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My Bold Predictions for 2013

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 2, 2013

Happy New Year! Alrighty, now that I’ve judged myself on my Bold Predictions for 2012 (and done not so badly overall though always with room for improvement), it’s time to spit em’ out for 2013. I’m hung over, have a sore back, haven’t slept and oh yeah, have to head back to what will be an insane merger-induced grind tomorrow so I’m actually not in a blogging mood but dammit, predictions must flow! I’m going to try to put in everything I can think of before posting this but I do these kind of off-the-cuff and with no pre-planning so I am going to reserve the right to add to the post for up to 48 hours after publishing it in case I remember anything. These are also tech and gaming predictions. I have predictions in the economic and political arenas too but these will be long enough and frankly, I don’t have the time or the energy for political arguments.

And away we go!

Gaming

  • THQ’s new private equity owner will ensure all their games in the pipe come out but the company will be split up and sold off shortly after. This is honestly a shame because despite the absolute idiocy of that company’s management (Jason Rubin being very much an exception), they’ve managed to keep a lot of talent and put out some pretty good games. That said, the AAA industry is in a state of massive flux right now (more on that later) and even the big boys can’t figure out how to reliably succeed in it so I can’t see who would want to fund another go for THQ in that arena. There’s a lot of mystery around this eleventh hour deal but from what I’ve read, it looks like vultures who want to ring out whatever profits they can from the nearly finished games in the pipe and then sell the studios and IP for some additional profit. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am.
  • Mobile gaming will continue to grow but the honeymoon is over. This is kind of an extension of a prediction from last year but I’m declaring it to have a bigger effect this year. I’ve banged on about how the meteoric growth of this industry (and the companies whose platforms it runs on) is a fashion trend, that the growth is unsustainable and that a big equalisation adjustment is coming as it already has in the social space. Mobile has quickly been usurped by big companies and the only games that are attaining mass scale success are from big companies with the occasional fluke like Angry Birds was. It’s a super hit driven industry just like AAA is and the press will no longer be able to ignore that as they’ve been doing for a while now. This type of gaming’s not going anywhere and that’s a good thing but this is the year reality hits and people realise it isn’t all milk, honey and guaranteed riches. Mobile will continue to exist and thrive but it’s not going to replace other ways of gaming any time soon if ever. To tie into this…
  • The general public will start to tire of free-to-play Skinner Box mechanics. This right here is why I can’t stand most mobile games. Everything’s filled with microtransactions, nags to spend money and a damn store front between every level, whether it makes design sense or not. It’s a terrible, exploitive way to design games, I hate it and I’ve already heard more than a few other people who are tired of it too. When people look at their credit card statements and realise those 5 $0.99 games they bought actually cost more like $25 in total in order to make them good and not just grind fests, they get frustrated and I think we’ll see more of that. This mechanic isn’t going away but I do think we’re going to start seeing mobile games that offer complete experiences for a higher price.
  • The WiiU will be a modest success. I’m sure Nintendo realises that much like mobile is now, the Wii’s growth was fashion driven and I’m sure they have no such expectations with the WiiU and have budgeted accordingly. I got one of these for Christmas and despite some dumb decisions they made (largely regarding patch structure, DRM and the GamePad’s battery, all of which can be fixed), this is an amazing platform that offers a lot of promise and uniqueness. This isn’t a Wii with a low-rent tablet attached and anyone who thinks so is either uninformed or more likely an Apple fanboy. I still don’t see Nintendo winning over third parties in a big way with this but as always, their own stunning developer talent will carry the WiiU to profitability.
  • The Vita will go from limping to crawling. Naming the Vita one of my disappointments of 2012 hurt because I love this thing so much. It’s incredible hardware and it’s a steal at $250 and it shows how you can do good portable gaming without compromise but no one’s making games for it. Even when they’re hurting bad though, Sony’s not one to throw in the towel and I don’t think they will here. They’ll keep pushing it and I do believe it will continue to sell small numbers and probably will never be a runaway success but I do think it will advance enough this year to keep owners like myself in some decent content. I also believe Sony’s next home system will give it a big push but more on that later.
  • Console shovelware is dead. It’s already happening and good bloody riddance! The Wii and DS were kind of the last bastions for the vulture publishers who make their living cranking out cheap, garbage games for $30-$40 in the hopes of catching suckers at Wal-Mart. The increased development costs of the new systems (which many believe to be 2-3x what they are now at a minimum) will make this slimy practice an impossible model. These publishers won’t simply move to mobile either because there’s already too much garbage in that space and because they were run by scummy businesspeople who didn’t really understand the industry as a whole, they won’t know how to adapt to the realities of the mobile market and will likely just up and die off. They deserve to rot.
  • The first major Kickstarter disaster will happen and will test people’s faith in the crowdfunding model. I think this model of funding games is brilliant and I spent way too much on Kickstarters this year. However, at least one of these projects is either not going to come out and zero out everybody’s “investment” or it will come out, be far below the majority’s expectations and people will feel ripped off. There have just been too many projects and a big portion of those are fuelled by rose-tinted nostalgic expectations. I know I’m probably going to hate at least a couple of the finished projects that I backed. No disrespect to Brian Fargo and I so hope Wasteland 2 is killer but inXile’s track record is not good. The Peter Molyneux and David Braben projects are also just gross and while perfectly legit, abuse the Kickstarter spirit in my opinion. The thing is, I fully knew what I was getting into when I backed them and the whole point of Kickstarter and that you roll the dice and take your chances. Most people don’t know that though or they say they do but don’t really mean it. When one of these games comes out to poor reviews or worse yet, doesn’t come out at all, a lot of people are going to feel burned and run away from crowdfunding. The people that do get it will continue to make it a viable means of indie development which is awesome but much like mobile, we’re still in the honeymoon phase.
  • The OUYA will come out and find niche success. I don’t really think the OUYA folks believe this is going to be the thing that overtakes Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo but I also think the fanboy press who largely hated on this thing not because of it’s ideas but because it’s Android and called it no less than a scam were dead wrong. None of them will do the right thing and eat crow of course but I didn’t expect it as such. Developer kits for this have already shipped whereas the press’ golden boy project I’ll talk about next is delayed until March, maybe. There seems to be a lot of developer hype for this and I think it’s a really cool idea. I actually backed it but had to reduce my pledge due to money issues but if this makes it to market, I’ll happily grab one to try it out.
  • The Oculus Rift will come out late and underwhelm. The same press outlets who have been dumping on OUYA have used such fashionable terms as “the future” to describe this thing. I think it’s very cool and if it does what it does well and gets game support, I’ll totally get one. However, all attempts at virtual reality have proven cumbersome and not generally worth the experience and I’ve seen nothing to indicate this will be otherwise. I do think this could find niche success but I think the press’ own hype of this will be to its detriment when normal consumers start getting their hands on it. I’ll be happy to be wrong about this.
  • Layoffs, studios closures and the viability of AAA development will be a bigger story than ever. This was one of the dominating themes of 2012 and as we go through yet another year waiting for new consoles, I think it’s only going to get worse. Sales are falling (no one’s 100% sure of why but many think it’s not just the normal end-of-cycle downturn), costs are set to skyrocket and anything that isn’t a sure fire hit is a recipe for financial catastrophe. Any studio that hasn’t consistently pumped out critical and commercial successes can’t get work anymore and we now have fewer publishers able to fund new AAA projects than ever before. I love AAA gaming and it pains me greatly to see it in such decline but unless people get bored of mobile games and come running back to it, I don’t see how they fix this going forward. My hope is that this is an adjustment and the industry will realign itself and come out stronger but that requires new players to enter the space and no one is.
  • Valve’s Steam box will not release this year but will enter the promised beta phase. My feeling is it will be a standardised PC design that runs customised Linux with Steam on it. And for that reason, I will probably not care because it will have a fraction of my library available to me and most of it is going to be indie stuff I don’t need to play on my TV or that I can play by running an HDMI cable from my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a cool idea and from the way they’ve talked about it being able to run competing software, it might even be Valve’s own attempt at an OUYA-like thing which could be something special indeed.
  • Steam on Linux will remain niche at best. Despite the hypocrisy of Valve and others towards Windows 8, I do get where some of their concerns are rooted and I share them. However, to think Linux is going to ever gain mainstream adoption of any kind, especially gaming at this stage is a pipe dream. Even the versions of it that are designed to be “desktop friendly” are a nightmare to maintain, drivers are a mess and the community as a whole is still full of elitists who drive the mainstream away and like it that way. All that’s fine, I’ve got nothing against any of that if that’s the way you want a platform to be but all of those things mean it will never take over Windows. Kudos to Valve for making a concerted effort to make the platform viable for gaming and I do hope they can succeed in some way. But if they do, it won’t be for a long time to come.
  • Cross-media gaming will be attempted multiple times and never take off. Frank Gibeau from EA as well as babbling heads like Kevin Dent say that big gaming franchises have to have components everywhere. Beyond your console or PC game, there has to be a tie-in product on your phone, your tablet, your browser and anywhere else in order to keep you engaged at all times. I think this is a dumb idea and a waste of developer talent and resources. EA tried it with Mass Effect 3 and all the tie-in content sucked and no one really cared as far as I can tell. I won’t talk about this too much here because I have a future blog post about it planned.
  • There will be no new games announced or released from Valve this year (Dota 2 excepted). Forget Half-Life 2: Episode 3, we will get zilch from them in 2013. Between their new hardware experiment, Steam for Linux and whatever else, they aren’t going to be in a rush to put anything out. I excepted Dota 2 from this because it’s technically out to anyone who wants it already but it may exit beta.
  • DayZ standalone will launch late and be a buggy, hacker ridden mess like all Bohemia Interactive launches. Don’t get me wrong, I think the ideas of DayZ are absolutely fantastic, even if I burned out on the game after a month and I respect Bohemia as a developer a ton for finding a super tight niche and thriving in it. But the fact remains that their launch track record is abysmal and I don’t expect that to change with the standalone DayZ game. I hope they buck the trend this time because they might have the birth of a new genre on their hands and they’d be foolish to burn it right at the start.

Next-Gen Consoles

This gets its own section because there’s just too much to talk about regarding the next Xbox and PlayStation. There’s no doubt in my mind that these machines will be radically different from anything that’s come before. They have to be because making themselves stand out against phones and tablets (for better or worse) is a must.

  • Both the next Microsoft and Sony systems will be announced and shipped this year. Rumour is the next Xbox was supposed to come out in 2012 and got delayed for major retooling. The industry can’t wait any more, new hardware has to happen this year or there will be no one left to make stuff for it.
  • Both platforms will use far fewer specialised parts and be more like PCs than ever. It’s cheaper, most of the off-the-shelf parts are more powerful and most importantly, it’s much easier and faster to develop for. The days of Cell processors and weird memory allocation issues are over, they have to be. I’m guessing each system will have a minimum of 4GB RAM and hard drives will be standard but not SSDs.
  • Both platforms will offer every title in every tier for sale digitally on day one. Sony’s already trying this with select PS3 games. We’ve reached a tipping point where despite the telecartel’s best efforts, broadband is becoming a viable way to get large content and video game retail is losing its stranglehold on publishers and platform holders. By selling games digitally, the useless middleman who rips off the industry and consumers with used games gets cut out, pricing flexibility and sales are easy obtained and everyone makes more money. Retail is the only reason this wasn’t done before and Microsoft and Sony realise it’s time to throw caution to the wind and just do it. Whether I embrace this depends on whether they do DRM intelligently. They can look to Nintendo for how not to do it.
  • Free-to-play will become a big deal on consoles. Again, Sony tried this first with DUST 514 and Microsoft tried it with an XBLA title that wasn’t very good. However, they both know how much money there is to be made here, Sony especially since free-to-play is where Sony Online Entertainment makes most of its money now. The ability to handle microtransactions will exist at the system level and seamlessly integrate into both platform’s store front systems. For this to work though, another major change must happen and that is…
  • Console certification processes will continue to exist but will significantly lighten and be sped up. Free-to-play titles live and die on how quickly they can iterate. PlanetSide 2 has probably had a dozen or more patches since it left beta and it’s a better game for it. If each of those patches required weeks of sitting in certification limbo, it would have been disastrous. One of the big complaints from developers big and small over the last year has been how expensive and unnecessarily burdensome the console certification process is. Given that numerous games still ship completely broken or in some cases unfinished, it’s clearly not working as it is. Games shouldn’t have to wait weeks to make sure they prompt you to select your storage device and specifically tell you “Don’t turn off your console” when they’re saving data. I don’t know enough about the current processes to know how they will be streamlined but this must and will happen.
  • SmartGlass will be a big deal for Xbox and Vita integration will be big for PlayStation. Being able to have your console content interact with your phone or tablet is largely a dumb gimmick right now but Nintendo is showing how you can do it in unique and interesting ways. Microsoft will expand their SmartGlass platform to make this a much bigger (yet still optional) component of the gaming and media experience on Xbox. I believe Sony has plans to do something similar but on a more unique scale with the Vita due to the things it offers that phones and tablets can’t. I don’t know if tightly integrating the Vita into the home PlayStation experience can save the platform but I really hope it breathes new life into it.
  • Motion gaming is over. The Kinect was a fad and it’s largely dried up and almost no one’s making games for it any more, certainly nothing with a decent budget. Move died even quicker. The public’s got over motion gaming and I don’t think putting it in the box with the next systems is going to make it popular again. No matter how precise you make it, it’s still not the best way to play games. The next Xbox might support the current Kinect but I don’t think we’ll see another one.
  • Like PC, AAA games will be only a single segment of the gaming experiences available on consoles. This industry simply can’t afford to focus on AAA content exclusively, especially since costs and risks are only going to get more insane. But variety is good and despite some incredible gems coming out of console downloadable services (including half of my top 10 games of 2012), there’s really only the AAA stuff and the high-end downloadable stuff. I believe that free-to-play and a newly refocused effort on promoting and fostering smaller indie development, consoles are suddenly going to have the wide variety of game types, production values and price points that you could previously only get on PC and on mobile to a lesser extent. I think this is going to be the single biggest paradigm shift in the history of the console industry and it’s sorely overdue. This is what’s going to keep it relevant against up and coming platforms.
  • Sony will offer backwards compatibility via their Gaikai acquisition at some point but likely not at launch. They bought that company to probably eventually make PlayStation a platform that isn’t dependant on hardware but for now, I could see them using it this way since the rumoured radical hardware changes in the next console will likely make built-in backwards compatibility impossible. I don’t know if you’ll buy individual games or a subscription service or maybe some kind of hybrid tied into PlayStation Plus. Personally, I’d happy pay a few bucks a month to get access to a huge PS2 and PSP library. I do sincerely hope people who made PSN purchases on PS3 will get automatic Gaikai versions. I’m not counting on it though.
  • Microsoft will not offer retail game backwards compatibility but will offer it for certain XBLA titles like the 360 does with original Xbox games. I don’t think they want to risk pissing off people who will lose access to everything XBLA but they also aren’t going to go through the headache of making every game work. Most XBLA titles never pushed the 360′s processing power very hard so in theory, software backwards compatibility could be enough for most of those titles. I imagine they will also keep the 360 on sale and the Live system for that system up and running for a while.
  • PC gaming will keep getting bigger and challenge the notion of whether many hardcore gamers even need a console. Due to the PC-like architecture rumoured to be powering the new systems, making quality PC ports will be easier than ever and with that goes the reason many PC gamers had for also owning a console. If I could be assured that the majority of AAA PC ports were well done and more like they’ve been in the last year, I’d seriously consider only buying the next consoles when they were cheaper for exclusives.

Technology

  • The Apple fashion trend will finally begin to normalise but the press will ignore it. I’ll say it again before fanboys lose their minds: This does not mean I think Apple’s going away. They aren’t and despite being a mean-spirited, greedy company riding a choreographed public and press perception, it’s a very good thing that they’re around. However, between market saturation, maturing competition and people realising that a lot of their products are underpowered, overpriced and riding hype and form rather than function, their growth is going to start to go from bubble to something more realistic. This is what happens with bubbles. Their stock price has already slid 25% in 2012 but you know how many stories about it I’ve seen from the numerous tech sites I follow? Zero, even though many of these sites live blog their earnings calls. There’s a trend in modern media to build people or companies up high and then kick them back down but that’s never how it’s worked with Apple. They always get a huge free pass that others don’t and I think that’s going to continue. The market’s waking up though and whether fanboys like it or not, a lot of people still don’t use Apple products and many more realise their stuff isn’t necessarily the best at everything.
  • The Apple television is not coming. I made this prediction last year but the rumour won’t die so I’m reserving the right to make it again. Nearly everyone who is big in the TV business is bleeding to death right now. The HDTV market is saturated with people who see no compelling reason to upgrade. Paying 30-50% more for a screen with an Apple logo and the guts of a $99 Apple TV box (especially when many already have iPads you can plug into any TV) is simply not going to happen. Steve Jobs had one line in his biography where he said he’d figured out how to innovate in the TV space. Only for Apple does that one throwaway bit of information lead to an endless stream of speculation on how they’ll somehow revolutionise the TV space. It’s not going to happen.
  • The iPhone 5S will be the next model but in the Fall, not the Spring. Many think that after Apple burned their hardcore by announcing a newer iPad only six months after the previous one that the same thing would start happening with the iPhone too. Aside from the fact that iPhone sales are down because the 5 doesn’t offer anything worth upgrading for, the 6 month iPad debacle was I think just an experiment to see how far they can push people. I don’t think they’re going to keep doing that.
  • BlackBerry 10 will sustain RIM, not catapult them forward. By all accounts, it’s a fantastic operating system and their stock has been reflecting the buzz. The problem is that all 3 of the other major mobile platforms all tie into something bigger. iOS ties into Apple, Android ties into Google’s many services and Windows Phone ties into PCs. All RIM has is mobile and that’s going to make things tougher for them. I imagine that it’s extreme manageability, security features and flexibility will still make it the ideal corporate platform and most of their current corporate and government base will continue using them, as will a niche group of others. But their previous leadership was too short sighted to see the consumer battle approaching and they’ve lost it. I think they’ll refocus on what they have and serving that well.
  • PC sales will slide a bit as the industry normalises but the slide will not be huge and it will settle. While I think tablets are a horrible way to do anything but the lightest computing tasks, there’s a big segment of the population that only has to do the lightest tasks. Those people are buying tablets instead of PCs and with good reason. In addition, a weakening global economy means enterprise spending is slowing across the board and that’s where a lot of PC sales come from. The PC will be the dominant computing platform for the foreseeable future, anyone who says otherwise is clueless. But the industry has been red hot for too long and some cooling should happen. I hope this will thing out some of the garbage vendors and maybe stop the race to the bottom for a while.
  • Windows 8 will sell well below expectations. I think the hyperbolic hate for Windows 8 is way overblown but I get and share some of the big concerns about it. I’ve used it but not full-time and at some point soon, I will be upgrading my gaming rig to it so I can properly judge for myself. Depending on who you ask, it’s either selling OK or worse than Vista which was a dud as Windows sales go and for good reason, it was garbage. Some sales softness can be attributed to slowing PC sales but there has rightly or wrongly been some poison injected into the mainstream consciousness about Windows 8. Microsoft’s been desperate to chase the anti-choice, closed ecosystem model that Apple made popular and I think that’s stupid. They should be running the other way, embracing the opposite side and evangelising that. I believe that the poor sales of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets will cause them to re-evaluate what they’re doing with Windows and maybe back off or make optional some of what people hate about it.
  • Windows Phone 8 will rise to a respectable market share. I was wrong about this last year with Windows Phone 7 but my girlfriend is in love with WP8, as is everyone who buys a phone with it. There’s been lost of buzz slowly building about it and when the platform launched in China, it sold out everywhere in 2 hours, far outpacing the iPhone 5, even though it also set a record. Android is decimating all right now and that’s not going to change, nor are a sizable number of Apple faithful going to jump ship. But there’s still a big market out there of people who don’t own smartphones or who want to switch away from BlackBerry or older Android devices and I think there’s a big chance for Windows Phone there. After playing with my girlfriend’s Lumia 920, it makes my BlackBerry 9900 look last century and if I could afford a new phone tomorrow, it’s without question the one I would get.
  • The TV industry will make a new push from 3D TVs to 2K or 4K TVs. I said we would see no mention of 2K/4K TVs last year and I was right, as I was about 3D dying off. However, the Japanese TV manufacturers are bleeding out fast and they need something, anything to resuscitate their fortunes. I don’t think the market is ready for 2K/4K yet but damned if they aren’t going to try to make it ready.
  • Sharp will go bankrupt and Panasonic will have a massive restructuring. Whether Sharp goes the Japanese equivalent of Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 I don’t know but there’s no way for them to recover from the death spiral they’re in. Panasonic is already talking about shedding Sanyo and I think that’s only the tip of the iceberg for them. Sony is well underway with it’s restructuring now but Panasonic’s going to announce some kind of similar radical plan that will involve much deeper cuts due to them not being as diversified as Sony.
  • We will start to see more mainstream PCs come standard with SSDs or a combination of SSD and hard drive. SSDs have gotten so incredibly cheap that it’s becoming worth it for PC manufacturers to put them in medium-class models just to boast about how fast they are. There are even low-end SSDs that are so inexpensive, they could even make it into some of the cheap big box systems.

And after another epic length post, there’s all my predictions for 2013! There’s a lot of uncertainty in not only the tech and gaming industries but in the world in general. Still, I think there’s a lot to look forward to and I’m very curious to see what lies ahead. I hope your 2012 was good to you and yours and that your 2013 will be even better. I’m very stoked for a lot of things coming in my life this year and may only my good predictions be the right ones. Happy New Year once again!

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Apple’s beginning to test the limits of their fans

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 26, 2012

Strap in, it’s another Apple post! It’s been a busy week for them so you know I had to get one in.

We had the announcements of the iPad Mini, a tablet that’s substantially more expensive than most of its rivals and inferior to many of them on features. We also got a new entry is the ludicrously overpriced segment of the MacBook line as opposed to just the normally overpriced segment and to the shock of pretty much everyone, a new full size iPad, a mere 7 months after they started pushing the iPad 3. This was all intentionally timed around the launch of Microsoft’s own Surface tablet as well as Windows 8. All that was followed up by Apple’s latest quarterly earnings which were still very rosy but had a few negative surprises. As usual, the fanboy press corps is spinning like a washing machine in a tornado to minimise the negatives as if it’s somehow their job to keep Apple elevated in the realm of public opinion. None of this is a surprise.

However, the reactions I’ve seen from many an hardcore Apple fan mostly this week but to a lesser extent in the last month as well have me very curious and wondering if the company everyone loves to love is beginning to test the limits of their fandom.

Whenever Apple has a press event or an earnings call, the most telling elements are never what they say but what they don’t say. They are masters of massaging their message and spinning without the appearance of doing so. It’s incredible and no one I’ve seen can do it like they can (though having most of the press never ask tough questions for fear of losing access certainly helps too). They will always hype up their successes and distort numbers into universal positives but they will simply avoid talking about things they can’t brag about. iAds, iCards, Siri, Apple TV sales and many more are all examples. The notable recent exception is Maps, only because it was so unbelievably terrible that they had to say something because even the press had a hard time defending them on it. Being a public company means they can’t hide sales figures though and this quarter, the shock was that while they still sold a boatload of iPads, it was noticeably lower than forecast. This was made up for and then some by iPhone sales that clobbered last year’s but there’s a telling omission in that stat as well. They never say how many of the new iPhones being sold are to new customers and how many are just existing customers replacing old handsets. A sale is a sale either way but the latter is a worse kind of sale because it indicates that they aren’t necessarily growing the user base as much, something that could be a long term challenge as other platforms like Android and Windows Phone rapidly start catching them in the app department.

Everyone, fan or no, was stunned to see them announce the iPad 4 (or the new New iPad). There’s been much speculation as to why they would replace their flagship tablet after such a short period as they have built their empire on relatively predictable yearly product cycles.

Some are claiming that the iPad 3 was actually not fully baked when it was shipped and that it was merely a stop gap measure until they could get this one out. I don’t go for this as there have been no major reported faults with the iPad 3 and it’s biggest new feature was the Retina display which impressed everyone and still hasn’t been matched elsewhere. The only real change in the iPad 4 is a faster processor which isn’t a big draw since barely anything’s making use of the iPad 3′s processor yet anyway.

Others speculate that Apple wants to put all their iOS products on the same refresh cycle so that they can have new iPhones and new iPads both come out in the Fall and have the same guts, rather than the iPhone always leapfrogging the iPad for six months. I don’t buy this either because people don’t have unlimited money and if you release both a new iPhone and iPad at the same time, I think you’re less likely to guarantee a sale of both as opposed to staggering the releases which makes it easier for consumers to justify the additional expense.

I speculated after the reveal that there may be an unannounced tablet coming from a competitor that destroys the iPad 3 and Apple was desperate to get something slightly better out ahead of it so they don’t get killed in the high-end segment this Christmas. That’s a long shot though. While the Surface looks promising, no one thinks it’s an iPad killer and if someone had an superior device coming for Christmas, a PR push would already be in full swing. It’s possible that Tim Cook is scared of Windows 8 and it’s potential impact among the crowd who still own PCs but don’t have a tablet yet. Given how much time he spends making snide remarks about the platform, it certainly seems to be on his mind a lot.

iPad sales do seem to be in decline and while it is modest, that the year of the iPad 3 is the first year of this decline could be a bad omen for the future. Does a slightly faster upgrade fix that though? At best, it puts a finger in the dyke.

Of course, I have no real idea what their motives were in doing this. What I do know is that a lot of iPad 3 owners feel burned, many of whom are hardcore iFaithful. Now, this is technology and one can say that getting upset because something you bought got upgraded is a classic example of First World Entitlement Syndrome. The thing is, this is the culture Apple has carefully cultivated for many years now. The yearly technolust and turning technology into fashion accessories is what’s driving their growth. For whatever reason, they feel the time is right to push the boundaries harder and try to get consumers to upgrade yet again. Maybe it’s out of arrogance (which they certainly have plenty of), maybe it’s out of fear of the real competition that’s coming and the inevitable race to the bottom that will ensue, maybe it’s just an experiment that they won’t repeat . Either way, I’ve seen more than a few people who have lined up to give them money for years now questioning if they want to as often and some are even saying they’ve had enough with Apple altogether. Take this quote from the iPad Mini thread on Gamers With Jobs:

“I am a longtime Apple guy – a musician, audio producer, and have been using them almost exclusively for the past 15 years. We have 2 iPhones, an iPad 3, & an iMac in our home, and I switched my dad over to OS X a few years ago and just recently bought my mom an iPad. The last 2 or 3 years have really disillusioned me, though, and I’m no longer viewing Apple as exclusive in my home. I’m considering my next PC purchase and highly suspect it will be a PC. I’m switching to WinPhone 8 when it launches, I’m getting a Surface, and will probably move my composing rig over to Windows soon, too. Maybe I’m unique, but Apple isn’t winning me over these days.”

Notice how this isn’t a decision he just reached, he said this has been building for the last couple of years. This is not the first such sentiment I’ve read either. I’ve seen blog posts (I unfortunately lost the links to them) from decades-long Apple users who have become disillusioned with the company’s recent direction. They say product quality has gone down (in stark contrast to the public perception about Apple stuff), their software has become much less reliable and buggy and that they seem more focused on cranking out expensive, consumable consumer electronics on a yearly basis than supporting their existing customers well and keeping everything polished to a mirror shine. Some have too much investment into Apple hardware and software to be able to switch, some still consider them a lesser evil than Microsoft and a few are actually considering dipping their toes in the other ocean. I’m not talking fickle mainstream customers here, I’m talking guys who have been using Macs since they were in black and white, since long before OS X and who stuck with the company even when they were on the brink of bankruptcy. These are the people who started the iCult. And they’re considering change.

Is this the majority of Apple customers? Of course not. It’s a tiny, infinitesimal slice of the user base and even for how much money they give the company, no one would notice if they went somewhere else. The thing is, these people are the taste makers. When Apple was almost dead and released the first iPod, these were the people who convinced the mainstream to try it. These are the people who stuck with the company through thick and thin and who were the first ones to preach the genius of Steve Jobs to the world. They may not mean much monetarily now but some of them questioning their long-time loyalty is a very telling sign.

Apple have purposefully created and curated monumental, astronomical and I believe unsustainable market expectations for themselves and while they’ve managed to capitalise on them so far, cracks are beginning to show. The “old guard” may be beginning to lose faith and while that’s not the end, it could be that the bubble is about to pop. When that happens, the reaction will be massive and will likely multiply exponentially as more of the mainstream public realises that the company’s image of infallibility is just that, an image. This won’t happen overnight, it won’t even happen in a year but their fortunes can still turn quickly. The “old guard” customers are not where Apple’s making most of their money right now and they shouldn’t necessarily be focusing on them. I do however believe that what these people have to say is a sign of potential major challenges ahead. Apple’s leadership should be paying close attention to what these people are saying and taking their words to heart before their sentiment expands and begins to run away from them.

I know this post sounds very doom and gloom and I’m sure more than a few of you dismissing it as “haters gonna’ hate.” I am not a fan of Apple and have very sound, legitimate reasons for that but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t want to see them fail or go away. Apple has woken up the rest of the technology industry from a stagnant slumber. They’re forcing others to think outside the box and innovate and it’s about damn time that happened. I guarantee that things like Surface and Windows 8 wouldn’t exist (or at least not in their current forms) were it not for Apple forcing the issue. I do believe Apple has gotten too big, too powerful and way too high on its own success. Their leadership is arrogant and greedy, their die hard fans are insufferable and they all need to be taken down a few pegs. Their growth needs to stabilise and they need to become one player in a vibrant, competitive market. Having one company so far out in front is not good for anyone, as Microsoft’s once near total dominance proved.

Despite Apple’s continued great successes, I believe some events in the last month or so are providing small signs of where things could be heading. The people leading Apple are much smarter than me and that they’ve managed to maintain this bubble as long as they have so far is remarkable and admirable. It can’t last forever though and if they don’t want it to burst suddenly, they need to reign themselves in a bit. Your most loyal fans are speaking Apple, you ignore them at your own peril.

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Could the iPhone 5 be the beginning of Apple’s plateau?

Leave a Comment Posted by on September 12, 2012

Breaking news here I’m confident you’ll not read anywhere else: Apple announced the iPhone 5 today. I know, hot scoop, though there was no sight of the iPad Mini or any of the other stuff that was widely expected to be there as well. I had to get a tire replaced today so I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the live blogging gushfests, electing instead to just read a couple of summaries after the fact. With Nokia stupidly bombing the intro of the otherwise impressive Lumia 920 with that camera scandal and Motorola’s new RAZR model dropping with a thud, Apple didn’t have to try very hard to impress. I had my suspicions of how the reveal of what the iPress claimed could be the biggest product launch in history would be received but I know my views are often coloured by my living in a reality where Apple can actually do wrong. Based on the stunning amount of “Meh” I’ve read since, it appears even many of the faithful have joined this reality.

I’ve said for a long time that Apple’s current growth is a fashion trend, that it’s unsustainable and that while they’re going nowhere any time soon, they are in a bubble that’s only going to pop faster with Steve Jobs now gone. This view has largely been met with rolled eyes but I believe I’m one step closer to being proven right today. The first sign of this was the iPhone 4S. It’s only big new feature aside from a spec bump (which is always expected) was Siri. It launched in beta (which Apple never does) and while other phones already had voice recognition features, none had the theoretical capabilities of Siri. After the initial lustre wore off though, people realised that Siri didn’t actually work very well and most stopped using it. Apple omitted it from the next iPad that followed and has kind of neglected to talk about it since. Apple loves to toot their own horn so when they don’t talk about something recently introduced, it means they aren’t pleased with how it’s done. I predicted that the iPhone 4S would be the beginning of a cooling off period for the Apple fashion trend and that it would sell well but would be the first phone to not trend as well as the previous one. I’ll admit it, I was dead wrong. The 4S is the best selling iPhone to date. There is no doubt whatsoever that the iPhone 5 will sell many millions and continue to make Apple buckets of money. However, I do believe this could be the tipping point and I’ll tell you why.

The overwhelming view expressed which I agree with fully is that the iPhone 5 offers literally nothing new. Siri was new in that like Apple often does, they took an idea someone else came up with and evolved it into something neater, at least on the surface. The iPhone 5 is in every single way, a spec bump. It has a faster processor, a slightly bigger screen, 4G LTE and it’s thinner. That’s it. That size screen (and larger) as well as LTE have been available on Android phones for years now. There are even Windows Phone 7 devices with them, forget the Windows Phone 8 ones around the corner. Those are not new features, they’re playing catch-up at best. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a spec bump but the generally accepted rule is that every second year, that’s when the big innovations come to the iPhone. The second one added 3G and third party apps, the fourth changed the design and added the Retina screen. With the iPhone 5, we arguably got less innovation than the 4S, just features that the competition’s already perfected. None of that is going to make anyone but the hardcore iCult break a contract to upgrade early and it’s certainly not going to convert anyone who wasn’t just waiting to buy an iPhone regardless of what it had. They didn’t even improve the camera, the one thing where the iPhone has solidly stepped on the competition’s throat for 2 years now. It looks like the Lumia 920′s camera will be the top dog this generation far and away, something that was enough to sway my girlfriend from being sold on the iPhone 5 to waiting for reviews of the 920 and likely going with that if the camera fares as well as it appears.

What this tells me is that Apple is running out of big innovations to make to the iPhone. They undoubtedly have an R&D superteam with a virtually unlimited budget crunching away on new ideas but there is a limit to what can be done right now and I think mobile phones are coming up on it, if they aren’t there already. If the best they can offer with the iPhone 5 is matching features others already have, that will start to take some of the sheen off the fashion trend that they’re carefully balanced on. If they can’t outspec the competition, they might have to start competing on price or offering things like more than 16GB of memory in the base model, eating into their precious high margins which remain an abberation in the tech industry. When those margins see even a small dip, expect their nearly $700 stock price to take a big hit as investors no longer see Apple as the new hotness.

Now, some of the smartest people in the world work at Apple and I believe they knew this long before I did. I also believe this is why they decided for no good reason to change the dock connector on the iPhone 5 to a new design ironically called Lightning. There was nothing wrong with the old connector. It was a bit large but it wasn’t obtrusive, it worked fine and it was on millions of accessories and cables. The new connector requires either the replacement of everything you used your iPhone with before or that you purchase a $30 adapter which Apple is rumoured to be selling exclusively. There is no benefit other than being smaller because this “Lightning” connector doesn’t even support the new USB 3.0 standard, meaning it’s probably not even much faster. This makes Apple’s partners happy because they get to sell the same thing to everyone over again and it allows Apple to hedge their bet a bit because if the iPhone 5′s sales don’t outpace the 4S, they can pad out those margins by making the new buyers pay for a $30 adapter that probably costs them $1.50 at most. If sales are lower, the new customers get the privilege of subsidising the drop and if the sales are higher, Apple just gets to make even more money. It’s the kind of scummy, disrespectful move that few other companies have the brilliance, gall and blindly ravenous fan base to pull off. I truly believe that this move has a shot at making Apple the same amount of money, even if the iPhone 5 ends up falling short of the sales bar set by the 4S. That will keep investors happy but it’s a move that will only work for a year. Lightning is something they’re going to be stuck with for a while.

I’ve insisted for a long time that Apple could only maintain the momentum they have for so long before they simply ran out of ways to milk it. Sure, they have the iCult that will blindly buy whatever Tim Cook tells them to and the success of iOS devices has grown that membership immensely in recent years. Much as I despise this company and the pretentious douchebags that ran before and run it now, they’re here to stay and I think it’s partially good because it forces everyone else to work extra hard to compete and make things better for everyone. As with all my predictions, I could be totally wrong on this but I think this is where their growth goes from stratospheric to merely atmospheric and where the other phone hardware and platform makers can really step up and show what they’ve got. Apple’s growth is wholly dependent on that ultra-high margin and if they can’t find a reason to get people to keep paying $200 + $80/month for an iPhone every year, the only way to keep the sales numbers up will be to join the “race to the bottom” that everyone else is in. When that happens, it’s no longer Apple and everyone else, it’s Apple with everyone else. That’s the way it should be and I won’t lie, if this is the first iPhone that sells less in the first month than the last one, I will take great pleasure in watching iCultists squirm as they try to spin it as a good thing. Apple’s done some great things but they need a shot of humility and I think this might be the start of it. In my house, they’ve now gone from a guaranteed sale to a 75/25 shot of losing to a Windows Phone made by Nokia. More people than just my girlfriend are thinking that now and that should be keeping Tim Cook awake tonight.

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On Gaming’s Future: Mobile Reality Check

2 Comments Posted by on April 4, 2012

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had the launch of the iPad 3 and a slew of rumours about what we may see in the next-gen home consoles. As usual, the growing Apple-centric members of the enthusiast press were quick to chime in on how the iPad 3 is somehow revolutionising games yet again, how Apple are the only ones that get the future of games and how iPad specs are accelerating so rapidly that in a few years, it will not only have rendered dedicated handhelds obsolete but now home consoles as well.

Never mind the inherent dangers of Apple controlling the industry, this is where all gaming is going they say and somehow, a monopoly is now a good thing. I think the predictions as they lay them out are very much a result of the Apple reality distortion field that still permeates the press today. However, they’re not entirely off base and to say that the current AAA industry doesn’t have major problems that currently don’t have a clear path to being solved is also false. I think AAA games as they are today are in very real danger but I don’t think mobile games on your TV is where things are going either. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I think if we’re going to answer the question on where gaming is going to be in a few years, it’s important to have a reality check of both sides of this debate as both are overstating their benefits and understating their weaknesses. Each have a lot of challenges both now and going forward and many of these are more similar between them than either would like to admit. This post is going to focus on the mobile space and the next one in a couple of days will focus on the AAA space.

When we hear the enthusiast press and Apple crusaders talk about mobile gaming (which is largely dominated by iOS, this can’t really be disputed yet), the talk is how it’s ushering a return to a golden era when games were less complicated, cheaper to create, the developers and not publishers controlled the content and innovation was encouraged and praised. Indeed, these are all generally good things. Games on iOS right now are low risk and every week, we hear stories about a small team having their project make a killing which leads to massive riches. Every time there are layoffs or departures from AAA studios, there’s usually a story the next day about how those people have gone off and formed new teams in the mobile and social spaces. Games on iOS are cheap to make, cheaper to buy and come with a massive and growing install base right out of the gate. It seems like the sector is in a stratospheric rise that has no limit and which will mean great things for innovation and new gaming experiences in the future.

That’s the reality for right now but the sad truth becoming more evident all the time is that mobile game development is quickly becoming as risky as other parts of the industry and will only get worse as the technology improves. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of games alone on the iTunes App Store right now and hundreds more being added every week. The better part of 90% of these offerings are garbage and not worth a second glance but the sheer volume makes it impossible to determine what’s good and what isn’t. iTunes has user reviews but like most other places, they often aren’t trustworthy and are dependent on personal taste. Even with many games selling for as little as a buck, people are being choosy because those bucks add up fast with that much choice and poor quality content out there.

So how does the average consumer decide what to buy? Usually by looking at the top seller or staff picks list, which are almost always dominated with the same few titles and rarely change. Unless a new game becomes a viral hit, has publisher and PR backing or gets co-promotion from Apple through one of these lists or placement in a TV ad, the chances of it becoming a huge seller are almost lottery-win thin. Apple has always thought of gaming as a red-headed stepchild and the revolution many say they started was something they fell into by accident and which has been perpetuated largely with their indifference. Steve Jobs believed computers were tools and that gaming was a waste of their potential and that’s still very much part of Apple’s culture.

The reality is that while we may always hear the press talk about runaway hits like Angry Birds or Draw Something, they are actually flukes and do not at all represent the norm. The makers of both of those titles had a string of releases prior to their seminal hits, most of which were flops. In fact, the often unspoken truth is that a tiny group of developers make almost all of the revenue on iOS and many respected developers are now seeing the platform becoming just like the rest of the industry it’s supposedly revolutionising. In other words, in only a few short years iOS has become almost entirely hit driven and dominated by a few key players who are following the money and not focusing on innovation or new ideas.

The one major advantage iOS has over home consoles and to a lesser extent PC is that the cost of entry is very low. One of the great things it has done has allowed the “bedroom programmers” to sweep back in and have a strong creative voice again. An individual or small team that would never be able to develop on a console can make an iOS game in their spare time, put it out there and maybe get rich from it. While there’s certainly a chance of that, the hard truths above make it a rare chance at best. Mark Rein, Vice-President of Epic Games who have released the very successful (and co-promoted by Apple) Infinity Blade series said on a podcast earlier this year that the average iOS game grosses $700 over its lifetime. Granted, he just threw that out with no citation but I’m going to assume given his position that he knows what he’s talking about.

$700 is nothing and makes even a part-time development endeavour a big financial risk. Even if we assume Rein is low-balling and the average return is ten to twenty times that, it’s still not enough for even one person to make a living on, let alone a team of people working full-time. For a lot of hobbyist developers, the risk may be worth it and I say more power to them. Some of the biggest successes and innovations in the world came from people with only a shoestring and a dream. But as a supposed new revolution that will bring with it a whole new facet of the industry, the picture is not super rosy. The press has people believing that the cost to get into iOS games is super low and because of that, it’s virtually a guarantee that you’ll get your investment back if not make a sizeable profit. That’s simply not the case and while the low cost of entry may allow a newly funded team to survive a flop or two, they can’t do so indefinitely until they get lucky enough to find their golden goose. Most of these people who are fleeing AAA development to make mobile games are going to fail and don’t have much greater a chance of success as they do in AAA, though getting funding to try is certainly easier. As tablets and phones get more powerful, it will only get worse.

The press is talking about how powerful the iPad 3 is and how it can rival the power of an Xbox 360. That’s actually not true at all right now but as these tablets continue to increase in power, there’s a good chance that in a few years, they will have similar graphical and processing capabilities as even the next-gen consoles. At that time, you could put your tablet down on a wireless video dock, pick up a Bluetooth game pad and play a AAA experience on your TV with a console you can pick up and take with you. Sounds pretty good from a user experience point of view and honestly, I really like the idea.

The danger is that the technical arms race is what made AAA games so incredibly expensive and risky and with iOS being fairly risky already, it will get even more so as power increases. This will quickly lead to the small developers being marginalised and forced out and the larger ones to need bigger and bigger budgets (and by extension more marketing which means even more money) to ensure that their games succeed. See where this is going? Right to where AAA games are now. Long development times, huge budgets and teams and few creative risks being taken. $1-$5 games won’t be possible anymore when they go from costing thousands to millions and then tens of millions to make and market. As prices go up, so do the apprehensions of customers to try out a bunch of games in succession to find out what they like. The marketing for these larger games will also drown out indie developers and push them back from the mainstream to a low-profit niche for enthusiasts only. Different form factor, same problems. This isn’t good for developers or gamers.

The raw fact is this: Publishers are desperate for new sustainable revenue streams right now and with a couple of exceptions like Electronic Arts, none of them have gotten behind iOS gaming in a big way. Some might say they’re just dinosaurs stuck in old ways and not embracing new things but these are large companies that are run by smart people in one of the most dynamic, rapidly changing industries in the world. They know fortunes in gaming can change overnight and how to latch on to things that have big success potential. With their resources, it wouldn’t be hard for them to try a few iOS games out and see what happens. Yet they largely aren’t and most of them are tie-ins to other properties, not original titles. Why is that? Is that because they simply don’t see them as big enough for their league or could it be that perhaps they don’t see the long-term potential in the segment and that it stands to be more of a fad than the wave of the future? The AAA industry is hurting right now but it still makes far more money per year than iOS gaming and it’s foolish to discount their knowledge and decisions. If they are lining up to back the Wii U but aren’t paying much attention to iOS, I think that says something significant.

So what needs to happen to prevent this platform from burning out and becoming like the AAA industry it’s trying to avoid? I honestly have more thoughts on this from the AAA side, only because that industry has been around much longer and isn’t in such a state of flux. I think the first and biggest thing is that Apple needs to take some pages from the book of Steam. They need to stop thinking of gaming as an afterthought and start embracing it. Rather than just letting games exist on iOS and having Darwin rule the ecosystem, they need to start showcasing titles and really giving attention and promotion to indies. Don’t just let the best selling or viral titles get noticed, start showing off the unique and creative experiences offered on your platform and show why sometimes the smaller games can be just as good or better than the technical show pieces like Infinity Blade. Steam is its own platform and owned by a company that makes games too but Valve don’t shy away from promoting the work of others and giving great projects from all levels of development the spotlight. If they want iOS to take over living rooms and become the next great force in gaming, they need to show everything that makes the platform great and ensure that it doesn’t just become about flashy graphics and big marketing budgets.

Even Apple must realise that iOS’s current growth is a fashion trend and is going to slow in the next couple of years. The platform’s not going anywhere but sales of new devices will taper and their user base will begin to plateau. If they don’t step up and start selling the benefits of their hardware as a gaming platform for all kinds of different experiences, they risk handing the keys of gaming back to the console makers before iOS gaming truly has rubber hit road. The small developers are fuelling the growth of iOS gaming and they’re the reason the enthusiast press is so infatuated with it right now. If it simply becomes about flashy graphics and style over substance, it will lose its lustre and the renaissance will fade. There’s great opportunity for creativity to shine here, Apple needs to get off the sidelines and start backing that. Otherwise gaming may go roaring right past them.

By the end of the week, I’ll have my next post up which will tackle this same issue but from the AAA side.

Business, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Tablets, Technology, Video Games , , , , , ,

UPDATED: Mike Daisey Stretched the Truth But There’s Still A Problem In China

1 Comment Posted by on March 16, 2012

If you’ve been reading the Internet this afternoon you’re probably aware of this already but This American Life has retracted the story Mike Daisey about Apple factory conditions after further fact-checking revealed that some of the more dramatic portions of his story either stretched the truth or were outright lies. I did a post about this story and though I don’t claim to be any kind of journalist, it appears I now used a bad source and for that, I admit it and want my readers to know if you don’t already.

It’s always a shame when one of the few sources of real journalism left in the world has a misstep like this and I will give This American Life credit, they seem to be owning the mistake. They are planning to devote an entire one hour episode to coming clean, pointing out the errors that were made and asking those involved to clarify. You’d never see Fox News or CNN do that. I do think the timing of this is highly suspicious as this is iPad 3 launch day. While it’s easy to say that this shows they were bowing to pressure from a mega corporation and are doing this to appease them, I actually don’t think that’s true. I do think that they are intentionally making this announcement today in the hope it will get drowned out among the sea of other lazy outlets devoting “news” time to covering the lines at Apple stores, something that involves about as much journalism as the Apple advertisements that will likely follow. Honestly, I think that’s kind of a shady thing to do but This American Life of all people know that many are incredibly connected (especially those who would buy an iPad) and word of this is going to make it out regardless. Since their site is currently down due to overloading as I write this, I think it’s safe to say the word is out.

Regardless of the reasons for this retraction, my great fear is that this will give the iCult and those of it who have infiltrated the press like David Pogue cause to go “SEE! There’s no problem in China, it’s all just made up by Apple haters!” Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s true that I have many legitimate reasons to dislike Apple as a company but that doesn’t mean there is no problem. Around the same time as Daisey’s story, other detailed reports were made about conditions in Apple factories, reports that haven’t been called into question. And as I’ve said before, this isn’t just an Apple problem but one that involves nearly every major electronics manufacturer. That one guy misrepresented some things doesn’t suddenly mean there’s no issue and that companies like Apple and many others shouldn’t be doing a lot more than they are to make things better.

As for Mike Daisey, I think his attempt to justify what he did by saying “it wasn’t journalism, it was just theatre” is complete crap. He did what he did to get his story on the air and draw attention to his one-man show about it. By fabricating stuff as he did, he only served to damage the cause he was championing, a cause I believe in and which many more should. Now we have one of the most vocal and rabid fanbases in the world using this as a reason to deny the problem and one of the last bastions of truly great journalism has been shamed and perhaps damaged permanently for what many will say was slandering the world’s most powerful and admired company. Thanks Mike, a lot of good you’ve done. I really hope he’s smart enough to just fade away and not continue to try to defend himself or represent the cause for fair treatment of Chinese workers anymore. He screwed up, he got caught, now he needs to go away and leave the honest people to continue to press the issue. He should be disgraced.

If you’re one of the people who got an iPad 3 today (I almost was but am not going to be for now), please take a moment to think about where it came from and what the people who made it for you went through so you could have your shiny new toy. A lot of this stuff is made in not so nice ways and one guy’s exaggerated tale of those ways doesn’t mean that obscenely rich companies like Apple can’t and shouldn’t do more to address it. We as consumers are the ones with the ultimate power to make things better and there has never been a more important time to do so.

UPDATE: I finally got a chance to listen to the full Retraction episode yesterday. I now have even more respect for This American Life than I did before and even less for Mike Daisey. The show went far and above what was required of them to admit their mistake and it was clear from his tone of voice that Ira Glass is deeply embarrassed and upset. As for Daisey, he did apologise for submitting the episode to them as journalism but still refused to accept responsibility for his lies which he was caught red handed in. He continued to use the “it was just theatre” defense and it clearly demonstrated to me that he has no remorse for what he did, only for getting caught. As I said, the man’s a disgrace to his cause. I was also pleased to hear the third act devoted to talking to the New York Times report I mentioned and addressing the real problems that do exist in China which Daisey used as the stepping stone for his narrative. I am glad they didn’t try to ignore the issue but said “We know we screwed up but this problem is real.” I truly hope that those who listened paid attention to that.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen that much backlash from Apple’s defense force. Even some of those I expected to scream how they’ve somehow been vindicated have either remained quiet or have praised This American Life for doing the right thing. I’m glad for that as the show doesn’t deserve to have its reputation tarnished. If anything, this shows how committed they are to proper journalism. When I have the means, I will be donating money to the show and needless to say, I will keep listening. I hope their listener base doesn’t take much of a hit from this.

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The Worries of An Apple Led Post-PC World

4 Comments Posted by on March 8, 2012

So the iPad 3 was announced yesterday (yes I know it’s just called the iPad but it’s the 3rd one so it’s the iPad 3) and as usual, the press tripped over themselves to give them free PR. The mainstream news media which wouldn’t give any other tech launch more than a cursory mention practically live blogged the event and well, the fanboy driven tech press did what it always does with Apple launches, gush like teen girls at a boy band concert, much like the legion of practically religious level Apple enthusiasts who clogged my Twitter feed during the reveal. It’s still gross and in the press’ case, the opposite of journalism but it’s also par for the course now and my getting mad about it is pointless. Truthfully, I was paying closer attention than I usually would because my girlfriend and I were strongly considering splitting the purchase of an iPad 3. She wants it to surf and do e-mail easily when she travels for work and I want it to see if it’s possible for iOS games to hook me in (which they haven’t to this point). Something unexpected happened after work that may result in us moving soon and thus delaying that money being spent for a while but we’ll see.

Among all the gushing comes the usual talking points about the “post-PC world” tablets are supposedly ushering in, points Apple themselves trumpet whenever they can. They are quick to point out that the term doesn’t mean the end of traditional computers (an area where they still make a lot of money) but it does mean a reversal of the current roles where the desktop or laptop is a person’s primary means of computing and the tablet complements that. Tablets don’t really fit in with how I do my day-to-day computing, mostly because I am usually either at home or the office, type at a blistering speed an on-screen keyboard simply can’t keep up with and I’m used to a heavy multitasking environment where I can do and monitor several things at once. You put two copies of myself on a couch with stuff to do and the version of me using my HP ProBook will leave the tablet version of me in the dust. However, I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which I use a computer now is not at all mainstream and this is most certainly a vision based around the mainstream. If my girlfriend and my Mom found themselves using a tablet first and foremost, that’s cool by me as long as I can still have my laptop and gaming desktop too.

Tablets require less material to make, can arguably be priced to be much more accessible than traditional computers (though Apple is trying their damndest to avoid this), can be carried around as easily as a pad of paper and can do most day-to-day computing tasks without even breaking a sweat. I’m not denying the benefits of the “post-PC” world and many elements of it I will welcome. What I do have many concerns with is Apple being the leaders of this world. The original iPad kind of came from nowhere and virtually everyone trying to compete with it has been stumbling over themselves to catch up, while also thinking they can charge similar prices for devices that are simply inferior. As tablets go the iPad is virtually unchallenged and barring some major missteps by Apple or a roaring comeback into the space from Microsoft (whose missteps with Windows 8 will be the subject of a future post), it stands to be that way for the foreseeable future. And this is not good for anyone.

Having a single dominant player in any market is a bad thing because it discourages innovation and leads to higher prices because of reduced competition. One need look no further than when Microsoft Windows was basically your only real choice for a desktop operating system. Poor performance, gaping security flaws, massive product delays, tiny incremental updates and bullying of OEMs were all the orders of the day back then. Apple is still a distant minority in the traditional computing space but they gain ground on Windows every day and the iPad led post-PC world could put the writing on the wall for Microsoft’s key rainmaker. When Apple put their feet to the fire, what we ended up with was Windows 7, arguably the most polished and solid version of Windows ever and a product which I happily use every day and firmly believe is superior to Mac OS. However, even when Microsoft Windows was at its flattest and most stationary, there were a number of key differences of PCs compared to Macs which Microsoft embraced and still does to this day. Apple does not share these values and should they become the dominant player in the market, their continued adherence to them doesn’t do good for the future advancement of computing. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Apple likes closed platforms: The original incarnation of iOS didn’t allow third party applications of any kind. This was the way Steve Jobs wanted it because he believed these external influences destabilised the user’s experience and he was right, they do. But after screaming demand from users (and Android right around the corner who embraced third party software), he relented and it was arguably the smartest thing Apple ever did. Apple nonetheless still holds the keys to the kingdom and while they’ll let anyone write apps for iOS, you have to get their permission to make it available and they can refuse you for any reason, including for things like making an app that’s better than one of their stock ones or making a game that raises awareness of their supplier’s factory conditions. The biggest innovations have come from people breaking the mould and disrupting trends with new things. You know, exactly like iOS did. On Windows, you could write any program you wanted and put it out there with permission from no one. In an Apple post-PC world, only one entity has control of what you get access to and they have an agenda that doesn’t always favour innovation. That only benefits them, not the innovators and not the users.
  • Apple hates user choice: Want an iPad? There’s three different memory sizes and you can have it with cellular capability or not. Want an iPhone? There’s 3 of them and they aren’t expandable. Want an iMac? There’s 4 of them. A MacBook? 8. Want a gaming system? Sorry, there isn’t one. Don’t care so much about having a lot of disk space but want a faster CPU? Can’t do that, you pick a template. Want a desktop PC but also use your own monitor setup? You can only do that with a Mac Pro that starts at $2,600. And since the Mac and iOS aren’t open platforms where you have different manufacturers offering different products and competing on price (someone tried to do this with Mac OS and Apple destroyed them for it), you either go with their options at their prices or stay out. For your average mainstream end user, this probably isn’t a big deal but the enthusiast and professional markets are massive and growing and Apple doesn’t care about those. With Windows PCs, you have all the choice you could ever want from a bare bones netbook to an $8,000 gaming rig that will dim the lights on your whole block. There’s something for everyone and it’s easy to find something that will do what you want for the price you’re willing to pay. Which brings me to the next point.
  • Apple products are purposefully overpriced: This is less of a problem than it used to be but it is simple fact that at least when it comes to desktop and laptop computers, Apple products cost substantially more relative to the technical capabilities you’re getting. You show me an iMac and I will show you a PC with similar specs that costs way less. Apple makes something like $200+ on every iPad sold from day one, an utterly obscene profit margin by modern tech industry standards. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a company charging what the market will pay and at least right now, Apple has managed to convince many people that paying hundreds more than a similarly speced competitor’s product makes economic sense. However, the only reason they’re able to do this is again because they have no competition in their space. Yes, we do still have Windows PCs that are fiercely competing on price but remember, we’re talking in the context of a post-PC world where tablets are the de facto standard. Right now, inferior Android tablets are going on sale for the same $500 price as the iPad because Apple has wrongly got it into the heads of the mainstream public that any tablet under that price isn’t worth considering. If we enter a post-PC world that Apple largely controls, the cost of computing will go up substantially, making it harder for less wealthy people to get into and thus, reducing the number of people using what is now a fundamental part of everyday life. Competition is key to lower prices, innovation and accessibility and with Apple running things, there would be no such competition.
  • Apple believes they still own the products you buy: If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod and want to load media or apps on it, you do it through iTunes. Period. A Mac App Store is already available and many believe software on Mac OS will eventually go the same way. On Android, there are multiple app stores that compete to offer the best products and prices and on Windows, you can get software in literally thousands of different ways to suit your preference. On iOS, there is no such thing unless you jailbreak your device (which of course voids the warranty and locks you out of future updates). Apple claims this is in the interest of making sure the user experience is always seamless and reliable but that’s a thin smokescreen. In reality, it’s structured this way to make sure anything you do with that device has to be approved by and more importantly, purchased through them. Apple takes a substantial cut of every single thing sold through iTunes and as with hardware, it’s not in their interest to let you shop elsewhere where they can’t control the experience and more importantly, their slice of the action. So after paying a minimum of $500 for your new iPad, Apple still believes they have the right to tell you how to use it and if you don’t agree, you don’t get to play in their sandbox. This is incredibly arrogant and despite what their carefully curated marketing tells you, this isn’t about ensuring a great experience for you but about how much they steer you into exclusively giving them more money, even after you’ve already given them a lot of it. In other words, they still believe they have a right to control your device, even after you’ve paid for it. As anyone who has used Windows 7 on a capable PC will say, you can have an open platform with choice and still have a rock solid, pleasing experience. You don’t have to wall it up for things to work well.
  • Apple is becoming a patent troll: There’s no denying that at least right now, Android based tablet competitors can’t hold a candle to the iPad. Frankly, Google and their partners need to get their act together and fast because every month they don’t bring out an iPad killer, more Android loyalists get fed up with waiting and go to the Apple camp. Windows 8 is also a long way off and we have no idea how that’s going to go. Beyond that though, there is another darker reason for this. Apple has been on a patent bender for the last several years, locking down everything they can and threatening Android partners with potentially bank-breaking lawsuits. They are already locked in many such fights across Europe. One of the main reasons Google bought Motorola Mobility for billions of dollars a while back was just to lock up their patent portfolio in order to use it to stare down Apple. Yes, lots of companies are doing this and yes, much of this is a result of an American patent system that’s broken to the point of absurdity. I don’t deny that but one also can’t deny that Apple is a company with $100 billion in cash with no end in sight, they don’t need the money and patents aren’t like trademarks, you don’t lose them if you just sit on them and don’t sue everyone. They’re doing this to bleed their competitors dry and trying to stop other, potentially better devices from entering the market alongside theirs. This isn’t an innovating marketplace of ideas, this is Apple trying to use their massive cash reserves to bully out anyone who can mount a threat to them. If they truly stand behind their products, then they should be able to stand on their own and if someone uses a slightly similar case design or the magnetic charging connector, they should have nothing to worry about if their stuff is still better. Using the courts to stop competition is manipulating the market and that doesn’t serve consumers.

You’ll notice one common theme in all those points: Choice or in Apple’s case, lack thereof. Everything Apple has built their impressive and continuing success on is based around restraining user choices which keeps prices high and ultimately, limits innovation only to their own and the ones they permit. So far this strategy seems to be working for them and probably will as long as they can string out the fashion trend that’s fuelling their current growth. But competition is what made the PC strong and it was a need to compete in new and creative ways that made Apple invent iOS and all its associated devices in the first place. Now that they are ruling the roost (at least as far as tablets go), their objective is about shrinking the scope of choice down and that’s something that only benefits them, not the customers and not the high-tech industry as a whole. Microsoft was accused, tried and heavily fined and regulated in Europe and almost in the US for doing far less nefarious things than that what I listed above. They were considered an evil predator but Apple does the same and in some cases worse and is considered a pioneering innovator.

Is a company who does all of what I’ve written and more the one you want having dominance of the post-PC world? I don’t know if I am. If you’re a hardcore Apple fan, you’ve likely blown off what I’ve written as me just being another hater who dislikes the top dog and that’s not what I am. Keep in mind, I almost bought an iPad 3 today and the only reason I didn’t was because of an unexpected event that should it not pan out, will have me considering the purchase again. I don’t want to see Apple fail, I just don’t want to see them being the only ones who have a say in the post-PC future.

Apple has done one thing exceedingly well: They took a very bloated, arrogant and stagnant high-tech industry and shoved a massive wad of humble pie in its face, almost overnight. That’s damn impressive and the shake up is exactly what the industry needed. I thank them for bringing about that change. However, I believe the tides have changed too quickly and even when they were almost down and out, Apple and their devoted fans were still incredibly arrogant. If they control the post-PC world, the same problems we faced before could be faced again, only with a different company at the top and no one in a position to challenge them. That’s bad for the industry, bad for consumers and bad for innovation. I truly hope that some of Apple’s competitors who are still scrambling to find their feet manage to do so and mount a proper fight. And I really hope that as consumers get more tech savvy, that they start to realise that Apple is supposed to work for them, not the other way around.

The post-PC world has the potential to be awesome and revolutionary but for it to realise its full potential, user choice must be at the forefront of it. In their current form, that’s not what Apple wants.

Business, Computers, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Tablets, Technology , , , , , ,

On Gaming’s Future: What does Angry Birds really represent?

2 Comments Posted by on January 15, 2012

Chances are if you own a mobile phone, use the Internet or really just breathe oxygen, you’ve heard of Angry Birds. In an massively and increasingly popular mobile game landscape this cutesy puzzle game, originally released in 2009, has taken the world by storm selling numbers never seen before, being ported to pretty much anything with a screen and spawning a popular line of merchandise. It has catapulted Finnish developer Rovio from a small contract developer to a media empire, with their ego ballooning at a similar pace. With this admirable success comes the speculation from various corners that this is where the video game industry will start to take queues from and that it shows how the real money isn’t in multi-million dollar console blockbusters but in small mobile games that don’t cost much to develop or purchase. Mobile games as a whole is a much bigger discussion which will be had in another post but Angry Birds goes beyond being simply a mobile game and is a force unto itself. Respected gaming journalists say that the hardcore ignores and decries Angry Birds at our own peril and that to turn a blind eye to it is trying to shut out where things could end up going. I think there’s wisdom to be taken from that but I also think while it’s time to stop ignoring Angry Birds, it’s also important to remember that one game’s unique level of success does not necessarily represent a trend, nor does it erase a past formula that has worked for a long time.

Having played Angry Birds on the PC through Chrome, my impressions are fairly flat. It’s a competently made physics puzzle game with a cute aesthetic and hits the most important design point for mobile games which is that it’s easy to pick up quickly and play in short sessions. It does nothing innovative or that other games haven’t arguably done better before, nor is it a genre that’s particularly challenging from a creative point of view. No one is certain why this particular title became so popular when there are a bazillion clones out there, including many similar titles that came out before it. Personally, like FarmVille before I think Rovio just managed to hit a magic sweet spot with the cartoony graphics, a simple and easy to remember title, levels that are easy to understand but later can become hard to master and happened to release right when mobile gaming was starting its revolutionary period. In other words, they made a good game but also got incredibly lucky. As reductive as that sounds, there is still no denying that a lot of design chops went into this game and Rovio is to be commended for that.

The theory posed by some is that Angry Birds is showing that people like myself who like hardcore games with depth and complexity need to stop ignoring it because it’s not what most people want and it’s showing that the money’s in simpler titles. I can see where one would form that opinion but there’s a couple of kinks. Firstly, I don’t think anyone in the hardcore community is ignoring Angry Birds. We all know what it is and chances are we’ve played it. The thing is, it’s over two years old now and it didn’t hit critical mass until 2010. Hardcore gamers move between titles quickly because well, we’re hardcore gamers. To say that we’re ignoring a product because we aren’t talking about it this far into its life cycle is to say that we aren’t doing what we as a community do. In a world where games generally have flash in the pan life spans, it is impressive that Angry Birds still keeps the public consciousness at large so engaged after all this time. But hardcore gamers are not the mainstream public and saying that sites which cater to us should be focusing on this game is like saying that USA Today should have a section dedicated to theoretical physics. It’s just not what we as a community are interested in and even though more enthusiast sites are covering mobile games, they’re covering the new ones.

Secondly and more importantly, who can name another title on iOS that has sold anywhere close to the number that Angry Birds has? I’ll give you a hint: There isn’t one. This is the same argument that people used with FarmVille as proof that Facebook was the future of all video games. Except that nothing comes close to FarmVille’s numbers, not even the myriad of other Ville games released by the same developer since. While its success is admirable, it’s only a trend if it continues with other titles as well. Sure, there’s tons of other very successful games on iOS but nothing has been able to touch Angry Birds’ numbers and there’s nothing on the horizon that looks like it will. That’s not a trend people, that’s a fluke. Given that Rovio seems to be doubling down on the franchise and hasn’t even made a whisper about doing something else–despite having made enough money to absorb numerous flops–they don’t seem confident that the public at large will take to something new and different. They know that people aren’t buying Angry Birds because it’s a Rovio game, they’re buying it because it’s Angry Birds. If they can’t attach that name to another product, they’re basically starting with zero brand awareness again. Mojang, who released the amazing breakout PC hit Minecraft has has the same problem with the multiple new projects they’ve announced. Everyone out there knows Minecraft, no one really knows Mojang and Minecraft’s awareness is not going to be what drives sales of their next release. Since Minecraft also has a large hardcore gamer community with it, I’d say Rovio’s challenges are even greater since most of their players are people who wouldn’t call themselves gamers at all and say, follow the developers on Twitter.

This is not to deny the success of Angry Birds. It’s monumental and having even a sliver of the money this small Finnish company has amassed in such a short time would be considered massive success by any aspiring game developer. The CEO of Rovio will be the first to tell you that I’m sure. However, I think many people are overestimating just how big an impact this will have on the industry as a whole and that this represents a shift in public mindshare that just isn’t there yet. If we start seeing even half a dozen titles a year sell at this level, then I think we have something to talk about. Until then, we’ve got a single middling puzzle game that has done extremely well and while that’s something to observe, it’s evidence of only one thing that we already knew: Sometimes, certain single things achieve massive success. For Rovio to claim that they understand the gaming industry better than Nintendo does is incredibly arrogant and frankly, they haven’t earned the right to make such statements yet. If their next game does as well as Angry Birds, I may be inclined to say they’ve got something right. However, one title’s success does not a trend represent. Angry Birds is an important game but it as yet represents nothing in the long term. When it does, you can be sure the hardcore community will start talking about it again.

Business, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Technology, Video Games , , , , , , ,

On the Future of Video Games: Prologue

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 4, 2011

I’ve been thinking about how to start this since before I started Geek Bravado, mostly because I wanted to figure out how to make my point without sounding like an old man who is afraid of change. It was originally going to be a single post but there’s way too much to say so I’ve decided to make it a series. Anyone who knows me also knows that ‘s not the case. I love technology, what it’s done for us all and what it has the potential to do going forward. Few other places demonstrate and take advantage of technological progress more than video games. Want to see the latest stuff pushed to its limit? Gaming does it first and often best. I think this is awesome not only as a lover of video games but of technology itself. I love seeing things used to their full potential and that my favourite hobby is what does it makes it even better. I’ve played video games since the Atari 2600 era and seeing where they’ve come in my 32 years of life still makes me shake my head in bewilderment. However, I think the unusual, instant, massive success certain advancements have had lately has distorted a lot of people’s views of where gaming is going, how quickly we’re going to get there and what barriers stand in the way. It’s easy to get swept up in the tidal wave of change that we’ve seen and make predictions about it but I think stepping back for a minute and looking at what’s in front of us right now is in order first.

The last six years have been absolutely insane and unprecedented for the video game industry. We’ve seen the launch of three home consoles, three (soon to be four) handhelds, mobile phone gaming go from a note in the margins to a whole new paradigm and social network platforms seem to have just appeared from nothing. Nintendo’s Wii and DS completely changed the way games are interacted with. Both were laughed at when announced, went on to years of unimaginable success and plateaued overnight. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are still selling well even in their sixth and fifth respective years on the market and there’s only now hints they their successors might come out in 2013. Microsoft and Sony have also released their own attempts at motion controllers for their platforms, something neither intended originally. Digital distribution of big titles went from a technical impossibility to the primary way games are bought on PC and likely the consoles before long. Companies realised there’s buckets of money to be made in games that you give away for free and massively multiplayer games went from being thought of as a money press to needing to adopt the free model to survive. Smart phones went from something businesspeople do e-mail on to pocket computers that can run the Unreal Engine and tablets just fell out of the sky one day. Facebook has over 10% of the entire world’s population using it. More people play video games in some form now than ever before. To boot, all of this has happened since 2005. Like…what?

It’s safe to say that no one who runs this industry or partakes in its wares has a true grasp on all this yet or where it’s going to end up. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be an executive at a large game company these days (despite my dumping on one recently). Trying to figure out how to turn a profit with spiralling costs, stagnant pricing, an audience that demands innovation but only occasionally supports it and new platforms appearing from the ether must often seem insurmountable, especially since even nimble big companies often don’t turn on a dime. The triple-A industry has moved to a cost model where titles are either huge booms or catastrophic busts with very rarely anything in between. Even development studios with long, successful track records can be ruined by the failure of a single project. As the next generation of consoles come into being, these costs and their associated risks will only grow larger.

The upside of all the new innovations and platforms that have emerged in recent years is that triple-A isn’t the only way to bring games to market. It costs a fraction as much to develop and self-publish on mobile platforms, Facebook or Steam which has breathed new life into small, indie game producers who are driven by the art more than the business. If you lose, you don’t lose as big but if you win, you can win huge. If you have a desire to start a game studio, you don’t suddenly needs millions of dollars of venture capital or publisher loans to get things rolling, you just need some talent and access to the Internet. Games cost a few dollars or in some cases, nothing at all and thus the barrier to entry for newcomers is extremely low. All of this is awesome.

The problem is that the gaming and tech press have latched onto this as the only way of the future, that the current methods of making and playing games are obsolete, the current giants of gaming are already a dying breed, things like iOS and Facebook are the way everyone’s going to play everything in the future and that the era of expensive games is over. These are all nice ideas to embrace and it’s true that all these new innovations are making big, likely permanent changed to the landscape. However, the enthusiast press is in the business of pushing hype and in this, they’ve certainly succeeded. I think we need to step back a bit and look at the reality of the situation both in terms of the present and where existing trends show it to be going.

Over the next few posts, I’ll be detailing some of these emerging trends, the impacts they’ve already had and where I see them going. I’ll attempt to cut through the hype and manufactured statements to look at the reality of things and attempt to address the salient points that the press is not. I’m not saying my way’s going to end up being the right way as like everyone else, I’m only going on the details I’ve seen. I don’t have all the answers but the thing is, no one else really does either and the uncertainty of the future for this industry is partially what makes it so exciting to witness and discuss. This is going to be a lot of content and a real challenge for me to write but I’m looking forward to it and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Business, Business, Coverage, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Technology, Video Games , , , , , , , ,

Steve Jobs, An Amazing One of Many

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 5, 2011

This isn’t going to be a particularly long post because there isn’t a lot more I can say on the passing of Steve Jobs that hasn’t been said everywhere else. To claim that he was a once in a generation mind who has had incalculable impact on the world of technology would be a huge understatement. It is not an exaggeration to say that many of the innovations we’ve seen from other companies in the cell phone, tablet and operating system spaces were born out of a competitive environment that would not be nearly as fierce without his influence. He made a lot of things better and made a lot of people rich while doing so. Anyone who knows me from elsewhere knows I don’t have a lot of love for the man’s attitude or many of the ways Apple does business. I think he and they have brought us ahead in many ways and backwards in others. However, had I the chance to meet the man before today, I would have shaken his hand and told him I was a fan.

The only other thing I can say is that should this post pass in front of the eyes of any of Apple’s 39,000 other employees, never forget that while Steve was the brilliant vision man, you are all the ones who made his visions a reality. He may have been the face of Apple but you all are the heart of it. You can and will continue to do amazing things without him and I think no greater tribute can be made than that.

Rest in peace sir.

Technology , , , ,

Has mobile phone technology peaked for a while?

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 4, 2011

Unless you are not on the Internet (in which case you aren’t reading this anyway), you already know that Apple had their big press event to launch the new iPhone. They put out a bunch of heavily manipulated and juked stats that as usual, the press responded to with enthusiasm instead of the skepticism anyone else would have gotten and eventually, got to what everyone was there for: The iPhone 4S. Yep, no iPhone 5 this time around. The response from what I’ve seen online has been a resounding “Meh”. Boiled down to cold reality, the iPhone 4s is little more than an iPhone 4 with beefier stats, a 64GB SKU and at least in the US, availability on three carriers simultaneously at launch.

The highlights include using the same dual-core processor that the iPad 2 has (something most software developers are not utilising right now because requiring it means you alienate all previous model owners), a nicer 8MP camera and an apparently new antenna design that may actually you know, work. The biggest innovation is Siri, a new voice control system that allows a potentially crazy amount of flexibility and control, allowing you to arguably control most of the phone’s functions without touching it. It’s cool but likely doesn’t work nearly as well in the real world as in the demo and it’s not something I think most people will use for fear of looking weird in public. Apple’s stock price took a drop after it was revealed that the phone is not revolutionary, something which I think clearly demonstrates how volatile and dangerous the culture Apple creates can be. But I’m not here to be a mouthpiece for everything they’ve said, the press will take care of that for us all.

What struck me most in thinking about this was that as cool as Siri is, I think it was rolled out more to give Apple a big new selling point for the iPhone 4S rather than “Look, it’s the same thing, only slightly faster!” which is really all this update is. Siri requires the new processor to work so it is in fact something you can only get on the newest model. I think the main reason it didn’t see a revolutionary spec bump is because cell phone technology has come as far as it can for the time being. The only innovation they didn’t embrace with this that other phone manufacturers have is 4G, a technology whose current crop of chipsets destroy battery life and which is still only available in limited markets. Given the insane rise in power and features of smartphones from 2007 until now (something which blindsided many companies like RIM but that’s another post), I’m not at all surprised that advancement has slowed. Clueless stockholders are no doubt panicking that Apple has run out of ideas or something but come on, you can’t advance a segment of technology so fast and not eventually bump your head on the ceiling. This obviously doesn’t mean that things can’t improve further or that more innovations aren’t already being designed in labs. However, technological advancement eventually does reach a point where no matter how many engineers you throw at it, there are just some obstacles in the way (be they in design, manufacturing, implementation or just plain raw cost) that just can’t be solved in a single year. No doubt bigger things are coming but I think the crazy pace of evolution with smartphones is going to slow down a fair bit and I think the mega “world changing” announcements are going to come less frequently and be a little less impactful.

None of the other smartphone makers have the engineering and design resources Apple does but if any of them have some new killer feature they’ve been keeping in a drawer, now’s the time to spend a ton of R&D and PR money and make a huge splash with it. The iPhone 4S will of course sell like gangbusters (in many cases, to people who still have perfectly good iPhone 4s) but if there was ever a time when Apple was “down”, this is it and it’s time to seize the day. It will be interesting to see what the next big innovation is but I think people were a bit naive if they thought that the pace we’ve seen in the smartphone space could continue uninterrupted. Sometimes, you just run out of cool new stuff for a while.

Mobile Phones, Technology , ,

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