I was reading the Malcolm Gladwell take on the Jobs biography and came across this little gem --

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.

Did you catch that bit in the middle (highlights/bold are mine). I was suddenly reminded of a bajillion graphs I've seen recently, including but not limited, to this one:

What if the problem with current innovation is that there's a "release valve" for it? That is to say, because workers are paid so little (in the US and elsewhere), there's not a pressure to reduce the number of them, so innovation is depressed?

I'm not looking to drive people out of work, but when labor costs are high, there's an inherent desire to make your processes more efficient so you can cut those costs. But the other half of that is that it takes far less capital to get your new businesses going, which means more people can do cool things.

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I learned a new (wonderful) word the other day. The definition is pretty straight-forward.

verisimilitude: (n) Having the quality of realism.

Basically, it just means that when you see something, it is internally consistent enough to SEEM real. Think of it this way ... you have a long wall and two people are standing on either end, facing at 45 degrees to the center of the wall, not at each other. And they're sitting there, not throwing directly at each other, but somehow they keep catching it. Now you're standing on the other side of the wall, this looks crazy. How is the ball going back and forth? Allow me to draw it out (crudely):

Now there could be any number of reasons that this works. Maybe there's another wall on the other side that they're bouncing it off of. Or maybe the ball is actually on as string and it's swinging it around. Or maybe the ball has some kind of boomerang effect built in. Or maybe there's a third person in the middle of the wall that they're actually throwing it to. Who knows - but because none of these violate the laws of physics, you can construct a theory in your head that makes everything work together.

In fact, you don't even need a theory that holds to the laws of physics. Let's say this was in a movie, and, in the movie universe, telekenisis was fully part of their world, and people could bend the ball to go where the wanted it to in their minds. No problem - that's how they're playing, and you move on. 

Where things start to fall apart is my topic for today - I call it the uncanny valley of science fiction.

The two ends of the spectrum of Sci-Fi are the following:

• Total fantasy
• Almost real

In the total fantasy side of the world, you look at something like Lord of the Rings. Beautiful world, magic everywhere, creatures being created from mud, and so on. You may look at it with a little bit of science - did that tower topple the right way, did the arrow arc through the air correctly - but by and large everything is on hold because there's no framework in which to judge its realism. Could Gandalf have destroyed the bridge with his staff? Who knows. A wizard did it. But it's enough to tie everything together.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Star Trek. Very tangible world, mostly extensions of inventions we've already created, but standard human biology and physics apply. In this case, ALL science must apply and be applicable, or you have to have a VERY plausible cause for why. If Geordi wants to move a moon out of its orbit, you better explain it down to the nano-newton exactly how he's going to do it. And, in large part, they do an excellent job in doing so, which is why the serieses are so beloved.

But now we come to the uncanny valley, and current sand under my fingernail, The Walking Dead. Agh. The biggest problem here is that while there's not much magic (other than dead coming to life and taking over the earth), there's SO MANY unanswered questions. And everyone of them force me to sit there thinking through those questions rather than enjoying the show. Here's a small list:

• How did all of the Southeastern US get taken over by people who cannot travel by car? The US is REALLY BIG, and not easy to get around in. Even if they ran NON-STOP, as fast as a marathon runner (3 hours per 26 miles), it'd take at least 24 hours to cross Georgia. Zero chance that goes beyond one state.
• Why are zombies out in the middle of a freeway, wandering around, walking through stopped cars?
• Why are zombies out in the middle of a forest, wandering around, threatening people?
• Why are a bunch of zombies sitting around a school where no living thing has been there for months?
• It's impossible to get into a tank using just a pistol, let alone your hands. How would a brain-dead zombie do it?
• Did I mention how big the wilderness is? You could camp out anywhere and likely have zero chance of running into someone else for months - in today's world! Let alone a world where everyone is running for their lives.
• If ANY significant portion of the population died (let's say 25%), we would have so much food, fuel and spare goods, we would not even know what to do with ourselves.

I could go on. But the net is that shows like this lack verisimilitude. They lack the internal structure that is consistent enough to explain how that ball is defying the laws of physics, and then instead of enjoying the character drama, you just sit there being slightly put off the entire show. I want to like SciFi shows like this - I really do. But pick a body and go with it - the uncanny valley is no place to write your show.

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Apple has been on such a roll with me product-wise, it's difficult to remember there was a time I did not merely follow every new release with a purchase. That roll, however, ended today.

I run on a Mac Book Pro at work, and, while it's not my favorite laptop or OS of all time, it's doing a fairly decent job at getting the codez out. Whenever Apple has some new release, and, occasional ridiculous new features aside, I install in and my computing experience is better. I was looking forward to iCloud, as a universal solution to basic cloud requirements (backup, sync) and installed it today.

To start, it turns out it does not provide Time Machine backup. Strike one. How, Apple, did you let this release go out the door without supporting this killer technology you have for backing and versioning things?

Second, it also has an steep cost curve. Strike two. I can get free Skydrive from MS (25GB). I can use DropBox for 50 GB for $120 (vs. iCloud 50 GB for $100) - so good, deal, right? No.. iCloud only stores my most recent 1000 photos, and (oddly) does not store ANYTHING from apps that haven't been updated to support iCloud. What? Further, with Live Mesh I can get unlimited space syncing to all my machines - a feature I love.

Normally this is where I point out that specific features are actually pretty irrelevant and the fact that Apple has a great end-to-end solution trumps all, and they're going to win. And, for all I know, they probably will win because this will be the default solution for the average user.

However, and finally, iCloud does not let me sync with Google Contacts. WHAT? 100% fail. I use Gmail on the Web, not having sync to my contacts means that I essentially am address-book-less. Yeah, that ain't happening.

And so, the elephants are dancing and we have to get out of the way. Soon enough, Google (or someone else) will create a syncing solution, and we'll get what we want, but this was a real annoyance. If you're forcing me to choose between using your service cause it's well integrated and has some nice features, and getting stuff done, it's not much of a contest. Sorry, Apple, you lose this round.

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MG Siegler talked about Siri yesterday and, summary, he says that everyone and their brother is going to jump around saying how they had speech first and their speech is just as good, but it is not and the proof is that nobody is using theirs, and everyone is using Siri.

I completely agree with him.

It's exactly what I wrote about last week - the difference between technology and the implementation that actually touches the consumer makes all the difference in the world. For example, F1 cars are THE MOST technologically advanced motor cars in the world, but if you handed it to the average citizen, they would not even be able to turn the thing on. You have to strip down the technology and put it in a package that someone can actually use before it means something.

As if to draw out in stark contrast, my brother-in-law's computer broke down this weekend - he got infected by a virus, and asked me to de-gunk it. In fact, it was too hard to de-gunk, I ended up wiping and restoring from the partition. I worked at MS for 6+ years, and really like the company, but doing such a simple task was INSANELY hard, I refuse to believe a single PM ever went through that process. I had to:

• boot up
• hold down a function key which was on-screen for literally 1 second
• identify the correct partition and restore plan (full restore, wipe out all contents, etc)
• do the full restore
• reboot
• connect to the wifi and go through 15 registration steps
• go through at least 6 different visits and reboots to Windows Update
• go through and remove at least 10 different pre-installed pieces of software and/or trial-ware

And by the end, I was left with a function netbook that took at least 1 second to respond when I touched the track pad (they should respond in under 0.2 seconds). This was a totally clean out of the box PC, and it was still miserable to use.

This is what MS will suffer with for a long time. Because they allow other people to stand in between their products and the final user experience, the user experience will always suffer. I love my Windows Phone, but you can just feel that the hardware is not optimal. Maybe they'll get there some day - The Windows Phone Hardware Requirements are a decent start - but not until they have hard core USER EXPERIENCE requirements. You don't pass, you don't get to ship Windows. 

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As I said on Twitter, I'm really moved by Steve Jobs passing. Difficult to think of the death of another person who moved me more though I never met him. Looks like the rest of the world is just as moved - his death accomplished the very rare TwitScoop sweep:

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Obligatory comment: Apple is still crushing it and will have phenomenal earnings and profits for years, if not decades. That out of the way...

Apple failed today. For the first time in about 10 years, they held a press event where the butt hurt was almost palpable before the last white on black slide was complete. The biggest problem is this product announcement fell victim to the exact same problem that everyone else in the industry has suffered with for years, and I hope Apple is able to correct course immediately. That problem is the obsession with numbers.

Quick, excluding all iOS 5 features already announced, what's one new feature that Apple announced today? Find my friends? Siri? You can count them on one hand, and still have room for a wicked pinky ring. But then why did the conference go on for as long as it did? Apple spent an enormous amount of time covering chipsets, download speeds, talk times and lots of other nitty gritty. Boooooooorring.

There's a rule in publishing that says for every equation you have in you book, cut your total sales by 10%. Apple used to understand the corollary about new product announcements... Numbers = death. There's nothing sexy, inspirational or engrossing about numbers and specs. They do not connect to users, or encourage people to create new experiences. And, worst of all, there's nothing unique about them to your platform, where people now get to compare in what they think is an objective way column a and column b. Congrats, even if you took the lead, you're now in a race you don't want to be in.

Apple got to where they are by being completely the opposite of numbers - inspiration, style, image. The numbers were always good (sometimes great), but they only served to support the larger vision that they were selling - if you bought Apple products, you were this kind of person. Now it is, if you buy an iPhone 4S, you have got something that has an A5 chip in it. That is not how they will win.

It's snarky, but this image sums it up nicely:

reddit.com/NextRound.net

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Let it never be said I cannot admit when I'm wrong. I saw the following comic:

And thought - "what a nice way to sum up a non-obvious climate issue." However, according to the NOAA, the comic (and I) were wrong.

They found no evidence — no human “fingerprints” — to implicate our involvement in the snowstorms. If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find a gradual increase in heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region as temperatures rose during the past century. But historical analysis revealed no such increase in snowfall. Nor did the CSI team find any indication of an upward trend in winter precipitation along the eastern seaboard.

Sadly - this will no doubt cause all climate change deniers to go nuts, but science is science. It's NEVER 100%, and anyone who points at any single data point as proof is lying to you.

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New Yorkers Saw DC Quake Tweets Before The Ground Shook

How prescient that XKCD posted about this very thing long before it actually happened:

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The news media and every pundit in the world basically said Apple would be just fine, thank you very much. DaringFireball / John Gruber summed up a lot of the sentiment with the following:

Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

So Apple will be exactly the same no matter what because Steve Jobs carved in stone and left it for all the world to consume? 

Of course not. Either Steve Jobs is the fantastic leader, innovative, and will continue to change the world, or he's a worthless hanger-on, and provides no value. The entire world seems to be saying the latter. Well, actually, that's not strictly true. They all SAY the former, but by implying Apple's going to be just fine, and crank along like nothing will at all change, they're IMPLYING the latter.

I think that Steve Jobs was and is critical to Apple's success and Apple WILL be different (and almost certainly) worse if he's not arround. That's just the law of talented people. There are a finite amount of them in the world, it is rare to EVER find one working at your company. When you lose one, you are likely to not find another one.

But to steal from an excellent post from Tim Bray:

I’m irritated at the prattling pundits prognosticating Apple’s future, most of them saying “Everything’s just fine, Tim Cook he da man.” Jeepers, the essential point about business is that you never know how the story’s going to end.

EXACTLY. No one in the world could have predicted the direction Apple was going to take and succeed in starting in 1997 when Jobs returned. I doubt anyone can accurately predict where they will be even three years out, even inside the company. Everyone has plans, and nice connect the dot lines from here to there, but guessing what's actually going to happen is just a total crap shoot. One thing I will promise - Apple WILL change, it already has.

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Many many many Democrats were up in arms that Obama totally mishandled the debt ceiling negotiations - at best, it seems like it was a big wash, and, at worst, he got taken to school. But what does not make any sense to me is that while the Republican won the battle (or at worst tied), the seemingly definitely lost the war. Here seems to be the only options:

• Republicans go into the super committee and agree to taxes/rewriting tax code. Result? "Balanced" budget, Obama/Democrats win for looking responsible, Republicans all get primaried by Tea Party people who demanded no tax increases.
• Republicans go into the super committee and agree to nothing but cuts. Triggers kick in, huge cuts in Defense and Medicaid/Medicare. Result? Obama/Democrats win by paint Republicans as anti-older Americans/poor, plus anti-defense. Republicans get to keep their primary wins, but get throttled in the general.

Far be it from me to underestimate the ability of Republicans to effectively communicate their messages, but if they lost NY 26 on the strength of a mere proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan, I have no idea how they don't get killed here.

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I would have loved to buy a TouchPad had they not sold out so fast. For $99, why not!

Check out this comment on TechCrunch:

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New post today on Seattle 2.0:

You will get a ton of commentary when you announce to your friends and family that you will be launching your startup and most of it is totally worthless so feel free to ignore it. However, the ones who have done it before, and who know what it is really like, will pass on at least one key bit of wisdom similar to “it was nice knowing you, see you in three to seven years.” Much like the gaseous form of a substance, your beer gut, or the US populous in the 19th century, your startup will strictly follow Parkinson’s Law and “expand to fill any (and all) available space.” And, even when you try to step away to vacation, eat, or sleep, you will find that while you may be physically elsewhere, your mind and soul are still fully under the grasp of your creation. In fact, I would say the closest you can get to starting a company is having a baby. »

Definitely one of those posts where each of these points probably should have been an article in itself.

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Please feel free to save this for future taunting.

Apple is crushing it. Just absolutely crushing it. Look at this graph:

Crazy!

Forbes is getting into the act, and points out six areas that are BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollars that Apple can very easily move into. 

And the always excellent RakeshLobster points out that the iPad is ALREADY the size of 2/3rds of ALL of Google's business.

As someone who held AAPL at $13 (sadly sold at $30), I've been a long time fan. And they are firing on all cylinders without question. But, seriously, something is insane.

1) AAPL is (as of today) 87% ($357B) of XOM's market cap ($410B). I know, I know, one is a growth company and one is not, and the P/E barely indicates any insanity (18 vs 11). But, one has rights to 72 Billion barrels (worth ~$7.2T, unrefined)  of a product that has been in heavy use for 140 years, and the other has 21% of its revenue made up of a product it released 18 months ago.

2) Please take a second to look at this graph:

3) I remember the 2000 bubble - one of my favorite stats was at one point Priceline was worth more than United, Northwest and Continental, COMBINED (this, too, is a funny comparison, since another of my favorite stats is the net profit of the airline industry since 1970? Negative $10B). Apple, right now, is worth more than every other company in the world (except XOM). A company where the majority of their product lines and revenue literally did not exist 10 years ago is worth more than all of them. Why? The standard answer is that "it's about future earnings, not the past". And, to this I completely agree. But people talk about the opportunities in China or NFC or getting 100% of the smartphone market not only like Apple is the only player, but like Apple will NEVER lose market share. That's crazy talk. 

Look, I'm not saying there are not billions of dollars on the table, but something feels hinky here. Either XOM is undervalued enormously (and all of these other "real" businesses), or AAPL is overvalued. To have a business that can be built in months means that someone else can do the same.

For a counter to my counter-claim, I would recommend the absolutely excellent Seeking Alpha.

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New post today up on Seattle 2.0:

Hark has been an amazing ride so far, and the best is still yet to come. It is more often than not extremely taxing (mentally, physically, emotionally, financially) but I strongly believe that people who are wired this way simply must do it - birds gotta fly, bees gotta sting, honey's got to be beared, entrepreneurs gotta entrepreneur. To encourage other to join into my shared hysteria, I have also recently publicly committed to helping more startups out - especially in Seattle. And, as the recent startup weekends and broad financial activity show, there's lots to be excited about up here. However, time and again, I run into the same critical flaw that dooms vision after vision from becoming real. So what is this fatal flaw that is infecting the community? Simple - caring about what you release.  »

There's a difference between a commitment to quality and making that the ONLY thing you care about. There are more important things in this world for Web sites.

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Osama's death nearly accomplished the sweep - but saw this one exception...

Weird.

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New post on Seattle 2.0 today:

Being in a startup is not just a rollercoaster; rollercoasters have inspectors and safety bars and rails that you travel on. Being in a startup is more like being duct taped to the top of a blind wildebeest crossing your fingers that it is going to end up where you need to be. »

Actually, this is not entirely correct. Being in a startup often is not that stressful. Especially if you're good, you have very little downside risk - you'll always have a chance to go somewhere else. Being an executive in a startup is where the majority of the insanity happens. With no net, and real people's lives depending on you, the stakes are much much higher. 

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My buddy is doing a great job taking notes and sorting out the facts in regards to the nuclear plant emergency at Fukushima (I'll also link to a great forum thread with actual scientists posting about Fukushima and Nuclear Plants on Ars Technica - hoping to steal a bit of Google traffic away from idiots for them).

If I hear one more "environmentalist" talk about shutting down nuclear power, I'm going to go apopletic. Here are the facts:

• We use energy. A LOT of energy.This number is going up, not down.
• ALL power sources have upsides and downsides. ALL OF THEM.
• Nuclear power costs less to create, generate and decommission than ANY OTHER POWER SOURCE (other than hydro).
• Coal spews more nasty shit into the air (!!) than a nuclear plant PRODUCES (in contained vessels) during its lifetime - including radioactivity.
• "Moving everything to solar/wind/hydro" is a nice pipe dream but 20 years off before such a move would not shut down our economy due to the 4x cost per watt.
• Even if you evened the price per kWh tomorrow, you still have 20 years to build the new plants all over the world (let alone, new grid and battery tech to support night time generation).

In short, shut up.

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Inspirational stuff. When I saw people linking this, I thought I was going to be unimpressed, but even my cold black heart was warmed to this one.

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I just went through security in San Jose and caught this awesome sign.

1) You are expected to have a laptop. There is absolutely no assumption that you could not not have a laptop.

2) Based on the ordering of the notices on the sign, removing your laptop is the most important thing you have to be worried about.

Ah, the valley.

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