With the recent unveiling of Google TV and rumors swirling of a pending cloud-based Apple TV, it’s interesting to see how both companies’ strategies will play out in this market. Apple, meeting with limited success with its product, has called its device “a hobby” but Google is forging ahead with what it believes could revolutionize the industry. So how do they compare?

What’s In a Name?

For starters, they both feature similar names. Simply take your company name and slap TV on the end. Very original, Google, but a point goes to Apple for having the idea first.

Beyond just what’s on the box, though, what do both of these companies stand for? What do users really associate with these brands? For Google, it tends to be searching and information. For Apple, it tends to be entertainment. You can back up this argument just by looking at what these companies do. Google has set the standard for search engines and Apple has created an entire ecosystem of products around iTunes, including content and third-party support.

How Does the Hardware Match Up?

Details on the new Google TV are sketchy, though we know it’s really more of a platform than just a piece of hardware. External set-top boxes will be produced by Logitech and partners like Sony will build the technology into their televisions. Additional television vendors will be added over time as they build in the technology as well. But how does the hardware compare? Here’s what we know.

Google TV

• 1.2GHz “Sodaville” Atom Processor
• 4GB of Memory
• 802.11n Wi-Fi & Ethernet
• Dual HDMI ports
• Dual USB ports
• S/PDIF out
• Video Chipset: Unknown
• Storage: Unknown
• OS: Android

For comparison, let’s look at what the current Apple TV offers.

Apple TV

• 1GHz “Crofton” Pentium M Processor
• 256MB of Memory
• 802.11n Wi-Fi & Ethernet
• HDMI port
• Component Video, Stereo Audio, Optical Audio Out
• USB port (for service only)
• Video Chipset: NVIDIA G72M with 64MB DDR2 memory
• Storage: 40GB or 160GB
• OS: Mac OS X 10.4.x

Purely looking at the specs, it looks like the Google TV blows the Apple TV out of the water, which is understandable considering the Apple TV hasn’t seen a hardware update (aside from a larger hard drive) since its launch in 2007. But rumor has it that a new Apple TV is around the corner and it could provide some stiff competition, boasting an A4 processor similar to the iPad and capable of delivering 1080p content.

The Experience

So what’s the big deal about Google TV? In Google’s eyes, it’s all about giving users the ability to find the content they want across a wide variety of mediums including broadcast TV, YouTube and pretty much anywhere on the Internet. The device also includes a built-in web browser (with support for Flash) allowing users to access content from virtually anywhere.

While the current Apple TV doesn’t support interfacing at all with broadcast TV, nor full Internet access, it still offers similarities with Google TV, like YouTube or accessing photos from the cloud from sources like Flickr or MobileMe. In fact, it even beats Google’s approach by tapping on the power of the iTunes Store, providing users with tons of content that they can buy or rent and download.

That’s really where we see a big difference in the strategies of both companies. On one hand, Google is attempting to aggregate all of the content from a wide range of places into one simple list of search results. How effective will this be? If I search for “Battlestar Galactica” will I find random YouTube clips, bootleg TV shows and other vaguely related ephemera mixed in? As I mentioned earlier, Google TV is a platform running Android, which means that an SDK will be available to allow developers to create specialized apps. In theory, Netflix could easily develop its own Google TV app just as it did for the iPad. Unfortunately, the openness of this platform can also be a disadvantage. Look at HTC’s Android-based products, for instance, which feature different interfaces for similar tasks.

On the other hand, Apple’s strategy has been to provide content that people want, but holding that content to a high standard of quality mixed with a simple to use interface. To see what I mean by this, look no further than the App Store which, for better or worse, has maintained a growing selection of quality apps. Or consider the iTunes Store. It’s easy to browse and find a show that I want, view any of the seasons that are available to purchase and sometimes even have my choice of SD or HD content.

While the current Apple TV may not have some of the features of Google’s offering, it does play very well with Apple’s iTunes ecosystem and that’s something that Google cannot, and hasn’t yet shown a desire to, compete with.

The Future

Even at this week’s D8 conference, Steve Jobs still referred to the Apple TV as a “hobby” and, while we are eagerly anticipating rumors of a cloud-based Apple TV to come to fruition, we’re still left where we began — a box that is just a hobby. In fact, at the conference he expressed his views on set-top boxes altogether.

The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us…ask Google in a few months. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it.

We’ve speculated before about what a future Apple TV could look like and rumors are circulating that the next version could be based on the iPhone OS. This inevitability opens the door to an App Store and, at least in my opinion, works to address the issue of getting content to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. Apple has tried several approaches to this (iTunes Extras, for instance) but nothing has really seen the runaway success like the App Store.

For comparison, a good number of people feel the print industry is dying, but looking at the success of the Wired iPad app, all of a sudden developers have a powerful canvas to push existing content and new ideas of content to consumers. Would a similar model be successful in the living room environment? What do you think? Do you think Google TV will really be a game-changer or a lackluster platform? Is Apple’s direction or Google’s the best? Share what you think.

For those interested in cloud computing or data centers, check out our Structure conference in June.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Google TV: Overview and Strategic Analysis

It’s becoming abundantly clear that Apple needs to improve MobileMe. Obviously, Android is now Apple’s biggest threat in the mobile space and Google’s innovation wheel isn’t slowing down. To fully understand just how bad Apple is at running Internet services, let’s take a trip back in time.

At the Macworld keynote on January 5, 2000, Steve Jobs released iTools which was built for Mac OS 9. Features included:

• An @Mac.com email address
• 20 megabytes of iDisk web storage
• An easy to use web page builder called Homepage
• A KidSafe product that ensured a safe Internet experience for the little ones

If you’re dying to know more, here’s the press release. What made the offering such a breakthrough is that it was an absolutely free service, back when Google was still just a search engine. Because of the seamless integration with Mac OS and the fact it was free, millions of Mac users signed up for iTools. This was the highlight of Apple’s Online Services product and, ever since, Apple has struggled to keep up.

In 2002, iTools was rebranded as .Mac and the price shot up to $99.95 a year. Apple dropped KidSafe, upped the iDisk storage too and introduced “Backup” which was an OS X app to backup files and folders to the online iDisk.

It was pretty clear that Apple didn’t truly put a lot of thought into .Mac because, while Apple.com was touting, “Macs don’t get viruses”, .Mac touted that you get a McAfee’s Virex Antivirus software for free just for joining and Apple stores across the U.S. were required to maintain a 60 percent attach rate for .Mac on all new Macs sold.

Apple still had a better service than any other web service, mostly because the cloud services that were existent saw Macintosh as too small of a market (remember this is 2002) and Apple seamlessly integrated .Mac into the system to the point where a power user may be nagged to just buy it already as Quicktime and iMovie had a “Send to .Mac” feature and Apple Mail placed .Mac as the first choice when adding a new e-mail account.

Apple lost thousands of subscribers in the shift to a paid model but many stayed until Google and other competitors began strengthening their cloud offerings. In 2008, Apple finally upgraded the aging online subscription model with real features that power users were aching for.

MobileMe, released in June of 2008 at WWDC, still included e-mail, iDisk and your own personal homepage (via iWeb ’09) but the new killer feature was sync. You could now keep multiple PCs, Macs, iPhones and now iPads in sync instantly via the web with calendars, contacts and email talking to each other to ensure the latest info is always on the device you have with you.

Apple’s foray into cloud syncing was a failure at first. Steve sent out this letter shortly after MobileMe’s launch admitting the MobileMe launch was a failure saying, “The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour.” Apple gave out free months of service to people who purchased the new service and improvements were made. Since then, Apple has done little to add to the service and MobileMe is now completely overshadowed by every other competitor in the market. Even startups like Box.net started by a couple of guys with some angel financing were able to top Apple’s iDisk that was introduced back with iTools in 2000.

Apple added features like “Find my iPhone” in 2009 and continued to make slight improvements, but Google offers e-mail, sync, storage, calendars, contacts and more for free. Sure, Google has advertising but no one seems to care, because $99 for an email address and some syncing between devices is completely ludicrous now that we’re half-way in to 2010. We featured a post in February, “10 Ways to Make MobileMe Perfect” which detailed exactly what Apple needs to do to find relevance again among a slew of superior products from competitors.

Another great example of Apple completely missing an opportunity with MobileMe is the iPad. Why must you sync with iTunes and deal with a difficult-to-use interface to get documents on and off of the iPad? Why isn’t MobileMe the key that makes iPad a true on the go device? In his review, John Gruber writes:

Apple has MobileMe, but because it’s a paid service, they can’t (or at least won’t) assume that all iPad owners are going to use it. But then even those of us who do u

se MobileMe get stuck with a first-run iPad experience that involves a tethered USB connection to a computer. The Apple Way is to assume that your primary data stores for these things are locally stored on your Mac or PC — Address Book, iCal.

I think most of the Mac community has accepted that iTools, .Mac and now MobileMe is a product for new users and not a service for power users and my personal motto became, “those who know, don’t use MobileMe.” It wasn’t until Google’s I/O conference last week in San Francisco that I realized how poorly Apple is positioned in the fight for mobile dominance.

Google released Android version 2.2 with over the air everything. You can purchase music in your web browser and it’s on your Android phone instantly. The same goes for Google Maps links, which you can click “send to phone” and the maps app opens automatically. The real power of Android is entering your Google ID and all of your data comes down from the cloud and stays in sync without ever plugging into a computer. Apple has completely failed at this.

I’m not writing the death of MobileMe just yet. Apple’s recent beta release of a new and improved MobileMe webmail is a step in the right direction, but it still has a long way to go.

Apple purchased Lala.com which is an incredible startup that allows you to stream music that you’ve purchased from anywhere and Apple has announced the closure of Lala on May 31 (only a few days ahead of WWDC). One can only imagine that Google’s ultra-cool over the air music purchase technology demoed last week will soon be old news as iTunes in The Cloud becomes a reality where your entire music library travels with you anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection.

The ultimate task for Apple is to bite the bullet and make MobileMe free again. It’s easy to compare Google to Apple’s products when one is free and the other is $99, but when comparing two free services and accounting that MobileMe is built into every Apple device you own, it’s a much easier consideration for users. Doing the math is easy when you consider that Apple might make $99 per user per year but losing an iPhone sale to Google’s Android platform is a far greater loss and Apple needs to free MobileMe from a subscription model to compete head on with Google.

Of course, there’s a lot more Apple can do beyond simply offering up MobileMe for free. Remember iWork.com? This collaboration tool goes head to head with Google Docs in many ways but it’s still in beta over a year after being previewed at Macworld 2009 and Apple lead us to believe it would actually be charging for this when iWork left public beta.

I could go on and on comparing Apple to Google in every way, but it’s clear that Google is the winner and that wouldn’t change even if Apple dropped the price of their suite of tools to $0. That boat has set sail and Apple is still offering a miniscule 20GB iDisk storage and iDisk is just as reliable as it was 10 years ago. Let’s hope Google’s kick in the butt with Android 2.2 will encourage Apple to step it up and bring MobileMe up to speed very soon.

For those interested in cloud computing or data centers, check out our Structure conference in June.

The iPhone may have given up its edge in the U.S. market over Android recently, in terms of smartphone OS share, but globally it still leads Google’s mobile OS. That’s according to market research firm Gartner (via PC World), who recently conducted a survey of the global smartphone terrain covering the first quarter of 2010.

That lead is thanks to two key international markets in which the iPhone still boasts a significant lead over its Google competitor. In Europe and Asia, Apple maintains a lead that amounts to around a 3 million unit advantage over Android. It’s still a significant lead, but the fact is that Android is still in a very strong position in all world markets.

It’s especially strong because it’s the fastest growing of all the smartphone operating systems represented in the survey, and it’s experiencing that growth during a heady time for smartphone sales in general, with global sales overall seeing record increases. Put simply, Android is grabbing the most significant portion of an expanding pie.

Android’s share grew from 1.6 to 9.6 percent in Q1 2010, while Apple’s share went from 10.5 to 15.4 percent. Both are still behind Symbian and RIM, but the shares of both those companies shrank during the period measured. Symbian, the worldwide leader, dropped to 44.3 from 48.8 percent. RIM slid from 20.6 to 19.4. Windows Mobile is the big loser overall, dropping from 10.2 to 6.8 percent, which puts it behind Android in the global rankings.

It’s a mixed bag for Apple. On the one hand, it’s still performing well in the global market, and two of the three major smartphone markets still have them positioned ahead of Android. On the other hand, Android’s growth is meteoric, and the numbers would seem to indicate that customers new to the smartphone market are leaning in Android’s direction overall.

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that Android’s share grew from next to nothing to a significant percentage. It’s highly likely that it’ll continue to have similarly strong performance globally, since it can really only go from nothing to something once. Now that it’s entrenched itself in the market at large, its growth rate will likely slip to something much more reasonable, like Apple’s five percent gain.

Will Android continue to threaten Apple’s piece of the smartphone market pie? No doubt. Will it blow past iPhone OS and emerge as the dominant force in the market? That’s much less likely. Android and Apple will contend with each other on the world stage, but it’ll be a real fight, not a one-sided affair.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Who Owns Android’s Future? Google — Or Apple?

Despite numerous reports earlier this week claiming that Google was planning to bring its free turn-by-turn navigation to the iPhone, it turns out that the search giant currently does not have any such plans.

Word regarding the alleged move first broke when a Mac User report claimed that a UK-based Google executive had revealed details about introducing the navigation tool to the iPhone, in addition to other mobile devices. The comments were apparently uttered during a London press conference in which Google launched its popular Maps Navigation tool for UK Android devices.

However, in order to kill the rumor before it became any more widespread, Google has now confirmed to PCWorld that this is not the case. PCWorld’s report includes comments from a Google spokesperson who said the following:

“We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we’ve had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all.”

For those that don’t know, Google’s Maps Navigation is a free GPS 3-D mapping service which offers turn-by-turn navigation, automatic rerouting and voice guidance for Android users. Sadly, no doubt at the joy of GPS makers such as Tom Tom and Garmin, Google’s service will not be on the iPhone anytime soon.

Toward the end of 2009, I began to notice that my computing needs had changed quite a bit. I’d begun to do a lot more heavy duty work in video, requiring Final Cut Studio and a large screen for editing, so I purchased a 24″ iMac for the office. At the same time, I had been traveling for business much less than before, and began to grow weary of toting my laptop (a rev A MacBook Air) back-and-forth each day. I decided a new strategy was in order and determined that I could make my life much easier if I could just leave my laptop at home on most days. Then I’d be able to carry it only when needed it for a local presentation, traveling, or if I knew I’d be mobile for a good part of the day. Subsequently, I’ve ordered an iPad, and hope it can replace my laptop in many cases.

As I tend to work at home during early mornings and evenings, the biggest challenge in this new strategy quickly became how to keep files and app data in sync across the two computers. Now, to be fair, I didn’t approach this in any strategic way, but over the ensuing few months, I have migrated much of my Mac life into the cloud (for those interested in cloud computing or data centers, check out our Structure 10 conference in June). Here are a few of the key ways I made this happen.

Mailplane + Gmail

I have several email accounts for various projects and my personal needs, and they are all either Gmail or Google Apps accounts. Previously, I set them all up as IMAP accounts and used Mail.app as a client. Even though I accessed most accounts on a daily basis, Mail.app — despite its superior UI — quickly became an untenable solution. True, I can sync accounts, rules and other data using MobileMe, but I noticed some inconsistencies in the way messages were displaying, and I was using precious disk space on duplicate mailbox files, caches, and temporary files.

Mailplane is the perfect solution for me. As a direct view of the Gmail web interface, Mailplane ensures that there aren’t any inconsistencies. And nothing gets stored locally unless I choose to download it. Like Mail, I can easily switch between accounts, and I also have direct, integrated access with Address Book.

MobileMe for Address Book and Bookmark Syncing

Speaking of Address Book, Google’s contact manager is pretty weak, and despite integration with Gmail, I am not ready to turn my contacts over to Google’s less than desirable product. So I keep Apple’s Address Book as my primary contact manager, and sync it across MobileMe among my Macs and the iPhone. Syncing only certain contacts with others — my wife, for example, for our shared social contacts — is the next step for me. I am also using MobileMe to synchronize Safari bookmarks. Having the same bookmarks across devices has proven to be a lifesaver from time-to-time.

Google Calendar (including Mobile Sync) + Fluid for Calendars

As I described earlier, I have several Gmail and Google Apps accounts. With Mailplane, you get to see a list of accounts in a sidebar, and easily switch among them without having to enter your username and password each time. I’ve even combined some accounts by using one to send and receive mail from another, and deleting the account in Mailplane. To my knowledge, there isn’t a similar solution for Google Calendar. So I’ve set all my calendars to be shared with my primary account, then used Fluid to create an app-specific browser for the consolidated Google Calendar. As a result, I have one calendar app that displays all my various calendars but allows me to keep them separate (different colors, turn on/off, etc.).

SugarSync for File Synchronization

I have longed for Mac OS X features that allow file and folder-level synchronization across computers, to no avail. Many in the Mac community swear by DropBox, but I chose SugarSync for a couple of reasons. First, with SugarSync, you can add any file or folder on a computer to your sync profile, regardless of where that file lives. At least when I looked at it previously, DropBox required you to set up a special sync folder and move your files there, forcing me to reorganize my files, not something I wanted to do. And there’s always price: SugarSync is $5/month less than DropBox at the 100GB storage level. I now often save a file on my office computer as I’m leaving the office, then open it at home with those changes reflected.

Google Docs for Collaboration

More and more, I find myself working with others on projects that require collaborative editing. Google Docs is a great solution, as it allows multiple people to access and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The user interface and available styles aren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, but Google Docs works really well. Google recently added the ability to entire folders, not just documents, which made it even more valuable to me and my collaborators.

OmniFocus and Evernote

I’ve got a lot going on (probably too much), and I’ve started and stopped using various task management applications multiple times. I love Things, but I can’t live without hierarchical organization of my information and the Wi-fi based syncing with iPhone is tedious. I also really dig The Hit List, but after many months Potion Factory is still taking pre-orders and hasn’t released an iPhone app. I’m worried that it has stalled. I keep returning to OmniFocus from The Omni Group, which has some powerful organization and management capabilities, and also syncs perfectly among Macs and the iPhone. Lastly, I’ve recently rediscovered Evernote, whose web-based syncing has proven effortless and reliable (more on Evernote in a future post).

My Mac Life in the Cloud

I haven’t yet bothered syncing media, as I tend to simply use my iPhone for music, photos and more when I’m away from home. In the meantime, it seems like I can be anywhere and have access to all the files and data I need.

So, how are you keeping multiple devices in sync and using the cloud to make your life easier and more efficient?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

The Good:
- Email looks great on the iPad. It [...]

Read the rest of this story at the CultofMac

Read the rest of this story at the CultofMac

HTC has finally spoken out regarding the pending lawsuit Apple launched against the smartphone maker regarding its use of multi-touch as an interface navigation mechanism, and around 20 other technologies. It should surprise absolutely no one that the Taiwanese company doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the iPhone maker regarding the appropriateness of its use of the tech.

HTC CEO Peter Chou released a statement Wednesday addressing the recently filed suit directly. According to Chou, as quoted by InformationWeek, “HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself.” HTC’s stance, like that of Apple, is that it respects and values healthy competition and innovation. Of course, that shared premise leads both companies to quite different conclusions.

Chou elaborates HTC’s position further in the official statement:

HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible.

Apple is no stranger to suits from other companies, and it certainly hasn’t shied away from pursuing legal action itself in the past. A suit against Nokia along similar lines is still ongoing. HTC shouldn’t be surprised about the move, either, considering the fact that multi-touch wasn’t officially introduced as a launch feature on the Nexus One, even though the hardware supported it. It was added later by Google to the device via a software update. Sure seems like an attempt to dodge the ire of multi-touch’s proclaimed originator to me.

The Nexus One is almost certainly the catalyst for this suit, and with good reason. Despite the fact that the device itself isn’t selling anywhere near at the level of the iPhone, recent evidence suggests that the phone has raised the profile of Android, which seems to be positioning itself to make a serious bid on Apple’s smartphone market dominance. If Apple is ever to strip Google of some of that momentum, the time to do so is now.

But are the claims Apple is making valid, or is it just an attempt to strike down any and all competition before the consumer gets a chance to choose? I’m no legal expert, but it seems to me that Apple is going after some very basic concepts in its legal claims, ones without which the concept of a modern smartphone would be untenable. I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, but if we’re to see cell tech progress, it has to be at the behest of the free market, and that means not unduly placing restrictions on Apple’s competitors.

A Google employee expressed his distaste for the way Apple does business in no uncertain terms in a recent blog post. Tim Bray, a co-inventor of XML and a well-known blogger in his own right, is also a Google employee on the Android team, having recently joined following his time at Sun Microsystems.

The blog post at issue, which appeared on his personal blog, details his reasons behind joining Google, which include a passion for the rapid pace of development on the platform and the fact that it’s an open source system. Another reason is that he “hates” the iPhone. Or at least the context in which the iPhone operates.

Bray doesn’t shy away from sharing his opinion of what Apple’s done wrong with the iPhone, in no uncertain terms:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

I hate it.

I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.

The big thing about the Web isn’t the technology, it’s that it’s the first-ever platform without a vendor (credit for first pointing this out goes to Dave Winer). From that follows almost everything that matters, and it matters a lot now, to a huge number of people. It’s the only kind of platform I want to help build.

Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.

I think they’re wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it.

Even though I wasn’t sad to see Apple nix a whole host of “sexy” apps recently, I can’t help but agree with where Tim Bray is coming from. Apple is effectively packaging and selling back to us a polished and pristine version of what we used to have only free and unfettered access to. Giving them too much control might start to inhibit our ability to continue to have that free access.

I’m not sure handing the reins to Google won’t have the exact same effect in the long run, but that isn’t what will happen if some people side with them in this developing conflict. Luckily, unlike in professional sports, there doesn’t have to be a winner in clashes between mobile device makers. A healthy balance should keep the power of both in check.