Amazon Intros Relational Database Management Services

You get to run MySQL with Amazon managing all the dirty backend details, like patching and "time-consuming database administration tasks".

All of these "cloud computing for the masses" initiatives are interesting when viewed through the lens of the Desktop OS + Apps paradigm. What I'm blundering through trying to get at is that as average users begin to utilize online-only or online-with-some-offline-access services (think IMAP email, Google Docs, etc.) the OS begins to become less and less relevant.

Or, rather, it's not that the OS is no longer relevant because we're all going to be computing in the cloud (whatever the fuck that means). Simply, it means that the emphasis on the technical specs of your OS of choice are of less importance than your overall OS experience. This is why Apple's Mac has been making incredible strides, along with iPhone. No one outside of us tech geeks cares about the internals. It's all about getting what you want done, done, in an easy, no-brainer way.

UPDATED: Realized that the first sentence and last paragraph had zero relation to each other. So, I added the middle bit you see above there. Should make more sense now.