Off We Go, Haltingly, Into the Post-PC Era

We’re firmly into what’s commonly called the “Post-PC” era.

The iPad has sparked the gradual demise of both desktop and notebook computers. The mouse-click of yore has become the finger-tap of tomorrow, and the screen itself is now our primary means of inputting data into a computer.

Meanwhile, the “cloud” – aka the internet – has evolved into our primary information storage medium.

We have less and less need for local storage facilities like hard drives and DVDs. The more information we deposit into the cloud, the easier it is to access and manage.

There’s no doubt that the iPad as a device is truly revolutionary and has turned the technology industry upside down. Meanwhile, the cloud is redefining how and where we store our most valuable information.

Unfortunately, both new computing paradigms are weighed down heavily by the legacy of the PC.

And that’s extremely frustrating.

Life after files and folders

It’s silly.

We still use this rigid system of files and folders on computers almost 4 decades after it was conceived of in a lab.

Even back then it was only a moderately good concept. Better options existed.

But like the combustion engine, it’s a bad idea we seem to be stuck with.

Fortunately, the end is in site.

What I call the “library model” of document management is gaining traction. It’s the electric engine of the computer industry.

iPhone is officially old skool

I’m loathe to admit it but the Windows Phone 7 (what happened to Windows Phones 1 through 6?) officially makes iPhone’s interface feel old school, particularly in the home screen department. I get a really nice feeling from what little I’ve seen of the platform, but it’s hard to judge a device until it’s in your hands. One thing’s for sure: I love how Microsoft has contextualized information on the device rather than segregated it to individual apps. That’s my concept of Relationship Technology in action.

I certainly hope that Apple has some user experience surprises up their sleeve in the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0. They need to differentiate from the copycats like Android and meet Microsoft’s new challenge.

Putting the Tired Metaphor of Files and Folders to Bed

Who actually likes filing?

Not me.

And, judging by most people I know, not very many of you do either.

Our desks, shelves, floors and even walls are littered with vast amounts of loose paper, documents, pictures, and other stuff.

When we gaze upon this mess, a thought briefly flashes at the back of our minds: “I should sort this all out.”

And then we go outside to play.

The vast majority of normal human beings – those who enjoy their sanity – hate and avoid filing stuff.

The very thought of paper file folders gives even the most robust among us painful hives.

So it occurs to me: what ever possessed the geeks of yesteryear to adapt files and folders onto computers?

Was it some private joke? Did they think it was funny?

One Thing Windows Mobile Has Over the iPhone

I recently acquired a new Windows Mobile-based mobile phone, the Samsung Ace World Edition, from Bell. (Don’t laugh! I needed a new device and Bell’s clearing this thing out for just $100 without a contract.)

I’m definitely not a fan of the Windows Mobile operating system, but I have discovered one feature about it that I am definitely enamoured with: its initial home screen. This initial view appears when I turn the device on and it nicely summarizes a number of pieces of information.

For my roaming smartphone needs of late, I’ve been carrying my iPhone around. But I’ve been repeatedly frustrated by the volume of taps I must perform to access basic information like where and when my next meeting is.

A home screen, like the one I’ve got on Windows Mobile, helps me avoid all this tapping about. I can literally just turn the device on and it’s already displaying what’s next, this screen shot displays (check the black bar just below the calendar):

Windows Mobile Homescreen Telling Me What to Do Next

What’s more, by using the rocker switch on the front of the device I can quickly scroll through a list of useful information. Here I’ve scrolled to the messaging view of the bar:

Windows Mobile Homescreen With Contextual Menu Bar

I like that with the Windows Mobile home screen I can very efficiently access key information.

Now compare that to my initial view on the iPhone:

The iPhone Unlock Screen with Elephant

Besides a date and time, this lock screen is largely meaningless. And while I appreciate that I can place my son’s artwork on this screen, I would argue that there’s a whole lot of wasted space there that’s prime for a more functional purpose.

Granted, this screen will display upcoming events, but only within the range of the alarm I’ve set for each event. If I want to see something that’s happening later today, I have to go digging.

What’s worse, after unlocking the phone I’m left with even less information:

Apple's Goal-Killing App Blast: What Was I Doing Again?

To learn more about my day, I have to go one tap further and enter either iCal or the third party Daylite app.

And therein lies another problem I have with the iPhone: it requires a lot of tapping back and forth between apps to discover some very basic information. This OS needs a more integrated view of affairs that eases the burden on the users.

Windows Mobile definitely has a significant edge over the iPhone OS in its ability to summarize information and present it in an efficient view on the home screen.

Of course, I’ve moderately customized my device’s home screen, but even in its stomach-churning default state it was very functional.

Windows Mobile Blue Homescreen of Death

(Adjusting the home screen’s look and feel to a more palatable status exposed me to Windows Mobile’s primary weakness: poor usability. Despite the lack of a home screen, the iPhone is a joy to use whereas Windows Mobile is an exercise in frustration.)

I consider the lack of a home screen on the iPhone a huge oversight for Apple and a real handicap for the device.

It’s worth noting that all of the other major smartphones have blindly followed Apple’s lead down the apps-first home screen path:

Blackberry Home Screen

Palm Web OS Home Screen

Google Android Home Screen

They they are, the Blackberry, WebOS, and Android, home screens in all their default, contextless-glory.

I was particularly surprised to find that Palm’s WebOS offered such a dearth of data, considering how they tout the platform’s Synergy component. It occurs to me that a cornerstone of the WebOS should be a strong, contextual home screen.

My step back in time to a world where Windows Mobile was actually relevant has reintroduced me to the home screen of yore that actually carried some utility. And, truth be told, I like it.

But it makes me wonder: what sort of home screen will the new Windows Mobile 6.5 provide us? Will Microsoft be trendy with a minimalist approach, or stick to its tried-and-true rich home screen strategy?

it’s a bad time for a new contract with bell mobility

As a result of some extremely awful customer service I received from Bell Mobility recently, a helpful soul stepped in from the company’s “Executive Office.” (Sounds exalted, eh? I think it’s the just place they send customers so pissed off they don’t know what else to do with them.) He very kindly terminated my outstanding contracts without penalty and waived some other fees. And for that, he has my eternal gratitude.

Suddenly, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I was without a mobile phone contract. It was as though I’d been set free. But I quickly realized, of course, that spending most of my time in the Horse required me to have a CDMA-capable phone. (A landline wasn’t an option: the $31.33 monthly cost of a featureless Northwestel line is highway robbery.)

The choices were limited: back to the awful Bell Mobility or the local subsidiary Latitude Wireless (I’ll never understand why a massive geographic region of just 32,000 people needs two mobile providers). A third option was Telus, but they aren’t permitted to provision 867 (Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut) area codes, so I’d be forced to get a number from a different region of Canada. Since my primary reason for a mobile is to provide my son’s school with a local number to contact me at in case he has a seizure, I was stuck with either Bell or Latitude.

Being a gadget freak, my next realization was more painful: the Bell (and, hence, the Latitude) stable of mobile phone offerings is desparately lame and pathetic.

What an unfortunate predicament for anyone to be in…

kill your pc – and then what?

I’m a firm believer that, from a consumer perspective, the days of the PC (and, by proxy, the Mac) are numbered.

These massive multi-function machines are simply too overburdened with features and interface to continue to serve what consumers will require in the broader, more distributed evolving relationship technology environment.

More simply put: the idea that one expensive device can be all things to all people, is done. PCs are simply too big (and, yes, I consider netbooks too big), too heavy, too difficult to learn and master, too slow, and remain ignorant of the needs of the user. And by that last remark I mean the PCs still require the user to do the heavy lifting with information.

Plus, PCs are desperately dependent on place: they are generally rooted to one location, or have limited portability. As the booming smartphone business proves, people want their technology to be available ubiquitously. Just consider this: after less than 24 months, the iPhone has grown to represent a larger percentage of Apple’s business than the Mac.

Aspects of the PC will merge with other common forms of technology, based on users’ requirements and habits. New, niche-need devices will evolve.

The new Verizon Hub is a great example of this. By combining a VOIP phone with an internet-connected touchscreen LCD , the device supplants the most common functionality of the PC, combined with a phone line. (Interestingly, the device is targeted at people who currently own just a mobile phone and want to augment it with home-based communication and information services.)

The Verizon Hub is a fascinating, well, hub, that connects and filters a wide variety of information related to the time, place, and interests of a group of people such as a family. So it can be used as a collaborative calendar, it offers a group messaging environment, and it serves as a source of new and information prescient to a the immediate needs of its users. 

The Verizon Hub isn’t a perfect device – it still lacks the intelligence required of a true relationship technology device – but it indicates a direction. The ancient box-screen-keyboard-mouse paradigm is crumbling as new function-specific forms evolve. Many people who want a little more than their smartphone can offer will forgo the massive PC purchase when the Verizon Hub, for example, can satisfy their narrower needs.

New devices will evolve as contextual windows into aspects of a user’s distributed relationship-based information space. PCs, by contrast, are stationery lock-boxes of stored data that users spend tremendous amounts of time managing and filtering through. And, these days, nobody likes to be weighed down by such an anchor.

GPS: From Tragedy to Frivolity

Global Positioning System (GPS for short) is a satellite-based way to locate yourself on the face of the earth.

Back in the early nineties I used a GPS unit for some mining exploration field work I was performing as a summer student.

It was massive, heavy, and highly inaccurate. We carried it around the bush like a crown jewel in an awkward plastic Pelican case. After all, it had cost the company more than a car. 

We didn’t need that coming out of our pay.

So it still amazes me that both my Blackberry Curve and my iPhone pack GPS capabilities that can pinpoint my location to within a few feet.

Like many technologies we enjoy today, GPS was designed by the US military.

You might think, then, that GPS’ development was driven by a mindset of fear and animosity.

In fact, GPS has evolved more as a technology of public safety.

In 1983, the civilian Korean Airlines flight KAL007 strayed into Soviet airspace as a result of a navigational error.

 The Soviet government, however, considered this passage a deliberate and  provocative test of its military response capabilities.

So they shot the plane down, killing all 269 people on board.

At this time, GPS was still little more than a concept.

Still, to try and prevent future disasters such as KAL007, US President Ronald Reagan promised to make it available as an operational system to civilians.

That happened ten years later, in April 1995, when testing on a network of 24 satellites was finally completed. 

(There are now about 31 up there.)

GPS is still an American system managed by its air force. Every other major government in the world, including China, the European Union, and Russia, have plans for similar systems.

However, only GPS is full operational.

GPS, as a consumer product, is well known as a personal navigation system.

GPS can track an individual’s whereabouts and offer guidance on arriving at a specific destination.

When coupled with a software mapping system, it can offer real-time, turn-by-turn directions.

Many cars now have GPS capabilities that promise to replace paper maps.

So, in a sense, GPS is a system developed to help protect the male ego. 

(There’s that great line from Cars, when the lost van says to his wife: “I don’t need a map! I have the GPS. Never need a map again, thank you.”)

My Blackberry has this capability built-in.

The last time we were in Vancouver, I let my 4-year-old son navigate us from one side of the city to the other with it.

Other than a brief detour to a Dairy Queen, he got us to our destination without incident.

I was pretty excited about this. But the glow wore off quickly when I realized I didn’t really need turn-by-turn directions in a city like Whitehorse.

It seems that RIM has unfortunately limited the Blackberry’s GPS capabilities to its own navigational software.

My Curve doesn’t even automatically “geotag” photos with the location at which they are taken. (Although, I could kind of hack the device to make this happen.)

So it’s very exciting that Apple has opened up the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to any developer writing software for the platform.

Now some really interesting GPS-based software is starting to appear.

I’ve tried Nearby, a social network application that displays a map of your whereabouts in relationship to your friends’.

It also allows you to mark locations on a map that can be shared with others.

Another social application, Twinkle, combines GPS with the geek social network Twitter.

This is sort of silly, though, since I don’t think people who Twitter every really engage with one another in real life. So location in Twitter is somewhat superfluous.

Another cool, if frivolous, application is Graffitio. As its name suggests, you can virtually graffiti any GPS-based location on earth.

Another iPhone user who happens upon that spot will be able to view what you’ve left behind.

Interesting uses for this, obviously, are fun things like scavenger hunts.

Quite possibly the best use of GPS on the iPhone, however, is urbanspoon.

Like a Magic 8-Ball, you can shake your iPhone and it will randomly find you a nearby restaurant.

This is accomplished by comparing your GPS location to the database of eateries at urbanspoon.com.

If you have a craving or a budget, you can specify a set of parameters such as cuisine and price, to narrow the results.

Once you choose a place to go, urbanspoon generates a map-based set of directions to get you there.

Current implementations of GPS on the iPhone are cool, and represent the dawning of the age of Relationship Technology.

But they’re just the tip of the iceberg. 

Once developers get past the fun aspect of location, they’ll slowly start to integrate the experience of GPS into the more utilitarian needs of a user’s mobile computing experience as it relates to all the data they need to engage with.

Then, like a 5-pound GPS unit in a Pelican case, we’ll all be able to leave our desktop computers behind to collect dust.

Originally published in the Yukon News on Friday, August 8, 2008.