Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo?
We heard a rumor last week that Sony was working on new handhelds to compete with devices like the iPad. It sounds like a great idea: a PSP with integrated telephony and e-book functionality could perhaps give everyone in the market a run for their money. But I’m a little skeptical — Sony’s Clié line once defined state-of-the-art PDA, but the company ceded the market to Palm long before the PDA was eventually reborn as the smartphone. If Sony’s seriously thinking about getting back to the handheld space, here’s some lessons it might learn from its efforts back in the PDA day.
1. Innovation is great but only when you really innovate. Sony led the market in innovation when it entered the PDA space. It offered the first Palm OS devices with removable storage, the first devices that could play back audio and video, and the first high-resolution color devices. All of these clearly drove the market forward. Then the innovations became less innovative and more “gadgetry.” There were 3D interfaces for the launcher that were confusing and awkward. Some devices had Bluetooth support but not others. Devices like the NZ-90 (pictured above) added so many features into the mix that it was big, bloated, and nearly useless.* In short, the innovations became less compelling and eventually stood in the way of. I’m worried that Sony’s meshing the type of functionality rumored to be its new device without any thought how it all has to work together.
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Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform?
My friend and colleague Harry McCracken recently bought a brand new Droid from Motorola. He says it’s a “loaf of day old bread.” He’s right. The Droid and Android 2.0 were introduced with much fanfare in December, but have already been eclipsed by Android 2.1 running on Google’s Nexus One, and there are some serious ramifications for being behind. For example, Google recently touted the latest mobile version of Google Earth, which is a cool app that you won’t be able to use unless you’re running 2.1. Sure, Google says “Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions,” but that’s most, not every. And what does Google mean when it says “as devices like the Droid get updated…” to 2.1? When will they get updated? Is it any wonder that some Android users are starting to get pangs of buyers remorse?
When Android was announced, I wrote that if “Google can deliver, the impact could be huge,” but I caveated a major issue: Google would need to prevent the market from fragmenting and allow it to succeed where other mobile and desktop Linux implementations had failed. Linux fragmentation remains one of the many reasons the open-source OS has failed to capture a meaningful share of the PC desktop market, and Android is rapidly following a similar path by fragmenting into different versions with different core feature sets, different users experiences and run different applications.
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Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Windows Phone 7 Series
It’s been a rough year for Microsoft in mobile. Despite the launch of impressive products such as the HTC HD2, the company has faced some harsh criticism: “except for gaming, it’s ‘game over’ for Microsoft in the consumer market” was just one of the choicer comments from the past year. Personally, I’d disagree, and I’d actually argue that Windows Mobile 6.5 is underrated in the mobile arena — almost as much as Android is overrated. But no matter. Whether last year’s mobile platforms are good enough or not is irrelevant; no platform from 2009 is good enough for 2010 and beyond, and every mobile platform will need to evolve this year. Last week in Barcelona, we saw the first part of Microsoft’s revamped mobile strategy, and while there are many questions that will need to be answered, there’s a lot to like about what we saw.
First, it’s important to look at the velocity of the mobile space. The tech industry is largely governed by Moore’s Law, which predicts a doubling of semi-conductor density roughly every eighteen months, but the mobile space is moving at a rate of change that’s closer to every eighteen minutes. What happened yesterday simply doesn’t matter nearly as much as it once might have. Just look at two of the hottest companies in mobile, Apple and Google. Just a few years ago, neither would have been part of the conversation, much less at the center of it.
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Entelligence: Windows Phone 7 Series originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Two DVR features I’m waiting for
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
I love DVRs. I have been using them for over a decade, and my original model is still in use. Whether it’s a PC-based solution, something that comes from your cable provider or the granddaddy of all DVRs, TiVo, a DVR totally changes the way you watch TV, especially if you don’t like watching a lot of TV but care a lot about the TV that you do watch.
Last week TiVo sent out word of an event coming in March with a mysterious tagline. Even as good as my current TiVo Series 3 is, it could even be better, and while we speculate about what TiVo will announce, there’s two features I’d like to see.
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Entelligence: Two DVR features I’m waiting for originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Another view of Microsoft’s creative destruction
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
Last week, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by former Microsoft executive Dick Brass, in which he took the company to task on many issues. Brass was a VP at Microsoft who left in 2004, and prior to his departure he worked on various projects from e-books and ClearType to the Tablet PC. I’ve met Dick through the years and he’s a super smart guy, but I’m not sure I agree with everything he wrote in his op-ed. Dick argues that internal politics and unwillingness to do “risky” hardware have led Microsoft away from innovation. Clearly, Dick has a much better view regarding Microsoft’s internal politics than I do, but some of the examples that he uses to bolster his argument are a little off base, at least in my opinion.
Dick cites Clear Type, Tablet and Mobile as examples of innovative products that Microsoft managed to somehow bungle due to internal politics, and says that Xbox is at “at best an equal contender in the game console business.” Let’s examine those claims.
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Entelligence: Another view of Microsoft’s creative destruction originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Context is the killer application for mobile
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
We live in a world of diverse mobile devices. Laptops, smartphones and everything in between define the mobile experience of the 21st century. But what is the killer application for mobile computing? We all know the theory of killer apps — they’re the reason and the purpose people invest in new devices. The killer app in the early days of PCs was the VisiCalc spreadsheet. PageMaker and the creation of desktop publishing were the killer apps for the GUI-based PC, most notably the Macintosh. But for mobile, it’s not as clear; some people think the killer app for mobile is email, while other say it’s the mobile web. Personally, I don’t think there’s one specific killer application — I think the killer app for mobile is simply context.
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Entelligence: Context is the killer application for mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: Lessons from the iPad launch
It was quite the week for Apple, first with its best-ever earnings and then the launch of the iPad. While Apple didn’t create this category of device, it did answer the fundamental question of why this form factor needs to exist. The meta lesson is that the story told is as important as the hardware, software and services being sold — and while everyone may not be convinced, I do think Apple will win over the majority of a skeptical audience with high expectations. But there’s also four important lessons that Apple taught the market this week, as it enters a space that’s been mostly a failure.
1. Define what your product does. The first thing Apple did was answer that question immediately and then define what the product needed to do. Apple explained what capabilities need to be in the this class of device and then went on to show how each of those features not only worked but were optimized for the iPad. That’s something we’ve seen lacking in this category to date.
2. Leverage what you’ve done before. I believe the iPad is likely to do well with consumers as it leverages Apple’s previous successes with the iPod and the iPhone. At the base level, that’s compatibility and synchronization with iTunes as well as backward compatibility with existing applications. That’s important — as a user I can use my existing content library and my application collection. It also means that iPad has 140,000-plus applications at launch. But it’s more than that. Apple is not only leveraging its ecosystem of devices and software, it’s leveraging the lessons it spent a decade teaching consumers. Apple taught its market about MP3 players, digital music, smartphones, capacitive multitouch screens and mobile apps. It can now go directly to selling the form factor, as well as new features such as productivity and e-books.
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Entelligence: Lessons from the iPad launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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