The dusk of the computer age

Some have argued the iPad is the dawn of a new era. Oh wait, that was me, three days ago. But in another respect, it is the dusk of another, representing a return to the past when people did what they wished without worrying about their computer.

From O’Reilly:

The automobile went through a similar evolution. From eminently hackable to hood essentially sealed shut. When the automobile was new, you HAD to be a mechanic to own one. Later, being a mechanic gave you the option of tinkering and adapting it to your specific interests. In fact, that’s how most people up until about 1985 learned to be mechanics. The big changes came with the catalytic converter and electronic ignition (and warranty language to match). Now the automobile has reached the point in its development where you don’t even have to know whether it has a motor or an engine to use it, but to tinker at all requires highly specialized skills.

Is this really so bad?

Here’s the point: there is a lot of hand-wringing about the iPad being a closed platform, even as people acknowledge the advantages of that (everything just works, no viruses, etc.) What is clear though, is that it is geeks doing the handwringing. Which makes sense in a way. It really is the end of their era. But for everyone else, those people for whom a computer is a necessary accessory, but not their life, what the iPad portends is a future where the computer fades away, leaving only the art.

Consider photographers. Today’s photographers are among the most computer-savvy people in the world, but by necessity, not by choice. Computers are simply an essential component of modern photography, and if that means understanding things like RAM, cache, and the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit computing, then so be it. But the second revolutionary aspect of the iPad is the way it transforms a computer into an appliance, where what happens under the hood is indeed magical. No, iPad 1.0 will not be a photographer’s computer, but iPad 4.0 just might. All that matters is that it edit photos, or display pictures, or capture text, NOT that it be “open” with all the good and bad that implies.

A photographer wants to photograph.

A writer wants to write.

A grandmother wants to see pictures.

A teenager wants to chat.

Only a geek wants to hack.*

The iPad is the first of a new paradigm that will free people to do what they want, what they were meant to do, with a tool meant to aid, not frustrate.

I think that’s pretty awesome.

*I self-identify as a geek, but diverge on this point: I am interested in technology to the extent it can solve normal people’s problems, and much less interested in technology for technology’s sake. It’s a slight but crucially different point-of-view.

Frasier Speirs, who I linked in the article, really said it much better:

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.

It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.

As you can see, I couldn’t have said it better myself…

The iPad: it's for everyone else

For what it’s worth, we’ve been here before. Apple product is rumored, hype builds up, it’s revealed, and people are disappointed. In this case, “It’s just a big iPod Touch” is the new “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

And, once again, it’s because the hype aimed too low. The iPad isn’t Apple’s attempt to make a tablet or netbook; it’s the first of what Apple believes is the future of computers. And, taken in that light, everything makes so much more sense.

I think a lot of the confusion stems from this slide in Steve Jobs’ presentation:

There’s the iPad, in the middle. And that, many argue, isn’t a particularly compelling place to be.

They’re right, and wrong. The middle isn’t a great place to be, but the iPad isn’t in-between an iPhone and Macbook. For a significant segment of the population, it is meant to be their Macbook. And, for those who need a Macbook, the iPad isn’t for them. But it will be.

Let me explain, with a new take on Jobs’ slide:

Remember the beginning of the Keynote: Jobs said that Apple is now a mobile devices company. What the iPad does is give Apple a product that offers a superior experience in every dimension of the mobile experience, namely, content creation, content consumption and mobility.

The reason this matters is that the vast majority of users are primarily content consumers. These are the people buying netbooks as their primary computers, or simply avoiding computers as much as possible. They simply want to go on Facebook, check their email, watch YouTube, and at most, upload pictures. Apple’s value proposition to these customers is:

The iPad is a superior content consumption experience with sufficient creation capabilities to meet your needs.

That is why iWork figured so prominently into the Keynote - it was reassurance that the iPad can pass as your only computer (more on iWork in just a moment).

Of course the vast majority of geeks and business school students (the two crowds I’m most familiar with) completely missed the point. They’re power users, and the iPad isn’t directed at them. In fact, Apple has a perfectly good solution for their needs: the status quo:

But here’s the deal. Most people aren’t power users. And now, there’s a solution for them as well:

I think that’s a pretty good market to be in.

And now for the caveat:

This is a 1.0 product. Just like iPhone 1.0, there are missing features both in hardware and software, and the Apple fanatics will be the de facto beta testers. So in that regard, the picture I just laid out is more applicable to the medium term.

BUT

It’s the long-term picture that is particularly fascinating, and gets back to my contention at the beginning of this post. For while the laptop has all but reached it’s potential - the consumption experience will never improve beyond what it is now - the creation experience on the iPad will only get better with time. In fact, I believe the iPad will be looked back upon as the pioneer of what will become the default way of interacting with computers just like the Macintosh.*

Go back and watch the Keynote, especially the iWork demonstration that begins 57 minutes in. The iPad doesn’t just let you create documents. It lets you create documents in a way that is simply impossible on a normal computer. It is so much more natural, so much more intuitive, that users accustomed to a keyboard-and-mouse will adapt quickly, and more importantly, users accustomed to multitouch will never understand the attachment to a mouse. I truly believe my two year-old daughter, who has already taught herself to use my iPhone, will never seriously use a mouse. To flip John Gruber’s famous headline on its head, the mouse will be the new command line, beloved by geeks and graybeards, and puzzled at by everyone else.

*Ironically, in this case it could be Microsoft who claims they were first.

The Google China Cynics

Despite the fact Google’s decision to stop censoring www.google.cn in response to Chinese cyber attacks is right in my wheelhouse (<— this is where I link to my archive full of articles on China, which haven’t made the trip over to Tumblr yet), I’m not going to bite. Rather, just a quick note on the cynics, of which there are two types:

1. Google won’t follow through (1) because the China market is too big to ignore.
2. Google is using this as an excuse to get out because they’re getting their rear end kicked by Baidu.

My response to the first is that Google would be risking a huge amount of credibility by not following through, especially after the public relations beating they took in 2006 when they launched Google China. Moreover, publicly calling out the Chinese government is a recipe for disaster if you actually want to continue to do business there. As for the second, 35.6% share in 4Q 2009 (an increase from 31.3% 3Q 2009) is extremely respectable, and, I’m sure, profitable. Why leave now?

More broadly, though, these two criticisms are fundamentally at odds. If the first is true (Google wants to make money, and they’re performing decently, so they won’t leave), then the second is false (the proper response would be to redouble efforts, not abandon the investment). Similarly, if the second is true (Google can’t cut it in China), then the first must be false (the China market isn’t worth fighting for).

Or, it may just simply be the case that Google actually meant what they say, and that the whole “Don’t Be Evil” motto actually means something (2).

1) From what I can see, results are still censored. Here’s the link to a search on Google’s China site for “What Happened on June 6, 1989?” (天安门广场89年6月4日发生什么事).

2) It sounds corny, but Google employees totally buy in to that motto. It’s definitely not just cute lip service.

Stuck in the past

My earlier observation that technology companies too often don’t appreciate the needs of normals is hardly groundbreaking. What is less intuitive is how often geeks are the ones stuck in the past.

During a recent discussion about the future of the PC, a friend posited that the PC as we know it wasn’t going anywhere soon - after all, netbooks and upcoming Internet-only devices don’t play games, for example.

So let’s consider games. Here are the top 10 PC games of all-time (via Wikipedia):

1. The Sims (16 million)
2. The Sims 2 (13 million)
3. StarCraft (11 million)
4. Half-Life (9.3 million)
5. Half-Life 2 (6.5 million)
6. Myst (6 million)
7. The Sims 3 (5.9 million)
8. SimCity 3000 (5 million)
9. Doom (5 million)
10. Riven (4.5 million)

Right off the bat, you can see that casual games - aka games played by normals - have a significant presence on the list. But that’s not even my point - the reality is that these numbers are tiny, at least in comparison to a game like Farmville.

The number of players? 22 million.

A day.

It may be controversial, even radical, to say that the PC as we know it is dead, especially to a geek. He can list off any number of things he can only do on his computer. Edit photos, use a fully-featured spreadsheet application, and even little things like a real email client. Those aren’t random examples - they’re applications I use every day. But that doesn’t mean my wife does. Or my mom. Or the 22 million farmers on Facebook. It’s to the geek’s peril that their affinity for and ability to use fully-featured desktop applications obscure the fact that the normals have moved on.

UPDATE: A fantastic article about Normals and iPhone apps:

The people who are consuming software now are a vast superset of the people who used to do so. At one time, especially on the Mac, we’d see people chose software based upon how well it suited their requirements to get a job done. This new generation of software consumers isn’t like that – they’re less likely to shop around for something rather they shop around for anything. These are people who want to be entertained as much as they want to have their requirements met. They’ve not bought into a tool they’ve bought, either financially or emotionally, into The Future. The Future is never about the most practical and useful outcome, it’s about flying cars and cute robots who shit talk but will still mix you up a killer G’n’T when you need it. The Future isn’t a service that’ll send you a text message when you’ve been out too late on a work night, The Future will get you laid on a Tuesday and make excuses to the boss the next morning.

How did applications that make farting noises or make you sound like T-Pain do so well on the App Store? The answer is simple – they made people laugh.

That should have been the first sign that the software market was changing. It’s obvious in retrospect; people were buying software that would make them laugh. This runs counter to the common understanding of an Application. An Application represents the developer’s best effort at creating software that applies the capabilities of the device to solving a specific problem. Making people laugh is not a problem an Application can solve; it’s not about the device it’s about the person using it.

It’s worth noting a lot of geeks hate the app store, not just because of Apple’s policies, but because of the kind of apps that proliferate. The article actually addresses that too, quite elegantly. Go read it.

Christmas Letter 2009

Here I am with our annual Christmas letter. Sure, it’s a bit late, and not nearly as pretty as past efforts, but such is the life of a father/graduate student. I wrote last year about the big changes that were in store; this year has been all about the realization of those changes. After deciding to attend the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, we spent most of the late spring and summer preparing to move, well, back from Taiwan, from my prospective, and abroad, from Jasmine and Aliana’s. That move has been a good one, for which Jasmine and Aliana surely deserve the credit.

I am keeping extremely busy; I took five classes last quarter, and will take another four starting in January. Meanwhile, recruiting is starting to heat up; earlier this month I, along with several of my classmates, traveled to Silicon Valley to visit several prospective companies with an eye towards a summer internship with a technology company. Jasmine has been staying home with Aliana, a welcome change of pace for her. She is a tremendous cook and is adapting pretty well: we were both shocked when, after a trip to the store in -8°C (18°F) weather, she remarked, “It’s not too bad out!” Aliana is amazing. She loves to sing, dance, and draw, and already knows her ABC’s. Like all children, she is clearly above average. No matter how busy I may get, knowing she and Jasmine are waiting for me makes it an imperative to get home as soon as possible. Every day she learns something new, and if there is anything I myself have learned, it’s too not miss a single bit of that.

The coming year looks to be more of the same. In addition to classes, this spring I will (hopefully) finalize a summer internship; ideally, I will have the opportunity and desire to continue with that company in a full time capacity when I graduate in 2011. Regardless, there is a decent chance I will know where this part of the journey will end by the time I write you next year.

In that respect, this Christmas is a time for rest and reflection, both to recover from a momentous 2009, prepare for a defining 2010, and enjoy time spent with my extended family for the first time since 2002. Once again, here’s to you, our friends. May your year be similarly filled with appreciation for the past, anticipation for the future, and the joy that each individual day brings.

Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year!

Ben, Jasmine & Aliana