The Business Model of Never Growing Up

The very mortal Larry Page and the rapidly aging Ray Kurzweil, in their mad, sad dash to live forever, will fail in this utterly futile, mostly human effort at denying the inevitable, at fighting that greatest of fleshly trappings, that soul wrenching but unalterable truth which reveals the eternal equality of us all.

We are all going to die.

Soon.

It is what it is.

Billions of years ago, literally, dying stars sent tiny pieces of themselves hurtling through space. A few trillion of those pieces, maybe more, reached Earth, falling unseen like manna from heaven. Fewer still, as if touched by (a) God, made it inside every one of us.

For what purpose, exactly?

google-calico-cover-0913We may never know. Till then, there’s money to be made. Lots of money. And it seems to me that by design or not, and unable to conquer death, Silicon Valley has instead embraced the business model of never growing up.

Mock if you wish but this is certainly more rational then what Larry Page and Sergey Brin are doing, spending untold amounts of Google money on “tackling aging” through a series of pricey ventures. The super-smart Calico is just one:

[Google-funded] Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. 

And of course it will fail. Or worse. We could wind up with this horrid “singularity” vision as espoused by Google’s Kurzweil, where computers and AI progress to a point where humans can radically alter their minds and bodies — and anyone else’s — or ‘upload’ the equivalent of our consciousness into a thinking machine that allows each of us, you and me, to effectively live forever.

What a bleak existence.

It is what you feel, see, hear, taste, who you live with, your stumbles and successes, a good joke and a big slice of birthday cake that make you who you are and all of these, every single bit, will be irrelevant to the ‘you’ inside a computer.

Each moment you go inside a computer, you die just a little bit. Till there’s nothing left.

The futile Kurzweilian effort helps explain why, outside of Google, so much brainpower and money are flowing not in fighting mortality but instead in empowering us all with the illusion of never growing up.

What is Twitter but a mode for all of us, like some recent college graduate, to espouse to everyone, every single thing we think and feel the moment we think it or feel it? Isn’t all social media in fact optimized for talking without ever listening?

Selfies celebrate the self, obviously. Why think beyond our corporeal form, at this moment, in this place? Let us glorify the now — with the self at the center, fixed for all digital eternity.

Is Uber, with its $40 billion valuation, anything other than a way for all of us, like teenagers, to never have to own a car yet always have someone there, exactly then, to take us wherever we want to go?

Gamification is the dream of liberating ourselves from the drudgery of even a moment of the kind of work “adults” must engage in.

Wearables literally transform the profoundness of computing into me, me, me!

Augmented reality seems intent on transmuting the real world, with all its imperfections, into a multi-player amusement that keeps us entertained, as if we are forever children, forever awaiting delight.

Not ready to settle down? Just need a couch to crash on? AirBNB has you covered.

Here’s a tablet! Never be bored, never feel alone — and free yourself from the fears of change, time and mortality.

Is this why Silicon Valley seems to have become so ageist? Do tech companies fear that should they hire anyone over 40 — the horrors! — then every other staffer will be forced to acknowledge their own mortality? To see exactly what awaits them?

I do not expect Silicon Valley to embrace death. But I do hope the Valley evolves to where it’s ready to fully leverage its brains and its wealth on very adult problems, many of which may never be fun but all of which are necessary should we desire a better future for everyone, however long it may last.

Time For Entirely New Myths At Apple

Steve Jobs is dead.

There’s no bigger, richer company on the planet than Apple.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly stated this most American of companies will soon garner more of its sales from China than anywhere else.

The company hasn’t really been a ‘pirate’ since the early days of the iPod — a decade ago.

The biggest hires at Apple these past few years have come from the world of high margin fashion.

Apple’s primary innovations the past five years, in my view, stem from technologies the company acquired, not developed: Siri and Touch ID, specifically.

One more thing: the great Woz says that whole “Apple started in a garage” myth? Yeah, not exactly true.

This is a new world. Mobile computing devastates all before it and Apple rules the landscape. The old myths, the myths of the garage, the visionary, the pirates, the small, merry ‘cult’ of users, these no longer apply.

What now?

Can you fly a pirate flag when you have more money than anyone else? And a partnership with IBM?

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When you are bigger than even Google or Microsoft or Exxon, can you usher in a new order? Against the established order?

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Time for new myths at Apple. Myths help support the brand. Apple’s brand is the most valued in the world.

For the second year in row, Apple has topped Google as the world’s most valuable brand. The two are the only brands to be valued at more than $100 billion, according to the annual Best Global Brands report. 

Valued at $118.9 billion, Apple increased its (brand) value by 21% year-on-year, while Google’s brand value of $107.43 billion jumped 15% compared to last year.

The Insanely Great New Myths

New myths are now necessary. These must resonate on a deeply personal level, on a universal level, and must seem borderline eternal.

That is not easy to do.

I suspect this is why Apple has been spending so much lately to develop in-house advertising expertise — to craft the message no one else can legitimately mimic. Apple’s current ads reflect the company’s transition from destroyer of Big Old Order to guidepost for Universal Individual Empowerment. But they do not soar. They are not “only Apple.”

Apple’s current ads focus on thinness, a product feature, or generic personal empowerment, an emotional tug. These are fine as marketing efforts go, but are easily replicable by competitors.

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What is or can be an “only Apple” myth?

Let’s consider recent Tim Cook quotes as Apple’s attempts to uncover the new myths, the new rallying cries that drive staff and customers for at least a generation.

We’re very simple people at Apple. We focus on making the world’s best products and enriching people’s lives.

A great statement, though I suspect it’s too expansive. The “best products” that “enrich” our lives could be a mobile computer, a watch — or a car, dishwasher or robot butler. Apple can’t do all such products.

Strike 1.

Companies that get confused, that think their goal is revenue or stock price or something. You have to focus on the things that lead to those.

This is an awesome sentiment, in large part because it’s believable. However, as $AAPL nears a literal $1 trillion in value, shuttling billions around from country to country, state to state, such a view opens itself up to way too much snark.

Strike 2.

Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can’t imagine your life without it. And you can count on Apple doing that.

Stand up double.

This last sentiment of Cook’s works. It sets Apple apart, puts the pressure on Apple for achieving a level of greatness others can’t match — and suggests its products are rightly coveted.

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Remember, it’s never only about the product. Just ask Coke or Coach.

Myths matter, even in business. From a Salon essay on the subject:

Even stripped of their original religious significance, even when we don’t know their source, myths still strike us as being filled with meaning. 

In the 20th century, the psychiatrist Carl Jung formed his theory of archetypes, motifs recurring throughout most cultures. The archetypes, he believed, arise from the collective unconscious, an inherited body of symbols shared by all humanity. 

Apple products, logistics, manufacturing acumen, design skill and vision enabled it to rise from near death and become the world’s richest company. These qualities remain. It’s the myths that must now change. The old Apple mythos no longer applies in our new world.

Mobile Is Eating The Car

I attended last week’s Los Angeles Auto Show, as I do every year. While the norm among native Californians seems to be to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I always drive. I make my way over to I-5, confirm there are no patrol cars nearby, then torch the accelerator. Soon I’m in LA, checking out all the new models and the many concept cars.

This year was different.

This year it was incontrovertibly clear just how much mobile is eating the car. We still need cars, of course. Some of us still desire cars. But their value is being eaten away by our smartphones.

While it may not seem the tiny smartphone would impact the car industry, car design, or our massive, decades-long commitment to car infrastructure, the fact is smartphones are disrupting this giant 20th century ecosystem just as they are so many others.

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1. Jobs To Be Done

A primary reason for the car’s existence is to get us to work. In the mobile age, work is everywhere we are.

Mobile devices enable us to work anytime, from anywhere. They are even changing the meaning of work, its urgency, how we collaborate, how we respond, and what data is available.

Plug in from the coffee shop. Have a video conference while walking the dog. Check sales reports, site data and support emails from the couch. In this new world, cars are less important, less valuable.

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2. Location Location Location

We need to know where we’re going and want to know the best route. Smartphones are already better at this than cars:

  • We are more familiar with smartphone mapping tools.
  • They offer real time traffic data, including data from the crowd.
  • They know our history, previous locations and preferences better than our (dumb) cars.
  • They know our schedule and contacts better than our cars.

All of this means smartphones, not cars, can better predict where we need to be, where we should be, which path is best, and which mode is superior — car, public transit, ride service, walk or staying put. Yes, we still need the car to physically get us from Point A to Point B, but the value of the location data — more prevalent in our smartphones — is ascending.

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3. Entertainment

We are human. We need to be entertained. The more (and better) our smartphones entertain us — while we are in a car — the less important the car itself. The car’s value is diminished. Don’t believe me? Try this: commute in a $20,000 Honda Civic for one month, with your smartphone. Next, commute in a $90,000 Cadillac Escalade, fully tricked out, also for a month — but without connectivity. No streaming, no Siri, little to keep your and your passengers entertained.

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4. Interface

We deserve simple, instant access to our music, our contacts, our friends, our status updates. I have examined multiple cars at multiple price points and every smartphone I’ve ever used offers a superior interface to mapping, entertainment and other data — despite a 120 year head start for the car industry.

Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s AndroidAuto will deliver simpler, more responsive interfaces, better data, richer options. Expect these to become the norm, not the car maker’s lesser, more confusing dashboard configurations.

As the more personal, interactive interface of the smartphone evolves — from inside the car — the more the car itself becomes merely a vehicle for transportation. Again, this will diminish the car’s value.

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5. Ownership

Uber and similar services, all thriving due to the smartphone, are further undermining the value of a car. Consider that if you live in an “exurb” and commute to the big city for work every day, and your commute totals a whopping 20 hours per week, you are still only using your expensive car for no more than 20% of the day.

That’s a wasted asset. Why pay tens of thousands for a car that will rarely be used when someone else can take you to wherever you need to be?

Yes, the convenience of owning still trumps “ride sharing.” Owning a car means it’s always right outside your door, available at a moment’s notice.

This will change. Smartphones will soon enough be able to proactively tell any available car to be waiting and ready for us, wherever we are. Knowing our calendar, preferences, history and habits, our present location, our to do list, and knowing who we are with — and who we may need to impress — will become more valuable than having the same owned, under-used car always nearby, eating up our limited wealth.

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6. Freedom

Cars are freedom. Every teenager knows this.

Or, once did.

The open road may beckon some but with constant connectivity to friends and family, with our favorite musical groups via social media, with our favorite TV stars via Twitter, with our favorite books on Kindle, it’s time to accept a new truth: we now have more freedom inside our smartphone than is available anywhere our car may take us. No wonder fewer teens are interested in getting a driver’s license.

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7. Under The Hood

For decades, car owners loved to get under the hood, tinker with the engine, make modifications and personalize their cars. Look at today’s engines, especially those that are hybrid or electric, and know that one of the glories of car ownership is rapidly being stripped away. Only trained experts using the right tools can safely modify your purchased vehicle.

Mostly, it’s the same with smartphones. Still, after-market accessories and efforts such as Google’s “Project Ara,” which lets users customize their own mobile device, may foster a generation of smartphone tinkerers who previously might have liberated their mechanical creativity on the internal combustion engine.

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We are rapidly approaching a world where a $250 smartphone is more important than a $25,000 car. The world will never be the same.

Apple’s Very Human Interface Guidelines

I am impressed with the speed of Apple’s foray into entirely new UIs. No, I am not talking about the re-jiggered version of iOS the company built for the Apple Watch. It merely reveals the way forward. Apple is clearly focused on transforming our bodies into the next great interface.

The devices this could enable are nearly limitless.

Starting with the launch of the Apple Watch, our voice and flesh, maybe soon our eyes, become common input methods — the mode by which we interface with data and interact with machines (or screens, clothes, wearables).

You already know about voice. The iPhone is now good enough to be reliably used for dictation, creating notes, tweets, texts, setting reminders and appointments, even searching the web. The Apple Watch incorporates this voice capability, along with touch, right from the start. The Apple Watch also incorporates physical interactions — haptics. Apple brands this as “taptics.”

My recent article in Macworld examined this new UI:

Haptic technology—haptics—uses force upon the skin to deliver real-time tactile feedback. These physical sensations are created by tiny motors called actuators. Done right, haptics can mimic the feeling of a pin prick by a wearable that tracks your blood sugar, simulate the plucking of virtual guitar strings on a tablet screen, or re-create the physical recoil of a phaser from your favorite game controller.

To date, use of haptics has been limited in part by middling accuracy — how much and where exactly the force is applied. Apple appears to have uncovered the use cases and improved the accuracy enough to make haptics a core feature of its next big thing. As the company boldly states:

Because (Apple Watch) touches your skin, we were able to add a physical dimension to alerts and notifications — you’ll feel a gentle tap when you receive an incoming message. Apple Watch also allows you to connect with your favorite people in some new, spontaneous ways not possible with any other device.

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Physical sensations — haptics — are core to the Apple Watch UI.

It’s called the Taptic Engine, a linear actuator inside Apple Watch that produces haptic feedback. In less technical terms, it taps you on the wrist. Whenever you receive an alert or notification, or perform a function like turning the Digital Crown or pressing down on the display, you feel a tactile sensation that’s recognizably different for each kind of interaction. Combined with subtle audio cues from the specially engineered speaker driver, the Taptic Engine creates a discreet, sophisticated, and nuanced experience by engaging more of your senses. (emphasis added)

Where might this lead us?

I won’t predict any specific devices. I will say that, by leveraging human voice, touch and sensation, entirely new forms of interaction become possible — with data, objects and people. Thus, while I confess I am not terribly interested in the Apple Watch per se, I am very excited by Apple’s deliberate if somehow under the radar efforts at launching these human-centric UIs.

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me

Sogeti Labs predicts a “personalization” revolution by 2025, a world filled with an amazing array of mobile devices, sensors, wearables, things, robots and semi-autonomous machines. In this brave new world, current input methods simply won’t work. No matter how great or how knowing the state of artificial intelligence or Big Data may be ten years from now, the world of “computing everywhere” will be severely limited if it cannot be instantly and reliably engaged by voice, touch, physical force and/or eyesight. Apple — with its pricey, jewelry-like watch — is showing us the way forward. Not with a failed beta like Google Glass but with a very real product soon available for sale around the world.

I predict the potential for human UI to be so great in fact I suspect Apple’s appropriately named Human Interface Guidelines only barely scratches the surface of what will soon be possible. These are the early days of the human-computing interface, akin to when the early PC makers touted the benefits of “storing your recipes”.

Here are some of the present ways the Apple Watch will leverage our body to interact with data (emphasis mine):

Voice

Siri. Dictate a message, ask to view your next event, find the nearest coffee shop, and more. Siri is closer than ever with the Apple Watch.

And…

Phone. Use the built-in speaker and microphone for quick chats, or seamlessly transfer calls to your iPhone for longer conversations. You can also transfer calls from the Apple Watch to your car’s speakers or your Bluetooth headset. 

Body

In addition to recognizing touch, the Apple Watch senses force, adding a new dimension to the user interface. Force Touch uses tiny electrodes around the flexible Retina display to distinguish between a light tap and a deep press, and trigger instant access to a range of contextually specific controls — such as an action menu in Messages, or a mode that allows you to select different watch faces — whenever you want. It’s the most significant new sensing capability since Multi‑Touch.

And…

Heartbeat. When you press two fingers on the screen, the built-in heart rate sensor records and sends your heartbeat. It’s a simple and intimate way to tell someone how you feel.

And…

To pay with Apple Watch, just double click the button next to the Digital Crown and hold your wrist up to the contactless reader. You’ll hear and feel a confirmation from the Apple Watch once your payment information is sent.

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And…

Since the Apple Watch sits on your wrist, your alerts aren’t just immediate. They’re intimate. With a gentle tap, notifications subtly let you know when and where your next meeting starts, what current traffic conditions are like, even when to leave so you’ll arrive on time.

According to Apple, “You won’t just see and respond to messages, calls, and notifications easily and intuitively. You’ll actually feel them.”

Eyes

Confession: There are no eye-driven UI features in Apple Watch. I do wonder, however, if such a UI may be coming soon. Consider how “Looks” will work in Apple Watch 1.0:

A Short Look provides a discreet, minimal amount of information—preserving a degree of privacy. If the wearer lowers his or her wrist, the Short Look disappears. A Long Look appears when the wearer’s wrist remains raised or the user taps the short look interface. It provides more detailed information and more functionality—and it must be actively dismissed by the wearer.

I can absolutely envision an Apple Watch 2018 model, for example, which can and does change the information presented based on actual eye glances, not just movements.

The overall design of the Apple Watch, its innovative computer on a chip, the clever Digital Crown input and other features and technologies are all laudable. That said, I think the most important aspect of the Apple Watch is what it portends: entirely new ways of interacting with data, machines and people all thanks to entirely new forms of human-centric interfaces.

First Rule Of Homebrew Drone Club Is There Are No Rules For Homebrew Drone Club

Drones are the next revolution, the next insanely great thing, the pirate, the multi-billion dollar business, the integration of the physical and the digital, the device that will fight our wars, provide web access to the poor, deliver our pizzas in way under 30 minutes, ensure the air is safe, expose dictators, and turn us all into Hollywood-style directors, even if just for some grand selfie.

I don’t make, I write. If I made, I would make drones.

If I was that guy in The Graduate, my one word would be: “Drones”.

If I were the next Steve Jobs, I would dream of drones. If I were the next Bill Gates, I would envision software empowering drones built on every kitchen table.

You know what’s going to power the DeLorean back to the future? Drones.

Not since the launch of the iPhone and possibly not since I first used Mosaic have I felt about a technology as I do about drones. The market for drones is expected to reach $91 billion by 2020. I think this radically understates their impact, even considering the current muddled legal environment.

Drones are the next ‘stack’ of the global internet, and will radically re-make our perception of location, privacy and commerce. They are as if the PC and the Internet launched together. In 1988.

Not surprisingly, everyone wants in on the action.

  • Mark Zuckerberg is funding efforts so drones can “beam internet to people from the sky.”  
  • The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to re-tool aircraft to serve as a “flying fortress” filled with drones able to carry out all manner of missions in any region of the planet.
  • Amazon is “doubling down” on drones for delivery.
  • Skycatch is already building a sort of Uber for drones, linking drone “pilots” and makers with those who need drone-based services.

Despite all this, it is hobbyists who are advancing drone development even more than government or business.

There is a thriving community of drone builders and enthusiasts at OpenPilot.org,which has created an open source platform for drones. The nonprofit OpenPilot hopes to make drone technology more affordable, more accessible — and optimized for improving humanity’s lot.

DIY Drones claims to be the world’s largest community for drone hobbyists. DIY Drones was also instrumental in the development of the Dronecode Project, which aims to “bring together existing open source drone projects and assets under a nonprofit structure governed by The Linux Foundation”. Drones just had their Tim Berners-Lee moment.

Yes, the rules for drone use in the US are in flux and clearly lagging the technology.

“After years of waiting, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official said the agency was close to releasing a ruling that would give commercial entities greater access to fly small unmanned aerial system in the domestic airspace.”

It’s not just the FAA. The Office of Management and Budget is also involved. Then there’s the FCC and the Government Accountability Office. All are working to enact Congress’ 2012 “FAA Modernization and Reform Act,” which is meant to bring a clearer legal framework for the commercial operation of drones (unmanned vehicles weighing less than 55 pounds). In addition, several states and cities have enacted their own rules. Businesses don’t know what to do, other than do nothing or operate in secret.

For hobbyists, the rules are essentially that drones must remain within line of sight and away from airports and below 400 feet.

Don’t fear, I know a secret: This will all get taken care of — because, just as with PCs and the Internet, the spread of drones cannot be stopped.

It’s a drone world after all….and the best is yet to come.

The FAA expects more than 30,000 drones in commercial use by 2020. These will be used by law enforcement, military, logistics companies, businesses, and tech giants. The potential, however, is limitless. Witness: The nonprofit Drone Adventures sends drones to impoverished areas of the world, assessing air quality, agricultural impact, promoting conservation and archaeological efforts.

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Conservation Drones uses drones to map sections of the planet and assess local environmental challenges. Matternet is using drones to deliver lifesaving medicines where they are needed most.

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How is all this possible? Smartphones.

Smartphone-optimized technologies, including GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, mobile cameras, a litany of sensors, mobile battery power, lenses and more, have all become widely available, shockingly affordable — and are transferable to the drone industry.

Then there’s the rapid drop in price. The new Lumia 535 is available for $137 — inclusive. Only a few years ago, such a price for so much technology was unthinkable. A similar phenomenon is happening in the drone industry. Consider this is what you can get now for the price of an iPhone 6, off-contract: the Phantom can fly 22mph and reach an altitude of 1,000 feet. GoPro optional.

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You were not part of the original Homebrew Computer Club. You’ve just been given a second chance. Nowhere to go but up.

There Are No Muggles. We Are All Wizards Now.

I read the first three Harry Potter novels to my son. It’s a fond memory strengthened by the fact the books were quite good. In each, the young Harry Potter straddles two very distinct worlds, the magical world of wizards and the familiar world of non-magical folk, Muggles. Us. Except, this is not true, not anymore.

There are no Muggles. We are all wizards.

I realized this while texting my son baseball playoff updates — as I was flying across the country, 30,000 feet above the ground.

Think of it. Nearly 2 billion of us carry wands. We call them smartphones. These semi-magical devices enable us to connect with nearly anyone at any time from any place. We can instantly access the world’s knowledge. Always in hand, always at the ready, we use these “wands” for work, for play, to protect us, to make our lives better. They know us, know where we’ve been, what we like, answer to our voice.

Point your smartphone at the sky and learn what planes are flying overhead, even what satellites are circling the globe.

Hear a sound and your smartphone will tell you the song — using the appropriately named Shazam app. Point your smartphone at a complex math equation and it supplies the answer. This is magical.

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Want to use your smartphone-wand to put out the lights, turn on the television, fill your surroundings with music? Done. This is magical.

Magic is now commonplace, like air, or water.

In the later Harry Potter books, we learn of “horcruxes,” small objects, like a medallion, that literally contain bits of a person’s soul. Horcruxes are obviously real. Think of the Apple Watch, loaded with sensors, embedded with an entire — and entirely swappable — computer on a chip. This tiny object, placed upon your skin, knows where you are, where you’ve been, your heart rate, maybe your blood pressure, your voice, your history. This deeply personal information may last forever, reflecting you to whomever possesses the object.

I cannot be the only person who feels wizard-like powerful when I literally pause live sporting events on my television.

Look. You will soon have your very own invisibility cloak.

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According to the scientist-wizards at University of Rochester, “this is the first cloaking device that provides three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking.” How? By using readily available technology that almost certainly will radically drop in price and availability:

“With four lenses arranged in exactly the right way, The Rochester cloak creates a space in which anything that exists in between these lenses are hidden from sight. Unlike most other invisibility cloaks currently being worked on, the object being hidden here is able to remain hidden even when looking at it from multiple angles.”

Catch that? Yes, there’s more than one invisibility cloak under development.

It’s time to acknowledge we are all wizards and possess the tools of wizards. It’s not through magic, but brainpower, ingenuity, relentless effort, access to knowledge and high risk capital that made this magical world possible.

  • 3D printing is transfiguration, transforming one object into another.
  • Algorithms are our sorting hat.
  • Google Now is a remembrall.
  • Neural networks, like Inception, are the branch of magic known as Occlumency. More about ourselves is known then we know about ourself.
  • Social media is the Pensieve, storing our memories forever. Or, perhaps, our very own Mirror of Erised, revealing the “deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.”
  • Direct brain-to-brain interface is in development. This doesn’t even exist in Harry Potter’s world.
  • Ray Kurzweil is no doubt hard at work on a resurrection stone. 
  • That scar, there on Harry’s forehead? Haptics. Touch it, and it reveals what’s inside. 

Snitches are real.

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Last week, Amazon announced the Echo. This small device sits in your home and answers to your voice. It will play music, tell you the weather, read the morning’s news to you. Oh, and it learns. What magic trick can do better?

As our magical tools learn still more about all of us, about the world around us, and as “virtual” reality continues to progress, we might, yes, literally, live in a world where ghosts are common. Friends, family members, colleagues — and the departed — all (virtually, visibly) available, wherever we are, whenever we need them. In fact, it seems to me this will be so by no later than 10-20 years from today. Ghosts before driverless cars.

Oh, the Marauder’s Map? That’s Waze. No big deal.

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Wizard Or Squib?

Now what? What do we do with all this magic swirling about us, accessible with the touch of a finger or the sound of our voice?

First, embrace our powers, but remember to use them always for good.

Second, and while I am not suggesting we send our children off to wizarding schools, certainly our 20th century Muggle school infrastructure must be demolished. Let’s not make squibs of our own children.

Third, embrace the magic. It is ours, it is who we are. For our sons and daughters, it is the world they are born into.

What magical devices do you use? What new magic awaits us all?

My Facebook For A Kingdom

I come not to bury Facebook, but to question it. I seek clarity, assurances. What is Facebook? Is it social media? An app? A global phenomenon? Instant messaging? The place where we connect, share our family photos, check in from our favorite restaurant? Probably it’s all these things.

But is Facebook a viable business?

Last week, Facebook posted third quarter revenues of $3.2 billion, exceeding expectations. Facebook’s profit for the quarter was $1.4 billion.

While the blogosphere cheered, all I could think was: Is this really all there is?

As I write this, Facebook ($FB) has a market cap of about $200 billion. The company is growing. It’s adding new services, buying up new platforms, and led by the only person I am ready to claim as the next Steve Jobs. Why, then, are they making so little money? $3.2 billion for a quarter? Given Facebook’s global influence, shouldn’t we expect much more?

By contrast, Microsoft — doomed, as the blogosphere repeatedly claims — posted quarterly revenues of more than $23 billion and a quarterly profit of nearly $5 billion. Samsung, the other giant tech company that the blogosphere is (so wrongly) touting as doomed, had a profit of $3.9 billion. Still another example: over the same period, PepsiCo had $17 billion in quarterly revenues, netting $2 billion.

Yes, I understand — Facebook is new, it’s growing, it’s connecting the world, and run by Silicon Valley’s best and brightest. Soon, all our photos, our videos, our news, recommendations for what to eat, buy, and watch — will come through Facebook. No one, no thing, no government, will know us as well as Facebook. My concerns, however, are two-fold:

1) what if this doesn’t happen?

2) what if this all happens — only, it still doesn’t matter?

It’s this second question that has me pondering Facebook’s future. Indeed, it has set me to wondering about the future of all global platforms built on digital advertising.

To the charts!

Facebook reported 1.35 billion monthly active users. That is staggering.

monthly active users

Lest you think “monthly active users” is not an appropriate barometer of revenue generation, Facebook proudly reports that it has a nearly unfathomable 864 million daily active users.

Try to comprehend such power and influence upon the world. A service that has nearly a billion people using it every single day.

daily active users

Should you believe aggregate “user” numbers do not matter much, what with “mobile is eating the world” and all, know that Facebook excels at mobile.

mobile daily active users

Imagine that: 703 million daily active mobile users. That’s more than everyone on every iOS device visiting every single day. Again, this is nearly unfathomable.

And those users are, obviously, scattered all over the world. Facebook handily breaks out the numbers by location.

revenue by geography

Now we’re beginning to see the problem. Almost half of Facebook’s revenues comes from the United States. If it wants to grow, as all companies do, and as investors in a $200 billion conglomerate demand, then it must:

1) extract more money from its existing users and/or

2) gain new users

The former is always very hard for every company, no matter how smart, how timely, how disruptive. Just ask Google how much it’s making from television, music or health data, for example.

That leads us to new users. For Facebook, already with over a billion users, it must now work very hard to add more people to its platform. Offering text-based services, experimenting with drone-powered Internet, and cutting deals with makers of low cost handsets and carriers around the world should help. The company is busy with each of these. However, the money from these unconnected billions, we must assume, will not be much more than Facebook already generates from its “rest of the world” group.

Spoiler: that’s not very much. How much exactly? Er, 87 cents. Really.

average revenue per user

Facebook earns an anemic 87 cents per “rest of world” user. That’s it. Not everyday — once a quarter! Think of all Facebook offers. Consider how many already use the service. As each new human being gets connected, purchases a smartphone, they will join Facebook. Good for them.

Yet Facebook’s incremental revenue from these new users may be nothing more than a measly 87 cents per. That seems not just low, but embarrassingly low.

The problem?

Advertising.

For every user type and every geography, nearly every penny Facebook generates is via advertising. Facebook is an advertising company. Specifically, digital advertising.

revenues

Is digital advertising really so inconsequential?

Over a billion users, nearly a billion daily and mobile users. All that data. All those features. Yet, Facebook’s quarterly revenues are just over $3 billion. Worldwide, its quarterly revenues per user are only $2.58. I spent as much on this morning’s coffee. I might even go back for a second cup this afternoon.

How much must Facebook know about us, how many billions more people must join Facebook, how many more (free) services must the company offer us all to boost that number to a whopping $3 per user?

Not With A Bang But An Interstitial

Remind me, please, to never ever spend my money on a company who’s entire source of income is dependent upon the very ads I never ever click on, the very ads which I’ve trained my brain to ignore.

The web will continue to spread, evolve and empower our lives and our machines. I can scarcely imagine what it will be like in 2050, 2100 and beyond. But I am confident that web businesses dependent upon display ads are destined for the scrap heap. Probably by no later than 2020.

Advertisements have always promised more than they deliver. Let’s not weep now that advertising can no longer deliver on its promise.

Microsoft Is Doomed. Doomed!

I have to believe Microsoft’s latest earnings has finally obliterated all the silly “Microsoft is doomed!” discussion that’s been so bien pensant across the blogosphere these many years. This is a company that generated $23 billion in revenues and is clearly poised for growth. Most surprisingly, it’s poised for growth in the consumer and hardware markets, mobile and the cloud.

What’s that? Why, yes. I do hear Steve Ballmer laughing from the comfort of his LA Clippers courtside seat.

Billions Billions Billions Billions

Last week, Microsoft announced FYQ1 revenues of $23.2 billion. That’s up 25% year over year, despite the many proclamations of doom repeated over the years. Profits were a very healthy $4.5 billion, even after a $1.1 billion restructuring charge related to the Nokia acquisition.

msftq115

  • Cloud services, which includes Office 365 and Azure, grew a whopping 128%, to $1.18 billion.
  • Office 365 grew to 7 million subscribers. Remember: unlike Apple’s iWork, people actually pay for Office.
  • Surface revenue was a surprising $908 million for the quarter — again, despite the persistent declarations it was a dead product.
  • Lumia sales were a robust 9.3 million devices.

According to CEO Satya Nadella:

“We are innovating faster, engaging more deeply across the industry, and putting our customers at the center of everything we do, all of which positions Microsoft for future growth.”

CEO speak. Yada yada. That said, to view Microsoft as a one trick pony, stuck in the past, as so many analysts still do, is to utterly misunderstand Microsoft and the industry. Simply check the numbers. Microsoft has one division with about $10 billion in quarterly revenue, and another five with quarterly revenues of about $2 billion or more. For comparison, Yahoo — all of it — just reported quarterly earnings of $1.15 billion.

microsoft revs

Claim Chowder

The facts are clear:

  • Microsoft is still printing money.
  • The death of the PC (and Windows) (and Office) (and Surface) (and Xbox) has been greatly exaggerated.
  • Yes, Microsoft can do hardware: Xbox, Lumia, Surface all had strong y-o-y growth. As Jan Dawson noted, “Lumia sales and Surface revenue were both the highest they’ve ever been.” Xbox was the highest outside of a holiday quarter.

Microsoft is welcome to serve up a bowl of tasty claim chowder. You know why.

Again and again, we were told Microsoft was dead or would be by now. You’ve heard this more times than you can count: The PC is dead — not merely dying. Bing? Dead. Skype? Irrelevant. Windows? Free or dead are its only options. Office? iWork and Google Apps will force it to be offered for free — and then kill it off.

Repeatedly, the analysts trotted out “jobs to be done” and “the innovators dilemma” and “the smartphone is the computer” to explain why Microsoft was so obviously doomed.

How could they all have been so utterly wrong?

No, it wasn’t a herd mentality that brought them all to the same, erroneous conclusion. It’s worse than that: They were not paying attention. What the analysts and blogosphere were doing — what led them to be so utterly wrong — is they were comparing single, often minor aspects of giant Microsoft against the primary driver of another tech giant’s entire operations.

Google search is far bigger than Bing, therefore Bing dead. Therefore Microsoft dead.

Windows Phone sells far less than iPhone, therefore Windows Phone dead. Therefore Microsoft dead.

It gets worse. By comparing one aspect of yesterday’s Microsoft to all of today’s Apple, for example, these seers of doom missed out on what Microsoft was actually doing in the cloud, and with social in the enterprise, with hardware, software, and on meeting the mission critical requirements of governments and Fortune 1000 companies.

Oh, and worst of all, Apple supporters in particular, so vigorous in their defense of Apple hardware prices and margins — because people will pay for quality — repeatedly failed to acknowledge these same “people” will pay for the quality and benefits they receive from Windows and Office and Azure, among other Microsoft products and platforms.

Long Slow Decline Except Not

You’ve seen the posts, many, many times: Microsoft must focus on the consumer. Microsoft must abandon hardware. Microsoft must give away Windows. Windows is doomed. Xbox is doomed. PCs are doomed. Over the past few years, Microsoft Is Doomed is the gift that kept on giving.

I will unfairly single out John Gruber because he is typically so understated and sparing with his criticism. That said, his “Microsoft’s Long Slow Decline” post from July 2009, which he proudly linked to less than three months ago, is one he no doubt would love to have back.

A few other favorites:

  • “These Two Photos Show What a Disaster Microsoft Is Today”
  • “The irrelevance of Microsoft”  (with charts)
  • “How Microsoft Lost Its Way, as Understood Through The Wire” (a personal favorite)
  • “The PC Industry Is Digging Its Own Grave”

When Vanity Fair opens its long post on Microsoft with “over the last decade, as the biggest force in tech history hurtled toward irrelevance (albeit lucratively),” you know the meme — despite being 100% false — is simply being parroted by writers who are willfully not paying attention. The utterly nonsensical pairing of “irrelevance” and “lucratively” stood in place of thoughtful analysis.

If billions of dollars are wrong, I don’t wanna be right. 

Pundits have for years now insisted Microsoft was dead or dying, brandishing the “dying” PC ecosystem as the doomed company’s massive blind spot. In fact, these analysts revealed a rather shocking blind spot in their own understanding of this highly iterative, multi-faceted industry.

Despite the many billions in profits repeatedly generated by Microsoft, drive by bloggers continued to insist:

  • Microsoft = packaged PC software
  • Packaged PC software is dying
  • Therefore, Microsoft is dying

Viewing 2014 Microsoft as being just like 2004 Microsoft is as wrong as viewing today’s Apple as no different then pre-iPhone Apple. Again, Microsoft has six lines of business all generating billions  — and all likely to continue growing, and continue delivering actual profits.

Stop the Microsoft is doomed nonsense. It was always wrong. It is wrong still.

That sound you hear now? That’s Satya Nadella, laughing from his CEO chair in Redmond.

Lt. Uhura. Dr. Mae Jemison. Melinda Gates. Onward.

Mae Jemison turned 58 last Friday. Jemison was the first African American woman to travel into space. As a child, one of her influences was Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura. I hope some one, some day writes the definitive piece on all the girls inspired by this popular television character.  

Dr._Mae_C._Jemison,_First_African-American_Woman_in_Space_-_GPN-2004-00020

Role models are vital. They help clear the path, guide our future and quite possibly change the world. But where do they come from? 

Many look toward Silicon Valley, land of the smart, home of the super-rich. This strikes me as a rather limiting vision. The next Lt. Uhura is not likely to be employed at a company with a rock-solid 401K.

Increasing the numbers of women and minorities at the already highly successful, exceedingly rich Big Tech conglomerates — Apple, Google, HP, Oracle, Facebook — may be laudable, but it’s unlikely to blaze a trail.

Silicon Valley was once about disrupting the world, not meeting its numbers. To change the world now, we must cross the valley. First stop, Washington State, home of Melinda Gates.

Melinda Gates is changing the world. One girl, one woman, one dollar at a time. 

These Are The Voyages

Melinda Gates is not a self-made woman. Not as traditionally defined. In 1994, she married Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and the world’s richest man for, it seems, as long as all of us have been adults. Do not let the primary source of her wealth mislead you. 

I have never met Melinda Gates but am repeatedly struck by how deeply involved she is in aiding girls, women, the poor, the sick, the marginalized, children who deserve a better education, those dying of 19th century illnesses, fixing America’s profoundly broken school system.

Perhaps I should not be surprised. Melinda Gates was her high school’s valedictorian. She earned Bachelor’s Degrees in Economics and Computer Science, and an MBA from Duke. She likewise earned her way into Microsoft, back when it possessed the very highest concentration of hard working, fast charging, manifest destiny brainpower.

And then she married Bill Gates. 

If I had Melinda Gates money, I can attest, hand to God, I would use the vast majority of it to promote education, health, opportunity. I cannot swear, however, I would do it so vigorously, so personally, expending so much effort, so much of my heart and soul.  

A billion to my university. Receive honor.

A billion to aid those in my hometown of Detroit. Receive honor.

A billion to Food for the Poor. Anonymously, in this case.

Then back to the private jet, the infinity pool, the party.

Why is Melinda Gates so different? Does having everything motivate you to do more? Is she smart enough to know she can truly change the world?

As much as I admire Bill Gates, I give a great deal of credit to Melinda Gates for harnessing Bill’s Microsoft money and brainpower — along with hers, which is well documented — to focus on not just improving life for the world’s marginalized but on laying the groundwork for ongoing, self-led improvements.

Melinda Gates is more Silicon Valley than Silicon Valley.

Note the values of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

Our foundation is teaming up with partners around the world to take on some tough challenges: extreme poverty and poor health in developing countries, and the failures of America’s education system.

We focus on only a few issues because we think that’s the best way to have great impact, and we focus on these issues in particular because we think they are the biggest barriers that prevent people from making the most of their lives.

To Boldly Go

Computing technology has progressed in our lifetime from the once unfathomable vision of a computer on every desktop to several billion smartphones, tablets, clouds and things. We possess the tools to fundamentally re-make our world.

Are we blowing this confluence of opportunities on games, hook-ups and selfies? Are we ignoring our chance to tackle the really big problems — while the call of change avails itself to us? Not if Melinda Gates has anything to do about it.

Some of the projects we fund will fail. We not only accept that, we expect it—because we think an essential role of philanthropy is to make bets on promising solutions that governments and businesses can’t afford to make. As we learn which bets pay off, we have to adjust our strategies and share the results so everyone can benefit.

Yes, everyone. Change, disruption — and new role models — are blooming all about us.

Nichols-1977-NASA

While Silicon Valley looks inward, focused as much on backwards-looking hiring targets and mimicking each other’s business model, Melinda Gates is focused on sustained improvements all around the world. As her work in Africa reveals, this most often means empowering women and girls.

“If you want to lift up an economy in Africa, you basically start with the women.”

According to Gates, a woman with a job — and her own money — is more inclined to plow it back into her family. That increases opportunities for her children and her community. As she wrote only last week:

Research tells us that women invest more of their earnings than men do in their family’s well-being—as much as ten times more. They prioritize things like healthcare, nutritious food, and education. When a mother controls her family’s budget, her children are 20 percent more likely to survive—and much more likely to thrive. Healthier, better educated children today lead to a stronger workforce and more prosperous communities tomorrow.

Frankly, this is a rather damning indictment of the men in those under-developed communities. As Mrs. Gates notes:

  • Infant and maternal mortality rates are falling, because mothers and midwives are working together to embrace new innovations to make childbirth safer and infants’ first days less risky.
  • We are within reach of eradicating polio forever, because a cadre of frontline health workers—almost all of them women—are working to bring basic healthcare services to even the poorest, most remote corners for the globe.

Brainpower, belief, vision, technology, money and a commitment to learning made these possible, as did directly empowering very poor women. As governments around the world seek to stem the spread and disruptive power of technology, they should instead consider how to accelerate this new world order Melinda Gates is helping to usher in.

Gates’ Twitter bio is concise and revelatory:

Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, businesswoman, and mother. Dedicated to helping all people lead healthy, productive lives.

I write. My Twitter bio makes that much clear. The very wealthy Melinda Gates reminds me I can do much more. I suspect you can as well. We are not surrounded by work but by opportunity.

Technological Patriotism

Technology is breaking down barriers throughout the world. Conversely, a form of technological nationalism has taken hold, limiting tech’s rise. Expect such nationalist fervor to become more widespread, more virulent, probably more unfair. 

Technology is the new oil. It’s vital to our lives, our economy, our personal wealth, our national interests. As such, governments believe it is right to be intimately intertwined in the development, use, purchase, promotion and spread of technology.

Government inquiries, embargoes, regulatory barriers and tax disputes with technology companies will become commonplace. Fighting (and/or championing) such affairs will become a standard course of business for tech firms, much like complying with accounting standards are today. VCs, start-ups and well established high tech companies will need to fundamentally reconstruct their focus. I say this all without judgment.

That most of the world’s largest, richest tech companies are American — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cisco — makes this new world order that much more combustible.

Should Five Percent Appear Too Small

Big technology companies are sitting atop sizable piles of money. Many governments believe they are owed their rightful share of these piles. The European Union (EU) alleges Apple is concealing taxes duly owed on sales and profits generated throughout Europe. Their allegations rest almost entirely upon the obvious: 

“Multinational corporations have a financial incentive when allocating profit to the different companies of the corporate group to allocate as much profit as possible to low tax jurisdictions and as little profit as possible to high tax jurisdictions.”

apple international

Examine Apple’s European org chart. What does it appear optimized for? If successful, the EU’s action could cost Apple billions. That is why, when Tim Cook told the US Senate “we pay all the taxes we owe — every single dollar,” he is no doubt being 100% accurate and equally irrelevant.

Tax battles are costly for tech firms, but just one fight of many. Regulatory barriers can similarly limit the full and beneficent spread of the world’s most liberating technologies. As famed tech investor Peter Thiel recently remarked:

“It probably would be better for Europe to find ways to be more innovative, rather than ways to regulate.”

This sentiment was echoed by uber-VC Marc Andreessen, an aggressive proponent of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that could, in theory, disrupt a core government function and major policy lever:

‘‘The problem with building a new product or service in the existing financial industry is that tens of thousands of pages of legislation and thousands of lobbyists are going to come down on you very quickly. We needed a new technology to have the wedge to be able to enter the market, to be able to justify all the work to rebuild the system.

With bitcoin, we now think we have that wedge.”

Neelie Kroes, the EU’s digital chief, has made it abundantly clear government is not so willing to rebuild its systems:

“I do wonder how many more Valley companies have to get slapped before the rest of them realize it’s time to start investing in better relations with the EU.”

Expect such “investments” to become commonplace. Likewise, add Amazon to that list of companies who apparently need to be “slapped”:

The European Commission is poised to launch a formal in-depth probe into its serious concerns over improper state aid, dragging Amazon into a multi-pronged clampdown on sweetheart tax deals that has already ensnared Apple in Ireland and Starbucks in the Netherlands. 

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Amazon has declared it pays “all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within.” As with Apple, the accuracy of this statement is borderline meaningless.

Prediction: numerous governments will alter their tax rules simply to prevent other governments from getting a larger share of any Big Tech monies available. To wit: Why let Europe get a (theoretical) cut of Apple’s bounty when that money could be put to better use in America? Or Brazil? Or China?

Here, There And Everywhere

Tax disputes are certainly not the only concern for tech companies. Just this year:

The Chinese government (blocked) virtually all access to Google websites, instead of just imposing 90-second delays when banned search terms were used. Experts initially interpreted the move as a security precaution ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4. But the block has largely remained in place ever since.

This latest move and previous actions by China have significantly impacted Google’s long term potential inside the world’s largest Internet market. Not surprisingly, China’s own Baidu has a 90% share of search — and not because users prefer its results to Google’s.

Despite Baidu’s ubiquity, many users are finding it to be a poor replacement—especially students, academics, researchers, and technicians who need to rapidly find reliable information online. 

It’s not only Google that faces such barriers. Twitter and Facebook are both “filtered” in China. Nor is the problem confined only to American technology companies.

Two popular messaging services owned by South Korean companies, Line and Kakao Talk, were abruptly blocked this summer (by China), as were other applications like Didi, Talk Box and Vower.  

Nor is hardware spared. Despite its stellar reputation for security, China’s CCTV ran a report earlier this year suggesting Apple’s iPhone location tracking could put state secrets at risk. If true, China obviously has no choice but to take swift, decisive action.

Government entanglements can take many forms. For example, Apple was caught off guard last month when regulators did not provide the requisite approvals for the company to begin legally selling its new iPhones in China. This despite Tim Cook’s many visits to the country, Apple’s sizeable third party workforce there, and the fact Apple and its partners had readied a major advertising push, believing they had done everything necessary to satisfy the various interested parties. Not so, apparently.

Surprise! Regulators have now proffered their assent, in large part due to Apple’s latest assurances that the American government cannot “backdoor” access iPhone data and obtain any of those China state secrets as noted above. 

Rules are rules. The costs required to successfully navigate such rules may not always fall the way prices of technology always seems to fall. Nor may such rules prove as leveling. As Bloomberg recently reported, myriad new government rules in China are likely to benefit local companies, such as Xiaomi.

ixYamAEfPMjY

Moreover, now that users in China can legally purchase iPhone 6, it may cost them more than anticipated. China’s government recently decreed that China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier, must reduce phone subsidies. The effect of such actions are obvious.

“High-end flagship phones will suffer the most from the regulation due to their prohibitive prices in the China market without subsidies.”  

“Samsung and Apple, as the two major high-end flagship phone makers, have the most to lose.”

A Day In The Life

Brazil has demanded Apple delete the Secret app from iPhone. Russia recently seized Bitcoin mining equipment at its border with China. Several US states have taken legal action against Uber and Lyft. The EU wants Google, Facebook and Twitter to help it combat what they view as online extremism — and what others view as free speech. The lesson, once again: Tech company interactions with governments will become the norm. Simply put, because tech touches everything.

No matter what you think of Europol‘s veracity, when Europe’s cybercrime unit writes the following, it necessitates a reasoned, continued and very likely financial response from well-heeled technology companies eager to profit from the Internet of Things:

With more objects being connected to the Internet and the creation of new types of critical infrastructure, we can expect to see (more) targeted attacks on existing and emerging infrastructures, including new forms of blackmailing and extortion schemes (e.g. ransomware for smart cars or smart homes), data theft, physical injury and possible death, and new types of botnets.

Death and botnets are always scary. Fighting them is no doubt expensive.

Technology’s promise carries with it parallel strands of fear, always. Consider how smartphones and social media have deepened our understanding of events around the world, such as the recent protests in Hong Kong. Now consider not everyone is pleased by this.

Tim Cook has spoken publicly about civil liberties. Is it fair to ask him — and Apple Inc — to choose a side in this latest skirmish? Is it fair to ask the same of Twitter? Many will.

You Say You Want A Revolution

I suspect you want me to say these many government interventions are dubious, the product of terminally greedy tax collectors, frightened regulators, and entrenched forces hoping to kill off outland competition.

I won’t. Mostly because such sentiments are not relevant.

The many reasons for these many government actions will grow in number, kind and intensity as technology continues to destabilize and disrupt industry after industry. You must understand: There is no bigger industry than government.

Tech is money. Money is power. All three are quickly spreading around the world and most of us want, at minimum, our perceived fair share. Do understand, however, that what’s right and what’s wrong are just two sides to this proverbial Rubik’s Cube.

Freedom is not a zero sum game. Not all believe the same is true for money and power. This is true everywhere. The really big disruption won’t just be of the established order, but of human nature. 

I Want It Later! Building The Inconvenience Economy.

As I stood in line with a giddy gaggle of high pants hipsters, each eagerly anticipating the drip, drip of their very own drip coffee from the sainted Blue Bottle, conversations were many and temporary friendships took brief flight.

I looked up from my phone and realized: we are doing it all wrong.

In nearly every aspect of our lives, from work to parenting to play to eating, we are demanding quicker, faster, now. Worse, our technologies — the very products and services we build for our own good — are forcing this upon us. Even worse: We seem to have no idea, no plan, no counter to this offensive.

Understand, I am no Luddite. I am not suggesting we limit the advance of technology (or progress). Rather, I am suggesting we figure out a way to build technologies and services that nurture our very human need to take our time, to hone our craft, to focus on our work, to block out the noise. Almost nothing we have created allows this. Almost no one in Silicon Valley even considers this. I am considered a gadfly whenever I merely suggest it.

Why have we allowed our technology to be so limiting?

Convenience and productivity are just two of the many human desires we hold dear. So where are the devices, the apps, the advances that satisfy our longing for peace, calm, reflection?

No. Turning something off is not a solution. Partly, because that’s so hard — like eating only a “single serving” of cookies. Secondly, because this requires everyone else do the same. Unplug, walk outside, stare at the stars and then count the seconds before a jet flies by, a leaf blower punctures your ears or a bright light pierces your vision.

We are demanding convenience above all else, when in fact we crave the messiness of taking our time. Yet, none of our richest corporations and none of our very best minds appear to have any solution. I doubt they are even considering this. Twitter co-founder, Ev Williams, made this clear last year when he described the Internet as “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.” 

“The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience. Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease.”

I got 99 problems but convenience ain’t one.

Fat And Fast

Our very best minds — and we have encouraged this — view the next big thing as whatever it is that satisfies our present, reflexive, fleeting demand for: Now. Want. Now. Want. Now. Again, from Williams:

“Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company. Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

Then what? Race ya till you die! There are many human desires where taking out a step does not make life better.

To be fair, Williams does make the obvious connection between our burgeoning abundance of convenience with last century’s abundance of fast, cheap calories:

“Look at the technology of agriculture taken to an extreme — where we have industrialised farms that are not good for the environment or animals or nourishment. Look at a country full of people who have had such convenient access to calories that they’re addicted, obese, and sick.”  

Despite this awareness, however, Williams doesn’t really offer a route around this. Nor does Silicon Valley. Most infuriating of all, neither do I. I keep wracking my brain to come up with a way out, to imagine technology truly supportive of all our human longings. I got nothing.

The newly heralded convenience economy is enabled by smartphones, apps, the location-based web, the cloud, and pretty much every device in our possession. It’s lighting every moment of our lives, altering our work, deconstructing our expectations, yet I am not sure it’s as liberating as we believe.

Immediate access to messaging, e-mail, media, and other online functionality through smartphones has generated a sense of entitlement to fast, simple, and efficient experiences.

Aren’t we also entitled to contemplation, craftsmanship and effort? Is pining for a thing no longer a viable thing in this new millennium? What else might we lose? Taking our time, honing our craft, embracing the goal, the journey, these are vitally important pillars of life — I presume — yet our own creations constantly work against them. Imagine pitching to a VC your idea for a service that makes people wait, that never interrupts, that takes forever to master. Are such technologies or services even imaginable by our collective, connected 21st century brains? With access to everything, at low prices, instantly, how do we deny ourselves? Should we?

The Marshmallow Test

In the 1960s, the marshmallow test validated the idea children who could push aside a minor reward — a marshmallow now — for a greater reward — many marshmallows in the near future — enjoyed greater success in life. Why then, are the products of our best companies designed to reward us all instantly?

According to the Harvard Business Review, “as adults we face a version of the marshmallow test nearly every waking minute of every day. We’re not tempted by sugary treats, but by our browser tabs, phones, tablets, and (soon) our watches—all the devices that connect us to the global delivery system for those blips of information that do to us what marshmallows do to preschoolers.”

Will we grow fat on convenience? How might that look? Explosions of uncontrollable anger when the young man at the drive thru counter takes seconds longer than the lighted sign has promised us?

When the great minds of the early 1900s constructed methods to ensure we would all never go hungry again, it’s unlikely they envisioned a world where hundreds of millions become morbidly obese. Again, from the Harvard Business Review:

“As we’ve reshaped the world around us, radically diminishing the cost and effort involved in obtaining calories, we still have the same brains we evolved thousands of years ago, and this mismatch is at the heart of why so many of us struggle to resist tempting foods that we know we shouldn’t eat.  

A similar process is at work in our response to information.

Just as with food, the problem will almost certainly not be solved by self control, which was always a lie, an easy way to blame others and ignore reality. 

Is there some Paleo diet for the mind, an Ornish diet for the spirit?

Goethe wrote, “talent is nurtured in solitude.” Can solitude exist in our world? If not, will talent vanish, killed off by the creations of our smartest humans and our mutual lust for immediacy?

I wish I could offer you some guidance but I just thought of the cleverest tweet.

Mars Needs Indians. Earth Needs Women. The Internet Needs Balloons.

Question: What can a country with over a billion people and a per capita GDP of $4,000 do with the cash it costs to make a middling Hollywood blockbuster?

Answer: Send a spacecraft to Mars! On their first try!

We do not seem to be talking enough about this, so I will repeat: India sent a spacecraft to Mars!

For $74 million!

The craft is in an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet, ostensibly sending back information on the planet’s atmosphere and weather.

There is so much money and so much potential and so much to do and I am amazed and giddy by India’s achievement and also concerned we, humanity, are not doing enough, not trying enough, not spending enough. After all, Apple made about $1 billion — in profit — on the first weekend of iPhone 6 sales. Think of what that money could do — for all of us.

Question: What should we do next?

Answer: That I do not know, although I expect it to be amazing. Scary amazing, perhaps, but amazing nonetheless. To quote India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “when you are trying to do something that has not been attempted before, it is a leap into the unknown.”

For most of us, the unknown is scary. Spoiler alert: Prepare yourselves for crazy amounts of scary. The world is on the cusp of pan-global, transformational change enabled in large part to the fact all of us will soon be connected in real time, regardless of location, gender, social status. Barring any wrath of God scenarios, having all of us connected could very well lead to the completion of the original Tower of Babel dream:

“If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Go to Mars. Live at the bottom of the ocean. Save babies from dying. Radically extend our lives. When we can tap into the best from all of us, or each of us, the potential to achieve greatness — and at very low cost — becomes radically more possible. Much of the credit for the effort towards pan-global connectivity goes to two companies we typically do not care for: Google and Facebook. Both are committed to spending billions to connect the world.

If You Give A Girl A Smartphone

Internet access is taken for granted by many of us. We use it for work, learning and play. It’s so common in fact, we forget how liberating and empowering it can be. Yet, most of the world does not have access. Those that do not are disproportionately poor, female and/or disabled — and we are badly missing out by not being connected with them.

Consider that, per UNICEF:

  • Offering equitable education can increase a country’s GDP by a whopping 23% during that girl’s adult working life.
  • Educated girls around the world means less AIDS, less poverty, less disease.

Going to Mars is awesome. Remaking Earth equally so.

Mobile Internet devices have radically fallen in price. Connectivity to the global web, however, remains costly or impractical. Facebook and Google are working to change this.

Drones And Balloons And Satellites, Oh My

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is “prepared to spend billions of dollars” over the next decade to connect everyone.  Facebook’s “Connectivity Lab” is working on a variety of methods to make this happen. One way is via solar powered drones. These are expected to fly at 60,000 feet, well above commercial aircraft, and use FSO (free-space optical) communication to beam data via lightwaves.

Another method is via low Earth orbit (non-geosynchronous) satellites, able to beam connectivity over a wide swath of sparsely populated regions.

Google, long accustomed to moonshot thinking, has similar plans — and potentially more resources than Facebook. According to IEEE, Google is the only company that possesses “at least a strong (financial) stake in the five technological options” capable of delivering wireless Internet access to all areas of the world. The company recently acquired drone maker Titan Aerospace, in part to deliver Internet service to the world.

Google also has balloons, as you may have heard. Google’s Project Loon is comprised of balloons made of polyethylene plastic, 12 feet tall, 15 meters in diameter, and powered by solar panels — and wind. The balloons float along the stratosphere, about 12 miles above the surface, and beam 3G-equivalent Internet access to terrestrial antennas. They can stay aloft for more than 3 months.

What happens when these devices come crashing down?

What of regional, national and international spectrum rules?

Can cheap Android One mobile devices and floating Internet access meet the needs of billions?

I do not know. Nobody really knows, not yet. But India just sent a spacecraft to Mars so I do know all of these questions are addressable and the issues surmountable.

Flotsam and Jetson

I love this quote from Mark Zuckerberg:

When people have access, they not only connect with their friends, families and communities, they also gain the opportunity to participate in the global economy.

But make no mistake, Google and Facebook are operating in their own self-interest. Each new access point, each new eyeball, each new click, each new pageview, each new ad, they both profit. That’s what this is about, obviously.

Moreover, their profits entail very real consequences for all of us, not all of them good. I hate being tracked online. I hate the repeated intrusions upon my privacy — and the plans to effectively obliterate it entirely, such as through Google Glass. In so many ways, Google and Facebook are the leaf blowers of the digital realm, noisy, unceasing, their immediate benefit only for a select few. These giants earned our scorn, at least in the developed world.

But their efforts to connect everyone deserve our praise. For all I dislike about the Facebook and Google business models, these very same models are connecting the poor and the marginalized. Let’s not forget that. Google is connecting all of us to data and things. Facebook is connecting all of us to people and places. Their work will change us and change our world. I believe this change will be a net good.

The future is unknowable and scary and I do fear our senses will be endlessly assaulted but if that is the price we must pay to take everyone with us, I will take that deal.

Image via Vimana

Thoughts On Apple

Let’s start with the bad news: The Apple Watch. This beautiful, technological marvel is, in my view, the device our future selves point back to as delineating when Apple changed forever.

Not necessarily for the good.

The company long known for delivering absolutely amazing computing devices, so perfect, so uncannily universal that often times, one device, one product line, one price point is sufficient, is no more. The new Apple Watch starts out with three distinct variations and what appears to be a near-infinite number of eye-catching bands.

This feels wrong.

Tim Cook said the Apple Watch is the company’s most “personal device yet.” Maybe so. At present, my take is thus: The Apple Watch is a pricey talisman, one certain to accelerate the top-line yet with only marginal tangible benefit to Apple’s existing customers.

Have we crossed a line?

The Strange Changes

Yes, change is necessary, often good. I realize this is Tim Cook’s Apple, not Steve Jobs’ Apple. That’s both obvious and expected. What I find so troubling is that I no longer know if this is my Apple. Having defended Apple for years against the silly, baseless charge that “Apple is a marketing company,” I woke up last week to discover that, as John Gruber flatly stated, “Apple is not a tech company.”  

I am at a loss to adequately explain why anyone would pay $349 for this device. Indeed, $349 just gets you in the door. Yes, many analysts made similar declarations about the iPhone and the iPad. Fair enough. The Apple Watch may prove transformative. Still, Apple was able to fully, succinctly proclaim exactly how we could and would all benefit from those earlier products. This is much less so with Apple Watch:

It’s the most personal product we’ve ever made, because it’s the first one designed to be worn.

Yes, but what does it do? And why should I buy one?

A device you wear is vastly different from one you keep on a desk or carry in your pocket. It’s more than a tool. It’s a very personal expression. 

Yes, but what does it do?

Apple Watch combines a series of remarkable feats of engineering into a singular, entirely new experience. One that blurs the boundaries between the physical object and the software that powers it.

I do not understand.

Apple Watch also presents time in a more meaningful, personal context by sending you notifications and alerts relevant to your life and schedule.

Such as?

Apple Watch is right there on your wrist, so it makes all the ways you’re used to communicating more convenient. 

Tell me one!

Don’t Want To Be A Richer Man

Most of the world could never afford Apple products, be they Macs or iDevices. This was, frankly, because the costs of quality, usability, integration and reliability necessitated those high prices. True, Apple margins on iPods, iPhones, iPads and some Macs are sizable. Prices can be lower, in theory. The bargain between Apple and customer, however, is we accept these large margins knowing that year after year after year Apple products will get better, without fail, until a completely new magical device takes flight. That’s money well spent.

Will this be so with Apple Watch?

I think not.

Based purely on the company’s marketing messages, the various Apple Watch(es) appear priced primarily for reasons almost fully extraneous to its technology or functionality. I find this disconcerting, to say the least.

For most users, Apple offers the very best smartphone, tablet, MP3 player and laptop available anywhere. The Apple Watch changes this equation in no way. Still, I can’t help but wonder if my relationship with Apple will change now that this “non-tech” company so proudly offers what we assume will be, per Gruber, gold bands on deluxe watches that retail for an astounding $10,000 or more. 

I don’t even go into those stores.

Time May Change Me

Throughout its history, Apple has gifted us with numerous incredible devices. Recall the iMac, the iPod (classic) or the very first iPhone. We never envisioned such a device, then quickly wondered how we ever lived without it. It was as if someone from the future left this marvel behind, perhaps accidentally, perhaps as a test. But always, magic, always liberating. 

The Apple Watch feels the opposite of this. Lock-in is not liberating. With Watch, Apple has created a mobile computing device with a small screen which requires another mobile computing device with a small screen, the iPhone, before it can function properly. 

I can’t help but think how much better it would be — for us, the users — had Apple taken all that Watch work, all those Watch resources, and made the iPhone, iPad and Mac even better, more magical. This applies to the iPhone, in particular. The fact is, I believe Apple and iPhone are on the cusp of remaking everything and I selfishly do not want Apple to blow this opportunity by getting sidetracked with a watch.

And now the good news.

Change Their Worlds

In his long interview with Charlie Rose last week, Tim Cook stated it’s important to think about long term, big picture ideas. One of these, he said, is what comes after the Internet?

I suspect Apple is not merely thinking about what comes after the Internet, but actually working toward this. What is it? My prediction: The entire Internet done right. That is, a secure, family friendly, screen-optimized web paid for by all of us — with our money not our privacy.

Google should be very concerned.

With iTunes, apps, Apple Pay, Apple TV, iCloud, continuity, inter-app communication — now available across all screen sizes and devices — we can finally have our “web” the way we’ve always wanted, the way we’ve always deserved, before we foolishly allowed it down that horrible path back in the 1990s, funded by pornography, data tracking, unceasing ads and content “aggregation” that bordered on theft.

Apple has developed the tools to make these bad bits all go away. We get what we want, reliably, securely, privately, by paying for it, not by having bits of us taken, not by having our eyes and ears assaulted with unwanted garbage.

This will change everything. It cannot come soon enough. 

Oh, and the company is not just remaking the digital web and e-commerce. Apple is helping to re-configure offline retail, making it better, faster, more personal. Consider its currently available toolkit:

  • Apple Pay (money and credit)
  • Touch ID (security)
  • iPad (cash register)
  • iBeacon and Passbook (for deals and rewards)
  • AirDrop (peer-to-peer sharing of money and benefits)

No one else has anything like this.

Perhaps I’ve been unfair to the not-yet-released Apple Watch. But, companies can’t do everything. The iPhone is literally helping us to change the world. It is re-making commerce, the web, play, learning, work. I don’t want to lose this opportunity.

I fear the Apple Watch has captured Tim Cook’s focus and consumed the best of the company’s design, hardware and software skills. If so, while Watch may be great for Apple I believe it is detrimental for the rest of us.

Are Dogs Even Necessary In An iPhone World?

Does the iPhone hate dogs?

I know, that’s not a fair question. Still, I can’t help but wonder if the iPhone, if all smartphones, will fundamentally alter our relationship with our most trusted, faithful, ready-to-die-for-us-but-until-then-let’s-go-for-a-walk companions.

The arrival of the iPhone has, for better and for worse, diverted significant chunks of our attention away from both people and places. That much we know. But what about our dogs? Do we no longer require their fellowship? If not, what happens to them?

I do not know. The possibility of this scenario is without precedent. In such cases, I turn to fiction.

In the beloved film classic, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, all the dogs and cats are dead. Briefly, it’s because apes from the future come back to the present (1983) and, well, a disease subsequently wipes out all our little friends. Not a problem. Humans, being a resilient lot, decide apes will make effective pet replacements. They also quickly realize apes can do all sorts of things, more, even, than dogs and cats.

Smartphones are our apes is what I’m saying.

Let’s set aside for the moment how the apes launch a rebellion and wipe out most of humanity. For now, smartphones provide immediacy, interaction, diversion from our stresses. They tell us when to exercise, remind us if we are spending too much time at work, offer comfort when we are upset. They play music, show videos, hold our entire library, manage our schedule. They learn our habits, know our routines, and make us better than we are. 

So why even have a dog?

These are the primary reasons for having a dog:

  • Dogs alert us to dangers. They can even alert us to changes in our body.
  • Dogs remind us to go out for a walk. They help us lose weight and get fit.
  • Dogs are always there, always ready to interact with us at a moment’s notice.
  • With dogs, we feel more connected, happier.
  • If you have OCD, depression, or suffer from PTSD, dogs can help.
  • Is your child safe? A dog can warn you.
  • If you feel lonely, your beloved dog offers comfort.
  • Need someone to just listen, empathize? Dogs are especially good at this.

Thing is, smartphones already do all of these. Some they do even better than dogs. And should you need to track a loved one, if they have a smartphone that’s much better than if you have a dog.

Smartphones also cost a great deal less than pets.

My oldest dog just required surgery. This set me back $5,000. That alone pays for two shiny new iPhones, an Apple Watch and at least two years of cellular service.

sparkycast

It’s not the cost, however, that prompted my speculation on the necessity of dogs. It was a trip to the vet. The old dog was in his normal jovial mood when I drove him in for surgery, despite having to go without eating for more than 12 hours. But he quickly got scared, intuiting the clinical surroundings could only mean something was amiss. He kept nudging up against me, kept seeking reassurances. I happily obliged. Every time.

Until one time when I did not. I was busy tweeting some brilliant insight, as I do, when I suddenly realized he was trying especially hard to grab my attention. A scared dog will do that. I stuck my iPhone in my pocket and left it there for the remainder of the appointment.

It is extremely difficult to put away that beckoning screen. Not just for me but for hundreds of millions of others. This is fact and offered without judgment.

Where does this lead us? Again, I do not know. I do know that smartphones will alter us because they will alter our relationships, disrupt our time, rearrange our priorities, and deconstruct traditional links with our surroundings.

I wish I could say always for the better, but that would be a lie.

The old dog’s fine. In fact, the vet says he probably has four good years remaining. What our screens will do for us by then, I can only imagine. I do know they are replacing much more than just other gadgets.

I Was Wrong And The iPhone 5c Is Still A Failure

The best way to defeat the iPhone is to create a superior alternative to the app ecosystem. With widgets, notifications, continuity and inter-app processes in iOS 8, Apple did just that. Woe to Android, Windows Phone and anyone who hopes to see Apple falter this decade.

Unless, of course, I’m completely wrong.

Perhaps there’s some amazing technology out there waiting to leapfrog iPhone. Perhaps the new iWatch and iPhablet and all the various Kits and Plays fail to entice. Maybe Tim Cook and Angela Ahrendts succeed in transforming Apple into a luxury brand, turning the iPhone into a “Veblen good” and moving the company from high margin computing to higher margin fashion.

This seems unlikely. Nonetheless, on the cusp of the big Apple launch event, I am thinking not of new products, but of past ones, and not only of successes, but failures. When I labeled the iPhone 5c a “failure,” readers did not hesitate to emphatically declare I was wrong.

Wrong.

The iPhone 5c was a failure both in terms of sales and for how it diminished Apple’s image as an innovator. I may never have been so right as when I declared the 5c a failure. Expect it to be erased from Apple Stores before this year is out.

The 5c will not be the last Apple flop. I suspect the primary value of any iWatch, at least in the first few years, will be to show people you have an iWatch.

Carry That Weight

I understand if you vehemently disagree with my assertions. Tomorrow brings us new products but will not necessarily end any long standing debates. For example, despite the adoption of Chromebooks and the gutting of the great LA Public Schools iPad experiment, I steadfastly believe in the merits of my plan to give an iPad to every child in America. Similarly, regardless of what every other tech writer is saying, and no matter what Apple introduces tomorrow, I still think NFC is a waste of Apple’s talent and our time.

Going on public record can be daunting. Certainly, it is filled with missteps. Here are two minor predictions I have for tomorrow’s event: 

  1. Apple will offer universal content search and a single log-in across apps for its Apple TV
  2. The company will launch consumer-grade, home-optimized iBeacons

Now a big one:

The weeks-long stream of “leaks” is well orchestrated and not at all coincidental. Apple plans to reveal a great many products tomorrow but few will ‘wow’ and several are almost fully dependent upon multiple partners. CarPlay and iPhone payments may be great — but these will take time and usage and third party vendors to make successful. As the ecosystem expands, Apple has less control. This forces them to talk up the product whereas in the past, the product spoke for itself.

We will know shortly if I am right.

Some predictions take longer, however, and are not as clear-cut. My very first Techpinions column, from February 18, 2013, focused on — believe it or not — the Apple iWatch. I wrote:

Very soon, sensors throughout our homes, on our pets and possibly inside our bodies, all monitored or even controlled by our smartphone, will be the norm. Imagine now if these were ad-subsidized devices, like Android or Kindle, offering no escape from the latest marketing pitch or sponsored social media update. Is this a tolerable future?

I know. Brilliant.

But a paragraph later I followed up with:

The next design battle will almost certainly not be about “skeuomorphism” versus “flat design”. Rather, monetizing hardware, the Apple way, versus monetizing data and advertising, the Google way, will set the stage for this next great battle.

Incorrect.

Nearly 2 years later, this was a battle that never happened. The market has embraced both models, not chosen one over the other. Perhaps, as wearables and smart homes become more common place over the next many years, this will change. That’s a rather weak prediction, however.

Here’s a bold one. From March 18, 2013:

As the blogosphere pronounces ‘Apple is Doomed’ at every turn, I can’t help but thinking we have it wrong. Apple will have its ups and downs, no doubt. It’s just, the more I follow Apple, the more I study Steve Jobs, the more I suspect that, while he could not live forever, Jobs absolutely believed his creation, Apple, could. Literally. 

Am I right or wrong?

Fixing A Hole

Confession: sometimes I secretly blame you for when I am wrong. In “iOS 7 Game Changers,” I spoke glowingly of AirDrop:

I predict AirDrop will have a paradigm-shifting impact on content sharing – which means it should have a paradigm-shifting impact on social sharing sites, particularly Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. 

Hundreds of millions of iPhones with simple, real time, on-the-spot sharing, all thanks to AirDrop. Big transformative things were supposed to happen. I really believed what I said. So why do almost none of you use this “paradigm-shifting” feature? (Because it’s not necessary, that’s why. I did not think it through at the time.)

Of course, some outrageous ideas may yet come true. Just over a year ago I recommended Apple:

Integrate iCloud, fingerprint technology, and an open API. Touch any connected screen and it instantly re-calibrates itself to our preferred, personalized settings, ST:TNG-like. In this way, Apple becomes the company that manages every screen in our life, everywhere, all the time.

I think this is a near certainty within the next 10 years.

Oddly enough, it’s the stuff that seems patently obvious where I get the most pushback. Following last year’s big Apple iPhone launch event, I stated:

Asking Apple to go down market is like asking Microsoft to no longer charge for software. It runs counter to their history, their strategy, their culture and skill set, their strengths, their leadership and how they recruit, reward and incentivize their staff.

…and took a great deal of flak for that.

I contend it was true then and more so now. That even the most expert Apple analysts refuse to accept this makes it no less correct. The 5c was a mildly painful reminder the company cannot go down market. That Apple is moving further up market is no surprise to me.

Getting Better All The Time

I think I have maintained a reasonably high average for prognostication. For example, fully nine months before the actual Amazon Fire Phone was released, I explicitly stated here that:

  • An Amazon smartphone would be focused on getting us to shop more — from Amazon
  • The widely reported “3D” screen technology would be a bust
  • No Amazon Phone could possibly hope to compete with other devices unless it was completely free, which I seriously doubted would happen

You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, there are those predictions that are quickly proven wrong. Just two months ago I wrote:

Given Android’s headstart in wearables, it’s hard to see Apple winning any wearable app wars. Given the limitations of its market reach, it’s similarly difficult to see Apple winning the “smart home” market without buying its way in. 

What was I possibly thinking? With Mac, iOS and HomeKit — and a premium user base — there may be no company with a bigger head start here than Apple.

Apple will reveal much tomorrow. I predict this will be a once-a-decade event, with a stunning array of new products, services and partnerships. However, despite all the talk, all the tweets, all the analysis, we will not know the full impact of the company’s efforts for years to come.

The 5.5 Inch iRemote For The Apple Home

You want to talk about Apple. I understand. They are the biggest tech company in the world. Their products are used by hundreds of millions. Oh, and next week there’s — OMG! — a major Apple event, not at Moscone Center in San Francisco but at Flint Center in Cupertino, the very same location where the original Mac was introduced and where the phoenix-like (i)Mac was introduced, and this can only mean…

A new Mac?

How can that be?

We are all expecting an iWatch.

And a large, new iPhone.

Two!

Some of us are even expecting an iPad XL, complete with badly needed split-screen, multitasking function. Tim Cook has repeatedly promised us new products, after all. We are 14 years beyond Y2K. Macs are borderline inconsequential in our glorious new world. Apple can’t possibly be putting the Mac at center stage, can they?

Unlikely, but kudos for cleverly diverting our attention.

Oh, glorious Apple. Stoking the rumors, week after week. Divvying out the “leaks” bit by bit. Building our excitement. Inciting our lust until…shazam!

Something totally unexpected.

Fine. Two can play at that. Here’s my totally unexpected prediction: a 5.5-inch iRemote for the home.

Price? $299, including an Apple TV.

The $299 iRemote

Ben Bajarin says there will be no 5.5-inch iPhone “phablet.” I agree. Jony Ive resisted increasing the size of the original iPhone for years. Market demand forced his hand. The market now wants an even larger iPhone. Ive will once again be forced to capitulate.

A 4.7-inch iPhone should suffice.

An iPhone that size can retain most of Ive’s iconic design, support one handed use, at least for some, and have the additional benefit of offering a larger, longer lasting battery, which is sorely needed.

A 5.5-inch iPhone is nothing more than a twisted abomination of Ive’s design. I can’t believe this will happen. Unless the rumors of a 5.5-inch iPhone point instead to an entirely new device.

The Future Of The iPod

A remote control for the Apple-optimized home does not require one handed use. It needs only be light, mobile, affordable, possibly even unapologetically plastic.

Such a device can control your HomeKit-enabled appliances. 

It replaces that wretched plastic Apple TV remote which has grown so useless even as Apple TV offers up so many more new content possibilities.

It’s the perfect size for tweeting while watching television. It encourages FaceTime calls.

Possibly, this device even supports multiple user accounts. 

That Apple will finally offer “widgets,” which are optimized for both the small iWatch screen and glanceable CarPlay screens, may possibly work better on this new device as well.

The device also does not diminish iPhone sales, where Apple gets the bulk of its money from. Think of this as the future of the iPod, if that helps. Not quite an iPad, which is more personal, this new “iPod” belongs not to a person but to a home. It collects data, controls applications and commands other devices. Yes, even an Apple Television in time.

Instead of storing and presenting your music collection, this new iPod stores, presents and manipulates the collection of data from the family’s wearables, appliances, the Internet-connected thermostats, door cams, and lights. The iPod becomes the universal remote for the Apple optimized household.

Siri will be front-and center with this new iPod, encouraging you to tell her when to turn off the air conditioner, or for how long the oven temperature should be set. Plus, with iCloud, Apple suddenly becomes a leader not just in “machine learning” but more importantly, possesses a knowledge of people inside their homes that is truly unique.

Everywhere A Screen

I accept I may be completely wrong. Where a large iPhone ends, a small iPad begins, or how iPod evolves in a world with all of these is not as clear-cut as even Apple marketing would have us believe. My strength lies not in predicting new technologies but in understanding how existing technologies will re-make the world, the economy, learning, work, power, joy. 

Yet, as computing spreads into all areas of our lives, and burrows its way into all of our things, we need new and better devices to help take full advantage of their combined potential.  

This is a unique Apple strength.

Time and again, Apple shows us how all our many technologies are supposed to work — for people, not for corporations or things or business models or the established order.

steve-jobs-pre-iphone-slide

This is why I am reasonably confident that, whether Apple reveals an entirely new device, a deconstruction of an old one, or something in between or far beyond, it will matter. If not right away, soon.  

Next week, the very moment Apple releases a larger iPhone of any size, tech bloggers will giddily point their finger and exclaim: “J’accuse! Apple copied! The iPhone phablet is copying the Samsung Note!”

This is willfully missing the point. 

Lousy artists copy. Tech bloggers squeal. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

Mobile computing is barely into the Model T phase. Apple is helping to push us forward, mostly in positive ways — even when we think their latest product is just one more device in an already crowded market. We can’t know what we need till we have it, be it an iWatch, a phablet, an all new Mac, or, yes, a universal home remote. 

We live in interesting times. They are about to get even more interesting.

The Unbearable Loneliness Of The Sharing Economy

The sharing economy promises the potential for riches, personal empowerment, new modes of work, and fear, the kind of fear that swells from a livelihood dependent upon algorithms, star ratings, and the feedback of strangers. 

When we imagined the future, certainly starting from the point when the smartphone was born, few of us expected a world where in-kind tips and real time number crunching might determine where we live, how well we ate, the size of our home, the composition of our dearest friends.

Of course, in a world where billions are virtually connected, all fighting over the same job, the same task, the same dollars to be made by sharing our rooms, our cars, our talents, can we have any real friends? Or does everyone morph into some 21st century amalgamation of customer-competitor?

The billions of dollars fueling Uber, Airbnb and the sharing economy appears to generate as much fear as it does potential, and rightly or no, the great minds and deep pockets of Silicon Valley are failing to address these fears.

There is, in particular, a persistent fear which suggests for all save a fortunate, wiley few, the sharing economy will transform us into the modern day equivalent of chimney sweeps, smartphones replacing brooms, our independent (contractor) status leading us toward digital subjugation rather than technological emancipation: Alert! You have been selected to compete! Right now, for X dollars an actual human being will pay you to drive them some place. Go!

The Future Has Arrived Only It’s Evenly Distributed

The most popular, most repeated quote about our highly technological present comes to us from dystopian novelist William Gibson: “the future has already arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

Except, what if Gibson is not just wrong but profoundly wrong? What if the future, the now, is in fact evenly distributed, and we are all equally victimized by it? What if technologies, algorithms, and Big Data do not liberate us but instead place us all at the mercy of a system where periodic demands — a room, a ride — meet endless supply?

A transformative element of Uber is its “dynamic pricing” feature, which can measure real time demand and shift prices accordingly. Can it also measure real time desperation?

I travel regularly between San Francisco, which is leading the current global technological economic transformation, and Detroit, which led the last. I sense at least as much fear as embrace for the new, sharing-based economy.

Confession: I believe these fears are generally overstated.

Over the long arc of time, the benefits of technology spread to the many. This spread appears to be quickening its pace. An iPhone may for now be available only to the world’s 10%, an iWatch to the world’s 5%, and the direct medical benefits from the individualized analysis of their combined HealthKit data available only to the world’s 1%. I believe this will change, fast. As we’ve seen from the rapid evolution of the Android platform, copying, learning and the endless tearing down of barriers is in our DNA, whether motivated by concerns for humanity or desires for riches. Technology’s benefits spread from the few to the many.

The problem, of course, is this spread can take years, and for some, decades before the technology’s benefit bears them fruit. What till then?

The answer: Government.

It is through government we mitigate the ill effects of technological disruption. Yes, this gets nasty. It always does. Already, petitioning the government for redress — and for preferential treatment — from the sharing economy has begun in earnest. Just as the disruptive impact of the sharing economy is eradicating many existing rules and regulations, have no doubt it will lead to many new ones.

There is one area, vital to our person, yet where government cannot protect us and which Silicon Valley has failed to even acknowledge: loneliness.

Message In A Bottle

A great unspoken fear of the sharing economy is loneliness.

Consider that should the sharing economy work as envisioned, all of us, with our cars, our homes, our tools, time, talents, eager to rent or sell each of these the moment a potential opportunity pops up on our smartphone screen, have been reduced to waiting.

Waiting where? Waiting for how long? With whom?

With the sharing economy, there may be no need for offices, no demand for meeting spaces. Sit alone, phone in hand, and wait to be summoned. As the world grows more virtually connected, physical connections diminish.

This is not how it’s supposed to be.

Even in the 21st century, we stand in lines, bemoan our commutes, tolerate annoying coworkers in large part because we all crave regular physical connection with others. The tools and technologies which fully enable telecommuting have existed for many years now, yet most people reject their use. This is not a failure of the tools nor of management. Plainly stated, we desire to be near others.

The leading platforms of the sharing economy may disrupt the need for us to interact with our fellow humans in physical space. That is scary.

Perhaps that’s why more and more we read these joyful tales of customers at coffee shops ‘paying it forward’. Standing in line, paying for the person behind us, we are reminding them and ourselves in even this small way that each of us matter, and that none of us should ever be reduced to a score. We are alike and we are together.

Which makes me wonder if those investors relentlessly pushing the sharing economy forward have it all wrong. Clearly, there’s an opportunity to connect us not to a platform but to one another. Who will build this?

America Needs Entrepreneurs. Instead Of Programming Teach Children Fantasy Football.

America needs entrepreneurs. Men, women, boys, girls, native-born, immigrants, smart, skillful, driven, capable entrepreneurs to propel the economy, create jobs, spur innovation and build something from nothing.

I believe to do this, to create a sizable generation of entrepreneurs, we should teach fantasy football to all children. Yes, really.

Again and again we are told all children should be taught computer programming. Perhaps. I suspect however that teaching computer programming is a false idol, a way of telling ourselves we are prepping our children for the future, even though the future will likely need radically few programmers and our screens will be disposable.

Fantasy football, however, teaches lasting lessons, lessons that encourage children to lead, to think, compete, manage, crunch the numbers, negotiate with others and take charge of their destiny. Yes, this also works should your child choose fantasy baseball or fantasy soccer, for example.

Fantasy Is Reality

With fantasy sports, such as fantasy football, a child is allotted a set amount of virtual cash, say $100. From that $100, the child must build a team comprised of actual players. In this instance, the team must include a quarterback, running back, kicker, special teams and defensive unit, for example. Yes, you can spend half your budget on Tom Brady, but that means you now only have $50 remaining to field your entire remaining squad. Talent matters — but talent costs. That’s your first lesson.

Each week, your team wins or loses based on whether your players, in real life, tallied the most points, gained the most yards, limited the opponent to the fewest scores. Your fantasy “Tom Brady” is only as good as the real Tom Brady. Your fantasy defense is only as good as the real defense. That’s your second lesson: It may not take much money to build a team but you must nonetheless be shrewd with your limited resources.

Weekly wins are vital, but you also learn the season is a long, arduous grind. There is no first mover advantage. There are no weeks off. How each player and each unit performs, week in, week out, determines your ultimate success. That’s another important lesson. Once you’ve built your team, your work doesn’t end. Just the opposite. If Tom Brady has a bad week, you have a bad week. If your kicker gets injured, you must take your few remaining dollars to bring in a replacement, or trade an existing team member, or do without. Make a bad bet on a high draft pick and you may find it exceedingly difficult to succeed.

Each action has very real consequences. Drafting the best talent is of disproportionate importance, true. But, even with the very best draft, no team can be set on autopilot. That’s a path to failure.

Learning Is Fun. Just Like Building Your Own Business.

Teaching programming is useful, but I believe we need fewer programmers and far more entrepreneurs, more young girls and boys confident in their ability to start a business, stay on top of all the shifts in the market — the playing field — and continuously improve. Fantasy sports teaches each of these.

It’s also extremely accessible, unlike programming, say. Fantsy sports leagues are freely available on Yahoo, ESPN, and numerous other sites.

Now consider what a child learns by “playing”:

  • How to allocate resources
  • How to build a team
  • Negotiation skills, via trades
  • Statistical analysis and number crunching
  • Managing a payroll

These are all skills that are likely to never have a limited shelf life, unlike computer programming.

Another great lesson: children learn numbers count but only the numbers that count, count. No matter what stats can be generated, no matter the buzz on any player, only a few select stats, like touchdowns, actually count. Know what matters! The weekly standings provide a beautiful, stark, and sometimes brutally harsh reminder of how you are doing. Don’t be misled by numbers, data or buzz that detracts from your goal, winning.

Still more: Children can play in a Yahoo league against other children, teens, adults, retirees. They are not segregated by age or grade. This can be liberating.

Play To Win

Another benefit from teaching fantasy sports: Everyone can play. Everyone. Girls, boys, rich, poor. There are no barriers to starting a team. There are no biases, no restrictions on who can play. Age, gender, race are all irrelevant. The rules are the same for everyone and anyone can field a team, lead a team, and win.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg has been a strong voice for increasing diversity in the tech industry and for overhauling our education system:

At the broadest level, we are not going to fix the numbers for under-representation in technology or any industry until we fix our education system and until we fix the stereotypes about women and minorities in math and science.

No one can stop a girl or anyone else from going online and starting their own team. No one can stop them from drafting, trading — and winning. They can play as part of a league at school, or anonymously. Through the poorly named “fantasy sports,” a child can prove to themselves their abilities to compete with anyone on the planet long before unleashing their full talents into the world. Along the way, they improve their math scores, improve their understanding of business, and build better habits. These are lessons that never vanish.

Not everyone can be the next Mo’ne Davis, but everyone can play and compete on an even playing field.

America Needs Entrepreneurs

America needs entrepreneurs. As Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site reveals, entrepreneurship is a “critical source of jobs” and a “major driver of productivity growth.”

Despite what you think, however, we are failing at entrepreneurship. 

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Yes, it’s the same bad news even in Silicon Valley.

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Vivek Wadhwa similarly notes that “start-ups have become a smaller proportion of the economy, going from 15 percent to 8 percent. This is worrisome because young companies account for a disproportionate share of job growth and tend to be more innovative than older ones.”

As important as programming and “tech skills” are for old and young, girls and boys, we all know tech constantly changes. Learning programming today will become outdated a few years later. Play fantasy sports and the lessons last a lifetime.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen states his firm is “biased towards people who never give up, who never quit; and that’s something you can’t find on a resume.” Playing fantasy football, or fantasy baseball, for example, teaches these exact same qualities. Even if you’ve put together your own great team, you can’t place it on autopilot. Week after week, your attention is required, and changes are always necessary. Never quit.

Our new world requires new forms of education. There are multiple paths toward creating the next generation of entrepreneurs, but fantasy sports may just be the most accessible, fun, affordable and democratic. It’s worth trying.

Steve Jobs Reveals The Only Way Forward For Windows Phone

The only way forward for Windows Phone — that is not death — is work. Real work. In the 21st century, real work is inherently collaborative.

Collaboration is the Achilles Heel of all things iPhone, iOS, and Apple.

Steve Jobs, for all his greatness, for all he achieved, did not play well with others. Evidence is legion. Jobs forced the future upon us, refusing to budge to present day concerns. His iconoclast’s vision is reflected in every Apple product and has been since the beginning.

Jobs exalted the individual, from the singular 1984 rebel through to the lone, joyful iPod listener to now, where budding creatives obsessively focus their gaze upon the shimmering, inviting iPhone screen and not upon the people, life and physical flotsam whirring about.

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Apple marketing dutifully reflects both Apple products and Apple culture, a culture which reveres solitary pursuits and nourishes individual genius.

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This leaves a strategic opening for Microsoft and Windows Phone. Not by creating a disingenuous demarcation between “work” (Microsoft) and “play” (Apple), but by optimizing its platform, its cloud, its tools, its services — and especially its mobile devices — for collaboration.

Steve Jobs empowered us, liberated us, heightened our creative abilities. He transformed us into digital cowboys, technological gunslingers, mad genius loners. Not collaborators. His heroes do not need others nor do they require consensus.

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To quote Jobs:

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules…

Such people are the opposite of collaborative. Yet, for all but a few crazy ones, greatness may only be accomplished via continuous collaboration and teamwork, not by being that round peg in the square hole.

Out Of Many One

Make no mistake. This is not about an Apple failure. Apple products, spanning the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac, are exemplary. But, their design and intent, empowering the individual, offers a clearing for whichever company develops computing and communication hardware and services which exalt the group.

Enabling new forms of work and new forms of creativity, facilitating time-shifting, globe-spanning, multi-modal collaboration from men and women, girls and boys whose full potential is untapped when pursuing their visions in isolation is the only way forward for Windows Phone.

The pieces to make this happen may already exist:

  • multi-screen function (desktop, mobile)
  • cloud support
  • Yammer
  • Skype
  • Exchange
  • Office 365
  • Office Lens
  • OneDrive
  • OneNote

Each of these are capable of providing highly functioning services, synchronized sharing, and any time, any place collaboration. The problem, of course, is none of these are yet fully optimized for mobile in general, or for Windows Phone in particular.

Jobs Informs Nadella

The recent revisionist history (such as herehere and here) proclaiming Steve Jobs as a world class “collaborator” is simply unfounded. Recall the single biggest change at Apple since the passing of Jobs: Tim Cook’s executive management shakeup, which the company itself positioned thusly:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services (emphasis added)

Apple’s pro-individual, non-collaborative, go-it-alone DNA runs deep. This has created an opening for giant Microsoft’s tiny Windows Phone: collaborative creativity, collaborative work.

It bears repeating: by “work” I do not mean those activities presently optimized for PCs inside the enterprise. Microsoft’s fading retort that Windows is the platform for “work” badly underestimates how capable, valued and productive users of Apple devices are. But Apple hardware and supporting services are purposefully created for the individual. The future demands devices — hardware — for the group, not the one.

It also bears repeating: time is quickly running out for Windows Phone.

In his “bold ambition” statement, Nadella mentioned Microsoft’s commitment to “first party hardware” four times. Yet, within his 3,500-word manifesto, he mentioned “Windows Phone” only twice, and even then withholding clear affirmation:

(1) Today the Cortana app on my Windows Phone merges data from highway sensors and my own calendar and simply reminds me to leave work to make it to my daughter’s recital on time.

(2) We will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone.

This and other Nadella statements led me to state several weeks ago that:

Prediction: Microsoft will focus its mobile hardware efforts not on Windows Phone but on Surface, on new mobile gaming devices, and new mobile “productivity” devices; anything and everything that might help them uncover that next great mobile computing inflection point. Smartphones are lost to them.

I now wish to amend that prediction. Microsoft lost the smartphone wars — that much is clear. But smartphones are lost to Microsoft only in how we define such devices at the present. An entirely new or repurposed mobile device which advances creative and productive collaboration as easily as iPhone advances personalized empowerment is still within Microsoft’s reach.

iPads At The Border

I believe (nearly) every child that comes to America seeking refuge should be welcome. I fully understand if you disagree. It is a complex issue after all. 

We are told tens of thousands of children are showing up at America’s southern border hoping to be allowed permanent entry. The President has requested many billions of dollars to help address this pressing entanglement. The opposition party has similarly offered up many billions, albeit far fewer than the President says are necessary.

What then?

Assuming some, most, or all of these children are allowed permanent entry into the United States, what then?

I have no answer for this. I do have a suggestion, however: I think we should give every single one of these children – every child in America, in fact – a tablet, preferably an iPad.

Readme

What would my proposal cost?

Estimates, which vary wildly, suggest 100,000 children will seek refuge in America this year, and another 100,000 next year. An iPad mini with Retina display retails for $400. Sold in bulk, and for goodwill, Apple may be ready to part with these for $200. Certainly, other tablet vendors would be so willing.

$200 x 200,000 children = $40 million

But let’s not give tablets only to new entrants, but to all children in America, at least those of school age. There are approximately 45 million children, ages 6-17, in the United States. Thus:

45,000,000 x $200 = $9 billion

Yes, that’s a staggering sum. Except, Americans already spend over $650 billion every single year on public K-12 education and another $350 billion every year on  higher education, at minimum. An iPad mini is reasonably future-proof, and likely to last at least three years, for example. Even if we factor my potential tablet spend against only one year of K-12 expenditures, that’s:

$9,000,000,000 / $650,000,000,000 = 0.014

That’s less than 1.5% of one year’s K-12 spend. With this, 45 million children have a tablet — a tablet that can come preloaded with literally thousands of free books; books which reveal America’s history, greatness and failures. Books that teach, warn, inspire.

That’s just the start. There are thousands of free apps that promote creativity and collaboration. We can preload twenty or so on every device. Already, Apple includes iMovie, GarageBand, Pages and Numbers, among others, with every iPad.

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Should the child be fortunate enough to have access to WiFi, YouTube offers amazing resources for self-directed learning. All free. iTunes U similarly offers a wealth of free courses for those with access.

Perhaps Fox will donate the entire Cosmos series toward this effort, helping us to inspire a generation to embrace science, discovery and their innate smartness.

A front facing camera will enable every child to take a picture of themselves and their surroundings, offering a document of their life and their world unmatched in scale.

The Diamond Age

Why do this?

Two reasons:

This is very likely the first and only time in human history where a nation can afford to provide every single child with a fully accessible, easily manipulated tool that contains or can retrieve nearly the entirety of that nation’s history, culture, great works of fiction, film, television, lectures, puzzles and knowledge.

Let’s seize this amazing opportunity!

In his Hugo-winning work, The Diamond Age, author Neal Stephenson posited a future where a young girl, poor, living on the margins, came into possession of a interactive book — what we now call a tablet — that educates and empowers her, leading her to achieve what was once assumed unattainable.

There are only two such ‘books’ in Stephenson’s future world. What a much better world we have now. In fact, in our present day reality, there are already hundreds of millions of such tablets. Even better: almost every one of them can be used, misused, manipulated and managed by nearly any child of any background without any prompting or guidance.

This is profoundly revolutionary.

The System Of The World

The second reason is self-directed learning has many lasting benefits.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have famously credited Montessori schooling for spurring their entrepreneurial success. Montessori adheres to a self-directed learning model. Children follow their interests and avail themselves to information and knowledge in their own way and on their own time. Per Larry Page:

“I think (founding Google) was part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world and doing things a little bit differently.”

 Will Wright, video game pioneer and creator of The Sims, stated this of his self-directed Montessori education:

“Montessori taught me the joy of discovery. It showed you can become interested in pretty complex theories, like Pythagorean theory, say, by playing with blocks. SimCity comes right out of Montessori.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also attended Montessori school as a child.

Correlation is not causation. What leads a child toward success is no doubt a multi-variant process. But tablets can expose children to untold learning resources, creative opportunities, collaborative play and work. This seems like an opportunity the country should not pass up.

Recently, two villages in Ethiopia were provided with (Motorola Xoom) tablets preloaded with various apps, ebooks, movies, drawing programs and alphabet games. The First Grade children who received the tablets were illiterate, had never used paper and pencil, yet within a few months had taught themselves to read.

“Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android.”

It almost seems unjust to not provide every child with a tablet.

I know there are questions. Who will pay for this? What about theft? What about illicit online activities? Who decides which books to embed? Will the children spend too much time with their tablet

These are all answerable. Yes, really.

The larger question: Will it work? Haven’t laptops, PCs and other technologies in the schools failed to incite a learning revolution?

Perhaps. But at no point before now has there existed reasonably affordable, highly interactive tools that are personal, mobile, configurable, pose almost no barriers to operation, and which can store truly stunning amounts of knowledge and learning resources — all of it accessible with the swipe of a finger.

The children are here. The opportunity exists. Let’s be willing to fail with this.

Thoughts On iPhone Inc

The iPhone is bigger than McDonald’s. That seems a useful demarcation for how we should view the iPhone in particular and Apple in general.

The iPhone is that once-in-a-generation product that alters daily reality for at least a century. The Model T production line, overnight shipping, indoor plumbing and the credit card are other such examples. I fully expect the iPhone will enable Apple to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.

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There is a cost however, at least for we users. Almost certainly, iPhone will diminish Apple’s ability to create new game changing products.

Why? Because being irrational is hard, really hard. It’s rational to do everything in your power to maximize a product that has the legitimate potential to help you become a trillion dollar company. To do anything — anything at all — that might alter that path is irrational. Steve Jobs could be irrational at times. Tim Cook cannot. At least, I have witnessed no evidence of this. Apple is now iPhone. iPhone is now Apple. Just like Windows is Microsoft.

The Long March

No one ever got fired for buying Apple computers from IBM.

An iOS-based, touchscreen-enabled laptop, priced around $799, and sold by IBM to the enterprise seems an obvious product Apple should offer. It also seems like the kind of product that could destroy numerous existing giants.

For too long, iPhone users have not had their much desired iPhone “phablet.” A reason for this is because an iPhone phablet would gut iPad sales. Considering the iPad sales numbers for the past year, this is a fear Apple no longer possesses.

You will not give up your iPhone. You will not give up your Mac. You may give up your iPad. At this juncture, iPads are simply not must-have devices for nearly anyone. That’s the primary reason for the diminishing sales gains.

Easy prediction: We will almost certainly get an iPhone phablet this year and, likely by next year, a larger iPad.

I am regularly surprised at how bad Apple is at app discovery. That Facebook app ads are my current best source for app recommendations is a clear market failure. I hope the purchase of Beats, Swell and BookLamp signal that Apple is finally willing to get serious about content curation and recommendation.

I have no idea if Swift is a superior language. I am not a developer. I do know however, Apple is big enough to demand its use.

Despite the iPhone’s incredible array of features and functions, we mere mortals no doubt spend far too much time obsessing over which apps belong on the home screen.

Bugs And Features

The smartphone is the computer. Your app is your business model. Every business is impacted by iPhone. Know this or perish.

That Touch ID can’t read my thumbprint if there’s just a tiny bit of water on it seems more bug than feature.

It’s 2014, fourteen years since Y2K. Still, iPhone users can’t have their preferred calendar app list the date on the app icon. This is the equivalent of how the DOOR CLOSE button on any elevator never seems to work.

Samsung ads mocking iPhone users have been brutal and highly effective. Yes, I have had Android users (justly) mock me for having to scour an airport in search of an available outlet. The iPhone battery deserves its poor reputation. However, Samsung’s latest ad where they mock Apple users for not yet having a large display iPhone strikes me as desperation. Almost certainly, there will be a large display iPhone. What then, Samsung?

Amazing iPhone games are available for $5.99 yet millions refuse to pay such ‘outrageously high’ prices. There is much to celebrate and decry with this.

Using the same OS for the iPhone as for the iPad has some obvious limitations. On the small smartphone screen, getting into an app, grabbing the data, then exiting, a singular app occupying the entire screen makes obvious sense. Not so with the iPad. I want at least two windows open on my iPad almost always. Kindle and Twitter are the most common examples. Email and web browser are another. Even while gaming, I prefer two windows open. I can’t imagine buying an iPad until Apple offers this feature.

The Sincerest Forms Of Flattery

The almost laughable copying by Xiaomi of the iPhone and iOS 7 is all the evidence you need as to why Tim Cook must expend significant resources on building the luxury appeal and premium status of the iPhone; all those hard-to-define elements beyond actual quality, reliability and usability.

There are few people better at this, if any, than Angela Ahrendts.

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Confession: it’s hard for me to watch the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie and not think of Steve Jobs and Apple.

Rumors Jony Ive was in a Flock of Seagulls cover band are completely unfounded.

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Input method is now a more important consideration than processor, OS and software. No one seems to understand this more than Apple.

More Is Less

Lost in the bubbly talk of an Apple iWatch is the fact everything about it seems wrong. We do not need yet another thing. I want my iPhone — or any smartphone — to serve as my ID, car keys, credit cards, TV remote, glucose reader, everything. Apple should focus its genius on making the iPhone devour more of those things, not create new ones.

The newest version of PayPal appears to equal, possibly usurp, Apple’s Passbook vision: Payments, money transfers, loyalty cards, information on nearby shops, it’s all there. Apple certainly wants the iPhone to be used for payments, though maybe they have finally decided enabling payments and not powering them is the way forward. This may also explain the company’s recent decision to once again allow Bitcoin apps in the App Store.

I actually read app update notes. This recent update from Yelp made me laugh.

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Jan Dawson made a strong case for why Apple should stagger launches of its major products. Commenters offered additional insights as to why Apple does not (or should not) heed his advice. Not stated, however, but which I think is at least worth considering, are the possible impacts of corruption. Nearly all assembly of nearly all Apple products takes place in China, where there is a less-than-transparent relationship between the government and business. It seems the implications of this should at least be examined.

I am surprised by how few iPhone users seem to ever use AirDrop to transfer files or data to one another. Perhaps personal iPhone-to-Mac AirDrop sharing is the superior use case.

I am unaware of the age, gender, race or LGBQT numbers at Apple Inc., Apple in Cupertino, or of those who work solely on the iPhone. But together, these people have created something positively impacting lives. And they keep making it better. I tip my hat to them all and hope in some way, my words can ever do the same.

More Than One Jony Ive At Apple Now

Does Jonathan Ive really want an iPhone “phablet”? I have doubts. Ive resisted increasing the size of the original iPhone, yet today’s larger iPhones (5/c/s) seems far too small for much of the world. Ive’s iconic design will doubtless change yet again, soon, driven not by design principals but by market demand. 

This is to be expected. The market never sleeps.

What I had not expected, however, yet which appears now almost certain to happen, is that Jony Ive likely won’t be involved in several major Apple hardware designs. Apple has simply become too big.

In yesterday’s earnings call, Tim Cook said he “can’t wait” to introduce several new products and services to the market. Ive may have overseen the design of all of these, but that’s not likely to remain true. What does this mean for Apple products going forward?

Mostly good things, I believe, with an explosion of not only new products, but new looks and new identities.

Cook Brings In Ringers

Does anyone really expect Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine to have their (Beats) headphones, speakers and related audio accessories conform to any Jony Ive preferences?

Yes, Ive is Senior Vice President, Design, in charge of software and hardware design. He has certainly earned his reputation as a peerless product designer. But I think Cook is right to bring in ‘ringers’ as the company steadily moves into new markets, new products and new regions, propelled by the world’s insatiable appetite for the high margin iPhone.

As Jan Dawson‘s latest chart reveals, iPhone revenues simply dwarf everything else at Apple — practically everything else everywhere.

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Tim Cook has no intention of allowing this trend line to falter on his watch. More iPhones are to be sold to more people, with iPhone sales and margins protected by a range of hardware accessories. Beats, wearables, watches; these will be the start. Not all new hardware design will be overseen by Jony Ive.

Consider these Beats headphones. What will be Ive’s input into future Beats designs? Will he have any input? 

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It’s not just headphones and speakers, of course. Angela Ahrendts, the new Senior Vice President, Retail and Online Stores, has brought to life numerous fashions and accessories for Burberry, a company she almost singlehandedly rescued.

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Ahrendts proved her deft touch in determining what products would sell to discerning customers, particularly in China — factors extremely important to Tim Cook’s grand plans. It seems silly to believe the future Dame Ahrendts will only be involved in the look and feel of Apple Stores given her uncanny ability to understand fashion, luxury, design and desire.

In fact, there may be no one at Apple with a stronger intellectual and emotional connection to Steve Jobs than this newest member of Apple’s executive team. Consider these quotes from a Vogue interview with Ahrendts:

Upon her arrival in London, she discovered that there weren’t many high-level Burberry executives who shared her enthusiasm for the label. Within a year, she sacked the entire Hong Kong design team and closed factories.

The label was in need of a dramatic overhaul, its famous plaid having become diluted by wide-spread, cheap copies.

Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey have taken (Burberry) back to its pure heritage.”

Ahrendts bought back 23 licenses that Burberry had sold to another companies, which had meant other firms could use its signature check on products such as disposable nappies for dogs. “I feel like I spent my first few years here buying back the company – not the most pleasant or creative task,” she said. “But we had to do it. If you can’t control everything, you can’t control anything, not really.”

Just like Cook didn’t acquire Beats solely for its margins on headphones, he did not bring in Ahrendts simply because she understands how to optimize profits per square foot.

A New Apple Design Template

I believe we are on the cusp of a product explosion at Apple. Given the new hires and acquisitions, I think a design explosion is also percolating inside Apple.

Just look at the talent.

This is a new Apple and one person, not even one team, can design every product for every market segment. Is Ive really best for each of these — or all of them?

  • Tablets and laptops
  • iWatch and wearables
  • iPhone cases and accessories
  • The look and feel of CarPlay — including built-in hardware — in vehicles ranging from a Mercedes AMG to a Chevrolet
  • iBeacons. iPods. Beats.
  • iPhone (all versions)

Putting Ive in charge of all of this is like putting Elvis in movies. Suboptimal results all around. Cook knows this. Therefore, he brought in significant talent from the outside. Ahrendts, Iovine, Dre, men and women with design experience in watches, fitness bands and wearables. Men and women with a keen, proven ability to attract Chinese consumers. Those with a keen ability to attract urban youth. Those who desire fashion and those who demand function.

Prediction: The iconic look and feel of Apple products will likely no longer be the single, driving element behind the company’s hardware. Rather, the depth of its integration to the iPhone. The days of ‘universal’ Apple products designed to satisfy everyone are coming to an end.

The future Apple will release some duds, no doubt, but I think there will mostly be an incredible range of beautiful, functional products. 

Deconstructing Satya. Episode II. The Empire Strikes Back.

Last week before the news broke, I warned Microsoft employees, all of them, to “get to work on your resume.” Change was coming, major change, and that always always always begins with a bloodletting.

Indeed, as others were decrying the word count of Satya Nadella’s “bold ambition” manifesto — signifying nothing, given it took Steve Jobs 1700 words to tell us he wasn’t going to use Flash on the iPhone — I read each word, every sentence. Nadella’s near-term intentions were obvious.

What was not clear, however, not until now, is how deeply divisive the Nokia purchase remains within the corridors of Microsoft’s ruling elite.  

This Deal Is Getting Worse All The Time

Despite the corporate-speak, despite the strategic shift toward “productivity and platforms,” Nadella’s manifesto message last week was undeniable. Job cuts. Thus, I wrote:

“Big layoffs by Christmas.”

But Nadella kept hinting, so I followed that with…

“Big layoffs by Thanksgiving.”

But Nadella hinted further, so I followed that with…

“Big layoffs by Labor Day.” 

In fact, the big cuts came only a few days later. Points for swift action, I suppose.

Nadella’s willingness to act fast, to re-make Microsoft, hack away at the extraneous and transform the company into “the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world” appears to be exactly what the company needs.

But when you gut a $7.2 billion acquisition, which the company only closed on this past April, and fire 18,000 people, then you haven’t leapt from a burning platform, you’ve set the platform ablaze. There is no going back, no do-overs for Mr. Nadella. He is about to set the company on a ten year course, possibly longer, and though Microsoft possesses a rather stunning array of assets, what’s most stunning is the company still has virtually zero response to the iPhone, the iPad and Android. In 2014.

Competing in a mobile-first, cloud-first world — with no mobile device the world actually wants — seems less like corporate bumbling at this point and more like French royalty certain the barbarians will forever remain outside the gate.

Sadly, more than 18,000 will soon join those barbarians.

That Was Never A Condition Of Our Agreement

Nadella’s follow-up email to staff announcing major cuts is mercifully shorter than his bold ambition manifesto, though similarly riddled with the kind of corporate-speak analysts with expense accounts use on marketing managers with a too large budget.

My thoughts on Nadella’s latest message are below, in bold italic.

From: Satya Nadella
To: All Employees
Date: July 17, 2014 at 5:00 a.m. PT

5am! Leading is hard. 

Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture

“Starting to Evolve.” Catch that? This is just the start.

Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction as a productivity and platform company.

And now I’m gonna need those TPS reports.

Having a clear focus is the start of the journey, not the end. The more difficult steps are creating the organization and culture to bring our ambitions to life. Today I’ll share more on how we’re moving forward. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments.

This reads like a draft memo from the assistant to the regional manager. No excuses here. 

The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year.

Nokia is dead. Godspeed all you Nokians. 

Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers.

12,500

In his “bold ambition” email to employees, only days before this, Nadella stated “first party hardware” would form part of the core Microsoft vision. He said this four times! 

    1. Our cloud OS infrastructure, device OS and first-party hardware will all build around this core focus and enable broad ecosystems.
    2. Our Windows device OS and first-party hardware will set the bar for productivity experiences.
    3. Our first-party devices will light up digital work and life.
    4. We will build first-party hardware to stimulate more demand for the entire Windows ecosystem.

[emphasis added]

Now, days later, he guts Nokia, kills off the very popular Asha hybrid phone line and halts development of the AOSP-led Nokia X.  

I suspect Mr. Nadella believes the smartphone wars are lost, despite whatever else the company may tell us. They are no longer worth fighting for. 

Prediction: Microsoft will focus its mobile hardware efforts not on Windows Phone but on Surface, on new mobile gaming devices, and new mobile “productivity” devices; anything and everything that might help them uncover that next great mobile computing inflection point. Smartphones are lost to them. 

We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.

13,000 from the 18,000? 12,500 from Nokia plus 500 from elsewhere? Where does this number come from?

Nadella needs to be straightforward here. So far, he’s failed. 

It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas.

Nowhere near 18,000, however. Thus, it would be best if not said at all.

My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.

Your own email appears poorly thought out and lacking transparency!

We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.

Forget them. Move forward. 

Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization.

How bureaucratic is this company?

Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment.

That’s three, maybe four outcomes, not two. Can Nadella really not trust anyone to review and edit his emails? 

Fact: Nearly every single Nokia device over the next several years will be replaced by an Android, perhaps a few by iPhones, not Windows Phone (in any form).  

My prediction that the remaining “Nokia” employees will focus mostly on new mobile productivity devices and new mobile gaming devices, not smartphones, stands. Nadella just isn’t ready to tell us this, not yet. Perhaps, he’s not come to terms with it himself. 

First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster.

Perhaps given your size, strengths and history, being inflexible and moving slower, and with less accountability (e.g. investor input), would be the best strategy?

Yes, I am serious. Agility and speed are never the strengths of behemoths. 

Perhaps You Think You Are Being Treated Unfairly

As part of modernizing our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change. In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers.

Sideways layers of management? Sideways layers!  

In addition, our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft.

Question: How dysfunctional is this company?

These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at different paces.

Answer: Appreciably dysfunctional. 

Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft. We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. The first-party phone portfolio will align to Microsoft’s strategic direction. To win in the higher price tiers, we will focus on breakthrough innovation that expresses and enlivens Microsoft’s digital work and digital life experiences. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.

Integrate Nokia into Microsoft? Realize the synergies committed to last September? Align the first party phone portfolio to Microsoft’s strategic direction? To win the higher price tiers? Which builds on Microsoft’s success in the affordable smartphone space?

We can’t possibly divine what these words mean because Nadella does not know the way forward in mobile. That’s a problem. 

Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind. Thank you for your support as we start to take steps forward in evolving our organization and culture.

Satya

It Is Your Destiny

Last week, I praised Nadella for his bold, borderline revolutionary statements. A few days later he morphs into a parody of his predecessor.

I give him a pass. This time.

When it comes to massive corporate downsizing, we always say there’s a right way to do these things but there’s never a right way to do these things. That said, it seems clear Nadella hasn’t yet figured out exactly what Microsoft should do in mobile and that’s a problem for which no one will give him a pass.

Deconstructing Satya

Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid bare his vision for the tech giant. It is borderline revolutionary.

From its early days, Microsoft has focused on using software and computing to empower people and businesses around the world. Nadella still clings to this laudable vision. However, he has now fundamentally flipped the seat of power, even as he fears to let go of all Microsoft has amassed over the decades.

Just as America’s Constitution enumerated inalienable rights all its people are endowed with, forever empowering even a single individual against the full force of the government, in a similar manner Nadella has positioned the user above all else.

This is radical. For Microsoft, it’s nearly unthinkable.

Nadella does not simply place emphasis on users instead of PCs, on productivity instead of Windows. He changes the equation of the software behemoth going forward.  This could set Microsoft apart from all others.

The most user-friendly tech company in the world, Apple, emphasizes ecosystem over device, lock-in over empowerment. Google takes from its own users when they are not looking. Amazon confounds its customers with Prime service, making it nearly impossible to ever fully know the actual price — or value — of any single item.

Nadella is positioning Microsoft on the side of the user. Security, privacy, productivity, empowerment. I believe this will have a profound and lasting impact on the company and its customers forever. This call to great and permanent and never ending change is buried inside Nadella’s 3,500 word memo to Microsoft staff. I understand if you choose not to read (any/all of) it.

My analysis of his manifesto is below, in bold italic.

Nadella word cloud

Satya

From: Satya Nadella

To: All Employees

Date: July 10, 2014 at 6:00 a.m. PT

Subject: Starting FY15 – Bold Ambition & Our Core

Team,
As we start FY15, I want to thank you for all of your contributions this past year. I’m proud of what we collectively achieved even as we drove significant changes in our business and organization. It’s energizing to feel the momentum and enthusiasm building.

This is all wrong. Platitudes, corporate management speak and 3,500 words are absolutely the wrong way to begin a discussion about “significant changes” and “enthusiasm building.” That within the first paragraph we are twice reminded FY15 has commenced, all I can think is Nadella is too steeped in the pre-existing conditions of Microsoft to achieve anything great, let alone revolutionary. 

The day I took on my new role I said that our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation. I also said that in order to accelerate our innovation, we must rediscover our soul – our unique core. We must all understand and embrace what only Microsoft can contribute to the world and how we can once again change the world. I consider the job before us to be bolder and more ambitious than anything we have ever done.

“What only Microsoft” can do should be plastered across every meeting room in Redmond. Nadella mimics Tim Cook’s penchant for “change the world” pablum but to be fair, very few companies really can. Microsoft is one. Kudos to Nadella for not shying away from this. 

We’ll use the month of July to have a dialogue about this bold ambition and our core focus.

The very corporate nonsense-speak that turned me into a freelancer.

Today I want to synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity I’ve been discussing for the past few months and the fundamental cultural changes required to deliver on it.

Means nothing.

On July 22, we’ll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I’ll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. Over the course of July, the Senior Leadership Team and I will share more on the engineering and organization changes we believe are needed. Then, at MGX and //oneweek, we’ll come together to build on all of this, learn from each other and put our ideas into action.

Rigid, bureaucratic and enslaved to artificial dates. 

We live in a mobile-first and cloud-first world. Computing is ubiquitous and experiences span devices and exhibit ambient intelligence. Billions of sensors, screens and devices – in conference rooms, living rooms, cities, cars, phones, PCs – are forming a vast network and streams of data that simply disappear into the background of our lives. This computing power will digitize nearly everything around us and will derive insights from all of the data being generated by interactions among people and between people and machines. We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.

This is brilliant. Better, it launches the long, painful slog of fully re-positioning Microsoft away from PCs, away from Windows, away from Office, away from its past, which now binds it, and onto a future of screens, data and insight.

The only company at present that can challenge a fully engaged Microsoft in this is Google. 

In this new world, there will soon be more than 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices – from a farmer in a remote part of the world with a smartphone, to a professional power user with multiple devices powered by cloud service-based apps spanning work and life.

Microsoft will be the anti-Apple, delivering services and value to all, not just the world’s 10%. 

The combination of many devices and cloud services used for generating and consuming data creates a unique opportunity for us. Our customers and society expect us to maximize the value of technology while also preserving the values that are timeless.

Means nothing. Wasting employee’s time.

We will create more natural human-computing interfaces that empower all individuals. We will develop and deploy secure platforms and infrastructure that enable all industries. And we will strike the right balance between using data to create intelligent, personal experiences, while maintaining security and privacy. By doing all of this, we will have the broadest impact. 

Preach! Only Google can challenge Microsoft in delivering services to all. But, only Microsoft can deliver these services and effectively protect individual privacy. 

Mobile First Cloud First

Microsoft was founded on the belief that technology creates opportunities for people and organizations to express and achieve their dreams by putting a PC on every desk and in every home.

Microsoft’s business practices rightly angered many of us. But their efforts also helped deliver us directly to this future. We should be thankful for that. 

More recently, we have described ourselves as a “devices and services” company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy.

I am not Steve Ballmer.

At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.

Wow. This is a truly revolutionary message and within Microsoft’s skill set to make happen. I will be happy if Microsoft simply comes close to this vision, as it is glorious: “empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.” 

We think about productivity for people, teams and the business processes of entire organizations as one interconnected digital substrate. We also think about interconnected platforms for individuals, IT and developers. This comprehensive view enables us to solve the more complex, nuanced and real-world day-to-day challenges in an increasingly digital world. It also opens the door to massive growth opportunity – technology spend as a total percentage of GDP will grow with the digitization of nearly everything in life and work.

I think this is wrong. Backwards, in fact. It’s not about an “interconnected digital substrate,” a nonsense phrase, but about building a product that truly empowers that one person. If it empowers one, it will empower millions. Apple has taught us this. Microsoft has yet to learn this. 

We have a rich heritage and a unique capability around building productivity experiences and platforms. We help people get stuff done. Stuff like term papers, recipes and budgets. Stuff like chatting with friends and family across the world. Stuff like painting, writing poetry and expressing ideas. Stuff like running a Formula 1 racing team or keeping an entire city running. Stuff like building a game with a spark of your imagination and remixing it with the world. And stuff like helping build a vaccine for HIV, and giving a voice to the voiceless. This is an incredible foundation from which to grow. 

Nice reminder for the troops and the public. 

At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.

Repeating this is not productive.

Microsoft has a unique ability to harmonize the world’s devices, apps, docs, data and social networks in digital work and life experiences so that people are at the center and are empowered to do more and achieve more with what is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity – time!

It took far too much time to get here, but Nadella has shrewdly set in motion not only Microsoft’s mission, but its marketing message as well, which is almost as important.

Microsoft will save us time. 

Productivity for us goes well beyond documents, spreadsheets and slides. We will reinvent productivity for people who are swimming in a growing sea of devices, apps, data and social networks. We will build the solutions that address the productivity needs of groups and entire organizations as well as individuals by putting them at the center of their computing experiences. We will shift the meaning of productivity beyond solely producing something to include empowering people with new insights. We will build tools to be more predictive, personal and helpful.

The deconstruction of Word, Excel et al shall commence starting now. 

We will enable organizations to move from automated business processes to intelligent business processes. Every experience Microsoft builds will understand the rich context of an individual at work and in life to help them organize and accomplish things with ease.

This will be tricky. Even in a data driven, always-on world, people vigilantly maintain different lives: work, home, and those known only between the person and her browser history. Nadella wants to create a whole where I believe people want to maintain separate, if porous, fiefdoms. 

Productive people and organizations are the primary drivers of individual fulfilment and economic growth and we need to do everything to make the experiences and platforms that enable this ubiquitous.

I love how Nadella and Microsoft are the anti-Apple. Steve Jobs was famous for talking about computers and creativity whereas Microsoft is now focused on computers and productivity. Both are worthy visions: Apple is more likely to garner passionate adherents, Microsoft is more likely to lift up all boats. 

Users Not Consumers

We will think of every user as a potential “dual user” – people who will use technology for their work or school and also deeply use it in their personal digital life. They strive to get stuff done with technology, demanding new cloud-powered applications, extensively using time and calendar management, advanced expression, collaboration, meeting, search and research services, all with better security and privacy control.

Privacy, privacy, security.

Wise of Microsoft to attack Google’s Achilles Heel. Obviously, we embrace the many benefits that accrue as our data, all of it, flows between many clouds and many screens.

We will want to know, however, that some data will remain forever cordoned off to all but exactly whom we wish and when. Only Microsoft can deliver this — Google’s business model is almost in direct opposition to it and Apple refuses to embrace Microsoft scale.

Warning, Mr. Nadella: do not abdicate user privacy. Do not screw this up. 

Microsoft will push into all corners of the globe to empower every individual as a dual user – starting with the soon to be 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices. And we will do so with a platform mindset. Developers and partners will thrive by creatively extending Microsoft experiences for every individual and business on the planet.

None of this sounds even remotely appealing. Platforms empower the maker, not the user. That’s why every company in tech talks platforms.

“Microsoft experiences” sounds no better than, say, a visit to the dentist. 

Across Microsoft, we will obsess over reinventing productivity and platforms. We will relentlessly focus on and build great digital work and life experiences with specific focus on dual use.

Nadella has hitched his future to a belief in “dual use.” That is, our work and home lives meld into one interconnected digital sphere. I think this is wrong and will be his undoing.

Microsoft Everywhere

Our cloud OS infrastructure, device OS and first-party hardware will all build around this core focus and enable broad ecosystems. Microsoft will light up digital work and life experiences in the most personal, intelligent, open and empowering ways.

Key words: “first-party hardware.” Surface, Lumia, Xbox — these are only the start of Nadella’s hardware ambitions. Ballmer must be pleased. 

Developers and partners will thrive by creatively extending Microsoft experiences for every individual and business on the planet.

Requisite acknowledgement of developers and partners now out of the way… 

We will deliver digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. First and foremost, these experiences will shine for productivity. As a result, people will meet and collaborate more easily and effectively. They will express ideas in new ways. They will experience the magic of ambient intelligence with Delve and Cortana.

This is the future we expect and I am looking forward to Microsoft’s implementation of “ambient intelligence.”

It’s easy to believe Microsoft will be unable to match Google Now and other iterations of Google’s ambient intelligence capabilities. It’s nearly as easy to believe Microsoft won’t be able to deliver a service as simple to use as Apple’s Siri. These are legitimate concerns. That said, Bing, Yammer, Office, Exchange, Skype, Lumia, and the reach of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure are critical resources to be tapped, and will help guide users in all facets of their digital life. 

Moreover, for the shareholders, ambient intelligence will be a business revolution, and in this, Microsoft is far ahead of the pack. 

They will ask questions naturally and have them answered with insight from Power Q&A. They will conquer language barriers and change the world with Skype translator. Apps will be designed as dual use with the intelligence to partition data between work and life and with the respect for each person’s privacy choices. All of these apps will be explicitly engineered so anybody can find, try and then buy them in friction-free ways.  They will be built for other ecosystems so as people move from device to device, so will their content and the richness of their services – it’s one way we keep people, not devices, at the center.

I hope you succeed at this. Right now, these remain mere words.

This transformation is well underway as we moved Office from the desktop to a service with Office 365 and our solutions from individual productivity to group productivity tools – both to the delight of our customers.

Please ban the use of the word ‘delight’.

We’ll push forward and evolve the world-class productivity, collaboration and business process tools people know and love today, including Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Bing and Dynamics. 

The next revolution will be in the office, not in the home. In this, new Microsoft still acts like old Microsoft. 

Increasingly, all of these experiences will become more connected to each other, more contextual and more personal. For example, today the Cortana app on my Windows Phone merges data from highway sensors and my own calendar and simply reminds me to leave work to make it to my daughter’s recital on time. In the future, it will be even more intelligent as a personal assistant who takes notes, books meetings and understands if my question about the weather is to determine my clothes for the day or is intended to start a complex task like booking a family vacation. Microsoft experiences will be unique as they will reason over information from work and life and keep a user in control of their privacy.

Dear tech bloggers: the ‘Microsoft is doomed’ stories are just stupid. 

The Cloud Everywhere

Our cloud OS represents the largest opportunity given we are working from a position of strength. With Azure, we are one of very few cloud vendors that runs at hyper-scale. The combination of Azure and Windows Server makes us the only company with a public, private and hybrid cloud platform that can power modern business. We will transform the return on IT investment by enabling enterprises to combine their existing datacenters and our public cloud into one cohesive infrastructure backplane. We will enable our customers to use our Cloud OS to accelerate their businesses and power all of their data and application needs. 

The cloud will be where nearly all our data and all the intelligence connected to that data resides. But not all. We will use our mobile devices to store and share data and content which we dare not send via the cloud.

That said, the cloud will be paramount, and Mr. Nadella is wise to focus so much attention upon Microsoft’s capabilities here.

His statement also reminds us Nadella is a techie and he understands how to fully leverage the breadth of Microsoft’s infrastructure. I wish his statement, however, wasn’t so buried underneath enterprise-speak. How will this cloud benefit me — not me at work, not me doing work. Simply, me. 

Beyond back-end cloud infrastructure, our cloud will also enable richer employee experiences. For example, with our new Enterprise Mobility Suite, we now enable IT organizations to manage and secure the Windows, iOS and Android devices that their employees use, while keeping their companies secure. We are also making it easy for organizations to securely adopt SaaS applications (both our own and third-party apps) and seamlessly integrate them with their existing security and management infrastructure. We will continue to innovate with higher level services like identity and directory services, rich data storage and analytics services, machine learning services, media services, web and mobile backend services, developer productivity services, and many more.

Nadella may talk of “dual use” and of the merging of work and home. Microsoft remains, however, a work company.  

Our cloud OS will also run all of Microsoft’s digital work and life experiences, and we will continue to grow our datacenter footprint globally. Every Microsoft digital work and life experience will also provide third-party extensibility and enable a rich developer ecosystem around our cloud OS. This will enable customers and partners to further customize and extend our solutions, achieving even more value.


Cloud “APIs,” essentially, could revolutionize how we create, manipulate and benefit from data. Microsoft should be a leader in this, and it will propel tremendous business value. 

Hardware Everywhere

Our Windows device OS and first-party hardware will set the bar for productivity experiences.

Again, that phrase “first-party hardware.”

Microsoft is (now) a hardware company. But a good one? Can an applications, services and infrastructure company also do great hardware? I have my doubts. I welcome being proven wrong. 

Windows will deliver the most rich and consistent user experience for digital work and life scenarios on screens of all sizes – from phones, tablets and laptops to TVs and giant 82 inch PPI boards.

Does anyone believe this will ever be so?

We will invest so that Windows is the most secure, manageable and capable OS for the needs of a modern workforce and IT.

Nadella will not cede one organization to Google Docs and not allow a single corporation to let iPhone, iPad or BYOD to loosen its grip on the enterprise. This will be a bloody fight. I can’t wait.  

Windows will create a broad developer opportunity by enabling Universal Windows Applications to run across all device targets. Windows will evolve to include new input/output methods like speech, pen and gesture and ultimately power more personal computing experiences. 

Multi-mode inputs will absolutely create more personal computing experiences. The burden of proof that these should — or even can — be offered by Microsoft is quite high, however.

Very, very few humans use speech, pen or gestures to interact with Microsoft products or applications. Microsoft has repeatedly failed to lead the world in this. 

Our first-party devices will light up digital work and life. Surface Pro 3 is a great example – it is the world’s best productivity tablet.

No.

In addition, we will build first-party hardware to stimulate more demand for the entire Windows ecosystem. That means at times we’ll develop new categories like we did with Surface. It also means we will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone, which is our goal with the Nokia devices and services acquisition.

Being deliberately inexplicable is not productive, Mr. Nadella. What exactly is “responsibly make the market?” You intend to be a hardware company, in direct competition with many of your very best partners. Say so. 

I also want to share some additional thoughts on Xbox and its importance to Microsoft. As a large company, I think it’s critical to define the core, but it’s important to make smart choices on other businesses in which we can have fundamental impact and success. The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming. We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox. Xbox is one of the most-revered consumer brands, with a growing online community and service, and a raving fan base. We also benefit from many technologies flowing from our gaming efforts into our productivity efforts – core graphics and NUI in Windows, speech recognition in Skype, camera technology in Kinect for Windows, Azure cloud enhancements for GPU simulation and many more. Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.

Brilliant. Nadella has scuttled all rumors about Microsoft abandoning Xbox. He has reminded analysts gaming is a primary driver behind mobile and while Microsoft lags in mobile it is a leader in gaming. Nadella also reminds us in our new age of data, collaboration and ideas, “gaming” will become a crucial component of productivity.

While today many people define mobile by devices, Microsoft defines it by experiences. We’re really in the infant stages of the mobile-first world. In the next few years we will see many more new categories evolve and experiences emerge that span a variety of devices of all screen sizes. Microsoft will be on the forefront of this innovation with a particular focus on dual users and their needs across work and life.
 Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox.

My take: Microsoft to acquire Zynga. That’s just for starters. 

Our ambitions are bold and so must be our desire to change and evolve our culture.
I truly believe that we spend far too much time at work for it not to drive personal meaning and satisfaction. Together we have the opportunity to create technology that impacts the planet.

Good, lord, this memo is just ridiculously long. 

I’ve Seen All Good People

Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture to deliver on this core strategy. Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving.

If you are not a star, I strongly advise you to get to work on your resume. 

I am committed to making Microsoft the best place for smart, curious, ambitious people to do their best work.

If you are a star, I strongly advise you to get to work on your resume. 

First, we will obsess over our customers. Obsessing over our customers is everybody’s job. I’m looking to the engineering teams to build the experiences our customers love. I’m looking to the sales and marketing organizations to showcase our unique value propositions and drive customer usage first and foremost.
 In order to deliver the experiences our customers need for the mobile-first and cloud-first world, we will modernize our engineering processes to be customer-obsessed, data-driven, speed-oriented and quality-focused. We will be more effective in predicting and understanding what our customers need and more nimble in adjusting to information we get from the market. We will streamline the engineering process and reduce the amount of time and energy it takes to get things done. You can expect to have fewer processes but more focused and measurable outcomes. You will see fewer people get involved in decisions and more emphasis on accountability. Further, you will see investments in two new or combined functions: Data and Applied Science and Software Engineering. Each engineering group will have Data and Applied Science resources that will focus on measurable outcomes for our products and predictive analysis of market trends, which will allow us to innovate more effectively. Software Engineering will evolve so that information can travel more quickly, with fewer breakpoints between the envisioning of a product or service and a quality delivery to customers. In making these changes we are getting closer to the customer and pushing more accountability throughout the organization.

We should not be surprised when thousands of Microsoft staff are shown the door.

Second, we know the changes above will bring on the need for new training, learning and experimentation.

That’s you, old, middle management gatekeepers.

Over the next six months you will see new investments in our workforce, such as enhanced training and development and more opportunities to test new ideas and incubate new projects.

Big layoffs by Christmas.

I have also heard from many of you that changing jobs is challenging. We will change the process and mindset so you can more seamlessly move around the company to roles where you can have the most impact and personal growth. All of this, too, comes with accountability and the need to deliver great work for customers, but it is clear that investing in future learning and growth has great benefit for everyone.  

I suspect Microsoft will soon become the GE of personal computing. Massive, always in flux, possessing an agile bureaucracy, driven less by product or business model and more by shrewdly financing initiatives which it can dominate.  

I am committed to making Microsoft the best place for smart, curious, ambitious people to do their best work.

Why hasn’t it been?

Finally

Yes!

every team across Microsoft must find ways to simplify and move faster, more efficiently. We will increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes.

See note above re: resumes.

Culture change means we will do things differently. Often people think that means everyone other than them. In reality, it means all of us taking a new approach and working together to make Microsoft better. To this end, I’ve asked each member of the Senior Leadership Team to evaluate opportunities to advance their innovation processes and simplify their operations and how they work. We will share more on this throughout July.

Big layoffs by Thanksgiving.

A few months ago on a call with investors I quoted Nietzsche and said that we must have “courage in the face of reality.” Even more important, we must have courage in the face of opportunity.

+1 for quoting Nietzsche. -2 for quoting Nietzsche 3,000 words in. 

We have clarity in purpose to empower every individual and organization to do more and achieve more. We have the right capabilities to reinvent productivity and platforms for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. Now, we must build the right culture to take advantage of our huge opportunity. And culture change starts with one individual at a time.

Validate why you, ye lowly programmer, should continue to be employed by Microsoft. 

Rainer Maria Rilke’s words say it best: “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

Want to get on Nadella’s good side? He obviously has a penchant for early 20th century German writers.

We must each have the courage to transform as individuals. We must ask ourselves, what idea can I bring to life? What insight can I illuminate? What individual life could I change? What customer can I delight? What new skill could I learn? What team could I help build? What orthodoxy should I question?

Big layoffs by Labor Day. 

With the courage to transform individually, we will collectively transform this company and seize the great opportunity ahead.

I wish you well, Mr. Nadella, and all of you (still) at Microsoft. 

Decoding Page And Brin

I have noticed successful CEOs share an uncanny ability to lay bare a company’s strategy while simultaneously leading you down a false path. Steve Jobs was a master at this. I learned from watching Jobs it was always best to remove my expectations, toss aside my biases, and focus strictly on what he was saying and what he was showing. Only then was it possible to divine his intentions.

The same skills are required to decode the words of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This recent joint interview tells us a great deal about each man and the direction of Google.

Expect still more big, bold bets, more run-ins with the law, more jarringly bad incursions upon our privacy, more encroachments upon everything tech, possibly upon everything man made. That’s how audacious Page and Brin are. Indeed, it’s audacity mixed with a belief in fate, I suspect. Page and Brin appear to embrace the notion it is right and just and good they have so many billions, so many smart employees and a company of such immense, transformative power — only they can rightly and profoundly change our world.

Of course it’s hubris. They are billionaire techies, after all, highly successful since at least their dorm room days, and worth more money than they could spend in multiple lifetimes. But it’s also daring, inspiring, the kind of stuff that enables Silicon Valley to lead America and which enables America to lead the world.

Page And Brin On Record

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were interviewed recently by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. The interview is relaxed, even clubby, but quickly becomes revelatory. We learn, for example, Excite nearly purchased the Google tech back in 1999. For $350,000.

We learn Page, who sounds awful, is clearly interested in healthcare as well as healthcare regulations. I would not be surprised if Page secretly believes his billions and Google’s work on life extension, artificial intelligence and computer-enabled consciousness will enable him to achieve near-immortality.

This will fail, of course, though many will likely benefit from Google’s work. Which is a theme in this interview, from Page, especially. He is committed to using Google’s money, brainpower and computing brute force to make a better world.

Some insights based on my analysis of the interview [direct video link]:

  • Page does not seem to particularly care what Brin has to say.
  • Page is obviously committed to Google — the corporation — but also to Googlers, the employees.
  • Google is undefinable, even for Page, the CEO. Google is search, obviously, and those elements clearly linked to search, such as location. But Google is much more than that, even if Page fails to fully distill this into words. Google is artificial intelligence, machine learning, a gift to the world, a transformative engine of innovation.
  • Page intends to remain at Google indefinitely.
  • Brin may not be at Google quite as long. It’s clear Page is in charge of Google Inc. and equally clear the Google X skunkworks efforts captivate Brin. It may be best for everyone if he takes his work outside Google.

Google Now

Did you watch? It’s quite useful if you are interested in Google. Here is my take on the important bits:

0:50 Forget the laughter, Brin is still peeved that “PageRank” was not called “BrinRank.” I am not sure hyper-competitive people have any idea how hyper-competitive they are — about everything.

1:48 I realize Sergey Brin is not wearing a wedding ring.

2:20 Brin re-tells the origin story of Google and how it was nearly sold to Excite. This is thoroughly discussed, I suspect, because Google believes it is destined to do great — insanely great — and tales of how it nearly died merely reaffirm their manifest destiny. (At 4:15, Page joins in this discussion)

5:00 Page’s throat muscles appear stressed, damaged. I cannot stop myself from speculating on his health.

6:05 Page states most companies are “short term focused” and clearly is pleased that Google thinks bigger, longer. At 6:50, Page notes most companies are measured quarterly and most CEOs have no better than a four year tenure. He states solving “big problems” are easy when the leader has a 20 year horizon. Bottom line: Expect Page to helm Google well into the next decade at least.

8:00 Brin states Google has no “critical” opportunities to focus on as a “critical” opportunity would suggest an inherent vulnerability. The implication, of course, is Google can only be un-done by the future, but that won’t happen as Google intends to build the future. This sentiment is especially telling because Google has repeatedly missed opportunities, including social, text messaging, apps, streaming and more. It would be interesting to peer inside their minds to understand how they reconcile their manifest destiny visions with the incessant disruptions percolating from 7 billion humans.

8:50 Brin is clearly excited about the potential for the autonomous cars — a “big bet.”

9:40 Page finally and briefly mentions Android, which he believes is important to Google over the next few years. This is the sole statement regarding Android. Indeed, the interview is surprising for how little the two mention any actual Google products.

10:05 Page offers important insight about search, access to content, navigation, and the expanding notion of what “search” means, which includes knowing the question before the user asks it.

11:05 Page decries the current “bad” state of today’s computers — desktops and smartphones — which require far too much effort and deliver far too little benefit. I start to wonder what amazing gadgetry he has inside his home.

12:20 Brin leads several minutes of animated discussion on Google’s current and long range “machine learning” efforts. He believes Google, unlike all those in the past, can make artificial intelligence — thinking machines — a reality.

14:20 It requires a question from Khosla to force the two to consider how these machine learning efforts will impact jobs, labor, equality, economy and people. Sadly, this mostly leads to joking and a discussion on America’s agricultural past. It’s never been more clear than now just how removed Page and Brin are from the daily realities of nearly the entire world.

16:10 Page states the basic needs of the world can and should be easily provided. Ours is a world of abundance, he tells us. We should focus not on jobs per se, but on abundance and leisure time. Again, Page seems wildly out of touch here, despite any positive intentions. At 18:25, Brin interrupts Page, who then quickly interrupts Brin and it’s now crystal clear the two men have different views on the near term economic and social harm of technology. This is the first clear break between the two. Regrettably, neither possesses the answers to solve these problems.

21:20 Khosla appears to realize Page and Brin have no real answers for current issues re: work, employment and inequality. He leaps to a speculative question “forty years” into the future.

24:15 Brin speculates on who will make the company’s self-driving cars, Google or “partners.” The only thing we learn is the implication the self-driving car market is many, many years off.

25:25 “My view about this has changed quite a bit over the years.” That’s what Page states about Google being involved in too many projects. Page says he used to discuss this idea with Steve Jobs, who insisted Google did too much. Page, however, says much of what Google does is interrelated. He also notes the various projects give employees an opportunity to grow and be creative.

26:45 “Sergey can do that and I don’t have to talk to him.” “That has almost nothing to do with our current business.” This is what Page says about Google’s driverless car efforts — which Brin is responsible for.

27:40 Brin discusses Google X. He reveals X is focused on “atoms, not bits,” an insight I had not previously considered. Cars, internet balloons, Glass, etc. are all hardware first, software second (at best). Unfortunately, Brin does not state exactly why he chose to focus on atoms, not bits. I suspect it is because then Page would keep his distance.

29:00 A discussion on Google’s interests in health services begins. At 29:50, however, Brin states healthcare is so “heavily regulated” that such efforts, at least for now, are not a priority. Page agrees with Brin’s assessment.

30:45 Page, again revealing his tone-deafnesses over current social norms, discusses the potential of using data to improve health. He notes allowing “medical researchers” to search your medical data is a big win for society and likely the individual. Except, Page remarks “maybe” your name is removed from the research. This is shocking. Page seems genuinely focused on leveraging Google’s capabilities to make the world a better place. That said, time and again he seems literally unaware — or simply uncaring — of how actual human users may be harmed or frightened.

34:20 The co-founders dodge the question of whether or not they have ever “fundamentally disagreed” on an issue.

37:15 Page is displeased with how government is “illogical” and how its complexity increases over time.

38:30 Page says he was talking recently with the president of South Korea. Might there be more expansive tie-ins with Samsung?

40:00 Page provides sage advice to entrepreneurs regarding who to hire.