Mobile is Eating the World
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Mobile is Eating the World
1–10 of 158 posts
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#2 Hmm, Good Information ...
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#3The western world right now is in a bit of a defeatist mood and pessimism reigns supreme. And while I can't deny that all things end and in some sense civilization is scheduled for some receding, I find myself wondering what impact this sort of technology will have on that process. Technology is speeding everything up so much and so fast... what if technology speeds up our next "dark age" from centuries to decades... or decade... or mere years? What if we're even already halfway through the decline?
We know technology is a big game changer. Sometimes we overestimate that impact, but sometimes we underestimate it too. What will it do for everyone to have a smartphone? Heck if I know! But perhaps it's reason for at least a smidge of hope.
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#4Technology gets cheaper and easier to use - a consistent story over time. Interestin stats.
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#5Is this actually true? My perception is that the smartphone bubble is bursting. Yes, there are lots more people to come online, but all they're going to do is use WhatsApp and Facebook.
The big disappointment of mobile is that all this stuff doesn't seem to result in enabling people to do their jobs better or more easily. Web apps really exploded with things like Basecamp, but the most mobile has brought along for that seems to be mobile email. (Edit to add, the only exceptions I can think of to this are actually the SMS apps deployed in the places pegged to explode in smartphone usage).
Having lots of people mindlessly addicted to notifications is not really that interesting.
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#6There 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 email and Facebook have shifted that activity to their phones and tablets. But its equally true that these devices are still really only good for quick, informal communication and browsing. Despite the best efforts of Apple and Samsung to persuade us otherwise, tablets are lousy for getting real work done.
So we find ourselves in the ironic situation of a domain that is experiencing almost unprecedented growth but in which almost nobody is making money except Facebook and the vendors of what are essentially gimmicky slot machine games. My take on this is that the market for richer desktop/laptop software isn't going anywhere soon. People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers. As a developer this kind of customer is in many ways a better customer to serve than a teen snapping selfies on a phone.
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#7Is this actually true? My perception is that the smartphone bubble is bursting. Yes, there are lots more people to come online, but all they're going to do is use WhatsApp and Facebook. The big disappointment of mobile is that all this stuff doesn't seem to result in enabling people to do their jobs better or more easily. Web apps really exploded with things like Basecamp, but the most mobile has brought along for th…
Completely agree with this. We've reached the same point we did with laptops a few years ago where making hardware more powerful doesn't improve the user experience much. Phones from different manufacturers are more or less interchangeable and there's not much incentive for an owner of last year's model to upgrade to this year's model. Both of the leading app stores are full of gimmicky junk and the leaderboards are increasingly stagnant. The prospect for indie mobile developers with new ideas is grim in 2014. Users are settling into patterns with a handful of established apps and it turns out there's just not that much you can do as a developer with nothing more than a 5" touch screen.
So I'm a contrarian even though I've been building mobile apps for the last four years. The desktop seems like both a vastly more interesting but likely also more lucrative place to be for a developer.
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#8There 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…
"A bit" ... >Seriously, who is this guy?
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#9There 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…
> But for a lot of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate.
The number of use cases is less important.
What are the most common use cases?
You're conflating people that use computers as part of their job incidentally, with people that use a computer because their job inherently necessitates one. Refer to this article about the most common occupations in the US: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-10-m...
Managing emails, customer relationship software, and checking websites are often the extent of how a person uses a computer at their job.
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> So we find ourselves in the ironic situation of a domain that is experiencing almost unprecedented growth but in which almost nobody is making money except Facebook and the vendors of what are essentially gimmicky slot machine games.
Business facing software never gets mainstream news whether it's mobile or not. It just so happens that most new and popular consumer focused technology is mobile / web.
Making news =/= making money.
Microsoft, Oracle, etc. make gobs of money selling to business and enterprise customers. You never hear about it because it's uninteresting.
In the same vein, you don' hear about business software that runs on mobile. "Make my business software work on mobile" is a booming category of work in software development.
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> People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers.
In the cases you suggested you propose that it's different. However, they might need the physical interface of a real computer, or the technical power of a real computer, but they don't really need a "real computer"
- traditional input devices (keyboards) are increasingly compatible with mobile hardware
- tablets and cell phones are only getting MORE powerful, not less
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It's really just a matter of time before the line between mobile and desktop disappears.
Part of what's keeping it there is simply the fact that desktop class hardware from the last 2004 is still good enough to do what most people need to do in 2014
Re: Mobile is Eating the World
#10There 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…
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 convergence where mobile devices learn to run desktop software, and can be docked to a mouse/keyboard/monitor. But we are still a long ways from that point, and there is no great incentive to build office suites for mobile devices that are efficient for power/work users.
Mobile is great for 1) consuming content 2) interacting with your extended environment when you are not grounded to a computer (summoning an Uber, paying with an app, etc.) The money in content consumption will go to either the content creators or the digital sharecroppers (Facebook).
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?