Windows 8 CP Tablet Experience: Distinctive yet Risky for Holiday 2012

A little less than a week ago, Microsoft launched to the public the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (CP). This is a follow-on to the Developer Preview (DP) that I’ve been using on a tablet and all-in-one desktop since it was introduced last September at the Microsoft BUILD partner conference. After 6 months and reportedly 100,000 code changes, is Windows 8 ready for prime time? Based on over 20 years of working with Windows development code and launching real products, I believe that Windows 8 is very distinctive but is risky for a Holiday 2012 release.

If you haven’t actually used Windows 8, I urge you to download it here. Truly using beta software is the only way to truly get the “feeling” of preview software and devices. What I will do is take you through the areas where I believe Windows 8 shines, needs work, and finally, areas where there’s not enough data to make a recommendation one way or another. I want to stress that my assessment is based on “preview” or “beta” code, not the finished product. Finished code is called RTM, or “Release To Manufacturing”. One very important hurdle for preview or beta is that it must be feature complete, which in some areas Windows 8 is and others, not.

Tablet Experiential Plusses

Fast response: My tablet booted very quickly and most times, woke up very quickly from “sleep.” Like DP, Metro was very fluid and fast as well, a first for a PC platform. Even installing apps was fast.

Content mashups: Unlike Apple iOS or OSX, Microsoft has attempted to deliver what people really want who have multiple on-line services; a focus on the content and interaction, not the service. For example, those who have LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, multiple address books, etc., Win8 makes it simple. Instead of having to go to multiple services or apps, consumers go to apps like “People” (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google), “Pictures” (Local, SkyDrive, Facebook, Flickr), and “Messenger” (Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) All of this saves time and places focus on the content.

Metro apps visually stunning: Microsoft pulled the “essence” of the app experience from Windows Phone, Zune and theXBOX 360. This results in beautiful looking apps like Music, USA Today, Weather, Bewise Cookbook, and iCookbook. When playing music, cover art and band photos are “silhouetted” on the display giving the feeling of a premium experience. Photos are huge and there is always a lot of white space. App beauty matters; just ask Apple.

Live tiles: Microsoft took what Android started in mobility, perfected the notification system with Windows Phone and extended it to the tablet. Without even opening up an app or swiping, consumers can see latest emails, next calendar item, most important stock prices, weather, and social media updates.

Dual use experience: I have been a proponent of modularity for years as it ultimately where the future of computing is going. With Win8 mid-term, Microsoft has the unique ability to capitalize on this with tablets, unlike Apple or Google. It’s simple; when users want to use the tablet on the couch or in bed, they use Metro. When I want the full desktop,they dock it with a full sized mouse, keyboard, 32” display and am doing real work. Microsoft ultimately needs to enable a way for a Metro and Desktop app to share the same local data files, but cloud-sync is an acceptable start particularly for the tech-aware audience.

XBOX integration: Like Windows Phone, Windows 8 CP integrates XBOX functionality quite well but is just a start. Using the XBOX Companion app on my tablet, I could find movies, TV shows, and music and even launch games to be watched or played on the XBOX. It is like an XBOX remote on steroids. I am still waiting for the enhanced “play to” functionality to share local content like photos and web pages to the TV via the XBOX. This functionality was discussed in-depth at the BUILD conference.

Search: Unlike the iPad, users can do full document and app content search. This what consumers expect and this is what Windows 8 CP delivers.

Too Early to Tell

ARM experience: Microsoft and its partners have been very selective on showing the Windows on ARM experience. It has been shown on stage and behind closed doors, but unlike the X86 versions, the public cannot touch the devices. Even at January’s CES show, the public was not allowed to touch the devices. If it were working great, there wouldn’t be a restriction and as I pointed out here, there are many challenges with Windows on ARM.

Updates: Every operating system and apps have updates and for good reasons, namely security and bug fixes. What is unknown with Windows 8 is the size and frequency of updates. We all know that the current pace and method of Microsoft updates is unacceptable in the modern world, and if it continues at its current pace, will detract from the tablet experience. The first day after I installed Windows 8 CP and got my system ready for desktop use, I received 34 updates; 4 for Windows 8 and 32 for Office. It took over an hour and that’s unacceptable in a modern, tablet world.

Tablet Games: I was very impressed with Pinball FX, but one game make not a trend. Given games are the most popular iOS and Android app category, I would have expected more by now.

Metro SkyDrive: I have used SkyDrive and Live Mesh for many years but primarily use Dropbox and SugarSync. There are two main issues I have found. First, I can see no more than 14 icons on an 11″ tablet display and there isn’t search capability. Sorry, consumers don’t like to create file folders nor do they manage them tightly. I am expecting Microsoft to change this or it renders SkyDrive useless.

Number of relevant apps: Certainly this will grow given Microsoft’s big bet and investment into developers but I was expecting more apps 6 months after Visual Studio was shown at the BUILD conference. 15 games and 3 social media apps 6 months after the developer preview isn’t the progress I expected.

Tablet OS footprint: The size of the final tablet installation is unknown, but if it’s more than a few GB, this will be a cost issue for tablets. Hard drives are “free” on desktops, but on SSD-based tablets, it’s a premium. The current download size for Win8 CP is between 2.5GB and 3.3GB, but those then get “unpacked” and increase in size. Microsoft is recommending 16GB free space for 32-bit and 20GB for 64-bit so the reality is the build will be between the download and the recommendations. Keep your eye on this one….

Tablet battery life: Microsoft and its partners have made a tremendous effort to improve battery life. Early indications show that by re-architecting the ways drivers work and BIOS work, using Metro as the front-end user experience, and by leveraging the lowest power ARM and X86, battery life will be competitive. I expect battery life to be competitive, but less than iOS or Android devices; but then again, it does more and I believe that it won’t become a consumer issue.

Experiential Improvements Needed

Too many bugs: Yes this is preview, but I was surprised to see this far into the development process the amount of application “hangs” with Metro apps like Mail, SkyDrive, and Photos. I experienced many situations where the screen just sat there in one color as if it were waiting for something. I used Microsoft’s recommended hardware tablet platform so that cannot be the issue.

Universal email inbox: The Metro Mail application doesn’t support a universal inbox. This is just basic and is surprising a feature complete preview launched without one.

MS Office file format viewers: Unlike iOS, OSX, and Android, the Win8 CP doesn’t include local viewers for MS Office documents. But it does support viewing PDF files.. huh? Click on a Word doc and you get sent to online SkyDrive where you can view and even edit a document. I see why Microsoft would want this as it “motivates” you to buy Office, but with all of the competition providing this, it really messes up the experience. The Windows 8 on ARM systems do contain Office but it isn’t clear what will ship on X86 systems. For the user’s sake, we can only hope that OEMs install at least viewers or Office Student Edition.

Metro Windows Explorer: Sorry, the newly designed Explorer doesn’t cut it in a touch environment. Even on an 11” display, it’s just too easy to click on the wrong icon or accidentally delete or move a file.

Metro Internet Explorer bookmark folders: Even Apple fought against but finally learned on iOS that for a browser to be usable, it needs an easy way to file bookmarks. And that means folders. 50 bookmarks strewn all over the place is just a mess and will repel users.

Conclusions

Windows 8 Consumer Preview builds upon the Developer Preview by adding application previews and cloud connectivity. Windows 8 for consumer tablets is very distinctive in that it can effectively be used as a tablet device for “lean-back” usage models and for “lean-forward” usages when docked in desktop mode. Like Android, Windows 8 takes a content-first approach, albeit with much more beauty and style, and simplifies user’s interactions between different local and cloud-based services.

Unlike iOS, Windows 8 is “alive” and vibrant with its live tiles, white space, and over-sized imagery. When launched it will pose a serious threat to high-end Android tablets and will help thwart competitive threats on the desktop by Android, iOS (in convertible form), and even OSX. The biggest challenge I see is Microsoft’s and its partner’s ability to hit the 2012 holiday selling season with a stable operating system for tablets to compete with the iPad. That risk is being mitigated with special image loads for specific devices, but given the state of the Windows 8 CP experience, hitting holiday 2012 with the experience Microsoft envisions and must deliver will be a tremendous challenge. I believe it is a bridge too far and the experience will suffer at the need to hit the holiday selling season.

Why the PC Industry Cannot Ignore Smartphones

When HP abandoned their smartphone and tablet business and webOS last August, many in the industry were disappointed in the speed of the Palm acquisition and the quick dismantling of it. Some who consider themselves "business-savvy" said it was the wise approach as it wasn’t core to HP’s corporate mission. They said that smartphones were a distraction to competing with IBM and even Dell. We won’t know until 3-5 years from now whether it was a good decision or not.

I believe though, that just as PC companies fought to stay away from the sub-$1,000 PC market in the 90’s, PC makers who don’t embrace smartphones could be out of the client hardware business in 5 years.

Some Context

Over the last 20 years, PC hardware and software have done this little dance where one is ahead of the other. New software came out that required better hardware, then the new hardware outpaced the old software and the cycle continued. With the better hardware and software came new features and usage models like multimedia, desktop publishing, 3D games, DVD video, videoconferencing, digital photography, the visual internet, and video editing. Then Microsoft Vista was launched and it seemed no matter how much hardware users threw at it, issues still existed. Microsoft then spent the next few years fixing Vista and launched Windows 7 instead of developing environments for new rich client usage models. Windows 7 actually took less hardware resources than Vista, the first time a Microsoft OS could say this. Microsoft is even publicly communicating that Windows 8 will take less resources than Windows 7. So what happened? Did the industry run out of usage models to consume rich PC cycles? No, there are many usage models that need to be developed that use rich PC clients.

What happened was netbooks, smartphones and tablets. Netbooks threatened Microsoft and forced them to re-configure Windows XP for the the small, cheap laptops. This was in response to the first netbooks, loaded with Linux, getting shipped into Best Buy and direct on the internet. In retrospect this wasn’t a threat to Microsoft, as those netbooks had a reported 50%+ return rate. After netbooks came MIDs and after MIDs failed came touch smartphones and the iPad. Once the iPhone and iPad showed strong sales it was clear that the center of design was moving to mobility even though needs the rich client PC could solve didn’t just go away.

Windows 8 and Rich PC Clients

Windows 8 was clearly architected to provide a tablet alternative to the iPad and stem the flow from Windows to iOS and Android. Most of the work has been to provide a new user and development environment called Metro, WinRT and to enable ARM SOCs. None of these investments does a single thing to propel the traditional rich PC client forward, maybe with the exception of enabling touch on an all-in-one desktop. Without Microsoft making major investments to propel the rich client forward, it won’t move forward even to the dismay of Intel, AMD and Nvidia. I want to be clear that there are still problems that the rich client PC can solve but the software ecosystem and VC investment is enamored primarily with tablet, smartphones and the cloud. Without Microsoft’s investment in rich PC clients, thinner clients like phones and tablets will evolve at a much faster rate than rich PCs.

The Consequences of Not Investing in the Rich PC Client

With the software ecosystem driving "thin" clients at a much faster rate than "rich" clients, the consequences start to emerge. We are seeing them around us every today. Users are spending more time with their tablets and smartphones than they are with their PCs. Savvy users are doing higher-order content creation like photo editing, video editing and even making music with GarageBand. That doesn’t mean that they don’t need their PCs today. They do, because neither smartphones nor tablets can do everything what a PC or Mac can do…. at least today. Display size, input method and lack of software modulraity are the biggest challenges today.

Enter Smartphone Modularity

Today, many users in traditional regions require at least a smartphone and a PC, and a tablet is an adder. Tomorrow, if users can easily attach a keyboard to a tablet via a convertible design, they may not need a PC as we know it today. It’s not a productive discussion if we debate if we call this a PC with a removable display or a tablet with a keyboard. What’s important is that some users won’t need three devices, they’ll just need two.

What about having just one compute device, a smartphone, and the rest of the devices are merely displays or shells? Sounds a bit aggressive but lets peel this back:

Apps: If you believe that the smartphone ecosystem and apps moves a lot faster than the rich client ecosystem, then that says that thin clients at some point will be able to run the same rich apps as a PC. Then the question becomes, "when".
OS/Dev Environment: iOS, Windows, and Android are all becoming modular, in that their goal is that you write once and deploy everywhere. Specifically, write once for a dev environment and deploy to a watch, phone, tablet, PC and TV or console.
Hardware: Fixed function blocks and programmable blocks on tablet and smartphone SOCs are taking over many of the laborious tasks general purpose CPUs once worked on. This is why many smartphones can display a beautiful 1080P video on an HDTV. This is true for video decode, video and photo cleanup, and natural user interfaces too. 3D graphics will continue to be an important subsystem in the SOC block.
Display: With WiDi, WiFi Direct, and WiFi AC on the mainstream horizon, there’s no reason to think that a user cannot beautifully display their apps from their 4" smartphone display to a 32" high resolution PC display. Today with my iPhone 4s I can display 1024×768 via AirPlay mirroring with a little lag but that’s today via a router and WiFi network. I can connect today via hardwire and it looks really good. In the future, the image and fonts will scale resolutions to the display and the lag will disappear, meaning I won’t even need to physically dock my smartphone. It will all be done wirelessly.
Peripherals: Already today, depending on the OS, smartphones can accept keyboard, mouse and joystick via Bluetooth, WiFi or USB. The fact that an iPad cannot use a mouse is about marketing and not capability.

Smartphone Modularity a Sure Bet?

As in life, there are no sure things, but the smartphone and cloud ecosystem will be driving toward smartphone modularity to the point where they want you to forget about PCs. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are building scalable operating systems and development environments to support this. Why Microsoft? I believe they see that the future of the client is the smartphone and if they don’t win in smartphones, they could lose the future client. They can’t just abandon PCs today, so they are inching toward that with a scalable Metro-Desktop interface and dev environment. Metro for Windows 8 means for Metro apps not just for the PC, but for the tablet and the Windows smartphone. The big question is, if Microsoft sees the decline of the PC platform in favor of the smartphone, then why aren’t all the Windows PC OEMs seeing this too? One thing I am certain of- the PC industry cannot ignore the smartphone market or they won’t be in the client computing market in the long-term.

The Dell XPS 13: An Ultrabook that Could Steal Customers From Apple

If you are in the high-tech industry and haven’t heard of the term “Ultrabook”, you’ve probably been on sabbatical or have been living under a rock. Intel introduced an industry-wide initiative to re-think the Windows notebook PC, which they have dubbed and trademarked the “Ultrabook”. Launched at Computex 2011, Ultrabooks are designed to be very thin and light, have good battery life, have instant-on from sleep, be more secure and have good performance. If you want to see the details on what constitutes an Ultrabook, let me direct you to an article I wrote in Forbes yesterday. Does this sound a bit like a MacBook Air? This is what I thought about the entire category until Dell lent me their Ultrabook, the Dell XPS 13, for a few days. I have to say, I am very impressed and believe they have a winner here that could take some business from Apple. I don’t make that statement lightly as my family is the owner of three MacBooks and I do like them a lot.

Dell plays hard to get
When Ultrabooks were first introduced in July, Dell was somewhat silent on their intentions. Typically Dell is locked arm in arm with Intel many steps of the way. When they didn’t introduce an Ultrabook by the back to school selling season, “industry people” started to ask questions. When Dell didn’t release one by the holiday selling season, people were asking, “what’s wrong with the Ultrabook category”, or “what is Dell cooking up”?

I thought they were waiting for Intel’s Ivy Bridge solution that was scheduled for earlier in the year. Whatever Dell was waiting for doesn’t matter, because they did nothing but impress at CES. During the Intel keynote with Intel’s Paul Otellini, Dell’s vice chairman Jeff Clarke, stormed on-stage with some serious Texas swagger. The video cameras at the CES event didn’t do the Dell XPS 13 justice as it’s hard to “get” the ethos of any device on camera, but with Jeff Clarke and Paul Otellii on stage, you knew it was important to both companies. In my 20+ years as PC OEM and technology provider to OEMs, I believe the only way to really “get” a product is to live with it as your primary device for a few days. And that’s just what I did.

Industrial Design
It’s apparent to me that Dell took their combined commercial and consumer experience and put it to good use. Rather than just follow Apple, HP or Lenovo, they put together what I would call the best of both worlds. The machined aluminum frame adds the brawn and high-brow feel, while the rubberized carbon-fiber composite base serves to keep the user’s lap cool and reduce weight. The rubberized palm rest provides a slip-proof environment that adds serious precision to keystrokes and trackpad gestures. It also provides a slip-proof mechanism for carrying the unit across the house, the office, or into a coffee shop. In a nutshell, Dell solved my complaints about my MacBook Air and made it look, feel and operate premium.

Instant-On
I give Dell and Intel credit for working together to make Windows 7 PCs almost “instant on”. The XPS 13 turned on and off very quickly thanks to Intel Rapid Start and Dell’s integration. I wasn’t able to use Smart Connect, but when I can use the XPS 13 for a few weeks I want to try this out. This is essentially a feature that intermittently pulls the XPS out of sleep state and pulls in emails and calendar updates. While this is as close a PC will get to “always on, always connected”, it is a decent proxy.

Ingredient Branding and Certifications
Historically, the typical Windows-based PC with all its stickers looks like a cross between a Nascar racing car and the back of a microwave oven. That doesn’t exactly motivate anyone to shell out more than $599 for a Windows notebook. There are no visible stickers on the XPS 13 and the only external proof of Intel and Microsoft is on a laser-etched silver plate on the bottom of the unit. Underneath the plate are all the things users usually ignore like certifications.

Keyboard and Trackpad
I never quite understood how little evaluation time users spend on what ends up being one of the most important aspects of a notebook; the keyboard and trackpad. I already talked about the rubberized palm rest that gives the XPS 13 a stable palm base for the keyboard and trackpad. My palms slip all over the place with my MacBook Air. The XPS 13’s keyboard is auto backlit and the keys have good travel and a firm touch. The trackpad feels like coated glass and supports all of the Windows 7 gestures. Clicking works by either physically clicking the trackpad down or gently tapping it. It’s the user’s choice.

Display
The display is 13.3″ at a very bright 300 nits at 1,366×768 resolution. It’s an edge to edge display (or nearly), which allowed Dell to design a 13.3″ display into around a 12″ chassis. I compared it to a MacBook Air and it is in fact narrower with the same dimension display. That is very impressive. I would have preferred a higher-resolution display but I don’t know if many users will make a huge deal out of this. The display is coated with Gorilla Glass which gives some extra added comfort knowing it will be up to the task of my kids accidentally scratching it up.

Ports
Compared to some of the other Ultrabooks, I applaud Dell for removing some of the ports that I am certain primary research said were “must-haves.” Must haves like a VGA port, 5 USB ports, and an ethernet port. (yawn) Users get a Displayport, one USB-3, one powered USB-2, and a headphone jack. The only port I would have preferred was a mini or micro HDMI port. Displayport guarantees that I will need to buy a cable or an adapter I don’t have. I can live without the SD card reader but it sure would have been nice if they could have fit it inside.

Battery Life
I am still very skeptical on most battery life figures of any battery-powered product. One exception is the Apple iPhone and iPad, where Apple goes out of their way to provide as much detail as possible for different use cases. With that caveat, I do believe the Dell XPS 13 will have very respectable battery life figures versus other Ultrabooks and the Apple MacBook Air. Dell says the XPS 13 will achieve nearly 9 hours of battery life, well above Intel’s target of between 5 and 8 hours.

One of the sexier features harkens back to the days of Dell batteries, which had buttons to gauge how much was power was left. Like the Dell batteries of yesteryear, press a small button on the side (not back) of the XPS 13 and it will light up circles to show how much battery you have left. That shows a dedication to useful innovation, not penny pinching bad decisions made in dark meeting rooms. This is the kind of small thing that demonstrates attention to detail that Apple quite frankly has dominated so far.

Consumer and Commercial Applicability
Whenever I hear that one product serves two different markets I usually cringe and jump to the conclusion that it will be mediocre at both. I also take a very realistic approach on the “consumerization of IT”, in that I believe we are a long way off until 50% of the world’s enterprises give their employees money to choose their own laptop. In the case of the Dell XPS 13, I believe that it will provide a good value proposition to both target sets. Consumers are driven by style, price, aesthetics and perceived performance at an certain price point while businesses are more interested in TCO, services, security, and custom configurability. The Dell XPS 13 provides all that. They may run into challenges with IT department and sealed batteries, lack of VGA and Ethernet ports, but then again a few IT departments would require serial ports if you let them spec out the machine completely.

Pricing and Specs
The Dell XPS 13 starts at $999 and includes an Intel Core i5 processor, Intel HD 3000 graphics, 128GB SSD hard drive, 4GB memory, USB 3.0, and Windows Home Premium. For a similarly configured Apple MacBook Air, buyers would pay $1,299. With the Mac, you get OS X Lion, a bit higher resolution display, Thunderbolt I/O, and an SD card slot. And yes, for the record, I know PCs don’t primarily sell on specs but they are still a factor in the decision. If it weren’t, Apple wouldn’t provide any specs anywhere, right?

Possibly Taking Bites from the Apple
From everything I experienced with the Dell XPS 13 evaluation unit, I can safely say that they have a potential winner. Why do I say “potential”? First, I’m using an evaluation unit, not a factory unit with a factory image. As a user or sales associate, if I start Windows and I start getting warning messages for virus protection, firewall and 3rd party software, the coolness factor will be for naught. The first consumer impression will be bad. I hope this doesn’t happen with the factory software load.

Many success factors go into successfully selling a system and creating a lasting consumer bond. Great products must align with great marketing, distribution and support. Controlling the message is key at retail. If, and I mean “if” Dell can effectively pull their messages through retail and somewhat control merchandising at retail, this will be a solid step in connecting the value prop with the consumer. This is very hard, especially in the U.S., where Best Buy rules brick and mortar. What will the Best Buy yellow shirt say when someone asks, “whats the difference between the MacBook Air and the Dell XPS?” If they say “$300” that is a fail. Retail will be important, more important than direct for Dell, because industrial design doesn’t translate well to the web. Seeing the XPS 13 image doesn’t impress as much as holding it does, so retail cannot be minimized.

I see the XPS 13 doing well in business and enterprise, again, given aligned messaging, channel, sales training and support. IT departments now have a design that is every bit as cool as the MacBook Air and arguably more productive plus the added benefits of TPM and Dell’s customization and support.

Net-net I see potential consumer and business buyers of thin and very light notebooks looking at Apple’s MacBook Air and many choosing the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook instead. This won’t just be based on price, but all other benefits I’ve outlined above. I also believe Apple’s MacBook Air sales will increase during 2012 but they would have sold more had it not been for Ultrabooks, especially the Dell XPS 13, the best Ultrabook I’ve used so far.

You can get more information on the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook here on Dell’s website.

The Potential Losers if Ultrabooks Win

(Originally published on Forbes)

Ultrabooks were one of the most discussed form factors at this year’s CES 2012. This was due not only to Intel’s CES marketing push, but by all of Intel’s ecosystem demonstrating their prowess by showing their latest and greatest designs. OEMs like Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, Toshiba and Lenovo showed their new designs with different industrial design, color, keyboards, displays, Intel processors, storage, and proprietary software and cloud services. One question I have received often since CES is, “who loses if Ultrabooks are successful”? We must first start by defining an Ultrabook then move on to a complex discussion with many scenarios.

What is an Ultrabook?

Ultrabooks were introduced by Intel at last year’s Computex 2011. Intel owns the Ultrabook trademark, which means only those who license it and abide by its restrictions can use it. This becomes important as it relates to receiving Intelmarketing and design funds. If OEMs, ODMs and retailers don’t abide by the Ultrabook definition, they will not be eligible for those funds.

An Ultrabook is a notebook computer that has the following characteristics:

Thin: 21mm or less. As a comparison, the 13.3″ MacBook Air is 17mm at its thickest point.
Battery Life: 5 to 8 hours. The 13.3 MacBook Air, per Apple, gets 7 hours of “wireless web” browsing.
Start up: Intel describes that “the system wakes up almost instantly and gives users quick access to their data and applications.” There are storage, boot, sleep, and BIOS implications to this.
Secure: Intel states that “bios/firmware is enabled to expose hardware features for Intel Anti-Theft Technology (AT) and Intel Identity Protection Technology (IPT).” This means the hooks must exist in BIOS that can talk toIntel AT and Intel IPT
Processor: Intel Core Processor Family for Ultrabook.

Storage Implications

Most of today’s notebooks use spinning storage, specifically a 2.5″ hard drive. On the spot market, you can buy a 1 TB 2.5″ hard drive for $145-110. This is very inexpensive and enough storage to hold just about everything a user may need unless they’re a videophile. The downside is that physical hard drives are slower and consume more power than SSDs. To achieve the battery life and more importantly start up requirements, Ultrabooks require some form of SSD. SSDs can come in the form of an SSD drive or a hybrid drive which has a combined SSD and physical hard drive. A 128GB SSD drive on the spot market is around $175-200. A 500GB hybrid drive with 4GB flash costs $150 at retail.

The potential losers here are traditional spinning 2.5″ hard drives. Hybrid drive-based Ultrabooks are just hitting the market and it’s too early to say whether they will dominate over the more expensive, responsive and power saving SSD drives. Seagate is already in the market with their Momentus XT brand hybrid drives but Western Digital has yet to show up with a consumer solution.

Discrete Graphics Implications

Two different kinds of PC graphics exist, discrete and integrated. Discrete are a separate graphics chip that is either soldered on the mainboard or most likely a separate card inside the notebook. Integrated graphics are inside the SOC (System on a Chip) with the CPU and memory controller or it exists in what’s called the “tunnel” or the companion chip to a CPU. Intel provides integrated graphics only and is the PC graphics market share leader pulled by their CPU franchise. AMD provides discrete cards and chips, formerly branded ATI, and also provides integrated solutions with their Fusion-based SOCs. Nvidia serves the PC graphics market solely with discrete graphics cards and chips.

The potential losers here are discrete graphics. It’s not they are “banned”, but the Ultrabook specifications make it very challenging to integrate discrete graphics into designs. The two challenges are height and power draw. Adding a discrete card and keeping inside the 21mm restriction is difficult but not impossible. Two major players, Lenovo and Samsung have already announced Ultrabooks with discrete graphics. The announced Samsung Series 5 contains the AMD HD 7550M and the Lenovo ThinkPad T430u will ship with Nvidia Geforce 610M.

Discrete graphics from AMD and Nvidia will again get challenged when Intel unveils Ivy Bridge that has Intel HD 4000 graphics that support Direct X (DX) 11. AMD and Nvidia have managed to weather the risk through Intel’s DX 9 and DX 10 and I expect a similar kind of battle here. The ending could be different if AMD and Nvidia cannot effectively market the value of more gaming graphics or GPU-compute horsepower.

Processor Implications

By definition, Ultrabooks must contain Intel Core processors for Ultrabooks.

This means AMD, or for that matter, ARM-based processors from Nvidia, Qualcomm, or Texas Instruments cannot be inside an Ultrabook. This requires a bit more of an examination as it is regulated by the Ultrabook definition. AMD atCES 2012 was discussing their “ultrathin” plans and will reportedly enter the market with their Trinity platform. Press reports describe that AMD will leverage their graphics capability and also enable much lower price points than the $1,000 Intel price point many Ultrabooks sell at. I expect to hear more from AMD at their Financial Analyst Day next month.

ARM-based SOC suppliers Nvidia, Qualcomm and TI argue they already provide Ultrabook-like benefits with products like the Transformer Prime. The Asus Transformer Prime is a 10.1″ convertible powered by Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3, gets 18 hours of battery life, is super-thin at 16.3-18.7mm thick, and is instant-on with Android 3.2 moving to 4.0 OS.

Security Implications

Intel Anti-Theft Technology and Intel Identity Protection Technology come with the Ultrabook package. OEMs arent required to support every feature, but many of the features are tied to specific solutions. For instance, Intel Anti-Theft works with Winmagic, Computrace, and Symantec. Don’t see your provider? Well you are out of luck and more than likely the company unless they build to Intel’s spec and APIs. Because many of the Ultrabook security features are hard wired into the CPU and chipsets, by definition, it has potential implications for AMD. The potential impact is yet to be seen because AMD has not played their “ultrathin” hand yet.

Marketing Implications

Intel owns all rights to the Ultrabook name. With that, they have the right to enforce how people use it. This, tied with the 100s of millions of dollars that will be invested in Ultrabooks, will be very impactful to the ecosystem. AMD cannot use the name Ultrabook without Intel’s expressed permission, something I doubt either party would explore. If Intelcan make Ultrabooks a household name and consumers then buy online, Ultrabooks have a built-in advantage. BestBuy.com and even HP.com have a separate digital aisle specifically for Ultrabooks that won’t include anything from AMD. Amazon currently, on the other hand, does not. AMD is at the least risk at retail where the “ultrathin” specifications could be evident. Consumers will see OEM brand, design, thinness, weight and battery life. Time will tell how powerful the Ultrabook brand will be at physical retail.

Like AMD, no one in the ARM ecosystem like Nvidia, Qualcomm or TI can use the Ultrabook brand either for their Windows 8 clamshell designs. So that fancy Asus Transformer Prime? Not an Ultrabook in the ads, product reviews nor will Asus receive any engineering or marketing funds. Would Best Buy rather stock a margin-neutral, 13″ (hypothetical) $599 Asus Transformer Prime or a $699 Asus Ultrabook that gets $50 dollars marketing money per unit? You know the answer.

So Who Potentially Loses if Ultrabooks Win?

As you can hopefully see by the analysis above, there are many scenarios that must play out before all the winners and losers can be tallied. There are not any clear-cut answers. This is a highly competitive market and historically, AMD and Nvidia know how to play the game well and have much more experience at it then Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have little or no experience fighting Intel at their own game.

Spinning hard drives without flash are extinct on the Ultrabook but adding flash to a hard drive to make a hybrid isn’t rocket science. So even Western Digital cannot be counted out yet.

Net-net, there are no simple Ultrabook winner-loser answers but what is for certain is that Intel has shaken up a sleepy Windows PC ecosystem, and that’s a good thing for consumers and the PC industry.

How Intel Could Achieve the 40% Consumer Ultrabook Target in 2012

There has been a lot of industry skepticism since Intel predicted at Computex Taipei 2011 that Ultrabooks would account for 40% of consumer portable sales by the end of 2012. That included skepticism from me as well, and I continue to have that skepticism. Rather than dive into that discussion though, I think it’s more important and productive to examine how Intel could conceivably achieve that goal.

What Intel is Actually Predicting

It’s important to understand what Intel means when they made their prediction. First, they are making the prediction for the consumer market, not the slower moving SMB, government, or enterprise markets. Also, the prediction is not for the entire year, it is for the end of December, 2012. That is, 40% of consumer notebooks by the end of December 2012 would need to be Ultrabooks. This makes a huge difference when evaluating the probability of this actually occurring.

So what would it take for 40% of all consumer notebook sales to be Ultrabooks by the end of 2012?

Make Ultrabooks Look New, Relevant, and Sexy

Intel and their ecosystem need make Ultrabooks perceived as new, relevant and sexy. By relevant I mean making the direct connection between what the Ultrabook delivers and what the consumer thinks they need. Sexy, is, well sexy, like MacBook Airs. The ecosystem must make a connection with:

Thin and light– this is easier because Apple has blazed the trail and it is evident on the retail shelf.
Fast startup– this is somewhat straightforward and a communicated consumer pain point with Windows today
Secure– this is the most difficult in that it is always difficult to market a negative. It’s like life insurance; it sounds good, people say it’s important, then don’t buy it. I think Intel would be much more successful taking the same base technology and enabling exclusive consumer content or speeding up the on-line checkout or login process.
Performance- this is difficult to market in that no longer does performance have a comparable metric and chip makers have appeared to stop marketing why it is even important.
Convertibles- I am a big fan of future convertibles given the right design and OS. If OEMs can put together a classy, ~18mm design, it could very well motivate consumers to delay a tablet purchase. This will not work prior to Windows 8’s arrival, though because you really need Metro for good touch.

Probably the biggest impediment here is the “sexy” piece. Sexy is the “X” factor here. It’s cool to have an Apple MacBook Air. It isn’t cool yet to have an Ultrabook. A lot of that $300M UltraBook investment fund must pay for the Ultrabook positioning and re-positioning of anything Windows. This is a tough task, to say the least.

Steal Some Apple MacBook Air Market Share

Intel and their ecosystem, to hit the 40% target, will need to steal some of Apple’s market share. There is no way around this to achieve the 40% target unless they want to pull the dreaded “price lever”. Apple “owns” 90+% of the premium notebook market today and because Windows OEMs and Intel for that matter aren’t motivated to trash pricing now, they will need to steal some of Apple’s share. This will be a tough one, a real tough one particularly in that Intel shoots itself in the foot short-term by going aggressively after this one given they are inside every MacBook Air. So OEMs will need to take this one on their own, using Intel marketing funds as a weapon. This will be especially difficult given that Apple positioning isn’t going to be instantly erased by anything short term and Windows OEMs haven’t been able to penetrate this for years. Remember the Dell Adamo? Sexy, Windows 8 convertible designs could very well be the magic pill that could help steal share from Apple.

Lower Price Points

This is the last lever anyone wants to pull as it destroys positioning. Depending which data service you look at, the average consumer notebook ASP (average selling price) is between $600-700. This seems high, I know, when you look at what is being sold at local retailers, but remember that this includes on-line and Apple which has a higher ASP. Ultrabooks range from around $799 to $1,299 excluding Apple. This is well above the prices it would need to be to achieve the 40% goal. There are two ways to lower price; lower the cost or lower margins. I believe you will see a little bit of both.

As volumes increase, there will be immediate cost savings in expensive mechanicals like aluminum, plastic, and composites. Custom cooling solutions are very expensive required to cool thin chassis between 16-21mm in thickness. Tooling and design cost can be amortized over greater volumes to decrease the cost per unit. Intel Ivy Bridge, available in April 2012, will provide a shrink from 32nm to 22nm which would theoretically allow a lower price point at the same performance point, although I am sure Intel isn’t leading with that promise. Intel would much rather provide large marketing subsidies and pay NRE (non recurring engineering) costs to retailers and OEMS to design and promote the Ultrabook category. SSD is a tricky one to predict given spinning hard drive supply issues. Spinning hard drive price increases allow SSD makers to increase prices which doesn’t bode well for Ultrabook BOM costs in the short term.

Leverage Windows 8 Effect

The expected Windows 8 launch for the holiday of 2012 could help the Ultrabook cause on many fronts. First, it may give consumers a reason to consider buying a new laptop or notebook. I fully expect consumers to delay purchases and wait for Windows 8 to arrive. This could create a bubble in Q4 that, again, helps achieve the 40% goal.

Perceived Momentum

Finally, Ultrabooks need to get off to a solid start in 2012. Consumer influencers and the rest of the ecosystem needs to perceive UltraBooks as a success in 1H/2012 for them to “double-down” for 2H/2012. CES will be one tactic to do this, where I expect to see 100s of designs on display to demonstrate OEM acceptance to the press, analysts, and retail partners. Intel’s Ivy Bridge will give another boost in April, followed by the Windows 8 launch. Retailers cannot be stuck with excess inventory and cannot make drastic price cuts that would only deposition the category. Currently there is skepticism on the entire Ultrabook value proposition and the price points they can command so there is a lot of work to be done.

Will Ultrabooks Achieve the 40% Target by End of 2012

While this analysis is about what it would take to achieve the goal, I must weigh on what I think will happen. I like to bucket these kinds of things into “possible” and “probable”. I believe that if the Ultrabook ecosystem could accomplish everything outlined above, Ultrabooks could hit 40% of consumer notebook sales by the end of 2012. So it is possible, BUT, I don’t see it as probable, primarily due to the low price points that it will need to be hit. There just isn’t enough time to reposition a Windows notebook as premium and either raise price points of the Windows notebook category or steal Apple market share.

Apple iCloud Shortcomings Provide a Competitive Opportunity

Apple iCloud launched two months ago to huge fanfare and punditry. It’s no surprise given the huge future opportunity with the cloud. Also, it was a big deal for Apple given their past online endeavors had been so unsuccessful that even Steve Jobs issued out one of the few apologies Apple had ever made. In that case, it was about MobileMe. Two months in, Apple has done an admirable job, but it’s clear if they don’t plug some holes, competition has the ability to swoop and and deliver a much more user centric, comprehensive solution.

iCloud Problem #1: Lack of video sync
Unlike photos with Photostream, iCloud will not sync videos taken off of an iPhone and sync to a consumer’s iPad, PC, Mac, or Apple TV. So that last minute winning basketball score…. you are out of luck. Lose the video? Oops… With advanced and mainstreamers users already embracing video this is a huge hole that will be be filled by someone. Bandwidth isn’t an excuse because there’s certainly enough of that over WiFi at home or the business. This is a hole that Google could easily fill in that they get video via YouTube. And with Apple owning both ends of the pipeline, they could even develop a proprietary CODEC that shrinks and expands the files minimizing bandwidth even over WiFi. Microsoft certainly has the capability given they own the PC market and with Live Mesh could provide an solution that never touches an external server.

iCloud Problem #2: Fractured productivity pipeline
Unlike photos, iCloud requires significant user intervention to sync documents, presentations, and spreadsheets between iOS devices and PCs/Macs. If a user creates a document on an iPad and wants to pull it into Pages for Mac, the user is required to download from iCloud.com. After changes are made on the Mac, the user needs to drop it back into iCloud.com. Seems like syncing documents folder on the Mac and PC would have been a whole lot easier. Again, an opportunity for Google Docs and Office 365 from Microsoft.

iCloud Problem #3: Lack of on-line photos
Unlike Google Picasaweb and Yahoo Flickr, iCloud provides no way to go online and view, download, and share pictures from a web browser. This is a very basic feature that is surprising in its absence. Microsoft Live Mesh and Windows Live service can easily fill in this gap.

iCloud Problem #4: PDFs are books, not documents
For most consumers, PDFs are intended to be files intended to be uneditable documents. They are so pervasive that even global governments use them as standard document formats. How does iCloud treat them? As books, of course. In Apples war with Adobe they have crossed the line and have sacrificed the consumer in the process. This is easily addressed by Google and Microsoft.

Filling the Gap
Many companies can fill the gap opened by the lack of iCloud comprehensiveness, timing, and completeness. They fall into two categories; niche plays and comprehensiveness plays.

From a comprehensive standpoint, there are three options, Google, Microsoft and an OEM. Google and Microsoft solutions are straightforward, but the OEM play is a bit complex. Google and Microsoft can build cross platform smartphone, tablet and desktop apps that keep everything in sync. Google already has many desktop apps, with Picasa 3 already filling the comprehensive photo sync role to Picasa Web. Microsoft already has a comprehensive solution with LiveMesh and Office 365 but need to provide more robust smartphone and tablet integration. OEMs like HP, Sony and Dell could either build their own infrastructure or partner with companies like Box, Dropbox, or Sugarsync to fulfill that need. They could also partner with Microsoft and Google as well, but sacrifice some level of integration and control.

The niche players are in the market today, companies like Sugarsync, Box, Dropbox and even Evernote. Essentially, a consumer looking for a specific, non-integrated solution can look to these players today to provide cloud sync. While they aren’t always integrated into an end to end pipeline into the apps, they provide a solution today, and maybe even tomorrow who don’t want to get locked into a solution. Most sophisticated and experienced users will actually prefer this approach as they understand the complexity and see the downside to being locked into an app environment. Probably many reading this blog in fact.

Microsoft, Google, and Independents Fill the Gap
I believe Apple is rolling out online, integrated services as fast as it can, prioritizing what it believes consumers will want first. Services hasn’t been Apple’s core competency, as Ping and MobileMe highlight this. It’s on a slow pace which will let Microsoft and Google edge into a market leading position, regardless of Apple’s prowess in phones and tablets. Microsoft will leverage their ~95% share in PCs and Google will leverage their market share advantage in smartphones and search. The big question is, can Apple accelerate into an area rife with competition in an area which isn’t it’s core competency?

Windows 8 Desktop on ARM Decision Driven by Phones and Consoles

There has been a lot written about the possibility of Microsoft not supporting the Windows 8 Desktop environment on the ARM architecture. If true, this could impact Microsoft, ARM and ARM’s licensees and Texas Instruments, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm are in the best position to challenge the high end of the ARM stack and are publicly supported by Microsoft. One question that hasn’t been explored is, why would Microsoft even consider something like this? It’s actually quite simple and makes a lot of sense the position they’re in; it’s all about risk-return and the future of phones and living room consoles.

The Threat to Microsoft

The real short and mid term threat isn’t from Macs stealing significant Windows share from Microsoft, it’s all about the Apple iPad and iOS. It could also be a little about Android, but so far, Android has only seen tablet success in platforms that are little risk to a PC, like the Amazon Kindle Fire. Market-wise, the short term threat is about consumer, too, not business. Businesses work in terms of years, not months. The reality is that while long term, the phone could disrupt the business PC, short term it won’t impact where Microsoft makes their profits today. Businesses, short term, won’t buy three devices for their employees and therefore tablets will most likely get squeezed there. Business employees first need a PC, then a smart phone, and maybe a few a tablet. There could be exceptions, of course, primarily in verticals like healthcare, retail and transportation.

What About Convertibles?

One wild-card are business convertibles. Windows 8 has the best chance here given Microsoft’s ownership on business and if you assume Intel or AMD can deliver custom SOCs with low enough power envelopes, thermal solutions and proper packaging for thin designs. Thinking here is that if business wants a convertible, they’ll also want Windows 8 Desktop and more than likely backward compatibility, something only X86 can provide. So net-net, Microsoft is covered here if Intel and AMD can deliver.

Focus is Consumer and Metro Apps

So the focus for Microsoft then is clearly consumer tablets, and Microsoft needs a ton of developers writing high quality, Metro apps to compete in the space. Metro is clearly the primary Windows 8 tablet interface and Desktop is secondary, as it’s an app. Developers don’t have money or time to burn so most likely they will have to choose between writing a Metro app or rewriting or recompiling their desktop to work with ARM and X86 (Intel and AMD) desktop. It’s not just about development; it’s as expensive for devs to test and validate, too. Many cases it’s more expensive to test and validate than it is to actually develop the app. Strategically, it then could make sense for Microsoft to push development of the Metro apps and possibly by eliminating the Desktop on ARM option, makes the dev’s decision easier.

Strategically, It’s About Phones and the Living Room in the End

Windows 8, Windows Phone 7, and XBOX development environments are currently related but not identical. I would expect down the road we will see an environment that for most apps that don’t need to closely touch the hardware, you write once and deploy onto a Microsoft phone, tablet, PC and XBOX. The unifier here is Metro, so getting developers on Metro is vitally important.

If Microsoft needed to improve the chances developers will swarm to Metro and do it by taking a risk by limiting variables, let’s say by eliminating ARM desktop support, it makes perfect sense.

Gaming AMD’s 2012 Strategy

AMD intends to pursue “growth opportunities” in low-powered devices, emerging markets and Internet-based businesses.

There’s an awful lot of mis-guided analysis wafting about regarding AMD’s new strategic direction, which the company says it will make public in February. This piece is to help you (and me) sort through the facts and the opportunities. I last took a look at AMD’s strategies earlier this year, available here.

Starting With the Facts

AMD is a fabless semiconductor company since 2009. The company depends on GlobalFoundries and soon Taiwan Semiconductor to actually fabricate its chips;
In its latest quarter, AMD had net income of about $100 million on $1.7 billion in revenue. Subsequently, the company announced a restructuring that seeks to cut costs by $118 million in 2012, largely through a reduction in force of about ten percent;
AMD has about a 20% market share in the PC market, which Intel says is growing north of 20% this year, largely in emerging markets;
AMD’s products compete most successfully against rival Intel in the low- to mid-range PC categories, but 2011 PC processors have underwhelmed reviewers, especially in performance as compared to comparable Intel products;
AMD has less than a 10% market share in the server market of about 250,000 units, which grew 7.6% last quarter according to Gartner Group;
AMD’s graphics division competes with nVidia in the discrete graphics chip business, which is growing in profitable commercial applications like high-performance supercomputing and declining in the core PC business as Intel’s integrated graphics is now “good enough” for mainstream buyers;
AMD has no significant expertise in phone and tablet chip design, especially the multi-function “systems on a chip (SOCs)” that make up all of today’s hot sellers.

What Will AMD CEO Rory Read’s Strategy Be?

I have no insider information and no crystal ball. But my eyebrows were seriously raised this morning in perplexity to see several headlines such as “AMD to give up competing with Intel on X86“, which led to “AMD struggling to reinvent itself” in the hometown Mercury News. I will stipulate that AMD is indeed struggling to reinvent itself, as the public process has taken most of 2011. The board of directors itself seems unclear on direction. That said, here is my score card on reinvention opportunities in descending order of attractiveness:

Servers — For not much more work than a desktop high-end Bulldozer microprocessor, AMD makes Opteron 6100 server processors. Hundreds or thousands more revenue dollars per chip at correspondingly higher margins. AMD has a tiny market share, but keeps a foot in the door at the major server OEMs. The company has been late and underdelivered to its OEMs recently. But the problem is execution, not computer science.
Desktop and Notebook PCs — AMD is in this market and the volumes are huge. AMD needs volume to amortize its R&D and fab preparation costs for each generation of products. Twenty percent of a 400 million chip 2011 market is 80 million units! While faster, more competitive chips would help gain market share from Intel, AMD has to execute profitably in the PC space to survive. I see no role for AMD that does not include PCs — unless we are talking about a much smaller, specialized AMD.
Graphics Processors (GPUs) — ATI products are neck-and-neck with nVidia in the discrete graphics card space. But nVidia has done a great job of late creating a high-performance computing market that consumes tens of thousands of commercial-grade (e.g., high price) graphics cards. Intel is about to jump into the HPC space with Knight’s Corner, a many-X86-core chip. Meanwhile, AMD needs the graphics talent onboard to drive innovation in its Fusion processors that marry a processor and graphics on one chip. So, I don’t see an AMD without a graphics component, but neither do I see huge profit pools either.
Getting Out of the X86 Business — If you’re reading along and thinking you might short AMD stock, this is the reason not to: the only legally sanctioned software-compatible competition to X86 inventor Intel. If AMD decides to get out of making X86 chips, it better have a sound strategy in mind and the ability to execute. But be assured that the investment bankers and hedge funds would be flailing elbows to buy the piece of AMD that allows them to mint, er, process X86 chips. So, I describe this option as “sell off the family jewels”, and am not enthralled with the prospects for success in using those funds to generate $6.8 billion in profitable revenue or better to replace today’s X86 business.
Entering the ARM Smartphone and Tablet Market— A sure path to Chapter 11. Remember, AMD no longer makes the chips it designs, so it lacks any fab margin to use elsewhere in the business. It starts against well-experienced ARM processor designers including Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, and TI … and even nVidia. Most ARM licensees take an off-the-shelf design from ARM that is tweaked and married to input-output to create an SOC design, that then competes for space at one of the handful of global fab companies. AMD has absolutely no special sauce to win in the ARM SOC kitchen.To win, AMD would have to execute flawlessly in its maiden start (see execution problems above), gain credibility, nail down 100+ design wins for its second generation, and outrace the largest and most experienced companies in the digital consumer products arena. Oh, and don’t forget volume, profitability, and especially cash flow. It can’t be done. Or if it can be done, the risks are at heart-attack levels.

“AMD intends to pursue “growth opportunities” in low-powered devices, emerging markets and Internet-based businesses.” One way to read that ambiguous sentence by AMD is a strategy that includes:

Tablets and netbooks running X86 Windows 8;
Emerging geographic markets, chasing Intel for the next billion Internet users in places like Brazil, China, and even Africa. Here, AMD’s traditional value play resonates;
Internet-based businesses such as lots of profitable servers in the cloud. Tier 4 datacenters for Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are a small but off-the-charts growing market.

So, let’s get together in February and see how the strategy chips fall. Or post a comment on your game plan for AMD.

A Scenario Where Smartphones Take Down the PC

If you’ve done any long term strategic planning you know there are few absolutes but, very many scenarios. Tech history shows that even disruptive innovations take time to rollout and many scenarios existed that could have gone both ways. BlockBuster saw digital media coming and I will bet they had scenarios that showed varying levels of digital video acceptance showing what would happen to them if they didn’t lead levels of digital media leadership or lowest price. What if the publishers had stuck to their earlier guns and hastened digital rollouts? That could have given BlockBuster breathing room to develop more and they may still be around in their prior form.

There are other scenarios rolling out that are very interesting in that they could disrupt a giant, 500M unit market. That is, the scenario that has the smartphone “taking out” the personal computer.

I’d like to take a look at a few variables that could increase the likelihood of this happening. Remember, it’s not about absolutes, but about different scenarios and their chance of happening. Also, I’m not saying absolutely it will happen, but it is a viable scenario.

The New Personal
It all starts with the end user and making choices. If posed with the question, “if you had to choose between your phone of the PC, which one would you pick?” Sure, most want both, but making them choose makes them prioritize, and most would pick the phone. Why? One reason is that its so personal. People take it in the bed, bathroom, our pocket, on the dinner table. It knows where we are, what we’re doing, who we’re with, can communicate how we feel, etc. There are even reports that people would rather starve or refrain from sex rather than separate from their phone. Net-net, the phone is more personal and one variable that could, scenario speaking, accelerate the erosion and “take down” of the PC.

Good Enough Computing
Setting input and output aside for a second, the smartphone is pretty good, or good enough, for most email, web, social media, and light content creation. The web has actually “dumbed down” a but to make this possible and apps have helped almost as much Light content creation is writing email, editing photos, creating social media posts, and even taking notes. The big usage model exceptions to this are workstations and extreme PC gaming even though these are starting to be processed in the cloud. Most all else, scenario speaking, can be processed in the cloud.

Modular Designs
The iPhone 4s and the iPad 2 can already wirelessly mirror what is on the phone or tablet on the next best display. Most Android devices and even QNX can work with a full size wireless keyboard and mouse. Extrapolate that ahead three to five years with quad core general purpose processing, today’s console graphics capability, and even better wireless display technologies and it doesn’t seem, scenario speaking, that there won’t be a whole lot the user cannot do.

For “desktop” use, users will be connect to full size displays at high resolutions with full size keyboards, trackpads, and mice. Apple Siri, Microsoft Tellme and Google Voice Actions voice interfaces will be greatly enhanced in future iterations and can serve as the secondary input. Scenario-speaking, laptops could be wireless “shells” and leverage the processing power, graphics, memory, storage and wireless plans. The shells would cost a lot less than a full fledged laptop and have the convenience in that the content, apps, wireless plan is in one place.

One potential modular wild-card are flexible displays. While these have been demonstrated at every CES for over a decade, they appear to be getting very close to reality. While details are hard to come by, Samsung indicated that they will be shipping flexible displays in 2012. This could mean in phones by 2012 or shipped to OEM customers in 2012 for shipment in 2013. HP has been very active as well with their flexible display technology in alliance with ASU, the US Army, Du Pont, and E-Ink. HP is positioning their technology not only great for phones and watches, but also for larger POS displays, interactive advertising, and even on the sides of buildings. As it relates to smartphone modularity, think about “unfolding” a 10″ display from your 3″ device. That changes everything.

Potential Winners and Losers in Scenario
There are obvious winners and losers in this scenario. The big winners will be those who can monetize the smartphone or thin client and the cloud. Losers will be those who are stuck in the old model of computing, scenario speaking. If you’re one of those companies, I’d be rethinking your strategy.

Protectionism Rarely Works Over Time
Any scenario where well established and large losers exist, there will be protectionism. Over time, protecting something with such consumer benefit and such upside for other companies very rarely works. This is especially true for this scenario given the high levels of consumerism. Today, consumers have access to great info from the web and it’s amplified in the social media echo chamber. It’s hard to snow over consumers in any high value scenario.

Scenario Conclusion
The “smartphone kills the PC” scenario isn’t novel or new, but it is certainly one of the most important one of this decade. And certainly one of the most controversial as well given the 500M unit stakes with the winners and losers. How many of those will really be modular smartphones and how many will be PCs as we now it today?

iOS Morphing Into a Desktop OS?

During the Apple WWDC, I was really struck at just how many features were added into iOS 5 and just how few new features had been added to Lion. Don’t get me wrong here, I like Lion a lot but after using many of the 250 new features, few altered how or what someone can do with a computer or already to with a tablet. The one exception was AirDrop, which makes peer-to-peer sharing easier. Also, many of the iOS features seemed like desktop features, and the new Lion features appeared to make it look more like iOS features. Let’s take a look.

New Desktop-Like Features in iOS 5

Tabbed Browsing: I remember some apologists explaining away the lack of tabbed browsing with the iPad 1. Now Safari has tabs…. on its 9.7″ display.
Basic Photo Editing: No longer an add-on app like my favorite, Photogene, photo enhancements are available right inside the Photos app. Users can use auto-enhance, remove red eye and even crop photos.
Reading List: Previously available on the Mac, the iOS Safari browser has the Reading list, a place to save articles you wish to read later.
Mail Features: Now users can edit email text, add or delete email folders, and even search all the email text, not just the subject line for topics. All of this in the new Mail.
Calendar Features: Like on Lion, users can drag time bars to set meeting time, can view attachments inside the calendar app and even share calendars.
Mirroring: Via a cable to wirelessly through an Apple TV 2, see on a monitor or TV exactly what is on the iPad 2 or iPhone 4s.
Improved Task Switching: With new “multitasking” gestures, users no longer need to click the home button to return to the home screen or switch between apps. They use a four-finger left-to-right gesture to switch tasks and what I call the “claw” to go to the home screen.

New iOS-Like Features in Lion

New Gestures: Every iOS user is familiar with finger scrolling, tap to zoom, pinch to zoom and swipe to navigate. Now this is available on a Lion Mac.

Full Screen Apps: By design, every iOS is full screen. Now Lion has this capability.
App Store: Required since the first iPhone, now ships with Lion.
Launchpad: This is Lion’s fancy name for iOSs Home Screen. A bunch of app icons.
Mail Improvements: Yes, even desktop Mail is getting more like iOS. In this case, adding full height message panes.

So What? Why Should we Care?

So what does this mean, if anything? It is too early to tell, but it could signal a few alternative scenarios:

Unity of UI? By uniting many of the UI elements across phone, tablet and computer, quite possibly it could make switching between iPhone, iPad and Mac easier. Also, as advanced HCI techniques like voice and air gesture emerge, do input techniques get even closer? Can one metaphor work across three different sized devices?
Easier Switch to Mac from Windows? The logic here says, even if you were brought up on a Windows PC, if you can use an iPhone or iPad, you can use a Mac.
Modularity? I’ve always believed that a modular approach could work well in certain regions and consumer segments, but only if the OS and apps morphed with it. For example, a tablet with a desktop metaphor makes no more sense that a desktop with a tablet metaphor. What if they could morph based on the state but keep some unifying elements? For instance, my tablet is a tablet when it’s not docked. When docked it acts more like you would expect with keyboard and mouse. They two experiences would be unified visually and with gestures so that they didn’t look like two different planets, but two different neighborhoods in the same city.
Desktop OS Dead or Changing Dramatically? What is a desktop OS now? If a desktop OS is a slow-booting, energy-consuming, keyboard-mouse only, complex system, then Microsoft is killing it with Windows 8 next year anyways, so no impact.
Simplicity Dead? If phone and tablet OSs are becoming more like desktop OSs, is that good for simplicity? Or are desktop operating systems getting more like phone and tablet operating systems? How do you mask the complexity and still be able to do a lot?

Where We Go From Here

We will all get a front row seat next year to see how users react to one interface on three platforms. Windows 8 will test this next year and Metro UI will be on phones, tablets and PCs. The only caveat here is the Windows 8 desktop app for traditional desktop which will server as a release valve for angst and a bridge to the future. Whatever the future holds, it will be interesting.

“PC Free” in iOS 5 Doesn’t Mean “Free from PCs” (or Macs)

There’s a new feature in iOS 5 that’s called “PC Free”. While the definition is very specific, it conjures up a lot of images I would guess, specifically getting rid of the PC and Mac. So exactly what parts of the PC and Mac is it removing?

“PC Free” is about removing the PC for a few tasks that are frankly awful parts of the iOS experience and primarily administrative. Here is how it’s described on the iOS 5 landing page:

“Independence for all iOS devices. With iOS 5, you no longer need a computer to own an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Activate and set up your device wirelessly, right out of the box. Download free iOS software updates directly on your device. Do more with your apps — like editing your photos or adding new email folders — on your device, without the need for a Mac or PC. And back up and restore your device automatically using iCloud”.

It sounds promising, the promise of getting rid of that nasty horrible PC or Mac. :-). Can you really dump your Mac or Windows PC?

I asked a few people in my family and at work what they liked doing on their PC and didn’t do on their tablet. Here’s why they said they couldn’t ditch their PC or Mac to (UPDATED):

Text chat with someone on Google Chat at the same time as you are looking at FaceBook.
Quickly create a somewhat complex spreadsheet or presentation. You really need a mouse to do this productively and iOS doesn’t support mice with Keynote or Numbers.
Download a file from multiple web sites in the background as you do something in the foreground. There are a few exceptions with some apps, but certainly cannot be done in the iOS browser.
Compress a big file and email it. Zipping or Rarring a file, attaching it, then emailing it.
Watch 1080p video. iPad has “768P” display for lack of a better term. Yes, a user can watch 1080P on the iPad 2 on an extra display like an HDTV.
Importing HD video into the iPad that wasn’t taken on an iPhone or another iPad. I am not aware of HD source video that’s shot to iOS specs. I’ve had to reconvert gobs of videos on my PC to play on the iPhone or iPad.
Storing all your pictures. I am talking the multiple gigabytes of years and years of pictures. Alternatively you can rent iCloud space.
Store your entire music collection beyond iPads storage.
Store lots of personal videos.
“Perfect” personal video you’ve downloaded or shot with a camcorder that’s shaky, dark, etc. Things that software like VReveal can do.
Face tagging. You’ll need iPhoto, Picasa, or Windows Live Photo Gallery for this.
Display different content on one display and different display on another. There are a few exceptions, very few.
Any web site that uses Flash for navigation, like my local Mexican restaurant.
Print. I know, iOS says it can print. Have you gotten it to reliably print? I didn’t think so. You think people don’t need printers anymore? Tell my teenagers science and English teacher that.

OK, so you get the point here. PC Free means you don’t need a PC to do some very basic and fundamental things. If you do need to do something the very basics, you will still need a PC or Mac.

iCloud is Awesome Yet Incomplete

After release to developers at Apple’s WWDC, the Apple iCloud is available to all consumers today with access to iOS 5 and updated iTunes. In many ways, it is incredible that millions will have access to the consumer power of the cloud. It’s very integrated into the experience, but then again, it’s not as complete or comprehensive when compared to the best-in-breed cloud apps and services available today. Will that make a difference in consumer acceptance? Let’s see.

What Makes a Great Cloud Experience?

A few applications define by example what a great cloud app or service can provide. To a consumer, this will change over time and will also be dependent of their comfort and knowledge. Some sites that are ahead of the cloud service game are Evernote, Amazon Kindle, and Netflix. What makes these great examples of consumer cloud offer? While very different in terms of usage, they share similar variables that in aggregate make them awesome:

Cross Platform: Windows, OSX, iOS, Android and the web. Kindle and Netlix are even available on special-purpose devices like the Kindle and Roku. Consumers can buy into the service and not worry about the platform going away.
Continuous Computing: Continuous computing means a few different things. On content consumption, the next device picks up exactly where the last device left off. On Netflix, if I am halfway through a movie on my iPad I can pickup at the same spot on my Roku. When I pick up another Kindle device, it asks me whether I want to go to the latest bookmark.
Sync: While a step back from continuous computing, it does assure that the same files are on the same system. On Evernote, every change I make is in synch when I open up the next device.
Continuous Improvement: Monthly and even weekly updates to add features and functionality.
Compatible and Data Integrity: Even with all these updates, the data keeps its integrity. If the service has a question about which version is the master, it asks me. Evernote will tell me that I have a duplicate entry and lets me pick the version or content I want.

iCloud: Cross Platform

As we all know, Apple by design works in its own “walled garden” but that doesn’t mean its completely closed off. You cannot get iCloud-enabled apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote or iBooks for Windows or Android. Even worse, you cannot get to your photos and PhotoStream on any mobile device other than iOS. To be fair, users can get access to Photo Stream on a Windows PC , but users should at least be allowed access to their own photos over the web if they want. Users can access iWork compatible documents on all “modern” browsers by going to iCloud.com and downloading files. Windows users then need to drag and drop the updated file inside the web-based iCloud.com to update the file. – Grade D

iCloud: Sync

iCloud will automatically “sync” photos (Photo Stream), purchased music and TV shows (iTunes), apps, letters (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers), and presentations (Keynote), Reading Lists and Bookmarks (Safari), reminders (Reminders), calendar (Calendar), email (Mail), notes (Notes), and contacts (Contacts).

There are some major exceptions. iWork documents will not auto sync with the Windows “Documents” folder, as I think users would expect. Sugarsync and Drobbox will automatically sync documents with Windows and any other file type with Windows. Also, personal videos and commercial movies do not sync on any iCloud platform which I don’t fully understand. Maybe its a concern with storage on iOS devices or storage and throughput in the iCloud. – Grade B

iCloud: Continuous Computing

Within iOS phones and tablets, users can start right where they left off for TV shows (Videos) , games (Games Center) and book bookmarks (iBooks). These are real awesome capabilities especially for those where it’s hard to know where you left off.

iCloud will not save the “state” for playing music (Music), playing movies (Videos), or web pages (Safari). Add the PC and Mac into the continuous computing arena and iCloud experience starts to degrade for most all use cases for a variety of reasons. iOS games don’t run or sync on a Mac or PC and on Windows platforms iWork isn’t available. Consumers over time will expect continuous computing on every usage model on every platform, the way Evernote does it today. – Grade C

iCloud: Continuous Improvement

I cannot definitively answer this question as it will emerge over time, but I must extrapolate from what I have seen from previous drops of Apple software. Apple software app drops, with iOS in particular, have been consistent, very often, and very solid code. – Grade A

iCloud: Compatible and Data Integrity

So far so good, even on difficult to manage applications like word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. I make a one line change to a document without going back to “Documents” inside iOS and web Pages, the one line changed on every other system. – Grade A

What, not Straight A’s and Does it Matter?

Apple has never needed to achieve a 4.0 in everything to be successful. Getting all A’s in the core segment of users and building useful solutions that just work has been the Apple hallmark. The first iPhone proved this and the iPhone 4s will prove this again as everyone else offers 4G but Apple doesn’t have to. A good fallback to Continuous Computing in good Sync, and I believe that as long as Apple still allows other services with better cloud capabilities into their walled garden, it won’t be an issue now. Over time, I believe Apple will fill in the gaps in iCloud and that have fully thought through where they could add the most value and that’s what they hit first. Your move, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

10 Days, 10 Questions About Windows 8

Last week, I wrote about the many positive experience aspects of the Windows 8 developer tablet. There are, however, experience areas that are difficult to evaluate, either because Windows 8 is only a developer version and not final product, or it would take longer than 10 days to gain that insight.

Two User Interfaces

I found it a challenge to bounce between the Metro and Desktop interfaces. This was true for me whether I was using it as a tablet or docked with a large display, mouse and keyboard. Metro is designed for touch and Desktop is optimized for mouse and keyboard. Even on the 11.6” display, I still managed to botch pull down menus and fine pointing mouse controls.

Another challenge to the two user interfaces was duplication of certain tasks. For example, there are two ways to join a network, Metro and Desktop-style. There are two ways to change volume, change tasks, change controls, etc.

This could very well take some training and everything will be fine, as it was for me when Windows first launched and I was bouncing between DOS and Windows.

Metro UI and “Deep” Applications

Metro is about beauty, space, and the content. Desktop is all about 100 functions on one screen and quickly bouncing between multiple apps. But what about apps like Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and video editors? I cannot yet imagine how this works Metro-fied on a 22” display, but also understand that in the grand scheme of the global population, it’s the exception, not the norm. But what happens to the exceptions? I am leaving that door open for now.

Web Plug-Ins and Metro

Internet Explorer 10 will not work with plug-ins like Adobe Flash. I understand the experiential, security and performance issues with plug-ins, but I also respect that end users expect their systems to work with every site they deem important. I fully expect major web sites to transition to elements like HTML 5 video, but many in the “long-tail” will not. For example, my local Mexican restaurant uses Flash in the UI and I had to use Desktop IE 10 for this to work. I can do this, but then again I have been in high-tech for over 20 years with 1,000s of hours clawing through hardware and software. What about those who don’t have the experience or the desire? I haven’t heard too many people complaining about the iPad browsers inability to do these things, so I am open on this one.

Touch on Desktop Apps

Applications like Microsoft Office 2010 are optimized to work great with keyboard and mouse, maybe even pen, but not a finger. Fact is, I can’t work without Office as it’s the AMD corporate standard. On the beautiful 11.6” Samsung display, I could easily navigate the larger ribbon icons (i.e., “Paste”), had a difficult time with the smaller icons (i.e., “Format Painter”), and found it extremely difficult to work with text navigation (i.e., “File”- “Open”).

This seems like it could be changed to make Desktop apps friendlier without having to crack the code; but then again, I’m not a software developer.

Various other Questions

Footprint: How much hard drive space will the OS and baseline apps occupy? This will be especially important for tablets, where extra storage space comes at a premium.
Metro Apps: Obviously at this stage, only the intern-written Metro apps are available. I’m really interested to get my hands on many more Metro apps, particularly those with depth.
CPU/GPU and Experience: The developer tablet included a very expensive x86 processor. Will the experience be the same on an ARM-based tablet whose processors power smartphones and tablets?
Windows Store: Microsoft was transparent on their plans but I need to use it before I can intelligently discuss it.
OS Updates: With Windows 7, it feels like I am receiving weekly updates that are quite large, take a while to install, and sometimes require a reboot. That won’t fly on a tablet that’s targeted for convenience. I don’t need to do that often on my iPad, Xoom, Transformer, Galaxy Tab or PlayBook. When it does, it’s usually some new cool feature, not a “fix”.
Smaller than 11.6″: My developer tablet was on an 11.6″ tablet. Will it feel different on a smaller tablet like 10″? Desktop was manageable on 11.6″ at 1366×768 but I believe could be very different on a 10″.

Conclusion

There are very many positive aspects of the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Given the state of Windows 8 Developer Preview, many elements of the experience are unknown as I lay out above. As we get closer to launch, these important pieces of the experience puzzle will be filled in and we will be able to better evaluate the future experience. I have used almost every beta version of Windows since Windows was born and this version is the farthest ahead of anything I have seen. The biggest difference now, is that there are alternatives already in-market for the very products that Windows 8 hopes to replace, and they will also be improving up until launch.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

10 Days with Windows 8 Developer Tablet- the “Plusses”

It has been ten days since I attended Microsoft’s BUILD developer forum where I listened to many of the public details on Windows 8. The most valuable time I spent was that with customers, developers, press and analysts to share thoughts about what we all just heard about Window’s future. I also picked up a Samsung tablet with Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview on it. I have found that after actually using a product, I can learn 10x more than from any slide deck. I’d like to share my first impressions after using Windows 8 Developer Preview for 10 days, and I will start with the positive aspects. In my next blog, I will discuss the less appealing aspects or areas where it’s just too early to call.

State of Windows 8

Windows 8 is currently in the stage called “developer preview”. How does this relate to alpha or beta stage? Consider it pre-beta, in that it is almost feature-complete. So my thoughts will be in the context that this is a developer preview, not beta, and certainly not a shipping product.

Start Time

Starting the Windows 8 tablet was nothing short of amazing. Press the power button, and in 3-5 seconds you are at the start menu. Nothing short of incredible and I hope this will be consistent between platforms and when lots of software is installed. I remember Windows Vista seeming good at beta stage, but then I started installing programs…

Metro Touch UI for Tablets is “Thumbtastic”

I was stunned at how well Metro works and how good it looks on the developer tablet. It is fast and fluid, minimal, graphical and optimized for a user holding the tablet with two hands in 16×9 landscape orientation.

In fact, most of the important things I wanted to do I could accomplish with my two thumbs.

Multitask by scrolling through open programs
Go “home” or to the Start screen
Initiate a search
Share content to a service or to another device
Change key settings connecting to a network, volume, brightness, notifications, and power

No other tablet I have used comes close to that at 10” and above. Android Honeycomb forces me to reach in to the center to change programs and the thumb action is too far down the tablet in the lower right and left corners. Thumb actions need to be where the thumbs naturally rest.

Live Tiles to Launch Apps and Provide Info

Instead of icons and widgets, Metro uses live tiles. This combines simple navigation with instant access to relevant information. I have always loved Android’s widgets and screens. The issue with Android widgets is complexity and uniformity. Windows 8 goes a step further to provide uniform sizes and a simple update methodology.

Dock as PC

I am an unrepentant fan of “smart” modularity, or making a device serve completely different functions when connected to another device. This must be done intelligently; otherwise users just won’t do it because it’s either not obvious, or too difficult.

I was very impressed with my tablet’s ability to dock with off the shelf peripherals. Samsung’s tablet dock had ports for USB, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, and audio. When I returned from meetings, I connected the tablet to a 22” display, a full size keyboard and mouse. In desktop mode, it was like I was at a desktop PC, where I could do heavy-duty work and content creation. When I was done or if I went to meetings or home, I would undock and it was good on the couch.

“Play To” Amped Up

Anyone with a Windows 7 PC can currently play content to another Windows 7 PC. This is via a feature called “Play To”. Also they can play content to a DMA like WD TV Live Hub and even an XBOX 360.

What’s different in Windows 8? First, it’s not buried five layers deep. It’s one thumb swipe away. Secondly, it supports content from the Internet Explorer 10 browser. For instance, even though it’s a preview version, I streamed HTML 5 YouTube videos from my tablet to my HDTV via my WD TV Live Hub.

Finally, at BUILD, Microsoft outlined a new program to certify that the experience would be really good for “certified” Play To devices. For Windows 7, peripherals weren’t certified for experience, but were tested for compatibility. This meant that it would work, but may not work well. With Windows 8, I am hopeful we will see many Play To devices that are certified for compatibility and experience.

Runs Windows 7 Apps

I ran every app I use on my Windows 7 machine in “desktop mode” without any compatibility issues. I used apps like MS Office 2010, Adobe Reader X, Evernote, SugarSync, XMarks for IE, Google Chrome browser, Amazon Kindle for Windows, Hulu Desktop, and Tweetdeck.

Full Screen Internet Explorer 10 Browser

Admittedly, I have been skeptical on full screen browsing. I’ve tried to like it since full screen browsing options started, but it always felt out of place and awkward because no other apps were full screen. Also, without “chrome” or borders, it was difficult to change programs. Windows 8 and Metro changed all of this.

Compatibility was good, too, as long as I didn’t go to sites where plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight were required. I didn’t encounter many compatibility issues at all, surprising given how early this version is. Heck, even LogMeIn worked.

Conclusion

While it’s only been 10 days, it’s easy to get the feel of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Developer Preview operating system. This is particularly true after using so many different tablets over the last few years. There’s a lot to like about Windows 8 so far, particularly the Metro UI on a tablet and its chameleon-like capabilities to transform into a PC. As in life, there are always down sides to decisions or it’s just too early to tell how something will end. That’s the case for Windows 8, and I’ll be exploring this in my next analysis.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

Metro Could Drive Voice and Air Gesture UI

Last week, I attended Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Anaheim, where, among other things, Windows 8 details were rolled out to the Microsoft ecosystem. One of the most talked-about items was the Metro User Interface (UI), the end user face for the future of Windows. The last few days, I have been thinking about the implications of Metro on user interfaces beyond the obvious physical touch and gestures. I believe Metro UI has as much to do with voice control and air gestures as it does with physical touch.

Voice Control

Voice command and control has been a part of Windows for many generations. So why do I think Metro has anything to do with enabling widespread voice use in the future, and why do I think people would actually use this version? It’s actually quite simple. First, only a few voice command and control implementations and usage scenarios have been successful, and they all adopt a similar methodology and all come from the same company. Microsoft Auto voice solutions have found their way into Ford and Lincoln automobiles, branded SYNC, and drivers actually are using it. Fiat uses MS Auto technology as well. Microsoft Kinect implements a very accurate implementation for the living room using some amazing audio beamforming algorithms and a hardware four microphone array.

None of these implementations would be successful without establishing an in-context and limited dictionary. Let’s use Kinect as an example. Kinect allows you to “say what you see” on the TV screen, limiting the dictionary of words required to recognize. That is key. Pattern matching is a lot easier when you are matching 100s of objects versus 100K. Windows 8 Metro UI limits what users see on the screen, compared with previous versions of Windows, making that voice pattern matching all the easier. One final, interesting clue comes with the developer tablets distributed at BUILD. The tablets had dual microphones, which greatly assists with audio beam forming.

Air Gestures

Air gestures are essentially what Kinect users do with their hands and arms instead of using the XBOX controller. When players want to click on a “tile” in the XBOX environment, they place your hand in the air, hover over the tile for a few seconds, and it selects it. Kinect uses a camera array and an IR sensor to detect what your “limbs” are doing and associates it with a tile location on the screen. Note that no more than 8 tiles are shown on the screen at one time, increasing user accuracy.

Hypothetically, air gestures on Metro could take a few forms, and they could be guided by form factor. In “stand-up” environments with large displays, they would take a similar approach as Kinect does. In the future, displays will be everywhere in the house and air gestures would be used when touching the display just isn’t convenient or desired. I would like this functionality today in my kitchen as I am cooking. I have food all over my hands and I want to turn the cookbook page or even start up Pandora. I can’t touch the display, so I’d much rather do a very accurate air gesture.

In desk environments, I’d like to ditch the trackpad and mouse and just use my physical hand as a gesture methodology. It’s a virtual trackpad or gesture mouse. I use all the standard Metro gestures on a flat surface, a camera tracks exactly what my hand is doing and translates that into a physical touch gesture.

Conclusion

Microsoft introduced Metro as the next generation user interface primarily for physical touch gestures and secondarily for keyboard and mouse. Metro changes the interface from a navigation-centric environment with hundreds of elements on the screen to content-first with a very clean interface. Large tiles replace multitudes of icons and applets and the amount of words, or dictionary is drastically reduced. Sure this is great for physical touch, but also significantly improves the capability to enhance voice control and even air gestures. Microsoft is a leader in voice and air gesture with MS Auto and Kinect, and certainly could enable this in Windows 8 for the right user environments.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

Will an HP PC Spinoff Make a Stronger Competitor?

I have been having conversations with key executives around the industry about HP’s decision to explore spinning off their Personal Systems Group, which is the group that makes their business and consumer PC’s. An interesting question that has come up is whether or not spinning off PSG will make for a stronger or weaker competitor in the PC industry?

The logic goes that PSG was so tied up in big company atmosphere, who as of late was prioritizing software and services over hardware. Knowing how large companies often move slow and conservatively I can see how this could be an issue for a group who wants to act more like a startup.

So the real question is if HP does decide to go ahead and spin off PSG, will this move put them in a better position to compete?

I certainly can see and sense the desire from my PSG colleagues to move and innovate faster. The PC marketplace is changing rapidly and competition is getting fierce. But PC’s are not going away and can still be a legitimate business if managed well and they innovate in a more timely manner. So it makes a fair bit of sense to build a case that if spun out they could innovate, create and compete in a fast moving market.

It is also very difficult in today’s changing technology landscape to run a business with a successful enterprise and consumer division. Both require very different mindsets, strategies and leadership.

The fact of the matter however is that whether or not an HP spinoff can make for a stronger competitor in the industry will depend on the leadership and the talent that goes with it or is acquired as a new organization.

If the spinoff is approved by the board and moved forward with, this new entity would start its life as a Fortune 60 company with over $40 billion in annual revenue and it would be the #1 PC manufacturer (if you dont’ cound tablets).

That is not a bad way to start off. However the real test of the leadership will be not just to maintain but to grow their percentage of market share in all the areas they choose to compete.

Although execution will be critical and will be what others affirm as the challenge, what may be even more important is the right vision.

HP’s slogan has been the “PC is personal again.” However the real challenge of the companies who aren’t Apple is to make the “PC interesting again.”

Intel is hoping they can assist makers like Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung and others with their UltraBook initiative. Will UltraBooks Make PCs Interesting Again?

If HP does decide to spin off PSG what we will look for is their vision. What categories will this new entity focus on? Where do they believe the growth areas are? How will they compete, differentiate and add value?

Those questions and more will be what we look for as analysts in order to come to an opinion on how successful and competitive this new business will be in the marketplace.

H-P’s Apotheker: We Want to Split H-P Into Two Companies

H-P CEO Leo Apotheker has a very different set of talking points this week than he did last week in a hastily called teleconference after a trading halt which announced the halt to WebOS investments and the spinoff of the $38 billion Personal Systems Division (PSD). Analysts and Wall Street immediately started picking likely buyers of H-P’s PC product line.

But Monday’s interview with the Wall Street Journal tells a different story with a decidedly different outcome for shareholders. Quoting Apotheker:

What we’re really doing is creating two companies: One focused on the enterprise, and one which will be a highly-effective, end-user device business. It will be much more than PCs.

These businesses are ticking at different speeds, need to have different structures, and make different investment decisions. The device business [is] a fast moving consumer business. If you want to compete in this business you have to be much faster than a conglomerate can move in most circumstances.

The other side of H-P, the enterprise side, that’s where we acquired Autonomy. We have some great ideas for how we can scale that business.

Our default option is to see if we can spin this business off to our shareholders. That’s not the only option that we’re looking at. The board and management have been working on this for quite some time. If we really want to take the necessary steps, you have to involve a lot of people and once you inform a lot of people you need to inform the market.

We said it would take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete the spin, and it’s obvious that the decision will happen much sooner. The board will want to make the best decision for shareholders and our current hypothesis is that is by spinning the business to shareholders.

This different story — or Friday’s story told better — is a lot less suicidal than throwing PSD off the bus to the highest rapacious bidder. Motorola did this last year, spinning the personal devices company off from radios and public sector. So there certainly is precedent.

But what do we make of “one which will be a highly-effective, end-user device business. It will be much more than PCs?” My reading is everything consumer including phones, PCs, and printers. If Leo really wants to focus on medium and large enterprises, he’ll throw in transactional servers, storage, and maybe even the entire small-medium business (SMB) organization.

If the spinoff to shareholders looks like my sketch above, it’s not a bad strategy. Makes H-P kinda look like Samsung, which makes smartphones and oil tankers through highly decentralized business units.

Here are the concerns H-P shareholders face in considering a deal, once announced:

It’s all about execution. Slamming together PCs and printers does not ensure success. And even enterprise company sales reps sell PCs, or used to. The devil is in the details.
The independent, entrepreneurial culture does not exist at H-P. Where does the PC Newco innovation DNA come from?
By over-spending in a $10 billion bid for Autonomy, H-P has only $3 billion in cash. Where does PC Newco get the billions it will need for R&D and cash flow? Underfunded, the effort will quickly disintegrate.
Did the premature and botched announcement of the spinoff last Friday freeze PSD staffers like deer in headlights? Will the human capital disappear before PC Newco really gets started? Didn’t $5 billion in Palm WebOS investment get vaporized?
Can any big PC company — with the glaring exception of Apple — do much better than 6% margins in a fast-churn product rat race?
How will consumers react to PC Newco branding (let alone products)? When IBM spun off PCs to Lenovo, the valued ThinkPad brand went to Lenovo. take away the H-P name and logo, and the products won’t sell as readily. And Pavilion as a brand does not come close to the value of ThinkPad.

We’ll leave how the rest of the PC ecosystem might react to the PC spinoff to another day.

via H-P CEO Apotheker Defends Strategy – WSJ.com.

BAPco SYSmark 2012: Dropping the Llano Shoe

No wonder AMD was upset enough over BAPco’s SYSmark 2012 benchmark to drop out of the non-profit benchmarking organization in June with much sturm und drang.

My testing of the AMD Fusion high-end “Llano” processor, the A8-3850 APU, shows an overall rating on SYSmark 2012 of 91. Except for the 3D component of the benchmark, the Intel “Sandy Bridge” Pentium 840 scores higher in individual components — and higher overall — with a score of 98, according to the official SYSmark 2012 web site.

The SYSmark 2012 reference platform scores 100. That puts the high-end Llano desktop performance at 90% of a 2010 Intel “Clarkdale” first-generation Core i3-540, a low-end mainstream processor.

Moreover, the Intel “Sandy Bridge” Core i3-2120 dual-core processor with integrated graphics costs within a dollar of the “Llano” A8-3850 but delivers a 36 point higher score – noticeably snappier performance, in my actual use experience (see chart below).

I also tested AMD’s Phenom II 1100T, a top-end AMD six-core processor with an ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics card, against an Intel “Sandy Bridge” second generation Core i5-2500 with integrated graphics. The Core i5-2500 is the superior processor on this benchmark; the much-maligned Intel internal graphics barely loses to the ATI 4920 external graphics card in the 3D component, while delivering a 44 point overall advantage. The results are shown below in Chart 1.

Chart 1: Selected BAPco SYSmark 2012 Scores

Processor	Overall	Office	Media	Analysis	3D	Web	Sys Mgt
Intel i5-2500	166	144	162	191	181	168	153
Intel i3-2120	127	123	125	146	125	121	122
AMD Phenom II 1100T	122	109	116	122	183	108	110
Intel Pentium 840	98	100	102	106	87	90	107
AMD A8-3850	91	91	84	96	121	73	88
Intel Pentium G620T	79	81	81	88	70	71	86

Source: Peter S. Kastner andBusiness Applications Performance Corporation

Is SYSmark 2012 Relevant?
SYSmark 2012 is relevant because it allows evaluators to test specific PC configurations against actual, commonly used business applications.

AMD says “AMD will only endorse benchmarks based on real-world computing models and software applications, and which provide useful and relevant information. AMD believes benchmarks should be constructed to provide unbiased results and be transparent to customers making decisions based on those results.” Let’s look at what SYSmark does and how it does it.

Serious readers will study the SYSmark 2012 Overview published at the BAPco web site. This benchmark version is built on 20 years of collaborative experience by BAPco in modeling business work loads into application scenarios and corresponding benchmarks through a 26-phase process that takes years to complete. The last version was SYSmark2007 under Windows Vista. SYSmark is real-world in that it incorporates widely used applications such as Office, AutoCAD, Acrobat, Flash, Photoshop and Internet Explorer under Windows 7 in component scenarios.

SYSmark is widely used around the globe in business and public tenders to select PCs without bias towards vendor and processor manufacturer. SYSmark is the only generally accepted benchmark for general business computers since it uses actual application code in the tests, not synthetic models.

The benchmark is intensive, reflecting workload snapshots of what power users actually do, rather than light-duty office workers. There are six scenario components to SYSmark 2012, each of which counts equally in the final rating:

Office Productivity: The Office Productivity scenario models productivity usage including word processing, spreadsheet data manipulation, email creation/management and web browsing.

Media Creation: The Media Creation scenario models using digital photos and digital video to create, preview, and render a video advertisement for a fictional business.

Web Development: The Web Development scenario models the creation of a website for a fictional company.

Data/Financial Analysis: The Data/Financial Analysis scenario creates financial models to review, evaluate and forecast business expenses. In addition, the performance and viability of financial investments is analyzed using past and projected performance data.

3D Modeling: The 3D Modeling scenario focuses on creating, rendering, and previewing 3D objects and/or environments suitable for use in still imagery. The creation of 3D architectural models/landscapes and rendering of 2D images and video of models are also included.

System Management: The System Management scenario models the creation of data backup sets and the compression, and decompression of various file types. Updates to installed software are also performed.

For each of the six components, BAPco develops a workflow scenario. Only then are applications chosen to do the work. BAPco licenses the actual application source code and assembles it into application fragments together with its workflow measurement framework. The data/financial analysis component, for example, runs a large Microsoft Excel spreadsheet model.

What I don’t like is the “2012” moniker. This SYSmark version is built on business application components as of 2010. By naming it SYSmark 2012, BAPco implies the benchmark is forward looking, when it actually looks back to 2010 application versions. The labeling should be 2010. In spite of the labeling, SYSmark 2012 is unique as a cross-platform benchmark for stressing business desktops using real-world applications in job-related scenarios.

Analysis and Conclusions
The SYSmark 2012 reference-point PC is a Core i3-540 and has a 100 point score. When I used this processor with Windows 7 last year as my “daily-driver PC” for a month, I was underwhelmed by its overall feel. Subjective comment, yes, but my point is that the reference machine is no speed demon.

The new AMD “Llano” A8-3850, a quad-core processor with integrated graphics, is adequate for light-weight office duties as measured by BAPco SYSmark 2012. The top-of-the-line AMD Phenom II 1100T with a discrete graphics card is better suited for mainstream task-specific business computing than the “Llano” processors.

Intel’s low-end dual-core “Sandy Bridge” Pentium 620 and 840 bracket the “Llano” A8-3850 in processor performance, while lagging in graphics-intensive 3D benchmark components.

Intel’s entry-level Core i3-2120 with integrated graphics handily beats the top-of-the-line Phenom II 1100T with a discrete graphics card in all but graphics-intensive 3D benchmarks, making it an attractive price-performer. The high-end Core i5-2500 tops the top-of-the line Phenom II 1100T with a 44 point overall advantage, despite using integrated graphics.

SYSmark’s results do not plow new performance ground. An Internet search will quickly turn up numerous reviews that conclude, using a different set of benchmarks, that the “Llano” line is weak as a processing engine and pretty good at graphics, especially 3D consumer games. Yet consumer games are not typically not high on the business PC evaluation checklist.

Many of the SYSmark 2012 applications use graphics-processor acceleration, when available, including Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Premier Pro CS5, Autodesk 3ds Max and AutoCAD, and Microsoft Excel. SYSmark 2012 convinces me that today’s integrated graphics are plenty good enough for business PCs shy of dedicated workstations. But a strong processor is still necessary for good overall performance.

Business desktops ought to be replaced every three to four years. However, the reality is many businesses keep desktops for five or more years, and many have instituted a “replace it when it breaks” cycle. Productivity studies show that knowledge workers deserve the higher end of today’s performance curve in a new PC so as not to be completely obsolete — and less productive — before the machine is replaced.

No single benchmark should be the sole criteria for selecting a computer, and SYSmark 2012 is no exception. However, I disagree with AMD that SYSmark is no longer worthy of consideration, and by other analysts that SYSmark is dead because AMD walked away from BAPco.

The bottom line for PC evaluators is simple: if you believe that the extensive work by the BAPco consortium across two decades stands up to scientific and peer scrutiny, then the SYSmark results discussed above show AMD at a serious performance disadvantage. If you don’t think SYSmark is a relevant benchmark for business PCs, then neither AMD nor I have a viable substitute.

The next shoe to drop is AMD’s high-end “Bulldozer” processor, expected in the next 60 days.

Windows Laptop Makers Can’t Catch Up to the MacBook Air

VIA PC World -By James Cross

A highly recommended read. I completely agree that matching the cost and quality of the Air is going to be the biggest challenge of UltraBook makers.

Mac OS X Lion and the Future of Computing

By now, you’ve probably all heard or read about Apple’s new desktop operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, or just “Lion” for short. While I believe it is a really good operating system today, what I am most interested in is what it means for tomorrow. I’d like to share with you my thoughts on what I believe OSX Lion tells us about our computing future.

Device Modularity

Device modularity is essentially when one device, when docked or connected to another one, becomes something even better or more functional. It’s a world where a phone becomes a tablet; a tablet becomes a notebook and even a phone or tablet becomes a desktop. I’ve touched upon modularity with a few previous blogs covering the Motorola Atrix Lapdock and Multimedia Dock, the BlackBerry PlayBook and even the Motorola Xoom.

One of the inhibitors to good modularity is modality in UI. Or in other words, the smartphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop act like you would expect in the context you want. When you plug the phone into the dock to make it a laptop, it acts like a laptop, not a phone.

Lion has unified many of the UI elements and HCI (Human Computer Interface) between the iPhone, iPad, MacBook and the iMac:

· Gestures: Lion unifies gestures, or begins to, between the four platforms. Familiar gestures from iOS like pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and swipe to navigate are just a few of the multi-platform gestures that are shared between phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.

· Launchpad: Does this look familiar? This isn’t an iPad or iPhone; it’s Launchpad in Lion on a Mac Air laptop. Launchpad is a place for apps and folders of apps just like you see on the iPhone and iPad.

· Full screen apps: This isn’t exactly revolutionary if you’ve used Windows 7, but full screen apps does just that; allows apps to be maximized to the whole screen, just like iOS apps look with no windows. Then, a user can even “three finger swipe” between apps, similar to iOS 5.

So by unifying user interface and basic HCI, Lion has removed a major hurdle for the future, modular designs.

Air Gestures

We’ve all seen Microsoft Kinect in action in the living room and some of us have even seen “home-brew” tests using the Kinect SDK for the PC. Imagine more advanced, future computer “vision” on a much closer scale, or “near-field” basis, removing some of the actual physical peripherals. This could use very common and inexpensive cameras, possibly stereoscopic, with interconnects like CSI-3 and a heavy compute engine building a 3D model of the hand.

· “Magic Hand”: Consider removing the mouse and trackpad and replacing with a camera to use your own hand to do the gestures. Maybe even remove the keyboard and replace it with a projected virtual keyboard. The camera, like Kinect, tracks exactly what your hand is doing.

· Consistent Gestures: As described above, by having consistent gestures between all devices, the computer would be very focused on a specific set of near-field air gestures, not different ones by platform, increasing the chance of success.

With Lion unifying gestures today tied with future improvements with compute power and lower power with architectures like Fusion System Architecture, higher speed camera interconnects like CSI-3, a future without the physical mouse and trackpad becomes a distinct reality. Removing the physical keyboard is more of a stretch, but with pico projection a robust investment area, who knows? Also, with the success of keyboards on iOS and Android tablets, users are becoming conditioned to be satisfied with virtual, non-haptic keyboards.

Peer-to-Peer Communication

Peer-to-peer communications occur when one device directly interacts with another without the need for a LAN or WAN. The trend with services and the internet has led to the belief that peer-to-peer was dead. Not so with Lion, as it actually dialed it up a notch.

· Airdrop: Airdrop enables two Lion-based Macs to safely send files directly between each other without the need for an intermediate LAN or WAN. It automatically creates an ad-hoc WiFi-WiFi connection.

I find this very interesting given Apple’s forecast of a “post-PC” world. With very innovative features like HP’s “touch-to-share” and enabling communications like WiFi Direct and BlueTooth 4/5, peer-to-peer comms could be making a comeback. I’d guess that we will be seeing even more of this in CE devices. Who would have thought in this “everything in the cloud” world? J

Conclusion

OSX Lion is a really good operating system for users today and also gives us some indications of interesting things to come in the computing future. I believe that Lion tells us a lot about the future of device modularity, our ability to ditch the mouse, trackpad, and maybe even the keyboard. Lion also guides to a world that increases the likelihood of even more devices talking directly to each other without the cloud middleman. It’s a future I can get excited about. How about you?

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

The Many Screens of Our Digital Lives

A few months back, my friend Harry MaCraken of Technoligizer wrote a piece entitled “Hey, they are all just screens.” in which he echoed something I have been writing about for the last five years in many of my PC Mag columns. It is a good read and I suggest you take alook at what Harry says here, but in essence, both of us are identifying a rather important trend that will drive the next generation of personal computing.

If you look closely at our smartphones, tablets, laptops and even Internet connected TV’s, they represent different screens that become gateways to local as well as cloud based apps, content and information. Below is a slide I use to actually explain this.( In it you see out on the periphery are a whole host of “screens” like the normal one’s we have today in our smartphones, Internet TV’s, tablets and PC’s as well as new ones that are emerging such as screens in our cars, refrigerators and even in our appliances.

All of these screens are just gateways to the next layer, which I list as apps and services. And sitting at the center is the cloud, which hosts these apps and services. From an industry standpoint this slide really represents the topology of the way we should view this trend. Each screen now has intelligence thanks to an OS, smart UI and connections to apps, services and eventually the cloud. But if you look long and hard at this diagram, you can easily see that we are in the early stages of understanding that these devices are just “screens” and that we are in dire need of creating next generation standards that let all of these screens work together and interact with each other seamlessly.

Today, each has their own OS and UI and in some cases proprietary architectures that helps them differentiate. While this heterogeneous approach is admirable, the reality is that we ultimately need to create a level of commonality across all devices in order for all of these screens to deliver on their stated promise of giving us the applications, content and services we want and need on demand.

While apps tied to individual operating systems work today, as bandwidth increases and devices become more powerful and battery efficiency goes up, the common denominator between all of these devices needs to be the Web browser and more specifically, these same apps delivered in Web App forms via HTML 5 and future versions of HTML standards that deliver cross device functionality.

This needs to be the goal of those working on devices, standards and cloud based services and infrastructure. If they can grasp this idea that all of these devices just represent screens that tap into these services and the cloud and that ultimately all of these screens need to work together and talk to each other seamlessly, the faster we will see the promise of the Internet and the cloud fulfilled.

Final Cut Pro X, Apple, and the Enterprise

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how Macs has become the overwhelming computer of choice for tech elites. No sooner had I done this than Apple offered glaring proof of its limitations as a provider of technology for professionals–or as a vendor to the enterprise.

Final Cut Pro X is the successor to Final Cut Pro, which has become the non-linear editing software of choice for professional videographers and filmmakers. (It also replaces Final Cut Express, a prosumer version.) The problem is that X is a completely new program, with new ways of doing things. It is incompatible with project files for older versions and lacks many features that pros have come to rely on.
Continue reading Final Cut Pro X, Apple, and the Enterprise

Macs and Windows: Why Tech Elites’ Choices Matter

Over the past couple of years, Windows laptops have been becoming rarer and rarer at events where tech reporters, bloggers, and analysts gather. Not so long ago, Windows PCs (including netbooks) outnumbered Macs at these affairs by two or three to one. Today, that ratio is at least reversed. The netbooks have all but disappeared and their place has been taken by tablets, nearly all of them iPads.

Apple has gained significant share in the laptop market, but not at anywhere near the rate of this shift. And this Mac dominance is a tech industry phenomenon. This week I was at a Ford Motor Co.-sponsored gathering of bloggers and magazine writers, most of who write about things other than tech. Windows PCs were dominant, though I did see plenty of iPads.

The overwhelming preference for Macs among tech elites has real consequences. There’s a reason why they are often called influencers: They have a lot of effect on other people’s choices. I try to be fair in everything I write, but it’s hard for me to work up much enthusiasm of anything Window-based these days. When asked for a recommendation, I always go with Apple unless there is something specific about the user’s requirements that argues for Windows. And that’s doubly true if I think I will end up supporting the purchase.

Why do tech elites prefer Macs? It’s certainly not because they love Apple, which regularly sets new standards for being hard to do business with. I think there are several reasons. One, oddly,has to do with price. The best argument against Macs is that you can buy a perfectly serviceable Windows notebook for around $500, while the entry price for a Mac is $1,000 or more. But the fact is that members of the tech elite tend to buy (or have employers who will buy) relatively high-end equipment. Spec-for-spec, Macs are not particularly more expensive than Windows systems, so the price differential is not an issue in this market.

Second, tech elites care, often passionately, about their technology and Apple equipment is a joy to use. And for people passionate about their technology, esthetics matter, and no one comes close to Apple. On the rare occasion when an HP or a Dell comes up with a really handsome product, it still must swim in a sea of cheap-looking junk.

Apple hasn’t made an ugly product since it retired the eMac. And the 13″ MacBook Air on which I am writing this is, for my purposes, the best laptop I have ever used–by far. The combination of light weight, terrific battery life, and snappy performance (for the sort of light-duty work I do on this system) cannot be matched by anything else on the market. (If it had a 15″ display without being any bigger or heavier, an obvious impossibility, it would be perfect.)

Then, of course, there’s the software. The yawning gap that had opened between Mac OS X and Windows during the Vista fiasco has narrowed considerably but in a home or small business environment, Mac software is much easier to set up and maintain. Take setting up a networked printer. In Windows, despite improvements in Windows 7, this remains a black art, largely because the paradigm is designed for enterprises and IT administrators. With OS X, you connect your printer to the local network and you Mac finds it, using Apple’s dead simple Bonjour protocol. IT departments may see job security in complexity, but for those of us for whom maintain our own or other peoples’ systems is a distraction, simple is a huge advantage.

Microsoft’s business model depends on keeping large enterprise customers happy. The big PC makers’ business model depends on selling huge volumes of low-margin product. That means that neither can compete with Apple among customers who demand the computing equivalent of a Lexus or a BMW and are willing to pay for it.

Is There A ChromeBook in Your Future?

The answer is probably not. However, if I were to ask you whether or not a browser based computer was in your future, the answer would be most likely.

I say this with confidence because it seems nearly inevitable that the client server paradigm of browser based computing will become a reality, at least to some degree. Therefore, whether the device looks like a notebook or desktop PC as we know it today, or comes in the shape of a tablet, hybrid, smartphone, smart screen, or something else, its going to be cloud connected and cloud dependent.

The degree said device depends on the cloud to function may vary by type of device, type of consumer, type of use case and more. Yet its clear the cloud will play a much more central role in the minute to minute functioning of personal electronics in the future.

Still, there are two things standing in the way of a fully functioning cloud computing reality, which are networks and software.

The Network Challenge

Even as 4G gets off the ground it’s still clear, we are no where near where we need to be for a pure cloud computing to truly hit the mainstream. Which means hardware will have to make certain trade-offs as manufacturers integrate more cloud computing capabilities. Offline caching being one of the primary trade-offs.

If we agree that 4G will be the first broadband technology to usher in cloud computing, then we still have a few years to wait. If you look back at the 3G adoption cycles it took just over 3.5 years for 3G to hit a critical mass of nationwide availability and device support.

Assuming 4G follows a similar path, as is likely, we are still a few years off from having total nationwide availability and device critical mass.

Software

If you don’t have software, you don’t have hardware. Without software all our devices are basically paperweights. However, what becomes interesting in this cloud computing paradigm is where the software originates. Today much of it originates natively, stored on our hardware. Our operating systems are “installed” and our applications are “installed.”

In a cloud computing paradigm where software sits in the cloud you will not install software you will access it through the Internet. It will already be there ready for you to use. The browser will be the mechanism that gives you access to the software of your choosing.

Accessing Internet based software solves quite a bit of software development issues. Developers won’t have to pick and choose which platforms they write software for because the Internet becomes the universal software development platform.

Therefore web standards like HTML and JavaScript become the software language of the future.

In this reality there is no such thing as apps that are available on one device or one platform that are not available on another.

In this reality every device that can connect to the Internet and has a CPU strong enough to process web standards, has access to the depth and breadth of Internet software.

Thus, again placing the importance back on the browser to be current and innovative. This leaves not only Google, but Apple, Microsoft and even Mozilla in strong positions if browser based computing becomes mainstream.

For software developers this is as exciting as it is important. For consumers and their hardware this is an equally exciting reality, we simply don’t know it yet.

2012: A Year of Innovation?

One of the things I look at in order to get an idea of what the next years worth of innovations will bring is the semiconductor industry. Given what I am seeing from the various ARM vendors like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Marvell and TI as well as from Intel and AMD, I am encouraged.

The primary industry that stands to gain from new semiconductor innovations is the mobile industry. Namely the hot category of tablets and smart phones. That is not to say that the PC will be left out, for example Intel brought attention to the concept of “Ultra-Books” at this years Computex.
Continue reading 2012: A Year of Innovation?