The battle between the cloud and the desktop has been going on for a long time and will likely continue until the end of time. The winning side at the end of each day will be the one with the latest technology.

Once upon a time there was a mainframe and dumb terminals. That was when everything was in the ancient cloud. Then mini computers came along and processing moved to smaller clouds. After that came the PC’s and the processing power moved to the desktop. The cloud was dead.

But then the internet was born and the cloud was reborn. The masses moved back into the new cloud and everyone jumped on the smart terminal (dumb PC) bandwagon. But bandwidth issues were a problem and the cloud couldn’t keep up with the new power hungry applications. Soon more powerful desktops processors became available and the pendulum to swung back to the desktop.

Then we get broadband, server farms and cheap storage and back to the cloud we go. Next, server class processors showed up in desktops and cheap flat panel screens became wide spread and back to the desktop again. Now we have quad core mobile phones with ever increasing screen resolutions and sizes paired with WiFi and 4G networks so guess where we go now?

There will be no end so just go with the flow and use whatever works for the task at hand. So to answer the OP’s question “Can Sonar be ported to the smartphone?” … Yes and someday your audio gear will all be connected to the cloud.  You will be recording, mixing and mastering a live multi-user recording session with musicians across the planet and doing it all on your phone … or desktop … or the chips implanted in your head.

Working "in the cloud" is getting more pervasive all the time.   I work for a fairly large engineering software company and we continue to introduce more and more mobile and cloud based apps and services all the time.   Granted, this is an entirely different industry and it's had a quicker adoption rate than the audio world.  But it's a trend in software none the less.
 
The book "Consumption Economics" (required reading where I work) describes how this technology has really started to take hold since the mid-2000's, using companies like Amazon as examples.  Where it all goes from here remains to be seen, but for sure the times they are a changin'...
 

slartabartfast

 i. e. the running of programs themselves, will be done on distant servers. 

Good thing I saved all my monochrome monitors. Like bell bottoms and polyester shirts, I knew they'd make a come back in a big way.

Damn, I threw out my amber monitor a while back.

I don't think that cloud services has to mean that computation will be done elsewhere necessarily nor that we'll opt to store our data in the cloud rather than locally.  I think these are two extremes that, as others have pointed out, been done before and are not new ideas.

Instead I think we might find that cloud services make things seem more seamless.  The reason for the cloud services won't be too provide more power and storage, because we already have plenty of that in our local environments.  It'll make some things more convenient in the way we are already seeing: the automatic sharing of files (DropBox), development (open source), licenses (waves), software patches and downloads, etc.

But there are more interesting ideas such as having people share a creative session, perhaps jamming or mixing from remote locations, where your local resources are combined with those in the cloud to enable a more seamless experience despite the distance.

If any of you have experienced Netflix on multiple devices then you may already be aware that you can start watching a movie on your TV at home, and then if you get interrupted, finish watch it later on your tablet from the precise moment where you left off.  Same goes for reading a book with Kindle.  Apple has done some cool things in this area, and I know we all like to bash them, but if you operated in their environment, without bias, and fully using multiple hardware devices in a earless manner....well, some of it is cool and well thought out.

But as I mentioned above in my first comment.  The ability to create any time, anywhere, on multiple devices and platforms without having to stop and think about importing or exporting or whatever is the most exciting and applicable to what we do.  There are many steps and pitfalls with what we do that could be taken care of, and done better, perhaps in such a way that we won't even realize it...

Interesting article. I knew an IT guy who said this was going to happen over 13 years ago.

I think it will happen and there's nothing to be gained by saying, "I don't like it."

It probably will be cheaper. Why? There's not reason to create cds packaging or other crap that ends up in landfills.

Renting it, like it says in the article, will mean you always have the latest updates.

Stabilitly, since there will be no need for all these crazy combanations of motherboards, cpus, gpus and whatever, that alone will end up giving us more stable UIs.
 
3d printing. As it stands right now, we can print many things using plastics and resins. It won't be long before we can print using other things like metals or whatever. If something goes wrong with a part, you just go to the printer's and get a new one. That has nothing to do with the aritcle but I thought I would throw it out there.

Only time will tell.

This quote from the article shows why software companies may be tempted, and It one positive in what for me is mostly a depressing article.

"That's if you honor things like End-User License Agreements and you don't take that copy and install it on, say, 10 more PCs, or you never bought the software in the first place and are using pirated license keys.
If you're one of those people, then all I have to say is that you're just going to have to pay for your software like everyone else."

I do see a threat to "cheap" high powered workstations as more an more people move to tablets, smartphones and other junk to do their facebook, email, micro-blogging and the odd word document, those who need a dedicated powerful computer will have to pay more as components become more and more specalist, and up will go the price.

Moves by the likes of Amazon and iTunes to move music onto the cloud are worrying. I can access my complete music collection on my 80GB iPod classic when work takes me to remote locations in countrys with limited infrastructure.

do see a threat to "cheap" high powered workstations as more an more people move to tablets, smartphones and other junk to do their facebook, email, micro-blogging and the odd word document, those who need a dedicated powerful computer will have to pay more as components become more and more specalist, and up will go the price

 
... which seems linked to that recent thread about Intel embedding chips on MBs...
 

So I was reading an article about Dell, which pointed out that the company is doing very poorly indeed selling laptops and desktops. But then again so is everyone. And it became clear to me why.

Computers are cheap enough so that:

1. Almost everyone who needs a computer already has one.

Cheap computers are powerful enough so that:

2. Almost everyone who has a computer has enough power to run the software he needs.

And computers are doing so many things that are not actually "computing" that

3. Almost everyone who has a computer does not need one.

What most people need is a web appliance, or a smart phone.

The market for computers has been massively inflated by the fact that until fairly recently, that is what people had to use to update their facebook page, check their email and watch videos and download music.

People using a computer for truly productive work, have been a progressively diminishing slice of the PC market for decades now. 

That does not bode well for the future of high end but still affordable PC's.

The industry may be shifting, but there will always be a need for powerful computers.