Tag: updates

4 things operating systems should do today…but don’t

This is my 2014 wish list for where operating systems (OS) should be headed with laptops, tablets, smartphones and smart devices. Now before you lambast me or fill my ears with technical mumbo-jumbo about why some of these ideas aren’t possible, just take a slow, deep breath. I offer these concepts up as a challenge to take things to the next level, and not as fodder for a debate contest of what’s possible and what’s not. I hope these ideas are viewed as worthy goals rather than existing only in our imaginations thru science fiction.

I suggest it’s time we rethink operating system kernel theory and discard some of our historical notions of how operating systems are supposed to work. I’m continually amazed that even the newest operating systems, such as Android, have fundamental problems similar to what we’ve had since the earliest versions of Windows! So here’s my list…

No more OS lockups – It’s 2014 and computers still experience software related operating system crashes. In the last year, I’ve personally had brand new Windows machines, Mac’s and smartphones lock up in one way or another. No, it’s not just bad luck. I put the onus and ultimately responsibility back on the OS vendors. A 21st century OS should be hyper-intelligent about memory allocation and reclamation. The OS should be able to gracefully self-recover from everything short of a fatal hardware failure.

No more app crashes – I’m sure the OS developers will blame this on the application developers and vice-versa.  My take on this: app crashes should never happen. There are many well-known bad patterns that operating systems can monitor for and avoid. The OS should be able to detect bad application code and handle it without coming to a screeching halt. Examples that I’m thinking about include:

  • being aggressive about detecting and providing programmatic feedback on memory leak conditions,
  • automatically isolating run-away code blocks so they don’t lockup an entire application,
  • giving applications feedback on whether or not they are on a trajectory to run out of memory rather than simply killing them off,
  • provide not just guidelines but also build-time test tools for analyzing applications and provide pointed feedback on best practices.
  •  some may consider it draconian, but you could be more assertive on failing builds that don’t meet a minimum best-practice standard set by you, the OS manufacturer.

Dynamic updates – We should be able to update the OS and apps while they are running. I really don’t like having to reboot any device that gets updated, and in the case of Windows this can lead to multiple reboots and that is a major pain. This includes phones, computers, as well as TiVo’s, Hoppers and more. I’d like to see OSs model themselves after web pages that can replace specific content on-the-fly without having the refresh the entire page.

Instant boot – OS should allow smart, lazy loading of modules and applications as needed. Do we really need to wait for everything under the sun to load up front while we wait…and wait? My iPad takes some time to boot, my Android Nexus takes even longer, but my MacBook boots within seconds.

So that’s my short list. I hope some OS engineers have a chance to read this and give my suggestions thoughtful consideration.

Browser updates…too many too fast?

We’ve finally reached the point where the number of browser updates is out of control. There’s an all-out war between the various browser companies to see who can push out the most updates and improvements in the shortest period of time.

All these updates are causing a ripple effect on everything else that is dependent on the browser; for example, plug-in vendors, IT support staff, computer and smart phone vendors, application developers, any company that has a website, and your average consumer.  I’m guessing that on average the pace of updates is starting to outpacing business and consumer’s ability to keep up…and it seems to be accelerating.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree we benefit from the advancements. No argument there. However that is balanced by reality. And, reality is architecting our products to support the latest and greatest. There is also the fact that most of us also have to maintain support for older versions of browsers and there is a cost associated with backward compatibility. And, there is a cost to upgrading. Not everyone is able to update all the time.

As a case in point, let’s take a look at Firefox since it’s fairly easy to find an archive of their older releases. We are only seven months into the year 2011 and Firefox has had two major releases: Firefox 4 and Firefox 5. However, if you include releases candidates, betas and updates to Firefox 3.x the total number climbs to around twenty-two releases so far this year. Yikes!

Sure, most consumers only saw the two major updates: Firefox 4 and Firefox 5. But, they also experience a plethora of plug-in updates. For example, Flash Player has had eight updates so far this year. Silverlight has had three general distribution releases this year and one beta release of Silverlight 5. And, I wasn’t counting but it seems like I’ve had a bunch of Adobe Reader updates in the last few months.

My concern is that the speed of browser innovation is starting to cause businesses and consumers to get fatigued. It begs the question: how long can the ecosystem of browser consumers maintain this pace? Or, at what point do people just start jumping off the bandwagon and simply starting skipping releases? Do most consumers really care if their browser is now 100ms faster in parsing JavaScript? How many new ways can we create tabs?

In summary, I think browser vendors should slow down and become better custodians of their systems. How about also focusing on innovation in security, memory leaks and best practices documentation and vendor-provided validation engines? Indeed, they have sparked tremendous innovation across the entire world wide web since Mosaic released in 1993. But, depending on how many websites you visit, you can still experience slow web pages, in-consistent cross-browser support and browser crashes. I know there are no easy answers because competition breeds creativity. Perhaps we’ll all go back to just looking at basic text, pictures and videos in the future. And, there will just be specific widgets with very focused functionality for other things.

References:

Flash Player Archive

Firefox Archive

Silverlight Release History