MacBook Touch - the threads and rumors around the Apple Tablet come together

Recently I had to send my Apple MacBook Pro to the Apple Hospital for some Tender Loving Care. Thankfully after a new Logic Board everything is humming along nicely again. The incident did however underscore to me the hidden power of the MobileMe service.

If you have an iPhone you really should be using MobileMe. The Find my iPhone feature that was introduced with iPhone OS 3.0 is very cool but the real power is in the over the air syncing of Contacts and calendar information.

When my Mac was in the AppleCare Hospital I got my hands on a HPMini 1000 for a week and managed to install OS X. There were limitations to running OS X on the NetBook. For one thing I couldn't get sound working and the NetBook did not come with Bluetooth. However, once OS X was installed I was able to connect up to MobileMe and my preferences, calendars and contacts all came streaming down to the NetBook. With that core information the NetBook became far more valuable.

Why is this relevant to the MacBook Touch rumor? It's simple. While I have doubts that a Tablet will appear as "just one more thing" at the anticipated September Apple Music event. I do think we will see a Tablet arrive early next year.

The rumor is plausible that we will see a new product drop in around the $800-900 price range. A product with a large screen and that leverages MobileMe, the App Store and the beta development being done with iWork. Let's not forget that Apple has quietly been testing a web-based iWork platform. It has limitations but that and the iDisk app for the iPhone all point to an increasing capability to seamlessly connect to our data in the cloud.

A 10 inch MacBook Touch Tablet would be a great multi-tasking platform that could use 802.11n to stream movies from our iTunes libraries while also using the iPhone iTunes remote application to control a remote library.

Now will a tablet run OS X or a modified iPhone OS? I would hope it runs OS X. The Tablet could leverage the iPhone Multi-touch interface that has been built in to the OS X platform. Snow Leopard is about to launch with a streamlined core that makes OS X a lighter weight proposition. The Tablet could also run iPhone apps in emulation mode. Let's not forget that Apple has signed up thousands of iPhone App developers that are able to run an iPhone simulation on their Macs. What would it take for Apple to create an application that encapsulates an iPhone Application and run it on OS X? Surely not a lot. That would let the Tablet immediately leverage the library of iPhone Apps and be able to multi-task iPhone apps. With a full Safari browser the Tablet could leverage the cloud. Do you remember how the iPhone did this before Apple released the iPhone SDK?

The Tablet could run OS X without being dependent upon an Intel processor. Apple has already ported OS X once. Another migration to using a custom ARM processor would not be an unrealistic feat. The only downside to this is that support for existing OS X applications would be dependent upon Rosetta-style emulation as was the case in the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors.

The Fact that Apple is investing in data centers on a massive scale would also seem to reinforce the idea of a Tablet App store and a Tablet product that held most storage in the cloud. I think there would still be some local storage, for when a network connection is unavailable but Apple has been working with Sync services on MobileMe for a number of years now.

Will a Tablet include 3G network or WiMax support? I suspect not in the first iteration. I could see Apple doing so in the second iteration of the product after they have given Verizon some time to get their LTE 4G network up and running. The fact is that the vast majority of NetBooks are used inside the home. That makes it far more likely to include WiFi in 802.11g and 802.11n versions. With Wi-Fi Apple could also leverage their iPhone product line. It would be really easy for them to issue an up date to their iPhone OS that allowed you to setup a Wi-Fi sharing network between your Tablet and your iPhone and use the tethering feature on your existing iPhone data plan. This would also mean Apple could produce one version of the Tablet and not have to produce variations to meet the different wireless carrier needs. Don't forget that Sprint and Verizon are already carrying the Novatel Mi-Fi that I wrote about back in May - identifying the product as a game changer. That provides a personal Wi-Fi network. That would be ideal to match with a MacBook Touch with Wi-Fi. It would also allow Apple to build relationships with the other carriers in a way that promotes sales of those lucrative data plans. Can you imagine being able to go in to a Verizon or Sprint store and purchase a bundled Mi-Fi and MacBook Touch? There has also been talk about AT&T charging for Tethering on the Data Plan. Allowing unlimited tethering of a MacBook Touch via your iPhone might be an option that people would consider. AT&T could bundle that at a lower price point as an Add-on service than using the Mi-Fi service on a competitor carrier.

I increasingly believe that the Tablet will not be just another product from Apple. Instead I am convinced that Apple is looking to leverage everything they have learned with the iPod and the iPhone. They will leverage the cloud and the existing ecosystem. When the iPhone was released it built upon the iPod ecosystem and leveraged the iTunes store. Expect this new game changing product to take that a step further.

Do you think there is substance to the iTablet rumors? What are you looking for in a Mac Tablet?

Sorry but Copy Cats don't add value to the Social Graph

The ripple in the social network pond this week has been caused by the news that the URL Shortener tr.im is (probably) shutting down.

Nambu, who own Tr.im, can't find a viable business model for tr.im that can work against twitter's selection of bit.ly as their preferred URL shortener. I must admit, I like bit.ly and had used it as my default URL shortener via TweetDeck well before Twitter bestowed the app with "preferred" status.

The issue here is not so much whether Twitter picks winners, we have to remember that bit.ly has won mindshare, beating out the entrenched services like tinyurl, because bit.ly recognized the fact that URL shortening is a lot more than just shortening URLs.

What bit.ly did is provide a set of value added, yes - valuable, services to their users. That is the foundation for a viable business. The statistics and custom short URLs are the types of service that people are willing to pay for.

Once again Web 2.0 principles come in to play. It is in fact the by-product of the service that is more valuable than the service itself. The ability to track who used a link and where they came from, and when they came is far more valuable than the shortened link itself. Google learned this lesson a long time ago. Their search service is valuable but the information and insight they gain from people using search is far more valuable.

Network effects and the wisdom that can be divined from the actions of the crowd. These are the factors to consider when developing a Social site. "Me Too" services will not win - get over it! You have to deliver something extra that adds depth and richness to the network fabric.

Bit.ly may be safe for now, but if someone else comes along with an alternative that finds a way to deliver value in ways that bit.ly had not thought then they may have a fight on their hands.

Preserving the Twitter hive mind

Twitter is having a rough time. The Denial of Service Attack is one thing. Then Facebook goes for the jugular by spending $50M to acquire FriendFeed. I have also written about Twitter's loss of memory. Yes, our collective hive mind has disappeared, or it is being held to ransom behind the walls of fortress Twitter.

My advice to you is that a topic is worth following in your Tweetdeck or Seesmic twitter client then grab the RSS feed for the search term and drop it in to your RSS Reader. I have taken my most frequent searches and added them to my Google Reader. It is easy to do and means you can go back and search on your comments and mentions.

The Direct Messages I receive already arrive in my email inbox. The only thing I haven't found yet is a convenient way to archive my Sent Direct Messages. Does anyone have any ideas on how best to do that? I suppose I could look at using OAuth and set up a routine to regularly connect and retrieve Sent DMs.

Free is just too high a price to pay

Robert Scoble seems to be on a roll at the moment. His commentary on the the Twitter ecosystem are fascinating. Last week he discovered that the Auto-follow had made him dumber. Now he is being more selective and as a result the quality of his feed has risen dramatically. His latest post is about the demise of tr.im from Nambu and the shortcomings of the Twitter platform. It is well worth a read.

The took two things from Scoble's post:

1. The Network Effects keep pulling us back
2. Put your stuff in more than one place.

When Twitter has a bad day, like the Denial Of Service attacks last week, we just wait. Just like how Scoble can't get thousands of his followers to meet him on FriendFeed, each of us is daunted at the prospect of persuading our tens, or hundreds, of followers to move with us to another platform.

Facebook and Twitter probably both recognize this fact. It is not just the followers but how about all the ecosystem components I have connected to my Twitter account. Brightkite, TwitPic, Bit.ly, Delicious. The list goes on. Every application adopted makes a user more "Sticky." The adoption of OAuth by Twitter and Facebook's Connect feature make the respective networks more essential to us.

The need to put our information in more than one place has been driven home to me when Twitter Search "Broke". It is more likely that Twitter deliberately hobbled search in order to manage their resources more cost effectively. We now have access to only a couple of weeks of tweets. This means that the collective thoughts from numerous conferences, camps and meetups have vanished.

This tells us Twitter may have stumbled on yet another business model option. They could choose to charge us for access to that collective hive mind. Would you pay? I would certainly think about - but only if Twitter let me pick up those searches as an RSS feed and republish them freely on my blog, or other sites I use.

The actions of Twitter warn us that "Free" is often too high a price to pay for services from a startup. It may be too high a price to pay from even established companies, like Google.

Free services on the Internet are a wonderful thing. But be wary. You always need an alternative. Put your information in more than one place.

It also means that, if you are serious about your personal brand on the Internet, you need to invest in a domain and look at the tools you depend upon and purchase or use Open Source code on servers in your domain. There are examples of open source URL shorteners.

I think I need to look at my blog here on blogger and how I can reduce my dependence on bit.ly. I may also have to revisit implementing identi.ca (laconi.ca) on my own platform.

  

Health Care Reform and Health 2.0

Last night I attended the Health 2.0 Meet up in Silver spring, MD. It was a great event organized by David Blackburn of Aquilent. There was a sizeable crowd - the organizers had to turn down last minute requests to attend.

It was great to see David Hale talking about the evolution of PillBox at the National Institutes of Health. After seeing PillBox at HealthCampDc last year it has matured nicely.

Marie-Michelle Strah gave a fascinating talk about the use of Tele-Health by the US Armed Forces in the Mental Health field.

I had also been asked to present. My presentation can be found on Slideshare:

Its About Health Participation

View more presentations from Mark Scrimshire.

Health Reform is up to us - The innovators and consumers

I find myself regularly listening to C-Span and the machinations going on in Washington to reform the Health Care system. I hesitate to call it a Health Care system because the current system in the USA is a Sick Care system.

President Obama is right to be tackling Health Care reform. The current growth in medical spending is unsustainable. The problem comes in the execution of the reform via Congress. The challenge is of such magnitude that the solution will be complex. When that is expressed in legislative terms we end up with a bill of more than a thousand pages and it is destined to grow as amendments are added to accommodate different interests.

The process is frustrating and difficult to understand by outsiders.

What are we trying to accomplish here? We have to stay focused on the prize. What is that?

We want a Health Care system that is focused on keeping us healthy. A Health Care system that enables us to afford preventative action to keep us health for as long as possible. A Health Care system in which the consumer/patient is an active participant (or who can nominate someone to act on their behalf).

The current system is largely geared towards paying for quantity, not quality. There is no incentive in the industry to spend less to get better care. More tests means more money. The Pharmaceutical companies are complicit in this too. A cure is not good business. Far better to stabilize and have patients on a lifetime supply of medications.

There are two groups that can change this:

1. Innovators/Entrepreneurs
2. Consumers/Patients

HealthCamp has proven to me that there are real innovators out there. My professional role has also shown me that there are innovative thinkers inside the Health Care Industry. It is a source of hope. Yes, people are working to make a real difference in health care.

The Health 2.0 Accelerator meetings bring together dozens of entrepreneurs and really drives home the vibrancy in the Health 2.0 arena. New applications are emerging and the Internet is unleashing solutions that are leveraging the wisdom of the crowds and the ability to aggregate vast amounts of data and put those new insights to good use in enabling actionable change.

HealthVault and Google Health are providing un-tethered Health Records that we can take with us, regardless of who we work for or which medical benefits plan we have.

Sites like PatientsLikeMe are providing help to disease sufferers. Change:healthcare is helping consumers spend their money more wisely on health and a growing array of other innovators are building applications that plug in to the Personal Health Record "ecosystems" that are emerging.

The next step is for us, the consumers and patients, to stand up and get involved. We can become more active in our own health care. The tools are out there. This is what HealthCamp is all about. It is about providing a grass roots platform for consumers, patients and professionals from across the industry to come together and discuss the issues and generate ideas that can address the challenges we face in Health Care.

You can get involved. There are HealthCamp events taking place in the next few months. Check the calendar. Register on the HealthCamp site and join in the discussion.

If we want to live healthier, longer lives we can't afford to be illiterate when it comes to health issues. Health Illiteracy can kill you. We need to track our Body Mass Index, to take our Blood Pressure regularly. These simple steps can help us become more aware of our general health.

I am increasingly fearful that Washington will produce a health care reform bill but it will not achieve what the President set out to achieve. It will not make us healthier. It may just make Health Care more complicated and more expensive to deliver.

If we want to see a real Health Care, rather than the Sick Care system we have today, then we, the Innovators and Consumers, have to work together to create the Participatory Health Care system that we want to be a part of. You can take the first step by getting involved in a local HealthCamp.