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Tai

Tai

I'm a product person by trade. Doing VP-ish stuff around Toronto.

What it boils down to is the fact that one technology is designed for the users (Apple) and the other is designed for the merchants (CurrentC). Normally I’d say that the product with the most user appeal will win but the power and size behind the CurrentC group is too big to ignore. People aren’t reliant on mobile payments at this point so stopping Apple Pay out of the gate is a strong move as almost nobody will miss it.

CurrentC requires an app, password and QR Code to be scanned.  It works for pre-paid, cash accounts.  This is a solution to a business problem (lower transaction fees, better customer tracking) that is being touted as addressing a customer need.  People like using their credit cards.  The US economy (and Canada to a lesser extent) are built on easy access to credit.  They’ll be shocked to find out that people don’t have positive balances in their bank accounts.

I’m not even sure if the CurrentC group of retailers (really big retailers with over 110,000 storefronts in North America) are even serious about deploying it.  It strikes me as a competitive wedge to negotiate lower transaction fees with Credit Card companies. They are probably also using it to extract better terms (customer info) from Apple and Google with their competing wallet technologies.

Techcrunch reviews the Kobo H2O:

 “Kobo’s offering is the peak in terms of e-reader hardware right now – Amazon’s device is slightly smaller and lighter, but you get a far superior screen from the Aura H2O, as well as the built-in water resistance and superior reading light. The only thing you don’t get access to is your Amazon content library – which can be a big turn-off if you’ve already invested heavily in the Kindle ecosystem.

…

Ecosystem lock-in aside, Rakuten-owned Kobo has executed perfectly on e-reader hardware with the Aura H2O – so much so that even if you are invested in Amazon’s bookstore, if you’re a true lover of reading, it could be worth the switch.”

Great work from my team at Kobo.  I’m so proud of the team who pulled this off.

MG Seigler writes:

Here’s the thing: while some try to paint comments as a form of democracy, that’s bullshit. 99.9% of comments are bile. I’ve heard the counter arguments about how you need to curate and manage your comments — okay, I’m doing that by not allowing any.

I’m Starting to feel more comfortable leaving them off.

In “The Dumbest Idea in the World: Maximizing Shareholder Value,” Steve Denning writes about Roger Martin’s new book “Fixing the Game“:

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value,” says Martin. “The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”

Emphasis added by me. Roger Martin is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Looks like I picked the right profession to be in. Fuck yeah.

Here’s the thing. Apple’s been here before. Jobs missed most of 2009, and when he returned, it was a while before he got back to full time. The product cycle continued. Existing products were improved. New products were released. Future products progressed in development. Was it the same without him? No, of course not. Did the company function just fine? Yes.

from John Gruber regarding Steve Job’s recently announced leave of absence

Best wishes to a true visionary.

I am hopeful that he makes a full recovery. Apple is in the strongest position on so many fronts (music, mobile, high-margin PCs). There is no better time to leave, but I wouldn’t want that. He has a few more years in him I think. Steve Jobs has really pushed my industry, User Experience, I am thankful that he has such great taste.

Should the worse happen, Apple will be fine for the next 2-years. The product development cycle is about 18-months; after that, we’ll see the true test of Apple as a company, culture, and icon.

 

My sister got a Samsung Focus for her birthday. She’s 18, uses a Mac and lives on Facebook. She loves it. I don’t think Microsoft is targeting the hardcore geeks and power users with Windows Phone 7. I think they’re targeting the Blackberry users and first time smartphone customers who want a constant connection.

from Justin William’s review of the Samsung Focus and Windows Phone 7.

That’s how I felt as well. In particular having purchased a Samsung Focus for the UX team at Kobo and using it, it’s definitely not marketed at Android users or iPhone users. It’s for the people who are looking to move from a “Feature Phone” to a “Smartphone”. As Horace Deidu says in his asymco blog: “What history shows is that consumers have been happy to trade up to technology that offers more option value.

You’re missing the Big Picture. Fact is, there’s not a corporation on Earth that wouldn’t be improved by putting Steve Jobs in charge.

In response to Ray Sun’s “Why Facebook Badly Needs Steve Jobs“.

Total un-abashed Apple fan-boyism here: while Ray Sun makes some good points in his blog post, I think “@Mister Snitch!” nails here—any company, whether they build phones, make movies, make software would benefit with a CEO like Steve Jobs.

…what I notice isn’t just the appalling video frame rate (“seconds per frame, not frames per second”, as Tofel says), but also how drastically Flash content affects scrolling and touch events in the browser itself. Even before any Flash content is loaded, these web pages scroll with jaggy animation, and touch events don’t register immediately. Unresponsive scrolling and taps are unacceptable.

John Gruber’s observation on Kevin Tofel’s Nexus One-Flash demonstration.

I noticed this straight away when I first installed Flash; that, and crappy banner ads.

Flash gaming is great and all, but who wants to see blinking animated ads on the websites?

I really don’t see the point of having it. Choice is good, but it really seemed to bog things down for me.  Uninstalled.

 

There’s a reason why most page layout programs considered “Hyphenation and Justification” to be two aspects of the same feature. I strongly agree that you should never use justification without good hyphenation — let alone without any hyphenation at all.

From John Gruber regarding Safari’s Use of Justified Text in Reader

This, my friends, is why the Kobo eReader doesn’t support justification. Without a proper implementation of hyphenation, the text becomes less readable.

The phone operating system does away with pretty much every scrap of previous mobile efforts from Microsoft, from the look and feel down to the underlying code — everything is brand new. 7 Series has rebuilt Windows Mobile from the ground up, featuring a completely altered home screen and user interface experience, robust Xbox LIVE and Zune integration, and vastly new and improved social networking tools.
…
Besides just flipping the script on the brand, the company seems to be taking a much more vertical approach with hardware and user experience, dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices (a specificCPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration), and doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz. That’s right — there will be a single Windows Phone identity regardless of carrier or device brand

From “Engadget’s coverage of Windows Phone 7 Series Launch“ regarding the need for tightly controlled UX.”

Hmm, maybe we shouldn’t count out Microsoft just yet. Bing has been great, it’s not better enough for me to switch from Google, but there are some really innovative things there. Windows Phone 7 series looks very much like the Zune; very promising.

I’m glad that Microsoft realizes that the UX is the most important factor in developing a winning product—they are about the only company (next to Apple) that has the clout to dictate a rigid stance on hardware and UX (for better or for worse) to its carriers and partners.

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A blog by Tai Toh

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