Tech Recap Week Ending 5/13 - a new Clash

It was a busy week in Tech and May is usually that way, spanning back all the way to May of 1990,  when Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 to the world. Things changed.

This week Microsoft was at it again and they announced that they were buying Skype, which at 8.5 Billion is a steep price to pay to get your Mojo back. See my take on the deal here.

Of course Google was at it too and the shot that hasn't yet been heard around the world is their new Chromebook. A nifty way to shift people from buying to renting a PC (prices are roughly US $20-28 per device/month) and more importantly some clever security and a new way of isolating of apps from the OS to stop intrusion attacks. Google still needs to show that it is committed to this approach with its partners, but this week it certainly showed it is dedicated to Chrome. The progress Google showed with Chrome in just twelve months is impressive and it also shows that Google's development teams are maturing.

The last item probably would have never showed up at all had it not been for a smart reporter that wasn't about to be duped and it has to do with the whisper campaign Facebook tried to launch against Google. While this has been widely reported and widely tweeted about, what is interesting is that this represents an epic shift of the clash of the titans.

I used to discuss Microsoft vs IBM as the big titan clashes. Now that the battle is in the cloud, it is Google facing off against Facebook. This time it is really all about Ad revenue. Google has it and now Facebook does too. I'll certainly be talking about Facebook in the future, but suffice to say, Facebook is pretty vulnerable to the same type of PR attack it launched on Google. Even more worrisome, Facebook is also an effective tool to use as part of a cyber-attack on an enterprise (see As Facebook Grows, so does Cyber Warfare).

So a busy week in tech and it doesn't show any sign of slowing down.

The Apple iPad: The Game was over before it began.

In previous posts, I predicted that the iPad would be a huge hit. Many were skeptical in the press. Order taking just started last week (the unit hasn't shipped yet) and sources told the Wall Street Journal that hundreds of thousands of iPads have been ordered.

Where are all the orders for the look alike devices? The truth is Consumers are much smarter in 2010 than they were in May 1990, when Windows 3.x was announced. The iPad isn't even shipping yet and it has already won.

Of course, it isn't the iPad itself that is the difference. It really is the Operating System, the User interface and the applications and content that you can put on it that are the difference makers. Put simply, the iPad and it's brethren the iPhone/iTouch offer a superior user experience. They delight their users.

So the game is over before it has even begun. It will be interesting to watch which vendor makes a counter move, but they have mountains to climb and few have done their homework like Apple has on this product. Clearly, Steve Jobs and team have every right to be giddy with excitement.

Setting the Record Straight on Apple Macs vs PCs. User Experience Trumps all

While at Gartner, in December 2006, I started talking about the shift I made on the home front from Dell PCs to Macs. There was a simple reason I made the shift. My Dell PCs were great, but I was spending too much time maintaining them. Too much tinkering. Another reason was that I wanted an easier way to manage photos and videos of our kids without going to the extreme of Photoshop.

The home shift to Macs was easy and we never looked back. Of course, I have many friends that just love to tinker with PCs and Windows. They won't admit it, but it is a borderline hobby. For many IT people, they have made it a career of keeping PCs tweaked and running.

Jump ahead to 2010 and why are so many Apple Macs showing up in Corporate settings, often paid for by the employee? There must be a reason for it and there is. It is called user experience.  In fact, the user experience on a Mac is so good and relatively trouble free, that when faced with the need to support Apple Macs, most IT Departments only offer a user supported Wiki (community support). What, no dedicated IT people to tinker with the MacOS? Nope. The latest generations of Macs just work. No tinkering required.

For the most part, Windows requires lots of tinkering (note, this is an opinion). Windows 7 may fix that, but right now that is still an unknown. It is also important to point out that Microsoft knows all about user experience. Just look at MS Office and Outlook, both gold standards on user experience. Ask any Mac user what they run on their machine for creating documents and presentations and 9 out of 10 will quickly answer "Microsoft Office".

Going forward, users will decide how they want to consume information and what types of devices they want to use to do so. This will go far beyond the current Mac vs PC discussion. Tablets appear poised to make a comeback and a majority of end-users around the world have a mobile device, not a PC. There too, it is about a positive user experience.

If you have any doubt about the importance of User experience, let's talk about the device that has taken the world by storm: the Apple iPhone.