7 ms·

> Why would one need Continuum when the changes you make in Google Docs on your phone are reflected immediately on every device or PCs you have? You're not thi

by amyjess 11y ago

> Why would one need Continuum when the changes you make in Google Docs on your phone are reflected immediately on every device or PCs you have? You're not thinking long-term enough. You should be asking, "why would one need a PC when you can just stick your phone in a dock?". It's going to take a while for hardware to catch up, but in about a decade I think desktops will almost exclusively be used as high-end workstations for stuff like 3-D rendering, scientific number crunching, and maybe hardcore gaming, while anything with fewer demands will be satisfied by a phone using Continuum or something like it.

vetinari 11y ago
That dock thing is not going to happen. For that you need connectors, that are big, unsightly and brittle - or high bandwidth, ultra low latency wireless. From the engineering point, it is much simpler just throw separate device into the mix. From the business point of view, more profitable too.
- derefr 11y ago
  > connectors, that are big, unsightly, and brittle You know you can run Thunderbolt over USB-C, right? There's no reason that even five years from now, I shouldn't be able to plug my iPhone into my iMac in Target Display mode using the same cable I use to charge it.
  - chinpokomon 11y ago
    Miracast, Bluetooth, and Qi charging... Who needs a dock?
    - newjersey 11y ago
      Having seen a few people struggle with Intel Wireless Display, I'd argue that wireless display over current infrastructure is very premature.
      - lewisl9029 11y ago
        If by current infrastructure you mean WiFi, then I agree. However, I have been using a WiGig dock with 3 1080p displays attached for the past 6 months, and it has been trivial to set up, and nigh indistinguishable from a display connected over wires. For the record, I used to play FPS games competitively, and I still find the input lag on many IPS monitors completely unbearable to this day. For my eyes, the WiGig dock adds no discernible input lag or compression artifacts to any of my 3 displays, except in games where some frame dropping can still be observed in exceptionally intense moments. I honestly can't wait for the day when laptops with WiGig and Wireless Charging become mainstream.
bad_user 11y ago
I think there are multiple problems with that vision. For one you're assuming that current computing capacity is enough for most people. However current computing capacity is enough only for current applications of it. In a decade from now however people are going to get interested in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It's inevitable. Plus the gaming industry, just like the housing industry, has always sucked all surplus. And there are hard limits to how small transistors can get, or to how fast wireless networks can be. But problematic are also the batteries, for which Moore's law never applied. Only 5 years ago I was using a phone whose battery lasted for at least 7 days. How about your current phone? Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. The form factor of a laptop is optimized for productivity work while remaining portable. A physical keyboard is more productive than typing things on a touch screen. A 13-inch screen is more comfortable than a 4.7 inch screen for doing any kind of productivity work. I can go to a coffee shop, pull out my 13-inch laptop and instantly be productive. And transporting around a dock, a keyboard and a monitor to plug-in your phone in case you need it would be more impractical and would defeat the purpose of that phone. I concede that there will be people interested in using their phone as a general computing device. Those will be the same people that are doing that today, as in the people that lack the resources to buy multiple devices. A very important and probably big market, but still.
- scholia 11y ago
  > Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. With Windows Continuum, you plug an external monitor and a keyboard into your Windows 10 Phone. You get a desktop style experience on the big screen but you can continue to do phone stuff on the phone. BUILD 2015 Continuum session - Windows Phone as a PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ It becomes significantly interesting for the odd 4 billion people who will own a smartphone one day but may never own a laptop. Toshiba tried something similar with a PocketPC (powered by Windows CE) a couple of decades ago, but it didn't work well enough to go anywhere.
- amyjess 11y ago
  > For one you're assuming that current computing capacity is enough for most people. However current computing capacity is enough only for current applications of it. In a decade from now however people are going to get interested in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. I'm fairly sure most AI will be done in the cloud. We're already going in that direction, with stuff like Google Now. VR is an interesting question... I'm really excited about the HoloLens, and I'm really curious to see where things go from there. Honestly, I think AR might become a big deal once we start getting wearables that aren't super clunky. Actually, introducing wearables to the mix also introduces the idea of a personal cloud of devices. The concept of a PAN has been talked about for a while, but we haven't really seen it amount to much, unless you count things like Bluetooth headsets. Cheap, stylish wearables with phone-quality processors, however, can change all that (I don't think we're at either cheap enough or stylish enough yet... but that's a big "yet"). Think beyond smartwatches or googles, too. Imagine wearing a smartshirt and smartpants and smartshoes. Imagine if every single thing you wore on your body had a CPU in it. I think we'd avoid the problem of how small transistors can get just by sticking sources of computing power everywhere. Of course, this paragraph is all pie-in-the-sky far-future stuff. Prices will need to come down to the same range as normal articles of clothing, which will take a long time. And we'll have to have a seamless way to charge your clothes that won't add any more mental overhead. Nobody wants to say "sorry, I have to stay home, I forgot to charge my pants last night". > But problematic are also the batteries, for which Moore's law never applied. I think at some point there's going to be a backlash against thinness, and we'll start seeing bigger devices with thicker batteries. Wouldn't surprise me if portable power sources take off too (I'm already seeing external battery packs being sold at department stores, of all places), especially if inductive charging becomes a bit less clunky. Women might be a good driver of this technology: for example, I can see a system where you just drop your phone into your purse, and it magnetically attaches to a wireless charging mat plugged into a battery pack. > Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. The form factor of a laptop is optimized for productivity work while remaining portable. A physical keyboard is more productive than typing things on a touch screen. A 13-inch screen is more comfortable than a 4.7 inch screen for doing any kind of productivity work. I can go to a coffee shop, pull out my 13-inch laptop and instantly be productive. And transporting around a dock, a keyboard and a monitor to plug-in your phone in case you need it would be more impractical and would defeat the purpose of that phone. Of course, you're assuming nobody will make a laptop-shaped dock that you can insert a phone into like a cartridge. Think something like the Asus PadFone [0], but with a laptop instead of a tablet. The only real barrier to that right now is that every shell has to be matched with specific models of phone, because every phone has a different size and shape, but I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing standardized form factors at some point in the near future. Better yet, combine that with a setup like the Surface Book, and you'll have a phone that can dock into a tablet that can dock into a laptop. [0] http://d5htu2v3nddyh.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/a/s/asus-padfone-2-1350320045_3_1.jpg http://d5htu2v3nddyh.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/a/...
neolefty 11y ago
Probably true that phones will become good enough for most things. But at the same time, how many devices will the average person use? More or fewer? If it's more, then no matter what -- even if we don't know what those devices will be -- you want it to be easy to switch between them, which is the problem Continuum is solving. I think this is Google hedging its bets again and getting ready for whatever unpredictable thing happens next. They just assume it will include a proliferation of devices.
jessaustin 11y ago
You're not thinking long-term enough. You should be asking, "why would one need a PC when you can just stick your phone in a dock?". Instead, ask why you'll need a phone when UI devices become invisible, ubiquitous, and networked. Eventually, our children (grandchildren?) will laugh at our phone obsession. I'm imagining a silent reel of a Charlie Chaplin figure repeatedly patting all his pockets searching for his phone, dropping it when he does find it, pecking the wrong portion of the screen, and then when he finally answers the call discovering that the battery is dead. In other words, me, every day.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Very good point. I'm hoping the "personal cloud of wearables" becomes reality at some point in my lifetime. Reading the Shadowrun v4 player's guide seriously influenced the kind of technology I want to experience.

by amyjess 11y ago

vetinari 11y ago

That dock thing is not going to happen. For that you need connectors, that are big, unsightly and brittle - or high bandwidth, ultra low latency wireless. From the engineering point, it is much simpler just throw separate device into the mix. From the business point of view, more profitable too.

derefr 11y ago
> connectors, that are big, unsightly, and brittle You know you can run Thunderbolt over USB-C, right? There's no reason that even five years from now, I shouldn't be able to plug my iPhone into my iMac in Target Display mode using the same cable I use to charge it.
- chinpokomon 11y ago
  Miracast, Bluetooth, and Qi charging... Who needs a dock?
  - newjersey 11y ago
    Having seen a few people struggle with Intel Wireless Display, I'd argue that wireless display over current infrastructure is very premature.
    - lewisl9029 11y ago
      If by current infrastructure you mean WiFi, then I agree. However, I have been using a WiGig dock with 3 1080p displays attached for the past 6 months, and it has been trivial to set up, and nigh indistinguishable from a display connected over wires. For the record, I used to play FPS games competitively, and I still find the input lag on many IPS monitors completely unbearable to this day. For my eyes, the WiGig dock adds no discernible input lag or compression artifacts to any of my 3 displays, except in games where some frame dropping can still be observed in exceptionally intense moments. I honestly can't wait for the day when laptops with WiGig and Wireless Charging become mainstream.

bad_user 11y ago

I think there are multiple problems with that vision. For one you're assuming that current computing capacity is enough for most people. However current computing capacity is enough only for current applications of it. In a decade from now however people are going to get interested in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It's inevitable. Plus the gaming industry, just like the housing industry, has always sucked all surplus. And there are hard limits to how small transistors can get, or to how fast wireless networks can be. But problematic are also the batteries, for which Moore's law never applied. Only 5 years ago I was using a phone whose battery lasted for at least 7 days. How about your current phone? Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. The form factor of a laptop is optimized for productivity work while remaining portable. A physical keyboard is more productive than typing things on a touch screen. A 13-inch screen is more comfortable than a 4.7 inch screen for doing any kind of productivity work. I can go to a coffee shop, pull out my 13-inch laptop and instantly be productive. And transporting around a dock, a keyboard and a monitor to plug-in your phone in case you need it would be more impractical and would defeat the purpose of that phone. I concede that there will be people interested in using their phone as a general computing device. Those will be the same people that are doing that today, as in the people that lack the resources to buy multiple devices. A very important and probably big market, but still.

scholia 11y ago
> Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. With Windows Continuum, you plug an external monitor and a keyboard into your Windows 10 Phone. You get a desktop style experience on the big screen but you can continue to do phone stuff on the phone. BUILD 2015 Continuum session - Windows Phone as a PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ It becomes significantly interesting for the odd 4 billion people who will own a smartphone one day but may never own a laptop. Toshiba tried something similar with a PocketPC (powered by Windows CE) a couple of decades ago, but it didn't work well enough to go anywhere.
amyjess 11y ago
> For one you're assuming that current computing capacity is enough for most people. However current computing capacity is enough only for current applications of it. In a decade from now however people are going to get interested in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. I'm fairly sure most AI will be done in the cloud. We're already going in that direction, with stuff like Google Now. VR is an interesting question... I'm really excited about the HoloLens, and I'm really curious to see where things go from there. Honestly, I think AR might become a big deal once we start getting wearables that aren't super clunky. Actually, introducing wearables to the mix also introduces the idea of a personal cloud of devices. The concept of a PAN has been talked about for a while, but we haven't really seen it amount to much, unless you count things like Bluetooth headsets. Cheap, stylish wearables with phone-quality processors, however, can change all that (I don't think we're at either cheap enough or stylish enough yet... but that's a big "yet"). Think beyond smartwatches or googles, too. Imagine wearing a smartshirt and smartpants and smartshoes. Imagine if every single thing you wore on your body had a CPU in it. I think we'd avoid the problem of how small transistors can get just by sticking sources of computing power everywhere. Of course, this paragraph is all pie-in-the-sky far-future stuff. Prices will need to come down to the same range as normal articles of clothing, which will take a long time. And we'll have to have a seamless way to charge your clothes that won't add any more mental overhead. Nobody wants to say "sorry, I have to stay home, I forgot to charge my pants last night". > But problematic are also the batteries, for which Moore's law never applied. I think at some point there's going to be a backlash against thinness, and we'll start seeing bigger devices with thicker batteries. Wouldn't surprise me if portable power sources take off too (I'm already seeing external battery packs being sold at department stores, of all places), especially if inductive charging becomes a bit less clunky. Women might be a good driver of this technology: for example, I can see a system where you just drop your phone into your purse, and it magnetically attaches to a wireless charging mat plugged into a battery pack. > Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still handicapped by its small screen real-estate. The form factor of a laptop is optimized for productivity work while remaining portable. A physical keyboard is more productive than typing things on a touch screen. A 13-inch screen is more comfortable than a 4.7 inch screen for doing any kind of productivity work. I can go to a coffee shop, pull out my 13-inch laptop and instantly be productive. And transporting around a dock, a keyboard and a monitor to plug-in your phone in case you need it would be more impractical and would defeat the purpose of that phone. Of course, you're assuming nobody will make a laptop-shaped dock that you can insert a phone into like a cartridge. Think something like the Asus PadFone [0], but with a laptop instead of a tablet. The only real barrier to that right now is that every shell has to be matched with specific models of phone, because every phone has a different size and shape, but I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing standardized form factors at some point in the near future. Better yet, combine that with a setup like the Surface Book, and you'll have a phone that can dock into a tablet that can dock into a laptop. [0] http://d5htu2v3nddyh.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/a/s/asus-padfone-2-1350320045_3_1.jpg http://d5htu2v3nddyh.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/a/...

neolefty 11y ago

Probably true that phones will become good enough for most things. But at the same time, how many devices will the average person use? More or fewer? If it's more, then no matter what -- even if we don't know what those devices will be -- you want it to be easy to switch between them, which is the problem Continuum is solving. I think this is Google hedging its bets again and getting ready for whatever unpredictable thing happens next. They just assume it will include a proliferation of devices.

jessaustin 11y ago

You're not thinking long-term enough. You should be asking, "why would one need a PC when you can just stick your phone in a dock?". Instead, ask why you'll need a phone when UI devices become invisible, ubiquitous, and networked. Eventually, our children (grandchildren?) will laugh at our phone obsession. I'm imagining a silent reel of a Charlie Chaplin figure repeatedly patting all his pockets searching for his phone, dropping it when he does find it, pecking the wrong portion of the screen, and then when he finally answers the call discovering that the battery is dead. In other words, me, every day.

amyjess 11y ago
Very good point. I'm hoping the "personal cloud of wearables" becomes reality at some point in my lifetime. Reading the Shadowrun v4 player's guide seriously influenced the kind of technology I want to experience.