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iPhone 5 concepts

I realize that over the past few weeks, I've included at least one article each week that talks about the iPhone 5. Why? It's the hottest story in the tech sphere week in and week out.

This week, several new images of possible iPhone 5 prototypes have been posted. To start off, we don't even know if it's going to be called iPhone 5 yet. However, heavy speculations points to that name. Speculators are still arguing over whether it will have a home button or not. I side with the people who believe there will be a home button. It'd be silly not to have one.

Apple is extremely secretive about launching its products. Not one single peep, hint or clue is given. This is what makes the speculation so much fun. Many wild pictures have been posted this week, but I am only going to show three. The first two are real possibilities, and the third is somewhat of an outrageous idea -- but extremely fascinating. Tell me on Twitter (@thedavidbell) which one of these prototypes if your favourite.

McDonald's Photoshop magic

It's inevitable that in your lifetime, someone will tell you McDonald's is bad for you. It happens to everyone and everyone realizes it. What most consumers think is that there is an insane amount of editing to those tasty-looking ads for burgers and junior chickens you see when you walk into a McDonald's or go through the drive-thru. Hope Bagozzi, director of marketing for McDonald's Canada, did a documentary style video on the whole photo-shoot process. To my satisfaction, there wasn't as much editing as consumers believe. Bagozzi first went to a McDonald's, ordered a quarter pounder, and then took it to the photo studio. They shot it and then compared it to a photo-shoot ready burger. The main difference between the two is that a food stylist created the burger for the photo shoot. He uses all of the same ingredients; he just positions them nicely so they appear good on film. A McDonald's employee doesn't take four hours to create a burger like the food stylist does. That's the difference. Same ingredients, but a longer amount of time assembling it. Check out the four minutes film on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?featureplayer_embedded&voSd0keSj2W8#!

YouTube could net Google billions this year

Who would've thunk it that a site where you can watch cats play the piano can net billions of dollars of revenue in a year? YouTube is growing insanely fast. Seventy-two hours of video footage is uploaded every 60 seconds... that's crazy.

YouTube has been growing 20 per cent quarter after quarter after quarter. Google will net $2.5-billion in revenue from YouTube this year alone. They gross $3.6-billion, but after divvying it up to the YouTube partners (like me), they end up with $2.5-billion. This just shows the power of video content. Not too many people would read a five-page blog post anymore. A lot of people would sit down and watch an eight-minute-long YouTube video, however.

Microsoft Surface

A few years back, Microsoft released a video about their product called Surface. It originally was a coffee table that allowed you to do many things that a coffee table couldn't do. Some of those things may have been: placing a camera on the surface and being able to drag all the photos off of it, emailing your mother or checking Facebook. People loved the concept of Surface. However, it never was made available.

On Monday, Microsoft finally unveiled Surface -- except it looked a lot like Apple's iPad. Surface will be running Windows' new flagship operating system Windows 8. Windows 8 is very mobile and has a touch-screen-friendly operating system. I don't know if I should be happy or sad about this new product. It's certainly nice that Microsoft unveiled its first go at the tablet market, but I feel like this is going to be another BlackBerry PlayBook saga. I assume the Surface will attract a lot of attention early, then sales will plummet, and then a fire sale will happen. Just an early prediction ;).

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 24, 2012 ??65521