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HELLO,
LENOMOTO... MOTONOVO...
#Motorola #Google #Lenovo #LenoMoto #MotoNovo #MotoX #MotoG #MotoE #AndroidLollipop
#Android #Chrome #ChromeOS #AndroidWear #AndroidAuto #AndroidTV #Chromecast #Glass
#Nexus #Silver #Lollipop #Android5 #Android5Lollipop #ChromeAndroidOS
#ChromeAndroidPC
Goodhour,
Synapse Circuit Readers. How are you? Do you happen to own a PC? Did you see
the Reallusion article on the forthcoming iClone 6 3D animation software? If
you want to start your own animation studio you NEED
to check it out: iClone 6 Pre-Launch Offer!
I also don’t suppose you’re an Android fan? Have you heard the good news?
LENOVO
COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF MOTOROLA MOBILITY FROM GOOGLE
WHAT THIS COULD MEAN FOR ANDROID & COMPETING MANUFACTURERS...
A DONE DEAL
“Over the past two
years we have transformed Motorola by focusing on what matters most --
consumers. We’ve made huge strides in bringing the mobile Internet to millions
of people around the world and improving their lives through exceptional
technology, experiences and value. While we’re proud of the progress we’ve
made, we recognize that there is still much more we can achieve -- in
innovation, reach and impact.
In Lenovo we have a
partner that shares our mission and that brings global scale, a diverse product
portfolio and a track record of seizing strategic opportunities and making the
most of them. Together we will go farther, faster. With an impressive portfolio
of smartphones, wearables and PCs, our two companies will be uniquely
positioned to push the boundaries of choice and value, and bring exciting new
experiences to people everywhere.
As excited as we are
about what’s changing, we’re also pleased with what we are carrying forward
with us. We will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Lenovo and remain
headquartered in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart while maintaining offices around
the world, including in Silicon Valley. The iconic Motorola brand will
continue, as will the Moto and DROID franchises that have propelled our growth
over the past year. We will continue to focus on pure Android and fast
upgrades, and remain committed to developing technology to solve real consumer
problems. And we will continue to develop mobile devices that bring people
unprecedented choice, value and quality.
Motorola is a company
that has long helped to define the course of the mobile telecommunications and
mobile computing industries. With Lenovo backing us, we look forward to being able
to reshape the industry for decades to come. We’re ready for the challenge and
hope you’ll join us on the journey.”
Motorola Mobility President Rick Osterloh
WHY,
GOOGLE, WHY?
ANSWER: ACCELERATION
To accelerate Android’s world domination. In this year and especially in the
month of October – Happy Halloween – Google have made enormous strides in
technological advancement. CEO Larry Page has truly delivered on his promise to
bring the cost of the smartphone down to sweet price point and as a result the
Nexus 5 has become a main driver for many Android fans; it sold out on the
first day it hit the UK retail outlets. I tried to get hold of one and they had
flown out of the stores! This was the breakthrough Nexus that gave the iPhone a
run for its money.
No, I still maintain that Android is not directly competing with Apple iOS
simply because there are millions of Mac users around the world and therefore
the iPhone enjoys a readymade marketplace (opened by its range of computers). As
you know or may not know, the Mac computer was aimed squarely at the desktop
publishing / graphic designer and these, often pompous, elitist folk felt that
the combination of the Mac, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and a desktop
publishing program for printing arty design magazines, etc liberated them from
the mechanical processes of print. As a result they were prepared to pay what I
feel is extortionate prices for a Mac. Once upon a time – if you hung around
the graphic design circle – all you heard was, “Yah, Mac... Yah, design... Yah,
Adobe...” That’s my attempt at visually reproducing the snooty, annoyingly smug
Mac person. And I guess they had some justification for being that way...
The
Apple Mac and Adobe revolutionized the print, publishing and design industries
almost overnight! It was relatively easy to start, back in those days, a
publishing company, design house and advertising agency, etc. If you could afford
the top of the range Mac computers, high resolution scanners, software, etc
that was half the battle won. And since the magazine industry was very much in
its infancy it was not too difficult to create and publish new titles. In fact,
it was thanks to technological advancements that created a whole new publishing
industry based on computer aided design and music. Not to mention the handful
of dedicated Mac magazines. Then the Windows PC came along and burst that
elitist bubble! Steve Jobs was pissed and so were the Mac owners! From there we
got the “us against them” mentality. Only the PC owners outnumbered the Mac
elitists. As a result Apple was able to retain its high prices by maintaining
that to own a Mac meant that one was a committed professional media producer.
Owning a high-end Mac was and no doubt seen by many (Mac owners) as the Ferrari
of the computer industry. The PC, in comparison, was like the American custom
car build in that the PC allows folk to swap out components as and when. Need a
new graphics card? Sure, remove the old one and insert the new one in. And with
enough knowledge one can build a PC from scratch!
Fast forward to today, we can see that Apple has been usurped again. Jobs tried
– and quite successfully – to make the iPhone seem like it was a precious stone
made from rare meteorites. Jobs made a move to block Adobe and the Flash
phenomenon was a dying wild beast in the jungle and maggots started to multiply
in the thousands from that savage bite. Fancy that, eh? Flash, Adobe Flash had
been entertaining a worldwide web audience from the mid 90s until now. It makes
me laugh upon recalling the smirking Jobs’ face whenever he talked about Adobe
Flash. For a while Google used Flash as a selling point, “Compatible with Adobe
Flash...” as did BlackBerry with its Playbook tablet. It worked. However,
Google dropped support for Flash as it had YouTube and that it was in its best
interests to push for the HTML5 standard and wrestled a key medium from Adobe. Not
only did Google put the wounded Flash beast out of its misery it killed off
Apple’s QuickTime movie format too! Do you remember the days when you went to
the Apple QuickTime site to watch movie trailers? Those days are gone thanks to
YouTube, MP4 and the HTML5 video player format.
Effectively, Google was able to push its YouTube platform into the stratosphere
and to move Android away from utilizing a media technology owned by Adobe. What
Google has been doing and has done is to place its music, book and newsstand solutions
over any other. And by making Android open source Google knew that the battle
for world domination had been won already! Apple with its elitist ethos was not
going to dominate the world with overly expensive handsets and tablets; this is
what Jobs realized. Jobs had effectively shown that he hadn’t learned from
making the Mac so expensive that it is often seen as specialist. Had Jobs looked
more deeply into the future just about every household on the planet would have
a Mac computer today! Instead the man had a thermonuclear meltdown! Imagine
that, eh? Imagine missing the mark AGAIN!!! Cook, with a clearer head, can now
see that iOS can never be as popular and it is futile to keep Jobs’ legacy of
vengeance. Cook as recently said that he’ll, “...never produce a cheap
iPhone...” He has also come out in full as being Gay. It’s amazing what the
feeling of liberation can do! It must be a huge weight off his shoulders to be
able to bury Jobs’ vendetta against Google Android with the man himself.
Google had taken the Microsoft model by making Chrome the antithesis of
Internet Explorer and on top of that it made Chrome into an operating system!
Essentially, Chrome OS could usurp Windows based computers as the relationship
between them and Microsoft is quite frosty and every hybrid Android and Windows
device has been blasted out of the sky (by Google). I get the feeling that
Google is biding its time... Chrome OS is going to grow into something else...
Now that Android has gone 64-bit and spans across many CPU architecture the
next logical step has to be a dual bootable Chromebook / Chromebox or instead
of a dual boot it would be a symbiotic boot as it is now! Google has recently
made it possible to run some Android apps on Chrome OS. This is why Chrome OS
and Android is not going to merge in the foreseeable future. In a sense they
(Android and Chrome OS) have merged already; Yin and Yang.
What better company to sell Motorola to than Lenovo, a PC manufacturer? I can
envisage that Lenovo will be one of the first computer manufacturers to produce
a Chromebox Android PC and from that position Lenovo Motorola can push
compatible smartphones, wearables and tablets in a way that Microsoft is
struggling to. Microsoft has lost over $1 Billion pushing Windows RT. Apple is
doing this seamless transition from device to device but the iPad is very much
surplus to requirements. With Android and Chrome OS Google has made it so that
just about everybody can own a device.
“Together we will
go farther, faster. With an impressive portfolio of smartphones, wearables and
PCs, our two companies will be uniquely positioned to push the boundaries of
choice and value, and bring exciting new experiences to people everywhere.”
The desktop / laptop computer isn’t dead...
Because Chrome OS can work on Windows based PCs it potentially makes the
Windows PC a cocoon waiting for this Chrome / Android OS Symbiote to emerge. If
and when this happens I can only hope that Google will be sure not to go the
way the Amiga computer went: Great operating system, Workbench, but no blinking
software worthwhile running on it!
We’ve seen very interesting shake ups with Google of late besides Android 5 Lollipop;
CEO Larry Page has put Sundar Pichai in charge of all of Google’s major
consumer products including Maps, Search, and Google+ as well as commerce and
ads. Page is going to step back to take a look at the bigger picture! And the
latest Nexus products: 6 & 9 (69 symbolizes perfection) and these products
look perfect! Android 5 has come to herald a New Age of personal computing.
This could very well be the reason why Samsung has pulled out of producing PC
products for the foreseeable future.
“Android 5.0
Lollipop, which comes on Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Nexus Player, will also be
available on Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and Google Play edition devices in the coming
weeks...”
What better company other than Lenovo to pass the Motorola baton to?
“The iconic
Motorola brand will continue, as will the Moto and DROID franchises that have
propelled our growth over the past year. We will continue to focus on pure
Android and fast upgrades, and remain committed to developing technology to
solve real consumer problems. And we will continue to develop mobile devices
that bring people unprecedented choice, value and quality.”
Just look at the great portfolio of Motorola handsets that literally came out
of the blue and reinstated the Motorola brand as being amongst the top mobile
device players in the world! In the meantime Nokia has bitten the dust and
BlackBerry has produced another dud! Look at them:-
Moto X (1st Gen. & 2nd Gen.)
Moto G (1st Gen. & 2nd Gen.)
Moto G with 4G LTE
Moto E
Droid Ultra, Droid Maxx, and Droid Mini
These handsets are getting the sweet Lollipop
upgrade! Yes, even the 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 dual-core Moto E with 4GB of internal
storage is getting the Android 5 Lollipop upgrade! It makes me wonder as to how
many budget Android handsets can receive the upgrade.
We are going to be seeing some awesome looking handsets in the future! I think
the next Nexus devices will come from Lenovo!
In any event this lazy headline attention grabbing, Apple vs. Android thing
should be well and truly dead now. Different operating and ecosystems yet
Google have applications running on both platforms. Genius!
WEAR
IT WITH STYLE
MORE WEARBLES ARE COMING
Glass and Moto 360 are just the tip of the iceberg... I am predicting that
Google and Lenovo have already started exploring new designs of Glass and
smartwatches; the quest is to make them even more cost effective to manufacture
so that Glass can come in well below £700! I can only hope that will be the
case! And as for smartwatches... I can see that they’ll morph into
smartwristbands ranging from a 4” rectangular wrap-around band to the current
wristwatch design. We’ll have to wait and see!
A
BLANK SLATE
ANDROID TABLETS RISING
8 and 9 seems to be the magic numbers where Android tablets are concerned and I
have been practically campaigning for 7 to be the new phablet size! Why? I want
the 3G / 4G LTE enabled tablets to be able to utilize the standard mobile SIM.
Because the 7” phablet is still seen as a tablet the mobile network providers
wants to extract more money from the consumer with data only SIMs aimed at
tablet users. I would like to change that! Anyhoo... The Nexus 9 looks superb
and very, very desirable. But I do like the idea of a 7” 4G enabled tablet with
a 64-bit CPU and made from modest materials! I’ve told you and will keep
telling you that plastic is ultimately the most durable materials for tablets
and handsets! Not only does plastic go some way to making your devices last
longer it makes them very cost effective! Give me a 7” version of the Moto G
any day of the week if it’s going to cost me around the £150 mark! Okay, £200
if it has a 64-bit processor and full HD screen! Make the darn thing thicker,
place a super-high capacity battery in there and add a couple of USB 3.0 ports,
HDMI and so on!
Look, the iPad Air 2 may possibly be the thinnest tablet in the known universe
but this thinness comes at the expense of the battery! Tell me, what... ...is
...the ...point??? The prices of the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3 are very high but
what are these consumers really paying for, an LCD screen with an LED light
underneath it??? C’mon, let’s stop this “the thinnest” nonsense and let’s have
slates that are up to 12mm thick! Try it! Put a decent price on it and some USB
3.0, etc as stated above and I reckon they will fly off the virtual and
physical shelves!
PACK
IT IN OR PACK UP
OFFICIAL BATTERY PACKS
Finally, I would like to see official battery pack extensions that plug into
the micro USB port for smarpthones and tablets because if Google (Apple and
Microsoft) wants us to use our devices productively some serious longevity has
to be built into the battery or have some way of juicing up our devices with
official battery packs. Using an unofficial battery extension in my Galaxy S caused
it to malfunction like an ED-209 (Robocop, 1987). This ties in to having
thicker tablets (and handsets).
It remains to be seen if Lollipop will add some longevity to Android devices in
general! Despite my absolute HATRED for non-removable batteries in smartphones –
my HTC One X is finished after taking a few pictures and checking my Facebook
in less than 2 hours – I had to get the second generation Moto G! I wanted to
be amongst the first wave of fortunate individuals to experience pure Lollipop!
What a milestone!
Roll on, Google! Roll on, Android 5 Lollipop! Roll on, Motorola Lenovo! So long, Andy Rubin! Thank you for Android!
There you! Some things to think about!
THANK YOU FOR READING!
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