Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

[desiv]

I like having a real keyboard.

Yes, but frequently people like having real keyboards because the things they do have been designed with keyboards in mind....

As more and more work/time goes into the touch interface, people will find themselves wanting a real keyboard less and less.

I spend a LOT of time on real keyboards, but its either at work (business will be "desktop computer safe" for quite a while) or at home.. on my Amigas...  ;-)

I almost never use my PC anymore..

I use the laptop for watching Netflix and some Internet stuff, but if my tablet did Netflix I'd use the laptop less and less...

My wife loves taking pix of birds...  She's not a pro, but has a lot of fun..  She does all the cropping and such on her Dell Mini 9...  She loves that thing.  I can't get her to use the larger screen laptop for pix..

Comfortable Form Factor and mobility has been trumping power in our house, and I see that happening elsewhere..

PCs aren't going away, but I think the PC market isn't going to increase.....
The "mobile" market will increase..
Not sure if MS will be a player there tho.. I won't bet against them, but I can't see it with the products they've shown so far..

desiv

[desiv]

Yes, I suppose when literacy finally gasps its last and the alphabet is discarded as arcane devil-runes that distract us from the right and proper path of licensed media consumption, we won't need keyboards for much anymore...

Yep..
:-)

Looking at twitter, texting, and the general decline of our language in society..
That will also play a significant role...

That and voice to text and gesture recognition...

desiv

[desiv]

Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's really been a satisfactory substitute, doesn't bottleneck your text output by limiting it to your rate of coherent speech, and doesn't at all make you look like a goon for talking to an inanimate object...

You're right..
Because it hasn't been done properly so far, it never will be...
Good point..  ;-)

desiv

[desiv]

.. it imposes a bottleneck (rate of coherent speech) that's typically much more restrictive than the keyboard bottleneck (rate of precision typing) (unless you're a professional auctioneer or the Micro Machines guy,) and it's just a damn nuisance to the people around you

True, but I said initially that PCs will still have a place in business..
I'm talking non-business devices in general...
And for that audience, "text as quickly as they speak" would probably be more than fast enough...

Actually, that assumes someone doesn't come up with some type of verbal language shorthand, so to speak...
So people say partial phrases and the computers fill in the rest...

I'd laugh, but I can actually see that happening..

People walking around talking to their bluetooth headsets speaking truncated English stubs..

The whole text nightmare brought to speech...  



desiv

[desiv]

but how would you like to have the entire composition/revision process of your daughter's email to her school friends drifting down the hall

I grew up with lots of brothers / sisters..  That happened without voice-to-text.  ;-)

Reminds me too, when I saw my granddaughter entering her extra-credit homework via the Wiimote on our TV without any complaints or apparent issues, I realized that keyboards might not be the big selling point they used to be...

She had the option of using the laptop, but she was already on the Wii and it didn't bother her..

desiv