Apple needs it own data network to make its own smart TV

by schmilblick

Assessing the Smart TV Opportunity
[Via asymco]

There has been increasing chatter about a new TV being developed by Apple.

My opinion on the subject was summarized in the post called Tele Vision. I contend that a TV cannot be smart until the content it delivers becomes smart. The logical conclusion is that the value chain needs re-integration so that the component which is not good enough (the content) can be improved along the dimensions that users value. And it cannot be improved unless the direction it needs to go into is aligned with the direction of the disruptive innovator. I won’t repeat the theory here, but it suffices to say that whatever will change television will do so by re-defining the core product not just the tools we use to consume it.

But today I wanted to address another question: how do we value the opportunity? In a back-of-the-envelope manner, can we tell if this business is big enough to try to fix.

The answer depends a lot on the business model of the disruptive entrant. The entry could depend on software or advertising or hardware or distribution, and each would have a different valuation.

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Lots of talk recently about Apple coming out with a TV, that Jobs cracked the nut and they will be  out in 2013.

Sounds really cool getting your TV over the Internet. But some people have worried what the cable companies will do.

They provide TV and also the Internet. To a lot of people. They are not likely to just let Apple take away their TV revenue.

Asymco hit the nail on the head earlier in a post called Tele-vision. He ended that post with this observation:

So as far as having a vision of tele-vision, the answer is not to graft technology onto an archaic value network, but to build a new value network around new technology.

I’ve mentioned that Apple hates other people controlling their future. They do not like being hampered in their own goals because of the goals of other companies.

Much of their disruption in the wireless market comes from the fact they maintain control of their phones in ways no other maker does. The forward progress of the iPhone is solely determined by Apple and not Verizon, Sprint or ATT.

In fact, some of the best technology Apple has do not even need the cell networks, if WiFi is available.

So, how does Apple get around the cable companies, disrupting their model and preventing them from hurting Apple? They need to new way to deliver the Internet to people anywhere.

I think they are working on just that. Having their own wireless network will not only get them around the cell phone makers but also be able to provide the Internet to anywhere.

I’ve written that it could be something like White-fi.

Just imagine such a thing.

It would sure explain why Apple has such a large cash horde. They would need to spend that in order to create a nationwide or global network.

A network that used the same protocols in all countries. A network that would supply high speed wireless calls and high speed Internet to anyone anywhere in the world. No need for cable. No need for the wireless carriers.

I even bet they are willing to work with Microsoft and other high tech companies to make the protocols open, knowing that only a few companies are capable of providing worldwide coverage and support. Only Apple has a retail presence in so much of the world.

Sure, people could still buy an cell phone from ATT, the Internet from Comcast , a TV from Samsung and continue to pay for that luxury and complication. Or they could just buy everything from Apple – where they all just work together – and pay Apple.

That is how Apple will disrupt everything – provide a way for the Internet to be decoupled from the phone and cable companies – and connect it to the high tech comanoies.

[UPDATED} No updates for Android uses

Unlike Apple’s iOS, Android phones not getting updates
[Via AppleInsider]

While Apple rolls out iOS updates rapidly to its iOS devices three years after their release, Android phones often ship with outdated software that is rarely updated, even during the device’s original contract term.

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The chart in the post is very telling. People can load the latest iOS version on phones that are three years old. Not everything will work but it can be loaded.

There are Android phones that are less than 2 years old that are 3 Android OS versions behind and not being upgraded. The user has no ability to update the OS themselves. Those phones are still under contract yet are pretty much obsolete because their OS is so old.

Since Apple controls its iPhones, it makes sure they get uograded. But Google does not own its Androids, nor does it care to. The telecoms own them and they would rather you upgrade  the whole phone – and perhaps sign up for another 2 year contract – than make your current phone more useful.

Google does not really care about the users of its phones. They simply want the most handsets out there to look at ads. They will go along with any plan the carriers use to sell more handsets, even if that hurts the customer. Not rapidly upgrading Androids is a feature, not a bug.

But, of course, all this does is serve to fragment the Android market even more. App developers never really know which version to develop for. And many people will not buy a new phone simply to be able to play a new game.

This is one reason why people flock to the iPhone. They know they will not have a phone that is obsolete before it is even released, as some Android phones were. And that the customer controls the update cycle, not the telecoms.

Apple focusses on what the customer’s needs are. For Android, the customer’s needs get lost to the wireless carriers needs for profits.

[UPDATE: I forgot to add this great quote that really applies to all Apple does. It explains so much.  "Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one."

Sprint loves the data-efficiency of the iPhone. Are other carriers simply ripping us off?

Sprint says iPhone most network-efficient smartphone and “worth every penny”
[Via AppleInsider]

Sprint’s top executive said this week that Apple’s new iPhone is its most network-efficient smartphone, using some 50% less data than comparable Android handsets.

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So Sprint can maintain an unlimited data plan because the iPhone is so data efficient. Yet every other carrier got rid of their unlimited plan because the iPhone was using too much data.

Seems much more likely to me that the telecoms are simply milking the data cow for all they can get. Typical.

Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent hurts copy cats

Taiwan concerned Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent could hurt market
[Via AppleInsider]

Government officials in Taiwan have expressed concern that Apple’s recent success in obtaining a patent for the slide-to-unlock gesture on touchscreen devices could hurt competing smartphone makers.

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Give me a break.  Apple came up with a novel way to unlock a device according to the patent office.

There are other ways to unlock a phone. Copying Apple’s way should open them up to lawsuits.

Now that the patent is published, they should do what they are supposed to do ≠ find a novel way around the patent and actually innovate.

Sounds like they would rather fight court battles than come up with something new.

Why I cried at a photo

Wounded veteran improving as protesters urge strike | Reuters
[Via Reuters]

An Iraq war veteran badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police was upgraded to fair condition on Thursday morning as activists called for a general strike against the Bay Area city.

A spokeswoman for Highland General Hospital in Oakland said that former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen, 24, had been upgraded from critical to fair condition overnight.

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This image made me tear up almost immediately but I was not sure why. It did not hit me until I noticed something in the picture that made sense why I had such a strong visceral reaction to the photo.

I was raised Catholic and remember the 14 Stations of the Cross that were often represented on the walls of churches. Actually, I really only remember 3 of them because the images were so vivid to a young child – the Crucifixion, the Descent of Christ’s body from the Cross, accompanied by the Lamentation and His burial in the tomb.

Later, when I was taking art history classes in college, we studied many of the Renaissance versions of these same scenes; seems great artists ere attracted to the same three Stations of the Cross as I was. And the most amazing one for me was the painting by Rafael.

He chose to draw a scene between the last 2 stations and not of any specific one. In fact, he shows us a group of people traveling from one place – Golgotha where the Crucifixion  and Descent took place – to another place – the tomb.

It lacks some of the formal aspects of the other stations which often seem too staged for my tastes. By making this change and showing us a scene between two stages, he had some freedom to introduce some aspects I did not see in any other such representations – extreme emotion and anguish, compassion and love. The emotional impact of this painting – more than any other I remember from the class – is simply heartbreaking.

And it really does not matter that this is a religious painting. The manner in which it is constructed could apply to any death – because its impact is so strongly emotional.

All the living people in the painting but one are in various stages of grief – from nonacceptance to overwhelming despair.

Christ’s body is simply that of a dead man, nothing more. He is being held on a sheet by two commoners, as they do not have halos. They are both unable to look directly at the body.

St. John also cannot look at the body while Nicodemus can only glance at where they are going – the tomb. Christ’s mother, Mary, has fainted and none of the three women with her are looking at the body.

In fact, while eight of the nine living people in the painting are in varying degrees of grief or disbelief or sadness or despair, none can actually bear to look at the body of Christ. That is just too much to ask.

Only one – Mary Magdalene – can look on the body of the dead Christ. Only she can look directly into his dead, unseeing face.

And the look on her face is not one of sorrow, grief, despair or disbelief. It is one of tremendous love and compassion. Of all of the people in the painting, only she can bear to touch the dead flesh of Christ’s hand, which she holds in as comforting a way as seems humanly possible.

She holds dead flesh like it was still alive. Because she knows it soon will be. It is like she, of all the others, knows what is about to happen. She looks at the dead face of her Redeemer with an expression of such deep emotion that I simply cannot understand how Rafael simply painted it.

How did human hands put that emotion onto some swirls of oil paint?

The others all react like we all do in the face of death. She does not.

She sees beauty. She sees truth. She sees something bigger than herself and is overwhelming in her response.

Of them all, she is the only one who really sees that this is not a dead body; that there is something great about to happen and that she is there to witness it.

I tear up every time I see this painting. Even if you do not believe all the religious aspects, it is one of the most emotionally riveting paintings ever done. And the open emotion of Mary Magdalene over the dead body just does me in.

Okay, enough art history. What does this have to do with the Reuters’ image?

It has enough similarities to resonant with my feelings of Rafael’s work.

The people carrying a limp body, on their way from some place to some other place. Everyone is looking away from the body except one. And that one is not only looking at him with compassion but is actually the only one directly touching the limp body.

The lights almost seem halo-like. And finally, what do we see directly behind them? A cross.

The similarity in the images was apparently all it took to make me tear up when I saw the Reuters picture.

I really wonder if the photographer purposefully set it up that way – to mimic Rafael’s work. Maybe not.

And I am not trying to equate any religious or historical aspects to the modern photo. I’m just looking my emotional response to the photo’s image; no other significance.

At least for me, the visual imagery resonated with my memory of Rafael’s work on some level, I think. That explains why I am so emotionally unsettled and upset by this one photo.

Just shows the power of strong visual imagery and how the reappearance of that imagery somewhere else can still provoke a strong response.

Rafael was a genius and this photographer was able to piggy pack on that genius.

David Brin tells us how the history of “class warfare” informs us about today

Contrary Brin: “Class War” and the Lessons of History
[Via Contrary Brin]

One aspect of our re-ignited American Civil War is getting a lot of air-play. It is so-called “class war.”

That’s the tag-line ordered up by Roger Ailes. The notion: that any talk of returning to 1990s tax rates – way back when the U.S. was healthy. wealthy, vibrantly entrepreneurial and world-competitive, generating millionaires at the fastest pace in human history – is somehow akin to Robespierre chopping heads in the French Revolution’s reign of terror.

That parallel is actually rather thought-provoking! Indeed, can you hang with me for a few minutes? After setting the stage with some American history, I want to get back to the way things got out of hand during that earlier 1793 class war in France. There are some really interesting aspects I’ll bet you never knew.

But in fact, “class war” has always been with us. If you ever actually sit down to read what people wrote in times past – for example Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, or even the Bible – then you know struggle and resentment between social castes was the normal state of human affairs for 6000 years, or much longer. Seriously, randomly choose (or “roll-up”) a decade and locale from across the last few millenia! Tell me who oppressed freedom and competitive markets in that time and place. I’ll wait.

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I find myself just wallowing in so many of David’s essays. I love the range of  his writing, the scope of his history, the richness of his prose.

And the points he makes aren’t anything to ignore. Here he ranged from Adam Smith to FDR to the French Revolution.

All to remind people what happens when oligarchs refuse to pay their fair share. And how revolutionary our own Founding Fathers were with their attempts to level wealth inequalities.

The point is that we never had the kind of violent class war that erupted in France, because our elites were smart enough to avoid it!

We have done this in the past whenever the wealthy class began to overturn our economy. The late 18the-early 19th century. The Gilded Age. The Roaring Twenties.

Will we do so after the Awful Oughts?

It is the context of the positive sum game. (Look it up!) The notion that we can get all the benefits of an enterprise-market system — using the allure of wealth to reward innovators and vigorous competition — while somehow preventing the toxic side effect of wealth… the poison called oligarchy. The same poison that ruined markets and freedom in every culture other than ours, in every other era than ours.

Every time we have worked to reduce the same sort of oligarchy that destroyed France. When we succeeded before, we often entered a time of significant economic growth.

The French Revolution occurred partially because the rich oligarchs refused to pay for the wars France had fought, much like today’s oligarchs refuse to pay for the current 10 year war.

Yet we can fix all of this with a little bit of tweaking – go back to the same tax rates as we had in the 90s, when we had the greatest economic growth of a generation; have everybody pay the same percentage of income for Social Security; re-instate Glass-Steagall.

And I do agree with Brin’s last words:

So don’t fret, Boomers. Your children will rescue America.  Not with violent class war… what are we, French? But with the kind of tweaking we saw from Washington and Lincoln and Carnegie and Teddy Roosevelt and FDR. (Three of them Republicans.) The kind that restores that flattened diamond… while continuing the miracle of competitive markets and freedom.