In an Apple Discussions forum on Spaces for iPad, Robb Manning stating back in 2010 that having "the ability to touch one button and switch spaces to where I have safari up to do some research would be awesome." Well, today we move closer to that reality. The USPTO has revealed a patent that shows that Apple is bringing Spaces to the iPad. In fact, if you look closely in one patent graphic, you may actually be getting a sneak peek of OS X Lion on iPad. This spices things up a bit wouldn't you agree?
Nokia patent application shows what might one day be a real thing
Unfortunately it is not possible to present any real example ofreplacing rather than fixing the Unix permission model. One contendermight be that part of "SELinux" that deals with file access. Thisdoesn't really aim to replace regular permissions but rather tries toenhance them with mandatory access controls. SELinux follows much thesame model of Unix permissions, associating a security context withevery file of interest, and does nothing to improve the usabilityissues.
A different partial approach can be seen in the access controls usedby the Apache web server. These are encoded in a domain-specificlanguage and stored in centralized files or in ".htaccesss" files near thefiles that are being controlled. This method of access control has a number of realstrengths that would be a challenge to encode into anything based onthe Unix permission model: The permission model is hierarchical, matching the filesystem model. Thus controls can be set at whichever point makes most sense, and can be easily reviewed in their entirety. When the controls set at higher levels are not allowed to be relaxed at lower levels it becomes easy to implement mandatory access controls. The identity of the actor requesting access can be arbitrary, rather than just from the set of identities that are known to the kernel. Apache allows control based on source IP address or username plus password. Using plug-in modules almost anything else that could be available. Access can be provided indirectly through a CGI program. Thus, rather than trying to second-guess all possible access restrictions that might be desirable and define permission bits for them in a new ACL, the model can allow any arbitrary action to be controlled by writing a suitable script to mediate that access.
So why call WOA devices PCs? While part of this is due to the politics and semantics alluded to above, I think another part of it has to do with productivity. Microsoft sees PCs, in addition to being leisure devices, as things (machines or devices) with which people get work done. And that's why, I believe, Microsoft is allowing one non-OS application suite to run in the Desktop mode: Office. Take a look at this video with Scott Seiber, featured in Sinofsky's post -- particularly at the 3:46 time marker -- and you'll see what I mean. I haven't used Office 15, so I don't know how productive it really is with touch, but it looks good. I have used iWork on the iPad, and I know that, for me at least, it's not productive at all.
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