Top Bananas | Monthly Archives: August 2015

Thinking One Step Ahead

Posted on August 31, 2015 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: Too many companies anticipate the immediate future. What many companies fail to anticipate is the next step beyond the immediate future.

When Netflix was formed, they started out renting DVDs by mail. Yet from the very beginning, Netflix’s founders knew that streaming video would be the future, so they already had plans for streaming videos to customers eventually when mailing DVDs would become too cumbersome. By anticipating the future, Netflix was ready for the future of fast and ubiquitous Internet connections.

Look at a company that failed to anticipate the future. Kodak thought photography was about film so they focused on selling film and processing film. Yet Kodak invented digital photography but failed to anticipate that digital photography would eventually overtake film. At one time, Kodak proposed to its shareholders that they could pursue one of three options:

Remain focused entirely on film
Divide their attention, half on film and half on digital photography
Devote all their resources on digital photography

Amazingly, one-third of Kodak’s shareholders voted to keep the company focused entirely on film even though they knew digital photography was growing in popularity and improving rapidly. The future is easy to predict just by assuming your entire business model will become obsolete eventually. By assuming your business model will become obsolete, you can make plans to thrive when that future eventually arrives.

Another company that failed to anticipate the future was Borders Books. Borders made so much money through retail sales that they focused entirely on opening new stores and improving same store sales. When the Internet arrived, Borders stupidly directed potential online customers to buy books on Amazon because Borders didn’t want the hassle of selling books online. As the cost of running retail stores increased while Amazon’s book prices undercut Borders, Borders wound up dealing with increasing expenses and decreasing sales, which led to their eventual downfall. When you fail to anticipate the future, you’re doomed to get wiped out by changing trends.

That’s why the latest headline is how Uber is hiring hackers to protect the security of future self-driving cars. That’s because the future of Uber isn’t hiring freelance drivers to pick up and deliver people. The real future of Uber will be to cut drivers out altogether to lower costs and create self-driving cars that can pick up and drop people off. Uber has already created the structure of their network of getting customers to call Uber for a ride and then sending someone to pick them up and bill their credit card automatically.

What Uber will do with self-driving cars is eliminate the cost of drivers. Then Uber will be the first self-driving, automated service while old fashion taxis will still rely on human drivers that charge far more than Uber.

Uber can see the future clearly and it doesn’t involve human drivers. If you’re making money driving for Uber, get ready for the day when Uber no longer needs you. That future will come with self-driving cars, and that future is coming faster than you might think.

Anticipate the future and you’ll thrive. Fail to see the future when it’s right in front of your face and you’ll risk getting killed like Kodak or Borders Books. What will you do in your industry to anticipate the future?

Click here to read an article about why Uber is hiring hackers.

Mobile Gaming Drops in Popularity

Posted on August 30, 2015 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Mobile computing, defined by smartphones and tablets, have displaced many PCs including laptops. Initially the hottest trend was gaming on mobile devices but that trend seems to be dropping.

At one time, you had to use a PC (desktop or laptop) for everything. If you wanted to browse the Internet, send e-mail, chat, or play games, you had to use a PC. When Apple introduced the iPhone and later the iPad, they created the mobile computing market so people no longer had to rely on a PC for everything. That meant sales of PCs immediately plummeted since smartphones and tablets were not only less expensive than PCs, but more convenient to use wherever you went.

One of the early bright spots in the mobile app market were games. Because people could take mobile devices everywhere easily, they often pulled out their smartphones or tablets to play a simple game like Angry Birds just to pass the time. Unlike more sophisticated Xbox or PlayStation type games with detailed graphics, multiplayer support, and multiple levels to challenge users for months, mobile games were often much simpler and easier to play. In the early days, the most popular mobile apps were games.

Yet the latest survey by Yahoo’s mobile analytics company Flurry suggests that while the average amount of time Americans spend using mobile devices every day continues to increase, average time spent playing mobile games in the U.S. has dropped significantly in the past year. Instead of playing games, more people are increasing their use of social apps and entertainment apps. People still want to be amused but they’re just choosing different ways to do it.

That doesn’t mean that gaming is dead, but that it’s no longer the lucrative field it once was. If you’re developing an app, gaming is still popular but it’s an increasingly crowded field where more competition means less visibility for you. If you have a great idea for a game, don’t hesitate to jump into the gaming market. Just be aware that selling it may not be as easy as you might wish.

Perhaps the real key to gaming isn’t just to provide a compelling game but to include social network and entertainment aspects to your game as well. For example, most games let you play and track your high scores, but why don’t games offer a way to share your results with others? For example, suppose you got a particularly high score on Angry Birds. What about making it easy to share your high score to post to your Facebook page or send through Twitter so you can brag to your friends? What about capturing your game session and sharing video clips of your best gaming moments to boast about your skill to others?

By combining gaming with entertainment and social networks, games don’t have to be limited to just playing. If the current trend is towards more social interaction and passive entertainment, games should embrace this new field and cater to these trends.

The point is that nothing lasts forever so you always have to keep your eye out for changing trends. Just because gaming was popular in the past doesn’t mean that gaming will remain popular forever. Don’t jump into a crowded field because you think it’s lucrative because by the time you discover a lucrative field, the trend is likely already over. That means being smart and watching new trends. You don’t want to blindly follow trends just to make money. What you really want to do is create something you enjoy and then find ways to tweak your product so it takes advantage of changing trends.

Given a choice between playing a game or playing a game that includes social network features as well, you can already see which game should appeal to the growing trend. Gaming will always be popular, but like any crowded field, you need a way to differentiate yourself from the pack. That means looking for changing trends and following them as fast as possible.

Project Rigel and Its Impact on Universal Apps

Posted on August 29, 2015 by admin Posted in Programming, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Project Rigel is Adobe’s code name for a new version of Photoshop optimized for the iPhone and iPad.

In the photo editing world, Adobe Photoshop reigns supreme. While there are plenty of competitors, Photoshop remains the standard that all other photo editing programs are compared against. The biggest problem with Photoshop is that it’s limited solely to Windows and OS X computers. While the rest of the world shifts to mobile computing, Adobe tried to offer a Photoshop Touch app, but that proved far less popular to the point where Adobe has decided to create a new, touch optimized app called Project Rigel.

The importance of Project Rigel highlights two crucial trends. First, mobile computing is important so if Adobe wants to avoid being stuck as a PC/Macintosh software publisher, they need to make sure they have photo editing apps available for smartphones and tablets. That’s why Adobe rushed Photoshop Touch out (and subsequently cancelled it) because without mobile, Photoshop risks being abandoned by users who might get accustomed to other photo editing software running on smartphones and tablets.

Second, Adobe’s desire to create a touch-optimized version of Photoshop essentially drives a stake through the idea of Microsoft’s Universal Windows apps. The idea behind Microsoft’s plan is that developers can write a program once that can run on PCs, smartphones, and tablets equally well. Yet as Adobe discovered, an iPad app needs to be optimized for touch gestures. Just making a user interface designed for a keyboard and a mouse accessible through touch gestures means creating a less than optimal user interface for mobile users.

Adobe isn’t trying to make their iPad version of Photoshop identical to their PC/Mac version of Photoshop except with touch support. Instead, Adobe is trying to design a photo editing app designed to have both the power of Photoshop and the optimization of the touch gesture for iOS. Why isn’t Adobe taking the easy way out and just converting their OS X version of Photoshop into an iPad app? Because then they’ll be left with a clumsy photo editing app not optimized for touch gestures.

That right there shows the futility of Microsoft’s Universal Windows app initiative. To create the best software, you need to design that software specifically for the correct device. A program designed for PCs will be clumsy to use on a tablet just as a tablet app will feel weak and underpowered running on a PC. Universal Windows apps solves the problem of getting apps on to Windows mobile devices in a hurry, but completely ignores the sorry user experience that people must confront. Universal Windows apps are a mythical goal that will never work like the search for a perpetual motion machine.

So Adobe’s announcement of Project Rigel highlights the importance of software publishers to stake a claim in the mobile computing market and design their apps specifically for the mobile market. If Adobe can see how this makes sense, perhaps Microsoft will come to their senses and stop trying to peddle Universal Windows apps as the solution for developers. Adobe plans to create a version of Photoshop (Project Rigel) for iOS first and later for Android. No word yet on when (or if) Project Rigel will make it to the mobile version of Windows 10. All we know for certain is that Adobe most likely won’t try to cram their current PC version of Photoshop to run on tablets using Windows 10. That makes as much sense as trying to build a car that works equally well as both a horse carriage and a motor vehicle. It can’t be done just like Universal Windows apps can’t be optimized for both keyboards/mice and touch screens.

Adobe can clearly see the future for developers. Smart developers will follow Adobe’s approach. Delusional ones will believe Microsoft’s unproven Universal Windows apps idea and face frustration and complexity while churning out mediocre apps as a result. As a developer, which choice do you want to make?

To read about Project Rigel, click here.

Apple’s September 9th Event

Posted on August 28, 2015 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: Apple has rented out the Bill Graham Civic Center in San Francisco for a special event.

Every fall, Apple announces new iPhone models so it’s no surprise that Apple would plan an event to announce the new iPhones. What is a surprise is Apple has rented out the Bill Graham Civic Center for nearly a week.

What’s unusual is that the Bill Graham Civic Center can hold around 7,000 people compared to the San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center (that can hold 1,470 people) or the Flint Center in Cupertino (that can hold 2,400 people). So if Apple is renting out the Bill Graham Civic Center that’s nearly three times as large as their previous venues where they announced previous products, something big is coming on September 9th.

The release of a new iPhone model doesn’t justify renting out such a huge space so the consensus is that Apple is releasing a new product of some kind beyond new iPhone models. The two most likely candidates are the iPad Pro with Force Touch, a larger screen, and a stylus, and/or the long-awaited Apple TV.

An iPad Pro may be interesting, but could it justify a large venue? Probably not, which means the Apple TV is likely to appear with integrated HomeKit features that let you control your lights, appliances, and thermostat with your iPhone.

The rumored Apple TV will supposedly not only offer better options than cable for subscribing to the shows you want to see, but may also include its own app store that will turn the Apple TV into a video game console as well as a computer dedicated to entertainment as well. You probably won’t be able to run Pages on an Apple TV to do word processing, but you will be able to browse the Internet and watch movies or TV shows in addition to using Apple TV to control your house through HomeKit.

HomeKit looks like the major announcement because it can link an iPhone to an Apple TV and provide greater control over your home so you can remotely lock and unlock doors, turn on lights, change the temperature, and monitor your house with video cameras. The possible uses for HomeKit can be numerous, which justifies a major event to accommodate as many people as possible.

Yet there must be something bigger to justify cramming more people into this special event. Given Apple TV’s venture into movies and TVs, there could be major partnerships announced between TV networks and movie studios that can drastically change the way we watch TV shows and movies, or play video games.

Whatever is coming on September 9th, it’s definitely not just another announcement for a new iPhone. There’s something bigger that means a major new product line. A new Apple TV? Options for cutting the cord to a cable TV company without losing access to your favorite shows and at less cost? Keep your eyes on September 9th. Apple is likely to change the world. Again.

Design Flaws

Posted on August 27, 2015 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Design flaws are problems with the way products are made that cause unintended consequences.

Apple has had its share of design flaws. In their quest for ever thinner and lighter devices, they ran into a problem that an iPhone could bend in someone’s pocket. Earlier they had the problem of the iPhone losing connection to a carrier network if you held your hand over the antenna a certain way. Both of these flaws were dubbed Bend-gate and Antenna-gate.

The problem with design flaws is that they look good in the laboratory but if the designers neglect to consider everyday use in ways that they never thought about, then a potential flaw could rear its ugly head. In the case of Samsung, they created the Galaxy Note 5 with a stylus that you insert in a slot to store it. Unfortunately if you insert the stylus in the wrong way, it can risk getting jammed and damaging both the stylus and the phone.

Samsung’s official response is that users should read the manual, but a far better idea would be to design products that can’t fail no matter how users abuse them. One problem with the connection with earlier iPhones was that it was too wide and the plug had to be inserted right side up. If you tried to plug the connection in upside down, it wouldn’t work. This was a minor irritation that was solved with the new Lightning connector that can be plugged in upside down or right side up. In other words, by redesigning the Lightning connector, Apple made it impossible to plug it in wrong and they made it far smaller to boot. That’s an example of good design.

Samsung’s stylus design flaw is an example of poor design. Users should be able to insert a stylus anyway they want without risk of damaging the stylus or the phone. To dictate that you could insert the stylus only one way is a problem. To dictate that you could insert the stylus only one way or you would damage your phone and stylus is the pinnacle of poor design.

Users can’t be expected to read the manual and follow directions, so designs need to work regardless of how the user behaves. There’s a reason why doors leading out from buildings all push outward. That’s because if doors could only be opened by pulling them in, people might panic and rush a door during a fire — and be unable to pull the door open inward.

By making it easy to push on a door to open it and exit a building, the design insures that in an emergency, people can easily flee a building by running into the door and pushing it open. That doesn’t require instructions for how to open a door.

In older airplanes, luggage doors used to swing inward. The idea was that if the door lock failed, the frame of the fuselage would still keep the door shut with the air pressure in the luggage hold pushing the door outward. In a newer airplane, engineers made the luggage doors swing outward so there would be more space inside to store luggage. However that design also meant that if the door lock failed, the door would swing open and that’s exactly what happened.

Good designs prevent problems without users even realizing it, but the designers must know that ahead of time. While it’s a critical problem that the stylus can wreck a Galaxy Note 5 by inserting the stylus the wrong way, it’s an even more critical error for Samsung to tell people to just read the user manual and insert the stylus correctly each time. It’s far too easy for the user to insert the stylus in wrong, and wreck the stylus and phone at the same time.

Good design is more than just performing a particular function but in protecting the user from problems as well. That requires thinking ahead and anticipating possible problems, which is why design flaws continue to show upon in products periodically.

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The Meaning of Insanity

Posted on August 26, 2015 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Android Wear is the Android version of the operating system for wearable devices.

Long before the Apple Watch became a reality, Google had released a version of the Android operating system specifically geared for wearable computers called Android Wear. Although Android Wear came out before the Apple Watch, it didn’t see much success. dNow that the Apple Watch has defined the wearable computer market, Google is trying once again to push Android Wear out to compete.

The idea behind Android Wear and Android in general is that manufacturers can use it for free and then develop products to sell based on the free operating system. In return, Google gets additional devices in which to track people for their ad business. Theoretically, this should be a win-win situation for everyone.

Unfortunately, reality has a harsh way of affecting theory. By not having the Apple Watch to mimic, Android Wear floundered with a variety of different designs, none of which caught on much with the public. Now that the Apple Watch is available to imitate, Android Wear can emulate the Apple Watch just like Android emulated iOS.

However the big problem is that history could be repeating itself. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Back when Android was taking over the smartphone market, manufacturers thought they needed to follow Android to remain successful in the smartphone market. As it turns out, with so many manufacturers selling Android smartphones, even the best designs got lost in the sea of mediocrity. While HTC and LG tried to create decent Android phones, Samsung and Apple carved up the smartphone profit share for themselves with Apple taking roughly 90% of the smartphone profits, leaving everyone else scrambling for the remaining profits. Samsung usually took the remainder of the profit share, leaving other Android manufacturers losing money.

Now that Samsung no longer has their bigger screen advantage in the smartphone market, their profits have been dropping every quarter. As other Android manufacturers offer lower cost smartphones, Samsung is getting squeezed on both ends by lower cost Android manufacturers and Apple’s iPhone. Samsung’s smartphone profits keep falling with no hope in sight to reverse this decline.

Now with Google pushing Android Wear, manufacturers are rushing to create wearable computers like the Apple Watch. The trouble is that they’re simply following the path of unprofitability just like so many manufacturers discovered with Android. When you sell devices that have no unique features, you can only compete on price, and when you can only compete on price, there’s a huge chance you’re going to lose money. Just ask LG and HTC how much money they’ve lost selling Android smartphones. When you’re losing money selling products, you can’t stay in business for long.

So now Google wants manufacturers to struggle and lose money selling Android Wear wearable computers? For those manufacturers rushing to create Android Wear devices, watch them lose money. All of these Android Wear manufacturers are hoping to become the next Samsung, which means they’ll be the exception. However most will fail and even becoming the next Samsung is no guarantee of success when your real rival isn’t Apple but other Android/Android Wear manufacturers.

Android is essentially in competition with itself. Even Samsung tried to distance themselves from Android by developing Tizen, another open source operating system. The big problem with Tizen is why would anyone else support an operating system designed to benefit a competitor like Samsung? That’s like Burger King promoting McDonald’s. Even worse, if Tizen becomes an unlikely success, other manufacturers will still be selling identical products running Tizen instead of Android. The insanity continues.

The path to quick, illusionary profits is to copy the leader and hope for the best. The real profits go to the leaders and innovators. If companies like Samsung and HTC really want to succeed, they need to create unique products of their own that appeal to the public, not rely on commodity type operating systems that attempts to mimic the success of MS-DOS/Windows. The main reason why Windows succeeded for so long was because there was no other alternative. Now that there are alternatives, a commodity operating system is doomed to fail regardless of its technical capabilities.

The reason why Apple succeeds is because if you want a Macintosh, iPhone, or iPad, you have to buy it from Apple. If you want anything else, you can choose from a dozen manufacturers, which means no single manufacturer will make much money. Apple is poised for continuing success. Companies chasing after Android, Tizen, or Android Wear are simply knocking their heads against the wall and hoping to make money doing the same thing as everyone else. When you lack innovation and vision, then copying others always seems like the safest approach even when it’s clear that it doesn’t work. Just watch all those companies killing themselves to compete with Android Wear devices and Samsung go nowhere with their Tizen operating system. The bloodbath of commodity operating systems will just continue.