6 ms·

The Digital Wallet of the Future (1996)

58 points by Lammy 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
______- 5y ago
And now we have people losing access to their cryptocurrency wallets[0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwo...
- jjulius 5y ago
  This thread is about an article Bill Gates wrote in 1996 foreshadowing the existence of smartphones. I'm not sure how this relates?
abss 5y ago
Not available in Europe.. Do you have other link?
- madars 5y ago
  https://archive.is/4c3NW https://archive.is/4c3NW
- Lammy 5y ago
  A substantially similar version is quoted in full on this Windows CE history page: https://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/walletpc/ https://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/walletpc/
smoldesu 5y ago
>If you lose your wallet PC, replacing the actual device may cost about what it does to replace a good camera -- several hundred dollars, at least -- so you won't want to lose yours. >On the other hand, replacing almost anything "in" the wallet, from money to photos, will be simple and inexpensive because the wallet will contain only digital information that can be traced, replicated or retrieved from another location. Love him or hate him, Gates had pretty damn good future sight back in the 90s. It turned out not to be a panacea (see recent events), but his focus on feeding a corporate world with money to burn made him a rich man very quickly.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  Just a year before this article, everyone thought smart cards were the wave of the future. All of your credit cards, IDs, and medical records were going to be stored on one card. The rest of the world did move on to smart cards in limited form, from phone cards to credit cards. The USA never did implement these cool ideas; and our credit-card companies JUST NOW put chips in their cards... but then blew it by still resorting to signatures instead of PINs.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    > The USA never did implement these cool ideas DoD kinda did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
nickelcitymario 5y ago
It's fascinating to go back and read predictive stuff like this. He got so much right (digital wallet, replaceable, a small screen in your pocket), yet missed the big picture that made it reality: It's not a Wallet PC, it's a PC in your pocket that happens to include a wallet as just one piece of available software. There's an alternate reality where he figured that out sooner and beat Apple and Google to the punch.
- detaro 5y ago
  > it's a PC in your pocket that happens to include a wallet as just one piece of available software. I mean, that's what he's describing and what PocketPCs were? That's not what the current crop of smartphones beat Microsoft at.
- petermcneeley 5y ago
  You might want to read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- simonh 5y ago
  I’m reading Stephen Sinofsky’s new book as he writes it, he’s blogging the chapters, and it up to just a few years earlier, about 1993. These are the operating systems they were developing at that time. DOS, OS/2, Windows, Windows NT and Cairo. Each was a different code base, different strategic vision and different technical requirements. That’s unbelievably stupid. They soon ditched OS/2, DOS and the failed Cairo project, but then added Windows CE. They never valued and core technology. Each product or market segment was addressed separately, from scratch by a new product team. The compiler team barely talked to the tools team, who developed separate tech from the applications teams who used their own frameworks different from those provided by the OS team. Most of the narrative is about teams talking past each other in meetings and struggling to get them to work together. It’s nuts.
  - soco 5y ago
    OS/2 was technically ditched by IBM as sole owners (well after a while). And many Cairo components landed elsewhere sometimes as separate products - Windows 95 GUI, COM, Active Directory, Exchange... so where coordination definitely failed, technology seems to have produced lasting results.
poundofshrimp 5y ago
I suppose it wasn’t obvious in 1996, even to someone like Bill Gates, that mobile telecommunications and the “pocket PC” would become intertwined and the former would drive the adoption of the later.
jmvidal 5y ago
The Apple Newton was shipping in 1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
- simonh 5y ago
  Indeed, and General Magic was working on similar concepts. Psion was doing well. The first Palm PDA came out the same year, 1996. The DynaBook concept had been around for decades. It’s all about execution.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    and waves remember electric vehicles predates ICE ones
jancsika 5y ago
Is there anyone out there discussing things like Ecash in the cryptocurrency space, or has blockchain essentially eaten all those brains in the short term? Just seems like Ecash got so much right in terms of the properties one would want for digital cash...
- gruez 5y ago
  Because people who are into cryptocurrencies are in it for the "not fiat" aspect, not the "electronic transactions" aspect. If you care about the latter, credit cards and/or mobile wallets adequately covers 90% of the use cases.
  - swiley 5y ago
    I don't know how you expect to come to reasonable conclusions when you generalize that extremely.
    - gruez 5y ago
      Am I wrong? Is there a silent majority somewhere who thinks that bitcoin's 1T valuation can be justified by being a slightly better paypal/alipay? As for the "generalize" bit, would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you?
      - wmf 5y ago
        You're not wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "in it for the tech" people are doing some really heavy rationalization about how number go up is just market validation of superior tech and not a massive bubble.
        Geee 5y ago
        It's a combination of both. You can think that the bottom price of every cycle is the actual non-hype price for Bitcoin. Hype drives adoption and when the hype dies, there's always people who want to be in it for the long run. "Come for the greed, stay for the revolution."
newbie578 5y ago
I still believe that the anti-trust case against Microsoft completely changed the course of history. Microsoft was left a shell of its former self, a wolf without fangs, tired and exhausted from a battle of attrition, with the biggest casualty being Gates himself who lost the inner drive to lead such a huge company. I do hope he plans to write a detailed biography one day, so that we can see what his thought process back then was. Apple wouldn't even exist honestly today if the anti-trust case wasn't launched against Microsoft. That is the very reason I cannot wait for Apple to get launched with its own anti-trust, who knows what company will come to take it's mantle.
- the-dude 5y ago
  That is an interesting take. A take I have never heard of before. A take I definitely do not agree with. But it is an interesting take.
- codehalo 5y ago
  You are comparing Microsoft from the 90’s to Apple today, which is absolutely preposterous. That Microsoft makes Facebook look like Habitat for Humanity. You cannot be serious.
  - lukifer 5y ago
    The comparison to 90's Microsoft is today's Apple is a tenuous one at best, but IMO not a specious one. While it's easy to forget how oppressive MS's 90%+ market share felt at the time, and the impact of their "Embrace Extend Extinguish" strategy, neither did Microsoft ever exert the same degree of control over their software ecosystem as Apple does over third-party software in iOS (30% of all revenue, unilateral gatekeeping privileges, etc).
jbb_hn 5y ago
And the original article has exactly ZERO comments. A lot of his concepts were right, but the implementation isn’t as aggregated as predicted.
nixarian 5y ago
Keys last...how long? Electronics last...how long? Keys require how much power? Electronics..? These people are out of touch with reality.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  The opinion piece by Gates was meant to describe a device that could help sell more Windows software. None of the "industry forecasting" really applied. He didn't care how much power the device would use or how long the battery would last. He wanted to sell more software.
pkt1975 5y ago
Blocked from the UK due to legal reasons.
amadeuspagel 5y ago
> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, call (800) 777-8640.
- ______- 5y ago
  https://archive.is/4c3NW https://archive.is/4c3NW
  - amadeuspagel 5y ago
    Thanks.

58 points by Lammy 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

And now we have people losing access to their cryptocurrency wallets[0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwo...

jjulius 5y ago
This thread is about an article Bill Gates wrote in 1996 foreshadowing the existence of smartphones. I'm not sure how this relates?

abss 5y ago

Not available in Europe.. Do you have other link?

madars 5y ago
https://archive.is/4c3NW https://archive.is/4c3NW
Lammy 5y ago
A substantially similar version is quoted in full on this Windows CE history page: https://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/walletpc/ https://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/walletpc/

smoldesu 5y ago

>If you lose your wallet PC, replacing the actual device may cost about what it does to replace a good camera -- several hundred dollars, at least -- so you won't want to lose yours. >On the other hand, replacing almost anything "in" the wallet, from money to photos, will be simple and inexpensive because the wallet will contain only digital information that can be traced, replicated or retrieved from another location. Love him or hate him, Gates had pretty damn good future sight back in the 90s. It turned out not to be a panacea (see recent events), but his focus on feeding a corporate world with money to burn made him a rich man very quickly.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Just a year before this article, everyone thought smart cards were the wave of the future. All of your credit cards, IDs, and medical records were going to be stored on one card. The rest of the world did move on to smart cards in limited form, from phone cards to credit cards. The USA never did implement these cool ideas; and our credit-card companies JUST NOW put chips in their cards... but then blew it by still resorting to signatures instead of PINs.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > The USA never did implement these cool ideas DoD kinda did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card

nickelcitymario 5y ago

It's fascinating to go back and read predictive stuff like this. He got so much right (digital wallet, replaceable, a small screen in your pocket), yet missed the big picture that made it reality: It's not a Wallet PC, it's a PC in your pocket that happens to include a wallet as just one piece of available software. There's an alternate reality where he figured that out sooner and beat Apple and Google to the punch.

detaro 5y ago
> it's a PC in your pocket that happens to include a wallet as just one piece of available software. I mean, that's what he's describing and what PocketPCs were? That's not what the current crop of smartphones beat Microsoft at.
petermcneeley 5y ago
You might want to read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
simonh 5y ago
I’m reading Stephen Sinofsky’s new book as he writes it, he’s blogging the chapters, and it up to just a few years earlier, about 1993. These are the operating systems they were developing at that time. DOS, OS/2, Windows, Windows NT and Cairo. Each was a different code base, different strategic vision and different technical requirements. That’s unbelievably stupid. They soon ditched OS/2, DOS and the failed Cairo project, but then added Windows CE. They never valued and core technology. Each product or market segment was addressed separately, from scratch by a new product team. The compiler team barely talked to the tools team, who developed separate tech from the applications teams who used their own frameworks different from those provided by the OS team. Most of the narrative is about teams talking past each other in meetings and struggling to get them to work together. It’s nuts.
- soco 5y ago
  OS/2 was technically ditched by IBM as sole owners (well after a while). And many Cairo components landed elsewhere sometimes as separate products - Windows 95 GUI, COM, Active Directory, Exchange... so where coordination definitely failed, technology seems to have produced lasting results.

poundofshrimp 5y ago

I suppose it wasn’t obvious in 1996, even to someone like Bill Gates, that mobile telecommunications and the “pocket PC” would become intertwined and the former would drive the adoption of the later.

jmvidal 5y ago

The Apple Newton was shipping in 1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton

simonh 5y ago
Indeed, and General Magic was working on similar concepts. Psion was doing well. The first Palm PDA came out the same year, 1996. The DynaBook concept had been around for decades. It’s all about execution.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  and waves remember electric vehicles predates ICE ones

jancsika 5y ago

Is there anyone out there discussing things like Ecash in the cryptocurrency space, or has blockchain essentially eaten all those brains in the short term? Just seems like Ecash got so much right in terms of the properties one would want for digital cash...

gruez 5y ago
Because people who are into cryptocurrencies are in it for the "not fiat" aspect, not the "electronic transactions" aspect. If you care about the latter, credit cards and/or mobile wallets adequately covers 90% of the use cases.
- swiley 5y ago
  I don't know how you expect to come to reasonable conclusions when you generalize that extremely.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Am I wrong? Is there a silent majority somewhere who thinks that bitcoin's 1T valuation can be justified by being a slightly better paypal/alipay? As for the "generalize" bit, would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you?
    - wmf 5y ago
      You're not wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "in it for the tech" people are doing some really heavy rationalization about how number go up is just market validation of superior tech and not a massive bubble.
      - Geee 5y ago
        It's a combination of both. You can think that the bottom price of every cycle is the actual non-hype price for Bitcoin. Hype drives adoption and when the hype dies, there's always people who want to be in it for the long run. "Come for the greed, stay for the revolution."

newbie578 5y ago

I still believe that the anti-trust case against Microsoft completely changed the course of history. Microsoft was left a shell of its former self, a wolf without fangs, tired and exhausted from a battle of attrition, with the biggest casualty being Gates himself who lost the inner drive to lead such a huge company. I do hope he plans to write a detailed biography one day, so that we can see what his thought process back then was. Apple wouldn't even exist honestly today if the anti-trust case wasn't launched against Microsoft. That is the very reason I cannot wait for Apple to get launched with its own anti-trust, who knows what company will come to take it's mantle.

the-dude 5y ago
That is an interesting take. A take I have never heard of before. A take I definitely do not agree with. But it is an interesting take.
codehalo 5y ago
You are comparing Microsoft from the 90’s to Apple today, which is absolutely preposterous. That Microsoft makes Facebook look like Habitat for Humanity. You cannot be serious.
- lukifer 5y ago
  The comparison to 90's Microsoft is today's Apple is a tenuous one at best, but IMO not a specious one. While it's easy to forget how oppressive MS's 90%+ market share felt at the time, and the impact of their "Embrace Extend Extinguish" strategy, neither did Microsoft ever exert the same degree of control over their software ecosystem as Apple does over third-party software in iOS (30% of all revenue, unilateral gatekeeping privileges, etc).

jbb_hn 5y ago

And the original article has exactly ZERO comments. A lot of his concepts were right, but the implementation isn’t as aggregated as predicted.

nixarian 5y ago

Keys last...how long? Electronics last...how long? Keys require how much power? Electronics..? These people are out of touch with reality.

IncRnd 5y ago
The opinion piece by Gates was meant to describe a device that could help sell more Windows software. None of the "industry forecasting" really applied. He didn't care how much power the device would use or how long the battery would last. He wanted to sell more software.

pkt1975 5y ago

Blocked from the UK due to legal reasons.

amadeuspagel 5y ago

> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, call (800) 777-8640.

______- 5y ago
https://archive.is/4c3NW https://archive.is/4c3NW
- amadeuspagel 5y ago
  Thanks.