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Google Glass, like the Segway, is what happens when Silicon Valley spends too much time talking to itself. 

There’s really nothing wrong with Google Glass as a technological experiment (it’s good PR) but as a mass product : oh boy!

Indeed the added value to the user way of life is really too low compared to the effort that users have to make. Why should I constantly wear glasses with a 3 hours battery life that give me headache ? to take 5/10 pictures per week ? use the navigation system one or two times per week ?

That will end-up in the hands of mall cop, hipster/glasshole, handicap people, extreme sport guy and that’s pretty much it.

And no, that’s not like the iPhone when it first lunch … the iPhone had a killer feature right out of the bag : you know … the phone … 

the good thing about that, is that we will be able to insult those guys without being too rude, just by using the word glasshole :)

I genuinely respect a lot John Gruber, I listen to his podcast, read his website since more than 10 years, met him briefly twice and follow him on twitter. He have most of time some great moments of clarity.

what baffle me is his position on the market share.

I am not in the camp that root for the market share no matter what … indeed as we can see in the post pc market, demography of quality and developer revenue are more important than pure download/devices number. But here what shock me again and again since 3 years :

Apple will do just fine if its long-term position in the phone market settles in like its position in the PC market.

Apple will. But Developers and Users will not. look at the mac today : very few apps and vey few games, because dev struggle to make a living.

is that what Gruber want for iOS devices ?

Note that this kind of blurry and foggy vision is unfortunately quite common when you are the mindshare leader. 

because it’s what gonna to happen (until Apple change the game again) once the app revenue will move to other platform, developers will follow. More developer means more apps and little by little a better quality. Not as good but good enough for the mass.

Android monthly store revenue is on the rise and dev earn now about 50% of what they could earn on iOS. Android devices (htc one mostly) are little by little approaching the build quality of an iPhone. they will reach the good enough state soon.

And this analogy with the mac is not accurate either, because the mac rely a lot on the web with a true compatible browser for all those web apps. In the app world that do not work that way and we will be force to run Android or Windows apps in an emulator like in the past … so it will be the mac before web apps.

from me : hey @gruber, remember the time where we had only a crappy browser and really few quality apps on the mac ? I was there and it was not pretty.

And we are heading right into it. And that’s a lesson from the past that Apple should have learned. I will still be there because I love simplicity and design but most of iOS Developers that sold out the WWDC will not be here in few years … along with their apps.

it will not happen this year as the Apple ecosystem is better than ever with millions of iDevices in the hand of real customers, but if the trend continue it will happen as this phenomenon was cast at the outset of iPhoneOS (no licensing vs install everywhere)

Until Apple change the game again … but until that disruptive force come again (mac,iPod, itunes, iPhone, iPad …)  the ecosystem will loss lot of value for users and developers.

Three prominent venture capital firms are scouting for start-ups building apps for Google Glass, the new Internet-connected glasses.

I am already an asshole … I don’t want to be a glasshole too :/

And if I had the money I would buy a segway … (that say a lot)

First, there is nothing more personal than a face and I don’t think that people are ready to wear that. The Face is  very personal and with the segway effect (rich and weird), I am really convince that it will not work … like google wave.

Secondly, at this point in time, the value added by GoogleGlass is simply too low. why on hell I am gonna to wear those glasses all the time  just to take few pictures and videos ??? Answer : I will not.   

Unless GoogleGlass find a killer feature that make it indispensable like a phone …  

French homeland intelligence threatens a volunteer sysop to delete a Wikipedia Article

While I agree that it make sense to delete this wikipage, I find the method quite disturbing for a democracy.

Since two months iOS outperform Android in the US based and horace gave his vision of this fact.

However, I would have to slightly disagree with horace analysis on the reasons why iOS outperform Android in the US.

to me, here the reasons :

■ Samsung announced it’s next generation flagship phone (SG4) since december. lot of buyer are waiting for the next generation. This phenomenon happen to Apple too, a month before a new phone is release the sale plunge.

■ user satisfaction drive the network effect. Indeed Apple product have a user satisfaction way higher than samesung so when people ask their buddy what they should buy, they will probably recommend an iPhone. Also as most people have a cheap android phone, the comparison is way in favor of the iPhone.Only the new HTC is able to compete on the build quality of the iPhone but they are too small.

■ The financial crisis is an old nightmare in the US. People spend more and want to buy high end product like the iPhone. Samsung due to a poor build quality have a light penetration in the high-end/hipster market. On the other hand, the financial crisis and low budget is still thriving in Europe.

As I predicted in january, I think that Android market share is gonna to continue to shrink in 2013 due to the manufacturer fragmentation between windows/Android, a lower user satisfaction and the Europe financial recovering.

But make no mistake this Market share statistic is not something that dev should take as a stimulus to develop for android or iOS. Indeed only two indicators should be taken in account :

- The number of download in the appStore or google play if you have a eyeball business plan (ads)

- The revenue per App.

Android have pretty much the same number of download than iOS, so a ads business driven make total sense. On the other hand android is still very week on the IAP and generate 4 times less than iOS.

And that lead to the main question : does those new android/iOS users have a “better” demography (better IAP) ? Cause as we have seen on iOS, number of users do not really matter, it’s what they do with their phone that do.

I am always befuddle to see how naive our industry is. 

The word of mouth and other PR tend to make us believe that google reader has been stop because of cost issue.

it is not! First google reader did not change since many years and secondly for a company like that 2/3 engineer to fix bugs and maintain a so small infrastructure is pin-nuts. Furthermore knowing what people are interested in is what google is making money on.

Google Reader is dead because Google+ is the new darling of google. Simple as that. Feature wise you are gonna to be able to do almost the same things connect with your interest with g+ communities and other website news via following them directly.

it make total sense for google to close this insider competitor! And guess what, in my opinion, G+ is a good product and to me you will be better off there than with a RSS reader.

The Keynote :

what’s the word that I am looking for ? … oh yes found it! Pathetic. No more no less. I really though that the Qualcomm keynote was the bottom of the barrel … nop! I was wrong. SameSung “top” Qualcomm in this race to the bottom. SameSung keynote was sexist, over produced, really weird and generally very embarrassing. 

The SamSung Galaxy S4 :

It’s very good Smart phone that feature wise and performance wise, out-perfrom any smartphone of the world (HTC one and iPhone 5 included). It’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. The S4 is literally loaded with tons of features. few of them are Apple inspired/copied  … Others are gimmicky at best or clearly for a niche/”switch off” usage (airview, air gesture, Dual camera, Smart Pause/scroll …), but few of them are brilliant :

■New Captors : Temperature, Humidity and step counter captors feel like they should have been included in any smartphone since day one. yes, I think it’s that good! Like the iPhone captors really revolutionize the way we use smartphone those new one are an incredible addition.

■S-Health : That’s killer. clearly. Inspired by fitbits and others wrist device that count your steps and sleep, this new feature directly included in the GS4 make it a must buy for me.

■S-Translator : Killer too. Sure it exist before but with a product like that and well marketed it could become a stapple of this galaxy version like the S-Health.

So overall it’s a very good phone.Though to me it’s still a fail. Mainly because with this cheap build quality and phone design, I do not think that they will succeed to grab the upscale demography that the IPhone 5 is able to grab. And this battle is the most important battle for Android in order to make this ecosystem profitable for their partners (developer,manufacturer …)

I also don’t like what they are trying to do with Android by taking control of all the User Interface over the stock Android. Android becoming a vulgar spec in their mind/marketing … It’s a negation of all what the Android Platform is about. I am pretty sure they will fork at some point. It’s business 101. Also their marketing spending is now out of control and others manufacturers cannot compete with that. I predict that thanks to SG3 for free and this SG4 pushed like crazy they will grab 70% of the android market in the next 6 months (50% right now).

Make no mistake I think that SameSung will become the uncontested winner of this smartphone war, but the S4 is not it. Indeed SameSung is the only Android manufacturer that can cut drasticly the cost of their phone indeed half components cost are already profits in their hands. By comparison Apple is paying samsung for those components.

So at some point they will ship a phone more prenium than the iphone but for half the cost! People will find it good enough ….

it pretty much look like it!

Clearly “inspired” by the iPhone 5 bi-color design, this phone, based on all reviews that I read and my own opinion based on those reviews, seems like the best android device so far.

What’s more interesting is the top notch build quality that this phone provide : Top Notch like the iPhone5 and it seems even better. 

Well, I am not surprise that it’s coming from HTC but more interestingly that could trigger a major change in the android demography. Upscale people will always prefer a upscale materials than a plastic build quality.

Sadly, at this end of the day this phone will barely sale … Indeed SameSung is flooding the market with ads and other incentive by spending 5 times more than Apple, HP, Dell, Microsoft and Coca Cola combined. Also as this market is carriers/manufacturer rigged and no matter how good this phone is, SameSung will get the crown of the market share.

However if samesung follow with the same quality there is no doubt in my mind that the upscale demography will come to android. Resolving at the same time the problem of lack of beautiful(expensive to make) apps as dev could be able to earn something closer to iOS.

Android need to be fast cause the tablet market is closing in pretty fast thanks to windows 8 laptop/tablet (A failure at 60 millions is something that  everybody would love to have) and do not be in this tablet market will be deadly at long term as people want the same app between their tablet and phone.

Thanks for all those good reviews and messages about Heroes Battle 10 and Vampire Stories 10