Windows8 is still searching for its USP

OMG the PC business is tanking. The likes of HP and Dell are suffering. Really too bad, how come actually and should we be worried? These interesting questions are in my opinion easier to answer than most think. How about: the days of the PC are over, we won't need powerful desktop machines any longer, unless you are in the video or sound recording business. Come on guys accept it, the desktop PC is a dead horse and we should be happy.

The last time I bought a desktop PC was in 2004. It was a huge machine, can't remember the processor speed, the hard disk size nor the RAM memory but it had one thing that impressed everyone; 3 SVGA screens. 

So yes, it looked the part in my small recording studio. It had a DVD-R drive, way ahead of most other PC's. I never ever recorded anything on it though. But then I moved on professionally and privately and my mobile lifestyle started with a Dell laptop that was surprisingly powerful.

Since then I never ever considered going back to having a desktop PC. The stuff I do, word processing, surfing on the web, Powerpoint presentations and so on and so forth do not require a powerful machine. On top of that I switched professionally from a lamentable experience consisting of a laptop PC with Windows Vista to a MacBook Pro and I swear, I will never go back again, unless Apple turns into the next Microsoft.

So back to the desktop PC topic. This type of machine was meant to help you executing tasks. Specifically for video and audio recording and editing local processor power is very important. But how many of us actually do this? Without knowing the actual numbers I'd say that at least 80% of the all the computer users never ever need the full processing power available today.

Even better, most of what we need to achieve is possible on pretty much any laptop or ultrabook if you must. If you then look at the convenience of the laptop form factor one really wonders why you would ever buy a clumsy desktop PC. Even if you need an additional large screen all laptops today have a graphics card that allows you to connect a massively big external screen that will satisfy most users. Ok, I don't know about three screens but hey, isn't that what Thunderbolt would allow?

So back to Windows8, what is its USP actually? Touch screen support? Interesting enough few people know that this is a standard feature of Windows7. It has a few drawbacks when you use it on a touch screen since some interactions are optimized for classic mouse-clicking. But other than that it generally just works.

The Windows8 tiles are nice at first but the value add of having an overview on one screen of your activities is exaggerated. Most of the programs running on Windows8 do not really match this User Interface paradigm, at least not yet and after using it a while, I found myself actually switching back to the classic interface. The reason for this might be that I'm so much used to this that I feel I'm getting quicker to what I need. Maybe a younger generation will prefer the Tiles, no idea.

That I'm not the only one switching back to the 'classic' Windows interface, is confirmed by IDC Analyst Bob O'Donell in this article. Also recently Jun Dong-soo, Samsung's head of memory business, stated that the poor attach rate for ultrabooks is linked to Microsoft's "less competitive Windows platform". He predicted this and took the decision to focus on memory for mobile a while ago. We can simply say today that this decision has more than paid off for Samsung.

On a tablet Windows8 may have its charms compared to iOS but in trying to be different it comes with drawbacks, specifically when it comes to speed and smoothness of the experience.

But what is really disappointing is the Search function in Windows8. Although its a leap forward compared to Windows7 and all previous iterations, it still can't match the sheer powerful elegance of Spotlight MacOS. The most important key-combination for me every day (cmd + spacebar), gets me Google-like quick to everything on my laptop.

For Microsoft I guess times are changing, to stay ahead of the change from desktop PC's to mobile, a super nice UI doesn't make the cut it. What does? Search, voice command even eye-tracking comes to mind. Although Microsoft has exciting things like Kinect among its offerings and it has a SDK available, suggesting that it will be part of Windows in the future, I am still not convinced that the integration will be as elegant as we're used to have from Apple, specifically from the times where Steve Jobs was still at the helm.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Matt

The Working from Home Discussion is somewhat pointless

At first I couldn't believe that Marissa Mayer's simple decision to stop the Yahoo employees from woking from home would lead to such a hefty discussion on the web. Working from home is certainly a great concept but like with so many other things should be used with moderation. She's an experienced manager and from what I read it's clear to me that she had to turn a derailed working culture around. 

If you read the Memo she sent it is clear that her focus is on restoring team-work. Apparently the feeling of achieving a goal together got lost and she decided that the only way to restore team-work and foster team-spirit is to simply make sure that the employees work closely together.

All the arguments about how communication technology have make working from home a viable alternative do not adress the value-add of working together while being physically in one space. 

Working with people in one space or room allows to closely manage the outcome and check productivity. It ultimately ensures that there are ongoing checks and balances regarding the company's direction. That in turn contributes to quality and efficiency. If a company's employees lose a sense of direction, this immediate costs in terms of quality and inefficiency are enormous. The costs to turn this around, as we see currently happening at Yahoo!, can be substantial as well.

My view on this is simple:
- Foster team-work when a company is in a situation of crisis and change. In this case you need short communication lines and regular meetings to establish a sense of urgency and manage change.
- Allow working from home when the change is over and limit it to a 20% home, vs 80% office work.

Only if you are in a business where team-work is much less important, e.g. in translations, the amount of homework could be increased.

The upside of working together and socializing work challenges is such that even free lancers have discovered the upside of working in the same space, while keeping their independency.

In short I do think that this topic should be managed with the company's strategic direction in mind. As an old African saying goes: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. 

That so many got all excited about the ban shows how socially important this topic is. As I said it should be applied with moderation and this decision should be owned by the CEO. For the rest I think all the excitement is somewhat pointless.

Marrissa Mayer has achieved at least one thing: a lot of exposure for Yahoo! in general and for her as an executive in particular. I can only say: bravo!

Thanks for reading my blog.

Matt

Or if you want a totally different opinion on this topic read the Oatmeal on Working from Home.

Why DriveNow is steering in the wrong direction

DriveNow is, at least from a customer feedback point of view, a highly successful car-sharing program in Germany, initiated by BMW. In Berlin, where I live, its incredible how often you come across the DriveNow branded Mini's in traffic. I'm a big fan of the program even though I use it only 3 to 4 times a months. But those times I'm totally satisfied with the user-experience, the state of the cars available, the close availability of the cars in general and the fact that these Mini's and the occasional BMW 1 Series and X1's are just great fun to drive. They also tick all the boxes when it comes to the combined use of Mobile Apps to find and book the cars and the website to inform (and also find and book the cars). All was fine at 29 ct/s min. to drive these cars until the moment an email dropped in my private mailbox...


First things first; what is DriveNow?
Not all my readers live in Germany so here is what DriveNow is about. DriveNow is a car-sharing program introduced by BMW and rolled out in Germany and in San Francisco. In Germany it competes with offerings owned by Mercedes (Car2Go), Volkswagen (Quicar, only in Hannover) and Deutsche Bahn (Flinkster). What's great about these Programs is - apart from Flinkster - that you can find and park the car anywhere in e.g. Berlin in the streets. You're not bound to pick-up and return at fixed stations in the city. Parking is for free, even in zones where parking is normally charged. Astonishing enough the cars are invariably in a clean and scratch-free state. You find and book cars using a mobile app or a website. You open and close the cars with a NFR chip that's attached onto your driver's license.
The business model is very easy. You pay 29 Euro cts. / minute once you've started a booking and are driving the car. If you want to keep it for further use you pay 10 cts. / Minute parking fee.
For a one-off fee of 29 EUR you join the program and the rest of your costs are variable.
So far so good.

I want to pay for how often I HAVE used the service, not on how many times I PLAN to use it! 

K.I.S.S. Convenience Goodbye
Then I got an email announcing a new tariffs. When I read it at first I thought it was all ok. They just announced the availability of pre-paid minute bundles. Buying more minutes gets you a lower charge / minute. Then I saw that they increased the tariff per minute from 29 to 34 cts/minute. And then it dawned on my. This pre-paid payment model is totally wrong.

Dear DriveNow, your program is all about utter convenience. The fact that I can pick up and leave a car anywhere I want within the dedicated zone, without being bothered about parking fees or fuel is fantastic. Now don't ask me to plan the usage of your program ahead. I know I will be on the loosing streak when I don't consume the minutes in one month that I thought I'd need.

In fact its no longer in line with how the internet works. I expect to use you're offering on a very simple basis. I want to pay for how often I HAVE used the service, not on how many times I PLAN to use it! For god's sake in today's world I wouldn't know how to plan that and actually I don't want to. Discount based on Use-Frequency is so easy to achieve and above all so fair!

So my suggestion is that DriveNow respects the Keep It Super Simple or K.I.S.S. approach which they applied at the start.

Pay-per-use
So DriveNow should really offer me an automatically increasing discount when I use the  program more frequently. I should feel rewarded for using the program. That is e.g. also the case through the "fill up the tank and earn 20 free minutes" deal. That is how I want to use DriveNow. I provide a value by filling up the tank and get a more than generous 20 minutes in return. "I Like"!

This new pre-paid package feels all wrong and reminds me too much of the old subscription economy, so much loved by the telecom operators. They spend tons of money on explaining packages with all sorts of limits and benefits which in the end still come across as a swindle.

Selling services in today's internet economy should not be about selling 'old-school subscriptions but a "pay-per-use frequency" model. DriveNow has the opportunity to apply this in the real world. I would even go as far as accepting an increase of the fee for infrequent use to 50cts/minute. As long as it rapidly declines when I use it more often.

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share, comment and discuss!

Matthieu

For further reading:
DriveNow website

Why Nokia should enter the 3D Printer Business

I never worked at Nokia but I did work for them on a number of Consumer Data and Consumer Experience projects as Client Partner for a Berlin based mobile agency. That's the time where I saw first hand, back in 2009, how stubbornly blind they were to what was coming their way. I was one of their first clients back in the 90's when I got my first Nokia 1011 and always loved their phones. I had one till 2010 or so, the last one being the E71. Then came the iPhone, also for me, followed by the Android Tsunami and the rest is history. The latest Lumia models are nice, very nice indeed but I find it hard to believe that they can survive on a "Me has smart phones too". Although nice and refreshing Windows Phone is simply not the disruptive change and jump forward we'd all love to see and have as consumers.

So where should they go from here? My suggestion: they should enter the 3D Printer Business. Here's why.

From past to present

Look up Nokia and on Wikipedia you learn that this company started out in the wood pulp business and then went into the electricity generation business near Tampere in Finland. It added Rubber to its portfolio and started marketing rubber boots under the Nokia Brand Name. It then evolved into a conglomerate of businesses that included over a period of decades, telegraph and telephone cables, bicycles, robots, television, military communication equipment, gas masks and chemicals. The first step towards telecommunications was made in the 70's when they produced a digital switch for telephone exchanges which became the workhorse of the telco industry.

Through its military engineering experience Nokia started experimenting with wireless telephony in the 70's as well and they were directly involved in creating the first communication standards for wireless telephony. Its first GSM phone came out in 1989 and was delivered to Finish telco operator Radiolinja. From there, in less than a decade Nokia quickly dominated the mobile phones business with Motorola and Ericsson in its slipstream.

What does the history of Nokia teach us? Well, they have a lot of experience in engineering, designing and building electronic hardware and they have two decades of programming software for this hardware under their belt. But all of this experience is now at a critical cross road where they risk loosing lots of this heritage if their smartphone business strategy doesn't deliver.


What about 3D printers?

If you believe the hype, 3D printers are going to change the way we live and do business in under two decades from now.
For those who don't know here's why 3D printers are so important:

• They will change the way we produce an increasing number of products dramatically. From prosthetics, via glasses, household items and jewels all the way to the scandal inducing possibility of guns and rifles. 
• This new way of producing one off and personalized goods can potentially make a chunk of what's mass produced today redundant. It will open the door to a new type of retail commerce, i.e. specialized 3D printer stores, that are simply there to turn digital ideas into tangible objects. I'm sure you will see specialized stores springing up because not all printers can deliver all objects. You could metaphorically consider 3D printers as the last missing output module of the internet.
• Although the technology is still in a very early stage and end-results are not always satisfactory, its just a matter of time till we will buy a 3D printer for at home or in the garage and start using it to enhance our daily lives. 

3D printing today is in its infancy. You can buy a 3D printer today for a price that would buy you a sophisticated fridge or washing machine but defining 3D objects, using graphical software, is not an easy task. Of course one can find 3D printer forums and blogs by the dozen and they most will offer  some form of file sharing. Experimentation is still part of the process though but as said before, the promise of being able to print personal objects for a wide variety of applications is getting the attention of an increasing number of consumers, start-ups and businesses. 

So why should Nokia go into the 3D printer business?

Its my strong believe that if any company in the world is capable of entering this space and turning it into a strong new business its Nokia. As I pointed out before they have long standing history in hardware AND software manufacturing. My guess is also that they have access to a well trained workforce and an extensive line up of production partners around the globe. All that's needed is a nod from Stephen Elop and the creation of a 3D printer task force with a R&D budget attached. My  guess is that they'll be able to churn out a 3D printer with an easy to use interface and software within a year. They should not forget to leverage their experience in creating eco-systems. Anyone remembers Ovi or MyNokia? If they create an eco-system around these 3D printers using the same principles as Apple once did with Music and Movies via iTunes, they're in for a healthy future.

So, who introduces me to Mr. Elop so I can pitch the idea? :-)

Thanks for reading my Blog.

Matt

For further reading:
http://3dprintingindustry.com

If you want one yourself check Cubify