The Apple "Tablet" and Chrome OS are Meaningless - the Phone is the Future of Computing
If you're paying any attention to the techosphere today there are two stories dominating the headlines. Both involve non-shipping products.
First, Google showed off the first demo of its Chrome OS. Download Squad does a nice job breaking it down....
"So what exactly is Chrome OS? It's an operating system based on a web browser called... Google Chrome. The idea is that you won't have to (or be able to) install a single application directly on your PC. Rather, all of your apps will be run from the web and all of your data will be stored in the cloud."
Second, a mythical unicorn called the Apple tablet, which I don't believe exists - at least anymore, is rumored to have slipped to late 2010. Like Google Wave the "iTablet" doesn't solve problems so I can't be bullish about it - yet. Ian Paul seems to be the lone voice of reason ...
"These rumors are getting so ridiculous that I think it's time we accepted the truth: the Apple tablet is dead; in fact it probably never existed."
So why do I think these stories are meaningless? Simple. Your phone, my phone - any smartphone - will become our primary portable computers long before these two products catch on in the mainstream. For the more adventurous among us, it's already happening. Chris Rawson writes about 33 products his iPhone made obsolete. It's not just about the iPhone either. Any smartphone - Android, Palm (a client), Blackberry, WinMo - will soon do double duty as PCs, turning all the above two products into vaporware.
Why? Simple. Moore's Law. Already an 64gb iPod Touch has enough on-board storage to easily hold two operating systems, OS X and OS X mobile. Apple is even billing it as a pocket computer. As processor speeds increase and full graphics systems get embedded onto single chips, the phones will soon be able to embody a PC experience as soon as they get near a flat screen TV and a keyboard. Some data will be locally stored but the rest will be in clouds - either your personal cloud or your employers. Want a clamshell keyboard and screen like a laptop? No problem, soon we'll see "dumb shells" that encase phones so they can do more on the go.
So take today's news with a grain of salt. The phones are going to be where the action is for the vast majority of users. It's good enough. And the pace of change in mobile will be rapid.
Comments 39 Comments
As soon as battery life improves we'll be there. But, when an iPhone shows me the 20% battery message after only 3.5 hours of hard core use we have a problem.
Adam
Netbooks are saving the PC industry at the moment and each one of those purchases could have been an iTouch or iPhone. Why didn't consumers choose those devices? Physical size.
It's our own physical interface (fingers and eyesight) that ultimately determine what products we use for what purpose and in this respect, no two people are the same and for a good many, a smartphone is just too small as a genuine mobile computer.
Chrome OS is a fundamentally different approach that removes Moore from one side of the equation. It's all about web-based apps with very little need to have significant processing power or storage at the consumer-end. It's about leaving your stuff in the cloud not taking it everywhere with you.
This is where (generic) tablets fit in. Your own in-home internet kiosk, where you can get your email, look-up the weather, watch a tv on Hulu, listen to Pandora, view your photos on Flickr, catch-up with friends on Facebook all on low-cost, low-energy hardware.
Whilst consolidation will take place where devices are fighting for the same space (such as the pocket or handbag) I think there will be a general trend for niche devices that solve a particular audiences problem at the lowest cost possible.
If anything, perhaps it's the common old PC whose days are numbered.
As far as the screen, battery and "dumb shells" - here's how I see it playing out:
When I get to my desk I set my iPhone (for example) down on a wireless charging station. It automatically pairs with a keyboard, mouse and monitor and switches to a desktop operating system. While "docked", all phone functionality can be done through the desktop OS.
When I pick up the handset it automatically switches to the phone OS, fully charged and ready to go.
Thoughts?
I have to admit that I don't have a smart phone (in this day and age i should kick myself in the behind) and rely 100% on my PC. This very post has spurred me to go out and buy one though.
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html
If you are right, and I think you are, then the move to smart phones will spawn two huge new businesses: docking stations and backup storage. Smart phones will never provide the user interface of a laptop or desktop, so large screen and keyboard docking stations will be big peripherals. And smart phones will continue to get lost and injured, putting data at risk which will require quick and easy back-up. Let's start designing for Xmas 2010.
Anyway, I do want a Tablet really bad though. I would like a larger screen for around the house. The Touch is great for on the road, but at home I would like something bigger. I see Apple selling a lot of Tablets when you start to consider the functionality of the device and all it's capable of.
The concept of "dumb shells" was extremely intriguing to me at the time, and as technology progresses it makes more and more sense to carry around a small, compact, powerful device, and leave the large input/output devices as the stripped down stationary components.
We continue to be able to build things faster, stronger, more powerful, and smaller. But our own input/output (eyes, hands, ears, etc.) are limited.
If the Apple Tablet was easier to type on, nicer to read with, nicer to watch video on, easier to use as a media player, easier to use as a GPS, I could easily see myself going back to a simpler phone that is just good at making phone calls.
Seriously? You were DRIVING a series of turns while trying to use the maps app at the same time? And the phone rang and THEN you had to pull over?!
Dude, you're a Darwin Award waiting to happen. I hope I misread or misunderstood something there.
I'm sorry, this just makes me laugh, and laugh, and laugh. *snort* *giggle* *guffaw*
The phone as my primary computing platform? What am I going to be doing on this mythical megaphone (get it?) of which you speak? Will I be writing documents? On a 4 or 5" screen? How about spreadsheets? Oh! I know! I'm going to be running Maple on it for my day job. Sure, the processor will be able to handle it, but I'm not really all that certain that even an 8" screen with 500dpi is going to be very useful when doing data visualization. Wait. 8" screen? No, that's a tablet. And those don't exist / are irrelevant, right?
Oh, I know. The phone will have a video out jack and I'll just have to plug it into a monitor and keyboard ... oops, then it's not very portable anymore, is it?
Maybe if the phone manufacturers talked to Wolf Blitzer over at CNN... I hear that they have some kickass "hologram" technology.
Gah. I've worked in mobile development for a few years now, and I keep hearing how the phone is going to become the primary computing platform of the future. Maybe for you, and anyone interested in tweeting their location, or updating their Facebook entries. But the physical constraints of phones limit their usefulness.
If the phone turns into anything larger, then it's a tablet or netbook. And your argument is invalidated.
Maybe when memory and processor speeds improve and voice recognition gets a little smoother, maybe ...
Google Wave has many, many applications, and works in a number of use cases. I'm currently using it in project management, for example.
And there are use cases for both Chrome OS, the Crunchpad (you forgot about that one didn't you) and the iTablet.
I use my iPhone alot, but i also use my desktop and laptop just as much, if not more. Larger screen size, larger keyboard and the use of a mouse all being reasons.
So I do not agree with you that the mobile phone is the compute platform of choice for the future.
I think Chrome OS is a great solution for any business looking to reduce hardware and software costs. With simply a netbook and a net connection to the core web applications that the company relies, companies will be able to reduce their IT costs greatly.
Everyone has different requirements from technology, so it's fair to say that different people will prefer different devices to work with. Smart phones like the iPhone can only do so much and are more expensive than say a netbook and mobile broadband.
If we add in the numbers of people using smartphones vs full sized computers and also include the rate at which they are gaining in popularity. Factor in the potential for html5, faster and more compact processing hardware, increased broadband penetration and faster speeds. You might have something worth looking at there. But still it would not really lead to any great insight into which will dominate in the future, only help you understand what is happening in the short term.
The problem with these kinds of predictions is once you get above a few years, you can't really accurately predict anything. In 5-10 years there could be a bunch of new technologies that change the way we use computers and no one knows what they will be. Everything might be pretty much the same, despite the potential for so much more.
My own guess is that smartphones, laptops and desktops will continue to be popular for many years to come. Tiny vs portable vs large I believe will always lead to three different markets of users with different needs. Thos that need something that fits in a pocket will go tiny, those that need a larger screen for more complex ui will choose portable and those that need the very best ui experience will stay with the large desktop format. It will take some new technology to allow a tiny device to act like a large one and this may or may not happen in the next 5 years-ish.
I think for a smartphone to replace the desktop it would have to have new tech that allowed for a screen to fold out so we really do have a full sized screen. Same with the keyboard. Speed will have to increase in these tiny devices beyond what is happening in the desktop market. It's not good enough to say that a smartphone today has enough cpu power to run apps on a 3" screen. The speed has to match or exceed what a desktop can do today or people will just end up choosing the faster platform as developers historically have always created software that makes use of that speed. A dumbed down version for a tiny screen is no incentive to cause a mass exodus from the desktop.
For instance I'm not going to choose to play Far Cry on a smartphone when I know the experience on a desktop will be so much better. I wont edit videos on a 3" screen when I'm already craving for multiple 24" screens to have more UI on screen. I'm not going to watch video on a 3" screen when I can watch it on a large monitor or TV. I'm certainly not going to use a smartphone to store video and then play it on a larger display or make use of some cheap built in projector that will be inferior to a proper display. There are still many types of applications that are far superior on desktop and without a technological change, this will remain that way for the foreseeable future.
Finally you can't use the example of plugging in a smartphone to some terminal to make it take on the properties of a desktop as a way to promote the idea that smartphones will dominate desktops. The moment you dock your smartphone to a full sized keyboard, display and docking station (presumable with storage of its own) you have in effect created a desktop machine subject to all the faults any other desktop machine has.
However, anyone who does real work that requires computing power for the heavy lifting needs a bigger and better user interface than that provided on any ‘smart’ phone. Having polled a number of users that use computing power on a daily basis to do real work (CAD, AV, Spreadsheets, Plotting/Graphing, hard number crunching/analysis etc.), the unanimous choice for the next step is for a tablet like device capable of having all apps onboard and with a suitable OS to run them all. The CPU/hardware for this gizmo may one day be the size of a current smart phone, and use a projection/roll-up screen, keyboard or similar so as to reduce size and weight further - but it will still have to be ergonomically functional for a human user, something which cannot be said of current smart phones.