Is Apple in long-term trouble?

A survey of software developers shows a sharp drop in Objective-C popularity, Objective-C being the main programming language for Apple's iOS.

Source: tiobe.com

Fewer developers means fewer apps for consumers and businesses. One could argue that with hundreds of thousands of apps already available in the AppStore Apple should not worry about the trend. Furthermore, Apple's move into its own services, including media streaming, may also decrease the need for independent developers. In general, the mobile apps space has matured well beyond its heydays.

Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine a popular software development platform that is of limited interest to developers. We might be seeing the beginning of the end of Apple's rapid expansion.

tags: technology, apple, software, services, dominant design

Trade-off of the Day: Smartness vs Ease of Use

Steve Jobs shows how Apple broke the trade-off with the iPhone.



tags: trade-off, dilemma, interface, mobile, software, apple

Lunch Talk: Ron Johnson at Stanford GSB

Everyone thinks they innovate, but most of the time it's just improvement, shared former Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Operations Ron Johnson at his View From the Top talk at Stanford GSB. "To win in business, you have to let the imagination run." During his conversation with Stanford GSB student Amanda Facelle (MBA '14), Johnson also shared the biggest life lesson he learned from Steve Jobs: "You have to be willing to start again."

Popular media hypes up a trivial Apple 3-D gesture patent

Science fiction writer Michael Crichton once said about journalists' cluelessness on subjects that require special knowledge:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

The recent media coverage of US 8,933,876 awarded to Apple is a remarkable case of baloney reporting. For example, in a CNBC news segment Dan Costa, the Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com says, he's surprised how broad the patent is. Obviously, Dan is clueless because in reality the patent claims only a vertical unlock gesture - a narrow set of functionality that is extremely easy to work around, e.g. by implementing it horizontally.

The Business Insider header says, "Apple Just Patented 'Minority Report'-Style Gesture Controls." This statement is a huge stretch of reality because Apple patented just a tiny extension of the technology already implemented in, e.g. Microsoft Kinect, Nintendo, and other devices.

As a rule, when you read something about patents in popular media consider yourself under the influence of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

tags: patents, apple, media, information, error

Trade-off of the Day: happiness vs blindness to obvious

Paying too much attention to detail may cause you to miss the obvious:

(Science 5 October 2012) To our surprise, whereas attention improved the monkeys' ability to detect subtle orientation changes, it worsened their performance when the change was very obvious, which suggests that strongly attending to one feature (e.g., vertical stripes) makes it more difficult to see a very different feature (e.g., horizontal stripes).   -- Marlene R. Cohen. When Attention Wanders. Vol. 338 no. 6103 pp. 58-59. DOI: 10.1126/science.1229552

Paradoxically, attending to the present makes people happy, while having a wondering mind produces unhappiness. Is there a trade-off between one's happiness and blindness to the obvious just outside of the focus of attention?

Was Steve Jobs paying too much attention to the color of Google icon on the iPhone that he missed the obvious fact that Google was ripping off the overall iPhone design?

tags: trade-off, psychology, creativity, apple, google

Snack Talk: iPhone 5 - first look.

tags: lunchtalk, apple, psychology, media

Lunch Talk: Steve Jobs' presentation in 1980.

This video was gifted to Computer History Museum by Regis McKenna and can be found on their online exhibit about Steve Jobs here: http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/stevejobs/

tags: lunchtalk, computing, history, apple

Lunch Talk: (@Google) Steve Wozniak.

Steve Wozniak talks about his career at Apple as well as his life and new book "iWoz" at Google. (Spring, 2007).

This video is a candidate background material for the Greatest Innovations of Silicon Valley course John Kelley and I are going to teach at Stanford University CSP.

tags: lunchtalk, innovation, apple, history

Apple vs Motorola: no damages, no right to exclude.

June 22, 2012. CNet:

A U.S. judge has tossed out the Apple v. Motorola patent case for good, according to reports.

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. District of Northern Illinois said that neither Apple nor Motorola has been able to prove damages and that neither company would be permitted to refile a claim.

Posner strongly questioned Apple's bid for an injunction against Motorola smartphones, saying, according to Reuters, that a ban on sales could have "catastrophic effects" and would be "contrary to the public interest."

the judge also pointed to serious problems with the U.S. patent system and questioned the worth of many software patents, saying, Reuters reported, "You can't just assume that because someone has a patent, he has some deep moral right to exclude everyone else."

In the judge's mind considerations of public interest seem to be prevailing over the patentee's right to exclude others from using the technology.

tags: patent, apple, google, portfolio

The market side of breakthrough technology and business model.

The latest numbers from Asymco show that Apple, with 9% global share of physical mobile phones, has 75% of industry profits. All other manufacturers are fighting each other, supplying the market with commodity devices and services.

For more detail, see CNET.

Simply put, the iPhone ecosystem has no substitutes.

tags: mobile, innovation, apple, breakthrough, niche construction

Quote of the Day: Google design with no human bias.

Probably the greatest contrast between Google and Apple is their approach to design. Apple is famous for its attention to human aesthetics. On the other hand, Google culture prides itself on the total lack of thereof:

Marissa Mayer*, the fierce protector of Google’s look, once quelled an incipient revolt by designers by finally defining what rankled her about a stunning design submitted to her. “It looks like a human was involved in choosing what went where,” Marissa told them. “Google products are machine-driven. They’re created by machines. That’s what makes our products great.” 
In other words, the message Google wanted to convey was that its products had no human bias. 

quoted from "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes our Lives", by Steven Levy.

*VP at Google, one of their first 20 employees.

Mobile phone is not a phone.

The new data is in and it confirms the prediction (iPhone is not a phone) I made two and a half years ago. Mobile devices we buy and use today are computers that live on data. Voice is but one application that runs on them.

Dec 15, 2011. VBeat ...data usage is up 256 percent from last year with the average 13- to 17-year-old teen now consuming 320 MB of data per month. Should the trend continue — and we think it will — teens will easily get up to 1 GB of data usage a month by next year.

The cell phone’s primary purpose (i.e. to make calls), according to the data, is quickly becoming lost on teens. Voice usage dropped from 685 to 572 minutes in one year.

 Mobile communications infrastructure will have to be rebuilt with new technologies to accommodate the emerging usage patterns. 

tags: mobile, communications, infrastructure, information, apple

Mobile ads: Apple vs Google

Using IDC data, WSJ shows (12/13/11) that Apple is losing to Google in the mobile ads market.

 

Last year, Apple shared the top spot in the mobile display ad market with Google, with each company capturing 19%, according to research firm IDC. This year, Apple fell to the No. 3 spot, behind Google and independent mobile ad firm Millennial Media, capturing 15%, or $95 million, of the $630 million market, IDC says.

Hordes of developers have activated iAd, but they say that Apple hasn't sold enough to make any meaningful revenue for them. David Barnard, founder of mobile app company App Cubby, says he earned $320 from iAd in the past 30 days and that the service is only filling roughly 13% of his apps requests.

As I wrote recently, Apple is not an ad company. In this market they are going to lose to Google  because, among other things, Google has a much better targeting and delivery platform. The ad-based business model fits Google setup like a glove. On the other hand, Steve Jobs always hated ads and as the result, in Apple's kingdom content is the king and ads are an afterthought.

Further, I would venture to say that when (not if) Google and Apple come out with their digital TV products, the overall business outcome will be the same: Apple = content; Google = ads.

tags: content, information, technology, business, model, apple, google, control, deontic

Apple is outsourcing patent trolling.

(Dec 10, 11. VBeat). In a clever deal that effectively gives Apple immunity from attack by the troll, Apple agreed to some cross-licensing deals that gave Digitude the ammunition for a heavy attack against Apple’s rivals. Digitude recently filed suit against RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia. It did so at the International Trade Commission, a body that can quickly bock the import of products deemed to infringe on patents. Moreover, it included four patents in its claim, two of which were owned by Apple earlier this year, before they were transferred to Digitude.

Finally, the industry is waking up to the fact that patents are not about protecting inventions. Rather, they function as a business asset for improving company's competitive position. It doesn't matter who is using the asset, as long as its purpose is preserved.

tags: patents, business, model, innovation, apple, deontic, intellectual, property

Content vs Advertisement

According to Piper Jaffray (via CNN 11/21/2011)

• Since its inception, Google's Android Market Place has generated about 7% of the gross revenue of Apple's App Store.
• Apple has about 85% to 90% market share of the total dollars spent on mobile apps.
• Only 1.3% of Android apps are paid, compared with 13.5% of iPhone's.
• Apple developers have made more than $3.4 billion since 2011, compared with less than $240 million for Google developers.

Apple and Google have different business models. Apple makes money on hardware and content, including apps, while Google is an advertisement company, which monetizes free content provided by others. On average, to get the same money on Android, an iOS (Apple) app developer would have to reach 10 times more customers. With Androids market share only twice as big as iOS, the math for quality content is skewed toward Apple. But if you are willing to spend time on app selection and device configuration, you can save money by using an Android device. I guess, there's a business model available for premium phones that for a fee provide the best of both worlds.

In the meantime, VBeat reports about the latest and greatest in the iOS world:

Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Angry Birds
2. Fruit Ninja
3. Angry Birds Seasons
4. Cut the Rope
5. Tiny Wings
6. Angry Birds Rio
7. Words With Friends
8. Camera+
9. Doodle Jump
10. Plants vs. Zombies

The top 10 paid iPhone apps were all games, with the exception of Camera+, a photo app with tons of cool filters. Angry Birds claimed the top spot, and it’s no surprise. 2o11 was the year Angry birds went from a niche meme to a full on cultural phenomenon. Making an unlikely appearance on the Top 10 list is Doodle Jump, a basic but “insanely addictive” platformer that first appeared on the iPhone nearly two years ago.

Top Free iPhone Apps:

1. Facebook
2. Pandora Radio
3. Words with Friends Free
4. Angry Birds Free
5. Skype
6. Netflix
7. Angry Birds Rio Free
8. Groupon
9. Fruit Ninja Lite
10. Twitter


tags: mobile, apple, google, business, model

Patents: Apple's virtual sliding bolt latch.

Apple just got a patent issued on the sliding lock for iPhone/iPad. Now, they can sue the pants out of Android manufacturers until they come up with a better idea.

An excellent example of how an old interface concept can be transferred into a new environment. The good old sliding latch is a perfect metaphor for unlocking a device.

Of course, voice or thought control will make all these physical gestures obsolete.

tags: interface, mobile, apple, google, patent, example, control

Innovation of the Day: Siri, the voice control fairy.

In the NYT video below, iPhone-based virtual assistant Siri beats a human assistant in solving "girlfriend situation."

The episode reminded me the work we did at Philips Research Silicon Valley ten years ago, trying to marry voice control to a mobile device.

 

Unfortunately for us, phone hardware was not good enough to perform necessary computations in real time. Now, when you have gigahertz processors and graphics chips on a mobile device, mapping simultaneous inputs from multiple sources can finally be done. The problem of user interaction with a tiny device is fundamental. As the density of information we exchange through the device increases, information resolution, i.e. user ability to discriminate between items available on the device, has to increase as well. Zooming in and out is one way to do it. Accessing via voice and touch, as Siri does, would be another.

Winning in patent courts, by design.

Emphasizing design not only helps Apple convince consumers buy Apple products, but also allows the company to attack its competitors in court. Instead of using a more traditional IP litigation strategy based on utility (technology) patents, Apple leverages its cache of design patents to speed up court decisions. Litigating utility patents takes years, while showing similarity of design decisions makes infringement analysis very simple. Here's the latest from Apple's battle with Samsung:

Oct 13, 2011. San Jose, California. (Reuters) - Apple sued Samsung in the United States in April, saying the South Korean company's Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad

Koh [U.S. District Judge] frequently remarked on the similarity between each company's tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.

Additionally, at the hearing Koh said she would deny Apple's request for an injunction based on one of Apple's so-called "utility" patents.

So far, Apple is winning the battle.

tags: patent, strategy, integrity, control point

Steve Jobs: a 10X change for an infinite market.

It's hard to write about Steve Jobs' approach to innovation just one day after his death. Let him speak for himself. In this video, he introduces first iPod. Remember, this is years before Apple became a household name in consumer electronic devices. At the time of the speech, the company is a minor player in the IT industry dominated by PC. But Steve Jobs sees an infinite opportunity and he brings an order of magnitude change to take advantage of it:

Just to emphasize several points:

1. A major technology transition under way. [from CD to MP3]
2. A market with an infinite potential. [Everybody loves music]
3. No winning solution. [No competition in a potentially infinite market]
4. At least one order of magnitude improvement over current solutions. [ a) thousands of songs instead of hundreds; b) fast transfer of the whole library].
5. Cool design.

It's a tough set of criteria to satisfy. Out of today's devices only Amazon's Kindle/Fire fits it.

tags: 10x, apple, information, entertainment, market, 4q diagram,

And the world's best user experience creator is...

A data-driven view on Steve Jobs' design contributions to user experience:

Steve Jobs is cited as an inventor on 313 patents and is the first listed inventor on over 10% of them. Almost all are design patents, running the gamut from MP3 players to power adaptors to the stairs in the Apple Store. Pretty interesting for someone with no formal design or technical training, much less the CEO of a major corporation.
...
Designer Jonathan Ive was named as co-inventor on 64% of those 313.

Design patents cover non-functional ornamental aspects of the implementation. They are used to protect functionality-related aesthetics of the product: the look, the feel, the touch. Here's a couple of examples of Steve Jobs' patents:

(D638,835. Electronic device with graphical user interface  -- looks like iPhone 4):

(D641,021. Keyboard):

 

Compared to utility patents, the process for getting design patents is short and inexpensive. You can align it with the launch of a new products, so that copycats have harder time to sell knock-offs 1-3 years after the initial introduction. A good strategy for a market leader in consumer products/services.

tags: patent, apple, innovation, creativity, interface