AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

Finally, I’ve found a way to merge two topics I find a lot of interests in and maybe this will be an awesome click bait. Nah, I’m kidding (but not really). So, I have been reading a lot of posts of late about how the iPad really isn’t cannibalizing PC sales but rather that consumers are holding on to their old PCs older. Hey, that could be what’s happening and it go a long way in explaining why both HP and Dell are both experiencing a slow-down in the consumer PC market. It would definitely explain why Acer’s netbook market collapsed, people simply are very very satisfied with the netbooks. This would go contrary to the earlier reports that the iPad sales, along with other tablets, are hurting netbooks and low-end laptop sales. Here’s where I’m gonna to go “freakanomics” on you. People are definitely holding on to their personal computers, desktop or laptop, longer. And the reason is because many folks have bought a tablet and find that they can do most of what they do on their...

Intimacy.  That is the word that is put to the personal computing experience the iPad has brought to mobile computing and entertainment.  And while the iPad cannot get more intimate than the iPhone since it doesn't fit in the pocket of our jeans, the fact that it can do much more while it sits on your laps. It's on the moment you need it and it can easily take you through a work day or on a flight. I'm not sure that people, even iPad owners realize what's going on.  Their relationship with their iPads is vastly more different than with their laptop or smartphone.   I thought of this while I was looking at the original MacIntosh.  The very first one. The boxy thing with the smallish screen in black and white. Yeah, that one.  It was computing on a vastly different even than the Apple II or the IBM PCs around that time.   The new UI with the mouse as the controller gave users a level of control that was not achievable.  And through the decades after...

MobileMe mail is down for some folks and Apple has acknowledge that.  So far I haven't seen anything worse than the number of refrehses that I have do do on a daily basis.  Still, this can't be a good thing for Apple. There's expectation, rumors about iCloud notwithstanding, that Apple will revamp it's cloud services.   So, this late into the game with WWDC just weeks away does not give me confidence that Apple has its cloud issues licked.   More at Macnn .

Voice is great but even with Android having a huge lead in this department, I still see people hacking away on their Google e-mails or texting rather than speak their messages.  Here's the reason why.  We have not been trained to use voice after decades of trusting the keyboard.  And while iOS app, Apple's Siri, is pretty need, Apple needs not only build voice capabilities into the iOS but give us a reason to use it. Take Ping on the other extreme.  It's okay but we have no reason to use it.  With the rumored voice capability that is forthcoming, I'm sure Apple will vastly improve on Siri.  But will that be enough? I've used Siri to look things up  I've used it to look up definition of words.  I've put Siri in the dock to force myself to use it.  Practice using it so that I'm more comfortable with voice and when the time comes, I'll be able to take advantage of iOS 5's voice abilities.  But that's me. I'm sure you don't go to such ext...

Right now, the iPad 2 is awesome in that it's fast.  Very fast.  But that's limited to some apps and tasks. For the most part, I can't tell the different between playing Angry Birds on the origial iPad versus the iPad 2.  So, the question is if hardware development as advanced far beyond the needs of iOS 4 or even 5? Here's a most that kind of question this issue.   It's worth thinking about some more.  We know that Apple has a way to get us to upgrade by cripple certain features in favor of newer iOS devices over older ones.  Still, a hack here or there via jail-break can usually bring some of these missing features back to the older models. Other than Apple's artificially placed limitations, I don't see anything that iOS 5 can bring that the iPhone 4 cannot handle.  Obviously, we know nothing about iOS 5 yet and my declaration here is premature.  And I certainly hope to be wrong about this. Also, take Nvidia who is readying a four-core Tegra. ...

As tablets goes, it's iPad.  Don't let anyone kid you.  Xoom isn't selling well and the Galaxy Tab might have a market in South Korea where Samsung is headquartered but that's it.  Playbook?  Yeah right. Not even on the market for a month and there's already a recall. However, Apple's tablet dominance could be coming to an end if Amazon and Barnes & Noble can get their tablet plans off the ground. Amazon will soon unveil a new family of Kindle branded products  I reckon there'll be new e-ink readers as well as Amazon's flavor of Android tablets.  BN has done well with Nook Color and we'll see their second generation effort at the end of May.  What makes these two ebook sellers different from the other hardware companies?  And how can they succeed against Apple where other tablet makers have largely fail? Well, the first evidence of this is this. Angry Birds have been downloaded 1 million times on just the Nook Color alone.  And they got ...

A survey took a snap shot of what iPad users are doing on their Apple tablet.  The gist is this:  we consume and consume.  In all likelihood, we have evolved into a different kind of coach potatoes.  A digital or mobile variant of it. The top activity we do on our iPads is surf the Web.  Love Apple or not, Apple had done in incredible job duplicating the desktop browsing experience and ported it over to the mobile experience.  While the native mobile Safari on the iPad lacks some of the bells and whistles of the deskop version, for 90% of what you need to have a seemless Web experience is there.  And before, you get into Flash, ask the Android folks, not devotees (I wouldn't ask you take anything an Apple fanboy say either), and you'll know that Flash isn't quite there yet.  It's not Google's fault.  It's Adobe.   The second thing we do a lot of on our iPads is socialize.  In this day, "socializing" means tweeting, checking or updat...