Tech

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Last night I was in a pub, at a freelancer’s meet up, in Brighton. I’m still sightly recovering from the events of the evening as I write this post. Many conversations around tech were held, as always, but one comment particularly sticks out in my mind and forms the basis of this post.

Boys like to talk about their toys, that much is certain and is well regarded as fact. The conversation swung around to the topic of smart phones and consequently the forthcoming Apple iPhone event. A voice perked up from the crowd: “So what do you guys think is better?”, our drinking buddy slurred. “The iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S II?”. Immediately I took issue with this ridiculous comment and retorted with, “Hang on, you’re asking us to compare a Samsung Galaxy S II to a device that hasn’t actually been announced, or officially exists yet?”. This seemed like perfect logic to me, after all how can you compare a device to one that doesn’t exist and you know nothing about? It reminds me of the primary school playground conversations I had when I was a kid; being told that Microsoft’s soon to be announced Xbox could play PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, N64 AND GameBoy games, along with its own platform’s offerings. A completely magical and made up device that of course turned out to be nothing more than a child’s dream.

The conversation baffled me for the rest of the evening and for the rest of this morning. I couldn’t quite comprehend this person’s logic. He’d already decided that he was going to purchase an iPhone 5. “I’ve been waiting for months.” he said as he waved his Motorola brick around. “No matter what the cost or the hardware specs I’m getting one.”. This brand loyalty is often found amongst Apple fanboys, even the technically brilliant ones. There had to be more to it.

Catching up on the news of Amazon’s newly announced tablet offering, it suddenly occurred to me why my drunken pub friend would buy the iPhone 5, the iPad 3, the iTurd whatever. It’s the same reason why Amazon’s Kindle Fire will set the alternative iPad world alight. It’s all about the experience and the features. Although Apple heavily deny that their mobile devices are “feature phones”, they in fact are.

The simplicity of purchasing and organising music through iTunes has often been attributed as the key “feature” in the iPod’s success. With the iPhone it is without a doubt the iOS App Store which has been the root of the device’s mass uptake. The Amazon Kindle Fire will rise to a mass uptake and success because of its ability to tie in with all of Amazon’s digital media services.

Watching back through the Amazon keynote reminds eerily of an Apple event. Amazon’s focus isn’t on the hardware of the Kindle Fire, after all it’s pretty much just a rebadged BlackBerry Playbook; instead they focus on what the device can actually do, giving us demo after demo of the really cool interaction it has with existing services.

Apple has proven time and time again that integration with existing media offerings make a product and device succeed. Have a healthy media ecosystem around your offerings and you’ve got a winning product. $199 for a Kindle Fire, a 7 inch tablet on which you can stream movie’s from Amazon’s vast library, stream or store your music and browse the web at blazing speeds, is sure to make a lot of people strongly consider buying one.

Chris Leydon.

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In a time where most websites and services are looking to assimilate all Borg-esque into each other, the US film rental company Netflix has taken an interesting move and decided to split its company and services in half.

Netflix is a US based service which allowed its users to pay a subscription fee to have DVD rentals sent to their house through the postal system, or to stream the films online with their successful and pioneering web service. On Sunday evening Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, announced that they would be spinning off their DVD rental service and turning it into a new company called Qwikster; leaving their streaming service under the Netflix brand.

Poor diabolical and illogical choices of name aside, I do understand and support Netflix’s move in creating Qwikster. As Hastings said in his blog post announcing the split, in order for a company to be truly great they need to have complete focus and their DVD by post service wasn’t allowing them to do it. What baffles me though is the company’s choice to completely separate the two services and demand that users now have two accounts, two queues and two billing entries; all in an age where every other web service and company is preaching for unity.

The company often applauded for its unity of services, even if it can be rather creepy at times, is Apple. Every device and service that you have ties in nicely with your Apple ID. Imagine if suddenly one day Tim Cook, the new CEO, woke up and decided that actually it made sense if you had different logins for iTunes, the iOS App store and the Mac App Store; because they all do slightly different things and are different divisions. This move would create mass confusion and would probably encourage a drop in sales.

As much as I hate centralisation and fear the big bad evil database where my entire existence is logged to be looked over by anyone who wishes; I have to agree that as a consumer it’s made my life much easier. Separate your companies Netflix, sure that makes sense, but why not create a unified ID and billing system to make things easier for your consumers? Better still use something like Facebook Connect, so that when the CIA or MI5 decide that they want their big bad central databases to go live they can peruse through my awful taste in movie rentals.

Chris Leydon.