This optimistic outlook ignores the pesky reality of latency. Using VNC, X11, or an equivalent protocol over a connectiion to a data center hundreds or thousands of miles away isn't the same as an X terminal connected to a server in the same office buildinig.
While I entirely agree and preach latency often, there are two major points I would like to make:
1) Remote computing doesn't have to use X11. The local machine can do some of the lifting. Wolfram Alpha on mobile phones is a good example of this- a server does the crunching, but neither is the client side a dumb terminal.
2) I cross my fingers that one day latency will be prioritized more... IMO the majority of latency problems are not caused by the limits of physics, but rather the simple fact that not many people care about it.
The theoretical peak ping speed across the USA & back is something like 20ms, an entirely reasonable figure for remote computing- if only it was ever anywhere close to realized.
True, but is the real solution to remove the latency in the first place and just run it on your local machine without a network connection? (Like ordinary desktop software that we have at the moment.....; seems the terminal approach to software is attempting to fix a problem that has already been fixed - just run it locally)
