I’ve had a chance to view and play around with the recently released “new” iPad. What Apple says about the Retina display is definitely true. My eyes, which have perfect non-corrected vision, can not discern the pixels. Text looks absolutely as sharp as a printed page and everything else is noticeably sharper across the board. There is no doubt Apple is going to sell an astronomical number of new iPads, but the question is which model will be the biggest seller? Because as Apple as introduced the new iPad at the same price points as the previous two iPad models, they have kept the previous model iPad 2 around at 16 GB capacities, but have lowered the price $100.

As amazing as the new iPad’s display is, the practical matter is that the iPad 2′s display is more than plenty capable for just about any purpose. Even as I had an iPad 2 and a new iPad side-by-side comparing the difference, I had to concede that the differences were simply not that great from a very pragmatic viewpoint. If $100 makes the difference between having an iPad vs. not having an iPad, then I could not argue against getting the iPad 2 at its new price point. About the only caveat I would make is for the purposes of reading. If someone is planning to buy an iPad for heavy use as an e-reader, I think the extra $100 is worth it. And maybe photographers or creative professionals would appreciate the extra resolution. But for average use, the extra $100 isn’t worth it if it makes or breaks the purchase.

It is entirely conceivable that the new lower price of the iPad 2 16 GB models will spur growth of the iPad into more price-conscious markets. Just how large that growth will be is yet to be seen. But it is possible that while the new iPad will garner all the headlines for months to come, when all is said and done the biggest impact on the technology market may come from the iPad 2.

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Back in February of 2010 when I wrote a series of articles discussing the introduction of the iPad, I first mentioned The New World of Technology. It was a concept that I had been talking about for years in a vague way of “appliance” computing, but never had a concise term for. Since that initial mention, I’ve been expanding the concept and it has become core to my outlook of the present and future of technology as well as my consulting business.

However, I must give credit where credit is due. I did not come up with the New World/Old World term. That was Steven Frank, co-founder of the company Panic, Inc. and a fellow technology enthusiast. I was introduced to the term by a wonderfully written article he authored right after the iPad was introduced. When I first read that article it was as if I was reading my own thoughts and I knew that he hit the nail perfectly on the head with the New World/Old World phrasing. So I borrowed the term and linked to his article where I referenced it.

Last year I was reviewing some of my old articles and found my link to Steven’s article. I wanted to read it again, so I clicked on the link and found that the article had been removed! It seems Steven is very picky about his writing and decided to take his old blog down. I almost panicked and tracked down Steven to ask if he would re-post it or give it to me so I could re-post it. He graciously sent me his article and gave me permission to re-post his writing here. It was only later after my near-panic attack that I found the original article had been saved on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. But I think this article deserves a place of its own – and so that I may continue to give him the proper credit – here in its entirely is Steven Frank’s blog post introducing the New World/Old World terminology. I encourage you to read it because I think it is as relevant today as it was 2 years ago.

Steven Frank, January 28, 2010, 10:20 pm,

I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been on a veritable roller-coaster of “how I feel” about the iPad announcement, and trying not to write about it until I had at least an inkling of what was at the root of that.

Before we begin, a reminder: On this blog, I speak only for myself, not for my company or my co-workers.

The thing is, to talk about specific hardware (like the iPad or iPhone or Nexus One or Droid) is to miss entirely the point I’m about to try to make. This is more important than USB ports, GPS modules, or front-facing cameras. Gigabytes, gigahertz, megapixels, screen resolution, physical dimensions, form factors, in fact hardware in general — these are all irrelevant to the following discussion. So, I’m going to try to completely avoid talking about those sorts of things.

Let’s instead establish some new terminology: Old World and New World computing.

Introduction

Personal computing — having a computer in your house (or your pocket) — as a whole is young. As we know it today, it’s less than a half-century old. It’s younger than TV, younger than radio, younger than cars and airplanes, younger than quite a few living people in fact.

In that really incredibly short space of time we’ve gone from punchcards-and-printers to interactive terminals with command lines to window-and-mouse interfaces, each a paradigm shift unto themselves. A lot of thoughtful people, many of whom are bloggers, look at this history and say, “Look at this march of progress! Surely the desktop + windows + mouse interface can’t be the end of the road? What’s next?”

Then “next” arrived and it was so unrecognizable to most of them (myself included) that we looked at it said, “What in the shit is this?”

The Old World

In the Old World, computers are general purpose, do-it-all machines. They can do hundreds of thousands of different things, sometimes all at the same time. We buy them for pennies, load them up to the gills with whatever we feel like, and then we pay for it with instability, performance degradation, viruses, and steep learning curves. Old World computers can do pretty much anything, but carry the burden of 30 years of rapid, unplanned change. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X based computers all fall into this category.

The New World

In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule.

Is the New World better than the Old World? Nothing’s ever simply black or white.

Floppy Disks

An anecdote: When the iMac came out, Apple drew a line in the sand. They said: we are no longer going to ship a computer with a floppy disk drive. The entire industry shit its pants so loudly and forcefully that you probably could have heard it from outer space.

Are you insane? I spent all this money on a floppy drive! All my software is on floppy disks! You’ve committed brand suicide! Nobody will stand for this!

Fast-forward to today. I can’t think of a single useful thing to do with a floppy disk. I can go to the supermarket and buy a CD, DVD, or flash drive that is faster, smaller, and stores 1,000 times as much data for typically less than a box of floppies used to cost. Or better still, we can just toss things to each other over the network.

To get there, yes, we had to throw away some of our investment in hardware. We had to re-think how we did things. It required adjustment. A bit of sacrifice. The end result, I think we can all agree regardless of what platform we use, is orders of magnitude more convenient, easier to use, and in line with today’s storage requirements.

Staying with floppies would have spared us the inconvenience of that transition but at what long-term cost?

Nothing is ever simply black or white. There was a cost to making the transition. But there was a benefit to doing so.

To change was not all good. To stay put was not all bad. But there was a ratio of goodness-to-badness that, in the long run, was quite favorable for everyone involved. However in the short term it seemed so insurmountable, so ludicrous, that it beggared the belief of a large number of otherwise very intelligent people.

For a species so famous for being adaptable to its environment, we certainly abhor change. Especially a change that involves any amount of money being spent.

Cars

John Gruber used car transmissions for his analogy, and it’s apt. When I learned to drive, my dad insisted that I learn on a manual transmission so I would be able to drive any car. I think this was a wise and valuable thing to do.

But even having learned it, these days I drive an automatic. Nothing is black and white — I sacrifice maybe a tiny amount of fuel efficiency and a certain amount of control over my car in adverse situations that I generally never encounter. In exchange, my brain is freed up to focus on the the road ahead, getting where I’m going, and avoiding obstacles (strategy), not the minutiae of choosing the best possible gear ratio (tactics).

Is a stick shift better than an automatic? No. Is an automatic better than a stick? No. This misses the point. A better question: Is a road full of drivers not distracted by the arcane inner workings of their vehicle safer? It’s likely. And that has a value. Possibly a value that outweighs the value offered by a stick shift if we aggregate it across everyone in the world who drives.

Changing of the Guard

When I think about the age ranges of people who fall into the Old World of computing, it is roughly bell-curved with Generation X (hello) approximately in the center. That, to me, is fascinating — Old World users are sandwiched between New World users who are both younger and older than them.

Some elder family members of mine recently got New World cell phones. I watched as they loaded dozens of apps willy-nilly onto them which, on any other phone, would have turned it into a sluggish, crash-prone battery-vampire. But it didn’t happen. I no longer get summoned for phone help, because it is self-evident how to use it, and things just generally don’t go wrong like they used to on their Old World devices.

New Worlders have no reason to be gun-shy about loading up their device with apps. Why would that break anything? Old Worlders on the other hand have been browbeaten to the point of expecting such behavior to lead to problems. We’re genuinely surprised when it doesn’t.

But the New World scares the living hell out of a lot of the Old Worlders. Why is that?

The Needs of the Few

When the iPhone came out, I was immediately in love, but frustrated by the lack of an SDK. When an SDK came out, I was overjoyed, but frustrated by Apple’s process. As some high-profile problems began to pile up, I infamously railed against the whole idea right here on this very blog. I announced I was beginning a boycott of iPhone-based devices until changes were made, and I certainly, certainly was not going to buy any future iPhone-based products. I switched to various other devices that were a bit more friendly to Old Worlders.

It lasted all of a month.

For as frustrated as I was with the restrictions, those exact same restrictions made the New World device a high-performance, high-reliability, absolute workhorse of a machine that got out of my way and just let me get things accomplished.

Nothing is simply black or white.

Old Worlders are particularly sensitive to certain things that are simply non-issues to New Worlders. We learned about computers from the inside out. Many of us became interested in computers because they were hackable, open, and without restrictions. We worry that these New World devices are stifling the next generation of programmers. But can anyone point to evidence that that’s really happening? I don’t know about you, but I see more people carrying handheld computers than at any point in history. If even a small percentage of them are interested in “what makes this thing tick?” then we’ve got quite a few new programmers in the pipeline.

The reason I’m starting to think the Old World is ultimately doomed is because we are bracketed on both sides by the New World, and those people being born today, post-iPhone and post-iPad, will never know (and probably not care) about how things used to work. Just as nobody today cares about floppies, and nobody has to care about manual transmissions if they don’t want to.

If you total up everyone older than the beginning of the Old World, and every person yet to be born, you end up with a much greater number of people than there are in the Old World.

And to that dramatically greater number of people, what do you think is more important? An easy-to-use, crash-proof device? Or a massively complex tangle of toolbars, menus, and windows because that’s what props up an entrenched software oligarchy?

Fellow Old Worlders, I hate to tell you this: we are a minority. The question is not “will the desktop metaphor go away?” The question is “why has it taken this long for the desktop metaphor to go away?”

But, But I’m a Professional!

This is a great toy for newbies, but how am I supposed to get any SERIOUS work done with it? After all, I’m a PRO EXPERT MEGA USER! I MUST HAVE TOOLBARS, WINDOWS, AND…

OK, stop for a second.

First, I would put the birth of New World computing at 2007, with the introduction of the iPhone. You could even arguably stretch it a bit further back to the birth of “Web 2.0” applications in the early 2000s. But it’s brand new. If computers in general are young, New World computing is fresh out of the womb, covered in blood and screaming.

It’s got a bit of development to go.

I encourage you to look at this argument in terms of what you are really trying to achieve rather than the way you are used to going about it.

Let’s pick a ridiculous example and say I work in digital video, and I need to encode huge amounts of video data into some advanced format, and send that off to a server somewhere. I could never do that on an iPad! Right?

Well, no, today, probably not. But could you do it on a future New World computer in the general sense?

Remember, the hardware is a non-issue: Flash storage will grow to terabytes in size. CPUs will continue to multiply in power as they always have. Displays, batteries, everything will improve given enough time.

As I see it, many of these “BUT I’M AN EXPERT” situations can be resolved by making just a few key modifications:

1. A managed way of putting processes in the background. New Worlders are benefiting already from the improved performance and battery life provided by the inability to run a task in the background. Meanwhile, Old Worlders are tearing their hair out. I CAN’T MULTITASK, right? It seems like there has to be a reasonable middle ground. Maybe processes can petition the OS for background time. Maybe a user can “opt-in” to background processes. I don’t know. But it seems like there must be an in-between that doesn’t sacrifice what we’ve gained for some of the flexibility we’re used to.
2. A way of sharing data with other devices. New World devices are easy to learn and highly usable because they do not expose the filesystem to users and they are “data islands”. We are no longer working with “files” but we are still working with data blobs that it would be valuable to be able to exchange with each other. Perhaps the network wins here. Perhaps flash drives that we never see the contents of. The Newton was, to my knowledge, the first generally available device where you could just say “put this app and all data I’ve created with it on this removable card” without ever once seeing a file or a folder. Its sizable Achilles’ Heel was that only other Newtons understood the data format.
3. A way of sharing data between applications. Something like the clipboard, but bigger. This is not a filesystem, but a way of saying “bring this data object from this app to this app”. I’ve made this painting in my painting app, and now I want to bring it over here to crop it and apply filters.

By just addressing those three things (and I admit they are not simple feats), I think all but the absolutely most specialized of computer tasks become quite feasible on a New World device.

A Bet on the Future

Apple is calling the iPad a “third category” between phones and laptops. I am increasingly convinced that this is just to make it palatable to you while everything shifts to New World ideology over the next 10-20 years.

Just like with floppy disks, the rest of the industry is quite content to let Apple be the ones to stick their necks out on this. It’s a gamble to be sure. But if Apple wins the gamble (so far it’s going well), they are going to be years and years ahead of their competition. If Apple loses the gamble, well, they have no debt and are sitting on a Fort Knox-like pile of cash. It’s not going to sink them.

The bet is roughly that the future of computing:

1. has a UI model based on direct manipulation of data objects
2. completely hides the filesystem from the user
3. favors ease of use and reduction of complexity over absolute flexibility
4. favors benefit to the end-user rather than the developer or other vendors
5. lives atop built-to-specific-purpose native applications and universally available web apps

All in all, it sounds like a pretty feasible outcome, and really not a bad one at that.

But we Old Worlders have to come to grips with the fact that a lot of things we are used to are going away. Maybe not for a while, but they are.

Will the whole industry move to New World computing? Not unless Apple is demonstrably successful with this approach. So I’d say you’re unlikely to see it universally applied to all computing devices within the next couple of decades.

But Wednesday’s keynote tells me this is where Apple is going. Plan accordingly.

How long will it take to complete this Old World to New World shift? My guess? The end is near when you can bootstrap a new iPad application on an iPad. When you can comfortably do that without pining for a traditional desktop, the days of Old World computing are officially numbered.

The iPad as a particular device is not necessarily the future of computing. But as an ideology, I think it just might be. In hindsight, I think arguments over “why would I buy this if I already have a phone and a laptop?” are going to seem as silly as “why would I buy an iPod if it has less space than a Nomad?”

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During the keynote address introducing the New iPad, Apple announced that they sold 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011. Certainly, that’s a lot of iPads, but the more significant revelation is that Apple sold more iPads than HP sold PCs in that quarter. Compared to HP’s 15.1 million PCs, Apple’s 15.4 iPads meant that Apple outsold the world’s largest PC vendor during the holiday 2011 season. As more experts begin to acknowledge that the iPad is for all practical purposes a “PC”, this is a very significant development.

Of course, HP responded to Apple’s claim by saying, predictably, that traditional PCs aren’t dead and that a lot of people and companies still rely on them. Way to be stuck in the past, HP. But then they also stated that “… if you’re sending Junior off to college, the first computing product needed for homework is a PC.” Really? What exactly do you mean by that HP? Are college students actually required to purchase PCs? Or have they been increasingly choosing Apple’s Macintosh over the last 5 – 10 years? And could it just be possible that students are discovering that they can actually do most of their homework on an iPad? This isn’t even considering that in a year or two, students could be reading all of their textbooks from their iPads.

But seriously, what else would you expect to hear from a company that killed their tablet product and has nothing to sell but traditional PCs? HP’s former CEO specifically said that the “tablet effect is real“. Now there are some hard numbers to back that up. The Old World of Technology is ending right before our very eyes. If you haven’t already noticed, perhaps this is your wake-up call?

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Apple today introduced the 3rd generation iPad, interestingly dubbed “The New iPad“, rather than the expected “iPad 3″. Keeping it brief, the New iPad’s updated features are a significantly higher resolution display, more powerful processor and graphics performance, improved camera, and 4G LTE wireless technology.

The 4G LTE feature is certainly a big deal, as 4G speeds can be significantly faster than 3G. For those that use their iPads on the cellular wireless networks, this is a welcome new feature. However, given the limited reach of 4G networks, plus the fact that many people use their iPads over Wi-Fi, the 4G feature is not all that groundbreaking.

The feature that Apple spent the most time on was the new display and graphics performance. Given that the resolution of the New iPad is 4 times higher than the iPad 2, it is quite a significant upgrade. Listening to Apple talk about it, the new screen, which they call a “Retina Display”, redefines the iPad. Interestingly enough, Apple claimed that this is the first device they can not adequately represent through their on-stage projection system because the resolution of the iPad is better than the projection system. They repeatedly asserted that in order to appreciate the Retina Display of the New iPad, one needs to see it directly with their own eyes. That is a pretty strong claim.

Also, Apple announced that they will continue to sell the 16 GB iPad 2 model (Wi-Fi only and 3G models) at $100 off their original pricing. For $399 and $529 respectively, it will be interesting to see how the iPad 2 continues to sell. I’ve been told by many people they were waiting for the price of the iPad 2 to drop before buying an iPad.

My recommendation is to wait until you’ve seen the New iPad in person before making the decision between it and the iPad 2. If Apple’s claims are true that the Retina Display redefines the iPad, it is worth taking a look before purchasing.

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I stumbled upon an article titled, “The Best Tablet Not Always the iPad“. I was curious as to why the author thought this way so I read through it to understand his arguments. Not surprisingly, as is so common with most unfavorable reviews of the iPad or iPhone, the reviewer finds specific technical specifications of the iPad  (or lack thereof), compares it to devices that have bigger or more powerful technical specs, and comes to the conclusion that the iPad is not as good as those other devices. Generally these types of reviews miss the forest for the trees and do not take into account the entire user experience that has made the Apple devices so popular. And many technical writers wonder why the general public is buying Apple devices like hotcakes while ignoring other products of arguably better technical specifications.

The author bases his argument that the iPad is not the best tablet primarily upon another story that is linked within his article. That story states, “As we detailed in our Thrive [a tablet device] review, the full-sized USB port, HDMI port, and SD card make it a more productive tablet than the iPad.” Both authors have a pretty specific definition of “productive”, being that one can plug various other technology into a device without “expensive accessories”.

And thus, we quickly see why so many “techies” have a hard time figuring out why the general public loves their iOS devices: techies think that in order for a device to be “productive”, the device must have specific technology features. The general public knows that being productive means that the device works reliably, is easy to use, and does what they want it to do. Most people could care less about ports. They have found little need to physically connect other things as much as some would lead them to believe. If you don’t believe me, the numbers the author claims to be astounded by should be the proof. If the general public had such a great need for ports or other technical specs, then the iPad would not continue to sell so well – especially to business users.

The author states that he is astounded by the sales figures of the iPad, “considering how little you can do on an iPad out of the box”. I would find his opinion astounding, except for the fact that I have had many conversations like this with techie-types since the iPhone first came out. It simply comes down to the different ways of thinking the “Old World of Technology” has as compared to the “New World of Technology”. Again, he believes the iPad is limited because one can’t plug things into it right out of the box. Most other people believe the iPad is limitless out of the box because they can so quickly and easily get it working. Right away they are on the App Store downloading from an incredible selection of software that will make them productive without the need of a USB device, an SD card, or an HDMI cable. No other company can match the ease-of-use and user experience that Apple has provided for the iPad (and all iOS devices). This is the secret to Apple’s success and everyone else is struggling to simply copy Apple’s hardware – and still missing the point entirely!. The hardware is not so important when compared to the entire user experience.

And if we want to throw down when it comes to technology features, I could argue that technologies like AirPlay make physical connectivity a thing of the past. Why bother with USB and HDMI when one can wirelessly stream their media? Especially when one can still have physical connectivity IF they need it with OPTIONAL accessories (and I don’t agree that a $29 adapter is expensive). No other tablet has a feature that even comes close to the reliability, ease-of-use, and acceptance of AirPlay, so if we want to play the geek card I think Apple still has ‘em beat.

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I’ve written before about how consumers are now pushing their technology preferences into their workplaces. This change in how technology is deployed and utilized comes after the era where the IT departments of companies would dictate what technology their employees would use. By extension, what people used at work is what they generally used at home. Now, what people are using for their own personal or home technology is what they want to use at work, and increasingly forcing their IT departments to ensure compatibility.

I first wrote about this almost exactly two years ago, but I had observed this trend at least a couple of years earlier. Yet it seems that some big companies still don’t get it. Case in point, I recently read an article where a self-described “loyal BlackBerry user and fan of RIM” explained why he made the difficult decision to return his RIM PlayBook (also commonly known as the BlackBerry PlayBook). Even though he feels the PlayBook is technically superior in some ways to the iPad , his reasons for returning the device were not about the technology.

He gave three reasons why he felt that RIM was “screwing it up”. His first was “Not recognizing the consumer power shift”. To quote the article:

The fundamental pattern of technology adoption is shifting. In the old world, in which corporate IT departments determined which technology to approve and employees (users) simply had to follow suit, BlackBerry wielded a clear advantage. IT departments loved RIM’s solution for its security and reliability.

But the winds of adoption are shifting. Employees are in the driver’s seat. They are convincing their IT departments to adopt the platforms employees desire. The winners of tomorrow need to create solutions that appeal to consumers, not just their employers.

He then goes on to say that

Such adoption shifts have taken down giants.

He gives an example of beer purchasing in Japan, but we have examples much closer to home with Blockbuster and Borders. Companies failing to see changes in technology affecting consumer choices is a key reason they fail. This is nothing new, but yet it still seems that the lesson has not been learned – or many companies are just bad at executing change.

It took me 45 minutes from opening the box to being able to explore my new PlayBook. When my wife bought her iPad, she was already connected, and exploring within 10 minutes.

It’s time to make sure your company is recognizing the changing tides in technology. Don’t be late to the party like Blockbuster, Borders, and RIM.

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In the second shocking technology announcement of the week (after the Google announcement that they are going to buy Motorola Mobility), HP revealed that they are killing the TouchPad product after only 6 weeks, as well as their WebOS-based phone line. Additionally, HP stated they are considering leaving the PC business, possibly spinning-off the division that made the mobile devices and makes their PCs.

Let’s get clear just how important these announcements are.

1) The biggest PC company in the world threw in the towel after just 6 weeks in the “tablet” market. Why did I put the word tablet in quotes? More on that in a bit.

2) The biggest PC company in the world wants to get out of the PC business. The same business that brings in one-third of its revenue.

For a company to throw in the towel after 6 weeks is almost unprecedented (only Microsoft has done this with their Kin phones of last year). Sales of the Touchpad must have been utterly abysmal. This just shows how much of a lock on the market Apple has with their iPad. This is why I put the world “tablet” in quotes. As I’ve said before, along with a growing number of others, there really is no such thing as a tablet market. There is only an iPad market. People do not seem to want anything except the iPad. Most people probably aren’t even aware that the other tablets compete with the iPad. I wouldn’t be surprised if they think that the iPad is the only product of its kind – which in many respects, it is. Just look at the recent report that 97% of all web traffic by tablets is from the iPad.

This utter domination of the tablet market by Apple’s iPad explains why HP bailed out on their TouchPad so quickly. But it doesn’t explain why HP wants to get out of the PC business. Or does it?

Just look to one comment by HP’s CEO, who said “the tablet effect is real.” What he is referring to is the thought that tablet (i.e. iPad) sales are eating into PC sales. Up until now, the “tablet effect” has been sort of a hush-hush topic among the PC makers. Sure, PC sales were shrinking for the first time in history, but other factors such as the economy were surely to blame. Certainly the iPad could not be a significant factor, right? Well, now the cat’s out of the bag – big time. There’s no denying it anymore. The iPad is not only dominating the tablet market, but it is eating away at the PC market as well. HP sees the writing on the wall. The PC market has become stagnated with price being the only real differentiator. Competition is fierce and profits are slim. The PC Era is ending, the market is moving towards mobile devices, and the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Well … except for one company.

The only “PC” company that is growing sales, revenue, and profit is … you guessed it … Apple. The Macintosh personal computer, seemingly long forgotten until recently, is seeing tremendous growth while the rest of the PC industry is shrinking. So not only is Apple poised to dominate the “tablet” market, the Macintosh may be the “PC of choice” of the “Post-PC Era”.

Imagine a world where Apple completely dominates the “personal device” market – tablets, smartphones, iPods, laptops, and desktops. Does it seem like fantasy? Perhaps 10 years ago, even 5. But ever since the iPhone was introduced 4 years ago and the iPad just a year and-a-half ago, nothing seems out of reach for Apple. And perhaps companies like HP are waking up to that realization now.

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In a move that was as surprising as it is rife with possibilities, Google announced today they will purchase Motorola’s Mobility division for a staggering $12.5 billion. It is clear that this move is a game-changer for the smartphone industry. But the real question is who’s game does it change?

Is this move simply a patent portfolio purchase? Perhaps Google is trying to shore itself up against future litigation like the lawsuits their hardware partners are encountering now. But it isn’t evident that Motorola Mobility had any patents worth gobbling up. If so, likely the other players who have been purchasing patent portfolios would have been bidding. And from early reports, it appears that Google will keep Motorola Mobility running as a wholly owned and independent subsidiary. So it doesn’t appear to just be a patent grab – especially considering what Google paid. $12.5 billion is about one-third of their cash reserves.

So if Google is interested in making both the hardware and software (a la the Apple iPhone and iPad), where does this leave Google’s current Android partners? Does Google actually intend to allow other companies to continue to make Android-based phones and tablets while competing against them with their own devices? Does Google think that their partners are excited about this?

If it is true that Google wants to move to an Apple-style production model, it only reinforces the idea that Apple’s top-to-bottom control model is the only viable blueprint for the New World of smartphones. The Old World of smartphones was characterized by one company creating the software, other companies creating the hardware, and the carriers enforcing their whims on both. I’ve written many times how Google was following the footsteps of the Old World smartphone market with potentially disastrous results. Perhaps they’ve figured this out now?

Then the question becomes can Google compete against Apple in the game Apple invented? Apple has been in the hardware manufacturing business for over 35 years, has a minimum 4 year head-start on smartphone manufacturing, and has ample experience with all the business infrastructure required to run a company that makes physical products for their customers (support staff, fabrication contacts, supply chains, etc.). Google has never competed in this market before, and when they tip-toed into it with their Nexus One phone, most agree it was a disaster across the board for Google. Has Google learned from their mistakes or are they hoping that Motorola’s experience will fill in the gaps? Either way, it seems like a long shot for Google to take Apple head-on. But, after a couple of years of doing things the Old World way, perhaps Google has come to the realization it is their only viable strategy?

If so, can Google rollout this new model quickly enough to avoid a potential disaster? If Google chooses this new path, it goes against almost everything Google has said to this point regarding their strategy for the smartphone market. Not only could this destroy some of their credibility in the industry, but it could also devastate their relationships with their current hardware partners. What would happen if their partners suddenly stopped making new phones (say after the holidays this year)? Could Google’s Android platform survive such a blow? Could Google have a full-blown operation running to counter this potential so soon?

The bottom line is that this move won’t have any effect on the market until at least the beginning of next year. However, it is not too early for those considering device purchases to ponder the ramifications that this move will have. Primarily, if Google’s move destroys their relationships with their current hardware partners, what will happen to their options for support and upgradability over the next couple of years? If one buys an Android-based Samsung phone today, for example, and expects to keep it for 2 years, will they be orphaned in 6 – 9 months?

Already, Apple iOS devices have an overall ease-of-use and reliability advantage over the various Android-based devices. Now a cloud of uncertainty exists over the future of the current line-up of Android devices. At least until it is clear what Google’s plans are with this purchase and what effect it will have on their current hardware partners, I must recommend extreme prudence to those considering a purchase of an Android device.

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The now-famous open letter to RIM executives references a quote that one of RIM’s CEOs recently made in regards to RIM’s so-far-not-yet-successful technology transition, “No other technology company other than Apple has successfully transitioned their platform. It’s almost never done, and it’s way harder than you realize. This transition is where tech companies go to die.”

In fact, Apple has done it by my count, 4 times (Apple II to Macintosh, Motorola 68000 processors to PowerPC processors, Classic Mac OS to Mac OS X, PowerPC processors to Intel processors). And now it is possible to argue that Apple is doing it for a 5th time, transitioning from Mac OS to iOS. How does a company like Apple manage to pull off these transitions, during both good times and bad? It stems from their deeply held beliefs that technology must be user-focused. Great technology is born from this and it requires great technology (along with proper execution) to pull off major technology transitions.

As RIM’s CEO said, most companies that try it fail. It’s an incredibly risky time, as RIM is experiencing right now. Poorly executed transitions are opportunities for customers to jump ship. It’s why Microsoft has never done it. They know their continued success is contingent on the inertia that the Windows platform has built up in the industry. But more importantly, Microsoft realizes that this inertia is maintained by all the software that runs on Windows. In order for Microsoft to develop a truly next-generation operating system, they must give up the shaky foundations that Windows is built up. But they know that if they do this, they cut the ties that binds users to Microsoft, as software that runs on Windows would likely need to be modified or completely re-written to run on a next generation of Windows. Only an exceptionally executed transition across all phases would ensure that Microsoft keeps most of their customers. There’s not yet been a need for Microsoft to take that chance. But it is becoming increasingly clear that standing still is also becoming risky. At some point Microsoft, and many other tech companies, will realize that they must make a transition to survive. And that’s when things will become very interesting.

If one pays attention to the market, it is coming into focus that Microsoft is entering (or already has entered) a transitional state. As I alluded to before, the “PC” market is transitioning into mobile devices such as tablets (i.e. the iPad) and smartphones (i.e. the iPhone). Microsoft’s announcements of Windows 8 and their attempts at re-creating their mobile strategy with Windows Phone 7 is evidence that Microsoft has realized the changing state of the market. But a lot hinges on what Microsoft does over the next two years. If Microsoft doesn’t pull off this transition well, the entire future of the company is in doubt. If one doesn’t believe that a company like Microsoft could fall, just a little study of history can show what happened to tech giants like IBM.

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To those that follow the industry, it’s no secret that the company that makes the Blackberry, RIM, is in trouble. From a sales perspective, they still sell a lot of devices, but from a consumer perspective, they are nearly forgotten outside of the “old” smartphone market (i.e. corporations and tech-savvy people that have had Blackberries for a long time). Industry experts have been warning that RIM has fallen way behind to Apple’s iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Google’s Android platforms for some time now. But it doesn’t take an expert to see that the operating system of the Blackberry is still rooted in it’s original design that was created in the late 90′s. It was great back then, but certainly seems dated today.

An open letter to RIM’s executive management from an anonymous RIM senior manager was recently published on the Internet. The letter portrays a company internally dysfunctional and lost on what it needs to do to successfully compete. This is the major takeaway for anyone who has any interest in the Blackberry platform.

However, while the letter is focused on RIM’s issues, it brings up many topics about the smartphone industry that I have talked about before, both in this blog and to my clients directly. It is those points that I’d like to emphasize, taking quotes from the letter.

We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice — the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work.

I’ve made reference many times to how most smartphone vendors market their products as if they are “made by geeks for geeks”. They talk about specs, speed, capacity, and how “kick-ass” they are. Yet the reality is that most other smartphones simply don’t work as well as the iPhone. What this letter points out, and I can substantiate, is regardless of all the marketing done, if a product simply doesn’t work how it is supposed to (and the common expectation is that it will work as well as the iPhone), then the end-users will not like it. For all the “cool” technology behind a product, users just want something that works and works well. The iPhone should have made this abundantly clear to all tech companies. Obviously, it hasn’t sunk in yet for most.

Until companies embrace user-focused product development AND then figure out how to successfully implement it, they won’t touch Apple. And therein lies the rub. Companies must first embrace this thinking, which is extraordinarily difficult for most tech companies to come to grips with. It won’t happen overnight. There’s a lot of corporate culture to change and that takes time. And then once that long process is over, the company actually has to figure out how to make great, user-friendly products. That of course takes vision and talent, but it also takes experience. That is experience Apple has learned over 35 years. RIM, and most tech companies, have very little of it.

There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true — BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.

The original iPhone was successful. It made people stand up and take notice. Looking back, however, it really didn’t make that much of a dent in the smartphone market. It was the next year that Apple changed the world by introducing the App Store. Since that time, the tremendous success of the App Store has catapulted iOS devices into every aspect of society. Overnight it was no longer enough to make a nice smartphone. That smartphone had to run apps – and lots of them. It took a year or two for competitors to even get into the game. Now it seems that Apple’s experience working with third-party developers as well as the polished and mature software development environment provided for the iOS (both honed for years on the Macintosh platform) have put Apple into a position where the quality of their Apps is head-and-shoulders above everyone else. No other tech company (besides Microsoft) has the wealth of experience working with developers and development tools, so it would seem that this puts RIM at a distinct disadvantage.

25 million iPad users don’t care that it doesn’t have Flash or true multitasking, so why make that a focus in our campaigns? I’ll answer that for you: it’s because that’s all that differentiates our products and its lazy marketing … My mother wants an iPad and iPhone because it is simple and appeals to her. Powerful multitasking doesn’t.

Earlier I mentioned how most smartphone companies market their products as if they were “made by geeks for geeks”. Compare this to Apple’s marketing where they highlight the simplicity and ease-of-use of their products. In many cases, Apple’s marketing is inconsequential as the real secret to their growth is word-of-mouth. Apple owners tend to become evangelistic about their devices, proudly showing them off to their friends and family who quickly purchase their own Apple products and continue to spread the word. Again, most tech companies simply don’t understand that “old world” marketing only appeals to tech-savvy people. When the smartphone market was small and made up of mostly geeks, that worked well. Now that Apple has kicked open the doors of the smartphone market to the mainstream, that type of marketing is no longer effective. But again, it will take a complete corporate culture change for a company to embrace this type of thinking, then they must create the products that are user-focused, AND then they must understand how to market it. Again, none of this will happen overnight.

The bottom line is this letter highlights the trouble with RIM, but it basically shows the fundamental weaknesses of most tech companies which Apple is currently exploiting. The secret to Apple’s success is that they are the ONLY company in the market with so much experience in user-focused computing. That experience has been gained over 35 years, starting in the dawn of the personal computer market. No other company can touch that level of expertise and it is showing now. Only the companies that are strong enough to stick around, gain the necessary experience, and change their corporate culture will have any chance of competing with Apple. Unfortunately for RIM, time is a luxury it does not seem they have. Unless RIM can pull off a miracle, dramatically change their company, and introduce products that can feasibly compete in the new world of technology, it seems their days are numbered.

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