Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker
It’s not my job to fix that (assuming they even consider it a problem).
|
There's an old saying that says if you have a complaint, offer a solution.
It doesn't have to be the right solution, just a demonstration that you are thinking the problem through.
—
There is only one place left on laptops where there is room for true innovation, and that is the keyboard space. I mean, really, what else can you do? Battery tech could use a lot of improvement, but that has always been the case and that technology will be driven by some other purpose first (like cars or what not). Ax processors won't be "innovation" so much as technology independence. Screens? Not much to do there other than adopt new tech (like OLED or micro LED or something). Ports? They'll get spiffier or go away. There is room in wireless, but I think innovation in that space is software driven. The Tx chips are clearly giving Apple a competitive advantage and there is plenty of room for growth in that space.
As far as the design of the computer, however, the only space left is that keyboard. I know a lot of you roll your eyes when I say this because you want your Apple Tactile Pro keyboard to magically pop up out of the computer when you open the lid, but
you are not the future. The kids of today who are growing up with little more than short-throw clicker keyboards or—more likely—virtual keyboards are much more open to innovation in this space. That butterfly keyboard is going away, just not in the direction you want it to go. The Touchbar is just the beginning. That whole space is going virtual, and it won't be Apple that is first, although they are well positioned. I truly believe it is working in the labs—with Force Touch and everything—and will be present on the next major industrial overhaul of the systems. It will start at the high-end and work downward over the course of 3 or 4 years. It will virtually eliminate one of the most vulnerable places on a laptop while simultaneously bringing new UI possibilities to the forefront of portable technology. It will eliminate the need for multiple keyboards for different regions (pick your language and the keyboard automatically adapts); it will replace a multitude of external devices (audio controllers, etc.); it will enable advanced drawing techniques, signatures, Apple Pencil support, and the virtualization of whatever fancy new editing interfaces developers can come up with.
And people will piss and moan (understandably in some cases) because the haptic feedback of mechanical laptop keyboards will be gone.
And there will be no desktop equivalent, because that is a hurdle that seems insurmountable at this point.
There is just no other space for innovation that I can see. What else to do? Put a second screen on the back of the display? Make the logo glow in the dark?
Rounded corners? More color options? Perhaps, but any innovation outside of the control surface of the laptop is likely to either be hare-brained, impractical, or just plain stupid. We already have very unsuccessful laptops with flip-around screens or flip-backward screens and no one seems to care. There are touch-screen laptops that are pretty much useless to the average person. There are laptops with no ports, laptops with all the ports, and laptops with ports no one has used in 15 years.
Apple has innovated internally in ways that greatly improve performance and reliability, while simultaneously infuriating those who would like to change out their storage and/or RAM. They have brought battery tech a very long ways and added their own coprocessors to get over the hurdles left by Intel's lack of progress. They have made super-high resolution screens an expectation rather than a check-box feature. They have adopted the fastest and most expansive port options in computing and improved subsystem performance to eliminate long-standing throughput bottlenecks. All the while there is always room for improvement and mistakes have been made. But all of that is a direct result of innovating
towards the next major design change, which is the virtual keyboard—the "TouchBoard®" if you will.
Again, Apple
will not be the first into this space (as others are trying) but there is no other computer company that can A) truly pull it off; and B) do it in a manner that actually makes sense. It does no good to just replace the keyboard with a virtual thing as Lenovo is doing. You have to replace the entire concept of what a keyboard is and how we interact with it. And it has to be fast and reliable (Lenovo's is hopelessly laggy). Apple will conquer this because they will have some future Tx chip that will control that crazy thing, and it might even be the first thing powered by an Ax chip—a computer within a computer. Gaming interfaces and audio/video interfaces and Photoshop interfaces and you-name-it-interfaces will explode from the imaginations of developers and bring us fantastic new ways to interact with our laptops.
If there is any other space worth considering, tell us about it.
Well, I guess the trackpad could become a second digital screen, first.
