I both love and hate stories like this: I love them because it is amazing we're still finding new ways of making batteries; I hate them because at least 3/4th never make it to market, and the ones that do usually take about a decade.
Example: ubiquitous high speed front side bus interconnects between devices. Infiniband, Thunderbolt, RDMA over Ethernet, multi-host USB 3.x networks, whatever. Getting cheaper? Yes. Ubiquitous? No.
Example: Freesync being deployed everywhere, in monitors, on phones/tablets, being added to HDMI and put on all future TVs, and finally just eradicating a ton of processing latency in the display and getting UI responsiveness I last saw when all analog VGA CRTs existed. Is that a thing yet? No.
Example: Internet so fast that latency basically vanishes, and the last mile is no longer a liability, thanks to ISPs like Google Fiber proving it is cheap, easy, and required to deploy. Do I have Google Fiber or anyone else standing up to the challenge yet? No.
Example: A smartwatch, in the vein of Google Wear or iWatch, that has a week+ battery life, and can do various action tracking shit that Moov has been pioneering, and has actual working heart rate tracking, and has water proofness measured in tens of meters (so I can go swimming with the thing on if I so choose). Is that a thing yet? No.
All of these have been promised to me in the past decade. I'm tired of getting my hopes up, but hope is one of the few things I have left.
I have a modern Epson Workforce networked printer. Windows automatically detected it via "Hi, I'm here" broadcast and installed the drivers. So did my MBPr.
Making a scan happen from the printer's tiny little touch screen works fine, both my Windows and Mac show up in the list of computers to send the scan to.
So, yeah, if a $150 printer can do it, so can everyone else.
And enjoy your bliss while it last, my printer doesn't work anymore on Win10 because of reasons. I had to pray Siva for 2 hours before a hack solved the situation.
Side note: I find it utterly amusing that the 20MB android app from HP is smaller, faster, stronger, leaner at almost everything the Windows drivers+app (over 80MB if I recall correctly).
> "I'm tired of getting my hopes up, but hope is one of the few things I have left."
Tech isn't that important, even if we have those things it'll barely change anything worthwhile (aside from battery tech, I'd agree with you on that one).
Also, why can't you enjoy what we already have? If you lived through the days of dial up Internet you'd know what we have now is much faster and user friendly than what we had before.
Because I want technology to do what I want while I'm still young enough to enjoy it.
I no longer need more raw compute power, more raw storage capacity, lower storage latency IO. I have a CPU that is more than I need, with more RAM than I need, and said RAM is faster than I need, and the IOPS and round trip latency on my SSDs are better than I need.
What holds it all back for me? The code behind visual UI's keep getting slower. It isn't entirely software, it isn't entirely hardware, but a mixture of both that screws it over for me.
And the ways I want to interact with computers just isn't there yet:
* Microsoft did epic work on the Surface Pen, but I can't just go buy one of those for my Windows PC
* Google did epic work on Google Now, but I'll have to wait for Cortana to catch up before I get that on my PC (without being limited to just accessing it inside of Chrome)
* Stuff like all the non-gaming usage for things like Kinect or stuff like Leap Motion, no one is really doing anything with that for day to day stuff
* I wasn't kidding about Moov, go look at the new product they just came out: possibly the best fitness tracker ever made if you're interested in fitness coach type apps.
And there are other things: the desktop UI still is not based around doing tasks, and browsers suffer from this the most: no browser lets me hibernate collections of tabs (ie, entire windows) to bring up later (either on this computer, or another one; cross-computer window syncing for tracked windows would be absolutely epic).
I feel computers fight me on waaaaay too many things. Computers think they are the destination, but they're really just the vehicle.
> "I feel computers fight me on waaaaay too many things. Computers think they are the destination, but they're really just the vehicle."
Sounds like you want a smoother workflow, and I get why that's desirable.
However, if computers are just the tools to get you to your destination, then improving workflow won't change what they can do, just how well they do it.
Let's focus on the use cases, what do you use computers for now, and what would you like to use them for in the future?
I use computers now to do work for my company, and for any side project I happen to work on. I also use them to read things, watch things, listen to things, and communicate with people.
What I would like to use them for in the future? To offload most of my brain onto/into them, and use them as tools to be more efficient and more productive.
Browsers being such a goddamned broken workflow just makes shit so much more difficult. Tabli does a lot to fix it, but Tabli can't live-sync tab states on Tabli-managed windows across browsers.
One of my largest problems is, I can't restore my ongoing task state simultaneously on other machines. If I'm doing something on my desktop, and take my laptop downstairs or outside with me, I can't just pick up where I left off anywhere but my desktop.
"Cloud" services are meant to tackle this problem set, but complex things like Office365 only allow live cloud sync via the web client, the full scale desktop client does not yet properly integrate this.
If my task involves sshing somewhere, I often tmux long lived sessions, and can ssh in from somewhere else and attach them where I am now. Not all tasks I do are in a terminal.
As for the Moov stuff, yes, I'm very very interested in computer assisted physical task tracking and less traditional interfaces, such as voice or non-touch gesturing. When I'm using my hands and trying to concentrate on something, I can't go be fucking with my laptop or phone all the time to manage the task.
90 Wh/kg is actually a pretty decent energy density (LiPo batteries are now approaching 200 Wh/kg, but less combustible LiFe chemistries are around 100 Wh/kg). Does anyone know if there's any information on how the stability/thermal characteristics of the sodium-ion compares?
Just to follow up, since I was curious to do a bit of searching:
* Wikipedia's article [1] mentions two other startups working on sodium-ion batteries. Faradion apparently has a 150 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery [2]. According to the Wikipedia article, "These cells can be completely drained (to zero charge) without damaging the active materials. They can be stored and shipped safely."
* A Physics Today article entitled "Surprising stability for sodium-ion batteries" [3] summarizes a Brookhaven National Laboratory that despite an expected worse performance for Na vs Li, (with a tin anode), they found that "after that initial damage, subsequent desodiation and nine further charging–discharging cycles produced no further fractures: The expansion and shrinkage were reversible and produced a minimal decrease in charge capacity."
* While searching I found an interesting paper on a NA-SO2 formulation "A room-temperature sodium rechargeable battery using an SO2-based nonflammable inorganic liquid catholyte" [4] which has great numbers (discharge capacity similar to LiFe), but seems like one of those battery formulations that never make it out into the real world.
That's as far as my passing curiousity took it, but if anyone works in the field, it'd be interesting to hear their thoughts.
Since several tangents have already been taken in comments to this story, when are fuel cells for electronics supposed to arrive? I could've sworn they were "just around the corner" about five years ago.
I can only imagine this tech has turned to toxic waste as some patent firm has probably gobbled up the dregs only to lie in wait for the idea to resurface.
Example: ubiquitous high speed front side bus interconnects between devices. Infiniband, Thunderbolt, RDMA over Ethernet, multi-host USB 3.x networks, whatever. Getting cheaper? Yes. Ubiquitous? No.
Example: Freesync being deployed everywhere, in monitors, on phones/tablets, being added to HDMI and put on all future TVs, and finally just eradicating a ton of processing latency in the display and getting UI responsiveness I last saw when all analog VGA CRTs existed. Is that a thing yet? No.
Example: Internet so fast that latency basically vanishes, and the last mile is no longer a liability, thanks to ISPs like Google Fiber proving it is cheap, easy, and required to deploy. Do I have Google Fiber or anyone else standing up to the challenge yet? No.
Example: A smartwatch, in the vein of Google Wear or iWatch, that has a week+ battery life, and can do various action tracking shit that Moov has been pioneering, and has actual working heart rate tracking, and has water proofness measured in tens of meters (so I can go swimming with the thing on if I so choose). Is that a thing yet? No.
All of these have been promised to me in the past decade. I'm tired of getting my hopes up, but hope is one of the few things I have left.