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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? Which
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how Stuff Works dot com. Ei there,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulett and
Speaker 1: I'm one of the editors here at How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: And with me is writer Jonathan Strickland Aldie. And UM,
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about an article that
Speaker 1: I wrote, UM sometime ago called how the Google Apple
Speaker 1: Cloud Computer will work? UM. And UM, just to give
Speaker 1: you a little background about it, UH, this is a
Speaker 1: completely hypothetical product. UM. That's something that writer Nicholas Carr
Speaker 1: was talking about in his blog and a post in
Speaker 1: October two thousand seven. UM. And basically what he said
Speaker 1: was that because the future of computing is cloud computing, UM,
Speaker 1: and because Apple is such a great technology provider and
Speaker 1: Google would be such a good back end, UM, it
Speaker 1: would be really neat if they came up with a
Speaker 1: portable device that Apple made that Google would supply the
Speaker 1: the back end for the computing power for And the
Speaker 1: thing is it may sound completely fictional, but UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You've been writing a lot about cloud computer
Speaker 1: and for those of you who don't know. Cloud computing
Speaker 1: is is when you've got a network of computers or
Speaker 1: even supercomputers that does all the processing power for you.
Speaker 1: You use your computer to to log in and access
Speaker 1: these resources, so your computer is not doing the work,
Speaker 1: there's a network doing it. UM and Google is very
Speaker 1: much interested in this. UH. They've been pouring millions of
Speaker 1: dollars of research into cloud computing over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, so half of that equation seems to already
Speaker 1: be well on its way. The question is whether or
Speaker 1: not some hardware producer will come up with the the
Speaker 1: hardware end of at the front end, if you will. UM.
Speaker 1: That's that's where the largest amount of speculation is because
Speaker 1: we know that are a company's doing the back end.
Speaker 1: I'm Google is just one of them. There's also IBM
Speaker 1: and Microsoft is also interested as well as others. So
Speaker 1: it's coming. We just don't know who's going to be
Speaker 1: giving you the the hardware you'll be using to access
Speaker 1: it if if you're not just using a regular computer
Speaker 1: that is yeah, it's UM you know. Of course, Apple
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of positive feedback for design, especially
Speaker 1: with it's more recent UM things like the iPod and
Speaker 1: the iPhone, And really, I guess in a way, the
Speaker 1: iPhone is already cloud computer of source. I mean you
Speaker 1: could use Google Docs or some of the other cloud
Speaker 1: computing programs right now on an iPhone or some of
Speaker 1: the other phones too for that matter, right right, right,
Speaker 1: But with the Google Apple program, of course, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a very streamlined piece of hardware that would that
Speaker 1: wouldn't cost very much money. Um. I think two dollars
Speaker 1: was the figure Car was throwing around. So that's that's
Speaker 1: very appealing you think about that, a personal computer for
Speaker 1: two d dollars. For people who aren't really expert users,
Speaker 1: they might not understand that that doesn't that that that
Speaker 1: computer doesn't actually have any real native capabilities. It's really
Speaker 1: just a terminal to access other capabilities. Which I think
Speaker 1: is probably the biggest concern is just a user awareness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they don't know that this, they might be used
Speaker 1: to a computer where they save all their programs onto
Speaker 1: a hard drive or onto a disk. Uh. People who
Speaker 1: aren't really savvy about that might have some issues buying
Speaker 1: a computer that you know you can't do that it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that doesn't have a hard drive, or it
Speaker 1: doesn't have an optical drive or things like that. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. It reminds me of my college
Speaker 1: computing days. And I'm dating myself here, but back when
Speaker 1: I had to use a vax terminal basement of the
Speaker 1: library where I was in college. Um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: basically just a monitor and a keyboard and all the
Speaker 1: processing power was handled by a centralized supercomputer, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's going back to that timeshare model where you had
Speaker 1: a central computer and and several terminals and people could
Speaker 1: access the central computers resources, but the terminals themselves didn't
Speaker 1: really have anything to them, I mean other than it
Speaker 1: was it was just an interface. It's it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it is going on a full cycle. You're going back
Speaker 1: to the early days of computing with this model. It's
Speaker 1: just it's on a much more complex scale. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: funny though. You have other items like the like the
Speaker 1: MacBook Air, which doesn't have an optical drive built in,
Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't even have an Ethernet port,
Speaker 1: so you know, all you're computing would be done wirelessly. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is an actual computer. It's got you know,
Speaker 1: a flash um storage drive on it instead of a
Speaker 1: magnetic hard drive. So that's you know, I guess in
Speaker 1: a way, in some ways, we're already getting there. It's
Speaker 1: just not exactly what Car had in mind. Right and
Speaker 1: Apple has a reputation and of being very uh newbie friendly,
Speaker 1: but right now we're just not seeing that the MacBook
Speaker 1: Air I don't think is really a newbie computer. In fact,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I would I would think that most people
Speaker 1: wouldn't be purchasing an Air for their for their primary computer.
Speaker 1: That's that's almost a secondary or tertiary computer for those
Speaker 1: who have the resources for it, because it's a it's
Speaker 1: also fairly expensive computer. But but the Apple certainly has
Speaker 1: the capability of producing something very streamlined. Uh so we
Speaker 1: may we may in fact see cars vision play out.
Speaker 1: It might take a few more years though, Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: until then, you can definitely check out how the Google
Speaker 1: Apple Cloud computer will work on how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com and we'll talk to you again soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
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