All posts by onlyconnect

apple, asus, gaming, google, hardware

CES 2014 report: robots, smart home, wearables, bendy TV, tablets, health gadgets, tubes and horns

CES in Las Vegas is an amazing event, partly through sheer scale. It is the largest trade show in Vegas, America’s trade show city. Apparently it was also the largest CES ever: two million square feet of exhibition space, 3,200 exhibitors, 150,000 industry attendees, of whom 35,000 were from outside the USA.

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It follows that CES is beyond the ability of any one person to see in its entirety. Further, it is far from an even representation of the consumer tech industry. Notable absentees include Apple, Google and Microsoft – though Microsoft for one booked a rather large space in the Venetian hotel which was used for private meetings.  The primary purpose of CES, as another journalist explained to me, is for Asian companies to do deals with US and international buyers. The success of WowWee’s stand for app-controllable MiP robots, for example, probably determines how many of the things you will see in the shops in the 2014/15 winter season.

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The kingmakers at CES are the people going round with badges marked Buyer. The press events are a side-show.

CES is also among the world’s biggest trade shows for consumer audio and high-end audio, which is a bonus for me as I have an interest in such things.

Now some observations. First, a reminder that CEA (the organisation behind CES) kicked off the event with a somewhat downbeat presentation showing that global consumer tech spending is essentially flat. Smartphones and tablets are growing, but prices are falling, and most other categories are contracting. Converged devices are reducing overall spend. One you had a camera, a phone and a music player; now the phone does all three.

Second, if there is one dominant presence at CES, it is Samsung. Press counted themselves lucky even to get into the press conference. A showy presentation convinced us that we really want not only UHD (4K UHD is 3840 x 2160 resolution) video, but also a curved screen, for a more immersive experience; or even the best of both worlds, an 85” bendable UHD TV which transforms from flat to curved.

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We already knew that 4K video will go mainstream, but there is more uncertainty about the future connected home. Samsung had a lot to say about this too, unveiling its Smart Home service. A Smart Home Protocol (SHP) will connect devices and home appliances, and an app will let you manage them. Home View will let you view your home remotely. Third parties will be invited to participate. More on the Smart Home is here.

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The technology is there; but there are several stumbling blocks. One is political. Will Apple want to participate in Samsung’s Smart Home? will Google? will Microsoft? What about competitors making home appliances? The answer is that nobody will want to cede control of the Smart Home specifications to Samsung, so it can only succeed through sheer muscle, or by making some alliances.

The other question is around value for money. If you are buying a fridge freezer, how high on your list of requirements is SHP compatibility? How much extra will you spend? If the answer is that old-fashioned attributes like capacity, reliability and running cost are all more important, then the Smart Home cannot happen until there are agreed standards and a low cost of implementation. It will come, but not necessarily from Samsung.

Samsung did not say that much about its mobile devices. No Galaxy S5 yet; maybe at Mobile World Congress next month. It did announce the Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab Pro series in three sizes; the “Pro” designation intrigues me as it suggests the intention that these be business devices, part of the “death of the PC” theme which was also present at CES.

Samsung did not need to say much about mobile because it knows it is winning. Huawei proudly announced that it it is 3rd in smartphones after Samsung and Apple, with a … 4.8% market share, which says all you need to know.

That said, Huawei made a rather good presentation, showing off its forthcoming AscendMate2 4G smartphone, with 6.1” display, long battery life (more than double that of iPhone 5S is claimed, with more than 2 days in normal use), 5MP front camera for selfies, 13MP rear camera, full specs here. No price yet, but expect it to be competitive.

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Sony also had a good CES, with indications that PlayStation 4 is besting Xbox One in the early days of the next-gen console wars, and a stylish stand reminding us that Sony knows how to design good-looking kit. Sony’s theme was 4K becoming more affordable, with its FDR-AX100 camcorder offering 4K support in a device no larger than most camcorders; unfortunately the sample video we saw did not look particularly good.

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Sony also showed the Xperia Z1 compact smartphone, which went down well, and teased us with an introduction for Sony SmartWear wearable entertainment and “life log” capture. We saw the unremarkable “core” gadget which will capture the data but await more details.

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Another Sony theme was high resolution audio, on which I am writing a detailed piece (not just about Sony) to follow.

As for Microsoft Windows, it was mostly lost behind a sea of Android and other devices, though I will note that Lenovo impressed with its new range of Windows 8 tablets and hybrids – like the 8” Thinkpad with Windows 8.1 Pro and full HD 1920×1200 display – more details here.

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There is an optional USB 3.0 dock for the Thinkpad 8 but I commented to the Lenovo folk that the device really needs a keyboard cover. I mentioned this again at the Kensington stand during the Mobile Focus Digital Experience event, and they told me they would go over and have a look then and there; so if a nice Kensington keyboard cover appears for the Thinkpad 8 you have me to thank.

Whereas Lenovo strikes me as a company which is striving to get the best from Windows 8, I was less impressed by the Asus press event, mainly because I doubt the Windows/Android dual boot concept will take off. Asus showed the TD300 Transformer Book Duet which runs both. I understand why OEMs are trying to bolt together the main business operating system with the most popular tablet OS, but I dislike dual boot systems, and if the Windows 8 dual personality with Metro and desktop is difficult, then a Windows/Android hybrid is more so. I’d guess there is more future in Android emulation on Windows. Run Android apps in a window? Asus did also announce its own 8” Windows 8.1 tablet, but did not think it worth attention in its CES press conference.

Wearables was a theme at CES, especially in the health area, and there was a substantial iHealth section to browse around.

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I am not sure where this is going, but it seems to me inevitable that self-monitoring of how well or badly our bodies are functioning will become commonplace. The result will be fodder for hypochondriacs, but I think there will be real benefits too, in terms of motivation for exercise and healthy diets, and better warning and reaction for critical problems like heart attacks. The worry is that all that data will somehow find its way to Google or health insurance companies, raising premiums for those who need it most. As to which of the many companies jostling for position in this space will survive, that is another matter.

What else? It is a matter of where to stop. I was impressed by NVidia’s demo rig showing three 4K displays driven by a GTX-equipped PC; my snap absolutely does not capture the impact of the driving game being shown.

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I was also impressed by NVidia’s ability to befuddle the press at its launch of the Tegra K1 chipset, confusing 192 CUDA cores with CPU cores. Having said that, the CUDA support does mean you can use those cores for general-purpose programming and I see huge potential in this for more powerful image processing on the device, for example. Tegra 4 on the Surface 2 is an excellent experience, and I hope Microsoft follows up with a K1 model in due course even though that looks doubtful.

There were of course many intriguing devices on show at CES, on some of which I will report over at the Gadget Writing blog, and much wild and wonderful high-end audio.

On audio I will note this. Bang & Olufsen showed a stylish home system, largely wireless, but the sound was disappointing (it also struck me as significant that Android or iOS is required to use it). The audiophiles over in the Venetian tower may have loopy ideas, but they had the best sounds.

CES can do retro as well as next gen; the last pinball machine manufacturer displayed at Digital Experience, while vinyl, tubes and horns were on display over in the tower.

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mobile

CES analyst predicts flat global consumer tech sales, massive dominance of smartphones and tablets, drift towards low-end

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At CES in Las Vegas yesterday, CEA Director of Industry Analysis Steve Koenig presented data and predictions on global tech spending trends. The figures come out of CEA Research and are based on sales tracking at retail outlets around the world supplemented by other data.

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This being CES, I was expecting a certain amount of hype around how consumer technology is changing the world, but in fact Koenig’s presentation was matter-of-fact and somewhat downbeat. He said that the overall consumer tech spending trend is flat, with rising spend in emerging markets (especially China) more or less making up for declining spend in mature markets, which he says is due to market saturation. His figures show 2% growth in spending in 2013 but a 1% decline in 2014. Given the uncertainty of this kind of forecast, let’s call it flat.

The “market saturation” factor is a point to ponder. It suggests that technical devices are “good enough” for longer. It also suggests that overall the new gadgetry on show at CES is not sufficiently exciting to persuade us to spend a higher proportion of our income on consumer electronics.

Looking at his figures though, it is not just a matter of saturation. Another factor is device convergence. We are spending less on cameras and camcorders because a smartphone is good enough. We are spending less on printers because there is less need to print stuff; we can view it on a tablet. We don’t need a SatNav any more; we use a smartphone (or it is built into the car’s dashboard). In fact, we are loving our smartphones and tablets so much that spending on almost any other kind of tech is in decline. Here’s the slide showing how these mobile devices are forecast to account for 43% of consumer tech spending in 2014:

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Spending on smartphones is forecast to increase by 9% in 2014, and on tablets 6%. Almost the only other broad category for which significant revenue growth is forecast in 2014 is video games consoles, thanks to the launch of new generation Xbox and PlayStation boxes (maybe Steam boxes too). That is a product cycle, not a long-term trend. Personally (my thoughts, not Koenig’s) I reckon games consoles will decline thanks to competition from smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. Global TV sales are expected to increase by 2% in units.

The other big picture trend identified by Koenig is the reduction in the average selling price (ASP) of smartphones and tablets. Smartphone ASP is down from $444 in 2010 to $297 in 2014.

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This trend is partly because the quality of cheaper devices has improved, but also because the emerging markets which are spending more are also markets that want lower prices. Taken together, this translates to a significant shift towards the low end. Overall, CEA forecasts that tech spending in developing markets, primarily on low end devices, will equal tech spending in mature markets for the first time in 2014.

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Of course this is largely an Android story. I will add though some reflections on what has happened with Windows in the light of these trends. Microsoft was right to adapt Windows for tablets, but if you look at how Windows 8 was launched there was too much focus on the high-end, trying to copy Apple rather than compete with Android. That was a mistake, and it is only recently that OEMs like Asus, with its T100 Windows 8.1 tablet, have started to come out with decent low-end devices. Nokia on the other hand has done exactly the right thing with its Lumia Windows Phones, building market share with excellent low-end smartphones. Whether that momentum will be sustained following Microsoft’s acquisition will determine the fate of the phone platform. 

Finally, note that forecasting the future is never easy and this time next year the picture may look quite different.

Update: Koenig’s slide deck is here.

microsoft, software development, visual studio, windows

Figuring out Project Siena: a Windows 8 app to build Windows 8 apps

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A couple of weeks back I took a look at Project Siena, a preview of a new tool for building Windows 8 apps. Project Siena features a simplified user interface builder, an Excel-like expression language, and data-bound controls. It generates Windows 8 JavaScript apps. Project Siena is itself a Windows Store app, and runs fine on Windows RT (the ARM version). I have been using it successfully on Surface 2, on which it runs sweetly.

When I first looked at Project Siena I tried to build the same first app that I have used for numerous simple tests of development tools over the years: a to-do list. I was impressed by how easy it was to create the user interface, but unable to work out the code to complete it. Unless I missed it, the key information is not included in any of the initial documentation. I found this disappointing, since it has been easy to work out the code in every other programming environment I have tried.

I gradually worked it out. Here is the app:

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The idea is that you have a listbox, an input box, and two buttons. One button takes the contents of the input box and adds it to the list. The other button removes the selected item in the list. All the functionality you need for a to-do list (actually a simple memo control would do, but that would be a bit too simple).

In Siena, data is stored in Collection objects, and you can bind a listbox to a collection. By default, a new listbox is bound to an object called ListboxSample, but you cannot use it for this; if you try, you get a squiggly line error with the message that ListboxSample is not a collection.

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Instead, you have to create your own collection object. In Siena, you declare a variable by using it and its type is inferred. Enter this for the OnSelect property of the Add button:

Collect(mycollection,{Value: InputText1!Text})

This is the code that took me so long to work out. The Collect function adds an item to a collection. If the collection does not already exist, it creates it. The first argument to Collect is a collection object, and the second, an item. What is an item? In effect, a record or row in a table. The syntax for an item in Siena is:

{Fieldname1: fieldvalue1,Fieldname2: fieldvalue2,…}

where the dots represent additional fields as required. Therefore, the code I entered for the Add button creates or appends an item with a single field, called Value, to a collection called mycollection.

Now you can select the listbox and tap Data and then Items. The collection called mycollection magically appears for selection. Select it. In the case of multi-field collections, you can also choose which field appears in the list. Only one field it seems; yes, Siena needs a grid control.

Then you can run the app, tap Add, and see the content of the input box added to the list.

The Remove button is easy:

Remove(mycollection, Listbox1!Selected)

However, our app has a flaw. The data does not persist. Next time you run the app, the list will be empty. This is easy to fix too. Go back to the OnSelect property of the Add button. Type a semicolon after the existing line of code, and then:

SaveData(mycollection,"mycollection")

This saves the collection to isolated storage on your PC. Alternatively, you could call a web service and save to the cloud, but I am not sure of the code for that yet.

Next, we have to load the data when the app starts. You can use the OnVisible property of the screen for this. Type:

Clear(mycollection);Collect(mycollection,LoadData("mycollection"))

Note that since Collect appends to the collection, we have to clear it first, to avoid duplicate items.

Now the app is complete.

What do I think of Siena after doing this? It certainly has its frustrations, but I like it. I do think that the designers have gone too far in pretending that code is unimportant; it is silly that you have to type into a single line editor. It would also have saved me time if Microsoft had provided a syntax guide and programming guide, rather than concentrating on how to show pretty pictures.

Who is going to use Siena, if anyone? That is the harder question.

android, apple, cloud computing, facebook, google, microsoft

Reflecting on 2013: the year of not the PC, no privacy, and the Internet of Things

In last year’s review I wrote “Android up, Apple down, Microsoft so near, so far”. Same again? The headline still rings true, though I would not write “Apple down” today. Android ended Apple’s chance of world domination in mobile, but the company continues to thrive. In some markets Apple is almost the only company that matters. Earlier this month I interviewed Gregor Lawson, the co-founder of Morphsuits, for the Guardian web site. Lawson told me about the company’s mobile app, which he regards as strategically important; it is a free app used for marketing. I did not have space to include this snippet, when I asked him whether he had plans to support Windows Phone alongside Apple iOS and Google Android:

“Oh no. We could almost get away without doing Android. For the business that we track, we have about 80% iOS.”

Simple market share figures do not tell you that. It is a matter of context.

So what did happen in 2013? Here are some headlines.

The year of not the PC

You can safely predict that 2014 will be another year of “The PC is dead” “Oh no it isn’t” exchanges, providing technical commentators with an enduring topic. The PC is not dead; it runs most businesses, it is still the best tool for Office-style productivity, it is an excellent games machine, and a fine open platform for running whatever you want. Its decline is unmistakeable though; for people who can do most of what they need on a tablet, a tablet is a better choice, removing many of the hassles associated with PC ownership and offering portability that a laptop cannot match. Sales figures show that trend and 2013 will be another year of decline for PCs and laptops.

Might that tablet run Windows 8? I will say some more about this in the Microsoft-specific section below; but in summary, there was not sign in 2013 of Windows encroaching in any meaningful way on the iOS/Android tablet market.

The shift away from the desktop is huge for the industry. It continues a trend towards cloud and device which has been obvious for several years, but of which people are now more conscious.

BlackBerry dwindles

I dug out my BlackBerry Playbook (launched in 2011) during my Christmas clear-out. It is a nice little tablet – and the QNX embedded OS on which it is based is great – but it failed in the market for all sorts of reasons, the chief one being that it is neither iOS nor Android. 2013 was the launch year for smartphones running BlackBerry 10 (also QNX based), the Z10 and the Q10, but sales have been equally disappointing. It is a shame as the company did many things right: the operating system is good, the developer evangelism and support before the launch was strong, and the handsets in my brief looks are worthy contenders; but the barriers in front of any company trying to launch a new mobile OS have so far proved too great. Those barriers are to do with app ecosystem, the de-facto lock-in among users who have already purchased apps for their current smartphone and want to carry them over, operator support and marketing, retail support and marketing, and the difficulty of competing against Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft. Enterprise security was meant to be the USP for BB10 devices, but there are strong mobile device management solutions for other platforms; in fact, the current wisdom is that BES 10, the BlackBerry mobile device management software which also supports iOS and Android, may now be the future of the company.

The year of no privacy

Humans are not logical creatures, which is the only way to make sense of the no-privacy story of 2013. There are two key sides to this.

One is Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing over the data capture practised by his former employer the NSA (National Security Agency), which according to his reports goes beyond what the public imagines that national security agencies do and caused much consternation and indignation around the world.

The other is the increasing amount of data captured for marketing purposes by Google, mobile operators, internet advertisers, retailers online and offline, and others, about which the public cares very little as far as I can tell. The question is: how much data are we willing to hand over in return for free services, and the answer seems to be, pretty much everything. One or two individuals care about this – Aral Balkan for example – but it is not an issue for most of the public.

I am one who is concerned about this, because data is power, and it strikes me as dangerous to put so much power in the hands of a few large corporations, which are only lightly regulated. How much it really matters is open to debate; we are sailing into the unknown.

Turning this around for a moment, for many businesses the ability to make intelligent use of what has become known as “big data” is now critical.

Wearable computing on the rise

A nod here to wearable computing, with the big story being the previews of Google Glass, embedded Android with camera, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which is clipped to the side of your head and responds to voice control. It may or may not succeed in the market, and makes another bullet point for the Year of No Privacy, but it is a fascinating experiment with huge potential.

It is not just Google Glass. Devices like fitbit and Nike+ FuelBand monitor our movements for the purpose of fitness tracking and will become commonplace – more data, more possibilities, less privacy. Privacy aside, there is no doubting the potential of such devices to improve health, not only by encouraging exercise, but moving on into things like early warning of heart problems and better data on the effectiveness of different treatments.

The Internet of Things

Wearable computing is one facet of a wider field called the Internet of Things (IoT). I was fortunate to attend ThingMonk, a London event organised by analyst company RedMonk, which gave me several insights. 

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Claire Rowland at AlertMe.com talks UX for IoT at ThingMonk, next to an internet-connected coffee machine.

One is that IoT will change our lives, mostly in a good way. Ubiquitous small wi-fi enabled computers will get everywhere, talk to sensors, and connect with web services to make our lives mostly better. Home appliances will report service requirements to engineers before we know, moving maps on our SmartPhone will show where our bus has got to, luggage will phone home, and so on.

For businesses, IoT ability will be an important product differentiator, initially at the high end, but increasingly throughout the market in some sectors; motor vehicles is an example.

At the same time, it was evident from ThingMonk that the IoT world is full of ideas not all of which are practical and plenty of mistakes will be made.

It was also evident that lack of standards will hold back the IoT. Vendors will each prefer to use unpublished APIs and proprietary protocols, to protect their business, even though open standards and published APIs would enable more innovation and be a public benefit.

Microsoft in transition

2013 was the year Microsoft lost a CEO (Steve Ballmer announced his retirement) but failed to gain one (no successor has yet been announced). It is a difficult appointment: does Microsoft need an outsider with new ideas, or simply an insider with the ability to execute on the strategy that is already in place? My view is that the latter is likely to work out better. Oddly, the company announced strong financials despite the decline of the PC, which is why regard the tendency of the media to equate the decline of the Windows client with the decline of Microsoft puzzling at times.

Growth areas in the last set of figures were own-brand hardware (Xbox and Surface), server and tools, and cloud services including Office 365 and Azure.

It is possible that 2014 will be the year when Microsoft unveils a dreadful set of figures but I have been waiting for this a long time.

Nevertheless, Microsoft’s traditional software business is under threat, not only from PC decline but also from cloud computing. Weakness in mobile might help competitors (especially Google) promote rival cloud services.

Microsoft also needs to up its game in quality and performance. Bugs in SkyDrive on Windows 8.1 cost me data this year. I edited an article, saved it to SkyDrive, attached it to an email, but the recipient got an old version. It is extraordinary that Microsoft has yet to get sync right after so many years of trying. Another annoyance is the slowness of Microsoft web properties at times, including Bing.

As always, this will be a fascinating company to watch in 2013.

  • Can Microsoft continue to do whatever Nokia was doing right with Windows Phone, so that market share grows?
  • Will the Windows 8 “Metro” platform build some real momentum as market penetration improves?
  • What will the promised unification of phone and tablet platforms look like for developers?
  • How will Xbox One fare against PlayStation 4, given its higher price and lesser graphics power, but greater innovation with Kinect 2 and voice control?
  • At what point does growth in cloud computing mean that growth in on-premise server licenses will stall?

Twitter, Google, Facebook free services get worse

Twitter got worse in 2013. More sponsored posts and the appearance of inline images on the web site mean that for me the appeal of the controlled, short-form feed which made Twitter great has been diluted. Google search got worse in 2013, with more ads and more brand-driven results, and its insistence on putting Google+ at the centre of its services became an annoyance. Facebook too is increasingly commercial.

These are businesses after all. Overall though, it seemed that the web got more proprietary in 2013.

Social media: the good and the bad

During much of 2013 I edited a section on the Guardian web site focused on social media marketing. The opportunity to talk to many experts in the field has been illuminating. Social media is not a short-term fashion; rather, it has changed the way we interact with each other and made it richer and more public. It is also changing marketing, and not just marketing, but the way businesses engage with their customers and potential customers.

Speaking for myself, user reviews on the likes of TripAdvisor and Amazon are now a significant influence on my purchasing decisions. Despite the fact that such platforms are gamed by vendors, overall I believe I am making better decisions as a result. Whether or not I am right about that, the influence is real.

The positive aspect of social media is the opportunity it presents for businesses to be better informed and more responsive to customer needs, and the increasing power of customer opinion to influence others, resulting in better products and more responsible behaviour.

Negatively though, social media marketing means that our public interactions with friends are now invaded by brands looking for a marketing opportunity, enabled by social media platforms which are monetized by selling our personal data (though hopefully anonymized) and access to our social media feeds. When that vendor interaction is shallow and one-sided, it leaves a sour taste.

The good outweighs the bad in my opinion, though see again the note above on the Year of No Privacy.

Personal hopes for 2014

A few personal hopes for me to review this time next year:

  • A redesigned ITWriting.com, probably on a new cloud platform, as time and funds allow
  • A converged device that works for me, so a smartphone can be good enough (for my specialised purposes) as phone, camera and recording device
  • Complete my Windows 8 game; I am working on it and will write up the experience in due course!

Happy New Year!

development, microsoft, professional, software, software development

Do you miss manuals? Why and why not …

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It’s that time of year. I keep more than I should, but now and again you have to clear things out. I don’t promise to dispose of all of these though: they remind me of another era, when software came in huge boxes packed with books.

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If you purchased Microsoft Office, for example, you would get a guide describing every feature, as well as an Excel formula reference, a Visual Basic reference and so on.

If you purchased a development tool, you would get a complete language reference plus a guide to the IDE plus a developer guide.

The books that got most use in my experience were the references – convenient to work on a screen while using a book as reference, especially in the days before multiple displays – and the developer guides. You did not have to go the way the programmer’s guide suggested, but it did give you a clue about how the creators of the language or tool intended that it should be used.

Quality varied of course, but in Microsoft’s case the standard was high. When something new arrived, you could learn a lot by sitting down with just the books for a few hours.

What happened to manuals? Cost was one consideration, especially as many were never opened, being duplicates of what you had already. Obsolescence went deeper than that though. Manuals were always out of date before they printed, especially when update distribution was a download rather than a disk sent out by support (which means from the nineties onward).

Even without the internet, manuals would have died. Online help is cheaper to distribute and integrates with software – press F1 for help.

Then add the power of the web. Today’s references are online and have user comments. Further, the web is a vast knowledgebase which, while not wholly reliable, is far more productive than leafing through pages and pages trying to find the solution to some problem that might not even be referenced. In many cases you could post a question to StackOverflow and get an answer more quickly.

Software has bloated too. I am not sure what a full printed documentation set for Visual Studio 2013 would look like, but it would likely fill a bookshelf if not a room.

When software companies stopped sending out printed manuals, the same books were produced as online (that is, local, but disk-based) help. Then as the web took over more help went to the web, and F1 would either open the web browser or use a help viewer that displayed web content. There are still options for downloading help locally in many development tools.

Nothing to miss then? I am not so sure. It strikes me that the requirement to deliver comprehensive documentation was a valuable discipline. I wonder how many bugs were fixed because the documentation team raised a query about something that did not seem to work right or make sense?

Another inevitable problem is that since documentation no longer has to be in the box (or in the download), some software is delivered without adequate documentation. You are meant to figure it out via videos, blog posts, online forums, searches and questions.

A good documentation team takes the side of the user – whether end user, developer, or system administrator, depending on context. They write the guide by trying things out, and goad the internal developers to supply the information on what does and does not work as necessary. That can still happen today; but without the constraint of having to get books prepared it often does not.

development, microsoft, mobile

Microsoft Project Siena: another go at the spirit of Visual Basic

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Remember Visual Basic? By which I mean, not the current language that is a case-insensitive alternative to C# that does much the same thing, but the original rapid app development tool that democratised Windows development back in 1991. At the time, Windows development was a sought-after skill but rather difficult. VB meant anyone could create an application; pros could build excellent ones, amateurs something ugly and unmaintainable, but nevertheless something that worked. The transition to .NET brought many benefits, but also more complexity. The latest evolution of the Windows client, the Windows Runtime, is also challenging to get right (I am currently writing a simple C# game on the platform).

Microsoft has been looking for a new “VB” for years. 2007: Popfly (now abandoned). 2011: Lightswitch. Now we have Project Siena.

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Siena is an app for building apps. An app is a Siena document with a .siena extension. Here is what Microsoft’s Bryan Group says:

Microsoft Project Siena (code name) is the beta release of a new technology for business experts, business analysts, consultants, and other app imagineers. Now, without any programming, you can create powerful apps for the device-first and cloud-connected world, with the potential to transform today’s business processes.

Building Siena apps is as easy as editing a document. Place some visuals on a canvas. Hook them up to your data. Customize how your app looks and works. Then, if you need special logic and intelligence, write Excel-like expressions. You can use your app immediately, or share it with colleagues or the world.

This sounds great to me. I installed it and set about building an app. I decided to create the same app I have used to try out dozens of programming tools over the years: a to-do list with the ability to add and remove tasks

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Building the user interface went OK, but how do I add and remove items from the list? I have got as far as figuring out that I need to type the right magic into the OnSelect property of a button:

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I will let you know when I have worked out what to do next. I will observe that the environment is geared towards data binding, rather than directly updating the user interface, and remote data, such as binding to tables in Azure Mobile Services, a REST API, an RSS feed or a SharePoint list. However you can also bind to an Excel spreadsheet for local data.

Unfortunately there is no “Run” button. You can preview your Siena app by pressing F5 or tapping the Run button in the top app bar.

To deploy your Siena app, you hit Publish:

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This creates a package of files, including InstallApp.exe. Siena generates HTML and JavaScript so you can learn a lot about the environment by poking around in the generated files.

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Run InstallApp.exe and the app installs into your local PC. Mine runs fine, it just does not work yet.

Siena, as is usual for this type of release, suffers from lack of documentation. There is a function reference and a few sketchy help topics. There are also some sample apps. Here is what the Personnel Manager has in the OnSelect of its Add button; perhaps this is a clue:

UpdateIf(Assoc,ID = ThisItem!ID,{AssignedTo:SelectedDepartment, Time:Now()}); RemoveIf(SelectedAssociates, ID = ThisItem!ID)

While it is great to have a genuinely easy visual interface builder, the development features of Visual Studio are greatly missed; the code editor as far as I can tell is limited to a single line in a text input field, though you do get a squiggly underline if you do it wrong, and a bit of code completion.

How is the average “business expert, business analyst, consultant, and other app imagineer” going to get on with Project Siena? That is the question; and in the current preview I’d guess they will be flummoxed and go straight back to Excel or Access, though I would love to be proved wrong.

It looks like a lot of work has gone into this though, and no doubt better documentation and enhanced features are on the way.

apple, google, microsoft, professional

2013: the web gets more proprietary. So do operating systems, mobile, everything

There may yet be an ITWriting review of the year; but in the meantime, the trend that has struck me most this year has been the steady march of permission-based, fee-charged technology during the course of the year, even though it has continued trends that were already established.

The decline of Windows and rise of iOS and Android is a great win for Unix-like operating systems over Microsoft’s proprietary Windows; but how do you get apps onto the new mobile platforms? In general, you have to go through an app store and pay a fee to Apple or Google (or maybe Amazon) for the privilege of deployment, unless you are happy to give away your app. Of course there are ways round that through jailbreaks of various kinds, but in the mainstream it is app stores or nothing.

The desktop/laptop model may be an inferior experience for users, but it is more open, in that vendors can sell software to users without paying a fee to the operating system vendor.

Microsoft though is doing its best to drive Windows down the same path. Windows Phone uses the app store model, and so does the “Metro” personality in Windows 8 – hence the name, “Windows Store apps”.

What about the free and open internet? That too is becoming more proprietary. Of course there is still nothing to stop you putting up a web site and handing out the URL; but that is not, in general, how people navigate to sites. Rather, they enter terms into a search engine, and if the search engine does not list your site near the top, you get few visitors.

In this context, I was fascinated by remarks made by Morphsuits co-founder Gregor Lawson in an interview I did for the Guardian web site. His business makes party costumes and benefits from a strong trademarked brand name. Yet he finds that he has to pay for Google ads simply to ensure that a user who types “morphsuits” into a search engine finds his site:

Yes, it is galling, it really is galling," he says. "We are top of the organic search, but we also have to pay. The reason is that some people like organic, some people like to click on ads. Google, in their infinite wisdom, are giving more and more space to the ads because they get money for the ads. So I have to pay to be in it.

It is also worth noting that when you click a link on Google, whether it is a search result or an ad, it is not a direct link to the target site. Rather, it is a link which redirects to that site after storing a database record that you clicked that link. If you are logged into Google then the search giant knows who you are; if you are not logged in, it probably knows anyway thanks to cookies, IP numbers or other tracking techniques. It does this in order to serve you more relevant ads and make more money.

Of course there are other ways to drive traffic, such as posting on Facebook or Twitter – two more proprietary platforms. As this internet properties grow and become more powerful, they change the rules in their favour (which they are entitled to do) but it does raise the question of how this story will play out over time.

For example, Lawson complains in the same interview that if he posts a message on Facebook, it will not be seen by the majority of Morphsuits fans even though they have chosen to like his Facebook page. Only if he pays for a promoted post can he reach those fans.

The power of Facebook must not be understated. One comment I heard recently is that mobile users on average now spend more time in Facebook than browsing the web and by some margin.

Twitter is better in this respect, though there as well the platform is changing, with APIs withdrawn or metered, for example, to drive users to official Twitter clients or the web site so that the user experience is controlled, ads can be delivered and so on.

These are observations, not value judgements. Users appreciate the free services they get from platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter, and are happy to give up some freedom and share some personal data in return.

The question I suppose is how much power we are ceding to these corporations, who have the ability to make or break businesses and to favour their own businesses at the expense of others, and the potential abuse of that power at some future date.

I appreciate that most people do not seem to care much about these issues, and perhaps they are right not to care. I will give a shout out though to Aral Balkan who is aware of the issues and who created indiephone as a possible answer – an endeavour that has only small chance of success but which is at least worth noting.

Meanwhile, I expect the web, and mobile, and operating systems, to get even more proprietary in 2014 – for better or worse.

.net, microsoft, professional, software development

What next for Windows as Microsoft announces Build 2014?

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Microsoft has announced Build 2014, its premier developer conference for Windows, April 2-4 in San Francisco.

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In his blog post on the subject, developer evangelist Steve Guggenheimer mentions the Windows 8 app platform and Xbox One, and promises that Microsoft will talk about “what’s next for Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Azure, Windows Server, Visual Studio and much more.”

How is the buzz around Microsoft right now? Here are a few things that are not so good:

  • The Windows 8 app platform continues to struggle, despite picking up slightly from its dismal launch. Most of the conversation I hear around Windows 8 looks back to Windows 7 rather than forward to the new tablet platform: will the Start menu return?
  • The decline of the PC remains in full flow, while the non-Windows mobile platforms iOS and Android continue to grow
  • Xbox One, with its focus on Kinect and family entertainment, is falling behind Sony’s PlayStation 4 in terms of which console is most desired. Sony’s cheaper price and higher resolution on games like Call of Duty Ghosts make it a better for buy for gamers who can live without Kinect

On the other hand, a few positives:

  • Microsoft’s cloud platforms Office 365 and Windows Azure are growing fast, as far as I can tell
  • Server 2012 R2 is a solid upgrade to an already strong server product, and Hyper-V is making progress versus VMWare in virtualisation
  • Windows Phone 8 is making some progress in market share, though whether it will cross the point at which it becomes important enough for companies with apps to feel they have to support it remains an open question (currently they mostly do not)

What does that mean for Build? We may of course just see more of the same: improvements to Windows 8.x, further convergence with Windows Phone and Xbox platforms, new features for Windows Server and Azure, early previews of the next Visual Studio to support the new stuff.

I wonder though whether we may also see some new directions. Microsoft is supporting Xamarin for cross-platform mobile development and it would not surprise me to see more being made of this, or possibly some new approaches, to promote the use of Microsoft’s cloud services behind apps that run on iOS and Android.

Microsoft still intends for Windows 8/Windows Phone to be a major mobile platform alongside iOS and Android but its progress in reaching that point is slow. The task of building its cloud platform seems to be going better, despite competition from the likes of Amazon and Google, and in this context deep integration with the Windows client could be as much a liability as an advantage.

It may seem perverse; but it could pay Microsoft to focus on improving how well its server offerings (and Office) work with iOS and Android, rather than pushing for Windows everywhere as it has done in the past.

amazon, cloud computing, microsoft

Google Compute Engine: good enough to take on Amazon?

A week ago, Google make its Compute Engine generally available. The service offers virtual machine instances as a cloud service, at prices from $0.114 per hour for a single-core VM with 3.75 GB RAM. In addition, you pay for outgoing network traffic and persistent storage. Reflecting the shortage of IP addresses, a static IP costs $0.01 per hour – but only if it is not in use. Linux is the only available operating system.

The service seems similar to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), but there are a couple of reasons why Google has the potential to take on Amazon. One is that it has the scale: just as Amazon, prior to the launch of EC2, had datacenters already in place to run its ecommerce business, Google has them to run its search and advertising business, as well as services like the Android Play Store, Google Mail, Docs and other cloud services.

Second, Google can afford Amazon-like commodity pricing. It could even afford to lose money on cloud hosting for an extended period, thanks to its dominance in web advertising, if it needed to do so in order to win market share (though I am not suggesting that it is in that position).

Why though would anyone use Google rather than Amazon? A post on Quora highlights some of the reasons, including sub-hour billing, live migration of VMs (no downtime), persistent disks that can be mounted read-only by multiple VMs, more integrated virtual networking, and better network throughput. This last point is interesting: the suggestion is that Google can use its own private connections between datacenters, where Amazon is more dependent on the public internet.

Amazon also has advantages, including a larger portfolio of cloud computing infrastructure services thanks to its greater maturity. Unlike Google Compute Engine, Amazon supports Windows VMs, for example.

Some large customers will want to spread VMs across multiple cloud providers for resilience, and it will not surprise me if Amazon plus Google becomes a popular combination.

microsoft, professional, software development, windows

Will Microsoft scrap Windows RT? Here’s why it might not matter

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At the UBS Global Technology Conference (aimed at investors, since UBS is an investment bank), Windows Executive Vice President Julie Larson-Green was interviewed about the future of Windows, and Microsoft has helpfully posted the audio and full transcript.

Larson-Green was asked about the viability of the “dual track” for Windows, or put another way, does Windows RT have a future?

I will interject an anecdote here. A neighbour came to me this weekend with a Windows XP laptop. Internet Explorer 8 no longer worked, and as no other web browser was installed, she could no longer get to the web on that machine. Microsoft has advice on reinstalling IE8; you re-run setup. We downloaded the setup from another machine and re-ran setup. It made no difference.

The only clue was an icon in the notification area for secure search. What was it? My neighbour did not know. She mentioned that she had been offered a free backup service and had started installing it. The service informed her that her backup was too large and she would have to pay. She thought she had cancelled and uninstalled it successfully, but maybe this toolbar, which redirects all searches to conduit.com, came along for the ride. Removing the toolbar from add/remove programs brought IE 8 back to life; if she is lucky, that will be end of the incident, if not, there could be other surprises.

It is just hopeless; and although later versions of Windows have improved security, users ultimately have full control of their machines and therefore the ability (with the help of unscrupulous third parties) to break them.

Now listen to Larson-Green’s description of Windows RT, evidence that Microsoft understands these issues very well:

Windows on ARM, or Windows RT, was our first go at creating that more closed, turnkey experience, where it doesn’t have all the flexibility of Windows, but it has the power of Office and then all the new style applications. So you could give it to your kid and he’s not going to load it up with a bunch of toolbars accidentally out of Internet Explorer and then come to you later and say, why am I getting all these pop-ups. It just isn’t capable of doing that by design.

That said, in its first year on the market Windows RT has largely failed. OEMs like Lenovo and Dell, who produced Windows RT tablets last year, have abandoned it. Microsoft is now the only Windows RT vendor, with Surface RT and Surface 2, other than Nokia with the Lumia 2520 – wait, that’s Microsoft too, following the Nokia acquisition.

Why has RT failed? Performance is an issue on most first generation devices (solved on Surface 2), users have been infuriated and/or flummoxed by the inability to install desktop applications, and even those (like myself) who understand and like the Windows RT concept run into functionality gaps, where there is no suitable Windows Store app and nothing built into the desktop that will do.

Nevertheless, something like Windows RT is necessary if Windows is to survive as a mainstream client operating system. What are Microsoft’s plans?

We have the Windows Phone OS. We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We’re not going to have three. We do think there’s a world where there is a more mobile operating system that doesn’t have the risks to battery life, or the risks to security. But, it also comes at the cost of flexibility. So we believe in that vision and that direction and we’re continuing down that path.

You can read this as saying that Windows RT will be scrapped, to be replaced by Windows Phone OS adapted for larger form factors (which is what some of us thought Microsoft should have done three years ago). Some have drawn that conclusion, even in the mainstream press. However, this is not what Larson-Green said. Rather, she confirmed what has been strongly hinted for some time, that Windows Phone and Windows RT will converge. In fact, the company has already said that there will be a single development platform for Windows Store / Phone apps at some future date. Note that Windows Phone 8 is no longer built on Windows CE, the cut-down version of Windows, but uses the full Windows kernel, so some convergence has already taken place.

There are rumours of a battle within Microsoft: should Windows Phone adopt Windows RT, or vice versa? Windows Phone is increasing its market share, whereas Windows RT struggles, so from a marketing perspective the phone may be the winner here, though from a technical perspective it might be better to adapt Windows RT for the phone so that desktop Office remains possible on future devices.

If Microsoft gets this right, it will not matter to end users which way it goes. Here is what makes sense to me. Microsoft should converge the development platforms for Windows Phone and Windows Store apps so that both types of apps run on both platforms (though developers should be able to specify a minimum display size to avoid issues with apps designed for a larger screen), and a single project in Visual Studio should be able to target both platforms.

The most interesting question is the future of the desktop on Windows ARM tablets. I love having the desktop on Surface RT and Surface 2, because it greatly increases the utility of the devices; my perspective is that it’s great to have the Windows desktop and Office on a locked-down device, rather than lamenting the inability to install new desktop applications. However, it is a compromise that needs keyboard and trackpad or mouse for optimum operation, and means that Windows RT devices suffer from the same dual personality issues as full Windows 8.

If Microsoft managed to implement a decent version of Office as a Windows Store app, could we live without the desktop? Maybe, though I doubt it will be easy to match the full Windows version of Office (even without VBA) in the Windows Runtime environment.