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Mobile is Eating the World

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Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#81

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cageface wrote: post #6

There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile. I find Evans' analysis of mobile a bit hyperbolic. Yes the growth of mobile is explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology. But for a lot of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate. It's probably true that a lot of people that used to use desktop or laptop computers just to check…

> Yes the growth of mobile is explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology.

I think the mischaracterization is of what mobile is replacing. It isn't the PC. A PC is primarily a computing device, an iPhone is primarily a communications device.

The iPhone and iPad aren't replacing PCs, they're replacing newspaper, radio and telephone. They're only replacing PCs to the extent that the PC had already partially replaced some of those things.

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#82

Post by danielbarla »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #49
pfitzsimmons wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the biomechanics, it does seem like a keyboard + mouse + >=20" screen is the optimal setup for doing actual work. A keyboard is simply the most efficient way to get information into a computer (the exception is that some graphics editors work might work better with a multitouch screen, it will be interesting to see if someone builds a touch-first photoshop killer). That said, there might be a convergen…

Your assumption, which I think is wrong, is that WPM (or maybe APM) is the bottleneck for most work. I suspect reading/comprehension, problem solving, planning, usability, and access to the right tool, discovery of tools, responsiveness of tools, teamwork... These things are much more likely to be the bottleneck. As a programmer, I suspect I could probably type the entirity of a days work into the computer in a half…

I suspect that this is highly related to the task being done, and the context.

Some days, I'd totally agree with you; I'm not really sure of the next step(s), and have to give myself lots of time to think about things. This tends to apply when I'm entering unknown territory, and my tasks are relatively fuzzy and uncertain.

On the other hand, some tasks are extremely straight-forward (repetitive / memory-based), and more or less completely WPM and flow-bound. Even working with relatively efficient editors (using shortcuts, macros, VI bindings, etc), it's hard to type out (or otherwise input) much more than 2000 lines of code in a day. These types of tasks certainly require efficient input, and could be greatly enhanced by even better human-to-machine interfaces.

(I'm also a programmer, and these do come from my own experiences)

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#83

Post by purpletoned »

sinofsky wrote: post #54

At every moment of disruption in technology people saying that the new technology doesn't replace the incumbent. By definition disruptive technologies are less functional and inadequate "replacements". First, folks tend to talk about all the things that the new technology can't do that the old one does do. In the Steve Jobs interview at All Things D referenced in the comments, he goes on to talk about how software ne…

If you're really Steven Sinofski, pretty damn amazing to see you on hn. Watching you introduce Windows 8 at build two years back, I couldn't have ever imagined seeing you post on hn or any other discussion forum for that matter.

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#85

Post by acqq »

purpletoned wrote: post #83
sinofsky wrote: post #54

At every moment of disruption in technology people saying that the new technology doesn't replace the incumbent. By definition disruptive technologies are less functional and inadequate "replacements". First, folks tend to talk about all the things that the new technology can't do that the old one does do. In the Steve Jobs interview at All Things D referenced in the comments, he goes on to talk about how software ne…

If you're really Steven Sinofski, pretty damn amazing to see you on hn. Watching you introduce Windows 8 at build two years back, I couldn't have ever imagined seeing you post on hn or any other discussion forum for that matter.

Discovering that Steven Sinofsky is now a board partner at a big VC firm, it's not so surprising to see him here. Welcome.

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#86

Post by burkaman »

maxsavin wrote: post #84

I saw Eric Schmidt's quote "By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded" and stopped there.

I really hate comments like this. What is the point of leaving this "review"? Are you proud of not spending the 2 minutes to finish the slideshow? You mention a quote you didn't like, but then immediately invalidate the criticism by saying you didn't keep reading to see if there was anything further to back it up or refute it.

I'm not disagreeing with your complaint, I just really hate the way you framed it.

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#87

Post by majgr »

pfitzsimmons wrote: post #56
jonnathanson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So the question is, are there large untapped areas where a phone could be used to interact with ones environment? What kind of day-to-day things could be enhanced with internet connected software?" This is why I find machine learning and optimization such fascinating areas to watch. At a certain point, we may reach the practical limits of what human gestures, commands, and requests can tap into or do. The machine (o…

Gestures are much less efficient than using a mouse or touchscreen, gestures require more muscles and movement and are less precise. Voice commands beyond the very simple stuff is an AI complete problem. True AI is much further away than we think. And when it comes it will be so deeply weird and also mind-blowing that asking it to buy us plane tickets via voice command or whatever will be the last thing that we would…

How about eye?

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#88

Post by dingaling »

marknutter wrote: post #44
megablast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who's tried the Oculus and who has even an ounce of entrepreneurial imagination would agree. People have been saying exactly the same thing since the first VR came about. For some reason, VR really excited some people. Even though there is no way it is replacing a computer or a smartphone, since they have different uses. Unless you are suggesting VR will improve writing emails or entering data into a spreads…

>Even though there is no way it is replacing a computer or a smartphone, since they have different uses. Of course VR won't replace a smartphone or a computer. It's a completely different tool solving a completely different problem. >Unless you are suggesting VR will improve writing emails or entering data into a spreadsheet? Reminds me of the comments people first made about the iPhone when it came out; like "how ar…

>Reminds me of the comments people first made about the iPhone when it came out; like "how are you supposed to type without a physical keyboard?"

I don't know if that was a common conception at the time; after all touch-screen kiosks have been common since the 1990s. And Palm had discarded physical keyboards in their PDAs as far back as 1996.

More it was a case of 'typing will be much less efficient without a keyboard', which was true and has only been addressed by lateral thinking such as Swype[0], an analogue of which Apple have finally implemented after five generations.

[0] or, as I've just been reminded, Graffiti on the Palm PDAs

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#89

Post by barking »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81
cageface wrote: post #6

There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile. I find Evans' analysis of mobile a bit hyperbolic. Yes the growth of mobile is explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology. But for a lot of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate. It's probably true that a lot of people that used to use desktop or laptop computers just to check…

> Yes the growth of mobile is explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology. I think the mischaracterization is of what mobile is replacing. It isn't the PC. A PC is primarily a computing device, an iPhone is primarily a communications device. The iPhone and iPad aren't replacing PCs, they're replacing newspaper, radio and telephone. They're only replacing PCs to the extent that the PC had already pa…

Very well put.

In my experience tablets are also replacing books and tv.

I suspect that in a lot of houses the parents are now using tablets, the kids are using PCs/laptops and the tv is mostly off.

Well this is how it is in our house :). Our tv now exists for netflix via chromecast once or twice a week.

Re: Mobile is Eating the World

#90

Post by CmonDev »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #47

I have been hoping for a world where developers and content creators produced reactive HTML 5 web apps that worked beautifully on all devices from phones to laptops to large screen desktops and TVs. An analogy: writing and production tools have been getting better with output to PDF, Kindle, iBook, and print books. The overhead for creativity decreases so more effort goes to producing great content. This is what I wo…

I am hoping for a world where developers have a choice of a technology, without being limited to legacy semi-modernized languages like HTML and JS.
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