PixoBebo

Much has been written about Facebook Home’s failures, but the whole saga points out an important aspect of what Apple does differently than most competitors.

Dogfooding.

The simple definition of dogfooding is this:

Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to reference a scenario in which a company (usually, a computer software company) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product.

Simply put, a company that uses what it makes usually makes better products, though it helps to be brutally honest about how a product works.

Does anyone honest believe that Apple employees do not use a Mac, iPhone, or iPad? Of course not. Even better than just using a particular product is the passion that goes into making a product that the designers, developers, and engineers actually want to use.

That’s dogfooding.

Those Apple employees engaged in the design, development, and building of Mac, iPhone, iPad or OS X or iOS, or any of the company’s great applications already know the value of their passion to create what they themselves want to use.

Going back to early versions of OS X for the Mac, we can see the excitement generated by a product that drove customers to stand in line at Apple stores for the latest version. That same zeal has grown as Apple’s product line has grown. New iPhones are met with lines of eager customers at every launch.

So, dogfooding isn’t just an issue of using what you make. Microsoft’s employees certainly use Windows, but what prevents Windows users from having the same passion about what’s running on their PCs?

Dogfooding implies more, and with Apple it contains an element of passion about what a product does, how it’s used, and the delight a user takes in a product that’s been carefully designed and crafted to create an emotional bond.

Does Windows have an emotional bond with users? Yes, but not for the same reasons. Those emotions are mostly negative, perhaps fearful, and often frustrating.

It is said that Facebook’s Home development team mostly used iPhones, although Home was launched on an Android OS smartphone made by HTC (and the Home experience was available for other smartphones). I don’t think that’s why Facebook Home failed. Home’s failure is a direct result of Facebook’s executives to not recognize what users want, and instead force fed users what they did not want– an all encompassing Facebook experience which overshadowed everything else on a smartphone.

Can those at Facebook involved in creating Home actually say they prefer to use Home, or prefer to be able to customize their smartphone however they wish. If it’s the former, I’ll be surprised. If it’s the latter, it’s also a good example of how brutally honest dogfooding results in true innovation, and a bond between product and customer.

When it comes to iOS apps that are used by the masses, there’s Mail, Safari, Maps, Camera, Photos, Music, and Calendar, though not necessarily in that order. Each of those apps have third party counterparts, too. Google Maps, for example, And there are hundreds of camera apps.

The app that makes my day, literally, is Calendar, made even better by stable synchronization to Calendar on the Mac and iPad. Calendar is used by many but could be better. That’s where Fantastical comes in. It’s Calendar but more efficient.

On iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, Fantastical takes dictation to enter event details. The DayTicker is a more efficient way to view your schedule than Calendar.

Fantastical’s list makes it easier to find daily events, and a single tap is all you need to display or edit an event’s details.

Moving events around on the calendar is equally straightforward. Tap the event, hold the tap, and then move.

Fantastical isn’t limited to iOS’s Calendar data, either. It can view and manage Facebook events, does Google Calendar, and Exchange, so it plays nice nice with the business world.

I like the voice dictation and single tap event moving, but I’d like to see dictation work to change event times and dates. Otherwise it’s well worth the few bucks you’ll spend to become more efficient at managing your Calendar events.

Apple should design and build a car. If they did, it would probably be called a Tesla Model S. Consumer Reports says it’s close to being the best car ever. And it wasn’t designed and built by Apple.

Why not? That’s not how Apple rolls. You’ve probably noticed that Apple doesn’t jump into every opportunity, though the company could easily afford to do just about anything it wants. Like purchase Dell, and then shut it down. Or, do the same with France.

What many of us in the Apple watching business want to see is content on demand. Any TV show, any movie, any music or video, on demand– streamed straight to Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iGlasses and iWatch. Apple has the money to do it but it’s not going to happen.

Why not?

It’s that famed Apple discipline. Historically, at least under Steve Jobs, the company goes into markets with products that make a difference, products that leverage other products or services. This strategy is apparent going back to the Mac. The first iPod was Mac only. iTunes was Mac only. iPhone and iPad share a great ecosystem together with a somewhat anemic cloud service but the world’s largest online media store, and the best app stores.

Apple loves to leverage a new product against current products. And, importantly, Apple loves to make money. The company’s forte’ is well designed products– hardware and software– which work well together, and thrive in the ecosystem.

It makes sense that Apple could do to media what it did to music, apps, and the smartphone and tablet industries, however, it’s beginning to look as though the content business may be coming to Apple. Despite what you read about Netflix or Amazon, Apple’s iTunes Store– just TV shows, movies, rentals, etc.– is much larger and more profitable on a worldwide basis.

The latest trend is that content makers– television networks– are distributing their wares through apps. In the internet future, TV channels will be apps. Whatever you want to watch will be available online– through an app.

Unfortunately, this dramatic shift from cable TV to internet is not likely to happen overnight as there are many players that must be fed. Still, Apple has the money and in Steve Jobs had the discriminating taste to seed development of content that is distributed through App Store apps to Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iWatch and iGlasses. With Jobs gone, who is Apple’s standard-bearer for taste?

When Steve Jobs took over at Apple in 1997 his agenda was simple. Shore up the Mac, conserve money, trim down the product line, get to profitability, and focus on the future. Oh, and make sure Microsoft continued to develop Office for the Mac.

Microsoft, haunted by the government for monopoly abuse, wanted to keep Apple alive, if only on life support, so Bill Gates agreed to a five year Office development deal, and tossed in a $150-million investment to sweeten the deal, and keep the feds at bay.

That was then and this is now. Today, the Mac is profitable beyond belief, Microsoft is beleaguered, and Apple has crushed Windows in smartphones and tablets.

Quick, without naming email, browser, or office suite, can you name one of the most used pieces of software on planet earth?

Apple’s iTunes.

Guess what? There’s no iTunes on Windows Phone or Windows RT, and Apple isn’t as likely to be as helpful to Microsoft as Microsoft was to Apple back in 1997.

Why not? Why should Apple help out Microsoft during this time of need? Apple was beleaguered back in the day, and Microsoft helped out? Why doesn’t Apple help Microsoft today?

Because Apple was in dire straights and needed a helping hand, even if one from an enemy. Microsoft remains cash rich because of Windows and Office, but has stumbled badly in mobile devices, relegated to a niche player as Apple and Samsung sew up the profits.

Microsoft could easily help itself by building a better phone, or a better tablet. Instead, mediocrity rules at Microsoft and Apple has little incentive or a compelling reason to help out their former enemy and investor in this time of need.

Paraphrasing the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, there’s ‘no iTunes for you‘, Microsoft.

It wasn’t all that long ago when tech media pundits were falling all over themselves about Facebook Home and the HTC First smartphone. “Apple is doomed,” they cried. The handwriting was on the wall, they said, “Apple needs Facebook Home to survive the coming onslaught of Facebook users moving to a Facebook-centric smartphone.”

Remember the PC netbook? Apple and the Mac were supposedly doomed to niche status because the inexpensive netbook would rule the PC world. Try finding a netbook in any store, or someone carrying around a netbook. Apple avoided the temptation to get all trendy and join the fad and the result is that Apple’s Mac division is more profitable than the next five Windows PC makers. Combined.

So it is with Facebook Home. AT&T just cut the price of the first Facebook Home phone, the HTC First, from $99.99 to a plain old 99 cents.

That’s 99-cents. As in a penny less than a dollar. A single dollar.

Reuters has all the details, but the handwriting on the wall could not be more obvious. Facebook Home has been met with a big yawn by Facebook’s supposedly one billion users.

To be fair about this, cutting the price of a new smartphone isn’t all that unusual, even for AT&T, and even for an Android OS-based smartphone. Doing so a few weeks after launch should raise a few eyebrows, however, even Apple dropped the iPhone’s original price a few months after launch as demand began to match supply.

This is yet another black eye for Facebook and Google’s Android as it represents the failure of yet another marketing gimmick to topple the iPhone from the profitability perch.

What’s wrong with Facebook Home? Facebook Fatigue. Bernhard Warner in Bloomberg points out that teenagers are growing tired of Facebook.

A similar decline in Facebook usage has been reported in North America, Europe, and elsewhere.

Uh oh.

It may be too early to condemn Facebook as a fad, but Facebook Home clearly has yet to meet up with expectations, and represents yet another example of Apple’s famed discipline– avoiding the faddish trends.

That brings up an interesting point about phablets– tablet sized smartphones. While larger smartphones represent a small portion of all smartphones sold, they’ve become more visible in recent months. Is it a fad or the future? Will Apple succumb to the phenomenon or stay the course? Or, just eliminate it altogether by putting a phone in the iPad mini?

Too much of my time is devoted to travel. It may sound glamorous, but once you’ve gone to 17 destinations in a few weeks, the travel bug can be declared dead and buried. As it turns out, I was traveling last week when I read a new IDC report about iPad’s market share dipping to 40-percent.

I know, I know. Apple is doomed, right?

Humans are interesting creatures. We keep track of details which are seldom important. What was the highest grossing movie of all time? Wouldn’t it be more telling to know which movie has been seen by the most number of people?

International Data Corporation tracks things, including PCs, smartphones, and now, tablets. Their latest report says Apple’s share of the worldwide tablet market has dropped to under 40-percent.

Oh, the humanity. How can Apple possibly survive?

Let’s read between IDC’s lines to get a clearer picture of what’s actually happening? Why? Because IDC says six out of every 10 tablets is not an iPad. Look around. Does that seem right? Have you seen anything that resembles that ratio?

No, of course not. Why not?

Because the numbers are not true, they’re not factual, therefore, they’re not accurate. First, IDC uses the term shipments. That’s not accurate, either. They don’t track shipments. IDC creates estimates based upon educated guesses.

With one exception, IDC does not count sales or shipments. They simply guess. What’s the exception? Apple provides actual sales numbers for iPad’s sold in any given quarter. Apple is the only company to do so.

When has Amazon ever released a specific number of Kindles sold? Where’s Google’s list of Android tablets sold? What about Microsoft’s Surface?

Crickets.

Samsung and other manufacturers don’t publish their sales numbers for obvious reasons. They don’t know, either. They ship tablets out the door, and IDC and others guess at the number, but it’s all wink wink, nod nod. For all anyone knows, 60-percent of the tablet market could still be sitting in warehouses.

That’s a dirty little secret which is exposed by other data which also requires a little reading between the lines. Other data? Yes, Apple’s iPhone and iPad get used by owners far more than all other mobile devices combined. A good example of real world data comes from NetMarketShare.

Their online tracking data shows iOS device users account for about 60-percent of all mobile device web usage. Android’s total is less than half of Apple’s, but BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and friends are far down the list into insignificant number territory.

My father once said that in war, information is the first casualty. Business can be like war, and accurate information is difficult to obtain and requires a little work. To make it easier, let’s do a simple test. Look around the rest of the day. Chances are very good you’ll see more iPhones than Android smartphones. And you’ll see more iPads than all other tablets combined.

Guesses are made up of numbers, but not all numbers are guesses.