The reason I like this gig and the work that we do is we are essentially focused on a market or idea around what the mining industry should look like from a geological standpoint over the next x-years. Loads of data that need user experience driven solutions to help unravel it.

I won’t go into details about what specifically the above means (as with this company, I actually have an NDA this time ), suffice to say we are focused and in the course of writing this strategy combined with the constant RSS feeds over the last 72hrs about Steve Jobs that it hit me what makes Apple such a powerful force today.

They are focused.

Looking at Apple’s website, you see they are in a number of products but the more you look at each individual product and how they relate to one another it’s clear there is a coherent strategy in place. There is still a case of multiple threads flowing at once yet they are still interconnected at some point.

I look at the iPhone and then look at the Macbook’s on offer and one can sit back and easily assume that the iPhone is an extension of the Macbook that the idea is to get you into the iPhone ownership whilst then bait you into the desktop solution there after – it just works right?

Everything in Apple orbits the iPhone, its realistically today the center of all products that Apple produce’s gravity, it’s clear to me personally they are focused on a strategy – how well the retain custody of this vision or strategy with the passing of Steve Jobs is yet to be written, suffice to say they have one of the best foundations to build from.

I observe often just how focused Apple.com has become as a website, every line of text, every picture right down to the consistency in design seems to say “we have an idea, wouldn’t it be cool…”

To put it in perspective on the influence, I watched a colleague of mine – better to not name him – design Microsoft.com/web (which imho kills on all Microsoft.com sites). I watched him sit down and do everything in his power to avoid opening Apple.com and it’s not because he hates Apple or drinks the Microsoft kool aid, quite the opposite he’s at heart a pure designer – one of the best I know – he avoided opening it because he wanted to beat it because he appeared to want to put Microsoft’s best foot forward and not have a site like Apple overshadow it.

He had a lot of fools in his way, but he navigated the mess with class and kept a strategic focus on a simple principle – user experience first around the products he managed.

My point is this, Apple and Microsoft are opposite from one another, we all get that but if one thing about writing my 8^th Product Strategy and living by the a sense of “focus on the user experience and work your way back” has taught me, that at times you just need the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc of this corporate focused discipline we call the software industry to just do what they do best and stop crowding them with bullshit and have a point or focus.

Microsoft, Adobe and even Google just seem to have this scatter shot approached to product strategy & marketing.

Personally, it’s quite frustrating to just watch given their huge amount of potential they have? We should have 10 Steve Jobs personas in our industry with the same level of UX focus for a brand? That’s what people are probably the most down about in his passing – who’s going to lead us now?

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I’m not one to subscribe to celebs etc., but today Steve Jobs dying did leave me a pondering the power of how one person made such a huge impact.

I have heaps of positive / negative stories about Apple etc., but the one that stands out the most is the day the iPhone 3Gs was released in the US.

On that day, I was on Microsoft campus after working through the night on a project – cannot remember what the project was – and it was around 7am I decided to call it a day. I shut down my computer and remembered that this was the day Apple was going to release their new phone, I wanted one because I still had my Australian iPhone but figured I can wait until next month when all the madness dies down.

I got in my red 2010 mustang (loved that car), pulled out of Building 17 and drove towards my house in Sammamish only I figured I’d swing past the local Redmond AT&T store to see if there were any Apple nutters lining up as maybe because the store is so close to Microsoft campus there won’t be as many people queuing up (Microsoft internally was very weird around Apple hardware ownership as you can imagine).

I slowly drove down the main street towards the railway line and there it was a queue that ran all the way around the block and then some. Looking more closely I noticed a few familiar Microsoft faces and could see heaps of blue tagged swipe cards attached to peoples belts like some weird Texas ranger police badge.

I smiled, we compete daily with Apple but here inside the heartland of Microsoft there were staffers queued up like the rest of the stores around the US all keen to get their hands on the iPhone 3Gs.

I later heard a rumor that over 30,000 Microsoft staffers per day used iPhones to connect to their emails.

This phone came from the creation of many at Apple, Steve Jobs was their leader and maybe he was the ideas man but in the end it took teams of people to execute on those ideas. The man not only made an impact on my career and continues to do so, but I watched an entire company take deep collective breathes at nearly every WDDC, I watched internal mailing lists fire up and lots of internal debates around how “Apple are copying us” and “Steve Jobs is <insert negative/positive comments here>” and even today as I watch my wife struggle to force herself into an optimism bias fueled acceptance of the Windows Phone 7 she holds in her hands whilst staring at my iPhone4 with envy – you just can’t but help this was a moment in my lifetime that I probably won’t see in a hurry – the man died, can you believe that? Isn’t he some kind of immortal tech geek god personality?

Today, I own 3xMacbook Pros, 4x Apple TVs, 3x iPods, 4x iPhones, 2xiPad, 1x iMac and next week I’ll also own the iPhone 4S (aka iPhone 4 Steve). I buy these products because they inspire me creatively not through their unique designs but how others add to the design(s). I care less about the Mac culture and I spend a fortune on Apple daily to the point where it annoys the hell out of me at how expensive it is to be a customer of the brand.

Simply put, I find little to complain about and I agree with most of what Steve Jobs has done in the past and the way he’s set us up for the future.

I look at the iPhone Siri and just think to myself – that is really cool? Like if it can do as the ads say it can, this is going to be a game changer for business women/men worldwide. The camera looks amazing and that’s enough for me to drop $799 AUD next week.

Everyone else’s reaction was “meh”.

How far have we come today where there is a phone that has the potential to take on the role of Ironman JARVIS like intelligence that we turn and just throw down and have a technology tantrum?

Steve Jobs not only influenced me on an industrial design & interface level but I look at my 3D portfolio and often catch myself daydreaming about what it would be like to work at PIXAR – a company I’d often joke about “leaving my wife and kids to work for” with a friend of mine who used to play sport with my family every Saturday in Seattle who used to work for PIXAR.

I don’t subscribe to celebrity nonsense, but with this guy, I was hooked like a school girl watching a Justin Beiber concert.

Today, the myth of the man got bigger whilst the enemy of mediocrity got one leader shorter.

I hold Microsoft to high standard and will beat them up often over it and have a mixed result around success but I do so because of guys like Steve Jobs. The dude’s a fucking legend – enuf said.

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I stumbled upon a blog post that I think should be titled – Genius is non-transferable. Nice up beat post about the influence of one Mr Steve Jobs and how his departure is affecting the future of Apple via a thought inspiring post.

This got me thinking about the day Bill Gates officially retired from Microsoft. I was on campus at the time and I remember everyone that I was near talked about this moment and there was a weird vibe around confidence levels. Most brushed his departure as the old guy has left the building, he didn’t do much anyway these days? Others who were more senior and seasoned didn’t follow this thread of thinking. Instead, they were more conservative and gave lofty responses like “we’ll see..” hinting that we as a company have only just began a journey of success vs. failure ahead.

Today, Amazon has setup shop right near Microsoft and recently the company lost or was expected to lose over 3,000+ staff to the ….online bookseller? storage in the cloud? company?. …Google, Facebook etc. have also setup shop just outside the borders of Redmond as well with I’m sure equal numbers of the 3,000 likely to occur as well.

How does the Amazon staff hiring blitz have anything to do with the topic at hand? Its simple for the first time in the history of Microsoft not only does the company have just as rich competitors today, but they also have their medium level competitors parked outside their village. This is a small but equally important issue as now not only is Microsoft HR departments on notice that they need to improve their metrics around success and fail but it also has a significant impact on the quality bands of their products (ie key staff leaving? Good or bad? Depends…)

Pre-Bill Gates.

Pre-Bill Gates departure, Microsoft was still a chaotic organization filled with typical large enterprise issues but it in turn was kept in check by a guy who remember outsmarted the beloved Steve Jobs on a number of business related tactics over the years. You worked hard to outsmart Bill in the organization and he did have a cultural impact on staff – prime example, ThinkWeek Papers.

Post-Bill Gates

Post Bill Gates, well products aren’t doing that great other than Windows 7 but in reality Windows7’s success is really a false positive given if you remove Windows XP from the market and force business/consumers down a path – it’s what I’d call a duress driven success.

You have a staff exodus problem occurring and furthermore you have no cohesive strategy around marketing products that at the end of the day are technically well built – Microsoft’s always had a marketing issue never really a technical one.

Windows 8 Predictions

Next month, Mini-Steve (Sinofsky) is keen to jump on stage and release the momentum he’s spent months ratcheting around the future of Windows8. The prediction here is simple, he’s going to unload a device-operating system, and he’s going to outline Jupiter but paying close attention to promoting it as an animation framework only while throwing most of his weight around HTML5/JavaScript/Internet Explorer as being the Web Application of tomorrow.

This is going to give people their Microsoft high for the year, then in the following September 2012, he’s going to come back and officially release this to the world thus removing MIX Online from our memories for ever more.

While this is happening he’s then going to spend energy & time building out the desktop concept of Windows as we know it today whilst factoring in the disruption of Windows8 Device / ARM Operating system and its effects on the market.

Apple in turn are going to spend a lot more budget / cycles now to rebuild confidence now that Mr Jobs has stepped down for what we all know now sadly, health reasons. Inside Microsoft they will see this as a moment of weakness, the beloved General has fallen – storm the gates, hard and fast.

This is a software storm of under qualified sugar overloaded officers at best who are going to promise us the world, the future of a brilliant tomorrow when it comes to vNext Software.

The underlying impact here for all of you to consider and the moment in which I personally just shake my head and sigh.

There’s no Steve Jobs and Bill Gates anymore, just punks who think they have the capabilities that these old warhorses once had.

These two didn’t accidently impact our lives worldwide in a once off streak of luck, they had consistent measure of success over the years in everything they did and we in turn backed their abilities in one way or another.

We had confidence.

Today, you look at the landscape of software companies and what they are all busy right now pushing and pulling the industry into what it should be and you have to ask yourself a simple question?

Are you confident we are on the right path now? If that answers no, kind of or not stacking into the majority of “Yes” column. Then we have a problem and future CEO’s like mini-Steve may think he’s got the winning formula but in truth, he’s been too busy copying Steve Jobs/Bill Gates homework he’s not taken time to learn from what they’ve failed and succeeded at.

Inside Microsoft, watch guys like Scott Guthrie as whilst everyone is running towards Windows 8 / Windows Phone 7 gravy train(s), he’s walking towards Azure, a spot where you can easily hide for a while and let the mob fall on top of each other over Windows 8 / Windows 7 device rush.

Mark my words, he’s the one you should all keep an eye on as he has potential to one day become the next Bill Gates / Steve Jobs for Microsoft or maybe a competitor should he jump ship to?(minus the creative part of course).

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Ask not what Microsoft can do for you but what you can do for Microsoft. That’s really the inspiring quote that President of the new colonization group – aka Windows  – needs to say to the unwashed masses of tomorrow.

Microsoft is taking on a mission that looks to go beyond the moon, they want to land on Jupiter and it will be done with Apollo. Still confused?

If you’ve not paid attention to all the codenames flying about the place you’d be forgiven to be confused as there’s a space theme happening and with these code names its quite interesting to see how the objectives for the next generation of Microsoft is likely to shape up.

Jupiter is rumored to be the reset button to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight. A reset is the latest suspicion as just yesterday I found out that the XAML ethos within Microsoft has been disbanded and set to various corners of the company.  Some went to Internet Explorer team, some went to Windows teams and others went to Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Why disband the teams? It is time for pencils down folks, let us stop piling on code for the existing stuff but now let us set our sights for the future, let’s be bold. Let us be daring. Why land on the moon when you can land on Jupiter floating on a cloud of Azure? (Ok, I lost myself in that metaphor as well).

Ok fine, I have gone through the seven stages of Silverlight/WPF grief and I am at acceptance I think.

The Mission.

In order to better prepare for the mission ahead, let us think about the various things we need to account for prior to launch (September).

Replace Crew Members.

Inside Microsoft there is a lot of toxic turmoil going due to internal re-orgs (which is fairly common) that fueled with how the Global Financial Crisis has affected employees etc. it’s no secret that Microsoft are losing some quite influential and dare I say, hard to replace staff to places like Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on. I personally know of three employees who have hated working for Microsoft for quite some time but have been stuck due to housing prices in Redmond etc not being ready enough for a resale – that is – until Google, Adobe, Facebook and soon Amazon have campuses of their own in Seattle.

Now the super geeks have alternative employment options. Microsoft is now on notice, treat me better or I will leave. The later choice has been winning in my opinion and the more the new found employees have sent me messages of "Omg, its way better over here than Microsoft" which has to be salt in some current employee’s wounds whom are likely staring down the barrel of uncertainty in the company given its end of year commitment scoring mixed with the demise of what we used to call the Silverlight/WPF & Blend ethos. What to do!.

Reaching Parity. 

A gentleman and fellow .NET scholar Jose has done the best he could in reverse engineering Direct UI (rumored to be the leaked incarnation of Jupiter). He has some insights that are both great and disappointing at the same time. The great part is it could very well be the next iteration of what has to come in the landscape of C# and XAML for tomorrow’s UX Pioneers.

The downside is its 3-5 or maybe more steps backwards in the current feature parity you have all eagerly waited for over the past 4 years. There are some fundamentals in the room whilst there are concerns around some of the other features that may or may not make the cut for version one.

If I know Microsoft and I like to think I do, this is likely to be yet another one of those traditional "version 1" moments whereby the team(s) behind the product eventually stumble across the finish line, exhausted but barely breathing enough to shout "Give me feedback on what you want in version 2, it will be better I promise" followed by some metaphor about how it’s a marathon and not sprint to the finish line (We got great mileage out of that with Silverlight and I dare say you could get a few more products out of it yet).

The tooling is likely to be not in place during this version 1 lifecycle as my sources tell me that the Blend Team aren’t cranking out the vNext improved world of Microsoft. I know Steve Sinofsky has had a few ambitions about what the Tooling should look like in the perfect world of Windows vNext frontier and I am guessing he did not play well with others in the Devdiv team(s) to share such ambitions.

That being said, either there is a skunk works tooling team hidden in some random building in Microsoft that others do not know about or the tooling story behind this next frontier is unlikely to be in place before Sept or for whenever this next version of our beloved Silverlight/WPF ethos occurs.
What I mean to say is welcome all to Microsoft 2005. Hold onto your Winforms or ASP.NET MVC  for a little bit longer and for those of you in Silverlight/WPF investment land(s) – try to not focus on the future but the now (best to keep your code base as lean as possible and not to tightly wound in client-side logic).

Put vital organs into Escrow.

Microsoft are quick to throw technology at a problem first and then ponder as to why the problem existed. I’ve often personally seen strategies – wait, that’s not correct, strategy requires forward thinking – tactical decisions (better) made around trying to grow developer audiences.

The assumption are

"ok, we’re not making our tech palatable enough, lets steal stuff from Ruby On Rails, Apple or Oracle to make it better".

The absolute harsh reality is often a lot of non-Microsoft customer(s) etc. just don’t like Microsoft (Ever liked a girl/guy and they don’t like you back? You try changing your clothes, hair, car etc. and still nothing. Welcome to the Microsoft Developer outreach program, you will fit right in).

The other side of this coin I guess is those of you who adore Microsoft for what they are. You spend thousands of your own dollars to go to various events to listen to Microsoft confuse the absolute crap out of you. The problem is lately, they seem to be a company you just cannot bet on for the future.

Grandiose plans to land on Jupiter may be bold, daring and exciting but is it dependable? Can this company commit to a master plan and is this a plan or just a tactical political brain dump mixed with a lot of Microsoft experimentation.

Is it a case now of not waiting for the next Service Pack but now waiting to see if a product can get past version 3 and 5 before you really consider it as a viable option of the future?

In order to prepare for this next mission, someone has to donate some good will to the fans of Microsoft technology. That means you cannot stick to the ye olde "need to know information" mentality. You got to bring your roadmap(s) for the future and you got to show us that you’re telling the truth that you want to aim for Jupiter and not some closer planet or worse – the unknown void beyond Jupiter.

Commit and stop being assclowns.

Commit to us so that we may commit to you. No more lies, No more "I’ve got a secret, can you guess!" and lastly no more internal political child play spilling over and into the blogosphere. It’s time to be a big boy company and use big boy strategies with big boy plans mixed with a lot of big girl personality (somehow that did the ladies no favors).

If we are to take on this mission, it’s time for a smarter playbook around transparency and if Steve Sinofsky is willing to bring the "come to Jesus" moment for the company around consolidating the entire product lines into a consistent continuous experience across all devices with a developer/designer experience to boot. Great, I personally will print out a t-shirt that says "I’m back in team Steve" (heh my old team inside Microsoft was called Team Steve…Steve the manager though was a arrogant jerk, different story, different time).

Right now its just a case of me holding up a really sick puppy that others have kicked and telling you all about the neglect its owners have given it. (If I quote that metaphor I was given last night by a friend).

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The industry way.

Inside Microsoft it varies, you could be the source of power or you could simply be a reactive title that is less Management and more Marketing. What I mean to say is, inside Microsoft a Product Manager can often simply be a Product Marketer whereby they wait until the Program Manager’s decide the features and then the Product Management / Marketing team go to work in communicating the features to the masses.

It takes on a somewhat reactive role as in the end the Product Manager’s main priority is to convince the Program Manager(s) to add xyz features to their engineering "things I need to build list". If that can’t succeed then you try alternate routes by going to concepts like Product Unit Managers, Vice Presidents or General Manager(s) – basically from my own experience inside Microsoft it can be a game of "Lord of the Flies" – figure out who has the conch and do as much as you can in terms of convincing them with data / opinion sooner rather than later.

Outside Microsoft, I have found that to be different, for example recently I have had some chats with Apple around how they do product management and it was interesting to hear that the person(s) in that role (kind of) are the one-stop shop of the power seat. Engineering don’t do a thing unless there is a market to sell the features to in that the Product Manager(s) role is to figure out what’s basically a sellable feature based on market data (need vs. want, differentiation and so on). I have also heard rumors that this is how Adobe does things as well (be curious to see how Google run the show, but given their strong DNA of ex-Microsofties me thinks the Microsoft way of life may propagate upstream).

I am yet to really pin down specifically how the correct formula works here as again, each brand has their own unique perspective on the role. My thinking, mainly because I am arrogant – you are doing it wrong.

The Barnes / Mad Men way.

A colleague of mine had this brilliant way of explaining how he’d setup a team for his start-up and he called it "Mike’s Eleven"  (aka Ocean’s Eleven). Each person brings a unique attribute to the team that helps you rob people. You do not bring in a person to the team unless they can really contribute. I like to think of this in much the way of my favorite TV show – Mad Men.

The Don Drapper (aka Director)

This person is like Mad Men’s Don Draper, smooth talking has brilliant insights into the way marketing engines work and lastly knows how to keep a steady but calming influence over the others. I’d highly recommend this person at least have an MBA – whilst as douche as that sounds – but this degree isn’t as easy as people think to get and lastly it brings a lot of Wikipedia of marketing to the table (whilst mostly theory based). If this person is marketing your product as if it was Soup and not Software, you may get some left field thinking into the equation. Hiring an ex-engineer to be your Don Draper is useless, as they cannot think creatively / laterally most of the time – given the OCD / problem solving skills they have already tuned.

The Roger Sterling (aka Community / Client Liaison)

This character in Mad Men has a famous quote in the TV series – "Let me put it in account terms, do you know how many hand jobs I have to give to fix what you’ve just done?"

That is a quote worth remembering when it comes to your Community liaison person(s). These people have one goal and that is to figure out what the client(s) or customer(s) want the most. They play a game of contact sport, whereby they are rarely in the office and are constantly out in the field getting insights into how the product is shaping up each version you produce.  This role is expensive, but worth it provided they are steered in the right direction (it’s not all about hotels and bar tabs).

The goals for this person is to firstly create rock stars, do not be the one in the room on stage find others to put on stage to evangelize your product(s).  They also need to avoid conferences as much as they can and instead meat businesses at their front door.  You do not learn a lot from meeting the same people repeatedly at the same conferences but you do learn a lot when you sit in on a technology decision-making meeting inside a random mining, finance, medical or start-up company in blah country.

They are your socialite and spy in one.

The Lane Pryce / Paul Kinsey (aka Domain Experts).

You need someone in the room who is your in-house engineer. This person will work with your non-technical minds to come up with a simplified way of approaching the set of features you want to build. Let us face it some features in most software are left field in either complexity or mickey mouse go no-where thinking. The Technical side kicks figures out ways to make the feature work kind of your early prototype but more so they are looking at it from a pragmatic perspective.

Say the Don Draper & Roger Sterling want to build a concept whereby the software can do facial recognition to avoid Security logins for PC’s of tomorrow. Now their job is to determine if there is a market for it and you trust that they have done their homework. The technical sidekick now needs to look at the feature from the developers perspective, they need to sit down and dream up the idle way a developer should approach this (so it’s kind of part User Experience Imaginer as well). They look at it from the angle of setting goals for the engineering team to meet the marketing team half way on.

No more over complicated API that go nowhere and lastly no more tooling that makes you want to scream at the product(s) and you soon forget the benefits of the feature (I’m looking at you Deep Zoom, WCF and a whole heap more).

Having this equation also stops science projects spilling over online, where everyone is looking confused and thinking "oh must be for someone else as I so don’t need that feature at all" from occurring. It’s a balance struck much like rock paper scissors (each role trumps the other).

The Salvatore "Sal" Romano (ak Artist).

This person should have a portfolio of design that makes you dreamy eyed with envy. The point is this person is your polish to the spin you put out and it’s their job to figure out what looks good and what isn’t. Once you figure out what you want to build and how you want to market it, you need a person in the room who can manage your media / design agency vendors and with an attention to detail the goes beyond color preferences.

Most of Microsoft’s "viral videos" look cheesy, over worked, over bought and under delivered. The reason being is you rarely have someone in the room who thinks creatively. This person goes to art galleries because they want to see art or they like the Apple iPhone because of its Industrial Design characteristics and not because it has Angry birds.

This person keeps your presentation skills in check and through the guidance of the team will make sure you come off looking polished.

Look at World of Warcraft’s website; this is a amazingly well designed site for a game. Now look at other game websites, the difference is the experience.  The point here is someone in the room is keeping a close eye on design decisions being made and ensuring the brand is putting best foot forward.

The same can be said for Apple vs. Microsoft. Apple have a centralized polished look to the way their make products online – Microsoft looks like someone figured out how to remake Geocities but for corporate reasons.

Just like in Mad Men, Sal is the person who knows good design when he sees it.

The Peggy Olsen (aka PR / Copywriter).

This can be an important but healthy addition to the team(s). If you are going to manage a product, make sure you have someone in the room who can write a sentence that does not look like my blog – full of spelling and grammar errors.

This person’s job is to make sure you do not screw up online and say stupid stuff – especially when dealing with your competitors. They also handle your press and announcements with keen focus on what needs to be said and when/how. They work closely with Art & Technical to ensure the message they position is correct and is not full of fluff / waffle that goes nowhere.

They also need to be edited as much as they can by the Don Draper’s & Roger Sterling’s to ensure that the message / copy they produce is not talking at the audience(s) but with them.

Recently Microsoft said Windows 8 and HTML5 in the same breathe which lead to a lot of questions around .NET’s future. Had a Peggy been in the room this would of not happened, as letting a VP go on stage like that solo is just showing off. You need to get that person on stage, do their message drops but also have an entire campaign of media ready to drop in behind it to underpin the messages and points you want made across the globe.

Steve Jobs gets on stage does his thing but the moment he drops announcements there is media everywhere to support it at the same time in parallel.

Having a good PR person working closely with press is important as well and they need to be devoted and focused to a product (not someone you bring in on/off again).  They are also your lawyer in a room full of press as you let them figure out the ways to handle aggressive and passive journalists (News flash, sometimes Journalists are so lazy you can almost write the story for them whilst some are the ones you try as best you can to play a game of high stakes poker with).

In conclusion.

That is my thinking of how Product Management should work, it is not really one person it is a team of entities all working in a tight unit much like a game of rock paper scissors. You need to market a product to the masses but you also need to figure out what the masses need vs. want whilst at the same time coming up with features and ideas that they aren’t expecting.

There is no such thing as a separation between Inbound and Outbound marketing, its bulls**t.  It is both directions at the same time and engineering need to listen up and listen well. Your jobs are to take the bright crazy dumbass ideas and figure out ways to make it happen, as you now need to reverse engineer the imagination it took to think up.

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There is a consistent theme that I often see when I have been invited into conversation(s) regarding Windows 8 and the whole HTML5 saga. The main undercurrent is "Why would they do that?" and it is a perfectly valid question that often gets lost in the whole opinion / news pieces that are floating around.

Understand the metrics first.

Inside Microsoft you are really goaled around a metric that involves the words "market share" in that somewhere along those lines your entire reason for drawing a pay cheque distills down to that. You have to help Microsoft grow its market share across all battlefields and there are multiple battlefields in play.

Battles are what are happening in today’s software industry. It is quite competitive and cutthroat in many places and often mercy is for the weak.  Companies on both sides often play by the rules governing ethics but often more so than ever it is not the case under the covers or behind closed doors. There are often many tactics at work that the audience(s) and customer(s) do not always see.

For instance, when Silverlight/Expression was heating up in the early days the battle between Adobe and Microsoft was quite intense (I myself was caught up in it quit easily). You’d have situations where Adobe would threaten to shut down a conference if Microsoft Staff showed or you’d have Adobe specifically target Microsoft showcase wins the next year and spend large amounts of $$ to win the customers back to create the perception that these customers had buyer’s remorse.

Apple, Google, IBM and Oracle all suffer from the same somewhat software industry driven guerrilla warfare style tactics. It is a competitive sport and staff within get quite emotional and aggressive at times about it – like a thunder dome of super geeks.

Tactical approaches and competitive aggression is what fuels Microsoft often. It has also to answer the question you have around "Why would they do that" simply put; it is about building an army primarily.

Understand the Tactical Programs

You have programs in play like BizSpark – an idea to give the software away for free in order to seed start-ups into adopting the Microsoft technology stack. It is the old heroin addiction formula at work, in that the first hits free but the second and third will cost you. Ensure an addiction takes place then the monetization will follow.

HTML5 + Windows 8 are no different. The prospect of enticing never before heard of developer hordes – also known as the Alternatives to .NET development into adopting Windows 8 platform(s) via the HTML5/JavaScript route is worth the risk to Microsoft.  It is about socketing these peeps in early, get them acclimatized to the Microsoft technology stack and from there you can bleed the monetization models outwards into channels that you can declare internal victory over.

Understand the Compete motions

The thing though is this playbook or this strategy is in no way different to the days when .NET was first created and it is again a rinse/repeat formula being played out.

The motivation is growth around developer share (that is an obvious objective around winning) the other objectives are also around competing head to head with Google & Apple. Google is the main focus though, this company is taking bodies from Microsoft staff lines often and if you were to look at the past two years around who’s left the .NET development teams as well as the Internet Explorer teams for Google it’s almost alarming.

Google don’t need to compete with Microsoft, they just need to re-hire their staff and I often giggle about this as I once wrote an internal memo regarding Adobe compete whereby I said "We should make a $300k a year offer to their entire evangelism staff to work for us, we say here’s $300k now go sit in the park and enjoy life for the next 2 years as it would be cheaper than what we spending on compete for Adobe".

Google are kind of doing that in many ways.

Understanding the gullibility.

Google are also provoking Microsoft into adopting their tactics and more importantly forcing the companies hand into moving Internet Explorer closer towards a HTML5 Future(s) than before. For instance they punk’d Microsoft into fixing the JavaScript engine within Internet Explorer because they had the company convinced that this was their biggest fear around how Microsoft could beat Google. Microsoft took the bait and the funny part is the person who worked on that engine is now working at Google today.

Google played Microsoft and it is this small random pocket of competitive insights that often go unnoticed in the industry. These small little gems of "hah that was funny" all add up to the situation we see before us today around why Windows 8 looks and is likely to act in the way it is.

There is no real strategy here, just tactical competitive reactions played out that do not often give pause to the massive impacts it places on the hordes of developers who wear the Microsoft logo on their blogs / resumes etc. with pride.

Microsoft is doing a terrible job at corporate communication(s) and the most frustrating part of all is that it is the actual fans of the brand that are noticing the most.

That is probably a small glimpse at how a competitive situation can motive product lines into making snap decisions the way they have been in the past five years.  The reality is you the customer out there who use the technology actually play somewhat a smaller role than you do think around feature selection and roadmaps for product designs.

It’s often a competitive influence that drives the most decisions and sure compete leads to innovation right and that’s something we should all embrace – except if the tax is instability.

Summary.

For a deeper insight into this topic around “Why” Listen to a podcast I did list week titled “Windows 8 Round Table” via TalkingShop DownUnder.

http://www.talkingshopdownunder.com/2011/06/episode-58-windows-8-round-table.html

Related Posts:

• The mission to land a .NET developer on Jupiter.
• Is Adobe’s new HTML5 Edge tool Expression Blends replacement?
• Windows 8 : Making new friends, Ratcheting Momentum and influencing anger.
• WPF lip service at it again
• Microsoft’s Behavioral Patterns.

How did the product arrive at this state? Where a pittance of allegedly 1.6million units have been sold out of the 2million units known to be “in-market”. My thinking is as follows:

No Aesthetic Differentiation.

Stating that is bold and a bit of an eyebrow raiser, as clearly the Metro UI is different to the rest right? Not really, as you are probably looking at this through the lens of a TechEd T-Shirt wearing c# ninja aka Microsoft “aware” perspective. The reality is if you go into a mobile store of any kind around the world, you just have to stare at the buffet of phones on display and cannot really help but notice one thing. They all seem to look kind of like the iPhone in terms of shape – keep in mind we humans are pattern people, we seek patterns first and then adjust to what the pattern is second.

If all the phones have similar shapes then what does that say? Does it feel like an iPhone knockoff? It has the similar price tag. So why pay for a copy of a popular device when you can have the real thing?

Assuming you get past that train of thought let us look at it from a different perspective. You are in the store, you get excited over the initial 10seconds of “Wow, nice UI” moment(s). The more you use it, the more you start thinking “meh, what kind of apps does this thing have?” so now you have to grasp the concept of the Zune Marketplace – assuming you’re outside of the US and the brand Zune is “What the freaking hell is a Zune?” moment(s). How do you grasp Zune Marketplace while in a store? You click on Marketplace but nothing happens as most phones have no internet connection(s) in stores.

I have seen many a “marketplace” on the ye olde phones that were run by carriers so what makes this different to those as again who is Zune? What apps do you have and do you have Angry Birds? Skype? Foursquare? Facebook (yes its built in, but are others outside the Microsoft sphere of influence aware of this?) etc?

Too consistent & poor quality bands.

The differentiation is one thing but then comes the moment of too much consistency. All of the applications tend to blur into being the same old cookie cut style. There is not a real sense of change or theming in place other than games. Today’s twitter application looks like a thousand other twitter applications aside from some color changes. There is no real sense of depth and whilst the team has pushed for “authentically digital” which is a noble gesture in the art scene, it is but one lacking in the consumer space.

To put it another way, If I have a voice recording “memo” style application then please make it look like a recording application (i.e. iPhone uses this big Microsoft and it takes on this “theme” of being the app). There are some diamonds in the rough when it comes to the marketplace, not all are bad – most are though.

All it takes is any C# developer with some developer muscle and a lame brain idea around FlashLight, Twitter, Task list or Tip Calculator and pretty much soon you have a saturated idea brimming to the surface of applications made available to you for purchasing. The quality baseline for success in the market is measured around quantity not quality. iPhone is no different much like Android, the difference with those phones however is they aren’t the ones struggling to convince people that their old version isn’t the same as you see before you in the new version(s). They don’t have as big of a hill to climb back out of and arguing mediocrity in quality bands as an excuse as to why is plain stupid.

There is no switch up inside the phone, all apps tend to become the same look and feel repeatedly – so my point is this is not just a phone it’s a media device that should be filled with brainless eye candy as much as functional brilliance. Let the audience decide if Authentically Digital compositions are their cup of tea but forcing all to bow down to this mentality is simply locking you into a bubble of ignorance.

Dance with the girl you came with.

Consumers are morons, and are easily tricked if you have a brilliant strategy. Urban legend of Colgate guy wanting to increase toothpaste sales that tried everything but in the end all he did was increase the diameter of the hole in which toothpaste pours out of by 3mm in the end sent sales through the roof (given we used more toothpaste unwittingly). It is a story I was told in my days of Marketing 101 training, but it stuck with me for obvious reason(s) – hopefully.

Microsoft is so preoccupied with “beating” the other guy (and we used to drink that compete rage elixir often) that its lost perspective on the places its getting success – Business/Enterprise. Go into a govt department, large mining company, finance sector the whole thing and ask them how they are coping with business related devices such as PDA’s and wanting field staff to do xyz. You would be surprised at the response you get – especially how iPhones, Androids and Windows Phone 7 are not even in the race. The reason being is simple – “How does one deploy a private app to my citizens?”

The reality is Microsoft’s spent the lion share of its marketing spend on US Consumers hoping that this like some kind of weird end of year Xbox style achievements metrics “Congratulations! You have Achieved Level 1 in sales!” moment(s).

Inside Australia for example the WP7 Marketing is a secret? As its rare you catch glimpses of its existence outside a mobile store and even then you have Windows Phone7 Logo right beside Windows Phone 6 devices.  Confused? I was.

The win here while it may not be loud (which sadly gets you career points in Microsoft) is that if Microsoft released an Enterprise follow-on with the WP7 devices focused on allowing draconian SOE overlords to brick the phones in such a way that forces its peon’s to adhere to the blah blah policy then you in turn would have a backdoor into consumer market.

The reason being is these are human beings the phones are being handed to during work hours. The more they use them, the more the grow accustom and forgiving towards the device you are giving your crack away via corporate mandates. Establishing a habitual usage amongst the business/enterprise community in turn creates natural evangelism, which in turn can either make or break you (if its crap phones it will be very loud as to why).

If you are in a meeting and you see many WP7 phones in the room, you cannot but help notice them – that is what they call “product placement” in marketing terms and you get it free amongst the business community.
Nobody is doing this right now, and I’ve witnessed thousands upon thousands of units of HP IPAQ like devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 as a result (right now I’m staring at a body of work I’ll need to work on soon in this space, simply because no Wp7 device is available for commercial usage).

Competitions are an act of marketing desperation.

I was once told inside Microsoft that if you get to a point where you are running a competition to excite developers around a product, you have failed. It is the last desperate refuge for a marketing to try to regain some lost momentum around marketing a product that really needed more than a “Win a new phone?” moment(s).

When I was doing my interviews for Product Manager on the Silverlight team, my bosses boss (Dave Mendlen) asked me how I would handle a competition etc for a product if had $50k to spend? I guess he wanted to see me break it down into its overall pieces etc. My response was simple

“I’d take the $50k,  put up a 1x Page website and simply give away a CAR in any country around the world for the best and fairest blah blah”.

My point was simple; competitions suck firstly so I would rather get this fool’s errand out of the way upfront. Secondly, if you are going to have competitions then go big or go home. Don’t pussyfoot around with $1k or below offerings, you want competition right? You want people to take notice and work hard to fight to the finish then put a carrot that is big enough that it feels both reachable and enriching at once.

I see way to many competitions for developers to write xyz Windows Phone App around lately and it’s just sad to watch. Microsoft needs to raise its game and seed the product in much smarter ways then weak competition tactics. Evangelism needs to be smarter and the marketing spend / product placement campaigns need to be better than it is today. Seeing a Windows Phone 7 on a TV show is a good start but it lacks follow-up(s).

If I go to a geek conference of any kind I want to see Wp7 branding everywhere but I also want to see someone doing something interesting with the phone(s). I want sizzle and holding creations as if the one Brandon Foy hostage to “If you get 200k+ views I’ll let you do a commercial for real” is like asking Don Draper to audition for entry-level copywriter. You had talent in front of you and you still missed it.

In Summary

The phone is failing and it is not really the actual phones fault it’s more direction, understanding of who needs the phone and lastly ensuring the quality bands associated with the phone raise. If you are going to go head to head with Apple who have shown repeatedly that Industrial Design / User Experience is what consumers are really attracted to. Bring it fully do not “version three we will get it right / marathon speech” it to death.

Related Posts:

• WP7 Developers! Developers! Devel…wtf is the designers?
• The mission to land a .NET developer on Jupiter.
• HTML5? Ok, so let’s also deploy Microsoft Silverlight onto Android then…
• The Likes & Dislikes of Microsoft in 2011
• Silverlight huh, bit of a …hot topic..wouldn’t you say?

In October 2009 I warned the Adobe community via InsideRIA that Adobe should tread very carefully with Apple and how that if they kept poking the sleeping giant sooner or later they’d react.

It’s now April, and Apple have reacted – and like a great game of chess, it’s not check mate just yet either.

Apple decided this week to update their licensing and block the ability for 3rd party software vendors like Adobe for example, from allowing their tooling and customers to produce iPhone/iPad based solutions that do not make full use of the way Apple intended to enable such vendors in the first place – “It’s my house if you don’t like it leave” is the summary.

A lot of people are asking questions around “why” and a lot of the blame is being pointed at Apple as being unfair and so on. Allow me to interject given I was one of the main Adobe compete leads at Microsoft and secondly my prediction rate on Adobe has been approx 90% correct so far (I guess you’ll have to trust I know a thing or two about the brand).

The lesser of two evils.

Adobe or Apple who is to blame? who is innocent and who is trying to do the right thing? these are all immediate questions that come to mind when you start seeing the battle lines being drawn between these two “A” brands.

The answer is – it depends.

The knee jerk assumption is Apple isn’t playing fair here that they are the ones holding innovation back on the beloved iPhone/iPad platform(s). It depends, as in Apple’s defense why would you allow a company like Adobe who’s made no secret about this:- the ability and power to lock down the user experience for all devices into a democratic format like Flash.

That plan is effectively the same playbook as Microsoft has used for Windows, own the platform own the industry its that simple.

If Flash was to gain entry to the iPhone/iPad then it effectively puts app vendors and such on the same playing field as other devices and in many ways the unique form factor of that which is the iPhone today starts to lose its initial appeal as it then becomes yet another device. Apple is a company that prides itself on “thinking differently” in that it appears to approach consumer based products in a very unique and at times stubborn – but profitable – way. The brand likes to ensure its products are different from what people expect and that their experiences are unique and a must-sort after thing.

Adobe is desperately trying to change that, they see their future as being the UX platform to the masses – “use my tools and you can produce on all devices and platforms” is essentially their mantra.

Apple, Microsoft and in parts Google aren’t even slightly interested in agreeing on this as they are all acutely aware of the potential hazard products like Flash can become if left to grow organically.

If your going to have democracy, let it be HTML5 then.

User Experience in technology is now fast becoming a consumer focus as well as an enterprise focus. 99% of my workload is visiting Microsoft customers every week helping them figure out their UX story on disparate technology. I’ve never seen this before  and I’ve been a UX plug-in focused designer and developer for the past 15 years and as my bio states, a Product Manager of one of these technologies. It’s inspiring but at the same time fragile and the reason being is HTML5.

HTML5 for me represents an industry slow-down, in that if we all move to abandon plug-ins and support HTML5 in the way it’s being instructed to, we in turn sacrifice the agility of that which is user experience on the web as we know it today.

Apple and Google are ok with this though, for both of them having HTML5 on the horizon is a good thing. It enables them to still control the way in which they run their unique business models but at the same time it still gives them the ability to block competitors from over-taking their said business models.

An example is today, I can log into my bank ANZ.com.au and handle my financial affairs all through a unique iPhone specific experience. One of the largest banks in Australia reacted to the iPhone and produced a solution that befits a device which today still has minority share.

The point of that example is simple, companies will react to where they perceive the value is and enabling their various application domains to have multiple user interface channels is extremely important and one that is visible on all of their roadmaps for the future. They are all acutely aware that the industry is changing and the lines between Desktop and Mobile are blurring and in a manner that  is going to be a lot harder to separate.

HTML5 however represents a unique value proposition to this technology hazard that’s coming up fast. It effectively puts us all on an even playing field and it also strikes at the heart of everything Adobe represents as it effectively deprecates Flash.

If Apple is able to keep large brands reacting to their business models without having to take a technical dependency on products like Flash, then this in turn solidifies their position in the future in a more healthy way. It’s much more profitable today to starve the Adobe ecosystem out  Apple based devices than it is to allow the said technology to co-exist on the devices – as once that technology gets on the phone all bets are off as sure it will become popular.

It’s not about being ethically right, as this isn’t a Disney movie it’s reality. All software vendors are doing everything they possibly can to dominate a niche in the industry without taking a technical dependency on a foreign software company

Where is Microsoft in all this?

If i know my old team well, they’d be chuckling at the demise of Adobe and how all their best efforts in marketing CS5 + iPhone just came unstuck overnight. That being said, this is why Silverlight and WPF was built to play by the same rules but differently. Microsoft aren’t interested in holding down a unique experience on their own proprietary devices as well they don’t make hardware. Its in their best interest to keep things on an even playing field provided you buy their operating system first and secondly you develop using their tools for it. If either of those tick boxes are ticked, life is good for Redmond.

If you screw around with those two boxes they will compete against you and hard. Silverlight is a result of this, as it was well known Adobe’s intent was to own the UX platform across it all which in turn interrupts Microsoft’s story in a way that isn’t healthy for the company. Silverlight was born out of that competitive necessity and you’ll soon start to hear random stories on how Windows 8 will solidify their position on counter-acting concepts like Adobe but whilst still embracing the existence of concepts like HTML5.

HTML5 is the brakes for this giant chess game, its the technology safety haven which enables us all to slow the engines down a little and start making stronger bets instead of this ad-hoc technology evolution we seem to be on.

Apple can leverage its concept to propel them forward in a much more controlled fashion. Google will enjoy its splendor as their content business model can remain intact without having content and experiences online forking. Adobe will do what it can to keep their fingers in the HTML5 via their tooling story (and in parts server products) but in reality if HTML5 were to gain dominance it would impact their entire business model in a way that they aren’t yet equipped to deal with.

Apple blocked the Adobe market potential simply out of necessity and future proofing their brand, all you’re seeing this week is one move out of many in this game of industry chess.

Adobe are being attacked on all fronts, they simply MUST stop their immaturity and aggressive behavior in order to survive – otherwise their developer share will continue to drop and Flash will continue to be ignored in lieu of other more appealing approaches to the same thing.

Adobe will win this, public demand will turn in their favor.

It’s something I hear often a cry of desperation if you will. Adobe don’t have a groundswell of developers to storm the Apple gates and press outlets like New York Times etc may post an article or two around how unfair it is but it won’t be a sustained momentum as they are more inclined to talk in depth about the engaging devices such as the iPhone and iPad bring than what powers them.

What about consumers by large? Consumers are indifferent to technology choice as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Amazon etc are all bombarding them daily with “try my new shiny toy” so it’s hard enough for the tech savvy minded to separate signal from code.

I predict Adobe will lose this bout and despite Adobe’s CTO post today about how they will produce CS5 to do the same as what they had intended and leave it up to Apple to make the next move is a silly move on their part as it effectively devalues CS5’s potential – again. Not to mention his wording just is passive aggressive for example:

First of all, the ability to package an application for the iPhone or iPad is one feature in one product in Creative Suite. CS5 consists of 15 industry-leading applications, which contain hundreds of new capabilities and a ton of innovation. We intend to still deliver this capability in CS5 and it is up to Apple whether they choose to allow or disallow applications as their rules shift over time

The last line in bold was a smart ass response and I took that as being “We will still move forward and we are calling you on your bluff Apple”. As that is a feeble attempt to ignite a public tech riot once the first app gets blocked. Watch how fast it starts and dies down as well.

Related Posts:

• iPad is still missing iPlugin due to Compete wars
• Windows 8, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and how Genius is non-transferable.
• Is Adobe’s new HTML5 Edge tool Expression Blends replacement?
• Context and Experience Matters.
• Metro: Typography trumps chrome–debunked.

In my twitter feeds I’ve been reading a lot of mixed opinions on Adobe, and given I often weigh in on all things Adobe, I thought I’d write down a few of my ideas on where I would take Adobe if I were CEO of the day and was talking on stage to the staff within (now that I don’t work for Microsoft I can express these opinions more in the light of day).

PDF vs SWF?

We are tools based company at present, we can replenish our market every two or so years, but this isn’t going to sustain us for too long. We need to spear heard the Enterprise in a way that allows our file formats to take on more of a de facto standard, much like PDF has today. We can expand more on the concept of “what is a document” further through the use of Flash technology. We however, must approach this concept from a completely different angle.

We must consolidate the two formats into one, but we must also provide developers and designers a HTML like experience in producing these formats. Our mandate is not to pick sides on the plug-in vs HTML battle, our mandate is to absorb both ideas at the same time.

We can provide interactive documents to those who want to go beyond the limitations of HTML today. We also want to enable these same documents to exist on the internet for those who don’t subscribe to this philosophy and a degraded experience isn’t a bad thing, it’s a palatable compromise. In other words, we need to ensure our future file formats work in all devices but done in a way that our tooling is the most superior.

HTML is Flash’s friend.

Browsers are our biggest competitor and at the same time ally. Enabling Flash technology to be injected as the preferred rendering engine for HTML5 will require us to open the runtime more. Instead of all or nothing approach which we have today, we should instead provide a turnkey based approach to this equation. At a core level, Flash should respect the current HTML standards we have today but provide a hook point for us to make additional changes on that suite different file formats outside of HTML.

HTML is still not portable, providing companies the ability to take their web like experiences into other software is our mission. Again, our PDF methodology is much the same as what HTML is today, the difference is we provide a much richer experience in around presenting document based experiences. We stand a greater chance of allowing Microsoft Office works to produce interactive experiences that can work on multiple platforms and devices whilst stil adhering to intended experience being asked from such workers.

We must invite companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple to help shape this future as they do not want to be the tooling providers for our core audience – designers. They want the developer base and its a highly contest arena that we simply don’t have the manpower or finances to contest.

User Experience is our future.

Our customer base represent majority of all user interface design, we should and continue to own the way forward for these types of customers to move the human race forward. Our job is not to compete with Apple, our job is enable tools that empower companies like Apple to do better and more agile user experience assembly. If Apple want an Appstore, our job should of been to provide a tool that enables their customers to produce experiences for their devices – to a specification they need and we can respect. If Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 needs our help to enable their customers a tooling experience that helps design audiences create the next generation of mobile apps, we should be there. We shouldn’t be the platform in which runs these experiences, we don’t have permission to do so.

We are not a platform company. We are a creative experience company.

Our job is simple, provide the missing workflow required in order for platform companies to succeed, meaning we want to empower our design audiences to design for these platforms. Flash technology is simply our portable rich format, it is not a platform – it could be, but we aren’t able to sustain this investment for much longer if we should head down that path.

Humility

.When a company like Apple or Microsoft rejects us, act with humility. End the conversation with “I think we agree to disagree on this one”, finger pointing and passive/aggressive assaults will not yield answers to why they reject us – it simply puts more distance between us.

Instead, listen, understand why they are forbidden to use us in context to what we are doing above. Should Microsoft or Apple wish to compete with us in the tooling space around what we produce, then its clear we are doing something wrong. We are limiting their potential and that is the heart of where we must compete. Silverlight and QuickTime should never of existed, we should have had a solution in place that was palatable to their needs. We failed in that regard, none the less enabling Flash Tooling like experiences to produce Silverlight or QuickTime is where we can regain our strengths. Expression Studio is our competitor not Silverlight.

Summary.

Adobe have squandered a lot of potential in the last 10 years (inclusive of Macromedia). Their staff are aggressive behind the scenes and they often remind me of the “old skool Microsoft” where Kill Sun Kill Sun type attitude ended badly for the said company. Their assaults on both Apple and Microsoft has continued to backfire, yet there doesn’t appear to be any outwardly change in behavior. It’s time they consolidated their efforts into a consistent message behind PR / Marketing spin.

They own the design audience’ at the moment, this however is likely to change at the rate the current competitive climate is looking. Products like Acrobat and Flash are file format stories only, Photoshop, Fireworks etc are tooling to enable these file formats and others to succeed. LiveCycle and Coldfusion are a distraction and should be culled or handed off to the open source community grow on their own and in a manner that is passive to other brands.

Adobe are skating on some very thin ice with all the large powerhouse brands. They require permission for Flash / Acrobat etc to exist, and whilst on the PC there has been great success but those days are starting to wind down. Everytime an operating system is released on a device/pc, Adobe is not there. Customers are easily swayed to new things, and at the rate of where the industry is going, lock-outs are an acceptable process today.

Its easy for me to guess that Windows Mobile 7 will not ship Flash, it directly couter-acts Silverlight’s existence should it. iPhone/iPad/iNext will not ship Flash as Apple see no value in providing such experiences and more to the point video online is the contested space for Apple/Microsoft/Google – so sacrificing that for Flash isn’t palatable at this stage for all involved.

OSX, Windows 7 and beyond doesn’t come with Adobe technology pre-installed now, the saving grace right now is there is a deeply seeded saturation of file formats such as SWF on the web today. That being said, the more lock-outs that occur the less powerful this argument becomes – as it puts downward pressure on webmasters to start considering avoiding using these or albeit provide alternative file formats to solve the said problems.

Adobe need to now ready, aim, fire and less ready, fire, aim.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft and Adobe casual gaming partnership– Casual love or just gaming each other?
• Is Adobe’s new HTML5 Edge tool Expression Blends replacement?
• Lifting the Apple vs. Adobe compete veil
• Context and Experience Matters.
• iPad is still missing iPlugin due to Compete wars

One scene did catch my eye, it was a scene where the guy from Mad Money tells everyone to sell stocks in Stark industries.

I chuckled at seeing this scene, as for me I can’t but help laugh at the fact here we have this fantasy based device that 3 years ago, made people drool at the very idea of its existence. Fast forward to today, Apple announces the iPad which is probably the closest looking device of this kind on the actual market and has received mixed reviews, mostly how it lacks innovation.

Innovation, what does that mean? Wikipedia says:

The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products .

Incremental and revolutionary are often not allowed to be used in the same sentence as they kind of fight with one another in terms of adhering to people expectations.

For instance, I’ve often heard Microsoft Surface table being declared a “missed opportunity” and I can’t but help disagree with that remark. Today for instance I ordered a Dell Multi-Touch monitor and a new Dell Laptop with Windows 7. 1 year ago, it didn’t exist, today it does. Microsoft Surface did it’s job, it dared the mainstream hardware manufacturers to beat it in an open market place, it provided the necessary research and development skills to the Windows team to ensure multi-touch was baked into the next operating system (which has recently reported enormous growth potential). It’s expected by 2012, multi-touch devices are going to be as normal as a mouse/keyboard – yet, 5 years ago, it didn’t exist.

10 months ago, Silverlight was just a plug-in, today it’s a plug-in that sits within a browser but also has the option to pop out of the browser, sit on your desktop and then get this – have a browser within itself. It’s fast becoming a concept where you have browser meets desktop and the division between desktop client and browser start to blur.

Approx 2 years ago, Steve Ballmer wrote off the iPhone as just some luxury device that wouldn’t sell as well as folks believed it to. He was partially right, the iPhone hasn’t sold as much as people think, but what it did do was light a huge fire under the mobile device markets butts. Now, today, you’re being bombarded with “iPhone” envy based devices.

My overall point is this, somehow we are owed more yet we don’t seem to take time out to pause and reflect on what we have before us. User Experiences is a prominent fixture in our daily lives now, the “good enough” approach is fast becoming taboo, we are innovating and we are doing it via revolutionary increments. The software industry is probably at its most exciting point in time, its the time when operating systems and devices need to bring more to the table than they have that or find ways to expose what they have in a more UX favored light (innovation is often also hidden deep within the bowels of existing technology, waiting to be exposed).

Steve Jobs this week allegedly called Adobe lazy and in the same breathe cited HTML5 as the future. I agree Adobe have been lazy and immature for quite some time (its the core of my frustration with the brand) but I disagree with HTML5. The reason I disagree with HTML5 as i feel it goes backwards in innovation and not forward, its an incremental growth spurt that is taking forever to land. What happens with HTML5 thereafter? what’s next?

I’ll buy an iPad for the same reason it was shown in the movie IRONMAN as for me its going to be my interactive tv and newspaper in one. Fit for initial purpose to be exact. I bought a multi-touch capable computer now, because i want to implement some ideas I’ve had for quite some time, albeit implement my Fantasy UI.

I’ll continue to look at every device I can find that touches on User Experience and look at it from the lens of “What does it do? and what will it inspire its competitors to do?” and then judge it a success or failure. Incremental change needs to come from lessons learned.

Links you should click on:

• Bill Buxton on Multi-touch: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
• Mark Coleran Visual Designer and Hollywood FUI Guru – http://blog.coleran.com/
• My Interview with Mark Coleran – http://www.riagenic.com/archives/174
• Star Trek FUI Interview – http://theflashblog.com/?p=1023

Learn to Appreciate Technology

Related Posts:

• Decoding Windows 8 UX Principles– Let Context breathe instead of the UI!
• THELAB: User Story Management – think beyond cards.
• FUI – Igniting the Fantasy User Interface spark.
• My Slides: Microsoft UX: What Just Happened
• Interview with Mark Coleran.