The post-PC world

Since the early 1980s, the personal computer has been sitting at the core of people’s experience with technology. But several trends have chipped away at that dominance for the last few years, first with the rise of dedicated devices with computer-like attributes (eg. ereaders and MP3 players), then with reintegrated devices that brought several of those features back together in a more portable form factor (smartphones and tablets).

Along that curve, Microsoft and Intel found themselves in an increasingly difficult position, largely trying to hold on to the legacy platforms that sourced the largest portion of their revenues while unsuccessfully trying to find ways to play in the new world.

Along the way, the two companies grew farther apart. In late 2004, I had called for Apple to move to Intel chips, a call that was met with derision by most people at the time because they thought Intel would never do anything that could run counter to Microsoft’s worldview. A couple of years later, Apple and Intel did make the move, creating what was possibly the first wedge in the Wintel cartel.

Last month, Microsoft made an announcement that was probably similar in terms of overall strength, looking to ARM processors as the future, and moving to a space where their reliance on Intel processor was relegated to the back of the bus. It wasn’t entirely clear at the time but one could see that the Wintel alliance had been hobbled and could possibly die off soon (in related news, HP announced this week that it would consider running its webtop OS on PCs).

Meanwhile, it was only a year ago that Intel and Nokia announced a strategic partnership, where they would merge their OS platforms. The intent there, I suspect was for Intel to start pushing its own chips into Nokia devices, allowing them a play they had longed for in the mobile space.

Yesterday’s announcement from Nokia that it would abandon its own OS effort and focus on Windows Phone 7 probably infuriated some people at Nokia.

Why Winkia will work: Developers

Of course, there is a lot of doubts about the partnership. High level partnership have a tendency to fail (in fact, Horace Dediu has shown Microsoft’s particularly bad track record in the mobile space).

But I disagree. Earlier this year, I argued that Microsoft would acquire Nokia for its distribution footprint. At the time, I did not elaborate but here’s how I see things working.

For starters, let’s look at areas of strength and weaknesses. Microsoft still has a large development community used to developing with its toolset and aching to get into the mobile space. With Windows Phone 7, that crowd now can use the same skills, programming languages and development kits they have been used to for years to create for years.

But the challenge that was presented to date was that there were no users of Windows Phone 7. While the operating system has generally been well received by critics, there has been precious few apps developed on top of it to date. Part of the reason for this, I suspect, is that there isn’t really a built-in public for those apps yet so many developers are waiting on the sidelines. In fact, this is something that people at Microsoft were painfully aware of, as they are now starting to explain to developers that the deal will bring a larger public for their apps. In a recent blog entry, Matt Bencke, Microsoft’s General Manager for Developer and Marketplace in the mobile space, said:

In simplest terms, this alliance can dramatically increase the customer base for Windows Phones, and, by extension, your apps and games. […] For example, Nokia already has strong relationships with operators in more than 190 markets. Nokia also manages an application marketplace that delivers 4 million downloads per day; a channel that will complement the existing Windows Phone Marketplace experience to bring Windows Phone developers and Nokia customers together.

[…]

From a tools and platform perspective, we’re working to make it as easy as possible for developers to take advantage of this new opportunity.

So the message they send here is clear: more people to use your apps and you can use the same tools you know already. This is bound to help create a market where lots of new apps will end up being created in a Windows Phone 7 environment only.

Why Winkia will work: Footprint

So how big is the marketplace we’re talking about? Well, before we enter this arena, let’s make a few key assumptions: growth in the mobile space is largely coming from the smartphone category. In fact, the entry of sub-$100 android phones is basically going to kill the concept of smartphone altogether by just gobbling up the regular phones and pushing the trend to every phone becoming a smartphone. So the game here is for the whole pie instead of a smaller portion.

So how does Nokia do in that space? The Symbian operating system, the one the company is abandoning, was on 37.6 percent of smartphone devices in the last quarter but Nokia overall marketshare in the mobile space was 28.9 percent.

How does it compare to others?  In the OS game, Nokia has a 15.1 percent lead over Android, its next nearer competitor (Apple comes in 4th, behind RIM) and an 11.3 percent lead over Samsung in the overall mobile space.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was nowhere to really be seen, with a mere 4.2 percent of the OS market, coming in above “others” in the OS category.

If the tie-up had happened last quarter, the combined team would hold first place with above 40 percent of the smartphone market, almost double their nearest competitor (Android) and almost triple Apple’s own offerings.

With that large a footprint, any developer will have to think about supporting those devices.

Furthermore, Nokia has a long-established relationship with phone carriers around the world (while I have not checked the data, I would be ready to venture that there isn’t really a phone carrier out there not carrying some Nokia phones). That kind of network will be hard to defeat moving forward.

Why Winkia will work: Patents

When he unveiled the first iPhone, Steve Jobs made it clear that there was going to be a huge legal fight in the mobile space.  During the unveiling, he highlighted that oncoming fight in the following way (emphasis is mine):

We have invented a new technology called multi-touch. It works like magic, you don’t need a stylus, far more accurate than any interface ever shipped, it ignores touches, mutli-finger gestures, and BOY have we patented it!

[…]

We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them

Apple later sued HTC and Motorola over some of those patents.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has not been shy in suing some companies over patent infringement relating to Google Android. The operating system from Google continues to be challenged in court, the most recent lawsuit coming from Oracle over alleged infringement of Java related patents.

So all and all, the mobile game is one dominated by patent fights. In the lead-up to this week’s announcement, Nokia’s CEO was touting its patent portfolio as something to look at. A story on AllThingsD put it as such (emphasis is mine):

Friday’s investor meeting will also address other aspects of the company, including its services strategy, its plans for its Navteq navigation unit and its plans to leverage its huge patent portfolio.

Between Microsoft’s patents in the mobile space and Nokia’s, I suspect we are soon going to see some lawsuits emerging from the new partnership and going after different aspects of the iPhone and Android devices (though I suspect Google will be the first target, with the iPhone being left for later).

Conclusion

Between Microsoft’s strength in the development community, Nokia’s strength in the hardware and distribution realm, I would venture that we may be seeing the beginning of a major shift in the mobile landscape. Both of the partners are quite strong and I would not be completely surprised if they were to both be able to reverse their fortunes in the mobile space. I also would not be totally surprised if, at some point down the line, Microsoft were to announce that it is taking over Nokia and folding it in. An interesting thing is that the cut in the overall market capitalization of Nokia after the announcement has now left it in a position where Microsoft could buy it in cash if it felt like it.

However, there are still a few things to be ironed out. For starters, Microsoft has just tied its OS to one partner and may have difficulties convincing other players to build mobile phones. Expect Samsung, LG, and HTC to stop investing in Windows Phone 7. So if Nokia fails in regaining some momentum as a result of this partnership, it may take with it Microsoft’s hopes in the mobile space.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Winkia rising. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Then, I picked up the same info from the Apple store offerings for the MacBook today:

So looking at this, the comparison in terms of a price drop, since we’re talking about features, would probably have to be around the 2.4 GHz version since it’s the only version that appears on both pages (the MacBook didn’t have any 2.0 GHz or 2.1 GHz version.)

However, here is the first problem with the statement. The 2.4Ghz MacBook version offered today is $1599 and the 2.4 Ghz MacBook Pro version offered yesterday was $1999. That’s only a $400 price drop.

Using the same advanced “check the Google cache” methodology, I pulled up the technical specification list for the MacBook Pro as it appeared on Apple’s site yesterday. It looked like this:

I then pulled up the similar data from today’s specifications for the MacBook. The idea here is to get a fair assessment, based on Apple’s words yesterday and today, about whether one really gets the same value for less.

So let’s take a quick run down through the features of each devices, since Steve Jobs asked us to keep thinking of today’s MacBook offering as equivalent to yesterday’s MacBook Pro, based on the data provided by Apple itself:

So by the look of it,it’s not an exact match. The screen of the old MacBook Pro is, of course, larger, which accounts for it being heavier and bigger. But other features seem to have disappeared: The 2 firewire ports are gone, as is the ExpressCard slot; So is the antiglare screen (with glossy available as an option instead of a default) and the DVI port. Oh, and the supported screen resolution goes from a top of 1440 by 900 to 1280 by 800.

On the plus side, the multi-touch pad is a glassy button-less one, a new video card is available, as is a larger hard drive (50 more Gb to use) and a speedier motherboard is available. Also, it appears that the battery is now a 45-watt-hour one instead of a 60-watt one so I suspect that there are some power enhancements in this new machine.

Are the two machines similar? No. However, each of them has pluses and minuses and they are only $400 apart which, considering some of the things that have been dropped and added, seems to point to a machine that, assuming depreciation, is probably in line, price-wise, with the earlier one.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Apple: Same value, lower price?. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Recently, though, TechMeme has gotten me thinking about the tech blogosphere conversations as a whole and their longer term relevance. To the small “web 2.0″ community, TechMeme serves as a bit of a paper of record; The subhead even claims that it represents the “Tech Web, page A1”, claiming to bring us the important stories. But how do those stories fare over time? Is today’s hot topic a step in understanding a longer term trend or is it just a temporary distraction that will be forgotten a month/3 months/6 months/a year from now.

Fortunately, Gabe Rivera, the founder of TechMeme must have anticipated such a question and provided a way to look at TechMeme as it was a particular point in its short history. Using the simple interface, it’s easy to see the page as it existed at a precise point in time. So I decided to start looking at the site at the same time in single month spaces. The middle of the night and middle of the day position ought to be good time stamps so I decided to look at the site at 12am and 12pm on the selected date. I also had to discount the fact that April 1st is April fool’s day so I could not use the first of the month as this fact could skew the data. Here are the dates and times I ended up with:

• Today: June 2nd 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• A week ago: May 26, 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• Two weeks ago: May 19, 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• One month ago: May 2, 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• Two months ago: April 2, 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• Three months ago: March 2, 2008 at 12am and 12pm
• Six months ago: December 2, 2007 at 12am and 12pm
• Nine months ago: September 2, 2007 at 12am and 12pm
• One Year ago: June 2 2007 at 12am and 12pm
• Two years ago: June 2, 2006 at 12am and 12pm

With 20 data points, here’s what I discovered.

Today

Based on today’s news at noon, it looks like the important subjects at noon in the blogosphere are Adobe’s latest move, combining Flash and Acrobat with their entry in the already crowded (Google, Microsoft, Zoho, etc..) web-based office suite market. At midnight, things were a little less exciting, with discussion around the privacy issues Google Maps is raising with their StreetView offering.

Of course, it’s still too early to tell whether those stories will have a long term impact so let’s roll the tape back a little.

One Week Ago: May 26, 2008

At noon, a week ago, the top story was about a new type of SSD, developed by Samsung. Since it’s hardware, I assume that the impact of this news can’t be felt initially but there could be longer term repercussions. Also of note on that page is a small item lower on the page about Paypal outages. An interesting trend in my research on this is that this story is slowly developing over a period of weeks and months and the noise level appears to be increasing on it.

At midnight, the discussion was around Google’s power and the needed for another organization to work as a counter balance to that powerful force in the search engine space. Coupled with the discussions last night about privacy issues relating to Google maps, it seems we are seeing an emerging pattern here.

Two Weeks Ago: May 19, 2008

Two weeks ago, at noontime, the claim that Microsoft would eventually buy Facebook and keep it close was dominating TechMeme. At this point, no announcement has been made so this is largely conjecture and, while an interesting opinion, it’s not really news. This editorial was largely in response to the news item that dominated the previous 12 hour cycle about Microsoft’s statements regarding pursuing a possible deals other than a full acquisition with Yahoo!

One Month Ago: May 2, 2008

On May 2, 2008 at noon, the big news was… that the Google RSS reader is now available for the iphone. I’m sure many people consider this event as a major turning point when… well, hmm… a big big deal. Amusingly, Adobe was also in the news that day, with news that its flash plugin would escape computers and appear in set top boxes and mobile phones.

Another big subject was Steve Ballmer’s mention that Microsoft could go it alone without Yahoo, a discussion that dominated the midnight page on that day. The Yahoo/Microsoft chat has been kind of the soap opera of our industry and this latest installment was remembered as a turning point (or not) by many.

A possibly interesting trend piece, around midnight, was also intriguing: Will Grand Theft Auto IV hurt Iron Man opening weekend sales. I haven’t seen a follow up on that piece yet, which could tell us whether video games are displacing movies as the primary form of entertainment but my guess is that the answer is no.

Two Months Ago: April 2, 2008

On April 2, 2008 at noon, the top story on techmeme was about Intel’s plan for chips that would power up more mobile devices. Interestingly, this story was largely driven by mainstream media as the lead was taken by john Markoff of the New York Times, followed by comments from Forbes magazine, and Infoworld. The other related story was the press release itself, which can be seen as bloggers pointing straight to the source of the news. I suspect that this story will probably have more legs moving forward. A cursory glance provides glances at developing stories ranging from the rumor stage (that all important Google/Skype partnership or acquisition… which didn’t happen) to the focus on process (like the approval of Office Open XML as an ISO standard).

The departure of Google’s CIO dominated the prior night’s news cycle and word of Apple’s 3G iphone started to filter through.

Three Months Ago: March 2, 2008

March 2, 2008 at noon provides us perspective on today’s news, thanks to Microsoft’s announcement of ITS entry into the web-based office suite market. When put side by side with today’s announcement by Adobe, it seems to start pointing to more of a trend. Beyond that, little news that seems to be of note from a memorable standpoint.

The interesting thing here is that the same subject was leading the previous night’s news cycle. This seems to establish a first rule for techmeme: subjects that survive on the front page more than 12 hours may be worth paying attention to.

Six Month Ago: December 2, 2007

There’s an all saying in journalism that 3 items make for a trend. In the case of this study, it looks like Web-based office suite are definitely the hottest trend around, as the top news on December 2, 2007 at noon was information about the future of Google’s offering in that space (either that or there is an unwritten rule in the technology field that information about web-based office suites MUST be introduced on the second day of the month or wait until the following month).

The subject was starting to climb the chart 12 hours earlier, even thought the discussion at the time was dominated by a Facebook misstep (remember Facebook Beacons? Well, that was around that time). From an interface standpoint, it also brings up something that I’d like to recommend to Gabe: could you add and up or down arrow to highlight if a subject is getting more play or not. On something like this, it would be nice to get an idea of the stickiness of a topic. It appears many topic appear low on the page and move up over time, the quicker and faster they move up seems to indicate the importance of the story and it would be a nice addition to have that info on the screen.

Nine Month Ago: September 2, 2007

September 2, 2007 was a quiet news day. I guess everyone was mourning the death of the newspaper, which was forced by Google on that day, according to the noon-time headlines. There doesn’t seem to have been any other major news around midnight either. This, however, could be an artifact in the data as September 2, 2007 was a Sunday, which is generally a pretty quiet news day as most people don’t work on Sunday.

Interestingly, a story that is just now starting to get more notice is the continuing brushfires around Paypal’s outages. Not that sexy a subject but one that started to be raised around that time. At the time, discussion of Google’s entry in the mobile market centered around the idea they would deliver a device instead of a platform.

Last Year and Two Years Ago

A year ago, at noon, the Techmeme conversation was around porn. During the night, though, the conversation was centering around the acquisition of Feedburner by Google. This is probably remembered by people in the industry as an important milestone and here, techmeme shines at organizing a package with the appropriate conversations.

Things do not improve much if you go further back: 2 years ago, at noon, and midnight, gives us little to mull over.

Conclusion

The data seems to point that the front page of TechMeme largely represents what’s hot right now but does not necessarily highlight stories which have a longer term type of impact. In that sense, it may also be highlighting that discussions in the tech blogosphere are largely centered on insider-type minutia while failing to put things in a larger context. This appears to present a myopic view of the tech world that leaves us with lots of data but preciously little information. So while TechMeme provides a useful tool in terms of getting an idea of the pulse of the conversation “right now,” it does little in providing data that would allow someone to understand the larger trends that are affecting our world as a result of the internet (and web 2.0 revolution).

I would argue that the answer to the question I posed in the title for that post is a resounding yes. Because it deals largely with the trivial and assess little value to longer type impact, TechMeme creates a self-imposed myopia on its readers and participants. A possible exception is when a story manages to survives through multiple 12-hour instances, providing many angles to the same events. But those events are few and far between.

Whether the lack of headlines with a major impact is a phenomenon that is unique to TechMeme or to the tech world in general is a question I’d like to leave to readers and I’d appreciate comments as to your thinking around this.

But all this comes down to a simple fact: if you’ve missed what happened on TechMeme in the last XX hours, days or weeks, you may not necessarily have missed much. so kick back, relax, step away from the computer and, if you need to catch up, you can always pick up a mainstream publication that may cover a distilled version of what happened if it’s of any particular significance.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Is Techmeme myopic?. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Comparing Apples to Apples

One of the interesting thing is that Apple did not demise its existing Powerbook G4 product line. Whether it’s a question of inventory management having gone awry or an attempt to milk more out of the G4 market, it provides an interesting way to compare Apple laptops from the G4 generation to those of the Intel one. For the purpose of this study, I took data directly on the Apple site, looking at their offerings for the Powerbook and its equivalent on the Intel side of the house, the MacBook Pro. Here’s how they stack up against each other:

So, at first look, the processor is about the same, memory is twice as fast, and other specs are roughly the same. But, when you take a second look, you realize there are a few differences. For starter, the footprint of the new laptop is slightly larger (slimer, true, but still with a wider footprint) and there seems to be a few things missing. For example, S-video and composite video seem to be gone. And so is the built-in modem (now available as an extra, sold separately) and so is a firewire 800 port. On the other hand, you get a remote and a video camera with the new laptop.

Also a little scary is the fact that Apple is not touting the battery life on this laptop (it claimed 5.5 hours on the powerbook). Considering the might of Apple marketing, I suspect this is not an oversight but that the battery time is probably lower than 5.5 hours.

Last but not least, it is interesting to see that they are pricing them at exactly the same price-point ($1999). Is Apple hedging its bets?

Comparing Apple to… not Apple

While the Apple to Apple comparison provides some insight into their own product, the fact that they are now switching to Intel Core duo provides us with a unique opportunity to do actual hardware comparisons with other systems. A quick web search yielded the TravelMate 8200, a new laptop from Acer that seemed to match the MacBook in terms of price and offer a Core Duo processor. Let’s look at how they stack against each other since one could assume that both machine could run the same software, if Apple and Microsoft let them.

This table does not seem to favor Apple. On a feature by feature basis, it seems the Acer beats. In the categories of CPU, screen resolution, memory, hard disk space, video memory, and resolution on the video camera, the Acer comes ahead. The same is true in terms of ports (S-video, TV-out, 4 USB2 (vs 2 on the MacBook), more audio ports, etc…). However, when it comes to weight and size, the Apple machine is much slicker. The MacBook offers a backlit keyboard but the Acer offers a modem. So if it’s style you’re after, the MacBook is your machine but if you’re aching for raw power, another option may beat it.

Update:

There’s a discussion going on in the comments as to the price on the Acer. Currently, different sources are quoting two different prices: $1999 and $2499. I don’t know which one is correct yet and could not find that information on the Acer site.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title MacBook Pro Comparison Charts. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

The 5-years outlook

The interesting thing is the timing of the move, a bit over 10 years from the move from 680x processors to PowerPC and a big over 5 years from the transition from MacOS to OSX.

In 1994, the company decided to abandon some of the more proprietary components of its hardware architecture and move to a more “open” hardware architecture, using models similar to what was then available in the PC world. At the time, the transition was largely seen as just a processor transition but it was a much larger move to more open hardware architectures.

Then, in 2000, the transition started from the proprietary MacOS to a more open Unix-based operating system. Once again this was seen as an Apple only move and mostly seen as a simple migration.

Today, the company announced that it was moving from PowerPC to Intel-based x86 processors, a move that leaves open more questions than it answers.

However, it shows a clear trend in the company’s approach to change: Every 5 years or so, the company makes a move towards more openness. I’m assuming that, at this rate, Apple will make a decision to either move to a more open platform (notice in today’s announcement that they did not announce they would be available on hardware beyond Apple’s own hardware) or ditch the operating system and work on being a hardware company with a few Windows-based (and/or linux based) software products. This decision, in my view, will be announced in either 2010 or 2011.

The short term outlook

I would say that, short term (under 5 years), the move will be towards introducing an Intel-based laptop running OSX. Basically, the G5 laptop is not just not happening this year, it’s as dead the famous Monty Python parrot. However, the Apple Intel laptop is coming and it will probably be one of the first item they introduce under the new line.

The next thing that we’re going to see is a new price drop in some of the hardware. Expect more of the iMac line to trend down price wise. I suspect Apple will use the iMac line as a value line with prices ranging from $399 to $1000 for desktop and from $999 to $1500 for laptops. However, they will probably bring to market a higher end line of pro (or prosumer) devices. This strategy might help them grow their marketshare.

Third, expect Motorola/Freescale to be the first one to suffer. The transition, on the desktop, will probably start with the G4 line and then be followed, later, with the G5.

Fourth, expect Apple to announce a new version of their server and a new version of OSX running on either Intel x86 processor or Transmeta chips (technically, one could assume it’s possible).

And what about the lawsuits?

A few months ago, some blogs leaked information about upcoming Apple products and Apple filed suits to find who their sources were. Last week, the Wall Street Journal and Cnet leaked info about this move to Intel and… well, I guess Apple must have decided to stop suing people or maybe they are just reserving lawsuits for bloggers.

Update

: A helpful reader pointed out that I had argued in favor of the switch last year.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Apple moves to Intel. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

I know mac users will probably flame me for this but I believe that the direct result of this is the need for Apple to start taking a serious look at more of a cross-platform approach. Before you send me irate emails, however, realize that I am a mac user (we have several macs at home and I use an iBook as my primary machine, largely due to the small footprint factor (there are previous few 10 inch screen computers in this world and I am among the list of oddballs that prefer that form factor when it comes to portables)) and that I only want to see the best for Apple, a company that exudes coolness when it comes to marketing and design but one that may be losing the war in the consumer space.

Why I feel now is the time for Apple to consider a change

Over the past few years, Apple has made great headways in the music business, first with the iPod, which now holds a substantial lead over all of its competitors, and later with the iTunes Music Store, which has solidified the company’s position in the emerging world of digital music. Much of that success, I believe, stems from a smart decision to look beyond the mac and start offering like-for-like products on the windows platform. First, it was an iPod that could work with Windows, and then it was iTunes for Windows. Historically, Apple has had many successes on the Windows platform. Look, for example, at the success of Quicktime, which still represents a dominating force in the world of digital video. I believe the embrace of either Windows or Intel as a platform (in the examples I’ve given, it is the combination of both) always benefits Apple as a company. Every time Apple has offered a product on those platforms, it’s been successful. Let’s look at different combinations and the advantages and/or pitfalls of that approach.

Apple and Intel

It’s hardly a secret that Apple has switched CPU providers in the past. While their relationship with Motorola sustained them through the 80s and 90s, the move to the G5 architecture showed a willingness to switch provider. In that case, the provider became IBM, ie. the other provider of PowerPC chip. Who’s to say that Apple could not start holding discussion with Intel, looking to them as a provider of chips for their platform?

One of the possible combination here would be to port the Mac OSX operating system to the Intel platform. The bottom line would be a new market for Apple software product and a third alternative to Windows and Linux on the Intel platform. Darwin, the underlying core of OSX, is based on BSD. It has already been ported to the Intel platform and BSD itself has a rich history of distributions running on Intel processor.

The advantage of this approach is that it would make OSX available to a much wider public. This could translate into higher software sales for Apple (which provides a more end-user focused product than Linux at this time and a more secure product than Windows at this time) and could allow for a rise in the number of developers for the OSX platform as the potential of a larger market could enlarge the whole eco-system. One could foresee a time when iLife would be offered on that platform and Apple could use this as a seed for their new product offering.

On the downside, is the competition presented by Windows and Linux. By some accounts, Apple is now in danger of becoming the third most popular Operating System, behind Linux and Windows. However, one could look at this approach as a way to stem some of the losses. Another downside would be that Apple hardware would no longer be tied to the OS itself so people who want the features of OSX would not have to buy Apple hardware.

By offering their operating system on Intel processor, Apple could find itself with a growing market again in the OS world, providing a solid mainstream consumer alternative to Windows. On the downside, it could be cannibalizing its own hardware sales.

Apple and Windows

All this brings me to part two of the Wintel Strategy: Windows machine from Apple. It is undeniable that the look and feel, the design, and the marketing of Apple hardware exude coolness. The hard work that the Apple design team puts in its products is a large part of the company’s continued relevance in the market and few companies (Sony and Alienware are the only ones that come to mind) in the industry have the kind of following that Apple hardware enjoys.

If Apple started offering hardware that ran with Transmeta CPUs and could run Windows software, one could see an upsurge in the sales of laptop and desktops as part of the Apple business. For the last few years, sales of macs have been sluggish at best and I believe that part of the problem is a skittishness on the part of consumers to be locked into the Apple world, forced to use only Apple hardware and software. With the software being liberated, Apple could look to a slow migration of its hardware platform to Transmeta processors (AMID or Intel could also be contenders).

Why Transmeta? Well, my thinking is that the Transmeta approach is to do software-based processor units through code morphing. If they were to offer a G5 equivalent of their morphing software. This would establish a base line in terms of offering equivalence with current hardware. The next step would be to offer the same hardware but with the Transmeta Intel-based chips, which could then run the windows or Linux platform (or any other Intel-based OS). Users who want to experience the coolness factor of owning a mac would be able to do so and still run the apps that somehow kept them from moving to OSX.

On the downside, Apple would not necessarily hold much of a lead with the operating system. As more and more Intel-like systems go out the door, Apple could loose some of the remaining market share they hold in the operating system. Another potential downside would be the commoditization of the hardware platform. However, I believe they would still be able to hold patents on their designs and continue producing products that look cool.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Some people will probably dismiss these concepts as plain nuts and I have to admit that it takes quite a leap of faith. To me, however, that leap of faith was made by Apple with the iPod and I believe that they can make it again as a way to increase their overall market share.

The overall downside of this strategy is that it might anger fans, who are notoriously devoted to the company. However, Apple has not really worried about this much in the past. In the 90s, the company started OEMing their hardware platform but decided to pull back when some vendors started representing real competition (remember PowerComputing?)

The question is whether Apple wants to remain a niche player in the computer market. Based on the last quarterly report, it seems that most of the growth is coming from the music business. So maybe this would be a good way to reinvigorate the computing part of the business.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Why Apple should consider Wintel. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

While companies from Intel to Microsoft are talking about how they plan to implement digital rights in the future and are taking tentative steps in that direction, Apple is working on a strategy that covers multiple platforms beginning today. The iTunes music store may be an interesting story in terms of the consumer market but it seems to me that there is also an interesting play at hand for a business to business model. If Apple succeeds in its implementation of the music store (and there is little doubt that they will), they could turn around and start offering a set of products and services to organizations dealing in digital goods.

I believe that the iTunes music store will eventually drop the music part of its name in the future, when video becomes the thing to download. The underlying data structure already points to Apple’s ambition to move into other media format. So let’s look into the future…

As broadband becomes more pervasive, video becomes an attractive thing to download. At that point, Apple start offering TV shows and movies in a store similar to the Apple music store. They can then decide that there are areas they want to play in (read: where they want to manage the store) and other areas where they might want to offer customized system. Showing the iTunes music store as a proof of concept of their way to do DRM, they approach large studios and/or labels. From there, they can show that their store is running on Apple hardware and runs a server version of their operating system. Much like they are packaging streaming solutions with that software, they could start package digital rights management solutions.

So who’s the market here? Well, for starters, Apple is probably not going to want to create too much competition with its business to consumer segment so I think looking at movie studios may not be the right thing to do. However, they could look at TV stations, both in the US and abroad and start offering on-demand video services, wrapping QuickTime (as a streaming format) into their own proprietary DRM flavor. Going beyond that market, they could also look at the corporate market for companies that want to do internal presentations but ensure that only certain groups have access to certain presentations.

Another potential direction for Apple would be to look at software delivery. Using their proprietary DRM and an infrastructure similar to the one powering the Apple music store, they could deliver software packages either on a per-use basis, or as complete package. Now that they have crossed the divide between the mac market and the windows PC market, there are a lot of potentials for them to figure out how to mine the field.

Bottom line: Apple now has a strong cross-platform offering for distributing protected data. As the early lead in the market, they now have potentials to expand a lot beyond the world they run in.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Apple: Cross Platform DRM. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

For the past few years, Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to remain relevant in an era of increasing openness. The rise of HTML and of HTTP as the underlying protocol for distribution on the Internet have challenged the level of control that Microsoft had on the computing world. The initial control was borne out of a partnership between Intel and Microsoft, which allowed them to establish both companies as the essential players in the desktop computing world (the partnership often being recognized as the Wintel (Windows plus Intel) behemoth.

When the Internet started to rise, the network jeopardized that relationship as open standards offered the ability to move more of the software logic to servers and rely less on the client desktop, with HTML being pretty much the universal interface to those new systems. With the advent of Linux, a cheap alternative to Windows, Intel found itself remaining in a very strong position (as Linux can run on Intel boxes) and Microsoft sees the possibility of being increasingly marginalized. The problem comes from the fact that Microsoft, as holder of the software component is really only working as a middle tier in a relationship that involves processors, network bandwidth, software, and content. Let’s review why this development is significant in the new world.

Ten years ago, the big challenge in computing was processing power. Software was always coming out that needed to gobble up more processing power and more memory. In the last couple of years, though, the equation has shifted radically. Increasingly, users have more processing power on their desktop than they can use. Unless you are a hardcore gamer, the combination of Moore’s Law (which has pushed CPU speed to a point where any gain is of little relevance to most users) and the steady decline of prices for memory has meant that today’s user is finding himself/herself with a computer that is only gated by one factor: speed of access to the Internet. The challenge here is that, for most people, access to the Internet still happens over a regular modem, hence limiting what they can do online. While adoption of broadband access is growing, it still represents a gating factor in what most users can do. As a result, most people are now looking at how they can access the Internet faster, moving the discussion away from the desktop and onto that bit of the network that has traditionally been the realm of telephone companies.

With the rise of cable companies as access providers to the Internet, Microsoft now needs to find partners in two access camps: on the one hand, it needs to partner up with cable companies, and on the other, it needs to partner up with phone companies. For the first time in its life, Microsoft is actually forced to play in an arena where the monopoly players are somewhere else than in its own company.

With the AOL partnership, Microsoft is closing one part of the equation, by getting access to the pipes offered by Road Runner, the high speed access company offered by AOL/Time Warner. Coupled with relationship established with Verizon and Qwest, Microsoft has gained a foothold in the access space. However, this is potentially short-lived, as Microsoft could easily be replaced if any of those companies decided that they wanted to partner themselves with someone else.

So securing access to the pipe is one way to ensure continued relevance but it does not ensure the level of control that the desktop monopoly once allowed. In order to get that level of control, one must find a way to leverage the existing platform (windows) and create a lock-in with it. This is where partnerships on content can become useful.

In order to create a long term strategic control, Microsoft must ensure that it will be difficult to move away from its offering. This is where the Windows media strategy comes in. If Microsoft manages to get control of content created on the Internet, it will be much more difficult to unseat it in the future. With last week’s announcement that AOL would collaborate with Microsoft on digital media, the companies have started to establish something that may give Microsoft much more control in the future. Once content is encoded using the Microsoft Windows Media solution, it will be difficult to move away from it. A partnership on Digital Rights Management also ensures that Microsoft will hold the keys for content encoded using its solution, hence ensuring its tight control of a very lucrative market.

The ace card Microsoft holds in this is its installed base. By moving the dialogue from web servers (a battle it lost long ago) to video and audio servers (a battle that has yet to be fought), Microsoft is positioning itself for the future of the Internet. This early position will ensure that it will be able to offer Windows Servers that power the next generation of Internet content. The key in making its case is that, because it has control of the desktop, Microsoft can offer millions of users with a media player already running on their machines. This is an attractive public, and allows the company to make a strong case for an integrated suite of products and services (“here’s the player, here’s the server.. oh and while you’re using our streaming media server, how about using our rights management system… and you know all that stuff actually runs better on our windows platform…”)

So this is the worst case scenario. But, one can easily say, there are competitors and there’s no guarantee that this will work. Furthermore, the open standards are always creating a limit on the company’s power, right?

Well, that’s not even a guarantee. As we know, Microsoft came from behind in the browser wars. First, there was Netscape, and it was controlling 80% of the market. Then Microsoft launched IE but things didn’t really change much in the beginning. As Microsoft improved its browser (and Netscape, drunk on its own hype, believed it couldn’t be defeated), the percentage of control shifted.

AOL, with its established customer base of 30 million, and its ownership of the Netscape browser (bought as the company was already losing marketshares), was the only company that could have change the balance back. By bundling Mozilla first in Compuserve and then in the mac client for AOL, it indicated to Microsoft that this was something they might be willing to do, if Microsoft didn’t work with them. It quickly became obvious to Microsoft that they could be locked out of the browser market if they didn’t play nice with AOL. So they cut a deal and gave AOL a royalty free license to use the browser for the next seven years. That seemed to pretty much lock everything in place to keep tight control.

But the story doesn’t end here…

Apparently, Microsoft does not intend to build a standalone version of IE anymore. The relevant lines in that discussions are as follows:

Q: when / will there be the next version of IE?A: As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation.

Zeldman points out that IE will be built into future version of MSN for the mac but that otherwise, it will be part of the OS. This is an interesting development.

Let’s extend this concept out to beyond seven years: Microsoft and AOL are at the end of the current agreement. AOL did indeed use the Windows Media suite and is using the OS-embedded IE. Microsoft decides to renegotiate terms. AOL balks. Microsoft says that it will change its browser so that AOL doesn’t work on it. What happens then? What is AOL’s fallback position? On one hand, it’s got 7 years worth of media now encoded in Windows Media format (and would need to reformat all that in order to move off the Microsoft platform, a huge undertaking unto itself), and is locked into the Microsoft OS.

It seems that, unless AOL is keeping Mozilla alive, it is about to sign a deal that could eventually put it in a tough position on the browser end. It also seems that unless it hedges its best and encodes content in windows media and another format, it risks lock-in.

On the web development end, this also has huge repercussions. If we all develop solely to Microsoft, and agree to extensions they might make to HTML once its in the OS, we run the risk of all becoming windows developers, beholden to Microsoft.

This is a really all about a fight for the soul of the Internet. In the 90s, Microsoft announced a strategy of “embrace and extend”, which was often derided as “engulf and devour”. We’re now starting to see the extension happening, and it seems to point back to windows. Do we want to be locked in?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Microsoft Lock-in?. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Since no single source has been offering a complete rundown of both candidates’ positions on tech issues, I’ve decided to do the research myself and share it with you. You might notice that it is not an exhaustive list. The main reason for this being relatively short is that I only posted information I could get from more than one source. I’ve tried gathering the information directly from the candidates’ websites or their party websites.

If a claim was made and I could not substantiate from more than 2 sources, I decided not to include it, nor did I include claims made by non-accredited news sites (think Drudge Report and the likes).

While I managed to get a fair amount of information from both politicians sites, I was surprised not to find it more easily. One would think that in this day and age, technology would be a big platform issue but it still isn’t. I would urge members of the tech press on this list and in general to start pressing the candidates to see what technology agenda is shaping up. After all, it is something that will affect all of us to some extent during the next few years and it would be nice to have clearly stated positions on such issues as future Internet development, taxation policy, etc… I’d also like to hear what each candidate has to offer in terms of helping net companies get more qualified workers and fill some of the current gap in recruiting. Will we see some government sponsored retraining programs or some government help in terms of getting kids to study computer science? Those are issues of critical importance to the Information Technology community and I would love to hear each candidates’ stance on this. After all, whoever wins this election will lead US policy and, as a result, affect world-wide policy about the Internet. It would be nice to get a better idea as to what that will look like so we can prepare for it.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 2000 Tech Politics. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Morphing software

Many of the media seemed to miss the story, however, treating it as just another company announcing a new computer chip. What they missed, largely, is the revolution heralded by Transmeta’s code morphing software. What it does is translate X86 instruction into Transmeta’s native code.

The revolution behind this lies mainly in the fact that this architecture could theoretically allow machines running Crusoe (the Transmeta line of chips) to act not only like x86 machines running either Windows, Linux, BSD, BeOS, or Solaris for x86 but also run code designed for any other chip. All they would have to do is throw in a different version of the morphing software on top of the chip (say, for example a G4 software layer) and run the OS running on other machines.

Logically, what Transmeta has done is simply create the most versatile chip in the industry, allowing it to morph into all the most popular computer chips out there through software emulation.

And because the first translation layer they built is the x86 one, it means that their chip can now power Windows and Linux boxes as well as any Intel chip.

In other words, what Transmeta announced today is that they had built a chip that is what Sun is trying to build with the Java chip, and in the process they have created what is essentially a virtual machine that addresses directly the chip, completely bypassing the OS.

Caching for better performance

Another interesting part of the announcement of an adaptive algorithm in their chip set that caches the most often use instruction sets. As a result, the performance of the chip is greatly increased because the Transmeta software caches the information that repeats itself. In the demo they gave at their press conference, they showed how running a DVD movie on a Pentium III processor compared to running the same movie with the same DVD reader on a Crusoe chip. The difference was stunning. While on the Pentium III, the idle time drop from roughly 90% to roughly 50% for the duration of their running the application, the Crusoe chip first saw a spike to less than 50% for a couple of minutes and then went back into idle mode as all the necessary instructions to run the DVD players had been cached in memory.

The bottom line here is that they have essentially created an adaptive multi-tasking environment on a chip.

Built-in power management

The other thing that was interesting was their approach to power management. For starter, the Crusoe chips do not call on all areas of a processor all the time. Because of the adaptive nature of their memory caching system, they show a major performance increase at a lower consumption rate. According to the Transmeta web site,

When an application doesn’t need peak processor performance, the model TM5400 can save power by reducing its clock speed and voltage. Using Transmeta’s LongRun power management technology, software continuously monitors the demands on the processor, dynamically and smoothly adjusting the processor’s speed to exactly what is needed to run the application.

You probably keep more than one application open on your computer at a time (for example, as I’m writing this, my email client is running in the background, as well as a few browser windows from which I’m getting information) but most of those being in the background, they should take major amounts of CPU. A Crusoe enabled machine would realize that and reduce the voltage consumption of those tasks, therefore increase the battery life on your computer (this is, of course, aimed at the Mobile market Transmeta is going after).

On a regular machine, the chip knows either how to turn a process on or off but not how to degrade it to lower power consumption. As a result, Transmeta has built a better mousetrap.

Upgradeable through the Internet?

Because the core of the chip resides in a software layer that sits above the hardware level, it is possible to create a chip that is upgradeable through the Internet. A few years ago, the first ROM-upgradeable modems came out, allowing users to move from a 28.8kbps modem to an 56k modem by just downloading software. Theoretically, Crusoe chips should be upgradeable in much the same way, which makes for an interesting world where hardware and software become closer.

But why does Linus Torvalds work there?

The question on the mind of hordes of Linux users was why would Linus work at a chip company? Well, today, the answer was given. Along with the announcement of the new chip, Transmeta announced Mobile Linux, a version of Linux designed for systems without hard disks, such as Mobile Internet devices (for example, Web pads, palmtops, etc…)

The principal enhancements for Mobile Linux will be in power management and in the reduction of the memory footprint. So that’s what Linus has been working on all this time, as well as being part of the team that built the morphable software. All and all, one can say that it was really smart of them to add him to their roster of talent, as it will fire up the Linux community to develop for this new version of Linux (and yes, Mobile Linux will be open source).

Style change

In what may be a departure from the industry’s playbook, Transmeta decided to announce the products they had on hand. Yes, the chips are available today (they mentioned that IBM would manufacture some of them) and no, they won’t answer any questions about the future. In other words, this is no vaporware but a very real set of products. This could change the way companies around the industry release their products.

The losers: Palm Computing, Sun, Intel, Motorola and AMD

All and all, this announcement changes the landscape for a couple of major players. For starters, Palm Computing might find itself in the middle of a very big battle. Because of the low power consumption of the Crusoe chips and the introduction of Mobile Linux, it is now possible to envision Palm-sized devices that can run audio and video. This represents a major threat to Palm Computing’s installed base.

Second among the losers today are the chip companies. Because they can run the x86 set, Transmeta’s chips are a potential replacement for Intel and AMD chips in the laptop market. A lot of the problems those chips have encountered is that the higher the processor speed, the hotter the chips run, and the larger the fans that need to be used to cool them. If Crusoe holds up as well as they demoed, Transmeta could capture a major lead in the laptop market. Add the morphing software architecture and Transmeta could also become a competitor to chip makers Sun and Motorola.

Sun is further hurt in the fact that this is a virtual chip that takes away from the concept of virtual machines that Sun pushed with Java. As a result, Sun’s hope of covering the market with Java devices as well as their JINI-everywhere strategy may have to be rethought.

The winners: Linux, Microsoft, Consumers

Linux is a clear winner with the introduction of Mobile Linux, which will strengthen Linux’s gain in the computer market by offering it as an alternative to any other OS in the hand held market.

Microsoft, interestingly, also becomes a winner with this. With Intel making some moves to back alternative operating systems, Microsoft was finding itself in the difficult position of being somewhat subservient to its biggest ally. Yes, there’s AMD but Crusoe is yet another competitor to Intel, which only strengthens Microsoft’s position in dealing with the chip manufacturer. Also, Microsoft gains some advantage here because its Windows OS can now run at better performance levels on handheld devices. Yes, it will have to battle Mobile Linux but this could make the main Windows line (Windows 9x and 2000) an alternative platform in the portable device market, which means that Microsoft could now ditch their efforts on WinCE and still have a card in that new market if they want to.

Consumer also stand to win from this announcement as it heralds a new age of mobility. Soon, a lot of low powered mobile devices will hit the market: Portable DVD players and wireless Internet devices now have more of a chance in the marketplace since they won’t consume as much in batteries. I think we’ll all be happy to see those new devices hit the market.

All and all, it was yet another day when a major announcement changed the computer landscape. Since that’s two major announcements in as many weeks, I wonder what’s going to happen next week.

Stay tuned!

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Transmeta Changes the Landscape. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.