First, it’s all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn’t trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer.

Some other information about Chrome is at MaximumPC. Google has a kindergarten explanation of Chrome in the video clip below:

The Chrome OS is not anything like Windows or any other general PC operating system. It is for the Web and small devices only. However, a Web appliance is just what millions of people need and it will be very interesting to see if this type of system someday replaces the PC in many households

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

Jim Jubak is a stock market commentator and at his investment blog, he asks, Has Apple blown it? Did the company squander the competitive chance of a lifetime? He makes a pretty good analysis:

But it still looks to me that Apple has missed its chance. It had a limited window of opportunity when competitors such as Microsoft couldn’t do anything right and it didn’t turn that opening into a big enough share of the personal computer market. It was first to market with a game-changing smart phone but the company has pursued a high-end niche strategy with the iPhone that has left the door wide open for Google to grab for the mass market.

If this is as good as it gets for Apple, the company has no one to blame, finally, but itself. The opportunity was there and Apple didn’t exploit it as ruthlessly and as relentlessly as it needed to.

Here’s my basic problem with Apple’s strategy and execution: The company didn’t kick ‘em hard enough when they were down.

In his blog, Bill Pytlovany, Windows expert and the author of WinPatrol, writes:

The market has been ripe for Apple to pick up a sizable portion of the computer share but it has failed. According to market researchers IDC and Gartner, Macintosh sales are up but their share is still way below 10%. That compares to PC sales by Acer and Toshiba. Why doesn’t the Mac have a larger market share?

Apple Inc has a polished image, high customer satisfaction and its brand identity couldn’t be much better. People who chose Macs have been very happy with their purchase. The only portable music play anyone wants is an iPod. The iPhone has set the bar so high for cell phones that companies are struggling to keep up. The stock value of AAPL is double what it was a year ago and is still climbing.

So, why are people still forking over their hard earned money for Windows 7 machines and not Macs? It doesn’t make sense. Did Apple drop the ball while Steve Jobs was on sick leave? In their efforts to target the cool people did they missed an opportunity to attract the main stream market disappointed with Windows Vista?

Personally, I think Apple has decided that the PC is not its main business. After all, it’s the consumer electronics like the iPod and the iPhone that have been blockbuster successes. In PCs, Apple has a strong niche position in the upscale market but apparently doesn’t see any point in going up against an entrenched Windows in the mass PC market.

What do you think? Did Apple miss a big chance to increase its share of the PC market? Or is it really a consumer electronics and entertainment company?

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

In many parts of the world, the cell phone is the main device used to get on the Internet. As recently noted, the number of smartphones keeps growing and will soon exceed the number of PCs. For some time now, there has been speculation that the smartphone or some similar mobile platform would become the main device for personal computing and communication.

The speculation becomes closer to reality as the mobile platforms continually grow in power and utility. Already, the iPhone and its cousins are the main device for many. At Technologizer, Harry McCracken has a post called PC vs. Phone: Which Matters Most? He writes about a recent survey of smartphone users:

A quarter of the survey respondents said that they use their smartphones more than they do their PCs for business use. I’m not sure if that sounds low or high, but as smartphones get smarter over the next few years, you gotta think that many of us will come to see them as our principal computing devices, and consider traditional PCs to be the secondary, special-purpose gadget.

And at ZDNet, Dion Hinchcliffe asks, Are the iPhone and social networks making the classic Web and intranet obsolete? He thinks that not only the PC but also the present Web may be replaced. He writes:

There’s been an important and relatively sudden change taking place over the last couple of years in the way that we interact with the Web. While direct access or search activity has been (and still is) the most common way that we access the content and applications of the Web, new ways have been rapidly growing and competing with how we work online, both at home and at work.

Thus these new models, exemplified by social networking sites like Facebook or mobile apps on platforms like the iPhone, Palm’s new webOS, and Android, will ultimately herald a change in the way that we work with our IT systems in the enterprise.

Technology always goes down surprising paths and what we will be doing 5 or 10 years from now, I won’t venture to guess. But it is hard to believe that the complex and ponderous Windows PC will continue to be so dominant. Some people see Google’s Android system as the coming thing. For an enthusiastic look at Android, see the Gizmodo post, Giz Explains: Android, and How It Will Take Over the World. A little hyperbole there, of course, but who knows?

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A new gadget designed specifically for people who want to tweet on the go was launched Tuesday by gadget maker Peek.

The device, dubbed TwitterPeek, does one thing and one thing only: it lets people tweet. It doesn’t access e-mail. It doesn’t make phone calls. It tweets. That’s it.

TwitterPeek, which looks like a smartphone, features a QWERTY keyboard and comes in black or aqua blue.

The idea behind TwitterPeek is simple. After buying the device, users need only to input their Twitter credentials to get going. The gadget lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers. It supports one account at a time. Users can also view TwitPics by clicking the “view content” option from the TwitterPeek menu. The company claims its battery lasts three to four days with average usage.

Not everybody thinks this is a good idea. At PC World, David Coursey says:

Who needs this device? That’s a fair question. Smartphones already have Twitter applications, so this is not a great second or third device to carry around.

Another skeptic is Colin Gibbs at GigaOm:

For those who thought its email-only device targeted too broad a market, Peek Inc. has gone even more niche — and more absurd — with the first mobile device dedicated entirely to Twitter.

For a hands-on review, there is John Biggs at CrunchGear. He seems to like it.

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

Now Google is adding a free navigation service for phones and that’s bad news for the makers of GPS devices. The New York Times reports:

GPS navigation devices were the latest must-have tech toys just two years ago, and shares of device makers like Garmin and TomTom were soaring.

That didn’t last long. In a turnabout that has been remarkably swift even for the fast-moving technology business, those companies have suffered as competition has pulled down prices — and as more people have turned to their cellphones for directions.

In the latest blow to the business, Google announced a free navigation service for mobile phones on Wednesday that will offer turn-by-turn directions, live traffic updates and the ability to recognize voice commands. The service will initially be available on only one phone, the new Motorola Droid, but will be expanded to more phones soon.

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

Amazon announced on Thursday its “Kindle for PC,” a free application that lets users read e-books on their PCs.

The software makes it easier for a tablet PC to double as an e-reader that’s compatible with Amazon’s Kindle store and its 360,000-some books.

Like its namesake e-reader device, Kindle for PC uses Amazon’s Whispersync tech to automatically save and synchronize bookmarks and last page read across devices.

You may give up some portability but you save $259. Now let’s see what Barnes and Noble does.

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The answers that came my way ranged from the iPod to HDTVs to the Xbox 360. But it was the iPhone that garnered the most votes. And it was the Kindle that failed to receive a single mention.

I was shocked. It wasn’t surprising that the iPhone received all the accolades (it always does), but I did find it jarring that not a single person picked the Amazon Kindle as the most important product on the market today. It was my choice. And to me, it seemed like a pretty obvious one.

The Kindle is doing something that no one thought possible: it’s revolutionizing an industry that hasn’t changed since its inception. You can’t say that for the iPhone. The iPod might have started an industry, but it isn’t all that groundbreaking. And HDTVs and the Xbox 360? Come on.

I just don’t believe that the Kindle is as appreciated as it should be. That single device that allows users to read books electronically is putting the publishing industry on notice, it’s causing books to be offered at their cheapest prices in years, and it’s practically ensuring that going forward, people will have ready access to desired books without leaving the house. It’s taking on the library and the book store. And it’s taking no prisoners.

Of course, the Kindle is no longer unique. Barnes and Noble has just introduced its own reader, called Nook. And that may spell trouble for the Kindle according to this review of Nook.

What do you think? Have you ever used a Kindle or other e-reader?

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

However, the PC is not the only kind of computer or technical hardware that is important these days and some are saying that Microsoft may have missed out on the trends in consumer electronics. And then there is the cloud. Using the cloud requires only a browser, and the operating system is secondary. In fact, Google wants to make the browser the operating system.

Looking at the various factors and what they mean for Microsoft is the subject of an article in the New York Times business section by Ashlee Vance. It’s a substantial piece and among other things says:

These days, however, Microsoft has legions of doubters. While it still commands a prominent and profitable position in computing, brand experts say consumers stumble when trying to define what the company stands for and whether it can create a grander technological future.

“Microsoft sort of disappeared from the scene,” says Regis McKenna, a Silicon Valley marketing and strategy expert. “Every once in a while, they have a delayed Windows release or something like that. By and large, I think the marketplace is focused on what Google and Apple are up to.”

Critics of Microsoft say it has hugely underestimated market changes and plotted a long and winding course toward irrelevance. It remains too fixated on its old-line, desktop-based franchises, they say — too slow, too predictable and too, well, Microsoft.

“They are trapped in their own psychosis that the world has to revolve around Windows on the PC,” says Marc Benioff, the C.E.O. of Salesforce.com, which competes against Microsoft in the business software market. “Until they stop doing that, they will drag their company into the gutter.”

Of course, others and Microsoft think Microsoft is still the dominant force:

Mr. Ballmer, Mr. Ozzie and others at Microsoft see things rather differently, and for the last year have argued that coming software releases for PCs, data centers, mobile devices and game consoles will confirm exactly how Microsoft will remain a pivotal force on the tech landscape.

Mr. Ballmer contends that Microsoft is the only company prepared and positioned to merge computing from both ends — the desktop and the cloud. “We’re just investing more broadly than everybody else,” he says, adding that, when it comes to software, “I want us to invent everything that’s important on the planet.”

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

Consider these remarks from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, spoken Wednesday at the CTIA wireless industry convention in San Diego: “We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: what happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour, or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum. The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis.”

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.

Smartphone sales will surpass worldwide PC sales by the end of 2011, says a report. The report, by RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, estimates that by that time shipments of both will be approaching 400 million a year.

Smartphone sales are on the increase, with standard mobile sales decreasing – and that is pushing PC giants such as Apple, Dell, Acer and Microsoft into the lucrative arena.

©2009 The PC Informant. All Rights Reserved.