Category Archives: apple

apple, google, ibm, microsoft, open source, oracle, Sun

Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz makes the case for free and open source software

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I interviewed Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz last week, and wrote it up for Guardian Technology. By the way, the picture is much better in the print edition.

Sun is gambling on open source – not only open source, but free software. This is possibly easier for Sun that it would be for, say, Microsoft or Oracle, because Sun, like Apple, is a hardware company. You can therefore think of the software as an overhead for selling the hardware. It is not without risk though – most of the software (including its Solaris operating system) runs on commodity x86 hardware as well as on Sun’s SPARC processors.

Not everything we discussed made it into the Guardian piece. I put it to Schwartz that Sun has historically done a poor job of monetizing the software it gives away. For example, it made Java the most popular programming language in the world, with huge enterprise adoption, yet until recently the company was posting losses. I then asked whether he considered that the fundamental open source model – give away the software, make money on support and services – was the future for the whole industry, rather than just for Sun and a few others?

I think first of all our strategy is to build the broadest global communities we can, and then from those communities to identify the opportunities to make money by building datacenters and by building the technologies that go into those datacenters. Software, systems, services, and microelectronics. So right now, in responding to the question is that the future of the industry, right now if you’d like a free Microsoft-office compatible Office suite, you could go to OpenOffice.org, download it, as roughly 100 million people have done in the past couple of years, and you’d have to pay nothing. Or, you could go to your local retailer and pay for the latest proprietary office suite. So if you were a betting man, and you looked at 3.3 billion people online today, where do you think the majority of them will acquire their office productivity suites? They’ll probably acquire the free ones, by definition those will be the most popular.

Now the same thing would apply to search. If you wanted to be in the search business can you imagine trying to run a search portal today, charging customers 50 cents per search? You’d probably have no takers. So, if you want to be the broadest supplier of volume technology into the marketplace, the only acceptable price tag is free.

We are in fact interested in pursuing the broadest global developer community possible, for whom the only acceptable price is free. So I think, if you’re going to try to compete against our virtualization products, our office productivity products, our network infrastructure products, you have to come to the table with a free product. Absent a free product, you won’t even be considered by the majority of the marketplace. So right now I believe we stand alone in having evolved our business model to actually monetize that community. That’s exactly what we’re doing, every day. So when people ask, when will you monetize those free software downloads, again, we had 7% operating margin last quarter. It’s not going to be a single line item, it’s going to be the whole company’s market opportunity expanding. So I feel very comfortable that this is not only the direction for Sun, and it’s a great direction, it’s the direction for the industry. The move towards free software is unstoppable. Not simply in your home, but at your workplace.

Note that it helps to consider this in a global context, not just the traditional highly developed locations like Europe or the USA.

Is he right? The world’s biggest and most profitable tech companies are not built on open source. IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, for example. All these companies flirt with open source, even make real and meaningful contributions, but they keep their prize jewels proprietary.

Bottom line: Schwartz may well be right, but he’s not right yet. Still, follow the trend. Free software continues to improve; the proprietary vendors are giving away more of their stuff; the cloud is growing in importance relative to the desktop; and tough economic times are likely in tech’s most profitable markets. I doubt Sun will be the only company to change its business model.

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apple, internet, microsoft, web authoring

Web usability has a long way to go

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First thing in the morning I often browse through recent blog posts and follow links that look interesting.

I noticed a free Windows 2008 book offer from Microsoft. Might be useful background for my review I thought – I’ll download it.

I lost count of how many slow, unresponsive pages I had to traverse before getting the book. Yes, I am persistent. I do recall having to sign in with Windows Passport (to the same account) twice – once to register for the book, and a second time for something called the E-Learning center, both times passing registration forms that I have seen many times before and do not intend to change. The final annoyance is that you cannot right-click and download the PDF; it is a Javascript link that opens in the browser. In my case I’ve set Adobe Reader to open outside the browser, which helps, but it is still an irritation.

It would not be so bad if this labyrinth of links were quick to navigate, but they are not. The problem in this case does not appear to be the download of large files (the PDF actually came down quickly once I got there), but rather slow server-side code resulting in web pages that seem to hang.

Next came an irony. Via Jimmy Guterman at O’Reilly I noticed a presentation by Edward Tufte on the Apple iPhone UI. Guterman warned that it was a large Quick Time file that would take “many minutes” to download. I clicked anyway. And waited. It was better than endless link-clicking, but still a poor user experience – no download thermometer, just a web page that seems completely unresponsive.

I agree with Guterman – the video is worth watching. Key points:

  • The content is the interface – remove “computer administrative debris” like buttons and toolbars.
  • Clutter is a failure of design
  • Add detail to clarify

Nevertheless, getting to the video is a lousy experience. The key here is that progress indicators transform the user’s perception of lengthy operations. I don’t just mean a spinning hourglass or the browser’s loading thermometer – we’ve learned that these are unreliable indicators, and that we may wait forever.

apple, windows

My Mac day: Jobs of the print variety

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While Steve Jobs was extolling the merits of thin laptops (I prefer small to thin, but tastes differ), I was in the depths of /var/log fixing a print issue with a friend’s Mac Mini and her LexMark printer.

It was almost the same issue as described here by Ted Landau, though I got there a bit quicker thanks in part to his post. Symptom: you hit print, but get a printer stopped message. You can restart the print job but it immediately stops again.

It wasn’t obvious what was wrong, especially as the printer passed all its self-tests including printing its test page. There were no clues in the OS X GUI. The USB cable was OK.

I was helped by familiarity with other Unix-like operating systems. The first thing to look for is an error log, and in this case there was one sensibly located at /var/log/cups. It told me that a cartridge change had been detected and the new cartridge was not yet aligned, a condition that the driver treated as a fatal error. At this point the user confessed that the black cartridge was new, and that the printer had not worked since. However, she had run the alignment utility, several times in fact. Getting warm.

In Landau’s case, there was old ink in the cartridge bay preventing a good connection. In my case, the cartridge itself was faulty; a replacement worked fine. The deceptive aspect is that the cartridge had ink and could print; it just could not register its alignment for some reason.

Landau has a little rant about this:

Neither Lexmark’s nor Apple’s software were able to get the relevant error message to pop up anywhere where a user would be likely to see it. Having no message at all in the Printer Queue and having the key message buried in a cups log file is not the ideal situation.

His underlying point is correct. The cuddly GUI hides huge complexity. Windows is the same of course.

The point I will make is that both operating systems do a poor job of surfacing error logs. In Windows most logs are accessible through the Event Viewer GUI, but only advanced users find this. When a hard drive fails, you sometimes find that the event log (presuming you recover it sufficiently to read it) has been reporting bad blocks for ages, but the user was unaware.

In this case I suspect the real issue is Lexmark’s poor driver, which could have reported this problem in a sane manner.

How did we fix computers pre-Google?

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apple, microsoft, multimedia

Wired votes for Zune over iPod

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Wired Magazine, home of Cult of Mac, has declared the Zune 2 a better buy than the iPod Classic.

This may prove any number of things. One possibility is that Microsoft has a winner. After all, it the company’s modus operandi. Windows 1.0, rubbish. Windows 3.0, word-beating.

Then again, perhaps articles with unexpected conclusions just get more links. Like this one.

Not that I care – there is no Zune for the UK.

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apple, itunes, multimedia

Camera, Flash, Action: review of the LG Viewty

I’ve reviewed LG’s new camera phone here. I found this an interesting device because it has a Flash UI, one that for the most part works very well. It also has an excellent camera. No wi-fi, which is a shame.

The Viewty is bound to be compared to the iPhone, because both have touch screens. The Viewty is cheaper and has more features (though it is missing a few as well), but to my mind its biggest handicap is that it lacks the polish and attention to detail which typifies Apple’s products.

Back in 2004 I reviewed the iRiver H140, a great MP3 player that was superior to Apple’s iPod in several respects. It had both digital input and output. It had a better battery. It had FM radio. It had a remote with controls and an LCD display. It had a built-in microphone and a mic input – I still use it for recording today.

The H140 was a modest success, but nothing in comparison to the mighty iPod. Why? It wasn’t just the marketing, or the looks, though both were factors. Another issue was that the H140 and its successor the H320 have perplexing controls that almost seem designed to catch you out. The iRiver also came with PC software that didn’t seem to do anything at all, though in fact it inserted some right-click options into Windows Explorer. It was a far cry from the slick iTunes/iPod integration.

The Viewty pays more attention to usability than the H140, but there are enough niggles – like the dangling stylus holder, the awkward jog wheel, or the error-prone LG PC Suite – that you wonder if these lessons have been learned.

On the positive side, the Viewty is an excellent phone, camera, and portable entertainment device. It proves that the Flash UI concept works, and that the day will come when I no longer need to take a standalone camera to conferences and the like – paying attention, Canon?

PS does anyone know how to take screen grabs from the Viewty? If I can figure it out, I’ll post some examples of the UI.

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apple, microsoft, software, windows

Two spins on Microsoft’s excellent quarter

Microsoft has delivered an excellent set of results, showing growth in pretty much all areas.

It seems to me that you can spin this in a couple of ways. First, you could argue that Microsoft is alive and well and still in the race. Certainly, with figures like these you can hardly suggest that it is out of the race.

Second, you could argue that the figures demonstrate how monopolies can continue to make good profits even when their products disappoint, especially in a buoyant market like computing.

The truth? Somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter how good the financials are: the disappointment with Vista is real. Personally I have Vista working fairly well, though annoyingly slowly at times, but I notice plenty of people advising one another to stick with XP, for performance and compatibility. Maybe the long-awaited SP1 will fix it, but some are now resigned to waiting for Windows 7 (you know, odd-number release theory) for a really good upgrade. Vista’s problems have created an opportunity for Apple and even Linux to grab some market share.

Other shadows hanging over Microsoft that come to mind:

  • Lack of clarity over Internet strategy
  • Continuing security problems centered on Windows (for whatever reason)
  • Losing the search wars
  • Governments mandating ODF
  • Apple’s increasing market share, especially among thought leaders
  • Bureaucracy and litigation
  • PR and image problems

On the plus side I’d mention the strength of the .NET platform and languages; Silverlight’s promise; and the fact that most people still want to use Microsoft Office rather than Open Office (in my experience).

I am absolutely not a financial analyst; but I observe that having a good quarter does not fix what strike me as deep-rooted problems. At the same time it is a reminder of Microsoft’s huge resources and entrenched position; that’s not going to go away quickly either.

TechEd Europe the week after next; no doubt some more Microsoft reflections then.

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apple, drm, multimedia

Amazon launches iTunes music store competitor

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Amazon’s MP3 download store has launched. Unlike the otherwise similar service from emusic.com, Amazon’s store features many of the big names that form the pop mainstream, from Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen to Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and John Lennon (but not the Beatles). There are still big gaps, but this is a significant initiative.

The big selling point is the songs are DRM-free. I never expected to see this. Even iPod/iTunes users may appreciate what this means. For example, virtually any mobile phone will play MP3 files, whereas DRM-encumbered AAC files are restricted to Apple’s expensive iPhone. Amazon has included an iTunes/Windows Media Player integration applet, which automatically updates your media library.

Most of the songs are 256 kbps vbr MP3 files – probably a little better quality than Apple’s 128 kbps AAC files, and cheaper than the iTunes store for DRM-free files where they exist. You cannot replace previously purchased files, so watch those backups, or maybe upload them to Amazon S3.

This strikes me as the first commercial competitor to iTunes that stands some chance of success. A bigger problem for the music industry is Illegal downloads and file-swapping. In theory Amazon’s service could make illegal music exchange worse, by providing more files to swap; but the executives have possibly concluded that since the dam has already burst, a few more drops of water will make little difference. It seems that promoting competition for Apple has become more important than DRM.

Will I buy? It’s more attractive than the iTunes music store; but I would still normally buy a CD and rip it, because I prefer music files without lossy compression. Actually, Amazon has cottoned on to this as well, and publishes a how-to guide:

After you’ve purchased a CD (say, from the Amazon Music Store), you can quickly and easily “rip” them, or copy them onto your computer, by using software such as Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft Windows Media Player.

The problem Amazon faces is the seamless experience offered by iPod/iTunes. Competing will not be easy, but this is a start. If it succeeds, it will help to promote alternative hardware as well. It’s all welcome news for users – but not yet internationally. Amazon’s MP3 store is in beta and restricted to the United States only.

apple, itunes

iPod database successfully hacked – for now

A couple of days ago I blogged about the database hash in new iPods, which prevents their use with song management software other than iTunes. There is no iTunes for Linux.

The good news is that apparently the hash has been cracked, “using a debugger on Windows.”

Miguel de Icaza goes on to observe:

Breaking the hash is not really a long-term solution, as they can keep making the process harder every time. The long-term solution is for iPods to have a standard interface that third parties can communicate with.

Indeed. Of course, if iTunes and iPod communicated through a standard API, and if Apple would license its DRM or support alternatives, then any hardware vendor could sell iPod-compatible hardware, any software vendor could come up with substitutes for iTunes, and any online music store could compete with Apple’s official one.

Commoditization. Something Apple will do anything to avoid.

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apple, itunes, multimedia, software

New iPod locked more tightly to iTunes, will not work with Linux

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Apple has apparently made some changes to the iPod that make it increasingly difficult to use with anything other than iTunes. Since iTunes does not run on Linux, this affects Linux users more than anyone.

I wrote a piece a while back on Linux multimedia, and was impressed at how well my old iPod Photo works with Amarok on Linux. I have this iPod formatted for the Mac, since iTunes seems to work better on OS X. The only change I needed was to turn off journalling on the HFS+ file system. So what’s happened now?

According to this post, Apple has encrypted the iPod’s database. If you write to the database other than with iTunes, the iPod firmware will report that it is empty.

How about replacing the firmware completely, say with Linux? Bad news there as well – Apple has encrypted the firmware too. See ipodlinux.org for more details. In consequence, you can only hack the firmware on older models.

The change to the song database is more significant. Only a tiny geek minority would be willing to replace their firmware, but there are more people who like the the iPod but not iTunes. This may be damaging for third parties like J River, which offers iPod-compatible media center software.

See also Mike Elgan’s article on Is Apple the New Microsoft; and also note how the piece has over 1000 “Do not Recommend this story” votes from enraged Apple enthusiasts.

There is also a discussion on slashdot.

Update: more commentary from Miguel de Icaza (of GNOME, Mono fame) and Cory Doctorow – the usual suspects, I guess. “This has nothing to do with preventing piracy — this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store,” says Doctorow.

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apple

Hands on with the iPhone

I am in San Francisco this week and got to play with an iPhone for the first time.

Very cool device, but I am not sure I could live with the keyboard (or lack of it). I typed a short message and found it painful; you simply cannot see which key you are pressing until the result appears, often not the one you wanted. It is fine for numbers, since the virtual keys are larger.

In mitigation, the iPhone has text recognition algorithms that take this into account. If you have faith, then quite often the word you wanted does appear, even though you mis-typed it. Fair enough, but I prefer a real keyboard which gives you tactile feedback. That said, I agree with the decision not to resort to a stylus, which is always a nuisance on a handheld device.

Omitting a physical keypad does mean the iPhone has a larger screen than most devices of its size, and as you would expect the multimedia is nicely done. Unfortunately I am a text-oriented user, so I would rather have a real keyboard and a smaller screen. And yes, I am a QWERTY user.

Could I learn to love the soft keyboard? Possibly, but there is also the price to consider. The iPhone seems extraordinarily expensive for a locked-down device. I’ll be interested to see what the UK pricing is like when it appears there in due course.

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