Throwing An Unforgettably-Productive Work Party

Work Party? That's an oxymoron that has somehow turned into standard practice. But who says work can't, or shouldn't be, enjoyable? I think we can all drink to that!

My Favorite Work Party, Ever, Was a Big Mistake

I once hosted a "Work Party." It was terrifying. Scores of the nerdiest, freelance developer/authors on the planet, all in San Francisco to attend one of Apple's WWDC gatherings. This was an after-hours gathering, and few of us had met face-to-face before, so it had to be socially comfortably—AKA: beer, wine, and nerd snacks aplenty.

I had some distinctly work-oriented objectives, and once the conversations got going, there was plenty of talk of our many collaborative projects, current and future. The fact is, iOS and mobile developers are a congenial and basically happy lot. The place was pleasant, the food was good, and most people stuck around through more than a single bottle of suds.

We made lots of new friends, and there were so many substantial ideas discussed, I had to break down and take notes for follow up. In fact, we ate all the food and hung around chatting until we were kicked out. All seemed to have gone successfully. I later learned that all was doomed from the start!

Experiencing Both Sides of The Double-Edged Sword

As it turned out, the corporate culture of my employer was distinctly anti-Work Party. This was not an acceptable way to do business, and for all sorts of non-business-like reasons that went unsaid during the planning process. Seems there were managers who were jealous of our "fun," which I failed to anticipate.

In short, from a productivity point of view, much was accomplished by gathering to party. From a corporate point of view, no good deed goes unpunished. But my lesson is not a negative one. You see, I remain friends and collaborator with many who attended the party and long ago said goodbye forever to the corporation!

Apple—Singin' & Dancin' in the Rain

I read the following article in Quartz: Why Apple should make its own TV shows, just like Netflix. It's a wrongheaded, poorly argued piece that made me angry. Here's the nutshell version:

• Statement: Netflix, Sony, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft are all acquiring and/or producing exclusive content.
• Problem: Apple "confronts slowing growth in the sales of its devices."
• Conclusion: "Maybe it’s something Apple should consider as well."

So says Macquarie Equities, which, according to Quartz, "became the 63rd research house to cover the world’s biggest company this week." And they show an impressive lack of expertise on the subject.

Let's restate the problem by changing one word:

Apple notes slowing growth in the sales of its devices.

It's true, Apple's sales curve is no longer growing logarithmically. The numbers for Apple's most recent quarter, reported January 27th are as follows:

• 51 million iPhones vs 47.8 million the previous year, up 6.7% 
• 26 million iPads vs 22.9 million the previous year, up 13.5%

Both of these figures are all-time quarterly records for Apple. Since the article speaks of devices as a single category, I'll lump Apple's iDevices together, yielding:

• 77 million iDevices vs 70.7 million previously, up 9.1%

IF 9% growth is a problem, would 10% growth to 77.7 million units still be perceived as a problem? At what point is Apple's growth sufficient? Would 15% growth, 81.2 million units, avoid the need for problem confrontation?

This value judgement notwithstanding, the rate of growth has undoubtedly slowed, which is what one expects in any product lifecycle. At the same time, "Apple…, is being criticized for not innovating enough." To which we can only wonder, how much innovation is enough?

For the sake of argument, let's accept the assertions that slowing iDevice sales are a concern and that Apple's ability to innovate is in doubt. We must also assume that the likely introduction of an iPhone 6 in June will be a disappointment, requiring Apple to look beyond its devices for additional sources of revenue.

I know, let's make content! Macquarie says:

We believe that Apple would benefit from the deployment of some of its considerable cash balance toward securing exclusive media content. In our 15 years of covering the interactive entertainment space, we have frequently observed the value that can be generated through high-quality, desirable content that is exclusive to a platform (the original Xbox is a classic example of this, with early-stage growth driven in large part by the popularity of Halo). We think just one or two key exclusives could be very helpful in establishing new products and extending iOS’s reach.

Translation: sometimes high-quality movies, TV, and video games make money.

This is not a profound insight. Furthermore, what has this got to do with iDevice sales? The article says:

There are already reports that, as sales on iTunes dwindle, Apple is trying to convince record companies to provide it with music that only it may sell.

Except that Apple reported a 20% increase in sales on iTunes for the last quarter. So maybe there's something else?

Of course, there’s no suggestion the company is even contemplating this, but if it ever did, Apple’s ruthless obsession with quality means it would probably be worth watching.

There it is. We'd really like to see something produced with such ruthless attention to quality that only Apple could make it. If only they'd admit that they're getting clobbered in the marketplace by the likes of Google and Samsung, we could end this charade and get down to some serious entertainment!

When Bigger is Biggest—Big New iPhone 5

iPhone 5, The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone.

It's not quite the grammatical gauntlet Apple threw down with "Think Different," but the iPhone 5 slogan still achieves a puzzling lack of syntactical precision. No matter that the next biggest thing is also the first big thing, but bigger, there are plenty of reasons to want one.

Here's Apple PR's one-line summary of new big things:

"Apple Introduces iPhone 5
Thinnest, Lightest iPhone Ever Features All-New Aluminum Design, Stunning 4-Inch Retina Display, A6 Chip & Ultrafast Wireless."

That's six comparatively bigger things: thinner, lighter, newer design, bigger display, faster A6 processor, faster wireless.

Here's my list of new iPhone 5 things:

1. New body is bigger, lighter, and thinner;
2. New display is longer*, clearer, and the colors more accurate;
3. New Lightning connector* is smaller, all digital, more durable, and reversible;
4. New A6 processor is 2x faster, 22% smaller;
5. New dynamic antenna;
6. New Wi-Fi with 2.4ghz and 5ghz on 802.11n;
7. New HSPA+, DC-HSDPA, and LTE added;
8. New battery lasts longer, 8-10 hours of use;
9. New iSight camera with sapphire lens is smaller, sharper, quieter, clearer, more dynamic, more precise, it's 8 mp, and it has panorama mode;
10. New FaceTime over cellular, take photos while shooting video, and both video stability and face detection improved;
11. New 3-microphone design—bottom, front, and back;
12. New speaker design with smaller five magnetic transducer, sideband audio, and noise-canceling earpiece;
13. and with new iOS6, but that's another story.

It's worth noting that this is the
* First screen-size change since the original iPhone, 2008
* First connector update since the original iPod 30-pin connector, 2003

And probably just as importantly, the iPhone 5 will ship to 100 countries and 240 carriers before the end of the year. What other company could manage logistics of this scale and on such a relatively tight schedule?

I find it an impressive list, even though the Wall Street Journal found the following "technology gaps:"

the iPhone 5 is missing:
• Digital Payments (Near Field Communication, NFC, technology)
• Touch to Share (Seems to be unique to WebOS, HPs defunct mobile operating system)
• Dynamic Home Screens (A feature of Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), which runs on tablets. Doesn't seem to be a hardware function.)
• Face Unlock (Android software security feature linked to the camera. It doesn't seem to be available, yet.)
• Even Bigger Screens (Meaning something bigger than the iPhone and smaller than the iPad)
• Wireless charging (Inductive charging devices are available from third-party suppliers)

Of this list, I'd like NFC capability in my phone, but the rest seem pretty uncompelling. If there's a technology gap, it's the one Apple maintains over its competitors. Apple needs the competition, but there remains no mobile device as thin, light, clear, elegant, and useful as the current iPhone 4S. As of this Friday, we'll be comparing everyone else to the biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone; the newer, bigger iPhone 5.

N.B. Auspicious, inauspicious, coincidence, or bad planning—the 4" iPhone 5 runs iOS 6.

Fired, Again!

I was fired from my job as an account manager one week ago today. It was remarkably like being fired three-and-a-half years ago from my job as an acquisitions editor. This time, though, I felt like an old pro at being fired, which probably isn't something I should be proud of. There are some striking similarities in the two situations.

In both cases, I had grown to hate my job to the point of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. It depressed me to work for people who seemed to take such pleasure in criticizing my work. I continued to do my job, not even perfunctorily, but well, but it was no use. I became withdrawn, uncommunicative, and argumentative even as I was trying my best (admittedly not great) to do as I was told. Once again, I find that I do not have the constitution of a good little girl.

In addition to being fired twice, I have been laid off and once I got offered a severance to leave when my boss went unnecessarily ballistic and cursed at me. But I've also had managers who I liked and who liked me. Interestingly, a couple of them have gotten fired along the way, as well

Is there a lesson to be gained from my experiences? Probably not, but I do think that a certain worldly caution is inevitable after such earth-stopping events. Or perhaps the lesson is simply that I'm slow to learn my lessons. No wonder I spent so much time in the "Thinking Chair" in second grade.

New iPods! Are we still excited?

Up in the sky! It's an iPod! It's an iPhone! It's iPod Touch. Huh? Even Apple has their moments of branding clumsiness, but perhaps it's just hard to get excited about a new form-factor iPod that's really just an iPhone with no phone. But like the name, this is either a great moment of marketing savvy, or a fill-in-the-gap product that means more for what it isn't than for what it is. What do I mean by this bit of confusion?

My first impression of the phoneless iPhone had to do with my eldest son, Timothy, whose music library expands to fill any available disk space. Great, I thought, a "cool" new interface for his next iPod. But then one notices that the iPod Touch is only available with 8gb or 16gb, one tenth the capacity of the updated iPod Classic. There are modestly updated Nanos and Shuffles, as well, which is nice, but not really the big news here.

So who is the iPod Touch for? Answer: all the people writing to Apple to say they'd really like an iPhone, but don't like or can't use the AT&T Wireless network that iPhones are wedded to. If I'm right, then this is not a key, long-term market, merely a stepping stone in a mysterious strategy for ubiquitous electronic media branded by Apple.

I choose not to join into this guessing game, but Apple TV, which is not exactly a revolutionary hot potato, and the iPod Touch, want to lead somewhere. The question in my mind is if, like two parallel rails vanishing in the distance, they will come together at some point? I'm in no particular hurry to find out, but I like to think that Apple knows what it's doing and that these pointers, place markers, interim solutions, whatever you want to call them, will all make sense in retrospect.

At the same time, Apple gets to collect huge amounts of genuine market research on everything it sells, and make money at the same time. It doesn't matter that the iPod Touch looks disappointing to me or that it feels like just another new flavor of cereal in the marketplace, it's almost as if Apple can't lose these days. So I'm see today's "big news" as further indication that Apple is staying ahead of all who would copy their success and at the same time plotting moves well ahead of any possible response from its would-be opponents.