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In Search of the Digital Uberdevice
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "News.com offers up an in-depth three-part article discussing the game industry's race to develop an all-in-one digital 'uberdevice' to combine gaming, television, computing, and other consumer technologies in a single box. The article looks at the past, present, and future of such trends, arguing that these developments in the world of home gaming consoles 'could have multibillion-dollar consequences for industries as diverse as computing, consumer electronics, entertainment and communications, while redefining household entertainment.' Of course, the article also concludes by noting the fact that consumers have thus far shown relatively little interest in adopting such all-in-one convergence boxes. Could constantly improving technology, the ongoing exodus of young males from primetime television, and a revitalized marketing push turn the tide, or is the search for an 'uberdevice' just hype?"
I have a VERY short attention span ("that dog has a puffy tail! c'mere puff!!" [Homer]) but right now I'm focused completely on MythTV I'm actually in the middle of installing and tweaking it right now, it mostly runs now. If I get it working seamlessly (meaning that it passes The Wife Test (tm)) then it will be the uberdevice in my house. Onscreen news and local weather Stream MP3s Play/Rip/Burn DVDs Timeshift TV and skip commercials Yes, quite uber.
Intel has been plugging their "Digital Briefcase" initiative recently. Basically, they want to create a PDA/phone/blender type device with copius amounts of storage. The idea is to allow "Digital Briefcase" compliant PCs to automagically recognize the device via 802.11 (and/or Bluetooth) and subsequently allow a user to log into that PC as if it were their own - all settings, configuration, eye candy, etc are configured on-the-fly. The device would also hold a replica of the user's data (documents, MP3s, everything).
This seems like panacea and one might ask how Intel would cram such capability into such a small device. See my sig for more on that...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
No way! My dream digital convergence is the Phone + PDA + Music player. Complete convergence can be bad for reasons listed above but there are some things that should be merged. By your argument:
A monitor is a monitor.
A keyboard is a keyboard.
A speaker is a speaker.
which implies laptops are bad...?
Some things naturally fit together, especially things that have redundent or related parts. A PDA + Phone + Music player of appropriate size and cost (yes, that's key, I know) would steal the market.
The only important thing your phone does that your PDA doesn't is connect to another device using the cellular network... which some PDA's do... and contains a speaker and microphone.
The only important thing an iPod has that on a PDA in terms of functionality is basically (yes, I'm generalizing) the _Hard Drive_ in the iPod. The average PocketPC can play music, it just can't play very much.
Nobody complains that the PS2 plays DVDs. Yes, absurd convergence and combination is bad and being _FORCED_ to use said convergence devices is even worse. But if it's natural to combine functionality, great! And there are some people who don't ascribe to the "UNIX Way." My grandma, for one, likes her TV w/VCR & DVD player in it and single, easy to use remote... she'd adore an iMac if she weren't content with her 200mhz P1 for checking e-mail...
The problem here is the marketing. Young males (read: geeks) don't want a convergence device but (my) grandma does. Change your market focus oh corporate masters and let us poor geeks alone... unless you're giving me my iPod + PDA + Phone.