Technology - Google News

A port-free iPhone is my dream and nightmare - CNET
The PC was supposed to die a decade ago. Instead, this happened - ZDNet
Should you be polite to your smart speakers? Why many people say 'please' to Alexa - TODAY

A port-free iPhone is my dream and nightmare - CNET

Posted: 07 Dec 2019 05:00 AM PST

12-iphone-11-pro-and-iphone-11-max — Will this be the end, little port?
Sarah Tew/CNET

A new report on the next iPhones coming from Apple in 2020 and 2021, by reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, predicts something beyond just 5G, or an iPhone SE successor, or more advanced 3D depth-tracking cameras. In 2021, iPhones may not have any ports at all.

And I'm... full of apprehension already.

Instead of moving from Lightning to USB-C, Apple may go straight into being a seamless screen-slab that charges and syncs and does everything without any physical cables.

When I read this report, I tensed up immediately. But I also knew it was coming.

We've talked about it on CNET before. And I've been interested in where wireless tech is heading for years. WiGig, or really high throughput local wireless, has promised low-latency video and graphics for things like TV and VR. Contactless charging is already here. Peripherals like the Apple Watch and AirPods are wireless already. The future of other emerging tech like VR headsets and smartglasses is also wireless. Where we're going, we don't need wires.

Except, we do. On a daily basis, I have problems with wireless connectivity of all sorts. Crackles and skips and outages. Sometimes AirPods don't connect. Sometimes AirDrop doesn't find my MacBook. Meanwhile, contactless Qi-based charging is slow, slower than wired fast-charging solutions. Having a simple cable is comforting. It's a lifeline.

Also, there's a feeling of Apple robbing us of already fine input options. First Apple came for the headphone jack. Now it's gunning for everything.

Moving from that old 30-pin port to Lightning was stressful. MacBooks losing SD card slots, USB-A ports and HDMI was stressful. Getting rid of the headphone jack was, and is, a hassle -- even if I do use wireless buds most of the time now.

I've started stocking my bags and drawers with dongles. Lightning to USB-C. USB-C to Lightning. Three pairs of headphones for plane flights. Did I bring the brick that works with the charge cable I need?

But I also got used to the changes. I'm here. I'm fine.

speck-presidio-grip-wireless-charging — Wireless charging: it's been a thing since iPhone 8.
Sarah Tew/CNET

Maybe a wireless future means a dongle-free future -- if all the tech companies can agree on standards. Maybe Apple adds a smart connector on future iPhones like the one on iPads, but a more advanced version that also allows dongles to snap on (hey, remember Moto Mods?).

Maybe the cable's a placebo. It's like the modern equivalent of having a physical copy of something purely because it's comforting. I used to say I'd never give up the book or the disc, and now so much of my life is digital, virtual, cloud, streamed.

Getting rid of ports would seal up iPhones even more and perhaps make them more durable. It would also definitely make them more reliant on Apple accessories or services to connect. Then again, iOS devices are already walled off. They're harder for the layman to repair, let alone fiddle around with, and doing things with USB-C on an iPad Pro is up to the discretion of what Apple deems it wants USB-C to do in iPadOS. I can't just sideload files onto an iPhone from a computer. So, then, what am I losing if I never really had much flexibility in the first place?

I see my future as being covered in exchangeable wireless things that I sometimes use, while a simple hub is somewhere on me, powering them. That future's here now. Phones are hubs. But closing off the last hole on the iPhone will also feel like the final step of an evolution that has already been in place for a long time. We just didn't want to admit it would happen.

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The PC was supposed to die a decade ago. Instead, this happened - ZDNet

Posted: 07 Dec 2019 05:00 AM PST

Not all that long ago, tech pundits were convinced that by 2020 the personal computer as we know it would be extinct. You can even mark the date and time of the PC's death: January 27, 2010, at 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time, when Steve Jobs stepped onto a San Francisco stage to unveil the iPad. The precise moment was documented by noted Big Thinker Nicholas Carr in The New Republic with this memorable headline: "The PC Officially Died Today."

A few months later, CNN Money added their own obituary, complete with charts and graphs: "The end of the desktop PC (seriously)."

Fast-forward to April 2013, when Forbes was still looking for a pulse: "The Death of the PC Has Not Been Exaggerated." At the midpoint of the decade Wired was using the same cliché but qualifying it with a wobbly adverb: "The Death of the PC Has Not Been Greatly Exaggerated."

And by 2017 The Inquirer, never one to shrink from a controversial topic, had conceded that the patient was apparently alive and well: "The PC still isn't dead and the market is 'stabilising'," they wrote.

And so, here we are, a full decade after the PC's untimely death, and the industry is still selling more than a quarter-billion-with-a-B personal computers every year. Which is pretty good for an industry that has been living on borrowed time for ten years.

Maybe the reason the PC industry hasn't suffered a mass extinction event yet is because they adapted, and because those competing platforms weren't able to take over every PC-centric task.

So what's different as we approach 2020? To get a proper before-and-after picture, I climbed into the Wayback Machine and traveled back to 2010.

The competitive landscape

You didn't have to be a Big Thinker with a book contract to see the beginnings of a Pretty Big Trend in 2010. Increasingly powerful mobile devices made it possible for people to quickly complete a variety of tasks that used to require a PC. That tech transition drained away much of the demand for PCs from consumers, although it made only the slightest dent on business demand.

The first casualty was the netbook, a category of cheap PCs that used underpowered Atom processors and smaller screens than you'd typically find on an entry-level laptop, on the theory that mere consumers wouldn't notice the difference.

The PC may be alive and well, but underpowered, clunky netbooks like this are long gone.

Spoiler: Consumers noticed the difference. Netbooks were slow and ugly and cheap, serving more as a reminder that you could get a real notebook for maybe $100 more. The category was gone almost before anyone noticed that it was fading.

Meanwhile, PC makers realized that at least two groups of customers were willing to pay a premium for a PC: business buyers and gamers. And so, as we shall see, OEMs began investing heavily in those two categories.

The hardware

Desktop PC configurations (conventional towers and small form factor devices) haven't changed much in the past decade, but portable PCs sure have. For a quick refresher course on what the laptop market looked like back in 2010, you don't need to borrow my Wayback Machine. Just read this excellent round-up of the best notebooks of 2010, as selected by Laptop Magazine editor Mark Spoonauer.

Here's what I noticed when I compared the class of 2010 to PC technology from a decade later.

They're thinner and lighter. The device that every PC manufacturer has aimed to emulate over the past decade is, without question, Apple's MacBook Air. The Laptop crew, in fact, designated it as their "Breakthrough Device" for 2010, calling the 2.3-pound and 2.9-pound devices "ridiculously light." Today, most high-end Windows PCs can meet or beat those specs, with the physical limitations of the battery and keyboard preventing them from getting much smaller or lighter. At least they don't need optical drives anymore.

The original MacBook Air defined the thin-and-light-laptop category. This 2019 model is no longer so distinctive.

Touchscreens and 2-in-1s are common. Back in 2010, Microsoft was just beginning to show off its touch-enabled Windows 7 PCs, but they were quickly overshadowed by the iPad launch. By 2015, the category had solidified into a wide range of shape-shifting 2-in-1 devices. Today, touchscreens are common on Windows laptops but nonexistent on Apple's MacBook lines.

This gallery, from 2015, provides a snapshot of how that transformation looked at the dawn of the Windows 10 era.

Solid state storage is standard. Conventional spinning disk media were all the rage in 2010, with reviewers praising devices that offered fast 7200 RPM hard drives. SSDs became an expensive option over the next few years and have dropped in price dramatically since, to the point where it's difficult today to find a portable PC with a conventional hard disk.

Battery life is better. Back in 2010, battery life benchmarks of 5-6 hours were considered good, and real world performance was always less impressive. Battery technology has improved since then, as have the ability of CPUs, chipsets, and system software to manage power usage. Modern PCs routinely get double the battery life of their ancestors from a decade ago.

Ports have evolved. Looking back on those laptop designs from 2010, I was struck by just how clunky the port lineup was. Consider the Alienware M11x "gaming netbook," which promised "the graphics power of a 15-inch laptop in an 11-inch form factor." It was admittedly small, but the entire left side was taken up by ports, including separate VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort connector, plus full-size Ethernet, USB, and IEEE 1394 ports. On today's PCs, those would be replaced by one or two USB Type-C connectors.

For a tiny device, this 2010-vintage Alienware laptop sure packed in a lot of ports.

The software and services

A decade ago, most software was shrink-wrapped, and cloud storage was an interesting novelty. Office 365 wasn't introduced until 2011, and OneDrive was still called SkyDrive until 2014. Back in those days, average internet speeds weren't quite fast enough to make fully cloud-driven experiences practical.

Thanks to ubiquitous wireless connectivity and dramatically faster speeds, the cloud is no longer a curiosity. Likewise, web-based services are systematically eliminating the last traces of boxed software. By mid-decade, that trend was accelerating for Microsoft, arguably the most important company in the PC industry. (See "Microsoft's transition from traditional software to the cloud is picking up steam," published in 2015.)

Also: 8 ways you can (maybe) get Microsoft Office 365 for free or cheap

The effect of that transformation on portable PCs is twofold. First, storage requirements have dropped significantly, with a 128 GB SSD sufficient for most midrange PCs. And second, wireless connectivity options have improved as Wi-Fi standards have evolved. And with ARM-based PCs and 5G mobile networks finally reaching the mainstream, we may see a rapid evolution in cellular connectivity soon.

The other big trend in software was the transformation of operating system upgrades, which used to be an expensive option and are now free. As I noted in this 2016 post, Apple dropped paid OS X upgrades in 2013, and Microsoft followed suit with the release of Windows 10 in 2015. The upshot is that the useful life of a PC can extend well beyond the traditional three or four years that used to represent a major new release and a major upgrade cycle.

In fact, one of the most interesting developments in the PC market is a logical extension of that trend: hardware subscriptions that replace PC ownership. Microsoft's version is called Surface All Access for Business; but Dell's PC as a Service (PCaaS) for Business is a much purer expression of the concept. Both plans allow you to lease a new PC with no upfront costs and one fixed monthly payment, then trade it for a new PC after 36 or 48 months. In Dell's case, they set everything up and securely remove data and recycle the PC at the end of the term.

The OEMs

At the beginning of the decade, just before the release of Apple's iPad, a PC was essential for consumers who wanted to do common online tasks like shopping or checking the news. But as I noted at the beginning of 2019, "the consumer market for PCs has essentially vanished" and three companies that focused primarily on business PCs took an increasingly larger share of sales and revenue: HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Companies like Toshiba and Fujitsu, which once had some of the most interesting designs around, exited the business.

The one major addition to the lineup of PC OEMs in this decade was a surprise, and also a bit of a roller coaster ride. Microsoft's reveal of the original Surface RT and Surface Pro in 2012 was a bold move. The failure of Surface RT was an expensive embarrassment. But the company's persistence and eventual success with Surface, turning it into a billion-dollar brand, was only surprising to people who haven't seen Microsoft's tenacity in other fields.

But of all the surprises the decade brought, the biggest was probably the change in Apple's fortunes. They started with the breakthrough device that defined the category, the MacBook Air. But somewhere along the line Cupertino seems to have taken its eye off the ball when it comes to the Mac. The hardware is underwhelming, the keyboards are defective, and the OS is buggy.

Maybe it wasn't the PC that died a decade ago. Maybe it was the Mac. At any rate, place your predictions on what PCs will look like in another 10 years, because it doesn't look like they'll be dying off any time soon.

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Should you be polite to your smart speakers? Why many people say 'please' to Alexa - TODAY

Posted: 06 Dec 2019 10:10 AM PST

When Alexa and Siri hear commands from their owners, it turns out there's also plenty of politeness coming their way — especially from women. But is that a good thing?

Smart speakers powered by artificial intelligence, like the Amazon Echo or Apple's HomePod, have become some of the most popular gadgets in people's homes, playing music, answering questions and adjusting the thermostat.

It's just a machine, but many humans still want to be courteous to their virtual voice assistant.

When making requests, more than half of smart speaker owners — 54% — report that they at least occasionally say "please" to their devices, a recent Pew Research Center survey found. About one-fifth do it frequently.

Women are more likely than men to be polite to their voice assistants: Almost two-thirds of women, 62%, have said "please" to their smart speakers compared to 45% of men.

Trending stories,celebrity news and all the best of TODAY.

The results may seem innocuous, but they trouble experts like Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is researching people's relationships with such devices. She called them "pretend empathy objects" that know nothing about the human experience.

"What concerns me most is that in using this language designed to make humans feel respected and cared about, we become increasingly drawn in to the false premise of Siri and Alexa — that they are worthy of this kind of language and deference in the first place," Turkle, the author of "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age," told TODAY.

"How ironic, that women who are, in general, tuned and trained to be more empathic than men end up accepting this premise of false empathy," she added.

"When we treat machines as though they were people, we allow ourselves, people, to be treated as objects to be fooled in this new game. Artificial intimacy is the new A.I. Ironically, women are more susceptible to it."

June 19, 201803:35

Unusual etiquette question

From a pure etiquette point of view, experts were split on whether politeness was required.

"A human being should not feel obligated to express gratitude to a plastic speaker with internet access," said Thomas Farley, also known as "Mister Manners," who frequently shares his etiquette advice on TODAY. At least until the devices can experience true happiness or genuine disappointment, he noted.

"As an aside, have you ever typed 'thank you' to your browser after it delivers the web results you sought?" Farley, asked.

But Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute, believed people should be polite to their A.I. assistants because such behavior encouraged more courtesy in other parts of their lives.

"It's really important not to just devolve into commands. It also helps us to be more polite within our own families, households and work environments when we are practicing politeness on a regular basis," Post said.

She and Farley agreed it's a good idea for parents with young kids at home to say "please" and "thank you" to their smart speakers. It displays respect toward "all contributors to a household's comfort and contentment — including the electronic ones," Farley said.

"Does any of that matter to Alexa or Siri? Not at all — yet."