Up in the Clouds

How do you like them apples?

Yesterday on the radio I heard that Apple had a bad weekend. They only sold 5 million iPhones instead of the anticipated 6 to 10. Uhm, how many companies would call 500 million dollars in sales a bad weekend? Not including all their other products. Nevertheless, the stock market fell a bit on this tragic event.

I doubt anyone is really that worried about this crisis. The company employs over 60,000 people and continues to grow year after year, leading the way toward the future with its iPods, iPads, iTunes, iPhones and iMacs. Now it's the iCloud....

This morning I was thinking how clever the Mac strategy has been, calling everything "I"... but which really means "My." MyPod, MyPad, MyTunes, MyPhone and MyMac. And we enter the new era of cloud computing, Apple is encouraging everyone to use MyCloud. Which really means TheirCloud.

Back in the 90's leaders like Larry Ellison predicted a future where computers would be a "dumb box" and everything would be run from somewhere else, stored somewhere else. This seemed too far out, but as a close friend of Steve Jobs during his Pixar years, Ellison's ideas no doubt made an impression. When Jobs rode back onto the Ponderosa to regain what he'd built, the cloud was with him.

We often think of clouds as something that obscure the sun. They also bring much needed rain and serve to help the earth's atmosphere retain heat. The hard frost we had this weekend fell through a cloudless sky.

Clouds are nebulous, too. They appear very defined from a distance, especially at sunset, but up close you really can't touch an edge anywhere.

The Internet has a similar configuration. It's "out there" somewhere, but exactly where we're not sure. We sort of know what it is, but we don't have to fully understand it to experience its benefits.

When I took an Internet class at UMD in 1994, Netscape didn't even exist yet. The infant World Wide Web was just emerging from the womb. Up till then, the Internet backbone consisted of email programs like Pine, and Veronica searches using Archie, or something to that effect. The instructor gave a demonstration of Mosaic at the end of the day and he seemed blown away by it. Though visually more interesting than a screen full of text, it took forever to load on his screen, and that was with the university's T-3 line. Hmmm. I didn't seem to think it would fly. But what did I know? I was still too down to earth. More impressive to me was my ability to sit in Duluth, MN and explore libraries in Pisa, Italy and Berlin, Germany in a matter of moments.

One of the first pictograms used to illustrate what the Internet really was a diagram of a cloud. I used a similar image in my Screen Net column the following year.

Evidently the cloud image conveyed something, even if that something is a bit abstract for most folks. Clouds can be associated with dreams and poetry and intangibles. And that's what Apple's all about, isn't it? Aesthetics and possibilities, not just technology.

You can be sure we'll be hearing more about clouds in our future. Spread your wings and fly.

What We Can't Live Without

This month's Letter from the Editor in Fast Company is titled Things We Can't Live Without. Robert Safian's editorial begins with a memory of his dad buying the first television in the neighborhood and people coming over just to watch the transmission signal. From here he transitions to iPods and automobiles, and steps up to Facebook and Twitter as the new "must have" apps.

It's a strange world when you start looking at what various people define as a must. For example, I tweet, but to call it a Must Have part of my life is a bit of a stretch.

The other night when the electricity went out, I recognized that electrical power was a "must have" for me. Either that, or leave Minnesota, because any duration of time without electricity when it is nineteen below is going to freeze your pipes, and be generally intolerable.

Maybe we're just a little glib about what we think we absolutely need. I did a Google search for the phrase what we can't live without and came up with quite a few things to look at. The first list I looked at was at the NewsCred Blog, Michael Arrington's favorite technologies that he uses every day. GoogleDocs, Skype, Dropbox, WordPress, Gmail, Twitter, Amazon Web Services, Songza, Google Analytics and Mechanical Turk. My guess is that if these are the things Arrington needs to be happy, then when the electricity is out he's screwed, too. And to see Twitter listed again just makes me scratch my head. (Though I have already tweeted that I am writing about this here...)

Now I am looking at a Computerworld web article on 25 things we can't live without, and Skype is here, too, as well as iPods along with things like the Siber Systems RoboForm for storing usernames, passwords, and other contact data for websites.

The real question, especially for Americans, is how to differentiate between what is a luxury and what is a necessity. Are two cars a luxury? Is air conditioning a necessity? Think of all our appliances which we consider an absolute basic part of owning a home. For some folks, having "land, lots of land and sunny skies above" is a necessity. They simply don't want to be fenced in.

Here's another site with a study called What Americans Need: 1996-2006. The report compares trends over a ten year period. It's more realistic and runs this way. Car, clothes washer, clothes dryer, home air conditioning, microwave, TV set, car air conditioning, home computer, cell phone, dishwasher, cable or satellite TV, high-speed Internet, flat screen TV, and iPod. Interesting. Nearly everything here is dependent on electricity, including that car some day possibly.

I'm curious where music and art and friends would fall on some of these lists. It's also interesting how we take our clean drinking water for granted as well.

My cell phone probably falls close to the necessity realm for me, but a television does not. I still haven't figured out how to hook up the new box for HDTV. I ought to add it to my TO DO list, but my motivation just isn't strong enough. Hopefully I'll get around to it, but it took us five years to purchase the first B&W television we got in 1984... Evidently TV is something we can live without.

Some of these lists, and there are quite a few, are simply a way to talk about new things. The catchy title is an apparent exaggeration, but it does catch your eyeballs, and your imagination. What are the things you can't live without?