Image by ohskylab via Flickr

I think we can happily say that Apple has with some success turned the failing tablet market into a viable industry with its iPhone, iPad and iOS platform.  Even though they were not the first, or maybe even the best, in the end Apple did take the tablet device into the mainstream.  Apple turned a touch device into reality on both the phone communications scale and arguably the personal computing level.

So if we take the notion that the tablet device was one of those things that us computer geeks wanted to see as reality, because it was in the books and movies we like, not because there was any real practical application.  Then we need to ask ourselves, what is the next fantasy device we want Apple to turn into a consumer device?

Well here’s hoping that Voice Control is next, and according to The Next Web it may be …. Read more here.

Jason

…if it isn’t broken, I say “Break it”…”BREAK IT!”

Image via Wikipedia

I have discussed this in a recent post about the importance of mobile phone wireless carriers in the real world.  As people interested and immersed in the tech world, sometime we forget that all these cool devices, technologies and services need to be connected to work.  If you then want the full experience, that connection needs to be there when you need it, and reliable as well.

In the last post, I mentioned how the choice of carrier is really more important than your choice of device.  This can be more so the case in the world of smartphones where most of the experience is reliant on being online.  Remember, though, that another use for the mobile phone device is also to make calls.  Many of us here in Oz picked up mobile phones more so for safety and communication while traveling from home.  But the gist was that people complain about their device, when the problem is really their choice of carrier.

On Saturday the 12th I was doing just that.  I was taking my two young girls to the in-laws, some 4 hours from home, when on a dark and rural road I was second on the scene at a single truck accident. I arrived at a scene my years of computer games, movies, and imagination hadn't really prepared me for.  The driver had dozed off and come off the road, and came to a sudden stop at the base of some established trees on the side of the road.

I slowly drove past the inferno that was once the cab and trailer of the truck and I think I swore, even in front of my girls.  It was so alight that I stopped thinking of survivors, and focused back on getting to safe distance from the possibility of exploding fuel tanks.  The accident can’t have been more than minutes old, but the fire was so fierce that I could only hope the driver had died on impact.

Once past, I saw a woman on the road by her car.  I pulled up in front of her car and got out and heard her yelling she had no signal.  We were kind of in the middle of nowhere, but only about 20 minutes from a major town.  My first thought as I pulled out my iPhone 3GS was that if she had no signal, then what hope did I have?  Well I tried “000” anyway and  I got through, on a couple bars of signal. 

At the time of making the call, I didn’t know that the husband of the woman had actually dragged the driver clear of the cab before I had got there, and that when asked by the operator “Fire, Police, or Ambulance?” my weak reply of “better send all three”, was going to matter.  For the husband’s quick actions, and (if you could have seen the fire that greeted me) bravery, and getting through to get the ambulance quickly, saved the drivers life.

I can’t really say how long I was at the scene but it was punctuated with lots of exploding fuel tanks.  Once the Police and ambulance arrived, I gave my details and left so I wouldn’t be in the way.  The interesting thing was that while I was on the phone and during the time while we waited for help, a number of cars pulled up to the scene.  I was the only one with signal, my carrier was Telstra.

I grew up on the land so maybe my choice of a carrier with better coverage was just a natural one.  But it did surprise me a little that even those who lived in the area had gone with carriers whose coverage is lacking where they live.  This is not a Ad for Telstra as I could fill many posts about their faults, but a call to common sense.  If you want the service, choose your carrier before your device.  My iPhone beat up better phones because I had a bar of service, and they didn’t.  I could use Google Maps to find my location and the nearest crossroad and call for help.

Anyway, I’m proud to share the same first name with Jason, who did something that I can only hope I would have the courage to do if I had been first.  If we catch up, drinks on me.

Jason Remnant

...if it is Broken, sometime all you can do is sit back and enjoy the fuel tanks exploding.

Image via CrunchBase

I was in the chemist yesterday, waiting as you do, checking e-mail and Twitter when I got the “Hey, is that an Apple iPhone?”.  I was a little taken aback as it is 2011, and even here in Bendigo the iPhone is a common sight.  But no, this wasn’t “Hey is that an iPhone?” question directed to early adopters, but a lead in to a “I used to have one of those but sent it back” stories.

The crux of the story was that he had reception issues with the iPhone.  “They have reception problems don’t they?” was his next question.  I informed him that they don’t, and I haven't had any issues with the 3G, and current 3GS.  He then asked who my carrier was and mystery  was solved, he was with a carrier whose coverage of the area is bad.  So bad that he needs to use a 9dB antenna on a broadband wireless card for his computer.

So it was the carrier to blame, not the iPhone.  We can’t even blame Apple’s choice of carrier as the iPhone is available here in Australia on all the major carriers.  I just don’t get the mentality of some people.  Maybe it is the negative press, maybe the tall poppy syndrome, or maybe expectations, but some technology and the consumer don’t mix.  Purely because the consumer don’t want to understand.  On a recent TV current affairs show with the headline of “Apple’s new iPhone 4 has screen cracking issues” (while showing a 3GS in the promo), a young girl announced that the screen cracked on her 3GS and she only dropped it three times.

Luckily after parading a bunch of unhappy consumers who had had their iPhones crack from being allowed to roll around in their bags, dropped, and so on, one voice of reason says (referring to iPhone 4) “It is made of glass, what do you expect? Put a case on it”, Amen.

Whereas I don’t believe there are any issues with the iPhone’s reception here in Oz, no more than any other Smartphone, reception has been a big issues for Apple in the US.  This issue has a lot to do with the iPhone only being available on one carrier, AT&T.  Also it seems to be an issue in the major city’s with the highest iPhone per user ratio. 

All this is about to be tested as Verizon gets a shot at hosting an iPhone product.  (Actually it won't, as AT&T and Verizon have very different networks - AT&T are GSM, and Verizon will have a CDMA version).  But what it will do is put the iPhone into Verizon’s high Android market, and the challenge here will be how much of that market Apple can grab.

Despite all the flexibility issues leveled at the iPhone, the reality is that Android has its own issues with platform fragmentation and issues with OS updating.  Can Apple exploit Android’s problems by offering Verizon customers a choice? Or will they need to offer a better device?

Whatever the reason, the decision to move into multi-networks might just be what Apple needs to get their market share back, and prove that openness will take you so far.  Not that I think that is a good thing.  Competition is important in all markets, even the one-sided ones.  Android though, has a bit than just market share to worry about.  If the Android is just going to be the Smartphone OS for the Geeks, then it isn’t going to be competition.  Sometimes free ain't better.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn’t Broken, then you will probably need to pay for it.

Image via Wikipedia

Broken Points:

• Geeks are not the best judges of the future
• Future will happen with or without us
• Those who are winning are willing to be ahead of the curve, but support the legacy

The subject of personal computing becoming accessible to the masses is one that we IT geeks both understand as the future, but pray (to anyone who will listen) will never happen.  This realisation hit me today during a discussion with a couple of IT practitioners about the emergence of the mobile tablet platform (iOs & Android) as a mature content producing platform. This discussion concluded with them telling me that Nokia is the best smartphone platform.  They also told me that business was bad, read into that what you will.....

Today’s discussion was a weird one as it started with one of guys showing me a Pioneer Dreambook, a pretty cool looking Windows 7 tablet.  It was the 3rd Win 7 tablet I had seen today, and I pointed out the one thing that always annoys me about Windows tablets, and that is the touch interface accuracy.  This provoked some discussion and because I had been reading a few articles like Smartcompany’s “The 20 best iPad apps for entrepreneurs”, I tried to bring the discussion around to the maturity of the mobile platform, and how it could be cannibalising the retail computing market they live and work in.

The interesting thing about the next few minutes was the fervency in which, despite holding a tablet device in their midst, they attacked the notion that the platform had any real practical relevance.  Being me, I kept pushing, but it was apparent that they were going to defend their desktop and laptop business to the end, and for their sakes I hope that they are right for a little while longer.  But I couldn't help seeing them as steam train drivers.

As they attacked every detail of my argument, I realised that they didn’t really understand what I meant.  Not talking on an intellectual level, as they would kick my butt in any meeting of the minds (for example one thinks that the online game EVE is a lite RPG).  But the idea that the evolution of the computer they know and love was bringing them, and the masses, the device that we saw on Star Trek.  A small, light, and connected device with the versatility of a desktop computer.

The problem with the smart geeks is that they can see too many details at the beginning, and seem unable to get past said details.  I wonder if it was the same for the Steam train geeks when the transition was made to electric or diesel? Did they argue tooth and nail for the purity of steam over the inevitable future?

As I said, today I saw a number of tablets in the wild.  And when I say wild I mean Echuca, Victoria, Australia, google it, it is small.  It may be small but is is going ahead and the intake of IT trainees per capita must be the highest anywhere.  I had a similar discussion as the above with one thriving IT business owner in Echuca, as I noticed that he was sending back his iPad and setting up one of the Win 7 tablets.  The discussion went very differently, as a smart business owner always makes sure to be ahead of the curve, but also be in a position to support the legacy.

My personal issue here is that I teach, and preach, that to be successful in IT you need to love IT and it should be your hobby, your passion.  The flaw in this philosophy is that the people who work in IT, and IT is their passion, tend to be the geeks from the beginning of the article.  Yes they are successful in their chosen discipline, and for the length of time that the discipline is useful, but unless they can get past the details they tend to turn into those old men  going on and on about how “...in my day you never got fingerprints on the screen” and “...if we had a problem we could always turn it off, and on again.”

Now though, in this time of change, the successful ones are those who can surf the wave of change, and harness the geeks.  Those who can spot the untapped niche and understand how the user and the technology fit together.  These are the ones who can understand the details, but choose to look at the bigger picture.  And in those last couple of sentences is the distilled formula for success, sorry but I don’t have any of the more details.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn’t Broken, then it might just work.

Image via Wikipedia 

Broken Points:

• The iPhone created the Smartphone market for the masses

• The iPhone is a feature phone, not a Smartphone

• Apple has done what it wanted to do with the iPhone and iPad, which was gather new users to the Apple brand

• The Smartphone fight is now between Android and Windows Mobile 7

  Once there was this relatively new untapped Smartphone mobile market, and the existing players in the market were getting complacent and boring.  Then at a meeting at Cupertino, during a brainstorming session, someone blew out a smoke ring and pointed out that Apple should do something.  They also pointed out all the trending towards mobile and how the kids were chasing a way to continue their digital life once they had left the computer.

  Despite not being feature competitive, or in some cases, not even being in the same league as some of the existing market offerings, Apple dropped into a maturing market the sum of all the missing answers to the masses, the iPhone.  The answers may have been missing a few of the questions, but in typical Apple style, the iPhone set out to answer one question first, and that was the interface.  It answered it so well most of us forgot about the other missing answers.

  For those of us that were using Smartphones before the iPhone, you could say that WinMo handled most of the features we needed and more.  But the way it handled them was its own barrier to entry, which meant that unless you really had to do it, you wouldn’t.  The iPhone was a closed “Feature Phone” that had the opportunity to take on the Smartphone market.  Just because it looked good, and you now wanted to do all those things that you needed to do.

  Over time the iPhone has become all things to all men, and women, because of its ability to feel like a “Feature Phone” but do most of the Smartphone things.  The greatest trick Steve pulled was making us all think that the iPhone is a Smartphone.  In reality, it is just a terminal into the Apple ecosystem that is there to solve answers to the questions that we are going to ask.

  However, the ride is coming to an end.  Apple has tackled the mobile market and won the first couple of rounds with both iPhone and iPad.  But now having set the bar they can sit back and cash in on their new fame and mind share while the Android platform, Windows Phone 7, and I guess RIM, slug it out old-school for those who for one reason or another didn’t drink the Apple Cool Aid.

  I feel for the other players in the market because Apple’s disruptive foray into the mobile market was really a smash and grab for users and cash, and had the added effect of bringing the big boys, Google and Microsoft, into the market.  This then turned the market into a 4 or 5 horse race, and guaranteed that the problems of Apples desktop past won’t come back to bite them, ....they hope.

  Well is the race over? I think that for Apple, the urgency is gone.  And if the others don’t get it just right, then Apple will be there to service the users who need them, and use the funds to find the next underdone market to disrupt.  How very entrepreneurial of them.

  Jason Remnant

  ...if it isn’t Broken, then Apple hasn’t been there.

Image by lamont_cranston via Flickr

There is a Anti-Virus phone scam doing the rounds in Bendigo/Australia, and it is kind of a good one.  I got a call yesterday so I thought I should post the details to provide lolz to those who know and info to those who wouldn’t.

I was home working on stuff for class, when I received a call from a software security company, with an instantly forgettable name, but a Indian accented operator.  I was told that they had detected that my computer had some malicious software on it.  I looked around at the 4 computers that I was working with and asked which one.(Side Note: I have 6 running in the house that I use, with Win XP, Win 7, Snow Leopard, Ubuntu 10,04, and FreeNas.  Not to mention my Server 2008 test servers.)

This stumped her for a second but then the operator asked me to go to a Window machine.  Again I quizzed “which one?”, but it seemed that any one would do.  You might think that I should be hanging up at this point, but I had time and curiosity was getting the better of me.  She was my first Scam call, and I was going to play along to the end.

I was pretty confident that my systems were clean, so what was the harm...  Once I was at the keyboard I was asked to hit “Ctrl” and “R” buttons which brings up the Run box, and then type in “prefetch”.  This brought up a win explorer window showing the contents of the prefetch folder.  Once I had done this and let the operator know that I was looking at lots of files, I was told that they were all malware and viruses.

I LOL’ed, the operator hung up.  I think to keep the call going I should have gasped in horror, and begged her to fix it.  Then she would have offered me a deal on some anti-virus/anti-malware software for the over the phone credit card payment of “insert reasonable sum here”.

It is a good scam.  Show any user the contents of a system folder on a computer, and call the files malicious and you will be pulling the files out of the trash in no time.  People are scared of what they don’t know and in the IT world there is a lot we don’t know.  The same would happen if you opened the bonnet on a car and said “there’s your problem, too many wires”.

With all the hype over cyber attacks, viruses, teenagers, and spy-ware it is no wonder that this kind of social engineering attack would work.  The only real way to not be caught by the scam is to know about it, or be a IT professional.  I’m sure that if they had chosen to pick on the washing machine or that thing you cook things in, the scam may have been effective.  But you have to wonder if they rang 50 numbers for the day and spoke with 30 people, fooled 6 (1 in 5 Sales principle) and charged $49 or $79 sale, that's a nice profit, especially if you have a call centre at your disposal.

This is not a new scam if you do some searching, there are a number of posts going back a few years.  So maybe it’s starting the rounds again, so please get your own tech person that you trust and use them.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn’t Broken, just run “prefetch”.

Image by Francis Storr via Flickr

Like many of you, I spend a portion of each day pouring over RSS feeds, blogs and pod casts to get my daily tech and news fix.  Tech is a passion for me, and there is always something new and interesting to read and learn.  And I guess it is always cool to be the only guy in the room that knows about the latest Apple product, or the sales figures on the popular Apps stores, right?

OK, yes it does sound a little pathetic if you put it that way, that is why most of us have blogs, twitter accounts, and other ways to express geeky ways without too much ridicule.  If only this stuff was more interesting to the general public.  The problem is that it is not.  Despite the end user being more technologically savvy, that has not translated into them being interested in the technology they use.  I guess the good thing is that those of us in the service industry will always have a place, but the issue here is that the users will now be the driving force behind the future of technology, and if we can't pack the user base out with the savvy geeks, then the future is going to be heading in the direction of Facebook, Apple and Nintendo.

You may be under the misapprehension that the users have been coming to technology and the Internet because it is the future, and that it is just an evolution of man to use the best communication and socialisation tools around.  I think this is the wrong view.  The users are moving to technology and the Internet because these technologies and services have become easier to use and use the right psychological hooks to keep you coming back.

Shiny things

Think of the iPhone/iPod as a technological case study.  Apple created devices that made the Mp3 player and the smart phone both usable and desirable.  There had been many Mp3 players and smart phones up to that point, but the interfaces and the ecosystem that Apple provided with iTunes fixed the usability problems that were holding most of the potential users back.  Of course there is the other part to this equation and that is the cool factor that Apple was able to create.  Despite the bevy of better technology, and truckloads of more experienced manufacturers, Apple in a few short years was able to become a power house, and market changer, all because they made a product cool, and usable/understandable by the everyday user.

Us geeks may have been excited about the iPhone when it came out, but were over Apple's arrogance in leaving out what we thought were key features (multitasking, and cut & paste) but the new user didn't care because the device worked, looked cool, and was an accessible smart phone just like all the geeks had.  In time, all us geeks got the iPhone for similar reasons.  It was nice to have a true developing platform that worked and didn't needed to be restarted every couple of hours.

So what we have here is a success story which wasn't due to the geeks, or in some ways the technology, but purely the users.  Apple tapped into the broader market and it paid off for them, for the geeks, though, we are kind of stuck with a bloated App store and a uncertain future of the platform, as now Apple knows where their customer base lies and it isn't in the bosom of the geek.

Keeping up with Friends

This sort of pattern has also followed us onto the secret geek place, the Internet, with all the activity surrounding the rise and rise of the super social network Facebook.  Once membership to the Internet was almost as hard to get into and understand as one of the fabled boys clubs on American universities.  But then, just as you were setting up your profile, you find your mum and people you went to school with actively Farmvilling away.  It makes sense that people would use something like Facebook, but come on, some of these user don't even have PC's!

Facebook is a great example of how things are moving out of the reach of the geeks.  We should be aware of the privacy concerns surrounding Facebook.  Many high profile geek, tech pundits, and commentators have outed Facebook for what, to us, seem to be some big privacy issues. But Facebook continues on.  Why?  Because the majority of the user base are not geeks.  The majority of the user base doesn't really take this whole Internet thing seriously, and many have a "leave it to the government to sort out" approach to things they don't understand.

If you are not familiar with the "Government" defence to ignorance, it goes like this.  You have your own little world and everything outside of family, job, hobbies and your understanding is the Governments problem.  "That is what they are there for, and that is why I pay my taxes" is the reasoning.  It is a great way to relieve stress.  The issue is that you tend not to think past that reasoning.  If there is a fault with a car then we know that there is process in place to recall and sort it out.  If there are privacy concerns at a bank or medical facility, then we know there are government agencies and law enforcement in place to deal with that.  Just look at TV, no naughty things on during the day to bother the kiddies, the Government fixed that for us.  So it stands to reason that Internet has the same type of control, doesn't it?

So while we geeks blog, rant and start groups over the privacy issues in Facebook, the rest of the four plus million users are happy posting pics, commenting and "liking" their way around the Internet without a care in the world.  And in most cases, they probably don't have a care.  They will just hang out with their ten/twenty friends and family, and share lives and never be affected.

The other issue is that the geeks have more to lose, this may be why we care so much about our online privacy.  Most of our lives are lived on the Internet, it is where we work, shop, and get entertained.  But for the users, it doesn't have the same level of importance, and if there was a problem, the government will fix it.  Unfortunately we know that isn't the case, darn this knowing stuff.

What this means is that change is going to happen along the pathways of least resistance and so when Facebook says that the majority of their users are OK with the changes they are not talking about us.  So Facebook will keep to their course of eroding the privacy of its users to the point that they can sell to your door, and as long as they can maintain most of said 4 million users, they won't miss the noisy geeks.  And ironically, because we fought so hard to stop government regulation of the Internet in the early days, there isn't even the government to fix it.

First the Money then...

The gulf between the geek and user has more to do with the money than the ideology.  The geeks are the creative minds, the fixers, tinkers, and hackers are the ones with the interest and drive to care about technology and how it is used.  As we began to play with this new technology, this open playground called the Internet we found ways to get stuff for free, to access information that got us stuff for free, and of course, create free stuff.  We also learnt that the knowledge we gained around the technology of the Internet was worth something.  So we set out to make money off those who didn't know, and this has always been the craftsman's way.

The problem is that some of us started companies and started to make some of those technologies.  Others started services around those technologies and making a lot more money. Gone was the ideology of the hacker, in came the MBA's and the lawyers.  There was money to be made in them thar digital hills and all it took was the right time and a product that could bring in the unsophisticated users.

The upshot of all this is that the playing field is changing, and we need to start recognising this. We have to start shaping the Internet back into the way we want it by doing things, rather than just complaining about it.  The Facebook and Apple case may be out of our hands due the momentum that their user base gives them.  So let's work on the systems and services that we want and re-start the open Internet revolution again.  If we build it and it works, is cool, and can offer the openness that the others don't, then as the non-geek users begin to chafe under the closed systems that introduced them to the Internet, then the alternative will be available..

But if we just troll and flame, we'll just become assimilated into the "closed net".  So it might be time for us all to bone up on our open source, and step away from those nice sleek white devices.  Just as the industry starts to make some good desirable devices/services they go and close the ideological door on those that put them where they are.  The crazy thing in all this is that it sounds like such a good movie.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn't Broken, there isn't enough money in it.

Image via CrunchBase

I'm one of those people who like to sit back and look at interesting tech industry drama's from a distance, preferably from a comfy chair with a cold drink, and look at the bigger picture.  Normally due to the speed of the tech industry, I don't really get much of a chance, but over the last couple of months the rise of the Flash v HTML5 question has given me plenty of comfy chair time.

With a rare moment of scripted openness, Apple's Steve Jobs posts his "Thoughts on Flash" wherein he steps out the reasons for Apple's move away from the format.  Worth a read regardless of which side of the fence you're on.  I wonder if, when the decision not to support Flash was made, if Apple thought it would cause such a stir?  Well, to add to Adobe's woes, Microsoft have uncharacteristically drawn an early line in the sand announcing HTML5 as the future of the web and support for HTML5 video steaming in IE9.

I have already posted about my thoughts regarding the demise of Flash, but I would like to step back a bit to ask the questions - was Flash on its way out before Apple made its stand? Does Apple have the power to force these decisions upon the industry with just a couple of devices/services? Or was Apple just ballsy enough to say and do what the industry was thinking, but couldn't work up the courage to do?

The question about the future of Flash could be summed up with the old "Well, everything dies eventually" argument.  But the Internet is kind of reinventing that a little.  Due to the size of the user based web technologies, if they can keep up, you could in theory live forever if they catch on well in the beginning.  And Flash was going to be the poster child for the theory if they had been able to keep up, or had read the play better.

Here's the alternate future.  Though HTML5 looks to be the winner, there are still a lot of things to work out, for example, the standard video codec.  There is just a huge can of worms when you look to de-throne a king.  If Flash had continued to develop and moved earlier to lower power platforms and driven the field, rather than just being the default, they could be have been seen as the future rather than the roadblock.  They could have lived on driving the video streaming and content creation market.  If Flash ran well on mobile devices, and for that matter on the computers in general, do you think Apple would have bothered keeping it out of the iPhone/iPad?  Flash had the opportunity and botched it, pure and simple. 

So back to the other questions, is Apple the game changer or was this going to happen anyway?  Flash had the opportunity, but held on too long before doing anything about it.  So as we can see, with the rush to HTML5 by the industry, and the public support from Microsoft and Apple, that in this case, Apple was just the first high profile company to draw the line.  You might say that only Apple would ever draw the line, but Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 isn't launching with Flash either.

I would go so far as to say that Apple devices have sped up the adoption.  You drop a million Internet devices into the market in 28 days that don't support Flash, then you get a lot of web developers buying "Learn HTML5 in 24hrs".  The funny thing is that, when the iPad launched, Flash developers, in an effort to dis the device and Apple's stance on Flash, publicly outed sites that weren't going to work on the iPad, I wonder how many still don't?

To be successful and innovative in tech, whether in manufacturing or the web, you have to be able to predict the future and also pick which of the possible future's may come true with enough support and users.  In the old days, that had a lot to do with features and listening to the customers.  But now we are working with generations that have been professionally advertised to.  So it seems that you need to be different, you need to be Facebook different, or maybe Google different, or as in this case, Apple different.  Flash wasn't different enough.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn't Broken, just rewrite the rules, the rest will argue the rules while you kick the goals.  It's a business thing.

Image by Robert Scoble via Flickr

I’m working my way through Jeff Javis’s Audio-book “What would Google Do?” at the moment.  It is one of the best studies on Google and their current, and future influence on online and business worlds.  The book looks at the business models that Google champions and shows how they are destined to fit into our online and offline lives.

Jeff reasonably points out that Google’s example is the future of business on the Internet.  Googles' example of free products, services and exchange of ideas is successful for them, and is shaping the way modern businesses on and off the Internet are needing to work to be successful in the modern business landscape.

I like the information and there is a lot of really good ideas about how we need to really focus away from old business models and start to think about “What Would Google Do?”.  But I would really like Jeff to write the book “What would Apple Do?”.  

To their credit, Google has changed the current business landscape, and are helping to destroy the old established business models.  Then to Apple's credit, the success of redefining the old business models, and almost reinventing them for the online world.  I would not go as far to say that Apple is the anti-Google, but more so that Apple is the model for the transition time between the old business (mainly media) and the Internet.

If Google were successful because they gave everything away, then Apple is successful for locking everything down.  If Google are successful for changing the old business models, then Apple is successful for adapting the old business models to work, but then being able to change when the time is right.

Which is better? Well I have written before about how the old business models are dying, and even though we see newspapers and TV trying pay-walls and other ways to try and postpone the inevitable, that is really all they seem to be doing.  They still don't seem to understand the new online world, and as the population continues to adopt the online world, they will need a company like Apple to help with the transition.

While I was thinking about “what would Google do” I kept wondering about how the transition from old media to new media would happen for those who are not or can’t be plugged into the new media.  And at the end of the day, it is all about the consumers way of thinking. And Apple seem to be on that wave length. 

For example, iTunes worked with DRM in the early days because those new to the digital space expected restrictions and to pay for their content.  They expected that to have the convenience of digital media, that they would have some inconvenience in other areas.  The geeks always expect freedom over inconvenience, because to us the tech world is supposed to offer freedom and convenience and cost savings.

Then once Apple was successful, they removed (most of) the DRM and freedom won out.  The old business model was changed and the transition was reasonably painless.  Yet we still complain about Apple's involvement in other areas like TV, movies, and now books.  Could Apple's goal here be to reinvent the E-book market - not by opening it up, but just by the sheer momentum of the uber successful device and delivery method?

I'm really interested in why it is that Apple are successful by being so different to Google, is it just that there are Google people and Apple people?  

Please Jeff, look into this as I think that by only focusing on one side of the coin we may be missing out on understanding the online future.  My fear is that Google is so in-tune with the Geeks and techs, that as the unwashed masses venture online, our Utopian systems will be supplanted by the closed systems that the masses understand.  And that Apple's systems are going to be the ones they look to.

So What Would Apple Do? It is a good question, and worth a few dollars.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn't Broken, WWAD?

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

With the announcement of the coming OS 4.0 for the iPhone we seem to be finally getting Multi-tasking.  There was a collective sigh of relief from the geeks, and a hurried re-organising from the hater's who saw the lack of multi-tasking as the iPhone's great sin against tech-kind.  Now the only issue Apple has left is the Adobe question, and Mr Jobs is happy to give a "No" as the answer.  So at least the hater's have something to focus on.

As a long time Win-Mo/HTC user, I'm disappointed that Apple has caved in to the pressure, and are poised to drop one of the best features of the iPhone platform, the lack of Multi-tasking.  Stopping third party Apps from multi-tasking is one of the key features that has made iPhone the first stable smart-phone, and allowed the smart-phone to reach beyond business and into the consciousness of the mass user base.

Now, yes, the iPhone has always been able to multi-task, that is why you can listen to the iPod App while you Tweet, web surf, or check-in with Foursquare.  It has just been restricted to the core function Apps of the device.  What this gave us was something that other smart-phones dreamed about, or took lots of micro-memory management to achieve, a stable device that could make and receive phone calls and the odd email.  Not to mention lasting a days usage, and I could go on and on (and often do).

With all the things that the iPhone does right, I really believe that the "no multi-tasking" is the reason the whole platform is successful.  This is one of those cases where stability and function win out over features. I mean, regardless of the hype, the iPhone was successful without features like cut and paste, which was standard on smart-phones before the iPhone.  So the platforms success was more about the things it didn't do and how that impacted on the stability of the core functions, than how it pandered to the Geek few.  Really, that is what Android is for.

So where are we at now? Maybe Apple have worked out the great smart-phone problem, and we are about get our cake and be able to eat it at the same time.  Gizmodo.com.au has a great post "How Multi-tasking works in iPhone OS 4.0" which explains nicely how Apple looks like they're going to run multi-tasking on the iPhone.  I'm still worried that this could break the useability of the core functions of the phone, or that many Apps will need to be updated to work properly with multi-tasking, due the fact that they had never needed to worry about memory management before.

In the end I guess I shouldn't be too concerned, this is Apple after all.  We will all love the result, regardless of the outcome.  And really, what are the other choices?

Jason Remnant

...if it isn't Broken, listen to the Geeks, they know how to mess it up.