Continuing his departure from Apple as smoothly as possible, today Steve Jobs relinquished the post of CEO to become Chairman of the Board and ‘employee Steve’.

Thank you Steve, for all you’ve done to change the world (and my life). I hope your influence and ideals forever endure at Apple.



The soundbyte is probably the single most destructive factor in politics today, forcing politicians to frame positions into a single sentence, throwing nuance and insight to the wind in favor of something catchy that sounds truthy.

Twitter has democratized the soundbyte to be within everyone’s reach, so any representative, official or not, can make a catchy assertion of 140 characters or less and not have to worry about a follow-up question or be held responsible for any more nuance than their truthy tweet.

Today’s case in point? Google published a blog post lamenting the state of patent law and the aggressive nature of Apple, Microsoft and others in bidding exorbitant sums of money for patent portfolios that they would use to extract royalties from other companies including Google and their partners.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith struck back with this tweet:

Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.

Ooh, zing! Google’s lying! End of story! 18 characters to spare! And of course the pundits (Daring Fireball for example) took it at face value and didn’t dive deeper than the sheen of truthiness.

So here we go, throwing down a little context. Microsoft’s proposed deal was offered back in October of 2010, while several companies were bidding on the Novell patent portfolio. The patent portfolio is valuable to companies in the mobile sector for a few specific reasons:

1. To have unrestricted license to use the inventions described in the patent.
   
2. To be able to take legal action against — or get licensing revenue from — other companies who may be violating the patent.
   
3. To use as a negotiating chip when other companies threaten to sue you for other patent violations (or anything else).

Bidding in partnership with a competitor is helpful when your goal is to have unrestricted license, or when the company you’re climbing in bed with is not one that you want to either take legal action against or protect yourself from.

In October 2010, Google’s primary motivation was reason #3: To build a defensive portfolio against Microsoft and others. Sharing the patents with Microsoft would nullify that advantage.

Isn’t it possible that Google’s just being paranoid, and wouldn’t need a defensive patent portfolio? Let’s check in with Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith again. This time it’s July 5th, and Brad is elated at their success in using patent threats to extract licensing fees from a fifth Android partner:

Our Wistron deal today makes for four Android #patent license agreements in nine days. (No need to calculate pi to figure that one out.)

The Wistron deal, like those that came before it, give Wistron license to a number of Microsoft-owned patents including those acquired in the Novell auction.

So in retrospect, back in October 2010 Microsoft gave Google the option to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to help acquire a patent portfolio, or to make its partners pay what will likely amount to $750 million a year in licensing fees for access to the self-same patents.

But hey, why care about the whole truth when you can make something that sounds so truthy in 122 characters?

By the way, Microsoft, along with Apple, last month spent another $4.5 billion dollars to grab Nortel’s patent portfolio. I wonder how many tweets Brad will write gloating about their use of that portfolio to kill its competitors, when he’s not too busy tweeting about how he tried to be friends first?

Update 8/5: I’d like to thank John Gruber for writing a thoughtful reply to my posts this morning. I can see his viewpoint a lot more clearly in this post than I could in his earlier ones, and only have a few comments:

First, that I do see a significant difference between using patents defensively vs offensively. I feel that Google thinks ‘empty patents’ (not all patents) shouldn’t exist, and that a defensive portfolio helps nullify their effect on Google. Proactively suing competitors for violation of such patents is not what someone would do if they think such patents shouldn’t be enforced.

Second, Gruber states:

What I’m complaining about isn’t Google playing the game, but rather their insistent whining about their competitors only after they lost the game.

What if they’re only losing the game, but that game is ongoing? Last month’s $4.5b Nortel portfolio is an indication that things are only getting worse, not just for Google, but for an entire industry that’s pouring money into an arms race fought within the context a patent system that nearly every party involved has admitted is antiquated and lacking.

If companies whining about getting beat up in the schoolyard is what it takes to help sway public opinion on patent reform then I’m proud to have Google stand up and say they hope it gets better. Telling them to grow up, not pout, and ‘play like the big boys’ certainly isn’t the right answer.

Larry Tesler, one of Macintosh’s Founding Fathers, writing on the Interaction Design Association mailing list:

The original Lisa and Mac vertical scroll arrows were at the top and bottom of the vertical scroll bar, and the up-pointing arrow moved the content down. I ran a user study in the early days of Lisa development that informed that design.

Most (but not all) study participants expected to position the mouse near the top of the window to bring the content hidden above the top of the window into view. One reason was that they were looking at the top of the window at the time. Another reason was that they were more likely, as their next action, to select content in the upper half of the window than in the lower half. Consequently, we made the upper member of the arrow pair move the content down. With apologies to computer architects, I’ll call the majority whose expectations were met by this decision the “top-endians”.

The study also examined the question of which way the arrowheads should point. Half the participants thought the upper arrow should point down, the way the content was moving. Half thought it should point up, the direction from which the content was coming. If the latter is surprising to you, consider that a wind blowing air from north to south is called “northerly” in English, and that a standard PRNDL floor shift makes the driver push the stick forward to go into Reverse and backward to go into Drive. If you don’t accept those analogies, note that the “elevator” in the scroll bar moves upward when the user presses the up-pointing arrow to scroll content down.

Most of the product team wanted the arrows to point the way the content moved, and to point away from each other. The issue was escalated to Trip Hawkins, the VP of Lisa Product Marketing. After hearing the study results, Trip offered to go with the usability study on arrow locations if I’d be willing (which I was) to make the arrows point away from each other because it “looked right”.

Be sure to click through to his full post for more insights on the evolution of scrolling, and consider how the decisions the Mac team made so long ago have permeated almost every device on the planet that supports scrolling. Changing that behavior is a huge deal, but one whose time may have come.

For another great story, check out why dialog boxes say “OK”.

Excellent insights on the risks in Groupon’s sales model from Wharton professor, David Reibstein. Here’s the important bit:

Knowledge@Wharton: Why do you believe that business model will not support the current growth rates?

Reibstein: Let me talk about some of the fundamental weaknesses. Obviously, one is, however brilliant of an idea it is, there is also now a huge increase in competition. When Groupon had few competitors, it was more viable than it is now with 499 competitors.

But that is not the big weakness. The Groupon business model works better during a recession than it does during a vibrant economy. I will explain why, and this is where it gets intriguing. The reason some retailers might be willing to provide supply to Groupon is because they have excess inventory. That is particularly the case for services. One of the services I notice frequently [offered on group buying sites] is that of beauty salons. They have so many seats and so many beauticians. If I don’t sell that 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. time slot on Thursday afternoon, I cannot carry that time slot in the inventory tomorrow. It perishes. It perishes in the same sense as an [unsold] airplane seat [once] a plane takes off down the runway. Because of the recession, there has been an abundance of people who are forgoing beauty salons and other sorts of luxury, discretionary services. Rather than let that airplane seat go [unfilled] and the beautician hour go with no revenue, [companies] would [rather] sell it for a little above whatever the incremental costs are. So there is a willingness to do deep discounting.

As the economy picks up and there is less excess inventory, the availability of supply will go down. The willingness of the merchant to offer deep discounts will go down. The business proposition to the customer will be less attractive if [the item or service being offered] doesn’t have the same deep discount.

I wonder if Groupon is keenly aware of this and whether it has anything to do with their rush to IPO.

(hat-tip to Mitch Kapor)

Why? Because Apple will be the first major player to crack the consumer cloud storage nut.

Who? Google or Microsoft. The fact that there are two viable buyers drastically increases the chances that a sale will happen sooner rather than later, lest one company’s sloth lead to a missed opportunity.

Last weekend I made a list of technologies and features I hypothesized Apple is working on and would announce at Monday’s WWDC keynote. As I mentioned, it wasn’t based on any inside info and was admittedly far-reaching. In truth I only expected a handful of these things to be announced this week.

So enough with the equivocation. How’d I do? Here’s my self-graded assessment in light of Steve’s keynote announcements.

First, the stuff I got right:

• Seamless remote access to any data kept in your Documents folder, and synchronization across machines.

  100% CORRECT – Apple’s iCloud offers a free 5 gigs of space for automatic cloud storage and file synchronization across not only Macs, but also iOS devices.



• Realtime, continuous syncing of iOS devices will mean never having to plug your iPhone or iPad in to your computer again, or even the need for a computer for syncing at all.

  100% CORRECT – iOS 5 and iCloud let users completely cut the cord between their iOS devices and Mac/PCs.



• Task-level integration between iOS and Mac OS. If you have a spreadsheet open in Numbers on your Mac and you open Numbers on your iPad, the document you were working on will open up. Realtime synchronization will be integrated as an OS-level service available to developers.

  100% CORRECT – The demo on stage used Keynote and Pages, but the feature has already been built in to the full iWork suite, with APIs so any Mac or iOS developer can add it to their applications.



• Your canonical music library exists in the cloud. Your Mac, Windows, or iOS device can sync with all or part of it in the same way that your iOS devices sync with your computer’s iTunes library today.

  100% CORRECT – Not only spot-on, but I really like how Apple achieved this. I don’t mind paying $25 a year in exchange for better quality tracks than the ones I ripped from my CDs 10 years ago, especially if it means that the labels are on board instead of trying to sue a service to oblivion. Also, not having to upload 35 gigs of music to a music locker is a nice plus.



• A major theme will be the concept that a task doesn’t reside with any particular device, but instead with the person, so shifting devices doesn’t mean you have to shift or restart tasks. Devices will simply be windows into what tasks you’re currently doing.

  MOSTLY CORRECT – A ton of the new functionality throughout iOS, Lion and iCloud is there to remove the mental tax of adding another device to your life. Not having to keep track of what you were working on where, because it’s all available in all devices, is a huge move toward device independence. Incidentally, it also means people have less of a mental barrier to buy just one more iOS device.



• Universal login using your Apple account: Walk up to any Mac, sign in as a guest using your Apple account credentials and you’ll be brought to the same desktop you get on your personal machine. Files will be downloaded from the cloud (or your home network) on demand, and you’ll have access to all the apps you’ve purchased via the Mac App Store, downloaded and installed on-demand, and removed securely, along with your data, upon logout.

  HALFWAY THERE – While universal login to any MacOS device apparently isn’t in the cards for 10.7, the ability to download both files and previously-purchased applications from the cloud to any machine you authorize is part of iCloud, and the ability to completely provision and restore an iOS device by entering your Apple account info is part of iOS 5. I’d expect universal login to make its way into Mac OS well before 10.8 rolls around, since most of the necessary ground work has already been done.
  



• AppleTV + App Store updates probably aren’t there yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear announcements in order to get developers building apps.

  CORRECTISH – With the exception of an update to enable a few iCloud features like Photo Stream, AppleTV was noticeably absent from the Keynote. (I’m not counting this one in my right/wrong tally, since the way I wrote the guess I could count a win if they announced or if they didn’t.)

And then there’s stuff that didn’t happen:

• Apple will announce that by early 2012 every screen they make will be touch-enabled, including the entire Mac line, and while it will be several years before OS X apps require touch, there will be universal gestures that will be useful in today’s apps from day one, and more gestures that tomorrows apps can choose to support to augment the pointer-and-keyboard model.

  WRONGISH – A lot of emphasis was placed on multi-touch gestures and controls in Lion, but nothing was said about touchscreen displays. At the same time, Apple said nothing about hardware advances throughout the keynote, so it may be that touchscreen displays are coming, but aren’t being pre-announced. I’d still bet we see our first touchscreen Mac in the first quarter of 2012, but this may take a bit longer to come about.



• iOS runtime within Mac OS to allow iPhone apps to run as Dashboard widgets and iPad apps as first-class desktop apps.

  100% WRONG – As several people have said to me since I write this list, too many apps rely on specific iOS hardware capabilities like accelerometers and on-screen multi-touch gestures for this to work. I think it still may happen at some point, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards any time soon.



• Built-in screen sharing of Mac OS to the iPad, to do lightweight actions on your Mac from your iPad.

  WRONG – It’s not exactly pivotal or elegant to try and make an iOS device something it wasn’t designed to be. Chalk this one up with the iOS apps on the Mac as a cool idea, but maybe not a mainstream enough one to clutter the OS with.



• Unification of the App Store to encompass Mac, iPhone, iPod, AppleTV and iPad apps. Ability to make a single purchase for all the environments the app supports. Also, stripping out the App store from iTunes. iTunes will be the media storefront and the App Store will be the resource storefront.

  WRONG – So far as I can tell, there’s no unification of app stores yet. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.



• Continuous media play across devices: Play music on your mac, then with a tap shift the music to your iPhone when you’re on the go. A sizable portion of the playlist will quickly transfer over so there’s no reliance on continued wi-fi access or 3G streaming.

  MOSTLY WRONG – There’s still some hope though, since your iPhone will be able to grab the music from the iCloud.



• The only new devices announced at WWDC will be updates to facilitate the new software functionality. Some have speculated on new Airport base stations built around iOS to make VPN easy and mainstream. This seems very likely. It will be important to have one device that is always on and available, and Airport is a sensical bet.

  NOT YET – No new hardware or hardware updates were announced during the keynote. An iOS-based Airport Extreme may be on the way, but the keynote’s comprehensive overview of iCloud casts doubt on the Airport being positioned as part of the iCloud solution.
  

All in all my predictions ran 50/50, which I’m very happy with since the things that did come to pass were the larger, more ambitious items on my list. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some beta software to download and install.

I get the feeling that the announcements at next week’s Apple WWDC are going to represent the same kind of fundamental shift in Apple’s offering that the iPod did in 2001.

I don’t have any inside info, and I make a point of not trying to pry secrets from my friends who work at Apple, but the rumblings are huge. ‘iCloud’ could mean anything, but given the complete failure of MobileMe over the last decade there’s no way Apple would introduce it on such a pedestal unless it’s incredible. My guess is that iCloud is to MobileMe as iPhone was to Newton: a complete, deep, polished solution after an underwhelming market failure.

Apple took a long time to get the Internet. Geeks were still installing FTP clients and web browsers for years after Apple belatedly included TCP/IP and PPP to their OS and, when Apple finally did integrate the Internet into Mac OS, it was in a very tacked on kind of way. A browser, an app for making web pages, eventually a few vertical online stores. I think that’s all about to change.

The scene has been building for a long time: The iPhone blurred the line between using a local device and being online. Chromebooks propose to eliminate the line completely by using an OS that expects to be online all the time (though still has limited functionality when the wireless cord is cut). Dropbox is a huge hit because it provides the most seamless way to use native apps while still writing to the cloud. Google and Amazon are tripping over each other (and the music labels) trying to roll out virtual music lockers.

My guess though is that these vertical solutions will seem pretty thin by the end of next week.

In no particular order, here are some thoughts about where Apple may be going. These are not based on any inside info, and they certainly won’t all be right:

• Seamless remote access to any data kept in your Documents folder, and synchronization across machines


• Universal login using your Apple account: Walk up to any Mac, sign in as a guest using your Apple account credentials and you’ll be brought to the same desktop you get on your personal machine. Files will be downloaded from the cloud (or your home network) on demand, and you’ll have access to all the apps you’ve purchased via the Mac App Store, downloaded and installed on-demand, and removed securely, along with your data, upon logout.


• Apple will announce that by early 2012 every screen they make will be touch-enabled, including the entire Mac line, and while it will be several years before OS X apps require touch, there will be universal gestures that will be useful in today’s apps from day one, and more gestures that tomorrows apps can choose to support to augment the pointer-and-keyboard model.


• Realtime, continuous syncing of iOS devices will mean never having to plug your iPhone or iPad in to your computer again, or even the need for a computer for syncing at all.


• iOS runtime within Mac OS to allow iPhone apps to run as Dashboard widgets and iPad apps as first-class desktop apps.


• Task-level integration between iOS and Mac OS. If you have a spreadsheet open in Numbers on your Mac and you open Numbers on your iPad, the document you were working on will open up. Realtime synchronization will be integrated as an OS-level service available to developers.


• Built-in screen sharing of Mac OS to the iPad, to do lightweight actions on your Mac from your iPad.


• Your canonical music library exists in the cloud. Your Mac, Windows, or iOS device can sync with all or part of it in the same way that your iOS devices sync with your computer’s iTunes library today.


• Unification of the App Store to encompass Mac, iPhone, iPod, AppleTV and iPad apps. Ability to make a single purchase for all the environments the app supports.


• Stripping out the App store from iTunes. iTunes will be the media storefront and the App Store will be the resource storefront.


• Continuous media play across devices: Play music on your mac, then with a tap shift the music to your iPhone when you’re on the go. A sizable portion of the playlist will quickly transfer over so there’s no reliance on continued wi-fi access or 3G streaming.


• A major theme will be the concept that a task doesn’t reside with any particular device, but instead with the person, so shifting devices doesn’t mean you have to shift or restart tasks. Devices will simply be windows into what tasks you’re currently doing.


• The only new devices announced at WWDC will be updates to facilitate the new software functionality. Some have speculated on new Airport base stations built around iOS to make VPN easy and mainstream. This seems very likely. It will be important to have one device that is always on and available, and Airport is a sensical bet.


• AppleTV + App Store updates probably aren’t there yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear announcements in order to get developers building apps.

At its core, Apple will use Lion and iOS 5 to make the shift from building computers that access the Internet to building a global computing service that lets people use any number of physical devices to access it.

At least, I hope so.

UPDATE: Here’s my self-graded,, post-keynote report card on these guesses.

I’m excited to hear what Microsoft is focusing on for Windows 8, targeted for 2012. I have to say though, that even the lock screen delivers a little trepidation, asking the user to press the eternal “CTRL + ALT + DELETE” to log on.

Why does this bug me? Okay:

1. This is a keystroke that is deliberately difficult to type, because it used to be the way to shut down your computer, an action you would never want to have happen by accident. Exiting a lock screen is the most common task the user would want to perform when the computer is locked, and the gesture to do so should be much, much easier.

2. Semantically, the keyboard combination makes no sense. ‘Control’ when chorded with a letter, is given the attributes of the verb ‘do’ (e.g. Control-C means ‘Do copy’) and ‘control’ + ‘alt’ means ‘do in the special way’. Control + Alt + Delete means ‘Do delete in the special way’ which actually was appropriate when it was the method for shutting down your computer, logging the user out, or putting it to sleep. Using the same keystroke for logging a user in abandons semantics in favor of familiarity in the same way users must first go to the Start menu to select ‘Shut down’.

3. The very nomenclature of “CNTL + ALT + DEL” relies on every user to understand that ‘+’ in this context means ‘press at the same time’ which may not be as obvious when presented outside the context of a menu shortcut, but also that many keyboards nowadays have a ‘Control’ key but no ‘CNTL’ key, and many also have two keys labeled ‘Delete’ (forward and backward delete) which is a whole separate issue.
   

Seeing as how Windows 8 will have a lot more functionality built in to support touchscreen environments, you can bet that the way to unlock a tablet will be far more elegant. It would be nice if they rethought some of the most antiquated and overlooked parts of the experience.

Then again, at least you almost never see [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore anymore.

I’m turned off when someone describes their startup as “the $successfulCompany of $otherIndustry” or “$successfulCompany for $otherIndustry” for three reasons:

1. It implies that copying a successful model is easy. Companies are rarely success stories based solely on a great idea. Execution usually matters more. It’s worth asking a founder if they know of examples where the $otherCompanyName model has been applied to other industries and whether it has worked or not. Ideally they should be aware of successes and failures, and be able to identify the root causes of each.
2. It’s an oversimplification that lends itself to a variety of interpretations. One company I looked at recently pitched itself as “Facebook for Things.” What does this mean? Do things have friends? Photo albums? Do they poke each other? If you’re going to try positioning your company in a single sentence, it’s important that your audience is left with an accurate idea of what the company is. Even worse than ambiguity is false certainty. If your positioning sentence makes someone believe they understand what you are, but you’re actually something else you run the risk of being ignored by people who might be interested in what you actually are, and turn off people who are excited by their false interpretation but find that it’s not who you are.

3. Original ideas are more compelling than adaptations. I’m far more interested in a company driven by a specific passion around an original idea than one that feels like it was created around a matrix of successful companies on one axis and niche industries on the other.
   

Homework: Look at successful companies and see what “$successfulCompany for $otherIndustry” might have fit them when they were just starting up. Tweet your answers with the hashtag #UberForPizza and we’ll compare notes.

Update: Okay, okay. “Uber for Pizza” is a great idea, it’s true. But it’s still ambiguous. Is it a single number or app that will send your request to the closest/most available pizzeria with delivery? But Uber is all about higher quality than regular cabs, so maybe the company operates (or subcontracts) a fleet of vans with half-baked pizzas and flash ovens which can bake and deliver a pizza of consistently high quality in 8 minutes or less. Or maybe it’s a taxi service where fresh pizza (and breadsticks) are baked and served inside the car as you make your way to your destination.

Mmm, delicious ambiguity…

Are Microsoft, Apple and Google quietly preparing for war with mobile carriers? I think so.

With all the advancements made to mobile phones in the past ten years, the part that’s been woefully slow to improve is the act of calling. Making calls, placing calls, searching for signal and scrimping minutes hasn’t changed much since the mobile phone came out, because carriers have little incentive to innovate. Mobile carriers make their money either way, and ‘innovation’ comes down to increasing the bottom line, whether it’s charging $1,300/megabyte for text messages or adding 20 seconds of instructions on how to leave a voicemail so that the carrier might get an extra minute’s revenue.

If technology or product companies were in control of the full telecom stack, you’d be able to get caller ID data for incoming cellphone calls. You’d be able to see someone’s availability before you call them, and that availability could be controlled by the user or automatically by time of day, location, current calling status (“Kevin is currently on the phone.”) You’d see robust competition producing a hundred other innovations to make calling a reasonable mode of communications again.

Sure, a few middleware services like Google Voice (and Grand Central before them) have offered some innovation, but they’ve been hobbled by spotty levels of OS integration across platforms and even more limited access to carrier services. They don’t let you ping a phone for status before you call, or a dozen other features that can be found in IM or email clients. Even the iPhone’s visual voicemail was only implemented because it was a dealbreaking feature Apple insisted upon in its negotiations with AT&T. Remember, carriers have a disincentive to make calls more efficient because they get paid by the minute.

Then there’s the cell network. Recent innovation in cell networks has been driven almost exclusively by skyrocketing mobile data needs. Most 4G-capable phones can’t even use 4G for voice calls, falling back to their secondary 3G (or 2G) chipsets and cell networks when placing or receiving calls. At present, 4G is just for data on these phones and voice calls happen in a completely different way. SMS messages are similarly distinct from data. (Think a backup tricycle in the trunk of your sports car.) Your phone’s Wi-Fi capable? Tough, you can’t use that for calls either, unless you buy a microcell for your home network. That microcell creates a mini 3G network that plugs in to your home internet, but you’ll still pay your mobile carrier for the minutes on calls you pipe through your own internet connection because they go from there to your mobile carrier’s central computers and back out again.

That’s the preamble for what’s broken, and I could go on, but I’ll get to the point: What if Microsoft’s plan is to fix it?

To create a new full mobile pipeline you’d need to control the mobile phone hardware, the mobile OS, and the carrier. It’s incredibly hard to start a new cellular network because placing cell towers all over the country is extremely expensive and permits for individual towers can take years to obtain, so most small carriers lease capacity from one of the major mobile carriers, which gives small carriers a disadvantage when it comes to pricing. Also, leasing access from a primary carrier doesn’t let you bring much new technology to the table. The data is still going through their limited systems using their stagnant protocols, which leaves Wi-Fi and cellular data as the ways to go. Our phones already use Wi-Fi for data access, falling back seamlessly to the cellular network when Wi-Fi isn’t available. Wi-Fi usage is essentially free, so a ‘soft carrier’ could drastically lower their costs by routing calls over wi-fi when available, and buying data access from a primary mobile carrier’s network when Wi-Fi isn’t available.

If over half of a soft carrier’s airtime minutes were carried over Wi-Fi rather than a leased cellular network, that carrier could beat a traditional mobile carrier on price even if the traditional carrier doubled their costs when they leased access to the soft carrier, and for every customer who only has 3G access there’s another who has almost exclusively Wi-Fi access, and over time the scales continue to tip toward the latter, steadily lowering soft-carrier costs. Rates could either be flat regardless of transport, averaging out the benefit to all customers, or discounts could be given to those who use Wi-Fi more often.

Going back to the three ingredients: Microsoft has a good mobile OS, they just bought a soft carrier in Skype, and whether the rumors of a potential acquisition of Nokia pan out or not, Microsoft’s recent deal with Nokia seems to go beyond a simple OS licensing agreement. If Microsoft is trying to turn the cellular industry on end, it’ll start out with Nokia hardware built to Microsoft specifications. No other hardware manufacturer would likely risk pissing off their major customers (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) with a move that so directly challenges the entire mobile industry.

And of course Microsoft isn’t alone in this ambition. Apple and Google each appear to have been moving to the same destination by different paths. Apple’s integration of FaceTime, first into the iPhone, then the iPod Touch, iPad 2, and Mac OS, is a clear move toward carrier independence. In a limited sense, the iPod Touch is already a wi-fi phone. It would take very little for Apple to build its own Facetime-to-POTS gateway and roll out a voice-only version to create an experience almost identical to a cellular carrier but living entirely in the data stack, using Wi-Fi when available. In fact, I’d be amazed if such software wasn’t already running inside Apple. Mix in Apple’s recent deals with voice recognition leader Nuance and we’re several steps closer to what former Nuance licensee TellMe (acquired by Microsoft in 2007, by the way) calls ‘Dialtone 2.0,’ where phone conversations start simply by lifting the receiver to your ear and talking to the computer.

Google Voice and Google’s long-time interest in the FCC spectrum auctions are clear indications of their ambition in this area, and their recent moves to tighten their control on the design and feature sets of Android handsets may be another indication that changes are afoot. Add Amazon in as a wild-card and you have four new mobile telephone creators and carriers, all with ample experience with routing large amounts of data, passion for bringing new capability to their customers, and a consistent resentment of working with partners who get paid beyond what they bring to the table. And if any one of these companies moves to cut out the carrier, the others will race to compete at the same level.

The next five years are going to see as much innovation in the way we make and take calls as the last five have seen in how we use our phone for data. It’s about damned time.