Future form factors....what is in the works?

I was thinking and was doing some googling about future form factors the other day. I have seen a bunch of stuff about NUC and other VIA form factors but those are really only mini computers like a smaller version of the mac box or whatever. Anyone else have seen some cool form factors? IBM had one that has a table/notebook design but i honestly haven't seen anything that stuck out.

 

Well, there's glasses and watches...

 

i am honestly not that impressed with google glass but that is just me. I know samsung has the flexible screen but no way to really implement it.

 

There's always the classic breadboard

 

interesting i am not sure if i have seen that before....i think i have but i am unsure. My knowledge of super old tech is fairly limited. Amazes me how many weird old things used to be used. I remember seeing on "I Dream of Jeannie" (my favorite show) the old card reading computers ^^

EDIT: My knowledge of old shows i think is better than old tech -_- I love TV/movies...i know how much life have i wasted *shrugs*

 

You can make some very interesting circuits with one or more breadboards and accompanying ICs, resistors, and wires. Of course, you're not going to have something even remotely close to as powerful as a Rasberry Pi, for example, but figuring out how to design, build, and successfully test stuff like a x-bit ALU, x-bit combinational multipliers, stuff that outputs to LED displays, etc. You can also learn some very interesting ECE-related stuff as well with a bit of research and know-how; I remember our ECE 209 lab teaching us the basics of direct-mapped cache, though we did that (and the other larger, more complex) circuits in software like Digital Works 95 instead of a physical breadboard (not enough space/parts provided in the lab kit).

Fun fact: Much of the stuff you can create using a breadboard can also easily be done in Minecraft with redstone circuitry

 

minecraft....the biggest waste of time lol. i avoided that for that one reason....i have no idea how much time some people have wasted in that but than again I think of PVK/CS/RTS games and sigh... So no other interesting form factors? I have seen some cool stuff with the projectors and laser keyboards (do those even work?).

 

Oculus Rift VR headset.
It's currently in the prototype / developer / pre-release phase, expected to come out in 2014 for about $300 retail. From what everyone has said about it, they are all absolutely blown away at how incredibly well-executed of a VR implementation it is (both 3D effect and the head-tracking). It's a complete departure from the first wave of mid-1990's "VR" helmets in terms of how convincing of a simulation it provides.

Currently supports Team Fortress 2 and Hawken as actual game implementations. Has support for Unreal and Unity game engines.

I know that your question alluded to hardware form factors. But I think that those are all going to be predictable.

• Laptops: Typical incremental improvements with getting thinner, lighter, more powerful.
• Desktops: Typical incremental improvements to CPU and GPU computing power; typical incremental improvements to higher capacity storage at a lower cost.
• Tablet computing: Convertible tablets will "flood the market with cheap garbage" approach we saw with netbooks ultrabooks, and android tablets. They are going to race to the bottom to see who can crank out the cheapest tablet, by consistently throwing in sub-par cheap displays and build quality. Very few will stand out. Most will be entirely forgettable.
• Smartphones: Typical incremental improvements. They will get thinner, and more powerful. Someone will try to 1-up competitors by releasing a smartphone with an even-larger screen.

All of those hardware form-factor predictions I could have told you 3 years ago. Because nothing really game-changing has happened to hardware form-factors. And nothing is really on the horizon for hardware.

I think we need a new MODE of computing to shake things up, similar to how tablets have provided us with a new mode of computing over the past 5 years. And I think that a successful VR implementation (especially when combined with space-aware controllers, like a Microsoft Kinnect) will be the next game-changer in computing. Minority Report time.

 

I think we will see some kind of "pillar" computers in the future that stand on the ground. You would stand in front of it an control it with something like leap, and either a) have a display/video projector in front of you, or b) wear a VR headset like Oculus.

 

I'd like to see more context-aware voice recognition integrated into household technology. It's improving in smartphones and Kinect, but there is a lot of potential for use in home automation, security, etc.

 

Makes me think of a home improvement episode on home security systems lol

 

This is the near future:

Lumus - Consumer Market Products

Connect them to a smartphone in your pocket or PC in your basement/attic, and you're done.

And of course, the far future should give us display contact lens and of course brain implants

 

Actually... what I'd love to see is better smartphone integration in cars.

I want to be able to use my Android phone and Google Maps on a car's in-dash display. Right now, the $600 smartphone in my hand is far superior for mapping than a $200 standalone GPS nav unit, or a $2000 in-dash car navigation unit.

 

yea i have a 2013 corolla with a screen and i really want to see if their is a way to get my phone to work on it but don't really have the time to tear apart the dash to figure it out.

 

simple solution, buy a model S

I think people are leaning to tablets, my take is

Wearable devices, so smartphones will be inevitably integrated on glasses, watches and so forth

Tablets - notebooks will become much like the new tablets/notebooks, with a variety of ways to stash the keyboard or none at all - then we have the nifty thunderbolt for expansion purposes

Workstations/gamings - notebooks that need a lot of power will still retain power and sincerely they will probably tend to become thinner, with the demolition of some things, like 2.5'' drives, ODD

Desktops - will only serve to be servers/extreme workstations, they are dying a slow and painful death for a long time, and will eventually cease to exist for consumers and will inevitably move to AIO designs for those that linger

Integration is the norm, bluetooth will become more useful, or other forms of wireless communication

 

that is way over priced by like 2-3 grand

 

Too true, hence the "context-aware" part. The technology is currently available to make nearly everything voice-activated, but it would be a comedy of errors and mistakes, as the programs do not yet have the level of sophistication to reliably differentiate between conversation and commands.

 

its simple think of the fluffy bunnies and their happiness



see how suddenly those 2-3k are nothing?

 

holographic 3D pc's at homes.

 

I might be going out on a limb here, but I'd imagine that (practically-speaking, not wishfully-speaking) that gaming consoles and/or tablets and/or smartphones will be the primary computing device in most non-techie homes that don't produce media content often or if at all. For example...

The current Xbox 360 OS supports IE (so you have full web browsing), Netflix/Hulu/other streaming services, and obviously can play games pretty well. In addition to mouse/keyboard support, you can basically use that console in the same way most people use laptops/desktops.

Or take smartphones (tablets too, since they're basically the same, sans cellular voice/texting). My mom, definitely non-techie, performs the majority of her computing tasks on her iPhone. She has a web browser, an app market, and as a bonus she can make/take calls and texts with that. Pretty much the only time she uses the family desktop is if she needs to print out something (though I understand that there are devices/services that allow iPhone printing these days?).

I can't see most of the other suggestions taking off for a long time, if at all. But not only that, but you have probably *the most important* issue that faces these futuristic computing devices: "Why do I need to buy this? What value does this have to justify replacing my current desktop/laptop/tablet/smartphone/console/whatever?"

 

Yes, the integration is now complete: you have now been assimilated.

Seriously, technology is a wonderful thing as long as I always have control of the off switch...a true OFF switch!

 

I don't get how this stuff is supposed to work, vision wise. I'm assuming this is one of those screen-in-the-lens products? I can't focus my eyes on anything much closer than four or five inches. How do you get a viewable image on a glasses-lens display?

 

so you wouldn't be able to use google glass?

yea i just tried it myself i can't focus on anything closer than an index finger away (3.5 inches). I am not sure how these things would work...maybe your eyes just think it is farther away than 3.5 inches?

 

Better minds than mine have thought this stuff through, I'm sure. The diagram for the Lumus shows the screens near the temples and then rerouted via mirrors it appears. That increases the distance, but it's still too close for my eyes. They probably have a focusing lens, maybe static or maybe adjustable, that somehow augments your eyes' ability to focus on something that close.

Still, I'll believe it when I see it, and since I don't really care about this kind of technology until it's cheap and mature, that won't be for a while.

 

transparency might make a difference but than i think of how my eyes get really annoyed when driving in the rain. Trying to focus into the distance past the rain is really hard and gives me a headache. We maybe the unlucky few lol

 

anyone hear of anything good at computex? i surprising heard very little from it minus what techpowerup and notebookcheck.net reported. Checked several other places and didn't really see anything about the event

 

it was a pretty bleak event barely any coverage done

 

was it bleak or did news event places drop the ball?

 

im going for bleak, everywhere you look is the same

 

Computex was "Haswell, thinner (to the point of flimsy) ultrabooks, Haswell, higher-res (but not better) screens, Haswell, more tablet convertibles, Haswell."

At least, that's what I got from the little coverage I could find...

 

Computex was fine. I think that anyone who was disappointed, had unrealistic expectations.

* Computex is an computer industry trade show, intended for tech industry press (e.g. Anandtech, TomsHardware, etc). You should expect to see motherboards, CPUs, video cards, etc. Which is exactly what we got.

* Everything we saw was evolutionary technology. Intel Haswell is a predictably evolutionary improvement over Ivy Bridge (slightly improved CPU, GPU, and power consumption). nVidia showed evolutionary improvements with their new GeForce 7xx series parts. Motherboard vendors showed products that can support the new Intel Haswell-based CPUs.

* Laptop manufacturers showed evolutionary products, where laptops and tablets had slightly improved specs, parts, and/or price. Even something like the new Alienware laptops were completely predictable (Haswell CPU, new nVidia GeForce 7xx series mobile GPU, higher-res screens).


Computex is all about the hardware that goes INTO a machine based on the existing ways in which we interact with computers. If you're looking for new ways to interact with computers, you'll need to look at PC and console gaming tradeshows. For example, we know that game developers (both PC and console) will focus on motion-based gaming. For PC users, this means it is more likely to see VR-based projects like Oculus Rift gain prominence over the next 8 years. We also know that 4K resolution gaming is currently NOT available in announced consoles, which means we are less likely to see PC gaming adopt 4K resolution gaming over the next 8 years.