Live from Las Vegas, it’s …

Having worked in radio years and years ago, I had a great time doing this CES interview on Chad Hartman’s show on WCCO/Minneapolis today. We talked tablets, phones, TV and weird tech. You can download it directly here or listen to the podcast on the station’s site.

 

Fractured Android leaves orphans behind

If tablets are the stars at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, then the headliner is Google, whose Android mobile operating system runs most of the devices getting so much attention this week in Las Vegas.

The iPad is still the king, but Apple isn’t here — as usual. This gives Google’s little green robot command of the spotlight almost by default. Nearly every major computer maker already has an Android tablet or is debuting one (or more) at CES; by the end of the year, Android will have grabbed a third of the tablet market to go along with half the smartphone market, analysts Piper-Jaffray projected this week.

But by mid-year, consumers will have to wade through a half-dozen different Android operating systems on tablets. Those on earlier releases will essentially be stranded — Google orphans left to rely on the cleverness of an already-thriving community of hackers who fill in the holes in Android on their own. Meanwhile, developers must weigh whether it’s worth the resources to bring out yet another version of their applications for yet another version of Android.

Hardware is back

The iPad, right, changed the game for manufacturers of mobile technology. Its simplicity helped create devices defined by what their hardware will — and won’t — let you do. Google’s Chrome notebook, left, has no obvious file system or desktop. The eLocity A7, center, is just one of dozens of Android-powered tablets that try to mimic the iPad’s intuitive look and feel. (John Brecher/msnbc.com)

When was the last time you referred to your computer as a “486-DX66”? When was the last time that you even thought about what microprocessor was beating at the heart of your PC/laptop/phone/game?

Computer processing has leaped so far so fast that sometime in the past decade it became commodified. Consumers no longer pay attention to what’s inside their devices because just about any computer they can buy is guaranteed to be far more powerful than they probably need for everyday browsing, storage and media.

This is odd if you stop to consider it. Think of it in terms of cars: Sure, there are gearheads who obsess over things like fuel injectors and cubic capacity, but normal humans just pick a general category and trust that whatever they buy has the appropriate engine for their needs and it will get them from Point A to Point B with the greatest efficiency.

What determines buying decisions are the personal choices drivers make that are peripheral to actual driving. You might be raising a family in the suburbs, so you buy an SUV with a DVD system to keep the kids occupied. Or maybe you’re single and looking, so a sporty convertible is more your speed, or you want to save the world, so you seek out a hybrid or even an electric car with no air-conditioning. If you’re like most people, you’re not interested in a turbocharged racing car to get you to the grocery story.

It doesn’t work that way with computers, which mostly come in two racing classes that all look alike, like Formula 1 (desktops) and NASCAR (mobile computers). The odds are you’re computing on the equivalent of a Ferrari when all you really need is a nicely detailed Honda.