I actually hate watching videos on my phone, or using it for much of anything that isn’t essential. It may have a relatively large screen (an LG V30) but it’s just too frigging small to view things comfortably for very long; and without earphones or something, I can barely hear it. (Why do speakers on mobile devices always point BACKWARDS? You have to be facing a wall to get a good reflection to hear the audio well.)
Being in my 60’s now, neither my eyesight nor my hearing are what they once were. Devices today seem to be optimized for people with “younger” sight and hearing. The rest of us have to compensate, and now look at all the crap I’ve got to take simply trying to do that! As I said earlier, people are wont to come up with all sorts of workarounds based on their own needs and assumptions, without giving much consideration of limitations others may be dealing with.
As I said, I have three tablets and one more on the way. Two Android, two iOS. I don’t like having to load content onto them first. I also have protective cases on ALL of them (including my phone) so plugging in/out a microSD card on the ones that allow it is extremely inconvenient. Plugging something into the USB port is also inconvenient b/c they all have different ways of accessing the media (and iOS is especially cumbersome!)
I just want to be able to pick up a device and quickly select and view something residing on my own storage medium, whichever device it may be, whenever, with the same “user experience”, and without having to think about it first and have to prepare. That’s supposed to be what the promises of WiFi and “the cloud" are all about, right?
Why is that so damn difficult for people to grasp?
And that also includes the Chrome PC dongle I’ve got plugged into my TV so I can surf the Internet, since these “Smart OS” TVs can’t do that on their own. (These so-called “Smart OS” TVs seem to be able to access any PAID service you can think of, but none of your own content without having to plug something in.)
To quote a famous guy about a new form of communications technology from the past: “What hath god wrought?”
WE (software developers) are the people who design this stuff, and inflict our often painful and limiting assumptions, reasonings, and expectations on an innocent user community who has to explain and cajole and STILL be dismissed!
Does anybody remember back to when you had to connect your computer to specific LANs, you had to figure out which interface box was being used, then download specific drivers, install them, and fight with DOS compatibility problems until you could get them to connect to the server? Imagine having to go through that every time you wanted to switch between WiFi networks today.
And back then, I’m sure there were people saying, “I don’t want to have to deal with all of these different types of networks, I just want it to work!” while the geeks were giving excuses about, “Well, how can you expect to get an optimal connection without specific drivers?” and “why do you need to move your computer around?” and “you’d be better off just getting your employer to set up different computers at the different places you need to work so you don’t have to keep switching from one type of interface to another” and “Why don’t you get your employer to switch to 100% of the same interface boxes so this isn’t a problem?”. Remember having to deal with two or three different LANs in the same building? I remember hearing all of these excuses from people back then! They were essentially saying, “Why should the tehcnology adapt to poor business decisions?” Well, look where we are today. Some improvement, and yet the same arguments for technological limitations to accomdate user’s needs.
WiFi today — you just select one by name, enter a password, and viola! The need to worry about the interfaces being used is no longer an issue. The software now figures it out for you.
If anybody is noticing, the memory contained in mobile devices is growing almost exponentially year-over-year, at the same time as vendors are tripping over themselves to migrate services into the Cloud. There’s a disconnect here.
I’ve never used more than 16GB of storage on ANY of my mobile devices. Why do I need 256GB?
I want to be able to access ONE COPY of MY OWN CONTENT that lives in ONE PLACE, from ANY DEVICE, ANY TIME, ANY WHERE, without any advance preparation or thought.
There are three ways to make this happen: (1) clone all of my content to all of my devices transparently (ie., how Dropbox does it); (2) I’d have a device where I put my content and I can access it from anywhere at any time. It might sync with a cloud account to provide that as a global access point, but otherwise the content isn’t duplicated across all of my devices; or (3) physically plug a storage medium into each device I want to use to access things on it.
Option (1) is the dominant approach today. Option (3) is possible today, but is inconvenient, and probably won’t ever get much better.
I believe (2) is the future, because it requires the least amount of involvement from end users. That’s the trend history shows things follow. And that’s what I’m looking for right now; it’s clearly not feasible yet, either in technical solutions or in terms of how technologists think yet.
Rusty, tell your student to keep refining that project, and maybe help turn it into a real product. It’ll be the dominant means of accessing media in 10 years! Because it just won’t be very convenient if 90% of all data bandwidth is taken up syncing terabytes of individually managed user data among multiple devices per user.
-David Schwartz
> On Nov 16, 2018, at 2:38 PM, Carruth, Rusty <Rusty.Carruth@smartm.com> wrote:
>
> Our mails passed in the ether. I suggested an RPi, because I'm pretty sure it can stream video, unless maybe you're thinking 4k at 120FPS or something...
>
> A student of mine created a portable media server, with included video camera, on an RPi, in a cute little box, very small.
>
> And would a 8000mAH usb battery power it for long enough? I don't know.
>
> And, how big is your pocket?
>
> And I'm not sure how downloading direct to the phone counts as a change to a work habit, as it sounded like you were trying to use your phone for this anyway, but maybe I misunderstood. No biggie, we're talking Pi right now anyway
>
> Rusty
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PLUG-discuss [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of David Schwartz
>
> Thanks, but I’m looking for HARDWARE suggestions, not advice on how to reinvent my work habits.
>
>
> I did find one thing that looks promising: Asus Travelair N Wireless 1TB Hard Disk
>
> Does anybody know if RPi's have enough horesepower to stream a video? Can I fit one in a case with a battery that fits in your pocket?
>
> -David Schwartz
>
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