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Dvorak Says gPhone is Doomed

drewmoney writes "Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness John Dvorak rants his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. 'First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone. It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask! I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right. They take forever to navigate. It's hard to read the screens ... I also hope that people note the fact that the public has not been flocking to smartphones of any sort.' "

7 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. gPhone != Itanium by downix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    His first arguement is that the gPhone is like Itanium, with wide industry support. Well, that depends on a few things:

    1) will it arrive years late?
    2) will it perform as promised or be lackluster?
    3) will it shoot google's existing product lineup in the foot?

    I don't think these three will occur.

    --
    Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
  2. Re:Doomed for another reason... by FrankSchwab · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stop pissing all over someone else's attempt to build something, and go make something new yourself.
    Damned armchair inventors, entrepreneurs, and capitalists.
    hrumph.

    --
    And the worms ate into his brain.
  3. Rly by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So it's a guaranteed success then?

    So John says nobody is flocking to smart-phones, ergo Google is d00med to failure. Gosh. Maybe it's because the other smartphones didn't have something Google's will. I seem to recall many phones which played music and did a variety of other tasks not going anywhere until Apple launched the iPhone.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Re:Really? by semiotec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't bother to read Dvorak anymore, since I always feel dumber aftewards, so I have no idea how good are his predictions or if they are so bad they are guaranteed to be wrong (anti-prediction, in a sense).

    but his gripe about not able to read web content on phones is really just a problem of people not generating format for phone use. He should spend a few weeks or months in Japan and use their system.

  5. Re:Really? by Ngarrang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am surprised, frankly, that anyone still reads Dvorak's drunken ramblings. He is like the Jerry Springer of the computer world.

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    Bearded Dragon
  6. Re:Really? by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He gets paid to make ridiculous, outrageous and often times completely asinine claims based on speculation for the purpose of attracting viewers so ads can be sold. He does his job well. Also people are really good at remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, if he ever actually gets one right that's all you're going to hear about him, not the hundreds of things he's been wrong on.

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    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
  7. Re:Really? by Brickwall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Totally agree with the "crappy little screen" comment. I have a Nokia phone that supposedly has web access, but the damn thing, while letting me put all kinds of pretty colours and ring tones on it, won't let me adjust the damn font size. I'm 51, and my eyesight is getting progressively worse, but Nokia seems to think that 8 point fonts - and white outline fonts on a cream background, for crissake - are going to be perfectly legible to me. Hint: they are not, and it's a pain in the ass to have to haul out my reading glasses every time I want to make a phone call. Surfing the web with it is just not on; too slow, too hard to read, too infuriating an experience.

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    What was once true, is no longer so