Initially bootstrapped and then funded by an initial round of $625,000 from investors including Connecticut Innovations, Advantage Capital, Enhanced Capital and one unnamed individual investor, Floop quietly launched on the App Store early in September and has been amassing a steady user base since. There’s already a healthy little community participating in Floop’s social polls. Here’s a look at how those work.

Simple, sticky Q&A

Twitter is a good tool for getting a snap, cursory view of general opinion on a question, provided you: A) have a large enough network; and B) ask the right question at the right time, but it lacks permanence. Once you pose your question, it’s pretty much also assigned a drop-dead date of only a few hours. With Floop, that’s not the case. Questions can be followed by anyone using Floop, and you can always check back to see the current status of responses. Co-founders Richard Schultz and Patrick Shields described Floop as “truly immersive” in this sense. With Twitter, they said, users are just “sending and forgetting.”

Discovery is also much easier on Floop. You don’t have to be following someone to see or follow their poll question; you can search by keyword and see trends and new surveys posted by other users. You can also filter results by geography with a single click, seeing what polls are active within eight miles of your current location. There’s no option to change that radius. The simplicity of a fixed geographical footprint for search works well for keeping the experience easy for end-users, but I can see how it might be an issue for people looking to use the service to find results that go beyond casual interest.

Good for context, and living data

Floop also provides another benefit over other informal polling tools; it allows you to aggregate and centralize contextual discussion with comments attached to each poll created. That allows people to explain their answers, extend the discussion with follow-up questions, or work out an alternate poll idea that may be more accurate or useful. The conversation can also extend to other networks, as Floop provides tools for sharing polls via Twitter, Facebook or email. You can invite other Floop users to a poll and also add images to any question. Schultz and Shields describe this as “joining a shared conversation,” and talk about how this, pared with the data from the answers graph, allows pollsters to see both the “macro and micro together.”

Unfortunately, a major drawback of Floop is its avoidance of hard and fast numbers; you can see results in real-time displayed on a graph and adjust the timeframe for short or long-term snapshots of results, but you can’t see how many people actually voted one way or the other. That’s in part because Floop’s response system is built on a sliding scale, allowing you to express stronger or weaker opinions in the affirmative or negative for any question. You can also change your opinion on a subject, which means Floop will be able to display in real time how sentiment around a topic is evolving. But it limits the usefulness of Floop for hard number crunching purposes. Schultz and Shields argue that the approach is more analytical than informal polls conducted elsewhere; they say “the graph eliminates the ambiguity of data,” since Floop isn’t “processing natural language but rather getting a definitive feedback response from the participants.”

Use cases

For questions that I would normally take to Twitter, Floop looks like a solid alternative. I can track (though not tabulate) results more quickly and more easily than I can with Twitter, and the results are fine for making a general point to support an argument. It’s also apparent from the kinds of polls already on Floop (“Giants or Eagles?”) that the product is meant primarily to appeal to casual users looking to find out things about their friends and neighbors.

Floop does casual well, but the app’s creators are clearly hoping to take it further. Schultz and Shields have already had discussions with people in Hollywood and New York City media about its potential applications for use at in-person, broadcast and virtual events. Businesses might want more access to hard data, but that’s probably something Floop can do for those customers down the road.

The challenge

Floop is a promising app with a great vision behind it, but its biggest challenge is the one that faces all new social tools: building a network. To use Floop, you have to sign up for the service, which is understandable given its use of commenting, response tracking and photo-sharing features. But convincing users they need another social networking service isn’t easy, as apps like Color that struck out alone have discovered. A better strategy, given the nature of the content being shared with Floop, might have been to tie it to something like Facebook’s new Open Graph.

And yet, Floop is growing. According to the company, it attracted 10,000 users in its first month on the App Store, despite little fanfare about its arrival. On average, the app sees about 400 new registered users per day, coming out of around 1,000 downloads. The revenue model for the app, according to Schultz and Shields, will come from “the sale of analytics and reporting on the data collected (in market research fashion),” and “the formation of partnerships to incorporate Floop into specific venues, broadcasts, etc.” That should mean that the community won’t have to bear the financial burden of the app through paid upgrades or intrusive advertising down the road.

If Floop can keep up the pace and prove that it can also work as an engagement tool for businesses, brands and events, I definitely see a bright future for this data-savvy startup.

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It’s no coincidence that I’m thinking about this the week following Macworld, arguably one of the Apple faithful’s most important annual pilgrimages. While I’ve yet to go myself, both Weldon and Dave are regular attendees who speak about the event with something approaching reverence. Even now that Apple no longer graces the Macworld floor with its presence (arguably limiting the show’s newsworthiness), early estimates put show attendance for 2011 at as much as 25,000. It’s hard to imagine a similar turnout at, say, an HP-focused convention where HP wasn’t in attendance.

Macworld isn’t the only recent development that sparked this introspection. CNET today has a great interview with Mike Daisey, a devoted Apple fan and theatre geek who actually visited Foxconn facilities in Shenzhen, China to see where the products he loves are made. Daisey has just started a one-man show called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” in which he compares his choice of operating system to a religious choice. And if you’ve seen the ardent defense mounted by Apple apologists (myself sometimes included) when their brand is besmirched, you have to admit the comparison is apt.

For me, Apple is so closely tied up in who I am partly because its products seemed to make my life so much easier once I switched from Windows-based devices, and partly because evangelizing the adoption of Macs and iDevices among my friends has left me feeling that I have a personal stake in the reputation of the company behind them. If Apple’s image suffers, so too does my own. After all, what happens to The Apple Guy when everyone’s using Android devices?

Apple is also a company that makes products designed to breed loyalty. After half a year with an iPad, I recently tried switching to a Galaxy Tab, which is a fine device by most accounts, including those of my colleagues. As Kevin noted, I returned my Tab soon after purchase, citing the somewhat ambiguous complaint that I found myself wishing it was an iPad. If I had to articulate, I’d say that feeling stemmed from relatively insignificant isolated user experience differences that, taken together, I was unwilling to learn to overcome after years of getting to know and love iOS.

Motorola just introduced a new promotional spot for its Android-powered Xoom tablet in time for the Superbowl. In it, the company obliquely compares Apple to Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, which ironically takes a page out of Apple’s own playbook. Granted, it’s a hyperbolic comparison, but isn’t my knee-jerk urge to call it baseless, ridiculous and uniformed before I’d even seen it at least somewhat indicative that it isn’t totally off the mark?

As a journalist, I’m able to put aside my fandom and think critically about the decisions of Apple and its competitors. But as a user and consumer, it’s much harder to separate myself from the products I use and live with every day. But is that something to be worried about, or just a testament to the quality of the products Apple creates?

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Source: Piper Jaffray

InfoWorld’s Randall C. Kennedy thinks not. Sounding a sour note about Apple’s anticipated tablet plans, InfoWorld’s Randall C. Kennedy says that even clever engineering can’t overcome fundamental limitations of tablet computing,

“Tablet PCs suck,” says Kennedy, categorically, elaborating that tablets are underpowered, only marginally portable, and awkward to use in anything but a traditional seated position at a desk or table.

Fundamental Realities

Kennedy observes that Microsoft and various PC makers have been trying for years to create market traction for the tablet computing experience,  and have failed miserably. He contends that to believe Apple can somehow succeed where all others have failed is to ignore some fundamental realities of tablet computing.

“The lap doesn’t work as a desk,” declares Kennedy, especially if you’re in motion on a train or aircraft, and he suggests that typing on the anticipated onscreen keyboard would quickly degenerate into an exercise of hit or miss.

The Problem With Touchscreens

I work with clipboards a lot, and still do a lot of my composing longhand with pen and paper before using MacSpeech Dictate to enter it as computer text, but he’s got a point about touchscreen keyboards, which I personally revile. As he notes, with a real laptop keyboard the user’s lap and palms act as stabilizing influences and the positive tactile feedback of electromechanical keyswitches is a distinct advantage when working in mobile environments.

Personally, I would prefer to see the iTablet feature some sort of slide-out keyboard of the sort used by various smartphone designs, but given Apple’s stubbornness about such things, I join with Kennedy in doubting that’s very likely. However, I would council Cupertino (not that they’re likely to put much stock in my advice) to at minimum incorporate Bluetooth and/or USB RF input device support.

“Prehistoric World Of Dragging And Scratching”

As for pen-based or stylus input, Kennedy says he types a lot faster than he can write with pen and paper. Me too, but I often think better with pen in hand, so I don’t agree that the “prehistoric world of dragging and scratching” with a traditional writing instrument is hopelessly anachronistic. On the other hand, a tablet screen is not nearly texturally satisfying as paper, and again I have to agree that entering serious quantities of data with an onscreen keyboard or stylus will soon get tedious.

Possible workaround: voice input. If the iTablet turns out to be a full-fledged Mac, it should support Dictate, which is amazingly accurate once you get it trained. Even the mediocrities of touchscreen would be made more tolerable in most environments, though not in trains and other shared spaces.

The Netbook Factor

However, Kennedy suggests the biggest obstacle to iTablet success is the increasingly ubiquitous netbook. Some newer examples incorporate the advantages of conventional notebooks, especially near full-sized keyboards, and Kennedy contends that compared to an iTablet, devices equipped with these advantages simply make more sense to consumers.

He may be right. I’m a tablet skeptic too, although I’m open to persuasion, and it’s a fool’s game second-guessing Apple’s prowess at product direction choices. Lots of folks predicted failure for the iPod, iPhone and iTunes as well.

What do you think? Will the iTablet prove the skeptics mistaken again?

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There are no doubt reasons Apple doesn’t talk about price. I’ll mention a few of them later on in this post. The thing is, especially at the low end of its product line, Apple stands to gain a lot by trumpeting its price tags to the masses.

Why People Are Switching

In the past three months, I’ve seen three friends buy their first Mac computer. None of them purchased the 13-inch MacBook Pro that Apple has been so lauded for online and by the tech journalism community. Instead, all three bought either a Mac mini or a white plastic MacBook, and all three did so because these machines represent the lowest cost of entry into Apple’s Mac lineup.

That’s great news for Apple. Its low-end computers are doing their job, and bringing people in who otherwise might not have looked at a Mac. The problem is that none of those three people would’ve considered a Mac if I hadn’t recommended them. The reason? They all perceived Macs as too expensive.

I know this evidence is anecdotal at best, and doesn’t mean this is the case for the general computer-buying population, but everyday I meet people who just weren’t aware that there existed such a thing as a Mac that costs less than $1,500 or $1,600. Some used to use them for work in the eighties, when it would cost you $1,800 to get one for home use, but speak with fond longing about the user experience they remember.

When I tell these people that they can get back into Mac for as little as $600, they are completely flabbergasted. As in, never even conceived such a thing was possible, totally unaware. To me, that means that Apple isn’t doing its job right on the marketing side of things. Of course, word of mouth is probably part of the company’s marketing plan, but why depend on individual evangelists like me to spread pricing info when televised media is so much more efficient?

The Great Unmentionable

Apple has some very good reasons not to talk about price. For one, they can’t beat PC manufacturers in that area. There will always be a cheaper PC with better specs on paper out there. But talking to PC users, that isn’t as big of an issue as I thought it was. People who remember Macs from times past don’t care that you could get a better spec’d PC for the same price or better as the Mac mini. They care that Macs are so affordable as compared to their precursors from 20 years ago.

Another reason Apple might not want to talk about price is that it would be inconsistent with its branding to date. Apple’s computer products are targeted at a demographic that doesn’t list price as its top priority. The average Apple consumer is financially comfortable, and willing to pay for a quality product that sets them apart. “Think Different” really means “Buy Different.”

Getting Past Taboos

The fact is, Apple’s changed its pricing policy to target new growth and new demographics, and it should change its marketing strategy to be more in line with those new sales goals. A Mac mini commercial, done with all the usual Apple visual appeal, with a simple “Starting at $599″ at the end would do wonders for raising consumer awareness regarding pricing without diluting the strong brand Cupertino’s worked so hard to establish.

You can talk about features and reliability till you’re blue in the face, but if you want price-conscious consumers to listen, you’ve also got to talk about cost. If Apple really wants to convert new pricing structure into an exponential increase in sales, it would do well to make sure people know about it.

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What’s Wrong With It

It is underpowered, it is overpriced, and, worst of all, as Gizmodo points out, it is not easily upgradeable after the fact, so most users would be advised to bite the bullet and pay Apple’s extortionate rates for in-house upgrades, or risk breaking something. The hard drive options are almost insulting, with the max available upgrade being 320GB. That seems pretty clearly intended to force your covetous gaze towards the higher-priced iMacs, if you ask me.

Even though I agree with Tom, and I truly believe everything I just said, I will still be buying a new Mac mini today…despite already owning an iMac and a MacBook. Maybe I’m masochistic, or just a compulsive shopper, right? While both of those things may be true, neither is the reason for my purchase.

What’s Right With It

The reason I’m buying the Mac mini is that for my needs (not as a small business owner, and not with such specific tastes as some), and with my existing setup, it is the perfect home theatre PC. Before you protest, let me explain. Afterward, you can protest till the cows come home.

The Current, Mac mini-less Setup

I currently don’t have a proper home theater receiver, or traditional book shelf or floor speakers or any kind of 5.1 surround setup. What I do have are two sets of Logitech X-series (two different incarnations of the same product, but released at different times) 5.1 computer speakers, three gaming systems (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), an HD cable box, and an LCD HDTV. To wrangle these mismatched, hodge-podge devices, I currently use a system of plugging and unplugging depending on what I intend to do, watch, or play, and what source I intend to use. Volume is controlled either remotely or manually, owing to my speaker sets lacking a wireless remote. I would provide a visual diagram, but I don’t want anyone to become terribly lost and confused.

There is one set of circumstances during which everything seems at peace with my home theatre setup. In order for everything to come together, I have to have my MacBook hooked up next to my TV, with both set of speakers attached to the headphone jack via a 2-mini stereo jack to 1-mini stereo plug adapter, and with the optical audio out from my TV attached to the MacBook input via a TOSLiNK to mini-TOSLiNK cable. Also, my MacBook’s video out is hooked up to my TV’s VGA input.

Still with me? I also need a software helper, the freeware app called LineIn that lets you pass audio directly through your computer from the input jack to the output. This means that audio from the cable box will play through the speakers, or, if I watch something from my MacBook, I can hear that too. It also gives me remote volume control, thanks to Apple’s own IR remote (of which I have many).

All that sweet synchronicity falls apart every time I have to unplug my MacBook to work, or to travel, and in the meantime I trip on all the cables it takes for me to be able to use my computer from the couch. Then it’s back to fumbling with plugs and switches, and turning dials to control volume.

The Setup With the Mac mini

The Mac mini will sit quietly in my TV console, nestled comfortably next to my cable box, all wires out of site. With the improved graphics card, it’ll be able to handle full 1080p HD video without issue, and maybe even some older games. Thanks to LineIn, it will be doing the duty of a receiver, and thanks to my existing external media hard drives, which will be plugged in behind it, it will provide access to my entire media library, including movies, TV shows, and music.

Buying a new home-theatre-in-a-box would cost me at least $600, and that’s not for a good one. I don’t need Blu-ray, because I’ve got it with my PS3, and even then, I suspect digital distribution will replace it in a few years anyway. I don’t need an HDMI connection, although it would be nice, because the PC-in on my TV, even if it does required two cables (gasp!) works just fine. I’d like a larger hard drive, but I can live without it, thanks to the FireWire drives I already own. I don’t want a screen, because that’s precisely what’s stopping me from using my iMac in the same capacity.

The new Mac mini may not be the ideal computer for everyone, and I fully acknowledge its many failings. For someone like me, however, who’s looking to leverage his existing components, and cares more about form factor than whiz-band features and specs, it might just be the perfect machine.

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When it rains it pours, and the current outlook is calling for torrents of speculation regarding iMac and Mac mini updates from Apple. Just to show how desperate people can be for any shred of “information” regarding Cupertino, let’s look at the latest bit of “news” making the rounds.

Yesterday, Macsimumnews.com published a piece in which editor David Sellers claims to be “pretty sure” that the iMac and Mac mini will see updates on or before Tuesday, Nov. 10 (it’s actually the 11th). He makes no mention of sources, and the article is categorized as an opinion piece.

Which didn’t stop 9to5mac from posting about the piece under the banner “iMac, Mac Pro upgrades loom?” Loom? It hardly seems valid to suggest updates are “looming” based on the guesswork of a single Apple journalist, even if he does have experience in the industry.

MacDailyNews opted to use as their headline the prediction even Sellers himself believes to be a stretch, boldly proclaiming “Apple to debut new Mac Pro at Macworld in January?”. In a move typical of Apple rumor sites, MacDailyNews opts for the more sensational and attention grabbing headline, regardless of the facts.

Ditto World of Apple. They actually manage to fit all of the baseless speculation in a single headline for the article, “New Mac Pros at Macworld, iMac, Mac Mini Nov. 10?” To be fair, they at least mention that Sellers “makes no mention of sources”.

Zolotech is possibly the worst offender, since they leave out even the mandatory “?” at the end of their headline, “New iMacs, Mac Mini November 10th, New Mac Pros at MacWorld Rumor”. Plus, they report the content of the opinion piece in a way that makes it indistinguishable from tangible news, offering no indication that the info isn’t solid.

Is that what we expect from Mac reporting? Scrambling for crumbs dropped by others in the same business? Obviously, we here at TAB also publish stories that deal in speculation and conjecture, but we follow-up, and we spend some time assessing the validity of the source. Sellers’ piece is a case-in-point. We emailed him immediately after he posted his piece, asking if he’d based his predictions on any source or credible information. His answer:

No, it’s simply my “best guess” based on the fact that I think Apple will update one or both of the lines before the holidays — and I think Nov. 10 is the last practical day to do it. So I’m just speculating.

Just speculating. Not that Sellers was wrong to publish his piece. It’s a perfectly valid opinion, and he is in a position to make a guess. The problem here is that the Apple blogosphere is so eager to take his opinion and make it news. We like rumors as much as the next site, but let’s base them on something more than nothing at all, shall we?

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iTunes is obviously a companion to the popular iPod music player (though I’m not sure ‘popular’ cuts it with more than 100 million sold in the past 5+ years…), but gives a decent view into the simplicity that the marriage of Apple hardware and software are known for. The iPod has proven to be somewhat of a ‘gateway drug’ in terms of converting users of the mp3 player to Apple computer owners. (see, Halo Effect as a Business Model)

Safari (version 3, beta) was released to the public not quite a month ago on both the OS X and Windows platforms. The Windows version was immediately found to be quite buggy, but was just as quickly patched-up. It is beta software afterall, and that’s the purpose for which it’s been released! But now Windows users fed-up with Internet Explorer can get a taste of the speed and ingenuity that Apple offers in it’s wide array of software products on the Apple platform.

So back to the question at hand: What may be Apple’s next software release for the Windows platform?

The knee-jerk answer might be, “Well iLife of course!” There are however, a couple problems I see with this answer. First off, it costs money. Granted, $79 for the amazing range of functionality and consumer-power-tools that iLife includes (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie HD, GarageBand, and iWeb) is a steal, but when Windows and 3rd party developer offer similar software on the Windows platform (in many cases, free or nearly so), it may be a hard sell convincing a Windows-user to plunk down the money. The second, and much larger problem, is that iLife is so simple because of it’s tightly-knit connection with the Apple-developed hardware platforms. The user experience is heightened ten-fold when all their hardware works seemlessly with their software. Without direct control over the wide array of hardware that Windows users are working on, iLife may seem more like a black eye than a reason to take the next step into the Apple World.

iWork may be slightly more viable as a Windows software offering from Apple. There’s less hardware integration to hold it back, but it relies quite heavily on Core OS X functionality, not to mention the tie-ins with the iLife apps. The design capabilities are extremely easy and fun to use, but there could be an awful lot lost in translation without the operating system and ‘companion’ applications support found on the OS X platform. Oh, and it’s also $79, so there’s that fiscal barrier-to-entry yet again.

There are a host of other applications that Apple puts out that may be hits on Window as well – Final Cut, Motion, Shake to name a few – but I believe there are three keys to the most plausible answer. The software in question needs:

1. To be interesting to a large cross-section of the user population
2. To be free, or nearly so
3. To create a desire to move to the Apple platform completely

Based on these criteria, I believe Xcode will be the next software offering from Apple for the Windows operating system. Software developers are becoming a dime-a-dozen (not a bad thing, mind you) and the number of Windows devs around must be tremendous. (At WWDC 07 there were many comments about the huge number of developers – new to the platform – that were there.) Xcode is currently offered for free under the Apple Developer Connection, so it wouldn’t require potential developers to ante-up just to see if they liked it. And most importantly, the great tools that Apple builds to hook-into the vast power and functionality of OS X should be a great argument for a developer to make the Switch and pounce on a new Mac.

I realize there are many more requirements behind the scenes for something like Xcode to work as intended, on Windows, but I wouldn’t put it outside Apple’s reach. They’ve shown their desire and commitment to powering their company forward, and I feel Xcode on Windows is the next big step they’ll take in doing so.

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And that brings me to the first rant regarding UI design on the Mac OS: consistency. Apple has made good strides – with Leopard, at least – to pull the UI back to one consistent style and way of doing things. The trouble is, we still have some Carbon hold-outs and some apps that look and act completely differently. John Gruber had a write-up about this topic back in 2003, but I take the opposite stance on the idea of “click-through”…

Safari supports click-through for most interface elements. This means that even when a Safari window isn’t in the front (including when Safari isn’t the current application), you can click on its toolbar buttons. iTunes does not support click-through, so you can click anywhere in a background iTunes window and the click will simply bring the window to the front. (Except of course for the window titlebar buttons – close, minimize, zoom – which now support click-through system-wide in Mac OS X, which is an entirely other story.)

Safari’s support for click-through is a terrible idea. You might think otherwise, especially if you come from a non-Mac background, but trust me on this. The argument for click-through is that it’s somehow a time-saving shortcut – I see the button in the background window, why not just let me click the mouse once to invoke it? But how much time does an extra mouse-click to activate a window before clicking a button cost you? A fraction of a second, almost nothing.

He goes on to state his case for why he thinks click-through is a bad idea. I disagree with his opinions about it, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. In fact, I would still use the Mac platform even if they had kept the non-click-through nature of OS 9 (Gruber came from OS 9, which would explain some of his feelings).

The problem is in iTunes. See, in iTunes, if you click the green Zoom button in the upper-left corner, the app goes into a handy “remote/mini-player” mode. And iTunes, in its normal full-windowed mode will not support click-through, but as Gruber points out a few paragraphs down, the mini-player does support click-through. This is still true 4 years and 3 revisions later. If the rest of the operating system supports click-through, from the caption buttons to standard controls, where is iTunes at in terms of ignoring it? The window control buttons that are on iTunes even support click through all the time. This isn’t consistent – both within the app itself and in relation to the OS and other apps. (Gruber also believes very strongly in consistency. He also published a piece ranting about the lack of consistency between Dashboard widgets and regular apps and their “themes”, back when Jobs previewed Dashboard.)

But there’s a worse issue with usability in Leopard: contrast and the ability to see the status of an app in your dock. If you look at the keynote video from WWDC, the new dock is striking and just really beautiful, and the reflections look great, but I noticed something missing: the familiar black triangles.  Sure, they weren’t that easy to see, but they were noticable enough to tell you what applications were running. They’ve been replaced with something not nearly as good: little spots of light. Their white-blueish color isn’t exactly helpful, because it tends to blend in with the glossy reflections of windows and the desktop. Many windows tend to be gray or white, so the white dot doesn’t stand out. I would have thought that they could do a contrasting visual as we see in the menu bar of Leopard. Allegedly, we’re going to see some minor UI changes before Leopard is released, so I hope this is one of those changes.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t hate Leopard or iTunes, or any of Apple’s UI work. It’s definitely awesome, and continues to make steps in a positive direction. But like anything in life, it can always get that much better.

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Let’s just put it this way: If your app can tell me that it needs to be updated, it better also tell me to install & restart. I really don’t love when I choose to grab the update, and it launches a browser window for me to do the whole process manually…

I realize all developers aren’t at the same level, or that they’re doing real jobs and fitting their software development into ‘free’ time, but it sure would be nice for everyone to unify on the way applications update themselves.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m a bit cranky – so while I mean what I say, don’t take it too personally…

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