Robomac's Profile

I agree on the gaming front will be the iPad's big draw but I have been thinking, how do you control a game needing two thumbs or a combination of your four main digits (index and thumbs) playing a multitouch game without setting the iPad horizontally - like on your lap or table top? See, its a humongous iTouch in an awesome way but if you are holding it with one hand, that only leaves the other paw for gaming controls. I hear about some wireless (Bluetooth?) controller as an option but then the iPad is no longer a portable or even mobile competitor to the Gameboy or PSP in this way. It will just be a fancy tabletop gaming gadget. Surely, many hardcore gamers simply will not rush out from their PC rigs or X360s or PS3s to the iPad. I doubt Apple is targeting this audience though. The iPad doesn't appear to be built for their lives. No finder, no QWERTY keyboards, just finger-tapping goodness. Anyhoo, it will be an uphill slog for iOSX in the gaming department but seeing what iSupply saw with the iPad's build of materials, Apple has lots of room to compete on price and I believe they will. For $299 who can resist an iPad 16GB? Not I. Ditto with iOSX games today. They are still in the simplistic kiddy varieties although some are getting really good - witness EA's games. The iPad will surely give iOSX gaming a big boost via its increased screen size. I can see MMORPG like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy migrating finally to the iPad. Disc-based fantasy and huge RPG games like the new Mass Effect 2 may not come to the iPad soon unless there will be a memory slot of some kind in the next version. 64 Gigabytes sounds cavernous at first but after a few HD movies, your music collection, and multi-GB games there is little left for your photos. If there was a SD or XD card slot these games may be distributed this way or can be downloaded onto. Remember 32GB SD/XD cards are now very common. 64GB or 128GB cards can't be far off. Then again, Apple has changed the way we interact with files on their mobiles now that an internal SSD is all we will have. 64GB is okay with me but give me an option to expand it later and not a sealed deal. Even with all these "negatives" I will still be an iPad v.2 owner - I do not buy 1st gens you see. ;)

Wine... the delicious fine cabernet sauvignon from the FOSS folks. Who can resist free Windows emulator (No! Wine Is Not an Emulator - thereby the name, folks). If I am a coder and I am "emulating" all W32 calls and hooks then what am I actually doing? Emulating W32. I have used Wine since 1.0 myself. Works no doubt. Even CodeWeaver's CrossOver emulator. I think you were actually referring to CrossOver taking much of the XP left-for-dead enterprise IT knockheads. I don't think enterprise IT will deal directly with something like WineHQ. But, anyhow, CodeWeaver might be a viable alternative since it is a legit business outfit. I agree having Google as another OS competitor will only make the market that much more exciting given the size of their treasure vault. Google can even afford to come out with a skimpy beta version, satiate our appetite, then come out with a good version 1.0 That is great for everyone. Apple and Microsoft will have a formidable company to reckon with. It will keep them on their toes. It will enhance their "innovation" and come out with exciting new stuff. It is this "new" stuff - new directions - that we won't know until Chrome comes out and starts gaining traction (as you keep wishing, Bard). There are so many ways both Microsoft and Apple could branch out in other business model. Note portable gaming. I could then visualize Apple going in this direction when the iTouch came out but blog friends kept saying the iTouch will never be a games machine like the DS and PSP. I told them they were looking in the present form - no SDK, no AppStore, the hardware is barely 1.0, so on, so forth. Now, forward 3 years and now we can see that Apple is moving in this direction, big time, and have Nintendo and Sony watching their behinds. Next is the console replacing the AppleTV that will become the living room game center. The iTablet for casual computing and portable gaming priced to beat the netbook form. There are just too many blurry pictures right now for Chrome and Google's intentions of it. Sure they want to have OEMs preinstall Chrome with their netbooks but will the Acers and Asuses of the netbook world replace XP or Linux? It is hard to imagine consumers will buy something that will not run their applications. Applications...Google will want to control what applications run on their dear ChromeOS. They will have an "app" store themselves. Google will no doubt will hit a wall. It will run into the classic "chicken or the egg" conundrum. Will developers (from where? they are all too busy coding iPhone apps) come? Will Google themselves code the apps? How much revenue-sharing for each app registered? Will the store handle all the transactions as smoothly as Apple's App Store? There are a lot of questions for Google to answer in a year's time. Right now is not the right time for Chrome's "cloud" computing. Perhaps in a decade or more when the slowest speed is >100Mbps (Fast Ethernet line speed) then this proverbial "cloud" nirvana can be realized. Not when most of us cheapskate folks rely on 1.5Mbps down/384kbps up and even 56k dialup for judas' sake! It will not work next year or the next. You think Google can wait for another 10-15 years? Bring it on.

"Google’s market is part of that 50 percent of the world who don’t use computers now along with Windows XP users on very old hardware." Remember the One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop with similar tactics as a Linux kernel running a custom GUI called SugarOS? It flopped. Big Time. No one wanted to use it since....it was not XP compatible they all said. The other 50% of the world knows what they want - a real working OS with real applications that doesn't require the "cloud" to work.

"Apple will not be fighting with Google; it is not engaged in the lower end of the consumer market." Not yet anyways. The much-rumored iTablet will change that equation overnight. Apple may not be saying publicly but the iTablet with version 4 of its MID OSX will knock the socks off the ChromeOS. Then what will Google do? Make an iPhone-killer? Oh, they are trying that now with DOA Android OS. Ha ha ha.

"Perhaps, but, Google isn’t creating a new OS." B.I.N.G.O.! Damn you Google for taking our Free-As-In-Beer code to devastate Windows and OSX and send WebOS out to pasture!

"Microsoft wants to shut Google down. So, what choice does Google have, but to attack where Microsoft is weakest?" I think it is the other way around. MSN search (then Live search. Now Bing search) has been around even before Sir Sergey and Lord Larry came up with their magic algorithm. So, MS did not get it right, we know, but does that give Google license to kill Windows too? Again, Google is an advertising company doodling in software. Yes, they have some success in GMail and Maps (homegrown only please) but creating a compelling OS is not exactly the same level as apps. You only have to scour for Android news lately to understand what Chrome OS will be.

"Apple will confine itself to its chosen markets..." Today that is true and making tons of cash in return. That's a fact. Google is also making a mountain of greens from search ads. Why wouldn't Google confine itself to its "chosen markets" and keep the change?

"Who cares about finder if Fusion can run Windows XP apps and upload XP files? WMware Fusion does that on a Mac, right now. Microsoft won’t be able to sabotage that." Fusion or Parallels, by their very lonesome, do not run Windows XP apps, Bard. You still need to install a licensed XP on the damn thing.