Rolandt

James Devitt, Futurity, May 06, 2016

I have said in the past that we see what we are looking for. This is confirmation of that. "Our findings provide evidence that the stereotypes we hold can systematically alter the brain’ s visual representation of a face, distorting what we see to be more in line with our biased expectations." Our expectations play a critical role in perception. That's why there is no such thing as 'theory-neutral data'. We need to be aware of the way our subjective perceptions in turn shape our expectations. "Men, and particularly black men, were initially perceived 'angry,' even when their faces were not objectively angry; and women were initially perceived 'happy,' even when their faces were not objectively happy."

'The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history and to try and catch on to his coattails as he marches past'

Bismarck

One of the lenses historians sometime apply to history is the counterfactual - if something fairly small had happened differently, what would have changed? If this battle had gone the other way or that statesman or general had died in infancy, would the whole period have looked different, or not?

At a shallow level this can look like ‘should-have-could-have’, but actually it reflects some pretty basic questions about how history works - how much was this event driven by ‘vast, impersonal forces’, with humans swept along, 'catching on to the coattails', and how easily could it have looked very different?

A good example is Waterloo - Napoleon Bonaparte really could have won, and it was very close. He wouldn't have needed completely different circumstances, just a few different decisions over the previous few days. There was no inevitability to his defeat. But if he had won, what then? Would he have been able to reach a settlement and place a Bonaparte dynasty on the throne of France for a century, or had Europe changed since his heyday, and would the allies have rallied, raised another army and crushed him a few months later? Probably the latter. This is the answer to a lot of counterfactuals - if the Ottoman Turks hadn't captured Constantinople in 1453, they'd have captured it in 1454. But on the other hand, suppose Lenin had died in a bank robbery in the early 1900s. There would have been chaos and revolution, but Bolshevism would be an obscure sect, filed next to People's Will, and Russia might have gone down a much less bloody path.

The point here is that there are some cases where what looks like the decisive moment really just crystalised the underlying situation: sometimes the forces in operation are so strong that if by chance they had failed on this occasion, they'd have won another day. But there are others where things are balanced enough that different luck on the day could have changed everything. 

'Give me generals who are lucky'

Napoleon Bonaparte

Technology has much of this issue. There are very strong deterministic forces that drive the industry forward - Moore's Law, network effects, economies of scale, migration of value up the stack and so on. But there's also a strong element of chance and luck. Great talent and execution and great ideas are part of the mix, but sometimes you're also in the right place at the right time.

All of this came to my mind when I looked at this slide that Facebook showed at F8.

Since WhatsApp, earlier in the year, disclosed that it has 40bn messages a day, this means that Messenger 'only' has 20bn. Now, consider that with slightly different timing and personalities, it would have been perfectly possible for Google instead of Facebook to have bought WhatsApp. Both, after all, have the freedom of action that founder control brings. In parallel, consider that with different timing and personalities, Twitter could well have bought Instagram. At that point (and assuming continued execution post-acquisition, of course), Facebook's position in mobile social would look quite different, and much less dominant.

Aggregate MAUs across social apps (m)

That is, Facebook's successful purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram was not inevitable - it did not flow out of a great preponderance of industry dynamics. Indeed, the dynamics were against Facebook, since the shift to mobile brought new dynamics to social that removed the winner-takes-all effect that it enjoyed on the desktop (push notifications, the shared address book and photo library, and the home-screen icon model all make it much easier to use more than one network on mobile than on the desktop). Facebook didn't have inevitability on its side. 

There's a similar observation to be made about the Chinese Internet. One can look at the dominance of a few large conglomerate/portals ('BAT') and say 'well, that's because it's an isolated market that blocked the global category killers' (or that language and culture kept them out), but one could also suggest that this is what would have happened elsewhere if AOL and Yahoo hadn't gone to sleep for a decade.  We think of the portal model as a dead-end, but half a billion Chinese Internet users suggest that it could have been otherwise. The Chinese internet is a great way to challenge your thinking on what's inevitable in technology - it's a living counterfactual.

On the other hand, one can also look at RIM and Nokia's failed reaction to the iPhone and suggest that actually, they were doomed a long time before the iPhone launched. The problem was not that a few senior executives looked at the iPhone and didn't get it, but that they had committed to a software and component model five years or more earlier that made it structurally impossible for them to match the iPhone (or its Android cousin) in time. In other words, sometimes the issue is not 'what if they'd taken a different decision that day?' but rather 'what if they'd been a whole different company for years earlier?' Perhaps, like Bonaparte in 1815, Nokia and RIM were doomed no matter what decisions they'd taken in 2007 - it was far too late. 

'Mad, is he? Then I wish he'd bite some of my other generals'

George II of James Wolfe (apocryphal)

The key thing, I think is that we have both those deterministic drivers of change and also luck, skill and brilliance. These can take you to different places. I wrote earlier this year about what you could have said in 2001 to be right about how mobile would develop. You could have got perhaps 90% there with the right determinants and vision, but would you have put a had-been computer company that had just launched a music player at the top of the heap? Steve Jobs supposedly said, returning to Apple, that his plan was to stay alive and grab onto the next big thing - to listen for the footsteps. He tried video, and a few other things, but he got there in the end. But he might not have.

Jane Hart, Learning in the Modern Social Workplace, May 06, 2016

I think this should be sort of obvious (and I've mentioned it in this newsletter in the (distant) past) but it always bears repeating that your employer is  not looking out for your best interests when it makes decisions. Nor should it. "For this reason, every one of us must have a career strategy, and that strategy should be guided by your industry’ s trajectory. You should be fine-tuned to  the intricacies of your profession.  You have no choice. You  have  to self-develop to stay relevant." That's why I'm still learning even as we speak and why you should be too. 

The exuberance of a west-coast spring is on display in Stanley Park – notably at the Greig Rhododendron Garden (south of Lost Lagoon, north of the pitch-and-putt course, steps from the West End).

.

A wonderful perennial experience – and yet so fleeting.

The bike route that connects the seawall from English Bay to Coal Harbour runs by the garden illustrated below, and of course attracts heavy traffic.  Most of it is separated from the pedestrian path – except for one critical piece:

.

This dank and dark little tunnel under Stanley Park Drive crams peds and bikes together, with room for neither, on a blind curve.  It’s been like this for years, even as the conflict has grown – and it’s not the only case where bad design suggests that the Park Board has not really prioritized active transportation in their plans.

Apparently I’m now Windows XP Firefox Blogging Guy. Ah well, everyone’s gotta have a hobby.

End of Life for Firefox on OSX 10.6-8

The Firefox Future Releases Blog announced the end of support for Mac OSX 10.6-10.8 for Firefox. This might be our first look at how Windows XP’s end of life might be handled. I like the use of language:

All three of these versions are no longer supported by Apple. Mozilla strongly encourages our users to upgrade to a version of OS X currently supported by Apple. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use.

You could apply that just as easily and even more acutely to Windows XP.

But, then, why isn’t Mozilla ending support for XP in a similar announcement? Essentially it is because Windows XP is still too popular amongst Firefox users. The Windows XP Firefox population still outnumbers the Mac OSX (all versions) and Linux populations combined.

My best guess is that we’ll be able to place the remaining Windows XP Firefox users on ESR 52 which should keep the last stragglers supported into 2018. That is, if the numbers don’t suddenly decrease enough that we’re able to drop support completely before then, shuffling the users onto ESR 45 instead.

What’s nice is the positive-sounding emails at the end of the thread announcing the gains in testing infrastructure and the near-term removal of code that supported now-unused build configurations. The cost of supporting these platforms is non-0, and gains can be realized immediately after dropping support.

ICU Planning to Drop Support for Windows XP

A key internationalization library in use by Firefox, ICU, is looking to drop Windows XP support in their next version. The long-form discussion is on dev-platform (you might want to skim the unfortunate acrimony over Firefox for Android (Fennec) present in that thread) but it boils down to: do we continue shipping old software to support Windows XP? For how long? Is this the straw that will finally break WinXP support’s back?

:milan made an excellent point on how the Windows XP support decision is likely to be made:

Dropping the XP support is *completely* not an engineering decision.  It isn’t even a community decision.  It is completely, 100% MoCo driven Firefox product management decision, as long as the numbers of users are where they are.

On the plus side, ICU seems to be amenable to keep Windows XP support for a little longer if we need it… but we really ought to have a firm end-of-life date for the platform if we’re to make that argument in a compelling fashion. At present we don’t have (or at least haven’t communicated) such a date. ICU may just march on without us if we don’t decide on one.

For now I will just keep an eye on the numbers. Expect a post when the Windows XP numbers finally dip below the Linux+OSX as that will be a huge psychological barrier broken.

But don’t expect that post for a few months, at least.

:chutten

According to Langara College:

The following is an excerpt adapted from Building a Feedback Machine, our free eBook geared towards product managers who need an effective, scalable method of capturing and leveraging customer feedback. Get the full version for detailed advice on how to build your a process that works for you and your organization.

Customer feedback is a driving force behind every product’s development; we can use it to make decisions about how we build our products, validate ideas, prioritize roadmap initiatives, and we can even leverage it as a source of ideas when searching for new opportunities to innovate.

Relevant, actionable feedback can be worth its weight in gold (figuratively, of course), but only if you have the structure to gather it. Unfortunately, gathering quality feedback from internal teams is a challenge for even the most experienced product managers at organizations of all stages and sizes.
While there’s a huge desire to incorporate more feedback from users and customer-facing teams into product decisions, the majority of product managers don’t have a functional feedback communication process in place. Fortunately, it’s not impossible to develop one — it just takes some strategic know-how and the willingness to implement a few best practices:

1. Improve product roadmap communication

It’s pretty hard to get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going. Establishing where you’re heading in the long-term will help guide your more short-term objectives like quarterly Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and get everyone on the same page. In other words, in order to see the details, everyone must know and understand the larger vision.

What’s most important is that you’re keeping customer teams informed about what your product team is working on and the goals of each initiative. This way, they can share relevant feedback with you that aligns with these goals rather than guessing at what feedback matters or, worse, sharing self-serving feedback.

2. Pick the right feedback communication channels

There are several ways to gather feedback from your team. Master any or all of them:

• Email and chat – collect feedback directly through personal messages.
• Team meetings – sit down monthly or bi-monthly to have face-to-face conversations.
• Feedback reports – collect customer feedback reports from each team
• Individually – collect feedback from individual stakeholders.
• Collaborative spreadsheets – customer-facing teams enter feedback into a spreadsheet.
• Feedback collection platforms – designated software to collect and organize feedback

3. Establish a scalable feedback process

You shouldn’t waste your time implementing a system or process that your team will outgrow in 6 months. Spending a little extra time up front to find a solution that can grow with you is well worth it. It will help prevent the game of telephone that happens when feedback is coming in from all directions and there’s no system in place to filter it.

As a general rule, writing down feedback and keeping it in one place is a much easier to manage it than sharing it verbally, but in some instances you’ll need to continue the dialogue with the colleague or customer who shared it with you.

Be sure whatever process you go with allows you to easily reach the original source of feedback so that you can follow up with more questions, involve them in beta testing (if the source is a customer), or even close the loop with them about any decisions made based on the feedback.

4. Gather the right feedback

You need to ensure that you adopt a process that allows you to capture and store both qualitative feedback and any accompanying quantitative data that’s shared with you without having to do a ton of extra work. Also, you’ll thank yourself later if your system makes it easy for you to organize the feedback you receive in a manner that is easy for you revisit and use to make decisions without having to spend a lot of time searching.

5. Give your feedback context

Without context, a piece of customer feedback is just a soundbite: a string of words and maybe a few emotions that tell part of a story. It can be difficult to make informed decisions without the full story because, as the old adage goes, the devil is in the details. In this case, the details are data.
If you can get support and other customer-facing teams into the habit of bringing you the full story via “quantified qualitative feedback” — customer feedback that’s tied to the metrics you use while making product decisions — you’re already improving your feedback process. Suddenly, “Customers are asking for feature X” turns into “20 of our most unhappy long-term customers who collectively spend a total of $200k a month on our product are asking for feature X.” Now that’s more like it.

6. Not all customers are created equal

Yes, all of your customers are important — but some customer feedback is more important than other customer feedback.

Before making any decisions based on customer requests, you should always determine the weight of the feedback, including how long the feedback-giver has been a customer, their Net Promoter Score, etc. Keeping this at the forefront of your process will save you mega-time and give you better insight into what you should prioritize.

Once you’ve put these critical feedback practices in place, you’ll have a new, shiny feedback machine — long-lasting, self-sufficient, able to grow with you, and helping to improve your product development process for years to come.

Learn more about creating a scalable feedback process by downloading our free eBook “Building a Feedback Machine”.

The cultural panic over kids and screen time has never made sense to me. But one of the great joys of writing for JSTOR Daily is the opportunity to delve into academic research that sheds light on this kind of mystery.

In my latest JSTOR post, I dig into feminist history for analogies to the current anxiety about kids and technology, and discover there’s plenty of precedent. As I write in my post:

When we worry that parents are shirking their duties by relying on an electronic babysitter, we’re really worrying that mothers are putting their own needs alongside, or even ahead of, their kids’ needs.

It’s a worry that rears its head any time someone comes up with a technology that makes mothers’ lives easier. As mothers, we’re supposed to embrace—or at least nobly suffer through—all the challenges that parenting throws at us. We’re supposed to accept having little people at our heels while we’re trying to buy the groceries, make dinner, or go to the bathroom. We’re supposed to accept the exhaustion that comes from working a full day at the office and a second shift at home before falling into bed for an inevitably interrupted sleep. We’re supposed to accept the isolation that comes from raising children in a world that regards a crying child as a crime against restaurant patrons or airplane travellers.

The mother who hands her child a smartphone is taking the easy way out of these challenges. But since so much of parenting consists of situations in which there is no easy way out, I’m deeply grateful when somebody offers me a cheat.

Read the whole story at JSTOR Daily.

Strava is a great, free app used by millions of cyclists around the world to record their bike rides, plan routes, and virtually compete against themselves and against other cyclists. But if you are one of those cyclists who don’t use Strava, there are now two very good reasons to start: the Strava Metro initiative, and the upcoming Global Bike to Work Day, which Strava is planning for May 10. Read on to find out why you should join in !

The post Why and How Cyclists Should Use Strava appeared first on Average Joe Cyclist.

Ricky Yean, Vox, May 06, 2016

This takes me back to many of the points I addressed in Arlington  when I talked about the real advantage elite universities offer their students. "Tangible inequalities  —  that which can be seen and measured, like money or access  —  get the majority of the attention, and deservedly so. But inequalities that live in your mind can keep the deck stacked against you long after you've made it out of the one-room apartment you shared with your dad." It doesn't apply to everyone, and it doesn't apply evenly, but it applies. What's important to understand it that it is addressing  this - and not access to learning content - that will enable  equity.

Graham Brown-Martin, Medium, May 06, 2016

This is a pretty good statement of the issues surrounding learner voice in the development of their own education programs, though I think it ends with a bit of a thud. Before you get to that disappointing finish, though, there are some good points. For example: "no one considers anything a person who thinks in a way that favours both imagination and practicality says because they are not following what society wants them to follow." P.S. it was Francis Bacon who said "knowledge is power", in 1597.

Apple:

It's done. You can download it now.

Everybody else:

We have just released it. Users will start receiving it next week. We will now start lying to you.

Please comment on all of my social accounts b/c my dress will react to your emotions! #MetGala @IBM @MarchesaFashion pic.twitter.com/CXUKcVd8Hm

— Karolina Kurkova (@karolinakurkova) May 2, 2016

IBM Marketing is going to be so pleased with the thousands of social network reactions from people who never buy enterprise IT systems. Hey Siri and Cortana, let's go visit Alexa. OK, Google, you can tag along.

Reply to this post

Security issues highlight more pressing problems. 

• Google is trying hard to fix the endemic security issues that continue to plague Android devices but unfortunately it is making almost no progress.
• Since August 2015, Google has been releasing monthly security updates to address the security flaws but there are two big problems.
  • First. Any security patches that Google makes to Android only apply to its own Nexus devices.
  • These devices make up an insignificant proportion of the Android device population meaning that almost no-one receives the updates.
  • Second. The updates themselves have yet to address all of the known security issues in Android.
  • For example, despite monthly updates the mediaserver (finds and indexes media on the device) remains critically flawed.
  • Google is playing a horrible game of whack-a-mole with this component as every time it fixes one flaw, another pops up.
• I have long believed that Google’s inability to effectively manage Android security and its updates is rooted in its history as a server company.
• When Google wants to update its search algorithms it simply updates the code on the server and the job is done.
• Because devices run their own software, they have to be individually updated and it this is very different to the way Google has operated for many years.
• Consequently, it has taken Google a very long time to come to grips with this problem and I am far from convinced that the issue is close from being resolved.
• To be effective, all Android devices need to receive these updates which brings in two more big problems.
  • First. Most Android devices are not updatable.
  • Android is a commoditised, brutally competitive market meaning that in the mid-range every cent of cost matters.
  • Making a device updateable means that extra resources have to be added to the device which are never reflected in the price.
  • Consequently, the vast majority of Android devices are not updateable to later versions of Android as there is no incentive for the device maker to add this capability.
  • Second. Google has no control over the update process for any of the devices that run its services.
  • It can update Google Mobile Services (GMS) from Google Play but lower level system updates (Android) are controlled by either the maker of the device or the mobile operator.
• Consequently, I think that Google has to take control of Android because in its current state, it is very unsecure with no scope for improvement.
• I continue to believe that this may happen in 2017 as Oracle has provided Google with the perfect excuse to do so (see here).
• This would result in a series of proprietary ecosystems based on an Android kernel of which GMS, Cyanogen and MIUI would be three.
• Google still has another good year ahead of it thanks to the underlying growth of Android users, but the medium term urgently requires for this problem to be fixed.
• I prefer Samsung and Microsoft to Alphabet in the long-term, although the immediate term for Alphabet continues to look good with absolute user numbers still growing very nicely.

Of course they did, your members are your best customers.

If you tell your customers to join a community, those that know and like you best will dominate membership.

If you then compare the spending of community members against non-members you shouldn’t be surprised to discover that members spend more than non-members.

That’s not the ROI of the community, that’s a comparison of your best customers against the rest.

This mistaken formula handily guarantees every community shows a positive ROI, but it’s damaging when exposed.

It’s not whether members do {x} more than non-members that matters. It’s whether that metric’s increased more than non-members since joining the community.

If the average spending of members increased by $50 and non-members by $20 since joining the community, that’s $30 per member which might be attributable to the community.

Multiply this by the number of active members and you might have something.

Not a bullet-proof formula but far more defensible than comparing your best customers with the rest.

Dan Lyons’ book Disrupted tars the whole startup business with the brush of his experience at HubSpot. One key element is to show that the rest of Silicon Valley is also corrupt with a recitation of all the recent sins of tech companies. Whenever you see a list like this, you should be skeptical. Here’s a paragraph … Continue reading Beware the litany of passive accusations →

The post Beware the litany of passive accusations appeared first on without bullshit.

It’s widely believed that 2016 is year of virtual reality, though mainstream adoption of the technology won’t begin for some time.

It’s difficult to ignore the excitement that stems from trying out the technology. Limited availability, however, and high prices remain adoption issues for the burgeoning tech.

An online survey  of 35,000 people ages 10-65 across 16 countries conducted by marketing firm Newzoo, indicates 11 percent of consumers plan to buy a VR headset, with Spain, Italy and the United States showing the highest levels of interest.

When it comes to annual hardware budget among potential VR buyers, Canada topped the list, with over a quarter of potential buyers budgeting over $600 annually. That kind of budget puts those Canadians in the high-end VR market, if respondents choose to spend their money that way, which only seven percent of those surveyed said they would.

The majority of respondents who described themselves as esports enthusiasts said they planned to purchase VR hardware in the next six months. This is a particularly interesting statistic, as the lucrative esports market is relatively untapped in the realm of virtual reality right now.

Here are the mothers and fathers who work like you. Read More

Sony has applied for a patent covering camera contact lens technology, putting itself in the race to produce commercial smart lenses alongside Google and Samsung.

The present disclosure was filed April 7th  but appears to have been in the works since May 2013, when the foreign application data was first submitted. The application goes in to significant detail about the lenses compared to Samsung or Google‘s patents, giving the appearance that the technology is at a fairly advanced stage of development.

As described in the patent, the technology will allow users to take pictures through deliberate blinks, which will be differentiated from regular blinks through the length of time the eye is closed. By way of example, Sony says a blink over 0.5 seconds would activate the camera, as normal blinks are generally between 0.2 and 0.4 seconds.

The pictures can be taken one at a time or in bursts according to settings users can regulate from an external device. Once taken, they are sent to an external storage device via a built-in transmitter. Also in the patent is mention of a display unit that activates when eyes are closed and uses a head-tilt sensor to scroll through pictures.

The camera itself, the patent states, will have image stabilization, autofocus and zooming, as well as aperture and exposure adjustment.

Perhaps one of the more fascinating aspects of the patent is the section where Sony gives a passing reference to animals wearing the lenses. The mention is in a section regarding display elements placed in matrix on a curved surface corresponding to the curved surface of a human eye. It notes: “In the case where another animal wears the contact lens 1, an eye of the animal.”

Are we approaching the days of high-tech animal spies? One can only hope, but from the in-depth nature of Sony’s patent, it appears it may be available to us humans in the near future.

Related reading: Google granted patent for glucose-tracking smart contact lens

If you have trouble understanding Snapchat, Beme is a tough nut to crack. I tried it last year, and it sucked big time. Now the team releases a new app for Android and iOS. The idea is simple. You broadcast what is happening around you. No filter, no fancy fonts, nothing. Just cover the proximity sensor and it starts recording.

Casey Neistat, YouTuber of the Year has this idea, that we should stop posing and instead of looking at a screen to just share what we see. What we really see. And I like that. I like it more than Snapchat.

I know two people who play with Beme: Teymur and me. And we are both not convinced that Beme will fly. But we both like what Casey is doing.

Chinese electric vehicle company Chehejia has raised a combined 780 million RMB (US$120 million) in series A funding at a valuation of 2.98 billion RMB from seven investors, according to company founder Li Xiang.

Founded in July last year, Chehejia is backed by a group of seasoned entrepreneurs. Li Xiang has launched two successful startups, Pcpop.com and US-listed automobile site Autohome.com. He is also a co-founder of NextEV, the electric car maker looking to take on Tesla. Li Xiang and Li Bin, another co-founder of Autohome.com launched NextEV last year to go after the top-tier electric vehicle market.

Unlike NextEV which is currently developing high-end concepts and supercars, Chehejia provides smart transportation solutions for mass market users. The ten-month-old startup is developing two smart car models: an SEV for short-distance urban transportation and a more powerful SUV for long-distance journeys.

According to Li, the two models will cover over 90% of the transportation demands of urban citizens, adding that Chehejia’s vehicles will be less dependent on charging piles.

Li has been seeking funding to support his vision since November last year and the current round will increase the company’s total funding raised to 2.5 billion RMB. He noted then that it will take US$200 million and four years for product development and marketing before the Chehejia vehicles are available for mass production.

LEO Group leads this series with a 350 million RMB in exchange for an 11.74% stake in the Beijing-based startup. Other investors include Source Code Fund, Changzhou Wujin Industry Fund and Future Capital.

The latest injection of capital will be used in R&D and the construction of production bases, according to the company. The firm disclosed that the construction of an aluminum production plant and a battery manufacturing factory located in Changzhou Wujin High-Tech Park has begun.

Marco Arment on the latest update to Overcast:

In the last few Overcast releases, I’ve been optimizing the sync protocol and decreasing the burden of each sync to both sides (my servers and your iPhones). In 2.5.2, we’ll reap some of the benefits with the first version of what I’ve been informally calling “quicksync”.

In short, syncing Overcast between multiple devices — say, an iPhone and an iPad — is now much faster and more accurate, making multi-device usage much more practical and compelling.

"I've been testing this for a few weeks...", the saying goes, but it's true. In my tests during the beta, quicksync made switching between podcast episodes on two devices faster and less annoying than before.

Quicksync worked well in my typical use case: I'm washing dishes and Overcast is playing through the iPad Pro's speakers, which are louder; then, I have to go out and connect my iPhone to my car's audio, resuming Overcast to the same episode. With quicksync, I no longer have to skip ahead to catch up with the iPad's progress. Marco did good work here and I hope the servers hold up well.

→ Source: marco.org

We love Redis. It's a great in-memory database which lets you keep an entire dataset available for blazingly fast access. Or it can be your super-quick cache for your applications to call on. Or it can start aggregating your data for faster analysis later with HyperHyperLogs. Redis is a superbly versatile tool to have in your application stack; it's part of our production stack and we think it should be part of yours. There's never been a better time to give Redis a try on Compose

If you’re already running another database on Compose, spin up a Redis instance, get your data into it and see just how quickly your data can be accessed. It works in tandem with your other current database to give you super fast access to your data - think of it as the high speed glue for your applications. To see how it works, check out this article on Redis and the power of incremency. If you haven't tried Redis yet, easily spin up a MongoDB and Redis deployment to give it a try. And, as an added bonus and for a short time, we’re giving everyone who tries Redis a limited edition Compose Redis shirt.

Get started.

If you’re already up and running with Compose, just login, click deployments and spin up a new Redis instance.

If you haven’t tried Compose, today’s a good day to get started. Head over and sign up and you can try out Redis, as well as all of our other offerings, free for 30 days.

Cool, but how do I get my shirt?

Easy, when you sign up, we’ll send you an email with a link to a form. Fill out the form with all of your info we need to send you your shirt (name, address, phone number, etc), play with your new database while you wait, check your mailbox in a few days and bam, you’ve got a shirt. Pretty simple.

While you’re at it, if you’d like to write about your journey with Redis, you can submit an idea to our Write Stuff program and get paid cash and Compose credit.

Apple has spent years proving iPhone doubters wrong. Those who made a habit of calling for the iPhone's demise have watched the product go on to bring Apple over $600 billion of revenue and close to $250 billion of gross profit over the years. Ironically, just when it seemed like iPhone skeptics had thrown in the towel and accepted the iPhone's supremacy, warning signs are beginning to appear in the iPhone business.

Apple's 2Q16 earnings report was not pretty. (I reviewed the full report and management's conference call here and here.) Not only did iPhone sales decline year-over-year for the first time, but management issued alarming guidance for 3Q16, suggesting another very difficult quarter for iPhone sales. In addition, Apple expects iPhone average selling price (ASP) and margin to deteriorate due to the recently introduced $400 iPhone SE. On top of it all, Apple will take a historically large $2 billion inventory adjustment related to the iPhone 6s due to sales coming in below expectations. While some are optimistic that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will turn things around in a few months, it's time to become skeptical. The iPhone growth story is breaking apart, and management does not seem to be in control of the situation.

Slowing iPhone Growth

The iPhone business is slowing. When looking at iPhone sales on a quarterly basis (Exhibit 1), it is difficult to see the true extent of the slowdown. 

Exhibit 1: Quarterly iPhone Unit Sales

Graphing sales on a trailing twelve months (TTM) removes the cyclical nature associated with annual iPhone launches and enables us to reach a clearer view of the iPhone's growth profile. As seen in Exhibit 2, the recent iPhone sales slowdown becomes quite visible. Apple's 3Q16 guidance implies Apple will report its first quarterly iPhone sales decline when looking at sales on a TTM basis. This is a noteworthy development. 

Exhibit 2: Quarterly iPhone Unit Sales Growth (TTM) 

Some have argued that recent iPhone sales weakness is due to the iPhone being on a two-year cycle. Accordingly, if the very popular iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are excluded from sales trends, the iPhone's long-term growth trajectory would still be in tact. The numbers tell a different story. When looking at iPhone sales on a trailing 24 months, which helps diffuse some of the outsized impact from the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the iPhone business is about to experience its slowest growth yet. As seen in Exhibit 3, while sales growth remains positive, recent trends are cause for concern with the iPhone business quickly approaching no growth territory on a trailing 24 months basis. 

Exhibit 3: Quarterly iPhone Unit Sales Growth (Trailing 24 Months Basis) 

Caught by Surprise

The most alarming aspect of the iPhone's recent growth troubles has been that Apple management appears to have been caught off guard. The company thought the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus would build off of the sales level associated with the very successful iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Instead, Apple is seeing iPhone sales fall 15% to 20% in 2016.

Rumors from Apple's supply chain had indicated iPhone component orders were cut soon after the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus launch. This was soon followed by additional rumors that Apple had cut iPhone production by 30%. While it is difficult to position these reports as concrete evidence that Apple overestimated iPhone demand, there are clearer signs that suggest management has not been able to completely get ahead of a deteriorating iPhone demand environment.

On October 27th, 2015, Tim Cook mentioned on Apple's 4Q15 earnings conference call that he expected iPhone unit sales to grow year-over-year in 1Q16. Cook based this assessment on the percentage of iPhone sales attributed to Android switchers and the iPhone upgrade rate, or the percentage of the iPhone installed base upgrading to a new iPhone. Three months later, Apple reported total iPhone sales of 74.8 million units, only 311,000 more than the previous year. To make matters worse, the only reason Apple was able to report any growth in iPhone sales was due to 3.3 million iPhones being added to channel inventory. Apple also just barely met its own revenue guidance for the quarter.

Cook has also given recent comments regarding iPhone sales that proved to be too optimistic. On Apple's 1Q16 earnings conference call, Cook said that he did not think iPhone unit sales would decline more than 15% in 2Q16 (in reality sales fell 16%). Cook then said that iPhone declines would trough in 2Q16 with better results during the back half of FY2016 given an easier sales comparison to prior year results. Apple's weak 3Q16 guidance proved that comment to be grossly optimistic. These types of miscalculations are not common for Apple and demonstrate that management has been unable to completely grasp the full extent of slowing iPhone demand. 

Warning Signs

On Apple's 2Q16 earnings call, management positioned pent-up demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the weak global economy as the two primary reasons for slowing iPhone sales. While there is tangible evidence to support a portion of that claim, I'm skeptical that the iPhone's slowing growth is strictly related to two iPhone models, currency fluctuations and weaker economic conditions. 

Instead, there are a number of warning signs beginning to appear in the iPhone business indicating underlying deterioration:

Longer iPhone Upgrade Cycle. Much of the iPhone's current success has been a result of iPhone users regularly upgrading their devices every two years. However, there are signs that this upgrade rate is actually much longer than two years. Over the course of the past year, Cook has provided updates as to the percent of the iPhone installed base as of September 2014 that had upgraded to a larger iPhone (6, 6 Plus, 6s, or 6s Plus). At the end of 2015, 60% of the iPhone installed based as of September 2014 had not upgraded to a larger iPhone. That data point is not representative of an iPhone business on a two-year upgrade cycle. Instead, the iPhone installed base is, at a minimum, on a three-year cycle.

Much more concerning for Apple is that the longer the remaining 60% of the installed base delays an iPhone upgrade, the longer the upgrade cycle is extending. It is not unreasonable for the iPhone installed base to extend out to four or even five years. Not surprisingly, these trends were never accurately captured in consumer survey research reports. This is unchartered territory for Apple.

iPhone Growth Catalysts Are Disappearing. While there are legitimate reasons for explaining some of the iPhone's recent sales declines, much more concerning is how the largest multi-year growth catalysts for the iPhone business are either disappearing or turning out to be much less attractive than first thought. 

1. Mobile carrier expansion is slowing. A significant contributor to iPhone sales growth over the years has been mobile carrier expansion. As Apple brought the iPhone to new mobile carriers, the device's addressable market continued to expand. In early 2014, China Mobile began selling the iPhone for the first time, opening up the iPhone to hundreds of millions of new consumers of which tens of millions were in a position to buy an iPhone right out of the gate. There are no additional carriers like China Mobile waiting in the wings where Apple can expand the iPhone's addressable market. Most of the world's population is now on a mobile carrier that sells iPhone. 
2. India is not the next China. India has recently been positioned as the next big growth engine for iPhone. However, it is becoming clear that this optimism has been grossly misplaced. Cook even admitted on Apple's 2Q16 earnings call that India's smartphone market is where China was seven to ten years ago. That comment is not too reassuring for anyone thinking India would pick up the sales slack from a slowing China market. The country is just not in a position to represent a significant driver for iPhone unit sales given Apple's current pricing strategy. 
3. High smartphone saturation rates. High smartphone saturation rates in the U.S. and other developed countries have removed feature phone users as an iPhone growth catalyst.
4. Declining number of premium Android switchers. Apple has been very successful over the past year and a half appealing to high-end Android switchers craving larger iPhones. However, there are signs that the easy growth in terms of Android switchers is ending. There are only so many premium Android users in the marketplace, and Apple will need to begin appealing to Android users in lower price brackets to achieve the same kind of user growth. During 2015, there were approximately 1.2 billion people that bought a non-iPhone smartphone, up from a little more than 1 billion in 2014. Of that total, approximately 100 million were likely in a position to even buy a flagship iPhone. This does not exactly leave much room for Apple to grow the number of Android switchers year after year.    

ASP and Margin Pressure. During Apple's 2Q16 conference call, management attributed a portion of its weak guidance to the iPhone SE impacting iPhone ASP and margins. Over the past two years, both of those metrics had held up remarkably well despite Apple peers facing increasingly deteriorating conditions. The combination of a higher priced "Plus" iPhone model and iPhone storage configurations provided a significant tailwind for maintaining attractive iPhone ASP and margin trends. The iPhone SE introduces a new headwind into the mix as the more successful the iPhone SE sells, the more pressure overall iPhone ASP and margin will face. 

Apple Has an iPhone Growth Problem

When looking at all of these iPhone warning signs, it is becoming clear that Apple has a significant iPhone growth problem on its hands. The combination of a slowing iPhone upgrade rate and declining number of growth catalysts for expanding the iPhone's addressable market will make it very difficult for management to report unit sales growth going forward given its current strategy. In addition, the iPhone SE highlights how any strategy to fix some of these issues will likely end up jeopardizing iPhone ASP and margin trends. 

It is important to note that the iPhone business is not imploding. Satisfaction rates and loyalty trends remain industry-leading. Apple has a very attractive iPhone installed base numbering close to 550 million users with additional users purchasing an iPhone in the grey market. Each quarter, Apple is still bringing new people to the iOS ecosystem. Instead, it is becoming much more difficult for Apple to grow iPhone unit sales each year. 

How Did This Happen? 

All of this seems a bit surreal. Apple just recorded its best quarter for iPhone sales in 1Q16. How can there now be so many iPhone warning signs only a few months after this milestone to the point that even Apple management was caught off guard?

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus masked deteriorating iPhone trends. While those two iPhone models ushered in a wave of sales from both existing iPhone users and consumers new to iOS, upon closer examination the iPhone installed base had become much more diverse than first thought when it comes to thoughts on upgrading. In addition, the sheer success associated with launching iPhone on China Mobile made it that much more difficult to see an even greater amount of success in subsequent years. When dealing with unit sales growth, Apple needs to bring in many new consumers just to break even each year. At a certain point, it is just not sustainable. 

Finding the Path Forward

Apple needs to get ahead of this deteriorating iPhone demand environment. There are a few key elements to such a strategy: 

1) Throw out all existing conventions about upgrade cycles. Management cannot assume that iPhone users will upgrade to new iPhones like they have in the past. This will have an impact on how Apple approaches iPhone development schedules. It was clear that the iPhone "S" cycle ended last year, and current iPhone trends all but confirm that to be the case. It is now time to get rid of the "S" iPhone nomenclature as well. A case can even be made that it is time for Apple to change its entire iPhone numbering nomenclature given changing device upgrade behavior. 

2) Keep a pulse on the iPhone user base. It is becoming more critical than ever for Apple to understand the average iPhone customer. There is much change going on within the iPhone user base with a more diverse collection of thoughts towards technology and smartphone features. With Apple rumored to push ahead at the premium end with a differentiated iPhone Plus model later this year, Apple can no longer assume that iPhone users will follow the company in a similar direction. Greater focus needs to be placed on the risk that Apple ends up over serving the market by introducing certain features. It may sound odd, but Apple may end up slowing the introduction of certain new iPhone features and instead focus on other items that consumers are truly craving. 

3) Recognize the iPhone SE's power. The iPhone SE has the power to impact Apple ASP and margins much more than Apple management initially thought. There is an increasing level of risk that there may be unintended consequences associated with the iPhone SE including greater cannibalization of higher-end iPhone models.    

At a certain level, none of this should surprise Apple. The company's long-standing iPhone strategy involved it beginning at the high end of the market and slowly making its way down market, capturing as much profit share as possible at each subsequently lower price tier. At a certain point, this strategy enters a phase where growth slows and the business enters a much more mature product trajectory. The various warnings signs flashing in the iPhone business indicate that point has arrived.  

The good news for Apple is that the company is organized in such a way as to handle these iPhone warning signs better than most other companies. There are signs that Apple has been working to move beyond the iPhone for well over a year with Project Titan and other wearable devices representing the company's future. The one thing management needs to work on is moving the Apple narrative away from iPhone unit sales growth. 

One Steve Jobs quote displayed at Apple HQ will end up doing a great job of describing Apple's path forward for iPhone: "If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next." 

Receive my exclusive analysis and perspective about Apple throughout the week (2-3 stories a day, 10-12 stories a week). For more information and to sign up, visit the membership page. 

Above Avalon members received my complete AAPL 2Q16 earnings review including new iPhone unit sales projections for FY2016 and FY2017 (available here).

I heard that a Chinese private school was looking to partner with the local school board in Powell River to start a new kind of venture, where the Chinese company would build a school and dormitories for 400 students while the district handled all the teaching.

That was interesting enough. But once I started calling around to get more information, I found out there was so much more going on: another Chinese investor, another piece of property and talk of joint programs with the local university satellite campus; a shellfish hatchery just opened by still another Chinese investor; and Chinese entrepreneur immigrants coming in to the community through the entrepreneurship program.

My story that sketches out the bare bones of this is here. I imagine there will be more to come in future.

I think we have no idea at all what kind of change is going to be wrought on this province by these investors from one of the world’s biggest economies, who seem to have a fascination with the province equivalent to what the Germans do.

Back in 2013 when Facebook offered to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion USD, it seemed to many a misguided act of hubris from founder Evan Spiegel to turn the offer down.

Critics assumed Snapchat was a flash in the pan and would soon go bankrupt. Three years on, Snapchat is still going strong with the 10 billion “Stories” viewed per day and a $16 billion USD valuation as of its last raise this March.

Meanwhile Facebook, the company that long saw Snapchat’s potential, now appears to be testing a feature that mimics arguably the most crucial element to Snapchat’s success. The new function appears in screenshots posted to Twitter, showing options for users to set their messages to delete after one minute, 15 minutes, an hour, four hours or a day.

More screenshots about disappearing messages (and shared links section).
Thanks @Geek_Break.@WABetaInfo #Messenger pic.twitter.com/MDWjsqdhID

— iOSAppChanges (@iOSAppChanges) May 1, 2016

This comes a mere week after the Wall Street Journal‘s Deepa Seetharaman reported that Facebook was planning to launch a stand-alone camera app that opens directly on the camera allowing users to quickly live stream video.

There have also been recent rumours that Facebook will allow users to turn on end-to-end encryption for select conversations.

With all these features echoing aspects of Snapchat, it appears that Facebook is now determined to beat the more youthful app at its own game.

Related reading: Facebook may be launching a stand-alone camera app to rival Snapchat

Shot at 12mm focal length (35mm-equivalent of 24mm)

I recently wrote about being able to carry three lenses with my tiny Panasonic GM-5 camera in a nice, small bag. One lens is always on the GM-5 and that is usually my Olympus 25mm prime lens. The other two, then, are the Panasonic 35-100mm, f/4-5.6 and The Panasonic 12-32mm, f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens.

Shot at 100mm focal length (35mm-equivalent of 200mm)

Since the Panasonic GM-5 is a micro four thirds camera, it has a 2x crop factor. That means that you multiply the stated focal length of a given lens by two. So, in effect, in this little Mountainsmith bag, I’m carrying around lens power that will give me a 35mm-equivalent focal length range of 24mm through 200mm. I am including an image shot at the widest, 24mm, focal length and the longest focal length of 200mm. In addition, I have included a collage that shows the extremes of the zoom lens along with a shot taken with my great Olympus 25mm, f/1.8 lens.

Shots from all lens extremes plus the 25mm prime.

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