I think its more like 5months. I do get it.. they are driving amazing innovation, and exceptional polish that everyone else will have to copy. But they will catch up, because its fundamentally about engineering - its better when you decouple hardware and software.
Most people wont pay for the difference of that extra level of superb integration that Apple offer.. the gap will close as there is so much volume and competition in the mobile and tablet space.
I actually think we are close to optimizing the mobile form factor.
What other hw features could you have on these devices.. [natural spoken language translation in realtime?] its all software from here on up.
What other hw features could you have on these devices.
Solar panels, e.g. Apples's patent for a screen integrated one, contactless inductive charging, pixelqi style sunlight readable display, e-ink style display which uses no power to keep a static display, display privacy with a display that can change it's viewing angle right down, make the back optionally touch sensitive as well, if you remember Doc. Brown from back to the future had some augmented reality binoculars, you could speculate about possible camera improvements which would aid that kind of thing such as infra red sensitivity to help apps locate people in scenes, haptic feedback more than just 'vibrate', and again very speculatively dynamic changing materials - e.g. If the handheld device could change texture, kinetic charging, pico projectors, pressure sensitivity both on the screen and on the device generally, someone made a nice hack to wear a magnetic ring so they could gesture above their phone and sense it using the compass - theremins can do similar using some kind of em field distortion, could a device integrate anything like that without a huge aerial?
I'm not sure if you're saying there's nothing else we could put in a device now in hardware terms, or if there's nothing else interesting we could put in a handheld device ever, or just nothing we could put in that a consumer would want, but I'm not convinced for any interpretation.
its better when you decouple hardware and software.
Im saying theres not much more we could put on a mobile device that is a game changer [and yes I entertained the tricorder idea with a DNA sampler & diagnosis, but I guess thats out of range for a decade ]
Agreed longer battery life has room for improvement, but would it change usage, given current devices can be used for 4 or 8 hours already?
re decoupling hw / sw : Ill give an explanation, rather than a citation :
We write in high level languages that use logical abstractions, not machine specific ones. These can be ported across various hardware platforms, and thus reused, saving work.
I think everyone prefers to have the same HTML5/javascript api work on all devices.
Most people wont pay for the difference of that extra level of superb integration that Apple offer.. the gap will close as there is so much volume and competition in the mobile and tablet space.
I actually think we are close to optimizing the mobile form factor.
What other hw features could you have on these devices.. [natural spoken language translation in realtime?] its all software from here on up.