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Ten Things Mobile Phones Will Make Obsolete
An anonymous reader writes "recombu.com has an article examining ten things mobile phones will make obsolete, including phone booths, wristwatches and handheld games consoles. It's interesting to see how many devices have been absorbed into mobile phone technology, and it raises the question: are we better off having everything in one device? The author poignantly concludes that while it's great to have so much power at our fingertips, it does mean that some of us will rely on mobile phones for even basic mental tasks, which is great until the battery runs out." See also Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power.
...why have a watch on your wrist when you can fish it out of your pocket.
At least pocket watches kept the time even if you were out of cell service.
THL phish sticks
Who was it wrote that SF short about the civilisation that suddenly thought of putting humans into their spaceships, they were so much more flexible than computers...
This reminds me exactly of the stories about consoles killing off PC gaming.
I doubt cell phones will kill many of those things off.
I agree with land line phones in the home, unless some one needs to fax something but I suspect those online fax services will get more popular to pick up the slack.
The rest of the stuff would have already happened if it was going too (with the exception of gaming)
Wristwatches seem to be making a comeback in a big way. Watch any TV show and keep an eye out for flashy watches. As a bit of a collector, I'm kind of annoyed that they seem to becoming trendy. On the bright side, the selection of cool watches is definitely improving.
I have a flip phone that displays the time in large, bold numbers on the outside of the phone and even syncs time automatically. But I still use my wristwatch whenver I'm wearing it, because a) I don't have to fish it out of my pocket, b) it's always right there, unlike my phone which more often than not is out of arm's reach. Not to mention the fact that a watch battery lasts years, unlike the 1 week max the phone battery lasts.
More generally, I thought the lesson the original iPod taught us was that specialized devices tend to do a much better job than multi-function devices because they allow the UI and features to be specialized for a specific task. Phone cameras, clocks, and other doo-dads are great, but work best as stand-ins for the real thing. They are what you use when you don't have anything better at hand.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I have yet to see a phone that can take anywhere near as good a picture as some of the most basic point and shoot cameras.
Maybe it's the Aspergers that makes me obsess about things being technically correct, but begging a question if very different from raising a question. Just saying.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
1. Being able to hear the other person clearly.
2. Ability to have a safe drive.
3. Going ten minutes in public without hearing some inane tune over and over.
4. Ability to recognize crazy people as those talking loudly when nobody else is nearby.
5. Ability for state agents to commit crimes without bystanders having photograph evidence.
Humans, after we all die from cell phone radiation.
One advantage to my wristwatch is that it's conveniently located on my wrist, unlike a cellphone which lives in a pocket or holster.
Yup just replaced my Seiko Helmet which my cat broke the crystal on when it pushed it of my bathroom sink with a nice Bulova Marine Star. It don't make phone calls but sure wears fine.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Computers were supposed to get rid of paper and they didn't. Phones won't either.
Gaming on a phone is awful. Unless that is properly addressed, then the likes of the Nintendo DS won't have to worry and I'm sure Nintendo isn't seeing how many DS units they're selling.
If I am going to do work during my commute it will be on a laptop or netbook, not a mobile. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way.
Decent cameras will never go away because a phone will never be able to match the feature set of the camera....even compact ones, imo.
Watches will always exist, if anything, as a fashion accessory.
Payphones get used by people who can't afford a cell phone. It's easy to come up with $0.50 for a call, but $30-40/month is beyond a lot of people's budgets around here. Plus there are people like me who don't want a cell phone and need to make a call from time to time.
As long as DSL is "bundled" by the phone company, land lines aren't going anywhere either. Around here (Saskatchewan), long distance "bundles" just aren't available for cell phones, so you need a land line if you make a lot of long distance calls, especially if they're overseas calls. A couple of cell providers have "free" long distance, but charge you for air time instead (often more expensive than the per-minute long distance charges.)
The only thing I see cell phones managing to eliminate are the hand-held gaming units, but even that will only happen if they start getting some real games on cell phones. All I ever seem to see on them are "retro" arcade games and adventure games.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It really is amazing how many features they keep cramming into these tiny devices. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I am hopeful that in the next couple of years somebody will figure out a way to make reliable phone calls with these things.
-Not that we can't benefit from free thinkers. We'll just dramatically reduce the number of them available for all the important things our race needs to accomplish. And, I suppose, zombies need free thinkers to manipulate them, (since they're not much good for anything else), so Free Thought is not entirely redundant. But among cell phone users, it's pretty much a dead issue.
Oh, and if through your muddled thinking, you believe you are taking offense to this, don't worry. That's just the ego programming kicking in. Don't worry about it. You can't do anything about it anyway, except allow it to direct all of your behavior 24/7.
It's amazingly easy to manipulate the perpetually ignorant and dazed. Good thing I'm not evil. Too bad your masters are.
-FL
That's just dandy... where is Clark Kent supposed to change now?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...which is probably sooner than I'd prefer, but still a couple of decades away at least.
Wristwatches - I know people who use their phone. My watch is faster, convenient for me. It's a fashion accessory for many (in addition to their fashion phones)
Bedside alarm clocks - I can see this, but until shows the time without me having to touch it (and without it lighting the whole room with the back light), wakes me up with NPR, and increased the light in my room to simulate a sunrise, I'll stick with my beside box. (Okay, two boxes...it's a SunRizr that does the lights)
MP3 players - I'm sure all the iPhone guys are saying "hell yes." I've got a WM phone, and while it does great things the iPhone can't, it sucks donkey balls as a music player. The average phone is going to have to get a lot better - and a lot bigger storage (which will happen "soon") - to take over as my portable player. I'll still keep my SwimP# for the pool though...I don't think many phones would thrive in a aquatic environment.
Landline home phones - Okay, just call me an old fart; I'll probably always have one. The uptime is much better than cell.
Compact digital cameras - they're going to have to get massively better. I'm talking several orders of magnitude. Maybe before I die. Maybe.
Netbooks - keyboards and screens that don't require massive scrolling or a magnifying glass. 'Nuff said.
Handheld games consoles - Hmmmm...not much use for one, so... *shrug*
Paper - sorry, I still print directions and confirmations. This may change. Someday. But I'm awfully attached to dead trees. Probably has to do with my note taking desires, and the aforementioned need for a magnifying glass or scrolling for all but the simplest of things on a phone.
Thinking - The 'net has already made that obsolete. Now get off my lawn...
Man, I need to get back to work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They also make stones obsolete. I don't long have to throw rocks at a window, I can just throw my phone.
Is a brilliant idea. And then you drop it.
Czech language for absolute beginners
Will prices like $50 for 5gb and then $50 per gb phones will not take over that fast also the screen need to be a lot bigger for real gameing, some web stuff, and maps
You keep hearing about the things that phones are going to replace and, at least for me, it's never been true.
I like having a Nintendo DS. The iPhone has not provided a game with the depth of most AAA DS titles. It's lack of buttons is a serious problem with gaming.
The camera isn't as good as any half way decent point and shoot. I haven't gotten a chance to play with any GPS software for any smart phone, but I hear there are limitations (including the need for cell service) that stand alone GPSes don't have.
Even the music functions of an iPhone aren't as good as a regular iPod or (gasp, because I love Apple gear) a Zune.
And yeah, you can use it as a watch, but any fashionable man knows that a watch is how a guy shows off. It's the only acceptable piece of jewelry for the well dressed man.
Even today's best smart phones are just communications devices with varying degrees of success. Occasionally a smart phone is "good enough" in a pinch; photographers like to say the best camera is the one you have with you, which certainly applies to smart phones. But if I know I want to play games or take pictures, I take my DS or my camera, or whatever. Phones haven't and won't - because each thing needs its own UI and software guidelines, no device is going to be able to do it all well.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Early camera phones where painfully bad but strong sales proved that there was a demand for them.
When I got my phone, I bought it because it was the cheapest phone that had the ability to see who's calling without having to answer. It so happens to have come with a camera which I never use because it sucks. Now, are the camera manufacturers counting my sale as someone who wanted a camera? Probably. There's a few other features built into the phone that i looked at and never used because I have no use for them.
That's the thing, there's only so many choices and it's impossible to get a phone that has a feature you want without getting a bunch of features that you don't want. And if you find one, it may not be supported by your cell carrier.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Juggling out the cellphone just doesn't have quite the same flair as pausing and then checking your wrist watch for about 5 seconds when the interviewer tells you that 20 hours of overtime a week is "normal" for the position you're interviewing for.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Top Ten : Phone boxes Wristwatches Bedside alarm MP3 players Landline home phones Compact digital cameras Netbooks Handheld games consoles Paper Thinking- (joke)
[X] Convenient. You don't have to pull them out of your pocket or purse to see what time it is.
[X] You can get them dirt cheap (under $10) so if they break, get wet washing the dishes, fall in the toilet - no big deal. Try that with your cell phone.
[X] One for day and one for evening wear - they are a fashion accessory.
[X] If they get rained on a bit, big deal. Most are water-resistant.
[X] It's harder to steal a wristwatch than a cellphone
[X] It's harder to forget your wristwatch on the roof of your car, at home, or at the office than a cellphone
[X] I might be convinced to buy a CowboyNeal writstwatch as a joke item, but never a CowboyNeal cellphone.
same misconceptions:
I want to a PSP-sized phone to have a decent screen size, and I want to take it off my pocket to check the hour. Of course it should have a full-sized QWERTY keyboard to replace my netbook (not miniaturized like G1) so that I could exercise my writer's hobby on a train, and then they will be so cheap that if I want to give someone a note about some new recipe, I scribble it on my phone and give the phone for them to take (paper replacement).
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Another thing you can do on most modern web enabled phones is look up phrases like Begs the Question and see what a fool you are making of yourself prior to posting on slashdot.
http://begthequestion.info/
Brought to you by the obligatory and gratuitous grammar snarks.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Phone boxes: Dead. Abut the only use is to report the theft of a mobile phone.
Wristwatches: Well, my wrist is in a very convenient place. I can even look at it whilst holding something else. It doesn't need to be fished out of a pocket. Women have the greater problem of having to fish it out of a handbag. Hell, I can look at it whilst on the phone. A watch than can keep better time than our planet can be purchased for about the same as an iphone app.
Bedside alarm clocks: Mine has a battery life measured in years. It has a handy big button on the top to stop the alarm. Far superior than to a phone.
MP3 players: I don't know why but I like my mp3 player better than my phone for mp3 purposes. Maybe that's just me, since I can't really rationalise this one.
Landline home phones: Dead. I know very few people who still use these.
Compact digital cameras: My Canon gives better pictures than any mobile phone ever will. It's not just about lens quality or pixels. There's a matter of having a large enough CCD to collect all those photons, which means you need a longer lens. And you do need a decent quality lens. They are expensive. Adding one to a cheap mobile phone means you might as well have a camera.
Netbooks: What!? They're totally different devices. If you can have a decent sized keyboard and 10 inch screen on a device that fits into your pocket let me know.
Handheld games consoles: Games consoles are extremely demanding about user interfaces. touch screens are not good for games.
Paper: I've been essentially paperless for a decade. Mobile phones aren't going to affect this significantly.
Thinking: Tools and information aid thinking. They don't replace it.
They serve two purposes, not one. Frankly, telling time is the least of their purposes. As a man, a wristwatch is probably the single most expensive a wife/girlfriend or even boyfriend can buy for you. It can be large without being sententious, be jewel encrusted or plain, and can hold much more metal and gems then a ring. Also, they are more accessible. It is far easier and less obvious to check than to pull out a phone and flip it/turn it on/enter your password.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
what? are you drunk?
I'd think any true geek out there would appreciate the mechanical complexity of a quality watch (read: not quartz). Granted they are more jewelry like than actual time reference objects, but when you get out of the low end you can appreciate a lot of fine horology!
-Xen
One thousand years ago, even one hundred years ago, the concept of communicating with people who were not within line of sight or range of hearing would be called clairvoyance, clairaudience, mental telepathy, witchcraft, astral projection, sorcery, or something similar. It would have been persecuted and shunned even to the point of executing (as painfully as possible) anyone who claimed to have such ability.
Nowadays we call it technology and we persecute and shun anyone who has no interest in it calling them antisocial, or disgruntled, or loner, or hermit, or difficult to get along with.
My how human society has changed.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Add GPS to that list. My Droid gives turn-by-turn directions while linked to Google Maps, meaning Garmin will no longer be receiving $80/year for map updates.
"Careful! We don't want to learn from this!" -Calvin & Hobbes
This is one of the greatest posts I've ever read. I'd like to nominate it for a Pulitzer.
First off: a mobile phone has quite a limited interaction possibility due to the small size and no real specialization.
Second, and most important: most people can't grasp even a small portion of what little their phone can.
Sure, some folks use it as replacement for an alarm and watch. Inbuilt camera is also cute, though not even suited for good vacation photos, much less professional ones.
Games will stay with DS and PSP, and they won't loose sleep over it. Did not even see many people using their phones for music, though that would be a possibility (thanks RIAA).
Practically the only 2 thing mobile phones changed were, that people were more often reachable via phone (which they mostly don't pick up anyway) and everyone is typing those damn SMS all the time.
Now stop dreaming, face reality. Seriously..
Poignant? People tried to say the same thing about calculators in the 50s. Tools augment human capability, they can be a crutch but we're a little far from walking in the jungle throwing spears, aren't we?
Either you get the watch, or you don't. I learned to tell time in the second grade and George actually gave me his watch because he didn't know how to tell time and I did (mom and dad made me give it back).
Had a digital watch as soon as they got cheap in the 70s (those of you born in the mid 60s will remember that well, I'm sure), an LCD watch when those got cheap. Bought a new Timex LCD in 1986 and wore it more or less continuously until 2007 when my wife gave me a Tag Heuer self-winding chronograph.
I'll never look back. This watch is a tank, keeps good time and looks fairly smart. Plus NO batteries.
Portable devices are converging, and cellphones so far are the main target of that convergence. But they are evolving. Started looking just as a bit more than a (big) keypad, added display that grew over time to be all display in touchscreens, added fast cpus and plenty of memory, photo/video cameras, gps/accelerometers and other sensors, etc. In a short future could be seen more as portable internet devices than phones, and its shape and way to use could evolve even more.
How they will end if start adopting the features of i.e. SixthSense or other approachs to user interfaces? More than cellphones will be called Augmented Reality Devices?
Please, call them 'communicators'. It makes me feel like I'm living in an incredibly advanced society (technologically, anyway). Which, let's face it, is the truth.
Our technological capabilities constantly change, but will we ever live up to what we can achieve? Stupid UIs and bad integration are one thing that will never disappear, but a great UI with seamless integration into life is what really matters. That's why /I/ use emacs. So powerful, it was used in the creation of the universe, or so I hear.
Long live emacs!
Long live BeOS!
Long live the Newton!
Long live ssh!
And that's why ChromeOS will be successful. I really am not very interested in it, but it is certainly following the restrictiveness of Apple, and one-upping it.
I hate restrictions, but restriction is what allows for excellence. You must make a choice, and stick with it to excel.
Unfortunately, I'm more of a generalist. Computers, music, ultimate, and cooking. My only hope for achievement is to bring insights of one field to another. How depressing!
It does NOT "beg the question"! It might RAISE the question (perhaps not even that), but it certainly does not claim that the question itself is evidence for its truth.
Kids these days!
Read: http://begthequestion.info/ (or just a frickin' dictionary).
Buy Text Processing in Python
... how about the most obvious things? Namely _wallets_ and _keys_.
Phone booths maybe. I still see people use them in malls or on the ferry.
Wristwatches no. I bring my phone out of my pocket to check the time and it's a PITA. After tiring of this, I recently ordered a wristwatch. Wristwatches are still fashionable. If I may psychoanalyze the author of this article I suspect that he is a pragmatist.
Alarm clock probably yes as long as the software is sufficiently flexible.
MP3 player yes.
Compact camera likely. The best camera is the one you have on your person. My current phone's camera is shit, but if it was decent I probably wouldn't have bothered getting a compact. Anything bigger than a compact camera is still safe.
Netbooks? I don't know, but as long as I have the choice I won't do any of my work on a computer the size of a phone. OTOH I would love to be able to bring my phone to work, plug it into a KVM and carry on that way.
Handheld game consoles maybe. No reason the current game giants can't make software for phones.
Paper? For maps and dictionaries and stuff, sure, to some degree. For writing, no. I'll believe that when I see Larry Lunchbucket on the jobsite taking notes on his phone's screen.
Please, someone make something that will obsolete slashvertisments disguised as rehashed top ten lists.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
1. GBP 10 is not $10.
2. Your cell phone was probably subsidized by your cell phone company, if you bought it new. Try buying a new cell phone without a plan, and no subsidy. they'll be more than $10.
3. I don't need to recharge my wrist watch every few days. How many days can you talk on your cell phone run without a recharge?
4. Does your cell phone fit conveniently on your wrist like a watch? Or would you have to duct-tape it?
5. Is your cell phone as light as a watch?
6. Can you make calls on your cell phone without some sort of plan, even if it's pay-as-you-go? I can still tell time with my watch - no plan needed.
7. My watch doesn't have "dead zones" where it stops telling time. Does your cell phone have dead zones where you can't make calls?
8. I don't have to worry about my watch interrupting an important meeting with an embarrassing ring-tone.
9. If someone steals my watch, I don't have to worry that they have a lot of my contacts.
10. A thief can't run u a big bill for me on my watch.
11. I don't have to back up my watch.
12. It's legal to look at my watch while driving.
I have both a cell phone and a watch. Each one has its own place. Maybe you've heard of the concept - "right tool for the job."
Please stop misusing "begs the question". It makes you seem very, very stupid.
"Begs the question" does not mean the same thing as "Raises the question."
Please don't be stupid on the internet. Please.
Phone boxes - Good riddance
Wristwatches - Not a chance. I've tried doing it since my last watch broke, but have hated it the entire time. Can't wait until I can get the inclination to go find a new watch.
Bedside alarm clocks - Possibly, but if my blackberry is any indication, they really need to improve the software. Kind of sad that it still only allows 1 alarm.
MP3 players - Seem to be on their way towards overtaking them.
Landline home phones - I know several people including myself who haven't had a landline phone in a while.
Compact digital cameras - How long until they offer anything comparable to a decent digital camera. They replace the cheap point-and-click thing, sure, but anything respectable?
Netbooks - Too small and no keyboard.
Handheld games consoles - It's hard to replace the dedicated hardware. Maybe someday though.
Paper - How many times has this been claimed?
Thinking – If we count this category, then hasn't thinking been replaced for a while now? Either we consider thinking as already having been replaced or cell phones won't make change things much more.
. . .wristwatches are . . . a symbol of status and of self-expression.
Which is why everyone who wears one nowadays comes across as an insecure realtor or con-artist.
You think your iPhone is going to get you laid... or any serious street cred?.
I beg to differ; most of the people who I know who have iPhones say that it gets them screwed every month.
As for "cred", there's an app for that, isn't there?
That's what they WANT you to believe!
Surely the calculator is the obvious item for a phone to replace.
Lets face it, a normal phone these days can do anything a normal calculator can, while the more complex stuff could probably be thrown into an iPhone ap already, and if not soon will be.
...and I still own pliers, files, screwdrivers, a corkscrew, etc., etc. The second part of the saying is "Master of None"
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
TFA listed only the obvious stuff.
What about: Cash, credit cards, tickets, ID cards, wallets, keys, remote controls, maps, compasses, GPS devices, eBook readers, books, newspapers, flashlights, USB drives and other portable media, calculators, dictionaries, calenders, scanners of all kinds, road signs, ballot-boxes, stereo systems, video cameras, microphones, VCR/DVD players, TiVos, computer mice, laser pointers, thermometers, the box of your desktop computer, physical pictures, receipts, coupons, fliers, brochures, menus, projectors, etc.
And this is only the technologically easy stuff. Some of it already obsolete in places like Japan.
This is my own personal pet peeve.
And don't give me the 'language is evolving' line. This isn't about language evolving, it's about the users of the language devolving.
It's perfectly acceptable to say that it 'raises the question 'or 'asks the question' or 'slams its fists on the table demanding an answer to the question' but begging the question means to simply re-ask the question. You never want to beg the question. The question will tell you to go get a job, hippie.
---Nathaniel, shouldn't drink beer before posting.
When is the last time you've seen someone fiddle with an answering machine? Maybe in some action movies released between 1985 and 2000.
I thought of this after noticing that only 2 of the 10 items in TFA had to do with actually talking or listening to someone one on one.
I love the tail end of this dross:
"What do maps, dictionaries and novels have in common? They're all printed on paper and they can be heavy, expensive and difficult to access."
Digital smartphones: cheaper than a map or novel!
Twee, useless article.
It doesn't matter how good the picture is. This is the point many a photographer forgets when it comes to phone cameras.
It's about being able to get an acceptable picture without having to carry a camera with you. It's about being able to know the time without wearing a watch. It's about being able to set an alarm or add a quick note without needing a separate PDA. It's about being able to check your e-mail without having to carry around a laptop.
Quality doesn't matter, as long as it is good enough to get the job done. I for one like being able to leave my camera at home and still being able to make a quick shot if the occasion arises. Nobody is going to compare them to shots taken with a SLR, and that's perfectly fine.
This sig is intentionally left blank
there a app for that
Mobile phones can replace a lot of things, but some will persist because they require a specific form factor. Wristwatches, gaming devices, movie players, and paper won't be going away. A mobile phone may emulate them, and that works in a pinch, but these items have a unique shape that augments their function. For a wristwatch it stays on your wrist, for a gaming device it's gaming controls, for a movie player it's a decently large screen, and paper is paper. A cell phone too has a specific form that is necessary for functionality. Blue tooth headsets might alleviate that need, but you'd still need two devices so why bother?
Sooo . . . which cell phone company do you work for?
The one thing that determines how good a handheld game console is the quality of the controller. For instance, it's impossible to play console-style games on a PDA keypad, or a touch screen. You need an honest-to-god D-PAD or Analog stick and buttons to play console-style games. That's why the Game Boy and Nintendo DS hasn't been displaced already.
You just can't play Super Mario Bros on an iPhone.
[X] Convenient. Comes with your pants or shirt, so they're with you nearly all the time!
[X] You can get them dirt cheap--usually free with purchase of a pair of jeans!
[X] One for left and one for right. Two sides, two pockets, 1 awesome invention!
[X] If they get rained on a bit, big deal. Most are water-resistant.
[X] It's harder to steal a pair of pants than a cell phone!
[X] It's harder to forget your pockets at work, home or wherever than cell phones.
[X] I might be convinced to buy a CowboyNeal pocket, but never a CowboyNeal cellphone.
Honestly, just stick your phone in your pocket, and problem solved! It's not exactly a huge task to take your phone out.
I think we have a foolish view of obsolescence, where, something new comes along that is completely better and replaces the thing that was before it. Technological advance is really a sort of a specialization, where the new thing improves on some fraction of tasks the old thing did. While one computer might make the old one completely obsolete, hardware wise, in software, there really hasn't been so much in sweeping replacement. UTF-8 might be more international than ASCII, but ASCII is still cheaper to work with if you are an American only firm, so, there's a niche for ASCII.
Its silly to say that cell phones will replace hand game consoles. As cell phones evolve, so too will game consoles, and, a joystick is an entirely different thing than what most cells have. There's money involved. Even if it could theoretically be done, the moment somebody puts 3d graphics in a cell phone, somebody else's cell phone will get that much cheaper and so even 3d graphics won't be quite so universal or maybe there will be another trade-off - simpler graphics for longer battery life. And, handheld consoles will have bigger screens.
Cell phone cameras have some hard physical limits to get up against. You need to have decent lenses...
Reading a book on a cell phone screen seems to be a terrible screen. I'd think I'd rather have a larger screen that I might not carry around as often but can still move around the house or in the car without too much hastle, kinda like a kindle
This is my sig.
Truthfully, for a couple of years I wasn't wearing watches, and I'd still look at my wrist to think about time.
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
Being attached to a piece of technology at the hip where I can still get hampered with 'the-sky-is-falling' on-call calls when I'm *not* on-call, people I don't feel like talking to me can annoying me with phone calls/txts that I have to take the time to silence, my flip/touch-phone device for a bordem-killer to the point that it takes two years off it's design worth, knowing what time is ANY time of the day (it's actually nice not to keep track of time once in a while), yet another device I have to carry around with me besides my netbook/ipod/work-laptop/gps, etc. (unless you're an uber-UBER power phone user, I don't agree WTFA on that one totally), never knowing anyone's phone number anymore (leaves you dead in the water, especially when you leave your cell phone at home by accident), substituting nice, quality memorable photos from a good, quality digital camera for 1MP squashed ones, loosing total track of your walking and ability to dogde solid objects when trying to answer that important txt msg while on run or in the car (I've seen people almost kill themselves to fulfill that 160 character impulse). The list can go on and on... It's a mere trade-off for the extra added stress is causes us IMHO.
I set the phone on vibrate mode, clamp it between my butt cheeks and set Skype to auto dial.
You: http://www.xkcd.com/610/
Its true that people will keep wearing watches but just as jewelry. Their function in slowly being replaced by a more useful device. Some people wear glasses because they think they look good, not because their eyes are bad,
One other thing that will be made obsolete.
Mobile Phones.
The replacement can best be referred to as an 'aid' or personal device
#12: It makes you conveniently forget that language evolves over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Modern_usage
I wear a watch. On occasion I use a public phone (When my battery dies). I have a real alarm clock. I carry around my IPod I always use the home phone when Im not out (excluding txting) Digital cameras I can agree with to an extent - Pictures with friends, ect. But not for real photography. I love my Acer Aspire 1410, it does many things my Blackberry Tour doesn't. My DS is my life. Paper and thinking................... The author needs to be fired.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
The article author claims to not know anyone who wears a watch.
I haven't noticed really, but in my circles I think most everyone wears a watch.
I have a box full of watches myself, from a $10 Casio (analog, not digital) that keeps fantastic time - truly amazing - to a "OMG what did you spend on that" from my wife.
It's darn hard to subtly slip your phone out of your pocket and check the time in a meeting. A little flick of the wrist with your hand in your lap, on the other hand....
And the converse is true, too. Nothing says "shut up and get to it" like pointedly looking at your watch.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
iPhone can't touch the DS. Nintendo still sells almost half a million units every month and it's been that way for years. I still carry my DS with me because my cell can't do the games that my DS can. And it's an industry issue. How do you get Nintendo to give up their IP onto someone elses cellphone/gaming device? Mario is theirs to keep.
Can I bum a sig?
Humans are a curious species who still think that digital watches are a good idea.
The cellphone will never replace cameras, net books, hand held game consoles, paper or thinking. You'll never be able to pack the quality of a high end Camera, the form factor of a netbook, the interface of a game console, the durability of a paper document, or (wtf) thinking into a cellphone.
Are these people retarded? My watch's battery last years. I wouldn't rely on my cell phones completely random 1 hour to 2 days battery for this.
I don't use alarms of any kind. But unrelaible battery would make me avoid cell phones like the plague for this mission.
Is the author on crack? The first 7 inches netbooks failed because both the screen and the keyboard were too small to be of practical use. I can't picture people wanting a rectangular cell phone with a 10 inches diagonal...
This one will get replaced by netbooks.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The mobile phone replaced the following for me years ago, in this order:
landlines
wristwatches
bedside alarm clocks
mp3 players
At this point phones might serve as backups for cameras, netbooks, and handheld gaming consoles, but the idea of replacing them by convergence into one item ignores that each of those items has a specialized and BIGGER type of form factor to enhance functionality in ways that counter that of a phone.
While phoneboxes are on their way out, there will probably be some functional replacement along the lines of a pay-per-use public cell station because the need will probably not entirely disappear. As common as phones are, some people sometime are going to need to use a phone, won't have one, and won't be able to borrow one at that moment. Computer kiosks already outnumber phone booths in international airports as it is.
TFA almost made it through without getting cliche, but then it had to go and include paper. Didn't we already learn this from the dead-wrong paperless office predictions? Phone technology is not even fractionally as mature as paper technology.
I find most predictions like this extrapolate a technology and start solving problems that we don't have. Flying cars are a great example. What problem do they solve that is worth the effort vs. what problems they create? So a great prognosticator would answer a much more interesting problem. Ten things that will make the mobile phone obsolete? And tell me this in the middle of a wave of cell phone innovation. Keep in mind that the medium is the message. So while so many companies try to create ebooks with eInk you must ask yourself. Is it that people want electronic books with eInk or is that we want information available to us? (a book being the best storage solution until recently) I have an Sony PRS and it is fine for some things but for many books I much prefer an audiobook to paper or eInk. A map I want on my iPhone, some lectures I want in video others audio. But these preferences are being shaped by the technology; not some pre-existing desire to have audio books or whatnot. Audiobooks now fit nicely on my iPhone but reading a book on the iPhone is nearly useless. Quickly flipping through eInk is nearly impossible at this point and thinks like magazines are very flip friendly. But a slight change in eBooks or iPhones capability could wildly shape how I want my information. An ebook with limited video capability might be cool but beyond a few animations in science textbooks I would think it would be a deadend. People are demanding annotation capability for eBooks but when was the last time you annotated a Spy Thriller? Basically what I am trying to point out is that something as simple as the lowly book could end up heading in many directions with just the technology on today's table. I would be loathe to predict the book's future in even 5 years. The cellphone is a much more hydra technology than books so who knows where it could possibly go?
Have you ever visited someone who lives in an apartment and not had a phone on you? Do this often enough and you've quickly get sick of buzzer systems that have evidently been broken for months or years, intercoms that require you to punch in a code that the person you're visiting didn't think to give you (and may not even know), and, in some cases, buildings that lack per-apartment doorbells entirely.
People, people, this debate is very simple and obvious.
For any given electronic device of a given size and cost, a specialty device will always do a better job than a generalist device. A portable ipod is (slightly) better than an iphone. A portable game player such as a PSP or DS is also better than an iphone. Handheld GPS systems, same story. A watch is a better time keeping device than a cell phone, with more time related features. A compact digital camera with a bigger lens is much better than the camera in a phone. And so on and so forth.
But the point is, for MOST users 99% of the time, the inferior function on your cell phone, especially a cutting edge phone like the iphone or the Droid DOES THE JOB. You only lose a few seconds pulling your phone out rather than looking at your watch. The pictures taken by the camera on the iphone or droid are more than sharp enough for posting to a resolution limited site like facebook. The iphone has a fairly good GPU, and many small and creative 2d games work great on it, so it's almost as entertaining as the PSP or DS. The GPS may be a little fuzzy, but it's usually close enough to find your way around. And so on.
So, the inferiority of the phone's functions are nearly always MASSIVELY OUTWEIGHED by the fact that you only carry ONE device rather than a whole batman belt worth of them. Size and weight and convenience means that for 99% of users, it's easier and cheaper just to buy a smartphone and use it exclusively for all of the above functions.
cell phone proliferation has already all but wiped CB radio off the map. And it's making ham radio less and less useful. But I suppose it's still the only reliable communications in disaster areas. (katrina etc where towers and grid power were down)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The most important societal change that the cell phone has brought is freedom of travel for women. As a result, the rape whistle has been obsoleted. You can hypothesize all you want about reaction times for the whistle vs. the phone, but empirically speaking, the rape whistle popular in the 1990's is nowhere to be seen in the new millenium.
It's all about the consolidation of power.
Get a society addicted to, uh, I mean, using a perceived essential technology, and then turn it off, when those with a master off switch want control.
It's painfully obvious, and most of you jump right in, because, "Awwwww, that would never happen here".
I agree as to what the term originally meant but would argue that the definition is changing into "There is a question that is begging to be asked and that question is ...".
I also agree that this change in definition is due to a lack of education, but is a logical inference of the meaning of the term.
It is the same inference technique that causes people to ask "Why is it called a hamburger if it has no ham". We know how the English language works, but we don't know the origin of "hamburger". We assume it is a compound word, like "raincoat", and that "ham" is the modifier of the root word "burger".
The truth is that a Hamburg-er is a type of food from the German city of Hamburg, the same way the frankfurter is a type of food from Frankfurt, Germany.
The article has some good points, and I agree with most of their predictions, but not all. First, paper. Mobile phones will never make paper obsolete. The only thing that could *possibly* make paper (as we know it) obsolete is electronic paper. Any device small enough to be considered a mobile phone is too small to replace paper, plain and simple. Same thing goes for netbooks. If mobile phones were going to replace netbooks, netbooks would never have happened. Mobile phones already have everything to offer that could possibly make them a replacement for netbooks (prime example, LG env Touch), and yet netbooks are still selling like mad. It's because netbooks hit that perfect balance between usability and portability. They're small enough to put in just about any bag, yet big enough to (relatively) easily type on, and have a screen that's just large enough to properly display things like websites. Again, mobile phones are just too small for this. I also don't see phones truly replacing portable game consoles - there's a lot to be said for a discrete d-pad, shoulder buttons, etc. You can only do so much with a touch screen, no matter how good it is. And as for thinking... gosh I hope not.
But for the rest, yeah it's already happened for me.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Staying in your own $%&$^%(* lane while driving.
Have gnu, will travel.
Stop shouting, I can hear you. I'll get off your lawn.
I'm 26 and still like making notes on what I'm reading during a meeting. I also go to the physical library for paper books
You can't full-text search a library book, nor can you jot notes in it. Electronic books allow for both: the computer can generate an exhaustive index before you're done reading the first page, and the notes can be stored separately from the text, each section of the notes referring to a section of the text.
I [...] refuse to pay a monthly fee for my mp3 player with apps.
Your iPod Touch or Archos 5 probably has a lithium battery. Lithium batteries have a finite shelf life, and the replacement every couple years is indistinguishable from a monthly fee. Granted, this fee is less than the fee for battery + phone service, but it's still present.
...ten things mobile phones will make obsolete [...] See also Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power.
An article about gadgets obsoleting other gadgets is making you think of *that* Asimov story? Honestly? My luddite grandma likes technology more than you guys do.
Phone boxes - People have been predicting the demise of these for a long time now, ever since cell phones first became mainstream. I think it is possible, although I think the big phone companies will fight this, if only because they want to feel important.
Wristwatches - Not a chance. The convenience of having the time on your arm will never be replaced by something you have to pull out of a pocket/purse/holster. The relative inexpensiveness of watches makes it easy to have one in addition to your phone, so there will continue to be a market.
Bedside alarm clocks - Again, no way. No matter how good an alarm clock app might get, it will never match a simple bedside alarm. People who use their phones as alarms are doing it for the novelty, not because it is the best thing for the job. Like wristwatches, the low cost will keep alarm clocks around.
MP3 players - Ok, this one I agree with.
Landline home phones - I would agree, except I know too many people who are uncomfortable with the idea of giving this up. I've also found that a cellphone often doesn't make a good replacement for a family phone. I think over time the landline may give way more and more to voip, but not cellphones.
Compact digital cameras - Yeah, probably.
Netbooks - I'm still not convinced there's a significant market for these anyway.
Handheld games consoles - No way. While casual gaming on phones will definitely take a bite out of the market, more serious games will still require a dedicated device. Phones will never have the right controls for gaming without seriously interfering with their use as a phone.
Paper - Are you retarded?
Thinking - I'll take that as a "Yes."
The author poignantly concludes that while it's great to have so much power at our fingertips it does mean that some of us will rely on mobile phones for even basic mental tasks, which is great until the battery runs out.
I've noticed a similar problem with people, they work great until they run out of food, water, or even air. Even worse, if you don't supply them fast enough they permanently brick themelves. Total bummer.
Then there's the fact that phones are horribly locked down
Android phones, not so much.
as well as incompatible with PCs. Hopefully at some point in the future we'll be able to buy a phone that basically is a PC, running the same OS and software.
Linux PDA runs Linux; I guess "some point in the future" means "as soon as the case molds get back from China". Sure, Pandora has an ARM CPU, but porting source code originally developed on x86 to ARM is no big feat. Or were you referring to non-free x86-only applications published by Microsoft and Adobe?
using a mobile is the only way to answer my email on my way to work.
Download your e-mail at one end of the ride, go into offline mode, answer the e-mails, queue up the outgoing messages, and empty the queue into a mail server the next time you get WLAN. Such a work flow was incredibly common in the dial-up era. Or is your position such that answering your e-mail necessarily involves looking things up on the web?
Exactly. Expensive watches or sunglasses are like jewelry. The functional purpose they serve --providing time or protecting eyes-- are only secondary to their primary purpose of being a symbol of status.
The gaming one is BS ... we still have game systems even with computers that are pretty much the exact same thing.
Except computers aren't pretty much the same as consoles. For one thing, PCs tend to come with underpowered Intel graphics, no SDTV output (without an obscure adapter), and no HDMI output, so they're not often connected to TV-size monitors. (Yet.) Because the typical PC monitor isn't big enough for four players to fit around, there aren't a lot of major-label games that support four players holding USB gamepads. And because there aren't a lot of games designed for HTPCs, HTPC makers tend to spec their products for noninteractive video playback and not gaming. One way to solve this chicken and egg is for PC makers to switch from Intel graphics to NVIDIA graphics, as Apple did in a recent revision to its Wii-sized Mac mini.
Laptops will likely kill netbooks as battery life improves.... there will be a variety of sizes that's all.
The difference between a netbook and a laptop isn't as much a difference of hardware as one of software licensing. Microsoft provides deep discounts on copies of its non-free Windows operating system for use on ultra-low-cost PCs as long as hardware specs stay below a certain threshold.
Apple made the iphone because they saw the death of the dedicated player.
Not everybody wants a voice and data plan that costs $60 per month in the United States; some people like myself can do most of their voice on a land-line at home or at work and most of their data on Wi-Fi. Apple realized this and made a phoneless version of the iPhone called the iPod Touch. The only monthly fee on an iPod Touch is a couple dollars per month toward replacement of its lithium battery.
The DS will be the last generation of dedicated handhelds
Not all parents who want to buy a video game system for a child in elementary school want to buy a phone and commit to a 24-month voice and data plan.
10. car phone
9. flashlight (torch)
8. sun dial
7. singing telegram
6. level
5. vibrator
4. paper weight
3. slide rule
2. hammer
1. rock
Was payphones, i can think of plenty of reasons to have separate versions of each one. Point and shoots still run circles around anything a cellphone can do. It's still a question of lens size/image sensor. The big thing with these all-in-one phones, is that when your cellphone breaks or encounters a problem, everything breaks. That and when better components come out (mp3s, cameras) happen, you don't need to worry about upgrading everything or being left behind.
But I am not going to get the last Mario RPG game on the iPhone
Nor are you going to get games in the Halo series on a PLAYSTATION®3. The root of your complaint isn't that iPod Touch and iPhone aren't suitable for gaming as much as that Apple isn't a first-party video game developer.
This comment indicates that dancingmad prefers an iPod Nano or iPod Classic to an iPod Touch.
Increasingly, cell phone companies are treating calls to continental Canada the same as calls to the continental US.
Pepper sprays and other crime deterrents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7x1aic74Mg
Here's an example: http://www.pcgames.de/screenshots/original/2009/11/mw2_vergleich_1.jpg
"No deeplinking please!" Would you please link to the HTML page in which you found this screenshot?
Consoles have advantages over PC, and vice versa.
Consoles' advantage is local multiplayer (four gamepads, one TV). PC's advantages are mods and indie games. People who want a local multiplayer game with mods, or indie developers who want to develop a local multiplayer game, are screwed as far as I can tell.
Obviously most Slashdotters here don't cook more than nuking a hotpocket in a microwave.
Anyone who cooks, needs a watch (besides a timer) so you can keep several things timed. Best is a diving watch (rotating bezel) that doesn't mind water. Note Guy Fieri from Food Network often wears a Seiko Orange Monster diving watch in his shows, Alton Brown has IIRC a Bulova Diving watch.
Besides being beautiful, watches help you time (multiple) dishes. They are (because they are specialized) far more useful (particularly analog watches) for not just telling time but estimating at a glance how much time is left before the next appointment, etc. A good quality watch can be had for reasonable amounts, will last quite long, and tell time quite well, and as noted be an acceptable piece of jewelry for men that instantly displays status/judgment/personality. For things like diving, or skiing, or any active sports where keeping track of time is important, they are also the only thing acceptable. Analog watches can function in a pinch as work-around compasses in the daytime.
A point and shoot camera will give you better results than a cell-phone camera, though the ubiquity of cell phone cameras is striking. The Nintendo DS is a better and more enjoyable gaming platform than the IPhone, though the ubiquity of the IPhone is threatening Nintendo sales.
Bottom line, if you cook, or have to get to meetings on time, or duck out of meetings at a certain time, or partake of active sports or outdoor activities, a watch beats the cell phone. So does Nintendo/PSP for gaming, cameras for picture taking, and paper for reading anywhere and any time.
I'm also skeptical of the idea that phones will put an end to independent gaming devices. For one thing, there has yet to be a phone that is at all adequate for running games on; I know there are games for the iPhone, but the vast majority are hugely hampered by the interface. In gaming, the control interface (buttons, joysticks) are as important as the display. Gamers don't WANT their device any smaller than a DS or PSP; some want it larger.
In addition, I might let my eight year old son have a DS, but no way in hell is he getting a cellphone.
I think it might be possible that some future iteration of the DS, PSP, or other console incorporates some VOIP into it's internet link; or perhaps even include full cellular technology. But at that point, is the cell phone replacing the gaming device, or the gaming device replacing the cellphone?
That comma is author's choice. Bite me.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
geez, you might have reminded him of the babage machine.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah, we know this in holland. Vodafone had a major screw up and was out of service for more then a day and a half.
Light rail service used their GSM network for communication rather then those obsolete radio systems everyone else uses. Result: fewer trams because it wasn't safe to drive a full service.
Please, tell me again how regular radio which just fucking works is obsolete?
Oh, and there has NEVER been a disaster big enough to wipe out ALL landline services, completly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
On the other hand, if you live someplace like the mountainous (and sparsely populated) interior of BC, it can sometimes be pretty easy to find someplace where you just don't get cell phone reception. There are actually a couple of towns in BC that pride themselves on being cell-phone free.
For my part, even though I've rarely been outside of cell reception in the last decade or so, I've still found a use for the ancient wrist watch. There are various times when it's just not worth the trouble of hunting through my myriad pockets to find my (increasingly) tiny cell phone. A flick of the wrist, and I know what time it is.
That having been said, I am one of the crowd that uses my cell phone as an alarm clock.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Got an Ericsson R310s 9 years ago, dropped it off scaffolding and all sorts of things. Contacts for the recharging conntection died after 6 years so I replaced it with another one off ebay for £30, this one is three years and counting, multiple soaks, puddles, etc. I believe there's a new branded armoured phone out there, will be my next choice: Sonim S1 http://blog.phoneslimited.co.uk/2009/08/13/landrover-s1-sonim-landrover-phone-review-sonim-s1-review/
... if the mobile phone were as inconspicuous as a wrist watch.
Unfortunately, it's (still ?) a loudmouth that's too large to go unnoticed.
First off: I have a smartphone, I'm a *nix person, I've been using a Mac since 2006 (great UI) and my phone is a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone .... stupid. I know.
My phones does everything. But really I only use it for phone calls. Often I get a phone call and I can't get it because the software has crashed and I need to reboot the phone. My old Motorola C115 was perfect. It could only really be used as a phone and never crashed.
Because I use a Mac I also carry around an iPod Touch (wlan, Apps, iCal, Music, Videos) and because I'm a photographer I still always carry around a "real" camera (Lumix LX3), and I only carry that camera for snapshots. For the "real thing" I carry much heavier gear.
The only thing I consider removing from this mix is my smartphone. All the other good things are there to stay.
actually this is a good point. the tighter social networks become (and definitely advanced mobile devices help this process - what with everyone checking FB on their iphones, and all), the less time and need people have to listen to that tiny voice in their head called their brain. it's a signal to noise ratio issue, if you consider a person's own mind the signal, and everything from the outside noise. 200 years ago the average person probably had to make a 3-day horseback trip just to find noise, but today there are 10kW speakers jammed in our ears pumping the mental equivalent of thrash metal.
weinersmith
It's not an issue of one device, the mobile phone, making all the others obsolete, it's digital convergence. All mobile electronic devices are converging. Palm started off with PDAs, Apple started off as MP3 players, others as GPS. However, of those [i]devices[/i] some won't be eliminated the wrist watch as jewellery, the hardline. The phone box is the same, a convergence of emergency phone, broadband hard line, WiFi access point.
The same thing is happening in the home, the VCR, CD player, DVD player, DVB-T terrestrial receiver, DVB-S satellite receiver, the PVR, web-on-TV, internet television, streaming media. All separates a couple of years ago, increasing evidence of digital convergence.
I go out of coverage all the time and my phone still displays the correct time. I have never heard of a phone losing it's time just because it is outside the coverage area, certainly it wont be able to update the time automatically while outside the coverage area but for a phone not to remember the time just seems dodgy. Perhaps it's an American thing because all the phones in Australia keep their time irrespective of the coverage, it's totally unheard of for the clock to need the network.
I've always used Nokia's but I haven't heard of any other brands forgetting the time, so this is rather interesting.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
1. They make calls. Can your watch keep you in touch with your friends over long distances?
2. They store data. Can your watch help keep you organized by maintaining a list of vital information about the people you interact with daily?
3. They make calls. Starting to see my point?
4. They make emergency calls. Can your watch summon life-saving medical attention for you (or anybody else for that matter)?
5. They can give you directions. Can your watch connect to the GPS satellite network to give you directions?
6. They play movies/music. Can your watch keep you entertained for more than 10 seconds on a long, trans-continental, flight?
7. They can link your laptop to the internet. Can your watch pull down all the information you could ever possibly need?
My point here is that you're comparing apples to atomic bombs - they're very different things, but also very good at what they do. By giving "12 ways watches are better than cell phones," you insinuate cell phones are inferior. Frankly, given the choice of one over the other, I'd take a cell phone any day. Hands down.
A savings account is going to be obsolete by the time the mobile cell companies get done with their creative billing.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
i thought it was perfectly clear: _things_ == devices, which fabric is not...
More generally, I thought the lesson the original iPod taught us was that specialized devices tend to do a much better job than multi-function devices because they allow the UI and features to be specialized for a specific task. Phone cameras, clocks, and other doo-dads are great, but work best as stand-ins for the real thing. They are what you use when you don't have anything better at hand.
Yup.
It all boils down to what do you need function for:
Do you need something special from your alarm clock ? Or will any 2$ electronic cheap crap to the work for you ? If that's the case an phone-embed app will do the same (crappy) work.
Do you want to play good high quality games ? Or just have something to avoid getting bored while waiting for the bus ? Phones miss the high quality display and sound device (few feature stereo speakers) and specially advanced inputs (most modern phone are limited to touch screens and accelerometers. No tactile feed back as with buttons and sticks). Hardcore players will probably keep their PSP.
Same with every other few thing on the list.
Convergent hardware, specially when it has to cope with device size- and battery life- restrictions, is never as good as specialist hardware. On the other hand, phone are ubiquitous and embedding functions may attract the "good enough" crowd.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You ever hear the one about showing instead of telling?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Perhaps for people that think a quality watch is a 2 dollar walmart special will migrate to their cellphone, but for those of us that still appreciate a quality ( normally mechanical ) timepiece, they will continue to wear a watch.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Article misses the most obvious thing that phones have already started replacing which is portable network devices, i.e. GPS in the car.
Phone booths - Still in service in certain environments like on factory or freight terminal premises for intra-premise communication. Unlikely to go away.
Wristwatches - Extremely unlikely to go away. "Most people" still wear one and most likely will until someone comes up with a mobile phone small enough to always have a glance away without having to hold it.
Bedside alarm clocks - Possible to replace but they will still stick around because slamming your hand on your phone to activate the snooze function only works a couple times before your break the thing.
MP3 players - The iPond Shuffle suggests that mobile phones will have to get much smaller if they want to completely take over that segment. In fact, the Compact Flash based player I had aeons ago was much smaller and a fair deal cheaper than even a small MP3-capable mobile today.
Landline home phones - Because I want my 911 to go down if there's a thunderstorm. Or heavy snowfall. Or just about anything else that might interfere with the operation of the tower. (Before you comment that the telephone mast in front of your house could be knocked down as well, note that in more civilized areas such cables usually run underground.) Sounds just like a dream.
Compact digital cameras - Why use a 50 USD 5 Mpixel camera if I can use one with the same resolution for five times the price? Why use a 10 MPixel camera for 120 USD when I can pay twice that for half the resolution? Yeah, high-end mobile phones will have to become much cheaper if they want to displace compact digital cameras. Maybe for teenagers who want to take pictures of their latest bingeand are okay with blurry 1 MPixel shots but not for anyone who wants to take holiday pictures, do amaetur photography or create just about anything of any aesthetic value.
Netbooks - If they come up with a mobile phone with a 10" screen, maybe. Then again, no; nobody would buy that monster. As weird as it may sound, not everyone is content to use a platform with a miniscule screen at an equally miniscule resolution that is unable to run any of the applications they normally use.
Handheld game consoles - The NGage showed how well that works. The iPhone has more promise but still can't offer what regular portable consoles have to offer. Like a d-pad. Any game that doesn't rely on tilting for movement control (or has no need for movement control at all) feels extremely awakward on the iPhone and adding decent gaming controls is going to destroy its low profile. The "advantage" TFA cites (being able to connect to mobile networks) is no differentiating advantage either: The DSi does it, the PSP Go does it and the Pandora will do it.
Paper - Erm, no. Maybe they will take a bite out of print media (although I don't expect them to impact the book market nearly as much as eBook readers do) but they're hardly going to replace paper. Whether for quick notes or sketches, paper is still vastly superior to mobile phones and print books can be used in places where you wouldn't want to have your phone running all the time (or at all) like on a camping trip (you need to conserve battery charge) or in the bathtub (mobiles tend to take a lot more damage in hot, damp areas than paper does).
Thinking - Everything they attribute to mobile phones has been provided by ther technologies before; smartphones merely offer many of those things at once.
Most of what they said is nonsense and they forgot the most important one:
Money - Between the price of that shiny new high-end smartphone and the mandatory data plan, you notice that with a 40 USD wristwatch, a 20 USD alarm clock, a 50 USD MP3 player, a 30 USD landline phone, a 50 USD camera, a 150 USD netbook, a 150 USD handheld console and 200 USD worth of books, you still could've used phone booths for the next two years and paid less.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
What, you live somewhere where there are still phone booths? Where people still bother with wristwatches?
Oh, right, the US, isn't it?
There's no way handheld game consoles will be obsoleted by cell phones until one of the big console makers makes a handheld that's designed as a game console first and a phone second. Most gamers won't completely switch over to something that's all touch screen or uses cell phone buttons to play (N-gage, anyone?)
The root problem that will make this prediction fail is that all those things use power. The more you make that causes the user to use the device constantly, the harder it will be to keep the thing charged up enough to make phone calls.
The cake is a pie
Sometimes I'm in an environment where camera phones aren't allowed so the available payphones are handy. Also, when I was poor, I couldn't afford a cell phone, they're still much more expensive than land lines. I bet there are still poor people out there in that situation. I know I used payphones all the time.
I would still use them just to avoid having phone records of the call... for no particular reason.
Furries make the internet go.
I'll take a deep game where ever I can find one. It's that these games are not really possible on a phone with no buttons.
Are you aware that you're calling Kirby Canvas Curse, Planet Puzzle League, and other DS games that can be played with only the stylus not deep?
In theory, you can hook up to 127 gamepads to a PC (one per usb port)
Which doesn't help if the game you want to play allows the user to select only one of these 127 gamepads. Too many major label PC games are developed under the assumption of a separate computer for each player on a LAN or on the Internet, and families have a harder time affording four gaming PCs than one console, one TV, and three spare gamepads.
and almost all graphics cards made in the last few years (even my old Geforce 4MX) have TV-Out ports.
I checked Best Buy, and a lot of the PCs for sale there didn't even have a graphics card; instead, the demo unit had the monitor plugged into a VGA port connected to integrated graphics.
I play Pro Evolution Soccer and many emulators with my brother and friends.
What emulators, and what games in those emulators?
When I'm refereeing a game of football (soccer to you American types ;-), running a half marathon, doing a biathlon or out hiking in the mountains and my cellphone becomes more convenient than wristwatches, I'll tell you.
My wristwatches need to be:
a) robust
b) waterproof/mudproof
c) convenient to use without needing to reach anywhere with my hands (ever tried taking something out of your pocket cycling up/downhill?
Also, in the case of refereeing, I run two watches for redundancy purposes: taking two cellphones on the field sounds plain silly.
Couldn't stand the weather
I'm from New Zealand, and plenty of phones over here don't display the time when out of coverage. It's not only the old CDMA phones either. I have also always had Nokias, all of which will display the time when out of coverage, but plenty of other brands do not.
Like most people, I have a wireless phone that tells me the time, but I wear a blue-tooth so I don't HAVE to fish it out of my pocket to look at it when I need it.
Besides being convenient, a good watch is fun to wear and looks good. If watches are falling out of favor its because the average Walmart plastic watch is just junk. I love watches, but the choices today seem to be plastic crap, or $3000 mechanical marvels.
So I favor mechanical/electric geek watches. Mostly vintage Accutron watches, The ones that ran on a 360hz electric tuning fork. Also, the occasional digital from when digital meant expensive.
The TI digitals are retro antiques, and the Accutrons were the most accurate watches in the world pre quartz. More reliable than a high end mechanical chronograph. The first one, the Accutron 214. This movement had a history with the space program, and there were 214 based timing mechanisms in the Apollo capsule, and some early satellites.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2622/3909134560_9fb9ea18e6_b.jpg
And the same type of "tuning fork" watch updated for 1973, still working perfectly,
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3661/3608838339_bf1c040e17_b.jpg
Lastly, some vintage LEDs, which never seem to go 100% out of style.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2471/3864049434_b03901cd02_b.jpg [flickr.com]
you said "indie developers who want to develop a local multiplayer game are screwed". They're not, users just have to buy the gamepads, just like with a console (none of my consoles came with more than one gamepad).
People already own consoles. They don't already own HTPCs; instead, the PC and the TV are often in separate rooms. So each indie developer that self-publishes for the PC would have to persuade customers to buy not only a $19.95 game but also a $429 computer[1] and a $40 SDTV adapter just for one game. If the major labels also published AAA games designed for gaming HTPCs, it would be easier for a home user to justify buying a gaming HTPC to play indie games, but they don't. ObTopic: Likewise, if there aren't a lot of major label games for an Android phone, it'll be tough to convince gamers to buy one instead of an iPhone.
VGA to TV Converter: $0.99
From the page you linked: "Only works with VGA cards that have TV-Out functionality through the VGA connector. Check your Video Card manual to make sure that your VGA card has TV-Out capability." I researched this cable before when another Slashdot user told me about it. But this cable does not do any signal conversion; instead, it assumes that the video card is outputting SDTV on one of the pins. Some video cards are capable of this, but given the negative reviews I read for a cable nearly identical to the one you linked, popular integrated graphics chipsets are not.
if you can afford a HDTV, you probably can afford a non-integrated graphics card as well)
What laptop computers support non-integrated graphics cards?
[With my HTPC and emulators, I use] Usually N64 or Genesis games I can't find on auction sites
These games are still copyrighted. True, there are authorized emulators that come with ROMs, such as Midway Arcade Treasures, but Project 64 and Kega Fusion are most commonly used with ROMs downloaded from the Internet. Makers of gaming HTPCs aren't going to advertise their products for use with infringing copies of copyrighted games for fear of retaliation from a trade organization representing the games' copyright owners.
[1] Price from Dell.com for a Dell Inspiron slim PC with a discrete card and no monitor.
One of the key things this article missed is wallets. We will soon have digital wallets on cell phones that will store all of our identity and financial credentials (with exceptional security against fraudulent transactions).
When "smart phones" rival wristwatches in battery life, we'll talk
One day you will pay for things--any things--with your phone. It's a technical reality today, there just hasn't been that "aha" moment yet. Throw in a little infrastructure and an industry organization to coordinate standards for exchanging data and there you go.
Take your iphone to walmart, load up a cart. Go to a checkout and plug in a data cable/wave near a bluetooth scanner while running a payment app. Confirm the transaction and amount with a button on your screen. Your purchase shows up as a charge on your next "phone" bill or, after the process gets streamlined further and phone companies get in to the credit business more directly, it is charged to your bank account more directly.
I want my Cowboyneal
www.eye.fi
What copier did you use to copy your authentic Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Game Pak to your computer so that you could install it on your Windows Mobile phone?
I'd think any true geek out there would appreciate the mechanical complexity of a quality watch (read: not quartz).
I do. They are amazing bits of engineering and manufacturing prowess. It does not logically follow though that I want to wear a wristwatch because of that admiration.
I have a few watches for the rare occasions when I actually need to carry a watch. Ordinarily I find a wristwatch more annoying than useful, so most of the time they are in a drawer somewhere.
A Rolex is a rather accurate and reliable pretentiousness detector.
You get over it in a couple of weeks to a month.
Maybe you did. I tried wearing a wristwatch on many occasions for significant lengths of time (months). Rarely needed to know what time it was THAT immediately and the wrist strap never stopped annoying me. Tried numerous different watches and straps to no avail. I have a few wristwatches for the rare occasions when I wristwatch is necessary (athletic events mostly) but it's just not something I need or want to wear.
I think the fancy watches are very cool bits of engineering and manufacturing but I also think the people that actually buy high end wristwatches are generally pretentious. Nobody buys a Rolex because it is a nice bit of engineering; they buy it to show off the size of their wallet.
Wear a stainless steel backed watch - it won't give you a rash.,
That depends on the alloy. Many stainless alloys have nickel in them and people do react to those alloys. Better watchmakers are undoubtedly aware of this and just avoid using the alloys that contain nickel.
My wife happens to be a dermatopathologist and I just now confirmed this with her. If anyone would be an authoritative source on this matter, she would.
My phone was free. Same with my last phone and the one before that.
Unless your phone was a gift it wasn't free. You paid for it, just not up front.
My iPhone camera sux by MY standards, and I'm no photographer. I use it when I want to take pictures on the spur of the moment because I don't carry a real camera around with me. But if I was PLANNING to take pictures, I'd rather do it with a real camera, not the POS built into my phone.
My phone might do a lot of things decently, but it doesn't do any of them well enough to "obsolete" special purpose equipment.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
But it has the exact same result it just saves me the technical difficulty of using and buying a copier.
17 USC 117 states that the owner of a copy is allowed to make other copies and adaptations (in this case the ROM dump) necessary for using the program on a machine (in this case a PC with an emulator) but not to redistribute such copies and adaptations.
Also it is illegal either way. Having a rom even if you created it yourself by format-shifting your real game is illegal, sorry.
U.S. courts in Sony v. Universal and RIAA v. Diamond disagree with you.
Also the game is 15years old, the system 20 so again I don't care.
That's still far less than 95.
Media that is out of print doesn't in anyway count as stealing since it is impossible to buy from the creators.
Hand out burned copies of Song of the South (or for that matter anything in Disney's vault) and see how long it takes Disney to be on your behind.
I am using a product that while illegal also has no possible legal way to purchase.
For one thing, SMRPG is on Wii Shop Channel. Even if it weren't, a copyright statute in effect where I live, 17 USC 109, states that it's not an infringement for someone on eBay to resell a lawfully made Super NES Game Pak as a "used copy".
Ever thought the law might just be wrong?
Commercial application repositories for mobile phones can't very well operate on the basis of "the law might be wrong".
I have not heard of and cannot find a single case of a person being charged for possessing roms on the planet.
Not necessarily possessing but distributing, or "inducing" distribution. If a company markets a device as ideal for emulation, the company is "inducing" the use of emulators. MGM v. Grokster .
I dunno... Now that I have a cell phone, I have different priorities when I buy a watch. I no longer care about features or accuracy; I just want a watch that is indestructible and will last forever. As a result, my current watch has a metal band and uses no battery.
I also don't get the whole replacing alarm clock thing... Sometimes I use my phone as an alarm clock, but I still prefer my real alarm clock.
No, I will not work for your startup
Instead of squeezing Netbook/Laptop features into Mobile Phones, why not integrate Mobile Phone in Netbooks/Laptops?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga