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The last year brought endless new products in the tech-world, a number of services and other features that were designed to improve the day-to-day life of gadget enthusiasts. To quote a few examples, Samsung in its latest phones enabled the launching of camera app just by double tapping the home button. As its said - Time is Money, so keeping that in mind TiVo introduced a smarter way to skip the commercials and speeding up the video playback so that the user can watch TV shows and movies in half the time.
But, apart from all the aforementioned features, there's a lot more that a normal user wishes for and now with the onset of the new year, we as users are a lot more excited to see as to what the new year has in store for us. So, let's take a short peak into the wish list for 2016:
Pick and choose:
There are endless moments when a normal user wants to unsubscribe a certain set of channels from its daily package but finds himself incapable of doing so. Understanding the concerns, HBO and Showtime started offering app subscription to its consumers directly eradicating the hassels of cable and satellite-TV service.
Though there are lots of channels like ESPN who are still locked in channel packages not everyone looks for, but it's a start and one can expect subscribers to understand the requirements of the user and make necessary improvements.
Shows Management:
As the technology is advancing, the options of online watching too are getting a rapid increase and as its said - Excess of anything is bad, so we need better ways to keep a track of what to watch and when a particular show expires from the streaming services. Though we have Apple, Roku, Amazon, Nvidia that allows us to search for available multiple services at once post streaming TV-device, but we still have no means to add them to a universal queue.
Instead, we need to visit Netflix to see the list of flagged shows on that service, HBO to see its list, and so on that gives the feeling as if we are using separate video recorders for each channel. However, TiVo comes closest to offering a universal queue with its OnePass feature, but it has relatively few streaming TV apps.
Trouble of Passwords:
No wonder, the technology has made us weaker in terms of mind power and hence we tend to forget our online passwords often. This is one of the major reasons why many people reuse the same password across multiple online services without paying attention to the privacy factor.
However, Yahoo implements an easier way to sign in to its services using one Account Key which the user can confirm through the text being sent on your phone, and now it looks like Google is following the same route as Yahoo as reports indicate that Google is testing something similar.
Being mobile is the Mantra of many companies today, so many services tap the fingerprint ID technology found on iPhones and some high-end Android phones. A touch of the home button bypasses the password by confirming the fingerprints and in future, we need more such mechanisms that offer both simplicity and security.
Getting along:
Survival of the Fittest. This quote goes well in the technology world as the companies are now getting better at acknowledging their rivals. For instance, Microsoft before tackling its own Windows phone made offline apps for its rival platforms Android, iPhones and iPad. Walking along the same route, Apple made its music service available for Android users and even Samsung smartwatches work with non-Samsung phones now.
Companies are getting better at acknowledging their rivals. Microsoft, for instance, made its Office apps for iPhones, iPads and Android before tackling its own Windows Phone system. Samsung smartwatches now work with non-Samsung phones, while Apple made its music service available on Android.
Though all this is definitely exciting and a good note to begin the new year, but still there are many unspoken factors that one must consider like animated photos taken with Apple’s new iPhones can be viewed only on other Apple devices and streaming devices made by Apple, Google and Amazon.com typically won’t play video bought from each other, at least not without using a backdoor relay feature such as AirPlay.So if the user has Amazon video, he’s definitely stuck with Amazon’s device.
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