Digital Revolution

The fact that Mac vs. PC commercials are so successful reflects not only the Mac/PC divide, but also a sober truth that Microsoft's focus on enterprise computing has left the PC world stagnant, lagging further and further behind Apple. PC today is not oriented toward personal computing, but a component to fortify Microsoft's dominance in workplace. Office, Windows Server, and Azure, etc. are Microsoft's agenda for continued monopoly, not personal computing. Microsoft's strategy likely spelled doom for its own smartphone ambition. Smartphones, after all, are deeply personal objects. The distinction between personal computing and enterprise computing can be illustrated if we compare Apple Pages and Microsoft Word. Pages templates provided by Apple are professionally designed to help people create quality documents, while Word templates fall far short and largely rely on enterprise CIS for layout. Since most people aren't great designers, and enterprise CIS is not desi...

Turing machines are usually regarded as the de facto model of a computer. John D. Cook even said "For example, a Turing machine is a computer reduced to theory." There is a serious objection to this view, for it leaves no place for innovations like the transistor. If a Turing machine producing symbols on an infinite tape is a totally adequate model of a computer, why bother transistors? Yet transistors are the reason why modern CPUs are so fast and small, suitable for personal computing devices. A more balanced point of view would be that Turing machines capture the logic of computation, but are not a comprehensive model of a modern computer. Turing machines constructed as they are operate very slowly. The place of transistors is to preserve the essential logic of Turing machines while greatly speed up computation. Consequently, computational steps, or logical depth, should not be regarded as a measure of real computational time, but only as a measure of logical complexity. O...

Among Apple's great line-up of products, there is a weak point that's the Apple TV. Although Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed intense interest in TV , Apple TV still fell short of revolutionary and was gradually marginalized, despite rising sales. The reason is that Apple TV lacked a viable strategy, and Apple TV+ alone won't save Apple TV. The market of smart TV is dominated by Android-based devices. Google's open source approach allowed TV makers to ship smart TVs of their own. A screen integrated with Android that doesn't require additional setup boxes proved a success. Apple TV's lack of a screen may be understandable from technological point of view, that Apple only wants the best of possible TV screen technology, but without sufficient product differentiation between tvOS and Android, Apple TV makes itself appear redundant. On another front, Apple TV is an inadequate substitute for entertainment boxes like Xbox and PlayStation. The primary shortcoming is lack ...

There is a disparity in the digital revolution today. While mobile phones have been transformed by the iPhone revolution, ordinary telephones remain technologically backward. There are uses for more advanced ordinary telephones like contacts, blacklists, corporate CRM, etc. Thus, the absence of a telephone revolution begs the question whether this is a historical accident or a feature of the digital revolution. Stephen J. Kline and Nathan Rosenberg theorized that commercial innovation is controlled by two distinct sets of forces that interact with one another in subtle and unpredictable ways. On the one hand is market forces, and on the other, technology. There is no technological barrier for adding advanced features to ordinary telephones. Do market forces prohibit the introduction of advanced telephones or merely reflect a lack of concern? Innovations aspire to become the future of mankind, but countless innovations bite the dust under market selection. The famous need to bet on fut...