Motorola, RIM and the Tablet - Indiana Jones and the Palace of Doom

Power, like a desolating pestilence,

Pollutes whate’er it touches

Shelly, Queen Mab, III

Yes, gentle people in the Tech World, both Consumer Electronics and Software Development, the buzz from the Google Chrome still refuses to die. This is part of the technerati folks, as Developers have since slinked off to their little Skunk Works to test out the Google Chrome OS Cr-48 Laptop that was launched with much fanfare on Tuesday December 7^th , 2010AD as per the article “Google's Chromes updates: Browser, Web Store and Notebook OS will redefine ‘Cloud computing’”, published December 7, 2010, by Sam Diaz, (http://www.zdnet.com) as well as fully detailed in my blog article entitled “Google Chrome OS and Open Source - Star Wars A New Hope”.

The potential for computer makes to use Open Source to build NC’s (Network Computers) similar to Google is now obvious. Albeit the Google Chrome OS is mainly on a bank of servers, characteristic of a NC (Network Computer), thus being imbued with the quick start features of SSD’s (Solid State Drives), people have already managed to put Open Source OS on the otherwise barebones prototype, though I cannot write it here, as that may not be in keeping with the intentions of Google.

Aside from other nuances announced at the launch, there was a bit of fanfare when Google introduced the eager crowd to Google Android OS 3.0 aka Honeycomb, the successor to Google Android OS 2.2 aka Froyo as surmised from the article “Google shows prototype Tablet running Android 3.0”, published Tuesday December 7, 2010 2:01 pm ET by Barry Levine, newsfactor.com as well as the article “Google Engineer Demos Prototype Motorola Android Tablet”, published Tuesday December 7, 2010 5:50 am ET by Mikael Ricknäs, PCWorld Yahoo! News, (http://news.yahoo.com).

Successor? Indeed. Both Google Android OS 2.3 aka Gingerbread and Google Android 3.0 aka Honeycomb are development branches from Google Android OS 2.2 aka Froyo, Gingerbread being designed for the Google Nexus S and Honeycomb for tablets. Thus it was no surprise that at the conference Google debut the Motorola Tablet as per the article “Google shows prototype tablet running Android 3.0”, published Tuesday December 7,2010 2:01 pm ET by Barry Levine, newsfactor.com as well as in the article “Google Engineer Demos Prototype Motorola Android Tablet”, published Tuesday December 7, 2010 5:50 am ET by Mikael Ricknäs, PCWorld Yahoo! News, (http://news.yahoo.com).

Motorola is now finally living up to its potential, to be sure, riding on news of its mobile Division posting a profit with the Motorola Droid series of smartphones running on Google Android as per the article “Android pushes Motorola into black”, published October 28, 2010 4:55 AM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET - Signal Strength, (http://news.cnet.com). Whether this new Google Android OS will be a hit with the market remains to be seen, as it is optimized for the Tablet interface. It is being assumed at their point that no more codenamed Android OS will be coming out after these two (2) siblings have made their debut. Instead, newer versions of the Google Android OS will branch off from theses new versions, possibly with the version number incrementally increasing.

The design sounds good, albeit the lack of physical buttons in this preliminary device is a bit unnerving as this means that the touch screen interface has to work reliably all the time. Nothing really is known about the Motorola Tablet with Google Andrid 2.4 codenamed Honeycomb, not even the name (may I suggest the Motorola Lightsabre?), except to say it is a dual-core tablet running Google Android 3.0 aka Honeycomb and the 3-D (on a Tablet?) is being done by Nvidia as per the article “Motorola Tablet taps Nvidia for 3D”, published December 7, 2010 3:15 PM PST by Brooke Crothers, Nanotech - The Circuits Blog, (http://news.cnet.com).

It is expected to be a hit, being as they might be the only challenger who can unseat the ever popular Apple iPad as speculated in the article “Motorola most likely iPad Rival”, published August 22, 2010 11:00 AM PDT by Brooke Crothers, Nanotech - The Circuits Blog, (http://news.cnet.com) and my blog article entitled “RIM and the BlackPad - RIM's Black Pad and Steve Jobs the American Ninja”.

RIM, which debut their Tablet now called the PlayBook as per the article “RIM aims to challenge iPad with PlayBook pricing”, published Monday October 11 2010 By Miyoung Kim and Saeed Azhar, Reuters, Yahoo! News, (http://news.yahoo.com) and later corroborated in the article “RIM takes on iPad; downplays Blackberry threat”, published Wednesday November 10, 2010 1:58 am ET by Miyoung Kim and Saeed Azhar, Yahoo! News, (http://news.yahoo.com). RIM may soon be also reaping the surprise success that greeted the HP Slate 500 as stated in my blog article entitled “Apple iPad and the HP Slate 500 - The Force Unleashed in the Tablet Wars”. This is as reports of RIM excellent Fourth Quarter as stated in the article “RIM earnings better than expected”, published Thursday, December 16, 2010 5:12 PM ET, CBC News, (http://www.cbc.ca).

Thus news of the PlayBook landing as early as February 2011 should be enough to get people excited about tablets all over again as per the article  “Blackberry Playbook landing as soon as February?”, published December 17, 2010 7:11 AM PST by Don Reisinger, CNET News - The Digital Home, (http://news.cnet.com). Albeit a tad too late, as the Apple iPad S (no number two thing ‘round here?!) with is two-of-everything design as stated in my blog article entitled “Apple and the iPad 2 - Honeycomb, Chrome and the DragonSlayer”……..