On 03/20/2013 05:44 PM, Ralf Corsepius
wrote:
On
03/20/2013 09:32 PM, Temlakos wrote:
On 03/20/2013 03:58 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 03/20/2013 12:50 PM, Gordon Messmer
wrote:
There will continue to be high-end
workstations with whatever features
you want that aren't in mobile devices,
Like keyboards big enough for touch typing?
Think that's the stuff of science fiction?
Well, hold onto your seat,
because voice command is already a feature of most smartphones
Nothing new - It already was available for PCs 10years+ ago.
that use
the i- and Android OS and, I presume, the WinPhone OS, too. From
command
to dictation is a step that I predict will take not more than
five years
to take.
That's what Dragon told us 10years+ ago ... They have been proven
wrong. "Command to dictation" is a _huge_ step, nobody so far has
been able to overcome.
Now will someone tell me again that
smartphones will never replace
laptops?
Yes. They might be able to replace laptops for those folks who
don't need much more than a mediaplayer/phone/webbrowser, but for
anybody else, esp. those in the professional field, smartphones
are no alternative to desktops.
What am I missing here?
Try to insert a 4 TB HD, try to extend its RAM, try to replace the
CPU, replace the battery, try to ... ? You say, you don't need
this - Likely, today. ... 2 years ahead, you likely would want to
be able to do so, instead of having to throw away your smartphone
;)
Ralf
Ah, but I never said a smartphone would carry terabytes of added
storage. The pundits are saying that you "won't need all that
storage." All your data will stay on The Cloud, and you will access
it with a username and password, same as you do for any subscription
service today. You will create and save documents on The Cloud, with
a back-end word-processing application. Then you will send e-mail
for a short document, or if it's much longer, you'll send a
read-only link to your book-length manuscript that will stay on The
Cloud, at your designated directory, and you will need your username
and password to get read-write access.
Turbo Tax for Business will go the way of Turbo Tax for individuals:
completely on-line. Smartphones might bring back the stylus, so you
can draw your cursive signature to attach to any document that needs
one. So you sign your tax return and send it to the IRS (or Inland
Revenue, or Der Finanzwaltungen der Länder, or whatever tax
office have you).
For really important documents, you print to the nearest print
device having a wireless connection to The Cloud. Typically, such a
printer will reside in the office of a local Notary Public or
Justice of the Peace, or in a courthouse or law office.
That's the vision. Now I realize that many of you simply can't
believe that things will ever come to that pass.
Now what else do you need 4 TB of storage for? The usual large file
is a video for a one-, two-, or three-hour motion-picture or
television program. The next size down is a music track. The idea
here is that everyone will subscribe to one of a handful of
services. Pay a fixed amount, say 20 USD or 15 EUR; get a link to
play a certain movie title, or album, to your smartphone wherever
you are, whenever you want. (And maybe 1 EUR or 1.3 USD for what we
call a "single" -- one track.) No more CD, DVD, Blu-ray, or other
optical medium. No more ripping.
Now the one thing the pundits have not addressed adequately is:
security. They define security strictly in terms of "accidental loss
of data." Against that, The Cloud is getting better every year. In
ten years, it might be well-nigh impervious.
And "accessory to copyright violation" will go away, if everyone now
subscribes to digital content, as I described above.
But: what about "unauthorized access to data"? And what about
"malicious destruction of data"? Maybe The Cloud can guard its
servers against brute-force erasure or corruption. But what about
the one who maliciously corrupts the user database, so suddenly The
Cloud forgets who you are? Or worse: hijacks your account so that
you can't even tell The Cloud who you are, and your data, finances,
etc. are in the hands of an impostor. Here in America we call that
"identity theft." (Identitätsdiebstahl)
And--I realize this is almost totally off topic, and beyond scope
for many of you, but I'll say it anyway--there are classes of
individuals who keep very sensitive data, in the form of
political broadsides or plans of preparation against economic and
social collapse, that they do not want known. Especially by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard, La Sureté
nationale, Der Bundeskriminalamt, Interpol, etc. I
think you can well imagine that members of that class of computer
users will feel threatened as they never felt threatened before. And
they won't be able to afford a "private Cloud."
OK--those are the two sides of the debate on whether mobile devices
will ever totally supplant laptops and desktops, and who would, and
who would not, want that change to happen. And those are the
issues I have seen raised, and that I have raised when no one else
did.
Temlakos