The French Photographer Weblog

If you read my previous article on this topic and everything I wrote about RAW software converters you already know that Aperture has been a topic of equally great enjoyment and disappointments.
Version 3 is out and so far it sounds very promising.

In no particular order version 3 brings
- Faces, already introduced in iPhoto. It’s about time!
- Places, an awesome support of GPS metadata and geotagging. So far it’s the best support of geo localization I have ever seen in any software.
- Video and audio, the DSLR have included that functionality and Aperture is following this evolution. The support of audio files attached to the pictures is also very welcome. As far as I know, no other software have this.

Expect a full review soon.

Ok, so now we know! It’s out, no more waiting and wondering.
So let’s take a user point of view and see what we can tell about it.

The size

Small is what came to my mind first but like with every engineering project it’s a trade-off, give a little, get a little. The balance looks acceptable.
I tried to type on a 10″ netbook and it’s not really easy, let’s wait for a practical validation of the real usability.

The device

Well… it is an Apple product and you can tell. Great finish, very nice as usual. The technical specifications are unfamiliar. It is powered by a 1 Ghz chip designed by Apple and nobody has any experience with that. On stage the demo looked impressive but we will have to wait and see.
Maybe the greatest achievement is that Apple managed to create a real laptop with no keyboard. Time will tell, if that really works but so far it looks very promising.
And for a change the price is good too. Compared to a traditional netbook the entry level model is rather well priced.

The user interface

Nothing really disturbing here or fundamentally new. It is a touch base user interface just as expected. The attention to detail is even more spectacular than on the iPhone.
But a lot of elements will make it familiar to iPhone users, the tab navigation at the bottom, the home button, the automatic switch between landscape and portrait. Ok let’s say it – it’s a larger iPhone or iPodTouch.

The OS

We don’t know much right now. It looks like it does not do multitasking even if the processor looks powerful enough.
I will study the SDK soon and maybe I will figure out a few things.

The communication and networking

A good wifi chip, ok, what else could we have expected anyway. Blue tooth, normal. 3G, logical.
No contract needed and all devices unlocked. Even better. I assume it is a GSM device so it should work with multiple operators.
I wonder to what extend it is a device that you will carry with you all the time like an iPhone. It’s not like you can drop it in your pocket and forget about it, so maybe the 3G is not fundamental unless you are constantly on the road.
It also looks like you cannot make a phone call with it, even on the 3G model with headphones.

What is a surprise?

No camera!. Why the hell? Honestly I have no idea! Why such a device could not be used at home for video conferencing. I use my laptop for that connected to a wifi network all the time. The iPad would be perfect for that if only there was a basic web cam.
It does not make any sense to me. Except if maybe Apple want to come with an iPad+ in a few months with that feature.
In the meantime, sorry guys but it’s a pretty stupid omission.

What is it good for, especially for a photographer?

No camera. Ok, well, I will miss it for video conferencing but I won’t miss it for taking photos.
Where I see a flow int eh logic here is that this is a perfect device for geotagging due to the integration of the map but the device has no GPS. So what’s the point?
A good part of the presentation was dedicated to photos and it looked really good. It is some sort of iPhoto with a Cocoa touch flavor.
The iPhone was already a great way to show your portfolio the iPad will be even better.
Some people pushed the iPhone pretty far in term of creativity with the built in camera, with a larger screen I think that wee will see more serious photo retouching softwares. Once again it will depend of how sensitive the screen is and to what extend it will replace a graphic tablet. Maybe with an additional pen it can actually replace a Wacom tablet.
Another thing is not clear at all – connectivity. Could the iPad be used as a tethering device connected to a camera. Probably not out of the box or without some specific connectivity and custom software development.

A developer point of view.

To finish, let’s look at the device as a developer. The screen size is different from the iPhone. So the traditional iPhone applications will have to be adjusted, the traditional views won’t fully take advantage of the new device. But that’s not such a big deal. It looks like the screen in landscape mode is like 3 iPhone screens next to each other. For example the Mail application on the tablet gives you the list view of the iPhone and to the right 2 times the size of the list view for the detail of an e-mail. Same thing for the calendar. This was not possible on an iPhone, so the way to develop softwares will change for sure.
Unlike the iPhone there are floating windows and actually more than one window at a time. That will also be a big difference in the way the software function. Ok Apple call that “pop-over menus”, I guess it’s a new concept.

So, overall, no real surprise. No disappointment either except maybe the lack of video conferencing on such a device which does not make any sense. If ATT&T network cannot handle it at least Apple could have enabled this on wifi.

Since my iPhone App has been online a lot of people have been asking me if there is gone be something similar for other smartphones. The answer is – probably not. For various reasons.

First I believe that the iPhone has more or less already won the battle of the smartphones. Apple current market share is still low but it’s rising very quickly. In the US the exclusivity with AT&T is a strong factor to limit the market share but it is likely that this will have an end as soon as possible. In France, for example, during the last 2 weeks of December Orange the largest mobile operator announced that 77% of the smartphones they sold were iPhone. That is the market share we are heading toward in my opinion. Another factor to consider is that most of the cellphones are subsidized by the operators in exchange for a 2 years contract. So users have to wait to get a new device, but once they get one, they are more likely to get an iphone than anything else.

The second reason is simply that the competition is still not catching up with Apple in terms of offer, technology and marketplace.
When the iPhone was released everybody focused on the device and the hardware (yes it was missing 3G at that time) but nobody realized that to go with the iPhone Apple created a mobile operating system. More precisely a version of MacOS that works with devices without a mouse or a keyboard. The iPhone is not a cell phone it’s a computer that can be used to make phone calls.
The magic is that the computer is small enough that you can stick it to your ear.

This OS has been a major investment to create and we can expect that it will be used in other Touch based devices. And to tell the truth, it’s a pretty good OS. Far more advanced than Windows Mobile. And as far as the other competitors, well let’s face it, they have nothing at all even close.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is also a great phone. Apple came up with a nice user interface and some great innovations. We can even wonder why people who have been selling cell phones for 15 years could not come up with something like Visual Voice Mail. Why did they had to wait for Apple to invent it?
But the real strength of the iPhone is not the hardware or the device itself, it’s the operating system and the ecosystem that goes with it.
So, ok, the iPhone has a great OS but what about Google and Android? Well, yes it’s an OS, a modern one, pretty good too.
Will it be successful? Well most likely yes it will, because it is better than anything else (ie Windows Mobile), it is free and if you are a cell phone manufacturer like HTC (those guys do some really nice hardware) it’s your best interest to use Android in your phone. Android lacks the second component that makes the iPhone a success, the ecosystem, ie iTunes, the App Store, Apple review of all the softwares available and Apple strict guidelines on what an App should look like and do.
A lot of developers have been complaining about Apple review process and for sure there has been some ‘disturbing’ stories, but overall Apple strict guidelines and policy make users life much easier.
When you buy an iPhone you are pretty much assured that you will be able to use every software on it. The interface will be consistent.
Unfortunately with the competition it’s not exactly the same, software versions and operating systems differ. One software will work on one phone but not on the other. Screen sizes are not consistent. Overall it’s not nice and slick and a no brainer like the iPhone can be.

It’s a typical case of look a like product. You save a few dollars (not always) you get a product that look like the real thing but when you start digging you figure out that it’s not the real thing, far from it!

Like I said yesterday, 2010 should bring us new devices, Tablet computers and DSLR capable of doing video. To what extend this prediction is accurate does not really matters, I think the real question is – what are those devices going to change in our lives?
And the answer is not always as obvious as it sounds.

Let’s take the example of the DSLR first – having new devices capable of shooting video will allow photographers to… shoot video! Well, it is not that simple. It’s true to a certain extend, for wedding photographers for example, now they will be able with one device to shoot stills and video during their assignments. That’s good and convenient isn’t it?
But if you try to do so you will quickly realize that shooting video is not only a matter of having such a device. Shooting video at a professional level means at least an additional device to stabilize the camera, maybe an external screen to visualize what you are doing and some sort of focusing wheel. Very quickly your gear turn into something like RedRock Video DSLR platform, it’s not cheap and it will take 2 people to operate it. All of a sudden everything becomes a little more complicated than just having a device that shoot video.

So the capability of the device is one thing but what you really end up doing with it is an entire different story.Hence my point, the functionality of a product is not what matters. What is important is what the user do with it and how it changes our lives. It’s not because DSLR will soon all shoot video that photographers will turn into videographers overnight. There will still be people doing video and people shooting stills for ad campaigns.

Now let’s talk about the tablet computer and more specifically Apple latest products the iPod and the iPhone. Tablet computers have been on the market for a while now but never really made a hit. Similarly MP3 players existed before the iPod and smartphone had been on the market before the iPhone was released. But once released those products revolutionized their industries.
Why? Because they were done right, or more precisely in a way that made the users feel different about it.

Sure Apple’s marketing is good but that’s not enough to explain the widespread success of those products.
What strikes me is that the recipe for success is quite simple and still nobody does the same thing as Apple did.
Let’s look at that recipe. What does an iPod and an iPhone have in common?
- a great, as simple as possible user interface.
- iTunes, a companion software also with a simple straightforward user interface.
- an attractive design.
Is it such a difficult recipe?
A pre-iPod MP3 player was pretty much a Walkman without the cassette tape. Usually without a screen and without a menu navigation. The iPod introduced a new way to navigate in your playists.
A pre-iTunes software had the most complicated, heavy, busy interface. All of a sudden Apple came up with something simple, slick, easy to understand and use for everybody… and it worked.
Both iTunes and the iPod have a set of features that is rather limited compared to what other smartphone offer and still people like those simple devices better because they are easier to use and more convenient.
So why companies who have been doing cell phones for 20 years could not think of reinventing their devices? Why companies who have been doing Walkmans for 30 years could not move to the digital age? Those are simple consumers products after all!
Simply because they were still sticking to the same concepts and the same technology.
Once again what matters is not what the device offers but what we do with it. Usability is more important than functionalities.

Let’s apply this prediction to the tablet computer and my bet is that we will see a device that we will be able to use and that won’t be another incarnation of some flavor of a portable computer. A new user interface a new way to interact with a new kind of device which does not have a name yet.
More on that tablet, what is it all about and other comparisons with other Apple products.

I guess the end of a year is a good time to make predictions on what is coming for us (I mean photographer/computer user/iPhone fans/geeks of all sort).

I don’t think I’m being very original here but we can forecast 2 things:

- The tablet computer – or maybe it’s 2010 version. Apple has something coming up. It’s now all over the web and it looks like it’s coming on January 26th. What it’s gone be exactly? We start to have a pretty good idea. It will be based on the iPhone OS or maybe more precisely on Cocoa Touch. But isn’t Cocoa Touch becoming more and more of a software layer built on top of some flavor of MacOS. Apple will need to add a few things to it but they have already so much in there that it won;t be too difficult.

It’s actually when I realized how much Apple invested in Cocoa Touch that I realized that this cannot be just for the iPhone. They are building a full software environment for devices that will actually use a “touch” interface. the iPhone is the first one but certainly not the last.
So it looks like in 2010 we will se more Cocoa Touch devices, whatever they are called.

- DSLR camera shooting video and video camera usable for stills. Ok no big surprise here. Actually I could have written the same thing last year at the same time. What did 2009 brought us.
On the video camera side – A big announcement from Red about their new product but nothing is really shipping here. Maybe it will become real in 2010 and we will have a better idea.
On the DSLR side, a few product actually shipped, some pretty convincing products from Canon and some less convincing attempts by Nikon. But Nikon experience with video does not compare with Canon’s and I’m afraid that they will be playing catch up or the next few years.

Ok those are the products predictions but is that really what matters? I don’t think so, what matters is what will be the consequences of those new products, what are they going to change?

Let’s celebrate the end of 2009 and the upcoming 2010 and we will talk about that tomorrow.