Please Don’t Call it a Web “OS”
Having worked with people who have been unhealthily obsessed with terminology (“Hey, I’m going to interrupt you to clarify the term you’re using even though I know exactly what you mean.”) I hesitate to bring this up. But luckily hypocrisy doesn’t get you blackballed from writing a blog.
Over the years there have been several attempts at creating a desktop-type experience that runs in a browser. And in many of these cases I see folks calling them a WebOS. Here’s one of the latest. Not to be too picky, but we do have things called “Operating Systems”? It’s pretty clear what they are and what they generally do. I even understand interpreting the term operating system in the broadest sense. To help clarify, walter points out the following:
Yes, it’s annoying that people are diluting the term “operating system”.
However, Windows and Mac OS aren’t “operating systems” either and everyone calls them that anyway. It’s funny that Mac OS is the one with “OS” in its name even though it’s the one whose actual OS has a separate name (Darwin).
In fact, are three (I think) definitions in common usage:
1. A software platform extending from hardware upwards (classic definition).
2. A software platform extending from applications downwards (Jooce, “Java OS”, .NET Framework, Apollo, etc.).
3. A bundle of software that comes with a computer, generally including both 1 and 2 along with some apps (Windows, Mac OS).I agree all but #1 are annoying.
I can understand calling these sites “shells” or “finders” but for me I think the proper term for the category is “web desktops”.
Next time on Anal Terminology Theater we’ll complain that the term “beta” has lost all meaning in today’s crazy world. ;)
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Adam Davis
September 6, 2007 at 5:21 am
I suspect that eventually the term OS might be suitable for a web based system.
Assume that an OS is merely a collection of software, utilities and drivers that abstract common services so programs are portable from system to system.
Historically this has meant that programs can access files on a wide variety of storage devices without caring or knowing what the device is or how it works. They can present data to the user in textual or graphical format, on screen, paper, or other visual mediums without specialized knowledge. They can communicate with other programs on the local system, as well as separate systems with common connections, and the OS will work out the details.
I expect that over time services will develop which manage the wide variety of social applications and abstract that interface so a user need visit only one site to update Facebook, Orkut, Linkedin, MySpace, etc simultaneously. IM transports have evolved so that one need only use one client and one protocol to chat on MSN, GTalk, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, etc. Web mail services will develop to allow access not only to IMAP and POP, but AOL, Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc so that those with multiple accounts (most of us) can manage all that information.
A web OS would then merely be a collection of software, utilities, and drivers (or services) that allow applications to be written that can access all of those resources without knowing or caring what the particular details are – which services the user has signed up for, what each service offers, how to commit news/blog/sms/etc updates, how to shorten URLs for various service restrictions, etc. The web OS may reside and run on a server, on the device (ajax, etc), on peer to peer devices, but most likely a combination of these – wherever there are computing resources available.
That may well involve the phasing out of the historical OS – Sun’s thin client heavy server vision of old, where the browser is in firmware, and the hardware needs no ‘OS’ proper – or it may simply mean that we have different types of OS – one for local hardware services, one for remote hardware services, one for web services, one for communication services.
Eventually they will all be consumed by one mega-OS which provides abstraction for the majority of common services/hardware/drivers/resources/etc.
-Adam