People Often Deride Game Changing Technology as 'a Toy' (medium.com) 282
Steven Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, has cataloged how often game-changing technologies have been derided as toys. Some of the things he has included in the list include a PC, C programming, PC networking, GUI, color screen, AI, and internet video. He writes: As many have recognized, when inventions and innovations first appear they are often (always) labeled as "toys" or "incapable" of doing "real work" or providing "real entertainment." Of course, many new inventions don't work out the way inventors had hoped, though quite frequently it is just a matter of timing and the coming together of a variety of circumstances. It can be said that being labeled a toy is necessary, but not sufficient, to become the next big thing. This got me thinking about all the conferences, trip reports, and new products I have looked at over many years. Sure turns out that a huge number of things in my own career were labeled as toys -- not just by me, but by an industry at large. Check out the list on Medium.
Windows... (Score:2, Insightful)
Was a toy, still is a toy, and always will be a toy.
Re:Windows... (Score:5, Funny)
And that's why most games are released on Windows!
Re: (Score:2)
Wait wait wait... Let's get this straight.
You're arguing that something can't be a toy, because it's used to play the most games?
That sound about right to you?
Re: (Score:2)
Parent said Windows was a toy, I agreed by saying most games are released on Windows.
I don't know why you read that in any other way.
Re:Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I first started programming, I dreamed of owning a Mac.
I couldn't afford one, so I got a PC and learned about programming DOS.
When Windows came around, I bristled when people would tell me "It's just a fad, a toy"
When first being exposed to linux, I told others "It's just a toy" and laughed that it had so much ground to make up to be anything like Windows.
When I switched to linux, I realized that it was Windows and the pre-OSX Mac that were toys.
I suppose I'll be saying the same thing again some day...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I had used Windows 3.x before, but it was complete shit and didn't give me the level of control, stability or compatibility that DOS did. Win9x offered one thing that I wanted: a web browser (Arachne was never very good). The first version of Windows that I installed on one of my own PCs was Windows 95, but I still had it set up to boot directly to DOS and I treated Windows as the DOS program that it was, starting it manually and quitting back to the DOS prompt when I was done. I continued to use Windows th
It's always like this (Score:3)
I suppose I'll be saying the same thing again some day...
Well, if you think about it, that's actually quite normal.
Most new disruptive technology are developped quickly, with a lots of iteration and experimentation.
(That comes more or less with the fact that they are trying something new, and iterative and rapid development are more or less a requirement).
Of course that means that the technology will necessarily go through a "minimum delivrable" phase.
It's not complete yet, it only contains the bare minimum to make a viable product.
Then of course, obviously, old
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Was a toy, still is a toy, and always will be a toy.
The geek has had about twenty years now to topple Windows as a desktop OS --- with damn little to show for it.
Windows in all its incarnations a modern, very capable, OS and it is past time the geek stopped pretending otherwise,
Re: (Score:2)
Linux was NEVER aimed at consumer desktop. It does topple the scientific workstation and server world for windows. I dont see NASA or JPL using windows on anything that matters except for Word, reports, and email.
Re: (Score:3)
Linux was NEVER aimed at consumer desktop.
It was so awesome in the 90s with a linux desktop, it was like having a 30k *nix workstation, but free. Well, and with less hardware to be sure, but for those of us targeting internet and database servers, it was the real thing.
The only shortcoming I've ever had with a linux workstation is in the past decade, with the "paradigm shifts." Get your toys away from my existing knowledge base, thank you. I'm back to XFCE and I'm no longer even willing to try new desktop-related things. Just show me lots of xterms
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
My first home computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 with Sinclair BASIC ROM and 2k RAM. No storage. Why? Because it was all I could afford with my neighborhood lawn mowing business. My family thought home computers were a "scam" to sell toys, that they were just for games and not useful for education. I quickly set to work programming "hang man," and I failed to succeed inside of 2k. The RAM had to hold both the working memory, and also the program source. When the RAM filled up, the thing simply locked up; re
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, that old chestnut. Never change, Slashdot.
Windows was probably the single biggest driver for the mass adoption of computers in the 90s that transitioned them from a work/niche device to a home must have.
Re: (Score:3)
Windows was probably the single biggest driver for the mass adoption of computers in the 90s that transitioned them from a work/niche device to a home must have.
No, games and the ability to work at home were the main factors. Personal computers were heading for mass adoption with or without Windows, with or without the IBM compatible PC. They were already taking off nicely with the likes of Amigas, Amstrads, BBC micros, Commodores etc.
They laughed at Columbus.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They laughed at Columbus - but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Re: (Score:2)
James Bond: "Go on, laugh. They laughed at Einstein."
Mata Bond: "Nobody laughed at Einstein!"
James Bond: "Well, they would have, if he'd carried on like this!"
(From the movie "Casino Royale")
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely. Do they list all the things touted as "game-changing" that turned out to be toys?
Re:They laughed at Columbus.... (Score:4, Insightful)
They were both stupid, silly, and lucky.
Columbus made several mistakes; such as miscalculating the size of the Earth without checking with existing sources; not finishing his trek across across Panama, which would have revealed the Atlantic (disproving his India theory); and being a crappy island governor, lacking people skills and sliding into wacky religious rants.
The boundary between "stupid" and "brave" is perhaps a blurry one.
Dear manishs, (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not news, this does not matter, this is not thought-provoking.
This is some suit's banal blog-spam.
Leave it on medium.com where it belongs, along with the other shite
your hobby is childish; mine is super-serious! (Score:5, Funny)
"People Often Deride Game Changing Technology as 'a Toy'"
That is ridiculous. Things that change games are properly classified as "sports equipment".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Silly boy, they're called mods. Sometimes expansion packs.
Clippy (Score:2, Offtopic)
After a sex change (not that there's anything wrong with that), he/she's back to annoy over a billion people as "Cortana" (que the ESPY awards) whether they are at work or not.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/15/5617234/clippy-replaces-cortana-in-windows-phone-easter-egg
Re: (Score:2)
Note that many of those things were toys when they were first introduced, and needed to increase in power and capability before competing in the real world.
[citation needed] (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is just a list of game-changing technologies coupled to unsourced assertions that these were derided as toys when they were first introduced.
I don't recall a widespread opinion that color monitors, sound cards, digital cameras, wireless networking or AI were "toys" when first introduced. If anything, I recall and endless stream of over-hyped articles about how they heralded the second coming of Christ.
Re: (Score:2)
Color and sound were considered toys for a long time. You only needed them to play games. Real work was done on Green/Amber Screens.
Wireless networking took some time and I remember when everyone was waiting for the year of the network when networking would be commonplace. Heck even cars and aviation where considered toys when new.
AI was over hyped as was 4G programing. Don't forget Prolog.
New technology is often unreliable and expensive when compared to new technology. It took over a decade for jet aircraf
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm ... I'm not that old, but I'm pretty fucking sure both sound and color pre-dated the use of computer screens. ;-)
Basic Math / Basic Logic (Score:2)
TFA causes a loss in IQ - Labels like "toy", "Fad", and even "Game changing" are simply labels. There are far more failures than successes. Basic mathematics should be all it takes to realize that the label makes no difference in the statement. Things labelled "toys" failed at roughly the same rate as things labelled "game changers", and "must have", and "earth shattering", etc.. etc...
Society ends up placing the proper label on things. The label does not make the product, the product makes the label.
Re: (Score:2)
I think a lot of it depends on perspective too. A lot of times you have entrenched old-timers (for certain values of old - they may not be old age-wise) who aren't able to see the value in new things when they're comfortable with their current things. I was a kid when color monitors were getting to be a big deal and I remember being blown away at high-resolution color graphics. I also remember plenty of people first getting into computers who obviously wanted color screens - some people speculate this may b
Not reciprocal ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some things which have been game changers have been dismissed as toys. Just because your shit was dismissed as being a toy doesn't make it a game changer either.
All that shit Microsoft said was a game changer but nobody gave a damn about? Not game changers.
The only thing which differentiates the two is reality of what has actually happened. But the history of people saying "this will revolutionize the world", or "in 5 years we'll all be doing X" -- well, the pundits seem to have a far worse track record of telling us what will happen than what won't.
How many of us have spent decades seeing the stuff the pundits and futurists said would change our lives, only to have them fizzle out into nothing?
If we stamped 100% of all ideas as "toy" or "garbage", I bet we'd be right 80% of the time. People suck at predicting the future.
Re:Not reciprocal ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Flying cars"
Re:Not reciprocal ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, being labelled a "toy" is not a predictor of future success. Indeed, being labelled a toy means there is little immediate application for it.
On the other hand, applications do appear which turn toys into game changers. So, it makes sense to evaluate toy-like creations for how readily they can be repurposed for something interesting.
Tabletop 3D printing? Toy. However, it is very clear how tabletop assembly of components can be extremely useful, if you can get around the challenges with the current iteration.
So, toys with a roadmap of improvements and applications ahead of them are probably worth looking at.
Re:Not reciprocal ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, strangely the author of TFA actually says "It can be said that being labeled a toy is necessary, but not sufficient, to become the next big thing."
I mean, that's a completely unsubstantiated and meaningless claim.
It's like the entire article is intended to make the bullshit argument that being labelled as a toy is a strong indicator you're onto something.
Being labelled a toy is neither necessary nor sufficient to become the next big thing. The entire article is drivel.
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, applications do appear which turn toys into game changers.
With a few exceptions, if you ask about the products on the list, "does this represent a new ways to promote porn, and/or sex" then you would see a successful product. But then humans are pretty creative in that department, so there may yet be hope for the 3D printer.
Re: (Score:2)
True. Definitely. Welcome to survivor bias. (Score:3)
Decades later, people will dig up the quotes about the new thing that has survived all these years, make a big story about it and feel smug about it. Many new things that actually turned out to be dumb (NeXT? Newton? That Timex+Microsoft chimera watch that downloaded data by the blinking[*] CRT montor? Plasma TV? HD-DVD? TurboPascal? FoxBase? Quattro spreadsheet? ), and the new things that were merely ahead of their time (geocities? myspace?) will be forgotten...
[*] Actual blinking, blinking not used as a euphemism
Re: (Score:2)
I lost the drivers for mine. Does anyone know where I can get new ones?
Re: (Score:2)
I would disagree with Newton. It was an idea ahead of its time, regardless of implementation. We are using the Great Grandson of Newton today, they are called iPads.
The technology wasn't ready for what Newton promised at that time.
Re:True. Definitely. Welcome to survivor bias. (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is very often the problem when people make these claims about being The Next Big Thing.
Often the technology IS just a toy, and is a proof of concept of something which might be useful in a bunch of years.
So, yeah, you have a seed of a kernel of a nugget of an idea which points to some Really Cool Things down the road. But your cobbled together demo which doesn't, at present, actually DO anything is a long way from changing the world, and you'll excuse us if we roll our eyes and think that you're getting a little ahead of yourself.
I mean, the flying car has been coming Real Soon Now since, what, the mid 60s? Nuclear fusion as cheap energy? Routine trips to space for all of us?
He, we want the cool new future. We're just seldom convinced when the guy in marketing tells us that he has it; because we pretty much know he's full of shit, and he will claim to have The Next Big Thing pretty much for everything he ever tries to tell us about.
By about the 10th time, you stop listening.
Re: (Score:2)
The articles also miss the other point, which is so many other inventions were just "toys" and never really amounted to anything at all. We tend to forget Failures, discarding them along the way.
What? (Score:2)
It's all a toy (Score:2)
Every new thing is a 'toy' because it's unproven in the real world. An academic paper, or lab experiment, or startup company doesn't mean much. And for every 'toy' that ends up being the next big thing there are thousands that are failures.
And that's why research, and experimentation, and startups are so important. It takes hundreds or thousands of failures to find one success story, but the benefits of that one success pay for the failures a thousand-fold.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Almost any first gen technology product is probably closer to "toy" than "game changer". If a version 2 makes it out the door, you may have something...
Flash storage a toy? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, sure... but (Score:3)
I looked down the entire list: well, yeah... they're all toys. What's wrong with that?
I love my toys. The fact that I happen to make a living using some of those toys is really immaterial.
Repitition (Score:2)
Repeat something that is true most of the time eventually it will be false. It is the reverse of the "even a broken clock is right twice a day".
The list on Medium suffers from selection bias. It is merely a list of times when calling a new technology a "toy" was false. It says nothing about the number of times saying "it's a toy" was true.
"Game changing" (Score:2)
It's possibly worth noting here that "Game changing" does not necessitate "good". For instance, Windows 8 could be said to have been "Game changing", given how big a turd it was.
Certainly changed Sinofsky's game, at any rate.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Deservedly so (Score:2)
Can you show me a game-changing technology that was completely productive on it's first try? Many times it takes a few software updates or even hardware generations to become productive. This is also why many businesses are reluctant to purchase a brand new product that doesn't have much of a history. Can't blame them for being skeptical when money is involved.
A Toy Never Played With Is Not A Toy At All. (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
I still think anything other than the Nomad is lame.
Toy = Fun (Score:5, Interesting)
If something is not fun to use, then it isn't a toy.
If something isn't fun to use, then it is likely to never go anywhere, no matter how much people think it is important to their personal product/use.
But merely being fun does not mean it is also useful.
To be a game changer, it must be useful, and also fun. Then people will use it. If it isn't fun, someone will find a better way.
Who is "People"? (Score:2)
It's usually correct (Score:3)
Many of the things that are labelled a "toy" really are. Others are until someone drops millions on R&D to make it useful.
"PC is a toy"
The PC in 1981 *was* a toy. With 16 kilobytes of memory, no concept of directories, and a ludicrous buy-in required, it was a niche machine. Lotus 1-2-3 was two years away. Obviously it was a toy with a great deal of potential, but it took a lot of time to get there.
“C programming language is a toy”
When I google this, it takes me to the article and no place else. If this quote is real, it wasn't a very popular opinion. By 1982, C had been used for Unix for a decade or something- how a popular and standard OS and its myriad of tools was dismissed as "toy-like" isn't obvious to me, and I'd be surprised to find out that this claim got much purchase. Assuming it exists. I mean, it must, right? Someone had to be clueless.
"Mouse is a toy", "GUI is a toy"
GUIs were a toy in the early 80s, and so were mice. With a mouse driver chewing up your precious RAM and an utter lack of support, it took a long time before a mouse was considered something that you could assume your users would own. Windows could be run entirely from the keyboard for this reason. Despite being so good at its thing, it took a long damned time before it had real use.
"Email on a pager is a toy"
And it was. We don't all have email enabled pagers, we have touchscreens that didn't exist back then with high res displays that didn't exist back then running on batteries that didn't exist back then with a huge wad of software that cost a ton of time and money to create. Smartphones aren't email pagers that got bigger, smartphones are PCs that shrunk.
Many of the others, I don't think anyone believed. I don't know anyone who dismissed VOIP, the Macintosh, Flash storage, Youtube, or touch screens. Facebook is STILL a toy, it just has large buy-in and a bunch of money. Hell, people keep creating things that will be "the next facebook", and those are mostly toys too- if one catches on and turns facebook into myspace, that won't really change that. Cloud has never been a toy, but its certainly been oversold, and most of the critiques mock that point- the upsides of clouds are hyped, the downsides ignored.
The list has some good points on it, but mostly it deals with technologies that took years to decades, and tons of research and development, to leave their "toy" status behind. If you call something gimmicky and then it catches on twenty years later after all the underlying tech has changed, that doesn't make you wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the things on your end list were dismissed by plenty of people, but they tended to be the minority who didn't foresee various advances rather than even mainstream folks. I remember trying to use early VOIP programs on 14.4 and 28.8 dialup connections and they were largely useless. But while some people dismissed it as a "never work", others kept working on it and it became usable. Likewise there were plenty of people saying Youtube could never make it. This [blogmaverick.com] and this [bbc.co.uk] talk a bit about what some people
Re: (Score:2)
"Mouse is a toy", "GUI is a toy"
I worked for a small consulting company in the mid-1990's that was a huge Netware shop. They used to demonstrate the new Windows NT OS by putting on a performance monitor and then moving the mouse back and forth quickly to show CPU cycles being consumed. These dipshits would laugh and laugh while telling customers and potential customers how the GUI had no place in modern business computing and this was the proof. I recall being pretty embarrassed to be in the same room with them. Not long after, we had a
DNA Sequencer (Score:2)
This has certainly been the case for the DNA Sequencer I've been doing "technology development" on. It's been almost impossible to get people to treat it like a useful, serious sequencing device.
No shit. Being considered a toy is a requirement. (Score:4, Interesting)
Being considered a toy is a requirement for being a game changer. If a technology is taken seriously early on, it's inmediately locked down with patents and pricetags by big business. That's why toys always win in the long run.
iPhone? Toy. Who want's that? ... Whooops. [google.com]
PC? Toy. Here are the specs and the architecture, for free. Go play. We sell real computers. 20 years later x86 is all there is.
The Web? A toy.
PHP? JavaScript? Toy languages, laughed out of the room, even still yet. While everybodys laughing, they're taking over the web. [w3techs.com] Well, PHP at least.
WordPress? Yet another shitty CMS/bloggin engine by someone who can't programm. Toy. Oh. 102 Million active installs. 25% of the web. Mmmh. [w3techs.com]
Toys win, because they initialy aren't taken seriously and thus have room to get adopted by those who want to build stuff without being at the mercy of some psychopath corporation. Once they've gained traction it's to late to box them in and everybody has to follow suit to stay in the game.
It's that simple.
Spaghetti meet wall (Score:2)
Seriously, most new stuff is junk and even the survivors of the shakeout were often pretty lousy in their first offerings.
They ARE toys at first (Score:5, Interesting)
New technology usually are toys. They are immature and not road-tested. Hobbyists fortunately don't mind taking the proverbial arrows in the back to find the kinks and build/find uses for them.
The first photographs required sitting perfectly still for 5 minutes; the first phonographs had the quality of rusted tin cans with a nose plug; the first cars broke down often and required lots of fiddling to keep going, their starter mechanisms often braking arms; the first electronic computers took more time replacing vacuum tubes than computing; the first satellites kept blowing up on the launch pad; the first PC's had crappy software, unreliable storage, and crashed often for no reason; the Newton was bulky and slow; the Lisa & Mac were too expensive for most home/biz users and lacked useful software until desktop publishing matured years after release; the first online services made molasses look fast; both Java and JavaScript were buggy and inconsistent upon release; and HTML 5 is still buggy and inconsistent. And node.JS? I still don't know what the fock that's all about, I hope to finally "get it" before I die, or maybe dying is preferable?
And the reverse can also true (Score:2)
Wrong interpretation of the word "toy" (Score:2)
My car is a toy. It's a sportscar, and it's fun. It also gets me places, and it also keeps me warm, but what it brings to my transportation over a normal car is unnecessary for transportation. In other words, the more that it offers doesn't make the transportation any better (not faster, not more comfortable, not easier).
Each of those items, and the mouse is an easy example to discuss, was a toy when it came out. At the time, computers were used for typing. What the mouse offered wasn't necessary for c
I can imagine how VR will be seen in Engineering (Score:2)
Fixed Headline (Score:2)
[Stupid] People Often Deride Game Changing Technology as 'a Toy'
A little less profound that way, but mostly true.
Home automation (Score:2)
Some of it may be useful, especially energy-related such as closing and opening window blinds, turning off/on heat automatically (even using a weather forecast?). But the rest seems to be crap like a touchscreen mirror that teaches you how to brush teeth, music that follows you around if you have a mansion and no family or friends, a fridge that thinks it's a mainframe or any contraption they can come up with. Will we really need, eventually, a conveyor belt that feeds bread slices to a toaster, then a car
Re:yeah! like 3d tv!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
We need submissions to cover all of these scenarios.
Re: (Score:3)
Nonsense! I've been waiting since the 1950's, but I'll never give up on the dream of the flying car! NEVER!
Re: (Score:2)
and some things labelled as game changers turn out to be of little use
The most overhyped "game changer" was the Segway, with predictions that cities would be redesigned for it.
The least appreciated was when Og invented fire, and all the other Australopitheci laughed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3D printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's not really true. There are already industrial 3D printing machines.
Now as for "tabletop" 3D printing? It is a toy at the moment, but it wouldn't be hard to see how the idea could become something very important under the right circumstances.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IF a toy is something you can't do real work with then no, desktop 3D printers do not qualify as mere toys. Citation: I've done actual real work using one.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's not a toy. They're used in a lot of low-volume specialized applications like R&D.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
3D printers is a huge category. There are a wide range of 3D printers from sub-$500 glorified hot glue guns to multi$100K laser-sintering printers. To me, the low end printers are a toy as they have many issue that only hobbyists could love. The high end ones are definitely not toys considering the awesome stiff they can make. Sometimes it is the implementation and not the technology that makes it a toy. For example, the standard household oven [jerrysappl...irnova.com] is not a toy but the Easybake Oven [wired.com] is.
Re: (Score:2)
3D printer advocates have as much trouble getting their replies to flow as they do their printing material.
Re: (Score:2)
Give me a break, it's -17C outside, of course I have flow problems!
Re: (Score:2)
No 3D printer yet but I'm planning on adding a hot end (E3D v6 [e3d-online.com]) and extruder (something geared, current choice is the Toranado [thingiverse.com] right now) to my CNC.
Since I don't have a 3D printer yet, let's use my CNC as a comparison. So far, I've cut a lot of parts for projects that would already have cost me a lot more than the CNC itself if I had to pay to have the parts made by someone else. And judging from the quotes I get from 3D printing services online, it won't take long for my future 3D printer to pay for itself
Re: (Score:2)
In your cost calculations how much did you figuratively pay yourself? If you valued your time at $0/hr your calculations may be a bit off.
As for 3D services, they generally have printers that produce much higher quality that desktops can produce. A desktop extruder is very different than a laser sintering printer.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not calculating my time because the parts I make are for personal projects, i.e. it's a hobby.
As for 3D services, it's desktop FDM printers and not polyjet or anything fancy and even those prices are too high. Once you add shipping on top of that, plus the delays, it's much better to make the parts yourself. These days, even commercial FDM printers have a hard time beating a properly calibrated 3D printer kit or a home-made one. One service I called was proud that their Stratasys was able to make 0.25mm
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not calculating my time because the parts I make are for personal projects, i.e. it's a hobby.
By definition a tool used for a hobby is also a toy.
What commercial services use FDM? The one I have seen use much more expensive technologies.
One service I called was proud that their Stratasys was able to make 0.25mm layers even though a properly calibrated home-made printer can do 0.10mm layers.
That is kind of strange since the lowest cost Stratsis, the Mojo [stratasys.com], can do 0.178mm layers. This also brings up the question of how hard is it to "properly calibrate" and how long does that celebration last? If it takes hours of setup to print one item it is a toy. Sure, if you compare low quality prints done by a hobbyist and the same prints using similar equipment by
Re:3D printers (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Who's definition is that? Does your hammer become a toy if you repair something in your house with it? You should look up the definition for the word "toy" [wikipedia.org]. A hobby is not "playing" with something.
It's a Stratasys uPrint Plus [stratasys.com]. In the specifications page, it says "Layer thickness: .254 mm (.010 in.) or .330 mm (.013 in.)"
It depends. If it takes hours of setup every time you print one item, it's just an unreliable tool, but still not a toy. If it takes hours of setup to properly calibrate once in a while, it's just normal wear and tear. We're talking about fractions of millimetres here.
Of course the quality from higher-end 3D printers will be much better, but so will the cost. If we're talking precision alone, an FDM from Stratasys won't stand a chance against a Polyjet from the same company.
But comparing the output quality of a Stratasys FDM vs a well-calibrated RepRap? You'd be surprised which one you'd pick and the price difference between the two.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I still think of my iPhone as a toy computer. That doesn't mean I don't use it or like it, but it still feels extremely limited compared to a desktop computer (which I think of as a "real computer").
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, but my desktop (or even the laptop) doesn't fit well into my pocket.
Re: (Score:3)
The primary reason the iPhone was popular (even around here) was that its browser didn't require sites to be mobile friendly. Before the iPhone mobile browsing sucked.
Re: (Score:2)
I was mobile browsing on the Palm Treo as well and, frankly, I think you're remembering it through Rose-colored glasses. It technically worked but everything was formatted in a screwy way and didn't have the zooming options we're familiar with now. It was a step up from IE on Windows mobile, but the Safari browser blew it away. The only real advantage Palm had was it had working copy/paste.
Re: (Score:2)
The Palm web browser didnt work on a lot of sites that the iPhone did and the keyboard didn't matter that much unless you were using it to spend an inordinate amout of time posting on forums... where the wysiwyg interfaces never worked. The iPhone also had wifi from day 1.
Again, rose-colored glasses.
Re: (Score:2)
The music files from iTunes can be accessed by most devices too, only the early ones had DRM on them.
Music videos/TV shows/movies, on the other hand, are another story.
Re: (Score:2)
Mac, iPad, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Brand new technology rarely as well fleshed out as existing technologies, This is the obvious statement news at 11.
It's not that it's "not as well fleshed out". There are lots of things that start out as "not as well fleshed out". It's not about features and power users. It's more that many technologies actually start out as toys. Being a toy is the killer app that allows them to continue to grow until they get a real killer app. Today's CPUs and GPUs would be a lot further behind if they didn't have the cashflow from gamers on the leading edge. If you want to look at current toys that might one day make the swi
Re: (Score:2)
While we're on the topic of "fleshed out" - what about the "porn drives technology" factor behind internet (DVD, VHS, printed, etc.) transmission of photos, video, video chat, and all manner of other remote applications? If it's "a tech toy" that has porn applications, that seems to drive adoption and growth in most cases - later leading to more mainstream applications.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't know what was a Viewmaster, and I looked it up. It's a passive viewer for stereoscopic stills, this existed much earlier in the 19th century. "3D" has been trying to take over for about 170 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Londoners who remember buzz-bombs dropping all around them during the blitz would beg to disagree.
Re: (Score:2)
That was only because it had already been revealed and he didn't see a way of stealing the patent.