Technology Futures

Apple announced new iPhones yesterday. Faster, brighter displays, and better cameras. Ho hum.

What interested me was the Apple TV announcement--the new Apple TV supports 4K video, which uses FOUR TIMES more bandwidth than HD video. Apple continues to improve the user experience with its products, but many Internet services are not going to be able to deliver 4K streaming video, or at best, only one stream at a time. Meanwhile, the average household has more than ten Internet-connected devices, and that is going to keep growing.

T-Mobile is not happy with iPhone X because it does not support T-Mobile's new LTE frequencies.

In the race to try to squeeze more bandwidth out of wireless radio systems, more frequencies are being used, which means device manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have to build more radio technology into their devices, which means more weight, poorer battery life, and less space for other stuff.

What phone do I use? I'm still completely happy with a three year old iPhone 5S. Fits in my pocket, has long battery life, and rings every time someone calls me. I don't need much more than that.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything about the Space Economy. I was, perhaps, overly optimistic about the timing, but lately all the signs are that the private sector now has sufficiently mature payload to space technology to completely change the nature of space research and business.

SpaceX seems well ahead of competitors, with two launches in a just a few days, and both times, the first stage booster returned successfully to the launch pad.

In other developments, Virgin Galactic is apparently nearing final development of its near space tourism offering. Bigelow Aerospace, an early entrant, has signed a contract to supply NASA with inflatable space habitats. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin round trip space vehicle continues advanced testing, and NASA and the European Space Agency continue to pursue their own plans.

Space really is starting to look like the final frontier.

YouTube (part of Google) has launched a streaming TV service, making the whole video on demand space an even more confusing array of services and options, which include Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Roku, offerings directly from some of the alphabet networks, and many others. But competition is a wonderful thing. As buyers of entertainment, we have a wide array of choices that most of us never dreamed of fifteen years ago, and the growth of the Game of Thrones-style miniseries is producing some really good TV, although the term "TV" is really an anachronism these days.

As more and more homes cut the cord to the traditional cable TV package, the importance of having a high performance fiber connection will only increase.

Design Nine has a tiny service contract for an old Xerox printer. I had a billing question about a late fee that was assessed for the first time in more than twelve years. I wasted more than forty minutes on the phone with various Xerox reps, none of whom were helpful. Of the forty minutes on the phone, I spent about twenty-five minutes on hold, and I had to call three different numbers and had to talk to four different people.

None of them spoke English as a first language, and none of them were authorized to do anything but apologize for their inability to do anything. If I had a nickle for every time one of them said, "I apologize" I could have paid off the late fee. They had to keep apologizing because they literally could not do anything but apologize.

Xerox makes good printers, and we just did buy one to replace the one going off contract, but Xerox apparently does not care that we've spent thousands and thousands of dollars with them for more than a decade.