The iOS 6 Maps Fail And The Next Big Question

Back in July, I said the big question about iOS 6 was the new Maps. I wrote,

  • How comprehensive will the coverage of 3-D data be when iOS6 and the next iPhone and the all new iPad mini (you didn’t think it would be announced before iOS6 is out, did you?) launch?
  • How competitive will the mapping basics be? Things like coverage 2-D aerial photography, places of interest, searching for locations, directions.
  • How competitive will the new features be in practice eg the turn-by-turn navigation?
  • How important will the loss of unique Google features, like Street View, be?  To what extent can the 3-D view substitute for Street View going forward?

In short, has Apple done enough to delight their customers; or too little that people will feel the new maps is a downgrade?

The reality turns out to be much worse than I’d imagined. The maps team has failed in all the above key areas, including the basics.  That means the new Maps app is badly broken. Customers didn’t take long to notice. For example, see this story on the BBC News web-site.

Now, the big question is – can Apple fix this on any reasonable time-scale?  That depends on when key people at Apple realized there was a problem.  If they’re only just realizing now that there’s a problem, then there may be no quick fixes. That’s because the whole strategy behind the current implementation of key aspects is flawed.  On the other hand, if the current implementation was always intended as a stop-gap solution to meet their shipping date, then there may already be a “proper” solution in the works.

Time will tell. Personally, I’m shocked at how bad the new Maps is. I’d wrongly assumed that the beta was deliberately crippled so that Apple’s competition wouldn’t know how far along they’d got ahead of shipping the new product.

If you know what Steve Jobs said to the Mobile Me senior management when they shipped a disastrously broken product, you might be forgiven for wondering if Tim Cook should be saying something similar to the senior people responsible for the new Maps…

The Big Problem For Samsung

Samsung has a problem. It’s trying to argue in court that it didn’t copy Apple.  The company has told the jury that “ordinary observers” would think its products are not copies of Apple products. However, you have only to look at the iPhone and the iPad, and compare these to Samsung’s competing products to know, one hundred percent for sure, that it did.  There is no doubt.

It’s obvious too that with iPhone, Apple revolutionized the smartphone; and with iPad, Apple revolutionized the tablet.  You’d have to be delusional to think otherwise.

The copying is so clear and comprehensive, it must have been deliberate corporate strategy on the part of Samsung. That means, unless Samsung has succeeded in destroying all the relevant documents and e-mails, it’s very likely there will be significant amounts of incriminating evidence that will prove it.

This case is Apple’s to lose.

If you want to follow the Apple-Samsung trial, The Verge has some great coverage.

 

 

3D TV – Dead Or Alive?

 

We’re at an interesting juncture for television in general, and 3-D television in particular.  Apple is currently selling single digit millions of its Apple TV set top boxes per year, and is widely thought to be close to launching an HDTV that may be as influential in the field of TV as iPhone has been on smart phones, and iPad has been on tablets.  The question is – if you were launching a revolutionary new television, would you have 3-D as a feature, or not?

You might think it’s a no-brainer to include 3-D,  but I’m not so sure it is.  It’s certainly not a no-brainer for great film directors to make 3-D part of their new movie experiences.  Take the current hit movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Director, Chris Nolan, chose not to  make this movie 3D. Here’s what he had to say on the subject,

The question of 3-D is a very straightforward one. I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it’s always a source of great concern to me when you’re charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for.

Now, a handful of film-makers use 3-D to spectacular effect; with James Cameron’s epic film, Avatar, being probably the best example.  Most 3-D films, however, end up looking like a bad lenticular display. In fact, the 3-D is so bad, it’s hard to draw any conclusion other than that film-makers are totally disinterested in 3-D; and that studios are just insisting on it as an add-on feature as a way of trying to justify higher ticket prices. Without great content, though, where’s the value for consumers in including 3-D as a feature on a TV? I’m not sure there is one.  If great content doesn’t come along soon, it might be that 3-D dies before it ever really gains widespread consumer adoption.

Apple, historically, likes to place its bets on technology that it believes to be in the ascendent.  The best recent example of that was the decision to support HTML5 video in iOS, and not worry about including Flash support. It will be interesting to see what the company’s judgement is on 3-D when it releases its HDTV.

 

Why Losing The iPhone 30-Pin Connector Is A Good Thing

Even the mainstream press is writing about it – it’s looking like the new iPhone (almost certain to be announced in around two months) will do away with the current 30-pin connector in favor of a new, smaller connector (see the photo above which shows what is claimed to be the case for the next iPhone on the right).

The problem, so the theory goes, is this.  The new iPhone will make all existing accessories which use the 30-pin connector obsolete.  Now, that would be true if it wasn’t for one thing. As far as I can tell, there are already massive compatibility issues when connecting an iOS device to an accessory using the connector.   In fact, in my experience, it’s seems to be more likely that an accessory won’t work with your iOS device than it will (at least not easily).

Check into your suite at a luxury hotel. Of course, it has an iPhone dock so you can play your own music on the room’s sound system. Good luck getting that to work. In fact, your iPhone might not even fit in the dock.  Or, try connecting your iPhone to a car’s media system to play audio and video on the car’s multimedia screen(s). Unless you have the right cable, good luck getting that to work (the standard connector cable won’t work, you see).

The truth is – the whole “wired” model of connecting devices is (badly) broken.  What we really need is a wireless communications protocol for iOS devices to enable third-party innovation, without worrying about compatibility with physical connectors. If only Apple had thought to offer something like that. Oh. Wait…

 

 

The Big iOS 6 Question

There’s a lot of discussion about the relative rates of innovation at Apple and Google at the moment. Is iOS starting to feel a little old? Is Android starting to feel more polished? However, if there’s one question about iOS 6 exercising minds at 1 Infinite Loop, I suspect it’s this – will the new Maps be good enough, when compared to Google’s previous Maps offering?

In iOS 6, Apple is dumping the previous mapping capability in iOS which was powered by Google maps.  As of iOS 6, people will be using maps powered by Apple.  The new, interactive 3-D model-based visualization in iOS 6 maps is very cool… but only if the city you’re interested in has the required data available to provide the 3-D views.

So…

  • How comprehensive will the coverage of 3-D data be when iOS6 and the next iPhone and the all new iPad mini (you didn’t think it would be announced before iOS6 is out, did you?) launch?
  • How competitive will the mapping basics be? Things like coverage 2-D aerial photography, places of interest, searching for locations, directions.
  • How competitive will the new features be in practice eg the turn-by-turn navigation?
  • How important will the loss of unique Google features, like Street View, be?  To what extent can the 3-D view substitute for Street View going forward?

In short, has Apple done enough to delight their customers; or too little that people will feel the new maps is a downgrade?

Mapping in mobile really matters. If it didn’t, Apple wouldn’t have taken the decision to do its own maps.  It’s a big risk, though. As of right now, however, no-one outside of Apple knows the answer to these questions.  It’s really hard to judge to what extent people inside the company do.  When iOS 6 launches, customers will judge, and we’ll find out…

 

 

Marissa Mayer Has Something To Prove

I’m sure you’ve seen the news – Yahoo! has hired Marissa Mayer to be its new CEO. Now, I don’t know Marissa personally – but I do know one thing.  She has something to prove. So she’ll be extremely motivated to succeed.

Why do I say she has something to prove? You don’t have to know much about how corporations work to understand that Mayer was marginalized at Google when Larry Page took over as CEO.  That will have hurt. Today, unnamed sources are already reported as saying that they don’t feel any need to replace her role at Google.

There’s no doubt that turning Yahoo! around will be a huge struggle – the company is a mess. However, one thing is for sure – Yahoo! just got a hell of lot more interesting by bringing Marissa on board as CEO.  Today, the company will be able to hire better talent, and do better M&A than it could have done yesterday. I hope the Board and the key investors understand just what a challenge this is, and take a long-term view – major change is required.

The key question, of course, is whether Mayer has the vision and leadership qualities required to make Yahoo! a success again. I don’t know the answer to that.  If she does, I wouldn’t better against someone so highly motivated.

Always Encrypt Your iPhone and iPad Backups

If you backup your iPhone or iPad using iTunes, there’s a good chance you’re not encrypting your backups. Most likely, that’s because it requires you to do some “extra work” – clicking a check box and typing a password (twice) – and you don’t feel that you need encrypted backups.

However, it turns out that there’s a big difference between encrypted and non-encrypted iOS device backups. Non-encrypted backups aren’t actually a full backup of your device – they don’t store your private data (like passwords for e-mail accounts). That means, if you have to restore your device from a backup, and it’s not encrypted you’ll have to spend time setting up your iPhone and iPad again.

So, if you want to do a proper, full backup of your iPad and iPhone (and you should want that!), you have no choice but do choose an encrypted backup.  You do that within iTunes when your iPhone or iPad is connected – see the iTunes screenshot below for details (click/tap to enlarge it).

If you do this, you’ll enjoy rather more painless restores from backups in future.

Microsoft In Denial: Apple Has Got It Wrong With iPad

Microsoft Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner thinks Apple has got it badly wrong with iPad (see the story on The Verge).  Consumers don’t want iPads, he believes, rather they want tablets that are just like desktop PCs… you know, like the Microsoft Surface Pro.

We’ll know the current sales of iPad on July 24 when Apple announces its quarterly results. However, it would be surprising if the company has sold fewer than ten million iPads in the most recent quarter.

How many Surfaces does Microsoft believe it will sell per quarter?  Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer believes it might be less than one million per quarter, and he thinks that would be a success.

If Apple’s vision for tablets is so wrong, and Microsoft’s is so right, why would ten times as many people buy iPads as buy a Surface? If these sales predictions prove to be correct, it won’t be because people haven’t heard of the Surface, it will be because people don’t want a Surface.

What’s puzzling about all this is that Microsoft senior management simultaneously believes iPads will outsell Surfaces by more than 10:1 and that Apple’s vision for tablets is not what customers want.  They appear to be in denial about what’s happening to their business.

 

 

Who Would Design A TV Remote Like This?

Imagine you design and manufacture TVs.  You can’t be sure, but there’s a chance a revolution might be right around the corner.  At the very least, in a few months, there will probably be a new entrant in the market with a global reputation for designing exceptionally “cool” products that consumers love. So you’re working hard to innovate, to make sure your next-generation, top-of-the-range flagship TVs can compete in the new era.  Every part of the team is busting a gut, striving to do the best work they’ve ever done.  There can be no compromise.  There will be no compromise.

OK. Well then. Would you design a remote for your new flagship TV that looks like this?

Philips would.