IPhone and iPad are terribly boring, what's next?(blog.shoutem.com) Interesting take on the evolution of new technologies. It is true that iPhone updates are more and more obvious and that we miss that WOW effect that Steve Jobs use to provide. What's next then? |
I'm not seeing the point of this piece. It doesn't offer anything in the way of information. It's a fluff piece that can be boiled down to "things are going good, so let's just keep on moving forward" with the call to action of "hey mobile devs, have you ever thought of developing for mobile devices?"
I would even argue that the big innovation isn't coming from software next, it's coming from hardware. Notice that the big talent is switching back to hardware? Just because Apple's profit margins don't push them to make another huge innovation doesn't mean that no one is innovating.
The reason it's easy to discount past innovations and say that hardware is perfect now is because past innovations have already been developed. They've already been made, and they already exist. They're obvious now. Future innovations are not obvious, that's why they're innovations. The better software called for in the blog post is just minor iterations like a new Madden (that's a really innovative game). Meanwhile, the Kinect has already been made, so of course the Xbox is perfect and hardware is dead. Pay no attention to the fact that Kinect wouldn't have existed if people thought the same way you do.
Not a new observation but one that is worth thinking about now and again.
One of the interesting things I observe about mobile devices is their use as a function of their connectivity. Which is to say tablet with no network connectivity isn't as useful as a tablet with network connectivity. The networks are growing, but outside of major metro areas they still aren't great. The previous generation of laptops carried enough along to be useful during long periods of no connectivity [1]. So things like maps that aren't maps unless you're connected are less useful. (Google finally caved on that slightly which I applauded)
Perhaps the next thing is better reference tools. As a search company I get to see a lot of things people search for and reference searches are still a big chunk of search. That is however a place that could easily be disrupted by localized data. All of Wikipedia, maps, phone books, dictionaries, etc etc etc are actually small enough to carry around now. Sure you want updates to come from the web but the main corpus? Doesn't change that much. Who is going to build the Encyclopedia Galactica?
[1] I remind people sometimes that 'networking' was an add-on feature for the first laptops.
I'd like to see in-device projectors soon, but is there a more useful device addition to be had? Wireless charging, maybe?
Project Glass is definitely interesting, as another commenter mentioned.
Ex: I love my Roku to death, but the interface is so buggy it's like using a Flash app from 1999.
When apple puts it into their one premiere phone, millions of people will have it and interesting 3rd party software is worth making then.