Although the analogy is flawed in a number of ways, the most interesting to me is this:

Google does not give a crap about whether current hardware will be able – at all – to run the next version of the OS.

You could certainly say that Microsoft, in the early days of Windows, was pushing the performance envelope.  There were definitely computers being sold that wouldn’t be able to run the next version of Windows – my lowly 33MHz 486SX with 4MB of RAM needed a lot of coaxing to run Windows 95.

But at the time, that computer was a few years old already – at least three.  And it did indeed run Windows 95, albeit slowly.

On the other hand, the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab are just over a year old.  Yet, they will never receive the Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Maybe it’s unfair of me to say Google doesn’t care about this; I’m sure somebody there cares.  But apparently, as a team, they don’t care enough to make sure that Samsung can get it running on a phone that is, at worst, only one generation behind the current.

And maybe that’s part of why the Google/Microsoft analogy is so flawed.  Fundamentally, the market for phones and tablets is different than that of computers in the 90′s.  So, perhaps a more forward-device looking approach is better.

Perhaps not.  I like that my wife’s iPhone 4, clearly a generation behind, runs the latest iOS.

Macrumors links to what they characterize as a dubious claim of an updated iPod Touch with 3G capabilities.

I’d agree this is dubious for a single reason: at that point, I don’t think they’d call it an iPod Touch anymore. Here’s what I think we could see from Apple: no more wifi-only versions of the iPhone or iPad.

At some point, cell network communication chips just don’t cost enough to justify making a separately designed product without them. My theory is that if you want what today is an iPod Touch, you can buy a cheap iPhone. It’ll still be contract free, it’ll still be cheaper – a cheaper, thinner design, that looks like today’s Touch possibly using the last-gen chip instead of the latest-gen. Maybe it doesn’t have a retina display.

And it will have 3G. If you want, you could turn on cell data (voice as well if you want), if you don’t it will still be an iPod Touch.

Carriers could use this model as your cheaper, pre-paid iPhone. Instead of selling the 3Gs, this could be subsidized to cheap-or-free.

Right now, Apple maintains some level of production on three models: the iPod Touch, the 3Gs, and the 4. If you can eliminate one of these lines, still provide a cheap entry-level iPhone that can do double-duty as the Touch – and can become a phone at any time – it seems like it makes sense to do that.

I’ll grant that’s probably crazy. And maybe with LTE on the horizon, you wait until you can do this same thing with LTE instead of 3G. That then also gets rid of your separate Verizon model. On the other hand, maybe you simply use a dual-mode chip.

Just some crazy thoughts from a fanboi.

Today, things have changed.

For today, friends, I’ve downloaded Hulu Desktop.

I’ve got to say, the app itself is exactly what I was waiting for – gorgeous, gives me access to all the same content as the site.  I’ve still got ads to deal with, but I get the content free, which is an acceptable trade-off to paying for the content on iTunes.  And the actual app itself is far more beautiful, and usable from a remote, than the Hulu site itself.

Now, I’ve still got that same DSL connection that I had when I wrote the original post.  I’d really love to see the Hulu app be able to pre-cache the episode – especially if I “subscribe.”  Get the first 5 minutes of each episode so that I can watch anything I’ve subscribed to, and watch it immediately.  If my DSL connection becomes a problem for the Hulu Desktop app, I’ll scrap it.

“What can Hulu do about my internet connection,” you ask?  Well, here’s the situation: I also have a Blu-ray player with Netflix Instant Streaming built in.  Although I do get the lower end of the quality compression spectrum, I still get served.  It works well, the quality is good enough (read: not annoying, but not cinema, either), and I can count the times the picture has stuttered or rebuffered on one hand since January.  This problem has been solved, so hopefully Hulu solves it too.

And yes, I’d love it, AT&T, if you would upgrade your local switchboxes so I can get faster DSL.  That would be great.  We’d be best friends forever.  Ahem.

So thumbs up Hulu Desktop App, thumbs down AT&T until you upgrade your POTS network, and outlook unclear on the viability of Hulu watching in my home.

Rock & Roll, everybody!

This is yet another example in a long string of Apple’s forward-pushing of technology. USB, Firewire, and DVD were all formats or interfaces adopted by Apple slightly before their time. In each case, it was fairly clear that the industry would move in that directions – but Apple was an early adopter.

Sometimes, these transitions have come at a cost: the first Blue & White G3’s and the first iMacs dropped the 3.5” floppy drive – the same floppy that Apple first made popular with the original Mac. Interestingly, though they included the USB port, they couldn’t yet boot from a USB drive! You had to rely on CD or Firewire for booting something other than your hard disk.

More recently, the iPod has dropped support for the Firewire connector. I’ve got an iPod Touch and Shuffle which will charge via Firewire, but cannot sync to the computer save via USB. Firewire has been dying a slow death on the platform; mostly, I believe, because of iPod’s desired compatibility. Outside of DV and Audio hardware, Firewire has never really taken off. Most consumer computers don’t come with the interface in the stock configuration.

That’s not to say it isn’t a better interface – it is. But it’s also more expensive to implement, and the physical connector itself is larger.

DisplayPort has the potential to replace both the display connector, and Firewire. It has two-way communication in the spec, and the maximum theoretical throughput vastly exceeds the requirements for DV and Audio. Whether the new MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s support two-way isn’t clear, yet.

The disappointing fact, to me, is that the early-adopter nature of Apple has once again lead us into a corner where none of the pieces are yet in place. Only the new 24” Cinema Display can connect to the new laptops. In fact, that’s the only computer it can connect to – adapters do not yet exist to get a DVI, VGA, or HDMI output into the new Cinema Display. The Mac Pro’s do not yet have DisplayPort output.

The lack of adapters to get my current MacBook into the next generation monitor is unfortunate. I would love to buy the new display, but I do not (yet) want or need to upgrade my lappy. So while I’m excited about the new technology, I’m also temporarily a casualty of the upgrade war.