Additional thoughts on the iPad

Feb 3, ’10 8:51 PM

It’s been a week since the iPad announcement, and like many in this business, I’ve followed the opinions and punditry. My personal view is that the iPad is going to be a great product for Apple. It will also — and this isn’t quite the same as being a great product — be a commercial success.

There’s a lot of criticism about what the device doesn’t have built-in, or doesn’t support. And there’s been a lot of “why, it’s nothing but a big iPod Touch.” And the usual lists of “must have but missing” features from engineers and developers who are already gnashing their teeth about how useless the iPad will be.

Here’s why we should ignore premature predictions of doom for the iPad.

Sure, there’s nothing shockingly new here. In a sense, it’s a big iPod Touch. Or it’s a slimmed down Tablet PC with integral Kindle. Actually, it’s all of those things.

What we’re forgetting is that Apple’s main strength isn’t necessarily inventing a new category (marketing spin aside), it is in bringing hard-core user research and industrial design to bear on creating devices which end up “crossing the chasm” to the mainstream for a given technology. THAT is what Apple, and Steve Jobs, are good at.

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iWork for the iPad: Game changer for the software business

Jan 31, ’10 6:43 PM

Amidst all of the positive and negative opinion pieces and postings which followed Apple’s iPad announcement this week, the impact to software businesses are only starting to become apparent. I think Apple’s announcement that iWork pricing will be $9.99 per app is significant.

It’s game changing not for third-party ISVs already developing for the iPhone, since they’re used to charging 99 cents to a few bucks for an app. For Mac software developers like OmniGroup, it’ll be challenging. There is already a large Mac software ecosystem with apps priced in the $20 – $60 range. These ISV’s have continued to charge such prices even while iPhone app prices dropped a zero, because the difference in functionality and screen size between a Mac laptop and the iPhone is significant. The difference in what users can do is significant.

iWork on the iPad is a laptop/desktop experience, suitable for the vast majority of home and many business users. And yet Apple dropped a zero on the pricing, basically. With a presentation program, word processor, and spreadsheet available for $10 each, or $30 for the entire productivity suite, how will third party ISV’s charge $50 or $60 for an iPad version of their Mac software apps? Perhaps they can’t.

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Is it 10am yet?

Jan 27, ’10 4:33 PM

I’ll admit it.  I’m an Apple fan.  I didn’t actually need to say that out loud to most people I know.  I joke that I should just tithe a percentage of my income to Cupertino, and have them send me one of everything in return – a “hardware subscription.”

This morning, fingers crossed, we’ll learn more about the new “tablet” device.  The leaks have been accelerating for days, business partners ringing my iPhone constantly to tell me breaking news, and of course I’ve read all the non-news news purporting to describe authoritative leaks.

But none of it matters, because ultimately what we want to see is Steve, dressed in his usual black and white, stand onstage and give The Demo.  If you’re in the biz, The Demo is King.  The Demo is where you set expectations, destroy preconceived notions.  The Demo is where you win or lose, fundamentally.  Because before The Demo, the chessboard is empty.  The Demo is where you put your pieces down — not in the starting configuration, but hopefully in position to reach mate in the fewest moves possible.

If you’re Doug Englebart, giving the mother of all demos, you literally change the world by showing us the ragged bits that the rest of us will spend the next forty years making smooth and usable and real.  Everything that followed:  Dan Bricklin’s Visicalc, Alan Kay’s pioneering work, Steve and Steve with the Apple II, Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee and the Web, Netscape, Linus Torvalds…all of it the work of giants in our field…all of it playing out the possibilities inherent in that mother of all demos.

Steve Jobs consciously aims at game-changing demos:  the original iPhone demo was, as was OS X and the Intel transition.  I don’t know that today’s announcement will rise to that level, but I hope so.

I think our industry is getting tired of playing out the possibilities inherent in a forty-year-old demo.  It would be nice to have some new territory to explore.

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Amazon and the Kindle: A customer service tale…

Jan 24, ’10 6:32 PM

Early in my experience with the Kindle DX, which I love and use constantly, I put the default Amazon case or cover on it. The cover attaches to the Kindle through two metal tabs that engage in the side of the Kindle’s plastic case. It’s not a bad cover, but it turns out that if you open the cover upside down accidentally (easy to do since the nondescript black leatherette looks about the same apart from the Amazon logo), the metal tabs flex the Kindle’s case and it can become cracked. Mine was within 2 weeks of getting the device, but without any real damage. I kept using the Kindle since I didn’t want to hassle with returns, migrating content, or being without my Kindle.

Last Friday night, I open an email from Amazon, and it contains a friendly reminder about my Kindle warranty and what it provides me. And in the middle, a little paragraph precisely describing what can happen if you open the default cover/case backwards — describing the cracking I’ve got. And the email encourages you to get in touch with Support.

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Hiatus over…

Jan 24, ’10 12:13 AM

I stopped posting here almost a year ago, focusing instead on my community of friends on Facebook. But recently I’ve decided that the blogging/notes options there aren’t terribly good, and I’d prefer to run my own websites (with help from a hosting company, of course).

Over on MadsenLab you can read about my research, but here we’ll stick to the standard fare: politics, food, wine, cocktails, books, legal scholarship, and whatever else I feel like discussing.

It’s good to be back and writing again. Cheers.

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Guest Post: What I’d Say to President-elect Obama If I Had the Chance

Jan 20, ’09 12:59 AM

A friend (who we'll call EC) and I were talking about what I thought Obama should tell us later today, and she offered another perspective.  With permission, I'm reprinting her words to ensure that her perspective has an audience, too, however small (since I couldn't quite swing CNN airtime today…).

Here's what EC had to say:

—–

Sometime after my friend Mark and I talked today, I started
coming down with something.  I now have a high fever and I feel like I'm
going to collapse.  But still I toil on at my desk.

I toil on because I'm afraid to lose my job.  I toil on because I'm afraid
to lose my insurance.  I toil on, because I'm afraid for my daughter and
myself – that we will be without food, without access to health care,
without somewhere to live without this job.

I toil on, despite the fact this nation is a nation of taking chances,
despite the fact that I have a brain full of great business ideas that
should be launched.

I toil on, despite the fact that this nation was founded on bootstrapping
and the entrepreneurial spirit and starting things and shaking things up.

I toil on, because somewhere at home, my baby is playing or sleeping or
crying or pooping, or doing any number of the adorable things that she
does, secure in the knowledge that her bottle will always be full; secure
in the knowledge that we'll always be able to go to the doctor if we have
to.  Because I have good insurance at my job – even if the bacon isn't fat
here, it's still a slice, it's our slice, the slice that we need.

That's what I'd say to Obama.  Then I'd add:  universal health care would
help me to be able to take the entrepreneurial risks that made this
country what it is.  Without little people like me bootstrapping ourselves
into something bigger, we are nothing.

That's what I'd say.

If I had a chance.

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