Friday, February 20, 2015

Not Every New Feature is Immediately Useful, but That Doesn't Mean It Should Be Dismissed as Frivolous

I read this article on LifeHacker this morning about how you can turn on your phone's flashlight using by telling Google to turn on the flashlight. Still not quicker than just hitting the flashlight button on the phone in my opinion. Same with toggling WiFi and Bluetooth.

I had this same reaction back when I looked at the Commandr app. I just don't see this new feature as being at all useful or important.

However, after giving it a little more thought, that's not at all fair. Commandr and the deserved accolades it got made it clear that there was interest in voice functionality. This new step from Google is pushing the ball forward. Yeah, the current iteration of what it does might not be all that impressive, but that doesn't mean the next step won't be.

My point: just because the newest feature or idea seems frivolous to you, that doesn't mean it won't be the genesis of the feature you're using everyday six months from now.

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