Says it all, really. Front page of yesterday’s Guardian.
Jobs’s blind spot?
Brent Schendler wrote a snooty piece in Fortune About Apple TV, which he doesn’t think much of. He explains further in his blog…
He wrote the column, he says,
to point out that even Apple can bungle a product from time to time. Another thing I probably should have said in the column was that in a broader sense, flubbing is actually a good thing, because it shows that Apple is genuinely trying to raise the state of the art of consumer electronics. As the old Silicon Valley saying goes: “If you don’t launch a dud now and then, it means you aren’t trying hard enough.” Finally, I also wanted to show how even Apple can sometimes make the same kinds of mistakes that Microsoft does.
Mainly, however, with the launch of the much ballyhooed iPhone looming in June, I thought it was important to point out how Apple TV demonstrates that Steve Jobs, the ultimate control freak, is not in total control of all the production values of his new consumer electronics products; at least not as much as has been the case in the past with his computers and the first few generations of the iPod and iTunes. That’s not his fault, but instead is because Apple, as it ventures further afield, no longer “builds the whole widget” to the extent that it has in the past. It must rely on capricious movie studios and TV networks and record companies for content of course, and it increasingly will depend on stubborn telecom carriers for cellular and broadband connectivity and for marketing help.
Steve Jobs loves music, and the much celebrated iPod clearly was not the product of someone with a tin ear. “Elegant” really is the appropriate adjective to use to describe it, because every little nuance seemed right. But Apple TV makes you wonder if Jobs paid any attention at all during the birthing process. Or maybe it betrays how his well-known disdain for broadcast television might have left him with a blind spot when it comes to TV-related products. Or perhaps this is just what happens to a company when it develops the makings of a high-tech monopoly that it wants to preserve and extend, in this case the market for digital downloads. Speaking as a long-time Apple fan, I sure hope not.
The Microsoft coffee-table computer (contd)
David Pogue is underwhelmed…
This new “surface computer,” as Microsoft calls it, has a multi-touch screen. You can use two fingers or even more — for example, you can drag two corners of a photograph outward to zoom in on it. Here’s an article in yesterday’s Times about it.
If this is all sounding creepily familiar, it is probably because so far, all of this is exactly what NYU researcher Jeff Han has been demonstrating for a year and a half now. I’ve written about it several times on my Pogue’s Posts blog…
And he callously destroys my illusions about the device. (I loved the way the table sucked images out of a Canon IXUS.)
Microsoft’s version of the multi-touch computer adds one very cool, though impractical, twist: interaction with other electronics.
For example, in Microsoft’s demonstration, you can take some pictures. When you set the camera down on the table top, the fresh photos come pouring out of it into a virtual puddle on the screen — a slick, visual way to indicate that you’ve just downloaded them.
Next, you can set a cellphone down on the table — and copy photos into it just by dragging them into the cellphone’s zone.
Then you can buy songs from a virtual music store and drag them directly into a Zune music player that you’ve placed on the glass.
How cool is all of this? Very. Unfortunately, at this point, it’s the Microsoft version of a concept car; you can ogle it, but you can’t have it. These stunts require concept cameras, concept cellphones and concept music players that have been rigged to interact with the surface computer.
Wonder if that’s accurate. I’m sure there are compact digital cameras that are wi-fi enabled.
Hmmm… Just checking…
Yep. Nikon do one. And Canon do a Digital IXUS Wireless model. So the demonstration could have been done with a bog-standard IXUS.
Hah! I was right — see this admiring video from Popular Mechanics:
Jobs and Gates: the secret marriage
Hilarious joint interview from D:5 conference. It’s a clumsily edited compilation, though. Jobs seems much more adept than Gates at this kind of thing. The whole interview is split into seven segments. Worth wading through the whole sequence if you have the time. Or you can read the transcript.
Microsoft’s new coffee table
Nice video from the D:5 conference. The bit I really like is the way it interacts with the Canon IXUS.
Catalogue of Geoffrey Vickers’s papers is online
Hooray! The OU Library has published its catalogue of the Geoffrey Vickers papers.
Sir (Charles) Geoffrey Vickers (1894-1982) had a varied life as a lawyer, a soldier, an economic intelligence officer and legal advisor. In the later years of his life he became a prolific writer and speaker on the subject of social systems analysis and the complex patterns of social organisation. The collection includes materials created in this latter stage of his life.
The Geoffrey Vickers Collection at the Open University largely consists of draft material and correspondence relating to his published works, articles and speeches.
I knew him only towards the end of his long life. He was one of the wisest men I’ve ever met. And I guess he was the only winner of the Victoria Cross to write insightfully about complex systems and organisations.
(Image submitted to Wikipedia by Martin Hornby.)
The Wikipedia entry describes how Vickers won his VC:
On 14 October 1915 at the Hohenzollern Redoubt, France, when nearly all his men had been either killed or wounded and there were only two men available to hand him bombs, Captain Vickers held a barrier across a trench for some hours against heavy German bomb attacks (the ‘bombs’ of the citation were early grenades). Regardless of the fact that his own retreat would be cut off, he ordered a second barrier to be built behind him in order to secure the safety of the trench. Finally he was severely wounded, but not before his courage and determination had enabled the second barrier to be completed.
Not exactly your typical academic, then. He was also an astonishingly successful City lawyer, specialising in mergers and acquisitions at Slaughter and May. When Clement Atlee, the great post-war Labour Prime Minister, wanted to nationalise the coal industry, he brought in Vickers to handle the legal side of the process.
One of his sayings has remained with me ever since I first encountered it. “The hardest thing in life”, he said once, “is knowing what to want”. He was right: it is.
Buzzword
More info here.
Microsoft forsakes desktop for tabletop
From the Daily Telegraph
Microsoft has unveiled a coffee table-shaped ‘surface computer’ that responds to touch and is expected to generate a multi-billion dollar market.
Surface is a 30-inch computer display that is embedded on the table surface. It does not need a mouse to operate it, and unlike traditional touch-screens, can recognise more than one finger at a time, allowing small groups to gather around the table and use it at the same time. It also recognises objects that are placed on its surface.
For example, if you are out at a restaurant with friends and you each place your drink on the table, a range of information will appear by your glass, such as menu recommendations to go with your wine, and pictures of the vineyard it came from. You can order your next course with the touch of your finger and even split the bill.
Wonder what’d happen if you spilt Java Beans on it? Also, what do you do when your table crashes?
Picture post
Hallelujah! My son Brian has finally started a Blog! Nice title too.
Yuck
Every year, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal hosts a lucrative talkfest in San Diego. Here’s the official description of the venue.
D: All Things Digital is once again being held at the Four Seasons Resort Aviara, just 30 minutes north of San Diego. All sessions and activities are taking place at the Four Seasons, and D5 has a complete buy-out of the property for maximum use of the resort’s facilities and grounds.
Southern California’s finest resort experience, the Four Seasons offers casual elegance in a breathtaking location that is accented by wildlife and wildflowers. Guests of the resort enjoy the elegance and legendary service of the Four Seasons in an unequalled setting, featuring spacious guest rooms, an Arnold Palmer signature golf course, six floodlit tennis courts, a luxurious spa and expansive fitness center, Family Pool and Quiet Pool areas with deck side whirlpools and the area’s top dining choices…
Er, pass the sickbag, Alice.
GMSV has a nice passing swipe at the pretentiousness of it all.
It may not be the cage match of your fantasies, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will take the stage together tomorrow at the D: All Things Digital conference, despite scientists’ worries that the density of their combined egos could open a rift in the space-time continuum.
There’s something uniquely nauseating about the top end of the US technology industry.
Later… Which reminds me, Ken Auletta wrote a typically uncritical, admiring profile of Mossberg in the New Yorker. When journalists become the story, the game’s over.