Comments for Extended Phenotype

Comment on Reflections on the best bartender in America: Murray Stenson by Wendy miller

Wendy miller — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:03:22 +0000

What a nice post! Murray is a true professional & so deserves this award! As for his schedule it’s tues-fri, there’s (going) to be an app for that! Lol! & Erik is an awesome bartender in his own, Murray has a way with the education, no? As always Mark you have a way with words!

Comment on iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business by admin

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:35:38 +0000

Oh, I think there’s absolutely both an opportunity here and a sea-change in app design, as you mention. We’ll build things in smaller pieces and for more specific functions, and rely on exchanging data. You already see this in some ways, but it’ll become more prevalent on a larger device like the iPad.

Though it’s going to cause more of the complexity I talked about in a post today; apps that we used to think of as unitary things will now rely on distributed systems and data, and that means as developers we have to be much better about ensuring consistency and not relying on the next code down the line to do it…

Comment on Additional thoughts on the iPad by admin

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:12:23 +0000

Steve – I definitely agree. Apple consistently demonstrates an ability to iterate to success, as you say.

But sure, I was as shocked as everyone else at some of the choices. What’s really tough is not being given any rationale for some of the choices, not necessarily just the choices themselves. That’s the trouble with this pre-launch announcement business, right? If they were launching the device the same day, then you’d expect a schedule of interviews over the following days from various VP’s dealing with the hardware and software choices, which mainstream users would ignore, but would be targeted at geeks, pundits, and developers, where somebody would say, “the camera is clearly an important feature, but listen, we faced some design conflicts this time, so rather than given you a substandard battery life, we decided to push that off a bit.” Or whatever.

Instead, we geeks are sitting here with a list of things that seemed to be no-brainers and no actual rationales.

And yeah, this is clearly “potential” goodness rather than the real thing. But then, I still have my Gen 2 iPod with the black and white text screen and the click wheel. I don’t use it, but it’s a useful museum piece to remind us how very serious “iteration” can be in a very short time frame….

Comment on iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business by Kelly Jones

Kelly Jones — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:35:35 +0000

Getting back to your point about the change in the cost structure of applications. Think of the old argument about your typical office suite of applications. A person will use only 5% of the available features, but it’s a different subset for each person. Hence the need to buy the entire suite to satisfy the universe of customers. Think of your typical iPhone application where the application provides functionality to post photos to Flickr. The iPhone application provides specific functionality to do just a few things out of the entire functionality of Flickr. Now imagine that there are many Flickr applications, some that allow for posting of pictures, some that allow for following photos that have been posted by your friends, etc… Notice that an iPhone Flickr application is not required to know everything about Flickr in order to function properly. I would consider the entire Flickr API as the entire “Office Suite”, but the client functionality has been decoupled. Hence the ability to offer an application for $9.99. In the old world the document format and the implicit functionality of the associated application defined the type of client that could use it in a meaningful way. With a typical iPhone/iPad app, the barrier to entry is lowered and the low price makes it a low risk for the end user to try out.

Anyways, I haven’t fully fleshed out my thoughts on this topic, but it’s very interesting.

Comment on Additional thoughts on the iPad by Stephen Speicher

Stephen Speicher — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:18:00 +0000

It’s a perfectly fine analysis. The only thing that I would say is that it’s possible to both think that a) Apple will iterate to success (a typical Microsoft strategy) AND b) be amazed at some of the initial choices.

The two most obvious are a) lack of a front facing camera for video conferencing and b) the idea that Apple thinks that i) music consumption ii) phone usage and iii) tablet computing should all be done EXACTLY the same. That’s a bizarre notion for a company usually so intouch with their users. I understand a very similar paradigm, but EXACTLY the same? I was disappointed to see the lack of software thought. Leading up to the event we kept hearing that the real magic would be in the software. In the end, there was absolutely no thought paid to the software. There was no innovation. It was just Apple building a very very nicely put together device.

Anyhoo…

Comment on iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business by mark

mark — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:56:26 +0000

Indeed Kelly, you’re absolutely right. Sharepoint is collaboration done 1995 style, with a thin veneer of web technology to obscure the fact that you’re still using heavy desktop software.

Not that heavy desktop apps will go away, in the slightest. It’s hard to imagine in the short term anyone paying the performance penalty to run Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, or Mathematica, in a web or hosted version. But it’s time to admit that the *function* provided by a word processor, after five or six turns of Moore’s Law, need not be tethered to the “form factor” of desktop applications, as you say.

Comment on iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business by Kelly Jones

Kelly Jones — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:59:27 +0000

Mark,
Interesting post. One thing the introduction of the iPad clearly shows is that computing for business purposes is being released from its earlier singular PC confines. Notice that I’m not saying a normal PC is unimportant. It also clearly shows that you don’t need to store your entire universe on one device. Office is a jail. Sure, you can send files around to a bunch of people on a distro list, but who wants to do that??? As limited as Google Docs may be, I can access it from various mobile apps for various purposes. Surely there’s a business opportunity there. Think of the popularity of Microsoft’s *clunky* Sharepoint software, yet people use it in droves. The iPad and the underlying cloud infrastructure is a harbinger of things to come. Anyone who misses that is fooling themselves.

Comment on WA Democratic Caucus Update by to put together

to put together — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Postolos Plans to Leave Rockets

Rockets through the move to the Toyota Center and Houston through its role in hosting the 2006 NBA All-Star Weekend, said his resignation

Comment on WA Democratic Caucus Update by administrator,

administrator, — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Doan’s staff selections align with objectives

most recently the Arizona Red Cross’ chief operating officer, will become the

Comment on WA Democratic Caucus Update by writes Ray Buck

writes Ray Buck — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

When Mavs Get Shoved, They Shove Back

the basket, although they stayed far enough away to avoid any real collisions with the likes of Shaquille O’Neal.