2013-05-24T20:39:03-04:00 Graham Barlow http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=graham-barlow Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Graham Barlow Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2695901 2013-02-17T19:00:00-05:00 2013-04-19T05:12:02-04:00

Graham Barlow http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-barlow/
I've lumped those three together because they're all on a Word document I keep on my desktop called 'Not a Snowball's Chance in Hell'. And yet, if you stop your average man or woman in the street they'll know all about the iWatch. "Ah yes", they'll say. "Apple is about to bring it out!" with a look of smug satisfaction that says they know they have their finger on the pulse of modern technology.

No, Apple is not about to bring it out. Or maybe it is, but the fact is that nobody actually knows what Apple is about to do, except Apple, and it isn't talking. We've all being fooled by an overly click-hungry technology press who so over-report every Apple rumour that you'd be forgiven for thinking they're all fact. Every time I visit my in-laws at the moment I get locked into a conversation with my father-in-law about how Apple is about to release the iWatch. When I say that nobody really knows for sure he looks at me in disbelief, as if I'm stupid. Of course, that's also a possibility, but looking around the headlines on various websites I can see how we got here.

"Apple has a team of 100 people working on smart watch".

"Apple Said to Have Team Developing Wristwatch Computer"

"Apple iWatch 'heading into production'"

Yes, I admit I could be wrong and Apple is about to unleash the iWatch. (Hey, remember that stupid tablet rumour in 2009?) And if it does then I really hope they call it something better than an iWatch. But either way, there has to be a better way of sorting out the reporting of Apple rumours so that there's a clearer differentiation between fact and (however well informed) fiction. It's not the individual stories that are the problem, it's their combined weight and Apple's own secrecy, and tendency to selectively leak information, doesn't help the situation either.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm sure we should be doing better.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2614298 2013-02-04T07:06:07-05:00 2013-04-06T05:12:01-04:00

Graham Barlow http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-barlow/ '10 Predictions for the Mobile Industry in 2013' online at Forbes.

What's kicked off the latest round of Web App championing is that this year a number of Open Source operating systems for mobiles are being released, including Firefox OS, Tizen, and Ubuntu. All these operating systems will run HTML5 apps natively, without them having to even be in a browser. Of course, with almost 90% of the mobile market in the US running iOS and Android it's still the browser-based Web Apps that matter right now.

Web apps, also known as 'Web-based apps', or 'mobile sites' (imagine apps that run inside your web browser, but for all intents and purposes look and feel like native apps) do have some natural advantages over native apps that run only on the platform they were coded for. For a start, they're 'code once, run everywhere' solutions. No longer do you need to learn two (or more) entirely different programming environments to get your app out on different platforms. They work across tablets, phones and desktops. As a developer this will obviously cut down on development time (and cost), and get your product out to more people. There's also no need to get your app approved by an official App Store - once its written you can literally just go live by uploading your app to the web.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Except it all falls apart when you start to think about the implications. Forget about the fact that native apps have a performance advantage over HTML5 ones, my main problem with Web Apps is this: Where's the money? In theory it's there - HTML5 apps already support web-based advertising, so there's a much larger pool of advertisers waiting to pay money for them. I can see why people think this - Apple's own iAds (adverts that appear in iOS apps) haven't really taken off, finishing 2012 with only 2.9% of US Mobile advertising market because of their limited reach, iAds are a very hard sell to advertisers, who probably have a large budget earmarked for 'online' and zero budget earmarked for 'apps.' Yet, what this neatly glosses over is that there's no way for customers to buy Web Apps that matches the convenience and ease of use of Apple's App Store - that means we'll most likely just have to put up with them being funded by advertising. If the success of Apple's App Store has taught us anything it's that if you make the payment system easy, insist on a decent level of quality and make it easy for developers to create beautiful, ad-free apps that surprise and delight us then they will, and people will buy them, in their thousands. The Mums and Dads, kids and Grandparents browsing the App Store from their iPad don't care about the difference between 'closed' and 'open' methods of delivering apps - they just want a system that works, and that's what Apple is delivering right now.

As I mentioned, there are ad-supported apps on the App Store, but have you used them? It's a terrible, frustrating, user experience. The ads are intrusive, your children click them by mistake all the time, pinging you off to the App Store or websites to buy something you don't want. I'm convinced the chief motivator for paying full price for a game on the App Store is the remove the intrusive ads from the Lite version! If Web Apps are forced to use advertising as their only revenue generator then good luck with that. The customer experience will be terrible and the revenue generated will be tiny compared to the App Store model.

That doesn't make your development costs cheaper - it actually destroys the revenue base for your product. Until Web Apps can properly address this problem the App Store model will be here to stay.

Graham Barlow will be treading the floors of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. If you'd like to show him your latest Web Apps, get in touch.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2565580 2013-01-28T06:59:54-05:00 2013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00

Graham Barlow http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-barlow/ announcing one of the best financial quarters that any company in the US has ever had - ever! - revenue didn't match market expectations, and so the shares slumped. Now Apple has lost its crown as the most valuable company on the stock exchange with oil company Exxon Mobil bubbling back up to the top slot. In fact, last Thursday $50 billion was wiped off its share price.

I'm actually quite relieved by this. As any mountaineer knows, it's hard to breathe at high altitude, and worrying about the share price too much distracts a company from what it should be doing, which is making great stuff. It also felt wrong - as anybody who has been following Apple for long enough knows, its natural home is not the mass market with its bargain basement bins and two for one price offers. Apple means luxury, Apple means quality and Apple means 'thinking different'. Once everybody is thinking different what does that mean for company that isn't supposed to be for everybody?

But does it mean that Apple is in trouble? Well, not really. Apple sold more iPads (22.9 million) and iPhones (47.8 million) in the last quarter than in any previous quarter. Just not enough to satisfy the analysts.

Apple aren't slowing down either. Rumours of what it has planned for us over the year are as rife as ever - a 128GB iPad? A new iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 in June? A budget iPhone for the low-price markets that Apple has traditionally shunned? I'm quite happy to get back to speculating about Apple's future products and not about how it's now bigger than Google and Facebook combined. Just like updating your status on Google+, it doesn't really matter. What matters most is the products it makes and how it treats its customers, and as far as I can see both of those things combined are still Apple's strongest suit.

I'll predict it now: 2013 is going to be a great year for Apple. Notable Brit, saviour of technology design and spiritual successor to Steve Jobs, Jonny Ive has been put in charge of human interface design across all of Apple's hardware and software products, and this can only mean that the software that runs on your iPhone, your Mac or your iPad is going to get better than ever. It's true that Apple has dulled its edge in innovation, with rivals like Samsung, which used to be accused of copying Apple, releasing phones with newer features first. But I think those were exactly the warning shots across its bows that Apple needed, and the right changes have been made in the management structure to get things back on track.

For me, Apple being the largest company in the world just never felt right. Apple works best when it's standing for something different to the mainstream, and I'm looking forward to it getting its head back under the parapet, where it belongs so it can concentrate on making those innovative products that we don't even know we need, yet.]]>