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Switched On - Macintel: Expanding market share via the chic, the geek, and the IT meek
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: During Apple's bombshell announcement at its annual developer conference that it would be switching the Macintosh to Intel processors, Intel CEO Paul Otellini encapsulated the profound irony – and yet amazing consistency – driving the controversial decision. The chip maker's president showed an old Apple commercial poking fun at how hot early Pentiums ran. When Apple switched to the PowerPC, its story was at least about the PowerPC's superior power consumption as it was about raw horsepower. Eleven years later and especially after Intel's breakthrough Pentium M, the tide has apparently turned. The PowerPC chip has been portrayed as the Power-Hungry chip – offering enticing enough performance to court all three next-generation game consoles, but falling behind for mobile computing. The PowerPC may have been running out of steam (or generating too much of it) for Apple's notebook plans, but the company still did pretty well with its notebooks. So the looming question is, what does Apple want to do?
Switched On: The Tao of the Photo Trinket
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Versatile, intelligent, sticky – those were the adjectives used by a fake Saturday Night Live commercial in 1993 extolling disposable "McIntosh Post-It Notes" that mocked the perceived frivolity of the recently released Newton. The parody proved prescient. Today, companies such as Logitech with its IO Writing System and Selwyn Electronics with its DigiMemo A501 continue a tradition of competing with the plain old legal pad; PDAs that sell for hundreds of dollars vie with inexpensive paper organizers; and millions of consumers will have spent $100 or more on flash players that have less capacity than a $30 portable MP3-CD player. Unfortunately for LCD manufacturers, though, the digital picture frame has not fared as well against its ubiquitous competition. So, following the lead of the MP3 hardware crowd that has seen far greater success outside the home than within it, at least three companies have released consumer products that are used almost exclusively to display pictures. Unlike devices intended for professional photographers, such as those from Epson or SmartDisk, these are all available for less than $150.
Switched On: Aping Donkey Kong: The bizarre 180 of XBox 360
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: As the last Switched On discussed, paid subscription services and the kind of reputation-tracking that Microsoft is planning for Xbox Live Gold are not the kinds of features that will expand the console gaming market far beyond its current audience. Nonetheless, Microsoft remains determined to pursue this nebulous target market. Judging by a recent interview, the new console was apparently named after the total number of things that the company sees as not being key to expanding the market. Microsoft's positioning has changed as completely and dramatically as one of its new console's removable faceplates. According to its Xbox executives, it's (now) not about better graphics. It's not about better sound (this time). It's (suddenly) not about more capacity. It's not about having a custom CPU (or presumably a new graphics processor). It's not even about the potential Microsoft advantage of launching earlier than your competition. And it's not about serving as a more affordable Windows Media Center or more powerful Media Center Extender.
Switched On: Next-gen consoles have 500 million triangles per second and nothing Pong
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: We all learned a few important things during the XBox 360 unveiling on MTV. First, with little more than an airbrush and a pair of LEDs in the right hands, it's possible to take the original XBox to unimagined new levels of aesthetic tragedy. Second, professional gamers can earn more than $80,000 per year, which works out to about 50 cents per hour. Finally, women gamers can assert their professionalism by saying "bitch" more times than in an average episode of Showdog Moms and Dads. Despite all this, the network responsible for attention deficit disorder was the perfect symbolic launchpad for the next generation of home consoles. Both the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 will meld video gaming, television watching, and multimedia to cater to today's multitasking short attention span gamer archetype. Could it get any better?
Switched On: Longhorn hardware advances could give PDAs a one-two punch
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: When comparisons were initially made between the Apple Newton and the original Palm Pilot, two of the most striking differences were size and input. The new PDA was much smaller than the MessagePads that preceded it. And instead of relying on handwriting recognition that resulted in egg freckles all over the face of Newton, used the Graffiti system that forced a small learning curve on the user in the name of increased accuracy. The Palm Pilot started life as an appliance, but Palm OS would grow to a platform in order to drive new functionality. However, while its hardware kept improving, the main constraints of its size did not. PDAs remained effective tools for retrieving bits of data on the run as long as they had been synced and poor tools for taking notes for an extended period of time. Taken together, though, several hardware enhancements for Longhorn that Microsoft demonstrated at WinHEC – namely the auxiliary display and the one-pound, 7-inch "ultra-mobile" – may represent a tandem challenge to the besieged handheld even in the tethered domain that they have taken for granted.
Switched On: Philips PSS110, The Little Boombox That Can't
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The giants of the consumer electronics industry exercised exceptional restraint in veering beyond established product categories at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show back in January. Philips emerged as one of the few companies willing to court the chaos of convergence with the PSS110, which is 80 percent miniature boombox, 15 percent alarm clock, and 5 percent iPod accessory. It's also 100 percent digital albeit with a paltry 256 MB of flash memory and no flash card slot. As white as a polar bear in a wedding dress, the PSS110 promised to add a spontaneous soundtrack in any space for up to ten hours. Now that it's hit store shelves, is this bit-bound bantam boombox a binaural bust? The PSS110 experience starts out edgy enough. Philips ships the device charged from the factory with "play-through" packaging that allows shoppers to hear the device within its plastic cocoon. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to get a sense of the PSS110's sound quality, though, the speakers are not exposed, so the best one will hear is a muffled version of what the device can output. Of the four 128 kbps MP3 songs Philips includes on the device, at least one would not make it onto the public airwaves without some strategic volume adjustments. Yes, while the history of consumer electronics includes many devices that have moved consumers to exclaim profanities, the PSS110 may be the first to beat them to the punch before they even tear into the blister packaging.
Switched On: The misguided marketing of PlaysForSure
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: When longtime industry watchers - some of whom rise before dawn to hear the unique mating calls of rare species of industries - look at Apple's iPod business, they are aghast that Apple's hardware is incompatible with so many music stores and formats and that Apple's music store is incompatible with so many other players. Has Apple learned nothing, they ask, from the history of the Macintosh which, according to business school case study cliches, would have become the dominant platform had it been licensed when it had a clear marketplace lead in graphical interfaces? Perhaps Apple has not, but perhaps there isn't a relevant lesson for the iPod. While inexpensive Macs like the Mac mini are as competitive with Windows machines as they've ever been, let's envision a fantasy world in which Macs are almost universally perceived to be as cost-effective as Windows PCs, all Windows applications are available natively on Macs, and it rains chocolate milk. (The last bit isn't very relevant to the argument, but if you're creating a fantasy world, you might as well throw in everything you want.)
Switched On: The Ambient Dashboard moves the needles
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The first Switched On that discussed Ambient Devices - the company that was heretofore known for its luminous Orb and Beacon monitoring devices - focused on the potential of wireless data around the home rather than on one's wrist. The company's 5-day weather forecasting device, being rolled out by Radio Shack, offered a better value than its radiant radios that were described by one reader as "a one-pixel monitor." Now, Ambient has released its most ambitious information appliances with the Dashboard, which uses three VU meter-like displays to show the status of a wide variety of information. Its three slots are configurable by putting in any of 30 clear plastic FaceCards that ship with the product that reflect changes in basic data such as temperature forecasts, precipitation, and stock indices.
Switched On: Apple, RIAA Should Sue Each Other's Fans
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Apple and the RIAA have had a good partnership. Since the launch of the iTunes Music Store nearly 11 months ago, Apple has sold more than 300 million songs. More significantly, it has shown the recording industry the promise of Internet distribution, reversing a trend that had started with the rise of the original Napster service that rekindled consumers' interest in music However, both organizations still face problems with the pesky dissemination of Internet content. Terabytes of music continue to flow freely through peer-to-peer networks such as KaZaa. The result is that today's multi-millionaire artists must make painful sacrifices such as marrying Kevin Federline. Apple, meanwhile, must struggle against teenagers who must violate the Geneva Convention in order to extract information about mind-blowing new products such as pastel socks. It's clear that the next step for Apple and the RIAA is to join forces in doing what they do best and sue each other's most enthusiastic fans.
Switched On: Stuck in the Middle with UMD
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: After more than a year of fever-pitch hype, the PlayStation Portable didn't need a dramatic corporate shakeup to add more media attention to its launch, but that's what it got. Sony's incoming CEO has been vocal about the company's need to integrate its content and technology assets, and can't help but make progress in a company that has sometimes seemed on the verge of suing itself. To that end, Sony deserves credit for the flexibility it's offered with its relatively expensive and unpopular Memory Stick Pro Duo. Overall, the PSP has gotten a bad rap for its "convergence" features but it's unfair to paint it with a single brush for all content. While, contrary to the company's positioning, the handheld is no competitor to the incumbent iPod, it does benefit from Sony's recent détente with the MP3 format. Furthermore, the PSP – aided by its dramatic, high-contrast screen - is the best portable photo viewing device targeted to consumers; PictBridge capability would have been a nice bonus. Its main drawback is that one has to quit a game in progress in order to view photos. This modality should be familiar for old Mac hands who remember those innocent, carefree days of computing before MultiFinder.
Switched On: The PSP Changes the Game
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Until this week, Nintendo had dispatched so many competitors over the ten years of its virtual monopoly in the handheld gaming space that its reign seemed assured. But maybe those competitors – GameGear, Neo Geo Pocket, Atari Lynx – simply got it wrong. Maybe they lacked the right features or enough marketing support. Or maybe, as Mickey Goldmill put it in Rocky III, "they was good fighters but they wasn't killers." Could a competitor change the rules of the game simply by throwing enough engineering and marketing dollars into a rival system? Judging from the masterpiece of technology and design that is the PlayStation Portable, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
Switched On: The Blossoming of Bluetooth
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: For years, many have been predicting the death of Bluetooth, the underachieving technology that served as the slow and ungainly Stephen Baldwin to brother WiFi's Alec. After WiFi achieved great success, Bluetooth was spun as a technology for simple "cable replacement" (as opposed to wireless technologies that don't replace cables?). Since it had its roots in the cell phone industry, it was expected that Bluetooth phones would flood the market, creating millions of "wireless hubs" that would host a range of connected devices and offering a gateway to the Internet for even more millions of products without cellular radios. But the hubs were slow to come. Without those phones, there weren't many compelling reasons to support Bluetooth.
Switched On: Motorola's cell phones keep getting BETR
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Motorola has been on a hot streak lately with its stylish RAZR, SLVR, ROKR and PEBL mobiles. What could possibly be next? An exclusive preview of its new lineup reveals that was just the beginning: Removing any doubt as to the level of commitment it has to the iDEN network in the wake of the Nextel acquisition by Sprint PCS, Motorola has two groundbreaking iDEN phones in the queue - the OVER and the NEVR. Both handsets prepare customers for the eventual shutting down of iDEN by offering push-to-talk-to-yourself technology. According to Motorola CEO Ed ZANDR, the former handset should appear long before the high-concept later one. "Lots of people think that iDEN is disappearing faster than Starr Jones. But when people ask me about the current state of iDEN technology, I simply tell them it's OVER. When they ask me when we'll see the next generation of iDEN, I tell them it's NEVR."
Switched On: The "i" behind iPod -- innovation, integration, or inertia?
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: More than two decades after the debut of the Macintosh, Apple decided not to license the iPod design generally. The one exception has been HP, which is currently acting more as a reseller than a licensee. So, as with its famous computer, the iPod's fate rests solely in Apple's hands, Those hands have pushed the polyphonic pods toward a dominant market share. However, how much of this has been due to innovation, the integration with iTunes, or simply brand momentum? Early iPods had clear form factor and ease of use advantages versus their competitors. Nowadays, though, the hardware competition has become much stronger, particularly in the "mini" segment that's seeing strong growth. The changes that we've seen since the debut of the iPod have mostly been refinements - thinner designs, color screens, smaller form factors, shuffled controls, and tweaked interfaces. Compare this with Apple's iMac, which has seen two dramatically different form factors since incarnation. One could argue that the slow-growth consumer desktop computer market needs more pizzazz to create excitement, but shouldn't a company be advancing the product that's driving its growth most aggressively?
Switched On: High-resolution photos want to be free
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: It's happened to all of us. You're having a pleasant lunch with your gal pal klatch and in walks Steven Tyler – in slow-motion, no less. Instantly, your inner drunk Wrigley Field fan chasing a foul ball kicks in. After you've trashed the restaurant, all of your Aerosmith-lovin' supermodel lunchmates want a copy of those pictures. And being a tech-savvy stalker, you want to send them the high-resolution originals so that they can crop them or print them at large poster sizes for their own shrines. But now what do you do? The first thing is you probably have to remember to send them all the photos later, because there isn't a way to do it now. E-mail might work if it's a photo or two, but if the rest of Aerosmith had also been there, you might have to either pick and choose a few or send them at reduced resolution. There are also the big three photo sharing services, but there your friends will also be restricted to viewing a reduced size photo or have to pay to download the original resolution if that's even offered. There are also photo sites where you can offer high-resolution originals, but they often require a subscription.
Switched On: Time to write off pen computing
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The last Switched On discussed the shrinking PDA market. Indeed, in the graveyard of failed technology products, the pen computing section is overrun with tombstones - GRiDPad, Zoomer, PenWindows, Momenta, CreuisePAD, Newton, Envoy, Marco, Magic Link, EO, Avigo, Clie, CrossPad, TransNote, Clio, Qbe, Audrey, and Smart Display, to name a few. From innovative startups such as GO Corporation to some of the world's most successful consumer technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony, pens have consistently yielded red ink. History has simply taken the style out of the stylus. In its early days, pen input held promise as an alternative for those who couldn't type. Typing, though, with all of its significant inefficiencies, is rapidly becoming a skill as basic as reading and arithmetic. Apart from the social faux pas of typing in a meeting (a taboo that seems to be fading quickly in corporate conference rooms and universities), keyboards are simply better for taking notes. Furthermore, much like the head of the absent-minded, the keyboard is infrequently lost because it is attached. Contrast that with styli that disappear faster than the CEO at an emergency HP board meeting.
Switched On -- PDAs, a multiple murder mystery
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The consensus diagnosis of the ailing PDA market is that smartphones have been responsible for the demise. Indeed, future smartphones and even lower-end feature phones will likely become the dominant mobile platforms with which we check the contacts and calendars that were the killer apps of the original Palm Pilot. Furthermore, smartphones are theoretically better PIMs than PDAs were because of their wireless connectivity. Smartphone users can take advantage of live remote synchronization or check off a to-do item by, for example, scheduling an appointment in the field or following up on something via a phone call. But looking at the current crop of high-end smartphones hardly reveals a murderers' row off handheld punishers. While such devices continue to improve, handsets such as the Treo 650, Sony Ericsson P910, and HP iPaq h6315 are fraught with compromises and high prices even after carrier subsidy when compared to their closest competitors. As a result, their penetration is low. Many more moderately-priced phones have basic calendar and contact functions, but carriers do a miserable job of helping consumers synchronize those phones with the computers that manage them today.
Switched On: Pimp My Rise
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: History tells us (but only over a quiet candlelit dinner) that the primitive man would often have trouble getting out of the cave early enough for the hunt. Rather than rely on natural stimulants such as daybreak or the consumption of a limb by a predator, he would ask a more reliable cavemate to guide him from slumber. Cave drawings show that the first human to serve this role, named Noodge, pioneered a very effective technique that only distant descendants would appreciate as an advanced application of physics. As far as the silly caveman knew, he was simply being hit in the head with a rock. Fast-forward a few hundred thousand years to when science brought us the alarm clock. While much more sophisticated than the rock of ancient times, it did not prove significantly more effective at waking consumers at first. The product was nearly deemed a failure until someone took the cord used to sling it at the sleeping party and plugged the device into a wall. Consumers rejoiced in the new freedom from concussions, oblivious that they had set in motion a turn of events that would ultimately lead to the much more painful morning radio "zoo" show. Since its early days, the alarm clock has seen many changes. It made the transition to digital display. It incorporated the cassette, the CD, and even in some instances, the cordless phone. Many models now offers such functionality as automatic time setting, dual alarms, countdown timers, battery backup and snooze (a real sleeper feature). An alarm clock feature is conveniently built into many cell phones these days. You can't miss it - fourth deck down, eighth menu item.
Switched On: Motorola will play shuffle-bored on deck
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: With so much of the excitement around the company in the digital music space, Apple is savoring the big slice of the sweet market share pie with which it's been tormented for so long. Enter the iPod shuffle. While the iPod mini stunted the growth of the flash market in 2004, that market may yet spring back as average flash player capacities increase. In any case, the iPod shuffle has proved the product's vaunted "halo effect" in that, when Apple introduced its new iPod in January, everybody stopped talking about how many copies of Halo 2 Microsoft shipped during December. However, there's another flash-based player that Apple briefly mentioned at Macworld Expo that stands to become more strategically important to the computer maker down the road than the iPod shuffle. It's neither designed nor produced by Apple and probably won't even be sold in its stores. Rather, it's the first Motorola cellphone that will be bundled with a version of iTunes.
Switched On: Mac mini, the best media center that isn't
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Apple creates consumer solutions that reflect deep insight with unparalleled integration and attention to detail. However, that focus sometimes requires sacrifices when compared with Microsoft's far-flung initiatives and longer-term ROI window (or, as the company calls it, "patience"). Such has been the case with living room computing. Apple has repeatedly dismissed this notion, with Steve Jobs insisting that consumers want a passive TV experience. That may have been true at some point, but television itself is changing. Picture-in-picture, electronic programming guides, video-on-demand, digital video recording, and the display of other media via network interfaces, DVDs, and flash cards are transforming the medium even more profoundly than the content explosion that cable wrought.
