>This week Shawn and Ben are joined by our pal Marco Arment to talk about the new Amazon Kindles and home coffee roasting and AeroPressin’.
It’s good one, thanks to Marco for joining us.
Month: September 2011
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How Much Time America Wastes in Line at Starbucks
Michael Pusateri breaks it down, I won’t reveal the answer here. But, he does estimate this:
>Doing the math: 11,131 stores * 449 visits per store = 4,997,819 visits per day by Americans.
That’s just America…
[via Twitter] -
‘It’s More Likely That I Was Doing 911km/H’
A letter from Justin Lee to the New Zealand Police on Letters of Note:
>For me to have traveled from Porirua to the foot of the Bombay Hills just out of Auckland by six thirty, I would had to have crawled into the first car in the hospital parking lot and headed for Auckland at around 1,000 km/h. For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116 km/h as per the infringment notice, it is more likely that I was doing 911 km/h.
This is an excellent letter.
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iOS, a Bigger Business Than Microsoft
Horace Dediu:
>iOS powered devices generate more revenue than all of Microsoft’s products put togetherThat’s almost unbelievable, not to mention [IBM surpassing Microsoft](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016361398_ibmmicrosoft30.html?syndication) as the second largest tech company by market cap. I bet Ballmer is sweating.
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Amazon and Apple Have Mirror Opposite Tablet Content Strategies
Mark Mulligan:
>Put simply, Apple is in the business of selling content to help sell devices whereas Amazon is in the business of selling devices to help sell content.That’s about as clear as you can state it.
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‘What Are We Supposed to Do With Google+?’
Garrett Murray has a great onslaught of questions about Google+, my favorite of them is this bit:
>And if it’s an experiment, what is it trying to test? Whether or not people want a different social network? And also, if the experiment proves people do want an alternative, is Google+ the best one? Will that guarantee its success?You should read his entire post, great questions.
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Amazon’s Repositioning
A great post by Chris Ziegler that touches on a few really important concepts behind the Kindle Fire:
1. Amazon turning Android back against Google.
2. The idea that Amazon is now, in fact, a hardware competitor.I really like this line from Ziegler:
>After all, it wasn’t long ago that we thought it was preposterous that a search engine might create a phone popular enough to take over the world; it’s no more preposterous to think that the world’s largest online retailer could do the same.
That is so very true and exactly what makes Amazon so interesting right now.
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‘Pure Fiction’
Alastair Sharp reporting:
>”Rumors suggesting that the BlackBerry PlayBook is being discontinued are pure fiction,” RIM spokeswoman Marisa Conway said in an emailed statement. “RIM remains highly committed to the tablet market and the future of QNX in its platform.”I would guess there are a lot of things analysts/investors and RIM Co-CEOs could label as “pure fiction” right now.
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Amazon Kindle Press Conference Video on YouTube
You can now watch a low resolution video of the Kindle presentation on YouTube. I haven’t checked it out yet, but I have been told it was a well done presentation.
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HP TouchPad Go Details Galore
Derek Kessler has a nice run down of the 7″ version of the HP TouchPad, one that we will probably never see. Of note is this bit from Kessler:
>The IPS screen retains the 1024×768 pixel count, but scales it down from 9.7 inches to 6.95 inches.
I’d think that would have made for an excellent reading screen.
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Amazon and Apple
There are two huge differences between Apple and most other companies that it “competes with”:
- Apple has a knack for understanding what the consumer wants — even if the consumer is still not quite sure what they want. To illustrate this point I think it best to recall a story I grew up hearing about cars in the 50s, the ones with fins running down the back of the cars. The legend, the story, that I have grown up hearing about those cars is the auto makers stopped asking consumers what they wanted and started asking them what their neighbor would want. ((I doubt this story is true, but the point holds.)) The people asked then said something like: “Who Steve? He’d probably want something crazy with huge wings or something on it. That guy…” This research led to the finned era of cars (or so goes the tale) and spurred massive sales and pretty wild designs — it was a realization that consumers aren’t very good judges of what they want.
Everyone said at the introduction of the iPhone that the lack of 3G would be it’s death. That the closed nature and web-only apps would be a problem. The original iPhone was still a hit despite those limitations — because what people actually wanted, what they actually cared about, wasn’t 3G or native apps.
- Apple also has shown many times over the willingness to introduce new technology the moment that they can. Some where (again, can’t find the source) there is a quote of Steve Jobs (I believe) saying that Apple likes to introduce new technology while that new technology stills seems magical. This is an important part of Apple’s products.
### Enter Amazon
Up and until today I strongly believed that no major technology company was able to both understand and execute on both of these items in any way, shape, or form close to what Apple does. That’s why most tablets that we see simply look like clones of the popular iPad — albeit a crappy clone in most cases.
Today Amazon showed that they, at the very least, understand the first point above. They seem to get what the consumer wants, or at least are willing to gamble on what they *think* the consumer wants. It’s an interesting and refreshing perspective.
Amazon has never been in the business of providing the second item — the magical technology ((Unless you are Prime member, because that can be magical at times.)) . Amazon seems to understand that they, as a company, will prosper on pricing — that’s their goal, it’s Amazon’s second item ((It too is becoming one for Apple.)) . Amazon wants to ship products that attempt to meet what consumers actually want, at low prices. Apple adds in the magical part, while attempting both of the same things.
It is an incredibly encouraging sign for Amazon, and for consumers, and I for one can’t wait to see how well Amazon executed this vision on the Kindle Fire.
Whether the Kindle Fire is a success or not — it speaks well to Amazon’s longevity in the consumer electronics space.
- Apple has a knack for understanding what the consumer wants — even if the consumer is still not quite sure what they want. To illustrate this point I think it best to recall a story I grew up hearing about cars in the 50s, the ones with fins running down the back of the cars. The legend, the story, that I have grown up hearing about those cars is the auto makers stopped asking consumers what they wanted and started asking them what their neighbor would want. ((I doubt this story is true, but the point holds.)) The people asked then said something like: “Who Steve? He’d probably want something crazy with huge wings or something on it. That guy…” This research led to the finned era of cars (or so goes the tale) and spurred massive sales and pretty wild designs — it was a realization that consumers aren’t very good judges of what they want.
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T-Mobile Also Files Brief in Support of Samsung Against Apple
Florian Mueller:
>T-Mobile just submitted an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of Samsung against Apple with respect to a possible US-wide preliminary injunction […]Good luck getting the iPhone.
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Quote of the Day: Tim Cook
“It’s people who deliver innovation.”— Tim Cook -
‘Purpose-Built’
Paul Stamatiou on the Kindle Fire:
>The original Kindle was purpose-built: create an amazing digital reading experience. The Kindle Fire’s MO seems to be create an okay experience for apps, the web, books, movies, music and of course Angry Birds.It’s an interesting question that I don’t think any one short of MG Siegler can answer right now: did Amazon integrate the “content consumption” experience well enough to allow consumers to forgive the assumed hit that one takes to readability of the non e-ink screen?
Secondarily, and more to Stamatiou’s point, does the broader focus of the ‘Fire’ make the device poor?
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Amazon Silk
Amazon Silk Team on the new browser that will be running on the Amazon Kindle Fire:
>Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely.
It’s damned clever and might just be *the* thing that we remember five years from now. Be sure to watch the video, the part talking about how fast web pages will load if those pages are already on Amazon’s network is key.
Amazon has just given every web developer a way to make incredible fast and targeted sites for the Kindle Fire. That’s clever. That’s a company that gets it.
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Kindle Fire
7″ tablet with WiFi for $199. Pre-order now and ships on November 15th ((I’ve got my pre-order in.)) but what is most interesting is this bit of marketing text from Amazon:
>Kindle Fire uses IPS (in-plane switching) technology – similar technology to that used on the iPad – for an extra-wide viewing angle, perfect for sharing your screen with others.
Did you notice that they mentioned the iPad by name? That signifies one thing about Amazon — the same thing that has always kept them successful: they acknowledge their competitors and respect them. Amazon could have said it is a better screen than tablet X — instead they acknowledged that, yes, the iPad screen is pretty nice and our is similar. Well done.
I haven’t touched one, but even at that I think there is an argument to be made for buying this over an iPad — I just don’t know what that argument is quite yet.
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Samsung Takes Android Patent License From Microsoft Rather Than Wait for Motorola
Florian Mueller:
>By taking a royalty-bearing license, Samsung recognizes that Android has intellectual property problems that must be resolved with license fees, and reduces to absurdity the idea that Google is going to be able to protect Android after the acquisition of Motorola Mobility.Mueller also notes that Samsung has over 100,000 patents worldwide, a quarter of which are U.S. patents — none of which offered them protection in this instance. What Google does with Motorola should be pretty interesting, but it is looking more and more like something that was done just to make a “splash”.
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Let Us Pay
Marco Arment:
>If the free-update offer still stands when TextMate 2 ships, I will not take you up on it. I’m buying TextMate 2 as a new customer at full price.[I am right there with him](https://brooksreview.net/2011/03/fragility-free/).
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Instagram 2.0 Filters
John Gruber on the dulling of Instagram’s filters in the 2.0 release:
>That’s the bottom line: they made Instagram less fun.I agree, the most obvious change (to my eyes) is with the ‘Kelvin’ filter which used to make the picture hideously orange. I’d welcome back the mandatory borders if it meant we were granted use of the old “better” filters.
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The Small Monitor Experiment
Last week [I wrote a post](https://brooksreview.net/2011/09/meticulous/) that was a response to [Trent Walton’s post](http://trentwalton.com/2011/09/20/unitasking/) titled “Unitasking”. I hypothesized that my productivity and general computing happiness would rise if I stuck with only using the screen attached to my 13″ MacBook Air, thus forgoing using my spacious 24″ Apple Cinema Display.
I committed to do this for a week, here we are now well short of a week and I am willing to report back: this was a terrible idea.
Let me first start by saying that I lasted approximately 5 days — three of which I wasn’t at my office (the only place where I have an external display). So I actually only lasted two days before I decided that this was a terrible idea and went back to using the larger display at work. ((You could argue that had I given it a full week I would have gotten used to it, but I so hated the setup and I couldn’t bear to give it that long.))
### Small Screen Usefulness
None of this should be read as me stating that small screens can’t be as productive as large screens. I still believe that they are a far more focused — and therefore a better — way to work.
The size and resolution of my MacBook Air’s screen is just about perfect for 99% of all tasks that I do on my MacBook Air. It’s not even those 1% of tasks that caused me to switch back over to my 24″ Cinema Display.
### Aesthetics
This all comes down to aesthetics. Simply put my MacBook Air looked down right silly sitting on my office desk all alone and that, in turn, led me to feel silly using the setup.
It made my workspace feel awkward at best, and down right annoying most of the time. I hated the way I felt exposed to the rest of the office and how dwarfed everything felt with just that screen sitting atop my `6′ x 3’` desk.
My decision to switch back came down to two things:
1. I hated the way it looked.
2. I hated the way it felt.I have always believed that you are far more likely to use, and be productive with, something that you love. I just didn’t even come close to liking this setup.
At home I just use the 13″ Air and have yet to have a problem and will continue to do so. At my office, I just felt weird the entire time I tried to not use my 24″ screen. ((I did reorganize the entire desk moving the 24″ screen out of site and re-running all the cabling. This was not a matter of a temporary feeling setup.))