Happy Birthday, iPhone!

Today is June 29, and that marks the anniversary of the launch of the first iPhone. This also means that the one-year warrantees for the first iPhones bought expire today. Mine expires in September, so I need to get my iPhone-skydiving experience in soon. Arguably the warrantees expiring don't mean much, because if it hasn't turned out defective or buggy in the first year, it probably isn't. In addition to the warrantee thing, the iPhone contracts of people who bought their iPhone on the 29th last year are half over. Apple's deferred revenue from the iPhone is also half over. Happy Birthday, iPhone!

Is a broken box model too much?

For so long, web developers have had to deal with the quirks of internet explorer. Today, most focus on their web site working under versions six and seven. Apple has decided that they were not going to put up with it anymore, and decided to drop support for IE 6 in the upcoming MobileMe. According to the linked post, 31% of the people that use IE are using IE 6. According to Wikipedia, 75% of browsers are IE. Now, anyone can multiply those two percentages and come up with the relatively small number Apple is willing to ignore. WHAT! One fifth of the internet! Apple did not have to think about this decision. The decision was made for them the moment they picked up SproutCore, because SproutCore programs do not run under IE 6. Not even a little. The two example programs on the SproutCore homepage do not. SproutCore wants a more complete CSS implementation. Although it works around IE's Javascript DOM (see here), its box model just breaks down in IE 6.

Apple's decision to not support IE 6 in MobileMe is probably for the best. Everyone wants to see a move away from IE 6, including Microsoft, who has been pushing Internet Explorer 7. Although ignoring a fifth of the internet is difficult, that fifth of the internet may just decide to change browsers so that they can do more. After all, most web browsers are free. Legacy users go through a one-time process of switching and the internet is better for everyone. Internet Explorer 6 is now six years old. Isn't it time the web moved on?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, MobileMe, Web, Windows

Levreging the Amazing Power Trapped in a Video Card

Apple has its new "Grand Central/OpenCL" feature planned out for Snow Leopard. OpenCL is a feature that uses the immense parallel computing power in a video card for other purposes. Has it occurred to anyone that Apple may be looking at other applications for OpenCL besides the desktop? The fact that this comes from the same company that had the novel idea to put a video card in a phone makes me believe that:

1. The iPhone 3G may come with a faster video card, both to help Core Animation renders as well as take some of the load off of the processor.
2. iPhone Firmware 2.0 may include OpenCL already. In the same way that iPhone Firmware 1.0 was a Leopard-based system, iPhone Firmware 2.0 may be Snow Leopard based, or at least take advantage of the graphics card when Core Animation is not being used.
3. OpenCL will set the iPhone apart from Android, as it will make the already fast iPhone experience even faster. Although users do not normally run very intensive tasks on their phone, the phone may be called upon more and more to do things such as blogging and the like. Parallelism is also useful in things such as fast Javascript interpreters (critical for a mobile device.)

Speed and responsiveness are of the essence on a mobile phone, because to do a task in thirty seconds or less, the hardware definitely needs to cooperate. OpenCL contributes to that speed, for although developers are not expected to fill up a graphics card with their threads, they are at least expected to employ parallelism in their applications. Multiple threads have many uses (background polling, perhaps? If Apple did not already have a solution it would be a good argument), and it is possible that Apple may deliver the first mobile phone that really makes use of multiple threads.

Technorati Tags: 3G, Apple, Cell Phones, Core Animation, iPhone, iPhone SDK, Mac OS X, OpenCL, Quartz, Smartphone, Snow Leopard

Software Vs, Hardware: Android and iPhone

Two major smartphone platforms have dominated 2008: Android and the iPhone SDK. However, these two phone systems have vastly different models: the iPhone chooses to focus on software, while Android focuses on hardware. This is evident in the release of the 3G iPhone, where the only new hardware feature accessible to developers (so far as I can see) is the GPS. Android has a myriad of hardware features, but also a myriad of possible features to support. For example, in Google's Maps application for Android, thene is a feature within street view that requires the device to have an internal compass as well as GPS. It is logical to assume that phones without compasses will not have this feature available to them. The thing is, consumers do not like to see features "grayed out"; disabled features only add complexity and a feeling of "my phone is bad because it Cannot do <insert feature here that the phone does not support but is in the interface anyway.>" Consumers like to be able to use all of the features of their phones, because even if they do not use any of them besides the part that makes calls, they like to have that feeling of "my phone can do this" satisfaction. This also creates a headache for developers, especially those developing installer software, because apps have to worry about dependencies. Because there is no central way to specify the hardware dependencies of an app in android, people may end up installing an application and then finding out that it doesn't work because they don't have a specific piece of hardware. Compare this to Apple's model, where everything will run on either an iPhone, iPhone 3G, or an iPod Touch, which all have pretty much the same feature set. And for those 2.5G iPhones that do not have GPS, it can be assumed that smart developers will have an intervening if statement that uses cell triangulation instead.

In the aforementioned scenario, Android is beginning to look a little fragmented hardware-wise, as it embraces the Microsoft model of providing only the software and letting the hardware makers build the phones, while Apple is taking its traditional stance of keeping its cards close to the chest and exerting a tight degree of control on its hardware and software, which enables it to provide deeper integration. And with a centralized application distribution system, similar to the style of the Linux package manager with money added, Apple manages to make a tidy profit out of it. Google manages to get its money's worth too, just in a different form: people using the internet more often. And with more people to use the internet, more people use search, and thus see its adds. This is not the only effect however, as more people using the internet makes internet advertising that much more viable, due to a larger and more diverse audience. Therefore, Google sells more ads, and as more people set up web sites, Google buys more ad space. Although both strategies are valid, I prefer Apple's strategy of militant compatibility across devices, because it guarantees a better overall user experience with the device. I would imagine user experience would be important for Google, as the better user experience people have with the web, the more they use it. Although each platform is different, Apple and Google may just have to compete for the high-end smartphone market (both phones require fairly good video cards.) Apple and Google have gotten along in the past, the question is: can they do it in a market they are both attempting to flesh out in vastly different directions?

Technorati Tags: 3G, Android, Apple, Cell Phones, Google, gPhone, iPhone, iPhone SDK, Linux, Open Source, Smartphone, Usability

Open Source is Magic, Not an Excuse For Laziness

Nokia wants open source developers to "embrace the old-school cell phone business model of DRM, Intellectual Property, SIM Locks, and subsidies. Nokia expects the open source developers to do their work for them and make them an OS, albeit an OS that goes against the Open Source philosophy. In the article, it was said that Nokia had once tried to spin its own version, but that the community had moved ahead of them in the time it took to do that. Nokia needs to embrace Apple's model of open source: take the original project, then write some third party drivers and add-ons that can be laid over the original project. These add-ons can have DRM. These add-ons can have Intellectual Property. Now, I am not saying that Apple's model is perfect (their version of most of their open source is a little behind), but it works, and Nokia has the chance to improve that model by allowing the open part of the project be updated under the open source model. Nokia may have to invest a little work in this (Kernel modules have to be recompiled with a major kernel update), but they have everything they need, and with a little intelligence, they can make the system work on their side.

Certificates and Their Place in the Web

I have implemented zero sign on in my myOpenID settings, and let me say that it is ... interesting. It is similar to having a keychain, not having to type in passwords, however it is also different in that you are already logged in on all sites that support OpenID, and you appear as the same person on all of them. Client Certificates, the method behind zero sign on, may become more common once they are simplified. At the moment though, they remain an esoteric oddity.

I Sense a Disturbance in the Source

Hmm. I believe SCO owns the Me-inc. trademark. And they provide software for mobiles, such as syncing software... SCO vs. IBM... History may repeat itself.

Sorry to tease you SCO, but...

Motion in the Semantic Sea

The semantic web is evolving quickly; Apple is expected to unveil MobileMe, a revised .Mac with integrated desktop-quality applications, Google is encouraging semantic web development (and does quite a bit itself). Here are some prime examples of great semantic web applications.

• 280 Slides. This is a great example of what I expect the semantic web to become: Dynamic languages interpreted into Javascript. This one uses Objective C, but Google Web Toolkit allows you to do it in Java. This is a web app that imitates Keynote. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people at this company either work for Apple as part of the MobileMe initiative, or are very soon going to be working for Apple. I also suspect that they are using a WebObjects 4.5 backing.
• The Waterfall Software Store (WebKit and Konqueror only). Amazing. Astounding. Probably the fastest drag I've seen, and that's because it's operating system-level. This store uses the CSS property -khtml-user-drag and javascript to provide an awesome integrated shopping cart. It degrades well too. Users of Firefox and Internet Explorer will get 'buy me' boxes on the items.
• .Mac Web Mail Apple really did well here.
• Acobat.com The concept of VNC inside a browser window is pretty cool, even if the performance penalties may be a bit greater. In addition, the PDF editing and such are... interesting.

After that there are pretty much the usual culprits: Google Reader, Photoshop Express (even if it does use flash), etc.. The semantic web is starting to grow up, and that is a move that could make or break companies.

Is Snow Leopard really that big of a surprise?

It is rumored that Mac OS 10.6, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, will be previewed at WWDC and announced at the Macworld Expo 2009, just fifteen months after Leopard. What people don't seem to realize is that Panther came fourteen months after Jaguar, and Tiger came seventeen months after Panther. In fact, it is only Leopard that took two and a half years. For a visual representation of this, see this chart. Maybe 10.6 represents Apple's return to normalcy in its release schedule.

Are touch screens the way of the future?

I have previously written about the difficulty of touchscreens in larger computer screens. The main difficulty: real world scalability. Touchscreens do not scale well from 3.5 inch phone screens to 17 inch computer screens. I have previously seen a good demonstration: touch the top, then bottom of your computer screen for three minutes. I wrote about this earlier. Imagine moving your finger like that for three hours. The thing about touch screens is that they add cost to computers, in addition to the keyboard. And most of what I do when I am using the computer is writing. Most of the time, I am not using the track pad, because reading and writing email involves the keyboard, writing blog posts and papers involves using the keyboard, and writing code definitely involves using the keyboard. The places where a touchscreen would be useful are in multimedia applications such as iLife. Organizing photos is definitely a good application for a touch screen, as is using iMovie. However, note that fingers are a lot less precise than mice, trackpads, or styli. Multi-touch is also a good technology for gaming, as it is possible to select multiple thing, and touch multiple targets, etc.. However, each user's preference for multi-touch may depend on what they do with their computers. If they are heavy writers, they are probably not going to use their touchscreens very much, and they may become extra pricing. If they are heavy gamers, they may use touchscreens a lot.

Although having a touchscreen does not preclude the use of a keyboard, it does drive the price of a computer up. With Microsoft's initiative for Windows seven to employ more touchscreen and multi-touch capabilities, they may drive the price of a normal PC up. With Apple scraping the cream-of-the-crop expensive computer market, Microsoft may have more trouble with Windows Seven, as computers become less affordable and Macintoshes become more viable in that price range, Microsoft may see more switchers. And when consumers are looking to get PCs that do not require touchscreens, and computer manufacturers are looking to eschew the cost of a touchscreen and an expensive OS, Linux may become a more viable option to Windows on low-end PCs. With Apple moving in from the top, and Linux moving in from the bottom, Microsoft may begin to lose market share, or it may fumble it in the same way as it fumbled Vista: higher hardware requirements and a paradox of choice in its pricing scemes. And Microsoft may become less relevant as the tech industry moves on to less expensive things and bigger and better things, with Windows caught in the middle.

At what point?

The Golden Compass has incited a proposal to censor books based on age. At what point do books such as Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Animal Farm become "Inappropriate for all ages." Will it even matter, because people will be too complacent to comprehend the symbolism? Isn't this net neutrality in printed form?

Linux off the Desktop

Linux, and open source projects in general, grow in very interesting ways. Because the growth of open source projects cannot be planned. During the Google IO conference, one of my favorite talks was Chris DiBona's Open Source is Magic talk. One of the things explained in that talk was how Open Source software is not planned by a group of executives wearing suits; in fact, it is not planed at all. Most open source software originates with one developer saying "Oh, this would be really cool!", and then implementing the skeleton of that project. Then, Linus's Law kicks in. "Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow." Some developers may be added, and hopefully it is released under one of the licenses that 99.9% of all open source projects use. Although its unpredictability is one of its greatest strengths, it is hard for "industry analysts" to sit down and say that 'Linux is going to go here in five years." Five years ago, analysts had no idea of an eeePC. Of course, this leads to Steve Ballmer saying things like "Linux is a Cancer" on Intellectual Property.

Due to the unpredictability outside of Linux's kernel (which is mostly controlled by Linus and a small group of elite developers) and the current state of the computer market, Linux has grown in interesting ways. Because of its price, it has become an attractive alternative to Windows on low end PCs, because of two reasons: One, these PCs cannot handle Vista's 16GB monstrous installation, let alone its memory requirements, and two, Windows is expensive; even for OEMs it costs about twenty dollars. And in these low-price PCs, every little bit counts.

One of the main attractions of Linux's, and all free licensing, is that there is no implied support. As Chris DiBona said, if you charge any amount of money for your software, you are implying that you are going to fully support it, and you will get emails for help and feature requests. Commercial support for Linux is available, but the community support is just as good, if not better. The community built Linux from the ground up (nearly, see Minix), therefore it is logical that they are the ones that know how to use it the best.

Regardless of the support issues of Linux, it is interesting to see how both Linux and Mac OS X are cornering Windows in the software market; Linux is working its way up from the low end of the scale, with the help of Asus and the likes of the eeePC, and Mac OS X is swiping the "cream of the crop" high end of the market. With the high end users who are likely to pay a lot gone to the Mac, and the plentiful low-cost users switching to a free OS instead of an expensive and draconian rights managed one, Microsoft has no where left to run than be caught in the middle of Apple and Linux. Although Linux is by nature unpredictable, the unpredictability culminating recently may change the scope of the computer industry in the next five years. We just need to wait and see how.

Touching is Believing ... On a Small Scale

Following the iPhone and its success, Microsoft has decided to bring the touchscreen goodness of a coffee table to its next version of Windows. See here. But is this really a good idea?

The idea of a desktop touchscreen is a tricky concept. Once a developer figures out that fingers are not mice, and that user interfaces should not be designed by the developer, they have to realize that the size of a finger pretty much breaks backwards compatibility with menus. Microsoft has built an empire based on vendor lock-ins and corporate we-absolutely-have-to-use-this-piece-of-legacy-software-that-only-works-on-windows-ness, and if they brand Windows Seven as the we're-so-cool-we-don't-need-a-mouse OS, they may become dead in the water.

An open world: Spread Virally

I'm here at the Google IO conference, and have just listened to the open social section of the first keynote. One of the interesting things that I found about Open Social is that once a company has deployed their app on a social network, the app is going to spread with about the rate of a virus. Applications on a social network that are picked up by a lot of individual users off of an enormous select applications screen are no good; a social network applications need to be adopted by one's friends. Of course, app developers are not going to hope that friends either hear about their app by word of mouth or another way, apps on a social network are able to send notifications and "invitations" to join the app and share things with your friends. Once a friend sends a notification to another friend, they can either choose to accept it and move on without using the application, or use the application and "pass it on", or send similar notifications to their friends. This provides the "web" diagram commonly linked to social networking. And this spread model is about the same as a virus.

For example, if you assume that each user sends notifications to all of his or her friends, but only three friends really adopt this new app. (Yeah, small number.)if each of those three friends has three more friends that adopt it, there are fourteen people using the app so far. And the number only gets larger. One more iteration and you have fourty-one users, and one more and you have 122. This is the viral spread of social apps; it forms an exponential curve. And, of course, the numbers only get larger. Social apps are not just each person finding and discovering on their own; they are people finding and discovering, and then passing it on. The heavy integration provided by APIs such as OpenSocial are just vessels to get people to let the apps access a contacts list when they send out notifications, and to position them in a place where they are going to be talked about, and thus spread.

Motion in the Mobile Web

One of the advantages that developers on the mobile web has is, if they are going to pursue separating "desktop" sites from "mobile" sights, is that the mobile web is more up-to-date with regards to standards than the desktop web (Here's looking at you IE and, to some extent, Firefox.) Mobile Webkit nearly passes Acid 2, and I am not sure about Mobile Opera. However, mobile browsers, specifically those based on Webkit and Opera, are more advanced than a certain browser that web developers always have to worry about. Plus, all mobile brosers (sans mobile IE) support CSS rounded corners: Firefox has -moz-border-radius, Opera has -o-border-radius, and Webkit -webkit-border-radius. Rounded corners in the mobile web may become a big thing, as it does not require any more images to load.

Today, Webkit dominates the mobile web. Motorola uses it in their MOTOMAGX browser, Apple in Mobile Safari, Nokia for their default browser, and Android. Because of the recent adoption of Webkit as an engine, the majority of the mobile web now has access to a CSS property that may make their whole experience so much better: -webkit-transition and -webkit-transform. I mentioned these two CSS properties previously in my post about the semantic web. Using these properties, web pages can achieve hardware accelerated animations, which is important in a mobile phone, as every little bit counts. And, because most of the mobile web supports this, auxiliary animations may become the standard, making the mobile web a vastly different experience than the desktop web.

Of course, this ignores Windows Mobile, which had 21 percent of the United States smartphone market with all of the individual hardware makers combined, and less than 6% worldwide. (I don't know the actual statistic, but I know that it is less than the iPhone at around 6%. However, a developer has to accept that the mobile web is a worldwide phenomenon. Webkit is the most popular mobile browser, and people may jump on the opportunity to provide the best experience possible to their users, just as developers focus on Internet Explorer on the desktop. Webkit's animations may become what ActiveX used to be on Internet Explorer, and because they originated in an Open Source application and degrade well in browsers that do not support it, it may become a harmless standard.

The Androids! They're compiling!

I'm here at the Google IO conference in San Fransisco, and in the morning keynote we saw a real android phone. My father thinks that it is an HTC Dream. However, the coolest thing was not the way in which the internal compass communicates with Google Street view to provide a three-hundred-sixty degree street view that depended on which direction the phone was oriented; the coolest thing is that it is relatively fast. This is compiled Java. Naturally, this also makes the footprint smaller, as all of that unnecessary stuff that makes the files human readable have been stripped. This is going to set an example for how mobile phones use Java in the future, no more of these silly slow interpreted things.

One more thing: The Android multiple home screens seem like a Frankenstienian monster of the iPhone home screen and the KDE plasma widgets. It is kind of cool how the background moves half a screen when switching home screens to give the illusion of the widgets being closer to the front. Of course, the idea of using a high res panoramic shot for the background and moving it right and left when the home screen is switched is brilliant in itself.

Web 2.1: Mash-Ups and Agglutination

The next step in the web world of user-generated content is not new ways of generating content, but new ways of consuming more content at once. This new quality of web pages pulling content from different sources and displaying it to the user in one integrated view has become popular with Web 2.0, because a user can see other related things around him, and see how everything connects. An example of a company that nails this is Google. Take a look at any Google Finance page. Google supplies the graph, and a little of the data about the company. However, the majority of it is taken from other places, be it another Google source, such as Google Blog Search, or a non-Google source, such as Reuters statistics. Google makes less work for itself by pulling in data from AOL Finance and Yahoo Finance on its pages, look in the right sidebar. This is also evident in other Google products. Intelligent laziness is a stellar quality in a software developer, and this enables developers and corporations to be lazy and focus on what they're good at (In Google's case, indexing stuff) instead of trying to spread a broad net over every area they could possibly attempt to compete in.

With this new paradigm, there is some risk of confusing the user; all of the other stuff on the page may distract from the main data. However, if the main focus of the page is really big, this should not be an issue. Such mash-ups are made possible by open web APIs and search engines that index everything and then provide that content. It is worthy to note that this is the same strategy that Google uses for online advertising: it displays relevant links next to the content, which the user may become distracted by. If sites use Google's API in this way, it also provides Google with a chance to serve more ads, users are pointed at Google Blog Search and other Google services. Isn't it great that developers can be lazy?

Making the Jump to the Web

Many applications on the web are now considered by the general public to be "semantic" web applications. In this case, semantic means that it is easier to use compared to the "old web"; it is easier to find, collaborate, and share documents. This can be accomplished through AJAX and the like, or through proprietary formats such as Flash and Java. Paradigms which require the user to reload the page or move to a different page to do something are not considered semantic because they remind the user that they are in a web browser. Ideally, a semantic web page provides an interface that the user is used to, such as .mac web mail imitating the Mail.app interface. Some web browsers provide tools for doing this that degrade gracefully, most notably WebKit (the Safari engine) and Gecko (The Firefox/Netscape engine) provide rounded corners through the -moz-border-radius and the -webkit-border-radius tags. Any browser can provide a system-themed dialogue using javascript, for example:

This input will ask a user for their name and provide a box to answer it in, and it adopts the look and feel of the system it is running on. In this way, a semantic web application can provide a method for user interaction that feels integrated with the system.

A browser that goes above and beyond in terms of integration is WebKit. Integration and looking great on one platform sometimes requires sacrifices on others. However, in most cases, WebKit's integration degrades gracefully, leaving a "normal" experience on another browser. For example, if this page is viewed in Safari 3 or another recent webkit-based browser (like the android browser), hovering over the /rc/etc image at top will cause it to tilt and scale. This is done through the -webkit-transition: and the -webkit-transform css tag. This degrades gracefully in other browsers, leaving nothing behind. See here for more information on CSS animations in WebKit.

Another way to provide more seamless integration is through sliders. It just so happens that WebKit provides a gracefully degrading slider as well: the -webkit-appearance: slider-horizontal or slider-vertical. This will degrade gracefully in other browsers by just leaving a text field for users to enter a value in. For example:

Of course, all of this can be applied to mobile web applications as well. Sites targeted for the iPhone and other mobiles with Gecko and WebKit-based browsers can make use of the appropriate tags, because they don't have to worry about other browsers (besides Windows Mobile's IE). This can be a path to smooth transitions on the iPhone by employing JavaScript for the WebKit animations, or other things

What the "iPhone Killers" don't seem to get

So, RIM has a touchscreen iPhone killer, there is an open source iPhone killer, a Samsung iPhone Killer, and a Windows Mobile iPhone killer. All of these devices have a touchscreen. However, all of these devices also have buttons.

Think of how uncomfortable it is to be typing on these devices' virtual keyboards, either with your fingers or with a stylus, and have to either bend your thumb downward in an awkward way or reposition the device in your hand. This is, of course, true for the iPhone as well. However, it makes more sense on the iPhone as well. On the iPhone, one is going to reposition the device when returning to the home screen and switching activities. However, it is more natural to switch positions when switching activities than to switch positions to bring up a menu to do something in the current activity. The iPhone neglects this model entirely, and just doesn't use menus. If it is not important enough for one of the buttons on the screen, it is probably too distant from the actual function of the application. Granted, some options can be grouped into modal dialogues off of buttons, but those represent distinct groups of the same task. With a traditional "menu phone", there is no distinct grouping to the menus, or even any semblance of standardization. In a touchscreen phone, muscle memory is key, and if these small menus are popping up with different things in different places in different applications, muscle memory will not be built up. For those who think that that's not so bad, consider this: phones aim to get something done where a laptop or desktop computer could not be used or would be awkward. This small space also includes time; if a user is going to be working on something for a long period of time, he or she may as well use a laptop. If things are in different places, can a user get a multitude of things done quickly, quite possibly using different applications? A user may gain muscle memory for one application, but this lack of familiarity loses the "learn one, learn all" principle that Apple and the iPhone really get. However, cell phone manufacturers cry the marketing of "more features", rather than a few, simple features. They don't have to be great, they just have to be simple and consistent.

iPhones are using a lot more data

A&T proves that iPhones use more data than blackberries, by a margin of about ten times. iPhone users use on average "'well over' 100 MB per month (compared to Blackberry around 10 MB)" (see this article. It just proves that the easier technology is made, the more people will use it and the more often it will be used. However, the main thing to look at here is not the higher volume of people, but the more time people are spending on the mobile internet. Mobile internet usage is no longer a chore, and when people start enjoying technology instead of waiting for things to load, squinting to try to read size eight antialiased text, and restarting after crashes (Safari has them too, unfortunately), technology starts to seem so much more personal and accessible. This then translates into more use, which AT&T has been seeing. However, their revenue per iPhone user has been about double that of a normal mobile phone user, due to the data plan involved.