Today's "Smart" TVs

So there's been a lot of talk about whether Apple is going to create a TV set. I'm too lazy to find links, but speculation generally falls into two camps:

1. Of course Apple is going to do it, DUH!
2. Why would Apple make a TV? What could they possibly do to make it worth upgrading?

 For the record, I happen to lean towards camp #1. I hear the people in camp #2 but I remind them that just because *you* can't imagine what Apple might do doesn't mean that Apple hasn't figured something out. And all the (very legitimate) roadblocks you cite (content availability, etc) are surely ones that Apple knows well. 

Before the iPhone debuted, many people hated their phones (myself included). They wanted Apple to release a phone because they wanted a phone they could love. Apple releases the iPhone, and people love their phones. I don't think there's nearly as much vitriol towards today's television sets (pre Apple) as there was with mobile phones. But that doesn't mean that today's TVs don't suck.

I don't mean they suck in what every TV before them did—displaying a picture. They do that very well. But they do suck when it comes to going beyond traditional television. Smart TVs are following in the wake of Smart phones as everything gets smartified. But like the smartphone market pre-iPhone, the Smart TV market pre-iTV just plain sucks.

The Samsung 51" television I bought less than a year ago is one of these TVs. It has apps and is hooked directly to my broadband connection. You can even upgrade the firmware. Here's how to do it:

1. First you are greeted with this prompt alerting you that an upgrade is available.

   

2. Then you have to realize that you can't actually access the upgrade from the TV set. You have to go to your computer ad visit the link mentioned in the prompt.
3. At your computer you have to find and download the software to your hard drive.
4. Then you have to copy the software from your hard drive to a USB stick.
5. Then you plug the USB stick into your TV.
6. Once the USB stick is plugged into your TV, you have to access the proper menu from the TV to initiate the upgrade which reads from the USB stick.

So, you can't tell me that there's no room for improvement here. Whether Apple will or won't come out with a TV is anyone's guess (they will), but don't be led to believe that today's Smart TVs are as good as it gets.

The Appeal of Android

Ryan Heise has an interesting blog called My Dinner with Android. Four months ago he switched exclusively from an iPhone to a Nexus S running Androud v2.3 to get a long-term test drive of Google's operating system. With the purchase of his iPhone 4S, his experiment has ended and he's posted his final analysis, which includes the question of who Android is for. He writes:

"To be frank, I still don’t know who Android is for.

If it’s for those who don’t want or simply refuse to as a product with an Apple logo, that’s sad, because all you’re getting is an inferior facsimile.

If it’s for those who still want to make some sort of argument predicated on shouting the word “OPEN!”, that’s sad, because Android’s “openness” is a meaningless bullet point to average users and a facade championed by its most devoted. If anything, the openness of Android is it’s biggest threat with the imminent release of the Kindle Fire.

If it’s for hackers and tinkerers, I can somewhat understand that. But jail breaking iOS seems like a more enjoyable path, and one supported by many of the computer engineers I’m surrounded by at my day job.

I know there are people who simply choose to use it, and I accept that. I don’t really care. But I just can’t wrap my head around any of the arguments that come up in support of it."

I think the answer is that Android has appealed to two main markets so far in the course of its existence. At first it was for the tech nerds who decried iOS' lack of customizability, or for whom one or two specific features (eg. unparalleled email service or 4G connectivity) were more important than the overall experience. Android is probably still for those people, but they are a decided (if dedicated) minority.

Android moved aggressively onto multiple carriers and appeared quickly at multiple price points. When this happened, Android was the OS for those who wanted a smartphone but couldn't afford an iPhone, or who didn't want to leave their carrier or join AT&T. Android's market share went through the roof during this phase (which ended on October 4, 2011).

On October 4, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S, and dropped the price of the iPhone 4 and 3GS. And they announced a partnership with Sprint as the third U.S. carrier. So now Android and iOS are just about on equal footing, and Ryan's question is valid today. Customers can get an iPhone at any price point from $399 down to zero. And all except the free-on-contract iPhone 3GS (which is available only on AT&T) are available on the nation's three biggest carriers (sorry, T-Mobile) as well as a wealth of international carriers.

Much has been made of Android's meteoric rise in market share over the last year. But I suspect that to start to decline in the quarters ahead. I think as iOS becomes a more accessible option for more consumers, and especially next year when (conceivably) the iPhone 4 drops to $0 on contract on the heels of the iPhone 5 announcement, we're going to see iOS market share increase as first-time smartphone buyers choose it, Blackberry users switch to it, and many former Android users switch to it. Android and Windows Phone will duke it out for second place, but it will be a distant second. In essence, both Windows 8 and iOS will grow at the expense of Android.

This isn't to say that Android won't still have a very strong appeal for its original niche market, because it will. But that niche market is nowhere the size of the rest of the market, made up of non-technical people who are certainly not reading this blog. And further, that niche market will likely be divided between Windows 8 and other devices like the Kindle Fire, which appears to be in very high demand.

Full disclosure: I own a modest number of shares of AAPL.

On Steve

It's unfortunate that many brilliant individuals are only so appreciated for their contributions posthumously. Even by some who use Apple's products and certainly from many who don't, you'd often hear things like "yeah, great products blah blah blah, but that guy's such an asshole." And then they tell you some hugely exaggerated story of how he fired someone for breathing the wrong way. Apparently Darth Vader never had such a temper. But I think there was and still is a profound lack of understanding of Steve Jobs' ability to do the insanely great things he did. And when you don't understand something, it's easy to be dismissive, to simplify, and to be harsh and cruel. People by nature are scared of things they fail to understand; not things they could learn if they studied, but things whose explanations are so elusive that they almost seem magical. It's why people get so mad at government. It's why people get into fights. It's why dying is frightening to those who don't understand—as Steve so aptly put it—that "death is very likely the single best invention of life".

Steve Jobs was no magician. He seemed that way to some because of his uncanny ability to produce remarkably successful products seemingly at will. And he presided over perhaps the greatest and most unlikely corporate turnaround we've ever seen or will likely ever see. At once on the brink of bankruptcy, Apple now stands as the #2 most valuable company in the world. Rather than smoke and mirrors, Steve was simply very observant, and devastatingly uncompromising. He knew what he wanted, and he was able to see how so many novel technologies would help him get it. When he built his products, he refused to settle for anything less than perfection, which is why even when Apple released something, he was already hard at work at what came next. This is what drove Steve Jobs. He wasn't driven by money or by market share or fame. He worked to make the best products he knew how, and for someone with as impossibly high standards as him, nothing was ever good enough. It is often remarked how the very best athletes are the ones who are never satisfied when they reach the top. They are the ones who are constantly trying to better themselves even when they're far beyond the pack. In sports we call those people legends. In business however, we usually call those people crazy.

Steve never went to business school, and it's probably just as well. His guidance of Apple went against much of conventional wisdom. The fact that he was able to save Apple by innovating his way out of their situation should prove to anyone that he was driven not by dollar signs or market share but by a desire to improve the world with amazing products and services. He refused to sacrifice his talented staff, and instead sharply re-focused them and produced the iMac. His plan worked, and while Jobs wouldn't shy away from being called crazy, his plan was anything but. Not to diminish the greatness of what he did, but it was no mistake that it happened.

So to talk about Steve's character or temper as a negative is to discount part of his incredible ability. Was he rude at times? Did he yell at people? Of course. But only when he felt that others weren't striving for the same goals he was. Only when others were compromising when he refused to. He got upset because he held people to the same impossible standards to which he held himself. It's an integral part of what allowed him to do what he did, not a proverbial fly in the ointment. As I'm sure those that knew him well would tell you, he was not a mean person, he just had impeccable standards and exquisite taste which he pursued relentlessly.

So it's really not any surprise that Steve was able to do the things he did at Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. When you understand something you cease to be frightened by it, and I think I've always understood him. Maybe that's why people call me a 'fanboy'—because I was never a doubter, even when things were bleak. But even though I understood Steve, that doesn't mean I still wasn't blown away by the products that his teams produced, as we all were. It just means that i wasn't surprised that he had done it, or that he would do it again.

I never met Steve so I don't have one of those stories about how he affected me personally with a clever line, but I did see him up close one time. It was after the 2000 Macworld Expo Keynote address where he officially announced that he was no longer the 'interim' CEO. I was on the show floor looking around and I saw him walking near me, not talking to anyone. I wasn't sure it was him at first—how could it be—but as I saw him casually walk in the other direction and then out of sight there could be no doubt. I was paralyzed for a moment, not believing that this guy was just hanging out in the middle of 500 people and nobody seemed to notice. Of course that was my chance, and I let it walk away.

When Steve retired from Apple I began writing a thank you letter to him. I wanted to thank him for bringing together so many bright and talented people and leading them to make some of the most amazing products this world has ever seen. I wanted to tell him of the Microsoft stock my grandmother bought me which I sold to finance the AAPL shares I bought in 2002 at $14 per share and against the better advice of my broker. But like Steve I wasn't in it for the money. I just felt if I was going to own some stock it should be a company in which I believe and whose products I use. That extremely modest investment has now grown to over 40 times its original value and someday will be used towards the purchase of my first home. I wanted to tell him about the meeting I had with my parents' accountant years ago, who told me how Apple would never recover and be bankrupt in less than a year. And I wanted to tell him how the first computer I ever used was an Apple ][+, and how as a very young child I was already writing my own programs and creating my own works of digital art. All because of Apple. All because of his vision and determination. I never got around to finishing that letter, and I regret that it's too late now for him to read it. The best I can do is to take his advice and live life to the fullest, stay hungry, and stay foolish.

Two Questions About Notifications in iOS 5

Apple announced lots of fun stuff today. One of the most welcome features was a totally revamped notification scheme (42:30 in the aforelinked video) for iOS. FINALLY. It's clearly a rip on Android, which isn't a bad thing—Android's notifications are damn good. But I have two questions about it…

1. Are there any apps for which a downward swipe from the top has a significant function which would be obviated by activating the new system-wide Notifications Center? Games would seem to be especially susceptible to this.

2. Notification Center looks great, but it seems like there should be a way to see how many unread / existing notifications there are without having to invoke it. Not only would this help users manage their notifications, but it would give them a UI to know that Notification Center exists. As it stands, the UI is completely invisible if you don't know it's there, and if you invoke it accidentally (because you don't know it's there), it could be quite jarring.

More Fun with Charts

Jon Chait at The New Republic takes exception to a chart by The Wall Street Journal which attempts to imply that most of the money from which the government should be collecting tax isn't resting with those making over $200K (as liberals would have you believe). Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has re-drawn the chart. He takes the same data and reconfigures them to show how much money really is sitting with those making over $200K, relative to everyone else.

And so while I agree with his and Chait's point, I don't think his graph is accurate either.

Chait points out that in the initial graph there are 7 bars representing all those making over $200K, so even though the biggest single bracket is those making $100-200K, if you lump everything above 200 into a single line, it becomes the biggest bracket. This is not untrue, but it's also misleading as it makes the same exact mistake again. If you group all the people making under $200K and put that graph against all the people making over $200K, again it would seem that most of the wealth in fact lies with those making much less than $200K.

What the graph fails to account for is population distribution. If you look at the sum of money with those making over $200K, that represents a far smaller number of people than the other group. Collectively, it's true that more dollars exist in the sub-$200K pool than the $200K+ pool, but the $200K+ pool is a tiny fraction (around 4.5%) of the rest, so we're dealing with less people being taxed, and people who are individually much more able to afford a modest tax increase. The data do back up their arguments, but only when you consider all the variables.

Not Playing the Same Game

John Gruber responds to a post by Tim Bray about the viability of 16:9 tablets. John writes:

"One of the things I find curious about Android tablets and the BlackBerry PlayBook is that they’ve all chosen to go 16:9. To me, 16:9 tablets only look right when held in landscape — they look too skinny when held in portrait. Considering all the things they copy from Apple, it seems weird not to copy the iPad’s 4:3 aspect ratio. 16:9 is ideal for video, but 4:3 is a good trade-off for a device is meant to be used in portrait much of the time."

I think the answer is fairly simple. Remember when the iPad came out, one of the complaints was that it wasn't 16:9, so you had these "awful" black bars when watching video, which I think many have an instinctual aversion to because they think they're missing out by not using every available pixel. In reality I don't think most people REALLY get bothered by them while they're actually watching a movie (and also they're not actually missing anything).

And so tablet makers eager to capitalize on the iPad's mistakes (and who, let's be honest, think that a feature checklist is all that matters), made all their tablets in 16:9, which is one area they could tout as being better than the iPad. And if all you do is watch movies, then it's tough to argue against that logic. Ironically, the best tablet for watching video is the iPad, and it's not even a fair fight. Which just goes to show how utterly out of touch tablet makers are when it comes to this stuff. While it's true that people did complain (and loudly) about the iPad's 4:3 aspect ratio, they failed to fully assess whether there might not be other benefits, and now have products that feel awkward if not held in one orientation.

They think that in order to succeed they have to outdo the iPad (which is not necessarily true), however what they fail to realize is that the iPad didn't become a success by trying to "outdo" another product. The iPad became a success because Apple understood the market, understood what sort of things people would want to use a tablet for, and built something that did all of those things, and looked sexy too, for a pretty incredible price.

Perhaps it's because most of these companies are used to the commodity PC hardware game, where they win by outselling and out-featuring their competitors. Feature lists are a much more appropriate measure of quality here since the boxes all run Windows anyway. That strategy works when you compare a Dell to a Toshiba, but not when comparing either of those to a Macintosh. And the same goes with the iPad—you can't compete with the iPad if you ignore the software because you're not playing the same game.

On Apple's unannounced TV

I happen to think that at some point in the next few years, Apple will unveil a television set as a new product category. Or more likely, they'll upgrade their Apple TV product by integrating it into a full-size television.

John Gruber comments on a post by Marco Arment about whether Apple will in fact get into the TV-making business. John doesn't think it will happen:

"The fundamental question Apple always wants an answer for before entering a new market is “Why would someone buy this instead of what’s already out there?” I don’t think there’s a good answer for that if an Apple-branded HDTV is just a big screen with built-in Apple TV functionality."

If an Apple branded TV could replace your Apple TV, DVR, cable set top box, Blu-ray player, and gaming console, I think that's pretty compelling.

Clearly an Apple-branded television could replace my Apple TV; that one's a no-brainer. Check.

So what about my Blu-ray player? Certainly Apple could integrate a Blu-Ray drive into their set. But perhaps they don't need to do that since they have iTunes? But iTunes doesn't have a wide enough selection, nor do they get movies the same time they're out on Blu-Ray, nor do they have the same quality (720p streaming vs. 1080p on Blu-Ray), nor do they have the extra features that most Blu-Ray discs come with. Yes, all of those are problems that could be solved, but they aren't solved yet. Plus there's the fact that a lot of people own Blu-Ray discs and probably don't want to be told they can just rent a movie on iTunes that they've already purchased—iTunes' aforementioned limitations notwithstanding. And finally, unlike compact discs which do not contain any sort of copy protection, security measures on Blu-Ray discs have to be circumvented to rip a movie to your computer, and then you have to store those files somewhere. So people are still likely to own Blu-Ray players. Which means either Apple could consider this an issue they want to solve and include a Blu-Ray player, or they might contend that people would rather just buy a Blu-Ray player on their own and those who don't can rent or buy from iTunes. Or they announce new features to iTunes which bring the experience on-par with what you can get through Blu-Ray. Either way this becomes a non-issue. Check.

So what about a DVR and the cable set top box? TiVo already makes a box that supplants a cable set-top box. You can use the CableCARD standard to receive your cable programming right on your DVR. Apple could write their own DVR software and allow people to pop in a CableCARD. TiVo is great, but Apple could write a much much better DVR application. I love my TiVo, but it's only in comparison to the other crap that's out there from the cable companies. Check.

And finally, what about your gaming console? Apple TV is not a platform that you can officially develop for yet, but it seems inevitable that this will change (or at least it certainly could change). And with it, you've got a gaming console built into your television. You've got a huge iOS developer base and I think it would not take long for that market to explode on this new platform. Check.

Remember when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and billed it as 3 products?

"An iPod. A phone. And an internet communicator. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device!"

The same could be true for an Apple-branded television.

But that's not all, either. Apple could also integrate a camera for FaceTime into the television. They could integrate Time Capsule and Airport functionality as well. They could allow you to use your other iOS devices as remote controls. And that's only given what we have today. It's possible and not unlikely that there could be other great affordances which we can't even imagine to legitimize Apple's foray into digital televisions. Before the iPhone was announced, though many speculated Apple was working on a phone, I think very few expected it to be as groundbreaking as it was.

All of this isn't to say that doing these things is completely trivial for Apple, but neither is that the point. Maybe Apple would love to do all this but can't for some reasons I don't know about. Perhaps Apple would rather stick with their $99 Apple TV box, but I don't think that's likely.¹ So something at some point has to change with the Apple TV in its current state, and building a television is one direction Apple could go. Maybe they won't choose that route, but I don't think it will be because they can't answer the question of how to provide enough value in their product.²

¹Steve Jobs has called the Apple TV a hobby by which we're supposed to infer that they're not putting as much at stake with its success as with their iPhone, iPad, and Mac businesses. But it can't stay that way. Either Apple decides that their hobby is over, and at some point kills the Apple TV altogether, or they turn it into a full-sized business. I think the latter is far more likely, but just how that pans out is anyone's (and everyone's) guess. ←

²It might be that there aren't any technological barriers for Apple, but rather some economical ones. If that's the case, it's only a matter of time before those barriers are gone. ←

Open, Shmopen

Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop posted an article about the recent news that Google is not releasing the source code for the latest release of their Android operating system (Honeycomb), or at least not now.

Dalrymple writes:

Where are the mainstream press articles tearing Google up over this? While there are a few comments, many of the articles I’ve seen told Google’s story and stopped there.

Can you imagine if it were Apple delaying a software release. What would the press say if Apple admitted it took shortcuts with its OS to keep up with Google and now they couldn’t release it? The press would have a field day with that story.

Here's why people aren't more up in arms about this: most people don't really give a shit about openness, because openness doesn't represent a tangible advantage—only a theoretical one.

You hear it in the tech news all the time because it's the biggest difference between two operating systems that are actually quite similar (whether that's because Google copied Apple or what-have-you is a topic for a separate debate). There are perhaps a few examples where the actual user experience on Android is unequivocally better than iOS (notifications for one, Amazon mp3 Store/Cloud Drive for another), but in most cases the "advantages" you hear about which Android has over iOS are: a wider variety of apps (those that Apple won't allow), the ability to customize to your heart's content, and the fact that it's "open".¹

But none of these things are actual improvements to the user experience. They are theoretical improvements—they represent improvement potential. As the theory goes: give people the tools to do whatever they want, and someone will do something truly great. And it's true that Android has the theoretical potential to outclass iOS in just about every way. But it doesn't seem to be happening.

So, what have we seen so far with Android being "open" and customizable with a wide-open App Store? Malware, lower-quality apps (for the most part) subsidized with ads, bloatware, restricted features and updates because carriers can lock things down any way they want.

The next time you hear someone saying Android is better because it's open, or because Google allows any app in their store, or because you can customize the OS, ask if they like crackers with their red herring. Let's stop talking about the potential for greatness and start talking about how each operating system actually performs in the real world. When the actual experience of Android outclasses iOS, I'll be right there to acknowledge it.

Again: why aren't people more up in arms about Google not releasing the Honeycomb source code? Because the loss of potential advantages is not really a loss if such advantages have yet to be realized. Pundits are very good at pointing out differences between feature lists. What most of them are very bad at doing is providing comparable feature lists in the first place (user experience, ease of use, etc. are almost universally forgotten in lieu of CPU, storage, memory, number of cameras, and other quantitative measures).

So while it's true that Android has been open sourced until Honeycomb, the loss of such freedom can until this point only be seen as a GOOD thing, given that most of what has come of the OS being open sourced thus far has been detrimental to the overall Android experience.

There will always be those who insist that open is better, but what they are hoping for is some mythical über-experience just waiting to be unlocked. But until that utopia is realized on Android, don't expect there to be much protesting.²

¹The word "open" is in quotes because there is debate over what the term even means. For practical purposes, open in this sense means that the source code is freely available and anyone is able to take it and tweak it to make their own versions or to change certain components they may not like. ←

²There are people who prefer an open platform because they have the skills to customize the experience, but these people are a decided minority and thus are not creating such an uproar as Dalrymple suggests would happen if Apple failed to open source iOS after promising to do so. ←

iOS Notifications

On his blog, Shawn Hickman proposes the best re-design of the iOS notification system I've seen. I think it's nearly perfect. 

Shawn Hickman's iOS notification screen

I would make only two changes:

1. Move the Spotlight screen from a toggle within the notifications screen to its own screen—off to the left. It's easier to swipe left again than to tap a toggle. Additionally, when there aren't any notifications, perhaps the notification screen doesn't appear at all, so Spotlight is more accessible and you don't have to swipe past a blank screen to get there.

2. Reduce the timeout form 5s to 2s. When a notification comes in, you decide almost instantly if it's something you need to attend to immediately. If it is, you tap it and off you go. If you'd rather ignore it, then waiting 5 seconds seems like an eternity. Tapping the "close" button isn't any better than what you do now.

I like that the notifications bar slides up and over the dock, rather than pushing the screen upwards. When you're inside an app, this can be more disruptive than a modal dialogue, since UI elements can get pushed off screen. This happens currently when using an app while on a call—the content in this case is pushed downward by the OS. Smart choice here by Shawn.

I think most people agree that iOS needs a notifications overhaul, and here's to hoping that iOS 5 brings it to us. I can't see it getting much better than what Shawn has proposed.

HP is Ready to Play

HP had a big day today, introducing the Pre 3 and Veer smartphones as well as the TouchPad, all running the innovative WebOS first developed by Palm. But perhaps the biggest announcement came when HP later announced that they are dropping Windows from their PCs and going to ship them with WebOS.

HP will be making both the hardware AND software for its digital computer products—desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Sounds a lot like another company I know.

But bigger than the fact that HP will be competing directly against Apple (and, importantly, with the same tactics) in all of Apple's biggest markets—the Mac, iPhone, and iPad—what's most interesting to me is the transition of webOS from smartphones to PCs.

The PC operating system has been mired in a series of incremental advancements ever since the original Macintosh. Though OS X and Windows 7 are both infinitely more complex and powerful than Mac OS 1.0, they are still echoing the same tired chords: window and icon-based UIs with a hierarchical and visible file system.

Part of the reason Apple's iOS looks so different from OS X is out of necessity—you can't feasibly run multiple applications onscreen simultaneously on a phone, and file system access would makes things needlessly complex. But Apple has recognized they have some pretty good ideas in iOS that can translate to the desktop which is in dire need of an overhaul. Recently they announced that the next incarnation of OS X—Lion—will adopt many features from iOS which translate well to the desktop. This is a positive step, but at the heart and soul we're still talking about the OS we've known for over 25 years.

HP is doing it differently. They're starting with an operating system designed for smartphones and using THAT as the basis for a desktop-class operating system. WebOS running on a PC won't be like OS X Lion running on a Mac; there won't be any OS relics or legacy technologies that need to be supported to make people happy. WebOS for PCs represents the biggest UI evolution in the PC market since the original Macintosh OS. Just as people knew how to use an iPad from using their iPhones and iPod Touches, people will know how to use a next-gen HP desktop from using their Pres and TouchPads. The paradigms and metaphors, indeed the whole UI on an HP desktop will feel more like using a giant (and really powerful) TouchPad because people won't be upgrading from a current-generation desktop OS. In this sense HP is ahead of Apple, whose OS X updates must still contend with users familiar with Mac OS as it's existed for years. HP has no such baggage with WebOS.

HP is doing exactly what Microsoft and Apple cannot—starting completely from scratch. At the moment, Apple seems best able to match HP, since they've already begun to blur the line between iOS and Mac OS. Microsoft seems to be falling further behind by the day. Sure, Windows is king of the hill right now, but the hill it's on is shrinking, and the fastest-growing hill right now is topped by Apple and Google.

As the PC market continues to shrink, as mass market computers continue to evolve into smaller, more specialized devices, the companies that will benefit will be those that can capture this emerging market. HP has shown it is ready to do just that. And when the PC market dwindles to a small set of machines used only by dedicated professionals (designers, developers, video editors, etc), HP won't have to worry about where it's going to get it's next operating system.