My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Apple iPad hurricane - what more cakes and ale in the future

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Apple iPad hurricane - what more cakes and ale in the future


Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Excerpt From Williams Shakespeare‘s Twelfth Night 

The Apple iPad is truly a man for all seasons, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the above quote, as is there merely for show. But show and tell it is for Apple and it latest toy the Apple iPad, being venerated as if it were Ganesha, the Indian elephant head Deity that removes obstacles set before the wayward traveler.

With great reviews thus far as stated in the article “Early reviews: iPad is 'beautiful', 'blazingly fast', 'has a touch of genius'”, published Wednesday April 1 2010 by Ben Patterson Yahoo! News, and comments as to how responsive it is and un-Microsoft in its rendering of a tablet (actually an eReader) as stated in the article “How Apple's iPad Succeeded where Microsoft Failed” published Tue Apr 6, 8:00 pm ET by John C. Dvorak Yahoo! News (PC Magazine), more repetitions of the same are not required again.

Curiously enough, even though it lacks a USB port or SD Card reader, it is far more stable, secure and less hacker prone than the HP Slate which has all these things as stated in the article “HP preps its would-be Ipad Killer, the Slate” published Tuesday Apr 6, 11:13 am ET By Ben Patterson Yahoo! News that runs the slow, unstable and hacker friendly Microsoft Windows 7 as stated in the article “HP Slate more Netbook than iPad”, published April 19, 2010 11:25 PM PDT by Brooke Crothers, CNET News - Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

Indeed, even the announcement of the Apple iPhone 4G and the new iPhone 4.0 OS as stated in the article “Will iPhone 4.0 derail Microsoft's phone plans?”, published April 9, 2010 10:24 AM PDT by Ina Fried, CNET News - Beyond Binary and the possibility of a CDMA 1900 Apple iPhone being ported to Verizon and possibly even contracts with Sprint and T-Mobile to carry the Apple iPhone as hinted at in discussions between Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Apple as stated in the article “Verizon CEO has told Apple of iPhone interest” published Tuesday April 6, 10:28 am ET, Yahoo! News seems uninteresting.

The excitement of the Apple iPad launch, which seems set to surpass that of the 2007 Apple iPhone launch, slowly simmering to a boil come this Summer when the Apple iPad 3G and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n), Apple iPhone 4G with the new iPhone 4.0 OS and the announcement of the Apple iPhone on Verizon is expected by many a giddy Apple fanboy. But what is the next big future product from Apple?

Their is so much buzz and excitement from Apple’s announcements thus far that there is absolutely no news muchless rumors about any other potentially noveau Apple products, aside from product refreshes (they don’t call them updates) expected for MacBook Pros, Apple iPod Touch and Apple iPod Nano, Snow Leopard OS, iTunes and other Apple Gadgets out their I am yet to bump into in the wild. Just because we have all become virtuous Apple fan boys for Apple’s latest toy, does not mean that there is no more “cakes and ale”, an illusory reference to ones enjoyment of more Apple Gadgets in the future.

However, based on current trends it seems that there is indeed something coming on the horizon, as all these product refreshes point to a new computer design based on research and consumer testing of these concepts on their current product line. This by way of:

  • Apple vocal stance against Adobe Flash and its demonstrated blocking of Adobe in the new iPhone 4.0 OS as stated in the article "Adobe scraps work to bring Flash apps to iPhone", published April 21, 2010 2:53 AM PDT by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech
  • Apple’s support for HTML 5 and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n)
  • Apple’s push to introduce new gesture based technology to the Apple iPhone as stated in the article “Apple to give next-gen iPhone the finger?”, published February 26, 2010 3:01 PM PST, by John Paczkowski, CNET News - All Things Digital
  • Apples support of the Universal micro USB charger standard being pursued by the GSMA (Global System Mobile Alliance) as stated in the article “Apple, others agree to universal cell phone charger standard in Europe”, published June 29, 2009 11:22 AM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - Signal Strength
  • Solar power to all of the products in line as stated in the article “Apple eyes gadgets with built in solar panels”, published January 22, 2010 7:46 AM PST by Martin LaMonica, CNET News - Green Tech

 Alas signs can also be seen from the companies that Apple has purchased, such as Quattro Wireless as stated in the article “Apple to buy Quattro Wirerless for US$275 million”, published January 4, 2010 8:25 PM PST by Kara Swisher, All Things Digital, CNET News – Apple.

So let us add this all up and lay my cards straight.

The future gadget from Apple in the next five (5) years will be a computer that is solar powered, both in terms of its processor as well as the mainboard. This as currently there is research being done in terms of solar powered 10 nm process 5 GHz processors, designed in Japan and manufactured in the Peoples Republic of China or Taiwan that use up to 30% of the power of regular processors.

It may even function when there is no power as stated in the article “Report: Asian firms eye alternative to Intel”, published September 9, 2009 3:00 PM PDT by Brooke Crothers, CNET News - Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

This future gadget uses Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) the latest Wi-Fi standard for now and the foreseeable future as stated in the article “802.11n Wi-Fi standard finally approved”, published September 11, 2009 5:33 PM PDT by Dong Ngo, CNET News - Wireless and is compatible with 3G and 4G, be it LTE and WiMax 4G Mobile (IEEE 802.16d) built in from the factory, much as it is currently with smart phones and netbooks.

It will have no cables but instead will use the seven (7) gigabits per second wireless WiGIG protocol developed by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. This Alliance includes such Industry Technology heavyweights as   Intel, Dell, NEC, Toshiba, and Microsoft.

WiGiG is intended to be used on high end home entertainment and computer products for point to point high speed data transfers of video and audio between multimedia devices such as HDTV screens and Blu-Ray players and computers as stated in the article “WiGiG group finalizes new wireless standard”, published Friday December 11 2009 by Lance Whitney CNET News - Wireless.

WiGiG will run over the 60 GHz spectrum, an unlicensed frequency relatively unused at this point and be in direct competition with proprietary standards WirelessHD and Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI). Thus, this computer may not even have a keyboard, or mouse for that matter as using the WiGiG wireless standard, all peripherals would be wireless as the bandwidth would be more than adequate to interconnect or tether separate wireless devices within the room.

Even seeking out and connecting remotely to a LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony WiGiG compatible HDTV 3-D set, as all four (4) currently support WiGiG and will be rolling out the service as stated in the article “Samsung, Panasonic start selling 3-D TV's this week”, published Tuesday March 9 2010, 11:04 am ET, By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Write, Yahoo ! News.

When you are not near to the screen, you can wear an optional pair of eyewear that looks like a pair of stylish Miu Miu or Dolche Gabbana transitional rimless glasses which have wireless connectivity via 3G, 4G, be it LTE and WiMax 4G Mobile (IEEE 802.16d) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) built in. Its lenses able to go opaque and bring up a HUD (Heads Up Display) Screen reminiscent of the glasses worn by a female femme fetale in the movie G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra or even the movie Johnny Mnemonic,.

This would be effectively a form of augmented reality as stated in the article “Augmented Reality goes Mobile”, published November 3, 2009, 12:44AM EST by Rachael King, Business Week - AUGMENTED REALITY.

Its display would probably be in 3-D as well and the glasses would have also a magnetometer, an accelerometer and built in 50 Mega pixel camera. The computer, though, would also have a bi-directional fiber optic cable standard connector called LightPeak to connect and transfer data from external devices, as in the next five (5) years it is hoped that this standard created and supported by Intel for consumer electronics mainly aimed at computers and large hard drives.

It will be the new port configuration standards replacing all physical ports such as Serial, Parallel, USB, FireWire, HDMI as stated in the article “Intel's Light Peak: One PC cable to rule them all”, published September 23, 2009 12:54 PM PDT by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech. This is much in the same way it is hoped due to industry wide support that WiGig will be the high speed wireless data transfer standard to interconnect devices to computers wirelessly.

LightPeak will support speeds as high as 10 Giga bits per second as currently demonstrated by Intel at the Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco, California in September of 2009 and in the next five (5) years, that speed will increase to 100 gigabits per second. As such all devices that connect to this computer will have to connect with either the LightPeak or WiGig standard and transfer data at these rates, requiring much faster RAM (Random Access Memory) or Primary Memory.

Most likely in the future hard drives will be counted in terabyte sizes and be smaller than a USB Thumb drive and both hard drive and main memory will be the same memory area, with memory allocated based on software needs with no need for paging or virtual memory file creation. The computer itself should be no larger than an Apple iPhone and because it is solar powered, should be always on and possibly use only 35 Watts of power, similar to a light bulb.

Because of its SFF (Small Form Factor) and the future ubiquitousness of WiGiG and LightPeak as connection standards, this computer would not require a screen, merely to be near to HDTV complaint screens that support these protocols and for the persons to wear their glasses. augmented reality with Kinect-like capabilities, much as is the case with the Nintendo Wii or the Apple iPhone.

And finally, most importantly of all, in this bold new future, the DVD and CD will be rendered obsolete worldwide, signaling a tremendous blow to piracy, with hard drive storage devices that use WiGiG and LightPeak.

 High end games, normally purchased on DVD’s or Blu-Ray would be streamed over the 3G, 4G, be it LTE and WiMax 4G Mobile (IEEE 802.16d) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) network connections via services similar to that of OnLive, copies of the service slated to launch this June 2010 as stated in the article “OnLive game streaming service to start in June”, published Wednesday March 10, 3:19 pm ET by BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer, Yahoo! News, (AP)

In the future Wireless Internet will be very affordable, as with the proliferation of competition due to the ambitions broadband due to the National Broadband Plan by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as stated in the article  A conversation with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski”, published March 23, 2010 8:45 PM PDT by Molly Wood, CNET News - CNET Conversations

The expected surge in usage from customers for 3G, 4G, be it LTE and WiMax 4G Mobile (IEEE 802.16d) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) data services that mimics wired broadband usage will no doubt soon occur as more and more people catch on to the trend of having Internet access wherever they go, even to the point of replacing traditional wired broadband.

This is once the performance and the price is right as stated in the article "Can 4G wireless take on traditional broadband?", published March 22, 2010 4:00 AM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - CTIA 2010 despite prior speculation to the contrary as stated in the article  Will 4G Wireless Really Threaten Wires?”, published August 13, 2009, 8:22PM EST By Stacey Higginbotham, Business Week – GIGAOM.

Also in this future, fiber optic may be common place, possibly using cheaper plastic fibers, as already Google is testing out applications that can work over ultra fast fiber optic broadband networks as stated in the article “Google subsidizes ultra fast broadband test”, published February 10, 2010 8:58 AM PST by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech, with the ever enthusiastic Topeka, Kansas unofficially renaming itself to qualify for the broadband test as stated in the article “Topeka unofficially re-christened itself 'Google'”, published March 2, 2010 11:27 AM PST by Caroline McCarthy, CNET News - The Social.

Also, spectrum or unused “white space” frequencies currently occupied by Broadcasters post DSO (Digital Switch Over) in 2009 would have been thoroughly mapped out by Google and Microsoft and placed in a White Spaces Spectrum Database as suggested in the article “Google wants to build 'white spaces' database” published January 4, 2010 5:54 PM PST by Tom Krazit, CNET News - Relevant Results.

Already White space Frequencies are already in use in parts of the United States of America to deliver wireless services in places where spectrum was being restricted by terrain as stated in the article "TV white space Networks tested", published February 24, 2010 4:06 PM PST by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - Signal Strength.

Thus the future, now forever changed by the introduction of this new Apple device, the Apple iPad and it effect on computer architecture and the next Great Apple Gadget is summarized in a few simple words:

  • High speed wireless and wired connections both between computer and Telecom Provider or ISP (Internet Service Provider) as well as between consumer electronics devices
  • An emphasis on energy efficiency using solar power
  • Portable design common ultra fast memory area for RAM and hard drives counted in terabytes
  • Universal High Speed Internet 100 Mbps

And hopefully Jamaica would have gone DSO as stated in the article “Slow road to digital switch-over  - Cable groups mum; Flow ahead but network coverage behind”, published: Saturday  August 15, 2009 by Mark Titus, Gleaner Writer, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Ditto that for MNP (Mobile number Portability) would have occurred in 2010 as stated in the article “OUR signals policy shift on portability - Says Jamaica running out of phone numbers”, published Friday November 20, 2009 by Mark Titus, Business Reporter, The Jamaica Gleaner.

The latter now seems certain to occur, as Senator Phillip Paulwell, Opposition Spokespersons on Telecommunications and ICT has spoken in support of MNP implementation and competition in the Energy Sector as stated in the article “Paulwell calls for number portability”, published Wednesday April 21, 2010 by Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter, The Jamaica Gleaner

I give you the Apple Cider. Have fun in the future drinking Apple’s Juice like a true fan boy!!!!!

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