ACTiViTY 2...

" COMPUTERS 20 YEARS FROM NOW"

I think that this is an interesting take on the future of comupters, but this industry is a fickle and unpredictable one. You know that little quip about "never needing more than 640K of RAM" - that wasn't quite so true, now was it? Having said that the industry is unpredictable, you can't really fit its progression to a linear curve as you have - I'm sure that the industry would deviate from the line all over the place.

My prediction: in the next twenty years, society will push for greater integration between computers and their users - us. An intersting project codenamed "Digital Angel" sprang up about six years ago, with the intent of implanting people with GPS tracking microchips. I don't know what happened to this project, but to me, its some kind of precursor to the future of society. 
Actually, I am more amazed at how little the actual "user experience" has changed in the past twenty or more years. Let's face it, we're all using fancy-ass, super-fast Xerox PARCs with vintage 1970s technology: Keyboards, mice and windowing-OS's are almost thirty years old. If you go back thirty years before that, computers took up entire buildings and were programmed by hard-wiring!

When I was a kid I figured by now, I'd be having philosophical discussions with my own HAL 9000, not still banging on a QWERTY keyboard designed to keep speedtypists from jamming the keys on manual typewriters in 1868!!! Where are the universal speech inputs? Where are the eye-focal pointers? Where are the neural interfaces? Hello?

Even the speed itself of the "user experience" hasn't changed much since my Mac Plus. Even though my CPU is a few zillion times faster than a 68000, Word still takes half a minute to repaginate my manuscript... but it does it in 32 bit color... which is such a help when I'm writing a report... DUH! And my Mac Plus booted up in a few seconds... try that now with XP. So today I can Gigaflip and Gigaflop. Big frakkin' deal.

I'm massively unimpressed by today's computing experience. The vested interests embodied in Satan Gates and his Satyr Henchman Jobs have effectively frozen the computer "user experience" to about 1980 when they first got into the business. They have done more to hold us back than anything else by distracting us with the mad "performance" game which looks great on charts but doesn't mean tiddly-squat to the average computer user.

BlackBerry PlayBook

 RIM’s foray into the tablet world. They have announced it, they have shown it running Adobe’s Flash and they have revealed 3 different models however, they have yet to give their much anticipated device a concrete release date other than to say it will be out sometime in early 2011. RIM needs to get back into the game in a major way, BlackBerry 6 and the Torch don’t count, and the PlayBook very well could be the device to bring them back to relevance.

Verizon’s LTE phones

 none of which have been announced yet.  Big Red will be rolling out their 4G LTE service in over 30 U.S. cities by the end of the year yet that haven’t announced any mobile devices that will be supported by the new network. One them could be the gorgeous HTC Incredible HD, but other than that rumor, there isn’t much out there. We should know more about these devices by the end of January.

Mintpass’ tablet

 a dual screen, dual booting device that will be able to run both Android and Windows 7. The two screens can either fold up or fold out making it sort of a cross between a tablet and a laptop. Also of note, the screens can be used in unison or separately. Mintpass is hoping to get it out next year, they still need to find a manufacturer for it. Let’s hope it comes sooner rather than later, eh?

Apple’s iPhone 5

 which oddly enough isn’t the most anticipated iPhone of 2010. Much like the second-gen iPad, details are hard to come by although reports indicate it has a different form factor from the iPhone 4. In fact, it’s said to have a different design than any of the iPhones currently on the market. It also might employ Near Field Communication (NFC) to support mobile computing. Expect it to show up on a bar stool in Redwood City and on camera in Vietnam soon.

The PlayStation Phone

 a device that as of right now only exists in leaked photographs and rumored specs. Sony Ericsson is said to be working on a device,codename Zeus, that will apparently be part PSP and part Android Gingerbread powered smartphone. While the debate wages on as to whether or not the device is too late to market , it’s hard to deny that the device is one of the most anticipated releases of the upcoming year.