The kind of text to speech app you mention is an example of a specialized application that supplements existing technology very nicely and is a wonderful idea that will increase productivity ( this kind of speech to text stuff has been highly functional on the desktop for at least a dozen years and yet key boards and mice have survived. How many businesses do you know of that have laid off the keyboarders because the boss now inputs his own correspondence in Dragon Dictate.)

But it doesn't in any way supplant existing technology, anymore than the "paperless office" has been embraced the way it was predicted to ( though the supplemental benefits of electronic documents is well known, heavily used, and the source of a lot of my bread and butter ) And I'm a lover of ebooks and all they imply. It's going to be the way of the future, and increasingly portable computing power will be too. But that's going to happen a lot sooner than handheld pads are going to replace desktops and laptops for business computing ( or any kind of computing that involves sitting in one place for any length of time where portabiilty is not the primary issue )


I'm all for mobile apps and to whatever degree they enhance productivity I'm all for them. ( or even to whatever degree they are just fun to play with )

And I don't doubt that a lot of people buying a new device will go for a Pad of some kind (after all they already have a desktop and a laptop) and if you are getting a new phone and the company is paying the outrageous monthly tariff you get a smart phone and why not. And if you've got one you download a couple of mobile apps to play fantasy football, find restaurrants or win bar bets.

But this isn't the death knell of the current paradigm, just additional stuff that hooks into it. As to the disconnected model, check out Devforce and its Entity Server as one example of doing this in the

Ultimately, the notebook/laptop is not going away, and they are going to be useful insomuch as they connect to the infrastructure of PC networks.

My bet is interop between mobile OS and current OS would be a very lucrative field.

I'm sure that computing will look very different in 20 years. I expect to see holographic headset devices popular for all kinds of things in my lifetime. I'm not at all a believer that old ways are automatically best.

I get your acceptance of the anecdotal data supporting "productivity" and some of it is undoubtedly accurate, but I also know that if the company is asking me if buying me an ipad or a smartphone will make me more productive my answer will be yes and if I'm an IT guy who wants to expand my skill set on a hot new technology on the company's dime I'm going to be all for that too. Steve Jobs and the phone companies are great marketers.

Kind of like the commercials that end "To the cloud!" Maybe dogs don't really crave cheese in their dogfood ? ....


>>>I just don't see any connection with productivity.
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>As they say in animal science, "the animal is always right." Meaning that if theory/belief "A" says that the animal will do "B" but it does "C", then the theory is wrong. No matter how certain people were about it. In this case it's not me talking about efficiency, these are reports from people who have actually tried rather than being certain that it won't help.
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>>>I have no idea of whatever facts generate the contention "corporates already are folding because mobile devices make people more productive."
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>I don't mean folding as in going broke, I mean they're giving in and allowing staff to use their own devices rather than insisting on a work-issued device. There have been issues (e.g. unencrypted sensitive info on easily stolen devices) but as you'd imagine, that's a fairly easy technical problem.
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>>>Mobile devices have a great future, but outside of specialized markets, not for productivity (except for those who produce, market and develop for mobile devices.)
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>How do you know? Ken Levy pointed me to a voice-to-text app for iPhone and I tried it out. Even the free version is impressive. Efficiency seems assured, especially for busy professionals who now can dictate and approve correspondence *immediately*, wherever they may be. Once it binds into an electronic record, I am confident that entire professional segments will declare a preference for mobile devices. I don't know what markets you serve but if it's one of those likely to benefit from this sort of technology, IMHO this is not a time to be sure that the old ways are best.
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>>>Mobile's big, and it's going to get bigger. But, as Kevin says, its a new market, a new opportunity and does not displace an existing paradigm that is maturing on its own path. I don' t think the lesson of 1920 was "we've got airplanes now - the car thing is over"
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>How about "we've got cars now- the horse-drawn buggy thing is over". ;-) Neither metaphor is particularly apt. Especially since mobile doesn't need to displace the PC any more than mobile email had to displace PC email to be a success. People want both, meaning you can't just focus on traditional keyboard/screen and shrug off mobile.