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by mortenjorck 2242 days ago
Mainframes didn’t go away; we just renamed them to “the cloud.”

Smartphones won’t go away. Yes, wearables will replace some use cases – just as personal computers replaced some mainframe use cases and smartphones replaced some personal computer use cases. But smartphones will continue to evolve, just as one can draw a line from time sharing on an IBM 709 to spinning up a Kubernetes cluster.
1 comments
Wowfunhappy 2242 days ago
Even without any particularly futuristic hardware, I'm of the belief that someone could design a smartwatch which does 80% of what I use a smartphone for. We primarily need better voice recognition (where better = basically flawless), and more power-efficient CPUs and radios.

A smartwatch can give directions, read and reply to messages, look up information, display schedules, and take pictures—all without taking my attention too far away from the real world. Anything longer I may as well do on a computer or tablet. I wouldn't be able to read the news or random forums, but the inability to do that 24/7 would be healthy IMO.

I don't forsee a future where smartwatches could replace smartphones for everyone, but I do think they could replace them for a lot of people, me included.

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mantap 2242 days ago
How would you get any privacy? I don't think other people on the train are going to be happy with me dictating "eggplant emoji smirk emoji" to a wearable.
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capableweb 2242 days ago
If your texts frequently contain a particular phrase, have aliases! Saying "purple sun" will actually dictate "eggplant emoji smirk emoji"
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saagarjha 2242 days ago
You can’t always dictate responses to your watch, and trying to respond with anything that doesn’t fit on the screen is really inconvenient.
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Wowfunhappy 2242 days ago
In my company's open office, I can whisper into my Pebble and it'll still pick it up†. On e.g. the subway there would be way too much background noise, but I can imagine a future where AI filters that out.

And, society can adapt. People used to talk on the phone in public constantly (and still do to a large extent, just less). This would be far less intrusive.

† For what it's worth, this is Google's AI. Rebble, the community-run service that lets Pebble's operate post-shutdown, chose Google for voice dictation, and as a result its more accurate now than it was originally.

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