I found CES at the turn of the year to be incredibly depressing. If it wasn’t the continual attempts by companies to press the ‘need’ for the 3D ‘transition’ in the home (when it gives enough headaches in the cinema) it was an endless stream of near identical, mostly vaporous, Android tablets. And little else. I’m going to ignore the 3D angle (just like most consumers) and focus on an area in which I have some stake, tablets & phones.
The Xoom has subsequently appeared to tepid reception; showing that perhaps the Android tablet race will take the form of the Android phone ‘ecosystem’ (and I use that word advisedly) hundreds of devices manufactured to less than exacting standards, replacing the new ‘hotness’ every four weeks or so. Except, with the iPad 2 approaching tomorrow, will Apple have an even larger start in the tablet market than it did with smartphones?
In the Android phone world only HTC stand out, their modifications to the standard Android interface brings it up to a level approaching the care taken by Apple. Which is kind of my point. It’s the software that’s important in driving the experience, and most companies don’t seem to be in that business anymore.
All the major players in the current phone and tablet market have completely neglected their software user interface design. From the PC vendors having subsumed any expertise to years of Windows, to the phone vendors seemingly unable to move from the more elegant phone software of ten years ago.
There are of course exceptions, companies who seem to ‘get it’.
HP
Buying Palm seems to have given them the one thing that no-one else seems to have: control over their devices. A path that isn’t dictated by the whims of another company, if nothing else they have bought the opportunity to forge their own path.
webOS seems to finally have hardware that can drive it’s HTML/CSS/JS architecture at a reasonable speed and the attention to detail and ease of use is brilliant. See how they deal with notifications on the TouchPad (3:40 minutes in).
Microsoft
I hope that going back to the drawing board and coming up with the marvellous elegance of Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is seen in years to come as the move that got their software mojo back after a decade of Vista embarrassment.
Finally they have been brave enough to ditch their reliance on 15 year old desktop-based, legacy design tropes. I urge you to try one if you haven’t already. The interface seems also to drive elegance in their third party apps. See the difference between the iPhone and MSWP7 (even the acroynm is ugly) versions of a Singapore national paper for an example of what I mean.
The issue is tablets, having gone back to the drawing board on phones, how long is the lead on Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Tablet Edition?
(trust me that’s the name they’ll use)
Nokia
By teaming up with Microsoft, Nokia have made the only move that they could, given their recent inability to deliver software to the quality and reliability of my ten-year old 3210.
They have a partner with a truly promising software platform and Microsoft have gained a motivated ally with no other choice than to swing for the fences or become irrelevant.
Everyone else?
Riding the Android wagon, not realising Google is doing to them what Microsoft did to the PC manufacturers: putting them into a commodity race to the bottom. While continuing to grow their own core business: in Google’s case, advertising on the web.
Let’s not even get started on RIM’s perculiarly-tethered-to-your-Blackberry Playbook. They seem to have realised the same thing as HP but still don’t quite believe it enough to ship anything.
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I guess I should really be thankful there are two (three including RIM) competing platforms all trying to push Apple in the new computing world, despite their huge lead, but somehow I find the lack of ambition and attention of great companies like Sony, Samsung, LG et al is more depressing than the bright software sparks of HP & Microsoft.
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NB: All this talk of software is not to denigrate the excellent, and significant difference in hardware quality that Apple devices have over pretty much all their competition: that’s an added bonus for them.