A House Without Windows

I recently donated my last two Windows PCs to Goodwill. They were getting a bit long in the tooth, but both were very capable machines. I got rid of them for three reasons.

First, I use a Mac Mini as my main computer, making the old Windows desktop an unused fixture in the basement, just taking up space.

Second, I use my iPad as my mobile device, for example, as I write this blog sitting in the Chicago airport. It does 90 percent of what the laptop did, but the laptop added weight, time-wasting boot ups and downs and terrible battery life.

Finally, I simply got tired of the maintenance on the Windows PCs. I bought back an hour or more every month eliminating the patching and updating. The Mac Mini occasionally asks if I want to update something and the iPad's Update All feature is equally a few seconds work.

I had also noted that my collection of "computers" had grown in the last couple years and it was time to thin the herd.

Of course my cell phone is another primary device. I've just upgraded from the original Droid to the Droid Razr. Not crazy about the battery life of the Razr, but it's wicked fast, light as a feather and bright as a star.

Then there is a Google Chromebook and an Archos 101 Android tablet, which are useful in their niches. Almost forget the iPod Touch, which is now exclusively a music player attached to a pair of Griffin Evolve wireless speakers.

Of course my work laptop is Windows.

At least for now.

Love and Hate

As we live though this exciting, and turbulent, time in technology, I've started to notice the building tide of emotions towards companies and their products. The new wave elicits more "love" comments than "like", while we speak about the older ones, many previously loved, more likely being "hated" than "disliked". The business value of being loved versus hated is much greater than being liked versus disliked. This wider gap breaks down the barriers to change more quickly, leaving less time to react to market changes, perhaps fatally.

There is no better example of this than Apple. Talk about the iPad and you'll hear the word "love", loud and often. You will see smiles on the faces of people using them.  Watch someone begin using Siri on their new iPhone 4S.  Listen to them say "thank you" to their phone and the very personal connection they develop with it.  Love has powered them to the top of U.S. companies. Not the tablet or the phone. Love.

On the other side you find Research in Motion (RIM) and their previously loved Blackberry phones. A few years following the start of serious competition, that "love" has increasingly turned to "hate". I haven't talked to a single person that has replaced their old Blackberry with a new one, except when their company provided them with no other choice. Of course that just helps build the "hate".  RIM is not tumbling because of products missteps or product delays. The reason is simple. Hate.

Telephone, wireless and cable companies are on many people's hate list, mostly for are arrogant customer service practices and perceived price gauging. Given a viable alternative they will abandon you in a heartbeat. That might take them a quick phone call or requiring them waiting for a two-year contract to expire.  But a couple years is a very short time to move someone off their emotional cliff.

Perhaps the most paradoxical example are Windows PCs in corporations. IT staffs love Microsoft products. It's what they know well. But many users hate their desktops and laptops. They're slow, restrictive and unreliable. How long can that last? With the advent of tablets, smartphones and buying services, probably less time than you think.

The bottom line is to take stock of people's emotions regarding your product or service.

If they hate you, you're in big trouble.

No Killer App

It’s the easy question that has no easy answer that is quite often the most fascinating to ponder.  As the owner to two iPads, it was natural for me to get the “why should I buy an iPad?” question.  I would describe the iPad in glowing detail.  Lightweight, instant-on, all-day battery, touch interface and really cool smart cover.  Lots of apps in the app store, many of them free.  But the answers never really seem to satisfy, so I reflected on why that might be the case.  

Really ground-breaking technology always seems to deliver on something new, something so compelling that almost all people see it as a break-through and they want it badly.  Mainframes had back-office accounting apps.  PCs had VisiCalc, the first PC-based spreadsheet program.  Smart-phones have email and texting.  These “killer apps” drove the technology into an increasing number of people’s hands.  And new eco-systems grew up around these new platforms, propelling the technology world to new heights.

So the real iPad question I was being asked is: “What’s the killer app?”.  The answer: “There isn’t one.”

If not, then why all excitement?  Why do iPads fly off the shelves?  In my opinion, it’s the new “killer experience”.  All those things I was describing had to do with how it felt to use an iPad and much different and exciting is was to use it, not at all what I did with it.  It’s similar to my first HD TV.  It didn’t enable me to watch more TV, cable TV did that.  But I watch HD content almost exclusively because of the awesome experience.  I imagine 3D TV will be the same in 5-10 years.    

I suggest approaching iPads not as a new way of doing old things, or looking for the application that everyone is clamoring to get.  Look for opportunities to completely blow-up or dramatically revise what you’re doing today.  People can now carry a “computer” everywhere, all-day and interact immediately.  We’re not used to thinking that way.  Changing your mindset is the place to start.

I've Gone Mac

A couple months ago I bought a Mac Mini out of total frustration of the time it took to maintain, boot up, debug and protect my Windows machines. I thought it would be a steep learning curve and I could write a long blog on that frustrating process and some useful tips and tricks. Sadly, from the blog's perspective, and happily, from my personal perspective, that's simply not the case.

The Mac Mini is a little box, about the size of fat, small, square frisbee, makes no noise, is cold to the touch, boots in about one minute and has a small selection of ports to attach devices. In my case I have an HDMI-attached monitor and the keyboard and mouse are bluetooth. The mouse is a Magic Mouse, and that alone is worth the price of admission. I spend most of my time in a web browser and the Magic Mouse makes scrolling, zoom and previous page navigation so much easier.

The defining change in going Mac is the lack of interaction that Windows constantly presents. Applications install with one drag. System updates take one click, and so far have not required a re-boot and do not interfere with normal operation. Installing the printer took zero of anything. It takes a little getting used to. Actually, very little, after I realized that Apple takes a minimalistic approach to asking for anything. Quite the refreshing change.

I've loaded a few applications, my beloved Google Chrome browser, DVD converter and Skype being at the top of the list. Most everything else I use comes with it, such as iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie. Haven't felt the need for any anti-bad-guy stuff, although I'll be researching that in the coming months.

And perhaps best of all, no bloatware. No 30-day trials of anything. Annoying the customer doesn't appear to be in Apple's DNA.

Thank you.

The Root Root Cause

In a previous article titled "The Perfect Problem", I discussed finding ways to improve outage recovery time by looking at all of the operational aspects surrounding the problem. Now it's time to take a deeper look at the problem itself and see if there are clues to other, perhaps more profound, issues. I call this looking for the "root root cause" since most root cause analysis efforts don't look for a deeper meaning or really find the true source. Root causes like "the disk filled up" or "a table needed reorganized" is frequently as far as it goes. Their root root cause might be something like "no one was watching when Fred was on vacation".

I'll use three real examples, one each for people, process and technology, to demonstrate what you should be looking to undercover.

The most common fault of a root cause analysis is stopping too soon, generally before an individual is identified that made the change that resulted in an outage. I understand that people can be very sensitive to being called out, but how can we truly improve until we know where the actual problem started? The goal is not a witch hunt, but to help the person improve. It may take a few brave souls to step up and say "I made the mistake. Here's where I went wrong". The first clue that you're likely having this situation is to look at the verbiage being used. Personally I like "post-mortem", with the clear meaning that we had a death to our service and we're taking this very seriously. If you're using wording like "post-incident review", you may be in trouble. Sounds more like "we have to do this, we really don't want anyone's feelings hurt, and let's just sweep this under the rug".

One of my favorite examples of a process problem was many years ago when my boss made me responsible for the pocket-sized corporate phone directory that had just been horribly misprinted. The root cause was determined to be a mistake made by the printing company. Digging deeper, the root root cause was a process that avoided both work and blame for the prior organization. The directory was a mess, even before the fatal distribution. A new team was formed with a different mission: publish the best directory we can. No more CYA, just the absolute best we can do. By recognizing the real problem and fixing that upfront, the team went on to change the format, the paper used, the binding, and just about everything else. They met with the printer and found a sure-fire way to avoid printing errors. They met with other local companies and brought back fresh ideas. They met over lunch and looked for errors, even going as far as calling Hawaii to find a mistake and have it corrected. They were rewarded with more positive feedback than they ever imagined. All by starting with an approach 180 degrees opposite and finding their own way.

Technology breaks and technology has bugs. But technology can also be put together in ways, particularly over time, that ends up having negative effects much greater than expected. Such was the case of our building's local area network in the 1990's. We had an outage due to a hosed-up network switch that had user PC's attached. But what was puzzling was why did it affect a half-dozen production servers in the computer room. The answer, its root root cause, was a network architecture that resembled a balloon that was getting bigger and bigger. One problem caused the balloon to pop. So the answer was a new design that would grow horizontally and isolate different services and still allow them to communicate. A new design was created that housed servers, PC's, the Internet and the wide-area network in different "towers" connected by routers that prevented many of the issues inherent in the "balloon". Almost by magic, the network was more reliable, faster and able to change quicker with less disruption. And we spent less money by using far cheaper equipment. All this by identifying and solving the real problem.

As you might guess, this can take a lot of work, finding and fixing the root root causes.

But your customers will love it.

It Wasn't Scary

Tablets are all the rage these days.  Seems like a year ago (it was) that the pundits were predicting the market failure of the iPad.  It was just an oversized iPod Touch, wasn't anything more than an interesting toy, and certainly wasn't going to be of interest to corporate types.  How could they be so wrong?  Every other tablet introduced crashed and burned.  They missed the biggest selling feature this time, staring right at them, that wasn't there before.

It wasn't scary.

Take the average person and put them in front of a computer.  Most are scared to death and refuse to touch the keyboard in fear that they might break something.  Put an iPad in their hands and seconds later they're tapping and sliding and laughing.  Most will play for several minutes, ignoring guests and its rightful owner, as they discover this and that cool feature.  I've seen construction workers waiting to take their turn and grandma's sliding pictures with their pinkies.  And smiling all the while.

Why such a difference?  Computers and iPads both have processors, memory, an operating system and icons.  Under the covers, they are basically the same.  But we humans fear complex things and proceed with caution, using our basic survival skills that serve us well, day in and day out.

The typical computer is a big machine and goes through several minutes of whirling and clicking before it's ready to use.  It has a mouse that moves a pointer and two buttons that do different things in different situations.   It has a keyboard with somewhere around one hundred keys, many of which have multiple purposes elicited by holding shift, alt, ctrl, fn or a small four-part flag.  It most likely has a dozen or more lights and a dozen or so ports of different shapes and sizes.  You need to patch, you need A/V, you need anti-this and anti-that.  And most of all, you need to be frightened.

Contrast that with the iPad, which is just shy the size of a piece of 8.5 by 11 inch paper and weighs in at 1.5 pounds, turns on instantly, has four buttons each which you can figure out in less than a second each and the same connector you use on your iPhone and iPods.  You turn, it turns.  You touch, it reacts.  Can't open it up, don't need anti-anything and has a nice "upgrade all" feature.  You bring yours, I'll bring mine.  Let's do coffee and a game.  And not be scared.

That's my belief in what is driving consumers and business people to adopt tablets at a record pace.  You can't employ the typical fear, uncertainty and doubt to slow this down. 

We're not scared anymore.