Four publications. One view of the technology stack.

In a first for the Delight Scale, we are publishing the scores for two products by the same brand in the same family. Our product research on AirPods and AirPods Pro yielded some consistent insights across Apple hardware products. One of the staple benchmarks of the Delight Scale is the ability to m

Creative Strategies August 19, 2021

The Metaverse and Reality

I’m fond of saying that all science fiction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever we see in science fiction inspires human ingenuity to pursue it. In a way, this is happening with the Metaverse because when you hear “visionaries and futurists” talk about it, it ends up sounding a lot like the Matr

Creative Strategies August 12, 2021

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Delivers Confidence on Galaxy Z Fold Line

For Samsung, summer has traditionally been synonymous with the Galaxy Note, but in 2019 the top-of-the-line model had to share the limelight with the Galaxy Z Fold line. Then, in 2020 the Note even had to share the stage with the Fold family. If you follow the smartphone market, you can understand w

Creative Strategies July 28, 2021

Intel Returning to Form

On Monday, Intel held an event to outline the next 5 years of their process technology roadmap. In addition, there were a number of technical announcements where they highlighted some of the benefits of their transistor design and packaging technology that will come to their latest chips over the ne

Creative Strategies July 22, 2021

Alexa’s Evolution Into An Ambient Assistant

At Alexa Live 2021, Amazon’s annual developer conference focused on skills and services built for Alexa-enabled devices, the company shared a long list of improvements both from a features and developer tools perspective. Seven years in the making, Alexa now counts hundreds of millions of devices in

Creative Strategies July 21, 2021

The PC Category Resurgence

Few technology categories have taken more abuse and had opinions formed than the PC category. While the PC is not the primary computing device of billions of people, that crown belongs to the smartphone, it is still the second most adopted category of computing on the planet. The current PC installe

Creative Strategies July 14, 2021

Apple and Developer Satisfaction With App Store

536 developers for Apple’s software platforms participated in a study Creative Strategies fielded in late May. What makes our study results particularly interesting, is the makeup of our panel ended up being small business developers making less than $500,000 a year from their apps. With 55% of them

Creative Strategies July 14, 2021

Microsoft Broadens The Meaning of Collaboration With Teams, Dynamics 365 And Collaborative Apps

Lately, you can’t talk about work without talking about hybrid work. As the world starts to go back to regular business, brands and industry watchers begin to hypothesize what work will look like going forward. We can certainly disagree on whether the future of work will be remote or hybrid or a pla

Creative Strategies July 7, 2021

For Peloton Owners, Hardware + Software = Delight

We were excited to run our Delight Scale on Peloton and see if it truly stood up to the glowing fanfare coming from consumers on social media. Sure enough, Peloton scored a 960, out of the possible 1200, on our Delight Scale with some of the most overwhelming positive sentiment of any consumer produ

Creative Strategies June 24, 2021

Windows 11: Microsoft’s Most Holistic Approach To An Operating System

We all saw the leaks last week, and while I was left with more questions than answers, it was evident that Microsoft focused on a much more modern, fresher, simpler user interface. What was unclear till today was why Microsoft thought that the update it delivered was worthy of a step-change in numbe

Creative Strategies June 14, 2021

Google Workspace Emphasizes How Work Gets Done, Not Where

Google Workspace had undergone a transformation since October 2020 when G Suite was rebranded to Google Workspace, and a series of skews were released to address the enterprise market. In February, Workspace was brought to the education market, and at Google I/O, the team launched Smart Canvas, a ne

Creative Strategies June 8, 2021

Three Big Themes at Apple’s WWDC

I am not sure if it’s the lack of down time for stage walk-ons or that Apple has got this digital event thing down to a science, but the pace of this year Apple’s Developer Conference (WWDC) was incredible. The overall impact of the announcements across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS will take