Quite frankly, I never expected this will ever come true, especially so soon after the release of Kindle 2. At this point, Kindle 2 is just barely hot off the press, shipping to those early adopters, and already it’s being replaced by a software platform strategy. You have to wonder about Amazon’s claim of Kindle success. For as long as Amazon has tauted Kindle being a hot selling, successful consumer electronic product, the company has been more than reluctant to release any sort of sales figure. During the Kindle shortage throughout the holiday season, Amazon would not divulge any production schedule or data.

Every consumer product company, regardless of industry, understands the important in marketings its own success. McDonald’s with their millions of burgers served, Pepsi with their “4 out of 5 people prefers the taste of Pepsi over Coke”, Apple with their millions of iPhones shipped. Publishing these numbers breeds consumer confidence, and leads to increasing momentum for the popularity of your product. So why isn’t Amazon more forthcoming? Is Kindle really as much of a success as Amazon want the outside world to believe?

Kindle on iPhone's User Interface

To be fair, although Kindle for iPhone is a free app, iPhone itself is a rather expensive device. If you were to compare them purely by the book reading experience, I’m sure more than a few people will prefer the experience of the Kindle hardware rather than just the software alone.

• The e-paper display has a much longer battery life, you don’t have to worry about running out of juice in middle of reading.
• The display is larger and more comfortable than iPhone.
• Backlit LCD screen is more tiring on your eyes over time.

However, iPhone does so much more than the Kindle: You can check email, browse the web, watch videos, download apps, and of course, make phone calls. On top of all that, iPhone actually starts at a lower price range for the base model than Kindle 2. Sure, you have to factor in phone bills as part of that cost of ownership, but those are phone bills that you would probably be paying regardless if you were using the iPhone or any other smartphone/cellular phone devices. From that point of view, Kindle 2 becomes an “unnecessary cost” while iPhone is just another piece of existing cost (cellphones in general) that people can’t live without.

So why would Amazon do this to themselves?

When the Kindle was first released, a lot of people thought that Amazon was aiming to create the same vertical market that Apple had with iPod and iTunes Music Store. The reason Apple was so successful with their strategy, is that they were able to dominate in all fronts of their vertical integration: Hardware, software and content. If Apple had given up that exclusivity at any point and allowed other devices to interact with their software and content, chances are iPod would not be as dominant as they are today.

For Apple, they realized that although content is the “reason” for consumers to purchase iPods, it is the iPod, not the content, that is the primary source of income for Apple. It is increasingly apparent that Amazon’s strategy is very different, they’re in the business of selling content, not hardware. The act of making Kindle available as a software platform on other devices, also makes their own hardware less appealing. It’s not just the iPhone. What if I can get Kindle on my desktop computer, my laptop computer? If you really look at the pricing structure of the Kindle hardware, I can get a Netbook for about or less than the cost of Kindle 2, and I have a fully functional computing device with a full color screen.

Clearly, this is the first step for Amazon to step away from the hardware business. No one knows exactly how much Amazon is paying to subsidize for the cost of not only the hardware itself, but also the wireless service that goes along with the Kindle hardware. If Kindle becomes nothing more than just a software platform, then it’s not much different than MobiPocket, which has been selling eBooks on mobile devices since the year 2000, whom Amazon had also acquired.

The problem with losing this competitive edge, is that without a hardware platform to tie yourself into, you lose the distinction against any upstart that can take over with better value propositions and tools. Perhaps Amazon should’ve learned the lesson from their own MP3 store, which were granted DRM-free music licenses a year before iTunes Music Store. Despite the fact that Amazon had technical advantages with better music file format (higher bitrate and DRM-free), cheaper pricing, they still couldn’t topple iTMS, simply because the synergy of that hardware+software+content platform is too strong to overcome. Amazon MP3 store ended up doing nothing to thwart iTMS sales, although it did manage to pick up and expand its own fan base.

Without the Kindle hardware, Kindle books are just any eBook. If I can get the same eBook that’s better looking or cheaper from any other third party publisher with the same content, I will. Amazon still has the force of being the 500lb. gorilla in the world of book selling, but it just made itself a lot more vunerable if eBook is truly to be the future.

The question is… Will I be motivated enough? Typing on this virtual keyboard is serious business!!

Well, Google released the Android SDK today. The SDK was pretty impressive, giving us a good preview of the the OS user interface (via Engadget). However, one can’t help notice how much the “mockup” looks like a Palm Centro, or any myriad of Palm or Windows Mobile device that’s been available so far. One also can’t help but notice how the UI takes many lessons from iPhone’s UI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, but didn’t everyone expect a *lot* more from Google than just another software platform that looks just like any other software platform?

I listen to podcasts when I bike to work every morning (my form of reading the newspaper while having breakfast?), and one of the panelist on TWIT made a lot of sense, although I can’t recall it verbatim (and I’m too lazy to listen through a one-hour long podcast to find the exact quote). Whenever Google can’t conquer a market, they fragment.

Take for example, the “OpenSocial” initiative that Google just started. Google had their own social networking property (www.orkut.com), which was almost completely forgotten as a footnote to all their other services. Facebook became the monstrosity that overtook MySpace, which long before had overtaken Friendster. Orkut, however, was nowhere in anyone’s distant memory. By introducing OpenSocial, Google is undoing Facebook’s dominance in building web applets specifically for their service. In away, it seems like a move that benefits every developer, who can now develop for every social networking site (other than Facebook) and support many “platforms” at once. Of course, the “side” benefit is that Google has planted the seed that could possibly unseat Facebook from its dominance at the top, and also insert themselves as the tour-de-force of any social networking site that may eventually take the throne.

Taking a look at what they’ve done with Android, they’ve essentially fragmented any previous mobile Linux development, again inserted themselves at the helm of the movement. Furthermore, they’ve even fragmented the Java development community as well. CNet’s Crave blog has a great post on this, which touches on some of the issues with Android’s SDK and overall Java development. Of course this isn’t all bad, since Java in itself is a platform that has failed to satisfy anyone. However, once again it shows Google as a very shrewd company at being able to project themselves as a kind, gentle company that can do no evil; and at the same time, position themselves as the titan that is able to undermine an entire industry in one fell swoop.

Who does that sound like? You know it, it’s on the tip of your tongue, you know exactly who I’m talking about.

Yup, Apple.

It was another day of soul-searching later, that I said to myself, “Wait, is that all there is to this news? That’s it? Really? You mean, I didn’t miss anything? I mean.. I combed through my RSS reader for hours and hours looking for more detailed information, something more exciting, something with actual substance…. and… really? That’s it?” For at least a few hours, I thought I was caught in some sort of temporal anomaly and was missing vital information that Google has apparently announced to the entire world minus little ol’ me.

The truth is rather, disappointing? Underwhelming? Indeed, the news outlets were positive on Day 1, and almost all universally speculative and introspective on Day 2. How many times have we been promised a “mobile phone OS based on Linux & open-source”? This harkens back to the Linux PDA days, and we all know how that went. The only difference between Google’s announcement and all the other dozen open-source mobile OS initiative, is that Google has a lot of money. Shitloads of money. Certainly a lot more money than open source Linux companies that’s been trying to figure out how to make any money at all by doing, anything and everything?

Of course you’ll see an impressive list of partners, it’s Google for god’s sake! Everyone jump in the pool! The question is, how many of those partners really have any product development plans? How many of those partners will be looking for their own competitive advantage once the SDK is out? How many of those partners will actually, actively contribute to the initiative once they realized that they are at very high risk to put themselves out of business?

The answer for now is, “It’s Google, they’ll make it work.” We’ll see what develops in the coming months. I see it as Google just throwing a piece of SDK out there, and allowing the sharks to battle it out for supremacy. After all, taking this strategy really means they have very little stake in any particular company. It’s a smart way to position themselves, as a software platform provider that doesn’t really care which hardware wins out. If Sony Ericsson develops something great and put HTC out of business, so be it. If Nokia collapse (well, they haven’t made a commitment to the consortium at all yet, probably a smart move at this point for them), it really doesn’t matter to Google either.

I’m starting to see a bunch of executives & software engineers from companies gather at a coliseum built in Google’s backyard (or maybe by naval airbase or something), and someone from Google is sitting atop in the Emperor’s seat and just giggling at the bloodshed that’s about to happen.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the way that Google is going about this. In fact, it’s probably the smartest thing they could do to get into the mobile device arena without actually becoming involved in it. The style just disagrees with me on a personal level. I like companies that design end-to-end solutions that satisfies consumer needs. For example, Tivo is a great company that threw themselves into the heat of the battle, and forever changed the way we interact with televisions.

That kind of a company earns my respect. Google’s Open Handset initiative makes me wonder, “Is this just going to be a Linux version of Windows Mobile?”

So I was a little disappointed when NBC decided to have a bit spat with iTunes, and decided to pull all of their shows off of iTunes by the end of the year. What really gets to me, is how senseless the arguments the media companies are raising against Apple. This doesn’t pertain to just NBC, but all media companies dealing with iTunes as a whole.

Think back to when Universal was negotiating with Apple for their new music agreement. Their argument was that they’re not making enough money from iTunes Music Store, they want more control over pricing. Similar arguments has been brought up over the years with Apple multiple times, and they’re all along the lines of more control over DRM, more control over pricing, more profit for the record labels. Time and time again they insist that they can’t make enough money from iTunes Music Store alone.

Yet, look what happened these past few months. EMI started selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes, and doesn’t seem to be hurt by it as much as bolstered by it. All the other studios started offering completely DRM-free tracks on Amazon MP3 that sold for as little as $0.89 per track, depending on albums (although the misconception is all tracks are available at $0.89, they are not. Most out-of-print album tracks are $0.99, similar to how such albums costs more than new releases at record stores). They have agreed to sell less restrictive & less expensive music on Amazon, meanwhile telling Apple this is precisely what they cannot ever afford to do.

Now with this NBC deal, they’re complaining about revenue, about not making enough money. Same arguments as the record labels had with iTunes. At the same time, they’re going to be bringing out their own video service that allows you to watch entire shows for free (albeit with advertisements) and even embed videos on other sites in a very web 2.0-friendly fashion. So now they’re just serving up bandwidth and going back to relying on advertisement-based revenue models. Do they really make that much more money from webcasts compared to selling the shows? I’m sure the studios makes a huge amount of money from DVD sales of TV shows. Meanwhile iTunes’ sheer volume may not be as much as DVD sales now, it is a developing market that will probably grow bigger over time as we steer away from solid-state mediums for media delivery.

Furthermore, NBC’s little tirade about how much they’ve helped the iPod, and how they should get a share of that iPod sales revenue, is utterly ridiculous. Has RCA, Sony, Sharp and other TV manufacturers been sending part of their revenue to television stations? Obviously TV as a delivery medium wouldn’t work without the TV stations. So why isn’t NBC charging TV makers a fee for delivering their shows to millions of homes everyday?

We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. In the end, AmazonMP3 might take over iTunes Music Store, but that’s only because iTMS was there to pave the way first. Maybe Hulu.com will succeed, or maybe it’ll be a massive failure. Whatever happens, the end result probably wouldn’t impact iPod sales a slight bit. After all, no one’s stopped buying TV’s because NBC doesn’t have any interesting shows on Wednesday nights, right?

I immediately scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar, went in and exchanged my iPhone after work. The concierge at the Genius Bar was taken by surprise; he said it was the first time he’s seen this on the iPhone, although it was seen plenty of times on the iPod Touch already. He promptly exchanged my iPhone, and I walked out the Apple Store within 10 minutes of my appointment with a brand new iPhone and a much better screen.

The customer support experience I’ve had with Apple has always been very good. Although I do wish that I didn’t have to do that with almost every first generation Apple product I’ve purchased. I have exchanged an iPod Nano that couldn’t play Apple Lossless formats (even though it played everything else just fine), older iPods where the hard drive failed after less than a few weeks of usage; and my Macbook Pro’s power button has sunken in, which means I will have to take that to the Apple store eventually down the road.

Despite how well their products are designed, it’s also pretty widely known that first generation of any Apple product tend to have some unforeseen issues. I still remembered how the first TiBooks had a misaligned CD/DVD drive that can get your disc jammed and permanently stuck inside. Why can’t they just iron out these launch issues… pre-launch? Oh wells, at least I have a pretty screen on my iPhone now.

I’ve ran into a few annoyances so far with the iPhone:

• I missed being able to manually manage music. Even though creating a playlist for the iPhone is still pretty much the same thing, it just creates one extra step that I didn’t have to deal with before.
• I’m guessing the above change was made due to the “always disconnected except for sync” nature of the iPhone. I think Apple realized people will need to answer their iPhone at any given time, they can’t wait for the “disconnect first” method of previous iPod and all USB mass storage devices. So unless you are syncing, the iPhone is always disconnected. I think they could’ve created some sort of logic to handle manual management as well… but they just didn’t have the time to do that, so manual management is out.
• As a result of the above change, USB storage mode is turned off, so you can’t use the iPhone as a hard drive. Well, not unless you have other apps to hack it, I suppose.
• For whatever reason, iPhone also do not charge from USB when the computer is turned off. My previous iPods can charge from powered USB hubs even when the computer is turned off. The iPhone cannot. Hence you will probably be wise to grab another dock cable and have that with your AC adaptor ready at all times.
• I really hate the recessed headphone port.

Those are the only gripes I have with iPhone. There are other shortcomings for more advanced users, such as not being able to install native iPhone apps without hacking it (and having to reinstall them again probably after every Apple firmware update to the iPhone). I do wish there is a robust eBook application of some sort, but for the most part I’m happy using the various web-based apps for things that iPhone can’t do with antive apps. For example, Meebo on iPhone works extremely well.

With the new, larger screen, watching movies and tv shows on iPhone is also much more pleasurable than before. Also the playtime is much longer than iPod Video due to the lack of hard drive access. I’ve purchased an entire TV series from iTMS for the first time, and actually enjoyed the private watching experience almost as much as I would have on my HDTV setup. I can watch the shows before going to sleep (instead of hanging around the living room and falling asleep on the couch), I can watch them during lunch breaks at work… etc.

I also ripped some of my DVD’s using Handbrake into iPhone compatible format. I never thought I would enjoy watching video on such a small screen, but there’s something about the private, personal experience I can have now with my movies, just as with my music, that is very satisfying. I don’t think I’ve been this happy with any consumer electronic device in a very, very long while (since my first Tivo?).

Despite of how much I love the iPhone, I still don’t believe in signing  a two year contract for AT&T/Cingular. I’ve been a customer with Cingular back since when they were PacBell PCS, I have no reason to be locked down to a contract to prove my loyalty to a carrier. Especially since the iPhone isn’t subsidized at all. If signing a contract meant I can save a few hundred dollars, then at least the value proposition is existent. There is absolutely no reason to a sign a contract for a phone that will inevitably be unlocked (and probably be available at the same price).

Service issues aside, the iPhone itself is simply one of the most brilliant consumer product ever made. It is a device that will completely reshape the mobile phone market. The problem is, the other phone manufacturers seem to be thinking, “Wow, the iPhone has a touchscreen, we must all move to touchscreen-only phones as well.” I’m not saying that iPhone’s touchscreen isn’t brilliant, but it isn’t the end-all solution to the woes of the mobile phone design we’ve seen in the past decade.

There are already several manufacturers that’s decided to manufacture their own versions of a touchscreen phone. Some of which has been offering touchscreen capability for years (for example, most of HTC’s Windows Mobile based phones). The problem with these phones isn’t whether or not your buttons are placed on a screen or engraved into a rubber nub, the problem is the underlying unresponsive, inadequate, and sometimes down-right ugly software.

It’s easy to credit an obvious invention (even though touchscreen has always been around, the type that iPhone uses, basically a type of clear laptop touchpad, is completely new to the market) for the success of a hardware product; ultimately it isn’t just the hardware design, but how the hardware design interact, melds and works with the underlying software. I don’t find the buttons on my Razr hard to press, I don’t find the features on my HTC Windows Mobile phone to be so hard to access or inadequate; but I also don’t understand why everything I do on either of these phones seems to take place 3 seconds after I’ve executed a command, clicked a button, or even just scrolling through the address book.

Years and years ago, there was this great, ambitious operating system called BeOS. It was built from the ground up to be a multi-threaded, multi-CPU operating system. The most impressive aspect of BeOS, was how responsive it was at handling tasks that were extremely taxing to other operating system at the time. You can run multiple windows of videos, move them around the screen, resize them and still have lightning fast response. Mind you, this was the age when most users were still living with Windows 3.1 (maybe some on Windows 95?). The software engineers of BeOS were able to achieve this, because they were very aware that the outward responsiveness of an OS is just as important to its interaction with the user as the underlying operations.

For example, while another OS will prioritize the task of writing files to the disk, BeOS prioritized the playback of that file being written, saved, copied. The writing of the file can still be finished up in the background, but the immediate feedback of that file being worked on is the most important thing to the user, and delivered a level of interactivity that was far more appreciable.  The OS was instantaneously more robust because it made sure that you knew what it is doing, what you’ve done, then went ahead and finished up all those tasks in the background where it wouldn’t bother you.

That is in essence one of the most important aspect about the iPhone. On the first week of iPhone’s release, CNet even performed a real-life, side-by-side test of iPhone’s UI speed against what Apple were showing in the commercial. There were all sorts of accusation that Apple had fussed with the footage, sped up some parts, edited out the lag time in between. Well, the CNet guys found that almost second by second, they can do everything that was done in the commercial with their iPhone. Sure, the touchscreen UI is slick and intuitive, but it is also the amazing responsiveness of the UI, the underlying robustness of the software, that really sets the iPhone apart from any phone that you’ve ever used before.

Another company named Pasen put out this video on Youtube recently:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Sure, it’s a touchscreen device that completely rips off the iPhone. Look at the video, watch the number of times you had to click, double-click, drag fingers around, try to see if the device is responding. Wait, what is it doing now? Did I just select that? Is that playing now? How do I.. wait, let me click on that again.

I hope the rest of the consumer electronics industry doesn’t follow suit. It’s not just about the touchscreen.

The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices—such as an iPod and a phone—and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton—who knew a thing or two about apples—they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It’s a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.

Read the whole article here.

Part of that may just be Apple is very satisfied with where Mac hardware & software is right now, and any model changes & upgrades wouldn’t require such a big announcement at Macworld. I think part of the reason may also be article like this one in Information Week:

“Microsoft had two serious issues. First, they had to make this update of Windows revolutionary enough that it came close to justifying the delay. Second, they had to come up with something that would stand up well with its main competitor in the desktop OS market, Mac OS X. Have they succeeded at both? I’d argue that the former’s almost a non-issue: Vista will sell well, because the world won’t have a choice. As far as the latter, well, probably, but you’d be hard-pressed to say Vista’s better than Mac OS X.”

“Windows is…well, Windows is very eager to tell you what’s going on. Constantly. Plug something in, and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you’re on a network that’s having problems staying up, you’ll get tons of messages telling you this. It’s rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout…who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans.”

“This kind of “change for change’s sake” is all over Vista. The window controls in Vista are smaller and flatter than in XP, and unlike XP, don’t reach all the way to the top of the window anymore.”

“For example, in Windows XP you have a control panel called “Add or Remove Programs.” While not elegant, it is clear. You know what that control panel’s functionality is, no guessing. It adds and removes programs. The Vista version? “Programs and Features.” Huh? What does that do?”

This article goes into a good amount of detail, including some comparative screenshots, and echos my sentiment about Windows Vista. It’s just not good enough to be “competitive”, but it’s still better than Windows XP.

Read more at Information Week:
Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista