Attention Conservation Notice: this is long,
and thrown together quickly, and you might
want to skip a part or two if your own
background and/or understanding makes it
redundant.
Here's a handy index for scanning:
"KILLER APP" DEFINED
- a clarification of the meaning of Killer App
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5.0b (patch level 7)
- an unstuck-in-time historical digression illustrating this meaning
FOMA = LIES?
- a recap of the current situation in mobile digital telephony
I CAN SEE WIRES ON THOSE WINGS....
- a question about whether this 3G thing is really flying.
THROUGH AN LCD SCREEN, DARKLY
- my own take on the matter (inevitably)....
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
- ...and where I would start groping around
--------------------------------------------
"KILLER APP" DEFINED
To clarify "Killer App": it means "the class of application
that will make people buy the next generation of hardware
just to get their hands on it."
This certainly matters in some view of things (especially if
your fortunes are tied to hardware, systems software, or
the presumption of perennial advances in both.). So it's
worth looking at how this works.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5.0b (patch level 7)
I'm not sure how far back to go, but let's start with
the microcomputer just to keep it within living memory
of most of us here.
The Killer App for the micro (ca late 70s) was the
spreadsheet. And it was a surprise. The makers
of the first micros were hippie visionaries, positioning
them as a home computers, before most people had
the slightest idea of what they would do with one.
The early Apple machines were saved by the business
market, and almost entirely because people bought
8-bit micros to run spreadsheet software.
Score one for the suits. Stoned hippie hackers get
a free point, too.
The increasing memory and screen real estate
demands of all this corporate number crunching
led micros forward to another business app:
full-screen word processor software. (Note
that dedicated word processors had already
been around for a while.) This also opened
up the micro for general business use, and gave
birth to the 'integrated' software packages
(spreadsheet, word processor, presentation
graphics). But spreadsheets were still the
biggie -- one memory extension standard
for the PC was LIM: "Lotus Intel Microsoft" --
Lotus being in on the deal so as to a get
a jump on providing more spreadsheet cells.
Score two for the suits. The hippies now
have titles like "Senior Software Engineering
Architect," but no stock options.
The next killer app -- the one that rationalized
the move to the 386 and multi-megabyte RAM
sizes, etc. -- was probably desktop publishing,
This was made possible by the laser printer, not
to mention the seemingly-inexorable Moore's
Law, which applies everywhere here.
Finally, artists get a point. Stoned hippie
programmers are dazedly asking "Where's
the command line interface?..."
The web browser was a kind of mini-Killer
App in the 90s -- lots of people were buying
machines as browser terminals.
Artists get another point. Maybe their last
for a while, though. Stock options replace
drugs. Most drugs, anyway. No more
hippies, everybody has stubble everywhere.
Note that e-mail, in itself, can run on even
the wimpiest hardware (as we are seeing yet
again on the mobile phone), so it hadn't been
a Killer App for platforms so much as for
networking itself.
I.e., flamers like me were there all along.
Zero points for that.
FOMA = LIES?
Where this debate starts on keitai-l is: what
is the Killer App for 3G phones? This is why
there has been so much argument about video
on mobile phones in forums like this. If video,
and its huge resource requirements, isn't part of
the mobile phone future, we might be looking at
something like a plateau, and soon, in demand for
mobile phones with greater power and network
access speeds.
The last mile for that glut of fiber might be crossed
in the radio spectrum, only to get stuck in the mud.
Sell your NEC stock now.
WHERE FROM HERE?
The Killer App (sorry, Tracey, you must really
be gagging by now) for mobile phones was
telephony, of course. The Killer App for *digital*
mobile phone communications has clearly been
"texting" -- e-mail and SMS.
The question now is: will people really need more
hardware oomph? After all, the paradox with DoCoMo
is that they tapped into a high- growth market using
network bandwidth that was considered too low
by many (far too low according to some), but that
actually works fine, given the resolution of the media
(text, melodies, illustrative GIFs) that turned out to be
so popular. So this is, really, a valid question.
So long as screens are small, speakers
wimpy, and e-mail length effectively limited
both by typing speed and reader interest, it's
a fair bet that this will be the status quo for
some time to come. But only a bet.
THROUGH AN LCD SCREEN, DARKLY
So far MY bet is with Tracey's strategy, or what
I might call "The Wizard of Oz" strategy.
I loved that movie because it was a great
story, well-told even on a black and white
TV set with lousy reception. It was also
a transcription of wonderful 'music' (Frank
L. Baum's perennial classic children's novel)
to a different 'instrument' -- the movie projector.
They certainly limited their risk there. And
even though a transition from black and white
to color (and back again, at the end) is used
to some effect, the story doesn't depend on this
technological gimmick in the least.
I'll say (shout) that again: THE STORY
DOESN'T DEPEND ON THIS TECHNO-
LOGICAL GIMMICK IN THE LEAST.
Stories, after all, aren't technology.
As an advertising genius once said:
"It's 90% what you say, and only 10%
what medium you say it in."
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Kids are going to be a large market for
the mobile phone. As they were for the
pager, when it finally shed its drug-dealer-
and/or-high-powered-executive aura
and became generic technology, a way
to keep track of people in your life or
business.
So if you wanted to figure out what
kind of enriched media will be the Next
Big Mobile Thing, I'd recommend trying
to make The Wizard of Oz a compelling
experience on a low-end 503-series phone.
Just as an experiment.
And I wouldn't be in the least surprised if
a digital reduction of the movie was your
first failure in a series.
As you move toward actually making it
exciting, keep in mind that you might be
defining a de facto standard transmission
format for a new medium, one that we'll all
have to live with for a decade or more.
Design it for scalability, all kinds of features...
Or, hey, forget that and just wing it --
after all, only programmers will curse your
name in perpetuity. Everyone else will love
you.
I'd do it. If I only had a brain.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tracey Northcott" <tracey@enfour.com>
To: "Keitai-L" <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 7:11 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) Killer Apps
> Hi all,
>
> Sure I have been quiet for a while - but am still around lurking in the
> shadows - waiting for another keitai-L party to be seen in public again.
:-)
>
> And the reason I write today is to rant - not at anyone in particular -
> just a general rant - if I hear the term "killer app" one more time I am
> going to scream!!! I don't think I am alone here.
>
> It is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. There are
> no get rich quick schemes, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and
> no tooth fairy (sorry). Traditional lessons still ring true in the
> digital consumer age as the consumers are *still* people - as different
> as each snowflake and numerous as grains of white sand on Shimoda beaches.
>
> Stop looking for the Killer App and concentrate on developing compelling
> content useful to improve people's lives, leisure, business - whatever -
> do the research, build/create a quality solution, price it accordingly
> and then market well....
[snip]
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Received on Thu Aug 9 13:39:11 2001