I wouldn’t. I’d like to pay the full $600 for the device and do with it what I please.

But I don’t know if that was my view a couple of years ago. In some ways the lock-in “free phone” model was more benign. Perhaps even helpful. You see, since phones weren’t very exciting, the long and short of our choice was, which network do we want? In this market Verizon did very well and Sprint did not.

But the iPhone changed all this. Immediately it became all about the device. Then the dropped calls. The situation that got worse. And worse. The Schadenfreude of the iPhone 4 launch and the “Verizon!” heckle.

.. so, seriously, why can’t I use an iPhone on any network I want?

What would be best is complete decoupling of the number/device/network stack.

Enter Google Voice. Conceptually the key is to accept that voice is just an application, not a device and not a network. Nothing new here. Cisco was delivering this message at least 7 years ago and has now utterly destroyed the TDM-PBX business. On the consumer side the voice-as-an-application isn’t new either: Skype, Yahoo, you name it. But being tethered to a PC or some other fairly fixed device has limited the utility.

The promise of Google Voice is a phone number in the cloud, paired with just about any device you want, on any network you want.

I have undertaken some practical experimentation and my conclusion is that Google Voice is to AT&T what Cisco was to Avaya more like around 2002-ish: great vision, good idea, needs a bit more polish.

Like much of what Google produces, it seems very beta (even alpha) -ish. User experience aside, right now this is the deal-killer: you cannot port an existing number into Google Voice. Migrating fully into Google Voice means a new number.

What it is very very good for right now is making international calls and visual voicemail on Android devices. Roll on number portability!

One issue I have been wondering about is, whatever form the iTunes cloud takes, how will it deal with content already owned? Let’s say that over the past six years you have accumulated a terabyte of content. That content was all legally acquired – MP3s from Amazon perhaps (to avoid Apple DRM restrictions), etcetera. All of this content is being served up through your iTunes-based home network, which includes at least one Apple TV.

It seems feasible that media purchased from iTunes will be made available from the Apple Cloud at no charge (since you have already paid for it). But the rest? You won’t be able to upload your third-party content to the Apple Cloud… hence the reference to the option to utilize an Apple Time Capsule.

So, once again you’re tied to local storage. Groan.

Options?

(1) Dump all your non-Apple content and re-buy it all from iTunes. Except, of course, there will always be “that one thing” that iTunes doesn’t sell.

(2) Buy a Time Capsule to store non-Apple content. How will this be backed up?

(3) Maintain an iTunes server (current solution) locally, with local or cloud storage and backup.

(4) Have a hybrid – use the Apple Cloud TV as the primary for acquiring new content, and some other delivery method (iPod?) for the non iTunes content.

All are horrible.

But are we closer to iTunes content being hosted in the cloud? We have to be. Your iPad can’t hold all your media. Your iPad is yet another device to be restricted by (5 – n) DRM…

We’ll see what happens at the end of the month.

Google is working on just that for printing — inspired by the needs of Chrome OS (which I perceive is a loss-leader technology rather than a new line of business).

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html

First, an old Sun Netra X1 I used to play with years ago (and has since been de-cluttered). It was used primarily as a NAS and racked in a full-size rack in the basement. The cover is off because in order to install Solaris I had to attach an IDE CD-ROM drive to one of the IDE connections in the Netra, then serial into it using the LOM port …

It’s important because (a) it forces a new paradigm in cloud-centric application development – same old applications is not an option; (b) it will force a new paradigm in peripheral I/O. If USB isn’t an option, what do you do? If bluetooth isn’t an option, what do you do? And so if peripherals are now connecting wirelessly, through the web, what new and amazing opportunities will that create?

The iPad is a cloud innovation stimulus.

That’s why it’s important.

These devices wirelessly connect with a computer (Windows or OSX) via a usb stick and the ANT protocol. Once connected the data is dumped into an application called Training Center (Windows only) or uploaded to a web application called Garmin Connect.

Garmin Connect is very good. Its presentation of data is great. It’s everything you’d expect from a web app. But it’s not a true web app., because of the dependency on the usb stick interface and that hardware’s dependency on a Windows or OSX agent. Unsurprisingly, this agent is the least reliable part of the story, in my experience.

The solution here has to liberate the device from the computer intermediary – the device needs to be wi-fi enabled. An example is the Withings Body Scale, a wi-fi enabled scale. Another lesson from the Withings scale is its relatively open format. Over seven providers have built applications that take data from the scale, from Daily Burn to Google Health. If Daily Burn could pull data from the Garmin, both the Garmin and Daily Burn would be a lot more valuable.

Similar challenges exist with all sorts of other hardware dependent applications – dive computer, anyone?

“…But it couldn’t stream to my AppleTV. DRM. So I rented it again on my AppleTV (I know I know – a waste). Except my AppleTV now says my HDMI connection is not HDPC compatible. Groan…groan…groan…this is NOT it. DRM is ridiculous nonsense from an age of physical media…“

Can it be cloud to the rescue? The iTunes cloud is coming in 2010. That was made clear by Apple’s acquisition of Lala. This is huge.

“Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices. Since media will be supplied from the user’s personal collection, Apple is freed from the hassles of device and region limitations.” – Apple’s Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical.

No more local storage to manage! No more syncing! No more “not authorized to view this content!” No more 5 device limitation!

Hurrah!

“…InstantAction lets people play games in the Web browsers…”

I’d like to see this work. I’m particularly interested in how it is streamed. You couldn’t pull this off with ICA, RDP, PCoIP, ALP, etc. So it must be some sort of mechanism for executing the rendering locally based on smaller instructions from the cloud. Perhaps this is what the “mini-program” refers to. I can’t find any details beyond minimum system requirements, which primarily appears to be a 5Mbps broadband connection.

“…OnLive in March of last year revealed it was building a library of videogame software on servers that players reach over broadband Internet by using mini-programs in home computers or OnLive MicroConsoles connected to television sets.

Comparable in size to decks of cards, MicroConsole devices will be provided free with videogame services that let people pay monthly subscriptions to play online…”

- http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gWoiOT0f1OgzZ1HSsnXskkms3r7g

• First, obviously the PC has to be Bluetooth enabled. I used a Rocketfish USB Bluetooth adaptor.
• Second, the pairing procedure requires a quick extra step. Go to Bluetooth > Add a device as you normally would. Now sort of (I had to try it a couple of times before it worked) follow the guidance here.
• Third, whilst not necessary for basic functionality,  UAWKS is a great little utility that allows you to use Mac key combinations (apple-C for copy, for example).

Notes (after a few weeks of use):

• The Apple Wireless Keyboard is beautiful. It’s the right size, it’s wireless, the keys are great.
• It works with Windows 7 quite reliably, but sometimes it disconnects.
• The Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Z etc. mappings are strangely inconsistent, specifically whether it accepts Ctrl-C or Apple-C in any given application.

Due to the above I have switched to a Kensington Slimblade, which is wonderful.