#SteveJobsinity

#stevejobsinity is a type of technological trend when a technology is opted out of advanced features in order to simplify the product and thus maximize its reception by the general public.

Hate Steve Jobs. Hate the late victim of a fracking incident enough to #hashtag his persisting existence.

Not for what he did -- or did not do, actually, but for what he represents and what is now attracting the biggest followship in the technical world.

Because of #stevejobsinity -- now this time I refer to the mode in which the technical world is operating these days -- good ideas are left unnoticed ... even before they were properly understood.

Let me give you an example. I was a happy owner of a 7" HTC Flyer for a while last year. I bought three more for 3 of my students at the time. All were happy. I was happy. Now let's test how deep the #stevejobsinity goes right now. I am the tester you are the testee. Look at the picture below, follow this link with specs, take you time to study the information and come back beneath the picture to verify if you understood what idea was lost.

So? Did you get it? I only got it after about an hour of playing with the thing -- cause reading online did not help one bit. The key point is the stylus. But not its presence per se. You can find pens in lots of other devices now. I have four between me and my wife -- all Samsung Notes. It is not about the pen, it is about its technology.


HTC Flyer went and did something unconventional -- it separated the streams for the pen from the general input stream. You can still work it with your fingers and even those weird rubbery pens, but the pen stream is processes by the hardware separately. They actually had to tinker with Android (which is why you did not get OS updates on that thing) to put in a driver for the pen. But after it was done, its outcome was beautiful!

Now, you should probably guess that the pen would not work with just any application. Any new application you install (I use Papyrus for notes for example) would only work with your fingers and would not see the wonder-pen. But HTC covered all the basic uses -- Office, Notes application and a Foxit PDF Reader. The last application was used most often by me and my students. Annotation, naturally.

Now take this. When I try to use my Note for presentations, I end up using it only for slides and am forced to give up annotation. Simple because I cannot change pages (or do any fingering) when in annotation mode. It is the same no matter which PDF app I use -- Adobe Reader, ezPDF, RepliGO, etc. The same problem everywhere. Switching between annotation and viewing modes is clumsy and unfit for official presentations.

HTC Flyer could actually make +annotation presentation possible. Pen would automatically write on the PDF (freehand commenting) and fingering could switch pages, zoom, etc. I am not sure if you can picture this scenario ... but if you can it should boggle your mind!

My current presentation machine is Asus Taichi and my application is PDF Annotator. I still can't use annotation and paging mode together -- in fact, PDF Annotation does not recognize the difference between fingers and pens. So, I have to use an Air Mouse for paging. You can picture me with this air mouse in one hand and a pen in the other... making presentation. My own assessment of my equipped-ness is that I cannot possibly do better with present technology.

Sad that I could use HTC Flyer with equal success and more. Sad that I do not have the machine anymore. But even sadder is the fact that because of the #stevejobsinity of technological trends it is unlikely that HTC will invest further into this idea.