The Type of Companies That Publish Future Concept Videos
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
The thing about these managers are they are delivery focused, not product focused. The have no imagination, and no emotional attachment to the product. They are there to make sure the books balance and revenue increases, thats it.
These people have always frightened me a bit because they just don't understand what the people who work under them do. You can't sit in a meeting and explain a new concept to them, you have to completely design a working product and walk them through it step by step.
A verbal explanation will only confuse them, and often they get agitated... because they don't understand. I'm sure most of us have been in a meeting where every single person understands the speaker except for person who has the authority to approve or deny the work... and all they can say is "I don't get it" (and you are going holy crap 20 other people get it, I can see them rolling there eyes and smirking).
I wouldn't mind betting that these videos are a sign of delivery managers being brought into R&D departments. These videos are made so that the delivery manager can understand what the people around him are doing, and so he can explain it to the bean counters. Its a sign you have put the wrong people into positions of authority.
EDIT: I just realized that the character Veronica on "Better off Ted" is exactly what I'm describing. I recommend watching it if you've never seen it.
Interestingly enough, I recently saw a video giving a more sympathetic view of such a mind set...
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-pro...
Keep in mind that the makers of this video series have spent more time on the creative end than the production end, and the viewpoint becomes even more surprising.
The managers I'm specifically talking about are the ones who can tell you exactly how many hours or dollars have gone into any project under there watch, but if asked what Employee X is working on couldn't give you much more than a "Something to do with TV remotes".
They probably aren't bad managers, hell they might have even been specifically brought in because them team was flailing, but they are the wrong manager for the team in the long run. That vid is spot on, you have to be over everything, best everyones go to man, but not be the subject matter expert.
Concept videos are for people who don't get - as in grok - the concept already. These people should not be in positions of power.
Contrast this with the recent thread about "for a successful presentation to Jeff Bezos, delete every third paragraph - he'll fill in the gaps and still figure out on the spot what you missed and how your bleeding-edge new idea can be improved." Bezos and his kind don't need concept videos.
The irony is that concepts that intentionally ignore reality create the impression among those same people who "don't get it" that these concepts not only are grounded in reality, but are as trivial to create as the concept video makes it look.
It reminds me of this clip from Ali G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuOuxRD1Bc&feature=youtu...
My concept was this (pitched to the news agency I used to work for). I did some thinking about the next wave of devices and I thought I found a nice market that no one else had tried before.
We modify the RSS subscription interface where users can select categories for news stories they are interested, and email service already exists.
The RSS feeds already exist, and there are already staff curating the best of the best etc... they are pretty good feeds.
We then run batch scripts every morning, compile the articles into ePub format (essentially HTML), and push personalized pre-packaged news paper style format to subscribers. Target eReaders, tablets etc... turn a passive website into one that chases customers each morning.
Now this isn't difficult to implement, there is already a email service doing exactly the same thing. Basically all this service would do is wrap up HTML pages and build an index or two.
I felt like everyone in the room was the chap Ali G was talking to, they just wanted me to shut up ASAP.
Sales equivalent is
"Did you get the sale?" "Did we make our numbers?"
I remember one VP of Sales at a Mac peripheral company that didn't know at the time (1993) what a Syquest drive was when I put it on an expense report.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPKX5iuBvZg
I was 13 or 14 at the time and to me it was a bit of a "wow" moment. Not because I related to the topic (mostly this was manufacturing) but because of the interfaces and the speed of information dispersal. I remember seeing other concept videos (the famous AT&T ones, Apple's, Adobe, etc) and they were likewise inspiring.
I know reality is often the best thing to market, and Apple and the like have made reality as inspiring as a far future concept lately.
But concept videos from the late 80's -> mid 90's had a huge impact on why I'm in technology today.
Luckily it's on Youtube so I can reminisce. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOsPKjbMvxY
They're more private than the video (used only by internal staff/guests/partners), but a much bigger waste of money.
One of the features was a countertop screen that displayed information like the time and date. I asked the tour guide about how the countertop screen worked, since it didn't look or feel like an LCD - the images were much too dim and the surface felt like acrylic. She laughed and said that they hadn't known what to do, so the night before it was supposed to be finished, someone ran out to the department store and bought some translucent plastic, and then installed a video projector underneath the counter, pointing up. Sure enough, the cabinet was glued shut, so as not to ruin the illusion.
Everything else felt similar. Standard (and awesome) futuristic concepts, but executed cheaply, and not really usable beyond the staged usage scenario. It was like showing off a flying car that can only fly a foot off the ground and by the way you're not allowed to look underneath.
Now, the Surface could actually be a neat product. If it were affordable enough for any small office, or for people to use in their home, it would probably sell well. If they actually developed only one tablet platform, that scaled up from their phones to the Surface with only minor modifications to UI, they'd have a serious contender for a touch based platform.
But with something that's just a toy for companies with extra money to spend entertaining their guests, with its own APIs so that software isn't portable between it and other products, and no real significant tablet offerings to fill in the gap between the phone and the Surface, it just doesn't make that much sense. I doubt that they can be making much money on it.
These concept videos can also be useful when an ingredient brand wants to push other players in their industry forward. When company A needs company B to buy into building new types of hardware, far-out concept videos can go a long way. By publishing concept videos, firms can essentially create reference designs for the future.
Compare this to how far (and how fast) one can get by letting your purchasing power do the talking, rather than a concept video. I like concept videos, personally. They are techno-lust candy to me. If this is a big part of how they move other players in their industry forward, however, then this is an inherent weakness in their business model. Industry players respond much more quickly when you're handing them money.
This makes a lot of sense when you're Apple, and very little when you're Microsoft. Going to Samsung and saying "I'll buy 10MM units, guaranteed" isn't very fiscally responsible if you don't sell hardware.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft
I could likewise argue that Apple has "sucked the air" out of the smartphone market. That didn't stop Android from taking the lead from Apple.
The historical context in which it was a strength is gone.
It was a strength during personal computation's ramp-up to ubiquity. It was a strength while Moore's Law allowed Microsoft to confidently add features in anticipation of more Mhz for less money in the nick of time. It was a strength while the margins for hardware vendors were fat and Microsoft could benefit from their race to the bottom as they competed with each other. That is when the hardware vendors were the most innovative. It was a strength before various governments around the world grew weary of its monopoly position on operating systems. And, frankly, it was a strength back when consumers were willing to eschew quality in favor of a cheaper, safer choice.
Those days are over. Computers are ubiquitous now. We've hit the Ghz barrier. The race to the bottom is over, and hardware vendors have razor-thin margins. Their corporate structures and cultures were formed around making things cheaper. Microsoft can no longer tie products together without legal hassles. And perhaps most importantly, humans have figured out open data formats and protocols.
Biology is replete with strategies that were historically strengths until environmental changes turned them into liabilities. For well over a billion years being an anaerobe was the best game in town. Then cyanobacteria gave us photosynthesis and free oxygen, rendering anaerobes' dominance an edge-case at the dawn of life.
Microsoft's dominance is literally the edge-case at the dawn of personal computers. They are now in a position where they have to look to concept videos to inspire ossified and margin-starved cost-cutters to innovate.
Anaerobes probably thought the first air-breathers were an anomaly, too.
I also don't think the environment has changed as much as you say. We've still got numerous PC manufacturers selling "IBM compatibles" running Windows. On the phone front, we've got a similar situation, with Android in the lead. On tablets, it's likely just a matter of time before someone dethrones Apple. Really, when you talk about historical context being gone, I think you're just talking about Apple becoming so huge. And that is a big deal. I'm not sure it fundamentally changes the software-only strategy, though.
I would personally (and this is just me, and obviously has no relation to Microsoft's plans) love to see Microsoft sell hardware. I would love to buy a sleek tablet, phone, and laptop made by Microsoft. I'd love it if we sold a premium product designed exclusively in-house. But would this be a good strategic move for Microsoft? Honestly probably not.
I couldn't disagree more on that point. You ask what those details have to do with the software-only strategy? Well, they were the historical context in which that strategy allowed them to dominate. Did it matter that the hardware innovation of that era had to do with cost reduction? Yes. Did it matter that Microsoft was able to keep customers captive through closed document formats & protocols? Yes. Did it matter that Microsoft both had and leveraged a monopoly position? A thousand times yes. Did it matter that Microsoft had OEMs over a barrel and got them to sign anticompetitive distribution terms? Of course.
I would be reluctant to point to Android phones as an example of a software-only success, because that knife cuts both ways for Microsoft. How is Microsoft going to sell Windows Phone in a market where Google is dumping a free operating system as a loss-leader for potential ad-revenue? Android is just yet another way in which the historical context that allowed Microsoft's software-only strategy to thrive has changed. You have to be able to actually sell the software, after all.
Regardless, here's a great illustration of the effects of Android's software-only model:
http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan...
Why is this relevant? If the hardware innovation had been about attractiveness or energy efficiency or portability or any other factor, would Microsoft have been unable to compete? Would Windows have been non-viable if Compaq had been selling sleek aluminum boxes instead of beige boxes? Have hardware manufacturers stopped competing in price now? Last I checked, that was still a major selling point.
> Did it matter that Microsoft was able to keep customers captive through closed document formats & protocols? Yes.
This has nothing to do with the viability of the software-only strategy. Would anyone be less locked-in by Microsoft Office if it were running on a Microsoft Machine?
> Did it matter that Microsoft both had and leveraged a monopoly position? A thousand times yes. Did it matter that Microsoft had OEMs over a barrel and got them to sign anticompetitive distribution terms? Of course.
Sure, and you still haven't explained how any of this makes Microsoft's software-only business weak now. Microsoft reached their dominant position as a result of their software-only strategy. Software-only allowed them to partner with every PC maker to make sure that 95% of people would buy a Windows machine.
> I would be reluctant to point to Android phones as an example of a software-only success, because that knife cuts both ways for Microsoft. How is Microsoft going to sell Windows Phone in a market where Google is dumping a free operating system as a loss-leader for potential ad-revenue?
That's a good question, but I think the end answer will come down (partly) to price. If Windows Phone is a better experience than Android, but it costs an extra $15, will anyone care? Is anyone going to reject Windows Phone because it adds a couple percent to the price of their phone? (Especially when many Android phones are probably paying as much for patent licensing anyway.)
> Regardless, here's a great illustration of the effects of Android's software-only model:
That's an illustration of how crappy the carrier lock-in model is. Or perhaps how little Google cares about its phone users. There's no intrinsic reason Android couldn't use the Apple model and push directly to consumers. Nonetheless, Android is selling extremely well in spite of this.
This is exactly what Gruber is referring to. If crazy videos like this are being used to determine budgets, then the company is being led by fools.
Any manager that would watch this video and then declare "Yes! Build me that!" doesn't understand how products get made and should not be let anywhere near the Product team.
We are going to work on creating a set of products X, which will enable these ways of living and working Y, which in turn will spawn these associated needs Z, and here is a scenario acted out where we can make a case that this is a vision that we should go for. When designing our products, this video is the high level reference point for the product world we are moving towards.
In any case, I wouldn't think too much about it. MS is a really big company, and they probably pay for something like that from their pocket change. Whatever.
Also I like reading science fiction, and isn't a video like that also a kind of science fiction?
I didn't think the video was "creepy", but it made me think: it showed essentially how people are being pushed from location to location by their devices. I guess that is an interpolation of the life of office workers today, who are dominated by Outlook. But it struck me that in the end humans might become merely processes executing the program their devices and management software sets up for them. I doubt that is what humans really desire, so I suppose MS got it wrong in the video. But it was sufficient to evoke some thoughts.
2) Who cares? The people who voted for it on HN maybe? What part of "social news website" don't you understand? (rhetorical question: the "social" part of course)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8
The company that brought it to me wasn't AT&T.
Worse yet, concept videos make it all too easy to fall into the trap of working to make a product that looks cool in a demo but in reality is either hugely impractical to make or use or simply not very useful. For example, you could make a demo video of people commuting to and from work via rocket powered skateboard. And it would look awesome, and after watching the video everyone would want to commute to work via rocket powered skateboard. But in reality it's not practical, and possibly not even as fun as it may seem (after the first 100 times the novelty would wear off, and then you're just riding a death trap and getting rained on and stuck in rocket-powered-skateboard traffic ... ok, it still sounds awesome, nevertheless...).
When you skip so many intermediate steps you can generate a false sense of what's possible, or even mislead yourself on what you're working on. Eventually smartphones are going to have no bezel and be super thin, so what? That's cool, but what does it have to do with what you are doing in the mean time to make smartphones better? It's easy to make a demo about voice control but the hard part is making it work in the here and now, how do you do that?
Since that video they have released or announced two products with the metro interface (Windows 8 & Windows Phone 7). Microsoft also has announced a version of the metro interface for the game console (Xbox 360). The part of the video where the guy takes a photo of the display and transfers it to a page is already possible in a less exciting capacity on WP. Take a photo of something, and it instantly shows up on your skydrive account. The children communicating through the wall display is a possibility today, but less impressive, with the use of a Kinect and a projector/screen. Microsoft actually has developed wall displays in their research division. They also announced yesterday that they will be partnering with a bunch of companies to provide the Kinect in enterprise environments.
Every good microsoft product already has implementations of an idea that is in their concept videos. The average person doesn't go watch their concept videos, so it has no negative effect on their image. Also, thinking of the future does not have to be a distraction from the present. Why is Apple doing better than Microsoft with consumers? They are not associated with viruses, IT departments, ugly products, and office suites. Microsoft = Painful & Not-Cool. Apple also gives their employees more freedom and they push products out when the market is ready, but only when they are ready for them. If Windows Phone came out instead of the iPhone, when it was announced and released, WP would have failed completely.
You say that they are "important" but you don't say how or why - you're listing a bunch of stuff MS has done since/alongside the video. But I don't see where the proof is that a video like this was necessary.
It's also an inspiration for the various design challenges/competitions that some of those companies do.
Concept videos usually aren't realistic, or even preferable, since they have to convey what the technology can do simply through video. In reality, it'd probably be more discrete and easier to use. The advantage concept videos have is that they simply demonstrate possible uses of possible technology.
That triggers a few questions if you're creative: Is this possible to achieve with today's technology? What problems would things demonstrated in the video solve? Is it possible to solve the same problems, or sub-problems, with today's technology? Can I develop this concept further, take it in a more useful/fun/futuristic direction?
They haven't introduced anything new, they've taken ideas that have been around forever and made some high-quality versions of them. Big deal. How excited can you get about that?
Meanwhile, Microsoft gives us things like Kinect which I find much, much more compelling than anything Apple's ever come up with.
I don't think that technology demos and concept videos are ill-founded in general, but I certainly agree that they can be. Microsoft Surface was a technology demo for quite a while, then it became a product... and then almost nobody bought it. It still looks cool. But while Microsoft used multitouch to build a cool thing that nobody uses, Apple used multitouch to change the world millions of devices at a time.
Then again, Kinect started life as a technology demo, too. And now it's a technology demo that's in the living rooms of millions of people. Without the demo, it would probably have been difficult to gather the resources to produce such a transformative product, even if it did get greenlit as a response to the Wii.
So I think it's more fair to say that they can be good or bad, and I think this applies to concept videos too.
If they have a plan of attack for the stuff in that MS concept video and the video helps them shepherd the resources to actually build it, then I think it's a good thing as long as it's something people actually want. You're right that there's a lot of fluff in there like the super thin bezel-free phones, but there's also plenty of things in there about embedding smarter context (Siri takes a modest step in this direction, and it's a great one), simplifying communications, and pulling different user interaction paradigms together so that it's not just "X or Y or Z" but all of the above, focusing on whichever one or two are the most useful at the moment. If MS can use this video as marching orders, and deliver products that do that, we all win.
A tech demo is a demo. It's real. You can use it, you can see how well it works, and you can get a feel for whether it can be developed into something real or not. Making a tech demo is an exercise in putting your money where your mouth is.
A concept video, in contrast, is just a bunch of special effects. It exists free of any constraints. You can make a concept video for something which is impossible to make--time machines, faster-than-light spaceships, cars that run on water.
I disagree. If anything a concept video shows you where your constraints are. Concept videos aren't so effective for showing you what you can do -- but they are effective for pointing out what you're NOT thinking about (where you have effectively constrained yourself w/o knowing it).
For example, would a 2005 concept video show people using a stylus on a tablet like device? I suspect quite possibly. An astute concept video watcher would question that. And hopefully open a conversation about it in a way you can't do with a tech demo (because people can shoot back in a tech demo that you need a stylus for a resistive display and capacitive is too expensive).
There are problems with concept videos, though. Mostly, they seem like a sign of poor leadership.
Concept videos aren't a plan. They are a sales pitch. There's only three reasons I can imagine you would need a marketing campaign (not just an elevator pitch and in-depth memo) for your plan - your leadership doesn't buy it, or your staff don't buy it, or there's infighting that is getting resolved internal marketeering. OK, maybe you need to excite the general public, but I doubt it.
If Steve Ballmer (or his board) doesn't buy his own lieutenants' plans, it's a problem. If the engineers in MS need to be sold on the plan, it's a problem. And if executives are spending money and time lobbying Ballmer for more resources, that's expected in a big company, but if they think that slick videos are the way to go then things are getting out of hand.
MS should be killing internal marketing, both the demand (dummy management not listening) and the supply (encouraging slick middle managers who think their job is to acquire more resources at all costs). There's various ways to do this (mostly techniques known as "communicating", "making hard decisions at the top", and "not putting up with the guys who try to pull this shit"). But first they should recognise that there's a problem.
I love when companies do this kind of concept video, and if anything, I think these don't look far enough in the future. I've never seen these as predictions of the future. More like sci-fi vignettes. I think it's great that big tech companies allot resources to look beyond the next product, out to the horizon of imagination and inspiration.
Gruber argues that this is lost attention on the Windows phone, but is it really? Would there be conversations about the video and would it have this type of debate and conversation about a video about the Windows phone?
How does one criticize both science fiction that isn't daring enough, not inspiring enough, and corporate future concept videos that are too futuristic and unrealistic? Is it that both sit in the unimaginative future, or is it insulting when a company attempts to claim credit for generic futuristic visions?
I think if you take a look at most big tech companies they have these visions, will talk about it, put it in slideware, and slip some into their advertising. Making a video is taking it one more step. The videos are probably not for the HN crowd, but instead those that haven't seen or thought of similar things and have now painted that company as the innovator.
There's some value in Microsoft's video, but given the unnecessary production costs, acting, etc., all of which is divorced from the engineering team[1], it sounds like their time would be better spent taking an approach more like BMW's.
BMW Page on the GINA: http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/AllBMWs/ConceptVehicl...
For all I know he could be 100% right about this (I'm not claiming he's wrong), but he just asserts it without giving any explanation or justification.
They would use Shockwave professionally to visualize the interactions of a business workflow. It was really a animated use case when you get right down to it. They had a lot of success and it was easy to get people onboard with a new process because they could "see it". Really not sure what happened to them.
I can see using a concept video like this as an internal "Does this make sense?" and "Prototype Modeling", but I am at a loss as to why you would release it the public. You aren't selling it now so you cannot profit off it, and various critics will point out the flaws in usage inside the video. Plus, Gruber is right, it does take away headlines that could be about your now and selling. The worst part is having a obviously struggling and clueless competitor decide they too need a video.
Yes there are bad videos and they may have an unclear purpose but I think it is all about the context of the video.
Either way, I think there's tremendous value in being able to sell (or get a verbal commitment of a sale) a product before you have to build it. Just make sure you can build it.
EDIT: Here's the thread where Drew showed Dropbox to HN. Video is long gone though... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Cars or computers or phones, stop wasting time giving us lofty promises and prototypes of a future that won't happen, give us tangible purchaseable incremental and revolutionary improvements of real products NOW.
Doesn't seem they are doing too well now either? Nokia Windows Morph phone 7 anyone?