Synkronized

Yes, I know the title of this post is misspelled and should read 'Synchronized' instead, but being the creative person I am (...) I just had to include this subtle reference to Jamiroquai's 1999 album by the same name. This post is not about music, however. In my previous post I mentioned that Parallels Desktop for Mac allows me to run alternative operating systems like suse 10.1 and Windows XP in parallel with Mac OSX, without having to reboot. Furthermore, Parallels Tools enable folder and file sharing between Mac OSX and Windows XP. Something Parallels doesn't support is the sharing of bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords and browse history among browsers in different virtual machines. For a true Transparent OS to materialize, however, such synchronization would be required. Enter Google Browser Sync.

This extension for the Firefox browser allows you to synchronize your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers (or virtual machines, for that matter). It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Instead of having to export and import bookmarks from one computer to another yourself and maintaining synchronization manually, this extension does all this for you, automatically. But the real benefits come from sharing cookies and passwords and having a single browse history across computers or virtual machines. It is easy to continue a session that you started on another computer, while looking up the URL of that site you visited yesterday while working from your desktop is now possible as well.

Although Google will most likely have developed this extension with sharing across physical computers in mind, its use across multiple virtual machines is illustrative of the kind of synchronization mechanisms needed to turn the Transparent OS into a reality.

Transparent OS

In my previous post, I wrote about the network becoming the computer and the reduced relevance of a computer's OS as more and more applications move online, thus enabled by AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). But although these developments indeed make it less relevant which OS you are running on your computer, it is a given that every computer still needs one. Did I just say 'one'? If current developments around virtualization are any indication, many of us will soon not have just one but multiple OSs running alongside each other, enabling us to work with our favorite applications without having to worry whether or not our system operates under the right OS, i.e. Windows XP, Mac OSX or Linux. This end-state, whereby it is transparent to the user which OS underlies a particular application, I have come to call the 'transparent OS'. Although the industry still has a long road to travel before this state is reached, several developments point in this direction.



As the proud owner of a MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo processor, I recently installed Parallels Desktop for Mac (RC2). This virtualization software allows me to run Windows XP and Suse Linux 10.1 alongside Mac OSX, without the need to reboot as is required by Apple's own BootCamp. Furthermore, Parallels Tools enables, amongst other things, clipboard synchronization and shared folders between host and guest OSs. This makes that I can use each OS for tasks that it is best suited for; Suse Linux 10.1 for the geeky stuff, Windows XP for the mainstream stuff and Mac OSX for the 'insanely great' stuff! In all honesty, I first and foremost work under Mac OSX but especially in situations where no support for Mac OSX is available (yet), the power (and potential) of the virtualization concept in a consumer context comes to the fore. In the post 'DRM = DRaMa', I mentioned the fact that my ISP provides IP television services, which work with Windows Media Player only. This meant that whenever I wanted use this service, I had to boot up my Dell laptop from work, even if I was working on another, non-Windows computer at the same time. Now, I can work on whatever I need to do on my MacBook Pro, watching some IP TV via Windows Media Player under Windows XP in a separate window on my Mac OSX desktop at the same time. That's progress, don't you think? ;-)

Maybe this example has not yet really convinced you of the validity of my claim that the 'transparent OS' is upon us. In that case, listen to this. It is rumored that Apple may actually incorporate the Windows API in the next version of its own operating system, Mac OSX 10.5. This would mean that users, who are hesitant to upgrade to Vista (Microsoft's own new OS, now due out in 2007) but are looking for a stable and virus-free OS, can buy themselves an Apple computer while still being able to run all their (expensive) Windows XP applications. As said, all this is based on rumors, but if it turns out to be true it sure brings the 'transparent OS' a step closer! So, watch this space!