And that's why I decided to put together an overview of some of the key trends in the mobile industry that are already influencing the way we study, work and socialize, and will probably be an increasingly important part of our day to day life. You can find the slides and the video of my lecture, as well as a text recap, in this post.
Now, imagine this setting: instead of hooking your classroom overhead projector to the painfully slow computer on the teacher's desk, connect it to the $99 Apple TV. And then use AirPlay Mirroring on your iPad to share presentations, your web browser or any of the 90,000 (!) beautiful apps for the iPad.
And the best thing? You're free to walk around the classroom and let your students interact with the apps.
In part 1, I talked about my personal experience with three of the most popular operating systems for mobile devices of today and the future. In this post, I'd like to continue my analysis by looking at which OS has the biggest potential to become a hit product of our classrooms.
Q4 2010 brought a big milestone to the mobile industry: smartphones outsold PCs for the first time ever. And that's not even taking into account tables and iPods that provide similar functionality. In short, mobile devices - or "post-PC devices", as Steve Jobs calls them - are hot stuff right now.
I think computers are still mysterious, magic boxes for a lot of people outside the tech savvy crowd, and we need to keep looking for solutions that can change that perception. Perhaps by learning from simple, easy to use, user centered mobile devices, like the iPad.
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| Photo: Microsoft.com |
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| Photo: Apple.com |
Most Wii games fall into this category and I would also include games supposedly more focused on exercise, like Wii Sports. These games count on a limited amount of moves, and you don't even have to invest a lot of effort into the right moves to make it through the game. The focus is on fun rather than burning calories and these games usually won't hold your attention for long.
The games in this category can be quite demanding, especially if played on higher difficult levels, although they sometimes don't get your whole body moving (for instance, We Cheer is mostly a good exercise for your arms). But be prepared to spend a lot of time navigating menus, choosing exercises, songs and what not. Also, be prepared to invest some time in making sure your moves are detected properly, which can be quite frustrating and can spoil your immersion in the game. However, if everything works fine, these games provide a lot of fun and some exercise, but a lot of time is lost on pointless tasks (and if you're out of luck, a cumbersome navigation through menus).
Interestingly enough, the highest intensity exergame I found for the Wii doesn't even use the motion sensing abilities of the Wiimote or the Wii Balance Board. It's just a continuos exercise routine that really gets you moving around. It's up to you to make sure you're doing the right thing, but if you're interested in getting fit, you should have the motivation for that anyway. What I like about My Fitness Coach is that you only have to choose the duration and daily focus of your workout, and everything else is done for you. No wasting time on menus, you're just asked to assess the difficulty of the workout after completing major sections, so that the next workouts can be adjusted accordingly. A great feature is also that you are asked to do a Physical Challenge every 10 workouts, so you can really track how your workout affects different parts of your body.
Yesterday I finally got the chance to actually see Steve Jobs' MacWorld Keynote during which he introduced and presented the Apple iPhone (the name is still a controversy) and I'm still amazed at what they've managed to create - especially when compared to other related products on the market. In the last years mobile phones have been getting new features and mainly they stopped there. We'd constantly get new features: the ability to play MP3s, video calls, improved browsers, better cameras etc. but little change to the UI or drastic hardware improvements. And "smartphones" with Symbian seemed such a good idea (wow, would you look at all of the features?) but the excitement would soon disappear after actually trying to use one in real life: these phones are frustratingly slow, practically useless if you want to make a quick call or quickly write a note, and also crash quite often. But manufacturers didn't seem to care about that - the important thing was to come out with new features! Until... Apple entered the game and reinvented the phone. And they didn't just try to make a better mobile phone and follow the trends; they presented an innovative new product that focuses on usability! Usability is a key feature that has been neglected for a looong time by other mobile phone manufacturers. Apple iPhone just seems so... simple, yet powerful - just like the iPods. I don't know about you, but I can really see myself using it in real life, real time. And nobody really saw such iPhone coming. There were many predictions for what was coming, but all included separate products - in general we were waiting for a better iPod with video, a mobile phone, some hoped for a tablet computer etc. - but what Apple did was to combine a set of features and devices into one brilliant product that is years ahread from what's on the market right now. And it's clear that they did it for the users.
Wow, Steve Job's Keynote at MacWorld 2007 has just finished... and wow is all I can say for now about the new Apple iPhone :-D For anyone who missed the Keynote here's Engadget live report and the first iPhone news. Why the new Apple gadget (much more than just a mobile phone) is called iPhone still remains a mystery (didn't Cisco own that name?).
