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Another Augmented Reality Startup Bites the Dust

Posted on September 13, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Daqri, a 10-year old company that built enterprise-grade AR headsets, has shut down.

Ten years ago, Daqri decided to jump into the augmented reality market before anyone else. The company targeted enterprise customers with augmented reality headsets. The big problem was that there’s no clear use for augmented reality headsets. In other words, what problem does augmented reality headsets solve that can’t be solved through today’s technology?

The key to identifying the value of a product is to look at the problems it solves. The telephone solved the problem of the telegraph by providing voice communication directly between people, eliminating the need for a middle man (the telegraph office). Mobile phones displaced landline phones because mobile phones are more convenient to use wherever you go.

So when any startup jumps on new technology to be first to the market, they’re succumbing to the delusion that the mythical “first-mover” advantage will sustain them. Big mistake.

Daqri tried to sell augmented reality headsets to enterprise customers without clearly identifying a meaningful problem that enterprise customers needed to solve. Without a clear problem to solve, few companies saw a need to buy augmented reality headsets for any purpose.

The fastest way to sell any product is to show how it solves a dire problem. Someone dying of thirst in the desert would gladly pay for a glass of water. That same person dying of thirst would pay nothing for an augmented reality headset since it wouldn’t solve that person’s biggest problems.

Watch as multiple augmented reality companies will fade away just as multiple wearable computer companies and tablet companies faded away before people found a use for them. Before Apple introduced the iPad, a company called JooJoo sold a JooJoo tablet. Not surprisingly, the iPad killed the JooJoo tablet.

Before Apple introduced the Apple Watch, Pebble sold one of the first smartwatches, but few people saw a need for it so Pebble died. Yet once people recognized that the Apple Watch excelled at real-time health monitoring, sales of the Apple Watch skyrocketed.

The failure of Daqri doesn’t mean that augmented reality has no future. Rather it means that companies that fail to identify a problem to solve have no future.

Augmented reality needs to focus on enhanced vision in a niche market first before smart glasses will become widespread. Daqri is gone because they arrived too soon and couldn’t survive long enough to carve out a substantial market. When Apple introduces their smart glasses, they’ll succeed only if they can demonstrate a compelling need. If not, then Apple’s smart glasses will likely stumble about like HomePod currently is doing, attracting a niche market and little more.

To learn more about the demise of Daqri, click here.

Smart Bands are the Future of the Apple Watch

Posted on September 4, 2019 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: Apple recently patented smart bands for the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch has always been constrained by its smaller size that needs to fit comfortable on a user’s wrist. While the Apple Watch provides sensors to detect heart rates and skin moisture, there’s only so many sensors Apple can put on the physical size of the Apple Watch. Even worse is that some people may not want certain types of sensors while other people do.

That’s why Apple has patented smart bands that work with the Apple Watch. The main idea behind smart bands is to provide extra sensors that the smaller size of the Apple Watch can’t accommodate.

One long-rumored sensor that Apple is working on is non-invasive glucose monitoring. This would provide a way for diabetics to monitor their blood sugar level without breaking their skin to get a blood sample. Since only diabetics would want such a sensor, it makes sense to offer it as an optional smart band that can work with any Apple Watch.

Right now, the band that holds an Apple Watch to a person’s wrist does nothing else. By adding smart capabilities, a smart band offers more space for adding sensors to compliment the Apple Watch. Today the Apple Watch is dependent on the iPhone but soon the Apple Watch will be independent of the iPhone. With the addition of smart bands, the Apple Watch will soon be more capable as a biometric device as well.

The Apple Watch isn’t the only type of wearable computer Apple is working on. The less obvious rival is Apple’s AirPods, which could detect blood vessels in the ear canal, which is supposedly easier to access than blood vessels in the arm.

Still another potential wearable computer will be smart glasses. With so many wearable computer models to choose from, it’s likely people will choose one or more for different activities.

The Apple Watch will be focused on real-time health monitoring. AirPods will be focused on hearing and real-time health monitoring. Smart glasses will be focused on real-time information overlaid against the real world.

Mobile computing (smartphones and tablets) are slowly taking over the traditional PC market just as PCs gradually took over from the mainframe and minicomputer market.

Now wearable computers offer the next big leap forward as people start wearing their computers instead of carrying them with them.

The future of the Apple Watch is smart bands and the future of computing will be wearables whether strapped to your wrist, stuck in your ear, or propped on your face.

To learn more about Apple’s latest patent involving smart bands, click here.

The Future of HomePod

Posted on August 26, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Music, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: HomePod has a small share of the smart speaker market, but it has the potential to continue growing.

Amazon introduced the first smart speaker with Alexa as its voice assistant. Because Alexa speakers are so inexpensive (often as low as $30), more people are willing to try an Alexa smart speaker. In the meantime, Apple introduced a $349 (now $299) smart speaker called HomePod.

In pure unit sales alone, Alexa is dominating the smart speaker market. However, in our unit sales alone, Android devices dominate the smartphone market too. So judging on market share alone isn’t an accurate measurement of a product’s success.

The big problem with HomePod is that it, like the first iPhone, is more of a novelty than a necessity. When Apple first introduced the iPhone, more people still relied on other smartphones from Nokia or Blackberry. Only until the third generation of the iPhone (after Apple also lowered the price of the iPhone) did the iPhone slowly start taking over.

The iPhone took over the smartphone market because it represented a vast improvement over existing smartphones of the time that relied on tiny screens and physical keyboards.

However, HomePod will likely need to pursue a different approach to succeed. HomePod’s sole advantage over Alexa is its higher quality audio. A far distant advantage is that Siri, on HomePod, understands close to thirty languages compared to Alexa’s seven languages.

For people whose language Alexa understands, there’s no advantage in using Siri, but for people whose language Alexa does not understand, they’ll have no choice but to chose HomePod and Siri.

HomePod right now is a novelty, much like the original iPhone. While the iPhone offered clear-cut advantages over existing smartphones of the time, HomePod does not offer such clear-cut advantages over Alexa. HomePod cannot compete against Alexa on price, and audio quality is more of a luxury than a necessity. So how can HomePod compete?

The first solution might be to focus on defining why the average person would ant to use a HomePod. Essentially, HomePod’s prime advantage is hands-free computing through voice commands.

In the home, HomePod’s advantage won’t be apparent until smart homes using Apple’s HomeKit become more popular. When you have a smart home, then it will be easy to control it with HomePod. If you do not have a smart home, then there’s little reason to use HomePod.

Since not everyone will want or use a smart home, the second way HomePod could grow is by offering tighter integration with the Macintosh. Put a HomePod next to your Macintosh and now you have superior audio quality.

More importantly, put a HomePod next to a Macintosh and you also have a microphone, suitable for talking through video conferencing or for controlling your Macintosh through voice commands.

Given the slow growth fo the smart home, HomePod’s greatest future lies in working with the Macintosh as a smart accessory.

HomePod should also work with the iPhone and iPad, offering superior audio quality as well as a wireless smart speaker. Perhaps if HomePod offered a place to put in an iPhone or an iPad, more people would think of using the HomePod in conjunction with an iPhone or iPad.

Today, HomePod is mostly a curiosity. Tomorrow, HomePod has the potential to grow, but only by integrating itself with other products. By itself, HomePod is a great audio speaker, but when connected to other products, HomePod will become a crucial product that more people will want.

Watch HomePod. It’s going to grow over time just like the iPhone did.

To learn more about HomePod, click here.

The Changing TextBook Industry

Posted on August 12, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Education Leave a comment

What it is: Textbooks are a multi-million dollar industry, and it’s changing to adapt to rising prices.

One of the biggest scams has been the cost of textbooks. Publishers would typically publish a textbook and immediately revise the textbook as quickly as possible to avoid students selling their old textbooks to students who don’t want to pay full price. After all, once a textbook has been sold once by a publisher, they can’t make money off it no matter how many times it’s re-sold and used.

That’s why publishers constantly update their textbooks to make previous editions obsolete. That limits the used textbook market and insures that most students pay top dollar for information that’s largely identical to previous editions. While topics like marketing or computer science might change rapidly, other topics like math or physics do not.

That’s why the textbook industry is undergoing massive upheaval from rental textbooks to digital textbooks. Apple has been trying to promote ebooks as a way to provide quality information inexpensively.

In general, the book industry is dying, not because people are reading less but because people can access the same information in multiple ways. In the old days, people bought books because that was the best way to get information. Nowadays, people can get information through search engines crawling the Internet. Given the choice between using a book or a search engine, it’s obvious what most people prefer.

So the book industry is shrinking with the loss of retailers like Borders Books and the slow decline of Barnes & Noble. Retail book stores are in the business of selling paper, but search engines are in the business of providing information.

That’s the huge difference and that’s why paper books are fading. Many people still prefer paper books but a newer and younger generation are growing up without the familiarity of paper books, which means they’ll be more prone to accept ebooks and other forms of digital formats. That will simply spell a shrinking market for book publishers unless those publishers switch to the information business rather than the printed book business.

Watch the textbook industry to see where all books are heading. Textbooks are getting cheaper and easier to access and today’s printed books will have to follow this model to survive in the future.

Books are no longer the sole source of information anymore. Tomorrow, books will be supplemented with websites and digital files. The future of publishing is actually bright. It’s just the future of traditional print publishers that’s dimming every hour.

To learn more about the textbook industry, click here.

Apple’s Changing Business Model

Posted on August 7, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Marketing Leave a comment

What it is: Analysts keep worrying if slowing smartphone sales will negatively impact Apple, but Apple keeps changing its business mode.

At one time, people updated their smartphones almost every year, fueling the growth of the smartphone market. However, smartphone sales have been slowing down lately, which makes people immediately worry that Apple will be in trouble.

Of course, Apple has always been reliant on a single product for the majority of its revenue, but they’ve always managed to introduce a new product to make up for the decline.

Initially, Apple survived solely on the Macintosh. Even though the Macintosh never dominated the personal computer market, sales of Macs kept Apple alive.

Yet the Macintosh was never going to take over from cheap PCs, so Apple started making money from their next product, the iPod, which helped fuel the rise of iTunes digital music downloads.

The iPod proved so popular along with iTunes digital music downloads that Apple dominated this market for years. Microsoft even tried to crack this market with the Zune, which flopped despite being a decent product.

Then as smartphones started to appear and replace the need for the iPod, Apple introduced the iPhone, which has now led the bulk of the company’s revenue for the past few years.

Now that smartphone sales are slowing, the next business model of Apple will be services. That includes the growing revenue they’ll earn from Apple Pay along with the Apple Card and services like Apple Music. Apple is no longer dependent on hardware sales but has switched to services to earn the bulk of their income.

Now it doesn’t matter if smartphone sales slow down. Just as long as people continue using iPhones, iPads, the Apple Watch, and the Macintosh, they’ll likely tap into Apple’s numerous services and continue sending profits towards Apple.

Apple is no longer dependent on the Macintosh any more, just as they’re no longer dependent on the iPod or the iPhone. The future of Apple is services for the near future. That will only continue growing whenever Apple introduces their next major product line, which could be augmented reality smart glasses or self-driving cars. Whatever happens, Apple will keep growing and adapting.

To learn more about the changing business model of Apple over the years, click here.

The Future Mac is the iPad

Posted on August 4, 2019 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: Rumor has suggested that Apple will replace Intel processors with their own ARM processors, but Apple has no reason to do so.

At one time, Apple relied on PowerPC processors while PCs relied on faster and more powerful Intel processors. So Apple shifted from PowerPC processors to Intel processors.

To do this, they created Rosetta, a software emulation layer that allowed Intel processors to run PowerPC programs. Then developers crated fat binaries that contained both PowerPC and Intel code, allowing programs to run on either older PowerPC Macs or newer Intel Macs.

Now the latest rumor is that Apple will soon replace Intel processors for their own ARM processors on the Macintosh. However, that makes little sense even though Apple’s ARM processors are now getting faster and more powerful than equivalent Intel processors.

If Apple switched to ARM processors for the Macintosh, they the reasoning goes that they’ll have more powerful and energy efficient computers. However, doing so means Apple will sacrifice Windows compatibility and need to rely on an emulation layer to allow Intel programs to run on ARM processors.

Apple needed to shift to Intel processors because PowerPC processors were falling behind. Today, Apple does not need to shift to ARM processors because they’re already using ARM processors in the iPhone and iPad. Most kids today are growing up using smartphones and tablets while sales of PCs are slowly falling among consumers.

Since many kids today use smartphones and tablets and not traditional PCs like Windows PCs or even the Macintosh, there’s little reason for Apple to switch the Macintosh to ARM processors because people are no longer going to want a traditional PC. They’re going to want mobile devices like the iPad.

Today’s iPad is nearly as powerful as today’s laptops. In another generation or two, the iPad will be more powerful than equivalent laptops, which will only accelerate the shift away from PCs to mobile devices like tablets. That means Apple has little reason to prop up the fading world of PCs and has far more incentive to keep improving ARM processors for the iPad.

Creating iPadOS is Apple’s way of defining the future. With a dedicated operating system for tablets, Apple is going to make the iPad even more powerful with each generation. Combined with the growing power of ARM processors as well, and more people will simply buy iPads instead of laptop Macintoshes.

Therefore, the iPad is already the ARM equivalent of the Macintosh. The Macintosh, like PCs in general, are slowly fading away while mobile devices like tablets are continuing to grow. The future is clearly the iPad, not the Macintosh because the future is mobile and not desktop/laptop PCs no matter what operating system they might be running.

Just ask a mainframe of minicomputer user how well their favorite devices are holding up against PCs and that’s the future of PCs against mobile computing.

If you want the power and energy efficiency of an ARM processor, get an iPad. For many people, the iPad can already replace a traditional PC. In another generation or two, the iPad will be able to replace more PCs, not less.

The Macintosh has a limited future and Apple knows it. The iPad is clearly the future, and Apple knows that too. If you want to cling to the past, stick with a traditional PC. If you’re a child of today growing up in a world of smartphones and tablets, who never or rarely uses a traditional PC, you’ll likely never want a traditional PC.

Older people will cling to PCs. Younger people will cling to mobile computing. Eventually the older people will be a smaller part of the market and younger people will be a larger part of the market. It’s just logic, and that sums up the future of the Macintosh and Intel processors.

To learn more about the future of the iPad, click here.