Podcast: Microsoft 365, T-Mobile-Sprint, Network Reliability

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi, Mark Lowenstein and Bob O’Donnell discussing the release of Microsoft’s new Microsoft 365 subscription service, analyzing the impact of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger on the US telecom market and the rollout of 5G, and chatting about overall broadband and mobile network reliability during the COVID19 crisis.

Niantic Buys 6D.AI as Battle to Own the AR Cloud Begins

This week a small startup that few people outside the augmented reality (AR) industry have heard about called 6D.AI was acquired by Niantic, one of the few AR-focused companies most people do know (thanks to its hit game Pokémon Go). So why is Niantic’s acquisition of 6D.AI important? Because it could represent the opening shot in an industry-wide battle to own an essential building block of our AR future, collectively termed the AR Cloud.

What is the AR Cloud?
The AR Cloud, as the name unintentionally implies, is a somewhat amorphously defined technology that is comprised of a 3D map of the world that enables AR applications to persistently tie digital objects and experiences to specific locations in the real world. Fundamentally, it is vital because mapping the real world is essential to the future of AR if it’s going to move from purpose-built applications in the enterprise to mainstream usage. The AR Cloud will be critical to driving a feature-rich, shared AR experience across all types of AR-enabled devices from smartphones and tablets to glasses and headsets.

How important is this technology to the future of AR? Many in the industry call it the operating system (OS) for AR. We know from history that the companies that own the OS of a new technology category—think Apple, Microsoft, and Google—are the ones that tend to capture most of the revenue generated there. So, it’s no wonder that many of the tech-industry majors have begun the work of building their own versions of the AR Cloud, some quite publicly and others behind the scenes. Concurrently, we’ve seen a ton of investment into startups, such as 6D.AI and others, that are racing to build their versions of the AR Cloud.

The well-funded startup Magic Leap calls its AR Cloud the MagicVerse. Microsoft calls its service Spatial Anchors, and it is in beta supporting HoloLens, Apple’s ARKit, and Google’s ARCore. Facebook calls its version Live Maps, Google’s is Anchors, and Niantic’s is the Niantic Real World Platform. You get the picture: Everybody is in the pool, and some are being more public about it than others.

Why the AR Cloud is Key to the Future of AR
One of the reasons that AR’s biggest successes, to date, have mainly occurred in the enterprise is because there is clear value to real-world use cases there, from knowledge capture and transfer to collaboration to accessing 3D models and more. And it’s not that enterprise use cases can’t use real-world mapping; it’s that they’ve mostly dealt with the lack of mapping by using next-gen barcodes, object recognition, and other technology workarounds. But for AR to expand its commercial use cases, and to take off with consumers, the industry needs to make all of this happen automatically. My AR device needs to know where I am, and when I’m there, and it needs to recognize the digital objects that others have placed there.

Another critical element that the AR Cloud will drive is something called occlusion. A person’s AR experience is significantly improved if the digital object they are viewing is spatially aware of the real-world objects around it. So, for example, if you are watching a digital rabbit run in front of you in AR, it shouldn’t run through the real-world light post, it should run around it. And just as important, when it passes behind the light post, it should briefly disappear and then reappear on the other side. Occlusion not only drives a higher level of immersion; in time, it will be instrumental in driving better forms of interacting with these digital objects, too.

One of the issues we’re going to run into as all these companies build out their own AR clouds and make them available to the developers who create the next generation of AR apps is that persistence only works if it is universal. If my map is different from your map, and each shows different landmarks and such, it diminishes the usefulness of both maps. That’s why the Open AR Cloud organization exists. It’s mission: “to drive the development of open and interoperable AR Cloud technology, data and standards…” The company has an impressive list of contributing companies, although there are some notable hold outs. Recently the organization announced plans to build its own reference Open Spatial Computing Platform (OSCP). Keep an eye on this working group, as its ability to bring companies together to create a truly useful AR Cloud will be important.

Why Niantic’s Purchase of 6D.AI Matters
So, at the end of the day, why is the purchase of a company most people haven’t heard about by one that many have heard of important? For starters, it means one of the upstart independents has been swallowed up by one of the more prominent players. That will have a meaningful impact on developers that have built or are building apps utilizing 6D.AI’s existing services. The company says its current SDK will only remain active for another 30 days, and it will wind down its existing developer tools during that same period. A note on its site says it is shifting its focus to “helping developers build realistic AR applications through the Niantic Platform.” I hope Niantic takes good care of 6D.AI’s existing developers.

We can speculate as to why 6D.AI opted to sell now, but the broader implication is that this likely signifies that additional consolidation in this space is coming. There are simply too many companies trying to build out their own AR Clouds, and the ramp of AR in the consumer space is, quite frankly, taking longer than many of these companies expected. It was just a matter of time before we started to see more acquisitions, and likely some closures.

My hope is that purchases such as this one will help speed the development of workable AR Clouds that will deliver the experiences that we’re all looking forward to having in AR. My concern, however, is that as bigger players capture more of the technology and developer mindshare, we could be headed toward a series of walled-off AR Clouds. If that happens, it won’t be good for the industry or users.

Amazon and Apple: When a 30% Cut is Justified and When it Isn’t

Amazon and Apple
Some interesting news dropped yesterday with Amazon enabling Prime video rentals and purchases to now take place inside the Amazon Prime Video App. As of a few days ago, I know because I tried, you still had to go out of the Prime video app and to Amazon’s website to buy or rent a video from Amazon. This news changes that, and finally lets people seamlessly purchase premium content from Amazon and never leave the app. There are some important aspects of this to unpack.

First, we know Amazon has long held out doing this for their customers to avoid paying Apple’s 30% cut on digital purchases taking place in an iOS store. Note this applies to digital purchases that are then played on an Apple device. Oculus has long had the ability to pay for content on the Oculus iOS app but then play that content on an Oculus VR device. This pushback on Apple’s 30% cut for in-app purchases has also come from companies like Spotify and Netflix.

Apple’s comments on the matter suggest there was already an established program in place for this, but that has caused some doubt by independent developers reading through the lines.

I have no idea if Ryan is correct, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. Whether there was a program or not, or whether Apple and Amazon worked this out together, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it exists now and that’s great for Amazon’s customers. But it is worth taking a deeper look at the reason for Apple’s 30% and why that reason has never applied to Amazon.

Apple’s 30% cut, in their minds, is justified for a few reasons. First is because the iOS store is a marketplace. Apps on that marketplace are put before customers and given an environment in which to be discovered and sell content. For the vast majority of apps, without the iOS store, they would not exist. That alone equals some value to both parties. Second, Apple is acting as the merchant/payment processor. This is important because without Apple acting as the seamless and trusted intermediary between business and customer. If the App store’s mechanism for payment through Apple did not exist, the vast number of companies collecting payments via in-app purchases or subscriptions would not be possible. The alternative would have been these companies setting up their own payment mechanisms and asking a consumer to set up an account, enter payment information and key personal details, etc., All too much friction most would never have bothered.

Not only would most consumers not bothered, most would have never heard of these companies before and never given them their payment information to begin with because they did not trust them. This is where Apple becoming the trusted intermediary for payments is crucial. If that did not exist, I am extremely confident there would not be the iOS economy there is today, processing billions of dollars annually.

If there is one company, for whom I have always believed this rule should not apply, it is Amazon. Amazon was already a dominant commerce company before the iPhone. Amazon was the pioneer of simple one-click checkout, and Amazon was already a trusted brand that already had customer accounts in the tens of millions before the App store ever launched. Amazon NEVER needed Apple for either market place assistance or payment/trust processing. All the reasons Apple felt their 30% cut of digital transactions was justified never applied to Amazon. And honestly, I think Amazon is the only company I can say this about. Feel free to debate me 😉

Yes, perhaps Netflix, but even then, I’d argue a large surge of Netflix new customers was due to this ease of payments through Apple. But Netflix will be fine using its own payment mechanism. Spotify, on the other hand, despite their lawsuits and complaining, would have had a significantly more difficult time growing to the size of the customer base they acquired without Apple’s in-app payment process. If Spotify would have asked every new customer to go sign up and give them their payment information, etc., it would have been a wall and, in reality, a wall that would have greatly benefitted Apple Music. One could argue the level playing field in ease of transactions was a significant reason Spotify could compete with Apple Music to begin with, and had they had their own payment requirements, the playing field would have actually not been even. It’s a paradox, I know.

This, now, raises a few questions.

  • First, will other companies start to use their own payments to get around the Apple 30% cut. The answer is yes, and for many companies, they will fail and need to return to Apple’s in-app-payments.
  • Will Amazon doing this hurt Apple’s services revenue? No. Apple was not getting any revenue from Amazon anyway on digital purchases. Therefore this will have no revenue impact on Apple’s services business.

  • Will this impact Apple’s services business as new companies try this? My gut answer is no, and it is for this reason. As I pointed out, it takes a company that has reached a certain size, scale, brand, etc., even to pull this off. Amazon is that Netflix is that, and now Spotify is that Disney could do this as well. However, it behooves them to not. I’d argue that in any companies growth strategy, or as we like to call it in the business land and expand, using Apple’s payment processing for easy one-touch transactions will be essential. It is only once that company has reached a certain size of customer base when they can move to their own system, and at that point, I’d argue, their growth would have slowed. So Apple would capture a share of the revenue during their growth stage, and by the time they can pull off their own system, they won’t be adding customers nearly as fast and thus would be contributing little to Apple’s services business any longer.
  • Overall, this is great for Amazon customers, and one does wonder if there is some unions between Apple’s tvOS and FireTV in-store now this is worked out. It will be interesting to see what other companies move in this direction, but as I said, there is a shortlist of companies who can pull it off, and that is not going to change any time soon.

Why AI and Deep Learning Will be Critical to Solving the Current and Future Pandemics.

The world is facing a crisis due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a virus that is in the SARs family and has mutated and spread around the world at lightning speed.

Medical researchers are working around the clock to find a cure, as well as a vaccine to deal with this virus and its dire health consequences.

In the world of technology, one technology that will be desperately needed to help find a cure and a potent vaccine will be Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning.

Intel, IBM, and others with AI technology already have experience with applying AI to disparate cancer databases to try and curate data from cancer research centers around the world.
In this case, AI is targeted at a broad disease and using AI to find commonalities and using deep learning in a way to help researchers and doctors deal with this deadly disease.

In talking with medical researchers working in the field of virology, epidemics and disease transmissions, they are desperate to find a way to delve deeper into multiple data sources to not only find a cure for this current Cover-19 pandemic but to be able to identify any new viruses faster and keep them from spreading. They agree that AI and deep learning will be a critical tool in helping them with this quest.

Given our industry’s strong work in AI and its experience in using it for cancer research, I believe these companies need to perhaps create another moonshot like a project, not necessarily just focused on COVID-19, and look at applying AI and Deep learning to the work of identifying viruses as they develop in their early stages and keep them from spreading at all.

AI and deep learning has the potential of being one of the greatest technologies have created that can apply to this particular problem at a broad level, such as identifying and nipping viruses before they can spread, as well as finding cures and vaccines for ones that are already released on mankind.

Bill Gates has been warning us for years about the threat of deadly viruses and it has taken COVID-19 to get people to understand his comments and concerns. And as he has suggested, the medical world needs to work hard to identify these viruses early on and keep them from ever spreading.

I have been reading a lot of medical research papers on viruses, and most state that once a virus is identified, they need to aggressively go after its source. But to do so they need a wealth of data from past viruses and dig deeper at their roots and similarities in order to identify them and then crush them before they can spread.

At the moment, the research data is spread all over the world in databases and research material created by universities, Pharma labs, medical researchers and virologists, etc. But, in most cases, these databases are not connected to each other. Even worse is that some of these databases contain up to a couple of terabytes of material that need to be combed through and cross-referenced as part of any significant research to identify any new viruses at their roots as well as find a way to keep them from ever seeing the light of day.

If ever there was a time for tech to step up it is now. We have supercomputers and high-performance computing systems that, if aimed at these virus databases and applying AI and deep learning to the research process, the chance of identifying new viruses before they even start, could be possible.

I know that given our current situation with COVID-19, we need AI and Deep learning applied to find a cure and a vaccine in the short term. But those like Bill Gates and others who have studied viruses and their potential impa.ct, say that the current conditions such as climate change, extreme poverty, poor sanitation, etc could breed other viruses and we need to be able to ID them fast and eliminate them at their roots. If not, what we are going through now, could happen multiple times in our lifetime.

Microsoft 365 Aims at Helping Us Navigate Our Blended Lives

In a world where productivity is no longer confined within the physical place where we work, why should the tools we use create artificial barriers for us, rather than help us blend work and play? Now more than ever, thanks to COVID-19, work and school have found a place in our homes as we are all trying to work, learn and live under one roof.

Microsoft’s vision for a blended life started almost two years ago when, at the Devices Fall Event in New York City, Microsoft’s Corporate VP, Yusuf Mehdi, mentioned for the first time Modern Life. The vision that we humans share both many tools and many goals in our work-life as we do in our private life remains true today as it was in 2018. What has changed over this period of time,  is how Microsoft will empower us to achieve that blended life. It seems to me that Modern Life has evolved from a product to a philosophy behind the products Microsoft will bring to market starting with Microsoft 365, an evolution of the consumer version of Office 365.

This is what I wrote back in 2018, commenting on Modern Life:

It is this blurring of our work life and our personal Life that Microsoft is addressing with Modern Life. Because of its history with consumers and the lack of mobile presence, Microsoft comes to this from its position of strength, which is work and the PC.
Modern Life takes those users who Microsoft caters for in a corporate environment and addresses their needs before and after they get to the Office helping them achieve what they want to achieve: finish a presentation, dialing into a call on the way home, planning a weekend away or juggle the after school calendar.
In other words, Modern Life recognizes that I am not a “worker” between 9 and 5 and a “consumer” for the rest of the time. I am a human being 24 hours a day doing different things depending on time and place but still with the same goals, values, and aspirations.
Fast forward to this week and you see two marked differences.

Confidence and Focus

What struck me about the Microsoft 365 announcement, this week, is the confidence Microsoft displayed in addressing some real pain-points and, in doing so, where it matters the most to users, which meant making its tools available first on mobile. This is a very different company from two years ago. One that knows the value of its own services and has come to fully embrace an OS-agnostic approach as the value proposition shifts to center in the cloud and AI.

And so, Microsoft Teams for consumers will be made available first on mobile, both Android and iOS, for consumers to be able to chat, share photos and videos as well as do video calls. From sharing to-do lists across the family to organizing a book club, the Teams app will become a collaboration and communication one-stop-shop. Plus, if you are one of the current 44 million corporate users, you will easily be able to toggle between your personal and your corporate account.

The second difference comes in the name Microsoft 365. To me, this signifies that the company believes they have value to offer beyond Office, beyond a more traditional concept of productivity. The name also speaks to the pillars that Microsoft’s services and apps are built on: cloud, AI,  privacy and security. Privacy, in particular, was mentioned when talking about the chat function within Teams, a very timely highlight, given this week’s news about Zoom. The other mention of privacy was in relation to a new app called Microsoft Family Safety, which helps parents keep their kids safer both in the digital and the real world. Digital safety has similar features we have seen for iOS and Android around screen time but offers the additional benefit of working across Android phones Xbox and Windows PCs. It also helps manage appropriate content when browsing which remains one of the biggest issues for parents when their kids just start to discover the Web. In real life, the focus shifts to physical safety as the app sends notifications when a family member arrives or leaves a location. The app also offers driving reports for new drivers with the promise that your information will be kept private and not shared with third parties such as insurance companies.

A Better Understanding of Consumers

What I have seen in Microsoft is indeed confidence rather than arrogance. They understand where their sweet spot is, and they want to stay true to it, which is why we did not see Microsoft get into content as others have done. Microsoft knows the brand has consumers’ trust and they know there is value in offering alternatives to existing apps by centering them on privacy and security. This is especially true when it comes to location data and financial information. So Family Safety location alerts might not be an original idea, but for those parents who use solutions like Life360, having an alternative that offers peace of mind on privacy and security is a welcome addition. The same can be said for Money in Excel, a solution that draws data from your banks and credit card accounts to create personalized insights to help you improve your spending all while your data is kept private and secure.

Microsoft does not just better understand its strengths. Microsoft understands consumers better. A blended life does not mean that I want to extend my work to home. Sometimes I might have to, but what I am looking for is a consistency of tools and workflows that allows for a more seamless transition between my personal and my professional. This realization is clear not just in the tools that Microsoft is offering within the traditional Office suite, but in the use cases they list for those new features. And so Calendar is not about accessing the work calendar in the morning to see what is coming up. Instead, it is about being able to see a family calendar right next to my work one, so that scheduling anything becomes easier. Or Word where Microsoft Editor is expanded because good writing does not only matter at work. In addition to Money for Excel, in my spreadsheets, I can now start to analyze other data like food, dogs, places, or even Pokémon.

All these services will start rolling out over the coming months with some services like Money for Excel only available in the US first due to the need to close relationships with banks and card issuers. For current users of Office Personal or Family, the additional services will all be included in the subscription as they start to roll out later in April. For new Microsoft 365 subscribers, the cost will be $6.99 for Microsoft 365 Personal and $9.99 for a family up to six users. Is it worth it? Here is some context. A monthly subscription to Grammarly is around $11 if bought as an annual subscription. Budget management apps like Dollarbird, Goodbudget and Tiller Money go from $3.99 to $6.99 a month. Life360 with Driver Protect is $7.99 a month. It seems a pretty easy decision to make from an economic standpoint but even more so from a security and privacy standpoint.

Zoom’s Security Challenges, PC Hardware Surges

Zoom’s Security Challenges
The undisputed winner, in terms of name recognition and likely usage, of the remote working/learning situation is Zoom. Influential venture capitalists, and CEO, and more are all tweeting about Zoom, brands are sharing images to be used as Zoom backgrounds as marketing.

People all over are sharing images and stories of teachers and all educators doing Zoom’s with their students to stay in touch and teach remotely. Like I said, in terms of mentions in public as well as the public’s mind, if you were to ask them who is winning video conferencing, most would likely say Zoom.

Zoom is a solid product. It is arguably the easiest platform to get set up, use, and start video conferencing. It is also highly reliable in terms of video quality and audio quality. We had known for a while that Zoom was spreading like wildfire because of its ease of use. It was continually being adopted by users for a variety of reasons.

Zoom has also been crushing it from a stock perspective. It is currently trading at a P/E of just over 1600. There is debate about whether Zoom is over-valued, and its a good debate, but you can’t argue Zoom becoming the generic face of video conferencing during this period of quarantine is not valuable and will not do wonders for their continued growth.

But, it is not all good news for Zoom as some security and privacy concerns are now starting to gain headlines. It was reported last week that Zoom was sending data to Facebook when their customers choose the log-in with a Facebook option, which should not be a shocker to anyone who looked into how the log-in with Facebook SDK was working. The fascinating question is, why did Zoom even offer log-in with Facebook to begin with? I’ll hit on that in a moment.

Zoom has since plugged that hole, and did so quickly, also releasing a blog post on the matter.

More recently, today, an article came out today looking at the lack of true end-to-end encryption on Zoom calls.

While I do, perhaps naively but I do, take Zoom at their word that they are not spying on customers or actively selling their data, I do think Zoom’s growth strategy, or land and expand as its called in the business, was developed with a much more consumer-friendly attitude than an enterprise-friendly attitude. What I mean by that is Zoom took a bottoms-up approach that focused on making things dead simple for the end-user and through that process got adopted into enterprises with a less than thorough security and privacy approach. Now, for a lot of businesses and institutions, that may not matter. I’m sure educators, colleges, many SMBs, and even plenty of large enterprises are not trading in deep secrets and are ok taking Zoom at their word they aren’t spying or selling data. However, there are also plenty of organizations like Governments, global tech companies, perhaps medical and healthcare, and others who will simply not use Zoom because of security and privacy concerns.

I’m not worried about Zoom even with these security and privacy reports. I say that knowing full well that without standard security and entrenched encryption in place they will not land certain customers, but the market is big enough for all the players now seeing tremendous growth like Microsoft with Teams (they need to kill skype), Cisco with WebEx, Google Hangouts/Meet, etc.

Zoom’s lesson is that a user-focused approach where ease of use is central is the quickest way to land and expand your customer base. But, the lesson is also to consider how much of a pure enterprise company you want to be as you start. Zoom, I think, also wants a pure consumer play, and because of that, there will be some tradeoffs they will make.

PC Hardware Surges
In a turn of events, no one saw coming, nor could have predicted, the PC ecosystem is surging. At a time when smartphone demand is at an absolute abysmal low, the good old PC and its ecosystem of monitors, mice, keyboards, and other accessories (beauty lights and external cameras) are surging.

I first got wind of this weeks ago when talking with those in the PC supply chain and then double confirmed it with the PC OEMs we work with. All of them are seeing a surge of demand as corporations are refreshing machines quicker than normal to get employees the hardware they need to

Further confirmation came from our friendly NPD analyst Stephen Baker who published a brief report today highlighting surging sales they see from retail and B2B resellers they track.

So why is this interesting? When we step back and look at the big picture and the potential trends and market place changes, knowing that PC demand and a flurry of work from home accessories are surging, it emphasizes the point that more corporations and individuals will have adequate hardware solutions in place to embrace more remote working as needed or demanded.

Once companies make this shift, as they are forced to know, there will be new processes and new comfort levels of the business and its employees. I’ve long said that people should not have to come to the office every day, and or they should be able to live where they want and still be an integral part of their team. What we are witnessing right now is going to make this possible.

There are so many positives that come out of this reality. Not only killing traffic in metro areas but cutting down on pollution, companies not needing as much real-estate, the development of other areas and city economies not located on the coasts, etc.

The other thing I’m wondering is if people are starting to build new habits with their PCs again now that they are being used for more than just work at a workplace but also at home and in kid’s education. This is purely a hypothesis to watch I’m pointing out, but we know smartphones were stealing tasks from PCs on the homefront, and I wonder if now PCs will start to steal some time back going forward.

Microsoft 365 Shift Demonstrates Evolution of Cloud-Based Services

If there’s one piece of software that has held up remarkably well over several decades, it’s Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity apps. From business to personal life, the applications in Office have proven their value time and time again to people all over the world. Perhaps because of that, Microsoft has used Office as a means to push forward the definition of what software is, how it should be delivered, how it should be sold, what platforms it should run on, and much more over the last decade or so.

In June of 2011, for example, the company officially unveiled Office 365, which provided access to all the same applications in the regular suite but in a subscription-like “service” form that was delivered (and updated) via the internet. Since then, the company has added new features and functions to the service, made it available to mobile platforms such as Android and iOS, in addition to Windows and MacOS, and generally used it as a means to expand how people think about applications they use on a regular basis. In the process, Microsoft has made many people comfortable with the idea of cloud-based software becoming a cloud-based service.

Yesterday, the company took the next step in the evolution of the product and renamed the consumer, as well as the small and medium business versions of Office 365 to Microsoft 365—changes that will all occur on April 21. The name change is obviously a subtle one, but beyond the title, the changes run much deeper. Specifically, the new brand reflects how the set of applications that make up the company’s popular subscription-based offering is evolving. It also reflects how the company itself is changing.

In the case of the SMB versions of Microsoft 365, the name change is simply a branding one, which better reflects that the service includes more than just basic office productivity, particularly with the Teams collaboration tools and service. For the new consumer-oriented Personal and Family versions of Microsoft 365, the changes are more extensive.

Notably, the consumer versions of Microsoft 365 include the addition of several new applications, a number of AI-powered intelligent enhancements to existing applications and—in an important first for Microsoft—some mobile-first advancements. The new version of the Microsoft Editor function works across Word, Outlook.com, and the web, and is essentially a Grammarly competitor that moves beyond simple spell and grammar checking to making AI-powered rewriting suggestions, avoiding plagiarism and more.

The AI-based Designer feature in PowerPoint—which I have found to be incredibly useful—has been enhanced in this latest version of Microsoft 365 to support a wider array of content that it can “beautify” and includes support for a greatly expanded library of supplementary graphics, videos, fonts and templates.
The biggest change to Excel is the forthcoming addition of Money for Excel, an add-in that gives it Quicken-like money and account management features. In addition, working in conjunction with Wolfram Alpha, Microsoft is adding in support for over 100 new “smart” data types that makes it significantly easier to track everything from calories to travel locations and more. In essence, it provides the type of intelligence that people may have expected computing devices and applications to have all along.

The addition of both Teams (for Consumers) and Family Safety are interesting because of the capabilities they bring to the service and because both will launch first on mobile OSes—Android and iOS. Microsoft has had mobile versions of its main productivity suite apps, as well as its One Drive storage service for a while now, but this Microsoft 365 launch marks the first time the company will debut new apps in mobile form. On the one hand, the move is logical and not terribly surprising given how much people use their mobile devices today—particularly for communications and tracking, which are the core functions of Teams and Family Safety respectively. Nevertheless, it’s still noteworthy, because it does show how Microsoft has been able to pivot on its typical “deliver on PC first” strategy and keep itself as relevant as possible.

In the case of Teams, the company isn’t replicating its Enterprise version, but instead has developed a consumer-focused edition that allows for real-time chats, document sharing, creating and tracking lists, and more in a manner that should make sense for most consumers. Family Safety is completely new and allows parents to provide limits and controls on digital device usage and content, as well as track the physical location and even driving of other family members. Importantly, Microsoft made the point to say that it’s doing all these things without sharing (or certainly not selling) any of this information to auto insurance companies, advertisers or any other companies. While the company would have undoubtedly created a bit of an outcry if it did any of that, it was still reassuring to hear a big tech vendor emphasize these privacy and security-focused concerns. Let’s hope all major tech vendors follow suit.

Speaking of privacy and security, Microsoft took the opportunity with its Microsoft 365 launch announcement to also unveil the latest version of Microsoft Edge, the company’s significantly improved browser. In addition to several convenience-based features, such as the addition of vertical tabs, smart copying from web pages, and the ability to easily create portable “collections” of content from web-based sources, the company debuted some important privacy features as well. Password Monitor, for example, can automatically track whether any of your logins are available on the dark web and encourage you to change your passwords on sites where that may have occurred. Given the huge number of security breaches and data exposure that have impacted almost all of us at this point, this could prove to be an incredibly valuable new feature. In addition, the company added refined tracking controls that allows you to set the amount information you are willing to share with other websites as a result of your browsing sessions.

All told, it was a pretty impressive set of announcements that highlights how Microsoft has managed to continue adjusting its strategies to match the changing needs of the market and its customers. Of course, many consumers will still be content using the free versions of the basic Office applications and services that Microsoft will continue to make available even after April 21. However, the functionality that the company has built into its new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family offerings will be compelling enough for many to make the switch, and the success that the Office suite of applications has enjoyed for so long will continue with the new Microsoft 365.

Could VR Gain Traction with Consumers During Covid-19 Lockdown?

Last week I wrote about the potential of VR video conferences becoming a possibility in the future. My view of VR specifically is that it is a technology that is optimal for vertical markets like manufacturing, utilities, military, airlines, etc. Even VR video conferencing falls into my definition of vertical markets. I know that VR games have driven sales of VR headsets, and while that is a large market, it still falls under my view of vertical markets because it does not bring VR to the masses.

Based on years of research on AR and VR, I have felt that AR and VR were really different approaches to mixed reality and that it would be AR that would eventually bring mixed reality to the masses. I still hold that view and believe that Apple will eventually be the company that, with whatever AR headset with apps and service model they create, will be the one that actually gets mixed reality to the broader public.

However, now that I am at home and can finally spend more time using a VR specific headset like the Oculus Quest, I find myself using one particular VR application a lot. This app is related to travel, and more specifically, travelogues and travel-related documentaries and travel educational VR programs.

Now I admit that part of why this fascinates me is that I have traveled for 39 years as part of my job and visited over 50 countries in my work. This has created a travel bug in me that is pretty active. While I do enjoy not traveling at the moment, I found that I still would like the travel experience but without getting on planes or trains.

I had used VR travel apps in other VR headsets, but the Oculus Quest is a step above the lower cost VR headsets I have used in the past. It is no wonder that Oculus Quest headsets are on backorder now, as it appears that a lot of people have bought them during their stay-at-home experience.

Although I have used this VR headset for other apps, including some games, it is the travel apps that I think make VR quite attractive for a broader audience than just verticals.

One travel app that came up in the initial tutorial when I fired up the Oculus Quest was a virtual tour of the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral. I had seen pictures of the damage on the outside, but this tour took me inside the church and walked me through the damage, floor by floor. I have spent a lot of time in Paris and know well the history and layout of Notre Dame.

I actually spent a large part of a day once exploring every space I could go that had public access and became very familiar with its iconic relics, crips, and statues. With this virtual 360 demo, I was able to walk down the center aisle, which I have done over a dozen times and see the damage in the main church. The tour then took us up to the roof where the Spire had been and could look down o the damage from this viewpoint.

When my son Ben was 15, I decided we needed to do something that created a tighter bond. For most of his life, I was on the road, and one summer, I took extra time off, and the two of us got certified as scuba divers. We were privileged to be able to do dives in the Florida Keys and many dives in Hawaii. I even did a shark dive in the Bahamas, which was quite an experience in its own right since this dive was not in a cage.

One particular diving experience in Hawaii was when we would find a group of turtles and literally swim with them about 10 feet away, gliding through the clear blue waters as these turtles swam looking for food.

It turns out that swimming with turtles in VR delivers a very similar experience. The only difference is that I don’t have to put on scuba gear and can do this from an easy chair in my study. Because this is a 360 VR experience, it feels exactly as if I am in the waters with the turtles and swimming beside them. The first time I used this app, it brought back great memories but was, in a sense, a bit spooky too.

One other travel app that I really like is related to food. One of my favorite food cities in the world is Singapore. There are multiple VR ravel apps that bring me to what they call the “Hawker Centers,” which are city created areas with food stalls that serve incredible food at very low prices. There are dozens of these hawker stalls and special food markets, and these VR apps can take you right to these areas and make you feel like you are there in person.

I have spent many hours in the hawker centers and markets in Singapore, and being able to walk through these stalls and markets is a great experience minus the ability to go and eat at the various food stalls in person. In fact, the VR travel apps can take you to food markets all over the world, and even if you have never been to them in person, it is an educational experience in its own right where you can learn about a countries foodways and culture.

I have looked at most of the various predictions on VR and don’t believe that VR by itself is the virtual approach that will drive mixed reality to a broad consumer market. I still believe that AR and some form of AR and VR will eventually have the killer apps that make virtual reality a mainstream technology.

But my experience with the Oculus Quest has given me a new perspective, and with the right apps, such as games, travel, and entertainment, VR dedicated headsets will draw interest from most likely an early adopter community that in itself is millions of people. However, an AR focused mixed reality solution to me is still that one virtual reality technology that has the greatest chance of bringing a mass consumer audience to the mixed reality virtual experience.

I just don’t think VR alone will do this. While it may take another few years to get the right mix of AR glasses or goggles and apps that make AR very consumer-focused, I know that Apple, Google, and Samsung see AR as the next big thing in virtual reality and are working hard on making the right products and apps that could eventually bring mixed reality to a mass consumer market.

Podcast: Technology and Remote Education

Ben Bajarin and Carolina Milanesi are joined by special guest Dr. Mitchell Salerno who is head of school at Monta Vista Christian School.

They discuss the school’s rapid transition to distance learning, the role technology played, and challenges and opportunities learned from distance learning.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast client or Apple iTunes Podcasts.

Apple Watch and Other Health Tech During Pandemics

As I wrote the other day, I like to look at things in the big picture. As I do that, one thing I’m certain of is something like this will happen again, and it will likely happen sooner than people think. Which got me to thinking, how can health-related technology help play a role in early identification and even protection? Naturally, that got me thinking about Apple Watch.

You may or may not have seen some timely marketing data from a company called Kinsa that makes a smart/connected thermometer. Kinsa positions itself as a public health company dedicated to providing the knowledge, guidance, and tools to keep communities healthy. During this time of COVID-19, they have been using data gathered via randomized and anonymized samples of specific regions in the US to track fevers. They blanket this under their initiative to track Flu-like symptoms in country regions, but since fever is an indicator of worsening symptoms of COVID-19, this works in their favor.

Here, they share a link showing how fevers have varied in certain areas where social distancing was implemented sooner. It is designed to show how places that hunkered down and people groups who limited interaction with others did have an impact on the health of a community.

The challenge with the data is generally high-income class groups, and more tech-forward people are going to have a Kinsa smart thermometer. So while the data is relevant, it is also indicative of a social base who would have hunkered down early and whose employment likely allowed them to do so. It is not totally representative data, but that does not mean it doesn’t prove the right point.

That being said, their motivation is directionally correct and highlights a specific point about how health data can help us detect and even prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

More data and more Sensors
This whole situation has actually got me thinking even more deeply about Apple Watch’s vision as an intelligent guardian of our health. The Apple Watch currently can’t play much a role to help early detection of things like Flu or even a new virus-like COVID-19. But what if it could? There are other sensors we expect to see Apple Watch include, a blood oxygen monitoring via a pulse oximeter is one of them, but what if Apple could figure out how to measure other things, maybe even temperature via the wrist or via the ears/face?

What if AirPods and eventually AR glasses can help monitor vitals in our ears and face that can now detect any range of things as a platform for preventative health? We know the ears offer unique benefits for measuring heart rate and temperature, so that seems possible. But obviously, our eyes are another indicator of health and wellness. I had thought about AirPods as a health platform but not something like AR glasses until today.

What you can see happening is a comprehensive computing solution emerging that is the combination of sensors on wrist, ears, and eyes/face that are not just good for potential computing applications but a much richer solution for health and wellness as well.

Going beyond the benefits of this to a single human, the Kinsa example shows how health-related data tracking is useful for early identification and spread of infectious disease in a community. This would be an opportunity for Apple as well if the sensors are there. Even just looking at the benefits to flu season seems an incredible opportunity.

I can imagine getting a warning that flu-like symptoms are spreading more rapidly in my area and then be encouraged to practice some social distancing while out and about and perhaps be overly rigorous in my personal cleanliness. Although I’m a germaphobe, so I already obsess over hand washing and using hand sanitizer. But many aren’t, and warning and detection can help remind others to be more aware and, in general help slow or stop the spread of something like the Flu.

Going beyond that, I’d love to see how sensors we wear, or use like a Kinsa thermometer, can help detect anomalies earlier and perhaps get the right health organizations early data to start digging into the potential spread of something we don’t see coming. This could be everything from anomalies in a group of people’s heart rate, temperature, oxygen levels, etc.. Still, the point being early detection of something via health sensor data would do wonders for our world going forward.

I’ve been slowly convinced that nearly every person on the planet, in developed parts of the world, will someday wear some health tech on their body. Even if it isn’t a smartwatch, I’m now certain some technology will find itself onto every human that plays a role in health monitoring and preventative health. This current pandemic certainly shines a light on the reality and need for such solutions, but the data is too valuable to us individually and as a community. Particularly when you realize something like this will happen again, and again, and again.

Some “Lighter Side” Headlines For the Coronavirus Era

For most of us, the past couple of weeks have been ‘all coronavirus all the time’, whether personally, professionally, or financially. I just looked at my work e-mail inbox, and 80% of messages have COVID-19 in the subject line. So it’s time to take a break from adding to the chorus of bleak forecasts or recommendations on what XYZ company should do. With April Fools approaching, here’s an attempted humorous take at some of the headlines we might see coming out of the tech and telecom worlds over the next couple of weeks.

WeWork To Change Its Name to iWork. With nearly all co-working places closed worldwide and the massive shift to working remotely, the company has been advised that anything connoted to the concept of ‘We’ will take an even bigger chunk out of WeWork’s ongoing valuation freefall. Adam Neumann, the company’s beleaguered former CEO, has suggested that the stock symbol for its future IPO should be just “I”, rather than “WE”.

Apple Temporarily Disabling Screen Time Feature. Nearly two years ago, Apple introduced a feature called Screen Time, to help customers take control over how much time they’re spending on their various iDevices. But with the kids at home for an extended period and parents also pulling their hair out, Apple has decided it’s better for everyone’s mental health if they just simply don’t see that their usage across all screens roughly mirrors the hockey-stick-like surge in confirmed coronavirus cases.

New TV Show To Debut on Netflix: “Billionaire Island”. Part ‘Survivor’ and part ‘Hunger Games’, this new series puts 12 tech billionaires infected with coronavirus on an island, without any access to PPEs or ventilators. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have signed on as advisors to the show, and, as one would expect, they’ve designed some interesting challenges and plot twists.

Secret Emerges in DISH offer to Lend Spectrum to T-Mobile. DISH’s offer let T-Mobile use a chunk of its 600 MHz spectrum for free in order to help meet network capacity demands in the coming weeks is laudable. Many were surprised, however, since DISH has been hoarding its spectrum for years. We’ve since learned that in a break during the negotiations between DISH and T-Mobile that helped get the Sprint deal done, John Legere challenged Charlie Ergen (a famous poker player) to a game of Texas Hold ‘Em, using spectrum channels rather than dollars, as currency. The evening ended with Legere up about 30 MHz.

Alexa To Be Used to Help Identify Those With Coronavirus. The shortage of test kits for the coronavirus continues to be a serious problem. But tech companies are stepping up. In his news conference yesterday, President Trump announced a new arrangement with Amazon, whereby anyone who says “I might have coronavirus” within earshot of Alexa will be entered into a national database, as a first step in determining who should get tested. The president added “If  Amazon does a good job, we might take another look at that JEDI contract”.

Fund Managers Start Shorting Netflix Stock. This might seem like a counterintuitive move, since it appears that we’re all homebound for the long haul. However, it’s possible that we’ll have cycled through pretty much everything Netflix has to offer — something that until recently seemed mathematically impossible — which could lead to significant numbers of subscribers dumping Netflix once they’re actually allowed to go.out.again.

Airlines Will Make a Huge Comeback…With $1,000 Bag Fees. Airlines are the good cop/bad cop of corporate America. During the past ten flush years, they’ve done nearly everything possible to make the flying experience less pleasant. Now, they’re being all nicey-nicey, waiving change fees, cancel fees, and baiting you with $30 fares to Hawaii. But when flying returns, you can bet that they’ll be looking at all sorts of creative ways to recoup their losses. We hear they’re considering $1,000 bag fees, surcharges for crying children, and huge fines for anyone boarding a plane with so much as a runny nose.

Facebook to Relaunch Facebook Dating as A Virtual Service. Facebook received a huge amount of bad press when it launched the Facebook Dating app not long after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to testify in front of Congress about customer privacy concerns. Predictably, the app has not been a standout success. However, we hear that Facebook has pivoted and is re-casting Facebook Dating for the coronavirus era. In a press release, the company said, “Our whole company was built on the basis of people virtually, rather than actually, interacting. Facebook Dating is the logical extension of that, and is perfect for these times, since people can only virtually, and not actually, date”.

Two New Coronavirus-Era Reality Shows Being Rushed to Market:

  • ‘Zoom Bloopers’, Hulu. Next week will mark the debut of the show on Hulu. Zoom users — who now equal about 100% of the U.S. population — will be asked to send in videos of their favorite Zoom fails and embarrassing moments. Categories include: Most Embarrassing Unmute Moment; Worst Audio of the Week; Most Distracting Behavior by a Child During a Work-From-Home Zoom Call;  Best Example of Someone Getting Frustrated Learning How the F___ To Use This Thing;  and You Shoulda Left the Camera Off.
  • ‘Work From Home War Stories’, Netflix. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have never worked from home are now getting adjusted to this new reality. Well, this sure works better for some than others. Sketches for the first couple of episodes include: WFH Will Ruin My Marriage; Odd Spaces for Home Offices; Sweatpants Are The New ‘Business Casual’; One Thousand Ways to Distract Your Kids So You Can Actually Work For Ten Minutes; These Types of Classes Just Don’t Work For Online Learning; and Foods Not To Eat While On a Conference Call. People will be able to nominate their colleagues for a special award, to be given at the end of each episode: Least Effective Home Worker Of The Week

Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay sane.

Creativity in Times of Chaos

I’ll be honest, it is hard to keep writing these days as it seems like the world is burning down. It’s hard not to watch the news or keep checking Twitter in the hopes of some good news in containing this virus and all the while just seeing more chaos. I truly hope everyone is taking mental health in these times as seriously as physical health.

My brain naturally looks for big picture observations and patterns. Many of the patterns I’ve talked about have been about the broader trend with remote work, what we can learn, and how we can use this situation to shape us better as humans, society, governments, and businesses going forward.

One of the more interesting things I’ve seen is how businesses, particularly those in the services economy, are adapting to stay in business and keep their workers employed.

These are exceptional times, and I’ve been encouraged by the quick and creative adaptations of many companies. As a consumer, I have noticed many of my favorite brands doing unique offers right now, some doing things they have never done before. A random anecdote is one of my favorite breweries in Santa Rosa called Russian River Brewing offered to ship bottles of some of their famous, and very hard to find beers to fans. They brew several beers recognized in the top 20 beers of the world, and my personal favorite, Pliny the Elder, is very hard to find. They are struggling, so they offered to sell 12 packs and ship to consumers for the first time ever, and they sold the deal out in 4 hours. I jumped on this deal early as it was a total win-win for both parties. This is a simple example of many we are seeing as workers in food services.

Airlines are having to pivot to use their planes for cargo delivery during less travel and minimizing routes. Elon Musk, begrudgingly, shifted resources from making Teslas to making respirators. I even saw on the news today Tito’s vodka is using their knowledge of distilling alcohol to make hand sanitizer. Clothing makers are pivoting to help make masks for hospitals and healthcare workers.

It’s also been fascinating to see local and boutique retailers now get set up online, mostly with Shopify, which is why their stock price is, growing. I’ve seen friends on Facebook or Twitter, all promoting local retailers making unique products and now offering online in order to save their business.

Out of trying situations, people are being creative and in the process, many of their businesses may be better for it. This forced change among businesses, companies, governments, etc., is disrupting the status quo and out of that disruption may come needed change. Whether it is an evaluation of old processes, or technologies, business models, etc., many are having to move fast and adapt to the new way of doing business, at least for a prolonged period of time.

I’m trying to round up more stories of this creativity in chaos. If you know of any send them over to me. But this remains one of the small things helping to give me hope during these trying times. We, humans, are creative, and in many cases, it is inspiring to see so many people willing to help each other during times of crisis.

The Time for Pragmatism in Tech is Now

The tech industry has always prided itself—and for good reason—on describing and building products, services, and even business models that look to the future. In fact, the technologies behind many of today’s advances are arguably helping define our future. Because of that, it’s become quite normal to think and talk about these developments as having to unfold over the course of several years before their true impact can be accurately measured.

But the COVID-19 crisis is focusing a dramatically different lens on many of these efforts and forcing companies to think (and act) on completely different timelines. It’s also getting people to think differently about what technology products can and can’t do for them, which is leading to some important reassessments of what really matters as well as what’s truly useful and what isn’t. Frankly, in many instances, it’s a rethinking that’s been overdue.

Reassessing and/or revising expectations has some potentially profound implications for tech companies, which can then smartly recognize ways they can shift both their messaging and even their product strategies. It also opens up some interesting opportunities to make meaningful improvements in existing products. Last, but certainly not least, it also provides an incredible opportunity for at least some portion of the tech industry to turn the increasingly negative narrative about big tech around and to reposition the tech industry as a beneficent force that can help improve our society and our world.

Thankfully, the manifestations of these new approaches are already starting to happen in both big ways and small. T-Mobile, for example, quickly got the FCC to give its approval for what’s called Temporary Spectrum Access to increase the available bandwidth they had at 600 MHz—which the company uses for both 4G and 5G service—by essentially “borrowing” unused spectrum from Dish and Comcast. Because T-Mobile had already built-up a good part of its network infrastructure for its 5G deployment, it was able to move much more quickly than it would have otherwise been able to. In addition, the company followed up this week by also launching a new low-cost ($15/month) plan sooner than originally planned. For their part, both AT&T and Verizon also joined in the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge and made similar efforts of their own to increase available bandwidth, remove data caps for broadband services, pledge not to turn off connectivity plans due to financial hardship caused by the crisis, and more.

Collectively, these quick efforts showed the telecom industry as a whole to be very responsive and sensitive to the issues at hand, all of which should certainly go a long way in improving consumers’ perception of them. Throw in the fact that, as of now, the critical telecom and data delivery infrastructure has held up remarkably well given the huge increase in traffic it’s had to deal with from the many people working and living exclusively at home, and it’s arguably been an impressive week or two for the telecom industry.

Yet another interesting example and set of data comes from Cisco, whose equipment powers large segments of these infrastructure networks. On a call with Cisco executives and CEO Chuck Robbins, the company talked about having to approach these network loads in entirely different ways than they had in the past. Rather than taking a more systematic approach to problem solving, they freely discussed having to make adjustments in real time—a clearly different approach to what they’d done in the past, and yet, based on what we’ve been experiencing, a successful one.

Not surprisingly, the Cisco execs also discussed the incredibly robust demand they’ve seen for their networking products—every company is looking to their bandwidth—as well as the enormous traffic increase (up to 24x) that they’ve seen for their Webex videoconferencing and remote collaboration services. Clearly, these are things that companies need immediately, so Cisco’s ability to adjust its own networks on the fly to meet these huge demands speaks volumes about the pragmatic approach the company is taking to address these issues. One interesting side note from the Cisco call was that the vast majority of Webex client software downloads was for PCs over smartphones, once again highlighting the real-world value that PCs (laptops in particular) continue to play.

In a different and yet thematically related development, IBM, along with a number of government labs and technology partners like HPE, made the decision to open up access to many of the world’s fast and most powerful supercomputers to scientists who are working to battle the virus. It was a smart, fast, pragmatic decision that serves an incredibly important cause and highlights, in a very public way, the efforts that IBM is making to assist in whatever way it can.
Of course, many other tech companies also announced their own efforts to address some of the concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic has created. In fact, as a long-time industry observer, it was very encouraging and even heartwarming to see how much concern that the tech industry was displaying. While it may prove to be short-lived, there also seems to be much more willingness for companies to consider partnering with each other to help create new solutions that, in otherwise normal times, might not happen.

Even with these efforts to provide quick benefits, however, the new “normal” has made it clear that much work still needs to be done, particularly in making some tech products and services easier to use. Case in point: given the huge increase in video calls that I and most other people are now experiencing, it’s easy to find instances in applications like videoconferencing that need to be improved—and quickly. If you’ve ever suffered through trying to troubleshoot your audio and video connections for these calls, for example (and let’s be honest, who hasn’t), then you understand the need. Something as obvious as having a button on the main page of an online service or in the launch screen of a videoconferencing app to let you test your connection (or even better, to use some kind of AI or other software intelligence to fix it automatically), without having to log-in to an account or find the buried preference settings, seems like a very easy thing to do, yet, it’s just not there. These are the kind of small pragmatic differences that companies should also be thinking about.

To be clear, the more pragmatic approach to creating, marketing, and even selling tech products that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing upon us doesn’t have to come completely at the expense of forward-looking technology advances. The R&D-focused efforts within the tech industry that are enabling things like quantum computing, or the latest neuromorphic chips that Intel recently unveiled, remain an absolutely essential and defining part of the business. The difference now, and likely into the foreseeable future, is really more one of focus and emphasis. Companies need to look much harder at the types of changes they can make here and now both to existing products and upcoming products. I’d argue that the tech industry had gone a little too far down the path of promising long-term revolutions without thinking enough about short-term implications. If nothing else, I expect that one of the more important outcomes that will linger on after we pass this crisis will be more attention to what kind of ideas, products, and services make a difference in the near-term—not just in some far off “vision” for where things might go.

Of course, it’s also important to remember that necessity is the mother of invention, and there are likely few times in recorded history when the necessity of thinking and acting differently has been more urgent. As a result, an even more important silver lining from our current crisis is that we will soon start to see and enjoy the inventive benefits of many of the most brilliant minds in the world who are spending their time thinking, from a present-focused pragmatic perspective, about how to solve many types of tech-related problems both big and small. It’s not clear when, how, or in what exact form those innovations will appear, but I have absolutely no doubt that they will arrive and that we will all benefit from them.

Podcast: Apple Product Launch, Sony PS5 and Microsoft Xbox X, Intel Neuromorphic Chip

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell analyzing Apple’s surprise launch of their new iPad Pro, Magic Keyboard, and updated Macbook Air and Mac Mini, discussing the product spec reveal this week of the forthcoming AMD-powered PS5 and Xbox X gaming consoles, and chatting about the innovations enabled with Intel’s latest neuromorphic chip.

Is VR and AR Video Conferencing a Killer App for This Nascent Market?

Now that many people have to work from home, they are using tools like Web-Ex, Google Hangouts, and other collaboration tools to work with colleagues from disparate locations more frequently.

I have used these forms of collaboration tools for years, and while they work, I am not a big fan of their poor ease of use and UI. That is not to say they are not useful tools, but these apps often have issues when it comes to logging into a conference as well as how well they work in presentation mode.

Another tool that makes it possible for us to work at home and in remote offices around the world effectively is video conferencing. Zoom, Skype video, and others are taking off now and enabling us to connect in new and more personal ways.

However, while these tools also work, especially in face to face video meetings, I find that video conferencing with a lot of people, especially if the video is on participants, is very distracting. I have done a few of these types of video conferences lately, and I turn my camera off intentionally to not be a distraction to others during the meeting.

One thing that strikes me about using these tools at home to have meetings, make presentations and conduct effective interaction is that the face-to-face discussions are still the best way to get the most out of a meeting. I realize that my view is controversial, especially to a younger generation who can even conduct meetings via texting, however when I am in a meeting with my customers and face-to-face, we do get a lot done.

When Facebook bought Oculus, one of the key reasons was for them to create a virtual room where people could sit around a table, or sofa’s in living rooms and communicate in real-time. The early version had what I would call crude avatars represent a person in these rooms.

Eventually, Facebook created Spaces and Oculus rooms, which were exciting but never took off. At Facebook’s developer conference last summer, they replaced these rooms with Facebook Horizon.

Engadget wrote about Horizons and shared the following:

“In Horizon, you’ll be able to create an avatar that, bizarrely, won’t have any legs. You can then use portals (or “telepods”) to make your way to public spaces such as a town square. Horizon will offer exploration and games, along with ways to build communities through groups and events.

“Everyone will have the power to build new worlds and activities, from tropical hangout spots to interactive action arenas, all from scratch — no previous coding experience needed,” Oculus stated in a blog post. “Whether people choose to build, play, or simply hang out, Horizon will ensure a welcoming environment through new safety tools and human guides — Horizon Locals — to answer questions and provide assistance, if needed.”

I realize Horizon is focused on consumers, but it represents an example of using a virtual world for people to get together. And it would not be a stretch of the imagination for Facebook to eventually evolve this platform to include virtual conference rooms that include real live video meetings that have a background that could replicate any company’s conference rooms or even auditoriums.

Another company is creating an AR-mixed reality app that, according to their site, can teleport your presence anywhere. It will let people “Meet with anyone, anywhere in the world as if you were in the same room. Your meetings will jump to life with spatial audio and 3d telepresence that feels like being face to face.”

The company is called Spatial and I encourage you to check out their demo on their home page. It is awe-inspiring and could become a killer app for AR and VR with companies who would prefer meeting as if they are still in the room but piped in virtually from all over the world.

Since I have had more time at home due to the work at home and shelter in place edicts, I have been spending more time on my Oculus Quest VR headset. I Used the original Oculus Go for a year, but the Quest is so superior to the first model that it has changed my view of VR. I had felt that it was a technology that would have greater acceptance in vertical markets and gaming.

I have been using it for streaming videos and many VR travelogues, especially the ones that put me in the location being shown, such as an African Safari and scuba diving with turtles.

One of the most exciting travel videos is the restoration of Notre Dame in Paris. I have been to Notre Dame well over a dozen times and combed it from top to bottom. To walk through the main sanctuary and see up through its roof where the spire once stood was fascinating. The videographer made the tour so realistic in VR mode that one feels like you are there while watching it thousands of miles away.

While the Oculus Quest is still more of a consumer product since it excels in VR gaming, you can see that VR headsets are moving in the right direction. I can see them delivering broader-based applications like VR-AR video conferencing, which could become a killer app that makes VR-AR headsets indispensable to businesses sometime in the future.

Apple’s Quiet Launch Brings Welcome Updates

Apple skipped the virtual press event and launched its latest updates to the iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini via press release. Without executives on stage, it may have felt like a quiet launch, but Apple is delivering some key updates here that should make some serious noise in the market.

iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner
Apple continues to iterate on its world-class iPad Pro form factor. The latest 11- and 12.9-inch versions of the high-end tablet feature a new A12Z Bionic chip, a Pro camera system with a 12MP Wide and a 10MP Ultra Wide camera, and five studio-quality microphones. Perhaps the most notable new hardware feature is the LiDAR Scanner, which Apple says can measure the distance to surrounding objects up to five meters away. The company says the scanner, combined with the new camera and new computer vision algorithms on the A12Z, will drive improved augmented reality experiences.

Rumors last year suggested that Apple had hoped to add the LiDAR Scanner to at least one version of the iPhone, but it wasn’t yet ready. Its inclusion here suggests we can expect to see it ship on one or more of this year’s phones, too (although its placement where the iPhone Pro’s current third lens resides brings up some interesting questions). LiDAR is short for Light Detection and Ranging, and I’m a little surprised Apple marketing didn’t come up with a better name for its version of this technology. Others have called similar technologies “time of flight” sensors, which isn’t much more user friendly. While the naming isn’t sexy, the capabilities should be. Essentially the LiDAR Scanner should drive much more robust AR experiences on the device. Apple points to instant AR placement, improved motion capture, and people occlusion.

I’m pleased to see Apple continuing to push forward with AR methodically. These new hardware features, coupled with continued updates to iPadOS, should result in some of the best AR experiences you can have on a handheld device. It will be interesting to see how developers utilize these new features to improve their existing apps and create new ones. It’s worth noting that mobile devices like the iPad also continue to be a primary way many enterprise organizations are testing the waters of AR usage. I expect commercial-focused SDKs and applications—such as PTC’s Vuforia Engine and Vuforia Studio—will begin to leverage these new features straight away.

The other big iPad-related announcement was the addition of touchpad support to iPadOS and a supporting product, called the Magic Keyboard, which is due to ship in May. The Magic Keyboard may well represent the most wished-for product of many die-hard iPad loyalists. It attaches to the iPad Pro via magnets, and it allows for screen angle adjustments. In addition to the all-important touchpad, it includes scissor mechanism keys (with 1mm of travel) and—super importantly—a Type C USB port for charging that leaves the existing iPad Type C port open for accessories.

I can’t wait to try out the new Magic Keyboard, and I’m pleased to see that it will work with existing iPad Pro models. From a design perspective—and without having used it yet—the biggest issue I have is that Apple continues to leave out a place to store the Apple Pencil securely. I’ve been using a $10 case that brilliantly holds the pencil where it can charge, and it never falls off in my bag. Microsoft cleverly addressed this same issue with its Surface Pro X Signature keyboard. It boggles my mind that Apple won’t make this simple feature available in its cases. Beyond that design issue, my other biggest quibble is Apple’s pricing for the Magic Keyboard, which starts at $299. Yes, there are some great new features in the product, and I rarely criticize Apple for its premium pricing, but that price tag is too high. Yes, Microsoft charges $269 for the Surface Pro X Signature keyboard, but that price includes the Slim Pen, whereas you must buy the Apple Pencil 2 separately from Apple for another $119. That means, all in, a new entry-level 11-inch iPad Pro with all the accessories will cost $1,167. That feels too high at a time when iPadOS still feels like a work in progress. Will I buy one? Yes. But at $299, it feels as if Apple missed an opportunity to cast a wider net with this product launch.

Updated MacBook Air, Mac Mini
I’m not happy with Apple’s Magic Keyboard pricing for the iPad Pro, but I am pleased that the company lowered the starting price for its updated MacBook Air to $999. The new notebook features the new Magic Keyboard, faster Intel processors, and a new base-level storage allotment of 256GB.

Each of these new additions is incredibly important. One by one, Apple is replacing the products in its lineup that shipped with the former flawed keyboard design, and now its entry-level buyers can once again buy a notebook with a keyboard that should last the lifetime of the device. The processor upgrade is also huge and moves the lineup from Intel’s 8th generation to its 10th generation products. Apple says to expect a 2X performance boost plus 80% faster graphics. The $999 product is a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3 processor; an extra $100 buys the 1.1-GHz i5, or $250 buys you a 1.2-GHz i7.

Apple also updated the Mac mini, increasing the storage of the starting $799 product to include 256GB instead of the previous 128GB. I’m happy to see Apple showing the mini some love again, although I would have liked to see a processor bump here, too.

A Strong Lineup in Uncertain Times
As we head into the second quarter of the year, Apple’s iPad and Mac lineups are looking quite robust. Pricing complaints aside, the iPad Pro continues to be one of the most technically impressive hardware products on the planet. iPad OS still needs work, but I’m hoping to see it evolve into something on par with the hardware in the next 18-24 months. The new MacBook Air addresses some of the primary issues many people had about the product and should return it to its former “easy recommendation” status. And more storage for the Mac Mini is a plus.

The real question Apple faces–along with the rest of the technology industry—is what the market will look like for the remainder of the year. As an increasing number of countries move to address the ongoing threat of COVID-19, we already see dramatically negative impacts on the world economy. While we’ve seen an early surge in technology buying as consumers and companies buy products to facilitate working and educating at home, we’re likely to see a significant slowdown in the coming months as everyone waits to see how things play out. Strange times, indeed.
As we find our way forward, please be kind to each other and stay safe.

The iPad Pivot, Apple Slaying Sacred Cows

A few weeks ago, it seems like a year ago now, I wrote about how the rumors of iPad getting a mouse/trackpad would be a pivot from the iPad’s original positioning. I still believe that is true. However, there is a better point to make now that we have seen the new iPad Pro and the new Keyboard with a trackpad for iPad.

Overall the new iPad is a nice upgrade. The LiDAR camera is interesting as it provides a new level of capabilities in-depth mapping, and we can expect that to come to iPhones before too long. But the talk is really about the new Magic Keyboard.

I have wanted a better iPad Keyboard since day one. I’ve tried practically every third party solution out there time and time again and never found one that was right. When it came to tablet-like devices, I have always agreed with my colleague Carolina Milanesi that Surface Pro sets the bar with their keyboard, not their trackpad but their keyboard. That is why I’m extremely interested in trying the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro.

The biggest benefit to choosing my iPad to my Mac was portability. When I go out to meetings or travel, etc., I like to travel light, and the iPad has always been the best device fro Apple that combined productivity and portability. Note, I said the best device from Apple because, as I highlighted in the article last week, I’ve also been using Surface Pro X more in travel situations. Granted, no one is going anywhere now for some time.

A key point to re-emphasize from my article a few weeks ago on iPad evolution is this:

I wrote last week, that I have been living in a Windows world and using both a 15′ Surface Laptop and a Surface Pro X and the more I become comfortable with my new workflows on Windows the more I like the Surface Pro X tablet functions as a companion to the laptop. Being able to seamlessly move from one device to the next and keep my workflow intact is efficient. This is counter the experience I have using Mac and iPad together as they both have two very different workflows for most of my main tasks.

I want to emphasize this point of seamless workflows. This has been a positive of going from iPhone to iPad, but iPad’s more PRO workflows are quite different from macOS. By evolving iPadOS and adding trackpad support in apps, my guess is the workflows from Mac and iPad will not be that different any longer which is good in my opinion.

I hate the debate as to whether the iPad is a computer, or not since I think it should simply be clear it is a new type of computer. That being said, it is extremely interesting to me they dynamic that has been at play between the iPad and the Microsoft Surface. If you had told me when iPad and then shortly after Surface launched, that in 10 years iPad would look more like a Surface, I would have told you you were wrong until I was blue in the face. Yet here we are.

Slaying Sacred Cows
I’ve said, and still believe, Steve Jobs’s original vision was much more transformative to the computer paradigm than perhaps humans were ready for. I honestly don’t think where iPad has evolved is where Steve hoped, but I could totally be wrong here, that’s just my hunch. I think humans again are stuck in my behavioral debt theory, and we gravitate to old things that are comfortable, and old habits really do die hard.

There is nothing wrong with this, there is simply wisdom in understanding the universal nature of this truth. When something transformative enters the picture, it is not the established users who embrace it but the new users who grow upon it. For example, my daughters use iPads for school. One of them will be a Sr. next year, and I had been thinking if she was going to need a Mac/PC to go off to college. She much prefers iPad to Ma,c and now with iPad Pro and the Magic Keyboard, I am confident that will do just fine for her in college.

But, what I think matters here in the big picture is Apple’s willingness to slay sacred cows. I do have a strong hunch, not bringing mouse/trackpad to iPad was a sacred cow for many early years into the iPad launch. It is extremely mature of Apple to be willing to leave behind ideas that may have had genuinely good intentions, and evolve in a way that fits the user, not their (Apple’s bias). This is not the first time we have seen this either. I think the iPad Mini was a concession by Apple, and I think smartphones larger than 5 inches were a concession by Apple. But, their concessions met the market where its needs evolved, and those concessions kept them in dominant positions with device sales.

I think these new feature improvements to iPad will do the same. It will keep iPad as the best selling tablet/computer combination and even leader to stronger sales going forward. It will also help the Mac, as I alluded to in my piece a few weeks ago. Bringing mouse support to iPad OS will absolutely help iOS developers bring their apps to Mac, which will create a software boon for Mac, which we have not seen since the early days of Mac software development. Apps help drive platforms, and if we see a flood of new macOS apps, this strengthens the case for developers for both iPadOS and Mac at the same time and could very well put both platforms on a new trajectory.

Apple In The Time of Coronavirus

The rumors about an Apple event in March had been mounting since the start of 2020. Still, the string of cancellations of every live tech event and conference from February to July had people believing Apple would pivot to an online event to launch what was expected to be a low-cost iPhone, a new iPad Pro and a new MacBook Pro. Then, last week, the COVID19 crisis accelerated across several locations, including Apple’s backyard: Silicon Valley. A date for WWDC was announced and with it the news that the event will be a virtual one. I am sure even for the most avid fans, whether or not Apple was going to have a product launch was no longer top of mind and many might have thought this was not the best time to have a product launch.

To Launch or Not To Launch

I have no insights into the thought process that lead Apple to launch its products, but there were a few things that stood out to me about the process. Some might argue that this was not a time to launch any consumer products. The reality, however, is that the uncertainty of how long this situation will last makes it hard to delay products as doing so might impact other products coming to market later in the year. Also, although brick and mortar stores are closed in many markets, online stores are still open for business.

I thought the way Apple decided to launch was sympathetic to the mood we are all in. There was no live event, which could have been an option we have seen other brands adopt. Instead, there was a press release, a landing page for each product like we usually have and video ads and demos. The video showcasing the iPad Pro new Magic keyboard saw a much less exuberant Craig Federighi than we are used to seeing on stage. There was contained excitement for the product, but the demo was delivered in a very matter of fact way acknowledging the unique situation we are finding ourselves in.

There was one product that was expected to be part of this launch that we did not see and that is the rumored lower-priced iPhone. It could well be that Apple might be facing some supply issues, but I would not be surprised, although I doubt, we will ever know for sure if delaying the launch of that specific product has to do with the COVID19 crisis. A more affordable iPhone would have its greater appeal among potential buyers who have a more limited disposable income. I would argue the economic uncertainty tied to COVID19 is likely to impact this target market the most. That said, I believe the choice Apple made not to launch the new iPhone model at this time had more to do with not being out of touch with reality than a concern about weaker consumer confidence.

Three Thoughts on the New iPad Pro

And now onto the product that most interests me: the new iPad Pro. I will have more to say once I get my hands on one, but from the demos, there were a few general observations I wanted to make.

The Trackpad

I have never been one of those iPad users calling for trackpad support, I was just going to be content with a backlit keyboard, but I got both! What struck me about the demo that Federighi delivered was that the trackpad is more akin to the MacBook TouchBar than the trackpad on the Mac, which is why I believe we will see it go from the iPad Pro to the Mac. The idea is for the trackpad to keep the hands where you have them when typing but allowing you to interact with content on the screen as if you were touching it. Wouldn’t that be what you want to do with a Mac?

PC vs. iPad Pro

The “How to correctly use a computer” video has evolved from the “what’s a computer” video of a couple of years ago. The focus shifted from what the hardware should look and feel to how the hardware defines the way we work. It seems subtle, but as the iPad Pro gets closer to the Microsoft Surface Pro, at least conceptually, moving the conversation to how people work points exactly to differences such as the role of a trackpad as well as the app ecosystem.

Software

Over the years, the big argument people would make on whether the iPad Pro could replace a PC was centered around three things: better keyboard, mouse support, and software. Now that Apple has delivered on the hardware front, the software is what needs to be addressed.

In my view, this means that the race that used to be iPad vs. Surface Pro becomes iPadOS+MacOS vs. Windows 10x. With Panos Panay now leading the Windows effort, I would expect a new emphasis on ease of use and richness of the experience. I also expect a lot of learning coming from the effort that Microsoft is putting into Android and bringing Android and Windows closer together.

Even switching from hardware to software, it is interesting to see how these two companies are heading towards a very similar final goal but coming at it from the opposite direction. iPadOS users are calling for software that can handle more, while Windows users are asking for a much slender software. It sure will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Tech’s Time to Shine and Re-Build Trust With Society

I’m going to keep today’s note short and sweet. For one, we are now in a shelter in place in the Bay Area and that has caused a bit of chaos in many of our worlds. On top of that, a friend had an issue with his sheep who was giving birth today so I had to run over and help the situation.

Right now it feels as though there are chaos and turmoil. Humans are panicking as many of their worlds have been disrupted, turned upside down, and fear and panic are resulting. As I observe the totality of the situation, it strikes me that right now is the time for big-tech companies, and the technology industry as a whole to shine and rise to the occasion.

For some time now, tech companies have been getting a bad reputation and being viewed more like evil entities than friends of humanity. This is a golden opportunity for leaders in the tech industry to rally together and rebuild trust in society and around the world.

This starts with something like misinformation and presents a massive opportunity for Twitter, Facebook, and more to start managing how better they sort and present trusted information as this is a critical time for people to rely on information they can trust.

Interestingly, I have really appreciated how Apple News is handling curating important news related to COVID-19. In case you haven’t seen it, the first page of Apple News, at the top, has this highlight.

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As opposed to going to Twitter early each morning as I drink my coffee, I am going to this section of Apple News for all the latest information. This is not to say I don’t find valuable information related to the outbreak on Twitter, but that I’m not sure what I can trust on Twitter and right now I care more about having confidence in my information and maybe having less information than I do having too much information and wasting time figuring out if it is credible.

Facebook has felt like a total waste of space when it comes to anything related to the virus because people in my feed are sharing content that fits their narrative. Either this is the end of days or it’s no big deal it seems based on the variety of content I see. Facebook has been the most frustrating place to frequent during this crisis.

But, now is the time for all these companies to see this as an opportunity to showcase their best approach to these problems and play a helpful role in helping us get past it. This is, likely, the most impactful global event since World War II, and it represents an unprecedented need for technology to do the right thing for humanity. Those who fail may only increase the negative posture many people and governments have toward technology.

It has been encouraging to see tech companies offer many of their tools for free to institutions who need it. While that is a win-win business case, the reality is it creates a positive posture that will help these companies look better in the public eye.

I have also wondered if the companies who play this right, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., who may have come into some government regulatory speculation may also come out of this with a changed tune. For example, I think a reasonable question would be if breaking apart a company due to regulatory issues would actually hurt the global situation in case of a catastrophe? Would a company be able to respond as quickly to a global crisis if the government was to burden them with restrictions? These are not questions faced before when big tech was bad, but if big-tech can help prove good, and in light of the situation we find ourselves in, these are interesting questions in the here and now!

I want to be optimistic in my outlook on current events and look at the positive scenarios that could play out. Ultimately, this is a massive test for everyone. For individuals, for businesses, for governments, and for leaders. I genuinely hope we have more who pass than fail this moment in time which will go down in history books.

The Value of Contingencies and Remote Collaboration

The stark realities that we’re all facing from the COVID-19 pandemic unfortunately won’t be going away any time soon. The simple truth is that life is just going to be different for a while. Let’s hope that the extraordinary efforts that companies and people are taking to minimize the spread of the virus prove to be effective sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, however, it’s clearly time to settle into new modes of working, with technology obviously playing a key role. Work at home numbers are going to shoot up tremendously, for example, and many people are about to get a crash course in things that work well—and things that don’t—in that environment. (By the way, if you’re looking for some advice and pointers on the subject based on years of experience, check out the latest Techpinions podcast: https://techpinions.com/podcast-working-from-home/59461)

In addition, many companies are going to have to start up whatever contingency and emergency plans they have in place. The speed at which events are occurring and situations are shifting is undoubtedly catching even the most well-prepared organizations off-guard to some degree. Once things start to settle down, however, the critical importance and value of technology-enabled contingency plans should start to become very obvious.

Unfortunately, there are likely several companies that didn’t have those types of plans in place. In addition, there may be an even larger number that had a basic plan in place but didn’t take it to the level that our current situation has created. (To be fair, it would have been hard for anybody to really predict the speed and depth of impact that COVID-19 has created.) The challenge for these organizations will be to quickly put together plans that can help them adapt in the best way possible to the new environment. I have no doubt that, in fact, that’s exactly what a lot of IT professionals are in the process of doing as we speak.

The good news is that we now have access to an amazing array of different technology-based options to help address at least some of the challenges organizations are going to be facing. Additionally, thanks to a series of encouraging announcements, a wide range of tech companies, carriers and others are pitching in to make their services free or to reduce data caps in order to ease the potential limitations of network bandwidth.

From high-quality videoconferencing solutions, to fast, reliable broadband networks, to mature cloud-based collaboration software tools, the tech industry has never had a wider range of tools to help ease the process of working at home (or remotely). In fact, once we get past all this, there’s little doubt that we’ll look back at these next few months as being a defining moment for remote collaboration. The extensive use of these tools is also going to be an incredibly valuable real-time experiment that will clearly expose the real advantages (and challenges) of existing tools. Hopefully, these next few weeks will also quickly lead to tweaks and adjustments that make them easier and more reliable. If these tools do perform well, they could end up becoming significantly more important in the average worker’s arsenal even beyond this crisis. Of course, if they don’t work well for many, expect to see some serious pushback against them.

In addition to these basic remote work enablement capabilities, there are a number of more nuanced factors that are going to come into play, particularly as time goes on. Even if companies have the basic tools they need to enable collaboration, for example, what level of control or management do they have over the devices or the networks being used to do that work? Those are details that can get overlooked in basic contingency plans but need to be a factor for longer-term emergency plans that, hopefully, every company is now creating, if they haven’t already.

If we learn nothing else from this crisis, it should be abundantly clear to all that the need for creating plans that allow business continuity in even the most challenging of situations is absolutely essential. There should be little doubt that aggressively leveraging the new types of remote connectivity and collaboration tools now available needs to be a critical part of those plans.

Podcast: Working from Home

This week’s Techpinions podcast, which features Ben Bajarin and Bob O’Donnell, takes a different approach than normal and features an in-depth conversation on how to make the best of working from home, providing advice and best practices gained from many years of personal experience on everything from developing habits, to optimizing your connectivity, to leveraging the right kind of tech equipment and more.

Another Remote Work Take Or Remote Work Does Not Suck

I am sure by now you had enough about people pitching remote work and how the future will change because of what we are all experiencing due to COVID-19. I already wrote about how frustrating it is that it takes a pandemic, now an official one, to look at how far tech has come to empower remote work. I also warned about the need for companies to take seriously the cultural change that needs to occur to leverage remote work after this crisis is over.

So why am I writing about this again? I read an article earlier this week that really struck a nerve for the many generalizations that the author made on who benefits from remote work and how remote work negatively impacts creativity.

In my career, I have worked both from an office and remotely. I have done so both in the UK and in the US. My experience is my own. We are all a little different, the work we do might be different and the companies we work for are also different making each situation almost unique. So I will try my best not to succumb to generalization just to prove a different point from that expressed in the article and that is remote work does not have to suck.

Who Can Benefit From Working Remotely?

The article calls out new parents as a group that can benefit from working remotely. When I had my daughter, I was still in the UK and I was already working remotely. Those first few months were the hardest I ever had as a remote worker, so I am not sure it was quite a benefit. If you are a mother and you are breastfeeding, working from home allows demand and supply to be in the same location, which certainly simplifies things. Yet, trying to adjust to being a new parent while working all under the same roof makes boundaries much harder. As breastfeeding did not last long for me, I opted to go into the office for a few hours a week as a way to create a separation between me as a mom and me as a business person. Generally, I would say it is not feasible to work from home while looking after a child of any age unless it is for a limited amount of time, like during an illness or a bad weather day when one can temporarily rearrange calls and deadlines.

The other group the article suggests could benefit from working from home are “people with disabilities or others who aren’t well-served by a traditional office set-up.” I would think the hardest part for many in this group is commuting rather than actually being in the office. There is no question that cities could make it much easier to support people with disabilities when it comes to commuting. Often as I battled through the London underground during rush hour I wonder how visually impaired people or people using a wheelchair dealt with the number of stairs and escalators let alone the number of people.

Commuting is also tasking, of course not to the same extent, for people who do not have disabilities. The level of stress that commuting adds to our life impacts both our physical and mental health. In 2017, a study developed by VitalityHealth, the University of Cambridge, RAND Europe and Mercer, examined the impact of commuting on employee health and productivity across more than 34,000 workers across all UK industries. Commutes longer than 30 minutes appeared to have a negative effect on mental wellbeing with 33% of longer commute workers more likely to suffer from depression, 12% more likely to report multiple aspects of work-related stress, 46% more likely to get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep each night and 21% more likely to be obese.

There are other groups who I think could take advantage of working remotely and those are people who do not live in areas where work opportunities are plentiful. For some of these people moving to look for a job might mean not being able to afford a decent home or leaving behind any family support which could help with caring for their kids. It could also mean they are the ones unable to do the caring for family members, for instance.

Remote working might also result in a more diverse workforce. Companies not limiting their talent sourcing to the cities and counties where they have offices might make it easier to attract talent from different ethnicities. Take the tech sector and San Francisco as an example where, in 1970, the Black population represented around 13% of the total population and by 2018, that number was down to less than 6%. How can tech improve diversity if it is fighting against decreasing numbers of available candidates? Also, how can these companies attract diverse employees when it often means not having a community they can belong to?

Productivity and Creativity

I am not sure one could ever settle the discussion on remote work productivity and the jokes I have seen on Twitter over the past week are really not helping. There is this fantasy that working from home means you are less productive because you are easily distracted by family, roommates, pets, delivery people, the TV and apparently whatever else is in your home. While a little self-discipline is required, the distractions are only different, not necessarily less than what an open office can offer. Those who argue for higher productivity often mention the lack of commute time, which can impact how present or more relaxed one is by the time they sit at their desk but might not necessarily result in more hours spent working.

On creativity, the author is clear that working from home kills your creativity because of the lack of stimuli, he even quotes Steve Jobs about how staring at email does not help. But who stairs at email now? The reality is that with today’s technology, you can brainstorm, collaborate and connect in so many different ways and have a quality experience. Being in the office does not necessarily guarantee you are where your team members are, especially if you are working with international teams. The chances of those casual conversations by the micro-kitchen being always about work are also pretty slim. Not that my colleague Ben Bajarin and I should be used as an example, but we are rarely in the same place unless we are traveling. We both work from home and have our best brainstorming session over chat or iMessage. I am also more connected to Ben than I ever been to most of the people I saw every day at my old office.

Working Remotely Does Not Mean Being Alone

The current circumstances are, of course, very unique as we practice social distancing, but in general, working remotely does not mean being alone. The more people in the team are remote, the more the company will have a culture of inclusion and you will not feel like the odd one out. Just this past week seeing most of the people I had meetings with working from their home office rather than all being around one conference tablet and me dialing in from home made a big difference in how we all felt we belonged equally.

The more important point, though, is that remote work gives you the flexibility to include work out time, or running an errand over your lunch break, catching up with a colleague or a client over coffee, and the list goes on. Yes, the jokes about never taking your pajamas off might have some truth for the first couple of days and there are some people for whom remote work could lead to depression induced by isolation, which is no joking matter. Still, with a little proactiveness in setting up human contact and technology that improves telepresence, I think most people would find it quiet but not lonely.

 

So, do I think that remote work sucks? Absolutely not. Do I believe that remote work is for everybody? Of course not. If you are new to remote work and you want to see if it might be something you want to continue to do once the emergency is over, give it some thought. Evaluate the pros and cons, looks at the technology both devices and software that might help you improve the quality of your experience – this is the time to ask for what you need – and try to get into a routine.

Could Tech Actually Save Bricks and Mortar Retail?

There’s no question that e-commerce has changed the retail landscape forever. The hollowing out of physical stores started with books and Amazon and has now touched nearly every retail sector. In the latest wave, traditional malls, big box stores, and even grocery stores are feeling the effect.

But a recent trip down a storied Boston shopping street proffers hope that bricks and mortar retail might experience a sort of rebirth. And, ironically tech is playing a part.

Newbury Street in Boston’s tony Back Bay neighborhood has experienced all the familiar phases of retail over the past 30 years. For a long time, Newbury St., which runs for about 1 mile between Boston Public Garden and Kenmore Square was a high-end retail district, lined with boutique shops, galleries, and a few restaurants. That began to change in the 1990s, when the continued escalation in rents and the growth of big box stores resulted in the “mall-ification” of Newbury St. Even though the neighborhood remained delightful for walking,  Newbury St., which is populated by three to four story brownstones and mid-rise commercial buildings, started to look like the outdoor version of a typical American mall. Cue the Gap, Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, Urban Outfitters, and the like. A Tower Records store became a Best Buy.

But with the continued rise of Amazon and online shopping, and growing fatigue with the genericization of the retail shopping experience, business at many of these retail outlets started to fade. Vacancies, even in an otherwise healthy economic times, started to rise. And then, about three years ago when things were starting to look downright depressing, Newbury St. started to experience somewhat of a rebirth. Now, it’s still a work-in-progress, and there’s no doubt that retail remains a particular challenge…but the trendlines are cautiously encouraging. Ironically, e-commerce, tech, and big data have influenced or helped make this happen. How?

First, there’s the growth of what I call micro-segments, which are surely enabled by big data and social networking. For clothing, it used to be, there were men’s stores, women’s stores, and children’s stores. Now, these tend to be higher-end stores geared toward much more specific segments. The generic wedding shop is now Firas Yousif Originals Bridal, which makes custom gowns and women’s evening wear. There’s No Rest for Bridget, which has an ever-rotating line of trendy women’s clothing and accessories. Mulberry Rd. is the same idea, but for infant and kids clothing. The Fish & Bone, for pets. Allsaints has 200+ stores worldwide, catering to the ‘chic and edgy’ segment. There’s a block-long ‘athletic cluster’, consisting of Patagonia, Arc’teryx, North Face, and Fjällräven, all surrounded by yoga boutiques, a bike shop, a boxing club, and a Boston Sports Club.

Microsegments also include niches, such as Barbour, the British brand of cotton waxed jackets English country apparel, Akris, which features a Swiss line of womenswear and accessories, and Alps and Meters for luxury alpine sportswear.

Then there’s a group of stores that the increasingly sophisticated supply chain at least partially enables. Ministry of Supply is a men’s clothing shop whose main appeal is affordable custom-made wear. You stop in, are offered a coffee, and then get measured for an item that you actually have to pick up two weeks later…all while buying a sweater or some accessory that sits on their rather sparse shelves.

Third, are the types of stores that e-commerce can’t replace. Goorin Brothers Hat Shop still survives, since hats are probably something you don’t really buy online. Or the more modern Topdrawer, which sells pens, pencils, stationery, and travel type gifts – the whimsical sort of thing you wouldn’t know to even look for on the Internet. Muji is a Japanese retailer that sells a large range of clothing and household knickknacks. There are at least 15 shoe stores on Newbury St., since that’s a type of product that’s harder to buy on-line. And, high-end designer boutiques that have made somewhat of a comeback. Sure, this is a function of an affluent city/neighborhood and a strong economy, but also type of product/experience for which there is less of an online substitute.

Fourth is a group of stores I term ‘Born in Silicon Valley’: AllBirds (the shoe version of Lululemon), and Warby Parker (the Apple store of eyeglasses). You also see where Apple has had an outsized influence on design, such as at the sleekly decorated LIT Boutique, and numerous other stores along Newbury.

Yet another category is stores that started in direct-to-consumer online but are now adding a bricks and mortar presence. The above-named Allbirds is an example. Another example on Newbury St. is Tracksmith, which sells running clothing online for the prep school/Strava crowd but has opened the Trackhouse, which looks like a mix of Augusta’s 19th Hole and the Harvard Club. All that’s missing is the Winkelvi. Related, are stores influenced by online sites. So, the online StitchFix and Rent the Runway beget several high-end consignment shops on Newbury St., such as Castanet Designer Consignment and Revolve.

Finally, and this has nothing to with tech, is what I call ‘trend of the month’. Bagel shops became cupcake shops, which became frozen yogurt shops, and are now…smoke and CBD shops. Which will run through their cycle and yield to…anybody’s guess.

To conclude with a twist of irony, I should mention that one block over, running parallel to Newbury St., is Boylston St. It’s a wider street, home to the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church, but also a much larger population of chain type stores and restaurants than Newbury St. And the largest employer on Boylston St.: Boston-based Wayfair, which at least for household goods has mounted an impressive online challenge to Amazon.

Magic Leap Explores Sale, A Global Recession Looms

Magic Leap Explores Sale
Yesterday Bloomberg posted a story that Magic Leap is exploring options which include a sale. This is not surprising to many since the company raised way too much money to be sustainable and the market adoption for this technology is simply too far off.

I have always had my concerns for Magic Leap. I knew the solution was incredibly early and the technical problems they were trying to solve were not easy ones. The massive amounts of venture money they raised was necessary to try and solve these technical problems and they simply could not raise enough to solve those problems and play a patient capital game and wait for the market to develop. We honestly may still be 5+ years away from any reasonable AR solution and a decade or longer away from the mass adoption of AR head-mounted solutions. Magic Leap simply can’t wait for the market.

What gets tricky in the analysis of this market and Magic Leap’s role, is historically we have needed companies to try and fail in order to pave the way for an upcoming market. If you look at the history of any major technology going back to shipping and railways, perhaps farther, early entrants learned the hard lessons and paved the way for future companies to succeed. It’s unfortunate it took a tremendous amount of capital, that won’t likely be returned for a dividend, but hopefully, Magic Leap is purchased and the tech and IP used at a larger company who has a better chance at future success.

A Global Recession Looms
It seems like COVID-19 and its impacts are completely dominating the conversation right now, but for good reason, we need to be well informed and wisely charting a path forward. It seems ever likely things are going to get worse before they get better and while we will likely get past this virus, the impact from it is looking more likely to linger much longer.

The economic impact and fallout are looking to be significant and government involvement seems absolutely necessary at this point to help aid in the situation. Countries leadership is going through a scenario we have never seen before, and for which there is no manual. It will be a defining point, or a crumbling point, for many governments.

For China, even the quick action they took as a nation will see prolonged pain. Even though they seem to have contained the virus and are now starting to return factories to full capacity, the markets in which they export are being hit and likely going into financial/economic distress. So while China was hit economically as they dealt with the virus, they are now going to be hit a second time as nations whose markets they rely on could go into recession and possibly a prolonged one.

While the Chinese government puts on a posture of affluence, those who study the reason know they are leveraged beyond what is economically viable as they overinvested in their growth, real-estate, and to some degree economy, and could be strained to figure out how to support their people if a prolonged recession hits and many people lose their jobs, even if temporarily.

Even as we hear in the US work to contain the virus the government is already trying to propose an economic stimulus package. We are starting to see the job losses in retail, food, travel, entertainment, and while small for the moment we should expect this to grow. This is not just happening in the US but those workers impacted when people stay home in mass is inevitable. Bigger companies are at least still paying their hourly workers even if they can’t come in but not every local or small business has that capability.

My personal view on the matter is that if nations can not contain COVID-19 quickly, and by quickly I mean in the next month or two at most, then we face the reality a deep recession is likely and it will take years to recover. This scenario impacts everyone, not just a few.

Smartphone Market Pain, Throw Recovery Assumptions Out the Window

Smartphone Market Pain
I have been following the smartphone market as it relates to COVID-19 impact since if smartphones get hit bad, other categories could be worse. Basically, the smartphone market is the canary in the coal mine.

Looking at the smartphone market the past few months a few things stand out as micro and macro observations. The first one being the whole market is off, likely around 50%. China was hit the hardest as the country was ground zero for the virus and went into lock-down relatively quickly. Country data on smartphone sales show most vendors having their historical monthly sales halved, Apple included.

All investor notes I’ve read on the subject have cut estimates for vendor sales anywhere between 2-5m units. For Apple, most are cutting roughly 2-3 million off their sales numbers for iPhones, which could put Apple into the 38-39m iPhones sales figure, a number that has not been this low in quite some time. If you recall, there was a time Apple sold north of 60m iPhones in the March quarter. Yes, those days have been gone for a while but mid to high 40m units was where iPhone sales normalized in the March quarter. I share that number to highlight how impactful COVID-19 has been to Apple in terms of iPhone sales in March.

Apple is not alone, and again I use them as an indicator to gauge how hard Apple is hit because other smartphone vendors will be hit even harder. Apple, Samsung, and Huawei all are impacted but these three companies are in the best position to absorb the hit. Where companies like Vivo and Oppo (all owned by BBK) are not in as strong of a position, despite being owned by a larger company, and the impact to these brands could be greater. Outside of those five, most other smartphone brands could be hit even worse with potentially devastating financial impact.

The broader point here is the smartphone is arguable the most important piece of technology most humans on the planet own. If this market is hit and seeing potential declines of 50% or more in certain regions, then what about other hardware categories like PCs, TVs, even accessories, etc? My gut is these other categories are seeing even greater impact and may be off even more than 50% for the foreseeable future.

Throw Recovery Assumptions Out the Window
I personally do not believe demand has gone away. I don’t think any smart folks actually believe that. However, demand will be delayed is the right perspective. The problem is most assumptions believe the virus will be contained around summer and that the second half of the year, even going into 2021 should see recovery. That is a fine theory but I don’t think we can make any bets on it at this point in time.

Obviously, if we do not contain this virus globally by at least July then I think there is a chance the whole of 2020 is shot. Even if we do contain this virus by July, and that is probably optimistic from what I’ve read, we may see a recession follow as countries recover and how long a post virus recession could last is entirely unknown. In many ways, we are in uncharted territory and do not have much historical information to compare. We are literally learning in real-time about how humans are behaving and will behave when it comes to a global epidemic.

The main point about recovery, for smartphones, in particular, is the last big recession we had in the smartphone market, and Apple specifically did quite well. But those were different times. The smartphone market was just starting to scale and masses of consumers were still getting their first smartphones. Their realization of how important and central to their life a smartphone was caused them to prioritize it as a purchase even in the midst of economic hard times. That is not the market where are in today where most consumers are not buying the first time but are replacing older smartphones. During this period of economic hard times, it is extremely likely consumers put off replacing their smartphone even longer than they may have intended.

What 2020 becomes is manage through the hard-times situation for tech companies executives. Managing demand with your supply chain is going to be extremely hard, and my gut is most companies will be conservative in their build estimates for the quarter. Which in turn, could make supply more scarce.

Should the market pain, and situation worsen, and lead to a deeper recession, you can also expect then a less than ideal launch for fall device, and what could have been a strong 5G launch this fall. Which brings me to an interesting point to watch.

It was rumored Apple was going to release an updated iPhone SE, and some new accessories this Spring perhaps in March. I’d argue it is likely Apple will, or should, delay this launch because any new product launch this Spring is launching into nearly zero demand due to the uncertainty of both the virus and potential economic hard times. Regardless of people’s overall concern about the situation, their money is being held tightly for more critical basic needs than a new smartphone. It is simply unwise to launch anything new at the moment by any company.

We do believe a recovery will come. Whether it comes quickly or is drawn out and gradually ramps is the central question no one knows the answer to or has any good historical comparatives to build a defendable thesis. From a macro view, I think we have a lot of important market observations and learnings happening right now at every level from human behavior, government protocol, science, and society at large.