The iPad isn’t what you think it is

Apple’s stock has tanked since the iPad announcement.  Apparently too many people were expecting a surprise or a miracle beyond the leaks.  Even without having seen or touched an iPad I’d argue that the naysayers are missing the big picture.    I too wish it had multitasking (possibly coming in a software update this summer), front and back cameras and a few other features.  But that’s my techie self speaking.  This is not a techie device (at least not in version 1.)

Computers today are too complicated.  Think about it.  With Mac or Windows you’ve got to learn what applications and windows and browsers and files are.  You have to keep track of what you are doing and what the other distracting elements are.  What’s unique about the iPhone (and Android)?  It has no files.  While it has applications, they are each focused on a single task.  And when you start one, the whole device transforms and becomes dedicated to that task.  This was Jeff Raskin’s (one of the inventors of the Macintosh) vision.

It’s a marvel of ease of use.  There’s no help system, it’s not needed.  Everyone can figure it out immediately.  You don’t have to remember where you stored a file, each app takes care of it’s own data.  Photos?  They are in a database.  Same for email.  Sure it’s limited and can’t replace a desktop computer, but for many people it’s all they need.

So why is the iPad going to be successful?  As TechCrunch points out this is your mother or father’s computing device.  Its not particularly useful for day-to-day computing.  But its going to be fantastic for carrying around the house.

Picture someone sitting in their easy chair with a iPad.  Read a book. Check email.  Look for something on Amazon.  Play bridge with someone across the world at a web-site.  Use it as a remote for your TV.  For each of those tasks, this device is perfect.  Easy to use, no learning curve (well, maybe for bridge) and if you do get confused, press the Home button and start over.  It only ever does one thing at a time and when it does that one thing, the whole machine is dedicated to it.  And it seems that the iPad is crazy fast and responsive which is incredibly important for a morphing device.

It won’t be long before more web-sites have iPad/iPhone/Android specific interfaces that take advantage of HTML5 and browser databases to provide services that are tailored to this experience replacing current Flash interfaces, unless Apple and Adobe work something out.  By next holiday season, I predict this will be the top gift for parents (for people who can afford it of course).

For techies, the iPad will come into its own in future versions as the missing pieces, cameras, projectors etc are added to it.   That’s normal.  By the way, everything here is probably the true for future tablets that will come out running Google’s Chrome OS.  They won’t be as polished of course…

Here’s the really wild prediction.  I believe Apple’s true long term vision is to migrate this user experience back towards their larger computers.  Steve Jobs talks about Apple being the world leader in mobile computing devices.  These devices need a different user experience and Apple understands that if they want to migrate people up from iPods to iPhones to MacBooks, they need a seamless experience.  This is a consumer version of Digital Equipment Corp’s strategy in the 1980′s and I think its going to work, again.

What do you think?

Read the whole caption…

Read the whole Description

“Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations.  The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days.  I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.  Great stories.  But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).  By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that.  My yard couldn’t take it either.  I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.”

(I don’t know the actual source of this image/story.  But if anyone knows, please let me know so I can give proper credit.)

Never Bored — When the kids are bored

I’m very excited that we (Mainely Software) have released our first iPhone/iPod touch app.  Never Bored is the answer for when your kids says: “I’m booo–rrrred”.  It’s got hundreds of games, activities & fun suggestions for home, car or anywhere for a range of ages.  Please try it, rate it, and let us know what you think!  It’s available in the iTunes app store, and there is more info on our website.

Does cable channel bundling give us lower prices?

I had an interesting Twitter exchange with @comcastcares, Frank Eliason who does a great job trying to improve people’s image of Comcast, no small task.  I told him, that I’d like to see TV channels unbundled by cable providers so I wouldn’t have to pay for channels I’d never ever watch.  Frank replied that bundling actually lowers costs and pointed to an NY Times article on the subject.  http://bit.ly/jXVO3  He later followed up and told me that programming costs are going up 9% next year, though not YET passed on.

So there are three arguments from the FCC’s dueling studies and Frank’s comments:

1) Overall costs to consumers are lower because they share the costs, like an insurance plan.

2) If consumers were to pick and choose, some (many?) cable channels would disappear, presumably this is a bad outcome for society.

3) Programming costs are increasing, and the cable companies are fighting on behalf of consumers against the greedy content providers.

Let’s look at these arguments. So, let’s say that the article is correct and to maintain revenue in an unbundled world, ESPN would have to raise its rate from $3 for all households to $12 to just those households who want the programming.  Sounds fair.  But suppose further that people refused to pay that high price, maybe consumers have an aversion to paying more than $6/month/channel.  So ESPN’s revenues drop in half.  Again, where’s the problem?  ESPN doesn’t have a right to their current revenue.  They would have to do cut costs like any business.  They could drop some of their channels with few viewers, bid less for rights to events or raise advertising rates.  In the end they would survive and baseball players might get paid less.  And households who don’t value ESPN would save $36/year, on this channel alone.

But the 2nd argument above says that lessor channels that don’t have ESPN’s big draw wouldn’t be able to attract enough viewers to survive.  In the NYTimes article they claim that BET would have to raise its rates 1,200 percent.  And if they didn’t attract viewers they would go dark.  Again, in the rest of the economy, with books, magazines, movies, stores etc, that’s how it works.  Why should these channels get what are effectively public subsidies?  I enjoy the BigTen channel (included in Verizon’s basic tier), but since they carry virtually no advertising, they are making all their money off the monthly fee and I don’t see why my neighbors should have to pay for it.  Why not move the channel to PPV or on-demand on the internet?

It’s a social good that we subsidize so many channels for diverse tastes and interests.  As if these hundreds of cable channels were adding culture.  The reality is many are just recycling material as an excuse to get at the monthly fees.  But the real argument is, who’s deciding what channels get subsidized?  That would the cable companies.  So, what would happen if channels only got money when people watched them?  First, they’d be like every other product in the world.  Second, many would disappear, or merge so that they’d have a higher percentage of desirable content or they’d move to the internet and explore new business models.  Our economy is based on the idea that if the content is worthy, people will pay for it.

Finally, let’s look at the argument that programming costs are going up 9% next year.  Since core inflation is much lower, and rapidly advancing technology in cameras and editing tools are rapidly lowering most production costs and reducing the number of people required, its hard to see why programming costs are increasing.  Lets imagine that the Food Network had to get people to sign-up, in the same way a magazine like Bon Appetit does.  Do we really think that they’d be raising prices this year?  Or would they find a way to lower costs.

To see if the cable companies are really looking to lower costs for consumers, let’s look at their high speed internet business.  Prices have steadily increased even as their costs for bandwidth follow general technology trends are and are dropping rapidly.  Looking at Comcast, their defense is that they are offering much higher speeds than they were a few years ago.  Of course, it happens that they increased speeds only after Verizon offered much higher speeds as they built their FIOS network.  So, the driver of what Comcast delivers in internet services is competition, not their internal costs.  Yet, they argue that for TV the reverse is true.

Ok, that’s my opinion, but what do consumers what?  As a proxy, take the explosive growth of Hulu and other original content internet sites.  An increasing number of young people, the media consumers of the next 30 years, are opting to drop their expensive cable to watch TV on their computer.  Why would they do this?  Hulu’s quality is vastly inferior to the HD delivered by cable.  It suffers from glitches and most people have to sit uncomfortably in front of a computer.  These people (and the numbers are growing rapidly) are voting with their wallets that they won’t pay inflated prices for content they don’t want.

Finally, lets look at Comcast.  While Verizon has invested heavily in their FIOS network, Comcast has been investing in content and is currently rumored/expected to buy NBC/Universal.  Now, lets imagine a world where NBComcast creates a channel and Comcast TV agrees, on behalf of all of their customers, to buy it for $1.50/month/subscriber.  Ratings don’t matter.  The channels doesn’t need to sell any ads (which it can’t because it has no viewers.)  But Comcast makes millions per month.  In what way does this benefit consumers?

The bottom line is that the current system of bundling cable channels is anti-competitive and raises costs for consumers by sheltering channels with virtually no viewers and hiding price signals from consumers as to which channels they’d actually prefer.  It also has the effect of allowing content providers to raise prices indiscriminately since again, consumers are insulated from the actual buying decision by cable companies who have little incentive to lower the price.

I am not among those arguing that content should be free.  People work hard to produce original content and should get paid for it.  I only argue that the cable companies, if they want to maintain their position as gatekeepers, need to offer products more competitively.  They are many ways to accomplish this.  We could be billed per program watched (as with mobile phones), or with various bundles.  Current technology makes it possible to be very creative with offering and billing. And I am pretty sure that the cable executives see this coming, but are milking the existing oligopoly for all the excess profits they can, while the going is still good.

So what if it works?

The thing I still don’t understand about Dick Cheney and his apologists on Fox News and elsewhere is the basic issue.  Even if torture works (and that’s debatable), the point is that we are not KGB/Gestapo.  This is America, we don’t torture here!

But you do have to admire Cheney’s persistence.  How did he know that waterboarding someone 132 times wasn’t enough?  That 133 was the magic number.  Amazing.

Its been a while

I haven’t posted in a long time but with my iPhone it seems like time. I am planning a major revamp, just need to find time.

Wait, wait. Ok, you can tell me now.

Last week, we were in Chicago and went to see the taping of Wait Wait, don’t tell me, our favorite radio show which was being taped at Millennium Park in Chicago. Kate got there early and managed to hold some 4th row seats in the center. It was just what you’d expect from an NPR crowd. Older, polite, friendly. The highlight was the interview with Patrick Fitzgerald, the man who prosecuted Scooter Libby. Again, no surprise, the crowded was for him and pretty annoyed at the President. When Peter Sagal asked Fitzgerald, “so you live in the city, but what do you think about commuting?” the crowd went wild.

Hello world!

It’s been an interesting summer.  Kids are at camp, working on www.somewhere.com.  But for fun, it’s my new iPhone.  I’ve been on the leading edge (or close to it) for a lot of consumer electronic goodies but this is the first one in a long time that joins the pantheon of the original 128k Mac and Tivo Series 1.  It’s flawed, it’s fun and it’s useful.  All of which contribute to it’s appeal.