Why the smartphone is more like a car than an MP3 player

Clayton Christensen is one of the most celebrated business thinkers and writers. His seminal writings on the subject of “Disruptive Innovation” helped to explain the forces of commoditisation. In this, he argued that most companies focus on the top of their market, where the profit comes from. This makes them vulnerable to cheaper, but “good enough”, upstarts innovating at the bottom of the market. This is a good thesis to explain the consumer electronics market, where it has been proven true again and again. But I don’t think it helps explain the nature of the smartphone market.

Superficially, Christensen’s explanation seems to neatly define why a company like Apple is vulnerable. After all, Apple is the very definition of a successful company focussing on the top of the market. They are therefore doomed, as the narrative goes. But I don’t think this is the case - and the easiest way to explain why, is to look not at consumer electronics but at cars.

For if Christensen were universally right, a company like BMW shouldn’t exist. Toyota, Skoda and Nissan long ago proved there are cheaper, reliable, and functional alternatives at half the cost of a BMW. So why is BMW not just still here, but thriving?

I believe that BMW exists because its product exhibits a number of attributes that make it immune to the forces of commoditisation:

1. Innovation means the product is continuously being reinvented, not just refined. Electric drivetrains, safety changes, self-driving and entertainment innovations all mean the car of tomorrow is nothing like the car of today. As a result, consumer expectations of “good enough” are constantly advancing.
2. Consumers highly value the fashion, brand and aspirational social status of the products. These things ensure “good enough” isn’t good enough for anyone who can afford to pay a little more.
3. The product is essential to consumer’s lives and is used on a constant basis - meaning it’s easier for consumers to justify an upgrade or investment, because of the critical nature of the product.

Once an MP3 player has enough storage capacity, it’s hard to imagine how it can be “better”. But a car isn’t an MP3 player. So we always want the next innovation because it improves our lives. Or sometimes we don’t need it, but we’ll still buy it because that new metalwork looks “oh, so stylish”. In these ways BMW ensures its continued place as an innovator at the top of the market.

Despite its position in the consumer electronics industry, the smartphone is more like a car than an MP3 player. The definition of a modern smartphone is continuously changing, manufacturers have successfully worked out how to exploit fashion and brand and the product is at the centre of how we live our lives.

Continuous product redefinition

Some have fallen into the trap of thinking a smartphone is a phone - and is already “good enough”. Like an MP3 player, it’s hard to imagine how different or better a telephone needs to be. But the last thing a smartphone is, is a telephone.

My teenage daughter has removed the phone app from the home-screen of her iPhone. Where I see a phone icon in the bottom-left corner, she has a messaging app. When I questioned her, she very logically protested that “nobody my age uses a phone”. Her iPhone is a computer, not a telephone. Notice how the original iPhone press release talks about the iPhone being a “Breakthrough Internet Communications Device”.

Whilst the power of the original iPhone seemed adequate for the time, the processor of today’s is 50x the performance of that device. It is hard to imagine using that original iPhone today - it would be far too limiting and slow for anything remotely serious. But more significantly, that processor innovation has enabled entirely new uses for the smartphone - some of the things we now use it for weren’t even conceived in 2007.

When we judge the level of innovation in the smartphone market, we shouldn’t look at individual product releases. That’s like saying “is the 2015 BMW 520i sufficiently different from the 2014 520i to make people upgrade?” (which of course it isn’t). Rather like the car market, we can only see the true level of innovation across product cycles. So “is the iPhone 6s sufficiently better then the iPhone 4 to tempt upgraders?” is perhaps a better question to judge the level of innovation.

One data point for how the definition of a good smartphone is changing is that people now talk seriously of the smartphone replacing the camera. Indeed, the compact camera market is already succumbing to this threat. The camera on the original iPhone was just a toy, but the latest models can be considered serious cameras in their own right.

We can now edit videos, play high-end games, compose music, write documents, edit images and many other tasks on our smartphones. Product innovation is changing what a smartphone is, not just refining its capabilities.

And there is much yet to come - who wouldn’t pay for a smartphone with a week-long battery life, a screen that’s as easy to read as a book in sun-light, or that provides dynamic haptic feedback that makes the on-screen keyboard feel “real”? The smartphone of tomorrow will be radically different to that of today - and we’ll almost certainly find we need those innovations.

Fashion, brand and social status

We value the design, style and quality of our cars, and we do the same with our smartphones. For an essential item we use all the time, many are willing to spend the money to get a better model. Or to trade-up when our current model starts to look a little tatty around the edges.

Many upgrade their cars every few years. We don’t have to - for although the seats may be a little dirty and the paintwork not as shiny as it once was, our old car is frequently still perfectly functional. But “perfectly functional” isn’t good enough when we can afford something better. The same is true with smartphones. We change our smartphone for often similar reasons that we change our car. The new model looks nicer, is faster, has more features. We might not need it, but we want it.

Whilst some who don’t see the appeal of a “premium” product, that attitude is a relatively niche one. Whatever the rights and wrongs, there’s undeniably a healthy market associated with aspiration and style.

But aspirational brands and products shouldn’t be mistaken as purely superficial. If that were the case, consumers would soon catch-on. A BMW is a genuinely good car and very well engineered. The fit-and-finish is excellent and it drives superlatively. That quality allows the brand to have a consistent appeal over many years.

An iPhone’s engineering is similarly great. Like a BMW’s engine, it’s processor design is industry leading and the physical engineering of it’s case is top class. Even if you value other attributes of competing products, it’s hard to ignore the quality and engineering inherent in the design. And so there’s a substance to its position as a “premium” product that allows it to hold that position consistently.

There may be cheaper products that are perfectly functional. But “perfectly functional” isn’t the aspiration for many. Like cars, smartphone brands and products have become aspirational.

Critical role

Our smartphones are how we communicate with both loved ones and colleagues, they are how we navigate, they entertain us with games, we listen to our music collection on them and they are how we consume the day’s news events. Without a smartphone, most of us would be lost in the modern world.

If you’re one of those modern city-dwellers who’s calculated that a combination of public transport and Uber are more cost efficient than car ownership, I bet I couldn’t prize your smartphone from you hand? And if I did, how would you know the times of the trains or how to book an Uber?

We have only to watch the human misery of mass migration on the news to notice one common and consistent theme. Those who have left their homes in hope of a better life carry one thing with them: their smartphone. The smartphone is their link to reality amongst a sea of misery. It helps people keep in contact with loved ones in the most trying of circumstances and helps them navigate treacherous routes to safety. If you’re going to leave a war-torn country and travel half-way around the globe, your smartphone (and it’s charger) is your most prized possession.

The smartphone isn’t just a critical communication device for the chattering classes, it’s become essential to people of all backgrounds.

But…

There’s one enormous difference between a new BMW and a new iPhone. The finance payments on a new BMW are hundreds of pounds every month, but a new iPhone can be purchased outright for just one of those monthly payments. As such, the iPhone becomes the “affordable luxury” for not just the elite, but the masses.

Much like the car, we have a product in the smartphone that is essential to people’s lives, is constantly being redefined through innovation and appeals to the sensibilities of fashion and style. I think it’s reasonable to consider the smartphone market much more like the car market than the consumer electronics one. That’s why premium smartphones continue to exist and why people continue to buy them. The smartphone is much more like a car than an MP3 player.

Taking the blue pill

I previously blogged about breaking rules and why it should be a skill we all learn and perfect.

In this post I’d like to present the counterpoint to my previous argument. Today I shall be arguing why rule breaking is a bad thing.

Breaking rules puts you on the outside. It excludes you from the ruler-maker’s club. This makes it tough for you to influence that club. For throwing small stones from the outside can be tough when the windows are reinforced. Pebbles are useless, you need boulders. And you probably don’t have boulders.

Instead of futile pebble throwing, work out how to get on the inside. Work out how to infiltrate the system, and then influence it from the inside - this can be much more effective.

Bide your time, hold your tongue. Hide your opinions when they are strong. Keep yourself to yourself until you’re on the inside. Don’t give your hand away. Have patience.

Breaking rules can have the effect of offending the rule makers. It puts their backs up. People who might otherwise have supported you might turn away - making it more difficult to influence them.

Showing anger or emotion can be a sign of weakness. It can be used against you - “he’s unstable, he’s letting his emotions get away with him”. Better not to display that anger, so you appear reasonable. The rule makers love reasonable people, people who don’t threaten their position.

Rule breaking is also the more difficult path personally. You’ll have a tough time, feel on the outside, feel not one of the club. That can be tough emotionally. Sometimes it's better to play the system to get on.

Gaining influence and position is the objective. For without influence and position it’s hard to change things. This is why politicians sometimes compromise their principles in order to broaden their support - for a politician can only really change things if they get elected. To be elected on a manifesto of doing half what you would like, is better than not to be elected at all.

Once you’ve become elected or gained entry to the rule maker’s club, that’s when you can start changing things. Perhaps. Maybe you’ll just bide your time a little more to consolidate your position. You’re a new girl/boy in the club, after all - it would not be prudent to make a noise until your support is broad. Perhaps you can make some small changes whilst you prove yourself. Next year might be the time to do something more dramatic. Perhaps.

Do you still want to take the red pill? Perhaps the blue one is looking more attractive? Does the blue pill feel like you’re selling out? Or maybe you feel you can manage the conflicts associated with it? Maybe the blue pill is the way to get things done? Life is complicated.

Breaking rules

We should all follow the rules, right?

Countries have laws, companies policies, societies rules. They all amount to the same thing - an attempt to place some order on chaos.

If the rules are wrong, we work to change them, we don't break them. For if we just ignore them, chaos would reign. No organisation can allow any random person to ignore its rules. This is how civilisation and business was built, right?

Actually, no.

Civilisation was built by people breaking the rules. Women got the vote because people were willing to break the rules of the day. Slavery was abolished because people broke rules.

Maybe we shouldn’t compare the epic struggles for human rights with the stuggles associated with a startup business. That might be going too far. Or is it? There are some similar principles at work - the overriding need for change.

Uber cannot request new rules to support its new form of taxi service. To do so would probably take decades, as a combination of intertia and vested interests work to frustrate any change. No, it sometimes needs to break or skirt-around those rules in order to launch its business in a new city. In so doing, it creates evidence of demand for its service that pressures authorities into making their rules match the new reality. Change doesn't happen by people asking politely, because the polite request is likely to be squashed. To get change you need to create a lot of noise.

It turns out that most rules are put in place by old rich people. I say that provocatively. I don't necessarily mean really rich people, just people who have something to lose. Those with a certain investment in the way things are. That immediately means anyone who’s worked their way into a position of influence - they owe their role in society to the rules within which they've worked. They're probably a bit older than most because you have to work your way through a system to be the custodian of the rules. Rules are hardly ever made by the people at the bottom - the poor, the young, those without influence or eduction. No, rules are made by the old rich people. And there’s a problem with that.

Old rich people are susceptible.

Some of them just can't envisage a world that's different. They’ve spent their lives getting to where they are with a certain mental model. It's not their fault, but they just struggle to see that things could or should be organised differently. They have become set in their ways and are blind to the need for change.

Some of them just don't want to change because it's not in their own interest.

And some of them are perhaps easily influenced. There are a lot of vested interests lobbying to keep things a certain way. A little naivety can make an individual susceptible to the wrong influence. A friendly handshake, a nice meal, a feeling of friendliness - these and other flatteries can influence minds. In contrast, the uncouth protestors, the angry, the disrupters - they're dangerous, not one of us. This is why “political lobbyist” is a job - subtle influence works. It’s especially effective when you have money - for the nice meal, the day at Ascott and the like don’t come cheap.

There's one other thing about the rule setters. They're very good at coaching their successors, in creating a system whereby others achieve a role in the system through effort. Small incentives of prestige ensure there's always a new generation to take over - but one which fundamentally thinks the same way. The status quo can be maintained.

So for those that want to fundamentally change things, it's a tough gig. That's why they often don't play by the rules. For if they did, nothing would happen. Or it would happen at a glacial pace, which is the same thing.

That's why companies like Uber sometimes fly a bit close to the wind. It's why some argue that Google plays it fast and loose with the copyright of newspapers and books. It's why technology companies sometimes get sued - for to build a new product without treading on the toes of any existing providers is sometimes impossible. It's why the phrase “it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission” is a mantra of those wanting to change things.

Change often doesn't happen within the rules. The rules are put there to keep things the way they are. Maybe that's not the explicit objective of those setting them, but it's the inevitable outcome. Old rich people just don't change things quickly or easily.

This is why the rule setters are often outraged to see rule breaking. The outrage is genuine, but sometimes misplaced. For rule breaking is a critical part of change. It has to happen, or things stagnate. It's why some companies lose markets - their system of rules and politics prevents them from recognising the need for change. Blackberry and Nokia, I'm thinking of you.

But of course breaking any and every rule will just get you into trouble and results in chaos. So, a key life skill is learning which rules to break and when. Which ones will be overlooked if the change turns out to be good? This can often be a finely balanced evaluation. Go too far and you're sacked or put in prison. Don't go far enough and nothing changes.

I wonder why our schools and universities don't address this challenge? These institutions seem the embodiment of “the rules are here for a reason” attitude. But I'm not sure that helps in passing on the skill of rule breaking.

After all, were some people not willing to break the rules, women might never have got the vote, slavery not have been banished and we’d be standing in the rain waiting half an hour for a taxi.

So perhaps we should all stop before venting at a rule breaker. Perhaps their form of rule breaking isn't so outrageous if we stop to think about it? Perhaps they're ushering in a form of positive change that can't happen without some rule breaking.

Rather than criticising those who break the rules, maybe we should consider rule breaking as part of a broader system? A system that tolerates some rule breaking in order to remain flexible to change. Exactly which rules we can break is the big life lesson we all need to learn.

By the way, you have watched ‘The Matrix' trilogy, haven't you? For ‘The Matrix’ is the embodiement of a system that survives precisely because it has learnt the need to allow rule breaking.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” The Matrix.

I salute the rule breakers, the ones who take the red pill.

 

Posted with Blogsy

App craftsmanship

Bespoke artisan furniture; we can all appreciate it, even if we can’t afford it. There’s a place for Ikea, mass production and flat-pack, but there’s also a place for craft.

It’s similar with software. There’s a phrase “code is craft”. The mobile app revolution is perhaps one of the best examples of that philosophy.

We’re not talking business cases, global delivery, multi-platform development or sprawling requirements here. We’re talking software developed by a handful of people, or maybe even a single person, building the absolutely best thing they can. We’re talking small nuggets of software perfection.

I can think of two good examples of this: Tweetbot (Twitter client) and NetNewsWire (RSS reader). Both of these apps are something rather special. They are also the two most-used apps on my iPhone. Every day I use them to keep abreast of the world around me. And they are both little nuggets of perfection - created by software artisans.

The UI design of these apps is subtle. They are both designed to fit within iOS in a respectful way. They don’t attempt to reinvent the wheel, but use standard UI capabilities, extending only where useful. Branding is exhibited through subtle use of colour, icon design and animation. Nothing is overt, everything feels natural - as if it had been desiged by Jonny Ive himself.

Discrete might be another way of explaining this kind of design philosophy. Being discrete and subtle sometimes takes a lot more effort and thought than being brash or overt.

Take the way that NetNewsWire subtly colours the navigation bar with the theme of the news article’s source. We don’t see a brash logo, but rather just a subtle colouring. As a result, everything feels consistent. But articles are also differentiated in a discrete way.

And take the way that everything in Tweetbot scrolls at 60fps. Consistently smooth inertia scrolling at 60fps takes design effort. That effort isn’t obvious, but it’s there. This kind of attention to detail is needed if you want an app to be something special. It’s not easy to measure and justify the effort involved. But it matters if you want to delight your users.

Sweating these details matters - because it creates something a little special. And when something’s a bit special, it’s obvious - in the same way that a hand-built piece of furniture is obviously special.

I use NetNewsWire and Tweetbot not just because they get the job done, but because I appreciate the thought that has been poured into them. Using apps like this is pleasurable.

In contrast, some other apps annoy me every time I use them. Their brash colours, their clumsy styling, their inept attempts to re-interpret standard UI controls for no purpose, their stuttery scrolling. Some exceptional examples have even failed to update for iPhone 6/6+ screen sizes, continuing to operate in zoom-mode a year later - hardly an attempt to delight users.

Much has been said and written about the economic difficulties of making a business in app development, with so many free or £0.69 apps around. But I gladly coughed up the ‘premium’ price for Tweetbot and NetNewsWire.

When I say ‘premium’, I mean the price of a couple of Cappuccinos, which perhaps puts things into perspective. I can drink coffee for a few days, or I can buy an app I’ll use every day for the next couple of years, at which point I’ll gladly pay again for the upgraded version.

There’s a role for something better and that role has value. Many of us still appreciate craftsmanship and are willing to pay for it.

I cannot afford to furnish my house with bespoke furniture. But luckily, software craftsmanship is cheap. If you can afford a Starbucks, you can afford a good app. So when you see a great app that costs a few pounds, compare it to the value you get from a coffee. Apps like Tweetbot and NetNewsWire are enormous bargains.

Apple Pay - the first novel payment system that actually works for users?

I used Apple Pay last week for the first time. It’s really excellent and a huge contrast to other mobile payment solutions I’ve used or looked at. I thought it worth a little analysis of what’s going on with Apple Pay because there are some interesting lessons here.

To start things off, it’s worth recapping why other mobile payments solutions have struggled to succeed. I’ve previously been quite dismissive of those solutions because they all have at least one of the following drawbacks:

1. They aren’t secure. e.g. Barclays bPay thing is very convenient, but relies on a £20 limit on transaction value as there's is no way to authenticate a transaction. I can’t accept the idea of so little security on a banking transaction, regardless of the imposed limits. bPay is just a digital version of cash - if you lose the physical bPay device, you quite possibly lose all the money loaded onto it.
2. They are actually less convenient than our normal European chip+pin solutions. Unlocking a phone, finding and launching an app and entering a secondary security code is a surprisingly common series of steps. Or loading money from your bank account into a special new “mobile wallet”, that comes with yet another passcode to remember. These approaches are less convenient than a plastic card. And the £20 transaction limit on UK contactless payments pretty much limits its use to coffee+sandwich only - hardly convenient.
3. There’s no critical mass of acceptance at retailers. If I can’t actually use a new payment method to buy the things I need, it’s pretty useless. There’s a profusion of interesting “fintech” payment solutions - but you have to really try hard to find a retailer that accepts them and there’s no realistic prospect of that changing.

I think that Apple Pay looks like it might be a winner - because it ranks well on all three of my problem fronts:

1. It’s secure - you can’t pay without authenticating with TouchID. And TouchID is almost certainly more secure than a 4-digit PIN code that anyone can steal by looking over your shoulder.
2. It’s convenient - just hold the phone whilst touching TouchID. No codes to enter, no buttons to press, no apps to find. It’s about as simple as it’s possible to be. Because TouchID means the Apple Pay transaction is secure, some UK retailers are already removing the countries £20 contactless limit for Apple Pay.
3. It’s gaining critical mass. Apple Pay works at the growing number of standard contactless points that are being rolled out across retailers. Because UK banks had already invested in NFC contactless features in debit/credit cards, Apple Pay exploits that industry standard point-of-sale infrastructure. And in the USA the launch timing was perfect, as industry rushed to renew point-of-sale infrastructure in order to increase security in the light of scandals like the Target hack.

It’s still early days for Apple Pay (especially in my native UK where it’s only just launched), but it’s the only novel payment solution I’ve seen that has a chance of meeting my three criteria. It has to be secure, it has to be simpler than chip+pin and it has to have a demonstrable likelihood of critical mass acceptance by retailers.

I don’t care about how novel it is or isn’t, if it saves retailers a few fractions of a penny or how it might disrupt the world. The only thing that will make a new payment mechanism successful, is if the experience is better for users. If it’s not, people won’t use it and everything else is irrelevant.

Of course Apple Pay will always be a relatively niche solution because it’s maximum market size is a subset of iPhone users. But American Express seems to have survived for many years on a similar basis.

The way that Apple Pay is integrated deeply into iOS is a critical part of the overall user experience. Others could use the TouchID API to build fingerprint authentication into their payment solutions, but that would still require the user to unlock the phone and find/launch the appropriate app before starting the payment process. In contrast, the that Apple Pay is integrated deeply into the iPhone and iOS requires none of this, just needing the phone to be placed near the payment terminal.

This experience could only be created by an organisation who has the ability to influence not just the banking ecosystem (Apple had to galvanise the banking industry into delivering on the promise of Tokenisation as part of the Apple Pay solution), but also the phone hardware and operating system design.

Lets look at what was needed to bring Apple Pay to fruition (this is far from a complete list, I am sure):

• Bring TouchID to market, ensuring the availability of a seamless authentication solution
• Wait to ensure a critical-mass of TouchID-enabled phones being used by customers, so that when Apple Pay launches there’s enough people with TouchID-enabled phones to use it
• Influence Visa and Mastercard to implement Tokenisation
• Get the retail banks on board to implement their end of the solution - at the time of writing I can count over 380 banks currently supporting Apple Pay, so no mean feat
• Strike deals with payment processors like Stripe to ensure that Apple Pay can also be used for in-app payments
• Integrate Apple Pay deeply into iOS so the end-to-end user experience is simpler than anything else
• In the USA, sign up a broad array of retail partners who will implement the required point-of-sale infrastructure to support Apple Pay
• In the UK, start influencing retailers who’ve already implemented contactless payments to remove the £20 limit for Apple Pay transactions
• And since it’s Apple, do most of this in secret

Let us not forget that Apple had to purchase Authentec for $356m in order to obtain the underlying technology needed to create TouchID in the first place. On top of that were the presumably significant investment costs to perfect and bring to market that nascent technology. If we then add in the costs of creating Apple Pay, it’s easy to see that it might have cost well in excess of $0.5bn to make Apple Pay happen. I don’t think that is the sort of money that banks are typically investing in their innovation programmes.

Apple Pay is the fruition of a very ambitious goal, the creation of new innovations like Tokenisation and TouchID across several industries and a very complex set of coordinated deliveries over several years. I think it’s fair to say that Apple isn’t playing at this.

For those that ask “why could the banks not have created their own successful mobile payment solution?”, the answer is simple. They can’t. Without the ability to influence the way the mobile OS and hardware interact with payments, it’s not possible to engineer the required user experience. This is why we’ve seen a proliferation of small-scale “experiments” that people like me sneered at, rather than anything significant.

Companies like Apple are also able to justify huge investments that banks would really struggle with. They can do that because they see mobile payments not as an end in itself, but as just another jigsaw-piece in the success of their wider mobile platform. And a company like Apple sees this on a global scale, whereas nearly all banks are regional players when it comes to retail payments.

The cost for traditional industries who wish to become serious digital players is higher than I think many acknowledge. Take Facebook’s urgent need to make the transition from desktop browser to mobile app - acquiring Instagram for $1bn and WhatsApp for $19bn. Or BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagon purchasing Nokia’s HERE mapping division for $2.8bn. Or Adidas purchasing runtastic for $240m. Whether purchasing mature and successful businesses (Instagram, WhatsApp, HERE) or raw technology (Authentec), the costs and business risks involved are often significant.

I find Apple’s ability to control not just its components of the solution, but also to influence and lead the required wider consortium, perhaps the most interesting lesson here. Vast arrays of retailers and banks, together with Mastercard and Visa, all needed to be influenced and coordinated to make Apple Pay happen. Banks would typically go about this kind of thing with armies of highly paid consultants and a heavy-weight “project office”. I don’t think that is how Apple did it - I’ve certainly not heard of those consultant armies. Intriguing.

Overall, it seems that creating success in mobile payments needs high ambition, deep pockets and an ability to influence all parts of the ecosystem involved - with that in mind, Apple Pay is a rather remarkable achievement. I’m not sure I see how banks can do this kind of thing on their own - which is an extraordinary statement about the role of the banking and technology industries.

Might "chat" become the universal User Interface?

Google’s home page has a single box: “what are you looking for?”. We type our questions, and receive answers.

In contrast, most other home pages are cluttered with images, adverts, complex menus and general clutter. We have to hunt for what we’re looking for amongst the trivia, the distractions and the irrelevant. Often times our answer is buried several pages into a site - so we have the added distraction of working out how to navigate to what we want.

The web was a brilliant invention for publication, but it’s a frustrating one when we just want an answer or to get something done.

Google originally became popular not because its search was especially better than others, but because its clean and simple home page loaded quickly, in an era when many of us were still using dial-up modems.

Fast, clean and simple, the “search box as universal home page” launched a $430bn company.

If search as a UI works for Google, why should it not be extended for a bank, an insurance company or a retailer? Of course our needs with those organisations are frequently more complex than simple search. So the simple search box needs to be extended to allow a dialogue. We ask questions, we get answers without distractions.

Your retailer might ask “What are you looking for?” and we might type “I’m looking for men’s casual shirts”. And Boom!, there you are, straight to the men’s casual shirt page.

Or your insurance company might ask “How can I help you?” and we might reply with “I’d like a car insurance quote”. The chat would then enter a natural language dialogue where we are asked a series of further questions to gather the required information. All of this can be done through a single chat dialogue - just in the way that we message our friends and relatives in iMessage, Facebook or WhatsApp.

Rather than searching in vein for the “how to change your password” and navigating several pages of a website, we would just type “how do I change my password” and get straight to the information we need.

Of course chat needs to be more than simple text. A chat dialogue can have embedded pictures, videos, maps, links and can cause an app to do things like display a popup. It’s not that there’s only chat, but that chat might be the centre of the user experience.

The dominance of social media apps in the modern age means that a “chat interface” is now our most frequently used interface with a computer. All of us, from teenager to grandparent, have a common and universal understanding of how chat works.

Indeed evidence from China is that chat interfaces for brands of all sizes are now expected and commonplace. The Chinese appear comfortable adopting this style of interaction not just with friends, but also businesses.

Of course there is one drawback to using “chat as the universal UI” – and that’s that it needs a human on the other end. It’s all very well us chatting to our bank or our local builder’s merchant, but that needs an army of trained people to respond…

That is where cognitive technologies like IBM Watson come in. Because Watson understands natural language and is able to hold a conversation, it can automate these chat-based interfaces. Instead of chatting with a human operator at a business, that business trains Watson to handle the chat on its behalf.

We’re already seeing these automated “virtual assistants” in our phones. Siri, Google Now and Cortana prove that no smartphone worth its salt can now come to the market without one. Some may sniff at the idea of chatting to a computer in our phones, but more than half of US teens now use “voice search” daily.

Riding on the popular familiarity of assistants like Siri, we’re beginning to see a new wave of “conversational” apps where the primary interface is a chat one.

• Native is a travel concierge app, with a chat interface
• Vida is life and health coach app, with a chat interface
• x.ai is a personal assistant who schedules meetings for you, through a chat interface
• Luka is an app that finds and books places to eat, through a chat interface

One of the most popular calendar apps on iOS is Fantastical. A big reason for its popularity is because you can use natural language to interact with it. Type “I want a meeting with Fred at 10pm tomorrow” and it creates an appropriate calendar entry for you.

Simplicity sells and chat is the simplest UI imaginable – instantly recognisable to all and more efficient than complex menus and mice. I think we’re seeing the start of a big trend with chat interfaces because of that simplicity.

A couple of weeks on: what I've done and not done with my Apple Watch

I’m a bit of a sucker for a big Apple launch and an entirely new device like the Watch intrigued me greatly. I’m sure I didn’t surprise many when I was the proud owner of a 42mm Apple Watch Sport on launch day. However, despite my excitement, I was unsure of what to expect. I entered ownership as an experiment and with a few anxieties (most notably battery life). I might have been excited, but I wasn’t blind. So how have I got on?

If my personal experience of the way I’m questioned about Apple Watch is anything to go by, a lot of people are very intrigued by the device. I thought it worth capturing my experiences now that I’ve got past the initial novelty stage and begun to settle into a bit of a rhythm in its use.

I’ve structured this post around the three big questions that I’m consistently asked about Apple Watch:

• What can you do with it and why might I need one?
• Is the battery life good enough?
• Does it suck you further into the digital realm?

So, here we go with those questions.

What can you do with it and why might I need one?

Lots of people have asked me why they might need an Apple Watch.

“It’s about desire, not necessity. Convenience, fun and style are not needs. They’re wants. And people will gladly pay for what they want. The iPad faced similar misguided criticism. How many times did you hear or read someone say of the iPad, ‘Why would anyone who already has a phone and a laptop need an iPad?’ That was the wrong question, because almost no one needed an iPad. The right question was ‘Why would someone who has a phone and a laptop want an iPad?’ ” John Gruber, Daring Fireball

As Gruber says, "why do I need one?" is the wrong question. Nobody needs an Apple Watch. But I believe that lots of people might want one when they begin to see what it can do. Lets not kid ourselves – mostly the watch is about convenience and desire, not need. But these are mostly the same desires that drove the smartphone revolution. We chose iPhones over Blackberry’s, not because we needed iPhones, but because we wanted them.

So what have I done, and not done, with my Apple Watch?

I’ve checked into security with my British Airways boarding pass on my watch. Note, I had to resort to using my iPhone at the actual gate because the scanning machines aren’t big enough to get a wrist underneath. I had fun joking with the BA staff about the size of my wrist though!

I’ve hailed a London cab from my wrist using the Hailo app. You can do a very similar thing with Uber as well - the watch app finds your location and calls a car to where you are. My cab driver was a bit taken aback when I explained how I’d called him - he didn’t know the watch app existed and was very excited to tell his grandchildren that he’d been hailed by an Apple Watch!

I’ve discovered that I need to do more exercise using the Activity app. I had a Fitbit before and quite liked the way it tracked my steps and encouraged me to walk more. But a Fitbit only counts steps, it doesn’t know if you’re walking briskly and therefore exercising, or just dawdling. Apple Watch has made it painfully obvious that I need to exercise, not just walk. It logs my heart rate every 10 mins and I can view that in the Health app on my iPhone. I’ve already started walking energetically to meet the exercise targets on my watch. It’s actually changing my behaviour, for the better. Health and activity might be the ‘killer app’.

After realising that my heart rate from my Apple Watch is logged in the Health app on my iPhone every ten minutes, I geeked out about this data before wondering “what is a healthy heart rate?”. DuckDuckGo (my chosen search engine) to the rescue, it appears that a resting rate of 60–100 beats/minute is considered the normal range – the lower the healthier. Luckily I fit nicely within that range. I’m now wondering if I could get my resting rate down by doing more exercise – a new project.

When close to my daily exercise target, I do confess to having run energetically on the spot for a couple of minutes in order to attain my daily award badge. Gamification seems to work!

I’ve given a Keynote presentation by remote controlling the slides on my watch. My iPad was connected to the projector and I could go forward/back on my watch - pretty cool! MS PowerPoint also has a similar Apple Watch app.

I’ve responded to a text message whilst out walking in the street and without brandishing my iPhone. Apple Watch provides some useful stock answers (which you can tailor) that mean you can easily respond whilst walking. I also used Siri to dictate a reply, which seems incredibly accurate - I could sware its more accurate than on iPhone.

I’ve made my daughter reply to a text message because of the funky big animated emojis you can send from Apple Watch. Getting a teenager to react isn’t always easy - Apple Watch helps.

I’ve found a nice restaurant to eat at with a friend by using the Foursquare app on my watch (there's also TripAdvisor for a similar function)- this shows the best places in your current vicinity, so ideal for on-the-go last-minute dining choices.

I’ve answered a phone call on my watch when my iPhone was in another room of the house and I’d likely not got to it in time. I wouldn’t do that in the street, but it’s very convenient in the right environment.

I’ve changed the music track playing on my iPhone whilst leaving it in my pocket whilst on the train.

I’ve listened to a news article that I’d clipped to Instapaper for later reading. Instapaper is a great ‘read later’ option for caching articles for reading when you may not have phone reception. The Apple Watch app converts the text to speech and reads the clipped articles for you. It sounds strange, but is actually much more practical that you might think - close your eyes and just listen whilst travelling, rather than get tired reading.

I’ve propped my iPhone up and used the camera app on my Apple Watch to remotely take a photograph that included me in it.

I’ve used the maps app to get directions whilst walking. Instead of having my watch barking instructions at me in the street, Apple Watch taps you gently and discreetly on the wrist to indicate left/right turns.

I've found the time of the next train home using the CityMapper app, which is programmed with my home address - so all I needed to do was to tap the ‘get me home’ button on the watch. It then plans a route from my current location and tells me what time train I should aim for.

I've silenced an incoming call by covering the screen with my hand - such a human and natural way to silence something, but a delight to find that it works the way you might think it should.

I've realised that I can also turn the watch’s screen off by coving it with my hand.

I've become more aware of the day, by having sunrise and sunset continuously displayed on the watch face (keen photographers will appreciate that in order to be aware of ‘golden hour’ where the light is perfect for photography).

I was informed that the Duchess of Cambridge had given birth to a daughter the moment the news hit the BBC, through the wonders of the BBC Apple Watch app and notifications. More interestingly, for me at least, I got notified of developments during the recent UK General Election - all consumable by a simple glance and so very convenient when on-the-go.

I get notified when I have a retweet, reply, mention or new follower on Twitter. Perhaps not earth-shattering, but interesting and more timely if you’re a Twitter addict.

I’ve recently invested in the OmniFocus “getting things done” app for my iOS devices. With OmniFocus also on my watch, I can see my to-do’s and mark them complete there. This is outstandingly useful - I focus on getting things done and just tap the big round button on my watch when I complete my tasks. I like this a lot.

I do make sure that the notification settings on my iPhone don’t result in Apple Watch notifications becoming intrusive. Specifically, I only get notified of emails from people on my VIP list. It’s tough to get on that list, and easy to get removed from it if you irritate me. As a result, Apple Watch is not a new way for anyone to gain my attention - only the special VIP candidates get that privilege.

I don’t tend to read emails on the watch, although I can - I hate “doing email” at the best of times, so squinting at a tiny screen just brings a whole new form of pain to the medium that I can do without. Instead of working through my inbox, I tend to just glance at the emails from my VIP list that I get alerts for. My “email on watch” experience is therefore a hugely refined version of my more general-purpose email experience on devices with a bigger screen.

I haven’t so far got to test the freehand-message-drawing or heart-beat-messaging – you need a friend with an Apple Watch to make that work. So far my wife hasn’t relented and bought one, but I detect a wavering. So maybe I’ll be heart-beat messaging her in the near future.

I haven’t played any games on my watch. Seriously, games on a watch and with a screen that small? They exist, but I don’t think it makes any sense and I’m not much of a gamer anyway.

The rich variety of things that Apple Watch makes more convenient or just more fun is what makes the device for me. I might argue that no one use, except for perhaps the health stuff, is on its own a killer-app. But taken as a whole, I now find it impossible to imagine going without it. As a consequence I do use my iPhone less, preferring the simplicity of the watch. There are days that, when I do use my iPhone, I’m struck by how positively enormous the screen is in comparison. I think I’m also a bit more aware of how much light is emitted by a smartphone when in a darker environment - the watch is much more discreet, given the small size of its screen and that it uses a black background.

Is the battery life good enough?

This is the one thing that really concerned me about Apple Watch. None of us are used to watches that need regular changing and it was hard to tell if more ‘enthusiastic’ use was going to make charge-anxiety ‘a thing’. I didn’t fancy the idea of carrying a charger with me, even less so the anxiety over where my next ‘fix’ of power might come from. I imagined this to be the one thing that might make Apple Watch impractical.

As it turns out, battery life has been a complete non-issue for me. Apple Watch always gets me comfortably through a long day, even with my ‘enthusiastic’ use when it was novel and everyone wanted a demo. The past week I’ve gone to bed with between 30% and 60% battery-life remaining, after long ~18 hour days. I’ve learnt that it doesn’t matter how much I fiddle with Apple Watch, I’m not going to run out of charge.

I have my Apple Watch charger setup next to the bed. Every night I take the watch off of my wrist and place it on my bed-time table, in the same way that I would with an analogue watch. The only difference is I snap the magnetic charger to the back. Because I don’t need to charge at any other time, the charger never moves around the house and the routine is set. I charge every night, the charger never moves from the bedside, and I’m guaranteed an easy full-day without any battery-life-anxiety.

The only time I’ve broken this routine was on the evening of the UK General Election. I had taken my watch off whilst watching TV into the early hours and forgotten that I’d left it on the sofa, without charging overnight. In the morning I placed it back on my wrist, without charging, and spent a whole day using it. By the time I got home from work I was down to just under 20% remaining power. So it’s possible to get two days of use without charging, at a stretch.

As a result of my experience, I don’t carry a charge cable with me – I don’t need it. Apple Watch has a ‘power reserve’ mode which cuts back function to preserve basic time-keeping, but I’ve never even been tempted to try it – battery-life has been such a non-issue for me. It’s possible to add battery-life as one of the ‘complications’ that are displayed on the watch face, but I’ve not done so because I’ve become so uninterested in how much power remains.

Does it suck you into the digital realm?

This is a great question and a very valid concern. Many of us worry that smartphones can sometimes become a barrier to human relationships. Google Glass seemed to go a whole stage further, coining the term ‘glasshole’ for the type of people who used it. Does Apple Watch have a similar affect? My initial conclusion are that it does not. People seem genuinely interested rather than annoyed by it. It’s tiny screen limits the its ability to suck you in. Most of all, the software design choices seem to heavily favour short snacking rather than extended use.

“The Apple Watch is best used as that: a watch. It’s something you check for a second or two and then put away. And in 2015, it’s nice to have a watch that can do more than simply tell time. We can carry it around with us everywhere we go, and it springs to life when it receives a notification: a text, an email, a tweet, a Facebook message. Those notifications don’t always need a response, but they are important to glance at, just like the time.” Steve Kovach.

The Watch has a concept of ‘glances’, which many apps provide - these are a way to quickly see the essence an app needs to convey, without providing further function. A glance is just that - you glance at it, in the same way you would glance at a mechanical watch. I think it works. A glance takes a second of your time, no more.

Glances are perfect for a watch and make it quick and discreet to use. They are the antidote to browsing a Facebook news feed, or a Twitter timeline. Those things “suck you in” and are an activity in and of themselves. But browsing a timeline or feed on a watch is impractical because of its tiny screen. It makes no sense to spend minutes doing something on an Apple Watch – everything about it is designed to get you away from the watch as soon as possible. In that way it’s the polar-opposite of the smartphone. So no, this is not a device that sucks you into the digital realm. If anything, it frees you from that.

I find myself glancing at my watch for information, rather than turning on my phone and getting distracted by the rich experience it provides. For example, I might get a notification of someone favouriting a tweet on my watch. All I do is view it, smile, and dismiss it. On the phone I’d probably end up looking in my twitter client (Tweetbot) and having a quick look at my timeline, before….. But on the watch, I glance and move on with life.

Should you buy one?

You almost certainly don’t need an Apple Watch - most of what it does, you can do with a smartphone. But it is more convenient, more discreet, and fun. I think it’s less of a distraction than a smartphone and a better way of communicating in many situations. It doesn’t suck you in and doesn’t rule your life in the way that a smartphone sometimes can. It’s beautifully designed and a delight to use. The battery easily lasts a day (or two) and isn’t something I’ve needed to worry about. There’s a wide variety of third-party apps that make the experience much more complete. The health function seems to be a big deal and has the capacity to change behaviour, which if you think about it is profound.

I like Apple Watch a lot – I think we’re witnessing the start of something big.

Some initial thoughts on the Apple Watch experience

My watch arrived towards the end of the day yesterday [that's launch day, if you're reading in the future], so I naturally spent all evening playing with it. It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions, so I’ll wait a week-or-two before penning anything definitive. However, there are some clear initial impressions that I think won’t change.

1. The sport straps are wonderful
   I spent ages prevaricating over which strap to get and how much I wanted to pay. In the end I decided that, since the Watch utility is unknown at this stage, I’d stick with the cheapest and see how it goes. In reality the Sport strap is incredibly comfortable and very natural. It feels more in-tune with the modern aesthetics of Watch than the leather options. I feel really happy this was the right choice.

2. You need to prune notifications
   Watch can alert you whenever you have an email, a tweet, a diary entry, a Periscope, etc. Every app that notifies on your iPhone can give you a light tap on the wrist to gain your attention. In theory this can make you more productive. In reality there’s a big risk that it shackles you to the digital world and work. I’ve turned off a lot of the notifications so that I’m still a free man. I’ve set notifications only for emails from my VIP list - if you’re not on my VIP list then I don’t get notified about your email. I just don’t feel a need to be “more efficient” in everything I do. I want to be able to switch-off and tune-out. Pruning the notifications to ones that I choose, rather than everything, is a good way to ensure that is possible.

3. Apps make the experience
   On setting up my Watch I had 47 apps available as a result of those I already had installed on my iPhone. That’s quite a few - I’ve not installed them all and am still working through them one-by-one. Already I can see some stand-out apps that transform the utility of Watch. Just as with iPad, the value of the device is made not by what Apple installs on it, but by the third-party apps. My favourite ones so far include:
   • TripAdvisor, which very quickly shows the top things to do around where you are now. Wandering around a new place and want something to eat? Just raise your wrist and use the app.
   • Foursquare, which does a very similar thing to TripAdvisor, but on a different data set. I’m not sure which is the best yet, but I find it interesting that Foursquare has already gained my attention when I’d all but forgotten it on my iPhone.
   • CityMapper, which has a brilliant travel guide capability. These guys have really thought things through. I press a button “Get me home” and it shows me directions to the local station and finds the next trains to my registered home location – utterly brilliant.
   • Uber, for getting a cab and tracking it’s arrival.

4. The best apps provide a subset of the iPhone experience
   Watch isn’t about doing everything an iPhone app does – it’s about convenience and quick access. So, developers that have worked out the essence of their app and provide a very streamlined experience for the core use, are the ones that seem to work well. TripAdvisor is a good example – it’s not about doing all the research and looking for different options, the Watch app just focusses on what is near to where you are now.

5. App quality is higher than I expected
   Some of the apps show some rough edges – it was tough for developers to get the experience right when they’d never seen the app running on a physical device until yesterday. On the whole though, the vast majority are useful and high-quality – and I’m sure those with minor issues will see those ironed out in the coming weeks. Given the very limited testing opportunities most developers have had, I’m incredibly impressed with what I see.

6. Some things just don’t work on the small screen
   Take email or browsing a Twitter timeline. You can do it, but frankly the screen is far too small for it to make any sense. I very much doubt I’ll be using Watch for things like that – it’s easier to get the phone out and use that. I’m also not convinced of using it to phone people. Sure, you can. But using a Watch to phone means that you’re either broadcasting the conversation to everyone around you, or you need bluetooth headphones. Maybe I’m wrong, but talking to your watch, so that everyone can hear the conversation, has elements of “glasshole” about it for me.

7. The quick-access button for contacts is a master stroke
   If you press the long button it takes you to your contacts so you can send a message, phone (I think not), etc. But it’s not your whole contact list because that would be very hard work to navigate on the wrist (my address book has hundreds of entries). Instead, it’s your favourites – so again, the Watch usage is for messaging the important and frequent contacts, not trying to do everything. As a result, it carves a niche for itself (very rapid and easy access to your important contacts) that might be devalued if it presented a scrolling list of 500 contacts.

8. An un-Apple-like level of customisation
   This thing has so many ways to customise things – the level of tinkering you can do is even slightly daunting initially and I’m still getting to grips with what I can change and how I want things setup.

9. Health & fitness is intriguing but will take time to explore
   I dallied with a fitbit for a while, but fell out of the routine of charging it. Already Watch is telling me my heart rate. I have no clue what to do about this, but plan to delve into the fitness side of things over the next week and see if it might get me more active.

10. Siri comes alive
    I never really used Siri on the iPhone. But on the watch you need to – e.g. to compose a message. It works *really* well and suddenly I find I’m using Siri a lot. The whole idea of natural language interaction suddenly makes so much more sense when you have a tiny screen that prohibits typing.

Overall I’m very impressed so far. Time will tell where the utility is, but I’m fascinated by this idea of “essence of iPhone”. The vibrancy of the iOS development community has ensured that many of the best iPhone apps have a “mini” experience on Watch. So “essence of iPhone” doesn’t mean “essence of the Apple experience” but also an "essence of third-party apps" experience.

Seeking inspiration

I meet with many different people in my job. I go to many meetings – some good, some not so good. Increasingly I’ve noticed a huge variance between the best and worst. The more I've noticed this, the more I've thought about why it is – and have come to believe there are two fundamentally different environments in which we work.

Type-A environments

The best meetings, environments and teams are inspirational. They are characterised by people hungry for new ideas and facts. Those people are always incredibly sharp, operating at their peak. They are enthusiastic and energetic. You feel that energy as soon as you walk into the room.

There’s a pace and urgency to do things.

There are no pre-determined answers at the start of these meetings – the outcome is determined by the discussions, with opinions being formed around the ideas and facts as they emerge.

No idea is off-limits, and diversity of thought is celebrated.

Problems aren’t expressed as road-blocks, but instead people seek insight by asking questions like “this might be a challenge, how could we overcome it?”

Seniority is irrelevant – your grade or experience is not a factor, the only thing that matters is the value you bring to a particular discussion. Typically nobody even knows the grades of those involved, its so trivial a matter.

Discussion focusses on ideas, not on politics.

These environments are incredibly empowering – entering them is like attaching jump-leads to the brain. Ideas bounce and feed off of each other, with new possibilities continuously emerging.

Type-B environments

Conversely, there are environments that are somewhat different. The people working here always seem to have a reason not to change anything, or not to do anything.

Type-B environments are characterised by people who seem to know what the “right” answer is, and are only interested in data that supports that pre-determined view. If contrary data-points or opinions are expressed, a clear disapproving response is provided that makes it clear to all involved that these views are not appreciated.

Dissenting opinions are suppressed not via debate, but by disapproval and unsaid threat of ex-communication.

The environment is very low-energy – and with very little emotion.

The priority seems to be to only do the “right” thing, no matter how long it takes to decide what that might be - time is not a priority.

“Conventional wisdom” is used to raise roadblocks that ensure new ideas are squashed without any real exploration of how their perceived drawbacks might be mitigated.

Grade and seniority are critical factors, with a clear hierarcy that expects “respect” – the political complexities of navigating that hierarchy often dominating discussions.

Type-B environments and teams suck all of the energy and creativity out of the air. They are profoundly unempowering and depressing.

Contrasting Type-A and Type-B

The contrast between these two environments is so enormous and obvious within 30 seconds of entering a room. Its impossible not to immediately notice which you are in. The impact is dramatic - one team gets things done, the other finds excuses. I wish all leaders would look hard at the culture and environment they foster – because that leadership, or rather a lack of it, is what allows Type-B environments to exist.

Diversity is often a factor – teams of people of a similar age, gender, profile and background tend to form a collective “assumed view of the world” that prevents alternative opinions from emerging. In contrast, where diversity of background exists, diversity of thought thrives.

Early in my career I was once asked to attend a board-meeting of a significant public company. Part way through the meeting the Managing Director stopped the meeting, pointed at me and said “this guy is here for a reason, I want to know what he has to say.” It was a defining moment – for my junior rank and lack of grey hairs had, until this point, meant I was continuously talked-over by my elders and supposedly betters. We need more leaders like this – people hungry for ideas who are willing to break conventions to seek them.

Can we please have some more diverse teams and empowering environments? I get up in the morning for meetings like that. I have to take intravenous caffeine for the other type, just to get through them.

Demystifying Cognitive Computing

Is "Cognitive Computing" a huge computing revolution that ushers in an era of thinking machines?

If you listen to Professor Stephen Hawking and some of the press commentary, you might be forgiven for thinking that the age of science-fiction is upon us. However, the reality is a little more mundane, much less scary, but no less exciting. The science-fiction talk frequently disguises the practical reality, which is that any app developer can start to use cognitive capability for very small tasks – no matter their understanding of the technology or the depth of their pockets. It's this more down-to-earth view of the subject that I'd like to address in this post, hopefully dispelling some of the confusion and mystique that sometimes surrounds the topic.

In my university days we didn't talk about Cognitive Computing, we talked about Artificial Intelligence. The two phrases describe broadly similar concepts, but cognitive is perhaps better because it does less to conjure up images of sci-fi "thinking" machines. Instead, the subject implies a set of capabilities that are slightly less fanciful – things like identifying the subject of a passage of text, or picking out the names of people in a paragraph. It also includes more ambitious capabilities, like the ability to converse in full natural language. But the term is very broad and does not always imply things that you would necessarily think of as "intelligence".

At its most basic, cognitive computing techniques allow the analysis of data types other than the traditional structured records in a database. These might be sentences of natural language, voice recordings or images – all things that until very recently we would have considered a ‘blob’ of data, but a ‘blob’ with which we could do very little. Cognitive computing gives us the ability to peer inside the blob and to start doing interesting things with it – to parse sentences, recognise the subject of images, translate speech, etc.

It can sometimes be hard, even for humans, to understand the true meaning of ambiguous natural language, or to be absolutely certain that two photographs are of the same person. We often hear people express this in terms like “I think that’s probably Jane”.

When a computer tries to match faces, it turns out that we can be a little more specific about its confidence. By using the level of evidence found to support a suggested answer, we can calculate a probability score. This approach is very useful with many cognitive functions – images, natural language, speech, etc. We can then use this calculated probability to make decisions – for example, when IBM's Watson played the Jeopardy! quiz show, it had a threshold that ensured it didn’t answer questions when its confidence was too low – because if you answer and get the question wrong, you lose money.

Because the level of confidence in a cognitive function is really important, techniques like “machine learning” are often deployed to increase confidence over time. A machine can "learn" by taking feedback from users of the system on its accuracy. If users can tell a system when it is right or wrong, it gives that system the ability to use this feedback to adjust its confidence levels and approaches to problem solving. Or, a machine might learn in an "unsupervised" way by discovering patterns in data. Sometimes machine learning is also used to build a knowledge base by discovering data - for example, allowing a computer program to traverse links in Wikipedia and build a database of celebrities. In these ways, we can build computer systems that are more accurate.

Machine Learning hasn’t typically been needed in the past, because traditional computer applications that work on numeric and structured data are dealing with certainties – it’s not that we think 1+1 is 2, we know it is. In this context there is no need to learn and become more accurate because the system is already precise in its judgement. Some things we have done in the past – like writing a program to parse web links – have just inherited a more sophisticated label. And some things you might not immediately realise are using machine learning, are – for example, the way that google guesses your words when you type in search keywords.

Sometimes cognitive function brings about radical new types of apps – for example, Watson Oncology Advisor, which is helping to treat cancer and save lives. Some of the systems being built are very ambitious and aim to democratise knowledge by consuming large quantities of written documents that can be queried using natural language.

But cognitive function can also be used in a more bite-sized way – the capabilities being seamlessly blended into very useful, but far less ambitious, apps. For example, the popular mobile app Pocket uses cognitive services to accurately categorise and discover interesting content from the web, saving it to the user’s mobile device for later reading. The use of cognitive capabilities is both subtle and invisible to the app’s user. Nobody would think that Pocket is "thinking" or that it is revolutionary – but it is useful. It provides a streamlined experience, with articles being automatically tagged without the user needing to suggest or type those tags themselves. We don’t always need to change the world in order to exploit cognitive capabilities.

Apps like Pocket are made possible because we can deploy cognitive capabilities into a cloud and hide the underlying complexity behind a very easy-to-use developer API. They, the app builders, get to concentrate on how to use cognitive function rather than the engineering required to build cognitive function. In effect, we get to democratise access to the underlying cognitive service. This simplification for app builders is a good thing, like all simplification, because it sets our minds free from the chains of complexity to dream of new possibilities.

I notice this shift towards how to use cognitive function, rather than how to build it, all the time in my conversations around the topic – the discussions are almost exclusively in the “how can we use this”, rather than the “how does this work” camp.

Hiding cognitive behind a cloud API is particularly important, because some of the computing systems needed have a high degree of complexity. Sophisticated software architectures and unusual physical infrastructures that exploit graphics processors (GPUs) for their ability to perform high-speed parallel calculations, abound. This is a specialised area of technology and one, thankfully, that app builders do not need to worry about thanks to APIs.

The provision of cognitive services as APIs is also important because it often brings a “pay per use” charging model. Instead of large up-front investments in complex infrastructures, developers can start small and pay on a usage basis. Often the providers of these APIs offer a free tier sufficient to support the development process of a new app. “Starting small” might even mean “zero cost” in the initial stages. This low entry cost is perfect for fostering innovation and small experiments. Because the up-front costs are so low, ideas that might otherwise be strangled by red tape can be allowed to grow. And in cognitive computing this is important, because the things we are doing are often novel. The ideas need a little space to prove their worth before the full force of ROI and Business Cases are forced upon them.

“The level of computational resources required for us to get to the required scale of natural language processing functionality would be cost- prohibitive.” Jonathon Morgan of CrisisNET, on why they chose to use cognitive APIs rather than build their own natural language processing.

So the “API-ification” of cognitive computing both hides the underlying complexity of the systems and also removes the need for large up-front investments - empowering ordinary developers to start using cognitive capabilities in their apps. Rather than the topic being a complex and mysterious one, it is instead very simple. It takes just a few lines of code in any programming language to access a cognitive API, using industry standard REST API concepts and technologies.

IBM’s Watson Group is pioneering the development of cognitive APIs at the Watson Developer Cloud. There’s a lot of services now available, some perfected and some still being perfected in an open Beta programme. These APIs can be used to build new classes of cognitive apps, but they can also be used in much more subtle ways to augment and make apps just a little more natural and easy to use. But either way, you don’t need to know anything about cognitive computing, or have deep pockets, to use the APIs. Don't let industry jargon and mystique stop you from exploring the potential.

Why I will be in the Q to purchase an Apple Watch

I’ve decided I’m getting an Apple Watch. My current watch has broken (no, really) and I’ve tried using my iPhone for several months as a timekeeping device, but it just doesn’t work for me. I hear the stories of millennials not having watches, but clearly I’m not one of them.

The way that things are designed and made are important to me. If I need something, I’ll often wait and prevaricate until the right thing comes along – rather than buy something quickly to “do a turn”. The world is full to the brim with badly designed and manufactured objects – they all depress me. When you find something that is just right, it’s an immense pleasure – like finding a rare jewel. So, for me, the sheer care that has goes into the Apple Watch manufacturing processes is very appealing. I have yet to see one in the flesh, but this looks like something that’s a bit special. And judging by the reactions of those who have actually touched one, I might be very right.

Most importantly, unlike the industries early attempts at smart watches, the Apple Watch isn’t a big black plastic macho hulk. I respect what Pebble did with their watch, but its physical design is just not something I would consider. I could make similar comments about most of the other competition – there are signs that the market is waking up, but most have a long way to go to match Apple’s attention to detail.

I appreciate that Apple offer two sizes for different sized wrists. I appreciate the variety of case metals and strap choices. And no, I’m not buying the rose gold version! It’ll be aluminium or stainless steel for me – I’ll make my choice when I get to see them in the flesh. And I’ll be choosing a strap material and colour to suit my personal style. Choosing an Apple Watch is more like tailoring than off-the-peg clothing.

I think the price is about right. If you’re an iPhone owner then the entry price of £299 is almost certainly less than you payed for your phone (if you bought sim-free like I did). It’s not cheap, but it is easily within reach for the target market. I’ve had two fitbits (one broke) – which is already 2/3 of the price of an Apple Watch. And an Apple Watch does much more than a fitbit, with a great deal more attention to style and design.

But what really fascinates me about the Apple Watch is its utility – what will I use it for? My dallying with fitbits fizzled out – I kept forgetting to charge it or put it on my wrist. I like the idea of a fitness band, but the single use nature of them means they aren’t central enough to my life for me to focus on. Can the Apple Watch become essential in the way that my iPone has?

I think the only way to make a device essential, and therefore train me to consistently wear it and remember to charge it, is for it to perform a multitude of important functions. Each on their own might not be enough to make it essential, but the combination does.

I can see the combination of Time, Health, Communication, Travel and Payment making this device essential in a similar way that my iPhone has become. Time will tell (no pun intended), of course, but I can see the utility.

Time

I need a new watch to tell the time and Apple Watch does that. It has power-reserve mode, so even if the battery should be nearly depleted, it still works as a timepiece. Job done.

Health

I want to track my activity with a device that does more than that. The Apple Watch does so, but also captures my heart-beat as well – which I find intriguing. Its haptic feedback engine can lightly tap me on the wrist when I’ve been sitting for too long – nothing dramatic, but something useful (maybe a good excuse to force in break in long business meetings that are running on). It does what my fitbit did, but it does more.

New forms of Communications

This is the one that completely fascinates me. The Watch includes entirely new ways to communicate without words. The ability to send my heart-beat to another, to sketch messages that are drawn on another’s watch, or to send a walkie-talkie style voice memo – these are all novel forms of communication.

I can tap a code on my watch that the haptic feedback engine then uses to silently tap against my friend’s wrist. The haptic tapping is truly silent and discrete - in a way that “silent buzzing” mode on a phone is not. I can think of so many meetings that are going to be made better by the ability to silently communicate amongst attendees: “three taps means this presenter is boring, lets find an excuse to get out of here” ;-)

"If I'm at a party and a guy is being super creepy, I can double-tap it and that'll be like 'come and save me, right now'! Girl-code taken to the next level!". First reaction of a woman using an Apple Watch.

Or, as Mashable put it, “sharing your heartbeat over Apple Watch is the new sexting”. Maybe, maybe not – but it feels like these new, more intimate (what is more intimate that something next to your skin), forms of communication might be significant in a similar way that SMS was all those years ago.

One thing is for sure – I don’t think I’ll be using the Watch for either phone calls or emails. It can do both, but I’m just not interested in using it for either. For me, its ability to communicate in new ways is far more interesting than its ability to perpetuate existing forms of communication.

Apps

Many iPhone app developers are adopting their apps to present a simplified Watch interface. As an amateur app developer I can speak from personal experience that it is relatively easy to adapt an existing app. The Watch as an app platform is a guaranteed success, even before its launch, simply because there are so many developers and apps that can easily be adapted.

A couple of examples have already caught my attention. I often use Uber. When I do so I stand in the street, iPhone in hand, watching the progress of my Uber car on a map. Uber are a launch partner for the watch and their new app allows me to leave my phone in my pocket and view the map on my wrist – much preferable.

Trip Advisor is a very useful tool for finding places to visit. I’m not a fan of its mobile apps - they aren’t particularly well built and rely too heavily on reuse of existing web content to provide a truly excellent user experience. But, they are an Apple Watch launch partner - and you can’t reuse web content on the device, so it looks like we might be in for a treat with a genuinely useful travel advisor on our wrists ,with a native UI.

There will be many more examples – the ones that will catch on will be those that capture an “out and about” usage, where leaving your iPhone tucked away in a pocket is a valuable convenience. The sheer volume of Watch Apps we’re likely to see means I will have plenty of things to play with.

Apple Pay

You can use Apple Watch to Apple Pay. We don’t have Apple Pay in the UK yet, but all the indications are that it’ll be with us by the end of the year. Apple Pay features in the “out and about” usage category for me - I don’t particularly want to pull my iPhone out to pay, so the ability to extend my wrist looks interesting. I know this isn’t going to change my life and its hardly a hardship to fish in your pocket – but I suspect it’ll become so convenient we’ll wonder how we managed in the dark ages of wallets and pockets!


None of these uses is, on its own, a killer reason to own an Apple Watch. But, I can see their combination making the watch essential by sheer volume of different uses. Being essential means I might remember to charge it and to put it on my wrist – for me that will be a key test. If it’s only semi-useful then it’ll quickly fall into disuse, but I don’t think that will be the case.

Early anecdotal reports from those who have used the watch are fascinating:

“People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck. One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period.”

Adopting the Watch will be an experiment, in the same way that ownership of an iPhone was in the early days. Many people will hold off, sceptical of the newcomer, in the same way that they held onto their Blackberries and professed the essential nature of a physical keyboard. But I’m not sceptical, I’m excited in the same way that I was excited by my first iPhone. I was in the queue to purchase the iPhone 3G on launch day and never looked back. The watch is cheaper than that iPhone was and looks like its had an order-of-magnitude more love poured into its physical design and manufacture. Only time will tell if these guesses are correct – but I’m placing my bets on the Apple Watch being a significant inflection in the way that we use technology.

Reviewing 2014 Mobile Predictions

About this time last year I wrote a blog entry outlining my predictions for mobile technology in 2014. I said at the time that I might review my predictions and here we are – a year later. So, how did I do?

1. Smartphones get smarter, with more real-world sensors

This prediction wasn’t exactly difficult. Every new phone continues to support an expanded set of environmental and communication sensors. We saw Apple’s iPhone6 include new “Sensor Pixels” to provide Phase Detection autofocus normally associated with DSLRs, an air pressure Barometer sensor and new NFC communications for Apple Pay. We can all see the way that smart-watches are including personal health sensors, made possible by their close proximity to our skin – the Apple Watch, for example, includes movement sensors and a heart-rate monitor. There have been many articles speculating on other health sensors that might be built into mobile devices – detecting chemicals or perspiration in our skin, blood flow, etc. There doesn’t seem to be any let-up in the real-word sensing our mobile devices acquire.

SCORE: YES!

2. Smartphones get smarter, with more artificial intelligence

Apple’s Siri and Google Now both continue to get cleverer. This year they were joined by Microsoft’s Cortana. Having natural speech technology and artificial intelligence now appears to be table-stakes for a smartphone platform.

My personal usage of these services is probably best described as erratic at best. Interestingly, however, app trends in China seem to indicate that “chat” interfaces are now de-rigour for all sorts of apps. If this trend crosses to the West, then automated intelligence is going to be critical a critical component.

My employer, IBM, launched its new Watson division this year. A $1bn investment in artificial intelligence (we call in “Cognitive Computing” now, but its the same thing) isn’t to be sniffed at. Most Watson apps tend to surfaced through a mobile interface. And Watson isn’t about fulfilling the trivial whims of a smartphone owner; its about much more serious things. Like diagnosing and curing cancer.

SCORE: YES!

3. Mobile extends to the Home

Google bought Nest, validating the importance of the “smart” home. Nest saw a bunch of competitors emerge with their own “smart” thermostats, including Honeywell, Hive and Tado to name a few. Apple incorporated HomeKit into iOS8, providing a common framework to manage smart home devices from your iphone or ipad. We seem to be getting pretty close to the connected home being a reality not just for the geek squad, but for the average consumer.

SCORE: YES!

4. Mobile extends to the person

Android Wear devices trickled onto the market, including the much talked about Moto 360. They’ve so far failed to make a market impact and I’ve never seen one, so maybe the jury is out on how much consumers really want or need this kind of capability.

The Apple Watch announcement was one of the biggest and most anticipated from the fruity company. Can it succeed where others are struggling? Its rumoured to make it’s debut around February 2015, so its not long to wait now.

For me the killer app for these devices might be a new form of very personal communication. The haptic feedback in the Apple Watch that lightly vibrates a message against your skin, mimicking that tapped out by your friend on their watch, is a peculiarly intimate form of communication. Or perhaps not quite as intimate as transmitting a pulsing heart rate to your lover? Time will tell, but there seems high potential for new forms of intimate communication here.

SCORE: YES!

5. Fashion and style become increasingly important

Apple have been on a mission this year to woo us with the fashion status of the Apple Watch. Articles in Vanity Fair and events at Paris Fashion Week - they sure want us to see the watch as a fashion accessory. The Apple Watch is probably the first electronic gadget that’s been deigned and marketed so explicitly with fashion in mind.

The watch comes in four different case metals, two different face sizes and can be customised with a huge profusion of straps in different colours and materials. When you then add the array of electronic faces and software customisations, its clear the Apple Watch is without doubt the most customisable and personal piece of gadgetry we’ve yet seen.

This is the first serious piece of fashion-conscious design and marketing we’ve seen in the tech-world - and if the rest of the industry does what it usually does when Apple leads, we’re going to see much more of this. Indeed, the most talked-about Android Wear watch is the Moto 360 - not because of its capabilities, but because of its looks.

Personally? I’m tempted by an Apple Watch, 38mm Stainless Steel Case with Brown Modern Buckle. Maybe Santa will pay an unseasonal visit in the spring!

SCORE: YES!

6. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) powers new forms of mobile interaction

I’m a big fan of BLE-enabled iBeacon - I think it has the potential to bring about very interesting new forms of interaction between mobile devices and their physical environments. But we’ve not seen much of it in our day-to-day lives so far.

I’m told there’s an Oxford Street app (one of London’s main shopping districts) that sends you marketing alerts as you walk past shops - but why would you want that? In the USA the NFL is using iBeacon within baseball stadiums. And of course Apple itself uses iBeacon within its stores. But so far, I’d argue, the usage of this technology is relatively invisible to most of us and therefore its potential remains unlocked.

We now have iBeacon devices being manufactured by high-profile organisations like Qualcom’s Gimbal spinoff and Estimote. But it’s taken a year for this manufacturing capability to mature. The way that iBeacon apps might be used is also taking a little time to mature beyond the simple ‘marketing alerts’ that few of us want or need. However, I think we’re getting there - it’s just taking a little time for all of the components to fall into place.

SCORE: Maybe

7. Processor innovation shifts from performance to low power usage

I kind of got this one wrong. I thought phones were powerful enough, so the emphasis would shift to battery life (because that’s what we all complain about).

However, I misread the forces. Screen pixel density and size has been increasing - and more pixels mean more processor power is needed to shift them around. We’ve still been on the “need more power” part of the maturity curve.

Perhaps more importantly, phones are no longer phones. If smartphones were to stay as relatively simple devices then we have all the power we need - but they won’t. They are morphing into pocket computers with more real-world sensors and capabilities than we ever imagined.

Phones are becoming games machines - Apple’s 64-bit A8 processor means that iPhones are beginning to rival dedicated consoles for their graphical capabilities.

And the rumour sites continually mention tantalising snippets of information about 3D user interfaces, 3D real-world sensors, Haptic displays and DSLR-quality cameras. Such capabilities surely drive increasing demands on processors due to the sheer quantity of data that’s needed to be processed.

As excitement over the novel tablet form factor seems to have slackened off slightly, we're seeing a focus on the software capabilities. ie. "yes, ok, I like the device, but what do I *do* with it"? Microsoft Office on the iPad was an important inflection point. And Pixelmator on the iPad rivals Photoshop - which was unthinkable when the first iPad emerged. But serious apps like this need all the processor power they can get.

My mistake in this prediction was in categorising smartphones and tablets as an effectively static category with static capabilities. However, it's now clear that its a moving category - as the devices become more powerful, consumers and industry are finding more ways to exploit that power. The iPad Air 2 is faster, processor-speed-wise, than a 3 year old Macbook Air - and if we're going to be editing documents, photos and videos it needs to be.

There is, however, an interesting dynamic that’s going to hit us soon. The yearly reduction in die-size of microprocessors has been a central part of the increase in power that we’ve seen over the years. As processors become smaller, they also get faster. Today’s Apple A8 chip is based on 20nm technology and next year’s A9 is rumoured to be based on 14nm technology. After that 10nm is predicted, but then it starts getting tricky. Below 10nm the experts say that we’re nearing the edges of physics - to reduce even further has a great deal of uncertainty and requires the invention of new materials. The level of deep science required to continue the Moore’s Law path is enormous, which is why IBM is investing $3bn in microprocessor research. Whether we hit a bump in the road, or if the science keeps ahead of us, is a little uncertain – it’ll certainly be interesting to see what plays out over the next few years.

SCORE: NO

8. Innovation emphasis shifts from hardware to software

I was naive in predicting that processor speeds will stop increasing and I think I was naive on this one for similar reasons. The idea that my iPhone is as good as I ever need it to be for a phone ignores that my iPhone is going to do a whole lot more as hardware capabilities improve. Screens with haptic feedback, 3D sensing of the real word, possibly even 3D screens (if Nintendo can do it with the 3DS then I’m sure we’re going to get it on phones before long).

Yes, software is an engine of innovation. Apps like Pixelmator, that provides a photoshop-like experience on the iPad, transform what we can do with mobile devices. Without this software-led innovation we get stuck making phone calls and browsing the odd website. But we're not. When entire ad campaigns are filmed on an iPhone, we know software innovation is at the heart of things. The software revolution of apps are central to what has driven the popularity of mobile devices. But so is hardware – and I’m willing to predict that rather than a tailing off of innovation, we might even see an increase. Haptic feedback is in the Apple Watch, so how long before it hits the iPhone, for example?

SCORE: NO

9. Backend As A Service gets serious

In the IT industry there’s one sure-fire way to tell when a technology is getting serious – when my employer, IBM, gets involved. IBM’s release of Bluemix in the Spring of 2014 was one such move. Bluemix includes mobile-back-end-as-a-service(MBAAS) capabilities and is seen as an incredibly strategic move within the company. Most mobile apps now need to interact with some server-side capabilities – and making the job of mobile app developers easier and simplifying server-side programming is critical. I can’t think of a better way of validating this prediction than the evidence of Bluemix.

Whether it’s Amazon, Facebook’s Parse or IBM’s Bluemix – any app worth its salt needs a back-end.

SCORE: YES!

10. Mobile continues to eat the PC market

Yes, the PC market continues to stagnate, with further sales declines year-over-year. There’s little let-up for PC manufacturers and price competition is relentless. Innovation certainly seems more obvious in mobile, where sales volumes continue to increase. The very personal nature of mobile devices means those volumes are unlikely to slack-off until every human on the planet has one. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even thinks he can make that happen with internet.og

SCORE: YES!

11. The platform wars are over

I’ve noticed a more balanced commentary in the market as 2014 has progressed – less ill-informed “my phone is better than yours” discussions. I’m not sure the fan boys have quite declared de-tante yet, but most normal people have. iOS and Android own the market and it seems pretty clear that position isn’t going to change in the foreseeable future. Android’s higher sales figures are balanced by Apple’s focus on the more affluent (and therefore commercially influential) part of the market.

In some (but not many) price-sensitive markets MS's loss-leader strategy with Windows Mobile has led to reasonable market shares for the platform. But I find it hard to see how this success can be replicated around the globe profitably.

For a given market its obvious what the important mobile platforms are – mostly that's iOS and Android. But most of us have got bored of talking about it. If you still think your preferred mobile platform is going to take over the world – get over it!

SCORE: YES!

12. (Small) Cameras replaced by phones

The market for compact cameras appears to have collapsed. The cameras in our phones are now as good as many of us need need for casual snaps. A perusal of the most popular cameras on photo-sharing site Flickr, I think, provides all the evidence that we need.

We’re also just beginning to see the emulation of depth-of-field lens blur in smartphone software – so even that arty shallow-focus effect of high-end DSLRs is now possible.

Whichever way you look at it, it seems pretty certain that smartphone cameras and very clever image manipulation software are rendering the point-and-shoot camera obsolete. Maybe they will one day threaten DLSRs as well, who knows?

SCORE: YES!

13. Tension between cloud convenience and corporate/government snooping grows

Apple even went as far as building an entire website dedicated to privacy and making their approach to the subject a selling point of the iOS platform. And shortly afterwards, Google announced that Andriod 5.0 Lolipop would follow iOS8’s lead and enable encryption by default. Many internet companies have also moved to rapidly increase the level of encryption used in their cloud data centres.

Of course, these moves incensed the security agencies, with the UK’s Robert Hannigan (head of spy headquarters GCHQ) writing an article in the Financial Times complaining about it. Quite how this will all work out is very unclear – but the tech companies certainly seem to have caught onto the public mood of concern about recent spying revelations.

SCORE: YES!

Summary

I make this 10.5/13, if I award myself 1/2 mark for the “maybe”. Not bad. It’s certainly interesting to see how things have worked out and where some of the trends are heading. I don’t think I’d change the categories here for next year’s predictions and I’ve given a perspective on what I think will happen in 2015. I wonder what I’ll be saying in another year’s time?