It's nice to be right

Back in February this year, and earlier in September 2011, I wrote a couple of blog articles titled "Are you selling technology or services?" These posts put forward my opinion that Apple's strategy of tightly integrating its hardware and software had a vital third component; namely the services that people used on their iDevices. I wrote that Amazon seemed to be adopting this approach with the launch of its Kindle Fire. The Software Engineering Services Blog posted last week a piece called "Suddenly everyone wants to follow Apple's integrated hardware-software model," which describes how Google,  Samsung and Microsoft are now also trying to follow Apple's lead  by offering a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The blog post concludes by saying "Steve Jobs may be long gone, but his vision lives on and everyone suddenly wants a piece of it, but just because they each recognize the magic behind Apple's strategy doesn't mean each can successfully copy it or that the market will follow. And that is the real challenge these companies face." It's nice to make a prediction that comes true.

Did Roger Fidler invent the #iPad in 1994?

Roger Fidler with the iPad and his tablet 

An interesting video has surfaced on YouTube that shows Roger Fidler, University of Missouri program director for digital publishing, talking about a device for digital newspapers that looks very similar to the iPad. Moreover, you'll see in the video that many of the features of Fidler's tablet are very similar to the iPad and features of the Safari browser and magazine apps.
   Samsung, who is in patent infringement litigation with Apple, is claiming that since Filbert's tablet was in the public domain in 1994 Apple can't have patented the idea. However, before we all rush off and call Steve Jobs a conman and a plagiarist, we should appreciate that Fidler's tablet was only an idea, he never built them.

Alan Kay with the Dynabook

   If we want to find the real inventor of the iPad then Alan Kay of Xerox PARC can probably lay claim to having first invented the idea with his Dynabook in 1972, a small portable tablet with an intuitive GUI. However, like Fidler's tablet, the Dynabook remained just an idea until Apple built it and called it the iPad.
   
(skip in about 4 mins to see the tablet)

Flexible phones!

The news last week was full of rumours that Samsung were going to release a flexible bendy cell phone called the Galaxy Skin. Earlier this year Sumsung showed a bendable AMOLED display - so a bendy phone seems like the next step. However, it turns out the phone everyone had become so excited by is actually a design students' project and they put the Samsun logo on their concept to make it look more authentic. Sumsung have subsequently denied the rumours.
   However, that is not to say that scientists and engineers aren't working on flexible electronic devices. Nokia and scientists at Cambridge University are working on flexible and stretchable electronic skin that could in the near future become part of clothing (see the video below). Flexible batteries are underdevelopment and Samsung have already shown us a flexible screen. Soon perhaps we'll be wearing our smartphones, rather than carrying them - Apple rather than Armani.