I'm Todd Sieling, and I help design software experiences and strategies for the web. Here I write and can be contacted about creating humane, effective and memorable products for the connected world.
Just over three years ago Steve Jobs closed a keynote with notice that Apple Computer had changed its name to Apple, Inc. My first reaction was that they were taking the business more towards the iPod model and away from Macs. Later, I wrote that I saw Apple taking the direction towards digital appliances and what that meant for watching movies at home. I’m happy the Mac is still central to their strategy, but in the iPad we see more of what Apple sees: the general purpose computing paradigm is a dead end.
Lots of techies are upset, seeing the future of making software as a Facebook experience: whitewashed, right angles and the turfing out of anything not deemed to fit by corporate interests.
How did that happen? There were plenty of chances to make things easy and for everyone, like the marketing copy we keep slapping onto our product descriptions. But we blew it.
Like many, I watched the iPad announcement on Wednesday and then went straight to discussion forums to see what people were saying. As with any disruptive product, there’s a mix of reactions ranging from lust to uncertainty to outrage. What gets missed in the excitement for or against is the comprehensive and disciplined innovation strategy that Apple has used three times now, most recently in the iPad. Read more »
Amazon today announced a revised royalty program for its e-book Kindle Store, significantly increasing the potential return to authors and publishers in exchange for commitments to meet certain feature requirements. The move, which takes effect on June 30th, essentially bumps the royalty payments to 70% of an e-book’s list price, up from the existing 35% rate that will remain in effect for publishers who do not wish to meet the requirements of the new program.
Firstly, a correction to my own statement that Amazon was sharing only 30% of revenue from Kindle titles with authors. But 5% doesn’t change that the pressure Amazon brought to bear on authors was threatening to reduce author returns to sweatshop wage levels, a position that could only be enjoyed from a de facto monopoly.
The timing and degree of the revenue share is particularly interesting, as Apple seems ready to spring a tablet onto the market that would likely inherit the App Store model of a 30%-70% revenue split, with App (and soon ebook) authors taking the bigger slice.
While it’s great that Amazon is making this move, it’s a sad statement that from the position of first mover their impulse was to impose such harsh terms on authors. The move also shows the threat to the Kindle that Amazon sees in an Apple table ebook reader.
While writing a long-overdue post about the failure of imagination that has been the Kindle, I found myself feeling a little left out of the Apple tablet speculation game, though yesterday’s post did have some of that.
Instead of listing a bunch of things I think the tablet will do, I wanted to step back and try to boil down the design thinking that would drive such a product to market.
Evolution is a funny thing, and by funny I mean like religion: easily grasped in the way that suits the dispositions of the reader. We often think that evolution produces the optimal, even the perfect, but this is nowhere near the truth. Rather than travel in a straight and rational line, evolution pushes design iterations along winding roads that can double back on themselves as easily as they can curve and veer in new directions.
Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, must be losing some sleep this week. Just six days ago he made in one of his posts a call for a ‘digital flash mob’. The goal: overload the AT&T 3G network in a protest response to the company’s grousing about Bandwidth Hogs. Now, the Bandwidth Hog is a mythological beast in the world of telecom and internet service providers. Spokespeople portray them with propagandistic rhetoric as an invisible enemy among us, greedily devouring fantastic amounts of bandwidth to the detriment of us fair-minded, simple folk. Invoking such a cheap device is condescending enough, but the real insult is that these companies consistently fail to produce evidence of actual bandwidth hogs.
But that doesn’t excuse Lyons from what he must be starting to see as a bad mistake. His Operation Chokehold has escaped the crystal prison of satire and threatens to run loose in our world. That’s right, Fake Steve found the silly old book of magic spells and thought it funny to read one calling forth the Bandwidth Hog from the demon dimensions. As if in a bad horror movie (or a great Buffy episode), the beast becomes real and is loosed upon the world.
In real terms, the stunt is little more than a crowdsourced denial of service attack, and the FCC has already commented to that effect. Moreover, one has to wonder how much damage this whole thing will do to the future of unlimited data plans; if Operation Chokehold demonstrates a risk exposure in unlimited plans, the telcos will have a great shield to hide behind as bandwidth caps and tiered access once again rule the day and destroy a huge user experience benefit that Real Steve Jobs brought in with the iPhone: that you don’t have to wonder about data limits when you use the device.
By invoking the ethos of the vandal with a ginned up crowd, Lyons went beyond satire, slapped on a pair of jean shorts and made the wonderful Fake Steve Jobs jump the shark.
What Dan could and should have done is tuned AT&T anger at the partner with the trump card: Apple. They’ve shown us that they can and will break carrier exclusivity by punishing Rogers/Fido here in the Canada just last month, so why not reach for the lever that seems to actually work to the customer’s benefit?
If Dan’s satirical voice does wane after this episode it’ll be a net loss, but like the Fonz nobody made him get on those waterskies.
The proverbial They are often heard to say that a hallmark of good design is that it’s obvious.
It’s hard to argue that understanding what something does should not be as immediate and easy as possible. There are exceptions, such as in games where exploration and challenge happen in part by decrypting the utility and purpose of the unfamiliar.
Embracing that maxim, however, can lead us to dismiss the reasoning behind a design choice when the need itself isn’t immediately obvious. I learned just that by taking a close look at the recent update to the Apple Remote and its puzzling addition of a Play/Pause button.
Just over three years ago Steve Jobs closed a keynote with notice that Apple Computer had changed its name to Apple, Inc. My first reaction was that they were taking the business more towards the iPod model and away from Macs. Later, I wrote that I saw Apple taking the direction towards digital appliances and what that meant for watching movies at home. I’m happy the Mac is still central to their strategy, but in the iPad we see more of what Apple sees: the general purpose computing paradigm is a dead end.
The proverbial They are often heard to say that a hallmark of good design is that it’s obvious.