I've just seen the future of computing

This is the closest thing I've yet seen of a clear vision for the future of computing. A single computing device, always with you, with all your stuff, that you can expand and grow to suit different use-cases and needs. The number of times I wish I could switch seamlessly between my phone and computer - to "session shift" some activity I was working on between the different formats, is perhaps 3 or 4 times daily. Session shifting has become even more of a problem for me as I end up dealing with half a dozen computing devices in a day (desktop, netbook, laptop, phone, work laptop, work software testing laptop, etc.)

One thing I have to also admit to liking about it is the surprising unslickness of the whole presentation.

It's perfectly mundane looking. Like it's something that everybody just uses as a matter of course. The computing devices just blend into the background, there's no spotlight or fancy dog and pony show. It's just a stock monitor/keyboard/mouse and a more or less humdrum looking laptop style device. It's commodity stuff that'll find it's way into ubiquity.

In other words, it's not Apple and that's a good thing. Apple makes beautiful devices, but at the end of the day, they always fall short of that ever present need for our tools to simply blend into the background and do their thing quietly -- not showcase themselves. Apple doesn't understand the need for computers to simply be an appliance with pure utilitarian functionality.

Yes, Apple talks about computing as appliances all the time, but when was the last time you dropped half a month's salary on a toaster designed by the top industrial designers in the world pushed out by a multi-million dollar marketing campaign? Apple is a boutique pen maker in a world powered by disposable bics. There's always a market for the Montblanc, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a fine pen is a work of usable art. The $.12 disposable Bic powers the world. And while my overstretched analogy is getting a bit thin here, I'm not saying the whole setup looks cheap, but functional and utilitarian. It's not a Yugo, it's a Honda.

Hence my thinking about this. It's a good/decent looking device, crammed full of all kinds of goodness.That powers 95% of most people's computing needs. Speaking with a colleague over the last few months, he's gone through a tortured decision making process to find a lightweight portable computing device to take on vacations with him. He's found that when he brings his laptop with him, he almost never takes it out. And an iPad doesn't let him do the couple things he wants to make sure he's able to do on the go, the new MBA, while sexy, can't justify their price to him. This device would completely fill all of his needs. Couple that with the media center role (and the upcoming Netflix) this phone can assume, the kindle app and some games, and literally you can bring your world around with you in your pocket.

What I found also very interesting is the end-to-end thinking behind this. It's clearly targeted at corporate users, the portion of the demo regarding citrix and the use-case of the laptop dock on a train really drove that home. But it can clearly assume useful roles for most people.

Is it perfect? No...clearly not. It's stuffed full of all kinds of compromise, bridging the webtop and phone sides is going to be a challenge in some cases, but it's a bold first step in the right direction.