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Entelligence: Happy 10th birthday, Pocket PC
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Microsoft introduced the world to Pocket PC on April 19th, 2000 at a relatively small gathering in Grand Central Station in New York City. Pocket PC was the company's response to Palm, which at that time was leading the PDA market -- for many geeks, using a personal digital assistant was indeed a public display of affection. I was at the launch event -- in fact, I was even quoted in the press release. Microsoft introduced four devices that day with their partners: the Casio EM500, the HP Jornada 545 & 548, the Symbol Technologies PPT2700, and the Compaq iPAQ. The iPAQ was the flagship of the Pocket PC line and the hottest handheld you could buy at the time: it had a slim form factor with "sleeves" that could be attached to add functionality such as Compact Flash or PCMCIA cards, a "fast" ARM processor and a killer indoor/outdoor screen. Availability was limited and prices on eBay quickly topped $1,000 for the scarce unit.
Entelligence: Think Pink - First take on Microsoft's Kin
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. It has been a project shrouded in mystery and speculation that sparked imaginations about just what Microsoft was doing. Its codename was Pink, referring to the premium mobile experience group, and yesterday Microsoft finally revealed its Pink story. It's called Kin and it's pretty impressive. At its heart, Kin is centered around two devices called Kin One and Kin Two. Both the hardware and software were designed by Microsoft, and while Kin is a Microsoft brand, Microsoft is still not getting into the phone business. Built in conjunction with carrier partner Verizon, Pink is an extension of the company's mobile strategy, something that complements and co-exists with its larger ambitions with Windows Phone 7. In many ways, Kin is the extension and spiritual descendant of the Sidekick (which was a product of Danger, founded by the father of Android, Andy Rubin, and later acquired by Microsoft). At its core, the Kin philosophy is guided by the proposition that one size device doesn't fit all, and specific demographics have different mobile needs.
Entelligence: What can Courier teach the market?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. A few months ago, some videos leaked from Microsoft showed a book-like device with two touch screens and a stylus. The user is seen researching, creating and designing content in a manner that looks both intuitive and innovative. Called Courier, the product doesn't (yet) exist beyond the conceptual videos, but it shows Microsoft is thinking in some new ways. Ross Rubin discussed Courier's role for creative professionals last week but I think there's even more at stake here -- I think the concept shows computing models are evolving. Here's what Courier represents to the market: The pen isn't dead. The pen's been searching for a place in computing for more than a decade. We've seen experiments in all different types of pen computing from the PC to the PDA and the phone. They've all pretty much failed, and today's hot commodity is capacitive touch. Microsoft's Courier video shows how the pen can play a prominent role in the evolution of computing interfaces. While fingers are great for many things, there are tasks better served by the ability to manipulate at the pixel level. Handwriting and the ability to take written notes is one of them. Content creation and painting is another. It's clear Microsoft knows all this -- in addition to Courier, there's the Deskterity project that melds pen and touch on Surface.
Entelligence: the iPad as a productivity tool
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. When Apple announced the iPad, Steve Jobs positioned it in the space directly between the laptop and phone. That greatly interests me because there are moments in my life where my phone is too small and my laptop too large. While the iPad clearly won't replace my phone anytime soon, my question is: Can it replace my laptop on occasion and serve as a content creation as well as content consumption tool? A few weeks ago, I deliberately left my laptop at home for a week of heavy business travel. Instead, I relied mostly on three phones: an iPhone, a Pre and an HD2. And now I've been using a production iPad for the four activities that were difficult and uncomfortable on my phone. Here's what I learned.
Entelligence: Mobile multitasking is mostly a myth
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. The idea of multitasking on mobile devices has been a hot topic for years. It's been debated since the early days of smartphones, when devices such as the Treo based on Palm OS could not handle more than one task at a time, while handsets based on the Windows Mobile platform had the capability. The issue reached a crescendo with the release of the iPhone (and more recently with the iPad) and lack of multitasking capability for third party apps. This week it's come up once again, with news from MIX10 that Microsoft would not support multitasking for third party apps on Windows Phone 7 Series, at least initially.
Entelligence: Will Surface ever surface?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I'd paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote for the CE market by saying that any sufficiently advanced new product needs to look like it just came off the Starship Enterprise. I'd say Microsoft Surface was a product that met my definition as well as Clarke's when it launched a few years back -- and it should have changed computing quite a bit. Sadly, I haven't spoken to the Surface team in a long time and it looks like it may never go anywhere in the end. The Surface concept was great. It was a Windows PC inside a table with a 30" touchscreen on top, and cameras that could sense what's happening on screen. The result is you could use a Surface device just by touching the screen with your finger -- but unlike other large touch screens at the time, Surface was multitouch, so you could use all your fingers at the same time. More importantly, multiple users could engage with each other. It was a PC but didn't look or run like a PC, which was genius -- you'd never know it was running Windows, but there was no development learning curve. It was totally optimized for that big honking touch surface area, and applications that worked with it -- I'm sure it could run Office, but that's not something it's was ever likely to do. Surface was PC evolution happening in real time. It's really something you needed to see up close and in thirty seconds before the light bulb went on. Sadly, most people have never seen or worked with a Surface unit. Beyond a small retail rollout at AT&T stores in NY that seems to have ended, the last time I saw one was the Edelman PR offices, where it sat like a large coffee table and did pretty much nothing.
Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. We heard a rumor last week that Sony was working on new handhelds to compete with devices like the iPad. It sounds like a great idea: a PSP with integrated telephony and e-book functionality could perhaps give everyone in the market a run for their money. But I'm a little skeptical -- Sony's Clié line once defined state-of-the-art PDA, but the company ceded the market to Palm long before the PDA was eventually reborn as the smartphone. If Sony's seriously thinking about getting back to the handheld space, here's some lessons it might learn from its efforts back in the PDA day. 1. Innovation is great but only when you really innovate. Sony led the market in innovation when it entered the PDA space. It offered the first Palm OS devices with removable storage, the first devices that could play back audio and video, and the first high-resolution color devices. All of these clearly drove the market forward. Then the innovations became less innovative and more "gadgetry." There were 3D interfaces for the launcher that were confusing and awkward. Some devices had Bluetooth support but not others. Devices like the NZ-90 (pictured above) added so many features into the mix that it was big, bloated, and nearly useless.* In short, the innovations became less compelling and eventually stood in the way of. I'm worried that Sony's meshing the type of functionality rumored to be its new device without any thought how it all has to work together.
Entelligence: Windows Phone 7 Series
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. It's been a rough year for Microsoft in mobile. Despite the launch of impressive products such as the HTC HD2, the company has faced some harsh criticism: "except for gaming, it's 'game over' for Microsoft in the consumer market" was just one of the choicer comments from the past year. Personally, I'd disagree, and I'd actually argue that Windows Mobile 6.5 is underrated in the mobile arena -- almost as much as Android is overrated. But no matter. Whether last year's mobile platforms are good enough or not is irrelevant; no platform from 2009 is good enough for 2010 and beyond, and every mobile platform will need to evolve this year. Last week in Barcelona, we saw the first part of Microsoft's revamped mobile strategy, and while there are many questions that will need to be answered, there's a lot to like about what we saw. First, it's important to look at the velocity of the mobile space. The tech industry is largely governed by Moore's Law, which predicts a doubling of semi-conductor density roughly every eighteen months, but the mobile space is moving at a rate of change that's closer to every eighteen minutes. What happened yesterday simply doesn't matter nearly as much as it once might have. Just look at two of the hottest companies in mobile, Apple and Google. Just a few years ago, neither would have been part of the conversation, much less at the center of it.
Entelligence: Two DVR features I'm waiting for
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. I love DVRs. I have been using them for over a decade, and my original model is still in use. Whether it's a PC-based solution, something that comes from your cable provider or the granddaddy of all DVRs, TiVo, a DVR totally changes the way you watch TV, especially if you don't like watching a lot of TV but care a lot about the TV that you do watch. Last week TiVo sent out word of an event coming in March with a mysterious tagline. Even as good as my current TiVo Series 3 is, it could even be better, and while we speculate about what TiVo will announce, there's two features I'd like to see.
Entelligence: Another view of Microsoft's creative destruction
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Last week, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by former Microsoft executive Dick Brass, in which he took the company to task on many issues. Brass was a VP at Microsoft who left in 2004, and prior to his departure he worked on various projects from e-books and ClearType to the Tablet PC. I've met Dick through the years and he's a super smart guy, but I'm not sure I agree with everything he wrote in his op-ed. Dick argues that internal politics and unwillingness to do "risky" hardware have led Microsoft away from innovation. Clearly, Dick has a much better view regarding Microsoft's internal politics than I do, but some of the examples that he uses to bolster his argument are a little off base, at least in my opinion. Dick cites Clear Type, Tablet and Mobile as examples of innovative products that Microsoft managed to somehow bungle due to internal politics, and says that Xbox is at "at best an equal contender in the game console business." Let's examine those claims.
Entelligence: Context is the killer application for mobile
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. We live in a world of diverse mobile devices. Laptops, smartphones and everything in between define the mobile experience of the 21st century. But what is the killer application for mobile computing? We all know the theory of killer apps -- they're the reason and the purpose people invest in new devices. The killer app in the early days of PCs was the VisiCalc spreadsheet. PageMaker and the creation of desktop publishing were the killer apps for the GUI-based PC, most notably the Macintosh. But for mobile, it's not as clear; some people think the killer app for mobile is email, while other say it's the mobile web. Personally, I don't think there's one specific killer application -- I think the killer app for mobile is simply context.
Entelligence: Lessons from the iPad launch
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. It was quite the week for Apple, first with its best-ever earnings and then the launch of the iPad. While Apple didn't create this category of device, it did answer the fundamental question of why this form factor needs to exist. The meta lesson is that the story told is as important as the hardware, software and services being sold -- and while everyone may not be convinced, I do think Apple will win over the majority of a skeptical audience with high expectations. But there's also four important lessons that Apple taught the market this week, as it enters a space that's been mostly a failure. 1. Define what your product does. The first thing Apple did was answer that question immediately and then define what the product needed to do. Apple explained what capabilities need to be in the this class of device and then went on to show how each of those features not only worked but were optimized for the iPad. That's something we've seen lacking in this category to date. 2. Leverage what you've done before. I believe the iPad is likely to do well with consumers as it leverages Apple's previous successes with the iPod and the iPhone. At the base level, that's compatibility and synchronization with iTunes as well as backward compatibility with existing applications. That's important -- as a user I can use my existing content library and my application collection. It also means that iPad has 140,000-plus applications at launch. But it's more than that. Apple is not only leveraging its ecosystem of devices and software, it's leveraging the lessons it spent a decade teaching consumers. Apple taught its market about MP3 players, digital music, smartphones, capacitive multitouch screens and mobile apps. It can now go directly to selling the form factor, as well as new features such as productivity and e-books.
Entelligence: Here's what I want in my next phone
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. By my last count, I regularly carry as many as five different devices in my bag, with lots of overlapping functions. But I seldom want to carry more than two, and one of those is always going to be a phone. As good as today's phones are, however, I'm still left wanting. I use of a lot of different phones in the course of my work and while the perfect device still doesn't exist for me, we're getting very close. Here's what I'd like to see in my next phone -- and I'd like it this year, please. First, the table stakes. It's got have a great voice capability -- I want to make crystal clear calls and never drop them. It's also go to have perfect contact and calendar features, a modern web browser, and an email client optimized for both Exchange and Gmail. Of course, a robust set of third party applications are a must, including a good RSS reader that syncs to Google Reader and a great version of Tetris.
Entelligence: 'Don't be evil' isn't the basis for a relationship
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. After a weeks of speculation, leaks, confirmation and a sneak peek from my colleagues here at Engadget, Google finally told the story of the Nexus One. The Nexus One is the latest and greatest Android device, with a bit of a twist. The Nexus One is available without contract and unlocked directly from Google for $530, as well as subsidized from T-Mobile on a two-year contract for $179. Even with T-Mobile service, the device is only available from Google. Interesting, but hardly the groundbreaking business model that was expected as soon as the words "Google phone" began to make the rounds. As nice as the Nexus One is -- and in my opinion it's the nicest Android device on the market -- it makes me wonder what Google's up to with Android and why it's even in the mobile OS business, let alone selling phones directly to consumers. I'd ask the same about Chrome and Chrome OS as well. Android is particularly puzzling, however: Google licenses it for free and it's turned up on some rather interesting devices, but none of those devices have helped build out an ecosystem. Many of them are proprietary and Android is rapidly becoming fragmented -- the Archos5 Internet Tablet, for example, can't make official use of the Android marketplace. But nothing is as strange as Google getting into the hardware business directly and selling devices, albeit unlocked and unsubsidized ones, directly to consumers.
Entelligence: Gartenberg's best of 2009 in personal tech
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. As the year comes to a close, it seems appropriate to cast my vote for the best (and some of the worst) gadgets I've seen. These are my personal choices for products that I felt were best of breed and really managed to differentiate themselves (or didn't at all). In no particular order, here are my picks and pans. Best Phones: This was a tricky category, and I'm not breaking it down into different segments. This is just the best on the market in my opinion -- no matter how smart it was considered to be, or how well it did in school. iPhone 3GS. It was a simple choice. Take the coolest phones on the market, bump up the memory and make it twice as fast. Add in some new features like a digital compass and toss in an ecosystem of 100,000+ apps. Sure, it's still locked to AT&T but the iPhone is still the phone that many others aspire to be. Palm Pre. At this point last year many had written Palm off entirely. Instead of fading away, Palm came back on strong with webOS, a new way of integrating diverse content called Synergy and two devices launched across the globe. Along the way, the Pre garnered much mindshare from consumers, and Palm showed that you don't need to clone the iPhone to drive the state of the art forward. HTC HD2. When Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.5, there was a chorus of groans about more of the same. HTC took up the challenge and proved that there was more to Windows Mobile than slow devices and resistive screens. The HD2 takes Windows Mobile to places never seen before with a capacitive touch screen, a Snapdragon processor and HTC-created extensions that make multi-touch work the HD2's gorgeous 4.3-inch display. Wrap it all up in HTC's Sense UI and you've got the best Windows Mobile device on the market today.
Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Harry McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched -- it was about three years ago at this time that rumors were swirling around Apple getting into the phone market. All sorts of predictions had been made for years, dating back to a 2002 New York Times piece in which John Markoff said "Mr. Jobs means to take Apple back to the land of the handhelds, but this time with a device that would combine elements of a cellphone and a Palm -like personal digital assistant." Of course, it took until 2007 for Apple to announce the iPhone and nearly six months longer for Apple to actually ship it. The rumors of Apple doing a phone back then were at about the same fever pitch of the recent Apple tablet rumors. Like the iPhone, the tablet rumors aren't at all new -- in this case we can go back to 2003 for some of the earliest stories about this mythical device. Will Apple introduce a tablet in 2010, as some predict? Will there be in an introduction in January? What features might it have, and how could it be sold and positioned? I'm not going to speculate on those things for two reasons: first, if I don't know, my guess is as good as yours -- and second, if I do know, I probably couldn't tell you anything, could I? Having said that, I find it remarkable that the latest tablet buzz so closely echoes the run-up to the iPhone. Call it déjà vu all over again.
Entelligence: A Google Phone could be the death of Android
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Without a doubt, the big buzz since the weekend has been over the "Google Phone," an HTC-built device called the Nexus One handed out to Google employees last week in what Google describes as a "mobile lab." Confirmed to be running Android 2.1, the Nexus One has once again raised the idea of Google selling unlocked devices directly to consumers. (Google has been selling unlocked HTC Android phones for some time, but only to developers.) It would be a strange turnabout if Mountain View made this move, directly going in the face of previous assurances that Google had no plans to compete directly with Android hardware manufacturers. What's more, there are a lot of unanswered questions here.
Entelligence: Lessons from the CrunchPad
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Last weekend, Nilay Patel did a great overview of the murky legal issues surrounding the mysterious CrunchPad -- now coming to market direct from developer Fusion Garage as the $499 Joojoo. While I won't get into the swirling controversy, I think there's a few important lessons to be learned from this great gadget debacle. First, smart vendors under-promise and over-deliver. The hype and buzz around the CrunchPad were off the charts from day one. Everything from the delivery schedule to the initial price points were unrealistic, made moreso by continued promises to publicly show the prototype and targeted price points that kept rising with each announcement. Keep it low-key and simple -- then surprise and delight your customers with early ship dates and lower than expected prices. Too much promise with no delivery is the classic recipe for having a product get tagged vaporware. Always good to remember, "Whom gods destroy, they first make humble."
Entelligence: What's the future of Nokia?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. It's the largest cell phone maker in the world, with the largest share of any smartphone vendor in the world. Yet I increasingly look at Nokia's products and listen to its strategy wondering if the company can remain relevant in a mobile world that's changed drastically over the last two years. I'm not talking about a Nokia deathwatch, or whether the company will remain in business -- that's foolish. Of course Nokia is going to stick around; it's what it's going to look like that concerns me. A future of selling low-end phones into emerging markets with some minor services might be profitable, but it's not a direction that leads to industry relevance or influence. First, I'm confused by Nokia's platform strategy. There's been a lot of chatter about Maemo being the future, and while it might be a strategic direction, it's nowhere near ready for primetime now. Chris Ziegler suggested to me the other day that "Maemo 6 (or 7) in an X6 form factor with a more cohesive Ovi strategy could be killer." Perhaps, but right now Maemo feels very immature and unfinished. In fact, it feels like what it is: an OS designed for Nokia's Internet Tablet MIDs. On a phone like the N900 it's just too kludgey for the mainstream market. That leaves Symbian-based S60, which was totally innovative in 2002 but now looks creaky and has fragmented into multiple versions, leaving a very confused developer market. Sure, Nokia supports Flash and Silverlight with Qt somehow tying all this diversity into some unified grand theory, but it's enough complexity to make most developers look elsewhere -- and that's exactly what's happened. Without a clear platform strategy, it's going to be difficult for Nokia to get the developer mindshare required to stay relevant to the mass market.
Entelligence: Black Friday
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Black Friday is nearly here with a legion of new gadgets, devices and products all designed to seduce you with technology. Thousands of gadgets are released each year promising to enhance our lives, increase productivity and deliver a sound ROI. Often, however, it seems that many products are released before they're ready for the mainstream and any positives are negated by poor design, buggy code, or just being too far off the curve. This is the pitfall of the early adopter, but remembering Gartenberg's First Law of Consumer Electronics can help avoid some of this pain when you're doing your holiday shopping. Remember Gartenberg's Three Laws? We're only interested in the First Law today: "There is a worldwide market of 50,000 for anything." Unless you are part of this group of 50,000 -- namely folks that install operating systems on a Sunday afternoon as a form of social entertainment -- you need to look beyond technology for the sake of technology and see if what you're about to purchase meets the three criteria below. If it doesn't, you might want to wait for version 3.0.
