Tech product review

Disclaimer : This post has turned out to be a lot more technical than I intended. So if you are not a tech-geek you'll find it pretty dense and incomprehensible.

Google plus has certainly captured the imagination of, well, those who signed up for it in the last few weeks since its launch. It already has 500 trillion users and this number is growing. The saving grace is that it hasn't created any new 25 year old billionaires. Its potential is unmistakable but is it the product that it can be, yet? Let's take a critical look at this product by comparing it to what, in some ways, is its only competitor, my old ipod-shuffle.
1. G+ has friends but Ipod has songs : My shuffle can hold about a hundred songs of all types, English, Hindi, regional languages - you name it (and then download it) and the ipod has it. G+ on the other hand, holds a virtual network of friends and family. You do the math.
2. You can shuffle songs but not friends : Even the most skeptical of song listeners will agree that sometimes you just need to shuffle songs, which my ipod does pretty easily. It can be argued that you can't shuffle friends because it might annoy them but that's just a sore-loser argument in my view. Surely family members and some other 2-3 circles should not mind being shuffled around?
3. Ipod usually comes with earphones : Well, this is self-explanatory. It is rumored that G+ is only in beta phase and when the launch happens, you can download some earphones but then what will you be listening to? Friends' status updates?
4. Privacy : Strictly this is a techno-legal issue and beyond the scope of this article but let me try to simplify it for a lay audience. This is the same malaise that facebook suffered from and can't be ignored. G+ has an option to block some friends (why add them in the first place, moron?) but surprisingly enough, ipod comes a cropper on this one. You can't block a song, but only manage through skipping or deleting.
5. User interface complexity : G+ is a frikking full page on my laptop with so many boxes and text. Ipod has only one circle with 4 arrows. I like. And not facebook-like.
6. Inter-usability between these two : G+ clearly scores on this one too. If I'm listening to a particular song ABC, I can update my status on G+ as "Listening to song ABC" but the reverse integration has just not worked out for Apple. A friend updates his/her status on G+ - absolutely no change in ipod music. And I checked the battery and earphones. Go figure!
7. The physical touch-feel aspect : This one's pretty obvious. You can give your ipod to a friend including the earphones if you don't have any infection or anything. But this is not possible with G+. You can maybe printout your home page and give it to the same friend but I think we can agree it's not the same thing as giving away an ipod.
8. Migration : You were on orkut just a few years back and then you got really lonely there. Sound familiar? Now your facebook friends are vacating for no particular reason. In contrast, when the ipod nano was launched, none of the songs moved out of my ipod, not one.
There's more of course, but these are the top-of-mind issues that developers at both companies are grappling with. Switching costs are high and the product really has to deliver on a unique feature or die a quick death. Will this be another all-out war like facebook versus the desktop computer from the previous decade? Watch this space.