1. What percentage of people who have iPads / tablets and want to read the New York Times on those devices also own smartphones? My guess is that there is significant overlap between iPad / tablet owners and smartphone owners. Why penalize that audience to the tune of $180 per year for the right to consume the content on two additional devices? It basically doubles the price of the annual subscription on a single device.

2. While I’m willing to pay a bit extra to be able to read the NYT on the tablet and a second device, I’m not willing to pay over $400 a year to read it on my tablet and my iPhone / Android device. That just seems outrageous. If the price increment were on the order of $5 per month, I’d probably opt for the full plan that includes tablet and smartphone access. Paying a small amount for an incremental device makes sense. Paying almost double does not.

The thing is, I don’t actually object to being charged more to read the NYT on multiple screens. But I think of the world in a really simple way – there’s my computer (my Macbook Air) and then there are my smart mobile devices (iPad, Android phone, and iPhone). It feels to me like splitting the tablet and smartphone experiences into two different plans doesn’t match my usage patters. I’m either on my computer or I’m on the go – I’m happy to pay for convenience, but this plan doesn’t nail it for me.

I hope the New York Times reconsiders and drops the price on the “all-in” plan – I’d happily pay for the peace of mind knowing that I can consume everything across all the devices I use for a price I can swallow. Until then, I’m sticking with the iPad plan and I’ll have to just make do on my smartphones.

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If you’re short on time, the summary answer is that I the iPad cannot be a 100% laptop replacement for me during the workday. That being said, I did identify quite a few use cases or types of days where it was perfectly fine to go iPad only and leave the Macbook at home.

To give the iPad vs laptop comparison a fair shake, I thought it was only fair to compare an iPad without an extended / additional keyboard to a laptop. While having an external keyboard would have closed the gap between using an iPad and a laptop, the real goal was to see if I could get by with the iPad as is – if I’m going to carry the iPad plus a dock or keyboard, I might as well just carry a laptop. I should also say that I have been using an iPhone for about two years and am very comfortable with the iPhone operating system and user experience.

Broadly speaking, most of the workdays I have fall into one of three main buckets (or a combination of them):

* Heavy Meeting Days – These are days where I have 6-8 meetings during the day, with maybe 30-60 minutes in between each meeting.

* Heavy Transit Days – These are days where I might not have a lot of meetings, but I do have to make a major transit move or two, going from Mountain View to San Francisco, Berkeley, or somewhere else more than 30 minutes from home. The time spent commuting is a pretty meaty chunk of the day, at least 2 hours or more.

* Desk Days – These are days where I’m mostly sitting at a desk of some sort. It can be a coffee shop, hotel lobby, or some other reasonably comfortable place where I can work for blocks of 1-2 hours at least once per day.

The biggest thing I realized from going iPad only is that it’s a total waste of time to lug around the Macbook on days where I am doing a ton of commuting or have a lot of meetings. By and large, I was able to keep up with email, Facebook, the news, and deal with Google Docs and light spreadsheets / presentations on the iPad alone. When I was going iPad only, I basically just deferred any long emails until I got home (which was generally okay) and deferred playing Flash-based Facebook games until I had a Flash-capable device. Overall, I found that I was happy to use the iPad for about an hour straight to do work before I started wanting to have a full keyboard and larger form factor.

Oddly enough, I did not miss having a full keyboard. Unlike the iPhone or my Droid, where I am pretty fast holding the device with one hand and typing with both hands, the iPad does not allow for easy one-hand typing – it’s too heavy and too awkward. The simple workaround for me was to simply defer typing intensive tasks until I had a full keyboard.

There was one very unexpected surprise. The iPad is a much more capable all-day computer than my Macbook. I generally can’t get more than 2-3 hours of useful stuff done on my Macbook on a single charge. On the flipside, my iPad is able to last an entire day on a single charge with nearly constant use.

So, overall, I was pleasantly surprised with using the iPad as a laptop replacement. At least 2-3 days per week I have a combination of commute and meetings that basically make the laptop useless. When I’m on the go, I rarely get the opportunity to sit down, plug in, and get enough work done to justify lugging around the laptop. I’m happy to have found a new device to lighten the bag for days where I’m on the go.

As always, leave a comment if you like.

You know what strikes me as funny? I would never have felt the need or desire to even try an Android device at all if not for the spotty phone performance of my iPhone. It’s not a lack of compelling features that made me want to try Android – it was the inability to simply complete and maintain a phone call. With something approaching suitable phone performance, I would have remained a happy sole iPhone owner. Below are a few observations from my time using the Android platform:

Google Voice has allowed me to use the HTC Android device without having to go through the trouble of switching my number or blasting all of my contacts with my new number. That makes it a lot easier to test out the phone without the personal switching cost of getting the word out to my contacts.

About 60-70% of the applications I have become accustomed to using on my iPhone are now available on my HTC Incredible. There are usable versions of Foursquare, TripIt, Twitter, Pandora, Mint, Facebook (not quite as good as the FB version, but usable), and the New York Times. Gmail works great, as does the calendar. I’m missing ESPN Radio, XM Radio, and all of my favorite games. I suspect that will be remedied as Android grows.

Developers go where there is usage and volume – developers are unlikely abandon Apple regardless of what it does in terms of platform policies. However, as Android grows, developers will follow.

Getting media on my Android devices still feels broken, especially compared to the iTunes sync experience. But I’ve found that DoubleTwist is serviceable and up to the task. That makes my Android device more fun – I can actually take some of my music with me on the go.

Overall, I think Android has a pretty bright future. Despite all of the free vs closed debate, I think Android stands to be a strong competitor not because it’s open (whatever that means) but because it’s free. Having a very good, competitive free operating system that isn’t bound to one carrier or device should allow the platform to really reach scale. I wouldn’t have believed how much the gap had closed had I not played with devices myself.

Feel free to leave me thoughts or comments below.

One of the big risks in being in the platform business is that nobody will build the things on top of it that you as the platform owner want to see built to showcase the opportunity. Facebook built apps on its own platform (photos, groups, events) before their platform really took off. The iPhone launched with some Apple-created apps – Maps (via Google), mail, calendar, etc. There’s a really good reason for this – as the platform owner, you want to make sure that some of the “right” stuff gets built and made available. And what’s the “right” stuff? It’s generally whatever you, as the platform owner, think needs to exist to showcase the power and potential of your platform.

For me, there is only one interpretation of what the Google Nexus phone means. It means that Google did not believe that its handset partners, left to their own devices, were on track to deliver an integrated consumer device (software + hardware) that would properly showcase Android and develop consumer interest sufficient to win iPhone converts or those who want a smartphone but are on the sidelines. The Droid hasn’t done that. Neither has the G1. I don’t think Google necessarily wants to play the role that Apple does in the iPhone ecosystem. But without a strong exemplar of what a great Android device can do, it will be very difficult to compete with the iPhone ecosystem.

Photo Phone Book – It’s caller ID + photos for your iPhone. It integrates with your Facebook friends and other photos you have on your phone. They have a clever part of the app that allows / suggests that you ask your friends to provide updated photos of themselves.

Loopt – The latest version of Loopt encourages you to check out other people you might know who are already on Loopt. I’m not entirely sure how they generate the list of people, but they were able to serve up about 30-40 people with whom I might want to connect.

I’m really curious to see how virality plays out on the iPhone. Looking back at many of the platforms that have launched in the last few years (Facebook, MySpace, etc), there is usually some first-mover advantage to taking advantage of new viral distribution channels before they get saturated. I’m interested in seeing how well iPhone app developers implement virality and whether it ends up working.

The other missing piece in this puzzle is some kind of newsfeed. I’m perplexed by the fact that there isn’t a simple way (that I know of, at least) to see what applications my friends have installed. With 15,000+ applications available in the App Store, there’s no way I’m going to filter through them all to find a few gems. But I would check out apps that my friends install.

Without a common social graph for iPhone users (Facebook Connect, anyone), I’m not sure how this could be done quickly and easily. But I do think it’s worth doing and I believe someone will do it sooner rather than later.

In the United States, the mobile web is likely to continue to be about specialized applications and optimized sites rather than general web browsing. Unless someone builds the ultimate transcoder that can take any page from web to mobile seamlessly, I just don’t see a strong case for mobile browsing. If you can get a page to load over a decent-speed network, having it load in a non-navigable fashion is a really disappointing experience. If you’re going to wait for a page to load over a modest-speed network, it had better render properly and be navigable.

I am really surprised that so many articles such as this one focus on the technical and business impediments like data plans and slow networks. These things are very real, but I think the big issue for mass market adoption is really user experience and user interface. If mobile web experiences were cheaper and faster, I suppose people would be more willing to tolerate the poor state of affairs if you don’t have a QWERTY keyboard on your device. But if the interface paradigm were better, perhaps people would think differently about the price and speed issues endemic in the domestic mobile web.

Tags: mobile, mobileweb, blackberry, iphone

It’s hard to argue that the iPod has not become an iconic device. What’s interesting to me, though, is how two other formerly iconic devices, the RAZR and the Treo, have just fallen on hard times. As someone who owns several iPods, there are a few things that I’ve noticed about how Apple manage the iPod line:
Apple has conditioned me to expect a constant array of truly new (as opposed to retread) products. Each new iPod generation generally does two things. First, it usually makes the price/storage quotient for the new device seem like a bargain compared to what I paid 12-18 months ago. Second, each successive generation of the iPod generally introduces improvements along at least one dimension – size, user interface, navigation paradigm, etc. As an iPod owner, I know that the next generation of product will be better than what I have today – that doesn’t make me any less willing to buy new iPods at lower price points.

Apple actually takes chances and introduces features and functionality that push the envelope. I remember when the first iPod Shuffle came out and a lot of people thought you couldn’t sell an iPod with no LCD. Well, that’s not the case. Then the touch screen on the iPhone. The ultra-thin nano. The list goes on. I’m sure Steve Jobs and company have some other delights up their sleeves.

Look at the RAZR and the Treo. In my opinion, neither of those products has changed in any meaningful way since launch. The RAZR is still thin and has a slightly better camera now than it used to, but what else is better? The UI is still awful and its primary selling point is that its thin. And don’t even get me started on the Treo. It looks virtually unchanged over the past few years, unless you count the cosmetic removal of the antenna and the inclusion of alternative operating systems.

Successful products can be a real challenge and in the RAZR and Treo I see a real reticence to tinker with the golden goose long after the initial wow factor of the product has paled.

If the iPhone has been able to do it, I wonder why the Treo and Blackberry haven’t had similar levels of success. And do you think it’s rationale for app developers to be building iPhone-specific applications?

If US broadband penetration tops out in the 50-60 percent range in the near term, that means that about half of the country doesn’t see fit to have Internet access at home. If they can live without it at home, I bet they can live without it on the go as well. Unless prices come down on the mobile data side, I’m not sure why an increasing number of people will want to spend more on an expensive, slow connection?

Without a great low-end device that can expose “the masses” (or normal people) to the joys of data in a cost-effective way, I don’t see why the market for mobile data will grow quickly.

After reading all of the early iPhone reviews, I’m convinved the iPhone team would be nuts to focus on matching all of the high-end features that the Blackberry offers to corporate clients. We already know how large that market is and I doubt the iPhone would grow the pie. The only interesting thing to see is whether a lower-end iPhone with a good data plan and a better network would drive mass adoption. The consumer market has yet to see the combination of a great device, a reasonable hardware price point, a strong nationwide carrier, and a sensible data plan. The closest we’ve seen to that nirvana is the Sidekick, whch I’d argue struggles more from being restricted to T-Mobile than anything else. Cult status is the best you can hope for given that the device is restricted to the #4 carrier in the United States. The Blackberry Pearl is great, too, but I don’t hear anyone making the Pearl vs iPhone argument in a convincing fashion. Apple is in a great position to make this happen, if they focus and get the price point down.

To get specific, I think the device needs to be below $200 in price, with a data plan in the sub $20 per month range for unlimited usage, and be offered on one of the top two networks.

The one wildcard in this whole thing is what major corporations decide to do. If more companies put good, data-capable devices in the hands of a wider base of employees. Putting devices in their hands would also include picking up the tab for the data connection. If this were to happen, we might see something akin to what happened with landline broadband – consumer adoption driven by a combination of low prices and employer subsidies.

Arguments I Don’t Buy

Lack of Corporate IT Support – I don’t think the lack of IT support for the iPhone will inhibit adoption. Early versions of the Blackberry only worked on the desktop. And if enough executives pick up the iPhone, I guarantee you that IT departments around the country will find themselves trying to hack together ways to support the device. IT adoption for devices like this can happen from the top, not just from the bottom.

High Price Tag – I don’t buy this one either. People are paying more and more for consume electronics devices. Also, Apple customers are used to paying full retail price for new products — you rarely find Apple products on sale or at discount unless it’s an end of life issue. Given the pent-up demand, I doubt Apple will be under any pressure to lower prices on this iteration of the device anytime soon. If anything, I think the high price will only increase the aspirational appeal of this device.
Arguments I Do Buy

Battery Life – I have certainly had my “everything” device bonk out due to battery usage and it is not cool. If you have one device that does everything, losing battery support for that device essentially cuts you off from the world. Reading the stats on battery usage, it appears that users who really push the device to do everything it can do (web browsing, audio, video, photos, and voice) could experience battery life issues.

Touch Screen – I do think this could be an issue. I have damaged every touch screen device I’ve ever owned. And the lack of keyboard might be a real issue – the only way to know is actually use the device and see how well text input without tactile response works. I do a lot of texting, email, and IM – I can’t imagine how I’d be efficient without a “real” keyboard.
My Complaints with the Curve

Better support for instant messaging – I’ve owned a lot of phones in my day and I would say one of the more life-changing experiences I had was owning a Sidekick 3 for a brief period of time. As someone who makes heavy use of IM, having a device with great IM and a full keyboard really makes mobile IM useful.

Better web browsing -The Blackberry has a serviceable web browser on Cingular. I can get to most pages I want to see, but not all pages render correctly and the browser tends to break tables and other formatting elements. Given that the iPhone will be using the same EDGE network as the Curve, I doubt I’ll see any improvement in browser speed. That doesn’t mean that the iPhone browser won’t provide a better experience (transcoding, page presentation, etc), but I don’t think it will be any faster.

So, as far as I can tell, the iPhone has the possibility of solving only one (at most) of these two issues right out of the box. That isn’t to say that third parties won’t develop the apps I want in the IM realm, but we won’t have that functionality on Friday. The Curve does everything I need it to do and I just don’t feel compelled to buy an iPhone. What am I missing? Help me out.