The Mobile Downturn
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This is repeated from blog to blog but is it really true?
Smartphones outsell desktops because you change phones every 18 months while a desktop will last maybe a decade or more; but do people really prefer to use their phone if they have a choice?
It would seem to me people who use a phone most of the time are people who don't have easy access to a desktop: young people, or people who don't have a job or whose job keeps them away from a desk (lucky them!)
When I'm around people who use a smartphone, I never see them engaged in anything more complex than listening to music, texting, or playing some super-simple game such as CandyCrush; they're never "browsing" anything, searching, writing, composing, etc.
So if you're doing social or communications, sure, mobile first makes a lot of sense, but how about other domains?
Do people use Github from mobile platforms? The Github app for Android apparently has "100,000+ downloads", which doesn't seem like a lot?
It would be interesting to know the numbers for Github (for example), of mobile vs. desktop usage.
Look at everyday of an average person, and you will notice that most are indeed spending significantly less time using PC's than few years ago.
I am scared to observe that these people use nothing beyond facebook.
I may spend more time staring at a computer monitor, but that time is spent on my work routine, where new tools and apps are added sporadically at best.
My phone, on the other hand, is where I spend time in a less routine way. Much of this time is up for grabs and the way I spend it changes on a much shorter cycle.
But, to your point about other domains, I think the obvious answer is that there are certainly myriad products that don't need to be mobile-first today, if mobile just doesn't tie into their users' primary workflow. But even most of those services (HipChat, say) can become far more powerful by adding mobile apps. GitHub would be silly as a mobile-only service, but there are plenty of cases where accessing from mobile could be valuable.
Phones and tablets might run the same OS, but tablets are much more viable as a PC/laptop replacement. Maybe not yet, but soon.
I can "dock" my Nexus tablet with an external monitor, and bluetooth keyboard & mouse, and do a considerable amount on it (email, taking notes, even some development), then take just the tablet with me for review or minor changes, as well as simply looking at things with a mostly big enough screen. For that matter, adding just the b/t keyboard is pretty useful. In a pinch, I can run the same apps & content on my phone, as well, which complements the system, though the phone is a poor viewport for most content.
People might downplay the capabilities of a tablet, but the configuration mentioned above is considerably better than anything that I used to do actual work in the 80s, and the resolution, though not size, matched most of what I worked on in the 90s.
The way the apps are partitioned so they can't crap all over each others' DLLs and registry entries helps some as well. The single-source app store may or may not be a win for everyone, but making apps keep to themselves helps avoid fouling the whole OS install.
edit: + 'mobile' in last sentence
These places are completely leapfrogging desktop technology and going straight to mobile. It isn't just the case that the end user can't afford desktops: think how much infrastructure is needed (in terms of power, connectivity, etc) for a desktop device versus a smartphone or tablet.
Not sure what you mean by connectivity -- desktops and mobile devices have the same options: wireless (3/4G, etc), and wired (via wifi for the mobiles). A desktop surely doesn't require buildout of a infrastructure-heavy wired network to have comparable connectivity to a smartphone.
As far as connectivity goes: again, you're talking about a hypothetical. While there's no reason you can't create a low-bandwidth experience on desktop, the fact remains that simply opening my email transfers over .5MB. Opening my Facebook account transfers more than 1MB. Doing this on my phone uses a fraction of this data.
> This is repeated from blog to blog but is it really true?
Just an anecdote: In our household, we have multiple tablets, laptops, and a mid-tier desktop with a huge beautiful screen.
My wife prefers 99% of the time to do everything on her iPhone 5s.
From the occasional glances, she's mostly doing one of these:
1. Playing a game
2. Browsing on online clothing shops, both mobile websites and native apps
3. Keeping up with friends and colleagues via Whatsapp
4. Pinterest
5. Facebook
So I'd say most of her time is spent in native apps.
edit: linebreaks
The thing is, for the vast majority of people that's all they were doing with their PCs anyway. They weren't composing librettos, they were just checking email and playing Farmville. So to them it doesn't feel like they've lost anything.
an here is the next multi-billion of dollars :)
Yes, most of the world is starting with mobile and that is all they know, but my feeling is with low cost pc's/ chromebooks/ surface-type tablets - we'll see those as places where "work" happens
I have one friend like this who had a mishap that resulted in a blowtorch in his trunk burning a hole right through his laptop. By some miracle the laptop works. It runs like shit and looks awful, but he refuses to replace it because he has no reason to. He rather use his smartphone for the majority of his computing needs.
Yes.
The interesting story here, to me, is native app verse website. Which wins?
TCP/IP, HTTP, the browser, search, social, mobile, and blockchains.
I know that it's got something to do with Bitcoin, but have no idea what a blockchain is. Wikipedia only references it in a link to blockchain.info, which talks about blocks but not blockchains. Nobody I've asked can explain it to me either.
If it's such a massive innovation (is it?), what is it, and why isn't it easy to discover what it is?
"Integral to Bitcoin is a sequential record of all transactions known as the block chain. There is only one block chain, and it records bitcoin ownership both present and at all points in the past. By keeping a record of all transactions, the block chain mitigates double-spending, a core design challenge of digital currency. Approximately every ten minutes a new bundle of transactions, called a block, is added to the block chain."
If you need a more in depth explanation, which also covers how this relates to a famous problem in distributed systems (the Byzantine Generals Problem), see: http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the-by...
Computers all over the world are competing to extend the block chain by solving a problem involving cryptographic hashes. The reward for solving the problem is that a wallet controlled by the machine that does it can claim a Bitcoin reward. The reward is currently, I believe, 25btc --- but it's scheduled to drop over time; eventually to zero, at which point, miners will have to be compensated by claiming transaction fees.
The upshot is that Bitcoin has a system for maintaining a single, global log which is consistent across all connected Bitcoin clients. And while Bitcoin itself uses this as a transaction ledger, there are plenty of other things you might want to use this construct for once you have it. Namecoin, for instance, uses a Bitcoin-like block chain to manage a DNS-like naming scheme.
(There are some weaknesses to the design: most notably, if a single party has more than half the mining compute capacity, they're able to pull off all sorts of chicanery against the community as a whole...)
1: https://www.namecoin.org/ 2: https://www.ethereum.org/ 3: http://protoshares.net/
I'd say that JavaScript should be on that list -- not that I like JavaScript, but a scripting language in support of DOM was an important piece of work.
Other trends are big data, deep learning.. i bet deep learning will me much more revolutionary.. But you know SV have a love affair with hypes
Let me explain, what are big networks buying? Think Yahoo, Facebook, Google, MS, etc..
The mobile app now represents user data to buy...and that is what we are seeing in some of the acquirehires buying sprees is that the mobile app is kept alive after the buyout because the firm doing the buying is buying user data.
Thus we still will see some $1B or more home runs if we know and understand what they are buying