When a grain of salt won't do it.
I love industry websites like fiercewireless.com and theregister.co.uk. They keep us up to date with the goings on across wide swaths of the telecom and technology industries. However, I am rarely impressed with the accompanying analysis of many tech bloggers/writers. It seems that more and more the tech media lacks the broad technical expertise required to see much past press releases and industry hype. Often, some products are so over hyped that they have credibility bestowed upon them that they have not earned (i.e.: WiMax). In other instances, truly ground breaking and industry shifting products get labeled as over hyped, as is the case with the iPhone.
I love industry websites like fiercewireless.com and theregister.co.uk. They keep us up to date with the goings on across wide swaths of the telecom and technology industries. However, I am rarely impressed with the accompanying analysis of many tech bloggers/writers. It seems that more and more the tech media lacks the broad technical expertise required to see much past press releases and industry hype. Often, some products are so over hyped that they have credibility bestowed upon them that they have not earned (i.e.: WiMax). In other instances, truly ground breaking and industry shifting products get labeled as over hyped, as is the case with the iPhone.
The typical surface analysis does not take into consideration all the moving parts outside the obvious. Product features dominate the story. Each week a new column: Like a humming birds frenetic bounce, many bloggers/analyst go from press release and story to press release and story in a constant search for fresh content. It is a classic dilemma and I have come to the conclusion that many bloggers are overloaded and simply can't maintain breadth, volume and the depth of insight all at the same time.
To be fair, it is not always easy to see the deeper significance and impact products may have. Take the iPhone for instance. To understand the iPhones true potential you would have to be more than just tangentially versed in multiple disciplines across several industries;
1. Wireless Carriers Practices and Politics
2. Hardware, Processors and Manufacturing
3. Standards Bodies and Intellectual Property (Patents)
4. The history and evolution of Mobile Computing
5. Application and User Interface Design
6. Web 2.0 Strategies, Communities and Development
7. Open vs Closed Source Development and Politics
In the case of the iPhone, the problem is your average cell phone industry analyst has never needed to know nor look at half of these issues before, simply because it was never necessary. No phone has every truly had a powerful processor, or 3D graphics, let alone a full and modern Operating System like Unix and a fully mature development environment in the form of the iPhone SDK. All together they form a proverbial iPhone "iceberg": It is what rests below the surface that gives it its true significance. The iPhone has injected an order of magnitude in complexity to the cellular industry ecosystem. Many industry savvy insiders often miss the profound nature of the iPhone's seeming unrelated computing focused architecture.
We the readers are left in the middle. On one side, we have industry "subject matter experts" saying why the iPhone is not competitive compared to, say, Nokia. Yet on the other side, you have a programmer/developer or other Apple "fanboy" saying how superior the iPhone is in every respect. Lastly, you have the user experience of the device itself, which to Apple's credit seems deceptively simple.
In a world of competing views, amid great complexity no single view will give you the insight you seek in order to determine the truth. This is the reader's dilemma, not just for the iPhone, but for many emerging technologies that cross disciplines and industry verticals. In a world where convergence is finally happening, who do we listen to?
To be fair, it is not always easy to see the deeper significance and impact products may have. Take the iPhone for instance. To understand the iPhones true potential you would have to be more than just tangentially versed in multiple disciplines across several industries;
1. Wireless Carriers Practices and Politics
2. Hardware, Processors and Manufacturing
3. Standards Bodies and Intellectual Property (Patents)
4. The history and evolution of Mobile Computing
5. Application and User Interface Design
6. Web 2.0 Strategies, Communities and Development
7. Open vs Closed Source Development and Politics
In the case of the iPhone, the problem is your average cell phone industry analyst has never needed to know nor look at half of these issues before, simply because it was never necessary. No phone has every truly had a powerful processor, or 3D graphics, let alone a full and modern Operating System like Unix and a fully mature development environment in the form of the iPhone SDK. All together they form a proverbial iPhone "iceberg": It is what rests below the surface that gives it its true significance. The iPhone has injected an order of magnitude in complexity to the cellular industry ecosystem. Many industry savvy insiders often miss the profound nature of the iPhone's seeming unrelated computing focused architecture.
We the readers are left in the middle. On one side, we have industry "subject matter experts" saying why the iPhone is not competitive compared to, say, Nokia. Yet on the other side, you have a programmer/developer or other Apple "fanboy" saying how superior the iPhone is in every respect. Lastly, you have the user experience of the device itself, which to Apple's credit seems deceptively simple.
In a world of competing views, amid great complexity no single view will give you the insight you seek in order to determine the truth. This is the reader's dilemma, not just for the iPhone, but for many emerging technologies that cross disciplines and industry verticals. In a world where convergence is finally happening, who do we listen to?
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