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Cloud first, longevity never

Recently I had to prepare a lot of documents in both japanese and english. I thought I did a pretty good job(6 or so documents) but there was 2 documents they had requested in Japanese that I didn't have translated.

So I looked online and was able to upload a file to a website that translated the document and downloaded it again. The translation wasn't perfect but It worked well enough.

I love this style of program.

  • No Signup
  • No setup

Just input a file and output a file, it reminded me a piping in linux and how simple it is.

Then I went to print the document at the convenience store.

printer

I recently watched Orbital Children which has a lot of characters using peer to peer wifi signals similar to the chromecast, so I thought yeah lets try to print over peer to peer wifi that will be cool! @WORD:nice@

anime

My Experience

The workflow of this feature was as follows:

  1. Download the "special printer app" from the google play store.
  2. Connect to peer to peer wifi
  3. Send the file to the printer

You are probably thinking, yeah so what? thats normal everyone has an app BUT if you think about it for just a little bit of time you realize how short lived this solution would really be. -_-

  1. the offline peer to peer system need you to go online to send files offline defeating the whole point.
  2. The user has to have an IOS or Android phone. (not so hard)
  3. The company has to maintain the code over time (fix bugs from loads of different phone models")
  4. Keep up with service agreement changes and new versions of the Phone OS and re-releasing the app.

All this trouble and man power so you that the user doesn't have to plug in their phone.

Which would come first:

  • a software update that breaks compatibility with the printer app?
  • OR
  • the phone cable doesn't match your phone?

The Lighting connector came out in 2012.
The Usb C came out in 2014.

Connectors have changed only once over the course of smartphone history and they still connect to USB A.

The machine already has loads of hardware connection options to choose from; they are actually very verbose.

I think people lose there mind a little when it comes to smart phones, like they forget all the method we used before. I dunno this is something I'm more mindful of lately. The creation of cloud server middle man systems that just over complicate a normal file system interaction.

Its like people hate files I don't get it. (-ω-、)

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