The iPad and me

It's very rare that I buy new things. If you know me well, you'll know that I have never bought a new car, never bought a new phone (my 2G iPhone was donated by Sherry to replace the other 2G iPhone that I lost, donated by my brother), even this Macbook Pro came out of a friendly Nicaraguan guy's raincoat in Hillsdale mall's Starbucks. [I later discovered that it had Apple Care - something that he didn't know. I know it wasn't raining on Feb 11, 2008, the day I picked it up].

I have therefore taken a very uncharacteristic move in buying not just one, but two iPads on launch day, and reserving them on the day they were offered for pre-ordering.

But first, I'd like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the frenzy surrounding the product launch yesterday. I exchanged knowing smiles with the brave souls camped outside Palo Alto's Apple Store, and tried to fit into the frame of the KTVU Channel 9's camera as the channel interviewed them for the evening news. But failed, I think.

This morning, I realized that I had to be at TedX in Berkeley all day. My brother and his entourage waited almost an hour at Hillsdale's Apple Store and picked up my order for me. They even got served coffee and donuts while waiting in line.

OK I'll get to the meat soon. But first I'll say that I am grateful to my brother for buying me a neoprene iPad case which I didn't expect :)

Now, let's get down to business.

The name: it never even crossed my mind that i"Pad" was inappropriate for women, until I talked to my friend Anna-Marie.

Aesthetics: the device is reminiscent of the unibody Macbook pro. The buttons on the side look the same - squared, notchy (not wedgy) and click just right.

Screen: crisp and bright. Fonts seems incredibly smooth - more book-like and less computer-like

Sound: Mono speaker ports at bottom (3 grilles).

Controls: Volume up/down on right, similar to iPhone. New "Lock orientation" switch just above it. Very useful when you're in bed.

On/Off switch: behaves similar to iPhone's.

Headphone jack: in same place as iPhone.


On screen keyboard: huge keys. You seem to want to "peck" with two fingers, not touch type. Even so, you spend a disproportionate amount of time backspacing. Or I do.

Notes: Interesting overlay, like an HTML layer, with an index of all your notes, so you can keep the current note in view while browsing for another.




YouTube: super smooth. I love the new tracking functionality: you can scroll through the movie by whole minutes by dragging on the time bar, or seconds by scrolling far away from the time bar.

iBooks:just look




I don't know what it is about this device. But it just feels "right". reading the WSJ feels like I'm reading the actual newspaper, not just a web-page rendition. It's so comfortable. I don't have to FIGHT this computer. This is 1984. Bad hairstyles and all. I am very eager to download my favourite apps (NoteApp, MuniApp, Tap-Tap (yes, I do play occasionally), Google Earth, Google Voice (for the fun of it), and soon, iWork.) I do think that this is a content creation device as much as the iPhone is an email device (people have started sending more, shorter mobile emails, imperfect as it is, it's a blessing after T9)



This will be everywhere. Entire communities will skip the laptop and jump straight into the iPad. Medicine will be different. Research will be different. And of course, reading will be different.

Good night from CA.

Mr Toyoda suffers unintended acceleration to DC

Darrell Issa, the most senior Republican on the House Oversight Committee, is putting significant pressure on the Toyota CEO (Akio Toyoda - seems like a long dynasty) to appear before a Senate hearing committee on Toyota's accelerator and brake problems. Sending his North American head does not seem to be enough for this hard-nosed Republican. Surely the head of North American operations is equally accountable, with the trust invested in him by his Japanese boss for sales of cars to American consumers? Or is Mr Issa after his moment of glory, in shaming an "alien" CEO? Please.

On a technical level, what's interesting is Toyota Motor's proposed fix to the accelerator problem. As described by the FT, this would kill the engine when the accelerator and brake were pressed simultaneously. Meaning that if I had to take off from my driveway in ice, I'd be out of luck....

OK, it has never snowed in San Carlos :)

The Pigs and the Stupid

Niall Ferguson is a Glaswegian economic historian, who is the author of the book "The Ascent of Money". I bought the DVD (published in the US by PBS) for a friend, and recommended the book to another friend last night in Borders. She promptly bought it. If you were to choose between the two, choose the DVD, as the footage of Venice is breathtaking, and gives a visual sense of the sheer power of the Italian Mendici family, and its lasting legacy.

In his piece in the FT today, Mr Ferguson suggests that the crisis currently affecting Greece will soon reach America. A Libertarian friend of mine, whom I took for a walk to the Stanford dish, suggested, like Mr Ferguson does, that the multiplier effect of government spending is low, and therefore the effects of an economic stimulus are likely to be a waste of public money.

While it's very clear that the current US administration has inherited much of the current deficit (paid for by bonds bought by the Chinese), it's also clear that now the cash cow's run dry (China now expects to buy a token 5% of new issue, and threatens to liquidate existing holdings every time the Dalai Lama shows up in DC), America is planning some austerity measures of its own. By austerity I mean a freeze on "non-essential" spending for the next three years.

To answer Mr Ferguson's question: "But the key question is when that crisis will reach the last bastion of western power, on the other side of the Atlantic."

The answer is "NO", because an exogenous shock will see America through, like it did in the early 90s (with the Internet boom) and like it did in 2003 (with the housing boom). In this case, it will be out of the government's control. But it will happen.
Put your wallet away, Mr Obama.

Trust me.

PS As I've received a few emails about the title, I am not calling anybody a "pig" or "Stupid". These are, in fact, derogatory acronyms for countries asking for bailouts or about to require bailouts, and have been banned by the FT. To give you a clue, the G in Pig stands for Greece. Figure out the rest, or see the FT

Less proprietary trading please!

What I love about the proposed new legislation (that the media informs us, is aimed at "reigning in" banks, giving us the impression that they've become wild horses) is that it will limit proprietary trading. PT is what disgusted me enough to abandon dreams of a career in London's financial district and instead work on something "real" ("real" in this case being the Network Computer).

Simply put, proprietary trading allows bank employees to take bets with the bank's own money - in things like commodities, Forex, equities, fixed income instruments and corporate and government bonds. Makes markets more efficient, say the bankers through their Porsche windows at traffic lights. Makes my petrol and food more expensive, I say, remembering volatility in petrol prices caused by huge speculative effort (banks giving the most weight to this). And airlines having an excuse adding a "fuel surcharge" to their fares (to offset their non-fuel operational costs).

"Capping the overall size of banks" sounds knee jerk to me. But if it can clip the wings of the bank-that-one-dare-not-name, I'm all in favour.

In short, I'd say that the government's plan needs some time to be thought out. With non-lobbyist bankers representing the banks' interests. "How big should a bank be", "what reserve limits should be enforced", "what would the underwriting limits be for commercial lending", "how risky can their bets be" are all questions that need to be answered.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the ranch to reign in some Mustangs (the kind that don't have an investment banker sitting inside).

The iPad

Now that the excitement's died down, I'd like to say a couple of things about the new iPad:

1. The most amazing thing was the price, and I think that by pitching the entry-level product at $499, Apple has irreversibly disrupted the executive-gadget market

2. The AT&T deal for "only" $30 unlimited data is an appeasement to AT&T, the dying beast that Apple are sworn to protect. I forecast that most professionals will find a way to tether iphones or regular phones to their iPads (through some jailbreak solution) and will forego the $130. The only entities that will spend $130 for the privilege of paying AT&T more money will be corporations. And fleet purchases will add up (will be a new executive privilege (akin to Blackberries in the early 2000s)).

3. 16MB is enough for everyone. Storage is cheap, and tethering by USB to your desktop will be what most people will get by on. Face it, will being able to store 20 two-hour videos at a time be much different from being able to store 5 two-hour videos? Unless you're leaving your home for a year?

4. No camera. Whatever. This ain't no netbook. It's firmly aimed at Amazon, not at Asus.

5. Compatibility with iphone/ipod touch apps. Smart move! There's a critical mass of developers out there just waiting to create database, spreadsheet utilities! :-) Actually, expect a new cottage industry of such companies. By charging $10 for its full iWork suite, Apple is setting the bar very low...

6. The netbook won't die. I know hundreds of professional photographers who'd lug one around. But the HP Slate will be stillborn. Why have the privilege of running Windows 7, when you can do 95% of what you want in real style?

7. Cutting through all the noise about the use of the "iPad" name, have a look at the AAPL Jan 2011 call option prices. They are a superb buy. With even 5m sales of the iPad, they are golden.

Great job, Apple, except for the AT&T ball-and-chain.

TechCrunch hacked... :(

The Nexus and the Olive Tree

Synopsis:
1. Why the Nexus One is bad for Google
2. Why I'm abandoning my iPhone
Reading time: 6 minutes
Comments very welcome

Much like the Toyota of the 80s, HTC have mastered the art of mass production, and have customers lining up to buy their product based on low cost, reasonable performance, and, "Believe it or not, Reversi!"

In the pre-Lexus, pre-Acura era, Japanese carmakers struggled hard to capture the imaginations of value-conscious consumers who would notice that the Camry was offered in only one trim level, yet featured luxuries (for the era) like electric windows, a sunroof, alloy wheels and a digital radio cassette player. On a $32,000 BMW 325i, you'd pay almost $1000 extra for electric windows, and you'd take delivery of your car with wires sticking out where the radio should be.

Features, schmeatures, I'd say. People still bought the 325i and, at traffic lights, would crank down their windows and smirk at the Accord driver next to them. If features were truly important, how do we explain monstrosities like the Motorola ROKR (Apple's attempt to create a product in partnership with the leading handset maker) that failed to capture the media or the tune-hungry generation Y? Simple - the ingredients were there but the cake went flat.

Google, too, should know better than commission a high-volume producer, shackled by its own management, marketing and product constraints, to build a phone. In my opinion, Google should start a completely new hardware business from the ground up, and hire Apple engineers, product managers (everyone has a price), HTC business development people, and really invest heavily in redefining WHAT a phone is, much like Apple have done.

Having used an HTC product in 2006 for a year, I can say that my first impression was that it was the equivalent of a second-rate athlete on powerful steroids. Playing with my brother's 2009 HTC Hero, I can say that nothing has changed. It still has the HTC DNA, and feels like a smartphone with knobs on. Much like a 2009 Honda CRV "feels" like a 1979 Honda Civic. And a 2009 Ford 500 "Feels" like a 1997 Ford Escort. The Google Nexus One is a win for HTC, but severe brand dilution for Google. It's equivalent of Pierre Cardin agreeing to branding deals with lesser clothing manufacturers, that sent his brand down-market, or Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein products that can now be bought in the sub-$20 price range at discount retailers.

I think that Apple have enough people to blow their trumpet, so I'm going to add fuel to my gripe below, before I bring out the match. In my opinion, the iPhone should be spelt "Iphone". Because it's NOT an outstanding PHONE but an outstanding "I"-product. Apart from visual voicemail (which was available before, but never widely used), the iPhone brought little innovation to the way that a phone was used to make calls. And there's so much that could be done to innovate in that regard, especially as the iPhone community is huge and iPhone users make most of their calls to other iPhone users:

- Extend caller ID (which has been around since the 80s) into caller info.
eg: Alam Kasenally calling RE broken down on 101! HELP!
(that might change your opinion on whether you want to answer my call)

- Call priority: Emergency ringtones signifying something is an emergency, or muted ringtones if I'm calling you late at night about something that can wait

- Voice authentication. The length of your vocal cords is fixed, and your voice has a unique signature and fundamental frequencies. A quick phone automated call to you from your bank, whenever you make a credit-card transaction, where you say a standard phrase (like "Open Sesame") could confirm your identity. Yes, even if you're putting on a 1930s Southern Gentleman accent
- Have a record button that will allow you to record parts of a phone conversation easily. "What's you professor's email?" " charles@boffin.com". "Thanks, got it". Index all recordings by phone number and time automatically. Saves hunting for a pencil. While you're driving. Oops. If you work for the CHP and you drive a motorbike, pretend you haven't read this.

Come on, Apple, you don't need AT&T anymore so stop shackling yourself to their marketing requirements, and redefine your product in ways that AT&T would be happy to be part of.

The sad part:

However, I am planning to abandon my iPhone and buy a used Verizon Blackberry Worldphone.
Why? Because I need to make and receive calls reliably, a privilege not afforded to me with my iPhone in the Bay Area. A missed call that I don't see for 2 hours could be a lost star employee for our team, an angry customer who's a blogpost away from destroying our business, or a reporter who's got a choice of 2 companies to cover, and, well, chooses the other because they answered the phone and we didn't.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy using my iPhone. From its form factor, to the few applications that I rely on (the Alarm clock, MuniApp, pdaNet, GVMobile, Tap Tap (I've only played it twice, and it's dangerously addictive), etc), to the quality of the device in your hand, it is, hands down, a winning product on par with:

+ The 1980s S Class Mercedes Benz
+ The Porsche 911
+ The 12" Apple Powerbook (Aluminium line)
+ The original iPod
+ The Sony Walkman
+ The original Mini Cooper
+ Google Search ("Grandpa, is it true that Google started out helping people to find things online?". "Well yes, grandson, when I was a boy, greedy people thought that they could sell you stuff on the internet, and it quickly became like a chaotic fish market. Google was the only way you could reliably find what you were looking for. Well, most of the time". "Whoaaaah! I wish young people now were as creative as they were then! Grandpa, if I come to your house, will you show me your PC again?")

My iPhone has a soul, and will live on, just not with the AT&T leech on its back (or maybe with someone else's). But for a businessperson, a phone that you enjoy using but can't guarantee calls on is sadly but an expensive toy.