Palm, then, is clearly a shortimer on shaky ground as Apple has managed to several up their opponents at every turn, and I’m having doubts that they will show up to this party with 80′s grade wine coolers. The iPhone is, after all, Apple’s flagship product already in its short life, besting even the powerful and battle-ready iPod (yeah, the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the phone, so you do the math). This new iPhone is just in time to sate the upgrade needs of the original iPhone owners whose precious non-3G gizmos 2 year contracts are coming up.

Interestingly enough, it appears that Palm is struggling right out of the gate by releasing webOS 1.0.2 today! Reports on PreThinking.com are already saying that the update makes the phone faster and adds a clock widget. Wow. I’m not surprised, since its a very Palm-like thing to do, but its not the kind of message that Palm should want to put out there. Regardless, there has been a great deal of buzz about the Pre and people appear to be loving it, with thousands of tweets hitting the nano-blogging nano-sphere as people pick up their new handsets at a local Sprint store.

The excitement is clear and many of the reports being posted about new Pres is very positive, which is a good sign. The other question is, “Who will win, Apple or Palm?” Fortunately, I’ll break out the old saw and say that neither, its the consumer who wins. Apple set out to completely revamp the mobile market and it did so in less than a year with the first iPhone. It has taken less than three years now for the competition to start catching up, and (this is my opinion) the Palm Pre and the new webOS is the first to offer a valid challenge to Apple. Apple wins, Palm wins, and we all win.

We get a pair of kick ass pocket computers for cheap! Nice work, fighters!

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So, can IE beat Firefox? No. Its not possible for two reasons. One, Microsoft is slowly but surely losing marketshare to Apple. Two, Microsoft has been losing its edge in applications for some time. They’re being beaten by the likes of Google and Facebook and there are dozens of Web 2.0 sites which do neat stuff. Three, Microsoft can’t win at media players (the Zune is about to die, I’m sure) or smartphones. Apple has those markets sewn up. Four, the Firefox web browser works on nearly all platforms including Windows and Mac OS X. With addons which work in both places and tools which can sync them, there’s little need to focus on a single platform. Five, People are bored with being brand loyal and are happy to own a Dell lappy and an Apple iPod.

So, in the end, it doesn’t come down to how well MS has programmer IE8. It will never matter until their produce versions of IE with the same features and compatibilities for Mac OS X and Linux. Windows compatibility is become a thing of the past. I’m not saying were in the “cloud” yet. That won’t happen for some time (4-7 years, likely later rather than earlier). There are a lot of things we do in the cloud, though. Google, Facebook, MySpace (blech!), WoW, YouTube, Pandora, NetFlix, Hulu, etc… We email. We browse. We shop. We SMS. We post silly videos. We play. We meet. We goof off. We speak out mind. IE8 may make that happen better than IE7 did, but it still can’t ever beat Firefox.

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Apple has reached a point where they are now the defacto name of cool in the technical space. Apple has a cachet which Microsoft never had and it looks like Apple is now trying to capitalize on that. The simple truth is that cool doesn’t carry, and Apple will have to fundamentally modify its strategy to continue to grow. Its become clear that Steve may have figured out that no matter how many moves of the chess pieces he orchestrates, there is no longer anything new Apple can do that will have the Zing Factor of the iPhone.

They’ve captured the laptop market, the mobile media player market, the music market, the mobile phone market, and enough of the desktop market to make them very happy, and they’re watching that marketshare grow consistently. Anything they do now will be a derivation of something they’ve already done and people will necessarily be disappointed. This, I believe, is why Apple has been migrating away from the event-driven announcements over the past few years. Apple also had to have noticed that shares of Apple stock drop after every keynote.

I’m pretty sure that Steve knows that Apple rises and falls on his perceived failings and fortunes, and that’s not good to the ongoing fortunes of a huge multinational. Apple needs to become a brand again and right now its Apple is Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs own mortality had to play a role in his views on how Apple should appear to the world. Apple is now distancing itself from its fanbase and will, in the next year or so, become something akin to Microsoft.

This will actually help Apple to grow as the lifestyle brand it has been forging itself into, something Microsoft has never been able to get a handle on. The people who purchase Apple goods now don’t do so out of brand loyalty or because they are phanboiz. They buy because it is popular and it works. This was the image Steve Jobs has been crafting over the last decade. He started with the iMac then the new PowerBooks then Mac OS X then the iPod and so on.

If Apple is going to move forward, gain more marketshare, and be a powerhouse from this point on it needs to behave differently. Will this piss off the phanboiz? Sure. Will it upset the loyalists? Some. Will it cement Apple’s role in the future of lifestyle computing? Without a single doubt. Apple has created a brand image for itself which works on all levels of a persons needs from the technological standpoint. They have made themselves as necessary as shoes, and unlike Microsoft’s lumpy pennyloafers these shoes are nice and comfortable.

That brand image doesn’t have a picture of Steve Jobs in it. Think back and try to find any piece of advertising material aimed at the general consumer in the last decade which has included Steve Jobs in it. My bet is you won’t find any. I’m also going to bet that Apple will return to MacWorld soon, maybe even next year, but they won’t do the keynote.

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Some people just move the cable to the printer from one machine to the other. Others delve into the periodically annoying and frusterating world of network-based device sharing. Others who care not to engage in such tomfoolery just duplicate some things. This is where the new Kensington ShareCentral line of device management products comes in. Kensington shipped me a ShareCentral 5 the other day, and I’ve been putting it throught the paces to see what its made of.

RIght off, I’d say its made of some pretty nifty technology. When I first received it I made the almost immediate discovery that what amounts to a 5-port USB hub is first and foremost an ingenious USB device aggregator. Here’s how it works. On the back, as you can see in the illustration, there are two USB Type-B sockets, one for each computer. There are then 5 USB ports and a power socket for the powersupply. Install tiny little drivers on the two Macintosh or Windows systems (or mix of the two) and plug them in.

My assumption would be that the driver sets up a number of virtual device ports on the host computer so that they can all talk at the same time. This is fantastic because then all you need to do is plug in a single USB cable to access all of your devices, something which could possibly allow for cleaner cable management. Of course, its a little too expensive to just use as a device aggregator, but as a device sharing tool, it strikes a fair bargain.

To test the ShareCentral 5, I set it up on my desk where I have an HP 7800 Small Form Factor PC running Windows XP SP3 and an older PowerPC-based Mac Mini running Leopard. I removed the keyboard and mouse from the Mac and installed the drivers for both Mac OS X and Windows. I was a little disappointed at the poor quality of the CD-ROM supplied. It seemed rather poorly created, but it worked well. I would have preferred a dual format CD for users who may not be as well equipped to work with technical issues as I am.

I then plugged in each of the supplied USB to Computer cables (one is shorter than the other for what I would assume to be an effort to reduce entanglement) into each of the machines and connected the wireless dongle for the Logitech LX710 keyboard and mouse combo. It popped up in Windows first. I then clicked the button with the keyboard and mouse icon on it, it flashed a few times, and jumped to the other side. Now the Mac was using it. It was seamless, though it took a few seconds.

I tested a printer and a USB hard drive formatted in FAT32 and each worked flawlessly. I even tested switching with a hard drive from the Mac to Windows without first ejecting the drive and it apparently doesn’t complain, which means that the driver must add that functionality. I can’t confirm that just yet because I haven’t tested it to my satisfaction, though, so don’t take my word for it. Otherwise, everything works as advertised.

The box comes with everything you’ll need inside, including a little rubber gromet thing which can attach to either side and act as a cable guide in case you want to plug in a laptop in front of the device. Another nice touch are the four buttons which are magnetic. If you mount the device on a wall, you can rotate the images. If you want to put on custom buttons, it comes with three numbered blanks. Very well thought out, aside from the CD, of course.

Its solid, well built, and very functional. I appreciate the Mac OS X support, as well as the seamless operation between systems. It would be nice if Kensington got really platform happy and developed a set of Linux drivers, but we can’t get everything we wish for, do we. It is now available for US$79.99 direct from Kensington and, I would presume, from their retail partners.

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There are two primary points involved here. One, Apple has added complete Exchange connectivity to the iPhone 2.0 software, making it able to automatically connect to the single most used email server software in the world. They did so by making it work with ActiveSync, so that it meshes with the same technology Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile (and older Pocket PCs) use to syncronize data between desktop and email access provider. Two, people are tired of the phones they have so far been offered, what with their difficult to use and inconsistent interfaces, small displays, pointless PIM applications, and unreliable performance. More and more people have realized that the so-called “free” phones they’ve been offered are just shills for their service providers.

Apple and the iPhone have already made major strides in changing that by directly affecting the product design methodologies of other handset makers, just not always in the right direction. It seems that everyone has latched onto the idea that the iPhone’s sole aspect of success is its touchscreen. What LG and HTC and the others making touchscreen handsets now don’t get is that the touch part is only one small element of everything that makes the iPhone great. Its the best iPod ever made, its a portable media player, its an internet access system which fits nicely in your pocket, its a real PIM, its a messaging center, and, if you didn’t know, its a phone.

Some handset makers have taken notice, notably Nokia and RIM. Sure, they both already had a clear idea about how the mobile handset should also be a PIM and, at least in the case of Nokia, about how the handset could be a media tool, but form factors have long been hideous. Take most Blackberrys until the Pearl, which wasn’t a very good phone until the Curve came out, and Nokia’s Communicator series which is simply monstrous. Now RIM has introduced the very slick and aptly named Bold and Nokia is about to introduce the extremely sexy and functional E71. Neither of these are touchscreen devices, which is smart, because neither of these devices would work well as a touchscreen without a major overhaul.

What Apple has done is force the other makers to focus on their strengths and to address their shortcomings, and I’m sure Apple is aware of this. Its very likely that what Apple has done is knowingly caused the market to re-evaluate itself and its expectations, creating what it hopes will be a market-wide halo effect, driving even more customers to Apple. This, of course, will never be confirmed by Apple since they never confirm anything until they have officially announced it, and they only officially announce products, not strategies. It could also backfire on them. Apple is not the only source of innovation, and that’s not their only Achille’s Heel.

While I can’t claim to share the views of everyone, I do believe that there are some innovative offerings in the technology and mobile world which Apple did not have a hand in. As regular readers of me will know, I’m an IT guy a heart, and Apple has been stuck in IT Kindergarten while companies like HP and Dell have already graduated from college and gotten their Master degrees. Apple also lost its edge in the education market. Apple has never been able to shake the concept that their computers are more expensive, even though they aren’t. Most consumers who have not experienced Apple simply can’t wrap their minds around the idea that equivalent Windows-based systems cost the same, and in some cases more.

In innovation spaces, Google has made enormous strides in online technology. Who knows, maybe Apple’s new MobileMe, the replacement for .Mac, will be its answer to Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s Gmail, all in one tidy package. Then again, at US$99 a year, its not been as huge a draw as Apple has hoped it would be, though now that they’ve added complete Windows compatibility, that may change. Despite Apple’s early hand in the PDA race, Palm was the most influencial contributor from which came Handspring, the inventor of the Treo, the handset which changed the smartphone industry forever. Oh, and no matter how you slice it, the iPod was not Apple’s idea. They just did it the best.

What Apple has done, however, is create the iPhone Era, which will start soon after July 11th. Be ready for it, for we will all reap the benefits, whether we buy an iPhone or another phone which was made better because of the iPhone’s influence and market impact. Just keep in mind, you don’t need to buy crap just because others are willing to settle.

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Where, then, does Linux come into the picture? Do you see all of these tiny little lappies hitting the market? OLPC started it with their little green bug and kicked it into gear when they started offering the Buy-Two-Get-One deal where one goes to a child in a 3rd world country and you get the other one. ASUS saw something in that and ponied up the Eee PC, a tiny little lappy with a 4GB solid state hard drive and an eensy weensy price tag. Buyers freaked and they flew off the shelves, and other fabbers took notice and made their own. They are called MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) and are meant to be companions to your online life.

I would say that this is simply bad timing for Microsoft, but its also bad marketing. Microsoft, as usual, isn’t giving users what they want, the Redmond giant is demanding that the users do what Microsoft wants. It has numerous ways to leverage this desire, but its primary tool is its resellers like Dell, HP, Acer, and hundreds of others. Microsoft says jump, and they all ask how high, or at least they used to. At no time in Microsoft’s long history has it had to deal with a wide-open market, a bum new OS, a re-upstart in the form of Apple, the assumed arrival of Linux for end-users in Ubuntu, and a realization in end users that they don’t have to buy Microsoft to be “in the loop”.

Of course, that’s not all. The economy isn’t helping, either. People are either buying ultra cheap and sticking with Windows XP or they’re spending more on Apple, knowing that Mac OS X systems last longer and have a better resale value. Only those who honestly don’t know any better are moving to Vista, thinking that anything coming from Microsoft must be better than the previous version. However, more and more seniors are being dragged into the market by their tech-savvy children and getting into Ubuntu is very, very easy for first time users. The people behind Ubuntu have even created a new MID-specific version which has a new UI for smaller screens. There are plenty of other small screen UIs for MIDs, as well.

What’s Microsoft’s response to this major threat? To still cancel Windows XP Professional and continue to offer Windows XP Home Edition for MIDs, and it far from clear how long they’ll even do that. MIDs, by definition, are small, ultra low power devices which are not meant to be full portable systems or to replace desktop systems, so how does Microsoft expect MIDs to effectively run Vista, one of the single most resource intensive operating systems of all time. I mean, really. Considering what you can do with Vista that you can’t do with XP and what Vista sucks up just isn’t warranted. In the meantime, Linux runs faster on slower hardware, taking the utmost advantage of whatever resources it has access to.

What can’t Microsoft do, then, when faced with this threat. It can buy Yahoo!… oh, wait. That deal’s all finished, and Yahoo! is supposedly talking to Google about a team up. Hmm. I’d suggest that MS come out and say they made a mistake then take back their cancellation of XP and announce a new version of XP based on the Pro edition. Oh, and sell it retail for US$49. You’ll make bank, dawg! Everyone will get the OS they want, and even pay for it, since US$49 ain’t a high price to pay for a commercial OS. Hell, Apple users pay US$129 for each major upgrade, and happily!

I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Really. I’m just a pundit so I’m not qualified to read the future. What I can tell you, though, is that if Microsoft continues on the path it is traveling, Apple and Linux-based systems are going to start to gain some major marketshare. No, Apple isn’t going to dominate the market next year or even by 2012. Apple will have a very large marketshare, then, though. Keep that in mind. Keep watching the iPhone and the iPods which are now as necessary as underwear. Just keep watching.

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After all, what is the point of one-upping Apple when your efforts fall flat on their face anyway? I beg your pardon if I’m hammering at this point, but what purpose did it serve Sprint to pre-announce the Instinct as an iPhone killer? They must really feel like asses now, or at least they will come Monday when Jobs whips out yet another “One More Thing”. His Steveness, after all, has created a PR system which doesn’t talk, doesn’t proselytize, doesn’t dole out freebies to anyone who asks, and isn’t warm and fuzzy. Apple PR is cold, efficient, quiet, and very, very effective.

One of the largest and most captivating aspects of this Soviet Bloc-style PR defense is the huge amount of speculation and hoaxing which seems to swell enormously in advance of any Steve Jobs keynote address. This is yet another one of Apple’s greatest PR tricks. Each and every time a MacWorld Expo or WWDC rolls around, Apple is fed a huge number of ideas and concepts from some of the brightest minds in design; Apple’s rabid phanboiz. Do you honestly think it was chance that Apple was developing the iPhone for a few years, especially considering the ongoing interest in the Apple Newton line of PDAs?

It should have been made even more clear when Apple finally revealed that they had been developing the Intel version of Mac OS X alongside the PowerPC version the entire time. If that doesn’t clarify that Steve Jobs, his executive team, and the board don’t have their pulse on the future, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think it indicates an otherworldly precognition, but it does indicate a genius and aptitude for technology which none other appears to have. How, after all, do you explain the iPod phenomenon, Apple’s ridiculously rapid rise to sales parity with HP and Dell in the laptop market, their newfound dominance in the high-end workstation market, the iPhone taking a huge share of the smartphone market in less than a year, and their seeming ability to hit every single market they’ve targeted with a bullseye.

Okay. There’s one market they can’t seem to get right, no matter what they do (or don’t do, which may be more apropos); the enterprise server market. Right now, Apple is flailing around like Microsoft in the early days of Windows CE, trying deperately to find a way to seat itself in the market. Their current strategy is to make everyone believe that Mac servers are only for newbie dorks with SMBs who are seeking to improve the ease of use of their network. Fiddlesticks. That them thar is Unix, maties. Its been the single most powerful OS on the planet for over 30 years. Its no n00b toy, even if Apple has made it that way.

If I had my way, Apple would create a new division called Apple Enterprise and they would go head to head with the likes of HP and Dell, forging relationships with Cisco, Citrix, VMware, Foundry, EMC and a range of others to heave itself from the depths of the doldrums. They’re doing that with the iPhone ala 2.0 of the software, but that’s just for users. Apple really needs to offer a real end-to-end offering if they are to win back the world. I predict, at their current rate of halo adoption they will have 40% of the overall world market in 12-15 years. If they slam a homerun with a complete enterprise-grade backend, they could do that in half the time… as long as they honor Windows users with real security.

So, in reality, Apple appears to be playing a waiting game, or at the very least they are holding something big back in the server space that we can’t even imagine Apple doing. That, however, is just like the rest of their PR. We have no idea if they have something cooking back there, and I could simply be ignorant about thier plans for enterprise deployments. We’ll just have to wait and see, just like everything else. If Apple keeps this kind of PR going, it will end up being very, very unlikely that any other major player will be able to predict what Apple is doing. With that logic, its also extremely unlikely that others will catch up with or surpass Apple at any level.

Keep your eyes peeled for the kickass announcements at the WWDC. If you want to know what’s going on now, MacRumorsLive.com has the best feed. Load it and let it roll, Web 2.0 stylie, dawg. No need to reload the page.

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What is a MID? A MID is a Mobile Internet Device, a term coined by someone else whom I don’t care to lookup. It could have been Intel. It was Intel, in fact, which coined the term UMPC, or Ultra Mobile PC, which Microsoft later called its Origami Project. Much like the Tablet PC before it, people did not flock in sizable droves to purchase UMPCs with wild abandon. This is mostly because people don’t like them or find them useful. They are large, heavy, and cannot be closed to protect their screens. The market, indeed, is telling Microsoft what it wants. They do this by calling the large number of new micro-lappies UMPCs.

That is, after, what they are. It all started in earnest with ASUS’ Eee PC, a tiny sliver of a lappy, able to do just about anything as long as it didn’t require significant processor resources or touchtyping at over 100 WPM. Since the Eee PC shipped, there are now at least eight other competitors on the market, including products from HP and Dell, all of which are sub-US$800 systems, with most of them selling for under US$400. This brings us to the MID. The MID is what falls into the space being created for the pocketable PC. That idea which came to then Apple CEO John Sculley for a personal assistant which could go everywhere with you has come around again for another shot at the big time.

This time, however, Apple has already made their successful version and now others are trying to catch up. Its not just about the iPhone, though. Its about a range of different product technologies which are all coming together and finding that the technologies have improved enough to make certain technologies viable. In this case, its the MID; a convergence of the PDA, the mobile phone, the iPod, and a desktop computer. Yes, a desktop computer. Why? Because MIDs are capable of running Windows XP, various Linux distributions, and, in one case so far, even Windows Vista, though its not recommended. I would assume that by the time MIDs hit the market, someone will have hacked one to run Mac OS X, as well.

This is a compelling idea, yes? How could it not be compelling to be able to carry a full-sized desktop OS in your pocket and use it whenever you need, you say. That’s going to be a problem, though. Desktop OS are designed to be used with a mouse and a keyboard. We already know from the Tablet PC experiement that its actually more complicated to use a desktop interface with a pen and no keyboard, especially when entering data. That’s when using an interface designed for pen interaction becomes useful, but from years of experience with Palm and Windows CE based OS, I know that there’s a very limited amount of interaction you can have with a PDA OS.

It all comes down to data entry. If its going to be hard to enter data, then it won’t be used to enter data, and the MIDs will not fulfill their promise of a more powerful, portable computing platform. It will be another larger, faster PDA which uses more battery power and isn’t as convenient. Then again, I could be entirely wrong, and heaven knows I’ve been wrong before. The MID could be that bridge device which carries us into the next decade eyeing Star Trek’s science fiction concepts with confidence and swagger. Imagine a future where we get up in the morning, check out our news and answer our spam-free email, then grab our MID (which was acting as our desktop system in a cradle) and head out for the day.

We check movie times, verify our appointments with clients, set up a date with a GF or BF, plan a trip to Vegas with our pals, and all the while feel confident that we are computing in one place, with every iota of it being backed up constantly. That one place might just be our MID, a small, pocketable module which uses an Ultra Low Voltage CPU which still runs fast enough to run all major internet and office applications and is made even more powerful when connected to the home dock which adds a CPU, an optical drive, an additional hard drive for archiving and third-stage backup, and a video card to run an HD display. This rig will also allow you to make a receive video calls either at home on your big screen or while you’re out and about enjoying the fast and freeing WiMAX network.

Sadly, this is more a PR firms descriptive text than a possible reality. This IS, after all, what we want. This is not what we get, though. Competition prevents that from coming to fruition. To make such a device reality we would need to see technology sharing pacts between Intel, Microsoft, Apple, AMD, ASUS, Vonage, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Sun, EMC, Linux, and possibly the Pope. They’d all need to get together and say, “hey! Regardless of the fact that our individual survivial and success means that we must grind 2/3rds of you into the dirt within the next 20 years, we’d like to work with you to make this global computing environment a possibility within the next two years. Sound good?”

Yeah, right.

Among all of the other issues, I could see the entire Republican party having a simultaneous coronary and the FTC’s Antitrust department having some serious issues about all of this. Most of the companies in my incomplete list simply aren’t creative and forward-thinking enough to even be engaged in a part of such a conglomeration, much less spearhead it. So, in the end, the MIDs will just be another market niche. They will likely even sell well, though I predict they will sell more and offer more variants and models in Asian countries than here in the States. Ultra portables have long sold well in Japan and personal media players (the video kind) are very popular in Malaysia and South Korea.

In the meantime, Microsoft is busy making Vista the standard in the world and Windows 7 will just be larger and require more resources than Vista, completely the opposite of what a MID market needs. The best desktop OSes for MIDs are Windows XP, Mac OS X, and the king of the hill in embedded performance, Linux. Microsoft wants to kill XP dead, though, despite the fact that the market is making it plain and clear that it doens’t want to lose XP. Microsoft is making it equally clear that they don’t care what the consumer wants. Apple listened and produced the iPhone. If they ever make a larger, tablet-like one, then their MID will be perfect and complete. Linux already works perfectly well on a range of embedded systems.

So, again we are confronted with the truth that Microsoft isn’t interested in playing the game by the rules everyone else is cotent to play by. Not only will they not take their ball home so nobody can play, but they will replicate the ball and forcefully install it into every home in the neighborhood until people accept it as theirs. The telecoms are the same. Sprint has no interest in playing with Verizon or AT&T, and the latter two could care less about the others. It is their aim to win and not taking over the entire market is losing, so you see where we’re going there.

The reality is that no, MIDs will not be the tricorder, they won’t work like KITT, they won’t be an R2D2 to our Luke, and they won’t know how to make dinner reservations for us. They will be just another dumb tool which looks nice, costs a lot of money, and takes up space. Might as well get an iPhone and be done with it.

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The Cuban government has just released restrictions on its citizens having home computers. I don’t suspect it will take long for various vendors to start getting their little laptops down there. ASUS, you seeing a market for your Eee PC yet? Maybe not, since Raul Castro didn’t un-ban the Internet. The Communist government claims that the US embargo stops them from connecting to the cable. We’re friends with China and they’re communists! What gives, Bush?

It looks like the Psystar Mac clone isn’t fake, after all. At least there seem to be a few out there that people are talking about. Gizmodo and Engadget each have at least one. Guess they aren’t fakes after all.

Kensington has a new battery charger for the iPhone, though I’m sure it will work with other dockable iPods. Boy Genius has the poop on a clamshell handset from RIM, supposedly dubbed the BlackBerry KickStart. Finally, Microsoft is no longer pursuing the deal for Yahoo so you can stop trying to come up with new names for the merged force of nature (i.e., MicroHoo!, YahooSoft!, MicroYAHOO!soft, The Yang-Ballmer Love Child or YBLC, or just plain Microosoft!).

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