Wondering, is it just me or has traffic slowed down in these forums?
Sure, the tech world’s been a real downer lately. Panos leaving Microsoft, AI taking over every conversation, [insert any other disappointment from our tech overlords], and @dstrauss settling in to begin his time at Appletraz…
“Evil days are coming, we are in for darker nights.”
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I was thinking the same thing. I agree that a lot has to do with the tech coming out. Nothing really new other than AI everywhere. I’m also somewhat in the same boat as @dstrauss , just decided to use my MBP and IPP and be content with them if and until something groundbreaking can improve my workflow.
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Wow amazing, I was just debating whether I should mention this. I just happened to glance at the site stats, and looking only at the number of pages views by logged in users over the last six months, looks like we’re one or two months away from having zero page views! 
Not sure what’s going on.
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Count me in, too. I agree with @Nnthemperor 's assessment. The tech landscape has become so boring that there isn’t much to elicit significant membership discussion.
HOWEVER… I think it’s encouraging to note that when technology does pop up, it gets discussed. Surface Pro X, Windows 12 and Apple’s Vision Pro all developed a health array of comments in the recent past. The tech industry needs to shake off its malaise and get back to business and I predict that then forum traffic will return…
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Doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon, not with Wall Street cheering them on. Instead, they continue the mass layoffs and devices seem to take the brunt of the cuts.
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Don’t look at me — I totally messed up my timing, so wound up w/ a second Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, rather than an upgrade to a Book 4 Pro 360, and this also killed the discretionary funds I was hoping to use for a Raspberry Pi 5 and a new Wacom One 13 Touch.
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From my industry, whatever interest (funding) might have been had in Mixed Reality, has basically shifted to Gen AI. Its not surprising given that AI can easily touch so many everyday tasks, compared to forcing niche use cases with head mounted displays.
Otherwise, ugh, there is so little hardware innovation going on, just refinement of the same architecture. Even folding screens have gotten stale to me, which I never thought would happen.
I’d say the only consumer hardware that even remotely piques my interest is whatever refinement they find in xReal glasses.
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Folding/dual screens can’t go stale until someone makes at least a 10" device which is mechanically robust and which supports Wacom EMR.
I need one, and ideally it would:
- have the sveltitude of my Samsung Galaxy Book 12
- have the daylight viewable display and rugged nature of my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110
- an elegant folding case/keyboard like to my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10
- the expansiveness and performance and flexibility of my Book 3 Pro 360
- the lightness/power to weight ratio of my Asus Vivo Note 8 so that since it would fit in my sling bag, it would always go with me everywhere
For bonus points, it would have a 3rd screen on the outside which was e-ink so that it could also replace my Kindle Scribe.
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Hey, I’d be just thrilled if such a device ran Mac OS (and I’m still tempted to try to get NeXTtstep or Geoworks Ensemble running on some current device).
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I think that applies to hardware innovation across the board.
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I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I look at my current tech attitude/outlook, I would have to agree that the tech industry has become much less interesting the last few years. I have been listening to less tech podcasts, reading less industry stuff, and I no longer work for either a “tech” company or a software company or a digital agency. I feel that the digital drawing space has gotten a lot less interesting and many companies seem risk adverse. The market is pretty stagnant and most things now seem derivative. I think also, the market has moved away from the “Tablet PC” concept for the most part, and Apple’s vision of the tablet-space took over, which I find tiring. I am also nearing 50 and considered one of the gray beards at work now, and if I look around at my own kids (now grown) and young designers/devs entering the field now, they don’t have the same experience or world view. While, I truly like the TabletPC concept, and I prefer a pen input for most things, I’m very aware now that I have an anachronistic viewpoint that most don’t share.
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I think this is a spot on view. Many of us are probably in a similar boat. Honestly, for myself, I stopped taking digital notes with a pen years ago and now use a keyboard for almost all of my notes. My pen is now just for art, and while I use them often, my iPads are very limited in scope. I use them only for art, writing with Notion, as an e-reader, and occasional media consumption through various streaming services. All of my work, social media, and non-creative productivity is done on my Macbook or phone.
We have had attempts at blending those 3 things into one with varying levels of success with the Surface line, Samsung’s Dex, Magic Keyboard with Stage Manager. I used to think that companies weren’t invested in these ideas because why sell 1 device when you can sell 3? But the more I look at it, the more I think it’s market driven, and these ideas never really took root for the market at large, so have only gotten fringe development at best. I think the stagnation we’re seeing in tech is a result of those mostly failed attempts over the past 15 years or so. Clearly the Surface line has been an exception, but it’s also realistically just turned into a slightly different form factor laptop. Lots of Surface users only use it as a laptop, never touching the pen, if they even purchase it, and never removing the keyboard. In my previous job this was extremely common, where may directors and above had Surface Go’s that they could easily take from meeting to meeting, plug into whatever dock for presentations, or at whatever seat they were at to get some work done.
Anyway, the point is, the laptop form factor really is an overall exceptional design for productivity and portability. Attempts to think outside the box have failed with it for a reason. That, coupled with the improvements in phones, the reasons to have a tablet first design are more and more niche.
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…Another way to think of this: Most work is sedentary or, if mobile, doesn’t readily accommodate a tablet in your hand while doing other stuff (for safety and convenience reasons). So, a lightweight laptop is both the logical and preferred form factor for probably 98% of all situations. Remember that tablets gained popularity when laptops (think: Grid, among others) were hulking, weighty beasts.
I think that tablet advocates failed to see how light and svelte laptops could become, largely negating the perceived advantages of the tablet form factor…
And, as an aside, when handwriting stopped being taught in the public schools in favor of key board skills, the tablet pen became a curiosity to the current and growing crop of young adults…
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2 in 1 laptop market share (mostly yoga style) still seems to be growing though or at least being stable (with a considerable chunk of the market). Also still see Surface Pro’s (mostly business related). I think pen/touch input for tabletpc’s is not necessarily less popular but just not the primary input. Like I rarely see people using a 2 in 1 laptop with only a pen, but I regularly see people zooming in/out by touchscreen on laptops (sometimes even trying on non-touchscreen monitors 
) and use pen for signatures and note/art stuff. That makes sense in most use cases, keyboard & mouse pointer are (imo) the quickest forms of input and weak spots are filled in by touch and pen input. This is in Europe by the way, I believe that while Apple is still popular here it is less than in the VS.
That all being said it would be cool if touch input is taken more seriously by software developers (like in W8/8.1 days), though nowadays at least there is usually some competitor software available that has touch support (eg Shapr3D).
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