One of the best times in the year for a tech nerd is the second or third week of the year. Usually at this time we have CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and MacWorld going on, and lots and lots of new toys get debuted that will be available in the near or far future.
Over the last few years I’ve observed a few things that interest me that are worth sharing I think.
– Too often when I look at all these new TV’s, projectors, phones, video games, and other stuff like that I think one of two things. 1. That looks really great, too bad it doesn’t have feature X and it is so expensive, or 2. Holy crap that looks amazing, too bad it costs 100 giga-billion dollars and won’t be released until 3062.
After I got over my initial giddiness at the niceties of the new UI (User Interface) on the Apple iPhone I started asking questions about missing features. 3G for example. A $600 phone that plays movies, gets on the internet, and has no 3G support??? Seems a little odd even if they did do that for battery reasons. Also, no mention of syncing iTunes over the WiFi. Aren’t we supposed to be in the era of wireless? It seems obvious that this is a HUGE feature people would love, but with the big OS players releasing new media playing devices in the last few months with WiFi built in, we have yet to see that feature.
The exmple of #2 is the OLED screen. Been waiting for that since like 2002. Still, no TV’s yet. And I see all sides of this stupid OLED empty promises, since I know work for a company making products for people who manufacture OLED screens. OLED’s were supposed to be brighter, no viewing angle issues, darker blacks, and cheaper with lower power usage than anything else available. We’re still waiting and I’m much more likely to get on the SED bandwagon now than any other TV technology just because I’m pissed off I’ve had to wait this long for OLED screens of a decent size.
– The return of the UI. When I saw the UI on the new apple phone, my only thought was “Thank God they finally delivered on what PDA’s were supposed to be 5 years ago.” It seems like the steady enhancements apple has been making to OSX and microsoft has been making to Windows are finally starting to reflect how we do things in our daily lives. I think we can really thank Google for pushing this point more than anyone. Their web-based UI’s are everywhere we want them to be, work on any operating system, and they work how we think they should. Google made the consumer important again by giving us what we want, and only what we want, in the way we want it.
And now people are starting to figure out which type of UI goes best with which type of navigation system (i.e. mouse, touchscreen, keypad, TV, etc.)
I’ve been sick of UI promises that give me no functional improvements in how I use my computer, or that promise things and don’t deliver on them. But, I will praise the companies like TiVo, Apple, and Google for finally causing some change in this area, and save my further UI rants for another post…because the length would require its own post.
– Phones are finally getting smaller and dropping useless features. There are some neat phones coming out from companies like samsung, and motorola that are tiny small, and don’t have a crap-ton of features packed into them that no one will ever use. For a long time now phones have been staying relatively the same size and adding more crap into them. Most people just dial the phone, and maybe would like a cool mp3 as a ringtone. A good screen for seeing numbers, a decent keypad, and small form factor would benefit many more people than a phone that turns on your blender at home from work.
– OLPC beta. I’m still down with this. I love every communist idea that they spin as “collaborative”. The idea of the collaborative learning and creative environments make me super happy even though I know they are a re-spin of idealistic communism placed in a digital age. I think I could be down with that kind of communism, especially since I think it leads to a new form of capitalism if taken to a far down the road idealistic end instead of fully fledged socialism.
– DRM needs to go, standards in general are good. Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD, mp3 vs AAC vs WMA vs. Ogg vs. FLACC vs. Musepak, divx vs wmv vs mov, it is all stupid. The consumer looses in all of these fights. There is no winner from the DRM and format wars we wage. Content should be easily consumable. I shouldn’t have to always match my mp3 player to the records I want to listen to. Likewise, I shouldn’t have to match my DVD player to the movie studios that make my favorite movies (that’s right, up yours sony, no way in hell I’m buying the Blue-Ray version of spiderman3). I think everyone knows that this stuff delays consumer adoption of new technology. Right now I recommend to everyone to not buy any of the new HD formats of DVD, but on the other hand, over-the-air HD-TV signals are standardized, so there is no technological reason not to buy an HDTV set. And they are coming into the realm of affordability for the average joe like me.
So, moral of that story is, DRM = BAD, standards = good = need to get IEEE’s and FCC’s head out of its ass.
I think more people are aware of this issue now, and are begining to move grudgingly away from creating new propriatary standards. Except Apple, Microsoft, and Sony. I see Sony circling the drain though in many markets, and Windows Vista ain’t going to help MS any time quick with gaining any friends.
– Motion sensing is in. Yeah Nintendo for proving you could do this without sucking at it. I’m excited to see what is coming with more and more readily available semiconductor-based motion sensing devices gaining ground.
There you have it, my take on the state of technology from years of reading too much information about technology.