As many other Apple Mac users I updated to the latest operating system: Snow Leopard. It went really smooth and 40 minutes later I had a 64 bit operating system running on my iMac: hurrayyy!!! Soon after that I started to wonder: now what? Yes 64 bit is cool and yes applications will run probably even faster than ever before and yes future video editing apps will be even more fun than everything available today but… how much is too much for average users in terms of what they really use? Are we witnessing the Super Audio-CD effect of optimizing to the wrong direction?

Think about: how much time do you work with a computer using applications that really need a ton of processing power and / or 64bit? How many applications simply use the web or how much do you actually just use the web browser? I bet there are many less “stand alone” applications in use than a couple of years ago!

Take a look at Jolicloud, an OS for netbooks. It is super lightweight and free operating system fully using the Cloud. Yes, you will need to feel comfortable moving your photos to Flickr and edit your photos using Photoshop web, performing word processing tasks with ZoHo writer but the main point is that for everything “basic” you can just simply use a web browser…no need for a 64 bit operating system…

Who of you have made the switch already and is planning to do so in the near future?