Hi all.
Well the article to this can be found at the link below.
https://www.idropnews.com/news/9-devices-and-tech-that-will-soon-be-obsolete/151060/12/
I personally think articles like these are potentially dangerous.
Microsoft and others are trying to go passwordless for example.
First is my comment then my analisis on it.
To be honest I will have to disagree with you in some respects but not others.
1 wired headphones.
I agree, generally not for everyone.
But as a gamer and audio person, I actually use my wired sets on my studio gear including laptop.
I have portable wired units I use on my digital recorder.
My gripe about wireless/bluetooth are the delays and battery usage.
This will probably get better but for now nothing beats an expensive studio set while at home.
I don’t use headphones while on the go otherwise but am thinking about the frames stuff.
Being blind I shouldn’t have my ears blocked with things anyway.
- you are probably right with cameras period.
Most everyone uses digital cameras on their phones.
- hard drives.
Not sure, certainly I like running things locally as well as on the cloud.
I am a home user, and admin person, so a lot of my stuff is on the drive.
Sure internal drives on laptops will be harder and harder to get so eventually workstation desk units may be the way.
However I don’t see myself storing all my audio, video, and stuff online.
Price wize, you can’t get more than 1tb personal anyway.
I can still buy hdds of 4tb or more cheap enough.
What may happen is that ssd units will drop down and maybe that will be the future maybe.
As for drives sitting about I agree, my 1-4gb flash sticks do sit about, but I usually use 8, 16, 32, and 64 gb drives on a regular basis, well while thats not daily I wouldn’t go without them.
The net isn’t going to always be accessible or accessible at any fast speed.
In some rural areas thats really bad and if you are remote well.
I remember when I had a 128gb laptop only before I got a workstation with duel drives.
I was able to do everything online but take away the net and my laptop became fucking useless!
Now for those that work in business as a primary thing, do banking and email maybe, but net speeds don’t match up to uploading terabytes of info and dragging them about.
Yeah you can and some do this, but even on a fast connection you could be waiting for weeks for a backup, though granted hdds can and have gone bad I’d still trust my multiple offline storage solutions over online any day.
The next is who’s data is it.
According to some, its whoever’s server your stuff is on and can be used for well anything you can imagine.
At any rate all that digital music etc, some is streamed sure but for those that have a subscription in the cloud thhats not really your’s, I mean you have the right to access it but its not really yours.
Analog watches, maybe bar specialised things like braille.
Phones hmph not sure.
I like a physical keyboard and a home button, touch is something I will eventually have to embrace but not yet.
Passwords.
Yeah, nice try, but I will always trust a password over anything else, unless we get microchipped like sweeden I am unsure.
Not every device has biometric devices and even if you do have them they are not always acurate to be usefull.
I have family with a lot of issues usin theirs.
We should talk about things that should die.
- digital rights management at least for music and maybe books.
That is a good idea but its an accessibility nightmare.
- devices with inaccessible interfaces, all this touch is nice but a keyboard is the most accessible or at least some feadback or voice guideance.
-
copy protection on dvds and everything else.
No idea why producers just don’t sell or put with your video the audio described track in mp3 or something spacifically licenced for the blind.
It would save me cracking my own dvds which I legally brought so I can listen to them or going to dodgy sites putting my system at risk of a reformat, after all they have the material in the first place.
Lets break down the article as I see it though.
1
Corded Headphones
While I see this going away on the mobile side, I wouldn’t give up this just yet.
Audio files like myself like them.
On the pc and places where bluetooth doesn’t exist or is hard to access and to be honest non wireless is always best just isn’t there yet.
Also batteries, and latency can be an issue.
The blind have delays with speech as it is.
Granted if you use a portable device and are not wedded to a workstation a lot more than me I can probably get you, but I do think there will be wired options, maybe not with the 3.5 as much, maybe duel or other.
I can get a bluetooth/wifi set with a detachable cable still and there will always be cheap units.
2
Physical Storage
While I can see this on a business sence where you run everything on the cloud or on a server, as a business user that also is a home user, physical storage has its place, audio, video, and extra stuff being in a separate place is a good idea.
True its harder now to buy laptops with duel drives so eventually it will be a laptop and a desk station or nas or something but still.
At any rate have you ever tried to run a system in a situation where there is no net or slow net?
Fine if you have 100mb to 1gb I guess or higher but a lot still don’t have that or the speed.
Worse, just who does your stuff belong to, in some cases thats the cloud previder.
Do you really want to have all your personal files and everything else you own and make owned by google over the vast amount of stuff they own of yours anyway?
Pluss while they do fail, a few storage devices in different locations are good for backup.
You can backup, I have heard of some people with backup cloud drives, but assuming things don’t crash and you can afford 8tb or somethhing like that its going to take weeks to upload and download your stuff.
Becides with all the protection with books and music locking you into expensive contracts or single devices while its good for business its not generally good for users at home at least not for everything.
And with antivirus software flagging some apps I am happy for the separate storage here though yeah its going to get harder to justify that.
3
Point-and-Shoot Digital Cameras
This I can agree with.
There will always be specialised hardware, I have got the equivilant of a camera in an olympus lsp4 for my digital recording, the issue is that recording still takes up a lot of battery on your smart phone.
And unless you have a way to get things off or have a way to access the net to get it you may have a problem.
At any rate mobile phone rates are really expensive especially if you roam a lot.
4
Analog Watches
Bar braille I can actually agree with this, who’s seen a sightling use a non digital or non smart watch anyway.
Not for a few years I bet.
5
Lightning and USB-C Charging Cables
Same as the storage issue.
Do you know how much legal, non hacked mag safe actually costs, vs a cable?
Cables will never go away, at least not while wireless charging and such costs more than cables.
There is some contravercy that these so called wireless fast chargers dammage batteries, heat them and could potentially cause harm.
The humble cable aint going away, maybe you will get everyone adopting a universal standard like usbc and using that, that would be nice at least.
6
Standalone GPS Devices
As long as you have mobile data and are in range I can agree.
Unless you have lifetime maps your standalone device is going to cost a lot to keep upgraded.
But again this article doesn’t put in to account that outside the net like in the bush your gps may be still your friend.
Stand alone devices may go away but devices will start existing in other things generally.
Cars at least some manufacturers have crappy gps units or their data packs suck.
However outside any major city your mobile whatever is useless away from a cellsite.
7
Passwords
Biometric works with some but not others.
I still see a password as having some place still, either we have a manager or something but a password is still needed as well as 2factor codes and the like.
Not every device has biometric chips, anway how secure are those anyway.
I know in sweeden there are microchipps you get but how secure are those?
However for those that can’t use fingers or well faces especially a mask, not sure how you can go passwordless.
I mean I do on my home system, I don’t need a password to login.
Now if there was a way to log into my bank without my password or username or anything that would really be good but hmmm this may be still to early a concept.
8
The Home Button
I like this as well as keyboarded devices and so do a few other blind people
It just means that if the replacement aint accessible it makes things harder for the blind, granted some have got used to it but while touch is good the best control for the blind anyway will always be a keyboard and a physical button or sequence of buttons.
9
The Apple iPod
Hmph, unsure about that.
Maybe the ipod, but music and your phone and battery life = a problem potentially pluss do enough on your device and you will get a hot device.
At any rate its the smart speaker or something now that is a pod like thing.
The ipod may be on the way out but in some situations portable devices will still be here for a bit.