A few weeks ago someone mocked up a concept MacBook touch, and in a nutshell, they way-y-y-y-y overthought it.  After a week(ish) using my iPad with an external keyboard, I can see how the worlds could and should collide.  And I think it’s exactly what Apple plans to do – one day. The concept is already as much as there in their products anyway: ship Mountain Lion with the ability to “launch” iOS.  That’s it.

In the current OS X, Lion, we already have LaunchPad, a feature clearly designed for a touch-screen interface, mainly because it’s the exact UI for iOS apps.  This would/should be touch-enabled.

Next, OS X already has an App Store, the inventory of which could easily expand to include iOS apps.

The LaunchPad would become the primary “desktop”, and Finder would move to be an app instead of the primary navigation metaphor.

Apps could then be written as OS X, or OS X with touch, or iOS.  Standard OS X apps would function like they do today, expecting a mouse + keyboard interface.  That’s the easy part.

iOS apps would go into full-screen, thought likely not include the ability to rotate – but maybe they wouldn’t have to.  The next-gen MacBooks are already rumored to go retina anyway, which provides enough pixels for a portrait-mode app to run on the screen size of a 13″ laptop.  Granted, a ton of apps would work poorly – things that require lots of motion sensitive or heavy gesture inputs.  But maybe that’s okay.  Maybe this isn’t about a laptop with great Infinity Blade capabilities, it’s a bit more focused on productivity.  More on this in a bit.

OS X with touch apps would be able to support mouse + keyboard + touch interfaces.  This is the tricky part.  There are times when touch works great, other times when the mouse is ideal.  For example, a pull-down menu is going to be too tiny to easily work with a finger, but the mouse is perfect.  Similarly, mouse-overs are useful for many applications, and the pixel-level work in design apps could never be done without a mouse.  But moving files, selecting apps to run, and creating free-form quick designs are all radically better with a touch input.  Gestures are awesome methods of navigating through computing interfaces.  There’s a right balance, and as long as Apple can clearly delineate best practices, I think some great new experiences would emerge.

Combining the full power of OS X and iOS brings great power, and accordingly, great… You know.  But in all seriousness, this isn’t meant as a “make a MacBook all fun like the iPad” nor is it “turn the iPad into a productivity center”.  It’s both.  The computing era has evolved to the point where touch is a key part of things.  Further, Apple is uniquely positioned to create a product like this, where the touch features augment the overall platform, as opposed to just being gimmicky.  Lastly, they’ll create yet another leap forward that their competition will have to spend eons catching up to.

ps – for those wondering, I’m using the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard for iPad. I love it.  I started with the Apple Wireless Keyboard (with great sleeve by SF Bags) but ultimately preferred Logitech’s solution.  Amazingly.

At this point, my iPad has effectively replaced my laptop for everything other than photo management and documents.  The former isn’t going to change, but I realized that having a keyboard might notably improve my ability to work on longer docs and emails.  I’m currently trying out the Apple wireless keyboard (with handy protective sleeve from local vendor SFBags) though I’ll also give the new Logitech ultrathin keyboard a try (if/when it ever ships).

In my first day the difference was notable.  I’ve created Evernotes, long emails, and in general found the keyboard goes a long way.  Yay for that. Further, there are some handy keyboard shortcuts that make using it even more pleasant.  But I think this could go a long way from where it is.  Granted, there’s no debate that the overall experience around finger-based controls and gestures absolutely trumps using a keyboard, but that doesn’t mean a few power features couldn’t go a long way.  Here are some hopefully easy-to-implement shortcuts that I think would improve the existing experience:

1. Multi-task app switcher (⌘-tab)
Pushing this combo in OS X results in an application switcher.  You can use your mouse to pick an app, or arrows to navigate between them.  Same functionality could be present in the iPad – and once you are using a keyboard, it’s actually fairly inconvenient to tap on the screen to do this.

2. Menus (⌘-N, ⌘-R, ⌘-D, etc)
In an app-specific sense, enable shortcuts for “menu features.”  For example, in Mail, ⌘-N could start a New Message,  ⌘-R could reply, ⌘-D could delete, etc.  App developers could have certain liberty here (potentially) or there could just be a limited set of commands.  Either would be good for any “text-heavy” app where the keyboard is in use.

3. Home  (⌘-Esc or ⌘-Eject, etc)
Simple one – exit the current app back to the home screen.

4. Navigation (⌘-cursor keys)
Per (1) above, but extend it further: if the user is in the “Springboard” interface (aka the “home screen” where you pick an app), enable me to rapidly scroll through apps (or pages of apps) with the keyboard.

5. Switch windows (tab)
Inside any app (with support), the Tab key should switch between windows/frames/inputs.  This is already present in Mail, but only when composing messages.  Why not elsewhere?

6. App shortcuts (⌘-1, ⌘-2, or F1, F2, etc)
This is definitely a “power user” feature, but let me assign 10 apps I use a lot, and quickly launch them from the keyboard.  Alternately, these could be restricted to the 6 apps in the Dock (at the bottom of the home screen).

7. Search (⌘-space)
Much like other tips above, this is borrowing straight out of OS X.  Especially considering the amount search is intended for active use within iOS.

8. Settings (⌘-,)
On my Mac, pushing ⌘-, shows preferences for that application.  In iOS, there’s a global settings screen (not to mention the plethora of apps that have their own).  This shortcut could launch either.

9. Settings Toggles (⌘-F1, ⌘-F2, etc)
Could be predetermined or user-configurable, but how about direct access to toggling certain settings, such as airplane mode, WiFi on/off, etc.  I’d want a Bluetooth one too, but it’d probably only work in one way…

I know in the grand scheme of things this is a pretty minor issue.  The grand majority of iPad owners aren’t using keyboards, and probably never will.  But if someone had time to program Siri with enough depth to tell Zooey Deschanel that it’s not raining out, I can’t see this being too far out of scope…

As one could imagine, I end up in a lot of conversations about second screen TV apps, companion apps, social TV, etc.  Virtually every discussion takes some long varied road to get to a point where all involved agree that the only rule in building next generation TV platforms and products is this: not all TV shows are alike, and experiences must be built with this rule in mind.

Let’s start with #SocialTV – broadly defined in current terms as “people tweeting, checking in, and liking TV shows on social media platforms.”  While I’m pretty jaded in my belief that this is resoundingly uninteresting as a topic, it’s important to think of it on a per-genre basis, and in fact, a per show basis.  One could state that “dramas” for example won’t garner much social TV activity – who really cares about checking in to shows like CSI or House?  Then along comes Game of Thrones, rule broken.  Then you could use Game of Thrones data to claim people don’t tweet while watching live TV.  And along comes sports and reality shows.

When it comes to planning and thinking about how users may/will behave regarding social TV and shows, I recommend thinking about it from two perspectives: (1) live interaction and (2) cultural impact.  The personal drivers for a lot of these activities have to do with the social perspective.  People are interested in “connecting” with others, which drives the interactions (tweeting about your team, someone getting voted off the island, etc).  People are also interested in being part of the cultural zeitgeist – Game of Thrones is “in” and “cool” to tweet about, whereas CSI and House are not.

Next up are companion apps – smartphone and/or iPad apps designed for use during a TV show.  As above, the potential value creation here is entirely about the content.  Do users really want to pull out their phones and read trivia while watching an intense or immersive show like Game of Thrones or The Good Wife?  Doubtful.  Am I going to look away from a visually-rich experience such as Planet Earth? Or how about Family Guy, where half the show is visual gags?  Seems unlikely.  But during any reality show, game show, talk show, or sports? I’d guess there’s a huge opportunity here.

Same moral as above, the right companion apps keep the content in mind.  First, we really don’t need (or want) a dedicated companion experience for every single show that airs – it’s just plain unnecessary.  But regardless of that, the experiences should think about the audience and how they want to interact.  Sports is all about real-time and stats.  Cooking shows, on the other hand, don’t need a real-time experience, but yet offering recipes, how-to, pictures, etc that can be bookmarked, archived, and viewed in the future is quite handy.  Complicated plot-driven shows can offer complementary experiences that supply background or other pertinent information to help audiences keep up with whatever’s going on.

Enhanced content offerings - featurettes, behind-the-scenes, and other options that plunge the user in a further immersive landscape blah blah blah. Now, speaking as the guy who watched all 3 Lord of the Rings movies, extended cut, with director’s commentary on, there’s no question a marketplace exists for extra content.  Blooper reels.  Making-of’s.  Interviews with Cast & Crew.  The key focus again is identifying the right content for the right show and deploying it in the right place.

Do I really need a dedicated app for my iPad just to get extra content for each show I like?  Do I need to subscribe to something?  I think, fundamentally, content creators and technologists need to really spend time crafting the right offering for each individual show.  For example, having the “webisodes” of The Office available openly via Facebook each week is a great solution to enhance that offering.  But if I needed an Office app, with a new Office username and password, would it be worth the investment beyond the “Like”?  Doubtful.

Overall, the time has come for TV technologists, creators, producers, etc to work together to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to TV experiences.  Every show, every network, every device, and every platform should be regarded as a unique opportunity to engage an audience and tell a story.  Except, of course, for reality shows about celebutantes, which should just go away. Please folks, just do the right thing here.  We can find a cure, we can make it happen.  We can do it!

Back in college (ah, college), some buddies and I road-tripped down to New Orleans (thrice) to experience New Year’s Eve and/or Spring Break.  Good times had by all (thankfully this all happened in the pre-camera phone era).  Whilst there, I enjoyed local beignets, chicory coffee, and discovered Cajun Power Sauce. Yum.  I bought 4 extra bottles for the return, one to keep, the rest as gifts. By the third visit, I bought a dozen bottles, since everyone loved it and it wasn’t findable in the Pittsburgh vicinity.

Today, it’s not a big deal.  You can buy it online, from a variety of vendors. When I was a kid living in Montreal, the winter was a special time, as everybody knew someone returning from a Florida vacation, which meant a bag of fresh oranges/grapefruits.  Today, every supermarket everywhere has fresh produce, available pretty much year-round, coming in from around the world.  Today, I can order a fresh Maine lobster, have it arrive tomorrow in San Francisco packed in ice.  And it’s not just food.  With globalization, just about everything is a Google or Amazon search plus FedEx delivery away.

I was thinking about a few of my “favorite” things, and while none are mittens, most are the things I own that are more scarce than the rest.  The outdoor furniture my wife and I bought on our trip to Vietnam.  The shirts I had custom made in South Korea.  The t-shirts I order from CafePress are also fairly special to me, but no more so than the fridge magnets I pick up for my kids in every airport I visit.  All are hard(er) to find.  But the stuff I really like?  The highly limited run shirts at Threadless – until I bump into someone with the same shirt on. Sad face. My favorite t-shirt is one I bought from a UK-based semi-custom t-shirt store (pictured to your right – feeling good Billie Ray!).

I think there’s some kind of weird link between scarcity (or faux scarcity) and hipsters, who know about bizarre Japanese imports, coffee shops with no signs, and DJs who only play hidden clubs at 3am.  Think about the cache of being the first to discover some amazing artist, or having an iPhone case nobody’s seen before, or remembering that you played DrawSomething back when it was just a Facebook app.  Or knowing about Double Double Animal Style, back when it was actually a secret. Or having seen the original Hunger Games, when it was called Battle Royale.  Etc etc etc

At home we can make genuine chicory coffee imported from New Orleans.  We can find the recipe online for making Caffe Du Monde beignets.  I just ordered a bottle of Cajun Power sauce (and you should too).  But the truth is, I miss scarcity.  I miss things being hard to find.  I actually miss the feeling of missing out on being able to get something.  I also believe scarcity is power. Scarcity is the new hip.  Having “the only one” or limited production runs, etc matters.  Think about the desire for sites and services that launch “in beta”.  Think about the power of “only XX made – ever.”  I predict hyperpersonalization will be augmented with hyperlimited productions, and that will cross the lines between physical and digital goods.  And that’s something I can get excited about.

Abundance is a really great thing, except maybe when there’s just too darn much of it.

At GigaOm, a piece just ran called “It’s not about piracy, it’s about a failure to adapt” and all I can think of is how off the mark it is (and while I don’t agree with the premise, I do think it’s quite worth reading).  Here are some examples of how the industry has adapted in the past few years:

• 5 years ago, even with high speed internet, you couldn’t legally obtain *any* hollywood content streaming over the Internet.  Today you have Netflix, Redbox, Blockbuster, Amazon, Apple, VUDU, and many others doing just that.
• 5 years ago, your cable company only offered linear broadcasting.  Today, they offer huge selections of video on demand content, much of which is free.
• 5 years ago, your cable/satellite set top box was a completely locked down product.  Today, most offer programmable APIs, and have smartphone and iPad apps to control and program them directly.
• 5 years ago, your cable/satellite companies only let you watch stuff on TVs, via set top boxes.  Today, many offer TV Everywhere options streaming to your computer, phone, and iPad.  Further, some of them even offer apps to run on Smart TVs.
• 5 years ago, your Xbox was a game console.  Today it is a viable platform for end-to-end content delivery.
• 5 years ago, HBOGO could never, ever have existed.  Today it’s on a multitude of devices, and growing.

I’m not saying everything is grand and perfect and we’re all in the ultimate utopia or anything.  SOPA was a disaster, and the RIAA and hollywood lobbyists do terrible things.  It is true that getting Game of Thrones, right now, anywhere but live on HBO is impossible to do legitimately.  But I can make the same argument that getting Hunger Games outside of movie theaters is impossible to do legitimately.  Let’s face it, the amount of content you CAN get, legitimately, right now, is quite a bit.  And it’s all pretty cheap too.

As a guy who spends virtually every day talking to people out of Hollywood, device manufacturers, and cable/satellite providers, I can say with extreme confidence: these people are moving, and moving fast. They are not sitting on their laurels.  But they also aren’t abandoning their businesses and rushing to jump on board the Internet train of “everything, regardless of quality or production cost, is supposed to be free.”  There’s a great piece over on Wired today on the topic, I recommend reading it as well.

From my calculations, including the end-to-end costs of producing hardware *and* producing TV content, the TV industry alone represents well over $500 BILLION dollars.  This doesn’t include movies, music, video games, or other pieces of the puzzle.  It’s an impossibly huge amount of our economy and jobs to make and distribute the entertainment that we all enjoy for effectively meager amounts of money.

Just because we are getting used to everything we want, RIGHT NOW, doesn’t mean we are actually going to get it, RIGHT NOW.  Sometimes, as a man once said, you can’t always get what you want (when you want it).  Even my 5-year-old has that one figured out (except when it applies to chocolate).

“I’ve got it!”

“What?”

“We’ll give users points just for doing stuff they already do.  That’ll make them come back, be loyal, love us!”

“Huh?”

“Check it out.  Users will go to the stores they like, eat food they like, see the movies they like, listen to music they like.  The whole time, they’ll get points.  When they get enough points, we’ll give them a prize.”

“Oh.  What kind of prize?”

“I don’t know… how about we get a great sponsor, and then give away something awesome, like say… a Mercedez! Or maybe an iPad for a smaller reward.  Or a free vacation at a Four Seasons!”

“Let’s do it!!!”

3 months later

“I’ve got the latest sponsor!”

“Sweet, who?”

“Hyundai!”

“Oh.  Ok.  I guess that’ll fit well with last month’s Axe promo.”

3 more months later.

“Check it out – a Super 8 getaway in Sacramento!  Hello?”

So what happened here?  Seemed like a great idea at the time.  Create a simple program by which users get rewarded for the activities they already like.  It’s actually a no-brainer!

Until you apply a little game theory and a little human nature to it, that is.  Let’s play it out a little.

Prize 1, a Mercedez.  Gets lots of people excited and enticed, gets some buzz going, maybe even goes viral.  After all, who doesn’t want a sweet ride?  So the system/app/site gets loads of initial sign-ups, then users perform whatever mundane check-in/scan/picture-taking activity they are supposed to do.  Eventually, the prize is given away.  At which point, the site has a user base chock full of people.  All is well.

But then, they do a little data analysis, and find that most of the users who are playing the game/task/chore are really not of the demographic of Mercedez buyers.  New sponsors show up, eagerly, but at a slightly lesser stature.  Why?  Well, companies who would fund the giveaway of a Mercedez are trying to, for the most part, attract a demographic who might actually be able to buy one.  Instead, they reach an aspirational demographic, as well as, for lack of a better word, bottom feeders – folks who want the “free thing” whatever it might be.

I'm the king of the world. Give me a prize.

In phase 2 (figuratively speaking – it could take numerous “waves” of prize rounds for this to occur), with a lower quality item, the demographics slip worse (from a brand marketing perspective, not a judgement of people perspective).  After all, the prize moves from something highly aspirational into something accessible, likely affordable.  Which brings out the “couponeers” and everyone else who is less interested in the item per se, and just interested in winning something free.

After that, a bit of a death spiral occurs.  Prizes get shoddier, and the makeup of the game players not only slips, but becomes more highly fragmented along the way.  Eventually everything about the platform has slipped too far to recover.  And capitulation occurs.

Moral of the story: if you want to reward a user’s behavior, reward the change, not the things that stay the same.  That and if you don’t play any games whatsoever, odds are you’ll continually struggle with game theory.  Oh, that, and playing to become “mayor” is a crappy game, regardless of how you spin it.

Over the past 30 years we’ve evolved the television experience from something where everybody watched the same shows on the same channels on the same devices in the same rooms at the same time to a world where that’s almost never the case.  Today, with the exception of appointment TV, it’s such a fragmented landscape that it’s almost a challenge to find other people watching the same stuff you do.  But with all the variance in content, services, devices, location, price, etc, there’s still really only two ways people choose to watch TV.  This is a subtle, but extremely important concept to anyone in the business of changing television.

Deliberate viewing: you go to the TV with a specific piece of content in mind.  This includes live TV (“let’s watch Idol at 8pm tonight”), your DVR (“I need to watch last night’s 30 Rock”), and any VOD/OTT platform such as Comcast OnDemand, Netflix, Hulu, etc (“I’m going to watch the first season of Breaking Bad”).  We could also include a deliberate type of content in this category (“I’m going to watch a comedy” – not necessarily something you’d say out loud, but if you are in the mood for something funny, that’s a pretty deliberate concept).  I also refer to deliberate viewing as “search mode” for TV, since you will specifically search for the piece of content you want, whether by changing the channel, navigating your OnDemand menu, or going to your DVR library.

Random viewing: you go to the TV with no idea what you want to watch.  This includes simple channel surfing (“nope, next!”) as well as direct channel changing (“I wonder if anything good is on TNT now.  Maybe Shawshank or Blues Brothers??”).  It also includes browsing the OnDemand options (“I wonder if there’s anything new on Netflix?”) and even your DVR (“Maybe we recorded something we haven’t watched yet?”).  I also refer to random viewing as “browse mode” for TV, since you are just perusing lists of stuff until you find something you are content to watch.  Note the last phrasing here, as random viewing is less about the “excitement” factor of watching something deliberately, and more about the “good enough to pass the time” factor, with the potential for excitement.

Now for the cold, hard fact: any “future TV” service or product which doesn’t account for both types of TV viewing, will fail. This includes OTT services, smart TV apps, second screen apps, third screen apps, eighth screen apps, widgets, websites, gadgets, platforms, and everything else under the hood.  Again, if you cannot service both primary needs of a viewing audience, your system is a goner – unless, that is, you are specifically aiming to replace an existing component of those services (in other words – if your live TV service is designed to replace another live TV service, that’s viable, since the consumer’s ecosystem will still include whatever else it had before).

How do I back this up without cold, hard facts?  Because people don’t really change much, and TV, specifically, is not merely “another” activity up there with Angry Birds, Facebook, Pinterest, reading books, etc.  Watching TV is a very specific type of activity, one about entertainment and more importantly, escape.  Life is hard, TV lets you escape for a period of your day – why on earth would Americans spend 4-8 HOURS per day in front of it otherwise?

So if people don’t change, and people need escape (especially as they age – I’m not talking about 13 year olds here, for the most part), they need some version of deliberate and random lean back TV watching.  Could this include YouTube videos? Sure. How about an all-on demand lineup?  Doubtful.  How about a “TV is just an app” concept? Doubtful. It’s why most cord-cutting theories aren’t holding water.  It’s why #SocialTV is still mostly just a fad. It’s why most “second screen” apps are just barely gaining traction. It’s why Google TV is such a mess right now.  It’s why Apple TV is still a hobby.  Sure, these things work absolutely great for some, but absolutely don’t for most.

The future of TV involves a lot of change.  And the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Long live TV.