Apple Attacks Google

The rivalry between previous allies Apple and Google took an interesting step with Apple's release of the iPhone 4s. The announcement of the hardware and new version of iOS was not the difference, Siri was. 

While Apple portrayed Siri as a personal assistant on the phone who could set reminders and make calls, Siri is also able to search the Web on a voice request. In fact, Apple's Siri page does not even mention search.

This is Apple's first step into mass search, and while it may use Google's search engine (along with Wolfram Alpha), it will remove the users view of Google's ads. A direct strike at the jugular for Google.

The Crawlers they are a changing

The RKIL site has been around using one form of technology or another since 1995, and it has always been interesting to look at the analytics for the site.

In the past few weeks, a significant change has taken place, a new web crawler has shown up. Baidu is a Chinese based search engine that now accounts for 20% of the crawler traffic.

Something is about to change.

Laptops vs Tablets is Like Theatre vs TV

It is pretty tough to visit a tech bloggers site these days without stepping into a debate slinging insults back and forth about whether or not the iPad will replace laptops.

Technology evolution follows similar cycles, you just have to find the right paradigm.

At the turn of the 1900's most urban households made use of ice boxes that literally used ice. In northern climates the ice was cut from rivers in the winter, covered in sawdust, and sold throughout the year. The ice cutters were replaced by ice making companies who used refrigeration to make ice, and the ice makers were replaced by home refrigerators. No ice cutters, and few ice makers survive to current times.

By comparison theatre productions were not replaced by movies, and movies were not replaced by television. The parts and size of the market these entertainment technologies serve have changed over time, however they all survived.

It seems that the computer field with main frames, desktops, laptops and tablets will be closer to the theatres’ paradigm than the ice cutters’ paradigm. While few people have invested in a main frame for home, having a desktop personal computer, a laptop personal computer and an iPad does not seem out of the ordinary.

While preferences will vary, most people can selectively enjoy theatre, movies and television, without feeling like they have to take sides.

Has the thin client computer arrived?

The World Wide Web began to become easy to access in the mid 1990's, the promise of thin client computing has resurfaced. Some pundits have called thin client a return to terminal based computing where a central mainframe made it easier for IT  divisions to maintain.

It has never really arrived.

With the announcements of the Chrome OS and their CR-48 notebook, Google is making an attempt to bring thin client to the masses.

While browser technology has improved especially with HTML5 standards, Google's thin client implementation does require access to the Internet in order to work.

PlayBook goes around the iPad

Research in Motion has announced their PlayBook, and the inevitable comparisons with Apple's iPad begin.

The trade press immediately publish a feature by feature comparison with the iPad, and miss the point, again.

The hardware centric tech press universally predicted that the iPhone and iPad would fail miserably, because other hardware had more technical capabilities, more connections, fewer restrictions.

Most missed the fact that it is the software that determines the success of a product. The ability of the software to meet the needs of a segment of the market will determine which system wins.

Although RIM does not actually have a shipping device, they have included some very interesting software innovations.

1. The Blackberry OS has been replaced by QNX (shades of Apple replacing a creaking OS 9 with a BSD UNIX OS for the Mac) which will provide the quick, small footprint, multitasking environment that will make it an easy platform to support.
2. The very meagre software development environment and developer unfriendly environment of the Blackberry is gone, replaced with options that include HTML5 and AJAX or Java. This should make it easy for developers to develop apps.
3. The hardware which is missing is the 3G connection, however RIM have included the seamless ability to tether the PlayBook to a Blackberry for network access. A great low cost lock in for Blackberry users.

RIM may have produced the software environment that can be customized to meet the needs of its significant niche (about 40% of the smart phone market).