Despite the fact that users are gradually beginning to lose interest in processor cores, gigahertz and gigabytes, giving priority to other features of smartphones, no one wants to buy a frankly weak device. After all, he not only will not receive fresh updates, because the manufacturer will declare it insufficiently productive to pull out all the innovations, but it will not even be able to run more or less demanding games and applications. But thinking this way in the cloud era is, of course, a big mistake.
Cloud technology may soon replace iron
Canonical has announced a cloud platform for launching Android applications without the need to install them called Anbox Cloud. Unlike Quick Apps, which still downloads a small amount of data to the device in order to be able to launch a fragment of a program or game, Canonical's solution works exclusively with the cloud. In fact, it offers to run applications and games on remote servers and relay the picture to the user's device.
Is it possible to run applications in the cloud
The ability to run applications in the cloud has been asking for a long time, but it may soon become a reality
By and large, there is nothing outstanding in this idea. Today, all streaming gaming services operate on this principle. Their creators decided that the speed of wireless Internet today is high enough to transmit a picture from remote servers to user devices. After all, not everyone has computers that could pull out the latest novelties of the gaming world, not to mention smartphones, on which even GTA V would hardly have gone without lags. However, Canonical has gone further and risks revolutionizing the mobile app market.
Anbox Cloud will allow developers to create mobile games and applications that require even more memory and a powerful processor to run them. But since they will still run on powerful Canonical servers, even owners of inexpensive devices who previously did not have such an opportunity can use them. But why then did no one think to do this earlier?
How to protect cloud applications
The fact is that cloud applications are rather poorly protected from third-party interference. However, Canonical's developers managed to solve this problem. To do this, it was decided to take the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS kernel and the container system, which creates an isolated environment for all applications that the server provides. As a result, it is no longer so easy to break this environment, because all data that is transferred to the remote connection is reliably protected by a kind of shell. But the main difficulty is the lack of equipment that can securely deliver data from the cloud application to the user.
Canonical is now partnering with Packet, a developer cloud infrastructure provider with the right hardware. However, for widespread adoption of a platform that allows you to run applications in the cloud, Packet is likely to be insufficient. Moreover, Canonical plans to implement this scenario not only for mobile devices, but also for computers. This, in fact, will make powerful hardware completely useless and, obviously, will lead us to a new cloudy future.
Why there won't be cloud apps
So far, the Canonical project undoubtedly looks like a utopia. Well, I can't believe that yesterday we still spent a thousand dollars on flagship smartphones in order to be able to run advanced applications and games, and tomorrow we can buy any state employee for $ 50 and play RDR2, GTA V, and much more on it. . After all, even if this idea is feasible, it is logical to assume that manufacturers of processors, memory and other components will strongly oppose the creation of such platforms that may well leave them bankrupt.