Can an Android shake a red-faced Apple and turn it green with envy?!

You can't turn on the TV in 2014 without hearing about one war or another, which is a truly depressing state of affairs, so it comes as total light relief in comparison to hear of another war that has continued to simmer on and which just boiled over again - the smartphone war! Now that Apple has decided to bite the bullet and face the screen size issue, we are off once again into hilarious digs from the Android Nation - with Samsung in particular leading the charge via its series of brutal "It doesn't take a genius" videos.  

This is but one out of a series of six different ads all poking fun at the supposedly novel features of Apple's new offering, including the purported real purpose of the Apple Watch as a distraction from the actual phone devices themselves. Depending on whether you're an Apple (particularly a green apple!) or an Android, these ads come across as either truly annoying or comically brilliant, but in any case they show the great divide that does exist between the Droid Nation and the Apple Army. 

This divide is far from just a consumer-based rivalry and is most definitely not mere fun for the corporations involved - Apple vs Samsung is perhaps the most bitter, litigious and expensive war ever waged between two giants of the business world, never mind just the technology world. It all began in the summer of 2010 during the reign of Steve Jobs when Apple first claimed that Samsung's pioneering flagship device, the Galaxy S, was a rip-off of the iPhone. To cut a long story short, it has been going on ever since, involving millions of pages of legal documents and an even more staggering billion dollars plus in legal costs. As is often the case in such matters, the lawyers are the ones who probably enjoy the smartphone war(s) the most!

To say that the Koreans did not exactly agree would be putting it mildly, not least given that they were supplying (up until the most recent iPhone model) various key components of the Apple device, including that shiny retina screen. Further, Samsung responded by stating that they believed that Apple may have infringed on their patents used in previous Samsung mobile devices; the brand had been in the mobile phone business for almost two decades by the time the iPhone arrived (very glamorously) onto the scene.

Unquestionably, Steve Jobs and Apple got so much right in their flagship iPhone and things changed forever once iPhone fever kicked in, globally. At one point it looked like Apple was always going to be ahead, until one glaring oversight that became more and more apparent from Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy SII, and models beyond - screen size. This is where the two brands began to diverge and the devices began to feel and look truly dissimilar. For me personally, I began to feel that iPhones were simply too small for a man's hand, but they made extremely elegant phones for females. Conversely, Galaxy (and other Android) devices just got bigger and bigger, and the thinking that large tablet-like devices would not sell were put very firmly to bed by Samsung in particular and the Android Nation in general.

Samsung have not been slow to mock Apple for this oversight, one made by the great Steve Jobs himself, and they recently resurrected his own words as part and parcel of their response to Apple's (apparently self-indulgent) ads that suggest that the "bigger-is-better" philosophy is news to anyone except maybe Tim Cook. Naturally, the Apple Army have risen in numbers claiming that quoting Steve Jobs today is tasteless in the extreme, when sadly, the man is no longer able to respond. But you can't blame Samsung for also pointing out that they have had a smartwatch around for ages already, so what's the big deal about that? Essentially, everything that Apple is chest-beating and preening itself over has been available to the Android Nation for years already!

I (for one) knew that the statement above derived from an erroneous philosophy, not least because the very day I moved from Apple iPhone 3G to Samsung Galaxy SII - I was lost to the Apple Army. In one day, I knew I was never going back. Each time I handled a new Samsung phone, iPhones just seemed to get smaller and smaller, to the point where I would never buy one again - even if it was free with the contract! The incredibly successful (yet unwieldy, according to critics) Samsung Galaxy Note series proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Samsung was right, and Apple got it wrong - there's a huge market for so-called "huge" devices (phablets) and an incredibly loyal fan base who gobble up each new model with increasingly ravenous hunger. 

Bringing up that comment from Steve Jobs will hardly do anything to his legacy, I am certain - it's written deeply in stone, and his genius will live on with us (and maybe beyond us) for a very long time. I actually think that it's Tim Cook whose vision will be examined; it's no surprise that he had to go along with Jobs while he was the boss, but deciding subsequently to go with bigger devices is hardly visionary especially given that the market demand for those "unwieldy" devices was eating an increasingly larger bite out of the right side of that apple! So what is Cook bringing to the table that is new - that's the question being raised by Samsung, the Android Nation, some Apple die-hards, and maybe even the Apple board.

For us consumers, I think the smartphone war is all incredibly entertaining and it should not be taken too seriously. If the ongoing battle between the Android Nation and the Apple Army produces beautiful yet amazingly functional devices at killer prices, then it's all alright by me - bring it on, people!

Solving death is a Time-consuming business!

          

I've been more than a little intrigued recently about a new life science venture that is garnering increased attention, and the main reason for that intrigue is that this new life science venture comes with a globally-recognized brand tagged to it - none other than Google! Yes, it seems that the search engine/search engine marketing and Internet technology giant now intends to "solve death" (a rather ambitious challenge!) via their first foray into one key aspect of daily life for so many - human disease. 

Around this time last year, Google announced the nucleation of Calico, a California-based biotech company that would focus on health and well-being, and putting a priority on age-dependent diseases moving forward. Given how we have "solved death" (a better label might be cheated death) in terms of heart disease and certain cancers (relative to decades ago), we are all living longer, and unquestionably the emergence of what are referred to as "age-dependent diseases" is indicative of that medical success. 

Our grandparents maybe never experienced true age-dependent diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease etc. primarily because they died too young - but today's grandparents have benefited enormously from medical advances effected in their lifetime and as the population of humans in their 70s, 80s and 90s has increased exponentially, so have diseases that inevitably arise during those precious extra years of life.

Thus the choice of age-dependent diseases and improved well-being for an aging population is not exactly shocking for any contemporary new biopharma enterprise, but perhaps the fact that it is Google who are backing Calico is shocking, and raises some eyebrows. There is naturally a great deal of skepticism about the venture, especially given that it didn't even come with a website attached to it, and for a Google that just seems heretical! People have been asking whether it's just the next trendy thing that CEO Larry Page wants to have in his portfolio, or maybe he's actually trying to solve the issue of his own death, in advance!

The cynicism has been put to rest a little by the credentials of the person who is at the helm - none other than Art Levinson, former CEO and Chairman of Genentech, arguably the most successful biotech in the world, and he is also at the helm of Apple's board - so this is a big name and is someone associated with both far-reaching ambition and the talent to make it actually happen. But is it possible to build a second Genentech, in 2014? That is the question, especially if the goal is to "solve death"!

Subsequently to Levinson, there have been a few other more scientifically commonplace names mentioned, some of whom are involved in lifespan research in C. elegans - tiny nematodes that live in soil. As fascinating as some of the work is, it is a very long way away from humans and their diseases, and translation of nematode research into clinically relevant targets/therapeutics is far from the type of technology challenges that have been heretofore successfully addressed by Google. 

Even if they are an easy target in this regard, it is worth pointing out that Google knows nothing about biology. They know a truckload about the personal online habits and preferences of countless hundreds of millions of computer-using humanoids (often without their knowledge), but they know nothing about what truly keeps that extremely sophisticated biology alive and kicking, and functioning beautifully like that brand new shiny Google drone - and even that remains to be seen!

Of course, the reverse may also be (and is) the case. Would Google be impressed by a bunch of biologists announcing that they were going to solve wordless communication technology, via just the power of thought? That would be an enormous technological challenge, and certainly one that also involves some biology - but the task would be ultimately primarily technological, for now. Just as "solving death" remains indisputably a biological challenge, but one which naturally includes some technological excellence. 

But let's not forget that incredible advances in technology-applied-to-science/medicine, such as the sequencing of the human genome, have not fulfilled their promise in terms of their impact on "solving death", even if the reason is that the technology provided data that we as scientists can not yet interpret fully due to there being an ongoing and increased need for understanding of the biology underlying that data. Although a biologist could well have an idea for an app that is better than a typical tech geek, and some tech geeks may well be able to look at human disease with fresh eyes, it's still likely to be the tech geek who solves the communication issue and the biologist who finds a key piece in the puzzle of disease biology. 

To cut a long story short then, it seems to me that the most useful contribution of Google to Calico would be their cash, their brand, and the only way to make it competitive will be stocking it up with top notch scientists, and making it look as much as possible like a typical biotech company, and as little as possible like the brainchild of Google's Larry Page. The Google X team under him are indeed working on projects that fall outside of the traditional Google bread and butter, but none quite as far off as founding something remotely like a Genentech! It is worth noting in that regard that Art Levinson is also a founding investor, and he may well have pitched something to Google that persuaded them to go in this direction. 

Notwithstanding the apparent lack of movement over the past year, and the mounting sarcasm regarding how virtual-versus-real this venture is, it was announced just this week that Calico was going into business with a big name in the industry - AbbVie! Apparently both Google (Calico) and AbbVie are to invest a whopping $250M each into this disease-solving (sounds much more realistic than "death-solving") partnership, with each entity sharing in any proceeds. Given AbbVie's recent acquisition of Shire for north of $50B, it is clear that they can afford this play with Calico, and can readily invest the remaining cash outlined in the deal which could top out at $750M each for AbbVie and Calico. 

One can only hope that in the case of Google, someone took the time to explain to them that given the particularities of drug discovery and development (as opposed to releasing a new smartphone), it is not clear that Larry Page will still be the CEO by the time Calico would have a therapeutic for "solving death" on the market. Unless Larry Page knows something that we don't and he's intending to have the same number of lives as that cute calico cat pictured above! ;)