Archive for category Mobile
Windows Phone 7 Series: The Day Hell Froze Over
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Marketing, Microsoft, Mobile, Operating Systems, Technology on February 15th, 2010
Today is an historic day in Redmond: the day Microsoft can finally claim I wrote something positive about their mobile OS. Windows Phone 7 Series is a bold re-imagining of Windows Mobile which I have previously described as nothing less than a “car wreck hitting a train wreck getting hit by jumbo jet.” However, in analyzing Microsoft’s new strategy we see they have implicitly ceded defeat on the original Windows Mobile strategy. This has some very interesting ramifications I have not read about anywhere else, so I thought I would point them out.
If you want a good write up concerning the advancements in WP7S, Ars Technica has a great summary here. But, what interests me most about WP7S was never announced and probably never will be.
Windows Mobile = Windows…but Mobile
So the story goes that Microsoft defeated Apple in the desktop OS market because Apple stuck too rigidly to a command & control system of defining all hardware and software. Bill Gates came in and democratized everything allowing anything to work with anything. (Freedom rules! O’Doyle Rules!) The evil, all black wearing, communist Steve Jobs was handily defeated in the Great Operating System War (aka The First World Operating System War).
As the world evolved and mobile devices came to market, Microsoft pushed on with its democratic, diverse hardware platform strategy and ported it directly to these new waves of mobile devices. This is evident from the various names of these mobile operating system incarnations: Windows CE, Windows PocketPC (Windows…in your pocket!!!) and of course Windows Mobile. These attempts were all aimed at putting Windows on a mobile phone–Start button, task manager, windows file explorer and all–the whole shebang.
Why would mobile phones be any different than computers? Until today, Microsoft publicly believed that this is how the world should work: Microsoft makes the operating system and myriad device manufacturers compete from Texas to Taiwan to make dazzling devices with the most differentiation sporting the most megahertz and most whizbang features to lure consumers. (And we see this in how WinMo devices are marketed: They are marketed like computers: “You should buy this WinMo phone because it has a XXXMHz Snapdragon processor and XXXMB of memory!” Oooo! Ahhhh!)
Only problem? As it turns out, Windows in your pocket is a terrible idea. Why? I realize this may be hard to grasp–it’s exceedingly subtle (at least it was in Redmond for a decade): mobile phones are not desktops nor even laptops; they are mobile phones.
iPhoneOS ≠ OS X Mobile
Attack!!!
Until the iPhone was released, the mobile software world was a horrid shantytown of squalor, JAMDAT and diarrhea. No single mobile OS had a rich enough user experience or had enough market share for development to be worthwhile and hardware differed so much from phone to phone that entire businesses were made out of customizing mobile games into tens of thousands of individual SKUs (I should know; I looked at investing in a few such businesses).
A Turning Point
But now we are coming to the turning point in the war. We are 25 years after the first graphical version of Windows on the desktop. It is becoming apparent even to Billy G. and Stevey B. that quality assurance with an unlimited number of hardware devices and an unlimited number of peripherals, all requiring unlimited numbers of software drivers means, well…infinity plus one combinations of possible devices for Windows to reside on…and that makes producing really tight software quite hard. Windows grew ever larger just to meet the minimum requirements of supporting this infinite universe of hardware and software and soon began to sag and eventually crash under its own weight faster than the Warsaw Radio Mast. We have a name for this tragedy: Windows Vista.
WP7S ≠ Windows 7 Mobile
Today Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 Series and simultaneously 1) gave itself a decent shot at reclaiming major market share in the mobile OS and 2) conceded defeat of its core strategy by implicitly admitting that the “Freedom Rules!” lessons of the desktop do not apply to the mobile phone. As Ars Technica states:
“[WP7S relative to WinMo], however, is considerably less customizable, and the hardware requirements are much, much tighter…In fact, pretty much the only optional feature is whether to have a hardware keyboard or not…Software-wise, there will only be one version, with none of the variants that its predecessor had.”
Thus, Microsoft was able to save its mobile OS, but only by adopting tactics from the enemy. While this may have been “OK” to do for the limited world of the Xbox, this is quite a big deal for the mobile OS, which easily represents half or more of the future OS opportunity. Microsoft has ditched the large, open, hairy, wooly, unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism of both Windows and Windows Mobile for the carefully regulated, post-modern compromise that is WP7S.
And I toast Microsoft for it! That’s why WP7S works. That’s why it’s promising! And what next? If Microsoft is able to stick to this strategy, we may see a D-Day face off between Microsoft and Apple.
But will Microsoft ever adopt such a rational and post-modern view of Windows on the desktop, combining both a tightly regulated vision with some room for outside vendors? I certainly hope so.
Addendum on Product Naming
Windows Phone 7 Series…or was that Windows 7: Phone Series? Or Windows Phone Series 7? Really? I mean, really ? That was the best name you could come up with? The whole point of this new OS is that it is NOT “Windows 7 in your pocket.” I understand you want to benefit from the wave of positive press and enthusiasm Windows 7 is receiving, but this is short-sighted. It’s a mouthful and the order of the words is confusing. I am not saying I immediately have a better alternative, but then again I haven’t spent any time thinking about. If I happen to find a seven figure check in the mail from Redmond, I’ll start working on it. My guess is they come up with a better name or at least a more consumer friendly moniker before official launch.
[Ed: Of course, as my friend Lucas points out this is all in principle at least. WP7S is supposed to arrive by "holiday season 2010" which puts it just this side of what many would call vaporware. iPhone 4.0 will likely be 33-50% dead already and iPhone 5.0 will be 50% alive by the time consumers get their first taste of WP7S-an eternity in mobile OS time.]
iPad Analysis: History Repeats Itself
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Marketing, Mobile, Operating Systems, Technology on February 6th, 2010
I am going to respectfully disagree with Kellogg Professor Mohan Sawhney who recently wrote “I think the iPad is aimed squarely at the center – of nowhere.” My argument boils down to three primary points:
1. Neither early laptops nor iPods were truly mass consumer devices. Their progeny were, but those first incarnations were not.
2. If you try to think of the iPad as a “complete substitute for either a laptop or a netbook or a smartphone” as he argues, you have already erred. It is not.
3. You and I are not typical consumers.
Here we go:
1. The Allegory of the Laptop. I bought my first laptop in 2001. I thought of it as a “great addition to my desktop.” But hardly a great investment from a TCO perspective. I presupposed I would use it whenever I went to the Stanford Library to study, when I was traveling, or perhaps sitting outside in the Oval on one of those famously sunny Palo Alto afternoons. Never, however, did I imagine it replacing my desktop. Why? It couldn’t. The technology wasn’t quite there yet. Battery life was abysmal, the processor was more anemic than the venerable Irom Sharmilla on her 10-year hunger strike and Wi-Fi was still crying from its crib in infancy and not present on my laptop. Oh yeah, and I couldn’t see the screen outside–so much for working outside in the Oval. BTW, have you ever tried using a computer recently that wasn’t connected to the internet? WHAT THE HELL IS IT GOOD FOR?!
But then something changed. In about 2005 or 2006, I noticed some dust on my desktop both literally and figuratively. (Seriously, my room was a mess, the thing was filthy.) I didn’t need my desktop anymore. The equation had changed. I could now do 95% of everything I needed to on my laptop. I thought of my big, custom-built desktop as really only useful for large Excel documents, video games and as a big hard drive for my MP3/AAC collection.
The same is true for iPods. I bought an original iPod way back when. I still have it. It’s black and white, has a FW400 port, is thick as brick, practically needs its own wheelie suitcase to transport and cost $600. I remember my friend Kali asking/reprimanding me at the time, “What the hell is that? You spent $600 on an MP3 player!!!” [Ed: Actually, Kali this MP3 player will shake the very foundations of the computing industry.] That original iPod was not ready for mass market. It was a niche product for alpha geeks like me. But you know what? It wasn’t a mistake. The technology evolved, Apple executed and it turned out that everyone wanted thousands of songs in their pocket (i.e. once the iPod could fit in a regular size pocket). PS-I apologize for the misleading title of this section. That was in no way an allegory.
2. The iPad is a new device, don’t pigeonhole it bro. I readily admit the iPad is neither a laptop, netbook or mobile phone. It is not supposed to be. Good product design requires as much sacrifice as it does integration. To understand this, you need to think different for a second. To lose the inhibition, follow your intuition. Free your inner soul and break away from tradition. You categorically CANNOT look at the iPad and determine its utility by comparing it to other products. YOU MUST COMPARE IT TO CUSTOMERS NEEDS. Does it have 10x USB and 4x FireWire 800 ports? No. Does it have a 15x dual-layer burnable Dual-Scribe DVD Writer? No. I agree–from that perpsective it sucks. But so do feature lists. Do most people need those things? No! You need to start by asking what people use these devices/tools for.
3. My girlfriend does not have a computer at home. Right now, your mind just exploded and it’s just a red, gooey mess. But, Marketing 101, baby–you and I are not the typical consumer. Most people don’t go home and run conjoint analyses in Excel on weekends. But my girlfriend is closer to the typical consumer. What does she need? First, she has a computer at work. She uses that for most computationally and input mechanism intense tasks that she does–like large spreadsheets and long emails. She also surfs the web on it and takes care of most of personal internet needs through it. Second, at home and on her person, all she’s got is her Blackberry Pearl. Why? Because when she gets home she mostly emails, surfs a web page or two and makes a few phone calls. My girlfriend is the perfect example of a potential future iPad customer. Not today’s iPad mind you–too geeky for her. But perhaps iPad version 3. One day, Gilt or Groupon will come up with a social shopping app that she’ll need to have and the iPad v3 will arrive via FedEx the next day in a white box. Just like it was with the iPod…
Conclusion
Most people do “intense” computer work in the office on their office supplied machines. When they get home, they use the web for leisure, socializing and communication–exclusively. And for those of us who spend 5-10% of our time at home working, we can probably afford both an iPad and a laptop. Although as the iPad improves and you and I catch up to the new reality, we’ll begin to realize we think of our laptops like we think of desktops today–ornery beasts used for work. We’ll spend the majority of our time at home on the iPad, not our laptops. Desktops and laptops were expected to be used for both leisure and work. The iPad has for the first time truly separated “leisure” from “business” computing in terms of devices. From now on, the iPad/tablet is a “leisure” computing & web device, while laptops are “business” devices. This was brilliant customer and product segmenting, targeting and positioning by Apple. Is this all a sure bet? Hell no. There are risks up the wazoo in everything and anything I said coming to fruition–as was the case with the original iPod. But is it a bet I’d take if I were SJ? Hell yeah, I would.
NYC BigApps
Posted by tloverro in Mobile, Technology, Venture Capital on February 6th, 2010
So Chicago might not be taking my advice and trying to transform itself into a hub of mobile application development, but New York certainly is (though I cannot take any credit for it). The NYC BigApps competition is exactly the sort of government prodding that I think can be helpful in stimulating further entrepreneurialism and innovation. Let me be clear when I say that government action is not a necessary condition for any city’s startup culture in the US, but I do think it’s a positive NPV way for a city or state government to use its funds. I can guarantee NYC will get back more than the $20,000 in cash distributed at BigApps plus whatever G&A expenses incurred in the form of taxes and other revenues.
In the long run, this is a good bet for NYC. Mobile apps make a lot of sense for dense urban environments. Urban dwellers are more likely to derive a lot of utility from mobile apps (think about how much more helpful Yelp is in NY than a farm town) and mobile development teams are particularly well-suited for a metropolis since they works in small teams often of a dozen or less as opposed to packing 1,000s of folks into vast, suburban campus sprawls (Yes, I am thinking of you Adobe, Sun, Microsoft, Apple etc.)
Bravo to New Yorkers Mayor Bloomberg, Fred Wilson, John Borthwick, Kevin Ryan and Danny Shultz among others for getting involved and lending their names and credibility to the event. At the end of the day, any such initiative is only as good as the people putting it together and those competing.
(Also, in another bit of great news for NYC mobile app development, CNET co-founder Kevin Wendle and MusicNation co-founder Daniel Klaus recently announced the AppFund which will be based in NYC. Things are really coalescing for a new era in New York-based entrepreneurialism. Great news for us native New Yorkers with a deep tech passion.)
An Open Letter to Chicago on Technology Innovation
Posted by tloverro in Mobile, Technology, Venture Capital on November 22nd, 2009
Dear Politicians, Entrepreneurs and Financiers of Chicago,
Now is the time for Chicago to make a bold move to develop a technology and innovation-based economy. The proposal is straightforward: offer a basket of tax incentives, political support, direct subsidy, and venture capital to establish a “Mobile App Development Economic Zone” in downtown Chicago. The initiative should be aimed at both incentivizing existing mobile app developers and publishers to relocate to Chicago and for new entrepreneurs to choose Chicago as their metropolis of choice.
Chicago & IT: Now or Never?
Why do this? Let’s be honest. Chicago almost entirely missed the boat in the past 20 years on that whole “personal computer” and “internet” revolution that has energized state and local economies in just about every other major metropolitan center in the US. Mobile app development is one of the great frontiers of technology today with the potential to create jobs and wealth for Chicago and Illinois, while further diversifying the portfolio/mix of industries. Looking forward to the century ahead, it should be obvious to all residents that technology and specifically mobile technology will become increasingly important to our society and economy. If now is not the right time for Chicago to get involved, when is?
Why Mobile App Development?
Compared to other technology frontiers, mobile app development is particularly lightweight and democratic. For instance, it would be difficult to start a new semiconductor-based economy in Chicago now because of 1) extensive relocation costs for any preexisting company to make the leap since semiconductors are a capital (physical and human) intensive business 2) Chicago lacks the throngs of specialized hardware, firmware, tools, test and services engineers that are part and parcel of semiconductor engineering. You can’t just start a semiconductor business by yourself. You need at least 10-40 employees, which implies a much larger pool of potential employees with such backgrounds. 3) You can’t just start a semiconductor business with an idea that came to you in the shower. Semis are built on specialized knowledge generally hatched out of larger semis firms (see Intel). Chicago lacks all of the above. And this isn’t specific to semiconductors–these points apply as much to semiconductors as they do to enterprise software, consumer hardware or any number of the bedrock segments of an IT-based economy.
On the other hand, today any given mobile app development startup requires a couple of generalist software engineers and a graphics wizard/human interface designer. The idea behind the next great iPhone or Android app will not be found in some corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, CA or Waltham, MA, it could come to a Chicago CTA rider or a local university student. In fact, this has already happened with a notable startup named Bump Technologies, which was founded by a couple of Chicago Booth full-time MBAs. Unfortunately, without any incentives to stay, that company has since relocated to Mountain View, CA. Chicago had the idea and gave it up.
A Proposed Solution
- Establish Chicago as a MADE Zone, “Mobile App Development Economic Zone”
- Appoint leading business executives, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, professors, investment bankers, consultants, and politicians to the Council. I’d like to see Mayor Daley, a Motorola executive, J.B. Pritzker, Kellogg/Booth professor(s), an IDEO consultant from their Chicago office, a Deloitte big wig, and a young entrepreneur such as one of the Threadless founders on the Council
- Powers and characteristics of the MADE Zone are established below
- Offer a 5-year state and city tax holiday to mobile app developers & publishers in Cook County (ie Chicago)
- Specify the qualifying platforms: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Windows, and Symbian and other requirements
- Require all participants to submit formal applications to qualify. Companies must meet various requirements, be under a certain size, etc.
- Offer direct subsidies for relocating companies
- Establish a $XX million fund to promote and assist in the relocation of existing startups to help seed the project
- Market to and work with some leading, notable and young mobile app startups to bring them to Chicagoland
- Let’s get some really big names ones to make a splash
- Raise $X million to lease/purchase and rehabilitate a specific industrial building to turn into a MADE Zone incubator office building for X years–proximity of entrepreneurs drives innovation
- Offer subsidized rent to occupants
- Establish a venture capital initiative with Chicago & Illinois as GP or LP to fund mobile app development
- This could be in the form of a single fund run by the city/state as the GP (somewhat akin to the New York City Investment Fund) or as an LP to third party funds
- Offer additional tax and other incentives to qualifying new entrepreneurs and startups
- Have you ever worked in an early stage startup? Life isn’t easy. Payroll tax breaks and other such incentives could help on the cost side, preventing the death from a thousand cuts that kills innovation. How about some pro bono basic legal and tax consulting from MADE Zone Council Members such as Deloitte?
- Involve the Universities
- Get the University of Illinois, Northwestern, University of Chicago, DePaul, IIT, Loyola and the other Chicagoland and Illinois (hell, all of the Big 10 and Midwest) schools onboard with mobile app development courses (see Stanford’s CS193P taught by my good buddies), lectures, student club involvement etc. Give professors advisory positions and align incentives
- Involve local businesses
- Local businesses (big and small) should have every reason to support this. Think about it. Motorola: Absolutely! NAVTEQ: Yes! The sandwich shop across from where the incubator building is located: of course!
- Get the word out
- This is perhaps the most important initiative of them all and its the one upon which all depend
- Take out ads, get on Twitter, scream at Michael Arrington until he writes an article and setup press conferences until the whole world knows
Now is the time to act Chicago. Become a leader and innovator.
Sincerely,
Tom Loverro
Google Voice: Why AT&T Was Right
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Mobile, Technology on August 10th, 2009
Dissenting opinion. There’s been a lot of garbage and hogwash written about why Google Voice was taken down and barred from the iTunes App Store for the iPhone. There’s also been debate as to whether it was Apple or AT&T who demanded the take down. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that this was an evil and wrong-headed move by Apple and AT&T.
First off, it really shouldn’t be hard to figure out who ordered the take down. If Google Voice (and other IP-based phone apps like Skype) are allowed to operate over cellular/3G this represents a major business challenge to AT&T. Forget about “right” and “wrong” and your hippy ideals of “open” this and “free love” that for a minute. Do the goddamn math.I pay $122.04 per month with taxes to AT&T to operate my iPhone every month. I don’t even have that fancy of a plan. It’s upper-middle class. I have 900 anytime minutes, the iPhone data plan, and 1500 SMS per month–that’s it. AT&T gets about $100 of that per month after taxes. Now if Google Voice were available, I would instantaneously drop my voice plan from my $60 for a 900 minute plan to the barebones $40 450 minute plan. I would go from the $15 1500 SMS to the $5 200 SMS plan. Net net I would be paying AT&T $35 per month or $420 per year less to the Big Blue Death Star. Oh yeah, and that $420 has near zero marginal cost. It’s the sweet, sweet gravy on AT&T’s poutine. Consider hundreds of dollars of lost revenue per customer for all 78 million American 3G subs that AT&T has and all of a sudden this little Google Voice app approval thing looks like potentially billions of dollars of lost gross margin for AT&T every year. Ouch.
So should we get all up in arms and boycott the iPhone over this apparent customer-screwing move like a bunch of irate schoolchildren who just threatened to stop playing kickball until the rules are to our liking? Hell no. AT&T is a business you communist fool. They ain’t no charity. Randall Stephenson isn’t the CEO for his health. They have executives and a Board of Directors responsible to their shareholders in both the short and long-term. They are not about to voluntarily give up billions of dollars of margin and screw their shareholders over just because you think Apple and AT&T are capricious in their App Store approval process. News flash: It’s their multi-billion dollar 3G network, so we’re playing by their rules. It’s their kickball and their field.
Can AT&T hold out on Google Voice forever? No. They can’t ostrich this one for too long or the FCC or some 18 year old’s technology will find a way around whatever barriers are erected. (Life always finds a way. Doesn’t it Mr. Goldblum?) AT&T needs to come up with a solution. Very short-term they need to deny Google Voice exists except perhaps over Wi-Fi, but after that they need a plan. That’s the responsible thing to do for their company and shareholders.
For instance, AT&T could allow Google Voice but change their rate plans to go one of two ways: 1) the simple way…create a single totally unlimited iPhone plan that costs $89 pre-tax for everyone (i.e. a price point that’s higher than the current median iPhone plan price point but not too high) that doesn’t make silly breakouts for voice, data and SMS. They could call it The “Its All Frickin’ Packets Anyhow Plan.” Alternatively, AT&T could bundle voice, data and SMS together and base their plans on either access speed or MBs per month (or something else?). This would be similar to home internet access through AT&T U-Verse and others. (i.e. In the ISP world this is “Do you want access rates of 3mbps, 6mbps 12mbps or 18mbps?”) I don’t know if cell towers currently have the technological capability to throttle 3G service rates by individual handset (guessing not yet) but this is probably something they should start working on pronto if they haven’t already. Personally I think MBs per month would be a terrible idea that only complete nitwits would go with and would stifle all innovation. I also think Apple would quit AT&T the minute they did that. I am sure there are other sound ways too of AT&T making up for much (but probably not all) of the lost revenue that Google Voice and its kind represent, but the key thing is moving away from “minutes, SMS, MBs” to a less artificial approach that recognizes its all packets anyhow and AT&T should get paid for packets not minutes. (For instance, if at the end of the day under the new billing scheme my bill only goes down by $15 per month–the amount I pay for SMS, I would not be upset. Current SMS fees should be felony offenses in all 50 states.) The real problem is that AT&T still thinks of itself as a phone company.
So who rejected Google Voice? Yeah, I am going to have to go ahead and go with “AT&T” here as my final answer. And why? Because smart companies don’t voluntarily shoot themselves in the foot. Once you accept the fact that even though technology will continue to innovate, AT&T will continue to find clever ways to charge you an inflation-adjusted $80-$100/month you’ll be a happier person for it. So, Messrs. Arrington and Calacanis please give it a rest and realize that AT&T is a business and not a not-for-profit. Use some common sense. AT&T did what anyone should expect of them: they did not commit Seppuku.
REVIEW: Apple iTablet
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Mobile, Technology on July 27th, 2009
Now that the FT has confirmed the existence of an Apple tablet-style device running a future version of iPhone OS, I thought it would be appropriate to publish an advanced review of the product.
Now you may say to yourself “Hey, how can you write a review of something you’ve never used, let alone seen?!” And I’ll politely tell you to shut the hell up because here’s a little secret: I’ll get it 95% right now and Mossberg
, Pogue and those other amateurs will fill in the least important 5% months from now. You can know most everything you need to know about technology and gadgets without ever seeing or using them. This review is based on just a handful of reasonable rumors from the FT and Engadget 1) It’s a 10” multi-touch tablet 2) Runs iPhone OS not OS X 3) Costs less than a MacBook but more than an iPhone 4) Probably EVDO and/or HSDPA ready. So here’s my otherwise totally fraudulent and 100% made up, yet probably spot on review. [Comments from my present day self in brackets.]
Awesome, but what is it?
Today [on launch day in 2009 or 2010] the iTablet is definitively a “nice to have” given its price point and jack of all trades, but master of none qualities. For instance, it’s great for watching movies, but so is my TV or my MacBook Pro. It’s great for reading a book…but so is my, um, book or (theoretical) Kindle. It’s great for listening to music but so is my iPhone or extensive collection of wax cylinders. It’s great for email, but so is anything with electricity and lights these days.
However, this device is packed with nearly unlimited potential and should become a want-so-bad-that-I-need-to-have in the near future as apps are developed for its SDK. It’s “good enough” at so many things that once one or two compelling and totally unique apps are developed for it that appear nowhere else, all of a sudden during your lunch breaks you’ll catch yourself trying to mentally justify the purchase until…one day you walk into an Apple store an whip out that American Express card and buy one (whilst sneering to yourself that everyone around you knows less about computers than you do.) And by the way—just like the iPhone—what constitutes the “compelling, killer app” will likely be different for different demographics.
What does the future hold?
I can’t tell you what you’ll use this for in the future because those applications haven’t been invented yet. [Ironic enough for you?] For instance, who could have predicted Smule’s Ocarina or Sky Burger for the iPhone? But I can tell you two places you will be using said future apps: while traveling (planes, trains, minivans, hotels, dolphins, mustaches) and in your living room (no bathrooms please). Eventually, you’ll start using your primary computer less and less—only to edit complex documents and download photos from your DSLR.
Hardware and Software
The overall design is beautiful and the screen is gorgeous and dense. [But what the f*ck would you expect from Jonny Ive and the Apple ID team?] The software is intuitive and it’s great to see Apple playing leap-frog with all that cool Palm Pre eye candy / features. [Of course Apple’s going to strike back and steal the Pre’s hardly audible thunder with their next OS revision. If you don’t see this one coming, you’re a complete jackass.] The on-screen keyboard is surprisingly good though still inferior to the real thing. Battery life varies with usage and is mediocre overall. [Get it? Well, laugh then. All gadget battery reviews are the same.]
Conclusion
Beautiful and captivating but expensive. [Insert “So is your mom” joke here.] Do you need it today? No, not at all. But do you want it? Yes.
Will this be something you buy in the next 24 months? If you’re the type of person who shops at Whole Foods, yes you will. You’ll travel with it on weekends to the Hamptons and Napa rather than carrying your laptop and it will be the coolest thing in your living room for watching that spur of the moment YouTube clip with friends. And it just might get you excited about gaming again as interactive board games come out for it. [Can anyone say Settlers of Catan for the iTablet?] This device should also have a huge opportunity in vertical markets such as healthcare, retail, automotive and high-end home theater.
[PS—As a Product Marketing guy, I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be called the iTablet or iPod Tablet because those names have all sorts of issues, but since Apple doesn’t pay me I am not going to spend the next two months coming up with an original or awesome name for it.]
Top 10 Ways to Make the iPhone Enterprise Class
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Mobile, Technology on July 17th, 2009
Lloyd Blankfein loving his new and improved iPhone OS.
Here are my Top 10 Really Easy Ways to Make the iPhone Enterprise Class. When I say an Apple product’s name and enterprise class in the same sentence I know it’s a bit of an oxymoron and that Apple “really isn’t targeting the Blackberry/enterprise market” (in the words of my Apple buddies on the iPhone team) and I know that, but then again when you integrate Exchange into a smartphone, you can’t be surprised by requests like these. Gosh darn it, I love my iPhone but I secretly openly still miss a Blackberry.
To make this interesting I am going to skip obvious suggestions:
1) A physical keyboard
2) Incredible battery life
3) The ability to automatically read my mind and reschedule time-wasting meetings into 2H 2017.
Here we go…
10) Give me a little “i” on the Lock Screen. When people tap on this I should be able to write in a free text field “If found, please call 212-902-1000″
9) Don’t bury the Bluetooth Setting. I crave battery life and constantly toggle this setting on and off because I like to look hard core and wear my Bluetooth headset at inappropriate times like funerals, jury duty and baptisms but then turn bluetooth off while burning my battery life playing video games. Why bury the setting? Why?
8) Allow me to easily add a Contact during an Active Directory/LDAP lookup. Some new senior Managing Director just got added to my team and I need to send this draft analysis by black car to his house in Southampton by 6am on Saturday but I don’t have his contact info in my Contacts already. Shouldn’t I be able to add his Contact Card to Contacts easily (like on a Blackberry) after looking him up?
7) By default, all new Calendar events should have an Event Notification. What the hell is the point of a calendar event without one? Don’t you understand I am too busy and important to remember things like my son’s birthday? That’s why I bought this goddam iPhone in the first place.
6) Give me a Snooze option for Calendar events. OK, so I was just told by a Calendar Reminder that I have to call my parole officer in 15 minutes, but I am busy with this game of Snood. What if I forget in the intervening time? 15 minutes of Snood time is like 4 days back on planet Earth. The lack of this little feature just cost me six months of hard time.
5) Unified Inbox that includes Sent and Draft emails. Nothing makes me miss a Blackberry more than sitting on an airplane composing an email only for the draft to get saved to some far off land in a folder many fingers taps away. I should have the option to see Sent Mail in that Inbox and the email from multiple accounts. I don’t have the time to move around between Inboxes. I am important and busy like a boss!
4) Fix Mail’s bugs for Exchange accounts while offline. Please allow me to delete, move, etc. email in an Exchange account on the iPhone even if I don’t have signal. This works for other types of mail accounts today, but not Exchange. This is (an embarrassing) no-brainer.
3) The Contacts field of Phone should have the option to default to Search rather than Alaphabetical list. Unlike mom and little Joey who have seven contacts programmed into their phones, I have 655 contacts in my address book! Scrolling through them by letter doesn’t cut it.
2) Fix the Location field in Calendar. I NEED to be able to dial phone numbers for meetings and Google Maps directly from Calendar. Any Managing Director worth his salt would probably throw the iPhone out the window of his black car the first time a meeting reminder popped up for a dial-in meeting with some crazy phone number and dial-in code and he couldn’t dial directly from Calendar. (I filed this bug with Apple on iPhone 2.0…waiting…Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?)
1) Add a “Redirect” option to the Incoming Call screen. Let users configure the phone number this redirects to. Can you say Assistant? Or better yet, can you say Analyst? :-) Apple, want to best Research In Motion in the enterprise? This one feature will surely make most Blackberry users want to become switchers too.
Addendum
A quick definition of enterprise class: I used to work at a large investment bank. There are very few users who are more demanding than this crowd. So let’s set the bar high and go with M&A investment bankers as our definition of enterprise class. How do you know if you belong? Do you know offhand how many hours there are in a week? Have you ever worked more than 120 hours in a week? Have you ever made a Windows Mobile phone last less than two hours on a single charge? (I have. Hello Moto Q. Goodbye Moto Q.)
My New Ringtone: a 56k Modem
Posted by tloverro in Mobile, Personal, Technology on June 4th, 2009
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):
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!
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