Image: abulhussain/Flickr
More In This Article
-
Overview
Big Progress on the Little Things
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
In my Scientific American column this month, I pointed out three tech trends that are worth celebrating: the end of the megapixel race in digital cameras, the adoption of micro USB as a universal cellphone charging cord across all brands, and the rise of design simplicity as a marketing point (see: iPod, Wii, Flip).
But life isn’t all sunshine and bunnies. For every positive trend, you’ll have no problem finding a negative one. Here, for example, are a few trends worth bumming out about:
Instant Product Death Syndrome. 2011, it seems, was the Year of the Hair-Trigger Electronics CEO. An astonishing number of high-profile, high-potential electronics were killed—taken off the market—for no reason that any outsider could see.
There was Cisco, which bought the Flip camcorder company in 2009—and then, this year, killed the Flip and fired 550 people. There was Microsoft, which spent two years and millions of dollars developing the Kin smartphone, and then killed it only 2 months after its introduction. Then there was HP, which released its Touchpad tablet to much fanfare in April—and then killed it only seven weeks later.
They all have their inside corporate reasons, no doubt. But come on; there’s no possible way you could determine a product’s long-term prospects after only two months. Plenty of products, including the Microsoft XBox, had weak sales at the beginning, and became hits only when their makers stayed the course and kept making improvements.
The death of competition. This has also been a bad year for competition. Google bought Motorola’s cellphone division, creators of great gadgets like the Razr, Droid and Atrix. AT&T is trying to buy T-Mobile. And that’s on top of the quitters described above.
Competition means lower prices and new ideas. It’ll be a sad world when nobody’s making decent smartphones but Google and Apple.
Data caps. Everything, if you hadn’t noticed, is moving online. Photos, TV, movies, software, backups, phone calls. It’s all about “the cloud.”
These trends could save us money and time, and they’re very exciting. But they’re colliding with a truly depressing trend: data caps. Every cellphone company, and even many home Internet providers, are imposing limits on the amount of data we use each month—at precisely the wrong time in technological history. How are we supposed to enjoy our cloud, if we’re allowed only selective access to it?
The departure of Steve Jobs. You can love Apple or hate Apple—plenty of people do—but one thing is unassailable: the company has led or reinvented an astonishing number of industries. The music business, the movie business, the computer business, the phone business. And at the helm through all of it was Steve Jobs, who recently resigned as CEO, probably because of his failing health.
Apple is teeming with geniuses; the Jobs-shaped product pipeline will probably remain full for years; and Jobs will remain chairman of the board. But Apple owes much of its jaw-dropping success to Steve Jobs’s personality: strong, autocratic, focused, visionary, persuasive, charismatic. The company, and the world, won’t be the same without him.
See what we're tweeting about
9 Comments
Add CommentDid anyone mention it is simply the human inability to act responsibly when faced with a less than responsible situation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are a very limited species and our own expiration date is rapidly approaching, and when we go, there will be no one to even note the passing of a limited, failed species.
I'm not sure about the "limited, failed species" thing... if you count success as simply how long they kicked around on the planet, sure plenty of others will win the prize... but that seems like a pretty hollow victory...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this10 years or 10 million years, if each is exactly like the one before it, it is all wasted.
I'd say the species that progresses to the greatest understanding of the universe, that creates and appreciates the most, that is where the real success story is... and as far as we know, so far, that's us.
It's so true. The saying, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door" is sadly not true. The best isn't what gets made or produced. Another saying, "Sometimes crappy is good enough" is more commonly the reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRHoltslander wrote: "Sometimes crappy is good enough" is more commonly the reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That's me! That's me!" -- Sir M.S. Windows
Your complaint about the "death of competition" is laughably weak. Company A wanting to buy company B is *not* anywhere near to sufficient evidence that competition will suffer. For the AT&T/T-Mobile case, for example, the problem is that these two companies separately do not have sufficient usable spectrum ranges to completely deploy a 4G data solution with complete coverage. Separately, they aren't as able to effectively compete with Verizon. Together, they can combine their spectrum allocations to more effectively compete. So in this case, competition would be fostered by allowing the merger. In particular, note that this is a problem *caused* by government (in)action by not allocating sufficient spectrum to allow effective competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow on Earth could you avoid mention of patent trolls and the use of patents for competitive advantage? Who sponsored this article?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is helpful to laud or condemn trends that result from conscious decisions freely arrived at. The designer of a videocam has quite a bit of freedom, for instance. When he or she works hard to make the design simple and usable, that is worth pointing out, so that perhaps other designers will take note and follow suit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am less sure it is useful to point out good or bad decisions that were very constrained. Killing products like the Flip or the Kin is one example. No doubt those decisions were certainly made in response to some very strict exigencies, probably financial in some way. No doubt the responsible parties made those decisions reluctantly, knowing it would mean the loss of money, careers, reputation and so on. It is a bit like scolding a person for not having health insurance. Not smart, but maybe it can't be helped.
How about our increasing ability to create an extreme pollution of the nature with all this amazing new technology? We speed up our production of new gadgets that we HAVE TO HAVE with all this competition. May we stop, look around and come to our senses at last? We are creating a monster that are already slowly killing us because of our desire to shiny new toys that we do not really need. Do we really need a new phone every year? or computer? etc., etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this