Answer Guy Central

Are they kidding?

OK, no, they aren’t. Apple’s new iPad has the potential to be at the center of the biggest business change ever, anywhere. And the way Apple announced the device yesterday is all the proof you need of that. So the question is: will it work?

Let me start as I sometimes do by tipping my hat to David Pogue of the New York Times. As usual (I’m so bummed that the phrase “as always” no longer applies), David spoke as the voice of reason: we really haven’t seen the Apple iPad in action or put it through its paces, and in some regard should withhold judgment. Fair enough. But it’s exactly that point on which the iPad needs to be judged.

So, technical reality: The iPad is nothing more than a giant-sized iPod Touch. Let me say as I have before that I think the iPod touch, though not my cup of tea, is an amazing device. But using an iPod Touch isn’t the same as using a computer for the simple reason that you have to back out of whatever task you are involved in whenever you wish to start another. It seems that the iPad will “save your place” in a way that the iPod Touch doesn’t, but the overall experience is . . . clumsy. This is no Macintosh. It’s not even as good as a Windows machine for getting serious work done. No matter what Apple tells us, the iPad is not a “real computer”.

Take that and reduce the issue to this: when you buy an iPad you are getting an iPod Touch at approximately twice the price. It has a big screen, so that may be worth it to you. The geek in me stops right there. Now let’s talk business change.

If you add $130 to the price of your iPad, it will also become a phone—or once again, a giant-size version of another Apple product, the iPhone. Now we’re getting somewhere. Forget about how you won’t be able to hold this thing up to your ear, and the became-ubiquitous-way-too-fast MaxiPad joke; add a Bluetooth headset, and you have an iPhone. I’m not sure many people will want to carry their iPad with them 24/7 the way we carry cell phones and SmartPhones, but time will show us the answer to that question. Here’s what’s amazing, and may represent real business change in a way that Google’s Nexus One fails to: there’s no contract.

That’s right. $130 buys you a phone, and if you choose to buy a GSM model you can—in theory, anyway—activate service with whatever carrier you want, pay as you go, deactivate service, and switch carriers whenever you wish. This is a big deal; it will makes business change for Apple, cell phone companies, and you, and the price is reasonable, if not great. In other words, you pay for the device up-front and add the phone instead of your phone carrier subsidizing the phone and owning you for two years.

Here’s that “how do we judge the iPad right now?” moment: Apple hasn’t quite figured out how any of this is going to work.

Notorious for never pre-announcing products, firing employees who leak information, and having new products on sale immediately after they are announced, with the iPad Apple has told us about its new baby months ahead of the device’s actual availability; best estimates are that the iPad will be available in March or April. That’s what’s huge about the iPad: you can’t have one.

In fact, Apple’s web site says they haven’t even received approval for the iPad from the FCC. They can’t sell you one yet. Technically, they can’t even do much testing. The iPad as it’s been described in the only version that (might) matter doesn’t exist!

So there you have it: the Apple iPad is an expensive iPod Touch that you can’t have, and that may make for huge business change one day—but not in the ways Apple is talking about. To be frank, the iPad feels like not just a giany iPod Touch, but a giant scam.

I’ll be keeping my Droid.

A few weeks ago I had some harsh words for David Pogue. Dave, The New York Times’ lead technology columnist—among other things—had expressed an opinion about copy protection that I felt was so out of touch with reality he needed to be called on it.

Pogue didn’t like my opinion. He told me so. Well, David . . . this time I’m with you: today, Pogue comments on Google and their new Nexus One cell phone. And I’m happy to report that he’s back in the fold as “the voice of reason”.

Over the last few months, and especially the last couple of weeks, the hype for Nexus One has been in full overdrive. Without every saying so officially, Google had let us know that they were about to release a new, super-feature-rich phone that you can buy without a contract. And they’ve done exactly that. The Nexus One is very, very cool, leap-frogging even my beloved Droid in a few areas (while falling short in a few others).

And that’s it. Business Change from the Nexus One? Very close to zero.

My disappointment with what Google has done stems not from my feelings about the device itself; I’ll repeat that the Nexus One is a great SmartPhone. But let’s be clear: while it’s theoretically true that you could just buy the phone and then 1) get service from the carrier of your choice and 2) get that service at a lower cost , the reality is that differences in the way cell carriers move calls and data around means that the only place you can get service for the Nexus One is T-Mobile. Yes, you could use AT&T instead, but then your data would be too slow.

Oh, and by the way: if you buy your Nexus One from T-Mobile, on contract, you’ll pay about the same thing that AT&T gets for an iPhone and Verizon gets for a Droid. And if you buy a Nexus One without a contract it costs . . . you guessed it . . . pretty much what AT&T and Verizon’s flagship phones cost without a contract.

Overall, this makes the Nexus One announcement a non-event in my book. So why write about it?

Because this is the very first time that Google has hyped/announced/released something that qualified as nothing more than a me-too. Love them or hate them, Google pushes the envelope on everything they do, and the Nexus One is not business change, phone change, power-to-the-people, or anything else, other than Google wanting very much to usurp Microsoft and Apple in the phone operating system wars.

I concede, Google; Android is spectacular. The Nexus One is a great Android phone; I almost want to replace my Droid. But . . . really, when you tell the world you’re going to change business, you need to actually bring some business change to the table. The Nexus One is no such thing.

How smart is David Pogue? He’s an accomplished musician. A successful business person. An author with dozens of well-written books under his belt. The lead technology columnist for the New York Times, and a talking head on television. And I know him a little; he’s a great guy.

But wow, is he asleep on electronic publishing.

Yesterday, David blogged on the subject. He asked what sounds like an innocent question, and the response has been strong and pretty much of one voice: “David Pogue, you need to pull your head out of that orifice“.

Specifically, David was asking about copy protection. He framed the question as though it was meaningful, and to his credit has done some anecdotal (and flawed, by his own admission) research on the subject. And certainly it’s meaningful for content producers like David who make a living producing said content to ask these questions. But David Pogue has been in the business for a very long time, and knows all the angles way better than almost anyone.

So why the question? Greed aside, it’s because business change is hard, and maybe even harder when you know as much about your business as David Pogue knows about his.

Should electronic books be copy-protected? No, of course not. Do people with something to protect have a reason to ask the question from a different perspective that the rest of us? You bet.

But books are different than movies and music. The analog equivalent is very hard to copy (except in excerpt), so it’s never been a concern, just as it wasn’t a concern when we used record albums for music.

VHS video tapes were analog and studios figured out a copy-protection scheme for them, and of course cassette audio tapes are easily copied.

But as time as passed we’ve seen time and again how copy protection simply does not achieve its desired effect AND is ultimately defeated. It’s ridiculous to continue to play this game, and the mighty David Pogue needs to be standing down his publishers (et.al.) on the issue.

I can’t wait for the New York Times to start charging for on-line subscriptions, and then to follow the Wall Street Journal’s lead and tell its electronic subscribers that they need to pay extra for SmartPhone App subscriptions to the same content.

Or better: I’d love to see them get it right and enact some real business change.

Did you hear the one about the blogger who lost his job because not enough people were reading his words?

It’s not actually a new idea. The companies that aggregate blogs figured out quickly that if nobody was reading what one of their bloggers had to say that they were paying for nothing of value. The Gawker Medias of the world have been ruthless toward their mostly-underpaid staffers for years.

Now, The Washington Post is in on the act.

Is this bad business, or just another example of necessary business change? More of the latter, I’m afraid, but imagine you were writing a column for a big newspaper, were asked to do the extra work of writing a blog, had that blog promoted via means you weren’t told about, didn’t understand, and had no control over, and as a result of not enough traffic finding its way to your blog entries lost the job you had been doing for years. Ouch.

Now here’s a funny extension to things:

A couple of months ago, David Pogue, the New York Times’ lead technology journalist and the 935th most popular blogger in the world, suddenly became a non-force. His ranking dropped to zero. Why? Because somehow, the forces that make the Internet work got confused and though THIS blog was his. Yes, the problem has been fixed.

Which explains how I know that David is only the 935th most popular blogger. And raise the question: if David Pogue ranks 935, what chance do lesser lights have when their bosses start measuring them?

And firing them.

Watch the way you business goes, and the way you manage business change. Watch very carefully.

OK, maybe that’s a little bit much, but here’s the story: it’s been estimated that making us listen to that ridiculous “at the tone, please record your message . . .” drivel before letting us leave a voice mail, cell phone companies are making us spend an extra $600 million every year on minutes.

And that doesn’t account for wasted time, which is probably a bigger deal than the minutes for most people with calling plans and buckets of minutes (though maybe not for pay-as-you-go users, who this costs money directly).

David Pogue, an old friend and the king of the technology beat at The New York Times, has been on a bit of a rant lately at his blog. Frankly, I think he’s going on a bit too much, but the point is real, and here’s the tip that matters:

When you reach a voice mail box and want to leave a message without listening to the phone company’s extra silliness, just press 1*#, one after the other. Doing so will get you directly to “the beep”.

In keeping with our theme of “change and what you can do to adapt”, this is actually a big deal. I’ve been aware of how annoying I found this issue for years, and Dave has pointed out a simple solution to the issue of not knowing what carrier you’ve called or what their code is: just stack the “get me there right now” commands for all of the cell phone carriers.

It works; I’ve been using this tip for about a week now. Good work, David Pogue!