Infinite Style

Last week I watched portions of Facebook’s F8 press conference and walked away very impressed with the direction the company is taking.

I’ve always believed that the biggest fear at Facebook is that the party will one day end. That users will begin to abandon the service in droves for a new service. Let’s call it MySpace syndrome.

It’s obvious to me that MySpace syndrome is something that is often discussed and studied at Facebook. There are already a large number of users that currently tolerate but dislike Facebook. Feeling unable to depart with the service because of the large amount of friends and family that are connected to it.

Last week at F8 we saw what the company is doing in hopes of making it even more difficult for you to ever pull the plug and walk away from the service.

Facebook Timeline

Your Facebook profile will soon be transformed into a timeline of your life, and for the generation that is growing up with Facebook this will create a digital history of their lives. An online and social shoebox of memories that the people at Facebook hope you will never be able to bring yourself to toss out and throw away. 

I really can’t begin to say how genius a move this is. The minor Facebook users might scoff at it, but for the heavy users of Facebook the services is going to become so much more attached to their lives that ever before. 

I activated Timeline on my account and it’s very well designed. Very good looking and polished. Really think it’s a very strong move from the company and more than enough to make most people forget all about Google+. 

I’ve been waiting a long time for a device like the Kindle Fire to come out. Not because it’s a device I need or plan on purchasing, but because it proves a theory of mine. Google in it’s haste to bring Android to the market and try to become the Microsoft of the mobile industry made some very serious mistakes. 

Those mistakes are now all coming back to haunt them. 

Google loves to hide behind their “open” or “don’t be evil” mantras, which to quote Steve Jobs are bullshit. They use “open” especially loosely, participating in open source initiatives in areas and industries where they don’t dominate while being very very closed in the areas where they are industry leaders.  I think it was Daring Fireball’s John Gruber who pointed out there is absolutely nothing open about Google’s search algorithm. 

When Google looked to bring Android to the market they turned to the idea of making it open as a means of gearing up support for their platform. This worked like a charm, companies found a free platform that would be updated and improved upon without them having to do any work. While misguided nerds everywhere immediately fell in love thinking that Google was out to save the world and the Linux revolution was finally coming. 

The reality instead is that Google is just another big company that is out to profit, and the only reason they are supporting open source software is because of how it works into their business model and how they operate as a company. Use open source software to build cheap services which they provide for free and then make money selling data about the users of their free services. 

While this “open” aspect of Google’s plan worked extremely well, they were also making serious mistakes at the same time. A lot of these mistakes being openly acknowledged and ignored by the Android team. They ripped off and included a lot of intellectual property a long the way, justifying themselves with the excuse that sooner or later they would pay for the licenses and bringing the product to market was the most important thing. Well they are paying for it now, and their partners are paying for it big time. Google is currently being sued by Oracle, and Google’s partners are all bending down to Microsoft who is demanding they pay them royalties for their patents which Android violates.

These are huge problems for Google and for Android as a platform, and these problems are a direct result of Google’s arrogance in how they operate. Openly choosing to ignore licensing issues in order to come market was a huge mistake, especially when it was documented in internal company emails as a potential problem. It represents an ongoing mentality at Google where they feel they can do whatever they want because of their greater cause. Just look at how they begin digitizing books without asking publishers, or how their Street View cars collected data on people’s personal WiFi networks without asking or even telling local governments. 

And yet these problems for Android are just the appetizer, the main course is yet to come. 

The main course is, of course, the Kindle Fire. 

The Kindle Fire represents the biggest problem with Google’s Android strategy. They developed a free platform and now a major company has adapted it in a way where Google will not be able to make one cent from it’s use. 

Here’s how it works, any company can download Android for free and build an Android device. Where Google makes it’s money is when companies choose to include Google’s line of applications: Search, Maps, Gmail, and so fourth. This works perfectly in the cellular industry because the companies building dirt cheap phones don’t provide any of these service themselves but are expected to sell devices with these services bundled. However in Amazon’s case the rules change slightly. Amazon built a tablet device designed to consume digital media they sell. Books, Movies, and Music are the primary services and Amazon provides all of these. This allowed Amazon to take the free stock version of Android built their own custom shell over it and not give to Google one cent. Plus since Amazon operates their own App Store they can even lock the device and allow people to only buy applications from them and not from Google’s own app store. 

Ouch!

The best part in all this is that just this week Samsung agreed to license patents from Microsoft for their use of Android. This is a very bad trend and one can speculate that if the Kindle Fire is a success Microsoft will come around to asking Amazon for money. In which case it would mean that Microsoft is the one making money from Amazon’s Android based tablet and not Google. 

It’s really amazing how Android which had such momentous growth is really looking like a catastrophic failure right now. All the major partners paying Microsoft money, a major company like Amazon building a device which is designed to be marketed as their own and not as an Android device.

It’s just doesn’t look so good for the promised child right about now, and I saw this coming a long time ago. The only thing I had pegged wrong was the company to make this move. I saw Facebook being the ones to do it and release a Facebook phone. 

But hey it’s not to late for them, they can easily follow in Amazon’s footsteps. Plus they have a wonderful relationship with Microsoft which should allow them to get by without being sued by Microsoft. Just imagine an Android based Facebook phone with all services provided by Facebook and search by Bing. 

This week saw the resignation of Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO. I’ve been a big Apple fan since the first time I used OS-X so it’s very sad for me to see him go. Especially after all these amazing years where I’ve witnessed his guidance take Apple from a little under dog that would never make it to the number one technology company in the world.

The public reaction and outpouring on the Internet has been amazing and I thought I would share this Steve Jobs quote which I found on another blog.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

As of my writing this HP has just announced they will sell of their PC line and Google has announced their plans for acquiring Motorolla Mobility.

There’s no denying it, Apple has become the biggest player in tech. Against all odds, and against all the advice from one time tech leaders, the small company from Cupertino is know wearing the crown.

A story that hit the internets yesterday: 

So, add ‘em both up and you find that the “Wintel” is worth $316.8 billion. As you nmight imagine, we’ve been watching these values with anticipation for quite some time and today, for the first time (ever?), the closing value of Apple (AAPL) $317.60 billion exceeded that of Wintel. Just in time to make a nice slide for somebody’s WWDC keynote address (hint, hint).

Sure have come a long way in the last 10 years, huh?

Another interesting bit I heard that’s not gotten much attention is that if Apple were to stop growing, and sales were to level off then they would still be on track to amass over 300 billion dollars in cash by 2015. That would be enough money for them to buy the company (at today’s share prices) and take it off the market. 

Pretty amazing. 

Microsoft has given the world a preview of Windows 8, which seems to be a very big deal for them. It has the feeling of a make or break release. As you can see in the video it takes it’s cues from the Windows Phone 7 user interface. Something I rather like, it’s sleek and modern.

The idea of Windows 8 is that it will run across devices. From desktops, laptops, to touch screen devices. Hence introducing a more touch friendly device. However I wonder if they aren’t bitting off a bit more than they can chew by maintaining a legacy version of Windows. What happens when you try to run PC optimized software on a tablet. How will a desktop version of Excel with it’s small icons feel when used on a touch tablet? Will all software even be compatible? Most tablets are ARN based, I don’t see how an x86 based copy of say Photoshop could run with out some emulation layer. I think a big clue that are going to be compatibility problems is the fact that the tile layers is built on HTML5, which is an easy way to ensure that it runs perfectly on both ARN devices and traditional Intel devices.

These are pretty big questions, and questions I haven’t heard any answer to. 

I fear Microsoft might for marketing terms release a product that tries to do it all, and then leave users to discover the frustrating reality.

I guess we will need to see how it plays out. 

I saw briefly a demonstration of Google Music, which is Google’s answer to something I’m not sure is really much of a problem. See for the last year the media has been going on about the need for music to move into the cloud in order to do away with the awful hassle of spending 1 minute of your time syncing files to your handset. It’s picked up steam and now all the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) and so fourth are getting ready to give you their solutions. 

Personally I’m not to convinced in the idea of moving all your data into the cloud. I think it’s being pushed very hard because it can help to curb piracy, and while it has it’s advantages in some regards I think it poses a bunch of other problems and issues. 

The thing that has been bothering me about what Google demoed yesterday is that it essentially just moves this “burdensome” process of managing your music from one area (your mobile devices) to another (the cloud). You still need to put in the work of uploading all your music into their service and adding any new music you purchase into the service. So the chain has moved from one arm onto the other. 

I guess the problem that makes this so glaring is that Google doesn’t sell any music, so your music will need to come from other sources wether that be Amazon or iTunes and then uploaded into their service. It’s really a glaring omission in my opinion and it makes you wonder why they rushed to demo this thing. 

Yesterday at a Final Cut Pro user group meet-up at NAB in Vegas Apple gave a demo of the coming version of Final Cut Pro. Even if your not into film & video for work or creative purposes I think it’s interesting to observe this announcement and look at some of the subtleties behind it. 

If the bold title of the posts didn’t make it clear I think this is another example of just how strong Apple is as a company. 

There has been a lot of talk in the last year that Apple is losing focus on the pro-market and is more interesting in the cash cow consumer markets they’ve been dominating with the iPad and the iPhone. There was speculation that this new Final Cut Pro version would be some dressed up version of iMovie. 

None of this proved true. 

Instead we get another of example of how strong Apple’s eco-system is. How their tight control of both the operating system and the hardware gives them a distinct advantage over their competitors. 

Final Cut Pro X is the proof that Apple’s closed eco-system, which is often wrongly compared to some Orwellian future, really is the way to go. They have re-written the entire application to make sure it uses all of the features available in the operating system and in the machines. It’s 64-bit so it can use all the memory available. It’s designed to use all the available processor cores. 

Compare that with an offering from say Adobe which has to program an application that is expected to run on a wide variety of flavors of Windows. There really is no comparison. 

For the people using FCP X it’s going to be a vast improvement over the previous version. Rendering of large HD files in realtime, less waiting and more working. 

To top all of this off you just have to look at Thunderbolt, the Apple/Intel developed high speed port recently added to Mac Book Pros. You will be able to copy over large file sizes into your machines in seconds. Apple has the technology now, while competing PC makers won’t have it for another year. That’s Apple’s pile of cash being put to use. 

So just when there were those speculating of an exit from the pro market, they make two checkmate moves and move way in front of the competition. 

Well done.