this is just too funny… I’m almost wondering if this name was a last second change after Ballmer announced that MSFT would be running on a number of “slate” pc’s.  The name seems like an odd miss for Apple.  I would’ve gone with iBook, especially since one of the primary use cases is for reading.

I’ll be frank… I really don’t think media companies charging for content is the way to go.  Let’s look at why:

One of the things that made iTunes and other music download services great is that they allowed people to purchase an individual song as opposed to an entire record.  People don’t mind paying for something they value, but they don’t like paying for other stuff they don’t value.  Up until that point, consumers had to “take the good with the bad” and so many either begrudgingly bought the album just for a single song, while others passed on the album even though they wanted a song on it.

Another thing that made iTunes a success was that Steve Jobs (correctly) estimated that the hassle factor of illegally downloading a song was more expensive then a song priced at $0.99.  And he was right.  The iTunes model has proven definitively that most people are willing to pay a small amount of money for something of value, even when free versions exist, if the paid version is more convenient/fun to own.  With news content, the free version is the norm not the exception, and the convenience/fun factor is missing from the ownership experience.  As such, it’s unlikely that people would be willing to pay for content since it’s likely available for free elsewhere without much hassle.

In order to change this reality, the news companies are going to have to develop differentiated content.  CBS’ 60 Minutes is a good example of this idea as their content and investigative journalism style is unique among news sources.  The more that news companies can differentiate themselves in similar fashion, the more they’ll have the ability to charge for content.  Barring that, I predict that most paid models will not ultimately succeed.

It’s not often that I offer praise upon Redmond’s strategic efforts, but this one is indeed praise-worthy.  For some time, Microsoft has been decidedly absent from the smart phone conversation.  Yes, Steve Balmer will contest that they ship their WinMo OS’s on a gazillion handsets each year, but the perception is that Microsoft has missed this wave, and much of that perception stems from the minimal innovation coming out of Redmond in the smartphone OS category.  Hopefully that is about to change, and if the tipster quoted in this article is to be believed, this is one of the ballsiest moves by Microsoft in some time.

Such a move is not without recent precedent for Microsoft.  For years, they got their hat handed to them in search by Google.  It was only when they took some risks and started thinking and acting more like a startup did the market take notice.  By all accounts Bing is a solid entry in the search category and is the first real compeition Google has faced in some time.  That’s a good thing.  I love Google, but competition will always be a win for consumers.

As for SmartPhones, Microsoft has avoided risk for many years, being content with releasing new mobile operating systems that were at best a marginal improvement over the previous version.  Apparently, that’s about to change and I for one am a fan.  I love my iPhone, but I don’t love it because Apple makes it.  I love it because Apple is a company that never seems content with anything they’ve built, and is constantly pushing the envelope of what’s possible.  If Microsoft could rediscover that element of their own DNA, we’d all be a lot better off and competition between Mac and PC would be even more interesting.

John Siracusa of Ars Technica has written a compelling post on why the hype over the tablet is overblown with regard to its technical capabilities, and why we aren’t likely to be blown away on that front.

The biggest reason John is right is that many of the futuristic ideas being written about ignore the wisdom of versioning strategy.  Sure, some of them will make it into the product eventually, but they likely won’t (and should not) be in version 1.0

When developing the iPhone, Apple had a lot of the ideas that didn’t make it into the initial version.  If they had wanted to, Apple probably could have released the iPhone with the App store from the beginning.  But just because you can do something technologically doesn’t mean you should.  The market needs to be ready to understand and assign value that technical achievement in order for it to succeed (in order for people to buy).  Even if Apple had the technical capacity to release the app store then, it wouldn’t have made sense strategically because the market was not yet ready for it, and needed time to absorb the rest of the iPhone capabilities first.  So Apple waited until the following year, and by then the market understood iPhone 1.0 and was ready for the 2.0 version

With most technology products, it takes a while for the market to absorb the new ideas and functionality.  If a manufacturer includes too much stuff in a new version, the market tends to get confused.  Confusion over what a product is supposed to do (its value proposition) is the leading reason that people choose not to buy: they don’t get why they should want or need it.

Apple is masterful at making sure that its audience—consumers and the consumer media—gets it.  By that I mean that these constituencies are able to digest and understand why they should want or need the product.  In the case of the tablet, while some of the ideas being put forth are certainly interesting, they might simply be too much too soon.  The market first needs to absorb version 1.0 of the tablet before it can be ready to absorb versions 2.0 and 3.0.

Best line from the article, “There is the very real possibility that this could be Jobs’ last major new product launch… Does anyone really think Jobs is going to go out betting on a niche product? No.”

I agree with John Gruber’s post… “I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing.”

We’ll see…

The new Facebook App for iPhone (v 3.1) lets you download your friends photos and store them as the profile images for your Phone’s address book.  This is definitely pretty cool.

It also now has push notifications, also cool.

Skype video calling makes it to the TV.

With apps running on the TV, Boxee Beta, the rumored iTunes TV subscription model, and News Corp making wicked demands for a bigger peice of the pie, I’m betting we will finally hit the inflection point this year and have a mass of consumers opt for web connected TV’s.