Apple philosophy finally emerging victorious

Rememeber back in the 1980′s and 1990′s when the desktop computer revolution was really taking off for most of the American population? Back then Apple actually started the personal computer revolution. Their philosophy was to control the whole widget. They wanted to sell you a computer, the operating system that went with it and even the software that ran on it. But computers were expensive. When Microsoft came around with all those less expensive peersonal computers that were open to running software anyone could build for them, people started picking those up. It was really a lot about price, performance and rapidly evolving market where Moores Law was in full effect. Soon Apple found itself in a bad place, without the vision of it’s original founders and nearly bankrupt by the middle of the 90′s. People were flocking to where the market was and the market was interested in rapidly developing, lower priced commodity PC’s running Microsoft Windows.

Fast forward to the 1998+ Era of Apple. The return of Steve Jobs and the philosophy of selling you the whole widget. So what changed? Well, Apple started putting more emphasis on design and building a premium product. But even then they didn’t gain a ton of market share. What they were gaining was a lot of mindshare as begain trendsetting the look of modern computers and a modern operating system.

It was the release of iTunes for Windows and the iPod that really gave Apple its second breath. It introducted a lower cost Apple product to the masses of windows users who either hadn’t even considered an Apple product before or felt they couldn’t justify the extra cost and migration to an Apple computer.

But something else started happening around that time as well. By the mid 2000′s desktop computers were becoming less important as laptop computers were gaining in speed and shrinking in price. More people began to shift to laptops; not needing the full power of a desktop machine. People found themselves doing more simple tasks, like watching movies, listening to music and browsing the web. Consoles like the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 began to take over computer gaming, so even the desktop gamers were shifiting their computing priorities somewhat.

It wasn’t just one thing that brought Apple back from near obscurity. For as brillant as Steve Jobs might have been as a product guy and marketing guy, there are always other factors involved. It just so happened that the stars lined up in favor of Apples “whole widget” philosophy. Even though computers continued to get faster and more powerful, the people using them were doing things with them that hadn’t changed much in a 4-5 year period. The internet was really the biggest draw for using a computer and that didn’t really require a new more powerful machine two years.

The period of late 2006 to mid 2007 is where I pinpoint the paradigm shift actually happening. That’s the point in time where Nintendo released their game chaning console the Nintendo Wii and Apple released the original iPhone. These two products proved to the market that “more power” was no longer the answer people were looking for as they had been for the last two decades. The shift was all about new ways to interact with your devices.

Now Apple had fully evolved the successful iPod into a personal hand held computer. The ability to subsidize the hardware cost through cell carrier contracts also helped bring the cost down and put the iPhone in more peoples hands. It was the first really substantial touch screen cell phone that proved to teh market that touch screen devices were a via option and the way forward. But more importantly with the release of the SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone, Apple was the first to market with a truly next generation computer platform that developers could build applications for.

It’s been five years now since the first iphone was released and few years since the release of the iPad. Apples larger tablet computer based on the same operating system as the iPhone. These two products have sealed Apple into the market, making them the largest most valuable publically held technology company as of this year. But what’s most interesting is that these two products more any other have stuck to the philosophy of controlling the whole widget. Even Mac OS for as closed as it is, can be ported to run on other generic PC hardware, and have software sideloaded onto it without any hacks. Whereas iOS requires apps that are purchased from the guarded Apple App Store. This means that Apple finally controls the whole widget, the hardware, the operating system and what apps can and cannot be run on the devices.

So is this philosophy any good?
Yes and no, depending on who you are. If you are like the millions of people out there that just want something that works without any fuss, then this is a philosophy you want to buy into. However if you’re one of the more geeky among us that wants to tinker, customize and brave a world that may not be so secure, you’re probably better off with Android. There are definitely benefits to both.

In the Android realm you get the most choice of hardware, you can tinker with your software and customize your Android setup till your heart is content. But you’re living in a realm that may cause you to fall victim to software exploits, you’re living in a fragmented world where the hardware you choose may not be supported with the latest Android releases and you’re stuck with a limited number of third party accessories for your device. Simply because there are so many different Android devices it’s hard to support them all with third party products.

In the realm of iOS your hardware choices are limited to whatever Apple releases. Their hardware is beautiful and powerful, but if you were like me and looking for a larger screened iPhone, you’re out of luck until Apple releases one. On the up side, the operating system, while beginning to look and feel a little dated, is also incredibly polished for what it is. It’s designed to just work and it usually has all it’s i’s dotted and t’s crossed. The upshot to all of Apples devices running the same OS, and very similar hardware in limited choices is that developers can easily develop apps that will work on all of Apples iOS devices and the do. Often releasing iOS apps before Android apps. You also get the most third party accessory support as the iPhone and iPad have a huge eco-system of products available for them. It’s this huge eco-system of apps and third party products that really set Apples iOS devices ahead of the rest.  This wouldn’t be possible if Apple didn’t control the whole widget. If they let the kind of fragmentation that runs rampant in the Android world happen in the iOS world we wouldn’ have such a wonderful eco-system.

So today we live in the age where the “whole widget” philosophy actually pays off for Apple. The philosophy of the market has changed. It’s no longer a rat race to the bottom for the lowest price. handheld computers like msartphones and tablets have evolved into powerful, affordable handheld devices that can do amazing things and best of all different things than desktop computers.

As of the last couple of years Apple has been shifiting the things they have learned in iOS back into their laptop and desktop market as well.  The additional of a Mac App Store, multi-touch track pads for all their machines and beautiful hardware, along with a market more open to Apple products as a result of the iPod, iPhone and iPad have given them a true second wind. In addition the public has finally come around to the mentality that they just want a machine that just works. The time for the whole widget is finally here. The question is, how long will it last?

Search First!

I’ve been a messageboard user for well over a decade. Dating back to the late 1990′s. I love messageboards or forums as they are also called. They are a wealth of information and community. They are the precursor to modern day social networks even though messageboards are still around and thriving. But they are often not talked about on tech blogs because they aren’t new and exciting. They aren’t run by silicon valley startups with millions of dollars in venture capital or angel investors. Most of the time a messageboard community is run by a single individual who does it as a hobby and will elect certain other community members to act as forum moderators. While there are a few successful generic message forums, they mostly tend to be niche communities that focus on a given subject, such as filmmaking, religion, e-cigarettes and so on. They then break that subject down into individual forums and sub forums as a way of organizing and categorizing content.

Successful messageboards suffer from one particular problem more than anything. Repeating topics. As messageboards are often used to ask questions and get answers, community veterans find themselves answering the same questions over and over again. They get sick of it and start yelling “search first” in the comments.

I have been a member of more forums than I can count. I have also been an administer of a handful of messageboards. From my experience, people yelling “search first” tends to produce a negative effect on the members being yelled at. It makes them feel unwelcome in the community. Most of the time that message is given to new members, some of which have never used a messageboard previously. It can be a real turn off.

But what’s an even bigger turn off is that messageboards are anti-search to begin with. On one hand you have members yelling “search first” and on the other you have messageboard software that does everything in its power to prevent you from searching.

The software often buries the search form on another page which has a ton of check boxes and text areas which can immediately confuse a new user. Then after entering a term they may be returned with an error that tells them they must enter more than three characters. Upon entering more than three characters they are then returned with another error, that they must wait 30 seconds before submitting a new query. Some forums even rub salt in an open wound by making them fill out a captcha (those crazy unreadable letter/number images) before submitting their query.

Imagine if Google had all of these restrictions. Would you ever bother searching for anything? Wouldn’t it be simpler just to hit the “new post” button and ask your question in the way that you want to ask it? I bet it would.

The Solution
Forum search needs to be dead simple, limitless, powerful and looking you in the face the whole time you visit that community. Like a big long search field at the top of the forum, stacked right where all the sticky posts are. It needs to return results in real time as a member types. It needs to be limitless in the minimum number of characters or how many searches can be performed in a given period of time. Last of all, it should NOT be a process that requires a captcha.

We no longer live in an internet that is starving for resources. Today we have virtual servers, cloud hosting and nearly limitless bandwidth, even on the least expensive hosting providers. Database sharding and smarter software on more powerful machines makes search queries less painful than they used to be. Couple that with most users today being on broadband connections and there is no justifiable reason to fear extra database queries on an already niche community.

The logic is pretty simple. If you have a small community with a small amount of active users then you will have less search queries to begin with. If you have a larger community then you should probably view yourself as startup and find ways to monetize your community to pay for the extra resources you need.

Upon doing these things I think we’ll find that people will be more inclined to search first and as a result, annoy vetrans less and create a more welcoming environment.

I don’t fear Google+

You would think that because my partner and I are developing SocialMore.com we would be hesitant and a little fearful of today’s announcement of Google+. This is after all Google’s answer to Facebook and social networking as a whole.

Google+ shares a few things in common with SocialMore in terms of grouping people and sharing things. But then, every new social network is going to have those things in common. So that’s not really a big concern. No doubt Google will have a lot of people wanting to use this new service of theirs. They have a good shot at dethroning Facebook or at least knocking it down a few notches. Which means we could see a whole new shift in the social networking landscape over the next few years. If history is any sign, people will become disinterested in Facebook and try out new services like Google+ and SocialMore.

So why don’t I fear Google plus? Why am I not just packing up shop and stopping development on SocialMore? The reason is simple. I think people are going to be burned out on social networking in the next couple years. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go away. No, instead it wil just become part of the fabric of the internet. In fact it always has been. People have been connecting and sharing stuff with each other since the dawn of the internet. That’s the entire point of the internet. Social networking is really just a buzz word and a set of tools that make it easier to share with people. The real power is in what those tools can do. Simple things like organizing your friends and family into groups and putting Like buttons on your stuff is just the beginning. What we intend to do with SocialMore is expand into what really matters; your content. It’s one thing to pass links around, but it’s another to get your content out there and seen by the right people.

SocialMore offers something different. Even if it doesn’t grow to be the size of Facebook or Google+ it wil certainly have its place. We’re building SocialMore because it’s something that we want to use ourselves. Something that solves a problem we’ve had for years. I know I’m teasing you right now by not telling you what that is, but there are some things we need to keep close to our chest for the moment. But I do fully believe that if you have passion and what you’re building solves a problem, it will find its place.

Nikon D5100 hopes

Update: January 30, 2012
Nikon announced the D5100 on April 5th, 2011. Turns out most of my hopes were realized, unfortunately the video quality doesn’t match the D7000. Details here.

Chances are Nikon is going to release or at least announce a D5100 within a week. That said I really hope it has the video capabilities of the D7000 rather than those of its younger brother the D3100. The video on the D3100, although 1080p/24fps, contains no manual control and jello galore. It’s my hope that Nikon can release something that will compete head to the head with the Canon Rebel T3i in the same price bracket. I’m tired on Nikon being behind the times when it comes to video. The D7000 is a good showing but if they can’t bring those video features down below $1000, we should also just pack it up and forget about Nikon once and for all when it comes to serious professional video.

Beyond that, I also hope Nikon brings this thing with a side swivel LCD screen and not that silly vertical LCD the D5000 had. The D5100 better be sporting a million pixels on its lcd like its Canon counterparts. Especially if they plan to hit the T3i price point. They are so much easier and nicer to focus on than these half megapixel LCD screens.

I say this because I really love Nikon cameras and the Nikon look. So I hope for the best with the D5100. If it hit these marks I know what my next purchase is. If it doesn’t, it’s going to have me shaking my head.

SocialMore to compete with Facebook

I’m building a new social network with my partner. SocialMore.com is designed to be an alternative to Facebook. Our goal isn’t to try and beat facebook or anything like that. In fact a lot of people have said “you’re crazy, facebook is huge, how can you compete?” I think the simple answer is, facebook is not the end. It’s not as if the world ends tomorrow and facebook is declared the winner. Clearly there is a lot of room for new sites in the social networking space. But very few people have the vision to see that. Everyone else is building niche social networks so as not to compete with facebook out of fear that they don’t stand a chance. We on the other hand believe we have some good and interesting features that offer something facebook doesn’t.

Our goal is to launch the beta of SocialMore.com by the end of the year at the latest. It will take some time to make sure everything is in tip top shape and to weed out what works and what doesn’t work. We’ll be running a private beta before we go public with it. Hopefully that will begin this fall.

This is a very exciting project with a lot of promise. Stay tuned for more information. Both here and at SocialMore.com

Linux vs the Apple iPad

For years linux has been attempting to gain ground in the desktop market. While successful as a server OS and even recently as the backbone of mobile OSes such as Android and Web OS, Linux has struggled for nearly two decades to make decent inroads onto the average consumers desktop or laptop. Mostly considered a hobby OS by the mainstream, linux distributors need to come to the harsh realization that the desktop market is a place that has been lost to them. In fact that battle for the desktop was over before they even showed up on the battle field. The battle for the desktop OS was during the 1980′s. It’s clear that two and a half decades later the two main players (Apple and Microsoft) are still in the game and not going anywhere.

That said, why continue to fight a battle for the mainstream that the mass majority of consumers could care less about? Without proper commercial software and a steady stream of hardware driver support, the linux battle has been uphill and continues to be uphill.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel for linux. That light is called mobile devices.

What makes mobile devices different? Well for starters, they are all-in-one systems. This means that the end user doesn’t need to mess around with driver issues and complications. It also means the end user is willing to accept simplified software that does specific tasks rather than huge pieces of killer software for extensive work. At least right now anyway.

What constitutes a mobile device? Well, that’s a pretty generic term, but the focus of this article is really on the two hottest types of mobile devices currently sweeping the consumer electronics space right now, smart phones and tablet computers.

Linux has already made begun to make its mark in the smart phone market with Android and Web OS. What makes linux shine on smart phones is the “new market” that has emerged for them. There was no precedence in place for smart phones, unlike desktop operating systems. When linux entered the desktop market it needed to play catch-up with the existing desktop OSes that came before. Namely Windows and Mac OS. For nearly two decades Linux has been playing catch-up with both of these operating systems. But in the smart phone market there has been little to catch up to. The Apple iPhone having a two year advantage is a small enough gap that linux could easily step in and make ground. The same will be true for the emerging tablet market.

Tablet computers have been around for a long time. The problem however is that up until now they’ve mostly remained a niche market, much like linux itself. The reason is because they’ve usually been nothing more then large expensive touch screen convertible laptops running full desktop operating systems. The Apple iPad however, is changing that idea.

The rumors and speculation surrounding the Apple iPad before and during its announcement really put tablet computers back into the public’s focus. It doesn’t hurt that more powerful and larger touch screen smart phones began emerging around this same time. All of it has really helped to give everyone a better idea of what a tablet computer could be.

The introduction of the Apple iPad has been both a blessing and a disappointment to many people. There are many who see the elegance in its simplicity. But there are many others who have found complaints in its lack of (insert missing feature here).

Really we should all be very happy for the introduction of the iPad. At the very least it brings the re-imagining of tablet computing into the consumers focus. Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago when they were building a new Ikea in my local area a news crew interviewed other local furniture stores and asked them what they thought about this Ikea opening up. I think the news reporter thought there were asking a question which would result in a response filled with dread and dismay. However the response they got was anything but. In fact one of the representatives from a local furniture store responded very positively saying (and I paraphrase) “We’re really happy to see them here, because it gets people excited about furniture again. So while they may walk into an Ikea to check it out and see what they offer, they may very well decide that they’d rather spend a little more money and get something nicer from us or one of the other local furniture stores.”

I think the furniture store representative hit the nail on the head with that comment. I also think that comment can easily apply to tablets. The Apple iPad will get people thinking about tablet computers in a new way. But many will walk away from the Apple store not entirely pleased with what the iPad has to offer. As a result they’ll be looking for an alternative that suits them better. It’s a win win situation for everyone offering a similar tablet on the market.

So how can linux enter this game? Well, it already has. Many companies are already looking to include Android as the base OS for some iPad competition. But I think that linux can do better.

Android is a great operating system. At its core it’s wonderful and scalable. That said, the basic Android interface leaves much to be desired. Honestly I can say the same thing about the iPad as well. The iPad is nothing but a scaled up iPhone interface. While Apple has built some great custom applications that take advantage of the larger screen real estate, they haven’t done much to the interface itself. This is precisely where linux can make its mark.
The company HTC has done a great job in re-skinning the Android interface on smart phones. They gave it a nice glossy finish and wonderful widgets that rest on the home screens. The same needs to happen for tablets. But it needs to go beyond that.

Based on a lot of comments regarding the iPad and those who are disappointed in it, many people (myself included) were really looking for a desktop OS that was re-skinned and re-imagined for the tablet. In other words, what people really want is all the power and functionality of a desktop OS with the fit and finish a simplified multi-touch GUI (graphic user interface).

Lets try to imagine what that could be for a minute. But to do that we need to step outside the convention of a desktop operating system as we know it. We need to forget about the idea of a desktop filled with icons and files buried inside folders, buried inside folders and so on. We need to ask ourselves; can grandma use this?
The great thing about multi-touch screens is that they represent a paradigm shift in how we interact with computers. Up until recently we forgot that. It took the iPhone and now the iPad to really show us that it’s not just the hardware that needs to change, it’s the way we interact with the software that also needs to change. Surprisingly this is something we’ve known for a while now. Not all touch screen computers have been unsuccessful. ATM machines and touch screen kiosks have been around for a while and served us very well. But in both of those situations we’ve used software built with large buttons and graphic elements. They’ve also given us little arm strain (gorilla arm) because of our short time using them.

Do to our experience with ATM’s and kiosks we know that touch screens really aren’t great for desktop computing. In fact they really aren’t great for any computer in which a screen stands up vertically in front of us. This includes laptops. That said, touch screens are wonderful and they are revolutionary. They really do allow you to interact in ways you could never do with a mouse and keyboard. But they need the proper medium to exist and be useful. That medium is a tablet. Something that lays in your lap or on the table in front of you and allows your hands to fall upon it rather than outward toward it, hanging in the air.

So now that we have the tablet and we have the multi-touch screen, what changes? For starters we need the interface to be at our finger tips rather than at the tip of our mouse cursor. This means larger buttons or at the very least buttons that can act like they are larger. it also means taking all the strange icons typically found in the tool bars of programs like Microsoft Word and making them larger and hiding them behind a layer or a larger menu button. I realize this breaks conventions and adds steps. However when it comes to a touch screen device you really need to clean up the interface considerably and that might mean taking a few steps back in the speed in which you can get things done. Hopefully that can be made up for in the WAY you get things done.

In short, what we need are good alternatives. We need companies who are now focusing on desktop linux solutions to change their focus and take advantage of the blooming tablet market. They need to rethink the folders and icons approach to computers and consider widgets and methods for multitasking full screen touch applications. We also need them partner up with hardware manufacturers to provide simple solutions. Gone are the days of installing any OS on any devices and playing with it for hours to make it work. I think Apple, Sony, Nintendo and even Microsoft have shown us that people want solutions that just work out of the box. We have enough complication in our lives. We want to get past the technical complication and get to whatever it is we need to do. The computer needs to be the tool to get the task done, not the task itself.