MS Office for the iPad 2

More thoughts on the topic:

If MS had confidence in their Windows 8 tablet strategy surely they'd hold out the port of MS Office for their own kit. Wouldn't it be the definitive tablet killer app? Maybe, maybe not.

It would be the first time that MS were producing a major product for a platform they didn't control (yes I know that office for mac has been available for years - but it hardly counts). Scary new territory.

MS Office for the iPad

A few posts back I speculated as to whether Miscrosoft would bring Office to the iPad. According to recent tech news Microsoft is indeed in the process of porting its Office suite onto the iPad. If true this is an interesting development. You would have thought that such a move was counter productive given that it could hold off and port Office directly onto the Windows 8 platform for both PC and tablets.

I wonder if they'll get round to doing an Android port?

Size Matters 2

In a tech interview the late Steve Jobs indicated that Apple had done a whole lot of research on optimal screen sizes before launching the iPhone and iPad devices. As per my previous post I don't think that there is much debate that 3.5" - 4" appears to be the optimal size for a mobile screen.

The debate for tablets, however, seems unresolved with devices between 5" and 10" being launched at various times over the last two years. To anyone following the tablet market it comes as no surpirse to realise that Archos, Dell, Blackberry and others have had no luck with the smaller form factors between 5" - 7". Indeed Amazon's much lauded 7" Kindle Fire has recently come in for some poor reviews to do with poor browsing experience among other complaints. So does this mean that anything short of Apple's 9.7" is inadequate? Well I don't think so and it wouldn't surprise me to see a 7.8" iPad3 - Apple has allegedly order a large number of these screens - released next year complimenting the existing form factor.

Why? Well rumours are that the 7.8" screen was a very close second to the 9.7" screen that Apple launched the iPad with. Also if you think back to the days when a lot of pressure was brought to bear upon Apple to enter the netbook market Apple actually responded with an 11" Macbook Air despite Job's earlier statements that anyting under their existing Macbook range of 13" screens was sub optimal. Anyone like me who previouly owned a late, great 12" iBook or PowerBook would realise the flaw in that statement.

Two trick pony

I've had the misfortune to be upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010. IMO it's a horrible piece of bloatware that tells you all you need to know about what's gone wrong at Microsoft. It somehow manages to muck up the casual and power user experience - which let's face it is no mean feat. However, what it does have on it's side is legacy, legacy more legacy.

If we accept for a moment that we're about to begin a journey in the the brave new Post PC world then we have to accpept that one of Microsoft's two big ticket items - Windows - will also wither on the vine. This will place extra pressure on the Office suite of products. So my question today is how long will Microsoft resist writing a native port of Office for the iPad?

The Post PC era

If you read back in this blog you will understand that whilst many people initially dismissed the iPad as a glorified iPhone without the phone, I predicted that it would be a hit. I now believe that iPad (or tablet computer) is primed to replace the PC as the default tool of choice by the information based workforce.

Why? Because for many employees a tablet, whether iOS or Android based, will meet most of the functions they now use their desktops,laptops and blackberrys for. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, voice & video conferencing, BI dashboards and reporting consumption, web enabled data entry, etc. can all now be done using an iPad style device. The tablet is also poised to become a collaboration device in the way that the PC and even laptop can't. More than that I believe that iOS will win out over Android.

Can you imagine software using NFC and SIRI to record attendance, minutes and actions of a meeting and then automatically update time recording/project tracking software of its occurence and cost. I can.

So here's what I'd be doing (and I have suggested this to my CIO).

1. Read the following http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/02/07/i-want-my-ipad-avoiding-it-consumerization-pitfalls/

2. Stop handing out Blackberry's. They are the dead man walking of the mobile industry.
3. Put your Windows 7 upgrade plans on hold whilst you evaluate a mobile migration.
4. Pick your mobile os of choice. Yes folks - It's just like the Windows vs OS/2 argument again. iOS or Android. My money is on iOS as it is more secure, less fragmented and Apple will most likely win the current round of patent wars.
5. Incentivise and support a pilot program of your chosen Mobile OS.
6. Encourage employee's to BYOD's to work.
7. Evaluate Mobile BI offerings.
8. Investigate a custom mobile development strategy. The question remains whether you want to develop generic HTML5 WebApps or dedicated native apps (Objective C for iOS or Java for Android)

Technology meets Liberal Arts

Anyone who studies the origins of the Qwerty keyboard will get the irony that they key layout was designed not for humans but for machine limitations of early physical typrewriter (i.e. to reduce interference between the 'typebars').

I've always felt that Apple might have attempted to change this legacy by coming up with an ingenious new way of interacting with a computer via a new sort of keyboard. And in a way they have - but not as I was envisaged. Note that as I've already stated in previous post I'm not suggesting that Apple have invented anything new here. Apple's strength is not innovation but lies in picking up available technologies, usually poorly implemented, and hitting the sweet spot of user adoption which Jobs described as the intersection between Technology and Liberal Arts.

This happened with the original Apple PC's (Keybaord/screen), then with the first Mac's (Mouse/GUI) then the iPhone/iPad (touch) and now Siri (voice). Let's just think about that for a moment. At the intersection of every one of these user interaction is Apple. That's an amazing track record.

So what's next - my money would be on thought interaction - but that's a long way off I guess. Will Apple still be there. I guess that will depend upon just how much Steve Jobs did or didn't control everything at Infinite Loop.

The ultimate iPad?

I have owned my iPad (first gen 32Gb wifi) for over a year now. By coincidence I just happened to be in San Francisco on launch day and just couldn’t resist getting one. I predicted that they would be a massive hit and so far they have been.

How is it bearing up? Well to be honest it has been a mixed bag. Part of the original justification for purchasing the device was for my wife to use it surfing the web and to avoid scalding her lap but also the long battery life would be a distinct advantage. In reality this benefit was never realised because she still prefers to use the laptop for web surfing. I have to say that I agree with her.

Browsing the web - Don’t tell Steve Jobs but the truth is that surfing the web on an iPad is a bit of a disappointment. I often hit links by mistake or whilst trying to pinch or scroll. This tells that either the device, or my finger, isn’t optimal or precise enough for web surfing. Roughly translated I imagine Cupertino speak for this would be ‘website design has some way to go to be great on a touchscreen device’ but that’s another point. And don’t get me started on Flash because in this case I’m with Jobsy here. The fact that RIM is heavily promoting Flash compatibility on the Playbook just shows how far off the mark they are. Anyway, here’s a rundown feature by feature.

Battery life – is outstanding. Nothing more to say.

Perfromance – I’ve never had any CPU or memory related issues so again all is good. Wifi performance has been poor compared to my laptop on the same network though.

Screen – Despite not matching the ‘retina display’ resolution of the iPhone 4 it is still great. The colours are vibrant for watching movies and playing games. The retina display is rumoured for the iPad3.

Camera - I bought my iPad with my eyes wide open knowing that a camara equipped version (iPad2) would be waiting in the wings. In fact I could never understand at the time why the original iPad didn’t have one. We now know that it was because of graphics limitations with the A4 chip which are now resolved with the A5 successor. Anyway, this is now resolved.

USB/SD Card – Being locked down by iOS to iTunes is part and parcel of the new paradigm of mobile operating systems. This will change to the new iCloud services later. Should we need a file explorer in the 21st Century. I would like to see an inbuilt SD card reader though in the next device.

Keyboard – The iPad’s virtual keyboard is surprisingly decent for typing but I remain confused as to the position of some of the more obscure keys every now and again. The lack of a numbers on the front screen is painful as they are often required for passwords. I ended up purchasing a Bluetooth keyboard which I use when typing on the iPad for any duration.

Design – Both the original iPad and the successor, iPad2 look a cut above any other tablet out there. Top marks to Jonny and the team.

Case – My official Apple rubber/neoprene case hasn’t aged well. It still does the job but looks tatty and I have to remove it when placing the iPad in a dock stand. All resolved with iPad2 and smartcovers.

Apps – Like the iPhone I’m still a bit perplexed by hundreds of thousands of iOS apps. Yes I have a few dozen but as ever these appear to be more about marketing than actual use.

Conclusion – so what more is there to say. The original iPad has been a runaway hit and the iPad2 fixes some of the first gen issues. The inclusion of a USB/SD card port might be my only bugbear but I could fix that if I forked out for the adapter.

The fact that we still prefer to use a laptop at home for web surfing and the fact that I often use a keyboard with my iPad however leads me to think that perhaps the ultimate iPad won’t be the iPad3. If Steve can lower the pricepoint of the next Macbook Air it might just be that.

Travel Happy

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald there is an article discussing the relative merits of the iPad as a travel gadget. Of course the iPad was used as a hook and the comments descended into the usual pro/anti Apple rant.

I have previously discussed the merits of the iPhone as a convergence device but many of the same points apply to the iPad. After all it is just a big iPhone without the phone, isn’t it?

To recap my previous post: A few years ago I was used to lug away on holiday a mobile phone, iPod, PSP, DSLR, camcorder, point and shoot digital camera and occasionally a laptop with all the respective cables and power supplies. I resisted from adding a portable dvd player to this collection. After I got an iPhone I decided to gradually phase out all these devices with the exception of my DSLR.

I now travel on holiday with a combination of iPhone, iPad and DSLR. My phone generally stays switched off. There are obvious advantages of this approach in reduced weight and cost. Also I only need to carry a single charger (my SLR is AAA battery powered) and I invested in an Apple video display cable to which displays the iPhone/iPad video onto hotel TV’s.

As always with convergence devices there are compromises to be made. The pros - iPad battery life, screen quality and build are excellent. The cons - the keyboard is adequate for most tasks but surfing the internet I find inferior compared to the precision of a mouse. Maybe website design just needs to evolve to better satisfy mobile touch screen devices. I also refuse to pay for an SD-card reader that really should be built in as standard.

Am I an Apple fan. I suppose the answer is qualified yes but I’d happily consider the respective Android alternatives out there when the time comes to replace my iPhone and iPad. To avoid vendor lock-in I have so far resisted purchasing content from iTunes and have only paid for a small number of iPhone/iPad apps.

The only device of genuine interest to me remains the Kindle. The iPad is NOT a great eReader. Now only if Amazon would start selling eBooks as cheaply as paper ones.

Is that a computer in your pocket or are you .....

One of my New Years Resolutions was to use Facebook a bit more. My wife is a facebook junkie and whiles hours away on it sat in front of the TV. I just don't get it but each to their own. Having started to use Facebook a bit more my question for today is where is facebook's strategy for tablet computers. The mobile app is fine but is a cut down version of the browser experience so why no app for the iPad for example.

I was intrigued at Mark Zuckerberg's definition of mobile technology at their recent Mobile press event which simply failed in any way to acknowledge the tablet computer as a mobile device. So according to him PC's and smartphones are important but tablets are not.

Link that back to Steve Ballmer's quotes recently about everything being a PC (including tablets and smartphones) thereby all being candidates for Windows (God forbid) and also the recently cleared up confusion from Google about where Chrome and Android sit and we can see that the Cupertino tablet has really caught the competition on the back foot. It seems to me that Job's vision and strategy is the only complete one on the market today.

So back to Facebook. Not only should people be asking why there's no app for the iPad but more importantly is where is the Facephone or FacePad.

I think I need an App for that

You may not know it but we are now in the middle of a new tech land grab as established iPhone developers desperately scramble to get native iPad versions of their apps ready for the new platform. This land grab has been measured by the incredible uptake of the iPad SDK.

And before you say it - yes I know that the vast majority of the existing 150,000 iPhone Apps will upscale and run on the iPad but that's a stopgap at best. No doubt new iPad owners will want shiny new iPad apps.

The land grab is underway because the smart developers know that there's a narrow window of opportunity before the AppStore becomes awash with tens of thousands of iPad apps.

No here's the thing I find most interesting. Viewing the AppStore today on my iPhone I can basically flick through 20 categories and about 300 apps per category - give or take, assuming I have an hour or so spare, that is. That's 6,000 apps I can access before I have to resort to a search strings or the genius recommendation.

This is tip of the iceberg stuff. There are another 144,000 apps out there that it's highly unlikely that I'll every find, unless they're featured in some way. Hence my problem how do I know that these apps exist if they're not featured and I can't easliy access them?

Maybe I need a better way of searching for the apps. You know what - I think I need an App for that!

Benson - 9th Generation PC

I was a huge fan of Paul Woakes' groundbreaking 'Mercenary' computer game, which is probably best remembered for its smooth 3D vector and polygonal graphics. What is perhaps less memorable about the game was that your character was guided through the game by a wiseass sidekick called Benson, a so called 9th generation PC. Benson would alert you when you were under attack, communicate with the locals (the Paylars and Mechanoids), etc. At the time I imagined that Benson was some sort of wearable PDA like device - maybe strapped to your arm, for example. I certainly didn't believe that a 9th generation PC was some beige box, screen and keyboard that you lugged around an alien landscape.

So this has got me thinking - what would the ninth generations of PC look like?

1st - Well a first generation PC is easy - your probably still using one on your desk today
2nd - That would have to be the laptop
3rd - I'm figuring that would be a PDA (Palm Pilots, Psions, Windows CE) or smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) - If I'm honest these are pretty close to what I imagined Benson would be twenty years ago - only perhaps wearable.
4th - Is it the tablet? Time will tell.

What the 5th - 9th generations are still open for the likes of futurologists and sci-fi fans to debate, but here are some candidates:

I'm thinking that 5th generation PC's will be devices like an augmented reality e-paper displays as seen in the movie Red Planet. Alternatively they could be wearable PC's that display augmented reality information onto a HUD style goggles/spectacles, or as some have proposed, contact lenses.

Further afield is impossible to predict but if I had to have a stab at it then genrations 6-9 would adopt technologies proposed in many sci-fi movies (Firefox, Strange Days, Existenz, The Lawnmover Man, The Matrix, Johnny Mnemonic, etc.) which interact directly with our brains via some digital thought bridge, as scary as that might seem.

The one thing I can be certain of - that the existing first gen PC won't be around forever.

What goes around

Every wondered how over the last 20 years or so popular culture has begged, borrowed and stolen everything from the past fifty years or so. I think we're currently upto in 1983 in this playback. Goodness knows where we will go after we've revisited grunge because I don't think anything original has been created since then.

Strangely Enterprise IT has it's cycles to:

Centralised IT - Mainframe and green screen dumb terminal
Client Server IT - Midrange UNIX boxes and desktop PC's. Custom built GUI Applications.
Distributed IT - n-Tier applications, middleware, web and application servers and browser delivered applications.

The problem with this model is that every time we've added something we've also taken away.

Green screens were great for data entry but try viewing a BI dashboard on one. GUI Apps were much prettier than browser apps but required all those installation and network overheads. Browsers are great for distribution and access from anywhere but often have a woeful user interface.

I've been waiting for the last 10 years for the next cycle to arrive. One candidate was the advent of Rich Internet Applications like Ajax, Flash or Curl but frankly I'm still waiting for these to arrive in Enterprise IT.

If the iPad get's picked up for the Enterprise them maybe all that will change and well start to see Apps being developed that are user friendly yet easy on the infrastructure. Isn't that a little bit like a return to the Client Server model.

Netbook Blues

Here at the Department of Hopes and Dreams one of the key strategic initiatives underway at present is Kevin Rudd's Digital Education Revolution (DER). In essence this plan involves providing all teenage school students with a netbook computer. Over time elements of the curriculum will hook into the equipment transforming the education experience. I'm no expert in this field but even I can see the potential here so in one sense hats off to Kevin and Julia for the program. More about that later.

A few years ago I gave a hand me down PC to my Mum as she showed interest in getting on the internet. Despite my Mum attending a few computer courses she's still a technophobe at heart meaning that the PC is effectively used for solitaire, skype, e-mail and a little bit of internet. As we now live 9,000 miles apart Skype Video has become by far the most important of these applications.

A few months ago she got a virus ultimately requireing a complete PC reinstall, a new ISP software CD, etc. Long story short is that the outage lasted about 3 weeks and was only fixed by using the services of a PC repair man.

Now back to the DER. Here in NSW some 500 Technical Support Officers (TSO's) - effectively glorified PC repair men - have been hired to support the program. Maybe it would have been better just to pick a better device than an underpowered PC running windows that wouldn't crash so much - say an iPad or a Google Tablet running Chrome perhaps?

Speaking of which, when Steve gets round to putting a front camera in the iPad I figure it'll be just the deveice for my technophobic Mum.

ROLAP smolap

One of the first ROLAP tools that I came across was Oracle's Discoverer product. As one of Larry's consultants I lead a Data Warehouse Team that delivered our reports using it when it was a brand new product. So new in fact that the client didn't realise that the paint hadn't dried on it and it was actually pre production software. They assumed that Discoverer 3.0 had been preceeded by versions 1.0 and 2.0. and there's another story in there about trusting Oracle Sales and Marketing, but I digress.

Some 12 years later I came across Oracle Discoverer again. To my suprise very little appears to have changed. The EUL and full client looked almost identical. I'm sure that under the hood there have been some changes for intranet, pdf's and web delivery but I'm still a bit amazed about the lack of innovation in the ROLAP world.

Business Objects finally seem to be getting things together with BOXI R3 and I have to admit that I haven't seen Cognos's stuff for a while so for them I can't comment.

The only real innovation I've seen in the last few years was ProClarity, before they were swallowed up by Microsoft, but that's OLAP and not ROLAP offering.

A few years ago I started to believe that the Reporting tools were stagnating and that cubes - whether OLAP or ROLAP weren't the answer. I hoped that the move into RIA (Rich Internet Applications) and tools like Curl would fill that gap but as yet nothing seems to have developed there.

Maybe new platforms like the iPhone and more importantly the iPad will spur the sleeping Reporting giants into a new series of innovation. I hope so.

Apple's BusinessAppStore

With the launch of the iPad, Apple will have three content based online stores. These are:

- iTunes
- AppStore
- iBookstore

What I'm wondering today is whether they need a fourth store dedicated for Business? What I mean by that is that could be potentially hundreds of thousands of business apps that companies might want to deliver internally but not make available to the world at large.

For example, what if I wanted to develop a front end dashboard application for my EIS? As I've already stated in a previous post we are being pressured to deliver pdf reports to our CFO's iPhone which breaks our Warehouse Security model. The potential could be enormous but then so would be the challenges.

For a start - how would Apple charge for a BusinessAppStore. Currently they take 30% of the revenue from all paid iPhone Apps. Security would also be an issue to, of course. But I think the idea has legs.

Just out of interest I noted the other day that there was a SAP Business Objects App for the iPhone so it's obvious that not only Game Developers see interest in Apples devices in a business context.

Expand this concept wider and hook it into Apple's cloud platform, MobileMe, and we really could see something of interest.

140,499 Reasons why the iPad will be a hit

I wanted to give it a few days before commenting about the iPad in order to let the effects of Steve's Reality Distortion Field to abate. Now that it has, here's my take on it.

Most of the tech journoblogs were underwhelmed by the device - and it's hard to argue against the technical critiques of the device. The iPad does have some serious technical deficiencies including, but not limited to:

- no front camera
- no flash support
- no multitasking

Ultimately I believe that none of this will matter and the iPad will be another big hit for Apple. Why? The following numbers are crucial:

- 140,000 - the genius of this device is that pretty much all iPhone Apps will run out of the box on the iPad. The iPhone and iPad SDK's are complementary meaning that anyone who has invested in building iPhone Apps can easily convert to building iPad Apps.

- 499 - the low price point is crucial especially when establishing a new category of device. Would you spend a grand on an iPad when you can get a netbook for half that. Probably not. Reduce the entry point to $499 and the answer will probably be different. I know where I'd be putting my cash.

As to the technical criticisms of the device I'm mainly in agreement with the tech press about their nature, but don't think that this will seriously dampen demand.

- No Front Camera - This is a curious one because I can see no good reason for the omission. There also seem to be some hooks in the iPad SDK to a camera indicating that if not present now a camera will be included in a future update. Maybe its a cost thing or maybe the software wasn't up to scratch. I suspect however that the lack of inclusion may be that the Apple A4 chip just might not have had enough grunt for something like Skype video. I know that my MacBook Pro runs pretty hot when running Skype so that may be a factor.

- Multitasking - Not an issue on the iPhone this may become a real bugbear for the iPad. Time will tell. I suspect that at the heart of this is a philosophical debate about how we will use mobile devices in the future and where we as humans need to multitask in the same way we do with a PC.

- No Flash Player - There seems to be a real spat between Apple and Adobe at the heart of this. Essentially the lack of flash hasn't detracted from the iPhone internet experience. Does anyone imagine that consumers will balk at the point of purchase because there's no Flash support?

Other observations, and what I find most curious about the iPad launch, are the following in no particular order:

- Lacklustre - For me it was one of the lest effective Apple product launches of late. At times they were almost apologetic "you have to hold the device in your hands to understand". Maybe Apple are correct that the real effect won't be understood till people are holding these things for real but compared to the iPhone launch I though this one lacked punch. However the free marketing and hype machine has been in overdrive and for many consumers the soundbyte and image of an iPad in Steve's hands is enough to guarantee sucess.

- To consume or create? That is the question. The PC has always suceeded because it is a flexible creation device. The Walkman, Gameboy and iPod likewise worked because they are great consumption devices. To look at the iPad specs you'd probably think it's more a consumption device (a big iPod Touch) and that would be fine. However then Apple throw in iWork at $10 a module but also leave out iLife. This is interesting because iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand) has always been bundled free with Macs. It's obvious that Apple cannot bundle iLife into the iPad and keep the price point low so why develop iWork for the iPad and sell it for a few bucks? My thoughts here are that Apple has big ambitions for the iPad in the workplace but won't agressively market it as such. They will let private individuals champion the device in the way the iPhone is in the workplace today. In a year or two from now I can see iPads cropping up on desks next to PC's and being used for calendar, email, internet together with the usual office suspects (word processing, speadsheets and presentations). They won't instantly replace the desktop or Microsoft Office but over the next decade I believe we will start to see the use of PC's diminish as they are replaced by tablet computers.

- Limitations? Remember the original iPhone? It was panned by the critics for being 2G. People were suspicious about touchscreen phones and the lack of a tactile keyboard. I suspect that we will look back at the first generation iPad in the same way. It's a placeholder for the main event if you like.

- MultiTouch - There was nothing new here really on the UI front, but again the beauty of the software keyboard and touchsceen means that any new developments can be introduced over time.

- The new Goldrush - What's interesting that Apple used the term "goldrush" in their hype when describing the iPad AppStore. If I remember from North American Goldrushes of the 1800's it was the merchants and traders selling pick axes that got rich and not the prospectors.

To summ up - Is the iPad all it could have been - probably not, but has Apple done enough to establish a new type of device. Definately.