Do client operating systems matter any more?

Lately I’ve been taken aback by the amount of press around the recent release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard from Apple. At the same time, Microsoft is pumping up the release of Windows 7, which is supposed to be much improved over the embattled Windows Vista. Does anyone care? Not me.

Don’t get me wrong, the best job I have ever had was reviewing operating systems for PC Magazine. I was a Unix guy who also knew Windows, so I was tasked with comparing and contrasting several Unix flavors along with OS/2 and Windows, and I did so a few times in the ’90s as a contributing editor for the magazine. The reason was simple: We spent most of our time dealing with the client OS during those days, thus the ability for the OS to provide the features and functions we were seeking was very important to the reader. So what changes as we move to the cloud?

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The fact is that operating systems are becoming just software supporting the browser, and the browser is, in essence, the new OS as we move headlong into cloud computing. As we go through these iterations of OS upgrades, such as Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, I can’t help but think that it all doesn’t matter, considering the trend is to move the processing off the desktop and into the clouds.

Google perhaps has the right idea with its Chrome OS, which is basically the browser becoming the OS. We could all be booting into the browser sometime in the next few years, not having any idea as to what OS is behind it — or even care.

Therefore, as cloud computing becomes more pervasive, the importance of the client diminishes quickly. I consider my own personal computing habits as proof of this. I write and blog from Google Docs, I use cloud-based e-mail, I do my calendaring as a service, my contacts are in the cloud, and my accounting and, of course, social networking systems are in the cloud. I use my computer’s OS and native software running on the OS for very little these days.

Could I be happy with just a browser? Not yet, but we’re getting there.