'Fraid you're right on the ... dreamed expectations :-/

Post #302,387 by Ashton 1/14/09 4:50:01 PM Reply	'Fraid you're right on the ... dreamed expectations :-/
Post #302,392 by drook 1/14/09 5:13:49 PM Reply	Why dreamed? It's already possible to make an MP3 player so small you don't want to use it for lack of a human-scale interface. Same for phones. They have more capability than you can access through that tiny screen. And don't get me started on trying to dial or type when you have adult American male-size thumbs. So some devices are already constrained not by what is possible, but what is comfortable. Assuming it were possible to plug your PC directly into your brain, and have fully-immersive sound and video, would that necessarily be the interface we want all the time? As I'm typing this, every now and then I stop to think, and I look away out the window at the snow. I want to be able to look away. Sure, I'd like a bigger TV, but I don't want it to dominate my living room. Connections will keep getting faster, compression better, screens larger, CPU/GPUs faster. Every so often a Jobs needs to remind everyone the difference between more and better. But there will be more, if only so the non-Jobs-es can try to compete. -- Drew
Post #302,403 by static 1/14/09 7:05:25 PM Reply	Absolutely. The second generation iPod Shuffle shows this to good effect. And Korean MP3 makers have released MP3 players not much bigger than suger cubes before. There have been recent discussions in here about smartphone UIs - it's dreadfully easy to put a smartphone OS/UI on a device that is the wrong size, as a number of Windows Mobile devices attest to. Wade
Post #302,406 by Ashton 1/14/09 8:40:41 PM Reply	Thou sayest: - Yeah we could do that. Is it 'worth' the hours, $Bs ... just now, in the course of things? Seems to me that decisions about where to invest resources ought to at least consult some sort of Master Triage list -- and not, just do the familiar -- with no Sense whatsoever, of what is Adequate? VS "other things needing doing." That your scenario is apt to prevail only tells me that -still- ours is a kultur which has yet to grok even partially: what adequacy.. means -- in the setting of priorities that affect everyone, even the Amish -- who never have an upgrade worry. Go for HDTV in a trice? [When that is realized: there will be left No solitude for too-Very many, I wot.] Why not FIX something on that List of a 1000+ criticalities? so easily tuned-out by our 24/7 entertainment? More 'home electronics' today means: Muricans forever remarketing stuff from China and never knowing Ohm's law. Build some clever new windmills? Roll-out and staple-up ne solar cells? 998 to go. ________________________________________ My koan, courtesy of the sage, Ashleigh Brilliant -- (illustrated by flowchart arrows, on my fridge post-card version) In the final analysis --> Everything depends --> <-- on everything Else

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