From what I’ve seen, desktop microphones are still largely wired headsets, for best performance. Wireless microphones seem to be primarily bluetooth headsets focused on phones. Even then, I’d say blue tooth is less than 50% of the cell phone usage I observe on a daily basis, but that’s anecdotal.
I’d say that the prediction obviously doesn’t include integrated anything. Therefore I’d count desktop microphones, but not ones integrated into a cell phone or laptop. I’d count bluetooth cell phone mics, wired mics attached to webcams, but not laptop-integrated mics. I suspect more people have bluetooth headsets than wired desktop mics, but I don’t have data to back that up.
Every MP3 player I’ve ever bought came with a WIRED pair of external earbuds, so I can be pretty confident that there are more wired than wireless earbuds out there.
My experience shopping for a headset for my desktop suggests that wired headsets are still vastly more common than wireless ones.
It seems cellphones are the only exception, and only because of the exclusion of integrated microphones (I’ve never seen a cellphone with a wired headset). I can see excluding integrated microphones that aren’t used, but I would say that at least 50% of cell phone usage I see is based on an integrated (and therefor NOT wireless) microphone.
In short, while the world is clearly moving towards wireless, the issue of power / battery life still seems to be a rather solid obstacle. I vastly prefer a wired keyboard and mouse, because unlike my roommate, I’ve never died in a video game when my mouse’s battery suddenly died :)
Earbuds weren’t on the list, so I was ignoring them. It seems unfair and highly open to bias to add devices that weren’t on the list when evaluating the prediction. The prediction is vague enough as it is, without going that route. When considering integrated microphones, I would say that they are part of one thing, not connected components of a system. I’m aware that definition is non-obvious; however, I believe it is justified by context. The prediction is about “cables are disappearing”; an integrated microphone (or cell phone display, or cell phone keyboard) has no part that an end-user would identify as a cable. I can’t believe that Kurzweil thought wireless would become so ubiquitous that it would be used within a cell phone, and I don’t see anything in the prediction that I can read to mean that.
That said, I may be vastly underestimating the number of headsets with microphones sold for gaming. I don’t do gaming with them. Availability heuristic and all that; it wouldn’t surprise me much if they outnumbered bluetooth headsets.
And to add another example, my previous cell phone came with a wired lapel mic. I used it on only rare occasions.
From what I’ve seen, desktop microphones are still largely wired headsets, for best performance. Wireless microphones seem to be primarily bluetooth headsets focused on phones. Even then, I’d say blue tooth is less than 50% of the cell phone usage I observe on a daily basis, but that’s anecdotal.
I’d say that the prediction obviously doesn’t include integrated anything. Therefore I’d count desktop microphones, but not ones integrated into a cell phone or laptop. I’d count bluetooth cell phone mics, wired mics attached to webcams, but not laptop-integrated mics. I suspect more people have bluetooth headsets than wired desktop mics, but I don’t have data to back that up.
Every MP3 player I’ve ever bought came with a WIRED pair of external earbuds, so I can be pretty confident that there are more wired than wireless earbuds out there.
My experience shopping for a headset for my desktop suggests that wired headsets are still vastly more common than wireless ones.
It seems cellphones are the only exception, and only because of the exclusion of integrated microphones (I’ve never seen a cellphone with a wired headset). I can see excluding integrated microphones that aren’t used, but I would say that at least 50% of cell phone usage I see is based on an integrated (and therefor NOT wireless) microphone.
In short, while the world is clearly moving towards wireless, the issue of power / battery life still seems to be a rather solid obstacle. I vastly prefer a wired keyboard and mouse, because unlike my roommate, I’ve never died in a video game when my mouse’s battery suddenly died :)
Earbuds weren’t on the list, so I was ignoring them. It seems unfair and highly open to bias to add devices that weren’t on the list when evaluating the prediction. The prediction is vague enough as it is, without going that route. When considering integrated microphones, I would say that they are part of one thing, not connected components of a system. I’m aware that definition is non-obvious; however, I believe it is justified by context. The prediction is about “cables are disappearing”; an integrated microphone (or cell phone display, or cell phone keyboard) has no part that an end-user would identify as a cable. I can’t believe that Kurzweil thought wireless would become so ubiquitous that it would be used within a cell phone, and I don’t see anything in the prediction that I can read to mean that.
That said, I may be vastly underestimating the number of headsets with microphones sold for gaming. I don’t do gaming with them. Availability heuristic and all that; it wouldn’t surprise me much if they outnumbered bluetooth headsets.
And to add another example, my previous cell phone came with a wired lapel mic. I used it on only rare occasions.