RealityAbsorptionField
Latest
Reality Absorption Field: Why Microsoft was no Google part two
A previous Reality Absorption Field examined three ways in which Google has taken on Apple in ways that Microsoft never could. in this week's column, we'll look at three other ways that Google has distinguished itself as a more worthy Apple rival. Design Microsoft has made a lot of progress in its user interface design since the days when Office was littered with tiny and rarely used toolbar icons (as well as one of my most hated user interface foible, short menus). The software changes started in some of the early work around Xbox and the Windows Media Center that now lives in limbo, The latter's Portable Media Center companion device platform planted the seeds of the user interface that would evolve through Zune to become the Modern user interface in Windows 8 and Windows Phone. On the hardware side, things started improving with the 'squircle"-equipped second-generation Zune and showed further progress with the Zune HD and Xbox 360. Google has an even sparser history in designing its own hardware than Microsoft, and the Chromecast is nothing to look at (literally, as it is designed to be hidden behind the TV). But the pricey and understated Chromebook Pixel is a gorgeous laptop. The Moto X, on the other hand, is attractive if not exceptional versus the iPhone or HTC One. On the software side, Android is notorious for its rough edges and UI inconsistency, but the baseline from which it started was certainly much better than legacy operating systems it squeezed out such as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry 7. Android has taken big steps forward with the Holo user interface guidelines as well as Google's own mobile apps. Everywhere Windows controls the PCs used by hundreds of millions of users. But it is under the hood, or at least it had been for many years until the jarring changes in Windows 8. People spend hours with Microsoft Office getting stuff done, but it is really Xbox that is Microsoft's best tool for emotional engagement. In contrast, Google has become, for far more people a gateway to the world's knowledge and, via its maps, the route to its destinations. Microsoft has fought back with strong improvements in its search engine, Web mail and mapping. It's probably safe to say, though, that the lack of strongly supported Google services on Windows Phone is a bigger sales impediment than the lack of strongly supported Microsoft services on Android devices. Failure Microsoft's been quick to pull the kill switch on a number of its projects that crashed and burned out of the gate, such as its Kin phones. However, it's generally more tenacious, having stuck with the Zune through three product generations and having its name even live on for a bit after it finally ceded what was left of a dwindling music player market to Apple. Despite the flop of the Surface tablets, you can be sure that Microsoft will be back for a second generation. Google, on the other hand, has embraced early retirement for its products that don't resonate such as the Wave collaboration software mentioned in last week's column, and even for fairly popular services that don't resonate enough, such as Google Reader. Again, with a consumer base, and one that typically does not pay for its products, there is less concern about customer blowback. Its quickness to close its Buzz social networking service paved the way for a more successful but quite different approach in Google+. When compared to current Internet darlings such as Facebook and Twitter, it's a bit difficult to consider that Google has been around since 1998. Microsoft, of course, is of another technology generation, having been founded in 1975, a year before Apple. It's no surprise that Microsoft (Big Software), now being squeezed by Google (Big Services) and Apple (Big Devices) now wants to turn itself into a "services and devices" company. But if one looks at the competitive heat map, it should be no surprise that Apple is scrambling to build up iCloud and assorted services to prepare for what has been its greatest competitor. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: The Crusaders
Is technology made to serve consumers, companies or causes? When Apple introduced the Macintosh, it famously invoked Orwell's vision of 1984 to promote how its little beige box would stand in the way of IBM's hegemony. In the coming years and for reasons that had little to do with the Mac, IBM would lose control of the PC's operating system, lose share in the PC market, and ultimately exit it altogether in selling the business to Lenovo. But that loss of PC market leadership came at the hands of Microsoft, which did in fact institute near-hegemony from the release of Windows 95 until at least up to the release of Windows Vista. More than a quarter century after the launch of the Mac and following up from iPod dominance that has been Reality Absorption Field has chronicled very thoroughly, Apple found itself on the more enviable side of market dominance with the iPhone. What would come to be known as iOS would leave in the dust every mobile operating system that preceded it. Customers flocked to AT&T to get access to it despite that carrier's notorious struggles providing it with satisfactory service. Competitors needed a way to compete with the iPhone and Google provided it in Android. At Google's developer conference, VP Vic Gondotra took up his own version of the screen-smashing mace, invoking some wording parallels with Apple's famous commercial. "If we did not act, we faced a draconion future. Where one man, one company, one carrier was the future." Indeed, Android debuted on T-Mobile but saw huge market share gains as Verizon based its strong-selling Droid line on Android. Now, coming full circle, the company that came to represent the establishment that Apple was rallying against -- Microsoft -- recently invoked the threat of oppression, if in less dramatic rhetoric. In explaining its acquisition of Nokia's device and service business, outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer noted, "We run the risk that Google or Apple will foreclose our ability to innovate, to integrate our applications the way we have in Office, to do distribution, or to impose economic terms." That makes sense with respect to Apple, which had developed, but has since improved, something of a reputation for being a stickler regarding its iOS developer terms and conditions, But for Google? First off, Microsoft has made so much from Android intellectual property licensing that it is a bona fide revenue stream for the company. Second, has the company not seen the Kindle Fire? It runs Android and, near as anyone can tell, doesn't suffer from much Google interference at all. Indeed, Amazon has even renamed its variant Fire OS. Google would only be a real inhibitor to Microsoft if it wanted the full suite of Google services on its devices, And still Microsoft competes with nearly all of those, it wouldn't be much of an issue. Unlike with the original Mac and with Android, there is no real bogeyman for Windows to fight on the mobile side, just plain old competition. And that's a worthy pursuit. But if Microsoft can't cut deeply into the mobile phone market, there will still be plenty of resistance from those willing to fight the next revolution. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Why Microsoft was no Google
In the height of the PC era, competition between Apple and Microsoft was of a vertically integrated creator of hardware and operating systems versus that of a dominant licensed operating system. In the smartphone era, Apple has expanded its degree of integration to include chip design, core apps, retail and cloud services. But while the opposition is still a dominant licensed operating system, it is now Android from Google. For a few reasons that could fill another column, Apple has been able to attain much higher market share in the smartphone market than it did in the PC market. But that is particularly impressive given that Google is a very different company than Microsoft was during the heyday of Windows, and in many ways is a stronger competitor: Ambition After it had established desktop supremacy, Microsoft began investing heavily in R&D and today Microsoft Research is home to some to many fascinating projects. Call its research's goals more focused if you will, but its clear that Google is interested in attacking issues that reach far beyond any near-term business goals with such far-out projects as Google Glass, the self-driving car, and Project Loon. Who knows what humanity-saving skunkworks may be brewing at Google X? Business model Steve Jobs once said of Bill Gates that his friend and adversary was the first to recognize the potential of software and for many years, Microsoft certainly did do the best job of monetizing it directly. Microsoft is still so dedicated to the idea of recognizing software as a discrete asset that its Windows team changes its Surface team a license fee so as not to give it an unfair advantage over other PC makers that have to pay the fee. In contrast, the engine that fuels Google's growth is advertising, and so a mandate to drive audience is tantamount. This is one reason why Google is so intent on keeping its iOS apps fresh and prominent; to reach a huge set of eyeballs on behalf of its advertisers. Consumers Even today, Microsoft caters strongly to the business market and many of its users are IT professionals. There are divisions of the company that are virtually unknown to consumers, such as its Dynamics customer relationship management software. Windows, Windows Phone, and their server counterparts include many features for enterprise management. Unlike troubled companies such as BlackBerry and Dell, though, Microsoft does have explicitly consumer-focused businesses in Bing and Xbox, but those are relatively small forces steering the ship compared to the predominant focus on consumers that is Apple's and Google's business. Google has certainly stepped up its corporate push with Google Apps, which has attracted a string of attack ads from Microsoft. Still, Google Wave, its attempt at a collaborative environment that might have challenged Microsoft SharePoint, flopped. Next week's RAF will conclude our look at how Google is a stronger competitor to Apple today than Microsoft was even at the height of its strength. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple Shrugged
Like other public companies, Apple is judged by financial analysts on its ability to maintain and improve unit volumes and revenues, market share and margins. But since it would be difficult for Apple to substantially increase its share and profitability in many of its categories, what Apple is really judged on at a macro level is its ability to disrupt, launch and capture the value in product categories. In this, the company isn't quite alone; Amazon and Google, for example, are also expected to be disruptive, but each flanks Apple. Since it has to run on the tight margins of an Internet retailer, the expectations of Amazon are not as broad as they are for Apple. Its current obsession, for example, seems to be trying to kill Netflix. On the other hand, much has been made of Google's moonshots such as the self-driving car (and surely many more behind lab doors). These represent amazing, even inspiring, research efforts that may demonstrate Google's commitment to innovation to investors. However, it's impossible to tell when they may have an impact on Google's short-term financial performance. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to not only invent or reinvent new categories, but ones that represent the next great successive growth curve for the company. At the risk of comical understatement, this is not so easy. Take, for example, the alleged Apple watch. Wearables appear to be the only way to do to the smartphone what the smartphone did to the PC; this explains Google's interest in the market. The manifest engineering challenges include design, input methods and a long battery life. But Apple must go beyond that to satisfy the Street. It must show that this is a market the size of the next iPod, iPhone or iPad and that it can enter it with a product that carries comparable margins. Furthermore, it must show that it can reinvent the rules of wrist wear to the point where it can defend an opportunity that will attract a host of competitors from out of the woodwork. It would not be in Apple's nature to shy from such a challenge with a product, but it also would not be in Apple's nature to ship that product before it's right. This is not to say that Apple doesn't substantially revise products after their release, e.g., AppleTV, but it's rare that the company is expected to get something right on the third try as in Microsoft lore. Unfortunately, the Street hates that as well. You know how Apple keeps missing shipping dates for its watch and TV? And how those are the only two game-changing products it could possibly be working on? Of course you don't. But some of financial analysts seem to believe both of those scenarios to be true. Management teams should be scrutinized, but there will certainly be no letting up on fundamental skepticism regarding Tim Cook's team until it can create the next sea change opportunity for Apple. To stay focused on the products that have meant success for the past 15 years, Apple must show the apathy of the honey badger when it comes to stock price changes driven by such skepticism while its financial results are sound. Until then, the most reassurance one can derive is in the imminent Mac Pro. While it is in a category that will make a seismic difference to Apple's revenue, the scope and ambition of its redesign is a signal that Apple intends to keep capturing imaginations as it captures revenue. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: From Passé to Pastels
If tradition and reported rumors prevail, September will likely mark the debut of iOS 7, which Apple characterizes as the biggest revision to its mobile operating system since the its debut. It includes a host of features that range from the nice-to-have (such as iTunes Radio and updates to Notification Center) to features that could make for huge changes in how consumers navigate and use their iPhones and iPads (Control Center, AirDrop and better photo management). There have also been some key gesture changes. For example, on the app launchpad, Control Center is activated with a swipe from the bottom and the search page has been replaced with a swipe down. And that would all be fine, but what would an Apple product be without something at least a bit polarizing. In this case, it's the aesthetics of iOS 7, with a host of parody Web sites giving the "Jonny Ive" software design makeover to all manner of logos and other artwork. iOS 7 may also introduce some icon inconsistencies between Apple's mobile devices and the Mac; an example is the proposed icon for Safari. But current iOS users will hardly be lost in iOS 7; the icon grid remains intact with no top-level bubbling of app functionality to answer Android widgets or Windows Live Tiles. The new aesthetic of iOS 7 has a few main characteristics. Simplification and minimal ornamentation. At the introduction of iOS 7, several jokes were made at the expense of current and former releases of Apple operating systems and apps, including the green felt casino game motif of Game Center and the remnant torn paper in OS X's Calendar. Instead, iOS 7 will err on the side of abstract representations. One of the best examples of this kind of change is iOS' Photos app. Today, it features a detailed depiction of a flower. But that's slated to be replaced by eight overlapping color ovals. New typography with a focus on taller fonts with a thinner weight that take advantage of Apple's high-density displays. A new color palette that leans heavily on pastels. Extended use of translucence. To the extent there is a real risk, however, it is not that consumers will reject the look of iOS 7 so much as that Apple risks losing some differentiation on the look of the OS. This is particularly true when compared with Android, which has also embraced taller, thinner fonts albeit mostly in Google's own apps (on Android and iOS). Windows Phone has also done this to an extent although mostly in the navigation of its "panoramic" navigation at the top of its apps. Skeumorphism brought a bit of levity to the Apple OS experience. Regardless of whether one loved it or hated it, though, it was -- in part due to their competitive reactions -- a contrast from the flatter designs of other phone interfaces. The new look of iOS 7 is but one of its new features. It may not ease the daily routine -- or even the eyestrain -- of its users, but ultimately it is something of a red herring once the initial visual shock subsides. Most users will probably not think twice about it a few days after acclimating to it. For those whose feelings for green felt were heartfelt, a trip to your friendly Internet poker site may be able to help relive the glory days. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple's cloud comeback
Look closely at the moves of the three main consumer operating system vendors. Each has become infatuated toward expanding into a new area from its strength among the landscape of hardware, software and service. For Microsoft, which has long been strong in software and has gained strength in services, its clearly tablets (as a broader hardware beachhead), or at least in defending its PC franchise from them. For Google, which was born on services, its software via its operating systems and -- to a lesser extent -- hardware where its Nexus brands and Motorola acquisition are areas of growing relative importance. And for Apple, which has made its name tightly integrating hardware and software, services have become critically important. Apple's track record with services has mostly been one of struggle. It tried to launch cloud offerings even before they were called that. Rising from the pre-Jobs ashes of eWorld, Apple introduced iTools, then .Mac, then MobileMe and then finally back to the "i" convention with iCloud. iCloud started mostly as a simple shuttling service for documents. iTunes then jumped into the cloud with the the undramatically named "iTunes in the Cloud" (paralleling "Documents in the Cloud") and iTunes Match. Apple also saw success in the cloud with iMessage. Things seemed to be going well until the arrival of Apple Maps, the makeshift attempt to build independence from Google Maps justified by many features that Google Maps would soon add and for which Apple apologized. The Maps fiasco, though, hasn't shaken the company's resolve. Later this year, it's pressing ahead with two new cloud services -- iTunes Radio and iCloud Keychain. The former, a competitor to services such as Pandora, Slacker and iHeartRadio, is a natural move for a company that has owned such a franchise in music for which consumers are now turning to streaming services. It will complement and feed the pay-as-you-go model of iTunes. Extrapolating OS X's Keychain feature across Apple devices, iCloud Keychain will not only remember your password for you but even suggest hard-to-remember ones. It addresses a real problem in the days where many Web sites seem to have different rules for password generation and an email address change may lock you out of a site forever, but it's also one that has been attacked in the marketplace by offerings such as 1Password and LastPass. The availability of passwords -- particularly ones that have been automatically generated and are thus impossible to remember without the service being available -- will place a new burden of reliability on the company's services. It would represent a big leap of faith for consumers requiring great trust in Apple that faces tough timing given the recent controversy over NSA inquiries as well as painting a bullseye on iCloud among black-hat hackers. The company assures that all iCloud Keychain information will be encrypted and that the passwords will not be tied to a person's Apple ID. This way, even someone who gets access to a stolen iOS device won't be able to unlock an iCloud Keychain master password. Still, Apple seems in a position to integrate with hardware and build in a fingerprint reader or some other biometrics to further differentiate and secure this particular cloud service. After all, unlike many consumer cloud services such as Pandora, Netflix, Dropbox and OnLive, it's Apple's focus on its own customers as opposed to Internet users at large that set it apart. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: To the third screen
What screens will Apple next attack? There's certainly been much hearsay and rationale for the company entering the smartwatch market. While its WWDC announcements were inconclusive as to Apple's move to build a televison, they certainly showed that Apple is now serious about addressing the viewer in the vehicle. Game Controls A somewhat under-the-radar part of the WWDC announcements came in the form of Apple specifying standalone and attachable specifications of game controllers for iOS devices. The move symbolizes an acknowledgement that many games benefit from control beyond touch despite Apple's great success with iOS as a gaming platform, but action gamers will likely spend more time celebrating vindication by taking advantage of the new controls than filling the air with "I-told-you-so's." The addition of these controls have been widely speculated to be a sign of Apple's long rumored foray into the TV market. Indeed, long before found its way to the TV by virtually any means, the TV apps were games. A handful of semi-portable Android microconsoles around the size of Apple TV -- such as OUYA and GameStick -- seek to bring Android games to the television. Meanwhile, Apple is sitting on a massive casual game catalog and could allow consumers to use the apps they've already purchased in a game-enabled Apple television set. However, as with most Apple televison scenarios, they could also do that with an updated version of Apple TV, or even via AirPlay as is possible today. In fact, they might not have much to do with the television at all, but just providing more control options for the iPhone or iPad enabling, for example, two kids a car's back seat to play games on an iPad mounted to a headrest. iOS in the Car iOS' multitouch user interface may have been a revelation in terms of navigating the limited real estate of a mobile phone experience but it's far from idle in the vehicle. For years, we've seen Android devices feature various car modes and car docks to facilitate use in the vehicle, but interacting with iOS in the car remained, to borrow a phrase from consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, "unsafe at any speed." Meanwhile, a broad consortium of car makers and handset companies banded together to form the MirrorLink standard for mirroring a phone's display on the console of a vehicle. A representative once described its membership as consisting of "everyone but you-know-who," And yet, while car makers seem eager to support MirrorLink, it hasn't been embraced by the key mobile OS vendors yet. According to Reticle Research, about 10 percent of U.S. consumers have an app-compatible console in their vehicles. Then came Siri and Apple Maps. And then came slightly more usable Siri and Apple Maps, And then Apple announced iOS in the Car. Much as AirPlay incorporates much of the functionality of DLNA, iOS in the Car includes much of the functionality of MirrorLink but most likely throws out implementation details that Apple deems cumbersome, extraneous or otherwise unwanted. The list of backers that have signed in for iOS in the Car span the gamut from miser-friendly Kia to millionaire-friendly Ferrari, but just what its functionality will include remains to be seen. Unlike with MirrorLink, a key question raised by desirable integration with Siri is how open iOS in the Car will be to third-party apps. A failure to expand it will confine iOS users who take advantage of the integration to Apple Maps versus Google Maps and iTunes Radio vs. Pandora. --- Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: The Untouchables
At WWDC the announcement of OS X Mavericks, plus the release of the new Intel Haswell-based Macs on which it will eventually run, reaffirmed Apple's direction to keep touch with the province of iOS devices. Meanwhile, on the Windows side, we are increasingly seeing a host of ultraportables that can either convert to a tablet by rotating or twisting the keyboard or have the touch-enabled screen detach for a purer tablet experience. While we've seen a number of Windows makers enable this on PCs that are 13" or even larger, it makes the most sense on smallest notebooks since those make for a more comfortable tablet scenario. If the trend keeps up, the 11" MacBook Air may be the last notebook standing (or, rather, poised on a surface) that doesn't have some ready-to-manipulate touch display. There needs to be good reasons for going against such a grain, and in Apple's case, there are. Tim Cook was addressing the Windows 8 user experience when he referred to the convergence of a toaster and refrigerator as an unsatisfying product. The dichotomy that Microsoft has created with Windows 8 and RT has resulted in a fractured experience for the former and an app shortage on the latter. A MacBook-iPad combination interface likely would not be quite as disjointed as Microsoft took great pains to differentiate its "Modern" UI from the iPad and thus the Mac, but clearly there would be fundamental challenges to resolve such as the use of windows and menus. Meanwhile, the iPad has had no problem attracting apps. Sure, many those apps may not offer the depth of features that OS X apps at this time (Apple's own iWork and iLife apps are examples of that.) but there's no need to prop up the new platform with apps from the old as Microsoft has done. Indeed, third parties have offered a wide choice of keyboard options for the iPad including standalone full-sized and portable keyboards, cases with integrated keyboards, ultra-thin covers from Logitech and Belkin, and laptop-style docks such as the Brydge. True, these all rely on Bluetooth and therefore require their own batteries unlike Microsoft's Surface keyboards or certain Windows 8 tablet keyboards that can charge the PC while it is docked. The iPad is a new beginning. The Mac isn't going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, in announcing OS X Mavericks, the company intimated that it plans to have OS X around for another ten years. However, one must face certain advantages that iOS has. It powers Apple's smartphones, key to market share as the largest device category in the world. It runs on Apple's processors, which use the ARM architecture that provides efficient horsepower and where Apple can customize the specifications of its own chips. It enables thinner, more portable, and less expensive devices. The iPad also has a much shorter learning curve than the Mac and largely dispenses with inhibitors such as knowing how to type and hierarchical file systems. Apple has complete control over app distribution and dominant market share. For all these reasons, iOS seems like a horse that Apple will be betting more and more on as time goes by. Trying to make the Mac's OS too much like it would be like when Apple grafted the Mac user interface onto the Apple IIGS: novel, but ultimately a poor fit. The iPad already benefits from Siri and speech recognition, and its future lies more with these technologies than the keyboards of the past. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: iPod's trail of tears pt. 3
The last Reality Absorption Field discussed how pioneers in the PC peripherals market laid claim to the iPod throne as well as two consumer electronics giants in Sony and Samsung. This week's column finishes up the series with talking about how other big consumer electronics names as well as a few companies outside the PC and CE mainstream approached the digital media player business. Consumer Electronics Companies (continued) RCA Along with the Creative and Rio brands, the RCA brand (owned by Thomson Consumer Electronics at the time) was an early and relatively prolific Apple competitor, but one with an unusual advantage. Since it had patent rights to the MP3 format, it gained royalties from every iPod Apple sold. Strong at Walmart, which still carries the brand online, the RCA Lyra line spanned both hard drive and flash players. Thomson ultimately vacated consumer electronics and the RCA brand for everything but TVs became owned by VOXX International (formerly Audiovox), along with a large collection of other accessory brands. Toshiba and Philips Toshiba created the hard drive in the first iPod and the internals for the first Zune, but it had its own line of MP3 players as well called Gigabeat. Despite not selling well in the U.S., they were one of the few hard drive-based players that were thinner than their contemporary iPod rivals. Philips, on the other hand, mostly focused on small flash players with its GoGear series. Like Creative and others, Philips also tried a multimedia player that ran Android, the Philips Connect. But it has left the category, and now the Netherlands-based lighting powerhouse offers Fidelio iOS speaker accessories. The Pure Plays SanDisk The leading flash memory brand was an unlikely contender to be Apple's strongest rival in the U.S., but for a period of time it was just that with the Sansa brand that included a range of original iPod Shuffle-like stick players and video-capable models (that skipped an announced large-screen model called the Sansa View). SanDisk tried to buid on its momentum in several ways that flopped. Like Microsoft, it developed its own iPod-like dock connector that attracted a speaker dock or two. It also introduced the Sansa Connect, one of the first Wi-Fi-enabled products that was paired with Yahoo!'s music streaming service; it used the Zing software created by former Apple engineer Tim Bucher later purchased and abandoned by Dell. SanDisk also made an ambitious play in 2009 to revive retail music distribution with slotMusic and the slotRadio music player. Accommodating 1,000 songs preloaded on a microSD card, it was a sort of offline Pandora without the custom channels. A half-dozen or so cards focusing on different music genres were created before SanDisk ended distribution last year. Today, SanDisk remains in the market with its relatively low-end Clip and Fuse lines that maintain the ability to take microSD cards that are a far more important business for the company. Archos While it dabbled in flash memory players, Archos was an early believer in portable video with the hard drive-based tank-like Jukebox series, Archos was the most ambitious player in portable video for many years, adding docks to help its players function as GPS units and DVRs. It also created Archos TV, a stationary DVR that could offfload music to the players. These days, the company is mostly focused on a wide range of Android tablets and recently launched into smartphones. However, it has trotted out several offbeat Android products such as an Android-based alarm clock and home phone and a fat handheld keyboard that brings Android to the TV. iRiver and Cowon These Korean companies have been known for well-designed players and continue in the market but are rare in the U.S. iRiver, which first gained notoriety for its SlimX MP3-CD player, expanded into e-readers. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: iPod's trail of tears, part 2
The last Reality Absorption Field discussed how most of the big names in the PC industry tried to take on the iPod and the fates of their eventual efforts. This week's column will look at PC peripherals companies and how the consumer electronics giants reacted, while next week's final installment will finish a look at the CE companies as well as discuss some of the pure plays that competed with the iPod. PC Peripherals Companies Diamond Multimedia and Creative. For many years, these two companies were two of Apple's most tenacious competitors. Diamond Multimedia, primarily known for its video cards, introduced the Rio PMP300 that opened many people's eyes to the promise of MP3. It also bore the brunt of the labels' wrath, which sued it into bankruptcy. However, the Rio name would resurface under the SonicBlue.brand (I was particularly fond of the microdrive-based iPod mini competitor Rio Carbon, which felt great in the hand.). Most of its portable devices were flash-based (including models it built for Nike and Motorola) but it created hard drive-based fixed devices for the home (Rio Central) and car (Rio Car). However, SonicBlue eventually went out of business as well, ending the line. Like Diamond Multimedia, Creative was early in the MP3 player market with the hard drive-based, Discman-shaped Nomad Jukebox. It produced a slew of hard drive and flash-based players, including some large-screen video players under the Zen brand. Creative was also noteworthy for a patent dispute with Apple that resulted in Apple paying royalties. The company is still around, of course, but mostly focused on its roots as a PC periperhals and speaker company. You can still find a few MP3 players listed on its site, including the Zen Touch 2 that runs an old version of Android. Iomega. A footnote in the history of MP3 players, the creator of once-adored Zip drives tried to crack the market smaller devices with a 40 MB disk cartridge called PocketZip and, later, Clik! Iomega convinced Ricoh to adopt the format in a camera and made its own MP3 player, the HipZip, which could not only play back MP3s on the disks but funciton as a general drive for reading them. The format couldn't compete with flash memory, and thus the HipZip had to RIP. The company was purchased by enterprise storage giant EMC in 2008. Consumer Electronics Giants Samsung and Sony. These two premium TV market rivals represented different kinds of competition to Apple. Sony, a pioneer in portable music, sought to maintain its Walkman heritage as it initially positioned Mini-Disc against the iPod. But the discs required transcoding the MP3 format to Sony's ATRAC codec with poorly received software called SonicStage. The company gradually came to adopt MP3 natively and drop ATRAC across mostly flash-based players and eventually even brought its Walkman brand to a series of feature phones it created in its Sony Ericsson venture. Sony remains in the category today with a relatively robust lineup that includes music-playing Sports earbud models, the E and Wi-Fi Android-infused F series that roughly correspond to the 5th-generation and current-generation iPod nano, and the Android-based Z series that competes with the iPod touch. Today, Samsung is Apple's strongest competitor in the smartphone space where it operates its own media store, but it was less successful competing against the iPod with a huge array of music players under the Yepp brand that spanned six full product lines of different form factors. Samsung now mostly competes with the iPod touch as a smartphone variant with a handful of products under the Galaxy Player brand. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: iPod's trail of tears, part 1
The recent celebration of iTunes tenth anniversary provided an opportunity to remember that it debuted before the iPod and was initially positioned as a way to get Macs to play well with the CD burners that had come to the iMac as well as to early MP3 players from rivals. Before and (mostly) after the iPod, it's surprising to see not only how many different companies sought success in the portable media player category, but the diversity and depth of their approaches. While some achieved a degree of success and implemented a few things that were ahead of Apple, none came close to matching Apple's success. This column will focus on how PC companies approached the portable media player market while the next Reality Absorption Field will look at how competitors from other industries fared. Dell and Gateway Prior to the arrival of Microsoft's Zune, Dell was probably the most serious PC company in the media player space. Putting its own spin on Creative's internals, it released a few hard disk models of its DJ (Digital Jukebox), tapping out at 30 GB. It also released a microdrive line to compete with the iPad mini and finally the DJ Ditty line of flash players to compete with the first-generation "pack of gum" iPod shuffle . Dell even created a networked audio player based on the Rio receiver, a brand descendant from Diamond Multimedia's breakthrough iPod predecessor. The former stock market darling is now taking itself private. Just as Gateway's PC line sought to keep pace with Dell's, so did its media player line roughly mirror Dell's interest with entries in the hard disk and flash categories. Gateway also had a networked audio player, a rebadged version of the excellent Turtle Beach Audiotron. None of these products ever competed effectively, though, and Dell's failure to take on Apple beyond the PC set a precedent for the company's struggles in other categories such as smartphones and tablets where Apple has excelled. Compaq and Intel Compaq and Intel both dipped their giant corporate toes in the MP3 player market and their one-hit wonder efforts were actually not too shabby. Both were early flash memory-driven efforts, Intel's Pocket Concert and Compaq-s iPAQ PA-1 (and its nearly identical follow-on, the PA-2). Intel sold a dock that allowed its blue-and-silver music player to work with matched speakers and Compaq's player -- while hardly a looker -- had a clip years before the first iPod shuffle integrated one. Intel retreated from the consumer device market while Compaq was acquired by HP. HP HP had what was perhaps the most unique reaction to the iPod. After holding back from the market after what was allegedly a poorly received prototype based on a partnership with Napster 2.0, it decided to try to join 'em if it couldn't beat 'em. HP iPods were identical to Apple's in nearly every respect except for the branding, which Apple also worked its way into since they were called Apple iPod+HP. HP tried to differentiate by coming out with a line of printable "tattoos" that could be affixed to the front of the devices, but in mid-2005 the strange relationship dissolved a year and a half after it began. Microsoft Microsoft tried to compete with the iPod in three main ways. The first of these was the launch of Playsforsure, a horrifically named digital rights management service that was to ensure compatibility between various music stores and music players. It drew support from many of the player makers, including Dell, SanDisk, iRiver, Samsung and others as well as subscription music services such as Napster and Rhapsody. The effort ultimately fizzled, though, and Apple worked to get even its digital rights management software removed from iTunes music. Microsoft also tried licensing its software to power portable media players with a focus on video for devices called Portable Media Centers, a way to take TV shows and other media recorded Windows Media Center on the road via sideloading. Creative, iRiver, Philips, Samsung and Toshiba all hopped on that bus before it broke down. Frustrated by the failure of these efforts and true to Steve Jobs' prediction, Microsoft jumped in itself with Zune. The first version, with its "double shot" coating and bulky, optionally brown exterior coating Toshiba's Gigabeat player internals, was unimpressive, but Microsoft made improvementst, adding the excelle "sqircle" touchpad that gave the click wheel a run for its money and introducing the sleek "full-touch" Zune HD, all with proprietary iPod-like connectors. But the iPod touch inheriting the iPhone's avalanche of apps was the final nail in the coffin for the Zune device. And in fairness to Microsoft, the MP3 player market was already starting to move past its peak anyway. Microsoft kept the now curiously named Zune software around a while longer, but ultimately replaced it and the service to which it served as a conduit to Xbox Music. The confusing branding continues as much of what it serves today is Windows Phone devices. The Portable Media Centers and Zune had at least one important legacy for Microsoft, though. They iterated what would become known as the panoramic Modern, nee Metro, touch user interface that Microsoft now uses on smartphones and PCs. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Backups Capsule
Despite the great success and momentum of the iPad, the iPhone is still probably Apple's product that continues to receive the most attention by the broadest number of consumers as well as by investors. The smartphone slips easily into a pocket, accesses cloud from virtually anywhere, has a slick and engaging user interface, and supports hundreds of thousands of apps. It has been updated every year since its introduction and makes billions for the company. Microsoft covets its success. But Apple has another product that in many ways is the anti-iPhone. It usually never leaves the home, doesn't access any cloud services and has no apps or even local user interface. Its rare updates often consist of little more than a capacity increase. And if Microsoft, which keeps chasing the idea of a cohesive user experience, wouldn't gain much from the revenue it drives, it would still do well to offer its benefits. That product is Time Capsule, Apple's router/backup appliance that sits quietly on a home network, seamlessly and reliably sucking in incremental backups of every Mac it can find. In an era where the best-selling version of Apple's once straightforward iPod music player is an iPhone-like software chameleon, where hard drives are considered the dinosaurs of consumer storage, and the cloud is the place where shared files are stored, Time Capsule is a throwback. It is the hardworking Morlock to Apple's converged device iLoi. Like any tech product, Time Capsule has its share of compromises. Backups can get corrupted, causing Time Machine to falter at the beginning or end of a backup. Time Capsule's doesn't provide a ton of status information on what's going on. And if the unfortunate circumstances require that you use it to restore, it can take hours as is the case for any network backup product. And when it comes to features, Time Capsule's name is more than just a clever play on words. Unlike with cross-platform "shared storage" products from storage and networking companies including Netgear, Seagate and WD, there's no access to Time Capsule storage from outside the home network. It can't send video to most TVs or Blu-ray players due to a lack of native DLNA. You can't add capacity to Time Capsule or back up the backup. Other companies have created slick iOS apps for accessing photos and other data on home networks from across the Internet. In an ironic contrast, though, Apple hasn't created one for Time Capsule, which could serve as a personal cloud alternative to or extension to iCloud much as Pogoplug has married its home storage and cloud storage products. Instead, only Mac-owning iOS device users can take advantage of Apple's network backup device, and even then only indirectly by having their Mac-based backups backed up. Ah, but in conjunction with Time Machine, Time Capsule remains the best integrated home network backup experience on the market. It may never be the kind of thing that convinces someone to buy a Mac, but anyone who has ever been saved by it will consider it a reason to stay with the platform. In contrast, while Windows had an integrated backup app before Apple did, its network backup strategy has been divided between a feature found only in the Professional version of Windows and the sputtering path of Windows Home Server that came closest to Time Capsule's automation and integration, but couldn't approach its simplicity. Windows 8 has added a file history feature that's network-drive agnostic, but that's only part of the solution. If Microsoft would offer a simple backup appliance that works with software built into Windows, it would instantly strengthen the case for all Windows PCs, including tablets such as Surface for which a key marketing point is the robustness of the Windows ecosystem. Of course, it would also be great to see Time Capsule expand to back up Windows PCs, or even iPads and iPhones, or enable remote access, but one has to wonder how much more attention Apple -- fighting Google with its head in the cloud -- will give to its reliable relic. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Making the top choice
Among Apple competitors, it's become fashionable to pay the company a backhanded compliment regarding iOS. Yes, the patter typically goes, Apple created a breakthrough platform back in 2007. However, the paradigm has now shifted to... something. In the case of BlackBerry, that something is a smooth means of swiping in and out of all your communications at a glance without interrupting whatever else you're doing. In the case of Windows Phone (and for the new Facebook Home user interface layer atop Android), that something is seeing all the updated information around the people in your life. Now, you don't have to be marketing a rival operating system to Apple's to make the case that updates from your personal connections should bubble up to the top of the interface. But there is also the case that business news should be at the top of that interface. Or information about where you currently are. Or your favorite games. Or, as a former colleague put it, everything related to Gilligan's Island if that is someone's preference (it wasn't hers). The idea that communications should be the main feature of a phone is a quaint assumption these days. Apple showed its indifference if not disdain for this concept clearly when it designed the iPhone. Unlike previous phones and even many previous smartphones, there were no physical call or end buttons. And phone calling was just another app. Indeed, today a host of alternatives such as Skype, Tango, Fring and perhaps others waiting in the wings that one can use as their main dialer if they so choose. And of course, a host of voice alternatives -- messaging, video chat, -- now exist that were unimaginable when the phone was in its infancy. A victim of its own success, iOS has given rise to an app sprawl that is difficult to manage once one acquires several pages of apps. But with the exception of not being able to delete those that come from Apple, apps are all given equal opportunity to be presented in the topmost layer of the user interface that Apple allows with the dock providing a favorable position to four of them on the iPhone (six on the iPad). Android widgets and Live Tiles provide different tradeoffs in taking that functionality to a higher user interface layer. Unlike the recently announced Facebook Home, they provide for multiple items to share the spotlight, not an environment that revolves around a single social network. That may work for HTC, but won't for Apple or other mobile OS vendors. Of course, phones will probably always be used to communicate. Then again, just as voice has lost monopoly of the phone, the phone has lost its monopoly on long-distance, real-time communications. These days, tablets and PCs and even TVs in some circumstances can be used to reach out. By allowing users to choose the functionality that's most important to them, they can best manage when to have the exchanges they want, when to avoid the ones they don't, and how to improve efficiencies to eliminate the ones that don't need to happen in the first place. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple's best product revision
Have you heard the news? There's this pretty successful Apple product -- starts with an "iP," ends with a "d" and has a vowel in the middle. And its average prices have dropped. Apple is (cue ominous music) doomed (cue evil cackle). Doomed, I say, repeating myself loudly so as to be heard above the sound effects. That product is called the iPod. For now, let's confine its definition to the dedicated media players, not the iPhone-without-a-radio that will likely live on for quite a while. The iPod has proved remarkably tenacious and dominant since its introduction in 2001, smashing competitive products and leaving only a handful of cheap players such as the SanDisk Sansa Fuse in its wake. You don't hear too much about it these days, especially beyond the annual product revision. Incredibly, the iPod classic, despite not being revised in years, remains on sale, and the Shuffle seems to have settled into a pretty familiar form factor. The nano went back to a big screen last year and incorporated a home button as well as Bluetooth (finally). While Apple's seeking to keep the product fresh, though, the market for standalone media players continues to decline. The iPod may still be refreshed for many years to come, but it is sliding away from view -- and that is a good thing for Apple. The iPod was unveiled in 2001 as the first major new product category from Apple since the doomed Newton. While the iMac had been a promising harbinger of how things would improve in the post-Amelio Apple, the iPod really started the virtuous chain going that resulted in the juggernaut built over the past decade. Apple's franchise in digital music and iTunes helped beget the iPhone and app sales, and the iPhone, of course, helped beget the iPad. The iPod's slow decline has come against a backdrop of Apple showing transition from one product arc to the next. It has helped to prove that the product Apple has been best at revising is Apple itself. What's next? A television? A watch? The iBed? When? Cynics have a point that it will be difficult to top the smartphone opportunity, but that is a constraint that Apple's competitors face as well. And so, returning to the idea that the iPad mini is reducing Apple's tablet margins in exchange for volume when it must compete with $200 (or sub-$200 in the case of the new HP Slate 7) smaller Android tablets, those concerns were voiced about the iPod as well. And that was when market share didn't have the broader implications of furthering an operating system to attract, retain and expand the developer opportunity. Despite cheaper competition, Apple maintained its dominance in media players. However, it also moved on to other categories and other opportunities. Perhaps some of the skeptics will as well. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: The Mac clone that wasn't
One could say that the Apple of the Michael Spindler era was like today's Apple in name only. However, even that is not quite true. (Apple dropped the "Computer" from its name just over six years ago.) In the mid-'90s, Apple had an aggressive if conflicted Mac cloning program. Beige boxes from the likes of Power Computing, UMAX and Motorola were available. At that time, there had been concerns that licensing the Mac OS to a really big PC vendor would create more competition than Apple could handle. Nevertheless, there were persistent rumors that Dell, for one, was interested. Coincidentally, long after licensing ended, the Round Rock, TX-based PC company was early to offer a "Mini" netbook that could easily be turned into a "Hackintosh." These were aberrations in a long rivalry between Apple and Dell that has been filled with contrasts. As Apple focused on building its own vertically integrated PCs, Dell was a master of supply chain and cost reduction in the PC clone model. Dell was welcomed through the front door by most IT departments; Apples were snuck in by enthusiasts. Dell was an early e-commerce poster child selling its PCs direct online, but Apple ultimately trumped it selling its PCs via its white-walled physical stores. And Michael Dell infamously said during Apple's darkest days that he would close down the company and give the money back to the shareholders. Today, of course, the tables have turned. Apple is one of the world's most valuable companies and Dell has opted to flee public markets, perhaps even veer away from the PCs that are the last vestige of the company's roots as a direct sales pioneer. But a twist of fate may have OS X plastered across the screens of PCs from Dell -- and other PC vendors -- after all. As part of its work with Wyse, the "thin-client" company that Dell acquired last year, the company has developed a device and service called Project Ophelia. Ophelia is a USB stick-sized computer that runs Android. Several of these have come to market. But there would be links to what would presumably be a Dell-powered cloud that could serve up a host of different computing environments similar to how OnLive or CloudOn -- or Wyse's own PocketCloud -- do on the iPad today. Those environments could include Windows, Linux or OS X. Of course, accessing OS X remotely, even in a world that offers ever more prevalent and speedy mobile broadband, is not the same as running it on Apple hardware or even a well-designed Hackintosh. And any number of remote apps can call up an OS X desktop to a Mac, PC, iPad or Android tablet. But Ophelia represents the greatest deviation from standard Windows computing that we've seen from Dell since its short-lived Android tablet dalliance, and the freshest idea from the company in even longer. Time will tell if Ophelia turns out to be, like its tragic Shakespearean namesake, desperate for love, crazy, or even suicidal. But if not, a pocketable Dell device may soon be vying to be your means to OS X access. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: Forms without Apple function
The last Reality Absorption Field discussed how CES is relevant to Apple -- mostly through major standards milestones -- even though the company doesn't attend the annual confabulation. But CES can also be seen as a mirror that is held up to the world of device makers, even those that don't attend CES. In that vein, there were a number of significant new computing form factors shown in the desert. And while their having any impact on the computing world outside of Apple is far from a sure bet, it's still worth considering their relevance to the company. NVIDIA Project Shield gaming handheld Perhaps the most significant surprise at CES, Project Shield represents the first end-user gaming hardware from chip-maker and Mac graphics supplier (but ARM architecture competitor) NVIDIA. It's an Xbox-like controller with a flip-up lid that includes a 5" "retina-quality" display. Like Kickstarter projects OUYA and GameStick, it runs Android and can connec to a big-screen TV, but Project Shield will be the first Android device to include a Tegra 4, the company's state of the art system-on-a-chip offering. If all that weren't enough, the handheld can reach across a home network to access and remotely play games on specially-equipped PCs running Valve's Steam service. Any possible connection between Apple and the TV seems to draw a lot of attention these days especially as Apple has enabled Bluetooth on Apple TV, but it's difficult to see an iOS version of something like Project Shield even without the far-out remote PC gaming features. Apple has built a strong case for buttonless games in iOS, and the iPhone or iPod touch serves the role of a controller in which the games resided and could be sent up to TV via AirPlay. Lenovo Horizon Table PC Remember Microsoft Surface? Not the iPad competitor Microsoft rolled out last year but the big honking table computer it rolled out around the same time as the iPhone? Well, it's still around -- sort of -- as the Samsung SUR40. And it's still pretty expensive. The Lenovo Horizon PC seeks to bring the Surface experience to a broader experience by embedding it within a 27" all-in-one PC that lays flat for table games. Alas, since its a Windows PC, Lenovo has had to create its own app store filled with apps that are optimized for such a form factor. Now, if you scoff at the idea of a 13" Android tablet like the kind Toshiba tried, it's kind of crazy to consider a 27" iPad. And yet, the Horizon takes the kind of casual gaming people enjoy on the iPad and turns it into an engaging multiplayer experience by having people sit around it. Best of all, flip open the stand, and it turns into an all-in-one PC much like the iMac. This is a tough one to see Apple doing for a host of reasons, but it is an interesting extension of the iPad concept from a single user model to a multiple user model. Pebble Smartwatch The Pebble watch, which in part soared to record Kickstarter funding heights based on its compatibility with iOS, was well-known before CES, but the developers took advantage of the trade show to announce that the product would finally be shipping and it has. Like other entrants in the smartwatch space, such as the Cookoo and MetaWatch Strata, the Pebble gleans connected information and from your smartphone and offers basic controls for tasks such as playing music. The chance of Apple coming out with a smartwatch are still probably pretty slim, but relatively high compared to a gaming controller or table computer. While Apple changed course from the wrist-friendly direction in which it was taking the iPod nano over the course of two generations of that product, that might have just been clearing the deck for what could be a bona fide wrist companion. Such a device might even be capable of running true widgets that could be accessible via the iPhone, iPad or even Mac, imbuing new life into the Dashboard feature. We know that Apple remains focused on mobility, and the smartwatch space could certainly use the kind of design panache, focus on long battery life, and thinness for which the company is known. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.
Reality Absorption Field: What happens in Vegas
A few years ago, a senior Apple executive was once told that, even though Apple did not exhibit at the annual Las Vegas spectacle that is the International Consumer Electronics Show, its presence seemed to linger in the arid air and in the clouded minds of many attendees. "We love that," he replied. But cashing in on the media attention around CES is but one reason that the the tech show from which Apple abstains has relevance to it. At this year's CES, for example, there were several trends that had relevance to Apple's business both from a cooperative and competitive perspective: Displays The main attraction in the CES circus is almost always television, historically the largest consumer electronics category. The show has long hosted advances in TV sets and their AV peripherals. Following in the footsteps of HD and 3D, 4K dominated the announcements of major consumer electronics companies at the 2013 show. Even with Apple's television set still a rumor, the heightened resolution represents an answer form HDTV manufacturers who have seen Apple boast that the iPad's Retina display contains more pixels than their living room behemoths (even though a 4K TV currently costs about 40 times what an iPad costs). Radios But it's not all a competitive story. The availability of TVs that can accommodate the iPad's Retina Display could add value to future versions of AirPlay. Of course, that would be helped by a bigger wireless pipe between the iDevice and the TV, and new Wi-Fi standards were on display at CES. 802.11ac -- the 5 GHz-only successor to 802.11n -- products are slated to be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance with this year. And right before the show, the Wi-Fi Alliance noted that it had merged with the WiGig Alliance; the combined work on short-range sharing in the 60 GHz range which should facilitate the sharing of multigigabit video in the same room, again providing more options. Alas, the Alliance is also again providing more options for future Apple TV products. On the other hand, the alliance is also gearing up to throw its weight behind Miracast, the AirPlay competitor that is already supported by some smartphones. Chips Speaking of competition, the number and kinds of products that compete with Apple's that are shown at CES varies. Following the release of the iPad, there were scores of tablets shown by exhibitors, nearly all of which flopped in the marketplace. With the exception of Lenovo, though, almost all major PC vendors shy from the hallways of the Las Vegas Convention Center. And with Microsoft now leaving CES, that left Intel to carry the PC banner. The giant chipmaker employed some marketing mojo regarding the evolution of higher-efficiency chips that will benefit all of its hardware partners, including Apple, of course. Intel also continues to work toward expanding its role in tablets and smartphones, but it will face competition from ARM-based rivals, including Nvidia's Tegra 4. The new processor includes an impressive 72 graphics cores that should keep Apple on its toes as it evolves beyond today's A6. ---- Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Opinions expressed in Reality Absorption Field are his own.
Reality Absorption Field: Peering into the crystal apple
photo by carl.lacey2 | flickr Should auld iQuaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Last year was a landmark year for Apple that saw significant leadership changes. Tim Cook has committed to preserve Apple's culture and seems committed to many of its fundamental tenets -- high-quality products, owning the customer experience, product secrecy and innovation that matters to the mainstream. But Cook has also vowed not to run a museum and has noted Steve Jobs' urging to do what is right and and not what the legendary Apple co-founder would have done. As we head into 2013, there are three classes of predictions one can make about the company and its products. Playing it safe The new year will almost certainly see revisions to OS X and iOS. Facing competition against a relaunched Google Maps on iOS, Apple Maps will see meaningful improvements. There will be a new iPhone even if it continues Apple's emerging pattern of sticking with a case design through one revision. And while one can debate the merits of a spring versus fall launch for the next iPad, it's all but certain that it will appear sometime within 2013 along with at least one more go-round for the iPod line. We also know that the first Macs to be made in the USA in many years are coming soon, presumably in 2013 -- and potentially in Apple's small form-factor desktop if the latest round of rumors prove true. Going out on a limb As one digs down a layer of specificity, there are a few areas that seem like reasonable extensions of current trends. Many believe we'll see an iPad mini appearing with a Retina Display and NFC may come to the iPhone or the whole Apple product line. As one arrives at the airport from which to board a flight of fancy, of course, there is that old Apple television set trope, so breathlessly anticipated that Tim Cook's mere repetition that it is an area of keen interest sets the rumor mill into overdrive. Connected to any discussion of an Apple television set is that the company would package up a television service to compete with cable or, alternatively, partner with leading pay TV providers much as did with cellular carriers for the iPhone. And as long as you're dipping into new subscription or freemium Apple services, there's the Pandora-like radio service rumor. Once, having an operating system provider offer pay TV seemed far-flung, but Google is now doing just that in Kansas City, and Nokia seems to have finally found a viable way to differentiate its music experience with Nokia Music. Then there's the even more far-flung notion that Apple might mash up the MacBook and iPad in strange ways such as an ARM-based MacBook, a touchscreen MacBook, or (if one purchases a first-class ticket on the flight of fancy) a Surfacesque keyboard-equipped iPad. The unexpected One way Apple could certainly benefit from all these rumors is if they all serve as a smokescreen for something completely out of left field. It is hard to believe that the iPad was introduced only in the beginning of 2010. Of course, prior to that, the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and the iPod in 2001. It may be a little early for a brand new product line from Apple. On the other hand, the company is investing more in R&D than ever. If Apple doesn't surprise and delight customers with a new product category in 2013, customers wil be counting on it to find other ways to do so. ---- Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Opinions expressed in Reality Absorption Field are his own.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple's wireless way
While it was announced amidst the October departure of Scott Forstall, the news that Bob Mansfield would un-retire to oversee all of the company's semiconductor and wireless work didn't get as much attention. Obviously, we are moving toward an increasingly wireless future. The technologies Apple chooses to adopt and how it adopts them will play big roles in terms of its platforms' capabilities and compatibility. Short-Range In 2012, we saw Apple gain a lot of attention for a new Lightning cable connector to replace its venerable 30-pin iPod interface. But while iPhone watchers were contemplating adapters and docks, phones from competitors such as HTC and Nokia adopted wireless charging and NFC. Apple passed on NFC in the iPhone 5 -- somewhat justifiably, from a pure payments perspective. Nonetheless, NFC has other applications as Samsung has been showing off in its commercials. While a bit late to the Bluetooth party, Apple has become an enthusiastic backer, supporting the technology well throughout the product line and being one of the first companies to implement Bluetooth Smart, the low-power version of the technology that is now finding its way into such objects as activity monitors, watches, and even light bulbs. While Apple will likely eventually adopt NFC, there is work going on in the Bluetooth camp on standards that could compete with NFC. Apple, of course, would prefer to deal with one radio instead of two. Medium-Range With the introduction of its first AirPort cards for the iBook way back in 1999, Apple led the industry in supporting Wi-Fi. Apple's efforts helped push the technology ahead of what was then a promising competing standard called HomeRF, backed by Intel. Nowadays, Wi-Fi is available throughout Apple's product line as it is for many other tech companies, and Apple has built AirPlay on top of it. It seems likely that Apple will support the next generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac. It remains to be seen, though, if Apple will support Wi-Fi Display and Wi-Fi Direct as it has adopted its own alternatives in AirPlay and AirDrop (although these are not necessarily mutually exclusive). AirDrop in particular seems like a promising way to easily move files between a Mac and iDevice without having to go through iTunes; hopefully this will be addressed now that the OS X and iOS teams are united under one manager. There are also other "whole-home" wireless technologies that Apple has heretofore passed on such as Zigbee or Z-Wave. These low-power radio technologies are at the heart of many security and home automation installations. But Apple will likely continue to refrain. Wi-Fi gateways can bridge control between iPhones and these products, and Bluetooth is becoming more competitive in terms of battery life. Long-Range In 2012, the third-generation iPad marked Apple's late jump onto the LTE bandwagon and the strong indication that the 4G technology would be the wireless foundation of the iPhone, which it was. LTE also made its way into the iPad mini, serving as a differentiator from inexpensive 7" tablets such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet HD that lacked any cellular radio. Apple is already supporting LTE on many different bands across the three models of iPhones and iPads. More may be coming in the next generation of cellular-equipped products now that T-Mobile USA seems set to carry the company's products in 2013. However, it likely also has its eye on technologies, such as DIDO from Rearden Labs, that claim to leapfrog well-accepted standards like LTE. As wireless technologies continue to work their way into more objects and become cheaper and faster, Mac and iOS apps will be able to monitor, communicate with, and control a broader array of devices than ever before. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin. Views expressed in Reality Absorption Field are his own.
Reality Absorption Field: The one-two punch (minus the two)
When Microsoft talks about getting into devices so that it can integrate hardware and software in a way that HP, Dell, Acer and others don't or can't, one does not have to ponder long which competitor it has in its sights. But you can't accuse Microsoft of copying Apple's clean product segmentation between iPad and MacBook. Indeed, the latest Windows releases support devices that mash together the best of -- and worst of -- the notebook and tablet. Among these are the Surface RT and Surface Pro. With its long battery life and $499 starting price, Surface RT is clearly trying to take on the iPad. But Surface -- with its precious adornments such as the kickstand and typing covers -- seeks out a customer who is yearning to use a tablet for more of the kinds of things traditionally done with PCs. Starting from scratch on the app front, Microsoft would have faced a tough enough situation a year ago, and even tougher in a 2012 holiday field that includes the lower-priced iPad mini as well as even less expensive 7" tablets from Amazon and Google. But at least Microsoft is in the game with the Surface RT. Microsoft more recently announced that pricing for the Surface Pro will begin at $899. In any number of products we see the price of backward compatibility in a figurative sense. But with Surface, it can actually be counted. A $400 difference separates the Surface RT from its Intel-based sibling. It surpasses the Surface RT in several ways, such as having a higher resolution display and integrated stylus support. But it also falls short of the first Surface tablet in some key ways, most notably with half the battery life. The closest thing in Apple's product line to the Surface Pro equipped with, say, the tactile Type Cover, would be the $999 MacBook Air, and it's not a bad matchup on paper. Both are about 2 lbs. and about 0.7" thick. The MacBook Air has a larger screen although the Surface Pro has a higher-resolution one. Still, while the 11" MacBook Air has been embraced by Mac users seeking the ultimate in laptop portability (as well as some early iPad users who've found it a better if pricier fit for its needs), it's hardly the heart of Apple's MacBook line. Just as Microsoft has found itself "forced" to enter the tablet market to compete with the iPad, it will have to consider driving a further wedge between it and its hardware partners to take on Apple in the high-volume notebook business. The company has broadly signalled that it will forge ahead with its own devices if it feels there's an advantage to taking on Apple. But there's still no evidence that its approach with Surface has been more effective than the similar moves it made with Zune. There, Microsoft sacrificed its relationship with hardware partners in the name of taking down a device with a huge marketplace lead. Not only did its efforts crash and burn, but in doing so provided an opening for Apple to build upon key factors of its iPod success with the iPhone.
