My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Apple iPad and Fiber Optic - Twilight Saga Eclipse

Monday, August 9, 2010

Apple iPad and Fiber Optic - Twilight Saga Eclipse

 Hail holy light, offspring of heav’n firstborn!

Milton, Paradise Lost, III

Happy Independence day to Jamaica!

The Summer of 2010 has just started and there is still no end in sight to the “silly season” of new products and services – and the controversy surrounding the apparently too-secure-for-government Blackberry from RIM, which Governments now have realized is too secure for its own good.

 First UAE (United Arab Emirates), now Saudi Arabia this Friday August 6th 2010, the EU is scratching its Recession hit head and India, having banned it prior, is mulling doing it again.

Now add Indonesia to that growing list as stated in the article “Indonesia joins countries mulling BlackBerry ban”, published Wednesday August 4, 5:28 pm ET By NINIEK KARMINI, Associated Press Writer, Yahoo! News.

Blackberry was also banned it back in 2008, due to poor Customer Service. Indeed, it is a trifle odd, all this sudden concern over the Blackberry, but it is now all that recent, as many countries have had run-ins in the past, but have patched things up with RIM.

This time the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a point of duty to protect its citizens from terrorism.

Saudi Arabia band Blackberry – Terrorism is a daily reality for the Kingdom

Terrorism is a very real threat that seems to be a follow-on (cricket pun intended!!) with respect to recent activity on the United States of America Homeland.

I’m of course referring to the failed bombing plot in New York Time Square by alleged bomb plotter, Faisal Shahzad as stated in the article “US lawmakers target pre-paid cell phone anonymity”, published Wednesday 26-05-2010, AFP, Yahoo! News.

This is a wakeup call to the Government of the United States of America as it relates to the ease with which Pre-Paid phones can be purchased by Muslim Extremist supporters. Then can use these Prepaid phones to plan Bombing attempts without requiring the customer to register using approved Government of the United States of America registration i.e. Social Security check using ones Credit Card.

The United States of America now requires that all Prepaid Mobile Phones, Phone Instruments (mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems) IMEI and SIM Cards (mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems) IMSI be duly registered. This makes the defense of RIM by Senator Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State to the United States of America of a Canadian company, look odd.

In Saudi Arabia’s eyes it justifies security concerns of International spying, so close on the heels of the recent Spy swap between former Cold War adversaries the Government of United States of America and the Government of Federation of Russia.

Interesting coincidences……..but I got some more!

USA Registering Prepaid phones – Preventative measure against terrorists in the Homeland

Interestingly, the Americans are actually following the Government of Mexico and the Government of Jamaica respectively.

The Government of Mexico requiring all persons to register their mobile phones using their Clave Unica de Registro de Poblacion (CURP) [CURP, in English]. The CURP is the universal identification number in Mexico enabling them to shut down nearly twenty five million, nine hundred thousand (25,900,000) mobile phone shut down back in the week of April 11 2010.

An unprecedented move for any country, but given the scale of their Narcotics Trade, a necessary one. Jamaica, after its own “Dudus Gate” which saw Tivoli Gardens invaded to capture alleged strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke and later imposing two back-to-back States of Emergency in June and July 2010, also has a spiraling crime problem, mainly exacerbated by the ease with which criminals can communicate.

Senator Dwight Nelson, Minister of National Security and Justice is thus mulling the same thing as the Government of Mexico in the form of forcing Jamaican to register their mobile using the relevant approved Government of Jamaica identification i.e. National ID, Passport, Driver’s License, Birth Certificate, a measure which he refers to as MRSI (Mandatory Registration of Subscriber Information).

This is a precursor to the much vaulted MNP (Mobile Number Portability), both measures that Telecom Provider CLARO alone supports as stated in the article “CLARO Backs Cell Phone Tracking Plan; Digicel, LIME in Wait-And-See Mode”, published Sunday May 16, 2010 by Mark Titus, Business Reporter, the Sunday Gleaner, good PR necessary to distinguish themselves from the pack of money-greedy Telecom Providers.

Apple iPhone 4 and Apple iPad – Camera and Wi-Fi Direct coming with next iteration

But this Summer of 2010 is unlike no other, as it is dominated by the Apple iPhone 4.0 and Apple iPad, its Fanboys and its slew of would-be Assassins. This is inclusive of Captain Ahab in the guise of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who is yet to be definitive in what Microsoft plans to debut as its Apple iPad killer.

Curiously, most of these challengers seem to be going after perceived weaknesses in the Apple iPad as stated in the article “Motorola and Verizon Plan Cable-TV-Watching Tablet”, published Wednesday August 4, 2:07 pm ET by Barry Levine, newsfactor.com, Yahoo! News.

They will all fail, as Apple is taking its own sweet time to upgrade, or as they call it refresh, their products.

The  ever busy and ceaselessly toiling Engineers at Apple in their little secret bunker may decide to include a front facing camera and thus FaceTime to the next generation of Apple iPad as stated in the article “Report: Next iPad likely to include camera”, published August 3, 2010 10:47 AM PDT by Lance Whitney, CNET News.

A sure-fire hit no matter what innovations the other would-be Apple iPad assassins arm themselves with, Apple’s “Gadgety Goodness” even defying the logical draw of lower pricing.

There is some truth to the need to penetrate the Television space, the last unconquered frontier for Apple having attempted with their DVR (Digital Video Recorder) the Apple TV, and curiously an early suggestion from yours truly back in 2003.

Google is also interested as well, planting their claim firmly with their Google TV offering. This is much to the delight of its advertising partners as stated in the article “Google tries where others failed: shaking up TV biz” published Tuesday August 25th 2010 by Yinka Adegoke and Jennifer Saba, Associated Press Writer, Yahoo! News.

But it is another innovation that Apple Engineers are alleged to have up their sleeve and that is the possibility that the next iteration of the Apple iPad may be supporting WiGiG and Wi-Fi Direct.

Hopefully (fingers crossed), the ultra fast fiber optic connectivity standard from Intel, LightPeak, Heaven’s Holy Light.

But a bit of history first………….

How Apple can power Wi-Fi and WiGig – Solar Power to power Wi-Fi Direct

Apple’s 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.

Apple’s support for HTML 5 and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) is well known.

Solar power is definitely coming to all of its products in its Fall of 2010 line-up in refreshes for the Apple iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, Apple iPod Touch and Apple iPod as well as its Summer of 2011 Debut 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.

There is even talk of making their products location aware to push advertising as GloPos. GloPos is a Technology start-up run by a pair of Telecom Provider veterans Mikael Vainio and Alexander Le Bell with decades long experience from Nokia and Ericsson and their single tower sans GPS tracking technology can be readily integrated into their products.

This removes the need to place bulky power draining GPS modules in the Apple iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, Apple iPod Touch and the grand-daddy of them all, the Apple iPod and instead placing a GSM or CDMA module.

Solar power could be used to power the processor under ambient lighting conditions, based on research by the Japanese to 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.

Use of 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 is to be baked into all of its products lines.

Support for the seven (7) gigabits per second wireless WiGIG protocol developed by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance may also coming to the Apple iPad.

WiGiG is a wireless replacement for 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 December 11 2009 by Lance Whitney, CNET News.

WiGiG will run over the unlicensed frequency of 60 GHz spectrum, and will compete with proprietary standards WirelessHD and Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI).

The Apple iPad may now be able to seek out and connecting wirelessly to the nearest LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony WiGiG compatible HDTV 3-D set in the room using an onscreen gesture.

This is somewhat reminiscent of Iron Man (2008), 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, Associated PressYahoo! News.

Apple AR Glasses accessory – Multi-Tough Air Gestures to make the screen obsolete

The Apple iPhone 5.0 will possibly have a new accessory in the form of sunglasses tethered to the Apple iPhone 5.0 via Wi-Fi Direct, a firmware upgrade to Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) protocol that turns any Wi-Fi modem into a Wi-Fi Hotspot.

This would make it possible to create mesh networks for mobile phones………an introduction for another idea of mine to be dealt with at a later date.

For now, Wi-Fi Direct is supported by such tech heavyweights as Cisco, Intel and Apple as well as the motley crue of almost three hundred (300) manufacturers that produce Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) protocol complaint products as stated in the article “Wi-Fi is about to Get a Whole Lot Easier”, published October 14, 2009, 12:01AM EST By Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek.

This firmware upgrade will enable the customized sunglasses, preferably a stylish transitional rimless glasses provided by a partnership with Miu Miu or Dolche Gabbana, which have wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi Direct built in with its lenses, to go opaque and bring up a HUD (Heads Up Display) Screen.

This is reminiscent of the glasses worn by a female femme fetale in the movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) or even the movie Johnny Mnemonic (1995) 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, BusinessWeek.

Making air gestures of the multi-touch gestures that already exist a new catch-phrase within Apple. Its display would probably be in 3-D as well and the sunglasses would have also a magnetometer, an accelerometer and built in 5 Mega pixel camera.

Most likely, it would be an optional hands-free accessory for the Apple iPhone 5.0.

Apple and Lightpeak – Bi-directional Fiber optic cables

But here is the nice part.

The Apple iPad, though, may also have an optional bi-directional fiber optic cable standard connector called LightPeak. This would allow users to connect and transfer data from external devices, following on the recently slimmed down and re-christened Xbox 360 with Kinect packing a Fiber Optic Port.

This standard was created and supported by Intel for consumer electronics mainly aimed at computers and large portable external harddrives connections.

It could act as a replacement of all physical ports such as Serial, Parallel, USB, FireWire and even 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.

LightPeak will support speeds as high as 10GBps as demonstrated September 2009 at the Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco, California.  In the next five (5) years, that speed will be bumped up to 100GBps.

As such all devices that connect to the Apple iPad 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.

Future hard drives in terabyte sizes compact hard drive and main memory will be the same memory area, with memory allocated based on software needs.

But most importantly, the coming of fiber optic ports will render CD, DVD and Blu-Ray’s obsolete worldwide, signaling a tremendous blow to piracy, with hard drive storage devices that uses encrypted WiGiG and LightPeak.

Especially with the advent of video game streaming services such as Steam and OnLive 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, Associated PressYahoo! News.

Apple Competition in smartphones and Tablets – Smartphone’s means more bandwidth needed

With the proliferation of competition due to the Apple iPhone 4.0 evident from its growing popularity based on news of component shortage as stated in the article “The Summer of the smart phone Shortages”, published July 13, 2010 4:00 AM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News, mobile phone manufacturers are stepping up their game.

The Apple iPad Effect and the coming to pass of the prediction that the Apple iPad would cannibalize the Netbook market as stated in the article “ Netbook Sales Sag as the iPad Arrives” published April 7, 2010, 12:27AM EST By Cliff Edwards, CNET News.

Apple also jumped from being the number seven (7) to number three (3) in the world in terms of portable Netbooks as stated in the article “iPad pushes Apple into the top mobile ranks”, published August 2, 2010 9:20 PM PDT by Brooke Crothers, CNET News.

This thanks to three million, three hundred thousand (3,300,000) strong sales since the debut of the Apple iPad on the weekend of Saturday April 3rd and Sunday April 4th 2010 AD.

This makes the ambitions plans for Net Neutral 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 seem a bit outdated.

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 mimicking Wired Broadband Usage 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 is here now.

Telecom Provider Verizon has gotten their wish and my bets are that they will soon start feeling the strain of the increased traffic due to the data hogs. They have left Telecom Provider AT&T and jumped onto Telecom Provider Verizon bandwagon with the Motorola Droid X and the Motorola Droid Incredible.

These are two potential Apple iPhone Killers on the most beloved Telecom Provider in the United States of America.

Apple and Whit Space Frequencies – White Spaces and Fiber Optic for faster Broadband worldwide

Apple Devices using the soon-to-be available TV and radio spectrums is also possible 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 its effect on computer architecture and the next Great Apple Gadget is summarized in a few simple words:

1.      High speed wireless and wired connections both between computer
2.      ISP (Internet Service Provider) with 100MBps speed Data Transfers
3.      An emphasis on energy efficiency using solar power,
4.      Portable design common ultra fast memory area for RAM
5.      Hard drives counted in terabytes and Universal High Speed Internet 100 Mbps or more
Telecoms would be finally catching up with the rest of the world.

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, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Ditto 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, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Hopefully, by then, Jamaica will start catching up to the Ultra Fast future that is mostly Fiber Optic, the Holy Light, heaven’s Offspring.

No comments: