Demotion of the PC, Promotion of the Cable (Part 2)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Apple's demotion of the "PC" (which they use to refer to their Macs) as just another device has many subtle repurcussions.  The most obvious is that the center of the diagram ends up being the charge & sync cable.  Normally this would be my typical blather- but I am convinced I am onto something. 

I think Steve Jobs, via Apple is going to target the cables next.  We know the Apple design- smooth edges, high contrast (silver/black), thin lines, and of course- fewer cables than most of the PC cousins.  Well, Patently Apple noticed this post the other day.

To sum it up, it's for a magsafe power/data cable.  That's the same cable type the macbooks use now.  Get it?  Imagine a universal cable that let you charge your mac, sync your mac to your iPad, charge your iPad, sync your iPhone to your mac... the list goes on and on.  There's surely a hat trick I am missing, but the benefit would be clear- you could travel with a mac & iOS device and need only one brick.  The brick could easily have multiple ports on it. 

Now here are some crazy possibilities:

• The ability to combine USB or Thunderbolt onto the charge cable
• The ability to sync over the powerlines in your house with a special charge adapter (the mac brick)
• "Tunneling" Thunderbolt over your powerlines.  Maybe not as fast, but far fewer cables.

This becomes increasingly clear when you look at a Windows laptop setup:

1. Power cord from laptop to brick (usually crumpled behind the laptop)
2. Power cord from brick to wall
3. USB mouse cable
4. USB phone charger or media player
5. USB for external hard drive

Now I am ditching several items to go along with the Apple Way, but imagine the direction:

1. Power cord from laptop to wall brick
2. Power/sync cord from iPhone to wall brick
3. iCloud for storage

Of course iCloud hasn't been anounced for that per se, but you see the direction.  #3 on the Apple side is not really a cable at all.  Go one step further with solar devices and you would not need a charge cable for the iPhone most of the time.

New Viper Mule Found in Downtown Phoenix

Some sweet shots of the new Viper, which I am guessing is still a mule given the body style.

What a cool idea for a notebook

I have always loved blank & graph notebooks, but this one got ordered tonight.

Network-enabled Circuits

This is an old release, but I just came across this a few days ago.  How cool is this?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/25/netduino-plus-earns-you-ethernet-and-microsd-an-approving-nod-f/

Essentially it's the ubiquitous Arduino platform, but instead of this running custom C++ or Basic, this little guy runs .Net.  .Net cannot live on an island, so the fact that they are shipping one with a built-in ethernet port is really, really cool.  Network-enabled devices get cheap for hobbyists.

Any ideas for uses?  I have a couple and plan to work on them this fall and post what I build.

Keep an Eye on Infrastructure

With an ever growing fear of China attacking & infiltrating our infrastructure, it's important to keep an eye on what's being presented at BlackHat this week.  The confirmation will be if you see the same topics covered at Defcon this weekend, where folks trade in corporate sponsorship for headline grabbing hacks.

If you have a smart meter, it's accessible via 2.4Ghz.  If you have a wireless water meter, it's wirelessly accessible too.  Big deal right?  Except one guy has already found exploits in PLCs (chips) which seems to be much like Stuxnet stuff.