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 | The Seattle Storm beat the Sacramento Monarchs for the 2004 WNBA championship. Seattle, WA October 12, 2004 |
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May 13, 2008Office 2008 SP1I'm happy to report that my colleagues at MacBU shipped the first service pack to Office 2008 (2008 SP1) today; you can get the bits directly from the "downloads" section of our Web site, or you can wait a day or two for it to appear in AutoUpdate. All the product teams worked incredibly hard on this release, and I'm very proud to see the results getting out to customers. If you're interested in the scope of what got done, check out the KB article. It's also worth pointing out that Office 2008 is a barnburner, sales-wise: Office 2008 launched at Macworld Expo 2008, and sales for the productivity suite continue to soar, selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years. (Awesome.) UPDATE: Schwieb has a great post on SP1 on his blog. Check it out. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 13, 2008 7:15 PM. February 5, 2008I Heart CosmoPodOne of the (under-appreciated) benefits of taking transit to work is being able to watch video on your iPod or iPhone while someone else does the driving. I love watching TV shows (I'm kinda addicted to "Entourage") or movies - particularly on the way home - as a way of unwinding after a long day. Problem is, there's a lot of great video on the Internet that I'd like to see, much of it on YouTube, and I've been somewhat stymied about getting that stuff from YouTube's Flash-based video player into a format that my iPhone can understand. Stymied, that was, until I discovered CosmoPod. CosmoPod is this kick-ass plugin for Safari that detects a video clip on a Web page you're looking at, and, with a click:
In short, it rocks. I find it incredibly useful for longish (40+ minutes) clips on YouTube - the sort I never have time to sit down and watch, uninterrupted, in front of my MacBook. (For some reason, these all seem to be taken from the "Talks @ Google" series - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, "The Secret History of Silicon Valley"). CosmoPod detects this stuff, downloads it, and pops it on to my phone - fantastic. The product isn't free, but it is cheap - about ten bucks. If you're a commuter, it's well worth a look. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 5, 2008 3:13 PM. January 25, 2008Office 2008: The 10-Minute WalkthroughThe fine folks over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog have posted an interview with MacBU's own Amanda Lefebvre. Shot at Macworld, Amanda spends a good 10 minutes talking about Office 2008 and showing off a number of the new, cool things you can do with the suite. It's a solid primer for folks thinking about upgrading. (Nice work, Amanda!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 25, 2008 4:35 PM. January 13, 2008Off To MacworldMacworld kicks off tomorrow, and a good chunk of the MacBU (including yours truly) are heading down to San Francisco to meet customers, take questions, and show off Office 2008. I'll be working the Microsoft booth during the week, so if you're at the show, be sure to stop off, introduce yourself, and say hello! (And, if you're at the show, don't forget to print your Keynote Bingo card!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 13, 2008 8:52 AM. January 9, 2008"How The iPhone Blew Up The Wireless Industry"Wired has a fascinating, must-read article on the birth of the iPhone: The conversation about which operating system to use was at least one that all of Apple's top executives were familiar with. They were less prepared to discuss the intricacies of the mobile phone world: things like antenna design, radio-frequency radiation, and network simulations. To ensure the iPhone's tiny antenna could do its job effectively, Apple spent millions buying and assembling special robot-equipped testing rooms. To make sure the iPhone didn't generate too much radiation, Apple built models of human heads — complete with goo to simulate brain density — and measured the effects. To predict the iPhone's performance on a network, Apple engineers bought nearly a dozen server-sized radio-frequency simulators for millions of dollars apiece. Even Apple's experience designing screens for iPods didn't help the company design the iPhone screen, as Jobs discovered while toting a prototype in his pocket: To minimize scratching, the touchscreen needed to be made of glass, not hard plastic like on the iPod. One insider estimates that Apple spent roughly $150 million building the iPhone. (Thanks to Bill for the link!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 9, 2008 9:26 PM. January 3, 2008NetFlix To Make A Set-Top BoxFresh on the heels of my predictions about AppleTV v2: DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. will begin delivering movies and other programming directly to televisions later this year through a set-top box that will pipe entertainment over a high-speed Internet connection. The battle over the living room is going to erupt into a full-fledged shooting war in 2008. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 3, 2008 11:51 AM. January 2, 2008Macworld 2008 PredictionsMacworld is less than two weeks away, so it's time for the annual magic-8-ball-shaking routine. This year's show feels a touch more stable than last year's, if only because the rumor mill isn't being stoked as hotly by crazy-ass theories that Apple was going to get in to the phone business (I mean, really - can you imagine?). This cycle, it seems like people have a few pet theories about what Apple is going to launch - I hear "a Mac Tablet" a lot - but there's not the same crazy, "oh-God-what-is-it?!" kind of fervor. Frankly, I think 2008 is all about Apple building on their franchises, and I expect their product announcements to reflect that. Specifically, I think the big news will be a new, super-thin laptop, the iPhone software upgrades, and a substantial rev to AppleTV. (As with most of my Apple posts, the usual disclaimer applies to this one - I may work for MacBU, but I don't know anything special. I'm just throwing darts at a board like everyone else.) Since the name of the show is "Macworld" (as opposed to say, iPhoneworld, or AppleTVworld), it makes sense to start with... Macintosh Both the iMac and MacBook product lines are really strong at the moment (and both have been completely refreshed recently), so I don't expect any notable changes to either. Friends of mine who follow the Mac Pro market (I don't, generally) tell me that the thing is getting a bit long in the tooth, and is ready for some processor and motherboard upgrades to whatever latest-and-greatest Intel iron is available. (And, anecdotally, my coworker Kurt swears that Apple will refresh the Mac Pro because "he just bought one." I trust Kurt on this.) The MacBook Pro, however, is going to be the big change. When it was first introduced, the MBP wasn't much more than an Intel processor in a G4 PowerBook case. In fact, the current design of the MacBook Pro line was introduced at Macworld 2003 - five years ago - which is an eternity in the world of Apple design. I'm betting that the MacBook Pro line is about to get a stylistic refresh, becoming thinner and lighter across the board. And I'm also betting that the rumors are true, and the current 15" and 17" models will be joined by a holy-crap-that's-small 12" or 13" model. Might be flash-based, might not be; might have an optical drive, might not. Whatever. It's going to be small, light, gorgeous, slip-it-in-a-bag-and-never-notice-it cute. It's worth pointing out that Apple has never replaced the gap in its product line caused by the demise of the 12" PowerBook. The 12" seems to still be in fairly wide use today. I know lots of people who love their 12" PowerBooks, despite the fact that they're woefully underpowered. This unit longevity and loyalty speaks to a decent market for small machines, and, given Apple's relentless focus on design and miniaturization, it makes sense that they'd do a fantastically tiny Mac laptop to serve it. iPod/iPhone I don't expect new hardware in either the iPod or iPhone area - the iPods just got refreshed with the introduction of the "fat" Nano and the Touch, and iPhone v2 - one with 3G, and more memory - feels more like a late-Spring delivery, timed to coincide with the product's rollout in Asia. That means iPhone announcements will be all about the software. We know that the 1.1.3 update to the iPhone is imminent - GearLive, among others, has some great video footage of new enhancements to the product. I'd wager that we'll get a walk-through of some of these new features, as well as availability of 1.1.3 by the end of the show. The big news, however, will be the iPhone SDK. I've already talked about what I expect from the SDK, so I anticipate that Steve will spend a lot of time talking about their partner value proposition is - especially for small developers. I also expect one or two handpicked folks - people with early access to the SDK - will be on stage to talk about their experiences with the kit, and to pump their products. (Think Theo Gray doing his Universal Binary talk at the Intel announcement, and you've got the right idea.) And I fully expect that at least one of these folks will be someone like EA or PopCap. See, the iPhone needs games. I miss games on my iPhone. I started goofing with my iPod a bit over the holiday and fell in love with Zuma all over again. My brother-in-law is addicted to Vortex on his Nano. Casual games are such a natural, wonderful fit for Apple's consumer market that their absence from Apple's high-end portables is quite jarring. I think this is mostly a timing problem - the SDK just isn't out yet - but if Steve talks about any apps at all for the iPhone, I'm betting he'll talk about games. AppleTV Launched last year, AppleTV has been a modest success, lauded by many of its users for being an elegant, simple, and ridiculously-easy way to watch iTunes content on your television. Apple needed the AppleTV to support the launch of its movie download business, and the product delivered. Problem is, despite its excellent execution, the consumer promise of AppleTV is a bit too thin at the moment. There's no "second act", no "one more thing..." to drive sales beyond the market of people who a) have content in iTunes, and b) want to watch that content on their television. Unlike, say, the Xbox 360, AppleTV doesn't play games; unlike, say, a PlayStation 3, the AppleTV doesn't play DVD or Blu-Ray discs. As such, people who might want the capabilities that AppleTV offers are stuck looking at the prospect of putting One. More. Freakin'. Box. into their home-theater system - they can't pull one out because they're replacing functionality (as they did to their VCR when they bought a TiVo), or make the case that it will get a lot of use from other members of the household (as you can when you watch DVDs on your game machine). AppleTV, today, is an "additive" thing to the media console. And many people feel like their media consoles are stuffed to the gills already, thankyouverymuch. AppleTV's problem is, basically, that its use-case is too specific: the product needs to offer more options for content playback. Therefore, I predict that AppleTV v2 will come with DVD - and that there will be a higher-end AppleTV that does Blu-Ray or HD-DVD (although my money is on Blu-Ray). This will be the first step in a series of moves to evolve the AppleTV from "one more box" to the nerve center of the living room - the true "digital hub." The living room is a natural next step for Apple (and not just to protect the iPod/iTunes business). Technologically speaking, the living room is a nightmare for most people - three or more different remote controls, each driving a television, receiver, DVD player, TiVo, and so on. Getting the system set up at all is a Mensa test; making it work for everyone in the family requires a ton of training and a real comfort with technology. (And if you think I'm overstating the problem, invite a nontechie fortysomething relative over to your high-tech home for the holidays and ask them to "turn on the TV." Point at your basket of remote controls next to the coffee table, and start the timer on your watch. They'll be asking for help in less than 2 minutes.) It's just this type of problem space - confusing interfaces, lots of interoperability challenges, impenetrability to the non-propellerhead consumer - that Apple has a special penchant for solving. The living room isn't just an opportunity for Apple to sell a few more copies of "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" through iTunes; it's an opportunity to knock Sony down in the dirt, and make a lot of money doing it. Don't forget: Apple's new business model is to launch new consumer-electronics (read: hardware) businesses that intelligently leverage the Mac. That's AppleTV. So AppleTV v2 will be a bit cheaper (maybe $199 or $249), and come with DVD/Blu-Ray. That makes it an easier sell for a lot of people, especially people who are thinking about getting a Blu-Ray player anyway. But what about software? Well, again, we're hearing rumors that Apple has cut deals with studios to offer on-demand rentals of movies through iTunes. If true (and I think it is), this will be a huge advantage for AppleTV, because it will turns the box in to an on-demand movie (and, eventually, television) service. For people who don't like the selection of their cable company (or who don't have cable), this will be a real boon. In effect, this is the first step toward Apple building a private, iTunes-and-Internet-based TV network. AppleTV is the set-top box, content comes direct from the studios, and Comcast/DirecTV/Blockbuster/Unbox/Netflix can suck it. (And - long shot here- if Apple is really savvy, they'll encourage users to get their video content into iTunes by incorporating a DVD ripper/encoder into iTunes 8. This is, in effect, the same strategy they used with the iPod, letting people "rip, mix, burn" their already-owned CDs into the iTunes jukebox. Nothing really does that today, other than Handbrake, and Handbrake is Propellerhead Central. Apple might be able to get the studios to go along with it, too, as long as the newly-ripped files were encrypted with FairPlay, to prevent distribution. But this really feels like an AppleTV v3 thing to me.) If they make a really compelling AppleTV v2, then the next step is to move it up the chain in v3 and beyond. Make no mistake - Apple wants their media technology to be as necessary to your home theater as a HDTV and good speakers. It'll take 'em a while to get there, but I expect we'll see a big step toward it on January the 15th. So that's what my magic-eight-ball says. What about yours? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 2, 2008 9:52 PM. December 21, 2007Birth Of A PlatformWelcome to late December! Work is winding down for the year, holiday parties are being thrown, shoppers are scurrying around the malls looking for a Wii. And, for the Mac community, this is the usual time of year to pause, reflect, and begin making predictions about what will be announced at Macworld San Francisco in January. This isn't my Macworld prediction post (I'll get to that after the holiday), but I did want to take a bit to reflect on the forthcoming iPhone software development kit (SDK). This SDK is critically important to Apple; getting it right will transform the iPhone (and iPod Touch) from a fantastic piece of consumer electronics into a bona-fide platform, the kind of place where consumers can get a particular software itch scratched, developers can build a business, and everyone makes money. If done correctly, the iPhone SDK will become a huge strategic asset for Apple, driving sales and ancillary revenue, boosting customer satisfaction, and helping Apple ward off competing mobile platforms. So ... what will it look like? First, a disclaimer: while I work for Microsoft's Mac team, none of what I'm writing in here has been informed by any inside information, and certainly nothing is covered by NDA. I don't know anything special. This post is fueled by being a Gruber-reading, MacBreak Weekly-listening, Apple guy from way back in the day. Set the wayback machine for June: roughly 15 nanoseconds after the iPhone was launched, developers were trying to crack it open and figure out how to write native applications for it. This was fiendishly difficult work, both because a) Apple wasn't supplying any documentation on how to do this, and b) Apple was going out of their way to stop people from doing it. A game of cat-and-mouse evolved - developers would find a way to crack the phone, and, once they did, Apple would release a software update to prevent their break-in from working. Finally, in October, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be supplying a native SDK for the iPhone in February 2008. This served two purposes - first, it took a lot of the fight out of the hacker community to keep finding new-and-novel ways of breaking in to the iPhone (I mean, what's the point? Just wait for early '08), and second, it bought Apple the time it needed to get the SDK finished and out the door. One question on people's minds was, "why February?" I mean, it's clear that Apple has an SDK for the iPhone - otherwise, they'd never be able to create Mail, Mobile Safari, or any of the rest of the applications that come on the silly thing. Why not just make that available? My bet is that these new, third-party iPhone applications will only work on a new version of the iPhone operating system - call it v1.5 - which will be based on Leopard. And while v1.5 wasn't ready in October, it will be by February. Why Leopard? Well, aside from the obvious advantage of synchronizing the versions of OS X in the iPhone and on the Mac, Leopard has a number of new technologies that are great for your desktop iMac, but fantastic for mobile applications. Specifically, I expect that all iPhone applications will make use of:
What this means as well is that iPhone applications will be Cocoa applications. No Carbon (and certainly no Classic), no Java, no Python or PHP. OK, so now we know how these applications will be built - the next question is, how do users get to them? Will this be like the Mac shareware market, where people just offer downloads off their Web sites? Or will this be classic commercial software, sold in a box through Amazon or the local Apple Store? The short answer, I think, is iTunes. Today, people get a ton of content for their phones or iPods by going to the iTunes Store. You can get music and movies, as well as podcasts, TV shows, and iPod games. And, I suspect, when Jane Developer wants to put her newly-created Widget 1.0 for iPhone in the market, she'll do so much like she would with a podcast - she'll park it on a Web server somewhere, fill out a form on the Apple site, and, within a short period of time, the product will appear in the iTunes Store for purchase. Like podcasts, Jane Developer will be able to pick a handful of categories that apply to her app ("Games", "Productivity", "Utility", etc.), write some marketing text, have a cool icon. Like everything in the iTunes Store, users will be able to rate Widget 1.0 and leave feedback for others to see. And the whole transaction will take place in the iTunes environment, with Apple collecting a cut of the proceeds. For users, this is about the slickest thing ever. It extends the iPod shopping metaphor they're used to, and lets them use their current payment preferences (via their Apple ID) to just ... buy more stuff. I'd even wager that iTunes gift cards will be applicable toward third-party software, as well. If I'm right about this, there's a lot of goodness here for prospective iPhone developers. Because the phone is based on OS X, they get a modern, object-oriented codebase, a lot of world-class system services and features, and a high-quality desktop development environment. They also get a simple hardware target (for today, at least, the iPhone is the iPhone is the iPhone), which dramatically reduces the complexity of testing. Small developers will love the fact that iTunes handles marketing, payment, distribution and installation. In fact, this approach neatly solves a lot of long-standing problems in the mobile phone market. Consider the plight of a smartphone developer today. Let's say Jane Developer wants to write Widget 1.0 for Symbian or Windows Mobile - great. Here's her problem - her prospective user base is highly fragmented:
And so on. Now layer on a little more complexity - different installation techniques for phones. Some carriers (such as AT&T) want you to buy software "over the air" from them (paying data fees, of course) and install it in your phone that way. Others might want you to download programs off the Web (hello, Palm!) and "sideload" the installation. And so Jane, poor developer that she is, is stuck writing lowest-common-denominator products for the widest possible audience, or is going to have to pick a relatively scoped market (e.g., PalmOS machines with color screens) for a higher-end application. Marketing Jane's software might be difficult, too - she's got to build herself a Web site, come up with a payment-processing system, and then fight to get the attention of prospective buyers by using search-engine optimization techniques, buying AdSense ads, or both. In short: being a small software developer is hard; being a small software developer for a mobile platform is hellish. The iPhone turns a lot of this on its head. In many ways, the business model for iPhone development has more in common with video game consoles - the XBox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii - than it does with the traditional PC. For developers, the value proposition of a game console is simplicity - an Xbox 360 is an Xbox 360 is an Xbox 360. Each 360 has the same processor, the same video card, the same amount of memory. If you can write a game for one 360, it'll run on all of 'em. And because developers know what kind of hardware their prospective customers are working with, they can push it - really make the most of the platform they're on. It's one reason that second-gen video games for a given platform always look so much better than first-gen games - the developers have figured out how to tweak and push the hardware in new ways, get more out of it. The iPhone is very much like this. Every iPhone has a fantastic color screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a data plan, 8 GB of memory, a camera, and is linked to a PC or Mac with great desktop software called iTunes. This means that developers will go crazy making the most of this hardware/software combination, pushing the phone to do things that other phones simply can't do - or, at least, can't do in sufficient numbers to be interesting, market-wise, especially when the iPhone is already outselling all Windows Mobile devices combined. (And yes, future iPhones will undoubtedly bring more capabilities - more storage, 3G data connections, etc. - but I believe the basic form factor is unlikely to change for quite some time.) In short - the iPhone platform is going to bring the trifecta of 1) a stable, known hardware platform, 2) desktop-class development tools and technologies, and 3) dead-bang easy software marketing, distribution and installation to a fragmented market. And, I predict, it will be the dominant mobile development platform in less than 24 months. I certainly wouldn't want to be Palm or Nokia right about now. On a final note, I'm intensely curious to see what the success of the iPhone platform will mean for Mac users. Apple has stated that they plan to sell 10M iPhones by the end of 2008; based on current sales trajectories, I see no reason they won't hit it. That represents roughly 10% of the 100M-unit smartphone market; as Apple attempts to convert the majority of their 110M+ iPod customers to iPhone customers, it's eminently reasonable to assume they'll have 30M phones in circulation by the end of 2010. Read that again: 30M phones. As a point of contrast, that's roughly the size of the Mac installed base (!). Remember that iPhone developers are actually OS X developers, and remember that iPhone developers are using many of the same tools and APIs that you would use to develop for the Mac. Suddenly, as the iPhone attracts talented developers, many of those developers will find themselves with a lot of knowledge about how to create great Mac applications, too. I predict that the iPhone developer community will be a steroid for Mac development in general, and we are going to have a flood of new Mac applications hitting the market after the next year or two. New products, new ideas, new companies - all made possible because the delta between iPhone development and Mac development is much smaller than, say, the delta between Palm development and writing for Windows. (And, if you're a Mac rock star like Cabel Sasser or Wil Shipley, the iPhone is a win-the-lottery kind of new-market opportunity.) This flood of Mac apps isn't the point of the iPhone; rather, it's the spoils of victory. If Apple really manages to harmonize its developer story across its devices and desktops, really manages to crack the marketing, distribution and commerce problems, and really delivers a viable, vibrant market by selling the hell out of its product - then they've got it. One way or the other, it'll be fascinating to watch. (And frankly, I think they're going to pull it off.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 21, 2007 11:21 AM. December 17, 2007"oPtion$: The Secret Life Of Steve Jobs"I'm a regular reader of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (if you like snarky tech, it's a must-read), and recently finished the book by FSJ, called, "oPtion$: The Secret Life Of Steve Jobs". Bill had snagged a copy when it first came out, and just raved about it, so I placed a hold through SPL. Now I know why Bill loved it so much: it's laugh-out-loud funny. Really, really great. First, the basics: "oPtion$" isn't some kind of tell-all book about Real Steve Jobs or Apple. Instead, it's all about Silicon Valley, unchecked egos, and narcissism. In fact, FSJ is sort of a geek Paris Hilton - he's famous, yes, but mostly famous for being famous, and woefully free of any actual talent. The book's got zingers a-plenty, mostly run through the lens of people doing things that annoy Steve: Suddenly the air feels really, really cold, and it's so quiet that I can hear the air conditioning whirring in the walls, and I'm thinking to myself, Holy friggin mother of Jesus, I am so going to kill the a-holes who did the HVAC work in this place. Because I specifically told them I want this place silent. Not quiet. Silent. Like a friggin tomb, I told them. Yet there's this whirring in the walls as if we're up in a jet at thirty thousand feet. How am I supposed to concentrate? This is how I'm supposed to work? I can't even hear myself think. Or consider this great example of how FSJ and Larry Eillison spend their weekends: Rat Patrol is what Larry calls it when we drive his Hummer up to the city and cruise the Tenderloin in the middle of the night, wearing balaclavas and commando outfits and firing Super Soakers at transvestite hookers. You get points for how many you hit, with bonuses for letting them get as close as possible to the Hummer before you leap through the roof and open fire. We've done it a few times and I'll admit, it's pretty fun, especially when the trannies get all pissed off and start shouting and swearing. Larry aims for the face, and tries to blow their wigs off. The book's plot revolves around Apple's stock-options scandal from earlier this year; Jobs is tortured by an incompetent board, rebellious iPhone engineers, and a Zune-toting, Windows-loving prosecutor who thinks Steve is a poseur. It's fantastic. FSJ, if you don't know, is really author Daniel Lyons from Fortune. Lyons did an appearance at Microsoft earlier this year (we regularly host speakers on campus), and the talk was videotaped ... it's damn funny (and not remotely safe for work - the guys swears a lot). Check it out (note: requires Windows and Internet Explorer). The book's a definite recommend. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 17, 2007 11:13 AM. December 13, 2007Office 2008 Released To ManufacturingIt's official: Mac Office 2008 has been released to manufacturing. The product launch is January 15 at Macworld. (And, I know I uh, work for MacBU and all that, but I really like the software.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 13, 2007 7:15 AM. November 16, 2007Awesome Apple Ad ParodyValleywag carried a link this morning to this outstanding Apple ad parody. Any Apple fan who listens to the lyrics will immediately start giggling. And, if you're interested, the original ad can be found here. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 16, 2007 4:42 PM. October 16, 2007Leopard Arrives Oct. 26It's official: Apple has announced that Leopard will be available on October 26. The online store is taking pre-orders now; retail price is $129 for individuals, $199 for the family pack. Get 'em while they're hot! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 16, 2007 7:03 AM. September 6, 2007Apple: Early Adopters Get $100Yesterday, Apple announced that they were slashing the price on the iPhone by $200 - the 8GB phone, formerly priced at $599, was now $399. This is clearly great news for Apple (they'll sell a gadzillion of them), great news for phone buyers (a great phone is now cheaper), and bad news for people who ragged on Apple's pricing. However, a number of people in the Mac community lost their shit about the price cut, feeling, in no small way, that they were victimized/gouged/screwed when they bought their iPhone for its formerly-suggested retail price. I am not one of these people. The iPhone was worth $599 to me, I paid $599, I'd pay $599 again. It's an amazing product. I've also been around long enough to know that a) v1 is never as good as you think it'll be, b) capacities/capabilities will go up, and c) prices will come down. It's the nature of being early. Well, today, Apple announced that they're going to give an $100 Apple Store credit to all the early iPhone buyers out there: I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions. Clearly, I'll take the $100, but I'm really surprised by this. The goodwill Apple is buying with this move is astounding, and, frankly, cheap - they're going to give away $100M (1M iPhone customers x $100 per customer) to basically protect their brand. Wow, is all I can say. Smart move, folks. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 6, 2007 12:57 PM. July 26, 2007Switching To The Mac(BU)As of August 13, I'm starting a new job here at Microsoft. I'll be a Program Manager in the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU - pronounced "Mac Boo"), working to help design and build the next generation of Microsoft Office for the Mac. I can't even begin to express how thrilled I am. When I've shared this news with people over the past few days, I've received one of two responses. They are:
I'll take each in order. First, it's no great secret that I'm a longtime Apple fan. I won't bore you with the usual discussion of my bona-fides, like when I got my first Mac (1990) or what model it was (SE/30); suffice to say that I've been doing my Amateur Apple Pundit Thing on this blog for a good three years now, and the company is clearly a passion of mine. I like their products, like their focus on the customer experience and think they're producing some of the hottest stuff in the industry right now. MacBU is the largest Mac development shop outside of Apple (the Seattle PI did an article on the team a few years ago, called, "The Mac Lovers Of Microsoft"), and our flagship product is Mac Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, and Messenger). So if you want to have an impact on the software that a lot of Mac users use (which, uh, I do), Microsoft is an excellent place to do it. Second, I do like Planning. I've been "living the dream" in Office - doing an interesting job with great people - since I connected with the Product Planning team as an MBA intern in 2004. Planning has been nothing but nice to me, generous with their trust and their resources. I've learned a lot, met wonderful folks, and done some work that I'm very proud of (and which you all will be able to see when Office ships next). So why change? Well, I've seen Microsoft VP Robbie Bach speak on more than one occasion, and whenever he talks about career development he invariably talks about building your "portfolio of skills." Broadly, this means you should look at what you do and don't do well, what parts of the company you have or have not worked on, and so on. In Bach's view, it's smart to do a 360-degree analysis of your skills, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and plug the gaps by trying new stuff from time to time. He counsels you to go give yourself experiences that seem interesting (work abroad, do a stint in sales, dabble in operations, etc.), and that pull you out of your comfort zone. I find this model compelling. One reason I went to business school was because I wanted to try working for a big company. Office Product Planning was my first taste of that, and the experience has been well worth having. But as time has gone on, I've found myself yearning to own more and more of the product, take things from idea to execution, bring new stuff to market. It's something I've done in a startup context, but never with, you know, serious budgets and millions of customers. And of course, if I'm going to build something, I'd like to be building something I'm emotionally invested in, that I really care about. In my world, that really boils down to Internet stuff and/or Mac stuff. Hence, I've been sniffing around the MacBU for a good while now, doing informational interviews and generally making a pest of myself. I heard earlier this year that the Program Manager gig might be coming, and, when it got posted, I went for it - submitted the resume, did the interviews, the works. And now, well, you're reading about it. I'm jazzed. Just .... jazzed. Jazzed about the job, jazzed about the Mac, jazzed about learning new skills, jazzed about getting to work on products that I'll have in my Dock. Jazzed that I'm going to get paid to attend things like MacWorld and WWDC, jazzed that my primary work machine is a MacBook Pro, and jazzed that I'll need to partition it for the Leopard beta, cause, you know, I need to know about that stuff for work. But mostly, I'm jazzed that I get to work on crazy/cool new software ideas that will, undoubtedly, keep my brain running full-speed. Drawbacks? Yeah, a few. Elaine and I just finished moving (Megaproject #1), and all of this happened a lot faster than I thought it might. In my mind, any kind of job transition was going to kick off after we got back from our honeymoon in September. This would let us use the summer to plan the wedding and get married (Megaproject #2), and then figure out what to do, career-wise (Megaproject #3). But life kind of has its own schedule. This came up early, I realized I wanted it, and the tumblers all clicked. So #3 happened second, and my summer is going to be even nuttier than expected. One thing I've been particularly impressed by is how open the process has been, internally. My lead and I had our mid-year career discussion back in February, and I told her I was planning to make a play for a Mac job if one became available. We've kept in touch on the issue over the last few months; I let her know that the job was getting posted, let her know when I applied, and so on. Being transparent has helped both of us plan for a clean, clear transition. Planning has been nothing but great about all this - Microsoft's got a strong commitment toward keeping people in the business, and working on projects that make 'em want to get in to work every morning. (Which, uh, this does.) So I'm winding down my Planning activities, transitioning my work to others, and, as I understand it, my MacBook Pro is on order. And about two weeks from now, I'll be reporting to work in Building 115. Watch this space for details. (Jazzed.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 26, 2007 9:16 AM. July 11, 2007Convenience Samples: A Pictorial RepresentationIn market research, a convenience sample is defined as follows: A convenience sample is a sample where the patients are selected, in part or in whole, at the convenience of the researcher. The researcher makes no attempt, or only a limited attempt, to insure that this sample is an accurate representation of some larger group or population. Convenience samples are generally bad, because the researcher winds up gathering data from people he or she knows. Since people generally (but not always) associate with people who are like them, that often results in the survey data reflecting the researcher's own biases - and not the tastes of a larger population. Which, when you're gauging something like, oh, say, the public's appetite for a new product, is pretty damn important. I bring all of this up because Richard and Melissa were kind enough to throw Elaine and me a wedding shower on Saturday, and, as our friends arrived, they'd generally toss their keys and cell phones on the kitchen counter. The photo kinda says it all:  We had quite a lineup: 6 iPhones, 2 BlackBerries, and a RAZR. (I guess I really do live in a bubble.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 11, 2007 10:21 PM. July 1, 2007My iPhone Adventure
There was a lot of debate amongst my friends about where to go to be assured of getting product at launch. Richard, for instance, was a proponent of finding the small, out-of-the-way AT&T store in, like, rural Idaho - someplace without much of a line. For my money, though, the U Village Apple Store was the only place to go: as the flagship Seattle store, it was guaranteed a good supply of the phones ... and it's where the party was going to be. (I mean, waiting in line for Star Wars is as much the experience as the movie itself, right?) We weren't disappointed. Bill and I got to the U Village around 2:45 PM and took our places at the end of the line. Adrian was happily sequestered up front (#36!), but I managed to land at #195. The line would later grow to about 350 people before the doors opened at 6. The mood was, well, happy. People were settling in, enjoying themselves, chatting with their friends and one another. One guy brought his ClearWire Internet service and was broadcasting it over WiFi for the benefit of the public. Another guy ordered pizza, and shared slices. There were three TV news trucks, plus newspaper folks walking around, doing interviews, shooting footage. The Apple employees would walk the line every 30 or 45 minutes, handing out bottled water and thanking people for coming; other folks would also walk the line, handing out flyers for their Mac-troubleshooting businesses, or four-color postcards advertising their new Web sites, games, or iPhone accessories. (And, in perhaps the funniest, least-effective expenditure of marketing dollars ever, a Verizon Wireless billboard truck cruised the parking lot for two hours before launch. The crowd started laughing - loudly - when it arrived.) I was surprised at the number of people I ran in to, or who showed up to join me in line. Bill and Adrian were there, of course, but over the next few hours I found myself joined by Richard, Melissa, Hessan, Pete, and Jeff (kids in tow). Elaine came, too. (Best. Girlfriend. Ever.) The doors opened at 6, the cry went out, people started clapping. And, by 6:45 PM, Elaine and I were standing outside the Apple store, phones in hand, smiling and blinking in the sunlight. Four hours, start to finish. I got home, opened the box, and plugged it in to my MacBook. iTunes came up and did what it was supposed to. I switched my current Cingular account over to the iPhone (it even detected my corporate-discount plan through Microsoft), entered my Apple ID, and clicked "OK" on the terms and conditions for both Apple and AT&T. It then tried to process my activation, but came back and said it was taking too long, and the system would e-mail me once it had been completed. Twenty minutes later, I was up and running. I gave the phone a name, and the system auto-synced my calendars and contacts from my Mac. I then checked some options for the photos, music, podcasts and movies I wanted to have on the device (even with the 8 GB iPhone, I can't fit all of my media on it), hit "apply" and waited for the file-copy to finish. Bing, bang, boom. So what's it like? Four words: holy crap, it's cool. Some notes:
And that's the big thing, here -- the iPhone is an amazing product (and doubly so for a v1), but the real excitement lies in what it will become over the coming years, as Apple enhances it with ever-more-clever software. They'll finish some of their applications (Notes, Calendar), smooth out the UI, and enable exciting new functions. I can think of a good half-dozen interesting applications I'd like to see on (or build for!) the iPhone. I'm sure smarter guys than me have longer lists of more-interesting ideas, too. Apple clearly has the heat in the market. Nokia, et. al. are going to have to work very, very, very hard to keep up. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play with this thing for a while longer... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 1, 2007 10:46 AM. June 29, 2007Off To The CircusOK, so Bill and I are taking off for the U Village Apple Store - we're meeting up with a gaggle of fellow geeks to wait in the oh-so-growing iPhone line.(Rumor has it there's a good couple hundred people there already.) Adrian's been there since 5:30 this morning -- he's #36. (Talk about hard-core!) We should be situated by 3 PM or so. If you're heading down to see the show, look for us and say "hi"! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 29, 2007 1:39 PM. Out Of The BoxEarlier this week, Apple posted a video that shows how you activate the iPhone. As I plan to buy an iPhone tonight (provided, of course, that supplies are available) this was of no small interest - I mean, I'm a current AT&T/Cingular customer, and was curious about how the whole buying experience was supposed to work. I have generally found the process of buying a new cell phone to be, well, laborious. Usually, even if you know the phone you want, you're going to sink 10 or 20 minutes working with the rep behind the counter as they activate your new phone, switch over your account, validate your credit card, run a credit check, take a blood sample, have you sign the new two-year agreement, switch the SIM card from one phone to the other, and so on. I've had some great experiences of late at the Cingular store at Pacific Place Mall (they're very pro down there), but even those experiences tend to be far, far more time-consuming than, say, buying an iPod (walk in, grab box, pay nice man, walk out). This 10-to-20 minute transaction overhead for cell phones was spookin' me - there's going to be a gazillion people waiting in line for iPhones across the country, and, in my mind's eye, I envisioned crazy pandemonium at Apple and AT&T stores as rabid would-be buyers tried to get the attention of harried clerks, each of whom was already working to serve 4 or 5 different customers by getting their phones sold/activated. Cell phone stores have the luxurious, languid feeling of a country club at, like, 3 PM on a Sunday - nowhere else to be, nothing to do, have another highball - whereas tonight is going to be something more akin to Christmas shopping during Cabbage Patch Kid/Tickle Me Elmo season. Put frankly, the cell industry has never seen demand for phones that looks anything like this. So it pleased me to no end to see that Apple, apparently, knows that the cell-phone-activation experience could be improved, and has elected to reboot it. Rather than activate your iPhone at the Apple/AT&T store, you just buy the box, take the phone home, and activate it there. Over the Internet. This is genius. I'm unbelievably impressed with how smart this is, and am also agog at, once again, how much flexibility Apple is able to wring out of its business partners while improving its customer experience. A few thoughts:
Really, as boring as an "activation video" might be - check it out. The sales model for the iPhone may well shake the industry as much as anything else: "just buy the box and use the Internet to do the rest." I'm in line for the 8GB version this afternoon. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 29, 2007 7:53 AM. June 24, 2007Same Planet, Different WorldsOne thing that's surprised me about the whole moving-in-together thing has been how much time I spend checking my calendar. Elaine and I are both pretty social, and as such we're forever trying to schedule ourselves or the other for dinners, lunches, walks around Greenlake, barbecues, Storm games, and the like. Until about a month ago, we generally did this with e-mail, which was like this extended game of Battleship: G: "I'd love to have Bill and his wife over for dinner. How's the 18th?" So the conversation continues like this over several more exchanges, and, eventually, we locate a date that seems to work ("You sank my battleship!"). Then I just have to see if Bill's OK with a) the weekend we've chosen, and b) being scheduled out two years. And then, a month ago, we tried switching from e-mail to using a series of shared Google Calendars. It's like going to heaven. If you've not tried it, Google Calendar is a terrific Web-based calendar. It's very simple, very usable, and very powerful -- a great Web application that feels a lot like a desktop app. However, the secret sauce of Google Calendar (much like the secret sauce of most of Google's Web applications, like Docs & Spreadsheets) is that Calendar makes it possible to share your calendars with others. The scenario breaks down like this. I log in to Google Calendar and populate a calendar with a handful of my personal appointments. I want to share this with Elaine, so she knows where I am (and whether to expect me for dinner). So in the Calendar, I click on the options drop-down, select 'Share this Calendar' and then enter Elaine's e-mail address. She gets an invitation in e-mail to look at my calendar, which, when clicked, adds my appointments to her Calendar interface. Simple. We've set up a few different calendar files, based on the context of what we'll be doing. Our "big three" are:
We also have the Storm Home Game calendar, and I've put up a calendar for my hobby stuff (e.g., singing). Since we're now both working on the same calendar file, we have a need to let the other one know if a given event is for one or the both of us. Thus, we flag appointments with "[G]", "[E]", or "[G+E]" to indicate whether the appointment involves me, her, or the two of us. (Entries have titles like, "[G] Drinks with Jon".) We're about a month into using this system, and I can't go back to e-mail. Having everything consolidated into a single view (that I can get from any Web browser!) is fantastically convenient, and saves time. Bill can walk in to my office, talk can turn to that dinner we've been trying to plan, and I can give him some good dates right away, rather than playing the, "Uh, let me e-mail Elaine and see what her calendar is like" game. Now right about now, I'm sure a few of you are asking, "But what about iCal? I thought you were all hot on your GTD, iCal-as-dashboard system! How does iCal know what's going on with your Google Calendar?" This is a great point. One of the big challenges I've had with Google Calendar has been interoperability with iCal - out out of the box, iCal can subscribe to calendar items in Google Calendar (change it in Google Calendar, and iCal gets the change), but this is a purely one-way relationship - I can't use iCal to change what's on my Google Calendar. And then came along Spanning Sync, and everything got better. Spanning Sync closes the loop between Google Calendar and iCal. It's a Mac OS X Preference Pane that keeps selected Google Calendars in sync with the calendars on iCal, and vice versa. As a practical matter, this means I can continue working in iCal as I usually do - dragging around appointments, changing things - and Spanning Sync lets Google Calendar know, so Elaine gets the latest, freshest, most-up-to-date information. When I'm at home, I can work on my Mac; when I'm at work, I can use Google Calendar through the Web. It's seamless, slick, and, like all great Mac software, Just Works. It also allows me to keep using KGTD, MailTags, and all the other great stuff I rely on to manage my projects. Spanning Sync isn't free (I pay $25/year for it), but it does come with a 15-day trial to let you know if you'll like it or not. (I liked it.) So there it is. I know a lot of my fellow Geek Couples wrestle with this problem, too, so folks, lemme tell ya - give it a try. I predict you'll be able to leave "Battleship" where it belongs - at Game Night. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 24, 2007 10:57 AM. June 22, 2007iPhone Guided TourIf you want to see how-freakin'-unbelievable the iPhone is, take 20 minutes and swing on over to Apple.com for this guided tour. It's a shockingly good walkthrough of the product ... and now, of course, I can't wait to get my hands on one. (Not that, uh, I was waiting very patiently before. Who else is waiting in line at |
I did, indeed