The battle of the benchtop sequencers (between newcomer Ion Torrent, recently purchased for a staggering $725 million by Life Technologies, and the directly competing MiSeq instrument announced by established sequencing giant Illumina) has taken a turn for the surreal, with this YouTube ad by Ion Torrent following a well-trodden "Mac vs PC" line:
Those of us following the industry can only cross our fingers that this heralds an all-out YouTube duel between the two companies.
Ion Torrent accusing MiSeq of peddling vaporware is pretty bold: Torrent made a big deal of its announcement of its new, high-throughput 318 chip as changing the game, even though it won't actually be released to early access customers until September. I'm also not sure how long Torrent can pull the "we're the little guys in T shirts up against the middle-aged businessman" routine now that they're officially part of the Life Tech mega-corporation. But hell, it still amused me.
