Open sourcing webOS changes nothing

A couple of months after the company announced the death of webOS, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman has thrown the OS a lifeline in the form of the open source community. The greatest takeaway from this announcement is the fact that webOS is not dead. It's now vastly in the hands of passionate developers to build upon and improve efficiently whilst being freely distributed for anyone to use.

From the outset, we couldn't have possibly gotten it better, open source developers as a collective can make changes and improvements much more quickly and efficiently than the vast bureaucratic corporate structure of HP ever could. And speaking from a consumer's own vantage, we have another free operating system to contribute to the highly valued element of choice. As well as being a free operating system, webOS exhibits polish, the kind of quality you'd generally expect to pay for.

Looking past the thin veil of optimism, none of this changes the fact that HP webOS failed tremendously, such to the point that it was actually dead for a period of time. It doesn't change the fact that there is yet to be any worthy complementing hardware for webOS and in no way does it contribute to the operating system's relatively minute app developer community. It offers no succour for the fact that iOS, Android and even Windows Phone already have significant market share to leverage whilst webOS has virtually none to boot. Most importantly, it doesn't change the fact that HP is still yet to find any significant value proposition in webOS to gain hardware partners.

It's quite clear that keeping webOS as a proprietary OS in the hands of HP was no longer a viable option. The fledgling operating system was already skating on thin ice even before HP's immense Touchpad failure, and the heat of the competition from Apple and Google was slowly melting away at HP's chances of even minor success. The Touchpad, as the inaugural HP/webOS tablet had to be pretty darn good, but it wasn't.

I've always believed that it takes multiple subsequent impressions to eliminate the sentiments from a single first impression, and HP's first efforts at a truly mobile operating system in webOS left consumers and pundits with a sour sour taste. It would take the bare minimum of two years to manufacture sufficient subsequent efforts to try and clean the taste, and even then, imminent slow sales could hamper the webOS image even further and render the $1.2 billion acquisition essentially worthless. It would be too risky. Leo Apotheker wasn't completely out of his mind to cancel HP's webOS project altogether.

So, as much as persevering with webOS would have been a desirable trajectory, the plan was ultimately destined for failure. HP had various other options including licensing and selling the operating system off. Both these options I believe would have been higher on HP's priority list given their capabilities of monetization. But licensing was always an unreachable dream given the free availability of an operating system in Android with a lot more to offer, and there simply isn't a discernible target market large enough for those hardware manufacturers wanting webOS purely for diversity. To add insult to injury, clearly nobody was interested in buying webOS from HP.

By the looks of it, open sourcing was just a last resort for an HP that had completely run out of ideas. They couldn't make it work for themselves, they couldn't license it, they couldn't sell it so they've decided simply give it away.

HP is a profit-seeking corporation, they certainly wouldn't want to open source and wouldn't have made the decision had they not be in a position that forced it. The soul reason that Google voluntarily open-sources Android is because they have an ecosystem to tie users into so they can profit from users consequentially by putting their services into as many hands as possible.

All HP has is a lonesome operating system, tied into an ecosystem with little value, and no web services aside from a fairly deserted sandpit of an app store attached to it. Open sourcing doesn't cater to HP's personal vantage aside from the distant goal that perhaps they could capitalise on webOS in any way in the future if it ever gains any traction - but that's a far-fetched dream with various apples and green robots obstructing the path to the gold medallion.

Despite the aura of optimism and excitement shrowding the open sourcing of webOS, webOS is still in a poor position to compete. I hate to be the pessimist, in fact, I'm usually the optimist - I believed for a long time that if Sony played it right they could compete against Apple's iPod, I still believe that RIM can get right back into the smartphone game and I believed that HP had a shot at tablet market share if the Touchpad hadn't been a year out of date.

webOS has polish, it has a clean interface, it works darn well but that's not enough for a world so invested in apps, content and cross device integration. HP's open source plan will maintain webOS as a niche platform for a community of passionate webOS die-hards, but it will never find the mainstream traction HP were hoping for simply because it doesn't have the ecosystem lever that companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft possess.

Carrier IQ isn't tracking you, it's helping you

With a class action lawsuit and the whole world against them, Carrier IQ have found themselves in a place they never thought they'd be in - a target for litigation with the torch of the public eye shining right in their faces.

Trevor Eckhart, a 25 year old man from Connecticut discovered a mysterious piece of software by the name of 'IQRD' installed on his HTC Android smartphone. It wasn't seen in his running programs list in task manager, but it was always running, and virtually impossible to stop. Through investigation, Eckhart discovered that this humble little software was capable of much more than any other application on his phone. It could see what he was doing.

Carrier IQ has software installed on almost 150 million phones, software which has the capability of tracking your every activity - your keystrokes, your text messages, your calls and even your browsing history. The company didn't do themselves any favours by sending a cease and desist letter to Eckhart. After all, telling someone to shut up, albeit in a orderly and business-like manner isn't too different from telling the rest of the world that you have something very sinister to hide. But this ill-informed perception multiplied by the sensationalist media is quite contrary to reality, Carrier IQ have nothing to hide. And surely nothing sinister to hide.

The whole scandal has been in most part an enormous public relations disaster, with what is genuinely a small issue being blow exponentially out of proportion. The phrase 'your phone is tracking you' has an unnecessarily dire ring to it and unsurprisingly it's been a phrase that the media has overused countless times throughout the duration of this scandal. The truth is, even though your phone is capable of tracking your every move, is it really? And to be entirely pragmatic, why would the carrier have even the slightest concern on the content of your text message or browsing history?

Sure, Carrier IQ, along with the carriers may have stumbled into a moral grey area by not clearly informing consumers of the presence of the tracking software on phones. But the basic use case of Carrier IQ's software doesn't deem it as a necessity. Despite the fact that Carrier IQ can see everything you're doing, the software acts a lot like a drug sniffing dog. It sniffs into every nook and cranny but only barks when it finds drugs. Carrier IQ reads everything, but only records abnormal or undesired behaviour - like a dropped call, unloading webpage or a failed text message. The software discards everything else almost as soon as it comes in.

At that, Carrier IQ is really just a mandatory process, another gear in the whole working mechanics of the carriers and your phones. Your carrier contract doesn't inform you that your calls and texts operate by sending signals to satellites and that your phone operates by passing electronic currents through wires and complicated circuit-boards. Why then, would it be necessary to inform users that their phone occasionally picks up abnormal data in order to ultimately better their phone experience? It's just part of the process.

By the hard stencilled writing of the law, the company have potentially acted illegally, breaching federal wire-tapping law. But to what good is the law when it can't account for crucial contextual detail, and in this case Carrier IQ have engaged in unlawful activity but whilst benefiting everyone involved. What they're doing simply isn't a bad thing.

To give the company what they've been handed in the past week is unquestionably unfair. As the world shoots at the company for immoral and unethical behaviour, this destructive negativity itself is in breach of ethics. It's unethical to throw metaphorical faeces at an innocent company simply doing their job.

Nobody's reading your text messages, nobody's looking at your web history, nobody is stalking you. Carrier IQ is helping you, while the media attempts to earn the ad dollars by selling the lopsided hyperbole they're here to write.

It's time that people got a look at the broader picture of the Carrier IQ 'scandal', instead of spreading the word that Carrier IQ is 'tracking you', 'stalking you', 'watching you' and a bunch of other bull excrement that the media put into their mouths. 

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The Social Factor

So, what is the social factor? The social factor is a collective term I like to use to describe a service or product that embraces active user engagement. User engagement not in the sense of poking and prodding said item physically, but personal engagement with a product and personal engagement between users. Thus, commenting and reviewing apps and music on iTunes can be coined as a product of the the social factor, communicating with Youtubers in a comment flame war is an element of the social factor and of course Twitter and Facebook among other social networks are examples of the social factor in its purest form - social networking.

The social realm has received a generous ignition recently, with the release of Google's own Google+ service as well as the revealing - not unveiling - of Microsoft's oddly named Socl service. It's a completely different landscape from not too long ago when the heavenly abode of social was occupied almost exclusively by Facebook and Twitter. Myspace was descending precipitously with the accolade of an also-ran.

Fast forward a few years, to now, and for the most part the social realm paints a fairly similar picture when looking at the colours of the raw hard numbers. Facebook dominates the social networking space with upwards of 800 million active users, and Twitter with a user base of more than 100 million still trumps that of a fast growing Google+. That's all not to mention actual user engagement, an aspect that Google+ has struggled to maintain following the pre-release hype.

Numbers don't count for everything though, and despite Facebook's considerable lead, Google+ isn't out of the game, and Microsoft Socl isn't dead on arrival. Far from it.

The term social networking is a particularly deceitful monicker given the image that most people have of what a social network is. To most people, a social network is simply what Facebook is - a platform for interacting with friends, and sharing content with friends. At that, Facebook's greatest value proposition isn't in the service itself, but the users that inhabit it. In such a business where the most effective way to get users, is to have users, anyone attempting to beat Facebook at its own games playing by the same rules will end up with a slap on the face and a disheartening, unsurprising disappointment.

Google+ and Microsoft Socl are both great platforms by their very own merits, they're not trying to be Facebook killers, and if they were, then they would quite literally be throwing an untrained army of 50 million against a heavily armed pack of 800 million. It's not possible. It will never work. It will never happen. Let's talk about Google+, and what this element of social plays for Google.

Jolie O'Dell of Venturebeat published a comprehensive article recounting Google's Bradley Horowitz's views on their very own 'social network', Google+. Initially, I assumed his general carefree aura on the, I wouldn't say failure, but perhaps under-performance, of Google+ could be none more than the typical cavalier executive talk. But, Horowitz revealed a vision for Google+ that not only negated my impulse expectations, but his trajectory for the Google+ was elegant and clever, bringing to light that the social factor has implications far beyond the superficiality of people interaction.

Google+ is all about an online identity, an online persona that we have - a virtual porting of our real selves. When you're able to put yourself into the products and services that you use, the seeming triviality of technology is put into perspective and given context. It transforms technologies that are passive, into an actively intricate emulation of our real social communications and inner selves. Essentially, even if social interactions form the core of what constitutes social networking and the social factor, it's greater purpose is to make technology that much more personal.

You see, it's basic human nature that we hold much more sentimental value to the things that are closest to our hearts. For most non-cyborg human beings, the 'things' that we are most emotionally attached to are the people around us, our friends, our family, our boyfriends, our girlfriends. Sure I'd cry if I dropped my phone off the balcony but I'd cry a heck of a lot harder if my mom died. I have a mate who was driving himself half bonkers because he misplaced a pen his girlfriend had given him despite that fact that there were many smoother and inkier pens lying around.

Taking into account this hierarchy of sentimental importance, it makes sense to integrate our personal lives into our products because it allows for a much greater degree of emotional attachment - a sly, but clever tactic to keep consumers loyal.

Microsoft Socl in many ways aims to pursue this same vision of a more personal technology, however aims to add more practical benefits to this.

I, as many are am a little spacey on the tid-bits and details of Microsoft's 'maybe not even coming into market' social network, after all, the only half-decent look we've had at it was when The Verge was granted some much appreciated hands on time. The interface design is fairly standard, calling upon the three column layout shared by Facebook and Google+. And Microsoft were not very creative with the colour scheme either with an eerily similar blue to that of Facebook's, though with a slightly lighter and perhaps more pleasant tinge.

A stand out feature though was something dubbed 'social search'. No, it's far from a revelation, but it shows what social is capable of, and why social is so important to completing a product ecosystem. Social search simply allows your friends to see the queries that you throw at search engines, with the hope that they'll be able to chip in too.

As experience should teach us, it's much easier to extract information out of knowledgeable humans than a knowledgeable website. Hence why we have teachers in classrooms as opposed to a Google homepage. With social search, a Microsoft Bing search has potential to provide better results than a Google search.

What's more, for Microsoft, social search finally allows them to put that tortured little Bing to good use, and as a moral boost, Microsoft can finally start telling people that their foray into search wasn't completely absent of fruits. Microsoft have reiterated that search is an important field that they needed to be involved in, and social search certainly does give it something to show for - a fully integrated Microsoft experience. Without Google. And social search gives Microsoft's Bing a reason to be, because currently, aside from the flashy backdrop of good photography - which, let's be honest is only remotely interesting for those who don't know what they're searching for before they arrive at Bing - Google's a better bet anyway.

The social factor is inarguably invaluable in providing a good ecosystem. Apple tried and failed with iTunes Ping, which demonstrates that even Apple is aware of the capabilities that the emotional and personal attachments of social can have on a consumer.

Aside from providing an online identity as Google+ aims to provide, Google+ unifies Google's too-many-laned highway of products into a flowing single vertical. By having a basic identity tied into all that Google provides, it allows the consumer to act as an umbrella over all the Google services they use and leaves them less chance to drop one, forgotten in the rain. It gives the user more control. Furthermore, Socl social search exemplifies the single greatest thing about the social factor by allowing a company to tap into their single greatest asset - the users themselves. 

How to win in television

As a backdrop to the all too common mobile device war, TVs are starting to capture the attention of technology enthusiasts with the rumours of an Apple television set possibly appearing sometime in 2013. The recently unveiled biography of Steve Jobs has revealed a vague trajectory of Apple's plans in an entrance to the television market. In the meantime, Sony warned investors a fortnight ago of an imminent 2.2 billion dollar loss on its bleeding television business, making it the fourth consecutive year in which Sony's television division has remained unprofitable.

There's a powerful demarcation to be made here - why would investors and pundits be potentially excited over the notion of Apple television when Sony, a long time and trusted manufacturer in this business isn't even capable of hauling in a profit themselves? Most of us, would have never pictured Apple building their very own in house television set, the Apple TV always looked about as far as they would be willing to dip their toes into the deep television pond. The deep television pond infested by manufacturers willing to reap the slimmest margins to undercut competitors.

You see, that's the biggest problem with the television business for Apple, and even Sony, - it's heavily commoditised and highly competitive. With its vast manufacturing scale and supply chains, Samsung is more capable than most other manufacturers of profiting from television, and even their performance remains modest at best. 

Apple as a newcomer to the competition couldn't possibly expect to be able to develop in-house and manufacture quality televisions at the same scale as Samsung or even Sony and be able to deliver an affordable product to the end consumer. On the flip side of the coin, if Apple were to outsource production and buy flat panels from existing manufacturers - like Samsung - then they wouldn't exactly be innovating with their product would they, which by all accounts would most likely oppose Apple's ethic entirely.

Television is a business where it's very hard to differentiate or maintain an exclusive, Sony's Phil Molyneux even criticised the nature of television labelling this monotonous line of similar products as the 'sea of sameness'. Given product differentiation is so difficult to achieve, price differentiation is the only remaining resort, turning television into the bleeding, painful and low margin business that it is today.

Apple doesn't like playing the game that way. Historically speaking, Apple enjoys exclusivity around their products - a business model that doesn't always equate to leading market share, but always pulls in a huge profit, brand loyalty and evidently a glorious stock price. A sweeping dichotomy from conformist television manufacturers. So how do you work around this? How can you win in a business when it's hard to even break even?

First off it's important to evaluate the importance of television in an overall vision, or perhaps more importantly, the role of television in the the direction of the technology industry as a whole. It's fair to say that the whole industry is leading towards an almost universally pursued four screen strategy involving smartphones, tablets, personal computers and of course the television.

When Google and Apple begin hinting at entrances into certain markets, you know things are about to get real, and for television, Google's already waddling in the water albeit with a little uncertainty and we're expecting Apple to take a fully committed chunky dunk. Apple revolutionised the music industry with its ubiquitous iPod. Apple almost single-handedly crafted the modern smartphone, and Google made it big. Apple created and revolutionised a practically non-existent tablet market and Google made sure there was a little more variety to suit everyone. There's no reason that in their monstrous tandem, these two will be able to revolutionise the plateauing television business as well.

Consumers aren't going to be prepared to pay anymore than they are already for a television, especially given the state of the economy. Even if manufacturers gathered to form a pact that ensures a handsome profit for every unit sold, consumers wouldn't buy, even if they had no choice. Televisions are costly, low replacement devices, so consumers typically only replace televisions when they really need to. And a steep price increase for already rather steeply priced televisions would only push consumers to eBay and second hand items. To pursue this current business model in selling televisions as passive displays is not a feasible model, it never was, but now, we have better options.

The analogue age was a time when devices could thrive even when operating on a shallow and superficial microcosmic level. Devices were sold on the merits of their hardware capabilities, the quality of its parts and its physical design, as opposed to its potential for customisation and expansion. That analogue era, was long ago, but for the most part, television is still there - with picture quality and hardware quality still very much on the priority list for TV buyers. To win in television, we must relay our focus completely from commoditised hardware and aim to sell on the merits of potential expansion, integration, connectivity and content. Aim to emulate Amazon's business model for the Kindle Fire tablet - make a small loss or just break even on the hardware, and aim to cover that cost in packaging good software and selling content.

Google TV was initially poised to be the redefining of television but I think it's fair to say that we all misjudged, or more suitably, over-judged it's potential. Logitech's CEO went so far to state that the company had made 'a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature', and the company had no plans to release a second generation Revue set top box. Sony hasn't achieved much success with their Google TV either.

Google TV never took off and still hasn't largely because it simply doesn't offer anything exclusive in the way of content, it contains Netflix and Pandora among other video and music subscription services but these services are all accessible through other mediums. And with all these content services being provided by third parties, once again we're not making much money on selling content and therefore unable to afford reaping negative or neutral margins on TV units.

But securing profits directly from selling content isn't the key, because most of the revenue is inevitably turned over in royalties to the content owners. In fact, the most popular online music store, iTunes, earned $1.9 billion dollars in revenue in 2007 according to Ed Christman, the retail columnist for the Billboard. However, taking into account royalties and operational expenses, Apple took away less than $400 million on its music store that year. Google recently sent out invitations to a Los Angeles event on November 16 which appears to be hinting at a music store, if Google has indeed struck a deal with the major labels I'll be damned if they're going to make as much dough per song purchase as Apple's iTunes store.

The idea though, in operating content stores is to provide a little extra change to allow for more flexibility when pricing television sets, after all, you can expect to subsidise at least some of the losses on unit sales with profits from content stores. Additionally, content stores that integrate well within an established ecosystem are just another incentive for consumers to want in - a core reason why Google TV has failed to catch on. Google currently has no music or video store and therefore no genuine reason for Android users to invest further in Google's ecosystem; adding insult to injury, the assortment of Google's cloud services like Docs, Gmail and Reader have no meaningful integration in Google TV.

The Google TV saga also serves to teach us that evidently, it's not enough to simply throw in some apps, integrate subscription services and allow native Youtube and web browser access to 'revolutionise' television. That's not enough because a consumer savvy enough to even adopt a young platform in Google TV would most likely be in possession of a tablet; and why compromise the display real estate of the television when you could be web browsing, Facebook-ing and Twitter-ing right from your tablet while watching TV. Essentially, the additions Google TV provides are more novel than genuinely useful.

You see, if Apple had simply thrown in a well-performing web browser, some fun apps and deep music store integration into a basic Blackberry form factor, would Apple still have revolutionised entirely the smartphone industry? No, not at all. Not even a little bit. So it's no surprise that Google hasn't done so with the television.

Apple revolutionised the smartphone because they changed the way we interacted with and used our phones. Apple turned scrolling into flicking, and pushing into pinching. Google on the flip side has only added quasi-useful functionality to television and we're still stuck with the same basic interface model of remote controls and navigational D-pads. Apple is now poised on the precipice of perhaps another revolution, and now couldn't possibly be a more timely hour for Apple given they've created a potentially revolutionary new way to interact with our devices, Siri. Siri, the voice interaction engine more human than anything we've seen before. Or heard before. If Steve Jobs' message to his biographer - 'I finally cracked it' a TV that is 'completely easy to use' - is anything to go by, then Siri is an almost certain implementation.

A lot of the time, it's not alterations in what we use a device for that cause excitement, but how we use it that strikes a certain spark in our fickle emotions. Take the Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect as a classic example, serving the same purpose but in two completely different ways. Sales figures can speak for this story. Siri can be our new remote control, and even then, it could probably do so much more.

We're standing on the very edge, the dividing line, the stepping stone to a new generation of television. And if any company believes that right now is a good time to depart the painful television business, then, well, bad move. Television is a crucial element in the completion of our technological circle, we'll always have living rooms - and to simply exit the business soully because of non-profitability is a little short sighted.

Previously, in the analogue age where products were sold largely on the merits of themselves, as opposed to their integration with other devices, television would have been a poor business. But today, television isn't heading towards being a lucrative business that rakes in an abundance of dough, but rather a crucial business which provides a little chump change. The rise of the 'ecosystem' and cross device integration has allowed for the creation of the 'prison', though more often than not this prison is one that we, as consumers voluntarily move into. Locking consumers in is priceless for those corporations hoping to capitalise on their existing user base, and of course, force loyalty from the consumer.

Apple TV was never enough for Apple because it's simply not enough to add your ecosystem to a television set when you're merely a 'connection' as opposed to the real deal.

This is why I am almost certain that Apple will make a television set, one which has unsurpassed integration with Apple's ecosystem as its highest value proposition. Because a great ecosystem and great software is the only viable path in an industry infested with competitors who are inevitably capable of making better hardware and selling it for less.

Having said that, Apple's not going to be reaping huge profits on television, in fact, television for Apple may very well end up being a loss leader. Apple will probably sell a television set at an enticing price point coupled with revolutionary interaction models (Siri), invoking an almost impulse purchase and naturally building a large user base for Apple's televisions. Sure, they've lost money on selling the television sets at such a price but they can subsidise that loss partially with content sales on the device, via iTunes. To place the cherry on the cake, one more Apple product in the hands of consumers, is just one more reason to invest further and deeper into Apple's ecosystem, equating essentially to subsequent profits from selling more iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs.

It's a plan for the long term, and that's how you win in television. 

Rant: Blackberry Buzzkill

RIM earlier this week made the maligned announcement that the much anticipated Playbook OS 2.0 wouldn't be out until February 2012. RIM made clear that they wanted very much to have the product in our hands today, but unfortunately had to make the difficult decision to wait until they were confident they had a decent, complete and market-ready product. Well, that sure does speak a lot about the initial launch of the Blackberry Playbook, doesn't it?

The leaders at Blackberry have shrouded themselves in a cloud mushroom of lies and broken promises, and are desperately trying to make amends of their tattered public image by hiding behind a veil of PR small talk. Whatever it is they're doing, it's really not working because more than ever, consumers have lost faith in what was once the beloved makers of the Blackberry. A few months ago, the well-informed technology society was given the clearest indication that RIM was a breaking company. Aside from the declining market share and dwindling influence that was so plainly obvious on the outside, the open letter written by a disheartened RIM employee to RIM's senior management team gave us a snapshot of the turmoil residing inside RIM's inner sanctum. It became clear that it was not only a company that was losing a battle to the competition, but a company that was a losing a battle to itself, a company run by people who forgot their goal and were too busy playing catch up to recognise what they were really here for.

RIM's response to this letter funnily enough encapsulated entirely what was so wrong with this company - they were, and still are, completely out of touch. The letter response dodged every single valid question and objection posed to the RIM senior management team, cluelessness was haplessly disguised in phoney statements of optimism and opportunity pursuits, written by a person who much like the group he represented had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

Which brings me to now, and why I'm writing this rant today.

Back when the Playbook launched, the RIM leaders promised a native email client, a native contact client and a native calendar app 'soon'. We later found out that the root cause for the delays of these instrumental applications was deep within the foundations of RIM's system itself. We accepted this, so we gave RIM time. After Blackberry World 2011 RIM representatives told the press that we would be getting native email sometime this 'summer' without a specific date. We waited. We never got it. We were then told Playbook OS 2.0 would be made available in mid October after Blackberry Devcon America. But it wasn't. And now it's been pushed back 4 months to February 2012 which will make it little less than a year for an update that really should have been available from day 1.

Buying the Playbook always meant taking the good with the bad, and with the Playbook it meant filling a few gaping holes with a few tolerable compromises. Being an early adopter means buying products not for what they are, but for the potential that you see in them. When I bought the Blackberry Playbook, I didn't turn my back on it and make snide remarks on the absence of essentials, but I saw it for the multitasking prowess that QNX possessed and the ways it could integrate with RIM's acclaimed services and their overall vision.

Early adopters drive the market, and they drive competition. Without them, there wouldn't be a tablet market at all, but merely an iPad market; because what sober person, save for the Apple haters, would pick up a Honeycomb tablet as the product it is today against the iPad 2 as it is today. I'm trying to remain as objective as I possibly can here, so here's a few points you can't possibly argue against - Honeycomb has a serious app deficiency against the iPad and Honeycomb is unarguably a less stable operating system. And a few subjective points that I hold against Honeycomb are the inconsistency of aesthetics within the UI and the utter uselessness of multiple home-screens on a large display.

But I digress. The crucial point here is that early adopters are driven by promise of what will be delivered in the future. As an early adopter of the Blackberry Playbook I was fed by the promise of native email, native calendar, native contacts 'soon', 3 essentials that would make the Playbook a more complete utility - something that the product wasn't when it launched. It's taken more than half a year and deducing from RIM's sly previous efforts at PR, these three native apps are nowhere close to fruition.

Congratulations on killing the buzz, and absolutely butchering the first year of your entrance into the tablet world RIM. Stellar job. You failed to excite the average consumer market, you failed to entice the enterprise, and worse, you made the early adopters second guess their risky investment in buying your incomplete product. I don't regret purchasing a Playbook, not at all. In fact, despite its glaring omissions I'm still proud to say it's the greatest tablet on the market. But, had I known RIM were going to take their sweet time in blessing us with native email, contacts and calendar then I sure as hell would have taken my time in buying one too.

When things start to get a little out of hand

'Super size me,' is what the smartphone told the world. And so we did.

The inexorable rise of the mega-phone, or the super-phone or the jumbo-phone pretty much sums up the trajectory of the majority of smartphone vendors - Power = bigger and bigger = better. I talk a lot about the superficial and non-pragmatic spec wars that so many Android vendors are focused on, attempting to make their phone that 1% faster for succeeding generations instead of making the basic phone experience better. It now seems that this focus for more powerful, more 'mega' and more 'super' is now translating to the phone's physical size - in a way saying 'I made this phone faster, but since specs are nothing more than a whole lot of coded tech jargon to most, I'm just going to make the screen bigger so you can easily see what I've done.' And yes, we can see what you've done, because now your phone is that much harder to grasp in the hand.

Whatever happened to small and chic? 6 or so years ago when there was no iPhone or big touch screen phones and the only successful smartphone was a Blackberry, small was in. Small was hip, and miniaturisation was definitive of high-tech. People were amazed that you could fit so much awesome into something so small. The whole line of Siemens phones comes to mind, a market failure no doubt but still undeniably cool. As a kid I didn't know a friend who wouldn't have pounced on a Siemens handset had they the cash - which is unfortunately something that elementary school kids inherently lack. Successful examples of handset miniaturisation are the Sony Ericsson W880i - a supermodel handset and the Motorola RAZR both emphasising their merits for both thin and small.

Fast forward several years and at the rate we're going we'll have six inch phones in a couple of years, and I hate to be the one to break it but the human race won't have hands big enough to account for such gargantuan gadgets in 2 years time - evolution is not that fast. Evolution isn't running a 1.2ghz dual-core, in fact it's probably running the same piece of junk hiding shamefully inside my graphics calculator.

I claim no hatred against these 'larger' phones nor do I consider myself a Luddite desperately clinging onto the simplistic past, but perhaps I do long for a society and a technology industry that embraced more the notion of holding a cute little pebble to my ear as opposed to a pancake to the side of my face. Times change implacably though and the altering physical form factor and size of smartphones is the most obvious simulacrum of the new way in which we communicate with our phones.

The iPhone augured a significant shift in phones, the paradigm shift in phones from passive to active. Phones used to be the passive device, a device that alerted us when someone wanted to contact us but was otherwise expect to remain discreet - seen but not heard. Hence, why make a phone big when we're meant to pretend it's not even there, why make it big when the only time we're meant to have it with us is when someone wants to contact us or when we want to contact someone else. Phones were passive and discreet, so they got smaller and smaller. Enter smartphone - a phone that we're always meant to have with us, and one that we're always using. Phone call or not, we're always on them because we can do so much more from them - we can browse the web efficiently, we can play worthwhile games and we can keep updated on the latest. With these smartphones, we're not waiting for them to surprise us with a phone call, we're not waiting to see what it's going to throw at us because we're hoping that it handles the tasks that we want to throw at it. Smartphone has to be a superlative in power and size to handle our growing demands, so it's getting bigger and bigger.

But something's got to give and these immense display sizes are actually subtle inconveniences in real world use. This preternatural display growth has got to find its limit, before it becomes borderline tablet.

To illustrate the point of the 'subtle inconvenience' I'll call upon an interesting article written by Matthew Panzarino on 'The Next Web'. He stated that designer Dustin Curtis had done a test in which he found that the disparate display sizes of both the iPhone 4 (3.5 inches) and the Galaxy S II (4.27 inches) made a genuine difference in terms of their usability and could perhaps pose a niggling issue for the Galaxy S II through time. He found that the display size of an iPhone 4 allowed every icon on its home screen to be reached with the thumb whilst holding the phone with one hand, whereas the limited thumb span proved too small to reach to the further edges of the display when using the Galaxy S II. To the left is a diagram that designer Dustin made to complement his contention.

Sure, you have to make a few sacrifices if you want the big and the better. That's how life and nature works right...a little give there and a little take there. But I don't think that's how it works for phones - because a smartphone is meant to materialise a vision for easy, portable computing. And traditionally a phones have blessed us with the advantage and accessibility of quick one-handed operation; the fact that phones have increased in brain size and processing power shouldn't compromise this one distinctive trait. Smartphones need to retain their one-handed usability and size because it's the only characteristic that preclude the smartphone and tablet from convergence. It's the only reason why they're still different things. Heck, if I could grab a tablet and hold it in one hand and use it with that one hand with ease I wouldn't need my phone, because my phone would just be a smaller and more eye-straining version of something I already have.

So I'm here looking at the new Galaxy Nexus and its 4.65 inch display, and I'm thinking to myself 'how big are your hands?' You might think I'm overreacting and these seemingly minor nitpicks are all in for the sake of a more spacious experience. But more than you think it's the insignificant things that leave an otherwise perfect product completely smitten - thumb hyper-extension and unnecessary two hand use are just a couple of those things. I use a 3.8 inch HTC Trophy daily and for me and my average sized hands that's just about the limit. Again, this is all completely subjective and for some of you this large screen size may suit your needs, and your hand-span, but strictly from my own personal vantage and I'm sure that of many others anything above 4 inch is a heck of a size, and anything larger than the Galaxy S II is really really pushing it.

Super size? Are you really lovin' it?

TECHGEEK.com.au - Design Talks - For the iPhone 4S critics

Be sure to check out my article on TECHGEEK.com.au discussing the importance of product design and its applications to the somewhat ill-received and unexciting iPhone 4S. 

"Perhaps one of the most important lessons that Steve Jobs taught us in his tenure is that design is important. In fact, design is often more important than the very things inside that make the magic happen. That’s not to say that you’re better off having an aesthetically marvellous rock than a turd-shaped phone, but it’s saying that from a very very direct and impressionistic stand point, design talks to an audience much more than specs and inner hardware ever can..."

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs - You Changed the World

There are people in this world that either love or hate Apple, and there are people in this world that either love or hate Steve Jobs, but I know that there is not a single person in this world who doesn't respect Steve Jobs for not only his achievements, but with what heart and passion that he has managed to achieve them. Jobs' is the embodiment, a personification of unparalleled genius. His incredible foresight and vision for seeing how products interweave into the very cobweb of our lives has made this place we live in a better place. With this genius, and creativity he has brought us products that have revolutionised markets, the technology industry and the way people live their lives. Without any connotations or mockery, to describe Steve Jobs' leadership as 'magical' is truly justified.

These are all in the making of what makes Steve Jobs so incredible, but without a doubt the greatest thing that Steve Jobs takes with him, is the simplest, the most obvious and the most primal of his traits - and that is his passion. To meet a man with such love, and such enthusiasm for the things he does is rare, and with this, Steve Jobs has inspired us to pursue our dreams not for secondary and reactionary means as finances and stature, but purely for the satisfaction close at heart - because it makes us happy. 

To put it in his own words - 'The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.'

Steve Jobs story is almost a fairy tale of where passion and love can take us, and his love and passion augments and provides for the immeasurable genius and creativity that the man has been blessed with. We can all be happy knowing that Steve Jobs died doing what he loved the most. Even with his diagnosis of cancer several years back, Steve Jobs' love for Apple never waned, and he was there at Apple for as long as he could possibly be, with the baby he crafted and nurtured himself. And if getting fired from his own company came to prove anything, it was that Apple only truly has one father. 

So here we are, typing away on our Macbooks, slicing fruit on our iPhones and tapping away on our iPads - embracing ourselves in the magic that Steve Jobs has provided us. We're all saddened by the news of his passing, the world only ever gets one Steve Jobs and it's such a shame that the appreciation has only really been expressed openly once it's all gone. But Steve Jobs probably wouldn't have it any other way, loving our Apple products is our way of saying a subtle thanks, and thank you Steve Jobs so very much.

It feels strange imagining the tech industry without a Steve Jobs, but how much stranger and how much different would it be had he never even come around. So to quote the wise words of Dr. Seuss, 'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened'. And Mr. Jobs, the radiance of your innovation makes us all smile, every, single, day.