Yearly Archives: 2010

And The Award For Best Vaporware Goes To…

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Before we announce the nominees, let us define vaporware: the act of announcing a product or service that isn’t shipping but is intended to keep a customer from buying an alternative product or service.

So without further adieu, here is our 2010 nominees:

  • The Crunchpad/JooJoo Pad
  • Random Android Tablets (Dell Streak, Samsung Tab)
  • White Apple iPhone 4
  • RIM PlayBook

And the winner is… without even a fight… the RIM PlayBook!

This was a tough fight, I have to admit. There were some worthy competitors here. The CrunchPad, a Michael Arrington at TechCrunch production, was a full-blown court drama after all with he said/he said allegations, etc. But it couldn’t win because it really didn’t keep us from buying an alternative. It was just sad and was quickly eclipsed by the iPad. (Besides, it happened too early in the year. And you know how Oscars work: it is better to be one of the last dramas of the year than the first to win the big awards.)

The Android tablets, too, don’t quite qualify. While they have been rumored for a long time, their official announcements have come within a reasonable time of shipping (although they haven’t shipped here in the States yet as far as I can tell.) Got to give these hardware guys some credit. It is not like you can announce and ship on the same day… or at least they never have.

The white iPhone is worthy of the prize but I think it has probably cost Apple more than anyone else. After all, how many people were waiting to buy an iPhone 4 in white instead of black. (My wife is.)  This means they froze their own customers, and not competitors, which is quite not the point of vaporware. (I can only imagine how mad Steve Jobs is over this.)

And that leads us to the only true winner: the RIM PlayBook. Don’t get me wrong, it looks like a nice device. But they don’t expect to ship this thing until early 2011! That’s at least 4 months from now! 4 months in this market is a lifetime!

So we get the endless comparisons of these vaporware tablets against the first generation iPad and, at least RIM hopes, that it will keep people from buying the iPad this holiday season. I don’t think so. Customers don’t like technology products they can’t touch and feel and play with (see Google, Nexus One). And besides, as John Gruber pointed out yesterday, Apple will likely announce if not ship version 2 of the iPad by then, making all the comparisons moot.

I will say one thing: at least we have markets interesting enough for vaporware again. Vaporware was a very popular play in the 1990s as the market for computing hardware and software was heating up, then went dormant for most of the 2000s. With the rise of smartphones and now tablets, the games become interesting again!

Fighting Back: What You Can Do

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Last week I wrote about the real fight in mobile, how we have been distracted by Apple v. Google but in reality it is carrier v. device makers. My goal, to start, was to raise awareness and change the conversation. If we can stop in-fighting between Google and Apple and help the press focus on the real issues around carrier, then that is a great start.

What can you do? Easy. If you see people backsliding, remind them what the real war is. Write blog posts. Write comments to articles and blog posts. Keep up the pressure on politicians to not accept the carrier’s definition of net neutrality. Remind your favorite device and OS maker that we have their back. The hard work will be up to Apple, Google, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft to take the power away from the carriers. And this won’t be an easy task.

The fundamental problem is that carriers control the entire purchasing experience. I believe separating the device purchase from the subscription purchase is a huge first step.

Right now the US carriers act as a one-stop shop for all things smartphone. You go to a carrier to pick out your phone, to get your data plan. They even tried selling netbooks and are about to put their grubby little fingers all over tablets. If you can help it, don’t buy from carrier stores. Instead go to Apple, Amazon, Best Buy or your favorite local cell phone store. It’s not the end-all but it is a start.

This is a big company fight. Massively large companies fighting other massively large companies. And the US Federal Government has been bought hook, line and sinker on this one. AT&T and Verizon, combined, spent over $30 million on lobbying in 2009 alone (data here and here, respectively).

So how do hardware and OS makers fight back? First step is to understand there is a whole world of retail shopping out there that doesn’t involve the carrier stores. Apple is out in front on this one, selling a massive amount of devices through their own stores, Costco, Best Buy, Radio Shack and other retail outlets.

The second step will be separating the carrier from the device itself. Again, Apple as an example (and I wish I had another company to point to as an example), look at the iPad. You want 3G for your iPad? You buy it after market. Don’t be surprised if the future of the iPod touch is the same, offering an after-market 3G/4G plan if you want it. (And then use Skype, Fring, Google Voice or Facetime for all your talking needs.)

We can fight back and hopefully the device makers will fight back, too. In the meantime, we need to keep the pressure up and keep reminding ourselves that this isn’t about device maker v. device maker. This is about makers v. carriers. And the only way we, the consumer, win is by keeping the pressure up on all involved.

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I should have called out MG Siegler of TechCrunch with my post last week and didn’t. MG has been writing a lot on this topic and want to thank him for being one of the few tech writers paying attention to this issue. A few samples are here, here and here.

Fighting The Wrong Fight

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We have been distracted by ridiculous arguments and fabricated “wars” for too long. We have been distracted by thinking that Google is Microsoft and Apple is Apple in a doomed fight already fought 20 years ago.

But that is not the fight we should be caring about at all. The fight we should be talking about, but aren’t, is the fight between mobile device makers and the carriers. This is the only real fight that matters.

Why should we care? Because carriers have been standing in the way of excellent user experiences for a long time. For years, Palm and HTC and Nokia and RIM have been kowtowing to the carriers. Carriers sell all the devices and the services, decide what software is available and what isn’t, decide what you can do with the device you paid $3000 or more for (over a two year contract). And who is punished? We, the consumers, with lousy service and controlled devices with crappy experiences.

I’ve been in this business for 13 years now. 3 years ago I had lost faith… until the iPhone. It wasn’t Apple’s designs or devices or user interfaces that excited me as much as it was their revolutionary business model (although the former excited me, too). Apple controls what apps are installed. Apple controls where the device is sold. Everyone — Apple, AT&T, developers — gets a cut of the revenues and the consumer gets an amazing experience and exceptional support.

I was just as equally excited when Google announced Android. The two most powerful companies in tech could surely go up against the four major carriers, reducing them to what they should be: regulated pipe providers just like your gas and electric company. And maybe, I thought, this will get Nokia and RIM to finally grow a pair and butt heads with the carriers. (Didn’t happen as RIM’s own mobile app store is still not pre-installed on their devices.)

But this pipe dream is being crushed quickly. The carriers, after giving up ground initially, are fighting back. They are using Android’s openness against the company. The carriers refuse to carry the Nexus. Verizon cuts exclusive deals with Skype. Slowness in “approving” new Android OS releases. AT&T locked devices from side-loading and the removal of the Google Marketplace. Secret (and ridiculous) deals on net neutrality. And now, insult to injury to Google who expected to make most of their money from selling ads like they do on the web, removing Google Search in favor of Microsoft Bing as the only and default search option on certain Android-based smartphones.

My goal here is to re-focus the conversation, put the attention back where it belongs. This is war. And this war will go nothing like Apple v. Microsoft. This is about who controls the experience; who gets to interact with the customer.

The stakes are a lot higher.

Road Trips and the iPad

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My wife’s family owns some property in NE California so every Labor Day weekend we pack up the kids and head south. It is a very long drive, about 8 hours with limited stops. For us it was more like 9.5 since the girls need to stop to go to the bathroom, run off a little excess energy and eat.

In years past we have packed the portable DVD player and a handful of DVDs but this solution was not a good one once we had a second child. Last year we rigged up this horrible interface that made it hard for both girls to see and was way to soft for either one to hear.

This year we have… an iPad! So with movies loaded (ripped using HandBrake), I rigged up a string to go across the two front seats, used the case to straddle the rope and another string to make sure it didn’t slip off. It was now close enough to plug it into the auxiliary port on the car stereo system, too, so the girls got surround sound. Another bonus: every time we needed to change a movie we could flip the screen to the front seats without removing it from its hanging position. Because the screen would rotate, we could see the controls right side up!

A couple of grainy pictures for you to see the entire set up (and my two lovely daughters):

Back to our regular programming next week, but thought I would share an innovative use of the iPad this week. Thanks, Apple, for making this trip a lot easier.

Cloud Nine

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Last week I went off on Google. This week I am going to admit that of the big companies Google is one of the few whose products I use. The reason for this is that Google is one of the first who focus on and advance the “apps in the cloud” mantra, which is why their net neutrality stance is even more frustrating.

Here’s the complete list of big company apps:

  • Apple: laptop, iPhone, iPad, iWork (Pages, Keynote), iLife, MobileMe
  • Google: GMail, Reader, Docs (as little as possible), search, blogger, YouTube
  • Microsoft: Excel
  • Intuit: QuickBooks
  • Adobe: Photoshop Elements

(And I would love to replace Adobe and Intuit — especially Intuit. And Excel can’t be replaced even though their Mac version stinks.) All other software — and a lot of it — is from smaller, independent developers.

But it is Google and Google alone who really understands this concept of access everywhere. Take Google Reader for example. I access Google Reader from every computer I have (including using an app called Reeder on iPhone and iPad) and they all stay in sync perfectly because of its connection to the cloud.

This is where the future resides for most software products and anyone who doesn’t understand that will be left behind. I am already convinced that this is a clear deliniation on smartphones and tablets: if you don’t have a web connection, don’t bother developing it.