Changing the Nature of Ownership Online

I've been furious about the Lala.com shutdown since the announcement came out yesterday.

With the many irate Facebook and Twitter postings (most of them referencing Steve Jobs) now out of my system, I have had time to reflect more thoughtfully on why the Lala shutdown has been so difficult to accept.

Perhaps like to a lot of Lala users, I took full advantage of option to purchase unlimited web streaming rights for $0.10/track. I used it to expand my library to include exciting new genres and artists that I had discovered on my favorite alternative radio station, the Current (http://thecurrent.org), as well as music I was stumbling across on Pandora, Lala, and the like.

The ease and affordability of using the $0.10 streaming option allowed me to grow my catalog in a way that was incredibly fun and enriching.

And now it's gone.

I knew Lala disappearing was always a possibility (albeit a remote one), and I knew that buying rights to stream a track carried risks that buying the actual mp3 or CD doesn't. But that didn't stop me from attaching myself to the music in a way that made me feel as though it really was mine.

And therein lies the rub.

As more of our digital lives move to the cloud, more and more products can be delivered through a subscription model that provides you with access but not ownership in the traditional sense.

As long as the company is around to provide the service, and as long as you're willing to pay for it, the distinction between access and ownership means very little. But as soon as either of those things cease to be true, the difference between access and ownership becomes glaring.

Steve Jobs had every right to shut down Lala. Apple has no obligation to pay me back for all of those $0.10 acquisitions (though, in their one graceful move in all of this, I will get iTunes credit). And nobody is required to help me re-create my (yes, MY!) Lala catalog somewhere else. And that just sucks.

The Other (More Likely) Future of Computing

It's 7:00am and you're getting ready for work. As you typically do in the mornings, you log into your large flat-panel TV to stream the news while you finish your morning prep.

Before you're halfway through the news, you hit pause and run out the door to catch the train, this time with your tablet in hand. You sit down in your seat and finish streaming the news, then go to your Google Docs repository because you need to complete that presentation for this afternoon.

You're 99% finished when the train reaches your stop, so you power down your tablet, run into work and log back in to wrap it up on your company workstation.

Now imagine...

You work from home and are having a conference call with a colleague in Europe using the web-enabled, wall-mount TV in your home office. Halfway through the call, you want to share a document, so you pick up your tablet, open up the doc online, and hit "share via video feed." Since all of your devices are connected to the internet, the doc immediately appears on your colleague's screen, where he can provide feedback and watch you make edits on the tablet in real time.

Yesterday's post proposed that the controversy around the iPad suggests we're at a tipping point in consumer technology.

We feel the winds of change. And with the world of computing transforming, but in ways yet unclear, the stakes are high. Apple enthusiasts want to see Jobs take over the world with his elegant and intuitive devices, while the anti-Apple cohort fears a world of Jobs-like autocracy.

But to think of the future of computing through the lens of elegant vs. clumsy or open vs. closed is to miss the point.

The majors shifts in computing have revolved more around architectures than interfaces or software development philosophies. For example, it was the arrival of the PC operating system and subsequent shift from the mainframe to the client-server model that created the last revolution in computing.

Now we're coming to a new age in which the internet, browser, and ubiquity of wireless, and the subsequent shift to a cloud/SaaS model, will become the drivers of major software and hardware innovations. These changes will enable the ultimate in mobility, portability, and performance. It's not just the keyboard and mouse that are coming to an end, but also, and more importantly, the days of loading apps onto an operating system on a laptop or desktop PC.

When you look at the iPad through this architectural lens, you quickly realize that the device ultimately represents no real change. The touchscreen, accelerometer, etc. are impressive and important, yes, but the architectural makeup of the iPad is very consistent with the client-server model that has been in place for decades. You load an app, which requires processing power and is usually worthless without a connection to a server accessed via the internet, onto a bloated operating system that also supports a boatload of device drivers. (No wonder the iPad doesn't support multi-tasking...) It works, but the model involves large numbers of interconnected and moving parts and is suboptimal in a world connected by high-speed wireless data networks.

The more likely future of computing, then, does not rest in Steve Jobs' elegant devices but rather in platforms like the Chrome OS that take the traditional operating system/PC model out of the picture entirely by relying on rich internet applications that can be accessed from any device. The future is in the scenarios outlined at the beginning of this post, which the iPad by itself does not come close to enabling.

If I were a developer, I would try for the next couple of years to make a nice profit off a sleek iPad app, and then put that money into development for the real future of computing. How about you?

Taking iPad to the Mat. What the Controversy Really Means...

So, the wait is over and the news is out. Apple sold "over 300,000" iPads in its first day out of the gate, according to an official press release. That's more than the iPhone sold in its first weekend but far fewer than the 500,000-700,000 units some analysts had projected. (See the WSJ article here.)

Does that make it a success or a failure?

Even though it is far too early to tell, chances are you have an opinion. The iPad has been one of the most hotly debated new technology products in memory. Blogs and online articles far and wide have attracted an obscene number of comments. Online discussions have become both heated and personal, with iPad enthusiasts being dubbed naive Steve Jobs sycophants and iPad critics being labeled naysaying luddites.

The controversy doesn't tell us much about the iPad or Apple itself, as most articles and their ensuing comments are 50% speculation, 40% name-calling, and 10% fact.

What the controversy does suggest is that we have reached a tipping in consumer technology. The internet-as-a-platform and cloud computing paradigm is taking over, and a new class of devices, many yet to be dreamed up, is emerging to deliver users content and functionality anytime, anywhere. As our data networks continue to grow larger and faster, and as strategic partnerships between data providers and device manufacturers become more sophisticated, the way in which we interact with technology will drastically change.

What the iPad controversy represents, then, is the battle for mindshare regarding what that future will ultimately look like.

I have been incredibly critical of the iPad (or perhaps, more accurately, of the iPad junkies) and personally believe the design has some important flaws. Still, I have to offer kudos to apple for putting forward the most tangible, compelling vision yet of the future of computing.

Is the iPad good for Amazon? - CNET Reviews

(Credit: Apple)

Now that the dawn of the iPad is upon us, the inevitable comparisons between Apple's wundertablet and the Kindle--and what it all means for Amazon--have begun in earnest.
For example, in its write-up of the iPad launch, The New York Times said that Apple's new deals with five major publishers basically amounted to a declaration of war. "The announcement puts Apple on a collision course with Amazon," the Times said. And Steve Jobs, while praising Amazon for pioneering the e-book category, told the world that, "we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther."
That may very well be true, especially when it comes to stuff like comic books, graphic novels, textbooks, and interactive children's stories, but the war we're looking at isn't the war we're used to seeing in the consumer electronics world, where one piece of gear simply is superior, sexier--and better-priced--than another.