Top Bananas | Monthly Archives: January 2019

Apple’s Silly Naming Conventions

Posted on January 28, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Marketing Leave a comment

What it is: Apple’s latest naming conventions for the iPhone curiously resembles their Macintosh II naming convention.

At one time, Apple sold a variety of different Macintosh computers with confusing, but similar names such as Macintosh IIcx, Macintosh IIci, and Macintosh IIfx. With similar-sounding names, it made it hard fo consumers to know what was the difference.

That’s why when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he abolished this confusing naming convention and simplified it to just Power Macintosh and later to iMac. Notice Apple has returned to this confusing naming convention with the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max. What does this mean to the average consumer? Absolutely nothing.

Instead of offering clearly defined and simple names, Apple has reverted back to the techno-chaos that other companies embrace with confusing numbers and designations that mean nothing like the Dell Inspiron 15 7000. What do these numbers mean? Nothing, yet technology companies love them despite not clarifying their products for consumers.

Apple needs to go back to simpler names like the iPhone 10 (or iPhone X) and maybe an iPhone X Plus to indicate a larger screen size. All this nonsense with XS and XR means nothing and serves to simply confuse rather than clarify.

If the confusing Macintosh II naming convention didn’t work back in the 90’s, why is Apple going back to similar confusing naming conventions for the iPhone today? The answer is no reason other than it looks impressive. The moment Apple focuses more on naming conventions to impress rather than clarify is the moment the company is starting to lose their original vision and start following other technology companies down the drain.

Steve Jobs admired Hewlett-Packard because that company once was an innovation leader. Not any more. If Apple’s not careful, they could follow in the footsteps of Hewlett-Packard, and then they’ll be just cruising along worried more about profits and losses instead of making great products that are easy to use.

Just ask Hewlett-Packard what happened to their innovative culture.

To learn more about how Steve Jobs simplified Apple’s product line, click here.

More Augmented Reality Companies Failing

Posted on January 22, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Three augmented reality firms have failed recently.

For a while, augmented reality was the latest technology trend much like 3D TV and Blu-ray DVDs. However in the past year, three prominent augmented reality startups have failed: Osterhaut Design Group (ODG), Meta Company, and Blippar. The reason is simple.

Augmented reality glasses are too expensive, too bulky, and fail to solve a specific problem. New technology always exists to capture that gee-whiz hype prominent at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where technology is promoted for the sake of novelty.

However the purpose of all technology is to solve problems. Ideally, new technology solves problems faster and more efficiently, but the best technology solves problems that were impossible to solve with current technology.

The telegraph was simply a faster version of the Pony Express, and the telephone was simply a faster version of the telegraph. What the telegraph offered over the Pony Express was reliability. What the telephone offers over the telephone was interactivity.

A telegraph sends a message one way. A telephone allows two-way conversation instantly.

Smart phones are nothing more than mobile telephones. They solve the problem of not being reachable when others need to talk to you. Once mobile phones became popular, smart phones defined by the iPhone took over and got rid of the unwieldy mix of tiny screens, slide out keyboards, and physical buttons.

So technology always improves on existing solutions but offers something that current technology can’t do as well. That should be simple to understand but all those failed augmented reality companies didn’t grasp this concept.

Instead, they devoted time and money creating gee-whiz technology that looked impressive but failed to solve any particular need. With smart glasses, the most obvious glaring need is to replace eyeglasses.

People wearing eyeglasses are already using augmented reality in the form of physical lenses. Replace those lenses with computational photography found in smartphone cameras and you’ll have a light weight lens that you can adjust the magnification for close or far away.

Get the weight down to the weight of an average pair of eyeglasses, keep the price reasonable, and if smart glasses can replace traditional eyeglasses, there’s an instant solution right there. Smart glasses don’t need to display directions or ads in front of someone’s eyes, nor do they need to duplicate a smartphone’s purpose in a pair of eyeglasses.

Instead, smart glasses just need to replace ordinary eyeglasses. Give people to chance to magnify their lenses to see far away without the need for binoculars. Then let them change the magnification to read up close without clumsy bifocals.

The obvious need for augmented reality glasses is to improve eyesight better than physical lenses can do.

Once augmented reality startups realize they need a purpose for their technology, perhaps they wouldn’t waste so much time and money flushed down the toilet for no purpose. Too many startups come up with technology and then search for a way to use it. It’s far better to identify a solution and then create the technology to achieve that solution.

Obvious, but not to startups. Until people realize technology must solve a pressing problem faster, cheaper, or better than existing technology, we’ll continue watching startups failing as they ignore the obvious fact that technology must offer a clear, compelling solution.

The first augmented reality company that can achieve this will be the leader and everyone else will fall by the wayside.

The End of Microsoft Windows Mobile/Phone

Posted on January 21, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Microsoft officially announced the end of support for their mobile operating system Windows Mobile 10.

Before Apple introduced the iPhone, Google was trying to make a Blackberry clone called Android and Microsoft had morphed their Palm Pilot clone (Windows CE) into a phone operating system. Then Apple introduced the iPhone and redefined the touch screen interface for smart phones.

Google quickly rewrote Android to mimic iOS and Microsoft abandoned Windows CE in favor of creating a new operating system from scratch. That took time and by the time Windows Phone 7 came out, Android and iOs were already dominating the smartphone market.

Even worse, Microsoft decided to rewrite their mobile operating system again and come out with Windows Phone 8, which was incompatible with Windows Phone 7 apps. That meant developers had to rewrite their apps all over again for Windows Phone 8.

Then Microsoft changed Windows Phone 8 to Windows Mobile 10 and forced developers to rewrite their apps once more. Even worse, the official language for Windows Phone development was Silverlight, a Microsoft clone of Adobe Flash.

When Adobe Flash started dying since it couldn’t run on mobile devices, Microsoft Silverlight also died. Now developers had to rewrite their Windows Phone 8 apps to run on Windows Mobile 10.

With all this constant changing, is it no wonder that Windows Phone/Mobile failed? To make matters even worse, Microsoft was so fixated on Windows Phone that they failed to anticipate the iPad, which forced Microsoft to come up with a separate tablet operating system called Windows RT.

Now developers had to write separate apps in different languages for Windows RT and Windows Mobile 10. Instead, developers simply abandoned Windows RT and Windows Mobile 10. With few apps, users started to ignore Windows Phone/Mobile as well.

The lesson is clear. Mere copying of a successful product is rarely the path to success. The real path to success is originality. Come up with a new solution that’s better than existing solutions, not simply a copy of the same solution.

Microsoft Silverlight was a slightly better version of Adobe Flash, but solved nothing new. So people tended to stick with Adobe Flash and when Flash died, so did Silverlight.

Fortunately with Steve Ballmer out of the way, Microsoft no longer seems content to copy other successful products and hope it pays off in the long run like the Xbox. In the meantime, Windows Phone/Mobile wasn’t a bad idea, but it showed that unless you make a dramatic leap like the iPhone did over Blackberry and Nokia, there’s little reason to adopt it.

So rather than blatantly copy, companies should strive to solve problems that aren’t currently met by today’s technology. The iPhone’s touch screen interface solved the problem of tiny screens and physical buttons. Windows Phone/Mobile solved nothing over Android and iOS.

Nobody will miss Windows Phone/Mobile. Even Microsoft’s employees stopped using that operating system years ago. The lesson is copying rarely leads to success so strive for solving the problems of today, not the problems of yesterday that are already being met with today’s products. Just that simple lesson alone could have saved Microsoft billions of dollars and years of wasted development.

Apple’s Future is Health

Posted on January 17, 2019 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: Apple’s hiring of health related talent has increased 400% since 2017.

At one time, Apple relied on the Macintosh computer for all its revenue, but the world had already standardized on Windows so Apple had little room for growth focusing on personal computers.

Then Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes, and suddenly portable music players and music downloads gave Apple a huge boost in revenue while helping it rely less on the Macintosh.

When smartphones threatened to kill the iPod market, Apple reduced their dependence on the iPod by releasing the iPhone. The iPhone proved so popular that it defined the current smartphone market.

However, the smartphone market is slowing down. People aren’t upgrading their smartphones as often because each new model offers minor improvements over the current models. That means people are holding on to their smartphones longer, which means slowing smartphone sales.

Not only is Apple reducing their future revenue guidance due to slowing iPhone sales, but Samsung is also forecasting a downturn in smartphone sales as well. The problem isn’t just Apple but the overall smartphone market.

That’s why Apple has been diversifying recently with services such as Apple Music, Apple Books, and Apple Pay. the idea is to reduce dependence on hardware and make money whether people are using older products or not.

With iPhone sales slowing and showing no signs of suddenly picking up ever again, Apple needs a new market to target and that new market will likely be health, led by wearable computers such as the Apple Watch.

Like the iPhone, the Apple Watch has gone through major improvements with each generation although there’s little reason to upgrade each year with the Apple Watch.

However what will keep people pinned to the Apple Watch will be its improving health sensors. Since everyone (especially older people) are concerned about their health, it’s easy to see how wearable computers such as the Apple Watch and future Apple smart glasses product can use health as their primary focus, targeting the world’s aging population.

Far more people care about their health than care about using the latest smartphone. For that reason, health will be Apple’s new focus. Unlike smartphones, health-related products take more time to develop, which means it will be harder to take off-the-shelf components and slap them together to mimic an Apple Watch.

The iPhone is fine, but it will no longer be the primary driving force of Apple any more just like Apple no longer depends on the iPod or the Macintosh for the bulk of its revenue.

Health is the new focus because everyone is a potential customer, even people who don’t like Apple. Such people will have to decide if their health is more important than their irrational dislike of Apple because their lives literally depend on their decision.

Project Marzipan

Posted on January 13, 2019 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Project Marzipan is Apple’s framework to allow iOS apps to run on the Macintosh.

Last year during their Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Apple introduced Project Marzipan, which is a framework designed to make it easy to convert iOS apps to run on the Macintosh. Apple used their own framework to port several of their iOS apps to the Macintosh such as the Stocks app.

With iOS and mobile computing becoming far more important than desktop/laptop computing, it only makes sense for developers to focus exclusively on iOS programming because then they’ll be able to write apps for iOS and port them to the Macintosh.

Otherwise you’ll haver to write apps for iOS and macOS. That’s not too much of a problem since iOS and macOS are so similar but it does require you to write slightly different code. With Project Marzipan, the goal is to let you write an iOS app and let Apple’s framework convert it to run on the Macintosh with little work on your part. That way you’ll have two apps capable of running on the Macintosh and iOS.

For ordinary users, this simply means the Macintosh will soon get more apps. This can make the Macintosh more attractive but it will likely give developers an incentive to focus exclusively on iOS and then use Project Marzipan to create Macintosh apps that may not be optimized completely for the Macintosh.

So developers will likely need to tweak their code to make their app better for the keyboard/mouse interface of the Macintosh from the touch screen interface of iOS.

The Macintosh will likely never take over the desktop/laptop market with Windows PCs so entrenched in the corporate world. Then again, it doesn’t really matter since the world is moving towards mobile computing anyway.

The Macintosh has been around since 1984 and it likely won’t get any more innovative. So look at Project Marzipan as a way to keep iOS developers happy by giving them a larger market for their existing apps. Project Marzipan is not likely to attract more people to the Macintosh just for the ability to run iOS apps. Project Marzipan is interesting and will likely appear during 2019’s WWDC, but it’s just a short-term solution to help transition the world towards mobile computing so they can leave the world of desktop/laptops behind.

To learn more about Project Marzipan, click here.

Another Technology Company Bites the Dust

Posted on January 10, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Osterhout Design Group (ODG), an augmented reality smart glasses company, fails.

Osterhout Design Group (ODG), an augmented reality smart glasses company, is failed after twenty years. While it’s sad that the company didn’t succeed in bringing augmented reality smart glasses to the masses, the reason for their failure is obvious.

Ignore any technical obstacles they overcame. Just look at their web site and their press releases that describe what their smart glasses can do. Isn after reading their press releases and their web site information, you still don’t know what you can do with their smart glasses, you’ll suddenly understand why the company failed.

Technology by itself will always fail if there isn’t a clear, compelling problem that this new technology solves.

What problem do ODG’s augmented reality smart glasses solve? If you have to think for more than a fraction of a second, then you probably won’t want to buy these smart glasses. If the company itself can’t explain why anyone would want their smart glasses, it’s no surprise that they’re going out of business.

What all these augmented reality smart glasses companies are missing is that they need to enhance vision. That alone is the key to augmented reality because ordinary eyeglasses create a simple form of augmented reality by correcting someone’s vision with a physical lens.

Replace the physical lens with a computational photography lens such as the camera found in a smartphone and you have smart glasses that could zoom in and out to make it easy for someone to see objects close and far away. The real use for augmented reality smart glasses is replacing ordinary eyeglasses and correcting vision.

The reason the Apple Watch is gaining popularity is because it offers real-time health monitoring. Since everyone can understand its purpose, and everyone wants to improve their health, it’s no surprise that the Apple Watch can be easily understood.

Augmented reality smart glasses that remain vague will never sell. As soon as companies market augmented reality smart glasses as eyeglass replacements that are more versatile, that will be the time the augmented reality smart glasses market will truly take off.

Until technology companies can define what problems their products solve, they’ll keep going bankrupt over and over again. Osterhout Design Group (ODG) won’t be the first technology company to fail, but if they simply took five seconds to decide what problem their product could solve, they could have stayed in business long enough to actually make some money.