Rachel Metz at MIT Technology Review says Apple Needs a New Category to Reinvent.
I love that Apple is the only company that ever is ever told it needs to “reinvent” anything.
It’s also the typical, jaded and cynical response we often find in the technology press to anything new announced by Apple. It’s also extremely short-sighted and stating the obvious. Once a revolution happens, evolution steps in to define things. This is the case with the iPhone. It came into the world in 2007, revolting against all the “smartphones” at the time. Since then it’s been a constant and consistent refinement of the product and platform, interspersed with some mini-revolts along the way–the App Store, new Maps and Retina displays to name a few.
Maybe some of those examples aren’t as mini now that I look at them, but I digress.
The point is, if anyone is aware of when and where revolutions and evolutions in consumer electronics need to take place, it’s Apple. Sure, on a month-to-month, year-to-year basis Apple’s announcements might seem minor, but take a step back and look at the bigger picture if you want a better view of where things are headed.
Maybe I’m wrong, and Apple coasts on the successes of the iPhone and iPad for the next 10 years.
Ha, yeah right.

So Samsung gets to call “first” on the smartphone watch competition.
Good for them.
Now let’s wait for someone to come out with genuinely great wearable computer device.

Jonathan S. Geller ponders the next-gen Apple TV (meaning an actual display) that’s been on the tech press’s horizontal for a few years now:

It’s not a rumor, but a fact that Apple is looking at bringing a game-changing TV experience out of Cupertino. We just don’t know when or how. Or do we?
I think we do and it’s here in the form of the little, black set top box I have at home. This isn’t what the tech press wants to hear. They want a new shiny thing to pick apart and praise and bash and post pictures of the get clicks. Tough shit. It’s the cake that everyone who has $100 can eat right now.
I’ve been thinking this is a reasonable conclusion for a while now, but I’m seeing more and more evidence that validates it.
Like this recent post from Shawn Blanc on how to rearrange and remove channel apps from Apple TV (I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t know this trick). They just added Vevo,Weather Channel, Disney and Smithsonian. Next thing is maybe folders and ways to customize your Apple TV interface more. Then more gaming integration.
The pieces are sliding into place, bit by bit, or as John Gruber would say, they’re rolling into place.
It’s the same reason Apple doesn’t need to launch a big black or white box to compete with Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft in the gaming market.
As Jonathan S. Geller also noted back in June:
By introducing a game controller standard (this is incredibly helpful since developers now can build games that recognize a standard set of button controls and inputs that will work across every single game in the App Store), Apple has started to turn the volume up on Sony and Microsoft. Soon, you are going to be able to play a console-quality game on your iPhone or iPad with a game controller, and you’re going to be able to see it on your big screen television without any effort.
This is asymmetrical thinking. Cable television without the cable. Video games without the console.
(Iron Man just popped into my head, “Why not a pilot without the plane?”)
If/when Apple unveils an integrated television display, it will simply be the icing on the cake we’re already eating.

From one of my favorite movies, Beautiful Girls (1996):
Kev: It’s a trend in diamonds. Champagne. It’s a nice stone.
Willie Conway: Yeah, no, I heard about this. It’s a new trend in the diamond trade, they’re trying to create a new market.
Tommy: Oh, right, right. yeah. They were callin’ ’em “piss”, but they weren’t moving any units. What’s with you, man?
Paul Kirkwood: What?
Tommy: Well, how much you pay for this brown rock?
Paul Kirkwood: What difference does it make?
Tommy: Diamonds are supposed to be colorless! You go out and buy a colored diamond for a girl you’re not even seeing, man, you must be eating retard sandwiches again.

The other day the news was Apple acquired video search and recommendation company Matcha.
This is good. I hope they apply this to their App Store ‘Genius’ commendations. Right now, Apple thinks just because I own a note-taking app, I want every note-taking app in the App Store. This is not the case.

Via BGR:

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has more than 55 million reasons to sell the company. Bloomberg reports that Heins will receive a pay package worth $55.6 million if he sells the company and if he’s subsequently ousted as CEO.
Not a bad package for running a crumbling company.
Backwards world we live in.

So no one is biting on the price of Microsoft’s Surface Pro:

Microsoft is discounting its Surface Pro tablet this weekend, following heavy reductions to its Surface RT costs recently. The 10 percent price cut to Surface Pro reduces the cost of the 64GB and 128GB models by $100 each in the US.
As I’ve said before, I don’t watch sports. I watch design and technology and Apple is my team. This doesn’t mean I can’t call out Apple when they mess up. Like when they launched their shitty maps in 2012 (they’re still pretty useless to me in cities like San Francisco and New York where I need subway/bus directions). Or when my iMessages don’t show up in chronological order on my Macbook.
Back to Microsoft. Last fall they tried to “pivot” and move from being a company focused on desktop software to one that can do desktop software and consumer-focused mobile software with Windows 8/Metro/Not-Called-Metro OS and mobile hardware with Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets.
I said the whole thing sounded half-baked (John Gruber agreed).
The Surface tablets are almost a year old, and they’re still looking half baked. In fact, at this point I’m not even sure Ballmer knows how to use the oven. It doesn’t matter. Not only is Microsoft sticking with their Windows 8/RT/Surface pivot, but they’re raising the stakes and making it even more pivot-y by reorganizing the whole company. (For what it’s worth I was talking with some ex-Microsofties a few weeks ago when I was in Seattle and I asked them what they thought of the reorg-pivot-y-goodness. They laughed.)
I laugh too. The same way I laughed at Windows Vista, the brown Zune and the Kin (you totally forgot about the Kin, didn’t you?). I also laughed at Steve Ballmer, when he laughed at the iPhone in 2007.
I laugh at Steve Ballmer and the team he’s mismanaging (even more so than Bill Gates) because Microsoft is a company built to sell software to companies. They’ve never understood how to sell software or devices to human beings with emotions.
Yes, the XBox has been a phenomenal success, but if Microsoft relied on their Entertainment division to carry the company, their upper management would probably all jump off a bridge. If you’re wondering how much money the Entertainment division makes for MS it’s not much.
Maybe I shouldn’t be filled with this much schadenfreude because at least Microsoft did try to pivot with Windows Phone 7 & 8 and Windows 8 but it’s clear people and businesses are not nearly as excited about Microsoft’s new products as Microsoft is.
I recently asked my father, who’s been a Windows user since it debuted in the 80’s, if he was planning on upgrading to Windows 8. He told me, “no way.” He said he’d likely get an Apple computer the next time he needs to upgrade. I think that’s telling. You could argue that he’s older and doesn’t “get” Windows 8 and he’s not the target demographic for Window 8, but all demographics are buying iPhones and iPads so clearly Microsoft is doing something wrong. Or maybe they’re ahead of their time. I’m serious. Ok, I’m not.
I’ve read some articles saying the XBox One is Microsoft’s last chance to gain a foothold in the consumer electronics space.
I doubt it.
What I do know is schadenfreude goes down smoooooth.

MG Siegler on the state of tech news:

But my fear now is that we’re veering too far into the world of half-truths and straight-up bullshit. Everything reported on, no matter how inaccurate is often taken as gospel and spread further. Speed and exaggeration have won, accuracy and nuance are nearly dead. It’s not quite another age of yellow journalism yet, but we’re getting there.
I’ve been bitching about this for a while too.

Horace Dediu:

By the way, $900 million write-off could amount to over 3 million devices, more if Microsoft is assuming some residual value in the inventory. Misjudging demand to such a degree that more units are disposed of than sold implies a basic failure of understanding of hardware businesses.
Horace is great at explaining the state of the computer industry, but nothing speaks louder than his eye-opening charts.

Over at GigaOm, Janko Roettgers tells us to forget second-screen apps. Today, the TV is the second screen.
I said this back on 20 February of 2013.
I’m just saying, GigaOm should stop taking my exhaust.

BGR: Android users found to be least likely to pay for apps

Horace Dediu on size of the mobile computer install base:

In terms of install base, a computing category that did not exist six years ago has come to overtake one that has been around for 38 years.
Crazy. That is what you call disruption.

From the Verge:

Microsoft is planning to cut the price of its Surface RT tablets. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Surface plans have revealed to The Verge that the price cut could occur as early as next week, with each model being cut by $150.
This totally reminds me of when Apple had to slash the price of the iPad to boost weak sales when it first debuted.
Oh wait, Apple never had to to do that. Doh!
(*If you grew up in the 80s and lived in the tri-state area, you might remember Crazy Eddie’s classic commercials.)

Jonathan S. Geller at BGR on Apple’s plan to take over the living room while destroying Microsoft and Sony:

By introducing a game controller standard (this is incredibly helpful since developers now can build games that recognize a standard set of button controls and inputs that will work across every single game in the App Store), Apple has started to turn the volume up on Sony and Microsoft. Soon, you are going to be able to play a console-quality game on your iPhone or iPad with a game controller, and you’re going to be able to see it on your big screen television without any effort. This is game-changing!
Stranger things have happened.
Serious question: How do you think Apple’s “hobby” Apple TV is doing compared to Google TV?
Ok, that wasn’t a serious question because I’m willing to bet serious money that Google TV is closer to the true sense of the word “hobby” than Apple claims their Apple TV device is (13 million in sales?). And I’m taking into account all these devices no one is buying.