I think, I could save RAM and improve compatibility if my OS handled fonts. Then, I could just call up that feature, like the character map and chose my font. It only runs once on the system, so I save memory. These days Photoshop and Illustrator are about 50% identical, already it would make more sense for there to be a basic framework with individual features which can be called upon as needed. Both have colour pickers, (think what integration could do for managing colour profiles), Photoshop has vectors, Illustrator has layer styles... ..can you see where I'm going with this?
So, really I think it's up to the OS to incorporate everything, or at least provide a framework to make this possible. That way, more features could be integrated as individual modules. Think of the amounts of memory we could save. No longer would I have to load huge font list in five individual programs as they start up. Nor would I have to wait for all those Photoshop brushes to load when all I want to do is correct red eye in one photo.
It could work from a marketing perspective too; iTunes found success by selling individual songs from albums, I think programs could do the same with features. It might provide useful feedback on exactly what users want in applications. I think Adobe would be hard pressed to find anyone willing to buy some of the tackier Photoshop filters. And if users could spend less at a time, I'm sure more people would invest in these programs. People could buy the basic module, the equivalent of Photoshop Elements and then customise their package. Illustrator already doubles up with Photoshop on so many features, and Adobe already allows people to build packages of whole programs as custom Creative Suites, they're getting there already.
I realize it's not an easy answer, but you have to do these things one step at a time. If we ever want to make changes this immense, and in my opinion, this useful, we have to plan them and then implement them one step at a time.
Surely some of this is almost reaching the point of being a necessity? I thought that code was meant to get leaner and cleaner with each new release. And whilst this seems to be the case with smaller open source applications, like Lightbox and full open source programs like Blender, other programs, like Microsoft Word are power-hungry beasts, with god-knows what built in as standard. It's a Word processor for gods sake!!! You know, I got the feeling that perhaps Word Art was a step too far in 1998, I can't even use Word these days! On my new Vista laptop I had a 90 day trial of Microsoft Word, and along side it, a whole program just to activate it. To activate it. Am I insane here!? Why does my new laptop have a program on it to activate a 90 day free trial of an unusable word processor!?
But I digress, I want my OS to take on more of the workload. It's a lot to ask for, I know.
Having said this, I'm not the first person to think about this. Douglas Adams, suggested being able to "cut and paste" functions in Macs, nineteen years ago in an article in MacUser magazine.
Just stop and think, for a second. Think of Minority Report, The Matrix, Twenty Four, well, actually any film where the writers had no clue about how technology really works. And it's no slur on them, (god forbid we criticise the Writers Guild of America, I'm only just getting over my TV withdrawal) it's just the way we want computers to work. They are simple, integrated and fast. Agent Smith never had to pause to buffer, Jack Bauer never found his computer couldn't open PNGs, Tom Cruise never had to wait whilst his image manipulation software loaded, so why should we?
