Pleasant|Efficient|Affordable

This CES 2010 was very interesting. There’s something slowing down in the hardware world and that’s a big benefit for us as consumers and content makers.

The content (the oldest one, text is coming back hard) and user experience (free-dom) are driving the trend and that’s good news. HD wagon and 3D are trying to sell themselves like crazy but let’s face it: it doesn’t change things that much (you need a crazy large screen to see the difference, a lot of people don’t see the difference at all and more, 99% of the entire world cinematographic production is not in that format anyway). In that aspect that is no surprise if the SD-Wii launched three years ago is outselling by more than one million units its HD-competitors sales combined in the biggest month of the year in the game industry, last month. Seriously, it does say something.

It’s cool that 3D is coming out but let’s see when we’ll not need glasses which is a couple of years away, maybe much more before it’s affordable. HD’s still not.

HTC slate tablet prototype with Chrome OS

Instead the big trend appears to be about people connecting them, making their lives easier: TV integrating social services, devices streaming everything you want to every devices you want, e-readers allowing you to read stuff without killing your sight on a phone screen or making your knees hurt because of the heat of your laptop.

Instead of using technology to simply beef up the visual in-your-face experience, the trend is to do more overall and use the technology to make life better, more pleasant simply by being smarter on technology use, by being affordable.

Like the DVD upscaling technology. Like reaching your content from anywhere with Boxee Box or any computer set as a streaming machine. Like having a tablet on your couch, browsing the web and commenting your friends activity. Like the GPS and sync options of our smartphones. Like netbooks. Like charging your things wirelessly.

Like the SSD rejuvenating old PCs. Like Linux/Android getting huge because they make all these not-that-last-piece-of-tech you have work better, faster. Freely. For your own pleasure. That’s why Windows7 is good too: they didn’t rely on future technology like they did for Vista or older OS, they just heavily optimized what they had.

Dear slate tablets. Please hurry the fuck up. Game developers need you. 

I mean it’s a huge difference that we don’t go into the “MOAR” but into the “let’s be more efficient”. I know it’s not just to make people happy. Moore’s law is not as fast as in the 00s or 90s and now manufacturers can’t rely on that to scale investment and make a profit. They have to wait and expand their product life cycles.

Efficiency. It’s the first time in my mind that it’s the trend to rule them all, thanks to the mobile phones market driving the tech world today. Because we know it’s ridiculous to buy an entire new tv and entertainment set just to see 200 more lines in movies that don’t require that to be totally, absolutely enjoyable. It’s ridiculous to throw entire dvd collection to buy again some optical slow discs. It’s ridiculous to buy new expensive computers and graphic cards when we spend 90% of our time on the web and do so much on it. Hell my audio PC is just a bi-cpu and I can run more tracks than I can possibly handle. For life.

Despite everything manufacturers say people still have some brain or an empty wallet these days. Sometimes both, which make them search for efficiency even more.

The global economy is going toward better ressource management because we’re going to be short very soon. So does the entertainment and personal home digital business and we still have a lot to do (think about all this electronic trash we’re adding each day). 

Spending more, throwing things that work for a subjective gain is certainly not a good step into the future. Optimizing and saving ressources is a much better bet.