The Power of Your Own App

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John Economaki runs Bridge City Tools, a 25-year old company that makes finely-crafted woodworking tools. John was working on a new tool, the extremely cool Angle Master Pro (see the video here), and wanted to develop an app instead of producing a booklet. The booklet had massive tables covering thousands of angle calculations for calibrating the tool.

Enter powerOne.

I worked with John, who had written his calculations in a spreadsheet, to develop a template that did the same and, coupled with a number of improvements by John himself, is now available for download in the Library. powerOne is a great companion for Angle Master Pro!

And powerOne can be a great companion for you, too. Have a business that needs custom calculations or could use your own calculator app in the App Store? Drop us a line! We’d love to help.

Thank You, IBM

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I watched Jeopardy! the last couple of nights to see how Watson did against the humans. To make a computer think in abstract terms is an amazing accomplishment. My hats off to the folks at IBM.

But it isn’t just basic research in artificial intelligence that sets IBM apart. They have their fingers in lots of huge problems that could have a major impact on society. For example, Robert Scoble has an interview up at the Building 43 site by Rackspace that talks about IBM’s work on building a lithium battery that can hold enough energy to power a car 500 miles.

At a time when our federal government is cutting basic research done by the Department of Energy, DARPA, NASA and the National Science Foundation, among others, it is great to see an iconic American company picking up the slack.

The best you can do is iOS is Cool and Android is Open???

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I have recently been accused of being an Apple fanboy. I personally found it funny as, if you follow my writing you will know that while I like Apple’s products and approach I personally think Android will be the big player on the smartphone block.

Of course, my reasons for recognizing the dominance of Apple and Google platforms are usually different than most analysis. This weekend I was listening to an interview by Robert Scoble of two developers in the Bay area whose opinion boiled down to this: Android’s open and iOS is cool and thus they win. Robert’s argument, by the way, is that iOS and Android dominate apps and thus will dominate device sales.

As for me… my argument boils down to my college level strategy class taught by one Mr. Nelson Olf.

There are really only two sides to any market: the premium providers and the low cost providers. Apple, clearly, is the premium provider in every market they walk into. They maximize profit by protecting profit margin at the expense of market share. But in tech, just like in cars, there is always a premium provider. Think Apple as Lexus [1]. On the low end it is all about volume and cost control. Google, by open sourcing, is playing this game perfectly. Think Google as Toyota. The last thing to consider is that there really is no middle ground, or at least if you are in the middle ground you are likely to get squeezed. And that, I’m afraid, is Microsoft, Nokia, RIM and HP. None are considered premium platforms any more and, while Nokia and RIM have traditionally been low cost providers, they are getting squeezed by the army of hardware companies Android has unleashed.

Unfortunately for those three (now that Nokia will be a Windows Phone 7 licensee) there are only two ways to compete: either reclaim the premium brand or undercut Google as the low cost provider. Both are unlikely with the current crop of OSes.

As for developers, let’s face it, we are followers. (And I am one of them.) What we primarily care about is revenue in our pockets and thus the platforms that have the best chance of delivering that. (We also care about what is in our pockets.) A year ago that was only iOS. Now it is iOS and Android. For Windows Phone 7, webOS, and BlackBerry OS/QNX to become relevant, they have to either 1) get developers interested in buying and using their devices as their own or 2) show platform numbers that will attract developers because they think they can make lots of money there.

For now, only Apple and Google are demonstrating either of these.

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[1] The car analogy isn’t perfect. In cars there are multiple luxury (premium) brands: Lexus, Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, etc. I think the auto industry, though, is more forgiving of multiple players than tech because of developers. In tech developers act as a catalyst to drive consumers to one platform or another. We can only truly support a couple of platforms, making it unlikely that there will be more than two high profile players.

Nokia, HP and RIM, oh my!

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Wow. What a week. Let’s summarize (oh, these are snarky):

  • HP announces webOS Everywhere strategy. Make way for new smartphones, updated smartphones, tablets, and… webOS coming to a PC near you. The last one is the shocker and barely discussed, but most pundits are taking it as HP divorcing Microsoft. As for me… I will be the only honest one. Who knows?
  • Meanwhile, it turns out, Microsoft doesn’t care so much about HP asking for a divorce because they were already in bed with Nokia. It appears that Nokia is dropping their go-their-own-way Meego and eventually Symbian in favor of being another Windows Phone 7 box. That’s a way to act like a market leader, Nokia. Grovel to the guy with 1.5% market share.
  • RIM apparently is working on making Android apps work on their tablets, which makes it possible to write WebWork apps, Adobe Air apps, Adobe Flash apps and Android apps all for the platform, not to mention BlackBerry OS. RIM’s starting to feel like the back-alley watch salesman. Don’t like that option? Here’s twenty more to choose from.
  • Apple keeps doing what they do: sell freakin’ devices. Rumors: over a million in the first day on Verizon. 1 million units! And guess what? Everyone is disappointed! (I wish I could be disappointed like that.)
  • And Google… oh wait. Google was quiet this week. I guess that was expected after elevating their CEO out of the building two weeks ago and announcing Android version 3 (Honeycomb).

 

What One Developer Heard

Now that I summarized the news, let me tell you what I heard this week as a developer:

Blah blah … Apple sold another million units to a bunch of people that didn’t have iPhones before on a new network that will net millions of new iPhone customers, some of which will buy my products… blah blah … HP webOS everywhere … blah blah … Android on RIM? Great. Don’t have to develop specifically for RIM anymore … blah blah … Windows Phone 7 on Nokia? Excellent. I now have four platforms to worry about instead of seven.

 

…And Then There Were Four

(Sorry, Genesis, I know I butchered the album title.) So that leaves us with four major platforms: iOS, Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7. That’s what I call a good week for developers. (Oh, wait. Unless of course you make your living developing for Symbian or BlackBerry or QNX or Windows Mobile or Palm OS or …)

Tablet Wars and iPad Ship Dates

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Ah, yes, real choice. On your right we have the iPad, on your left a bevy of Android tablets, center-right we have RIM’s Playbook and center-left the HP/Palm TouchPad. And call me impressed. They are all interesting players in this market and have a chance to do big things. Of course, only one is really shipping — the iPad — and the devil is in the details. Lets see how the other devices actually work before calling winners and losers. Again from my January post, Apple and HP have the tablet advantage here because they understand how to distribute product outside of the carriers.

The discussion that is peaking my interest is the “when should the iPad ship” discussion. The gist of the argument, started by John Gruber at Daring Fireball, is that moving iPad launches to the fall positions the iPad as a holiday purchase item like iPods.

While I understand his reasoning, I respectfully disagree. March or April is the perfect time. I can sum this up in one word: education.

The iPad is going to be huge in education. I have never seen technology being adopted in the classroom as fast as this is. The reason is simple: the iPad fills the need education understood in the Palm days. Students are more engaged, can learn more and in their style, and direct manipulation (touch or pen) changes kids’ psyche like no other technology that has come before. Palm missed this one when they fired their education team in 2005. Apple, five years later, is picking up the slack. (Disclaimer: Palm’s dumb-ass decision cost me millions of dollars.)

Why is spring important for education? Because all the major trade shows and all of the budgets happen in the spring and summer. By bringing out new technology in the spring, Apple can ride that natural wave into the classroom.

And I doubt any kid is going to forget about the iPad by the time they’re writing letters begging Santa for Christmas gifts.