When the world gets its sneak peak at iPhone OS 4.o this week the conversation about the iPhone will radically change. The conversation will move from “What the iPhone really needs is feature X” to “What iPhone OS really needs to do is become X.” This change is notable for two reasons:

1. The conversation is about the OS rather than just the physical device. Now that there are two distinct devices, namely the iPhone/iPod Touch family and the iPad family we will be better able psychologically to parse out the software as a separate entity.

2. The conversation is no longer about specific features like Exchange support, copy and paste, multi-tasking or beard trimming. The conversation has moved to a philosophical debate about strategy. Specifically, I suspect the majority of the conversation will be around whether Apple should move in a more open direction (vis-a-vis the App Store approval process, Flash support, etc.).

These are both signs the platform has reached initial maturity (perhaps moved from infancy to toddler-hood?). Personally, I will be thrilled when this happens because every time I hear a well informed entrepreneur, technologist or VC say something like “Android will beat the iPhone because the iPhone doesn’t have [Flash or Background Apps]” I want to slap them. You can’t judge a device by the presence or lack of a handful of features. You must see them as platforms of which features are merely appendages. Now, open vs. closed–that is a good topic to debate whether Android or iPhone OS will win in the long-run.

That said, I truly believe this will be the iPhone OS and iPhone that goes from a crawl to a run as it hits the sweet part of the bell curve and has something for everyone.

No time for a full review or even blog post. Just some bullet points since it’s Easter Sunday and I need to go dress up in a bunny suit and dance for kids in front of the local five and dime because a man’s gotta earn a living.

Business Ramifications:

• Advertising: The Popular Science app is most notable to me not for content but the advertisements! They look gorgeous and sexy–and many are full page. You think to yourself “Crap, this is what I pictured online advertising to look like about 20 years ago. How did it take this long?” The iPad is a real game changer for advertising. The platform and SDK frameworks allow for unprecedented beauty and interactivity which will vastly accelerate the ability of companies to pursue global branding campaigns, which is where the real ads dollars are. Prediction: CPMs should and do go up. If they don’t, you’re getting screwed over.
• Cloud: Dropbox and/or MobileMe etc. is a must have complement. Given the totally wireless nature of the device, when you’re using it you have this feeling you are using the first device that can truly take advantage of the cloud without seemingly like it’s trying to.
• Content Beauty: Overall everything looks damn sexy on the iPad in a way that HTML and its plugins have never been able to attain. Whether you are browsing through the NPR iPad app or booking a flight through the new Kayak iPad app or looking at plain old web content through Wikipanion (a Wikipedia viewer) or Craigsphone (a Craigslist viewer) it suddenly feels like you traveled ahead 5 five years in a (hot tub?) time machine to gaze the future. Does HTML suck or does the iPhone OS SDK rock? Or are folks developers finally paying attention to UI because the device psychologically is more akin to paper? What’s going on here? I have my suspicions, but I promise you it looks better.
• $$$: I am much more inclined to pay up REAL MONEY for apps. iPad apps are not just “FREE” and $0.99. I feel myself gravitating to the $4.99, $9.99 and even higher price points because I can see the value. This is very promising for software developers. Since the device is new and burning a hole in my oversized iPad pocket I am also throwing down money on apps left and right which is great for those with iPad apps around launch.
• Gaming: Addicting.
• Allocation of Time: I will spend more time consuming long form prose content (probably some verse too), web video and playing games now that I have an iPad. I will spend less time solely watching TV, but more time on the couch with the TV on while I am on the iPad. I will spend less time on my laptop aimlessly browsing the web, checking Engadget for the millionth time. I will spend more time aimlessly opening apps on the iPad.

iPad Device, Software, UI:

• Gut Feeling: This is the most excited I have been about computing since circa 1990 (when my buddy upgraded his 386 and we installed the latest version of Test Drive and it came with 256-color graphics!)
• Usage: It’s definitely a device for consuming content and replying to quick emails, etc. not creating long-form content as we suspected. I am writing this blog post on my MacBook Pro from the comfort of my bed. There would be no comfortable way to do this with the iPad. (Believe me, I just spent ten minutes trying–even using the bluetooth keyboard, a bookshelf two pulleys, two lines, a counterweight, and a block and tackle.)
• Multitasking: I suspect it will come with iPhone OS 4.0. I don’t really miss it for now.
• Speed: Perhaps because I have an old, pokey iPhone 3G, the iPad feel so fast it even makes a laptop feel like you’re riding a three legged burro up K2.
• UI: Overall awesome. The new iPod app made me feel like the dude in the Maxell ads who gets blown away. Gorgeous. You can read about the overall UI in any number of reviews elsewhere, but one thing I’d like to add is that the home screen looks and feels slightly awkward to me. I suspect SJ feels the same way, but was willing to live with this to get the device out X months faster because he knew he had a winner on his hands. I imagine the dock and homescreen will become more pleasing to the eye in proportions and overall look/feel and also more useful with iPhone 4.0.
• Weight: It’s probably a little too heavy to replace my Kindle for reading a book in bed. Maybe too big of a screen too. I kinda dig the E-Ink for eye-strain reasons too, but I am sure many folks will have their own opinions. I see it better for web, magazines and newspapers than War and Peace.

For those of you who know me well, you know I once considered developing a product very similar to Withings–the wi-fi connected body weight and body mass scale. My idea was identical in the basic concepts of a consumer friendly wi-fi scale with an associated web and mobile tracking component. But I’ll get into the similarities and dissimilarities more in a separate, second post. First though I want to identify why I think this product could be representative of a larger trend that I very much believe in.

A lot of exciting things have happened on the web and with technology over the past 20 years. Yet, there have been precious few advancements from either the web or gadgets (or their intersection) which are health related that I regularly use. Consumer health on the web began and ended with WebMD and its clones. That is until Nike Plus. Nike Plus represented a new way to interact with health data combining the physical with the virtual. And Nike Plus is damned good (Need proof? It sold 1mm units in the first 4 months). It demonstrates how you can take something patently boring and horrible like a pedometer and turn it into a mass market hit that is genuinely useful for millions of people by informing and motivating their training and health. But why stop there?

And I am not talking about your $400 Garmin GPS watches for triathletes. Yawwwn. I am talking about a much more interesting and much larger market: preventive consumer healthcare in the home. Reset your expectations to the tens of billions of dollars. That’s where this market could and should go in the next decade.

What am I talking about? I want internet connected scales, blood pressure monitors, sleep monitors, glucose monitors and more–aimed at everywhere from the mass market to granular niches. Some people will read this list and get it instantly. Some will think WTF? But remind yourself it’s all about the execution: think pedometer vs. Nike Plus. The distinction is subtle but critical. The products need to be 1) simple to use and 2) the results need to be made meaningful to your target customer–and it can’t just be a bunch of data puked into Excel or a web page (which is how it’s currently done on today’s most advanced USB/Bluetooth products.) These need to be consumer devices at the end of the day even if the data is synced to a healthcare provider at some point.

If you design and market these devices the “healthcare way”, this whole idea is destination Titanic from the get-go. The vision might be obvious enough as evidenced by the Continua Health Alliance, but good execution will be very, very hard to find. (Most Continua members demonstrate the precise opposite.) I think Withings represents the cutting edge of this non-fitness, consumer -healthcare market that combines the web and smart devices. And when I bring up Nike Plus as the role model, I don’t mean it should be done with the Nike Plus target market or marketing in mind–this is not about getting in shape and is not targeted for fitness freaks. These devices are for a decidedly different target and would require decidedly different marketing and branding, but that doesn’t equal marketing it like you would a goddam enema.

Is it even possible to make some of these products sexy? Wrong question.

You don’t need to make them sexy. To reiterate, you just need to make them 1) user friendly enough that the target audience will be able to frequently use them and 2) have results that are easily understood. Here’s a slide on brand positioning from the original business plan I put together in late 2006 / early 2007. The blue arrows indicates where I think these sorts of devices could be placed on a spectrum from “Full Metal Jacket” to “Mister Rogers.”

So who would these devices be for? Oh, any one of the tens of millions of Americans who deals with obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, insomnia, etc. Is it a big market? You betcha. Is this the beginning of all this? I hope so. I hope we start seeing more and more entrepreneurs in this space because the big healthcare players get the concepts of “user-friendly” “marketing” and “web” about as well as Attila the Hun understood the concept of diplomacy.

The upcoming Withings: Part II will include a review of the Withings scale and a comparison to my original business plan. Stay tuned.

School life at Kellogg has kept me away from my blog the past few weeks. However, I’ve got a large backlog of ideas I’d like to write about.

Some of the topics that have been occupying my mind include:

• The importance of explicitly defining what you’re not going to do / customers you are not attempting to reach in business strategy. This is partly inspired by a conversation with my buddy Evan Doll, the former Apple iPhone programmer who is now co-founding a startup. It’s also inspired by a brilliant article by Michael Porter titled “What is Strategy?”
• The divide (at least in the media) between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Does this divide exist? Or is it the press looking for a story? If it does exist, why does it exist? What does it mean for the industry?
• Why I really like “medium-sized” business plans–these are business plans that don’t say “We are going to dominate the world’s operating system world” but likewise don’t say “We are going to be a tool for an existing service.”

Finally, on a personal note…everything here at Kellogg is going well. I am looking to join the Private Equity Venture Capital (PEVC) Club and make any contributions I can. I am also getting active with both the High-Tech Club and Investment Management Club.

In the next couple of months I will be considering my options for summer internships.

It always nice to have some fun early on, so let us indulge for a moment.

While watching this YouTube clip of a 300 baud modem hooked up to a phone, it occurred to me how far the world has come since I first really stepped into the online world with my first Hayes modem. All those old pinging and clanging noises, boops and beeps that used to connect me to CompuServe and AOL (even before the web). How quaint! Well why not bring back those sounds in the form of a ringtone? What fun! Imagine the possibilities:

Scenario 1
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, excuse me. I just need to connect to the net to download some email.

Scenario 2
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, that’s a fax. It’s urgent. I gotta take this.

I give you the ultimate new dork accouterment, the modem/fax ringtone (Creative Commons Licensing 1.0 this is a reformat of the original):

• iPhone (m4r)
• MP3

These are the sounds of a 56kbps modem according to my friend @chrismarcellino who can tell by just listening. My ideal ringtone though would really be the sounds of a 14.4kbps modem, which I know when I hear it. Thoughts?

File hosting for ringtones thanks to Dropio.com!