Running Out of Coolness?

Are our leading manufacturers of digital products simply running out of coolness? Some of the upcoming products for 2012 do not appear to be overly impressive. HP recently generated drawings of a razor thin laptop with a virtual keyboard. Now, anything that HP wants to do to improve the virtual keyboard would be welcomed with open arms, but someone needs to inform HP that razor thin laptops with virtual keyboards have been in use for a while. A second product to be released in 2012 is a watch that functions as a wireless hub, allowing laptops, tablets, and androids to talk to one another for the purpose of sharing information. It seems that the tools provided by Google would suffice for information sharing. This product doesn’t seem very intuitive, as individuals are forced to learn a new way of sharing information. The watch is also very unattractive. It is not clear what problem was solved by creating such a product.

The Media Mat represents a third product that will be released in 2012. This product is a screen that functions like an incomplete Apple iPad, rolling up like paper. Reviews on this item suggest images appear in grayscale, and the product has a slow refresh rate. It is difficult to determine why a roll-up mobile computer is needed.

Sometimes, it appears that our manufacturers of digital products are trying to quickly generate products for the marketplace without consideration of the problems that end users face. Such disregard for customer needs will likely make some great companies appear to be marginal. Over the years, our digital gods have produced some great products, but, at the time, it seems they are running out of coolness.