How will we get our software 5 years from now?

by Justin Horn on Jan 29th, 2009 @ 3:48 pm

Just read an article on GadgetVenue discusing how many 3.5″ floppies it would take for many of today’s modern programs:

Photoshop CS4, a cut down version at that, would take up 358 floppies, while a copy of the Sims 3 game would take up a whopping 1760 floppy disks.

Pretty funny thinking about that! What this article did remind me is how much has changed over the years in regards to how users obtain their software. We have moved from floppy disc, to CDs, then DVDs, and some software and music is being delivered on flash memory sticks.

Oh and don’t forget bluray! We already use bluray to get our hands on the latest Sony Playstation 3 games and 1080p movies, but I just don’t see bluray or flash memory stick becoming the next big thing like the CD and DVD were.

This isn’t news to most of you, but I think the next big step for consuming software is going to be through internet downloads. We already do this for a lot of software today, but as home internet connection speeds continue to climb so will the ability to download larger and larger applications. iTunes is a perfect example of this emerging delivery model. They have become the number 1 online music seller over the last serveral years and now with with the app store they are deliever software in this new innovative way. In the future I could see Apple selling software for Macs and PCs through iTunes bring this idea to it’s fullest.

There is also that one other competing distruptive technology out there which is software as a service where you don’t need any software except for a web browser and everything you work on with be conducted online. I beleive this is the the future, but we are just not there yet. In the meantime I believe we will transition away from physical media with  software downloads through services such as iTunes.

Follow me on Twitter @justin_horn



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  1. Chiyin
    January 30th, 2009 10:51 am

    yeah.. I remember installing windows 95 with diskettes…it took a long time to install…

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