Advancing with tech changes

ABOUT a month ago, the new MacBook Pro from Apple was released. A few weeks later, after most people got their hands on the new notebook, reviews started coming in and many people advised against buying it because it doesn’t have all the “pro” features that a MacBook Pro has such as an SD card reader, a HDMI port, an ethernet port, and USB 3.0; it only has four USB type-C ports. This meant if people wanted to use something like an SD card reader, they needed to purchase a dongle. This brought a few questions to my mind, one of which was, is the world of technology moving too fast?

You may think I’m some Apple fanboy defending it for only having four ports on its new laptop but I’m not. This is not just about the new MacBook Pro, but also about many other products that were released in 2016.

Let’s take the new iPhone 7, for example. It does not have a headphone jack. The new Galaxy S8 is also rumoured not to have a headphone jack. Some people didn’t mind this new feature but most people hated it – the fact that a smartphone brand they love took away an important feature that has been around for many decades.

Why did companies like Apple and Motorola decide to remove the headphone jack from their flagship products? Well, it’s because we are moving to a wireless future. In a few years, the headphone jack might just be a thing of the past and people will be using Bluetooth headsets, but right now, Bluetooth headsets are not advanced or even good enough for it to be used all the time. People still rely on the headphone jack to listen to music and not many use Bluetooth headsets. I’m not saying it was a bad idea to remove the headphone jack from flagship phones, but my question is, is it too early to do that?

Now we move over to smartwatches. Not fitness trackers. Smartwatches. I read an article once about how the smartwatches are a dying breed and how they are a waste of money. I agree and also disagree. In my opinion, smartwatches were introduced at a time when the world was not ready to have a phone on their wrist. Not enough apps were introduced yet for it to become a necessity and some operating systems were not developed enough and made some watches slow. So slow that it seemed quicker to just take out your phone rather than check your notifications on your wrist.

Now, fast forward to the year 2016, where smartwatches (most of them) are slowly taking a turn for the better. More apps have been introduced and operating systems are becoming much better. They haven’t reached their best potential yet, but they are getting there. We are still a few years too early for smartwatches to become as much of a necessity as a smartphone is to us, but we will soon reach there.

Let’s face it. The world of technology is changing very fast. Things like the new MacBook Pro may seem useless now but it is the future. USB type-C on laptops is the future. No headphone jack and Bluetooth headsets are the future. Even smartwatches are the future. Companies like Apple, Motorola and Samsung are getting our world ready for the future. It may seem like a big leap now to suddenly jump to almost zero ports on a laptop and using many different dongles to do something as simple as listening to music, but it’ll seem more logical in the near future. So instead of grumbling about companies advancing too quickly, we should accept that this is the future and move along with it.

Ask yourself this: when technology has advanced, would you want to be still stuck in the past, or already have advanced along with technology?

SRINIVASAN VIKRAM

Kuala Lumpur