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Reports: Apple to purchase McLaren Technology Group? So, the internet is already flooded with Apple Mac/McLaren puns and jokes so I will save you the pain of having to read too many more. The Financial Times is running a story today stating that Apple has approached McLaren Technology Group with the intention of acquiring the luxury automobile manufacturer. The interesting thing here is that the Technology Group has 3 main subsidiaries: McLaren Applied Technologies: produces high-end next-gen items such as Mark Cavendish's Tour De France bicycle McLaren Automotive: This is the car manufacturer, producing the 570S, 650S, P1 and more. McLaren Racing Limited/McLaren Honda: This is the world famous Formula One team. So why would the Mac maker be buying the Mc racer? Image credit: Automobile Italia Flickr Apple's interest in venturing into the automobile sector has been widely reported for many years now, with an 'Apple Car' being supposedly in the works for coming up to 3-4 years with little to no details having been released about the project by the tech juggernaut as of September 2016. Apple has been poaching a team of auto engineers and designers throughout this period but the end goal of this project is not clear. Is Apple aiming to provide technology to underpin cars manufactured by other companies, or is it wanting to manufacturer and design its own vehicles? A possible coupling with McLaren might answer some of these questions. With the British based company owning an impressive amount of patents, being at the forefront of automobile technology and renown for its engineering practices Apple would be buying a brand with a strong reputation. What could this mean for McLaren? The potential consequences of this acquisition for McLaren could be small, or gigantic, it will come down to how ambitious Apple are being with their Apple Car project. If the project aims to be a mass-produced consumer product then this will be a sea change for McLaren who currently only manufacture thousands of vehicles per year, not the tens or hundreds of thousands Apple could potentially sell. The F1 team has been struggling to find a title sponsor for the cars for the past 2-3 seasons so could we soon see the fruit logo on the race track? Time will tell. Are these reports genuine? And if so, will we see Apple making a large investment in the company or attempt a full takeover? Post your thoughts in the comment section below or on the Forum. Image credit: Header image from Falcon Photography Flickr

Cloud-based gaming: An inevitable future? As of August 2016 we find ourselves at a time where the demographics of internet users are quickly being dominated by those that do not remember a time before the internet existed. This age of rapid technological advancement results in a large number of internet users not being old enough to remember a time before music streaming services such as Spotify (launched in 2008), and also peer-to-peer services such as Napster (2002) and Limewire (2000). This eradication of the need to leave your house and purchase a hard copy of music or software or a PC platform video game has quickly increased in pace and now we find ourselves being able to play the latest console games as soon as they are released, right from the comfort of our own sofa thanks to cloud-based gaming. However, the gaming industry appears to be a few years behind its counterparts, with it only now being the norm to gamers that having a large amount of storage space or a high speed internet connection is now more important than living near to a video game store. We find ourselves in a world where there is seemingly no alternative to streaming. The shift from peer-to-peer in the mid noughties to the dominance of streaming services in the music industry is only now being reflected in the gaming industry. What is cloud-based gaming all about? These are both new technologies that promise to make any gaming previous to 2010 feel positively ancient but what are the advantages they give to the gamer? No dependence on gaming consoles: Do you have a controller? Do you have a TV? Do you have an internet connection? Then it is becoming increasingly possible for you to play a video game that you would have otherwise had to play on an expensive gaming console. Instant playing: If you want to play a game, be it an old one you have not played for a few years or a brand new one, there should be no wait. Gone are the days of searching for a game case/disc in the back of a cupboard, gone are the days of waiting impatiently as your new game downloads slowly. Hardware update: For the moment is hard to see the cloud-based systems matching the console-based systems for the constant requirement to update hardware. The almost annual update of gaming hardware from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo may be a thing of the past for gamers. Pirating-proof: As with all new technological advancements, everything is secure up until that moment where it suddenly is not. The secure servers on which cloud-based gaming hosts their games is up until now still secure. It is only a matter of time until pirated games are hosted on less-than-legal sources but for now this is a small victory to developers. My Experience As someone who has recently purchased an Nvidia shield and signed up to its GeForce Now cloud-based streaming service, the thought of having endless amounts of video games on that tiny rectangular box in my living room still comes across as alien. The quality of the Shield is comparable if not superior to that of a gaming console. It is quick, well thought out and good value for money. When you consider the first 3 months of the GeForce Now subscription are free and that there are a fair few big-name titles available to stream on the service the attractiveness of this new technology is evident. The convenience of being able to sit on your couch and play a new game without having to leave your house or wait while it downloads is something I simply cannot see gamers turning their back on. Cloud-based gaming eliminates the need for gamers to leave their couch - image credit Ian Burt So is it the future? Is cloud-based gaming the future, is it too good to be true or is it simply a fad? This comes down to a few variables such as how fast is your internet? Is it reliable? Cloud gaming can be faultless at times but if multiple people decide to stream live TV in your house, lagging can render a game unplayable. Another question needing to be asked is if services such as GeForce Now are worth paying for? The issue here is that cloud-based gaming still comes across as new and therefore slightly undeveloped. GeForce might have a good variety of genres and games but there is still not anything too appealing on the games list. Titles such as Dirt and Saints Row are a good start but there is nothing too eye-grabbing on the service as of July 2016. Will joining a large subscription based service such as Geforce ever be worthwhile to the popular game developers? I hope so, but with the messiness surrounding music streaming at the moment it is a difficult future to predict. At a time when the most popular artists in the world (Beyoncé, Adele and Taylor Swift) are trying to be independent or claim a loyalty to a certain service it highlights one of gaming’s biggest issues. Exclusivity. A word that might place cloud-based services such as GeForce now in the history books. The dominant companies will be either developing their own titles or ensuring brand exclusivity wherever possible to stop GeForce taking money from them. Over to you! What do you think? Will cloud-based video gaming inevitably take over and dominate how we game? Will downloading games to a local HDD be a thing of the past? Will gaming discs become a relic that our future children look at in wonder? Let me know in the comments section below or on the Forum!