Did the magic Elf make that tech work?

I heard that Santa makes all those great electronics we all crave, you know those new quad this or that’s.

The new phones and tablets that look cool and leap from the shelf into your hands are everywhere, but did you ever think what makes them so great?  Well here it is and in one word “SOFTWARE”.

 The real truth is that hardware is nothing without really good software that showcases the features. I recently worked on a hand held grocery scanner with old technology running the DOS like screens of old. This dinosaur in technology while not the new tablet GUI or having cool window effects it was purposed built with a vertical market in mind. So knowing that it had a specialized market made coding all the more interesting and difficult at the same time. You see development of software for the masses takes a long cycle of time. This cycle from idea to final release can be up to three years and more in many cases. Now in my case I was tasked with idea and development which took only three months in my cycle but I had only one task master being me, but think if that were the mass of you the end-user 300 Million strong. The pressure to release killer software is why developers for the masses take great care to release really world class stuff. I mean what if that development cycle was less than one year and the market just went oh ok another update big deal what would happen? That’s right boys and girls you the consumer would go “I’ll wait” for the next release and save my cash. The release cycle is key to driving the market for GOOGLE, MICROSOFT and others because too quick and they get that “I’LL WAIT”, “DO I REAL NEED” resistance of purchase, but when it is just long enough you get the opposite effect.

So now you know why software is released with year numbers and why Android 2.3 is still used on so many phones. It takes time to craft that end result of WOW to the consumer otherwise the ELFS would simply make Christmas a weekly thing.

CAW (Cool Application of Week)

I’m thinking that CAW this week is more about what is coming soon then an application. With Microsoft releasing Windows 8 to the masses in October you are going to see huge marketing dollars and new products released over the next weeks and I think maybe holding on to that wallet will bring many ELF releases with WOW is all. So hang out a few more weeks and watch the show of shows I think Santa will bring news soon.