As an experiment today, went for a 3 mile walk on the beach with no “computers” other than the Apple Watch series 4 (with cellular) and the AirPods. Wanted to see what a good solid hour of uninterrupted time would be like where I could just think about a world in which this was
more of a primary computing platform. First - let’s get the quirkiness aside; the AirPods seemed to cut in and out every few minutes, until finally stabilizing. Odd behavior given they were at 100% when I left. Also, after the hour, they were at 48%; not great if I was going to
use these all day long. Another odd behavior - some apps work great over cellular; others, like “Deliveries” requires the phone to sync data with - an odd choice given JuneCloud has their own sync service that could have easily used cell service to connect with.
Besides these shortcomings; my mind started to noodle around all of the possibilities of devices “exploding” into smaller functional components; all communicating over a “personal area network”.
A good 10 years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts around “The Exploding PC” - where I was exploring a world where embedded devices started taking over many of the mainstream tasks that a traditional PC took care of. Eventually this evolved into what everyone now calls IoT..
I think we are starting to just get a glimpse of what is possible with smart wearable devices working together on a personal network. Sensors in the watch and in the earbuds can do most of the biometrics; I’d envision simple triggers on the watch or by “action”
offloading interesting events to small, efficient cloud-based functions. Voice control needs to get better; but I’d love to be able to ask “what’s going on” and having a natural sounding voice interface tell me what’s up on topics I’m interested in. Right now; it seemed to
Be stuck on cached news stories from weeks ago. It’s all super interesting to see where this is going to evolve into; especially with the health tracking. The biggest issue now is not the data collection, but telling me something that I can be proactive with.
The possibilities are getting there. Looking forward to the ride.
