Global Travel, Blackberrys and the iPhone

So the iPhone is going to launch on Verizon's network. Cool, many people will be happy. That said, for many business executives who travel, the issue is having a phone and wireless carrier that they can use on a worldwide basis.

For many years, Blackberry RIM devices were THE standard and today for many, they still are. It is a great device for email and phone calls. I used mine all over the place, but about a year ago, I switched to the iPhone. On a recent trip around the world, the only device I took was the iPhone. It worked - flawlessly.

I used it for calls, for email, SMS texting and Web Conferencing. One of my products - Saba Centra Web Conferencing runs on the iPhone. I had to join a meeting right after landing in Amsterdam, and joined it via iPhone. I was in the meeting, watching the slides and talking via VoIP. Try that with other products.

So, anyway, my transition from Blackberry to iPhone has been a positive one. I'm much better at touch typing than I used to be. I'll also note that in Silicon Valley, I have very few dropped calls, but I'm not in San Francisco.

iPhones and Family Plans - A Saturday spent at AT&T and Apple Stores

After two years with two different cell phone plans, we made plans for a consolidation, and due to an existing iPhone in the family, and the new far less expensive data plan from AT&T, the decision was made to go with AT&T.

Our family members were given the choice on phones and to make a long story short, all picked the iPhone. It was a long Saturday and it started easily enough with a visit to the Apple Store in Los Gatos, CA. Tip: go to Apple Stores that are not in Malls. The Apple retail staff are more laid back.

The Apple salesman was very nice and we got two iPhones enabled and old data ported over in a little over an hour and a half. It was nice and relaxing at the Los Gatos store. I saw the CIO of Cisco there and she looked pretty interested in a bunch of iPad accessories. That was the start of the journey.

Apple can only add a phone to an existing plan or create a new plan. They are not authorized to set-up a family plan. Very strange, but it is reflective of the relationship between AT&T and Apple.

Next stop was the AT&T store. We waited in line for over an hour. After that, we got the new phones correctly updated and our other son's plan migrated to a family plan. My wife decided not to go with a Blackberry Torch and the AT&T store had no iPhones. So it was back to the Apple Store at a Mall across the street in San Jose.

We waited at the Apple store for 45 minutes before getting served. It was not relaxing like the Los Gatos store. They had an iPhone 3GS that I bought and it was turned on and the data was migrated from the old phone. Then it was back to the AT&T store to get it added to the family plan. The AT&T Salesman was very nice and claimed we were all set.

We finally got home well after dinner time.  While it was a long day, it was no longer than when we signed up with Verizon two years ago. It would be nice if Apple had more ability to setup AT&T family plans.

It was all good until this week, when we started getting messages that we were over our unlimited texting plan. A quick phone call to AT&T solved that.

I will say this. Never underestimate what a teenager can do with thousands of apps from the iTunes app store. The hot tip for your teens is to teach them how to connect their iPhone to wireless networks (home and school). That way, they don't go over the limits on their data plan.

Smartphones, Tablets and the Rise and Fall of Technology Providers

Time changes all things and 2010 is no exception. Everywhere I go, I see iPads.  In fact, my team at Saba Software helped me produce an awesome launch video about Saba Live and it has iPads featured in it. No one has made a challenge so far to the iPad. Nothing, not a squeak.
What is interesting to watch is how the smartphone wars have changed the landscape.  My friends at Gartner used to say that it wouldn't take much for Palm to be successful. Palm is gone. HP wants PalmOS...
Microsoft put out a new phone called the Kin and promptly killed it, only days after starting a TV advertising campaign. You can still see the website that shows the Kin, but you can also read the details about how it got killed here.
Google now claims that an Android phone is sold every two seconds and that Android is surpassing the iPhone. That may be, but Android doesn't have the cult appeal of the iPhone. That said, some techies are starting to shift. However, the new data plan for the iPhone will mean millions of teenagers will get iPhones, since many parents will go for the $15 dollar a month data plan.
Nokia, the world's largest producer of smart phones recently warned that earnings may fall.
The Apple iPad created a new category and is now a mainstream toy for all the tech enthusiasts that travel the world. Mainstream consumers are snapping them up too. Who will respond to the iPad? So far, no one has.
So, in the course of 36 months, the market for smartphones and tablets has changed. Vendors like Apple and Google are on the rise. Others are taking their lumps. As I have said before, user experience trumps everything.

Adobe vs Apple is really about Flash losing to H.264

It is the talk of Silicon Valley. The Flash smack down by the usually reserved Steve Jobs. The return strikes from Adobe, which didn't really accomplish much, except make it look very obvious that the two companies are not talking.

It seems that Adobe's Kevin Lynch never really talked to Steve and it was naive to think that Apple would ever give up control of its user interface for the iPhone, iTouch or iPad. That was really one of the big issues. Flash could enable a common user interface across all mobile devices. Ah but that is when the chess match gets interesting.

It is also a fight about money. Adobe sells tools that allow the creation of Flash and it has a great business. Apple makes money too and you can argue with their tactics, but you can't argue with the success of the iPhone or the App Store.  I don't see too many developers complaining about the App Store model, as many are now rich beyond their wildest dreams.

HTML 5 and H.264 are here. Argue as much as you want, but the numbers on H.264 are real. I was surprised by the uptake, but it is clear that it is already game, set, match for H.264.

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.

New Apple Device: Will it Lure Bill Gates out of Retirement?

A few days ago, I blogged about the second generation ebook reader. I was referring to the new device that is being announced by Apple tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Apple Execs, who are giddy with glee about their new device. Giddy? Content providers are also reacting the same way. Besides Apple, the winners are users out there and all the book, newspaper and magazine publishers, who were struggling with a digital business model.

It's the OS
The key thing is that Apple began this journey years ago with some critical developments. First, it was all about taking an Operating System (OS) and making it mobile friendly (iPod, iPhone).  Lots of naysayers have ignored this key move. It is the OS here that is strategic. Hardware can be copied. Software and great UI design is much much harder to mimic.

Second it was building two content related ecosystems, iTunes and then the AppStore. No other AppStore has come even close to Apple's success and iTunes remains the gold standard for music distribution.

So now Apple is about to launch a new device with great content and you have a recipe that will crush all comers. Who wins? You do. Students, Soccer Moms and even business people be carrying one soon.

Apple is on a roll right now. Google is a few laps behind (on Mobile) and we keep waiting for a response from Microsoft. It makes one wonder when Microsoft Founder Bill Gates will need to come out of retirement.

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.

The Unstoppable Force Called Users

A blog post from earlier this year, republished here for all to see:

The Unstoppable Force called Users

There is an unstoppable force at work (in enterprises) called users. Users are deciding how they want to use technology to solve problems and they are taking action. In a previous blog post, I discussed three CIOs who are beginning to adapt to this. Today, I will briefly discuss users.

Yesterday was a major day for Apple users all over the world: an updated OS Release called Snow Leopard. While there is news about this release (see Gartner First Take), what is more interesting is how users are dealing with these and other related technology issues.

In many companies around the world, bands of users are supporting each other regarding how they use their Macs at work. Besides the fact that many of these users feel so strongly that they purchased their own Mac, the real story is how they support each other through discussion forums, wikis and even short emails.

In the last 24 hours, the story that has surfaced with a few of my co-workers is how easy it was to connect their Snow Leopard enabled Macs to our Email Server (Microsoft Exchange) with no help from anyone within IT.

There are also even more examples of users who jumped the gun and migrated to Vista themselves and those users support each other. Now it is happening with Windows 7 as well. See a related blog post from Gartner Fellow David Mitchell Smith.

This is signaling a trend with users. Technology like computers, OSs and applications are becoming less complicated and users are no longer afraid (to take risks). Savvy CIOs are getting in front of this trend (the empowered user) and are adapting their workplace policies (giving up some control, but also, by being more flexible, gaining some back).

Macs may not overtake Windows in enterprises anytime soon, but the iPhone 3G and 3Gs have exploded into the enterprise, because of demand by users. As I stated to some of my former co-workers who use Macs,may the force be with you.