Mobile Forward

The PC is Passé. What Now?

Jean-Louis Gassée, on Monday Note, the blog he runs with Frédéric Filloux:

Whether through Apple’s long-term vision or the growing realization of an opportunity, iOS has become the OS in Apple’s future. iOS has already shipped on more than one billion devices; where Macintosh unit sales are measured in millions per quarter, iOS devices are multiples of tens of millions. Built to fit the constraints of the first iPhone’s limited processing power, iOS is still much smaller than OS X: 1.3 Gigabytes for the latest release, versus 8.41GB for my MacBook’s System Folder. iOS has a lot of room to grow into a fuller, richer OS, unencumbered by past sins.

If we accept the scenario of an iPad evolution into an iOS-based laptop, or even desktop, what happens to the Mac as we know it today?

Picture (no pun intended) digital cameras. With its ubiquity, connectivity, performance, and photo editing software, the smartphone has swallowed the point-and-shoot market, but it’s not a replacement for the pricey DSLR that’s beloved by the hobbyist and essential for commercial jobs such as sports, product, or food photography.

By analogy, even if an iOS-based laptop comes to serve many needs, there are jobs where a 27” iMac, its 5K display, 4GHz Intel processor, 64 GB of RAM, and terabytes of disk storage is irreplaceable – and will stay so for some time. The two will co-exist just like smartphones and DSLRs.

Sounds right to me.

Tim Cook on Cars

When I look at the automobile, what I see is that software becomes an increasingly important part of the car of the future. You see that autonomous driving becomes much more important in a huge way in the future. And so a lot of the major technologies in the car shift – electrification, etc. – they shift from today’s combustion-engine-centric kind of focus. And so it would seem like there will be massive change in that industry, massive change. […]

The interface in [the car] is probably not the thing – if you listed out the top ten things you love about the car – it would probably not be on the top ten list. […]

– From Brian R. Fitzgerald’s coverage of Tim Cook’s appearance at WSJDLive 2015

I do think that industry is at an inflection point for massive change, not just evolutionary change.

– From Geoffrey Fowler’s coverage in the WSJ live blog of the event

__________

Related Slides & Posts

For a high level view on change in the car industry, see the two slides below:

Mobile Forward 00401 2015-09-29Mobile Forward 00396 2015-09-22

 

 

 

 

 

 

And their respective posts:

Cars: Better than Ever. Worse than Possible. (Part 2)

Apple Car: Navigating the Transition

Apple’s Bold Platform Risk

Steve Cheney, in his interesting and good post entitled “On Apple’s Insurmountable Platform Advantage”:

In 2007, when Steve Ballmer famously declared “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance”, Jobs was off creating a chip design team. If you study unit economics of semiconductors, it doesn’t really make sense to design chips and compete with companies like Intel unless you can make it up in volume. Consider the audacity back in 2007 for Apple to believe it could pull this off.

Read the whole piece. It’s great.

John Gruber commented on Cheney’s post, and one thought that struck a cord with me was this:

We should clarify one point from Cheney’s headline — Apple’s lead is formidable, not insurmountable. Nothing in tech is insurmountable.

Why did I notice that bit? Perhaps because of my view on this.

Intel Working on an iPhone Modem: New Chatter

Mark Sullivan, for VentureBeat:

Intel now has a thousand people or more working to outfit a 2016 iPhone with its lauded 7360 LTE modem chip, sources say. If all goes well, Intel may end up providing both the modem and the fabrication for a new Apple system on a chip. […]

Apple may dual-source the LTE modems in its new iPhones from both Intel and Qualcomm. Today, Qualcomm’s 9X45 LTE chip is baked into all iPhone modems. […]

One source said Intel needs a small army of people on the Apple account because of the importance of the project to Apple’s future in the mobile market, because of the complexity of the project, and because Apple is a demanding client with an extremely popular phone.

You can be sure this modem meets a lot of Apple’s specific requirements, especially in terms of power. If any other OEMs purchase the same (or similar) part from Intel, they may benefit from some of those attributes, but not from all. When you’re as effective and important as Apple, you can shape product requirements in a way that helps you stay ahead of commoditization, even if others can technically buy the “same” part.

Sullivan’s sources also speculate that Apple may, eventually, integrate this modem into the system-on-a-chip (SoC). At that point, the combined function, power, and performance characteristics (of the modem alone) will be difficult for others to emulate.

Monday Assorted Links

1. Soon, Power Will Be Delivered to Your Device by Air

2. Apple introduces us to the Apple Ring in all its Glory  From Jack Purcher, on his site, Patently Apple. Note how often the patent says “in some embodiments”, meaning the device doesn’t have to be a ring. In fact, the patent states the device could have a touchpad or a touchscreen. Some of the use cases appear watch-friendly.

Apple explains that there’s a need for electronic devices with faster, more efficient methods and interfaces for interacting and/or controlling external electronic devices.

3. Apple granted patent covering iPhone with glass wrap-around display

4. China aims to complete electric vehicle power charging infrastructure by 2020

5. Google’s Cute Cars And The Ugly End Of Driving  Nice piece by Matt Honan, at BuzzFeed. Great experience:

The first time I rode in a fully autonomous car, what really impressed me was when the car saw something that I could not.

Apple Acquires Artificial-Intelligence Startup VocalIQ

Jack Nicas, for The Wall Street Journal:

The acquisition could help Apple’s efforts to bolster Siri, which is controlled by voice commands and sometimes struggles to understand users.

VocalIQ says on its website that its software helps computers speak more naturally by learning from each interaction with a human, employing an artificial-intelligence technique called deep learning. VocalIQ software also seeks to help computers better understand commands and their context.

Software Complexity in Cars

David Giles, Hiroko Tabuchi, and Matthew Dolan, for the New York Times:

New high-end cars are among the most sophisticated machines on the planet, containing 100 million or more lines of code. Compare that with about 60 million lines of code in all of Facebook or 50 million in the Large Hadron Collider. […]

The sophistication of new cars brings numerous benefits — forward-collision warning systems and automatic emergency braking that keep drivers safer are just two examples. But with new technology comes new risks — and new opportunities for malevolence. […]

Makes you wonder what sort of opportunities for better streamlining, unification, speed, and security there are. What is Tesla doing, and what will Google and Apple do, differently?

Cars: Better than Ever. Worse than Possible. (Part 2)

Yesterday, I posted a working view on dimensions and issues that affect car performance and car enjoyment. Today, I’m sharing with you the rest of the slide, the “Near Future” items.

Mobile Forward 00401 2015-09-29

It’s a working view, and certainly a very high level one. Hopefully, however, it will help you shape yours – via curiosity, reinforcement, or even disagreement – about how the car might evolve. As you can see, many items are driven by software, and several may be enabled by modularity (the cabin, maintenance, upgrade-ability advances). You can be sure that these elements are the focus of discussion at Tesla, Google, and Apple, as they develop their next-generation vehicles.

Now, for simplicity, this particular view is focused on ten dimensions. Most of them are related to the physical product. But there are many more ways to think about cars: some very fundamental aspects (e.g., jobs to be done), related steps (production system, customization, financing, charging at home and away, etc.), and specific high-value technologies (driver assistance, battery, quick charger, sensors, machine learning, security, just to name a few). The point, then, is that there are actually many ways to re-think the car, its purpose, context, and systems, and many dimensions to competition. The view above is just a device-centric start. I might explore some of the additional elements in the future.

Critically, it’s important to remember that no single car or car maker will advance in all areas. The effective product, design, and engineering leaders will focus on the most impactful elements and prioritize those. The outcome will depend on the customer they want to serve, the company’s capabilities and aspirations, competitor offerings, and the time available. (And – critically – on the leaders’ own sensibilities and the dynamics inside the organization.)

Still, it’s *very useful* to develop a rich super-set of things one *could* improve upon, comprised of this list and the other items I touched on. That sort of situational awareness helps you prioritize, and have confidence in your priorities, about where to direct R&D, product definition, design, and marketing. It helps you to shape the product you ship and its future generations.

So, back to cars, then. There are plenty of ways to make cars better. Who will be first? Who will be boldest? Who will be best? Who will make the transition from today’s car to tomorrow’s. And who might just skip most of that transition altogether? It’s 2015 – it feels like the future – but the journey to re-invent the car has just started.

Apple Car: Navigating the Transition

Mobile Forward 00396 2015-09-22

A few points:

  • Apple DOESN’T have to go through the same transition (the “curve”). But I didn’t draw Apple coming in at the top because doing a full product isn’t easy.
  • Also, the transition to another “steady state” in cars will take much time. That’s another reason I didn’t draw Apple coming in after the curve.
  • Transitions are done best when you can AVOID them. Apple can. And note that done “best” doesn’t mean done “easiest”. You have to master technology, product, and the consumer’s ability to adapt.
  • Apple’s ability to avoid a transition in its own executives’ mindset, own technology, own manufacturing, and own consumers’ memory is a HUGE plus. Meaningfully counter-balanced, however, by applying its capabilities in new ways to a new category.
  • Generally, though, expect other auto makers to have trouble making the transition. It’s a question of timing (how soon), quality (e.g., hacked security), ingenuity (e.g., design opportunities), and ecosystem (e.g., device interaction). Hence the “curve”.
  • Finally, as you can tell from the checklist, there’s more to success than the car itself. For example, I didn’t even get into supply and production issues.

For more of my posts on cars, just click here.

Apple Aims to Finalize its First Car by 2019

Daisuke Wakabayashi, for the WSJ, reports that Apple’s car program is now a “committed project”. Apple is accelerating its efforts to bring a car to market within, roughly, the next five years. It reportedly has 600 people on the project and intends to triple its size. Apple’s first car, Wakabayashi’s sources say, won’t be fully autonomous.

Product definitions and schedules change. 2019, 2020 – the precise year matters less than this fact: Apple has committed to this project.

It’s easy to understand why: better cars mean better living and a better environment for millions of people.

The saying is “Software is eating the world” but, really, it should be “Computers are eating the world”. When a company understands computing – industrial design, operating system, user interface, security, processors, sensors, networking, power management – it’s not surprising that it has the ambition to tackle another product that computers are transforming. Right now, computers are eating cars. Apple knows computers. And consumers, and transitions.

As Apple explores and builds it supply chain, we’ll hear more about the car project. What we won’t hear about, though, for a long time, is the nature of the innovations that Apple has in store: industrial design, interface design, cabin design, and battery improvements, among other things – and those are just examples at the core product level.

Apple Removes Malware-Infected Apps from its Chinese App Store

Sarah Perez, for TechCrunch:

Nearly forty popular applications infected with malware – a result of app developers being tricked into downloading a compromised version of Apple’s Xcode developer tool kit. […]

The malware could potentially impact hundreds of millions of users, [security firm Palo Alto networks] said. […]

A compromised version of the Xcode software was uploaded to Baidu’s cloud storage site, promising a faster download than the official version […]. […]

This was bound to happen, given iOS’ popularity and its success with prominent consumers. Apparently Xcode was weaker than iOS. But, at least in this case, you needed some pretty naive developers:

But to even install this affected version of the Xcode software, developers had to ignore a warning which indicated the software was damaged and should be moved to the trash […].

Friday Assorted Links

1. Apple Acquires Mapsense, a Mapping Visualization Startup

2. Samsung to mass produce transparent displays for home electronics products

Samsung is also prepping to display new products at CES 2016 that include devices with transparent displays, the reports noted.

3. MediaTek chipsets power new Amazon devices

4. Vehicles may contain as many as 10 cameras when the age of self-driving cars arrive  (Thanks to Vladimir Koifman, who linked to this on Image Sensor World.)

5. Tesla signs another deal with a company developing a lithium mine

Wednesday Assorted Links – Car Edition

1. Connected, self-driving cars dominate buzz at Frankfurt auto show  David McHugh, Associated Press, at the San Jose Mercury News:

The big question among automakers is whether they will be the ones to provide new technologies — and profit from them — or will major tech companies like Google and Apple take a slice of the industry. For now, the two sides are balancing cooperation against competition as they gauge what the future holds.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra succinctly expressed a common view, asserting that “we will see more change in the industry in the next five to ten years than we have in the last 50.”

2. Google self-driving car patent reveals how you’ll let AI take the wheel  Chris Ziegler, for The Verge:

An arm on the steering column (not much different from a windshield wiper arm) could be pulled to engage a car’s self-driving mode; at that point, the system would do a check to see whether it’s ready and able to actually take control from the driver. If it isn’t — the car can’t get a GPS lock, for instance — the driver might see a “Not Available” light on the dash. Otherwise, you’d see a “Ready” light, at which point you can start taking your appendages off the wheel and pedals.

3. How carmakers can compete for the connected consumer Hans-Werner Kaas, Andreas Tschiesner, Dominik Wee, and Matthias Kässer, for McKinsey, in the full PDF report cited by the article:

The connected car will feature a high number of interfaces (e.g., to infrastructure, to other vehicles, and to some cloud-based platform) for which common standards are required (cross-brand, cross-geographies). Building an ecosystem of multiple OEMs with a shared platform might turn out to be a more promising way for them to succeed than to try competing on their own.

In such an ecosystem, OEMs and other players could cooperate using the same (software) platform to reach sufficient scale and to acquire specific capabilities for providing functionalities and services while keeping control over data flows.

They could, I suppose. Under perfect cooperation. But that’s not very likely. That’s one reason (of several) why Google has developed an autonomous automobile platform. And also one reason why Apple thinks its integrated hardware-software approach will be an advantage.

Tuesday Assorted Links

1. Qualcomm’s new Quick Charge will take batteries from 0 to 80 percent in 35 minutes  Vlad Savov, for The Verge:

Quick Charge 3 is 38 percent more efficient than its predecessor, and will appear in mobile devices next year.

2. Apple creating new software platform to unify its cloud services, based off Siri’s open-source backend  Huge, complex undertaking. Benjamin Mayo, for 9to5Mac:

What’s particularly interesting about this change is that Apple will be relying heavily on open-source software. Mesos is released under an Apache license, for instance. However, the report claims Apple has struggled to attract engineering talent with open-source backgrounds due to the company secrecy.

3. Apple is quietly expanding its stealthy R&D center in Lund (Sweden) to work on ‘advanced mapping technology’: report

4. Verizon and AT&T to roll out mini-stores inside Best Buy locations across the country

Mobile Forward

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