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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Today is my wife's birthday...

For her birthday, she wants as many people as possible to donate to her cause, raising $55,555 for the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at UCSF Children's Hospital, where our daughter spent the first several months of her life. Proceeds will go towards funding hospital neonatal supplies and monitoring equipment, family-oriented support programs, and neurodevelopmental programs.

To donate, go to causes.com/ucsfpreemies. You can also contribute by: 1) Donating directly using UCSF's 'Make a Gift' page. 2) Making a contribution offline, by sending a check. Please write your check out to 'UCSF Foundation', indicate on the memo line 'UCSF Preemies', and mail to: UCSF P.O. Box 45339 San Francisco, CA 94145-0339 3) For those of you who are contributing through your Donor Advised Fund, please reference the foundation's EIN/tax ID#: 94-2829914

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good.

By now, everyone is tired of hearing about the iPad, but the negative responses are so perfectly misguided that it would be wrong to waste this opportunity. Even better, we can look back at the 2001 iPod launch and see the exact same mistakes. But this isn't about the iPad or the iPod -- it's about product design.

The most famous iPod review was from Slashdot, which simply declared, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." The iPad reviews are similar in that they focus on the "missing" features. Those missing features are typically available in a variety of unsuccessful competing products, which leads people to erroneously conclude that a successful product would necessarily have even more features!

I believe this "more features = better" mindset is at the root of the misjudgment, and is also the reason why so many otherwise smart people are bad at product design (e.g. most open source projects). If a MacBook with OSX and no keyboard were really the right product, then Microsoft would have already succeeded with their tablet computer years ago. Copying the mistakes of a failed product isn't a great formula for success.

What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can't make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That's it -- no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg -- nothing but the essentials, well executed.

We took a similar approach when launching Gmail. It was fast, stored all of your email (back when 4MB quotas were the norm), and had an innovative interface based on conversations and search. The secondary and tertiary features were minimal or absent. There was no "rich text" composer. The original address book was implemented in two days and did almost nothing (the engineer doing the work originally wanted to spend five days on it, but I talked him down to two since I never use that feature anyway). Of course those other features can be added or improved later on (and Gmail has certainly improved a lot since launch), but if the basic product isn't compelling, adding more features won't save it.

By focusing on only a few core features in the first version, you are forced to find the true essence and value of the product. If your product needs "everything" in order to be good, then it's probably not very innovative (though it might be a nice upgrade to an existing product). Put another way, if your product is great, it doesn't need to be good.

So where does this leave the iPad, with it's lack of process managers, file managers, window managers, and all the other "missing" junk? I'm not sure, but one thing I've noticed is that I spend more time browsing the web from my iPhone than from my laptop. I'm not entirely sure why, but part of it is the simplicity. My iPhone is ready to use in under 1/2 second, while my laptop always takes at least a few seconds to wake up, and then there's a bunch of stuff going on that distracts me. The iPhone is a simple appliance that I use without a second thought, but my laptop feels like a complex machine that causes me to pause and consider if it's worth the effort right now. The downside of the iPhone is that it's small and slow (though the smallness is certainly a feature as well). That alone guarantees that I'll buy one to leave sitting next to the couch, but I'm kind of atypical.

Ultimately, the real value of this device will be in the new things that people do once they have a fast, simple, and sharable internet window sitting around. At home we'll casually browse the web, share photos (in person), and play board games (Bret's idea -- very compelling). At the office, maybe we'll finally have an easy way of chatting with remote people while discussing a presentation or document (e.g. audio iChat with a shared display). Of course these things are theoretically possible with laptops, but it always ends up being so clumsy and complicated that we don't bother (or give up after trying once).

Making the iPad successful is Apple's problem though, not yours. If you're creating a new product, what are the three (or fewer) key features that will make it so great that you can cut or half-ass everything else? Are you focusing at least 80% of your effort on getting those three things right?

Disclaimer: This advice probably only applies to consumer products (ones where the purchaser is also the user -- this includes some business products). For markets that have purchasing processes with long lists of feature requirements, you should probably just crank out as many features as possible and not waste time on simplicity or usability.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Censorship flamewar

This post is inflammatory and unfair. It argues an extreme position that I don't agree with, but nevertheless find amusing. When writing angry responses, please direct your hate at the straw-man, not at me :)

Agree/Disagree:

When a powerful group forces information to be removed from the internet, that is censorship. Some acts of censorship are more acceptable than others depending on what information is being censored and why.

For example, Disney can force people to take certain information off of the internet because they have exclusive rights, and the free availability of that information threatens to undercut their profits, which would undercut their power to make new movies and also new laws to protect their interests (such as retroactively extending copyright, or increasing penalties for violations). In this case, censorship is good because if Disney lost that power, their profits could disappear entirely and then the world might run out of Princess movies. Perhaps someone else would start making Princess movies, but making Princess movies is difficult, and without the ability to censor the internet, they too might fail.

A second example is the Communist Party of China. They can force people to take certain information off of the internet because they have exclusive rights, and the free availability of that information threatens to undercut their power and profits, and without that power they could lose control of China. In this case, censorship is good because if the Communist party lost that power, their control could disappear entirely and they would no longer be able to preserve the peace, stability, and growth of China. Perhaps someone else would start governing China (after a quick revolution), but governing China is difficult, and without the ability to censor the internet, they too might fail.

Debate.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Books and stuff: three years of Amazon addiction

I'm a slow reader, but that doesn't stop me from buying a lot of books. Inspired by a Blippy review, I thought it might be fun to publish my Amazon order history.

My threshold for buying books is very low, so don't interpret these purchases as endorsements. Also, I haven't read most of them yet, so if you spot anything especially good, please let me know.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

10 predictions for the world of January 1, 2020

After writing my predictions for the past 10 years, I decided it might be fun to write a few predictions for the next 10 years as well. This is a little more dangerous though, since I now lack the benefit of hindsight and at least one of them will probably turn out to be as dumb as "Palin/Gore win the 2014 presidential election".

That said, here are my (random and probably over-optimistic) predictions for the world as of Jan 1, 2020, assuming civilization doesn't collapse first:

All data lives "in the cloud" and can be accessed from anywhere. Most computers are essentially stateless caches which can be replaced without any data-loss or need for reconfiguration or reinstallation. This prediction was copied from 10 years ago, but this time it's right.
Android and iPhone kill off all the other mobile phone platforms. Android will be bigger (it will run on all of the "free" cell phones), but iPhone will still be "cooler", and will work more seamlessly with Apple's tablet computer.
Facebook will be a big success, possibly as big as Google. I'm probably over-optimistic because I work there, but the people are smart and ambitious.
3D displays will be popular because people want to watch Avatar and all future 3D movies and games at home (plus porn, of course -- think of the porn!).
No human-like artificial intelligence, but computers get a lot better at both high level and low level intelligence. At the high level, Google will release an amazing question answering service that can answer complex questions and is in many ways smarter than any human. Low-level, insect-like intelligence will become common enough that I'll be able to quickly build a Lego robot that uses computer vision to spot ants and physically squash them (and it will be awesome).
There will be an even bigger economic crash. The system becomes increasingly unstable as we try to paper-over the damage from one bubble by creating an even bigger bubble elsewhere. Nevertheless, things continue semi-working for some reason.
The health care system continues to be badly broken, and attempts at reform probably only make it worse (here is a nice summary). Fortunately, solutions will come from outside of the system. People will get better at avoiding disease (start with Taubes), and bio-tech will start to deliver in a big way. Unfortunately, the bio-tech will probably come from China, since they don't have so many rules to slow things down. The Chinese treatments won't be approved in the United States, but we can simply travel to Mexico for care. Urgent care will be local, but non-urgent procedures will be performed outside the US. Not everyone will do this, but it will be a very visible and growing trend by 2020.
The drug war will be over, mostly. An increasing number of people will realize that the war is causing a lot more harm than the drugs are (it's killing Mexico, for example). The end of marijuana prohibition in California will demonstrate that non-addictive drugs are not as dangerous as the government claims. It's unclear what will happen with highly addictive drugs such as heroin, but bio-tech may offer a solution that removes the addiction.
The energy problem is largely solved by cheap solar. It's not 100% done obviously, but we'll be on the ramp. Nuclear technology (Thorium?) could do it too, but probably isn't politically feasible. Edit: To be clear since not everyone has the same definition of "solved", for me it means that we have a relatively cheap and scalable energy solution, not that we're fully converted to it.
Politics will evolve much faster than in the past due to the Internet and social networks changing the core architecture of society (what people think and how they came to think it -- the professional media and government are no longer at the center). New movements will arise and gain power very quickly. Obama beating Clinton was the first hint of this. Political outsiders will begin winning elections. Steven Colbert will win the 2016 election -- the left will think he's joking, the right will think he's serious, and both sides will think that they are tricking the other ;)

Friday, January 1, 2010

My poorly remembered and partially imagined predictions from Jan 1, 2000

Reviewing old predictions is fun. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to write any down, so I'm working from memory here, and of course human memory is very unreliable and selective, so this is rather bogus.

Predictions for the next 10 years, from Jan 1, 2000 (as remembered on Jan 1, 2010):

Prediction: Linux will continue expanding into new spaces and will eventually make Microsoft irrelevant. Windows 2000 is the last release that anyone will care about.

Result: I was over-optimistic about Linux -- the community is unable to produce anything worthwhile on the desktop, most development has moved to the web anyway (making the desktop OS irrelevant), and OSX popularity among developers took away a lot of energy (I develop in Linux, but use OSX to host my web browser and other apps). Linux is a huge success on the server-side though and continues to grow in more "embedded" contexts, such as Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft made itself irrelevant -- they still make a lot of money, but they are no longer changing the world.

Prediction: Wireless data access (such as that provided by Ricochet) will become fast and practically ubiquitous, meaning that the Internet is always with us.

Result: It took longer than I expected, but we're finally starting to get there, and it is awesome.

Prediction: "Computer Aided Reality" will provide a cool visual overlay by using computer vision to identify objects and then fetching info about them from the Internet.

Result: I was very over-optimistic. There are a few basic "augmented reality" apps around, but nothing major. I still think that this will happen, though the display technology is still very uncertain (I haven't even heard about direct retinal projection lately).

Prediction: All data lives "online" and can be accessed from anywhere. Your computer is a stateless cache which can be replaced without any data-loss or need for reconfiguration or reinstallation.

Result: I was over-optimistic. We made some progress with things like Gmail, but computers still store information (configuration at the very least). Chrome OS may be more like what I had in mind, and the iPhone is too if you set aside the fact that it requires manual syncing.

Prediction: The Java VM will get good enough that people will finally stop using C++.

Result: I was over-optimistic. The JVM got somewhat better (though it still has significant GC problems), but Java got worse due to cultural problems. Fortunately, a lot of other interesting languages became popular, including Javascript, and there are a number of fast virtual machines in the works.

Prediction: Google will be a big success, possibly as big as Yahoo. I'm probably over-optimistic because I work there, but the people are smart and ambitious.

Result: I was under-optimistic. Google is bigger than Yahoo ever was, and is getting close to Microsoft (their market cap is 70% of Microsoft's).

Prediction: Humans will be cloned. After the initial outrage, people will stop caring once they see that the result is just a regular baby (like the "test tube babies" before them), not a "soulless monster".

Result: To my knowledge, that hasn't been any successful human cloning, though I wouldn't be surprised if there has and they are just keeping quiet about it.

Prediction: The stock market will crash, and take Silicon Valley (and other bubble-zone) real estate markets down with it.

Result: The market crash came (sort of), but instead of going down, real estate kept going up! Even when it did finally crash, local prices (especially Palo Alto) remained remarkably high.

Prediction: A meteor strike will destroy all life on Earth on November 5, 2007, so I don't need to waste time writing down my predictions for 2010.

Result: I meant 2012, there was an off-by-5 error in my calculation ;)

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Tablet thoughts

I don't know anything about Apple's tablet, and I generally don't pay much attention to the speculation about their unannounced products. However, John Gruber has a nice post today which discusses the hypothetical Apple tablet.

The best part is the core product question -- how does this new product fit in with all existing products? Revolutionary products are underestimated because we evaluate them relative to existing products. This quote gets it:

Like all Apple products, The Tablet will do less than we expect but the things it does do, it will do insanely well. It will offer a fraction of the functionality of a MacBook‚ but that fraction will be way more fun. The same Asperger-y critics who dismissed the iPhone will focus on all that The Tablet doesn't do and declare that this time, Apple really has fucked up but good.

That was certainly the case with the iPod, or as slashdot put it, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

When considering revolutionary new products, we can not simply compare them with existing products, but must instead compare them with the products that don't yet exist, but should. For example, the PC was more than just an expensive, hard-to-use typewriter -- it was a whole new thing that just happened to have some typewriter features. Obviously this comparison is much more difficult than the "count the checkboxes" approach that we like to use when evaluating the "better mousetrap", but it's critical if we're going to understand or create anything truly new.

I have no idea what Apple is planning to release, but to me the revolutionary product need is in bridging the virtual and physical worlds. If you spend your entire day in front of the computer, this need may not seem real, but if you move between the two worlds you may notice that they are strangely disconnected. For example, imagine that I'm looking at a picture on my computer and want to give you a copy. In the physical world, I would simply hand you the print (I would have gotten double-prints), but with computers it's nearly impossible. Yes, there may be some complicated 10-step process that I can use to share the image, or maybe I can download and install some obscure software, but I'm not going to do that and neither are most other people. Imagine if I instead had a simple (built-in) gesture for passing the photo off to person standing next to me, and it were just as easy as handing them a real photo.

Of course exchanging photos is just one small example of these physical/virtual interactions. It's a whole new category, so many of them, including the most important, haven't been invented yet. However, you can get some ideas by thinking of the marketing cliche where two people are standing around a computer collaborating on something, taking quick notes, working off a recipe, etc. Those images occur in marketing because they are appealing, but they don't occur much in real life because our existing devices and software are awful. Current laptop computers are too bulky, awkward, and keyboard centric (the ui needs to be gesture-centric), and the iPhone is too small and limited. I want something about the size of a notepad that can be used naturally while standing up and walking around, just like an actual pad of paper, except that it's fully integrated with the virtual world as well as the physical world.

I hope this is what Apple is building -- it would be a great product. (or someone else could build it, though honestly I can't imagine anyone besides Apple getting it right)

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