Netizen

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Has Apple Peaked?

Image representing Tim Cook as depicted in Cru...

I think so.

The iPhone was a paradigm shift. The iPad was also a paradigm shift. But by now the Android platform is as good if not better in both those spheres, and there is no doubt as to who is the market leader. Android leads. The pace is to quicken.

And I don't see Apple coming up with the next big thing. Is it TV? I don't think so. TV is like cancer, it is not any one thing.

Tim Cook is average. The superb performance of the Apple stock for about a year after Steve Jobs' death can still be attributed to Steve Jobs. This guy was like the Kennedy of technology. The immense global media coverage of Steve Jobs and Apple after Jobs' death really helped Apple. Apple went to the masses. And the new versions of old products were already in the pipeline.

Tim Cook's real test would be if he could come up with another paradigm shifting product. I just don't see that happening. And that's okay. Not everyone can be Steve Jobs. People like him show up one or two in a generation.

The map fiasco that Apple had would never have happened under Steve Jobs. That was another tell tell sign.

I never believed Apple was on its way to becoming a trillion dollar company. On the other hand Google could end up there. But if it gets there it will have to have done so by 2020. And the clearest route to getting there is in the ISP space. Global gigabit wireless broadband supported by ads is Google's path to becoming a trillion dollar company.

Apple Drops 6.4% Due To Volatility And Uncertainty: The iPad Mini Is Out, Now What?

During the past 12 months, Apple shares have been up 42.7 percent, mostly due to two new products, the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini. With a new CEO and no new product in sight, volatility kicks in...... So the iPad mini is out. Now what? It’s hard to say what Apple’s next product will be, and especially Apple’s next breakthrough product. Steve Jobs passed away a little more than a year ago, and he still oversaw most of the products coming out today. ...... P/E ratio ... Microsoft’s is comparable to Apple’s.

Apple loses $34.9 billion in market cap in its worst trading day in 4 years, but why?

the company shed 6.43% of its value, to settle at a valuation of a mere $508 billion. ..... there could be a worst case additional 10% move to the downside. .... Digitimes. a well-respected industry publication, was reporting slower demand in the first part of next year. ..... Digitimes is suggesting a 20% q/q decline in Apple’s demand for parts and components in March. ..... something in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon. Heading up, Apple was a rocket, and now in the other direction it has been carrying weight

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

A Season For Forgiveness

Forgiveness lesson from flowers (Photo credit: juliejordanscott)

Looking For A Few Holiday Parties
Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best
Tips From Gandhi
Happy Holidays

Temba Sherpa, I forgive you. Now get back your driving license.

Fred Wilson. I forgive you. Just because. And also because you have a kickass blog.

Binod Shah. I forgive you and your clinic in The Bronx.

Anjan Shrestha. I forgive you and your obsession with public restrooms.

Mike Bloomberg. You seem to be running for Mayor one more time. I forgive you.

Barack Obama. I forgive you. I mean, how about a second term, eh!

Marissa Mayer. I forgive you. I mean, after all those page hits you have given to this blog of mine.

Nabil Mouzannar. I forgive you. Here's to hoping you will find me a few good parties this month.

Pemba Sherpa. I forgive you. Even though your name rhymes with that of Temba Sherpa.

Benoy Thanjan. I forgive you and your misleading last name.

Julie Irving. I forgive you and I also forgive the NY Tech MeetUp. Oh, the long virtual lines.

Tsepak Dorjee. I forgive your singing voice.

Platform Agnostic Is The Way To Go

Fred Wilson (Photo credit: Lachlan Hardy)

Fred Wilson has revisited his blog post Mobile First, Web Second that was inspired by a blog post of mine.

I think Mobile First, Web Second made perfect sense at the time, but that was an aggression needed to balance out the over emphasis on the Old Web we had seen to that point.

But the truth is it is not web first or mobile first. It is neither. It is user first. And the best applications going forward will be platform agnostic. As long as you use it, it does not matter what platform you use it on. And your behavior, your interactions will be collected in the Big Data world to glean insights on you - not necessarily to serve ads in sneaky ways - that can have huge commercial values. LinkedIn is a great example on that monetization strategy. LinkedIn does not make money because you visit it several times a day. You don't. How many times are you going to look at your own resume? Unless you are unemployed and are anal about that condition.

Mobile First, Web Second - Fred Wilson's most popular and most quoted blog post of 2010 - was right on for 2010. But with hindsight we have to see it was there to counterbalance Web And Web Alone, the thesis that had been ruling the space for more than a decade to that point, more like a decade and a half.

The app of today and tomorrow has to exist on all platforms - the laptop, the tablet, the smartphone - and more platforms than are in vogue today. Think wristwatch, think TV screen, think movie screen. Think platforms made possible by the gesture - NUI, Natural User Interface - going mainstream.

It is not about the platform, it is about the user.

Vibhu Norby misses the point. Although what he has said are points worth considering by those who are thinking monetization in the short run.

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Touch Is Transient

Gesture will go mainstream before we know it.

A Shape-Shifting Smartphone Touch Screen
Leaping Into the Gesture-Control Era

a matchbox-sized device that adds intuitive gesture control to any computer ..... The technology, which is also being adapted for mobile devices, could even leave the beloved pocket touch screen looking outmoded. .... The black glass on the Leap’s upper side hides two small cameras and a handful of infrared LEDs, which track the motion of a person’s fingers to an accuracy of a hundredth of a millimeter .... Leap provides the solution to “gorilla arm,” a term used to describe the dubious ergonomics of a person repeatedly lifting his or her hands from the keyboard or mouse and reaching out to operate a computer’s touch screen. Users of Leap’s device can lift their hands just slightly off the keyboard and make more economic gestures with their fingers. .... significantly faster than using a mouse and keyboard .... Holz says touch screens soared in popularity because they are more intuitive to use than keyboards and mice, but believes they are limited in a way the Leap is not. “The fact is that you can’t really do anything with a tablet, with tap and swipe, but it feels natural,” he says, meaning that people love touch screens but can’t easily create content using them. “We have that same natural experience but we have more power.” ..... since the [developer’s kit] is still in the preview stage, more features are being added that make capturing specific motions even easier. ..... over the longer term, the Leap will be used for very complex interactions. “You’ll be reaching into a 3-D world and grabbing hold of and moving things.” .... a chunk of simulated clay. He reached out and pushed and pulled with his fingers in the air in front of the monitor, creating a stylized human head in about a minute. ...... gestures can help remove a barrier between people and their technology ..... Leap Motion’s closest competitor may be Kinect, Microsoft’s body-tracking sensor for the Xbox games console

Monday, December 03, 2012

Erich Schmidt Has A Book

As soon as I read the headline I found myself thinking about the Bill Gates book that came out in 1995.

So it was eery when the last paragraph in the article said pretty much the same thing.

As it is described, "The New Digital Age" calls to mind Bill Gates' 1995 book "The Road Ahead," which made a similar effort to predict the changes that would be wrought by the personal computing revolution. But predictions can be tough: In 2010, a review by The Atlantic found that Gates had gotten things mostly wrong.