Maybe you didn’t notice, but on October the 4th 2011, Apple entered the search engine market with Siri, and from that moment on, casual search will never be the same…

I called Apple’s smooth search move out later in the month, what with everything else going on, I was late to the Siri party:

“You have to wonder how concerned Google are by Siri’s ability to grab the low hanging casual search fruit.”

So how concerned are Google? At the time, they played Siri down, which would be the right thing to do / say, be they concerned or not. After all, do you really expect Google to admit they’re worried about an idea, when such confirmation is as a good as a green light to anyone else with the same idea? Of course not.

Fast forward to a Forbes article quoting Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt’s response to the U.S. Senate antitrust committee, where he (and by extension Google) identify Apple’s voice-activated assistant as a threat to their search products. Why the change? Politics. Google need to appear the wounded party, or how else do they appease the politicians who, on a whim or word, could trim their commercial excess down to size?

But all these things are but a setting of the scene, because the real game changer isn’t Google’s search products, because they’re no longer bathing everyone in the afterglow of innovation. No, everyone expects the all-knowing Google to just keep on being Google.

But the problem is, Google are so tied to their search product, in the same way Microsoft are tethered between the twin pillars of Windows and Office, everything Google do, in so far as search, must be in some way an extension of their paid links franchise, and voice search just isn’t a snug enough fit. Let’s face it, when you’re on the move, who the hell wants to be hearing adverts being barked at them when they’re searching for the nearest Starbucks? That’s the Google dilemma. Apple have no such dilemma.

Trust in Apple technology

Apple like trust. Apple use their vast and ever-expanding walled garden to widen the horizon of their all-enveloping blanket of trust, through vetted applications, which is a fortress to Google’s picket fence approach to application security.

Apple have zero intention of allowing their customers access to untrusted sources via any search they perform via Siri, in so far as finding restaurants, hotels, cinemas, facts, figures et cetera. All of these sources are trusted sources, like WolframAlpha, and Wikipedia for example. Wikipedia, trusted? Do a search for the name of famous person on Google and the chances are you’ll see Wikipedia, or IMDb if they’re an actor, right at the top. That’s the level of trust Google bestow on Wikipedia, so who are Apple to do differently?

So when I say “casual search”, I’m talking about “What’s the weather going to be like later on?”, or “Where is Lake Garda?”, and not “Photos of Lindsay Lohan nude”, or “Cheats for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3″.

Apple are never going to compete with Google’s primary search product. The reason Google succeed is because their product and its agnosticism towards computing platforms; Google search works via the web, not the computer. Apple are for the most part tied to their own hardware, with the exception of Safari, QuitTime and iTunes, for example.

So don’t expect to see Siri appear on Google Android. Why? The deep integration between Siri and the swathe of resources on your iPhone is, most likely, impossible to replicate on Android, or destined to be but a poor imitation.

No, when I look at Siri, I see a proof of concept and a blueprint. I see a product useful for Apple in their desire to keep expanding their walled garden of trust. But I also see a whole population of computer engineers and scientists out there, all bent on replicating Siri and competing head-on with Google.

Apple didn’t change the game, they just helped re-write the rules of engagement. Expect a war of words and a breathless search for the next big thing in finding food, friends, fun and facts on the move…

The BlackBerry line of mobile phones may have become loyal companions to travelling businessmen, but with competitors ever encroaching on its market share, the company has had to refocus its strategies after seeing how much money could be made by orientating some of their devices towards everyday consumers rather than the enterprise.

Unfortunately, the glacial pace that Research in Motion allowed its developers to work at has allowed many of its rivals to gain an upper hand in providing users with alternative and more superior smartphones.

For example, Apple clearly reinvented touch and gesture based interfaces, also bringing it to the masses when it introduced the iPhone in 2007. Google’s Android has found its niche by providing power users and technology enthusiasts with a flexible and open platform. BlackBerry on the other hand has been slow to realise what effect a touch and gestured interface could provide its customers. It has mostly stuck to its tried and tested QWERTY keyboard build, a unique selling point that is becoming less relevant in the smartphone market.

Last year saw the company’s attempt at trying to fight against its ever decreasing market share with the release of its BlackBerry Torch 9800, but critics were left underwhelmed after the phone was revealed to have a specifications list that was still leaving it behind its rivals.

Realising that it needed to get back on the ball and focus on making sure that its user experience and hardware was unique to its brand, the company decided on diversifying and launching a tablet computer that would work in conjunction with one of their devices. The PlayBook also would be the first RIM device to include an operating system developed after its purchase of The Astonishing Tribe and QNX.

The PlayBook has been seen as one of the few competitors trying to provide an alternative experience against the clear market leader, Apple’s iPad. The PlayBook is also one of the few tablet computers on the market that allows users to view content created in Adobe Flash. Apple has stated that it refuses to allow its mobile devices the option of viewing Flash content because it would cause a poorer experience for the end user.

The next year will prove to be a vital one for the survival of RIM. Technology blogs have already leaked images and videos showing that the company will be combining touchscreen technology across all of their devices, but the big question is whether the Canadian manufacturer can be sure that its current customers will be willing to upgrade to devices that may not be as unique as they used to be.

Innovation is expensive and wasteful, and it doesn’t matter if you’re living tissue or leading-edge technology, the same rules apply. What we need is a revolution in patent legislation to help start an evolution of innovation…

Google innovation, Apple iteration?

Apple announced a wide range of new technologies at their World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday the 6th of June. Some of those technologies were, let’s face it, iterative rather than innovative. Back in 2006, Steve Jobs himself once (in)famously mocked Microsoft’s alleged attempts at copying Apple’s principle operating system OS X with the slogan: “Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers”, Redmond in Washington being the home of Microsoft.

Now, all joking aside, the war of words between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, both co-founders of their respective and aforementioned companies has been going on for years. Well now, Google have entered into the fray. And to be fair, the Android camp have a fair argument that several of the key new technologies finding their way into iOS, the operating system used by Apple’s iPhone and iPad range of products are simply an attempt to play catch up with Google.

That said, for all the haters out there, Apple have been thinking about connected devices and services for a long time, as far back as 1997.

Now, I’m no Apple apologist, though I freely admit I am a died-in-the-wool Apple user through and through. I do not in any way doubt Google’s ability to innovate with their Android operating system, as they have, and in doing so, have leapt in front of Apple. But all of this territorial fanboy sniping and snarling is an aside, because there’s a much, much bigger issue at stake, here — innovation is expensive and wasteful.

The convergence of evolution and innovation

As I said to a Andy Bold on Twitter earlier in the week, as an aside to our discussion of the above topic of perceived and actual innovation, there are only a finite number of ways of achieving a specific goal. How do I know this? Because we only need look to nature. Over the course of eons, biological diversity has been as breathtaking in its sheer depth and breadth as it is astonishing in its complexity and variety. But with justified hyperbole aside, underlying this complexity is a layer of fundamental simplicity, which takes the form of shared traits, characteristics and designs.

In nature, this is called convergent evolution, where things like eyes, wings, fur and even blood having formed in completely different organisms whose common ancestors either did not have such attributes, or they were so primitive as to be irrelevant to the eventual adaptations.

Man cannot as yet harness the truly mesmeric ability of nature to design such a bewildering array of variations, not biologically or technologically. And this is where the problems begin, because as soon as some company evolves themselves towards something intrinsically unique, they’re entitled to patent their innovations. On the whole, I don’t think patents are “evil”, that’s an affectation we must leave to people, who choose to pervert and subvert patent law for purely monetary reasons, the so-called “patent trolls”.

For those companies following in the footsteps of innovation first-movers, they must steer their ship well clear of waters where the sharks of patent litigation swim. To avoid such things, they must innovate in such a way as to approach their particular problem from a sufficiently different angle to remain unique enough that patent litigation isn’t an issue. Either that or they pay the requisite licensing fees to access the patent rights.

No one wants a square wheel!

To re-frame this problem in simpler language, companies have to keep re-inventing the wheel. If the same commercially biased logic existed in nature, we would most likely all be blind, as the human eye would have been secured as a biological innovation and barred by some long extinct sea creature from all future usage.

But the problem is even worse because, as nature will attest, there are only a finite number of ways of doing the same thing, as Apple and Google are discovering. So where’s the problem? As I said, innovation is expensive and wasteful. And in this day and age, with dwindling resources, we can ill afford to go pissing time and money away on re-inventing the wheel when the original worked perfectly fine first time of asking, thank you very much!

As an example, consider an automotive manufacturer and the effort invested in re-creating something that obviates possible patent and legal fees. The needless expense and wasted energy and resources would most likely, if calculated appropriately, total several billion pounds. And this is but one company in one industry. We, as a people, can neither afford or justify this kind of thing anymore.

When innovation is patently wrong

So what’s the solution? Well, we can’t scrap patent law, although some might argue otherwise. But what we can do is look to the various patent offices of the world, and ask of them to work more closely together. In this way, they can pool their resources, find those innovations which are of the finite and restrictive variety, which severely limit the scope of further innovations and either not allow a patent to be issued, or impose maximum licensing fees, or reduce the lifespan of the patent. We could, for the sake of developing countries, go as far as making patents open source:

“A re-worked definition of Open Source in our new context would be: a technology, or series of technologies where the source knowledge, materials and know-how are readily available to the general public for use and / or modification from its original design free of charge.”

The benefits to society would be huge, vastly out-weighing any short-term economic hard inflicted on businesses who’s innovations were made open source.

And because the principles of open source apply, the company that invested their time, money, resources and expertise into the original innovation would have access to all adaptions to their technology by anyone choosing to license said technologies.

Okay, I’m an idealist. But I don’t think anything I’ve discussed here is beyond the realms of possibility. In fact, I think we’re going to see something like this happen as the pool of possible technological innovations begins to shrink, with more and more patent trolls chasing after spurious licensing fees, forcing legislators to re-consider how patents are awarded and why.

What we have now is patently wrong, but what we could have in the future would be as much evolutionary as revolutionary…

And at that moment, I realized the limitations of my iPhone; the camera just ain’t what it ought to be. Why? Microsoft Photosynth is asking a question the iPhone can’t answer. But if Apple teamed up with Canon, Nikon et al, and got iOS running on their camera hardware…

You with me? Of course you are. No, I’m not talking about playing Angry Birds on your Nikon D7000 or your Canon 55D. In this scenario, Apple’s iOS would be a leaner animal, allowing applications like Microsoft Photosynth to run on dedicated cameras, doing justice to that ornate cathedral interior, or that arboretum you just visited.

So what’s Photosynth? Much to the dismay of the Windows Phone 7 crowd, launching on the iPhone first, Photosynth let’s you take a series of photographs, which it then stitches together into 360 degree panoramas. Believe me, getting the most from Photosynth takes some practice, but the results can be amazing.

But this is just one application. I’m sure there are plenty more out there, just aching to find their way onto an actual camera, rather than eking out an existence shuffling 5 megapixel resolution graphics around when so much more lay beyond.

I have absolutely no idea of the practicalities of making this happen, but I can imagine a lot of people welcoming the ability to run a limited collection of applications on their camera, enabling a wider range of possibilities and letting them squeeze even more out of their camera hardware.

Apple could work out some novel licensing deal, the camera companies get to work with software developers to make the most of their features, everyone wins!

The sad truth is, Apple just don’t like licensing their core software, even when there’s good business to be had in doing so — it’s a control thing. By contrast, it’s exactly the kind of thing Microsoft like doing — gaining greater exposure for their Windows franchise.

As I said, the technicalities aren’t exactly black and white, but the final composition could be a real Kodak moment…

Easter came and went a bit like Christmas, in that we’re all for the festivities, the food and the fun, but just don’t talk about religion. Meanwhile, a man wearing an odd-looking dress and silly hat bemoans the fact we’re no longer taking him or his beliefs seriously, amidst on-going claims that a supernatural being created the world in seven days, or something…

I utterly and vehemently despise all religion — religion is by far and almost beyond the reach of practical measurement, the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction ever devised by man. Yet people cling to such nonsense out of nothing more than fear and vanity all tangled together. That somehow, their lives are so precious that the universe itself ought to set aside a place somewhere so that they can live out all eternity.

And then there’s the alignment of political persuasion with belief. Suffice it to say, religious conservatism is not a choice for many (too many for the sake of common sense), while liberalism and atheistic ideals also align.

I find it quite amazing how conservative preachers and politicians alike squeal their venomous bile across radio waves, telephone wires and fibre optic cables, flatly denouncing science fact in favour of whatever entirely ephemeral, utterly unprovable and largely laughable lies they choose to believe in.

At what point did they choose to halt their “belief” in science? Just after the invention of what ever technological marvel allows them a forum to talk complete shit.

They hide behind liberalist ideals that protect their right to believe what they like, while proliferating their right-wing filth as if it was fact, making strident and sweating, clamouring efforts to silence the salient books of science in schools all across the southern states of the US of A, creating yet another generation of ignorant, hostile and paranoid people, acting as an anchor to the rest of the human race, stymieing forward motion, away from those dark, bad waters of our ignorant past.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the man wearing the odd-looking dress and silly hat is worried, and so he should be — people like me have you and your kind on the run.

Step into the light, Keith. I’ll show you what enlightenment is all about, mate. And such things do not begin or end with the fantasy section of a properly ordered book store, believe me…

OK, so at 8:11pm on April 19th, the military-designed artificial intelligence system called Skynet didn’t become self-aware and turn against its creators. And the real chances of a Terminator-style robotic armageddon any time soon? None, with a precision of several decimal places. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to stop worrying just yet — just ask Britain’s Ministry of Defence…

British newspaper, the Guardian got a glimpse of the Ministry of Defence report, entitled: “The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems” warning that the increased use of sophisticated drone aircraft, principally by the US, could well be an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality.”

Further highlighting the potential dangers of automatous machines, the report recommends, sooner rather than later, that we come to a decision on what is “acceptable machine behaviour”, kind of like a bill of robot rights, if you will.

But just how do we edge towards this kind of future? Through necessity and, to a greater and lesser extent, largely without even knowing.

Right now, we see pressures in far-flung places emerging from the action of insurgent forces all around the world, armed as they are with the will and the wherewithal to strike anywhere, not as an army, but as largely anonymous individuals. This is no longer a war amongst men of arms across battle lines, but a conflict fought through telephones lines, firing information around the globe, targeting indistinct and cryptic enemy “chatter”.

To defeat this ad hoc army of terrorists, we need a global network capable of scanning many terabytes of data, and that kind of data requires a certain type of computer, one capable of choosing for itself where best to spend its time searching for clues.

Out there in the theatre of this new war, cost pressures placed on the military exploits of various nations means the average soldier suddenly just got more expensive, not to mention the cost of aircraft, and an acceptable loss is no longer acceptable at all. A more inexpensive alternative is required, such as an automated drone.

Wherever this machine chooses to cast its gaze, men are killing other men for one reason or another, damaging the very soil beneath their feet that they battle so hard for the right to walk on. And that, my friends, is how we walk freely into a cybernetic insurrection against mankind!

Personally, I don’t rate the chances of a Terminator reality at all — robotics is, in many ways, a technological dead end. And in time, robotics will eventually be overrun by exceptionally versatile and massively more cost effective genetic developments, which if you’re looking to create a super soldier, the genome is where your money needs to go.

So why robotics at all? What better way to learn about how a thing like the human body works than to create one. Or a spider. Or an ant. Or a horse. The list goes on. Robotics offers scientists and engineers insights into the kinematics of nature, which is an essential area of learning. Right now, many robots are to be found rolling around on wheels, but that simply because it’s cheaper that way.

So don’t worry about Judgement Day. Now as for a rise of the planet of the apes, well…

With each passing day, the earthquake and tsunami stricken nuclear reactors skirting the wrecked east coast of Japan bring into sharp focus the questions concerning the reliability of nuclear power. Could the events in Japan hasten development of “greener”, sustainable energy technologies?

First, let’s be clear — the events in Japan are quite unique and unlikely to be repeated any time soon anywhere in the world. That aside, the anti-nuclear protesters in Germany, planned prior to the Japanese disaster, pressed on with their case with a much, much stronger argument on their side, forcing German premier Angela Merkel to declare a “three-month moratorium” on the proposed renew of 17 nuclear plants. Meanwhile in the USA, they choose to press on with nuclear power.

But at what cost? Here, the cost is unlikely to be a human one, certainly not directly. But at a cost to the future of energy production and the environment. History, at times, makes for an excellent observer — whenever there’s an oil crisis, attention turns to alternative energy sources. And right now, not only are we in the grip of a growing oil crisis, but a crisis of conscience regarding the use of nuclear energy.

Nuclear — not a clear answer to the energy question?

As a technology, we never really come to terms with efficiency and containment. And then there’s the reliability of such technologies in the face of natures’ fury. Speaking of which, Mother Nature did an excellent job of showing mankind how to create a reliable, stable nuclear reactor, in the African nation of Gabon, at the heart of the Oklo uranium mine, operating reliably for several hundred thousand years, some 1.8 billion years ago.

Can we emulate this natural technology? Almost certainly. In fact, there are those who’re working on doing just that. However, the problem is one of perception; people just don’t like nuclear power and what it’s capable of.

Now is the time to look to alternative energy technologies, such as solar, wave and wind power. But, we must be mindful of the impact we make on the world around us, and that in many cases, the principle technologies are often bought from the lowest bidders, as is often the case with wind power — if you buy cheap parts and low grade ball bearings, efficiency drops, as does public confidence.

Fossilized thinking versus energy innovation

I don’t think we lack innovations, what we lack is the political will to place sustainable and renewable technologies front and centre, and to fund these technologies appropriately and sufficiently. Right now, consumer electronics and gadgets are a growing burden on our electrical consumption, when this really needn’t be the case — we have the technologies to make our gadgets, to a degree, self sufficient.

There’s certainly a case to be made for instances of political stonewalling, heal-dragging and lobbying pressure from various energy consortia around the world who know only too well that a diverse portfolio of energy sources directly undermines their strangle-hold on energy production, provision and pricing. In short, the energy utilities fear a democrotization of energy production:

“In the short-term, as the myriad novel energy conservation and production technologies come on-line one by one, the utilities will start to hike their prices up. But over the long-term, they’re not going to be able to compete and people will, by then, be aware of the alternatives.

So all the efforts of the utilities to gouge the populous for what little energy we do use will only hasten our mass exodus towards alternative energy sources.”

And then there’s the spectre of “smart grid” energy technology, placing the power to distribute energy in the hands of everyone:

“I would also add that the demand from the domestic market for Smart Grid technologies will increase in the next two to three years. Why? Partly out of a ‘do good by the environment’ desire of people like thee & me, but mostly because energy costs are on the rise and we all want to cut costs where possible. Greater energy efficiency is as good a place to start as any.”

Power to the people

Recent events in Japan, however awful, could prove the necessary spark to initiate a swing towards renewable and sustainable energy technologies. But for this to work, pressure must come from the populous, to give power to the people…

When we imagine far off worlds, or make predictions of a future beyond the horizon of present day science and technology, and then make good of those imaginings, we create a self sustaining loop. By dreaming in the here-and-now of an as-yet unseen future, we change the present…

Beginning here in the present with the dreamers, their imaginations reaching out into the future, they pluck the plausible and the speculative from those imaginary worlds, and then return them to our present, to inspire and influence not just other dreamers, but those who have the power to make those dreams come true.

As the landscape of the present then begins to resemble these imagined future times, the process continues, bringing more of the future back into the present — again and again and again. Just imagine, perhaps like the dreamers.

The origins of the future

Somewhere in northern Iraq, around 4850 BC — some 6,861 years ago — farmers settled and tended the land and their animals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest example of farming. This one event marked a turning point in human history; technology and society converged in a truly meaningful way for the first time. Man now had the ability to manipulate the land, to cajole animals into tacit domestication, to build a variety of tools to break, carve, cleave and dig the very land beneath feet and hoof.

Prior to this, the extent of mans forethought extended only as far as the ranging beasts they would hunt, where they would anticipate their every action and inaction, in an attempt to kill them with spear and arrow. Now, rather than await the seasonal tides and swathes of migrating animal herds, swarming across the great plains of central Africa, man could coral them in pens and manage them as a cyclical, controlled resource, to ride out the harder times.

Also, man could look further ahead and plan for entire seasons, by planting crops to coincide with the cyclical patterns of nature and seasonal rain fall. All of this represented the most fundamental change in the direction of our species, one that those early agrarians simply couldn’t have imagined the implications of. Or could they?

Might they not have imagined larger farms, with more land, more animals, and more children to help tend both land and animal alike? We can ourselves only imagine.

Thoughts of the future become facts of the now

Now let’s return to the future. Or, more precisely, the recent past, relatively speaking. Let us consider those who imagined — authors such as Philip K. Dick, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, and Arthur C. Clarke. Or those behind genre-defining science fiction cinematic classics such as The Predator, Blade Runner and The Terminator. These people imagined our world, and worlds beyond our own many years hence. They imagined the subtle and supreme changes to human society that our technologies and our scientific advancements would bring.

In a sense, those writers and producers of science fiction novels and movies are conceptual time travellers, as their insights of what will be are brought back into the here and now, and often used as a basis for present day developments. There is an irony here. In other science fiction novels, those concerning time travel, the authors often speak of and warn against travelling back through time and interfering with events of the past. Yet do we not do the same when we imagine the future?

However, for any imagined worlds, spectacular scientific achievements and towering technologies to influence the fabric of our world of the now, they must influence the minds of people first. And so those authors whose ideas are most well read, whose ideas we exalt and hold aloft, it is their imaginings that we aspire to. Or perhaps, hasten to avoid.

Collectively, their readers and viewers are deciding, as if as a committee, which ideas are the most credible, or simply incredible. Their imaginings have fuelled the imaginations of younger generations, inspiring them to become the scientists and the technologists of the now, aspiring to build the world of tomorrow.

Alternately, what of those novels and movies whose ideas are equally amazing, but not nearly as well read and viewed? They need but the keen attention of one person of great influence and their ideas would also flourish — great influence can either rest in the hands of the collective, or the individual.

Would anyone have imagined building optical tweezers (which is essentially a scaled down version of the “tractor beam”), or mobile phones (also the realization of communicators) had someone not seen Star Trek as a child? In fact, we’re far closer to Star Trek technology than you would think.

Would the military be so eager to research invisibility for their soldiers vehicles and aircraft had someone not seen the movie The Predator?

Just how advanced would humanoid robotics be right now, had authors like Isaac Asimov, not written I, Robot and movies such as The Terminator not been produced?

In a very real and profound way, we are interfering with our present, by imagining the future, changing our time line as we go along. By imagining amazing science and technology, and having those ideas be accepted and blended into our cultural language, we place that most important thought into the minds of those with the will, the wherewithal and the raw talent to make good of the most important question of them all — “What if?”

Apple’s iPad is amazingly successful. The reasons for the success are there for all to see. But why can no one ape Apple’s success? Because what they’ve achieved is almost impossible to replicate, and I know why…

Yes, yes. It’s been an age since I last wrote anything here. I have a life, you know. And a business, too. Both of which are showing promising signs — I have a woman and several eager clients to keep me honest these days.

So my time is somewhat stretched of late. That said, matters surrounding the iPad have, of late, culminated in several thoughts, which I disclose here.

What if Apple made automobiles?

“Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” — Steve Jobs, Apple CEO.

But the analogy doesn’t stop there. The BMWs, Mercedes’s and the Porsche’s of this world differentiate themselves from every other automotive manufacturer not just through engineering prowess, but through heritage, design and experience.

And when I say experience, I mean the experience thee and me get when we buy one of their cars (personally, I’m an Audi man). And so it is with Apple and their gleaming line of products — you buy not just a product, you also buy an experience.

Of all the products that summon up this experience, the iPad is the one that best extols the value, prompting owners to almost exalt with spasmodic reflex, such is their enthusiasm. Now you tell me what other company engenders such gushing, fawning adulation? A handful, perhaps, including the aforementioned BMW’s, Mercedes’s and Porsche’s. Apple are at least atop that venerable and much venerated heap, and that’s for sure.

It’s that old Mac magic!

This experience is neither by chance or mistake. No, if you take a deeper look, Apple have about them an almost conspiratorial cloud of secrecy, casting a wide vail across their actions. Such is their secrecy, that they force upon people the only recourse available to them; one of rumour and hearsay. A modern day mysticism, if you like. Why do this? Just like the Coca-Cola Company, they’re protecting the magic from preying eyes, and preventing the competition from getting even the slightest glimpse of what they’re working on.

There are those who regard Apple’s our-way-or-the-highway attitude as a negative, variously referring to their way of doing things as a “walled garden”, within the confines of which all may be beautiful and magical, but strangely restricted and confined. Then there are the consumers who really couldn’t give a shit either way, so long as their iPad / iMac / MacBook Pro / iPod / iPhone just does the damn things it’s supposed to.

See that? There’s the trick; Apple understand the consumer and what they want. Give them what they want, and not one thing more. As for the rest. Ring fenced.

This wasn’t always the case. Apple sold the box, which was closed. But people didn’t want that. Back in the day, they wanted the box, but they also wanted to know what was in the box, and how to change things around. Back in the day, Microsoft ruled and their ecosystem thrived.

The experience Apple offer is truly end-to-end and seamless, to the point of appearing to not be real. They have their iTunes Store, the iMac, the App Store, their iPhone, their iPod Touch, their MacBook Air and Pro, and all work together as if they were grown from seed into siblings, not hewn from metal and plastic.

Yet their competitors still do not understand the way Apple work, nor do they either understand or appreciate the immense value of the seamless nature of how Apple’s product fit together flush, like the draws and doors of a fine period cabinet.

It’s like comparing Apples and Olufsen’s

Google brag about activating more Android mobile devices than Apple, that their mobile operating system will overwhelm that of Apple and their iOS. Meanwhile, headquartered in sun-drenched California, Apple ease back in their expensive designer leather recliner office chairs in air conditioned rooms and watch a miscellany of financial Key Performance Indicators rise and rise in lock step with their bulbous share value, as the no longer anecdotal “halo effect” takes, well, effect.

You see, Apple aren’t in the same race as everyone else. You could argue that Apple aren’t even in a race at all. Their aim is to forge and build about them a self-sustaining ecosystem of high quality goods that work together seamlessly, and to become the Bang & Olufsen of consumer electronics. You don’t know who Bang & Olufsen are? Exactly.

Let the Google’s of this world dominate the mobile device market. They concern themselves only with unit numbers, while Apple concern themselves with the experience felt by the people they appeal to, watching as they buy one Apple product after another from their own Apple Stores all over the world.

Right now, the iPad still has no real competitor, even a year after inception. And for those emerging into this nascent market, they will have the iPad 2 to contend with by the beginning of March.

But in reality, Apple don’t have competitors, because none of them can replicate the experience, and the people buying a tablet device from some other manufacture are most likely doing so for very different reasons to those buying an iPad. People buying an iPad do so for the experience, not because they want something cheap. But the irony is, Apple have met with a price point the other manufacturers are struggling to meet.

So how did Apple do the iPad on the cheap. They probably didn’t. The difference here is in the infrastructure. Apple give away huge amounts of software for free, or for hugely discounted prices because they now have the unit sales to absorb the difference. And the same scale of economics works for the iPad and the associated hardware components.

For a start, Apple are not having the cost of the iPad marked up by a huge standing army of resellers, as for the most part, people buy Apple products direct from Apple, either through their website or from a bricks & mortar retail store — Apple have an infrastructure to die for.

Replicating the Apple experience

Do you really think Google can replicate the experience? Not a chance. The charges against Google’s Android are long, with regards to the lack of media cohesion — there’s no iTunes, nor is there anything similar, and if there was, it certainly doesn’t enjoy the same brand awareness. And with so many people using iTunes, this places pressure on the likes of Google to either create their own, or put their weight behind the market leader, possibly alienating antagonizing the rest of the developers.

Do you really think Microsoft can replicate the experience? Not a chance. Because of the way their business operates, everything is a meandering, quasi-religious homage to their Windows franchise, and all of the attendant baggage that comes with such things. Anyway, which mobile device would that be? Depends on which new strategy Microsoft are presently working on, which is anyone’s guess these days.

What about Hewlett-Packard and Research in Motion? They’re too busy with their business customers to care about consumers. Yes, they’ll pay lip service meeting consumer needs, but neither have the strength in depth Apple have and must therefor focus their efforts on their core market, which is corporate business.

So who could replicate what Apple are doing? Sony. But the last time I checked, they couldn’t tell you the difference between their own arse hole and their elbow. Sony have the technical know how and they know what makes the experience. But they have also completely lost the plot, which just so happened to have coincided with Apple taking their lunch, when they released the iPod way back when, killing off the Walkman line of portable music devices.

Apple are unassailably strong and it’s difficult to see who can compete with them. But things change. We all know this. Steve Jobs looks two meals away from death, and he ain’t eating a bacon and egg sandwich any time soon; him being a vegetarian.

Right now, Apple are enjoying their moment in the sun, and good luck to them. As far as I’m concerned, long may that last…

We humans are limited only by our imaginations. Or are we? Lord Rees reckons limitations of human brain mean we may never understand the secrets of universe — human evolution may make fools of all of us…

There are those amongst us who are gifted with prodigious mental faculties that far exceed those of normal human beings. No, I’m not talking about childhood prodigies’ who waltz through university before the age of ten. No, I’m talking about an even smaller minority of people, those who often struggle or even find impossible the task of holding down a conversation, who are challenged and left vexed by simple numeracy and are often in long-term care — here, I’m talking about prodigious savants.

These are people, truly rare individuals, who have quite exceptional talents in mathematics, art and music. Such are their talents, they are often the subject of intense scrutiny by cognitive scientists and neurologists the world over. However, their condition is poorly understood.

Imagine, if either you will or even can, a person who can multiply huge prime numbers and recite Pi to tens of thousands of places, or a person who can listen to a single composition of music once and then play it back note perfectly, or a person who after but a single glimpse of a face, landscape or a building can sketch or paint a perfect likeness. However, often their gifts are enshrouded in a troubled in mind, not clear or free to express cogent thoughts or articulate questions of their own.

Quite aside from the oft-associated crippling mental (and subsequent behavioral) shortcomings, they hint at something truly phenomenal and beg the obvious question: what if a “normal” person had their abilities? This is not an unreasonable question, nor is it a question that will rest long without an answer. This I am sure of.

Lord Rees is not wrong, in so far as the present generation of the human race. As a species, we are on the cusp of something remarkable. Right now, we have about us the rules and laws of nature, but what we lack is not a further understanding of mathematics, but a deeper sense of intuition. We stare into the ink black of the universe and recoil at the sight of the monumental cosmological conundrums that we wrestle with and lament their complexity.

We have seen patterns of breathtaking simplicity emerge from numbers, such as the Mandelbrot set, the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio. We have marveled at our achievements yet still we do not fully understand. But someone will. The human brain is evolving.

They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. This may be more true than the oft-said phrase might hint at. Consider the greatest minds in the arts and sciences, many of them have been troubled, withdrawn and eccentric. Perhaps we’re seeing the faltering hand of mother nature as she attempts to extend our mental mechanisms, trying to balance social skills and towering intellect, with prodigious savants being the most extreme example.

Right now, our minds are subject to a sensorial torrent of information and our minds are being conditioned to manage that ebb and flow of information with greater proficiency and efficiency. Are our children not the answer to our problems? We should expect the human brain to adapt further. We should also expect soon that young person to ask questions of the impossibly complex firmament and then set about answering them.

Of the the more than six billion people alive right now, out there somewhere is that person waiting to happen. And when they do, they and those like them will usher in a new era in human evolution — their answers to our questions will change everything for everyone…

Recommended reading

• Humans are a greater threat to life on earth than any alien race
• The myth of human consciousness and accidental AI
• DNA hardwired into the universe
• Humans are not unique