Bit of a delay on this one.., still nursing my CES hangover and haven’t been writing too much.
I covered some MS stuff while at the show and posted a write up over at GigaOm’s NewTeeVee site.
The title is a bit dramatic after going through one of their editors, but basically Microsoft is really kind of silently mounting a solid standing in the living room by battling on two fronts, one direct to consumers with Xbox, the other via the service providers and Mediaroom.
Getting around to some CES posts finally after 4 days of non stop Vegas action. My first CES post will be about the Palm Pre which is probably number 1 or 2 on the list of exiciting things introduced at the show. Lets get to it.
First, let me say that I have two friends at Palm, one on the hardware team, one on the software, and they have been uber jazzed on the device and OS for the past 6 months. They are not the type of people to get over exicited about technology or “drink the kool-aid”, so I knew what they have been working on has to have been something worthwhile to the marketplace. After visiting the Palm meeting room on thursday for some experience with the device the results actually exceed my expectations.
I have been working with wireless technology since 1999 on the application side. I wouldn’t go as far as Scoble dramatics saying the Pre made me cry, lets just say it gave me goose bumps and made me happy I have been holding out for purchasing a new device even though I am not the biggest Sprint fan.
You could tell the Apple influence from Rubenstein with the invite only meeting room that was decked out and designed very nicely to provide a complete experience down to the wood panels they used on the base of the overhead projectors.
They had four demo stations set up with overhead projectors outputing to TV’s. I took some video and pictures of various pieces that stuck out most and are posting them here.
First up is a demo of the contact management/usage experience. The way they are trying to include social type functionality and represent a single contact with data points from various inputs (demo shows phone, outlook, facebook) is a nice touch:
The next piece that stuck out was the calendar. Following suit with the contacts management you can manage and view calendar items from various inputs (demo shows phone, outlook, google). The user experience is very well thought out. They know they provide a somewhat smaller screen so they created an “accordian view” for calendar space that is not occupied with any items:
In the final video you see some general user experience shots including the fantastic ribbon feature from the gesture feature. The addition of touch/gesture from the bar below the display is a great new introduction of usabitlity for the handset market:
Again, some follow up posts on things Palm needs to do to step it up on for their WebOS but while I am still on cloud 9 with the first experience let me touch on the things that stand out and what makes it dificult for all the other players:
First off I am not going to include Symbian, Windows or Linux Mobile, or any homegrown OS’s here.
WebOS
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This thing is redirkulous and is really the gem of this initial announcemt. What isn’t mentioned too much is most of the writeups around the web is that the entire user experience and everything you see IS web based from the menus to the “card view” to the applicaitons. This thing is a linux kernel and webkit, period. Everything you see is <divs> and all the snazy animations everyone is drooling over is a native javascript physics library…, which of course can be used by your apps.
I don’t mean to be mean, but between the idiots online and two gentlemen I experienced in the Palm meeting room who said Palm should have chosen Perl for their app creation people are off their rockers if they think developers won’t flock to this. The MAIN thing they need to worry about is getting the devices and OS in front of people. They still haven’t mentioned other devices that might come out in the first year OR if they will provide the OS to other CE manufacturers. If any sort of traction is gained thousands of apps will be created is the shortest timeframe compared to Apple and Android. Again.., sorry for calling people idiots, but anyone who compares programming Java or Objective C to html/js/css should not comment about anything engineering related ever again.
On the topic of html/js/css, lots of doubters out there saying the WebOS is going to fall short of providing developers what they need. I have some thoughts on this.., but remember, EVERYTHING you see on a WebOS screen is html/js/css. Palm is going to provide proprietary js hooks/events/callbacks for contact/calendar/location access. I have a post here wishing for the day that the core of a mobile OS would be available via javascript and it appears that day is here.
Form Factor
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The Apple fan boys can talk smack all they want but the iPhone, besides being fantastic, IS a large device. I long for the iPhone Nano.., anything that is about 20% smaller than the current device. Palm has solved this with the Pre by having a smaller device, full touch screen and the slide out key pad to satisfy the RIM fan boys.
Reasons why Apple should be worried:
1) Full touch screen and slide down keyboard. Apple wont go there. RIM, Android phones and Palm own this combo. You can say it doesnt matter but any device smaller than an iPhone makes all softkeys tough to work with, just look at the new LG devices.
2) Applications running in the background. Apple better get on this quick. Android and the rest do it. Becuase the WebOS is entirely browser based every app is esentially run as a tab or a page, thus allowing them to run a large number of apps concurrently while maintaining performance.
3) User Experience and design. For once Apple has been trumped by someone on these items. The the gesture feature and card experience, not to mention the Touchstone charger (it is awesome) are a step up. Even if Apple releases new updates to software and hardware before the Pre comes out that match this (and they wont), they will be branded as copiers.
4) SDK cannot compete except for 3D graphics and games. Some might argue, but I dont think this is too big a deal right now when it comes to “the masses”.
Reasons why Google should be worried:
1) Palm, like Apple currently owns the stack end to end making it impossible for others to fully compete. By owning the hardware and software the user experience can rise to a whole new level as evident with Microsoft announcing this week they are going to cut out a good amount Windows Mobile devices to limit the number of CE companies they have to work with.
2) The experience and smoothness is just plain better. I have used all three devices (Pre, iPhone, G1) and the G1 is by far the worst experience. The animations are pretty slow and the initial browser is shite. Android runs multiple apps at the same time but again a slight slowness/lagging in the experience blows.
3) Again, the SDK cannot compete given a solid deployment of WebOS units.
Ok.., enough Palm fan boy action for now. I have other posts to write before getting to the things I DONT like about the Pre and WebOS as well as stuff they better include in the SDK.
I have got to see what the deal is with Twitter. After months and months of wondering why the hell people rave so much about the site I am going to try it out and see if it really generates the value add people say when it come to broadcasting and gaining followers.
You will notice going forward.., at least during this trial period that I have placed my twitter feed into the Feed On section on the sites side bar.
More cloud computing news involving Microsoft today via The Register.
At a partner event in London Mr. Ballmer mentioned that at the Professional Developers Conference Microsoft will announce a new OS dubbed “Windows Cloud”.
Ballmer metioned that this is just a working title and that the OS will have an actual name, hopefully one that doesnt have the word cloud in it. Ballmer hints at geographic based replication and edge style computing will be built into the OS and that it will be one of the unique features that the new OS will provide developers.
This news is on the heals of the announcement from Amazon earlier today announcing that AWS will support Windows images and SQL Server on EC2. This is all definite evidence that Microsoft’s software + services vision driven by Mr Ozzie will be taking shape over the next 12 months. Be on the look out also for some big announcements from Microsofts data center team as they have been working away for the past couple years on building out ~$4/5 billion dollars worth of new facilities world wide.
Netflix with two big announcements and launches today.., first they are going to start streaming video from Starz. This is a pretty significant deal as if it is successfull Netflix could be a few strategic moves away from becoming the ultimate ondemand provider. They already have other providers in CBS and Disney and cut a deal with LG to support Netflix streaming to a new up and coming LG Blu Ray player.
Second, and a piece of news I am enjoying more is that they have opened up their system with a new API and the launch of their developer site. This is great for any service based around entertainment whether it be TV or movies. This should provide for some nice passive traffic and audience gains and in the longrun make it a good datasource competitor to IMDB.
Apple makes great designed products and people love them for it. Does this mean that Jobs and co should be able to just boss whomever they want around when it comes to digital media sales?
TimeOnline is running a story about Apple threatening to close down iTunes if the royalty rates are increased for digital download from 9 cents a piece to 15 cents.
This is quite a large percentage increase but if Apple wants to complain about things and threaten closure they should disclose exactly what the cost/profit structure is on their side.
If all is said and done Apple is only making 7/8 cents per song and this royalty hike is going to kill pretty much 100% of their margin, then yes, they should be complaining and trying to nock a couple cents off it.
If Apples expenses are 60/70 or even 80 cents all said done.., or god forbid less.., they should shut the hell up and eat it. 7 cents time the next billion downloads is a chunck of change to could go to more iPod billboards around the world but threatening to close down b/c of it is just them throwing another temper tantrim.