Intel486dx33 wrote:Keyboards and mice are dead.
It’s all about personnel assistants ( Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Watson ).
At this point I am almost certain the only thing you ever do with your computers is browse the web.
Meanwhile, in Real Life Land, by the time that technology becomes actually useful (but it will never be useful for basic I/O, no matter how well it knows what you want), "personal assistants" will be long gone, their parasitical faddiness having moved on to human-like androids, which I envision becoming pretty darn good in the coming years or decades.
I'm going to make the assertion that computers with physical keyboards and mice will NEVER die. Not even if a Star Trek like world happens. TNG got it wrong imo, touch screens will be there obviously but physical interfaces are definitely never going away. Why? It has to do, not with the path of technology, but something in the human psyche. We want to touch buttons. Besides that, they will always be the most reliable way to interface with a computer. It's pretty easy for a software glitch to knock out your voice assistant or touch keyboard.
As long as the free market still exists, we will determine where our technology goes, not the other way around. Just because you can make something doesn't mean people will buy it! Let's hope market decisions continue to be made by consumers and don't start moving towards government direction, which would be like every idiot-filled out-of-touch corporate marketing department wrapped into one, except they would have actual power.
But that is all more or less off topic.
More on the "lessons that should be learnt" topic:
Apple had better watch out. They are going to move to touchscreen keyboards pretty soon, replacing their failed butterfly keyboards. I predict it will be the beginning of the end for them (in the laptop market that is) unless they change their course. A big segment of their market is developers. If Apple stops making laptops with physical keyboards, there will be a mass exodus of the developer community, and probably many others, from Apple to other systems. Some other company will likely capitalize on this failure. Mark my words!
But they will go through with it, because they aren't actually basing their decisions on common sense and reality. They're just doing things for their own sake. It seems as if the marketing department is running the whole show now, and the poor engineers are just along for the ride.
Imagine if refrigerator companies decided that making the thinnest fridge ever was a worthy goal. They started making thinner and thinner fridges until finally, someone comes out with a millimeter thick refrigerator. "The thinnest and lightest fridge ever!" they say. "In addition, because we are so smart and innovative, we removed the handles on the doors in favor of a voice assistant. Simply say "Hey Fridgey, open the left-hand door!" and Fridgey opens the door for you! We've also innovated even more by removing the power cord. It's a wirelessly powered fridge now, and you have to buy our special external wireless power unit which is sold separately. But wait - just when you thought we'd innovated as much as we could, we also made the fridge connect to WiFi, so it can do awesome things like show you pictures of food in other people's fridges!"
And THIS is how companies die. In their rabid quest for "innovation" they trade real innovation and new things for unthinking variation on existing designs, eventually mangling good designs so much that they no longer resemble the original genius. Then some other company comes along with a product that is actually something new, different, useful, and that people will actually buy, and takes the market by storm. It's happened many, many times.
TL;DR it's the company's fault when they die, but the consumers are the executioners.
World's foremost 486 enjoyer.
