&gt;  If you wanted to look up a business on your phone you&#x27;d have to call directory enquiries - did that &quot;work better&quot; than your smartphone?<p>Bad example.  I didn&#x27;t need a smartphone for this task because there was a real live human being, who brought to the task all of the adaptability and intuition that modern systems lack.  I didn&#x27;t need Yelp, or Google Maps, or even the entire name of the business I was looking for.  &quot;I need the number to the printing company on the east side&quot; was enough to get me a name, an address, and the call routed, without paying monthly bandwidth fees or spending seven hundred dollars on a pocket supercomputer.<p>Realplayer sucked but it was about a thousand times more reliable than the current compatibility crapshoot (sans bandwidth issues).<p>Worth the price?  Sure, but to quote Pulp Fictoin, let&#x27;s not start beating each other off just yet.  There is <i>plenty</i> of room for improvement, and we&#x27;ve lost a lot of ground.<p>I used to be able to take a supersonic flight across the country, without having my body inspected via millimeter-wave radar.<p>Has anyone set foot on the moon in your lifetime?