In the future, I believe that our operating systems will move to the cloud and so the hardware will be a generic window into our cloud platforms.   The native OS will still be there but will become less important - more akin to the machine's BIOS rather than a central part of the computing experience.   With this shift to the cloud, users will regain control over that essential component of our technical lives, the operating system.

To explore this idea and to regain control over my own data from the tech giants, a few years back I built a cloud based operating system called "Sharedigm".  In the process of building this platform, I added a flexible theming mechanism which gave me a great degree of control over the UI aesthetics.  As I experimented with design concepts, I found myself gravitating towards many of the UI design aspects of yesteryear which have been somewhat forgotten (UI design is a lot like fashion and doesn't always move in a forward direction).

By blending the best design elements of vintage systems with the expanded capabilities of a modern cloud based OS, we could merge the best of what's old and what's new!   Thus, CloudRetroComputing was born.  See www.cloudretrocomputing.com, www.cloudintosh.com, and www.cloudwinxp.com .