I Want a Movement to End Cables In My Living Room

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Roku Streaming Stick adds streaming software to TVs, no box required 

If you are not familiar, Roku streams web-based content to your television. I used one for a very long time, especially to get Netflix and MLB.com on my TV instead of a computer in a room somewhere. Everything works with a remote control. This new device, just a stick that plugs into the back of certain television sets is even cooler. I love the idea that there are not even wires required, nothing sitting on a shelf, just a television set.

Over the past few years I ripped my entire collection of music, movies and TV shows to a hard drive and use iTunes, Apple’s sharing system and an Apple TV to stream that to my television set. This was an amazing breakthrough for me as I hated the massive number of shelves lined with cases. Now they are all on a 2 terabyte hard drive, all tucked away in the office out of site.

Seems to me the Roku stick is another step in the right direction, though. When we can get rid of the receivers and DVD players and Apple TV boxes and ridiculous number of cables and wires leading everywhere and collecting dust, I will be a very happy man.

RIM’s Window Dressing: Fire the Chairpersons

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RIM leaning toward new chairman: sources

The Financial Times reported yesterday that RIM was likely removing co-Chairmen Mike Laziridis’ and Jim Balsillie’s titles, installing an independent chairperson. The two would remain co-CEOs.

There is a great story in the Steve Jobs biography involving Larry Ellison of Oracle, Gil Amelio who was at the time CEO of Apple, and tech journalist Gina Smith:

That spring Larry Ellison saw Amelio at a party and introduced him to the technology journalist Gina Smith, who asked how Apple was doing. “You know, Gina, Apple is like a ship,” Amelio answered. “That ship is loaded with treasure, but there’s a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction.” Smith looked perplexed and asked, “Yeah, but what about the hole?”

Yeah, RIM. What about the hole? [1]

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[1] The problem is execution and mixed messages from the CEOs. Who gives a damn who is running the Board right now?

Who’s Your Daddy and What’s Your Killer Feature?

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Why Web OS Really Failed, and What it Means for the Rest of Us

Michael Mace dug into the webOS story, too, today with another excellent post. We kind of said the same thing. Mace said it was because there were no deep pockets to fix the flaws and no killer feature to get anyone interested. I contend that webOS would have looked innovative and killer if Apple hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room before Palm got there.

But that’s not why I am writing this. I am writing this because Mace’s comment — who’s your daddy and what’s your killer feature — is profound for any company writing a platform product (OS or otherwise). His premise is that the inherent trade-offs in version 1.0 ensures that there will be missing features, bugs and performance issues. There is no way around that. The only way to fix that problem is version 2 and 3. The only way to get to version 2 and 3 is time. And having time does you no good if you have no customers.

So the fundamental questions for any platform product is: how do you stick around long enough to fix your flaws and why will anyone use your platform to begin with? Answer those and you have the best chance of being around for an awesome 3.0 launch.

webOS Failed From Lack of Oxygen, Nothing More, Nothing Less

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In Flop of H.P. TouchPad, an Object Lesson for the Tech Sector

Two days ago, Brian X. Chen wrote an article for The New York Times regarding the flop of webOS. I’ll sum up the article for you here: it is the operating system’s fault that Palm and HP failed. The world of hardware and users weren’t ready for a web-based operating system.

Excuse my french but… bull shit.

The operating system was fine. I remember rushing over to a Sprint store to play with it and really enjoying the OS, actually. I thought it was smartly designed and although it had a couple of learning curve issues it was a solid system. While I have had my moments hating on Palm, I really was excited about developing for it because it used technologies I could use in other places, too. The hardware was good enough in my opinion (although I do remember there were some device manufacturing issues that took a few months to iron out).

Even the strategy of starting on Sprint, in my mind, was not a bad one. Focus on a smaller niche that you can dominate and then, with momentum, spread to other niches. Sprint is the smallest of the big four niches here in the US. Sprint helped with marketing and gave Palm time to work out any problems before also adding AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to their platforms.

Palm (and HP) failed because Apple sucked all the air out of the room. Then Google did a good enough job of copying Apple that any remaining air went to Android. webOS went cyanotic almost immediately [1]. And the one thing any good pyromaniac knows is that you can’t start a fire without any oxygen [2]. It’s that freaking simple.

Folks at HP and Palm can come with all the complicated reasons they want to make themselves feel good. But the reality is the software and hardware failed because there just wasn’t any oxygen left in the room. Sometimes you make history and sometimes you are made by it.

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[1] My 5 and 3 year old love that word. I always wanted to use it in a blog post.

[2] I’m not one but my wife might be.

Finding Your Inner Milkshake

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The hiring and firing of milkshakes and candy bars

Horace Dediu is one of the most influential and insightful analysts in the mobile market these days. I just started listening to his podcasts. The one I linked to above is an interview with Bob Moestra, who is executing on a simple Clayton Christensen idea.

The short summary is thus: products are hired to do a job. The key to each successful product is figuring out why the product was hired and then executing product, marketing and sales around that job.

Christensen’s example is one of a fast food chain that found that some customers were buying milkshakes in the a.m. Why? Turned out the commute was long and boring and they wanted something to do. Eating a bagel or sandwich was too messy. Drinking a milkshake kept them busy without risk of a sullied shirt and filled them up until lunch. The milkshake was being hired in the morning to help fill travel time and an empty stomach.

In the tech space one obvious example of a product that has figured out why it is hired is DropBox. DropBox is hired to give access to all my files wherever I am. The folks running DropBox have done a fabulous job engineering all facets of its business around this idea, even with new features like automated scripts for doing stuff on available files. What I admire about the company is that it realized not only what it was being hired to do but also that all the other noise needed to go away. No settings, no special processes, nothing. Just drop it in a file and go.

Even our very own powerOne has a clearly defined job: give you answers to your math and finance questions fast and easy. Believe me, we have tried over the years to expand its job but it has never worked. The product’s job is give a result fast and easy. Everything else is superfluous.

(As an aside this is why companies go astray, I believe, as well. Those developing it forget why it was hired. I also think this is why Siri is beta. It isn’t because it is not feature complete. I think it is because Apple doesn’t quite know what job you are going to hire it for.)

A couple of years ago I went to a TechTalk sponsored by Apple in Seattle. One of the things I took away from there was a distinct phrase that Apple uses for each one of their products:

Your differentiator your solution for your audience

In other words, what job is your product being hired to do by what audience.

Once we figure this out, the rest is staying focused and executing.