Flutterby™! : Personal computing again 2009-09-14 21:02:05.607184+00

Personal computing again

2009-09-14 21:02:05.607184+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

I have all sorts of complaints about the iPhone, but recently I've been playing with some other touch screen devices, and I'm being dragged in to an epiphany: Within a few years we will consider devices which have their own touch-screen display to be klunky and anachronistic. The interface to our gadgets will be a bluetooth or wifi enabled device of roughly the form factor of our current cell phones.

Roughly Drafted has some musings on this front based on some features in the iPhone 3.0 OS, which I was searching for and will investigate further.

I'd also add that i don't need 480Mbps wireless USB, a Bluetooth interface to a slow USB 1.1 host for $5 in quantity would ... Uh ... Excite me.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-14 23:47:35.986092+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger

I'd agree that this (bluetooth-enabled interfaces to hw) is the where we're going. I'm pretty sure it won't be Apple that takes us there, though. They might start the movement, they might make a ton of money off of it -- but whatever they come up with likely won't be the standard, platform-independent thing we all use in 15-20 years.

Mark, agreed, I think there'll be a couple of platforms duking it out before (or even if) a "Windows" for the handheld device evolves.

I've just been playing with some devices with resistive touch screens recently, and I've realized that the iPhone's capacitive touch screen has completely redefined how I expect to interact with a touch screen, and that several of these devices are specific purpose packages for something that iPhone can be a general replacement for.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-17 04:01:17.53014+00 by: radix [edit history]

I have touchscreens (FUZE smartphone, 2nd gen itouch) and like them, but I've been thinking that datagloves and a hand-location system would enable a gesture-based interface (perhaps ASL could be a key component) that would bring new efficiencies to HCI (a gesture would communicate a word/idea rather than a keystroke communicating a letter/subportion of word/idea).

Which is not to say that a personal touchscreen interface may not be an economically realistic stopping point along the way. I've been shopping for a good portable bluetooth keyboard a bit more actively of late.