As I kept hearing more and more about  ”Android’s Dominance” I was seeing quite the opposite in the real-world. I operate and assist clients with a number of sites and, as a result, I have visibility into tracking data for many sites. What that information showed, in spot samples, was overwhelming iOS dominance and, in particular, iPhone dominance. It was glaring. Something didn’t add up.

I was also seeing a staggering shift away from desktop/laptop computers (Windows and Mac) to mobile devices, particularly over the past six months.

So I decided to look at the data more closely to see if I could find any indications of this supposed “Android Dominance” and to see how real this apparent shift to mobile is.

Below I present two info-graphics. Both are ”how people accessed the web.” The first is from early 2010 and the other is basically now, very current data (the first 10 weeks or so of 2012).

How People Access The Web 2010 - © Copyright telEvolution, Inc.

How People Access The Web 2012 - © Copyright telEvolution, Inc.

Wow!

I first put together the 2012 chart. Once I had that in hand, in this visual form, I found myself compelled to look back to how much things had changed. So I put together the 2010 chart, thinking 2010 is not that long ago. The iPad was out at that time. iPhone had been out for two years.

To say I was surprised by the shift from 2010 to 2012 would be a colossal understatement.

In terms of the 2012 picture, when you see it this way, the so-called dominance of Android is put in more realistic perspective. Also obvious is the Android fragmentation.

At the same time it shows, rather dramatically, just how dominant Apple is in the overall mobile space and, in particular, iPhone. That iPhone pie slice in the 2012 info-graphic is just staggering, visually. Almost as dramatic, visually, is the fragmentation of the Android segment. And that 42% figure is not just 42% of iOS but actually 42% of the entire mobile space! Nothing else comes even close to that dominance. People may well be buying Android devices, but they are clearly using their iPhones.

If you’re wondering, the 0.3% “All Other” segment is things like game consoles, Playstation, Wii, Google TV, connected TVs etc. The only reason that even gets a label is because I was surprised how small that segment was. People watch Netflix on those boxes, but they apparently don’t use them to surf the web very much.

It’s also kind of interesting, but probably not all that meaningful, that the Mac pie stayed about the same size overall between 2010 and 2012, about 7%-8% of the total. The dramatic desktop decrease is in the Windows segment, dropping from about 87% of all accesses in 2010 to just 38% in 2012.

Another side note is how, even in the much larger 2012 mobile pie, Blackberry, Nokia, and Windows Phone, which may have actually grown in terms of raw numbers over this period, are still so visually insignificant that they don’t even get a label in the chart.

Far beyond the real Android story, Google has to be worried even more about the decline in the desktop pie, given that according to their own SEC filings, 96% of their revenue comes from web browser clicks – and people aren’t clicking those ads on their mobile devices. Google’s entire revenue model falls apart on mobile and so far, they’ve had no answer for that. Perhaps this is one reason they are shifting gears so much toward Google+ which seems to me to be chasing a 2002 dream.

I’ll stand by this dataset as a good representation of the net at large, although it is slanted toward the English speaking net. This is the aggregate of a number of popular and general sites. If you look at one focused niche site, it might vary a bit from the above, depending on how narrow the site is, but if you look at enough varied sites, I’m certain you’ll find something that looks a lot like the above.

The take-away for me is that not only are we headed into a mobile future, but we are headed, for better or worse, into an Apple future, and we better get used to it. If you take the Mac and iOS combined, Apple now owns 45% of the surfing experience, already surpassing Microsoft Windows at 38% – and it’s only getting worse for Windows, as iPad sales continue to steamroll PCs. This “Android Dominance” meme is utter fiction and wishful thinking. Windows Phone? Get real. Unless you’re fine playing in a niche space, if you’re building a product or service and it isn’t designed with mobile first, it’s time to re-think it – throw out your plans and start over. I’m dead serious. What’s more, if it doesn’t thrive in an Apple-dominated mobile ecosystem, it’s also time to go back to the drawing board.

Meta: If you use these graphics, please give credit.

I’ve already seen a number of sites listing some of the gadgets at the expo. In my usual contrary style, let me point out a few that some people are all excited about but that I see as dead ends:

• Flash Drives.
  Really? This is cool? At $100 or more? I don’t get it.
• Scosche myTrek
  Isn’t this just a $130 $3 pedometer? I know, it’s not really, but still.
• TV Remote app/gadgets
  This sounds so cool, but think about it. The iPhone makes a terrible remote because it has no tactile feedback. For a small number of functions, it might be possible to have a simple gesture based UI, but I think in real life this is nowhere near as cool as it seems at first glance.

I did buy the Blue Yeti Pro USB and analog XLR microphone ($199 show price), despite some mixed reviews on Amazon. Hopefully it will meet my expectations for a home studio mic that I can also take with me and use with my Macbook Pro.

UPDATE: After struggling for quite a while, reading about and trying all sorts of things to fix the problems, I couldn’t get the Yeti Pro to work properly. I couldn’t get it to work AT ALL in analog mode. Not wanting to mess around with it anymore, I have been trying to return it and get my money back and Blue has been absolutely horrendous to work with and refusing to refund my money. DO NOT DEAL WITH THESE PEOPLE.

And I love the Discovery Bay Atari Arcade for iPad ($59.95) with the “Atari’s Greatest Hits” app. But be advised, the games are $0.99 each or $9.99 for all 99 available old-school Atari arcade games.

Another interesting piece of hardware is the D1 DAC (digital to audio converter) from Audioengine. I have a Mac Mini that is dedicated to my living room TV entertainment setup but at $169 I need to do a bit more research to see if the improvement in sound quality is really that dramatic. It is a really solid and attractive bit of hardware though.

There was a lot of other stuff at Macworld | iWorld like navigation, home automation, a nice portable projector from Epson ($800) and a whole bunch of music production apps and hardware – oh, and a bazillion cases, screen protectors, and other such, of course

I’m going, of course. I’ll report here if anything grabs me.

One could say this is a problem for the future, but I know people personally that are ready for the computerless, iPad-only world today – they can do everything they want to do on their iPad.  In fact, that’s exactly what they do. The laptop or desktop gathers dust, until they need to sync something or perform an update to the iPad.  In practice, these folks usually also have an iPhone or iPod for which they also must use the “real computer” to sync.

The only app they run on the computer is iTunes. Yet they still must suffer all the babysitting and housekeeping that goes with keeping a full Mac or PC functioning: patches, drivers, viruses, malware, system updates etc. – all just to run iTunes. Their $1,000 PC has become nothing more than a “syncing station.”

This is also a show-stopper for recommending the iPad as a replacement for a wearing-out PC – even for someone who is  a perfect candidate for it.  If they have to buy a new PC , and “maintain” it, with all the support and admin hassles that go with that, even if only in order to setup, sync, and update the iPad, then iPad is essentially a non starter as a “replacement” option.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider when buying an iPad is the USB cable. It must be connected to a PC to get iPad going and to sync/update. In the name of truth in advertising, Apple’s marketing should show the iPad connected by wire to a PC because that’s the reality a buyer is faced with.

Apple, this is not a problem for some distant future. That future is here already. Please tell me when I can suggest the iPad to these users so they can get off the Windows/Mac Admin treadmill.

What’s next? Will Apple will start adding secret hidden “blacklists” to Safari too so competitors cannot even develop web-based versions of their apps?

Yeah, I have Intel Macs; but I also have a number of PowerPC Macs, including my  main laptop, that work just fine. I’d like to be able to use the latest software on these machines too, but now I’m rev-locked.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It feels like blackmail. It doesn’t feel very “Green” throwing away a working machine that is otherwise adequate, but no longer compatible (with Apple’s business model).

Nokia is playing a hardware one-upsmanship game, while Apple has swooped in on the flank and utterly redefined the handset landscape.

And the really bad news for Nokia is that even if they are able to realize they are playing the wrong game, they are in no position to be any good at the new game that Apple has created. Apple knows how to build good-enough hardware.  More importantly, they know how to market it and they have their own distribution – all things out of Nokia’s reach. And the nail in the coffin? The App Store. Not only do they not have one, but Nokia doesn’t own enough of the parts to create one, nor do they have the expertise for operating one.

Nokia’s numbers will continue to slide as the DIY niche continues to narrow. I’m not smart enough to know how to get them out of this situation, but I can make one suggestion: Make your platform the easiest to build for. Get rid of “Symbian Signed” and let a third-party app marketplace thrive. Don’t make it easier to get certs – get rid of certs entirely! This is one place Nokia can immediately leapfrog Apple – not follow, but lead.  Get rid of approval and let anybody write code and let the market, the community, rate the apps, and let end-users decide which ones they want to install based those community ratings.

No matter how often [Apple] drops the ball with a service (MobileMe) or product (3G Apple iPhone) that doesn’t work, batteries (iPod Nano, MacBook) that over-heat or slashing prices only a few months a product has been released (original iPhone), Apple somehow manages to stay out of trouble.

And

If Microsoft screwed up as badly, the cacophony would be overwhelming with people calling for boycotts and Steve Ballmer’s head.

For one thing, we have to bear in mind that, while Apple’s market share has been increasing, Microsoft is still the 800-pound gorilla, with at least a 90 percent market share. Microsoft is the incumbent. Apple is the upstart. Apple represents the alternative. And, as such, they probably do get cut more slack.

People have a tendency to cheer for the underdog. It’s not as “cool” to endorse the favorite.

And then there’s the fact that Microsoft has not given anybody much to cheer about in a long time. Apple really has produced some impressive innovations over the past eight years: iPod/iTunes, Mac OS X, iPhone. In the mean time, Microsoft has given us more bloated software and disasters like .NET (does anybody even talk about that anymore? – what developer that built on that platform doesn’t regret it now?).

Name any Web 2.0 company and they are not using any Microsoft tools. Its all open source and Mac with perhaps some Flash – Does anybody really think SIlverlight is going anywhere? Apple represents the future, Microsoft the past. Microsoft is John McCain and Apple is Barak Obama. It’s not cool to campaign for McCain… but like Microsoft, he still might win – he just won’t be “cool” in the process.

I believe an historic day passed us by last week. Sure, Apple opening up the iPhone App Store received some press, but I haven’t yet read anything that really “gets” the significance of this event. There’s all kinds of moaning and groaning about the quality of apps, the price etc. and while there may be truth to these gripes, the fact most people are missing is that, unless Apple screws it up in some big way, the world changed last week.

I consider it as potentially significant as the effect the introduction of WWW and Mosaic had on the Internet. Last week, Apple changed everything about the mobile phone ecosystem and I don’t think very many people noticed – yet. That world will never be the same, just like the Internet was never the same after HTTP.

The other players, whether device makers or carriers, are not even on the same planet – it seems like they aren’t even aware of the situation. They aren’t even asking the right question, to say nothing of having the right answer. There are hundreds of millions of mobile phones with Java on them – and nobody knows it. Most people have no idea how to buy anything for their phone beyond ringtones (if they even know how to do that). Their phones probably have the capability to run apps – but there is no place to get them. Well, or say in the case of Symbian phones, there are too many places to get them.

Apple is changing all that with the iPhone store. And gripe all you want about the warts of the current apps or the prices or whatever, all that mises the point. Ordinary people now know how to obtain apps (free or otherwise), how to install them – perhaps more significantly, the entire idea of adding apps to a phone is now “normal” – it’s now part of the collective consciousness.

And developers have a place to put them, not “yet another place”, but the place, the one and only place. I always said iPhone was about iTunes from the start.

Of course this is about distribution and execution – Apple has the right capabilities to create this “perfect storm”. Unlike carriers, Apple knows how to build and manage software and services (can you say iTunes?). Unlike other device makers, Apple has their own distribution and marketing – they don’t need to rely on the carriers to market their device.

The future of Mobile is now Apple’s to lose and the rest of the mobile space better be worried.

I have been working on an elaborate post about my uses of the Mac Mini for a while, but now I’m deciding to just go ahead and blurt it out, in short and sweet form.

I have a “lab” of sorts where I test a lot of things on different OS platforms. Years ago, it consisted of several basic “tower” PCs running various versions of Linux and Windows. Those took up a lot of space, consumed a lot of power, and made a lot of heat. A few years ago I downsized to Mini-ITX platforms to save space and heat/energy.

Well a few months ago, I took this even further and configured a Mac Mini for the role:

Headless Mac Mini VMWARE Fusion server

I expected this to take quite a fair bit of work and time. It turns out I got all the OSs installed in virtual machines and all the software running in the VMs in just a few hours. I was impressed with both Mac OS X 10.5 and VMWARE. Now I’ve gone from five Mini ITX PC boxes, to one Mac Mini running several virtual machines under VMWARE Fusion. And that still leaves the Mac Mini itself available for whatever I wish. The box is running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which now has better support for headless operation. The Mac Mini has no keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached, and lives happily tucked away in a closet.

The Mac Mini may not be all that green on paper, but it is far greener than the five systems it’s replacing. There is way less heat, and MUCH less power being consumed and it’s actually more convenient and more usable too.

In terms of space savings, it’s tremendous. Even with the smallish Mini ITX machines, we were still talking about something the size of a trash compactor or a small fridge. Whereas the Mac Mini would easily fit inside a single one of the Mini ITX boxes, with room to spare.

The VMWARE virtual machines are running some rather treacherous apps too and OS variants, and it all works. Apple has created more than a nifty desktop OS with Mac OS X. It turns out to be a pretty darned capable headless server virtualization platform too. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the tricks involved:

• You’ll need to attach the Mac Mini to a keyboard, mouse, and display to get it set up the first time. Be sure to uncheck the “Open Bluetooth Setup Assistant at startup when no input device is present” option in the Bluetooth System Preferences, or every time your headless Mac boots it’s going to complain that it doesn’t have a keyboard or mouse.
• Because this machine is a 24/7 server, I turn off Sleep in the Energy Saver control panel.
• Add any VMWARE virtual machines that you want to start automatically when the Mac boots to the “System Preferences > Accounts > username > Login Items” for the account and set that account to “Automatically log in” at boot (under “System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options > Automatically log in as:”).
• I run the Vine Server VNC server on the Mac Mini to enable any VNC client to remotely view or control the machine. This must also be added to the “Login Items” so it starts automatically when the machine boots.
• I use Chicken of the VNC (and ssh) to remotely control the Mac Mini from other Macs. Linux or Windows VNC clients can also be used to remotely control the Mac Mini and that works fine too (it’s weird to see a Mac OS GUI on Windows).

While I was at it, in the native OS X system of the Mac Mini, I activated the Apache 2 install that comes with Mac OS X 10.5 along with MySQL server and a WordPress install for good measure.

This all works very well. The only issue so far has been that some major OS updates kill the “headless” operation here because they pop up a dialog during the boot, BEFORE the user is logged in and therefore BEFORE the Vine VNC server is started, meaning no remote access. This sucks because in those cases I have to hook up a monitor/keyboard/mouse just to click ‘ok’ to let the update finish and let the machine reboot. This has only happened with one update so far, so it is an annoyance I can live with, but it would be nice if the mac update process eventually just timed out and completed the update unattended.

Update: July 2011. Vine VNC server is no longer needed and I simply use the “screen sharing” that is native to Snow Leopard now. This has the added benefit that Mac OS X updates can be done remotely now much easier. Also, I have abandoned VMWare due to the cost of updating all the time and simply use the free VirtualBox now. Unfortunately there is no easy way to automatically start the VirtualBox VM containers at boot – in my case, this has not been a major issue, but it could be a problem in a datacenter server type environment.