How the Google-Apple Cloud Computer Will Work

Cloud Computer will work? UM. And UM, just to give you a little background about it, UH, this is a completely hypothetical product. UM. That's something that writer Nicholas Carr was talking about in his blog and a post in

October two thousand seven. UM. And basically what he said was that because the future of computing is cloud computing, UM, and because Apple is such a great technology provider and Google would be such a good back end, UM, it would be really neat if they came up with a portable device that Apple made that Google would supply the the back end for the computing power for And the thing is it may sound completely fictional, but UM, I don't know. You've been writing a lot about cloud computer

and for those of you who don't know. Cloud computing is is when you've got a network of computers or even supercomputers that does all the processing power for you. You use your computer to to log in and access these resources, so your computer is not doing the work, there's a network doing it. UM and Google is very much interested in this. UH. They've been pouring millions of dollars of research into cloud computing over the last couple of years, so half of that equation seems to already

be well on its way. The question is whether or not some hardware producer will come up with the the hardware end of at the front end, if you will. UM. That's that's where the largest amount of speculation is because we know that are a company's doing the back end. I'm Google is just one of them. There's also IBM and Microsoft is also interested as well as others. So

it's coming. We just don't know who's going to be giving you the the hardware you'll be using to access it if if you're not just using a regular computer that is yeah, it's UM you know. Of course, Apple has gotten a lot of positive feedback for design, especially with it's more recent UM things like the iPod and the iPhone, And really, I guess in a way, the

iPhone is already cloud computer of source. I mean you could use Google Docs or some of the other cloud computing programs right now on an iPhone or some of the other phones too for that matter, right right, right, But with the Google Apple program, of course, you're talking about a very streamlined piece of hardware that would that wouldn't cost very much money. Um. I think two dollars

was the figure Car was throwing around. So that's that's very appealing you think about that, a personal computer for two d dollars. For people who aren't really expert users, they might not understand that that doesn't that that that computer doesn't actually have any real native capabilities. It's really just a terminal to access other capabilities. Which I think

is probably the biggest concern is just a user awareness. Yeah, if they don't know that this, they might be used to a computer where they save all their programs onto a hard drive or onto a disk. Uh. People who aren't really savvy about that might have some issues buying a computer that you know you can't do that it doesn't have that doesn't have a hard drive, or it doesn't have an optical drive or things like that. So it's kind of funny. It reminds me of my college

computing days. And I'm dating myself here, but back when I had to use a vax terminal basement of the library where I was in college. Um, you know, it's basically just a monitor and a keyboard and all the

processing power was handled by a centralized supercomputer, right. Yeah, it's going back to that timeshare model where you had a central computer and and several terminals and people could access the central computers resources, but the terminals themselves didn't really have anything to them, I mean other than it was it was just an interface. It's it's interesting because it is going on a full cycle. You're going back to the early days of computing with this model. It's

just it's on a much more complex scale. Yeah, it's funny though. You have other items like the like the MacBook Air, which doesn't have an optical drive built in, you know, and it doesn't even have an Ethernet port, so you know, all you're computing would be done wirelessly. Um, but it is an actual computer. It's got you know, a flash um storage drive on it instead of a magnetic hard drive. So that's you know, I guess in a way, in some ways, we're already getting there. It's

just not exactly what Car had in mind. Right and Apple has a reputation and of being very uh newbie friendly, but right now we're just not seeing that the MacBook Air I don't think is really a newbie computer. In fact, I wouldn't. I would I would think that most people wouldn't be purchasing an Air for their for their primary computer. That's that's almost a secondary or tertiary computer for those who have the resources for it, because it's a it's

also fairly expensive computer. But but the Apple certainly has the capability of producing something very streamlined. Uh so we may we may in fact see cars vision play out. It might take a few more years though, Yeah. Well until then, you can definitely check out how the Google Apple Cloud computer will work on how stuff works dot Com and we'll talk to you again soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com. Let us know what you think.

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