The Killer iWatch Feature

The "iWatch" will come. Maybe it is a riff on the watch, maybe it is mostly fitness tracker (though I hope not), and it will most certainly be called "beautiful". But what will it's killer feature be? What can it do that nothing else could do or do as well as it can?

The answer is: be cross platform.

Open it up. Make it work everywhere that has the right APIs to support it. Android, obviously. Windows Phone if it can handle it. If BB10 can do it, do it. Make the iWatch the best wearable for everyone. 

Here is why: Apple dominates the over $400 phone market. It sells tons of iPhones, makes a heallthy profit, and makes beautiful products that have a really good experience. But Apple can't, or won't, go too far down market. It isn't who they are. They won't just make a cheap phone. More importantly,they  won't make a cheap phone that they can't make a good profit on. Apple cedes this market to other device makers. 

Sort of like computers back in the 2000's Apple has no natural way to shove their way in to the market. Even if they did the feature-set/experience to price ratiio may not match the price they want to charge. They made their in-road by putting iTunes on Windows. iTunes made an iPod purchase possible. iTunes+iPod on Windows was the gateway to the Apple experience. All you had to do was download the software and pick your iPod. Buy a new one when you want. 

iWatch could be the same thing. It will be less expensive than an iPhone or iPad and, if it works everywhere, the barrier to entry is almost non-existent. Pair it with your One, your Galaxy - who cares. Apple will make it's money on the watch and use the product to show the majority of people, who buy Android, why the Apple experience is better. No one buys iPods anymore - so replace it with the iWatch. 

But will this hurt iPhone sales? Rene Richie of iMore loves to say that no company should mistake it's product for it's business. So, maybe it peels off some iPhone customers who switch to Android but still buy a watch - who cares? Apple made it's money on the watch and hopefully provides an experience that is worth buying in to again. Just like an iPod on a Windows machine. And if the experience is that good it will ultimately attract more people in to the ecosystem anyway.

Bonus: use it as a marketing stunt. Make iWatch compatible with all iOS devices running iOS 8. Update the product line as far back as you can. iPhone 4S makes the most sense since it is still being sold on two year contracts. Then, tell everyone that the iWatch will work with all devices updated to run the absolute most current version of Android - which will exclude many devices because of OEMs and carriers. Make that part of the experience story and why the Apple one is better. It is a short term jab - but it will make an impression. 

In the markets where the iPhone dominates there is an argument to be made that the phone is peaking or will hit the ceiling soon. Apple can trade the high end back and forth each quarter with Android OEMs but the mix of iPhone to Android won't change much in the grand scheme of things. A new product, that opens up the Android buying market to Apple, puts them somewhere they don't exist right now. 

Facebook Paper

This is a piece of sample writing I submitted to iMore.com for a Writer position. It's done in their review style but, hey, it was written - might as well post it.



Paper is Facebook's app reboot. Image based, gesture controlled, minimal, and task focused it is designed to be the opposite of the Facebook that mobile users have come to know. 

The first thing you’ll notice is how different of an experience Facebook created with the app. The main Facebook app relies on menus and buttons to show the user where to go. Launching it puts you in front of 11 different buttons: Search, Menu, Status, Photo, Check In, News Feed, News Feed again with a different use, People, Messages, Notifications, and More to use in addition to reading the app’s content. Paper, on the other hand, puts three: Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications. The lack of options is refreshing, as Paper focuses less on Facebook and more on your friends.


The content, especially photos, is the most prominent visual difference between the two apps. Here, Facebook displays status updates and photos as cards (webOS faithful will tell you all about those benefits) at the bottom of the screen for you to scroll through. Swipe up, more on that later, or click on one and it takes over the whole screen. This is a stark change from the menu dominated system Facebook relies on in the main application. At the expense of speed you can then slide the card over to go to the next full screen status update and read through your newsfeed one by one. Alternatively, you could read them all as small cards on the app’s home screen at the expense of legibility. Doing it this way results in a lot of squinting.


The top portion of the screen is dedicated to highlights from your Newsfeed. Facebook puts there what it thinks you’ll want to see and scrolls through it. I’ve noticed that it tends to pick people and items that you’ve already interacted with as opposed to things you would want to see. “Like” something in your Newsfeed and it will show up as a highlight in the next refresh. Cute, but not entirely useful. Swipe over on that highlight though and you’ll see something new from Facebook: Sections. Facebook turns itself in to a news aggregator. You can pick what topics that you’re most interested in and the app will show you news stories from outlets and their Facebook updates.


Back to gestures. Instead of 11 buttons Facebook has adopted four swipes and a tap as their navigation of choice. Swiping left or right always brings you to your next set of updates or photos. Swiping up from the Newsfeed cards will act like tapping on it and make the card go full screen – where you can then swipe left or right to go forward or back in the timeline. Swipe up on an article or photo to open it in an excellent full screen browser and swipe down to go back to the card. From here you can swipe down to minimize the card and return home. Swipe down from a highlighted story and you get a menu to Search, view your profile, create a post, edit your sections, and a settings menu. Using all of these gestures creates a fluid but sometimes slower experience than just reading a news stream. It is possible for something to feel faster because of how you’re using it but still be slower. Unfortunately the up and down swipes interfere with Apple’s Notification Center and Control Center gestures. Considering that these are system level features it is pretty annoying to not get them on first swipe.


One thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet is how Paper intends for users to share to services like Pocket. The option sometimes appears in a button in the web browser and other times doesn’t. There is probably a reason, but if that logic isn’t readily apparent then that is a problem in an otherwise easy to understand app.


The Good:

• Facebook puts its user’s content first. It has never been more enjoyable to view status updates
• Gestures are natural and feel fast, even if they aren’t necessarily faster than the main Facebook app
• The full screen browser is excellent. 

The Bad:

• While the individual updates and gestures feel more immersive and faster it is a slightly slower way to Facebook. 
• If you do try to power through updates as part of the card interface you may need glasses.
• Control Center and Notification Center are harder to get to here than other apps because of similar gestures.
• No iPad version. Going back and forth between the two versions is jarring due to how different they look and work.

The Bottom Line:

With Paper Facebook built an app that centers on content. There is far less noise here than in the main Facebook app – and if you just want to know about the lives of the people you’re friends with this will make your experience far more enjoyable.

Why We Enjoy Our Hobbies

Alicia Erlich from CrackBerry posted a moving editorial about the last year in her life, loss of her mother, and the special role BlackBerry played in it. You can find it here: Looking Back Part Two: Passion still Remains | CrackBerry

Her reflection on her loss is a wonderful reminder that while the gadgets and other nerdy things we all obsess over are what bring us together it is the community and common interests we share that make any hobby or interest rewarding.

I'll paraphrase both Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain. Talking separately about the obsession with food culture they've both expressed the idea that the type of food we sit down and eat and share on social media isn't important. The details and sometimes how good it is even isn't important. It is the relationship you share with the person sitting across from you and enjoying the meal, the journey, with you.

It isn't the thing you like - it is the relationship you have with others enjoying the thing with you. I thank her for sharing her story. 

The Real Problem with Fitness Trackers

In Response to Connectedly's The problem with fitness trackers:

Recall all your products, burn them, and start over. This isn't working. No one aside from the niche fitness community or general early adopters are buying in to your products, services, or story. It doesn't matter that you were first or that you're currently the best - so were Palm and Nokia. You're tackling a market by way of brute force and features. This will not sustain you.

It is a giant pile on right now of companies who want to get their names in to the mix of health. Bluetooth heart rate monitors, UPs, Flexes, Pyle, etc. But just having your product out there and doing something gets you no where. Ticking off features on the box like sleep tracking, heart rate, step counting, etc won't get you much further than where you are now. Just because some people on a survey said they want something doesn't mean they'll purchase. People don't buy that way. The majority would still rather buy a video game than your accessory. Your products and services are muddied and confusing to most people. Almost threatening. And do your products do what they say they'll do well enough anyway?

Soon your problem is going to be bigger than making your own message and refining your own feature set. Samsung, Google, and Apple in all of their own ways will make this market hell for you.

Samsung is already starting with their product line. They are the only company with enough scale to make brute force work. The S5 has a lot of health tracking built in and their Gear accessories augment that and add more features on top. I haven't seen any solid numbers on their second generation of Gears yet but even if they aren't doing well Samsung can spin on a dime and try something else and then push the change out in such numbers that your head will spin. Over time for Samsung it doesn't matter if they make the best - they'll make the most and blast the brand everywhere.

Google will try anything and they will do so at a loss. They don't care about hardware profit - it isn't their business. They'll take data however they can and monetize it. More so they get services in a way no one else does. They don't even need to make hardware - they can just bake health in to Android and wait for OEMs to update the software. The data will roll in based on what the phones report and Google Now will spit out updates about anything.

Apple will take the absolute lowest common denominator of features, do them really well, and create a compelling reason for people to buy in to their product. Their story will get played and repeated and most likely play to the aspirations of humans. It will show people what they can do with the right tools and with the right motivation.

The problem with fitness trackers right now is that every person wants to improve themselves in some way but the companies currently in the market, Samsung excluded to some extent, aren't focusing on the right services or message. What in your product can make people aspire to be better than they are? How do you want to show that? Don't be afraid to be better. Don't be afraid to tell people you can make them better. Then, make your services as easy as possible to use. Don't skimp on the experience. Identify your core feature and make it better than anyone else. I know some early adopters with the Jawbone UP (who have unfortunately fallen off the wagon) and I know a product like that already has some of that down. But you'll need to be better. The story needs to be crafted. You need to appeal to more people.