amudu

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Why Apple is Doomed

The Motorola Xoom has more memory than the iPad 2. It has a larger and higher-resolution display. And it runs flash. Venerable tech blog Engadget reportedthat "it outclasses the iPad in many ways."

Before launch, Motorola unleashed a heavy media campaign, making obvious their intent to attack the market leader. In a $5 million spot during last year's Super Bowl, Motorola mimicked Apple's famous "1984" commercial by depicting a lone Xoom-toting yuppie surrounded by white-robed Apple acolytes.

In a way, the ad was right: Nobody uses a Xoom.

Motorola's optimistic estimate put sales around 200,000 units in two months. Apple's iPad 2, meanwhile, sold a million in its first weekend.

It was a remarkably easy outcome to predict. The Xoom was typical of Apple's competition: feature-packed but unpolished. Noted gadget pundit Jon Geller wrote that "It's almost as if Google decided to try and pack as much in as possible to advance the tablet category forward... I'm not sure it has succeeded." The iPad didn't have quite the feature set, but it didn't matter. As usual, Apple won through design.

While they do make superior hardware, their secret sauce is interface design. Apple consistently develops interfaces so intuitive that instructions would seem silly. Even toddlers can navigate the iPhone effectively. Their products simply make sense, in a way their competitors seem unable to match. Because of this unique advantage, Apple has achieved their greatest success creating mobile devices, where the interface is psychologicallycloser to the user.

Since releasing the iPod, Apple has dispatched challengers with Jedi-like ease, brushing aside giants and upstarts alike to become the most valuable tech company in the world. In the meantime, they've built a giant fanbase whose love for the company borders on the religious. The Apple advantage is good taste, and the originator of that taste is CEO Steve Jobs.

"Apple is the most design-savvy company in the world, and it's because of Steve," says Ray Riley, a former Apple designer. Jobs is a brilliant marketer and the company's visionary. But his most important role is as tastemaker.

Longtime Apple engineer Mike Evangelist was once tasked with heading the design of a DVD burning program for the Mac. His team developed dozens of sophisticated mock-ups and gathered to present them to Jobs. "He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard," remembers Evangelist, "He draws a rectangle. 'Here's the new application,' he says. 'It's got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says BURN. That's it. That's what were going to make.'"

According to Inside Apple, Jobs holds court every Monday, reviewing each product under development at the time. The company's image is also under his constant scrutiny: he once demanded that a slab of Italian marble for Apple's SoHo store be shipped to him first for inspection. He is Apple's filter, personally ensuring that his stringent design standards are met across the board.

But Jobs is suffering from pancreatic cancer and is currently on his third leave of absence since 2004. Ever secretive, he keeps his condition tightly guarded. But he admitted in 2009 that "my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought."

While Apple has fared well during his leaves, they are not a proper indicator of what the company would be like without him. While off-campus, he continues to exert a huge influence (he remained CEO during his most recent absence), and his legacy is fresh.

His management, even his vision, is replaceable. But that brilliant sense of taste, to which Apple owes their success, will not be matched by the next regime. His death would leave Apple closer to the pack than ever.

When that edge is gone, Apple will no longer be able to operate as they have become accustomed. Without vastly superior products, their arrogant marketing will fall on deaf ears. Consumers will consider alternatives more readily. Their prickly policies towards developers will take a toll.

The company is keenly aware of this weakness, and preparations are well underway. They have even commissioned an all-star team of business professors to write a series of case studies chronicling critical decisions in the life of Apple, hoping to groom young executives who can seamlessly step in were the worst to happen. But in Jobs, they posses the most valuable creative mind in the world. Apple is not just the latest great tech company, it is historically great, and to maintain that level without the irreplaceable taste of Steve Jobs will be impossible.

Ty Fujimura

Creative Director at Designer Pages, Design Entrepreneur

Startup Hopes to Make Sickness Social

WEB

Startup Hopes to Make Sickness Social

Social networking data could give clues to outbreaks of disease.

If a close friend has a cold, chances are you might catch it. A startup called Sickweather hopes to tap into the social side of sickness with a social networking service that tracks illnesses within a user's circle of friends, and to forecast outbreaks.

The startup mines publicly available data from social networks such as and , as well as from its users, to provide information on illness trends. Sickweather recently launched an early version of its site for closed beta testing, and plans to open to a broader audience in July.

While some people complain about the vast quantities of often mundane data uploaded to social networks every day, companies are increasingly interested in mining that information for commercial ends. Bluefin Labs, for example, uses social network data to determineusers' reactions to television shows and advertisements. Specialized social networks are also springing up to collect more precise data.

PatientsLikeMe, for example, is a social networking site on which patients can share information and experiences related to their condition.

Sickweather's founders hope the data they collect can help users avoid catching their friends' bugs. Users would be able to log in to the site and view a map showing illnesses in their area. They would also see updates from friend connections mentioning current illnesses. The company plans to release mobile apps for the site as well, so that users can view this information while on the go.

, the company's CEO, says he thinks Sickweather will be particularly useful to young families that want to be alerted to illnesses going around their social circle. "They can decide, 'Maybe I won't take my kids to that birthday party,' " Dodge says. Users might also be able to use the information to decide whether their symptoms match up to current common illnesses and merit more attention, or to prepare a health regimen before taking a trip.

Like any social network, much of the value of Sickweather will depend on getting enough people to sign up, but the founders hope to provide a useful service based on publicly available data on social networks as well.

Sickweather uses to find information about sicknesses tied to a particular location. Michael Belt, Sickweather's chief technology officer, says the company searches for keywords related to sickness. To tune the algorithm, the system uses a database of words that exclude certain posts. For example, the system would want to record a post that says, "I'm feeling so sick—my nose is running." But it would exclude a post that says, "There were some sick beats last night at the club."

Sickweather hopes to eventually use posts that simply mention the symptoms of an illness. But the initial version of the site is focused on words such as "," "," and "." "It was eye-opening to see how much data we got just from specific technical terms," says Dodge.

Dodge says the company is exploring advertising partnerships to gain revenue for the site.

Others are exploring mining social networks for , and their experiences show how difficult it can be. For example, HealthMap, cofounded by Clark Freifeld and John Brownstein, brings together data from a variety of sources to show outbreaks as they happen around the world. HealthMap began by crawling news reports and blogs, but also has a partnership with Google to mine data from search terms. The company offers apps for smart phones, Twitter, and Facebook, through which users can report outbreaks.

For HealthMap's purposes, Brownstein says, Twitter is a difficult source to mine. "You need a sizeable [health] event to get enough data," he says. For example, flu outbreaks are usually large enough to get sufficient posts from social networks, but gastric illnesses are too isolated, he says.

Gunther Eysenbach, a senior scientist in the division of clinical decision-making and health care at the Toronto General Research Institute, has extensively studied tracking diseases through the Internet. He says that data from social networks is full of false positives. For example, people may post about articles they've read about a disease, and it's hard to filter that out, he says.

Eysenbach also worries about the privacy implications. He says mining social connections could have a chilling effect on people's willingness to post about illness, since it could create uncomfortable social situations, such as when no one shows up to that kid's birthday party. Such an outcome, Eysenbach says, would be a shame, because such data has public-health value.

iPhone 5 Seemingly Ruled Out for June Launch

By Jared Newman

Apple just pre-announced the iCloud for next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, but what the company didn't say -- specifically, that it'll bring the iPhone 5 or other new hardware to the event -- is just as important.

It's unusual for Apple to tease news ahead of time, so I can only imagine that this press release was intended to temper expectations. The headline of Apple's announcement says it all: "Apple to Unveil Next Generation Software at Keynote Address on Monday, June 6." In other words, don't get your hopes up for hardware.

For the last three years, Apple has used WWDC to announce new iPhones, but this year Apple seems likely to break tradition and hold off on its next smartphone until September at the earliest. That's what the rumors have been saying, at least.

And at this point, a September iPhone launch makes sense. It's closer to the holidays, when rival phone makers will be launching their own new Android phones and Windows Phones. It would also give Apple something else to talk about besides iPods and Apple TV, neither of which are as buzzworthy as the iPhone.

The next iPhone may not be a major revision anyway. We've seen the term "iPhone 4S" thrown around, as if to suggest spec boosts and minor cosmetic changes rather than a design overhaul and bold new features. At WWDC, expect Apple to argue that software is far more important as the company introduces iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and the iCloud.