It's about to arrive (7 years after the article):"Ubuntu for Android: Penguins peck at Nokia's core problem ...Your smartphone runs Android when it’s a phone but when you plug into a monitor or dock, Ubuntu kicks in. Plug in a keyboard and you’ve got Ubuntu – with the phone serving as your desktop computer."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/21/ubuntu_for_android/
You could say this article was very successful in predicting the features of the 2007 iPhone (and later Android phones), which does things like 'play a DVD movie on the big screen', stream music and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
-- Michael Bluett, February 22, 2012
someone at Microsoft must have read this article; now in 2015 they want to sell windows phone devices that can double as a desktop;http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-announces-continuum-turning-windows-10-phones-into-desktops/
is this done with the focus on corporations/enterprise markets? i guess that this will not make more sales for Microsoft, as most corporations are already using windows for the desktop.
-- Michael Moser, April 30, 2015
To say that MS is now implementing this misses (IMHO) the point of this piece.As I read it, Phil is asking for a simpler UI for users; basically he's asking for iOS. THAT is the important thing. Sharing a CPU and RAM is a pointless, idiotic, distraction. CPU and RAM is cheap and getting cheaper; there is utterly no need to drive your 27" screen using the CPU (and all its thermal constraints) built into a phone.
What MS is offering is the exact opposite of what Phil wants --- you can keep your old Windows, with all its problems and complexity and, hey, we'll add a whole NEW LEVEL of complexity to that...
So how would one implement Phil's vision? Step one would be a dramatically simpler,more secure OS. This is essentially what we have today in something like iOS. If ALL you care about is the vision, then we're done. But if you feel that an additional important part of the vision is large screens and keyboards, then what you want is seamless interaction between these. That is harder, but, again, not for the reason the Continuum fans think. There are two difficulties.
The first is wanting to retain the value in the existing OS while getting rid of what makes it difficult to use. Apple has mad substantial progress along these lines, for example with security measures that are not too disruptive, but it's not clear how far they can go. Much of the pain in using a PC comes from crappy hardware, and the consequent more or less random bugs that result; and it's not clear how far Apple can go in fixing that. (Though they certainly can do a LOT better than they do today.) So what does Apple do? You could imagine, for example, solutions somewhat like OSX Server. What I mean by this is that something like iOS (OSX UI elements, but iOS policy elements) is the base OS, but OSX is (like OSX Server) an optional install, maybe installed in a separate VM? The hope then is that the amount of life that has to take place in the OSX VM grows ever smaller, the security value of the OSX VM likewise grows ever smaller, and the iOS hypervisor is in control of the hardware and can cope better with its faults and stupidities. [My guess is that when the long-awaited ARM-based Mac arrives, it will provide a solution somewhat like this. I would expect the OSX Blue Box(a VM) to stay around forever, though the x86 JIT that accompanies it will probably have a limited lifespan.]
The second issue is that one wants a seamless compute experience between one's phone, tablet, and PC; but this is not best achieved by plugging the phone into a dock --- that's an idiotic solution. The goal is not to share physical hardware; it's to ensure that data of all forms is shared seamlessly across a personal eco-system. Apple has laid the foundation for that with iCloud. The next would be to seamlessly move "state" from one device to another ("I was composing that letter/reading that web page/listening to that song on device A, now I want to continue on device B") and Continuity (not Continuum --- that's MS) solves that problem.
Essentially an iPhone + iMac gives the valuable part of Phil's vision today (minus the simplified OS running on the Mac) but it's achieved by wireless network connections, not by something as 20th century as plugging an iPhone into a dedicated slot in a docking station.
-- Maynard Handley, December 23, 2015