Tech IT Easy » Wii

On Geeks and Apple and how iPad seals their Divorce

ceciiil — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:43:18 +0000

I do admire Geeks. I have nothing but respect for their work.

Their contribution with open source software to today’s world is unquestionnable. The idea that a bunch of coders came up with such great solutions as Firefox, Linux, Gimp, Eclipse, OpenOffice, JBoss (and all Java Enterprise frameworks) to name a few that I use on an everyday basis, this idea is just amazing.

Back in the day when I was working for In Fusio, a start-up doing video games and services for the mobile phone industry, I had this wonderful opportunity to work with a bunch of the most talented ones. These guys implemented the first over-the-air download system for mobile phones back in the early 2000′s. In 2 and a half years I’ve learnt as much as I would have in ten years in any other company.

What I’ve noticed though, is that geeks are not passionate about products. They are passionate about technology.

Just like old tribes have rites to pass and become a man, one has to harness the technology to get some consideration from a Geek.

00′s : a decade of Geeks splendor

The last 15 years have been the stage of a continued irruption of technologies and disruptive products : mobile phone, internet, broadband, Social Web, iPod, iPhone, Nintendo Wii and the democratization of the computer.

Geeks loved it because this was a world they would fully understand and dominate : innovation was a matter of technology and they were amongst the happy few to fully harness it, i.e able to hack it.

Their general position towards Apple has historically be mainly supportive. To start with, Steve Jobs has been the only one to dare and stand before Bill Gates on the PC market.

Besides, iMac have been a perfect alternative to PC, especially since the turn of the millenium with the advent of MAC OS/X based on BSD Unix. Just like on Linux, they would join the brave David to fight the Microsoft Goliath. They were able to hack the system, but in addition, they would be using a glamorous OS and benefit from the glorious image of the Apple brand.

D.I.V.O.R.C.E

The divorce between Geeks and Apple started with the iPhone. First you can’t hack it, or rather Apple doesn’t want you to. Then, there was the iPhone App store. This is the time where the real difference of vision between Steve Jobs and Geeks became blatant.

Steve Jobs is interested in a) providing the best and simplest products and applications to the broader range of people b) providing a unified user experience and c) fostering an ecosystem : iPod has iTunes, iPhone has App store.

With the App Store, anyone can develop and distribute a piece of software that anybody will be able to install and run smoothly on a glamorous device. Applications became social objects as opposed to technological trophies.

While making the iPhone SDK public, Jobs offered the possibility to anyone to be really innovative. I.e not only along the technological axis but also on the design, marketing and usability ones.

Here is the problem for Geeks : technology is largely democratized. Technological prowesses are no longer something to be proud of. Lovely apps are. What people want is apps that are useful and usable by anyone, regardless of how complicated they are.

Steve Jobs vision has completely hidden the technology behind the usability in the innovation definition. In Geeks law, this is sacrilege.

iPad = the Wii of the computing world

There comes the iPad. No spectacular new technology : iPad is merely a big iPod from a hacker perspective. No multi-task, not possible to develop applications etc … No chance he can gain any traction in the Geeks community.

This reminds me how hard core gamers mocked the Wii when it came out. The technical specifications were just ridiculous compared to forthcoming PS-3 or XBox 360. However, in the end who won ? Wii because the strategy was not to bring the best technology to the minority of hard core gamer. It was to bring the best product to the majority of people, with a special target on people that never played video games before.

How ? In bringing a product that is fun and dead easy to use.

(Geeks still managed to do incredibly fun things while hacking the Wii though)

iPad = iPhone for senior people

iPad strategy is identical : to bring a glorious user experience to people that shy away from the technology.

My take : this is a fantastic device that will have tremendous success with senior people. Senior people don’t care about technology. They care about products : ease, usability, design. To read their paper. To browse the internet. To play around on a big enough screen with the pictures of their grand children.

And to read books. And to buy books.

iPhone is the perfect products for teenagers and active people : small, mobile, connected, sexy.

iPad will be the perfect product for senior people : comfortable, large, easy : the best user experience to do few things but to do them with maximal comfort.

Single Task as a feature

iPhone is used on the go in hectic times. iPad will be mainly used for relaxing purposes in a single-task environment. The latter being more a feature then a restriction.

I was quite dubious regarding the positioning : I’m now fully convinced that it fits nicely between the iPhone and the Laptop. Laptop will still be used by coders to develop apps for the App Store, and active people with multi-tasking activities.

I don’t think iPad will take the place of the latter : rather it will be a perfect add-on to complete our lives digitalisation process.

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Another look at Nintendo's blue ocean strategy

Kari Silvennoinen — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:19:44 +0000

Nintendo released the new channel, Nintendo Channel, for Wii recently in Europe. It was released about a week after WiiWare, the channel that enables online shopping and downloading of games. WiiWare is interesting in the sense that we can easily expect some really amazing stuff coming out through that channel, while Nintendo Channel is something that exemplifies why Wii is different from other consoles.

It is an interesting channel in regards to Nintendo’s blue ocean strategy (discuess earlier here by Jeremy), but like many other aspects of Wii, it leaves me wanting more. The channel is basically an advertising/marketing channel for Nintendo. You can download demos, see information and trailers about upcoming games, and some other stuff. One of these additional functionalities is the feedback section, where you can submit feedback back to Nintendo on the games you’ve played on your Wii. You can also enable a tracking feature so that your Wii will send information what you do (the same info it shows in your Message view) to Nintendo and in exchange the channel will recommend you titles and allows you to download demos for DS. All in all, really simple stuff, but the execution is really nice – and dead simple.

I know that one main aspect of Wii is its simplicity and many of the things I think I’d want it to do would just make it too complex. I’m well aware the limitations of the console – most of which seem likeconscious design decisions by Nintendo. The hardware has been optimized for cost and really makes the developers focus on the gameplay (instead of graphics, like on the other next-gen consoles). The software and mutliplayer are made as child-safe as possible, to the point that mutliplayer racing in Mario Kart Wii feels like anonymous one-night-stand-orgy. It’s a bit like with most Apple products, you know the limitations in (mostly) advance and accept them as they are the reason “things just work”.

Remote would be one solution to aforementioned problem, but that of course is totally infeasible solution. Wireless broadband adoption of today doesn’t also warrant spending too much time on making I find it sad that some innovative features are underutilized with the Wii. I’d love that my Mii character would actually be “in the cloud” and propagate through my friends, carrying over my settings and accomplishments. Now, my Mii can only propagate a read-only copy of its appearance across other Wiis. No doubt the authentication scheme for such feature would be a nightmare. I like to fantasize something like this was in the initial vision of Wii, because otherwise I can’t understand why the Wii Remote has storage capabilities. Tying your character to a WiiMiis the global representation of my Wii gaming they could be. The ubiquoitus rules of unlockable content on console games mean that, as it is today, my gaming experience depends on how far the I or owner of the Wii I’m playing has progressed in a game and not how far I have progressed in some Wii. I guess this tradition will remain for all nomad Miis who wander from a firend’s Wii to another.

The current “next-gen” consoles have me split. While Wii is truly exciting and something new, it is a bit too centred still on the age-old Italian plumber. The Playstation 3, on the other hand, has only GTA IV going for it (okay, and Super Rub-a-Dub) and it’s twice the price. Xbox 360 just doesn’t feel right, and that it has like twenty different editions á la Vista doesn’t help. The Wii of course has lots of hidden fees in form of accessorizing (Component cable, Wii Wheel, Wii Fit…), but the other consoles are guilty of this to some extent too.

What interests me in today’s console gaming is multiplayer, both on my sofa and online. Both of these aspects are taken more into account on the Wii, where most gaming has been designed as a group activity. PS3 and Xbox360 have taken the more traditional PC way of mutliplayer and have focused on online only, which is stupid as the expectation that my friends would be online at the same time at their own homes playing the same game is really, really far-fetched. On the other hand, some games insanely enough do not supportmultiplayer on the same console even if they have online-multiplayer. This anti-social tendency I can understand in story-driven games as GTA IV, but not otherwise.

I did answer on Nintendo Channel’s feedback section that, in my opinion, Mario Kart Wii is, in fact, a Hardcore game (as opposed to casual). Once you’ve passed the easiest cups you start to see the classic Nintendoesque features. The game cheats as much as it can in the hard mode, just like in Mario Strikers Charged Football. It’s amazing just how in the last 10 meters or so, I’m hit with all the suffering theWii can inflict on me (red and blue shells, lightning…) just like it’s able to make a goal in the last second despite me trying to tackle the seemingly invincible player with all my players.

It is really exciting to see how Nintendo tries to do new innovative things with Wii. This has been no doubt a risky decision, but it seems to have paid off as Wii is still outselling other consoles, even though its pricing is exactly the same as on the launch date. The other consoles have seen aggressive price cuts, no doubt in part response to the success of Wii.

I’m quite sure that Wii can and will probably surprise us in the future, but I’m afraid the initial design decisions of PS3 and Xbox360 means that they can only replicate or improve, but not innovate. One reason, I guess, is because of people like me, who want to expect certain things from them. There’s no room for innovation when you got expectations on top of long traditions. In those circumstances you can only perform.

Cheap and simple VR – in your living room

Emmanuel Perez-Duarte — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:31:02 +0000

Just a quick find that I found fun, and genuinely interesting, as it is not yet another try at bulky and/or expensive VR systems (remember those huge helmets and gloves that made you dizzy after 30 seconds?).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw]

It is still in the early stages of development – and is not even an official/business-oriented development, but hey: it seems simple enough to have a realistic dream about it being in our living room in the near future.

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