This was shown to me by a 'friend':
I'll simply respond by the same comment I posted to his page:
Both were ruthless businessmen who have changed the world in unimaginable ways. One, more or less, ripped off the other's uses of a technology already at use by a company who didn't know what to do with it. This representation, of course, is a person's rendering of each person's 'morality' and no more than propaganda, but continue on mein führer...
That is all. -B
Interactive, projection displays everywhere. Cool ideas, though I wish the video had been a little more thorough. Seem like I might get a headache with that many screens moving around me all of the time...but I'd sure give it a shot.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo-fRuuwoPI]
Microsoft is a great company and I look forward to their future endeavors as they continue on the legacy they've built thus far. My hear cries for them to get back into the game.
-B
I don't remember the days before Google. Actually, I do. I remember Ask Jeeves (marketing used to the max), Dogpile, Yahoo (do people still use Yahoo?), AOL keywords, and so many other search engines and tools to navigate through the seemingly endless supply of websites online.
My children, though, will never know the days without Google.
We can argue left or right all day long about whether or not Google's impact on society has been positive or negative, but we will all agree that Google is present, in a big way, in all of our lives. We might even say that without Google in our lives, our existences would become a little more inconvenient. Things that we take for granted now would be gone.
We all know this. Perhaps more importantly, Google knows this. And for the better half of the last ten years, Google has been used to getting their way. They've made it their goal to document all of the ongoings of every part of the world, and have been (since day one) relatively unapologetic about their approaches.
Perhaps the best part of Google's plan? Everything is free. Everything Google offers (or seemingly everything) is free of charge to the end user. So with an almost endless supply of funding, a seemingly completely free product(s), and some of the smartest brains in the world on staff, Google has risen to the commercial power that they are today. Because Google sells ads on everything they produce, they make more and more money. Because they offer it for free, they gain more and more users. The only thing it costs the user: their information and privacy. Great deal, huh?
Whatever you think, their business model is very different than the ones of other companies.
A few months after the original iPhone released, Google made some of the work they had been doing on mobile devices known to the public. They had purchased a company writing mobile operating system software (Android Inc.) and decided (with a small alliance) to begin a movement toward popularizing open source software on mobile phones. Mobile phones had been plagued for years by the software that sat on them because the carriers locked down features, removed featured and mostly, crippled the phones. When Apple approached the first iPhone, they swore to take the control of the software themselves. When Android was announced, the pitch made was that NO ONE would have control over the device. It wouldn't cost to develop for it, it wouldn't cost to sell your app, it wouldn't cost to put the operating system on a device, and ANYONE could change whatever they wanted. Google wasn't releasing a phone, they were releasing an open source operating system.
Because for it to make any sense in Google's portfolio, it had to be completely free.
I'll, at this time, forego the argument that by giving up control over the operating system, Google gave control back to the cash-hungry-rotten-steal-all-your-money carriers.
Besides a few hurt feelings and harsh words between the two upcoming industry leaders, life went on as normal. The market, because it was free to put on any device, was flooded with Android handsets and devices and as time went on and the operating system became a little more refined, Google's Android became the number one used mobile operating system on a smart phone.
And sales at Apple remained positive. And companies like HTC and Samsung were able to make a significant mark in sales, when their numbers had previously paled in comparison to RIM's BlackBerry sales. And while it remained competitive, things were going along fine. More people were buying smart phones. A previously untapped market was beginning to be tapped.
Then crap went down.
A series of patents came up for sale from tech giant Nortel. Among the bidders for these patents: Apple, RIM, Google, and Microsoft. Google reportedly bid 3.14159 billion US dollars for these series of patents, while Microsoft and Apple (and others) bid together 4.5 billion US dollars for these patents. The highest bidder wins. And they did.
And that's all great. But Google wasn't happy.
Mostly because if these patents belong to Android's competitors, it will cost royalty money to put Android on a device. Google says somewhere in the range of $15 per unit.
The bottom line: putting Android on a device will no longer be free.
David Drummond (SVP and CLO for Google) posted a blog post called "When Patents Attack" claiming that these companies were ganging up against Google in an effort to stop Android and oppress them. Some highlights:
Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on.
But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.
A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a “tax” for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation.
Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.
I might actually argue that patents were not intended to encourage innovation, as much as to protect innovation. Sure, knowing your innovations are protected is encouragement, but that was not the point of them.
Google is claiming that this group of companies is fighting against them through litigation. But Google forgets to mention that they ran into the other people's business with a free product, determined to overrun the market. Microsoft has to charge for their software...its their business, it is how they make money. To truly compete (with open source software), companies like Microsoft would have to have that revenue from somewhere else. They'd have to develop the ad revenue that Google has. And, at this point, it's impossible. Google is such a large corporation that almost no one can compete with their power. How can Microsoft win hardware manufacturers' hearts because Google has such a large ad revenue that they can afford to make it free?
They can't.
It's as if the I-make-the-rules-because-I-own-the-guns gang leader gets upset because the rival gang leader goes out and buys his own gun. Oh no, who makes the rules now? Who enforces what rule now?
In the business world, you have to play by the rules of the game...whatever that game is, at whatever time it happens to be. If you want a piece of mobile advertising, you partner with a computer giant for their release and then go behind their backs and release a similar mobile operating system for free so that the cost to manufacturers is much lower. If you feel as if you're losing ground to an operating system that is being given out for free and you know that that operating system violates several patents that a now defunct tech company owns, you buy them up to even the playing field.
It's the way that business works. It's the way the world works.
So, play by the rules. Throw the cheap shots. Invade others' turf. Undercut their margins and prices. Talk yourself up and convince people to become addicted to your products.
Do all these things, because it's business, innovation, and the American Dream.
But for God's sake, don't complain about it.
You were the one who spurred it on to begin with.
-B
For the record, I really enjoy both Google and Apple's business models. I think Google's is a bit scarier but I have faith that our government will help keep us protected in a situation where Google would become Big Brother. I'm just, as in the case of Casey Anthony, tired of people (especially company leaders) publicly complaining about how the rules were followed.
Play the game, because the game is all you have.
This is the third installment in the "Everything is a Remix" series by a guy named Kirby. These are VERY well done and if innovation, progress, and the future of creation are of any interest to you, you ought to sit back and watch this for 11 minutes. Make sure you stay until the end, after the credits. [vodpod id=Video.11432879&w=425&h=350&fv=]
It is, without a doubt, an interesting take on the world and the progress within it. It is true that Apple did not outright invent Graphical User Interfaces (most people ought to be aware that it was a visit to the Xerox campus that changed Steve Jobs. He has been quoted as saying, "They showed us three things that day but I didn't see the other two. I was so caught up with the first thing that I missed the rest of the presentation.") Apple did, however, innovate in many ways. As the video points out, they made things easier, they made things make more sense. Those are innovations. They innovated in price, too, which made it more acceptable to the commercial market.
I don't think anyone doubts that one company or person has created things that were simply unheard of before. Some do, however, have better methods of creation and presentation that truly allows something to become...new. Apple has done this in computers since the late 70's. Disney has done this in animation and theme parks since well before that.
This quote from Henry Ford can be found at the end of the video:
I invented nothing new.
I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
-Henry Ford
-B
John Gruber says Kirby "nailed it." I think I agree.
I suppose we ought to get something straight: Microsoft is coming back. (If only we could keep them from taking 8.5 billion dollars and throwing it into the trash)
Today, they talked about their new version of Windows: Windows 8 (code name, not final product name). If you care, and you should, take a look at this video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I&]
It is nice work through and through. Finally, they have a consistent graphic design paradigm, an interesting view of apps and how they function, and a well designed user interface for how a person might navigate all of these things. It appears that you'll be able to run the new touch enabled Windows on a laptop or tablet device and the user interface is much like the new Windows Phone interface on the new phones. Finally, they're doing something different, relatively clever, and they're innovating.
Apple will announce how they intend to take their app and OS concepts on the iPad back to Mac OSX next week. They gave a preview a few months back, but next week we should see more of a final product. As an example, they're incorporating the organization of apps like they do on iOS, on the Mac platform. I haven't used the new Mac OS (Lion) but initial reports on the betas speak highly of it.
What seems strange to me, both in Apple's offering and even in this new Windows offering is the distinction of user interaction. It is my current belief that the mouse and keyboard aren't going anywhere soon. It is also my belief that gesture interactions with an operating system are great on mobile devices, but feel odd with a mouse and a computer. I think Apple thought this too, as they have designed the Magic Trackpad which brings some of their gestures of a MacBook Pro to the iMac and Mac Pro series. But still, it's not great. You can only do so much without touching the screen.
[It is also worth noting that Apple discussed touch-enabled desktop machines (think iMacs with touch screens) and spoke about how they demo well and look cool, but extended use fatigues a user's arm, etc. No one wants to lift their hand to interact with a screen all day long, especially to do things like typing, etc.]
It seems as if Microsoft is going to use the same Windows OS on the tablets as they do on their traditional computers. The user interface will have a lot to do with the phone interface, but seems to be designed to be different. This is remarkably different than Apple's approach: they took the phone software and blew it up to tablet size. Because the Mac still requires a different input method, they're taking the traditional approach for the future of that operating system.
It'll be interesting to see how each pans out.
Whatever the case, Microsoft is back, and it is so good to see.
Now, to get rid of Ballmer...
UPDATE: When watching the Microsoft people explain it at the All Things D conference today, Walt Mossberg asked a great question. If you watch the video above, you'll see that apps like Microsoft Office (which have kept Microsoft afloat when Windows went downhill) still run in the old Windows 7 interface. You effectively leave one interface to enter the other. Mossberg asked why they didn't redesign the app to work in the new interface. The lady's response: "We don't think people should have to leave what they love just to change to a touch interface"
She's wrong. You do have to. You may not think it is perfect, but touch interfaces use different size buttons, different menu systems and other things. Having the old user interface for this new Windows is a cop out. Apple's system is better. Everything is redesigned and reworked for each screen size AND interaction method.
Perhaps they're coming back, but they need some help.
UPDATE 2: My favorite Apple commentator makes the same argument about how this isn't a great response to the iPad. You can read it here.
-B
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ET6PqZtYd4] The large point that Craig made was not one of the technology behind it (though it was pretty cool) but was more centered around the idea of why a device like this is needed.
When the original Macintosh was released, the breakthrough in the consumer market was one of the GUI, or graphical user interface. It was now possible to use a system of icons to convey a message, and made computers usable to the general public. You no longer needed to learn code in order to interact with the device. It was, in its truest form, revolutionary.
The point that Craig made was that the trend has moved from the GUI to NUI, or natural user interface. Does this system use graphics still? Of course. However, there is no longer a mouse and a keyboard, you tell the machine what to do by using voice commands and physical hand movements. In a way, it seems more...natural.
This occurred to me last night when Allie and I were out to dinner and observed a mother with several children. One child was in her lap, using her iPad to play a game. One was across the table with her iPhone, supposedly doing the same. The kids seemed, as far as I the creep across the restaurant could tell, to be able to entertain themselves VERY easily by just tapping on what they wanted to do. They saw the icon, they clicked it. If you think about it, it's brilliant. They didn't have to realize that funny shaped thing next to the computer moved a cursor. They didn't have to find that cursor on the screen, move it around and then search a menu for what they wanted. They found the icon, tapped on it, and were off. Its like taking the graphical interface to the next level. It's what Steve refers to as "magical" about the iPad.
This is the difference that Android and the iPhone have made in the mobile market. No longer did you have to scroll through menus with directional keys or navigate through menus with a ton of buttons or scroll wheels. Oh wait, I guess Android still requires that. No longer did you have to worry about having a stylus with you wherever you go (or losing it).
Sure, the Microsoft Kinect is more advanced in many ways than the interactions with the iPad, but it is the same concept. Perhaps computers don't have to be so complicated. It should be relatively easy to do whatever you need to do, as quickly as possible.
It's not perfect yet. Apple hasn't quite seemed to figure out how to make it easy to manage lots of applications while maintaining the the simplicity. The new folders function seems to help, but isn't perfect. The Microsoft Kinect works well (from the few minutes that I got to play with it) but the gestures have to be large and intentional in order to be recognized and consequently must often be repeated.
But. Imagine a world in the future when yo walk up to the table at a restaurant and the menu is a part of the table. You point to what you want and it expands to show you the options for preparation. That is already happening in man restaurants around the world with Microsoft's Surface. Imagine never having to touch a cell phone while driving. Ever. And yet it can still be used to make calls hands free and navigate. That is already happening in many cars.
It's changing our world as we know it. It will be interesting to see how it changes in the future. This is our world.
-B
