An Apple Real Smart TV – Next Week?

The rumors about Apple launching a “Real” TV appliance next Month make a lot of sense.

Apple quote is “We have something you really have to see. And touch”.

• It is very easy to easy to imagine the features. Just think about a very big iPad. It needs internet access + Itunes + Applications + Local and Cloud Storage.
• There are many “Smart TV’s” around. As usual, the hardware companies jut don’t get it. The user interface is boring, the CPU is too slow, the software is limited. Just like smart phone before iPhones and touchpads before iPad (think Window Tablet for example ).
• The component prices are low enough that such an appliance can be reasonably priced.
• It might have build in Camera, making consumer Tele Presence real, for the first time.
• Apple has track record of selling large beautiful screens.
• From the business side Apple can partner with one of the Big Cable vendors to handle the “boring” stuff. The same way it saved AT&T business it can save a cable provider. Instead of fighting the internet the cable provider would get access to a new exciting high premium market. Or they can just buy NetFlix.
• Apple likes to take market away from Samsung and Sony 🙂
• Big question mark is on user interaction.Might be something like PrimeSense or maybe “Just” smart usage of iPhone\iPad people already have at home. Or maybe a new kind of control which is a hybrid of iPad and iPhone.
• I guess the stock would rise to $700 , if they do announce such an appliance 🙂

Here is an example of “Smart TV” from a company that does not “Get it”.

I can’t hear you, I Want to see you

This extremely funny clip serves as a good demonstration to the state of the art in conferencing. But if humankind can ride 30 meter waves, maybe there is a chance we can improve here as well.

Video conferencing is going to hit mainstream – the technology and bandwidth are available for couple of years , but now the software and hardware are also ubiquitous.

Smart phones and new laptops have an excellent built-in camera and microphone built-in and all the new messengers have built-in Video calling.

I have been evangelizing video usage in EMC Beer Sheva new site, and while it takes some time to get used to , it is hard to go back.

Don’t be surprised if the breakthrough here would come from a new player  and not the traditional players.

Unified Messaging – while there is no technology barrier to get it done, I know very few people who actually get all their email, phone, cellular ,calendar, voice mail and SMS information in aggregated fashion,in the same location and accessible through multiple views and devices. This is quite weird since the technology is around for a long time.

Even my $300 Cisco smart VOIP phone is no smarter than the $100 Panasonic wireless phone at home or the $10 unizen phone. No integration with email and messenger, no integration with cellular , no video capabilities. This seems like a product management issue.  Again, who ever gets it right and create the “DropBox” of unified messaging would “surprisingly” create a huge company.

High (Normal) Quality Voice Conferencing – at least 50% of the voice conferencing I attend have a horrible sound quality. People drop of, people can’t connect , there is background noise from traffic, annoying echoes, low sound quality and the list goes on. While the market is “commoditized” in theory this is , IMHO, BS.  While there are many free conferencing solutions they all suck, pardon my French. To make matters worst , the paid services are just as bad. I would be very happy to pay 10$ a month for a great audio conferencing service that always works, has easy sign on,  great sound quality, built-in recording and email\SMS reminders.

iPhone to BlackBerry , ThinkPad to Mac, Gmail to Exchnage

Japanese Gardens Albert Kahn Paris May, With Blackberry Bold

I moved from a 50 people company to 50,000 people company, but the important changes are in my computing environment 🙂 Quick observations, after one month:

• The fact that phones are still in “Logistics”  department and not under “IT” is obsolete. These are “Smart Phones”, after all.
• The BlackBerry bold  is inferior to the iPhone in almost every aspect. The usability, the performance, the applications, the browser , the contacts and so on. I don’t even like the keyboard too much.
• In the words of my five-years old nephew : “Why did they take the phone with the birds away from you?” and in his sad little eyes : “Will you promise to have the birds back again for next time you visit me?”
• Macs do get stuck. Mine gets stuck quite often. Probably because of the Cisco’s VPN client, but it mysteriously gets stuck even after a restart and requires a hard boot.  I remember form Check Point days that Apple’s API for VPN was quite horrible, but it does not make me feel better.
• The Mac is very very heavy compared to my X61 Lenovo. It is quite a burden travelling between Beer Sheba, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan,  Herzelia, San Mateo and Boston. My back really hurts.
• Drag and drop with the multi-touch is horrible. I have to use a normal mouse to move my emails into folders. And with my system for handling email, it is critical.
• Office 2011 on Mac is not horrible. Microsoft communicator is quite annoying, but the built-in camera works very well and video quality is very nice.  Does anyone know how to get  it to sign in automatically ?
• The Mac screen is awesome. It even makes the Blackberry photos look good.
• I guess Google can make $2B just from replacing exchange around the world. I suspect in two years they would.
• I’m carrying about 16 different forms of private key:  10 physical keys, 2 parking RFID keys, two employee badges , one SecureID , one cell phone with SIM. Can we have a start-up that unites all of these?  This is so 20th century and does not add any security, it just makes me look like janitor 🙂

My first 24 hours with iPad (and Google)

Although I went to the iPad launch in San Francisco, I preferred my morning coffee over actually standing in line.  I did have the sense to buy some Apple shares at $196 as they went down a bit after the announcement ($345 today, in case you are not following ).

But the time has come.Instead of replacing my personal R61 Battery and fan, I decided to buy my spouse an iPad for her birthday (stop laughing, there was a dress involved as well).

The main problems with the R61 were :

• It is far too heavy (3.5KG with charger) to be mobile
• It has too many options (e.g File System,Control Panel) if you only want to surf the net (“Isn’t Google == Internet”)
• Wireless\3G Connectivity is annoying and complex on XP
• Strange Hard Drive problems that require System restore every so often

I’m trying the iPad for couple of days now, here are few early impressions:

• It is not easy to create\edit content. For example in wordpress.com I can not see the text for some reason (had to go back to my x61 to write this blog)
• Battery life seems great. I don’t have to charge it every minute like my iPhone
• Not sure if the Apps are really needed here. The screen is big enough that websites SHOULD work like on a normal PC
• I could not upload a document to Google docs. iPad has no “open file system”  and Google removed the option to upload by email. This is the sort of annoying “closed garden” effect we are starting to see. Grrrrr
• No Picasa app for iPhone or iPad. Similar problem to the above.
• The sync from my Itunes->iPhone to iPad was very impressive. I got all my data in sync nicely. I did ran our of disk space on my PC because Apple creates a second “optimized’ copy of every photo, but it was not so hard to solve.

Wordpress Problem on iPad

• The iPhone’s apps don’t move so well into iPad (they are small with lousy resolution) but in some cases it’s good enough with 2X size.
• It does not burn my lap like the thinkpad. Cool and tender.
• When things go wrong it is hard to understand why. I was not able to play youtube movies because of a router problem, but the error messages were quite cryptic.
• I love the photos and movies color and details
• Why does Google show the mobile version for iPad ? It’s much more limited.
• Not sure on how to close tabs in Safari. I’m sure there is an easier way than the one I’m using 🙂
• For some reason the @ sign is not part of the virtual keyboard default when filling out forms. iPhone is better here.
• GPS is very cool. I assume there is no Compass 😦
• Rhapsody is working.It basically means I can hear every song ever recorded, if it is not in Hebrew.
• Hebrew support is impressive

Potpourri – Apple,Antitrust,Greece and Dog Food

Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,common group, but it’ll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right – right.

1. How come Apple does not get more Antitrust suits?

• It does not allow Flash to Run on iPhone.
• It didn’t allow Skype to run over 3G.
• Does not allow competitors to run Ads in iPhone.
• Does not Allow running Mac OSX on VMWARE.
• Draconian developer agreement

2. I love the iPad. Tried it in the Store. Much faster than iPhone. I will buy one when 3G is out.

Well,  if the Israeli ministry of communication will allow it 🙂

3. How come Listerine costs 3.85 times in Israel than in San Francisco?

It’s $6 (17.28 NIS)  for 1.25 Liter in Walgreen and 50 NIS for 0.75 Liter in Israel

4. The new version of Google Docs , finally seems useful. Next One should be a killer.

5. Did you notice that Firefox knows your exact location in the world ?

It using WiFi and IP’s to triangulate your browser and can show it to any web site.

No more privacy.

6. Did you notice voice recognition is finally here ?

YouTube has now released the ability to view closed captions on any video, even if they did not upload a transcript. This software is based on Google’s speech recognition technologies.

7. Rhapsody in iPhone rocks. 8 Million songs for $15 a month , always available.

The new version finally works. On Wifi. In the States.

8.  Most American restaurants burn their Hamburgers to death. Probably to match the coffee. Even at 3000 Sand Hill road.

But Harry‘s gets it right. Even the sliders are Juicy. AKA as bloody.

9. Being sick and Jet-Lagged is a horrible combo.

10. USAIR’s food is even worst than Continental’s. For $1500 one gets free dog food.

11. Microsoft is trying to push Azure very hard.

12. Greece went bankrupt.