LIVEdigitally

I'm in like with Siri

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While Mat from Gizmodo is calling Siri “Apple’s broken promise” (and he makes valid points) I see it a totally different way.  I’ll open with his closing argument:

And for me, once the novelty wore off, what I found was that Siri is not so intelligent after all—it’s simply another voice program that will obey very specific commands. If it knows those commands. If it can understand you. And if it has a network connection. Were this Google, or Microsoft, I’d shrug. But it’s not, it’s Apple. And Apple is the company that sells perfection. It’s a company that usually keeps its promises, and in its Siri ads, it promises far more than what it actually delivers. That’s not what any of us signed up for.

I’d agree with most of that.  So it’s really about managing expectations.  I will agree with Mat that the commercials and hype around Siri do not set the right expectations.  If you think you can talk to your phone and it’ll just do exactly the thing you said, the way you meant it, you are in for a world of disappointment.  This was about how I felt back in the first few days of taking Siri for a test spin (talk?).

Now, a few weeks later, I’ve found Siri a great component of the iPhone 4S overall experience.  Today I had to get to the office, was driving, and was in a rush.  “Driving directions to work”.  Perfect.  Last week, wanted to know when Hannukah starts.  “When is Chhhhanukah?”.  Winner.  Again, driving, running late to get home.  “Send a message to my wife” followed by “Stuck in traffic will be home soon”.  Bingo.

If you can get your head around how Siri works, what it knows, and more importantly, what it doesn’t know, you can really enjoy the ability of controlling a device by talking to it.  It can’t do a whole bundle of things I want it to do, for example:

  • “Turn on Bluetooth” – this would be awesome.  Not present.
  • “Launch Evernote” – yup.
  • “Read me my last email” – cool, thanks!
  • “Browse www.livedigitally.com”. must-have.

There are effectively no limits, no upper bounds to what an enhanced or improved interface could offer over existing ones.  This is true for gestures, for voice, for physical recognition, etc.  But, in all cases, the user must know absolutely what they’ll be getting out of that experience.  If the consumer expects too much, and is delivered too little, they’ll abandon it.  This is true for trusted experiences as well – if a gesture is inconsistent, or voice-to-speech is intermittent – consumers will try it, play around for a while, but mostly give up on it.

For me, Siri is in the “it can be handy from time to time” category, and as such, is something I’ve grown to like. I don’t use it often, because I know when it will/won’t help me out, but my “hit rate” is pretty good these days.  It also has a good potential for amusement…

Netflix + Arrested Development? Come On!

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I was asked by well-respected analyst firm TDG to pen a piece of the impact of Netflix wrapping up exclusive rights to the upcoming 4th season of Arrested Development (for their must-read OTT Newsletter).  At first they asked if I could get it done in the next two weeks, but I said, “two weeks, I can do it in two days. Hey!”  So readers who are surprised at that phrasing will probably want to stop right about now, since the rest of it is, in fact, an analysis, but one heavily wrapped in Arrested Development quotes.  You’ve been warned:

“I’ve made a huge mistake,” a quote that could either be attributed to the hasty creation (and destruction) of Qwikster, or to one G.O.B. Bluth, Will Arnett’s character on Arrested Development. In a groundbreaking move, those worlds collided as Netflix announced it was the “network of choice” to distribute the upcoming revival of the cult favorite show (leading many of us to say, “them?”).

Not FOX (the original broadcaster of the show), not Showtime (once rumored to pick it up from FOX), was in play here. In fact, not a single broadcast, cable, or premium network will carry the new episodes.

While Netflix already has rights to a forthcoming original effort (House of Cards, by David Fincher and Kevin Spacey), the Arrested Development play is a first for an existing show to be revived yet not be available through traditional TV (as fans of the show might say, “no touching!”).

Part of the curiosity here is that the show now has a larger fan base than when it was cancelled in 2006, and populates many “Most Popular” lists on Hulu, Netflix, VUDU, etc. One would assume traditional broadcasters would express interest in locking down that large audience…so much for assumptions.

For Netflix in particular, this is a very big deal. The company is acting like a loose seal out of water and consequently has Wall Street running scared. Having exclusive access to this show might bring back some of the recently lost customer base and could sit well with show fans, especially given that a key criticism of its service is related to its catalog.

From an OTT perspective, it’s safe to say there is no illusion of the tremendous opportunity ahead. In a world that seems to be moving more and more down a path where consumers can get truly quantum video access – the content they want, from the provider they want, on the device they want, at the time they want – this is a big stride forward.

Disclosures: I own a tiny amount of Netflix stock personally, but much more importantly, I’m a huge huge Arrested Development fan.  And as they say, there’s always money in the banana stand.  Come on!

ps – and that’s why you always add a disclosure.

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.

7 Simple Ways To Improve Twitter

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Last January I wrote a post “Will Normal Folks Ever Use Twitter?” in which I decried the service from a “regular” person perspective, including the new user experience, search, etc.  It’s been almost two years, we’ve seen change of CEO, product team, engineers, lots and lots of cash, and #NewTwitter, but in my opinion, it’s far from enough.  I’m of the mindset that if Twitter cannot get it’s collective product experience together, their growth will flatten, and usage will recede amongst several populations (great post on that over at AllThingsD).  Here are some of my thoughts on how to improve the Twitter experience:

Eliminate URLs and @Users from 140 character limit
Twitter announced their official URL-shortener is here to stay, which is fine, but I think it’s a poor experience for all users.  Instead, I’d prefer to see a URL and an @User take up a single character each of the official limit.  It makes no sense, even in “tight” communication/messaging, to count against a link or a person simply due to character length. Twitter’s system should ingest all URLs and @Users and only count against the usage, not the length.  Further, all twitter clients should auto-expand the URLs, and preferably replace them with the title of the target website.  Here’s some examples:

whats your opinion on Google+ versus facebook and twitter?  do you think they’ll be able to “win”? @harrymccracken @Scobleizer @jlouderb @jlanzone

Is currently 147 characters, and I as a user would probably remove the 2nd half of the question to tie in the names.  Instead, removing the 39 characters “wasted” on the usernames would make the tweet legit.

i think this is the most important news of the day, everybody should take a moment, stop what they are doing, and read it.  http://bit.ly/p7Ez3c

The above is 144 characters, but of them only 6 were needed to uniquely identify the link, and 14 were a waste.  Further, if the above were auto-fixed by a twitter client, they’d know better than to click on the link.  Suckers.

Make Search Work
I’m not sure which is more useless, searching on twitter.com for something, or trying to stop getting printed catalogs from Restoration Hardware. It’s been more than a decade since Google figured out search, why can’t twitter?

Autocorrect Error @-Replies and DMs
Twitter only really has two “commands” and both can be done so wrong so easily.  That’s like having an iPod that doesn’t always play music when you pushed the play button.  Twitter should intercept tweets “gone wrong”.  Not only would this improve the product experience for all its users, it would probably save some famous people from incredibly embarrassing moments.  That said, perhaps this is just nature’s way of weeding them out?

So if twitter “sees” a tweet like “D @username” or “DM username” or ” D username” or anything *even close* to an almost-DM, the client should prevent it from being sent without a Yes/No pop-up dialog.  Same thing when a user starts a tweet with an @, since I still believe even experienced users don’t realize those tweets are fairly hidden.

What could possibly go wrong?

Offer Multiple Views
Lists are definitely a great way to view tweets, and the media views are good, but realistically they are barely a band-aid on the massive problem: separating signal from noise.  Twitter needs to offer a lot of new ways for me to view my twitter streams.  For example, how about letting me select a few users whose most recent tweets are simply always in my timeline.  Or how about showing me my stream based on which tweets have been retweeted at least X times.  I use Tweetdeck to separate numerous topics, but there’s so much more that could happen here.

#Explain #Hashtags #Somehow
OK, so a hashtag lets people tweet about one topic, and really only seems to exist because of the brokenness of Twitter search (see above).  But most of the hashtags I see make no sense, and even clicking on them doesn’t exactly “answer” the question of why they exist. How about having users “register” a hashtag for a period of time?  Even if multiple users do that, it’d be fine.  Then when a new user clicks on a hashtag, they can see all the “terms in use at present” to close the loop on it.

Eliminate Trending Topics
When was the last time a single trending topic was actually useful to you?  That’s right, it was never.

I'm sure I'd learn a lot by clicking on these...

Help Manage Contacts
Ever get a DM from someone, try to reply, but can’t because they aren’t following back?  That’s not user error, that’s product design error.  Users shouldn’t be allowed to DM without following the target themselves. Alternately, at least inform the user they aren’t being followed back…  Also, why can’t I easily ingest LinkedIn and other contacts into the people I follow?

In Conclusion

The reality is I could keep going.  I could explain why 140 characters is arbitrary at this point and should be bumped up to ~200/250 without “damaging” the service.  I could talk about how they should fix username squatting issues.  I could talk about improving integration with other Web services.  I could talk about fixing the RT/Retweet issues.  But then I’d have to write more, and that would far exceed my character limits.

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.

Why User 111091089527727420853 Is Wrong About Google+

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Scobleizer doesn't have quite a "ring" to it...

Wondering who that is?  Here’s the link, and just for fun, I’ll try to get through the whole post without otherwise identifying him.  Oh who am I kidding, it’s the infamous Scobleizer, Robert Scoble.  He recently wrote a post on why he’s betting on Google+.  Here are some key reasons, and I believe they are represented fairly in context:

What I’m noticing is Google+ gets the best stuff first. And this is “with no one on it.” (That claim cracks me up, a new post shows up every 20 seconds, 24 hours a day, and that’s with following only 5,000 people here)

My videos get more views after a month, due to Google and other search engines, than they do in the first day (which is when you’d see them on social networks).

Google+ items are the best way to get my media into Google search. I’m already seeing that. Now that there’s a search engine here on Google+ it’s even a bigger deal.

How do you best capture the EMOTION of your time? Blogging? Not for me anymore. Tweeting? Not for me anymore (I will continue being there, mostly to let people who won’t leave that system know what I’m doing and where I’m doing it — it has turned into a UI for my Facebook and Google behaviors). Facebooking? Yes. I’m still there and will be for forseeable future at http://facebook.com/robertscoble

But other than that, what is my blog for? Monetization? Nope. My bosses are very willing to pay me even if I give up my blog completely. Branding? Does having a big logo help anyone? Really?

I think I can summarize his arguments into the following statement: Google+ is a great content discovery tool for both content consumers and products, and a personal blog and Twitter don’t capture enough emotion and conversation.  And I think he’s right — for Robert Scoble, and possibly a handful of others — and I can further understand why they have the passion for the site.  I’d argue, strongly, that for the majority of other people, and not just mainstream users but technically sophisticated ones as well, Google+ is utterly lacking the experience consumers want.  It doesn’t have my actual friends in it, nor does it seem to have the features that they will want (and they’ve reinvented the use of the + button, and there aren’t multithreaded conversations, and and and).  But I’ll instead just do the counter to Robert’s key points above.

First, it’s my assertion that most people don’t much care about finding “the best stuff” nor do they care about the speed at which they find it.  To my friend Robert, it’s a very important thing, which is understandable given the nature of his career.  Most people, however, are consuming a trickle of content, and are not living in “real time”.  Most people found out about Michael Jackson dying, Steve Jobs resigning, and the Japanese tsunami many many hours after the events, with only a tiny fraction of us in the few seconds or minutes after it was announced.  Considering the availability of blogs, twitter feeds, and other streams, if the mainstream really wanted to consume more stuff in real-time, we’d already see much higher spikes in traffic to some of these sources.  Google+ being “best” or “fastest” is one of those situations where “good enough” beats great by a long shot, and this isn’t going to send it users.

If I run fast enough, I'll have all the news!

Robert’s next two points have to do with getting his content to a wider audience – I’ll keep this point short and sweet: the vast majority of people rarely create content that they share with the general public.

Next up is creating emotion – I don’t mean to sound too harsh here, but the “emotional fabric” of Google+ is roughly on par to that of a sheet of loose leaf paper, maybe slightly less.  Google+ is about as bland and expressionless an environment as I have seen online, it’s only slightly more “warm” than their search results.  Facebook is unquestionably a better experience from this perspective, and as clever as the Googlers are, incorporating the warmth it’d take to create this kind of environment is simply beyond their DNA.

Let's just put it this way, in the movie version, they get Costner to play Google+

Lastly, on what is a blog for?  It’s about identity.  It’s only because of the “.com” that Robert grew an identity as Scobleizer (like it or not).  If a random person were to hear about Robert Scoble and decide he wanted to learn more about him, read his works, etc, he’s going to end up at his personal identity site.  Which is, at present, his blog.  In the future if it’s a smorgasbord of content distributed across the blog, YouTube, Building43, Google+, Facebook, and the occasional tweet, he’s diluting his brand.  Now luckily for Robert, he already has a brand, and he can really push the limits of sites like G+ and Facebook to accommodate his following behaviors.  But again, none of this ties into the identity of a random individual online, who is, like it or not, probably based on Facebook, with occasional presences on Twitter, Yelp, and other sites.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t question if Robert himself is getting a lot, at present, out of Google+, it’s clear he is.  But I’m shocked he’s betting the future on it.  I feel like we saw this play out once before, back in the FriendFeed days.  At the time, he was warned by Michael Arrington not too invest too heavily in that service. And just because “it’s Google” isn’t enough to be certain of permanence, in fact Google’s killed quite a few products recently.  And if Google+ really becomes a “ghost town” that the founders themselves aren’t interested in participating in, I wonder how long it can survive.

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!

No, Microsoft, this will not do. Not at all.

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Microsoft introduced Windows 8 for developers today, with a specific focus on their take on the tablet.  Now some are fawning over this, but they clearly don’t recall a summer day in 2005 when Microsoft showed off Vista for the first time.  I was there. It was, in a word awesome. The early demos of Vista blew us all away, it was as if we were at the Windows 95 launch all over again.  Then Windows Vista came out, it was *nothing* like the demos, the train blew through the station, and the company’s been in a bit of a quagmire ever since, losing market share as well as credibility and prestige in virtually every category (other than Xbox).

roughly as on target as Vista was...

So today, when they show us a decently cool looking version of a tablet that isn’t going to ship for another year, after series of missteps, I’m sorry if I don’t really get particularly excited.  Particularly when I see it’s got a fan inside.  This entire move, yet again, makes me wonder: who on Earth are they building this for? What is the real market opportunity here?  Even if the Windows 8 tablet *is* as good as the current generation iPad 2, that’s chasing a product that’s already 6 months old, and will be 18 months old by the time they are in the market.  Didn’t these guys watch the movie called “HP and the Wacky Adventures of the TouchPad”?  We’ve seen how it ends!

works like nothing... else...

There really is a great market for non-iPad tablet devices, there are a few in fact.  And Microsoft is perfectly poised to build a really great tablet.  But I don’t think that perfect Microsoft tablet is about consumers, nor is it about Windows.  These markets are, at present and for the foreseeable future, mostly closed to Microsoft, and they’ll have little luck there.  So empty your heads, don’t think of anything – they’ve only got one shot at this. Microsoft needs to focus on the other key product they have, the one software package Apple can’t really touch, the one where they make a boatload of cash.  Yup, it’s Office.

yes, that WAS a Ghostbusters quote, well played!

I can write another 1000 or words on the topic, but I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.  There is unquestionably a great business opportunity in a tablet device with a great Office productivity software suite.  If the iPad is a consumption/entertainment device, then for jebus’ sake, Microsoft, learn how to cross-program, and offer a completely different thing.  And do it really well, with no big committees, and nobody who’s worked for the company for more than say 4 years.  And then go let Dell build it.  Oh, and don’t standardize (read: compromise) – make one product that works one way, no drivers, fragmentation, or anything else.

ah, that's how they get so much done!

And please, don’t tell me about it until it’s ready to ship.

Smart TV: Not Dead Yet!

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I'm Not Dead Yet!

There’s a post on Wired entitled “Smart-TV Space May Never Take Off as Predicted” in which the author quotes a comment from ViewSonic:

“’Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation… that was forecasted over the last couple years. In addition, consumer spending for Smart TV’s in general has experienced a significant slow down as the economy has slowed. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available.”

Now with all due respect to ViewSonic, the last time I checked they didn’t rank in the top 5 TV manufacturers, and based on looking at prior years reports, my hunch is they represent somewhere between 0-3% of TVs sold (they do well in monitors, not as much in TVs).  So when they predict Smart TV to have a problem, perhaps they aren’t the voice we should be using, as compared to companies such as Samsung, who has over 2 million Smart TVs in homes already.

Q2’11 Worldwide Flat Panel TV Brand Rankings by Revenue Share

Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report

As Michael Wolf, of GigaOM, tweeted: “Folks, Viewsonic is not the bellweather company by which to judge success of embryonic sector on #smarttv.” Now that said, I completely agree with James McQuivey (Forrester analyst who is hitting Smart TV issues squarely on the head):

“What’s happening in the connected TV space is it’s not really about what consumers want, it’s about what manufacturers are making,” Forrester principal analyst James McQuivey says. “Simply having a connected TV doesn’t mean you’ll actually use it.”

According to all the analysts and manufacturers I’ve spoken with personally, and that’s virtually all of them, the industry is pretty well agreed that somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of all Smart TVs actually get connected.  Further, the vast majority of them are just using them for Netflix, and just about everything else is getting pretty well ignored (stats show the #1 Smart TV app is Netflix, #2 is YouTube, and #3 is “other”).

The Wired author goes on to cite failures of the Google TV Revue box as more evidence to why the market is stuttering.  The truth is, the Revue box is failing because it’s a lousy product with a poor customer value proposition, and Kevin Bacon commercials aren’t enough to pull the wool over it.  But this would be like saying there’s no SmartPhone market because the BlackBerry Storm wasn’t so hot.

BlackBerry Angry Birds

Wait a sec, that's not a touch screen!

Last January I wrote a piece for Mashable called “5 Reasons Connected TV Could Flop in 2011” and in my opinion, all 5 of those problems are happening.  And I don’t see anybody really emerging out of the pack to do it any better – yet.  In fact, I’d wager we’re going to go a full calendar year from now before seeing signs of change.  And here’s why:

The TV UI (aka “ten foot user interface” aka “lean back UI” aka “onscreen display”) is simply unable to scale to meet the demands of convergence.  I’ll write more on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but mark my words: we have utterly reached the apex of functionality of all forms of TV-based user interfaces/experiences.

I believe TiVo pushed the concept to the breaking point with their original UX back in 1999, and I’ve seen nothing push it further since.  Yes, there are some prettier looking things out there, with beautiful icons/etc, but from a UX standpoint, we’re well past the zenith of what you can do with a remote.  And no, I don’t believe gestures are going to cut it either, and I’ll go into depth on that topic in an upcoming post as well.

I'd change the channel, but honestly my arms are just too tired.

The last point on Smart TV I have is this – the biggest “thing” that’s going to slow down all forms of growth is replacement cycle consideration.  If you buy a device once every 7-8 years, yet know intrinsically that the technology inside that device will be outdated long before that, you are less likely to buy it.  The only way manufacturers can solve this problem, as far as I can see it, is through a modular component that will enable future-proofing of the set.  Hm, yup, time for a blog post on that.

So is the Smart TV world fragmented? Yes. Confounded? Yes. Faced with turbulence? Yes.  Full of shoddy products that are causing backlash and poor word of mouth due to radically complicated living room experiences when all we want to do is kick back, turn on Bear Grylls, and have a beer? Absolutely. Dying? Nope, not even a tiny bit.

List of SmartTV Events for Fall 2011

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Budapest Parliament Hall. This would be an awesome place for a smart TV conference!

Just like my Future of TV Newsletter (thanks to all the subscribers – wow!), I thought it would be helpful for all my peers to create a list of all the events I’m tracking this Fall that have anything to do with Smart, Social, or Connected TV.  That said, I’m sure I’m missing some (please email, tweet, or comment if you know of any!).  The list below also includes some of the speakers that are presenting, though is incomplete (I only had so much room on the page, sorry to anyone I cut – it wasn’t personal.  Well, mostly.).

The Future of #SocialTV – Sept 14 – New York City

Speakers include:

  • Brian Stelter, TV & Digital Media Reporter at The New York Times ( @BrianStelter)
  • Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Wiredset/Trendrr, @MarkGhuneim
  • Valerie Streit, Strategist at YouTube/NextNew, @ValStreit
  • Ryan Osborn, Director of Social Media at NBC News, @Rozzy
  • Alex Iskold, Founder & CEO of Get Glue, @AlexIskold

Lean Back – Sept 14 – San Francisco

Demos by:

Digital Home Summit – Sept 27/28 – Orlando

Speakers include:

2Screen – Sept 29 – London

Speakers include:

TV Next 2011 – Oct 4-5 – San Jose

Speakers include:

  • Sherry Brennan, FOX Networks
  • Steven Reynolds, Comcast
  • Eric Bruno, Verizon
  • Jim Louderback, Revision3
  • Larry Robinson, Motorola Mobility
  • David Mcintosh, Redux
  • Jeremy Toeman, Dijit
  • Kurt Hoppe, LG Electronics
  • Colin Dixon, The Diffusion Group
  • Stephen White, Gracenote
  • Richard Bullwinkle, Rovi
  • Ryan Massie, CBS Interactive

The Connected TV Experience – Oct 11/12 – Chiswick/London

Speakers include:

  • Anna Bateson, marketing director, EMEA at YouTube;
  • Lesley MacKenzie, group digital officer, at LOVEFiLM;
  • Anthony Rose, co-founder and CTO of Zeebox;
  • Dan Saunders, head of content services at Samsung;
  • Bjarne Thelin, chief executive, BARB;
  • Nigel Walley, managing director of Decipher;
  • Tom Wolfe, senior director, advanced advertising at Rovi.

Digital Hollywood Fall & the Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit – Oct 17-20 – Los Angeles

Speakers include:

  • Quincy Jones (yes, Quincy Jones!)
  • Harshul Sanghi, Motorola Mobility Ventures
  • Kerry Trainor, AOL
  • Jeremy Toeman, Dijit
  • Dan Cohen, Disney-ABC Domestic Television
  • Stephan Shelanski, Starz Entertainment
  • Leslie Wood, The Nielsen Company
  • Gregg Spiridellis, JibJab Media
  • Bill Gannon, Entertainment Weekly
  • John Griffin, Dolby Laboratories
  • Curt Marvis, Lionsgate
  • Lance Koenders, Intel Corporation
  • Kurt Hoppe, LG Electronics

Smart TV Europe – Nov 1/2 – London

Speakers include:

  • Karla Gecki, Facebook
  • Dan Saunders, Samsung
  • Stacey Seltzer, LG Electronics
  • Jordy Egging, Philips
  • Eric Elia, Brightcove
  • John Denton, BBC
  • Yosi Glick, Jinni
  • Anthony Rose, tBone TV

Streaming Media West 2011 – Nov 8/9 – Los Angeles

Speakers include:

  • Chris Knowlton, Microsoft
  • Michael Aragon, Sony Network Entertainment
  • Fred Santarpia, VEVO
  • John Civiletto, Cox Communications
  • Donagh O’Malley, Google TV
  • Paul Wehrley, Clicker.com
  • Ran Harnevo, AOL Video
  • Rob Roskin, MTV Networks
  • Gilles BianRosa, Fanhattan
  • Andrew Wallerstein, Variety
  • Greg Sandoval, CNET
  • Jim Funk, Roku
  • Evan Young, TiVo
  • Derrick, Oien, Chumby

TV of Tomorrow NYC Intensive 2011 – Dec 5 – New York City

Speaker list not yet finalized

Digital Living Room – Dec 7/8 – San Francisco

Speakers include:

  • Ashish Arora, GM, Digital Home, Logitech International
  • Ian Geller, VP, Business Development, Pandora
  • Joe Greenstein, Co-Founder and CEO, Flixster
  • Neal Hansch, Partner, Rustic Canyon Venture Partners
  • Evan Krauss, EVP, Advertising, Shazam Entertainment
  • Scott Levine, VP and Managing Director, Time Warner Investments
  • David Schlacht, Sr. Director, Multimedia, DirecTV
  • Jeremy Toeman, Chief Product Officer, Dijit
  • Charles Seiber, VP, Marketing, Roku
  • Paul Wehrley, General Manager, Clicker.com and TV.com, CBS Interactive

Musing on Apple Building a Television

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I don’t think I’ve ever waffled on a topic as much as this one.  Back in ’07 I wrote two articles on Apple “owning” the living room and building TVs.  Ever since, I’ve gone full tilt in both directions.  Until about a week ago, I agreed firmly with Erik Schwartz on the topic, as he wrote today:

I am quite sure that there has been a team at Apple working on TV projects for literally the last 20 years. I am also quite confident that they are not going to release a TV in the near future.  (read more)

He continued to espouse on the four issues he saw: Margins, Replacement Cycles, Logistics, and Integration.  And on all four counts, I’ve agreed with him.

But now I have second thoughts.  My friend and coworker Adam Burg has long been a believer of “iTelevision” as has Dijit (and TiVo and many others) investor Stewart Alsop (who was quoted today in VentureBeat’s article on the topic).  For them, and many others, the rumors were way too much smoke for a lack of fire.  And on that point, I tend to agree that the rumors are a little stronger than what the Apple PR team will let flow when there’s no substance whatsoever.

So first, the case against iTelevision

Generally speaking, the two strongest “con” arguments are:

1. The margins in TVs suck, and since you can’t get away from the reality check of what it takes/costs to make a TV (hint: glass), the margins will suck for Apple too, and Apple doesn’t play in the “sucky margin” business.  This would force Apple to make a notably more expensive TV than anyone else, and even Apple can’t somehow get people to spend $1500 on the same sized screen they can have from Samsung for $1000.

We make THIS many!

2. The TV replacement cycle sucks, as the average family won’t replace a TV for ~7-8 years, and that’s not a world Apple typically plays in either.  Unlike phones (1 year) and PCs (2-3 years), consumers won’t be up for buying a new set very frequently, and the concept of having an “outdated” television will cause more infuriated people than Apple typically likes to create.  Note: this is a concern of the entire “Smart TV” industry (well, it’s probably not, but it really should be), and you can mark my words that backlash is going to hit these manufacturers in the next 6-12 months.

I’ve had a 3rd argument personally, which is Apple can’t make an iTelevision for $1000 whilst selling a “$99 upgrade” Apple TV product that brings the same functionality/services to any other manufacturer’s device.  Now the counter to that would be the Apple TV is there to enable wider content consumption, etc, but it’s still generally considered a “no-no” to cannibalize your own market.

We'll pre-announce while our existing product is on the market. What could possibly go wrong?

So now, why I’ve come around, and the case for iTelevision. I’ll start by refuting the arguments above.

1. Apple makes awesome margins on everything. If Apple’s building a TV, they’ve figured out their own amazing supply chain methodology to do it profitably.  Very profitably.  So if everyone else is selling a 50″ LCD for $999, they will too, only instead of making less per unit than the price of a really good bowl of soup, Apple will rake in the cash as they go.  They are the only tablet manufacturer selling at a real profit (HP not withstanding.  What, too soon?),  and I see no reason why, if they enter this space, they won’t do the same thing.

2. Apple will change or solve the replacement cycle issue.   Before iPhones, the US market was radically less likely to buy a new phone every year.  I have a much harder time accepting that Apple can successfully convince people to lug a 50″ screen home (and correspondingly, out of their home) once a year (or every other year).  This is way too painful a process, even for a fanboy.

I'm on a truck!

This implies either Apple can make a TV that is easy to move/replace or the components which would require upgrade can be guaranteed upgradeable for a few years.  Both are actually feasible, though the former requires some more impressive technology (flexible or roll-up displays, for example, could do it).  The latter is probably more likely – after all, even the original iPhone can still run a lot of the apps that are on the market.  What would matter the most here is that each generation of iTelevision is guaranteed to mostly compatible with the same content offerings as future generations (in other words, regardless of apps and whatnot, if Johnny Homeowner’s TV can only play 1/3 of the movies as his neighbor, he’s pissed – if he can play mostly the same stuff, just no Angry Birds, he’s less so).

3. They could coexist, if the other product is iTelevision and it isn’t the same thing as an Apple TV. So if the rumored iTelevision isn’t about “Apple TV inside a flatscreen” and is instead something new/different, this could be more feasible.  I’ve heard and debated scenarios ranging from built-in DVRs to TV tuners to CableCard and more.  Here’s all I know: whatever they do will be fully end-to-end thought out.  You won’t buy an Apple TV then have to go to the mall to pick up a CableCard.  You will do everything in an Apple store or online (or from your phone), and it’ll just work.

If I have to weight the pros vs cons these days, I have to say, the pros seem to have it.  Will it come out in 2011 or 2012? Hard to say.  Will they dominate the TV market the way they dominate tablets? Unquestionably NO, but they’ll probably profit more off the sales of TVs than anyone else, more akin to what they do in phones.  Will they shock us with their offering when it comes out? Probably, though probably in the same “why isn’t everybody just doing it that way” style they do with everything else.  Will they create a massive gaping wound in the side of the TV industry, and opportunity for a brand new type of ecosystem to emerge?  Absolutely.

Now, back to the waffling.