Microsoft Zune to kill Apple's ipod

There is really only one way which the high profile as yet to be seen product brand introduction by Microsoft called Zune can defeat the dominance of the Apple ipod, and that is it has to be given away for free. If the player supports mp3 playback which all do to stay compatible, and since mp3's are pirated for free, then it's all going to be a win win scenario for the remaining consumers who have not yet bought an audio player. And those who have an ipod will throw that away for the free Zune device. That would surely destroy the ipod market share.
Everyone who bought 1 billion songs on itunes can convert them over to the Zune (uh is that legal?). Even if none of the installed base of loyal ipod owners switch, well I guess that's okay with Microsoft. There must be still plenty of consumers still waiting for something better than the ipod, or were they waiting for an affordable ipod? (that's okay too, Zune is all free) For the hardware partners who had their device locked with windows media player, will they get really angry and sue for breach of partnership?
It all seems like a doomed strategy, and guess who is giddy with anticipation, Apple most likely. Netscape was brought down by IE bundling in windows, xbox had a ton of money thrown at it with little return except maintaining a presence in the home theatre. If unhappy windows people are going to switch to MacOS X, then I guess happy ipod owners need to switch to Zune. I guess.

Tech Predictions: Apple's "Omni" iPhone

I predict that Apple's highly anticapted iphone will be voip and cellular capable and will represent an incredible value in terms of capability, functionality and productivity. An iphone that I can use on the road just like a regular cell phone but when I drive up to my driveway I can sync up with my secure wi-fi network and use the cheaper voip based connection to make calls. Heck I can do voip calling from any of my friends Wi-fi networks. Syncing up contact information and perhaps retrieving emails would add to the complete package. I could throw away all my land line legacy phones and dump my limited basic cell phone and reap every possible communication benefit from one sleek and stylish Apple solution.
Will it play itunes, games and movies as well? Based on historic Apple design focus, the device will be the best at the core capabilities first and the frills may or may not be jammed in to it to deliver an omni do it all phone device. I think that has been the issue with trying to make phone devices do too much all in one sleek package. They're likely to fall short in one area or another.
The iphone will be the best in it's class, that is strictly a device for communications purposes and the ipods as a portable entertainment device. So, I would look for the omni capable iphone and an omni capable mpod that covers all digital media services as the two next major products to come out of Apple Labs.

Television -> Netvision

Rich Internet really means rich television. We're in control, when and what we want anytime, anywhere...

Nintendo Wii - hitting the mark with consumers

The new Nintendo Wii may launch earlier than expected, while Sony's PS3 will follow afterwards. Trouble for Sony?

Anyone old enough to remember 8 track tapes? Sony's betamax became the video version of the 8 track. Looks like the minidisc will follow too (btw I was one of the few who bought one). The psp? hmmm, I bought movies on DVD, now I can download them from iTunes, uh now I'm going to buy the same movies again on umd disks so I can watch them on a psp, because it's portable? cha ching..

PS3

However expensive, the feature packed PS3 will pretty much match the track record of the previous two models. Expensive, but a lot for the value. Die hard gamers will still fork for this quality box, although over time we'll be saving a dime or two for a year to get it when it's been discounted a little and bundled with game specials. Meaning eventually we'll all go for one. But the Wii may just delay that action longer than previous historic impacts the cube made over the PS2. Our collective pockets has change for so many times during certain times.

Like Apple, Nintendo may be firing on all cyclinders too. I'm still reviewing the DS Lite and I like what I see in terms of esthetics, design, and functionality. And this is reflective in the limited views and initial product information on the Wii. And another common trait that seems to be in parallel here between Apple and Nintendo is an acute understanding of the consumer and how the market reacts to product releases (meaning, releasing just what we need when we needed it. Or wanted it :o)).

The Age of Virtualization

To continue the theme of tremendous growth and progress, we have come a long way in terms of computing platforms for game development and play. So has the growth of our reliance on the types of tools to make todays games possible; CPU power, memory capacity, faster and larger disks. 2 decades ago our arsenal for computing was incredibly trivial to what we have access to now, and open source has a lot to do with that. I spoke of enrichment in our computing lives and how utterly tragic it would be if I suddenly did not have Google. Yet Google would not be Google were it not for open source. Google is worth billions, but open source has become priceless.

Ok, back to the title of this discussion. Reflecting on the progression of computing platforms, for instance in my case; first computer was Vic-20, commodore 64 followed, next IBM clone (could not afford the PC junior, I think it was going for $5000), of course this started the whole Intel "stranglehold", i.e. I was now stuck on Intel's CPU path, first was 8086 ( my IBM clone), then a 286 (clone again), then oooh the powerful pre-emptive multitasking 386, then 486, 586, 686......Moores law and you get the idea. However the common line to this progression is that they were all single CPU architectures.

Jump to present day and we are at the apex of personal computing power where one CPU is just not enough, we have dual core designs in each processor, couple this with massive caching at every point of information flow, improving bus speeds and architectures, gigabit to pentabit network pipes...for about $5000 you could have a supercomputer cluster under your desk with a 40 inch High Definition video display. But the IBM junior was so cool :o)

Ah, but just as software was key in the 1980's, just ask Mr. Gates to confirm, it's even more apparent now as we push the envelope of digital creativity. Just as manufacturing techniques and hardware innovation has elevated how much data can be processed we look to software to maximize that value that hardware is now providing. And the key I believe is virtualization. Dual boot, tri-boot, quad boot, whatever boot managers came out they were not the ultimate answer to the question of ultimate productivity. Ultimate productivity will come from virtualization. Vmware is the leader in this space. Good or bad, Vmware does not make hardware, it's parent EMC does deliver hardware, just not computing platforms optizmized for virtualization. IBM has a broad range of virtualization solutions for their Risc platforms and blade servers. Sun has had this available for some time in their E10k offering. Heck, really, IBM basically had this with their mainframes eons ago.

But again a common theme is developing here from my earlier posts; the duality of technology in our world. The corporate and the personal computing worlds or non-creative and creative respectively. Virtualization is growing in use in the IT centers of large companies. But has not really taken off in the broader consumer market. Obviously someone surfing the web or updating their resume does not need virtualization. But the creative community definitely could take a long hard look at the productivity gains from this maturing technology. Where large companies spend hordes of money on blade servers and virtualization software, the trickle down effect is that eventually innovation from the open source community most likely will make this also available to the masses and we could see massive adoption. Volume management and journaled file systesm were once also the domain of only the rich and powerful corporate IT departments. So the question of functionality and affordability has finally been addressed. Key point is Apple's latest strategic hardware design; using Intel core duo processors. With Parallels Windows XP virtualization for MacOS X at $49.99 and you have the best of both worlds simultaneously. And MacOS X is really Unix, the best operating system every invented, more on that subject in another post...

So what can we creators benefit from Mac virtualization? Well immediately we would cut our budgets in half. No more buying a Windows workstation to run Windows specific tools like Ofiice and a Mac for iLife stuff. And the trouble of sharing files generated from both environments, now all natively accessible from both environments without network configured storage solutions (although it's still a vital component to external storage).

The time consumed by booting and rebooting, waiting for file transfers, converting file formats, etc...no more. Productivity gains will be made everywhere which means more time to be creative instead of being frustrated with blue screens and lost processing power and network bandwidth to spyware. The list goes on and on unfortunately.

Ah, a good question arises...how secure will virtualization be for us? The concept behind virtualization embraces security mostly from the standpoint that you build your virtual machine out of availble hardware resources, and if a virus were to implode that running operating system the effects would be restricted to the virtual enivironment created to run and nothing else. You shutdown the virtual environment and start over. It's vital that the core to the virtualization master environment be completely impenetrable to prevent root corruption. Security begins at the top but penetration from below is also not permitted.

Another intriguing aspect to the current boot camp from Apple is that you could run Linux too on the Mac. True virtualization could mean supporting any and all operating systems from the past such as CP/M, DOS, windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, all flavours of Linux, even OS/2? How much value we could get out of that capability is difficult to say beyond the sentimental aspect. But technically a great achievement.
But my point is that during my lifetime with various computing platforms and operating systems I was doing something creative. I definitely was writing games for all of them, as video improved, it included crude digital art, then photo retouching and as GPU's evovled that included realtime animation. Digital assets created in different time periods all with their particular value for that unique computing age. With the age of virtualization I can revisit all of those ancient software programs and code and content...maybe.