Bionic Woman is a Bionic Dud

Wow. My blog entries are so negative lately. Here's another one.

The new Bionic Woman on NBC. Saw the previews end of last season and was pretty excited about it. Being a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, seeing Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) Mark Sheppard (Romo Lampkin) as part of the cast got me drooling. My expectations were so high, I even overlooked the lame doctor from Grey's Anatomy in the cast.

Boy, what a disappointment. I actually think the original with Lindsay Wagner was better.

There's zero character development and the first episode rushes you to get the "bionic" part of bionic woman. Now, each episode is filled with corny lines, plot and characters. I'm going to give it one more episode before I give up on the show.

New shows that I like so far: Journeyman (love that time shifting stuff) and Pushing Daisies (quirky, bit dark)

Duds of the season: Bionic Woman, Private Practice (over dramatic, enough with stereotyping LA scene), and Chuck (just plain dumb)

Can't wait til Lost returns.

Apple's iPhone mistake...

Many folks take it for granted that because Apple was so successful with the iPod, it will easily duplicate its success with the iPhone. I beg to differ.

Most of us agree that the iPod was successful because it was a very elegant combination of device backed by the iTunes service. Those two components worked over an open network, the internet. While it's design is top-notch, the iPod would not have enjoyed the success it has without its counterparts. Most importantly, Apple solved a problem that no either device manufacturers nor service providers came close to solving; making music portable. If anyone tried running a non-iPod music player, you know what I mean.

iPhone shares some key attributes with it's older sibling, iPod. They both have beautiful software and hardware design combined with a great UI. But the iPhone lacks the seamless connected service and instead is tied to a closed network of a wireless carrier.

Key point here is that Apple's iPhone failed to solve the problem that mobile consumers were faced with. iPhone does combine the iPod with a phone but this was not really a problem but a nice-to-have. We already have lots of nice phones available to us (Treo, BlackJack, HTC, Nokia N95, etc). Sure not all of them have the sophisticated UI like the iPhone but they are packed with advanced features which include the ability to play MP3s. Yet despite all the advanced features on these phone, their end-user experience is crippled by the carriers. And by offering the iPhone tied to a carrier, Apple failed to solve the problem that could make iPhone a runaway success.

Apple still has a chance with the iPhone but it will require drastic changes. See previous post.