Apple to go WiMax?
Some voices that try to analyze the closed door meetings between Apple and Intel in the past week are now pointing to a commitment to WiMax - the new wireless technology that is spearheaded by Intels development of an integrated chip - by Apple. Apple was one of the first vendors who shipped WiFi - aons ago it seems - in form of the Ufo like Basestations and as an add in option to all of their Powerbooks and iBooks. Now every portable Apple ships has Wifi build in and using it is as easy as opening up you portable. So its not surprising that Apple wants to retain that lead and WiMax - which promises long distance wireless at much higher speeds then todays WiFi - seems to be the right fit. Yes please more radiation to the computers to fry the rest of my wave-bombarded brain.
Generally I think WiMax promises to be a great development but I can already see it beeing regulated down as it would basically mean every person with 200 bucks to spare could have a multiple-mile transmitter and that this could provoke a true uncontrolled "citizens" net - which is never gonna happen with our powerhungry ruling and rich corporation class. Just look how they try to fight open WiFi networks by making everything open = evil because they could be used for terroristic or child pornography activities.
I would LOVE to have a WiMax antenna on my house and be able to directly connect to a few friends in town without the need of the telkos spying and offering me a modest 1 MBit down and 128k up. Now before everyone jumps and says that this would be used for pirating or other terroristic activities - what about the simple desire to BROADCAST - something that I feel I have as much right to do as the mega corpos or the government - something that should be affordable and easy so a lot of people could do this - something that I see as the real reason for limiting my DSL upload bandwidth. Now lets hope Jobs has this little liberal rebel left in him and that he has this vision to empower the ordinary to free their thoughts.