Friday, September 21, 2012

Ecosystems


Last weekend I wanted to watch a movie. Not the latest in theatres but a little older one. I have an Apple IPad, Google TV (Logitech device) and Laptop running on Windows and of course a TV.  Without thinking too much I went ahead and rented the movie from Amazon Instant Video service. Here starts the trouble.

For some reason Google TV decided not connect to the Wi-Fi network. I tried fiddling (too many Wi-Fi networks around) with it but it was too much pain, so I decided not to pursue further.  I downloaded the Amazon app on IPad and I could see my rental waiting. I play the movie and it streams fine on the 10 inch table. I wanted to watch it on a big screen, so I pull out HDMI cable from Google TV and connect to IPad. And guess what I only hear sound on the TV, no Video. I tried plugging in and plugging out couple of times but no luck. However I could see/hear the video on tablet just fine. I did a Google search and it seems Amazon App on IPad doesn’t allow the video to be played on TV. You can just watch the video on tablet but not on TV. It was Amazon’s choice to not support it. Common guys, seriously.

Finally I turn to the good old laptop. But to my dismay, laptop doesn’t have an HDMI port. Well, that sucks. So I was left with gadgets which don’t allow me to watch a darn movie.  I dropped everything muddled around with Google TV and got it working. I spent 30 mins to watch a 90 min movie. Better option would have been to pick up the DVD from local store, could have been much faster. (In this technologically advance cloud era I thought DVD players were extinct, so never really bought one)

This means, I have 4 large gadget makers or rather Ecosystems builders (Google, Apple, Amazon and Windows) who doesn’t want to co-operate with each other and make consumers life miserable. So much for technology! If you own everything from Google Ecosystem things might work fine, if you have all Apple it must be great. But 1 device from Google and other from Apple doesn’t go very well. Lesson learnt!  (Learnt few more lessons after upgrading to IOS 6 , no YouTube, no Google Maps)

On an aftermath, I realized things are not very different in telecom world. One vendor makes it as difficult as possible for other vendor to inter-op.  Proprietary AVPs, out of standard IEs, driving standards in favor of their implementations is very common, leaving telecom operator in a tragedy. It’s all about power and control. Not too different Roman Empire!