Responding to Dvorak on the gPhone. Summary: he's an idiot
John Dvorak is an idiot. Old and privilaged and cantankerous, but still doubly an idiot.
The very use case that he ridicules, using a smartphone/PDA to look up location, hours, directions, etc of a restaurant, instead of actaully calling up the restaurant, is one that I see "normal" people, not just geeks, do all the time.
People don't want to wait on hold, nav a voicemail tree, or even talk to a rushed overworked human. They want to glance at the knowledge they want, and have it right at that moment.
And that's what ubiquitous `net, currently via usable phone-based browsers, gets you, that realtime telephony, POTS or cell, doesn't.
The very use case that he ridicules, using a smartphone/PDA to look up location, hours, directions, etc of a restaurant, instead of actaully calling up the restaurant, is one that I see "normal" people, not just geeks, do all the time.
People don't want to wait on hold, nav a voicemail tree, or even talk to a rushed overworked human. They want to glance at the knowledge they want, and have it right at that moment.
And that's what ubiquitous `net, currently via usable phone-based browsers, gets you, that realtime telephony, POTS or cell, doesn't.