Category Archives: mobile

linux, mobile, nokia, open source, professional, software development

MeeGo NoGo: things look bad for the Intel/Nokia Linux project

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A sad post yesterday from MeeGo contributor Andrew Wafaa suggests that MeeGo on netbooks may no longer happen:

Basically by all accounts MeeGo is stopping all work on the Netbook UX. Yup, all our hard work is now almost for nothing 🙁

This is remarkable. The original Moblin project, sponsored by Intel, was all about bringing an excellent user experience to Linux on netbooks. The first netbooks ran Linux, but met resistance from a general public familiar with Windows; yet Linux is more suitable for netbooks than Windows in its present form.

Moblin is different. It’s a friendly way to get the most out of your netbook. It doesn’t work like most other computers because it’s optimized for enjoying media, interacting with your social networks and the internet.

wrote Moblin Community Manager Paul Cooper back in 2009, when netbooks were hot.

The problem: tech trends sometimes outpace corporate planning. Moblin was a good idea in 2008, but nothing was delivered; and by the time it looked like it might be ready, the market seemed to want tablets – or Apple iPads – rather than netbooks; and whatever problem Moblin was addressing was already solved by Google Android.

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Two years later, in February 2010, Moblin merged with Nokia’s Maemo, creating a new project called MeeGo. The new focus would be tablets and smartphones:

The power and capability of handhelds has reached astounding levels – netbooks have been a runaway success – and connected TVs, tablets, in-vehicle infotainment, and media phones are fast growing new markets for devices with unheard of performance. Our goal is to develop the best software to go with these devices.

said Intel’s Imad Sousou.

So where are the MeeGo smartphones? Well, maybe we will see one at Mobile World Congress next week. But Nokia is in disarray. According to a leaked memo from new CEO Stephen Elop:

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

Perhaps Nokia will progress MeeGo smartphones with renewed vigour; but what looks more likely is that Nokia will embrace a rival platform, maybe Google Android or Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

That might well be alongside MeeGo, rather than replacing it, but Nokia needs to focus its energy and I would guess that MeeGo will lose out.

It may be the beginning of the end for a promising project that has progressed too slowly.

Update: Reuters is reporting that “two industry sources close to the company” say Nokia has ended development of its first MeeGo smartphone

google, microsoft, mobile, nokia, professional, qt, silverlight, software development, visual studio, windows

Nokia plus Windows Phone 7 – would that be a smart move?

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The rumour is that Nokia’s CEO, ex-Microsoft Stephen Elop, is planning a major strategy announcement on Friday February 11. The obvious move would be to embrace a new Smartphone platform, since neither Symbian nor MeeGo look likely to catch up with frontrunners Google Android or Apple iPhone. Could Elop be planning to partner with his former company and embrace Windows Phone 7?

It is a fascinating proposition. Here is the case in favour. For both Nokia and Microsoft, Android is the key competition in this market. The momentum behind Android is deterring both phone manufacturers and operators from investing seriously in Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s phone is well-regarded, but has made little impact on the general public. Nokia could change that; it could make beautiful Windows 7 phones and get them to the mass market.

Microsoft has also done a good job with the developer tools for Windows Phone 7, with Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight, XNA, and the .NET Framework.

On the other hand, if Nokia were to adopt Windows Phone 7 for its high-end phone platform, would it not alienate its own development community, which is oriented towards Linux and C/C++? I think it would, unless Nokia insisted that as part of its deal with Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 would also support native code development with Qt, Nokia’s cross-platform application framework. This would be great news for Microsoft as well, though it might not recognise it. Windows Phone 7 needs to allow native code development, and Qt is ideal for the purpose. Qt already supports Windows CE, which underlies Windows Phone 7. If Nokia could present Windows Phone 7 as just another platform for Qt, the deal would be palatable for existing Nokia developers.

If Nokia were to announce this, it would transform the prospects for Microsoft’s Smartphone OS as well as helping Nokia to make a renewed impact.

Now for the case against. I am not sure that Qt on Windows Phone 7 would be acceptable to Microsoft, which might prefer to keep developers locked to Visual Studio and .NET; and Nokia has an easy alternative, which is to adopt Android instead. Qt support is still an issue, but there is already an independent project to bring Qt to Android. The combination of the Android and Nokia brands has obvious appeal, whereas taking on Windows Phone 7 would be risky.

The biggest shadow over Windows Phone 7 is cast by Microsoft itself. I do not doubt the commitment of the team which builds it within Microsoft, nor the quality of the developer tools. I do question though whether Microsoft as a whole sees a long-term future for Windows Phone 7 and its “Metro” user interface. The strong hint at CES was that Windows 8, rather than Windows Phone 7, is the basis of Microsoft’s tablet strategy; and if that proves to be the case, then Windows Phone 7 may gradually be displaced. Another puzzle is how Microsoft intends to use “Jupiter”, a rumoured new user interface library for Windows that may well be designed with mobile and touch control in mind. Maybe full Windows with “Jupiter” is the future of Microsoft’s mobile platform, rather than Windows Phone 7? I discuss this in more detail here.

There is enough uncertainty around Windows Phone 7, and enough buzz around Android, that Google’s mobile platform looks to me more attractive than Microsoft’s from Nokia’s perspective. I do not dismiss the Windows Phone idea though; it would be a bold and interesting move.

I expect this post to be very out of date soon, if not by Friday, then certainly by early next week at Mobile World Congress.

Update: A Nokia and Microsoft partnership is looking more likely since Google’s Vic Gundotra tweeted:

#feb11 "Two turkeys do not make an Eagle".

microsoft, mobile

Trying out copy and paste in Windows Phone 7

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Microsoft has released an update to the Windows Phone 7 developer tools, which now include support for copy and paste in the TextBox and PasswordBox controls. You can try this in the emulator, though it is not yet available for actual devices.

If you single-click a word (or, I presume, tap) then it highlights. Drag corners appear to left and right of the highlighted word, which let you extend or reduce the selection – but only, as far as I can tell, to complete words.

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Tap the Copy icon which appears above or over the selected words, and a new icon appears above the virtual keyboard indicating that Paste is available.

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Now you can tap the Paste icon in the same or another application to insert what you have copied.

Curiously, the act of pasting seems to clear the clipboard. I suppose there are not many occasions when you want to paste the same words repeatedly, but it does happen. If you accidentally pasted into the wrong location, for example, you would have to go back, select and copy again.

Copy also works in the web browser.

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It works and it will be useful, though it strikes me as a minimal and slightly annoying implementation.

microsoft, mobile, windows

Server admin on the go with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 app for SBS 2011

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Microsoft has created a Windows Phone 7 app for managing the forthcoming Small Business Server 2011 Essentials.

The app sends alerts to your home page, and lets you perform certain tasks remotely:

  • View storage status
  • View status of connected computers
  • Start PC backup
  • Enable and disable user accounts
  • Reset user password
  • Reboot server

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A neat feature for simple server admin, and a bit of stealth marketing for Microsoft’s smartphone, which is struggling to make an impact.

I hope the app has some additional security though. Otherwise, a phone thief could cause mayhem with those few features.

apple, development, mobile, professional, software development, web authoring

Using HTML 5 to mitigate locked-down platforms like Apple iOS

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Apple has created a beautiful mobile platform; but it has some drawbacks. One was highlighted yesterday, when Apple rejected an app from Sony for reading and purchasing digital books on the device.

According to Apple’s Trudy Miller, as quoted in the New York Times:

We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app.

What Miller does not spell out is the further implication, which is that the purchase must go though the Apple App Store, and is therefore subject both to approval and to a 30% fee to Apple.

There is a suggestion that Apple is only applying the rule to books at the moment, but that could change. Other readers such as Amazon’s Kindle app will be affected though, after a grace period ending June 30 2011 for existing applications.

Currently these apps have a link which opens the browser, so that users can purchase on the web, and then download to the device, and this is what is annoying Apple. It is not clear to me whether Apple will be satisfied if that link is removed, but with users still to bypass the App Store by purchasing on the web.

It matters little. It is Apple’s platform, and tight control is one of its facets that makes it what it is. Apple can argue that it is enforcing the quality of the user experience. It seems to me that there are competition concerns if Apple comes to dominate a particular market; but don’t hold your breath for change driven by regulators.

What interests me about the issue is the extent to which HTML 5 apps provide a solution. Safari/WebKit on iPhone is a capable platform, and apps can even work offline and have local shortcuts installed. You can use local storage up to at least 5MB, with the user prompted to increase the limit if it is a SQL database – SQLite is built in to the platform.

Local storage is a problem for eReaders, though you can cache a fair amount of text even in 5MB. For many apps though, it is more than enough.

The more Apple locks down and taxes its platform, the more attractive the HTML5 alternative becomes.

apple, eclipse, javascript, mobile, professional, software development

Mobl: a new language for mobile applications, with Eclipse integration

It has gradually dawned on me that, contrary to first appearances, the Apple iPhone and iPad do come with a capable application runtime for those who would rather not tangle with Objective C; and one on which you can run applications without the hassle of negotiating the App Store. This runtime is the WebKit-based browser and JavaScript engine. This is for web apps of course; but as noted in my look at NS App Studio last week, you can blur the boundaries between web and local by creating a local shortcut and designing your app to work offline. Here is the Apple documentation, which notes:

Offline application support is available in iOS 2.1 and later and in Safari 4.0 and later

So you can do offline. There is also a local database, based on SQLite, documented by Apple here – putting iOS ahead of Windows Phone 7, which has no built-in relational database for Silverlight applications. Another plus is that other WebKit-based mobile browsers should work as well, including the one in Android devices.

It is possible to create application frameworks that wrap these features into a single development platform that compiles to JavaScript, HTML and CSS. PhoneGap is one example, and NS App Studio another; but today Reddit alerted me to another, Mobl, which has a modern feel and benefits from Eclipse integration. It is also free and open source, and with the right community momentum looks like it could be interesting.

Mobl is a statically-typed language with a syntax similar to Javascript – there is a guide and language reference here. The goal is to create a complete DSL (Domain Specific Language) for mobile development, which according to the web site:

Integrates all aspects of a mobile web application into a single language: data modeling, user interfaces, application logic, styling and web services.

The main author is Zef Hemel, from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Mobl makes use of Stratego/XT, which is a language and toolset for program transformation, and SDF  (Modular Syntax Definition Formalism), a language for defining syntax.

Mobl includes data modelling which handles object persistence and a concise language for defining user interfaces. AJAX support is built-in and there is integrated support for RESTful web services and for JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). The Eclipse add-in includes syntax highlighting, inline error reporting, code completion, and reference resolving.

All rather impressive for a project that has just burst onto the scene. I installed the Eclipse add-on and enjoyed its simple license:

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“This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful.” – though I have not found time yet to try creating an application.

There is more information on the nicely-designed website and blog and in the Google Group.

Update: thanks to @FransBouma for the link to the Mobl guide.

apple, google, mobile, professional, software development, web authoring

Back to BASIC with NS App Studio for mobile

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I was intrigued to discover NS Basic/App Studio, which offers a simple Windows IDE targeting iPhone and Android mobile devices.

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It is all a bit retro, especially when you discover that the company (NS Basic Corporation) has the leading Basic on the … Apple Newton.

Still, something like Visual Basic for iPhone and Android sounds interesting. Does this thing deliver?

I tried the demo. What NS App Studio actually does is to translate Basic code to JavaScript, so the end result is a web application targeting mobile browsers, rather than a mobile app. There is a bit more to it though. Apps have access to local storage including SQLite databases, since this is available to the WebKit-based browsers on iPhone and Android. You can create a shortcut to a web app and even run it offline, making it behave somewhat like a locally installed app. Further, the FAQ notes that you can wrap your web app with PhoneGap to create an app that you can distribute through the App Store or Android Market; and this or similar capability may eventually be included in the IDE.

The question though: why would you choose to use Basic rather than just learning JavaScript? I can make sense of the Google Web Toolkit, which compiles Java to JavaScript, but Google’s effort is more sophisticated. You are not expected to puzzle out the generated JavaScript, but just work in Java. By contrast, with NS App Studio you code in Basic but debug in JavaScript, with all sorts of potential for confusion.

I got the impression that the product is not yet mature. I changed the name of the form in my Hello World project, for example, but found generated code that still referred to the old name, causing a JavaScript error. I found it confusing that the property listed as “text” in the visual grid was “textContent” in code. The IDE is very simple, but also very lacking in features. Most developers would find a modern JavaScript IDE more productive.

Nevertheless it is interesting as a proof of concept, and shows the capability of these mobile browsers as a pre-installed application runtime.

apple, google, javascript, mobile, professional, software development

Appcelerator acquires Aptana

Appcelerator, a company whose main product is a cross-platform desktop and mobile toolkit called Titanium, has acquired Aptana, whose Aptana Studio 2 is probably the best IDE for JavaScript application development, and which also supports Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, and Adobe AIR.

It makes sense, in that Titanium uses JavaScript as the primary language for the application logic and UI.

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Appcelerator is already doing well from the current surge of interest in mobile apps, offering an obvious solution to developers endeavouring to support both Apple iOS and Google Android with a single code base. Aptana looks a good acquisition; but the news may not be so welcome to those who rely on Aptana Studio for Adobe AIR; I imagine Appcelerator may see this as a competing platform. Then again, most AIR developers use the Flash IDE or Flash Builder so it is unlikely to have a huge impact even if AIR support is dropped (I do not know what the plans are in this respect).

The server-side technologies like PHP and Ruby are a better fit, since many mobile apps have a server component.

Update: in the webcast about the acquisition, Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie said “There’s quite a few questions around Aptana as it relates to Adobe and ColdFusion; I don’t think we can say anything about that.”

The company is expecting to release a joint Aptana Studio/Appcelerator Titanium beta in March 2011. The initial release will not include a visual designer, though this is planned for some future release.

.net, apple, google, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, windows 7

Talk of Windows 8 on an smartphone shows Microsoft’s mobile confusion

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During a conference call to discuss Intel’s latest financials, CEO Paul Otellini raised the possibility of putting the full Windows OS onto a smartphone, running a low power Intel SoC (System on Chip). The matter came up with Otellini was asked about the impact of Windows on ARM, announced at CES earlier this month:

The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems we now have the ability for the first time: one, to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don’t have today. And secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors running Windows 8 – or ‘next-generation Windows’ – into phones, because it’s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us.

The reasoning seems to be: if Windows 8 is designed to run well on mobile devices with ARM, it will also run well on mobile devices with an Intel SoC, which will let us put it on phones.

Note the point he highlighted: Microsoft unifying its operating systems. No more full Windows vs Windows CE; one OS from mobile to desktop.

Although that sounds compelling, the snag is that Windows is not well suited to low-power mobile devices, which is why Windows CE was invented in the first place. Microsoft can fix this to some extent by fixing the things that make it unsuitable, but it carries a heavy compatibility burden.

It also throws up the question: just what are Microsoft’s long-term plans for Windows Phone 7, which is built on Windows CE, has its own GUI mostly written in native code, and a development platform based on .NET – Silverlight and XNA – plus a native code SDK that only mobile operators and device manufacturers get to use?

At CES Microsoft Steven Sinofsky sort-of denied that Windows will encroach on Windows Phone 7 territory. “Windows Phone 7 is uniquely focused on the small form factor that Windows doesn’t focus on,” he said.

Nevertheless, the company’s decision not to use the Windows Phone 7 OS for tablets may make that inevitable. What is the difference between a smartphone and a small tablet? Does Microsoft expect developers to write apps designed for Windows on a small tablet and then rewrite them for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight?

It does not make sense; and despite the Windows Phone 7 promotion included in CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, I was left wondering whether Microsoft’s new mobile OS really has a future.

That said, Silverlight abstracts the OS, so in principle Microsoft could use it to form a consistent mobile development platform irrespective of whether the underlying OS is Windows CE or full Windows. I am not getting that sense from the company though, and I’d expect the primary Windows SDK to remain based on C++.

I am struggling to understand how Microsoft expects this to work. App compatibility is the obvious benefit of full Windows; but two big issues are that most Windows apps are not touch-friendly and are not designed for small screens. Putting Windows on a tablet with a decent screen size and the dreaded stylus works to some extent, but will never compete with Apple’s iPad for usability. On smaller screens most existing apps will not work properly; and if Windows on small devices sprouts a completely new touch-friendly GUI, or borrows the one from Windows Phone 7, then app compatibility with desktop Windows will be limited.

It feels as if Microsoft’s Windows team is saying one thing, the Windows Phone 7 and developer teams saying another, and partners like Intel saying yet another. Windows Phone 7 was meant to be the thing that made belated sense of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, but even that now looks doubtful for the reasons stated above.

Microsoft is still a long way from having a coherent strategy for mobile devices, and that lack is damaging the company and helping Apple and Google to establish their competing operating systems.

Update: Mary-Jo Foley writes about Microsoft “Jupiter” which is a rumoured new user interface and application model designed for Windows 8 and its app store:

Jupiter is going to be a new user interface (UI) library for Windows, built alongside Windows 8. It will be a thin XAML/UI layer on top of Windows application programming interfaces and frameworks for subsystems like graphics, text and input. The idea is Jupiter will bring support for smoother and more fluid animation, rich typography, and new media capabilities to Windows 8 devices.

Is Jupiter a .Net technology, or XAML adapted for native code, or both? Is it one and the same as, say, Silverlight 6? That is not stated, though Senior VP Soma Somasegar helpfully (or not) said that:

some of the information in this post is not right and out of date, not reflecting Microsoft’s current thinking.

That seems to tacitly confirm that it fairly represents Microsoft’s thinking at some time in the not-too-distant past.

It would make sense to me if Microsoft used Silverlight to unify its application platform as mentioned above, and combining the XAML presentation layer with native code could address performance and memory usage concerns with .NET. This is the kind of news that would really give confidence to Silverlight developers, rather than the damage limitation PR that Microsoft has put out since PDC late last year.

On the other hand, I believe Somasegar when he says the information is out of date, so for the time being it is just another dose of uncertainty.

audio, mobile, music industry

Spotify everywhere: now on Logitech Squeezebox as well as Sonos, Smartphones

Spotify, the music streaming service, has announced a partnership with Logitech to enable subscribers to play music via Squeezebox. Logitech already has a partnership with Napster for a similar service, but Spotify is winning in terms of usability, ubiquity and mind share.

It follows a similar agreement last September between Spotify and Sonos, a Squeezbox rival. The company has also announced support for Windows Phone 7, which joins Apple iPhone/iPad, Google Android, and Nokia Symbian among supported smartphones.

Spotify is available for free on a PC or Mac, but supported by advertising, making it like a commercial radio station where you choose the music. However only paying subscribers get the benefit of using the service from these other platforms.

In my view streaming is the future of mainstream music distribution, so I see this as significant. Why pay for downloads, when you can choose from a vast catalogue and play what you want when you want?

The main snag with Spotify is that some artists are not available on the service, and some countries (including the USA) cannot get Spotify. Still, if it builds a big enough customer base, the music industry may find it cannot do without the service.