Andrew Busey: My Musings

This post is focused on the (large) group of strong iphone supporters: mainly people that bought an initial iphone at launch and immediately upgraded to the iphone 3G when it came out.

Here is what it says on the AT&T site when I check for an upgrade:

iPhone Upgrade
As a valued AT&T customer, we can offer you a discounted iPhone upgrade at a higher price, along with a 2-year commitment and an $18 upgrade fee. Please proceed with the online upgrade process for pricing details. You may qualify for a full discount on a standard iPhone upgrade on 07/13/2009

I can currently get the iphone 3GS for $499 - which is apparently the midrange of available prices. So it is sort of an upgrade price. But I can get the full upgrade price ($299) on 7/13 (which I’m guessing is the 1 year anniversary of my purchase of the iphone 3G.)

The annoying thing here is that the iphone 3GS will be released on 6/19 - so I can wait 24 days to upgrade and, presumably, save $200 or I can upgrade now. This is where it gets stupid.

Or I could game the system by buying an iphone 3GS on launch day, return it on 7/13, pay the 10% restocking fee ($49) and then buy a new one for $299. That saves me $150 on the get it now price (or I rent it for $50, depending on how I look at it) and creates a giant hassle for me and a lot of waste for Apple and AT&T. (The iphone has a 30 day return policy with a 10% restocking fee if it is used.)

I understand why AT&T doesn’t give everyone an upgrade all the time, that’s not good business. But sometimes a company should apply common sense, which they have clearly not done. Apple is partly at fault for this - the 24 day gap was created because the iphone 3G shipped a month after its announcement and the 3GS is shipping 2 weeks after its announcement. Apple could have avoided this whole brouhaha by just shipping the 3GS on the 1 year anniversary of the iphone 3G. Sure, some people would have whined about having to wait that long, but no one would be pissed that they aren’t able to upgrade to it.

Or, even more easily, AT&T could say “we’re going to let anyone who is less than 30 days away from their upgrade date” to upgrade on launch day. This would have won a ton of fans and some positive feedback for AT&T being good sports and rewarding the people who buy the upgrade every year and who are presumably great AT&T customers. The cost of letting these users upgrade 30 days in advance is insignificant and it does not set a significant precedent that would damage how phone upgrades are sold in the future. It’s a one time thing to resolve a timing anomaly.

The other benefit is it would likely reset upgrade dates in such a way that there is a lower probability of an 30-day upgrade gap next year assuming Apple continues to release iphone upgrades at the WWDC.

AT&T: if you’re listening (and you’re probably not for a myriad of reasons):

Create some goodwill among your most rabid consumers! It’s 24 freaking days!

Ok, so everyone is talking about Apple these days. There was a good Fortune article on why Zunes don’t matter, regardless of how good they might be. (The Trouble with Zunes) This got me thinking.

Windows is obviously a very successful product for Microsoft. (Captain Obvious.) The reason it is successful is because it created a very powerful ecosystem - developers, CPUs, hardware vendors, etc. I once saw a really insightful slide (from some analyst - no idea who or where to find it again) that showed how much Dell / HP / Compaq (shows how old the slide was), Intel, and Microsoft, spent on R&D and how nearly impossible it would be to catch up with that. Clearly it was right - no one has caught up. I think it missed the developer angle - the ability to develop interesting applications coupled with the right development tools and a critical mass (of consumers for the apps) is very powerful. And even more difficult to overcome.

Apple seems to get this on several levels:

1. The basic ecosystem: creating a linked system (a closed one is easiest) that just works from end-to-end is critically important. That’s why ipod+itunes has seized the music space. It’s also why once they get AppleTVs and AppleHomeServers right they’ll control the living room. Unless Microsoft wakes up and recognizes not just the importance of this ecosystem (I think they do) but that the only way to win is through a fully linked-up, coherent ecosystem, Apple is going to win this war too.




2. Design matters: Not just industrial design, but also interface and system design. And, probably more importantly, it is a heck of a lot easier to design a great product when you control the whole ecosystem. System design - basically how everything that is involved works together - is the hardest parth and is, again, made inherently easier in a closed system. Bill Gates is a great system designer. The problem is that at Microsoft I don’t know who else is. If there is one (or a group) it’s probably either the Office team (brilliant integration of formerly disparate applications to make them so co-mingled it’s hard to imagine them not being a suite) and/or the Xbox team (this is a good system Xbox 360, Xbox live, Xbox first party, and Xbox thrid party.)

Apple (or maybe just Steve Jobs) clearly gets these two things. They also have the inherent power and charisma of Jobs at the top which forces everyone else to at least try to think like him. I’d wager that everyone working on a product team at Apple is always thinking “omg, omg what if Steve comes in here and looks at my product - he better be blown away”. When everyone is thinking like that, you get 100x better outcomes. I’m pretty sure there aren’t many people thinking that way at Microsoft these days.

The third axis of tech power, Google, is somewhere in the middle. They have a lot of really smart people thinking up really smart things. However, I’m not sure they have a lot of system thinkers running around. All their stuff seems like amazing spot solutions with little overall cohesion. That’s why Android (their phone effort) has little (imo) chance to unset the iPhone. If they really got someone in there thinking about the overall system, this could change. It’s not beyond repair in my opinion.

If you want a clear example of this, look at their authentication system. Admittedly they are trying to fix this, but it’s pretty bad right now.

BTW, it’s hard to do this stuff. As an entrepreneur I try to do it everyday. It doesn’t always work out the way I hope - ecosystems (and systems in general) are pretty complicated and it is hard to figure everything out. It’s even harder to do with the limited resources of a start-up.

I rented No Country for Old Men this weekend on Apple TV. It was my first attempt at renting. It wasn’t ideal. I let it download for a bit before I started watching it and it still stopped midway through. So I watched some other DVRed stuff before returning and watching the rest. This wasn’t a great experience - it definitely broke the pacing and immersion of the movie.

So I tried again, this time I bought Revolver (a Guy Ritchie movie with Jason Stratham that I’d never heard of before). I let it start downloading. Found 28 Weeks (or maybe Days) Later and left that on while I watched some work. Then I watched Revolver. No issues. (Maybe it wasn’t true HD, the “buy” option is a little ambiguous about what you get - “iTunes Widescreen Format”, what the hell is that?). The quality was pretty good, the movie was reasonably good - although really weird.

I’m not sure it’s ready for primetime, but it is pretty cool. I’m getting ready to move so I haven’t spent much time setting up the configuration I want. I really want to have all this media on my Windows Home Server, but I have heard it is corrupting iTunes stuff in some cases so I’m waiting for a patch to mess with that. Until then I’ll just mess around with the Apple TV directly.

There has been a lot of talk about Mac vs. Windows recently. I think I might have posted about switching to Mac OS X previously. So before I continue, I want to say I love Apple - especially its industrial design… and most of its software. I have an Apple Cinema Display, an Apple TV, an iPhone, and a bunch of iPods (that I never use).

I love the MacBook Pro as an industrial design triumph. I still remain confused as to why not a single PC maker can make a laptop of similar quality, form factor, and aesthetic. I mean it is the same exact stuff. In fact, I used Boot Camp + XP for about 9 months and never booted into Mac OS X. It was a little annoying to have to carry a 2 button mouse around, the keyboard had some minor issues, but other than that it worked great.

So I switched to Mac OS X along with all my new co-workers at Challenge Games. It worked ok.

However, there are several things that really, really annoyed me about the Mac OS X. It’s like they had to do some things a certain way just to be different. And in this case different isn’t good or better, it’s just obnoxious and inconvenient. Like the CTRL key, ALT key, and Apple Keys. They are just different enough that using keyboard shortcuts on a Mac and Windows gets really confusing. Why? Totally unnecessary. I suspect it was someone at Apple deciding they couldn’t be the same as Windows. Who cares? Make it easy to switch. The home and end keys do weird things too. I know not everyone uses keyboard shortcuts for everything, but making them different just to be different is annoying. If they really want people to switch they should offer a Windows keyboard mapping option that make things do what we’re used to them doing. I guess that’s the Microsoft monopoly advantage. (I once heard something similar about Heinz Ketchup, but that’s a different story and would require me to go do some research…. maybe I’ll get around to it.)

Microsoft did a good job on one of the other major issues: Office. I actually really like Office 2007. It changed the interface a little (annoying), but mostly made things better and more efficient. On the Mac you’re stuck with a really old Office with a weird interface (Mac-ized) or the new iWork suite. Let me be clear on my opinion of iWork - it sucks. Numbers is horrible… to the point of being useless (IMO… lot’s of reasons that I’m not going to go into for now.)

Another thing about Mac OS X is its organizational model. Somehow I always ended up with a billion files on my desktop. Maybe that makes it easy for a novice, but man it was hard to ever find anything. My Documents might not be brilliant, but it works. I also find, particulalry in Vista, that the ability to organize files (save them in the right places, create folders at the right times, etc.) is just much better.

Then there is a the one button mouse. Don’t get me started on that.

So the end result of this is that I switched back. I got a Dell XPS M1330. (Ah the elegant naming systems of Windows PCs… that could use some work.) It’s a great computer. I’m really enjoying it a lot more than the MacBook Pro. I like Vista. I really like Office 2007.

My only gripe with the M1330 is the construction could be a little better. Frankly I wish Dell would just hire Ideo or someone to make a spectacular laptop that competes with the MacBook Pro. (Not the MacBook Air… Also there is a new 15″ Alienware laptop, but they made it to big.)

Speaking of MacBook Air, I’m confused. I bet they break. Several of my friends commented that when they heard I didn’t want one they were immediately predicting failure. I have an addiction to acquiring any new shiny technology. But, for some reason, have no real interest in the Air.

I am, however, in the market for a desktop. Alienware and Dell are really pissing me off. The Alienware I want doesn’t have an nVidia version and has a late March ship date. The Dell version ships next week but isn’t overclocked and, well, isn’t as cool as an Alienware. They are marketing this new XPS 630 that might be cool but building hype for a PC too far in advance seems like a dumb marketing move.

I just want a really high powered desktop that is quiet. My current desktop (Dell Workstation) is really noisy and is getting a little old so I’m looking to upgrade.

Well Im going to stop my midnight rambling for a bit.