Before the iPhone came onto the scene, people were still using cans and string for communications. Thanks, Apple.

most humans are completely unable to predict anything. at best they are able to predict incremental changes which have trended for years. CPUs will continue to get faster. Hard Drives will continue to get bigger. More memory.

But predicting discontinuous shifts is very hard. How often have we heard:

SSD will completely replace spinning hard drives. (the price difference between traditional HD and SSD continues to be huge. but we can finally run a PC on SSD. as long as you dont have any porn or video.)

The Segway will change the way we build cities!!! Reality, yawn niche product, banned in some cities. lol.


So my predictions? These cover the next 50 years.
The people who continue to predict the coming end of the world will continue to be completely wrong.
There will not be mass starvation.
There will not be mass deaths from global warming. (notice that I didnt say that their wont be global warming)
There will not be fusion power plants. (this is the one I am most likely to be wrong on)
We will not run out of energy.

Things will stay mostly the same with continuous improves.
Cheaper, smaller, faster

/I also predict that people who disagree will do so via personal attacks

CitizenTed: That was a very revealing read, subby. Good work.
Here is where the idiotic writer betrays his own logic:

"The company (Apple) didn't invent the personal computer or MP3 player, but it was among the pioneers of both products. Yet there is no shortage of phones out there. There are already big companies that dominate the space, all of whom will defend their turf. That means Apple will have to fight hard for every sale."

So what he is saying is that Apple has repeatedly come late into new hardware markets and trounced the competition with new, innovative product designs, but that somehow - just 'because' - they won't be able to reproduce this trick in the handset market. Because...well...because.

What a farking idiot. This guy should never write another word again.

we could be so lucky. the people who predict are never punish for being massively wrong. Look at the ratings companies and greece. none of the predicted the fall of greece and yet, yawn, they continue to make predicts about other countries?
Why would we trust or believe anything that they say?? They clearly do not have the data necessary to rate countries.

i love this gem:

If column inches and airtime guaranteed commercial success, Apple would already have a global hit on its hands. For the past week, it has been impossible to open a newspaper or look at a Web site without reading something about the shiny new phone.

what kind of asshole mockingly pretends that strong positive news exposure doesn't correlate with increased sales?

Lando Lincoln: Before the iPhone came onto the scene, people were still using cans and string for communications. Thanks, Apple.

right, because that was the iphone's great innovation: telephony. :rolleyes:

CitizenTed: That was a very revealing read, subby. Good work.
Here is where the idiotic writer betrays his own logic:

"The company (Apple) didn't invent the personal computer or MP3 player, but it was among the pioneers of both products. Yet there is no shortage of phones out there. There are already big companies that dominate the space, all of whom will defend their turf. That means Apple will have to fight hard for every sale."

So what he is saying is that Apple has repeatedly come late into new hardware markets and trounced the competition with new, innovative product designs, but that somehow - just 'because' - they won't be able to reproduce this trick in the handset market. Because...well...because.

What a farking idiot. This guy should never write another word again.

i think his logic was generally sound, i didn't believe that apple, or any company for that matter could come in with a consumer oriented smart phone and get the amount of sales they got. now 46% of US subscribers have a smart phone. I did not think in a slow economy the average person would pay the extra price for the device, and the increased monthly fee for the data.

I figured they'd become a good competitor in the space, but corporations wouldn't buy them because they didn't have a good way to tether back to the enterprise. But instead corporations dropped their phone plans, in part because of new IRS rules that would tax personal calls/texts to a work related device.

What surprised me the most was the willingness for people to spend that much more on their phone, and to spend that much on teenagers phones.

FlashHarry: Lando Lincoln: Before the iPhone came onto the scene, people were still using cans and string for communications. Thanks, Apple.

right, because that was the iphone's great innovation: telephony. :rolleyes:

Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks for Angry Birds, Apple.

FlashHarry: Lando Lincoln: Before the iPhone came onto the scene, people were still using cans and string for communications. Thanks, Apple.

right, because that was the iphone's great innovation: telephony. :rolleyes:

the iPhones, like pretty much everything apple has done was to change who these things were marketed to.

mp3 players were marketed towards geeks with mp3 collections. Apple got the RIAA involved and marketed a product to everybody.

smartphones had been around for years, apple cleaned up the design, took out the bloat, and marketed it to everybody.

that is their deal, take devices typically associated with the gadget crowd, and turn them into consumer electronic devices. Add new features over time, but keep the guts the same.

king_nacho: smartphones had been around for years, apple cleaned up the design, took out the bloat, and marketed it to everybody.

and eliminated the keyboard for an infinitely configurable touchscreen. but, hey, no biggie, right?

what did smartphones look like before the iPhone? the blackberry, right? what do they look like now? they all look like iphones.

the iPhone was a watershed device. like it or not (and i know most of you don't like it), it represented a sea change in mobile communications.

GAT_00: FlashHarry: what did smartphones look like before the iPhone? the blackberry, right? what do they look like now? they all look like iphones.

You can take my keyboard from my cold dead hands. Can't stand the touchscreen keyboard.

i wasn't a fan of touchscreens until i got swype on my android phone. after a little fine-tuning, it is so much faster and easier than thumb-typing

GAT_00: FlashHarry: what did smartphones look like before the iPhone? the blackberry, right? what do they look like now? they all look like iphones.

You can take my keyboard from my cold dead hands. Can't stand the touchscreen keyboard.

i went from a razr to an iphone, so i never had a blackberry-like keyboard. i can see how switching would be difficult, but starting out on a touchscreen was a breeze. and i can "touch-type" on my ipad almost as fast as on my regular laptop keyboard.

namatad: most humans are completely unable to predict anything. at best they are able to predict incremental changes which have trended for years. CPUs will continue to get faster. Hard Drives will continue to get bigger. More memory.

But predicting discontinuous shifts is very hard. How often have we heard:

SSD will completely replace spinning hard drives. (the price difference between traditional HD and SSD continues to be huge. but we can finally run a PC on SSD. as long as you dont have any porn or video.)

Having a 250G SSD in my laptop, and seeing the performance difference, I will predict SSD will replace spinning hard drives for internal storage...

But you're right about prediction. There was a good freakonomics podcast on the subject. On of the interesting facts was that people that predicted rare events, were less accurate overall on average.

FlashHarry: what did smartphones look like before the iPhone? the blackberry, right? what do they look like now? they all look like iphones.

The better smartphones have flip-out keyboards.

FlashHarry: king_nacho: smartphones had been around for years, apple cleaned up the design, took out the bloat, and marketed it to everybody.

and eliminated the keyboard for an infinitely configurable touchscreen. but, hey, no biggie, right?

what did smartphones look like before the iPhone? the blackberry, right? what do they look like now? they all look like iphones.

the iPhone was a watershed device. like it or not (and i know most of you don't like it), it represented a sea change in mobile communications.

I wouldn't call it infinitely configurable, it was a screen with icons, and then apps. the touch screen keyboard was something they licensed. the windows mobile 6 phone I had before the iPhone came out had a full screen and a touch screen keyboard, it did have a slide out keyboard, but apple certainly wasn't the first with the full touch screen. And yes it worked without a stylus.

I'm not saying what apple did was bad, just that they paved a way for fast advancement by opening up an untouched market segment.

The same thing happened with the personal computer, somebody has to figure out that these things can be marketed to the home user, and that is when the advancement quickly comes.

Microsoft and Apple figured out if they could get the computer to be easy to use without having to be a programmer or IT guy, people at home would by them.

Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Apple figured out that if you made the smartphone cool and easy to use, and easy to get apps for, then people would buy them, this is a very important step in the process, when you turn this stuff into consumer devices, they get better for everybody.

namatad: most humans are completely unable to predict anything. at best they are able to predict incremental changes which have trended for years. CPUs will continue to get faster. Hard Drives will continue to get bigger. More memory.

But predicting discontinuous shifts is very hard. How often have we heard:

SSD will completely replace spinning hard drives. (the price difference between traditional HD and SSD continues to be huge. but we can finally run a PC on SSD. as long as you dont have any porn or video.)

The Segway will change the way we build cities!!! Reality, yawn niche product, banned in some cities. lol.


So my predictions? These cover the next 50 years.
The people who continue to predict the coming end of the world will continue to be completely wrong.
There will not be mass starvation.
There will not be mass deaths from global warming. (notice that I didnt say that their wont be global warming)
There will not be fusion power plants. (this is the one I am most likely to be wrong on)
We will not run out of energy.

Things will stay mostly the same with continuous improves.
Cheaper, smaller, faster

/I also predict that people who disagree will do so via personal attacks

SSD will replace spinning hard drives, the price had dropped considerably over the last few years, we are seeing 300g SSD prices coming close to where Fibre Channel spinning drive prices were just a few years ago for the same size.

king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

CitizenTed: What a farking idiot. This guy should never write another word again.


That totally violates the First Amendment, but....um.....I'm okay with this.

FlashHarry: they all look like iphones.

Someone else made rectangular phones with rounded corners? How dare they rip off Apple's totally original design that was in no way similar to a previous product?

impaler: king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

in the early/mid 90s when most people were using AOL or some other service, MS stuck a TCP/IP stack and a dial up networking stack directly into the OS. They also included the IE in 1995, which i think was the first "free" web browser. Even Mosiac had a cost for commercial use. with the browser built in, and networking built in, you could get much cheaper internet from a local ISP, and many more people starting jumping on.

king_nacho: impaler: king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

in the early/mid 90s when most people were using AOL or some other service, MS stuck a TCP/IP stack and a dial up networking stack directly into the OS. They also included the IE in 1995, which i think was the first "free" web browser. Even Mosiac had a cost for commercial use. with the browser built in, and networking built in, you could get much cheaper internet from a local ISP, and many more people starting jumping on.

Yep, winsock was a revolution. It was like being locked in a house for years, and finally getting to go "outside".

GreenAdder: FlashHarry: they all look like iphones.

Someone else made rectangular phones with rounded corners? How dare they rip off Apple's totally original design that was in no way similar to a previous product?



give me a break - the vast majority of non-blackberry smartphones have iphone-like form factors now.

CitizenTed: "The company (Apple) didn't invent the personal computer or MP3 player, but it was among the pioneers of both products. Yet there is no shortage of phones out there. There are already big companies that dominate the space, all of whom will defend their turf. That means Apple will have to fight hard for every sale."

Meh, apparently this guy is an idiot... but I thought the same thing at the time. I had a Windows phone, and barely anyone else did.

Apple could have failed easily.

king_nacho: impaler: king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

in the early/mid 90s when most people were using AOL or some other service, MS stuck a TCP/IP stack and a dial up networking stack directly into the OS. They also included the IE in 1995, which i think was the first "free" web browser. Even Mosiac had a cost for commercial use. with the browser built in, and networking built in, you could get much cheaper internet from a local ISP, and many more people starting jumping on.

I was talking more about "made it easy to use" part.
Link

redpanda2: The article makes two assumptions: 1) that it would cost 500-600 dollars (which I think it did at first until Apple realized nobody was buying them at that price) and 2) that it would just be a phone with an mp3 player rather than a platform. If those assumptions had been correct, it probably wouldn't have taken off.

I almost forgot. For quite a while, there was NO 3rd party development for the iPhone. There literally was "no app for that."

FlashHarry: give me a break - the vast majority of non-blackberry smartphones have iphone-like form

And a significant chunk of them had it before the iPhone. I've got an old Windows Mobile phone that predates the iPhone by several years which has the same basic rectangle with rounded corners design. Pretty much any smart phone that didn't have the keyboard below the screen fits that form factor.

FTFA Instead of lugging around a phone for making calls, an MP3 player for listening to music, and a Blackberry for checking your e- mail, you can do all three on one device. Even better, you only need one charger.

If the idiot had only paid attention to what he was writing he would have realized why he was on the wrong side.

lemurs: king_nacho: SSD will replace spinning hard drives, the price had dropped considerably over the last few years, we are seeing 300g SSD prices coming close to where Fibre Channel spinning drive prices were just a few years ago for the same size.

SSD densities are limited by lithography. Although they've reached a point of being good enough for many consumers, anyone with lots of data will always get better bang-for-buck with platter drives. So just as spinning hard drives haven't completely replaced tape, SSD won't replace all spinning hard drives - it'll just take up its own place in the great storage continuum.

Maybe not all, but probably most at some point. We are at 4TB for spinning disk, 800gb for SSD. Faster spinning disk are just hitting the 1TB point. Big Data will probably be on spinning disk for a while, but fast data is moving to SSDs. We've got part of our SQL Cluster on SSD now, and are starting to move analytic engines to SSD as well.

impaler: king_nacho: impaler: king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

in the early/mid 90s when most people were using AOL or some other service, MS stuck a TCP/IP stack and a dial up networking stack directly into the OS. They also included the IE in 1995, which i think was the first "free" web browser. Even Mosiac had a cost for commercial use. with the browser built in, and networking built in, you could get much cheaper internet from a local ISP, and many more people starting jumping on.

I was talking more about "made it easy to use" part.
Link

Compared to what was there before it was a massive improvement.