There are many different technology adoption models out there. Geoffrey Moore's curve--the one that uses terms such as "Early Adopters" and "Late Majority"--is a common one. And different technologies end up getting adopted at strikingly different rates. This fascinating chart from The New York Times shows how the telephone made its way into U.S. homes only over a span of many decades while the VCR went from rare to commonplace over about a single 10-year stretch.
In general, new technologies are permeating the market faster than ever before. Still, the length of time it takes for even an ultimately successful innovation to become commercially important is routinely underestimated by lots of industry watchers. I've been guilty of this myself.
One issue is that many of us in the IT ecosystem are early adopters by nature. We're enthusiastic about the new coolness for its own sake, not just for what it's capable of. By contrast, the ultimate buyers are often more conservative and mostly want technologies that have already proven themselves. It's a potential that we as analysts try to guard against, in part by speaking with different types of end users.
Another issue is that new technologies are often more interesting in combination with other pieces than they are in isolation. To use the old cliche, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. However, the corollary is that it takes more work and more time to bring that combination into being than it does just one component. Frederick Brooks discussed this reality in the context of bringing the IBM System 360 to market in his widely read "The Mythical Man-Month".
I bring up this topic because of something that caught my eye in a Web 2.0 Summit presentation by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley. She devoted a large chunk of her presentation to mobile trends, beginning with a slide that stated "Mobile = Incremental Driver of Internet User / Usage Growth." She went on to say that "Mobile Internet usage is and will be bigger than most think."
This computing growth includes Apple. She stated that "Near term, Apple is driving the platform change to mobile computing. Its mobile ecosystem (iPhone + iTouch + iTunes + accessories + services market share / impact should surprise on the upside for at least the next 1-2 years." However it also includes a rich set of other devices including automobile electronics and home entertainment devices. In some respects, this is the "Internet of things" as Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos has called it. (Although as Richard MacManus over at ReadWriteWeb suggests, the full Internet of things, including RFID sensors and the like, is something more expansive.)
The "secret sauce" in this growth? Location-based services. Meeker quoted Mathew Honan, of Wired magazine, who wrote: "Simply put, location changes everything. This one input - our coordinates - has the potential to change all the outputs. Where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go - they all change once we merge location and the Web."
What caught my eye about all this was that I remember all the enthusiasm over the imminent arrival of the mobile Web back during the first Internet build-out about a decade ago. Here's a typical press release from a company named Optus in November 2000: "Mobile phone users can locate a close-by restaurant, chemist, bank or cinema now that Cable & Wireless Optus has launched Australia's first range of sophisticated location-based services on its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) service, Optus Networker."
There were many such claims at the time and many proclamations that "place" was the Next Big Thing.
Ultimately it appears the proclaimers were right. But it took a while. It arguably took the second or third iteration of iPhone for applications that make use of the user's location in smartphones to take off in a big way. And thereby make the promises of press releases of the year 2000 a mainstream reality.
Some of it is just technological maturity of the device and the network. A mobile browser that can access the "real" Web with reasonable fidelity and performance rather than being restricted to a dumbed-down mobile Web turned out to be one major piece.
Key too was a development environment that made it possible for many casual developers to create applications and not just a few working closely with a handset maker.
The vast amounts of data created over a number of years through various types of social media is pretty important as well. We don't mostly find nearby restaurants through formally curated data; we find it through Yelp.
In short, the rich mobile experience isn't about one thing but many. And aligning the pieces always takes time.
It doesn't take much to put Apple in the news, and this afternoon's excuse is that a Miami-based company called PsyStar is selling a Mac clone.
Its Web site was down earlier--ostensibly because of the overwhelming reaction to its product. As Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:
Before its site went dark Monday, PsyStar was pitching an Intel-based system it said could be configured to run Leopard, Apple's Mac OS X 10.5. The machine, which was priced at $399 minus Leopard, $554 with it already installed, is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and includes 2GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive, optical drive, and on-board graphics based on Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 graphics processor. The GMA 950 is part of several Intel chipsets--notably the 945 series--that are popular on PCs designed to run Microsoft's Windows.
There are a variety of issues here:
- Are Macs really overpriced these days, compared to a truly comparable Wintel alternative? (Certainly far less than in the past.)
- Is OpenMac a trademark violation? (Seems possible. I am not a lawyer.)
- Are any possible savings worth getting a PC-Mac OS combo that the Apple won't support? (Not from where I sit.)
- Does PsyStar have the right to preinstall an operating system for which it (apparently) doesn't have an original-equipment manufacturing, or OEM, license? (Seems dicey.)
But I wanted to focus on one issue in which I have some personal experience.
The Mac OS X end-user license agreement prohibits its use on hardware other than that sold by Apple. It reads, "You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."
A little legal history now. Way back in 1978, a company by the name of Digidyne brought suit against Data General, alleging that it was restraining trade by "tying" its RDOS operating system to its Nova minicomputer hardware. (Digidyne sold Nova clones.)
The case wound its way through the courts. A 1984 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision held for Digidyne; the case was later denied rehearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was a convoluted court case, but the bottom-line result was that Data General could not prohibit the use of its operating system on someone else's hardware. To use the legal term, you could not "tie" hardware and software. Related cases have involved prohibiting the use of specific supplies (such as punch cards) with a specific vendor's hardware.
My personal history here is that, at one point in my career, I spent many hours with huge Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, working to unbundle Data General minicomputer operating systems from the hardware on which they ran--and to do so in a way that was hopefully approximately revenue-neutral, as well as not too annoying to any customers.
This was, of course, a wholly different generation of hardware and software than was in place at the time of the original lawsuit--and there were no actual Data General hardware clones any longer. But nonetheless, it had to be done.
Does that mean that Apple's end-user license agreement clearly breaks the rules? Well, few things are crystal-clear, when it comes to legal matters. In this 2006 post in InfoWorld, James Bailey's quoted comment gives a good precis of the relevant issues:
First, DG lost because RDOS was the only viable operating-system software for Nova and any clones. There was no other reasonable OS available for the clone makers. Dell can hardly claim the same, considering that they currently ship both Windows and Linux. Claiming that those two OSes are not "uniquely desirable by buyers" would be a stretch.
To quote the 9th circuit decision: "Although expressing some doubt as to the sufficiency of the evidence, the district court assumed defendant's RDOS was superior to competing operating systems and was viewed as uniquely desirable by buyers. 529 F. We do not share the court's hesitancy about the adequacy of the proof of the strong preference of many customers for RDOS. It was a most popular product."
Even DG admitted that there was no viable alternative. Again from the record, "the only full-service operating system available for the Nova."
Second, the court determined that to re-create RDOS would be prohibitively expensive and probably not practical. Again, with Linux and other free operating-system software readily available, it is hard to believe that the courts would come to the same conclusion in the case of Apple and OS X.
Bottom line?
Apple's end-user license agreement may or may not be an issue. The tying of hardware, software, or services has generally been frowned upon by the courts. On the other hand, the ultimate resolution resolves around specific facts about market power and the like. And, in any case, there would seem to be far more immediate questions about the PsyStar approach than those that would only be resolved by multiyear court cases (which would inevitably favor Apple, in any case.)
The fundamental question, perhaps, is this: in a world where Apple has moved to Intel processors, brought its pricing much more in line with comparable competition, and is, well, cool, how much opportunity is there for an unsupported cut-rate clone, anyway?
We put stuff into computers (and, for that matter, get stuff out) in pretty much the same way we have for a good couple of decades.
Of course, we still use keyboards of a fairly standard design as our primary mechanism to feed words into a computer and mice are well-ensconced as the navigational tool of choice. Over in the gaming world, it's the familiar two-handed game controller that predominates. In fact, I sense that one sees fewer joysticks, steering wheels, various oddball keyboards, and trackballs than one saw in the past. This probably reflects that "productivity" PCs are shifting toward notebooks on the one hand and that gaming is moving toward consoles on the other.
The one clear counter-example is the emergence of "thumbing" (as opposed to typing). But this is really more about making compromises in service of the form factor of handheld devices than it is a genuine innovation--however commonplace it has become.
However, we may be starting to see some genuine change.
The motion-sensing Nintendo Wii remote isn't a particularly new concept. We've see academic work in data gloves of various types going back to the 1990s. What's different is that the Wii is mass market. Volumes mean not only lower cost, but an incentive for software makers to write games and other applications that support and use the device in interesting ways. Because it corresponds to the physical world, hand movement seems a natural fit with many tasks and manipulations. As a result, I expect that we'll see descendants of the Wii in increasingly widespread use.
Another big trend we're seeing is multitouch. As CNET News.com's Tom Krazit notes, it's Apple that has pushed this technology into the mainstream--starting with the iPhone in the handheld arena and the MacBook Air in the notebook space. (On the notebook, it's the touchpad rather than the whole screen that is multitouch and it's less of a big deal as a result.) I've been arguing for a while that being able to draw a "napkin drawing" or a "whiteboard sketch" is one of the things that's largely missing today when we work and collaborate remotely. The combination of multitouch and writeable LCDs at affordable price points, and supported by software, would be a genuine step forward.
These aren't the only possibilities. Six-degrees-of-freedom controllers have long been used in 3D engineering programs but they've been priced for the CAD professional. Logitech has come out with the affordable (about $55) 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator PE (Personal Edition) 3D Navigation Device version that makes a great Google Earth companion. If 3D virtual worlds ever take off in a big way, devices such as these would be a natural and obvious fit.
Then there's always voice recognition. It's getting better. But that could be a statement for just about any year. And general-purpose voice recognition remains a niche. You won't catch me betting on it (although I suspect its time will come--someday).
I was going to stay out of the MacBook Air discussion given the vast volume of discussion already online. However, I was more than a bit surprised by the negativity of so many posters and commenters. As an often "road warrior," I thought it pretty interesting--even if it does skirt the edge of excessive compromise in service of thinness.
First, by way of background, I like small notebooks. My current model is a Fujitsu LifeBook P5020D. Although I don't use my notebook only when traveling, it's definitely a supplement to my regular desktop. In fact, when working at home, I often just use the laptop through an RDP session from my main desktop system. As you may gather, I'm not a Mac user but the MacBook Air feature discussion isn't really about anything particular to Macs.
So, let's go through some of the MacBook Air's features and see how they would fit in with my specific usage scenario. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Form factor. Very thin. Very sleek. Lightweight. 13.3-inch widescreen display is nice. (That's a bit larger than my Fujitsu's 10.6-inch screen. I used to think I preferred the smaller screen so that I could work in planes but I find this hard to do anyway and I've come to think it's just a bit too small.)
Full size keyboard. Also nice. That's one of the things I just don't care for on my Fujitsu which has an approximately 90 percent-sized keyboard.
Large trackpad. My preference is for trackpoints a la Lenovo, but I've come to accept that trackpads are more common. I can live with either approach.
Now we get to some of the compromises.
CPU. The MacBook Air uses Intel's Core 2 Duo (1.6 or 1.8 GHz) in some special packaging. This is no speed demon but it seems that this would be quite adequate for my purposes. I don't do things like heavy-duty photo editing on the road although, truth be told, I would guess that this processor is probably at least as speedy as the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor that I do use for photo editing at home.
Non-Upgradable 2GB memory. Even by today's standards, this is a pretty healthy complement for most purposes.
80 GB 4200 RPM disk. This I'm a bit less thrilled with. I upgraded my Fujitsu's drive to a 5400 RPM model a couple of years ago. Nor is 80 GB a huge capacity even for a traveling notebook (especially if you want to carry a lot of video around with you). The good news is that I expect we'll see higher capacities coming down the road. The 64 GB solid state disk upgrade is pretty useless for most purposes today; it adds something like $1,000 to the price.
No built in optical. This one seems to have a lot of people up in arms. I rarely travel with the optical drive for my Fujitsu. (I put a second battery in the bay.) I rather like the sound of the whole Remote Disc system. I don't personally have any issue with the lack of an integrated optical drive.
Integrated (non-removable) battery. This one concerns me. I do travel with a spare of my Fujitsu's main battery. (So I actually travel with three batteries: two main batteries and a drive bay battery.) It's often hard to find power at conferences and it's nice to be able to go a full day without plugging in. That said, for all those batteries the Fujitsu still only gets maybe 7 hours or so with WiFi on. (It's a pre-Centrino laptop and the WiFi seems to be a considerable power hog.) So if the MacBook Air truly gets an honest 5.5 hours of battery life, that's not too bad--but not great either.
One USB. Again, not thrilled. I tend to use my laptop to charge a lot of my mobile devices. This probably means carrying a small USB hub with me.
No Ethernet. Increasingly not a big deal but I'd still need to travel with an Ethernet adapter to connect to the USB. The WiFi sometimes gets overwhelmed at conferences when there's still Ethernet in the Press Room. And you still need to use wired Ethernet in some hotel rooms. (Apple will also sell a USB modem but I can't remember the last time I used a dialup connection when traveling.)
No card reader. I sometimes use this to transfer photos but I suppose I could always just connect the camera to the computer.
No ExpressCard or other expansion capabilities. After consideration, this is what might concern me the most. It means that you can't plug in a card for either cellular broadband or for WiMAX. In practice, you may be able to get to cellular service by plugging a telephone into the USB. And perhaps WiMAX could be added at some future date through a USB-connected device as well. But about the best you can say is that the lack of expansion means that you won't be able to add new networking options to the MacBook Air as easily you would with chubbier laptops.
Price.Yes, it's on the pricey side but that isn't a major consideration for me (within reason) if it's the right tool.
If I were to replace my Fujitsu with a Mac, I would certainly consider a MacBook Air. Albeit not without some qualms. It does push the envelope hard and makes some design tradeoffs that not even all its target users are likely to be comfortable with. For myself, I would have to consider some of those tradeoffs carefully. But they hardly seem irrational.
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