Listening to the new tunes

July was a hot month in terms of weather across US and Europe. And it has been harsh to the east - rains, floods and tsunami.

Though no such tsunamis in the tech world, the Intel announcement of a new core architecture to power computers from servers to handheld is seen by the media as a big change to come. When Intel moved from memory to processors in the early days, it was becoming a leader. The x86 architecture went on for a very long time. The Wintel relation took it forth balancing between capability consumption - the business balancing between the semiconductor giant and the software behemoth. Giving the users a wild run for a new box every year. Recently but Intel has been trying to keep rather than to grow, thanks to "faster, cheaper" strategies from AMD.

The important point in the new move is the departure from single core and the ever mutiplying clocks. Instead of doubling the clock and betting the entire human life on processor clock, Intel has agreed that there should be multiple players. The new architecture is now multi-core. Multi-core is not anything new in the industry, but this is a new architecture for multi cores in the PC world - the bread and butter for Intel. Now that Intel is to focus on this new architecture, with the network processors XSCale being sold off, I guess there will be more interesting news to come in the coming months. And may be in a year from now, we could be working on new fast laptops that will not stall when Virus Scan starts at the busiest hour of the day.

We need to wait for some more days to see what Steve Jobs has in stock with the new processor. Mac will not announce this in an Intel show. They have their own Macworld, where Macfans jeer as Jobs announce every piece of a new Mac. And when he vents his harsh remarks on Windows. May be Mac is better poised to take advantage of Core2 Duo than Windows?

Another noted announcement was Zune from Microsoft. Gates had gone on record earlier that software and hardware has to be separate businesses to get users the best of both worlds. Visions and ideas are for the CEOs and Chairmans to talk on great shows. The business guys are to create dollars. Microsoft has been trying hardwares - like mouses and keyboards and later the succesful XBox. Steve Jobs theme on product has proved more productive - hardware and software are two sides of the coin and has to be rolled out in full alignment. The way he turned the business situation for Apple was really wonderful that opened Microsoft eyes too? In late 90s Microsoft plan was to have PC as the one for all. Microsoft was supporting PC games while Sony Playstation took over the world. Now with the all-new XBox Micorosoft is back into the game as a game console maker. Not as someone who believes Software and hardware should be separated for best user advantage.

Gates et al were focusing on PC based audio and Windows DRM while iPods invaded every pair of ears. The white headphones were too applish and not well taken in Redmond. So MS employees went for alternate ones. But there was no alternate iPod. MS had been trying to work with a host of partners on iPod likes, but none of them could create any crack in the solid iPod growth base. The Zune is said to be total new experience. With Microsoft user interface being great and good looking - though still lagging behind the Macs in terms of innovation - I guess this could make new waves. It might take some more time to get the full ecosystem to be in place - to reach where the iPod + iTunes model stands now. Let us see what are Microsoft plans on the new handheld. Soon we can hear more about Zune.

Anyway this shows the vast potential of the personal music player market. Bored people, busy people, lonely people, idle people, travelling people, stressed people, joyful people - all want to plug something on their ears. So far they could close their eyes to reality around. But God never gave them earlids. So find something nice that sings right into the ears.

Nero was listening to music when Rome was burning. I am pretty sure many in the US administration were listening to Podcasts while Katrina was on rampage.