Waiting for Godot

Last night we attended the Roundabout Theatre's production of Waiting for Godot, ostensibly a play about nothing, but, similar to Seinfeld, really about much ado about nothing.

The two main characters in the play spend two days waiting for someone named Godot to arrive. They really don't know him, nor do I think they know why they are really waiting for him. But waiting and speculation is in abundance.

During the play, I was thinking about Windows 7 (I must confess, it was a bit soporific so my mind was wandering) and what people are really waiting for in this new(er) MSFT OS. The pricing was announced the other day to great fanfare, but I am having a devil of a time wondering what folk are really expecting from this new generation OS that was more than 3 years in the making (older than Twitter).

For me, the reality is that my computing metaphor has drastically moved over the past 18 months, let alone 3 years. I now spend as much time now viewing internet rendered pages on my mobile device as I do on the PC, and the trend line is clearly against the PC. My applications have shifted to the cloud, reducing cost, complexity and downtime (thanks Google, RIM and Apple) and the nature of my computing is clearly changing from a 1:few to a 1:many metaphor. Unfortunately, nothing I have heard about this new OS accelerates, or even facilitates this shift.

It's unfortunate, and a huge opportunity for young companies looking to fill the void.