All You Need To Know About RIM

From the latest NPD report on smartphone sales…

Back in Q2 2006, RIM comprised half of all smartphone sales; however, by Q3 2011 the company had fallen to 8 percent.

I can’t imagine there will be champagne corks popping in Waterloo after the Q4 earnings call on Thursday.

Five Stages of Apple Critics

Over the years I’ve noticed several themes emerge when Apple critics or competing CEO’s speak of Apple and their upcoming or existing products.

I’ve outlined the five stages below.

First stage - Apple will never enter that market.

Once a rumour surfaces that Apple is about to release something cool, CEO’s and tech pundits usually chime in about how there’s no way Apple will enter that market. However, betting against Apple is becoming an unwise thing to do. Harry McCracken at Technologizer has a list of many analysts predicting that Apple won’t do something. As the post points out, that’s a risky bet. Even listening to Steve Jobs isn’t always a good indicator of what’s to come. Jobs once said that people don’t want to watch video on a small device. Then the video iPod came out.

Stage Two – Apple will fail.

The next stage usually has analysts changing their predictions to fit with the new rumor that product “A” (let’s call it iProduct) is in the pipeline. Now is when they begin saying that Apple will fail in this new product category instead of saying they won’t release at all. The reasons are by now very familiar. It will be too expensive. It will lack features. Releasing iProduct would require Apple to give up too much control. Too much competition, too late or too soon. They usually come up with all sorts of pricing predictions that are highly inflated.

Stage three - Product will fail to gain significant market share.

Now that Apple has released iProduct, and we know the price, the analysts begin saying Apple will fail to gain any significant market share. Because the features are now known, they begin to use that against Apple. It doesn’t do Flash, it doesn’t have a keyboard, it doesn’t have an HDMI port.

Stage four - Once competitors release their version of iProduct, Apple will lose market share.

Now that Apple’s new iProduct is a genuine hit, analysts now turn to Apple competitors. Though they’ve been wrong every step of the way, they now say that Apple’s days at the top are numbered. Once competitor “A” releases their version of the iProduct, Apple’s share will plummet, and its dominance will be over. Backing up their argument is that all the features iProduct lacks will be included in the competitors product and consumers will flock to the anti-Apple device. “It has flash”, it has a keyboard, it’s cheaper,  it’s open!” They say this with a straight face, as if anyone other then geeks and neck beards knows or cares what open source software is. Steve Gillmor is fond of saying that Apple’s lack of support for Flash is a feature. He’s right.

Stage five - Silence.

This occurs four times a year immediately following Apple’s earnings call. iProduct numbers are released showing 8-million units sold, $2.9-billion in revenue. The analysts, wrong about Apple yet again, have gone dark. They completely ignore the amount of money Apple makes. Usually they focus on market share only. For example, Apple has 10% market share of all PC’s, forgetting that they make 35% of the operating profits. Or that Android has more market share (true) while ignoring that Apple makes 57% of the mobile phone profit. In fact half of Apple’s revenue comes from the iPhone.

They also ignore the fact that soon, Apple will be able to buy the entire phone market (excluding Samsung) with cash alone. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber recently linked to a 15 year old blogger who points out that Apple makes more money from the sale of one Mac than HP makes from the sale of seven PC’s. If a 15 year old can see this, how come Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer or Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis of RIM can’t. Or do they see it and don’t want to acknowledge it?

Another thing about the money Apple makes. Among those who recognize that Apple makes a lot of money, which is (almost) everybody by now, there is a myth that people who buy Apple products are somehow being hoodwinked or have fallen under the spell of Steve Jobs. They’ve “smoked the Apple crack”, or are simply, “Apple fanboys” who are foolishly overpaying for products when many other cheaper and better alternatives are available. As if BMW or Porsche owners are overpaying for vehicles that are exactly the same as a KIA, that they’re BMW fanboys who don’t know any better.

It is striking to me how many companies that have been disrupted by Apple and Google, still fail to notice. Maybe they think that if they say everything is fine, it will make it so. Meanwhile, RIM burns and Microsoft’s money still comes from 30 year old products, Windows and Office.

Microsoft And Nokia Deserve Each Other

I can’t stop thinking about this Microsoft, Nokia partnership.

I can’t stop thinking about how desperate Microsoft has become. This deal with Nokia is something that makes total sense if you look at it logically while at the same time completely ignore history.

Nokia needs to cut costs because it’s hemorrhaging market share. Microsoft’s entire business model is finding hardware partners to distribute it’s software. Microsoft is being frozen out of the tablet space most recently with HP announcing their tablet, completely free of any MS software.

They are hungry for partners. It’s what they’ve been doing for 30 years.

So just put Windows Phone 7 System 7 Phone OS Mobile (or whatever it’s called) on Nokia phones and everybody wins.

It’s a match made in….well we’ll see.

In the meantime, asymco has a look at the history of Microsoft’s Mobile partners. I can’t believe how many of the companies went bankrupt.

Remember that famous 2007 Steve Ballmer video, you know, where he’s laughing about the iPhone…

“$500 fully subsidized with a plan. I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine.”…”I like our strategy, I like it a lot”.

Well, as Horace Dediu points out, the man he was sitting beside was then-CEO of Nortel Mike Zafirovski. Nortel went bankrupt two years later.

Robert Scoble says Nokia fans who are disappointed are nuts. Scoble points out that Nokia has a vast distribution system that Microsoft can leverage.

Employees at Nokia have staged a walkout.

My question about the European Nokia customers, how many bought Nokia phones because they were a proud Finish company? Is regional pride a factor? Do Finland cellphone customers buy a Nokia phone because it’s a local company? And now that Nokia phones will be running Windows, will that loyalty evaporate?

I’m sure people in Waterloo, Ontario feel some loyalty to BlackBerry because RIM is headquartered there.

Emotion does play a part in people’s choice of phone. It’s a very personal device, a fashion statement. Steve Jobs understands this. Google understands this (think of their positioning around open). Steve Ballmer doesn’t see this. That’s why he couldn’t see how anyone in their right mind would pay $500 for a phone that doesn’t have a keyboard.

What I’m getting at is this. I think many Nokia fans will abandon the platform and switch to Android. Microsoft will pile $800-million into the Nokia partnership. Nokia will go bankrupt.

UPDATE…Nokia says Microsoft paid “billions” to get Windows Phone 7 on their phones. So they’ve already lost billions, rather than the $800-million I made up for fun.

UPDATE 2…Nokia CEO Stephen Elop denies that Microsoft has paid Nokia billions of dollars. Still, 0 plus 0 is still 0.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

- George Santayana philosopher, essayist poet and novelist.

 

SaskTel To Launch iPhone 4 in Coming Months

I have been running an unlocked, purchased from Apple, iPhone 4 on the SaskTel 3G network since September. It’s the best phone I’ve ever used. The network has been flawless.

Now, officially, SaskTel will start selling the iPhone 4 in the coming months. No firm date has been announced. The subsidized iPhone 4 will come complete with a three year lock-in, I’m sure.

The official release is here.

I know it’s just a media advisory, not really for the public, but boy their web site is terrible. They’ve spruced up the front end recently, but the pages still use the old layout. What were they designed with, Microsoft Front Page 2003?

Part of being in the Apple universe is great design, time to step it up guys.

The home page of their site has a splash banner saying the iPhone 4 is coming soon.

UPDATE…the iPhone 4 will be available from SaskTel on Tuesday, April 26th, 2011.

Steve Jobs Takes Another Medical Leave

Apple has made public an email from Steve Jobs.

I hope Mr. Jobs gets lots of rest and regains his strength. Is this time more serious than the last? We can only speculate.

It’s more than just cool gadgets, Steve reminds me to be my best and to only spend time doing things I love.

All Things Steve

Here is the full-length interview of Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D8 conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Ironically, encoded in Flash.

Also the full WWDC Keynote address where Steve Jobs introduces iPhone 4.

2nd Quarter 2010 Apple Earnings Set Record

Another record quarter for Apple. The numbers don’t lie…

$13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

8.7-million iPhones were sold representing 137% year-over-year growth. 51.15 million iPhones have been sold since launch.

About half the Macs sold in their retail stores were to people who had never owned a Mac before.

We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.

These numbers don’t even include the iPad. Amazing. Read it all here.

What Sucks About Video Games

I just finished Infamous on the PS3. I beat the big boss on Hard. But it was a frustrating experience getting to the end. The game didn’t start out frustrating. It’s open world design with main and side missions was very cool for the most part. I could play for 1/2 an hour after work and make some progress. I’m not one of those people who can sit and play a video game for an entire day. I play in small chunks, at most three hours. Usually an hour or less. But as the game progressed and the missions got longer, I was having less fun due to some questionable design choices. My experience with Infamous got me thinking about some things that really irritate me about game design. These examples are mostly about shooters/adventure games and don’t apply to sports or driving games.

In Mission Saves

I may not have time to finish a big mission on a Tuesday evening after work. It’s really annoying to play for half an hour, then stop because you have other stuff you need to do, and find out later you have to redo all the things you’ve already completed, just because the game doesn’t save in the middle of a mission. Grand Theft Auto IV was notorious for making you drive for half an hour just to start a mission, and then repeat over and over. If you died with your enemy one shot away from death, BAM, back to the beginning and another 1/2 hour down the tubes. Nobody does in mission saves better than Call of Duty. You pick up pretty much right where you left off every time. This leads me to the next point…

Let Me Skip Cut Scenes

It’s annoying enough to have to repeat things you’ve already done because of no in mission saves, but it’s enraging to have to then listen to the stupid cut scene with inane dialogue for the tenth time! Let me skip cut scenes! I muted the sound in Infamous during many missions after one restart because I could not stand listening to the dialogue over and over. The main boss at the end kept saying, “You’re not going anywhere!” Not only the same line, but the same take the actor recorded in the session. Brutal. And it wasn’t long before I hit the mute button.

Death Recovery Too Long

Not every game is bad for this, but Infamous in particular had what felt like a ten second recovery time when you were near death. This was too long, considering many enemies could put you into near death with one shot. Either shorten the time it takes to recover from near death or lighten up on the damage one bullet can do.

Good Cover/Aiming System

It goes without saying, you must have a good cover and aiming system. Infamous didn’t completely fail at this, but Call of Duty Modern Warfare is the best at it. I quit playing Bio Shock because it had no cover system.

Provide Enough Ammo

Infamous had plenty of ammo, in the form of re-charging from the electrical grid. Modern Warfare has tonnes of ammo. Again, I quit playing Bio Shock within 2 levels because ammo was so hard to come by. I was spending all my time at that stupid vending machine where all your money would by five bullets! Are you shitting me? Give me some ammo for crying out loud!

Performance Glitches

GTA IV was miserable when lots of things started happening on screen. When tonnes of cops surrounded you the game would actually slow down and hinder your movement so you would not get be able to get away. Infamous wasn’t nearly as bad, but many times the game would stutter a bit at a key moment and I’d be dead.

Controller Responsiveness

Again, GTA IV had awful controller responsiveness. Call of Duty is the best. When I hit shoot, my character had better shoot, or duck or run or whatever. This sounds so simple but it’s amazing how many games fail at this. Infamous was so irritating when your character got knocked down it took FOREVER to get back up and before you’d even get another shot off, you’d be shot and killed. Often when you just wanted to jump to cover, you’d accidentally leap to a light pole and still be in the open where you’d be shot and killed.

Damage AI

If I have to shoot a regular enemy ten times to kill him and he has to shoot me once to put me down, that’s bullshit.

Armour

Armour that only works on one kind of enemy or only in a very limited set of circumstances is not worth having. Infamous had no armour at all. Your ability to deflect blasts never increased. Yes you get an energy shield at one point, but it doesn’t work for most of the attacks the bosses throw at you! I especially love when you come across some cool piece of armour or shield only to immediately face a new enemy that is twice as powerful, completely negating the affect of the just acquired armour. This also goes for weapons.

Weapons

New weapons are almost immediately followed by new enemies that are much harder to kill. I understand why this happens, but some games take this too far. Give me some time to blow the weaker enemies away before you bring in the tough dudes. That’s the fun part about new abilities and weapons, using them on foes that you used to have trouble with. If you instantly make all the enemies harder you’ve gained nothing.

Enemies

I understand why the enemies get tougher as you get tougher. If you were just invincible and could mow down everything in your path the fun would soon become boring. But I’m just asking for a bit more balance between challenging and frustration. I also get the model of big boss battles, they can be an exciting way to finish a game, but often they just descend into memorizing their moves and how to damage them. Rinse and repeat. What makes it really irritating is not being able to save if you are called away to something else and you lose all your progress.

Don’t Make Your Game Impossible

Say you are a game developer. In a sense you are the God of that world. You could write code that would make the big boss evade everything you throw at it, kill with one shot, have weapons blast away every piece of cover, have infinite life and loop his annoying taunts over and over because you didn’t want to pay the actor more money to record more lines of script. You could give the hero armour that is ineffective, weapons that don’t work on the big boss and include bugs and glitches that hinder the game players ability to properly duck and run for cover. You could disable in mission saves and skipping cut scenes to make the player crazy doing the same thing over and over until his wrists give out. Yes you could do all that because you’re the God of the video game world you’ve created. Congratulations. You’ve become a dick.

Conclusion

There are other things that can be annoying about video games, pop-in (where the background objects just pop-in as you get closer), artifacting, characters walking in mid-air and other often hilarious glitches that aren’t usually show stoppers. In fact they are often very funny, I’ve even come across a couple myself from GTA IV and Fear 2. No the biggest annoyance I have with video games are more AI and controller related, as the previous examples point out. These are the things that make or break a game for me. I’m a bit more than a casual gamer, but I’m not hard core. I don’t finish a game in a weekend. I sometimes buy game guides, but usually I just want to sit and play without too much trouble. Uncharted 2 was great for this. It was challenging and fun, but you didn’t pull your hair out in some insane and unfair level.

I don’t want to have to play a boss battle for hours. I should be able to beat them in 45 minutes. Not 45 minutes every day for a week. I don’t mind long games, as long as its spent playing new levels, not playing the same thing over and over because the cover systems sucks, you can’t aim properly, you run out of ammo, the boss is indestructible or your character slows down because your game can’t handle too many things on the screen at one time. I also don’t want my gaming experience to be longer because I can’t skip cut scenes or have to spend 10 minutes just getting to the mission I’ve already died in five times, but you can’t save so your screwed.

I want to have fun gaming, not feel like I’m being shortchanged by bad development choices, or bugs in the code.

Pants On The Ground Jimmy Fallon Neil Young

Jimmy Fallon rocks!

Amazon Recommends Fail

Got this email from Amazon today…

Dear Amazon.ca Customer,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Harry Potter Collection (Films 1-5) [Blu-ray] have also purchased Becker: Seasons 1-3 on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that Becker: Seasons 1-3 will be released on January 12, 2010. You can pre-order yours at a savings of 25% by following the link below.

Becker: Seasons 1-3

List Price: CDN$ 99.99
Price: CDN$ 74.99
You Save: CDN$ 25.00 (25%)
Release Date: January 12, 2010

So because I bought Harry Potter on Blu-ray I might like Becker! What the hell is Becker? I don’t like Ted Danson. Other than being a collection of DVD’s these two have NOTHING in common. Even that is stretching it because one is Blu-ray and the other is DVD. Wow.