Jul 30

Entelligence: Six is much too much

Posted in: Android, Apple, BlackBerry, column, Features, Google, Microsoft, mobile, nokia, palm, RIM, symbian, Today's Chili, webos, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

Last week, fellow columnist Ross Rubin talked about the state of mobile platforms and how the era for launching new platforms has come to an end. I tend to take a different view of the mobile market. There are currently six major platforms vying for the hearts and minds of users and third party applications developers — RIM’s Blackberry, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Apple’s iPhone, Nokia’s s60, Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android — and there’s simply no way the market will support that many device ecosystems. But there may yet be opportunity for other players to enter the market.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the early 80s there were a multitude of personal computing platforms. Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, Apple and even Timex (yes, Timex) all were in the personal computing business, long before IBM entered the game. All survived for a period of time selling to an enthusiast market with a focus on out of the box featuresets. Once the target became the mass market, however, user expectations changed from the out of box experience (which essentially meant programming in Basic) to additional capabilities provided by third party software. The success or failure of each PC platform was decided in no small part by the availability of third party software. Exclusive titles, best of breed titles, and titles that appeared on a given platform first determined winners and losers. The same thing is happening today in the mobile space.

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Entelligence: Six is much too much originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 28

Switched On: Compelling computing can keep netbooks niche

Posted in: column, feature, Features, Laptops, Microsoft, netbooks, switched on, SwitchedOn, Today's Chili, Windows

Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

If the PC marketplace were an ocean, you’d see a strange sight — small fish (netbooks) eating medium-sized fish (notebooks) eating large fish (desktops). But PC vendors are only partially pleased with this inversion of the natural order. While they embrace the replacement of desktops with higher-margin notebooks, they fear the cannibalization of notebooks with low-margin netbooks. Fast-growing and inexpensive netbooks have become such a threat to the notebook business that Intel and Microsoft have been wrestling with how they can adjust pricing in order to persuade PC makers not to market budget Atom-based laptops that have screens larger than 10″ such as the sleek 11.6″ Acer Aspire One A075 or 12.1″ Lenovo IdeaPad S12.

Slower, less expensive processors running an older, lower-priced version of Windows have put pressure on Microsoft’s Windows revenue. But rather than bemoaning consumer demand for less powerful PCs, Microsoft would do well to create more incentive to purchasing more powerful ones. Apple has partially addressed this issue by including, enhancing and promoting iMovie and GarageBand in its bundled iLife suite. These are two applications that can become quite processor-intensive when used for sophisticated tasks, like stabilizing a jumpy video.

But even more significantly, Apple has made the issue moot by creating an effective floor in the Mac product line of an Intel Core 2 Duo. Clearly that’s not an option for Microsoft, nor for many of its PC vendor partners catering to more value-minded shoppers. Indeed, Microsoft has optimized the Windows 7 kernel to run more efficiently on the lower-end netbooks that are the source for growth in the PC market. And that’s the right move.

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Switched On: Compelling computing can keep netbooks niche originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 13

Entelligence: Close to the edge

Posted in: column, Features, Today's Chili
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

There’s an interesting debate that I’ve had recently. Should product designers aim for the enthusiast or “edge” cases when designing products, or should they instead target mainstream users from day one? It’s an interesting discussion, but I believe that those that say “aim for the edge” and the enthusiast aren’t correct, at least in the long run.

Now if you’re reading this, chances are you’re a bit of an edge case — or at the very least a gadget enthusiast. That’s cool, I’m one as well. In fact, over the last few years I’ve coined three rules that I’ve come to refer to as Gartenberg’s Three Laws of Consumer Electronics. For those of you not familiar with them, they are:

  1. There’s a world wide market of 50,000 for any device sold to enthusiasts and early adopters.
  2. If Gartenberg sees a product at a demo and doesn’t offer his credit card for purchase immediately, the product is doomed.
  3. Even if Gartenberg does offer his credit card, the product may well still be doomed — as Gartenberg is part of the 50,000 enthusiasts that will buy (almost) anything.

(If you’re in the NY area, come on over some time and I’ll show you my collection)

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Entelligence: Close to the edge originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 May 2009 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 27

Entelligence: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

Posted in: column, Features, Microsoft, Today's Chili, Windows, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox360

Today we reintroduce Entelligence as a new column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

Here’s a riddle. Why was a $300 PC with a Pentium III CPU, an 8GB hard drive, 64MB of RAM, 10/100 Ethernet, a DVD player, and an NVIDIA graphics chip considered a killer PC system in late 2001? The answer is because it wasn’t a PC — it was the original Xbox. In recent years, Microsoft has evolved the Xbox quite a bit. No longer is it a PC system with N-1 technology — it is now a targeted and focused piece of engineering that is state of the art and optimized for games — but importantly, a lot more than games. It’s the Xbox that will likely be Microsoft’s beachfront into the digital home, and it will be the Xbox which furthers Microsoft’s role in the digital home beyond the PC.

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Entelligence: Beware of geeks bearing gifts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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