Tonight, I thought I saw the final missing piece fall into place that would let me take my gigabytes and gigabytes of e-mail off my hard drive and put them in the cloud, setting the stage for a long-discussed, but never fully implemented, move from my decade-old Mac.com e-mail address to a more Web savvy GMail account. An update on Google's Mac Blog introduced a new software option that promises to take all your Mail files from your personal computer, and take them to Google Apps. A free utility, the quick download looked like it was going to get me one step closer to a Web-centric experience, moving to the cloud. But it looks like I am still on the outside looking in, even though the product's release is extremely promising for an eventual solution.

More than two years ago, I talked about the potential attraction of GMail to corporate users who have long been tethered to the world of Microsoft. I said that Importing PST Files, or e-mail archives common to Microsoft Outlook, could be GMail's secret weapon. In the ensuing years, tools have been made to help upload e-mail from Windows, and to migrate Web mail to Google e-mail accounts. But tonight's announcement was the first for Mac users, who, despite the many synergies between Apple and Google, often find themselves last served, behind Windows and Linux users, by the Mountain View company.


So, of course, I downloaded the application immediately. Without any configuration on my end, it found my Mail.app e-mail and the correct hierarchy, looking to move more than 100,000 messages I've been hoarding since the mid 1990s to the cloud, with appropriate labeling. The expected move time for these 100,000 messages? Almost 30 hours. But at least it was something.

Unfortunately, as many good things tend to have, there was a catch. The e-mail uploader "currently can upload only to Google Apps email accounts, and not to gmail.com or googlemail.com accounts", so the planned migration, once again, seems to be on hold.


Given the wording of the post, the author, Greg Robbins, seems highly aware of the issue, having called it out, and the word "currently" is promising that a solution may soon arrive. But until that time, I will continue to keep using my Mac.com e-mail and storing my data locally. For me, the archives are almost as important, and in some cases, more important, than my most recent data. If I could upload my 100,000+ e-mail messages, with appropriate labeling, to GMail and have the search functionality and all other great items offered in GMail, I would have started the process tonight, but the restriction to Google Apps keeps us on the outside looking in, still.

The promise of the move is tempting enough to open up a new Google Apps account, but I'm not interested in further forking my e-mail experience with more and more accounts to check. It's already a challenge to get work e-mail with multiple clients, and my various online accounts. I have been wanting a real Mac-friendly E-mail uploader to GMail since shortly after its debut, and almost six years after GMail shocked the world with its invention, I still don't have it. So Greg, I know you want what I want, so how can we make this happen?

Despite my reputation as an Apple fanboy, through the months of rumors and hype around Apple's tablet, I remained relatively quiet. While it may have reduced my page views potential, I've made a cognitive choice not to be the fifteenth person jumping into a dogpile just to say I did it. If you wanted rumors and guesses, they were out there. If you wanted speculation and mockups, you knew where to find it. And when the big day came yesterday, instead of calling in sick and watching Steve Jobs wow the faithful in San Francisco, I was working, taking part in a full day consulting engagement with a new client working on some very interesting things.

But with 24 hours plus after the iPad has moved from rumor to reality, I am as unimpressed with the swarm of armchair quarterbacking that is going on from many corners of the Web pointing out its shortfalls when contrasted to their own dream machines, or trying to find out why feature X made it but feature Y did not as I was with their thin rumors. I've seen people claiming that the debut of the iPad is a big bucket of iFail, that it's a dud, that it's "not for you", or in the reverse, that it means the death of TV, the death of banner ads online, the death of Flash, the death of... yeah, you get it.

Without shooting myself in the foot, this is part of why the blogosphere can at times get a bad name. This is why Apple can afford to keep its eyes closed to the rumors and speculation and suggestions by committee, for if the iPad had been developed by the many who have designed its tombstone over the last 24 hours, it would be too expensive, late to market, too heavy, or simply defy the laws of physics.

To question Apple's decisions at this point, after the success of the iPhone, and the iTunes Store and the iPod before them, on the heels of the iMac, and Mac OS X and the top-quality MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines, is pretty silly. Put toe to toe with any other hardware and software company on the planet, I think I am going to pick the Apple team every time, because they simply know how to focus and execute.

Today, I finally took the time to watch Steve Jobs introduce the iPad. While some may have derided the iPad as simply a larger iPod Touch, I believe the most important part of what Jobs focused on was the reason for such a device, sitting between an iPod and a laptop. The need for such a product would be obviated if it could not do certain tasks better than an iPod or better than a laptop. Steve said it needed to browse the Web better, to play videos and iTunes better, and to look at photos better. It is also as important to focus on what he did not say it was intended to do. It was not built to "create" content better. Even though it does have e-mail, and iWork is to be soon available also, this device is built to be an amazing content consumption device.

The iPad is not a Photoshop machine. It is not designed to create PowerPoint slides. But it is designed for how many of us are using our computers today - to consume content. We read Web sites and blogs. We watch videos. We look at photos. We update our social networks. What the iPad is is the stepping stone from the laptop to the virtual "cloud machine", with no hard disk at all, which we may all see some day, the true network computer which has been promised for a decade-plus.

The iPad is designed for casual computing. The presentation yesterday did not focus on speeds and feeds. There was not megahertz bake-off with the A4 chip against Intel processors. Instead, we saw Scott Forstall snowboarding from the couch, and checking his Facebook wall. Steve Jobs looked at photos from vacation trips, sent a single-sentence e-mail and chilled to Bob Dylan.

The price of the iPad, starting at only $499 for an entry level unit, is about the same as the first iPods were in 2001 ($399), and they only did one thing - music. But instead of being limited to just one task, the iPad does about 90% of what you have come to expect from a traditional $1,000 to $2,000 laptop. For all the derision of the iPad in the world of business, it could be a fantastic tool for business meetings around round tables, and at home, it could be a fantastic Web tablet for people of all generations. Forget about finding a niche for me to use it, in addition to my iPhone and MacBook Air. Why shouldn't an iPad, version one or version two, become the first computing device for my kids? At its low price, large enough screen for their small hands, and instant access to iTunes apps, that could end up what happens in the next few years.

While the iPad does not run a derivative of Mac OS X, what instant integration with the iTunes App Store has done is turned the old adage of Macs not having enough software titles completely on its head. While more and more of our activity today comes through Web services, the iPad starts with tens of thousands of potential apps, on day one. Contrast this with what will no doubt be a future alternative to the iPad, with Google's Chrome OS, which may be a winner in browsing the Web and having a cheap price point, but won't likely come close to offering such a massive library of apps.

At the beginning of the year, I said that 2010 computing was going to be four things: Lighter, Faster, Mobile and Connected. The iPad is lighter, mobile and connected, three of the four, and it looks faster than the iPhone in terms of loading and processing apps. Reading the tea leaves that showed the MacBook Air line was not going to be updated this week, accurately, I did pick up my MacBook Air refurbished a few weeks ago, and it is already acting as my own cloud machine. Despite getting the 128 gigabyte hard drive, I still have more than 100 gigabytes available, as I continue to work toward a cloud experience. The iPad is another step in that direction, as it doesn't look open to third party software installs, and like the Air, does not have a removable media drive.

The iPad simply makes sense. I don't need to hold one to know how it will work, because I have become so familiar with the iPhone experience. I don't have to carry it from room to room while using the Web as I know I would, or read books or other content on it, instead of the Kindle, as I know it's better from day one, with more functionality, a better screen and real color. I do not care about all the whining that is going on about it missing a camera, or whether it supports Flash, or whether it needs a USB port or two to fit in. This is the first generation, and like the iPod and iPhone before it, the first generation is going to get updated and antiquated in about a year's time, as we continue to see the product evolve. The iPad, despite not being perfect, is the best product on the market at this pricepoint, period. It can make casual computing comfortable, and continue to erode the complexity so long associated with PCs from any source.

Have I purchased one yet? No. Having just purchased the Air, I am plenty happy with it. But I know an iPad, either this version or the next, will make it into my home. And if the twins have their druthers, we'll probably end up with two. So it's time to stop complaining about dream machines and misplaced expectations, and time to start trusting Steve. No other company, Google and Microsoft included, could have pulled off what Apple did yesterday. They are going to sell a ton of these machines, and you'll see them in places you never expected. Casual computing and content consumption are going to drive it.

With real-time news and distribution increasingly becoming the norm for many product launches and events, the interpreters of the news who pass their findings your way don't often have additional information that was gleaned as exclusive. As events are live streamed directly to the public, or presentations are mass broadcast to large groups simultaneously, those headlining the news are armed not with inside sources and first person quotes, but instead with immediate analysis of the events to try and put their own unique spin on history, separating themselves from their peers.

Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post titled Launching Products in the Age of Instant Analysis, highlighting the tech media's instantaneous interpretation of products like Google Finance and semi-regular introductions from Apple. You could later see tech bloggers swarm around Cuil and Microsoft's Origami platform, declaring each of them as failures, fairly accurately.

In the ensuing time, news has gotten even more rapid, and even more participants are helping to broadcast events, not just through their blogs and publications, but on Facebook, Twitter and many other social media properties. Those that attend live gatherings get an edge over their competition through speed of publishing, speed of transmission of photos and videos, higher quality videos, a better angle, or through an innovative use of a new Web service. We saw this with the recent Nexus One announcement from Google, and will inarguably see it again this Wednesday, when Steve Jobs entertains a hungry press corp looking for the latest from Apple.

Wednesday's entertainment will be much like many similar events before it, no doubt. Scads of gadget bloggers and Macintosh faithful will be there, flanked by general tech reporters, and the mainstream press. There may be a QuickTime stream, and if not, the absence of said stream will be made fairly irrelevant thanks to near-immediate live blogging, best exemplified by the work at Engadget or MacRumors Live in years past. Other sites will try to do the same, but to choose their work over the seasoned pros should only be done out of compassion by family members or significant others of the writers themselves.

Essentially, as Steve Jobs and his team flip through each successive Keynote slide, or walk through each carefully rehearsed product demo, those waiting and watching will all find out at the same time. The news you see or read through your computer screen will not be substantively less accurate or less speedily discovered than by those who were actually there. The press corp, in an effort to drive home their own relevancy and highlight their value through a key thing called "access", will drive home their recaps of the proceedings. Those driven by the quantity of posts will give each major product or feature its own story. Quotes off the cuff may be spun as insight themselves, and others will simultaneously post how each introduction will place in history, or judge its success or failure relative to the meteoric expectations they drove themselves. Subsequent stories will fawn over the first views of the product at stores, we will see glorious unboxing videos, disassembly of the parts, and estimates to total costs and product margins. Speculation will ensue as to whether the company built too many machines or not enough, if it's taking too long to reach customers, or if they priced the product too high. (They never complain that it's too cheap, after all)

All these angles and all this spin from all these places... While in the past, media properties were judged by their ability to get access to individuals and find things out that were not known by anyone else, or before they were supposed to be aired, the flattening of the media and the measurement of what some would say are the wrong metrics (be it page views, retweets or whatever your favorite statistic of the day is), have delivered a scenario by which there is more noise than ever, and as consumers, we must filter like mad.

Robert Scoble, a peer, and fellow geek and curator, said that he will be skipping out on Wednesday's news, and watching the news ink feeding frenzy as it seeps through our computer screens. His goal won't be necessarily to report on the news, which will be common knowledge as soon as he starts typing, but to find the best interpretations of the news from his favorite sources. He publicly will be doing something we all must learn to do - separating the news discovery artists from the news spin artists. With tools like Twitter and other networks making it ever easier to hit the publish button, our ability to screen, filter and decide what information is good for us is going to be increasingly tested.

If the company's recent hiring practices are any indication, fail whales may soon fade into the Web's memory bank, as Twitter continues to expand its team focused on data center and hosting solutions, or technical operations, hoping to scale the company's capabilities in line with and in advance of future growth. Today's newest hire is Lisa Phillips, who leaves Six Apart, no stranger to the high scale and high activity Web services arena.

As outlined on Lisa's LiveJournal page from earlier this month, Lisa is starting her position as Capacity Planning Manager today, and will be based in Seattle, visiting Twitter headquarters in San Francisco often to work with the technical ops team.

No stranger to spills and crashes, Lisa is also an avid roller derby participant with Bay Area Derby Girls.