Episode 183 of the Mac Power Users Podcast is a great overview on the current state of home automation. The magnificent Merlin Mann being the guest doesn’t hurt either.
box fight
Good analysis from Ben Thompson on where Box and Dropbox are coming from:
In other words, what we have here is one of the more interesting business experiments we’ve ever seen: is it better to have established a firm foundation in the top-down enterprise market that actually matters – i.e. Box – or to have built tremendous goodwill and customer loyalty with actual users – i.e. Dropbox?
There is another aspect to it that he doesn’t talk about. Both companies are from the US. Both will have to deal with a blow to their business because of the NSA. I don’t see a major company outside of the US choosing Box or Dropbox now and some existing business clients will most certainly leave Box. It’s a shame but it is not the fault of the companies nor of the boxes.
We will see how this will turn out. I used to think that Box is better positioned but post Snowden Dropbox might be slightly better off having already started to establish a platform1 agnostic way for app developers to store personal data from their customers.
-
As in Apple, Google. Should I call it ecosystem agnostic? ↩
Music is mainly purchased through aggregators like iTunes and Spotify who charge a hefty tariff. You need a comprehensive catalog to convince users to commit to a payment relationship.
In-app payments on iOS and Android are the one place where paid snacks exist at scale. They have been wildly successful, quickly becoming the dominant business model for games, replacing up-front payments and banner ads. (There are individual games that generate over one billion dollars per year from in-app payments.) Outside of games, entrepreneurs have started building interesting new products that wouldn’t have been viable without in-app payments.
https://newnetland.com/2013-09-music-is-mainly-purchased-through-aggregators-like/
Memo #1 to Jeff Bezos: Try Washington Post Prime
Memo #1 to Jeff Bezos: Try Washington Post Prime
“My bet is Jeff Bezos will use lessons from Amazon’s Prime service. For Monday Note readers outside the United States, Amazon Prime is a special service from which, for an annual fee of $79 (€60), you get free two-days shipping, free video streaming and the right to borrow Kindle titles in a catalog of 350,000 (I can hear writers and bookstore owners faint…) The least we can say is that it worked: more than 10m people joined the Prime program (including a couple of friends of mine who quickly dumped their cable subscription — call it collateral damage…) And that’s just the beginning: Amazon expects to reach 25m Prime customers by 2017. Even more interesting: when you cough up eighty bucks a year to use the service, you also tend to buy more, that’s the juiciest psychological facet of the Prime program.”
Bundling on a grand scale.
And yet, under Ballmer, everyone at Apple would be working so hard, and be making so much money, both for themselves and for Apple’s shareholders, that they would ensure that Apple never again reinvents consumer computing.
See, if Steve Ballmer were the CEO, Apple would make more money, but they would slowly but surely become irrelevant. Just like Microsoft.
[..]Ballmer did exactly what our capitalist system dictate he do: he maximized profits to the benefit of Microsoft’s shareholders. The implications of suggesting he was a failure are far more profound than most of his many critics likely realize.
Faszinating analysis by Ben Thompson. If you look closely you can see arguments being made which are being talked about constantly by Horace Dediu.
I think we are close to the beginning of a sea change in business science.
https://newnetland.com/2013-08-and-yet-under-ballmer-everyone-at-apple-would-be/
Lastly, the disruption of the TV will empower a new entertainment platform like no other. When you think about devices like smartphones, tablets, and PCs, we understand them to be largely computing platforms. Of course, elements of entertainment take place, but so do levels of creativity and productivity. What the three platforms I mentioned have in common from a computing perspective is a software development kit (SDK), enabling software developers to write relevant applications for these computing platforms. What excites me about the disruption of the TV is the prospect of an SDK for the TV. It would transform the TV, for the first time ever, into a platform that smart developers can write unique new applications for. We have not yet even scratched the surface of this idea. Those who have the most to lose when TV gets disrupted need not fear piracy; they should fear the SDK. When developers can take advantage of a platform, the possibilities are endless.
Why We Want TV to Be Disrupted So Badly | TIME.com
Fear the SDK.
https://newnetland.com/2013-08-lastly-the-disruption-of-the-tv-will-empower-a/
Amazon is not a media company
Bendict Evans:
“Amazon is not a media company; it’s a leveraged play on the conversion of the entire economy (or as much of it as possible) to ecommerce.”
Netflix UK users will get to stream new Breaking Bad episodes just a day after US broadcast
Netflix UK users will get to stream new Breaking Bad episodes just a day after US broadcast
What if Netflix and the likes become the go-to licensing partners abroad for US TV?
Why that would make sense you ask? Think lots of countries worldwide and transaction costs.
Who in a few years will be able to deliver worldwide? Exactly.
LinkedIn On A Roll
“It’s been pretty obvious from the stock price, but LinkedIn, which I’ve written about every so often, is really on a roll lately. The influencer content play (which I will admit I’ve been part of, in a small way) is a clear winner, the company is enjoying very positive press, and its premium services are getting really interesting as well.”
John Battelle is impressed and so am I.
LinkedIn has a clear vision and right now it seems to be doing everything right. I have said that for years: In a lot of ways LinkedIn is the biggest threat to Twitter.
ē The (alleged) 13-inch iPad and the triumph of thin clients
ē The (alleged) 13-inch iPad and the triumph of thin clients
“While a classic thin architecture moves processing to the server, enabling cheaper clients, those clients still have a GUI, mouse and keyboard. In other words, the experience is largely the same as a fat client, minus the superior performance and responsiveness. Tablets, however, are orthogonal to PCs; they are inferior in some ways (performance, text entry), but superior in others (size, battery life, touch). They have a reason-to-own other than price.
Thinking about capabilities beyond processing casts Microsoft’s Windows 8 troubles in stark relief. Windows 8, with it’s mixture of touch and WIMP-interface is the ultimate fat client. But by combining so many capabilities, it necessarily compromises them as well.
Today’s thin clients, on the hand, specialize. A pure tablet is superior for touch-based applications; a pure PC is superior for keyboard-and-mouse ones. An e-ink reader is superior for reading, and a 13-inch iPad would be superior for (in my case) drawing and making music. And while many people now use two devices, I think that’s only the beginning (I’m personally at four and the 13″ iPad would be number five).”
The always insightful Ben Thompson.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- …
- 27
- Next Page »
