[governance] IBM Predicts the End of the Digital Divide in 5 Years

Tue Oct 23 13:36:24 EDT 2012

Given the expected announcement by Apple in just a few hours from now, this
quote/prediction is one of the best in the list that's being compiled here:

"Second, I'd like to comment on the avalanche of tablets poised to enter
the market in the coming months.

First, it appears to be just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an
avalanche. Second, almost all of them use seven-inch screens as compared to
iPad's near 10-inch screen. Let's start there. One naturally thinks that a
seven-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen.
Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are
diagonal, so that a seven-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad's
10-inch screen. You heard me right; just 45% as large.

If you take an iPad and hold it upright in portrait view and draw an
imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on the
seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad
display. This size isn't sufficient to create great tablet apps in our
opinion.Well, one could increase the resolution of the display to make up
for some of the difference. It is meaningless, unless your tablet also
includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around
one quarter of the present size.

Apple's done extensive user-testing on touch interfaces over many years,
and we really understand this stuff.

There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a
touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is
one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size
required to create great tablet apps.

Third, every tablet user is also a smartphone user. No tablet can compete
with the mobility of a smartphone, its ease of fitting into your pocket or
purse, its unobtrusiveness when used in a crowd. Given that all tablet
users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious
display area to fit a tablet in our pockets is clearly the wrong tradeoff.
The seven-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone
and too small to compete with an iPad."

SOURCE: http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/230710

Rgds,

Tracy
On Oct 23, 2012 1:21 PM, "Chaitanya Dhareshwar" <chaitanyabd at gmail.com>
wrote:

> So considering the remarkable inverse accuracy of these statements they
> should have announced "Digital divide will be around for ever, we guarantee
> at least 5 years" - and then in 4 years we'd be clean?
>
> -C
>
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 9:51 PM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
>
>> On Oct 23, 2012, at 5:12 AM, Chaitanya Dhareshwar <chaitanyabd at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > That was 5 computers -
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote
>>
>> However, that article you referenced suggests 5 is 4 too many.
>>
>> > It's like Gates saying "640K Ram should be enough for everyone"
>>
>> http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 (note: potentially
>> offensive language unrelated to the Gates quote towards the end of that
>> article)
>>
>> Bill Gates did however say (in 1989) that Microsoft would never make a
>> 32-bit operating system and that spam would be "a thing of the past in two
>> years time" in 2004.
>>
>> > But yes why do they make such silly statements? And they're the ones in
>> the forefront of computing (facepalm)
>>
>> Making predictions about the future is known to be a bit challenging,
>> e.g.,
>> http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/
>>
>> Regards,
>> -drc
>>
>>
>>
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