Let’s all face it. We don’t have to agree with it or even like it, but the porn and gaming (poker) industry push the boundaries of the Internet and sometimes that translates to a better Internet experience for all of us.
No one is really sure yet, what it all means, but Google announced today that it has joined forces with dozens of other companies to work on a new smartphone platform called Android (gPhone would sound stupid and cutesy).
Android is not technically a phone, it is a mobile linux platform for which phones and software can be developed.
No phones have been announced.
Expect the first phones out by the middle of next year, if Google can do what Microsoft and Apple can’t and actually release a product on time.
After scanning the web for details on the android, this is probably the best article we came across to make sense of it all.
Apple products are beautiful and functional. Many people brag about their iPod or Mac’s stability, but there is a good reason that Macs are so stable. Apple is very restrictive as to what others are allowed to do with their systems.
For example, if you have a iPod, you can only use iTunes if you want to sync music to it. If you have another brand of media player, it will not work with iTunes.
Most standard hardware such as keyboards, mice and printers are compatable with both Macs and PCs, but when it comes to software, Apple has some very strict standards that developers must meet and money must exchange hands to apply for Apple approval.
If I was independently wealthy, I would give discounts to customers with Windows Vista. Alas, I am not independently wealthy and my business supports my family, so I charge for time I spend in a client’s office or home. One customer , today, could have saved 30-40% off their bill had they bought one of the few remaining laptops with Windows XP.
For every Apple device that becomes a standard there is a Sony technology that becomes obsolete. Apple and Sony both got off to a great start in the early 80s. Apple introduced the Mac and Sony gave us the Walkman.
From that point on, Apple has had only a handful of market failures and Sony has had nothing but. Sony announced their latest casualty this week by discontinuing their proprietary ATRAC audio compression file format.
While the rest of the world committed to MP3 and WMA or Apple’s music format for iTunes, Sony made up their own format only supported by their devices. Sony saw Apple succeeding with their own format and device and figured they could do the same.
I helped setup an iPhone for the first time today. Here is a quick summary of my findings:
Pros
Cons
I am throwing this into the newsletter this week. But I will post it here because I spent too much time writing it.
The Apple iPhone came out this Friday. We have taken the opportunity to write up the disclaimer that should appear on the device, but does not.
I really thought the computer world was simple. Ultra-geeks used Linux, cool cats with a little attitude used Macintosh and the rest of us used Windows. None of the three major platforms worried to much about the other and software remained pretty much platform specific. Then two years ago Apple released software for the Macintosh that allows Windows to be installed on their systems, an upstart Linux version called Ubuntu started to make a splash and Microsoft recently released their biggest dog yet…Windows Vista.
Today, I read a story that Windows users can now use the Apple Macintosh web browser called Safari. Dismiss the fact that hackers have already pummeled Apple's first offering at PC software and instead take a look at the tech forest. The tech forest is changing at a more rapid and significant pace than it has in nearly ten years. Microsoft and Windows are losing ground, manufacturers are now offering PC's with alternative operating systems, Apple is making a dent in Window's sales and now offering Windows software, buying packaged software is unnecessary in many instances, and computer users no longer crave or need the fastest or the latest and greatest.
I just "Stumbled Upon" this article from Hubpages.com and article which compared one of the earliest 'personal' computers (an Apple Mac Plus). What it concluded was what Adam and I complain about on the show often and what all computer users feel when they sit down at their keyboards; our computers are not any faster today, than they were 10 or more years ago.
Processors, hard drives, RAM have all increased exponentially in the last 20 years, but unfortunately so has modern operating systems. The article I linked above pointed out the gargantuan disk requirements of Windows Vista, so I decided to put together a little table comparing disk space and RAM requirements for the different flavors of operating systems. It is quite eye opening.
I ran across this cartoon in a random site today. Mac folks are very excited about the iPhone that is due out later this summer. The iPhone is a device that does some things that smart phones have been doing for a long time. Most Treo and Blackberry users have had the features that the iPhone boasts of for almomst a decade.
The feature that makes the iPhone so high in demand is the little Apple logo that is found on the back.
Since this cartoon was found on a random site (a site that shows random pictures from all over the web) I don't have the authors name or the original site's address. I will be happy to post it and link to it if anyone finds it.