Reactions to the Healthcare.gov "Obamacare" Website

I am not particularly sympathetic to the finger-pointing by the healthcare.gov contractors, that HHS should have left more time for testing the website before it went live, because they knew that there was a "drop dead" date by which the website had to go live. When I heard one of the contractors testify that their company didn't warn HHS of the need for a longer testing period, ostensibly because it wasn't their job, I had to roll my eyes. If you think it will take a month or two to integrate your work into website, and you know that the integration must be complete and tested inside of two weeks, it's your job to speak up - and to do so as soon as you realize that there's a problem.

I tried to use the website on day one. The site was clearly overwhelmed. My reaction to that? "I'll try again later." Yes, it would have been nice to get through the initial registration and set up an account, and it would have been nice had HHS anticipated the massive number of people who would try out the site when it went live, but this sort of thing happens.

What I didn't anticipate, when I went back to use the site, was an experience that suggested not only that the programmers didn't care about serve load, but that they built elements of the website that seemed to frequently and unnecessarily load the server. Oh, I'm sure lots of stuff is going on in the background, but when you're simply entering your personal information... why? And why so inefficiently? If the website is overwhelmed, it would make more sense to collect the information without doing all of the back-end data crunching and, when the basic information was collected, tell applicants, "It will take approximately X hours to process your application. We will notify you by email when your application has been processed. If you would like a text message, please enter your email address or cell phone number below."

When I went back to the site, I was able to complete the registration process, but received server error messages telling me to log back in later three times over that relatively short process. To the site's credit, I only lost data one time. One minor annoyance was having to enter the same information several times, with no ability to simply click a "same as last time"-type option to pull in the data already entered. Another was with the editing process. You have to enter SSNs for people who will be part of your application. For security reasons, the SSNs are obfuscated, with the last six numbers replaced by asterisks, when you edit the personal information for any person who is part of your application. But if you don't delete those asterisks and re-enter the SSN you will get an error message. That's the sort of inattention to detail that can make a website less pleasant to use - I wonder what percentage of applicants think that the asterisks reflect the website's retention of the data, such that it doesn't have to be re-entered, only to get that error message. If you have to enter the SSN anyway, don't populate the field with asterisks. Leave it blank, perhaps with an explanation, "For security reasons your SSN is not displayed on this page. Please re-enter the number before you proceed."

Another oddity is the navigation of the various steps of the application process. The site displays the steps you must take, and those you have not yet completed, but there's no "click here to continue" type prompt. You have to guess where to click. It's not that it's difficult to guess, but I've heard from a person who I would have thought would have figured it out and he was stymied.

When available plans are displayed, you can compare plans. You can select as many as you want to compare, but the comparison page only shows three plans at a time. The comparison page is decent, with the plan broken down into areas of coverage with subheadings for the elements of coverage within a given area. The problem is, if you choose the option to delete the plan in the first column, those subheadings go away making it e difficult to compare plans. They do not reappear even if you go to the next page of plans selected for comparison - for the subheadings to reappear you need to restart the comparison process.

Finally, when selecting a plan I received a large warning that the plan did not include dental coverage for minors. It did. The problem suggests that the data about each plan and its components is included in redundant fields, as if the plan can properly display the coverage it provides there is no reason why the verification algorithm would get it wrong.

Mistakes like these aren't just indicative of limited testing by HHS. They are indicative of limited testing by the contractors who developed the UI for the website, and more than that they suggest to me that the programmers were largely indifferent to the user experience. The delays in processing data suggest that programmers were largely, perhaps, completely, indifferent to server load.

I used the online chat service to verify that I could rely upon the plan description despite the warning message. Response time was prompt and the person providing support was professional and efficient.

If I were the programmer responsible for any of the problems on this site, I wouldn't be pointing fingers. I would be apologizing and redoubling my efforts to fix it. With Republican demagoguery on the law and now on the website, it's easy to point fingers but really - based upon the types of problems and issues I experienced, the programmers bear the lion's share of responsibility for the problems with the site they programmed.

If you want to browse basic pricing information for the sites included in healthcare.gov, but don't want to register yet, unofficial information is available courtesy of Stephen P. Morse.

Microsoft... Still Doesn't Get It

A Microsoft executive, Frank Shaw's, attempt to poke Apple has gained some attention,

Note: If you are the TL;DR type, let me cut to the chase. Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively. Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.

Since we launched the Surface line of tablets last year, one of the themes we’ve consistently used to talk about them is that they are a terrific blend of productivity and entertainment in one lightweight, affordable package. In fact, we’re confident that they offer the best combination of those capabilities available on the market today.

Wait a second... then why did Shaw just say this?

I have to say, I’m really excited for a 1080p Lumia with a third column on my start screen so I can keep a close eye on more people, more news, more stuff.

That is, if Microsoft's tablets are the best combination of productivity and entertainment on the market, why is Shaw excited about buying a Nokia, even if Microsoft is in the process of acquiring that company? Shaw leaves me with the impression that his blog post is less about touting his company's great product than it is an attempt to promote Windows tablets, generally, by taking digs at Apple. Microsoft was very late to recognize the market for the tablet computer, and continues to withhold Office from competing platforms as it has scrambled to develop its own tablets. On top of that, part of the reason that Microsoft's tablets are "affordable" is that they aren't selling, and as a result prices have been slashed... now twice. I don't want to diminish the Surface as a product, and I suspect that it would have been more successful had it been released two years earlier, but as with the Zune there's a significant price for coming late to market with a product that doesn't capture the imagination of your market.

What strike me most about the piece is how the Surface is, in essence, touted as a laptop. Microsoft, we're told, is the expert in how real people work. Real people want keyboards, trackpads, multiple windows open on their displays, a full version of Office. (Real people also apparently want an obnoxious, in-your-face tile interface shoved in their faces when they boot up a Windows 8 computer, and want touch screens on their portable computers.) And yet real people demonstrate Microsoft's skill in assessing their needs by buying Apple and Android tablets in huge numbers, while largely ignoring the Surface.

If you're typing or editing large documents, are creating spreadsheets, or working with other complex documents, you probably do want a keyboard and mouse or trackpad, but... you probably already have a desktop computer, a portable computer, or both upon which to perform those tasks. If you have a notebook computer that runs Windows, what's the advantage of toting around a Surface tablet with a keyboard cover when you can simply use your computer? The power of Surface has given Windows tablets about 5% of the market, which is enough to keep your toes in the water. Apple has about 5% of the global PC market, so in a sense Microsoft is in good company.

Shaw declares that by offering so much productivity Microsoft is leading the market (from behind)....

And so it’s not surprising that we see other folks now talking about how much “work” you can get done on their devices. Adding watered down productivity apps. Bolting on aftermarket input devices. All in an effort to convince people that their entertainment devices are really work machines.

In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their “iWork” suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking.

I think Shaw is onto something when he describes how Microsoft is in touch with what people want, if we define "people" as the population that is already predisposed to buy a Surface. The problem is, he is touting solutions that have absolutely nothing to do with how most people use tablet computers. The tablet is largely a product for consumption of media and entertainment, not for productivity. To the extent that you can add on productivity, about 90% of tablet users are going to find all of the power they need (and perhaps more) in the free apps that Apple is offering, and those apps will get better over time.

Perhaps what Shaw is displaying is discomfort at seeing his company's business model increasingly threatened by free software. Sure, the competing software may be less powerful than Office suite, but... free, and good enough for a significant majority of users. It's part of an expectation Microsoft helped create when it launched its browser war against Netscape, and even before that with its controversial bundling practices: the idea that you pay for your computer hardware, and that the software you need for basic functions (an ever-expanding category) should be free. Your Surface tablet runs Windows 8 and Office, but will upgrades to either be free? I doubt that's what Microsoft has in mind.

Apple seems to be taking the position that software is a commodity product that is best used to sell hardware, and by expanding the sphere of what its customers get for free - and how well its products play together - they want to keep customers in the Apple ecosystem. I can see merit in Microsoft's vision of the future, with people having full capacity to do whatever it is that they want to do on whatever device they have with them, but I'm not sure that the vision is compatible with Microsoft's business model - at least not in the mass market. If expensive software upgrades are required for any product running Windows, that cost will quickly undermine Microsoft's claim that its products are more affordable than those that offer free upgrades. Apple's vision of the future seems to be to allow users of its products to transition from one device to another, phone, tablet, computer, Apple TV, while having each device know exactly where you left off on the other. Continue your movie from where you paused, continue editing your document from where you stopped.... That vision seems to be more viable, and is unquestionably consistent with Apple's business model and - despite Mr. Shaw's claims - seems to be more consistent with how people in the mass market are using their devices.

So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.

Whereas I see Apple as obviating the need for 90+% of its customers to ever purchase "Office for IOS", should Microsoft ever muster enough courage to release such a product.

I think they, like others, are waking up to the fact that we’ve built a better solution for people everywhere, who are getting things done from anywhere, and who don’t have hard lines between their personal and professional lives. People who want a single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day. :)

I admit it. If I had to choose between doing my professional work, or even blogging, on a tablet or a notebook computer, I would pick the notebook computer as the "single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day". But I don't have to choose, and thus can use my smartphone or tablet for the functions they provides extremely well - basic communication, media consumption, web browsing, simple games, demonstrations, and online reference materials - and switch to my notebook computer (or go to my desk) for more complex tasks. To look at it another way, the fact that I have a Swiss Army knife and thus can sometimes avoid using a more specialized tool doesn't mean I'm going to throw away my saws, knives, screwdrivers and scissors. If your vision of a typical tablet user is somebody typing away on a keyboard using a fully featured windows OS, you're not looking at how people interact with their tablets.

Where We Could Really Use the "Next Steve Jobs"

A lot of people focus on the smartphone market, and complain with each new Apple product that... Steve Jobs would have done something different, or better, or both. Steve Jobs brought something unusual to Apple, specifically a willingness to make huge gambles on theoretical technology, and to release products that could turn out to be failures. Apple seems to have become exceedingly cautious, but I'm not sure that is so much the result of a change in the company's philosophy as it is a change in consumer expectations. The iPhone 4 antenna issue, and the Apple Maps brouhaha, suggest that consumers want nothing less than perfect and, rather than launching risky products that might inspire a mixed reaction or turn out to be the next Newton (or Zune), caution has spread across the industry.

The real story behind the focus on portable electronics is not so much that a life-changing innovation is just around the corner. It's much more that there is profit in the upper end of the market, the mass market having already been commoditized. Smartphone advances reflect the importance of competition as, even though Apple sees the rise and fall of Nokia as a cautionary tale, history suggests that product development in a commoditized market tends to be slow. Most companies see little to no point in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to marginally improve a product that will likely sell at the same price point as before. That's the sort of context in which a short-sighted CEO of a company like Hewlett-Packard might decide that it no longer makes sense to fund research that is not directly aimed at turning a profit, or why a similarly short-sighted company's products might go from excellent to "good enough" in order to increase margins by decreasing production costs. (Am I talking about the same company?)

One might argue that televisions have seen marked advances in technology despite being a largely commoditized market, but that has been driven in no small part by the introduction of HDTV and the money poured into the development of new displays for computer users and commercial settings. Even in that context, major players like Panasonic have a very difficult time turning a profit, and the pool of companies that produce television displays and sets is not expanding.

One area that has seen a surprising lack of innovation is the desktop computer market. That's in part because it's a tough nut to crack - computers do pretty much what we want them to do, there are no obvious ways to dramatically improve the user interface, and the technologies for interacting with computers other than through a mouse and keyboard tend to focus on niche users or turn out to be largely impractical. It may be that one day we'll have displays and "no touch" gesture controls as shown in the film, "Minority Report", but that's not on the horizon. Basically, the desktop computer market seems a lot like the television market. To the extent that incremental improvements are seen, they're in no small part the result of R&D in the mobile marketplace. The biggest "innovation" we've seen in a desktop operating system was Microsoft's annoying, clumsy interference with the user experience by putting a "smart tile" display between the computer user and the desktop - that is, they tried to make the desktop experience more like mobile, never mind whether that makes sense. Apple has made similar, albeit less in-your-face changes to its desktop operating system, with its Launchpad and App store, but they're really not part of the ordinary desktop experience.

Somebody commented to me recently that Apple seemed to be "giving up" on the competition for desktop computers. I responded that they're chasing money and market share, and that right now they can find both in the mobile space while there is little incentive to try to claw out a greater market share in the desktop market. The cost of significantly expanding their desktop presence would be significant, and there's really not much money to be made in that market. Were Apple to start producing $300 - $600 portable computers it might find a market, but it would have to make the quality cuts that are readily apparent in computers in that price range, potentially costing it brand loyalty over the long run in the same manner that the low quality Apple products of the Sculley era damaged Apple's reputation and competitiveness. Why mass produce low-cost computers that have to be sold at tiny margins and that would likely have an impaired user experience, when you can continue to sell $1000+ computers that people enjoy using, and sell millions of highly profitable iPads to the sub-$1,000 market?

Really, though, the desktop industry needs to be woken from its complacency, much in the manner that Google and Apple rebooted then-stagnant browser development with Chrome and Safari. The problem being, you either need a company that sees a long-term gain in developing new technology at a significant short-term cost, the way Xerox PARC laid the foundation for the computer mouse and windows-driven displays, or because they don't want to be indentured to a competitor's product. And if you take the HP Labs / Xerox PARC approach, you also need a visionary who can see how a new idea can be improved and put into widespread use - after all it was Apple, not Xerox, that turned the mouse and menu/windows-driven interface from an impractical lab-based demo to the desktop standard.

The manner in which the world, and Apple, has changed is perhaps best illustrated by today's quiet announcement that the iMac has been updated. You can go to the Apple Store and buy one today - but the new version isn't even flagged as "new". A secondary illustration comes from the Mac Pro, the high-end computer Apple develops for the professional market, which is soon to be released in an innovative new case. But that's innovation in the same sense as the Mac Mini was an innovation - great design and packaging, but nothing you couldn't have accomplished in a traditional mini tower case. Apple did promote the redesigned Mac Pro, some months back, but when will it actually come to market? Later this year. There's no sense of urgency, as there is in the highly competitive mobile marketplace.

An argument can be made that when a technology reaches a certain point of maturity, all new developments will be incremental. Perhaps the keyboard and mouse-driven desktop computer are pretty much it - and unless the entire concept is reinvented (much as the iPhone reinvented the smartphone market) this is it. People seem disappointed when the new "state of the art" smartphone looks like the old one - as if there's a great deal you can do to differentiate the hardware of a typical smartphone in ways that are obvious or exciting. Even in that market, unless a new, disruptive technology comes along the biggest future changes will come through software. In fifteen years, today's typical smartphone and tablet apps are likely to look about as sophisticated as Pong. But still, it would be nice to have a sense that somebody out there - somebody positioned to disrupt the market - was looking at "impractical, unworkable" new ideas from a different angle, and asking, "What if...."

Apple and the Decline of Microsoft

If the take-away is that big companies can sometimes lose track of how to compete effectively with smaller, nimbler, more innovative successors, there's nothing new to that story - it bears repeating, it's something companies should try to remember as they get big, and it's something most companies seem to forget given enough time, success, and/or an unfortunate choice of leadership. Paul Krugman argues that Apple could follow Microsoft into decline, and that it's situation could potentially be worse as it sells consumer products and thus isn't as insulated from market forces as Microsoft, which benefits from having lazy IT departments refuse to support Apple products. But that makes Apple more like Hewlett-Packard, a once great and innovative company that produced quality products, then lost its way under incompetent, bean-counting management that slashed its research budget and didn't care about quality. For that matter, you could compare the future theoretical decline of Apple to the past, actual decline of Apple, where bad decisions by Steve Jobs and his successor all-but-destroyed the company before Steve Jobs returned from NeXT with a much improved vision for the company. But for Apple's reinvention of itself, odds are that we wouldn't be fretting over whether the next iPhone will be only incrementally improved over the prior model and that Android would still be a Blackberry clone. Let's recall, Apple's big profits come not from software, but from hardware.

Krugman writes,

The story of how that state of affairs arose is tangled, but I don’t think it’s too unfair to say that Apple mistakenly believed that ordinary buyers would value its superior quality as much as its own people did. So it charged premium prices, and by the time it realized how many people were choosing cheaper machines that weren’t insanely great but did the job, Microsoft’s dominance was locked in.

On the contrary, I think Apple is painfully aware of the fact that many consumers, particularly those at the low end of the market, are choosing Android devices. Although Apple still suffers more than a bit from the Steve Jobs attitude of, "We know what you want better than you do" (an attitude Krugman notes in a blog entry on the subject) - and in fairness to Steve Jobs, at least during his second tenure at Apple he was often correct - they don't market their most profitable products in the manner that Krugman suggests. They're not trying to convince you to buy a $599 iPhone versus a bottom-of-the-market $100 Android phone. They're trying to get you to sign up for a two year contract with your phone carrier, with much of the purchase price being built into your service contract and your nominal purchase price being not much different from a low-end phone.

In terms of quality and pricing, for quite some time Apple's computers have stacked up quite well, feature-for-feature, with the diminishing pool of well-constructed PC's. But it has been my impression from the lack of development of their desktop market that they aren't interested in trying to make a huge - or even a modest - push for market share within that diminishing market. Not surprisingly, they like to manufacture products that are profitable, something that very few cell phone manufacturers do. They and Samsung presently sell cellular phones at a profit. Thanks to the increased quality of competing products, I suspect that Samsung will soon find itself facing a commoditized market for higher-end cell phones and Apple will be the last cell phone company that makes a significant profit from its hardware. Then, barring the unlikely event that we get something as disruptive to the industry as another iPhone, Apple will no longer be able to sell its cell phones for an appreciable premium over the commodity price - and the entire industry will have to glean its profits elsewhere. Apple is trying to establish a reliable ecosystem - hardware and software that work well together, allow most products that remain in service to be upgradable to the current operating system, and are easy and reliable platforms upon which third party software and hardware developers can manufacture apps and iOS-compatible products. Despite Android's quality, the fragmentation of its operating system and the fact that many phone manufacturers don't care if a two-year-old handset can be upgraded will impair its ability to offer the same opportunities. Apple intends to make money, even in a commoditized market, from app sales and licensing fees.

Krugman appears to be focusing on major disruption rather than modest innovation, even as he brings Yahoo! and Marisa Mayer into the discussion. If the resurgence of Yahoo! is a story to be believed... and I'm a skeptic... its resurgence will be the result of improvements at the margins. And that story would not be atypical. The biggest fortunes tend to be made not by the person who comes up with a concept or invents the early version, but with the person who comes up with an upgraded version of the product - something that ships better, something that's easier to manufacture, something that's easier to use. When Steve Jobs saw early versions of a window-based operating system and mouse at HP's then-famous labs, he saw the potential to transform them and turn them into products for a mass market. Jobs wasn't the inventor of the cell phone, display panel or touch screen - but he and his company came up with an innovative way to combine them.

Microsoft committed some odd, oversized errors over the past couple of decades that have contributed to its downward slide. As Krugman notes, they didn't see the potential of the iPhone, but more than that they didn't see the potential of the Internet. As Krugman noted, a lot of Microsoft's past success was built on its monopoly power, but its best and most profitable products were not major innovations. Windows built upon work that Microsoft performed for Apple, in developing the operating system for the Macintosh. It's office suite built upon software products that offered similar functionality, perhaps with modest improvement (but often without, or with 'innovative' features that you couldn't wait to turn off), and became dominant through bundling. Its browser became dominant through bundling, leading to the decline of Netscape, but it lost interest in developing a cutting edge browser pretty much the moment it no longer perceived Netscape as a threat.

Contrary to Krugman's inferences, having never been a user of Apple products, Apple did not always have a quality advantage over Microsoft or its associated hardware developers. Windows 95 incorporated some features that it took Apple years to emulate, and after Jobs left Apple's hardware quality plummeted. For that matter, for all of its innovative features, the early Macintosh suffered from having too few programs and too little RAM, as well as the odd design compromises that came from Steve Jobs' disdain for internal fans. Microsoft's present plight emerges from its failure to effectively enter new markets as the old ones faded - as operating systems became "good enough" that companies felt no need to upgrade every year or two, and as its Office suite became "good enough" that any changes it made from year-to-year were not likely to bring new sales, and as its customers tired of its game of modifying Word files such that you had to jump through hoops to save a document that would open on an older version of its software. In that sense we're back to the legitimate fear for Apple as a hardware company - that unless it comes up with a remarkable hardware innovation it's looking at a future where its products are commoditized and while, despite some people sticking with the company due to their library of iOS apps, many customers come to see little reason not to change platforms. Apple is trying to look beyond that day, and Google is struggling to convince Android developers to follow standards that will allow it to keep up.

Apple's biggest problems seem to come from copyright law, and entrenched monopolies and oligopolies. It is having difficulty coming up with a television product because of the difficulty of licensing content from media companies. Its products rely on Internet bandwidth, with many customers obtaining that bandwidth from cable monopolies. The iPhone demonstrated how you can create a breakthrough, profitable product in a tired, commoditized market, but without content there's no apparent room for a similar move in television. Also, most televisions these days would qualify as reasonably powerful computers, so it's not clear that Apple could offer a disruptive product that would not quickly be emulated, perhaps less artfully, by its competitors. People talk about an iWatch, and I think it is inevitable that Apple will produce a wearable device of some sort... although I don't think it is likely to be a watch in the sense that we have traditionally used that word, either in how it's worn or what it does, but all we can do at this point is speculate.

Google is, in a sense, playing Microsoft to Apple's iOS, offering a version of highly similar software for free, Microsoft Internet Exploder vs. Netscape's browser. I sometimes wonder if Google will continue to provide free operating system development for the world, or at least if it will be as quick to make its greatest innovations part of the core as opposed to part of a proprietary add-on, particularly as it attempts to spin Motorola up into a dominant manufacturer of Android phones. As with all of this stuff, time will tell.

When it Comes to Tablets, Microsoft is Overplaying its Hand

Perhaps inspired by a burning desire to do a "gotcha" over the historic "Mac vs. PC" ads, where a guy who needed a shave pokes fun at a pudgy guy in a suit, or perhaps inspired by the increasingly tiresome, "You have an iPhone? Let me show you this cool feature in my Samsung" ads, Microsoft is taking a potshot at the iPad:

The ad makes three basic criticisms of the iPad:

1. 1. It has a relatively bland, traditional desktop whereas Windows 8 uses "smart tiles" that continuously update;

2. 2. It does not multi-task; and

3. 3. Microsoft has dropped the ball when it comes to writing software for iOS.

It then presents an intentionally misleading price comparison between the iPad and an entry level Windows tablet (with a much lower resolution screen¹ and plastic case).

The first two issues are in no small part about power management. I can't tell you the degree to which Apple may incorporate multi-tasking or updating in the next version of iOS, which will include a significant revision of much of the user interface, but history suggests that Apple will continue to favor long battery life over power-draining features that have limited utility. Don't get me wrong - I would like Apple to allow users to have greater choice, even if it means that they will need to recharge their iPads more often. But it's highly misleading to suggest, "Our new mobile OS is really cool" without addressing how that coolness affects battery life and performance.

In terms of iOS not offering Microsoft Excel, well, yeah... Microsoft has delayed producing a version of Office for iOS to the degree that it's difficult to infer any motive but Microsoft's traditional, "Delay upgrading and offer inferior versions of Office for Apple products." Perhaps their next commercial will show some sort of Zune software running on the Windows tablet, with iTunes running on the iPad? My, how turnabout can sting.

Right now I'll admit to having more computers in my house than occupants. One is OS-X, two are Windows 7. And we also have a couple of tablets. The people who claim that tablets are mere toys, or are about to go the way of the Dodo, either haven't used one or aren't paying attention to how they're used. Games aside, a tablet is an incredibly useful tool for consuming online content - checking email, browsing the web, watching streamed or stored video, video conferencing and the like. Responding, "I can do all of that on my desktop or notebook" misses the point - the convenience and portability factor. A few years ago if you went to an airport you would see a lot of people working on notebook computers, trying to scrounge an outlet. These days you see an even larger number of people using tablets to read or otherwise entertain themselves, and notebook users have a lot less competition for those outlets.

But if I'm trying to type or edit a document, work on a spreadsheet, or do any sort of complex or multi-window task, I want to be at my desktop computer with a large monitor and keyboard. It may well be that I would be impressed with the touchscreen UI for Excel. I doubt it, given how unimpressed I am with the touchscreen UI for Windows 8, but Microsoft could surprise me. But what would I do if I actually needed to work on a spreadsheet? I would set down the tablet and use either one of our portable computers or my desktop computer - because they're better designed for that kind of work.

The Samsung ads, in my opinion, have devolved from being cute and funny to, more or less, showing Samsung owners wearing out their own arms by patting themselves on the back.² Oddly enough, Microsoft seems to understand this, even if they don't actually present a reason to buy a Windows phone other than "It's not an Apple or a Samsung".

The difference is this: If I weigh the pros and cons of the various smartphones available today, I can come up with valid reasons why I might prefer a Samsung over an Apple, or vice versa. If I put the two phones next to each other and run various tasks, I am going to see why I might prefer one over the other.

But if I were to recreate the comparison from Microsoft's commercial at an electronics store, putting the Asus tablet next to an iPad and running various apps, I would not have the experience depicted in the commercial. I would immediately see that the Samsung had an inferior build and display. And from the reviews I've read, I would see the Asus tablet slow down or become momentarily non-responsive when multi-tasking. I might notice that the battery has a significantly lower capacity than that of the iPad, and while crediting advances in CPU technology for its reasonably long battery life nonetheless recognize that the battery life is extended by the use of the much lower-resolution screen. Reviews indicate that I would find the cameras in the ASUS to be of good quality, but that I would likely be displeased by the camera software. And while the tablet might perform better if it weren't running a full version of Windows 8, without that you would have to drop the "And look how well it runs Microsoft software" part of the ad.

I'm reminded of the highly effective commercials Microsoft ran, touting the sub-$1,000 entry price for Windows notebook computers. I'm also reminded of how that series of commercials fizzled out when Apple started offering sub-$1,000 notebooks and Microsoft started touting lower price points - instead of comparing computers of reasonably comparable build and performance, getting into a quality of build and performance that no reasonable consumer would find to be a compelling point of comparison to the Apple product.

If Microsoft's goal is to get buzz, the victory goes to Microsoft - here I am talking about their products. But if its goal is to convince consumers to buy Windows tablets, the commercial seems to oversell the product, creating the potential for customer dissatisfaction at a time when Microsoft needs to build a significant user base for its tablets and risks increasing consumer skepticism of its marketing pitches.
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1. The Asus screen offers 1,366 x 768 pixels, for a pixel density of 155 ppi. The iPad offers 2048 x 1536-pixels, for a pixel density of 264 ppi.

2. Commercials I would like to see:

"Why are you and that other guy bumping your phones together?"
"My phone has this awesome feature that allows me to exchange data by bumping it into somebody else's phone, does your phone do that?"
"Um... my phone has email."

"Hey, you're using an iPhone. Wanna see this really cool feature my phone has that yours doesn't have yet? No? You said 'No?' What do you mean, you wouldn't use that feature? What do you mean, 'pro's and con's to every phone'?"

"You waited in line to buy your phone? I got a phone that nobody waits in line for. Wait, that didn't come out the way I wanted."

Do You Really Want a Touch-Screen Notebook Computer?

I'll admit it, one of my pet peeves is going to my portable computer, opening it up, and finding somebody's fingerprints all over my screen. I have at times found myself telling people, "Please point, don't touch", when they're drawing my attention to a detail displayed on my computer monitor. When I have to sit and stare at a screen, I want it to be nice and clean. And I'm far from a "neat freak".

The idea of touch screens on portable computers is interesting. I can see how some of the elements of the iPad interface would translate well to a portable computer, or even a desktop computer. But even with an iPad, sometimes you move to a new location, experience a shift in the lighting, or find that something is stuck to its surface and... it's cleaning time! I suspect that the few times I would want to use a touch-screen interface on a fully featured portable or desktop computer would be vastly outnumbered by the number of times I would find myself wishing for a clean screen, and that in most of those occasions I can do just fine with a mouse or trackpad.

Perhaps the concept will work better on a computer that's more of a tablet than a portable, an iPad-plus. Microsoft appears to believe so. But I'm presently leaning toward Steve Jobs-style skepticism that, once the novelty wears off, people will get much use out of touch screens on their regular computers.

And it Should Walk on the Water - And Be Free!

Consumer expectations like this lead me to believe that, should Apple produce a 7" (or so) tablet computer, it will be sold as an iPod.

Update: Upon reflection, I would consider branding the mid-sized device the "iPad Reader" - to attempt to position it as something other than a budget iPad, and also to provide clear notice up-front that the functionality will be a bit different because it's primary purpose is for reading.

Control Freaks vs. Commoditization

In relation to Microsoft's plan to become a manufacturer of tablet computers, Paul Krumgan observes,

[I]f you contract with other people to build equipment, they may be unwilling to invest in quality in the belief that you will use your sole-buyer status to extract the benefits.

And that, apparently, is exactly what has been going on with Microsoft; its reliance on other people to build computers using its software worked very well for a long time, but lately Apple’s control-freak approach has been winning out.

I agree with Krugman and his reference to Hart, but from my experiences in the hardware market I think Microsoft's primary difficulty emerges from the commoditization of personal computers, both desktop and notebook, and the reluctance of third party manufacturers to take a long-term, quality driven perspective through which they can profit from selling premium products.

I bumped into a friend recently and noted that he was using a MacBook Pro. I commented that he had traditionally used PC's. He responded that he is OS agnostic, and suggested that his principal motivation for switching was quality. I started to comment about the decline in the quality of the Dell notebooks I've owned and he cut me off, "Dell computers are crap!" So there he was, a guy with enough money to buy a premium computer of any brand, as long as it worked, and he was turning to Apple because, all else being roughly equal, its products are reliable.

The difficulty for Microsoft is that if it builds high-end products, sold alongside third party Windows tablets built to be sold as commodities, even if quality is accepted as a matter of faith it may have difficulty maintaining a premium price point. But perhaps Microsoft accepts that its move may alienate third party manufacturers, and that those third parties will compete more directly with Amazon and... it would appear Google as well, for the lower-end tablet market, while it focuses on a premium product that can compete with the iPad, or at least give Microsoft an opportunity to establish itself as a tablet manufacturer for enterprise customers while it fashions additional products that may have greater appeal to consumers.

Quality? If it wants to offer tablets that can truly be classified as premium, I don't think Microsoft has much choice but to make its own hardware. For any other company, such an approach would involve a significant risk with much of any eventual benefit flowing to Microsoft.

Microsoft Takes Tablets One Step Closer to Commoditization

One of the interesting things about Microsoft is that, for all of its talent at producing software, its biggest success as a hardware manufacturer has come by selling its hardware at a loss. In the video game console market that's part of how the game is played - you sell the console to lock players into your game system (and, ideally, also the successor).

Now, it seems, Microsoft is entering the tablet market as a manufacturer. You can call it smart, you can call it desperation, but it does appear that Microsoft has little chance of establishing a significant foothold in the tablet market without either making its own tablets or subsidizing third party manufacturers (directly, by giving them money, or indirectly, by creating a context in which they will profit through the sales of products and advertising on the units they manufacture). If it's impossible for third parties to turn a sufficient profit on Windows tablets, they'll drop Windows in favor of Android.

Microsoft has fallen far behind Google and Apple in the mobile OS market. I am not sure that becoming a manufacturer will be enough. But if Microsoft doesn't get its mobile platform into the hands of consumers, the number of consumers who are not invested in a competitor's platform - who either don't have a modern mobile device or are willing to dump their Apple or Android products, and all the apps that go along with them, in order to switch to Microsoft - will become vanishingly small.

I suspect that Microsoft, like Amazon, will ultimately make its tablets a loss leader for its sale of electronic media. Apple is enjoying its present profits, but it is aware that the long-term picture involves commoditization - little to no profit on the actual mobile device, with profits instead derived from the sale of software and media. Still, there's no guarantee that it will be an easy transition. Apple has two significant advantages over Microsoft - proven hardware, and a proven ability to sell apps and media. What a role reversal....

What if the New Apple TV Is...

The Apple TV? Seriously, it makes more sense to me that Apple would be improving their device that can be added to any TV set than it would be for them to be attempting to enter the consumer market and trying to compete with products that have established distribution networks and, in most cases, razor-thin margins.

But could it be more than that? Certainly. What if the new Apple TV is... the next generation iMac. Put it in any room as a computer that can substitute as a second TV and use it as a media server to the rest of the home, just as you can through your existing desktop Mac and Apple TV, with the exception being that you can feed your cable through the iMac or through a simple add-on device that allows you to distribute all of your media to other sets in your household via your wireless hub, whether or not they're connected to cable, as long as they're connected to the current Apple TV box or its successor product. Get people used to accessing their program through the Apple TV with the Apple remote (or iPhone and iPad apps), serving audio and video from a central (Apple) computer, renting movies from Apple instead of their cable provider.... (A quick check suggests that I'm far from the only person thinking like this.)

As we can expect to see the next version of the Apple TV unveiled shortly after noon tomorrow, and may see the next iMac at the same time, you'll probably soon know if I'm maintaining my long history of bad predictions about Apple. I'll add to that list, if a new iMac isn't unveiled tomorrow I suspect that they're planning a significant upgrade, not just the incremental updates we've seen over the past few years.

"You'll Get Used to It"

Microsoft's response to complaints about its tablet OS:

The company's answer to this kind of criticism can be found in a post from Jensen Harris, director of program management and formerly a key member of the Office 2007 Ribbon UI team - a project that also ran into user opposition.

Harris describes how every new version of Windows has had vocal opponents, but that users are won over in time. "Although some people had critical reactions and demanded changes to the user interface, Windows 7 quickly became the most-used OS in the world," he says. Clearly Microsoft believes that history will repeat; though Harris conveniently forgets the warm reception Windows 7 won even in preview.

On the other hand, in the world of cellular phones where consumers have had a choice between a clumsy Microsoft interface and a competitor's superior product, the competitors dominate. I wonder if Google is confusing its power as a monopoly ("We design what we want and our customers eventually get used to it") with a viable business model for markets in which they're presently an also-ran.

Mobility vs. Portability

A CNET column, speculating on the future of Facebook and its theoretical successors, comments,

The company doesn't get mobile -- never has. Young as he is, Mark Zuckerberg was raised on the Web, on computers. Remember him saying in 2010 that the company didn't have an iPad app because the iPad "isn't mobile, it's a computer"? Facebook just plain missed it.

I think there's a language disconnect here. A notebook computer is "mobile" in the sense that you can take it with you and use it from remote locations. Zuckerberg wouldn't argue with that - he just might use a different word, like "portable". While it's fair to point out that an iPad uses iOS, an operating system designed for mobile devices, due to the much larger screen size the experience of using apps on an iPad can be quite different than the experience on an iPhone. Facebook's platform and profits come from the browser, not the app. If Facebook produces a half-hearted app, inspiring people to use their browser to get a full or even adequate experience, Facebook makes more money both through advertising and by the advancement of its platform. If it allows you to take full advantage of the social world of Facebook via an app, but cannot effectively monetize the app or support social gaming through the app, it's harming itself.

That is to say, Zuckerberg is correct to be concerned about Facebook's becoming "just another app", when he needs to to be a platform.

Recent rumors of Facebook's interest in acquiring Opera may relate to its difficulty gaining traction on tablets and mobile devices. Opera doesn't have much traction on the desktop, but it might be feasible to create a heavily Facebook-flavored browser that would take the place of a hobbled Facebook app on mobile devices, including tablets. If you get people to spend 20% of their online time in your proprietary browser looking at your own content, and get them used to accessing the rest of the Internet through your browser instead of the default browser that comes with the device, you are much better positioned to monetize mobile traffic than if you're "just another app".

Meanwhile, a generation of kids my son's age and older are living their lives solely on mobile devices -- tablets and phones and whatever iterations the future holds. For them, Facebook will be something their parents do, and it's still fundamentally a Web-based experience. It's likely to hold little appeal to them -- and somewhere out there, entrepreneurs thinking along the lines of, say, Dave Morin at Path (ironically, a former Facebooker) are working on products that are born mobile, that skip the Web entirely, that live in the world the next generation lives in.

It makes no more sense to pretend that the entire world is mobile than it does to pretend that the entire world is sitting at a desk in front of a traditional, desktop computer. A big part of Facebook's success has been its ability to be inclusive - getting people who barely even use a computer to sign up in order to see photos of distant friends and relatives. No doubt, being the next, big, hot idea among the younger generation or on the mobile platform can translate into profit and success. We've all heard about Instagram. But a future with a hundred "Instagrams" vying for your attention on mobile devices is one of fragmented social media, something quite different than what Facebook offers.

I expect that the actual business plan behind apps "that skip the Web entirely" is to go the way of Instagram, to get snapped up by one of the giant players for a quick, significant profit, not to reinvent the online social world as a mobile-only environment. My guess is that no small number of them will let you register and log in through your Facebook account - in no small part because they're apps and Facebook is a platform.

One last thing,

Simply put: the world is going mobile, it's hard to make money on mobile, and no one is feeling that more painfully than Facebook.

But someone will figure it out. Someone always does, and there's always money to be made where the people are. It just won't be Facebook.

Am I the only person who has a problem with the conceit that someone "always" figures out how to monetize online information? If an edition of a newspaper is worth $2 in print, 5 cents when read via a browser, and a cent when read via a mobile device, is the proper conclusion that the newspaper "figured out" how to monetize its online and mobile content, or would it be more accurate to say that some types of content cannot be monetized in the online world at a level that sustains their historic business model? The reality is this: when faced with new business realities some businesses and industries find ways to evolve and make money, others go the way of the stagecoach company and village blacksmith.

War of the Platforms

How quickly we forget Microsoft (not that we should).... From an interview of Larry Page,

We are in an interesting place in tech where almost none of the big companies—Apple (AAPL), Facebook, Amazon.com (AMZN)—are working together. Why is that?

Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense. I don’t know that I believe there is some huge, strange change in that.

We were real interested in getting instant messaging to work across networks back in the day, and we worked really hard with AOL (AOL) to do that. You know, integration between Google Talk and AOL Instant Messaging. It ended up being a tremendous amount of technical effort. There were some user benefits generated by it, but I’m not sure it was ultimately worth the effort. I would say that my experience with these things is that they have been somewhat difficult.

As I interpret the first part of the answer, that's the important part: "We (Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google) don't see cooperation as being in our self-interest." The second part, about technical difficulties, is peripherally relevant - if you are trying to merge multiple platforms into a single interface you will encounter technical issues. But we're really talking VHS / Betamax here - the parties aren't interested in merging their platforms because they all want to win.

A number of years ago, Netscape created an Internet browser. After a sluggish start, Microsoft started listening to concerns that the browser might be the platform of the future, displacing or marginalizing the operating system, and used its massive market power to make Internet Explorer the dominant browser. Judging from their subsequent treatment of Explorer, they apparently then decided that they had killed the threat and went back to sleep.

Also, for pretty much as long as there has been an Internet, there have been efforts to bring the Internet to television. Microsoft was an early competitor for Internet TV, but between poor resolution, a poor interface and a difference in how people traditionally interact with their televisions as opposed to their computers, that didn't work out so well. Which isn't to say that Microsoft has given up - it is trying to turn the Xbox into an interface to television and movie programming.

There was a lot of hype a few months back about the possibility of an Apple television, with a lot of talk about interface. I would not be surprised if Apple is devoting considerable resources to researching television technology, how to improve displays, how to improve streaming, how to improve interface. But I'm increasingly skeptical that they are going to become so territorial about the television space that they attempt to enter the commoditized space of high definition televisions.

If television and movie producers were as eager to sign on to distribution through iTunes in the same manner as the music industry, perhaps there would be a greater opportunity for a premium-priced Apple branded television with an impeccable interface to their store, a brilliant screen, a wonderful interface, and packages of content that would allow owners to avoid subscribing to Cable (although they would have to get high speed Internet access somewhere). But the stars aren't aligning in that manner, so I expect Apple will continue to emphasize its products as an interface to Television. In friendly to not-so-friendly competition with Google, Microsoft and Netflix, with Amazon's recent Playstation deal suggesting that it, also, is entering the game.

Fundamentally, this appears to be a platform war. Microsoft is reportedly fashioning its next OS to integrate well with its relatively unsuccessful smartphone OS and its upcoming tablet OS. Amazon is happy to build its Kindle OS on Android, but strips out the parts of Android that most benefit Google. Google is pushing television integration and Google Play. Facebook is... I'm not sure, but as long as a huge percentage of social network traffic and gaming occurs through their platform, they're a possible contender. And all of them want you to buy entertainment products and software through their proprietary stores, taking a commission on the sale of each new song, TV show, movie or application you purchase.

The iPad has turned out to be an amazing platform. Although people talk about Facebook as a potential advertising company, it is only profitable by virtue of the commission it charges to third parties for the use of its platform. Microsoft understands that Windows for PC is eroding as a platform, and is hoping to reestablish itself through the Xbox and various Windows 8 products. Google is taking a gamble with Android as a platform, with Amazon demonstrating how a third party can take full advantage of its work in developing a fully featured, stable mobile operating system and swap in its own web store, but they'll keep pushing it as a platform and will probably try to come up with a revenue sharing model to keep other smartphone and tablet manufacturers from following Amazon's suit or switching to Windows.

And yes, those platform wars are going to creep into your living room. If you have a gaming system, Apple TV or iPad, arguably even a smart phone, they're already in your living room looking for opportunities to expand their reach. Huge numbers of TV viewers already have a second device running while they watch TV - how do you bring the two (or more) screens together? How do you make your smart device the default interface or control for the television and, from there, perhaps the default source for premium, purchased or rented video content? And as server-based games get more powerful, can even the promised exceptional graphics performance of the next generation of game stations continue to hold n advantage over app-based purchased, subscription or freemium gaming? Take your game from tablet to TV, back to tablet, to smartphone, to car, to friend's house, to friend's TV.... It's going to be interesting.

Computers Can't Eliminate Poverty

I recently read a particularly cynical take on the effort to distribute computers to children in impoverished areas of the world:

What a child needs is to be sequestered from human contact with the latest technology. A third world educational initiative should be conducted in the manner of an experiment in developing the cognitive power of chimpanzees. Feel the techno-idiocy: it burns.

I remember this idea getting serious momentum years ago until it was pointed out to some of the philanthropists that the places they were planning to distribuite computing to didn't have electricity. Now they've figured out how to put solar panels in the things, so its let them eat laptops: the sequel.

In fairness to the cynic, the actual proposal literally involved "tak[ing] tablets and drop[ping] them out of helicopters", unaccompanied by "any adults or teaching resources" to "see if the tablets could be used to teach them to read without additional instruction", with allusions to the Coke bottle in "The Gods Must Be Crazy", an approach that does seem rather absurd.

Thomas Friedman's recent column on an initiative to distribute inexpensive tablet computers to children in India brought it to mind, sharing a second-hand account of a maid's reaction to learning of the program:

"'What can you do on it?’ she asked me. I said, ‘If your daughter goes to school, she can use it to download videos of class lessons,’ just like she had seen my son download physics lectures every week from M.I.T.’s [OpenCourseWare]. I said, ‘You have seen our son sitting at the computer listening to a teacher who is speaking. That teacher is actually in America.’ She just kept getting wider- and wider-eyed. Then she asked me will her kids be able to learn English on it. I said, ‘Yes, they will definitely be able to learn English,’ which is the passport for upward mobility here. I said, ‘It will be so cheap you will be able to buy one for your son and one for your daughter!'"

I think that a decent computer, along with an adequate source of power and access to content, can be a powerful learning tool. But let's be honest here. Even if we assume that they have access to quality instruction, most kids aren't going to spend hours staring at the screen of a notebook computer trying to learn math or English. We may be dealing with a particularly motivated population of students and parents, but even within that context there is going to be a lot of frustration and failure. Hardware is the easy part - creating and distributing quality, up-to-date, accessible software and content is costly and difficult. Even if you create it, absent strong motivation it's likely to be underutilized.

If a school district were to propose to Friedman that it was going to totally eliminate classroom instruction in favor of having kids buy notebooks, no verification of Internet access, lessons and content to be developed at some point in the future, I would hope he would be skeptical and critical. This type of technology distribution is much more of an "every little bit helps" approach than a magic bullet.

I would like to see India push forward and invest the necessary money in content, software and infrastructure to make distance learning a reality for every one of the nation's children. Even if we assume only 5% of kids will actually see a significant benefit, advancing academically at or above 'grade level' despite a lack of access to schools and teachers, or using the computer to push beyond what they can learn in class, that's a lot of kids. Although I agree that you can't eat computers, it is not likely that the kids who most need this type of program will have reasonable, equivalent access to educational opportunity.

A Walled Garden, Yes, But....

A persistent criticism of Apple is that, with the iPhone and iPad, they have created a "walled garden", limiting what users can do on the devices and restricting which vendors can sell applications that will run on them. For example,

I have no plans to be captured by the Apple ecosystem. It is the height of control-freakery, with Apple telling app developers and even journalists whether what they sell through its storefront is acceptable. Apple wants customers to live in its gorgeous walled garden. No thanks, I prefer to make my own decisions.

It's a fair criticism to a point. Inherent to its business model, Apple does restrict what you can do with your iPhone and iPad. From the technological side, the restrictions keep malicious programs, viruses, worms and the like off of the devices, as well as avoiding technology that causes frequent crashes or drastically shortens battery life (sorry, Flash). Apple was savvy enough to recognize that users would blame it, not software companies, for crashes or for short battery life. Second, yes, by controlling the storefront Apple gets a cut from every product it sells. Apple has made some mistakes in excluding apps from its App Store, and imposes restrictions that keep certain apps out of its store, but pretty much all of that content can be accessed through the browser build right into the device.

The complaint reminds me of the early days of computers, with the introduction of the Mac and mouse. If you remember that era you may recall hearing from PC aficionados that a GUI was too limiting - that you were removed from the real power of the line command, a faster and more efficient means of controlling your machine. That's true to a degree, but even when they were forced to use line commands, most users learned little more than they needed to learn in order to run basic software packages. With improvements to GUIs, most computer users never even fire up a command prompt. Yes, probably 5 - 10% of computer users like and benefit from at least occasional use of a command prompt, most computer users were happy to see it go. The iPad and iPhone can be accused of continuing in that direction: making that same 5 - 10% of the potential user base grumble about it being difficult to program or customize iPads, the pros and cons of "jailbreaking" a device, etc., but producing an easy-to-use stable product that the other 90% of users enjoy.

But if you look at things from another perspective, the iPhone and iPad have, at least, made the cage a lot larger. Consider what was available on the market before the iPhone. If I wanted to develop a software product for the Blackberry or Palm, what was the mechanism through which I would have been able to push it out to the masses? What about a cell phone app - what if I wanted to produce software to run on Sprint's phones? What if I wanted (or want) to sell a VOIP app that will run on any cell phone and let people switch from their cellular minutes to making calls over an Internet connection at a coffee shop? Apple has produced beautiful devices that make us recognize that a cellular phone or tablet-type device is in fact a computer and is capable of doing more than its maker allows (unless you jailbreak the device) but while you're still in a cage, the cage is enormous as compared to what other handset manufacturers previously allowed (and in many cases what they presently allow).

I don't know if the author is a power user. I don't know if he's off writing apps for his Android phone, or if he considers it to be an exercise in freedom to watch Flash videos through a cell phone browser. I suspect that, as with most of the people who used to talk up the freedom and power of the PC's historic command line, it's an "I like to know that I could modify the OS and write my own Apps if I wanted to, and learned how, even though there's no realistic chance of either actually occurring." Let's say, however, that he wants to write and market an app for Android devices. Does he have a realistic option other than selling it through Google's app store or Amazon's app store? If he produces a product that competes with an add-on service from a cell phone carrier, can he be sure that his cellular service won't block or disable the app? That is, where in this market can I find the garden that is not walled - let alone one that has not been forced to expand in response to the iPhone?

As tablet computers become more powerful and capable, we may move into a future in which your cell phone can truly be your personal computer - use it on the go with it's built-in screen or use a wireless connection to have it power a monitor and keyboard for full computer functionality. If that's what the market wants, that's where Apple, Amazon, and the larger world of Android devices will go.

What's the Benefit of an Amazon Tablet

According to the Wall Street Journal, an "analyst" has proposed that Amazon could produce a low-cost tablet computer that could "disrupt a tablet market dominated by Apple".

Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps wrote that while "Amazon taking on Apple is a bit like David taking on Goliath," if Amazon proves willing to sell its tablet relatively cheaply and leverage its brand and surplus of online content, it could make a significant mark.

Specifically, if Amazon prices the as-yet-undisclosed tablet at less than $300, the Seattle-based company could sell up to 5 million units in the fourth quarter of this year, the analyst wrote.

By the same token, any electronics manufacturer could produce a high quality, low price tablet computer and "disrupt" the tabloid market. I recognize that the key factor here is "Amazon" - the idea being that Amazon sells a ton of ebooks and manufactures the Kindle, and thus could in theory achieve economies of scale that would be difficult for others to achieve. Even a Photoshopped logo on a medium-sized tablet can create a certain level of excitement.

What we all want is a hybrid of the [Kindle and iPad] - a kindle that is a full blown tablet computer with a browser, apps, and an OS. It looks like Amazon is going to bring that to market this fall. I'm getting one for myself and one for the Gotham Gal. And I'm pretty sure my mom and dad are getting them too. It looks like a killer product.

Except what I hear from Kindle fans is, "It's small, light, easy to hold, and liquid ink is wonderful to read," versus the larger format, heavier iPad with its much greater functionality and color display. Why not read ebooks on your smart phone? Too small, and no liquid ink? To me it seems like the "hybrid" misses the mark: You lose the larger screen size and quality display of the tablet, but you also lose the liquid ink offered by the Kindle. (It is theoretically possible to create a display that incorporates both LCD and liquid ink, and I believe I saw an Apple patent application for such a display, but I have no reason to expect that the early generations of those screens will be available on entry model devices.)

If you end up with a table that's too small to be an effective tablet, too large to replace your cellular phone, needs to be carried in a purse or briefcase instead of a pocket, and is best used for reading ebooks, you're really talking about a Kindle. When you add color, apps and additional Internet functionality, you have something that's much more of a "Kindle plus" than an iPad-Kindle hybrid. That is to say, rather than appealing to people who might be choosing between a Kindle and an iPad, such a mid-sized, mid-functionality device seems aimed at people who want a device that falls between a smart phone and a tablet - something to buy in addition to or (for those who are willing to forego liquid ink) instead of a Kindle. I'm reminded of Steve Jobs' reaction, a while back, to rumors of a smaller-sized iPad. Once you use the iPad, I don't think you yearn for a smaller version. But people who use the Kindle seem eager to get a color version, or an Android model that runs a browser and their favorite apps. So the excitement isn't, "Apple might make a smaller iPad," but, "Amazon might sell a branded version of a small tablet that could have some of the functionality of an iPad." When phrased that way, it's not particularly exciting.

Something else to consider: Apple's control of its supply chain and manufacturing allows it to sell iPads at a highly competitive price while achieving significant profit margins. When it saw the first round of competitors' tablets on the horizon, it came out with the iPad 2 so that it would stay equal to or ahead of those products while it prepared to leapfrog them with the iPad 3. Amazon can afford to sell a smaller, inexpensive tablet at close to cost, but how would that help Amazon? Amazon will add functionality to the Kindle in order to maintain its position as the market-leading ebook reader, and it would no doubt try to boost its own app store through the next-generation Kindle or "hybrid" device, but it's difficult to imagine that a smaller sized tablet, sold near cost, is going to have a significant impact on the tablet market, and without the generation of profits for R&D it's difficult to see how any short-term market gain would be sustainable. If in fact Amazon reveals a significant market for smaller tablets, Steve Jobs' past dismissals aside, Apple will produce a product for that niche.

Here's something for Apple's competitors to consider: Do you want to take the path of pharmaceutical companies, trying to design products that do the same thing as your competitors' blockbuster drugs but which provide little additional benefit to patients, or do you want to be like the company whose products you're copying - and produce well-engineered, breakthrough, market leading products in your own right? If Amazon decides that its future Kindles should be mini-iPads, it would be abandoning the latter approach in favor of the former.

Throwing Money at Internet Freedom

Jackson Diehl is concerned that, although money has been earmarked for use to subsidize sites that allow the residents of foreign nations to avoid state censorship, both the Bush and Obama Administrations have been slow to spend it. I can think of three reasons why that would be the case:

1. Just because I claim to have a good system for helping people avoid state censorship doesn't mean I'm necessarily a good target for $millions in taxpayer dollars. A company offered those $millions is likely to take the money, sure, but it may not use the money wisely - or its backers may pocket the money and run.

2. Just because a system is up and running doesn't mean that it's actually secure. Funding the wrong program could helptyrannical regimes identify dissidents.

3. The U.S. Government is concerned that it would be subsidizing tools used by criminals and terrorists to operate in ways that avoid detection and impede tracing by U.S. authorities.

So What Else is New

Apple's announcement of iAd pretty much demonstrates why I shouldn't try to guess what Apple is up to. I may get close, but I'll probably be wrong.

iAd, which enables interactive ads inside an app, is an affront to Google whose business relies on browser-based searching. "People aren't searching on a mobile device like they are on a desktop device," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "They are using apps to get to the Internet."

And now app producers can monetize their "free" apps with iAd and, thanks to Apple's patented approach to serving ads, advertisers can know that their ads are actually being watched. This also makes more understandable why Apple has been so cautious about approving Apps, even to the frustration of many developers. Advertisers can be comfortable that their ads won't be used to monetize, for example, X-rated content.

A Gremlin Ate My Cookie

I had a long post on "health courts" prepared, in response to Dr. Kirch's suggestions in this thread, but due to some sort of corruption of my Google authentication cookie it got eaten. Now you'll all have to suffer through the agony of waiting for a rewrite. ;-)

Any iSlate Bets?

With Apple's new device about to be unveiled, any thoughts about how Apple hopes to define our future?

My stab in the dark is games: I expect that Apple will try to make its new device a "way cooler than the competition" alternative to the current generation of handheld video games.

Update: I'm not the only one.