TechDistortion

Hooked On The 'One More Thing...'

The iPhone 5 was revealed by Apple this week. The reaction around the world has been mixed with words like “underwhelming”, “unimpressive” and “predictable” emblazoned amongst headlines with the occasional “evolutionary” if they were feeling kind. Myself I felt a bit underwhelmed but still impressed by the technological feat of engineering required - but then no more amazed by Apple for creating that technology than I also am by Samsung for creating the Galaxy SIII hardware.

There appears to be a contingent of people around the world that believe that Steve Jobs and Apples secrecy were the primary reasons for the success of Apple. People that were won over by his showmanship, the so-called ‘reality distortion field’ and the surprise revelations at Apple events became ‘iSheep’ that would simply buy anything that Apple put its name on. As a thought experiment, put Steve Jobs as the CEO of another company, let’s say HTC, but  keep the same products just with a different CEO and different product presentations. Same enthusiasm, same reality distortion field: would sales improve? I’m not convinced that they would. If enough people bought HTCs products under Steve Jobs, eventually the word would spread that the devices did not perform as well as they’d hoped. Inevitably the quality of the product would decide its own fate. The concept of a free market: let the market decide would still hold.

There is no doubt that Steve Jobs brought momentum to product launches. But all momentum will be lost unless the product is actually good. An Apple without Steve then, it just as likely to succeed as one without - in the long term.

Then what of secrecy? The age-old problem of matching product features by competitors will never go away in a free market. Hence any time Apple can gain over the competition is critical. That said, regarding the iPhone - is secrecy still relevant? In many respects, Android and competitors hardware exceeded the iPhone a year or two ago in terms of raw power, size and weight: not to mention cost. If we rewind to pre-iPhone, there were many players in the market that believed Apple was making a Phone, but none had any idea what it would look like and how it would work (or if it would work out for Apple for that matter). Apple surprised them all, and Palm, RIM, Google, Microsoft, Nokia (the list goes on) all changed direction shortly after this occurred. The market is rebalancing. The innovations became more incremental. The secrecy has become, for this product at least, less important.

The end result is that there is no more ‘big surprise’ from Apple regarding the iPhone. No “One More Thing…” as Steve Jobs introduced many new products including the Macbook Air and (iTV) Apple TV. Whilst the iPhone was not technically an OMT moment, the point is rather that it came out of left field (as they say in American baseball). That surprise is what mattered more to Apple. With the iPhone 5 there was no surprise: the entire product had been leaked prior to the event. Was it beautiful? Yes. Was it faster, lighter, thinner? Yes, yes and yes. What is a surprise? No.

Why the disappointment? Because we have all become hooked on “One More Thing.” The desire for Apple to pull something truly amazing out of the hat that no-one saw coming. Or if they did see it coming, they had no idea what it would look like, or how it would work.

The only product Apple is currently rumoured to be working on in this category is the true Apple Television (as opposed to a separate box that connects to a TV). When will it be the next big thing? When it does, or Apple’s next big thing truly arrives the focus will shift again - away from the iPhone and iPad. The iPhone has already become a mature product - like the iPod before it. It has broken all of the significant new ground that it can break. It is incremental improvement from here - like the iPod before it. Apple started the revolution, but is now just another player (a big and key one certainly).

None of this means that Apple is on the ropes or that Apple is ready for a fall or a slide. Apple will continue to make great products.

Apples biggest problem is the bar it has set for itself. Consumers have come to expect the next OMT. The next breakthrough. The continued success of Apple rests on their new devices. If they fail to deliver then the faith may be lost. In effect the only thing that can cause Apple to fail now, is for it to disappoint the market by not delivering the next One More Thing. The market has become hooked on it, like a drug and like a drug addict if the next hit isn’t provided in enough time withdrawal will begin. The iPhone 5 introduction was not the beginning of the withdrawal, but it is not far away. They need a One More Thing moment and they need it soon.

It's Easy To Imitate

What has been referred to as the Tech Trial of the decade, Samsung and Apple had sued each other for patent infringement and the court and a jury were tasked with determining whether or not Apples Trade Dress had been copied by Samsung. The trial was kept very short and as a result the verdict is in: Samsung were judged by the jury as having infringed and they should pay upwards of $1B USD in penalties.

It’s a landmark result and sends a clear message to the technology industry at large: you need to differentiate your products more or you may suffer the same fate. There is no doubt in my mind that Samsung have many talented engineers and programmers and together they have created some excellent products. The same is true of Nokia, Motorola, HTC and so on. Most people that have used a Samsung smartphone recently can not deny the similarities with iOS and Apple’s products. These similarities go beyond their Android OS basis but specifically TouchWiz - which is Samsungs layer on top of Android.

The fundamental argument that Samsung did nothing wrong seems to be based on the idea that copying can form part of new product development and there are only so many ways for a touch-based device to work. The point is that Apple spent years and millions of dollars developing their product and whilst it isn’t perfect, contains many highly tuned design concepts that Samsung then copied for little such time investment.

What Apple is said to have done wrong is stifled competition and used litigation rather than create new products. How is this true if other competitors are still successful in the mobile space that haven’t infringed Apples Trade Dress?

Another point to be made is that the public at large is more familiar with Apple than they are Samsung - brand recognition surveys have shown this many times in the last two years. They represent success and the underdog comeback in America - at least for the moment. No jury could or would be able to be completely objective about Apples stance. In the end it was going to be difficult for a jury to be fair in assessing this case - fair to Samsung that is.

So where does that leave us? There was enough mud in the waters to have made the result less clear-cut that is certain. Were Apple and Samsungs brand popularities in the common market reversed would the result have been different? I would say yes. Did Samsung deserve to be punished? Again, I would say yes. Did they deserve such a big fine? That is hard to tell.

Whether parallel timelines and universes exist or not, it is currently impossible to know what would have happened to Samsungs success (or not) with their devices if they used an alternative platform like Windows Phone 7. Given that, how can anyone be sure how much their actions impacted Apples success? Also, just how many people chose Samsung phones because they were cheaper, pushed by carriers or bought in 2 for 1 deals and don’t care how it looks or works, rather than “it’s just like an iPhone and that’s why I bought it” that Apple would have us believe? Again, how can this be determined?

One thing is for certain, technology companies have never been more motivated not to step on each others patents. If Apple takes this win and pushes for more blood with other companies, my opinion of them will drop and it will probably hurt their image in the consumer market. The judgement should be a warning. Samsung should pay, remove the offending material, and everyone should move on and continue to innovate on their own terms.

Success of a Social Media Platform

MySpace came and has in most respects, moved into obscurity. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ have all entered the field, with Facebook claiming nearing 900 Million users, Twitter is estimated to be around the 300 Million users, and Google+ is debated to be anywhere between 60 Million and 200 Million.

The figures themselves don’t convey much meaningful information unless of course your only metric is quantity of users. In the end, all of these platforms are driven by advertising, so surely the metric of Active users is more meaningful. Even active users could be split by time spent using their social media platform of choice daily. For example perhaps Facebook has 50M users that spend 1 or more hours on Facebook every day - purely speculative numbers: those figures do exist but aren’t publicised for obvious competitive reasons.

With Facebooks IPO sky-rocketting and then plummeting shortly thereafter, and as the previously Venture-Capitalise funded Twitter runs out of cash and moves towards a sustainable business model that incorporates advertising, the question that comes to mind for me is what truly defines success of a social media platform? Let’s start with the simplest motivator: money.

For Facebook and Twitter to earn money it’s about drawing more people into the platform by offering integrated news, special interest groups, calendars, email, messaging; anything to keep people on their site - that drives the advertising they need to survive. Getting more users is a good thing, but only if they are active users spending wholesale time on their site.

Google is in a different place. With years of GMail and Google Apps behind them they already had a user base to tap into with Google+. Anecdotally Google+ is somewhat of a ghost town however Google doesn’t require much income from Google+ as they earn their money primarily through search and integrating Google+ with their existing ecosystem and newer additions like Google Drive, achieve wins on multiple fronts for them in terms of peoples attention.

Finally an even newer kid arrives on the block: App.net. Their goal: to be 100% funded from users alone. The price of entry: $50/year for which you get access to (currently) a primitive private Twitter system. With no advertising to speak of and no VC money to run on for any period of time, their sole aim is to make their users happy. It sounds like an honourable goal but in a world where individuals are happy to pay for material objects they can see, feel and touch, but software services and the internet have ‘always been free’ makes such a concept hard to swallow for many people.

Thinking about their pressures a bit more the idea has a great deal of merit - no pressure to ‘keep eyeballs’ on their site; no existing infrastructure means no legacies to hold them back. The flipside is that user pressure will be extreme. Unlike on ‘free’ platforms where if users don’t like something the platform company will say, ‘Well, it’s not like you’re paying for this…so stiff…’ and in the case of App.net such an answer fails as the sixth word. This will inevitably create much higher end-user expectations and will make balancing specific user group requests very difficult indeed. If you don’t satisfy your customers then it’s all over.

Beyond the money, which is the rather obvious prime motivator for all businesses, what defines true success of a social media platform? Facebook is used by many people as a place to post/read what other personal friends/acquaintances are up to, whereas Twitter is more about seeing what other people you don’t personally know are up to. Some people use both platforms as methods of keeping up to date with current happenings and news/events and others as a basic communications medium for messaging.

However it is used the answer to success is: when I need to contact person X, or when I want to know what person Y is doing, I will check platform Z. To win this game, it inevitably comes down to numbers. Without a significant number of the people you are interested in keeping tabs on, or who are interested in keeping tabs on you, actively using a platform, that social media platform will not succeed. If there are 200 people I want to follow on Twitter, and only 10 on App.net - the choice is Twitter without much thought.

Reaching a critical mass of active users is key. Keeping that critical mass is just as important. Both Twitter and Facebook appear to have reached and passed their own niche critical masses. Google+ arguably hasn’t, and App.net quite possibly never will. For it to succeed enough people must exclusively use it over both Twitter and Facebook and Google+ to make signing up for membership worthwhile. With the draw of their current user-bases so strong this will take a long time and if Twitter/Facebook/Google+ don’t faulter then perhaps they will never get the chance.

So long as Twitter/Facebook don’t become too annoying and erode their critical masses, App.net will not stand much of a chance of succeeding. Any price of entry of greater than $0/year is too high for most people that simply don’t care about the advertising, the on-selling of private information, or the inserting of sponsored messages into their timelines. Geeks of the world rejoice: you may now pay to join your own exclusive Twitter club. Unless one of the three lead horses in this race faulters, you will be talking amongst yourselves, happily I’m sure, for a long, long time.

Competing Objectives - No One Device Can Win

There is no one device that can do everything. All engineering is about balance and choosing the right trade-offs. The more generic a device is, the less it is specifically useful for the task at hand. When creating a new device it’s critical to understand what purpose it is intended for, and choose your compromises carefully.

Since mainframe computers it was the dream to take computers portable. Eventually the laptop was created when people desired a portable computer to take with them wherever they needed to go. All of the benefits of portability immediately demanded a smaller screen size. Also without a power point (aka power strip) to connect to you needed to include batteries. Unfortunately those batteries went flat very quickly if you used desktop components, so they came up with lower-power CPUs, hard drives, smaller fans and so on. Unfortunately to get their power consumption down they had to slow things down so laptops became slower and less powerful than their desktop counterparts. Unfortunately even then they had to cut the weight of the portable down even further because it was too heavy to carry around easily.

If we choose portability over power there must be some sacrifices. The pinnacle of portability in the industry today, judged by its popularity, is the Apple MacBook Air. It’s thin, light and whilst it is not as powerful as desktops there is very little further it can go in terms of weight, thickness and battery performance. Certainly they will improve but so too will the desktops and the laptop will remain forever behind the desktop in terms of raw power.

The two key players in the industry: Apple and Microsoft, have chosen two different paths with respect to their software on desktops and laptops. Microsoft expounds Windows Everywhere, such that the interface does not change in any way for laptop devices over desktop (they have multiple versions of Windows but these do not change the user interface methodology). In the past few years Apple have chosen a more tailored approach by introducing full screen modes and multi-touch trackpad gestures for laptops (neither of which are as useful on a desktop where the larger screen area allows multiple larger windows and where a mouse offers more speed and precision than a trackpad). The same operating system for desktops is used for laptops but with tweaks that acknowledge the limitations of the smaller screen size of a laptop and provide a more tailored experience for laptops not just in hardware but software as well.

The “new” devices in the computing space are the tablet and the smartphone. (By new perhaps I should say recently popular entrants to the personal computer space - both smartphones and tablets have existed for over a decade) Again there are two approaches by the leaders in the industry (Google is not a leader in the desktop space and Android only has a reasonable presence in the mobile space). Apple tailored their operating system to be touch only without a stylus and a totally different set of rules for navigation that do not require a mouse. Microsoft again says Windows Everywhere and says that Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 will share the “Metro” interface first developed for the Zune, then Windows Phone 7 and this will apply to desktops, laptops, tablets and mice with only selected tablets, all laptops and desktops able to run the more classic Windows 7 interface. (Metro has evolved considerably in that time but the issue is their common use of the same interface across multiple hardware platforms).

Apples iPad and iPhone have sold very well and there are many theories as to why. In the end the software has been tailored specifically for a touch interface and accounts for the hardware limitations (no Virtual Machine layer, small amounts of RAM, low powered CPUs, use of hardware acceleration and hence restrictions of permitted software decoders). In trying to compete Microsoft has created a compromised experience for some users. In so doing they are guaranteeing that one of their fronts will falter: given Metro is designed for touch one would think that the desktop experience will suffer. Perhaps this is okay given that tablets are beginning to sell in volumes comparable to PCs in the consumer space. Perhaps soon tablet sales will exceed desktop sales. Then again, why compromise in the first place if you already have a successful desktop operating system?

Some may argue that Microsoft are hedging their bets by providing their classic Windows 7 interface if required on some devices. If they truly believe that Metro is the future they clearly lack enough conviction to put their interface where their customers face is. Catering for legacy has hamstrung Microsoft in the past and at the moment where they could choose to break free and think different, they fall back to their old mantra and something that could have been greater is now diminished.

Apple chose to have different user interfaces on its products and still succeeded - so too could their competition. Microsoft however are pushing one interface for everything and with four different device classes it’s clear that one or more devices will be disadvantaged by Windows 8. With these sorts of competing objectives, it’s clear that no one hardware device can win, nor can one software interface over different hardware devices win on all fronts either.