Google's downfall will result from three fundamental business failures. Failing in any one of these areas is enough to tank a successful business but when all three combine, you have the elements for a spectacular collapse. This article discusses Google's flawed business model and how it is at odds with your right to privacy.
Within the next 5-10 years, I believe that we will see the end of Google as a major player in the technology industry. This is the first article in an 8-part series that I have written analyzing Google's business practices and strategy, and arguing that these will lead to Google's eventual demise. All articles here are my own personal opinion and not related to or endorsed by my company, Renkara Media Group.
I recently wrote a post on my old blog about my predictions for "the new iPad" that was released in March. Let's look and see how accurate my predictions were:
Well, the big news outlets haven't picked up on it yet but new (and existing) phone activations are completely and totally hosed up. Every store in every country and every user at home is getting the same experience: no go on activation. Apple maybe should have consulted with the guys who put on the Victoria's Secret Superbowl half time runway show about how to handle massive spikes in traffic. Too late...gonna be a lot of unhappy people.
The iPhone 3G has launched!!! There are lines of people everywhere waiting to buy their new iPhone. Unfortunately, this time around things are going more slowly. Activation of the phone must occur in the store before leaving so it is taking 10 minutes on the low end and 30 minutes on the high end to get a new phone.
Sounds like Adobe has got Flash running in the Simulator but not on the device itself. Could it be that Apple has yet to accept Adobe into the iPhone Developer Program? Yikes.
I recently decided to start using source control for my Mac software development. Yes, yes, I use source control - Subversion - all day long at work but had not gotten around to using it at home for other projects. One of the reasons is that I simply don't want the hassle of setting everything up. I want to code, not fool around with the administrative tedium of doing backups, maintaining a repository, setting up SSL and securing the server, etc. I have one dedicated server and that is enough trouble as is.
I have been resisting the urge to spend any time using Twitter. However, I have recently conceived of a few areas of my life where it might be interesting to do some real-time micro-posting. So I'll be testing out the service over the next couple of weeks. In particular, I am aiming to do some real-time posting from the WWDC next week. I'll be arriving in San Fran on Sunday, leaving on Friday. With all of the recent performance and scalability issues Twitter has been having lately, it will be telling whether or not they can handle what I expect to be significant load during the Jobs keynote on the 9th. Anyway, more details inbound...
Turns out LaCie makes an excellent portable FireWire bus-powered 7200 rpm hard disk which implements a RAID 0 solution. The LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra does it all. This, my friends, is the ultimate drive for running a VM from an external drive to a MacBook Pro. It's 7200 rpm, RAID 0, FireWire 800 and has 400 GB of total storage space. Perfect.
I've been working with this new MacBook Pro for about 2 months now. I ordered the latest hardware refresh the day that it was released. I'm very happy with it. This new model replaced a 2-year old model which was also the "ultimate" configuration when it was out. One of the things I noticed about the new MacBook was the much faster hard disk. You can really notice the difference when you move to 7200 rpm from 5400 rpm.
I as you can see from an earlier post, I am working on finding the best home for my VMware guest disk file on my MacBook Pro. The LaCie BigDisk Extreme+ is looking like the best choice among hard disks but I wanted to know how the LaCie compares to the internal MacBook Pro drive. I have the latest "ultimate" configuration which includes the 7200 rpm 200 GB drive.
I remembered a couple of other Mac programs I use pretty regularly. Add these to my other list of Mac software:
I recently decided to switch to VMware on my Mac for hosting my Windows installation. I started off with the VM disk image on my MacBook hard disk. I have a MacBook Pro with a 7200 rpm 200 GB hard disk. The performance of the VM was not ideal. Obviously there is disk contention between Mac OS and VWware. But I hesitated to move the file over to an external drive because I didn't feel an external disk would perform any better. But I went ahead and put it to the test.
I am an enterprise application architect. My daily professional work consists of creating architectural documents and writing code in C# using the .NET Framework. But I do all of this on a MacBook Pro using a Parallels virtual machine or, in now rare occasions, the Boot Camp instance. I run Windows Vista Ultimate in the VM. But I only work in Windows when I have to. Even my documentation work is all done on the Mac side now. Here are the Mac applications I use regularly:
I find it ironic in the extreme that probably the best Windows computer in the world is Apple's Mac Pro workstation. For $2,799 base, you get (2) Intel 64-bit Xeon CPUs, each with 4 cores, 8 memory slots expandable to 32 GB total memory with 2 GB installed, and a bunch of other stuff.
I was talking to Primeaux today and was curious about how many CPU cores he has running in his household. I believe he counted to 20. Now, that's not surprising, considering he's a parallel and distributed kind of guy. My own count, though, isn't far off. 2 cores for my MacBook Pro and 2 core for Ahu's MacBook Pro. 8 cores for the new Mac Pro. 2 more cores for the iMac in the kitchen. 1 core for the Windows box I still have hooked up in the basement in case my Mac isn't cooperating and I have a World of Warcraft raid to be in. Right there, that's a total of 15 cores. We haven't come to a conclusion yet with regard to whether the 9 cores in my Playstation 3 count or not. Heh.
I ordered a new MacBook Pro last week, the day the new hardware refresh was released. Actually, I spent a bunch of time running around to Apple stores to see if anyone had one in stock but no one did so I had to order mine custom from the Apple store.
After yesterday's announcement of the new Apple iTunes movie rental service, the stock of Blockbuster tanked 17%. The end is near for those ubiquitous blue and gold stores. Personally, I loathe Blockbuster. Looking for a movie at Blockbuster is right up there with standing in line at airport security in terms of fun for me. I tried out the iTunes movie rentals last night. It took a few minutes to actually find any rentable movies (only 1,000 titles were available on day 1) but after I figured it out, it was trivial. I already canceled my Netflix subscription. Their stock dropped almost 4%. I'm also probably going to go buy an Apple TV tonight as well. That little device has finally become a compelling purchase. Awesome stuff, Apple!
Apple released the MacBook Air today. It is the world's thinnest laptop. At it's thickest, it is thinner than any other laptop's thinnest. It is a nice boon for the executive traveller who is tired of lugging around extra batteries and a heavy laptop. The MacBook Air weighs only 3 lbs. and has a battery that lasts 5 hours. That's a long battery life, really. My work laptop (not a Mac) has a 30 minute battery life and weighs 10 lbs. The MacBook Air has a full-size keyboard and a bright, clear 13.4" LCD screen.
Well, Apple finally released a mobile phone device. It's called the iPhone. I followed the play-by-play yesterday on Engadget. Lucky for me, I made a "bet" on Apple stock before Jobs' keynote speech and bought a big chunk of Apple stock ahead of time. By the end of the keynote, the stock was up almost 8%. Big mobile phone competitors like Motorola, Nokia, and RIM (makers of Blackberry) all took hits on their stock prices with RIM losing almost $2 billion in market capitalization.