The iPad and the Media Industry

No, this is not another enthusiastic I-love-the-iPad Review. Neither is it an enthusiastic I-hate-the-iPad Review. It is about the iPad and the Newspaper and Magazine Industry and about tablet computers and the Media Industry generally. Also I will be as visionary as ever to describe an idea of how Newspapers and Magazines will be consumed in the future.

It is and was often said, that with the iPad, Steve Jobs wants to save the Media Industry and that Newspapers and Magazines get a nice stage on the iPad to distribute their content in a modern way. But, I think, the Newspaper and Magazine Industry cannot be saved sustainably, in the form they now have. The Print Industry won't cease completely, of course, but will definitely transform particulary.

There are several reasons for this. First, the classic Print Industry has not yet found a satisfying Business Model outside of Print. Ads sell on their Websites as well (but to much lower prices) and people are attracted by the Websites of the NY Times or The Economist but they failed yet to establish a Pay-For-Content-Model that is working and satisfying for both sides, the Publisher and the Consumer.

Now suddenly, with the iPad, Magazines are creating Apps and want to charge again for the content. But I think one of the main reasons why this current Pay-For-Content-Model on the iPad won't work is, that the publishers are suddenly charging for stuff, that already has been for free. This Model might work for a few month, but as Chris Anderson wrote in his book "Free", in the Internet, free as in beer, is inevitable. There'll be a hard price competition between several Newspapers and Magazines, where at the end, we will be exactly at the point, from where we initially started: free. I don't see why I suddenly should pay for any news whereas only last week I still had it for free via RSS (Many Newspapers are already planning to stop RSS Feeds and want to charge you for reading articles on their Websites as well).

Second, Newspapers and Magazines are mistakenably perceived as Content Creators, which is absolutely wrong. Newspapers and Magazines are, exactly as Record Labels for example, Content Distributors, but not Creators. Content Creators are the Journalists and Authors.

I have an example: When you buy a CD, you buy it because of the Band, not because of the Record Label. Similiarily you buy a book because of the author, not because it was printed by Random House. When we come to Magazines its getting a little mixed up, because you buy The Economoist or Wired, because its The Economist or Wired, but, when you are not sure if you should buy it, you may be convinced to do so when you see that Steven Levy or Chris Anderson wrote the Lead-Article of the Issue (in case of Wired). And finally when you buy a Newspaper, you buy it, because its the NY Times and because the NY Times stands for quality journalism.

This clearly shows how the perception of who the Content Creator is, changes with the medium. For books there is no discussion who the originator is, but when it comes to Newspapers, the perception of who created the content is suddenly the other way round. You may not know if the Journalist who writes Foreign Affairs articles in the Washington Post may not also write for any Gossip Magazine, yet you consider the Washington Post as a quality Newspaper and may consider any Gossip Mag as crap, although perhaps the same people were producing (some of) the content.

I believe the future of how we consume Magazines and Newspapers will be in a very personalised way (like RSS Feeds), but we won't consume it on our Notebooks but on mobile devices as the Kindle or the iPad. I am also not 100% satisfied with one of the existing RSS Reader, so my vision looks like this:

I have an (Personal Newspaper and Magazine-) Application on my iPad with a uniform layout, so that I don't recognise the source of the article in my Application (I don't care whether its from TechCrunch or the Time Magazine, but I don't want that all my articles have different Fonts, different Font-sizes and different layouts). Next thing is, I am able to subscribe for certain topics, subscribe all articles by certain journalists, subscribe the top news or events from my current location and subscribe all articles where certain keywords occur.

That way, I get domestic politics of my local newspaper, international politics of the Daily Telegraph and Economics from the WSJ (subscription by topic). I also get all articles written by Tim O'Reilly, published in any Newspaper, Blog or Magazine (subscription by author). Further, if I happen to be in Zurich or in Tokyo, I get a list of exhibitions and concerts (subscription by location). And finally, I get all articles, published today, from all Blogs, Newspapers and Magazines that are about Artificial Intelligence research and Gödel-numbering and its real life applications.

To get all this stuff, packed into one application with uniform layout and delievered to me on a daily basis, I would pay a monthly fee. Why should I subscribe for a daily newspaper or a monthly magazine when I don't read all the content, although I pay for all of it? I think sooner or later, such a central platform will be developed (maybe even by me), that also introduces a convenient charging model for both - the Consumer and the Publisher .

The Classic Publishing Industry has its greatest enemy in the Internet (the Internet is, by far, the biggest Content-Distributor, as it is actually distributing, the Classic Content-Distributors Content XD). I don't mean that all Newspapers, Record Labels and Magazines will die, but they have to change their business model to stay profitable. The iPad won't be the saviour of the Classic Print Industry, the iPad and other upcoming multi-funtional-tablets are tools that are able to transform the Media Industry. And on the end of that transformation, I believe will be a platform on which you subscribe to have free-content and pay-for-content, delievered to a tablet device in a uniform layout as a personalised Newspaper.

The Unix Inheritance

This Post is about nothing else as the future of Operating Systems. Heavy announcement, I know ;-). But with the rise of the Cloud and the new fashionate term "Software-as-a-Service", we are at the beginning of a fundamental change of technology.

Further I will discuss the big 3 Players in the Operating System World, Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Linux and the dawn of Chrome OS, including the advantages of the Cloud itself and probably a small view on what applications are going to be important with the rise of the Cloud (That word already lost all its sense to me...)

The Big 3 starting with Microsoft, who is in an interesting Position. They are the clear market leader in the Operating System market and will probably stay the leader for quite a while, but they will inevitably lose some of their market share to competitors. Why that? Because the Windows System IS so popular, so wide spread and that for such a long time. The same, by the way, is true for Windows Mobile as well. Windows is carrying such a huge backpack with legacy code and backwards compatibility. The problem for them is, they cannot just start something new. They cannot tear down everything and make a brand new start. Just think if Microsoft announces that their new Operating System Windows 8 will not be backwards compatible with any of the older Versions (not Win 7, not Win Vista and not Win XP). What will happen? Their stock price will drop quite close to 0 overnight if they make such an official announcement. They are bound to their customers, not so much to private users, but to all the Companies that have Windows running (and thats quite a few).

The development of the Windows Azure Wave will probably bring some fresh wind into Windows (gosh, am I poetic...). Windows Azure Wave seems to be a tackle to Googles Chrome OS, as Microsoft announced that it will be more or less their Cloud OS for which applications can be programmable using the .NET platform. What Microsoft, in my humble opinion, has to do with Azure is, integrating into Windows as soon as possible and as good and smooth as possible. I don't think that it will be a good way to place Azure Wave as an own product next to Windows. The goal must be to merge them into one System within the next, lets say 3, full Windows Releases.

Due to the fact that more and more applications will take their way to the cloud (with the obvious advantages of being everywhere available and the obvious disadvantage of having your secret data lying on some Serverfarm somewhere nowhere), Windows will inevitably loose market share, unless they are doing the right things with the Azure Wave. They will suffer from the biggest losses on the private consumer side. More and more people will start buying Netbooks with Chrome OS or a Linux Distro. Companies will stay on Windows, what may lead Microsoft to meet the IBM destiny.

Apple, I think, won't suffer too much from Cloud Operating Systems too much. Macs and Macbooks are the premium-product class and I don't think Apple will do much to participate in lower cost classes with their Desktop - PCs and their Notebooks. Apple also has the advantage that they are more an end-user product, There are hardly any Companies that are using Mac OS as their main Operating System. But Apple also has to be careful with radical changes, as their products are, thanks to iPod and iPhone, quite widespread now and now also technically unsavier Users are now using Apples products.

Linux, my dear child, Linux, how are we all hoping for your rise and how are we all knowing that your rise, at least on desktop PCs and Notebooks, will never take really place. Their are many reasons for that and I will discuss some of them. I don't know where to start, so all reasons are in no particular order. First some words pro Linux: I like Linux, I have openSUSE running on one partition of my Notebook, and yes I admit, I really, really like it. It's great for Techies like me, you can do almost everything on a Linux System and I simply like using the mighty, mighty Shell.

Alright now to the dark side of the moon. There are countless different distributions that are offering Linux. Why that? There's only ONE company that is offering Windows and there is only ONE company that is offering Mac OS, but there are 124 that are offering Linux. How will a normal User who only wants to surf the Web, write Mails and do some scribble-scrabble in Spreadsheets and Documents know what to choose? That leads me direct to the next 2 points: There is no real Office Package standard in the Distros. OpenOffice more or less is a standard and also should be the ONE AND ONLY standard, but there is still the old stuff from the 2 different desktop engines on every Distro. Why?? Who needs 3 different Word Processors??

And wait, did I say 2 desktop engines? You have KDE and Gnome and you can choose between them. Its fun for people like me, weighing up the now not existent differences and then choosing one (I chose Gnome by the way, because it was simply cooler looking and faster at the time I set up my Linux). Hey, most normal Users don't even know what a damn desktop engine is, so why let them choose? That's useless, they are only confused. Next thing marketing. Why would ever any standard User install a different OS from that, that is running? Hey Mr. Shuttleworth and Mr. Novell CEO, if you really want to spread your Linux Distros, make some deals with those guys that build the PC's as Microsoft is doing. It's a really effective way to force Users to their luck.

The final problem is probably that the slim and fast Linux Kernel is nowadays a huge, ugly and unmaintainable Moloch. There's another problem, too many people who were working on Linux since the 80s are still leading the Development and still working on Linux with the same Tools and the same attitude, but hey, the world changed. Those guys did a fantastic job and Linux wouldn't be Linux without them, but they simply need to let it go. Linux hasn't so many Users, so there is the chance to make a complete new start without causing too many problems.

Now to Chrome OS. I said it before, and I say it again, announcing an OS is NOT innovative but I think Google will make a fantastic job on Chrome OS. Every day I am more convinced that this is going to be the perfect merging between the Web and the Desktop. Do you know why there is yet no G-Drive Online Storage from Google? Although Microsoft has its 25GB Windows Sky Drive and countless other Companies are offering Online Storage (including some really cool ones like Dropbox). G-Drive will be an essential part of and fully integrated into Chrome OS. Local storage no longer required. Everything else would make no sense.

I believe that Google is fundamentally changing the way Computers and the Web is used. Google won't take much market share from Apple, as Chrome OS is probably aimed at Netbooks, but they will steal Microsoft a part of their cake. The cool thing is, that every service Google offers is - of course - a potential Chrome OS Application. You are having your Desktop in the Web then, with a nice integration of all the Twitters and Facebooks we all like to use. No more Browser required (sorry Mozilla, but I still like you and will keep you on Mac OS). I know I sound like a cheap advertiser of Chrome OS (which I am not, otherwise I wouldn't write a Blog that no one is reading), but with Chrome OS the Desktop and the Web will be one and the same things, the borders between them are not recognisable any longer.

So to end this pretty long Post, what cool stuff will we have running in the Cloud? First, when I store my stuff in the Cloud, I want it to be safe, so Crypto Services will be essential (I hope Chrome will have that). The automatically integrated Crypto Service needs obviously be fast and safe. Next, I want to stream my music and my videos direct onto my mobile devices or my other Notebooks and PCs I use. So, there's already a service (currently invitation-only) put.io which seems to be a really hot thing. When you have only Apps on a device that is Online all the time (like the iPhone), there will be many other changes, where (useful) location based (Notebook-)Services will only be the beginning.

Final word, if you wonder why this Post is named, "The Unix Inheritance", I have to answer that I wanted to write about something entirely different first, but kept the Robert Ludlum like title (the title is still true in a broader sense, though) ;-)