Silicon Valley Is For Winners Only

Though I live in the richest area of the country – and during the richest epoch in humanity – whenever I spot a Powerball billboard and the number is over $100 million, I nonetheless fantasize about winning the jackpot.

This sets my mind to wondering. Even in my daydreams, I’ll assume there may be other winners. I know that taxes will take a mighty toll. I suspect that taking a lump sum will also bring the total amount I receive to something more Earth-bound. Say, $50 million.

From there, I quickly start divvying up the pot.

$10 million to parents, siblings, and in-laws.

$20 million to my children – in a trust, obviously: say, $200,000 every year forever.

$10 million goes to charity. I am a good and magnanimous winner, after all.

That leaves $10 million for my wife and I. Which breaks down like this:

  • $4 million for 2 houses – one of which will be a lovely $3 million Victorian in San Francisco
  • The remaining $6 million is doled out in monthly increments of $10,000 – each – till we die.

Pretty damn good.

Silicon Valley is like that. This is the land of the Powerball – and we are all winners here.

Yes, as with the taxman, we must pay the tolls. Our commutes are the stuff of dark comedy. Home prices are so high as to be literally inexplicable to our parents. There is a rather shocking and joyfully overt intolerance for diversity of thought: we gloriously present to the world our progressive, hard-driving, world-changing values like as if it’s that baby cub in The Lion King, yet anyone even dare suggest that, just perhaps, Marissa Mayer should not  be on so many boards, or maybe, just maybe, Obamacare should be shuttered, and they are quickly cut off from the innermost of the in crowd.

A rather small price to pay, really.

After all, here we live better than, say, 99.3% of the entire planet. Ever. We are the ultimate winners of a culture that has done more to transform the world than any other over the past millennia. Ok, over the last 100 years. But, hell, it’s not even close: Silicon Valley >> California >> USA >> The West.

The rest of the world lags far, far behind.

This place did not happen by mistake. So why are so many in Silicon Valley not positively reveling in their success? We created – and sustain – something that the rest of the world has failed to achieve, repeatedly.

Our choices won. We have been proven right, over and over. Celebrate!

Have you  given one second’s thought lately as to how unbelievably thin the new iPod Touch is – that thing you recently bought for your youngest daughter? It’s actually better than that “illustrated primer” tablet contraption in the popular sci-fi novel, The Diamond Age. Oh, and there’s not only two of these in all the world, as there was in that fictional tale. No, at least hundreds of millions. Because they only cost $200.

Read nearly any book, watch nearly any show, listen to any song, visit any site, connect with the world, video chat, all on this amazing, affordable device that nearly anyone on the planet can have. Oh, and it’s super-small and light as a feather.

It is right that we have more, eat better, live longer, can travel farther. The reason we spend so much time focusing on ourselves, on our work, our region, is because we continue to do it right. Why be afraid to admit this?

Is the marked hesitance to utterly bask in our blessings some perverted penance? Some odd notion of guilt yet to be disrupted by our collective big brains?

We stand at the top of the mountain. Think big and enjoy the view!

Let the world see that we have done it right, done it better, and that they are doing it wrong. Yes, we work much longer hours. We abhor unions. We demand super-intelligence. We glorify technology. We bask in disruption as much as creation. We swim in real-time. Because it’s right. Don’t like it, you’re wrong. The results are proof positive.

For our views, our choices, we have risen to the top. Party like it’s 1999. The rest of the world will eventually come to their senses.

But, should you think your success is undeserved, that the sacrifices of your parents, the brains you were born with, the luck of the time and place of your birth, the serendipitous confluence of money, talent and microprocessors are all more responsible for your good fortune, such that the largesse you have is little different than winning the lottery, then you are probably in the wrong place.

You can’t disrupt if you believe yourself unworthy. A master of the universe may suffer the slings and arrows of self-doubt, but never doubt their superiority.

This is your home now – the home of Apple and Google,  Genentech and Twitter, Facebook and Paypal; the land of crowd funding, kick starting, globe-spanning, market destroying transformation. These are no accidents.

Embrace it. If you cannot, you should probably just leave. It will reduce the commutes for the rest of us.

Beating The Dead Horse That Is Microsoft Windows (Part 1)

Few people enjoy beating a dead horse more than I do, but man, beating up on Microsoft Windows is simply no fun anymore…because everybody’s doing it.

The defining company of the PC era — which for the purposes of this discussion we’ll consider the 25 years from 1981 to 2006 — has not articulated a unique and compelling vision for the future of computing since the iPhone rocked it to its core in 2007. ~ Tom Krazit, Gigaom

Yup, that about sums it up.

The first part of this two-part series will focus on what’s gone wrong with Microsoft Windows. Next week, I’ll conclude the series by focusing on why Microsoft is in this position and what, if anything, they can do to resuscitate the dead horse that is Windows.

Let Me Count The Ways

So, exactly how badly is Microsoft losing in the personal computing space? Let me count the ways:

1) PCs are in decline;
2) Mobile is ascendant;
3) Windows Phone 8 sales have been disappointing;
4) Windows RT sales have been disappointing;
5) Microsoft Surface sales have been disappointing;
6) Third-party Windows 8 tablet sales have been disappointing;
7) Ultrabook sales have been disappointing;
8) Windows 8 adoption has been disappointing;
9) Microsoft App Store growth has been disappointing;
10) Business and Enterprise is moving on without Microsoft’s products or services;
11) Microsoft has lost its monopoly and its monopoly powers; and
12) Microsoft is dependent upon legacy products – Windows and Office – for the bulk of its profits.

No reasonable person is arguing that Microsoft is going away. What rational people ARE contending is that Microsoft is becoming irrelevant in the front end – the consumer facing portion – of the personal computing space.

How did it come to this?

1) PCs Are In Decline

If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will. ~ Steve Jobs

Evidence of the PCs decline is indisputable and, frankly, no one is trying to dispute it.

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Dropoff in PC Sales Is Accelerating and Tablets Are the Culprit, Says IDC

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In mature markets, the PC is saturated. And that’s where tablets are secondary devices. Shim says in emerging markets tablets are going to be primary devices. If the tablet takes off there, that kills the traditional PC’s chances of ever growing again.

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…for the 4th quarter PC sales declined by almost 5% according to Gartner research, and by almost 6.5% according to IDC. Both groups no longer expect a rebound in PC shipments, as they believe homes will no longer have more than 1 PC due to mobile device penetration, a market where Surface and Win8 phones have failed to make a significant impact or move beyond a tiny market share.

In the model IDC used to forecast the 7.8% decline, the second quarter — which ended June 30 — was to be down 11.7%, a smaller drop than the first quarter’s historic 13.9% plunge. Shipments in the third and fourth quarters, meanwhile, would decline 4.7% and 1.6%, respectively, from the same periods in 2012.

2) Mobile is ascendant

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” ~ Alan Kay

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Half of U.S. adults now own a tablet or smartphone, Pew study finds

…mobile devices — in particular iOS and Android — will continue to cannibalize PC sales throughout the year. Put simply, consumers and enterprise buyers prefer to spend their money on post-PC devices rather than on PCs.

Next year, tablet sales will beat notebook sales for the first time ever, says NPD’s DisplaySearch. It is projecting tablet shipments of 240 million units versus notebook shipments of 203 million units. That’s 64 percent growth for tablet versus a 5 percent decline for notebooks.

IDC: Tablets to outsell notebooks in 2013, all PCs in 2015

The latest prediction from NPD DisplaySearch shows just how quickly the market has changed. It was six months ago, in July 2012, that the same organization predicted that it would take until 2016 for tablets to surpass notebook shipments.

3) Windows Phone 8 sales have been disappointing

I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products. ~ Steve Jobs

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Source: Ben Evans

iOS and Android comprised 92.3% of Q1 2013 smartphone shipments

According to Murtazin, Microsoft’s royalty fees from licensing the Windows Phone OS to manufacturers like Nokia, HTC (2498) and Samsung (005930) are being given back to these companies in the form of marketing dollars. In Nokia’s case, an arrangement similar to the one Murtazin describes is a matter of public record, as per the company’s 2011 annual report

Windows Phone gets no traction despite the Nokia deal and RIM’s collapse

Manufacturers reportedly ignoring Windows Phone due to OS fees… and Nokia

Rumor: Microsoft paying $100,000 to some Windows Phone app makers?

You won’t help shoots grow by pulling them up higher. ~ Chinese proverb

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4) Windows RT sales have been disappointing

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true. ~ Oscar Wilde

…Gottheil dubbed the RT tablets a “meta-tweener,” a “tweener between a tweener (Windows 8 x86) and a pure tablet like iPad,” he said. … “I don’t think Windows 8 RT can be successful unless and until its price is much lower.”

Microsoft slashes Surface RT prices by $150 as it flounders against Apple’s iPad

Lenovo released one of the few PCs that ran Microsoft’s ARM-based Windows RT operating system last fall with the 11 inch Yoga 11 notebook-tablet hybrid. Now it looks like Lenovo is phasing out its lone Windows RT product, as it no longer sells the Yoga 11 on its own website.

5) Microsoft Surface sales have been disappointing

To change and to improve are two different things. – German proverb

Microsoft’s Surface Experiment Has Fallen Flat

“Perfection is the goal we’re going for, and that perfection comes with trade-offs,” said Panos Panay, general manager of Surface.

The above statement is “perfectly” ridiculous.

Someone at Microsoft needs to invest in a dictionary.

6) Third-party Windows 8 tablet sales have been disappointing

Bad engineering is solving a problem that you didn’t have in a way that you don’t understand.

…(A)t a time when buyers seems price-sensitive, Wu finds the $500 to $1200 price tags slapped on Windows 8 hardware to be “uncompetitive” when compared to Android with prices as low as $99, and the iPad mini which starts at $329.

Windows 8 tablet sales have been almost non-existent, with unit sales representing less than 1% of all Windows 8 device sales to date, NPD said, excluding sales of the Windows Surface tablet.

Windows 8 device sales have not met Redmond’s internal projections, and the company is blaming it on lackluster hardware from OEMs.

7) Ultrabook sales have been disappointing

Imitation is a good servant, but a bad master.

In October, IHS iSuppli downgraded its estimate of 2012’s ultrabook sales, cutting its projections by more than half from 22 million to 10.3 million, citing too-high prices. iSuppli argued that sales won’t take off until prices fall toward the $600 bar, perhaps in 2013. … The problem for Microsoft is that the outlook for ultrabooks, which the Surface Pro emulates, is dim. Windows ultrabook sales have been disappointing this year, and show little sign of improving sans dramatic price cuts.

NPD: Apple’s MacBook Air dominates with 56% of U.S. thin-and-light notebook market

8) Windows 8 adoption has been disappointing

I heard that if you play a Windows 8 CD backwards, you’ll get a satanic message. But the most frightening thing is that if you play it forward, it installs Windows 8.

The Windows 8 Sales Data Is In, And It’s Bad News For Microsoft

Windows 8 continues to fail

Windows 8 Is Failing to Beat Windows 7… And XP… And Even Vista!

Worse still, Windows 8’s month-over-month growth rate is lagging further and further behind Vista’s dreadful 2007 adoption numbers. When comparing the operating systems when they were first launched, Windows 8’s adoption rate in its first month trailed Vista by just over half-a-percent among PC buyers. Now, in their 8th month out, Vista’s market-share numbers now lead Windows 8 by 3.64 percent. Needless to say, both lag far behind XP and Windows 7’s numbers at similar points in their product life-cycle.

How bad are Windows 8 sales? In April 2013’s Net Applications numbers, Windows 8 barely crept up to 3.82-percent. That still leaves Windows 8 behind Microsoft’s last operating system flop, Vista, after seven months in the market. Windows on tablets fared even worse with touch-screen-based Windows 8 devices and Windows RT devices coming in at 0.02-percent and 0.00-percent each. The last was not a typo. The Surface RT is now in the running for worst Microsoft launch ever.

StatCounter’s findings follow a similarly worrying report from NPD this week, which found that Windows 8 had captured just 58% of all Windows device sales since its launch, while Windows 7 captured 83% during the same period.

9) Microsoft App Store growth has been disappointing

“There comes a time in the affairs of man when he’s got to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” – W.C. Fields

App-Growth-by-Platform

In a classic chicken-and-the-egg conundrum, the Windows Store needs more Windows 8 customers and Windows 8 customers need more worthwhile apps from the store. Microsoft has failed miserably at attracting compelling content, a painful fact for any developer — or software company — thinking about committing the resources to bring a Metro app to market. How bad is it? … In short, it’s a wasteland.

Microsoft expected 100,000 Windows 8 apps in 90 days. It took 248

Sources: Microsoft Is Paying Developers Up To $100,000 To Write Windows Phone 8 Apps

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Windows 8 users are turning to apps, on average, 1.52 times a day. Breaking this down by type indicates that tablet users are the heaviest app users, launching them 2.71 times per day, while touch-screen notebook users launch 47 percent more apps than those on a standard notebook. … Desktop users make the least use of Modern apps. … Soluto crunched the data further, and took a closer look at those who launch fewer than one Modern app a day. Here, the company noticed that a staggering 60 percent of users launch an app less than once a day. Even when it comes to tablet users, the heaviest users of Windows 8 apps according to Soluto, 44 percent of those sometimes go a day without launching an app.

10) Business and Enterprise are moving on without Microsoft’s products or services

If you’re in a card game and you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re it. ~ Anonymous

Gartner: By 2014, Apple will be as accepted by enterprise IT as Microsoft is today

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Thanks To BYOD, Apple Invades The Enterprise

More Data Showing iOS, Especially The iPhone, Still Killing It In The Enterprise

Why companies are still deploying iOS apps first

Fortune 500 Companies Moving to iPad Hits 94%

Apple’s iOS still dominated the enterprise mobile circuit with 75 percent of total device activations last quarter.

11) Microsoft has lost its monopoly and its monopoly powers

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false. ~ Paul Valery

Forrester Report: Microsoft’s Windows Dominance Is Over

…and Windows is no longer the dominant end-user operating system when PCs, smartphones and tablets are considered.

In the greater end-user market, as Mary Meeker, the well-regarded analyst and venture capitalist, pointed out in her May 2013 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ 2013 Internet Trends report, Windows is on the decline no matter how you measure it. Apple iOS and Android now have the lion’s share of computing devices, including PCs, smartphones and tablets, with 65-percent share over Windows’ 35-percent.

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Source

Microsoft’s mobile operating system share is actually worse than it appears. None of its most recent smartphone/tablet operating systems, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 or RT. even breaks the 0.01-percent mark on NetMarketShare’s mobile/tablet operating system market share chart. How bad it is that? Android 1.6, with 0.01-percent, does make the chart.

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While Microsoft apologists focus on Windows continuing to be the dominant desktop operating system, they keep missing the two elephants in the room: Windows 8 continues to fall behind Microsoft’s previous top operating system failure, Vista, and Windows is no longer the dominant end-user operating system when PCs, smartphones and tablets are considered.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened. ~ Sir Winston Churchill

“We had a little bit different expectations for Windows 8 than previous OS launches,” Jeff Barney, VP and general manager of Toshiba America’s PC and TV business, said. “In the past Windows was the only game in town, when it was Windows 7 or Vista it was the big event of the year. These days it’s a different environment.”

The erstwhile truism You Won’t Get Fired For Buying From Microsoft has lost its luster.

In the consumer market, we expect to Apple to gain share as the younger generation has grown up on Apples at school. … Pretty soon it could be that the ‘rebels’ will be the Windows users rather than the Mac users.

12) Microsoft is dependent upon legacy products – Windows and Office – for the bulk of its profits

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. ~ Sam Walton

Microsoft makes more than 75% of its profits from Windows and Office. Less than 25% comes from its vaunted servers and tools. And Microsoft makes nothing from its xBox/Kinect entertainment division, while losing vast sums in its on-line division (negative $350M-$750M/quarter).

Microsoft uses a licensing model. A licensing model only takes a portion of the total profits from a sale. In a licensing model, volume matters.

If Microsoft can’t move its Windows and Office products and services onto mobile phones and tablets, well…

Next Week

The first part of this two-part series focused on what’s gone wrong with Microsoft Windows. Next week, I’ll conclude the series by focusing on why Microsoft is in this position and what, if anything, they can do to resuscitate the dead horse that is Windows.

To Touch or Not to Touch, That is the Question

This is an excerpt from an analysis on the strategic errors of Windows 8 and the philosophy behind the product that was written for our Tech.pinions Insiders Members. To learn more about Tech.pinions Insiders click here or to see all Insider topics and articles click here.

Adopting a New Posture

While I was at Microsoft’s build conference last week, I decided to make a point to keenly observe those attendees who have embraced touch on notebooks and watch how they use them. The plus to being at a Microsoft conference was that I saw more touch notebooks, and Surfaces for that matter, in one location than I have ever seen out in one place.

What I observed was interesting. Those who had adopted touch on their notebook would type with the device at arms length, but then move their body and face closer to the screen as they sought to use touch input. In essence to use touch they actually leaned in, performed the action and either stayed or leaned in to scroll a web site for example, and then leaned back to start typing again.

Interestingly, Surface owners had adopted an entire experience built around leaning in. I can only speculate that this is because the screen is so small that staying leaned in closer to the screen makes it easier to read the text, etc. Surface owners would even type with arms bent significantly more because of how close they were to the screen.

Alleged-Microsoft-Surface-Phone-Emerges-in-Official-Photos-2

My key takeaways from these observations were that to use a Windows 8 notebook, or an aspiring hybrid like Surface, adopting touch as a paradigm is one necessary component, but so is adopting new body language to operate it in a useful and efficient way.

So the question we need to ask ourselves is this: Is this better? Does touch bring so much to the notebook and desktop form factor that we should consider this new, somewhat un-natural required body posture worth the effort?

Let’s look at it this way. Is adding touch as a UI mechanism to something like a desktop or notebook a more efficient input mechanism? In notebook and some desktop form factors, I would argue that it is not.

I absolutely condone touch on smartphones and tablets. In these devices touch is natural, and the best and most efficient input mechanism for the use cases they are best at. This is because they are truly mobile and you use natural motions to touch the screen to navigate. But notebooks and desktop are different beasts that succeed at very different use cases for very different reasons.

WHY TOUCH?

What I’ve tried to bring out, both in public and in private, is this: does using touch as an input mechanism on a notebook or desktop make me more efficient in my workflow? I’m yet to find that it does.

When you sit behind a notebook or a desktop you are prepared to get work done. In this context speed, efficiency, and ease of use are keys to make these devices the best tools for the job. So for touch to be compelling, it must be better at the above experiences than a solid trackpad or external mouse. Does it do this? The answer is no.

Take the trackpad for example. My hands have less distance to travel for me to reach the trackpad on all installations. To use a trackpad I bring my hands closer to me a very short distance (maybe 2-3 inches). Contrast that with using touch as an input mechanism and rather than bring my hands in a short distance I must reach for the screen (approximately 5-6 inches). This requires more effort and more time than using the trackpad and is more tiring to the arm, by keeping it fully extended to operate. Unless you hunch over or lean in, which is also uncomfortable for any length of time. I concede that for some the amount of time and effort may not be considered much difference by some, but it is still a key point.

When I discuss this with those who advocate touch screens on notebooks, they propose that touching the device for input is a preferred mechanism to the trackpad. My counter point is that this is because most trackpads put on Windows PCs are downright terrible. Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft pushed OEMs to do this on purpose to make touching the screen seem like a better experience, simply because the trackpad is so bad, that it makes touching the device appear to feel like a better alternative.

I’d like to quantify this sometime by having a race with a Windows user and challenge them to a similar task, like creating a few slides and graphs in Power Point. Them on their touch notebook and me on my MacBook Air. We will see who can finish the task the quickest.

When Microsoft Ruled Tech: An Elegy

Almost 20 years ago, when Microsoft was king, I became a full time tech writer after many years of writing about economics and politics and working as an editor. As I watch Microsft struggling to get its mojo back, especially in consumer markets, I realize that I really miss the swashbuckling Microsoft of the mid–1990s.

There’s never been anything quite like it, and may never be again. This was a Microsoft that its competitors industry feared and that many regarded as downright evil. It was at the start of a run of domination that would lead to it being found guilty of civil violations of antitrust laws in the U.S. and Europe. And it was an exciting and dynamic company. (Probably the closest thing to it today is Google. But despite Microsoft’s many sins, it lacked two of Google’s most significant traits, a lack of focus and an annoying streak of self-righteousness.)

What was this Microsoft really like? By 1994, Microsoft was on its way to ruling the PC world with Windows and it was developing a never-realized vision in which Windows code would run on everything, from PCs to copiers to coffeemakers. But Windows 3.1, despite its success, was a thin, kludgy layer of code on top of the rickety foundation of MS-DOS. Within Microsoft, two groups were racing to replace it, the Windows 95 team headed by Brad Silverberg and the Windows NT group skippered by Jim Allchin. In the best Microsoft tradittion, these groups competed hotly with each other. Windows NT was the more ambitious effort, built on a solid operating system kernel architected by Dave Cutler, who had created VMS for Digital Equipment. Windows 95 was a huge user interface improvement, but still a kludge dependent on a DOS core. Windows 95 was an instant hit, while NT provided Microsoft with its OS of the future: the NT kernel powers all current Windows versions.

Microsoft was a fierce competitor. But until recently, it has had phenomenal luck in the incompetence of its competitors. Apple slowly crumbled through the 90s, turning out lousy Mac hardware running outdated software, and steadily lost market share. The Newton, years ahead of its time, sapped scarce resources. IBM’s attempt to challenge Windows, OS/2, was just the consumer product you would expect from a mainframe maker. The dominant DOS applications software makers, WordPerfect and Lotus, both missed the rise of Windows, leaving the field open. Microsoft Office was born more or less by accident. Microsoft had developed Excel for the Mac, which lacked a good spreadsheet, but was having a hard time getting customers to trade MacWrite for Word. The company created Office by throwing in a copy of Word with Excel, a product that former Offcie marketing chief Laura Jennings once described to me as “crap in a box.”[pullquote]Microsoft was a fierce competitor. But until recently, it has had phenomenal luck in the incompetance of its competitors.[/pullquote]

That the internet and Internet Explorer would be central to the government’s antitrust case is the great irony of Microsoft history. Bill Gates and other executives of Microsoft were late to recognize the importance of the internet. Windows 95 originally shipped without a browser or any real internet support. This mistake, probably the biggest in the company’s history, helps explain why it came to regard Netscape as an existential threat that had to be destroyed. During the development of Windows 98, there was a fierce battle between Silverberg, who wanted a more net-centric approach for the future, and Allchin. Allchin won, and Silverberg and much of his team left the company. It’s impossible to say whether Microsoft would have done better had the fight gone the other way, but it definitely would have been much different.

Microsoft in the mid–90s was a fun company to cover. It believed in Bill Gates’ mission of putting a PC in every home and on devery desktop. Its executives were open and frank and it dreamed big dreams. It’s aggressiveness made it interesting. I used to look forward to my regular trips to Redmond. The antitrust case, a disaster from which Microsoft has never really recovered, sucked most of the fun and a lot of the life out of the company.

Microsoft was going to change anyway: It had become a big company and many of the executives who had led the phenomenal growth period and had grown rich beyond imagination in the process, were starting to move on. In nearly every case, their replacements were more managerial and less adventurous. The prosecution added to the growing sense of caution, and Gates, much of whose time was absorbed by the case, seemed to lose his fire and, gradually, his interest.

The dominant companies of today, Apple and Google, are nowhere near as much fun to write about as Microsoft in its prime. Both are secretive, Apple obssessively so, and neither makes its senior executives available except in very tightly controlled situations. For a writer fresh to the tech business, the Microsoft of 1994 was a dream. In an industry that has grown up a lot in the last 20 years, I doubt we will se its like again.

Pebble: The Nerd’s Watch

Ben Bajarin wrote a nice piece last week entitled “The Challenge of Wearable Computing”, where he talks about the challenges of wearables and offers some suggestions to developers to improve their chances for success. In this column, I want to share with you my early, personal and specific Pebble watch experience and extrapolate some of thoughts to the general consumer market.  Let’s start with a little background on Pebble.

The Pebble watch started as a Kickstarter project  that exceeded their $100K funding goal by over $10M over a year ago in May, 2012.  The watch is currently shipping directly from Pebble and you can also buy it at Best Buy for $149.99.  Pebble supports basic peer-to-peer functionality for Android and iOS phones and sports a low res e-ink style display. Built into the core Pebble OS, it supports notifications for calls, texts, calendar events, email, Google Talk, and Facebook notifications.  So basically, whenever your phone gets a notification, Pebble gets one.  Through 3rd party apps I installed, I could control my phone’s music player, extend RunKeeper, see Twitter and Facebook feeds, see the weather, view photos, view calendar, page my phone, and respond to texts.  Sounds robust and valuable, right? Well, not really.  The best way to go through the experience is discuss highs and lows.

Pebble Highs

  • Battery life: I have had Pebble for over a week, use every notification and the backlight but only have had to charge once.
  • Reliability when connected: When the watch is connected to a phone, the apps are super-consistent.  This must be partly because they do one single task, like alert you of an email or text.
  • Notifications with phone tucked away: There are times when having a phone out isn’t socially accepted or inconvenient, like during dinner or when in the airport line.   With Pebble, I can get nearly all my notifications and it was sometimes reassuring that I wouldn’t miss something.
  • Display: When you hear of a 144×168 black and white resolution in a world of Retina displays, most would laugh it off as a joke.  I was very surprised just how quickly I got accustomed to the backlit, e-ink like display.  I rarely had an issue in full sunlight and literally a flick of the wrist, the backlight turns on.
  • Exercise: While the RunKeeper integration is extremely limited, it does provide the basic information like pace, distance, and time run eliminating the need to look at my phone.

Pebble Lows

  • Limited utility via limited apps: Pebble is severely limited by a very low number of apps that support the platform.  Does “mobile device lacking apps therefore delivering low value” sound familiar?  It’s the issue for Windows RT, Windows Phone, BB10 and was one of the death blows for HP’s webOS. Sure it’s early, only a year into development, but getting notifications, having a second screen for a few apps, and controlling a few things on the smartphone just isn’t enough.
  • No App Store: There currently isn’t an official app store for Pebble, making finding apps a chore.  Users can either search the Android store for “Pebble” or go to the many non-Pebble supported websites via Google search.
  • Unreliable BT connection: Bluetooth inherently is unreliable, as we have all experienced at one time or another.  This is a real back breaker because Pebble is limited without the phone connection.  To make matters worse, Pebble doesn’t have a visual indicator that it is successfully connected, so you are left wondering if you were missing notifications. To add insult to injury, my phone often said Pebble was connected when it really wasn’t
  • Nerdy: My wife nailed it when she saw me with Pebble and asked, “so is that the nerd watch”?  As I recovered from the “nerd slap”, I thought about it, and the watch really isn’t very stylish. In fact, it’s nerdy.  It is shiny and feels cheap and plasticky, like a watch you can win as a prize in a machine in an arcade.  At the end of the week, I missed some of my watches.  I’m no watch collector, but I have some that are a few hundred bucks and a few that are a few thousand dollars.

Pebble right now is a classic “tweener”.  Let’s look at fitness devices as an example.  Pebble is not like a FitBit One, FitBit Flex or Jawbone UP that tracks sleep, movement, calories yet inexpensive, stylish or easy to hide. Nor is it like the $249 MotoActv that has a color display, heart rate monitor, embedded GPS tracker and built-in music player.  Pebble is smack dab in the middle of the devices while trying to get developers to do more. A tweener is never a good place to stay for long as it usually ends in death.

Pebble needs to be more “general purpose” like a phone, tablet, PC or more “focused” like a sports watch or game console.  To do this, I believe Pebble will need to change dramatically. To go more “general purpose”, Pebble needs a complete overhaul in UI that would enable a lot more input functionality via, let’s say, voice.  Even with added features, it would take a lot to get over the “nerd factor”.  I could see non-nerds getting comfortable with Pebble functionality if it somehow embedded into their favorite Omega, Breitling, TAG Heuer, Citizen, or Burberry watches.

To get more “focused” Pebble needs to identify a unique problem for a unique audience that only it can solve…. and then go solve it.  I could see a customized “Pebble-like” device solving some very unique living room gaming challenges with a multi-axis (more than 3) accelerometer.  I could see specialty watches for firefighters and policemen, too.  The list goes on and on, but unfortunately, this is just not what Pebble is.

Until Pebble and other devices like Pebble are semi-concealable or get more focused on solving focused problems, it will remain the nerd’s watch.  The world needs and loves nerds, but I don’t think it’s a very large market in the near future.

Text Me, Don’t Call Me

I find it interesting to look at how communication has evolved. In particular to where we are today where with certain generations non-verbal real-time communication has become the majority of interactions. I come across this frequently when I tell people the fastest way to get a response from me is to text me not to call me. I’m not always in a setting where I can answer my phone but I am generally always in a setting where I can answer a text message.

Technology has enabled this new tier of communication. I first started thinking about this new tier when I was studying how millennial’s were using technology in the 2007 timeframe. It was around this time we saw the shift happen with this generation to texting more than they were talking on the phone.

At the time this was a profound observation. This young demographic’s preferred method of communication was text messaging and in many contents it trumped other forms of communication.

Prior to text messaging, instant messaging was the closest thing we had to real-time non-verbal communication but it required you be logged in and at a computing. ((of course morse code was a form of real-time non verbal communication)) Texting delivered on the value of instant messaging but made it possible any-time any where, for a fee of course.

I bring this up because it begs an interesting question. Have we finished innovating on how we communicate? This is essentially one of the primary ways man has used technology. We have used it to our advantage to increase the manner and method in which we communicate. Communicating is a basic human need and nearly every example we have of communication evolving has been directly empowered by technological innovation.

Tiers of Communication

To look deeper at the question of future communication evolution it is helpful to look at the ways in which we communicate. I call these the tiers of communication and I believe there are three of them. Below is a chart I made for a presentation on the subject.

Screen Shot 2013-07-09 at 4.11.37 PM

The first tier or communication is a basic verbal conversation, either in person, on the phone, over video conference, etc.

The second tier of communication is like a text message, instant message, or some other form of conversation that takes place non-verbally but is in real-time or near real-time.

The third tier is made up of conversations we have that are non-verbal and not in real time. Email, and snail mail are examples of this form of communication.

What’s fascinating about having different options for communicating is that we can use the medium that best dictates the context of the conversation. For example in an emergency a verbal conversation is necessary. But for a question about a grocery store item a text message would probably suffice.

Text messaging is perhaps one of the most fascinating ways in which our communication styles have advanced. Texting is obviously good for short conversations, but many millennials, for example, will have very long conversations and multiples of them simultaneously in real-time. We have all heard the horror stories of parents finding unusually high cell phone bills due to kids texting more than 10,000 texts in a month. That’s some dedication to this new form of communication.

Interestingly social media like Facebook and Twitter contain multiple elements of these tiers. On Facebook I can post something with no real time sensitive purpose or even something requiring no response at all. I can also have a real-time conversation with someone via Facebook chat. I can send a message and even have a voice conversation.

Similarly Twitter gives me many ways of using the tiers of communication, minus verbal for now. Twitter is actually interesting to me and many in my close circle. Since many of us are bearish on Facebook, we have made time investments in Twitter. Because of how I use Twitter, it is nearly as good as text messaging if one wants to communicate with me.

My guess is that technology is not done advancing how we communicate. My conviction is that the tiers I outline above will stay the same, however, technology may enable new ways of engaging in them not possible today.

Maybe it will be the TV, or wearable devices which will enable new ways to communicate. One thing, however, is highly likely. The millennial generation that embraced new technologies and adopted them into their communication methods, will be the generation that brings us the next major innovation in communication.

The Challenge of Wearable Computing

I’d like to start out with a question I have been asking myself. Why does Google Glass need to be on my face? More importantly, to get the benefits of Google Glass (whatever one deems that to be) why does it need to come in a form factor that goes on my face? The answer is that it likely does not.

The same question will need to be answered by any potential existence of Apple’s iWatch or any smart watch. My favorite line of critics of the iWatch, or smart watches in general for that matter, is that no one wears watches these days. My standard response is: and those that do don’t wear them to keep time.

I absolutely agree that the wrist is prime real estate, but I’d add that it is also highly valuable real estate. Therefore for a consumer to put something on their wrist, their face, or any other part of their person, there must be a clear value proposition.

In Search of a Value Proposition

This is why to date the only real wearable success stories we have are devices like the Fitbit, Nike Fuelband, Jawbone Up, and others in the wearable health segment. The industry term for this segment is “Quantified Self.” These devices track our activity and give us insight into how many steps we have taken, calories, burned, quality and quantity of sleep, etc.

For many this is a clear value proposition and a compelling reason to place an additional object on their body. The value proposition is also a simple one: wear this object and it will give you details about your activity and general health which for many is valuable information. When a segment like wearable computing is in the early stages of adoption, as we are in now, simple value propositions are key to getting initial consumer adoption.

Google’s Glasses challenge lies both in the value proposition and the form factor. Google hopes to flesh out the value proposition with the public research and developing happening with its early adopters. The form factor however, is a larger question. While its true that many people wear sunglasses, or eyeglasses, most would tell you they do not always want to or even enjoying having glasses on their face. There is eye surgery for those who need glasses so that they no longer have to wear glasses. Given behavioral observations around glasses, one would need to conclude that to keep an object on ones face, there must be a good reason.

Whatever the longer term benefits of something like Google Glass turn out to be, it is likely that they will show up in other objects not necessarily glasses. Like displays in our cars, or more intelligent screens on our person like our phones, or perhaps even a smart watch.

Similarly, any smart watch will also have to make its case for existence beyond the techno-geek crowd. Here we come back to my earlier point that those who wear a watch don’t do so to keep time. I wear a watch. I like my watch and besides my wedding ring it’s the only piece of jewelry I wear. I intentionally selected this watch for a variety of reasons. It is not on my wrist because I need it to keep time. It is a fashion accessory for me. I’d argue that for most watch wearers this is the case as well. This is exactly my point on why the wrist is valuable real estate. It is valuable because those who place it there do so for more than just its functionality.

Why Should I Wear This?

Objects we choose to put on our person and go out in public with are highly personal and intentionally selected. The personal and intentional reasons that we wear objects are the things that wearable computing devices don’t just need to overcome they need to add to as well.

A smart watch needs to add to the reasons I wear a watch. Smart glasses need to add to the reasons I put glasses on my face. Addressing these things are the challenges of those who aspire to create wearable computers that are worn by the masses. I am also confident it is where much innovation will happen over the next 10 years.

We have ideas on how this shakes out. Things like relevant, contextual information at a glance, or notifications for example. All the exact value propositions of wearable computing are not yet fully known. Even with so much ambiguity around wearable computing, I am optimistic and looking forward to the innovations that will take place to create wearable computers that add value to our lives.

This Is It. This Is Apple. This Is Their Design.

On June 10, 2013, during the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote, Apple unveiled two new videos: “Intention” and “Our Signature

Two videos, but only one message.

Author’s note: All of the quotes from Apple’s videos are: “in bold text”.

“This is it.”

In those videos, Apple revealed its mission, its purpose, its essence, its raison d’etre and – perhaps – a bit of its soul.

This is the post-Steve Jobs manifesto. This is Tim Cook’s Apple. This is Apple’s new brand. This is Apple.

Something happens to companies when they get to be a few million dollars — their souls go away. And that’s the biggest thing I’ll be measured on: Were we able to grow a $10 billion company that didn’t lose its soul? ~ Steve Jobs

“This is what matters.”

“Listen up,” Apple is virtually saying to its customers, its employees, its investors, the analysts, the media, the pundits, and even to its competitors. “Listen up,” Apple is saying, “we’re telling you who we are and how we roll. This is our plan. This is our design. This is our intention. You should be paying attention.”

The Questions One Asks Inform The Answers One Receives

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“The first thing we ask is:

How it makes someone feel.

The experience of a product.

Who will this help?

Will it make life better?

Does this deserve to exist?”

Wow. Just wow.

Look at the types of extraordinary questions that Apple is asking itself. Talk about Thinking Different. It takes one’s breath away.

— Do you think that Microsoft asked such questions before it foisted Windows 8 on its customers?
— Do you think that Google asked such questions before it announced the Nexus Q?
— Do you think that Dell asked such questions — about anything, ever?
— Do you think that Apple asked such questions before they announced their mapping solution last year? ((Maps was a strategic move, a business move, perhaps even a mandatory move. But Apple has paid a terrible public relations price for prioritizing their needs over the needs of their customers.))
— Does your organization – or any organization you know – ask such piercing questions?

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
—Voltaire

Let’s pause and take a moment to parse these questions a bit further.

“How it makes someone feel. The experience of a product.”

Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience. ~ Jony Ive

This is huge. Apple doesn’t start with the specs or the features. They don’t start with corporate budgets or corporate agendas. They don’t start with what it should look like or how it fits into their current product lineup.

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology — not the other way around. ~ Steve Jobs

Apple starts with how the product or service makes someone FEEL. That person’s EXPERIENCE with the product.

It’s not just a people first approach, it’s an emotion first approach too.

Apple doesn’t define the “job to be done” in technological terms. They define the job to be done in emotional terms — by whether their devices make their customers feel:

“Delight, surprise, love, connection”

This is the ecosystem argument. That devices are superior when they are less centered around technology and features and more centered around cohesiveness and experience.

The fallacy most make when critiquing Apple’s services is to believe that Apple needs to out-innovate competing services. The truth is, all they need to do is out-integrate them. ~ Ben Bajarin

Bill Gates once said that Steve Jobs “never really understood much about technology.” But that’s because Bill Gates wanted to believe that superior technology alway wins. He actually had it backwards. It’s not about making technology that works. It’s about making technology that works the way we do.

“The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious.” ~ Steve Jobs

“(T)he opportunity is not in designing a better “user interface” but designing a better “user experience.” ~ Damir Perge

“… we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simple. ~ Steve Jobs

“Who will this help? Will it make life better?”

They say that Apple understands what makes people tick; that Apple is a human-focused technology company. If Apple starts their product design by asking great questions like these, is it any wonder that this is so?

Apple’s magic is in the way it evaluates a product in order to answer the question “How would average humans like to use this?”—without actually asking average humans. … (W)hen you rely on focus groups and checklists of features, you end up with a projector phone. Or, like HP, you end up with computers that look exactly like Apple’s but lack the ease of use and thoughtful design. ~ John Moltz

Much of the difference between Microsoft and Apple — or between Apple and just about everyone else — is not the technology, but the usability. The real killer appeal of the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad is how easy they are to use, and how integral that ease of use and design is to the product itself.

I’m sure when Bill Gates looks at the iPad or the iPhone, he thinks about all the features it doesn’t have, or all the things that it can’t do. But no one else thinks about those things — all they are interested in is what they can do, and how much fun it is doing them, and how appealing those devices are. And that is one of Steve Jobs’ biggest gifts to the world of technology and design. ~ Mathew Ingram, Gigaom

Customers can’t tell you what they want, but they can most certainly tell you what dissatisfies them. It’s in the customers’ unmet needs that the real opportunities for technology lie.

“Good design makes a product understandable. It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.” ~ Dieter Rams ((“Jobs was a famous admirer of Dieter Rams, a designer for Braun who had a number of mottos and aphorisms about design — one of which was that “good design will make a product understandable.” That applies to a lot of Apple’s most famous products, which were so painstakingly designed to be usable, even when (like the original iPod shuffle) they didn’t even have a screen to tell you what was going on inside them.))

“Does this deserve to exist?”

Talk about bringing things into focus. What a brutal filter to use in order to curate what does and does not get made at Apple.

“(W)hy are we doing this in the first place?” ~ Steve Jobs

Most companies are so busy asking whether something “could” be done that they never stop to ask themselves whether something “should” be done. ((Take the Microsoft Kin, for example. (Please!) ))

“We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too.” ~ Steve Jobs

Remember the quote, above, the next time you think about the rumored low-cost iPhone (or a myriad of other rumored Apple products.) Apple doesn’t cripple their products just to achieve lower price points because Apple only makes products that they, themselves, want to use. And they don’t want to use the equivalent of a Kin, Google TV or Nook. ((To be perfectly fair, no one else wants to use a Kin, Google TV or Nook, either.))

He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld

This Is Our Design

Where does Apple start? Do they start where they are? Do they start with their current design?

No.

“We start over”

“…Jobs was willing to completely start over with a product or service if it missed the mark. This requirement for perfection is highlighted numerous times in his biography and is rarely, if ever, followed by traditional companies when they are headed down the path of launching a new product, service or experience. ~ Eric V. Holtzclaw, Inc.

Starting over changes everything.

“When you start by imagining
What that might be like,
You step back.
You think.”

It allows one to see, not what can be added to what already exists, but what can be created from all of existence. It allows one to contemplate, not just the conceivable but what was once thought to be inconceivable too. It allows one to untether from what is, and to explore what might be.

It allows one to imagine. It allows one to dream.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” ~ Henry Miller

When you or I buy a sofa, we move around the contents of the room in order to make the new sofa fit in. If Apple buys a sofa – and they think that it is perfect – they are willing to re-design and re-build the entire house in order to make the house fit in with the sofa.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” ~ Albert Einstein

Starting over allows one to paint with a fresh palette.

“I dream my painting and paint my dream.” ~ Vincent van Gogh

White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities. ~ Stephen Sondheim

Starting over allows one to dream, and to dream big.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can reach. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries and predecessors; try to be better than yourself.

“We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.” ~ Steve Jobs

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Designing something requires focus.”

“We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.” ~ Steve Jobs

Divide the fire and you will soon put it out. ~ Greek Proverb

“There are a thousand ‘no’s’ for every ‘yes'”

Does Samsung ask the hard questions, make the hard decisions, or do they let their customers do the work? Do they ever say “no”, so their customers don’t have to? ((Samsung has 26 different screen sizes for its smartphones and tablets. Apple, by contrast, has four different screen sizes. Throw spaghetti against a wall model may be good for some, but it is not Apple’s model.

“Samsung has a history of confusing customers with an outpouring of phone models … (Samsung) revealed a bunch of new features for the phone like S Health, hovering over the phone, new security features, eye-tracking, two-way photography, and much more. Most, if not all, of these features were pointless.”

MOSSBERG: The Samsung Galaxy S4 Has ‘Especially Weak,’ ‘Gimmicky’ Software))

Does Microsoft say no? Or do they tell you that their tablet is really a notebook and their notebook is really a tablet. Does Windows 8 give you one operating system optimized for the form factor or do they give you two operating systems and let you sort it out? Or do they give you three separate operating systems in the Xbox One and actually brag about it?

Does Google say no with Android? Or do they give their users feature after feature after feature without thought to how each feature works with one another and whether the net benefit is outweighed by the cognitive cost?

Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. ~ Dieter Rams

“We simplify”

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ~ Leonardo DaVinci

When people talk about Apple’s design principles and philosophy, they often mention the unrelenting focus on simplicity (based in part on Rams’ motto: “Less, but better”). Jobs said that among the most important decisions in product design were what not to include and that this process involved “saying no to 1,000 things.” That’s a very difficult principle to adhere to at the best of times — but it’s especially hard if you are a technology geek and obsessed with all the ways in which your product is going to beat your competitors because of the cool features it has. That’s what causes the classic “feature creep” phenomenon, which often occurs when professional engineers get hold of a device. ~ Mathew Ingram, Gigaom

I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency… True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It’s about bringing order to complexity. ~ Jony Ive

“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” ~ Steve Jobs

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction. ~ Albert Einstein

“It’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” ~ Steve Jobs

Good design is as little design as possible. ~ Dieter Rams

“We perfect”

“Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.” ~ Dieter Rams

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” ~ Steve Jobs

Trifles make perfections, but perfection is itself no trifle. ~ Shaker proverb

I don’t think it’s good that Apple’s perceived as different. I think it’s important that Apple’s perceived as much better. If being different is essential to doing that, then we have to do that, but if we can be much better without being different, that’d be fine with me. I want to be much better. ~ Steve Jobs

There is hardly anything in the world that some man can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey. ~ John Ruskin

Design Is How It Works

“Then we begin to craft around our intention”

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” ~ Douglas Adams

“Until every idea we touch Enhances each life it touches.”

“Good design makes a product useful. A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.” ~ Dieter Rams

“We have always thought of design as being so much more than the way something looks. It’s the whole thing, the way something works on so many different levels.” ~ Jony Ive

“(Apple’s) ideology is design. It is a shared belief system that ‘No’ is more important than ‘Yes,’ that focus is essential to making great products, and that no one individual (not even Steve Jobs) is essential.” ~ Ben Thompson, Stratechery

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. ~ Steve Jobs

If the question is: “What job is this being asked to do?”, then Design is the guide and the pathway to the answer.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation… ~ Steve Jobs

What Makes Apple Different?

Do you want to know what makes Apple different? What sets them apart? How they attract the types of fans that Microsoft, Google and Samsung mock and denigrate but secretly envy and aspire to attain?

“What makes Apple come up with these great ideas while other computer makers stand around waiting for Jonathan Ive to tell them what to do next? ~ Don Reisinger

Is it Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, corporate culture, focus on quality, superior marketing, how they touch our emotions or some combination of all those things?

Is it because Apple is great at editing what’s possible, selecting options, saying no to things, and making something great by making it less, but better? ((These ideas were culled from Marco Arment, Accidental Tech Podcast, #14: Pouring Champagne onto Rap stars.))

If there was ever a product that catalyzed what’s Apple’s reason for being, it’s (the iPod). Because it combines Apple’s incredible technology base with Apple’s legendary ease of use with Apple’s awesome design… it’s like, this is what we do. So if anybody was ever wondering why is Apple on the earth, I would hold this up as a good example. ~ Steve Jobs

No. What makes Apple great is their passionate pursuit of perfection.

“Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.” ~ Steve Jobs

“For us, winning has never been about making the most. Arguably we make the best….” ~ Tim Cook

Does Apple always hit their target? Not hardly. They quite often miss their mark.

But as hard as it is to achieve perfection when one is trying, it’s virtually impossible to achieve perfection when that is not even one’s aim.

“The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you aim at it.” ~ Mal Pancoast

At least Apple is trying. And they are passionately trying.

Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” ~ Vince Lombardi

“I think back to Detroit in the seventies, when cars were so bad. Why? The people running the companies then didn’t love cars. One of the things wrong with the PC industry today is that most of the people running the companies don’t love PCs. Does Steve Ballmer love PCs? Does Craig Barrett love PCs? Does Michael Dell love PCs? If Michael Dell wasn’t selling PCs he’d be selling something else. These people don’t love what they create. And people here do.” ~ Steve Jobs

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do. ~ Steve Jobs

Apple relishes the challenge. And they love the chase.

“You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.”

Apple is the standard bearer of excellence. And that is why people love Apple – why they actively root for them – despite Apple’s many imperfections. People are not just rooting for Apple, they’re rooting for an ideal. They’re rooting, not just for what Apple is but, for what Apple aspires to become.

“Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny. ~ Carl Schurz

Appendix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZmIiIXuZ0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1s_B0zqX0

Terrestrial Broadcast Courts the Cable Guy

Each month, Ross Rubin writes for Tech.pinions on the development and evolution of technology industry standards.

It is an act of short-term pessimism and long-term optimism to kill a fledgling technology and replace it with something that has a higher barrier to adoption. But that’s what happened with digital terrestrial broadcast in the U.S. With coverage barely rolling out, News Corp. and NBC banded together to form Mobile Content Ventures, which would restrict reception of digital broadcast to those who had registered via the Internet. The few products on the market that could receive the few channels become paperweights.

It seemed to be the last thing that the technology needed in light of its competition against IP. There have been a number of companies over the years that have tried and failed to deliver digital OTA broadcasting or datacasting. These have included ones that didn’t get far off the ground (such as Geocast), ones that sputtered along the ground (MovieBeam and Sezmi) and ones that crashed hard into the ground (MediaFLO). The latter best approximated the use case for Dyle and, like the emergent mobile broadcasting, required special support in smartphones in order to work. (Even HD radio, rather than being built into handsets, has largley been enveloped by radio apps such as TuneIn. Like satellite radio, it stands ready to bear the brunt of in-vehicle competition as 4G proliferates.)

However, what’s bad for the carrier can be good for the consumer. Like Netflix and Hulu Plus, MediaFLO required a subscription. Dyle, on the other hand, is free, and doesn’t consume any data from your cellular plan. Also, since the launch of MediaFLO back in 2007, smartphones have increased their penetration many times over and the iPad has ushered in a major new platform for portable video consumption.

One doesn’t have to host a daytime court show to pass judgement on the limited appeal of over-the-air fare. But live access to cable channels anywhere without a cellular plan for no incremental fee could be compelling enough to warrant the inclusion of tuners and antennas in a range of devices.

The good news for mobile broadcasters supporting Dyle is that the utility of these devices, unlike the original “Watchman,” have made them far more popular than handheld TVs ever were, but today’s mobile video devices are convergence battlegrounds where all media duke it out for consumers’ attention. Even among video, a host of potential options stand toc compete for viewers. These include not only long-form oriented Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime, but increasingly, pay TV providers and broadcasters launching their own live streams for free. This is mobile digital TVs first major challenge.

The second is whether broadcasters can convince handset makers and carriers to build tuners into devices. These not only add cost, but require extra room for old-school antennae. Samsung, the world’s highest-volume smartphone-maker and a top vendor in the U.S., has long been a backer of digital terrestrial broadcast. It offers the Galaxy S Lightray on MetroPCS. However, carriers have little incentive to promote Dyle. Not only does it avoid tapping into consumers’ data plans, it substitutes for data-consuming services that might incentivize consumers to purchase bigger buckets of gigabytes per month.

What would be offered? Given the heavy competition of on-demand programming and the strength of digital terrestrial broadcasts, there would likely be an emphasis on live programming such as news, weather and sports. We’ve seen the results of some of this multicasting with fixed over-the-air digital television, where broadcasters have put on programming such as news and weather channels alongside their main local feed.

There are two rabbits that Dyle’s backers hope to pull out of its hat. First, since Dyle broadcasters know where the consumer is, they can insert commercials that are more contextually relevant. But the more interesting play is that, while the service today delivers only the same broadcasts one would see watching at home, it has the potential to include pay TV channels offered by those broadcasts. So, for example, an NBC affiliate could potentially offer Bravo while an ABC affiliate could potentially offer ESPN.

Such premium channels would likely be cable-authenticated. And as such, their broadcast transmission would be added on to the retransmission fees that cable companies pay; the twist is that it broadcasters would collect additional fees for carriage on spectrum that they own rather than on pipes owned by multiple video programming distributors (MVPDs) such as cable companies, DBS satellite companies and fiber-spinning telcos .

Yes, broadcasters — which expanded their portfolio of offerings with the bandwidth of MVPDs — now hold the keys to help those companies spread “cable” TV channels wirelessly. Of course, bandwidth would be constrained; one wouldn’t be able to receive the full breadth of a modern digital cable lineup via Dyle. But it’s clear that Dyle’s backers are thinking big; over time, as compression standards improve, more channels could be offered.

Of course, making that more palatable will require having Dyle on a wide range of devices. While unpalatable to carriers on smartphones, the tablet may represent the best vehicle (at least outside the vehicle) for Dyle to catch on. Belkin, for one, has released a small adapter powered by a coin battery that connects to previous-generation iPhones and iPads that use the 30-pin connector. Elgato has created a Mac-compatible dongle using USB. And a company called Tvizen offers a Wi-Fi hotspot that redistributes mobile DTV using other standards to a number of connected devices without having to be directly connected to them. It had shown off prototypes of a version for the U.S. market at CES a few years back. And the idea that consumers will return to the idea of extending a retractable antenna seems like a quaint one, at best. But if Dyle can fulfill its potential to move beyond simulcast to leverage popular cable channels such as ESPN and Bravo, it could at least provide an option for those who don’t want to tempt fate on their allocated data plan.

Apple, Microsoft, and Listening to Customers

iOS 7 beta 3 screenshotEarlier this week, Apple released iOS 7 Beta 3, the third test version of the upcoming software for iPhone and iPad released in a month. Users, by definition registered Apple developers, who installed it made a remarkable discovery: The Helvetica iOS system font, widely denounced as too light by earlier users, had been replaced by a slightly heavier version, producing a big improvement in readability. Apple, to the amazement of many who view the company as a design dictatorship, had listened and changed in response to what it heard.

Oddly, it’s Microsoft, once the paragon of listening to customers, that seems to have lost the knack. The preview version of Windows 8.1 addresses some of the most serious problems with the touch-centric Metro, it does very little to improve the legacy Desktop side of Windows 8. As a result, it does nothing to assuage traditional Windows users’ deep unhappiness with Windows 8. From developers to OEMs to ordinary users, I keep hearing complaints that Microsoft just doesn’t listen.

Apple and Microsoft are treating their previews very differently. Although calling Windows 8.1 a preview, Microsoft seems to think of it as a nearly finished product. In fact, the Windows App Store practically begs you to install the preview.

Windows app store screenshotBy contrast, iOS 7 is a true beta. It is only available to registered iOS developers (though anyone can become one by paying Apple $99 a year, it does require skin ion the game.) The download and installation process seems to be deliberately obscure to discourage the casual. And to download the software, you must agree to a confidentially agreement the prohibits publication of details that have not yet been made public. All of this is typical of serious software testing.

With Microsoft planning to release Windows 8.1 to OEMs by the end of August, I don’t expect that we will see more than minor tweaks to the software. The legacy Desktop will remain a jarring experience, ill-suited to either touch or non-touch use with Metro screen and apps that pop up seemingly unbidden at inconvenient moments. The changes from the version released last October are depressingly minor. There is more real change on the Metro side; in particular, Microsoft has drastically reduced the circumstances under which you have to drop back into Desktop. But the Metro apps, especially Mail, are still seriously under-featured and the app store remains a wasteland.

Microsoft seems to be following a similar course for the new Metro-fied versions of Office applications. Office 2013, released last year along with Windows 8, offered only minor concessions to touch and the applications were largely useless on the surface or other tablets unless there was a keyboard attached. In response to a strong negative reaction, Microsoft accelerated development of real touch versions. These are supposed to ship before the end of the year, but so far Microsoft is keeping them close to the vest. This is especially concerning because making applications such as Word and Outlook touch-friendly will require a radical simplification of the interface and, as a result, a lot of familiar features will have to be removed or hidden. You would think Microsoft would be seeking as much user input on these decisions as possible, but that does not appear to be the case. The result is likely to be another disappointment, though I really hope I am wrong.

iOS 7, by contrast, seems to be evolving quickly. I don’t think Apple will maintain the pace of a new release every couple of weeks, but many subtle design changes in the two updates we have seen suggest that Apple is heeding the concerns of testers. As Marco Arment, developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, put it in his blog:

Since Apple is just people, they’re usually trying to figure out the best answer to the same decisions and trade-offs we argue about on the outside: what’s best for the user, what’s best for battery life, what apps should be allowed to do, how multitasking should work, how far sandboxing should go, and so on. Almost any decision that causes controversy on the outside has almost certainly caused just as much on the inside, it’s probably still being argued, and the decision probably isn’t set in stone.

We can’t participate directly in those debates, but we can provide ammo to the side we agree with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dell-Icahn Debacle Exemplifies what’s Wrong with Wall Street

There have been a lot of industry and financial discussions lately about Dell’s privatization efforts.  So far, I have stayed out of the fray, but I think it is now time for me to weigh in on what I consider a total debacle…. a total lack of understanding of strategy, the technology industry, and Dell.  The current institutional investors who are mulling which way to vote on the Dell-Silver Lake offer appear clueless as they risk their current investments in search of a few pennies more from Icahn and Southeastern.  This is a good example of what’s wrong with Wall Street.  Let me start with the basic Icahn-Southeastern hypothesis.

Icahn and partner’s basic premise is that a newly appointed board can run Dell better than it’s running Dell today, and therefore they must think that Dell’s current board is mismanaging the company.  Many in the industry would like to know who those proposed board members are, their backgrounds, and exactly how their strategy would be different.  Are the proposed board members smarter, more experienced than the Dell’s current board?  So far, no details from the Icahn camp so it’s impossible to assess.

Given the massive wealth Icahn has amassed, he obviously has some brilliant folks, but would the new board have technology backgrounds or would they come from areas where Icahn has amassed wealth?  Icahn Enterprises web site states that“Icahn Enterprises L.P. (NASDAQ: IEP), a master limited partnership, is a diversified holding company engaged in nine primary business segments: Investment, Automotive, Energy, Gaming, Railcar, Food Packaging, Metals, Real Estate and Home Fashion.” Outside of investments and energy, each one of these markets is dominated by slow rate of change in terms of market dynamics, competitive shifts and growth.

Take high tech smartphones as an example. Five years ago, the leaders in smartphones were Nokia (40% share), RIM (16% share), and then Apple (9% share).  Android, hadn’t even shipped a phone five years ago and now it is the leading smartphone operating system today.  Nokia and RIM are almost out of the smartphone market and now Samsung (33% share) and Apple (17% share) lead the pack.  Five years ago, Facebook had 100M users and Twitter had around 1M tweets a day.  Now, Facebook has 1.1B users and Twitter now has 400M tweets per day. Technology isn’t railcars.

To give investors a better sense of comparing boards, Icahn and partners should divulge exactly who would be on the newly proposed board of directors.

Appointing a new board of directors would mean a new strategy, but what strategy? To offer nearly $25B to buy something, you must have some theory on what can be improved that the other guys missed or mis-executed.  There must be some low hanging fruit that no one else sees, right?  So far, there have been no specific proposed strategy changes floated by the Icahn camp.

I have been researching Dell’s strategy for close to 20 years. I was their competitor at AT&T and Compaq for nearly a decade, was a supplier for over a decade at AMD, and my firm researches them and their competitors today.  As PC growth declined, Dell had to pick a direction: stay bottled up in the consumer client-computing market or grow into an end-to-end enterprise player in data center infrastructure, software and services. Looking what it took for Samsung and Apple to rise to a duopoly in consumer phones and tablets, Dell chose the right direction.  Dell, who was very strong in servers and business PCs, went on a $13B acquisition tear for five years in services, software, storage, and security to pull together those pieces to become that end to end player.  It is a strategy that will take at least five more years to bear full fruit, as Dell needs time to pull those disparate parts into one holistic offering.

So what is the Icahn and partner’s strategy?  No one knows, but if that camp views previous Dell acquisitions as a bad choice, one must assume that divestitures is in the cards, selling off many of the businesses that Dell just acquired.  To an end-to-end enterprise player, this is like amputating a foot on a runner.  You need all limbs in good condition to finish the five year race.  I would view the selling of assets as a pre-cursor to Dell’s demise as a company, but this is what I view as a high probability with an Icahn acquisition.

To remove any ambiguity, I think it would help clarify for everyone for the Icahn camp to reveal some parts of the new strategy. Imagine what happens to the company value if, when the smoke clears with an Icahn win, there isn’t a new and amazing strategy or one that’s rejected by the employees.

There is a scenario where Michael Dell could still hold around 40% of the shares and could wage a proxy battle if Icahn won.  There could also be a split board of directors, a total mess. So what if Michael Dell just sells his stake and walks?  Michael Dell is worth billions, there are a lot of other interesting investments to make, and I’m sure his wife and kids would love to see him home more often.

While I think the possibility is low that Michael would walk with an Icahn takeover, investors should consider the “what-if”.  At this stage in Dell’s turnaround, if Michael Dell, left, Dell Corp. would die.  It’s as plain as simple as that.  Dell has great lieutenants, but if you’ve ever worked in a large, high-tech company, you know that the CEO choice drives the “operating system” of the company. The CEO drives the way decisions are made, the operating cadence, and is the cheerleader to the employee base.  This is particularly important when you have a founder-CEO.  You don’t want your founder-CEO leaving during a time of chaos, you want years of transition to a new one.  I can just imagine what happens to the stock price if Michael left.

Investors have a big vote on July 18 to accept or reject the Dell-Silver Lake offer.  The ISS, or Institutional Shareholder Services, has cleared the Dell-Silver Lake deal, which means institutional investors have “cover” to proceed.  Even with that, Icahn has vowed to keep the deal in the courts for years.

If the Icahn deal goes through, Michael Dell could wage his own proxy battle and there could even be a split board of directors.  This sounds like a complete mess and chaos would ensue.  What do you think that does to the turnaround momentum, employee and customer sentiment….. and the stock price?  If $13.65 a share sounds low, how about the pre-buyout price of around $9 or lower?  That is what the current institutional investors are risking here, based on their lack of understanding of high tech and what it takes to position Dell for growth.  Sure Apple valuation is a bigger “crime”, but the Dell-Icahn debacle demonstrates what’s wrong with Wall Street.

I Owe Bill Gates An Apology

I have changed my view of no person, whether living or dead, more so than I have changed my view of Bill Gates. Where once I hoped he failed, hoped his company would fail, believed him responsible for stifling competition, innovation, cheered when my very own government was working against him, now I accept him for what he really is: the man who has most transformed the world during my lifetime.

I owe Gates an apology.

No one, not Steve Jobs, not Mark Zuckerberg, not Hewlett nor Packard, has had a more profound global impact on people and business, on the spread of technology or the continued pre-eminence of America’s globe-spanning computing innovation, than has Bill Gates. Despite innumerable obstacles, Gates succeeded with his once-mad vision of placing a PC on every desktop.

Now, he has a new mission, one far more audacious, far more transformative. It is plainly stated through his well-funded
foundation:

“We believe every person deserves the chance to live a healthy, productive life.”

POLIO_OralVaccineNigeria_1000x380_revised

Sadly, we are far from realizing this vision. Yet, with Gates bringing his skills to bear on this rather base human failing, I honestly believe we will move radically closer to turning the hope that every person deserves a healthy, productive life, into actual reality.

Think how computing changed and improved and spread from 1980 – 2000, only now, those changes applied to people and medicine and learning and access and work.

If, as Steve Jobs said, Bill Gates “just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas,” then perhaps in trying to solve the world’s biggest problems, this is a good thing. Gate’s tactics may have found their logical pursuit.

Gates – still the world’s richest man – no doubt understands how profoundly billions of lives can be changed for the better by radically improving the code that now now dominates our world. In public classrooms, where our nation’s children are not realizing their fullest potential, and in villages thousands of miles away, where their children are dying, the tools to alter this reality are either at hand or very soon will be. We have an amazing opportunity to remake the world.

Think Gates can’t change the world a second time? Maybe. Although, if it was 1975 again – nearly 40 years in our past, before most of the people on this planet were even born – and by some odd coincidence you actually saw this machine, a Altair 8800, could you have divined how it foretold the future? Gates could.

664px-Altair_8800_Computer

Embrace, extend, extinguish – the modus operandi of Microsoft under Gates, and now eagerly adopted by today’s Google – laid everything to waste, it seemed. Netscape, Lotus, Apple (nearly), Wordstar – and all the many companies and products and people we no longer can even recall.

Yet it’s this same mental prowess, this same hyper-competitive drive, likely tempered by age, that could allow Gates to show us how to extend computing power, applied data, and a ruthless fealty to results, to extinguish some of the planet’s most chronic, life-limiting maladies.

If the world can be radically improved, it will take a fundamental re-working of the existing algorithms of modern life – all the nasty realities we presently tolerate or ignore, or simply fail to see. Gates was as good at crafting an algorithm, as good at writing code, as he was a unrelenting business tycoon. The world needs him.

This time, I am on Gates’ side, without apology.

Why ICAHN is a Bad Fit for Dell

I have had the privilege of following Dell from its inception. I became a PC industry analyst in 1981 and have tracked the PC industry from its beginning. In the process I have had the privilege of interacting with every one of the PC and CE companies at the highest levels for 32 years. Those who have followed my current writings in TIME’s online Tech section, PC Magazine and our own publication called here as well as my commentary on all of the major TV and radio networks and business publications know that I have been chronicling the tech market for decades.

I have watched PC companies come and go and understand well how the industry developed and what it will take to compete in the future. I have seen the market for PCs grow exponentially and become the heart of Information Age. Although the role of PCs has changed over these decades, it is still a key component of any business and consumer’s life, even if some of those computers are now called tablets and smartphones.

I have been watching closely the competing bids to take Dell private and am quite concerned about any outside plan that would not guarantee that Dell remain whole and execute as a single company with all divisions contributing to its success. While I have respect for Mr. Icahn, I am not convinced he really understands the dynamics of the tech market and what it takes to compete in this fast changing marketplace. The tech industry is not like the oil and gas industry where things change slowly. I believe that for Dell to compete and grow it must be run as a single unified company where all divisions work together to achieve their vision and goals. But if history is our guide, keeping Dell intact is probably not in the plans of Mr. Icahn and his team.

One Company, One Vision

A few months back, Dell held its annual industry analyst days in Austin. Like all of my colleagues at the event, we went to the conference to see first hand how Dell saw the market, what role it would continue to play in a technology world that is rapidly changing and how they planned to grow as a company in light of the increased competition and shifting demands from business users and consumers alike.

I sat through two days of speeches and dedicated divisional information sessions and in the end, came away with a picture of a company that was much more in control of its future than I had suspected. I found that they had diligently laid out the necessary building blocks that, when tied together, could give them the ability to weather the changing dynamics of the tech market today and had a solid vision that can drive it forward in the future. One that includes being a hardware, software, and services company offering the whole package for many key growth segments.

One very important thing that I came to understand from these meetings is that in order for Dell to navigate these choppy industry waters, it needs to be able to execute this vision in a measured and strategic way, which will take time. It is clear to me now that this is the main reason Michael Dell wants to take the company private. Trying to rush these things would be difficult given the need to make these changes to Dell’s future business models so that it can be done properly and executed without the pressure of always having to keep the investor community happy each quarter.

The building blocks of powerful server hardware, software and services, world class security, expanded IT services and even their PC business that, as we were told, drove 50% of all of their enterprise sales, are key components that when woven together as a single unit gives Dell the opportunity to remain a major player in the world of technology. We were also told about new tablets and other mobile products in the works that, when they come to market later this year, will make Dell very competitive with Lenovo and HP as well as other PC and CE vendors that are all targeting the same business and consumer customers.

I have one key observation that is quite important to this discussion. When I look at Dell, its building blocks and its competitive challenge ahead, I am convinced that they can only remain a powerful player in the tech market if the company competes as a whole, with all of these building blocks they have put into place working in harmony. Every one of their divisions needs to be connected and walking in lock step if Dell is going to succeed.

Servers, PCs and mobile devices need security. IT needs servers, software and mobile device management tools all working together to meet the needs of their mobile users. The future of software distribution is in the cloud and all of Dell’s divisions deliver key parts of a cloud solution that can work together seamlessly if executed properly. Consumers want a company that delivers solid products that they stand by and look to as PCs, tablets and smartphones become more engrained into their digital lifestyles. From what I saw while at the analysts meeting, Dell finally has all of the pieces in place that, when working together, will sustain the company and help it grow if executed well in the face of a tech marketplace that is constantly changing.

I cannot stress how important I feel that Dell operate as a unified entity in order to compete and grow. I have spent many years understanding the machinations of a successful tech company and monitored the shifting winds of business and consumers whose needs and wants constantly change. I can tell you without a doubt that for a company like Dell, HP and Lenovo, all of their divisions and executives have to be on the same page, working and collaborating closely together to provide all of the key components of hardware, software and services if they are to succeed given the current and future market conditions I see ahead.

For the record, I don’t own any Dell stock. I am an independent market researcher with 32 years of experience examining the tech market and this perspective comes from decades of studying how this industry works. In my opinion, if there was ever a time when a company needs to operate as a unified force, it is now.

Providing powerful technologies across hardware, software and services that are all interrelated and interconnected is the key to success in this globalized tech market where vision, order and collaborative leadership is vital to a PC company’s ability to remain competitive and thrive. Any attempt to break up that kind of synergy will only lead to failure.

Apple Can’t Innovate Anymore, My A$$

I am sick to death of pundits proclaiming that Apple can no longer innovate. Apparently, the less one knows about a subject, the more strident one’s opinion on that subject becomes. Nevertheless, this nonsensical posturing has simply got to stop, for it is easier to believe a lie that you have heard a thousand times, than the truth that you have heard only once.

Can’t innovate anymore, my ass. ~ Phil Schiller

The critic’s arguments seem to break into two categories, which are really two sides of the same coin:
— Apple desperately needs to enter a new product category;
— (But it’s already too late because) Apple can’t innovate anymore.

Apple Desperately Needs To Enter A New Product Category

Apple again seen losing steam, new products needed desperately
Apple managed to earn $9.5 billion in profit on $43.6 billion in sales last quarter without launching any exciting new devices, but the long wait for new launches is expected to begin taking its toll this quarter.

Apple’s business model forces it to constantly come up with groundbreaking new products
“At most companies, a year without a major new product release isn’t cause for panic. But Apple isn’t most companies. The problem with that business model is that it forces Apple to constantly come up with a groundbreaking new product.”

Apple needs new hardware
“There’s two reasons Apple needs new hardware: To prove it can still create killer new product categories post-Steve Jobs and because that’s how it makes its money.”

Find a new category to go innovate
“I keep trying to tell Apple…” Misek says, “Find a new category to go innovate.”

Any man who thinks he knows all the answers most likely misunderstood the questions.

Apple, a once-great innovator
“With Apple wrapping up its developer conference this week, the contrast between the once-great innovator that brought the world into the smartphone and tablet era and current Silicon Valley revolutionary Google couldn’t have been more stark … innovation is ideas like Google Glass, which represent new paradigms of human interaction with technology.”

Apple’s trailblazing days are over
“Google’s gaming console: The latest sign that Apple’s trailblazing days are over?”

Apple hasn’t been able to enter any major new product categories in years
“Apple’s stock hasn’t slid because it’s been putting out uninspired hardware — it’s slid because the company hasn’t been able to enter any major new product categories in years….”

If it can’t reinvent a category again soon, Apple could be in big trouble “(Apple) transformed itself from a niche company in the computer world to one that created entirely new categories of gadgets. If it can’t do that again soon, Apple could be in big trouble.”

The list of areas where Apple can repeat its act is dwindling
“In the past, Apple snuck up on people. It entered markets filled with clunky, overly-geeky products, released groundbreaking consumer-friendly versions, and established its dominance before rivals had the chance to respond … But today, we have huge companies investing millions of dollars in products that Apple “may release in the future.” … If there’s any area in which Apple can innovate, chances are, someone has already imagined it, written a blog post about it, Photoshopped it, and created a ready-made blueprint for any company that wants to gamble on it. … The list of areas where Apple can repeat its swoop-in-and-turn-the-industry-upside-down act is dwindling. ((The list of areas where Apple’s opportunities are supposedly dwindling: “TV? Microsoft beat Apple to the punch with futuristic voice and gesture control, and Hollywood doesn’t appear willing to let anyone innovate on the content distribution front. Wearables? Everyone and their mother is making a smartwatch, and Google has Glass locked, loaded, and almost ready to fire. Mobile/desktop PC convergence? Microsoft has already put its chips in that basket. … and then there’s gaming. The established players Sony and Microsoft are continuing to innovate, and now that Google is reportedly making this Android-based gaming console, that’s one less way that Apple can sneak in the backdoor and set the house on fire”.))

By the time Apple does it, it will have already been done
“(L)ike just about every other possible area of innovation, it’s becoming less and less likely that we’ll see more Apple “trailblazing.” … By the time Apple does it (no matter what it is), it will have already been done … and probably much more elegantly than the pre-iPod MP3 players, pre-iPhone smartphones, or pre-iPad tablet PCs.”

iWatch will be another hobby
“Just Like Apple TV, The Apple iWatch Will Be Another Hobby For Tim Cook”

Apple outfoxed: Foxconn first
“Apple outfoxed: Foxconn first to debut iPhone-compatible smartwatch”

Samsung is already working on a watch
“…Samsung …is already working on a watch of its own.”
Samsung unveiled games console first
“Sorry Google And Apple: Samsung Unveiled Games Console First”

Google to beat Apple to products Apple is reportedly developing
“WSJ: Google working on an Android-powered game system, smart watch and new Nexus Q … its reason for jumping into all these categories is to beat products Apple is reportedly developing in the same categories….”

(But It’s Already Too Late Because) Apple Can’t Innovate Anymore

It’s harder to innovate once you’re the incumbent
“Apple’s problem is that it becomes harder to innovate once you’re the incumbent rather than the challenger”.

Apple is not innovative
“Quite frankly, Apple is not innovative…”

Apple aren’t innovating any more
“(Apple) have a right to be proud of their accomplishments, but it’s not surprising that pundits claim they aren’t innovating any more.”

Apple is no longer a leader
“Apple is no longer a leader. Apple has become a challenger that now needs to look up to other leaders across the multiple categories it competes in and figure out what to do next.”

Apple is just another product company
“(T)herein lies the rub and the real tragedy: Apple is quickly becoming just another product company….”

Another company out-innovating Apple
“Cramer: Another Company Out-Innovating Apple?”

Apple has become a design follower
“Apple has become a design follower instead of a leader — and it may be just fine with that”

Apple is a lagging brand
“Apple’s Fall From Leading To Lagging Brand”

Stunning nine month gap between product events
“Apple will hold its first major product event in nine months on Monday, a stunning gap for a company that relies on regularly impressing customers with new innovations.”

A bear walks into a bar and says, “Bartender, I’d like a gin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and tonic.” And the bartender says, “Sure, but what’s with the big pause?”

Jony Ive is meddling in software
“Sir Jony has been trapped in a monochromatic hardware world of his own making for so long that now that he’s allowed to meddle in software, he’s pulled out that box of Crayolas he’s kept locked in the bottom drawer and let loose his inner Wonderland.”

The end for Apple exceptionalism
“iOS 7 redesign: the beginning of the end for Apple”

Apple plays catch up
“Apple’s primary motivation (with iOS 7) was to play catch up with… no, not Android but with Microsoft.”

All been done before “…Apple has not only failed to truly innovate in its own right, the changes and additions it has introduced (in iOS 7) have all been done before.”

Nothing new
“Is iOS 7 Apple’s admission that it has nothing new to bring to the table?”

I miss John Dvorak and Rob Enderle…but my aim is improving. ~ John Kirk

The Wide Lens

“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” ~ Winston Churchill

I mean, honestly, could Apple’s critics be any more wrong? Could they have it any more backwards? Do they know nothing at all about Apple or the Tech industry? The very people who seem most certain of Apple’s future (or lack thereof) are also the very people who seem most ignorant of Apple’s past. The following lengthy excerpts are quoted from Ron Adner’s: “The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss.”

[pullquote]Jobs tended to be late for everything because he wanted everything to be ready for him[/pullquote]

“(Steve) Jobs tended to be late for everything because he wanted everything to be ready for him. Jobs understood that the natural trajectory of challenges is toward the (smart mover, not the) first mover. (When the co-innovation of an ecosystem is required), the pioneer has no advantage. In fact, the pioneer is at a slight market share disadvantage relative to laggards. The “system” works to resolve co-innovation challenges, while industry rivals figure out execution.” “Reflecting on catching technology waves in 2008, (Steve Jobs) said:

“Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. Those waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you’re going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely, it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.”

“His insight was to ‘surf’ the co-innovation wave, knowing that its challenges would be resolved over time. His brilliance was to wait to expend his energy on the execution challenge.”

Waiting To Catch The MP3 Wave “Steve Job’s iPod journey is an exemplary illustration. Jobs knew that, on its own, an MP3 player was useless. He understood that, in order for the device to have value, other co-innovators in the MP3 player ecosystem first needed to be aligned.” “Jobs constructed the iPod ecosystem. (Then) Apple waited, and then waited some more…. As the iPod’s co-innovation risks faded away — when (the) pieces were solidly in place — both MP3s and broadband were finally widely available — (Apple) finally made its move, putting the last two pieces in place to create a winning innovation: an attractive, simple device supported by smart software.” “With its proprietary hardware-software combination, (Jobs) didn’t just put down the last piece, he put down the last two pieces. And he made sure they interlocked. Apple didn’t launch the iPod as a product. In combination with its iTunes music management software, the iPod was a solution.” “By shifting to offering solutions, Apple increased the execution challenge for itself as well as for everyone else, effectively lowering the value of competitor’s previous efforts and increasing the barrier for rivals to achieve future success.”

Waiting To Catch The Smart Phone Wave

[pullquote]Once again, Jobs was late – five years late[/pullquote]

“Once again (with the iPhone), Jobs was late – five years late.” “And rivals didn’t seem to care.” “Reacting to Apple’s January 2007 announcement of the iPhone (six months before its launch), Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry shrugged, “It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers.” “Asked to react to the announcement of the iPhone, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer literally laughed out loud.” “Steve Jobs could smile because he knew what (his) ecosystem carryover meant. Of the 22 million iPods sold during the 2007 holiday season, 60 percent went to buyers who already owned at least one iPod. The iPhone was not going to be a new entrant fighting to capture attention in a crowded mobile phone market. It was the next generation iPod. By carrying over the key elements of the iPod ecosystem, he would carry over his buyers too.”

The Critics Have Gotten It All Wrong

Apple’s critics seem to be diagonally parked in a parallel universe

After reading the excerpts from Ron Adner’s book, you can see just how wrong the critics have been.

A bartender walks into a church, a temple and a mosque. He has no idea how jokes work.

Some technology pundits appear to have no idea how tech works, either.

“Some people get lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.” ~ G. Behn

Not only have the critics gotten it wrong, but they have gotten it exactly backwards. Their advice constitutes the worst possible course of action for Apple, not the best.

Listening to free advice of a certain kind costs you nothing…unless you act upon it.

The critics don’t remember Apple’s history or tech history or the history of innovation.

Why don’t Apple’s innovation critics make ice-cubes? They can’t remember the recipe.

[pullquote]Stop telling us that you can predict the future when you can’t even recall the past[/pullquote]

Apple’s critics need to stop telling us that they can predict Apple’s future when they’ve already proven that they are not even capable of accomplishing the far simpler task of recalling Apple’s past.

The past, the present and the future walked into a bar. Then things got tense.

The facts can always be ignored, but one does so at one’s peril.

A drunk walks into a bar. “Ouch!” he says.

Nor does ignoring the facts change the facts or make them go away.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” ~ Aldous Huxley

When you’ve got your facts wrong, the second thing you need to do is more research.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswomen, “Where’s the self-help section?” she said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

When you’ve got your facts wrong, the first thing you need to do is just shut up.

First law on holes – when you’re in one, stop digging. ~ Denis Healey

Categories

What is this nonsense about there not being any more tech categories to conquer? The best way to evaluate whether Apple could enter a market is to ask whether people are satisfied with their current user experience. Where there is dissatisfaction, there is opportunity.

First

What is this obsession with being first to market?

[pullquote]It is better to be a smart mover than a first mover[/pullquote]

— Did being first help MP3 Man in MP3 Players, Palm, Nokia or Rim in smart phones, Microsoft in tablets, Microsoft or Google in TVs?
— Did not being first hurt Apple in iPods, iPhones or iPads?

No, in an ecosystem that demands co-innovation, it is better to be a smart mover than a first mover. Arguing that Apple has missed the streaming music or the console or the TV or the wearables market is like arguing that Apple has missed the train when the tracks have yet to be laid.

Apple Is Surfing The Innovation Wave (Like Mavericks)

Apple is doing what it has always done – and what it has always done successfully. They are surfing the innovation wave, just waiting for the complementary ecosystem parts to catch up. Apple isn’t late, the co-innovation wave is late. And when that co-innovation wave finally arrives, history tells us that Apple will be ready.

Rainbows & Innovations

images-70Rainbow

Rainbows don’t appear when it isn’t raining or in the darkness of the night or after every rain shower, but that doesn’t mean that there will never be a rainbow ever again. Rainbows only occur when all the conditions are right.

Significant tech innovation doesn’t appear every day, or every month, or every year, and new tech categories are rarer than hen’s teeth, but that doesn’t mean that there will never be innovation ever again.

Innovations only occur when the conditions are right.

Study the industry. Wait for the conditions to be right. And while you’re waiting for the next tech innovation, the next tech category, or even the next rainbow…

…don’t be an a$$.

Why Apple’s New Designed in California Ads are Strategic for the USA

There was a recent report that Apple’s current “Designed in California” ads were not a hit with consumers and various writers who reported on this urged Apple to change them and to start bringing out cool ads again.
While the ads may not seem cool to some, for Apple these ads are very strategic and will run as long as it takes for Apple to hit home the message that the fruit of Apple’s labor starts here and regardless of where they are manufactured, these are American bred products.

Apple has always been proud of the fact that they are an American company and more specifically, a major force in the growth of Silicon Valley that for decades has been and still remains the epicenter of all things tech. This ad helps reinforce the idea that Silicon Valley is not going away and in fact will continue to be a major tech design center well into the future.

But I also believe that Apple has been reading the tea leaves and has seen how Congress and many of the American people are going down a track to try and bring more manufacturing back to the US. They also understand that creating US designed products will be more strategic to the USA’s long term vision of making the US much more relevant in a time of globalization.

You may think that I am crazy suggesting this, but even Apple’s competitors are seeing that if the products are designed and manufactured over here that they may be seen more favorably by consumers. More importantly, it could give them favor with the US government and the American people who are getting more and more concerned that the US is loosing its edge, especially to S. Korea and China.

The Japanese car makers have been doing this for years. Besides doing a lot of actual manufacturing in US cities, a lot of the actual design work is being done here as well. They just don’t tout it like Apple is doing with the “designed in California” campaign.

Interestingly, Samsung, who is Apple’s biggest competitor these days, is moving more and more development to California. They are adding a huge extension to their San Jose Campus and building up their research center in Palo Alto. They are expected to hire more than 2000 hardware and software engineers in Silicon Valley to populate these new facilities over the next two years.

If US consumers, the US government, and US companies start emphasizing the new battle cry “designed in the USA” to bolster their position in the face of the globalization challenge, Samsung could soon say that their products too are “designed in California.” But this is where Apple has a gotcha for Samsung.

Not only is Samsung a S. Korean company, but as a S. Korean company they are very nationalistic. Can you imagine Samsung US trying to convince their top corporate execs to launch a Samsung ad campaign stating “Designed in the US or CA” and getting their OK for this ad? Not happening.

Google is also following Apple’s lead and taking it a step further and through their Motorola division, just started running ads that say that your smartphone can even be designed by you and will be made in the USA.

Neither of these companies are doing this because they recently caught some nationalistic fever. Both realize that globalization is a much bigger threat to the US and their own markets and that is time to be very clear that the USA is still top dog when it comes to its role in the tech market and that people from around the world need to value this fact. Apple is also leading the charge to bring at least some of their manufacturing back to the US and will make the new Mac Pro in Austin, Texas.

With these ads, Apple is positioning themselves as a leader in this “USA Designed” category of products that I am hearing Washington is quite fond of. I also expect these ads to influence more US based companies who design products in the US to soon emphasize this fact too. Apple is just ahead of this trend and leading the charge.

Windows 8.1: A Step Forward, a Ways To Go

Windows 8.1 has arrived, at least in preview form. And while it shows that Microsoft has made significant improvements in the eight months since the original version of Windows 8 shipped, it also shows just how far the software has to go before it becomes a truly useful advance.

I have been running 8.1 for the past week on a Lenovo ThinkPad Helix, a convertible design that gave the experience of using it both on a more-or-less conventional touchscreen laptop and on a standalone table. I would also have liked to try it on a Hewlett-Packard Envy x2 convertible, but the current preview edition does not work on the Envy’s Atom processor (the Helix is powered by an Intel i5.)

Microsoft seems anxious to have as many people as possible try 8.1, an unusual approach to software that has not been officially released. While Apple is restricting access to the preview version of OS X Mavericks to registered, paid members of the Mac development program, Microsoft is advertising 8.1 to all comers in the Windows store. It’s a big download, over two gigabytes, but the installation was painless.

The two most talked-about changes in 8.1 turn out to be no big deal. A simple change in Taskbar properties gives a number of new startup options, including booting directly to the legacy Desktops instead of the new Metro-style startup screen. But since all it ever took to get from the Start screen to the Desktop was a single click or screen tap, this isn’t exactly a revolution.

Similarly, the return of the Start button has been greatly exaggerated (though, in fairness, Microsoft has been making it clear for some time what the new Start button would do.) What’s new is a Windows icon at the far left of the Taskbar, where Windows 7’s round Start button used to be. Tapping it has exactly the same effect as pressing the Windows key on the keyboard or swiping in from the right and tapping Start: It brings up the Start page. If the appropriate property is set, it will take you to the Apps list instead, which is kinda, sorta like the old Start menu. (If this option is chosen, it affects all three methods; all will bring up the Apps list instead of the Start page.) But I never considered the absence of the Start button as anywhere close to the heart of Windows 8’s problems, so I find the value of this change to be modest.[pullquote]I never considered the absence of the Start button as anywhere close to the heart of Windows 8’s problems, so I find the value of this change to be modest.[/pullquote]

Far more useful is a major expansion in your ability to configure and control your system from within the Metro interface. In the original version of Windows 8, all but the simplest tasks required opening a Desktop control panel. 8.1 lets you do most of the chores you encounter with any frequency by tapping the Change PC Settings option you are offered with the Settings charm, from adding or modifying a user account to choosing accessibility options. This is a considerable benefit when working without a keyboard in tablet mode; those Desktop control panels are very difficult to handle with touch. One area where the new approach falls short, though, is networking; dealing with any real connectivity issues, including any troubleshooting, still requires going to Desktop.

Another significant change is greater flexibility in showing more than one app in Metro. The original version let you open a second app, but it was restricted to a vertical strip of a quarter of the screen on the left or right. Now you can choose among a quarter, a third, or half of the screen and, on big enough displays, you can open three apps. But they are still restricted to non-overlapping vertical strips, an arrangement far inferior to traditional windows on larger displays. Choosing which applications get to share the screen is also an unnecessarily fiddly process.

Many of the annoyances from the original Windows 8 remain. The need to switch between Metro and Desktop modes is reduced but not eliminated, regards of your choice of primary mode, and Desktop is still mostly unusable in touch. (Lenovo’s inclusion of a stylus with the Helix is helpful, but at the same time an admission of failure.) And after eight months, the lack of third-party Metro remains a huge problem. The necessity to switch to Desktop could be greatly reduced if there were more native apps available.

There’s also the problem that Windows 8 does not let you chose different default apps in different modes. Where Metro versions exist, they are the defaults; for example, clicking on a picture file in Desktop opens the Metro Photos app rather than the Desktop Photo Viewer. There’s no way to set separate defaults for each mode if that’s what you would prefer. The exception is Internet Explorer 11, where the appropriate version opens in each mode. But only if IE is your default browser. If you switch to, say, Chrome, you will get the Desktop version of IE in both Desktop and Metro. Go figure.

The real test for Windows 8 will come this fall, when Microsoft plans to unveil a touch-optimized version of Office. Its big selling point for Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets such as the Surface Pro and Surface has been the unique availability of Office. But Office, even with the touch enhancements of Office 2013, is a deeply unsatisfactory experience on a tablet.

Tabletizing Office is no easy task. To work well with touch, its interface has to be simplified radically, meaning that many features will have to be eliminated or hidden. With a 20-year history of Office applications providing every option, bell, or whistle that any user might want, this sort of pruning runs deeply against the grain. But including too many features will, ironically, seriously compromise usability. It will be very interesting to see what choices Microsoft makes.

Finally, a plea to Microsoft and its OEM partners: Please fix the behavior of touchpads in Desktop. Laptops designed for Windows 8 generally come with large, no-button touchpads. MacBooks set the standard for these some years ago: A one-finger tap acts like a normal mouse click, a two-finger tap brings up a context menu. This works on Windows touchpads but, in keeping with the Windows philosophy that there must always be more than one way to do anything, a tap on the right side of the touchpad, with one or two fingers, also brings up a context menu. This is disorienting, unnecessary, and symptomatic of Microsoft’s inability to ever let anything go.

Lenovo, to its credit, offers its own solution. A tab buried deep in the Mouse control panel lets you restrict the right-click effect to a small area of the pad. It even lets you set the area in the lower right corner when you are using the touchpad as a pointer and in the upper right corner when you are using the ThinkPad eraser-head TrackPoint. It’s a rare win for traditional, flexibility, and convenience. Windows 8 could use a few more of these.

A Requiem for ‘Classic’ iOS

On the iOS 7 Design page, Apple says:

The interface is purposely unobtrusive. Conspicuous ornamentation has been stripped away. Unnecessary bars and buttons have been removed. And in taking away design elements that don’t add value, suddenly there’s greater focus on what matters most: your content.

In the weeks following the WWDC keynote, much has been written about iOS 7's redesigned user interface. The word that keeps coming up to describe the changes is polarizing. Some people like it, whereas others hate it; there seems to be no middle ground. However, I think it's fair to say that everyone can agree that iOS was long overdue for a facelift.

While I'm in full agreement that iOS needed its user interface refreshed, a part of me is genuinely sad to be losing the "classic", Forstall-era iOS. For all Apple's boasting about doing away with "conspicuous ornamentation". I very much enjoy several of the skeuomorphic elements of iOS, such as the faux wooden shelving in iBooks and Newsstand. Other graphical favorites of mine include the paper-shredding animation in Passbook, as well as Cover Flow in Music. These bits of eye candy give iOS personality and an air of playfulness, and I'm going to miss them. Conversely, there are elements I won’t miss, like the Corinthian leather in Find My Friends and the yellow legal pad in Notes.

The arrival of iOS 7 this fall will truly mark the end of an era. That iOS's user interface has undergone such a dramatic overhaul is great in the sense that it's more modern and fresh-looking, but it's also a clear sign that Apple has driven a stake through the heart of the canonical design. That's sad for me, because not only am I losing beloved graphical elements like Cover Flow, it feels like the iconic design is gone forever. In other words, the iOS that made the iPhone and iPad what they are today will soon be a relic, ancient history. ((To be clear, iOS 7, conceptually, remains true to the iterations before it. What I'm addressing here is purely the Jobs and Forstall-influenced aesthetic.))

Of course, the impetus for giving iOS a complete makeover is precisely because it was looking like an ancient relic. My feelings are conflicted, though: on one hand, I feel wistful towards the "classic" design, yet on the other I use my iPhone 4S running iOS 6, and it looks and feels old. It reminds me that iOS needed a change, and makes me even more excited for iOS 7.

I'm sure that once I've used iOS 7 for awhile that I'll love it, and complain that some of my "legacy" apps look dated within the context of the new design. My sentiments aside, I know updating iOS's design was the right thing to do, long-term. I understand that iOS 7 is about putting content first. I look forward to seeing how Jony Ive and his team evolve the operating system from here on out. It's an exciting time — iOS 7 lays the foundation for the next phase of the OS's life.

I think the iOS as we know it today will always have a place in my heart. I'm going to miss the page-turning animation in iBooks and the reflections of the icons in the Dock. I'll even miss the linen and the ON/OFF toggle switches. But I am undoubtedly excited for iOS 7 and beyond, and I realize change is good and inevitable. The good part is I still have my original iPad running iOS 5. If I ever find myself getting sentimental over the old design, I can always fire up the old iPad. That'll be a nice stroll down memory lane.

Well, until I see Game Center's green felt.

Windows 8.1 Does Little to Boost Holiday 2013 Sales

Last week, I tuned into Microsoft’s Channel 9 to listen to keynotes and developer lectures for MS BUILD, Microsoft’s developer conference. BUILD attracts Microsoft devotees from its developer community for PCs, phones, servers and even XBOX.

The biggest item on everyone’s mind was Windows 8.1 and how Microsoft planned to breathe developer life into the platform. The conference was set against a backdrop of flagging PC sales and a PC ecosystem that is one edge, anxious to decide where they should be making their future investments. When BUILD concluded and the smoke cleared, my takeaway was that Windows 8.1 is a step forward, but will do little to boost holiday 2013 sales. Ironically, the hardware could make a difference. Let’s start with what 8.1 brings to the table.

Windows 8.1 was about two things- making Windows 8 more comfortable for traditional Windows desktop users and completing the base Windows tablet experience. Here is a list of the top features making it easier for desktop users:

  • Adding back the Start menu: While in the desktop app, clicking on the white Windows flag takes you back to the start screen in Metro. Right-clicking the flag let’s you shut down the system and access key desktop settings.
  • Boot to Desktop: Windows 8.1 let’s you boot to the desktop app, which is essentially the Windows 7 experience .
  • Remove Charms: Allows users to disable charms when you place your cursor in the top right or bottom right corner of the display.
  • Jump to All Apps: Upon pressing the Windows flag in desktop, this can take you to the All Apps page. If selected in settings, this means users will never have to see a Live Tile unless they want to.

So literally, if you don’t want to see much of anything that Windows 8 brings over Windows 7, Windows 8.1 will let you do that. Let’s move to the Windows 8.1 features that signify completion of the base Windows 8 tablet experience:

  • 8″ tablets: Windows 8.1 supports 8″ tablets, the volume driver in its category.
  • System-wide search: Instead of choosing between searching for apps, settings or files, the new search searches everything. This reminds me of Windows 7 and of OS X, but is arguably a better search than 8.
  • Basic photo and video editing: Windows 8 had no photo or video editing, obviously a feature left on the cutting room floor given every major OS has this already, including Windows 7. Windows 8.1 brings some basic and touch-optimized tools to the table. I really like the dials in photo editing.
  • Improved App Snapping: Windows 8 limited users to simultaneously display two apps, one occupying 75% of the display and one occupying the other 25% of the display. This limited the amount and kind of apps users could run. 8.1 adds up to 4 windows of varying sizes. This is a big step but I find it still difficult to get the windows in the right place.
  • Miracast: This enables 8.1 devices to wirelessly share their display when connected to a Miracast-certified devices listed here. This really helps plug the AirPlay hole. I have yet to test this feature pervasively, but I hope it is nearly as solid as AirPlay or it won’t be widely adopted.
  • Tile customization: Tiles can be 4 different sizes and similar apps can be assembled together with header names. This isn’t as clear as folders but extends the platform and makes it simpler than before.

[pullquote]All of these improvements to the desktop and tablet mode are a real step forward, but unfortunately won’t make a big difference on sales in holiday 2013. [/pullquote]

Why? You first have to understand what’s holding Windows 8 back in the consumer marketplace.

As I have been very consistent on, I am a believer that the closer the PC gets to the tablet, consumers will be more likely to buy a new PC. It won’t be one watershed event, but a long term evolution of the PC into the simple, always on, always updated, snappy, thin, light, reliable, with many apps, and 10+ hour battery life device. Many users appreciate this today in the the iPad, Nexus, Galaxy, Kindle Fire, etc.

The clear majority of Windows 8 PCs shipped up to this point, however, were quite different than the optimal. Most delivered three hours battery life, were heavy, difficult to use versus a tablet, weren’t touch-based, weren’t always-on or always connected, a bit lethargic and didn’t offer the consumer app library. Either that or they were expensive if you couldn’t use them as a “2 in 1” device (some usage models yes, but not all). What problems does Windows 8.1 help solve? Let me give 8.1 credit where it is due- 8.1 is simpler and more robust than 8. For the other consumer issues outlined above, 8.1 doesn’t improve a whole lot of anything. While I was initially excited about the prospect of an 8″ tablet, it was squelched by the awful reviews of Acer’s 8″ tablet. I didn’t sense confidence after listening to BUILD that tier 1 and 2 apps will grow in numbers, even though I was excited about Facebook coming to the platform.

Does this mean the industry should pack it in for holiday 2013 and go home? Absolutely not, as hardware could help turn the tide for Holiday 2013. Between Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Nvidia and their OEMs, they have the ability to bring the required touch-based snappiness, always-on, always-connected, thin, light, with 10+ hours battery life to tablets and convertibles, all at a decent price. Think of the irony for a second; hardware helping save software. Sad, but true nonetheless. This isn’t to say Microsoft’s efforts won’t make a different for the holidays, because they will. But I believe their latest retail strategy will make a much bigger impact than they made with the improvements made in Windows 8.1.

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The Liberating 2013 MacBook Air

A few years back I declared the 13″ MacBook Air the perfect notebook. With the recently released 2013 refresh, Apple just made the perfect notebook even better. They did it with one feature that has taken notebook computers to a new level–true all-day battery life.

Cable Free

There is something wonderfully liberating about not needing to worry about plugging your laptop in. Transformative is another word I’ve heard from those I’ve talked with who also have one of the new Airs. The experience actually reminds me quite a bit like the first time I got a hybrid car. Being able to drive longer and farther without having to think or plan trips around gas stations was wonderfully liberating. This is the same feeling I have now using the new MacBook Air.

It seems like a small thing, but not having to worry about, or even really think about where I sit in meetings, at airports, in airplanes, etc., is wonderfully freeing. No longer do I need to plan my day around a power outlet.

A Typical Day

Often times what will come up in this discussion is what a typical computing day looks like for me. I don’t have a desk job so I am highly mobile on a regular basis. More often than not I am on the road heading to other companies offices for meetings. At these meetings I am usually note taking, or sharing a presentation with our market insights. Obviously, as I go from place to place my notebook is not open and just in sleep mode.

Even when I am stationary or at a desk, I’m mostly checking email, Twitter, working on a column or report, or just browsing the web. Because I am bouncing around Silicon Valley so often, I usually do a lot of these tasks from Starbucks or some other location where I can use Wi-Fi. Doing my normal workflow at home or on the go, I am charging my new MacBook Air about every two days. As an aside point, I started this column after a full nights charge. After working for the past 20 min, I just looked at the estimated time remaining and it says 13 hrs and 08 min.

A Story Tells it All

My first true all day computing test happened this last week when I attended Microsoft’s build conference. The press and media were let into the keynote at 8:30 am, which is about the time I sat down and opened my notebook. They had power outlets available at the tables but I didn’t plug in since I was working on a full charge from the night before. ((I’m also noticing this new Air is charging faster, taking roughly two hours to go from nearly empty to fully charged)) I used the machine non-stop until the keynote ended around 10:45 am when I shut my notebook and walked to the press room to write.

I sat down and opened my Air in the press room a little after 11:00 am. ((When lunch is free in the press room you learn to get there to get in line early.)) Out of habit, I instantly checked how much time I had left on battery power. The battery status indicator estimated I still had 9 hrs 57 min left on battery power. I remained working in the press room until 2:00 pm when I left to meet up with some friends and check out the exhibits.

I got back into the press room to reply to emails and do more writing around 4pm and again checked my battery status out of habit. It estimated I had 6 hrs 23 min remaining. I worked there until 5:45 pm until I moved to the Mariott down the street to work from the bar. I went there to kill time before heading to the Microsoft party that night. Actually, if I’m being honest, I went there to get Pliny the Elder, the best beer (an IPA) in the world. When I got to the Mariott about 6pm I again checked my battery status. After working all day, I still had 5 hrs and 15 min estimated remaining. I worked there for an hour until I left for the event. I didn’t open the notebook the rest of the night. Never once during this day of fairly intensive use at a conference did I ever need to worry about plugging in. I also learned I don’t need to constantly check my battery status either any more. [pullquote]The kind of battery life experiences I am having with this new 13″ MacBook Air are more iPad like than notebook like.[/pullquote]

Compared to my old MacBook Air which I got two years ago, I am getting better than double battery life. The kind of battery life experiences I am having with this new 13″ MacBook Air ((I bought the fully loaded 13″ MacBook Air with the dual-core 1.7 ghz 4th generation Intel core and 512gb solid state drive with 8gb 1600 mhz DDR3 RAM. )) are more iPad like than notebook like. ((I keep the screen brightness set to 50% and I do not have Power Nap or app updates set to install during sleep mode while on battery power. I also keep the keyboard backlight set to auto. Other than that nothing special going on.))

Mavericks Advantage

As I pointed out in my article on OS X Mavericks from Friday, and although it is only a hunch at this point, I have a theory that OS X Mavericks will bring even better battery life improvements to the already stellar MacBook Air.

I’ve talked to several folks who are running the OS X Mavericks developer preview on their 15″ rMBP and are seeing significant battery improvements one even said he was getting better than 10 hours.

I’m looking forward to quantifying this point. With what I know technically about what is happening under the hood with OS X Mavericks advanced technologies, it’s hard to believe that it will not add even better performance to any machine running it.

Non-Retina?

In an age of high definition TVs, PCs, smartphones and tablets, it may be hard to conceive getting a non-retina like display in a notebook. I have many true high-definition PCs to test including a Retina MacBook Pro. Although I love the screens on these devices, the battery life improvements are so important to me due to the nature of my mobility that it is well worth the trade-off for me.

Too Good to Be True?

I’ve told many about these experiences and more over the past week and most have a hard time believing it. I even thought it was too good to be true when I first heard the claims. But after a week and a half with the new MacBook Air I can testify that this notebook more than delivers on its battery life claims. You can also check out these interviews with some other new MacBook Air owners for their battery life testimonials as well.

10 years ago or so, I was one of the few in press rooms and meeting rooms with a Mac. Now I’m one of the few who doesn’t need to worry about where a power outlet is.

A Week With OS X Mavericks

As I watched Apple announce and demonstrate many of the key new features in OS X Mavericks, I was continually struck with the same thought about the many features being shown. To me, they all seemed very useful.

In fact, the last few years it seems I have had the same feeling with each and every release. Each time its gets better and each time OS X gets even more useful features for desktop and notebook computer users. I’ve been using Mavericks for a week now and here are a few of my stand out experiences.

Surfing On Mavericks

Perhaps it is fitting that with this version of OS X named Mavericks, which is named after the epic big wave surf spot near Half Moon Bay, CA, Apple has released hands down the best web surfing experience on a Mac yet. The new Safari is noticeably faster. Which is saying something in an age of micro-second performance increases. Browsing the web simply feels snappy and quick.

Scrolling however, something we all do many times a day, is now super smooth and more like scrolling on an iPad or iPhone. Scrolling in this new version of Safari simply needs to be seen to be fully appreciated. I compared it to my other Mac running Lion and found that scrolling in Mavericks is noticeably smoother and more fluid. Making reading while scrolling feel like an entirely new experience.

Shared links is also a feature on the new Safari I found myself using more than I thought. I spend a lot of time on Twitter but not everything in my timeline is a link. I found myself using the shared links features to just filter what people I follow on Twitter are linking to.

Multiple Display Features

When I’m stationary at my home or work office, I use several monitors. I have a theory, the more monitors your use, the more productive you can be. It’s true for me at least. So it was no surprise to me, given my workflow, that I appreciate the new multiple display features.

In particular, the menu bars and docks are now available on all monitors, which is extremely handy. It may seem like a little feature but it’s actually a big deal in increasing efficiency of workflow when using multiple monitors. You kind of feel like you are using three actual Macs when in this multi-screen mode.

Another aspect of the new multiple display features I found quite useful was AirPlay display. This new feature lets you turn any TV connected with Apple TV into a secondary display. This has been extremely useful for me because I often work with others on presentations or data gathering in a collaborative environment. We do this through Apple TV connected to a TV in our conference room. Usually I just Airplay my display which will mirror my Mac’s screen to the TV. Now we can use the TV as a separate display to keep specific data on screen while we work collaborate on the other.

Interactive Notifications

When Apple added notifications to OS X, it was one of the features I was looking forward to the most. Yet once I started using them, I immediately felt it would be nice if I could delete an email or respond to one right from the notification.

After having and using interactive notifications on my developer preview of Mavericks, it is hard to imagine living without it. Chalk this up as a feature I hope comes to iOS notifications on iPad.

Overall Performance Increases

Apple lists several new features to Mavericks which they call “advanced features.” These advanced features, like app nap, timer coalescing, compressed memory, and more, are all designed to optimize the performance of your Mac. These optimizations lead to speedy and more responsive experiences with things like apps, the web, etc., but will also lead to better battery life gains.

I’ve been testing OS X Mavericks on a 13″ rMBP which is not my every day machine. I’d have liked to compare exact machines to quantify some battery life gains but I don’t have a second of the exact same machine. Some of these points are hard to quantify but I am including them to make an observation and propose a theory.

I’ve bought and moved to the new MacBook Air 13″ running Intel’s latest low power but high performance 4th generation core processor code named “Haswell” as my everyday machine and I’m running OS X Mountain Lion. Even without running OS X Mavericks the battery life I am getting on this Mac is profound and transformative. It is more than double what I was getting with my MacBook Air of two years ago. I’m planning a full article on my experience with this product but the bottom line is I can work all day in meetings, take notes, browse the web, etc., and I no longer need to worry about plugging in my notebook.

My theory is that OS X Mavericks is going to increase the battery life even more on this new MacBook Air–and all Apple notebooks for that matter–when it launches. The 2013 MacBook Air already has industry leading battery life and my guess is that OS X Mavericks will make it even better.

Overall, Apple is continuing their trend of adding new and useful features on an annual basis. But more importantly, in the grand scheme of things, OS X Mavericks represents Apple’s commitment to innovate uniquely for different form factors. Apple has drawn a line in the sand and stated with their actions that they believe software for the PC is different and should be treated different than software for tablets and smartphones. This does not mean all our screens are islands- quite the contrary. They share experiences and get more tightly integrated relationships in the multi-screen reality we live in. But it does mean that Apple is committed to delivering the best desktop and notebook computing experience possible. Mavericks represents this for Apple. Evolving computing is all about making computing accessible and enabling solutions that makes computing easy, effective, and convenient. Mavericks delivers on this promise.

When Mavericks comes out the experience scrolling with Safari and the advanced features leading to better system optimization and battery life alone will be worth it for me.

E3 2013: Fighting the Console Wars One More Time

Prologue
E3 is technically a trade show closed to the general public, but E3 apparently grants industry status to anyone who has ever worked at a Gamestop or Target (Target sells videogames, right?). As such, the show is more like Comicon than CES. Some attendees dress as their favorite video game characters, there are enormous props (World of Tanks had an actual tank parked in front of the convention center), and there are longer lines for free t-shirts than to try new game systems.

Oddly, E3 also does not evenly represent the world of electronic gaming. Exhibitors didn’t highlight the highest revenue platforms and genres or the biggest areas of growth. Instead, they skewed their exhibits towards a very specific audience: 25 year-old U.S. male console gamers. Fighting and role-playing genres were everywhere, while strategy, sports, dance, and puzzle games were not – even though more people play the latter category overall. E3 focuses more on living room consoles than PCs, even though PC gaming brings in more revenue, especially outside the U.S. PopCap was heavily promoting a new iteration of Plants vs. Zombies, but other than that, casual PC and web games were not well represented. A greater emphasis on consoles is to be expected in a year when a new generation of them is launching, but this pattern has held for several years, and the enormous growth in mobile gaming was almost entirely ignored. Last year, several major mobile game vendors from Asia had booths; this year they stayed home.

Finally, there was barely any mention of other forms of electronic entertainment at E3 beyond video games, despite the name of the conference (Electronic Entertainment Expo) and the fact that Microsoft reported consumers spend more time watching streaming media on their Xbox than they do playing games.

Sony and Microsoft both preempted E3 with previews of their next-generation game consoles. Sony held a large press conference in New York back in February, and Microsoft hosted a much smaller event on its Redmond campus in May. Just ahead of E3, Microsoft clarified its incredibly complicated policies on connectivity and used games, which allow consumers to play their games on friends’ Xbox One systems from the cloud, but restrict how games can be transferred. That left a lot less to talk about at E3 beyond pricing and extensive game demos.

The Main Event (Microsoft v. Sony: Fight!)

Sony’s decision to price the PS4 at $399 drew cheers, but mainly in comparison to Microsoft’s $499 Xbox One. Drawing even more positive feedback, Sony lampooned Microsoft’s move to DRM and connectivity mandate. Microsoft’s policies are definitely not consumer friendly – or easily understood – but are likely to be more significant to E3 attendees than average gamers. The E3 crowd was disdainful of the entertainment and motion gaming capabilities that Microsoft highlighted at its preview, and both Sony and Microsoft focused on traditional console gaming genres in their press conferences. Today’s motion games tend to focus on dance, fitness, and sports. However, the technology included in the Xbox One’s Kinect is truly astonishing, and the fact that every Xbox One will come with Kinect could lead to must-have game titles in the future.

The new Kinect is dramatically more sophisticated than the original. It works in low light and is not affected by concentrated light sources (like halogen lamps). It works in smaller rooms, enables a larger number of gamers, detects an incredible amount of detail – including gamers’ heart rates based on skin coloration! – and its microphones are more sensitive for voice commands. Sony does have a new PlayStation Camera (replacing the PlayStation Eye) for the PlayStation 4, but it is a $59 add-on, and Sony discounted its importance at E3. There were apparently Camera-equipped PS4 systems somewhere at the show, but I couldn’t find them. When I asked Sony about this, they were fairly dismissive about the importance of motion gaming. One rep noted, “you can buy the [PlayStation] Camera, and the new controller can be used with that if you want that type of game.” This could prove to be a big mistake over time as the Xbox One price comes down and developers design software that incorporate voice and gestures alongside the controller – even in traditional game genres. Sony is also behind Microsoft in cloud services; Microsoft has more Xbox Live subscribers than Sony has PlayStation Network accounts, and Microsoft is scaling up its servers further in anticipation of moving more gaming information to the cloud.

Console game sales are down ahead of the new hardware from Microsoft and Sony, but it isn’t clear that consumers are clamoring for new boxes that cost $400 – $500 before factoring in software costs and mandatory subscription fees for online play. I played a lot of games at E3, and the graphics on the next-generation consoles are better, but on many titles, that didn’t appreciably affect gameplay. There will be a lot devices fighting over limited consumer budgets this fall. Tablet and smartphone sales are exploding, and gaming titles for iOS and Android are either free-to-play or cost at most a few dollars a game. Some of these games are coming directly to the television. Ouya’s $99 Android game system was funded in record time at Kickstarter, and Apple is rumored to be opening its $99 Apple TV box to developers in the future as well.

Producing a winning living room game console is still a huge prize, but Sony and Microsoft seem focused exclusively on the living room, when gaming is clearly following computing into mobility. Sony execs were understandably proud of their performance at E3. However, Sony did not provide any more details on how the PlayStation will deliver on the larger vision of consumer-centric, location and device -independent gaming that it described back in New York. Microsoft is not doing much better in this regard. While a Halo game was finally announced for the Windows Phone, it will be an arcade-style top-down shooter, making it Halo in name only. The heavily promoted cross-platform game Spark impressed us by allowing consumers to design their own games on an Xbox One controller, an Xbox 360 controller, or a Windows 8 touchscreen, but it also lacks a Windows Phone version.

Epilogue

Microsoft clearly felt the heat from Sony – and gamers – on the Xbox One’s DRM and connectivity policies. A week after the show, Microsoft reversed nearly all of them: the console will not require connectivity to play standalone games, games will not need to “check in” every 24 hours to remain playable, and it will be possible to share or resell Xbox One discs without restrictions. While some damage was done, the updated policies were received well by the online gaming community. Microsoft was forced to change due to its downright consumer unfriendly DRM, incredibly confusing rules for sharing or reselling games, and the fact that Sony didn’t follow Microsoft into cloud gaming. (Sony gleefully turned the knife in Microsoft with YouTube ads ridiculing Microsoft instead.) However, Microsoft’s original plans offered consumer benefits, too. Microsoft failed to articulate them, but the connectivity and DRM enabled sharing games among family members, and playing games locally or remotely without requiring a disc in the drive. Faced with a consumer backlash, Microsoft had to make changes. Microsoft could have made disc-based purchases work DRM-free, and downloaded purchases work with DRM restrictions but with all the cloud benefits. However, this would have been a more difficult message to deliver. Instead, Microsoft simply went back to the old way of doing things, and consumers will lose out.

In Education, The Tablet Tide Has Turned…And It’s Turned Into a Tidal Wave

Apple introduced the modern day tablet in April 2010. That’s just a little over three years ago. Educational institutions are notoriously conservative – slow to change and slow to adopt new techniques. Yet, here are two stories that show just how quickly tablets are being adopted for use by school age children:

An iPad For Every Student In Los Angeles Public Schools

Los Angeles’ school system, the second largest in the country, is ordering iPads for all its students…$30 million worth of iPads as the first part of a multi-year commitment…Apple says the initial order is for more than 31,000 iPads.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 640,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

It wasn’t even close. The vote of the school board was 6-0.

Despite PC’s “preferred” status, Maine schools go with tablets

Apple’s dominion over Maine schools looked like it would change in April when the Maine Governor’s office announced that the MLTI’s new preferred vendor was Hewlett-Packard – specifically, the HP ProBook 4440 running Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system.

Maine’s massive Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI)…(revealed) that of more than 69,000 machines, only 5,474 will be the preferred Windows laptops. More than 92 percent of state schools are staying with Apple, the majority of which are turning to iPads… 39,457 students and educators in the MLTI are using iPads for the first time.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Tablets

My father was a school superintendent, so I am painfully aware of how maddeningly slow the wheels of education turn. However, the stars may be aligning for a significant change.

1) A tablet for every school child is a done deal. Most people just don’t know it yet. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen oh-so-very-fast.

Pew-Tablet-ownership

The Pew Research Center has been tracking tablet ownership from May 2010 when it recorded that 3% of American’s 18 years and older owned a tablet. From its most recent survey in May of 2,252 adults 34% of American’s owned a tablet, almost a doubling from April 2012.

Tablets have become an accepted part of everyday life and soon they will become an accepted part of education too. In three short years, we’ve already moved from the “Tablets are a stupid idea and it should never be done” phase to the “Of course Tablets are a great idea in education and why haven’t we done it already?” phase.

padagogy-wheel-450x4502) The tablet software industry is already well-established. Mobile software can be purchased cheaply and easily and installed almost instantaneously.

3) Apple has pulled out all the stops to cater to the education sector in its latest iOS version. Microsoft is giving away Surfaces for $199 each. Heck, everyone is going to want a piece of this market.

4) Win-Win. With millions upon millions of children getting tablets, and with hundreds of thousands of app developers using their creativity to develop educational apps in order to make money, maybe – just maybe – we’re on the cusp of seeing a revolution in computing software for education.

I am cautiously optimistic.

Source

Why the FAA Slow Walks Electronics in Planes

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Aviation Administration was moving to relax rules banning passengers from using phones, tablets, and other electronics at the beginning and end of flights. But by Monday, the Journal was warning us, not so fast. It will be many months before the rules change and even then not all devices may be allowed on all planes.

Behold the thalidomide effect. In the early 1960s, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration denied approval to thalidomide, a drug designed to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, thus sparing the U.S. from the severe drug-induced birth defects that plagued Europe. The non-approval won heaps of praise for the agency and for Dr. Frances Kelsey, the examiner whose suspicions kept thalidomide off the U.S. market.  And it greatly strengthened the already strong belief of regulatory agencies that inaction is the safest course for bureaucrats who live in constant fear of political fallout if a decision goes bad.

That bias toward inaction and extreme caution is why the FAA will not spend the next year or so testing every conceivable device in every known type of commercial aircraft before inevitably concluding that the use of electronics is safe in all phases of flight. They will continue to ban the use of cell-type radios during takeoff and landing–you don’t want to take any chances during these critical phases of flight and these signals are orders of magnitude stronger than incidental emissions or even Wi-Fi transmissions.

We know the use of these devices is safe because it is going on all the time.  I don’t think my use of devices is atypical. I dutifully stow stow my phone and tablet for takeoff and landings, but they are in airplane mode,  not shut down. I leave them in airplane mode during the flight because there’s generally no reception above 10,000 feet anyway and leaving the radio on just drains the battery as the device searches for a network. So from beginning to end of any flight, there are undoubtedly dozens of devices powered up at all times. [pullquote]The flight crew’s tablets are used in the cockpit, right on top of the instruments whose putative sensitivity to interference was the original reason for the ban.[/pullquote]

The strongest case for allowing device use comes from the airlines themselves. All of the paper documentation traditionally stowed in the cockpit and carried in the pilots’ flight bags takes space, adds weight, and is an enormous pain for both the airline and the crew to keep up to date. All of this can be eliminated by using tablets, mostly iPads in practice, as electronic flight bags, which airlines are doing as fast as they can. American Airlines just became the first U.S. carrier to complete the transition, including its fleet of ancient MD-80s. And these tablets will be used in the cockpit, right on top of the instruments whose putative sensitivity to interference was the original reason for the ban.

Unlike the Transportation Safety Administration’s ill-fated attempt to allow small pocket knives and other objects back on planes, the new rules on electronics will eventually go into effect. There doesn’t appear to be any organized pushback to the idea. Cabin crews, whose opposition was instrumental to killing the TSA change, will doubtless be glad to stop enforcing rules they, along with everyone else, regard as pointless.

But all the incentives at regulatory agencies are to move slowly and cautiously. So even though the FAA is a sprinter compared to the glacial Federal Communications Commission, it will take many months before any change happens. In the meantime, you’ll just have to make do with the airline magazine, or Skymall, or, as I do, something on paper that you have brought along to amuse yourself for the first and last few minutes of a flight. It really won’t hurt you to do without your electronics for a few minutes.

Instagram Video More a Threat to TV and Camcorders than Vine

Last week, Facebook announced Instagram Video, giving users the ability to take 15 second videos, add special effects and share with their friends. Instagram Video is nearly a feature-by-feature copy of Vine and has been reported to be negatively impacting Vine already. I believe, though, that Instagram Video’s biggest impact will be more on TV viewing and Camcorders than Vine.

If you haven’t used Vine or Instagram Video, it’s hard to explain why it is so addictive. For producers, it’s all about creativity, having fun, capturing “news”, showing off and getting “likes”. Let me use my daughters as an example on the production side. When they go to their friend’s house, what do they do? They are making videos, 8 hours at a time. It reminds me a bit of traditional photo Instagram, but much more intense and time consuming.

The most interesting video capture observation is “gamification”. Neither Vine nor Instagram Video support importing videos, meaning you have to capture the video you want in real-time. There is only minimal video editing in Instagram where you can delete the last video segment taken. What this leads to is the aspect of “challenge”, which I believe makes taking videos all that more addictive. The most interesting features in both programs are the use of filters and image stabilization to make videos look better or artistic.

As I said in the intro, I believe the more interesting discussion isn’t about Vine versus Instagram Video, but about how this increases the acceleration of the demise of the consumer camcorder. Camcorders are great for taking videos of graduations, weddings, baby births and sports events, but that’s about it. Editing consumer videos have been a total nightmare on a PC up until the last few years, which isn’t lost on the general consumer. The video quality and storage is higher on a camcorder than a phone, but then again, so is the picture quality of a discrete point and shoot camera. It’s the same logic here. Both Instagram and Vine give us yet another reason to ditch the camcorder. Let’s talk about viewing videos.

On the viewing side, the behavior is different than on the capture and edit side. It looks and feels more like channel surfing or wading through a Facebook stream. This audience is much, much larger and includes many who don’t enjoy making and editing the videos themselves, but would rather just watch and maybe “Like” or comment on a video. My daughters like to call them “stalkers”.

What makes viewing so addictive is that it is just so personal and has so much depth. Pictures and text are nice, but videos add motion and audio, adding a deeper layer of meaning. This is in part why you now see comedians, indie film makers and novice newscasters flocking to the new media platform. In a sense, the medium becomes real-time reality TV.

The most interesting playback feature is just how quickly videos start playing. Compared to other forms of video, it feels instant, but in reality, there is a small delay. This has a huge effect on just how much this positively adds to the experience. You see, our brains multiply time, meaning that milliseconds feel like seconds. Consumer packaged food makers know this well. This is why consumers will pay 30% more for packaged food that can be opened one second faster.

Like the impact video capture and edit on Vine and Instagram Video had on camcorders, I believe viewing videos has an impact on watching TV. The logic is simple- the more time we are consuming videos, the less time we have the TV switched on. For super-connected homes this has been the case with the trade-off between all forms of social media, smartphones and tablets. Those connected homes are spending less time on the TV and more time on their phones, tablets and PCs. As the content improves and more people are producing even more videos, more people will want to tune into the services to make sure they don’t miss anything.

What’s to put a potential damper on the viewing? Too many ads. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Instagram Video chose the 15 second ad length for their videos. It makes it all that easier to slot in an ad that was produced for TV, which come in 15 second increments.

Net-net, the competitive angle of Vine and Instagram Video is interesting, I believe the genre impact to other mediums and devices is more important. The new Instagram Video harms camcorders and TV viewing a lot more than it does Vine.