Google’s hot searches for 2010: Chatroulette, iPad, Justin Bieber – CNN.com

Apparently the naughty bits on Chatroulette didn’t deter Web surfers so much this year. And whether people agreed or differed with Steve Jobs about Apple’s “magical” iPad, they still wanted to learn more about it.

Internet users quit worrying so much about swine flu this year, though, and the memories of Michael Jackson’s death started to fade.

That’s all according to the hottest Google searches of 2010.

Apple’s iPad tablet eats into PC market | Technology | The Guardian

When Steve Jobs in January described the new iPad tablet computer as “magical”, PC manufacturers perhaps didn’t imagine that the magic would be to subtract money from their bottom line and add it to Apple‘s.

But that’s how it’s turning out. The research firm, Gartner, has slashed its forecast for the number of PCs that will be sold this year from 363.5m to 352.4m. And that higher figure was itself a downgrade from March, when the company thought that 366m PCs could be sold this year.

The reason for the downgrade is growing interest in Apple’s iPad and similar tablet computers, allied to shrinking budgets among consumers.

The abrupt drop is part of a trend that will become a long-term one, according to Ranjit Atwal, Gartner’s research director. “Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10% of PC units by 2014,” he said, adding that the new forecasts reflect “expectations of weaker consumer demand, due in no small part to growing user interest in media tablets such as the iPad”.

Other analysts think that growing user interest can already be quantified. Last week, Citigroup’s analysts forecast that 35m tablet computers, including 26m iPads, will be sold in 2011 – and that those will lop off 11m PC sales that would otherwise have been made by companies such as HP and Dell.

Craig Berger, of FBR Capital Markets, offers higher estimates for 2011 – of 40m tablets sold by Apple and 30m by other companies – and says that the economics of tablets “are not good for PCs”. He calculates that every five tablets sold means two lost PC sales. Berger’s numbers would suggest 28m lost PC sales – and given that Gartner has already trimmed its numbers by 10m this year since the iPad launched, Berger’s figure might not be fanciful.

Meanwhile, Gartner forecasts that worldwide PC shipments for 2011 will reach 409m units, a 15.9% increase from 2010 – but substantially reduced from its earlier estimate of 18.1% growth for next year. It’s entirely possible that further downgrades will follow.

Is this the end of the PC business that has sustained dozens of PC makers, and Microsoft in particular, over the decades since the launch of the very first version of Windows on 20 November 1985, just over 25 years ago? Microsoft makes its money from the licences for Windows on PCs, plus sales of its Office suite to a sizeable proportion of PCs that are used by businesses.

But if the PC sales engine starts to slow, so will Microsoft’s. And Gartner has bad news on the business front too: it predicts that by 2013, 80% of businesses will support tablet computers for their staff, and that rather than providing employees with business services and devices – that is, PCs – 90% will support corporate applications on employees’ own consumer phones, tablets and laptops.

Ray Ozzie, who last month stepped down as Microsoft’s chief software architect – a post previously held by Bill Gates – has already warned the company about this scenario.

In October, in an elliptical farewell email, which he also put on his blog, he urged its executives to look ahead to a “post-PC world” and warned: “Those who can envision a plausible future that’s brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead.” Or, to put it another way, those who stick to the PC-centric view will get left behind.

The PC market’s growth is not uniform. It has almost stopped in the US and Europe. The only bright light at present is emerging markets such as Asia, which Gartner says are driving sales: by the end of next year such countries will make up more than 50% of the world PC market, while “mature” markets – especially the US and Europe – will face “mounting challenges” as both businesses and consumers put off new purchases and instead buy smartphones or tablets instead.

And even in emerging markets the story is not all good news for the traditional PC companies. “There is a good chance that consumers will simply leapfrog PCs and move directly to alternative devices in the coming years rather than following the traditional pattern of purchasing a PC as their first computing device,” suggests Gartner, blaming PC makers’ failure to innovate.

Chip speeds are not doubling as they once did; where a decade ago, faster graphics and processors were guaranteed every few years and made new PCs a must-have, most people now have more computing power than they need. And even though Microsoft can say that Windows 7 is its fastest-selling version of Windows ever, the reality is that many businesses are downgrading their licences and instead running Windows XP, from 2001, while many consumers are also sticking with XP.

That could mean that companies which usually head the PC sales numbers will see their revenues head south too, unless they can leap onto the tablet bandwagon. HP, Acer and Toshiba – which, along with Dell and Lenovo, make up the top five sellers worldwide – have all announced moves into the tablet market, although analysts predict they will find it tough amid brutal price competition.

Oddly, the only computer maker that seems immune to this cannibalisation of the market is Apple, which has seen its computer sales grow significantly faster than the market this year. Maybe Jobs was right. The iPad is certainly having a magical effect on his company – even if not on any others.

Personal computer timeline

1975: Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who offer BASIC computer language for the now-extinct Altair computer.

1976: Apple founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They begin selling Apple I computer boards.

1981: IBM introduces the $1,500 IBM PC; Microsoft DOS available as an option.

1984: Apple introduces Apple Macintosh, with “windowing” interface.

1985: Microsoft ships Windows 1.0.

1992: Microsoft ships Windows 3.1.

1993: Total of 3 million people in the US connected to the net.

1995: Microsoft ships Windows 95, which sells 1m copies in four days.

1997: 100 million people worldwide connected to the net.

1998: Microsoft becomes world’s most valuable company, by market capitalisation

1999: Microsoft found guilty of antitrust behaviour over the browser market

2001: Microsoft introduces Tablet PC format. It doesn’t sell. It introduces Windows XP, which sells by the million.

2001: Number of PCs sold between 1981 and 2000 totals 835m.

2003: 1bn PCs shipped

2004: Microsoft found guilty of monopoly behaviour by European Commission.

2006: Intel estimates 1bn PCs connected to the net worldwide.

2009: PC sales fall for the first time since 2001.

2010: January – Apple launches iPad. May – overtakes Microsoft in market capitalisation.

Apple’s iPad tablet eats into PC market | Technology | The Guardian.

For Sale: A $160,000 Apple Computer – NYTimes.com

True computer nerds, do I have a deal for you!

Christie’s, the tony auctioneer, is hawking a snazzy computer that it hopes will sell for between $159,800 and $239,700. You’re probably wondering what kind of computer is worth close to a quarter million dollars? Let me tell you about its specs first.

This machine is loaded with only the best: It’s got three capacitors (yes that’s right, three), a whopping 8 kilobytes of random access memory, a printed circuit board with 4 rows A-D, whatever that means, and an Apple-1 motherboard.

So why would something that could barely power a game of Pong be worth so much? Well, this is one of the very first computers ever made by Apple, and is considered the first personal computer. What separated this computer from others was the fact that the motherboard came pre-assembled, whereas home computer owners of the past had to fit and solder the parts together themselves.

The Apple-1 is expected to sell for between $159,800 and $239,700.

The Apple-1 computer was built and sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founders,  in 1976 for $666.66 — the strange price was put into effect because Mr. Wozniak liked repetitive numbers.  (An inflation calculator determines that price is equivalent to $2560 in today’s dollars.)  It’s estimated that only 200 of these computers were produced and sold before Apple moved onto the next model, the Apple II.

According to the auction Web site, this version of the Apple computer is number 82 of those made, and was hand built by Steve Wozniak and then “despatched from the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents’ house – the return address on the original packaging present here.” (The Christie’s catalog uses a British spelling of dispatched. )

The version for sale through Christie’ths includes “the original packaging, manuals, cassette interface and basic tape, early documentation and provenance, and a commercially rare letter from Steve Jobs.”

The house at 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, Calif., where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built and sold the Apple-I.

The computer is part of a Nov. 23 auction in London of rare books and manuscripts that will quicken the heart of any rich geek. It includes a book by Charles Babbage, a collection of Alan Turing’s published papers, an Enigma cypher machine and the patent specifications for an ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer.

For Sale: A $160,000 Apple Computer – NYTimes.com.

Barack Obama becomes first US president to autograph an iPad

It’s official: there is no escape from the iPad. Even Barack Obama, a man used to firsts, can also go down in the history books as the first US president to autograph an iPad.

After an election rally held at the University of Washington in Seattle on Thursday, President Obama was shaking hands with supporters along the ropeline when one of them, Sylvester Cann, wrote on his iPad “Mr President, sign my iPad,” etching the message on the screen using his finger.

In a video of the historic moment posted on YouTube by Cann, as Obama gets near a Secret Service agent can be seen shaking his head, presumably at Cann’s high-tech chutzpah.

But when Obama approaches, Cann describes what happened: “He looked at it for a second and then used his left hand to sign. It was kinda funny because he looked up and gave me a big grin afterwards as if he thought it was pretty cool too.”

This “first” may not quite rank alongside being the first African American to be elected president. But it will have given him something to tell Apple chief executive Steve Jobs when they met later that afternoon.

Asked recently if he had an iPad, Obama replied: “I have an iReggie, who has my books, my newspapers, my music all in one place” – a reference to his personal aide Reggie Love.

Obama himself is hardly a big Apple fan: he is famously addicted to his Blackberry and has even been seen using a Zune, Microsoft’s ill-fated rival to the iPod. A few months ago he declared in a speech: “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

Footnote for iPad geeks: the software used by Cann and Obama was Adobe’s Ideas application. Steve Jobs will really dig that.

Barack Obama becomes first US president to autograph an iPad | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk.

A Google-Apple Snipefest – NYTimes.com

 

 

 

 

Over the years, business battles between corporate titans have played out in several different media: through press releases and news articles, or through multimillion-dollar ad campaigns in newspapers and on TV. Arguments made in one medium were generally responded to in the same medium.

Not anymore.

Witness the complicated corporate battles between Google and Apple, specifically focused on the two companies’ mobile strategies. Senior managers from both Google and Apple have continually taken swipes at each other in unusual settings, mocking their competitors’ mobile platforms during product announcements or in strange e-mail tirades.

On Monday,  the fight moved to new ground.

As my colleague Miguel Helft wrote on Monday, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, made an unusual appearance during the company’s earnings conference call to discuss the results, but also to attack Google’s Android platform and defend the consistency of the iPhone.

Andy Rubin, a vice president for engineering at Google and director of the Android platform, didn’t like Mr. Jobs’s comments and responded with a message on Twitter that only a small percentage of the human population will understand:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

In human-speak, Mr. Rubin’s Twitter message is showing how easy it is to set up and install the Android platform using open and free tools that are available to developers.

A Google spokeswoman confirmed that the message was sent by Mr. Rubin, and said the company would have no further comment on Mr. Jobs’s remarks.

These approaches speak to the styles of the two companies. Mr. Jobs is clearly taking the issue to his investors, trying to point out that Apple offers a better customer experience than its competitors.

Google on the other hand, by speaking in code, is choosing to defend itself to programmers who build products for the Android platform.

While the sniping continues, it’s apparent that consumers want both systems. This is illustrated by Apple selling a record 14.1 million iPhones this past quarter, and Android’s platform continuing to grow at a rapid pace.

A Google-Apple Snipefest – NYTimes.com.

Related Articles

• Google’s Andy Rubin, TweetDeck CEO respond to Steve Jobs’ Android slam (venturebeat.com)
• Andy Rubin tweets “definition of open” as Jobs retort (slashgear.com)

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