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The Future is Right Before Your Eyes

Posted on November 30, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: Volvo has posted their vision for the future of self-driving, electric ride-sharing vehicles.

The future is clear to see. In today’s world of automobiles, cars run on gas, need a human driver, and are most cost-effective when you own your own car. In the world of tomorrow, cars will run on electricity, be self-driving, and be most cost-effective through ride-sharing services.

Today, car companies make money selling cars. Tomorrow, car companies won’t make money exclusively selling cars. That’s why General Motors is making a massive bet today by trimming their old business geared towards gasoline engines, human drivers, and car ownership, and pivoting towards the future of electric, self-driving cars where people rely on ride-sharing services. The future is clear to General Motors and other car makers like Volvo. The only question is whether that future is clear to everyone else.

The problem isn’t that the future isn’t known. The problem is that people resist change and deny the future because they’re far more comfortable with the past. Think of all those gas station owners who make money selling gas with people stopping inside to buy snacks as well. Today, that’s a profitable business. Tomorrow, gas stations will be obsolete because there won’t be a need to go to a dedicated gas station to refuel your car when you could go to a shopping mall or restaurant to recharge your car through an electric station.

Gas stations needed their own space because of the need for an underground gas tank. Electric stations are not hampered by such restrictions, meaning that they can be put anywhere such as shopping malls. Gas stations make money selling overpriced drinks and snacks because they have a captive audience that has to buy gas from them. When people no longer need to go to a gas station, they won’t need to buy overpriced drinks or snacks. That means the gas station business is doomed.

That future is clear. The only question is when will it occur. It’s definitely going to occur but far too many people simply ignore the clear future right in front of them and cling to the past for far too long until it’s too late. By the time it’s too late, they act shocked that their life could be upended so suddenly, even though that fate was clear years ahead of time.

Besides gas stations, parking structures and car dealers will also suffer. Why buy a car when it will be cheaper to rent one through a ride-sharing service? The taxi business is already dying thanks to ride-sharing services. Next to go will be the massive million dollar business of car insurance companies that will disappear when people no longer need to insure their cars. The ripple of change is clear for anyone to see. The people who refuse to act on this obvious change will be the ones who will suffer the most because they’ll be least prepared for a financial disaster that was years in the making and occurring right before their eyes the whole time.

If you want to get smart, think of the future involving electric cars, self-driving cars, and ride-sharing services. That’s what General Motors is trying to do by shedding their old business of selling cars. The odds are against them shifting to a new business just like the odds were against Borders shifting to online books sales, Sears shifting to declining retail selling, and Blockbuster Video shifting to streaming video. The problem General Motors faces is that they can only devote part of their resources towards the future while their rivals can devote 100% of their effort towards the future. General Motors has to devote part of their resources keeping their old business model alive, which is like Kodak trying to embrace digital photography and maintain their film business at the same time. It didn’t work for Kodak and the odds are it won’t work for General Motors either.

Volvo’s website envisions a future where you can hail a ride-sharing service to get a car that can take you to your destination. Best of all, rather than fight airport security, you can sleep in a self-driving car at night and wake up in your destination the next day at less cost and hassle than flying.

The future is right before your eyes. The people who will thrive are those who can recognize this future. The people who will suffer will be those who deliberately choose to ignore the future because they don’t want to believe it will happen as fast as it will, and then they’ll be left wondering what happened after the future steamrolls them into oblivion. Ask yourself, which fate do you want for yourself?

To see Volvo’s concept for the future of self-driving, electric cars used through ride-sharing services, click here.

The Future of General Motors

Posted on November 27, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: General Motors announced layoffs to shift towards autonomous and electric vehicles.

General Motors nearly went bankrupt in 2009 and only survived through massive government bailouts. The problem is that the business of cars is changing and General Motors is still designed to sell cars to a market that no longer exists.

In the old days, people bought cars regularly and General Motors happily sold them cars. Now General Motors sees the future and it’s no longer car ownership. Cars make far less profit than SUVs so General Motors is going to focus on the high-profit products and dump the low profit cars. Even worse for General Motors, the future is no longer cars but electric vehicles, self-driving cars, and ride-sharing services, all of which General Motors isn’t focused on. That means the future of the car industry is heading in one direction while General Motors is designed to appeal to the past.

That’s why General Motors decided to lay off thousands of workers and shut down several factories because they know they need to cut costs now before it’s too late like 2009. General Motors wants to essentially get out of the car manufacturing business and get into the electric vehicle, autonomous, and ride-sharing business. Good luck with that.

The big problem is that few big companies can manage the shift to a new market because they’re burdened with an infrastructure designed to satisfy a dying market. Kodak tried to straddle between film and digital photography. Meanwhile, their rivals simply focused on the growing digital photography market and ignored the film business, and wound up grabbing the lion’s share of the digital photography market, leaving Kodak far behind.

The Yellow Pages used to be the main directory people used to search for local businesses. Now people rely on Google, Yelp, and other sites, completely ignoring the Yellow Pages. In most cities, the Yellow Pages no longer exists because people no longer use it. If people no longer use it, advertisers see no reason to advertise in it.

Yet the Yellow Pages could have shifted into search, Kodak could have shifted into digital photography, and Borders Books could have shifted into online book selling like Amazon. Instead, these companies were burdened by their past infrastructure catering to the past while the future beckoned newer, leaner rivals forward.

So the question about General Motors surviving to shift to a world of electric, autonomous, and ride-sharing services seems dim at best. First, General Motors needs to embrace the future quickly. Second, they need to free themselves of their infrastructure designed to profit from the past. To move quickly, they need to be like a lean startup that focuses solely on the future. Focusing partly on the future and partly on the past means General Motors will have no way of keeping up with rivals who focus solely on the future.

Despite what General Motors is trying to do, their chances of surviving the future is dim. They don’t have the luxury of focusing solely on the future but they do have the drawback of paying expenses to support the past. These twin drawbacks will likely sink the company for good that no government bailout will ever revitalize again.

Given the odds, General Motors and the entire Big Three auto makers are doomed. The future is not the past anymore than Sears is the future of retailing compared to Amazon. General Motors is making a valiant attempt to stay relevant, but the odds are against them. The company will likely become a footnote in history as newer companies like Tesla and Uber redefine the new transportation market. The future belongs to companies that focus on where the market is going, not where it once was. Tesla can focus 100% on the future. General Motors cannot, and that’s why companies like General Motors have little chance of surviving the future, let alone defining it any time soon.

The Apple Pencil Gestures Foreshadow the Future

Posted on November 2, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple released a new version of the Apple Pencil and its gestures foreshadow the future of wearables.

The first Apple Pencil was kind of clumsy. You could plug it into an iPad’s Lightning port, but if you wanted to put it into a wall outlet, you had to use a tiny adapter that was easy to lose. Apple’s new Apple Pencil is different because it charges wirelessly, connects magnetically to the side of the iPad Pro so you can’t lose it as easily, and recognizes taps to give commands to switching menu options.

That last feature is the most interesting because by tapping the side of the Apple Pencil, you can convert it from a drawing tool to an eraser tool (and vice versa). Now take this tape gesture control interface and apply it to wearable computers such as smart glasses. Tap the side of the smart glasses frame and you’ll be able to control it. Slide your finger along the smart glasses frame and you should have another way to control it. Tap with two fingers compared to one finger and you have yet another way to control smart glasses.

Tap gestures in the Apple Pencil 2 foreshadow the use of tap gestures in smart glasses. Touch gestures such as sliding your finger along a smart glasses frame offers another way to control the device. With wearable computers, you can’t control it through traditional mouse and graphical user interface, so you’ll have to use touch gestures instead.

What we see in the Apple Pencil 2 is just a precursor of the future. The Apple Pencil is a useful tool for people who need drawing capabilities, but not necessarily useful for people who simply write or view content on an iPad. What is important is the user interface of the Apple Pencil 2. Watch the Apple Pencil evolve and notice how tap gestures evolve too, because when Apple introduces smart glasses, you can be sure those same tap gestures that control an Apple Pencil will be used to control smart glasses as well.

To learn more about the Apple Pencil 2, click here.

Apple Intern Turns to Medicine

Posted on October 26, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical, Software Leave a comment

What it is: An Apple intern used his Apple Watch to monitor the pulse of an unconscious woman.

While on a flight from Arizona to Washington D.C., Brian Shear, an intern at Apple, helped a physician monitor an unconscious woman on the plane. Using his Apple Watch, Brian Shear captured the woman’s pulse information and then gave that information to doctors so they could use that information to help her. That’s when Brian Shear decided instead of working for a company making lifesaving equipment, he wanted to become a doctor and use technology to help others.

Brain Shear is now studying medicine at Central Michigan University and came up with another idea from his time at Apple. The hospital created a 50-page manual for brain tumor patients. Brain decided to turn this 50-page manual and convert it into an ebook using the free iBooks Author program. By making the manual interactive, Brian believes that patients will use and read the information. Even better, he can easily send this manual to others and duplicate it freely, completely eliminating printing costs with the paper manual.

By using the Apple Watch and iBooks Author, Brian Shear has shown how doctors in the future can use technology to save lives and provide information to patients. To read more about Brian Shear, click here.

Ohio State University’s iPad Experiment

Posted on October 25, 2018 by admin Posted in Education, Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

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What it is: Ohio State University gave every incoming freshman an iPad, a case, and an Apple Pencil.

Schools have long known that computers can help students take notes, do research, and learn programming. In the past, students had to buy their own devices, which meant a mesh-mash of operating systems and capabilities. That’s why Ohio State University decided to standardize on the iPad and to insure access, they gave every incoming freshman an iPad to use.

Not surprisingly, the school found that the iPad helped both high achievers and low achievers improve their grades and learning. Initially there were problems when low achievers actually did worse using the iPad, but after the school offered training to teach people to use the iPad for schoolwork, the low achievers improved their grades as well.

By using the iPad, students can take notes and do research on a single convenient device. Even better is that Ohio State University is looking at developing digital textbooks for students to read on the iPad. Instead of paying up to $220 for a physical copy of a textbook, students can buy a digital one to read on the iPad for $20. By lowering the cost of textbooks, the iPad offers yet another way to improve education in a college setting.

The iPad offers more security from malware than other devices such as standard PCs and it’s simple enough to use with a minimal amount of training. If students can learn to be more efficient with an iPad, it’s only a matter of time before working adults learn to embrace all the benefits of the iPad as well. The iPad can and will replace laptops for many people and Ohio State University’s iPad program shows that. Now we just have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up to the benefits of the iPad.

Camera Improvements in Software

Posted on October 23, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: The physical size of a smartphone limits the size of the camera lens, so the only way to improve camera quality is through software.

At one time, film camera dominated. When digital cameras appeared, they took chunky pictures so film enthusiasts could rightly point out that film was superior, which it was. Then digital photography gradually improved until it equalled and eventually surpassed film. Now hardly anyone uses film any more.

This same pattern is now playing out in camera quality. Dedicated cameras always have room to add bigger lenses that smartphone cameras can never duplicate. For this reason, dedicated film enthusiasts claim that smartphone cameras can never surpass dedicated cameras.

The problem is that physical lenses can only improve to a certain point. On the other hand, software improvements rely on processing images given the physical limitation of a smartphone lens. Initially, these software improvements still created inferior images compared to dedicated cameras, but software can keep improving while physical lenses cannot. Eventually, software improvements in image quality will equal and eventually surpass the physical lenses on dedicated cameras.

There’s a physical limit to image quality through bigger lenses. There’s no limit to image quality through software improvements and processing power. The only way dedicated cameras can compete is by adding processing power of their own, which will drive up their cost to make them impractical for most people. The future of photography is software.

Smartphones will likely continue using one, two, and even three-lens solutions to capture more light and data to process, but it won’t change the fact that the only way to improve image quality is through software that processes an image in ways that a physical lens on a dedicated camera can’t do.

If you want to see the future of anything, just look at what’s superior and see if its improvements can keep pace with its newest competitor. In the case of photography, physical lenses can never improve as rapidly as software improvements so that means smartphone cameras will one day replace most dedicated cameras.

Just as film used to be the standard for photography, so will dedicated cameras one day fade away like film. The future is computational photography.