Free Form Friday: WWDC, TV 2.0, & Garden Gnomes

Okay here we are with another fun week of Free Form Friday, which I always want to make Free Form into one word, and I think I can but never do…This edition is brought to you by the Gorillaz who are playing on my Apple mini entertainment center via iTunes radio.

So what’s new with the WWDC thing? Well the easy answer on this is go watch the Keynote and leave me to more important things, like planning world domination.  Otherwise keep reading if you’re too damn lazy to click a link and watch ol’ Mr. Jobs yammer about stuff.

Have you heard about the iCloud?  Didn’t Microsoft already have that?  Cool huh? Yeah it was cool five or so years ago when it first showed up on the scene…Now I’ll be the first to say most times Apple does it better, so it’s cool that MobileMe is finally getting the boot, because lets be honest, it wasn’t the best thing to come out of Apple and had been essentially reduced to simply a contacts\email\calendar sync due to far better doc programs being available (**cough** Dropbox **cough**) for FREE…so this was a good move.  Now as to this entire “cloud” deal.  No one owns the cloud concept.  iCloud is simply Apples TM of the idea, windows version of “the Cloud” is the same thing, as is everything Google docs has been doing forever now.  So let me break it down,  cloud hosting is simply a reference for wireless accessibility to your information (music, docs, emails, contacts, pictures, calendars, blah, blah, blah) across multiple devices anywhere you can access the web.  Company “A” has a warehouse the size of a mall somewhere out in the Midwest with floor to ceiling servers keeping all your info on it and connected to the web by a connection bandwidth that’d make Japanese Starcraft gamers cry.  It’s managed by one on site guy with a broom and penchant for killing rats who spends his time reading comic books until he gets to go home and play Starcraft.

What’s the big deal about the cloud thing? Okay it’s important and you’d better get used to the idea because of one big reality:  Computers cost more to make than sell at this point.  That’s right, they are no longer profitable.  The average America household has 2, and that’s the most it will buy, the market is saturated.  People are moving away from consoles to mobile devices as technology grows.  And finally the profit margin on the hardware (a computer\laptop) is so narrow that unless you’re a boutique producer (Apple\Alienware) the money is gone.  So enter the cloud revolution.  Basically if you’re not either producing software (windows, adobe, Logic, etc) or controlling the marketplace accessibility (iTunes, Kindle, iBooks, App store, etc) then you’re going to be out of business in about 5 years (i.e. HP’s downsizing).  Apple is half way into a plan to move away from hardware use and production and into “cloud” storage.  They make more money of your iTunes, App store, and iBook purchases than on a store full of computers.  So there.  Once wireless tech catches up in the US with the rest of the world (I’m looking at you Japan) there will be no hindrances to wirelessly accessing your info on the subway, car, office, plane, etc.

When’s the iPhone 5 coming out? Everything points to a fall\early 2012 release.  Schematics were leaked early this year and it looks like it’s slotted for fall production.  So if you’re lucky and sacrifice enough blood to Apple gods, you may see it for Christmas, but I’m betting it’s probably going to release like the Verizon iPhone 4 did at the beginning of this year.  And yes it sucks because my first gen 3G is so close to dead it’s not funny…

So how do you use a computer to watch TV like I saw at your house? I’ve gotten this question so many times this week it’s not even funny…it’s called TV 2.0, cable will be more formally out sourced in a few years, but some of us can take advantage of things now.  I’ll just write a post about it soon…can we talk about something not tech related now?  Throw me a bone here my FFF’s are supposed to be funny…

Wait, you have a garden? Yeah that’s right.  I live in upper Manhattan and have a back yard and a garden, which I’m planting.  And you better believe I’m going to get a garden space marine to defend my tomatoes against any surge of garden gnomes or Skaven plague bearers…and I saw one this morning walking my dog…she tried to kill it.

Alrighty guys that’s enough of an unusually legit FFF for this week.  Tune in next time.  Same bat time, same bat channel.  And make sure to click the pics if you want more info from their sources.  Peace!