April 2010 Archives

It's interesting that the iPad is one of my favorite gadgets of all time, and yet I'm skeptical about its success. Take, for example, laptop-replacement. Before the iPad, I was waiting with bated breath for new Macbook Pro announcements. I'm not anymore. Instead, I'm looking forward to my PC becoming obsolete so I have an excuse to buy a nice 27'' iMac. Then I'll ditch my PC and my Macbook Pro, and just have an iMac, iPad, and (hopefully Verizon-based) iPhone. Because I'm envisioning such a total transformation of my digital life, you'd think I'd be bullish on Apple.

It's a matter of whether you want to compare iPad's future to the Macbook line or the iPhone line. If you compare it to the iPhone, then it makes sense. Students beg their parents, "Please please, buy me an iPhone," which is code for, "Please don't give me a lamePhone." But students don't similarly beg for Macbook Pros. Students simply tell their parents, "I need a laptop for school," and parents then figure out what's the most powerful computer for the cheapest amount of money.

The appeal of the iPad to me is in how well it over-delivers on various slices of digital computing experiences. Unfortunately, the average consumer doesn't notice or appropriately value that. For example, I love how my iPad allows me to work in every room of the Mutual Mobile offices, all in one day. But that's something special and unique that I treasure, while most people are just happy to have good computing power. "My laptop's portable, why do I need an iPad?"

I think nobody can predict how the market will play out, and a lot depends on Apple's execution (and Google's counter-execution). In other words, it's too early to say that this is going to all-of-a-sudden change the way everybody computes. I still stand by the prediction, that this will be the most requested gift this Christmas. But I'm not sure how much of a takeover that represents for Apple.

One of the first things I did with my iPad was purchase a book to read on the Kindle app. I bought Rework for myself, but I actually really wanted a co-worker to read it. Then I discovered that there's no way for me to buy him the Kindle edition!

Similarly, I was checking out some random band on Bandcamp, and there's two options, "Buy" and "Share." But under "Share" you can only tell someone to go and buy an album. There's no way to just buy the album for someone.

I feel that I'm more willing to spend money on microtransactions for other people than myself. I'm more willing to gift an album than buy it myself, simply because I'm more likely to just pirate it if I really want it. If I tell a friend, "Hey, this is a good album, go pirate it," they won't. But if I just buy it for them on lala, then there's a much better chance they'll listen to it.

Why can't I gift you 1,000,000 gold coins on Bejeweled Blitz on facebook? Why can't I gift you apps on iTunes (yet).

Gifting digital goods gives you so much instant gratification that it's worth the rigmarole to pull out your credit card (or remember your favored clearinghouse's password).

(By "clearinghouse," I'm referring to places you trust with your saved credit cards, such as Amazon, facebook, or iTunes. Their entrenchment was the first step toward a microtransaction future.)

The iPad is kind of anti-climatic when it comes to apps. When apps came out for the iPhone, it was brand new and exciting, and since all your friends had iPhones, it was neat to be hanging out together, checking out apps together. The excitement for iPad apps seems about as exciting as software for laptops or desktops. When your friends come over to your house, do you tell them, "Hey, check out this awesome application for my macbook?" No, you just purchase something cool, use it privately, and then that's it.

In other words, I felt like Tarot (my product) for the iPhone was more exciting than Tarot for the iPad. With the iPhone, it feels like "Hey, check it out, I got Tarot cards in my pocket!" On the iPad, the experience is like, "Hey, um, I got, um, Tarot software, on my tablet."

It feels like my iPad-usage is more boring, but more solid. I spend more time using the product, but on fewer apps. It's not like I'm trying random, fun, apps for cheap thrills.

The iPad is more like a book and productivity tool for me. It's not like a cool James Bond gadget that I whip out to do some quick tricks.

There's about seven iPads at the Mutual Mobile offices, and we're not going up to each other saying, "Hey, check out this awesome app!" anymore. We did that maybe in the first couple days. Now the questions are more like, "So, how do you like using the keyboard to do work on it?"

Did you notice how when they trotted out the app download statistics (1 Million Apps downloaded in less than a week), they didn't mention how many were Paid vs. Free? Probably most of those were Free apps.

I think the iPad will be a more quiet revolution, where gradually you will see laptops disappear from ordinary consumers.

The iPad is supposed to save the publishing industry, but based on playing with three solid news-related apps on the iPad, I don't think it will deliver on this promise, at least not in its current state. The NPR, NYTimes, and WSJ apps are very impressive coming out of the gate, and this has spawned predictions of a native app era. This is from Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design:

Frankly, as the adoption rate of iPhone increases and if iPad follows suit, it will become increasingly difficult to argue in favor of a starting point other than iPhone OS. The NPR iPad app, for one, provides a much more pleasant user experience than NPR.org.

But the the disadvantage I find with the NYTimes, NPR, and WSJ apps is that they do not exist within my typical news-browsing stream.

Yesterday, for example, I was using Safari to open three windows: my Google calendar, my work Gmail, and personal Gmail (Safari is the only multi-tasking I've got). Then while I was on a phone call, I got bored and wanted to surf the web a little. So I opened a new Safari window and went through my usual routine (Drudge, HuffPo, The Week, reddit, Google Reader). I didn't tap Home to then go to the NPR app or the WSJ app.

And that's not because of my lukewarm interest in NPR or WSJ. Even if I had a DrudgeReport app or a HuffPo app, I wouldn't have used them.

Native apps are for focused interactions. I find them akin to tuning into a favorite radio station and staying on it for the entire twenty-minute commute (or at least beginning with that intention). There's very few news sources that I consume in a focused manner like that. There's only one that comes to my mind, actually, and it's The New Yorker.

Alternatively, if there was a more unified format and a single place for a "magazine rack" where you could subscribe to nearly-identical isomorphs of print-editions, I'd pay money for that. I'd rack up a handful of subscriptions, even to magazines I don't read that often, like The Economist or Wired. That way, when I turn my focus to the "magazine rack" app, I'd have maybe five subscriptions I could shuffle between. Otherwise, I'm not going to download and fiddle with an experimental Economist app or Wired app.

tl;dr: First, make one website version that looks good on the major platforms (Firefox, IE, iPhone, and iPad). Second, if you have to make an app for the iPad, make it look and feel as much like your print-version as possible, so people can equate the price of the print issue to the price of the digital subscription. Third, get in on the ground floor of some apps or programs that will let a lot of magazines come together under one umbrella, like a magazine-rack.

(via Daring Fireball)

A lot of my friends auto-stream their twitter feeds to Google Buzz. I wonder if you could have the @replies that happen on Twitter also stream into in-line comments on Google Buzz. Just a random idea.

My room is now a perpetual fitting room. There is always a Zappos box sitting somewhere, with products waiting to be tried on or returned.

I've been waiting to find a substitute for the mall for a while now, and I think I finally have it. Take, for example, the simple task of finding a black hat with no logos or lettering on it. Trying to accomplish this at the mall took me about 1.5 hours, and I still didn't find a single one. Doing this on Zappos took ten minutes, and I found five of them. And I ordered all of them.

Most of my orders on Zappos are for about five items at a time, and I'll usually return four. If there's a shoe I want, I order three of them: one at the size I want, and the others plus-or-minus 0.5 shoe-sizes. If I return some article of clothing, and start to regret it, I quickly remember that hell, I can just buy it again, without incurring any extra cost.

What got me started on my Zappos-training ultimately came from this video on how their free shipping works:

Somehow Zappos realized that their biggest customer acquisition barrier is the unfamiliarity or skepticism with the Zappos-way—kind of like in Miracle on 34th Street when the Macy's Santa Claus refers children to other department stores for cheaper products—no one believes they could stay in business doing that!

If you want to learn more, I recommend any one of CEO Tony Hsieh's talks about customer service.