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gDocs and Apple would taste great together

I've become an ardent Google Documents fan over the past few months -- especially as its support for Safari has improved (didn't say perfect; just improved). I use it for collaborating with clients and 43f guest authors, as well as for managing small projects and keeping various small teams organized. Personally, I find it simpler than a wiki and a lot more powerful than using a static .doc.

My favorite use right now is to use a single shared document as a common space that 4 or 5 people have access to and that they can use to give each other to-dos, ask questions, etc. I know stuff like Basecamp does this better and certainly with more sophisticated features, but I'm really attracted to the simplicity of the one-document approach -- especially for informal, remote teams.

I think my gDocs cincher was the first time that it occurred to me to see if I could even look at my documents on my iPhone; I was gob-smacked to see that it actually worked. Obviously it's not optimal for doing lots of editing, but you can see and perfunctorily edit your documents without a laptop, and that's just pretty mind-blowing to me.

As I'm wont to blather on about on MacBreak Weekly, I just can't rid myself of the suspicion that Apple and Google will eventually formalize a relationship around the suite of Google tools and the iPhone. It just seems like such a great fit -- especially if they can work up some kind of conduit for .Mac syncing that lets you keep everything humming along without manual updating. The idea of combining iPhone portability and style with Google ubiquity and power could pose a small but fascinating challenge to conventional big business apps.


Finally, the thing that got me thinking about all this in the first place this morning is this adorable video explaining how gDocs works (thanks, Mike). As far as I'm concerned, there's just not enough use of string in modern demonstration videos.

sborsch's picture

Apple is the "front end" to Google's "back end"

I've been riffing on this connection for some time, most recently in June (see this post: http://www.iconnectdots.com/ctd/2007/06/will_apples_saf.html).

This one paragraph in the post about sums up why I think you're right-on Merlin: "Google is a left-brain company that designs like a blind man with no arms. Apple is without peer in its approach to elegance, beauty, industrial design and understanding the interface between people and technology. They're simply better than any other company on the planet."

When Google released Google Pages I was stunned. When iWeb released a drag-n-drop connection to Google it made even more sense (yet another post: http://www.iconnectdots.com/ctd/2007/08/iweb-was-today-.html).

Bottom line? This Google-Apple connection goes beyond Google Docs, the iPhone connection or even Safari as a "container" for rich, internet applications and the signs will keep pointing toward confirming your suspicions.

 
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