John Dvorak Rant July 20, 2009
Thing is, the picture never seems bleak for Apple. I mean, the company is killing everyone. What is
wrong with this picture? What is Apple doing right? Well, first of all, Apple is still advertising like crazy
and paying no attention to the doomsayers. In other words, it has a positive attitude.
In addition to a positive attitude, there are other issues that need addressing if this industry is to survive.
I've listed them here in order of importance. I truly believe that if we fix these problems/issues, things like
the economic crises would not have much of a negative effect. Seriously. Here is what we need.
1) New killer apps. Where are they? The last killer app was actually the World Wide Web. People have
been fixated on it and produced various Web apps that have yet to set the world on fire. There are
some note-taking apps, a bookmarking app, and a bunch of other cute niche products. While some of
these hobby apps, such as Writely, the online word processor, get bought by Google, most are pretty
simplistic and none are earth shattering. I mean, take Flickr (please!). You can live without it.
2) Core development! While Linux, for example, will do some load balancing with six-core chips, and
some programs are coded to use multi core, the fact is that these chips have not set the world on fire
with huge performance jumps. On a typical Windows machine that runs Word and Excel, these chips
provide little improvement. You'd think four cores would be four times as fast but no. Where is the
multi-core OS? This all harkens back to the debate over parallel processing: no genius has come along
with great code that takes advantage of the inherent power so all apps benefit. Pity.
3) Robots. I thought I'd drop this zinger onto the list. Where are the robots? Roomba comes along
years ago and that's it? A floor-sweeping robot? Sigh. Meanwhile, Japan is working like crazy on robots.
In the 1980's people were jazzed about the robot idea. Over 35 years go by, and we've got little to show.
Oh, and by robot, I mean some device that can pick up the dishes and wash them as well as scrub the
floor.
4) The talking and listening computer. This is actually one step down from robots, and nobody can
mange to do this either. IBM kept bragging about its upcoming human-centric computer, or whatever it
was going to call it. You could actually chat with the device. I'll give up on robots for the sake of a simple
computer that can talk like the one in Star Trek. The fact is that today's machines cannot understand a
word we say, and the computer-generated voices are from the late 1980's. How hard can this all be?
5) Machine translation. OK, now you have probably noticed that I constantly complain about this topic.
And here I go again. I know that the complexities of idiomatic languages are incredibly varied, but can't
we do better that what we have. Without knowing the language, you can likely do better by guessing
context than most of these translators do. Often the translations do not make any sense whatsoever.
And yes, machine translation is very good at translating "hello" and "where is the train station?" And so
are the reference books from Berlitz. So what?
6) Handwriting recognition. As I write this complaint, I realize that I write this almost exact same
column every five or six years and nothing changes. This in itself, of course, suggests the overall
stagnation in the business.
I suppose the iPhone represents where we are currently in our industry. One of the most popular apps
for the iPhone is a flashlight. This is an app that turns the screen bright white, so you can use the device
to find your keys in the dark. Handy, yes, but it's not the killer app we need.
And speaking of needing better translation tools, the iPhone would make the perfect translation buddy,
using speech recognition. Say you're in Mongolia. You're lost and you're trying to get someone to help
you who, of course, does not speak English. You pull out your phone and say "How do I get out of this
town? I'm lost!" Suddenly, you get the translation (in a good computer voice). Then you get the person
you're trying to converse with to speak into the iPhone in Mongolian, which is then translated into
English. Oh, and you should not ever have to tell the iPhone that it is Mongolian. It should know
immediately. Now we're talking!
Google may be going in the right direction with the Android phone, which will take your words, send them
to some massive heavy iron someplace in the cloud, and return text. Some people get good results. The
key with these devices is to use the cloud.
This would also work for handwriting recognition and other computer-intensive chores that are
impractical on a phone. I suggest further research along the lines of Google voice recognition, meaning
using the cloud for massive computational chores. That said, looking back on this list, you'd think you
could actually do all of these things with, say, a four-core processor, wouldn't you?
It's sad when the flashlight app is the only bright spot out there. (Pun intended.)
More
Thing is, the picture never seems bleak for Apple. I mean, the company is killing everyone. What is
wrong with this picture? What is Apple doing right? Well, first of all, Apple is still advertising like crazy
and paying no attention to the doomsayers. In other words, it has a positive attitude.
In addition to a positive attitude, there are other issues that need addressing if this industry is to survive.
I've listed them here in order of importance. I truly believe that if we fix these problems/issues, things like
the economic crises would not have much of a negative effect. Seriously. Here is what we need.
1) New killer apps. Where are they? The last killer app was actually the World Wide Web. People have
been fixated on it and produced various Web apps that have yet to set the world on fire. There are
some note-taking apps, a bookmarking app, and a bunch of other cute niche products. While some of
these hobby apps, such as Writely, the online word processor, get bought by Google, most are pretty
simplistic and none are earth shattering. I mean, take Flickr (please!). You can live without it.
2) Core development! While Linux, for example, will do some load balancing with six-core chips, and
some programs are coded to use multi core, the fact is that these chips have not set the world on fire
with huge performance jumps. On a typical Windows machine that runs Word and Excel, these chips
provide little improvement. You'd think four cores would be four times as fast but no. Where is the
multi-core OS? This all harkens back to the debate over parallel processing: no genius has come along
with great code that takes advantage of the inherent power so all apps benefit. Pity.
3) Robots. I thought I'd drop this zinger onto the list. Where are the robots? Roomba comes along
years ago and that's it? A floor-sweeping robot? Sigh. Meanwhile, Japan is working like crazy on robots.
In the 1980's people were jazzed about the robot idea. Over 35 years go by, and we've got little to show.
Oh, and by robot, I mean some device that can pick up the dishes and wash them as well as scrub the
floor.
4) The talking and listening computer. This is actually one step down from robots, and nobody can
mange to do this either. IBM kept bragging about its upcoming human-centric computer, or whatever it
was going to call it. You could actually chat with the device. I'll give up on robots for the sake of a simple
computer that can talk like the one in Star Trek. The fact is that today's machines cannot understand a
word we say, and the computer-generated voices are from the late 1980's. How hard can this all be?
5) Machine translation. OK, now you have probably noticed that I constantly complain about this topic.
And here I go again. I know that the complexities of idiomatic languages are incredibly varied, but can't
we do better that what we have. Without knowing the language, you can likely do better by guessing
context than most of these translators do. Often the translations do not make any sense whatsoever.
And yes, machine translation is very good at translating "hello" and "where is the train station?" And so
are the reference books from Berlitz. So what?
6) Handwriting recognition. As I write this complaint, I realize that I write this almost exact same
column every five or six years and nothing changes. This in itself, of course, suggests the overall
stagnation in the business.
I suppose the iPhone represents where we are currently in our industry. One of the most popular apps
for the iPhone is a flashlight. This is an app that turns the screen bright white, so you can use the device
to find your keys in the dark. Handy, yes, but it's not the killer app we need.
And speaking of needing better translation tools, the iPhone would make the perfect translation buddy,
using speech recognition. Say you're in Mongolia. You're lost and you're trying to get someone to help
you who, of course, does not speak English. You pull out your phone and say "How do I get out of this
town? I'm lost!" Suddenly, you get the translation (in a good computer voice). Then you get the person
you're trying to converse with to speak into the iPhone in Mongolian, which is then translated into
English. Oh, and you should not ever have to tell the iPhone that it is Mongolian. It should know
immediately. Now we're talking!
Google may be going in the right direction with the Android phone, which will take your words, send them
to some massive heavy iron someplace in the cloud, and return text. Some people get good results. The
key with these devices is to use the cloud.
This would also work for handwriting recognition and other computer-intensive chores that are
impractical on a phone. I suggest further research along the lines of Google voice recognition, meaning
using the cloud for massive computational chores. That said, looking back on this list, you'd think you
could actually do all of these things with, say, a four-core processor, wouldn't you?
It's sad when the flashlight app is the only bright spot out there. (Pun intended.)
More
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