[Russ Smith]

The keywords in the intro quote were "but not all at once" for me. Why is that? It strikes me as it's a backward engineered bow to the iPAD, since it can only do one thing at once (at least for now). The thing is, I like to be able to do at least two things at once a lot of the time. Reading e-mail while watching a video; checking Facebook while waiting for a download; there are a lot times when one task doesn't require constant monitoring. Even on my phone, I want to be able to look up an address while talking to the person that needs it.

There are some NAS boxes that also support Torrents and such, allowing you to start a process and have it continue without being "connected" to it. That may be part of the solution for real usefulness in New World computers.

"New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash." seems like wishful thinking to me or at least predicated on the "but not all at once" scenario. It seems to me that, as long as you have clever, but morally-deficient people, you'll have to deal with some form of mal-ware. The sandbox and single execution only make it harder.

I do think that we'll eventually move to a dual device mode where the device we carry will have built-in phone capabilities but rely on a client for remote access/display to a much more powerful base device for bigger applications. Obviously, that has to be predicated on fast, nearly faultless, ubiquitous wireless access in order to work. It also requires some major work on the interface problem. Right now the screens are either too bit (iPAD) or too small (most smartphones) to be both carry-able and usable for more than basic needs. (There's only so much resizing and scrolling that's tolerable.) The same is true of keyboards.

The handheld device in the last paragraph could be an appliance computer of some sort (though I still think it needs to multi-task a bit).

The thing about an open client like that is that you could use it equally well and simultaneously with a user-owner base unit and with commercial server-based services.

I'll agree, however, that for some folks, an appliance computer is all they'll ever want, need, and use. The loss of freedom, for them is only theoretical.

I'd also agree with the author that such computers would benefit from "decades of research into human-computer interaction". My only caveat is that multiple vendors, while ultimately best for the consumer, also seem to result in a multitude of somewhat incompatible user interfaces and interaction styles. The solution would be to somehow make the interface portable so that you could use whatever user interface you wanted (on even multiple interfaces on the same device). Apple, who sells their hardware by selling the interface, wouldn't go for that at all.