Meditations on the Death of the Mouse

“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got [rubber band] scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.” (Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference, June 2nd)

When I read, and re-read this quote from Steve Jobs, I was most struck by the viral process that set loose the Touch  meme. In a flash of inspiration,  a foreign meme, Touch,  was injected  into the iPhone product development process.  And this meme, with prodigious speed and fidelity, replicated itself throughout the smartphone and computing eco-system, successfully competing with (and I predict ultimately crowding out) the mouse/keyboard meme.  However, one good meme is not enough.  As we explored in Galapagos, to have a lasting impact, we need a set of related, rapidly replicating memes to achieve evolutionary stability (i.e., have an enduring impact).

I think Apple with the iPhone/iPad has come close to achieving this “evolutionary stable set” with a few notable exceptions, most critically around a gesture-and voice-driven converged device that will compete with and ultimately replace TV.  And for those smug Apple acolytes who think the battle is over and Apple’s dominance is assured, read the following Steve Jobs’ quote below very carefully:

It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy….I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby. (Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference, June 2nd)

If smarter people do figure it out, I believe that Apple’s entire paradigm is at risk and the iPhone and the iPad will go the way of the hula-hoop and the get-rich chain-letter. A sobering thought for those who are hoping to ride their Apple stock to 10x its current value and retire worry-free.

See below for a list of what I believe are an evolutionary stable set of memes. And note that the iPad  scores poorly when rated against these criteria. (See The Next Big Thing for a discussion on why the iPad is only a transitional, not transformative, device.)

Evolutionary stable set of memes

1. Voice.  Interfaces that use voice as an overlay technology to supplement touch and gesture.
2. Touch. Multi-touch display that you can type on with your fingers
3. Gesture. Gesture- driven display when touching is impractical or undesirable (e.g., Wii)
4. Collaboration-enabled. Conferencing (including video), screen sharing, online-participation
5. Location-aware.
6. Mobile-enabled.
7. Multi-purpose. Device becomes the preferred tool for at least three major functions (e.g., voice recorder, camera, gaming, book reader)
8. Converged. Brings together telephone, TV, computing to a single hardware platform.
9. Fast-evolving  devices. Devices change shape, size, portability to fill new niches in the eco-sytem. (Example: iPod, iPod shuffle, iPod nano)
10. Fast-evolving symbiotic devices.  Add-on products (portable speakers, alarm clock docking stations, etc.) proliferate rapidly.
11. Apps.  Nearly limitless supply of no-cost or low-cost self-contained applets that cater to specific needs, e.g., Point me to Mecca. What species of tree is in front of 220 Mott Street?)
12. Single source distribution. Corporate-mediated single source distribution platform for  apps (e.g., App Store) and content.

…there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers…Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads….Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps (Steve Jobs, Thoughts on Flash)

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The genius of the Internet is its almost infinite openness to innovation. New hardware. New software. New applications. New ideas. They all get their chance….As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers….We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time. (Chuck Geschke, John Warnock, Our Thoughts on Open Markets)

*****

Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market and created a market dominance. General web statistics company estimates availability at 95%,^[16] while Adobe claims that 98 percent of US Web users and 99.3 percent of all Internet desktop users have the Flash Player installed.. (Wikipedia, Flash)

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QWERTY (pronounced /ˈkwɜrti/) is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard’s top row of letters…. It was designed to minimize typebar clashes,^[1] became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878,^[1] and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and the failure of alternatives to prove very significant advantages. (Wikipedia)

Early in my consulting career, I went on a sales call to the office of a very quirky decision maker at Gartner Group. He had an “MS-DOS: Just say No!” poster on his wall.  Gartner Group, in the early 1990s had standardized on Apple desktop computers and was building corporate applications using Apples’ object-oriented software development environment, Hypercard.  “Hmmm,” I thought, “an emotional position to take on an operating system.” When I asked about the poster, he went into a ten minute rant about the gross inferiority of the Intel/IBM/Microsoft personal computing paradigm. Well, we know how that story ended…QWERTY.

“We don’t care about your 20-year-old reminiscences,” you moan;  “we want  predictions for the future. QWERTY, Apple, Adobe. “

OK, here you go, my top ten :

1. Adobe fails to extend its dominance of the desktop to the mobile space.
2. Apple continues to march out a succession of devices for mobile use (bigger, thinner, fold-able ipads); better smart phones; smaller, smaller smartphones (think, smartwatch)
3. 4G Networks change the way we access entertainment and the way we communicate with each other. (Everyone videoconferences all the time. )
4. And the big news. The iPhone paradigm is not a mobile platform. iScreen replaces AppleTV and more importantly decisively ends the era of the purpose-built television.
5. Adobe slides into irrelevance.
6. Apple dominates consumer technology. Consumer technology drives innovation.
7. The 2010s become the golden age of publishing.  We look backwards. We publish beautifully illustrated books that would put medieval monks to shame. Our poets write to us, chant to us directly. Finally, computer-technology delivers art.
8. Home PC and consumer laptop sales decline drastically.
9. Google and Microsoft fight for dominance of the desktop and browser-based computing. No one, but corporate America, cares.
10. Business users hate their desktop computers, their suddenly retro-looking laptops. The Web is no longer cool and browser-based user interfaces feel like slide-rules. Powerful executives stare disbelievingly at their hard-wired phones, their keyboards, that ridiculous mouse and fume. CEOs, CMOs scream at their CFOs and CIOs and ask why their 11-year-old daughters have better technology than billion-dollar corporations. CFOs and CIOs mutter something about PCI compliance and the insecurity of the “cloud” and publish yet another memo on why users need to keep their corporate mailboxes under 10 terabytes of data. The foundation shifts. The Microsoft era ends.

“But what about QWERTY”, you ask;  “The network effect?”

The network effect only applies if you attempt to change an established dominant culture. Apple has gone down a different path; Apple is creating a new culture.