What’s more, building a computer based on a mobile OS throws out one of the biggest advances Apple has made in recent years: the ability to run Windows programs natively. And that means that none of your Windows software will work. For that matter, your Mac apps won’t run, either.
The battle between MacOS and Windows reminds me of watching partisans debate the merits of the latest American and Russian fighter planes. The Cold War is over, and the drones now rule the skies. I’ve often found myself in the thick of OS arguments, and they are real and important to people like me who care about the utility and functionality of the computers we use daily. But these conflicts are products of an era that is on its way out. Over the next few years Apple will face a far different struggle, as it races to define how everyday people will use cloud computing. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon won’t be sitting on their asses either.
Apple is already moving fast. Look at the iPod and the iPhone. The primary job of the OS in both devices is to get out of the way. The real stars of the show are iTunes and the App Store. While iTunes is a good piece of client software, its real mojo derives from its ability to get the content you want from the cloud to your device. And the direct integration between the App Store and the iPod/iPhone shows that the iTunes middleman won’t be around forever.
Apple has shown a willingness to set fire to its ships in order to conquer new territories. The iPod mini was a runaway success when Apple killed it in favor of the nano. The company has successfully pushed to make laptops the center of gravity for the Macintosh lineup, and the MacBook has been a huge hit. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple put the hatchet to its baseline notebook, bringing in the tablet as its replacement.
Yes, there will be plenty of users who need raw CPU power for apps like Aperture, Final Cut, Photoshop, and so on. Yes, some business apps also require a lot of juice. Apple has plenty of spiffy Macs to sell you if you need to run Mac and Windows apps. But if you use email, a web browser, and MS Office to get your news, communicate with people, work on documents, crunch numbers, and manage your multimedia library, increasingly the real heavy lifting for all of those activities takes place in the cloud. As for MS Office, the bullseye on Microsoft’s bag is big and red. Google and other players have shown that for many if not most documents, the bloated Office pig is unnecessary. Apple has been honing iWork for years. It’s not a stretch to envision MobileMe-synchable versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote running on the tablet.
Now imagine purchasing these and other apps from the Tablet Store. The iPhone App Store has been a staggering success as a software distribution platform, and controlling software distribution has been a big part of Apple’s success in the 2000s. Why wouldn’t Apple leverage the distribution power of an App Store for the tablet? And as more and more apps rely on the cloud, why wouldn’t developers continue to follow the money? Apple receives over 10,000 App Store submissions per week. There are a lot of iPhone developers out there, no matter how you slice the numbers. If Apple makes developing for the tablet only a minor adjustment for iPhone developers, the number of iPhone/tablet developers could soon dwarf the number of Mac developers.
As the hardware power of the tablet increases and Apple’s integration of device and cloud continues, the Mac may come to be seen as something of a relic, powerful but dated, a muscle car in an electric car era. Will it be 5 years from now when the last Mac rolls off the assembly line? Will it be 10 years? Whenever it comes, I expect the Mac’s demise will come at the hands of its maker, not at the hands of competitors.
I used to be fairly fit. I wasn’t a triathlete, but I wasn’t a couch potato either. Getting back into reasonable shape is going to take some work. Yet task of creating a healthier lifestyle for the long haul will be far more challenging.
Over the past few months I’ve realized that my brain is also getting flabby. The inklings have been hitting me obliquely. Reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln reminded me of the virtues of a dedicated opposing force. But was I challenging my own assumptions the way Lincoln did? No. Not even close. I was scooping up like-minded souls in Tumblr and Twitter. It amazed me that there were so many wonderful people out there in the Twitterverse and in Tumblr Land. It shouldn’t have surprised me, since I was following people whose views I found clever, well-argued, and at the very least, interesting.
Many observers suggest that microblogging is a particularly odious form of narcissism. This misses the mark. Narcissism permeates our society, from blogs to personalized license plates. Twitter and its ilk are drops in that vast ocean. But Nathan Roberton’s suggestion that Tumblr is lousy for anything but agreeing with people all the time made me think about just how much the design of microblogging platforms influences participant behavior. To paraphrase McLuhan, the platform is the discussion.
I’d already been noticing the similarities between compulsive channel surfing and daily Tumblr use. The Tumblr content on my dashboard tends to be visual rather than textual. And it is juicy stuff. Amazing, lush landscape photos composed with breathtaking artistry compete with Pictures of Beautiful People for my attention. It’s a staccato barrage of visual meth, devoid of context, presented in staccato bursts, proton torpedos aimed right at the center of the lizard brain. Yes, like an addictive drug, the high is what brings you back.
The Twitter experience is more like watching TV news. You receive lots of small chunks of information, most of it useless in your daily life, and much of it redundant. Yet you fear that the one snippet you don’t catch will be The One True Chunk, the singular piece of information that will make it worth your time investment. So you dutifully dip your brain into the stream of tweets every day. Or twice a day. Or every hour. Or constantly, the way some people keep CNN yammering in their living rooms even when they’re not home. Thankfully there are plenty of good chunks of info, crafty puns, well-delivered sentence truncations, and links to nifty new websites. But after all that sifting, am I like the crusty old ‘49er with a back sore from squatting at the riverbed, and just a grain or two of gold to show for the effort?
Why does it feel useful but hollow?
I think it’s because microblogging is untethered, both as a producer or forwarder of thoughts, and as a recipient of these thoughts. I have tweeted about my commute over Highway 17, expressed my outrage at the latest political stupidity, and forwarded excellent commentary from a well-known UI developer. Some of these brief messages have resonated with other Twitter users, which has led some of them to follow my tweets. But when do I get unfollowed? My guess is I get unfollowed when I write something a follower dislikes. That’s when I tend to unfollow someone. As long as you don’t post 50 tweets a day, if I like what you’re saying, I’ll probably follow you. But after five or ten tweets rub me the wrong way, you’re off my list.
More often than not we’re not really having a conversation in Twitter. Sure, there are people I send direct messages to, and I do have back and forth discussions of a sort in Twitter. But most of the hundreds or thousands of tweets I’ve made aren’t conversations. Twitter is serial micro-broadcasting. I have a message, and I want the world to hear it. You have a message, and you want the world to hear it. If our messages overlap in some fashion, chances are we’ll find each other, so we can feel good about those messages, and so we can spread that goodness. If our messages are antagonistic to each other, we’ll likely never encounter each other in the Twitterverse, because subjecting yourself to a stream of messages you disagree with is like agreeing to test out new waterboarding techniques each day.
Does this mean Tumblr is just useless eye candy and Twitter is just mental masturbation?
No. They can both be very useful. I don’t have a TV, so when I need to look at Interesting Things, Tumblr is there for me. When I tire of seeing the top five news stories over and over again on mainstream media sites, Twitter is there for me. But there’s an itch that neither of these microblogging tools can scratch. That’s the desire to engage in meaningful dialogue, to find people who challenge me, who help me learn more, and whose opinions I value even when I disagree with them.
It turns out this form of mental stimulation is particularly important as people get older. I turned 42 not too long ago, so I read the recent New York Times piece How to Train the Aging Brain, by Barbara Strauch, with particular interest. According to the article, there’s good news for middle aged folks:
The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.
She quotes Dr. Kathleen Taylor, who advocates pushing your brain beyond its comfort zone in order to build good brain health. One way to do this is to seek out ideas and opinions that don’t jive with your own. Dr. Taylor lays it out:
If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.
Since I do a lot of my “hanging around” online, I’ll need to replace at least some of my Tumblr and Twitter time with something else. I could subscribe to a few blogs created by smart people who will test my assumptions. Perhaps it’s time to revisit Newsvine, a site I’ve long admired, but could never really sink my teeth into. Or maybe I’ll dive back into Slashdot, a community that used to consume ludicrous amounts of my time. Then there’s LibraryThing. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but as shiny as Tumblr and Twitter are, I need some mooring, some context, and some sense that I’m not just patting myself on the back and being entertained. Shifting my online habits may be as difficult as getting back into running, but I figure I’ve only got one brain, so I should try to keep it healthy.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was smart to enter into a search deal with Microsoft. Many observers seem to believe that Microsoft pulled a fast one on the ailing Web pioneer. Make no mistake, Yahoo is in trouble. That’s exactly why they need to focus on their core competency.
Search has never been Yahoo’s competitive advantage, and no matter how hard they’ve worked to catch up to Google, they haven’t had the muscle for it. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been trying for years to take down Google in search. In Bing they finally have a search product that isn’t embarrassing by comparison to Google. Leveraging Microsoft search technology will help Yahoo keep its customers happy without draining resources at Yahoo that should be directed at doing what they do best.
Microsoft has failed time and time again on the human side of the Web. Content is just not their bag. Social applications are not their bag. Yahoo does both of these quite well. Google’s mathematical, reductionist, relentlessly quantified search is not the only route to money. Bartz gets this.
Mark your calendars and come back in a year to taunt me if I’m wrong on this one. I definitely seem to be outnumbered, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the wisdom of the crowds prevailed. Still, I think that by shedding old baggage, a leaner, more capable Yahoo could emerge.
Mistakes happen in every business. But these days you have to assume that any mistake you make could become public knowledge. When United Airlines broke David Carroll’s guitar and didn’t compensate him for the loss, he poured his frustration into a YouTube video that has been viewed millions of times and has done tremendous damage to United’s reputation and its bottom line.
Or consider Horizon Realty. They sued a former apartment tenant to the tune of $50,000 because of these words she tweeted: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” In bringing a libel case against this Twitter user, they generated a solid dose of attention and criticism. Did the tweet do $50,000 worth of damage to the company? It is doubtful that a Twitter user who had only 20 followers and tweeted infrequently had much pull.
But here’s the thing: As soon as she got sued, her tweet instantly became the subject of public scrutiny. Even if Horizon Realty wins the lawsuit, they’ll at best look like bullies and at worst will generate even further negative scrutiny from Twitter users, bloggers, and the mainstream media. Imagine if instead of responding with a lawsuit, Horizon had replied with a tweet along these lines:
Hey @abonnen, are there any maintenance issues in your apartment? Please direct message us so we can get to the bottom of it.
A message like this shows responsiveness and a desire to make the customer happy. It’s done in public, so anyone who is watching @abonnen’s twitstream can see it. Who knows, if they’d responded in this fashion, she might have started singing Horizon’s praises. Real customer accolades are difficult to earn, but they’re much more valuable than any PR or marketing campaign.
Imagine how different things might have been if United Airlines had engaged in a real dialogue with David Carroll after his guitar, the source of his livelihood, was broken? Again, United may have been operating within its contractual obligations when it refused to fix the problem. But in so doing, they created another, much bigger problem.
You can’t control the message. But you can engage in conversations with your customers and with the broader world. Don’t hide. Engage.
America’s Founding Fathers engaged in intense debates about how the United States should be structured. Many of the towering figures of that era were in nearly violent disagreement with each other for years. But they managed to build a disparate band of former colonies into a nation.
Decades later, the newly-elected Abraham Lincoln brought several of his most intense and capable opponents into his cabinet. During the biggest crisis the nation ever faced, he encouraged vigorous cabinet debate. At times the cabinet members were at each other’s throats. But under Lincoln’s leadership, the nation survived.
Hiring people who agree with you makes your life as a leader easier. You seldom get into arguments about your decisions. Nobody challenges you.
Nobody challenges you is another way of saying nobody tests your assumptions. Nobody vigorously examines your direction. Nobody pushes you to come up with better plans. Nobody is helping you be as good as you can be at whatever it is you are doing.
Years ago I led the development of a secure web application that was designed for internal corporate communication. One of the team members was a born contrarian. He’d tell us why a particular feature wouldn’t work. He’d point out how a nefarious user could game the system. I admit that at first this grated on me. But then I realized the full value of his criticism. He was revealing problems that would manifest if we didn’t change the design of the application. What seemed like sand in the gears was really a big lighthouse beacon, warning away from dangerous shores.
Thankfully he raised his concerns early in the development process. As we reworked the system, I explicitly placed him in an OPFOR role. His job was to pretend to be a malicious user. He analyzed the system accordingly, and as he brought flaws to the surface, we would fix them. This was a huge learning event for me, but more importantly, the development process actually went faster and more smoothly. We delivered the project ahead of schedule, and the client was thrilled.
If you’re in charge, having in-house skeptics may seem like a challenge to your authority. But if you’re secure in your role, they can help you exceed your own limitations.
Social media tools can be a tremendously valuable means of connecting with your customers, but you can’t just throw money at Twitter, Facebook, and your blog and expect to get any real benefit.
I spoke with a client yesterday who wanted me to create a social media strategy for his company. I impressed upon him the importance of authenticity. Sure, I could write his blog posts and tweets for him, but I don’t have his professional expertise. At the end of the day, I’d be merely adding to the chaff created by countless other inauthentic bloggers for hire, and doing next to nothing to advance my client’s credibility.
He would have to get involved. He would have to write.
Unfortunately, writing takes time. Whether you’re tweeting occasionally, posting religiously to a blog, or weighing in with comments on other people’s sites, there is an opportunity cost to social marketing. If you’re busy writing, you’re not busy billing.
Determine how much time you really have to devote to social media. Then think about your writing style. Those factors will help you determine which social media tools are right for you.
I like Google Analytics. It’s a solid, useful application that when used properly can provide a wealth of useful, actionable information. But the way Google uses green in comparison graphs bothers me.
Here’s how Google displays a traffic comparison. The blue line represents the current time period, while the green line represents the prior period.
Green represents both a time period and a traffic increase
This may seem incredibly picayune, but I frequently find myself looking twice or three times at the graph, trying to determine whether green represents the current time series or the time series it is being compared against. Why? Because green is used to delineate the prior time series, and it is also used to indicate an increase in traffic.
In this instance I see the 11.3% and get confused, because although there is an increase of 11.3%, the number is shown in green, which makes me look at the prior time series, rather than the current time series. Yes, I’m smart enough to eventually figure out that the traffic represented by the blue line is the traffic that has gone up by 11.3%, but it is confusing.
If I could, I’d change the green to a different color, something like this:
Gold rather than green for the prior time series
Presto, no more confusion. Green now unequivocally represents an increase in traffic. Red represents a decrease in traffic. Blue represents the current time series, and gold represents the prior time series.
Since its public unveiling at Google I/O, Google Wave has generated tremendous buzz. The newest Google project is a blend of instant messaging, email, and collaborative document creation. It is an ambitious undertaking, and grokking it fully takes some time. This video of Google Wave’s unveiling is over an hour long.
It is a video worth watching, because it shows the breadth of Google’s vision. I am reminded of the early days of the Web, when explaining technology we now take for granted required lots of metaphors, hand gestures, and labored explanation. Then, as now, the best way to explain a new technology is to show it in action.
What is most impressive about Google Wave is its scope. While the application itself garners the most attention, the real power lies in the foundation. Protocols are the vehicles by which messaging on the Internet takes place. For example, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is used by web servers. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used to send email. The Google Wave Federation Protocol is an extension of an existing protocol called XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) Core. Google’s intention is to make this protocol the foundation of a new class of messaging systems, and their patent license is explicitly designed to keep competing users of the protocol honest (my italics):
Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google and its affiliates hereby grant to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
A set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) sit on top of the Google Wave Federation Protocol. They allow developers to build new features into Google Wave applications and extend Google Wave functionality to other apps. This is where the magic happens. Google, as powerful as it is, doesn’t have an infinite supply of developers. They also can’t anticipate all the things end users might want from Google Wave. But an army of motivated third-party developers will take the APIs and create all kinds of interesting and useful new services, the way they have with Google Maps and APIs from Amazon, eBay, Netflix, and other savvy companies.
Many tech observers are making the mistake of focusing on the latest web applications, rather than on the APIs. Twitter is perhaps the best example of this: A minority of Twitter traffic moves through the Twitter website. Dozens of Twitter clients and mashups account for the majority. Because Twitter made the API available early in the game, it captured developer mindshare. A thousand flowers bloomed, and now Twitter is on desktops, laptops, Blackberry handhelds, Android devices, and iPhones.
Email has become unwieldy, particularly in business settings. Instant messaging is hampered by conflicting standards and limited extensibility. Document collaboration systems are fast improving, but they require initial intention; a Google Wave can effortlessly morph from conversation into document. The Google dev team also paid attention to making Google Wave play well with existing technologies. Developers and end users won’t have to shift over to Google Wave wholesale in order to start benefiting from it.
I expect to see a broad range of Google Wave applications not long after its official launch. Some of them will incorporate all or most of the platform’s capabilities. Others will be more lean and focused. There will even be Google Wave applications that provide interface polish and capabilities the Google Wave team hadn’t even considered. And that’s exactly why Google Wave will be a success.
The adulation of Google long ago reached fever pitch. I’d say it may have even peaked. But never one to undersell the wonders of technology, Wired this month published an article by Steven Levy which explains the auction mechanism behind Google’s phenomenally successful advertising platform. It is truly a wondrous vehicle for moving money into the Bank of Google.
But Google is also tremendously reliant on advertising. Imagine a world in which Google doesn’t dominate the online marketplace. Or, if you want to get really radical, imagine an alternate reality in which online advertising is no longer the only big game in town for companies seeking online exposure. There are already signs that while online advertising is a moneymaking machine for Google, despite the brilliant algorithms and economic efficiency, it has weaknesses.
A recent New York Times story highlights the nervousness some companies and investors feel about ad-supported revenue models. OpenTable recently went public. The company relies on referral payments from restaurants, rather than advertising. To pull in revenue, companies like Wetpaint and Pandora are trying a variety of methods beyond advertising.
I expect this trend to increase as the effectiveness of ads continues to diminish. No matter how effective the targeting and placement of an individual ad, the gestalt effect of being overwhelmed with text ads, banner ads, Flash ads, et. al. is that users become immune to them. The lowest allowable ROI is different for each advertiser, but if all boats are sinking, more than a few Google advertisers may jump.
This represents a threat to Google, and an opportunity for a new breed of intermediary that can match content providers with companies that are currently using web ads to market their products and services.
