Archive for category Storage
Fixing Apple’s Android PR Problem
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Google, Marketing, Microsoft, Mobile, Operating Systems, Storage, Technology on May 29, 2010
Oh the irony. Apple's emerging PR threat comes from a command-obeying robot. (See Apple's famed 1984 ad.)
When you’re number one, everyone is a hater. As Chris Dixon recently tweeted, “Let me get this straight: some guy speculates he could hack the iPad hence major business mag reports it’s insecure??” Indeed, when you’re el numero uno (officially as of 5/27), the media and your competitors are on the hunt for the slightest whiff of anything negative to slam you with, even if it’s it untrue or doesn’t make any sense.
The memes of Apple as “closed” “restrictive” and “arbitrary” are potentially the most damaging to the brand. These gibes have been around for a while but it is Android has truly brought them to the public’s attention. I cite two arguments for these being the most damaging: 1) Apple’s historical brand equity is built upon the concepts of “creative” “freedom” and “individual”—the very antithesis of “restrictive.” (See Apple’s famed Super Bowl ad, “1984”.) 2) Apple’s modern resurgence is based upon Apple’s brand defeating the reality and perception of Apple as “incompatible.” Consumers only bought Apple products en masse once they believed and experienced true cross-platform compatibility, embodied in the iPod, iTunes and Intel Macs (see Kellogg Prof. Julie Hennessy’s case on Apple and the iPod).
So given this particular reality, what is Apple to do? How can Apple defeat the memes of “closed” “restrictive” and “arbitrary”?
1) The New “Open” App Store Takes a Lesson from Amazon
Much of Apple’s brand’s greatest ire stems from Apple’s 100% control over the App Store. However, as Steve Jobs has directly argued, control is necessary to keep the App Store within brand and grant “freedom from programs that steal your private data” “freedom from programs that trash your battery” and “freedom from porn”. So how can Apple reconcile this tension? I believe the solution is by offering a first-party App Store as it is today (analogous to products “sold by Amazon.com”), but also offering a gate out of Disney World to third-party affiliate merchants (think Amazon Merchants) whose veracity can be approved by Cupertino and also continuously rated by customers (think Amazon Merchant star ratings). These Merchants would of course be limited in number and scope, but ultimately the effect would be that the App Store is no longer perceived to be directly under SJ’s thumb. This could be structured in such a way to create distance between Apple’s brand and the Merchant’s experience and goods. It’s all in the execution.
In conjunction, the other half of the equation would be that Apple would need to develop more clear guidelines for the app approval process (as John Gruber has previously argued).
2) Requiring Flash to Reach Goals, not Saintdom
Steve, I fully concur with you on every point you raise in your “Thoughts on Flash,” but the issue from a PR perspective is that it comes off as a crusade against all things Adobe since you pose problems that seem to have no solutions. Instead of indentifying the issues in such a way that they appear intractable, you should have simply set out specific and explicit hurdles that Flash must clear before being allowed on iPhone OS (even if you don’t believe some of them could ever be accomplished). For instance, “Cannot drain battery more than Quicktime and H.264. Must be fully touch compliant as approved by Apple’s HI team—we can help you on this. Must be open source.” I believe this would have been much better received. And yes, I did throw that last one in there—my point is that by publicly issuing a challenge for Adobe to open source you could have won major PR points rather than reinforcing the perception of Apple as closed by “shutting Adobe out” which I believe “Thoughts on Flash” is widely perceived to have done.
3) From MobileMe to OpenMe
If you really want to deflate the (Android) zombies out there who think Apple is “closed” and “restrictive,” open and free MobileMe. As my buddy Sachin has argued, start off by making MobileMe $0. Next, give people a whole bunch of free cloud space (5GB? 10GB? 20GB? 100GB?) and see what they do with it. Let them be creative. Allow music and media streaming. Cache iTunes purchases in the cloud. Open up an API. Go wild. Surprise us all and blow our minds. You know, think different.
iPad Hands On: What are the Game Changers?
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Mobile, Operating Systems, Personal, Storage, Technology on April 4, 2010
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.
Apple Cuts ZFS from Snow Leopard?
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Operating Systems, Storage, Technology on June 10, 2009
It’s beginning to look like Apple has cut the promising ZFS file system technology from even basic read/write inclusion from OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Snow Leopard Server. All previous mentions of ZFS have been removed as you can see (or not see more accurately) here, here and here. This is about as explicit as it gets. Apple lists the file systems for OS X Snow Leopard Server and ZFS is not there. (Somebody even already updated the Wikipedia page on ZFS already to reflect this.)
My guts tells me Apple made the decision for two interrelated reasons:
1) They want to keep Snow Leopard clean and MORE stable, not less stable because of new features…and file systems are a lot of work…per the recent WWDC Keynote.
2) ZFS is just not ready for prime time in production environments and Apple’s file system team realized this. ZFS has not itself been finalized and Apple’s going to have to do a lot of customization work to make it fit into OS X cleanly. This probably also means it will NOT be compatible with any other ZFS deployments / versions. So much for ZFS as a panacea.
Furthermore, for ZFS to be really useful for OS X customers, Apple will need to do the work to make it compatible as a boot disk which will require even more work and customization and Apple will also need to hide all of the brutal command line complexity and zpool crap and normal RAID levels that characterize ZFS. Getting ZFS to be easy to use is another ball of wax altogether! I bet that will take Apple 2-3 years minimum. In other words, kids please don’t hold your breath for ZFS.
Wow! Isn't this fun and easy! The dark side of ZFS...
While I think ZFS is extremely promising I get really concerned when I hear talk about it in mythical and impossibly optimistic savior-esque terms. In reality, it’s got a long way to go and most people only have such a positive impression of ZFS because they’ve never worked with it. Once you have, it tempers your enthusiasm about 50%-95%. Then again, HFS+ is pretty much ancient history at this point and could not be any less stable (particularly with external storage–needing to dismount? ahem?), so I think all OS X customers are long overdue for something bright and shiny.
My two Drobos I have running at home keep my data safe and don’t require me to understand the ZFS diagram shown. And when ZFS does replace HFS+ in OS X I am betting Data Robotics will make Drobos 100% ZFS compatible. Until then, I don’t really feel the need to run ZFS just yet. And remember folks, even if you are running ZFS that does not absolve you from needing offsite storage…
NAS is Overblown
Posted by tloverro in Marketing, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Storage, Technology on June 3, 2009
Dear Established Storage World,
I’ve got some serious issues with what you’re assuming consumers and SMBs want from their storage. Get your head out of the “cloud” and listen up. Here’s what people actually want:
1. Don’t f#cking crash and lose my family photos or tax returns.
2. See number one.
Why is it then that when you look at how vendors such as HP, Iomega or LaCie market their storage products, they either 1) promote a bunch of technical specifications that are 100% irrelevant to customers or 2) promote a bunch of esoteric NAS features that are only good for Alpha Geeks? Who the hell cares how much RAM or what MHz processor is in a storage product? Is 1GHz good or bad for storage? Have you ever tried using UPnP / DLNA? It blows!
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any problems with NAS per se. To me NAS is a great way of sharing storage/files across many computers. I use NAS (via SMB/CIFS) at home every day with a Drobo and DroboShare for the three Macs in my apartment. Here’s my problem: most storage vendors conflate NAS with multimedia streaming and “cloud” services, but this approach is bound to fail. NAS is first and foremost a way of sharing files, not streaming them.
FACT: Windows Home Server (WHS) is bound to fail, just as surely as Intel’s Viiv platform for the living room is now a laughable and faded memory. Why? It’s a freaking mule that doesn’t know whether it wants to backup your data or make sweet love to your TV.
Windows Home Server will never match the beauty or elegance of either 1) backing up to a direct-attached USB/FW/eSATA drive or 2) me walking up to my plasma screen TV and plugging my laptop in via HDMI–no need to convert videos between arcane codecs, download tons of buggy software or go through the headache of streaming. Intel’s Viiv failed because it’s really hard to put a general purpose computing device in the living room and have it do anything really well. WHS suffers from this same basic and fatal flaw. It’s really hard to put a general purpose storage device in the living room and have it do anything really well.
Sheer madness! Number of people who actually use this feature? Five? Ten?
At the end of the day WHS and most NAS devices fail my most basic of consumer/SMB litmus tests: I can’t explain what they do in one sentence or less. If you need further proof of their lack of consumer appeal, simply visit HP’s Home Media Server website. The first thing you’ll notice is a page about “Why a Home Server?” Um, if you need to have that page, you should realize you are selling a solution and technology in need of a problem.
"Redmond, we have a problem. No one wants these things."
How about this for a novel approach: we start with the needs of consumers and SMBs first? It’s what I did at Data Robotics (and they will continue to do) and we took the industry by storm. Here’s a cheat sheet for the Established Storage World , please refer to the beginning of this blog entry for what people want from their storage. Hint: it doesn’t have the words “Cloud 2.0.1″ in it.
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