More Future Tech – So Bill showed off Mira today, and Dave is speculating that Steve Jobs iMac announcement was not the end of the story. If you read the Quittner story, you'll remember Jobs talking about how the design of the new iMac was meant to fulfill the screen's “desire to be free”. If the screen wants to float freely, and the computer wants to sit close to the ground, then why does the iMac have them tied together with that funky desk-lamp looking thing?
My answer is that the physical connection between them is not necessary, and Jobs never implied that it was. He sees these as independent pieces that can be linked as demonstrated or linked wirelessly with 802.11. He has the same vision as Mira demonstrated, I'm certain. So why was the first announcement just of the new iMac? Who knows? Maybe he didn't have a wireless prototype ready, and this was just an example of “Fire and Motion”. Maybe he is waiting for a more dramatic venue, or suspense to build. Maybe he can't get the handwriting input method to work well enough to make a public bet on it yet. But I am pretty confident that he's going the same way with this.
And I agree with Jobs that “the CRT is dead”. The screens you carry around will be LCD and the big stationary screens will be DLP or Plasma. [Better Living Through Software]