I would have though Apple would be installing its own server network to handle the workload rather than farming it out. At the same time, Apple may be focusing on the iCloud service and meeting user needs than building out its own network. If iCloud proves to be really popular we may see Apple roll out its own network down the road.
I never thought Apple would stuff that North Carolina data center full of Apple-branded gear. The company has never had a strong enterprise presence outside of educational markets. For iCloud to be successful — and for Apple to overcome the MobileMe stigma — the service has to run well, from day one. Third-party hardware is key to that goal.
I’ve always wondered about the future of technology. While I’ve never been a flying car kind of guy, I do look forward to technology becoming more integrated in our lives.
This dream is an old one. The foundations of NLP can be found back in the 1950s. Apple explored this topic with the “Knowledge Navigator” project. Here’s a video from Apple, outlining the concept:
Now, speaking with computers hasn’t panned out as well as the writers behind Star Trek would have liked. NLP is still mostly text-based.
Calendaring applications have gotten the most NLP love in recent months. With Lion, iCal gained NLP, and apps like Fantastical and Alert Notes have become quite popular.
These applications can take something like this string of text and turn it into an event or reminder:
Meeting with Jeff at 6PM Sunday
When adding events to a calendar, natural language is much easier than clicking around a bunch of menu items within iCal.
With lots of voice-command-related rumors floating around about iOS 5, I’m hoping natural language is about to take off in an all new way for iOS.
Android, of course, has offered voice-control for some time now. It’s the single thing I miss the most about carrying around a Motorola Droid. Being able to pick up my phone and dictate a text message, search command or something else wasn’t only futuristic, but made using my phone in places like the car much safer.
MG Siegler got his hands on the Amazon tablet. From what he describes, it sounds like a killer product. Thankfully, it is expected to be sold alongside traditional e-ink Kindle readers.
This part is especially telling:
They are not working with Google on this. At all.
It’s clear Amazon wants to control its own destiny here. Which is good.
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as “when life begins” or “when it should be appropriately terminated,” but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.
These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tommorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.
In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
There is nothing to stop American films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage to suit their personal taste.
This is an idea I’ve had (and researched pretty thoroughly) since freshman year in the dorm: the ultimate tool for writing text. A “real” computer is overkill, and an iOS device, with its color LCD screen and multitude of apps, isn’t ideally suited to be a tool for writing text. What is needed is something closer to the Kindle: a (mostly) single-purpose, self-contained device with an always-on wireless connection (whether that’s through 3G like Whispernet or through WiFi) in which every facet of the design of the hardware and software is geared toward one thing: being an efficient tool for translating ideas into words. Essentially this device would be the translation of an application like Byword or TextMate into hardware.
I know iOS (and OS X Lion) can offer a full-screen writing environment, but just past that layer is a world of possible distractions.
