Benedict Evan’s latest post on Microsoft, IBM, and anti-trust is excellent. In it he argues (reminds us) that market power during one generation of tech, doesn’t necessarily guarantee market power in the next. And that anti-trust intervention isn’t actually responsible for Microsoft missing out on, among other things, mobile. The rules of engagement simply changed. The PC is now a smartphone accessory.
Here is an excerpt:
The tech industry loves to talk about ‘moats’ around a business - some mechanic of the product or market that forms a fundamental structural barrier to competition, so that just having a better product isn‘t enough to break in. But there are several ways that a moat can stop working. Sometimes the King orders you to fill in the moat and knock down the walls. This is the deus ex machina of state intervention - of anti-trust investigations and trials. But sometimes the river changes course, or the harbour silts up, or someone opens a new pass over the mountains, or the trade routes move, and the castle is still there and still impregnable but slowly stops being important. This is what happened to IBM and Microsoft. The competition isn’t another mainframe company or another PC operating system - it’s something that solves the same underlying user needs in very different ways, or creates new ones that matter more. The web didn’t bridge Microsoft’s moat - it went around, and made it irrelevant. Of course, this isn’t limited to tech - railway and ocean liner companies didn’t make the jump into airlines either. But those companies had a run of a century - IBM and Microsoft each only got 20 years.
For the full post, click here.
I took the above photo on my Fujifilm X-T3 at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Toronto. Obviously, it is a cast of David Bowie's head. I've been using Fujifilm's X cameras for exactly 3 years now and have already gone through 2 different models. I love them. But Om Malik's recent post on why the future belongs to computational photography is, in my opinion, entirely accurate.
For most people, taking photos on a standalone camera and dropping them into Lightroom is not only far too much work, but also unnecessary. Here is a chart from Om's post showing total worldwide digital camera unit sales (in millions). Sales have fallen off a cliff from about 10 years ago and now look to be on the verge of dying.
What is obvious is that we are all now just taking photos on our phones. Thanks to better chips, sensors, and software, the future of photography looks, again, destined to be computational. Apple is set to announce its new iPhone 11 (or whatever it will be called) this week and already the rumors point to a dramatically improved camera.
This change in hardware has also changed our relationship to the photograph. We now take photos for the purpose of real-time sharing, which is another point that Om makes. When I post photos of things that have happened in the past -- as I often do -- people are commonly confused: "Where are you? When are you back in Toronto? Wait, is this a #latergram?"
This has made photographic memories feel ephemeral. Once the moment has passed, we forget about them. They get drowned out in new real-time images and shares. As a society we are taking more photos than ever before. Not surprisingly, this lowers the gravitas of each individual one.
I think we’ve hit peak millennial.
Last Friday the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority, announced that 30 subway stations will be redesigned and that “millennial-friendly amenities” would be added throughout the system.
As you might guess, this includes adding phone chargers in train cars and buses and wifi throughout all the stations (by the end 2016). They will also be replacing the MetroCard with an all digital fare system that will include mobile payments.
But the reality is that this isn’t about being millennial-friendly. This is about joining the 21st century.
Here in Toronto, we finally have our PRESTO card working on all streetcars and in almost 40% of the city’s subway stations. This is a huge improvement over our laughable and antiquated token system, but it’s not enough. I really hope the next rollout is a mobile app that will allow everyone to pay with just their phone.
We also have wifi in about 30% of our subway stations, but again this is not enough. By the time you get authenticated (do you need to have Twitter now?), your train is usually arriving and then you enter a tunnel where no wifi exists. We need to be looking at the entire tunnel network. (Related topic: LinkNYC)
I say all this because I am a big supporter of public transit. Despite all the positive things I write about Uber, ridesharing, and driverless cars, I do not believe that they will eradicate the need for a strong transit backbone. This is fundamental to our city building efforts.
So let’s do our best to delight people when they take transit.