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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#201

Post by kobeya »

chubot wrote: post #178
swyx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a web developer i am bemused at every other comment on here that seems to agree with your sentiment that the world is walling up. yes, app stores will be a control mechanism for ever and consumers may not understand what they are opting into. but equally the open web will never go away and that's what general purpose computation has shifted to, thats basically all we've done this century. am i misunderstanding wha…

Can a program written for the web access all the great sensors on your Android or iPhone? Can it access new movies and TV shows? The web is a big success story, but it's not all there is in computing.

I hate the browser as a platform, but the answers to your questions are yes, and yes.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#202

Post by swyx »

codesternews wrote: post #113

Mobile Augmented Reality or ARKit, But it was just hype as previous. I mean nothing in mainstream. I think main reason is UX or User Interface. It is very hard for people who do not know how it works and expect it to work perfect (in low light etc) as with normal user interface of smartphone. It was not very intuitive for normal user because of Smartphone limitations. I can think that it might take in future if they…

Same, I was very optimistic. but even in good lighting I was disappointed by ARKit's performance. Still it is too early to judge the success.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#204

Post by kobeya »

Silhouette wrote: post #82
kobeya wrote: post #39

The general-purpose computer. It's a dinosaur on the verge of extinction at the hands of walled-garden app stores on phones and tablets. I never, ever expected that to happen.

That's profoundly disappointing, I agree, but in a sense perhaps we geeks only have ourselves to blame. We didn't solve the basic (to any normal user) problems of ease of use and security, despite having decades to do so. We also didn't start routinely educating the next generation of kids in how useful and powerful programming skills are. Consequently, for many people personal computing has been reduced to little mo…

> The one comfort is that someone still needs to be creating all that content and all those communications channels, and those people are always going to benefit from something much more capable than a small, lock-down touchscreen+WiFi device.

Maybe. Let's see what the next generation of visual programming and IDE UX bring.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#209

Post by kobeya »

michaelchisari wrote: post #60
kobeya wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what are you looking for? There's lots of tech developments happening in the bitcoin space, from mimblewimble to lightning to confidential assets & zero knowledge proofs. But it sounds like none of this is what you had in mind?

Something consumer driven that makes a $200 billion market even begin to make sense would be a start.

So, payments? There's plenty of work being done on that. See: lightning.

"Market" and "market cap" are two different things. The market cap of a currency is inversely driven by the velocity of money, which for bitcoin is quite low. The "market" (cap) of the US dollar is in the trillions even by low conservative estimates.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#210

Post by thaumasiotes »

PostOnce wrote: post #61
Muuuchem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, aren't phones and tablets essentially just smaller personal computers?

As kobeya points out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15719171 they are not the same thing they do less; the software is restricted, especially on iOS, there are _rules_ set out by the manufacturer about what is acceptable in software on the platform, both thematically and functionally. An app generally can't interfere with other apps, it can't be a dope wars style game about drugs; there are a lot more caveats,…

> especially on iOS, there are _rules_ set out by the manufacturer about what is acceptable in software on the platform, both thematically and functionally.

But iOS is not a phone. Windows could set rules about what was acceptable on the platform, but that wouldn't change what a personal computer was. There are no rules about what's acceptable on an iPhone.

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