In November I received an invitation to the second Mobius event of the year, held in Seattle just like last time. Mobius is a time where the invite-only attendees typically get to see Microsoft's road-map for future, hear from vendors and OEMs, pass along feedback to Microsoft, and network with each other. Microsoft covers the airfare and hotel stay for people who attend, unless they choose to pay their own way. Rarely one to turn down a free ride, I took them up on their offer.
The first part of every Mobius event is the meet and greet, held the night before the conference officially starts. It's always enjoyable to see my peers, and there are usually a few new faces every event. Meeting new people is a key part of what makes Mobius a fun event. The folks from Celio were present, showing off the new REDFLY products, and upon leaving we were given a nice laptop bag. I have a bit of a laptop bag fetish, so I always appreciate new bags to carry my gear in.
Mobius Day 1
The morning kicked off with an introduction from John Starkweather, and then the demos began. It's a Mobius tradition for everyone to stand up, introduce themselves, and show something off. Being the gadget geeks that we all are, there were demos of the Sony-Ericsson XPERIA, the Samsung OMNIA, and other phones and mobile devices.
Figure 1: Laptops galore, and in fact, Macbooks galore, at Mobius.
Windows Mobile Branding
Liska Rutherford kicked off a session talking about the Windows Mobile brand. Some of the challenges they face with the Windows Mobile brand include power user awareness, the significant marketing investments made by their competition, the compelling competitive brands, and the fact that software isn't top of mind for all consumers. The strengths they can bring to bear include the fact that there are 1 billion Windows users world-wide, and a large percentage of those users like the idea of having Windows on their phone. We had a discussion about the perception vs. reality of having Windows on a phone. I believe many consumers who answer yes to whether or not they want Windows on their phone are thinking of it in terms of a desktop/laptop experience, when the reality is that a phone is going to offer up a very different Windows experience than a desktop or laptop. Still, there's clearly an opportunity here for Microsoft - as long as they can address the consumer market properly, something they've historically struggled to do.
There's a significant opportunity with mobile power users - they're the number one growth segment, and what Windows Mobile brings to the table (the software) is becoming increasingly important to consumers with the added awareness that platforms like the iPhone brings. When you see those iPhone commercials showing the device in action, consumers are being shown the power of software. And because the iPhone makes it look so easy to do, it drives consumer demand for easy, but powerful, software. In thinking about power users and how Rutherford said it was the biggest opportunity for growth, I couldn't help but think about how often Microsoft has taken feedback from the Windows Mobile MVPs, put it in the "power user" bucket, and generally ignored it. I've been told for years that what power users want isn't what normal users want, but perhaps the market has evolved to the point where normal users are inching into the power user zone and suddenly our feedback is considered valid. We'll see.
So what does Microsoft want to see happen in this market? They want Windows Mobile to be the most-demanded mobile platform - they want consumers to walk into a carrier store and ask for a Windows Mobile phone. This is the same thing they've wanted for years though, and it's a tough goal to reach because Microsoft does so little direct the marketing of Windows Mobile. When Samsung or Motorola advertise their phones, the fact that it has Windows Mobile is typically downplayed. The hardware makers focus on selling their hardware, and the software is an afterthought. What Microsoft needs to do is make their software so great, so wow-inducing, that the hardware makers want to promote it because they see it as an asset.
Windows 7 for Consumers
Mark Croft and Brian Yee from the Windows Product Management team presented Windows 7 to us. I've had some experience with an early technology preview (as in, pre-beta) of Windows 7, and I really liked what I saw. They had a slide called "Windows Has Changed" that had an interesting point - it said that they were focusing on quality over timeline, and timeline over features. Deconstructing that, you get a focus on quality first and foremost, followed by timely releases (no more five year waits), and features last. Features last? That's an interesting departure, because Microsoft has traditionally been fairly feature-focused, to the point where trying to implement features drive back product release dates. Microsoft has three main goals with Windows 7: making it work the way you want, making everyday tasks faster and easier, and making new things possible. All laudable goals, but so much depends on the hardware partners and the "d" word": drivers.
Figure 2: Mark Croft and Brian Yee walk us through some of what's coming in Windows 7.
In the category of it working the way you want, they're focusing on making Windows 7 faster and more responsive - no doubt in direct response to complaints about Vista's sometimes sluggish behaviour. Specifically, better performance, faster startup and shutdown, quicker task management, improved battery life, and working closer with PC manufacturers. The last goal is a key ingredient when it comes to having the best user experience possible.
Take a very standard laptop task of putting a laptop into suspend (sleep) mode, and having wake up again. I have a Dell XPS M1330 laptop, a piece of hardware purchased some 18 months after Vista first launched. So, in theory, it should be a laptop completely optimized for Vista. Yet when it comes to sleeping and waking, I'd describe its functionality as suspect at best. It often takes 10 to 20 seconds from when I shut the lid until the power light starts pulsing to indicate that it's in sleep mode. I prefer not to pack the laptop up until I know the hard drive has stopped spinning, so that 20 seconds can feel like an eternity. And lately, putting it to sleep triggers the cha-chunk sound of the slot-loading optical drive, which is a bizarre development. Resuming the XPS M1330 is an uneven process at best - the laptop will power up, the lights will blink, and I'll be staring at a black screen for around 12 seconds until I'm presented with the login screen. Compare that to most Macbooks and you'll see why the marriage between hardware and software matters so much. Microsoft and their partners need to do better.
Figure 3: Windows 7 uses the same amount of system memory for drawing windows regardless of whether one or 50 windows are open.
Figure 4: When you click on an item in the taskbar, and it's already an open program, if there are multiple windows you'll get a preview of each one.
When it comes to compatibility, if it works with Windows Vista, it should work with Windows 7. There are no major API changes, which is a critical point: that means that if there's a Vista driver for your hardware, that should work under Windows 7 without issue. That's great news, because driver issues were one of the top frustrations for people moving to Windows Vista with XP-era hardware. Windows 7 will be more reliable as well - there are some improvements in reliability and self-diagnosis. There will be fewer prompts for user account control for instance, and in fact the default will be at a lower threshold than it was for Vista. There will be more controls for the user regarding account approvals, and it will be more discoverable than it was in the past.
Figure 5: Each item in the taskbar will have enhanced functionality. Clicking on the item gives you this pop-up menu that has frequently used tasks related to that item.
Windows 7 (continued...)
Home networking has undergone some significant changes and updates. Creating a home network still isn't very easy, and Windows 7 helps significantly with a new feature called Homegroups. It looks like an evolved version of the auto-discovery in Vista that works pretty well.
Figure 6: Joining a homegroup is fast and simple, requiring only a password.
Figure 7: Browsing devices over the homegroup looks easy enough.
Default printers change based on network - you can have one default printer for your work network, and one default printer for your home network. No longer a need to toggle! And, even better, printer drivers are installed automatically when a computer is connected to a Homegroup. They showed a demo where they connected a laptop to a Homegroup, and after authenticating with a password, all of the assets on that computer were available to the new computer - this included the printer. Amazingly, the printer driver was installed in the background, without a single user prompt. The printer literally just showed up and was available for use. If this works that well in the real world, that's an impressive improvement over the way things work today where printer drivers usually need to be installed on each computer that wants to use the printer. I wonder how this feature will work with networked printers?
Figure 8: Device Stage is the place where devices are managed - it's for phones, MP3 players, printers, etc. The manufacturer has complete control over what happens when the device is connected.
Figure 9: They showed how the enhanced media features, based on DLNA, allowed you to control a device like a Roku Soundbridge radio directly from a Windows 7 PC.
My biggest disappointment with Windows 7 is that there seemed to be very little good news for Windows Mobile users - with the Device Stage concept I mentioned above, they weren't even testing it with a Windows Mobile device. That's not a very good sign!
The remainder of the sessions on day one were NDA and unfortunately I can't say anything about what I saw, other than to say that a lot of it had me nodding my head and saying "Finally!".
Figure 10: We were given Mobius-branded Flip MinoHD video cameras. I hope I use this one more than the regular Flip Mino I bought earlier this year, which I've used exactly zero times. It seemed like it would be useful at the time, but I always opt for bigger, and higher quality video capture devices (like my Canon HF100). We also each received a Microsoft LifeCam VX-5500 and a Microsoft Arc Mouse.
Figure 11: The evening of day one was a fun event - we cooked! As a group we all headed to a local restaurant that holds "iron chef" style cooking competitions. We were divided up into three teams - above is team one, the team I was on.
Figure 12: Because it was a competition, there were prizes...HTC Touch Pros! Mmm, tasty hardware!
Figure 13: My team ended up winning the competition with a tasty salmon curry recipe. Delicious!
Figure 14: In addition to winning the HTC Touch Pro, with the video-out cable, I also received an HTC S740 (as did all attendees).
Mobius Day 2
The second day started off with more attendee demos. I saw some interesting gadgets, including a universal charger from Hong Kong that took a new approach to charging batteries: it had two metal prongs that could be re-positioned to touch the contacts on any battery and charge it. I'm not entirely sure how safe it would be, but it was cool to see a charger that could recharge almost any small battery. Lacking and good gadgets to demo that hadn't already been seen by most of the people in the room, I ended up talking about MotionBox and some of the challenges in shooting and sharing videos online.
Eric Lin from HTC
The first session on day two was presented by Eric Lin from HTC USA. He talked about the difficulty of differentiation among Windows Mobile OEMS - each OEM has the same basic software from Microsoft, access to the same basic hardware technologies, and generally have the same sort of limitations. So how does HTC stand out from everyone else? Lin said that four are popular basic designs: candybar QWERTY, 12-key slider, a slate (just screen), and a screen + QWERTY (the slider). We had a rather spirited discussion about which form-factors consumers really wanted versus what's popular right now. It's my opinion that HTC is focusing too much on chasing Apple's coat-tails and releasing nothing but "touch" devices. HTC has great slate and keyboard slider devices, but they lack a modern QWERTY messenger device, a candybar phone, and a clamshell phone. I used to think that HTCs greatest asset was the choice that users had with the hardware, but I can't think that any more - I want to see HTC go back to making best-in-class devices around specific form-factors. We don't need more "Touch" devices from them right now.
Figure 15: Eric Lin from HTC.
More NDA Stuff
The second session of the day was presented by Microsoft Labs under NDA. All I can say about the session is that what we saw presented first looked quite useful, and I look forward to being able to get my hands on it.
From the Carrier Point of View: T-Mobile
Next up was Beth Goza, now working for T-Mobile. If you recognize that name, it's because Beth used to work for Microsoft and was running Mobius events at one point. Beth took us through a presentation she did in 2007 that walked through the evolution of mobile applications, then launched into a new 2008 presentation that explained what she does at T-Mobile: she helps developers bring their applications to T-Mobile customers. Traditionally it's been difficult for a developer to get their applications into the hands of customers, so T-Mobile has come up with a program to facilitate this called devPartner. They have a revenue forecaster where the developer specifies which devices they're going to develop for, how much they're going to charge, what they estimate their return rates will be, how much network bandwidth they'll use, etc.
Figure 16: Beth Goza from T-Mobile.
The issue of network bandwidth ignited a firestorm of a discussion that focused on the fact that developers who release applications that use data have to pay for that data usage in some fashion, regardless of the fact that the customer is already paying for data with a plan of their own. This "double billing" concept clearly agitated a lot of people in the room, myself included. At first I thought I misunderstood the concept, and that developers would only be billed for network access if the customer using their application didn't already have a data plan, but this billing is above and beyond what the customer is already paying for. I'm glad this is limited to T-Mobile and feature phones, because I can't imagine how stunted the mobile application development scene would be if developers had to pay for data transfers that the customer initiated with their application. If the customer has a data plan, shouldn't any and all data transfers be billed against that? Why hold the developer responsible for that? Sheer lunacy!
Mobile Industry Trends
Michael Gartenburg, a research analyst, presented next on major trends in mobility. Point form notes tend to be the best type of way to summarize these types of presentations, so here goes:
• There's a worldwide market for 50,000 of anything;
• Sometimes David does beat Goliath; an underdog always has a chance to upset everything;
• "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone...PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." - Ed Collogan, Palm CEO, circa 2006. Talk about famous near-last words;
• The three big issues in 2009 are OS evolution (Apple and Google weren't on the mobile radar two years ago), Anytime & Anywhere, and ubiquitous devices;
• The notion of digital ubiquity is now a reality - you can get virtually anything you want to access on any device, pretty much anywhere in the world...but only if lawyers aren't involved to hold everything back;
• The third "tsunami of personal technology" is about multiple mobile devices, devices that are ubiquitous and contextual;
Figure 17: The very intelligent and well-spoken Michael Gartenburg. I always enjoy hearing him speak.
• Is a camera phone that a person that doesn't take photos with really a camera? They'll still have a digital camera. If someone has a "music phone" but they never use it to listen to music, they'll still have an MP3 player. The idea is that just because one device does that same thing as another device, doesn't mean that the consumer will get down to only one device;
• Consumers prefer to carry one device, but they will carry up to three things. One size doesn't fit all. The number and nature of devices are going to change. You don't want to be the fourth device! Three seems to be the universal number for what people are willing to carry. The types of devices will vary based on cultural factors, but three seems to be the magic number;
• The PC is not dead. First it was going to be the Internet that was going to kill the PC, then it was Java, then network computing. The PC remains a Swiss Army Knife of computing. Laptops and netbooks continue to grow in mainstream adoption. Productivity, communication, and entertainment are still driving factors;
• Casual content creation is becoming more common (YouTube, Flickr, etc.);
• Question: what's a "smartphone"? Answer: it doesn't matter anymore. The strict categorization of what a smartphone is only matters to people who count things;
• If a device doesn't displace another device, or serve a discreet function, that device will die...a slow, horrible, painful death. This reminded me of my Samsung Q1 Ultra, a device that has virtually no practical use for me;
• Technology is fashion. Geeks care about feeds and speeds (hardware), features, features, and POWER. The mass market? They care about form factors, color, caressability;
• Microsoft's core business is licensing and partnering. Apple's job is deliver end to end experiences, and they'll partner, but only on Apple's terms;
• Mobile OS task suitability: voice capability is critical, email is important, web browsing is important, media & entertainment less so, yet still part of the target that needs to be hit;
• There is no "Windows" of the mobile world, meaning a single standard that unifies everything. Lots of pieces: Windows Mobile, Android (Linux), RIM (Java), Palm, Mac OS, Series 60;
• Market success in the mobile market does not require market dominance. There will be many strong players in the mobile space even as there is consolidation;
• Control Sync - Control the World! Microsoft has all the right pieces, but they struggle with the messaging (this is my opinion at least).
Live Mesh
Live Mesh is a platform for developers that enables rich experiences for users. The task they set out to solve was how to create a solution that enables seamless movement from PC to Web to phone. Windows Azure is the foundation that many services are going to be built upon - Azure is their "cloud computing" operating system. Think developers renting computational cycles, a la Amazon S3. Windows Live Services is built on top of Windows Azure, and there are 460 million users who use Windows Live services at least once a month. They want Live Mesh to be the "last mile" platform, the one that will unite a disparate series of platforms, everything from entertainment platforms like the Xbox and PS3, to mobile platforms like Windows Mobile, Android, etc.
Figure 18: Live Mesh is a platform upon which many Microsoft services are going to be based.
Users want rich experiences; "Me Sync" (meaning all the stuff you want on every device you have), "We Sync" (meaning sharing the things you want to share with other people), and anywhere access - the user being able to access anything they want, on any device. He mentioned in passing the idea of a user having applications available on any device they're using, which is a fascinating concept. Not that you'd be able to use Photoshop on your phone, but that Live Mesh could serve as an application layer, giving you access to an application such as Photoshop on any computer the person is using. They had five guiding principles: put users at the centre of their digital world, make all the devices act as one (the mesh), make it easily accessible, making it social, make it an open Internet standards platform. They seem to be executing on all of those so far, though there's clearly a long way to go.
Live Mesh is going to be mainlined into Windows Live in a couple of different ways, and come Windows Live Wave 4 (Wave 3 was the one just released) we should see Live Mesh technology in more places. I asked about FolderShare (now dubbed Live Sync) and SkyDriv, and the eventual integration of those two since it's such a no-brainer. I was basically given the "wink and a nod", meaning this is clearly something that they're thinking about and likely moving towards.
From an applications perspective, there are some interesting possibilities - we were shown a video of a demo of a BBC application called the iPlayer that combines the idea of the Mesh with the content. The mobile implementation was particularly interesting - you can tag videos, and they're added to your mesh, which is downloaded to clients, allowing for local playback of video content - and even resuming playback on one device from the same point on another device where you paused it. This is all still early, but there are some game-changing possibilities here for Microsoft if they can execute it all properly.
Wrapping It Up...
After the final session, we headed out for the first ever Mobius roller skating event - and all I can say about that is that there were many people falling down over and over again. This Mobius was definitely the most bruising! After working up an appetite roller skating we headed out for dinner, and Mobius was a wrap. My evening ended up taking a turn for the worse with coughing fits, and it's only this past week that I'm more or less back to normal (hence the primary reason you're reading this Mobius summary so late). Got questions? Fire away - I'll answer what I can.
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He hopes he'll be healthy for the next Mobius event he's invited to.
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Mobius 2008, Winter Edition
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