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IPAD: the "end" of the Internet
Jiang Yaping
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From the first time I heard the introduction of Apple's IPAD products, I kept flashing such an image in my mind: the end of the Internet. Up to now, it has been half a year. This image, rotating, just doesn't go.
Ordinary people in China began to know about the Internet around 1994. At that time, American President Bill Clinton and Vice President Cole were very excited about the information superhighway-the Internet. They praised it and promoted it with all their might. Some pioneers in the IT field in China, such as Zhang Shuxin and Wan Pingguo, have successively established ISP companies such as Yinghaiwei and China Net, that is, Internet information service providers, to provide Internet services for ordinary people. I was a user of Yinghaiwei at that time. Use 256K modem to dial Internet phone.
The earliest computer I used was 8088. In the late 1980s and early 1990s. I borrowed it from a friend named Liu Xianglong. He went to sea from the Institute of Computer Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences and started a computer company in Zhongguancun. I still remember that the 8088 computer is so big that it seems that a thin quilt can be put in it. There is no hard disk, only a five-inch soft area. The floppy disk is a thin piece of black plastic and wobbles in your hand. The capacity is 1MB.
At that time, not many people knew about the Internet, and even fewer people were able to spend money online. Government departments began to pay attention to it, and the basic attitude was to regard the Internet as a scourge. At that time, I worked in the Economic Department of People's Daily, and Ai Feng was the director. He is a leader who can keep pace with the times. The computer originally provided to you is 80286, which has no hard disk, but it already has a three-inch floppy drive. Compared with 8088, it is much faster and the data security is better.
Since 1996, the Internet has become popular, surfing the Internet has become a fashion, and the IT industry has gradually become popular. I am responsible for the construction of the People's Daily. The leader in charge is Zhu Xinmin, vice president of creativity. Back and forth, up to now, fifteen years. During this period, there were many things, big and small, and heroes came forth in large numbers. The advent of the IPAd is a milestone in the field of Internet and IT.
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I just can't help loving the IPAD sincerely. It's like liking someone, thinking all the time, not walking in your mind. I like the appearance of IPAD, its style and spirit. What I like is that with the appearance of IPAD and its great success, all kinds of stories related to the Internet and its products in the market have begun to enter the final stage in the past decade. Regarding the first era of Internet market application, or the first war era after the Internet entered the market, we can say goodbye.
Over the past decade or so, many stories related to the Internet have been successfully introduced into the charming capital market, and most of them hold high the banner of scientific and technological innovation. In fact, from the perspective of effective application in the market, the main technologies related to Internet technology services and content services have not changed much over the years.
For example. Up to now, the portal website is still ahead of the whole country, with various customs, and the basic technology of its application, including website structure and basic services, has not changed much. Blog, which was popular a few years ago, is a contemporary version of personal space, which was popularized and once popular at the beginning of the Internet more than ten years ago. Campus network, Xinkai network, all social networking sites featuring SNS and their services are the amplification of online interactive function in the new consumption environment and new application environment. At present, Weibo, which is in its heyday, is actually an enlarged and three-dimensional BBS forum. With the functions of chat rooms and newsgroups, it is already very developed and mature.
Alibaba, Taobao and other e-commerce platforms have given great surprises to Internet applications. But it is still a content service provider in essence. Its main technology and architecture for serving netizens and consumers are similar to ICP. Compared with more than ten years ago, it is almost the same. The only difference is that the nature of information content is different, and there are more related payment and verification systems.
On the other hand, in the field of Internet, changes have indeed taken place, and great changes have taken place. However, these changes can be said to be basically based on some mature technologies that existed at the beginning of the Internet, as well as various quantitative changes caused by changes in related conditions and changes in other technologies. Over the years, no major breakthrough has been found in the related technologies of Internet application and promotion. In other words, what supports the vigorous development of the Internet is the previous basic technologies and the arrangement and combination of these technologies in the new social, economic and technological environment.
Other things related to the internet will be turned upside down. 1 997 65438+1October1People's Daily People's Daily Online, the number of netizens in China was 240,000. At that time, none of the seven Internet companies mentioned by Mr. Zhang Chaoyang recently were qualified to enter the China Internet market for the final duel. 1997101October 3 1 day, the first national internet survey after the establishment of CNNIC showed that the number of netizens was 620,000. By the end of June 20 10, there are 420 million people. Among them, there are 277 million mobile Internet users with wireless Internet access. It is about 6.5438+0.9 million times more than 240,000 people. Compared with 620,000 people, it increased by 6,774 times. It has been three or four hundred years since mankind entered industrial civilization and market economy. What kind of applications and products can capture so many people in such a short time? The charm of the internet is really wonderful.
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The basic technology of the Internet has not changed much, but the number of netizens is soaring. What is at work? It seems that the factors that affect the Internet application and the Internet market are these two aspects and five elements.
On the one hand, three elements belong to the hardware environment. One is bandwidth, the other is chip, and the third is memory, such as memory and hard disk.
Let's talk about bandwidth first. In the information superhighway system, bandwidth is the width of a real sports car. I remember that when the People's Daily went to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to request a dedicated line for the People's Daily data center, Vice Minister Zhou Deqiang in charge gave it the highest treatment in China at that time, 2Mbps. At that time, the total domestic bandwidth (the total capacity of international lines) was 25.408Mbps. What about now? By June 30th, 20 10, it will reach 998,217 Mbps. It increased by 39,287.5 times.
Besides, the chip chip is equivalent to the engines on all the carts and cars on the information superhighway. Anyone who has been doing IT and Internet since the last century knows that there is Moore's Law, that is, every 18 months, the number of transistors on a single chip doubles and the performance doubles. The founder is Moore, the founder of Intel Corporation. Forty years later, this law is still being verified. 197 1 4004 The processor has 2300 transistors. By 1997, there are 7.5 million Pentium 2. It is said that by 20 1 1 year, it may reach 1 billion, and 1000 billion instructions can be executed every second. Chip, the engine on the information superhighway, is getting smaller and stronger, with lower cost, more energy saving and faster heat dissipation.
The development of data storage capacity is also roughly the speed of Moore's Law. In the era of 4004 processor, the average computer has no hard disk at all, and the data storage capacity of a five-inch floppy disk is only 1 megabyte. Now, in just 20 years, the hard disk of an ordinary personal computer has 500G gigabytes, which is 5 12000 megabytes.
This fantastic change in the capabilities of chips, CPU and memory is even doubtful. From the beginning, companies like Intel knew that the capabilities of their chips and other products were actually infinite for a long time. At that time, the fear of technical limitations and the introduction of new products on the basis of so-called scientific research breakthroughs were mature and orderly market strategies dominated by national security needs and corporate profits.
Of course, during this period, the software capability has also changed greatly. The ability of software depends on the ability of hardware. With the increase of storage device capacity, the number of lines of program code included in system software also increases sharply. For example, the source code of Basic, 1975 has only 4,000 lines, and it has increased to 500,000 lines in 20 years. The first edition of Microsoft's Word processing software Word, 1982 has only 27,000 lines of code, and it has increased to more than 2 million lines in 20 years. The latest version of Word code is also a huge increase.
Another big aspect, two factors, is related to money. One is the internet tariff, and the other is the consumption power of netizens. In a sense, the situation of both determines the fundamentals of the market and related products. Their impact on Internet applications is greater than that of technology and hardware environment. Tariffs and consumption power directly related to money are the driving force and result of changes in all products and applications. According to the charging method stipulated at that time, the 2 trillion dedicated lines given by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications 1998 will cost more than 30 million yuan. But now, the line cost of 2 trillion yuan, 500 yuan can be done.
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Back to the IPAD.
1997 or so, there is an impressive debate in the IT field, that is, whether to use PC or NC in the future. A personal computer is a personal computer. NC is a network computer, a kind of network computer. In fact, numerical control is also a personal computer. The difference is that its configuration is relatively simple, more like an input and output terminal with simple operation and relatively low cost. More applications can be solved through the whole network system. Interestingly, this idea is completely consistent with the prevailing cloud computing.
When NC was first put forward, people thought this concept was clean, powerful and reasonable. Considering the limitations of technical environment, hardware capacity, tariff status and consumption capacity at that time, it is this concept that is reasonable. However, the debate between PC and NC soon ended. Well-equipped, omnipotent and affordable PCs quickly occupied the world. Why? Because people's demand for computers, with the above-mentioned changes in bandwidth, computing and storage capacity, with the decline in costs and the improvement of consumption capacity, has gradually been met on the PC. Another important reason why NC was aphasia at that time was the lack of a network system similar to cloud computing. This was impossible in the technical environment at that time.
If there were no two major events that happened later, the PC could go on indefinitely.
These two major events, one is the popularity of mobile phones, the application of short messages, and the marriage of its related functions with the Internet platform. First, the improvement and development of wireless Internet technology.
SMS and its marriage with Internet services have greatly revitalized and promoted the development of the Internet. At the beginning of this century, at this moment, for the Internet industry, which has just entered the 2 1 century and is in a stalemate, especially for the portals with immature and unstable business models, it is both a timely help and a icing on the cake. As we all know, short message service and its benefits injected new spirit into some portals at that time. On the other hand, the development of wireless Internet technology has fundamentally expanded and reshaped the functions of mobile phones, and expanded and enriched the extension and connotation of contemporary communication. All these changes mean that the mobile phone used for communication and the PC used for surfing the Internet actually form two platforms with overlapping functions and services, except for their different specifications and shapes. In other words, for consumers, they already have the same ability and can replace each other.
With the rapid development of Internet, 3G technology stands out. This means that the huge video product market will be dominated by the TV set operated by the former radio and television department, and it will become a three-point world with mobile phones and computers.
This is also why in recent years, the telecommunications market and the Internet market, including the field of radio and television, are so full of vitality, so endless and so lively. For these three industries, if you don't advance, you will retreat, which is a matter of life and death.
In this process, based on the market forecast, the expectations and desires for two completely different products, mobile phones and computers, are increasing day by day. Since it is technically feasible, why not integrate the functions of mobile phone and computer into one terminal, and strive to make this terminal with moderate size, moderate use and moderate price replace mobile phones with too few functions and too small interface, as well as PCs with too complicated functions, including laptops that can be carried around?
Now, because of the aforementioned changes in bandwidth, chips and storage capacity, including cost and consumption capacity, we have seen the embryonic cloud computing, and investors' desire for investment and innovation brought about by these changes, people can completely make such a unified idea.
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In fact, before Apple introduced the IPAD, similar attempts from mobile phones and computers were already dazzling. Almost all brand-name mobile phones have products that basically have all the functions of computers. Being able to surf the Internet is just a small case. Similarly, almost all brands of computers have different specifications in pursuit of portability and compactness. Whether to equip the computer with communication function is only a choice of ideas, even has nothing to do with hardware, but the choice of related software. People have noticed that comparing two different extreme products that tend to be opposite to each other, they look more and more like each other.
Now, we have to talk about handheld terminals. At first, it refers to electronic reading and listening equipment that people can use in their hands under certain technical environment, but they don't have communication ability and internet access ability. Of course, in fact, in the past ten years, handheld terminals have been tirelessly exploring in the three fields of communication, Internet access and offline reading and entertainment.
Handheld terminals initially had nothing to do with communication and Internet connection. Its main function is to meet some offline needs such as games, listening to music and reading. More than ten years ago, some handheld terminal products, namely PDA, appeared. Some PDA products were even developed on BBP pagers, which can be traced back to the middle and late 1990s of/kloc-0. Many of these original PDA products have the ambition to dance with PC in the Internet world. With the rapid maturity of telecommunications, Internet technology and market, most ambitious PDA products are heroic.
In this case, the PDA is divided and the soldiers are divided into four roads. All the way is mainly used to listen to music. The most mature and representative product is Apple's IPOD. On the other hand, with the electronization of traditional publishing industry and the change of readers' reading habits, it has evolved into e-books and e-readers. Typical products are KANDLE of Amazon and Hanwang of China. Another way is netbook, which is similar to the original NC concept. Before the IPAD went on the market, the netbook had a showdown with the PC. In fact, a netbook is a large PDA with Internet access. The fourth way is telecommunications. Probably the most famous one is Blackberry, which is popular in Europe and America. This is actually a screaming PDA.
The efforts to computerize mobile phones are surging, and heroes come forth in large numbers. Every well-known mobile phone manufacturer does not dare to slack off on this convenience, such as the IPhone series of Apple products that pay the most attention to the user experience. Driven and compared by the successful market image of IPOD, IPHON came from behind in similar products.
If it weren't for the appearance of the IPAD, which made its debut with the help of Apple, the three kinds of products with overlapping functions carefully cultivated by the three major companies in three fields might still follow their own trajectories.
The advent of the IPAD changed all this.
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How to describe and express IPAD?
Although it is still the original product, the IPAD has almost everything we have seen related to telecommunications, reading and surfing the Internet. In other words, all the concepts of applications related to IT, Internet, video, games, learning and entertainment that we have established in the past 20 or 30 years can be interpreted by holding an IPAD in your hand. Moreover, she is beautiful, kind, practical, hands-on, inexpensive and even feels a little sexy. These characteristics are her charm and lethality.
It has been noticed that the first generation IPAD currently on the market lacks a function and cannot make phone calls. However, as we all know, this is not a problem at all. In other words, this is a problem that can be solved in minutes. At present, the reason why the IPAD does not add mobile phone function is probably related to Apple's idea of reducing friction with the government and industry, reducing product costs and quickly occupying the market at the right price. But most likely, she will leave the opportunities related to the mobile phone market to the IPHone, especially the 3G version of the IPHone4, which has already had a royal demeanor in the mobile phone market. Now I can see clearly that Apple has been playing a leisurely and elegant but deadly combination boxing, with the strength of its own products, the best user experience and reasonable price as its core competitiveness.
Anyone with a discerning eye can see that the climax of Apple's dazzling combination boxing is still behind. The launch of IPAD is a prelude. Apple has too many cards to play, and they are all big cards with great lethality, trump cards. For example, based on the global strategy, the IPhone4 with 3G function will become bigger and stronger. At the right time, slightly change the specifications and slightly increase the application module at the right time, which is an IPAd with communication function. Similarly, when appropriate, you can attach all the communication functions of your mobile phone to the IPAD.
At this point, the Iphone is the IPad and the IPad is the Iphone. What kind of scenery will the two armies meet?
Also, don't forget Apple's other ambush, that is, the IPOD, which is very independent and mature in the market, and she can handle it calmly whether it is communication or surfing the Internet. Just as IPAD and IPHONE4 were leading the way in the market, news and products about "Apple Peel" also attracted people's attention. It only takes more than 300 yuan to turn an IPOD into a beautiful and practical IPHONE. What is particularly interesting is that when people cheered that the apple peel was invented by China people and praised the innovative ability of China people, they found that Apple had already applied for a patent for this device. Everything has been carefully thought out and arranged for a long time.
Such a situation, if one day, people find pieces of white, green and red apples on display in the multi-functional handheld terminal market, it is not surprising.
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In recent years, the development focus of telecom market and Internet market is increasingly pointing to wireless terminals. Wireless, broadband, specifications and man-machine interface are four key points. The technical service platforms and applications behind them are all looking for ways and balances around these key points. Among them, how big, how heavy, how thick, how many functions, how much money can be bought, how many technologies can be compatible, and how comfortable it is to hold it in your hand. Of course, such a terminal must be the earliest, and it may become a standard terminal, or it may become the standard people imagine. At least for now, the IPAD seems to have everything.
The Internet has developed into something that can completely change the world from the inside out, and there have been too many stories. Now, with the advent of the IPAd, it seems that a big liquidation can be carried out.
In the past few decades, telecommunications, internet, radio and television, including the digitization of all information in the real world, and so many products have revolved around whether technology is king, content is king, or channel is king. All these stories, in the final analysis, should be embodied in a physical thing that can make the human body and brain comfortable and meet people's consumption needs-products. This physical thing, this product, is an intermediary. This intermediary is not a person, but can be freely accepted by the human body and human mind. This intermediary, in the current technical and social environment, is a natural extension of the human body and the human brain. In other words, it is the channel through which people, as human bodies, have relations with the surrounding society and nature.
In this sense, it seems that the terminal should be king.
IPAD is such a product, an intermediary, a channel and a terminal. This is the liquidation of the Internet. This kind of liquidation, that is, from practice, technology and physical existence, can confirm the predictions made by some geniuses of our kind many years ago about the main characteristics of the global village: intermediary is media and intermediary is information; It can also be said to almost everyone who is developing Internet and communication-related products: Please note that a unified standard has emerged.
Maybe we can never say that something will end. This is especially true for the young Internet. However, at least, we can say that the appearance of IPAD and its corresponding "things" has indeed ended an era within the reach of all our current technologies. In other words, in the exploration of a new era characterized by the Internet, IPad, with its real existence and its concept, as an intermediary connecting people with the virtual world and people with the real world, helps us find a cognitive platform in the present time and space. On this platform, we can enjoy our past and explore our future. Apple may not be called Jobs, the IPAD may not belong to Apple, and even the IPAD will disappear. The dazzling ones will be WPAD, GPAD and FPAD. According to the latest news, BlackBerry will soon launch its own tablet computer, which is smaller, more functional and less expensive than IPAD. But none of this matters. I firmly believe that the story about the internet world and its ultimate intermediary and terminal, including all kinds of wars accompanying this story, has come to an end with the appearance of IPAD-shaped products. The smoke will still be filled, and different people will clean the battlefield. However, in the foreseeable time, the war on the Internet battlefield at this stage has ended. With this list, at this end, our human efforts to obtain information, take action and find the most effective connection between human body and environment began to take shape.
In fact, the IPAD and its corresponding products will become a new organ attached to the human body by people living in the information society. Different from other organs, it is not a mixture of meat and bone and blood, but a synthesis of plastic and a little metal.
What reason can we not cheer for the emergence of this clue and the emergence of this new organ of the human body? !
Of course, a new era will surely come. At that time, we humans didn't need a terminal, to be precise, we didn't need an in vitro intermediary to get any information. According to our needs, we just implant some kind of program chip in a certain part of the body and control it with our breath, language, eyes and pulse.
When the Internet began to spread around the world in the 1990s, some people marveled that it was as great an invention as fire. It was the IPAD that really passed on this great invention to people.
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Yesterday, I visited Tencent Weibo and saw a QQ scarf knitted by an old friend and former president of Dayang. com: Maybe the IPAD will be slimmer and smaller one day.
The day before yesterday, I saw a message on Sina Weibo that People's Daily Online launched the IPAD version. Some netizens exclaimed: Can I buy an IPAD at public expense in the future?
About 18 the day before yesterday, the day after the IPAD was listed in Chinese mainland, it was reported that although the price was nearly 20% higher than that in the United States, it was still 2000 yuan cheaper than before the parallel listing. Moreover, Gome and Suning are in short supply.
10/day, China National Day, Zhongqing.com reported that Apple admitted that the Iphone4 was discontinued in China.
………… ..
Thanks to the internet! Thanks to the IPAD!
20 10 September 16
2010 65438+1modified on October 2nd.