Dot.life: Sexting teens. Apple wins iPod hearing dispute. The rise of the iPhone generation | Comment is free | The Guardi. If you have an iPhone, you may be reading this with an app. A newspaper? Made of paper? Go and suck an arrow and protest against feudalism by dying of plague, Luddite. No. I, iPhone person, am superior. I am having a virtual bath before going on a virtual walk and maybe, eventually, hopefully, realising I am segueing into a virtual person. It was bad when people just had mobile telephones. But that was only, as we say in apocalypse-speak, the beginning. It is not the phone itself that I object to, even though its name suggests that if you do not own one, you do not deserve the personal pronoun. Customers, you see – actually, I prefer the word hostages – cannot be bothered to say "application".
In labour, trying to squeeze a baby out? Want to fart, but can't? Can't be bothered to smile? You will say that there are other, better apps. But still the apps meddle with the ordinary processes of life. Someone once told me that the larger my fantasy life, the smaller my real one would be. Technology changes 'outstrip' netbooks. Netbooks are under pressure as tech firms concentrate on mobile computing Rising prices and better alternatives may mean curtains for netbooks.
The small, portable computers were popular in 2009, but some industry watchers are convinced that their popularity is already waning. "The days of the netbook are over," said Stuart Miles, founder and editor of technology blog Pocket Lint. As prices edge upwards, net-using habits change and other gadgets take on their functions, netbooks will become far less popular, he thinks. "Technology has advanced so much that it's outmanoeuvred itself," he said.
His prediction stems from his belief that the netbooks of 2009 are losing touch with what made them so appealing. Media heart Asus kicked off the netbook trend in 2007 when it launched the Eee PC 700 and 701. It was cheap, cheerful and a boon for those wanting to check e-mail and go online while out and about. "As soon as you want to do anything else you hit the same problem, it ceases to work," he said.
Mobiles offer new view of reality. The organisation behind Firefox - Mozilla - has designed the Aurora project to predict how we may use the web in future. Virtual Reality has been a mainstay of sci-fi for decades but 2010 could see a pared-down version become mainstream. Augmented reality (AR) has had a quiet launch on mobile handsets but it is set to explode next year, experts say. AR is a technology that allows data from the web to be overlaid on a view of the physical world. Although a relatively small sector at the moment, analyst firm Juniper Research predicts that AR will generate incomes of $732m (£653m) by 2014.
AR allows mobile operators to combine the increasing functionality of smartphones, such as GPS, video and accelerometers, with the increasingly available number of location-based apps. Already mobile phones use location technology to help people find their way around, such as an iPhone app developed by UK firm Acrossair to help people find their nearest tube station. New look Consumer power Future browser. Sony Ericsson - Corporate - Products - Phoneportfolio - Specific.