印象笔记CEO：移动应用要过时了

    生产力应用开发商印象笔记首席执行官菲尔•利宾称：“移动应用作为一个概念已经没多大意义了。”

    菲尔•利宾是大受欢迎的生产力应用开发商印象笔记（Evernote）的首席执行官，他最近对“物联网”这个术语颇有微辞。

    所谓物联网是指任何联入互联网的设备、应用、可穿戴物品甚至任何物体。利宾认为“物联网”一词糟糕透顶。用他的话说，“物联网”是“有史以来最糟糕、最令人讨厌的名字”。利宾在上周四参加 F.ounders大会时说这番话的。F.ounders是每年在纽约纳斯达克股票交易市场定期举办的科技界领袖私人聚会。

    利宾语不惊人死不休的理由是什么？他预计物联网，也称互联设备（或者随便怎么称呼都行）的数量将非常庞大。互联设备的想法“超级棒”，但名字取得非常失败，利宾揶揄说。【他还开玩笑称，最近大热的心脏出血（Heartbleed，最近的OpenSSL安全漏洞）是很好的正面教材，取名深刻形象，颇具大牌风范。】

    利宾称，物联网设备的数量太多了，移动应用今后最终会被淘汰【当然，印象笔记也不例外。过去四年来，它一直是苹果（Apple）应用程序商店最受欢迎的25大生产力应用之一。】。

    “移动应用作为一个概念已经没多大意义了，”利宾说。“最简单的例子就是电视和手表。”

    原因在于人们对可穿戴设备的单位使用时间将大大缩短，没有时间打理应用。

    随着人们向体积更小、速度更快、使用更便捷的计算机系统迁移，每种设备的单位使用时间每次都会缩短。我们经历了从台式机到笔记本的迁移、然后是智能手机和平板电脑，现在又轮到可穿戴设备和互联设备了。之前，我们每次使用台式机或笔记本的时间都在两到三小时，而对于智能手机上，每次只需两三分钟，但每天频率多达50次。传统计算机的使用时间很长，所以我们通常会使用功能齐全的文档处理和数据库软件。对于手机，两三分钟的时间成就了移动应用程序的繁荣。

    利宾称，但随着可穿戴设备的发展，单位使用时间将从两分钟迅速减少到两秒钟。未来的挑战将是，如何使人们每天拥有1000次富有成效的一秒钟。移动应用程序在可穿戴设备的世界里将变得无足轻重，因为“如果每次交互时间都只有一秒钟，人们绝对没时间思考应用程序。它必须更接近于服务。”

    对于移动应用程序开发商而言，也许到了改变思路的时候。当然，前提是他们必须认可利宾的看法，即可穿戴设备和互联网将超越移动设备。

    利宾说：“印象笔记和其它进行转型的公司必须变成随时待命的服务。在增强智能领域，理想的设计是‘大象无形’，但又确实管用。”（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    "Apps as a concept don't make a whole lot of sense anymore," says Phil Libin, CEO of the productivity app maker Evernote.

    Phil Libin, CEO of the popular productivity app company Evernote, has an issue with the phrase "the Internet of Things."

    It has come to refer to any device, appliance, wearable, or object that's connected to the Internet, and Libin thinks that's just awful. In his words, it's "the worst and most obnoxious name ever." His comments were made from the stage at F.ounders, an annual private gathering of tech company leaders held at the NASDAQ Stock Market in New York Thursday.

    The reason for his ire? He predicts the Internet of Things, or connected devices, or whatever you want to call it, will be huge. Connecting devices is a "super-important idea," he said, but it's being undermined by a terrible name. (Heartbleed, on the other hand, has done a much better job with its branding, he joked.)

    The Internet of Things will be so huge, Libin said, that it will eventually make apps obsolete (yes, even Evernote, which has been among the top 25 productivity apps in Apple's App Store for the past four years).

    "Apps as a concept don't make a whole lot of sense anymore," Libin said. "They don't make sense on your TV, or on your watch."

    That's because session length for wearables will shrink. We won't have time for apps, he said.

    Session length shrinks each time we move to a smaller, faster, more convenient computing system. We went from desktop computers to laptops, and then to smartphones and tablets, and now to wearables and connected devices. We use desktop computers, or laptops, for two to three hours, and we use smartphones for two or three minutes at a time, 50 times a day. On computers with long session lengths it makes sense to use powerful software with files and databases. On phones, it makes more sense to use apps for our two-minute interactions.

    But when we move to wearables, session length will drop from two minutes to two seconds, Libin said. The challenge will be figuring out how to make someone productive for one second at a time, 1,000 times a day. Apps are irrelevant in the world of wearables, because "when any given interaction is a second long, you definitely don't have time to think about apps," Libin said. "It has to be more of a service."

    It's a design challenge that any app maker will need to figure out if they agree with Libin that wearable computing and the Internet of Things will eventually overtake mobile.

    "Evernote and other companies that make this transition will have to be a service that's just there," he said. "The right design in augmented intelligence is stuff you don't notice. It just sort of works."