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The future looks like a smartphone and docking station. The phones already have the horsepower needed to run all but the most demanding apps. Add a full size ke

The future looks like a smartphone and docking station. The phones already have the horsepower needed to run all but the most demanding apps. Add a full size keyboard/monitor when in dock and people will switch in droves. The only question is which of the big three will get the formula right. Apple would have the best shot if that was their direction, but they seem to be betting on multiple device sync rather that a single unified device. Also they will be too pricey in the long run. Microsoft is pushing for a unified device vision with win8 but windows phone doesn't have market share. Win7 is good enough for desktop users. Clock is ticking and MS needs a 'hit' crossover device. Doubtful that we will see one. Google already has desktop mode for android devices and several phones with HDMI output. Motorola and Samsung are making docking kits today. Also android is by far the cheapest option. The only thing holding back Google is a lack of salesmanship. If Steve Jobs had announced the Galaxy Note 2 and demoed the dock/desktop functions this market would be locked up already.

keithwarren 14y ago
This assumes the future needs a docking station. Which assumes a keyboard and mouse are still the tools interaction. I won't concede that they are. People in our business are a bit myopic because you HAVE to have a keyboard to code; that may not be true for everyone else. Granted that is what we are used to, but rewind a decade and no one was talking about playing games without a handheld controller.
- graue 14y ago
  johngalt didn't mention a mouse, you did. I think when we get larger touchscreens the mouse may indeed become obsolete. (I'm looking forward to it; I never had any love for that form of input.) But a keyboard will continue to be useful for anyone who has to write more than 2 paragraphs in a sitting. That's most office workers. Also, a reporter, marketer, investor or designer (to name a few example non-code jobs) can hardly do their work on a 3 to 4 inch screen.
  - jackalope 14y ago
    Voice recognition and predictive text have progressed very well. Despite the challenges posed by group settings, there are plenty of people who would turn to dictation if it freed them from the tyranny of the keyboard ("You want me to type 2 paragraphs? By hand?").
  - zem 14y ago
    moving from mouse to touchscreen will also require moving from vertical to plane-of-the-desk displays. it's simply not ergonomic to keep touching a screen oriented the way desktop and laptop monitors are today.
    - graue 14y ago
      Good point. Because of the bad ergonomics I hedged my bet and only said the mouse "may" become obsolete, but it didn't occur to me that full-size displays could sit flat (or very shallowly inclined?) on a desk.
- theorique 14y ago
  I assume you mean "our business" = tech, programming, web, etc. but lots more people in nearly all businesses write a lot of text in the course of their day. For example, marketing, communications, senior executives in almost every industry, sales ... these people write a lot of text in email or document form every day.
  - cdwhite 14y ago
    One can imagine them dictating, if speech recognition software is sufficiently good. This doesn't work for code (or, perhaps, it doesn't work for the programming languages we have now---a programming language with syntax designed to be spoken, not typed, would be very interesting) and it seems it doesn't work for writing fiction, as I think I recall Charlie Stross discovering (can't find the blog posts now, though http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writing-experiment-i-plan-to.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writin... discusses the problem). For day-to-day communication, though, the stylistic differences between dictated and typed prose are probably not important. Moreover, this might yield a small efficiency win over both text communication as is (email, IM) and the telephone: dictated text would be as fast to produce as spoken communication (I can talk much faster than I can type, and I get the feeling that's true in general), while remaining as fast to read and as easy to edit as text. I'm not sure this win would be very big, though; for me, at least, the bulk of the time I spend on writing is spent figuring out how to phrase things. Jackalope's comment, though, indicates that people are starting to see noticeable improvements in efficiency---the "how did I ever live without this" feeling. Perhaps they find speech more natural than typing, and spend less time agonizing over how to express themselves? This scenario depresses me somewhat, as I have an inordinate and perhaps irrational fondness for slower, more considered forms of expression. I find my prose is more dense and pointed when I hand-write than when I type, which I prefer (though my superabundant laziness combined with the ease of editing on a computer mean that I almost always type).
    - EwanG 14y ago
      Ummm... no. I am not going to dictate a spreadsheet worth of data even if the voice recognition were 100% (which it's not). I'm not going to try to dictate an IM in the middle of a meeting. I'm not going to dictate anything within listening distance of my boss or a customer that might be less than complementary. And so on... I think when we get fMRI sensors that fit on our head and we can "think" a sheet that's a possibility. But I see no business situation where voice beats typing when I have both available to me.
dotborg 14y ago
docking station, monitor, keyboard + mouse? that's no longer a smartphone
ladzoppelin 14y ago
Windows 8 phone will probably have the market share in due time. Nokia has already reported increasing profits and personally I cant wait to switch out my Droid 2 for one. Windows 8 on the desktop is also amazing once you step back from the blogger cloud of BS and actually use it. Having the same OS on both desktop and phone is a powerful idea which even Ubuntu developers are now beginning to realize. http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone
- tellarin 14y ago
  I definitely agree that having the same OS on your phone and desktop has a lot of potential. But calling Win8 'amazing' on the desktop is a bit too much. It's about the same as Win7, with faster boot times and those kind-of-out-of-place Metro apps. On a tablet, or on a laptop with a touch screen, on the other hand, then it is not bad after you get used to it.
  - ladzoppelin 14y ago
    It is the GPU acceleration of the UI and font rendering in desktop mode, the Hyper V integration, lower memory footprint and security enhancements that I think make it amazing. Sorry I should of said that is just my personal opinion. Yours is just as valid.
- jackalope 14y ago
  I'm testing the waters with a Windows 8 phone, which I bought after unintentionally checking it out while looking for a new Android to replace my old one. I did due diligence and checked online reviews first, which unanimously recommended not buying it because there weren't enough apps and it was too heavy (Nokia Lumia 920). But I was struck by how overwhelmingly owners of the phone in the comments loved it. It's only been a few weeks, but I don't regret it. I might even consider getting a Windows 8 tablet with a keyboard case, I find the interface so intriguing.
jackalope 14y ago
A docking station is almost redundant for most phones and tablets. You can already use bluetooth to attach a keyboard and/or pointing device. All you need now is a way to wirelessly connect to a video display, preferably in a way that supports touch. This can't be far off, with apps like Photobeamer, Apple's constantly improving multimedia sharing between devices, etc. I'd love to see the day where I can just drop my phone on a wireless charger at home or work and share the screen with a bigger display and other nearby peripherals without needing to invest in one or more docking stations. Who needs more technorubble?
Someone 14y ago
I can see that happen, but on the other hand: if data is in the cloud and computing hardware is dirt cheap, how would taking CPU+RAM out of a desktop setup make much of a difference? A raspberry PI in your 40" monitor shouldn't cost that much. If data is not in the cloud, I would not want to have it only in my smartphone. Also, I would hope that we will find a need for having desktop setups that are more powerful than what can realistically be put in a smartphone. 'Super ultra-extra-HD plus' or even holographic displays, good real-time speech and video recognition, whatever. So, I can see using a smartphone as access token or as data store for not-yet-synced-to-the-cloud data, but I would hope it will not get used as a general computing device.
Zigurd 14y ago
I hope the future looks like there isn't one answer. Apple's answer has been hugely successful, and so has Google's and they are not the same, even if they contend on the same classes of devices. It looks like US carriers are going to give a QNX-based OS a chance to keep Blackberry in business. Being able to carry a full desktop OS in your pocket and dock it to a big screen is something that makes sense for Windows Phone and is a stated goal for Ubuntu. It looks like B2G will pick up the HTML5 Web runtime in phones torch later this year.
Shorel 14y ago
So, the future looks like the Ubuntu phone? Bring it on!

keithwarren 14y ago

This assumes the future needs a docking station. Which assumes a keyboard and mouse are still the tools interaction. I won't concede that they are. People in our business are a bit myopic because you HAVE to have a keyboard to code; that may not be true for everyone else. Granted that is what we are used to, but rewind a decade and no one was talking about playing games without a handheld controller.

graue 14y ago
johngalt didn't mention a mouse, you did. I think when we get larger touchscreens the mouse may indeed become obsolete. (I'm looking forward to it; I never had any love for that form of input.) But a keyboard will continue to be useful for anyone who has to write more than 2 paragraphs in a sitting. That's most office workers. Also, a reporter, marketer, investor or designer (to name a few example non-code jobs) can hardly do their work on a 3 to 4 inch screen.
- jackalope 14y ago
  Voice recognition and predictive text have progressed very well. Despite the challenges posed by group settings, there are plenty of people who would turn to dictation if it freed them from the tyranny of the keyboard ("You want me to type 2 paragraphs? By hand?").
- zem 14y ago
  moving from mouse to touchscreen will also require moving from vertical to plane-of-the-desk displays. it's simply not ergonomic to keep touching a screen oriented the way desktop and laptop monitors are today.
  - graue 14y ago
    Good point. Because of the bad ergonomics I hedged my bet and only said the mouse "may" become obsolete, but it didn't occur to me that full-size displays could sit flat (or very shallowly inclined?) on a desk.
theorique 14y ago
I assume you mean "our business" = tech, programming, web, etc. but lots more people in nearly all businesses write a lot of text in the course of their day. For example, marketing, communications, senior executives in almost every industry, sales ... these people write a lot of text in email or document form every day.
- cdwhite 14y ago
  One can imagine them dictating, if speech recognition software is sufficiently good. This doesn't work for code (or, perhaps, it doesn't work for the programming languages we have now---a programming language with syntax designed to be spoken, not typed, would be very interesting) and it seems it doesn't work for writing fiction, as I think I recall Charlie Stross discovering (can't find the blog posts now, though http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writing-experiment-i-plan-to.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writin... discusses the problem). For day-to-day communication, though, the stylistic differences between dictated and typed prose are probably not important. Moreover, this might yield a small efficiency win over both text communication as is (email, IM) and the telephone: dictated text would be as fast to produce as spoken communication (I can talk much faster than I can type, and I get the feeling that's true in general), while remaining as fast to read and as easy to edit as text. I'm not sure this win would be very big, though; for me, at least, the bulk of the time I spend on writing is spent figuring out how to phrase things. Jackalope's comment, though, indicates that people are starting to see noticeable improvements in efficiency---the "how did I ever live without this" feeling. Perhaps they find speech more natural than typing, and spend less time agonizing over how to express themselves? This scenario depresses me somewhat, as I have an inordinate and perhaps irrational fondness for slower, more considered forms of expression. I find my prose is more dense and pointed when I hand-write than when I type, which I prefer (though my superabundant laziness combined with the ease of editing on a computer mean that I almost always type).
  - EwanG 14y ago
    Ummm... no. I am not going to dictate a spreadsheet worth of data even if the voice recognition were 100% (which it's not). I'm not going to try to dictate an IM in the middle of a meeting. I'm not going to dictate anything within listening distance of my boss or a customer that might be less than complementary. And so on... I think when we get fMRI sensors that fit on our head and we can "think" a sheet that's a possibility. But I see no business situation where voice beats typing when I have both available to me.

dotborg 14y ago

docking station, monitor, keyboard + mouse? that's no longer a smartphone

ladzoppelin 14y ago

Windows 8 phone will probably have the market share in due time. Nokia has already reported increasing profits and personally I cant wait to switch out my Droid 2 for one. Windows 8 on the desktop is also amazing once you step back from the blogger cloud of BS and actually use it. Having the same OS on both desktop and phone is a powerful idea which even Ubuntu developers are now beginning to realize. http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone

tellarin 14y ago
I definitely agree that having the same OS on your phone and desktop has a lot of potential. But calling Win8 'amazing' on the desktop is a bit too much. It's about the same as Win7, with faster boot times and those kind-of-out-of-place Metro apps. On a tablet, or on a laptop with a touch screen, on the other hand, then it is not bad after you get used to it.
- ladzoppelin 14y ago
  It is the GPU acceleration of the UI and font rendering in desktop mode, the Hyper V integration, lower memory footprint and security enhancements that I think make it amazing. Sorry I should of said that is just my personal opinion. Yours is just as valid.
jackalope 14y ago
I'm testing the waters with a Windows 8 phone, which I bought after unintentionally checking it out while looking for a new Android to replace my old one. I did due diligence and checked online reviews first, which unanimously recommended not buying it because there weren't enough apps and it was too heavy (Nokia Lumia 920). But I was struck by how overwhelmingly owners of the phone in the comments loved it. It's only been a few weeks, but I don't regret it. I might even consider getting a Windows 8 tablet with a keyboard case, I find the interface so intriguing.

jackalope 14y ago

A docking station is almost redundant for most phones and tablets. You can already use bluetooth to attach a keyboard and/or pointing device. All you need now is a way to wirelessly connect to a video display, preferably in a way that supports touch. This can't be far off, with apps like Photobeamer, Apple's constantly improving multimedia sharing between devices, etc. I'd love to see the day where I can just drop my phone on a wireless charger at home or work and share the screen with a bigger display and other nearby peripherals without needing to invest in one or more docking stations. Who needs more technorubble?

Someone 14y ago

I can see that happen, but on the other hand: if data is in the cloud and computing hardware is dirt cheap, how would taking CPU+RAM out of a desktop setup make much of a difference? A raspberry PI in your 40" monitor shouldn't cost that much. If data is not in the cloud, I would not want to have it only in my smartphone. Also, I would hope that we will find a need for having desktop setups that are more powerful than what can realistically be put in a smartphone. 'Super ultra-extra-HD plus' or even holographic displays, good real-time speech and video recognition, whatever. So, I can see using a smartphone as access token or as data store for not-yet-synced-to-the-cloud data, but I would hope it will not get used as a general computing device.

Zigurd 14y ago

I hope the future looks like there isn't one answer. Apple's answer has been hugely successful, and so has Google's and they are not the same, even if they contend on the same classes of devices. It looks like US carriers are going to give a QNX-based OS a chance to keep Blackberry in business. Being able to carry a full desktop OS in your pocket and dock it to a big screen is something that makes sense for Windows Phone and is a stated goal for Ubuntu. It looks like B2G will pick up the HTML5 Web runtime in phones torch later this year.

Shorel 14y ago

So, the future looks like the Ubuntu phone? Bring it on!