Standards – Sometimes it’s nice to all be the same…Sometimes not?

Apple 1984 commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Motorola Xoom commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgOX9mb7V4o

It is humorous to think that Apple used to stand for originality and breaking the mold, and now they have had that entire idea turned back around on them. A company that sold its first PC as a ‘do it yourself’ kit now will not let anyone open up their devices at all, restrict what you can load on them, and restrict what you can sell for them. On the other hand, cookie cutter systems that are all exactly alike are easy to manage, easy to plan for, and easy to replace. Not much thought has to go into the setup or nuts and bolts – and they should ‘just work’…

The past 15 years have seen a very stable and static framework for hardware. Desktops, laptops, servers – all pretty much stayed the same shape and size for a long time. Power and capacity within that structure changed dramatically, but shape and size moved little in comparison.

Now – in the past 2 to 3 years, there has been another mini-revolution in – well – miniaturization. The Cell phone is no longer a cell phone – it really is a multipurpose computing device. The evolution has been messy. Carriers have different networks so you cannot use your same HTC phone from Sprint on a Verizon network for example. Manufacturers have different connectors so cables and docking stations that work with one do not necessarily work with another. Now evolution and moving to better and faster is a great thing, but the pace that makes a phone essentially mothballed and antiquated in less than a year is a bit outrageous. The Droid Eris I received from Verizon less than an year and a half ago is no longer made/sold/supported!

How can an individual manage this turmoil? How can you make sure you end up with VHS and not BETAMAX? How can a manufacturer push big ideas like the one below in a scattered non-homogenous world of every producer for themselves?

Please contribute your thoughts below…..

Smartphones and Dumb Docks: A Proposal

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If there was one smartphone that stood out at CES earlier this month, it was Motorola's Atrix 4G, which plenty of gadget sites (including us) picked as being one of the best of the show. Just the specs alone are impressive -- it sports a 4-inch, 960 x 540 display, 1GB of RAM, an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, and HSPA+ -- but what really caught everyone's attention was the laptop dock accessory Motorola was showing off. Useless on its own, you just pop the Atrix 4G into a connector in the back and you have in your hands what is essentially a fully-functioning netbook that gives you access to all the files and Android apps on your phone. We've finally reached the point where smartphones are powerful enough to do this stuff without too many compromises, and it's exciting that the Atrix 4G might actually catch on where others, like Celio or Palm's Foleo, have failed.

I put the Atrix 4G on my gdgt Want list when it was announced, and am definitely considering it as my next phone (I'm currently rocking the Nexus S, if you're curious), but I think we're all missing the larger potential in the docks themselves.

What makes the Atrix 4G and its docking system (there will also be an "HD Multimedia Dock" if you want to use it with an external monitor as a desktop) so attractive is the prospect of having one small computing device that you can carry around and then dock into a larger device as needed. It's not hard to imagine a world where it might be commonplace for these "dumb" docks to be everywhere. You wouldn't need to travel for business with a laptop anymore, and you could just pop your phone into a dock at the hotel and then into another dock at your office, another at a cafe, etc. Given the explosion of demand for ultraportable computing, a smartphone and dumb dock system that would give users more flexibility without having to buy multiple machines certainly makes a lot of sense.

There is, of course, one big problem with that vision: it only works if every phone is compatible with every dock. There's no point in carrying around just your phone if the likelihood that the place you're headed is going to have a compatible dock is small. So I'd like to propose that somebody (yes, it should probably be Google) put together a standard webtop OS and dock connector so that we can use any phone with any dock.

Right now, Motorola has its own platform and will presumably be adding docking support to more Android phones. I'm sure that, given the response to the Atrix 4G at CES, we'll see several other phone makers rushing out docks of their own before the end of the year.

I certainly don't expect the entire industry to just magically come together on this. There are too many different smartphone platforms out there for something like that to be feasible anyway. But I do think the more modest goal of a standard docking platform for Android devices is entirely possible, otherwise we're going to end up in a situation where each manufacturer's devices are only compatible with their docks, which is a bit like only being able to use Dell monitors with that new Dell PC you've just bought. If you think Android is fragmented now, just wait until there are a dozen different dock standards out there.

Now would be a good time for Google to take this on. It'd surely be easier for them than for anyone else, since they created Android in the first place, and they could open source it so that everyone in the industry could use it. I suspect they might be a little reluctant to go down this road because it conflicts with their vision for Chrome OS, which is that you just log into a Chrome OS machine and have access to everything you need in the cloud. That said, given their investment in Android (which some have suggested should absorb Chrome OS anyway), and the fact that phone makers are going to do these docks anyway, they may feel like they have to do something like this. (Do you think they were happy to see Firefox running on the Atrix when docked?) This dock platform could even be some offshoot of Chrome OS, just one that also offered access to all your phone's files and Android apps.

A common standard for dock connectors combined with an open source webtop OS would also allow companies that don't make smartphones to get into the game, something which would hopefully lead to lots of interesting designs, as well as cheaper prices (Motorola hasn't announced a price for the Atrix 4G Laptop Dock, but supposedly it'll run about $150). There's no reason why there couldn't be tons of different options for your dock, like a larger or smaller screen, extra features like an SD card reader, better webcam, bigger battery, etc. Shoot, you could even see lots of different versions, like a dock that let's you turn your smartphone into a tablet, one that connects to your car for hands-free calls, GPS, and music, home entertainment and gaming docks for the living room. There will obviously be some form factor issues you'd have to deal with in creating a common standard -- not every smartphone would physically be able to fit into every dock -- but dock adapters and an option to connect via cable would help overcome most of those hurdles.

Hopefully Android phone makers will see the wisdom in this as well, as a common standard would make their handsets more useful and more valuable. I know I'm a little reluctant to spring for the Atrix 4G's Laptop Dock given the strong possibility that it'll be completely useless to me when I upgrade to a new Android phone a year later, and I'm sure others feel the same way. Yes, it will take some work for Google (or whoever tackles this) to get something together, but we'd gain more choice, better options, and a be little bit closer to a future where we could pop our phone into any dock anywhere and get down to business.