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The Silent Room Tone

I didn't actually get to see the now infamous Mark Zuckerberg interview yesterday at SXSW, but having read through about six thousand blog posts about it, I feel as though I've seen it. And, naturally, I have some thoughts about what happened, some of which connect to what happened the day before when I was on the same stage talking with Henry Jenkins.

Most accounts of the interview have talked about the role that the Twitter "back channel" played in the event. Clearly it was pivotal, and I think it sheds some interesting light on how face-to-face group events are changing thanks to communication tools like Twitter. 

I probably did more than fifty public appearances last year in front of crowds -- speeches, conversations, interviews, panel discussions, etc. And every time I get up there, the primary thing I'm thinking about -- more than the words themselves, most of which I've said before in roughly the same sequence -- is the room tone. In the words of our commander in chief: is the audience with me or against me? Are they having fun? Are they confused? Am I talking at too technical a level? Am I being condescending and talking down?

This can be very hard to gauge, because the information channels that flow back from an audience to a speaker are very narrow ones. An audience enraptured by a fascinating story is, most of the time, indistinguishable from an audience slumbering at a ponderous lecture. You can't read facial expressions in that environment, so all you have to go on is the sound, and the sound in both those cases is silence.

This is the main reason that I compulsively make jokes when I'm in front of a crowd. Not because I'm a ham (though that's no doubt part of it) and not even because the audience likes to laugh. The big reason to make jokes is because they're the best way to get a quick read on the collective mind of the group you're talking to. The volume of the laugh is important, but so is the lag time. You can tell immediately if they're on your side, and if they're really following what you're saying, by how quickly the crowd responds to your jokes.  And in doing so you open up the channels of information flowing back to you from the audience. If they're slow, you know you have to adjust, wake them up a little. If they're quick, you know you've got their attention.

In our talk on Saturday, Henry took another approach that had the same effect: he had a couple of "rallying cry" lines that set up the audience to murmur or applaud in endorsement. (A bunch were about Obama.) That's a great approach if you can pull it off; you really know you have your crowd if they're clapping mid-conversation.

But most of the time the crowd is quiet and unknowable. The room tone is silent. The one advantage you have as a speaker is that this unknowability extends into the crowd itself. Each individual might be sitting there quietly steaming at the absurdity of your comments, but unless they start openly hissing at you, they have no way of realizing that all of their neighbors are feeling the same hostile sentiments. And because people are more inclined to chuckle, laugh, or clap than they are to boo or hiss, the public signals that flow back to the center stage tend to be positive or indifferent, and not openly negative.

But backchannels like Twitter change all that. When enough audience members connect with each other, a consensus room tone can quickly form, with each member's personal outrage amplified silently by his or her neighbors'. Onstage, of course, you see and hear none of this. All you know is that the crowd is quiet Until something tips, and they start vocalizing as a group, having been empowered by the backchannel consensus.

And that's the irony of it: you have a thunderous room tone that is audible to everyone in the room except the people on the stage.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I think the overall system is on the whole better than the traditional lecture information channels. But I also think it has its quirks and points where it fails outright -- and given all that, Sarah Lacy probably had a case when she said she had a hard job up there. But maybe by thinking these issues through we can make it easier next time around.

Games and the iPhone

Two quick thoughts on the iPhone announcement today:

First, an open question: does this mean the only way you can do over-the-air syncing of calendar events and contacts (a feature I really, really want) is by connecting to an Exchange server? That would be pretty intense if Apple limited a crucial feature exclusively to users of a Microsoft product. Shouldn't iCal and Google Calendar users be first in line?

Second, I think by far the most important news today came in the form of those game demos. We knew the SDK was coming; we knew that some kind of enterprise support was coming. But you watched those games -- particularly with the accelerometer support -- and it was suddenly clear that the iPhone platform is potentially a serious competitor to the DS and the PSP. That's a whole new industry that Apple has NEVER seriously tried to be competitive in, but the touch and accelerometer hardware/software built into the iPhone means that they are -- literally overnight -- the Wii of the handheld gaming market: a platform where the controller innovation changes all the rules.

Apple Opens Up

It struck me yesterday reading Steve Jobs' personal note about plans for third-party apps on the iPhone that the most telling thing about the announcement was the opening five-word phrase:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

Let me just say it. What we're starting to see here (and of course in the anti-DRM letter from earlier this year) is a pretty significant shift in Jobs' public relations strategy, in that he seems to have recognized that there are limits to secrecy. Yes, some developments are best kept under wraps for as long as possible -- like the iPhone or the Intel switch -- contrary to all the principles of Web 2.0 openness and transparency. But with other decisions, you're sometimes much better off going public early, and exposing some of your thought process when you do. I had been thinking about posting something over the past week or two about the iPhone SDK issue, arguing that if Apple indeed was planning on opening up the platform sometime in the nearish future, there was absolutely no reason not to announce those plans -- unlike release specs for, say, the iPhone, keeping the SDK plans secret wasn't a competitive advantage in any sense, and it was bringing on a ton of ill will from people who would otherwise be iPhone fanatics.

But as it turns out, I didn't need to write that post, because Jobs decided to go public with Apple's plans, even if they weren't fully-formed. That suggests to me that he's still evolving as a CEO and as a PR wizard, still capable of adapting to new situations -- yet another reason for Apple's competitors to be nervous.

Here's my big question, though: I wonder whether Apple had the SDK as part of its plans all along, and merely changed its mind about whether to go public with it in response to the criticism -- or were they truly debating the merits of opening up the platform, and thus reluctant to say anything until they were 100% sure of their plans?

Clear Evidence That Apple Reads This Blog Religiously

Today on Daring Fireball:

The screenshots that show you how to check your iPhone’s serial number are based on the as-yet-unreleased 1.1.1 version of the OS. (The current release version is 1.0.2; no idea what happened to 1.1.0.) One change is an additional setting under General for “Home Button”; my guess is that it’ll let you select an action for double-clicking. The iPod Touch uses a double-click of the Home button to bring up music player controls.

Me, a few days after the iPhone came out:

So here's my solution: double clicking the home button automatically takes you to the phone favorites screen.

Thanks, Apple.

How To Make The iPhone More Of A Phone

So the one mild criticism I have about the iPhone thus far is that the phone functionality isn't quite as front-and-center as you'd like it to be. Remember Jobs' line about "calling someone is the killer app"? Well, I'm not quite sure they've got it exactly right yet. But I have an idea for an easy improvement that would really make a difference.

Here's the problem. If I was last using a non-Phone application, these are the taps it takes it takes me to call my wife:

1. push the home button to wake the iPhone up
2. "slide to unlock" on the screen
3. push the home button again to get back to the main application screen
4. tap the phone icon
5. tap "favorites"
6. tap my wife's name

On my old Nokia, I could generally get to my wife's number (assuming it was recently dialed) in 3-4 steps, even if I'd left the phone running the Gmail app. My gut is that 6 steps is asking a bit too much for calls you make ten or twenty times a day to your core group.

So here's my solution: double clicking the home button automatically takes you to the phone favorites screen.

If the phone is off, you'll still have to do the "slide to unlock" move, but even then you'll be always be three taps away from your top ten favorites. And if you're working in another application, two taps will do it (counting the double-click as one gesture.)

I'm wondering if there's a reason Apple didn't allow double-clicking of the home button -- the double tap is a pretty key element of the multitouch UI.

Thoughts?

Here's one I wouldn't have predicted in advance: the iPhone makes me want to take a train somewhere. People who have above ground mass transit commutes are going to be psyched. Surfing, checking mail, listening to music, picking up a few calls -- all without lugging out a big laptop, or switching back and forth between the Treo and the iPod.

I'd like to think that the iPhone will lead to widespread adoption of mass transit. But I suspect it'll just lead to a widespread adoption of driving while trying to read Digg on your iPhone.

Apple: Consumer Unfriendly

What a bizarre Joe Nocera Times piece about the lack of a removable battery in the iPhone. The key question:

One thing I wanted to know was why Apple had made a cellphone without a removable battery in the first place; it seemed like such an extreme act of consumer unfriendliness.

Why indeed? Hey, wait, here's one answer, quoted a few graphs later:

“The real issue is that Steve and Jonathan Ive” — Apple’s design chief — “have decided to emphasize sexiness and a different basic experience” over such ho-hum consumer needs as a replaceable battery. He was convinced that it was primarily a design issue; indeed, he thinks Apple is using a lithium polymer battery in the iPhone, which can be stretched into different shapes — and thus can be tucked into an extremely thin space.

How ludicrous and superficial -- not to mention consumer unfriendly -- to think that people might like a smartphone that's signficantly lighter and thinner than the competition!

According to Nocera's calculations, the iPhone battery might run out after two years of use, thus potentially requiring that it be sent back to Apple for replacement. Obviously, Apple made the decision that consumers would much rather have a slimmer phone for 730 straight days, and then have to part with it for a few days to get a new battery. I certainly would happily make that tradeoff. What's so hard to understand?

Two Hours With The iPhone

So I have an iPhone. (No surprise there, right?) Tried to be clever and buy at the downtown Brooklyn AT&T store, which was a nightmare and limited me to only one phone. Came home and my wife was so irritated at my having the only iPhone in the house that I got back into a cab and went into Soho at about 10:30, where I bought a second phone at the Apple Store in maybe 45 seconds.

First impressions after an hour or two of playing (and traveling in a cab) with it. Edge speeds right now are much better than I thought they'd be. Typing may be a little harder, though I'm still getting used to it. The landscape mode keyboard is SO much easier -- why is it only available when you're typing a URL?

But on the whole, my gut is that this going to turn out to be the best first-gen product Apple has ever released. It really is that good.

The thing that really struck me riding in the cab tonight was how foolish the consumers-don't-like-convergence naysayers have been. I'd been thinking of the iPhone convergence as primarily a pocket real estate matter: I'd be able to consolidate music and phone into a single device, thus leaving one whole pocket free.

But I hadn't really thought about convergence as a media experience. I got a little glimpse of that future riding in the cab tonight: I'm listening to a song, and checking email and surfing around a little, knowing full well that if someone calls me, there will be no fumbling around to find the phone, or switching from browser mode, or turning down the music, or pulling off my headphones -- the music just automatically fades out, and I just hit "answer" on the screen and start talking. And the second the call ends, I'm back reading email and the song starts up right where it left off. Pretty sweet.

Update The Next Day: EDGE speeds are way faster than I was expecting, in Brooklyn at least. Loaded up the front door of kottke.org in about 12 seconds while standing in the Long Meadow in Prospect Park. And while I was there, I read this excellent line from Jason, which is completely true for me as well:

After fiddling with it for an hour, I know how to work the iPhone better than the Nokia I had for the past 2 years, even though the Nokia has far less capabilities.

AppleTV and HDTV

So my AppleTV arrived this morning and of course I dropped everything to spend an hour or two setting it up and messing around. First quick impression: it's a lovely product, and absolutely fills an important hole in our media system. And the Expanded Front Row UI is fantastic.

But I have to say, I'm surprised they're not selling TV shows and Movies in 720P HD format and surround sound. I've got to believe they're coming, but why not have them in sync with the launch? Yes, consumers happily took a hit in audio quality in embracing their iPods and the iTunes Music Store for music, but by definition the people who have bought AppleTV have invested in an HDTV; they're people who CARE about image quality. (And I think most of us would agree that the difference between normal television and HD is much more pronounced than the difference between CD quality and the default encoding of iTunes -- to the lay ear/eye at least.)

Same goes for surround sound. People who bothered to install center and rear channel speakers are not going to give up Netflix for dual-channel, slightly less-than-DVD quality sound.

As I said, I can't believe they won't be offering this soon. And if they don't, it's still worth it to me as an iTunes/iPhoto jukebox, and a way to watch shows I didn't grab with the DVR. But I don't understand why they're not embracing real HD on day one.

Updated 3/23 9:07 AM: Better news on the HDTV front. It's super easy to get your own HD video playing through AppleTV. Last year I bought an HDTV camera for home movies of the kids, and ever since we got it I've been frustrated by how hard it is to get that video onto our TV. You can now edit in HD quality in iMovie, but if you want to put it on the big screen, you have to burn it to the lower-res DVD format. (It's hard even to see HD quality on your mac itself, since iMovie previews in some kind of compressed format as well.)

But with AppleTV, it's simple. You go into export mode in iMovie, select Export to AppleTV, wait a while, and then drag the resulting file into iTunes. If you've set AppleTV up to stream from that computer, the 720p movie you've made will be available in the Movies menu, and you can stream it flawlessly onto your main TV.

Very cool.

Multitouch Everywhere!

Jay Haynes pointed me to a wild piece on Ars about the future of Pro Tools, citing the latest batch of Apple rumors. The piece is mostly focused on Apple's plans for its music creation software, but boy does it bury the lede:

Basically the rumor is this: There will be no Logic 8. The successor to Logic 7 will have a new name. The unnamed application will be 10.5 only and will work with a new line of touch sensitive Apple displays. Also, it will be an OMG PROTOOLS KILLER!@!!

I read this and I thought: touch sensitive Apple Displays?!? That explains everything! This might be crazy, or might already be conventional wisdom somewhere, but hear me out. Think about the common denominator behind:

• The missing killer features in the Leopard preview
• The lack of iLife updates in Jan 07
• The rollout of the iPhone multitouch interface
• The abnormally long delay in releasing new Apple displays
• A rumor about a ProTools killer that relies on touch displays

I look at all those developments, and say with absolute scientific precision: Apple is going to roll out the multitouch interface across almost its entire product line this spring, integrated into Leopard, new displays, iPhone, iLife, and the successor to Logic.

OMG, did I just become an Apple rumors site?