Tag Archives: Apple

The Outside Scoop: Thoughts on Android Wear and a possible iWatch

The big news in tech today is Google’s announcement of Android Wear, a version of their Android OS specifically optimized for “wearables” like watches.

The tech media is erupting with ridiculously titled blog posts that refer to this as Google’s “answer” to the iWatch, a product that Apple has not announced, nor even acknowledged working on.

Surprisingly, for the first time I actually found one of these wearables mildly interesting, the Moto 360. But I am still skeptical of wearables in general, smart watches in particular, and especially the idea that Apple is working on one. But I’ve learned from my past mistakes, when I was convinced Apple was neither working on a smartphone in late 2006 nor a tablet in late 2009. So, in my world at least, my adamant belief that Apple is not developing a watch should probably be my biggest clue that they are.

So where is Apple’s “iWatch”? Aren’t all of these competitors eating Apple’s lunch (before it’s even cooked)? Perhaps. But consider this:

Remember the original iPod. It came into a market that already existed (but sucked), and delivered a radically superior user experience, and was a huge hit. Remember the iPhone. Once again, it came into a market that already existed (but sucked) and totally revolutionized it.

The thing is… a smart watch market doesn’t really exist (or didn’t when rumors of an “iWatch” first started to circulate). It almost seems like Apple got the wheels of the rumor mill turning deliberately, to goad their competition into creating the market, thinking they were beating Apple to the punch but in fact creating the exact environment of suck Apple needs to release a product into.

A few thoughts on the holiday/winter ads by Apple and Samsung

I’ve been tweeting a bit today about Apple’s iPhone ad that is getting some attention this holiday season, along with a new one from Samsung. But I have some comments that are a bit more than 140 characters long, that I’d like to share here.

I first heard about the Samsung ad via Daring Fireball‘s link to it on YouTube. Check it out below.

I’ll admit to finding the hapless iPhone owner on the chairlift a bit funny. I’m a sucker for cheap laughs like a guy dropping his expensive phone (and later his skis too) from a chairlift. But almost immediately the “Geared up” Samsung owner is creepy. Stalker creepy. He’s supposed to come off like he’s got “the moves” or something (which is creepy enough anyway), but he doesn’t seem suave so much as dripping with white privilege. He can just make the woman next to him on the chairlift give him her phone number because… why not?

The next scene is what really bothers me: he takes a bunch of photos and video of her on the ski slope, without her permission or knowledge. Because… why not? And when he goes up to her at the bottom of the hill to show off his efforts, she’s not creeped out (or is she… maybe… just a little?) because… he’s a handsome white dude who’s all “Geared up” so of course it’s OK.

Of course it’s really not OK. In so many ways, it’s not OK. If this guy were a real person, I’d have plenty more to say about him, but he’s not. He’s an actor, playing a role, attempting to sell a product made by Samsung. So let’s talk about Samsung’s advertising efforts and how sexist they are. Fortunately for me Anjin Anhut already did (in more general terms, but this Samsung ad certainly fits the bill) in a great blog post on Saturday that I encourage you to read.

Let’s contrast the Samsung ad with Apple’s ad, entitled “Misunderstood”:

I have seen this ad at least 5 times now and every time I tear up. Do I feel that my emotions have been manipulated? Of course. This is a commercial. That a commercial would make me tear up… of course my emotions are being manipulated. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing.

Apple’s ad connects on an emotional level, because that’s where we are with this technology today. Both Apple’s and Samsung’s devices can do so many of the same things, and fill the same needs and desires in their users’ lives, that it’s really down to how we as the users of these products connect with them on an emotional level. That’s really what Samsung’s ad is trying to do, I think. It shows off more specific technologies than Apple’s ad does, but ultimately it’s connecting with its audience on an emotional level as well. But the audience, and the emotions, couldn’t be more different.

There is nothing sexist or creepy about Apple’s ad. It delivers an image we’re all used to seeing these days: the tech-loving teenager, apparently tuning out the people around them and the meaningful experiences they should be engaging in. But the teenager is misunderstood—he’s not tuning out. He’s capturing fleeting, magical moments in his family’s life and he’s creating… putting those moments together into an artifact the family members will be able to connect with long after the holidays end. It’s a commercial that can resonate with just about anyone. It surprises and delights, and it shows us how using an Apple product can help enrich the experiences that matter to us. (It is an ad, after all.)

The Samsung ad? Well, first of all, the ad is targeted at a very specific demographic. It’s an ad for dudes. Want to impress and seduce that hottie next to you on the chairlift? Samsung has just the tech to help you make that happen. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t license Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” just to underscore the message.

On one hand I find it kind of surprising that any company would think they could get away with running an ad like this today, but the fact is, it’s not surprising at all. This kind of advertising obviously works. It may alienate a huge potential audience but as Anjin Anhut’s blog post describes, it has identified a target audience and is more effective within that audience.

The problem with that strategy though is that the more you target an audience, the smaller it becomes. It may be a subset of the population that is far more likely to buy your product than the average, but you become increasingly confined to that narrow slice of the pie. Unless of course you run different and contradictory campaigns simultaneously (which happens all the time). But still, ultimately, you’re eventually going to reach a saturation point with that target market. Then what? You can retreat to a broader message, but how much damage have you done (not just to your business, but to the community) by that point? And was it really necessary in the first place?

Say what you will about Apple’s advertising, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexist, racist, or otherwise exclusionary—except of Windows users.

Nintendo: 2 Darn Stubborn?

Since the newly announced Nintendo 2DS (yes, you read that correctly) is obviously targeted at a young audience, I censored the title of this post. Kotaku already won the battle for best title anyway.

Source: NintendoMy first reaction, upon hearing the name “2DS” was “What the hell?” My second reaction, upon seeing a picture of it, was “No, seriously… what the hell?”

I have been a Nintendo defender for a long time. I love Nintendo. My kids and I waited in line outside the Richfield Best Buy last fall to get a Wii U at midnight when it was being released.

Now, a few fun games aside, all of us think the Wii U itself is kind of a P.O.S., but that’s not even the point. Except, it kind of is.

Nintendo used to be the king of the video game world. They dominated the late ’80s and early ’90s. After faltering a bit, they roared back in the mid-2000s with the original Wii. But then the world changed on them. The iPhone happened. And suddenly Nintendo was Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff. Except when they looked down, they didn’t suddenly realize the ground beneath them was gone. They just kept right on running… into a strange world where all known laws of physics no longer apply.

The Wii U is a bit of a muddled mess, but its main failing is the poor user experience of its horribly designed system software. But it was indicative of the larger problem Nintendo currently has… it has become dangerously (to its own future) out-of-touch with how people are using not just video games, but technology devices in general. The 2DS seems like perhaps they have crossed a point of no return.

I “get” the 2DS. It’s designed to address a few very specific problems, all revolving around the fact that Nintendo’s core audience, especially for handhelds, tends to be young… single-digit young. The 3DS, Nintendo’s current flagship handheld system, has three problems with that audience:

1. It’s fragile.
2. It’s (kind of) expensive.
3. Its 3D effects can be harmful to young eyes.

Little kids break things. The delicate plastic hinges on the traditional clamshell DS designs are a perfect example. Parents don’t want to spend $150-$200 on a device their young child will break easily. And for ocular health, Nintendo themselves discourage use of the 3D effect on the 3DS for those under 7 years old. Parents can disable the 3D effect entirely, but it’s a cumbersome process.

Enter the 2DS: No hinge. Comparatively cheap at $129. And no 3D. Problem(s) solved, right? Except… targeting those specific issues has led to this monstrosity. Something that could only be created by a combination of focus group feedback and head-in-the-sand corporate executives, deliberately ignoring everything that’s happening in the world around them, denying the true source of the rot eating away at their company’s business model.

Set aside the Playstation Vita for a minute (since everyone pretty much has, amirite?)… there is one primary competitor to the Nintendo DS family for young portable video game enthusiasts: the iPod touch. There are plenty of reasons a parent might choose to get their kid an iPod touch, besides the obvious fact that the kid really wants one. But perhaps the most compelling factor is that the parents themselves already own iPhones. The iPod touch, after all, is pretty much just an iPhone without the phone. (And GPS, and a few other features, but you get my point.)

iOS is already familiar to these parents, so they can relate to their child’s experience. And more importantly, these parents understand the App Store, which is really the single reason why I believe Nintendo as it currently functions is doomed.

Let’s look at three more potential problem factors for the Nintendo DS family:

1. Its games are expensive ($30-$40 each).
2. Its game media can get lost.
3. Its games can only be used on a single device at a time.

True, the iPod touch starts at $229, a full $100 more than the 2DS. But buy just three games for the 2DS and you’re up to the price of an iPod touch. Granted, Nintendo has created an equivalent to the App Store for the DS line, but its selection of games is pitifully small compared to the iOS App Store, and many of those games are iOS ports! Even the best, deepest, biggest-budget iOS games rarely break the $20 barrier, and most are priced somewhere between free and $3.

Every subsequent generation of Nintendo handheld has seen its game media shrink in size, from the fairly large cartridges of the original Game Boy to the tiny SD-like cards of the DS line. They’re more portable, but in some ways smaller is worse… as any parent whose kids bring their DS on car trips will tell you, the games are incredibly easy to misplace, and at up to $40 each that’s an expensive scenario. And, of course, a physical game can only be played on one device at a time. Even Nintendo’s eShop is built around a ridiculous model where you can’t transfer purchases between devices.

Contrast that with the iOS App Store. There are no physical media to keep track of, anyone on the same App Store account can download (and re- download) apps to their device without re-purchasing, and you’re not limited to the single device you originally bought the app on.

So while Apple (and Android) reinvented the world of mobile gaming, what did Nintendo do? They continued to drift into this strange territory of weird proprietary hardware, trying to create a unique experience by building devices, and games around them, that would be impossible anywhere else. That’s great, I guess… if any of it really made any sense. And never has it been clearer just how little sense it all makes than with the 2DS.

What is Nintendo’s greatest asset? Not its “unique” game hardware. It’s the intellectual property of great franchises like Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Pokémon. For decades now, Nintendo has sustained a (more or less) thriving business by making these must-have games and then selling the only hardware anyone can play them on.

But times have changed. The video game landscape is so different now, that I don’t think these legendary franchises are enough to carry Nintendo’s increasingly absurd hardware business any longer. I’ve been saying for years that Nintendo needs to do what Sega did… get out of the hardware business and start putting their games on other companies’ devices. This will mean a leaner, smaller Nintendo, but I bet they could wring just as much or more profit from selling their games on other systems as from building and selling their own.

Put Mario, Link, Samus or (God help me) Pikachu on my iPhone, and I will buy it in a second. But this crazy new hardware Nintendo keeps dreaming up? I’m not buying it anymore. And, for the first time, neither are my kids.

What’s so Neue about Helvetica?

fonts
So, I was just reading Rani Molla’s post on GigaOM called What’s all the fuss about Apple and Helvetica Neue? and I felt compelled (as I so often do, about so many things) to comment on the issue here.

Contrary to how the GigaOM article seems to frame it, the controversy — the, if you will, fontroversy (I regret it already) — when Apple demoed iOS 7 at WWDC last month was not that they were switching to Helvetica Neue as the iOS 7 system font. It’s that they were switching to Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, a particularly delicate weight of the general Helvetica Neue font family. (I’ve read some things that suggest they’re reversing course on that decision based on developer feedback, but the GigaOM post doesn’t even touch that.)

The fact is, Helvetica Neue has been the iOS system font ever since the introduction of the iPhone 4. When the iPhone was first introduced, it used plain old Helvetica as the system font. But with the introduction of the Retina Display, Apple switched to the slightly more refined Helvetica Neue.

So the concern with iOS 7 is not Helvetica Neue itself — that’s been working out just fine. It’s this extra thin weight of the font, which becomes difficult to read at smaller sizes.

Personally I like Helvetica Neue Ultra Light. I think it continues the trend towards refinement Apple began with the switch to Helvetica Neue itself, and is demonstrated effectively in Cabel Sasser’s animated GIF featured in the GigaOM article. The version using Helvetica Neue Regular feels heavier and clunkier to me. That said, I do understand and appreciate the legibility concerns with Ultra Light at very small sizes.

I’m not sure how this will work itself out. I doubt Apple will switch to a different typeface, though they may increase the weight of the font in the final version of iOS 7. But part of the reason Apple went with Helvetica in the first place is that it’s neutral (at least in principle). It gets out of the way and isn’t distracting. It doesn’t convey any particular personality. It’s a “blank canvas” of a font, which makes it a perfect fit for iOS devices, where the device itself disappears and becomes the app you’re using. Developers don’t have to use the system font in their apps, but a lot of them do, and by keeping the system font as neutral as possible, Apple avoids predisposing apps to a certain personality or style.

This is exactly the opposite of the opinions expressed in the closing of the GigaOM article, and is I think the opposite of Apple’s intentions with the iOS experience. Using a custom font that “reinforces a more distinctive brand voice” would be the equivalent of sticking a big Apple logo on the front of the iPhone. Apple’s branding goes on the back (where it can be an effective marketing tool). It’s never a part of the user experience.

Can a developer use an iPad as their only portable “computer”?

I am at a crossroads in my work situation. Since 2008 I have worked as a freelance web developer, which naturally meant using a laptop as my primary/only computer. I worked mostly from home, but I would frequently go to coffeehouses, and occasionally work on-site at client offices. A portable computer was a must.

The same week that Steve Jobs announced the 11-inch MacBook Air, I went out and purchased one. It was exactly what I wanted: a full-blown Mac, (almost) as small as an iPad (which of course I already owned as well, but mainly used for testing, occasional gaming, and watching all six seasons of Lost in the span of a month on Netflix, not for “real work”). I loved the MacBook Air. I said it was the best Mac I’d ever owned, though I admitted it was a tad underpowered. Enough so that when SLP needed a new computer 6 months later, I gave her my MacBook Air instead and bought myself a new, slightly more powerful version of the same.

That MacBook Air has been my only computer ever since. In fact, shortly after switching to it full-time, I wrote a glowing review of it right here. But last April I moved my business into a storefront studio space. I’m not going to coffeehouses anymore. Now, more often than not, clients come to me instead of the other way around. And all of this time I’ve been sitting at a desk, with that same 11-inch MacBook Air hooked up to an HP 23-inch LCD. (Yes, HP. I may be a self-proclaimed Apple fanboy, but even I can’t justify the expense of one of their Cinema Display monitors.)

It’s in this context that I’ve finally really become aware of the performance limitations of the 2010 MacBook Air. It’s unbearably slow with Adobe Creative Suite apps. It’s even unbearably slow running Panic’s Coda. And no computer today should choke up on what is essentially a glorified text editor. (That said… As much as I love Coda, it does seem bloated and slow almost everywhere I’ve used it. There’s no comparison to the blazing speed of BBEdit, which I also love, but Coda has some features I prefer, so it remains my main coding tool.)

Over the past few months, as my workload has increased and my patience has diminished, I can no longer pretend that the 2010 MacBook Air’s performance is adequate for my needs. I know the 2012 Airs are at least 3 times faster than the one I have, and I’m sure this year’s will be even faster, and maybe even have a Retina display, and therein lies the problem: I’ve been desperately wanting to upgrade my Mac, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy one of the current 11-inch Airs (the only portable I will consider) when they’re getting so close to a refresh.

At the same time, I have a major crunch at work over the next 3 months. I couldn’t afford to wait on my creaky old Air anymore. So last weekend I settled on a compromise, borne of the fact that I almost never touch my MacBook Air outside of the studio anymore. I got a Mac mini for the studio. I went with the more powerful quad-core i7 model, which is rated on Geekbench as at least 6 times faster than my old MacBook Air, and almost twice as fast as the current ones.

I’ve already noticed a huge difference. Adobe Creative Suite is way faster, almost to the point of no longer being infuriating. (But that’s another story.) Coda is still occasionally sluggish, but that may have more to do with the fact that I’m working with files on our local file server over a questionable WiFi connection. I should try putting the files directly on my hard drive to see if it makes a difference.

But now I am faced with a weird dilemma. This is the first desktop computer I’ve owned since the Dell I had back in 2001, and the first Mac desktop since even before that. (It was a Bondi blue G3 tower, if you were wondering.) The dilemma is this: in a world of iPads, where I am already pretty much never touching my MacBook Air outside of work, do I really need a portable Mac at all?

I still have the Air, of course, and have continued to lug it around next to my iPad in my Tom Bihn bag this week. But why? In the two meetings I had this week at client offices, I only used my iPad. Maybe the iPad is really all I need. Maybe?

I have a few months to find out. I won’t consider buying another MacBook Air until the new models are out, so in the meantime I will experiment. I will try only using the iPad for any and all computing tasks outside of the studio. I’ve begun that today, by typing this blog post on it as I sit at the kitchen counter with my Saturday morning coffee. It’s been a bit of a challenge. I gave up on using the WordPress web interface and switched to the (marginally better) dedicated iPad app. And I’ve made lots of typos… some that iOS auto-corrected, some it didn’t, and some false positives it shouldn’t have. (C’mon, iPad… use some context, would ya? Why would anyone ever write “you we’re”?)

The biggest challenge will be if I have to write some actual code. But it’s a far different world for that than it was even a year ago. I have a handful of coding apps on my iPad, though nothing I have could be more valuable than another pair of apps from Panic: Diet Coda (great name, BTW) and Prompt, a terminal app. I haven’t had much call to use either of them… yet. But I’ve been comforted knowing they’re there.

At the end of this month we’re planning a family vacation to Utah. That may prove to be the ultimate test. Do I dare leave for a week with only my iPad? Honestly, I’m not sure I can. It will depend on the state of my various work projects at that time. But I’d like to be able to give it a try.

I’ll post follow-ups here as the experiment continues.