http://www.astatespacetraveler.com/a-mathematic...

Thanks for the compliment, I was always dissatisfied with descriptions of Simulated Annealing as they made so complicated what was, to me, a blindingly simple concept. I'm glad I managed to convey that simplicity across.

I don't know if I spoke specifically to you about this but, at CHI last year, I made two specific predictions:

1. in 10 years time, 90%+ of all phones in use in the developed world would look recognizably like an iPhone (in the same way 90%+ of all desktop computers look recognizably like an Alto)
2. Apple was too smart to be working on a tablet.

For the last year, I'd been itching to put down on paper what I had been saying out loud but I hadn't been able to find the exact right framing that would make such an argument clear to a mass audience.

This post is laying the foundation for what is to become my argument for why the iPad could be the largest mistake that Apple ever made.

Your discussion of the costs of [in]vested interests reminded me of an article by John Gourville in the June 2006 issue of HBR, Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption, in which he describes how “loss aversion”, the “endowment effect” and “status-quo bias” all contribute to our reticence to try (or buy) new things. The upshot: most people have to perceive a potential improvement factor of 3:1 before they are willing to abandon the old for the new.