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By Vincent Capasso
Why? Different device product lines lead to differentiation of the online architectures available to both companies. While Google has traditionally been a services based company they more recently have made the transition to devices with the Android based phones and the newly released Chrome OS based netbooks.
Different architectures do not necessarily mean one vendor solution is better than the other either, but consumers always welcome the available options and the ability to make the choice ( even if it based on herd conformity mentality ) between two popular products.
Lets take a look at the major annoucements coming from Apple recently. "We're going to talk about three things today," Steve Jobs said at the beginning his keynote. Then he and his colleagues proceeded to talk about many new features and services made possible by their new cloud initiatives as well as their OS upgrades.
There were a few major themes announced by Apple:
1) A cord-cutting of sorts that freed iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users from the requirement to own a Mac or PC. This is a fundamental shift in their strategy to date. Specifically, the iOS 5 announcement, the system upgrade for iPad, iPhone and the iPod Touch. The features Apple unveiled gives these devices capabilities previously available only on PCs. With iOS 5, you can edit photos, create mores complex mail documents, etc.
This accelerates the trend of releasing powerful apps on the iPad. So while the Mac is morphing into the iPad, the iPad is stepping up to perform tasks that were at one time reserved for your Mac or PC.
2) The demotion of the Mac from the center of the user's computing universe to just another Apple product. The release of Lion, with this latest version of OS X, the Macintosh is adopting more traits of its iOS cousins. Lion supports more multitouch gestures. Lion has the App Store built in, etc. This move brings the look and feel of all Apple interfaces closer together and closer to their historical norm. This was an important early feature of Apple Applications, all of the Apps had the same look and feel, there was no real need to "learn" a new interface with every application as you often had to do on a MS Windows application ( eg. Wordperfect and MS Word ).
3) Lastly, a new system of file storage that eliminates the need to know where files are stored - either locally or in the cloud.
The Apple approach to cloud computing very different from, and less radical than Google's. Apple has taken up the position that the cloud is really just the center of activity and a data store for all end user Apple assets.
Google's Chrome OS treats the cloud as the computer itself, more like the thin client network computer envisioned by Larry Ellision from Oracle back in the early 1990s. In the Google cloud there is seemless activity between front end Apps like Google Docs, and the Chrome based browser interface to the data.
Apple's iCloud is more asset based than processing based. iCloud is focused less on full-scale “cloud computing” (moving the performance of the apps themselves to the web) than on synching a number of devices with one’s personal data files — which resides in Apple’s data center. The Apple strategy is also less risky then Google because it is not as dependent on ubiquitious bandwidth demands brought on by server side processing of Chrome OS.
Apple, Jobs claimed, would achieve success in this model where others have failed. Why will Apple triumph? Because, said Mr. Jobs, “it just works.”
Lets hope so, there is a lot riding on it.
Published by myITview.com
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