As iPads and iPhones are being bought up like candies, but these things aren’t cheap! This has encouraged many people to predict that laptops and PCs are dinosaurs! Unfortunately, I feel it’s a mistake to make such a prediction!
As long people cannot type documents and coding programs and searching the web for long hours the way they have been doing on laptops’ keyboards, I don’t think laptops and PCs are going the way of the dinosaurs! I never have enjoyed typing anything on my iPad! Bringing a separate keyboard for iPad defeats the purpose of having to carry iPad around in the first place. Having an iPad case that has keyboard also won’t work out as well since many people have big fingers and they might still somehow feel that typing on the laptops are the closest feeling they have when they’re typing on normal PCs’ keyboards.
My point is that laptops and PCs will not go away for a long time to come. Of course, if someone can invent something that allows people to type — even better than using keyboards — on devices that are thinners and lighter than iPad (i.e., without the need of a separate keyboard or having something that works as well as keyboard), then laptops and PCs might have to go the way of the dinosaurs. In fact, if someone can come up with a way that is more effective than requiring to have people to type at all, then laptops and PCs will definitely go the way of the dinosaurs. Until then, I think many people such as I still prefer the use of laptops and sometimes PCs so we can actually do some real works. Of course, more often than not, I’ll be checking my iPhone and iPad from time to time for quick moments of fun times (e.g., gaming, weather app, stock app, read and reply the messages, phone, etc…).
Afterthought: After saying all of that, I think in the future, we may not even have to type at all. Imagine if machines can allow humans to communicate with them through mind effectively as if we’re actually able to describe the details down to every vivid bit that there is, then it will be pointless for the use of the keyboards. If that future comes sooner enough, then laptops and PCs will be history.
Even now, we already have something that allows humans to communicate with machines through mind only, and this is Focus Pocus. Check out the article “Video Game Uses Brain to Control Action” to know more about Focus Pocus. We’re making some headways into the field of brain and machine communication, and so I don’t see why the future that I’d described isn’t going to happen, right?
We don’t really have to use brain to machine communication to actually forgo typing! If Siri of Apple’s iPhone 4S can become even smarter, then we can have Siri does all the guesswork. Nonetheless, the guesswork better be damn good, because people really hate to repeat themselves as if they have to hit the backspace or delete key for the hundred times!
Vinh Nguyen
