Apple and Microsoft do sometimes agree

In the computing world, Apple and Microsoft are often considered opposites. Microsoft makes software; Apple makes hardware (primarily). Microsoft sells to enterprises; Apple sells to consumers. Microsoft products are ugly and buggy; Apple products are beautiful and "it just works".

Yet they do agree on one thing: The center of the computing world.

Both Apple and Microsoft have built their empires on local, personal-size computing devices. (I would say "PCs" but then the Apple fans would shout "MacBooks are not PCs!" and we don't need that discussion here.)

Microsoft's strategy has been to enable PC users, both individual and corporate. It supplies the operating system and application programs. It supplies software for coordinating teams of computer users (ActiveDirectory, Exchange, Outlook, etc). It supplies office software (word processor, spreadsheet), development tools (Visual Studio, among others), and games. At the center of the strategy is the assumption that the PC will be a computing engine.

Apple's strategy has also been to enable users of Apple products. It designs computing products such as the MacBook, the iMac, the iPad, and the iPhone. Like Microsoft, the center of its strategy is the assumption that these devices will be computing engines.

In contrast, Google and Amazon.com take a different approach. They offer computing services in the cloud. For them, the PCs and tablets and phones are not centers of computing; they are sophisticated input-output devices that feed the computing centers.

That Microsoft's and Apple's strategies revolve around the PC is not an accident. They were born in the microcomputing revolution of the 1970s, and in those days there was no cloud, no web, no internet. (Okay, technically there *was* an internet, but it was limited to a very small number of users.)

Google and Amazon were built in the internet age, and their business strategies reflect that fact. Google provides advertising, search technology, and cloud computing. Amazon.com started by selling books (on the web) and has moved on to selling everything (still on the web) and cloud computing (its AWS offerings).

Google's approach to computing allows it to build Chromebooks, light-powered laptops that have just enough operating system to run the Chrome browser. Everything Google offers is on the web, accessible with merely a browser.

Microsoft's PC-centric view makes it difficult to build a Windows version of a Chromebook. While Google can create Chrome OS as a derivative of Linux, Microsoft is stuck with Windows. Creating a light version of Windows is not so easy -- Windows was designed as a complete entity, not as a partitioned, shrinkable thing. Thus, a Windows Cloudbook must run Windows and be a center of computing, which is quite different from a Chromebook.

Yet Microsoft is moving to cloud computing. It has built an impressive array of services under the Azure name.

Apple's progress towards cloud computing is less obvious. It offers storage services called iCloud, but their true cloud nature is undetermined. iCloud may truly be based on cloud technology, or it may simply be a lot of servers. Apple must be using data centers to support Siri, but again, those servers may be cloud-based or may simply be servers in a data center. Apple has not been transparent in this.

Notably, Microsoft sells developer tools for its cloud-based services and Apple does not. One cannot, using Apple's tools, build and deploy a cloud-based app into Apple's cloud infrastructure. Apple remains wedded to the PC (okay, MacBook, iMac, iPad, and iPhone) as the center of computing. One can build apps for Mac OS X and iOS that use other vendors' cloud infrastructures, just not Apple's.

For now, Microsoft and Apple agree on the center of the computing world. For both of them, it is the local PC (running Windows, Mac OS X, or iOS). But that agreement will not last, as Microsoft moves to the cloud and Apple remains on the PC.

Smart watches are watches after all

The wristwatch has been called the "first wearable computer". Not the smart watch, but the classic, mechanical, wind-up wristwatch. I agree -- with a reservation about pocketwatches as being the first wearable computing devices.

Apple made a big splash in the news this week, finally announcing their smart watch (among other things). Apple calls their product a "watch". Is it? it seems much more than a plain old watch.

Apple did the same with their iPhone. The iPhone was really a small computer equipped with wireless communication. Yet who wants to carry around a small computer (wireless or not)? It's much easier (psychologically) to carry around a phone.

Looking at our experience with the iPhone, we can see that iPhones (and smart phones in general) are used for many purposes and only occasionally as a phone. We use them to take pictures, to watch movies, to play games, to read e-mail, to send and receive text messages, to navigate, to calculate, to bank online, ... The list is extensive.

Applying that logic to the Apple Watch (and smart watches in general) we can expect many purposes for them. Some of these will duplicate or extend our phones (those small wireless computers): notifications of appointments, navigation, display of e-mail and text messages, and of course to tell the time. Smart watches will offer new functions too: payments at checkout counters, unlocking house doors (equipped with smart locks), unlocking automobiles (and possibly replacing the key entirely), exchanging contact information (virtual business cards), ... the list is extensive.

Smart watches will provide convenience. Smart watches will also add a degree of complexity to our lives. Is my watch up to date? Have I charged it? Is my watch compatible with a merchant's payment system? Does it have a virus or other malware?

We'll call them "watches", since the name "small computing device that I wear on my wrist" is unwieldy. But that was the same issue with the original pocketwatches and wristwatches. They, too, were small computing devices. (Some, in addition to telling time, displayed the phase of the moon and other astronomic data. In the twentieth century, wristwatches often displayed the day of the month.)

So, yes, smart watches are not watches. They do much more than tell time. And yet they are watches, because we define the term "watch" to mean "small computing device that I wear on my wrist". We have for more than a century.