Fair enough. I may have mis-read the thread. And I agree that a full net boot would be too intensive. I wouldnt rule out a network home directory in the cloud with syncing, but that is not this patent.
I think that is correct. The net boot is local, the net administration is Internet based. Sure this has been done for years but Apple will likely make improvements in automatically syncing the updates. Visualize your local server receiving auto updates from the Internet which in turn auto update their own clients' boot parameters. Sort of a trickle down synchronizing so all the clients are continually up to date.
This patent cannot cover every possible method of net boot -- there's too much prior art out there, public knowledge for more than 20 years at this point, which would make the general method of net booting unpatentable
I don't think Apple will ever become a patent troll. They patent things but I have never seen them sue anyone unless they have created an actual product based on those patents. So if Apple does introduce a product which is truly unique and is protected by this patent you can be sure competitors will be copying those unique features as quickly as possible and then claiming Apple's patent is invalid because of prior art.
Would Apple really do something this boring? It's boring to me, a complete geek, so what about Apple's target audience, normal consumers?
Any time you see a story about "cloud computing," try this simple experiment. As you read it, substitute "internet" for "cloud." Suddenly the story makes more sense, and it sounds like it was written in 1997. It sounds old school. Because it is.
The concept of cloud computing is decades old. And, as you said, it's boring. It's not a feature that people are drawn to. It is only noticed when it doesn't work.
I think to understand this you need to be a bit more forward thinking. Saying "what if you have no network connection?" someday will be like saying "what if the power goes out?". You don't refuse to buy a fridge because the power goes out less than once a year, or refuse to buy light bulbs because the power grid has occasional brown outs. Likewise you won't make this assumption anymore once the network is always present, always on and everywhere (minus the short and rare outages similar to today's power grid). Today the power might go out in your house, you don't refuse to buy a desktop computer because of this small chance?
...
You're making a VERY bad analogy. The difference between Internet service and Power is that Power is regulated (and often served by government entity)... it's often very close to a right (ie, power loss during winter months is cruel even if you don't pay the bills - often city/state governments forbid power operators from shutting off power during winter months to prevent deaths).
If we had any meaningful movement on Network Neutrality, I might have agreed with you, but it seems we're going in the opposite direction: now corporations can directly buy the political spectrum.
Expect the Internet to become like Cable TV (pricey and horrible service/quality)... sad, but more likely than your utopian vision of ubiquity above.
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Fair enough. I may have mis-read the thread. And I agree that a full net boot would be too intensive. I wouldnt rule out a network home directory in the cloud with syncing, but that is not this patent.
I think that is correct. The net boot is local, the net administration is Internet based. Sure this has been done for years but Apple will likely make improvements in automatically syncing the updates. Visualize your local server receiving auto updates from the Internet which in turn auto update their own clients' boot parameters. Sort of a trickle down synchronizing so all the clients are continually up to date.
This patent cannot cover every possible method of net boot -- there's too much prior art out there, public knowledge for more than 20 years at this point, which would make the general method of net booting unpatentable
I don't think Apple will ever become a patent troll. They patent things but I have never seen them sue anyone unless they have created an actual product based on those patents. So if Apple does introduce a product which is truly unique and is protected by this patent you can be sure competitors will be copying those unique features as quickly as possible and then claiming Apple's patent is invalid because of prior art.
Would Apple really do something this boring? It's boring to me, a complete geek, so what about Apple's target audience, normal consumers?
Any time you see a story about "cloud computing," try this simple experiment. As you read it, substitute "internet" for "cloud." Suddenly the story makes more sense, and it sounds like it was written in 1997. It sounds old school. Because it is.
The concept of cloud computing is decades old. And, as you said, it's boring. It's not a feature that people are drawn to. It is only noticed when it doesn't work.
I think to understand this you need to be a bit more forward thinking. Saying "what if you have no network connection?" someday will be like saying "what if the power goes out?". You don't refuse to buy a fridge because the power goes out less than once a year, or refuse to buy light bulbs because the power grid has occasional brown outs. Likewise you won't make this assumption anymore once the network is always present, always on and everywhere (minus the short and rare outages similar to today's power grid). Today the power might go out in your house, you don't refuse to buy a desktop computer because of this small chance?
...
You're making a VERY bad analogy. The difference between Internet service and Power is that Power is regulated (and often served by government entity)... it's often very close to a right (ie, power loss during winter months is cruel even if you don't pay the bills - often city/state governments forbid power operators from shutting off power during winter months to prevent deaths).
If we had any meaningful movement on Network Neutrality, I might have agreed with you, but it seems we're going in the opposite direction: now corporations can directly buy the political spectrum.
Expect the Internet to become like Cable TV (pricey and horrible service/quality)... sad, but more likely than your utopian vision of ubiquity above.
I rember network booting on Novell back in the early 80's.... This is new?
No it's not, and the patent application isn't either. It's not even an application for network booting but for simplifying update management.
Why AI ties a 12 year old patent application with a cloud based Mac OS X, I don't know.