Chapter 14

Question 1

2010s

Answer 1

• personal computer sales dropped, brekaing a deacades long trend
• internet usage was transfered from laptops and desktops to smartphones and tablets
• the launch of iphone raised quetsion of relevance of the entire previous history of computing
• the smartphone rise was facilitated by high-speed cellular networks and supported by cloud computing
• teh history of computing involves the integartion of new and old devices, with new ones complementing the odl ones rather tahn completely replacing them

Question 2

specialised mobile devices

Answer 2

from many devices (camera, phone, organsier, music player) to one device that unifies all those functions

a tech entusiast going on a trip would carry a bunch of devices and a decade later he woudl only need one for all the functionalites those offered

Question 3

handheld computers

Answer 3

• they were around since microprocessors but were very limited
• late 1980s: electronic address books and diaries became popoular withing young professionals
• they used Filofax: large market for a computer of a similar size that would handle the same functions (business logs, expenses, notes, diaries)
• 1986 Psion Organiser II: custom mobile application and had a built in dairy
• 1991 Psion III: better keyboard, better organisation and better screen, folding like a laptop
  challenge: tiny keyboard

Question 4

Pen computers

Answer 4

• Alan Kay: replacing the tiny keyboard and mouse with a pen -> Dynabook
• 1990s the technology existed
• Jerry Kaplan 1987: co-founder of GO corporation, produced penPoint OS, the idea was ahead of the hardware capabilities at the time
• 1993 Apple’s Newton Message Pad: aimed to produce personal digital assistant capabilities
  1. performance wasnt good: the machines and the user had to learn eachother’s quirks
  2. sold only 50k units
  3. next version was mcuh more capable, but Jobs canceled it
• 1996 Palm Pilot: less technically ambitious than Apple, but clearest handwriting recognition
  1. very compact
  2. built-in button for certain actions
  3. cheaper
• at the end of the century Palm devices bacame ubiqutous

Question 5

cellphones, pagers & beepers

Answer 5

• cellphones arrived in the 1980s, becoming cellular, which allowed for smaller phones, feasible battery power and increased network capacity
• the first commerical cellphone was a Motorola model, it was very heavy and bukly, nicknamed the brick
• later cellphones became lighter and more portable
• cellular technology also supported pagers, which displayed numerical information and became widely used, especially with doctors
• 2G networks: improved security, digitised voice calls, extended battery life, SMS: young people replaced calling with texting
• early 2000s: convergance of cellphones and computer communication, -> enhanced data speed, web browisng, email
• Motorola introduced a folded model, that reached from mouth to ear , which was a problem at the time
• Symbian OS: very powerful, could run thousands of applications , send and receive emails and browse the web
• mobile email users preferd the BlackBerry because it allowed them to type faster usign both thumbs
• BlackBerry’s core market was corporations, offering secure mobile communication tied into their email servers

Question 6

GPS navigation systems

Answer 6

• late 90s: GPS in luxury cars
• deployment of the global positioning system
• allowed to determine the position and timing info by phone providers to hand off calls from one phone to another and traders could track transcation times
• origins in military programs, 1970s US airforce
• regular gps available to everyone
• the EU, China and Russia wanted to make their own sattelite based navigation systems
• digitisation of maps, efficient route finding algorithms, cheap low powered portable hardware-> big market: hikers, sailors, military, etc.
• Japan pioneerd naviagtion systems
• 1994 BMW series 7: the first western car to use a navigation computer
• Over time, GPS navigation units became more accessible, with cost-conscious customers preferring add-on units to integrated systems

Question 7

enter the iphone

Answer 7

• small, compact, elegant design, user friendly
• new touchscreen techonolgy that suspports swiping, zooming in and out using 2 fingers
• every new iphone: better camera, faster, fixes the previoius ones lackings
• early 2000s: cellphones began incorporating cameras, , MP3 players and other features
• Sony licenses Palms OS and uses it to produce variants with cameras and Mp3 players.
• Treo Series – hybrid between a cell phone and PDA introduced by handspring in 2002.
• Microsoft Windows CE OS 1996 (for handheld palm like devices) had a slow start but
  with a market shift from PDAs to smartphone hybrids, microsoft was dominant. In 2006
  it licensed Windows CE for a treo model.

Question 8

The first Iphone

Answer 8

• 2007 the launch of the iphone revolutionised the market, evenrually dominating it
• Jobs: evoluionary product that changes everything
• amazing technical aspects: fast, reliable, innnovative
• allowed pinching the screen which was never seen before
• the iphones popularity led a lot of webpage to redesign to fit its needs
• the 2nd model intorduced 3G and many other fetaures making it a universal device with countless features
• every subsequent version kept getting better, faster, better cameras better fetaures

Question 9

the app store

Answer 9

• the iphone came with a pack of initial applications but it lacked the option of insatlling more
• later apple introduced development tools amd the app store
• at first they wanted to control the apps but they eventually let third party developers create apps as well
• it provided safe downloads and a built in payment system
• huge popularity: angry birds, many dowloads
• use of its unique features: pinching and tilting the screen
• candy crash popularized fremium model for games :free download but in app purchases

Question 10

the mobile cloud

Answer 10

• iphone apps had almost constnat access to the cloud data centers and GPS data
• facebook uploaded photos and tagged them with the location
• OpenTable: restaurant booking app coudl list nearby available places
• Intagram: take pictures, apply effects and immediately upload them
• Thanks to GPS, iPhone apps could locate riders, as well as lovers and food.
• Uber, Lyft, Grind, Tinder
• Thousands of apps followed suit and became uber for X thing, like IKEA
• The success of ride-sharing inspired the “Uber for X” model, where various startups aimed to use smartphones to offer services at predefined prices. However, only a few, particularly those offering delivery services, achieved significant success
• Bird was one of many services blanketing cities with dockable bicycles and electric scooters. The dockless vehicles were Chinese, and so where services such as Ofo and Mobike.

Question 11

voice controlled assistants

Answer 11

• 1990s: voice recognition technology rapidly advanced, making voice control and dictation possible on ordinary PCs by the end of the decade
• however, not yet possible for pocket devices, as they lacked power to support such a fetaure
• 2011 iPhone introduced Siri: it could answer questions, preform actions like making appointments and playing music
• it operated using the cloud systems, which reduced the load on the device itself
• other companies inroduced their voice assisants, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant
• voice assistants expanded beyond smartphones
• Amazon integrated Alexa into speakers users could have in their home and Google created Google Home

Question 12

Apple wins

Question 13

android

Answer 13

• ## acquired by google in 2005