I thought Matt Burns’s article about Apple’s relatively simple product line struck a chord:

Garmin makes 82 GPS units that can be mounted in a car or carried in your hand. 82!?! That’s a lot and includes 27 designed specifically for the car. If Apple made a GPS, there would be two models available – maybe only one. Apple would shove everything they could into this one GPS and sell it at a profit instead of making similar different models that feature slightly different specs. 

I can relate, because I recently bought a Garmin GPS, but first had to wade through model-feature-comparison-hell.

There’s a lesson here that many product managers miss:  fewer choices is frequently the better design.

• Does Garmin really need two models, identical in all respects except Bluetooth support?

• Does every Windows install really need to ask what directory to use for installation?

• Does my PC wireless configuration really need to ask me a bunch of questions about what network to use?  Why doesn’t it just find the strongest, test for openness, and use that one? (but let me change it later if I want)

If you’re a product manager:  SIMPLIFY!

I’ve written before about how the future of TV is IP-delivered.   As more video comes on-line, cable packages will get unplugged just like analog phone lines.  It’s no longer “if”, but “when”, and 2009 is looking like a good year.

A few weeks ago, I finally set up a “real” computer for our main TV:  a dedicated Mac Mini, wireless keyboard & mouse, and video camera, all hooked into a large LCD flat panel.  It’s great for family video conferences, viewing photos and videos, and watching Internet content (e.g. Hulu, TV networks, Comedy Central, etc.)

The missing component is software:   a classic desktop UI with a mouse and keyboard works, but isn’t ideal for a living room.  On the Mac, for example, the screen fonts are too small and the only way to make them larger (I can find) is to lower the screen resolution, which defeats the purpose of a high resolution display.

I really want a UI optimized for “living room apps” instead of “desktop apps”.  I want to use a single Wiimote-like pointing device to navigate, with optional use of a keyboard and mouse.

Apple’s FrontRow has a clean design, but is too limited and isn’t 3rd party expandable.  I’m testing Boxee, which comes very close to ideal but still has rough edges.

It’s all coming together!

I can never be a politician; I’m way too good at verbal gaffes.  In an attempt to be funny or witty, I frequently manage to blurt out something wildly inappropriate, embarrassing myself and everyone around me.  But there’s no a tape or video recorder to memorialize the moment.

The Internet is a different story:  every blog post you write, picture you post, Facebook wall you write on — it’s all there “forever”.  As time goes on, we’re all sharing more, building a “comet tail” of our content behind us.  And some have learned the hard way that drunken party pictures may not help your career.

As the “blogging generation” grows up and enters politics, it’s going to get really interesting.  Even with an entirely professional on-line persona, you can have expressions and opinions from the past that you regret.

It’s starting with the Obama administration questionnaire — what about that blog post from a few years back?

There is some big news buried under Obama’s election win:  the FCC has adopted rules allowing for unlicensed use of some TV spectrum.

This is HUGE news.

Spectrum is a finite resource, and it’s availability (or lack of) is a limiting factor in satisfying growing demand for new services.  Most spectrum use requires a license, and incumbent license holders are quite adept at forming barriers against new competitors (good luck trying to start a new cellphone provider, for example).  The FCC occasionally auctions off spectrum, but that policy is fundamentally flawed (IMHO) if the goal is maximum benefit to the people.

Historically, the most disruptive and pervasive  applications have been unlicensed (e.g. Part 15), where, like the Internet, you don’t need someone’s permission to innovate.  Think of CB radio, cordless phones, the Family Radio Service, remote control of all kinds, low power FM, wireless headsets, Bluetooth and Wifi.

More unlicensed spectrum means more good stuff.

We’ve had a Netflix Player/Roku set top box now for a few months, and we’ve used it quite a bit.

The short review:  a decent product execution, but with very limited video content. Netflix’s “watch instantly” offerings mostly consists of TV content and older movies.  It’s rare that you find recent, top-quality movies.  Our kids quickly ran out of new things to watch.

The physical product is very nice and compact (roughly the size of a 1″ stack of CD cases).  It has no buttons, and only a power indicator on the front.  The remote control is very straightforward with a small number of buttons, and the on-screen menus are simple and easy to understand.  Setup and configuration was very easy, and the box has Wifi so you don’t need a wired connection.

We do wish fast forward worked differently.  It’s not like a Tivo — instead, it scrolls through a set of small video still frames.  When you hit “play”, the box takes a few seconds to rebuffer and resume from the new point.  Fortunately, Netflix’s video content doesn’t have ads that need to be skipped.

Also, videos can only be added to your viewing queue through Netflix’s Web interface — you can’t choose new videos through the box itself.  This is much more useful than our cable company’s on-screen interface for selecting an on-demand movie, and we’ve found it helpful to limit what our kids can watch (while still letting them choose from a list of options).  However, if you sit down at your TV to watch something new, you’ll need to go find your PC to add the movie to your queue.

Bottom line:  for $100, we’d probably get one again, but we’re really hoping that Netflix brings more (and better) content on-line.

I got this email this morning from Advanced Circuits (I fiddle with electronics stuff in my “spare time”, and one of these days I’ll do a custom PCB):

For our Printed Circuit Board customers using Chinese vendors, please be aware of the following air quality policy announcement from Chinese authorities:

In preparation for the Olympics, China has announced a factory shutdown for 9 weeks to clear smog and improve air quality in a 200 kilometer radius of Beijing. The shutdown begins July 17th and will extend until September 20th. Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong provinces are affected by the shutdown.

If air quality does not improve before the start of the Olympics, there may be an expansion of the shutdown. There are concerns there could also be a bottleneck at two main ports.

All this to say that if you have a PCB vendor in the affected area, we are available to take care of your printed circuit board requirements. In addition to our large fabrication facility here in Aurora, we also have offshore partners in other non-affected countries that are available to handle the larger volumes.

We are currently offering “Half Time” Specials (142 and 244), and we will turn your board orders in half the time at no extra cost. If you have expedited needs, we specialize in quick turns and can even supply boards over the weekend, if required.

It was pretty amusing to see the third and fourth-order global implications of the Olympics in China.

There’s a lot of chatter on the iPhone SDK mailing list about Apple’s approval process for the app store.  And Bijan Sabet writes:

I’ve been hearing more and more about apps that are still waiting for approval mode from apple. Some of those developers are friends of mine. These apps are somewhat competitive with iTunes I guess. Maybe that is the reason for the hold up. Or maybe it’s because apple is simply swamped.

(From Say it Ain’t So)

The mobile/wireless community has referred to on-device content and apps as a “walled garden“, because of the constraints and restrictions imposed by the old-line carriers.  The iPhone raised everyone’s hopes that the walls were coming down.

However, the process and criteria for getting App store approval from Apple is still unclear. Will Apple approve apps that are competitive with it’s own apps and businesses? Will they approve free apps that compete with paid apps (where Apple gets a rev share)?

Maybe the wall is still around the garden, but it’s now a knee wall.

I can only hope that the iPhone app store is wildly successful, and serves as a wakeup call to the old-school wireless providers.  I’m tired of being stuck with the hardware, firmware, applications, and features that Verizon dictates.

Have you ever looked at developing for BREW and getting “on deck” with Verizon?  What a disaster.

If you equate money and brains, Mark Cuban should be a pretty smart guy.  But then he writes this:

Rather than Hulu sending its video directly across the net to your PC, and let the end user figure out how to watch and distribute from there, it should send it to a box hosted by your cable/telco and possibly even satellite provider, which then transcodes the video and places it on the existing TV distribution system and sends it across a channel branded with your name and the name of the file to your TV.

From:  The Way to Save Internet Video

(Please ignore the suggestion that Internet video needs “saving”).

Video is just another data stream, and there’s absolutely no reason why this data stream needs or deserves a specialized distribution infrastructure.  Historically, it’s had a specialized infrastructure because analog video distribution pre-dated the Internet.  That arrangement will continue for a  while, because of entrenched vested interests in doing things the “old way”.

When the core infrastructure and last-mile bandwidth became sufficiently fast, the Internet happily absorbed the task of audio (MP3) distribution.  Accordingly, CD sales declined and on-line sales of audio content rose (and iTunes is now the #1 music retailer).

As bandwidths continue to increase, the exact same thing is happening right now with standard definition (SD)  video, and will happen soon with high definition video.