Technology | Shelly Palmer Digital Living

Apple Stock: What Goes Up …

February 17, 2012 By Shelly Palmer 1 Comment

apple-stock Apple’s share price has been “topic A” in my world this week. Everyone wants to talk about it — and, everyone has an opinion. First and foremost, I do not own any shares of Apple (or any other tech stock). I keep my money under my mattress. Also, I am not a financial professional, nor am I going to suggest that anything you read here be used to make any kind of financial decision. You should consult your own financial professionals for advice on how to invest your money.

That said, Apple is trading just over $500 per share and its market cap is somewhere around $468 Billion. A little research will show that it has dangerously close to $100 Billion in cash and marketable securities and, hasn’t really had a bad quarter in the recent memory of man or beast. iDevice sales are off the charts and the company (for the moment) seems to be doing everything right. So, is Apple worth $500 per share?

If I were a financial analyst, I’d tell you that it’s probably cheap (trading at just over 14 times its earnings for the past four quarters). But that’s not the whole story. Talk to a true financial professional about accounting practices and dig deep into how Apple accounts for its sales – you may be surprised at what you learn.

Of course, Apple may be underpriced because the market lacks confidence in the future. Or, it could be that the Street thinks that Apple is about face super stiff competition from a CE industry that is “mad as hell” about being brutalized by nice folks in Cupertino.

All of this begs for the question, “How high can Apple share prices go?”

According to some of my friends, the sky is the limit. My cynical New York financial friends say, “What goes up, must come down.” Emails and txt messages from readers suggest that, “Apple can do no wrong.”

It’s the last point that gives me pause. Apple could easily screw up the iPad 3 or the iPhone 5. AppleTV (whatever it ends up being at launch) may not be awesome. There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways that Apple could fall from grace. It should also be noted that Samsung, LG and the Android camp are not exactly asleep at the wheel.

If I had to guess what forces will most impact Apple, I would have to seriously discount competition as a factor. Apple is extremely aware of what other manufacturers and software vendors are bringing to market, and it is unlikely to be caught by surprise.

If anything negatively impacts Apple, it will be an unforced error. This may be caused by any number of things: abject arrogance comes to mind. But, it is also possible that the patent/trademark lawsuit games that Apple likes to participate in may also get out of hand.

All in, if I was a betting man (and I’m not), and someone asked me straight up “What’s going to happen with Apple?” My best guess would be that it is an unstoppable force of nature, and that no amount of financial analysis or market research is likely to yield any usable intelligence — accounting practices notwithstanding, $500 per share seems like a fair price for a company that has literally changed the world.

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Apple OSX Lion & Microsoft Exchange: The End of Fanboy Days

February 10, 2012 By Shelly Palmer 8 Comments

Outlook 2011

Back in April 2011 I wrote a scathing review of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. I was specifically distressed by the highly touted addition of Microsoft Outlook, because after careful testing, I could reach only one conclusion: it sucks. My solution for the total suckage of Outlook for Mac 2011 was to run Microsoft Office for Windows 2010 on the Macs around my office using a program called Parallels that (in simple terms) allows you to run Windows and Windows compatible programs on your Mac.

This sub-optimal solution became even more sub-optimal as we added more people to Microsoft Exchange. So, some intrepid souls decided to try something radical … they used Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book to interface with Microsoft Exchange. Low and behold … praise be to Jobs … it worked. There were happy Mac Fanboys all over the office singing the praises of Cupertino and loving the fact that Apple was in the business of doing business.

Hallelujah, Apple got its enterprise on. Time for Snow Leopard sock puppets! We were all thinking about making the switch. But … just as quickly as we had fallen in love with the Apple Mail/Microsoft Exchange solution, came the End of Fanboy Days … OSX Lion 10.7.x.

There are many wonderful things I can say about Apple’s OSX Lion operating system, but compatibility with Microsoft Exchange isn’t on the list.

All of our new MacBook Air computers came with OSX Lion 10.7.x preinstalled. As I am fond of saying, my MacBook Air is simply the finest computer I have ever owned … except for one small issue … iCal under Lion is incompatible with Microsoft Exchange. A few minutes Googling the error message confirmed our worst fears – Apple knows about the bug and has done nothing to fix it.

The issue is subtle, but it is a deal breaker. Under certain conditions, you can’t send and receive meeting requests and get the title of the meeting to show up in iCal. You get a blank meeting. When it happens the first time, you assume that you have done something wrong. After a few more times, you ask your system admin what’s up. By the 10^th time you lose your meeting info, you type the issue into Google … that’s when the enormity of the situation hits you. You’ve just opted into a workflow that is completely useless for the doing of business with 92% of the business world. Want a list of compatibly issues; just search for your favorite flavor – it’s not pretty.

To say that we did everything to solve this would be to understate the issue. No eclectic techno-geeky trick was left untried. Bribes to friends at Apple, calls out to hackers, even a FB plea to Fanboys around the world … all to no avail. :(

The ultimate solution is so sad, I have named it the End of Fanboy Days. We are now the proud owners of a bunch of 17″ HP ProBook 4730s running Microsoft Office Professional over Windows 7 Professional. HP’s Value Added Reseller (VAR) channel rocks! If you ever need a bunch of computers that are sturdy, built for business, free of bloatware and ready to use when you get them, call your favorite HP VAR. Talk about flawless integration with Microsoft Exchange — everything works so perfectly, it’s sinful!

I still carry my MacBook Air. For me, it is still the ultimate computer in the galaxy. I don’t mind having the crippled Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 running on this computer because I don’t do any administrative functions with it. But, if I didn’t have an executive admin and an administrative assistant who keep my calendar, I would have to choose between crippled Outlook functions or non-functional appointment compatibility in iCal. Two unacceptable options.

If you don’t use your computer for business and don’t have to have a computer that is 100% Microsoft Exchange compatible, nothing here really concerns you. However, if you are truly trying to use a Mac running OSX Lion 10.7.x as a business tool to interoperate in Microsoft Exchange environment … sadly, it is truly the End of Fanboy Days.

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Google = Skynet … Yikes!

January 27, 2012 By Shelly Palmer 2 Comments

The Shelly Palmer School of Connected Living has one primary thesis: “Technology is good.” I believe that all technological progress is good and that the story of the evolution of mankind is inextricably linked to the story of the evolution of our technology. We are tool builders, and we are tool users. It is, in large measure, what separates us from virtually every other species in the known universe.

I also acknowledge “Technology is good” is an optimistic point of view. I am, by nature, an optimist. I believe in lifelong learning and I aspire daily to the joy of striving to realize things that exist in our imaginations. It may be one of our higher callings; it is certainly one of mine.

So, I am usually one of the guys who says things like, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Which is my way of acknowledging that firearms are simply tools to help us throw rocks faster and more accurately and, if you need to throw a rock, it’s probably better to throw it faster and more accurately.

This argument can be extended to less emotional subjects like the Sony Betamax case or the more recent (though seemingly ancient) Grokster case. Both of which ended up with the court deciding that, and I’m paraphrasing: “Technology good … people bad.”

“If God intended us to fly, he’d have given us wings.” Yep. I totally agree. God (please use your politically correct deity, this article is not about science vs. religion) gave us brains that saw birds and imagined what it would be like to fly. The same deity gave us thumbs, manual dexterity and the ability to create tools that enabled us to have wings. We fly because we are genetically gifted to do so. (You can decide how those genetic gifts were bestowed, like I said, it is not the point of this writing.)

The point is, that technology is woven into the fabric of our lives and it, in every case, in every civilization (past and present) defines how we interact, how we live, how we work … it literally defines everything about us, including the epochs and ages of our past.

The reason for my huge pro-technology buildup is that I am about to write something that is so out of character, so remarkably against one of my strongest personal axioms, I have to talk myself into writing it …

Google is about to go too far.

On March 1, 2012, Google will consolidate the privacy policies for 60 of its products creating the singularly most significant database of the Information Age. The aggregation of these data will empower Google to correlate and contextualize our thoughts, aspirations, actions, physical locations and the timelines for the basic processes of the doing of life.

I don’t think any single thought about the aggregation of data or the use of technology has ever made me as uncomfortable as this announcement. On its best day, with every ounce of technology the US Government could muster, it could not know a fraction as much about any of us as Google does now. But now is not what I’m worried about. I’m not even worried about this decade. At the current rate of technological change, taking into consideration the amount of information we are creating about ourselves, and adding in the computational power that will be available in about a decade, Google will equal Skynet circa 2022.

This is a guess, of course, it could be sooner – but it won’t be later. What do I mean by Skynet. First of all, get your Terminator lore together, but then just imagine a database that could automatically determine what you are most likely going to have for dinner after your bowling league Tuesday night, where you are going to have it, who it will be with, whether you are feeling good or have a cold, if you and your wife are fighting, how your day was at work, what you are thinking about buying, who is helping you with your decisions about it, what chronic illnesses you are dealing with, what meds you are on, etc, etc, etc. And this isn’t even the scary stuff.

What scares me is the advance of analytical tools and the existence of yet-uninvented ways to manipulate data for good and, inadvertently, for bad. I’m not worried about bad people doing bad things. That is the nature of our world and, generally, it is easy to identify bad people who do bad things. I’m worried about the good intentions that pave the road to hell. I can’t speculate about how our near-term-future, data-dependent culture will be negatively affected by the law of unintended consequences. That’s because so many of the vocations and avocations that will be impacted have also yet to be invented. I just know that there are at least as many ways for things to go wrong, as there are for things to go right.

The sky is not falling and this is not a sensationalistic FUD-mongering exercise (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt). It is an admonition that the time has come for learned colleagues to start a Socratic discourse about what parts of the Genie need to stay in the bottle, and what parts can be let out. Imperfect metaphor? I don’t think so.

This is a very complex problem and we are going to need very simple ways to describe it. Skynet can’t win – at least not in the world I want to live in. Let’s get ahead of this while it’s still just the subject of the occasional rhetorical blog post – because, no matter what anyone tells you, the world of big data is never going away.

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International CES 2012: Bigger, Thinner and Connected

January 13, 2012 By Shelly Palmer 1 Comment

CES 2012 The theme of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was “connected living.” Everything from wrist watches to toaster ovens featured ways to connect to the Internet. Why? Because they could. Do you really need your wristwatch to connect to the cloud? Well, I don’t know if “need” is the right word. In many cases, connectivity is a “nice to have,” not a “need to have.”

I like to say that there are only two kinds of people, and two kinds of devices: connected and not connected – apparently, that’s how the Consumer Electronics (CE) industry sees the world as well. But here’s the thing: hidden under the excitement of cloud-connected devices is the reality that the industry is changing, and changing fast.

If you know anything about the CE industry, you know that interoperability is not something big electronics firms are fond of. For years, Sony refused to use industry compatible SD cards in favor of its Sony Memory Stick. It even used an obscure type of Firewire connector, just to promote the sales and non-interoperability of its video and still cameras. Not to single out Sony, almost every CE company has its own proprietary ecosystem. And all of them hope you will choose their way of thinking if you want to interface with their gear.

This is not a consumer-friendly strategy, but some “old school” businesspeople believe it is the right way to do business. At one time, it may have been a good idea, but it’s over. Cloud storage, 3G, 4G, WiFi, h.264, .mp3 and other very common consumer standards have wrenched control away from big CE companies and handed it to consumers. Which begs for the question, can you market a successful closed system in 2012 and beyond? I’m pretty sure the answer is no.

If you walked around the show floor, one of the key takeaways would have been silos and unique proprietary systems are not making the cut. The consumers have won, and won big.

What was interesting at the show? Intel chips have enabled a new class of personal computers called Ultrabooks. They are all MacBook Air look-alikes, but they run Windows and they are inexpensive by comparison. This is going to be one of the big stories of the year. They are really going to sell and, I humbly submit, give tablets a real run for their money. Of course, the same technology will find its way into tablets and the arms race will continue. The winner … you! Consumers will benefit in every way. Faster, smaller, thinner and more connected personal computing experiences.

lg-oled I also liked LG’s 55″ OLED TV. The picture is indescribably gorgeous and it’s about 4 millimeters thin. No price or specific delivery date, but look for it by the end of the year.

Samsung debuted a series of big, flat screen TVs that have motion sensing and voice recognition built in. Think of it as an Xbox Kinect without any extra boxes or cables. The demo was fun, but it’s not ready for prime time.

Samsung also showed off the Samsung Galaxy Note a 5.3″ Android phone/tablet crossover. Lots of people liked the size, some said it was too big, others said it was too small. Where’s Goldilocks when you really need her.

The most remarkable thing about International CES 2012 was the number of people doing business. There were fantastic parties, everyone had an optimistic, upbeat attitude about the future and the general consensus was that things are turning around.

Of course, it’s not business as usual, everyone is trying to figure out how to be more like Apple. From operating systems to hardware, almost every pitch included some reference to iDevices, iTunes or the iTunes store – and everyone is playing catch-up. This was not 2 million square feet of Apple Fanboys, this was a town full of electronics professionals wondering how they missed the mark and what they could do about it.

Lastly, if you’re wondering if Microsoft will be missed at next year’s show? The short answer is no. CES is not about any one manufacturer; it’s about an industry. Kudos to the CEA for putting on an amazing exhibition that included the best of the best in every category – this year was truly awesome!

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You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

January 6, 2012 By Shelly Palmer 3 Comments

Classroom “You don’t know what you don’t know,” is one of my favorite phrases. It’s an admonition I take seriously. No matter how hard you study, no matter how much knowledge you acquire, no matter how much wisdom you possess – there is always more to learn.

This is the third article in an ad hoc trilogy inspired by feedback from a remarkably diverse group of individuals. My first article, “Are You Employable In 2012?” recounts an experience I had trying to hire an administrative assistant. It’s full of helpful hints about starting a career in the 21^st century. The second article was an impromptu follow-on instigated by a bunch of 50-somethings who espoused prideful ignorance of modern communication entitled, “Attack Of The Pridefully Ignorant.” The thesis of the article is that we (all of us) need to stop questioning the necessity for digitally literacy and accept that “digital,” in the broadest sense of the word, is not going away. I gave a few simple tips about how easy it can be enter the world of social media, and ended with a paragraph about the need to add new digital skills to your professional tool belt. Not a comprehensive list of ways to become more digitally literate, but a good way to start.

I don’t think I have ever written a piece that received more attention – both positive and negative.

I try to limit my weekly writings to about a thousand words, so – first and foremost – let me say, I cannot cover this topic completely here. I do a pretty good job explaining my position in my latest book, Overcoming The Digital Divide: How To Use Social Media And Digital Tools To Reinvent Yourself And Your Career. It’s available on Amazon.com (both Kindleand Paperback) and wherever fine books are sold.

So, without further fanfare, here is my response to the thousands of emails, tweets and comments regarding “Attack Of The Pridefully Ignorant.”

Digital communication is here to stay. Intel says that today, there are just over two billion people connected to the Internet. It is projecting three billion by the end of 2015 and hopes the world gets to four billion by the end of 2020. Intel has a selfish reason for this prediction; it makes the chips for the billions of devices that will support this connectivity.

ComScore says as of November, total U.S. iPhone users grew to 26 million and total Android users grew to 42.9 million. That number is trending upward at a fierce pace.

Although it’s hard to find one definitive source, the general consensus is that, worldwide, there are approximately five billion feature phones, 500 million smart phones and 60 million tablets and e-readers. And, of course, these numbers are trending up too.

One hundred percent of these devices are digital. And, while it’s true that some of the radio signals that are used with these devices are analog, there are computers doing all of the heavy lifting. So, for all intents and purposes, the world of communication is 100% digital. Which begs the question, “Why would anyone even suggest that digital literacy is an unimportant skill in the 21^st century?”

Did Tiger Woods know that he was making a digital audio recording on a remote server? That bit of digital illiteracy cost him a lot. Did Eliot Spitzer know that a wire transfer was actually a digital file transfer and that, while private, it was not anonymous? Obviously not – that lack of digital knowledge cost him big as well. How about Anthony Weiner’s and Brett Favre’s experience with digital photos? Their collective lack of knowledge about simple digital file transfers yielded unfortunate consequences too.

Do you know how well your online presence matches your offline presence? When I Google you, will I find what you would expect me to find? How do you look on LinkedIn? Do you actually believe that there is a hiring manager in the connected world that will not check you out on Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn before considering you for a position? The reasons to become digitally literate are endless.

I am not advocating digital communication over in-person connections. In fact, I’m not advocating anything other than that the “pridefully ignorant anti-21^st century communications tools group” should consider that they don’t know what they don’t know.

These are early days. Social media is in its infancy and we have no way of knowing whether Facebook or Twitter or any one of the other 500 popular social networks will be around in a few years. What we do know is that while some people are using social media for egocasting, others are community organizing and still others are overthrowing governments. Same tools, different applications.

I’m going to resist all temptation to respond to any individual comment or email about my pridefully ignorant experience. The comments, including the most derogatory, simply prove my point. My thanks to all of you for surprising me this week, I was truly shocked that so many people spent their valuable time telling me how stupid and brainwashed I am about the need for digital literacy.

I will leave you with this one thought. There was a significant conversation going on about you in a place you know nothing about, care nothing about and don’t believe exists … like I said, you don’t know what you don’t know.

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I Want An iPad: How About A Nice Amazon Kindle Fire?

November 18, 2011 By Shelly Palmer 3 Comments

Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2

“Mom … you bought me the wrong one!” Yep, that’s the thing about kids and stuff. They know what they want. And, more importantly, they know what they don’t want. According to Nielsen Media Research 44% of kids between the ages of 6 and 12 years old want an iPad 2. So, how about a nice Amazon Kindle Fire? After all, it’s $300 cheaper and it does a lot of the same stuff. You can make this argument until you are blue in the face, but – after “death and taxes” there is now a third certainty … “If you want an iPad, nothing else will do.”

It has gotten to the point where I am now quite sure that there is no such thing as the “tablet business” in the consumer electronics industry. There is the “iDevice business” and, then, everything else.

That said, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is an awesome device. Mine arrived the other day and I absolutely love it. It’s a good e-reader. I like the screen. Video looks good, audio is acceptable and, for $200 bucks, what’s not to love?

Which begs for the question, “Who is it for?” If you can’t get your 6-12 year-old kid a $200 Kindle Fire and make them happy, is this a gift for someone else on your list?

Of course it is. If you carry an Android smartphone, you already have a Kindle in your pocket. If you want one with a 7″ screen, the Kindle Fire is for you. If you know someone who is a total technophobe and you `want a low-cost entry into the realm of digital content consumption (books, music, videos, etc.), the Kindle Fire fits the bill. If you know someone who loves to read, needs to check an occasional email and likes to browse the web once in a while, again, the Kindle Fire is a good choice.

Is it anything like an iPad 2? No. Not in any way. But it is at least $300 dollars cheaper and that makes it the right device for several different users.

Here’s how to decide which if the Kindle Fire is right for you:

If you want a device to: read ebooks, check email, browse the web, read magazines, watch videos, listen to music, play a few games and use a few apps, the Kindle Fire is for you.

If you want a device with a camera, video chat, expandable storage, 3G wireless access, GPS, maps, location services, or bluetooth, do not buy a Kindle Fire.

If you are on a budget and you want a well built, beautiful, simple to use e-reader with a ton of extra features that offer a tablet-like experience, you really can’t go wrong.

If you are not on a budget and you want an iPad, buy an iPad.

And, most importantly, if you think that you want all the things an iPad can do, but you’re not willing to spend the $300 extra dollars to purchase one, do not purchase the Kindle Fire thinking that it’s a poor man’s iPad. That does a disservice to the Kindle Fire and to you. The Kindle Fire is not pretending to be an iPad, people are making the comparison because it’s an easy comparison to make. Don’t!

The Kindle Fire is the perfect gift for someone who reads and wants to consume Amazon content. Think of it as a portable access point to amazon.com. It also has some great cloud storage features and, if you’ve got a robust WiFi connection available to you, you will really enjoy streaming music and videos from the cloud.

The bottom line: The Kindle Fire is a great gift and a great value for $200. It is not a $500 iPad for $200. Choose wisely.

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MacBook Air vs. Asus Zenbook

November 14, 2011 By Shelly Palmer 9 Comments

I love my new MacBook Air. I got it a few weeks ago and it is truly everything I ever wanted in a laptop. It’s light, it’s fast and it’s got enough horsepower to accomplish even the most difficult computing tasks. I wrote a glowing review about it on my blog (which you can read at shellypalmer.com) and, if you’re a Mac person, there is nothing about this computer that you’re not going to love.

But what if you’re not a Mac person? Is there anything you can do?

Lots of my friends run Windows on their Macs. You can do it with several programs such as, Parallels or VMWare. But running Windows on a Mac is not always a perfect solution. I use Parallels 6 and I run OS X Lion, Windows7 and Linux on my Mac. But I have a pretty high tolerance for technical problems. You may not have the patience to put up with the stress and silliness that comes with running several operating systems on a Mac. And purchasing a MacBook Air and single booting it in Windows is a crime against man, God and nature.

Thankfully, there is now an extraordinary solution; it’s called the Asus Zenbook. For all intents and purposes, it’s a Windows version of a MacBook Air. Zenbooks are available in different hardware configurations that are almost identical to MacBook Airs. The comparisons don’t need to be on a chart, the systems just match up — from pricing: $999 – $1,500, to Ram: 4 GB, to Storage: up to 256 GB, and even Battery Life: 5-7 hours. You can configure an Asus Zenbook to look, smell and feel just like a MacBook Air.

Both the Apple MacBook Air and the Asus Zenbook are available in 11.6″ and 13.3″ screen sizes. Both have well made metal cases. They weigh about the same. What is the biggest difference? MacBook Airs run OS X Lion and Zenbooks run Windows 7.

I ran the Asus Zenbook through its paces and I’ve got nothing but praise for it. The review unit I was given had an i5 Intel processor and it rocked every speed test, memory test, etc. The keyboard isn’t backlit, but I don’t think that matters very much. And, if you’re into music, the Zenbook speakers are an order of magnitude better than the ones in the MacBook Air. (Although, they still leave you wanting.)

Like my MacBook Air, the full-powered, top-of-the-line Asus Zenbook is powerful enough to be a complete laptop replacement. But, remember, these computers only have 13″ screens. Perfect for word processing while sitting in a coach seat on an American Airlines 757 when the guy in front of you reclines his seat – not great for 60 column spreadsheets no matter where you are.

Should you get one? If you’re a PC, but you’ve always wanted a MacBook Air, the Asus Zenbook is “the” computer for you. It’s awesome!

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Apple Television: Did Steve Jobs Crack The Code?

October 28, 2011 By Shelly Palmer 6 Comments

Steve Jobs

“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,” Steve Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.”

Everyone assumes that Apple is working on iTV or whatever it will be called. It’s in his biography, pundits speak about it — the only question is when will it debut?

I will be hugely surprised if Apple markets a television set, my guess is that it will bring a new device to the marketplace that will offer a Jobsian way to consume video content, play games and interact in the social space. Calling it a TV will probably be pejorative or, at the very least, a misnomer.

That said, I am fascinated by the quote from Steve Jobs’ biography. “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it,” mostly because it makes no sense. There is nothing in the world of technology simpler than turning on a television set. Flipping channels and adjusting volume are literally child’s play. It is a behavior exhibited by everyone over the age of three who has ever seen a television. “Simple as turning on the TV,” is the holy grail of modern consumer electronics design. Did Steve come up with a way to make it simpler? Doubtful.

But the interface, simple or not, is not the problem. That’s not the code that needs to be cracked. Where we need Steve Jobs’ magic is on the other side of the system – where content transitions from scarce (on TV) to ubiquitous (online). Find a codex that solves for supply and demand: Then, and only then, will the code be truly cracked.

Supply and demand is an immutable law of our human experience. If something is scarce, it is valuable. If something is ubiquitous, it is less valuable. I challenge you to identify any ecosystem anywhere in our observable universe where this is not always true. If you find an example, please email me immediately; you will be the first person in history to accomplish this feat.

If you want to reach the vast majority of television viewers in the United States, pick a Thursday night during November, February or May and buy airtime on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox between 09:00:00 pm and 09:00:30 pm. It will cost you a few hundred thousand dollars on each of the networks and it will be worth it. Why would you need to spend this money on Thursday evening? Because the vast amount of American TV viewers are awake and watching TV at that time. (That’s why weeknights from 8pm – 11pm is called Primetime.)

And, more importantly, Americans get paid on Friday. So, if you want to sell them something over the weekend or call them to action (Come to my weekend sale, or come test drive my car and get 10% off this Saturday) the last time you get to reach them when they are sober and might have money in their pockets is Thursday evening. They will go out on Friday and Saturday and by primetime Sunday night they will have a hangover and be broke! (Please don’t send me hate mail about my insensitivity to alcoholics or suggest that I am promoting or condoning underage drinking – I’m not.)

This makes primetime Thursday evening between 09:00:00 pm and 09:00:30 pm a very scarce resource indeed. Now, take the same piece of video content, put it online (which instantly removes both the temporal and geographic restrictions). What has to happen to the price of the airtime? Remember — supply and demand.

There is only 30 seconds available between 09:00:00 pm and 09:00:30 pm on Thursday night. It’s scarce. Once the content is online, it can be seen by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Again, what has to happen to the price? (Answer: It must go down.)

This is the code that needs to be cracked. The interface is not the problem at all. If you can’t create scarcity, you can’t charge what you need to charge to create the content – if you can’t create the content, there is no TV ecosystem.

People often confuse TV the art form with TV the platform. The television (and movie) business is about packaging content, measuring the audience and selling that audience to advertisers. If you add in the dual revenue business (like cable networks and some broadcast entities) it is also about creating high-value content that attracts and maintains subscribers. In the case of the premium content providers, it’s only about subscription revenue.

Why would content owners whose content is good enough to be distributed as a scarce resource want to unrestrict the very access that enables their remuneration?

Now, you could argue that scarcity can be created with a cloud-based video distribution system over the public Internet. That’s stating the obvious. Netflix is just such a system. So are Hulu Plus, Roku, Vudu, etc. Why haven’t these systems destroyed the cable and satellite business? They are too expensive, too limited and too hard to use. Can that code be cracked? Sure, this is probably the part Steve Jobs had figured out. But, at some point he would have been faced with the code that can’t be cracked: How do you make something ubiquitous and valuable at the same time? Steve, I’m your biggest fan and I want to be wrong, but I don’t think you cracked it.

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iPhone Battery Life: My Current Thinking

October 21, 2011 By Shelly Palmer 9 Comments

Someone asks me about iPhone battery life every single day. And while I don’t usually write about gadgets and gizmos, I will offer a short chronicle of my external battery life experience.

Before we get into what I recommend, here’s how you should determine if you need an external battery:

First, turn on everything you want: Location services, push email and notifications, etc. and get your iPhone operating in a way that makes you happy. Most “battery life saving tips” columns start by telling you to turn everything off and dim the screen – why? If you’re going to cripple your phone, there’s no point in purchasing it. So, turn on everything that you want to use.

Now, see how long your battery lasts. Can you get through a day? How about if you need to spend an hour on the phone? Can you play a game for an hour? Listen to two hours of music? Get a real sense of how long the battery is going to last using the phone the way you want to use it.

In my world, it’s about four hours – a far cry from the kind of battery life I need to get through a day. Your results will be different.

Once you know how long a fully charged iPhone battery will last (using the phone the way you want to use it) you can decide if you need an external battery pack.

For me, it was an easy decision. For my iPhone 3GS to my AT&T iPhone 4 to my current Verizon iPhone 4, I have used Mophie Juice Packs. The current model is the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. It’s about $99 on Amazon. For a while I thought that the Mophie products were the best, and I have been touting them as an excellent solution for iPhone battery life extension. However, this last crop of Mophie Juice Packs has been very disappointing. The USB connector was not up to par, and the unit’s multi-pin iPhone connector was poorly made and poorly fitted as well.

With its 2000 mAh power rating, the Mophie Juice Pack Plus claims to double your battery life. That may be true in a lab, but in practice I have not been able to verify that claim. My experience with my last three Mophie Juice Packs has included sporadic charging and generally suboptimal performance. Why did I keep buying them? I thought it was the only reputable solution. Quite obviously, I was wrong.

Just two weeks ago my Mophie Juice Pack started acting up and I went looking for another solution. As you can imagine there are a frighteningly large number of cheap, no-name external battery solutions for iPhones. Buyer beware.

However, I did find one that was so much less expensive, it was worth a try. So, for $29 on amazon.com, I purchased the uNu Power DX-1700B. Catchy name, don’t you think? As the name implies, it’s a 1700 mAh external battery and it even comes with a screen protector.

I’ve had my new uNu Power DX1700B for almost two weeks now and it is awesome. It has actually doubled my iPhone 4 battery life, it looks good and – to my utter amazement; it seems better built than the Mophie Juice Pack that it replaced.

If you need an external battery for your iPhone 4 or new iPhone 4S, I can heartily recommend the uNu Power DX 1700B. For less than 1/3 the price of the similarly-featured Mophie product, you can literally buy three of them and still be ahead of the game.

As for Mophie? I hope they get their quality control together – and, I hope that they up the game, or lower the price.

So, though you’ve never heard of them, and they may not even be a real company, my new favorite external battery solution for iPhones comes from uNu. Like I said, for $29, it only has to work 1/3 as well the Mophie Juice Pack – the fact that it works better is a huge plus!

Note to Tim Cook – my iPhone 5 better have a removable battery!

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Upgrade Your iPhone to iOS 5: 200 New Features and a Headache

October 14, 2011 By Shelly Palmer 10 Comments

iOS 5

I don’t always look forward to software updates from Apple. Most of the time I can’t take advantage of major upgrades because the software I use the most will not be ready. Companies like Adobe, Digidesign and Intuit generally do not have enough time with major upgrades before they are released to the public and, therefore, cannot make required modifications in time. This problem is well known and well understood. You just wait until you get a notification from your key software vendors and then upgrade.

iOS upgrades are different. Apple usually takes great care to make sure that pure consumer upgrades to its devices work flawlessly. I have never had a problem … so I was due.

Upgrading to iOS 5 on my Verizon iPhone 4 was a slow, painful process with several error messages and a general lack of emotionally satisfying communication. The download to update iTunes and get the required files took more than 20 minutes on a very robust broadband connection. And backing up my iPhone 4 took the usual five minutes. The one-click update started a long, convoluted process that included the deactivation of my phone and a full screen error message with a Verizon customer service number. There was no documentation about this, and calling the number yielded a 10 minute long voicemail tree that ended by telling me to visit a website for more details or, on a 3G iPhone, “Press *228 send to activate your phone.” Ugh!!!

About 45 minutes into this experience, and after several “error 3200″ messages, I was able to restart the process and restore my iPhone. When it restored, the iPhone had iOS 5 installed. To say that the process is counterintuitive would be the nicest way I could say it. BTW: “error 3200″ is Apple-speak for network congestion.

WARNING: If you plan to upgrade your iDevice to iOS 5, make sure you back it up first. Remember, you were warned!

With my new iOS 5 operating system installed, I was anxious to explore the 200 new features. The first one was pretty obvious. There is a completely new notification system. You will like it.

The new OS also lets you automatically download music, videos and apps from the iTunes/App Store if you configure the feature in the settings menu.

iMessage is Apple’s new version of free txt messaging between iDevices. Free is very pro-consumer.

If you live your life on your iPad and iPhone, you are going to think that the new reminder (task management) system is awesome!

iOS 5 has much improved Twitter integration. If you are a serial tweeter, you will love it!

You no longer need a computer to own an iDevice. And, you can now do all of your syncing without cables.

For business people with AppleTV installed in conference rooms or for teachers with Apple TV installed in their classrooms, you can now wirelessly mirror your iDevice. What does that mean? If your AppleTV is connected to a big flatscreen monitor, you can wirelessly show what’s on your iPad2 or iPhone screen on the big flatscreen through AppleTV. I tried it in my living room, it’s really cool.

There are some nice tweaks to Mail, Calendar, Safari and 190+ other things you may or may not care about. Overall, iOS 5 (once you get it installed) is pretty great!

I instantly noticed that my iPhone 4 works slower than it did before the upgrade. iOS 5 must put pressure on the processor. This will not be the case with your iPad 2 or your new iPhone 4S (when you get it). Certain processes are more sluggish than others, but it’s only mildly annoying.

All-in-all, I really like what Apple has done with iOS 5 and, once you get it installed, I think you will too.

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Filed Under: Blog, Technology