Smartphones are probably the ultimate computing device, for reasons of human physiology

In the most recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber and MG Siegler agreed that the smartphone will be difficult to overthrow as the dominant method of computing. Something unthinkable would need to happen for us to leave the phones at home in favor of watches, earbuds or pendants, Her-style. So, even if SoC and batteries improve to such extent that we could fit the 2040s equivalent of an M5 chip into a MacBook, iPhone and AirPods equally, and all with great battery life, people would still reach out for their phones first. This wasn’t the first time I heard the thesis, and it always sounded about right. I don’t know about everyone else, but I tend to be impatient when chatting with Siri. This isn’t about its “lack of” intelligence: although I had only used ChatGPT’s voice chats as a novelty when demoing it to elderly family members, even they needed a few more seconds to answer specific questions than my patience would allow. So why is that? Well, my impatience would suggest that…