Uploads, the personal computer, and why you should and should not buy apple stocks
The Macbook air showed that the whole computer industry functions around one factor: upload speed. Follow me a bit here.
What do you do with your computer? You probably work a lot, writing email, juggling spreadsheets and word documents, browsing facebook wallstreetjournal.com. Then there is your personal space made of conversations, websites, but also pictures, videos or music. That is why you call it a personal computer after all.
Back in 1995, Microsoft got really annoyed by Netscape when the Redmond giant realized that the web browser was set to become an operating system in itself. To use Gmail or Writely (an online equivalent of Word, now bought by Google) all you need is a browser, and you don’t care if it runs on top of Microsoft, Linux or Apple software.
So it is not interesting to fight on this ground. It is a lost war. What the operating system makers need to do is to focus on two things: what people do not want to upload, and what people can not upload. Why? Because it is everything that happens outside of the web browser, and in that sense it is where you can make a difference, you can separate yourself from the pack.
One company seems to have understood that: Apple. What do you get out of the box if you buy a mac? A web browser (Safari) but no office suite. You go online or download the free Neo Office for that. Then you get tools to manage your digital assets (iTunes for music, iPhoto, iMovies, etc…), i.e. these things you can not upload because of network limitations.
And the mac will also take care of the stuff you do not want to share because they are too personal, you have encryption (Filevault) and automatic backups (Time Machine). That is what you call focusing on users needs.
Now there is a next step coming. Uploads are getting easier with bandwidths widening slowly. More of the things you had to do on your computer (like edit a picture or a video) are moving online. Ask Rodrigo of vpod.tv for a demo of their next product and you will be blown away. You can edit video, create transitions, add overlays of information, all online and in real time. Flabbergasting. Imovies and Photoshop are now coming to the browser.
The tasks we could not do online because of technological limitations will soon be available as web pages. A next paradigm is coming, and again, who gets ready for that? The macbook Air! It is a lightweight terminal with reasonable performance (it runs a web browser very well) and a small 60GB hard drive (about half the size of what you get on the cheapest PC).
This is the computer for the next evolution, when everything you do is online, and the personal computer has to become a light, reliable, safe, autonomous and friendly terminal able to connect to the web and run a browser. Apple is getting in position to reign on that market, taking the lead in almost every dimension that matters (interface, size, security, communication). That is why you should buy Apple stocks.
And the reason not to buy these stocks? The fact that this company loses 50% of its value if Steve Jobs has a car accident tomorrow. Who said investment was a gimmie ;)
January 27th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Laurent, thanks for this interesting analysis. Also from my perspective Apple is very well positioned for this trend. Though, I would not overvalue its influence on Apple shares. Currently all (!) portables together make only 20 % of Apple’s revenue. I like esp. your last point :-). I stressed the same argument on a post of Martin Varsavsky (http://2big.at/vnu) as the biggest remaining risk to invest in Apple.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Hello Laurent,
Your vision of personal media publication is something I share:
“Now there is a next step coming. Uploads are getting easier with bandwidths widening slowly. More of the things you had to do on your computer (like edit a picture or a video) are moving online.”
Because I’m so passionate about the problem of media uploading, I’m starting up a service called tarpipe (http://www.liftconference.com/tarpipe).
As personal computers become lighter, applications and tools will begin moving into the Web. tarpipe will mediate all your uploads and will offer you new and combined ways of transforming your content by using the power of Web Services.
Looking forward to talking about these subjects at lift!
January 28th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Today in le Monde, there is a beautiful scream from Frank Laloë, directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS, against CD-Rom, CD-R and disks. Title of the article: “Attention, l’humanité perd la mémoire”. All about reliability. Between two and five years for CD, one and ten years for disks. Our society has never used such an instable way to record informations.
What’s particular: he forgot to mention that the futur of backup will be through servers & a permanent web connection. As far as I know, this is something that you, Laurent, were thinking a lot two years ago. Screaming to swiss banks that they should deploy some high-level secured servers for professional & private use.
So as they won’t do that, there are three solutions in our not-so-close future:
— Apple makes a .deluxemac account, syncing iPhone, Air & very private informations
— Opensource world & small providers offer a network of high-level & quick backup (the upload part)
— Some startups like wua.la offer p2p backup & other facilities (hey, tonight it’s the launch of Qtrax, a P2P music app , yet on bad fire…)
January 28th, 2008 at 9:18 am
You guys are great, always adding the info I missed :)
Gregor: agreed, but I think this is something that should develop. Here in Switzerland when people make the decision to buy their computer themselves (i.e. their company doesn’t do it for them) it seems 80% of people get a mac. It’s a rich country, macs are more expensive, but if you can you buy a mac.
Bruno: thanks, I had noticed you guys in the venture night submissions actually! http://www.liftconference.com/lift08-venture-night
Raph: thanks for making me such a visionary (I said that 1.5 year ago actually ;). It’s true I have been and am still baffled by the banks attitude, and I still think this is such a business opportunity. Oh and the guy who made me think about that - Christian Lindholm - now works for Fjord and is coming to LIFT. I bumped into him at leweb and said “did you know you made me start a conference?” He laughed and promptly registered to check if I was doing a good job with his ideas… ;)