Charlie Demerjian:

The problem is that if you are locked in with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, once someone goes, it isn’t a baby step, they are gone. Once you start using Google Docs and the related suites, you have no need for Office. That means you, or likely your company, saves several hundred dollars a head. No need for Office means no need for Exchange. No need for Exchange means no need for Windows Server. No need for Office means no need for Windows. Once the snowball starts rolling, it picks up speed a frightening pace.

For me, the shift away from Microsoft happened one app/device at a time.

I gave up Hotmail/Outlook for Gmail. Windows Media for iTunes. Windows Photoshop for Mac Photoshop. Downgraded from a Pocket PC to an iPod, which eventually upgraded to an iPhone. And then an iPad.

It all just snowballed from there. And clearly an entire market has been experiencing the same thing too.

Patrick Gibson:

Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.

Most insightful thing I've read all week.

Virtual Pants:

The moral of the story is that you should go to a store and try out a Surface if it is something that interests you. Don’t listen to other people’s views and opinions. You might hate it. You might like it. Everyone’s needs and expectations are different.

I couldn't agree more.

This is absolutely amazing to hear, almost 30 years later.

Highlights, courtesy of LifeLibertyTech:

• He mentions that computers are so fast they are like magic. I don’t think it is a coincidence that he called the iPad “magical”.
• He states that in a few years people will be spending more time interacting with personal computers than with cars. It seems so obvious now, but hardly a given back then.
• He equates society’s level of technology familiarity to being on a “first date” with personal computers. He recognized that technology would continue to evolve in the near future as would people’s comfort level with it. In hindsight, once it became dominant the PC industry stood relatively still while Jobs was busy planning “the next big thing”.
• He confidently talks about the personal computer being a new medium of communication. Again, this is before networking was commonplace or there was any inkling of the Internet going mainstream. Yet he specifically talks about early e-mail systems and how it is re-shaping communication. He matter-of-factly states that when we have portable computers with radio links, people could be walking around anywhere and pick up their e-mail. Again, this is 1983, at least 20 years before the era of mobile computing.
• He mentions an experiment done by MIT that sounds very much like a Google Street View application.
  He discusses early networking and the mess of different protocols that existed at the time. He predicts that we were about 5 years away from “solving” networking in the office and 10-15 years from solving networking in the home. I’d say he was pretty much dead-on.
• He says Apple’s strategy is to “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes”. Does that sound like anything we are familiar with today? And they wanted to do it with a “radio link” so that people wouldn’t need to hook it up to anything to communicate with “larger databases” and other computers. Hmmm ….
• He compares the nascent software development industry to the record industry. He says that most people didn’t necessarily know what computer they wanted to buy. In contrast, when walking into a record store they definitely knew what music they liked. This was because they got free samples of songs by listening to the radio. He thought that the software industry needed something like a radio station so that people could sample software before they buy it. He believed that software distribution through traditional brick-and-mortar was archaic since software is digital and can be transferred electronically through phone lines. He foresees paying for software in an automated fashion over the phone lines with credit cards. I don’t know about you, but I think this sounds incredibly similar to the concept of the Apple App Store. Plus his comparison to the music industry just might be foreshadowing the iTunes store. You need to listen to the speech to hear the entirety of this passage for yourself.
• Right at the end of the Q&A session, a question is asked about voice recognition, which he believed was the better part of a decade away from reality. Given the context of Siri today, it is interesting to hear him talk about the difficultly of recognizing language vs voice because language is contextually driven. He says, “This stuff is hard”.

Listen Now

Recently I saw one of my friends tweet that she was still debating on upgrading her 3GS to either the iPhone 4S or the iPhone 5.

Umm, duh! It's a NO BRAINER. iPhone 5 is twice as fast, offers 4G LTE, sports a better camera. And the thing just feels mind-boggling ability to look big but feel small in your hand.

But when I talked to her about it, she brought up a totally valid point: the iPhone 5's new Lightning dock connector will not work on any of her accessories. (Well, she could buy adapters but seriously, who wants to spend that much money?)

So if she gets an iPhone 4S, she'll essentially be getting an extra two years out of her accessories. Assuming she upgrades to the next iPhone in two years, she'll be faced with the same dilemma. But hey, she would've gotten an extra two years out of use out of her accessories.

I've been in this situation before and I've learned to protect myself.

When I'm looking at buying a new device, I don't simply think of it as a device — I look at it as an investment into a platform.

Back when I was still in college, before the modern smartphone, I was big on the Windows Pocket PCs. Specifically, I had the Compaq iPAQ. I loved the thing. It could play music, videos, games…and it developed a nice ecosystem of "sleeve" accessories that I could slide onto it for extra functionality (e.g. GPS).

At one point, on top of the $500 device, I had dropped another $500 on accessories.

And a year after, they changed the design of the next-gen iPAQ; just like that, my iPAQ and $500 worth of accessories were outdated.

From that point on, I vowed to never lock myself to a hardware platform like that again.

As of today, I'm running on my third iPhone. I've also had three iPod shuffles and three iPod classics. And the only accessories I've ever bought for any of these devices are:

• cases
• USB chargers
• external battery
• replacement headphones
• iPod-enabled car stereo adapter

For the most part, these accessories are either under $30 or they can be used over the span of multiple generations. (The iPod-enabled car stereo adapter has an additional auxiliary port.)

As an early adopter that loves to stay on the cutting edge of devices, I've made a conscious effort to never commit myself too much to any one platform.

Even with my Mac, where I have spent a few hundred dollars on apps, I know that all of my data — music, photos, photoshop files, etc — can be liberated at any time and can be used on any other platform.

All of this forward thinking, in a sense, grants me a lot of freedom. So in times like this when Apple moves to a totally new Lightning dock connector, I know I can stay on the cutting edge without pissing away a few hundred dollars worth of accessories.

FJP writes:

The Newton was a double-edged sword for Apple. On one hand, it had a big "wow" factor and reminded the world of Apple's innovative DNA. On the other hand, it was expensive and Apple had to spend considerable time and energy explaining why a "portable digital assistant" was necessary. It failed.

Now Apple waits for markets to mature a bit before they enter. They've de-emphasized "first" in favor of "best". Facetime is just video chat. Retina Displays are just higher resolution. Siri is just voice recognition. But in all three cases, they grabbed a tremendous amount of mindshare in a short time.

Amen.

Fanboys and haters like to get caught up in the 'ol "We did it first! You guys copied us!" argument. But really, that's just pointless.

It's not about who does it first; it's about who takes it to the next level.

Alex Dobie, editor at Android Central writes:

The open -- or "openy" -- nature of Android has its advantages -- a wide variety of hardware, hackability and custom ROM support, endless choice in screen sizes, software customizations, multimedia chops, chassis styles and industrial designs. But it comes with one major Achilles heel -- the labyrinthine, time-consuming and expensive process of getting phones updated with a new version drops. It’s not anyone’s fault, it's a weakness that's built into Android's DNA, and one we doubt will ever be overcome.

This is why Android is just not for me.

Don't get me wrong; Android is a fantastic platform...but it just has too many hurdles that prevent users from getting their hands on the latest version.

I love well-designed software. I love using software the way the designer meant for it to be used. I love software designers that have the balls to say "No" to feature requests because they have a clear vision and they're sticking to it.

Whenever I see that New Software Update indicator, I jump on it immediately because I always want the latest and greatest. I may not have the money to upgrade to the new iPhone every year. But when Apple releases a new version of iOS, it feels like it's a new phone. And that's enough to keep me happy and hold me over through my two-year contract.

But the reality is there are some people that are the complete opposite. There are people that get annoyed by software updates and go on as long as possible avoiding it.

Those are the jailbreakers. The tweakers. The "I want to customize every bit of my smartphone to make it unique" kinda people. The people that want more hardware specs bang for their buck instead of well-designed out-of-the-box software.

Those are the people that will never have the latest version of Android running on their smartphones...and they're perfectly fine with that.

MG Siegler:

That’s the thing — when people say they’re disappointed about the new iPhone, what they’re really saying is that they’re disappointed it doesn’t look that much different from previous version(s). But again, not only is that true, Apple went out of their way to make sure that was the case. [...]

Apple is not and will not make changes just for the sake of change. And while some may now be clamoring for this change, the paradox is that if Apple did make some big changes, many of the same people would bitch and moan about them. Apple is smart enough to know that in this case, most people don’t really want change, they just think that they do because that’s the easiest way to perceive value: visual newness.

Perfectly said.

Welp, none of my bold predictions were right, lol. I ain't trippin' though. Honestly, that's part of the magic about Apple -- there's that constant wonder and mystique in trying to predict what they're gonna do next.

All in all, the iPhone 5 is a solid update to a solid product. And despite how people complain this update is "meh," the iPhone 5 is gonna be the greatest selling product yet.