The processor in your laptop or desktop is not the kind inside your phone or tablet, but that’s going to change. The lower power use processors in phones and tablets will be used in laptops, and the higher performance processors from current laptops and desktops will be shrunk down to be put in phones. In the phone market, app compatibility won’t be much of a problem. On your laptop, running a different kind of processor means that older apps won’t work.

Intel makes the traditionally desktop/laptop x86 processor, and a company named ARM’s self-titled ARM, or Advanced RISC Machine processors are found in low-power use phone and tablet devices. Intel has a stranglehold on the x86 market – it designs and sells hardware, and this has allowed it to gain a massive advantage in the ‘die shrink’ race, the measure of how small the circuitry is on the processor.  But how tiny you can make your circuits doesn’t matter if they use more power doing the same work.

ARM designs simpler processors, and sells those designs to other companies to make. Some companies pay more to be able to customize those designs – which is what Apple and Samsung do, amongst others. ARM processors can use almost no power when not under load, which the x86 processors struggle to do. Intel can make its processors ever smaller, but to compete it must lower idle power use, which is not easy to do.

ARM processors on laptops, tablets, and tablet/laptop hybrids running Windows can’t run older software. While more and more apps will be ported to the new architecture, things you’ve already purchased, or old apps that won’t be ported but you still need won’t be usable. You can tell which laptop/tablet is using ARM because it’ll be running Windows RT, not Windows 8. You’d be forgiven for calling it Windows 8 regardless, as most do.

There’s a rumor that Apple is considering a move to ARM in its laptops, which makes sense. If ARM processors keep their advantage in battery life over Intel’s x86, and traditional ARM tablets like the iPad run full apps like Office just fine (as they’ve been ported by now,) it becomes embarrassing for the laptop to have less battery life running the same software.

As it did with its last two processor architecture switches, there’ll be an Intel compatibility layer. Because that requires much more power than ARMs have now, Apple won’t switch for another 2-3 years, if it ever does. Intel won’t go down without a fight, and their race to make phone processors will lead to even longer battery life on laptops. Hooray for competition.

I’ve always thrown around the statistic that for an album or track bought from iTunes or AmazonMP3, an artist gets about 10 percent of that price. Usually, that would be a dollar per album. How true is this? And what about Spotify, with its terrible ‘every track makes money for the artist’ ads – how much money? We’re used to having all the music we want available for free and streaming services provide that legally, but are you helping the artist by using legitimate avenues, or just avoiding copyright enforcement penalties?

The truth about artist’s share of the sale price of albums is harsh – getting 10 percent would be a good deal. The amount is often lower – but at least there’s less cost taken by physical media and shipping so more can go to the artist than in the past. The rest of the sale goes to the distributor and record label.

When using on-demand streaming services, the artist gets a fraction of a cent per stream – Spotify ideally pays about five thousandths of a cent, but it’s often less. Streaming offers the opportunity for people who otherwise wouldn’t have bought the music to ‘contribute’ to an artist’s paycheck, but it still requires millions of listeners for that to be a significant amount of money.

And that’s for bands that are well-known enough to even have people stream their music. To free artists from this payment model, they need a different source of initial funding, so they can sell their music themselves without being contracted to a music label.

You might have heard of Kickstarter – a crowd-sourcing website that allows for interested parties to chip in at the ground floor of a project.  The party running the Kickstarter sets a goal amount to raise, and offer various goodies at different contribution amounts – often, one level of contribution will effectively be preordering. It’s a different source of capital for the musician, giving them freedom from labels, but it isn’t optimal for those lacking a trusting audience willing to each chip in a bit.

None of this helps with the problem of low streaming reimbursement, but it allows for real profit from album/track sales via sites like Bandcamp or CDBaby that take only 10 to 15 percent of the sale, not 90 to 95 percent. Many artists aren’t or contractually can’t be on these alternative services though. Contracts signed with major labels might have other forms of artist reimbursement than just royalties; regardless, signing to a label distorts the efforts of fans to pay artists for their work.

The answer to these problems certainly isn’t just to pirate your music, although this is all a wonderful justification to do just that. Paying for Spotify doesn’t do more than just using the ad-based version – the artist gets almost the same amount. That fee is to get rid of the ads, not to help the musicians. Using Spotify in any form isn’t some magical way to help the artist, and their ads saying so are a bit dishonest. If you feel bad for procuring music via piracy, you shouldn’t feel much better using a streaming service. It being ‘legal’ doesn’t make it fair.

Is the answer to buy artists’ t-shirts and other merchandise? Going to their concerts? Maybe yes on the t-shirts, but it’s unlikely you’ll travel out of state to go to their concerts if you’re not going to a music festival. Unless the artist self-releases music, only a portion of the money makes it to them. Nonetheless, that is what they make their living off of, and it’s unfair to say that we deserve their work for free. There’s no consistently good answer to this yet and we should keep in mind that when considering new, supposedly legitimate music services.

When you’re left with just the things on your device, you immediately know what of your data is in the Cloud – but how often does that situation occur? And is the cloud so simply defined as the applications you use requiring Internet access? Problems accessing your data can be from internet outages like we’ve experienced on campus, or on the other side in cases like data center outages. Websites hosted in New York went down due to Hurricane Sandy, but usually it’s a more temporary outage. We’re relying on the cloud to be safe in terms of hacker resistant security, too, and while that’s pretty much guaranteed privacy is not.

Advertising the cloud without explaining it leaves consumers to wonder what is being sold. The Onion investigates.

If you’ll be hosting all your data on a server somewhere, it needs to be in a safe location. Usually it is, but not everyone has the setup that Google or Amazon has with data backed up in several locations with each location built for maximum reliability. It’s an interesting fact that Amazon is not only a e-commerce site but also a provider of cloud services that can act as the backend that stores your images on Tumblr or your files on Dropbox, amongst other functions.

Explaining what else the Cloud is requires some concrete examples, although it’s essentially just server processor power and hard drive space providing functionality that you won’t have to do locally anymore. The Cloud is Gmail for email, Google Docs for word processing, Google Drive and Dropbox for backup. The Cloud is Blackboard, OWL and WebAssign – you go to their site, you can’t work offline.

The cloud is as interactive as the application it’s being used for or as dumb as just hard drive space off-site. The cloud is not free and if it is there is some reason for that, like Google’s ads. Someone has to pay for the server costs, directly or indirectly.

The cloud is certainly not as accessible as a local hard drive – if you need much from it. Even here on campus there is little bandwidth to go around sometimes, but we have more bandwidth per person than a home internet connection would even then. Using the cloud without anything stored or running locally isn’t feasible yet.

Streaming some things is doable though; it’s convenient and instantly gratifying, saving hard drive space and waiting time to download. Listening to a song on Spotify or Google Music, watching a movie on Netflix, looking through pictures on Facebook or grabbing a backed up document you need but don’t have with you – these are all essentially cloud services and they are possible without an extremely fast connection.

If you’d like to, you can pull down all of your things – let’s say you’ve lost your laptop. It’ll take forever to download, but it’s better than nothing at all. Unless you’re using software like Dropbox, a Chromebook, iPad+iCloud or some other device with comprehensive, frequent background backup, the idea of even spending the time to back up all your things is daunting. This technological shift to automatic backup is great for people who don’t back up their things on separate local storage. Remote storage is just part of the puzzle – interconnectedness is the end goal.

Our devices already can send a website to be opened automatically on the other, as in Chrome to Phone. They save our pictures to a server in the background – if you use an Android and Google+ your phones’ photos are synced onto the Google+ site where you can choose to publish them. If you have a iPhone, iCloud does a similar thing by mirroring your phones’ photos onto your computer.

If you use iCloud notes, Google Docs, or just save your Word files into a Dropbox folder it makes sure that if you lose a flash drive precious documents aren’t lost too. Losing your devices isn’t such a bad thing anymore. That’s the cloud, it’s already useful, you probably already use it.

If you’re worried about safety, using a reputable cloud provider ensures that they have redundant backups of your data, and that it’s well-protected from hackers by constant monitoring and the best safeguards available. As long as you have a good password, you’re very safe, if not from the government. Something to think about is that businesses wouldn’t use cloud services if they weren’t as secure as what they’d have locally.

It’s good to know what the cloud is really to make sense of the generalized marketing that you might see about it. These advertisements tend to not make any sense as no one can succinctly put it into words. Or they don’t even know, and the marketing is just to associate a struggling brand with a buzzword.

We’re probably in the golden age of technology right now. It’s not implanted in our bodies yet but despite that we are attached. To help us with our attachment, companies like Google and Apple are competing to make tablets with crisper screens, longer battery life and faster processors. Microsoft has officially entered the game now, with a tablet-friendly interface that is different from the standard grids of icons. Apple and Google are updating their devices more often, making it hard for users to stay up with the cutting edge.

Last week Apple took the unprecedented step of upgrading their tablet not after a year’s time, but after only 7 months. As much as we like the idea of having the newest and best, technology advances fast. Especially as we move towards physically integrated tech, we must get used to not upgrading so often.

Rooting ourselves in the present time to decide what we’re going to buy is getting tough. Either you buy things close to their announcement, or you prepare for something better to be released right after you buy yours.

One thing that people keep upgrading are tablets; is this justified for what is often called only a luxury device? Commentators often state that as a matter of fact. But for many people, buying a Microsoft Surface with its free copy of full Office changes that situation. Soon that will be no different than any other tablet as Microsoft Office for iOS and Android should be released next year.

With Office available, many will finally be ready to ditch their laptop for their tablet of choice. Google wants you to consider their tablet by putting premium components in it for very low prices. There is much less selection for tablet apps on Google’s Play Store in comparison to the App Store, but spending less and getting a better device could be worth it for many.

In the recent and upcoming weeks, Google will announce its plans for Nexus with the 4.7” LG Nexus 4 phone and 10” Samsung Nexus 10 tablet, Apple has already announced its iPad Mini alongside the newer New iPad and Microsoft will ask politely for you not to laugh at its interface for Windows 8 and to please give it a shot. It’s the end of a busy season of announcements, and I can finally stop writing about them.

Apple announced a thinner iMac and upgraded Mac Mini. My theory about the thinner iMac is that we are only a few hardware revisions away from a fully touchscreen enabled OS X. A thin and adjustable iMac will be its vector. That certainly isn’t happening yet as it as at Microsoft with Windows 8.

Windows 8 has many backend improvements. If you are keeping a keyboard and mouse, avoiding the major interface changes is possible; there are several Start menu replacements keeping ahead of Microsoft’s plans to patch them out. Examples are Start8, ViStart and Pokki. Windows 8 really isn’t that bad unless you get a Windows RT tablet and laptop. They cannot run ‘standard’ or preexisting Windows programs and programs can only be installed through the Microsoft App Store.

Microsoft is leading its flock of manufacturers with their well-built Surface RT tablet. Unlike my guess that the Touch or Keyboard Covers would be inexpensive, Microsoft wants ~$130 for them. Buying them with the tablet they’re only $100, but that’s on top of a $500 base price.

Obviously, they’ve tried to avoid underpricing their partner manufacturers – but this is reminiscent of their overpriced Xbox accessories. It’s not exactly a plan for market domination when there’s the equivalent of other companies making Xboxes in the other Windows device manufacturers.

Staying ahead of the game is getting easier and easier because rumors of upcoming changes are so accurate. We’ve known about the iPad Mini, new New iPad, Nexus 4 and more recently Nexus 10 for a while. Often we know weeks or months before a device announcement. Either keep up with rumors, or just purchase what you need and live with it. Buyer beware.

Screen size has increased on Android phones to the point of silliness. There’s a reason for a 5.5 inch screen on a phone and that is to use it with a pen, but Google doesn’t seem to be going along for that ride. It is sticking to a vision of a touch-only interface to which they’ve made significant improvements recently.

Many recent normal-sized Androids have suffered from manufacturers and cell carriers adding supposed improvements to phones. These  changes are not as functional as standard Android but do make them look unique from other phones. After manufacturers release the phone, those changes would require effort to add to new Android versions. The lack of Android updates means these phones miss out on new features and bug fixes.

Having users stuck on old versions leads to a problem for developers called fragmentation. Fragmentation refers to having to develop apps that support several distinct versions of the same operating system.

Before versions 2.1 through 4.1 there were missing features such as lock screen camera access, a task manager, re-sizable widgets, offline maps, Twitter and Facebook contact integration from Android, but they’ve been added now. Android’s standard interface is stylish and accommodating compared to its earliest implementations. Reasons for not using Google’s standard interface are slipping away.

To reduce fragmentation, Google will likely start certifying devices as Nexus phones. Until now, Nexus phones were just a limited-availability example that were released once a year. In order to present a coherent front against Windows Phone and the iPhone, Google might set guidelines that manufacturers can follow to label their devices Nexus.

Incentive for users could be free Nexus-only apps, movies, music and books on the Google Play store. Definite reasons to choose Nexus are guaranteed updates that arrive when released, not months after. If Google follows this plan, phones with gaudy interfaces like the Samsung Galaxy S III and the upcoming LG Optimus G will have to compete against similar devices with better software.

The Nexus version of the Optimus G will be the first device to come out under this program in a few weeks. If marketed well, Google has a good chance to get manufacturers to use stock Android more often and follow their major design choices. One of those choices seems to be huge screens, but used in certain ways.

One reason for using a 4.65 inch screen on last fall’s Galaxy Nexus is it allows for the back, menu and home buttons to be on screen instead of below. An example of why the Nexus certification is important is that even a year after the Galaxy Nexus, stubborn manufacturers still use hardware buttons, limiting the phone’s potential. On screen navigation buttons allow for change down the line; the menu button has already been switched out for an app-switch button.

Both Google and manufacturers feel that the virtual keyboard is easier to use on the bigger screen and that 720P HD or higher resolution can be fit easily into the larger size. Unfortunately, if you want a quality phone with a screen not over 4 inches your best option is an iPhone. That’s a missed market for Google and manufacturers. A market that is missed by the iPhone is a screen bigger than 4″ on a phone. Google doesn’t want to go above 5 inches. Above that point it offers the Nexus 7, which is not a phone. It is a tablet. It would be silly to hold a small tablet up to your face to make calls, right?

Brisk sales of the Samsung Galaxy Note say otherwise, and similar phones from LG are incoming. Offering a pen to draw or write on the screen is the justification for their size, but many purchasers might just need a bigger screen due to poor vision. Others just want to have one device instead of a tablet and phone. Regardless, Google seems uninterested in Note-style devices. If Nexus device certification succeeds and Google doesn’t add pen input to stock Android, there will be a divide. Nexus phones versus the excluded phone-tablet devices.

Initially, Facebook didn’t have ads. In “The Social Network,” there’s a scene showing the founders of the company having a conversation over drinks with a mentor figure. One of the points brought up is that before there could be ads, people had to be dedicated to the site so they wouldn’t just leave.

Once enough people were consistently using the site, subtle ads were introduced. Now, advertising is going to change again to be more prominent. There’s a new way to show ads based on what your friends have liked.

If you’re a Facebook user, you have probably already noticed these ads showing up in your news feed. Companies, celebrities and political or charitable causes can pay to have their pages advertised to the friends of people who have liked their pages. This is actually how it has been for a while.

The change is that ads are no longer just on the sidebar. They’re mixed in with the stream of statuses and photos. This is for consistency with the Android and iOS apps that can’t have a sidebar for ads. Now that ads can be front and center, your Facebook friends may ask, “So, you really like McDonald’s, eh?” If you’re the only one of a friend group who has liked a page that’s being advertised, your profile picture is shown right above an ad. When you pressed the like button for that company’s page, you probably didn’t think you’d be used like this.

Why is Facebook experimenting with such intrusive advertising? It turns out that their Initial Public Offering was not such a good idea. Going public means that stockholders can ask how you are going to make money. There’s a bit of panic going on as Facebook finds ways to make as much money as people thought they were already making.

Pressure from an angry group of investors who just lost money is likely the reason for the new type of ads. Facebook is always careful about pushing new advertising because if they go too far, it could scare away users.

Compared to its potential, Facebook isn’t making much money yet. A lot of hype helped them start off at a relatively high stock price. Their stock price dropped quickly after it became available. People had invested in their potential and it turned out that it wasn’t ready yet.

One of the actions they’ve taken since the IPO fiasco is remaking their iOS and Android apps from scratch. The apps are no longer in HTML5, which is web-code that’s good looking, customizable and reusable. This way of creating an app is limited by the speed of the browser backend made available for apps.

Each of these apps for mobile phones are now coded directly for their operating systems. They’re faster, more responsive and manage to look the same as their HTML5 predecessors. It’s a good reason to not just use the Facebook website in your smartphone’s browser.

Facebook’s HTML5 app might have been cheaper and easier to implement, but investing the time and money into coding the apps ‘natively’ makes for an improved experience. It’s important for Facebook to have people using the app, as ads cannot be blocked like they could be in a browser. ‘Mobile,’ as it is called so generically by Zuckerberg and other representatives at Facebook, is something they’ve fallen behind in.

What that means is that Google controls the ad market for smartphones and tablets, and Facebook wants that market from them. The advantage is indeed Facebook’s, with their massive amount of users and all the data they provide. Be aware of what you like.

It’s not commonplace to buy a cell phone outright in the U.S. You accept that your phone will cost somewhere between nothing and $300 and sign a two-year contract to get it.

Buying a phone outright and using a prepaid plan like StraightTalk could cost less overall even though the initial cost is higher. A shiny new iPhone 5 or Galaxy S III is $600 or more for you or your service provider to just buy. Your initial savings are made up by the monthly fee over the 24-month contract.

This monthly fee was always based on tiers of limited minutes for talk. Data was available for $15 to $30 per smartphone line. Unlimited texting was usually $30 per family. Unlimited talk was unreasonable because it cost $60-80 per line, so most went for a $70-100 plan that added just $10 per line. So why are unlimited talk and text now included by default?

If not already, it will soon be feasible to use data to power all traditional phone functions. The only way it makes sense for a consumer to continue using carrier phone/texting is if those services’ data-using equivalents were no longer a cheaper substitute.

These alternatives are already out there, there just aren’t data-only plans. Skype and Google Voice offer personal numbers that can be dialed and texted to and from. While not available in Alaska yet, it is also possible to port your number to them.

While it may seem that you are getting a good deal with included unlimited talk and text, it’s at the cost of choice. Cell phone carriers do not want to become a dumb pipe, a service from which you buy just data. Charging for features was a very lucrative business, and in the absence of that requiring voice/text keeps prices high.

Text messages were created as a way to piggyback on phone status updates that were sent over cell networks just by the phone being on. Being charged $30 for unlimited or 15¢ per text for something that already happens was almost robbery. Charging for minutes is one thing, as making calls uses radio spectrum of which each carrier only has a certain amount. Buying more is expensive and might require changes to towers and new phones to take advantage of it. Spectrum scarcity is part of why data is so expensive. 4G is important because each user takes up less of it.

Kids running up huge texting bills is a thing of the past, but there’s a new way to have surprisingly high bills.

Verizon and AT&T now offer Shared Data Plans. These include unlimited talk and text. The increment to increase cost is in amount of shared data. If one person uses too much and pushes over the limit, others’ usual data consumption will be in overage at $15 a gigabyte. Not giving some people on the plan a smartphone is an option, but unlike the old $10 it’s not much cheaper at $30 per line. Carriers are encouraging smartphone use. Shared and non-unlimited data is the new way to have overages. At least providers are diligent about notifying via text when you approach the limit.

Per line cost is not a good deal at $30-45 a line at AT&T or $40 at Verizon – imagine paying $230 a month for a family of four at AT&T for just 4GB of data. As the possibility of charging for features goes away, base prices have increased tremendously.

We’re continuing the tradition of wanting to pay less for our phones to start off with, so cell providers can screw us on long term pricing. Alaska Communications’ new 4G plans which share data are even more expensive than the national carrier rates. While carriers may be increasing network speeds and coverage, that seems to be the only way they’re competing.

The idea that you should just choose a different option is a joke when they all offer the same plans. Hopefully, prices will change in response to increased competition in our state and pressure from Sprint and T-Mobile in the lower 48. If they don’t, it’s worth considering prepaid plans.

If you have a tablet or you’ve used one recently, you may have noticed that they are about as thin as a laptop screen. Manufacturers see an opportunity with this and are producing tablets that have a ‘keyboard dock’ that make them into pseudo-laptops. As part of the push for Windows 8 later this month, a whole wave of ‘laptops’ with removable screens will be available. Also, Microsoft is producing its own hardware for the first time. The keyboard for Microsoft’s 10 inch tablet, called the Surface, isn’t exactly a dock. It’s different and cheaper, and may have a significant impact on the tablet world.

Microsoft feels that its longtime hardware partners need a standard to meet or exceed, and instead of suggested guidelines it’s entering that market as a competitor. It’s similar to Google’s occasional production of Nexus phones. Google doesn’t intend to dominate the market with them, but to set up something that its software licensees will try to beat.

It’s still unknown how Microsoft will market its tablet. It’s likely to be a superior device than what the competition will release, but for the same price or even lower. If properly advertised and kept in-stock at retailers, it will be hard to beat.

A move like that might alienate manufacturers who have long partnered with Microsoft. They might consider building Android tablets. Unlike Android, Windows licenses cost money and it’s hard to compete against a company that doesn’t have to pay for them.

Transformer tablet being removed from its keyboard dock. Credit: asus.com

Prices for the Surface will be approximately $400 for the basic version, and around $700 for the Pro version. This isn’t cheap like the $200 Nexus 7 from Google, but if considered against a laptop or the iPad it is very competitive.

Asus has already perfected the make-a-tiny-laptop approach. At first glance it appears to be a laptop running Android with a trackpad and keyboard. But you can undock the screen, which is then a tablet on its own. These are aptly branded as Transformer tablets. Many manufacturers have followed their lead, with a tablet for which you can buy a keyboard dock with extra battery or storage.

Microsoft knows that selling a tablet for $400 and then having a $200 keyboard sold separately isn’t going to have the market associating Windows tablets with having a keyboard. No one will think these Windows 8 tablets are any more special than the iPad for real work.

But that’s what they want to impart. No one wants to only use a ‘virtual’ or on-screen keyboard to type an essay, after all. Their approach is to have something like the ‘Smart Cover’ that Apple has sold since the iPad 2. This provides a flipover cover that magnetizes to the tablet, covering the screen when not in use.

A Microsoft Surface – On left, the tactile keyboard. On right, the touch keyboard. Credit: microsoft.com/surface

Brilliantly, Microsoft has put a keyboard and trackpad onto their version of the Smart Cover. Since this doesn’t have a battery or anything else that would add significant cost, it will be priced at $40-50 or just bundled with the tablet. Unlike bulky cases with a keyboard for the iPad, or separate Bluetooth keyboards, it is physically connected. You can remove it whenever, but keeping it on means that when you need it you have the convenience of a laptop. There are two versions, one with tactile keys and one with gooey touch keys. Both have a trackpad for mouse control.

Microsoft hopes that this will provide a good compromise for consumers not ready to ditch the comfort of Word and Excel with a keyboard and mouse, but would like a tablet for its portability and long battery life. All kinds of options for hardware type and size will be available, but so far none are quite like Microsoft’s Surface tablets. Mostly, they use the Asus formula of a separate and pricey keyboard dock. Windows 8 comes out on Oct. 26, and alongside it the Surface tablets. Are you interested?

Those of you with an iPhone 4S might have had 4G up by the reception bar for a while now. You also may have heard that this isn’t really 4G. What is this mystical 4G and why do people disagree about what it means? What is the advantage of the extra G and how are we getting it before much of the Lower 48 does?

4G is a technical term describing a wireless network that can download at speeds of up to 1 gigabit, which is currently infeasible. The wireless technology is there, but there is only so much wired capacity that can be run to each tower. Consider that the fastest home broadband internet connection available in Alaska maxes out at around 20 megabits a second. That’s 50 times slower than the original 4G standard.

So neither 4G’s are real 4G, but that’s nitpicking. What we’re calling 4G is actually HSPA+ and LTE.

HSPA+ has been in Alaska for over a year. It’s faster than standard 3G, but it’s more of a stepping stone as far as wireless infrastructure upgrades go. When you see 4G without also seeing LTE, this is what you’re using.

LTE is short for Long Term Evolution.  It’s as close as we’re going to get to the real deal in the next 5-7 years. It uses less radio spectrum, so more people can use the same tower. It also has a lower ‘ping,’ a measure of time for response.

HSPA+ might have nearly the same speed on paper, but it doesn’t have the real life advantages of 4G LTE.

LTE is coming to Alaska for GCI, Alaska Communications and MTA customers, and is already in Anchorage for AT&T. When Verizon debuts in the state next year, they will start off with LTE coverage. MTA will be using Verizon 4G.

Alaska Communications and GCI are partnering up, and will sell phones that use service from a new company called the Alaska Wireless Network. This company will control all of Alaska Communications and GCI’s radio spectrum licenses, ‘backhaul’ which is the internet lines to the towers and the towers themselves. The longtime rival Alaskan companies teaming up means that they can collaborate on the costs of network expansion, and truly compete with the national companies.

There are basically three wireless competitors now: AT&T by itself, the Alaska Wireless Network consisting of Alaska Communications with GCI and MTA with Verizon. Technically all the companies will compete with one another, but there will be those underlying factors.

Each LTE network uses different frequencies than the other, and voice is still transferred over the old 3G networks. Phones will not be transferable from one network to another yet. But this will only be for the first few years, until phones are manufactured that cover all the LTE frequencies and use the same voice standard.

The advantage for consumers of standardizing cell phone networks is that an off-contract phone can be taken to whichever company offers the best deal. This is how it has been in Europe for the last decade, and their phone plans are cheaper with more variety.

We’re very lucky to have LTE in the state at all, as it isn’t common everywhere in the US unless going through Verizon. With Verizon entering the fray, AT&T’s recently rebuilt Alaska network already enabling LTE in Anchorage with much of the rest of the state to follow, as well as Alaska Communications and GCI teaming up, Alaskans are about to experience a leap in mobile technology. Hopefully, alongside that will be competition that is unseen anywhere else in the US.

At some point, many people have owned a Nokia phone. Probably not recently, because the giant Finnish cell phone manufacturer took its time moving into the modern smartphone market. Why aren’t there durable, inexpensive and simply built Nokia phones running Android? Samsung, HTC and LG occupy the price range where Nokia should be competing. None of them build a phone quite as well. So, where’s Nokia?

Stephen Elop, the former head of the Business Division of Microsoft, is now the CEO of Nokia. At best, it’s suspicious for an upper management person to leave Microsoft and have their new employer Nokia implement a plan that takes upon itself the entirety of the risk. Nokia’s new strategy is make or break because every alternative has been dumped. The company now makes Windows Phones, and not much else.

Nokia Lumia 900 image from the nokia.com website.

Nokia’s fate is now intertwined with Microsoft, whose bottom line is barely affected if Nokia fails. Nokia has laid off 15,000 workers, shut down its last factory in Finland and given overall control of their software away. The whole company depends on Microsoft’s mobile phone ambitions.

Nokia was actually the company behind some of the first smartphones, running the Symbian operating system. Symbian was showing its age by the release of the iPhone and Android. Nokia took too long to move forward from Symbian.

The successor to Symbian was a Linux smartphone system called Meego, which was developed in-house. The phone that was planned to showcase Meego looks almost the exact same as the company’s first Windows Phones. It was released quietly internationally, not in the United States at all and was then quickly forgotten.

Nokia, is known for its widely available cheap and durable third-world friendly phones. The company cannot stay profitable from its basic or ‘dumb’ phones, but they can subside off of them for the time being.

Microsoft can’t save Nokia if the Windows Phone platform fails. Nokia and Microsoft are both in a tough spot in this field, as Microsoft entered the market three years after the iPhone and two years after Android. But this is Nokia’s only field, and Microsoft would be able to survive a failure of their phone business. There aren’t any Nokia Android phones, though they would probably sell well. 

The whole setup depends on people wanting Windows Phones, but so far not many do. That’s too bad, because Windows Phone 7 is a slick operating system. The new version, Windows Phone 8, shares more than just a number with the mainline Windows. An app written for the phone can technically be run on the computer and vice versa. It’s nearly guaranteed that by the time Windows 8’s app store is well populated, so will the one for the phone. That solves the problem of ‘no users, no apps’ that Blackberry and HP faced with their phones.

Since Nokia no longer produces the main software, they focus on a few Nokia exclusive apps such as Nokia Music and City View. One of the only signs that Microsoft is as deeply invested as Nokia in this relationship is that their Bing Maps service is now called Nokia Maps, and uses some of Nokia’s mapping technology.

Nokia could find a new place as the premier Windows Phone manufacturer. The tie-in with Windows 8 and their potentially huge market share would keep Nokia a profitable and successful company, but it seems more likely that the Windows Phone will fail and take Nokia down with it.

The iPhone 5 will be announced on Wednesday, Sept. 12. It is likely to be released sometime in the following two weeks. Rumors say that the long awaited iPad Mini will not be shown until October. The iPhone 5 will be bigger lengthwise than its predecessor, and the iPad Mini will be smaller all around as its name suggests. In a market where phones with nearly five inch or larger screens are becoming the rule, a 3.5″ inch screen will no longer be enough to compete. The iPad Mini isn’t just for the purposes of being easier to hold and transport. It will counteract Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Amazon’s new range of Kindle Fire tablets.

Each company has different motivations for setting pricing. Amazon, like Apple, wants their device to showcase its media and app offerings. Amazon doesn’t try to profit from each device sold like Apple does. Production of an iPad might cost almost $200 less than it costs to buy in a store. Amazon uses ads to cover that part of the device price, which is dedicated to research and development costs and profit. Amazon’s Kindles only show ads as you turn the device on, or on their home screens,this sacrifice lets them offer a $160 tablet.

Google uses ads to subsidize its tablet too. Since Google controls Android, they can feature their advertisement platform in it. Overall sales of Android tablets have been low compared to the iPad. Google has the cash to sell a high-quality $200 tablet, ignoring profit and research/development spending. Amazon wants people to consume media from its online store. Google’s media store is essentially a bonus service, .

Google’s advertisements reside in apps and around the web. Their entire business is built on ads, while Amazon just uses ads as a tool.  The fact that Apple has finally decided to enter a device into the $250 range might be a response to these devices, or it could be that they’ve finally been able to get the cost of materials into their preferred range. A $250 iPad Mini might only cost $180 to make, and the device can be premium feeling, and relatively inexpensive without an ulterior motive or ads. As of late, Apple has really fixated on giving their devices a luxury feel while still considering the price.

The iPhone 4 was a significant departure in design from the plastic-backed 3G and 3GS.  At its release, the iPhone 4 was comparatively thin and light and felt like a premium device. Apple’s rule of reusing casing for another year and only changing the internals has allowed for Android manufacturers to catch up in size and weight and also device quality and feel. Apple will probably jump ahead again in these metrics with their iPhone 5.  Even if it is a slim profit now, it will eventually cost less to make.

In general, Android manufacturers have been growing the screens to massive proportions to allow for thinner phones. People like these giant devices despite the difficulty of fitting them into pockets. Acknowledging the market preference for big phones, Apple has decided to increase the size of the screen while keeping the same width, meaning the phone is taller.  The iPhone’s size was sacred, lasting through 5 revisions, so this is a surprising compromise.

Changing the screen dimensions means that for the first time the iPhone will be widescreen like most other modern smartphones, making it better for watching videos. The 4″ screen size matches the first Samsung Galaxy S from 2010, and the few recent non-iPhone devices that use smaller screens. By no means is the new or old iPhone’s size small – if one were to think back to before 2007, many of us were using screens that were at best two inches in size. It is interesting timing for the iPhone to become more like Android phones after the recent similarity lawsuit. It’s Apple sticking out its tongue.

This fall has been packed with press conferences and announcements of competing phones and tablets, and for once it looks like Apple is following the lead of others. It’s a turning point for Apple to appreciate market preferences and change to them.

At the end of this October, the latest version of Windows will come out. It is the result of Microsoft’s frantic effort to enter the tablet market.  They hope to take advantage of their position as the main computer operating system provider to introduce a fresh but jarring start screen.  This screen makes accessing applications easier to use with a touchscreen. It replaces the long-used start menu, and there isn’t an option to switch back.

It seems bizarre that Microsoft doesn’t allow for one to re-enable the start menu. Businesses, Microsoft’s largest group of customers, are always resistant to change as it could frustrate workers and decrease productivity. It seems the goal with this new software isn’t to keep businesses happy, but to target consumers.

There will be an App Store in Windows 8. The 30% industry standard cut of app sales might still keep Microsoft in the black even if all of their commercial clients do not upgrade. Having businesses upgrade to Windows 8 would be a bonus.

Windows 7 may stay in widespread use for a very long time. It is the last in the long line of ‘standard’ Windows. Many windows can occupy the screen at the same time, a setup known as the ‘desktop.’ Windows 8 is almost completely different. Despite the presence of an ‘app’ that acts just like the desktop on Windows 7, the intent is for you to use individual, separated, full-screen applications, and switch in between them. Windows 8′s desktop is just one of many apps.

Pushing all users into an uncomfortable new setup will make sure no one sticks to the old system out of habit. It will make sense for people to use the Windows Store to buy new, touch-friendly, full-screen apps. The apps on the store will be safe to use and easy to find. Most importantly, they will work as Microsoft intends. It is possible to use Windows 8 and its apps with a keyboard and mouse, but they are easier to use with a touchscreen.

When you want to launch another app, you jump back to the start screen, a grid of large, touchable rectangles and squares. Some show relevant information from their respective apps, some just icons and all show their names. Microsoft has no intention of directly copying or being left behind by the competition. Quite specifically, the iPad.

Apple’s iPad was bound to be a success, with people already accustomed to the iPhone. At the iPad’s release, many users complained that the iPad was just a giant iPhone. It’s really the other way around. The iPhone is a shrunken version of their early designs for a tablet. It was wise to test the waters, and make sure that people would buy this new form of technology. By the time that Apple released the iPad, users had learned the concept of apps and how there can be an array of different utilities for one device.

App developers spent several years practicing with the iPhone and were consistently rewarded for their efforts with a mass of customers willing to pay a few dollars for their work via the App Store. On the iPad, bigger versions of current iPhone apps found strong sales and new apps made specifically for the bigger screen were received warmly as well. Apple took a 30% cut from the price of an app, and thus set the industry standard.

Microsoft may have to pay developers up front to create apps to compensate for the initial lack of guaranteed demand. That money can be the substitute for the momentum Apple used to great effect, and will be remade with their cut of app sales. Microsoft wants the same success Apple found, and might be able to achieve it by targeting the massive amount of people who use Windows.

Samsung and Apple have been fighting a lawsuit over the usage of Apple patents. The lawsuit also deals with Samsung allegedly copying the iPhone’s icons and visual style when creating their Android smartphones. Android provides the base functionality of many phones, but Google does not produce hardware itself, just the software.  The case could affect Android users unless expensive licensing agreements are signed between Google and Apple or between Apple and individual manufacturers.

Apple brought consumer-friendly smart phones into reality with the iPhone in 2007. In response, Google began updating their Android prototype, what was then a Blackberry lookalike, to incorporate a touch screen. When the first Android phone went on sale in 2008, the Android software was not up to par with the iPhone’s.  Android was quickly adopted because Google allowed companies to use and modify the operating system for free. Apple wouldn’t let anyone else use their OS. The result: more new Androids are set up per day than iPhones.

Apple had initially been partners with Google, bundling Google Maps and YouTube with their first iPhone. Apple felt they could be the delivery method for Google services. Eric Schmidt, then-CEO of Google, was on Apple’s board of directors. That relationship ended quickly. The late Steve Jobs said he wanted an “all out thermonuclear war on Android.” Without directly attacking Google, Apple charged a legal crusade against any company producing phones using Android, which includes Motorola, HTC, and Samsung.

In 2010 Samsung launched a series of Android devices, known as “Galaxy S” phones. Lightweight, with beautiful screens, and adequate battery life, these phones could’ve been competitive by just running plain Android. However, Samsung made two significant design changes: they modified Android to make it look like the iPhone and the phone hardware looked similar to the iPhone 3GS. Samsung had led Google into a bad situation.

Samsung stood as Apple’s shining example of wrongdoing. Their lawsuit took two paths: asking for damages for copying their style and asking for damages for using techniques they had patented. Android’s interface, ‘home’ and ‘unlock’ screens, menus and such, don’t look much like the iPhone’s, but Samsung’s phones did. Many of the patents brought up were general to all of Android.

With this lawsuit, Apple could force removal of major features from new and existing Androids. Apple has a patent on ‘multitouch’ which includes pinch-to-zoom, and having a keyboard able to sense when two keys are pressed simultaneously. They also have a patent on manipulating lists as if spinning a physical wheel – known as kinetic scrolling. Other Apple patents cover in-device search, and slide to unlock.

One could argue that Apple is trying to kill off competition and that some of these features are generic. Regardless, certain Samsung phones were given trade injunctions this July, preventing import into the US until in-device search was removed from the code. The change was sent to existing phones via software update as well. While Android devices are often not updated, it is now possible for features to be ‘removed’ by the manufacturer post-sale. If Apple allows companies to settle and pay to license the features could stay. It is within Apple’s rights to not allow licensing at all.

On Aug. 24, the jury returned with a result of Apple winning over a billion dollars in damages. It gives legitimacy to their legal claims against other Android manufacturers, and against Google itself. How this outcome will affect users is yet to be seen.