Adobe CTO says AI will ‘democratize’ creative tools

Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis sees a shift happening.

A shift in how people share content and who wants to use creative tools. A shift in how users expect these tools to work — especially how much time they take to learn and how quickly they get things done.

I spoke with Parasnis in December to learn more about where Adobe’s products are going and how they’ll get there — even if it means rethinking how it all works today.

“What could we build that makes today’s Photoshop, or today’s Premiere, or today’s Illustrator look irrelevant five years from now?” he asked.

In many cases, that means a lot more artificial intelligence; AI to flatten the learning curve, allowing the user to command apps like Photoshop not only by digging through menus, but by literally telling Photoshop what they want done (as in, with their voice). AI to better understand what the user is doing, helping to eliminate mundane or repetitive tasks. AI to, as Parasnis puts it, “democratize” Adobe’s products.

We’ve seen some hints of this already. Back in November, Adobe announced Photoshop Camera, a free iOS/Android app that repurposes the Photoshop engine into a lightweight but AI-heavy interface that allows for fancy filters and complex effects with minimal effort or learning required of the user. I see it as Adobe’s way of acknowledging (flexing on?) the Snapchats and Instas of the world, saying “oh, don’t worry, we can do that too.”

But the efforts to let AI do more and more of the heavy lifting won’t stop with free apps.

“We think AI has the potential to dramatically reduce the learning curve and make people productive — not at the edges, but 10x, 100x improvement in productivity,” said Parasnis.

“The last decade or two decades of creativity were limited to professionals, people who really were high-end animators, high-end designers… why isn’t it for every student or every consumer that has a story to tell? They shouldn’t be locked out of these powerful tools only because they’re either costly, or they are more complex to learn. We can democratize that by simplifying the workflow.”

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Former HBO exec Richard Plepler signs exclusive production deal with Apple TV+

Nearly a year after stepping down as chief executive of HBO, Richard Plepler and his production company Eden Production have signed a five-year deal with Apple TV+.

Plepler started at HBO back in 1993 and became CEO in 2013. During his time in that role, HBO had continued success with shows new (“True Detective” and “Big Little Lies”) and old (“Game of Thrones”). It also launched its direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service, HBO Now, which in some ways was the precursor to HBO Max — an upcoming service from AT&T and WarnerMedia that will incorporate HBO as part of a larger offering.

Plepler left HBO in the aftermath of AT&T’s acquisition of its corporate parent Time Warner. Reports suggested that AT&T executives wanted HBO to ramp up its content production in the hopes of growing the subscriber base and time spent watching the service.

According to The New York Times, Plepler’s deal will see Eden Productions creating TV shows, documentaries and feature films exclusively for Apple TV+.

In explaining his move, Plepler told The Times that he didn’t want to try to “duplicate” his time at HBO — instead, it made sense to “do my own thing.” He also said that his only serious talks were with Apple: “I thought that Apple was the right idea very quickly, just because it was embryonic enough that I thought maybe, you know, I could make a little contribution there.”

Apple TV+ now live, with one year free for new iOS, Apple TV and Mac purchases

 

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This new wireless charger from Zens nearly fulfills the promise of Apple’s AirPower

Apple’s cancellation of its AirPower wireless charging mat was one of the company’s few big public flubs, but the concept behind the cancelled product remains attractive: A wireless charging pad that supports multiple devices, and that isn’t picky about how you set down your device in order to make a connection. Wireless charging accessory maker Zens has actually created such a device with the Liberty Wireless Charger, and while it doesn’t offer everything that AirPower claimed to be able to do, it’s a big step up from current wireless chargers and a a great companion for iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch.

Coils, coils coils

The Zens Liberty is special because of how it uses the wireless charging coils that are responsible for the charging ability of any wireless chargers – wound circular loops of copper cable that provide the induction power received by devices like the latest iPhones and AirPods charging case. Zens has stacked 16 such coils in an overlapping array – which, conveniently, you can see in pretty much full detail in the transparent glass edition charger that’s available today alongside the fabric-covered version.

These overlapping coils are the key to the unique abilities of the Zens Liberty: Specifically, their arrangement means you can place your devices down in basically any orientation and they’ll begin charging right away. Most charging pads, by comparison, have one, two or sometimes three coils placed in specific locations, meaning you have to make sure your device is properly situated above one to actually get it to start charging. If you’ve been using wireless chargers for any length of time, you’ve probably had the unfortunate opportunity to get this orientation match-up wrong, resulting in a phone that didn’t charge at all when you wake up the next morning.

Zens’ Liberty does indeed solve this annoyance, and I found I was able to put devices down basically however I wanted them and have them charge up.

Flexible seating for two

Up to two Qi-compatible devices can be charged at once, and they’ll each work with up to 15w of power, which is at the top end of what any current devices support. I tested it out with Android phones, iPhones and AirPods (plus AirPods Pro) and found that all worked without issue and basically however I wanted to lay them across the surface. The caveats here are that you should think of the areas around the edges of the charger as basically non-active, so stay around an inch in from the outer surface and you should be fine.

This flexibility may not seem like much (why not just pay attention when you’re putting your devices on a more traditional charger?) but it actually is a very nice convenience. Just that small assurance that you can easily put your device down on the Liberty’s generous surface and not worry too much about checking whether a connection was actually made is a big relief, when you charge a device as much as you do your iPhone or your AirPods.

Apple Watch, too

The Zens Liberty can’t charge the Apple Watch on the pad, the way that Apple had advertised the cancelled AirPower would’ve been able to. But with an accessory, the pad can become a truly all-in one charging station for your mobile Apple kit, Watch included. An officially supported Apple Watch charger with a USB A connector on one end is an add-on option that Zens offers, and it conveniently slots right into a USB port present on the Zens Liberty (and protected/hidden by a rubber flap when not in use).

This port actually supports any kind of USB powered device, so you can also use it with a cable to charge another gadget, like an iPad for instance. But it’s perfectly designed for the new Zens Apple Watch charger accessory, which comes with a little plastic shelf that snaps in to support your Watch when it’s charging. It provides just the right angle for Apple Watch’s Nightstand mode, and is a necessary addition for anyone looking for an all-in one solution.

Bottom line

The Zens Liberty is the best all-around charging option available currently, based on my testing so far. It’s also powered by an included 60w USB-C charger, which comes with two international plug adapters that makes it a great travel brick for other devices, too. That means you can also use standard USB-C power bricks with it, too, rather than requiring some kind of proprietary power adapter.

There are some downsides to keep in mind, however: You should realize that this is a big charger, for instance. That’s good in that it supports multiple devices easily, but it’s also going to take up more space than your average wireless charger. It’s also thick, which allows for the stacked coils and cooling system (this is the only wireless charger I’ve used that has clear and obvious vents, for instance).

That said, the Zens Liberty makes good on the true promise of wireless charging, which is convenience and flexibility. And it’s well-designed and aesthetically attractive, in both the fabric-covered and striking transparent glass designs. Zens is now accepting pre-orders for these, with shipping starting sometime this month, and the standard fabric version retails for €139.99 ($155 USD) while the glass edition is €179.99 ($199 USD), and the Apple Watch USB stick sells for €39.99 ($44.50 USD).

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This new wireless charger from Zens nearly fulfills the promise of Apple’s AirPower

Apple’s cancellation of its AirPower wireless charging mat was one of the company’s few big public flubs, but the concept behind the cancelled product remains attractive: A wireless charging pad that supports multiple devices, and that isn’t picky about how you set down your device in order to make a connection. Wireless charging accessory maker Zens has actually created such a device with the Liberty Wireless Charger, and while it doesn’t offer everything that AirPower claimed to be able to do, it’s a big step up from current wireless chargers and a a great companion for iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch.

Coils, coils coils

The Zens Liberty is special because of how it uses the wireless charging coils that are responsible for the charging ability of any wireless chargers – wound circular loops of copper cable that provide the induction power received by devices like the latest iPhones and AirPods charging case. Zens has stacked 16 such coils in an overlapping array – which, conveniently, you can see in pretty much full detail in the transparent glass edition charger that’s available today alongside the fabric-covered version.

These overlapping coils are the key to the unique abilities of the Zens Liberty: Specifically, their arrangement means you can place your devices down in basically any orientation and they’ll begin charging right away. Most charging pads, by comparison, have one, two or sometimes three coils placed in specific locations, meaning you have to make sure your device is properly situated above one to actually get it to start charging. If you’ve been using wireless chargers for any length of time, you’ve probably had the unfortunate opportunity to get this orientation match-up wrong, resulting in a phone that didn’t charge at all when you wake up the next morning.

Zens’ Liberty does indeed solve this annoyance, and I found I was able to put devices down basically however I wanted them and have them charge up.

Flexible seating for two

Up to two Qi-compatible devices can be charged at once, and they’ll each work with up to 15w of power, which is at the top end of what any current devices support. I tested it out with Android phones, iPhones and AirPods (plus AirPods Pro) and found that all worked without issue and basically however I wanted to lay them across the surface. The caveats here are that you should think of the areas around the edges of the charger as basically non-active, so stay around an inch in from the outer surface and you should be fine.

This flexibility may not seem like much (why not just pay attention when you’re putting your devices on a more traditional charger?) but it actually is a very nice convenience. Just that small assurance that you can easily put your device down on the Liberty’s generous surface and not worry too much about checking whether a connection was actually made is a big relief, when you charge a device as much as you do your iPhone or your AirPods.

Apple Watch, too

The Zens Liberty can’t charge the Apple Watch on the pad, the way that Apple had advertised the cancelled AirPower would’ve been able to. But with an accessory, the pad can become a truly all-in one charging station for your mobile Apple kit, Watch included. An officially supported Apple Watch charger with a USB A connector on one end is an add-on option that Zens offers, and it conveniently slots right into a USB port present on the Zens Liberty (and protected/hidden by a rubber flap when not in use).

This port actually supports any kind of USB powered device, so you can also use it with a cable to charge another gadget, like an iPad for instance. But it’s perfectly designed for the new Zens Apple Watch charger accessory, which comes with a little plastic shelf that snaps in to support your Watch when it’s charging. It provides just the right angle for Apple Watch’s Nightstand mode, and is a necessary addition for anyone looking for an all-in one solution.

Bottom line

The Zens Liberty is the best all-around charging option available currently, based on my testing so far. It’s also powered by an included 60w USB-C charger, which comes with two international plug adapters that makes it a great travel brick for other devices, too. That means you can also use standard USB-C power bricks with it, too, rather than requiring some kind of proprietary power adapter.

There are some downsides to keep in mind, however: You should realize that this is a big charger, for instance. That’s good in that it supports multiple devices easily, but it’s also going to take up more space than your average wireless charger. It’s also thick, which allows for the stacked coils and cooling system (this is the only wireless charger I’ve used that has clear and obvious vents, for instance).

That said, the Zens Liberty makes good on the true promise of wireless charging, which is convenience and flexibility. And it’s well-designed and aesthetically attractive, in both the fabric-covered and striking transparent glass designs. Zens is now accepting pre-orders for these, with shipping starting sometime this month, and the standard fabric version retails for €139.99 ($155 USD) while the glass edition is €179.99 ($199 USD), and the Apple Watch USB stick sells for €39.99 ($44.50 USD).

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The story of why Marc Benioff gifted the AppStore.com domain to Steve Jobs

In Marc Benioff’s book, Trailblazer, he tells the tale of how Steve Jobs planted the seeds of the idea that would become the first enterprise app store, and how Benioff eventually paid Jobs back with the gift of the AppStore.com domain.

While Salesforce did truly help blaze a trail when it launched as an enterprise cloud service in 1999, it took that a step further in 2006 when it became the first SaaS company to distribute related services in an online store.

In an interview last year around Salesforce’s 20th anniversary, company CTO and co-founder Parker Harris told me that the idea for the app store came out of a meeting with Steve Jobs three years before AppExchange would launch. Benioff, Harris and fellow co-founder Dave Moellenhoff took a trip to Cupertino in 2003 to meet with Jobs. At that meeting, the legendary CEO gave the trio some sage advice: to really grow and develop as a company, Salesforce needed to develop a cloud software ecosystem. While that’s something that’s a given for enterprise SaaS companies today, it was new to Benioff and his team in 2003.

As Benioff tells it in his book, he asked Jobs to elucidate on what he meant by an application ecosystem. Jobs replied that how he implemented the idea was up to him. It took some time for that concept to bake, however. Benioff wrote that the notion of an app store eventually came to him as an epiphany at dinner one night a few years after that meeting. He says that he sketched out that original idea on a napkin while sitting in a restaurant.

“One evening over dinner in San Francisco, I was struck by an irresistibly simple idea. What if any developer from anywhere in the world could create their own applications for the Salesforce platform? And what if we offered to store these apps in an online directory that allowed any Salesforce user to download them?”

Whether it happened like that or not, the app store idea would eventually come to fruition, but it wasn’t originally called the AppExchange as it is today. Instead, Benioff says he liked the name AppStore.com, so much so that he had his lawyers register the domain the next day.

When Benioff talked to customers prior to the launch, while they liked the concept, they didn’t like the name he had come up with for his online store. He eventually relented and launched in 2006 with the name AppExchange.com instead. Force.com would follow in 2007, giving programmers a full-fledged development platform to create applications, and then distribute them in AppExchange.

Salesforce AppExchange Revolutionized Software Distribution When It Launched Ten Years Ago Today

Meanwhile, AppStore.com sat dormant until 2008 when Benioff was invited back to Cupertino again for a big announcement around iPhone. As Benioff wrote, “At the climactic moment, [Jobs] said [five] words that nearly floored me: ‘I give you App Store.”

Benioff wrote that he and his executives actually gasped when they heard the name. Somehow, even after all that time had passed since that the original meeting, both companies had settled upon the same name. Only Salesforce had rejected it, leaving an opening for Benioff to give a gift to his mentor. He says that he went backstage after the keynote and signed over the domain to Jobs.

In the end, the idea of the web domain wasn’t even all that important to Jobs in the context of an app store concept. After all, he put the App Store on every phone, and it wouldn’t require a website to download apps. Perhaps that’s why today, the domain points to the iTunes store, and launches iTunes (or gives you the option of opening it).

Even the App Store page on Apple.com uses the sub-domain ‘app-store’ today, but it’s still a good story of how a conversation between Jobs and Benioff would eventually have a profound impact on how enterprise software was delivered, and how Benioff was able to give something back to Jobs for that advice.

How Salesforce paved the way for the SaaS platform approach

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Tech’s biggest companies are worth ~$5T as 2019’s epic stock market run wraps

Look, this is the last post I’m writing in 2019 and I’m tired. But I can’t let the year close without taking stock of how well tech stocks did this year. It was bonkers.

So let’s mark the year’s conclusion with some notes for our future selves. Yes, we know that the Nasdaq has been setting new records and SaaS had a good year. But we need to dig in and get the numbers out so that we can look back and remember.

Let’s cap off this year the way it deserves to be remembered, as a kick-ass trip ’round the sun for your local, public technology company.

Keeping score

We’ll start with the indices that we care about:

• The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 35% in 2019
• The SaaS-heavy Bessemer Cloud Index rose 41% this year

Next, the highest-value U.S.-based technology companies:

• Microsoft was up around 55% in 2019
• Apple managed an 86% gain in the year
• Not be left out, Facebook rose 57%
• Amazon posted its own gain of 23% in 2019
• Alphabet managed to grow by 29%, as well

Now let’s turn to some companies that we care about, even if they are smaller than the Big Five:

• Salesforce? Up 19% this year
• Adobe was up 46% in 2019, which was astounding
• Intel picked up 28% in the year, making it no slouch
• Even Oracle managed to gain 17% in 2019

And so on.

The technology industry’s epic run has been so strong that The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that, powered by tech companies, U.S. stocks “are poised for their best annual performance in six years.” The Journal highlighted the performance of Apple and Microsoft in particular for helping drive the boom. I wonder why.

How long will we live in the neighborhood of Nasdaq 9,000? How long can two tech companies be worth more than $1 trillion at the same time? How long can the biggest tech companies be worth a combined $4.93 trillion (I remember when $3 trillion for the Big Five was news, and I recall when the group reach a collective value of $4 trillion).¹

But the worst trade in recent years has been the pessimists’ gambit. No matter what, stocks have kept going up, short-term hiccoughs and other missteps aside.

For nearly everyone, that is. While tech stocks in general did very well, some names that we all know did not. Let’s close on those reminders that a rising tide lifts only most boats.

2019 naughty list

Several of the most lackluster public tech companies were 2019 technology IPOs, interestingly enough. Who didn’t do well? Uber earns a spot on the naughty list for not only being underwater from its IPO price, but also from its final private valuations. And as you guessed, Lyft is down from its IPO price as well, which is not good.

Some 2019 IPOs did well in the middle of the year, but fell a little flat as the year came to a close. Pinterest, Beyond Meat and Zoom meet that criteria, for example. And some SaaS companies struggled, even if we think they will reach $1 billion in revenue in time.

But it was mostly a party. The public markets were good, and tech stocks were great. This helped create another 100+ unicorns in the year.

Such was 2019. On to 2020!

1. In time, those numbers will look small. But sitting here on December 31, 2019, they appear huge and towering and, it must be said, somewhat perilously stacked.

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Just how good was 2019 for wireless headphones? Very, very good.

Companies sold a lot of wireless headphone in 2019. You already knew that though, right? What you probably didn’t know was precisely how many constitutes the aforementioned “lot.” New numbers from Canalys shed a light on those successes. The research firm’s classification of audio products is a little wonky, but it drives the point home nonetheless.

In their terms, we’re talking specifically about “true wireless stereo” products under the umbrella of “smart personal audio devices” — in other words, wireless headphones. Taken as a whole, the category (which also includes tethered wireless earbuds and over/on ear wireless headphones) hit 96.7 million shipments in Q3, making a 53 percent year over year growth. For the fourth quarter (including the holidays), the number is expected to break 100 million, pushing things to around 350 million for the full year.

The “true wireless stereo” segment (fully wireless earbuds) saw a 183% growth for the quarter, overtaking wireless earphones and wireless headphones in the process. Another not surprising thing: Apple led the pack, far and away. The company controls 43% of the market, per the firm. Xiaomi and Samsung are a distant second and third, respectively, at 7% and 6%, respectively. And Apple’s numbers will likely continue to look pretty good with the warm reception of the AirPods Pro.

The market is likely to get even more interesting in 2020 with the arrival of new products from giants like Google and Microsoft, coupled with an increased presence of low cost alternatives. But Apple’s stranglehold, particularly among iOS users, will be a tough one to break.

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