Apple Patent Hints at Net-Booting Cloud Strategy

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 4, 2011 @01:20PM from the steve-jobs-helped-chuck-norris-invent-netbooting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has received a patent that hints at the intent of providing network computers that will boot through a 'net-booted environment.' It may seem that Apple is moving slowly into the cloud computing age and that it has many assets that are simply not leveraged in what could be a massive cloud environment that could cause more than just a headache for Google and Microsoft. However, it appears that Apple has been working for some time on an operating system, conceivably a version of a next-generation Mac OS or iOS, that could boot computers and other devices via an Internet connection."

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Definitely possible by KE1LR · 2011-01-04 13:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

Having spent the last decade deploying a very homogeneous collection of hardware around the world, the idea makes some amount of sense as an evolutionary step. I don't see this happening in PC-land (Windows-based or or otherwise) because of huge variations in hardware configuration. I can definitely imagine Apple moving to cloud-booting ipads/iphones/imacs/appleTV's/whatevers. Of course, at that point who really owns (pwns) your hardware? Hmm.