The comparison between the two flying experiences crystallized one thing for me: user experience is not pretty logos, lovely web design or rounded corners. A smile is a user experience and so is an honest and candid reply to a tweet. Experience is not just physical. It is delivering happiness across as many touch points as often and as frequently as possible, is the ultimate user experience. Apple and Virgin are good examples of that whole experience package.

I like the way he puts that (ignoring the grammatical slip). The ultimate user experience delivers happiness as often and as frequently as possible.

Whatever your design background/perspective is, if what you make produces a smile then you’re doing your job.

A nice way of thinking about it. Good design is hard to ignore.

An old episode of Computer Chronicles, made possible in part by Hewlett-Packard.

“One thing on the net is [that] you spend a lot of time waiting.”

Videocassette copy available for $32.50.

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Now a spiritual sequel is coming to iOS, will likely be free to play, and I doubt I’ll play it for more than 15 minutes. I’m not a fan of that progression.

The “S” supposedly stands for “Social”.

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I like this ad, all in all.

Three things that got me:

1. The S Beam duo from 0:10-0:16 and the “wheeee” at 0:26
2. The guy flying across the floor at 0:40 (amazingly accurate physics)
3. The guy who reveals an Apple tattoo on his chest at 0:49

There are some mistakes, but most people won’t care – it’s a weird and entertaining ad for people who know about the current Samsung and Apple rivalry and don’t know much about Windows Phone.

My only question is what percentage of this TV ad’s target audience actually does know about that rivalry. I suppose they might know about the Apple/Samsung lawsuit, but have they ever witnessed first-hand the irrational fighting that happens online and occasionally in the real world? I guess it depends on which channels this commercial will air.

Also, it’s kinda nice to see Nokia and Windows Phone admit to being in third place. This ad doesn’t bother trying to woo people with a WP-exclusive feature or app (there aren’t many anyway), instead it just points out that there’s an alternative to being in the middle of this crazy battleground – a more peaceful way of being a smartphone owner.

One last thing: “Engadget’s Reader’s Choice Smartphone of the Year” isn’t the most amazing of achievements, but it sounds impressive in the 1.5 seconds the ad gives you to process what you just heard. Kinda tricky, but smart ad design.

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Marty Cooper, inventor of the very first cell phone 40 years ago in April of 1973, sat down for a short interview as a part of PBS Digital Studio’s INVENTORS series. I found this part to be particularly interesting:

What’s important about any technology is that the technology is hopefully invisible, but at least transparent and maybe intuitive.

Think about it. The purpose of technology is to make your life better. Most cell phones don’t do that very well, in fact, they force us to become engineers, to learn a bunch of new things, and we shouldn’t have to do that.

The ideal phone would be one where I would just talk to the phone, or maybe the phone would read my mind, and it would do things to make my life better.

A couple of thoughts:

#1) That last bit, about the ideal phone being more of a mind-reading, human-like companion is definitely something the world is moving toward. Google Now and Siri are just the first steps toward being able to interact conversationally with our phones, and I think the mind/body-reading part will largely come from the impending flood of smartwatches and wearable devices coming later this year and next.

#2) The second bit about technology making life better for regular people, not just the knowledgeable engineers who build it, sounds very human factors-like to me.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 seems to be a good example of the engineer-first type of device that Marty describes. It’s definitely a technical powerhouse that “power users” will love (I’d definitely like to try it out sometime), but the sheer number of features it has all mishmashed together makes it a usability/learnability headache for the average Joe. Read The Verge’s review to get a feel for how many new capabilities Samsung added to the S4 – there’s quite a lot.

Here’s a screenshot from the S4′s quick settings tray that demonstrates this complexity pretty clearly. Can you make a good guess as to what the green “Sync” button is actually syncing? Tell me what the difference is between “Air view” and “Screen mirroring”. Do their icons demonstrate what they do clearly enough? Is there a downside to leaving “S beam” (the much-advertised sharing functionality) turned on? Is “Blocking mode” some kind of special lock, or maybe something like the iPhone’s “Do Not Disturb” setting? Don’t I want “Power saving” on all the time? What gets disabled in that mode? Does “Driving mode” open up my GPS app, or do something else entirely? Why do I need to remember to press that button when I go driving anyway?

Features for features’ sake does not an ideal phone make.

Some of the many new capabilities of the S4 are legitimately useful and industry-leading, but they’re implemented in ways that require outside knowledge of the way they work and how to use them (like the above example). When new features aren’t immediately obvious to people – like HDR photography, AirPlay or iCloud syncing – Apple very cleverly uses TV advertising to demonstrate how they’re used and how they improve your digital life. Samsung also did this effectively with their NFC-enabled S Beam functionality, but I don’t think they’re planning on teaching people how to use 3/4 of the advanced features they’ve added in the S4, and that’s an issue.

As Marty said, ideally we shouldn’t have to learn a lot of new stuff in order to start using a new phone effectively. Sometimes, however, a highly desirable feature requires some explanation, and until technology can make it “just work” advertising can be used to great effect. With the Galaxy S4, Samsung has seemingly shot themselves in the foot by adding too many non-obvious features that require that kind of external learning. Many of these features are also half-baked, which means they’ll serve primarily as annoying visual distractions and be perpetually turned off instead of improving the user’s digital life.

When your phone is less usable or easy-to-learn than the competition, then it’s immediately less powerful in the hands of a typical user, no matter how many processor cores it has. I think this is a point that often goes unsaid in the tech press, and I’m glad David Pierce made a note of the S4′s “overwhelming” number of features in his review. Technology for technology’s sake is a bad thing – at some point a phone’s design team needs to draw a line and withhold features that just don’t belong. The S4′s team apparently either A) decided not to draw that line or B) were overridden when they tried to speak up. Either way, I know that my grandpa shouldn’t be allowed near this device – he’ll think all the awesome-looking features will make his life easier, but they’d actually make it twice as complex as it already is.

Note: For more on the creation of the first cell phone (the DynaTEC) and Marty Cooper’s thoughts on the current smartphone landscape, check out The Verge’s interview with him from last year. Lots of interesting stuff in there.

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Clearly this ugly, IAP-riddled Pokemon & Mario hybrid is targeted at kids. Not sure how it was approved.

In this Jim Handy motion picture from the 1930′s titled “Around The Corner,” an enthusiastic narrator and the Chevrolet Sales Team Band demonstrate how a clever combination of gears allows us to steer our cars left and right.

Bring in the trumpets!

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Clever name, although it reminds me of cable, and I don’t like cable.

Vimeo appears to be the “App Store for Entertainment” I discussed last year. Finally, video-makers have a distribution channel with enough clout and platform presence (even on Windows Phone) to sell their film to anyone anywhere. From their announcement post:

We’re creators ourselves, and we know how hard it can be to get your work out there and connect with an audience. Since we founded Vimeo in 2004, we’ve been dreaming of a world where more and more creators can support themselves with their work alone. Today we’re proud to be taking a big step in that direction, and there are many more exciting steps to come.

And from the video above (skip the first 50 seconds):

Introducing Vimeo on Demand, a new service that empowers you to play all the roles in distributing your work.

With Vimeo on Demand, we put the control in your hands; to beautifully showcase the work you want, at the price you want, to the audience you want.

And with our 90/10 revenue split, we make sure you get the biggest slice of the pie.

This service is in addition to the Tip Jar and (optional) paywall functionality they released last year for Vimeo Plus users.

The $199/yr fee for Vimeo Plus seems a bit steep to me, but then again distributing a multi-gigabyte film costs more than distributing a typical iPhone app (an iOS developer license is $99/yr).

One thing that caught my eye: if the creator stops paying for Vimeo Plus their videos are suddenly unavailable to anyone who bought them previously (unless they downloaded them beforehand).

I can see why Vimeo doesn’t want to continue streaming a video to customers without being compensated, but I can imagine a scenario where the creator of a one-off $5 hit feels pressured to continue paying $199/yr to make sure his/her customers can continue to watch the film through Vimeo on all of their devices. If they continue to pay they gradually lose what they earned, and if they cancel they get hate mail and people start to blame Vimeo.

The same situation happens with iOS apps pretty frequently; when a developer stops paying their license fee their app stays installed on customers’ devices but can’t be downloaded again from the App Store. The difference here is that most people won’t bother to download and store videos locally like they do with (possibly discontinued) apps that they frequently use. If Vimeo doesn’t do a good job of warning customers about an upcoming takedown so they can prepare, customers may sour on the idea of buying videos through their service.

Nobody will care about this for the first few years, but it’s something to consider in the long-term. I’m glad Vimeo is doing this and I think they’re in a position to succeed – now we just need to wait and see if people are willing to buy medium to high-quality content from independent producers and not just the big guys.

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When we play, we try things on and try things out. We improvise, taking on new roles, imagining what would happen if we possessed new capabilities or behaved differently. We throw away what doesn’t work and build on what does. We can play alone or compete against someone else; we can collaborate with another person or a team against a larger enemy. We may lose a game or a battle, but there is always the chance to start again.

He mentions a section from Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” biography in which Jony Ive explains the ‘magical’ properties of Apple’s design studio.

“This great room is the one place in the company where you can look around and see everything we have in the works,” said Jonathan Ive. “When Steve comes in, he will sit at one of these tables. If we’re working on a new iPhone, for example, he might grab a stool and start playing with different models and feeling them in his hands, remarking on which ones he likes best. Then he will graze by the other tables, just him and me, to see where all the other products are heading. . . . He gets to see things in relationship to each other, which is pretty hard to do in a big company. Looking at the models on these tables, he can see the future for the next three years.”

Maybe a good design studio is something like this: a playground temporarily separated from reality with trustworthy people and a set of  ground-rules to keep everyone safe. The team would approach each obstacle not as a problem that simply needs to be solved (likely with a Band-Aid), but as an opportunity to make something identifiably and qualitatively ‘better’ than it was before.

It’s a neat idea that’s very much in line with my previous thought on the importance of thinking like a kid. Start asking seemingly innocent questions and step outside of worldly constraints for a while – get to a place where all of the ideas in the room are laid out on one of Apple’s big, wooden design tables and start playing around with them.

Seems like an neat book.

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Brian Roberts, Comcast’s CEO (emphasis mine):

Our decision to acquire GE’s ownership is driven by our sense of optimism for the future prospects of NBCUniversal and our desire to capture future value that we hope to create for our shareholders…. We believe we are in a strong and unique position to continue to grow and build value in our combined company.

High fives all around the giant mahogany table.

Nilay Patel via Twitter:

Comcast buying out GE’s stake in NBC is a big big deal — broadband companies know that content sells the pipes.

Just think: to get NBC shows, Apple / Intel / Microsoft / whoever will have to deal with Comcast. Broadband economics change dramatically.

Standard Oil, anyone?

Whenever I read about this stuff, there’s one event from my high school history education that springs to mind – the Standard Oil Monopoly of the 1870′s-1880′s. You can read all about it here, and as you do, think about how similar it sounds to what’s been going on with the cable industry today.

At first, Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company focused on horizontal integration – buying up (or forcing out) some of the 250 other, smaller oil companies and refineries so that there weren’t as many people in the same industry to compete with. This is pretty typical in any industry, and what you end up with is something like the cable or cellular industries today (we have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and that’s pretty much it in the US).

However! Here’s where the parallel with this Comcast news becomes scary – Rockefeller and his pals soon realized that although horizontal integration worked pretty well, the way to get even more money was to integrate vertically – controlling not just the production of oil, but also its transportation and distribution.

They signed highly lucrative contracts with train companies to ensure that they could ship oil at a cheaper price than their competitors could, and started to buy up railroad cars, pipelines, terminals and even barreling facilities to ensure that they owned the oil industry in the US. If another oil company wanted to transport its oil across-state, Standard Oil could basically tell them no. Eventually Standard Oil owned 90% of the oil produced in the US and controlled pretty much all the means of distribution. They were a complete and utter monopoly.

Soon, it’ll become hard to compete with dumb pipes. Funny as that sounds.

In the case of Comcast buying NBCUniversal, the pipeline company and the oil company have now become one. This means exactly what Nilay says – if Apple or Microsoft or Google wants to become a pipeline company and ship NBC’s goods, they basically have to ask a direct competitor (Comcast) for the ability to do so. You know what Comcast will say? No. Because it kills their vertically-integrated control of NBC’s content. Why would Comcast let Apple sell NBC content for cheaper than Comcast’s own cable service? They wouldn’t. Apple can sell it for the same price as the other cable companies (like Verizon Cable, Time Warner, etc.) but definitely not at a price that’ll cut into its margins.

The clock is ticking for things to change

Back in the 1880′s Standard Oil’s tentacles of power extended successfully crept into the government, which kept it alive for a long time. Eventually in 1890 the loosely-worded Sherman Antitrust Act came around and let the Supreme Court try to bust them apart in 1892, but because the top executives of the various companies involved were in cahoots with each other already it barely even mattered – innovation was still stagnant. It wasn’t until the early 1900′s when Teddy Roosevelt came around that Standard Oil finally broke up enough to allow competitors to enter the marketplace and lower prices for everyone. It took a really, really, annoyingly-long time for things to get fixed.

Today, the media industry’s tentacles have started to poke and prod government officials into letting it become a vertically-integrated (and nearly unstoppable) beast. Somehow, the FCC and Department of Justice approved this Comcast & NBC merger months ago, and now we have junk like SOPA bubbling around Congress as well. Cable companies don’t feel like competing by improving their service, so instead they’re buying out content companies to make sure they own the entire industry and don’t have to innovate, and the government is letting them do so.

If this kind of stuff continues to happen for a lot longer, the crazy web of who-owns-who will become nearly impossible to untangle without some kind of major intervention. Content companies shouldn’t be owned by people who are financially incentivized to keep them from changing their means of distribution. If TV and movies are better served over the web, then they need to be served over the web at speeds that are comparable to the rest of the modern world. The eventual Apple TV (or something similar) needs to be able to succeed, and if it doesn’t (most likely due to the price of content or its availability), then something is obviously wrong.

Our generation’s battle with cable/media companies is shaping up to be very similar to the battle with Standard Oil (or maybe the more recent breakup of AT&T). I really hope I’m not 40 years old by the time we have extremely fast internet and have all of this TV/Movie access drama sorted out. The fact that bad TV shows I don’t even watch (like Hoarders) plays even a slight part in all of this annoys me.

*Note: In case you’re wondering, Hoarders is owned by A&E, which is owned by NBC Universal Cable, which is now owned by Comcast. So if you’re addicted to new episodes of Hoarders through cable, Comcast is using that addiction to ensure that it doesn’t need to offer Hoarders elsewhere or speed up its internet service (which improves your Netflix/iTunes/Play video-watching experience). Keep watching Hoarders and paying that cable bill, and we all suffer the consequences! (Also, I really hope you aren’t addicted to Hoarders. Although I guess that Honey Boo Boo show is even worse. Jeez.)

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