Tech.pinions Quick Takes – Page 2

Google vs. Microsoft: Just Cut It Out

Hostilities between Google and Microsoft are heating up, and users are being caught in the crossfire.

Microsoft, of course, has spent the last couple of years trying to bring the wrath of the federal government down on Google. This campaign failed last week, when the Federal Trade Commission let Google off with a mild admonishment because it did not have a case it thought it could win.

There’s no way to know if this is retaliation, but Google seems determined to make life difficult for Microsoft customers. The latest evidence is Google’s apparent decision to block access to Google Maps from Windows Phone 8 handsets. The issue is shrouded in a bit of confusion. Gizmodo first reported the blockage. Google responded by saying that the problem was that the mobile version of Google Maps is designed to work with Webkit browsers and the Windows Phone 8 browser is based on the non-Webkit Internet Explorer. But this explanation fell apart when Microsoft pointed out that the Windows Phone 8 browser is essentially the same as the Windows 8 version of IE, which works just fine with Google Maps.

App developer Matthias Shapiro seemed to settle the argument with a YouTube video that shows calls from Windows Phone 8 to Google Maps failing until the browser-agent string is changed to disguise the browser. With the phony browser-agent string, Google Maps worked just fine (in what appears to be a Windows Phone 8 emulator).

Fortunately, Windows Phone 8 users have other mapping options. I supposed Google has the right to deny its Maps service to any device it wants to block, but this just seems dumb and petty.

In other Google annoyances, yesterday I entered a search string in my Chrome browser and when the search page came up, I got an odd popup asking me if I wanted to share my results on Google+. Thinking that no one could conceivably be interested in my search for information on Fermat’s Little Theorem, I closed the window, unfortunately before I thought to capture a screen shot. I have not yet been able to replicate this behavior, but Google popping up a G+ interstitial every time I do a search could just drive me to Bing.

Qualcomm and the Birth of the Smartphone

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs’ appearance on the Charlie Rose Show brought back memories of the earliest days of smartphones. Jacobs told rose that he originally proposed adding a cellular radio to the Apple Newton MessagePad. When Apple demurred, Jacobs headed to Palm, then owned by 3Com, where he negotiated a license for Qualcomm to build a phone based on Palm OS.

The original Qualcomm pdQ wasn’t very good–I later described it as “a Palm glued to a phone.” It had all the functionality of a Palm 3 PDA and a typical CDMA phone of the late 1990s, but virtually no integration between the two sets of features. As I recall, you couldn’t even dial the phone by looking up a contact on the Palm and tapping the number. The only real advantage was that you got to carry one big device instead of two smaller ones. Needless to say, it sold poorly.

The followup pdQ a couple of years later was a more interesting product. By then, Qualcomm had sold its handset business to Kyocera, including the in-development pdQ 2. The revamped pdQ was a much more appealing product. It was much smaller than the original and offered some real integration of PDA functionality. It also borrowed the primitive Web-browsing capability of the Palm VII. Data communication in those days was limited to a theoretical maximum of 14.4 kilobits per second and you often did much worse than that, so the Palm system relied on pre-digested an condensed web snippets.

Interestingly, in the same BusinessWeek column in which I wrote about the Kyocera pdQ, I also dealt with what turned out to be the true ancestor of the modern smartphone. The Handspring VisorPhone was pretty terrible product from the company set up by Palm’s founders to build licensed Palm-compatibles. The VisorPhone, $299 with contract (!), was a GSM phone module that slid into the accessory slot of a Visor PDA and added phone and SMS apps to the standard Palm repertoire. Not many people bought it, but Handspring used the design experience to build the Treo 300, the first trule integrated smartphone, and the Treo 600, the first successful one.

CLARIFICATION: Turns out folks at Qualcomm in addition to Paul Jacobs have fond memories of the pdQ. Engineers who worked on the project point out that there was some significant integration between the phone and the Palm including the ability to place a call from the Palm Address Book, a “find and dial” search for phone numbers across apps, Address Book search from the phone dialpad, and APIs to give third-party Palm developers access to pdQ phone features. These features don’t sound terribly exciting today, but they were breakthroughs in 1999.

Why Mourn the Death of Pirates?

At some level, I have a bit of grudging admiration for CNET for publishing an article so obviously hostile to the the interests of its corporate parent, CBS. But on the other hand, it is long past time for anyone who want to be considered a responsible commentator on tech to praise common thievery. Christopher MacManus writes:

For many years, Installous offered complete access to thousands of paid iOS apps for free for anyone with a jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Think of it as being able to walk into a fancy department store, steal anything you want, and never get caught.

In my personal experiences with the app, I could often download the latest iOS applications and games for free from a variety of sources within mere seconds. After downloading, you could then install the app on your iDevice as if you purchased it from Apple’s App Store. Additionally, during its prime, it wasn’t unrealistic to expect expensive App Store apps hitting Installous mere hours after release.

I suppose it would also be nice to be able to shoot people I don’t like, but we don’t allow that sort of thing. Folks who download commercial apps they haven’t paid for don’t even have the lame excuse of those who torrent movies or TV shows that aren’t otherwise available for download or streaming. It is stealing pure and simple, and most of the time it isn’t ripping off some big corporation (another lame excuse for theft) but picking the pocket of a developer.

Maybe CNET intended this as some sort of New Year’s joke, in which case it isn’t very funny. MacManus identifies himself as a freelancer, so I imagine he expects to be paid for his work. He should extend the same courtesy to others.

Maps for iOS: What Does Google Have Against Tablets?

Google’s failure to understand that a tablet is something other than a really big phone is becoming one of the great mysteries of the technology world. The Android tablet business has been crippled by a lack of dedicated tablet apps, a situation that Google has done almost nothing to correct. Now Google has confirmed my worst fears with the release of the long-awaited Google maps for iOS.

Google maps for the iPhone is lovely. It’s better than the old Google-based iOS Maps app, adding vector maps and turn-by-turn directions. And it draws on slick search abilities and deep geographic data knowledge, the lack of which can make using Apple’s own Maps app an adventure. And Google maps integrates transit information (a feature sadly not available in the Washington, DC, area.)

But the iPad is a very different story. For whatever reason, Google did not bother to come up with a separate iPad-optimized version. Like any other iPhone app, Maps will run on the iPad, but like any other iPhone app, it looks ghastly. The picture above shows Google Maps on a third-generation iPad in 2X mode (the alternative would be to display an iPhone-sized image in the middle of the screen.) . Scrolling and zooming is not as smooth as on the iPhone, and notice the enormous amount of screen area that is wasted by by simply scaling up the various on-screen controls.

This is all rather hard to understand, since Google should have had no trouble developing an iPad version in parallel with the phone edition. Much smaller developers do this all the time. I can only hope that Google will realize that the iPad is something more than a larger iPhone and correct the error quickly.

Google’s Directionless Map Strategy

Marco Arment on Google Maps:

What this timing (of Google Maps) really shows is how much Google needs to be on iOS. They’re primarily in the business of reaching as many people as possible so they can build up as much data and advertise to as many bodies as possible. Android is an insurance policy against their profitable businesses being locked out of other platforms, not an important profit center itself.

Google’s Android strategy is inconsistent and incomprehensible. Apple never would have created its own mapping program at all if Google hadn’t denied Apple audible turn-by-turn directions. Now – after Apple has integrated their own maps into their iOS operating system – Google gives Apple everything they ever wanted. How does that make any sense?

If Google wanted to deny Apple access to features that were on Android, then they shouldn’t have created Google Maps for iOS. If they wanted iOS eyeballs, then they should have given Apple turn-by-turn directions BEFORE Apple effectively un-integrated Google maps. The whole affair was completely counter-productive for all involved.

You can’t have it both ways. Either Google should be in the business of being on every mobile platform or Google should be in the business of Android. Trying to pursue both strategies is like trying to keep one foot on the dock and the other on the boat. You can’t get anywhere and it’s going to sink you sooner or later.

Why Apple Manufacturing Needs Few Workers

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement that the company would do some Mac assembly in the U.S. brought on a flurry of publicity vastly disproportionate to the importance of the development. It’s good that manufacturers see opportunities for U.S. operations for a variety of reasons, but a big surge of employment isn’t one of them. Dan Luria, a labor economists with the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the Apple operation is likely to add only 200 jobs.

That’s not surprising to anyone who has visited a modern manufacturing facility, or who has seen only pictures of crowded Chinese assembly lines. Most factory work these days, especially in high-tech operations, is done by machines, not people (this is how a manufacturing company like Intel achieved revenues of more than half a million dollars per employee last year.)

The change is most striking in electronics assembly. Circuit board manufacture used to require humans to mount components on boards and solder them in place. Today, components have shrunk to the point where it is difficult at best for humans to place them with sufficient accuracy and impossible to solder by hand. Instead, high-precision robots place the parts on boards, which are then soldered in a quick trip through an induction furnace. Many Chinese factories still use lots of people for final assembly jobs because labor has been cheaper than robots; this is changing fast as Chinese wage rates rise.

A narrowing wage differential is one reason manufacturing in the U.S. is becoming more attractive. Rising shipping costs is another. As Quentin Hardy wrote in the New York Times Bits blog:

“The labor cost on a notebook, which is about 4 to 5 percent of the retail price, is only slightly higher than the cost of shipping by air. Soon even that is likely to change because of the twin forces of lower manufacturing costs from automation and higher transportation costs from rising global activity.”

The good news is that while the jobs are fewer, they are much better than most old factory work. Machines have taken over the heavy, dirty, dangerous jobs. (During my one summer of factory work, I spend a couple of weeks on the shipping line, sealing boxes, and applying shipping labels and postage. Back then, this was all done with glued tape and labels and I ended each shift covered head to waist in glue. I would have paid the robot myself to escape.) The jobs that remain are more for technicians than operatives. They require higher skills and generally offer higher pay and certainly better working conditions.

More Amazing Amazonian Mathematics

Amazon announced today that “[a]pp downloads in the Appstore have grown more than 500 percent over the previous year.” ~ via Gigaom

Of course, we don’t know 500% of what, but what the hey, 500 is a big number, right? We should be duly impressed, no? As they say, it’s all geek to me.

We really need to coin a phrase for what Amazon is doing – releasing numbers without context. Not that Amazon is the first to do this, mind you. I’m sure the Romans were pulling this kind of stunt too:

“First Citizen, Julius Caesar announced today that ‘Our troop strength in Britain has grown by more than MDCCCLXXXVIII over the previous year.”

(That’s 1,888, in case you were wondering.)

Amazon can make all the pronouncements they want. But until they release real numbers, 500% or MDCCCLXXXVIII% of no information still remains…no information.

Dear Amazon: You don’t get to use words like “double”

On Tuesday, Amazon issued a press release entitled: “Worldwide Kindle Device Sales More Than Double Last Year’s Record Over Holiday Shopping Weekend.”

Here’s the thing, Amazon. You never told us last year’s sales numbers. In fact, you never told us ANY sales numbers. Double no information is still…no information.

Dear Amazon: Until you tell us WHAT you’re doubling, you don’t get to pretend that your use of the word “double” has any meaning or significance.

Black Friday Is Morphing Into Black Week

Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine postulates that Black Friday is morphing into Black Weekend:

According to the research firm ShopperTrak, sales on Friday were down 1.8 percent from last year, which is the first dip since the recession hit in 2008. However, that still amounts to a staggering $11.2 billion in sales, and the drop wasn’t caused by Americans reeling in their spending. With retailers starting sales on Thanksgiving this year and extending deals through so-called Cyber Monday, the busiest shopping day of the year has been split into many pieces, and like a consumerism-crazed starfish, it’s now poised to respawn into a multi-day event.

I agree with her observation with one slight caveat. Black Friday is not only extending from Friday through Cyber Monday, but it is also spilling forward onto Thanksgiving Thursday and into the preceding Wednesday too. In other words, the shopping spree is going to start at around 5 pm the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and continue right on through Cyber Monday.

That’s an awfully long time to have a “1-day” sale. And since a LOT of tech gear is sold during that period of time and since a lot of the buying is now being done online, this developing phenomenon is well worth watching.

The Curious Gap Between Android Market Share and Usage

There’s been plenty of debate in these pages and their comments about who is winning and who is losing in the battles between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Asymco’s Harace Dediu takes a close look at Thanksgiving weekend data from the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark and reaches a surprising conclusion: Despite the sharp growth in Android market share, the iPhone and, especially, iPad share of online shopping activity is actually growing.

Dediu’s full analysis is well worth reading. But in the end, he is as mystified as everyone else by the phenomenon he calls the “Android engagement paradox”:

I’m not satisfied with the explanation that Android users are demographically different because the Android user pool is now so vast and because the most popular devices are not exactly cheap. There is something else at play. It might be explained by design considerations or by user experience flaws or integration but something is different.

Banking On The iPad

Barclays Bank has ordered 8,500 iPads in what is believed to be one of the largest corporate deployments of the device in the UK. ~ via TUAW

This kind of thing has got to be terrifying to Microsoft. Microsoft is losing the battle for tablet’s in the Enterprise and they know it.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the following has to make their blood run cold:

Barclays told The Channel that they went with the iPad because of staff demand.

However, Microsoft is in it for the long run and Windows 8 tablets have barely even come to bat yet. But if this was a baseball game, It would be like Microsoft coming to bat for the very first time in the bottom of the eighth inning already down 8-0.

The BlackBerry Death Spiral

“Notice of Intent to Sole Source iPhone Devices.” That dry headline, from a National Transportation Safety Board post on the Federal Business Opportunities web site, is news about as grim as it can get for Research in Motion. Though the launch of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones the company is counting on for salvation is just over two months away, it may well be too late. Enterprise customers, long the backbone of RIM’s business, are abandoning the platform and without them, RIM has little hope of survival.

The NTSB. like many U.S. government agencies, has long depended on BlackBerrys for secure mobile communications. But they are beginning to fall away. Among others, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and two Homeland Security agencies, Customs & Immigration Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives have announced plans to move to the iPhone.

BlackBerry’s advantages have long been security and reliability and, indeed, RIM recently announced that it had won FIPS 140-2 security certification for the BlackBerry 10 platform. But other devices, notably the iPhone, now also offer government-ready security solutions. As for reliability, NTSB says in its document justifying a sole source Verizon Wireless/Apple deal:

This requirement is for the acquisition of Apple iPhone 5 devices. These Apple devices will replace the NTSB’s existing blackberry devices, which have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate. The NTSB requires effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry-out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations.

If that’s the way its staunchest customers feel, RIM’s BlackBerry 10, no matter how fabulous, is doomed.

The Autonomy Catastrophe: Going from Bad to Worse at HP

Léo Apotheker’s brief, unhappy tenure at Hewlett-Packard is the gift that keeps taking.

The highlights of his 10-month reign, which ended in September, 2011, included a loss of $30 billion in market capitalization, the shuttering of webOS operations, and turmoil caused by public musing about a possible sale of spin-out of the Personal Systems Group. His big move to redirect HP: The $12.5 billion purchase of business analytics software company Autonomy.

Oops.

HP announced today, as part of its dismal fourth fiscal quarter financial report that it was writing off $8.8 billion of Autonomy’s grossly inflated value. From the HP release:

HP recorded a non-cash charge for the impairment of goodwill and intangible assets within its Software segment of approximately $8.8 billion in the fourth quarter of its 2012 fiscal year. The majority of this impairment charge is linked to serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corporation plc that occurred prior to HP’s acquisition of Autonomy and the associated impact of those improprieties, failures and misrepresentations on the expected future financial performance of the Autonomy business over the long-term. The balance of the impairment charge is linked to the recent trading value of HP stock. There will be no cash impact associated with the impairment charge.

Looks like one of the many things Apotheker wasn’t very good at was due diligence. In an uncommonly blunt statement HP accused Autonomy of mischaracterizing “negative margin” sales (i.e., stuff sold at a loss) that made up 10% to 15% of Autonomy’s revenue and inappropriately using licensing transactions with resellers “to inappropriately accelerate revenue recognition, or worse, create revenue where no end-user customer existed at the time of sale. ” With language like “disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations,” I suspect former autonomy executives and investment bankers will be hearing from HP’s lawyers before long. Autonomy founder Mike Lynch joined HP after the acquisition, but left the company in May.

Of Tablets, Phones, and Apps

This began life as a reply to a comment on Part 4 of John Kirk’s “Why Android Is Winning the Battles, But Google Is Losing the War,” but quickly got out of hand.

John’s post sparked a discussion of Apple’s and Google’s different approaches to developing apps for tablets vs. handsets. Commenter rj said that Apple’s approach is to favor development of “Universal” apps that will run on either the iPad or iPhone. This is correct, but it rather misunderstands what a Universal app is. If implemented following Apple’s user interface guidance, a Universal app will effectively create two different versions in a single package.

The Android guidelines focus heavily on scaling and are marked by a belief that, at worst, developers need make only modest adjustments to phone apps to make them suitable for tablets:

Provide different layouts for different screen sizes

By default, Android resizes your application layout to fit the current device screen. In most cases, this works fine. In other cases, your UI might not look as good and might need adjustments for different screen sizes. For example, on a larger screen, you might want to adjust the position and size of some elements to take advantage of the additional screen space, or on a smaller screen, you might need to adjust sizes so that everything can fit on the screen.

Apple is much more concerned with the need to redesign apps for different display types:

Ensure that Universal Apps Run Well on Both iPhone and iPad
If you’re planning to develop an app that runs on iPhone and iPad, you need to adapt your design to each device. Here is some guidance to help you do this:Mold the UI of each app version to the device it runs on. Most individual UI elements are available on both devices, but overall the layout differs dramatically.

Adapt art to the screen size. Users tend to expect more high-fidelity artwork in iPad apps than they do in iPhone apps. Merely scaling up an iPhone app to fill the iPad screen is not recommended.

Preserve the primary functionality of your app, regardless of the device it runs on. Even though one version might offer a more in-depth or interactive presentation of the task than the other, it’s important to avoid making users feel that they’re choosing between two entirely different apps.

Go beyond the default. Unmodified iPhone apps run in a compatibility mode on iPad by default. Although this mode allows people to use an iPhone app on iPad, it does not give them the device-specific experience they want.

But reading the two sets of programming guidelines, I noticed a much deeper difference. Both, of course, are intended as developer references and contain a great deal of nitty-gritty information about APIs and how to implement specific features. But the Google version is full of code snippets and parameter definitions while Apple’s approach is much more concerned with reminding developers that what matters is the user experience and how good app design contributes to that experience. The Google approach is more practical, but Apple’s may be more useful. I don’t want to read too much into a couple of pages from developer manuals, but at least to me, they do sum up important differences in how Apple and Google approach the world.

Why Does Microsoft Make It So Hard?

Are you planning to use a new Microsoft Surface for business? You might want to think again, at least if you are concerned about legal niceties.

At ZDnet, Windows guru Ed Bott examines the strangely complex legalities of using Microsoft Office on Surface. Office 2013–at least its Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote applications–is part of the Surface’s Windows RT operating sustem. But the bundled software, Office Home & Student 2013 RT, prohibits use of the programs “for any non-profit, commercial, or other revenue-generating activity.” Which seems to mean that if I were writing this in Word on a surface, I would be violating the license.

It’s not as though you have a choice about the version of Office on your Surface. Office RT comes with it and is the only version that can be installed. (The forthcoming Surface Pro will support any Windows version of Office, but probably does not come with any Office software included.)

There are several ways out of this. If the Surface is owner by a company and if the company has an Office Volume License Agreement, the restrictions are waived. Same if you subscribe to a business version of Microsoft’s forthcoming Office 365 service, $150 a year for Small Business Premium, $20 per user per month for Office Professional Plus.

Bott says you are probably also in the clear if you own a fully licensed version of Office 2013 Professional and maybe Office 2013 Home & Student, although those products won’t ship for a couple of months.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote aren’t the greatest word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software in the world. But at least if you buy these iPad apps, for $10 apiece, you can use them for whatever you damn well please.

Upside Down Analysis

These thoughts via Business Insider:

According to estimates from Canaccord Genuity, Samsung has shot further ahead of the pack as the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, shipping 56.3 million units in the third quarter.

Apple’s consolation is that it still takes a larger share of industry profits, despite shipping approximately half as many units as Samsung.

Today’s analysis of the mobile industry makes my head hurt because it is analysis turned on its head. In business, profits are not the consolation prize. Profits are the ONLY prize.

Sheesh.

A Surface Retail Reality Check

Whatever the buzz that got some people to line upo for the midnight launch of Surface sales at Microsoft Stores last night seems to have dissipated quickly. This afternoon, I stopped by the popup store in Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md. It was a slow time of day, about 3 pm on a Friday, but the heavily staffed store wasn’t having a lot of luck even getting passing shoppers to stop and take a look at its assortment of Surface tablets and Windows 8 laptops. At one point, I counted five customers (at least in the sense they were looking) and 10 store employees, probably mostly contractors.

Here’s a very of the same store, located at the crossing of two main aisles, from the level above:

And here, for contrast, is a shot of the Apple Store located directly above the Microsoft popup. It’s actually pretty empty by Apple standards, but Microsoft would die for this sort of quiet time.

Why Apple Is Keeping the iPad 2 [UPDATED]

Some commentators have expressed surprise that Apple is keeping the iPad 2 in its lineup after announcing what it calls the fourth-generation iPad on Oct. 25. The company’s normal practice would be to keep the n-1 product while dropping anything older. Instead, Apple dropped the third-generation iPad announced just last spring.

But when you look at the products, this call is not at all surprising. The key is that it’s a big stretch to call the new iPad (the 9.7” version) a fourth-generation product. All that is new for the iPad announced this spring is a processor bump from the A6 to the A6X and the replacement of the 30-pin dock connector with the new Lightning connector used on the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini. If Apple hadn’t already had an event scheduled, this announcement probably would have been made by press release.

Then there’s the question of pricing. There’s probably very little difference in the bill of materials between the new-new and the old-new iPad. So dropping the price of the third-generation iPad to $399 to maintain a $100 differential between the products would have forced Apple to take a significant margin hit. So the iPad 2 stays and the third-gen version is retired.

The real fourth-generation product is the mini. Although it uses a non-retina display and an older processor, it is amazingly thin and light. Its stunning new case, made with a new manufacturing process, echoes the design language of the iPhone 5.

I expect that come next March or April, Apple will hold its by-now traditional iPad announcement. Then we will really see a new-generation product. Look for a thinner, lighter tablet with the perfect chamfered bezel edge that is Apple’s latest design hallmark.

UPDATE

The announcement of the new iPad has set off a remarkable and totally unjustified chorus of whining, such as this piece by Cnet’s Roger Cheng, “thanking” Apple for rendering his months-old third-generation iPad obsolete. It’s no more obsolete today than it was on Monday. It’s true that the new iPad features a faster processor, but I haven;t heard anyone complaining about the current model being slow.

7 Inch Tablets Employ An Odd Definition of “Success”

TROY WOLVERTON at the San Jose Mercury News, talks 7 inch tablets:

Just two years ago, Apple’s late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs mocked small-screened tablets as “tweeners” that were too little to compete with the larger iPad but too big to compete with smartphones.

But after the success that Amazon and Google have had with small-screen tablets…

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop right there.

Success? What success?

Success is defined as: “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”

— Research in Motion, Samsung and other manufacturers introduced tablets with seven inch screens that flopped.

— It’s been estimated that Amazon sold 4.7 million seven inch tablets over a 9 month span.

— It’s been estimated that Google sold 3 million Nexus 7, seven inch tablets over the last quarter.

That’s not a “success”. That’s anything but a “success”.

Notice that the numbers for Amazon and Google are estimates. Their respective companies have not released sales figures. There’s a reason for that.

Also note that the Amazon and Google products are subsidized, which means that they are being sold at cost. What product wouldn’t sell well if it was sold at cost? Apparently, 7 inch tablets.

By way of comparison, Apple sells more that 5 million 9.7 inch tablets every month – at full price – and Apple is conservatively expected to sell 25 million iPads this upcoming holiday quarter. Again, at full price.

I have no doubt that the 7 inch tablet category is viable and I’m guessing that – starting on October 23rd – Apple is going to prove that in a big way. However, we need to stop talking about “the success that Amazon and Google have had with small-screen tablets” or we need to get a new definition for the word “success”. I’m leaning towards the former.

Rebuttal: Windows 8 “May Or May Not” Be The Disaster This Video Makes It Out To Be

Steve Kovach at Business Insider has a few words of wisdom regarding Windows 8:

Microsoft’s new operating system for PCs and tablets, Windows 8, will have a drastic new look.
The Start menu you’re used to is gone, replaced by a touch-friendly menu of tiles that houses all your apps and settings.

It’s going to be incredibly jarring for people to use at first.

Tech pundit Chris Pirillo demonstrates that in a man-on-the-street video where he asks people to try Windows 8 for the first time. The results don’t look good for Microsoft. Almost every person in the video is extremely confused by the new Windows 8 interface.

Does that mean Windows 8 is a flop?

Nope.

So far, I’m with Steve. Discoverability is not the same as usability. Microsoft’s radical new Windows 8 interface changes – particularly on the desktop – may be new but new isn’t necessarily bad. Features may be hard to discover at first – but learn a feature one time and you’ve probably learned it forever.

I think we can all agree that the lack of discoverability on Windows 8 is going to cause some problems at first. But it’s the overall usability that matters most and I’m not going to judge that until I’ve seen how regular people – you know, people who are not first adopters like you and me – react.

It’s at this point, however, that Steve and I part ways.

This is how you push innovation forward. It’s going to be jarring and scary for novices. It’s going to take time for people to learn the new menus. But they’ll catch on.

Hmm. Not so very sure about that. Sure, innovation CAN be jarring a scary. And jarring and scary is often the price we pay in order to move technology forward. But that doesn’t mean that we should pay that price if we don’t have to. So the question becomes, did Microsoft have to extract a price – or did they sacrifice discoverability on the desktop in order to forward their phone and tablet agendas?

Imagine giving someone who has never seen and iPhone or Android device before and asking them to use it. That person would be just as confused as the people are in the video below.

Say what now?

Kids and total novices can use smartphones and tablets. Ninty-nine year old senor citizens use them. Baby’s use them. Heck, even cats and apes use them.

As a friend on Twitter put it, “If every interface were designed by man-on-the-street committee we’d all still have Windows 3.1.”

Yeah, about that. Maybe that’s not so very accurate. Or even a little bit accurate . Perhaps the way Steve’s friend on Twitter should have put it was: “If every interface were designed with the “man-on-the-street” in mind, we’d all be using iOS or Android.”

Take a look at Pirillo’s video at the bottom of the the original article, here.

An Interesting Take on Android in China

Android is doing very well in China. But in something of an exclamation point on John Kirk’s musings on Android’s contribution to Google’s bottom line, Android in China may not be doing at all well for Google.

That’s the conclusion of a post at Telecomasia.net by Ovum analyst Siv Putcha (tip of the hat to Steve Crowley). Putcha argues that because the Chinese government blocks access to many Android services:

Chinese device vendors are using Android for their own purposes, and are increasingly at odds with Google’s preferred vision of Android’s developmental direction. As a result, Android is fragmenting beyond Google’s control, and Google’s Android strategy is rapidly coming undone in China with no immediate prospects for correction.

It’s not clear whether these millions of not-quite-Android phones being sold in China ever get registered with Google or count in Google’s activation total. But it seems certain that they are contributing little or nothing to the strategy of giving the software away and hoping to monetize services.

The Microsoft Surface Was Made For Surfaces…But That’s Not What Tablets Were Made For

The first Microsoft Surface Ad is out. It’s called “The Surface Movement” (although it probably should be called “Click”). In his article entitled: Marketing Surface and Windows 8, Ben Bajarin focuses on what the ad communicates to potential buyers. My focus is on what the ad communicates about Microsoft’s attitude toward tablets.

HOW MICROSOFT DEFINES A TABLET

Even before the ad aired, industry observers had picked up a theme:

The message we seem to be getting from Microsoft with its Surface tablets is that you need a keyboard with your slate to take full advantage of Windows. ~ James Kendrick, ZDNet

Microsoft is really is focusing on the keyboard as what enables the Surface to work equally well for consumption and creation. ~ Mary Jo Foley, CNet

It’s all about the keyboard and it’s all about using the keyboard on a flat surface.

WHAT DEFINES A MICROSOFT SURFACE

The Microsoft surface has five characteristics that distinguish it from the iPad:

— Windows 8 user interface;
— Windows desktop applications;
— Kickstand;
— Upturned rear-facing camera; and
— Attachable keyboard.

The last four of those five characteristics are most useful when employed on a flat surface…

…but that’s not what tablets were made for.

WHAT DEFINES A TABLET

The tablet has two defining characteristics: It is touchable and totable.

The tablet was made for standing, and walking; for moving from room to room, and moving from door to door; for sitting back and leaning forward; for remote locations and touch occasions. The tablet was made to be touched and toted. The Surface was made for a surface.

The Microsoft Surface goes on sale on October 26th. We’ll soon see what really defines a tablet.

Why Amazon is Not Interested in TI’s Mobile Processor Group

Some reports have came out that Amazon is interested in TI’s mobile processor division. I find this extremely difficult to believe. I personally, think TI’s move to shift focus from mobile APs (application processors) and more into embedded chipsets is a fascinating market development. However, I think it is a serious stretch to connect the dots that Amazon would use their extremely valuable cash to acquire something they don’t really need given their business model.

If Amazon was in the for profit hardware business then I can see how a case could potentially be made for purchasing TI’s OMAP mobile AP group. However they are not in the for profit hardware business and are rather in the hardware as a service business. They make practically nothing on the hardware and within the business model they are entrenched in, it would take an incredibly long time if ever to recoup their investment in a semiconductor group.

Furthermore, TI licenses and ships the ARM core but does not have an architectural license to customize or alter the chipset design like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Apple, and Samsung do. If the logic was that Amazon was going to use proprietary semiconductor assets to help them further differentiate their hardware, I’m not sure acquiring TI’s OMAP group would do this. In fact if this was the logic then it would be just as easy, and probably cheaper, for Amazon to acquire an ARM architecture license and simply hire a team of qualified SOC engineers.

However, because Amazon is building a hardware as a service business, it seems unlikely that making a large investment around hardware makes sense. Companies that are in the hardware as a service model are generally better served simply negotiating and buying components rather than making them.

Several reports also mentioned Amazon’s intent to get into the smartphone market and speculated that buying this group from TI could help this initiative. I continue to remain skeptical that Amazon will make a smartphone. I simply can’t see how it fits with their business model. Amazon is a retailer and any argument as to why a retailer should make a smartphone would be null in light of an argument that those same reasons can be accomplished with an app running on any platform. The many reasons why Amazon (a retailer) made a tablet does not translate into why they should make a smartphone.

Of course we can’t rule anything out in this industry, especially considering I would have never guessed an advertising company would have gotten into the smartphone hardware business. Or could I?

Marketing Surface and Windows 8

The first commercial for Microsoft Surface has aired. After seeing it, I’m not sure Microsoft’s partners should be at all worried about the perceived threat of Microsoft competing with them on the hardware front. The commercial itself does absolutely nothing to communicate any valuable reason why a consumer should even remotely consider buying it over something else. I wrote a column a few weeks ago explaining that in today’s day-and-age it is critical to communicate and message to consumers why they should consider your product over something else.

This is not rocket science. Show the product doing something valuable, something consumers can relate to and associate with. Apple, Google, Samsung, etc., are all doing this by messaging and highlighting in their marketing the key benefits of their products.

The Windows 8 preview ads do a little better job by actually showing some use cases with different products. This may sound odd given the market share Microsoft has in traditional PCs but I firmly believe Microsoft is the odd man out with the momentum in this industry and they are the ones in catch up mode.

From the early pricing we are seeing the upcoming flood of Windows 8 products are not going to be on par with other products from a pricing standpoint. Which by default means price is not in their favor. Because of that consumers must be absolutely clear on why they should care at all about this product.

What does it do that others products don’t? What does it empower me to do that others products don’t? What experiences exist on Windows 8 that don’t exist on other devices?

Success in consumer markets requires a good product and good marketing. I’m reserving judgement on whether or not Windows 8 is a good product. When it comes to the marketing, Microsoft needs to convince consumers Windows 8 is relevant to their current and future market needs. The current ads do not do this in my opinion.

In case you hadn’t seen them yet, here they are:

Microsoft Surface Ads

Windows 8 Preview Ads

The iPad Mini Hits Windows 8 Where It Ain’t

Tim Bajarin muses on whether it was a mistake for Microsoft to focus Windows 8 on the the larger screen sizes:

When Microsoft decided to get into the tablet business again, it pretty much committed to 9- to 11-inch tablets, mostly eyeing the business market.

… it is clear that Microsoft will stay this course and will not manufacture 7-inch Windows 8 tablets directly or through a partner any time soon.

I believe this is a major judgment error by Microsoft because the plethora of 7-inch tablets coming out soon will become a huge hit with consumers.

Consumers appear to be extremely interested in an iPad mini, but I predict many business users will also fancy it…(too)

Tim goes on to make several excellent points. I would add this. I think the rumored iPad Mini will be a MONSTER hit in education. The current iPad is taking education by storm and the rumored iPad mini will turn the current torrent of iPad adoptions into a virtual flood.

Microsoft is in a very tough spot. They need to get into tablets. They are wise to go with their strength (business). But they can’t neglect education either. It may sound trite, but children are the future. Kids are already enamored with the iPhone and the iPad. Microsoft is in a dog fight to recapture this generation of tablet users. However, if they let the iPad become the de facto standard in education at the K-12 and college levels, all their efforts may be for naught. While they’re busy fighting for today’s customers, they will have already lost tomorrow’s.