[Discuss] [OT] iOS from a power user's perspective

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

John Abreau wrote:
> Rich Pieri wrote:
>> Tom Metro wrote:
>>> I would bet that it is far more probable that 5 years from now tablets
>>> will have Kinect-like hardware built-in, than Microsoft will still be
>>> making Surface tablets.
>
>> I don't foresee it. It'll be nice if it happens but I'm not holding my
>> breath about it.
> 
> I believe Tom's main point was skepticism about Microsoft committing to
> Surface tablets long-term.

Actually both.

It's a safe bet that Microsoft won't be into (manufacturing) tablets in
5 years.

It's a reasonable bet that mobile devices will have gesture recognition
by 5 years.


Rich Pieri wrote:
> Oh, it's not that I don't expect the technology to happen. It's that I
> don't expect mobile device makers to take it seriously enough to spend
> the money and time developing a one-handed version that works at a
> distance of 6 inches.

Could be.

But there are some factors in its favor. One is that the technology will
be pretty cheap pretty soon. Already the Kinect hardware probably has an
OEM cost under $50, which if it could be made small enough, would be
cheap enough to build into a $600 phone. The rapid developments in
miniature cameras on phones only feeds into this.

The other factor is the desire to come up with alternatives to touch
screen interaction. You see lots of work being done on voice recognition
now. But that will level off, as there are many contexts in which voice
doesn't work (i.e. when in a meeting; or for precision movement). So
there is good motivation to develop some alternative. Maybe it'll be
Kinect-like gesture recognition. Maybe something else.


On a side note, Rich Pieri mentioned that imprecise touch screens were
the end of hand writing recognition. Oddly enough just yesterday I was
watching an old episode of "This Week in Google" (from late August I
think) and they showed a demo video from a cell vendor (Samsung maybe)
where they were showing off how you could enter text by writing with
your finger. It was only short words (that took up the entire screen),
which where used in conjunction with auto-complete to perform a search.
Not true full-text entry. (One use case was a person walking on a
treadmill, where the motion made hitting keys on a screen keyboard
difficult.)

Also, Samsung has their line of Note phones and tablets which use a
stylus, and supposedly higher resolution digitizer. I bet it has hand
writing recognition.

 -Tom


-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/