The Craftsmanship Gap

One big gap which exists in one of the most popular consumer device categories is the missing link between standalone cameras and smartphones. I wrote on this a number of times before. Of course the fundamental gap is the lack of a full-stack communications standard. One that would allow any phone to connect to any camera without a special dedicated app for that particular camera. It sounds super obvious and in the past there even was a digital camera working group at Bluetooth SIG. But that group never produced anything (any specification) reaching the adoption phase. Clearly members of that group did not have enough motivation to create the standard

They clearly thought they would achieve better results doing it in a proprietary way. But even in a proprietary way - they failed. The cameras' smartphone apps are infuriating - writes Richard Butler at DPReview. Yes they are.

This statement probably does not apply to the latest - meant by design to be connected - photo and video cameras. Good examples are Insta 360 and DJI Pocket. They would not exist without smartphones in the first place, so had to solve the problem somehow. Their apps are of course proprietary, but generally make a good job using Bluetooth to discover the devices nearby and then coordinate over Bluetooth the process of setting up a point-to-point WiFi connection. So this can be done.

But - as Richard writes -  the problem, or the gap - is even bigger with the world's leading legacy camera brands. Setting standardization aside, the gap is clearly a software gap. They simply can't write a decent app.

All the necessary technologies exist - there is the low power Bluetooth Transport Discovery Service to discover / coordinate and WiFi to do the heavy lifting of transferring large data sets. Every phone has them today and so does almost every camera.

At a high level the gap should not exist - we have the technology and we know what and how must be done. But it is one of the purest proof of what Steve Jobs was referring to in the Lost Interview - the software craftsmanship gap.

The disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all the other people" "here is this great idea" then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product. As you evolve that great idea it changes and grows.

It is real.