the future of pop machines

from special K: have you seen this? http://www.coca-colafreestyle.com/index.jsp they have them around here now.

the hotel TV inflection point

we're at an interesting point of time right now from a hotel TV point-of-view ... every now and then you'll still get a room with tube TVs in the US, although flat panels predominate.

in 5 years, i doubt you'll see tubes anywhere in the states.

the future of a rising tide

good article about rising water levels and the marshall islands. i knew a woman in college who is marshallese ... i'm going to try and track herdown to see what she thinks.

http://m.yahoo.com/w/ynews/article/topstories/16?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxml.news.yahoo.com%2Fus%2Fnews%2Frss%2Frichstoryrss.html%3Fu%3D%2Fap%2F20101206%2Fap_on_sc%2Fclimate_disappearing_nations&.ts=1291684006&.intl=US&.lang=en&ref_w=frontdoors

tip jars

in the past i never thought i'd see those damn things on every fricken
service counter in the future.

i just used an electronic boarding pass ...

... off my hiptop for the first time in my life. really really fast.

very accurate.

and to think, i lived in the silicon valley for 20 years ... and it happened in vegas.

Hunters Exchange Fire Over What's Fair Game

great article about the past, and possible future, of hunting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704518104575546253717892686.html?

data of the present

•    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of
the people.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share
of residential housing net worth in the United States than all
individual Americans put together.
•    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held
about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
•    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States
now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation's wealth.
•    Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States
are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20
years.
•    Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in
the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
•    The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of
our national income.
(from the article here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=%5EDJI,%5EGSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA)

Eating the Red Tablet

Above all else, the Silicon Valley focuses on technology.  There are only two speeds in this part of the world: fast and faster.  There's also extreme, and often warped, focus on the companies that do business here -- especially Google and Apple.

Today's release of Apple's iPad marks a true red-letter event.  I haven't seen this many people worked up over a software or hardware release since the original iMac (that was Steve Jobs's first "true" computer on his return to Apple).  People, especially the Apple zealots, are insane; I mean frothing at the mouth-and-rolling-their-eyes-and-drink-no-water crazy.

It's too late to give these "people" the proper dose of Rabies Immune Globulin -- not that they would have taken it anyway -- but my prediction is there's a much harsher fate awaiting the faithful: the chilling bite of a failed gizmo.

I have an usual and unique connection to this product.  In 1993 I was the Human Interface Evangelist at Apple, replacing (the heavy-over-hyped and self-qualified) Bruce Tognazzini.  One of the products under my wing was a thing called the PenMac.

The PenMac was a tablet computer with a stylus -- designed to be a super-portable-tuck-it-under-your-arm device that would run a robust subset of System 7.

As an evangelist, I pulled a move that I've never heard of, before or since -- I started a movement inside the company to kill the product before it was released.  Evangelists are supposed to support and hype products, not kill them; but I felt then the way I still do today -- I can only support a product I can believe in.  My technological word -especially when I had the backing of Apple and was writing for InfoWorld- carried a lot of weight.  It was important to me to not lie to the public.

The reason I helped to kill the PenMac was simply this: I felt there was no market. There was no discernible reason, need or market gap that the device could fill or satisfy.

Things are a little different now, but not a lot.

In the iPad's camp you have some pretty strong positive points that didn't exist in 1993:

• The Internet as a whole
• ITunes and associated content
• Portable book content (ala Kindle)
• And to a lesser extent the iPod and iTouch (giving a wider population familiarity with Apple products, producing what wags call the "halo effect")

The biggest competitor to the iPad, without question, is the portable computer -- and at the iPad introductory $500 price point, especially the Netbook.

And it's right here that we have a problem.

Now, Steve Jobs doesn't come from my don't-hype-what-you-don't-believe-in school-of-thought.  He'll gladly, and quickly, promote anything that might further the fortunes of the companies he is most heavily involved with (Disney and Apple) -- all the while holding a fairly heavy disdain of the world population as a whole.  Never forget, this is the man who: called color on computer screens "overrated" when he released the original Macintosh, ran a PC for months after re-joining Apple, and when asked at the most recent shareholders' meeting what kept him up at night said, "Shareholders' meetings."

Steve will tell you that Netbooks are worthless and overrated.  He'll also tell you that the iPad is better than the Kindle.

What Steve won't tell you is that Apple can't compete in the Netbook market because once you strip away everything else, Apple wouldn't have a price-competitive product.  He can't tell you want it's like to own a Kindle -- because he doesn't use one.  He also won't tell you exactly how you should carry your iPad if you already have an iPhone and an iPod.

The iPad has a few obvious problems: no multi-tasking, captive applications (meaning you have to pay the Apple price), no Flash support (Jobs will rail on Adobe about Flash, but the truth of the matter is Apple fell asleep at the wheel relative to display -- if they'd been paying attention, Apple would have the standard, not Adobe), no USB, no keyboard.

Apple fanboys, being what they are, will be quick to either dismiss many of these complaints or throw out the ever-constant, "that will happen in the future."  (This is so pervasive that my pal Bo3b believes that when you buy Apple you are always buying the future, never the present.)

There are some other problems endemic to tablets:

• Touch screen is a bad idea.  For some reason, people in the 21st century haven't yet figured out that you don't want to be touching the item that you are also supposed to be viewing.  You end up not only needing to be sure your screen stays in touch registration, but also looking through the grunge, smears and scratches that develop as you use it.
• Tablets in general, and especially the iPad all but demand that you use them two-handed (some gestures require two-hands on the iPad), but in a mobile environment, often times that's the very last thing you want to do.  For this example, don't think "different," think "riding on a bus."
• Typing on a screen is absurd with no feedback.  Sure you can get a keyboard, but if you do, you have to carry that and a dongle along.  And when you do that you start moving further and further away from "portable."
• Although I haven't handled one yet, I'm fairly certain they'll be easily dropped.  (In fact, I would venture that 100 people have already dropped their iPads today).
• With the exception of the Kindle, there aren't any screens on the market that are easily visible in broad daylight.  Think "standing on a street corner."  The iPad could be, but I'll bet you it's not.

And don't forget the US economy is still perceived as hurting ... and when that's true, people don't spend money.  Ignore what the out-of-work sociopaths try and tell you out here -- the Valley economy is, even in the worst of times, healthy (Sunnyvale housing prices -- the very epicenter of the Silicon Valley -- rose 30% in the last year).  That, in combination with the inflated salaries of the area, gives people the inability to see that $500+ is a lot of money for a "toy."  People here will pay it without blinking, but when you live in an area where that number may equal the price of your rent payment, the story is different.

Mix this all together, spill it out, and I say right here, right now, the iPad will be a loser.  In the same way that the way Macintosh actually changed computing was to put mice on all Windows machines, I think the best Apple can do here is get people to pay attention to other/cheaper tablets.

It'll sell remarkably well out-the-gate.  Apple always gets more rapid early adoption than other companies (and the press never mentions that.)  But when it fails, Apple will do exactly as David Nagel said in the corporate communications meeting all those years ago, "We'll declare victory, stop manufacture and move on to the next thing."

There is one very important thing to note here, though.  I know a lot of people in the Silicon Valley, ranging from Chairmen of the Board of billion dollar corporations to QA bottom feeders.  Of all these people, the guy I know who has the absolute best understanding of portable computing is Fat Paulie.  He knows more about this stuff than you and I combined (and is so deeply embedded in this world that there's a gold Sumsung cell bearing his name).  And Paulie claims this iPad is a winner.  It will be so huge that it will actually define a whole new category of computing.

In closing I wanted to capture an email Bo3b sent to me about this last night.

***

The media is of course awash with iPad mania today.  The curious thing to me is that everyone is assuming this is a raging success before it's even shipped.

5 million in a heartbeat?  I see an analyst predict 2 million to 6 million in the first year.

I see the Times wanting $17/month simply for access to their news. I see these apps doubled in price.  I see the venture fund that doubled in size in order to push for more iPad apps. I see people writing that this is the savior of books, news, and magazine publishing.

This is all very curious to me, for an unknown product in an unknown niche. People are assuming that anything Apple creates is a winner, no if ands or buts.

I just can't see it.  A $500 toy that is good for web browsing does not seem to fit into the success category of either an iPod or an iPhone- where it's clear that everyone could use them.


***


4/5 addendum:
i learned yesterday that you can't print from an ipad.  if true, this automatically, and nearly completely, kills the market for senior citizens ... they view computers in an "older" way and really like to print.


***


{side notes:

• with the exception of steve jobs, all the people listed here used to run mac OS, but now run windows.
• i own stock in both apple and intel.
• this article was written on a $300 asus netbook in a round table pizza parlor -- i wouldn't have been able to do it on an ipad.}

bilingual computer games of the present

here in the future nearly everyone in the first world has a computer, or access to one. they've been smaller, cheaper and more sociologically important than we imagined in the past.

like in the past, computers can be tedious and annoying, but they're still mostly fun and fascinating.  they're also a LOT easier to use now ... easy enough that you don't need to be able to program to use them -- the vast majority of users don't even know how.

there are tons of games and millions of ways to waste time socially, both with friends and people you don't even actually know, but here's one of my favorites ...

we now have software tools letting you translate from one language to another.  they're extremely fast, taking only fractions of a second to do a change, and can translate from-and-to all the major languages in the world.  (english, by the way, has become widely used -- in a large part because of its pervasiveness in rock n' roll, believe it or not.)

these translators are also sublimely inaccurate.  you can almost always tell what something means, but the translations are riddled with funny and/or bewildering errors.  and this, in turn, lets you play a game ...

you can take a sentence, translate it to another language and translate it back to see how far afield the translation has gone ...

for example, the sentence:

tomorrow i will ride my bike to school

in spanish becomes:

i mañana en mi bicicleta a la escuela.


but when translated back is:


i am on my bike to school.


so the game you can play is to translate something back and forth between languages until the sentence never changes in english, then show someone that sentence and have them guess what the original sentence was before it went insane.  now sure, i'm the first to admit this isn't the funnest game to ever be invented in the future, but you have to believe me here, it's not the worst (and it's way better than most of the stuff shown on future TV -- a medium so poor that i don't even watch it).


so after translating a sentence back and forth out of icelandic (and don't wig out -- nobody lives there, even in the future -- i just use the language because i can) here's my final draft ...


all d4rw1n to do is give me three oranges, a rabbit and basketball and I will take him to be the greatest man never born.


before you guess, i'll give you a hint.  here's the same sentence finalized with a different translation program (and believe it or not, this stuff in the future is all free -- you don't even have to check it out of the library or anything ... this time i'm switching back and forth between russian):


entire d4rw1n must make in order to give to me 3 oranges, rabbits and basketballs and I [rasmotrim], which was large always oh persona.


don't be fooled by "you get what you pay for."  here in the future there's a lot more free stuff and a lot of it's good -- this just happens to be a bit of a soft spot.  (and no, i have no explanation for the [rasmotrim] comment -- that word means as much to me here in the future as it did in the past ... which is to say, nothing.)


think think think.  what could it be?  well the first one is actually pretty close.  here's my original sentence:


all d4rw1n has to do is give me three oranges, a rabbit and a basketball and i will consider him to be the greatest person ever born.

in closing, as we say in english-japanese-english, "And the reader who becomes the thought and love, I acquired favorite farewell value from future."

the meta topic

from the point of view of the past, one of the things that would have surprised someone about the future is how little we talk about the future in a good sense now.  in the past there was an obsession with the future -- most of it was expressed in science fiction, but much of it was talked about directly in science fact ... we'll go to the moon and establish a base ... we'll farm the oceans ... alchemy will become a reality and we'll figure out how to turn lead into gold.

now whenever we mention the future, it's nearly always in terms of tragedy or trouble lurking just over the horizon ... global warming will kill the entirety of the planet ... there will be a world food shortage ... the oceans buckle under human-caused environmental strain.

(as an aside, my opinion is that much of this future pessimism is caused by television news ... feeding a society that seems to infatuated with fear ... but i'm not wholly informed here -- i don't watch TV.)

in the past there was some talk of trouble in the future, but nearly always it revolved around one of two things: population explosion, or seemingly inevitable nuclear war with what was then known as the USSR.  but unless you were someone like robert mcnamara, you didn't really worry about this stuff -- you left that to the bigger wigs as you tried to figure out just how big the flares in your pants should be.

the world today holds twice as many people as it did in 1969.  given that, if you showed someone from the past the world today, from a ecological point-of-view  (now we say "green") they'd probably be shocked at how little air pollution there is ... and for good reason, it was far worse before things like smoke stack scrubbers and catalytic converters.

if you asked someone from the past to guess what the cleanliness of the future would be like from here, they'd venture that a 40-year future would be even cleaner, given the vector we're on right now.

whether or not that's true doesn't matter.  i think the sociological meta question is more interesting: if we've done this well to this point, why do we no longer have optimism?