Family Historian User Group

NickWalker wrote: ↑

11 Oct 2022 21:47

There will certainly be software running on our own computers for decades to come but more and more people will move away from that. As I said, this won't be immediate and indeed many people don't have access to fast enough Internet connections yet.

It's not just the speed of "generally available" Internet Connection (I am still working on ADSL - getting 12M/bit/sec download), or what can be done on cloud based servers (even cloud based virtual servers - where you don't have a clue where data and programs are stored/operating from or indeed who by).

I think and hope that home hardware is about to "get itself sorted". Cheap Chromebooks are pointing the way - not much more than clever terminals. Do I want a new high spec lap top pushing £1,500 to even £2,000 or a cheap Chromebook at £200? At the moment it is the laptop, but if "Home Hubs" got organised ...

You have in effect a router/server connected to Gigabit internet (or whatever) and to your Sky Dish, 9g mobile, your old aerial, to a local RAID storage array, DVD changer and local Wifi. Your "Chromebooks" (possibly one per room, one per room user?), your smart phones, your "remote controls", even your old PCs, run an app that says "take this input" (local disk, internet cloud, sky disk etc.) and "output it on ..." (my smart phone, my chromebook, my living room TV) and in addition put the sound on the hi-fi speakers, and take input from my kitchen keyboard. (All by finger dragging on a screen - or voice controlled by the bastard love-child of Alexa and Cortana - or even CITT?) Then almost anything runs on almost anything. (And the embedded microchip in your neck ensures that everything follows you as you move through the house, get in your car (driverless of course), ...).

At that point we would probably cease to care where stuff is, we just subscribe to services (hopefully with money, not with our privacy and personal data). We also lose sight of whether it arrives over the 9g network, over fibre or from cached stuff on your RAID array - so instead of specifying our inputs, we just specify what we want.

If all that happens, perhaps applications running from a local disk on a local PC may have had their day?

davidf wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2022 09:39

... If all that happens, perhaps applications running from a local disk on a local PC may have had their day?

Though would we even notice if someone sticks a layer under everything so that, as far as I'm concerned, I'm still running Windows on a "hard drive", and FH, as we know it today, is still running under that Windows? I can see that Google wouldn't just want Chromebook hardware but Chrome software as well - but MS might not concur.... It's just all inside a VM

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2022 14:20

Though would we even notice if someone sticks a layer under everything so that, as far as I'm concerned, I'm still running Windows on a "hard drive", and FH, as we know it today, is still running under that Windows? I can see that Google wouldn't just want Chromebook hardware but Chrome software as well - but MS might not concur.... It's just all inside a VM

The whole concept of the Chromebook is that it is really just a web browser to access websites and web applications running cloud versions of software. I am aware this has changed slightly as they're able to run Android Apps now but really Chromebooks are all about running applications off the device with all the processing done externally. That's why they are so cheap because the processing is being done elsewhere so they don't need to be particularly powerful.

I imagine for many of us who use FH and AS, Ancestry is nowhere near powerful enough to use as a main repository for our tree(s). I don't even use Word anymore, but an indie program called Atlantis Word Processor. It may or may not have legs, but it's docs are all .rtf, so I can always open them in another program if necessary. I try to use as little Microsoft software as possible. If it comes to it, I can likely boot up old EZ PC, give the DOS command cd/wp and bring up WordPerfect 5.1

Teresa

NickWalker wrote: ↑

11 Oct 2022 19:24

fhtess65 wrote: ↑

11 Oct 2022 18:57

As useful as Ancestry is to build a basic tree, unless it vastly improves its citation and reporting system, it could never replace dedicated software. At least not for me.

Exactly. As I said "The features offered are not yet extensive enough or responsive enough for me". It will certainly have to improve massively for me to use it and I suspect it will be a decade or two before that happens at least. It would need to have the equivalent of AS available for me to use it . But IT is moving to the cloud, many businesses no longer run their own servers, for most normal people the online version of MS Word is good enough and they don't need most of the features of the full desktop application, they listen to music streamed from the cloud rather than owning it, etc.

NickWalker wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2022 15:09

...
The whole concept of the Chromebook is that it is really just a web browser to access websites and web applications running cloud versions of software. ... That's why they are so cheap because the processing is being done elsewhere so they don't need to be particularly powerful.

Indeed. The issue with them - as far as I personally am concerned - is that one needs totally new software, whereas I suspect that if one went for Citrix style solutions, one wouldn't need to alter the software and one could just "leverage the legacy investment". (Apologies if leveraging the legacy is a bit too management speak! ) That way, we needn't lose any software abilities we have now and we wouldn't really notice much about the Cloudification. I think... (Not sure if Citrix - which I'm referring to simply because it's the thing I was once familiar with - can cope with poor internet connections though.)

Citrix still exists and PCs running in the cloud are becoming popular but this is really to allow companies to run existing legacy applications. I can't think of any major new desktop-only software that has launched in the last 10+ years. By developing web applications companies are able to reach users of Windows, Mac, ios, android, linux, etc. PWA (progressive web app) technology is gaining more features year after year to allow web apps to feel as responsive as native applications with facilities to offer notifications, interact with devices such as cameras, etc. Microsoft Teams (arguably the only new software that's been a huge success for them in the last 15 years) is a web application that runs from the cloud across various device types. We've not even discussed the power saving and ecological benefits of not having computers running in our homes, businesses and server rooms but instead having them running in the server farms of cloud companies. If Calico Pie were starting to develop FH now as a new application then I'm sure they would be developing it using web technologies instead of being a stand-alone Windows app. This wasn't an option for them 25 years ago but it would be now. However, it would take many years of development and a lot of money to get even close to the features that FH has now.

NickWalker wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2022 20:12

Citrix still exists and PCs running in the cloud are becoming popular but this is really to allow companies to run existing legacy applications. ...

I agree - and part of my angle on this is to persuade people that "The Cloud" need not represent something utterly different that is to be feared but might allow legacy applications to continue. Nor is it about handing over all your data to the tender mercies of Ancestry or FamilySearch. Of course, whether anyone like MS cares to go down a Citrix type route is up to them, but so far wholesale revampings of the entire application portfolio seems to have come to a grinding halt (E.g. Chromebooks are fine providing you don't actually want applications that you've heard of. So far...)

NickWalker wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2022 20:12

... If Calico Pie were starting to develop FH now as a new application then I'm sure they would be developing it using web technologies instead of being a stand-alone Windows app. This wasn't an option for them 25 years ago but it would be now. However, it would take many years of development and a lot of money to get even close to the features that FH has now.

Yes, it's the "many years of development and a lot of money" that's the crucial matter.