Tag Archives: Apple

09.12.14
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News organisations need to focus on customer data as mobile payments take off

With a number of new and updated products announced, Tim Cook looked to make Apple his own just shy of three years since Steve Jobs death, and while much of the focus has been on the Apple watch, to me the most interesting part of the event was mobile payments. I instantly started thinking about how mobile payments would affect the business of journalism. 

Alan Mutter updated a post he wrote on how mobile payments could revolutionise commerce, including the commercial world of journalism. For me, these four paragraphs are key:

Although the outlook (for mobile payments) is unclear, there can be no question that mobile payments will revolutionise marketing by creating an ocean of real-time, granular and precise consumer data.

This matters to publishers and broadcasters, because it means that marketers in the future probably will vector ever more of their advertising dollars into direct connections with consumers, instead of mass media. …

Because rich data – not mass audiences – will be the name of the game in the future, every local media company should be gathering as much data as possible about every household and individual in the community it serves.

The most immediate opportunities to do this are through newsletter programs, contests, site registration and smart mobile apps. Obviously, all of these tactics require close attention to government and corporate privacy policies.

We live in a world of data. Data really is the new oil, and while the challenges for news organisations are myriad, data – and not just in terms of storytelling – is increasingly important. The organisations that master data will be the master of their own destiny, and for news organisations, this might be one of the best last opportunities to retake the initiative. 

10.06.11
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In memory of the vision of Steve Jobs

I woke up this morning where I wake most mornings these days, in a hotel room, and flipped on CNBC, one of the few English language TV stations I can get on the hotels 1500 channel satellite system. They were playing what I thought was an Apple retrospective, but I had missed the beginning. I was looking at my email and saw a message from the editor of FirstPost.com, a site that Suw and I helped launch. Suw is now the contributing technology editor for the site, and I have the grandiose title of writer-at-large, apt for the roving reporter that I am. The email just said get in touch when you’re up. Before the piece on CNBC was finished and I had read another email, I realised that Steve Jobs had died.

I never met Steve Jobs, although I did get close at MacWorld in 2000, which I covered as Washington correspondent for the BBC News website. It was MacWorld New York when he introduced the ill-fated Cube, one of the few flops of his storied second coming. I wrote this of my brush with Steve Jobs:

I was trying to make my way through the crowd of people swarming around the new sleek offerings from Apple at MacWorld when suddenly the crowd split.

It was as if Moses had parted the sea of people.

There he stood in signature black shirt and jeans, the man who made and later saved Apple: Steve Jobs.

For a man I never really met, I was caught off guard by how much Steve Jobs’ death affected me. Working on the piece for FirstPost, I found myself tearing up on several occasions, especially after watching the Think Different advertisement that he narrated, one that was never shown. It felt as if he was narrating his own eulogy.

In all the tributes and reminiscences rolled by today, a 1985 Playboy interview with Steve Jobs (might not want to click on that link at work – Steve’s clothed but the women in the ads aren’t) was making the rounds, and as I read it, I was struck several times why he deserves to be called a visionary. On the information revolution, he said:

We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy–free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt light bulb to run and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution.We’re on the forefront.

What was really interesting in the article, written in 1985 is that it’s quite clear, at least from the point of view of the interviewer, that the case for having a personal computer hadn’t been made yet. Jobs gave him a reason from his insight into the not so distant, and he really hit the nail on the head.

The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people–as remarkable as the telephone.

We still are moving through the early days of this revolution, but Steve Jobs saw it coming more than a quarter of a century ago, when he was only 29-years-old. He didn’t make it to see another 29 years. The world lost a visionary, but his inspiration lives on.

10.20.10
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The Lord of the Rings OS: One OS to rule them all?

Convergence – the combination of multiple entertainment and communication devices and platforms – has been one of those terms tossed around for decades. I first wrote about it in the mid-1990s when I was at university. It has been a rather quixotic quest until now. The handheld devices weren’t powerful or flexible enough. They didn’t have enough storage. Set-top boxes and televisions were pretty dumb in terms of what they could do. They did one thing really well and weren’t extensible. However, we’re starting to see the first glimmer of the pieces falling into place. As Rob Andrews of paidContent.co.uk wrote ahead of the recent launch of Google TV, “Innovation in the connected-TV space is about to explode, in to several, rival parts.” Moreover, it’s not just connected TVs but connected everything – TVs, tablets, phones and computers.

Apple, of course, has been knitting together its vision around OS X and its little brother, iOS. Microsoft has been trying to push this as well for years. While years in the making, their efforts are only now maturing to the point where they are actually compelling. Microsoft tying their new mobile OS to XBox 360 might be a very smart play. Apple’s iOS universe of iPhone, iPad and Apple TV shows their vision.

The two big consumer computer OS makers aren’t the only ones in this game. Motorola is showing off advanced demos of its phones and set-top boxes seamlessly share content, and KDDI in Japan has been using an earlier version of the system for its au Box service. Motorola is now adding its social-network mad Motoblur interface to its set-top boxes. Yes, indeed, it is all blurring together.

Google now has its TV offering with Sony, Logitech and other partners, and this brings together connected televisions, Blu-Ray players and the Android platform on the TV and mobile phones. You can now search broadcast and internet video content just as you search for things on the web. Google TV also runs Android apps and connects nicely to Android phones.

The dark horse in this race is MeeGo, the marriage of Intel’s Mobile and Nokia’s Maemo Linux-based efforts. The goal is the same, to knit together a seamless experience across mobile, home entertainment and other devices such as tablets and netbooks. MeeGo phones are expected to appear in early 2011. Intel believes that building an OS from the ground up for multiple platforms is superior to Google’s approach to drive Android to a range of platforms.

Intel and Nokia definitely have the hardware background, but the interface and content partnerships will be key to this. As recent reviews of its recently released flagship N8 smartphone show, Nokia has the hardware knowledge to make great phones, but it needs to radically rethink its user experience. With consumer electronics, you have to make powerful hardware that is so simple to use that it borders on seeming magical. Will MeeGo be a clean break from its past? We’ll have to see.

Whether you call it convergence or the post-PC era, to resurrect another decade-old phrase, the game is really on now with players from the computer, internet, consumer entertainment and content industries all approaching this from slightly different angles. This will remake technology, entertainment and information, and the battle is now on.

07.05.10
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Battle for the Living Room: Apple TV shifting to app strategy?

The living room (lounge for UK readers) is one of the most interesting tech spaces right now, and it’s got nothing to do with 3-D TV. (Just for the record, I’ve been referring to this as the Battle for the Living Room for a while now, lest anyone think I’m just ripping off Mashable headlines.) The blurring of the lines between internet video and broadcast television and between computers and traditional televisions is bringing consumer electronics companies and computer companies into a new competitive space.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times’ Bits Blog looks at how Apple could be looking to re-invent its rather sleepy Apple TV line. One of the big changes is that a new Apple TV could be based on the iOS that powers Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Why is this important?

If Apple does use the iOS software, it would allow people to download applications like the Netflix app, which allows streaming movies and TV shows; ABC’s TV player; or Hulu’s latest video streaming application.

This space is getting very crowded. As both Mashable and Nick pointed out, Google and Sony are going to launch Google TV. It will be based on its Android operating system, and an Android marketplace for Google TV will launch in early 2011.

Alt media centre software maker Boxee has its own apps and has launched its own hardware, the first Boxee box is coming from D-Link. (It was supposed to be out in the second quarter of this year, but it has now been delayed until November.)

Here in the UK, the BBC has won approval to proceed with its own project to bring its iPlayer catch-up service to the living room with Project Canvas. What is Project Canvas? From a story on the BBC News website:

Project Canvas is a partnership between the BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and TalkTalk to develop a so-called Internet Protocol Television standard.

The technology will be built into a number of set-top boxes. However, Canvas is UK-only, and as Robert Andrews at paidContent points out, there is a pan-European standard that has beaten Canvas to market: HbbTV.

Of course, hyper-competitive also leaves the potential for consumer confusion, and this looks like it might make the VHS v Beta battle look like minor scrap. Right now, we’re in the gold rush period, with a mad dash by a lot of major players to dominate this space. It’s very early days, and a lot of the products are little more than announcements. What is very interesting is that we’ve got a lot of major companies coming from sectors that previously didn’t overlap that much apart from some of the major Japanese players. They will not back down without a fight. It will be very interesting to see what our living rooms look like in 2015.

04.02.10
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iPad app pricing: A last act of insanity by delusional content companies

Looking at the iPad app rollout, you can easily separate the digital wheat from the chaff in the content industries, and you can see those who are developing digital businesses and those who are trying to protect print margins and who see the iPad as a vertical, closed model to control and monetise content.

There are those who believe that they sell content and that they should be compensated for it. Just as with the music industry, they couch this in terms of repaying content creators, when it really is more about wistfulness for the days of double-digit profit margins.

Those who view their primary business as selling content believe that not only can they charge for it but that they can actually charge the same or more for it, just because it is on the iPad. Time, for example, is charging $4.99 a week for their iPad ‘magazine’.

Scott Karp, CEO of Publish2 and editor of Publishing2.0, put it as clearly as it needs to be put on Twitter:

Paying $4.99 for magazine on newsstand includes cost of printing/distribution. Now you pay for iPad instead, so magazine should cost less.

What do you get for $4.99 a week?

Unique interactivity including landscape and portrait mode, scroll navigation and customizable font size

Oh, I’ve never seen that in a mobile web browser, I say with incalculable levels of sarcasm. That’s like morons in the 90s having Java animation that you actually couldn’t do anything with and calling that interactivity. You think that’s insane and delusional, just wait, it gets even better! No content sharing on the app, which I’m assuming means you can’t bookmark or Tweet your favourite stories, and you’ll have to buy and download the app every single week. There is also no indication that they will charge for their now free iPhone app or their website.

Note to Time digital strategists: Sorry caching your site so I can take it with me when I’m on the move isn’t a feature worth your premium pricing. I do that now, and have done it for years, with an open-source app called Plucker and an aging Palm T3. I’m truly sorry. Do you actually use the internet or digital devices or do you just indulge your bosses’ angry fantasies about the good old days?

Let’s look to Rupert Murdoch’s proud paid content pioneer, the Wall Street Journal. What is the Wall Street Journal selling? The past. Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor, online for the Wall Street Journal, says on MarketWatch:

We have come up with a version of the Wall Street Journal on the iPad that I think is closest you get to a newspaper reading experience on a digital device.

To be fair to Murray, he goes on to say that anyone giving their content away for free on the web won’t be able to convert those readers on the web to paid readers on the iPad. Murray says:

You have these apps, but you also have a web browser. So I don’t see how any newspaper that is giving its content away for free on the web is going to be saved by the iPad because the iPad makes it easier to access that free content.

Unless the Wall Street Journal’s app not only delivers me a ‘newspaper reading experience’ (which I frankly am not missing anyway) but also picks my stocks for me so that I can retire next year, I’m not going to pay $17.99 a month for it when I can subscribe to their website for $1.99 a week. I didn’t work on a journalist’s salary and still manage to be in a financially secure position by giving money away to grumpy old media moguls like Murdoch.

Paul Kedrosky, venture capitalist and private equity investor who writes the blog Infectious Greed, said on Twitter:

Paying $17.29/mo for WSJ iPad app should disqualify you for something important, like being allowed to use money.

As I’ve said before, Murdoch for all of his brash brilliance has no understanding of the economics of digital businesses. I give him props for still having the power to shift the discussion, and I think that his paywall strategy at the Times might help it stem its £250,000 a day losses. However, his paywall strategy is a defensive move, not a long term strategy. Unless he starts building credible digitally-focused businesses as soon as the paywall brings in some cash to stabilise the business, it will be a brief pause on the path to collapse.

Now, let’s look at other strategies for the iPad. Let’s look at the FT. Robert Andrews, UK editor of paidContent, says that the FT secured sponsorship that allows it to offer its iPad app for free for two months, after which time they will shift to subscription model with the promise of additional features. Much cleverer.

Suw and I talk often that one thing really lacking when it comes to digital content is commercial experimentation. The FT securing sponsorship for a free app for two months is a good step at not only experimenting with content but also with payment models. The Economist earlier this year released a report on social networking, allowing users to download it for free and giving sponsor prominent credit for the offer. This is clever. Premium sponsorship opportunities for special content or services.

Look at the development thinking behind National Public Radio’s iPad app. They did market research and found that up to 5% of their audience were planning on buying an iPad. They knew what the opportunity was. They also used iPad development to improve the experience for visitors coming from search or social networking services, explains Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of NPR Digital Media.

Compare the strategies and thinking. On the one hand we have a set of pricing models that deliver marginal value for premium prices and show very little that differentiate themselves from the web experience, although they expect to charge more. These pricing models are based on a sense of entitlement to set pricing as it was in the days of print. I won’t even call them strategies because they lack any kind of realistic strategic thinking.

On the other hand we have a set of strategic pricing structures. NPR takes a realistic look at the commercial potential, does market research and develops its app not just for a single device but also as a chance to make improvements to their overall service. The FT experiments not just with content but also with the commercial strategy.

In terms of who is positioning themselves for the future by delivering value to their audiences and experimenting with business models, it’s clear. If any company thinks that the iPad will allow them to rebuild the monopoly rent pricing structure of the 20th Century, then you’ve really fallen prey to the Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, and you’ve blown yet another chance to build a credible digital business. However, I’ve got a game you might want to check out, Final Fantasy.

01.28.10
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The iPad is a content strategy

As a geek and a journalist who often covers technology, I pay attention to the gigabytes and gigahertz that most people don’t. To be honest, in the era of giga-computing, the average user can’t really tell the different between a dual-core computer running at 2.3Ghz or 3.2Ghz. It does whatever they need it to.

The tech spec arguments have now moved on to netbooks and mobile phones, devices where a beefier processor can mean the difference between a smooth experience and a jerky, frustrating one. The spec counters have come out in force to denounce the Apple iPad: A 1Ghz chip sounds pretty weak. No USB. No expansion slot. 3G as an option.

As they do so often, spec counters and feature fanatics miss the point. There are phones on the market that do more than the iPhone but few do those things so well. When you’ve got a device that doesn’t have the almost limitless power of today’s desktop computers, you have to make choices.

However, with the iPad, that’s actually beside the point. The iPad is first and foremost a consumer electronics device. Do you worry about the processor in your cable box? No. The set-top box is merely an electronic gateway to content, and that’s what Apple is hoping to create with the iPad.

Yes, there are other media slates out there. Just look at the nearly dozen slates that NVidia was plugging at CES. HP will release a tablet later this year, and Amazon is going to beef up the Kindle. However, none of those devices has iBooks or the apps, games, music, movies and television available from the iTunes store. No other device offers this kind of content. I’ll agree with Joshua Benton at the Nieman Lab that the iPad is focused on ‘reinventing content, not tablets‘. iTunes and its effortless integration with the iPod helped differentiate it from the crowded market of MP3 players, and the content is what Apple is hoping will ensure the success of a new type of device, the iPad.

Consumers still have to render their verdict on the iPad, but the stakes for Apple aren’t just about the success of a single device but really about a much broader digital media strategy.

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