When the Macintosh was launched in 1984, computers running the MS-DOS operating system were nearing a dominant position in the market. Having launched in 1981 as the IBM PC, they were quickly cloned and four years later “PCs” were selling at the rate of 2 million/yr. The Mac only managed 372k units in its first year.
In other words, PC was outselling the Mac by a factor of nearly 6. It turned out to be a high point. The ratio by which the PC outsold the Mac only increased from there.
When Windows 95 launched in 1995 it negated most of the advantages of the ease of use of the Macintosh and the PC market took off. The ratio reached 56 in 2004 when 182.5 million PCs were sold vs. 3.25 million Macs.
During the second half of the 90s it was already clear that Windows won the PC platform war. Windows had an advantage that seemed unsurmountable.
I should point out that this ratio between platforms is not just an exercise in arithmetic. It’s a measure of leverage. The advantage of dominance is realized in an ecosystem which creates lock-in and additional economies in marketing. Ecosystems become self-perpetuating and there is a tendency toward monopoly. The stronger you are, the stronger you get.
Then, in 2004, something happened.
Although PC volumes continued to grow, they did so more slowly and the Mac grew faster. What coincided with this was the emergence of portable computing. The MacBook became easily differentiable as a “better” laptop. It was not faster, did not have more storage or any key metrics being used to sell PCs. It was just better as an integrated product. The integration manifested itself through a sense of quality and robustness as well as intangibles like aesthetics and “feel”. I wrote about this a few years ago.
As a result the Mac began to whittle down the advantage Windows had. The ratio of Windows to Mac units shipped fell to below 20, a level that was last reached before Windows 95 launched. It’s as if the Mac reversed the Windows advantage. This was an amazing turnaround for the Mac.
But the story does not end there.
If we consider all the devices Apple sells, the whittling becomes even more significant and the multiple drops to below 2. Seen this way, Post-PC devices wiped out of leverage faster than it was originally built. They not only reversed the advantage but cancelled it altogether.
Considering the near future, it’s safe to expect a “parity” of iOS+OS X vs. Windows within one or two years. The install base may remain larger for some time longer but the sales rate of alternatives will swamp it in due course.
The consequences are dire for Microsoft. The wiping out of any platform advantage around Windows will render it vulnerable to direct competition. This is not something it had to worry about before. Windows will have to compete not only for users, but for developer talent, investment by enterprises and the implicit goodwill it has had for more than a decade.
It will, most importantly, have a psychological effect. Realizing that Windows is not a hegemony will unleash market forces that nobody can predict.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Building and dismantling the Windows advantage | asymco
Five years later: How the iPhone reinvented Apple — Apple News, Tips and Reviews
June 29, 2007, is the day I’ve come closest to being trampled to death. I blame Steve Jobs for this.
As the countdown clock in the Apple Store window on Stockton Street in San Francisco neared zero, hordes of reporters from all over the world, customers — some who’d waited in line for two days — and curious passersby all at once surged toward the glass to get a better view as the doors opened for the first time to sell the smartphone that has revolutionized mobile computing: the iPhone.
Friday marks the five-year anniversary of that day. No product launch has ever come close to the crazy spectacle we saw (and survived) that day. A lot has changed about iPhone launches since 2007. People still line up, some media still cover it, but it’s more orderly now because waiting in line for an Apple phone is not considered unusual, and because iPhone distribution has expanded to include online channels and three major U.S. carriers.
The mobile world into which the original iPhone was born has seen other, vast changes in the last five years: Virtual keyboards are now standard; wireless operators changed the way they do business; and a company formed around an app designed on and for the iPhone platform has sold for a billion dollars.
Nothing, however, has changed more in those five years than Apple itself.
The iPhone, at first looked upon skeptically by some as an overhyped toy, has catapulted Apple to the top of the technology and business worlds. Apple is valued today at more than $530 billion, which, for those counting, is worth more than two Microsofts and almost three Googles. Amd it could buy both of the mobile powerhouses of 2007, Nokia and RIM, outright. That is if it wanted a piece of the disasters that have unfolded in Finland and Canada since the launch of the iPhone.
The stock chart for AAPL has pushed steadily upward and to the right since Apple introduced its combination iPod, phone and mobile Internet device. The Monday after the iPhone launch in 2007, Apple stock opened at $132.30. Yesterday it closed at $569.05.
Apple’s balance sheet, too, has been transformed by the iPhone. The device has become the engine for an incredible profit machine that drives the whole company. Apple has sold somewhere around 250 million iPhones in five years, according to Strategy Analytics, which is estimated to have added $150 billion in profit alone.
Apple hasn’t just sat on its enormous profits, however. It’s put some of it away — it had $7 billion in cash in July 2007, in April it had $110 billion. But it’s put much of it right back into the business of making and selling its phones, iPads and computers and building out its physical stores that help drive more device sales. More recently Apple has opened a series of gigantic state-of-the-art data centers to power the post-PC dream world it has largely created.
It uses that money to ensure product supply and ramp production to meet demand, which has the nice side benefit of blocking out potential competition by buying up, for example, the world’s supply of touchscreens. It helps Apple outfit the factories of partners like Foxconn with crazy-expensive, custom laser tools to keep its products differentiated in small but important ways. All of these are strategies that are core to the Apple way. And under Tim Cook’s direction of its operations have been perfected and expanded during the iPhone era.
The iPhone, of course, is not just about money. It’s also about vision. The iPod made Apple Computer into a consumer electronics player. But the iPhone altered the company’s destiny and turned Apple into a mobile company — it dropped “Computer” from its name the same day it initially introduced the iPhone in January 2007. No other traditional PC company has managed to make the same switch, and, as noted above, two pre-iPhone mobile giants — Nokia and RIM — are struggling in this new era while the seminal mobile company, Palm, is dead.
And since deciding to embrace being a mobile company, Apple’s computer business has, ironically, flourished. Almost every quarter in the past few years has included the phrase “best Mac quarter ever” from an Apple executive’s lips. People likely drawn to its stores for iPhones, and now iPads, are trying out Macs — half of the Macs Apple sells every quarter in its stores are to first-time Mac buyers.
The iPhone was also the defining product of Steve Jobs’ amazing career. By proving to Apple, the software development industry and the public that the company understood what mobile users wanted with the iPhone, it made way for the iPad, which was Jobs’ original dream device for mobile computing. It’s fair to say that without the iPhone, the iPad would have been a very tough sell — pre-iPhone, Jobs did not have the influence in the mobile world or the millions of third-party mobile apps that he did in late January 2010, when he first laid out his vision for a 9.7-inch, $500 touchscreen tablet.
Without the iPhone, we wouldn’t have Apple pushing innovation in all kinds of areas – App Store, Siri, mobile gaming, how we consume media content and much more — and it’s bringing its chief rivals like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook along with it. Because of the iPhone, Apple is, right now, the planet’s leading technology company.
That success has brought competition on many fronts. But the tech world has never been the same since June 29, 2007, much the same way the debut of the PC and the Mac ended the reign of computing giants like Data General, Wang and Digital Equipment.
And for that, we can blame Steve Jobs.
Please check out the rest of our stories on the fifth anniversary of the iPhone, collected here.
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- Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
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Sunday, July 01, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
The Girls with their Fashion Glasses
I had to share this as it is just too cute. They both received a gift card to Clare's and decided to buy some fashion glasses.
Uncle Drew on Devour.com
Uncle Drew
After spending four hours in makeup, 2012 NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving heads to the courts of New Jersey to devour some young bloods in a pick-up game.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
WWDC iOS 6 Rumors: What To Expect, Reject, and Wish For | TechCrunch
It’s WWDC time. Like, tomorrow. And we expect to see plenty of fun announcements, not least of which being a brand new mobile operating system, iOS 6.
It’s the type of Apple product every iPhone owner can enjoy, and I’m more than pumped to bring you a full list of expected, rumored, and wishlist features that we’ll soon enjoy.
So how does a silver user interface sound as opposed to blue? What about a departure from Google Maps and a brand new 3D map view brought to you direct from Apple? How about Facebook integration as deep as (if not deeper than) Apple’s beloved Twitter?
All that and more after the break.
Facebook integration
Rumor:
- Facebook will be baked straight into iOS 6 the same way that Twitter is in iOS 5
- This will allow for system-wide Facebook authentication services for apps, sharing to a limited extent (links, perhaps photos), and possibly check-ins.
- It would also be possible to integrate Facebook Events with the iOS calendar (iCal)
- Also possible, but even less likely: Integration of Facebook Chat with iMessages
Argument:
- It comes rather confidently from MG Siegler
- Apple likes Facebook
- Apple wants to keep things as easy as possible for users, and baking in Facebook only makes sense for users of Apple products, Facebook, and developers
- Facebook sharing is already built into iTunes desktop
- When asked about future plans with Facebook, Tim Cook said “stay tuned.”
Objection:
- Apple has baked in Facebook before and scrapped the idea
- Facebook is a far more complicated network than Twitter: Facebook privacy, Open Graph, etc.
- Concerning the deeper integration (iCal, iMessages, and even Photos), Apple usually takes its time with these big endeavors, like with Siri
Judgment: Likely. As the LA Times points out, all signs point to a Facebook-laden iOS 6. Facebook is usually the most popular social app on the App Store, and Facebook is picking up some serious steam in the mobile realm. Partnering in this way only makes sense, and should only strengthen both companies.
Siri for iPad
Rumor:
- Siri support, not just voice dictation, will come to the iPad
- The personal assistant will be accessed through a hold tap to the home button (like on iPhone 4S), whether the iPad is locked or not
- Siri will take up only a small portion of the screen, popping up from the bottom of whatever app the user is currently in
- It may only come to new iPads
Argument:
- It’s only a matter of time
- 9to5Mac “trusted sources” claim Siri is in testing on second and third-gen iPads
- Again, Apple wants to unify its products
- Siri is used in voice dictation on the iPad, it’s just not fully functional
Objection:
- The iPad may be too far away to understand dictation, according to some skeptics
- Siri is still in beta. Why jump to a new device?
- “Users aren’t proving adventurous with their usage”
- It’s possible that Apple may not reveal Siri for iPad at WWDC
Judgment: This one’s a maybe, but only because it may not show its face tomorrow, not because it won’t happen. Siri for iPad is only a natural progression. My guess is that it’s unveiled tomorrow and available only to third-generation iPads. Apple is scaling Siri to make sure that quality stays up to snuff with concerns for servers, etc., just like Siri was only available on the iPhone 4S.
iCloud Updates
Rumor:
- Apple is syncing new and current OS X features with iOS 6 through iCloud
- This includes iCloud Tabs, Do Not Disturb for Notifications, and Mail VIPs
- iCloud Tabs is said to offer a synchronized list of Safari tabs open across all Apple devices.
- Do Not Disturb would be a toggle under Airplane Mode in Settings that would disable notifications
Argument:
- An iCloud beta site confirms that new iCloud features will affect iOS 6.
- Mail VIPs is already a feature in OS X Mountain Lion, and it’s much appreciated by users. It only makes sense to include it in iOS 6 Mail.
- iCloud Tabs have been integrated into OS X 10.8 Developer Preview 2 in March.
- Even with rumors of added display real-estate to the next-gen iPhone, horizontal resolution wouldn’t change. With most games played in landscape, the ability to disable not only badges but banners during play is even more needed.
Objection:
- All three features come by way of anonymous “trusted sources” at 9to5Mac, with no real concrete evidence behind them.
Judgment: It seems like these features only make sense in the new mobile OS. It’s all-but-announced that whatever’s happening with iCloud — and some new things are undoubtedly happening — will be a part of iOS 6. However, the specific features listed don’t have much solid proof to back them up. We could be entirely wrong. Perhaps the Notes and Reminders synchronization shown on the iCloud beta page are on the WWDC menu.
We’re keeping you up to date on everything you should expect from the all-but-announced features to wishlist items. Check out Matt’s rumor round-up on Apple’s Notebook announcements, as well as a forthcoming post on possible OS X features to look forward to. WWDC 2012 is set to be the biggest developer’s conference yet.
Learn moreiOS is Apple’s operating system for their mobile devices. It debuted in 2007 with the release of the first iPhone, but has since been extended for use with the iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. iOS’ user interface relies on users’ direct manipulation of the product screen with multi-touch gestures, including swipes, pinches, taps, and reverse pinches.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
In "The Spirit Level," Richard Wilkinson charts data that proves societies that are more equal are healthier, happier societies. Full bio »
Canada fits in the middle of the pack of countries presented here in this presentation. However under the Harper Regime we are being pushed further to the right towards the US. As Canadians we instinctively understand that what makes us strong is our belief that we should we have more income equality. We have to make it clear to the government that we dont want to be more like the US but rather more like Norway. We can't sit back particularly when the data is so clear that this path that Harper wants to take us down leads to a less healthy and happy society.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Amazing Dance Sequence
This guy has incredible control of his body and has mind blowing flexibility.
If Tetris was a (stupid, Battleship-style) movie - Boing Boing
Warialasky's trailer for a big-budg apocalyptic science fiction movie based on Tetris is all too plausible in the era of Battleship: the Movie: "Official Tetris Teaser Trailer. The invasion is beginning. It is inevitable. You created them, you can destroy them! I did not create Tetris, I was but the messenger. Tell me how to stop them. This is an extinction level event. No, don't go! Let her go!"
Sunday, May 13, 2012
My Wine/Spirit Tasting Afternoon with Friends
See the whole slide show at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzm75ZY
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Hey Google, take control of Android already, will ya? — Mobile Technology News
Hey Google, take control of Android already, will ya?
Friday, May 04, 2012
Twitter Says Farewell To Adam “MCA” Yauch | TechCrunch
Earlier today, GlobalGrind broke the news that Adam “MCA” Yauch, a founding member of New York’s pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, had died of cancer at the age of 47.
While the loss of Yauch will be felt for decades to come, the outpouring on Twitter shows just how big an impact the Beastie Boys and Yauch have had on social consciousness. Both Twitter’s global and local trends are currently dominated by tributes to the boys from Brooklyn.
He is survived by his wife and daughter.
RIP MCA.
H/T to Gizmodo for the image.
Priceonomics Raises $1.5 MM, Users Unfazed
Priceonomics Raises $1.5 MM, Users Unfazed
Priceonomics just raised $1.5 MM in seed funding. Raising seed capital isn’t a triumph by any measure, but we’re enormously grateful we get the opportunity to build something we love. We get to go on the journey to build the definitive price resource so that no one gets ripped off ever again.
We raised the money from SV Angel, Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, CrunchFund, Crosslink Capital, Y Combinator partners, Michael Ovitz, top angels like Joshua Schachter, and early Google engineers. TechCrunch has the full announcement here.
It’s a little awkward announcing our funding, because what’s the point really? None of our users noticed when the money hit our bank account. We decided this announcement could be useful for two audiences:
- Engineers who want to join our team, or
- Other entrepreneurs who could benefit from our observations from raising money for the first time (or at least find it interesting)
So, here we go - a quick note to engineers and then our experience raising money for the first time.
Quick Note to Engineers and Hackers: If the idea of algorithmically cataloging every washing machine ever made and then determining their fair market price appeals to you, join us! We are a happy clan that relentlessly structures data and makes information digestible.
We’re hiring! Email omar@priceonomics.com or check out our jobs page.
Onward, what we learned raising money
To entrepreneurs and startup voyeurs, here’s what we learned raising money for the first time. We’re trying not to present any advice, but instead just present some observations from our limited and idiosyncratic experience.
1. We tried to follow Y Combinator’s advice to minimize time fundraising and get back to work. Our goal was not to die from lack of funding or die from losing focus on the product. All $1.5 MM was committed within 10 days of YC demo day. Once we hit that number, we got back to work on the product. When we were fundraising, it was actually hard to work on the product.
2. Commitments are important, but money in the bank is better. Logistically, there are still a lot of steps from a verbal yes to money in the bank. One of our co-founders (Michael) was designated “the closer” to make sure the deals formally closed and he dominated that role.
3. The first money is important. It seems unlikely anyone will give you any money until someone actually gives you money. If we noticed any hack in raising money, it is get someone to give you money first. SV Angel was the first investor we talked to and they offered to invest and set the basic terms. They were enormously helpful and we’ll always remember how important they were for us.
4. Our legal bill was $0. We used the standard YC documents and the platform clerky.com to handle all the paperwork. We also leaned heavily on YC’s in-house lawyer, Jon Levy. Thank you Jon!
5. Even when you’re able to raise money from awesome investors, it still feels like you’re failing. For every Andreessen Horowitz that tells you they want to invest, 3 investors give you the cold shoulder that same day. We raised $1.5 million in 10 days and pretty much the whole time we didn’t feel very good.
6. Inbound leads close, outbound leads don’t. Almost all investors participating in our round round contacted us or requested an introduction to us. Conversely, when someone told us, “Oh, you have to meet Investor X”, Investor X typically didn’t seem that interested in meeting us unless it was their idea originally. If there’s a second hack in the process, it’s to generate inbound interest in your company (which is a difficult hack to figure out).
7. ~$500,000 of the capital we raised were from people who cold-emailed us at “info@priceonomics.com.” Check your company’s public-facing email address!
8. Very few investors tell you “no”. Overwhelmingly, they just never email you back, even after they were the ones initiating the conversation. If they do tell you no, their reasons are often weird or cryptic.
9. People who invested in our round told us yes very quickly. No one who stalled on deciding ever came back with a yes. Investors that were engineers decided particularly quickly. On the other end of the spectrum were VC funds (except the ones that invested in our round, we love you guys!).
10. Deadlines and scarcity helps close investors. One of the biggest benefits of YC Demo Day is you get to simultaneously talk to many different investors who know they could miss out on the deal if they don’t decide quickly. If the process of talking to investors was purely sequential, it seems like they’d all just want to be the last investor you talked to.
After we got funding, we went a little bit nuts with the expenses.
Finally, an enormous thank you to the partners and staff at Y Combinator. It’s impossible to overstate how hard they worked directly on our behalf and how earnest they are about doing the right thing for their companies. The program lets you spend nearly 100% of your time working on the product, and then at the end creates inbound interest from investors for your company. Among the reasons this works is because everyone at Y Combinator puts so much effort into pulling it off.
It’s hard to go through Y Combinator and not feel optimistic about the human race. It’s also hard to not feel like you have a lot of work to do.
So, that’s where we are. Back to work.
We are hiring engineers. Comment on this post on Hacker News.
This post was written by Rohin Dhar. Follow him on Twitter here. Get the latest from Priceonomics on Facebook or Twitter.
How Apple will become a mobile carrier — Apple News, Tips and Reviews
What’s next for Apple? Apple will provide wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers. First, Apple will sell data packages bundled with iPads. Then it will sell data and international roaming plans to iPhone customers through the iTunes Store. And in time — sooner than many think — Apple will strike wholesale deals with several mobile operators so that Apple can provide wireless service directly to its customers, as Apple Mobile.
Will domestic and global mobile operators like AT&T, Vodafone, Telefónica and others “play ball” with Apple? Many in the U.S. were surprised six years ago when AT&T capitulated to Apple’s terms to become the first carrier to offer the iPhone six years ago. Conventional wisdom is that the struggling operators compromises, not a leading operator like AT&T. But Apple makes everyone “think different.”
And in hindsight, the first iPhone deal was a brilliant strategy that has continued to pay huge dividends to AT&T. In the last quarter just reported, four out of five smartphones AT&T sold were iPhones.
Apple changed the formula of the relationship between operator and handset vendor, with Apple having more bargaining power than the operator for the first time in mobile history. And that’s the point.
Apple will make an offer carriers can’t refuse
Today, mobile operators would have a hard time saying “no” to the world’s largest and fastest growing company, which builds the devices everyone wants. Apple tends to have its way with operators. Any reluctance on the carrier’s part to offer Apple a sweetheart wholesale deal would be outweighed by the huge business opportunity presented. It’s a classic case of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.” The carrier’s biggest fear is that if it says “no”, the business and growth would go to a competing carrier and it would be kicked the curb.
It’s no secret that Apple has been thinking about this strategy for some time. Apple filed a patent for “Dynamic Carrier Selection” on October 10, 2006, just a few months before Apple announced the first iPhone. The diagram in the patent application portrayed Apple as the wireless service provider connecting to multiple carriers. This would allow Apple to make wholesale cellular agreements with and connect to multiple carriers so it could offer its customers choices in carriers, plans and services. Apple has clearly put a lot of thought into its dynamic carrier selection architecture. And lest anyone think Apple isn’t serious about this, last June Apple extended the filing in what many considered confirmation of its plans.
Adding further fuel to the fire, Apple recently has been fighting with other handset vendors, including Nokia, over a new, smaller-sized SIM card for GSM and LTE handsets. According to some, such a SIM would allow Apple to bypass carriers entirely, and activate a new customer through the iTunes Store. Whether it uses the NanoSIM, virtual SIM or other variant, Apple could have the ability to activate and sell voice, data, messaging and roaming subscription plans before the ink dries on a carrier wholesale agreement.
Apple has all of the pieces necessary to offer wireless service directly to customers. They have the world’s leading brand, a loyal following who will pay a premium for Apple’s products and services, and 363 retail stores around the world, growing to 400 by the end of the year. And with iTunes, it has the digital content and billing platform to offer service with one-click simplicity. The infrastructure is in place today, with the patented architecture ready for Apple’s next big move.
iPhone customers typically spend as much as twice or more the U.S. national average monthly wireless bill, which was about $44 in the last year. So these are high value customers. And they buy apps and content – music, videos, TV shows and movies – through Apple today. By offering mobile service with iPhones and iPads, the company could provide the full Apple experience to its users.
How likely is this to happen? Given the patent filing more than five years ago, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple is already talking to mobile operators, nor would I be surprised if the mobile operators initiated the conversation.
And what about Google?
Might Google offer mobile service directly to its customers, for the rumored Google Android Tablet or any Android smartphone? With Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, it, too, will be able to manufacture handsets to its own specifications. But it won’t be nearly as easy for Google to follow Apple’s likely path. While Google has a great brand — number two in the world and second only to Apple — it doesn’t have the retail stores, the experience with subscription services, and the customer care that Apple offers. Nor does it have the elegant ecosystem that enables single-click app and content purchasing that Apple has through its iTunes Store.
Whitey Bluestein, a 25-year telecom veteran, is a strategic advisor and corporate development specialist focused on prepaid, applications, payments and services. For more information, go to http://whiteybluestein.com
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Sunday, April 29, 2012
Apple’s inevitable path to a post-PC era — Apple News, Tips and Reviews
There is definitely some sort of Zen that makes Apple, well, Apple. Taking something obvious, and making it somehow better, somehow cooler, somehow new. How do they do it? By observing how consumers interact with technology and experimenting ad nauseum internally, until they get it exactly the way they want it. This includes abandoning the past if it no longer makes any sense. So when Apple’s own Tim Cook declares that merging a refrigerator and a toaster is not good for the consumer, he may just have a point.
But as forward-thinking as the company is, perhaps Apple hasn’t created a new path at all. Through a technique of observe, perfect and discard, Apple has been heading for some time now in one direction — along the pre-defined path into the era of ubiquitous computing.
Ubiquitous computing defined
In some ways, this path is as logical as Moore’s Law. Look at the history of computing — from the mainframe era where there was one computer for many consumers, to the personal computing era where there was one computer for each consumer, to this new era where there are many computers for each consumer – and compare of the number of computer chips to the number of consumers using those chips. At its foundation, ubiquitous computing could be summed up by this simple principle of ratios.
The modern concept of ubiquitous computing originally came from Mark Weiser in 1988 from the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC (sound familiar?). The theory proposed a seamless, almost invisible connection between consumers and computers that would help drive a change in ratios from one computer to many people, to many computers to one person.
Apple’s tabs, pads and boards
Even considering the most radical interpretation of ubiquitous computing dust, the main point has remained the same. We will soon be overrun by computer chips. There are, however, three very distinct platforms in this well-defined post-PC era that we have all become accustomed to. Not unlike the three platforms we see evolving within the iOS platform today:
Gesturing tabs: Mobile technology already had small chips, powerful batteries, geolocation services and wireless networking. But that was not enough to win over the masses and drive us all to purchase multiple computing devices. It was the way consumers interacted with these smaller devices that needed to change. For a long time, it was thought that voice recognition was going to propel us into the next era of computing, but that never happened.
Leveraging the fact that there were approximately 100 million iPod users, Apple was able to use convergence to its advantage as it introduced these iPod users to a series of simple touch-based gestures on a nearly buttonless device. In the early years of the iPod, we all were trained on the scroll wheel. With touch-based gestures on a wide open screen, this paradigm was taken one step further. Just as the mouse accompanied the transition from the terminal-based Mainframe Era to PC era, the post-PC era was ushered in by a new way of interacting with other computer chips, touch.
Revolutionary pads: As soon as people became familiar with this new way of interacting with computers, it was time to challenge the personal computer paradigm directly. Netbooks attempted to continue the personal relationship with consumers by maintaining the 1:1 ratio. Tablets such as the iPad are more specialized and were never meant to be a total replacement for a traditional and general purpose personal computer.
The rapid rise and immediate success of the iPad was proof positive that consumers were ready for a third major computing device in their lives. With “pads” being used by pilots, students and doctors and in restaurants, kitchens and at work, the iPad was proving to be a specialized place-based appliance rather than a personal computer with a more general purpose. As powerful as the third generation iPad is, it will never replace the personal computer, just as the personal computer never really replaced the mainframe.
Experimental boards: The current AppleTV may be a stretch to accept as a computing platform as it has no keyboard, no mouse, no touch display, and just a very simple IR remote. That is unless you happen to be near one with a Mac or iOS device. Then the AppleTV becomes an extension of that device on a much larger screen. Although it is marketed along side the iPod, it is just as closely related to the Airport Express. Perhaps Apple needs to look towards Nintendo’s Wii or Microsoft’s Kinect, otherwise the AppleTV will be doomed as just an accessory to their Tabs and Pads.
Take a look at what HBO has done with the XBox Kinect as an example. If Apple’s recently awarded gesture based patents are any indicator, this may be where it is headed as well. The interaction between consumer and computer chip has not been ironed out enough to fully see this final platform — the boards of ubiquitous computing — take hold of our day-to-day life.
One human relation-chip
Making each device “aware” of how consumers use all of the other devices they own is the key to accelerating the adoption of more than one computing device. While Apple may in fact be the only company in the world to have constructed a homogeneous synergy between its personal and its ubiquitous computing platform, it is certainly not the only company trying to forge the relationship between the user and the computer chip. For the relationship between consumers and computing devices to become truly invisible, these new smart devices will need to know more and more about the consumers who own them. For instance, the devices will need to know everything consumers have done in the past, what they are doing now and even what they plan on doing later.
Perhaps this is the reason Tim Cook stated that Apple’s “best years lie ahead of us.” With technologies like iCloud and Siri, Apple will likely play a larger and larger role in forging the relationship between consumers and the growing number of computing devices in our daily lives. It is not about selling more of these individual devices, it is all about enabling the relationship between an individual and a collection of specialized devices. And Apple knows this.
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Apple squared, (four)squared — Tech News and Analysis
I was down in Soho last week, visiting (of course) the new Manhattan REI store. After the shopping spree, I pulled out my iPhone and found a dinner recommendation on Explore: five of my friends had eaten at La Esquina, several of them more than once. Bingo. I go and get some (delicious and a tad pricy) tacos, and pay the check by giving my full name to the waiter, checking into Foursquare in the process, without ever pulling out my iPhone.
At least part of that story is real, and Apple can make the second part real very soon if they use their $110 billion pile of cash to acquire the two companies that will help them get control of the local point-of-sale market, everywhere. Yes, I am suggesting that Apple acquire both Foursquare (let’s say, at a $1 billion to $2 billion valuation) and Square (currently evaluated at $4 billion, more or less). Paying a premium on both, Apple could keep it at $10 billion between them.
And what does Apple get?
A complete take over — and a true overhaul — of the local point-of-sale market. How much is it worth? Nobody can tell for sure. To give some examples, according to IBISWorld the grocery store market alone is worth an estimated $491 billion annually and convenience stores are a $51 billion market (a subscription is needed to view these reports). As Jason Calacanis wrote recently, if iPhones accounted for one percent of restaurant sales, that would be $6 billion of the $604 billion spent in 2011.
Apple-Foursquare-Square could jumpstart Apple on its way to take over a major part of the transactions in these (and many other) industries. Let’s look at what all three companies get out of this:
Apple gets:
* An immediate presence in the POS market, including merchant relationships. And it will get a platform for local payments that connects to the 200 million strong credit card database the company already has.
* The holy grail of advertising: conversion information. Apple will gain the ability to track customers from search and (even better) iAds to a point-of-sale purchase. We can only imagine how much that’s worth (read: a good chunk of Google’s business).
* Superior local search. Foursquare Explore continues to get better, and it is inherently social — ages ahead of any local search that exists today. Explore has been consistently improving, even outside of such major markets as New York City. If your friends are on (and if they have an iPhone, they will be if after this move), no other service can give you better personalized information about local businesses.
* A development team that is social to the core. Apple has long been accused of lacking “social DNA.” The Foursquare folks could be the seed of social at Apple — even beyond the location sharing — just like Flickr was the seed of social at Yahoo (well, maybe not).
Foursquare gets:
* More checkins and better information. Checkins should be implicit for every single purchase made, creating an immediate personal history. And if you haven’t checked in yet, then there should be an option to “explicitly” check in (i.e. broadcast to friends) when you make a purchase. More data means better recommendations, and it also makes additional services possible, not to mention better user modeling for marketing purposes.
* Easier integration for loyalty, business deals and coupons. Benefits could be factored right into the payment.
* Hundreds of millions of additional users from pre-installed iPhone clients. Additionally, other applications will be able to work with logins and data using device-level integration (similar to Twitter’s integration into iOS).
Square gets:
* 200 million pre-installed devices with credit card details already attached through customers’ Apple Store accounts, i.e. zero client acquisition cost.
* Hundreds of millions of devices equals a great motivation for merchants to sign up.
To summarize: after the deal, Apple will immediately become a giant payments company, with an installation base that is expected to encompass half of all mobile devices sold. The company will have the best local search abilities, far exceeding any existing recommendation engine. And due to its enormous reach, it will possess a payment system that merchants will line up to support. Who’s betting against this holy trinity? Not me.
Mor Naaman (@informor) is an assistant professor at Rutgers University where he directs the Social Media Information Lab. He is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Mahaya.
Image courtesy of Flickr user miamism.
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Very interesting suggestion. Unfortunately it will not happen. Apple, is by nature, extremely conservative in its acquisitions. This would mark a huge turning point in its direction and would invite the scrutiny of the DOJ.
No, AirPlay Is Not The New Apple TV | TechCrunch
Editor’s note: David McIntosh is the founder and CEO of Redux, a fast-growing video discovery company. Redux is the top downloaded app on Google TV, and you can read David’s other guest posts here.
If you asked your mom or dad what DLNA or UPnP stood for or did, would they just look at you weird? While the two technologies enable users to wirelessly beam content to Internet Connected TVs from their tablets, phones, and computers, Apple’s AirPlay is the first implementation that makes the experience seamless. Tap the button again and playback resumes on your root device. No complicated setup is required – it simply works.
Some, like Bloomberg and Hunter Walk, have suggested that AirPlay is Apple TV, and that Apple will simply license AirPlay to the major Connected TV manufactures – and by default every Connected TV sold will be an “Apple TV” – the remote being your iPhone or iPad. It’s certainly a sensible theory – there are 250 M+ iOS devices, and with the upcoming OS X update, laptops can now leverage Airplay as well. That’s over 300M Apple devices that can push content to TVs.
Fragmentation is the reality
That level of integration would be a dream come true for many networks, studios, and cable companies looking to sell a “TV Everywhere” experience directly to users. Simply integrate with an iOS app, and with one tap consumers can watch content on hundreds of TV devices. Today it’s a big competitive advantage to be able to offer a consistent and incredible TV experience across hundreds of devices. Netflix built its early lead around that competitive advantage, and many networks, studios, and cable companies are looking to build technological solutions to combat fragmentation so that they can compete with Netflix. A content network or studio needs to be able to deliver a discovery and consumption experience better than Netflix’s across just as many devices — otherwise the consumer will turn to Netflix.
A ubiquitous AirPlay integration would level the playing field considerably, but is unlikely for several reasons:
(1) AirPlay adoption is not wide yet. There are less than 5M Apple TV units in the market, which means that today there are less than 5M users in the market that use Airplay for video.
And while Apple is heavily promoting AirPlay-video-enabled apps in the iTunes store, wide consumer adoption is unclear. Unfortunately, stats on Airplay usage aren’t widely available, but anecdotally – in my group of friends I’m the one evangelizing it – many Apple TV owners I meet don’t even realize AirPlay exists.
(2) Manufacturer adoption will be slow. Given that AirPlay does not have a critical mass of users, it’s hard to imagine how in the short-term Apple will convince any of the top five TV manufacturers to adopt AirPlay. Margins on TVs have been decreasing over time, and manufacturers are looking to integrate Connected TVs into an ecosystem of higher-margin tablets and phones. Integrating AirPlay,while it may sell more TVs (when Airplay has critical mass) will reduce sales of higher-margin tablets and phones they could have sold that exclusively interfaced with their TVs.
(3) A seamless experience is unlikely. It’s unlikely video AirPlay would be integrated consistently across all Connected TVs to create the same seamless experience consumers have with an Apple TV today. DLNA is a good example. It’’s an open protocol that in theory should accomplish what AirPlay does, except it’s implemented inconsistently across devices and often doesn’t work at all. Unless Apple has full control of the software layer, simply licensing out AirPlay would not achieve the desired experience.
Apple can overcome the issue of critical mass with enough of its own Apple TV units in the market. But at the pace of sales for its existing Apple TV, it will be years before AirPlay would have the usage to give Apple the clout to get integrations with other manufacturers. That’s why the rumors of an upcoming integrated Apple TV or upgraded device make sense. While AirPlay may be the long-term bet, in the short-term Apple needs a critical mass of users airplaying content to their TV. And AirPlay may be a central part of the rumored AppleTV. It wouldn’t be surprising if Apple uses their new device to train users how to use AirPlay. At that point, AirPlay could become a must-have for other TV manufacturers. As a TV manufacturer you would lose sales by not having it integrated.
But even with a critical mass of AirPlay users in the market, it’s still unclear whether Apple could convince many manufacturers to adopt AirPlay, or would even have success getting them to implement it the way it’s implemented in Apple TV. That’s why Apple owns the hardware and software layer; they can create experiences that would never be created by leaving third-party manufacturers to their own devices.
Winners in TV will have technological solutions to fragmentation
What’s more, a fragmented approach to DLNA and Connected TV has already developed. Just as the Android ecosystem is increasingly fragmented, while iOS is uniform, the Apple TV of the future will be nicely unified with other iOS devices through AirPlay, whereas other Connected TVs will have fragmented platforms with fragmented DLNA protocols.
That means that succeeding in the fast-growing Connected TV ecosystem will require a killer approach to fragmentation. Leading cable companies, and networks looking to sell directly to consumers will have to sit on top of iOS’s uniform AirPlay platform, as well as a highly fragmented Connected TV and DLNA platform to reach meaningful scale.
There’s also the issue of whether or not Apple can strike a deal with Hollywood and other content creators but that’s a story for some other time.
I don't necessarily agree with David's assertion that TV manufacturers won't integrate Airplay into their sets. Many of the top audio gear has already done it so I don't see why TV manufacturers wouldn't (except that many of them are trying, with very little success, to build their own ecosystem with apps). As far as consistent support, Apple has traditionally been very good at enforcing good implementations if the manufacturer is to state that their device is 'AirPlay' enabled. I think this would be a smart route to go but I think the TV manufacturers are reluctant only because they would be ceding the entire app market to Apple by doing so.
The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That's Changing the Rules of Business | Epicenter
.ab_strike { color: #000000; font-size: 1.3em; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 5px; text-decoration: line-through; }
Illustration: Si Scott
You have to make choices.
Choose everything.
The online payment platform WePay designed its entire homepage through a testing process. “We did it as a contest,” CEO Bill Clerico says. “A few of our engineers built different homepages, and we just put them in rotation.” For two months, every user that came to WePay.com was randomly assigned a homepage, and at the end the numbers made the decision.
In the past, that exercise would have been impossible—and because it was impossible, the design would have emerged in a completely different way. Someone in the company, perhaps Clerico himself, would have wound up choosing a design. But with A/B testing, WePay didn’t have to make a decision. After all, if you can test everything, then simply choose all of the above and let the customers sort it out.
For that same reason, A/B increasingly makes meetings irrelevant. Where editors at a news site, for example, might have sat around a table for 15 minutes trying to decide on the best phrasing for an important headline, they can simply run all the proposed headlines and let the testing decide. Consensus, even democracy, has been replaced by pluralism—resolved by data.
The mantra of “choose everything” also becomes a way for companies to test out relationships with other companies—and in so doing becomes a powerful way for them to win new business and take on larger rivals. In 2011 a fund-raising site called GoFundMe was talking with WePay about the possibility of switching to its service from payment giant PayPal. GoFundMe CEO Brad Damphousse was open about his dissatisfaction with PayPal’s service; WePay responded, as startups usually do, by claiming that its product solved all the problems that plagued its larger competitor. “Of course we were skeptical and didn’t really believe them,” Damphousse recalls with a laugh.
But using A/B, WePay could present Damphousse with an irresistible proposition: Give us 10 percent of your traffic and test the results against PayPal in real time. It was an almost entirely risk-free way for the startup to prove itself, and it paid off. After Damphousse saw the data on the first morning, he switched half his traffic by the afternoon—and all of it by the next day.
Photo: Spencer Higgins
The person at the top makes the call.
Data makes the call.
Google insiders, and A/B enthusiasts more generally, have a derisive term to describe a decisionmaking system that fails to put data at its heart: HiPPO—”highest-paid person’s opinion.” As Google analytics expert Avinash Kaushik declares, “Most websites suck because HiPPOs create them.”
Tech circles are rife with stories of the clueless boss who almost killed a project because of a “mere opinion.” In Amazon’s early days, developer Greg Linden came up with the idea of giving personalized “impulse buy” recommendations to customers as they checked out, based on what was in their shopping cart. He made a demo for the new feature but was shot down. Linden bristled at the thought that the idea might not even be tested. “I was told I was forbidden to work on this any further. It should have stopped there.”
Instead Linden worked up an A/B test. It showed that Amazon stood to gain so much revenue from the feature that all arguments against it were instantly rendered null by the data. “I do know that in some organizations, challenging an SVP would be a fatal mistake, right or wrong,” Linden wrote in a blog post on the subject. But once he’d done an objective test, putting the idea in front of real customers, the higher-ups had to bend. Amazon’s culture wouldn’t allow otherwise.
Siroker recalls similar shifts during his time with the Obama campaign. “It started as a pretty political environment—where, as you can imagine, HiPPO syndrome reigned supreme. And I think over time people started to see the value in taking a step back and saying, ‘Well, here’s three things we should try. Let’s run an experiment and see what works. We don’t know.’”
This was the culture that he had come from at Google, what you might call a democracy of data. “Very early in Google’s inception,” Siroker explains, “if an engineer had an idea and had the data to back it up, it didn’t matter that they weren’t the VP of some business unit. They could make a case. And that’s the culture that Google believed in from the beginning.” Once adopted, that approach will beat the HiPPOs every time, he says. “A/B will empower a whole class of businesses to say, ‘We want to do it the way Google does it. We want to do it the way Amazon does it.’”
Says WePay’s Bill Clerico: “On Facebook, under the heading of Religious Views, my profile says: ‘In God we trust. All others, bring data.’”
Saturday, April 28, 2012
A father's lament: The real world is not a game | Internet & Media - CNET News
There was something about the Mama Bear family tech conference a week ago that creeped me out. I am the father of a 5-year-old boy, and perhaps a third of the people at this conference were trying to build apps for him. All the apps were well-intentioned. All were, at some level, educational.
Still, all the apps felt wrong to me. I wanted my son to have nothing to do with any of them.
I've been trying to understand why these educational apps were getting under my skin to this extent. It's not like I'm anti-technology when it comes to my child. He plays Angry Birds. We watch TV (together). He's a child of technology; how could he live in my house and not be?
A psychiatrist friend, listening to me rant about how these apps are trying to wilt my son's brain, sympathized, but not completely. Yes, he said, computer games can be addictive. In fact, in his opinion, teaching kids to expect the world to work like a computer game deprives them of learning real-world life skills.
But, he said, a truly good educational app can be effective like a book, or a teacher. You can't stick everything that pops up on a kid's iPad into the "evil" category.
So where are the really good apps?
The Vinci Tab II is an Android tablet preloaded with educational software for kids up to 5 years old.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)A few days ago, I handed my son a Vinci tablet to try out. This is another well-intentioned product for young children. It comes with pre-installed educational games carefully geared to kids up to about my son's age (actually he's a little old for it, but I occasionally make him earn his keep as a product reviewer).
I had the same feeling of foreboding about this product as I did about many children's apps I see. The Vinci reinforced this, unfortunately. While the game did in fact have educational payloads, the mechanics were, for the most part, dumb. How does pressing a button at exactly the right time to jump over a beach ball on-screen teach anything but how to operate a game, no matter what the game says it's supposed to be about?
The boy liked the tablet and its apps. But it's how he liked them that bothered me. The software sucked him in, and whatever lessons it tried to teach him were obstacles that seemed about as interesting as the flatly drawn beach balls. The real red flag came when I told my boy it was time to put the tablet down. He was so dialed in to the game mechanics that he panicked. He wasn't in learning mode, he was in addiction mode.
Did he retain the factoids and basic math and spelling skills he learned while playing? I think so. But I don't want him learning this way.
There is hope, though.
On the DIY app, kids snap pictures of their projects. On the Web site, shown, family and friends can award badges.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Yesterday, I read about the launch of DIY, a site and app for kids that's supposed to be a social destination for them to share their creative projects. They upload photos of stuff they've designed, built, written, or drawn, and then their friends and family members can award them badges.
Something about this site appealed to me as a father. Why was it better than all the learning games, with their impressive educational pedigrees? I couldn't put my finger on it. So I called up DIY's CEO, Zach Klein (formerly of Vimeo). Klein isn't a father himself, but he understands the child's mind. In a few words he crystalized for me what I find distasteful about most kids' programming.
"They are gravity-fed," he says. "There's a path of least resistance to get to the next screen." The player's job is to find that path, he says. Games like this "infantilize children."
The real world doesn't work like this. There are no shortcuts in life. You don't get a big reward for each tiny action. Real rewards take real work.
Related stories
DIY, he says, "gives children more responsibility than they are used to, not less." And the rewards aren't programmed. They come from peers and family. "We want kids to feel satisfaction, but we're suggesting it will take time and craft and love to earn it."
DIY is in a very early stage, and is too basic at the moment. In the interest of protecting kids, there's no personal information anywhere on the system; kids' identities are masked behind handles, and if a family member awards a kid a sticker, the kid can't see who it came from. But the thinking of DIY is right, at least to me: Encourage kids to engage with the real world. Use social-networking mechanics to reinforce it.
I loaded the DIY app on to my old iPhone 3G. I plan to let my boy use the app on this device without supervision. It's the first app I've seen that passes that test for me. I'm not sure he'll use it, but I bet he will. And I like it, because it's an accessory to his physical world, not a replacement for it.
This is an excellent article if you are interested in educational games for your kids. The best line is the description of most games:
"They are gravity-fed," he says. "There's a path of least resistance to get to the next screen." The player's job is to find that path, he says. Games like this "infantilize children."
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Decline Of Android Foretells The Rise Of A Total Apple Monopoly | TechCrunch
I own an Android phone right now as well and completely concur with Matt's assertions around Android.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Art of the Pivot
Very interesting article, with examples, of companies that have successfully pivoted from their original business model. It would be just as interesting to hear of pivots that didn't succeed but alas that would probably not get the same amount of click-throughs:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/the-art-of-the-pivot.html
Take Charge Product Management © | Advancing the Profession of Product Management ™
The project manager / product manager relationship
Sure we know that effective collaboration leads to improved outcomes and more effective teamwork. But what specific functional collaborations are key in triggering creativity, problem solving, fostering further team communication, and ultimately improving project outcomes? Just putting everyone together in a room at project inception doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.
From my experience, the most successful product development projects were those that had the product manager and project manger tightly coupled from the very beginning. Spending more time developing this relationship from the onset will pay dividends and increase the likelihood of project success.
If we can agree that the goal of a product development project is to create, develop, and deliver a product to the market, maximizing its value – the customer benefit and experience – while ensuring the return on investment (ROI). Then, nothing ensures maximizing ROI more than getting the definition correct at the onset of a project. Knowing where you’re going and how to get there, at the beginning of the life cycle, eliminates waste by avoiding unnecessary course corrections throughout a project.
Leveraging the expertise of project managers at the earliest phases of a project helps to get this definition correct by bringing their best practices and lessons learned to the table at a critical juncture – the start of the project. Engaging project managers early has additional benefits: (1) Project ownership is now ingrained into its leaders because they have helped shape the execution approach; (2) By working together to form the overall project definition in the beginning of its life cycle, the foundation of a team dynamic is put in place that spills over into the rest of the project organization as it is put together.
Product managers and project managers can strengthen this relationship by understanding three fundamental concepts from the beginning of every project:
- The product development and project life cycles are deeply intertwined
- The product’s production process needs to be collaboratively defined with clarification of the major deliverables and resources required to get the job done
- Shared incentives, performance objectives, and success criteria establish common ground for the entire team
Each one of these three concepts warrants its own discussion so I’m going to treat each one of these as separate blog postings. This should allow for more focused commentary allowing the concepts to be completely hashed out.
