The Teckki Says

In this increasingly connected world, there are two major reasons to possess a smartphone - the need to be connected and the convenience of being connected. I fall into the category of the latter. I check my email, news websites, and sometimes my Facebook page, among other things, all before I get to the office. The convenience of not having to wait several minutes to boot up a computer is ideal.

Often, I bounce between the two. These little devices could never replace a full sized computer. With the industrial strength computing power I need in developing programs and editing pictures and video, something that I hold an arm’s length to use one-handed could never replace my high-powered box.

Or could it? The following story may make you think about just how fast current technology, and conventional wisdom, could evolve.

I worked at Sears Roebuck when we were celebrating out 100th year in business. At the time, Sears was the world's largest retailer. There were others, Montgomery Ward’s, among them, but there was also Kmart. Wal-Mart was still a collection of rural stores. You could even buy groceries at some Sears’ stores. We were so big for so long, no one ever dreamed we would be anything less.

But we were wrong.

What we told the public, and what we did in private, were different things. We were losing money, and closing stores. We ceded the rural market to Wal-Mart. We didn't realize how fast the environment would change, and didn't adapt fast enough to make a difference. We were also being attacked not as a large department store, but in segments. Home Depot was attacking the Craftsman and hardware brands. J.C. Penney and Kmart were attacking apparel and merchandise. Best Buy and Circuit City were attacking Kenmore and appliances. Wal-Mart was beating up everyone on price, and it hadn't even moved into the suburban areas. The retail market was changing and taking no prisoners.

I see parallels in the computing world. First, Blackberry devices have taken over the email world. Google is in active battle with Microsoft on three fronts: Desktop applications, the Chrome web browser, and at the heart of Microsoft itself, the operating system Android. This battle has even spilled into the mobile world where Android is on target to snare the largest market share, having already dwarfed Windows Mobile, but soon overtaking Apple's iPhone OS4. As an extension of that battle, the tablet, which the troika of Microsoft, chip maker Intel, and the small cadre of computer hardware companies like Dell, HP and Toshiba hoped to dominate, Apple’s iPad is king. All of this will be at the expense of the big box.

Sears didn't disappear, and neither will the big box. But Sears I used to work at in no way resembles the Sears that exists today, and in the next decade, neither will the desktop computer in which I type this post. The Internet, along with wireless devices, has forever altered the landscape, and is quickly relegating the big box to the background as a hub in which all others draw upon as needed.

These changes will cause their own issues, but the momentum will go forward and resolve these problems, not backward to the familiar. It will also mean that businesses and organizations will have to adapt to a multi-device world. In this scenario, people have not stopped using their computers; they have added other devices to the mix. There will not be less of an information demand, just multiple different ways of presenting it. Access and presentation will be key.

In a companion article, The Eye of My Apple, I chronicle Charlie Havens, of Wooded Isle Computing, as an early purchaser of Apple's iPad. As an Apple computer consultant, Charlie keeps abreast on Apple's technologies as his clientele, mainly business and organizations, are increasingly looking for ways to incorporate Apple's new devices into an increasingly crowded world. His experiences with these technologies gives us insight, and will likely mirror our own.

If there is someone who should know how Apple's latest technologies will fit in or complement the business world, it's Charlie Havens, of the Apple computer consultancy Wooded Isle Computer Consultants. If there is someone who is still trying to figure this question out, it's also Charlie Havens. This is not a knock on his expertise, he's first rate. It does demonstrate the flux these new products are creating, and since they are directed at the consumer world, it also shows the complexity of making the crossover to the business and non-profit worlds. In comparison, Research in Motion's (RIM) Blackberry products went the other way, from the business to the consumer world. That is a much easier transition.

Havens' first thoughts were that his iPad was a lot more fun to use than his iPhone, but quickly found some quirks, such as the way either device displays the keystrokes of a password before it hides them on the screen. The iPad’s screen is much larger, magnifying this effect. Typing, while better, is not as easy as it is on a laptop, so most heavy interaction will continue to be on a big box. For the features the device shines at, like reading eBooks, web browsing and email, Havens gives the iPad very high marks.

Havens’ experience has been that of an early adopter. He encountered this a few years earlier with the iPhone. Both experiences are still fraught with growing pains. Apple makes it child-like simple on the consumer side to operate its devices, but something that businesses want, and take for granted, is integration of services on the back-end. Email, Google and Facebook work extremely well on the iPhone, but you are talking about systems that have hundreds of millions of users, and the experiences of each user are rather generic. Customized solutions for the iPhone OS-based devices yield mixed results at best, and some horror stories, as Havens can relate in trying to make Apple work in a still Microsoft-dominated world. I expect this to continue as Google becomes more pervasive in our computing experiences, and Apple continues to develop divergent paths with its new rival.

Havens’ job going forward will be to sort out this mess, and find new ways to use these devices. One such way was the use of an iPad as the server of a Keynote (Apple’s equivalent of Microsoft’s PowerPoint) presentation he made at a seminar back in May. First, hardware connections, like VGA adapters, had to be purchased, since they are not built into the device. Another challenge is getting that laptop-built-but-excellent presentation over to the iPad, since there are no disc or card slots. Finally, he had to deal with differences in laptop machine fonts that were used in the presentation, but were not natively loaded onto the iPad.

It struck me as curious that days prior to his presentation, he downloaded several different presentation applications from the App Store to get a feel of how each app might work with one. Apple had developed Keynote to the iPad, but it is easier to create more robust presentations on a laptop. To him, it seemed that every app had something that he wished was on all of the others. He settled on Keynote, and after the technical hurdles, everything was plug and play. Havens was able to do a great presentation, and his audience was wowed by the sight of an "everyone wants’ one" device demonstrated in the real world.

It might sound like a reinvention of the wheel here, because Havens had his laptop and could have easily done the presentation using that device. Havens wasn’t doing this as a part of an ego trip, but I am sure that advertising had some role to play here. More importantly, a client is going to clamor for a solution that involves the ability to use an iPad in this manner, and the client will expect Havens and Wooded Isle to deliver. That will require more than a Keynote presentation of how this might work.

In researching this article, I looked at several sites that have motion, animation and video - the Chicago Tribune, Disney and YouTube. They have one thing in common within their websites - they use animation software from Adobe called Flash. Not all animation is Flash, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, such as video, slide shows, many ads, games and some navigation, Flash is the tool of choice, and the defacto standard in website development.

This is more than a "nice to know" fact. The issue was pushed to the forefront last month when Apple's CEO Steve Jobs wrote and article on Apple's website to answer both customers and critics that Flash will never play on the iPad, as it did not do so on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple also took steps to ensure this by banning software developers from using tools other than its own to create apps for these devices. No more Flash means more than just no more pizazz, but the items I mentioned above, like video, games and other items developed in Flash, don't show up on Apple's mobile devices. If your navigation is developed in Flash, visitors to your site cannot move beyond the page they land on. This has serious consequences as to how your website is developed if you plan on your visitors being able to use these devices to view your site.

There are several things you can do resolve this, but bottom line is that you will probably develop two websites: one for computers, the other for mobile devices. On the surface, this seems like an extra expense, and it is. However, the website world is quickly moving from a one-size-fits-all environment, to one where multiple device types will access the web. The experience of sitting at a stationary computer is different from interacting with a device while in motion. As more flat screen TV's become Internet-capable, an entirely new web viewing experience will come into play, making websites developed for viewing via a 17" to 22" computer screens inadequate. But before you engage your developer in programming for new media, consider the following:

(1). Where is your audience, TODAY!
For anyone claiming that if you don't have a website, you don't have a business, I can find businesses that don't have websites, and are doing fine now, and will be in the future. In these businesses, the phone still works, and the doors are still open. The difference is they know where their customers are, but more importantly, their customers know where they are. Generally, no one is totally off the grid because search engines like Google has made it their business to put as much information out as possible, and businesses get listed through other means, such as memberships in organizations with website directories. But if a majority of your customers are walk-by's, how useful will your website really be, let alone someone searching online for you so that they can walk by your location?

(2). If being on the web is the future, what part of the "future" is yours?
It has been reported Apple has sold over 75 million iPhone OS devices (includes the iPod Touch) through last year. We can probably assume that better than 50% of these devices are still active. Apple recently announced that it sold a million iPads in the first month of availability. All of these devices are web-capable. How many of these device owners are actually a part of your targeted audience? These devices are definitely the future, but how long will they be potential? Even if all of your customers sported iPhones, will they use them to browse your site? You may be better off developing an app.

(3). How interactive is your website?
This is a very important question. The reason people migrate to these devices from computers is mobility, convenience and speed. Some sites require extensive interactivity, and need to be accessed using a computer and mouse. Other sites can be made very complex by reducing the size of the screen they are displayed on. Moving from one screen size to another can sometimes be compared from moving from a larger house to a smaller one - you are going to have to do a lot of rearranging, and some things will not be brought to the new house. A smaller screen may require a major re-engineering effort and purpose for your website.

All of the points above speak more to your business and your customers than to the technology that connects you both. While it is unsettling, and technology can usually transform entire industries overnight, ignoring how your customers interact with you can transform your business much quicker. Flash will be around awhile, because Adobe listens to its customers. Apple may or may not be a part of the equation, but their customers don't seem to mind too much, after all, a million iPads just got sold, and not one of them does Flash.