Microsoft is an odd bird.
Their new Surface 3 doesn’t come with a ($129) Type Cover even though every advertisement and press shot features the Type Cover.
If I wanted to buy the Surface 3, I would assume it came with the Type Cover.
And I would assume wrong.
When you launch a new product how it works is important (duh), how it looks is important, and how you photograph it is also very important.
You want your product to go viral, so make it as easy as possible for this to happen. This is where your product photography can help.
Your product photography is not just important on your website and promotional materials. It’s also important to all the people and news outlets you want talking about your product. Great photography increases your odds of them talking about it. Your great photography makes all the blogs and news sites look better. Give them images they can “steal”.
I was reminded of this after Apple’s Watch Keynote last week. They’re obviously Apple, so people will be talking about their new shiny stuff regardless of what photography exists, but just look at how impactful their product shots are:
There has been a bit of consternation about Apple’s focus on “fashion” and all that entails, but there is a very practical aspect to this focus: people need to be willing to actually put the wearable on their body. While “form may follow function” for tools, the priorities are the exact opposite when it comes to what we wear: function is irrelevant without a form we find appealing. In this case, design actually is how it looks.
It’s on this point specifically that most critics – including myself – have failed to appreciate Apple’s approach. After last fall’s presentation I compared the Watch’s introduction to that of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad and found it lacking for its lack of focus on functionality. What I now appreciate, though, is that this was almost certainly on purpose: there was focus in that keynote, it just happened to be on the Watch’s appearance; since I’m a geek I dismissed it, but normal consumers, especially in the case of a wearable, absolutely will not.
—Ben Thompson, How Apple Will Make the Wearable Market
The new Pebble Time smartwatch launched on Kickstarter and has raised $5 million dollars in half a day.
Fast Company is labeling it as “the battle” against Apple and Andoid smartwatches.
Not quite. At least not for Apple.
The Apple Watch is going to start at $349 and go up $10,000 (at least) for the 18K gold version. Pebble’s watch is under $200.
While I’m sure there’s quite a bit of overlap between people who backed the Pebble Time and people who want an Apple Watch the target markets are different. Pebble Time sales won’t affect Apple Watch sales very much the same way Honda Civic buyers don’t influence BMW buyers—even if those BMW buyers are buying “entry level” models.
My first impression of the Pebble Time is how awful the hardware looks. My second impression after watching the video is how fun and thoughful the interface and animations are.
Image taken from Twitter
Last week BGR posted this infographic of where all of Apple’s revenue comes from:
It’s important to emphasize the story that isn’t being told in the above image:
All the revenue from the Mac, iPad and iPhone are inextricably linked to the “minuscule” revenue from Services. The ‘Services’ category includes the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and the OS X App Store.
If you remove Apples services, everything else evaporates.
Canalys on Android Wear devices:
Over 720,000 Android Wear devices shipped in 2014 out of a total of 4.6 million smart wearable bands. Though the Moto 360 remained supply constrained through Q4, Motorola was the clear leader among Android Wear vendors. LG’s round G Watch R performed significantly better than its original G Watch, while Asus and Sony entered the market with their own Android Wear devices. Pebble meanwhile shipped a total of 1 million units from its 2013 launch through to the end of 2014. Continual software updates, more apps in its app store and price cuts in the fall helped maintain strong sales in the second half of the year. ‘Samsung has launched six devices in just 14 months, on different platforms and still leads the smart band market. But it has struggled to keep consumers engaged and must work hard to attract developers while it focuses on Tizen for its wearables.’ said Canalys VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones.
Language is important.
Shipped does not mean sold.
I’d love it if some of these Android Wear vendors strapped on some balls and bragged about how many devices they sold.
At Ars Technica, Ron Amadeo reviews Samsung’s first Tizen smartphone:
The million dollar question for any new OS is always “Why would anyone pick this over Android?” Google’s free OS seems purpose-built to smother upstart operating systems like Tizen. It has tons of developer support (even Samsung supports Android more than Tizen), killer integration with Google services, and is available on any kind of hardware you can imagine.
Samsung hasn’t provided a good answer to this question, which makes its outlook especially bleak in the hyper-competitive smartphone OS market. New OSes always have problems, usually with app selection and hardware availability, but they’re supposed to make up for their ecosystem problems by bringing something new to the table. Windows Phone had a new interface style. Blackberry 10 devices have a small but vocal built-in fanbase, well-made hardware with physical keyboards, and lots of enterprise experience. But Tizen doesn’t have any stand-out aspect. It’s all the negatives of a new OS without any of the positives.
Samsung seems better at ripping off Apple’s hardware designs than it is at ripping off Android’s software designs. They really epitomize the textbook definition of shameless. Also: the typography on Tizen is horrendous.
When I see this headline in light of Apple’s blockbuster first quarter—where they sold 74.5 million iPhones—I realize this is all just semantics.
Apple doesn’t breakout their 74.5 million sales by model, but we know the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus have been huge sellers (particularly in China) and as far as I’m concerned, the iPhone 6 Plus is a mini tablet.
So another way and looking at the numbers is: Apple sold more small tablets than they sold big tablets in Q4 2014.
Google’s Project Ara phone looks really cool and fun, but I doubt this phone will gain much traction in the mass consumer market. It’s way too complicated. The theory of a modular phone sounds awesome, but I think it would complicate most non-engineeers’ lives.
The Onion slam dunks Google Glass:
Following the company’s announcement that it would discontinue public sales of the wearable technology, Google officials confirmed Monday that all unsold units of Google Glass would be donated to underprivileged assholes in Africa. “We are committed to positively impacting the lives of poverty-stricken smug pricks by distributing the surplus inventory of Google Glass to self-important fucks throughout sub-Saharan Africa,” a statement released by the company read in part, adding that the program will provide the optical head-mounted technology, as well as professional training sessions, to destitute communities of conceited dicks from Sierra Leone, to Somalia, to Botswana.
In actual news, Tony Fadell (created the Nest thermostat, was on the team that created the original iPod) will be in charge of Glass now. It will be interesting to see if he’s able to make lemonade out of that lemon.
Samsung wants to get better at design:
Can Samsung Electronics design its way out of its recent profit slide?
As the South Korean smartphone giant struggles to fend off a slew of low-cost Chinese and Indian handset makers and a reinvigorated Apple, it is increasingly drawing from its Cupertino, Calif. rival’s bench of talent to bolster its design chops.
The latest move: Samsung plucked Lee Don-tae, a top executive at U.K. design agency Tangerine that consulted for Apple in the early 1990s, as senior vice president of Samsung’s global design team, giving him oversight of the company’s global design centers.
Listen: Jony Ive worked at Apple years before Steve Jobs came back to the company and while he did his best to design great products they pale in comparison to what he designed under Jobs (and after). The 20th Anniversary Mac, anyone? How about [the second generation Newton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_(platform)?
Just because you hire a talented person does not guarantee they’ll be empowered to make great things.
