While we have a little bit of a lull of late in tech, I had a few things I thought might be worth discussing, and each on their own merits wasn’t necessary a whole article, but in their totality, they might be – so I am going to roll up a bunch of ideas together, and start a new special feature I’m going to call “Silicon Theories” – this will be the inagural September edition of what I hope to be a monthly thing.  I’m going to collect of bunch of thoughts and ideas and submit them for your consideration.

• Apple is making changes other than removing headphone jacks from the iPhone – speaking of folks who are leery of handing over their data, this recent article from The Verge about Apple’s increased push towards TouchID usage sparked an interesting monologue in my head.  I first reviewed Apple’s biometric log-in solution on the iPhone 5S I use through my employer.  Its simple, fast, and easy to use.  Its not foolproof however, and others who have both physical reasons for having flawless fingerprints and other personal reasons for choosing not to use it are going to reach a crossroads very soon (if they are Apple users at least, and even quite a few Android OEMs are moving this direction as well) – in an increasingly “short attention span, instant gratification” world, people want things faster and easier than ever before in history.  We have faster mobile phones, tablets, and laptops; we have faster wired and wireless access to the internet.  Someone at Apple clearly thought that typing in a secure password took too long and so they developed a way to unlock their devices (and subsequently use those same biometrics for things like payment systems a-la Apple Pay) using any available fingerprint.  But as seen, there are basic levels of security that can only be accessed using a PIN or other alternative secure unlock method (after a reboot of your device for example, a biometric event is not accepted) – so those with a personal or physical desire to not use fingerprints might not be left out in the cold completely.  But they may in fact be without access to certain additional features as we become increasingly more reliant on these biometric “conveniences” (Samsung even recently added a feature to implement retina scanning as a unlock method) and for those that won’t or can’t use them having to find other workarounds.  And that is a shame. 

• There are rumors starting to surface that Google is looking to fold its 2 different operating systems together, creating a hybrid OS that can run on any mobile phone, tablet, and laptop – blending Android (on mobile phones and tablets) and Chrome OS (on laptops referred to as Chromebooks) into one new system, code named “Andromeda.”  This has the potential to do many things for Google, not the least of which would be to put them in direct competition with a company like Microsoft, with Windows.  As most know, Windows is the most used PC operating system in the world, and its not really even that close.  The Android operating system is the most prevalent mobile OS in the world, and again, not really that close.  There have been many developments in the laptop computing world of late, but one of the most significant was the ability for Chromebook to run certain Android apps – that’s means that all your stuff in apps like Evernote can now be accessed via your laptop.  That’s almost Apple level integration there, and perhaps a future even exists where Microsoft’s Windows is no longer the biggest driver of our PCs and mobile devices.  The future for Alphabet/Google could be very bright indeed.