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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? Which

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how Stuff Works dot com. Ei there,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulett and

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Speaker 1: I'm one of the editors here at How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: And with me is writer Jonathan Strickland Aldie. And UM,

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Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about an article that

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Speaker 1: I wrote, UM sometime ago called how the Google Apple

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Speaker 1: Cloud Computer will work? UM. And UM, just to give

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Speaker 1: you a little background about it, UH, this is a

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Speaker 1: completely hypothetical product. UM. That's something that writer Nicholas Carr

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Speaker 1: was talking about in his blog and a post in

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Speaker 1: October two thousand seven. UM. And basically what he said

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Speaker 1: was that because the future of computing is cloud computing, UM,

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Speaker 1: and because Apple is such a great technology provider and

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Speaker 1: Google would be such a good back end, UM, it

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Speaker 1: would be really neat if they came up with a

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Speaker 1: portable device that Apple made that Google would supply the

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Speaker 1: the back end for the computing power for And the

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Speaker 1: thing is it may sound completely fictional, but UM, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. You've been writing a lot about cloud computer

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Speaker 1: and for those of you who don't know. Cloud computing

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Speaker 1: is is when you've got a network of computers or

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Speaker 1: even supercomputers that does all the processing power for you.

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Speaker 1: You use your computer to to log in and access

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Speaker 1: these resources, so your computer is not doing the work,

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Speaker 1: there's a network doing it. UM and Google is very

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Speaker 1: much interested in this. UH. They've been pouring millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars of research into cloud computing over the last couple

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Speaker 1: of years, so half of that equation seems to already

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Speaker 1: be well on its way. The question is whether or

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Speaker 1: not some hardware producer will come up with the the

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Speaker 1: hardware end of at the front end, if you will. UM.

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Speaker 1: That's that's where the largest amount of speculation is because

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Speaker 1: we know that are a company's doing the back end.

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Speaker 1: I'm Google is just one of them. There's also IBM

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Speaker 1: and Microsoft is also interested as well as others. So

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Speaker 1: it's coming. We just don't know who's going to be

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Speaker 1: giving you the the hardware you'll be using to access

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Speaker 1: it if if you're not just using a regular computer

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Speaker 1: that is yeah, it's UM you know. Of course, Apple

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Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of positive feedback for design, especially

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Speaker 1: with it's more recent UM things like the iPod and

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Speaker 1: the iPhone, And really, I guess in a way, the

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Speaker 1: iPhone is already cloud computer of source. I mean you

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Speaker 1: could use Google Docs or some of the other cloud

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Speaker 1: computing programs right now on an iPhone or some of

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Speaker 1: the other phones too for that matter, right right, right,

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Speaker 1: But with the Google Apple program, of course, you're talking

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Speaker 1: about a very streamlined piece of hardware that would that

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Speaker 1: wouldn't cost very much money. Um. I think two dollars

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Speaker 1: was the figure Car was throwing around. So that's that's

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Speaker 1: very appealing you think about that, a personal computer for

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Speaker 1: two d dollars. For people who aren't really expert users,

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Speaker 1: they might not understand that that doesn't that that that

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Speaker 1: computer doesn't actually have any real native capabilities. It's really

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Speaker 1: just a terminal to access other capabilities. Which I think

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Speaker 1: is probably the biggest concern is just a user awareness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if they don't know that this, they might be used

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Speaker 1: to a computer where they save all their programs onto

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Speaker 1: a hard drive or onto a disk. Uh. People who

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Speaker 1: aren't really savvy about that might have some issues buying

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Speaker 1: a computer that you know you can't do that it

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Speaker 1: doesn't have that doesn't have a hard drive, or it

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Speaker 1: doesn't have an optical drive or things like that. So

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Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. It reminds me of my college

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Speaker 1: computing days. And I'm dating myself here, but back when

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Speaker 1: I had to use a vax terminal basement of the

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Speaker 1: library where I was in college. Um, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: basically just a monitor and a keyboard and all the

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Speaker 1: processing power was handled by a centralized supercomputer, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's going back to that timeshare model where you had

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Speaker 1: a central computer and and several terminals and people could

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Speaker 1: access the central computers resources, but the terminals themselves didn't

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Speaker 1: really have anything to them, I mean other than it

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Speaker 1: was it was just an interface. It's it's interesting because

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Speaker 1: it is going on a full cycle. You're going back

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Speaker 1: to the early days of computing with this model. It's

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Speaker 1: just it's on a much more complex scale. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: funny though. You have other items like the like the

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Speaker 1: MacBook Air, which doesn't have an optical drive built in,

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Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't even have an Ethernet port,

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Speaker 1: so you know, all you're computing would be done wirelessly. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it is an actual computer. It's got you know,

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Speaker 1: a flash um storage drive on it instead of a

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Speaker 1: magnetic hard drive. So that's you know, I guess in

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Speaker 1: a way, in some ways, we're already getting there. It's

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Speaker 1: just not exactly what Car had in mind. Right and

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Speaker 1: Apple has a reputation and of being very uh newbie friendly,

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Speaker 1: but right now we're just not seeing that the MacBook

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Speaker 1: Air I don't think is really a newbie computer. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I would I would think that most people

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be purchasing an Air for their for their primary computer.

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Speaker 1: That's that's almost a secondary or tertiary computer for those

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Speaker 1: who have the resources for it, because it's a it's

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Speaker 1: also fairly expensive computer. But but the Apple certainly has

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Speaker 1: the capability of producing something very streamlined. Uh so we

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Speaker 1: may we may in fact see cars vision play out.

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Speaker 1: It might take a few more years though, Yeah. Well

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Speaker 1: until then, you can definitely check out how the Google

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Speaker 1: Apple Cloud computer will work on how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: Com and we'll talk to you again soon for more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. Let us know what you think.

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Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast that how stuff Works dot

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