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News related to the IT industry. Well, actually more like my opinion about news, rather than news itself. There are so many news sites, there’s Twitter, Blogs… however, from time to time to do comment when I think my opinion is under-represented elsewhere.

The new iPhone 5c and 5s in reviews

by fberzau

If you want to save yourself time, just read John Gruber’s excellent review of Apple’s new iPhone models. And discard everything else.

In particular don’t even bother wasting your time reading what DER SPIEGEL calls a “Test”. It’s just a listing of features and quotes from Apple provided material. Very disappointing (well, if you expected anything better than that in the first place). Journalism should be better than that.

What is it about the iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c?

by fberzau

A lot has been written about the new iPhones just introduced by Apple. Interestingly, there’s apparently just two types of people. Those who love it. And those who don’t. I was asking myself why. And how come there’re so widely different opinions about these phones.

I think the simple answer is that there’s people who understand Apple. And those who don’t. It’s a cultural thing. It’s about core values. And what they mean to those designing and building those phones.

One group looks at numbers. Such as in MB, GB, Mhz and all these things. Or such as SD card slots, USB support and so on. They measure in number of features. Display resolution. Speed. Size. They enjoy how much of the advanced features are exposed to them. The depth and breadth of granularity in all the settings and apps. And they look at market share as an indicator of success, and indicator of how good a device is.

And then there’s people who enjoy what they can do with a device. And how easy it is to do. People who don’t care how much memory a phone has, how many features it has, what the display resolution is. As long as it does what they expect. And they value design. Beauty. Simplicity.

You can’t change those people. You can’t mix terminology or what kind of detail you talk about. As soon as you cross the border to talk to someone on that other side, and you don’t adjust to matching terminology and topic, they get bored or upset or just think you’re in idiot and laugh at you. They just don’t get it. They think there is disagreement. While it’s simply a cultural mismatch.

I  recently watched Samsung’s keynote for the new Note 3 and the Gear. What stuck with me is how often, during that keynote, they did two things. One, they mentioned a feature, then talked about something else, came back later to talk about it again. Really stupid. It was so hard to follow. So distracting. Second, I was amazed at how often they said the word “feature” during that keynote. To me the entire keynote perfectly illustrated Samsung’s culture. A feature-driven, crunch-as-much-in-as-technically-possible mentality.

Apple on the other hand focuses on a few things. They mention technology only when it really matters (e.g. when they talk about the new 64-bit architecture of the A7 chip). For the most part, they talk about what they did, and what it enables the customer to do. And they present the keynote without clownery, straight forward, authentic.

What I’ve seen over the past couple days is that each company, with their unique culture, matches to a group of journalists/customers. At the end, those people loving features, and stuff they can measure, will really enjoy the products built by companies who embrace that same culture. People who love experience, simplicity etc. love what Apple introduces.

The only group of people I’m worried about are those who need simplicity and fall into the trap of Samsung’s marketing, which tries to copy that of Apple. They are actually lying about who they are, and people end up buying the wrong product. These guys need to be protected. And it’s those people I will try to help get a product that’s ultimately better for them.

Quo vadis Apple?

by fberzau

I’m reading too much lately, about Apple being doomed. Because they can’t innovate anymore, without Steve Jobs. Because investors are starting to dominate the direction. Because they have the wrong CEO. Because competitors are catching up or out-pacing them. Because of shrinking market share. The list goes on. And I’m asking myself, is Apple really doomed? Or is Apple, after a lot of innovation across all major product lines in 2012, just taking a deep breath – before they surprise us all with a next revolutionary new product?

First of all, it was Steve Jobs, who said – during the 2007 iPhone introduction keynote:

Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything … One’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.

What Steve is saying here is two things. First, you’re fortunate if it happens. I think he knew very well that there’s more to it than just building a great product. For a new product to become a game changer, something that disrupts a market, or even creates an entirely new market, a lot of things have to come together. And some of them aren’t under your direct control or influence. Second, you’re lucky if you get to work on just one of these. Well, Apple’s done it a few times. The Macintosh, the iPod, iPhone, iPad. However, is there anything like a natural  path, like Apple’s always going to disrupt every couple of years? Creating entirely new categories of products that drive the world into the next wave of hype? No. Of course not.

So first of all, when I look at what’s being written about Apple these days, I can’t do anything but whole heartedly disagree with the expectations. Apple is just a company. A company building great products. No more than that. Never was anymore than that. What’s out of control is what we expect them to do. But without that, without the continues flow of introducing  revolutionary products, what is Apple actually? Well, I think Steve Jobs had said it very clearly, many years ago: Building insanely great products! And Tim Cook re-iterates it at every possible opportunity: We continue to build great products! One of the best examples in this GeekWire article by Blair Hanley Frank. Can’t agree more. Can’t find more continuity and loyalty to the core company values.

Also, why’s Apple required to continue introducing a revolutionary product every couple of years? Because of our insane expectation that they should? Certainly yes, just because we’re used to getting our hands on those revolutionary new products, we think we got to have more of it, right? Well, that’d be cool. However, those nagging articles fueled by Wall Street expectations are more an expression of investors’ hope for continued growth. Market share and growth. John Kirk on Tech.pinions wrote a series of articles that covers market share in great depth, which I really liked. But growth should be even easier to take apart. Resources on this planet are finite. The population on this planet is finite. Everything, except eternity is finite. And maybe not even that is, who knows. So, no matter how hard any given company tries – it will hit a wall. Period. So, just to be clear on that, we’re never ever talking about growth, in the context of revenues, market share, or other metrics. We are in fact talking about a temporary growth! And any accelerated growth will ultimately just lead to hitting the wall earlier. No matter how you look at it. You can, as a company,  in a market with competitors, take a bigger slice of the share. You will still hit the wall. Well, unless you’re only thinking about a very limited period of time, and maybe you’re thinking that time span is enough to make a fortune on the stock market and then run away. End of this topic. Why growth should be good for any company is beyond my imagination. And I guess that’s maybe worth a dedicated article… Why growth should be good for Apple, I don’t get. What is important for Apple, and for any company who’s serious about building great products, is that they stay healthy enough to be able to spend on R&D. When I read the quarterly financial reports Apple releases, it’s not hard to see that that’s the case.

Is Apple building a smart TV? Is Apple building a smart watch? Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I have a flat screen TV, still from the pre smart area. None networked. Would I love to get one that’s really smart? Like one built by Apple? Certainly yes. But here’s why. And I think that’s the relevant question. Why would Apple – or anybody else for that matter – enter into a new market? Why has Apple entered into the smart phone market back in 2007? Very simply said – because phones were fucked up. They were dreadful. Complicated to use. Built a very long time ago, when things were a lot more technology driven (vs. design/consumer driven). When design was so limited to what was technically possible. And then things became so very boring. Vendors were just able to think about additional features. I still remember back at the time, when I read the first rumors Apple would built a phone. What a pain relief. I was so much looking forward to it. And a TV today? Yeah! Same reason. What we have is  a legacy. It’s been built so long ago, as a pure consumption device. Just sit in front of it. Watch. Period. This market so desperately needs something really smarter, better. Not just a little easier to use UI, or a Wifi connection to replace my remote with an App. I mean something revolutionary. What I’m describing here is, im my opinion, one of the key, if not the key, prerequisite to entering a whole new market: Is it messed up enough. Are all the products available, no matter how hard I look, all kind of equally boring. And they’re all not really something I adore after having purchased one. That’s true for TV today, and looking at the past, it looks as if Apple, more than any other company, has had the courage to both. Use that as a guiding principle for entering a market, and also the courage to go do it despite having no prior experience. Like they’ve done an iPhone, despite the fact they had no experience with GSM and all the many technologies used in phones. Well, maybe that’s even an advantage! Because it forces you to think about all the things once again. And that kind of thinking allowed them to come up with something like visual voice mail (still one of the best loved features for me even today) and many more – and in summary a truly revolutionary mobile phone.

How I look at Apple today? They’re loyal to their core values, which is undoubtedly the most important of all. Whether they are building the next revolution, maybe in TV or any other market, I don’t know. However, I continue to believe they’re the number one company on this planet who’s capable of doing it! As long as they’re able to ignore Wall Street enough, so their core values don’t get under-mined, they’re in good shape. How much share of the smart phone market they have has no relevance to my life. Whether they build a TV or smart watch this year or next or maybe never, would make me happy I guess. But does it mean anything about how great they are? As long as they continue building great PCs and iPhones and iPads, and all the other great stuff, should I not be happy? Seriously, I fear nothing more than too much distraction with too many new products, and a loss of focus on building great stuff. I fear nothing more than a world in which I had to use plastic PC, a geeky Android phone and a cheap tablet with poor built quality and battery life. Cruel thoughts.

The end of advertising?

by fberzau

The mobile Google Maps apps are now showing ads. Wow.

Is it just me, thinking enough is enough? Seriously, I’m getting tired of it. Read Matt Kruse’s great article on his vision for Facebook. John Gruber’s recent comment to the Google Maps announcement also speaks for itself.

Ads aren’t bad per se. Some are actually really funny and entertaining. What’s bad about ads is the overwhelming number of ads, and it’s the ever increasing intrusive delivery mechanisms. That is a pain, and there is overwhelming consensus about it. I guess some people aren’t really thinking about it, they’re just taking it as a given. But I’ve never met anybody who liked getting bombarded with ads. So something’s fundamentally broken. And the ad industry has just a simple flat – and wrong! – answer to it: More. More ads. More intrusive.

I guess ads made sense in the beginning. Before the Internet. I mean before the television and radio, before newspapers. With improvements in logistics, transport and hence distribution, it became possible to sell goods or services to a wider market. And you had to tell people about your offerings, in an effort to educate them about what’s available and where. But then mass media was invented, and the ad industry just used it as a more convenient, further reaching vehicle to distribute more ads. Fast forward, in a connected world, I can buy anything anywhere (Amazon just ships it to me, wherever I am), and I can just do some research about what to buy, and where. That means the original purpose of advertising has become void. Not just a little. I mean void, like in the sense of – well… void.

But there’s an opportunity as well. The ad industry could help me.

Like building a Wikipedia like portal, a central place where I could get useful information to start my research. Otherwise I just use Amazon. check what’s available, read the customer reviews. And then click on purchase. Or not, just go elsewhere, maybe a local store on the way back home from work. Or I just use Google to find out where I could get what I need.

What bothers me is the dependency of large scale Web companies on the ad industry. Google really invented this business model (ad sponsored “free” services). Facebook perfected it. But it is annoying. What started small, with a focus on making just enough to pay for the infrastructure, has become a multi-billion dollar business in itself. In fact, you could look at Google or Facebook as advertising resellers. Because that’s essentially what they’re doing. In the case of Facebook it’s more than obvious how much of the roadmap is driven by the needs of the ad industry. It harms the user experience. It’s just wrong. I am your customer folks – is what I’d like to tell these companies. Make them aware that they exist because of me, because of my needs. Ignoring me, or putting me/my needs below those of the advertising partners makes me feel I am not getting what I could get. It makes me feel I’m second priority. And in fact I am second priority.

Besides, I have no idea how these guys are making money. How does advertising pay for itself. I have never clicked on an advertising. And with never, I really mean never. Like in never ever. And I will not. I also never went direct to the vendor’s website, after seeing an intrusive ad from them.

Offering me the option to pay for Google, or Facebook for an ads free version could be a first step. I think I’d pay for it. I’m actually pretty sure I would. But it would just be that, a first step. What’s more important is that they also start putting me and my needs on top of their roadmap. How hard is it to figure out a business plan that makes sense. One where you create a product or service that’s worth in itself. I mean worth that I pay for it. A free service might be a good thing for a startup, to build momentum (another word for a lot of users in a short period of time). But as things need to scale, it’s either worth paying, or not. And if it’s not, it has no right to survive.

Many years ago, during a winter vacation with my wife, we ended up in an abbey in the French alps. There was snow. And there was silence. And prayers. Nothing else. After a week or so, when we returned and passed through the first village I suddenly realized how colorful and distracting everything was. Banners, billboards all over the place. In a freakin’ little village in the middle of nowhere! And that was maybe about 25 years ago! You know how I’m feeling when I’m in a big city? No wonder we never get rest. This decoration of our cities, of the content in our web browsers, this noise on TV and the radio is a pain. And it’s so not needed. Not in a world where information about what and where to buy is just a click away.

It’s time for a fundamental shift. A very fundamental.

Microsoft’s uncool quest for cool

by fberzau

Interesting post by Ken Segall today, see http://kensegall.com/2013/02/microsofts-uncool-quest-for-cool/

In the technology biz, “cool” is a very good thing to be. Ask Apple. Its past revolutions were fueled by the ever-present aura of cool. But where exactly does cool come from? One thing is for certain: it doesn’t come from standing on a mountaintop and screaming “we’re cool!”

I remember doing this to a development team a few years ago. Just asking them to “make it cool”. Obviously the question came up “what you mean – cool?”. It’s actually a lot harder to answer than what you think first. I had to provide some very specific guidance. Look for examples of what I meant. It was a lot of hard work, and it was difficult to an unexpected extent to get to a consensus about ‘coolness’.

One thing that never crossed my mind though was ask marketing to create an ad like the stuff Microsoft does for Surface. It’s disgusting. Non-informative. And it’s not even cool. Sorry Microsoft, you’re not getting it. Ever.

iPhone 4S a “disappointment”?

by fberzau

When I read the news these past couple days I get the impression many people are disappointed by what Apple was introducing as the “iPhone 4S”. I was looking at the keynote, and I can’t help but I thought this was pretty cool. Surely, no big deal about many of the new features, none of them really unexpected. A5 processor, new 8 megapixel camera, and so on. Siri, while there was talk about it, I kind of feel nobody really expected how powerful it would be. The demos and examples shown in the promotion video are, in my opinion, a leapfrog step into a new world. A dramatic user interface paradigm shift. Away from stylus and other last century stuff happened when Apple introduced the original iPhone back in 2007. Now there is another leapfrog step towards natural language input. I think this is just awesome. Isn’t this what we’ve all be dreaming about? Known from movies but never thought possible for many, many years. And what about the other changes and new features? Isn’t it just a little over a year that Apple introduced the iPhone 4 design, and everybody was really impressed (except the antenna design which had some flaws)? So why change that? Are we really thinking a great design has got to change after just 15 months? Who says the design must change after 15 months? I still like my iPhone 4. I particularly like that with the iPhone 4S using the same case design I can still carry it around and not look old fashion. Like in the past when I got my first iPhone 3G, and later on Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS, and nobody could tell, by the look of it, that I had an “old” model.
I believe the iPhone 4S is maybe not a leapfrog step, a dramatically new, innovative bla bla phone. However, it’s a very solid improvement over the iPhone 4. I resolves the only real design flaw (antenna design). It brings natural language input to the world, in a usable form factor. And it gives Apple time to focus their development resources on the next generation phone, which I believe may come with a new case design, and who knows what else.
Let’s face it – the iPhone is still a great phone. I love my iPhone 4. I will continue using it. And in 2012, when my contract is up for renewal I am looking forward to an even better iPhone 5 :)

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