The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Apple, the 'Boomer' Tablet and the Matrix (Guest Post @ O'Reilly Radar)

I have written here, here and here about Apple’s inevitable assault on the Tablet market. What I hadn’t factored until recently is how symbiotic such a device would be for Baby Boomers.

Why Baby Boomers? Well, for the same two reasons that this demographic is unlikely to embrace the palm-sized iPhone en masse.

One, such a bookish-sized tablet device – I’ll call it the Boomer Tablet – would be tailor-made for home Wi-Fi setups, thereby obviating the mobile access costs associated with iPhone, a significant barrier for a generation that is programmed to keep mobile bills within a tight spending range.

Two, because a larger-form factor device would offer Boomers a bigger viewing screen and “lifestyle” settings, like fatter keys and a more forgiving keyboard to ease input, and wizard-like shortcuts to simplify recurring tasks.

This is key, because with the onset of age, Boomers’ motor skills have become less precise; their vision has become poorer; and their eyes get tired easier.

As such, the premise of them plugging away on tiny keys and peering into the tiny screen of a mobile device like iPhone/iPod touch is a non-starter.

By contrast, the Boomer Tablet offers a superior input, viewing and playback environment for accessing your iTunes library, personal media, syndicated content services, iPhone Apps and presumably, Mac Apps; something that the 70M+ Baby Boomers in the US who are aged 53-73 would likely find compelling.

Moreover, if Apple put a video camera in the device – not a stretch since they are doing it in the iPhone GS – it could make video conferencing and VOIP ubiquitous in a relatively short time (Skype already has a client for the iPhone/iPod touch). What better way to stay connected to distant loved ones?

Read the rest of the post HERE (at O'Reilly Radar).

UPDATE 1: Good Article in Fast Company looking at how Amazon is attempting to play its cards right with respect to Kindle.  Check out 'Amazon Taps its Inner Apple.'

UPDATE 2: My post on the (baby) Boomer Tablet computing device was referenced in today's New York Times. Very cool.  P.s., yes, I noted that the author misspelled my name.

UPDATE 3: AppleInsider is reporting that it has confirmation (from a trusted, reliable source) that this device will be coming to market in Q1, 2010 (versus Q4, 2009).  I wish it was the earlier date, but as my post underscores, this is a BIG undertaking.  Meanwhile, over at Seeking Alpha, Jason Schwarz argues 'Why Apple's iTouch Tablet Will Become It's Flagship Product."

Related Posts:

1. Start in the Middle: The "Jobs," "Outcomes" and "Constraints" Innovation Model
2. Apple, TV and the Smart Connected Living Room
3. iPhones, App Stores and Ecosystems
4. Is the iPhone Platform Destined to Disrupt the Packaged Software Industry?
5. Analysis: Apple WWDC Keynote - Punishing the Wizard, Part Two

The Nine Essential Truths of Entrepreneurial Success

I am blessed in that I get a lot of entrepreneurs reaching out to me for advice on their startup; namely, to sound board the efficacy of their idea, a key strategic decision that they are facing, or a milestone that they are working towards. 

Having been around the block a few times, I put together this primer of nine key lessons learned from doing eight startups (four as co-founder, four liquidity events – exits to IBM, Apple, Wind River, Zoom):

1.      It’s About Who, Then What: We love to fall in love with great ideas, but you know what, the most  basic truth is that the key strategic decisions are usually less about the industry, the products, the pricing, the message, the sales channel or even the technology, and MOSTLY about the people.  It’s the proverbial ‘Who, Then What’ dynamic at play. As such, it is never too early to define your ideals, establish your culture, and commit to actually living it. This will lead you to hire builders who think like owners, who operate with strong values that are aligned with your own, who are long-term thinkers, data-driven, and who want to build stuff that matters (not just make money).

2.     Say Goodbye to the Tyranny of the ‘All or None’: Details matter, but often the bigger challenge is reconciling all of the paradoxes and tradeoffs that come with starting and growing a business.  Human nature is to attempt to reduce these paradoxes down to either/or, black and white decisions.   My experience, however, is that success is a by-product of reconciling the nuance, and embracing the ‘AND.’ As such, always be asking yourself, “How might I approach the solution differently it I were embracing paradoxes, as opposed to avoiding them?”

3.     Be Use-Case Driven: It amazes how many solutions are built with a completely generic sense of the user, the use-case and the workflow required to satisfy their needs.  It’s okay to be wrong, but it’s not okay to be confused, so make sure that your product planning process is defined in a way that codifies specific use cases supported by clear workflows (in terms of click steps), backed by wireframes that express same.  This is the ultimate ‘rubber meets the road’ moment when you realize that you are either talking the same language with your constituency of co-workers, customers, partners and investors, or not.

4.     Spell out the Jobs, Outcomes and Constraints That Your Product or Service Addresses: When thinking about specific use cases and user workflows, I subscribe to the jobs, outcomes and constraints  “outcome-driven” innovation model. It assumes that your target user "hires" your product or service to enable them to achieve a specific set of outcome goals, relative to the constraints that they face (e.g., budgetary, ease-of-use, integration, etc.).  Hence, in thinking about your product or service, always know what jobs you are focusing on, how they enable the outcome you are pledging to deliver and how they stick within the constraints your customer faces.  This drives a level of specificity that enables crisp decisions of what the product is and isn’t, and equally important, enables you to test that value proposition with customers and partners.

5.     Know What has to go Right for You to Succeed: Too often, a plan fails to address binary assumptions, like required adoption by a “king maker,” such as a standards body or a major enterprise; the essentialness of a major distribution deal; changes in consumer behavior; or the competition opting not to pursue certain markets.  Not only is it integral to know what has to go right for you to succeed, but at the moment you identify the greatest risks to being successful, those risks should be front-loaded into the market research phase of your efforts.  Front-loading risk assessment will save you from finding yourself heavily invested in a given path, only to discover (too late) that it’s a dead-end road.

6.     Sanity Check the 1.0/3.0 Paradox: The 1.0/3.0 Paradox spotlights the indelible truths that must be navigated to achieve an initial beachhead in the market.  Specifically, most startups are born of a 3.0 sense of what the company’s business will look like when the product or service is mature; a time when they have achieved market penetration; and thus, can set the terms with customers and partners, so to speak. The paradox is that at the 1.0 stage of business life, you can only deliver 1.0 functionality, and consumers buy based upon their "selfish" 1.0 needs.  Moreover, history suggests that 1.0 is usually “good enough” to get to 2.0, and by 2.0, you are legacy, which is hard to dislodge.  Hence, the wedge into new markets comes from solving a compelling 1.0 problem.  

7.     Always Have an Official Plan of Record: This one seems obvious, but entrepreneurs can so fall in love with the big picture that they avoid sweating the details on things like audience size, metrics of success, major milestones, market segmentation, and go-to-market thinking.  Bottom line: you need a model of the moving parts in the business, and the inputs and outputs generated by same to know if you are on the right path.  In the early stage of a business, the model doesn’t have to be super specific; it just needs to be intellectually honest and supported by a clear narrative.  

8.     Is Your Solution a Vitamin, Aspirin or Penicillin?: A Vitamin Solution is one where the target customer knows they SHOULD use it, like vitamins, but it's not like they are going to get sick or die tomorrow if they don't.  An Aspirin Solution addresses a major, major headache for the target user. They may not die if they don't embrace a solution like yours, but the pain and suffering will be ever-present until they do ‘something’ about the headache.  The target customer NEEDS this type of solution very SOON, if not NOW.  A Penicillin Solution literally keeps you from an untimely demise. When you need penicillin, you NEED it TODAY.  Stating the obvious, it’s better to be a Penicillin or Aspirin Solution than a Vitamin one, at least on the scale of essential-ness.

9.     Be a Detective, an Anthropologist, Sociologist, Psychologist and Zen Master: My favorite quote here is from technology pioneer, Carver Mead, who once implored would-be innovators to “Listen to what the technology is telling you.”  Thus, it helps to have scenarios that drive the way you think about enabling technologies, new products and emerging markets; it’s critical to understand that it is as lethal to be too early as it is to be wrong; and as a friend of mine puts it, sometimes the big idea is looking at a solution which today is applicable to only a small fringe (10%) of the market (e.g., blogging) but with some re-thinking and/or re-factoring, could capture much closer to 100% of the addressable audience (e.g., Twitter).

If you are an entrepreneur looking for some pro bono guidance relative to your venture, reach out to me at LinkedIn by clicking HERE. 

My only request is that I need to really understand the specifics of what you are trying to do and what type of assistance you are hoping for to give you actionable feedback. 

Related Posts:  

1. Pattern Recognition - SupportBot and The Spiral Model
2. The Goodness of Artificial Milestones

Pattern Recognition: Makers, Marketplaces and the Library of the Commons

“There's something happening here;
What it is ain't exactly clear.”
- For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield

Creative destruction is upon us.  Print media has gone from toll bridges to soup lines seemingly overnight.

It seems inevitable that the ripple effect of this transition will be nothing less than a full re-boot of the print advertising business. 

Meanwhile, the big box retailer (think: Circuit City, Sears, Comp USA) and the record store (wither, Tower Records) are relics of a bygone age. 

Add to that an auto industry that is clearly at a crossroads, not to mention the carnage from a financial market crash that has wiped out 20-50% of most people’s portfolios (via home equity depression, stock portfolio depression, unemployment), and our sense of the known and predictable is under assault.

But with entropy and systemic destruction, a fertile, creative ground promulgates, and we see tangible signs that "something" renaissance-like is bubbling up. 

How else to reconcile that at the same time we see a consolidation within the agriculture, meat and dairy producing industries, we are also seeing a rise in organics, small lot artisan producers and farmer’s markets?

Exhibit A: Maker Faire
Envision a Public Market meets County Fair with a touch of Burning Man. 

That’s Maker Faire, the offspring of Make Magazine (dedicated to the DIY - Do It Yourself – lifestyle).

Like its parent, Maker Faire celebrates the organic, the homemade, the customizable, the non-conforming, the technical and the eclectic. 

The Maker constituency is a jambalaya-like melange of purveyors, artisans, kit builders and DIY’ers in areas devoted to: robotics and electronic gizmos; arts and crafts; fashion and music; food and drink products; and vehicles and installations that defy description.  (Okay, I’ll try – “Look, that’s a treehouse on wheels, and the mechanical giraffe just passed me on the left.”)

Maker by the Numbers
If I were to ask you how many people you thought attended this year’s two-day Maker Faire in San Mateo (on May 30-31), what would you guess?  5,000 people?  10,000?  How about 78,000 people (a 20% increase of the prior year’s event)? 

For some relativity, that’s slightly more attendees than a San Francisco Giants baseball game in terms of average daily attendance.  In other words, if numbers don’t lie, the Maker constituency has mainstream type of audience numbers.

Six Degrees of Demographics 
Prior to the event (where I led a presentation and demo of an iPhone powered universal remote control application/platform), I had never heard of Maker Faire, so I was pretty surprised to find the proverbial six degrees of separation at work in terms of Maker attendees within my social and professional universe. 

In attendance at Maker were: a family from my son’s kindergarten class; two members from my book club; and another two friends from my professional circle. 

Needless to say, it punched a hole in my reductionist “this is the Burning Man crowd” theories.

Another AHA was how many women were Makers, a welcome sight, inasmuch as we often default to associating events like these with single, pimply young males, although there were plenty of them, too.  A label-defying social broth in attendance, to be sure.

Mass Customization: On-Demand, Open & Shared
The advent of the laser printer presaged the rise of desktop publishing.  Blogging turned the web into a printing press for the masses.

The iPhone is mobilizing media, communications and information sharing, while facilitating all sorts of rich application spaces to emerge (50K apps, plus 1B downloads and counting).

Everything is getting Digitized and Cloud-ifed.  There is an implicit Library of the Commons between YouTube videos, Flickr pics, Twitter tweets, social bookmarks, Wikipedia entries, Amazon product pages and the Google-sphere. 

The trend towards open APIs for customizing and composite-ing the data flow in and out of Facebook, Twitter and Google, among others, suggests a river of third-party apps, web sites and web services washing away the legacy ways of communicating, connecting and buying, leaving in their place a social fabric that is organic, networked and fundamentally, shared.

Dovetailing this trend, all sorts of new-fangled design, fabrication, assembly and output solutions are getting cheap, precise and easy to use. 

At its most basic, folks like CaféPress and Zazzle are making DIY custom t-shirt/poster/mug creation easy.

Similarly, at Maker I heard story after story of how the value chain had moved to a place where robotics makers could build a high degree of sophistication without having to re-invent the wheel (as there was/is a robust ecosystem of third-party robotics sub-system makers they could leverage), which is emblematic of what has already played out in the technology industry, suggesting that there is something metastasizing that crosses social, societal, professional and logistical lines.

Consider Amazon, which has overrun many a brick and mortar industry segment by building and executing a better mousetrap; namely, an end to end logistics footprint that includes vast product listing data stores; a phenomenal customer relationship management (CRM) system; intuitive, rich product discovery tools (powered by the wisdom of the crowds, no less); and the ability to interstitial-ize "Ships from" and "Sold by" between Amazon.com operating buckets and third-party operators that plug into the Amazon ecosystem.

Not one to rest on its laurels, Kindle, Mechanical Turk and Elastic Compute are all reflective of Amazon’s ambition to lever logistics, digital generation systems and a loosely-coupled marketplace model to foment a new kind of entrepreneurial engine for the Mobile Broadband Era.

The moral of the story is clear; once-exclusive domains and fortress-like silos are becoming open, and the barriers between disciplines are falling.

Bringing this trend to my backyard, at my local Farmer's Market, food entrepreneurs of every stripe can formulate and launch new health drink concoctions and fine-tine them with taste trials from one weekend to the next; they can go direct-to-consumer on a tikka masala "heat and eat" line with a nominal capital outlay; and/or cultivate brand advocacy by doing "meet in the street" activities to promote a popular gourmet sausage line.

When Gravity Becomes Your Friend
There is an S-curve in nascent markets, a time when gravity shifts from being your enemy to being your friend.

We are on the cusp, a fortnight from it being easy to source and assemble new and custom products on-demand, leveraging open know-how and a free market of services that combine inter-disciplinary substrates across once-impenetrable mechanical, electrical, chemical, math, communications, computer, media and manufacturing boundaries.

The tyranny of the "All or None" is ending, and the dawn of the Meta-Maker is upon us. The Golden Age awaits.

Related Posts:

1. Overview of my Maker Faire Presentation: The Universal Remote Control Platform
2. Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon
3. Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard
4. Googling Innovation:  On strategies to Seed, Select, and Amplify new ideas
5. Kinkos, Ritz and CaféPress: We’re in the Output Business

Making Plays and Dagger Blows: Lakers Win 15th NBA title

Boston crushed the Lakers last year.  It was over the moment the Lakers blew a 20+ point lead that would have tied the series 2-2, with the Lakers having the next game at home. 

In that game, whether it was ignorant mercy or lack of a killer instinct, the Lakers took their foot of the Celts throat, and the Celtics made them pay dearly.

The collapse was complete when James Posey of the Celtics nailed a couple of dagger threes.  The Lakers never regained their footing, and the 39-point wipeout in Game 6 of the series was the cherry on top of the “Lakers Are Soft” sundae.

Those are the sad and painful facts from last year; so you can really appreciate just how frickin terrific it was to turn the tables on the Orlando Magic in a decisive Game 4 on Thursday. 

When Derek Fisher, whom EVERYONE except Phil Jackson (and the rest of his teammates) had performed last rites on, hit first the dagger three in the fourth quarter to send it to overtime, and then the second dagger three in overtime to rip the Magic’s hearts out for good, it was probably the greatest sports moment that I have experienced.

Great moment of triumph in the “pivot game” of the series – it’s either 2-2 or 3-1, depending on outcome – and in close series like this one, we all know that it comes down to these types of victory-seizing moments (sidebar: that was a classic Derek smile after the OT three).

In the end, that game and the series came down to making plays, pure and simple.  When the game was on the line, the Lakers made them and the Magic didn’t.  End of story.

Having been on the other side of the table at the end of last season, the Lakers were ready when the moment came, proving what we all know; experience matters.

The climb back to their personal Everest is now complete for the Lakers (and their fans), something not lost on this unit.

 “Kobe and I talked about how unreal the journey has been, going from being on top, to being on the bottom, and now rising back to the top,” said Derek Fisher of his long time Laker compadre, and of the journey now complete.

When I predicted that the Lakers would win the series in six games (mea culpa, they were even better than I gave them credit for) it was driven by what I had seen from the team all year. 

Simply put, the team showed a unity of purpose from the start, which they then codified across a breakout season.

When they executed on both sides of the ball, something they did often this year, they were practically unbeatable, and simply beautiful to watch.

And unlike last year’s free pass through the Western Division playoffs, this year they were baptized by the fire of really good series with the Houston Rockets (defense, smarts, hunger) and the Denver Nuggets (muscle, heart, attack) that prepared them to slay the Magic dragon.

I hearken back to a comment by Denver Nuggets coach George Karl in the post-game of the then just completed Nuggets-Lakers series, where he proffered that at the start of the series and through the first few games, he “saw the cracks in the Lakers,” but by the end, the Lakers had sealed up those cracks and become a better team.

Now if this wasn’t enough, there was an X-factor in every series that I call the Anaconda Squeeze. This is a period of the game when the Lakers seize control, usually with a debilitating run that breaks the will of the competition. 

Last night it was a 16-0 run in the second quarter that ripped away any sense of tomorrow for the Magic. 

Any way you slice it, winning 2 of 3 on the road is an impressive way to close it out, and the mark of a champion, a concept that would have been laughable at the beginning of last season when Kobe, disappointed in the quality of talent around him, literally had one foot out the door.

In reflecting about how the quality of Bryant’s teammates had improved in the past two years, Kobe beamed, "I had a bunch of Christmas presents that came early.  Got a new point guard (Fisher), got a new wing (Ariza), got a Spaniard (Gasol), and then it was all good."

As to the other standouts on the Lakers, all that I can say about Lamar is that to watch him is to appreciate sheer poetry and whimsy in one package. When he was on, which was plenty this series, the Lakers don’t lose.  It’s another dimension of scariness.

In tandem, Ariza was an absolute backbreaker.  He spread the floor, hit big shots and was a disruptor on defense. A true killer.

In many respects, I am most happy for Pau Gasol.  He was FAIRLY maligned last year, and to his credit, he not only answered his critics then like a man, but he elevated his game to a whole other level this year.  Beyond the offensive efficiency, the high basketball IQ and crisp passing, it was the defensive intensity that was most impressive. Consider that in game 5, Dwight Howard faced up Pau 38 times in single coverage and did not score from the field on any of them.

Kobe went into every game this year knowing that he could count of Gasol to deliver precious scoring, rebounding, passing and solid defense, which paid huge dividends in Kobe trusting his mates to make plays.

With my other sports teams (St. Louis Rams and Los Angeles Dodgers), I can be admittedly fair weathered.  With the Lakers, however, it is true dedication and love, dating back to a pre-Magic Kareem Abdul-Jabbar team back when Jerry West was still COACHING.

As I have written in other posts, I consider sports to be a great metaphor for life, and specifically look to NBA Basketball as an operatic style of performance.

But here is where that comparison falls short. There is nothing staged about what has culminated with the Lakers emerging as the 2009 NBA Champions.  Grit, experience, desire, talent and execution equaled championship results this year. The best team won.

Stan Van Gundy put it best when he noted in response to a question about Phil Jackson’s dependence on having great stars in his prolific 10 championship titles that he couldn’t think of one team that had won it all even once without having great stars.

When asked about what Jackson means to him, Derek said simply, “Phil allows us to be ourselves and realize our potential. I love that man.”

The coach and his quarterback (Bryant) celebrate the game, playing with discipline and a respect (for the game), trusting in themselves and each other.

In the end, they found their game, and locked in on the prize.

What’s left?  One question.  Phil, what's with the hat?

Whatever.  Today we celebrate.

UPDATE1: GREAT Forum Blue and Gold post, 'Deconstructing Kobe' on why Bill Simmons/ESPN Page 2 (one of my favorite writers) comes across as a sore loser in refusing to acknowledge Kobe's growth as a player, and the impact on that growth on the bottom line, the Lakers winning it all.

Related Posts:

1. The Anaconda Squeeze: Why the Lakers Will Beat the Magic
2. Lakers-Celts and the Sporting Metaphor
3. NBA Basketball as Opera
4. Sweet and Sour Endings: Boston Crushes the Lakers

Analysis: Apple WWDC Keynote – Punishing the Wizard, Part Two

Some time back, I wrote a post where I asserted that Apple (and Steve Jobs) has done such a good job of teaching us to expect magic that when they merely execute, we hammer them because…well it isn't magic.

I called this knee-jerk response, "Punishing the Wizard" since, where I come from, discipline, execution and proof of same are to be celebrated (what's not to like about -- Step One: make great products; Step Two: wow your customer/developer base; Step Three: print money; Step Four: repeat Step One?), but that's not how we think when it comes to Apple.

Thus, it is with little surprise that I find myself dubbing today's keynote, "Punishing the Wizard, Part Two." 

Consider the general tenor of blogosphere analysis on today's event, which ranged from "F-ck AT&T" (well-deserved, IMHO) to "Yawn" to "Uh, oh, where was Jobs?" 

Now to be fair, part of this is simply our culture of "buying on the rumor" and "selling on the news," which is to say that today’s announcements (essentially, Snow Leopard, new MacBook Pros, iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone 3GS, $99 iPhone 3G) had largely been discussed, disseminated and re-assembled into a series of plausible best guesses well in advance of the event, so the shock and awe was less than it might otherwise have been.

Hence, some of this disappointment is akin to reading a "spoiler" in a movie review immediately before watching the film; gums up the element of surprise.

But, there are several nuggets from today’s keynote that underscore strategic narratives worth pondering in the days, weeks and months ahead:

1. Apple is Playing Block the Kick with Focused Intensity: iPhone is the unquestioned leading device platform and ecosystem in terms of delivering a best of breed Mobile Broadband experience, albeit with Palm Pre and Google Android offering their own bits of goodness and differentiation.  By preemptively: A) Upgrading iPhone OS 3.0 and SDK (see my analysis HERE); B) Replacing iPhone 3G as the flagship with iPhone 3GS (faster CPU, adds video support, better camera); C) Dropping the price of iPhone 3G to $99 to capture the low-end of the market; and D) Adding the ability to purchase movies, TV shows directly from iPhone to better leverage its iTunes Media portfolio (versus requiring download & sync from Mac/PC, as is the case currently); Apple is doing everything humanly possible to remain on offense, and prevent the competition from finding its footing; namely, a market wedge/niche that can serve as the beachhead to slow down Apple's momentum. Plus, the $99 entry point on 3G appears to be the lower margin product that Apple had alluded to months back in discussions about not leaving a pricing gap for the competition to outflank them.
2. Pushing OS X Snow Leopard as a $29 Upgrade is Recognition that its 'Halo Effect' Opportunity Window (may be) Closing: Vista has been a debacle for Microsoft, and it has opened a door for Apple to grow OS X powered systems from 25M users in 2007 to 75M this year (inclusive of iPhone/iPod touch devices). But, Windows 7 is getting closer to release (October 2009), and in the interim, Microsoft is intelligently bifurcating their strategy and messaging between being the enterprise standard (we support everything, we're legacy, legacy never goes away, there is no "serious" enterprise alternative) and the consumer standard (we're cheaper than Apple, ubiquitous and "good enough") as a way to stop the bleeding. My guess is that Apple sees their ability to meaningfully differentiate on the desktop as a window that is closing, and as such, need to make Snow Leopard ubiquitous, presumably both to drive converts (esp. as the economy improves) and as part of a push to go after securing new Mac developers before Windows 7 ships (iPhone developers not currently developing for the Mac represent the low-hanging fruit).
3. AT&T and Apple – This Can’t End Well: While there is no question that the exclusivity deal with AT&T provided the launch pad for Apple to create the afore-mentioned wizardry with iPhone, and of course, the rich subsidy is heroin for consumers and Apple alike, there is also no question that the relationship can't end well (or is highly unlikely to). Why? One, today's announcement spotlighted the liability side of the AT&T relationship; namely, a great phone on a crappy network with an iffy track record of customer care, not to mention, a carrier and supplier who are at strategic cross-purposes. Case in point, the audience booed the moment they realized that a touted tethering feature, which allows you to seamlessly use your iPhone as a broadband modem for your Mac/PC, won't be supported by AT&T; and another feature, MMS support, will ship later than with other carriers. Two is the simple fact that the way people buy mobile devices is through their carrier, and as long as Apple is selling exclusively through AT&T, that means that the Verizons, Sprints and T-Mobiles of the world have to sell something other than iPhone, which is the number one way Android and Pre will find its initial market. As was the story with the PC, at some point, mobile becomes a units game, so Apple must counter this one as soon as humanly possible, lest the volumes accrue to the carrier independent device makers.
4. The (Hardware) Matrix is Coming: What is The Matrix? Envision a world where the Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch, iPod HD Tablet (rumored) and iPhone Nano (rumored), respectively, can leverage a common SDK, plug into the App Store and integrate with Mobile Me (in addition to iTunes), and you understand that this implies all sorts of hardware abstraction decisions. No less, this implies Apple partitioning the platform that supports these form-factors between device-specific functions, open PC-like layers (i.e., download apps from anywhere), and managed/closed runtime layers (App Store is THE marketplace with a singular SDK, APIs, etc.). This is The Matrix, a potential hornet's nest of technical, user experience and ecosystem decisions. Connecting the dots, I believe that Snow Leopard is the conduit OS where these things converge, but that's a total guess, based on the assumption that derivative form-factors are a given; that App Store and iPhone SDK are the best practices approach with the biggest developer ecosystem; and that Apple's best way to win in the Mobile Broadband Era is by making their products work together in a unified, but more than the sum of the parts, fashion. This would be another reason to push Snow Leopard NOW at $29; namely, so that when The Matrix emerges, and there's a requirement that all interconnecting devices run Snow Leopard to work together seamlessly, it's less disruptive of a proposition than it might otherwise be. And more to the point, it offers developers the largest potential installed base to develop for (i.e., the 40M iPhone/iPod touch owners PLUS the ~35M OS X powered Mac owners).

Looked at from this perspective, today's keynote may come to be known (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) as the keynote that was The Calm Before the Storm.  Stay tuned.

Related Posts:

1. Punishing the Wizard: On Apple and Jobs
2. ANALYSIS - iPhone 3.0 Developer Preview: Block the Kick Strategy
3. PC 1.0, iPhone 3.0 and the Woz: Everything Old is New Again
4. Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon
5. iPhones, App Stores, Ecosystems: On Recipes for Successful Developer Platforms
6. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: How and why gravity has become Apple's friend

3D Glasses: Virtual Reality, Meet the iPhone (Guest Post @ O'Reilly Radar)

A light flickers from two distinct points in time. As a child in the early-1970s, one of my toys was a View-Master, a binoculars-like device for viewing 3D images (called stereograms), essentially a mini-program excerpted from popular destinations, TV shows, cartoons, events and the like.

Flash forward to the present, and we are suddenly on the cusp of a game-changing event; one that I believe kicks the door open for 3D and VR apps to become mainstream.

I am talking about the release of iPhone OS version 3.0.

Read the rest of the post HERE (at O'Reilly Radar).

Related Posts:

1. PC 1.0, iPhone 3.0 and the Woz: Everything Old is New Again
   
2. ANALYSIS - iPhone 3.0 Developer Preview: Block the Kick Strategy

Closing The Book on Embedded: Intel Buys Wind River

This one strikes a personal chord.  Back in fall of 2000, my partners and I sold Rapid Logic, a device management platform and tools company that we had built from first heartbeat to a $10M business, 150+ customers and 225+ design wins (I was co-founder/CEO throughout) to Wind River for $67M.  Today, the news dropped that Intel is buying Wind River for $884 million dollars.

While some will spin it as Intel getting serious about software, or moving up the solutions stack, my guess is that the net out is a 1+1= <2 outcome (something that Intel factored into the price that they paid for the company). 

If anything, Wind River's inability to breakout, despite a once Microsoft-like position of dominance, is a by-product of their failure to meaningfully go "up the stack" and away from their historical focus on the silicon layer as a primary differentiation point. 

In other words, if Wind River had enabled the next generation of Cisco and Apple killers by providing more differentiated OEM-in-a-Box offerings, ala what Google is now trying to do with Android, they would not be staring at a $900M market cap and relatively flat revenues, margins and stock price.

In fairness to them, it's not like anyone else stands out as knocking the ball out of the park in the embedded domain, so this is perhaps just the last chapter (for now) in a book that began when Wind River and Integrated Systems merged back in 1999 (read: commoditization/consolidation).

The counter to that, though, is that the failure of the embedded gorilla (i.e., WIND) to innovate its way to greater heights made them susceptible/blind to disruptive threats like Linux, mainly because they never grokked the essential point that a loosely coupled combination of OS, silicon abstraction and protocol soup were no longer enough to build a multi-billion dollar company.

In other words, when a market's 800-pound gorilla shows as little vision as Wind River has, doesn't really try to set any meaningful standards that others can build upon in some sort of synchronized fashion, but yet manages to stomp out nascent companies, that has to feed back into the market as well.

Specific to Intel and their aims via this deal, let’s be clear; there is very little software systems DNA within Intel, despite the fact that there are many thousands of software engineers within the company.  A paradox, I know, but hard truth based on 13+ years of working with them.

Hence, barring a pretty serious religious conversion, software will always be the conduit to sell more silicon, which gates the likelihood of truly innovative solutions coming out of the combined entity.

Here’s some data on Wind River’s performance since the acquisition of Rapid Logic became “liquid,” with a chart on their performance relative to NASDAQ (courtesy of Kedron Wolcott, one of Rapid Logic’s co-founders with James Blaisdell, Lee Cheng and myself).

Wind River Stock Price since (12/8/2000)
Number of days above $40: 4
Number of days above $30: 47
Number of days above $20: 130
Number of days above $10: 1190
Number of days below $10: 932
Number of days below $5:  212

Wind River Stock Performance (relative to NASDAQ)

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The Anaconda Squeeze: Why the Lakers Will Beat the Magic

The other night, in Game Six, in impressive fashion and on the road, the Lakers closed out a very difficult Denver Nuggets team (the Nuggets are for real; a really exciting team). 

The Lakers played an absolutely brilliant and magical game.  The stat that says it all is that the Lakers team made all 24 of their free throws. 

That speaks volumes about the kind of focus and intensity that they brought to executing on both sides of ball.  No player missed even one free throw all night.

In the post-game, reflecting back on the series, Denver Nuggets coach George Karl proffered that at the start of the series and through the first few games, he “saw the cracks in the Lakers,” but by the end, the Lakers had sealed up those cracks and become a better team.

Next up is the the Orlando Magic for the NBA Championship.  Orlando has a great team, a monster defender in Dwight Howard, exceptional three point shooting and has beaten the Lakers both times they faced them. 

Nonetheless, I am expecting that the Lakers will raise another championship banner and beat the Magic.

Why?  The team has a unity of purpose; namely, putting the sourness of a Series defeat to the Boston Celtics last year; a series that included a monumental collapse in Game 4 and a 39 point beat-down in Game 6.

For Phil Jackson, winning also means earning his 10th title, and putting Red Auerbach in the rear-view mirror once and for all (and as a Laker diehard, I am a fan of anything that puts the Celtics in the rear-view mirror).

For Kobe, it means putting Shaq in the rear-view mirror by winning a championship without him. 

SIDEBAR: Give Kobe his props, as he has played brilliantly, and now is unquestionably the quarterback of the team, which has added a sweet dimension to his game, and made the Lakers a much better team, almost “scary good” at times. 

The bottom line is that whereas last year's Lakers were paper tigers, through repetition and good old-fashioned execution, this year's team is spun-steel, tiger meat, having gotten it done for a full season plus three playoff series.

In other words, they are at a special place, simultaneously battle-tested and battle-ready to win the Big Prize.

Case in point, last year they lacked mental toughness, and/or the ability to re-factor and rebound from serious body blows. 

As a result, despite an incredibly enjoyable run to the title series (after they acquired Pau Gasol), they fell out of their game and got pummeled when confronted by a more physical, hungrier Celtics team.

Last year, they had a pretty smooth path to the Finals.  This year, they had to face down some serious adversity to get where they are. 

I hearken back to when Andrew Bynum went down for the second year in a row (both times playing against the Memphis Grizzlies) at the start of a major road swing. 

How the do the Lakers respond?  Well, in the next game Kobe scores 61 against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, which set the tone. 

The trip culminated with the Lakers beating the Celtics and Cavaliers on consecutive nights to go undefeated for the road trip.

Moreover, this year, the Lakers were money when it came to winning games that were super close, coming down to who executed in the final 2-4 minutes.

That this is so speaks to a team-level commitment to lock-down defense at key points of the game, something that they absolutely lacked last year.

This year, they have what I affectionately call the Anaconda Squeeze, a point in the game, typically between the third and fourth quarters, when they absolutely squeeze the life out of the competition. 

They do this by running off a debilitating run that breaks the spirit of the competition and puts the Lakers in a very hard to beat state (typical run: 21-7). 

I have seen many a game completely turn this year where the Lakers basically overwhelm the competition, and the competition collapses from the pressure. 

The Anaconda Squeeze is what the Lakers did to Denver multiple times in Game 6 (and when they took over and won Game 5).  They learned something from the No Mercy sentiment that Boston cast their way in relentlessly stepping on the throats of the Lakers them in Game 6 of the Finals last year.

But here’s the irony.  While getting through Houston and Denver were really hard, sometimes painfully so, karmically-speaking, it served a greater purpose.

As a result, all is well now in Laker-land, a sentiment best articulated in a wonderful write-up at Forum Blue and Gold:

The road to the finals favors the Lakers. Apollo Creed identified hand and foot quickness as Rocky’s weakness. So he had him chasing chickens. You have a problem guarding quick point guards and perimeter shooters; practice against Houston for 7 games. Tough athletic post players have pushed you around in the past? Practice against Denver for 6 games. Ali prepared for Foreman by sparring against Ernie Shavers, not a lightweight.

In contrast, none of the teams the Magic has played thus far has prepared them for the challenges that the Lakers bring. They had so many physical mismatches against the Cavs that it was like seeing Ali beat up on the light-heavyweight champion, Bob Foster.

But this practice was no preparation against Ken Norton, who broke Ali’s jaw.

Last series against the Nuggets, I thought back to a younger Kobe against Sacramento Kings, a series where Kobe promised to cut the Kings hearts out on the road, and did just that.

Simply put, it's deja vu all over again, and feels like everything old is new (again).

As such, my money’s on the Lakers. 

All season long, when confronted with a supreme challenge, they have risen to the occasion.

I expect them to do the same once again, and to take home the trophy.

Related Posts:

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5. Sweet and Sour Endings: Boston Crushes the Lakers