RIM CEO Interview Thoughts

Quick thoughts on the interview with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins in CIO Magazine:

• He makes the interesting claim that RIM is losing market share in the smartphone arena mostly because the all-touch segment of the market is growing like crazy.  The keyboard segment of the market is growing much more slowly, but still growing.  So year-over-year RIM is ahead on handsets shipped/in-use, but because touch is growing like gangbusters the percentage numbers are dropping (down to something like 7%).  It's all relative.  But it is plausible.  If you have to have a keyboard -- and many people do -- RIM devices are king, between their high-quality devices and the BES network in behind it as a killer feature.
• That said, the BB-10 device to be first launched will be touch, then a keyboard BB-10.  He is clearly hoping for non-trivial percentage penetration into the touch segment, especially the consumer and BYOD segments since that is where the growth -- and therefore the money -- is.
• He says the carriers (presuming the US carriers mostly) see touch as a duopoply -- iOS/Apple and Android/Samsung.  Neither Motorola (ie Google) nor Microsoft are mentioned, even though Microsoft is also trying to ramp up their market penetration.  Personally I see the Motorola buy by Google as the most disruptive thing coming to Android over the next 18 months as Google starts to favor itself in Android distribution -- further weakening an (IMO) already bizarrely weak segment.  Short of a currently-invisible killer-app inherent in Windows-8/Metro, I don't see Microsoft playing extensively in the mobile phone segment (but tablets might be a different story depending on application portability).  The time is right for RIM to abandon its past devices and move to the BB-10 platform.
• There's no discussion of tablets here, but they have to be thinking about them.

iPad Mini

Two quick thoughts on the alleged 7-inch iPad mini:

• On the one hand, it doesn't make sense to have a 7-inch iPad if you accept the rumors that the next iPhone will be a 5-inch (or slightly larger).  Apple would start to have sizing creep -- the classic iPhone, the iPad mini, the iPad-2, and the current iPad resolutions.  One of Apple's hallmarks has always been consistency and simplicity, and while in the long run perhaps they'd add two more resolution families, I don't think they'll do both at the same time.  Based on that thought, I think that the iPhone 5 will be the same size and resolution that the iPhone 4 is -- because it fits in the pocket, more or less -- and the iPad mini will become a reality, giving Apple dominance across all three size formats.
• Simultaneously, the argument that Apple won't introduce the iPad mini this fall because they'll potentially miss the valuable holiday season short-changes Apple's ability to get supply lines running very quickly.  And an Apple announcement in this space would have the side-effect of devastating sales in the segment, holiday or no holiday.  Apple is the prime mover in this space and has the luxury of announcing the product when it is ready -- not necessarily having to prepare for a particular calendar event.

What Twitter Is Really Up To

Gizmodo has seen the future of Twitter:

In fact, Twitter is discouraging developers from re-creating that same Twitter experience in different clothing (Tweetbot, etc.) and encouraging them to build apps into Twitter. That turns Twitter the soapbox into Twitter, Inc. the platform.

Gizmodo compares this to Facebook.

Here's what I think when I hear about "apps" and "consistency of experience": Twitter is trying to change their service from a place where users come to create content into a place where users come to consume content.

The reason is simple: content creators generally do hit-and-runs -- they take up their timeslice on the community soap box then move along. Consumers will stick around longer and thus be more exposable to advertising, which is good for Twitter in the long run.

This is a hard trick to succeed at -- take a large service with an established following and successfully carry forward both your service reputation and a critical mass of the audience through a complete paradigm shift.

Offhand I can't think of a company that's succeeded at that. Apple, maybe, although what they've done is more using their previous line of business (boutique PCs) as a reputation boost to invent totally new businesses (smart phones and tablets), and growing those new businesses like crazy such that they eclipse the original.

Mr. Gilligan's Car

On the sale of a Lotus Esprit:

[...] the S1 Esprit's build quality hovers somewhere between competent home craftsman and something Gilligan threw together so that hilarity might ensue.

Sad, yet probably true...

The Moon

Watching some of these science shows that Jenn comes up with on the PVR leads to some interesting thoughts.

For example: maybe one of the most important components in a planetary system that will spontaneously start to support life is: a large, single, moon.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Life on Earth is dependent on the infusion of complex elements and molecules, formed in the core, and probably started in the ocean depths where those elements and molecules are brought together under great pressure near undersea volcanoes -- the subduction and induction zones caused by continental drift.
• Continental drift may be partially enabled by the constant tidal kneading of the crust by the moon's gravitational force as it orbits.
• The crust on the Earth is much younger than it would have been had the Mars-sized object not collided with it 4.5 billion years ago, a collision which formed the Moon.
• Life on Earth is protected from solar radiation by a strong magnetosphere, generated by the rotation of the molten core, rotation which probably received a whole whack of energy in the collision which formed the Moon.

Put together, it argues for Europa being another credible site of life formation -- at least on the primitive level -- deep pressures, water, and potential volcanoes caused by tidal forces from Jupiter.

Here's more: a video that shows how the Earth's magnetosphere helps protect the planet from coronal mass ejection (CME) events.  But relevant to this discussion is the observation that CME events have pretty much stripped any free water away from Venus, making life there unlikely, at least in the way that we understand.  The take-away from that: Venus doesn't have a magnetosphere, which to me means that either Venus' core isn't spinning the way Earth's is, or that Venus' core has a significantly different composition.  And looking at the topography, there isn't clear evidence of specific volcanic activity, or plate tectonics in general.

Sennheiser HD 500A

After using these Sennheiser HD 500A headphones, for a week, I can say that

• they are really comfortable; and
• they are much better quality than the MP3's I'm listening to.

We got them a couple years ago when the therapists that were working with Alex wanted him to do this "Active Listening" therapy, where special music/sounds were played to a child in order to stimulate parts of the brain.  Like all of these medical things, it was incredibly expensive, something like $250 for the CD and the headphones.  Not really sure that it did any good in the long run, as Alex quickly decided he didn't like the headset on his head.  The headphones today go for $140 on eBay, so I guess we did get some kind of value for the money.

But I found these headphones in the basement on the weekend while digging through boxes (ie "ineffectually moving things between piles") and figured I'd bring them into the office.  I have recently gone through a couple phases of music listening, first commandeering an old iPod of Alex's that isn't being used, then deciding I'd just listen to the music through iTunes on the laptop directly.  I still have the iPod earbuds for use when I am on the road, but these headphones are great for the office.

I used to listen to music directly off my phone, and I still do sometimes when I am in between calls while wearing the headset, but I've tried to become more battery-use conscious because I've had some days where I've been critically low on battery.

Victory!

OK, perhaps I'm overstating things a bit.

Anyways.  Last Friday I went to see the supervising oncologist who's been dealing with the post-operative management of my case.  After some poking and prodding, he said that as far as he's concerned, I'm cancer-free.  I had the cancer, I had the thyroid out, I had the ablation, and the scans don't show any anomalies that any of the experts are concerned about, so that's it, we're into managing remission.

So I'll do the follow-up radioactive iodine scan this summer before the trip west.  This won't be as big a deal as last fall's exercise.  The radioactive dose is much smaller, and although I'll have to go off the drugs and then be isolated for four days afterwards, the whole period of time is much shorter.

So yeah, Dave: 1, Cancer: 0.