If you have been following the gaming scene you must have noticed it. The mood is changing over the PS3. Just one year after it was introduced, Sony’s latest console is getting better press and less hate from bloggers. As a results sales are rocketing and Sony looks again like a strong contender.
Many credit the PS3 revival on the US$100 price cut recently announced by Sony. My personal opinion is that gamers are finally starting to understand the true potential of the PS3. Since last year, HDTVs have continued to gain popularity and are now becoming mainstream. HDTV owners want high-def content and the PS3 delivers both high definition games and movies right out of the box. Suddenly, the Nintendo Wii doesn’t look as cool as last year and buyers are left with only two viable options and the PS3 is the cheapest. The timely release of some great exclusive titles such as Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is also helping. These games are finally showing what this console is capable of.
Last year Sony got a lot of bad press for releasing the PS3 too late. It turns out that they may have launched it one year too soon.
A week ago Oracle announced at OpenWorld their new virtualization solution, unimaginatively called Oracle VM. I can see why Oracle is launching such a product. After all, customers have been adopting virtualization enthusiastically and Oracle has been extremely slow to adopt to the new reality. In fact, until last week, Oracle would not provide support to customers unable to reproduce a problem on a non-virtualized environment. That was a pretty lame policy, considering that most enterprise customers have ben using virtualization products for years.
While this announcement doesn’t help VMWare customers at all, since that environment is still unsupported, at least it gives them an option and it is a free one, which is always nice. However, many questions remain. The most important is obviously performance. Oracle is quick to point out that their product is three times more efficient than comparable solutions. Note that they say efficient, not faster. What does that mean? Who are they comparing to? Nobody knows. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, we all know that Oracle is primarily a well oiled marketing machine that displays little respect for the truth. Remember Oracle’s Unbreakable campaign? Enough said, I rest my case.
For Oracle customers, this new virtualization solution may translate into some savings which in turn may help make Oracle’s value proposition more attractive. That was probably why Oracle released this product in the first place, and it makes a lot of sense. The software industry is very competitive and that is driving prices down. By delivering a relatively simple piece of software for free that can help customers save money by impacting someone else’s business, they can protect their own products. That is a smart move, at least in the short term.
I just listened to a podcast where Microsoft’s Ken Pawlak was talking about the incredible potential of ultra-mobile PCs connected to the Internet through mobile operators. What struck me was the enormous amount of data he had to back his claims. The company had gone though a tremendous effort to understand their potential customers, interviewing face-to-face 15,000 persons in five different emerging countries. They used the data not only to size the potential market but also to define the devices hardware characteristics. They found out that the screen size should be somewhere between 9 and 12 inches and that customers absolutely want the device to include a DVD player.
My question is, do people really want a DVD or do they think they need one because they can’t imagine a portable device without it. Personally I seldom use my laptop’s DVD burner. In fact I am pretty sure that I have only used it three times over the lat year, just to install software (Leopard, iWork and iLife). That means that if I had been able to download the software quickly from the Internet or get it on a Flash memory drive, my need for a DVD drive would be totally inexistent. I am sure I am not alone.
I think that Microsoft’s approach is totally wrong. People who don’t know computers tend to ask for advice from those in the know. It is those trendsetters who need to be convinced that your products are good. They will be the ones selling these benefits to all the followers. Those designing products based on followers feedback will fail because improvements over existing wares will be marginal compared to what can be obtained by applying radical new designs that challenge the status-quo. In mature markets where trendsetters aren’t as important (think soap or toilet paper) since there is no such thing as product specialists, focus groups and surveys may still play an important role, but certainly not in the high-tech industry where capturing the interest of early adopters is crucial.
Today I had turkey for lunch. Nothing out of the ordinary for most Americans, but for me it was a first on this particular date. Like most of the world, I do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Having lived most of my life in catholic countries, where people are more used to ask for divine help than thanking God, the idea always seemed a little odd to me. Add to that the fact that I am a convinced atheist and you will understand why I haven’t really paid any attention to this festivity.
Today was different though, that turkey made me think (at least it did not die in vain). In a world where most spend too much time complaining about all the things they cannot afford, it is actually good to spend some time analyzing all the good things that surround us and that we too often take for granted. This shouldn’t turn into a complacency exercise though. We should always do our best to improve our life but that effort shouldn’t be motivated by living in a constant state of misery, thinking that happiness will only be achieved when all our goals are met. The way I see it, Thanksgiving is a pause to remind everyone that everyday life can and must be enjoyed, even if we haven’t reached all our goals yet.
So, today, even though I do not have a God to thank, it doesn’t mean that I have reached my current situation (whatever that is) without any help. That is why I want to thank my parents, my wife and kids, my friends and colleagues for the life I have enjoyed so far. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Yesterday Apple finally opened a Mexican on-line store. There is still no iTunes store, but this is a great (unexpected) first step.
The good news is that on-line prices seem to be reasonable. While it still is cheaper to buy in the U.S., the difference is now much smaller. This is good news because it may encourage many customers to shop locally. Until now, Mexico has been a minor market to Apple if you look at the sales numbers. However, that is not really true because wealthy Mexicans (those more likely to buy from Apple) tend to buy their mobile products (those that can be easily smuggled through the customs) in the U.S. and that skews the numbers significantly.
For example, if you were to walk into any Starbucks in Mexico City today you would have a good chance to see Macs outnumber PCs. The same happens with iPhones and iPods which can be found everywhere. Most of these sales never go through Apple Mexico and are therefore accounted as U.S. sales.
While this new on-line store may actually have a negative impact on both local dealers (used to low unit sales and high margins) as well as the physical Apple Store sales in the U.S. it may give Apple Mexico a chance to grow significantly beyond their current small local market (desktops used by graphic designers and universities). If this turns out to be true, we may finally get better local support, which is badly needed.
I am somewhat disappointed that Apple hasn’t announced some kind of upgrade to the Apple TV so far. Sure, the device works as advertised and I am extremely pleased with mine, but the fact that the device has not been updated to support the new iPhoto events made me expect a product refresh for the holidays.
Right now, the Apple TV is still a good value proposition for those who store large amounts of pictures in iTunes and buy TV episodes through the iTunes store. However, since TV shows are only available in the U.S. and in the U.K. (although there doesn’t seem to be a large selection available there) that severely limits the potential of the device.
It seems that Apple is working with the movie studios to offer online movie rentals. That could prove to be a smart move as it it obvious that nobody wants to go to Blockbuster to pick a movie and deal with late fees. Such an initiative could provide a much needed boost to the Apple TV sales. I am not sure that it will be enough, though as competitors are moving fast too.
For example, DivX recently announced that Sony had licensed their technology for the PS3. That means that PS3 customers will be able to use a single device to play games and view both blu-ray high-res movies as well as DivX content downloaded from the Internet (not that I would ever do that…). That is a great value proposition. You can now get a PS3 for US$499 and that includes 15 Blu-ray movies if you buy the device from Wal-Mart. Even if you price each movie at US$15, that puts the cost of the device at US$275, that is US$24 cheaper than the Apple TV.
From what I have been reading, I am not the only one doing the math and many are seeing the value that the PS3 delivers. It seems that Apple needs to do something quickly if they want to move more Apple TVs during the holidays and extend their current lead in the digital download market to the living room. However, time is running out, only three days to black Friday, and if Apple doesn’t release any updates to the device by then, we can be quite sure that there will be no updates until next year. That could be a big mistake.
Since I haven’t received my Leopard DVD from Amazon yet, I still have some time to blog.
However, having played with the Developer Preview I got at WWDC a couple of months ago i must say that I am surprised that except for a couple of honorable exceptions, all the OS reviews I have seen so far focus on the end-user features that are available right out of the box. That is just plain wrong. Reviewers should also have spent some time discussing what new features are available for developers and how applications could take advantage of these new or expanded APIs to create better applications for the Mac over the next few months.
It is too bad that the mainstream press didn’t take more time to review the developer CD because if it lis like the one handed to developers last June, it contains a lot of hints on how Mac applications will outshine their PC counterparts over the next two years. My two favorite APIs nobody has talked about yet are:
Ever wondered why there aren’t that many applications that work with RSS feeds? The reason is that there are many different versions of RSS (not even counting Atom) that a developer needs to support if he/she wants to avoid any incompatibilities. RSS Readers must also be able to work with malformed XML files, which are unfortunately very frequent on the Internet. Writing such a flexible parser is boring and time consuming. Apple understood that and decided to include an API to make it easy for any programmer to either generate or parse all kind of RSS feeds. This is great news because now we will probably see many new innovative uses of RSS in Mac applications. I am planning for example to publish puzzles created with my upcoming application as an RSS feed including custom XML files. The client will use RSS to download the latest puzzles included as attachments just like podcasts today include MP3 files.
Core Text is also new in Leopard. Core Text replaces most of all previous text handling APIs. Now it is easier than ever to write applications that can easily handle gorgeous text in multiple columns wrapping around complex objects. Expect to see many specialized text editors to improve dramatically as developers start using this new technology.
Many seem to believe that Leopard is just another small evolutionary step over Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger because they haven’t seen any applications yet that take advantage of all the changes that were made under the hood. I suggest to everyone to take a look at the developer sample projects included on the developer tools DVD to understand what Leopard really is about.
It is usual for employers to google for possible candidates in order to find out more about their personal interests and their past. That is why many are trying to alert the younger generations to be careful about what they post on the net. Reckless comments, visceral reactions can come back to byte you years later because once you have written something it may be impossible to take it back.
On the other hand, just like having no credit history makes it difficult to apply for a loan, it may become harder for those with no net presence to apply for a job. I see it in my job. I prefer to hire people who have a web-site and who participate in open-source projects. That means that if I do not get any search results when googling for someone, I consider that a negative. This may be related to the fact that I work in a high-tech industry, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this trend had already become mainstream in other industries, since online reputation is becoming harder and harder to separate from real world reputation.
This phenomenon could have unintended consequences for several social groups. The first one is women. Since it is common in many countries that women adopt their husband last name and considering that marrying multiple times in a lifetime is becoming more prevalent, large chunks of their online history could easily be lost to those who do not know all the different names a woman may have used. This could have unintended beneficial consequences for those interested in burying old stories but it could also lead to a situation where women could be perceived as having a less “interesting” professional past. There are many solutions to this problem, but my personal favorite is to have women keep their maiden name all their life.
Another group we need to be concerned with is the one living on the wrong side of the digital divide. If less web presence leads to less opportunities, we must make sure that everyone has proper access to the internet and that schools teach the importance of online reputation. This could, by the way, also help improve good judgement in adolescents who tend to say or write things without measuring the consequences.
None of my previous comments should indicate that I am against anonymity on the web. I am not, on the contrary. Without anonymity there is no freedom, but you cannot spend your life writing only anonymous comments. Sometimes you will have to show what you stand for, what you believe in or what you know. That is what will be used to build your image and your reputation. This cannot be achieved anonymously.
The IBM PC was introduced on August 12, 1981. At the time I was 15 but I was already an avid Apple II user who enjoyed programming in assembly language. I must say that I didn’t pay much attention to the announcement. After all, it was just another boring monochrome computer. However, it soon became clear that the PC was a commercial success and a clear threat to Apple. The truth is that, like most teenagers, I couldn’t care less about the business market. As long as Apple could maintain their lead in the education and home markets, I would be happy.
In 1983, however a new threat emerged, the IBM PCjr. This product was squarely aimed at the market that Apple had dominated for years, at least in the U.S. That is when I started to hate IBM. I felt that they were forcing me to switch to a platform that wasn’t as exciting against my will. Of course, years later the same anger made me revolt against Microsoft and I progressively started to forget about IBM. That is a good thing by the way because I have just celebrated my tenth anniversary at IBM. Of course it helped a lot that I have always worked at IBM’s Software Group, a division that is operating system agnostic and allows customers to choose their preferred computing environment.
Today, almost 23 years after the introduction of the IBM PCjr, Apple is the most valuable computer maker in the world. What has changed? We now live in a world ruled by consumers, not corporate suits. Consumers want exciting new products, not boring, barely functional products. That is good. Some may complain that teenagers are driving the consumer electronics industry but I am ecstatic. I still remember why I was so excited by Apple as a teenager. The reasons I had then were not driven by style or peer pressure, they were driven by a passion for radical new products that made no compromises to achieve greatness. In general teenagers do not tolerate mediocrity as well as adults because they are not scared by change. That is why Apple is successful now with a new generation. They are fighting the establishment with superior products and this is a battle teenagers can perfectly relate to.
However, make no mistake, this is not just a marketing gimmick. Unlike Pepsi who wanted to artificially create a generational gap with their “Pepsi generation” campaign, Apple decided to focus on creating exciting new products that have since been adopted by a new generation. That is why it worked.
As I wrote in my previous post, I am extremely happy with my iPhone. The screen is simply gorgeous and in general the experience has been amazing so far. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone.
Over the week-end I was helping a friend to unlock his brand new iPhone when we ran into a big problem. The wifi connection was extremely unstable. I could sometimes connect to my network, but just seconds later the connection would be lost and the phone wouldn’t display any available networks. It seems that either there is a hardware malfunction or that the internal antenna is disconnected. Either way, my friend is in serious trouble. Without wireless network access the phone cannot be unlocked. Even if I return his phone to original factory settings he cannot return the phone because it was never activated with AT&T. That makes it hard to claim that the wifi connectivity is not working, since there is no way to test that functionality until the phone is activated.
My friend is therefore stuck with a US$400 8GB iPod. He would have been much better off spending his money on a 16GB iPod touch. Of course, if this doesn’t happen very often, it is still worthwhile to take the risk, because the iPhone offers much more functionality than the iPod touch. The problem is that I have learned since that two other acquaintances have faced similar problems. One iPhone was dead on arrival (that is not a major problem, it can easily be returned) the other had a faulty battery which only offers a couple of hours of operation (that is tough if you discover the problem after unlocking the phone).
The iPhone is currently used all over the world. The temptation to buy one in the U.S. and bring it home is extremely strong. However, you shouldn’t minimize the risks involved. There is anecdotal evidence that Apple is facing production challenges that are resulting in a relatively large number of defective units. I strongly suggest that if you are planning on buying an iPhone in the U.S. with the intention to use it overseas, unlock it while in America. At least, if something goes wrong you will still have some options.