Author: Ben Bajarin

Years ago, I stopped doing a predictions article, generally because they seem ridiculous, and most readers view them as fiction. I considered doing a predictions article of things I don’t think will happen, and I still think that is an interesting article but have yet to attempt it. But we still do get questions from clients and media about what we expect in the coming year. As analysts, we get to view the industry from a 20,000-foot view, and there is some benefit to that view in seeing broader trends and connecting macro trends to the microelements of tech.

The challenge for many who try to predict the future is the desire to make a bold prediction, something that will happen that could change a paradigm or bring something dramatically new. A new market, a new technology, etc., is what excites people, but it is not what I expect in 2021. Rather, the challenge we saw in 2020 and the rapid movement of digital transformation happening in both enterprise and consumer markets put a giant spotlight on the reality that tech still has a long way to go. There are still huge numbers of pain points, frustrations, less than elegant solutions that need to be fixed.

So for 2021, the tech industry’s mission is to double down on solving the significant pain points that exist all around us as we use digital devices. I expect this to be able to happen much sooner than years before, largely because of the incredible progress of cloud computing. When you look at the core reason many tech companies were able to make the adjustment to work from home, even if it was not perfect and inelegant, the reality was if this COVID-19 pandemic would have hit a few years earlier, many companies would have had no chance at a transition and many businesses would have come to a screeching halt.

In many ways, I remember how the continual advancements in Internet infrastructure of the 2000 decade led to the massive industry opportunities that hit all at once. Most of the decade was more evolution and solving pain points, and that work led to the mobile era. In many ways, I view the cloud infrastructure and the underlying innovation in silicon as a similar laying of the groundwork for what’s next. But what is next is not coming this year, and that is ok. As I said, there are still many pain points to solve.

Which areas can we expect more digital transformation and a continued emphasis on solving pain points? Well, nearly all of them, but the tech industry’s journey has always been one that is a transition from analog to digital. This is why every company will someday be a tech company, if not by-product then by the process. All processes move from analog to digital, and many products similarly will include more digital elements. This is one reason why the auto industry, and in particular Tesla, has been talked about so much. That is an industry whose products have all but abstained from modern technology. Tesla brought the auto industry into the digital age, and there is no going back. I include this industry in solving pain points, which leads to many opportunities ahead.

I expect more companies to embrace direct-to-consumer, and the number of new brands and new products to increase thanks to the ease of services like Shopify for brands to control their storefronts and go direct to consumers. 2020’s e-commerce surge will no doubt assist this effort going forward, and shopping and buying online for everything is now an ingrained habit for many consumers. While e-commerce has made great progress, there are still pain points to solve in the total experience, automation, delivery, and more.

This point on D2C includes entertainment content. We already see movies go straight to digital services, and I expect this to be the new norm and offer a wide range of new experiences and new content. However, the current unbundled streaming landscape is a hot mess, and while our research and many others proves more consumers are leaving cable bundles for other content services, they find themselves leaving one set of frustrations and finding a whole batch of new ones. There is a huge opportunity here for someone, and as of now, I’d bet on Disney to become the new super aggregator in some way.

Enterprise software is another example where many pain points remain. While many companies embraced the latest technologies to enable their workforce to remotely, it was inelegant to put it kindly. There is still tremendous work ahead to more seamless blend workflows for individuals and teams, and that effort will pay off even when people start going back to the office. I expect big leaps ahead in solving these pain points for this category in 2021.

Lastly, Healthcare is another where I hope more tech companies can make an impact. If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly shown how broken much of healthcare is in the US but has also shown a further opportunity for digital, like Telehealth and other digital services stand to benefit and bring new opportunities.

While I highlight a few areas, and I’m sure there are more we will see pop up in 2021, the bottom line is, while not sexy, the tech industry’s focus and main push will focus more on solving pain points than pushing brand new inventions, or innovations. This is a good thing because, in order to bring about the new computing paradigm, we need to solve current problems rather than just create new ones.

For the past few weeks, I have been using the M1 power Mac mini as my primary day to day computer. I have not lived through as many Apple processor transitions as others who have been sharing their thoughts, but I vividly remember Apple’s transition to Intel. Ever since the late ’90s, Mac’s have been my primary computers. I have fond memories of bringing my Mac into meetings with PC OEMs and Intel in the early 2000s and always taking flack for not using Windows and Intel or what some would call a real work computer. Which is why I found it ironic after Apple switched to Intel how many Macs I saw floating around Intel when I was there for meetings. That’s another story.

During the Intel transition, the first Macs running Intel Silicon had a somewhat rocky beginning with many apps not optimized for x86. Rosetta handled the translation of code from Apple’s PowerPC architecture to Intel’s x86. The main thing about that transition that was burned into my mind was endless bouncing icons (the action an icon performs in the dock while it is opening on macOS) and how many times the app either never opened, requiring me to force quit or did not open requiring a total restart. Once apps were open, I recall the experience being mostly solid, with the exception of some frequent crashes. Still, those minutes wasted opening an app as Rosetta translated is burned into my memory.

Rosetta 1’s translation abilities were dependent on the code and Intel’s processing power back at that time, which is not what it is today as the x86 architecture is far more sophisticated and powerful. Given the underlying technology at the time during Apple’s transition from PowerPC to x86, some of these hiccups are understandable in retrospect. Still, many of us early users remember the pain of that transition.

Fast forward to today, and the current experience I’ve had with the M1 powered Mac mini, and it is night and day. After a smooth migration to the Mac mini M1 from my 16″ MacBook Pro, I started instantly picking up some work where I left off on the MacBook. I had a little flashback anxiety as I first launched Superhuman, the email client I run for Gmail, which is fairly lightweight. The Superhuman icon started bouncing in the dock and did so for 20 seconds or more. I briefly had Rosetta 1 deja vu. I immediately quit the app to try again to see what would happen, and it opened instantly. I quit again and opened several times, and each time, it opened instantly, to my relief. I then went on to open nearly all my other applications, which I knew were not M1 native-like Office apps, Zoom, Slack, some audio apps I use for editing audio. All of them took 20-30 seconds at first open but then opened each time instantly after.

What makes Rosetta 2 unique this time around is Apple is translating more like an ahead of time compiler (AOT) than a just in time compiler (JIT). Upon first open, Rosetta 2 is essentially translating all the x86 application code into native M1 instructions, which it will then run at each new open. This is the key experience that led many reviewers to remark on how well x86 apps performed on the M1 and how it felt like a native app. That’s because it basically was a native app after Rosetta 2 translation was performed. This is a huge advantage to Apple being the designer of the Mac CPU. Rosetta could, for the first time, be optimized and co-designed with the M1 and have unique knowledge of each other. This was not a luxury Apple has had in past silicon platform transitions.

I timed each non-native app’s translation process upon first open, and the average time was 26.7 seconds. That’s basically the time it took for the M1 to translate an x86 app to native M1 code. This is pretty impressive when you consider all that is going on under the hood.

Once the translation process was complete, all my non-M1 native apps performed just like I was used to on my Intel-based MacBook Pro. To have a reference, I timed how long it took the same apps to launch on both the M1 and my Intel-based MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz 8 Core i-9 processor). The table below shows the average time to launch, in seconds, and be usable of each app on each system. I timed each app five times and then averaged each out.

As you can see, each system had comparable app times. What was surprising was how none of my work-flows were interrupted as I moved from the Intel MacBook Pro to the M1 Mac mini. Literally zero disruption.

In terms of speed and performance, while I’m not a benchmarker, I did try and tax the M1 system in various ways I could with the software I have. Below was the CPU performance while I opened a native x86 app to run Rosetta 2 translation, scrubbed a 4k video in real-time, while on a Microsoft Teams video call (Teams not optimized for M1). I know it is a weird workflow to test, but it was the most CPU intense software at my fingertips.

As you can see, the spike was caused by the Rosetta 2 translation but never during this 1-2 min span did I see the system become sluggish, unresponsive, or have the spinning rainbow of death known on macOS.

What I found most intriguing about this CPU chart is the M1 has four performance cores and four low-power cores. This CPU chart shows that even the four low-power cores kick in, to a degree, during CPU intensive applications and are not just primarily there for lower-performance tasks.

Suffice it to say, the M1 has gone beyond my expectations right out of the gate, and from the reviews, it looks like I’m not alone. And any localized issues experienced by anyone with some non-optimized apps will be a thing in the past by the end of next year when nearly all, probably all, macOS apps will be optimized for the M1.

The M1 and the future of Macs
I wanted to conclude with a few thoughts on the role the M1 will play for the future of the Mac and Apple Silicon. I’ve long been bullish on Apple’s ambitions with custom silicon since Apple has helped establish the trend of specific purpose silicon away from the old world of general-purpose silicon. We also know Apple’s growing team of in-house silicon designers in-house, which gives them a huge advantage in custom silicon. What is exciting about Apple now challenging their silicon team with setting a new bar for high-performance computing is how those efforts will benefit Apple as a whole, not just with M1 Macs.

The work the team puts in to push the limits of performance-per-watt in high-performance applications will, likely, trickle down to things like iPhone, iPad, future augmented or virtual reality, and more. Meaning, this effort will yield fruit across Apple silicon, not just for Mac hardware.

Having experienced some of the latest processors from Intel and AMD, I am convinced Apple will set a new bar not just in notebooks but desktop and workstations as the M1 scales up to those classes of machines. And this leads me to the last point I want to make.

Apple making processors for Macs is extremely good for semiconductor competition. Not to say that AMD and Intel have been standing still, but both those companies have been focusing on competing with each other and largely competing in the datacenter when it came to pushing performance and high-performance design and applications. Apple has now created a new dynamic where both these companies are now competing with Apple to bring its PC customers a solution that will compete with M1 Macs. If they don’t, Apple could run away with the high-end of the PC market, which would have a drastic impact on the PC category, one I’m not sure Intel, AMD, and the PC OEMs have fully realized yet.

I have had the opportunity to spend time with the Surface Duo. A product that certainly has room for improvement, but which I think signals something about the future of mobile computers.

The emphasis from Microsoft was on a true two-screen experience with Duo, which is where the differentiation with this product and it’s most interesting use cases reside. As always, when I use a tech product that brings something new to the table, my exploration focuses on what I can do with this device that I could not do before. With Surface Duo, this was evident from the start where the side by side screens allowed to run two apps together side by side. What immediately hit me about this experience was how it was a mobile experience of my favorite way of working on iPad by using two apps side by side at the same time.

The bigger the screen, the more customers can do with their devices. This is why the notebook/desktop has always been positioned as the ultimate productivity computing devices. But also why the debate with iPad got blurry since it allowed for much better multitasking but on a more mobile device than a laptop and desktop. To that end, those of us who have always study consumer behavior has always been fascinated by just how much traditional computing tasks most consumers do with their smartphones, which has continually led me to conclude that what consumers really want is the most mobile device form factor that they can get the most done with. This is why the Surface Duo is so intriguing to me because it enables a dramatic amount of productivity in a pocketable/pursuable form factor. Which, as I mentioned, I have concluded, is exactly what consumers will continue to gravitate toward and exactly why I’m convinced folding pocketable devices have a bright future.

One of the more difficult parts of testing the Surface Duo was getting ample opportunities to stress test the productivity angle while out and about due to COVID-19 and the reality that many of us are not leaving the house. But I did take it out into the world every chance I got and intentionally took some video calls/meetings while out in the world which, given the work from home moment we are in, actually proved to be one of the more interesting use cases.

We can all relate to the painful amount of video calls/meetings we are all experiencing lately, and to be honest, before using Surface Duo, this is not something I would have considered doing with my smartphone due to my need to be present and on camera as well as take notes. This use case, in particular, is where the side by side apps and increased multitasking function of Surface Duo stood out to me as quite compelling. This use case is also made more functional due to the size of the side by side screens on the Duo, compared to something like the Samsung Galaxy Fold. While the Fold can run apps side by side, the Duo allows a little more real-estate for those essential productivity apps, which was quite empowering and gave me quite a bit of confidence to do more while I was on the go.

Going back to my point about how the Duo brought the most empowering productivity angle of iPad in side by side apps to a more mobile device causes makes me think it is better to think of Surface Duo as a pocketable tablet than a smartphone. The more time I got to use Surface Duo out in the wild, the more this became clear that using it feels more like using a pocketable tablet than a smartphone.

V1 and Software
There was a great deal of conversation around the software with Surface Duo. There were many fair criticisms of the Surface Duo hardware specs, and the greatest challenge for the platform and Microsoft, and Google is to get more apps optimized for the folding mobile device experience. Yes, Duo is a V1 product, but the broad commentary about the hardware was spot on. From a design standpoint, the hardware is amazing. The biggest hardware knock being the camera, which is also fair. But again, if we think of Duo more like a tablet than a smartphone, both the potential customer for this and the broader future of mobile devices becomes clear.

For all the criticism the Duo has taken in software, I think it is worth pointing out that getting the hardware right for this is an equally important task and arguably the first important task. The software can update over time, but hardware can not. In fact, even with the shortcomings in the camera specs on Duo, if this product was running the Google camera that powers Google’s Pixel phones, I don’t think the Duo camera criticisms would have been as negative.

I think Microsoft nailing the hardware design in many regards was the most critical first step on their journey. They are collaborating deeply with Google, which is an interesting side point. And given the bent on the productivity potential of Surface Duo and the fact that most of Microsoft’s productivity suite was highly optimized for Duo, being productive with Office was quite effective.

For Microsoft, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And for Surface, the goal of the Microsoft hardware line was never to be the market share leader in terms of sales but to be a catalyst for innovation and push the Microsoft ecosystem of software and hardware forward. While I am certain Microsoft has more Surface mobile hardware coming, if this product and their collaboration with Google causes the mobile ecosystem to move forward and support more sid by side app usage, then everyone wins. Especially Microsoft, as the more we can all get done in more places for our day jobs the better positioned Microsoft software and services solutions are on all devices.

Workflows

I found the flexibility of folding the Duo over for one screen usage quite compelling when I went to triage email or to enter long text. My biggest complaint was the keyboard for text entry when the device was opened to two screens. A challenge I think, will need to be solved for us to take folding devices more seriously. But that was solved by flipping Duo over into single-screen mode when I could use it more in a context like my iPhone for inputting and feeling comfortable inputting long text.

One very interesting thing I found, was because of some of the challenges inputting text I found myself using voice input more often. It caused me to wonder if this two-screen/folding screen mobile solution may cause more usage of voice as a computing interface and the role of smart assistants whenever it becomes mainstream.

Microsoft also did something with the software that I wish Apple would with iPad. Which was group different apps together so you could launch specific pairings of apps you pre-determine. Essentially I created several dual-screen workspaces with the most common pairings together. I did things like pair Teams and OneNote or Twitter and Edge, Facebook, and Instagram, etc. This way whenever you clicked the app grouping they both launched together side by side.

Ultimately, I land on the same point many reviews did with Surface Duo. It’s not perfect. It will get better (both hardware and software), but by using it, we get a chance to use a bit of the future today.