exaro has been quiet for too long. May's election was too depressing for words; then there was a vacation in Europe; but even returning home, inspiration to write just wasn't present.
Finally a quote, on a subject that grabs my attention, worthy of re-blogging and a kick-start:
"My guess is that iCloud is to MobileMe as iPhone was to Newton: a complete, deep, polished solution after an underwhelming market failure.”
link: Launch of iCloud seen as a major shift for Apple | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post
The original blogger Kevin Fox, former head of design at Mozilla Labs where Firefox was developed and, at Google, a leader of the teams that developed Gmail and Blogger, seems like the kind of IT guy who can spot the value propositions in the deluge of technological ideas that rain down every month.
The Newton was an amazing device but arrived before the technology required to allow it to meet users' over-inflated expectations. I remember clearly playing with one in a store (before Staples or Future Shop or Best Buy) but have no recollection of which store. That in itself says something about the changes the marketplace has seen in the past 17 years1 , not to mention the changes in technology and user needs and wants. If the developers of the Newton and such copy-cats as Palm had foreseen that we would be content to tap on tiny virtual keyboards they would not have spent so many months and so much effort trying write hand-writing recognition software and frustrating end-user so that they flocked to iPhones (and subsequent Android devices) when they hit store shelves. But they did foresee how technology could change how we live and work and, now, we will see if and how making all our data available instantly and quickly on any device, anywhere, will equally change our lives. As the above linked video shows, Newton's developers were prescient but lacked the access to LTE data-transfer speeds, cheap data storage and processing power to make it work.
While Apple's MobileMe had a rough start, personally, I never had any significant problems with the service or my subscription, but it has been somewhat underwhelming. In the 5 years since it's launch, competing no-charge services have duplicated just about everything MobileMe offers and Apple has had a challenge convincing users to renew. The issue today is whether Steve Jobs can wow us again, and more interesting, to see if Apple can exceed users' expectations and create another must-have product before we know we want or need it. In conversation with a cousin yesterday, who called me for IT advice, I admitted to being an Apple fanboy, so no surprise I will be following Job's keynote address to the World-Wide Developers Conference live, as it happens.
Writing about technology is so much fun. Definitely a better way to ease back into blogging than worrying about a re-jigged federal budget. Who will get bigger headlines in the dead-trees media tomorrow; Jobs or Flaherty?
- I feel ancient when I recall purchasing my first computer, an Osborne Executive "luggable" and dot-matrix printer from Eaton's business centre and paying double for it what i laid out for my latest MacBook Pro.↩
