Personal Computers are Appliances

Here's another take on http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2013/4/13/pc-sales-plunge.html, in the "Editor's Desk" section of the July 2013 PCWorld (following is the online version, which is a slightly different text than the one in print) -- 

PCs aren't dead, they're microwaves

Brad Chacos

Last week's news wasn't generous to PCs. In fact, half the Internet was ready to eulogize our beloved black boxes after market research showed that computer shipments fell by double-digit percentages in the first quarter. Stick a fork in 'em, the common wisdom declared. PCs are done.

But nothing could be further from the truth. PCs aren't dead—they're microwaves. But not for much longer.

Hear me out.

From marvelous to meh

Right up until the early ’90s, computers were a luxury, an oddity even. If your childhood chum had a 386, you were at his house every day, churning out ASCII art on a dot-matrix printer and playing asynchronous PBEM games or MUDs. Good times! Today, however, everyone in every neighborhood has a PC, just as everyone in every neighborhood has a stove, a refrigerator, and a microwave.

Our wondrous electronic windows into the world have evolved into ho-hum appliances—indispensable, yet unexciting.

Is it any surprise that shoppers treat these black holes of non-brilliance as appliances? The PC landscape has been devoid of any real hardware innovation for as long as memory serves.

Curious, I performed a quick, completely unscientific poll, asking about 20 nontechie friends, grandmothers, aunts, social-media acquaintances, and convenience-store employees the reason for their most recent computer purchase, whenever that may have been. The answers were unanimous across the board: They all bought their new computers when their previous computer broke.

And you do the very same thing with a stove, refrigerator, or microwave. You buy a new one when you absolutely have to, and not a moment sooner.

It's sad, really. (Do you realize how many microscopic, cutting-edge transistors are packed onto every single computer chip? Billions.) But it's not surprising. A whole range of factors have coalesced into a perfect storm, all helping to turn PCs into a commodity appliance.

Article continues at link. 

All that matters to me is a (fast) network connection, a (good) browser (I prefer Chrome), and a screen that's as large as the situation allows -- large-screen smartphone for pocket, ultrabook as laptop, ultrabook attached to large monitor for home. It really doesn't matter what OS the machine uses, how fast its processor is, how much disc storage the machine has.

Active Search

Back in the day, *you* searched the web, internet; now, increasingly, "search" is looking for you -- presenting content to you based on your location and search history. 

See this piece by Brian Proffitt in ReadWrite Cloud (". . . covers the movement of processing power and storage away from local servers and into the data center, exploring the implications of this seismic shift").

Forget Searching For Content - Content Is About To Start Searching For You

April 25th, 2013

The world of search is about to be flipped completely on its head. As part of that sea change, today's reactive Web-based searches are about to give way to proactive, geo-fenced answers that will pop up before you even frame the question.

In many cases, you won't be searching for content - content will be searching for you.

Putting The New Search In Context

Search, to date, has mostly worked something like this: You type a word or phrase into a search bar in a browser or mobile app and a search engine with a funny name returns a list of Web pages it deems related to your query.

In recent years, search has gotten a lot better in a number of ways. One key improvement takes location into account. If I type "Notre Dame" while I'm in my hometown, then it's very likely I will get results about the University. If I were located near Cleveland, though, I might get results about Notre Dame College. And if I were in France, surely my results would focus on this beautiful edifice. 

Location is part of what experts call "contextual search," which becomes even more important with the rise of mobile computing. Where we are and who we are makes a big difference in the search results we want, and contextually aware search engines are working to use that information to decide what results to return to us. 

Article continues at link. 

Google Glass Success

The geek in me wants Google Glass to succeed, but the rest of me fears it won't. 

Anne Cassidy writes in Fast Company's Co.DESIGN about what might be required to be a success. (". . . dorked to death. . ." is a priceless construct!) 

BRANDING PROBLEM? MARKETING EXPERTS MAP STEPS TO MAINSTREAM SUCCESS 

Still in its test phase, Google Glass may be dorked to death before it gets the opportunity to take off. Here, marketing players from a range of agencies provide their assessment of Glass’s chances and some suggestions for paving the way to mainstream success.

Google’s much-hyped wearable computer, Google Glass, has been touted by the tech elite as one of the leaps forward of recent times, but those same elites may hobble mainstream adoption of the device. 

While privacy concerns have blossomed (the device may be on its way to being banned at a number of locations), it may comfort those worried that we are all about to become spies for Google that the early adopters of Google Glass are helping to give it an image problem it might not recover from. 

Story continues at link. 

Zen and Design

By Matthew May in Fast Company's Co.DESIGN, a piece that offers some "Zen design principles." 

7 Design Principles, Inspired By Zen Wisdom 

WANT TO BECOME THE NEXT STEVE JOBS--OR JUST UNDERSTAND HIS NEAR-SPIRITUAL DEVOTION TO SIMPLICITY? THIS PRIMER, OUTLINING THE MAIN TENETS OF ZEN DESIGN, WILL HELP. 

One of the best-known photographs of the late Steve Jobs pictures him sitting in the middle of the living room of his Los Altos house, circa 1982. There isn’t much in the room, save an audio system and a Tiffany lamp. Jobs is sipping tea, sitting yoga-style on a mat, with but a few books around him. The picture speaks volumes about the less-is-more motive behind every Apple product designed under his command.

As Warren Berger wrote on Co.Design, Jobs’s love for elegantly simple, intuitive design is widely attributed to his appreciation of Zen philosophy (Jobs was a practicing Buddhist). But while many people might be familiar with Zen as a broad concept, far fewer are knowledgeable of the key aesthetic principles that collectively comprise the "Zen of design." 

To understand the Zen principles, a good starting point is shibumi. It is an overarching concept, an ideal. It has no precise definition in Japanese, but its meaning is reserved for objects and experiences that exhibit in paradox and all at once the very best of everything and nothing: Elegant simplicity. Effortless effectiveness. Understated excellence. Beautiful imperfection. 

James Michener referred to shibumi in his 1968 novel Iberia, writing that it can’t be translated and has no explanation. In his 1972 book, The Unknown Craftsman, Soetsu Yanagi talked about shibumi in the context of art, writing that a true work of art is one with intentionally imperfect beauty that makes an artist of the viewer. In the 1979 best-selling spy novel Shibumi, the author Trevanian (the nom de plume of Dr. Rodney William Whitaker) wrote, "Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances." 

Shibumi was first introduced to the West by House Beautiful in 1960. Nearly 40 years later, architect Sarah Susanka reintroduced shibumi in her 1998 book The Not So Big House: "The quality of shibumi evolves out of a process of complexity, though none of this complexity shows in the result. It often seems to arise when an architect is striving to meet a particular design challenge. When something has been designed really well, it has an understated, effortless beauty, and it really works. That’s shibumi." 

The process may be complex, but these seven Zen principles can help you approach shibumi in your own designs: 

The seven principles are 

1. Austerity 
2. Simplicity 
3. Naturalness 
4. Subtlety 
5. Imperfection; asymmetry 
6. Break from routine 
7. Stillness; tranquility 

Smartphone Innovation

Jessica Dolcourt, in "Smartphone innovation: Where we're going next (Smartphones Unlocked)" via CNET, writes a comprehensive piece about the future of smartphones. (It's not just about the hardware!) 

Smartphone innovation: Where we're going next (Smartphones Unlocked) 

Smartphone advancements are on the edge of transforming in some crazy ways, but it isn't like you think. 

by Jessica Dolcourt  April 13, 2013 9:00 AM PDT 

The HTC One has a gorgeous chassis and a ton of camera tricks, the Samsung's Galaxy S4 pauses and unpauses video when you avert your gaze, and in the Lumia 920, Nokia was one of the first to introduce wireless charging and an ultrasensitive screen you can control while wearing gloves.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Yet compared with the real meat of what you do with a phone -- things like communicating with people, browsing the Internet, snapping photos, and playing games -- today's top phones are mostly all on par. Software and hardware extras that extend beyond the basics, while impressive, convenient, likable, and even useful, still amount to fancy filler. 

All of today's technology will certainly improve: cameras will get sharper and clearer, processors faster, screens stronger, and batteries longer-lived. But in tomorrow's tech world, that "filler" may be the more compelling story. 

With his shaggy, sandy blond hair and a 5-o'clock shadow, Mark Rolston, the creative director for Frog Design, has studied technology for the better part of two decades. As he sees it, smartphones are just about out of evolutionary advances. Sure, form factors and materials might alter as manufacturers grasp for differentiating design, but in terms of innovative leaps, Rolston says, "we're at the end of gross innovation for smartphones." 

That isn't to say smartphones are dead or obsolete. Just the contrary. As Rolston and other future thinkers who study the mobile space conclude, smartphones will become increasingly impactful in interacting with our surrounding world, but more as one smaller piece of a much large, interconnected puzzle abuzz with data transfer and information. 

We'll certainly see more crazy camera software and NFC features everywhere, but there's much, much more to look forward to besides. 

The innovations include 

• Sensors that track the world in real time -- sensors including for atmospheric pressure, temperature, and humidity, in addition to the standard ones for movement, speed, and rotation (gyroscopes), and lighting. 
• Applications that tightly integrate with sensors. 
• Gestures and touch-less input. (See also http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2013/3/6/human-computer-interface.html.) 
• Devices even more tightly integrated into networks, including social networks. 
• Smartphones as central to wearable technology. 

See the full story at the link for surprising examples/scenarios of the above, and for more information.