Aakash - World's Cheapest Gadget

So India has now announced that it manufactures the world's cheapest tablet. That's fine and dandy. But why? What is the impact going to be?

The claim is that this will resolve access to information challenges for India's "marginalized, ignored, and disenfranchised". It is important to characterize this population in India. In the US, you classify as marginalized if you cant afford the HBO package on your cable. If you dont pay the extra $5 for unlimited texting on your phone plan. If you dont buy unleaded premium. If you buy your clothes are Target or Walmart. India's marginalized dont have running water, electricity, road access, education, or hospital access. There are no jobs, only land on which to grow whatever crops can survive the environment you live in. Their houses are built of mud and thatch. Village sewer lines are open canals that run along the front of houses. It is important to remember that when understanding the Aakash and its potential impact.

$35 is a lot of money to this population. Instead of a tablet, you could buy a good solar lantern to provide light. If you live in darkness, you probably want light before a tablet to play Angry Birds on. But many of the marginalized cant afford solar lanterns. A tablet? I doubt it.

The tablet is supposed to bridge the digital divide and provide internet access to marginalized people. But the Aakash runs off wi-fi. Which runs off electricity. And requires a data cable. If a village doesnt have running water, it isnt likely to have DSL. I know people in Delhi with laptops but no internet access. And that is Delhi.

Even those villages that do have electricity often only get it from 2am to 4:30am plus a few undependable hours that vary day to day. Will a student be willing to wake up at 2am to surf the web?

This isnt likely to be used by the truly marginalized. So what of the not so marginalized. Poor but not super poor households in India who can afford private education, who live in towns with electricity, who have access to schools with enough funds to pay for internet connectivity, who have enough cash to pay $35 for a tablet (which, lets face it, isn't capable of much. If you wanted to work, you'd buy a laptop). For this population, quality is pretty important. And this is speculation, but Im betting a $35 from India isnt quality enough. Ive purchased an $80 tablet from China and it didnt really work. So I gave it to a friend in Kanpur. He used it for a few minutes and then put it back in the box never to use it again. I imagine the Aakash is destined for a similar fate. A blurb in a newspaper, a lucrative government contract for a company looking for a quick buck, and then nothing more. Too bad. The government could actually do something for education with that money. If only there was a company that could make money doing it...

Marketing Intuitive

So Apple has long survived on the belief that its products are more intuitive than its competitors. Hard to believe, really, since Mac sales have lagged behind Windows machines for as long as Ive lived. If they were really so intuitive, wouldn't we have switched ages ago? Yet Apple's marketing team has convinced every tech magazine writer and many consumers that in fact this is the case. Apple makes products that work the way the brain works.

The first time I sat in front of a Mac, I was trying to write an email. I was in Kathmandu, Nepal at the Peace Corps office trying to send a note home letting people know I was alright (well, at least physically). I couldnt find the applications that had been installed on the machine. I pressed a few buttons, clicked on some icons, finally found a list of "Recent Applications" which unfortunately didnt contain the email client, clicked some more buttons, clicked harder, got upset, shook the mouse, clicked harder, hit the mouse, and left. Fifteen minutes and I couldnt even open an application. That was my first introduction to "how my brain works".

I did eventually use a Mac successfully. It was in that same office a few months later. It was somewhat less frustrating but it took me 45 minutes to do what would have taken me 20 on a Windows machine. Trying to go between applications was like trying to find socks in the dark. I kept pulling up the wrong application. I knew I had started an email, but as soon as I went to the web browser I couldnt see it anymore. I finally found it again only to have the same thing happen 5 minutes later. If it really worked the way my brain worked, I would have at least remembered how to find my previous window after having successfully done it moments before.

I irritably powered through a frustrating web experience with a Mac book in Nigeria a few years ago, Ive sat dumb founded in front of an iPad on the Eastern Shore, Ive yelled at iTunes in as many countries as Ive lived, and Ive nearly thrown out my wife's iPod on at least three separate occasions. But none really reflect how Apple products arent intuitive (at least to me) better than my time at the Apple store. The iPhone had just come out, nobody knew how to use it, but we were told we all knew how to use it. So I picked it up, typed an sms, "Hi Dyd, ab thy Apple stair, hand a god day", went to the web browser, and started trying to figure out how to do some of the basics I knew I could do. Like refresh. Expanding the page. Closing the window. In truth, I could probably do most of these things now that Ive learned how, but prior to learning how I had no idea. Really. I almost threw the iPhone against the wall in the Apple store. That would have been bad.

Of course there is another plausible explanation. That Im just not that smart. I think there is a statistic that 80% of the world believes they are smarter than average. And probably a similar percentage believe their blogs are worth reading as well. Maybe Im just not as smart as I think. I wont defend myself here. If I am really the only person who doesnt get Apple products, there is really no other logical conclusion. But Im betting that if I had thrown that iPhone against the wall, amidst the frantic cries of children and mothers tossing their kids behind a row of desktops, I would have heard one of the staff saying, "Not again!"

Tablet or Toss It

The word is out. Everyone needs a tablet. Nobody new it until Apple came out with the iPad. The big mystery is how we lived without them for so many years.

It makes sense. We need the iPods because the iPhone's are too big to run with. We need the iPhones because the iPads are a bit too big for our pockets. We need the iPads because laptops are just too heavy. We need the laptops because desktops arent portable. And we need the desktops because ... well, just because.

To think there was a time where you couldn't update your facebook page while walking to work. To think of all those friends who didnt know you were walking to work at that exact moment. To think that there was a time when facebook didnt even exist. A more primitive time when our survival instincts took over and we had to manage life without having phone and internet access at every moment of our lives.

Ok, so it sounds like Im one of those guys who hates change. Im getting older and I suppose at some point I may become that person, but I still see myself as far too young for that phase. I love thinking about the potential, about where we are going. I find myself fascinated by some of the things that are happening. But tablets just arent one of them.

I want fewer devices, not more. I want to do more things with less hardware. I want everything integrated. I want my old stuff to be obsolete, not complimented. I dont want to fill a gap with a new product, I want to replace a broader spectrum with a new product. I like waking up and not having that many things to worry about. I leave my house with my wallet and my phone. It used to be just my wallet. I don't want a carry-all to hold my wallet, phone, tablet, chargers, extra batteries, protective cases, fold out keyboard, and wireless mouse. The more responsibility you put in my hands, the less happy I am. Give me fewer things to watch over, and Im a customer.

But tablets arent really about moving technology forward. They arent that novel either. In fact, little of what Apple has put out has been novel. Marginal improvements on poorly marketed novel products that nobody was every told they needed. Apple is taking advantage of their current status. They needed another thing to sell us. They dont want us to stop buying the other things, they want us to buy more things. So while it may not be making my life better (or your life better), it is good business. As for us, the consumers, we have disposable income with nothing really great to buy (that we dont have already). Tablets are filling a need - we work jobs we dont like to earn money to buy things. So there had better be something new to buy! Apple helped us out there.

But thats not progress, innovation, or moving us forward. I hate watching movies on airplane screens. Even my 32 inch tv is looking small. So why would I want to watch movies on a tablet? I find my arms too tired of holding books while Im laying down trying to relax. So why would I hold a tablet? I type slower on my computer than I can think, I type slower on my phone than on my computer, and I type slower on a tablet than on my phone. So clearly I dont want to type on the thing. Can I really be so unique that a product that clearly has so little value added to me has so much value added to the rest of the world? I doubt it.

So before you buy a tablet, really think. What do I want? We are the consumers, we should be driving the market, not some rich folks in Silicon Valley trying to get even richer. Let's figure out what we want and begin demanding that. If you do that and what you come up with is a tablet, go for it. But if you decide what you want is an entertainment system thats wirelessly synced to the internet and your hard drive allowing you to store your music, tv shows, movies, playlists, favorite channels, and photos once and play them seemlessly from whatever you happen to have in front of you wherever in the world you are without cables, set up, or complex file browsing, then lets make a stink and say so. Maybe then Ill be ready to buy the next hottest product to hit the market. Until then, Ive opted to toss it.

Google acquires Moto Mobility

So the news is out - Google is now a hardware company. Or so everyone is saying at least. Why else would Google by Motorola Mobility if not to follow Apple's model of bundling a proprietary OS on a proprietary piece of hardware? Let me suggest a few reasons.

The first, of course, is what has already been said. This is to respond to patent attacks. With all of Motorola's patents, Android can keep doing what its been doing and say its got the patents to back it up. I'm certain this is a significant reason why Google bought Moto Mobility, but that doesn't really indicate what Google will do with the company going forward.

Let's first take a comprehensive look at Apple before we buy into their model. Nearly 30 years ago, Apple entered the market with their own OS and their own computer. They thought by controlling quality, users would have a better experience and would gravitate towards their products. But for the first twenty years of its existence, it was nothing more than a sideshow. Microsoft's business model proved more successful. Offer companies an operating system that works and they will build a computer for it to work on. Manufacturers dont want to write software, they want to build stuff. Make their business easier and they will flourish. It worked for Windows and it has already worked for Android. And Google is clever enough to have realized that way before any of us. They know how they got here and aren't likely to shoot themselves in the foot.

Google is a company that prides itself on solving big solutions. Pairing an innovative OS with a limited number of handsets may seem like a good idea to a few less forward thinking business folk, and maybe Google's strong enough to avoid the falls of Motorola of old and Palm, but that would hardly be consistent with Google's way of doing business. Google has always believed that the more a service is used, the more likely they will be able to make money off of it in the future. Unless Page is taking them into a radically different direction than the one he set Google out on so many years ago, Google will continue to promote Android on as many pieces of hardware as possible.

More likely, Google has something far more clever up its sleeve. What if they used those patents not to corner the handset market but to strengthen the full breadth of handsets that run its OS. "Not only will we give you a great OS that your customers want, we will help your hardware give your customers the experience they want." The patents Google now holds can help Samsung and HTC make better Android phones (for a fee, of course). And the better those phones, the more users using Android. And the more eyes that will see Google's ads. Which of course is really how Google makes its money.