A bummer. Now, that is classic.

I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time.

Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when we don't.

Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is not a bummer.

I think your post was tongue-in-cheek, and it is maybe one of my favorite HN posts ever. That said, I get a little bummed that there are no Back to the Future 2-style hoverboards, that I don't have a personal flying car, and that I still have to shower every day. I'd love a polymorphic phone screen, and am bummed that this display isn't that. Just out of curiosity, I rubbed some Vaseline in my ear just now, and must admit that it is more of a bummer than the lack of polymorphic phone screens.

"Everything is amazing, and nobody's happy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

I feel like people like you complained when the first computers were invented because they were slow. This is haptic technology progressing and just the fact that it's getting major media attention is amazing since on-demand haptic feedback is the biggest presence missing from digital technology. Touch is just such a fundamental part of the human experience that anything that advances the technology that gets us to that implementation should be celebrated and here you are declaring it annoying?

It boggles the mind...

Electrostatic haptic feedback looks much, much, much more promising. Toshiba demo'd it two years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j...

That looks amazing, I wonder why it hasn't been commercialized yet. Too expensive?

This isn't a prototype computer. This is a prototype relay that can only open. If they'd given their engineers just two more months they'd have been able to show off a grid of pixels - something that would work in multiple orientations with arbitrary UI elements. Show me the full relay and an adder and I'll be happy.

I had similar sentiments as the OP.

I feel I was just humbled in about the most effective way possible.

I think you might have to go 20 years to find that kind of difference. A decade ago, at least among the techie Americans that are the typical HN reference point, we had PalmPilot smartphones. Now we have some other brand of smartphones. Soon to have magical buttons, but otherwise not that huge of a revolution. The #1 thing to do with them a decade ago was to browse Google Maps and restaurant-review sites while away from a computer. Guess what the #1 thing to do with them in 2012 is?

We definitely were NOT browsing Google maps on our smartphones a decade ago.

Good point. :) However, there were maps on the Palm, just from a different vendor. Probably MapQuest, now that I think of it. The main point is that, imo, there was a step change when it became possible to find directions/restaurant info away from a computer. Now it's a bit more convenient, but just an incremental change in comparison.

In any case, it's certainly not the case that 2002 was some ancient era where we all used payphones, at least not in the West. That's hyperbole at best.

Google Maps didn't even launch publicly until 2005.

The earliest I had Google (or any) maps on my phone was 6 years ago.

I had a phone with a terrible web browser, a tiny screen, and ridiculous charges for bandwidth before that. MapQuest likely had a terrible mobile site for it to talk to. I think it's likely that I theoretically had maps on my phone 8, 9, or even 10 years ago.

In practice though, I didn't have them until June 2007.

Maps worked fine on the Palm. Not as nice as today's maps, but they were sufficient. Also, Sprint introduced a reasonably priced uncapped plan around 2002 or 2003 or so, coinciding with the introduction of one of the Treo models, so there wasn't really a data-charges problem. In fact, the data plans got worse for a period later in the decade. There was a time in the late-2000s when Sprint re-introduced per-MB bandwidth charges, except that Palm phones were grandfathered in on the old plan, so you got unlimited data on Palm, but not on anything else.

It's true that uptake has increased over the last decade, though. Partly due to product improvements, but I think largely due to cultural changes.

Even if you couldn't have overlapping pre-determined button fields for the dialer, apps, browser, etc., just having the keyboard, even in one configuration, would still be highly functional.

I tend to agree with you on this. It's a great idea, but not an amazing idea. And the reason is simply that we can think of what a better version would look like - polymorphic buttons.

I wonder if that's actually a good criteria for defining game changing innovation - that you can't think what a better version would look like.

I've personally been fantasizing about improved tactile touchscreen features since the iPad came out, but that didn't change the fact that it was a "game changing device". So I suspect that's not a great standard to judge by.

The fact is that every step in technology allows you to see farther ahead. To complain that the mountain you stand on isn't as tall as the one it allows you to see is ridiculous.

That's a fair point.

In my defence, I'm not complaining about it, just agreeing with the guy I replied to that I was somewhat disappointed. I was then curious why I was disappointed, and wondered whether my rationale was generalisable. It probably isn't.

You should still be able to dynamically change the symbols printed on those buttons. This still looks exciting to me. :-)

This always happens with technology videos. You can project a flat image onto a transparent screen? Call it a hologram! You can create fixed buttons? Suggest that it morphs into anything.

While I agree, I do completely hope that we will figure out a way to make the buttons dynamic - may be after 1 or 2 generations of this technology.