"They want to lure us into "the cloud". Partly because it's all the rage right now, partly as a hedge against the slowing down of the hardware market. Lock in the existing customers even tighter. Offer more products "as a service", switch to subsrcription models. You may still own your device, but in order to make good use of it, you must use their services on their server farms."
I suspect it's far simpler than that. I think it's more a case of the Silicon Valley ivory tower. Around there, broadband internet is ubiquitous, so they forget it's not across many parts of the rest of the world. I've said before that all SV developers should be dropped into the middle of the Mojave desert on an annual basis to remind them what the "unconnected" world is like. I guess we need to load up the designers too!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
