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Finally a podcast I can disagree with!
I do not think, in the neat future (5 years +) we will be getting rid of our portable electronics in favor of ubiquitous computing. Ask yourself this question - will we still have cell phones? If the answer is yes, why not carry your portable computing needs with you, instead of depending on a public resource which may or may not be available. This is directly analogous to the cell phone vs public pay-phone phenomena. Despite pay phones being relatively available, especially where people congregate, and also quite cheap, people preferred to pay $600 per year to carry their own device, on the off chance some-one wanted to phone them.
I think the "throw away device" scenario just reflects concerns regarding screen size. This may be solved by foldable screens or projection screens, which is technology which will be needed in any case to create cheap ubiquitous devices in any case.
I think how the future will work is that we will carry thin, small, light devices with fast WAN connectivity. These devices will definitely be our phones. They will also do everything else, because eventually we will get convergence right.
I believe the failure of PDA's to catch on has nothing to do with cost, as this did not stop cell phones from catching on, or more recently Ipods. Its simply that they did not make a sufficiently compelling case to the general population. WE know these devices can do anything that these other very successful devices can do, but we also know they do it poorly, with poor usability, and poor marketing. The focus remains on business, but Ipod's and cell phones are sold to consumers, and are very successful because of this. To sell to a consumer the devices should be task based, not application based. It should have persistent storage, and a lot of it. It should start with a page which says Music, Video, Contacts, Calender, Internet, IM, Navigation, etc, instead of the business focused today screen. The devices need to look good (and I'm not talking business sleek)
To end with, portable computing will end in convergence, and may still be ruled by what we call PDA's, but to sell to the general population they need to be done a whole lot better.
Surur
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