I recently attended a two-day Hardware Workshop offered by Bolt, a Boston-based VC fund. A dozen sessions gave hardware entrepreneurs exposure to practical tips for building a successful hardware startup.

The widely-circulated story today that Google fired an employee for reviewing the "private" files and information of users, and even harassed a user based on their "private" information might seem shocking, but it's really only illustrating something that those of us in the industry have known for years: anything we say, type or otherwise create that goes thru a pipe or a satellite or an antenna is fully accessible by every touchpoint in the process. It is kind of like being spied on by someone looking thru a peephole: we think it is private and "ours" but in reality we are buck naked for any prying eye to see.

I don't use the moniker "IT" very often, typically only to talk about the internal stuff at my company that has to do with computing technology in the vaguest way. Under "IT" falls our hardware and software that runs the gamut of business technology: computers, phones, Internet connection, printers, other peripherals...everything. However, with the recent wave of unexpected and in many cases surprising mergers, it appears we may start talking more about giant "IT" conglomerates that seem to be in any and every technology related to computing and communication.

I recently returned from a 2 week vacation and my source of digital consumption was with my iPhone or iPad. So for 2 weeks I was only using a touchscreen - and digging it.

The press is reporting today on a patent filed in January by Apple for what amounts to a "convertible" iMac - Apple's line of large screen all-in-one desktop computers - that also functions as a giant desktop iPad. This sort of device is certainly inevitable, in one form or another. The evolution introduced to everyday computing by the iPhone and now being accelerated by Android devices, the iPad, and other tablet solutions would certainly evolve into our desktop computing experiences. It was simply a question of when - and how. With this patent application we're seeing one potential approach to implementing these next-generation solutions.

Leave it to Apple to turn speculation of the future obsolescence of the mouse as a computing input device into present reality. Today Apple launched the Magic Trackpad, a mouse replacement that accomplishes all of the input interactions of the mouse as well as all of the input interactions of portable computing devices such as the iPad and iPhone.

I’m one of the fortunate few who has had the opportunity to use both a Microsoft Surface and an Apple iPad. While both are “magical” and “revolutionary” devices in their own unique and incomplete ways, I’m struck by the fact that both of them remind me of the only Palm device I ever had, back in 2003: a novelty that did some things well but most things poorly, and ultimately left me ignoring it in its charger. While I don’t expect Surface’s and iPad’s to collect a thickening coat of dust like my Palm once did I do think both are similarly flawed, incomplete devices. The device that will truly be “magical” and “revolutionary” will be a combination of the two, taking the best parts of both parents:

From the Microsoft Surface, the truly “magical” and “revolutionary” offspring will inherit…

It is generally accepted among the design intelligentsia that Apple is designing better software and hardware than pretty much everybody else in the core areas they choose to play. Yet there is one area where they have notably failed - if only by non-participation - yet stands as one of the most vital hardware solutions in the present and future: docking.