11–20 of 67 posts
Looks like Microsoft thinks that in the future we will all live inside Apple stores.
Did we watch the same video? Apple makes much more usable and sane UIs than the jumbled, awkward-looking (but pretty) ones depicted in the Microsoft Productivity Future 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXuXBROyV-g
It's good to see the tone of "utopia videos" hasn't changed in 8 years. Also interesting to see that slate type devices have been people's minds far longer than the iPhone has existed.
Also interesting is how the vast majority of predictions in the video have come true - phones as transaction devices, front/back cameras/video calling, mobile music via phones, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> " There are a ton of animations between slides in the screens. This is a waste of time."* Given the popularity of iOS and the growing popularity of OSX, I'd argue that most users disagree. Given the direction of Windows 8 it looks like we're getting more animation in the future, not less, and I for one am happy about that. Animation offers important cues as to the nature of the UI and data you're dealing with (the…
Is technology between the upper class and middle class really that different? Don't plenty of middle class people have high-end smartphones today?
Hyper-productive terminals for the creative class? What about industry? What about people working more mundane jobs instead of some future-eco-glamor-green-creative one? What will this crazy utopia-tech do for them?
I wish they spent at least a few more seconds looking at what this crazy utopia-tech does for the cab driver, or the bellhop, or the grocery store where the husband/daughter have to get their food from. Because right now it's a video of "what can future technology do for executives and her highly-paid future-eco-green-creative direct reports who work on ephemeral things that don't seem to have the slightest connection to reality".
There were so many opportunities here to explore what this tech will do to improve the lives of, well, the majority, but all of it was spent strictly on the upper-class, and that bothers me a bit. Even right now, the majority of the world doesn't work in a chic, well-appointed office. The majority doesn't fly around the world constantly...
Also, it's 6 minutes of software perfection - I have that sometimes... before Windows throws me an error, my Bluetooth stack fails and disconnects my headphones, my virtual machine hangs up, my phone's browser freezes and I can't close it (damn you Android) and my virtual desktops all meddle with each other since Windows (sigh) can't handle them natively and Dexpot just crashed :-).
I agree with this completely. In a sense, the dystopian presentation of a movie like Blade Runner or Akira feels oddly more comforting. Street venders, gangs of kids doing nothing in particular, smokers, etc. Even the cleanest, most polite scandinavian social democracy still has all these things, but they're conveniently left out of these "utopian" visions. I think, if anything triggers our discomfort, it's the subco…
I don't think is that, i think is the perceived monotony; like some lack of contrast between humans and their enviroment.
These false utopias are so unpleasant to deal with and the people who reach high positions in them are so hideous that one develops a reflexive dislike of anything that looks "utopian".
Afghanistan, under the Taliban, was a utopia. So was the Soviet Union. So is corporate capitalism, if a relatively bland one.
Did anyone else notice that the taxi at the beginning was very pointedly not a driverless robot car?
On the second half of the article, these are ads. They're going to show people happily doing productive things with their futuristic devices, not gritty mobsters calling in hits from across the continent or terrorists using GPS and Google Images to make sure they're blowing up the right building or all the people left unemployed by the advance of technology standing in a bread line. They want you to feel happy about their corporate branding. If they leave you feeling creepy, they might be overdoing it.
For instance, there's nothing creepy about the use of an advanced UI in Minority Report, because there's good acting and a compelling plot.
Did anyone else notice that the taxi at the beginning was very pointedly not a driverless robot car?