Top Bananas

The Fall of Blackberry

Posted on by Posted in Business, Marketing, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: “Losing the Signal” is a book that documents Blackberry’s incredible rise as the smartphone leader, and its dramatic fall as it struggled to compete against the iPhone.

In 2009, Blackberry held half of the smartphone market. Today they hold less than 1 percent of that same smartphone market. What happened?

The answer is easy. Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 and from that point on, any smartphone that didn’t offer similar features as the iPhone simply disappeared. Android mimicked the iPhone successfully by offering the same portable computer appeal as the iPhone, but Blackberry (along with Nokia and Windows Mobile) failed. Blackberry initially tired to convince everyone that physical keyboards were crucial. Even Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO at the time, laughed at the iPhone by claiming it wasn’t any good for typing e-mail since it lacked a physical keyboard.

What Blackberry and other smartphone rivals failed to see was that the iPhone’s touch screen interface was far more versatile than a separate keyboard and tiny screen crammed into the small form factor of a mobile phone. Anyone remember physical keyboards that would flip out or slide out so you could type on them?

What’s even more astounding is that after criticizing the iPhone for a lack of a physical keyboard, Blackberry introduced the Storm smartphone with a touch screen interface and (not surprisingly) no physical keyboard. Even more astounding is that Blackberry rushed the Storm to the market, knowing it was faulty. When a company knowingly ships faulty products, how can they expect anything good to happen as a result?

To no one’s surprise, the Blackberry Storm got hammered in early reviews, which drove customers away from Blackberry. When a company loses its customers’ trust, that company will likely never win it back. Blackberry users soon ditched their Blackberries for iPhones and Android phones, and that trend hasn’t let up since.

Blackberry’s biggest mistake was being caught flat-footed when Apple introduced the iPhone. Blackberry’s second biggest mistake was rushing the Storm to market before it was ready in an attempt to offer an iPhone-like experience with the (then) trusted Blackberry name. When you sell a product without regard for your customers, it’s easy to see that your customers will soon switch to your rivals.

To read an except from “Losing the Signal,” click here. Back in 2007, you would be hard pressed to get anyone to consider that Blackberry would soon lose their leadership in the smartphone market and become an also-ran. Yet that’s exactly what happened, and it’s unlikely anyone will start switching back to Blackberry phones any time soon. Blackberry kept trying to chase Apple first with the Storm phone and then with the Playbook tablet, which was also rushed into production and offered a poor user experience.

The lesson of Blackberry is clear. If you want to succeed, don’t do what Blackberry did. Here are their biggest mistakes:

  • Blackberry assumed they would always be leaders, so they assumed their existing products just needed minor improvements. The solution to this type of thinking is to always assume everything you’re doing today will get wiped out tomorrow. If Apple had protected the iPod, they never would have bothered creating the iPhone, and someone else would have killed the iPod anyway in the future (and killed Apple in the process).
  • When confronted with the iPhone, Blackberry reacted rather than developed a well-thought out plan. They rushed the Storm into customer’s hands before it was ready, which was simply a recipe for disaster.
  • When confronted with the iPad, Blackberry also reacted by rushing the Playbook into the market before it was ready, which repeated their recipe for disaster.
  • In the face of declining Blackberry sales, Blackberry had no plan other than to keep selling what they had and hoping people would keep buying them. Hope is never a strategy.

Blackberry put themselves in a position to fail by failing to plan ahead. The time to worry is when you become the leader in any market. That’s when you know you have nowhere to go but down.

Could Blackberry’s fate repeat with Apple? Absolutely. Apple is not immune from failing. Look how long Apple clung to digital downloads of audio files through iTunes, only to realize that streaming audio services were killing iTunes music sales. Apple had to spend $3 billion dollars to buy Beats Music to get their streaming music service along with their relationships to artists. Will this Beats Music acquisition save iTunes? Maybe, or maybe not, but it shows that even Apple can be toppled from their leadership position.

What will kill the iPhone won’t be another smartphone. What will kill the iPad won’t be another tablet. What killed iTunes wasn’t another digital audio music store, but something different altogether — streaming audio. What will kill the iPhone and iPad will be something so different than Apple may not recognize the threat until it’s too late, just like Blackberry failed to recognize the iPhone threat until it was too late.

 

What killed the netbook? It wasn’t another netbook, but the iPad. What killed Blackberry? It wasn’t another smartphone, but the iPhone that was really a portable computer in a smartphone form factor.

Until something comes along that makes people ditch smartphones, the iPhone will be safe (for now). Until something comes along that makes people dump their tablets, the iPad will be safe (for now). Keep your eyes open for what this new product might be. As soon as it appears, that’s the time when Apple will start going downhill like Blackberry.

The Ada Programming Language

Posted on by Posted in Programming, Software Leave a comment

What it is: The Ada programming language was a Department of Defense sponsored programming language designed to standardize on a single programming language for defense-related work and provide maximum safety in real-time environments.

Way back in the 1970s, the Department of Defense had a problem. Military programming was done with a variety of different programming languages that made it difficult to update and modify. The Department of Defense’s solution was to commission a new programming language that defense-related work could standardize around. One of the criteria for this new language was that it had to prevent common programming errors that could prove fatal in real-time, embedded systems.

After a competition, the Department of Defense chose a new programming language based on Pascal and dubbed it Ada after Ada Lovelace, considered the world’s first programmer. The goal was to make Ada a standard programming language for all military projects.

It didn’t work.

Initially the problem was that Ada was a large and complicated programming language, which made it difficult to create compilers for Ada. While the Department of Defense mandated Ada for most defense contracts, the rest of the world ignored Ada and adopted C and its variants like C++ instead. By 1997, the Department of Defense gave up requiring Ada for military contracts and allowed off-the-shelf products to be used instead, which often meant using another programming language besides Ada.

Yet despite this failure of Ada to become the standard programming language of tomorrow, Ada is still used in mission-critical programming such as avionics. Boeing used Ada to program their 777 jet liner and Canada’s air traffic control system was written in Ada. For maximum safety where lives are at stake, Ada has proven successful.

If Ada works so well in mission-critical solutions, how come commercial programmers don’t rely on Ada to create software that would have fewer bugs and be less prone to failure? After all, Ada is proven to prevent catastrophic failures in software.

The problem is that people don’t objectively choose what’s best. Instead, they choose what they’re used to and rationalize why it has to be the best. If your life depended on it, would you rather trust a program written in Ada or C++? Ada has a history of preventing catastrophic errors. C++ does not, yet C++ remains more popular. If more software were written in Ada, there would be fewer software catastrophic failures. People don’t build bridges out of balsa wood because it’s not strong enough or durable enough, yet they don’t make that same distinction between Ada and C++. Ada is strong and safe. C++ is not. Yet the world has adopted C++ instead.

Even the variants of C++ like Java, C#, and Objective-C still retain many of the flaws of C++. Ask a C++ programmer why they don’t use Ada and you’ll hear all sorts of excuses and reasons, but what you won’t hear is that Ada programs are much safer than C++ programs.

From a computer efficiency point of view, C++ beats Ada every time, but software isn’t just about efficiency but reliability and safety too, and that’s where Ada wins every time. Ultimately the only reason people use C++ and its variants is because they don’t value safety and reliability enough to justify switching to Ada. As a result, most personal computers, smartphones, and tablets rely on C++ and its variants, which basically condemns the world with buggy, unreliable, and untrustworthy software.

Is this rational? Of course not, but human beings are anything but rational. The biggest flaw of human beings is that they fool themselves into thinking they’re rational when they’re really not. Yet because they think they are, they won’t bother looking at alternatives.

Despite Ada’s sterling track record, it’s not going to be anyone’s favorite programming language any time soon. Ada is barely taught in college where introductory programming courses prefer overwhelming novices with the complexity of Java or C++ instead. Most compilers are designed for a C++ variant and not for Ada. Ada compilers are simply not as polished as similar compilers for Objective-C or C#, and the opportunities for Ada programmers is much more limited than opportunities for C++ programmers.

Since people rarely think rationally, you can expect this problem to continue in the future. Ada will languish on the sidelines while fulfilling mission-critical programming tasks, and the rest of the world will continue using C++, C#, Java, and Objective-C while not realizing that Ada could be a safer, more trustworthy option. Since it’s unlikely that the world of OS X and iOS programming will adopt Ada any time soon, the best bet is to adopt Apple’s new Swift programming language instead, which combines the speed and efficiency of Objective-C with the safety and readability of Ada.

If you want to know the future of computing, it’s never about features. It’s always about irrational choices that people rationalize later in the future. The next time someone tries to tell you the superiority of anything, just realize there’s probably an even better alternative, but you’ll never look for one if you blind yourself to accepting what everyone else accepts as “the best” in the first place.

About Ada.

A Linux Clone That Mimics OS X

Posted on by Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: The elementary OS operating system is a Linux distribution that focuses on mimicking the appearance of OS X.

If you have a really old Macintosh or PC laying around, chances are good it won’t run the latest operating system. Rather than limp along with an old operating system, you might want to consider installing elementary OS.

The elementary OS operating system is a free, open source Linux distribution that can run on PCs and Macintosh computers. Best of all, its user interface closely mimics OS X so if you’re familiar with OS X, you’ll have no trouble adapting to elementary OS. This will give an old computer new life and give you the familiar OS X user interface to boot.

Of course, elementary OS can’t completely mimic OS X, but its visual appearance is close enough. If you’re not sure, try loading elementary OS in a virtual machine using a program like VirtualBox. Then you can try elementary OS and see what you might like or dislike.

The ultimate goal of any operating system isn’t to show off, but to stay in the shadows behind the scenes and let you actually get work done. In addition, the better operating systems make working fun with interesting animations such as when you minimize a window in OS X and it shrinks and whose to the bottom right corner of the Dock, or when you remove an icon from the Dock and it disappears in a puff of animated smoke.

Such little touches make an operating system fun to use and likable, but the ultimate purpose of any operating system is to make your computer work. Where Vista and Windows 8 go wrong is that they constantly jar the user out of working so instead of thinking about accomplishing a task, Vista and Windows 8 force you to think about using the operating system. The moment you have to think about the operating system, you’re no longer thinking about accomplishing a useful task.

What makes OS X and its mobile equivalent of iOS handy is that both provide just enough visual elements to make using the operating system fun, but not enough distractions to keep you from accomplishing your work. Operating systems should be like butlers, there when you need them but unobtrusively out of the way when you need to focus.

If your Macintosh can’t run the latest version of OS X, there’s no need to update your operating system as long as it works. If you’re still not happy running an older version of OS X, then save your important files and consider installing elementary OS instead. It may not be exactly like OS X, but it’s close enough while giving you a more modern operating system to use that you might realize elementary OS X could be all you really need.

About elementary OS.

Contributing to ResearchKit

Posted on by Posted in Marketing, Medical, Software Leave a comment

What it is: ResearchKit is a software framework that makes it easy for apps to share and retrieve health information for medical research.

Most people can’t recognize innovation even when it’s right in front of their face. Just witness this video of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s former CEO, laughing at the iPhone, which would later go on to earn more money than every product sold by Microsoft. Steve Ballmer’s main criticism of the iPhone was that it didn’t have a physical keyboard, not realizing that the touch screen interface of the iPhone could double up as a virtual keyboard as well as a screen.

So many people claim that Apple has either stopped innovating or has never innovated at all. Yet it’s easy to see how innovation typically goes unrecognized by the masses in the beginning and only gets recognized long after others have already adopted it. One innovation that Apple quietly introduced is ResearchKit, which allows medical researchers to retrieve health data from volunteers all over the world.

In the past, a medical study might be limited to a few hundred people in the immediate area. With ResearchKit, that same medical study can be conducted with thousands of people from different regions with more speed and accuracy than traditional research studies could be conducted. The more data medical researchers can get, the more they can examine information that could lead to medical breakthroughs. ResearchKit is one of Apple’s quiet innovative products that gets overlooked because it’s not a physical product that people can buy. Instead, ResearchKit is a free, open source software framework that anyone can freely use and share.

Apple’s never going to make money directly off ResearchKit, which his probably why so few news stories promote it. However, ResearchKit will indirectly sell more iPhones because that’s the most convenient way for people to share health data with ResearchKit-related apps. As the Apple Watch becomes more popular, you can expect ResearchKit to tap into wearable computers as well.

ResearchKit is a subtle way to sell more iPhones while also advancing medical research dramatically in ways that go far beyond traditional research studies. As more medical researchers rely on ResearchKit, they’ll also likely rely more on Apple products. As more people contribute health data to ResearchKit, they’ll also have an incentive to buy more Apple products, so ResearchKit is Apple’s free way to market their products without being as blatant as an advertisement.

ResearchKit is probably the single most innovative product to come out of Apple in recent years, but you’d never know it with the way the media overlooks it. Perhaps if Steve Ballmer could laugh at ResearchKit like he did the iPhone, that would show everyone exactly how important ResearchKit will be for the future.

About ResearchKit.

The Future is iOS

Posted on by Posted in Marketing, Programming, Software Leave a comment

What it is: iOS is Apple’s mobile operating system that runs on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and soon the Apple TV.

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, recently said that he wanted people to love Windows. That sounds nice, but people really don’t want to love an operating system any more than they want to love the transmission that comes in their car. If Ford or General Motors said they wanted people to love their carburetors, that makes as much sense as Microsoft claiming they want people to love Windows.

Nobody wants to love an operating system except tech-savvy users who don’t care about what most people need and like. Most people just want a device that does the job as quickly and easily as possible. Most people are perfectly happy tossing food into a microwave oven without the manufacturer worrying if their customers love the microwave transmitter inside. People don’t need to love Windows. They need to love what their devices (running Windows) can do for them.

If Microsoft hopes people can love Windows, they’re already aiming for the wrong crowd. Microsoft needs to get people to love their smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Right now, most people tolerate Windows as something they have to use at work, but few people love it. The only way someone will love Windows is if it works without problems and stays out of their way so they can do what they want without constantly maintaining Windows all the time.

While Microsoft is busy trying to get people to love Windows, Apple is busy making products that people truly love like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Nobody loves their iPhone because of the operating system, but the operating system is the hidden brains behind what makes the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch useful. That’s why the future is iOS.

As a user, you don’t need to care what operating system a device uses as long as it works for you. As a developer, the money is in iOS in the same way that the money was in MS-DOS during the early days of PCs when CP/M-80 dominated the personal computer market. If you want to follow the money, follow iOS.

iOS powers the iPhone (the most popular smartphone in the world), the iPad (still the leading tablet in the world), and the Apple Watch (which is redefining the wearable computer market). Smartphones, tablets, and wearable computers are all huge growth areas. Already more people buy smartphones than PCs, and more people are starting to access the Internet exclusively through a mobil device than a PC.

PCs won’t go away in the same way that mainframe computers never went away. Like mainframe computers, PCs just aren’t on the cutting edge of computers any more. If you want to focus on the PC market, you’ll cater to an ever-shrinking clientele base. If you focus on iOS, you’ll cater to the growing market of smartphones, tablets, and wearable computers that will soon outnumber the PC market. The future is iOS.

Once you embrace iOS as the future as a developer, the next step is deciding how to write iOS apps. As confusing and cumbersome as it may be, the most lucrative path for iOS development involves using Apple’s free Xcode compiler and learning Apple’s Swift programming language. Mastering Xcode and Swift may not be as easy as other tools, but it will always keep you on the cutting edge of iOS technology so you can’t afford not to know Xcode and Swift.

Of course to use Xcode, you need a Macintosh, which is just another way to boost sales of Macintosh computers. Despite the growing popularity of OS X, iOS will always be more popular, more lucrative, and more exciting.

Yet nobody loves iOS. People love what iOS can do for them to make their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch useful. There’s a big difference between loving an operating system and loving what an operating system can do for you. Microsoft wants people to love Windows. Apple wants people to love what iOS can do for them. Can you guess which pitch will likely appeal to the general public?

About iOS.

 

The Hidden Potential of Apple TV

Posted on by Posted in Business, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple TV is a box that connects to any television set and provides Internet streaming capabilities.

One recent rumor suggested that Apple shelved a high-definition TV set a few years ago because it wasn’t feasible. Making a better TV isn’t the challenge because hardware is just another commodity. Look at how fast rivals copied the iPhone and iPad with similar hardware. What separates the iPhone and iPad from these copycats is the software, and that’s where the money is in Apple TV.

There’s no reason for Apple to build a TV set when people already have existing TV sets. Building a TV set means competing with hardware specifications, and that’s simply a losing game. Tomorrow one company comes out with a better TV and the next day a rival comes out with a better one. There’s no loyalty in hardware if all TVs basically work alike.

That’s why the real promise of Apple TV isn’t building a TV screen, but providing exclusive access to unique content. One of the more obvious uses for Apple TV is to allow subscribers to pick and choose the channels they want and only pay for those channels. That compares to today’s bizarre cable TV subscription plans that bundle everything but the handful of channels you really want. Then you’re forced to pay for what you don’t want in order to get a deal on the channels you do want. Any time you inconvenience the customer, you can expect the customer to abandon you at the earliest possible moment, and that’s where Apple TV has the potential to grab a huge market share right away.

The second potential for Apple TV lies in exclusive programming and content. You can get a hint of this already with iTunes and Beats Music. Not only did Apple buy Beats Music for their streaming content deals, but they also needed Beats to work with artists who can provide exclusive content only available on iTunes. That exclusive content keeps iTunes form competing in the commodity music field.

A third potential use for Apple TV lies in gaming. Most likely Apple TV will include a faster processor running iOS. Take all those existing iPhone and iPad games, make it easy to port to Apple TV, and you have a new iOS market for apps and games. Dedicated MP3 music players are dead because smartphones like the iPhone can duplicate those functions easily. That hints that dedicated video game consoles may also be dead (their sales are slowing), because a device like Apple TV can duplicate a video game console. Given a choice between an Xbox for PlayStation, or an Apple TV that can play games and also show you exclusive content, the Apple TV will likely be more attractive.

Video game consoles already understand the attractive of exclusive content, so if Apple TV can offer that as well, now Apple TV threatens the video game consoles without the video game consoles able to threaten Apple TV. While Microsoft tried to make the Xbox into a home entertainment system, most people just play video games with it and don’t see the Xbox as a device for watching movies or exclusive TV shows. The Xbox can do all that, but it’s not what most people get an Xbox for and it’s likely not what most people will use an Xbox for.

With its combination features of video games, exclusive content, and lower costs to buy only the channels you want, Apple TV has the potential to redefine the television market. Competitors like Netflix and Hulu have the content, but they lack the hardware access into people’s homes. They can get there through computers, the Xbox or Playstation, or tablets, which makes them versatile, but if Apple TV relies less on its hardware and more on its software (along with an Apple ID), then you’ll be able to watch your content on an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Macintosh. Apple TV shouldn’t limit people to just watching content on Apple TV, but throughout the entire Apple ecosystem of products.

Think of how the Macintosh already makes it easy to answer phone calls from an iPhone or hand off data from an iPhone to a Macintosh and back again. Now think of watching a movie or TV show on your iPhone, then switching to the exact spot on Apple TV when you get home. It’s the integration of the Apple TV with the rest of Apple’s products that promises the future, not just the hardware alone.

Hardware is a commodity. Software is the future. If Apple TV connects to HomeKit for controlling household items like lights and alarms, then you have yet one more reason to get an Apple TV and not something else like an Xbox or Playstation. With Apple, all of their products are connected, and that’s the ecosystem that no rival can touch, which makes Apple TV a looming threat for the near future.

About Apple TV.

HTML Snippets Powered By : XYZScripts.com