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Who says an operating system needs a user interface? A growing number of computer systems designers believe PC operating systems should be invisible to users, much as they are in devices such as calculators and telephones.
Computer companies, including Apple and IBM, as well as universities, are doing substantial work on this technology. Their goal:craft user interfaces that are suitable for a particular solution-and that don't have to look like a Macintosh, Windows 95, or OS/2 application.
In what's being called the application-centric model, the user interface is the exclusive realm of the application, not the operating system. In theory, each application could present a different user interface, one that is perfectly suited to the task at hand.
"There are clearly cases where {the common GUI} is a barrier," says Daniel Ling, director of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash. "If you take any CAD {computer-aided design} package today, modeling...