Companies like Popular
Power, Parabon, United
Devices, and Distributed
Science are currently trying to entice Internet users who own
PCs, Macs, and Linux boxes to download their client software (a
Java-based distributed multiprocessing application wrapped up in a
screensaver that fires up when the user is not actively using the
computer) by offering small payments, gift certificates, or warm
fuzzies.
The companies that pay for the use of that otherwise untapped
computing power appear to budget around $5-$15 per month per client.
What if Apple picked a player in this emerging industry, anointed it
the chosen one, created an Apple-only version of the client software,
and made it part of the default installation on some future revision
of the OS? Certainly that would be worth a few bucks a month to Apple
per client.
Companies in this space currently crow about having anywhere from
40,000 to 160,000 clients operating - it seems that Apple could
pretty quickly pump those numbers up into the realm reserved for the
great granddaddy of distributed computation, SETI@home,
with over 2 million client machines. Even at a lowly buck per month
per client kicked back to Apple, the dollars could quickly get fairly
interesting. Mac users might like the ability to subsidize the cost
of their connectivity. Corporations, universities, and school systems
with lots of Macs might not mind the unexpected revenue stream,
either.
The Mac OS currently offers limited support for Program Linking
and other applications, primarily graphic rendering applications,
already allow Mac users to make use of several computers linked
together to solve large, complex problems. Imagine this mostly
unfulfilled promise scaled up, designed for TCP/IP, able to work
through firewalls, multiplied by a couple of million times - you
start to get the idea that some pretty big things might get
accomplished much faster than anyone thought possible.
Take it up a notch: what if Apple could reserve a portion of the
distributed computing capacity for its own use in lieu of a portion
of its income stream from the service? The company would have access
to a distributed supercomputer inconceivably more powerful than the
Cray supercomputer Steve Jobs bought back in the 80s during his first
turn at the helm.
Take it up another notch: what if Apple could reserve a portion of
that distributed computing capacity for its users? What if the OS did
sophisticated load balancing and was able to "call for help" and tap
into the distributed supercomputer on the fly? Mac users could be
helping fellow Mac users without even knowing it. It would make
benchmarking the Mac against other computers even more difficult and
would be another arrow through the heart of the "megahertz war"
between Macs and PCs.
Granted, the logistics of all of this are daunting, but one of the
toughest parts of the job, designing and implementing the distributed
computing system, has already been solved by several companies. Apple
should pick a partner among the players and, to paraphrase Jobs,
"prepare to blow another hole in the universe." Of course, if Apple
isn't the first major computer manufacturer to implement this
concept, someone else surely will.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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