last post<\/a>, I am very much of a mind to look forward than back. What is ahead for 2012 and beyond? It is very dangerous to stare into a crystal ball and many people, who were far better informed than I, have looked foolish in hindsight. Having read that a supervolcano in Europe, which is overdue for an eruption, is stirring [which would be an interesting bit of divine lateral thinking to solve the Euro crisis], perhaps I am looking at the future primarily for Asia and the Americas, but I want to ponder how computers will be evolving …<\/p>\nAfter the sad death of Steve Jobs last year, many people were keen to catalog the list of Apple’s failed products: Lisa and Newton being good examples. As that company is considered to be about as visionary as you can get, and they can get it wrong, I do not stand a chance. But I have been wondering about the “post-PC” era.<\/p>\n
Over the holiday, my marketing\/visionary skills were put to the test. I was told about a product: someone had the idea that they could make computer mice in the shape of classic cars and sell them to executives. My immediate thought was that this was a non-starter; who would pay good money for a mouse in a silly shape that would be less comfortable to use? The answer was that millions of these things were sold. I guess this explains why I have yet to make my fortune.<\/p>\n
When I got over having been shown that I fail at being a visionary, I started thinking about human\/computer interaction in the general sense. For most of us, this interaction is a combination of keyboard and mouse for input and screen and speakers for output. Although I am an enthusiastic iPad users, I still feel slightly lost with out a mouse with a “real” computer, as I have had such rodent company for over 20 years. Younger people seem to get along fine with track-pads on laptops, so other options are possible.<\/p>\n
There is much talk [mostly from Microsoft] of “surface computing”, where the screen of the computer is a large surface that may be the top of a desk. Interaction with the software is largely by means of [multi-] touch and gestures. You do not have to look far beyond Star Trek [TNG onwards] to get the idea. Most people say that they need a keyboard too. Perhaps they do, but I am sure that much improved voice recognition could change that. Longer term, I am sure some kind of direct brain hook-up will be even better, but I am getting ahead of myself …<\/p>\n
To me, there is very little difference – other than size\/area – between a surface computer and a tablet [like an iPad]. In fact, Windows 8 seems to be targeted at both, so perhaps that view is common. I think there is an interesting possibility for the interaction between such devices. For example, maybe I am sitting at my desk [i.e. my surface computer] and I want to show a document to a colleague. In the old days, I would simply have taken a paper document over to them to discuss. This seemed a very natural way to interact. So called “modern” ways – emailing a copy to them – do not really feel the same. So, maybe I could simply slide the document off of my surface onto my tablet and carry that to the meeting. That would seem very intuitive. Is anyone doing that? [Other than in the Avatar movie – I knew I had seen it somewhere in the future.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Year greetings! As I mentioned in my last post, I am very much of a mind to look forward…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[350,302,429],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ipad","tag-off-topic","tag-steve-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10027,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions\/10027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}