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No, they aren't. Kinect was using motion tracking and stereo vision technology that already existed. They just refined it and it was clearly a dead end. Also it

• ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "the web" Okay, but that's sort of technological shift is rare. Nothing else in my lifetime has come close. >"home broadband" Just a refinement of the web. >"Linux" Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first released. >"smartphones" I hope you realise smartphones did not start with the iPhone. The smartphone has gone through a long period of iterative design improvements. If you're looking for a product that emerges out of a vacuum, you won't find it, all products build upon their predecessors, even the web (which made use of existing telecommunications infrastructure and existing work in the field of computing). What you will find are new forms that build upon the past. For example, quantum computing is a relatively new field, but has roots in the existing fields of computer science, physics and electrical engineering. Would quantum computing count as 'truly innovative' to you? If so... https://stationq.microsoft.com/ https://stationq.microsoft.com/
  • ebbv 10y ago
    > >"home broadband" > Just a refinement of the web. What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all. > Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first released. Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary here. GNU had been around for quite a while. It's Linux that was revolutionary. It's a kernel that worked well and that people could contribute to and package up with GNU to enable operating systems of very high quality. > I hope you realise smartphones did not start with the iPhone. The smartphone has gone through a long period of iterative design improvements. Aye carumba. What were called smartphones before the iPhone were awful. WinCE was a disaster, and Blackberries were a niche tool for a niche market. iOS and Android devices made computing usable on a mobile platform by everyone for the first time. Of course everything builds on the past, all of these things are based on integrated chips and transistors and on and on. But some technologies are actually revolutionary (like the ones just listed) and others are not (Kinect.) This is obvious by the impact or the lack of impact that they have. You are not fun to talk to because you are missing very obvious things, and I think you're doing it deliberately, so I'm done with you.
    • ZenoArrow 10y ago
      > "What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all." In terms of impact, which is seemingly how you want to measure how innovative something was, home broadband changed how much the web was used. Compared to the dial-up era it made the Internet something people could connect to 24/7. However, in my own personal experience I was already a heavy Internet user before home broadband, so it mostly changed how quickly things got downloaded. I still watched videos, listened to music, chatted to strangers, played games, etc... in the dial-up era. >"Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary here. GNU had been around for quite a while. It's Linux that was revolutionary. It's a kernel that worked well and that people could contribute to and package up with GNU to enable operating systems of very high quality." If open-source was the thing you wanted to point to as innovative, then you should've said open-source. Other than the development methodology behind it and how widespread it is, there's not much that's interesting about Linux. As for 'enable operating systems of very high quality', that's debatable. High quality compared to what? Linux is far from perfect. To give one example, CoreAudio is far better than ALSA or ALSA+PulseAudio when it comes to flexibility and latency respectively. >"Aye carumba. What were called smartphones before the iPhone were awful. WinCE was a disaster, and Blackberries were a niche tool for a niche market. iOS and Android devices made computing usable on a mobile platform by everyone for the first time." Again, this seems to come down to you wanting to measure innovation in terms of impact. Quite a bit of the UI of the iPhone has its roots in the PDA market, which was arguably also started by Apple with the Newton. The iPhone introduced capacitive multitouch, and had a sleek design, but if it didn't become popular it would've been just another evolution of the smartphone, just like the LG Prada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada >"But some technologies are actually revolutionary (like the ones just listed) and others are not (Kinect.) This is obvious by the impact or the lack of impact that they have." So it's not the design that's revolutionary but the impact it has? Was putting wheels on luggage revolutionary? >"You are not fun to talk to because you are missing very obvious things, and I think you're doing it deliberately, so I'm done with you." Feel free to ignore me if you like, I'm not fussed.