Siri and the iPhone 5 revolution (aka the Siri OS)

[9 January 2012: Brian: this post is nearly a year old -- from April 2011. In it, I discuss my thoughts on 'the next' iPhone revolution. Today is the 5th year anniversary of the formal iPhone announcement. The iPhone was released on 29 June 2007. What do you think? Is iPhone still five years ahead of any other phone? Will Siri be/come the next/final platform that Steve Jobs guided into the light? Will Apple, the company that made so many great UIs be the one, as I suggest below, to make the UI -- any UI -- disappear entirely?]

Steve Jobs has a well-earned sterling and global reputation for incredible designs of technology hardware, services, even platforms. His genius, as he has acknowledged, is not in what he includes, but what he leaves out, what is not included. iPhone spurred a smartphone revolution. It's success, rests on a platform. What if, as a final act, the design genius of Steve Jobs is to make the platform itself disappear? 

Just over four years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone. At the announcement, Jobs proudly stated that the "revolutionary" iPhone and its iOS (OS X) platform is "at least five years ahead of any other phone."

Your time is almost up, Mr. Jobs.

I think Jobs is very aware of this, in fact. And planning on another revolution. Which I believe, in the short-term, will ultimately fall just short. Long-term, Jobs' next iPhone revolution paves the way for the future of smartphones and personal computing. Again.

Analysts, writers, users themselves, all find it difficult to explain the iPhone. Or any 'smartphone'. With the iPhone leading the way, we've slowly come to define this device, this new paradigm in personal computing and connectivity, that offers anytime, anywhere access, as an app phone. That is, a mobile telephone wherein all features and functions are apps (applications) and all apps are supported by, developed by and distributed via a app ecosystem. Reading, gaming, surfing, watching, calling, texting. Each is an app; a distinct application that interacts with the underlying operating system and may or may not interact with other apps. Since the launch of iPhone in 2007, this new personal computing platform, the app phone, has spawned hundreds of thousands of apps, billions of dollars in revenues, and re-configured multiple industries.

As Jean-Louis Gassee wrote in MondayNote:

The App genre (the apps themselves, their distribution system, the development tools) is now fully embraced by the smartphone industry and by its customers. I realize we’ll keep saying “smartphones”, but “app phone’’ gets us closer to the genre’s core reality, to what drives enthusiastic user adoption — and close to triple-digit year-to-year revenue growth. The apps are to the iPhone what digital music files are to the iPod.

iPhone, the original app phone, de-constructed the mobile phone industry, transformed Apple, led the rapid global spread of smartphones, began the long, bloody process of disintermediating carriers from users, altered how Americans read, watch and connect. The new economic growth spurred by the iPhone is not countable, but potentially in the trillions of dollars.

This is how it works with a new computing platform. And the key, here, is platform. Computing, personal computing especially, has always relied on a platform. Open or closed is not relevant. Standardization, scope, ability to attract users, developers, money; the leading players who develop the platform, the early entrants that embrace and extend it, and, ultimately, the entire ecosystem of money, developers, users, partners, accessories, software, hardware et al that grow and sustain the platform. 

Apple has been a leader, a developer, a believer in computing platforms since its founding over 30 years ago. With varying degrees of success, such as Apple, the computer, Mac OS, and now iOS for iPod, iPhone and iPad. Computing platforms that have been most successful over the past two generations include the PC, Wintel, specifically, Mac, to a far lesser extent, the browser and now Apple's iOS and its lower-cost, less closed, more iterative competitor, Android.

For iOS and Android, as in the early days of Wintel, for example, the battle is on for users, developers, services, content, partners. The focus is on money and profits, yes, but the all-hands build out is to help ensure long-term prosperity, to lock in users, to offer safe harbor against alternatives. In the long arc of Steve Jobs' career, it has always been thus. Which is why I think a final act, in a career filled with destroying the present to re-make the future, Jobs will seek to destroy the very notion of a platform. 

And iPhone 5 will be the start of that revolution. 

At the start of this year, everyone assumed that iPhone 5 would be released, as was iPhone 4 before it, in early summer. Then, based on Apple's calendar, WWDC and other evidence, the view was that iPhone 5 would be released in September, 2011. Now, analysts are suggesting that iPhone 5 will be announced in September but not available til about January 2011. That is, five years after the launch of the "revolutionary" and "five years ahead of its time" original iPhone.

What will be announced? Launched? I believe Jobs, again revealing his penchant for de-constructing that which already exists, including Apple's own products, to create something far greater, will be revealed when iPhone 5 is released. Such as? Well, when you deconstruct a personal computing platform, peel away at its roots, stare down from above at its ecosystem, what do you have?

A means of providing functionality and access, really. The iPhone plus App Store, iOS SDK, iTunes, payments infrastructure, all those developers, in total, are offering functionality and access to milllions. Calling, texting, surfing; a game, a news reader, a foodspotter. Access to books and music, our financial records, check-in history, Facebook status.

If you deconstruct the iOS ecosystem, or Android, for example, you have functionality and access, packaged, fully realized. Except, not so fully realized, in fact. Because for all the magical, revolutionary benefit that iPhone and Android and Nokia N8s and Blackberry Bolds may, in fact, bestow upon us, they remain, despite the 'smartphone' moniker, rather dumb.

Consider notifications, one of the weaker aspects of iOS. As I wrote earlier:

The real problem with notifications is how needlessly limited they are. They are like the old push technology from the late 20th century. Push technology was shit. We all stopped using PUSH cause it was so hideous looking and intrusive and stupid and never learned, no matter how much time we spent teaching the damn thing.

And, shockingly, smartphone notifications are still shit.

I take my smartphone with me everywhere. Yes, everywhere. I have it with me all of the time. I use it for just about anything and everything. Yes, calling, texting, emailing. Plus, checking-in, playing games, counting calories, tracking expenses, logging time, reading books, buying/selling stocks, setting exercise goals.

I do not particularly give a shit that if I tell my bank to notify me when there is less than $500 in my checking account, say, that iPhone does a worse job at this than Android. Which it does. Both of them fail because both devices know, or should, how much is in my account and both know or should that I have just barcode scanned an item in my smartphone that I'm considering purchasing which is more than I can really afford. Yet say *nothing*.

Are they really so stupid?

Both devices know I am writing this post, and where I am when I write it and yet both also know, since it's there on my calendar, that I have an important meeting early tomorrow morning and both know I have not been getting enough sleep this week and both *fail* to say: Brian, stop. Go to bed. You will think more clearly in the morning and you will probably deliver a better pitch to the client.

How much information must I put inside my smartphone, inside its hardware, inside its apps and programs and services, before it learns how to fucking datamine itself!

Why is this so hard? Why are smartphones so stupid?

We take our smartphones with us everywhere. We use them all the time. Inside, they contain more information, more specific data about us than possibly any person, even our closest loved ones, know about us. When connected to the cloud, the amount of information -- and knowledge -- grows exponentially. Yet, the smartphone remains stupid. Limited.  A revolution is needed.

I believe that revolution is the recommendation engine. To wit: Smartly, wisely proactive, rapidly reactive, based on real-time awareness of where we are, who we are with, what we are doing, and combined with the massive amounts of data contained within the smartphone and linked to us and the device, via the cloud, the recommendation engine, one that actually works and thinks, will alter, fundamentally, how we conduct our business, connect with our surroundings, interact with friends, integrate with information, databases, social media, search queries, and the near-infinite number and kind of computing resources and applications available. (deep breath)

That would be a revolution. That would tear up the very notions of an ecosystem. In fact, distill it down to its basic elements: functionality and access. The hardware, the local data, the cloud data, and the real-time *wisdom* from the recommendation engine, combined, would be its own (new) ecosystem. No notifications, as they are now meaningless. Search is likewise irrlevant, with a device that knows what you seek before asking. Similarly, the app itself, which provides functionality + access vanishes. These are barriers, limitations, the equivalent of digital buttons. And Jobs hates buttons.

The pieces to achieve this vision, with Apple at the core, are (falling) in place. Apple has the hardware, the smartphone operating system. That giant, mythical cloud city hovering somewhere over North Carolina. And, Siri. Siri is that 'voice search' technology start-up Apple bought a year ago. Only, it's not simply voice search. Siri is a "personal assistant" technology. That has essentially gone dark since Apple acquired it. But, the potential for Siri was then, and is now, the ability to provide real-time, contextually relevant information, regardless of person, place or such mundane functions as notification settings. Siri knows, in theory, that you are with your date, where you are at, and suggests, possibly purchases on its own, two tickets for the next showing of whatever movie Siri knows you *both* will like, and for the appropriate time. There is no app for that.

Or Siri knows that you need to review your finances. Or get sleep. Or, perhaps, give your brain a rest and proactively offers up a quick round of Angry Birds. The possibilities are endless. And this only becomes possible if we liberate ourselves from the very notions of an app ecosystem and instead embrace the integration of device, recommendation engine, cloud-based data.

And this is what I expect Steve Jobs to announce with iPhone 5. 

Only, I really don't. Truthfully, I expect this is what Apple is working on right now, furiously. And I expect Apple to be about two years, not five years, ahead of all competitors. Just as iPhone was with Android. Still, all the outlying pieces for this grand vision are not yet in place. Apple's cloud cannot interact with everyone in real-time. Not even just those users in the United States. There are issues with carriers and billing and broadband. There remains no real online wallet or universally accessible digital currency. Not to mention, the iPhone and iOS have tranformed Apple into the most profitable, most valued tech company in the world. The time is not right to destroy any of that. Apple, for example, kept pumping out all manner of iPods up to and after launching iPhone. They understood that if Apple did not find a replacement for iPod, someone else would. But, they never left any money on the table.

Right now, there's too much money on the table. Along with too many pieces, even beyond their control, for Apple to make this all work. Steve Jobs will introduce iPhone 5, likely later this year. And it will be amazing. And we will get a glimpse of Siri and the Apple Cloud -- and the future.

But we will not get there. Not yet. Just as the launch of iPhone was magical, the revolution did not happen til a bit later, with the App Store and 3G and the next iteration of iPhone. iPhone 5 will be like that, I suspect. The beginning of the end of iPhone as we know it.

And the final act of destruction of Steve Jobs' career. 

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.
-Steve Jobs, 9 January 2007 (iPhone announcement)