末日边境
For decades now, it’s been a habit to keep renewing our devices. Our phones, our laptops, our desktop computers have been begging for a one or two thousand dollar upgrade every few years — sometimes every year. Fortunately for all of us, those days are almost over as the age of ambient computing brings products and services to you regardless of what you use.
几十年来，一直是不断更新我们的设备的习惯。 我们的电话，笔记本电脑，台式机每几年(有时每年)要求进行一千美元的升级。 对我们所有人来说幸运的是，随着环境计算时代的到来，无论您使用什么产品和服务，都已经过去了。
旗舰军备竞赛 (The Flagship Arms Race)
Year after year, the old stuff just didn’t cut it anymore. We took more photos and apps got bigger so we needed more space. Apps started getting more and fancier features so the old hardware struggled to keep up. Games got more impressive and needed newer GPUs to be able to play. We needed bigger batteries to cope with increased screen time as well as all that new hardware.
年复一年，旧的东西不再被削减了。 我们拍摄了更多照片，并且应用变得更大，因此我们需要更多空间。 应用程序开始获得更多和更高级的功能，因此旧硬件难以跟上。 游戏变得更加令人印象深刻，并且需要更新的GPU才能玩。 我们需要更大的电池来应对屏幕时间的增加以及所有新硬件。
So the time comes for that upgrade, but then all the options start looming large. Memory, CPUs, GPUs, storage, cameras, resolution. All those flagship devices look amazing but is everything going to transfer seamlessly? Would a cheaper version suffice? What if you go with a different manufacturer? Will you keep all your messages, photos, and emails? What about your game progress or system preferences?
因此，升级的时机到了，但是所有选择都开始浮现。 内存，CPU，GPU，存储，相机，分辨率。 所有这些旗舰设备看起来都很棒，但是一切都会无缝传输吗？ 便宜的版本就足够了吗？ 如果您选择其他制造商怎么办？ 您会保留所有消息，照片和电子邮件吗？ 您的游戏进度或系统偏好如何？
And then the bigger questions. Are you even staying with the same operating system? You’ve been in one camp but now the other camp looks enticing. Won’t you lose everything in the switch? These problems are all too familiar because they happen on repeat.
然后是更大的问题。 您是否仍使用相同的操作系统？ 您去过一个营地，但现在另一个营地看起来很诱人。 您不会在交换机中丢失所有内容吗？ 这些问题太过熟悉了，因为它们反复发生。
革命时刻 (Time for a Revolution)
Fortunately, the time is coming when we no longer need to answer those questions as all of it is slowly becoming irrelevant. Tech has been moving to make this irrelevant for a while. No one truly cares about gigabytes of memory or teraflops of graphical power.
幸运的是，我们不再需要回答这些问题的时候到了，因为所有这些问题都逐渐变得无关紧要了。 一段时间以来，技术一直在努力使这一点无关紧要。 没有人真正关心千兆字节的内存或图形能力的万亿次。
We all just want to be able to perform certain functions — work, play, and live — regardless of which devices are helping us.
我们都只希望能够执行某些功能(工作，娱乐和生活)，而不管哪种设备对我们有所帮助。
We’re living in a time when you can stand in the middle of your home and call out what you need. Turn on the lights, play relaxing music, watch “The Umbrella Academy”, start the Roomba. It doesn’t matter if there’s an iPhone in your pocket or an Echo on the table because the result is the same, and if you have both, you might not even be aware which one did the work. Meanwhile, the developers of the apps, services, and games that fulfill those needs also just want us to buy and use them. They don’t want hardware barriers to exist either.
我们生活在一个时代，您可以站在家里的中间，喊出您需要的东西。 打开灯，播放轻松的音乐，观看“雨伞学院”，启动Roomba。 口袋里有iPhone还是桌上有Echo都没关系，因为结果是一样的，如果两者都一样，您甚至可能都不知道是哪一个做的。 同时，满足这些需求的应用程序，服务和游戏的开发人员也只希望我们购买和使用它们。 他们也不希望存在硬件障碍。
Take phones for example. On the mobile hardware front, device manufacturers like Xiaomi, Oppo and OnePlus started popping up in recent years, creating hardware similar to Apple and Samsung at half the price. This created new pricing competition, but it also revealed the basic uniformity of the tech itself, regardless of brand; and it illustrated that each device, regardless of cost, basically does the same things as the next comparable device, with only marginal and often superficial differences.
以电话为例。 在移动硬件方面，近年来，诸如小米，Oppo和OnePlus之类的设备制造商开始出现，以一半的价格制造了类似于苹果和三星的硬件。 这引发了新的价格竞争，但也揭示了技术本身的基本统一性，与品牌无关。 它说明了每个设备，无论成本如何，基本上都与下一个可比较的设备做相同的事情，只是存在很小的差异，而且往往是表面上的差异。
While device manufacturers continued their flagship turf wars, much bigger players were thinking about ways to remove the hardware barrier altogether and started developing massive cloud computing solutions instead. Microsoft has Azure, Amazon has AWS, Google has GCP and these are taking over the heavy lifting. If you want to collaborate on a document, chat with colleagues, learn a new skill or catch some quick entertainment, there’s very likely a web app powered by a massive cloud-service that lets you do just that.
在设备制造商继续进行旗舰级争夺战的同时，更大的参与者正在考虑彻底消除硬件障碍的方法，而是开始开发大规模的云计算解决方案。 微软拥有Azure，亚马逊拥有AWS，谷歌拥有GCP，这些正在承担繁重的任务。 如果您想在文档上进行协作，与同事聊天，学习新技能或快速学习娱乐，那么很有可能是一个由海量云服务驱动的Web应用程序，您可以做到这一点。
The great thing is that this means your hardware can just handle the simple stuff — more often than not, just rendering a web page or streaming a video. All those gigahertz of power and gigabytes of memory and storage just sit idly by while you work online. If you switch to another machine, you can pick up right where you left off.
很棒的事情是，这意味着您的硬件可以处理简单的事情-通常，只是渲染网页或流式传输视频。 当您在线工作时，所有这些千兆赫的功率，数千兆的内存和存储空间都闲置了。 如果切换到另一台机器，则可以从上次停下来的地方继续接听。
The basic principle is that we’re freed from any one device to be able to do what we want — to the extent that we’re only passively aware of how we’re doing something and only focused on what we’re doing. Personal assistants like Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant are the go-to examples of this because you can reach them in multiple ways, but this concept is also what’s powering a massive shift in products and services to be usable from anywhere — all moving to the cloud and supporting interfaces for tv, desktop, mobile, watches, voice and more.
其基本原理是，我们从任何一个设备中解脱出来，能够做到我们想要的东西-对，我们是只能被动地了解我们是如何做的事情，只专注于我们正在做的事情的程度。 诸如Siri，Alexa和Google Assistant之类的私人助理就是其中的最佳示例，因为您可以通过多种方式与他们联系，但这一概念也推动了产品和服务的巨大转变，使其可以在任何地方使用-一切都在移动。到云，以及电视，台式机，手机，手表，语音等的支持接口。
There’s also a new tech buzzword for this device-agnostic ideal: ambient computing.
对于设备不可知的理想，还有一个新的技术流行语：环境计算。
桌面革命 (The Desktop Revolution)
On the application front, this is something that Google, in particular, has understood and been pursuing for years — and they’re honestly way ahead of the curve. Players like Microsoft and Amazon are pitching in too, albeit often in a game of catch-up.
在应用程序方面，尤其是Google多年来已经理解并追求了这一点-坦率地说，它们遥遥领先。 微软和亚马逊等公司也纷纷加入，尽管通常是在追赶游戏中。
Where the norm was to install a whole suite of office applications, dealing with version and license headaches, Google answered that you can do it all online with Google Docs. While we were all accustomed to our email applications, clumsily trying to figure out POP and IMAP settings, Google suggested we just visit an essentially bottomless web inbox named Gmail. As gamers dropped $400 on a game console or $2000 on a gaming PC, Google offered to be able to play the biggest titles from your browser with Google Stadia. And for all of those things, you can do them just as well on a $200 device as on a $2000 device.
在通常要安装一整套办公应用程序，处理版本和许可证问题的情况下，Google回答说，您可以使用Google Docs在线完成所有操作。 虽然我们都习惯了我们的电子邮件应用程序，但笨拙地尝试找出POP和IMAP设置，但Google建议我们只是访问一个名为Gmail的本质上无底的网络收件箱。 随着游戏玩家在游戏机上花费400美元或在游戏PC上花费2000美元，Google提出了使用Google Stadia来播放浏览器中最大的游戏的提议。 对于所有这些事情，您可以在价格为200美元的设备上和价格为2000美元的设备上一样好。
Google honestly doesn’t care about having a suite of office tools. They don’t care about delivering all your emails either. They certainly aren’t chomping at the bit to get into gaming. All they want is to get you on the internet. This is where they thrive. Google basically owns the web so that’s where they want you to live. They want to kill both the PC and the Mac, because all those old “desktop applications” do nothing for Google.
老实说，Google不在乎拥有一套办公工具。 他们也不在乎传递您所有的电子邮件。 他们当然不会为游戏而苦恼。 他们想要的只是让您上网。 这是他们蓬勃发展的地方。 Google基本上拥有网络，因此他们就是您要住的地方。 他们想杀死PC和Mac，因为所有那些旧的“桌面应用程序”对Google毫无用处。
Those are their motivations though, but Google’s needs and ours are interestingly aligned. Being able to do anything from anywhere is exactly what we want. It’s why we carry smartphones everywhere, even feeling naked without them, and it’s why we have dumped PCs and iMacs en masse for laptops. This is further evidenced by the number of people that flocked to Gmail, how we all watch YouTube, how Microsoft scrambled to get Office 365 online to keep people from moving in droves to Google Docs, and why suddenly Microsoft and Nvidia announced the imminent launches of their own game-streaming services when Google launched Stadia.
这些虽然是他们的动机，但有趣的是Google和我们的需求是一致的。 能够在任何地方做任何事情正是我们想要的。 这就是为什么我们随处携带智能手机，甚至没有它们也会感到赤裸裸，这就是为什么我们大量抛弃PC和iMac作为笔记本电脑的原因。 涌入Gmail的人数，我们大家如何观看YouTube，微软如何争先恐后地使Office 365联机以阻止人们大量涌入Google Docs，以及为什么突然之间微软和Nvidia宣布即将推出Google Docs进一步证明了这一点。 Google推出Stadia时，他们自己的游戏流媒体服务。
The advent of game-streaming services, in particular, negates one of the last major reasons for big hardware purchases: gaming. If you can buy a demanding, new title like Borderlands 3 for $60 and start playing it anywhere in 5 seconds, then the prospect of forking over hundreds to thousands on hardware, while still spending the same $60 for the game becomes far less attractive. Add to that waiting an hour or more for it to download and install, incessant updates while still only being able to play it from one machine, and the old way of doing things starts looking downright archaic compared to the cloud-based click-and-play promise.
特别是游戏流媒体服务的出现，否定了购买大型硬件的最后一个主要原因：游戏。 如果您能以60美元的价格购买像《无主之地3》(Borderlands 3)这样要求苛刻的新游戏，并在5秒钟内开始在任何地方玩游戏，那么在硬件上花费数百至数千美元却仍在花费60美元购买游戏的前景就变得不那么吸引人了。 再加上等待一个小时或更长的时间来下载和安装它，不断更新，同时仍然只能从一台计算机上播放它，与基于云的单击和单击相比，旧的处理方式开始显得陈旧过时。发挥诺言。
Going online means freedom for all of us. It’s a good thing. It means that your four-year-old Mac can still whip up spreadsheets just fine and your yellowed, aging work PC is perfectly capable of slaying demons in blistering detail in DOOM Eternal during your lunch break. As a matter of fact, some of the most popular desktop communication apps, like Slack and Discord, are already built completely using web technology, meaning you can use them just as well by visiting a website as you can by installing them. For stragglers like Adobe, time is running out. Either they get on board, or tomorrow they’ll go the way of the dinosaurs as web-minded newcomers blow past them.
上网意味着我们所有人的自由。 那是一件好事。 这意味着您只有四岁的Mac仍然可以正常使用电子表格，并且您的发黄，老化的工作PC可以在午休时间在DOOM Eternal中杀死恶魔，使其具有更清晰的细节。 事实上，一些最流行的桌面通信应用程序(例如Slack和Discord)已经完全使用网络技术构建，这意味着您可以通过安装网站访问网站，从而尽可能地使用它们。 对于像Adobe这样的散布者，时间已不多了。 他们要么登船，要么明天他们将成为恐龙的追随者。
操作系统革命 (The OS Revolution)
While going online is great for us, it’s bad news for the companies that are used to doing things the old way. In particular, it’s yet to be seen what OS X and Windows look like in the age of ambient computing and the cloud. Google introduced ChromeOS just over ten years ago to show the world what was coming and, unsurprisingly, much of the world laughed. After all, it’s a comparatively simple, little OS that essentially functions as a browser. Even today it has less than 2% of the market, compared to OS X’s 18% and Windows’ 77%, and its growth is still a slow creep. Those numbers give the impression their vision isn’t panning out.
上网对我们来说很重要，但对于那些习惯于按旧方式做事的公司来说，这是个坏消息。 特别是，在环境计算和云时代，OS X和Windows的外观还有待观察。 Google于十年前推出了ChromeOS，向世界展示了即将发生的事情，毫无疑问，世界上很多人都在笑。 毕竟，它是一个相对简单的小操作系统，本质上可以充当浏览器。 即使到今天，它的市场份额还不到2％，而OS X的市场份额为18％，Windows X的市场份额为77％，而且它的增长仍然缓慢。 这些数字给人的印象是他们的愿景没有平移。
Fortunately for Google, all it really needs to do is wait for more and more applications to move to the web. In the meantime, for most of us, our Macs and PCs are largely just fancy ways to boot up a browser. Certainly, not everything is web-based yet, but just think of how much time you spend using your computer for the web. If you’re anything like me, your browser, with bunches of tabs, is never closed. And there’s a 68% chance the browser you’re using is Chrome, especially since it works across every operating system. This was a really smart move on Google’s part because the separation between ChromeOS and Chrome is extremely small. Essentially, if you’re using Chrome, you’re already using ChromeOS, regardless of which logo you see when you boot up your computer. Suddenly, those OS market share numbers don’t seem to make much sense anymore.
对于Google而言，幸运的是，它真正需要做的就是等待越来越多的应用程序迁移到网络上。 同时，对于我们大多数人来说，我们的Mac和PC在很大程度上只是启动浏览器的理想方式。 当然，并不是所有的东西都基于Web，而是想想您花了多少时间在计算机上使用Web。 如果您像我一样，带有多个选项卡的浏览器将永远不会关闭。 而且您使用的浏览器有68％的机会是Chrome，尤其是因为它可以在所有操作系统上使用。 对于Google而言，这确实是明智之举，因为ChromeOS和Chrome之间的距离非常小。 本质上，如果您使用的是Chrome，则无论您在启动计算机时看到哪个徽标，都已经在使用ChromeOS。 突然之间，那些操作系统市场份额的数字似乎不再有意义。
When the last of your desktop apps goes online, it starts becoming quite a bit less interesting to spend $2000 on a piece of hardware just to see an Apple or Windows logo while you wait to open Chrome. At that point, a light-weight $300 Chrome-focused machine with a longer battery life starts looking like a pretty realistic option. And that’s the point: these devices are all starting to do the same things and the reasons to pay a premium for one brand over another is rapidly melting away.
当您的最后一个桌面应用程序上线时，花2000美元购买一块硬件只是为了在等待打开Chrome时看到一个Apple或Windows徽标，这变得不再那么有趣了。 到那时，一台重量轻，售价300美元，以Chrome为重点的设备，更长的电池寿命开始看起来是一个非常现实的选择。 关键是：这些设备都开始做相同的事情，并且为一个品牌比另一个品牌支付溢价的原因正在Swift消失。
But, while the sands are shifting, Microsoft and Apple often seem to be looking the wrong way. They’re both so used to fighting to gain ground in the OS battle that they haven’t noticed that war has moved online.
但是，尽管风云变幻，但微软和苹果公司似乎常常看起来是错误的方式。 他们俩都习惯于在操作系统之战中争夺先机，以至于他们没有注意到战争已经在线上展开。
For example, consider the Microsoft Store, which Microsoft consistently pushes heavily. It’s chock-full of games, generally poorly-rated apps for web-services like WhatsApp and Netflix and the odd productivity tool. The Mac App Store isn’t much better, again revolving around games, web-services, and a few more productivity and design tools. These stores are clear evidence that both platforms are desperately clinging to desktop apps because, without them, they basically have no reason to exist. Apple seems to recognize that there’s a problem but doesn’t understand where it’s coming from as it pushes mobile developers to port their iOS apps to OS X to keep its desktop OS relevant.
例如，考虑一下Microsoft一直大力推广的Microsoft Store。 它充满了游戏，通常是针对WhatsApp和Netflix等网络服务的差评应用以及奇特的生产力工具。 Mac App Store并没有更好，它再次围绕游戏，Web服务以及更多的生产力和设计工具展开。 这些商店清楚地表明，这两个平台都非常依赖桌面应用程序，因为没有它们，它们根本就没有理由存在。 苹果似乎认识到存在问题，但不知道它来自哪里，因为它推动移动开发人员将其iOS应用程序移植到OS X，以保持其桌面操作系统的相关性。
Worse still, Apple actively denies innovative cloud services like xCloud and Stadia from publishing to their app stores in an attempt to retain control over an ecosystem that is steadily growing past them. Since cloud services ideally run on anything, supporting them diminishes the value of owning a specific Microsoft or Apple machine, but in a catch 22, not supporting them diminishes the value of those machines even further. It’s a lose-lose scenario for them.
更糟糕的是，Apple积极拒绝像xCloud和Stadia这样的创新云服务发布到其应用商店，以保持对稳步增长的生态系统的控制权。 由于云服务理想上可以在任何设备上运行，因此支持它们会降低拥有特定的Microsoft或Apple计算机的价值，但是在陷阱22中， 不支持它们会进一步降低这些计算机的价值。 对他们来说这是个输球的情况。
As a consequence, in the near future, we’re very likely to see major changes in both OS X and Windows that steadily bring the web to the forefront, simply because they have no choice. The stores will start to embrace web apps (something Microsoft already does with PWAs — but more on that later) and perhaps even service subscriptions, purely because they have to if they want to remain relevant and useful in the age of ambient computing. Microsoft already threw in the towel on browser technology, basing Edge on Chrome’s underlying technology, Chromium. Nevertheless, they understand that they need to figure out how to bring back the glory days of Internet Explorer dominance by integrating it more tightly with Microsoft accounts. That brings with it a level of portability and freedom that is almost mandatory at this point, but is hampered by the fact that it’s only portable to the next Microsoft machine — whereas Chrome, for example, lives everywhere. But as long as Microsoft and Apple insist on making their software exclusively available on their respective systems, in the long run, they’re still playing a losing game where the device-agnostic nature of ambient computing is becoming the norm and cloud-giants rule.
结果，在不久的将来，我们很可能会看到OS X和Windows的重大变化，这些变化使Web稳步走在了最前沿，这仅仅是因为他们别无选择。 这些商店将开始使用Web应用程序(Microsoft已经在PWA中做过，但以后会更多)，甚至可能包括服务订阅，这完全是因为它们必须在环境计算时代保持相关性和实用性。 微软已经基于Chrome的基础技术Chromium充分利用了浏览器技术。 但是，他们知道他们需要弄清楚如何通过将其与Microsoft帐户更紧密地集成来重新获得Internet Explorer的辉煌时代。 这带来了一定程度的可移植性和自由性，这点在此时几乎是强制性的，但由于它只能移植到下一台Microsoft机器上而受到阻碍，而例如Chrome却无处不在。 但是，只要微软和苹果坚持要在各自的系统上独家提供其软件，从长远来看，他们仍然在玩一场失败的游戏，其中与环境无关的设备已成为常态，云计算巨头也以此为准则。
Some notes should certainly be taken from ChromeOS. If you’ve ever used a Chromebook, you’ll know that certain things feel right at home from the moment that you first log in with your Google account. This is because of the seamless integration with Chrome in general. The first thing that happens is that it instantly pulls in every extension and app that you already use with Chrome on any other system. You basically just opened up a machine that handed you the exact same customized Chrome browser that you use on Windows or OS X, your passwords and preferences came along, and you can even pull up the tabs from your other sessions. And this all happens within seconds of opening your first Chromebook. There was no setup or introduction or learning curve. It doesn’t try to differentiate itself or tell you how a computer should work. It just welcomes you back to the web and gets out of your way.
当然，应该从ChromeOS中获取一些注意事项。 如果您曾经使用过Chromebook，那么从您首次使用Google帐户登录后，您就会知道某些事情会让您感到宾至如归。 这是因为通常与Chrome可以无缝集成。 发生的第一件事是，它会立即提取您已在任何其他系统上与Chrome一起使用的所有扩展程序和应用程序。 基本上，您只是打开了一台机器，就可以将Windows和OS X上使用的完全相同的自定义Chrome浏览器交给您，密码和首选项也随之出现，甚至可以从其他会话中拉出选项卡。 这一切都在打开第一台Chromebook的几秒钟内完成。 没有设置，介绍或学习曲线。 它不会尝试区分自己或告诉您计算机应该如何工作。 它只是欢迎您回到网络而摆脱困境。
This is what an OS in the age of ambient computing should feel like. Instead of feeling like you’re missing “your” laptop, you should be able to feel at home on any machine. You can be completely device-agnostic. By design, OS X and Windows don’t do that — you have to effectively learn OS X and Windows — and they consequently have a lot of work to do to become cloud-friendly. Otherwise, that 2% ChromeOS market share is going to be a painful memory in a few years.
这就是环境计算时代的操作系统的外观。 您应该能够在任何一台机器上都感到宾至如归，而不是觉得自己缺少“笔记本电脑”。 您可以完全与设备无关。 从设计上讲，OS X和Windows无法做到这一点-您必须有效地学习 OS X和Windows-因此，要使它们变得对云友好，他们还有许多工作要做。 否则，几年之内，ChromeOS 2％的市场份额将是痛苦的回忆。
移动革命 (The Mobile Revolution)
You might be thinking I’ve been conveniently skipping over one major area where everything is native: mobile. Barely any mobile apps have web-based interfaces — and with good reason. Until recently, lots of web technology was still a bit too heavy and smartphones weren’t quite fast enough to handle the load of rendering full-blown web apps for them to be super smooth experiences. It’s a truly valid problem and likely the biggest hold up to everything moving to the web. We needed a flagship phone race to help solve it.
您可能会以为我一直在方便地跳过所有原生的主要领域：移动。 几乎没有任何移动应用程序具有基于Web的界面，这是有充分理由的。 直到最近，许多网络技术的仍然是一个有点太沉重，智能手机是不是足够快，足以应付呈现全面的网络应用程序对它们进行超光滑经验的负荷。 这是一个真正有效的问题，并且可能最大程度地阻止了一切移动到网络上。 我们需要一场旗舰电话竞赛来帮助解决它。
Originally, there were many attempts to make web-based apps — perhaps most (in)famously by Facebook in 2012, which even resulted in Mark issuing an apology for not going native. His head was in the right place, thinking that being web-based meant more flexibility and avoiding building multiple native apps to do identical things. It was visionary and logical, but it was also naive. While it sounded promising to make an app once with well-established web tech and have it instantly work on every new mobile platform (which back then included Windows Phone, Blackberry and Bada/Tizen next to iOS and Android), there were too many browsers that didn’t agree on the basics and it just didn’t work well enough. As a result, app developers simply gave up and went back to making native apps which work smoothly. Users are much happier when things work smoothly.
最初，有很多尝试制作基于Web的应用程序-也许是2012年Facebook最著名的一次，甚至导致Mark提出了道歉，理由是不走本地语言。 他的头在正确的位置，认为基于Web意味着更多的灵活性，并且避免构建多个本机应用程序来做相同的事情。 这是富有远见和逻辑的，但也很幼稚。 虽然用成熟的网络技术制作一个应用程序并立即使其可在每个新的移动平台(当时包括Windows Phone，Blackberry和Bada / Tizen，紧随iOS和Android)上运行都听起来很有希望，但浏览器太多在基本原理上并不一致，而且效果还不够好。 结果，应用程序开发人员只是放弃了，然后又回到了使本机应用程序运行正常的状态。 当事情顺利进行时，用户会更加开心。
But native apps were always a Band-Aid solution to web technology and mobile hardware being behind. That gap is closing and the reasons to keep using the native Band-Aid are evaporating. Google’s creation of and Microsoft’s push on the development of “Progressive Web Apps”, or PWAs, has created a new opportunity for developers to create extremely efficient, streamlined, mobile-friendly versions of apps that are entirely web-based and highly performant. And these don’t feel like websites at all. They support all kinds of native functionality like local installation, location detection, notifications, camera use, offline functionality, background synchronization, etc., blurring the lines between the possibilities on native versus web. On top of that, they work great on desktop browsers, meaning that we’ve quietly already achieved the holy grail of cross-platform development.
但是本机应用程序始终是针对Web技术和移动硬件的创可贴解决方案。 差距正在缩小，继续使用本地创可贴的原因正在消失。 Google的创建以及Microsoft推动“渐进式Web应用程序”(PWA)的开发，为开发人员提供了一个全新的机会，可以开发出完全基于Web的高性能高效，简化，移动友好的应用程序版本。 这些根本不像网站。 它们支持各种本机功能，例如本地安装，位置检测，通知，使用摄像头，脱机功能，后台同步等，从而模糊了本机与网络之间的界限。 最重要的是，它们在桌面浏览器上运行良好，这意味着我们已经悄悄地实现了跨平台开发的圣杯。
Additionally, all of the mobile app stores now welcome (or in Apple’s case, begrudgingly permit) PWAs, paving the way for users to install and use apps without even noticing that they’ve become a part of the web movement. Microsoft has pushed this even further by developing tools to make PWAs easy for developers to distribute to both the Microsoft Store and Apple App Store, clearly showing that they recognize the advantages that PWAs bring for the future. Microsoft has reportedly even been scraping the web, hunting for PWAs in the wild and adding them to their store automatically.
此外，现在所有移动应用程序商店都欢迎(或者在苹果公司的情况下，允许使用)PWA，从而为用户安装和使用应用程序铺平了道路，甚至没有注意到它们已成为网络运动的一部分。 微软通过开发工具使PWA易于开发人员进一步分发到Microsoft Store和Apple App Store，从而进一步推动了这一点，这清楚地表明他们认识到PWA为未来带来的优势。 据报道，微软甚至一直在抓取网络，在野外寻找PWA并将其自动添加到他们的商店中。
All of this means that those qualms about the web being too heavy for phones have been largely mitigated by being tackled from two fronts. Phone hardware has long passed the milestones necessary for smooth mobile web experiences, while mobile browsers and web technology have been vastly optimized for them. This means that phones can become much simpler devices, basically being nothing more than a beautiful screen with ample battery power and a bunch of sensors. They don’t need to push for the next blisteringly fast chips. They just need a great connection — which is where 5G helps ramp up the possibilities — since their primary purpose is becoming to serve up cloud services.
所有这些意味着，从两个方面解决了网络上对于电话过于沉重的那些烦恼。 手机硬件早已超过了实现流畅的移动Web体验所需的里程碑，而移动浏览器和Web技术已针对它们进行了优化。 这意味着电话可以变成更简单的设备，基本上只不过是具有充足电池电量和大量传感器的漂亮屏幕。 他们不需要推动下一个快速增长的筹码。 他们只需要一个很好的连接-这就是5G帮助扩大可能性的地方-因为他们的主要目的正在成为提供云服务的服务。
云革命 (The Cloud Revolution)
Chances are, you’ve already (perhaps unwittingly) been a big part of this revolution. You started to store your photos in the cloud, so you haven’t been hunting for terabyte external drives anymore. You want a phone with a bigger screen and a longer battery life but aren’t sure how many gigahertz the CPU is or how much memory it has. You probably flip-flop a bit on whether Android or iOS should be your next phone and whether OS X or Windows is best for you, because none of them feel quite right. The cost of switching walled gardens pains you. If you pay for something on one platform you don’t want to pay for it again on another.
很有可能，您已经(也许不经意间)成为了这场革命的重要组成部分。 您开始将照片存储在云中，因此不再需要寻找TB级的外部驱动器。 您想要一部更大的屏幕和更长的电池寿命的手机，但不确定CPU是多少GHz或拥有多少内存。 您可能会误以为Android或iOS应该是您的下一款手机，以及OS X或Windows是否最适合您，因为它们都不对。 更换围墙花园的成本使您感到痛苦。 如果您在一个平台上付款，则不想在另一个平台上付款。
That’s because, instinctively, you already know where we’re headed. We already have one foot firmly planted in the cloud — pulling what we want from it when we need it, regardless of what brand is emblazoned into the back of the device in front of you. Static content, like TV shows, movies, and newspapers were the first and easiest to move there, but now you can even play high-end games on any device. It won’t be long before the hold-outs like Photoshop get powerful cloud-based solutions. Just picture your giant Adobe Premiere video project rendering in the cloud, notifying you wherever you are when it’s complete, instead of chugging along and putting the expensive machine that’s firmly planted in your office out of commission for hours.
这是因为，本能地，您已经知道我们的去向。 我们已经将一只脚牢牢地扎在云中-无论何时在您面前的设备背面都刻有什么品牌，我们都可以在需要时从中拉出我们想要的东西。 诸如电视节目，电影和报纸之类的静态内容是最先和最容易转移到那里的内容，但是现在您甚至可以在任何设备上玩高端游戏。 不久之后，像Photoshop这样的支持者便会获得强大的基于云的解决方案。 只需将巨大的Adobe Premiere视频项目渲染图描绘在云中，即可在完成时通知您，无论您身在何处，而不必费力地将固定在办公室中的昂贵机器停工数小时。
Once that happens and the last of your apps goes to the cloud, you’ll finally be completely free from the shackles of walled gardens and flagship hardware, and you’ll be able to fully embrace the freedom of ambient computing.
一旦发生这种情况，并且您的最后一个应用程序进入了云，您最终将完全摆脱围墙花园和旗舰硬件的束缚，并能够完全拥抱环境计算的自由。
As a futurist and a nerd, I view this as a beautiful thing that I truly believe will benefit everyone. We’re in the middle of it, and we’re witnessing the slow-motion fall of old tech giants, the rise of new ones, and the shifting sands for entire industries. I, for one, can’t wait for my favorite services to be everywhere and anywhere I need or want them. Just imagine a world where a driverless car takes you to your next hotel room, where the lights change to your usual evening setting as you hear your schedule for tomorrow, and you blurt out “continue watching Mindhunter” without logging in to anything. That world is around the corner — and that, to me, is truly exciting. The phone in your pocket, the laptop in your bag, and the watch on your wrist are only minor pieces of that evolution. There will be no gated access to that future — as when any device can bring you the same great experiences, flagship devices will just be technological marvels for blogs to muse over.
作为未来主义者和书呆子，我认为这是一件美丽的事情，我真正相信它将使所有人受益。 我们正处于中间，我们正在目睹老牌技术巨头的缓慢衰落，新技术巨头的崛起以及整个行业的风沙变迁。 我迫不及待地希望我喜欢的服务无处不在，无论我需要还是想要它们。 想象一下一个世界，无人驾驶汽车将您带到下一个酒店房间，当您听到明天的时间表时，灯光将更改为通常的夜间设置，并且脱口而出“继续观看Mindhunter”而无需登录。 那个世界即将来临–对我来说，那确实是令人兴奋的。 放在口袋里的手机，放在手提包里的笔记本电脑以及手腕上的手表只是这种演变的次要部分。 通往未来的大门将无门可寻-当任何设备都可以为您带来相同的出色体验时，旗舰设备将成为博客沉思的技术奇迹。
翻译自: https://medium.com/swlh/ambient-computing-and-the-final-days-of-flagship-devices-82dea5e6de15
末日边境