The Intersect Between Technology & The Real World
Connected Appliances
This is a post I wrote a while ago when I didn’t have, in my view quite the right ‘medium’ to post it to. But I feel this is the right place for it.
We live in a world where smartphones have become popular due to the marketing power and design principles of one company. Apple. We can thank the ubiquity of smartphones down to the 2007 release of the iPhone and the subsequent release of the iPhone SDK and App Store with the 2008 release of the iPhone 3G. Apps and the simplicity of the then iPhone OS (now simply named iOS) got people excited about being able to do more with their smartphone than just make calls, send SMS and funny emoticons. Being able to have a workable calendar, browse the Internet utilising easy to use gestures as well as features like visual voicemail were revolutions. The iPhone of course had pitfalls like not being a 3G ready handset from the get go, a poor camera and no multimedia messaging features to name a few. This meant that it bucked the trends of the time. The iPhone 3G was a considerably bigger success than the original, however the iPhone is still heralded as a piece of beautiful design that changed the way we thought about mobile phones. Thanks to Android and it’s open source principles, smartphones are now ubiquitous, so much so that “dumb phones” are now the reserve of the few rather than the many like they used to be just 7 years ago. The landscape in the mobile arena has changed where one of the smallest players has now become the largest and one of the largest players now becoming an ’also-ran’.
The worlds most innovative and richest people are the founders of some of the most forward thinking technology companies in the world. Mark Zuckerburg went from being Harvard geek to being one of the worlds richest men in only a few years thanks to the meteoric rise of his product. That product was not physical, he didn’t build anything tangible. What he built was an idea, an idea that people could be social without physical interaction. That idea was Facebook. The worlds biggest social network.
Nowadays connected doesn’t need to mean being at the end of a phone. It doesn’t need to mean daily meetings in a conference room. It doesn’t need to mean teams of people working out of the same office. Connected means a Skype call, a social network connection, an email, a blog, a website, a tweet, a comment etc. It is easier than ever to ’connect’ with people and not just anybody, modern technology makes it easier than ever to connect with the people that interest and inspire us. Services like YouTube, Twitter and TED bring us closer to the people that previously we would have had to pay to watch speak or buy their books (we of course still do this), now we can follow them on Twitter or watch their YouTube videos. Technology connects us but also brings us closer to the subjects we love.
Technology has the ability to connect family’s and bring them closer together, it also has the power to drive them apart. The thing with technology is that it’s use is still a responsibility and thanks to comic books we all know that:
“With great power comes great responsibility”
I’ve seen technology that has brought people together and drive them apart. Facebook and Skype allowing people to communicate and keep their love and relationship going from the other sides of the planet, to the opposite end of the spectrum where Facebook use has become an addiction and has destroyed marriages. It’s all a responsibility that we must bear in our ’connected world’.
However, our connected world is now starting to grow beyond our smartphones and computers. With the advent of Google Glass and being on the possible eve of a decent Smart Watch phenomenon we may just be bringing that connectivity to the everyday objects we use on a daily basis. Glasses, the watch and beyond. Glass is only available to US early adopters and the smart watch has been tried many times by companies at the forefront of the technological revolution. Some of those companies are market leaders in other areas yet they couldn’t crack it. So what is the hype about? Where is it coming from? Simple the one company who brought smartphones into the mainstream. Again it’s Apple.
Success is measured differently by different organisations. Sales and revenue or profit are a measure of success to some, but to others it’s almost the be all and end all. To Apple, success is market disruption. The ability to enter a market, redefine it in their own image and then to iterate on that. Apple starts with innovation then moves to iterating in the best and usually (though not always) best senses. Take for example the iMac. It started out as a CRT device. Before moving to a thinner LCD based panel All In One, before becoming bigger and slimmer. Apple iterated to make the desktop computer bigger, more powerful like many of its competitors but what Apple also did was incorporate beautiful design and in doing so made its iMac desktop computer desirable. Why make a computer desirable in a declining market? Because what other PC OEM’s didn’t and still don’t appreciate is the power of beautiful design. The iMac is bucking the declining trend of the desktop, not because it’s more powerful, cheaper or has more features than the competition but because it is beautiful to look at and use.
The computer is something we take for granted, in much the same way as the appliances we use around our homes. Items like the toaster, the dishwasher, the oven, the fridge are all part of everyday life. So why have they not been ’smartened up’? How comes we don’t see the smart fridge, oven, toaster, washing machine et. al? Logic from above would dictate that it’s because Apple hasn’t made one yet. However Apple don’t make TV’s yet we see Smart TVs abound. Seems you can’t buy a TV above 32" in size without it being a Smart TV. I don’t know what your opinion of Smart TVs is but I loath them. The reason? I don’t want my TV to run apps. I want my TV to be truly smart and recommend things, record things on its own because it learnt my habits or be able to have a small window with another program in it so I could truly flick channels and ’browse’ what’s on to see if I’d enjoy it. These are smart features that help me. If I wanted to Skype I’d go to my tablet or notebook not my TV. If I wanted to use cloud services to show my pictures I’d send people to my web albums to prevent boring them when they’re at my house to see me. After all my TV is not a big tablet, it’s a TV. I appreciate connected technologies like DLNA that allow me to stream media from another device to my TV so why do I need apps on my TV to do this as well? I don’t.
Now away from my opinion.
Servers are commonly thought of as big complex computers that are hidden away in data centres around the world. Where super nerds sit and monitor complex graphs and numbers to show the stream of data being transmitted.
In reality servers are not this but are still complex machines. Microsoft tried to make servers more ubiquitous with its Windows Home Server software. WHS as it was more commonly known was a stripped down version of the full blown Windows Server 2003 and 2008 editions with some extra and useful functionality. This approach failed so the latest version of Server 2012 does not include a WHS option. However it is a product that was designed to bring the more complex aspect of computing to the average user (it was however only really picked up by the hobbyist system builder and power users of the Windows Platform). Microsoft’s vision was clear if a little premature but what if servers were the basis of our homes? If all our devices connected to a central home server that allowed us to take our appliances beyond the home? The ability for a fridge to communicate with us as we near one of our favourite supermarkets, to remind us to buy milk lest we not have some for coffee the following morning, for us to be able to ping our fridge and ask it what’s in it as we shop for dinner on the way home, or for the fridge to recommend recipes based on what’s inside to save us money on buying unnecessary groceries. Would that not be useful? For the washing machine to tell us when it’s done, for it to to be able to tell us what colours can mix and what can’t without us having to end up with a pink shirt, or even in that vein of thought, to remind us to double check the load to ensure no white shirt is amongst our red bedsheets. This principle doesn’t apply to everything, the toaster and oven are a little more ambiguous in their requirement of a technological update. However an oven that could automatically calibrate itself and heat or turn itself off based upon a recipe that your fridge has picked out or you have picked out would be advantageous.
Home management systems and solutions already exist of course. But they exist in the world of the millionaires. Houses and apartments no-one can really afford. They are part of bespoke housing and computing solutions for the wealthy that just want another toy or a show piece to say that they are in touch with technology and technological advances. They are not useful other than to turn the lights down with a hand movement or a clap. Google Glass has it’s sceptics that say it needs to be affordable for it to take off in the mainstream. This may be correct but is it? The iPhone and smartphones in general are expensive pieces of kit. As are computers (especially Apple Mac’s) yet people still invest in those either through savings, carrier contracts or finance plans. Consumers buy what they want and need not just what they need in their lives. That is the benefit of consumerism. The choice to buy. Google Glass is certainly an experimental product, one which seems to be dividing the technology community at present with it’s use. Google has been smart early on and given developers access to Glass’s API’s and SDK so that they can further expand the usefulness of the product before it’s commercial and consumer launch in the next year or so. As more developers get on board and develop for Glass so will more of the explorers (the Glass Early Adopters) utilise the device and in turn come to like and depend on it. Many have written blog posts and article about how the device is an eternal talking point with many people wanting to try it and then being amazed by it. Will this mean Glass becomes ubiquitous? That is unknown for now but Google certainly is doing the work for it to become so upon its eventual launch.
Will we see this sort of approach to ‘connected appliances’? It’s doubtful as the Apples, Googles and Facebooks of the world are unfortunately not present in these industries and are unlikely to enter those markets either. However the advent of Google Glass and Google’s self driving car research is something we should be paying attention too to bring this world closer.
If we could have all our devices connected, from appliances to smartphones to tablets to computers to automobiles we could not only make ourselves more connected with the world around us but also to each other as the advances allow us to save the one thing we all want more of. Time.
