Welcome to the weekly Tech.pinions podcast. This week Bob O’Donnell and Ben Bajarin offer predictions about what will be unveiled at next week’s Apple event and discuss Bob’s column on the relevance of Windows, Tim Bajarin’s column on the challenges with Uber and the recent USC School of Medicine’s Body Computing Conference.
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I have the ability to record and broadcast presentations I give through my primary presentation tool Perspective. So I thought it would be interesting to try something different and create a quick analysis of some of my data and add make some points around a particular focused topic. To start, I thought I would focus on Xiaomi. I’d love any thoughts or feedback on this as it is something I’d like to do more of, specifically for our subscribers, but wanted to test it out broadly first.
If you have the Perspective app (it’s free) you can use this link and watch this in the app which is a higher quality experience than the video. As I do more of these, it may be a good idea to get the Perspective app (available on iOS for iPhone or iPad) since I may do more of these live and be able to take questions. All of that can only be done in the app. If you use the app, you can also pause these stories and interact with my charts yourself. If you have iOS I encourage you to try it.
The one is 11m long. I’d like to keep them shorter in the future.
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I had the chance to use Uber for the first time when I was in Seattle recently. Unfortunately, my first experience with this service was not great. The driver had trouble finding me at the hotel I was at and, even worse, had trouble following the navigation app on her iPhone while ferrying me from one part of town to another. In the end, I had to pull out my iPad and a mapping app to actually get us to the location I needed to be and got there with only minutes to spare. She admitted she was a new driver and, knowing that, I cut her a lot of slack and even tipped her well. However, as I started thinking more about this driver specifically and Uber in general, I knew something was troubling about this experience, although at the time I could not put my finger on it.
After a few days of pondering, I realized the thing bugging me is that she was just a contract driver for Uber with little training and yet I had entrusted my life into her hands. As I understand the business model, Uber drivers are contract employees who get 80% of the amount paid them and Uber gets about 20%. These drivers have no benefits and in many ways they have most of the risk. Now I know I also put my life into the hands of cab drivers and limo drivers too but they are pretty much professional drivers and, while some may also be contractors, many are actually hired by the company they work for. In the case of the limo drivers I have used, they have full company benefits.
I recently ran across an article that highlighted what I see as a problem with this idea but was having trouble articulating myself. Kevin Rouse, writing in NY Magazine a piece entitled, “Does Silicon Valley have a Contract Worker Problem?” stated the following:
“With Uber valued at $18 billion, Airbnb valued at $10 billion, and new imitators popping up daily, Silicon Valley is clearly infatuated with the middleman model. A recent study by venture-capital firm SherpaVentures, which has invested in start-ups like Washio (Uber for laundry), BloomThat (Uber for flowers), and Shyp (Uber for packages), estimated that venture capitalists invested $1.6 billion in so-called “on-demand” start-ups in 2013 alone. SherpaVentures predicts that so-called “freelance marketplace” or “managed-service” labor models used by these companies are poised to transform industries like law, health care, and investment banking, and that fewer people have traditional full-time or part-time jobs as a result. This, in the firm’s mind, is a good thing.
“Perpetual, hourly employment is often deeply inefficient for all parties involved,” the report reads.
But increasingly, critics argue the freelance model is being abused, with workers being treated as if they were on payroll without getting any of the benefits afforded payroll employees. Some Silicon Valley insiders are beginning to worry that start-ups’ over-reliance on contract workers could come back to haunt them if they run afoul of longstanding labor rules. If that happens, these high-flying disruptors could be facing serious disruption themselves.”
We are already seeing this with Uber constantly coming up against local ordinances and regulations in place to monitor and license similar services in each community. You can imagine labor boards across the US will start taking a closer look at these business models and weighing in with their own concerns in the future. The role of contract workers is known as the 1099 economy and is by no means new. We have had contract workers probably since the beginning of time in one form or another. I also believe there is a place for them given the right circumstances. Most contract workers are self employed and fall under the various rules and regulations that guide self employment today.
The role of these contract workers in this Silicon Valley Uber model seems on the surface to be just another contractor working for an employer. However, it is a new twist on the idea and one that is concerning to many. Uber, and the other VC backed companies who use this model, give these folks minimal training, and as far as I can tell, none of these contractors are bonded. Uber and some others carry insurance related to their services but it is unclear how much of that insurance covers them vs their contractors. The recent case involving an Uber Driver attacking a passenger with a hammer underscore this issue. Although Uber touts its safety focus, if you read the small print in their terms, it clearly puts a lot of the risk on the consumer and tries to absolve themselves from as much responsibility as possible.
I know we are early in this business model’s life and much has to be fleshed out about how they work, train, pay, insure, and deploy these contract employees. After all Uber, Washio, Shyp and other similar tech companies are really logistic companies that mostly serve as a dispatcher for their workers to meet a specific need of their customers. However, they will increasingly come under governmental regulatory scrutiny and labor board investigations before we see if they will make it in the long run.
I admit I am highly conflicted on this issue. The Uber driver I had in Seattle was happy with her new job and I think she was only doing it part time to help pay for college. Many other Uber drivers and similar contract employees tied to these digital logistics services are full time and, like most contractors, are willing to carry the cost of being a contractor for the chance of making a living doing these jobs. Just the fact it brings more people into the job market is a good thing.
However, I think companies like Uber, Washio and others like them will eventually have to confront their responsibilities to their workers and their customers in better ways than they do today. How they treat these contract workers and protect their customers will determine if these types of companies stay around and thrive in the future.
There was a thought I alluded to in last week’s Tech.pinions podcast I want to expand. It’s the idea we’re now surrounded by many different computers in a variety of form factors and that one of the biggest questions for our industry is just how many of these computers each individual needs for their personal and business needs.
When the word computer was synonymous with the desktop PC, the answer was plainly either one or zero for the vast majority of people. Either you needed a computer or you didn’t. If you did, it likely sat on the desk at work or on a table at home if you needed it for personal reasons. Very few people would have needed more than one.
However, when the laptop came along there was suddenly a reason for at least some people to have more than one computer for the same purpose. One – the desktop – stayed on the desk while the other traveled with the user. This entailed some compromises – files often had to be manually transferred to the laptop computer using a floppy disk or a USB drive or similar. Over time, the increasing power of laptops allowed at least some users to forgo the desktop entirely, perhaps making use of a docking station when in the office or at home to extend the functionality of the laptop. As such, the laptop went from being a secondary device to being a primary device or even the only computer used for work or personal needs.
When the smartphone first came along, it took on a similar role to the laptop — as a secondary computer in our lives (at best). Early smartphones were very limited-use computers, effective only for basic emails and such, but able to replace very few, if any, functions of the laptop. As smartphones have evolved however, they have become more and more pocket computers, able to replicate, at least in basic form, many of the functions of a laptop. They began as secondary devices but, once again, as they’ve gained in power and functionality, they’ve become for many of us the primary computers in our lives, going with us everywhere, the first ones we turn to for many tasks, with laptops performing a backup function.
In 2010, Apple reinvented the tablet with the iPad and introduced yet another computer into this mix. People who already used a smartphone and laptop had another computer to use, optimized for certain tasks and scenarios, offering a larger screen than the smartphone, sharing many of its benefits, such as portability, instant on nature, and a touch-based operating system. This was arguably the first time that ordinary people were in the position of owning three different computers for personal use. In some cases, people resolved this situation by adopting the tablet as the primary computing device, effectively replacing a laptop much as the laptop once replaced the desktop.
I believe this instinct of trying to get back down to two computers for personal use is a powerful one, both for complexity and budgetary reasons. Many people and businesses struggle to justify three separate device purchases to accomplish essentially the same tasks. Though some resolve this tension by opting for a tablet over a laptop, others will resolve it the other way, falling back on the more powerful laptop and slowly abandoning their tablets. I see the last few years as a period of experimentation among many users as they test whether the tablet fits into their lives as a primary device, a secondary device, or not at all. The rise of two-in-ones and the Microsoft Surface are attempts to help users resolve this tension by finding a compromise between the two form factors, though these devices inevitably entail compromises.
Into this mix comes the “phablet” – the large screened smartphone which approaches the unofficial dividing line between smartphones and tablets at 5.5 inches or more. In some cases, users are resolving the tension by increasing the size of the smartphone they carry allowing the smartphone to absorb some tablet tasks, while others fall to the laptop, leaving the tablet without a role. While I think the threat of phablets to tablets can be overblown, I do think it’s real, and Apple’s larger iPhones in particular represent a particular threat to the iPad.
All of which makes next week’s Apple event particularly interesting. At this point in its history, Apple has to decide what the proper role of the iPad is in a multi-computer world, especially in the context of its recent iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launches. How important is it Apple provide compelling new reasons for people to choose the iPad in addition to the iPhone and Mac lines? Last year’s new iPad hardware was a significant step forward in the case of the Air, which is markedly lighter and thinner than the previous versions. Yet it provided no huge bump in sales. I’ve talked about the iPad replacement cycle before and I believe this may still be part of the reason for the current lull in iPad sales with a big upgrade cycle to come. I also believe Apple is slowly reducing the reasons to buy an iPad with enhancements to both the iPhone and Mac lines.
The question at this point is whether the iPad in fact occupies a position much like the iPod — extremely compelling for a period of time, but destined to be replaced at some point by other devices, like the iPod by the iPhone. This feels odd because of the order of their launches (though we should note that work on the iPad began before work on the iPhone). But as Apple has released increasingly personal devices, people have slowly shifted their attention towards the newer, more personal even if the iPad’s place in the order of launches is a little out of position. If iPhones cannibalize iPads, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for Apple, which makes more money from the former (both revenue per device and margins), except perhaps it reinforces the company’s reliance on a single line of devices for much of its growth, revenue and profit. But at some point in the next few years, Apple may have to decide how to actively foster that cannibalization.
We come, lastly, to the Apple Watch, which is the latest in Apple’s series of increasingly personal and “intimate” computers (to use Apple’s terminology):
The Apple Watch isn’t quite like any other smartwatch out there, not just because of the somewhat unique fashion angle, but also because it clearly sets out its stall as a computer in its own right, with huge potential beyond its current capability in future versions. Over time, I think it’s entirely possible the Apple Watch could become the primary computer in people’s lives just as the laptop and smartphone have been before. We’re some time from that eventuality, just as the original smartphones weren’t ready to replace laptops. But I can easily foresee this future coming in the next few years. This seems especially plausible when you bear in mind the fragmentation between inputs, outputs and processors I’ve talked about previously, in which small devices such as the Apple Watch might use external processing power, inputs and outputs to achieve their full functionality.
However, it raises the question yet again of, how many computers we need? We used to think the answer was either one or zero, whereas now the answer seems for many people to be closer to two, while for others it’s three. With watches like the Apple Watch coming on the market, some may start using as many as four. But over time, it’s likely the inevitable tension that arises from using multiple computing devices will kick in again and people will find themselves trying to eliminate at least some of those they use to focus on just a couple. It will be very interesting to see which they choose.
Yesterday, Samsung issued a Q3 2014 guidance update stating they will miss expectations. The report says profit is down nearly 60%. For many of us, this was entirely expected. If this estimate holds up, Samsung’s operating profit chart looks like this:
For me, the only surprise is so many people are surprised at Samsung’s troubles. Samsung themselves knew this was a possibility over two years ago. I had a long meeting with Samsung’s Chief Strategy Officer and his entire staff more than two years ago on this very subject. I outlined in detail what happens when you don’t have sustainable differentiation. Through the years I’ve written quite a bit and documented how I thought this would play out for Samsung. For this article I want to highlight the lessons learned and the key takeaways all hardware providers, but specifically those who ship someone else’s software like Windows, Windows Phone, Android, etc., must learn from Samsung’s cautionary tale.
Ultimately, Samsung’s challenges occurred due to a lack of sustainable differentiation. Samsung has a number of differentiating factors like scale, time to market, marketing prowess and budget. However, none of them were sustainable. By shipping someone else’s software and relying on someone else’s services, Samsung is only a hardware company. What their struggles point out is companies looking to profit from hardware will only struggle when they ship someone else’s software and rely on someone else’s services.
There was a time not too long ago when a successful strategy could be found in hardware alone. This was true both of PCs and smartphones for example. Prior to a category getting crowded, and while there is still category defining innovation, value can still be found and profited from with hardware. But once innovation slows down and hardware gets “good enough”, competitors who can also ship the same software as you can now begin undercutting your pricing. This is what is happening to Samsung as companies like Xiaomi, Huawei in China, and Micromax in India are eating into Samsung’s smartphone market share.
Those who did not see Samsung’s problems coming had a weak understanding of the dynamics of integrated and modular systems within the technology industry. At an even deeper level, many have a weak understanding of disruption within the dynamics of integrated and modular systems. In a modular ecosystem, a company like Samsung provides the hardware and Google provides the software. Apple is an integrated player. They make the hardware but also make the software. Apple does not depend on someone else to make the software for their hardware, nor do they give their software for others to use. As Ben Thompson says, “Apple has a monopoly on iOS.” This is a central point. Because Apple has a monopoly on iOS their product is differentiated. Apple’s iPhone stands out not just at a hardware level but at a software level. When consumers see iOS, they realize what they get with iOS they cannot get elsewhere. When consumers look at Samsung devices, they see an OS they can get on any other hardware. Therefore the purchasing decision nearly always comes down to price.
In modular ecosystems, the various hardware players all shipping the same software create what I like to call “the sea of sameness”. Outside of a few hardware differences everything looks the same. When everything looks the same, you are only as good as your lowest priced competitor.
Hardware companies, especially those who are modular and ship someone else’s software, have to learn that attempting to profit from hardware alone is not a sustainable strategy. This is true of PCs, tablets, and smartphones. This is why PC vendors like Dell, HP, and Lenovo focus on using the hardware as a means to a larger enterprise services strategy. In a modular world, hardware is a means to monetize services when all the dust settles.
What essentially is happening is Samsung is being disrupted in the classical sense according to the theory. I’d argue in certain markets, like pure consumer ones, disruption theory is more predictable and consistent in modular environments. I argued in this Insider post that Apple is immune to disruption thanks to their more integrated approach which is sustainable in large global consumer tech markets. Apple has yet to have to change their business model, whereas Samsung is actively shifting away from premium and changing their strategy to ensure the scale the fundamentals of their company require.
The lesson for all hardware OEMs making PCs and smartphones is to begin planning for a future where hardware becomes a means to an end and to sell a broader set of services. Competition is going to come from all angles and I expect even more “services first” companies, like telco’s or even TV services companies. Ultimately, companies like Xiaomi and Amazon who employ a services first strategy and hardware as a means to monetize those services, may be the future of the OEM model in modular markets.
To say that the past week has been an interesting one for the PC market is one heck of an understatement. Between Microsoft’s first official preview of Windows 10 and HP’s announced split into two companies, there has been an enormous amount of hand-wringing and questioning about the future state of the PC market.
Not surprisingly, that’s also led to a lot of questions about Windows, given its still very close ties to PCs. Many reporters I’ve spoken with have basically asked, given the challenging conditions PCs face, is Windows still relevant?
My short answer? Absolutely.
First, let’s address the PC question. Though 90% of the tech industry seems intent on burying PCs while they’re still alive, the truth is, they are still alive. In fact, they’re showing signs of coming back to life, which I’m defining as no longer declining. (Hey, remember, flat is the new up.) We’ll know more next week when third quarter shipment numbers are announced, but given all the research I’ve done, as well as the upbeat reports we’ve heard from component makers and PC vendors, I’m willing to bet the PC story is going to be decent.
Plus, in a strange way, some of the bad news we’ve seen about tablets recently (flat to declining sales, etc.) could prove to be good for PCs. What’s implied in that news is that tablets are not going to take over PCs for most individuals, so those people who’ve been holding off on upgrading their existing PCs for fear that PCs won’t be relevant anymore, can now go ahead and upgrade.
Given the big HP news from earlier this week, it’s somewhat ironic that one of the more upbeat PC companies of late has been HP. In their last reported quarterly numbers released in August, their PC shipments were up an impressive 13% year over year. Not bad for a “dead” market. Additionally, even though many have tried to read a negative PC story into the news, HP’s announcement doesn’t mean that they’re questioning the future of the PC market. In fact, you could even make the argument that it’s the exact opposite. The truth is, it’s much too early to tell exactly what the impact (if any) HP’s announcement will have on either the near-term or even medium-term outlook for PCs.
So, let’s turn our attention back to Windows 10. I’ll start by making the argument that Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been all along. Instead of bifurcating into two distinct environments with a confusing model for working and switching between them, Windows 10 looks to leverage everything that’s good about the familiar Windows 7 interface, along with some of the genuine enhancements that came with the Metro UI of Windows 8. Again, it’s a bit early for final pronouncements here as well, but what I’ve seen so far is definitely encouraging.[pullquote]Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been all along.”[/pullquote]
Of course, the unfortunate implication is that Windows 8 set the PC industry back a good two years and it’s going to be difficult to catch up. While there may be some truth to that argument as well, I think it’s far from a lost cause. PCs still play a critical, if not always central, role in many people’s digital lives, so the fact that a new option that brings them back up to modern expectations is set to launch is very good, and important, news.
Microsoft has even bigger plans for Windows 10. Their goal is to be able to scale the UI intelligently from phones through tablets up to large-screen monitors attached to PCs. While that’s still going to be a challenge to do well, in some ways, it may not be as much work as it first appears because I’ve always felt the pure Metro UI actually works better on smaller screens, so there isn’t as much to change there.
The bottom line is that both Windows and PCs are still relevant in an increasingly mobile world. The role that all tech devices play is evolving and Windows-based PCs are changing too, but they continue to play an important role in both commercial and consumer applications and will continue to do so for some time to come.
Hewlett-Packard’s decision to split the company into two businesses, one selling PCs and printers, the other offering services and high end business network equipment, marks the end of their run in the 35-year computer industry. In a sense, it’s an overdue shift of the business to companies designed to function as low margin and mostly Chinese. But it is worth considering the history. (Apple, of course, is another business that flourishes on computers for its own reasons)
In many ways, IBM shapes the story. The personal computer moved from being a consumer system, such as the Apple ][, into a business dominated market. The key was the introduction of the Model 5150, better known as the IBM Personal Computer, in 1981. But IBM broke its own way of controlling hardware. The PC was based on freely available systems, most importantly the Intel 8086 processor, and IBM freed Microsoft to make its operating system available to all comers. The market swelled from big tech companies, such as Digital Equipment and Texas Instruments, to arguably the most important start up, Compaq, in 1982.
IBM tried to strike back at the surging market share of “IBM PC clones”. In 1987, it came out with a redesign called the Personal System/2, which would require the use of IBM-designed computer cards such as graphics controllers in place of an industry common design. The only successful component of the PS/2 design was an improved round plug to connect keyboards and mice. At about the same time, IBM issued the OS/2 operating system to compete with MS-DOS and Windows. It was another dismal slump, although IBM wouldn’t give up, issuing a version called Warp aimed at business and consumers in 1994.
In the end, IBM’s last real hit was the first truly successful laptop, the ThinkPad, introduced in 1990. But even it could not hold off the competition from Compaq, HP, and a plethora of other laptop makers.
By the end of the 1990s, IBM was in serious trouble in just about all its businesses (more trouble, in fact, than HP has ever been in). As the last stage of a long effort to reconstruct the company, it sold its PC business to Lenovo, which managed to become a very successful computer company as a global, low margin leader. Earlier this year, IBM finished off the last bit of its low end hardware business by selling its X-series servers to Lenovo.
Needless to say, HP didn’t study IBM as an example. In 1999, it sold off its original instrument business (now Agilent Technology) to favor the printer and technology business and in 2002 bought Compaq, a dominant if not very profitable player in the computer industry. It also generated internal management and shareholder struggles that have never completely gone away, though CEO Meg Whitman seems to have calmed the chaos.
In a sense, the decision to get out of the PC and printer business has looked obvious. The company’s last dramatic computer move was the 2010 catastrophic purchase of Palm. HP’s big acquisitions have been EDS consulting, 3Com, with network equipment and services, and Autonomy, a controversial big data software maker.
In the new world, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, with a focus on corporate technology needs and competition with companies such as IBM and Accenture, will be run by Whitman and many of her top executives. Dion J. Weisler, executive vice president in charge of the PC and printer division, will be CEO of HP, Inc. The deal should close some time late next year.
The future of HP, Inc. is unclear. It could be like Dell, a U.S. seller of Chinese computers pursuing a low end market. Or it could end up being bought by a Chinese manufacturer — speculation having even included Lenovo. Either way, the HP we know is gone.
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.
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?
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.
Definition: “Tech Geek”
Someone with ridiculous skills on a computer/phone/iPod/other electronical device and scares us mere earthlings. they have a habit of breaking these after stretching them beyond their ability for normal usage. they also sometimes know more about a product than the producer. ~ Urban Dictionary
There are many stereotypes surrounding Tech Geeks. Are these stereotypes fair? What is this, kindergarten? Who cares if they’re fair ((A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg)).
A programmer’s wife tells him: “Go to the market and grab some apples. If they have eggs, grab a dozen.” The programmer returns with 13 apples.
A Tech Geek and his wife are out for a drive in the country. The wife says, “Oh, look! Those sheep have been shorn.” “Yes,” says the Tech Geek. “On this side.”
If a Tech Geek had named Kentucky Fried Chicken, it would have been called “Hot Dead Birds.” ((Via Jan Dawson (@jandawson))
A Tech Geek is someone who can’t sleep at night worrying that someone, somewhere is enjoying tech without having first truly understood how it works.
Most of my articles focus on the fact Tech Geeks know a lot about things and little to nothing about human nature.
Every man loves what he is good at. ~ Thomas Shadwell
We often refuse to accept that we are not good observers of human nature because, ironically, it’s human nature not to do so. We’re not good at knowing what we’re not good at knowing.
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. ~ Will Rogers
Even the most conceited and myopic Tech Geek will acknowledge that the vast majority of Tech Geeks — present company excepted, of course — knows zilch, zippo, zip, zero, null, nix, naught, nada, nothing about fashion.
Don’t be humble. You’re not that great. ~ Golda Meir
Tech Geeks struggle to understand normals, more less fashionistas ((fashionista |ˌfaSHəˈnēstə| noun informal
1 a designer of haute couture.
2 a devoted follower of fashion: sleek designs that press all the fashionistas’ buttons)), but apparently even though we know we know less-than-nothing about fashion, that does not stop us from thinking that we’re qualified to pontificate upon the subject. Sigh.
The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. ~ Jim Rohn
Dirty Harry once observed “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
Tech Geeks have to know their limitations too. We’re not good at fashion. If fashion were water, we’d be out of our depth in a puddle.
Author’s Note: Image stolen from a Horace Dediu Tweet
I mean, honestly, are you going to tell me you understand that jacket? Just to put things in perspective, that jacket costs $695.00. You could buy one of those jackets or TWO Apple Watches. Go figure.
For most of us, fashion is — and forever will be — A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. ((In the fall of 1939, following the Soviet occupation of East Poland, Winston Churchill told the British public in a radio broadcast, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma….))
In a word: “No.”
It seems smart watches will have to be analyzed both by fashion and by function. ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin)
The worst thing about techies covering this Apple event is the lack of understanding of fashion. ~ Abdel Ibrahim (@abdophoto)
Pretty sure a very different set of reviewers is going to be necessary for the Apple Watch. ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin)
The Apple Watch is maybe the best example of how disconnected most techies are from what people want and love. ~ Abdel Ibrahim (@abdophoto)
The vast majority of us are not even close to being qualified to comment on fashion. But we comment anyhow.
Apple Watch is the antithesis of what we’ve come to expect from Apple. Software looks absolutely amazing, hardware design is dated and ugly. ~ Zach Epstein (@zacharye)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the #AppleWatch looks silly. ~ Thomas Halleck (@tommylikey)
Where do you come off thinking that you can be the judge of what is and what is not fashionable?
QUESTION: You’re trapped in a room with a tiger, a rattlesnake and a tech geek who wants to give you his opinion on fashion. You have a gun and two bullets. What should you do?
ANSWER: Shoot the geek. Twice. To make sure.
Fashion or Tech?
If Apple thinks they’re competing with Luxury watch makers and not technology companies they’ve already failed. ~ (Name redacted to protect the guilty)
It doesn’t have to be one or the other — fashion OR tech. Apple could be competing against “both.”
Steve (Jobs) always wanted to stay one step ahead. When the industry started to become very colorful and lickable, then he realized—and Jony and I realized—that we needed to take a different path. ~ Don Lindsay ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=697961602))
CAPTION: People lined up to look at, not buy, Apple Watch in Paris’ fashion district
Disruption
The most interesting disruption comes from attacking an industry from what looks like an irrelevant angle. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
One disrupts through finding problems that look irrelevant, or finding solutions that look irrelevant. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Apple is attacking the watch industry with tech. And Apple is attacking the tech industry with fashion.
What could be more irrelevant to the watch industry than tech? Watches are already as accurate as they are ever going to need to be. And what could be more irrelevant to the tech industry than fashion? Most tech insiders wouldn’t know what was and what wasn’t fashionable even if it was literally sitting on their faces.
It’s classic strategy. Concentrate your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.
The Competition
Can you picture any watch maker competing with Apple’s technological prowess? Can you picture any of Apple’s current tech competitors competing with Apple’s fashion sense?
Can you imagine something fashionable coming from Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft? They are tech companies. Nothing more. ~ Lou Miranda (@TheNewLou)
Apple has not just “stolen a march” on Google. If the Apple Watch is successful, Apple will have practically made their watches competitor-proof on the high-end. Fashion is just not in Google’s DNA. (To be fair, fashion is not in the DNA of any tech company and, until September 9th, no one thought that it should be.)
Exploit The Line Of Least Resistance
Sun Tzu advised one to “strike into vacuities,” — to move into undefended space, and to “attack objectives the enemy must rescue.”
Google and Facebook defend against disruption by jumping over the horizon to entirely new tech. Apple, by jumping to things that weren’t tech before. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Apple is not a tech company, and Apple Watch is not a tech product. ~ John Gruber
There is no way to know IF the Apple Watch will be a success because the final product is not yet available and we haven’t yet seen the public’s reaction to that product.
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all. ~ Mark Twain
However, IF the Apple Watch is a success, I think it’s going to be very, very hard for competitors to mount an adequate response.
Tech Geeks are good at things, not people. And we’re especially not good at fashion. But like most people, the less we know about a subject, the stronger our opinion on that subject is.
There is going to be an unprecedented level of incomprehension and trolling around Apple Watch. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Remember the disdain that was poured upon the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad when they first appeared? That’s going to be nothing compared to the bile poured upon the Apple Watch. Apple thinks that fashion is the ultimate weapon in the tech wars. Tech Geeks think that fashion is a joke. We’ll have to wait and see who has the last laugh.
This week Tim Bajarin, Jan Dawson, and Ben Bajarin discuss the recent news around Windows 10 and what it means for Microsoft’s future. They also discuss some overall PC trends and how they may impact Microsoft’s strategy with Windows as well.
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I was fascinated to read a recent article about Steve Ballmer and how, in his role as owner of the L.A. Clippers, he has told his entire staff to get rid of their iPads. From now on they will be a Microsoft only facility. I was especially interested in this part of the article:
“Most of the Clippers on are Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,” Ballmer said.”And Doc (Clippers coach) kind of knows that’s a project. It’s one of the first things he said to me: ‘We are probably going to get rid of these iPads, aren’t we?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we probably are.’ But I promised we would do it during the off season.”
To his credit, he is trying to make the online experience at their arena work via Wifi and Bluetooth with any device. But for his staff, it is all Microsoft, all the time. Of course as owner of the Clippers he has the right to do this. But it is his total lack of understanding that we are no longer in a homogenous device world and are now in a heterogeneous world where people or users make the choice of the product they want to use and actually hire them based on personal needs and preferences that surprises me. IT has had to embrace this BYOD approach for some time and have made it work in most cases.
It was his blind loyalty to Microsoft and Windows that kept Microsoft from being a leader in smartphones and tablets. Everything had to be Windows based even though Windows was not an optimal OS for a smartphone. Instead, they spent years trying to push the round peg of a desktop OS into the square hole of a smartphone device while Apple and Samsung created mobile operating systems from scratch and left Microsoft in the dust.
This blind loyalty also caused him to miss an opportunity to make MS Office the de facto standard productivity tool outside of the Windows world and forced Microsoft to create subpar versions of Microsoft apps that worked poorly on other operating systems. This crippled any real chance for the applications group to win big in a heterogenous computing world where Microsoft no longer sits at the center and the biggest growth in personal computing has shifted to pocket computing dominated by Apple and Google.
This push to force Windows on his new company just says to me Ballmer still does not get it. I am also certain his coaches and players are not about to give up their iPads and will use them behind his back while being forced to use Windows-based products during business hours whether they like it or not. Yes, I know he is the boss and he can do anything he wants but to force them to use Windows only, I believe, will frustrate his staff.
The good news is there is a new sheriff running Microsoft and from what I have read and heard from folks inside, their new CEO Satya Nadella is not as narrow-minded as Ballmer and in fact has become more focused on creating great products around their own brand as well as make all of their apps world class on other operating systems, too. This says to me Nadella actually understands we live in a heterogenous world and will embrace it as part of his goal to make Microsoft relevant again.
To me this is a big deal. When I first went to visit Microsoft in the early 1980’s, the company had less than 100 employees. In fact, I was one of the first actual analysts invited to meet with them in their early days and was one of the first they reached out to when they formally created an analyst relations group in the early 1980’s. This means I got a ring side seat to watch Microsoft develop and grow. In fact, many times in the 1980’s, Ballmer would call me up and ask me to lunch when he was in town to run by some new project or effort they were doing in order to get my feedback and ultimately to try and get me to support it.
During those days, Microsoft was the only game in town. That is how they grew. The good news is because they were so focused on Windows and Windows apps they grew the company exponentially. The bad news is they were so focused on Windows they missed the major rise of operating systems beyond the desktop and laptops. This has left the company scrambling to even be competitive in the world of mobile where all the real growth has shifted to in the last 7 years.
Satya Nedella’s approach to the market embraces heterogeneous computing and is important but he also walks a fine line when it comes to Windows. Windows 10 hopefully buys him some much needed grace in the eyes of the consumers and IT and by making all of their apps “world class” on multiple operating systems keeps them in the game. However, with the PC market shrinking and mobile rising, Nadella really has hard task ahead thanks to Ballmer’s narrow minded strategies.
Windows will probably work well for the Clippers management and team. Although, I have a sneaky suspicion from the comment of Clippers coach Doc Rivers they would have preferred to use their iPads. As boss, Balmer has the right to push the tools he wants the team to use. But it would have been interesting if he had to deal with his IT the way most of the IT world has to today by supporting BYOD and innovating around that reality. Instead, the Clippers are a recipient of the old school thinking of Ballmer and will just have to work with what he has given them.
Back in February, I wrote a post called “The Windows 8 Mistake“, which outlined my perception of the reasons why Microsoft did what it did with Windows 8, why it was wrong to do so, and why Windows 8 was so poorly received. I also gave some thought to how Microsoft might go about fixing the problems it caused with Windows 8. With the announcement this week that work is underway on Windows 10, I thought it would be worth revisiting that piece and evaluating whether the new version is likely to solve the problems created by Windows 8 or perpetuate them. I think Windows 10 can be seen in many ways as Microsoft’s attempt to fix the Windows 8 mistake, but I’m not yet convinced it’s the right approach.
To recap briefly what I said in that previous piece:
The to-do list from my previous piece was as follows:
Microsoft has now either done, or announced plans to do, almost all of these things. Windows RT is going away and, in fact, it’s going further in unifying the different Windows flavors by creating a single version called Windows 10, with no more Windows RT or Windows Phone. It announced at Build that versions of Windows running on smaller devices would be free – this doesn’t go quite as far as making all tablet versions of Windows free, but it goes some way towards doing what I suggested. It has also significantly tweaked Windows 8 and in Windows 10 is restoring the traditional start menu and desktop as default features. The third bullet on my list is a longer term goal and one where Microsoft has made some progress, and where it is placing new emphasis with things like OneDrive, but there’s a long way still do go.
Windows 10 goes a long way towards fixing what was wrong with Windows 8. It restores the desktop and Start Menu as familiar features – arguably, keystone features – of Windows, it removes the weird schizophrenia between the Modern UI and desktop worlds, and above all it recognizes that touch is not going to be the dominant mode of interaction for devices running this OS. That’s obviously a good thing. If Microsoft wants to increase (or even maintain) Windows adoption and if it wants to drive upgrade cycles, fixing the fundamental flaws in Windows 8 was critical.
However, fixing mistakes from the previous version of your operating system can’t be the sole focus, especially when you’re taking years between releases while everyone else is moving to annual or faster updates. As Apple gets ready to launch OS X Yosemite just a year after the major overhaul of Mavericks, Microsoft is talking about an update which won’t be available for about a year. And the whole focus of what we’ve heard so far has been about putting right what went wrong in Windows 8. Now, to be fair, there is bound to be more coming later on, and as we’ve already said fixing the Windows 8 mistakes was critical, but it’s a bad sign the entire focus so far is on fixing mistakes rather than creating true delighters. That will have to change by the time Windows 10 launches.
There is one other major feature of Windows 10. Unifying the various threads of Windows into a single platform, with a single store and a single approach for developers. But here I believe Microsoft risks repeating one of the mistakes it made with Windows 8. Doing something because it appears to make good strategic sense for Microsoft rather than because it’s best for consumers.
Remember the key mistake with Windows 8 was attempting to parlay Microsoft’s desktop hegemony into mobile dominance. As a result, making decisions bad for customers, especially on mouse-and-keyboard devices (i.e. the vast majority of Microsoft’s installed base). With Windows 10, Microsoft risks repeating that mistake by attempting to again parlay its dominance on the desktop into dominance in mobile, but this time from a developer perspective. Microsoft hopes by unifying the flavors of Windows into a single platform, it can boost development for its mobile devices, because the large base of Windows developers will instantly become Windows Phone developers too.
This is flawed for two major reasons:
As such, Microsoft’s strategy here risks both alienating users, who don’t want a single operating system across smartphones, tablets and PCs, and failing in its very objective of stimulating cross-device Windows development and boosting interest in developing for Windows smartphones.
One interesting theme in Microsoft’s launch event was its recognition of the diversity of the Windows user base. This diversity was very well captured by the speakers, who talked about the diversity in the levels of expertise of users of Windows, the diversity in the devices in the market, the diversity of the use cases for those devices, and so on. This diversity is one of Microsoft’s great strengths: the 1.5 billion devices running Windows which Terry Myerson cited would be impossible without supporting a very diverse set of users and use cases. But it’s also Windows’ biggest liabilities, because it means each new version of Windows has to support all these users and use cases.
That diversity, and the frequent mentions of it, seem at odds with the One Windows vision at first, but it appears Microsoft intends to solve it with a multitude of different UIs built on top of Windows. In that context, then, one wonders to what extent developers truly will be able to develop apps once to run anywhere, when the UI contexts in which they’ll run might be very different (all full-screen apps on smartphones, for example, versus mouse and keyboard on many PCs). This is always the problem with any attempt at cross-device and cross-platform app development: it often leads to a lowest common denominator approach where nothing works excellently anywhere, and only the most painstaking developers end up crafting apps that truly work well on every device and in every UI context.
For all that we did hear about Windows 10 at the event, there were two key things we heard nothing about:
Both of these mysteries lead to a third: the cadence for future Windows releases. With Apple doing annual OS X releases and both Apple and Google doing at least annual mobile OS releases, Microsoft needs to get itself into a position where it can iterate more rapidly. Both lower pricing and new delivery models might feed into this, but it’s particularly critical that Windows 10 be built in such a way that it can be rapidly updated, especially in the variant that runs on smartphones. Windows Phone has been a fairly slow-moving OS, with only one major update since launch several years ago. That needs to change, and that’s something else I’m hoping we’ll hear more about as the release gets closer.
I have been visiting Washington area Apple Stores since the first one in the country opened at Tysons Corner, VA. So I was a little shocked today when I discovered a chaotic Apple Store at the Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. The problem appears to be mainly a smallish store that simply has more business than it can handle. It showed the Apple Store is not always keeping up with its customers.
I went to an appointment at the store with my wife, Susan, to have her iPad 2 repaired — it had stopped powering up. We had an appointment at the store and were surprised by how mobbed it was, with a line out front for purchasers of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It was the first time I could recall walking into an Apple Store without being asked for my business as soon as I walked in. I ended up standing in line at the Genius Bar only to find out there was room only for iMacs (somewhat oddly, the store has more business with Macs than anything else) and I’d have to find someone else in the store.
After several attempts with the scheduler at the door, I was told we would be seen at the Genius Bar. I’m glad to say although we were nearly 45 minutes behind our appointment, things finally got back to normal with the kind of response I am used to at Apple Stores. The genius promptly checked the iPad and found it would not respond to power. I couldn’t be told whether the problem was the battery or the power supply, but it doesn’t matter since you can’t replace either. So we paid $100 to replace the iPad, not a bad price since my wife is happy with the iPad she has and a new updated unit would have cost at least $529.
It was the first time I can recall being annoyed by poor customer service at an Apple Store. It’s probably the result of a store too small and too understaffed to deal with success. But many companies have made customers unhappy by failing to offer prompt service (not, I must say, a problem that Microsoft has suffered from) and doing too well can be a problem.
Apple pioneered the PC, the mouse-driven PC, the digital music player, the modern laptop, the smartphone, and the tablet. Steve Jobs directed the creation of each of these transformative products, collaborating with Steve Wozniak, Jon Rubinstein, Jony Ive, and others along the way. Apple is now entering Wearables without Steve Jobs at the helm – though Jony Ive’s fingerprints are all over the Apple Watch (literally. The Apple Watch is a fingerprint magnet). Along with several other Techpinions columnists and a few thousand journalists, Apple employees, and Apple guests, I attended the launch and got hands on with several Apple Watches.
Apple famously limits the number and type of products it works on. When it enters a new product category, like smartwatches or tablets, it explains what it thinks is wrong with the existing products and what role its device will fill. Apple also often curates use cases for a new product, and opens it up for apps and features later. The original iPod had fewer features than the competition; it took years before FM radio was added. The first iPhone was described as a phone, an iPod, and a web browser – the App Store did not come until a full year later. The context portion of Apple’s launch monologue typically explains why a minimalist approach makes sense. The limited functionality allows consumers to understand precisely what the problems the product is designed to solve – even consumers did not realize they had that problem before Apple pointed it out.
That is not how Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the Apple Watch. Like Samsung or Google or Asus, Tim Cook simply said Apple is building a watch. He then went on to describe endless features – exceptionally accurate timekeeping, interactive watch faces, fitness tracking, notifications, Siri dictation, GPS directions, Apple Pay, hotel access, BMW integration, watch-to-watch communication, and more. Rather than take the less-is-more approach – with more-is-more over time — Apple jumped straight to the more-is-more stage. This part reminded me of the iPad launch. However, the iPad really was “just” a larger iPod touch – and it was fair to say that consumers understood the value proposition of iOS apps on a larger display. That isn’t the case for apps on watches.
Consumers need concrete reason to buy things, especially new things; Apple may try to rectify this closer to launch. Google has not explained to consumers why they need an Android Wear watch, and mainstream consumers are not buying them. Samsung has not explained why consumers should buy one of its Tizen watches, and they are not selling, either (Samsung stuffed the channel with the first generation Galaxy Gear, but many ended up being given away with purchase of a Samsung TV or smartphone). Note: the reason to buy an Apple Watch is crystal clear for early adopters – get the first Apple Watch! I’ll discuss that below.
In Apple’s conception, a smartwatch does not solve a limited set of problems, it is intended to be a computing platform that combines fashion and a unique user interface. While Apple is prioritizing timekeeping, watch-to-watch communication, and fitness, Apple does not really know which watch apps will appeal to consumers – the apps have not been written yet. The Apple Watch will not be available for at least a few months, and it was announced now to give developers time to write apps. (The fact that it stalls consumers from buying rival smartwatches is a really nice bonus.) This launch was as much an appeal to developers as it was a pitch to consumers.
Tim Cook didn’t explain why Apple said “yes” to the watch and “no” to all the other things Apple could have built instead. So I’ll provide three:
It is a fashion device first. It is expensive – there are three collections (with six watch band options), and they start at $349. The gold version could be priced in the stratosphere: it’s real gold. No other vendor has paid this much attention to the style of the case and especially the straps, which are simply design masterpieces. There are two sizes – small and large 38 mm and 42 mm, and even the larger model is smaller than most competing smartwatches. No other smartwatch even offers a smaller, more female-friendly option. On the wrist, the Apple Watch looks much smaller than it appears in photos. Apple has also put a tremendous amount of effort into making the watch faces beautiful. Some are interactive. No smartwatch competitor has anything like this.
It’s a computing device second. The user interface combines touches, swipes, “force touch” (pressing harder), a side button, and a side scroll wheel/home button. Creating text is simplified with watch-generated short responses or with dictation (I was not able to get a live demo of this, but if it works well, it will significantly enhance usability.) No one thing is central to the Apple Watch – the concept of apps is the central conceit. This is similar to the iPhone (after the App Store was launched) and the iPad. Timekeeping is not central to the Apple Watch any more than phone calls are central to the iPhone. The Apple watch offers fitness tracking, navigation, notifications, NFC for Apple Pay, and much more. Two users with Apple Watches can send each other drawings and a haptic simulation of their heartbeat.
It is a phone companion (for now) requiring an iPhone 5 or better. The Watch does have its own processor and storage, so it can be used untethered for fitness tracking, music, and some apps. However, GPS, messaging, and anything requiring cellular connectivity will not work when out of Bluetooth range from an iPhone. Battery life is clearly an issue, as the screen turns off when you don’t have your wrist raised, and you’re expected to charge it every night using a magnetic cable. The magnetic connection is elegant, and an improvement on most competitors, though it is another unique cable to pack (and lose) while traveling.
Finally, the Apple Watch indicates the company is moving away from the “i” branding that started with the iMac and became a phenomenon with the iPod. It seems that Apple views the “i” mark as old fashioned and limiting, preferring the Apple mark itself for Apple Pay and Apple Watch.
Short term, Apple did not provide mainstream consumers a reason to buy the Apple Watch, but it certainly provided plenty of incentive for Apple early adopters: this is a gorgeous timepiece with a new user interface and endless utility. The pool of tech early adopters has increased significantly over the years; Pebble has sold over a quarter million watches. Apple early adopters are a far (far) larger group than that, and Apple should expect to sell millions of first generation Apple Watches.
Long term, two assumptions must be made. First, that Apple’s user interface works well, and second, that app developers show the value of having computing capabilities on your wrist. Given Apple’s track record with user interfaces and its relationship with developers, both of these conditions are probable. If both are proven true, the Apple Watch will have broad appeal to the installed base of iPhone users. This is a finite pool, though it is large, and some consumers may potentially buy more than one Apple Watch. Apple may make the Apple Watch less dependent on an iPhone in a future version, opening up adoption to consumers who use Android (or Windows) phones.
The biggest driver for mainstream adoption in the second and third generations is likely to be a lower entry price point. However, higher end models – potentially extremely high end – will remain in the line for as long as consumers buy them or they lend the line cachet. Apple could also expand its styles, adding a round design and creating special editions. Apple could also expand the connectivity contained in the watch; while it is unlikely that a watch would replace smartphones for most people, it is certainly conceivable that, sometime in the future, Apple might design a watch that could.
This column was adapted from a Current Analysis report. The full report includes key competitive comparisons and recommendations for Apple, Google, Samsung, Pebble, and MetaWatch.
As the markets for tablets and smartphones continue to mature and saturate, I believe we’re heading towards some important changes. Specifically, I think the time for mass market smartphones and tablets is rapidly nearing an end.
It’s not that we won’t have any big products, but post-iPhone 6, I think it’s going to be much harder for any vendors (including Apple) to create something that has enormous mass appeal.
The reasons for my thinking are pretty simple. As people have become more comfortable and familiar with smartphones (and tablets), they’ve started to realize the specific things they like and don’t like about certain models or certain types of devices, and they’re gravitating towards models that meet their personal needs.
Look at the debate over the iPhone 6 vs. the 6 Plus. Some people really want the bigger screen and some people really don’t. In fact, you could argue that the entire large smartphone (“phablet”) category is a great example of the specialization I’m referring to here. Depending on personal preferences and tastes, there are very strong supporters and detractors of the entire movement.[pullquote]I think the time for mass market smartphones and tablets is rapidly nearing an end.”[/pullquote]
In that light, I think the introduction of BlackBerry’s Passport phone last week actually makes a great deal of sense. The Passport is not something that an enormous number of people are going to want, but for the right market (mobile professionals who work for companies with strict security policies), it’s actually a pretty cool device. Similarly, for people who care more about looking at work documents on a phone than watching movies, the 4.5” square screen of the Passport works very nicely.
In the case of the Passport, it’s also important to remember that many people who still use BlackBerries carry two phones: a work phone and a personal phone. While that may not be an ideal situation for many people, it’s perfectly OK to many others. Again, in that light, the Passport is a great update of the work phone.
Moving forward, I expect we’re going to see a lot more specialization by other vendors to meet the needs of specific markets. As I’ve written about before, there’s a huge opportunity to create different types of smartphones for different age groups—15-year olds and 55-year olds don’t need (and probably don’t want) the same phone. I also expect to see a group of people who will steadfastly hold onto smaller size phones because of their easier portability and “pocketability” and expect some vendors to cater to those needs.
I believe the specialization trend will extend beyond phones to tablets as well. Of course there are the OS-based differences—just as there are for phones—but there’s also screen size preferences and other activity-based differences. The 9.7” iPad did a good job of introducing many people to the concept of a tablet, but honestly, is there anyone really that excited about another version of it?
That’s why I expect to see Apple introduce a larger 12” or so tablet, in addition to updated versions of their 9.7” products. A larger iPad isn’t likely to sell as well as the smaller models, but it will fill the needs of creative professionals and others who really want a larger screen size quite nicely. Similarly, that’s also why I find nVidia’s Shield gaming tablet to be an intriguing indicator of where the tablet market is headed. The Shield tablet is never going to sell anywhere close to the iPad or even generic Android tablets, but for the right audience, it’s a great product.
As appealing as the concept of more specialization may be, however, there’s a big challenge for hardware vendors: the larger the sales volume of a given device, the more you can reduce its costs and, conversely, the lower the volume, typically, the higher the cost. Smart designs will allow vendors to leverage similar components across multiple products, but it does place more difficult demands on their supply chains (and product designers).
Ultimately, technology products are likely to follow the path of other mass-produced goods, such as cars, appliances and even clothing. In all those markets (and many more), the ability to specifically target different types of consumers and then create products that match the unique needs/interests of those different consumers is what allows companies to thrive. Now, it’s time for technology companies to step up to those challenges and give us the breadth of product options that the market is hungry to see.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Welcome to this week’s Tech.pinions podcast.
This week Tim Bajarin, Bob O’Donnell, Jan Dawson and Ben Bajarin discuss the release of BlackBerry’s Passport phone and analyze the impact of the Apple controversies around the bending of iPhone 6’s and glitches in iOS 8.0.1.
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Runtime: 27:49
I have been amused by Samsung’s current TV ads saying they were first to market with a smartphone over 5 inches and staking claim to being the one who blazed the trail and showed the market there was demand for larger smartphones. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt reinforced this idea when he was asked about Apple’s success with the iPhone 6 and he stated:
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Schmidt said. “Samsung had these products a year ago.”
Bloomberg reporter Stephanie Ruhle quickly pointed out, however, that Samsung’s Galaxy device launches failed to spark the fervor witnessed at Apple Stores around the world, where customers eagerly lined up to wait overnight — in some cases, days — to be among the first iPhone 6 owners. Apple later announced first weekend sales hit a record 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units.
The question was again rebuffed, with Schmidt repeating, “I think Samsung had the products a year ago, that’s what I think.”
I am not sure how long Schmidt or Samsung have been following Apple’s business model but being first is not always a good thing. In fact, Apple’s strategy is basically centered around not being first — letting others do the R&D and early market development and then coming in with their own version and besting any similar product with design, applications and services. I saw this first hand in the late 1990’s. At the time, I was doing a consulting project for a company called Diamond Multimedia. Although they were mostly doing PC based media products, they had a skunk works project on what was one of the early MP3 players. I realized when I saw this product it had the potential of replacing Sony’s Walkman but was concerned with the actual design of the product and especially how difficult it was to get music into the MP3 player itself.
Of course, Steve Jobs saw the early MP3 players and realized the same thing I did and that this represented the future of portable music players. However, he did not just create a competing hardware product. He spent the next two years working with the record labels and designing a very easy way to purchase and then listen to music on what became the iPod. This basic business model has been replicated ever since. They did not invent the smartphone. They made it better and, along with an ecosystem of apps and services, delivered a ground breaking product that revolutionized the cell phone market.
Apple did not invent the tablet. Again I saw this first hand. In 1991, I was asked by Microsoft to consult on what was their first pen-based tablet. In 2000, I again worked on Bill Gates’ second attempt at a tablet. But these tablets had terrible UIs and could not get the software community to back it. The bottom line is, in both cases, the technology was not there to create a tablet that could be easy to use and was touch, not pen-based. As we know, 20 years later Apple put the pieces together to create the iPad and finally brought the tablet to the masses.
History is repeating itself again. But this time to the chagrin of Samsung and Google. Samsung was first with a phablet and I am pretty sure Apple is willing to thank them for blazing the trail and doing the market research for them. It is true Apple resisted doing larger iPhones for a long time based on the fact Steve Jobs truly believed people wanted to use them with one hand and that drove their designs through 2013. However, Samsung’s Note phablet, while not a huge success in terms of driving mass industry adoption, showed Apple there was legitimate interest in a 5.5″-5.7″ smartphone in China and parts of Asia, as well as in other parts of the world. By the way, we are still predicting the mix of smartphones Apple will sell will be 65% iPhone 6 vs 35% iPhone 6 plus even though early demand seems strong for the 6 Plus.
To say there was pent up demand for an iPhone with larger screens would be an understatement. One of the things I found out when talking to people waiting in lines for the new iPhones at Apple Stores is many of those who bought the Samsung Note 3 did so because it was the only one out there with this size screen. But now that Apple had one with basically the same size screen, they were going to switch to Apple. I also talked with someone familiar with Samsung’s own research on what prompted people to buy a Note 3 thinking it might be the pen or the larger screen. Interestingly, what they found is that many people, especially in Asia, believe bigger is better and that the Galaxy Note in their mind was a premium product. Now that Apple has one of their own, it too will be viewed as a premium product in all of these markets and there is no doubt Apple is going to capitalize on this fact in a big way.
Apple’s entering the phablet space with a premium competitor is going to have a major impact on Samsung’s fortunes. Samsung has already shown a serious loss in profits from their smartphone business last quarter and have already hinted to the street this quarter will be negative as well. We estimate Apple will sell around 63 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models in Q4 and if you add the sales of iPhone 5’s to the mix that are still selling well in certain countries, they could sell around 70 million iPhones during the holiday quarter. If this is true, imagine how it will negatively impact Samsung during this same time period.
In an article in the Korea Times last week, they point out Samsung is seeing the handwriting on the wall for their premium business. The article says:
To ride on the market changes, Samsung is paying more attention to the low end smartphone segment to entice more clients in populous emerging markets, including India.
I don’t expect Samsung or any of the Android smartphone vendors to actually get out of the phablet business. However, the Android vendors who until September had this market all to themselves now have to deal with Apple, a ferocious competitor. Given the cycle of cell phone contracts, I suspect demand for the iPhone 6 will be at record numbers well through most of 2015 and this will continue to contribute to Samsung’s woes, at least with their premium models. Apple is very grateful for the role Samsung trailblazed, although I am not sure it is wise to do ads about this fact.
There’s an Aesop’s Fable about a man, a boy and a donkey. In short form, the story goes like this: A man, his son, and their donkey set off for the market. At first, all three are walking but soon, someone criticizes the man for having a donkey but not riding on it. So he puts his son on the donkey and carries on, only for people to criticize his son for being lazy and riding while his father walks. So he switches places with his son and carries on, but now people criticize him for riding on the donkey while his poor son has to walk. Now, they both ride the donkey. Pretty soon, they near the market town, but now people challenge them both for overloading the donkey. Finally, they find a way to carry the poor tired donkey on a pole between them, to much ridicule, until finally they drop the donkey on their way across a bridge and he drowns.
Happy story, right? But as with all Aesop’s Fables, there’s a moral. What is the moral to this story? It’s generally stated as “please everyone and you’ll please no one”. In other words, if your general barometer for what you should do is trying to make everyone happy, you’re heading for a dismal failure. How is this relevant to the technology market? Very simply: it’s often much easier to be successful if you’re clear about which specific audience(s) you’re trying to serve, and rigorously focus on that audience. (There’s also another, secondary message to this story, which I’ll come back to at the end.)
On Wednesday this week, I attended the launch event for BlackBerry’s new device, the Passport, in Toronto. While BlackBerry has suffered in the past for being too broad in its ambitions, there’s a refreshing focus to the Passport phone. The tagline BlackBerry uses for the device is, “Serious Mobility for Serious Business”. This smartphone is clearly designed for the business and productivity-centric user. Of the hour and forty-five minutes or so BlackBerry took to introduce the device, I’d estimate five minutes or so was spent on consumer-centric features (the camera and the Amazon App Store which is available on the device, for “fun” apps). When you have that kind of focus, it helps you to zero in on what’s most important from a feature and functionality perspective. Access to business data, long battery life, ability to review and edit documents effectively, and so on, all come into view as key priorities. BlackBerry has delivered on all of that with this device. Is it perfect? No, of course not, and it’s likely not a good fit for the vast majority of the smartphone using population, because the app situation continues to be spartan. But it is a good fit for at least some of the users BlackBerry is focusing on and that’s the key point. I hope BlackBerry maintains this focus, something I and others have argued for some time, but I’m worried its next device may make the mistake of being too broad in its appeal again.
Contrast this with Windows Phone, which also treats productivity and getting things done as a key selling point, but has never been explicitly focused on the business user (in marked contrast to its predecessor, Windows Mobile). Office support and other features make Windows Phone a good fit in many respects for the email- and productivity-centric customer, but Windows Phone is rarely positioned as such. Instead, Windows Phone tries to be all things to all people, appealing to people in their personal lives as well as their business lives but, in the process, doing neither well. If you’re a pure productivity user, you might well be better off with a BlackBerry and if you care more about apps for your personal life, you’re better off with an iPhone or Android smartphone. Without a clear focus on a particular type of user, especially in today’s crowded smartphone market, Windows Phone is adrift, attempting to please everyone like the man in Aesop’s story, but pleasing no one in the process. Windows Phone badly needs focus, something I’ll talk a bit more about later on.
A key part of Apple’s approach to the market has always been focus and its strategy has always been as much about who it wouldn’t serve as about who it would. In the in-depth profile I wrote for my clients a couple of months ago, I said this:
Apple’s competitiveness in hardware may be summed up by saying that it chooses not to compete in certain areas, but where it does choose to compete it is often the most competitive vendor.
Apple’s success comes in great part from the fact it chooses narrow areas to compete in, sticks to those, and, as a result, does very well in its target segments, while leaving other segments essentially untouched. This is true for the iPhone as it was true for the Mac before it, though perhaps in a different way. The high price of the Mac compared with similarly spec’ed competitors, and the fact it couldn’t run Windows, limited its appeal dramatically. The iPhone has its own limitations but they’re not as dramatic. Yes, price is still a significant factor – the biggest – but iOS has actually become the most widely supported platform from a developer perspective, rather than an also-ran. However, the point remains Apple has made many choices about what not to do with the iPhone and though that’s limited its addressable market, its actually raised its share within the markets it does address.
It would be easy to look at Android in this context and see it as the anti-Apple, with no focus at all and trying to serve the whole world at once. And in some senses, that’s exactly what Android is. But of course Android isn’t a finished product – it’s an ingredient that goes into products made by others, and those in turn do make choices about where to focus, with any given device that actually runs Android. Even Samsung, with its amazingly broad range of devices, makes specific tradeoffs with each phone and tablet it ships running Android. Some are productivity-centric, others are media-centric; some are priced at a premium, while others compete at the mid- or low end of the market. Android as a whole offers myriad choices while each individual device meets specific needs. That’s the benefit of an open OS approach: as the OS vendor, you don’t have to make those hard choices, because your OEMs will make them, allowing you to serve many different markets at once with a single product. The challenge for Windows Phone is its vendors aren’t providing this same sort of differentiation based on function, in part because Windows Phone is relatively inflexible in its user interface and operations. Microsoft, as the owner of Windows Phone and now also the vendor that makes over 95% of the Windows Phones sold, desperately needs to specialize in its devices, creating phones for specific users.
The main thrust of Aesop’s fable about the man, his son, and his donkey is we shouldn’t try to please everyone. But I see a corollary in this story too, which is as observers we shouldn’t criticize for criticism’s sake. As an analyst, it’s my job to think critically, but there’s always a danger this criticism serves no end other than some perceived sense of false balance. At my previous firm, I often felt pressure to find a weakness to offset every strength, and a threat to offset every opportunity, when analyzing a company or a product. But the reality is some products and companies are unusually strong, featuring far fewer weaknesses than strengths, while the converse is often true as well. If I do criticize a company, its strategy or its products, I also try to do so constructively, proposing solutions or a better way forward. When I’m not just writing but actively advising big technology companies, I have to do this; my clients insist upon it. But it’s a habit I try to carry over to my writing too.
It is not hard to look back at technology innovation cycles and see how technology has advanced and impacted how we communicate. From the pencil, to the printing press, to computers, to the internet, and more recently our smartphones, all have evolved communication in some way. Each innovation has brought with it the ability to communicate both verbally and non-verbally in new forms. The telephone itself made verbal communication possible from a distance. Computers brought non-verbal communication into the digital era, evolving physical written letters into digital form to travel at near real time speeds. The cell phone made long distance verbal communication possible from any location. Smartphones further made the full spectrum of verbal and non-verbal communication possible from any location. However, what we learn when we study these technological advancements and how they have evolved our communication methods and patterns, is that ultimately, we have enabled new context in which to express and communicate digitally. In essence, technology has brought more communication options.
For example, prior to cell phones, many of us had pagers. The pager was basically an extension of the fixed landline. Someone could page you with a number and you would go to a fixed line phone and call the person back. As teenagers, we created numeric codes to send messages. 43770 was “Hello” for example. 143 was “I love you”. Effectively, every number or number combination had an alphabetical letter combination. Looking back, this was essentially an early form of text messaging, which, in and of itself, was a new option for communication. Not all conversation requires a lengthy voice dialogue. More often than not, short messages can suffice. It is the options that technology brings us that allow us to use them to communicate in different ways depending on the context of the conversation.
Many of you will also remember your first experiences with a BlackBerry. There was something profound about being able to see your email from a device other than your personal computer. We learned very quickly that, for some emails, quick responses would suffice and the BlackBerry was great for this. But for other emails, a more lengthy written response was necessary. For these tasks, we would return to the PC. The context of the response dictates which device we use in a multi-device world. This is what I mean by technology giving us options. Prior to the BlackBerry (or Palm Pilot, etc.), the PC was our only option for both long and short form email communication. As innovations like the BlackBerry were created, we were presented with more options.
There are plenty more examples I can dig into but I wanted to frame the points above to turn our attention to smartwatches in general and the Apple Watch in particular. While dozens of questions remain about the Apple Watch, it is perhaps its potential to add a new communication element I find most intriguing at this point. What I mentioned above about humans communicating through verbal and written forms, I left out another vital communication tactic — the physical one. As part of my continuing study of humans, I became aware of some of the modern research on the science of touch in human communication. This article in particular from Berkeley is a good starter on the subject and this line is one of the most interesting:
In recent years, a wave of studies has documented some incredible emotional and physical health benefits that come from touch. This research is suggesting that touch is truly fundamental to human communication, bonding, and health.
The physical connection has been proven time and time again to be essential to healthy relationships. A series of studies highlighted in the report showed how people, even strangers, can communicate emotion through touch. Touch is an essential part of how we communicate. It is very personal and very intimate, yet is foreign to the digital world. In a way, I think Apple understands this. This block of text on the Apple Watch website explains the value of digital touch.
What Apple is presenting with the Apple Watch appears like it may be the start of bringing digital touch as a communication method to the digital age. And if we think about the type of device that makes this type of digital touch communication possible, it makes sense it is done through a device we wear rather than one we keep in our pockets or bags.
While Apple may lead this effort initially, this is something that could expand even wider as the idea expands. A leading company in haptics named Immersion has been working on similar haptic communication as a language for years and could bring that solution to any wearable device.
In the same way technology has expanded our communication options, it has still not replaced many of our existing communication methods. In a way, communication has been extended through technology but not all prior forms have been made obsolete. Similarly, digital touch will not replace human contact but when we are away from our loved ones, friends and family, digital touch has the potential to extend that unique and intimate communication method in ways not possible before.
The focus on mobility and mobile platforms as the growth engines for the tech industry’s future is now so engrained into most people’s heads that it seems nearly blasphemous to suggest there could be faults in that thinking. But there’s a question that keeps popping into my mind—is the mobile app ecosystem really sustainable at its size and rate of growth?
I’m increasingly starting to think that no, it isn’t.
Some simple math helps with my reasoning. First, we’re at well over a million (likely around 1.2 or 1.3 million) apps in both the iOS and Android stores. Yes, the revenue numbers paid out to developers keeps growing as well, but it doesn’t seem to be growing nearly as fast as the number of apps are. So, basic division would suggest the amount of payouts per app is decreasing. In fact, I’ve seen numbers which suggest that a large majority (>50%) of mobile apps make only a few hundred dollars a month.
Now, of course, some of this could be due to the fact that many apps have moved to a freemium model, where the app is free, but in-app purchases and advertising generate the necessary revenue for developers. But in-app revenue still counts towards those revenue payout numbers that Apple and Google love to talk about, so the lower average per app still seems relevant.
With regard to advertising, mobile ads have notoriously poor click-through rates, so the amounts that ad networks, app developers and others selling advertising can charge on mobile devices is still relatively low.
So, as with many industries, it seems a tiny, single-digit percentage of applications and app developers are making the lion’s share of the revenues. Everyone else is just doing it for fun or holding onto the dream of being one of the very select few who do make it big—at least for a while—in the mobile app business.
Now, as an entrepreneur myself, I’m certainly not going to fault small businesses for having big dreams and hoping to generate a big financial windfall. More power to you.
But as a musician and someone who worked in the music business, I also know that 11+ years after the introduction of the iTunes store, we haven’t seen an explosion of new artists that have all reaped large financial gains. Instead, we continue to have a reasonable number of long-term popular artists, a few one-hit wonders and occasional breakthroughs of new artists that hit it big. Consider this, when Apple chose to release a free album to their hundreds of millions of iTunes users, they didn’t pick a relatively unknown new artist—they went with one of the most successful bands of all time. (Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big U2 fan and I wasn’t one of the people who wanted to delete their free album, but you get my point.) [pullquote]Instead of being cognizant that it’s very difficult to make it big—as most aspiring musicians know and readily accept—mobile app developers seem to think that their paths to the top are paved with gold.”[/pullquote]
The relatively harsh metrics of the music industry are widely-known, but I don’t see that same kind of thinking and logic being applied to the app ecosystem, even though—I think—they’re relatively comparable. The problem is, instead of being cognizant that it’s very difficult to make it big—as most aspiring musicians know and readily accept—mobile app developers seem to think that their paths to the top are paved with gold.
I believe some of this fault lies with tech investors, as well as the tech press, who promote the myth of mobile app millions, instead of the harsh realities that most mobile app vendors face. Of course, no one seems to want to burst the mobility bubble, for fear of what might be exposed. But it’s a story that needs to be told—and told—and told again.
The reason is, we’ve now reached a point where there are too many apps (yes, I said it) and there needs to be more focus on quality versus quantity. But if everyone involved seems to think building more mobile apps is their ticket to millions, the problem is just going to get worse. And that’s, ultimately, why I believe the app ecosystem could end up buckling under its own weight.
Until we’re all willing to take a more realistic look at both the pitfalls and opportunities in the mobile app ecosystem, I’m afraid we’re heading towards an implosion instead of the explosion that many still expect.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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:
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.
People really love to hate Apple. It should be considered a disorder at this point. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
The Apple Watch may or may not fail, but the analysis of the Watch has already failed. People just cannot wait to pronounce judgment. They. Can. Not. Wait. There’s plenty of thoughtful analysis out there, but mostly we’re hearing the same old discredited theories dredged up and reanimated like some horrible army of undead zombies.
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
There is something within human nature that immediately has a knee-jerk negative reaction to the new. If we’re not familiar with it; if we cannot understand it, we condemn it. Instead of saying: “I know little or nothing about this, so I’ll learn more and suspend judgement until I do” we instead say: “I know nothing about this…so it must suck.”
People’s reaction to ideas: Bad ideas: “That’ll never work” Good ideas: “That could work” Great ideas: “That’ll never work”
Not only are we terrible at assessing the new, but we seem compelled to share our uninformed opinions with EVERYBODY.
He who knows little quickly tells it. ~ Italian Proverb
Some say it’s wrong to mock those who make obviously stupid statements. There’s no sport in it.
Making fun of Apple’s critics is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope. ~ NOT P. J. O’Rourke
Others focus on more humanitarian arguments:
Do we really need insults at all? Aren’t insults just the precinct of the desperate or powerless, or simply of people too dim-witted to make cogent and logical arguments? Isn’t the whole phenomenon of insults…a sign of the general coarsening of culture? Such concerns are shared by many people, all of them half-witted, imbecilic cretins. ~ Insults Every Man Should Know
Look. These pundits said what they said. If they don’t like it, they can try to explain it away.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. ~ Robert Benchley
But don’t expect me to cut them any breaks. If they didn’t want to come off looking stupid, they shouldn’t have said stupid things.
I don’t suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer.~ Florence King
Intelligent debate is welcome and there are many questions surrounding Apple’s newly announced Apple Watch. But patently dumb allegations should not be debated — they should be mocked. So here are a couple (hundred) of my most unfavorite quotes, in all their glory, arranged sorta, kinda alphabetically by topic. Let the mocking begin.
Author’s Note: Some of the quoted material contains (R rated) curse words. I decided to use verbatim quotes in order to accurately convey their original tone and meaning.
I’ve got to start with this one via the Macalope. Dominic Basulto writes “Why I’d never buy an Apple smartwatch (even if Anna Wintour loves it)“. The beauty of this article is that it was written BEFORE Apple’s September 9th Event.
From all the rumors and leaks, it now appears that Apple is going to unveil the mythical iWatch at its much-hyped product launch event on Sept. 9. While nothing has been definitely confirmed … I still wouldn’t buy it.
As the Macalope says:
It’s always best to make summary judgments on things you know nothing about. That’s just logic.
Sameer Singh suggests a different approach.
Never dismiss a new product outright. Attempt to understand why it’s needed. Draw conclusions later. ~ Sameer Singh (@sameer_singh17)
Nah, that’s never going to happen. From the Claim Chowder archives:
Apple begins selling its revolutionary iPhone this summer and it will mark the end of the string of hits for the company. ~ Todd Sullivan, Seeking Alpha, 15 May 2007
Fools never learn.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. ~ Alexander Pope
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. ~ Dr. Laurence J. Peter
People will always jump to conclusions and judge things that they don’t understand. You have to ignore all of the ignorant people out there. ~ Steve Jobs
Showed my mom a tablet. She instantly got it and bought one. Same with Apple TV. If I showed her this watch…nope. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
Me: Hi mom, I’m back in town. How are you? Mom: I’m watching the Apple event. Me: Finally! Mom: Again! When can I order a watch? Me: !!! ~ Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie)
You’ve got your anecdotes and I’ve got mine. The important thing to remember is that anecdotal evidences is the BEGINNING of inquiry, never the end. Isolated stories can point us toward the truth, but they are not WHOLE truth. In fact, when taken in isolation, anecdotes are more likely to mislead than to lead.
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. ~ Anonymous
It’s bad to bring in a verdict before all the evidence is in. It’s even worse to bring in a verdict before the trial has even begun.
Apple hasn’t solved the basic smartwatch dilemma, which is that smart watches use up far more energy than dumb watches, and that there’s nowhere to store that much energy in something the size of a watch. Indeed, Apple has made the problem worse, by combining a powerful computer with a very bright, ultra-high-resolution, full-color display. Either of those things would require a lot of energy; both together require a very thick watch and a limited battery life. ~ Felix Salmon
My first knee-jerk reaction to the Apple Event was similar to the above. Apple didn’t announce battery life and I took that as a bad sign. Then I reconsidered. The product doesn’t even exist yet. Apple literally COULD NOT have announced the final battery life figures because they don’t know what they are. So I decided to cool my jets and wait until the numbers are announced. There will be more than plenty of time to criticize the battery life figures once we know what they are. Why start now?
Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren’t. ~ Barbara Sher
And while we’re waiting for those battery life numbers to appear, let’s chow down on some delicious battery life claim chowder from yesteryear. Yum!
Unless Apple has also developed some new type of power source, such as nuclear cells or magical hamsters on tiny spinning wheels for the iPad, don’t expect the claims about battery life to hold true. ~ John Breeden II, Government Computer News, 28 January 2010
We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures. ~ Karl Popper
Ugh, not another charging cable! ~ Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern)
Having to charge yet another device every day will be a bridge too far for many. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
(T)he user will have to take off the device for 1/3 of his life as well as carry an extra cable around with him. ~ Radio Free Mobile
Oh NO! We won’t have our device available to us for a full one-third of our life!
Admittedly, we’ll be asleep during that time, and dead to the world…
But still! One third of our life! And! And! And! And we’ll have to carry an extra cable! Oh, the horror! Oh, the HUMANITY!
Sheesh. I swear, if Apple made a time machine, we’d all be complaining about it having a proprietary power cable. Sigh.
People thought it was scandalous that the iPhone needed to be charged nightly. Not a deal breaker if worth it. ~ Ben Thompson (@monkbent)
Buck up, people. We may not be the Greatest Generation, but I think we can tough it out and suffer through yet another charging cable.
Make it your habit not to be critical about small things. ~ Edward Everett Hale
They that are serious in ridiculous things will be ridiculous in serious affairs. ~ Cato the Elder
A watch playing Coldplay is a bug, not a feature. ~ John Collison (@collision)
Okay, I’ll concede that one.
Wearing a radio directly on the body spooks many people who rationally or irrationally fear the health risks of close electromagnetic radiation. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
Oh, for the love of G….
Look, what are you trying to say here? That I’d be more fearful of having all of those “irrationally-perceived-as-dangerous” radio waves at the end of my wrist rather than in my pants pocket right next to my jumbly-wumblies?
Are you freaking kidding me?
Never miss a good chance to shut up. ~ Cowboy wisdom
AppleWatch may have a heart rate monitor but so does every serious athlete already. ~ Eric Perlberg (@eric_perlberg)
We never seem to get this right. It’s not the eggs that make the soufflé, it’s the Chef. Saying “every one already has” a feature is like saying that “every restaurant already has” eggs, therefore, every restaurant is of equal quality. Apple is the Master Chef of ecosystems. Others are more akin to the Dirty Spoon.
(A)t $349 [Apple Watch] is significantly more expensive than its better looking competitors (Moto360 $249, LG G Watch R $230). ~ Radio Free Mobile
It’s expensive — and not covered by carrier subsidies. It’s $600 for the whole package of a subsidized $200 iPhone and the $400 Watch. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
Apple clearly believes that the Apple Watch’s advances in size, speed, function and elegance are worth the $150 price premium, but not everyone feels that way. In an informal poll at the Macworld.com Web site, 40 percent of Mac fans indicated that they would not be buying an Apple Watch, and every single one cited the price.
Oh wait! Did I say “Apple Watch”? That last paragraph was actually a 2001 quote from Macworld concerning the original iPod, not the Apple Watch. Note how the nature of the products change, but the nature of the criticism remains exactly the same.
Presuming all decisions are based on price is the easiest way to mispredict the future. ~ Ben Thompson (@monkbent)
Every time Apple brings out a product, critics cite price as its fatal flaw, even when such criticism makes little or no sense.
“iPads are too expensive which is why most of the buyers are new to iPad” Wait, what? ~ Ben Thompson (@monkbent) 7/24/14
Many of Apple’s critics have never understood the difference between price and value. As we move toward wearable computers, the disconnect is only going to grow greater.
The more personal the computer the more value we will place upon it. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
The most expensive Apple Watch will cost more than the most expensive iPhone which will cost more than most PCs. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
And now that Apple is going high fashion? Look out. Most of us are going to lose our grip on pricing entirely.
(There’s going to be a) nerd meltdown when we all learn what “fashion” items cost. ~ Cabel Sasser (@cabel)
When the prices of the steel and (especially) gold Apple Watches are announced, I expect the tech press to have the biggest collective shit-fit in the history of Apple-versus-the-standard-tech-industry shit-fits. ~ John Gruber
Normally, as the price of an item goes down, demand goes up. However, as Ben Thompson likes to point out, with Veblen goods (named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who popularized understanding of the effect) as the price of the product goes up, the demand rises too. This is because the “job” a Veblen good is “hired to do” is not utility alone — it’s added prestige. Veblen goods are counterintuitive and full of surprises for the unwary.
Asia is by far the biggest market for Swiss watch exports accounting for 55 percent July shipments.” ~ CNBC
What folks don’t understand about Asian luxury market in particular is people buy BECAUSE it’s expensive. ~ Ben Thompson (@monkbent)
If you don’t have a background in engineering, you shouldn’t be commenting on how to construct the space station. And if you don’t have a background in economics, you shouldn’t be commenting on pricing, either.
The Prophets of the Church of Marketshare never understood Apple’s premium business model to begin with, even though there is a premium provider for almost every good and service known to man. Woman too. And now that Apple is moving toward fashion pricing, the explosive growth in the number of tech bloggers who will think they are qualified to comment on economic theory is simply going to boggle the mind.
Tech bears the same relationship to fashion as a multiple-choice test does to an essay exam.
I have no doubts [Apple Watch] will sell. If I had money to blow I’d buy one out of curiosity. But that’s not a product. It’s a fad. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
The iPhone was a fad too.
The iPhone is a commodity. That’s really all Apple’s iStuff is — an enormous and very profitable fad. It’s the Pet Rock of the new millennium. ~ Anders Bylund, Motley Fool, 6 Mar 2012
Data Processing was a fad too.
I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year. ~ editor of business books, Prentice Hall publishers, 1957
Movies were a fad too.
Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. ~ Charlie Chaplin
Be awfully careful before you summarily label — and then dismiss — something as a “fad”. It’s lazy and, even worse, misleading analysis.
Who is there who can make muddy waters clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will gradually clear itself. ~ Lao-tsu
(A)t today’s Cupertino, California, event, we — the press, the world at large — were treated to a beautifully designed smartwatch (e.g., those interchangeable straps) laden with an embarrassing slew of useless gimmicks. … Cheap tricks that consumers will tire of after a few weeks. ~ Joseph Volpe
Heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why don’t you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive line up? Or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?
Oops! So sorry. That last quote was taken from the forums at Macrumors and refers to the introduction of the original iPod in 2001, not the Apple Watch in 2014. My bad.
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources. ~ P. J. O’Rourke
The line between gimmicks and genius is thin, as both Jan Dawson and Benedict Evans remind us:
This stuff Apple is demoing now is classic Apple. Thin line between Samsung’s gimmicks and Apple’s delighters, but fairly clear here. ~ Jan Dawson (@jandawson)
There’s an interesting line between products everyone thinks are crap and products everyone thinks are stupid. The latter change the world. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Since the line between gimmick and genius is so thin — and since the consequences of getting it wrong are so great — we should think long and hard before we summarily dismiss something as a mere gimmick. Gimmicks, like art forgeries, abound and they need to be identified and discarded. But let’s not allow our analytical brushes to paint too quickly or with too broad a stroke, lest we conceal the subtle masterpiece.
Some things have to be believed to be seen. ~ Ralph Hodgson
I don’t get it. … Apple did not save wearables, as many thought it would. … Apple unveiled something, at best, lukewarm. At most, it’s prettier than the smartwatches that’ve come before, and that’s likely its greatest innovation. ~ Joseph Volpe, Endgadget
I don’t see it. Exquisite but no values behind it (except for design values). ~ Sean Egan (@Sean_Egn)
Here’s an idea. If you don’t understand something — REMAIN SILENT.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Good advice, seldom taken.
Worth remembering: the industry thought the iPod was stupid when it first came out. Even as recently as the iPad, people missed the point. ~ Jared Cocken (@engers)
We’ll see. It’s worth remembering that the iPod, iPhone and iPad, in turn, were greeted with initial skepticism. Apple Watch seeks to be the next in that lineage, routing the skeptics and delivering a massive payoff for Apple. ~ Steve Lohr, The New York Times
It’s okay not to get something. But it’s not at all okay for us to take that one step further and assume that because we don’t get it, it can’t be got. It’s like we’re blind, so we assume that everyone else must be blind too. It just ain’t so. If we don’t “get something”, that’s a sure sign that we should be shutting our mouths and opening our minds.
Half of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at. ~ Solomon Short quotes
The Apple Watch seems lovely. The problem is I don’t wear a watch, and 75% our office does not wear one either. ~ ariel seidman (@aseidman)
Most people don’t wear watches anymore. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
Jan Dawson explains this kind of thinking in a wholly unrelated article entitled: “NO-ONE I KNOW VOTED FOR NIXON” IN TECH“.
There’s a famous quote attributed to Pauline Kael, the movie critic, which is usually paraphrased as “How did Nixon win? I don’t know anyone who voted for him….”
The point was, Nixon had just won the US presidential election — in a landslide — and yet Pauline Kael lived in a world where almost no-one had voted for him.
I fear that the people who spend all day thinking and writing about technology often suffer from the same myopia about the behavior and mentality of the vast majority of everyday users of technology. We are nothing like them in many respects…. ~ Jan Dawson
When I was growing up, everybody wore a watch. Everybody. It’s only been a decade or so since some people stopped wearing watches and they did so because they were carrying mobile phones that also told time. In other words, the behavior of not wearing a watch 1) is recent; 2) is of relatively short duration; and 3) was caused by a shift in technology.
Source: XKCD
To suggest that no one will buy a wearable because you don’t wear a watch and no one you know wears a watch is the height of myopia — you’re living in a self-centric world where no one voted for Nixon.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. ~ John Maynard Keynes
Think about it. Did you carry a phone in your pocket prior to 2007? If you did, you were in the 1%. Now half the U.S. (and growing) carries their phone with them everywhere. Why the change in behavior? Change in technology.
Did you take pictures at public events using a ginormous tablet? Of course not. Who would do that? Well, turns out, lots and lots of people. (And it’s usually the ones seated just in front of you.) Why the change in behavior? Change in technology.
Stop saying you don’t wear a watch. You don’t wear a watch…yet. Tech changes. Behavior changes. Tech changes behavior. If wearing watches went out of style because of changes in technology, then wearing a watch can come back in style because of changes in technology too.
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences. ~ Norman Cousins
Our inability to even contemplate — more less fathom — the possibility that tomorrow may be different from today reminds me of this joke:
One caterpillar to another, as they watch a butterfly: “You’ll never get me up in one of those things.”
The things I miss most about wearing a watch would be fulfilled by wearing a watch and I can do that for $50. ~ The LeeBase (@TheLeeBase)
We used to only need to make phone calls too. And we could do that for $50. Then the iPhone came out in 2007. And now, we need more.
Our vision is more obstructed by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge. ~ Kristen Stendahl
There is nothing more reactionary than the general public. For most of us, our vision of the near future is actually our recollection of the recent past.
A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see. ~ Leroy Eims
Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities: Apple Watch is ground breaking – Innovation is back at Apple after a 3 year pause. ~ The Apple Watch: What the analysts are saying by Philip Elmer-DeWitt
A three year “pause,” ay?
Here’s the thing, Trip. It takes years to make an “overnight” success. The folks at Apple haven’t been sitting around on their barcaloungers sipping champagne and eating chocolate bonbons. They didn’t wake up on Monday, September 8th, and say: “Hey, everybody. Let’s innovate!” Then — bada bing, bada boom — out popped the Apple Watch just in time for the September 9th Event.
Hey! Wait just a darn tooting minute. Aren’t you the same Trip Chowdhry who said this:
[Apple has] only have 60 days left to either come up with something or they will disappear. ~ Trip Chowdhry (March 2014)
March, April, May….
Hmm. Maybe I should change the title of this article from “Claim Chowder” to “Claim Chowdhry”.
Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.
I guess left-handed folk are supposed to switch wrists. ~ Patrick Igoe (@PatrickIgoe) [9/9/14, 2:07 PM]
I guess some left-handed people have the patience of a gnat.
For you lefties: The Apple Watch crown works OK when the watch is on your right hand. But there’s a southpaw mode which flips the UI around. ~ Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) [9/9/14, 5:17 PM]
Apple Watch can be inverted for left handers. Hurrah. ~ Matt Warman (@mattwarman) [9/9/14, 6:26 PM]
For you lefties: …there’s a southpaw mode which flips the UI around. ~ Peter Hilleren (@Peter000) [9/9/14, 6:38 PM]
Left-handers: You can just turn Apple Watch upside down (and swap straps around) and it’ll just work. ~ John Gruber (@gruber) [9/9/14, 9:49 PM]
I have more sources, if that’s not enough.
A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains. ~ Dutch proverb
Seriously. Can’t people just ask a question and then wait an hour or two for the answer before they start whining? I mean, honestly. Is it really asking so much?
It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is square and fat. 85% of wristwatches sold in the market are round and in pure looks, I think the Moto 360 and the LG G Watch R are much better. ~ Radio Free Mobile
The form factor has fixed limits — the small screen obviates advertising, electronics fatten the case, big fingers obscure the screen when touching. For many, the form will be seen as simply ugly. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
Apple Watch ‘too feminine and looks like it was designed by a student in their first trimester’ (Boss of Tag Heuer, Zenith and Hublot says Apple has made “some fundamental mistakes” with its smart watch) – The Telegraph
It’s not a revolution and it’s not what any of us really expected. It’s lipstick on a smartwatch. It’s an accessory and nothing more. ~ Joseph Volpe, Engadget
All this coming from critics who have never seen nor touched nor worn nor experienced the Apple Watch.
Baffled by strong opinions on the Apple watch hardware from people who’ve not held one. I have held one and am still undecided. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
With smartwatches, even more than phones, even more than tablets, even more than PCs, any verdict requires actual use in the real world. ~ Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken)
Go back and re-read the above quote by Harry McCracken. Wearables simply cannot be understood until we’ve worn them. And nobody outside of Apple has worn them. Yet.
What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth. ~ Jewish proverb
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. ~ Oscar Wilde
The Apple Watch names are strange. Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch Edition. Weird that two have third names, and Edition is odd. ~ Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo)
I like analyzing product names too, but truth be told, if the product is lousy, the name simply doesn’t matter. And if the product is great, the name simply doesn’t matter either.
Remember how critics mocked the name “iPad”? How’d that turn out?
Talk of product names reminds me of this classic Saturday Night Live skit.
Hmm. Perhaps Apple should name their next product: “Mangled Baby Ducks.”
Beautiful, but a niche product. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
The $350 watch market is niche at best. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
Gee. When have I heard this lament before? Oh yeah. Whenever Apple introduces a new product category. The $350 iPod will be niche, the $600 iPhone will be niche, the $500 iPad will be niche, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Some Claim Chowder from the archives:
iPhone
The iPhone is a niche product. ~ Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, 17 April 2008
The iconic Apple iPhone will either not exist or occupy a very small niche satisfying the needs of committed Mac fans around five years from now. ~ Eugene Kaspersky, Kaspersky Lab, 27 April 2010
iPad
The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 29 January 2010
For all the hype about an Apple tablet , it is at best a niche product. ~ Joe Wilcox, Betanews, 2 January 2010
The iPad will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose netbooks…. (N)etbooks sales will still far outstrip those of the iPad. ~ Preston Gralla, PC World, 30 March 2010
Niche, huh? Let’s see how those niche products panned out:
Most CEO’s would cut off their right arms to have “niche” products like those.
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one’s voice. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Apple failed. They did not make the case to compel me to pay $350+ to reduce the pain of pulling my iPhone out of my pocket. ~ The LeeBase (@TheLeeBase)
For many, two devices on the body are unnecessary. Pulling the iPhone out of a pocket or purse is fine — most will not need another device to access payments or track health. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
Ya’ know, human beings are kinda funny (in an odd sort of way). I guess it’s human nature to ignore human nature. Go figure.
The fundamental principle of human action—the law that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics—is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion. ~ Henry George
Do want to call that kind of behavior lazy? Okay, we’re lazy. But mostly, we’re human.
I’ve always felt extremely lazy when I explain my main reason for wanting an Apple Watch. It would eliminate the need for me to reach all the way into my pocket to retrieve my iPhone when it buzzed. I stand by my brazen laziness. And I very much appreciate that the Apple Watch will analyze incoming email to create its own “quick choice” reply. Very smart. ~ Ken Segall
Benedict Evans poses some important questions regarding the tablet and the smartphone, respectively:
How much was it worth not to have to open your laptop? ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
I use my phone even though my tablet is in my bag or my laptop on the table. How much does a watch cannibalise in the same way? ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
We know that a large proportion of smartphone use is done in the home, where a laptop or tablet is within easy reach. Shouldn’t that be telling us something? Persistence matters. Convenience matters. Laziness matters. Human nature matters.
And besides, what else — or should I say who else — are we ignoring here?
For half the population, your phone is not always in your pocket. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Oh yeah. The female of the species. Remember them? The one’s who do most of the shopping for (literally) mankind? The ones who wear most of the jewelry? The ones who make up the majority of people living on this planet? The ones who often put their phones in their purses instead of in their pockets?
We should be very, very careful not to substitute our judgment for the judgment of others. Just because we don’t like something; just we’re not enthusiastic about something; does not mean that others will feel the same way. That’s just common sense. Unfortunately, there is nothing so uncommon as common sense.
I see a world where the watch will eventually replace the phone. ~ AAPL Orchard
The long-term success of the iTime (or whatever it gets called) will be similar. If it can’t replace the iPhone completely it’s a goner. ~ John Dvorak
My stance on the smartwatch as a viable mobile accessory is unambiguous; I’ve argued my case before. As a category, it needs to replace — needs to completely replace our need for a cellphone. ~ Joseph Volpe, Engadget
That’s great and all, except that it’s completely wrong.
“A smartwatch doesn’t replace my smartphone.” “A tablet doesn’t replace my personal computer.” “A motorcycle doesn’t replace my car.” ~ AAPL Tree (@AAPLTree)
A device should not try to be something it’s not. It should be true to itself. Why would we want a smart watch that replaces our smartphones? We already have smartphones that work great. What we want — or what we should want — is for smart watches to do what they do best. No one is quite sure what that is yet, but you can be darned sure that squashing a smartphone down to the size of a watch is not going to work any better than squashing a Personal Computer down to the size of a tablet worked.
Replace the phone with the watch? You’ve got it all wrong. And don’t blame Apple just because your vision is faulty.
The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. ~ Jim Rohn
Forrester’s research is showing nascent interest by consumers. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
Yeah, about that. I’m not a big believer in surveys about products that don’t exist. You shouldn’t be either.
iPad:
We’re finding — if you look at the surveys, you can see that large amount of the customers that have purchased touchscreen devices in last two years, they intend to get a device with the QWERTY keyboard on it now. ~ Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, Inc, 16 April 2010
iPhone:
Days before the iPhone debuted, the market research company Universal McCann came out with a blockbuster report proving that practically nobody in the United States would buy the iPhone. “The simple truth,” said Tom Smith, the author of the iPhone-damning report, is that “convergence [an all-in-one device] is a compromise driven by financial limitations, not aspiration. In the markets where multiple devices are affordable, the vast majority would prefer that to one device fits all.” Solid survey research suggested not only that the iPhone would fail, but also that it would fail particularly hard in the United States because our phones and cameras are good enough, already. ~ Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
Today there are lots and lots of people saying they have no interest in an Apple Watch or in the smart watch category altogether. They are telling the truth. They really can’t imagine owning a smart watch. However, their beliefs do not reflect the limits of the smart watch category. Their beliefs reflect the limits of their imagination.
You can’t ask people to decide on a trade-off when they have experience of one side but not the other. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
It requires an iPhone to function making it very clear that this is an accessory rather than a new product category in its own right. ~ Radio Free Mobile
Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein: While the device is aesthetically attractive, and has a very innovative UI (“digital crown” and differentiated touch), we struggle with the fact that the majority of the Watch’s functionality is dependent on the presence of an iPhone.
This shit better have some major non-tethered functionality. ~ Jason Hirschhorn (@JasonHirschhorn)
Remember when the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad were all tethered to the Mac? No? Neither does anyone else.
Memory may be a terrible librarian, but it’s a great editor. ~ Ralph Keyes
The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and now the Apple Watch are or were tethered to another device. They offload or offloaded tasks which they could not handle or which they were ill-suited to perform to the better suited device. Tethering is not a fatal flaw. In fact, it can be a chief advantages. Take, for example, the iPod:
One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless. ~ Steve Jobs
The very first new post-Steve Jobs product, Apple Watch, is stunningly pretty, is functional — and is utterly unnecessary. ~ Brian S Hall (@brianshall)
Did not expect to be so underwhelmed by implementation. It’s basically Android Wear 2.0, which isn’t saying much. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
I think Apple Watch will be a flop. ~ The Tech Guy, Episode 1118
Great just what the world needs.
I was so hoping for something more.
The reason why everyone’s disappointed is because we had our hopes up for this incredible device.
Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!
Oh wait! Those last four quotes weren’t about the Apple Watch at all. They were taken from the forums at Macrumors and were referring to the launch of the original iPod.
The more things change, the more they are the same. ~ Alphonse Karr ((The original saying & original author.))
New Apple product X is announced. Pundits & analysts say X will fail. X breaks all previous sales records. Step. Rinse. Repeat. ~ Nick Bilton (@nickbilton)
Three years from now, the same people making fun of this thing today will complain that Apple hasn’t innovated since the Watch. ~ Mitchell Cohen (@mitchchn)
Professional critics of new things sound smart, but the logical conclusion of their thinking is a poorer world. ~ Benedict Evans
Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
I have not exhausted all of my material, nor have I exhausted all of the stupidity…but I have exhausted myself. Enough. No more Claim Chowder.
It’s possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it’s probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity. ~ P. D. James
I want to make something perfectly clear. I am not advocating for or against the Apple Watch. That will be addressed in a future article. What I am advocating for is clear thinking.
The creators of Apple Claim Chowder used to be arrogant and obnoxious but ever since the introduction of the Apple Watch just the opposite has been true. Now they’re obnoxious and arrogant. After all, the vast majority of the Claim Chowder cited here, and in my previous 7-part series ((Apple Claim Chowder Series:
1) Introduction
2) Events
3) Killers
4) Cynicism
5) Product
6) Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
7) Business Models)) on Apple Claim Chowder, could easily have been avoided.
Conversation would be much improved by the frequent use of three words: I don’t know. ~ André Maurois
The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss
Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. ~ Lorraine Hansberry
Next
Next time, I’ll look at the design of the Apple Watch and try to pose some of the right questions. Come join me then.
Post Script
If you want to take the chance of having me ridicule you in one of my future articles, be sure to join me on Twitter @johnkirk. I’m looking forward to mocking your acquaintance.
Welcome to this week’s Tech.pinions podcast.
This week Tim Bajarin, Bob O’Donnell, and Ben Bajarin discuss the impact of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on the market and their potential impact on Samsung and others.
Click here to subscribe in iTunes.
If you happen to use a podcast aggregator or want to add it to iTunes manually the feed to our podcast is: techpinions.com/feed/podcast
Runtime: 27:45
Show Notes:
Samsung Faces China Storm – Link
Just for fun, Ben Bajarin used the revenue estimates for the third quarter for Samsung highlighted in the above link and made a chart. If that number plays out, Samsung’s operating profits chart would look like this.
When Apple and GT Advanced announced a partnership to make and purchase sapphire screens, most of the media jumped to the conclusion Apple was going to use them in their upcoming smartphones. However, when the iPhones were launched and no sapphire screens were used in the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6 Plus, I began digging into the reason. What I have learned about this issue and why Apple chose not to include sapphire in this generation of iPhone is fascinating and reinforces why all of us need to be more careful before jumping to conclusions. Many have suggested the decision not to use sapphire was the result of manufacturing issues – with more time, Apple would, in fact, put sapphire on the iPhone 6. As I looked closer at Apple’s announcement and after looking more at the benefits and drawbacks of sapphire, it seems Apple had good reasons to go with “ion strengthened curved glass” (Gorilla Glass) vs. sapphire.
While sapphire has been hyped as an alternative screen for smartphones, the continued use of strengthened glass has less to do with production issues and more with what smartphone manufacturers know about consumers and their preferences. More importantly, about how they actually use them and what they are willing to pay for their smartphones.
By the way, some reports stated that. up until a few weeks before the theiPhone announcement, Apple was going to use Sapphire but dropped it because of yield issues. This is not true. My sources tell me sapphire was never targeted for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus and its role in future iPhones has not even been decided yet. Also, anyone that knows the manufacturing process knows that, to make tens of millions of screens for an iPhone launch, any order for a screen had to be put in place well over six months ago and planned meticulously into the final manufacturing of these new smartphones by Apple well in advance.
Here is what I was able to find out about sapphire vs glass by doing many interviews and looking at the current research:
• The trend in smartphone design is to achieve thinner, lighter devices, while making them bigger at the same time. That’s not easy to do. To increase the size of a smartphone and still keep the weight down requires thinner, lighter material. What we know about sapphire is it is more than 30% denser than glass and would require a compromise on both fronts for widespread use in phones. Corning has shown it can manufacture Gorilla Glass to be thinner than a sheet of paper and strengthened with a process that makes it more damage resistant.
• Cost is a big factor with consumers and the smartphone category is hugely competitive these days. Apple is already pushing the envelope on price when comparable devices are priced at or lower than the iPhone 6, and Apple would have had to charge even more for a sapphire covered phone. The cost to produce a sheet of sapphire is estimated to be roughly 10 times that of strengthened glass. In fact, one source I talked to said the cost could be even higher. Our researched opinion early on was, if Apple did add a sapphire screen for a new iPhone, it would add at least $100 to the base cost of the iPhone. That could be a deal breaker for mainstream iPhone customers.
• Design flexibility and adaptability – the latest smartphone designs from Samsung, Apple and others are sleek, sporting displays with glass that curves to the edge of the device. Because glass can be manufactured to extremely thin dimensions and still be chemically strengthened, it is more flexible and can be formed and shaped into the designs you see in the iPhone 6 and others. http://www.ubreakifix.com/blog/sapphire-vs-gorilla-glass-bending-and-impact/ Sapphire is bulkier and must be cut into shape, creating both cost and production issues on larger surfaces. Today, Sapphire in phones shows up in only industrial style products, like the Kyocera Brigadier which uses a bulky casing to protect the screen.
• Battery life – by far the number one complaint among consumers is battery life in a phone. Manufacturers need to look at every component that draws energy and work to minimize the impact to help keep battery life strong. One of the biggest drains on battery life is brightness of the screen. According to Bernstein Research, which conducted research on the benefits of glass vs. sapphire as a cover material, glass transmits light much better than sapphire. Therefore, to get the same level of brightness using a sapphire screen requires more energy. That problem can’t be fixed easily as the basic properties of sapphire make it transmit less light than glass. This also impacts other things like glare. Glass can have an anti-reflective solution imbedded into the material, reducing the effects of the sun when reading outdoors. To achieve anti-reflection with sapphire, it has to have a coating applied which, over time, will wear off. This issue alone may make it tough for Apple to ever use sapphire in iPhones since most people have their iPhones for at least two years and some even longer.
• Environmental impact – manufacturers know consumers are starting to care a lot more about the impact the products they buy are having on the environment. Sapphire requires 100 times more energy to produce than glass. The energy requirements alone make sapphire problematic as a viable material to use on a smartphone. It is not out of the realm of possibility sapphire could end up on very high end smartphones someday but it’s less likely they could ever be used in smartphones aimed at the mass market.
• Durability – this is by far the most promoted benefit of sapphire and perhaps the most misunderstood. This is the area I got tripped up on by assuming too much from the Apple investment in GT Advanced. Sapphire is extremely hard and highly scratch resistant. That is why it is found on products such as luxury watches. But it is largely untested as a phone screen. While sapphire is a very hard crystal, it is inflexible and extremely brittle. Sapphire’s inherent structure makes it susceptible to flaws that can occur along the crystal plane. I was told by multiple sources various field tests subjected sapphire to scratch and break tests against strengthened glass. It performs better on scratch resistance but, when you drop it, it is more likely than glass to break. Glass actually flexes and can absorb the shock of a drop more readily than sapphire. Sapphire is prevalent on luxury watches and other products that don’t experience the same drop risk as a smartphone.
Like many who jumped on the sapphire bandwagon without really understanding it, I had assumed it was unbreakable. But in talking to various experts, they said the way to look at this is to think of a sheet of ice (also a crystal); small cracks weaken the surface and it will hold together for only so long before some impact will cause it to break. Those small cracks add up in the normal wear and tear we put our phones through every day – knocking around in our purses and pockets with keys and change or scuffing against the surface of a counter repeatedly. Current solutions, such as Gorilla Glass, apparently are reinforced with a chemical that alter its atomic structure and actually strengthens the area around scratches and insulates the glass longer against breaking. While surface scratches may be more visible earlier on, a glass screen will stay more intact over time than one made with sapphire. Once sapphire is exposed to a scratch or a flaw, visible or invisible, its risk of breakage and eventual failure is high. On watches, this is less an issue because they are seldom dropped and the watch surface is smaller. But in a smartphone with larger screens and many usage variables, this could make it difficult to put in smartphones and guarantee it is less prone to breakage.
I don’t doubt over time there could be some breakthroughs with sapphire and new coating processes could make it possible to use as a screen on a smartphone. However, from the research I did, it does not appear it could happen any time soon. Plus, sapphire’s less then flexible and brittle nature suggests, as least to me, that using it in large screen smartphones would still be difficult even if they were able to coat it in a way to keep the screen from splintering. I now at least understand why Apple did not use it in the new iPhones and the more I study this it seems it could be problematic for Apple to use it outside of their smartwatches anytime in the very near future.
