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Why I Miss Scarcity (and why it's the only thing that matters)

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Back in college (ah, college), some buddies and I road-tripped down to New Orleans (thrice) to experience New Year’s Eve and/or Spring Break.  Good times had by all (thankfully this all happened in the pre-camera phone era).  Whilst there, I enjoyed local beignets, chicory coffee, and discovered Cajun Power Sauce. Yum.  I bought 4 extra bottles for the return, one to keep, the rest as gifts. By the third visit, I bought a dozen bottles, since everyone loved it and it wasn’t findable in the Pittsburgh vicinity.

Today, it’s not a big deal.  You can buy it online, from a variety of vendors. When I was a kid living in Montreal, the winter was a special time, as everybody knew someone returning from a Florida vacation, which meant a bag of fresh oranges/grapefruits.  Today, every supermarket everywhere has fresh produce, available pretty much year-round, coming in from around the world.  Today, I can order a fresh Maine lobster, have it arrive tomorrow in San Francisco packed in ice.  And it’s not just food.  With globalization, just about everything is a Google or Amazon search plus FedEx delivery away.

I was thinking about a few of my “favorite” things, and while none are mittens, most are the things I own that are more scarce than the rest.  The outdoor furniture my wife and I bought on our trip to Vietnam.  The shirts I had custom made in South Korea.  The t-shirts I order from CafePress are also fairly special to me, but no more so than the fridge magnets I pick up for my kids in every airport I visit.  All are hard(er) to find.  But the stuff I really like?  The highly limited run shirts at Threadless – until I bump into someone with the same shirt on. Sad face. My favorite t-shirt is one I bought from a UK-based semi-custom t-shirt store (pictured to your right – feeling good Billie Ray!).

I think there’s some kind of weird link between scarcity (or faux scarcity) and hipsters, who know about bizarre Japanese imports, coffee shops with no signs, and DJs who only play hidden clubs at 3am.  Think about the cache of being the first to discover some amazing artist, or having an iPhone case nobody’s seen before, or remembering that you played DrawSomething back when it was just a Facebook app.  Or knowing about Double Double Animal Style, back when it was actually a secret. Or having seen the original Hunger Games, when it was called Battle Royale.  Etc etc etc

At home we can make genuine chicory coffee imported from New Orleans.  We can find the recipe online for making Caffe Du Monde beignets.  I just ordered a bottle of Cajun Power sauce (and you should too).  But the truth is, I miss scarcity.  I miss things being hard to find.  I actually miss the feeling of missing out on being able to get something.  I also believe scarcity is power. Scarcity is the new hip.  Having “the only one” or limited production runs, etc matters.  Think about the desire for sites and services that launch “in beta”.  Think about the power of “only XX made – ever.”  I predict hyperpersonalization will be augmented with hyperlimited productions, and that will cross the lines between physical and digital goods.  And that’s something I can get excited about.

Abundance is a really great thing, except maybe when there’s just too darn much of it.

The Case Against an Apple Television

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I’ve flip-flopped better than a politician on this topic, but just read an awesome piece that I wanted to share.  Highlights are:

Most fundamentally, all assumptions about Apple seem to stem from a misunderstanding of how differently Apple thinks and operates from everyone else.

For starters, Apple doesn’t chase markets just because they’re there. Nor do they get sucked into market share battles just so they can say they sold the most units (see: iOS vs. Android).

…

In other words, for an Apple TV to be free-flowing with first-tier TV content in the same way that an iPod flows with first-tier music, Apple will need DIRECTV and/or Comcast to bless it.

ESPN, after all, earns $4.69 per subscriber household in affiliate fees on each and every cable subscriber. Apple’s good friend, Disney, owns ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel and a slew of other channels. Disney simply isn’t going to throw billions of dollars away in affiliate fees just so they can help Apple. All of the major TV content players view the world similarly.

…

So where does that get you when you connect the dots? I’ll tell you where it doesn’t get you … to a television-like device that:

  1. Is priced 2-4X the cost of an iPad.
  2. Has sales cycles of one device every 5-10 years.
  3. Has bad margins.
  4. Has a serviceable form factor that for many people is good enough. (Apple challenges industries where the baseline experience is terrible. Television hardware wouldn’t seem to qualify.)

I strongly recommend reading the rest of it as well, one of the best perspectives I’ve seen on the topic of Apple in general actually.

So when might Apple announce a television?

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Seems like Apple has news coming later this month.  Regardless of your feelings about Apple, it’s safe to say they have mastered the art of the product launch like none other.  Even when virtually every detail of a new product gets leaked due to it being stolen lost at a bar, they still master the news cycle and generally enchant and entertain.  Some might argue they simply do things whenever they want, others would surmise they do it entirely calculated on a spreadsheet based on maximizing sales.  My guess is they do it “when they can” – the moment they are done with the first production line and have the shipments queued up, the media invites go out, a few semi-leaks pop up here and there, then off to the races.

This works great when you can fit a few hundred phones into every crate and airdrop ‘em over the US at the same day/time with ease.  Sure it’s costly, but in the grand scheme of things, no big deal.  The boat’s left the harbor at the same time, and within 3 weeks the full distribution cycle is up and running.

But now we’re not talking about a gadget that fits in your pocket, it’s an Apple Television (right? right?).  And despite what self-aggrandizing promoters some analysts say, it’d be my guess that they ship them in more sizes than just 32″ and 37″ (seriously, how did anyone actually believe that?).  Unless they’re about to pour forth with statements about how those are actually the ideal sizes for a display, I don’t think they’re about to exist in a market where size really does matter and play on the small front.  I’d guess we see one at ~32″, ~40″, ~50″, and ~60″ – those are the main categories of TVs sold today.

Yeah, I'm on a truck. Life's just that good. I have a keg back here too.

And now is where we face our hurdle: these TVs are big.  The box for my Samsung 63″ plasma barely fit into a pickup truck!  You can’t exactly airdrop hundreds of each model to Apple stores.  In fact, every aspect of the logistics to pull off Apple’s typical surprise & delight maneuvers is quite tricky here.  So that’s problem number one – in my guess they solve this via the “and you’ll all be able to receive your units 30 days from today” type of solution.  But there’s no way you’ll hear “and you can go get them in Apple stores nationwide this afternoon.”

Second, unlike phones and iPads, and even computers, TV buying has a lot more seasonality to it.  And other than a core set of fanatics (nope, I’m not at that level yet), most people aren’t about to pick up new expensive living room gear for any given reason.  This is actually one of the trickiest nuances of the TV world (on the hardware front) – it’s really hard to get someone out of their buying cycles.  Sure, if someone was already planning to get a new set next holiday season they’ll consider getting one in June or August or whenever.  But if not, (question mark).

So, they can’t announce too soon.  Or too late.  They can’t announce in the first half of the year.  But if they wait til too late, they’ll impact supply chain in a painful way and potentially affect sales.

My money’s on a late Spring announcement, shipping in the Summer.  Even though it’s traditionally a terrible time to introduce a TV set to the market, it’ll give them more time to get the logistic down, the stores reformatted, and everything else into full swing in advance of the Q4 buying season.

But then again, it’s Apple, so “the rules” just don’t apply.

CES Tips: CES 2012 Edition

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One of my favorite CES moments. I'm 1/4 of the way to winning an EGOT!

Over a dozen CESes later (is that how you pluralize CES?), my tips for attending CES have shifted a bit, but not too much.  But for a personal first, my tips aren’t changing at all since 2011′s CES Tips list.  So, here’s that list, copied and pasted for your convenience.

  1. Wear Comfy Shoes!
    Of all the feedback I get on these lists, this is the one people appreciate the most.  CES isn’t supersized like it was back in ’08, but it’s still big, and tired feet equals sore back equals unhappy attendee.  Freebie bonus tip: while walking the show floor, try to walk on the booths as they tend to have better padding than the walkways between booths.
  2. Stay Clean
    I’m not a purel fan in general, but for a show like CES with over a hundred thousand people visiting from every continent, you are guaranteed to bump into someone who has exposure to some bizarre strain of something that’s going to make your next few days pretty miserable.  Keep your hands clean, wash before every meal and snack, and you’ll at least up your odds of avoiding the CES Flu next week.  Good luck.
  3. Pack Light
    My recommendation is to walk the floor with either nothing or a near-empty backpack. Forget shoulder straps, you’ll be aching by the end of the day. Bring nothing you do not need during the day. Also, try to dump your bag prior to dinner, so you can spend the night on the town without having to remember anything later. What happens in Vegas…
  4. Be Nice to the Staff
    Booth workers have likely sacrificed their entire holiday season to prep for CES.  They have to answer a thousand questions or so an hour.  Their demos are probably going to go awry as they are probably dealing with brand new gadgetry that doesn’t really work so great.  Treat them nice – don’t pester them as if they are tech support – they aren’t.  Don’t ask them hour-long questions on some weird technology nuance.  Don’t badger.  And don’t suck up all their time considering there are folks standing right behind you with questions to ask too.  Just be nice, they could use a little break from time to time.
  5. Plan Everything
    Figure out which booths in which halls you are going to prior to getting there.  Figure out where your dinner is, and book enough time to get a taxi.  Figure out where to get your badge before going there.  Figure out where your parties are, and plan that properly.  ”Winging it” utterly sucks when it comes to CES and Las Vegas.   Traveling between any two destinations could easily take an hour, even as early as 8am. If you try to leave the show, go to a hotel, then come back, your day is done.
  6. Skip the Swag
    Do you really want a Panasonic pen, or a Sony plastic bag, or a brochure from TiVo? Really? My wife has actually forbidden me from bringing home anything, period. Also, for those of you into conservation (which should be, you know, everyone), no better way to send a message than to leave Vizo with an extra truckfull of mints (note that for the 2012 edition I changed Samsung to Vizio, just for funsies – yet I kept the same gag in from 2011 #lazy).
  7. Stay Hydrated
    If you carry only one thing (a simple backpack, remember?  no?  back to #3 for you!), it should be a bottle of water.  Also, since your hotel room will be quite dry, leave the bathtub 1/4 full of water overnight, you’ll feel better in the morning.
  8. Get Connected
    Since about 80% of everyone at CES will be using an iPhone, odds are y’all won’t have much of a signal.  Further, wifi is going to be spotty at best.  I recommend relying on texting as your go-to method of staying in touch with folks.  Either that or grab a MiFi for the week.
  9. Share Cabs!
    When you get to your hotel taxi line in the morning, and it’s huge, here’s a simple trick to save yourself 30 minutes per day(or more).  Walk to the front, ask if anyone’s going to the convention center, if they say yes, offer to pay for their cab.  You aren’t actually “cutting” in line, because the person who was 2nd in line remains 2nd in line and you have no impact on their wait.  Easy one, eh?  By the way, you should be sure to tip a little extra when you do this, since you’ve taken away a full fare.  Plus, sharing is caring (I don’t know how that fits in here, but it sounds so nice to say).  Oh, and don’t forget – you can’t hail a taxi in Las Vegas, so grab them at hotels, restaurants, or the LVCC.
  10. Layer Up
    Vegas is in the middle of a big desert, and while it may be warm during the day, the nights are very cold in January.  Bring a jacket or a sweater when you go out.  But don’t forget to leave your CES badge in your hotel room before you leave for the night!
  11. Bring Business Cards
    I would say roughly 97% of the people that I’ve met at CES over the years who don’t have cards regret not having them. Maybe it seems cool now not to carry them. Maybe you think they are so 1990s. The truth is, there’s almost no reason not to carry cards, and even looking at it from a potential loss vs potential gain perspective says: carry the darn things! And Moo cards don’t count, people.  Updated for 2009201020112012:  Still true.
  12. Follow Live Online
    Engadget puts up a post every 3.8 seconds during CES (this is not a fact, I am just guessing – it’s probably more frequent than that). Make sure you tap into theirs (or Gizmodos or your own favorite gadget blog) during the course of the show.  If you are AT the show, you might find out about something cool to see; if you are stuck in your office, it’ll be kinda like being there, except you are stuck in your office and they’re in Vegas. Loser.

Oh, and if you missed it, here’s a video of myself and Robert Scoble talking about whats in store this year.  Have fun at the show!

Decoding "I Cracked It"

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As Nick Bilton wrote:

“I’ve finally cracked it!” Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple, told his biographer, Walter Isaacson.

This topic seems to come up time and time again in the “future of TV” discussions, and was revived today over at AllThingsD: “Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.”  I’ve seen a few other stabs at what “cracking it” could possibly refer to, but none seem quite right.

First, regarding voice-controlled TVs.  Is this part of the future?  Absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably.  Siri hacking is already a hobby, and the idea of “TV, channel 702 please” or “TV, Watch The Office” or “TV, Record New Episodes of Arrested Development” all sound great.  But how much of an improvement is this really?

I’d call it a minor enhancement – specifically in context to all the action happening in the second screen. If you can pick up your smart phone or iPad and perform roughly the same query in one of dozens of apps, then “talking” this command doesn’t really sound like a HUGELY big deal.  It sounds incremental.  And “cracking it” doesn’t seem like it’s about incremental.  As I’ve written about previously, I don’t think it’s about physical gestures either, and as I’ll write about more in the future, it’s unlikely “apps” nor about some “new” 10-foot user interface (those are terrible, and are dead, thankfully).

What if the interview wasn’t about some futurey thing we’ll see one day?  What if it’s not some mystical innovation that we can’t possibly fathom?  See, I talk to virtually everybody in the future of TV industry, and not a single person seems to be able to imagine what this could be.  That’s a whole lot of smart, industry-relevant, savvy people to be so in the dark.

So I’m going to take a giant leap backwards on the statement “I cracked it” and instead of looking at what might come, I’m looking at what’s already there.  See, from my eyes, the single biggest improvement to the TV experience I’ve ever seen happened last year.  I think “I Cracked It”exists, and it’s called AirPlay.

AirPlay takes a fundamental mindshift from thinking about whats happening ON the screen, where you have to use a remote (or gesture or voice or whatever) to control some awkward, ill-performing, frustrating, fundamentally LOUSY user interface.  AirPlay shifts the interface to your favorite location, the device you hold, and carry with you all the time.  AirPlay enables you to have the most organic, natural, helpful user experience you can, then just shift that experience to the device you want, easily and flawlessly.  It’s an awesome experience.

For the record, I don’t mean this to be a gush about Apple TV / AirPlay – merely the experience the two together provide, one I anticipate will be replicated by others, and soon. The future of TV interfaces will be controlled by your second screen, and you’ll have one simple way to get it to the screen of your choosing.  Today that’s done by AirPlay, but by the end of 2012 you’ll see this type of offering from a variety of manufacturers and app providers.

The first “moment of change” for TV user interfaces happened in the late 1990s by TiVo.  The next one happened in 2010, by Steve Jobs & Apple.  And yes, he cracked it.

Why Apple Won't Buy Netflix (or Sony or RIM or …)

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We're like Media. Squared.

I enjoy pondering the question of “who should Apple buy next?”  I think it’s probably best answered in this Quora post, which conveniently includes a history of most of their recent acquisitions, then followed by all sorts of fun guesses.  Some of the companies mentioned include: Square, Pandora, Sony, Amazon, RIM, and many more.  PaidContent lists Apple as a good future home for Netflix.

I’m sure on paper many of these are sound acquisitions.  Some bring good IP. Others good cash flow.  Others good branding and distribution vehicles.  I’d surmise that many a financial analyst could put together very solid plans, and would even wager the discussions happen within Apple from time to time on the topic.  But I don’t think Apple’s buying any of them, and for a vastly different reason, one that won’t make any spreadsheet or pro forma statement anywhere.  It’s about the DNA transfusion.

If there’s one thing Steve Jobs created over the past decade-plus it’s a certain DNA.  It’s a company-wide culture that transcends from product to marketing to customer service to building design.  And inserting hundreds of product managers, engineers, QA staff, designers, etc who come from radically different types of DNA will result in exactly one thing: Brundlefly.

How about an iMinidisc player? Or adding UMD to next-gen Macbook Airs?

My money is on Apple continuing their pattern of only absorbing companies who are either:

  • Small – smaller teams who are tightly focused can have their developing culture be absolutely subsumed by Apple’s
  • Non-consumer facing – ingredient technologies (chips, algorithms, infrastructure) tend to need less of the consumer product dogma that guides the “Apple way” and have less impact on culture

The exciting thing about an Apple acquisition, in my opinion, is watching them take little pockets of technology and turn them into big consumer products far down the road.  Although I would say, of all the companies named above, it certainly does seem like Square could be a good fit from a product, market, *and* DNA perspective, but that’s just from outside appearances.

If AppleTV is 1/3 of the market, who's selling the other 2/3?

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A few blogs are reporting about Strategy Analytics’ recent claim:

Strategy Analytics projects that the market will reach almost 12 million units globally this year, with Apple alone predicted to sell nearly four million devices.

Wow. Pretty bold claim.  Let’s deconstruct it.  Let’s assume it’s a correct prediction:

AppleTV will sell 4 million units, leaving ~8 million for “the rest”.

what do you mean "and the rest"?

Here are “the rest”: Roku, Western Digital, D-Link (Boxee), and… er… I don’t know, how about Logitech? Maybe a few other smaller players, but nothing you and I are buying in a Best Buy, Target, Walmart or Amazon – the only places that matter at all for moving these kinds of numbers.  Yes, there are some other odds and ends in the bizarre category known as Internet Set Top Boxes, but they aren’t mustering up sufficient sales to count here.

Roku: I’ve heard all sorts of things, but lets use publicly available information: as of last January, Roku hit 1 million devices sold.  I’ll assume they’ve at least doubled that in 2011, possibly as much as tripled, due to new products, more viability, and lower prices.  That said, they are now up against an ever-improving AppleTV product.  Even so, let’s assume they can hold pace against the world’s largest marketing machine for digital lifestyle products, and sell another 3 million units in 2012.

Western Digital: You probably haven’t heard of it, but that little gadget your buddy has for watching photos on his TV is called the WDTV Live, and they’ve sold somewhere in the 1-3 million unit range (I know that’s a big range, but it seems pretty fair based on some poking around).  Not a bad showing for a company known for making hard drives.  But in the presence of both Apple and Roku, it’s a pretty fair bet that they aren’t edging out of third place for future market share.  I’ll again be kind with 1.5 million units sold in 2012.

From these guys, only for your TV. Perfect.

D-Link (Boxee Box): Disclosure: I was a core part of the launch teams for both Boxee and the Boxee Box by D-Link, and wish to see them extremely successful, though I am no longer professionally engaged with either company in any way.  And that said, I don’t think they’re anywhere close in numbers yet, and don’t see them hitting the million unit mark any time soon (specifically in regards to unit sales, this has nothing to do with downloads, active community, or positive thoughts). Optimistic high end prediction in 2012: 750K units.

Logitech: $100 million loss.  Let’s move along shall we?

Have the factory spin up about a bajillion of them, nothing will go wrong.

Everyone else: I’ll generously band them all together, and predict they maybe move 500K units.

Unknown entry by traditional consumer electronics brand: Look, anyone can make a media streamer, in fact you can make an adequate one by buying off the shelf parts and licensing open software platforms.  But even the formerly mighty Sony and the young stalwart Vizio is going to have a tricky road in getting a product out in this category that doesn’t include a full end-to-end solution.  And there just aren’t enough to go around.  Maybe Amazon could have some kind of Kindle Fire: Home Media Edition or something, but something tells me they are still getting their feet wet in hardware and aren’t going to jump too rashly into the space (though I’ve been known to be wrong about Amazon and hardware in the past).  Top guess: 250K units.

Grand Total Units Sold, Highly Optimistic Prediction Mode: 6 million units.  Giving Apple TV, with 4 million sales, a 40% market share.  And that’s me being *quite* optimistic, and I’d wager it’s more like a grand total of 4 for the rest.  Or less.  Giving Apple TV a significantly larger potential – and by the way, it’s not exactly Apple’s strongest product.

But their math was so good!

This whole story just reminds me of the time when I was reviewing an analyst report for the *exact same space* back in 2003 when we had just shipped the HP Digital Media Receiver (the first mainstream Internet Set Top Box, by the way).  This was, by the way, before consumers had Flips or other simple video recording devices, digital cameras were mostly a novelty, and there was no YouTube, Netflix streaming, or pretty much anything else to watch on the darned thing.  But still, the potential!

The analyst predicted hundreds of thousands of “streaming video boxes” sold in 2003.  The only snag was, we were literally the only game in town, and we had predicted tens of thousands at best.  When I spoke with the analysts, they said they predicted several years forward, based on consumer interest, to arrive at several million units a year.  Then, they backtracked it into 2003 and, boom, hundreds of thousands.  What could possibly go wrong with this kind of logic?

They sold literally dozens of them

Why Your Gadgets Don't Play Nice With Each Other

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I’m in the business of helping make your devices and gadgets work better and more seamlessly in your home.  But the truth is, if the industry made just a few simple decisions differently along the way, I wouldn’t have a business to be in.  The “remote control overload” problem we all have comes primarily as a result of your devices being digitally ignorant of each other.  Which, from the consumers’ perspective, sucks (industry term).  But the reason this sucks more than it seems is that your devices could be talking already, they just… don’t.  And they don’t in two different ways!

Connection-based compatibility – HDMI
Pretty much every HD product shipped in the past ~5 years has an HDMI connection. And HDMI has this protocol cleverly called Consumer Electronics Control – you can guess what it’s for.  It’s been part of the HDMI specification since the very beginning. And in general, virtually no manufacturers use it to control other brands’ products, though even more egregiously they even use this protocol to control their own products.  So your Samsung TV knows when a Samsung Blu-Ray player starts a movie playback, but ignores a Denon receiver’s request to change inputs. Fail.

"standards".

Network-based compatibility - DLNA

Back in the early aughts, there was this thing called the Digital Home Working Group, formed by several consumer electronics companies with the specific goal of – wait for it – making sure that consumers’ electronics products would work together harmoniously.  The DHWG was renamed into the friendlier Digital Living Network Alliance, and then launched in 2004. I was personally on the original working groups for the (both?) organization(s?).  Even at the time, it was beyond obvious that this open standard by committee approach wasn’t going to give consumers the solutions they were looking for.  7 years later, and I’d assert that consumer awareness of DLNA is negligible, and the standard has yet to provide the industry a reliable solution.  

So there we are, oodles of technology, tens of thousands (if not more) of man-hours developing standards and platforms, and still, consumers have to deal with the “input one” problem (in a nutshell: devices connected to anything but the first/primary input of a TV tend not to get used, with the lone standout exception being video game consoles, which is likely due to a) more explosions and b) children operating the equipment).  Why is this the case? My friend Julie Jacobson ponders a little conspiracy theory over at CEPro.

My sinister plot scenario is actually much simpler.  I think there are specifically two reasons why consumer electronics products don’t do anything “advanced connectivity”-wise together:

  1. It’s hard to make it a priority.
    Testing technology, in general, is challenging.  QA can take as long as actual development time, often more.  Many products get rushed to market even before the testing is complete.  So imagine, if you are the person in charge of shipping the product, and your marketing team probably (a) announced prematurely and (b) likely set expectations too high.  You are likely underresourced, understaffed, and concerned about just shipping at all (or maybe a few weeks too soon?).  How much energy do you think you’d spend on testing other companies’ products?  Right, me too.

    I'm not in charge of line-straightening, that's a different department.

  2. It’s not financially rewarding to make it a priority.
    As illustrated above, just getting the darn product to market is a major chore.  Further, you know that much of your sales and success in the marketplace have to do with product reviews, as well as customer ratings (and worth of mouth and social media, etc – but these all come from the quality of the product itself).  Lastly, you know that virtually no reviewer, either “expert” or “typical consumer” is going to take the time to really do a lot of testing of compatibility, unless of course you claim compatibility.  So if you don’t, and just sit back on the sidelines and phone it in when it comes to cross-brand compatibility, it isn’t going to hurt your product sales or market perception in any meaningful way.

The only meaningful standards to expect in living room are (1) most content should be able to play on most devices, and (b) most devices should use the same cables as most other devices, and (c) most devices will come with arbitrarily confusing directions as to how to connect said cables.  Oh, and don’t forget (d) most devices will not come with the cable you really need at 11:30pm when you finally get to setting it up.

Maybe they'd do better if they stopped asking for my phone number just so I can buy some more AA's?

Do I Want a Gesture-Controlled TV?

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With the latest updates, the XBOX 360 is able to show live TV via Verizon’s FIOS service. For Kinect owners, this enables a vision of a fully gesture controlled TV.  Swipe your hand left/right to change channels, up/down to change volume, and do a backflip to return to the channel you were previously watching.  Wonderful.

Well, wonderful in theory, that is.  But in reality, I’m not so sure.  First, I’ll get past the concern of my TV randomly changing channels when I gesticulate wildly during a hockey game (Go Habs!) and just assume it only does it when I want it to.  I’m going to move to the part of the conversation of “how much does this help me as a TV watcher?”

How does it help?
If I don’t need a remote control, at all, I’d say it’s a nice improvement (though as you’ll read below, this is pretty close to impossible).  With a caveat: it needs to work in such a way that every “command” is completely memorable.  If there’s a risk that I’ll forget how to Pause, Record, or access my DVR menu, and I’ll ever need to reach for that remote, it’s a done deal.  From my experience ranging from Siri on the iPhone to early gesture technology (my first ever was the original Black & White game), the moment the technology becomes semi-reliable it is functionally equivalent to unreliable.  And, dropped calls not withstanding, people for the most part do not regularly use unreliable technology.

How doesn’t it help?
Well, since there’s no way the gestures can replace on-screen menus (the dreaded 10′ UI), ultimately all the gesture does is replace a physical remote (in other words – there’s no gesture for “I want to watch The Office from my DVR” or “change to channel 704″).  So the user still has to deal with their sluggish, painful to use EPG (electronic program guide), navigate the tedious DVR menus, etc etc etc. Which begs the question – is waving your hand “up” really a “Great” improvement to pushing “up” on a remote?  I’d file this under the “not-so-much” category.

There’s a lot to be said for the transformation of TV.  There’s a lot of new functionality coming.  There’s a lot of new services coming.  This is about the most exciting time for innovation and change in the television industry that I’ve ever seen.  This also directly implies we’re going to see a lot of gimmickry, under which gesture controls firmly sits in my opinion (though ZDNet thinks it’s the bomb – but hey, to each their own).

But then again, if it lets people put down their poop-laden remotes, I guess that does make the world a better place.

Steve Jobs: the Father of Consumer Technology

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I surprised myself with the emotional reaction to hearing about Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday.  I guess I knew it was coming, but having never met the man, didn’t expect to have “a moment” about it.  After reading words from Eric Schmidt, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and President Obama (not to mention a few other people), it became quite challenging to write anything original that I hadn’t covered when he resigned.  But there is one thing that I don’t think is as bluntly stated as I’d do it, so here’s my brief take.

Steve Jobs is, in my opinion, singlehandedly responsible for the concept of Consumer Technology.  Or, less brief, responsible for the concept of really amazing consumer technology.

I wasn’t always an Apple fan, but I think I (almost) always respected (most of) their products.  Even before I wanted a Mac, I thought it was awesome that they paid such attention to screws and other little details.  Even when I thought a turquoise computer was silly, I was able to “get” why they did it.  Even when I thought switching to Mac would just cause me a pain (fears of incompatibility, etc), I always kinda sorta wanted to go there.  Even when I thought they couldn’t pull off success in the phone market, I had a sneaking hunch they’d do something a little, shall we say, different, than the rest.

The Apple II was arguably the first mass-market personal computer.  The Mac was the first visual computing environment that put ease of use ahead of a command-line interface.  The iPod was the first end-to-end solution for digital music.  The iPhone transformed phones.  The iPad is transforming the entire computing landscape.

Steve certainly didn’t do it alone, and the entire teams he’s had around him for years deserve immense praise.  But it’s safe to say that no other inventor, entrepreneur, technologist, CEO, engineer, marketer, product designer, or anyone else has pushed the “consumer” in “consumer technology” so far as Mr Jobs did over the past four decades.

So thank you, Steve, for not just the gadgets, but realistically the entire concept of building technology for the people.  You made technology, as you’d probably have put it, delightful.

Expectations for Tim Cook's Oct 4th Event

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The rumor mill has it that Oct 4th is the next big Apple event, in which we can expect to see Tim Cook kick off his term as CEO.  Here are some of my thoughts on what we can expect , in no particular order (note that I’m skipping all the pre-announced stuff, like iOS 5, etc):

No Steve Jobs
A variety of folks are speculating on whether or not Jobs will make an appearance.  I’d say absolutely not, other than possibly in the audience.  Jobs walking on stage would undermine Tim’s role as CEO and send a weak message to the media.  It’s time for Cook to run the show, and Wall Street in particular will be paying close attention to his every move (yet another example of how Wall Street’s mere presence harms us, but I’ll save that snarky feeling for another time. too late).  Granted I think we’d all love to see Jobs make an appearance, but unless they can figure out a way to do so without sending a lack of confidence message, I’d assume he stays on the sidelines.  This, by the way, will lead to rampant speculation about his health, again (under the veiled theme of “its news!” – tip: it isn’t, let the man be.).

Major Refreshes to Most Products
With one exception (below), I believe almost every product the company makes will get a refresh, either major or minor.  We already know about iPhone 5 and iOS 5, but rumors across everything else have showed up as well.  Per the above, it’s time for Cook to show his quality, and I think they’ll opt for over-delivering.

No iPad Updates
It’s just too soon.  Apple would frustrate their existing (huge) iPad base, and steal from whatever they’ll be doing in 2012.  Also, a complete dearth of competition in the space enables them to take their time and raise the bar next Spring.

New Presentation Style
Whomever created the “Steve Jobs Presentation” obviously deserves some kind of award.  But what made his style so special is how well it was tuned for Jobs.  I believe they’ll re-create the concept for Tim to enable him to deliver his own personal touch.  I don’t think it’ll be a massive departure, but I do expect some change.

Major iPod Changes
I wouldn’t be surprised if, starting next month, the iPod product line is reduced to the Touch and Nano (with WiFi), and everything else is gone.  That really is the purpose behind iCloud, and just like the company is killing off physical drives, it seems like the traditional iPod isn’t part of the new vision of the Apple digital lifestyle.  I’d like to see some minor “apps” for the Nano personally, but that might be a stretch.

One More Thing - iTelevision?
If they even continue with the “One More Thing” it could be the actual launch of the fabled Apple Television Set.  Or it could happen in 2013.  Or never…

Tune back on Oct 5th to review how I got 5/6 of these things wrong. :)

When Will Facebook Fail?

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Just like governments, mixing “creativity” with “banking”, taking naked pictures of yourself and hoping they won’t end up on the Internet, and well, this stuff, tech companies have a certain inevitable amount of failure built-into them.  Sure, IBM, Xerox and Motorola have existed for many decades, and both Microsoft and Intel still have dominant positions, but if we really think about the “powerhouses” in technology today (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple), they are all fairly young (I’m using the argument that Apple effectively reinvented itself in the late 1990s).  And if we look ahead even 10 years, it’s hard to argue those four will hold they same positions they do today.

Little known secret? Sony guts.

Of the four, I’d personally assess Google and Facebook as “most vulnerable” to obsolescence (just a hunch, I’m sure I’ll be ridiculed in the commentary for such a statement), and with the points made on “why Facebook’s the new Yahoo!” by Mike Elgan and Mathew Ingram, I thought I’d write up a little somethin’.

First and foremost, I see Facebook as in no way similar to Yahoo!  Not even a little bit, I’d barely even figure out how to compare the two companies (other than the “.com” at the end of their URLs).  The key thing, beyond whatever “Facebook.com” is all about, is that Facebook is unarguably the most well-distributed and deeply integrated service on the Internet.  According to Nielsen, Facebook users spent 53 billion minutes in May 2011 using the site – and this does not count Facebook-integrated features on other websites.  The Facebook “social graph” is at/near/above 700 million users at this point.  That’s a lot of the Internet.  A lot.

My God. It's Full of Likes!

I don’t see Facebook dying due to “stale technology” – they aren’t about technology (other than scaling, etc).  They aren’t about UI/UX (tip to FB: the “clickable thing” in an update should be the action/verb, not the user nor target/noun).  Most of the typical norms of a website’s laws of gravity simply don’t apply to them, due to the massive inertia they’ve built with their userbase. Further, the inertia of existing social graphs make growth of Google+ and Twitter effectively irrelevant – I think speculation that “Facebooking” will shift to a different social network is extremely hard to substantiate.

I used to take the “cool club in town” position on Facebook, and the moment it wasn’t “new” and instead full of B+T crowds, it’s popularity would sink and people would move on.   But I don’t think this argument holds up anymore, Facebook is too popular in too many demographics and the “cool kids” are “over” the fact that their lame parents are there as well.  It’s like the mall – just because Dad’s shopping at Eddie Bauer isn’t stopping the utes from hanging out in the food court.  I know it too is easily picked apart, but I think the mall argument works really well as a parable for Facebook.

Why does the one in the middle look so. much. older?

When you want to open a Gap, and you want customers, you find a mall.  Orange Julius? Mall.  Crappy replica furniture Bombay Company? Malls.

What’s the online equivalent of that?  Facebook, Likes, Facebook Connect, etc.  Facebook is the way brands are engaging with customers online.  And this is just making them even stickier.

I just hope there's a kiosk with a crazy lady selling mystical gems.

So how might Facebook fall?  A few thoughts…

  1. Massive shift to mobile interactions - Facebook’s weakest point at present is its mobile presence.  If the world continues its mobile/social/web path, I believe Facebook has less to offer that ingrains it so deeply in the traditional browser/web world.  Without the stickiness across mobile apps (especially with the iOS shift to Twitter and Android’s inevitable equivalent with Google+), they could be highly vulnerable.
  2. Massive revolt on social networking – At present, our society is unfortunately radically focused on narcissism and fulfilling ego problems.  This may (please, please, please!) change, in which case folks’ll have much less desire to share every (useless) nuance of their (mundane) lives with their friends/acquaintances/people they kinda met once.  If these patterns ever emerge, you can put Facebook at the top of the chopping block as it’ll become the target of said pushback.
  3. Massive elongated platform failure – Whether its by hackers or internal problems, a significant outage of Facebook and its related services could cause things to unravel in a significant way.  I’d wager that if a Facebook Connect downtime prevents users from logging into websites/apps for more than a few days could cause the digital equivalent of a bank panic by both the web services and the end-users themselves.
  4. Massive rapid shift to post-PC platforms – Similar to (1) above, if the shift from a computer-based world to a tablet iPad, phone, connected TV, and other device world happens, and Facebook can’t provide the same “glue”, they’ll be vulnerable.
  5. Massive privacy breach – When I say massive in this case, I don’t just mean Facebook makes some (typically) poor decision regarding consumer rights/privacy, I mean something really awful happens, and its very public, and its entirely due to Facebook.  Like, huge act of terrorism on highly visible people entirely tied to something that was Facebook’s fault.
  6. Unknown – This would be the deux ex machina of today’s post – something otherwise unpredictable comes along and clobbers them over the head.

It’s hard to predict the end of giants or eras.  But that they will fall and whither away is predictable.  Curious to hear any other people’s thoughts on the topic in the comments below!