I'm curious if and what the next big computer thing is. I think a lot of people saw the iPhone coming at least 10 years before it got here. I bought palm pilots realizing they weren't what I really wanted but the hope has been there for a while. Is there anything right now that will reach that?
Obviously VR is the hope but I think we're pretty split on whether we want that. I can't really see Google Glass type thing replacing the iphone. There's some intresting stuff in this microsoft future of computing video about surfaces and glass, but It doesn't feel like one revolutionary consumer leap to get there:
I suspect AR glasses, if done well, will be the next big world changing thing. Each WWDC conference releases more SDK advancements directly related to AR. They are also moving more of their AI features (Siri, text recognition, etc) to be on device rather than processed on a remote server. Something necessary for a smooth AR experience. Lots of releases and updates over the last couple of years all point to AR glasses.
The big issue with AR is that many people prefer to use eyeglasses instead of contact lenses. Many also wear sunglasses outdoors. I don't see a big AR breakthrough coming until someone figures out how to combine AR with the other functionality people expect from their glasses.
All very good points. I don't wear glasses, so hadn't thought about some of those. I do wonder if the usefulness would change peoples preferences or behavior.
The meta demo video I saw recently clearly shows that they're trying to seamlessly integrate prescriptions into their product via software and dynamic lenses.
Yeah this makes sense, and the Microsoft video I linked to does seem to be solving the same kind of problem, the ability to access the data available to a computer in any context, on any surface.
Humane (some ex-iPhone people) is working on some sort of projection like UI, but they have put out very little detail about it.
Apple is working on some sort of AR related heads up display. If the hardware can work well for that, the benefits there seem obvious if you can get the UX right. Looking at the world and pulling up information in your visual field would be really useful. Could still pull up flat 'screens' in your visual field for normal text/web interaction.
It's hard to do well given latency issues (need very low) and no real ability to draw black (AR uses ambient light), but if it can be pulled off I'd expect that as the next platform/device shift.
Just as Steve Jobs camped out by the river and waited for economical capacitive touchscreen technology to come floating by, somebody somewhere is waiting for adaptive optics to become practical at the consumer level. At that point it'll become possible for AR glasses to begin to replace conventional eyeglasses for presbyopes and myopes, and that'll be the NBT.
Everybody working in the AR field now is starting too early. In 2003 the iPhone was impossible, while by 2007 it was inevitable.
The Fly[0] came out in 2005, but it requires special paper that told it where it was on the page. It even worked as an MP3 player! I had one; It was big and clunky, and didn't work well if you wrote fast (which I did). It was still a neat thing.
> Microsoft’s platform has never been weaker. For all the growth in phones, every professional worker on the planet is sitting in front of a PC.
Or a Mac, or a Chromebook, or an iPad. It's hard to talk about this as a monolith since there are pretty distinct groups — most of the people I know who get to choose their device are using Mac or Linux (which is admittedly an atypical crowd of developers, scientists, lawyers, architects, etc.) but there are a ton of people who have professional jobs where that's not the case (e.g. everyone I know who works in healthcare uses some kind of Windows device which is so locked down that it might as well be an iPad, and I know some people at government agencies who are favoring ChromeOS for security reasons since you can lock those devices down so hard).
I make that distinction because it doesn't help Microsoft very much strategically if the cashier at McDonald's is sitting in front of a Windows box because they're interacting with a single application and will use whatever their next employer has standardized on when, say, they go somewhere which uses Square. Someone who uses Office is a bit more but as an increasing percentage of people aren't doing anything which they couldn't do in a browser, that's not as strong as it used to be. None of that means that Microsoft is going away but I think it does leave them really wondering how to avoid falling behind the next trend like they did with mobile devices.
Obviously VR is the hope but I think we're pretty split on whether we want that. I can't really see Google Glass type thing replacing the iphone. There's some intresting stuff in this microsoft future of computing video about surfaces and glass, but It doesn't feel like one revolutionary consumer leap to get there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraF2DjALls