Brian S Hall – Page 2

The Smartphone Is The Computer

I have spent the past three weeks in Detroit, a city possessing a rich history and an unremitting present. The vagaries of Silicon Valley count for little here. When I heard a young man ask — for real — if the Samsung Galaxy S5 was an iPhone or an Android, I knew there was much to glean if I simply put my smartphone down and listened.

Here then are my thoughts, insights and observations from the past one score and one day…

There are no smartphone wars. Rather, just amazing, affordable and truly expansive opportunity. Android versus iPhone means nothing to nearly everyone I speak with.

It is hard to overstate just how much television will be disrupted by the combination of children, tablets and YouTube. Free, always accessible content uniquely tailored to their own self-driven interests, available from any location is now possible — and the young will accept nothing less.

Facebook, not smartphones, not telcos, not automobiles, not Disney or ESPN, is connecting the world. Facebook is the new oil. If there is any ‘next Steve Jobs,’ it is Mark Zuckerberg. For whatever confluence of reasons, Zuckerberg divined the power of social media from the start, just as Jobs did with computing. No matter how rich, no matter how many struggles, I expect Zuckerberg to devote the remainder of his life to Facebook and all it represents.

There is middling outrage over the Facebook ‘user emotion’ study. As for me, this represents little more than A/B testing. In fact, I’m more angry over the iPhone keyboard. It’s so terrible. Is this some sort of secret Apple study? I mean, what other possible reason could there be?

I am in the place where cars and mass production altered the course of humanity. Now, it is smartphones, social media, mapping, and code; these are re-making the planet as much as the automobile did in the 20th century. We are at the start of a new future. That’s just awesome.

I was often asked the best way to become a professional writer. It’s such an easy question to answer.

Marry well.

Oh, and should you be so fortunate to have an opportunity to write about what you love, for an organization with no concern for page views and provocation, as I am at Tech.pinions, then do not fritter away such a blessing.

I first learned about the SCiO from Techpinions. Point this device at a piece of fruit for example, and it will tell you what it is and even provide data on its composition, such as how much fat and carbs the item contains. Every single time I read more about this device, I think it is absolute magic. I told so many people about it that I now desperately hope it works as advertised.

I have nothing but good things to say about the Amazon Fire Phone. Yet, I can’t possibly recommend it to anyone. Why would I? In the US, at least, there is almost no reason to recommend any smartphone other than the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone faces a similar fate as Amazon’s Fire. Fair or not, can you imagine any outcome for Windows Phone other than failure? How does Microsoft start over? What amazing technologies, hardware and combination of services can they possibly deliver to make the world care about a device that is not iPhone or Android? I do not have the answers.

If I were in charge of Microsoft I would simply continue to make quality devices, offering great Nokia design, great Nokia imaging, incorporating Skype, OneDrive, HERE, Office and other Microsoft-owned products and services. Plodding along, hoping more and more Android vendors exit the business, picking up the scraps, all while leveraging my enterprise install base and security, identity and productivity tools, hoping users discover my superior value.

It won’t help. The smartphone market is lost to Microsoft.

The screen market, however, is barely in its infancy. Microsoft should forget smartphones and focus instead on screens. Screens will become like power outlets, we only notice them when they cannot be found.

Perhaps no company — not Apple, not even Google — possesses the breadth of services Microsoft offers. The problem, of course, is these services are not exposed for all the world to use. They are locked inside unwanted PCs, shoved inside tablet abominations, buried beneath the content we actually seek from our Xbox systems, sold mostly to IT directors, attached to products and platforms we do not need, and hidden behind an incomprehensible UI. Microsoft has built an anti-moat around its services, not locking us in but keeping everyone out.

The World Cup has introduced to millions the joys of live sports streamed to our smartphones and tablets. This is so in Detroit and around the country. It has never been more clear we all want to watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it where we want to watch it and on the device we want to watch it on. This is simple, obvious and unstoppable. It’s only a matter of time before we have a difficult time explaining to our progeny how it ever could have been anything else.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook very happily took part in the San Francisco Pride Parade. Also, Hobby Lobby successfully won the right to provide only certain forms of contraception for its employees. What do these have in common?

Values equal profits.

Companies are publicly declaring their values, even going to court to defend and promote their values. This is only start. The technologies of Silicon Valley are breaking down barriers, bringing corporations to their knees and empowering individuals and groups around the world. With smartphones in hand, with continuous, real time, location-aware connectivity always available, we become our own corporations — with Uber, AirBnB and others merely pointing the way. We will work for ourselves and we will live by our values.

This is good. But it will be messy. Very messy.

Hype aside, can you envision a situation where you use Bitcoin over, say, your iPhone ‘wallet’ linked to your secure iTunes payment data? iPhone offers ease of use and peace of mind. That’s a powerful combination. Still worse for Bitcoin, is that it is essentially digital cash in a world addicted to easy credit. Learn about the blockchain. Bitcoin itself is merely a bystander.

Given Android’s headstart in wearables, it’s hard to see Apple winning any wearable app wars. Given the limitations of its market reach, it’s similarly difficult to see Apple winning the “smart home” market without buying its way in. Sonos would be a good start.

Smartphones are borderline magical. That said, the iPhone 5s battery and the HTC One (M8) camera are embarrassingly bad.

In the past week, I’ve rented two movies from iTunes. I failed to finish both in the first sitting and was not able to watch either until after 24 hours later. iTunes refused, insisting the rental period had expired. This was true, though did not mitigate my anger. I may abandon iTunes rentals altogether. The lure of non-legal downloading is strong.

How much of Yahoo’s Alibaba riches is Marissa Mayer prepared to spend to get us to visit Yahoo? I suspect all of it. Nowhere I go does Yahoo seem to matter.

Idle prediction: Apple will not kill off the iPhone 5/c/s form factor this year, nor will Apple offer three simultaneous iPhone form factors. Yes, that means I am predicting only one large-display iPhone.

Not a prediction, just a thought experiment: In 2024, when a chid is born, they will be assigned either an Android or an iPhone. This will control everything.

There will be over 1 billion (American) Android activations this year, and several hundred million (Chinese) Android (AOSP) activations. Android is a stunning success story. All those involved in Android have long since earned our respect. That said, some analysts, bloggers and even industry insiders still have not grasped the obvious: Smartphones are the first screen. Smartphones are the primary computer.

The CEO of Yahoo is female. The CEO of HP is female. The #2 at Facebook is female. A man runs Android, the world’s most popular OS. He is from India. The CEO of Microsoft is from India. The tech sector points the way forward not only with its products.

Be smart. Work hard. That’s true everywhere.

Life Liberty And Pursued By Google

If we do not have a right to be forgotten on the Internet then we have no right to privacy. None. We cannot allow Google and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales to strip us of this basic protection.

It appears, however, that is their intent.

Last month, in a freedom-fighting shot heard round the Internet, the European Court of Justice ruled people have a “right to be forgotten.” The Court stated every private citizen within 32 European Union nations can demand Google (and other search engines) remove links about them which are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.”

This decision is freedom.

Let’s say you defaulted on a car loan 20 years ago, your first year out of college. Should that be the first thing that pops up under your name when anyone, anywhere, anytime, maybe forever, types your name into Google? Must you forever be branded?

Thanks to the EU’s ruling, you can now have the link removed. The link — not the data, not the facts, not the source. The facts have not been changed. The document Google’s link has pointed to, a local newspaper article, say, or possibly an old legal filing, still remain in existence. But, you can no longer be unduly punished by Google’s unforgiving, unforgetting algorithms.

We need a “right to be forgotten” in the United States!

Indeed, while credit agencies must — by law — wipe clear their data on us from many years ago, the far larger, far richer, far more encircling Google faces no such restrictions. A small, local newspaper may have written a blurb about students unable to pay back their student loans in a timely manner. In 1998. And your name was included. Google enables the world to instantly know this about you, years and even decades later.

You’ve long since made good, of course. You satisfied your debts. Yet every future employer that types your name into Google sees that information, possibly at the very top of the page. Fair? Of course not. Must we private citizens be so powerless against Big Data collections? Technology is supposed to be empowering — and not just for a giant corporation, but for individuals, all of us. That’s the promise of technology, after all.

Google thinks different.

Soon after the ruling, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt stated “the balance that was struck [between a person’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know] was wrong.”

Curiously, it is Mr. Schmidt who is leading the company’s efforts to implement the court’s decision. Following the court’s ruling, Google appointed an “advisory board,” because, as the company stated:

“The court’s ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know. We’re creating an expert advisory committee to take a thorough look at these issues.”

Spoiler alert: Google’s “advisory committee” is stocked with ringers. These include Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Google’s lead attorney, David Drummond, and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales.

I confess I don’t know the views of all seven members on the Google-appointed committee. But I do know some. Eric Schmidt, for example, has offered numerous public statements on the issue of privacy, often going up to, maybe even beyond the creepy line. Here’s just one example:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Google’s chief lawyer David Drummond called the Court’s decision “disappointing”and stating it “went too far.”

Your laws, Europe, are impeding Google’s grand plans.

However, it is Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and a rather curious selection to Google’s advisory committee, who has waged the most vigorous and public opposition to this ruling. I interviewed Jimmy Wales for TechHive. He told me the court’s decision is censorship, plain and simple.

It absolutely is censorship and no one serious has any doubts about that at all. As a simple test, ask yourself whether this would be possible in the U.S. without a repeal or modification of the First Amendment—it would not.

Jimmy Wales is profoundly wrong.

The First Amendment was instituted to protect individuals. Yes, it is a right against the government, not private business. Still, his suggestion that empowering citizens to limit the lasting personal harm from Google’s algorithms is the equivalent of repealing the First Amendment is disheartening.

We have laws that limit pornography. We have laws that limit how long credit bureaus may keep their data. We have laws regarding copyright and content distribution. Our society benefits from these. Empowering individuals to have non-relevant or no longer relevant links about them removed from Google will not require a repeal or modification of our first amendment. Indeed, knowing search engines can’t hold onto or link to our private data forever may foster more speech and greater diversity.

Wales, however, takes the hard line stance, conferring all rights to Google while leaving individuals relatively powerless:

Google goes to an enormous amount of effort to write software to express editorial judgment about which links are displayed—that’s freedom of expression.

What we may not do, if we are respecting freedom of expression, is use the force of law to suppress a link to content that is legally published and true.

In Wales’ world, a single slip up, captured by Google’s globe-spanning servers, and you are forever branded.

The police must (now) receive a search warrant before tracking our movements by cell phone or cell tower. Credit agencies can’t hold onto tax lien data after a decade. Google, however, is timeless — no matter how damaging.

It gets worse.

Till now, we’ve had the power to decide whether to hand over our privacy or not. Our private data, our searches, our online purchases, the web pages we viewed were recorded by Google, that data then analyzed and sold, often in aggregated form. In return, we received various benefits such as free search and maps. Perhaps we got a raw deal, handing over far too much in exchange for meager gain. But, it was a deal nonetheless, a choice we all made. Now however, even this lopsided quid pro quo is vanishing. We are being captured without consent, and without ever striking a bargain.

I can avoid Google.com. I can route around Google fiber. I can attempt to escape Google’s servers and Google’s relentless bots, though it’s nearly impossible. How can I avoid Google satellites, Google balloons, or Google drones? These can spot us, soon identify us, link that data to time and geolocation, upload it to their servers, in near-real time, then let anyone, anywhere, forever, know the moment I simply walked outside my front door.

And when I got into my car.

And when I got out.

And where I drove and how fast and where I stopped.

An entire dossier available on me of nearly every moment of every day, available to anyone, anywhere, simply because I stepped off my front porch. You, as well.

Yet Wales and company offer us no power to limit this.

Understand, I am not opposed to these truly amazing technologies, far from it. They are connecting people across the world, enabling the sharing of content, changing views of life and geography. They are empowering. But they cannot be allowed to strip us of our liberty.

When Google purchased Skybox Imaging, a satellite company, Skybox stated:

We’ve built and launched the world’s smallest high-resolution imaging satellite, which collects beautiful and useful images and video every day.

Amen. This type of bold vision, and the execution that made it real, are laudable. Such efforts can aid humanity — not just in America, of course, but all around the world. Mapping our world has, despite many awful instances, helped people advance. This does not, however, give Google — or any company or group of companies — the legal right to capture and sell me, especially when I offered no consent in any form.

The FCC’s decision to allow commercial drone videography can absolutely make our lives better. But Google should not have the right to allow its drones to record me, my time and place, then make that information available to all (or to whom it chooses) without my explicit and ongoing consent, and without a means to have the data stripped from its servers.

This is basic.

Yet, per Jimmy Wales, I have no legal right to say no, no legal right to demand Google erase that data.

How utterly disempowering.

It gets even worse.

The EU Court said Google can refuse to remove non-relevant and harmful links if they remain in the public interest. Google seized on this opening:

The company can reject a takedown request if it thinks the information is in the “public interest” – a definition that will include information about private individuals that others have a valid interest in knowing.

By leveraging this rather amorphous “public interest” baseline, I fear Google will attempt to achieve its global business ends by pitting me against you. This cannot be tolerated.

Rights must rest with the individual, not a company, not a “public.”

It may be in the “public interest” to know when I, a private citizen, walk outside my door, or when I step into a public restroom, or when I do not drive my Prius at optimum MPG. Such data could aid public transit systems, for example, or help the government craft better driver training standards. But an individual has had his privacy stolen, has been disempowered. Rights that do not rest with the individual are no rights at all.

Am I to be made powerless? Are you?

Why must we have no legal recourse, none at all, to have harmful and unnecessary information about us removed? That Google would appoint people so opposed to this basic freedom of privacy is deeply troubling.

Many in the tech community argue for a technological solution. A technological cloaking device, for example, that (virtually) hides us from Google, Facebook, drones, bots, satellites and the like.

No!

We should not be forced into a technological arms race. It may offer temporary protection but it is not liberty.

Google’s vision is clear, their disparate businesses all possessing a common idea: to connect everything and everyone. That is astoundingly audacious. No one else is attempting this. Google are to be praised for their daring, their mission, their execution. They have earned billions of dollars over the years and much respect. But Google has no right to deny us our privacy. They have no right to take from us. We must not allow this.

Jimmy Wales is wrong — and his view of the future is a limiting one, disempowering people, placing algorithms and web bots above humanity. Don’t let this happen.

Note: I have asked Google for comment on the ruling and asked them also to comment on how they selected members of the advisory committee. Should they respond, I will update this column.

Note: My discussions with Jimmy Wales are here and here (via Twitter).

Why Do All Of You Hate Windows Phone So Much?

I have used mobile phones for two decades. I have tried nearly every single platform. I consider myself a good judge of functionality, durability, usability and value. I have spent the past six months using a Windows Phone — a Lumia 1520 — as my primary device. It is big, beautiful, intuitive, powerful. The battery, more than double the iPhone’s, actually lasts me all day long. Cortana knows my voice better than Siri. Live Tiles provide information at a glance better than any iPhone app and all my iPhone notifications. Nokia’s HERE Maps are more responsive than Google’s. The display is magic.

People stop me in public and ask me if they should buy one.

I always say yes.

A few, however, ask if I can recommend it over their iPhone or Android phone.

For this, I have no answer.

For better or worse, iPhone and Android are good enough for, well, nearly every single smartphone user on the planet. I have no reason to believe this will change soon.

Why?

Sales data, mostly. Management shifts inside Microsoft, partly. Plus, I ask people. I ask actual human beings both online and in physical space. I ask why they chose the iPhone or an Android phone. I also ask, and this is always more insightful, why they did not choose a Windows Phone.

But before that, let’s take a look at the numbers. They are unforgiving.

No One Is Using Windows Phone

The smartphone wars are far from over. The near term addressable market for smartphones is in the billions of units.

: Global smartphone growth

And yet…

As smartphones become more vital to our lives, as prices drop, as the technology spreads, as smartphones link to more devices, wearables and services, Windows Phone remains barely a blip. Tech.pinions estimates the Windows Phone install base at a mere 2%.

: Smartphone install base

Love your Windows Phone? Love Nokia design, imaging, sound quality, build quality? Happy with how Windows Phone offers a clear UI alternative, a uniquely innovative means to group contacts, superior music streaming versus Beats?

It does not matter, apparently.

The market has spoken — a billion times over. It can find no valid set of reasons to choose the Lumia Icon or Lumia 920, 1020 or 1520, or any other Windows Phone instead of an iPhone 5c or every model of Android.

It gets worse.

As the Tech.pinions analysis reveals, smartphone sales are dominated by the usual suspects — Apple and Samsung, plus numerous Chinese-based vendors. Nearly all of these are exclusively focused on Android.

Lest you think Tech.pinions numbers are an outlier, Tomi Ahonen aggregates data from several manufacturers and industry groups. His smartphone market share numbers align closely with Tech.pinions.

Spoiler alert: Almost nobody wants Windows Phone.

: Smartphone share

Bad, yes. Worse — the most recent quarter offered little hope, with market share for Windows Phone actually dropping:

By next quarter, Microsoft’s newly acquired Nokia division, which is responsible for the vast majority of Windows Phone sales, may not even crack the top 10:

Coolpad/Yulong? Ever heard of them? They sold millions more smartphones last quarter than did Nokia. To be fair, their Samsung Galaxy Note flattery is quite nice.

How can this be?

Why Is No One Using Windows Phone?

I want Windows Phone to succeed. I want yet another great American company to be a central part of our global, mobile, highly technological future. Plus, Microsoft can offer users a rather stunning array of uniquely valuable services and platforms. Skype, identity, Xbox, Office, OneDrive, Yammer — an unmatched range of corporate, productivity and connectivity tools that may be peerless in the computing world.

Why, then, are their phones so thoroughly rejected?

I said above I asked people why they did not choose a Windows Phone. That is a somewhat misleading statement. Because as it turns out, almost everyone I asked had not even considered a Windows Phone. They could give me no answers.

A few, however, had considered a Windows Phone. Or at least revealed awareness of its existence. Their responses to my informal survey are telling.

1. Microsoft Derangement Syndrome

If I were to state here Microsoft saved Apple from bankruptcy, the vitriolic comments would never end. Should I remark Apple is a great artist — “and great artists steal” — it would generate far more heated, angry response than could ever be justified.

And yet people have no qualms about openly hating Microsoft. The ancient slights, real and perceived, have not healed. I confess I was surprised by how many people made it clear to me they would have nothing to do with Microsoft. Ever. Whenever they have a choice.

I find this Microsoft hate odd and unproductive. I presume a change in perception will occur now Steve Ballmer, the physical manifestation of all that rage, no longer has a lead role at Microsoft.

2. Live Tiles

In theory, live tiles should flourish on our mobile devices. They deliver timely, desired information direct to the user’s screen, available at a glance.

In reality, the static app won.

Users I spoke with prefer the pull of static apps to the push of live tiles, even if they could not fully explain why. They also did not care for the look (design) of live tiles, how they twinkle and spin, nor did they express any desire to pin an app, a site, or other information to their home screen.

When it comes to smartphones, the look and feel of Apple’s iOS is what people expect, no matter who provides it.

3. No There There

Whether out of vision or necessity — or more likely both — Apple made the iPhone the center of our computing world. Microsoft continues to place the Windows PC at the center of our computing world.

This is not the future.

This snapshot of the US browser market is telling. On mobile, Microsoft is nearly non-existent.

Should anyone still think PCs will ever again be the center of our world, take note of this Mary Meeker graphic which reveals time spent in front of our various screens.

Those I spoke with viewed Microsoft as a PC company, not a mobile one (or a cloud one, even). Satya Nadella’s “mobile first, cloud first” strategy sounds exactly right, but his words have not resonated with end users.

4. iTunes

Of course, iTunes. Children use iTunes. Grandparents use iTunes. We all use iTunes. Over and over again, people tell me — and this includes Android users — that without iTunes, or seamless access to their iTunes content, they won’t even consider the alternative device.

5. There’s An App For That (But Not Really)

It’s been stated a million times and it cannot be overstated. The Windows platform desperately desperately desperately needs more and better apps.

There are far fewer apps for Windows Phone, and most of those do not offer the robust experience found on the iPhone.

It is now far easier to buy far more software and content for Apple devices than for Windows devices. This is a stunning reversal. Every person I asked brought up the ‘app gap’.

6. By Any Other Name

Do customers want a Nokia? Do customers want a Lumia? Is Windows Phone high-end, low-end? Is it a premium, integrated device or an OS licensed by unknown entities such as BLU Products, Yezz, BYD, Wistron and Prestigo?

The Nokia XL, which I consider to be an amazing device for the price, runs atop Android. But it looks like a Windows Phone.

What is it?

In my regular discussions with non-technical people, primarily in the US, a smartphone is:

iPhone first,
Samsung second,
Android third

in that order.

Microsoft’s marketing team must gain significant traction within our already crowded heads if it hopes to ever sell Windows Phone.

And We Continue…

Now, my personal experience.

7. Separate But Unequal

I have walked into dozens of carrier retail stores in the United States. Until recently, it was difficult even to locate a Windows Phone.

It gets worse.

At multiple retail stores, as I am examining a Windows Phone, a helpful salesperson has steered me toward Android. Microsoft needs to fix this problem stat.

8. No Self Control

What can I control with my Windows Phone?

My smartwatch? My thermostat? My television? My PC? My Xbox?

The smartphone is the center of our computing world. To succeed, Windows Phone must become this. While no one brought this up, I think the lack of an obvious, flourishing ecosystem centered around Windows Phone continues to limit adoption.

9. The iPhone Box

As much as I love the beautiful, colorful, brilliantly designed polycarbonite Lumia 1520 for example, perhaps Microsoft should focus on making devices that much more closely resemble the squared, austere iPhone. This seems to be what the market wants.

Ditch the colors, the curves and the unapologetically plastic design. The Lumia Icon mimics the boxy, metallic design of the iPhone. Perhaps that is how all Windows Phones should look. I hope I am wrong, but the world says otherwise.

10. Continuity

Apple made a splash at WWDC by promising “continuity.” That is, creating a seamless experience across devices — iPhone, iPad, Mac. Microsoft needs to show me and all its customers how Windows Phone can or will offer a seamless, integrated, multi-device experience.

Nowhere To Go But Up

It no longer matters whether Windows Phone is better, just as good, different, or some combination of these. The iPhone and Android are everything users need, which leaves Microsoft on the outside.

What happens next is up to Microsoft, not the public.

Apple once faced this exact same situation. They were forced to become something other than what they were, despite their abiding belief they offered a superior, or certainly equivalent, product. After a long, difficult slog, it worked out rather well for them. I hope the same for you, Microsoft. I know it will not be easy.

Back To The Past With Oculus Rift

The pundits tell us Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR is proof virtual reality has arrived, at long last. The future is now.

Except all I can think about is the past.

That’s what I mostly want from Oculus, or from Sony’s Morpheus or any similar device: the past. Not virtual reality or virtual presence, but a virtual time portal, a way to explore — to feel fully a part of — the events that shaped this world, this country, my life.

I was there with Jobs and Woz when they first started Apple!

Full disclosure: I was not there with Jobs and Woz when they first started Apple.

Imagine putting on your Oculus headset and instead of playing the most amazing, immersive game of Halo, you are tasked with parachuting onto a Normandy beach. It’s D-Day. You are there as it happens. Understand, this is not at all to diminish anyone’s effort or sacrifice, or confuse reality with imagination, but to enable each of us to viscerally, visually behold great moments in history in all their nasty, sweaty, dull, grinding, vicious glory.

Let’s explore not just the building of the Great Pyramid but the discussions on its construction. Watch the burning(s) of the library of Alexandria. Witness our own birth.

With the amount of documentary video evidence now at our disposal, and all our computing power, social media data, location-based tweets, check-ins and other information, soon we will be able to reconstruct the momentous events of our present in such a way our children really can use VR to transport themselves back to today’s equivalent of the founding of Apple, or, yes, go inside the deadly flights of 9/11.

Imagine how much better we might understand people and cultures, events, greatness, failure and chance if we focused the development of Oculus not on virtual realities but on very human ones.

We have arrived at a point that is, for real this time, only a short distance from making virtual reality a reality. Let’s not blow this chance.

I’m not that old. Despite what my son thinks, I’m not. My parents are still alive. My grandmother died a few years ago — after being struck by a car. I can remember what it was like pre-iPhone; hell, before everyone had a PC in their home. It’s taken a long time to get here, to a future we expected would happen by the 1990s, which makes me uneasy that nearly all the focus and all the cash behind VR is centered on gaming.

This is exactly what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stated when he bought Oculus:

When you put (Oculus) on, you enter a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away.

and…

The (Oculus) Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform.

Ugh, gaming.

It’s not just Zuckerberg, of course. The computer industry seems intent on constructing virtual reality mostly for gaming. So much, in fact, the tech press accepts this vision without comment. The Verge:

Nothing delivers a feeling of immersion better than VR. VR has been a dream of many gamers since the computer was invented.

In discussing their VR headset, Sony Studios president Shuhei Yoshida noted it was the “culmination of our work over the last three years to realize our vision of VR for games, and to push the boundaries of play.”

Explaining the amazing potential of virtual reality, Wired similarly focused almost exclusively on gaming.

In a traditional videogame, too much latency is annoying—you push a button and by the time your action registers onscreen you’re already dead. But with virtual reality, it’s nauseating. If you turn your head and the image on the screen that’s inches from your eyes doesn’t adjust instantaneously, your visual system conflicts with your vestibular system, and you get sick.

Videogame pioneer John Carmack is CTO of Oculus.

Oculus received major venture backing from Andreessen Horowitz, after the product was demoed at a gaming conference.

Really, I could not care less about games or gaming.

Imagine, instead, being ‘there’ the very first time the Beatles performed at the Cavern Club. Or witness a father watch the last of his six children die as the plague sweeps across western Europe.

Is it wrong to embrace the future yet be so utterly fascinated by the past?

How can any game compete with actual human history?

The pace of VR technology is accelerating. Delivering sight, sound, motion have nearly all been solved. But let’s not have the potential of this technology become so limited.

I have hope. Many developers are working on building immersive non-gaming experiences for Oculus and similar devices. Though not currently practical, this large-scale D-Day simulation points, ironically, to a rather stunning future.

Can such efforts succeed? That’s up to us, I suppose, and what we desire from our very best technologies.

Zuckerberg has also said “one day, we (at Facebook) believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.” I believe him. But instead of billions of us being entertained, which I understand is enticing, what if we could (almost literally) experience the reality of someone thousands of miles away, a person we will never otherwise meet, one who is so much unlike us?

Or, perhaps, following a nasty spat at work, HR makes us (virtually) experience the demands, deadlines and plainly different personal outlook of the boss we think we can’t stand because she refuses to understand our situation.

Virtual reality could soon become the very best way for businesses, clubs, universities, and start-ups to tell if you are the right ‘fit’ for their organization: “your resume is amazing, Mr. Hall, but let’s see how you interact with our staff and customers first before we make our decision. Here, wear this headset for the next 60 minutes.”

Call someone a forbidden word at school and the principal may require you don the VR headset to better understand how those slings and arrows do wound. Messy? Yes. But also transformative.

I am not sure we can even begin to fathom how ontologically disruptive this technology will be, even though it is on the cusp of becoming our new actual reality.

With virtual reality, we will connect with people in profound new ways. We can also connect with times and places. Ecotourism is a massive industry but I am far more excited about historical tourism — visiting a specific place not because it’s restful or beautiful but because of who was once there and what the place once meant.

I completely understand why Oculus and the others, including Microsoft’s Project Fortaleza, are starting first with gaming. Yes, I know there will be porn. But there can be so much more, and that’s what I most look forward to. Keep your high score. Take me to where and when our today was made possible.

Losing My Apple Religion. Seeking Salvation At WWDC.

I have crazy-high expectations for Apple’s worldwide developer conference. I expect, at minimum:

An iPhone phablet
iPad split-screen multi-tasking, necessary for the enterprise, awesome for gaming
Touch ID APIs to support mobile payments
Seamless inter-app communications
Apps that can actually push data onto the home screen — because we are adults and this is the 21st century
25GB free iCloud storage per device

That’s just for starters.

What I mostly expect from WWDC is neither new products nor long-overdue enhancements but rather, affirmation. Too often of late it appears that:

Ecosystem trumps product
Brand usurps technology
Growth precedes usability
Margin before accessibility

Does anyone else feel this way?

The creeping doubts refuse to leave — even as I happily work on my MacBook, play on my iPad and yearn for that large screen iPhone.

WWDC Pilgrimage

Today, we mark our annual pilgrimage to WWDC. We learn of the many new products, the updates to Apple’s operating systems, extensions to the platform, the new and better paths to monetize content and services. Everything, no doubt, will be better than before, better than what can be had anywhere else.

That should be enough. Why is it not?

Because we long time users — the Apple faithful — have always held Apple to a higher, more personal standard. Apple is more than a business, even as it has become the world’s biggest business. Why else would we care so much about a developer’s conference?

Apple will never again be run by Steve Jobs. Pirate Apple has become Corporate Apple. Understood. Nonetheless, we want Apple, more so than any other company, and no matter how big, how global, how rich it becomes, to stay motivated not by profits but by an absolute and unwavering:

commitment to innovation

Even as iPhone implants itself at the center of our computing life, we expect Apple to:

disrupt everything

Is this true of today’s Apple? WWDC will affirm our faith, or dash it.

Clearly, we hold Apple to an impossible standard, not merely a higher one. If Elon Musk can build a reusable space capsule capable of ferrying astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, why can’t Apple? Why must Apple spend the equivalent of 150 Dragon V2 spacecraft on a single headphone company?

These are the wrong questions.

Apple cannot do everything, cannot be everything. It’s simply unfair and unproductive to make Apple our litmus test upon which to judge all technological advancement and innovation. They make computing products and services. Nonetheless, we can’t help but demand Apple, especially Apple, relentlessly innovate, incite countless new revolutions, lift humanity to ever greater heights, with little more than screens that connect us to the world and connect us to our talents, the parts known and the parts yet-to-be discovered.

Believe Different

Belief sustained the Apple faithful through the dark times. It is this same belief that is now called into question. We want badly to believe in today’s Apple, and not merely admire its many products.

We want to believe blocking our messages was a bug, not hubris.

We want to believe China is not just about more billions, but about bringing the best of American technology to the world.

We want to believe CarPlay and “HomePlay” and “HealthBook” and Passbook are about making our lives simpler, better, not merely add-ons to enrich the ecosystem.

We want to believe that positioning the iPhone at the center of our digital life is empowering, not lock-in.

We come to WWDC to be inspired.

One Of A Trillion

As Apple continues along its inexorable path toward a $1,000,000,000,000 valuation, we hope the company remains personally connected with each of us, somehow.

In a world of big data and globe-hopping algorithms, driverless cars and autonomous bots, we expect Apple, more than any other organization, to power personal connections and accelerate human ingenuity throughout the world. We want it all to just work, exactly as we desire, even as the company extends across a billion customers.

That Apple will introduce more and better devices and services at WWDC is a given. Success is assured. The iOS moat is already so wide, so deep, as to make the company practically unassailable. The company’s shimmering glass headquarters will soon rise over Cupertino, its future set for decades to comes.

It’s not enough. Not for me, not for many of us, I suspect.

Fair? Of course not. But past performance influences present expectations. Which is why I say: Be a crazy one once again, Apple. Show us you are fully prepared to disrupt yourself just as you gleefully disrupt the world. Make us believe that you do now and always will think different.

WWDC has begun. The floor is yours, Apple. No pressure.

Has iPhone Lost The Best Value Crown?

Smartphones have gotten so good, so fast, and become so vital and accessible in such a short time, it’s difficult to accurately predict the direction of this market over just the next year, and nearly impossible over say, the next five years.

One aspect of the smartphone market that has remained steady throughout, however, is the iPhone always offered the best value.

No more.

A new crop of Android devices and remarkably low priced Windows Phones appear to have usurped iPhone along the value vector. This should put Apple on notice — and will almost certainly impact their branding, possibly even their pricing going forward.

No one ever got fired for buying the iPhone

The iPhone began as a revolution, turning the industry upside down. Since launch, Apple has worked diligently to improve the iPhone, expand its capabilities, and integrate it with other Apple devices and services. iPhone quickly became not just the best smartphone but the best smartphone for the buck.

There have always been solid reasons for not choosing iPhone, obviously, but value was not one of them.

Perhaps you couldn’t afford iPhone. You did not want a device with a locked-down ecosystem. The iPhone form factor(s) was not to your liking. All valid reasons for choosing ‘Other’. Now however, there may be another reason to consider a non-iPhone device: value. If so, this is a remarkable shift in the market and a new inflection point in the battle for market share and lock-in.

It’s hard to put a specific number on ‘value,’ especially as it can vary so greatly from person to person. It’s not just about design or usability. For example, iPhone’s value includes, at minimum:

device quality
integration with iPad and Mac
AirPlay
iCloud synch
free iWork
the most available apps
regular, free OTA updates
the most available digital content
minimal crapware
easy returns and superior support (for those near an Apple Store)
the largest range of accessories

The list is long.

Add to this list, the iPhone’s disproportionately high resale value. Dollar-for-dollar it’s hard to beat the iPhone — regardless of any personal preference for iOS.

Nonetheless, it appears new devices may now trump the iPhone, dollar-for-dollar.

For the Price of one iPhone 5s, you get 4 Moto E phones

It will cost you $650 for a 16gb iPhone 5s. For the same price, you can…

…Buy 4 Moto E smartphones.

No, the Moto E is not as good as iPhone 5s, not even close. It works only on 3G (not 4G). The screen is not nearly as nice. The camera is only 5MP — and there is no front facing camera. It also has only 4GB of memory, although this is easily expandable.

But, Moto E runs on Android KitKat, a very solid OS. It runs nearly every app, plays nearly every game you can have on your iPhone. Calls and messaging, social media and search, mapping and web browsing are all there.

On a per-dollar basis, it’s hard to think any smartphone offers a better value than Moto E.

Except, the Lumia 630, a mere $159 in the US, may offer a better value still.

Lika all Nokia devices, the Lumia 630 is beautiful, colorful and built to last. It runs on Windows Phone, which I prefer to Android although admittedly the platform continues to suffer from a lack of quality apps. It includes Cortana, Microsoft’s Siri competitor.

In my experience, Cortana offers fewer functions but has superior voice recognition.

The 630 has a 4.5 inch display, a remarkable 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor and 8GB of storage. I have not tested this, but reviews suggest the battery bests the iPhone’s. There is a 5MP camera but no front facing camera. In my experience, the embedded HERE Maps and turn-by-turn navigation Nokia offers is superior to Apple Maps. The 630 also has a swipe keyboard, which many users prefer.

Ready to buy? Ready to get one for you, your spouse and your two children — all for the price of a single iPhone 5s?

No? I completely understand. Apple has long made the very best, most desired smartphone. That’s the device most of us covet. If you can afford it, there’s little reason to not choose the iPhone. Nonetheless, the price, quality and functionality of the Lumia 630 and similar devices has to put Apple on notice.

Apple’s Loss is Our Gain

Apple devices, be they smartphones, tablets or laptops, have long been among the most expensive on the market. But, they have also consistently offered the best value, year after year after year.

Can we say that in a world where the new OnePlus One phablet is available for $350? This Android smartphone comes with 64GB of memory and has received gushing reviews. It is also obviously beautiful.

If the iPhone no longer offers the best smartphone value, dollar-for-dollar, then Apple will need to re-tool its marketing strategy as well as its product plans.

Tough for Apple, but a win for the rest of us.

The One Where Brian Is Wrong About Everything

Please allow me to introduce myself…

You likely don’t care and would not believe the volume of blog posts, research reports, technical writings and analyst studies I sift through on a daily basis.

This is necessary both to stay informed and to re-evaluate my opinions as new facts emerge. I refuse to let my initial reactions to the latest rumors cement my long term perspective. Though I consider my views well-informed, reasoned and likely to be proven true in the due course of time, my peers disagree.

For your reading pleasure, below are opinions I hold that currently run counter to conventional wisdom.

Who’s side are you on?

Sympathy For The Devil

Unlike all of Silicon Valley, it seems, I applaud the EU’s ruling that affirms an individual’s “right to be forgotten.” I expect this ruling to become the global norm by the end of the decade. Technology should be empowering and liberating. Of course, I should be able to require Google, Facebook et al to obliterate any digital data on me they possess. Everyone should.

I consider Apple’s iMessage – SMS “bug” to be a sure sign of corporate hubris. The absolute worst trait any large company can have is hubris.

I love that Microsoft is sticking to its vision despite the doomsayers. Surface Pro 3 is meant to be both iPad and MacBook. Comparing it to just one device is skating to where the puck never was.

Yet, industry analysts seem universally opposed to the very idea of the Surface. They are wrong. The market for paid software licenses is, to quote Bob Dylan, rapidly fading. Microsoft should not even consider reigniting the licensing ecosystem of its glory days. Such a strategy will fail, miserably. iOS, OS X, Android, Chrome and Linux are now good enough and are cheaper and readily available. Microsoft must create its own devices for a bold new world even as its OEMs fall to pieces. The Surface Pro 3 has the potential to become the device we all really crave: both a tablet and a laptop.

Someone — anyone — says the word ‘grok’ and my brain instantly screams: poseur! I cannot turn this off. I refuse to believe this is wrong.

This recent New York Times piece that glowingly praises a smartphone app, backed by VCs, that sends under-employed Americans on a mad scurry to fetch groceries for harried tech warriors is, I suspect, that singular article we will all point to ten years from now as the glaring, obvious symbol of the last bubble.

Think about an iPhone 6. Go on. If it’s not a larger form factor, why do you even care? Odds are very high you don’t. I have to assume Apple knows this. No iPhone phablet this year and iPhone’s market share will plummet.

I can’t fault a Samsung lawyer for calling Apple “jihadists” considering the Steve Jobs “holy war” email.

But Then My Homework Was Never Quite Like This

Your assignment, dear reader, is to map the decision-making tree that led the Microsoft Corporation to offer the Surface keyboard as a separate item. I bet you fail. It is inexplicable.

Fitbit hires design icon Tory Burch. Intel partners with Barneys. Apple hires Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts. Rumors say Apple is dangling billions in front of cultural trendsetters Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre. I think this is wise. Fashion boasts, fashion beguiles, fashion demands. Value and quality speak softly. It’s a big, noisy world out there.

Get a drone with a camera. Link it to your Oculus Rift glasses. Experience the world about you in profoundly new and different ways. Now, stream and share all you see and hear — on Facebook, of course. That’s Zuckerberg’s strategy.

One app, one task, one screen is a core value of iOS. If the new iPad allows two apps running on a screen, as rumors suggest, then we immediately know two things: 1) Apple is legitimately nervous about both Samsung and Surface, and 2) Apple intends to launch an assault on the enterprise. Smart and smarter.

I have serious doubts Tesla can ever build a car the 95% can afford.

We are all rock stars with our cool mobile phones.

Still Crazy After All These Years

The Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 is pretty. It’s also quite functional — provided you own a Samsung Galaxy. I think the bad reviews are all wrong.

I think a co-branded Mickey Mouse “iWatch” would be awesome.

Within ten years, schools and HR departments will have us wear Oculus Rift or a similar device to experience how others feel, think, and react differently to the very same people, words and actions.

The GoPro IPO, the rise of wearables, the Internet of Things, the budding Maker ecosystem. Hardware is eating the world, not software.

The best part of an iPhone phablet is it will create radically new experiences and app types. This Opera graphic reveals that phablet use is starkly different from smartphone and tablet use. No, I do not believe this is primarily driven by current phablet demographics. Rather, form factor.

I predict by 2017, apps will be made first for China for iPhone. Then for iPhone for America. Then Android. Then iPad. Then AOSP. Then Windows Phone. Then X or other.

Rhymin and Stealin

Dollar for dollar, there may be no better value in smartphones than the Lumia 630. And if I’m wrong, it’s because the Lumia 520, available for about $70, may be an even better value still. The Moto X and Moto E may prove me wrong yet again. Amazing, amazing technological evolution.

In 1997, Microsoft loaned Apple $150 million. Apple now has 1000X that just in cash. Also, one of these men is on the cusp of being a billionaire. No one saw either of those coming. We were all wrong.

Apple hardware is beautiful, understated, austere. Beats hardware is big, bold, gaudy. I have to believe an Apple – Beats acquisition horrifies Jony Ive.

It’s hard to overstate how much Google must fear Facebook. Facebook has over 1 billion users, mostly on mobile. Hundreds of millions voluntarily give Facebook highly personal information about themselves every single day, sometimes multiple times per day. This is not the same as unknowingly handing over select personal information to Google bots. By the decade’s end, search will be nothing more than a ‘signal’ for Facebook’s massive knowledge engine.

The other day, Yahoo flashed a pop-up on my screen asking me if I wanted to make Yahoo my default search engine. This made me laugh.

I believe Yahoo is on the cusp of what could be its worst-run, costliest period ever — and that, dear reader, is saying something. In her tenure as Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer has proven without a doubt her greatest strength is spending money. Sadly, her signal weakness is getting a return on said spending. If you are an investor, it’s time to storm the gates, else those Alibaba lotto winnings will be gone — fast.

Am I wrong? Share your thoughts.

The Subscription Economy Is Sending Me To The Poorhouse

[UPDATE: See below]

Technology is supposed to make our lives better. Shouldn’t we demand the same from business models? Sadly, it seems as if today’s bleeding edge innovations in business and retail are in — pricing. Yes, pricing. The chief goal, apparently, is to turn everything we buy or might ever buy into a subscription.

No, thanks.

While social media titans offer brands the allure of connecting with each of us — on a human level, of course — I confess I am not at all interested in a Facebook or Twitter relationship with whomever provides my toilet paper, vitamins, cloud storage, dog food, or even the books I read.

Yet, that’s how subscriptions are marketed — as a relationship. One designed to benefit us, the consumer, as much as the seller.

I have my doubts. After pulling together a few stolen moments to review my monthly spending, I discovered I had signed up — subscribed — for all manner of products.

Oyster (books)
Netflix (television)
Pandora (music)
New York Times (website)
OneDrive (cloud storage)
Anchovy oil (via Amazon, for the dogs)
NHL Center Ice
MLB At Bat
Evernote
Razor blades
Zyflamend (via Amazon, a multi-vitamin I decided to try and which apparently I subscribed to so as to save a penny per softgel)
Craft coffee

This does not include the makeup my wife subscribes to and somehow thinks I don’t know about. Nor does it include — as we are still “discussing” this — our basic monthly cable service, nor our monthly iPhone and Internet bills.

But, baby steps. Wherever I can, I am canceling all subscriptions, permanently.

Instead of making my life easier, making it so I never ever have to worry about running out of milk or daily vitamins, the subscription economy has become just another needless pressing burden. While analysts and market makers may cheer the subscription economy, I shall take my leave, despite the Sisyphean effort most retailers require to break these relationships.

Burning Their Money In Wastebaskets

Do you believe the sudden, expansive ramp-up in subscription everything is designed for your benefit? Really? Me, neither.

Are retailers so desperate to take more of what money we have they now must actively promote never ending subscriptions even for the most garden variety products?

I do most of my online shopping through Amazon. It seems like every item I search for anymore, the retail giant offers an enticement if I subscribe instead of just buying the product outright.

I am dubious of any savings or convenience.

Amazon states, non-ironically, “the more you subscribe the more you save.” They claim buyers can save 15% more when they “receive 5 or more subscriptions” per month.

15% savings? On top of Amazon’s already low prices? For a retailer notorious for reducing margins to zero, that’s a rather significant amount to be giving up.

I suspect they can offer this because you will soon discover you have agreed to purchase far more than you really need. Win for them, less so for you. Plus, if you are subscribing to Amazon — for anything — you can’t spend that dollar anywhere else. Share of wallet and all that.

To be fair, Amazon is one of the few retailers that actually makes it reasonably easy to quit. Try that with every other subscription service. Go on, I dare you. Just try. Start with the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. They will insist upon a phone call — in the year 2014! You know exactly why.

Canceling that subscription, which was supposed to benefit you, is made just hard enough, just time consuming enough to make it not worth your effort. You remain locked in. A dollar here, a dollar there, pretty soon it all adds up.

This is not what technology should do — ever. Technology should be liberating, empowering, not a time-suck and not a money pit.

The Best Minds of My Generation

Why must our greatest minds be employed by our greatest companies then tasked with nothing more than making it so we mere mortals can not ever glean the actual price for an actual product?

I suspect you are all familiar with the following scenarios:

I’d like to cancel my subscription.

But, sir, we can reduce the price by 25% if you extend your trial rate for 17 more weeks!

I want ESPN. How much does that cost?

If you subscribe to our Gold bundle, Mr. Hall, you get Bravo, A&E, ESPN and…

You promise me the best prices on the web. So why are you forcing me to join some Prime membership or demanding I buy this same item from you month after month, forever?

(Trick question. There is no human for you to ask this.)

You track me on the web. You track my movements on through my smartphone apps. How much is my data worth?

We can’t tell you that, sir.

But it’s my data!

No, sir. Not really.

I imagine the great minds of Silicon Valley will not stop at having my refrigerator text me that I am low on eggs. Rather, Big Tech will team up with Big Grocer and place me on a weekly egg subscription — one that is impossible to cancel but which no doubt promises 10 cents off, per egg, should I buy two boxes of Cheerios every month for the next year.

Time to disrupt these data disruptors. If we fail to take action soon, we could find ourselves trapped in a web of subscriptions from which there is no escape.

Trembling Before the Machinery

I cover the technology industry because it empowers people and makes the world more accessible. I analyze business trends because most of the innovation of the world, in my view, happens within the walls of for-profit enterprises.

But if you, the retailer, are incentivized to offer me something — anything — other than what I want right now and for which I am willing to pay, right now, then I immediately lose trust in you.

Life is much too short for double-talk, bundles and One-A-Day subscriptions.

Regrettably, my howls are likely to fall upon deaf ears. Nearly 15 million companies in the US and Europe are implementing the subscription model. FastCompany recently profiled Zuora, which has received a “whopping” $128 million in venture capital. Zuora’s mission? To “help us shift from owners to subscribers.”

Us?

Zuora needs all that money not just to scale, but to execute.

“(Subscription’s) a task more complex than you might think. How exactly should you price your product? How do you build a payment infrastructure to allow for price changes? How do you process payments internationally? How do you manage the legal issues that surround storing credit cards?”

Honestly, I am not even remotely impressed by the computational complexity and Big Data algorithms crafted by those leading the subscription charge.

Reminder: 45 years ago, before the majority of the people on this planet were alive, America sent three men to the moon. Two of them walked about. All three were returned safely to Earth.

That’s impressive.

I do not wish to be unfair to Zuora. That they have massive backing from multiple VCs in Silicon Valley suggests their skill set is to be lauded. That said, I simply do not believe their “nine keys to subscription success” are for my benefit or yours.

The Incomprehensible Prison

I am fully aware that far greater minds than mine will spend far more time than I ever can crafting clever appeals with the sole intent of enticing me to subscribe. To anything. I may succumb, despite my declaration.

I need your help.

Recently, after a Paypal executive went on a rather bizarre Twitter rant, I created the notion of a “Twitter buddy.” A Twitter buddy is the person who rips the phone from your hands the moment you begin tweeting inappropriately.

We also should have a subscription buddy.

If I ever decide to subscribe to a new service, subscribe to some product, grab my credit card and throw it in the shredder. That’s what a true friend would do. That’s a relationship worth keeping.

[UPDATE 27 May 2014: Zuora posted a response to this column on their website. It’s a strong rebuttal and I recommend you read it. — Brian]

Please Silicon Valley. Do Not Turn The Car Into Another Boring Box.

We stand at the intersection of the Internet of Things and the Connected Car. Soon, Cortana shall summon to us a driverless, fully autonomous vehicle, shared by the community, owned by no one, that will safely transport us to our chosen locale, as we tweet, stream, and tap away from the comfort of the back seat. Mostly, this is good. For most even, it will likely be very good. But I fear one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the car, will be reduced to yet another boring box, stuffed with computer chips, powered by lines of codes, and possessing no soul.

Please Silicon Valley, do not kill my love for the car.

One Piece At A Time

A revolution is taking place within the automotive industry. It began not in Detroit, Germany or Tokyo, but as with all revolutions, from the outside. In this case, Silicon Valley. The spread of computing, connectivity and the cloud has at last reached our cars. Driving — and automobiles — will never be the same.

Per the glorious visions of venture capitalists, the new market dreams of old world automakers and the ceaseless, prosaic functions of the Internet of Things, this is our car’s very-near future: Sensors under the hood, inside the dash, within the tires, sensors embedded in the roads and placed above traffic lights, all pumping out streams of data in real time, sent via telemetry to nearby vehicles, transmitted to the web for processing and analysis, shared with the crowd, then acted upon by the many computer chips within our own increasingly self-aware vehicle, all part of a highly monetizable big data ecosystem.

I am not at all opposed to this. Such efforts will almost certainly lead to faster commutes, a greener planet, fewer accidents and many saved lives. The Silicon Valley vision for the car of tomorrow should be lauded.

I ask only that the very best aspects of the car be carried forward into the future and not de-constructed into little more than a cubicle on wheels.

As a native Detroiter, I know cars are more than just data generators. Cars are freedom, independence, liberty, aspiration, mobility. In so many ways, cars disconnect us from the world as they reconnect us with our primal emotions. Cars are beautiful, personal, powerful. I want this not to go away.

I am not at all convinced we can trust Silicon Valley to transform these glorious mechanical objects into anything other than another node in a data-fueled, globe spanning web.

Let Me Ride

While driverless cars, as Google has promoted, are likely a decade away from practical use, semi-autonomous vehicles should be available in the developed world well before the end of this decade. The Internet of Things will enable these semi-autonomous, ‘situationally aware’ vehicles to keep us properly centered in the lane, to apply the brakes if we, the ‘driver,’ fail to spot the pedestrian in the crosswalk. They can ease off the throttle should they sense another vehicle is too close.

The car of 2020, and probably much sooner, will inform us when we are driving too fast given the current road conditions — and take corrective action should we fail to heed its informed advice.

These semi-autonomous vehicles will communicate with other cars, busses, navigation services and transit authorities as much as they communicate with us. This is good. As a proponent of mobile technologies, the cloud, wearables, sensors, Bluetooth, et al, I fully appreciate the value that comes from the open sharing of our data. If I am stuck in traffic, by all means let my car inform others of a better route. If a driver’s car wishes to inform those of us a few minutes behind that there’s a hidden police stop, good for us.

Above all however, the connected car will make for safer roads. Over 95% of all car accidents are caused by driver error. The Internet of Things will put a stop to this.

According to Intel, which is keen to put still more computing chips into our cars, with a mere one second warning, over 90% of all car accidents could be prevented. A half-second warning will prevent over 50% of all car accidents. Sensors and computer chips can act faster than us. They can also behave far more rationally. If we are being dumb, careless, foolish or simply unaware behind the wheel, our connected car can save us from ourselves — and save many others as well.

Over one million people die each year from car accidents. The benefits of integrating connectivity and computing inside our cars and within our road systems is significant.

And yet…

I still want the car to remain mostly mechanical, always beautiful, powerful, visceral — all those things that are never considered relevant in Silicon Valley.

Where I come from, it was absolutely no coincidence the boy whose father let him borrow the Camaro Z28 happened to be dating the prom queen.

No parallel to this exists for the young man with the biggest PC tower or the newest smartphone.

When it comes to our cars, whether for 2015 or 2025, let us not place clock speed above top speed, throughput over horsepower, or user interface above road handling. Nodes have primal desires, too.

No Particular Place To Go

While few things in life are as joyous as a fast car, top down, the open road beckoning, music blaring, such moments are rare. No matter how beautiful or powerful the car, the daily commute can be a grind. The connected car helps mitigate this, delivering all the comforts of our modern, fully connected world, accessible via a tap on the screen, or a command from our voice.

Stuck in traffic? No worries. The smartphone-like cars of post-2015 will offer:

streaming music, your favorite podcasts, even videos (for the kiddies)
news, weather, market data — read aloud, even personalized, as your new car, like a giant rolling Siri, knows your interests
geofenced notifications
Twitter and Facebook updates, voice driven, naturally
the fastest routes to everywhere you want to go
the nearest gas stations and restaurants
driving analysis, perhaps even a driver ‘Klout’ score based on your speed, how hard you brake, how close you were driving to other vehicles
engine diagnostics

These are all good. Silicon Valley is actively seeking to disrupt our commute. I stand with them. As our cars become increasingly more connected, tapping more computing power, more crowd wisdom, more algorithmic analysis, our driving should improve, our commutes should become more enjoyable, and ultimately, personal productivity should increase. Quite possibly, stress levels will all go down.

Again, my selfish concern is that these measurable goods will increasingly lead to an emphasis on “cars” that maximize efficiency, comfort, UIs, and that offer the best search, the most up-to-date data, the sharpest display.

A box.

Help Me, Apple. You’re My Only Hope

Is it possible to have the best of tomorrow with the best of yesterday?

I believe in the beneficent power of technology and innovation. I fully appreciate that Big Tech, Big VC, and Big Government want a lead role in the multi-trillion-dollar Internet of Things revolution. All are eager to remake our existing infrastructure, to place “intelligence” inside our cars, to link driver, car, road, and metro transit system into a cohesive, smartly flowing whole. I accept their work will alter not only driving but possibly even remake our towns and cities.

Why, then, does this make me a bit uneasy?

I do not fear my next car will experience a blue screen of death. Well, not much. Nor am I terribly worried hackers will access my car’s data, which will no doubt be linked to a payment system that lets me speed through electronic tollbooths.

I fear Silicon Valley will fail to divine the value in what makes cars glorious, and reduce the ultimate driving machine to just one more computing device.

Should I be disheartened or joyful that Apple SVP Eddy Cue joined the Ferrari board in 2012? Or that Apple SVP Phil Schiller sees fit to have a Racer X avatar on his Twitter profile?

Will these Apple executives help keep our cars from becoming just the latest personal computer box? I can’t afford a Ferrari, although I can pretend I’m Racer X — or possibly his brother, Speed. The question is, how long can I maintain the dream?

Some Potential Downsides for an Apple TV

Another year, another quarterly earnings announcement, a mere month before WWDC, and not a hint of an Apple Television. Don’t hold your breath. While many of us may crave the idea of an Apple Television and certainly millions of us are not pleased with our present television “experience,” there is little for Apple to gain by offering such a product. Indeed, Apple could actually be harmed by offering an Apple Television.

This is especially true for Apple’s two largest markets, America and China. In both, smartphones are commanding more of our time, more of our attention, more of our dollars. An Apple Television may do little more than shift our focus (and thus our dollars) away from the iPhone juggernaut. That would be a costly mistake for the company.

Stay On Target

The iPhone generates more than half of Apple’s revenues and profits. While some may insist this is a reason for the company to further diversify, such a sentiment is ignoring two critical facts:

The total addressable market for the iPhone extends into the billions of units. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. Apple’s primary focus therefore should be on aggressively growing the iPhone user base and maximizing the iPhone ASP, and not on lesser markets such as television.
The gains from an Apple Television (and any supplemental iTunes revenues) must be greater than any revenues and profits they might potentially steal from iPhone. There is no guarantee of this.

It is that second point which I think other analysts are missing. An Apple Television carries with it the very real possibility of dampening iPhone revenues. How? By diminishing iPhone engagement.

iPhone engagement — not margins, not prices, not functionality — is what so clearly separates the iPhone from Android. The rumored Apple Television carries with it the potential of reducing iPhone engagement.

Why take such a gamble?

Smartphones in general and the iPhone in particular have succeeded in doing what every other technology of the past 75 years has failed to do — capture our time and our attention at a level equivalent to or even greater than television. The “second screen” — the smartphone — is, in fact, quickly on its way to becoming our first screen. For Apple to risk shifting our focus away from the iPhone, even just a little, could precipitate a decline in iPhone engagement. Any such decline would directly impact iPhone usage, cut into iPhone sales, possibly bleed into the iPhone’s remarkable ASP.

In this light, an Apple Television seems needlessly risky, especially given iPhone growth appears to be slowing so appreciably.

While Apple no doubt would endeavor to build a television that fosters deep integration with the iPhone, any television worthy of the Apple brand carries with it the very real possibility of drawing our time and attention away from our beloved and far more personal second screen.

The iPhone In Prime Time

Despite television’s decades-long hold on our collective attention span, its days as our “first screen” are quickly fading. A recent survey offered a startling conclusion: time with our smartphone has now eclipsed TV time in the US.

While other studies somewhat counter these findings, the smartphone’s rapid rise in capturing so much of our limited attention is but one aspect of the profoundly shifting “screen” landscape. Recent Nielsen research concludes the obvious; even with the television blaring, our eyes are being drawn toward the smaller, more intimate smartphone screen:

Not only is smartphone penetration growing, with over two-thirds (67%) of mobile subscribers in the U.S. owning smartphones in Q4 2013, but consumer usage of phones is rapidly shifting toward increased screen time with entertainment and social media.

Americans simply can’t bear to turn away from their smartphones even while their favorite television programs are playing. Already, over 40% of us are regularly tapping, talking and staring at our smartphones — “multiscreening” — as the TV fades into the background.

For that multiscreening audience, 70 percent are looking and “unrelated content” (called “stacking”).

The other 30 percent are exploring related content or taking some action tied to the content or advertising on TV (“meshing”).

Television is becoming just one more feed inside our smartphone.

The data above is for the US market. The situation facing the original “first screen” is even more dire in China, where the smartphone extracts far more total time than the television.

Chinese smartphone owners spend nearly eight hours looking at electronic screens each day, the third longest in the world, with smartphones and laptops dominating their “screen time,”

Smartphones (170 minutes per day) and laptops (161 minutes per day) dominate their “screen time,” while TV holds their attention for only 89 minutes per day.

Death To The First Screen

Why enter a market that is becoming less relevant in our lives? Why risk detracting from iPhone usage?

A Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers study last year found the average user checks their smartphone 150 times a day. This number is higher still for the average iPhone user, as various metrics consistently show iPhone users spend more time on their device, more time on the mobile web, more time with apps.

Of course, it’s not just about how much time we all look at our smartphone screens but how we use them.

For a growing number of us in the US, China and every where else, the smartphone is simply more entertaining, more engaging, more attention-grabbing than anything and everything available to us on TV. Seen in this light, why would Tim Cook and Apple even consider such a product?

The derisively labeled “second screen” has become our first screen, and as with banks, that’s where the money is. Even the most aggressive analysis of the Apple Television’s potential suggest limited upside to the company’s value.

Perhaps Apple is working on a complete re-construction of the very idea of “television,” in which case my analysis is wrong. Or perhaps once Apple has sold as many iPhones as possible, then it might make sense to tackle the television market. If I were Tim Cook, I would take a pass, at least for now. What are your thoughts?

iPhone At 1 Billion. A Tipping Point.

What can you do with a billion iPhones? What can all of us do with a billion iPhones?

Analysts, telcos, networking firms and research consultants expect more than 4 billion smartphones in use by the end of this decade, maybe sooner. I agree. Where I diverge from most other experts, however, is that I believe Apple is well positioned to capture a quarter of this market, possibly more. That’s one billion iPhones.

What then? No, not what for Apple. I am not terribly interested in Apple’s valuation nor its ability to negotiate the best content deals or carrier subsidies. I am, however, extremely interested in what one billion iPhones means for all of us, as nearly everyone of these devices will have similar functions, use the same OS, possess the ability to track us in time and space and, through iTunes, include a user-specific payment service. That’s significant collective power.

Making The Case

Are one billion iPhones in use possible? My math says yes.

There are approximately 1.5 billion smartphones in use today, still far short of the 4+ billion smartphones I am estimating for 2020.

A key driver of smartphone growth is affordable, accessible mobile broadband service (3G/4G). Ericsson estimates that mobile broadband connections around the world will quadruple by 2019. This will result in 5.6 billion smartphone “subscriptions.” Some people may have multiple subscriptions (e.g. using multiple SIM cards on same phone to minimize voice and data costs), so this number is higher than the actual number of individual smartphones in use. Being on the conservative side, I estimate 4.5 billion individual smartphones in active use by 2020, a tripling of what we have today.

What will be Apple’s share of those 4.5 billion smartphones?

Here, I get a bit aggressive. Apple has nearly 20% of the market for smartphones in use — about 300 million iPhones. (Over 500 million iPhones have been sold since 2007.)

If Apple can maintain a global marketshare at around 20%, and the smartphone market climbs from 1.5 billion to 4.5 billion as I expect, Apple has close to 900 million iPhones in use — within striking distance of a billion iPhones.

Confession: I think Apple will do better.

iPhone consistently receives higher customer satisfaction scores than competitive devices. A higher percentage of Android users switch to iPhone than the reverse. These trends disproportionately favor iPhone going forward.

Then there’s Apple’s secret sauce — slowly, slowly improving hardware and features while holding the line on price, even dropping the price at times. We can confidently expect iPhones to get better year after year even as prices fall. In a market that is rapidly expanding, this is a huge advantage.

Imagine if today’s iPhone 5s was faster, simpler, more capable, and Apple cut the price in half. I expect exactly this to happen, albeit in slow motion. When it does, many of today’s very best smartphone makers will be unable to effectively compete. This means even more room for Apple to grow. Indeed, I think most analysts, blindly focused on Apple’s current margins, are wildly underestimating iPhone’s long-term market potential.

Consider the following:

Smartphones and tablets are highly functional, highly personal computers. By this definition, nearly 95% of every computer Apple sells today is priced under $1,000. Note: I derive this 95% figure thusly: Last quarter, Apple shipped 43.7 million iPhones. Their highest-priced version is the iPhone 5s with 64gb hard drive. It retails for $849. Apple shipped 16.4 million iPads. The highest-priced iPad sells for $929. The company sold just over 4 million Macs, most of them priced above $1,000. Add it up and 60.1 million personal computers out of a total of 64.1 million are priced under $1,000.

Given Apple’s commitment to improvement while holding the line on price, I expect that in a few years, certainly before this decade is out, that 95% of every computer Apple sells will not be priced under $1,000, but perhaps even under $500, and far better than today’s very best. How will high-end and mid-tier competitors survive in such an environment? Will there be Panasonic smartphones in 2020? Sony? BlackBerry? Xiaomi? LG? I’m not sure. Apple? Absolutely. Remember, Apple actually earns a hefty profit on each personal computer it sells.

Add it up and a billion iPhones in use by 2020 is an extremely likely possibility.

At One Billion iPhones

Okay, so what then?

First, as this is about all of us, we must consider the potential of a billion iPhones in the aggregate, and not what a singular iPhone in 2020 will offer.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. They have over 1 billion active mobile users. At last week’s F8 developer conference, Facebook offered new tools which enable deep linking and de facto integration across disparate mobile apps — taking you straight from your smartphone map to Yelp to your digital wallet, for example. This should prove useful for users and developers alike. This effort can only succeed, however, if there are enough smartphone users and enough of them have Facebook credentials and enough app developers can directly benefit by allowing Facebook to manage a user’s identity. Now there are.

Absolute numbers at massive scale enable new forms of innovation that otherwise could not exist. I expect the same to occur when we reach 1 billion iPhones.

Crowdsourcing Ideas For Peak iPhone

I am confident in my predictions and so I put it to you: where are your ideas?

My inclination is to focus first on media. The business model that today forces us to pay for content we don’t want simply to get the content we do want — aka cable television — likely fades away. Perhaps Apple offers a “Pandora for television” service, with virtually every TV program and movie available. With 1 billion users, it would be foolish to not let your content participate.

Mix iTunes, AirDrop and a billion users, all with their credit card info on file, and there now exists the potential to revolutionize how we consume and share media — it may become possible that each of us can financially benefit from our various online recommendations.

Entirely new forms of social networking also become commonplace. Apple’s new multi-peer service (“multi-peer connectivity framework”) essentially enables ad-hoc, proximity-based, peer-to-peer networking of iPhones. Imagine watching the University of Michigan football team alongside 100,000 screaming fans. There’s a great play, which is instantly available on your iPhone. Share and discuss the play with thousands of others, in real-time, in physical space, and in forms not previously possible. Now take these tools to a political protest.

A billion users on the same platform, each with their credit card information stored by Apple, will significantly impact the direction of online and offline payments. At such a scale, retailers everywhere might readily accept cash, charge or iPhone. No need for Bitcoin, PayPal or any other digital alternative.

Yes, Apple could indeed roll out its very own search engine with little concern of Google pushback should the company reach 1 billion iPhone users.

Perhaps it also becomes practical for every mall, every college campus, every city to place iBeacons everywhere, creating deeper links between people, place and time.

Of course, if Apple ever does reach a billion smartphones, the company’s value will almost certainly exceed $1 trillion. That’s Standard Oil territory, which resulted in a forced break-up. That idea also doesn’t seem farfetched.

Nokia Has Fallen. America Wins The Smartphone Wars.

Nokia has fallen. Not even the name will remain. America’s victory in the smartphone wars is complete — for now.

Last week’s news from the front lines of the smartphone wars illuminates the scope of America’s rapid mobile ascendency.

From Microsoft:

“Microsoft acquires Nokia’s smartphone and mobile phone businesses, its design team, most of its manufacturing and assembly facilities and operations, and sales and marketing support.”

From Facebook:

Mobile active users are 1.01 billion as of March 31, 2014, an increase of 34% year-over-year.

From Apple:

“We sold almost 44 million iPhones, setting a new March-quarter record.”

And the week before, from Google:

Q1 2014 earnings totaled $15.4 billion in revenue, a 19% increase over the previous year’s $12.95 billion. Oh, and their Android platform is on nearly 80% of every smartphone in the world.

Designed By Apple And Google And Microsoft In America

iOS, Android and Windows Phone – American designed, American-led operating platforms all – account for nearly 98% of the global smartphone market, a truly stunning statistic. There appears no line on the horizon.

As the world rushes to replace their mobile phones with smartphones, even Microsoft, now a distant third, is well positioned to fully capitalize on mobile. Their takeover of Nokia includes the company’s very popular Asha brand of hybrid smartphones/featurephones, as well as Nokia’s traditional handset business, which still ships more than 200 million devices a year. (Second only to Samsung)

Should America celebrate these results?

Yes.

Should the rest of the world take bold, perhaps costly action to limit the continued rise of America’s mobile dominance?

Probably they should try.

The Pivot To Mobile

How did America so convincingly win the smartphone wars? First and foremost by attracting, developing, retaining, and fully incentivizing the best and brightest.

Vision and execution are also paramount. Consider:

Apple’s relentless pursuit of optimizing hardware while simultaneously improving upon and expanding the modes of interaction with that hardware.
Google encourages, captures and then attempts to make sense of (and profit from) the multiple data streams we generate.
Facebook seeks to connect the world on a fully human level.
Microsoft has spent the past four decades making computer applications more empowering and productive.

Also, and despite their vast size, these companies move with speed. Witness Facebook’s head-turning pivot to mobile. I think Mark Zuckerberg should be hailed for this accomplishment.

Weaknesses Along The Front Lines

Are there weaknesses in America’s smartphone leadership? Several, in fact.

Apple

iTunes is the center of Apple. It’s what locks us in, it’s what helps lure new customers. iTunes revenues are falling on a per-user basis. If iTunes spending falls on a per-user basis, I believe hardware margins will follow suit. Apple is optimized for hardware margins. The iTunes trend line thus appears ominous.

Google

Google still does not have an effective messaging strategy. This is confounding. There may be no more important mini-platform in the near term than messaging. Facebook, of course, battered its way into this critical market, dropping $20 billion on Instagram and WhatsApp in a single year. Google will almost certainly need to do the same. Larry Page has the wherewithal to follow suit — does he have the necessary humility? I am not convinced.

Google’s primary response to date, requiring SMS and messaging to default to Google’s Hangouts service, seems a rather anemic response.

Facebook

Though it claims over a billion mobile users, Facebook has no smartphone platform. This perpetually locks them out from critical user, usage and location data. That Facebook is now looking to buy its way into the wearables market, which potentially delivers incredible amounts of user data, should be no surprise.

That said, what will Mark Zuckerberg do when the ‘monopoly’ money runs out? Successful businesses aren’t sustained on buying up others’ creations.

Microsoft

Despite the well reviewed Windows Phone 8.1 OS, Microsoft has yet to reveal it can create a thriving mobile-first business.

Manufacturing

Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia notwithstanding, the vast majority of manufacturing of every piece of smartphone hardware is outsourced. The case has been made that regular interaction with new materials and new manufacturing processes will lead to those companies (and nations) becoming the primary source of innovation, thus trumping Apple, Google et al. This idea has not been borne out and I suspect it never will. Shedding our manufacturing abilities has no doubt damaged America’s middle class, but not its technology leadership.

Money and the Snowden factor

Smartphone platforms almost certainly contribute to a nation’s economic well-being and security. Smartphones link people, telecommunications and banking, holds our most personal information, tracks our movements, manages our identity, logs our purchases, connects us to first responders, and provides vital access to news, cultural and learning resources. We have to assume larger nations in particular are keenly incentivized to repel America’s technological reach. This is especially true in a post-Edward Snowden environment.

It’s not simply a matter of geopolitics, of course. Real money is at stake. Google and Facebook are effectively banned in China — and the in-country alternatives are now worth billions.

Over 90 million smartphones sell in China every quarter. China may decide to lock out Apple and Microsoft — or demand unreasonable ‘rents’. If China creates barriers to Apple, for example, or perhaps does all it can to promote or subsidize homegrown companies such as Xiaomi, then certainly Apple’s growth potential will be diminished.

I would also not be surprised if government sponsored firms in India or Indonesia, for example, purchase BlackBerry or commit significant resources to improving the open source version of Android (AOSP), which is free of all Google services. Success by any means necessary.

Why This Matters

Smartphones are the next great phase in computing’s decades long remaking of work, play, learning, commerce, creativity and connectivity around the planet. They connect us with nearly everything. America is in the lead now. Americans may wish to celebrate this. To remain at the top, however, will demand vigilance, daring and vision.

Each phase of the computing revolution appears to come faster than the one before. The smartphone wars will soon be the technology revolution of the past.

Shazam! Why iPhone Integration With Shazam Really Is A Big Deal.

I believe most analysts, including those that monitor Apple’s every move, are seriously underestimating the ramifications of Apple baking Shazam’s music identification service into iOS 8. This is not merely about increasing song downloads. Rather, this move marks Apple’s determined leap to re-position the iPhone in our lives. The digital hub metaphor is now much too limiting. As the physical and digital worlds mix, merge and mash together to create entirely new forms of interaction and new modes of awareness, the iPhone will become our nerve center. It will guide us, direct us, watch, listen and even feel on our behalf.

A bold statement, I know, especially given the prosaic nature of the rumor. Let’s start then with the original Bloomberg report:

(Apple) is planning to unveil a song discovery feature in an update of its iOS mobile software that will let users identify a song and its artist using an iPhone or iPad.

Apple is working with Shazam Entertainment Ltd., whose technology can quickly spot what’s playing by collecting sound from a phone’s microphone and matching it against a song database.

Song discovery? Ho hum. Only, look beyond the immediate and there’s potential for so much more. That late last year, Shazam updated its iPhone app to support an always-on, always-listening ‘Auto Shazam’ feature is no coincidence. Our phones are becoming increasingly aware of their surroundings. I expect Apple to leverage this technological confluence for our mutual benefit.

Today, Song Discovery.

Apple’s move no doubt satisfies a near term need. While Shazam has been around since 2008, and the company claims 90 million monthly users across all platforms, having their service baked into the iPhone will almost certainly spur increased sales. Song downloads have slowed — not just with iTunes, the world’s largest seller of music — but across the industry.

Instead of having to download the Shazam app, iPhone users will now simply point their device near a sound source and summon Siri: “what song is playing?” So notified, they can then buy it instantly from iTunes.

Little surprise music industry site MusicWeek was generally positive about the news. Little surprise, also, the tech industry could not muster much excitement. Thus…the Verge essentially summarized Bloomberg’s report.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber offered little more than “sounds like a great feature.”

Windows Phone Central readers offered only gentle mocking, reminding all who would listen this feature is already embedded in Windows Phone.

That’s about it. Scarcely even a mention Shazam has a similar, if less developed TV show identification feature which could also prove a boon for iTunes video sales.

Place me at the other end of the spectrum. I think the rumored Shazam integration is a big deal and not because I care about the vagaries of the music business. This is not about yet another mental task the iPhone makes easier. Rather, this move reveals Apple’s intent to enable our iPhones to sense — to hear, see and inform, even as our eyes, ears and awareness are overwhelmed or focused elsewhere.

Tomorrow, Super Awareness.

Our smartphones are always on, always connected to the web, always connected to a specific location (via GPS) and, with minimal hardware tweaks, can always be listening, via the mic, and even always be watching, via the cameras.

What sights, sounds, people, toxins, movements, advertisements, songs, strange or helpful faces, and countless other opportunities and interactions, some heretofore impossible to assess or even act upon, are we exposed to every moment of every day? We cannot possibly know this, but our smartphones can, or soon will. I believe this Shazam integration points the way.

It’s not just about hearing a song and wanting to know the artist. It’s about picking up every sound, including those beyond human earshot, and informing us if any of them matter. Now apply this same principle to every image and face we see though do not consciously process.

Our smartphone’s mic, cameras, GPS and various sensors can record the near-infinite amount of real and virtual data we receive every moment of every day. Next, couple that with the fact our smartphone’s ‘desktop-class’ processing will be able to toss out the overwhelming amounts of cruft we are exposed to, determine what’s actually important, and notify us in real-time of that which should demand our attention. That is huge.

Going forward, the iPhone becomes not simply more important than our PC, for example, but vital for the successful optimization of our daily life. This is not evolution, but revolution.

The Age Of iPhone Awareness

Yes, it’s fun to have Siri magically tell us the name of a song. Only, this singular action portends so much more. At the risk of annoying Android and Windows Phone users, Apple’s move sanctions and accelerates the birth of an entirely new class of services and applications which I call ambient apps.

Ambient apps hear, see and record all the ‘noise’ surrounding us, instantly combine this with our location, time, history, preferences — then run this data against global data stores — to inform us of what is relevant. What is that bird flying overhead? Where is that bus headed? What is making that noise? Who is the person approaching me from behind? Is there anything here I might like?

Your smartphone’s mic, GPS, camera, sensors and connectivity to the web need never sleep. Set them to pick up, record, analyze, isolate and act upon every sound you hear, every sight you see.

This has long been the dream of some, though till now was impossible due to limited battery life, limited connectivity, meager on-board processing and data access. No longer.

Let’s start with a simple example.

Why ask Siri “what song is this”? Why not simply say, for example, “Siri, listen for every song I hear (whether at the grocery store, in the car, at Starbucks, etc.). At the end of the day, provide an iTunes link to every song. I’ll decide which ones I want to purchase. Thank you, Siri.”

Utterly doable right now. Except, why limit this service to music?

For example, perhaps our smartphone can detect and take action based upon the fact that, unbeknownst to you, the sound of steps behind you are getting closer. It can sense, record and act upon the fact you walk faster each time you hear this particular song. Or you slowed down when passing a particular restaurant. What do you want it to do based upon its “awareness” of your own actions — actions which you were not consciously aware of?

Our smartphone can hear and see. It is always with us. It makes sense then to allow it to optimize and prioritize our responses to the real and virtual people and things we interact with every day, even those outside our conscious involvement.

Ambient Apps Are The New Magic

The utility of our smartphone’s responses will only get better. Smartphones sense by having ears (mic), eyes (cameras), by knowing our exact location (GPS) and by being connected to the internet. These continue to improve. It is smartphone sensors, however, that parallel our many nerve endings, feeling and collecting all manner of data and notifying us when an appropriate action should be taken.

Though still a relatively young technology, smartphones have added a wealth of new sensors with each iteration. The inclusion of these sensors should radically supplement the recording, tracking and ambient ‘awareness’ of our smartphones, and thus further optimize our interactions, both online and offline.

Jan Dawson posted this Qualcomm chart which illustrates the amazing breadth of sensors added to the Samsung Galaxy line over just the past five years. What becomes standard five years from now?

Hear, see, sense. The smartphone’s combination of hardware, sensors, cloud connectivity, location awareness and Shazam-like algorithms will increasingly be used to uncover the most meaningful bits of our lives then help us act upon them, as needed. This is not serendipity, this is design. I think Apple is pointing the way.

Peering Inside The Apple Rumors Prism

Steve Jobs fully understood the value in surprise, the wonder of magic, and the awe a beautiful, functional, highly personal computing device can evoke when unwrapped for the very first time. Rumors, particularly a stream of unceasing rumors of all kinds, tend to sully this ideal.

Not much can be done about it, unfortunately. Not only because Jobs is now gone but because Apple is far, far bigger than it has ever been. The company now comprises ten of thousands of employees, a massive retail chain, strategic partnerships with nearly every big name in media, relationships with automakers and contractors by the score. The Apple ecosystems spans nearly half a billion active users, a global supply chain that touches 4 million workers, hundreds of suppliers, and 18 worldwide final assembly plants. Leaks and rumors are inevitable.

In addition to leaks, there may be story plants, trial balloons, media spin, hurt feelings from those let go, false leads from those gunning for a promotion, snapshots from an anonymous line worker in China, misdirections from a savvy executive and slip ups by trusted employees. Given the scope of today’s Apple, shutting down the rumor-media industrial complex is simply not possible.

The end result of all of this?

We don’t know what we don’t know and we aren’t always sure what we do know. To be sure, all the rumors and all the talk may help whet our appetite for the next great Apple product. It can also lead to far too many brain cells preoccupied with even the most ridiculous Apple tales.

For example…iRing. Yes, leading Apple sites have written about and thoroughly dissected the very real possibility of a computerized ring, forged by Apple, which could be, it is presumed, a means to support digital payments, possibly serve as a remote control for the wearer’s music collection, and all manner of other nonsensical functions.

This will not happen. There will be no iRing. None. If for no other reason than should Apple even dare release such a product, every sneer, every cutting remark made by any and every Apple hater everywhere since the beginning of time would instantly be made whole. I can barely write the word ‘iRing’ without laughing.

I am certain, however, that talk of an iRing will persist.

The Apple Rumor Prism

Like it or not, expect no end to the Apple rumors and tall tales that emerge from the amorphous flotsam the media periodically feasts upon. This is all exacerbated by the fact Apple PR, whom I have been in contact with on many occasions, nearly always refuses to comment on any rumor. Realistically, they have little other choice.

Which begs the question: Is there a way to pre-determine the veracity of a Apple rumor?

(Wait for it…)

No.

The best we have so far are a few very well connected Apple writers, such as Jim Dalrymple, who can deliver a yay or nay but only at certain times and only for certain rumors. With Apple, rumors are like weeds, and no one person can stomp down all of them.

For example, thanks to the ongoing court battles with Samsung, we recently learned Apple has been rather concerned over the sales growth of large display smartphones, which it does not yet offer.

Surprise! Days later, we are treated to pictures of new iPhone molds suggesting a larger iPhone! Is this a plant from Apple? A false lead? Or some kid in Taiwan not very good with Photoshop? We don’t know. Worse, we tend to latch onto any data point, such as it is, that confirms our biases or affirms our hopes.

What then, is the best means of determining if a rumor is even merely likely when Apple refuses to say and the best Apple sources can’t (yet) verify? I focus on what I do know with a high degree of certainty and run the latest rumor through that prism. This may lead to some dead ends or errors, but it typically keeps me on the right trail.

I know with a high degree of certainty that…

Tim Cook is firmly in charge of Apple
Jony Ive is firmly in charge of the look and feel of Apple products — all of it, inside and out
Tim Cook has essentially removed Jony Ive from the bowels of the Apple design labs and made him a quite respectable SVP, which almost certainly means Ive won’t be as intimately involved with each and every product, manufacturing process and innovative material going forward
Cook’s big name hires have been in retail and branding, though he’s also hired veterans from the fitness and medical devices industry
Apple works on products and prototypes for years before it believes everything is just right for launch
iPhone margins are massive and counter to the direction of the marketplace
Apple cannot go down market ¹
Apple is comfortable with offering seemingly confusing choices for consumers (e.g. iPad Mini RD vs iPad 2 vs iPad 3, I think)
Core Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad and the Mac are typically replaced by users every 1-5 years, and many of these are not junked but rather re-sold by the original customer or a third party
Apple possesses a near religious fealty to the notion of continuous product improvement
Optimizing and innovating all hardware in pursuit of product improvement — and product margins — is hardwired into the company’s DNA
Apple’s relationships with IT decision makers and procurement personnel in government, the enterprise and businesses with more than 20 employees is woefully lacking
Apple is worth more than $450 billion and is sitting on approximately $160 billion in cash and equivalents

These guide me whenever I dare pick apart an Apple rumor or chase down the latest crazy Apple tale.

Caution: these ‘knowns’ are not equal!

The majority of Apple’s revenues come from the iPhone. The addressable market for the iPhone is radically larger than the market for any other extant Apple product. Each fact from above, even if entirely true in isolation, is not inviolable should it ever even potentially bring harm to iPhone sales and iPhone margins.

The Apple Rumor Mill

Running rumors though this iPhone prism serves as my handy guide in understanding if a rumor has legitimacy or not.

For example:

An iWatch should almost certainly integrate with (and be made most useful by) the iPhone. An iWatch will likely demand a keen sense of style, luxury branding and retail sales savvy. Given what I know, iWatch rumors are absolutely within the bounds of certainty.

An Apple television would not be appreciably enhanced by the iPhone. Televisions are kept in use far longer than five years. There’s little to justify this rumor, no matter its persistence.

A line of wearables or ‘smart’ accessories that all tie back to the iPhone? Absolutely. These enhance the iPhone’s value and should extend iPhone sales.

That Apple has to do anything this month, this quarter, this fiscal year to ensure its success? Complete nonsense.

A revolutionary new product that just might “disrupt” the iPhone? No. Repeat after me: No. For Apple to even consider disrupting its golden iPhone goose would not only be foolish but darn close to a dereliction of duty. Buttressing this is another fact: there is nothing on the horizon, nothing at all, even remotely ready to replace the iPhone (or any high end smartphone). Nothing. Not Google Glass. Not Oculus Rift. Nothing. We are in the early days of the smartphone market. Do not make me repeat myself.

Within a week of reading this, probably sooner, you will hear yet another rumor about Apple. Before considering it, pro or con, first make sure you run it through your list of knowns. Most of the time, you will immediately recognize the rumor as utter nonsense. On rare occasions however and no matter the source, you will stumble upon a rumor more true than not.

Such is life for those that follow Apple Inc and the hundreds of millions who love its products. The true story of Apple does not begin or end at product launch. Those are merely two data points in an ongoing and very rewarding chase.

—

^{1. [Feel free to counter my claim Apple cannot go down market. Remember, however, even the ‘cheap’ iPhone, the iPhone 5c, is one of the most expensive on the market, and note also the major Apple retail hires come from luxury brand companies.]↩}

VCs On The Wrong Side In The Smartphone Wars

Think of how much better your life is now you have an iPhone or one of its many virtuous progeny…iPad, Android, apps, mobile-optimized games, content and services. Do you want to go back to before smartphones, before tablets? Unlikely. Yet many VCs do. Hence their self-interested handwringing over the alleged slow death of the mobile web.

Do not be fooled. The web is thriving.

The real issue? VCs fear the easy money days of amassing their fortunes atop publicly financed, freely available platforms is long gone. Now they are faced with the daunting prospect of either building their investments inside the thriving iOS or Android ecosystems, both of which demand their fair share of any booty, or figuring out ways to route around these two clever giants.

This is very unlikely to happen.

iPhone, Android, native apps and today’s infinitely scalable private platforms continue to deliver benefit after benefit to users around the world.

A Tax On Venture Capitalists

Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) bemoaned the declining state of the “web” last week, squarely blaming iPhone, App Store and all it has wrought.

What wins mobile, wins the Internet. Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing. Moreover, there are signs that it will only get worse.

Worse for whom? Not me. Likely, not you. Worse, perhaps for a venture capitalist. Just like the original incarnation of the web was worse for music companies and newspapers.

Dixon continues:

Resources are going to app development over web development. As the mobile web UX further deteriorates, the momentum toward apps will only increase.

Resources following users is not a problem. Moreover, Dixon appears to hold a rather limited view of the web. As John Gruber noted last week:

We shouldn’t think of “the web” as only what renders in web browsers. We should think of the web as anything transmitted using HTTP and HTTPS. Apps and websites are peers, not competitors. They’re all just clients to the same services.

The fact is, the “mobile web UX” has not deteriorated. Instead, the web has evolved, as it always has, and new platforms have constructed a thriving business that, for now, better support the needs of the billions of mobile web users. This should be lauded! Indeed, omit the nebulous term ‘app’ and the fact is web services, software and computing functions have never been more robust, more capable, more discrete, more accessible, more affordable. These are all good. I’m surprised any venture capitalist would bemoan this state of affairs.

Let’s not reduce the web to only those parts that VCs can exploit for maximum gain.

More money is presently flowing to Apple’s iOS ecosystem and Google’s Android ecosystem because that’s where the users are. That these two great private companies have their own platforms, their own gateways — and demand payment for access — has actually helped extend the power of the web.

My suspicion, of course, is VCs do not fear a deteriorating web UX, but are instead upset today’s brave new web limits their potential gains. Don’t believe me? More from Dixon’s post:

Google and Apple control what apps are allowed to exist, how apps are built, what apps get promoted, and charge a 30% tax on revenues.

Ponder that. A venture capitalist is decrying a sustainable business as little more than a “tax” on revenues. Again, whose revenues? Apple and Google have each created a marketplace that only a few years ago did not exist. These now serve billions of people. This is a net good, even if it’s not ideal for today’s web VCs.

Shortly after Dixon’s column, venture capitalist Fred Wilson similarly lamented the “mobile downturn”:

It has gotten harder, not easier, to innovate on the Internet with the smartphone emerging as the platform of choice vs the desktop browser.

Wrong! Innovation has never been easier, never been faster, cheaper, more accessible. Time for VCs to accept this new world.

Before the iPhone, before the App Store, the ‘open web’ offered a massive resource VCs happily plundered: the public switched telephone network. The costs of this public infrastructure was borne by carriers, the government and each of us. VCs piggybacked their investments upon this infrastructure, which carried them to unfathomable wealth.

Those days are gone. They will not return, no matter how hard VCs press for a change.

A Boon For Users

If the VCs really want to alter today’s mobile reality, they are welcome to risk their sizable funds toward technologies and services that improve the non-app web or completely disrupt the current state of affairs. After all, despite their assertions, the web has not been shut down or corralled. It’s still there, availing itself to all.

Build something better. That’s my challenge to them.

Do they have it in them? Consider this final lament from Fred Wilson’s post:

So (VC) Brian (Watson) pulled out his iPhone and I pulled out my Android and we took at trip through the top 200 apps on our respective app stores. And there were mighty few venture backed businesses that were started in the past three years on those lists.

This matters not one whit for users.

It just may be, thanks to the iPhone, Android and the new mobile web, the future big money in tech will have to be earned the old fashioned way: brick by brick; through building an actual sustainable profit-generating business, from scratch. Now that would be disruptive.

Panic Inside Apple and Cheers for Satya

The blogosphere has suddenly discovered the incredible array of products, tools and services Microsoft has long possessed. Better late than never, I suppose. Fact is, their realization of the obvious is in large part due to the accessible dynamism and well-regarded tech cred of Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella.

Nadella’s hire makes for a great story on many levels. I will get to those in time. The more important story however, is the potential trouble brewing inside Apple.

Yes, Apple is the richest tech company in the world. Its laptops, smartphones and tablets are the established market leaders. But as we learned last week, from still another Apple-Samsung court case, Apple is clearly in the throes of that great ontological concern sure to stricken all those with immense wealth and power: Who am I?

The very question could prove debilitating.

Since being named CEO, Nadella has rallied the troops, made the necessary overtures to developers, appeased the critics, silenced the doubters and taken rather bold, once unthinkable actions to ensure Microsoft has a prosperous future in mobile, in the cloud, in homes and businesses, on Apple, the web, and the Internet of Things. Not a bad two months.

The talk about Apple? There’s still no large display iPhone and the iPhone 5c is still unwanted.

All Our Yesterdays

Thanks to Apple’s ongoing “holy war” against Google — and the court documents that are now public — we learned last week what we already suspected:

Samsung’s ads attacking Apple users are particularly powerful.
The market for smartphones costing less than $300 is growing like mad — and this greatly concerns Apple.
The market for smartphones with displays larger than the iPhone 5 and 5s is growing like mad — and this greatly concerns Apple.

We learned something else, however. Something I had not previously considered — there is dissension among the upper ranks of Apple.

Apple is struggling to understand the bounds between margins and market share and how best to maintain the profit stranglehold its iPhone franchise has on the industry.

If Apple doesn’t know, this game just got really interesting.

Guess what? Apple doesn’t know.

The iPhone 5c has made that painfully clear.

With iPhone sales growth rapidly decelerating, SVP Phil Schiller is rightly worried “customers want what we don’t have.”

What Apple doesn’t have of course, is two things: an iPhone under $300 and an iPhone with a larger Lumia 1520-like display — the two areas where most of the smartphone growth is coming from.

Expect a larger display iPhone this year.

The low cost iPhone was supposed to be here already: the iPhone 5c.

Someone at Apple clearly blinked.

Given Phil Schiller’s exhortations for a low cost device, my suspicion is Schiller is now on the opposite side of Jony Ive and possibly even Tim Cook. Given the early growing pains of iCloud, perhaps Eddy Cue also was opposed to a low cost iPhone. They really needed to have decided all that before launching 5c.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

The iPhone 5c was meant to be the “low cost” iPhone but has failed at this one job. It’s almost comically overpriced. I’m now convinced internal divisions, corporate concerns over margins, branding and sourcing all forced Apple to blink and price the 5c far higher than it ever should have been.

As I wrote in a previous Insiders post (subscription required):

Apple’s iPhone 5c has been a striking failure, however, selling far fewer devices than Apple expected, likely dampening overall iPhone sales, and, if well-placed rumors are correct, very soon to be no longer of this world.

It all began, of course, with so much promise. The iPhone 5c — aka the “cheap iPhone” — was, we were convinced, going to be the aggressively priced new iPhone, ready to dismantle Android throughout the developing world, possibly beyond. It would (quickly) add tens of millions, ultimately hundreds of millions of new users into the Apple/iOS ecosystem.

Based on the court documents we saw last week, which make clear many inside Apple understood the pressing threat from the low end, such a low priced device was commissioned. Only…Apple doesn’t do low end.

But it must.

But Apple doesn’t do low end.

The end result: a failed product, at least. Given Apple’s strengths, that’s easy to recover from. If there are splits within Apple’s executive ranks, however, that could prove a lasting harm.

The iPhone 5c should not exist unless it’s priced at about $300 or so. The forces within Apple demanding such a device obviously clashed with the forces that demanded margins — and brand equity — trump new users.

I confess I find this fascinating.

I find it even more intriguing now that the giant, bloated, aging Microsoft has been rather stunningly re-energized.

In my earlier Insiders post on the iPhone 5c, I was troubled with the question, ‘why’. Why did the 5c happen and how?

Explain this: A 16gig 5c retails for $549. A 16gig 5s retails for $649. Why?

For that extra $100, the iPhone 5s buyer receives the following additional hardware, services and benefits:

A7

M7

TouchID sensor

Lighter weight

True Tone flash and larger 8 MP sensor

Slo-mo video

Enhanced imaging features

I stated then Apple had foolishly devalued its hardware by making a mere $100 price differential between iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c:

The most egregious, most confounding failure of the 5c, and the one I think will haunt Apple, is that the 5c effectively declares to all the world that one or all iPhones are radically overpriced. I am at a loss to understand how Apple allowed this to happen.

Now I know. Internal divisions. The 5c is a fine product, one explicitly designed to bring millions more into the iOS ecosystem. Only, the counter-forces decided another piece of beautiful, functional Apple hardware could not be priced with other ‘mid-tier’ devices.

That’s just not Apple.

Full Of Sound And Fury

The iPhone still accounts for the majority of the Apple’s revenues. The focus then is on building out the iPhone base, maximizing its profit potential, surrounding it with more and more devices, services and accessories to ensure lock-in. This is Tim Cook’s wheelhouse.

You can brand Cook as not being a ‘product guy’ like Steve Jobs, or not a true techie like Satya Nadella, but there is probably no one better suited for growing Apple and the iPhone business.

With Cook in charge, and given his keen ability to scale manufacturing and optimize profits, expect the iPhone to be the center of the Apple universe for years to come, probably through at least this decade.

Apple wearables will require the iPhone. CarPlay will require the iPhone. New Apple accessories will be optimized for the iPhone. iBeacons will work best with the iPhone. New forms of peer-to-peer and point-to-point sharing, via the iPhone, will be rolled out over the months and years.

This is all very wise.

But I confess the failure of Apple to deliver a low cost iPhone, when so many obviously want one, when its top execs understand the potential for one, does make me question Cook’s ability to guide Apple toward the post-iPhone revolution.

Unfair? Perhaps. Even if I’m right, given I expect iPhones — smartphones, in general — to be our primary mode of computing and connectivity through this decade, Apple likely won’t feel the least bit of pain.

We are, after all, still well into the evolutionary phase of smartphone and tablet computing. This year’s iPhone, this year’s iPad, will be better than last year’s. Next year’s will be better still. And so on and so on. But a revolutionary new product? One that can live outside of the iPhone or iTunes sphere? Do not expect any such breakthrough product or service anytime in the near future from Apple. Apple is on a very direct course, set by Tim Cook, with its mission being to ensure the iPhone continues to print money. A low cost iPhone would have threatened the vision Cook holds for Apple’s future. It’s a vision I believe is almost guaranteed to succeed yet also highly predictable.

At Microsoft meanwhile, everything is in flux.

Which brings me back to Satya Nadella. He has the benefit of knowing his core moneymakers are nearing the end of their life. Tim Cook is not yet aware of such horrors.

When that day does come, I cannot say if he will still be the best person to lead Apple.

The Genius Of Steve Jobs Or Why Google And Facebook Must Make Big Bets

The ghost of Steve Jobs haunts Google and Facebook. Unlike Apple, which has always aligned its interests with its users, both Google and Facebook must serve two masters: users and customers. They are not the same. Indeed, the divergent demands of these two groups has placed both web giants at a long term competitive disadvantage against Apple — one that will cost them billions to correct and will likely never be fully resolved.

Steve Jobs repeatedly veered from conventional Silicon Valley wisdom. His successes were legion. Given Apple’s current size and dominance, it’s easy to forget how so many of the big strategic gambles Jobs made were almost laughable at the time.

Vertical integration
Make both hardware and software
Keep design in-house
Create a global retail chain
Lock down your ecosystem
Make money on the hardware
Focus on fashion
Touchscreens are superior to physical keyboards

Google is, despite occasional shout outs to “openness”, absolutely following the Apple playbook which Jobs crafted decades ago. Facebook will follow as best it can, I suspect.

It’s not going to be enough.

Jobs made an even more profound strategic decision, one neither Google nor Facebook can ever match. It was a decision stunningly obvious in its simplicity, yet even today, despite Apple’s success, is still rejected throughout the Valley. That primal Jobsian strategy?

Your users are your customers and your customers are your users.

Sounds so simple, so obvious, yet think of nearly every start-up success in Silicon Valley this millennium, every hot new business model trend. Is the actual end user the actual paying customer?

In nearly every case, the answer is no.

In this disconnect, there is much weakness.

By linking Apple’s fortunes with the happiness of its actual users, Steve Jobs unleashed a slow-motion revolution that haunts Google and Facebook even now. Others, too. Even once dominant Microsoft, which remains radically dependent upon corporate buyers — not the actual users of their product — is hurting.

Obvious is not always easy.

The High Cost of Serving Two Masters

The divergent interests of users and customers is why Google and Facebook have been on such a massive buying spree recently. I do not expect a slowdown.

The latest acquisitions are not, as so many confounded analysts suggest, a sign Google and Facebook lack Apple’s “focus”. Rather, the fault lines in the Google and Facebook business models demand these acquisitions. That is, to make users happy and to make advertisers happy and to ensure an uneasy peace across both consumes enormous resources. Google and Facebook will always need to keep the checkbook handy. It’s not a lack of focus which explains their acquisitions. Just the opposite, in fact. Their focus is on a two-headed beast.

Before I go any further analyzing Google and Facebook acquisitions, I must acknowledge there are other, less critical factors at play:

Real Control
Fake Money

Google’s and Facebook’s founders have radically disproportionate voting control relative to their total ownership share. They can buy, even on a whim, and almost without explanation. Steve Jobs had no such control, nor does Tim Cook. Essentially, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg can buy whatever they wish without a single voice being raised.

In addition, the respective CEO-owners of Google and Facebook are fortunate enough to have inexplicably high PE values. $GOOG is at 31, $FB is 92 — that’s not a misprint. $AAPL on the other hand, trades at a stunningly reasonable 13. Whether you think the market is appropriately valuing these three companies is a separate issue. For now, the market is throwing money at Google and Facebook and money is of no use if it’s not being spent. I suspect if the market pushed Apple’s share price to a PE of 31, that Cook would likewise go on a shopping spree.

These two fortunate, albeit anomalous realities notwithstanding, the primary motivator behind the massive Google and Facebook spending sprees is, in fact, their respective CEO’s keen understanding of what their businesses require to succeed.

Think of a gushing well that nonetheless requires continuous priming.

Encourage. Capture. Present.

To continue earning billions, both Google and Facebook must:

Encourage use — to the point where they pay whatever is necessary to get billions more people online.
Capture our personal data — including where we are, who we are with, what we are doing, even how we are feeling.
Offer screens, tools, services and platforms so their paying customers — advertisers — can effectively present their message.

All their respective acquisitions are to maximize these three building blocks: Encourage. Capture. Present.

Thus, while couched in feel-good language, it’s shrewd business to encourage more people go online.

Last year Facebook and other tech companies launched Internet.org, a global partnership to make the internet available to the two thirds of the world’s population that doesn’t have it.

Thus, cool-sounding “AI” projects are really little more than a means of better extracting maximum value from the captured information of a billion plus users:

By teaching a computer to think, Facebook hopes to better understand how its users do too. So today the company announced that one of the world’s leading deep learning and machine learning scientists, NYU’s Professor Yann LeCun, will lead its new artificial intelligence laboratory.

Thus, a few years from now, when we spend as much time inside ‘virtual reality’ as we now do staring at our smartphones, Facebook will need to have a suitable platform for its advertisers to present their message. Enter: Oculus Rift.

SWOT

Of course, each company has its own unique strengths. As the graph below illustrates, I contend Google does a far better job of capturing user information — via Play, Wallet, Android, search, Maps, etc.

Both Google and Facebook do an equally good job of encouraging use.

Facebook offers advertisers more and better options to present their message — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.

We should therefore expect both companies to acquire other firms, talent and technologies that enable them to further enhance their existing strengths and to shore up their weaknesses. For example, Facebook needs to build or buy tools to more effectively capture critical personal data. Might this lead to buying Foursquare, for example, with all its user-location data?

As we increasingly look to our wearables and smart watches, expect Google to buy or build tools to ensure their advertisers can present their message onto these new screens.

There’s still another consideration for potential acquisitions. The companies currently are split in the type(s) of information they are best at encouraging, capturing and presenting.

Facebook’s superiority is better suited for encouraging us to share how we feel, and its platforms allow users to more fully express themselves. Google by contrast, is far better at capturing what we want and what we are doing.

Given this, I suspect while both Google and Facebook will acquire companies that help them shore up weaknesses across the feeling-doing-wanting-expressing spectrum, the really big money will be spent on ensuring their current leadership is almost impossible to surpass.

Focused Acquisitions

Was $19 billion too much for WhatsApp? Likely. As was $2 billion for Oculus and $3+ billion for Nest. Fair enough. But, these acquisitions do not reveal a lack of focus – just the opposite:

Driverless cars will present ads and content in a captive environment without distraction.
Internet drones, lasers and balloons encourage more of us onto the web and onto the many and varied Google and Facebook platforms.
If any of us spends any appreciable time in the “metaverse”, then Facebook’s Oculus Rift gamble will enable advertisers to present a stream of messages into our eyes and ears, without any of the real world’s messiness.
Google Glass can (soon) present the latest reviews of the newest restaurant as we walk past — or instantly display where we can get a better price on our favorite gear.
Nest will help Google capture our home information.
WhatsApp encourages us to share a great deal of personal information.
Instagram encourages us to express ourselves.

The list goes on.

Therefore, when you read financial analysts, such as Felix Salmon, who insist Facebook’s latest acquisitions aren’t related, they are missing the big picture.

Look at his big purchases — Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. None of them are likely to be integrated into the core Facebook product any time soon; none of them really make it better in any visible way. I’m sure he promised something similar to Snapchat, too.

Wrong. It’s not about being “integrated into the core Facebook product.” Rather, it’s about encouraging use, capturing use, and maximizing its value to advertisers — which means enabling those advertisers to present their message to every user at any time, in all places, on all screens.

And it will never end.

Apple must make its customers happy. That’s no easy task. Google and Facebook, however, must make both their customers and their users happy. That’s much harder. The checkbooks will remain at the ready.

The Computer Chronicles

Why are you here? Why are you even reading this?

Me? I know why and am grateful for the odd, stirring, mostly unplanned path that brought me here.

My father spent over 30 years working inside an auto factory, the first 20 “on the line”. When he heard “computers were the future”, he saved up, found one at a garage sale and proudly brought it home. It was a Commodore 64. I loved it from the start.

Confession: I have never cared much for coding, programming or building my own computer. I was however — and still am — acutely interested in what I could do with a computer. In the case of my 64, I was a kid, so mostly gaming. Lucky for me, dad’s garage sale booty included a “floppy drive”, several games and various “educational” programs.

In short time, I became reasonably expert at H.E.R.O., Fort Apocalypse, and Summer Games. There was a time when I engaged in far more virtual Raid(s) over Moscow than any of today’s most capable generals.

The Commodore 64 cost far more than my parents could reasonably afford. So from the start they made it plain it was very important, not at all a toy (despite how I used it), and repeated this to me like grace before dinner. Computers, they insisted, are the future. Be a part of that.

That’s why I’m here.

Intel Inside. And Maybe Hopes & Dreams.

Of course my native Detroit was far away from Silicon Valley, the fast beating heart of the computing revolution. It didn’t matter. The 64 carried me here. For all the machines that followed, the used Mac, the shiny new Mac LC, the Toshiba laptops and many more, it was that first 64 which shed a light on my future, a future where people and data and machines and ideas and random musings are all connected.

The Commodore 64 lured me down the rabbit hole that was online bulletin boards, which led me to Prodigy, Dialog, Compuserve and others. From there, I discovered Mosaic, then Netscape. By then I had a career in computer tech, almost without planning it; my parents’ intentions realized.

I can’t stop now. I don’t want to stop. It’s not just there’s more to come. More is coming faster, and it’s even more amazing.

Consider the scary-exciting merger of healthcare and computing. Acknowledge the rapid rise of Facebook and global messaging, from nothing to vital in a few short years. Reflect upon the astounding functionality of the iPhone, the utter pervasiveness of Google, how giant Microsoft is morphing before our eyes. We have new media, mobile payments, crypto currencies and experimental forms of retail. Global connectivity has dethroned the sovereigns of time and distance. Yet, both real time and precise location are now more critical to more of what we do and say (and even think, see and feel) than ever before. I did not see that coming.

I am here as well because the visions, proclamations and inspired work of the early computing pioneers really did come true. Their words, their mad tinkerings quickly spread far beyond Silicon Valley, where the shrouded potential of their creations seeped into our computer-less consciousness, found their way into the local news and duly informed my parents who went straight out and acquired for me everything they were told I would need to become a part of the future.

I am pleased to still be part of this long running serial.

Yes, our industry failed at much. The endemic spread of pornography, the utter devaluation of personal privacy, our rather casual silence at how the latest waves of computing technology are displacing good, smart, hardworking people by the millions, leaving them with little to do but hope self-employment, freelancing and the sharing of labor and tools can somehow enable them to get by. There is much to fix.

Random Access

The arrival of that Commodore 64 led to another serendipitous find. We could afford only one television in those days, no cable, and when home, my father religiously watched the local news and all sports. Big-ticket purchases like the 64, however, demanded he work on Saturdays — time and a half made those 8 extra hours of work equal 12 hours of pay, which mattered dearly. Which led to him being gone one particular Saturday. Which led me to gleefully run through all 9 channels. Which is when I stumbled upon The Computer Chronicles.

“the amazing palmtop computer”

The Computer Chronicles documented, almost from the very beginning, the rise, the spread, the incredible innovation of personal computing. It proved to me — because it was on television — a career in computers was viable, no matter where I lived.

I am more excited, more convinced of the transformative power of computing tech and its ability to achieve net good than ever before. This is one reason why I never play favorites. It’s why I can’t suggest you buy Bitcoin, no matter how hyped it has become, or why I cannot recommend the iPhone 5c, no matter how greatly I admire Apple. It’s why my posts cause numerous CEOs and VCs (and several editors) to immediately block me from their Twitter feeds, and limit my access.

All worth it. This stuff matters to me and I fully appreciate how it impacts you.

We are the screen. The screen is the world.

Whatever the reasons you are here, I am glad you are. Now hang on tight.

As Google and Facebook appear to buy up everything that was only yesterday considered cutting edge, as venture capital becomes, somehow, even more of an insider’s game, with not even scraps available to the rest of us, I nonetheless stay positive. I know money, computing power, networking, software, the creeping of technology into all aspects of our life and into every personal and business endeavor, and the random, very human mutations that takes hold inside this swirling glorious mix will continue to create still more and larger revolutions, more big and bigger bangs, more insanely great.

We are rapidly transitioning from the era of personal computing to an era where each person is a computer — with eyewear, wristbands and clothing all capturing who we are, what we do, and how, when and where. Then sending this data floating off, joining up with 7 billion similar nodes.

We are the screen. The screen is the world.

I say this all not because I have a product to sell you or because the larger, more pumped the market, the greater the return on my quickie investments. I say this because it’s true: The computer chronicles have only just started.

Why Bitcoin Still Does Not Matter

You can buy Bitcoin today, swap your next mortgage payment for this aggressively hyped “cryptocurrency,” lose it all to crime, fraud or incompetence, no questions asked. Yet you are still legally barred from even participating in crowdfunded investments of fully vetted Bitcoin start-ups.

Clearly, something is wrong.

Marc Andreessen and his A16Z venture capital group have regularly taken to Twitter to preach the Bitcoin gospel. Andreessen is such a believer in the expansive financial power of Bitcoin he intends to significantly increase his firm’s $50 million investment in the Bitcoin ecosystem — hinting he may invest upwards of hundreds of millions over the next few years:

Like the Internet, Bitcoin will emerge as an accepted technology, Mr. Andreessen argues, as it becomes more regulated and consumers and businesses become more comfortable with the idea of digital currencies.

Want to ride the Bitcoin start-up wave? Sorry, you can’t. The government considers you a lowly “non-accredited” person. Meaning, you cannot put any of your money into any venture capital fund or into any of its portfolio companies. You cannot even participate in a equity “crowdfunding” service, the kind that pools small fund amounts from dozens, potentially thousands of investors, eager to be part of the next big thing.

No matter how much you believe in Bitcoin, no matter how fully you believe in Andreessen et al, as a non-accredited person you won’t be able to legally invest in any of their well-promoted start-ups; at least, not during these heady land rush days. Your only hope is to buy a Bitcoin and pray for the best.

The early financing game continues to route around you.

Fair? Surprisingly, many think so, even those who have directly benefitted from the web’s otherwise open nature.

Tech news blogger site, GigaOm, which has received millions from venture capital, recently editorialized that preventing the “crowd” — that’s you and me — from investing just like venture capitalists is actually a good thing:

Full-blown crowdfunding — which allows anybody to buy shares in any company on the internet — has attracted hype, but it’s still not here. There are good reasons for that.

I disagree.

I believe the short history of the Internet reveals empowering individuals ultimately creates more new net value. Disruption works. There is nothing more disruptive than access to money — and the more you have, the greater the access. Being able to invest in start-ups from the start can do just that.

We can vote, own a gun, volunteer to serve in the military, run for public office, purchase Bitcoin, post intimate photos of our junk on social media. Yet we are still prevented by law from getting in on the ground floor.

This makes no sense.

Tens of millions have already been lost on Bitcoin, still more on day trading. Gambling is legal, much of it state-sponsored. There remains a plethora of “no money down” mortgage options that surround us. Given these high-risk, middling-reward options available, why then is the government still preventing us from investing in the high-risk high-reward field we know so well? Few understand the value of Snapchat, or Airbnb, or some amazing new smartphone beacon technology as keenly as we, yet still we are denied the opportunity to partake in the wealth-creating, sanctified pursuit that is venture capital.

In the valley of disruption, the biggest disruption of all eludes us.

The Crowd Is Kept Waiting

I would, right now, hand Marc Andreesson my spare $1,000 and have him place it in any A16Z fund, or directly into a Bitcoin-specific investment, such as their $25+ million investment in Bitcoin “wallet” Coinbase.

Even though I think Bitcoin itself is toxic.

I want in. I want in now. I know there is ample room.

According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), there are approximately 450 venture capital firms in the US (based on available 2010 data). VC firms are managing $177 billion in committed capital. The average fund size (again, for 2010) was $149 million, with about 2,750 companies receiving funds — 1,000 received funding for the first time.

I believe I can do better than most of these sanctioned venture capitalists, at least in web tech — if given the chance.

You, like me, read up on this industry daily. We work in this industry, and have for many years. We know the CEOs, the investors, the products, the markets, the technologies, the dreamers. We understand the potential and respect the risks. But still we are kept on the outside, looking in. This is not merely denying our abilities, it is denying our potential to further empower this great country.

Again, from the NVCA:

Venture capital is a catalyst for job creation, innovation, technology advancement, international competitiveness and increased tax revenues.

If venture capital achieves all that now, imagine how much more good can be accomplished when you and I and everyone we know can directly add our monies and our smarts to the industry, right from the start. Question: Why haven’t the venture capital firms fought for empowering the crowd as eagerly as they have hyped the still suspect ‘currency’ they expect the crowd to use?

The Wisdom of the Government

I am an expert in technology, not investing. This has not prevented me, however, from leasing a car, mortgaging a house, buying stock in numerous companies, some with share prices hovering around $1. I am now ready to invest in start-ups. I know this industry and I know what can work. Regrettably, the government still won’t let me.

For the government, it’s still a rich man’s game. The only way you can contribute money to a venture capital fund (or even to a equity crowdfunding platform), is if the US government labels you an “accredited investor.” To earn this lofty designation, you must…

“…have a net worth of at least one million US dollars, not including the value of (your) primary residence or have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years or $300,000 together with (your) spouse if married and have the expectation to make the same amount this year.”

Anything less, and you are callously labeled “non-accredited.” It breaks down like this: If you’re not riding the Google Bus, you probably don’t qualify. Doesn’t seem fair, I know.

This could all change, however, and perhaps quite soon.

The 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act altered many of the rules for funding start-ups. Title III of the JOBS Act could potentially allow those of us who are non-accredited to finally invest in start-ups, just like ‘real’ venture capitalists, should the SEC give the ok.

Be warned. There are several caveats to the rules changes the SEC is pondering:

Most notably, the government appears to still remain highly suspicious of the “equity model” of crowdfunding. (Kickstarter-like models, with no money on the line, are acceptable.)

The SEC appears set to require that any start-up seeking to raise money via equity crowdfunding will only be able to raise up to $1 million every 12 months. In addition, there will be rather arduous disclosure requirements that will cost start-ups dearly — money they obviously do not have. Worse, the very act of going through the crowdfunding disclosure process will likely brand any such start-up as unworthy to (ever) be invested in by Big Venture Capital, which can review the start-up’s unique assets behind closed doors. Thus, those with the most promising of ideas or technologies will remain incentivized to bypass the crowd. (Again, that’s you and me.)

In addition, we “non-accredited” investors will only be able to invest about 5% and no more than 10% of our income or assets.

Despite all this, the gate is rattling.

The SEC has apparently finished listening to comments on crowdfunding. Now, they are mulling exactly what to do. Perhaps it’s my techno-optimism, but unlike many financial analysts I fully expect the SEC to do the right thing. Once they do, once they allow the likes of you and me to invest in start-ups, expect a massive sea change.

It Don’t Take A Weatherman

I am no pollyanna. I’m quite certain clubby insiders will wish to remain clubby. The very best VCs will continue to grow their massive funds from institutional investors, not folks like you and me. Fraud will not magically disappear despite the vigilant buzz of the crowd picking through every document a crowdfunded start-up lays bare. The “magic the gathering” Bitcoin ‘bank’ painfully proved to far too many unfortunates that fraud and failure remain part of the human condition, even at the farthest reaches of the technology galaxy.

But we will finally have our shot.

Yes, we know venture capital is risky, even in small amounts. Is it any more risky than buying $10,000 in Mt Gox Bitcoins? Is it any more risky than flipping houses? We understand, as the Wall Street Journal states, that “over 60% of high-tech start-ups…failed to return any capital, and just 7 percent were essentially jackpots, generating returns of five times or more.” So be it. True equity crowdfunding will finally offer me a shot to invest at the start — just like blogging came along and enabled me to become a professional writer.

In fact, I have already registered with the “equity crowdfunding” site Startup Valley. No, they can’t legally allow me in, not yet. I am also registered at the crowd funding portal RockthePost. Still waiting there as well. That’s all right. My money is patient.

Who Will Be My Venture Capitalist While I Cannot?

It strikes me as both odd and extremely unfair that anyone in America can, with a bit of effort, buy Bitcoin. They can spend their life savings on it, in fact, and lose everything, and do so with almost no real recourse. Yet, for nearly all of us, including those of us who track this industry so closely, we cannot invest in any of the start-ups that are explicitly focused on growing the Bitcoin ecosystem!

Look, don’t touch. Buy, don’t own. So much for the belief in the wisdom of the crowd.

Sure, you can go on Kickstarter right now and “invest” in, say, that new Veronica Mars movie. If the producer generates enough, you might earn a free download of the final product. As for a financial stake? Forget about it.

We are being played. Worse — we are kept from playing. Still.

Billions in venture capital will be invested in the US this year alone. How much of it are you a part of? Zero, no doubt. You’re kept on the outside looking in, even in Silicon Valley — the land of the great disruptor.

Check out some of the top VC-backed tech companies. You know these intimately. You use their products. You have followed them from the beginning, contributed to their success. Yet you are unable to garner any potential windfalls when they go public.

The first start-up to receive venture financing was Fairchild Semiconductor — in 1959. That was 55 years ago. It’s been a long, long wait to allow all adult Americans to be part of this extraordinarily cozy, massively wealthy, highly influential sector we glorify so dearly. I am confident it will happen very soon.

No more…Brian S Hall. Writer.

Soon…Brian S Hall. Writer. Venture Capitalist.

As it should be.

Better For The World? Apple Or Google?

Arguably, Apple and Google are the largest, richest, most powerful, most influential technology companies on the planet. Across many markets their products, services and technologies directly compete with one another. Yet, in countless endeavors, each benefits the other, enabling both to earn more, reach more, do more, grow ever larger, their creations touching nearly all of us.

Which begs the question: which company creates more good in this world? Apple or Google?

Unknowable?

I think the question a valid one. Despite their many similarities, the companies have profoundly divergent strategies when it comes to the development, release and spread of technology. Seeking the answer to this question might help us better understand how we should construct future tech companies, offer insights into what we should value most and whose methods we should help foster.

Pay To Play

As both Apple and Google continue to extend their reach deeper into our lives, the more obvious differences between the two begin to peel away. Once, Apple was hardware and Google was software. Now, both are mobile devices, cloud computing, entertainment, maps, apps, payments, productivity, music, messaging and — even if poorly — social media. We have to look deeper.

Start with pricing. Apple, whose products no one is required to purchase, is regularly blasted for ‘premium’ pricing. Google, whose products are mostly free, generates no such acrimony.

Is it better to demand customers pay for a product, to enter into a covenant where value is promised at a specific price, as Apple requires? Or is offering services for free the superior model? Certainly free seems better, but the price of free in today’s world is constant advertising, payment of which is continuous mining of our personal data. Does the Google way — pulling off tiny pieces of ourselves, bit by bit, moment by moment, and then selling these off to an unknowable coterie of people and businesses — better serve humanity?

I want to be in favor of free, but in its current form, the price of free seems too steep for me. For the rest of the world, I think in pricing Google trumps Apple, whether I wish it so or not.

No Product Before Its Time

Another core difference: product development and release.

Is it better to release products only when they are ready, as Apple does, or as soon as they reach sanctioned beta stage, as Google does, allowing anyone to experiment with their creation, make it better, expand its reach? Again, this seems to favor Google.

While we wait for the next insanely great product from Apple, a hyperfast-moving Google is — right now — helping us understand the pitfalls and benefits of driverless cars. Google Glass is forcing us to consider our views on personal privacy in public spaces and it must be acknowledged, pushing the technical boundaries and design limits of wearable technologies.

Google is meeting with city leaders, exploring methods to offer cheaper, radically faster broadband. They are unleashing ‘balloons‘ to bring the Internet to all points of the world. Push, push, push, now, now, now. The Google Way seems more right for our world.

Meanwhile, Apple…what, exactly? An iWatch likely few can afford once its finally released?

Tim Cook recently tweeted:

“Remembering Steve on his birthday: ‘Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.'”

Is this true? Is this best for the 7+ billion of us on the planet? To wait?

Consider Android. Android is now the most widely used operating system in the world in part because Google unleashed it, for free, even while its business model remained in flux, and without waiting for agreement from potential stakeholders like Java’s Oracle. Nor was it perfect, by any stretch. Our gain.

We are rapidly connecting with one another, linking to astoundingly low-cost information resources whose total value is nearly incalculable, thanks in large part to this essentially free, freely available and extraordinarily robust mobile operating system. Humanity has been aided by Android, clearly.

Step back. Did Apple’s deliberate plodding make all this possible?

Look at an Android device pre-iPhone: it is an evolutionary dead-end. Think of all the apps, services, knowledge, entertainment and productivity we garner from all the phones that came only after Apple and the iPhone cleared the way. Consider the rather glaring limitations of Android, pre-iPhone. Had Apple launched iPhone before it was ready, before all the “details” were just right, the entire smartphone industry, now over a billion users strong, may have taken a completely different path – and died on the vine.

Might the same thing happen in wearables — likely the next iteration of the ongoing personal computing revolution? As wearable technologies abound in type and quantity, we await Apple’s entry.

Yet it may be wearables can only achieve their fullest potential for improving our health, our fitness, our connectedness to our minds and bodies only after the details are exactly right. That is, only after Apple clears a broad, lasting path just as they did with Mac (PCs), iPhone (smartphones), and iPad (tablets).

We have significant evidence Apple’s entry into a category has disproportionately, even radically re-shaped all that came before and all that follows. Perhaps we are better served in our analysis if instead of viewing Apple as sitting atop the ‘high end’ or ‘premium’ segment of a market, we acknowledge their products as a sort of official start, or a big bang of a new product category, unleashing and enabling the full potential of such technologies.

Thus, it may be that Apple better serves humanity even as their products are viewed by many as the tools of the wealthy. Apple made possible the very revolutions Google has seized upon. I think when it comes to the development, creation and release of products, Apple does humanity better.

Origin Myths

While I harbor suspicions regarding some of Google’s actions, I deeply admire their speed and scale, along with their willingness to try, to fail, to push. Google’s fast, expansive focus seems much more aligned with our nature and certainly more aligned with our times. Google’s beliefs include:

fast is better than slow
democracy on the web works, and
great just isn’t good enough

Thanks in part to such beliefs we most likely will have faster broadband, more bandwidth, radically cheaper smartphones connecting the world, tablets everywhere, a nearly infinitely scalable and mobile-optimized real-time web, all manner of affordable information and content, search, driverless cars, and whatever else Google is cooking up in its labs or scouting for acquisition.

That’s a substantial list.

It took Google for us to have YouTube, free maps, real-time-anywhere search, and the ability to live our lives within a fully digital realm. Yes, this comes at the creeping and rising cost of advertising everywhere and aggressively lobbied laws that do not necessarily favor our privacy interests. Almost seems fair.

Apple’s mission, by contrast, is shockingly prosaic:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

That’s it? No move fast and break things? No do no evil? Not even a computer in every purse?

In vision and purpose, I say Google bests Apple.

I suspect that despite their overlapping business interests, core differences between the companies are inextricably linked back to their founding — the mad, beautiful and deceptively detailed vision of computing borne inside the mind of Steve Jobs, versus the youthful, audacious and limitless grandiosity of Page and Brin.

Apple and Google are a mere five miles from one another, yet the difference in their work and world views appears an impassable chasm. I do not know who does more for humanity. I am greatly proud, nonetheless, that these two giants of innovation are American-born, American-led, and are both, separately and together, creating a better world.

The Mystery Of Flight 370 And Friends On The Internet I Will Never Meet

My mind continues to reflect back to those with loved ones on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370*. Desperate, hopeful, hopeless, an inexplicable truth staring back at them. What can they do? Wait still more? Call?

I picture each of them picking up their phone, praying, miracle of miracles that their loved ones or colleagues are somehow safe, alive, and will return soon. The phone rings and rings – no answer, obviously. Or perhaps, they hear a carrier’s hollow, computerized message and then an empty silence, their turn to speak. What is there to say?

For a few, the horror and blessing of their loved one’s recorded voice, on infinite loop, tragically disconnected from all we are connected with – which, even in the 21^st century, remains frightfully limited to the digital and the physical.

Would you leave a message? Where does it go?

Might an errant text arrive after the terrible truth becomes known? “Mom, Dad. We land in Beijing in just a few hours. See you soon! Much love.”

Despite the persistent limitations of our technologies and their callous lack of both awareness and emotion, I am nonetheless thankful for the many new forms of connectivity we have constructed for ourselves. For all their technical trappings and the radical new linkages between man and machine, I believe they are simultaneously enabling a more profoundly human world.

Never Too Far Away

Death remains blunt and obvious. For those of us old enough, however, born in an era of non-constant connectivity, we can still recall the powerlessness when our parents picked up stakes and moved us far away from all we knew. Dear friends we would never again see nor speak with. We might forget their names, forget what they looked like. We become ghosts to them, as they are ghosts to us.

No longer. Friendships now can easily survive great distances.

It gets even better.

There are friendships that are only now even possible, meaningful relationships with people we never actually meet and likely never will. This should be celebrated.

Yes, we now regularly interact with machines, artificial intelligences, databases, Siri and her cohorts, and it’s all amazing. But we are also interacting with more people than ever before as friends. I think this may have an even more lasting impact on humanity’s future.

I ‘speak’ regularly with people on Twitter, people I call friends, yet have never met them and know I almost certainly never will. I miss them when they are absent.

When they are offline for several days in a row I start to worry. Who can’t take time out to tweet they are busy and won’t be online for a week or so? Something must be wrong!

We share jokes, photos, advice. We listen. We recommend. We know each other’s likes and dislikes. We cheer when they get a new job or announce a new addition to their family.

Understand, this is not at all what I imagine a call on LiveLinks to be like. It’s no 90s phone sex thing, no going onto Yahoo chat and pretending to be someone you are not. We are real. These connections are our friends. We are like pen pals of old — only at infinite scalability and with far more robust communication modes at our disposal.

Is there a name for these types of friendships? Are they more or less special? It seems less, if I am forced to choose, though I admit to more than once being engaged in a discussion with good friends, friends mere feet away from me, then stopping to converse with one or more ‘friends’ on Twitter.

Of All The Souls I Have Encountered

We happily accept we have methods of maintaining contact with friends and family across any distance — via texting, FaceTime or Facebook, for example. Such methods are available to children as equally as to adults, fully accessible and without cost for most of us. That’s wonderful. What we rarely discuss, however, is these same tools have led to an entirely new reality: connecting with people on a deeply personal level, without ever meeting them in the flesh.

They are not ghosts, though we never see them. They clearly impact our lives, though we may not even know what they look like, what they sound like, their height, shape, skin color. I think this is profound.

I never want to reach out and discover a loved one no longer on the other end. But what we have today is, I believe, much better than before. Which probably makes it far more jarring when someone we know, in the flesh or not, becomes forever disconnected from us.

*At the time of writing, there were still no confirmed sightings of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Image courtesy of Bloomberg.

Why I Fear Apple CarPlay

I am excited by Apple CarPlay. But mostly terrified.

Excited, because I love constant, unbroken access to my phone, music, apps, maps, search, contacts, tweets, email — everything on my smartphone, in fact.

Terrified, because I have significant doubts that CarPlay will make driving safer, as Apple suggests. In fact, I fear it will do exactly the opposite.

Not for me, of course, I’m an excellent driver. Rather, for you and the millions of others out there traveling on the same roads as me. I have doubts that your use of Siri and iTunes and Maps and texting and calling and, ultimately, Yelp and Twitter and Facebook and everything else you will want to do will make you a safer driver.

Confession: I probably have more faith in Apple than in any other company on the planet to provide the simplest, most intuitive, least distracting interface between smartphone — and everything that it contains — and car. But there are significant caveats.

How safe can these solutions be? Ever? Tech companies and car companies certainly want us to believe they are safe. Google said nearly the same thing as Apple last year when it announced the Open Automotive Alliance: “making technology in the car safer, more seamless and more intuitive for everyone.”

I am not convinced.

I believe the following:

The more apps, information, content, and data at our fingertips, the more tools at our disposal — that are in NO WAY related to the act of driving – the more our focus on driving is diminished. This reduces safety.

I fear a fundamental Apple strength could come back to harm us. To wit: The hallmark of Apple products is not that they are intuitive, rather that they are enticing. Watch an iPhone user. They can’t seem to stop themselves, ever, from checking, tweeting, texting, calling, looking, reading, listening, scanning, scrolling.

Now put that into a car.

Yes, I know CarPlay is by Apple and Apple has four decades of experience creating amazing hardware and intuitive operating systems. There are two obvious roadblocks:

Apple has extraordinarily little say in any car’s actual hardware
The entirety of Apple’s existence has been on focusing our (full) attention onto its screens

I don’t want your focus to be on the screen! You are driving a car!

What’s that? You promise to only use the paddles on the steering wheel and to expedite all interactions via voice? Question: How often has Siri worked for you without error?

25% of the time? 50%? 90%? And that was when you had your hand on the iPhone screen and your mind fully focused on the (non-driving) Siri-related task at hand. The fact is, despite millions of dollars in advertising and years of effort, Siri continues to have painfully clear limitations.

I cannot believe that I am the only one that has such misgivings about CarPlay. And, yet, following Apple’s announcement…

The New York Times happily noted that “Apple’s CarPlay Captivates The Auto Industry.”

Forbes cheered Apple’s “powerful play to seize the dash.”

AutoNews proclaimed “CarPlay is smart but simple.”

I can only hope. I am disappointed, however, that they appear to have glossed over the very real safety concerns we all should have about CarPlay (and all similar efforts). In their statement officially announcing CarPlay, Apple endeavors to put us at ease. CarPlay is:

designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car

Is this true?

After all, every single car maker will continue to have complete control over their dash, their buttons, their type of screen, their steering wheel and how they integrate CarPlay. Oh, and they must simultaneously make sure to configure their settings in such a way that the vast majority of drivers — those without iPhone — can also operate everything effectively.

Not to worry, Apple says:

Users can easily control CarPlay from the car’s native interface or just push-and-hold the voice control button on the steering wheel to activate Siri without distraction.

I’m still not convinced. To me, this screams complexity — and thus distraction: native interface, steering wheel controls, Siri. Now add your mother behind the wheel.

It gets worse:

iPhone users always want their content at their fingertips and CarPlay lets drivers use their iPhone in the car with minimized distraction.

Yes, we do want all the wonderful content from our iPhones at our fingertips. My smartphone is rarely more than an arm’s length away. This does not mean we should allow it to be accessible while we are driving! In fact, the more I read from Apple’s own PR statement, the more worried I become. Parse this:

Apple has led consumer technology integration in the car for more than a decade.

What? Where? I’ve hooked up the cable television in my home but I don’t claim to have a decade’s experience in the entertainment industry. Implementing iOS in the car is a completely new endeavor, and for drivers, a completely new experience.

Putting more apps, more content into our cars, telling ourselves that it’s fine because Siri can manage it all — I simply do not believe this, not yet, and will not take part in what I consider be nothing more than a consensual hallucination.

Go to Apple’s very own CarPlay “coming soon” website. Remember, every single auto maker will implement this differently, with different knobs, different buttons, different screen types, different paddles, different layouts, different response modes. Yet, even using Apple’s own imagery, CarPlay appears to aggressively demand your focus.

Here’s just a sampling:

Do Apple’s very own pictures look either distraction-free or Siri-optimized? Now imagine 10,000 drivers with this. Or 1 million. Or 30 million.

Despite my fears, my concerns, I must be fair in my judgment of CarPlay. I have not used it, only seen it demonstrated. When it comes to developing intuitive touch and voice interfaces, Apple has led the way. Moreover, I doubt any car maker will do a better job of crafting a more intuitive, less distracting ‘infotainment’ system. Furthermore, Apple has so far restricted what they will allow offered via CarPlay. iTunes, Siri, Maps and a few other third-party apps, such as Beats, Spotify, iHeartRadio. No Yelp, no Twitter or Facebook. No WhatsApp.

Unfortunately, I simply do not believe this will remain the case. As the National Safety Council has stated, “the auto industry and the consumer electronics industry are really in an arms race to see how we can enable drivers to do stuff other than driving.” We mere mortals will no doubt demand more apps, more services, more entertainment, and if Apple doesn’t deliver we will turn to Android or some other provider for our fix.

Perhaps our focus should instead be on preventing access to all of the things, not enabling it.

Aegis Mobility is one of several companies that offer solutions for organizations with car and truck fleets, solutions specifically designed to prevent drivers from accessing their phones while driving. This is good for the driver, obviously, good for the company — good for all of us, in fact. Their tools detect movements, limit what phones can do during a driver’s work hours, or whenever the vehicle is in motion, can prohibit certain functions, such as texting. Try and skirt these barriers and you just may find yourself out of work. Perhaps we should demand this of ourselves and of every other driver, rather than promoting access to evermore data and entertainment.

There are over 1 billion cars on the road. Drivers are more distracted than ever before. We are hurtling down the wrong path. There’s still time to turn back.

India And The Future Of The Smartphone Wars

Perhaps I should have titled this “India Is The Future Of The Smartphone Wars”?

The appointment of the highly capable Satya Nadella to lead Microsoft only partly explains why I am thinking more about India and technology. The other reason is that it increasingly appears that the future of smartphones, and the winners and losers of the global smartphone wars, will be determined in large part by what happens in India. Great news for Google, possibly even for Microsoft and Nokia. Less good for Apple.

Despite the rather remarkable success of Indians in Silicon Valley, many of whom, like Nadella, are now leading tech companies, I still meet far too many analysts who remain disproportionately focused on what’s happening in China, or in Europe, while steadfastly ignoring the speedy, highly iterative tech landscape in the world’s second-largest nation.

Consider the following about India:

There are over 1.2 billion people — that’s about 4 USA’s
The median age is 25 (China’s median age is 36 and the US is 37)
India is the world’s 11th largest economy — and still one of the world’s fastest-growing
Annual per capita income is a dismaying $4,000 (by comparison, China’s is $10,000 and in the US it is $53,000)

Populous, young, growing, eager for technology, eager for connectivity, albeit with relatively meager resources to spend. It seems to me that is the perfect mix for disruption. Likely, this disruption centers around what is now our most important tool, the smartphone.

There are already about 150 million total smartphone users in India. Despite that number, and despite the nation’s large population, India is the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. The giant feature phone market is collapsing.

According to IDC, 44 million smartphones were sold in India in 2013. Phablets (smartphones between 5-6.99 inches) garnered at least 20% of the Indian smartphone market, though other sources place this number much higher.

Using IDC’s latest data, Samsung is the leading smartphone company in India, with India-based Micromax and Karbonn trailing. (Nokia, a leader in feature phones in India lags, though sales of its Lumia devices have steadily increased and the company now may have a 5% share of the market there.)

Given the size of the market, and its rapid growth, and the number of new users, current sales rankings may not matter much. As DNA India notes:

Tier one smartphone brands are ignoring the writing on the wall in the world’s fastest growing smartphone market in order to cater to a global market. This could be a dangerous thing to do especially at a time when the market is growing at a rate of over 150 percent and with 85 percent users still using feature phones. (emphasis added)

2014 could prove a watershed year, considering that:

225 million smartphones will be sold in India just in 2014 — compared to 89 million in the US
Of these 225 million devices, an amazing 207 million will be to first-time smartphone buyers — the largest proportion of new users to existing users anywhere in the world

More so than the spread of 3G/4G, and the rapid improvements in mobile-optimized services, it is the almost unbelievable low prices of new smartphones that are enabling the rapid jump to smartphones in India:

“The median price of a handset has fallen from 8,250 rupees (Dh490) in 2012 to 7,000 in 2013.”

That’s $115.

In fact, about 2/3 of all smartphones sold in India are priced under $200.

The derisively labelled “race to the bottom” is in truth, connecting India, and the world, and gifting us with unbelievably accessible technology.

Mozilla is seeking to create a $25 smartphone. Nokia’s X devices are all priced under $150. The new BlackBerry Z3 costs less than $200. This is amazing and laudable. Indeed, marketing firm Jana, has cleverly predicted that 2014 may be the year when a smartphone costs less than a carton of cigarettes.

The world will never be the same, and what’s happening in India offers us clues to our future.

As the Guardian notes, 2014 is when “the number of mobile internet users in the developing world will overtake those in the developed world.”

Connectivity is flowering in abundance. Equivalent access to everyone and to nearly every data resource will very soon be in the hands of the old and very young, male and female, rich and poor. This may be a first in human history.

We can’t know how this will change us, or change the world. But I suspect that watching what happens in India, and it’s happening so very fast, will provide us with many clues.

Predictions

Sorry. This market is too big, and moving much too fast for me to offer any reliable predictions. That doesn’t prevent me from sharing my thoughts, of course.

Apple

Meh.

Right now, Apple simply has nothing much to offer India. Offering the iPhone 4 for over $200 as they are again, when there are so many other amazing, new smartphones available for far less seems to me almost certain to fail. In fact, I think marketing very old devices against clearly superior ones, at the same price, only harms Apple’s brand. They shouldn’t even bother.

For example, India’s own Lava offers the following Android device for around the same price as the iPhone 4, but here’s what you get:

A sleek, sexy product running on stock Jelly Bean 4.2.1 with a magnesium alloy body, a 4.7-inch HD display, a MediaTek MT6589 chipset, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP camera in the back, a 3MP camera in the front, a panel that includes Sharp’s OGS solution, and Gorilla Glass from Corning.

Or, you can get a Moto G. Even the new Nokia X devices are all available for much less — and they carry the beloved Nokia brand name, look great, and include multiple popular Microsoft services.

In addition, India loves phablets — which pose a direct threat to iPads. Thus, even sales of iPad are hemmed in. Apple probably won’t have anything to offer India for years, in fact.

Will this harm the bottom line of the world’s largest tech giant?

Not so much, and certainly not in the near term. As long as Apple can peel off the world’s top 10% of buyers, they’ll be fine. It is a shame, however, that Apple and the world’s biggest democracy have so little a connection.

That said, Apple can certainly learn from the India market. For example, Indian handset makers are known for their ability to rapidly iterate, offer a host of new products, new models, all with the latest, most affordable hardware, and all at breakneck speed. Apple offers a minor iPhone upgrade about once a year, and a major upgrade about every 2 years. This has to change for success in the developing world — and it may already be underway. As the Wall Street Journal recently discovered, Apple is “hiring hundreds of new engineers and supply-chain managers in China and Taiwan as it attempts to speed up product development and launch a wider range of devices.”

Google

Android is the most popular (smartphone) OS in the world. This is especially true for India, where Google Android may make up 90% of the market. Google should do all it can to continue India’s love of Google Android.

Consider that nearly a third of “Android” smartphones shipped worldwide — that’s now over 70 million devices per quarter — come without Google apps and services installed. Blame, or thank, China, and don’t expect this to change soon. Chinese handset makers, Chinese app stores, Chinese web companies, and the Chinese government itself have little reason to embrace Google or to embed the company’s apps and services into their finished product. If Apple should ignore India for now, as I suggest, Google should similarly ignore China, which will continue to be unfriendly to the company, and instead embrace India.

Google should ensure that its very best tech, its latest services, its most amazingly affordable visions for computing devices all flourish in India, where value and accessibility are paramount. Efforts such as Project Ara, where Google hopes to offer a DIY smartphone for $50, should be heavily promoted and tended to in India, China’s manufacturing prowess notwithstanding.

Nokia

The widely mocked Nokia move to incorporate Android in its new Nokia X line could prove a rather bold, canny move. A feature phone stalwart in India, Nokia has to make an aggressive move to retain relevance in the country’s rapidly shifting phone market. Given the country’s speedy, almost wholesale adoption of Android, this may simply not be possible if Nokia remains fully wedded to Windows Phone.

Nokia’s new X phones will operate on Android, which is everywhere in India. However, they will carry the Nokia brand, retain the familiar Nokia design, keep the look and feel of Windows Phone Metro — and just might renew the company’s smartphone fortunes, all while potentially bringing millions more into the world of Microsoft services.

As Ben Bajarin states:

[Nokia X] is going to help Microsoft acquire customers at the low-end where all the growth is going to come from for the next few years. Every ecosystem needs entry points. Microsoft has a chance to acquire new customers getting their first smartphone and bringing them into the Microsoft ecosystem with a Microsoft ID.

Should the Nokia strategy fail, it’s hard to envision any other OS that is not Android finding any appreciable success in India, no matter the cost.

Where this might be wrong, although I think it unlikely, is if Chinese manufacturers such as the aggressively capable Xiaomi, successfully push out the top Indian mobile phone vendors (e.g. Lava, Karbonn), and thus effectively force them to offer something unique — Windows Phone, even Firefox OS, for example.

Understand, however, that India’s homegrown phone makers are formidable. I do not expect China’s own manufacturers, even such capable ones, to crush India’s leading vendors.

Not all aspects of India’s smartphone market will have a direct parallel elsewhere. The popularity of phablets may never be matched in the US and Europe. Features such as dual SIM are irrelevant in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, the smartphone skirmishes that take place in India will reverberate far beyond its borders. Analysts should pay more attention to this market and its users.

But Apple Is For Old People! Where iWatch And Apple Have The Last Laugh.

Anybody still recall when Apple’s chief competitors went about mocking the company for being, well, technology designed for older people? Those attacks came to an abrupt end in large part because Apple kept on printing money. I suspect, however, there is a second reason: iWatch.

iWatch may be the perfect personal computer for boomers, seniors and the elderly, yet Apple’s competitors, desperate to prove they are cool, have only now clued into the importance of this demographic. If at all.

Yes, the Apple iWatch does not exist. Rumors abound nonetheless, most insisting either that Apple iWatch will be the greatest computing revolution ever, or the latest batch of prognostication, an odd sort of tamping down of expectations, as if we should prepare ourselves to be disappointed.

Spoiler alert: neither of these groups knows.

We do know, however, that there is a massive, untapped market for an Apple iWatch: older people.

Consider that a device roughly as we imagine the iWatch to be, can at this very moment, serve as a tracking beacon, a camera, a heart monitor, an exercise monitor, pulse oximeter, a voice-based notification service – “time to take your pills” – a non-invasive glucose monitor, and a possibly a method of alerting the wearer to an impending heart attack.

All of which would be extremely valuable not simply to fitness freaks, but to baby boomers, seniors, elderly — certainly anyone over 60.

Bonus spoiler alert: there are a lot of older people. They positively abound in core Apple markets, including China, Japan and the United States.

The Bleeding Edge

Change comes fast to technology. The irony here is that the next insanely great market for computing tech, wearable devices, may reside within the demographic long considered furthest from the bleeding edge: older folks.

About time.

But first, a trip down memory lane.

“Apple is for old people.”

This glib statement has been a surprisingly persistent refrain from the media ever since the rapid mass market ascendency of the iPhone. Over the past 24 months, a “brand perception measurement” firm noted that Apple’s “biggest fans” hail from the older end of the spectrum. Bloomberg was happy to repeat this gospel: “Older people use iPhones, younger people use Samsungs.”

HTC — remember them? — mocked Apple back in 2011:

iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.

Samsung famously mocked iPhone’s appeal to the older crowd in a series of blistering televised attacks:

Not wanting to feel left out, Microsoft joined in on the action, wondering if the mean old lady was nonetheless (wink wink) too young to have an iPhone:

As a way to limit Apple’s growth, this line of attack has simply not worked. Indeed, I think this mocking of Apple – and by extension, all their older users – will come back to haunt the perpetrators. As this Digital Trends analysis reminds us:

Older consumers tend to have more disposable income and be less price sensitive than young consumers.

In addition, older people, happy and content with their iPhones and iPads, may offer Apple a sly path into the enterprise:

Having a positive perception among older consumers can also have indirect benefits to Apple’s business, since older users are more likely to be able to influence purchasing and technology policies and purchasing at schools, businesses, and enterprises.

The technorati continue to miss the big picture: whether or not “old people” are a natural Apple customer, we keep making more of them. Lots more. Just in the US, we will have 55 million people age 65 and over by the end of the decade. China is already approaching 200 million people aged 60 and older. This number is growing — fast.

What’s Old Is New Again

Note the graphs below documenting the aging of Japan and China, in particular. These aging populations will require innovate support, services and technologies to meet their unique needs.

Breaks down like this: More older people, living longer, possibly living alone, and with a greater need for health (and health monitoring) services. Think of the massive potential of an iWatch or similar device for this group.

Thus, while Apple is aggressively pushing into China, I suspect there is far more at stake than sales of iPhone. As Bloomberg noted last year:

More than two decades of record economic growth turned the Chinese into the world’s top consumers of cars and smartphones.

Yes, yes, smartphones. And yet, that very same Bloomberg report noted:

As the almost 200 million population of over-60s more than doubles in the next 40 years…

Forget talk about Apple building a “phablet” because China consumers will demand it. I can’t help but think an iWatch is the most logical product for Apple to build for China (and beyond). An affordable tracking device that monitors pulse, breathing, glucose, offers reminders, its data instantly synched to the cloud, accessible by health authorities, shareable with children or caregivers, could prove invaluable.

Again, it’s not just in China.

The US is similarly gaining extraordinary numbers of older people, as this PBS report noted:

(Starting in 2011) the first of the estimated 79 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 will turn 65 years old this year, at a rate of 10,000 a day. (emphasis added)

It gets better — if you’re Apple and if you’re working on an iWatch:

The number of people enrolled in Medicare will grow from 47 million in 2010 to roughly 80 million when the last of the baby boomers turns 65 in about two decades, while enrollment in Social Security is expected to rise from 44 million to some 73 million. At the same time, the ratio of workers paying taxes to support the programs to beneficiaries will drop.

Our healthcare industry, and our seniors, are going to be tasked to do more with less. Something like an iWatch, priced under $500, say, could prove a rather innovative means to save money on health testing, monitoring and possibly even visits to the doctor.

The Case For iWatch

It may seem like smartphones are everywhere, but even in the US the latest data shows that less than 20% of people over 65 have a smartphone. Likely, they find little need. But an iWatch, as imagined, could prove to be a near-necessity. Ask yourself: who is best equipped, anywhere in the world, to build a highly functional, reasonably affordable, startlingly intuitive, wearable personal computing device? My money’s on Apple.

Almost a year ago, CEO Tim Cook said “I think the wrist is interesting. I’m wearing this (Nike Fuelband) on my wrist…it’s somewhat natural. But as I said before, I think for something to work here, you first have to convince people it’s so incredible that they want to wear it.”

I do not know if Apple has reached that “incredible” stage yet, nor when they might. But a device that older people can legitimately operate and will use, offering valuable and personalized health data, could prove to be yet another massive market for the company.

I predict the iWatch will usher in a entirely new personal computing paradigm, flipping the early adopter/late adopter convention on its head. For the next phase of computing, build first for the old, that’s the bleeding edge, then let the technology drift out to the rest of the market in due time.

How Is It Possible That Google Is So Bad At What It Should Be Great At?

Mark Zuckerberg cooly plunked down $19 large last week for a SMS-like app that most Americans had never used, probably never will. The move was labelled bold, brilliant, strategic. Zuckerberg branded a badass, a visionary, the next Steve Jobs. I suspect had Zuckerberg offered, say, a mere $5 billion, the echo chamber would have suggested he foolishly overpaid.

One particularly interesting aspect about Facebook’s WhatsApp acquisition, beyond the fact that it generates roughly 0.001 the revenues of Apple’s iTunes group, is that it’s ad-free, unlike seemingly everything else in our expansive digital world. Which begs the question: how will Facebook ever make back that $19 billion?

A better question: how has Google already made so many billions from advertising? Or, better still: who are all these people making Google so much money by clicking on Google ads?

Maybe WhatsApp and Zuckerberg are ahead of the curve. After all, do you ever click on an ad? Ever? Do you know anyone who does? Haven’t you long since trained your mind, your eyes, to not even see the ads? Don’t you count down the seconds until you can SKIP AD on YouTube?

An interstitial takes control of your screen and you immediately click it shut. For those ads that make you watch before you can access your desired content, you sheepishly, guiltily, countdown a second or two, hoping the site owner can make a penny, then click again to get to the actual site. It’s only after shutting down your computer do you realize there were pop-under ads, which you hastily close. You open several tabs in your browser, then frantically search for the one tab where some automatic ad is playing, annoying you to no end.

It’s worse than spam.

This is how we fund the Internet? Still? Perhaps WhatsApp, should it ever come close to returning its investment, will lead us toward some grand new method of funding our digital lives.

Even if Google ads are better than every other ad network — a debatable position — the fact is that almost every single Google-based ad is of zero relevance to my life, an assault on my eyes and ears, a clear barrier to what I actually want. Yet the company continues to generate billions in profits off this digital flotsam.

How?

Is it you? Who are the people still viewing these ads? Who are clicking on these ads? And how is it even remotely possible that after 15 years of gathering every scrap of information about everything I do online, plus many of my activities off-line, that Google ads are still so wildly untargeted to every single thing about me?

I buy a plane ticket to Atlanta, say, and for the following week after that I’m shown offers for plane tickets to Atlanta. They’re worse than the colleague who discovers you just bought a car and tells you he could have got you a deal.

I fly to Atlanta, dine out, meet colleagues, conduct business, take in a few sights, return home. Go online. Where I’m then inundated with display ads, served by Google, for things to do in Atlanta. This lasts for days, at least.

While writing this article — fact — I was blasted with Google ads advertising Google ads.

What more of ourselves — our personal information, our likes, our shares, our time, our attention, our eyes, our ears — can we give so that Google et al finally get digital advertising to be merely remotely useful to us? Google knows us, our location, our friendships, our searches. They know our intent, allegedly, yet ad after ad after interminable ad is rarely anything more than digital trash.

Last week — true story — I searched for an app that might help me find and pay for parking in San Francisco, for that day only. Gmail now insists on showing me ads for “parking deals.” This all seems rather inexcusable. All that money, all those brains, all those machines, a billion smartphones, a billion plus web users, and nearing the mid-point of the second decade of the 21st century and Google advertising doesn’t understand that I needed that parking spot last week despite my explicit intent.

How can a company worth over $400 billion, that inspires so much awe and fear not only in Silicon Valley but in China, Europe and beyond, be so bad at what it should be great at?

To be fair, when I go to Google.com to search for a very specific item, the topper most ad and the first five or so non-ad results are usually, though not always, sufficient for my needs. As for Gmail and YouTube, ads there are so consistently irrelevant as to be comical — some sort of meta-joke the Google singularity squad are playing at our expense, I imagine.

Maybe getting advertising right is like finding the cure for cancer. The more money we spend, the more time and resources we devote, the more we realize just how far away we are from the end goal.

I haven’t seen much of an improvement in ads now that most of America and a good portion of the world has migrated to smartphones. These devices know where we are. They know what we are doing, what we are searching for, what we are seeking on a map, what we are texting our friends, where we are checking in to — yet I am at a loss to recall even a single instance when a tiny Google-served ad at the bottom of my smartphone screen was even remotely worthy of clicking on.

What is Google doing with all our information?

Forget for just this moment any privacy implications surrounding what Google does and instead think of this: someone else, a complete stranger, has full access to your photo library, your entire search history, your movements and locations throughout the day, everyday, a record of all your app purchases, book downloads, pirated television programs. Don’t you think they would have a near-100% better idea of what you’re interested in than Google does?

Almost never right but at scale has magically made Google king of the Internet.

When I search on Google Maps on my desktop — the smartphone screen is too small for this — and when using a generic term, such as pizza, that ad, to be fair, is typically semi-relevant, though has yet to ever be my first choice. That’s the very best I can say about Google’s ads.

Nonetheless, in 2013, Google had an astounding $60 billion in revenues and a profit of just under $13 billion. They had a per-employee profit of $270,000.

I have no answers for this.

I do my best to stay abreast of high-tech, including, grudgingly so, ad tech. Not just pop-ups, pop-unders, banner ads, etc., but the actual technologies and platforms powering these. There is contextual advertising, native advertising, search ads, mobile search advertising, platforms that enable spot-buys in near real-time, technologies that seek to integrate our interests, our location, our friendships across all our screens, all in the hopes of offering better, higher-margin ads. I follow how Google is aggressively pushing Google+ to ensure that all the various services of theirs we use, Gmail and search, maps and more, can all be linked back to us, individually. That Google is making less per ad on mobile than on desktop is a topic I’ve become quite familiar with. I read that Yahoo is trying desperately to re-take control over its search and advertising functions.

But the big question remains: how is it these all work so very badly?

Somebody, anybody, please disrupt this industry.

Is this why Larry Page is spending so much money on Nest, on robots, driverless cars, Internet balloons, fiber and so much more — he knows the whole web advertising ecosphere is ultimately doomed? It can never be right enough, timely enough, personal enough to make any appreciable difference in our lives? Unfair? Ask yourself: Did anyone really believe even for a moment that digital advertising would be so bad come 2014?

Despite my keen awareness of the breadth and scale of the global Internet I am simply amazed each and every quarter to re-discover that so many people around the world are clicking on ads. Yet Google’s earning statement confirm just this. Google even continues to lead the industry in limiting ad fraud. The company recently purchased Spider.io, a start-up that seeks to limit fraudulent clicks. Per Google:

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today — inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people.

Sounds well and good, but such acquisitions mostly only fuel my suspicions that digital advertising is a convoluted, confusing and inexplicable mess, the web equivalent of America’s healthcare system. Probably why at times, and despite how super-rich Google has become, I confess I think of digital ads as a con, a grift pulled not just on content creators, but on us users as well. We are bombarded with ads, companies base their business plan upon ad revenue dreams, ads litter nearly every public website on the planet, and yet in almost every single case and for nearly everyone I know they are a nuisance, an eyesore, almost always irrelevant, rarely of value, and quite possibly a calculated means of ensuring no other business models can thrive on the web.

Information wants to be monetized. Ads are middling succor. Funding the Internet went down the wrong path many years ago and we attempt to right it now simply by throwing in still more ads. Our shared loss.

Perhaps I should say nothing. Fact is, thanks to those billions of clicks and the billions of ad dollars they generate, we now have YouTube, the best search ever, free and accessible maps, a mobile operating system ready to power the world, even Gmail is probably still the best email service for most people. Nonetheless, I can’t help but take note that this is the year 2014 and we are still buried in meaningless, useless, annoying advertising and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting better, despite everything Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others have tried. Perhaps our best minds, our brightest engineers, should focus their talents elsewhere.