First Looks: Hudson Software Company Bomberman

Based on the classic NES, SNES, and TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Bomberman games, Hudson Soft's Bomberman for iPod places you in control of a bomb-toting robot who needs to dispatch enemies, find power ups, and bust through rock walls to clear stages. Each stage includes a maze-like array of rocks that you blow up to access areas packed with wandering bad guys and hidden weapons; you touch the Click Wheel lightly to walk and use the central Action…

Based on the classic NES, SNES, and TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Bomberman games, Hudson Soft's Bomberman for iPod places you in control of a bomb-toting robot who needs to dispatch enemies, find power ups, and bust through rock walls to clear stages. Each stage includes a maze-like array of rocks that you blow up to access areas packed with wandering bad guys and hidden weapons; you touch the Click Wheel lightly to walk and use the central Action…

  • News: Hudson releases Bomberman as iPod game

    Best known to fans of Nintendo and NEC game consoles from the 1980s, Hudson Soft's Bomberman has been released as a downloadable iPod game. The $4.99 title—third on today's list of brand-new iPod games—places you in control of a robot who uses bombs to make his way through mazes full of enemies and obstacles. Bomberman includes 20 levels, an iPod-exclusive boss challenge, and three mini games: Bomb Rollin', Bomb Buster,…

  • Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

    Daniel Eran Dilger Today's broad array of smartphone operating system contenders are offering lots of potential answers to a problem that only requires one. It appears the market has two options ahead: either pool generic hardware makers behind a single operating system and deliver a smartphone marketplace that resembles the Windows PC market, or watch them fall to a dominant leader and have a smartphone market that resembles Apple's iPod ecosystem. This decision isn't going to be made by a class of intellectual elite, or by government mandate. it's going to be made by the market itself. Here are the factors that will influence the outcome, either marginalizing Apple's iPhone into a niche as the company has twice experienced previously at the hands of DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1991, or positioning it as the dominant leader as Apple has achieved for itself with the iPod since 2001. The third segment in this series looks at Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance as a possible “DOS-attack” against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Nokia's newly opened Symbian and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Will Symbian Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Google Acquires Android. In 2005, Google purchased a startup named Android, which had been in business for nearly two years. The secretive startup was known only to be working on software for mobile phones. It was being run by a who's who of mobile industry veterans, including Andy Rubin, the founder of Danger. Rubin had earlier worked at WebTV along with Chris White and Andy McFadden, both of whom had also joined Android. Richard Miner of Orange and Nick Sears of Tmobile also brought their mobile provider experience to Android. At the time of the acquisition, Google didn't announce any plans for Android and instead only told BusinessWeek, “We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here.” It appeared that Google was only going to be expanding its search services for mobile phone users, along the lines of the Google SMS answer system it had recently released. Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal - BusinessWeek Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV: The Fall of WebTV The GPhone Myth. As reports began to leak out about talks between Google and hardware makers throughout 2007, rumors began to fly about “the GPhone,” a competitive offering that was supposed to take on the iPhone. Some phone enthusiasts hoped Google would jump in to rescue the struggling OpenMoko project and turn it into a viable project that could attack Apple's new smartphone. In October 2007, I printed the Great Google GPhone Myth, taking apart the idea that Google would be directly competing against the iPhone, and describing that Google was really working on a free alternative to Windows Mobile as a conduit for getting its search and related services on a broader variety of mobiles. Google's services were already on the iPhone. In November, Google played its hand: it had organized a consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance to develop open standards for mobiles. The first product from the group would be Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Google wasn't getting into the phone handset business at all; it was only making sure that its mobile search products would not risk being marginalized by the threat of Windows Mobile on phones in the same way Microsoft had been working to leverage its PC monopoly to push Google search off the Windows desktop. The Great Google gPhone Myth Introducing Android: Leader of Linux. Two weeks later, Google released an early version of the Android software. On top of a Linux kernel, Android uses a specialized version of a Java Virtual Machine that takes Java language code and turns it into what Google calls “Dalvik bytecode” rather than Java bytecode as a standard JVM would. This allows Google to leverage existing and familiar Java language tools without paying Sun for a Java license. Like Mac OS X and its fraternal iPhone OS, Android includes a variety of open source libraries, including SQLite and WebKit. On top of that, Google developed a series of frameworks that handle the tasks Cocoa Touch does on the iPhone. Android also bundles a set of applications. While Apple adapted its existing Mac OS X to work in a mobile environment to create the iPhone OS, Android is more like a customized Java environment running on a specialized mobile Linux variant: elements of maturity in an otherwise experimental new platform. What is Android? -Google Android was by no means the first mobile OS using Linux. Both Palm and its amputated ACCESS software arm have Linux-based mobile platforms. Nokia has Maemo, which it uses in its Internet Tablets, and also recently acquired Trolltech and its Qtopia mobile Linux platform. Motorola has teamed up with MontaVista Software to use its Mobilinux. Intel created the Moblin project for mobile Linux, aimed at Internet devices. Google's OHA also isn't the first consortium to attempt to standardize a mobile Linux platform. The OSDL started the Mobile Linux Initiative to define requirements for hardware; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) then worked to define various phone profiles aimed at the Japanese market; the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS) Forum tried to do the same thing in Europe. In 2007, LiPS was folded into the new LiMo Foundation, along with the OSDL. All of these committees have had some overlap and some complementary features. Several of Google's OHA partners are also LiMo members, including NTT DoCoMo, Wind River, and Motorola. So why didn't Google just join LiMo? “LiMo, very candidly, wasn't moving fast enough,” OHA board member John Bruggeman told CNET. Google hopes to herd the Linux cats into a progressive, structured platform that can battle against Symbian and Windows Mobile to succeed as the new DOS of smartphones. Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux? The Presumption of the Necessity of DOS. The previous segment examining Windows Mobile pointed out how the PC industry as a whole assumed that Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly would easily take over dominance in the MP3 player market, pushing Apple into a niche position. This was expected because DOS had pushed Apple's early computers into a reduced role starting in 1981, and Microsoft had repeated this again in 1991 when the DOS world migrated to Windows, effectively pruning Apple's Macintosh into a Bonsai platform. The inability of one company to dominate any product category has been frequently repeated by PC industry pundits as a given, despite the fact that history is full of examples of this happening. Sony dominated personal music players for two decades under the Walkman brand even while equally large competitors tried to push it from this position; Nintendo has similarly owned handheld gaming despite ill-fated efforts to grab a piece of its pie by products running a generic platform such as Microsoft's WinCE (Gizmondo), Linux (GP32), and Symbian (N-Gage). In fact, outside of the Windows/DOS PC, there are actually few examples of a generic platform taking over an industry. Nearly every other consumer-facing product uses proprietary platforms: car makers, stereo equipment, appliances and so on typically all use designs custom to their maker. The paradox of the Windows PC market has been that Microsoft's broadly licensed software supposedly saves hardware makers from investing in software development while ensuring compatibility, when in reality it adds significant costs to PC makers while limiting their ability to differentiate themselves. That explains why PC makers have been perpetually merging together and going out of business while Microosft has rolled in money over the last two decades. Parallel efforts to copy Microsoft in broadly licensing an operating system have regularly failed: IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, Palm's PDA OS, even Microsoft's own efforts to duplicate Windows dominance in other markets, from copy machines to PDAs to smartphones to SPOT watches to music players. The closest copy may be Symbian, but its customers are partners, not simply consumers of a generic third party's operating system as Windows licensees are. That indicates it is not necessary to duplicate the dominance exercised by Microsoft over the PC industry in the smartphone market. Google's Android and Symbian exist more as technology sharing pacts among manufacturers, but both aspire to take Microsoft's DOS role among smartphones. However, the idea that Apple's iPhone must be dethroned by a modern-day DOS, whether Windows Mobile, Android, or Symbian, is not just debatable, but does not sync with the reality of more recent events. Apple's recent history of the iPod further refutes the idea that a software analog to Microsoft is needed. The iPod Emergence: Apple & Pixo vs IBM & Microsoft. Apple's iPod in 2001 made no effort to clone the DOS business model; it actually did the opposite. When Apple entered the market, there were a number of existing MP3 devices using custom software, hardware designs, and DRM codecs. The iPod used off the shelf components to deliver a custom MP3 player using third party software, but Apple also added its own technologies: easy to use sync with iTunes, a fast Firewire interface that made uploading music far faster than the prevailing USB 1.0, and an attractive industrial design. With the iPod, Apple played the role of IBM in 1981, using Pixo's embedded operating system to enter the market quickly, just as IBM had used DOS. The difference was that Apple didn't direct any market attention toward Pixo and added a lot of value on top of that core embedded OS. A modern day Compaq couldn't simply clone the hardware and license Pixo to run on it in order to compete against the iPod, because the iPod was much more than just generic hardware running Pixo software. As the iPod developed, Pixo's role diminished and was eventually displaced. Just like IBM, Apple jumped into a new market just as demand was beginning to explode. Apple made MP3 players far more attractive to a general audience by delivering greater playback capacity than most entry level devices offered, along with an ease of use that encouraged buyers to jump in at the higher end of the market. That left Apple with not only the lion's share of the market, but also by far the most profitable segments of the market. Two decades prior, IBM badly fumbled its play with the early PC and ended up irrelevant in the PC world by the late 80s, sideswiped by Microsoft's DOS and the cloners who were licensing it in parallel, notably Compaq and later HP and Dell. Steve Jobs had witnessed that happen, and was determined to not let it happen again to Apple. Rather than being manipulated by a software middleware vendor as IBM had, Apple worked to incrementally develop the iPod market itself. After consuming the hard drive-based player market, Apple took on the Flash RAM-based market with a tiny hard drive system used in the iPod Mini, and followed up with Flash-based devices of its own in the Nano and Shuffle. This allowed Apple to progressively serve an increasingly wider market, incrementally growing upon an established foundation. With the iPod, Apple became, in effect, an IBM with its own internal Microsoft. Microsoft's Failure Despite Features. In contrast, Microsoft entered the music player market by promoting music player hardware reference designs around WinCE. However, it was unable to ship a finished design until the iPod had become firmly established around 2005. Later branded as PlaysForSure, the devices were sold by various hardware makers and all purported to support the same DRM and the same music subscription services while also offering a broader array of hardware that presented video before the iPod did, supported wireless before the iPod, and so on. Despite these unique features, all of those PFS designs still failed. Microsoft blamed the failure of PFS upon its music store and hardware partners and decided to take Apple on itself in 2006. It relaunched a Toshiba PFS player as its own device under the Zune brand, adding WiFi music sharing features and a larger display than the current Pods had. It failed dramatically as well. Did Microsoft's attempts to float a new DOS among music players fail because of Apple's success, or due to Microsoft's own problems? The failure of the Zune, which followed the iPod model rather than the DOS model, seems to suggest that Microsoft itself was to blame. Consider too that Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones, which use the same underlying operating system as its failed PlaysForSure music players and the Zune, had similarly flopped even before Apple could release a charismatic phone equivalent to the iPod. Of course, when the iPhone was released, it hit Windows Mobile hardest. The iPhone made Windows Mobile Smartphones look ridiculous and underpowered, and made Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones look clumsy and awkward, despite the fact that they both supported a variety of features the iPhone didn't, including the ability to edit documents, capture video, send MMS, and so on. Simply adding on features did not enable Microsoft to compete against Apple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that competing against Apple requires more than just having a feature arsenal. Microsoft's failures in themselves do not necessarily mean that Google's Android will fail in its attempts to float its own smartphone platform. Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Will Google Succeed where Microsoft Failed? Microsoft's demonstrated inability to successfully enter consumer markets for MP3 players and smartphones has given observers little faith that the company will somehow turn things around in late 2009 when its next generation of devices are expected to be released. However, prior to that the first fruits of Google's efforts to build its own smartphone operating environment will arrive. Will Google's Android take over Microsoft's crown as the “DOS vendor” among smartphones? Supporters of Google's Android project point to some parallels between Android for smartphones and Windows on the PC: Android will allow hardware makers to differentiate in ways that can offer features Apple can't (or doesn't want to); it should allow software developers to offer features Apple does not allow on the iPhone; it embraces open, hobbyist experimentation in ways that Apple currently isn't; and it opens the potential for content providers that Apple is not interested in allowing. Openness is Android's key competitive feature. Will all this openness allow Google to unseat the iPhone to become the primary platform developers want to participate in, and subsequently soak up the market for third party hardware makers that Windows Mobile serves? While Google currently has no market share due to the fact that no Android phones have yet shipped, it does have broad vocal support from a variety of the same kinds of hardware manufacturers that supported DOS and Windows and helped to make those platforms successful in the desktop PC market. HTC and Android. The first Android phone is expected to be the HTC Dream; Taiwan's HTC (High Tech Computer) also manufactures Palm's Treo Pro phone as well as many of the most visible Windows Mobile devices. In addition to models produced under its own name, HTC also sells Windows Mobile devices under the Dopod brand, as well as no-name phones branded by providers, such as AT&T, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and others. HTC will also be building the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile phone for Sony Ericsson. HTC was quick to throw its support behind Android despite its long term alliance with Windows Mobile. Why would it so enthusiastically support an unproven platform from a company that has no experience in consumer hardware platforms? One can only assume that HTC is not happy with the current state of Windows Mobile, and desperately wants another “DOS” to succeed where Microsoft's has so spectacularly failed. As an Original Design Manufacturer for Palm, HTC watched as Palm adopted Windows Mobile in place of the Palm OS and subsequently fell even deeper into crisis. Palm's only successful phone since has been its Palm OS-based Centro. HTC undoubtedly sees Android as its ticket to becoming the next Dell, but without a similar dependance upon Microsoft. Android for mobile phones is essentially playing the role of Linux for PCs, except that it has the backing of a major company behind it. Can Android Take on the iPhone with Openness as its Feature? As great as this sounds, it's important to consider that Linux on the desktop has made no significant progress in eating into Windows dominance after a decade of trying. Being open, free, flexible, and decentralized hasn't been enough of an advantage to get consumers to migrate from Windows to Linux in any fraction of significance. Similarly, in the music business, Linux-based MP3 players have had no impact on the iPod, despite offering more features, flexibility, support for additional codecs, and so on. In the mobile phone area, Linux enjoys a sizable portion of the smartphone market, but this is almost entirely due to phones sold by Motorola in China, where the advantages of Linux' openness are void. Motorola's Linux phones offer nothing to users in terms of openness or flexibility, and are really no different in terms of features than other appliance 'feature phones' based upon closed operating systems. And again, a key problem with assaulting Apple in a feature war is that neither the iPod nor the iPhone became popular by being “highly featured.” They both delivered perhaps 80% of the functionality found in all other devices in the market. Rather than trying to match every feature and cater to every niche as Microsoft had with Windows Mobile, Apple's devices did a few things very well at launch, and incrementally developed into full featured devices that still lack some of the more unique features of their competitors. Further, in terms of openness, the demographic that embraces Linux' characteristic freedoms is not the same as the demographic that buys smartphones in quantity and then pays for data service. This is a critical fact to consider because a big part of the iPhone's success stems from the fact that it is being pushed by mobile providers who want to capture the cream of the market willing to pay a premium for data services. The Frankenphone. Combining the fractured aesthetic of HTC's Windows Mobile phone hardware with Android's software, based upon Linux' perpetually unfinished DIY openness and Google's Java-like development platform, will not result in a product similar to the iPhone. Instead, it will look a lot like phones that have already failed in the market. Apple's advantage comes from slick hardware designs with a close attention to detail, combined with software that purposely does less so that it can do what it does better. Even Apple's own conservative attempts to broaden its software capabilities with iPhone 2.0 have resulted in instability problems that can be blamed upon both Apple's early releases of its phone operating system and software from inexperienced third party developers new to the platform. Would the current frustrations with iPhone 2.0 be somehow mitigated by additional openness that also embraced all kinds of variables from different hardware makers with less quality control than Apple, a loose committee of additional cooks working to serve up operating system features targeted at every possible conceived need, and a wider third party software group with fewer constraints on illegal behaviors? The Failure of Open. While it is politically unpopular to criticize the well meaning efforts of open source contributors, the failure of Linux on the desktop, the failure of the vaporware Indrema game console, and the failure of the OpenMoko project to deliver a workable phone within a year of its deadline all underline the serious problems open development faces in the world of consumer oriented devices. Open has simply failed to deliver on its promises in the world of consumer hardware. OpenMoko was supposed to release its first mobile phone to consumers for $250 several months in advance of the iPhone. When the iPhone shipped, the group then announced new plans to get its phone out by the end of 2007. Instead, this spring the group announced new plans to move to an entirely different development platform, and ship its phone mid year for $400 with limited functionality and incomplete software outside of basic GSM phone features. Linux's notable successes, from Motorola's Linux phones to the Tivo DVR to Linksys Routers, have often come without any associated openness or freedom, and were instead delivered simply to provide their manufacturer with a free kernel to build upon. This indicates that while Linux may find its way into an increasing number of smartphones, it will likely not be accompanied by the glorious freedom of an open development environment Google has said it would offer with Android. Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone Can Google Succeed Where Open Has Previously Failed? Despite “openness” being Android's strongest competitive feature compared to Apple's iPhone, Google recently revealed that its wide-open development model is intentionally gravitating towards a closed association of top tier partners due to practical considerations. In July, Google accidentally sent out a notice that revealed that it had been seeding private SDK updates to only a subset of its contributors, angering those who believed that Android would be as open as Linux on the desktop or the OpenMoko project. Further, Google has restricted initial development to higher level APIs just as Apple did, further indicating that Google itself realizes that being wildly open to impress a minority of hobbyists will not result in the commercial success of its new platform. That serves to neuter Android's primary advantage over the iPhone. Without delivering on the premise of being wide open, Android is really just a less mature set of Java libraries used to create a specialized binary that runs on a Linux foundation. Unlike Apple's iPhone, Android phones won't have a slick user interface developed by professional artists, nor the iPhone's legacy of mature software development frameworks crafted over the last thirty years, nor the iPhone's tightly integrated hardware with award winning industrial design, nor its marketing power tied into the iPod and Apple's retail stores. Android won't be an open iPhone, it will only be a Windows Mobile phone with a better kernel that runs specialized Java software instead of Win32 or .NET code. Don't expect consumers to be impressed by that. The Biggest Missing Feature. There is one remaining factor that strangles to death any last remaining hope that Android might assassinate the iPhone and assume the crown of the “DOS of smartphones.” That is: Android delivers zero price advantage to consumers. In 1981 and 1991, consumers who wanted Apple computers faced the sticker shock of a somewhat arrogant price tag. Apple sold its computers, as it still does, at the higher end of the market, but there was simply far more range in prices available. In 1981, that meant the Apple II was $2600 and the new Apple III was $3500, even before you added a monitor. On the low end, Commodore sold its far less powerful, but “still a computer” Vic-20 for $300, while IBM entered the market with the IBM PC at $3000. Over the next few years, Apple focused on delivering additional sophistication at the same price, releasing the $10,000 Lisa and then the $2,500 Macintosh. IBM continued selling PCs in the same $3,000 to $10,000 range, but other DOS PC vendors began selling machines at prices that ranged as low as $1500. That left Apple with a roughly $1000 price premium over low end PCs. The products weren't really comparable, but consumers only saw the huge price difference. In 1991, Apple was still selling moderate to high-end Macintoshes for $3,800 to $10,000; the crippled Mac LC was $2500, and obsolete-at-birth Mac Classic ranged from $999 to $1500. Windows allowed PC makers to ship a functional $1500 PC and claim a rough approximation to Apple's $2500 entry level system, maintaining that apparent $1000 price premium. Today, pundits are lucky to find a Dell or HP system that is even a couple hundred dollars less than a comparable Mac. However, in the smartphone business, the iPhone 3G is now the same price, if not less, than generic competing phones on the market. Even more significant is the fact that the price of the phone hardware is nearly nothing compared to the cost of the service plan. This fact simply eases any price premium that could cause buyers to flock to a smartphone running a generic operating system over buying the iPhone 3G, regardless of whether it runs Windows Mobile or Android. 1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds Android Partners Have Already Failed. That same pricing principle similarly prevented buyers from considering many of the alternatives to the iPod. While Apple's original iPod models were more expensive than many of the first MP3 players on the market, they were price competitive with models offering similar features. By 2004, it was Apple who was undercutting MP3 competitors on price. Microsoft offered zero price advantage when it began selling the Zune, a major factor in its failure, but Microsoft simply couldn't out-price the iPod; it was already losing money offering the Zune at the same price as the iPod. Apple now has tremendous market power in buying RAM and other components that will prevent any competitors from being able to offer a huge discount over the iPhone's $199 price tag. Even if competitors were to give their phones away, they would only offer a $200 discount to users who would then still need to pay the same mobile fees to use the phone. Android's other partners, including Samsung and LG, have already failed to capture any significant market share in the music player market. Are they going to maintain their position as smartphone makers now that they face similar competition from Apple, its iPod ecosystem, its iTunes Music and Apps Store, Apple's retail store experience, and other factors that are pushing the iPhone? If they can, it is not obvious how partnering with Android will help. Other Problems for Android. Android was announced in early November 2007 and was followed with an early preview SDK within a couple weeks, a month ahead of Apple's initial announcement of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. However, between March and July 2008, Apple delivered nine progressive releases of its SDK, opened its App Store, and sold 60 million apps, raising $30 million to support iPhone software development in just the first month. It has since released three more SDK updates to developers related to iPhone 2.1, which is expected next month. Android just published its first open SDK beta update earlier this week, warning developers that “applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0.” Additionally, Android still has no phones available. By the time the HTC Dream is expected to launch, Apple will have an installed base of around ten million iPhone (and iPod touch) users supporting software development through iTunes. The business model for selling Android apps is no better than that for selling jailbreak iPhone apps: there is no iTunes Apps Store to promote them, so users will have to track them down on their own. Android developers also have no real freedom that jailbreak iPhone developers lack. The only difference is that there are ten million iPhones to sell jailbreak apps to, and currently zero Android phones. If selling a jailbreak iPhone app sounds like more trouble than its worth, imagine trying to sell Android apps to a non-existant audience. Now add the official iPhone App Store into the mix, where publicity, promotion and profits are booming. What platform is going to have the most applications? How many users will flock to a smartphone platform with no apps? The wisdom of releasing a desirable phone and achieving a significant installed base before releasing an SDK makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Additionally, while Apple has a decade of experience in shipping regular updates to Mac OS X and its Xcode developer tools, Google has only shipped a random assortment of web-oriented SDKs (a number of which have been abandoned) as a tangent to its core business of selling advertisements. When the Android SDK 1.0 is finished later this year, developers will not only lack an installed base to sell their apps to, but will also have no high profile market for selling their apps in, and subsequently no financial incentive to develop applications that add value to the Android platform, just like Linux on the PC desktop. Around the same time, possibly within the next month, Apple will be shipping its second major OS release: iPhone 2.1. Apple will also be upgrading its entire user base to the new software so that developers will have a cohesive platform to target. This mirrors the efforts Apple has taken to upgrade its Mac OS X users to the same reference release. Mobile developers will be seeing money pouring in via iTunes while crickets chirp in the Android section of various mobile online stores. Apple’s iPhone Vs. Other Mobile Hardware Makers: 5 Revenue Engines Same Same, But Different: DOS Model Problems. Android developers will also have a series of other problems to manage. Like Windows Mobile, Android is intended to support everything, from BlackBerry-style keypad phones with a small touchscreen to the simple Windows Mobile Smartphone form factor lacking a touch screen to iPhone-like full size touch screens. Also like Windows Mobile, Android phone makers will have the option to leave off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS location services, graphics hardware acceleration, and so on. Each Android phone will also have unique camera hardware, support for different video and audio codecs, and varied support for other differentiating proprietary services demanded by mobile operators. This will force developers to to make complex decisions regarding the lowest common denominator they choose to support. So while the iPhone will have a cohesive feature set, a managed software environment, and a functional market, Android will be a loose federation of hardware makers selling the same random features found on Windows Mobile today, with a chaotic development environment that lacks any central market for users or developers. And it will be run as an experiment by a company with no experience in consumer hardware or platform development. The Missing Tap. One specific example of the “DOS model problem” is that Android currently does not support multitouch. It's not touched on in the API, and Google quietly tap dances around its omission. Why no multitouch? Because multitouch screens are expensive, and most OHA hardware members are more interested in making a profit in a competitive phone market rather than impressing consumers as Apple did with the iPhone. Most existing smartphones, even those trying to directly rival the iPhone, use a stylus driven, pressure sensitive tap screen or a simpler, cheaper touch technology that lacks support for sensing multitouch. The iPhone's screen can actually sense up to five fingers at once, but the primary feature multitouch offers on the iPhone is the two fingered tapping and the pinching effects everyone associates with it. Android could certainly support multitouch if there were a demand for it, but that's the point: Google knows that its hardware partners are cheap and unlikely to put out hardware that actually competes with the iPhone. Instead of using expensive technologies that deliver clever yet largely invisible functionality, OHA members, just like PC makers, are far more likely to add flashy, impractical gadgety fluff that's cheap to tack on, such as slide out keyboards, neon tubes, and scratch and sniff stickers. That's how you impress gullible nerds on the cheap. Google itself is blowing smoke and erecting mirrors to distract from the reality that it being a “DOS vendor” means supporting bargain basement hardware from penny pinching duplicators. Android has been demonstrating some “wow” features such as a Street Maps app that pans around based on an internal compass in the demonstration phone. The problem is that that kind of thing only makes for a fun demo. Nobody needs to twirl around their phone in the air to see a view of the other side of the street, but everyone who has used an iPhone will wonder why they can't pinch to zoom out. Even worse, most Android phones aren't going to have a compass built into them, so Google is demonstrating features most Android users won't be able to use. That Sounds Like Microsoft… Google's design decisions are beginning to look a lot like Windows Vista; rather than actually working to make laptops boot faster, Microsoft came up with the idea of adding a small screen to the back of Vista laptops so users could check their email without having to wake the system up. But this was a stupid idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that most users just want a laptop that boots up quickly. Few laptops got the mini screen, but every user who tries Vista on their laptop will wonder why it doesn't boot up as fast as Mac OS X Leopard. In the same way, Google is advertising features for Android that most users won't ever see in their actual phones while ignoring things people will expect based on their exposure to the iPhone. Android is simply selecting the wrong features. Android will offer the advantages of supporting MMS, recording video, and the list of other features Windows Mobile already supplies. Those features didn't stop Apple from firing past Microsoft in the smartphone arena however, just as the Zune's highly touted WiFi and screen didn't phase iPod buyers. Incidentally, just months after the Zune, Apple had not only demonstrated a larger display but a higher definition multitouch screen, and not only WiFi, but functional WiFi that could be used to browse the web or check email. This suggests that Apple, with its faster release schedule, won't stay behind any of the leading features potentially offered by Android for very long. Android partners, however, will find it as difficult to catch up with Apple's unique features, just as Microsoft has been stymied to keep up with Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone. The underlying reason: both Google and Microosft are tasked with maintaing support for a huge variety of hardware options demanded by all their partners. Apple has the unique circumstances to do only what it needs to do itself. Android in Windows Mobile's Shoes. Like Windows Mobile, Android faces a difficult market. In the US, it competes against the popular BlackBerry in corporate markets and the iPhone among consumers. Worldwide, it competes against entrenched market leader Nokia. The difference is that Google, unlike Microsoft, has no in. Windows Mobile was adopted by Windows-bound IT shops despite its weaknesses. Nobody has any preexisting reason to try an Android phone apart from hobbyists and open software enthusiasts, a demographic that has done little to move Linux on the PC desktop. Google also lacks Microsoft's installed base; it's starting from zero. The smartphone industry initially doubted Apple's chances of making much progress with the iPhone, despite the company having the Mac platform, the iPod, retail stores, platform development experience, marketing savvy, industrial design prowess, and so on. Google doesn't have any of those things. Mobile Providers vs Android. Apple also started with an exclusive partnership with AT&T, a three legged race that demanded effort from both. Google is hoping that hardware makers handle the hardware details and that mobile providers will be excited to sell its Android phones. While hardware makers such as HTC clearly appreciate having found a free alternative to Windows Mobile, it's not obvious why providers would be excited about Android, as it promises an openness that most mobile providers strongly oppose. AT&T took a big risk in getting behind the iPhone, as the phone encouraged users to use email rather than fee-based SMS and MMS, it supported WiFi for data access, and it bypassed AT&T's MEdia Net services to plug into iTunes instead. Verizon refused to parter with Apple and grant it those kinds of concessions. Is AT&T going to take a similar risk to partner with a phone that is not exclusive to it, and is Verizon now going to open its arms to support phones that do not exclusively support BREW, VCast and its other proprietary services? While Android may well eat into Microsoft's Windows Mobile business by stealing away its hardware makers, it seems unlikely that Android will ever serve as more than free alternative to Windows Mobile in a market where Windows Mobile is increasingly irrelevant. Android may have the dubious distinction of swallowing Microsoft's mobile business the same way Microsoft ate up the Palm OS, but even if it accomplishes that goal, Google will likely find itself unsustainably hungry immediately afterward. It will also find itself swimming in a shark tank of hungry rivals, including Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. Symbian is the final generic platform vying for the opportunity to play DOS in the smartphone market. The next article will examine Nokia's chances in its bid to match Microsoft's PC dominance in the mobile market while setting out in a new venture to copy Android's open software model. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • Hudson releases Bomberman for the iPod line

    Well, if Sonic and Peggle didn't do it for you, there was another iPod game released late yesterday - Bomberman from Hudson Software. Bomberman is one of my favorite franchises of all time - even though some of the games have strayed pretty far from the path of the original formula. This game is actually pretty packed with features. It has two modes of play, Normal and Challenge, over 20 stages including 1 Original Boss stage that is an iPod exclusive, 3 mini games, resumable gameplay, and you can even listen to your favorite tunes while you play the game. Not bad for $4.95. Click Here to check it out.

  • ★ Let the Tea Leaf Reading Begin

    The best thing about being an Apple observer is that even when the company does make a long-awaited announcement, it inevitably leads to new questions regarding what exactly they mean. Apple punditry is the Kremlinology of the tech world. So it is with this week’s announcement from Steve Jobs1 that, yes, “We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.” We now know two new things: (1) that there will be “native third party applications on the iPhone”; and (2) that the SDK is scheduled for February. That leaves a long list of questions. Whither Widgets? For one: What exactly is a “native third party application”? The obvious answer is the sort of UIKit-based Cocoa-ish applications that underground iPhone hackers have been creating over the last two months — the exact sort of native apps that Apple has itself already written for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For all we know at this point, though, it could be something more like Dashboard widgets — but I think that’s unlikely. Jobs wrote: > With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful > hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we > have created the best mobile platform ever for developers. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are cool in that they’re widely-used, widely-known coding standards — but they’re not a good way to create user experiences that take full advantage of the iPhone, and would be pretty hard for Apple to pass off as an SDK for “native apps”. Third party developers want access to the same dog food Apple’s own iPhone engineers are eating. Plus, there’s the issue of performance. Iconfactory developer Craig Hockenberry, who has been tinkering with the unofficial iPhone developer tools to create an iPhone-native version of Twitterrific, wrote a splendid weblog entry titled “Benchmarking in Your Pants” regarding the lackluster performance of JavaScript code running in MobileSafari compared to compiled Objective-C code running in a native iPhone app. Function calls, for example, were 226 times slower in JavaScript. (Hockenberry also benchmarked JavaScript running on the iPhone compared to the same code running in Safari on an Intel-based iMac; the code ran about 80 times faster on the iMac.) Back in January at the iPhone’s introduction in the Macworld Expo keynote, Jobs described some of the apps on the iPhone, including Weather and Stocks, as “widgets”. My somewhat-informed understanding is that Apple’s original plan was for the iPhone to ship with its major apps written in Cocoa and with a handful of smaller apps written as Dashboard-style HTML/CSS/JavaScript widgets — but that this plan was scuttled for performance reasons, and the Weather and Stocks widgets2 were rewritten as UIKit Objective-C apps sometime this spring.3 My guess is that they ran into what Hockenberry documented: JavaScript on the current iPhone just isn’t fast enough to provide an iPhone-caliber user experience. So my money is that the iPhone SDK that Apple plans to release this winter is the real thing — Cocoa-style UIKit apps written in Objective-C. Security? Jobs wrote: It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target. External security — the threat of vulnerabilities that would allow malfeasants to compromise a victim’s iPhone — is a serious matter. There have already been several published exploits against the iPhone, including an as-of-this-writing open vulnerability in TIFF-processing code in the current iPhone OS. So clearly there is some merit to Jobs’s stated security concerns. As it stands in the current iPhone OS, all processes run as the root user; in broad layman’s terms, any process has access to everything else on the phone. So when a buffer overflow can be exploited to allow remote code execution, that code can do anything. To allow third-party iPhone apps to run today would be to trust those third-party developers not to write code with any security flaws. What the iPhone needs before Apple will allow third-party apps to run is some sort of sandbox, a way to prevent application processes from being able to access things they shouldn’t be allowed to access. But iPhone Cocoa apps are no more inherently susceptible to buffer overflow vulnerabilities than Mac Cocoa apps. And the hysteria over the iPhone’s current “everything runs as root” situation is overblown.4 Applications on your Mac don’t run as the root; they run under your user account. But all of your data — your email, your address book, your documents, everything your apps can read or write without administrator authentication — is vulnerable to any sort of hypothetical buffer overflow exploit on the Mac, and would be on the iPhone, too, even if iPhone apps didn’t all run as root. Sure, root privileges allow an exploit to do anything, but the most important thing on your system is your personal data, and an exploit doesn’t need root privileges to access that. I’m thinking Apple is more concerned about internal security — about having third-party apps limited to a sandbox so that user-installed code has no access to things like, say, the phone network modem’s firmware (the component that you need to diddle with to create SIM unlocks). That’s the key difference between the iPhone and the Mac, security-wise. Which Third-Party Developers? Mac OS X is pretty much completely open to development; even the developer tools are free, and anyone is free to write whatever software they want for the Mac. It seems unlikely that iPhone OS X development is going to be like that. One possibility is that the iPhone SDK will only be available to developers with ADC Select ($499) or Premiere ($3,499) accounts. (Premier and Select ADC members are the only ones with access to pre-release Mac OS X seeds, for example.) If that’s the case, it’s not going to be popular with hobbyist developers, but most professional Mac developers already have paid ADC memberships, and, let’s face it, we all know most iPhone apps are going to be written by Mac developers. Interviewed via email, Craig Hockenberry told me, “If there’s a simple way to get third party apps on the iPhone, you keep 90 percent of the developers happy and jailbreak/unlock has much less momentum. Sure, there will still be people that want to ‘buck the system’ but they’ll be in the minority rather than the majority.” The most intriguing part of Jobs’s announcement was this section, regarding security: Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,? we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs. It’s hard not to interpret the scare quotes around “totally open” as a reference to Nokia’s recent “Open to Anything” ad campaign — sort of a you guys aren’t completely open either call-out. This seems like a pretty clear indication that Apple is working on a similar signing system for iPhone apps. Restricting development to paid ADC members would instantly allow Apple to associate app signatures “back to a known developer”. Here’s more information from Nokia on the signing program Jobs mentioned; here’s similar information on the Symbian site. Which Apps? Another question is whether Apple is going to allow participating (trusted-by-Apple) developers to write whatever apps they want, signing the apps themselves, or if apps will need to be approved case-by-case by Apple before being signed. Mac OS X Leopard includes a new “application signing” feature, described by Apple thusly: A digital signature on an application verifies its identity and ensures its integrity. All applications shipped with Leopard are signed by Apple, and third-party software developers can also sign their applications. That same page describes a “sandboxing” feature that seems applicable to the iPhone, too: Sandboxing prevents hackers from hijacking applications to run their own code by making sure applications only do what they’re intended to do. It restricts an application’s file access, network access, and ability to launch other applications.” The prototypical example of a potentially popular app that Apple might refuse to approve would be a VOIP app like, say, Skype, in that it would undermine the need for the phone network, which in turn undermines Apple’s revenue sharing with the iPhone’s exclusive network partners. Or, say, instant messaging, the omission of which from the current iPhone is seen by many as a concession to the fact that heavy SMS users pay handsomely for extra monthly messages. (Personally, I suspect iChat for iPhone simply didn’t make the cut for 1.0 but is planned for a future update.) “Nokia’s model is to run as trusted/untrusted,” said Hockenberry. “Trusted apps get to access more than untrusted ones. This model could be extended to allow different levels of access based upon whatever Apple wants (as owner of the root certificate.) Basic access for Wi-Fi, extended access for EDGE, hardware access for deep pockets, etc.” That makes sense, and strikes me as a likely course for Apple. Development There’s a question, then, of how developers will write the apps in the first place. If iPhones only run third-party apps that have been approved by Apple, how do you develop an application in the first place before it’s been approved? Steven Frank — who, as co-founder of Panic and an unrepentant gadget hound, may well be the single most interested person in the world in a supported iPhone SDK — described to me via email the development process for the Danger Hiptop/Sidekick: “The Hiptop/Sidekick platform has a Java SDK that abstracts away all the low-level hardware stuff so you can’t touch it, while still providing everything you need to write an application.  You test and debug in an emulator/virtual machine that can simulate edge conditions like loss of cellular network availability and so on.  When you’re almost done, and ready to try on real hardware, you apply for a ‘developer key’, which is a small certificate that you install on the phone that enables you to run third-party apps that didn’t come from the on-device for-purchase catalog.  To get the developer key, you have to prove to them you actually have an almost complete app, and aren’t just some kid who wants hot Yung Joc ringtones by submitting a build of your application.  You also have to sign a waiver that says you are no longer eligible for support from your cellular carrier.” The iTunes App Store? Which leaves us with the question of distribution and installation. The obvious route is the same one Apple has taken with iPod games: the iTunes Store. Apple, in this case, would likely get a cut of every sale. From a user’s perspective, it’d be easy and obvious: shop and pay for apps in iTunes, and iTunes takes care of installing the software, and, perhaps, synching data. This is similar to the Danger model — where apps must be approved, and can be sold only through the official channel. Limiting, to be sure, but as Frank put it, “The process [of developing for Danger] is somewhat tedious, but still an order of magnitude better than not allowing third-party applications, period.” Frank also pointed out the most glaring downside of Danger’s pay-to-play development model: “One drawback to this approach from the user’s perspective is that there is basically no free third-party software. Everything costs at least a couple bucks.” The announcement appeared on Apple’s Hot News web page, but with no permalink, so it’s likely to disappear from Apple’s web site in a week or two as newer items appear. I’ve saved a plain text copy here for posterity.↩ I wonder if the Calculator app was originally a widget, too. UI-wise, it’d certainly be a cinch, because just like with the iPhone’s Weather and Stocks apps, it more or less looks and acts exactly like the corresponding widget in Mac OS X. So my theory is that when Apple made the decision to rewrite the iPhone widgets as native iPhone Cocoa apps, they used the widgets as the specs for the apps. “Make a native app that looks and acts exactly like this widget,” more or less. One thing that makes me think this is that the iPhone Calculator app doesn’t make any sounds when you press the buttons. Pure JavaScript/HTML widgets can’t make sounds when you click or tap buttons. I find typing on the iPhone keyboard to be much more satisfying with the sound on; with the sound off, because the keys are virtual, there’s no sensory feedback at all. The Calculator app would feel more real if it simply made the same button-clicking noises as the iPhone keyboard.↩ That this change was — I believe — made rather late in the game might explain why vestigial references to “widgets” remained in the shipping iPhone 1.0 software. (It could also mean, of course, that Apple plans to re-expose this feature at some point in the future.)↩ It certainly is a curious question why all iPhone apps run as root. I don’t know the answer. But I’ll bet there’s an interesting engineering trade-off involved somewhere. If you think the reason is laziness or ignorance on the part of the iPhone OS X engineers, you’re an idiot.↩

  • Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK

    Daniel Eran Dilger AppleInsider's article “Why Apple keeps its iPhone 2.0 SDK under NDA” presented several reasons why developers are frustrated with Apple's tight control over the iPhone platform. Another facet behind Apple wanting to maintain a centralized position of control over iPhone development, where developers are bound by NDA to interface only with Apple but not each other, is to head off tangent hacks that might complicate Apple's ability to lead its platform in the direction it wants. One obvious recent example of this is OpenClip, a student developer's plan to add copy and paste features to the iPhone by allowing third party apps to copy pasteboard data from other applications' private directories. This works under the current iPhone 2.0 software, but only because Apple hadn't yet finalized all of the details of its application sandbox security enforcement. With the iPhone 2.1 SDK betas, which started shipping before OpenClip was released, the iPhone 2.1 software no longer allows apps to peek at each other's files, the implementation of a policy Apple originally announced to developers in the “iPhone OS Programming Guide” with the original iPhone 2.0 SDK. There are many other examples of how hobbyist efforts to graft unofficial APIs into mainstream iPhone development could cause problems for Apple and for users. Daring Fireball: Raining on the OpenClip Parade iPhone OS Programming Guide: Security Software Chaos This isn't a new problem; third party developers also worked to enhance and extend the Classic Mac OS of the 1980s using INIT patches that changed how the System Software worked at a low level. Apple gave developers an expanded, officially sanctioned mechanism for doing this in System 7 with System Extensions. However, this turned out to be chaotically difficult to manage. INITs or Extensions frequently ran into conflict with each other and destabilized the system. They also served as a vector for viruses. Once an Extension grew popular among users, it became difficult for Apple to work around any problems it might cause or to deliver new features that might run into conflict with existing Extensions. In Mac OS X, Apple intentionally provided no mechanism for broadly patching the OS in the manner of System 7's Extensions. Third party developers have still managed to find ways to hack into the OS however. Mac OS X's Input Managers, a mechanism NeXT originally designed to serve a controller for adding language support for complex character sets across applications, were hacked into a general purpose way to patch into nearly every app on the system and inject code that could modify their behavior and user interface. It's easy to see why Input Managers also serve as a security hole and a destabilizing factor that cause applications to crash and system updates to fail. MacJournals News : Input Managers are not 'plug-ins' Security Enforced by Authority. As Apple progressively tightens down the system to enhance users' security, it has only asked developers not to use Input Managers inappropriately; it hasn't yet banned them. it also asks developers not to install code into the Mac OS X kernel unless absolutely necessary, and provides security guidelines to follow when installing applications and in other cases where sloppy behaviors could expose users to potential threats. In other areas, Apple has gone beyond just making suggestions and is enforcing rules that following known best practices in security. From the start, Mac OS X was compartmentalized into Unix domains, including a System domain for Apple's software, a machine domain for system wide Applications, and a User domain that segregated the settings and files of each user. User accounts and file permissions enforced the domain boundaries, to help prevent software from assuming more control that it should. In the iPhone OS, third party applications are further compartmentalized into sandboxes. There is no communal file system that all apps can share as there is on desktop computers. Instead, each app can only access its own files within its sandbox for security reasons. Apple also limits third party apps from lingering in the background after a user has dismissed them with the home button. This is both a power saving mechanism and part of the iPhone's security policy. The system also requires that all apps be signed by a recognized authority, so that malware vendors can't distribute untraceable software. Efforts to inject malicious software into distribution through the iTunes Apps Store on the sly can be remotely shut down by Apple using its “kill switch” of certificate-based security. Apple's heightened security enforcement measures on the iPhone are also making their way onto the Mac OS X desktop, in order to allow corporations to centrally manage the software installed on their computers and to allow parents to control the access their children are allowed. Apple's security efforts are being rolled out in incremental advancements. If the company allowed third party developers to fork its strategies and introduce frameworks that impeded or conflicted with its plans, it would dial the company back into the days of System 7, where Mac Extension conflicts caused crashes that Apple could do little about because it wasn't exercising its authority to enforce security on its platform. iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work iPhone 2.0 SDK: The No Multitasking Myth The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. With its Android smartphone platform, Google appears to be offering users and developers the tantalizing fruit of determining for themselves what they want, including a security model where developers vouch for their own apps on a handshake and users are free to initiate their own trust relationships with developers without any certificate-based security administered by a central authority. However, that kind of freedom has served as fertile ground for the viruses, spyware, and adware crisis of the desktop Windows PC. The web itself is another example of a platform where anything goes and security is an afterthought, with the result being egregious adware and the mass distribution of malware that exploits the freedom of Windows PCs to seed new replicants and spam. Microsoft contributed to the seedy nature of the web early on with its ActiveX technology, which gave developers wide open freedom to do things within the browser, with disastrous results. The only way to secure the web is to limit what can be done within the browser and rely upon external authorities to certify encrypted transactions where necessary. Android developers, hardware makers and service providers will also have the freedom to pick and chose which APIs, hardware, and applications they want to support, ostensibly giving users the freedom of an infinite number of choices to select from, a policy that has introduced chaos among Windows Mobile phones, where choice is often an impediment rather than a feature. Symbian phones similarly have three different UI layers to chose from. Linux on the desktop has two main desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, with incompatible behaviors and implementations. Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Don't Trust Any Company Under 30. While some critics of Apple's security policies worry the company exercises too much control what software providers can offer on the iPhone, it's also true that the company's mobile platform has delivered a level of success and security for mobile software distribution that other platforms can't match, with tangible benefits for both developers and users. The iPhone's App Store prevents widespread piracy of developers' work, allowing them to sell their software in volume for just a few dollars a title rather than the $15 to $50 that mobile software commonly sells for on other platforms. Users can also be confident that applications they download through iTunes aren't infected with viruses, or spying on them via key loggers or other background tasks, and can't even access their location without asking permission first. Android, Windows Mobile, and other mobile platforms can only hope that malicious developers don't assault their users. Those vendors also lack a kill switch to do anything about it afterward. And despite all the freedom Android promises to provide in hardware variety (something Windows Mobile currently delivers), iPhone users have the actual freedom of knowing that titles they buy from the Apps Store will work on their phone. iPhone developers have the freedom to add accelerometer support into their apps because all iPhones have the hardware to use it. That's not the case with Windows Mobile, and it won't be true with Android either. While it's true other platforms offer features the iPhone doesn't, Apple's platform starts off from a secure foundation that will be easy to build new features upon; it's far harder to retrofit security into a platform that was designed to be full featured and impose few limits nor set any clear standards. Security requires a trustworthy authority. If Apple stopped playing God, it wouldn't be doing its job. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • ★ Macworld Expo Predictions

    Predictions and advance commentary for tomorrow’s Macworld keynote, some based on consensus rumors, some based on no more than wishful thinking on the part of yours truly. This is all conjecture and tea-leaf-reading (well, mostly), so, please, no wagering. I keep two questions in mind when evaluating Apple product ideas: Would people run out to stand in line to buy this immediately? If not, is there a long-term strategic reason for Apple to start selling this now? If the answer to both questions is “no”, then Apple isn’t going to do it. The iPhone is a perfect example of a #1; the Apple TV is a #2. New Sub-Notebook MacBook: Yes Apple hasn’t had a small notebook in its lineup since the 12-inch PowerBook G4, which I still see in wide use. If you’re using a portable as a portable, smaller size and lighter weight make a tremendous difference. The demand for a good notebook smaller and lighter than standard MacBooks is strong; I think it’s a sure thing that Apple is set to announce one. (Of course, I said so before last year’s Macworld, too.) I say the consensus rumors are right: super-thin, no built-in optical drive, widescreen 12-inch display. It will use a hard drive, not flash memory, for storage. (Look no further than the iPod Classic to see how hard drives don’t keep a device from being super-thin). Rumors are already running strong that it’ll be called MacBook Air. (I like it, not sure though if Nike would.) Newton-y Tablet Thing: No I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right. (Recall Steve Jobs’s statement to Walter Mossberg that he’s as proud of some of the products Apple decided not to ship as he is of the ones they did.) Like the iPhone, it runs “OS X” but not Mac OS X, does not run Mac apps, and will not be called a “Mac”. The big problem with a “tablet” computer of any sort is that 15 years of industry history indicate that people do not want to buy tablet computers. But the iPhone, arguably, is a tablet computer — a sub-tablet, if you will. The key mistake with failed efforts like Microsoft’s Tablet PC (and even Apple’s own Newton) was that these devices attempt to do too much. It’s seen as a feature that Tablet PCs run the full version of Windows. But why force software UI’s designed for traditional hardware form factors upon a totally different device? A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes). There’s still the “what would I use it for?” factor. It seems to me it would need to be something more than just an iPod Touch with a larger screen — if that’s all it is, then what’s the point of buying one instead of a smaller, poctetable, iPod Touch or iPhone? I simply lack the cleverness to imagine what that hook might be — but I can’t imagine Apple releasing such a product without an obvious “Oh I gotta buy that” hook. Anyway: I do think something like this is in the works, but I don’t think it’s coming out now. I’d love to be wrong. Ubiquitous Wireless Networking for MacBooks: Please After using my iPhone for a few months, it started feeling weird that my PowerBook doesn’t have ubiquitous wireless networking: Wi-Fi when available, and seamless, instant switchover to something else when it isn’t. Just what that “something else” is, I don’t know. EVDO? WiMax? A Bluetooth connection to share an iPhone’s EDGE connection? I don’t care. But I’d pay for it. Ubiquitous networking is certainly the most intriguing thing about Amazon’s Kindle. It just feels crippled that I can’t get a network connection — even a slow one — once I’m outside the range of Wi-Fi. Wireless Time Machine Backups: Yes Time Machine is very cool; the first backup that qualifies as “you don’t have to do anything, it just works”. But currently it only works using a storage device connected via USB or FireWire. Tethered backups are irritating with notebooks — and MacBooks are the fastest-growing segment of Apple’s Mac hardware sales. The problem is that when you want to use your portable away from your desk, it’s a pain to disconnect mounted USB and FireWire drives. You can’t just pulled the plugs — you’ve got to unmount them in the Finder first. And, once you do so, to get Time Machine backups running again, you’ve got to re-tether your storage drive. Leopard developer seeds all supported network backups to USB drives connected to an AirPort base station. The feature was also demoed at WWDC. It was removed (or, better said, disabled) very late in Leopard’s development, supposedly because of a security problem that was discovered, but I expect the feature to return, perhaps in 10.5.2. It’s a terrific idea, perfect for multi-Mac homes and small offices. But so why not sell a device as a dedicated product — a big 500 GB or larger hard drive (or array of them) with built-in AirPort networking. No need to attach it to a separate AirPort base station, no temptation to use the device for anything other than one purpose: backing up via Time Machine. Just plug it into a power outlet, run through a simply configuration tool a la AirPort Utility, and it’s ready. When it first appears on your network, your (Leopard-running) Mac could prompt to ask if you’d like to use it for Time Machine, the same way it prompts when you first plug in a new USB or FireWire drive. iTunes Movie Rentals: Yes This one seems like such a done deal that it barely qualifies as a rumor. It seems obvious: Unlike with music, there’s been a strong market for movie rentals for as long as there’s been a home video market. Most movies aren’t worth watching more than once. Reports (based on leaks from studio executives) indicate rentals will cost $3-5, and will expire after 24 hours. If true, presumably that means they’ll expire 24 hours after you beginning playing them, not 24 hours after downloading. It’d be nice if the terms were a bit more flexible than that. One of the best things about Netflix, and something which makes it far more appealing than traditional brick-and-mortar Blockbuster-style rentals, is that you can watch movies on your own terms. A Netflix-style iTunes movie subscription service that lets you keep a certain number of unlocked movies open at the same time would be killer. Apple TV 2.0: Yes Jobs has called Apple TV a “hobby” for Apple. I think they have high hopes for it, but calling it a hobby is a practical way to buy time for it. What Apple did with the iPod was start as small and simple as they could — one device, in one configuration, only for the Mac, and all it did was play recorded audio — and then build the platform slowly from there. Things like Windows support, color screens, video playback, and expanding to a range of form factors all came incrementally. I think that’s the plan with Apple TV. Start simple and humble, and build from there, year after year. One obvious improvement (albeit contingent upon another rumor) would be to allow us to buy (or rent) movies and TV shows directly from the iTunes Store, right from the Apple TV. If the iPhone can do it, the Apple TV should too. I still think it’d be good business for Apple to sell their own HDTV sets with Apple TV built-in — more money for Apple, one fewer device spewing cables behind the display. DRM-Free iTunes Plus Music From the Other Major Music Labels: No I think Apple would love to have this, but it seems pretty clear that the major labels — other than EMI, of course — are convinced that it’s in their interest to withhold DRM-free music from Apple, in the hopes of helping Amazon gain market share. It actually agree that it’s in the music labels’ interest for Amazon’s music store to succeed. I’m not sure, though, that withholding DRM-free music from Apple is spiting anyone other than iTunes customers. I suspect the vast majority — an overwhelming majority — of iTunes music purchases are made by people who have at best only a vague inkling of what “DRM” is. If there’s any actual logic to it, it’s PR — withholding DRM-free music from Apple makes it easier to paint Apple as a company bent on using iTunes as a competitive cudgel to lock customers in to iPod hardware. Only a hack reporter would buy into that line, given Steve Jobs’s unequivocol “Thoughts on Music” open letter last year. One thing that would dispel any negative stories on the state of the iTunes empire, of course, would be the long-awaited debut of The Beatles catalog, exclusively at iTunes, perhaps with an on-stage visit from Paul McCartney. New iPhone Hardware: No, With a Minor Exception Apple announced the original iPhone a year ago, but they didn’t ship it until six months ago. They’re not going to announce new iPhones six months in advance again. (It was to their advantage last year to cause people to postpone phone purchases until the iPhone appeared; that’s not the case now that the iPhone is on the market.) If anything, I don’t expect new iPhones to appear until next fall, at the yearly iPod/iTunes pre-holiday season special event, leaving the original iPhone on the market for over a year. Why revise hardware for a product that, by all accounts, is selling remarkably well as-is? The only exception I could see would be a 16 GB iPhone that’s otherwise unchanged from the current 8 GB model. iPhone SDK News: No I can see the upcoming iPhone SDK getting a mention from Jobs on stage, a reminder that it’s coming and that’s it’s going to be great, but Macworld isn’t WWDC, and SDKs don’t make for splashy presentations. If I’m wrong, it’ll be because they have a demo queued up from a third-party developer with early access to the SDK. Actual third-party software (written against the actual official SDK) is demoable. Games, perhaps? The apparently-leaked 1.1.3 firmware might make for a good demo, what with the jiggly icons and whatnot. Cinema Displays With Better Resolution, Brighter Screens, and Built-In Cameras: Yes If I keep predicting it, eventually I’ll be right.

  • Two new Mac games: Bomberman and Peggle

    Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, Software, Odds and ends, Universal BinaryBoy, it seems like everyone was waiting for me to write up my gift guide before releasing some interesting Mac games this year. First Horde of Orcs comes out, then Sonic of all things appears on the iPod, and now here's two more fun gaming experiences appearing on the Mac.First, our sister gaming blog Joystiq reports that PopCap's crack casual game Peggle has appeared for OS X, and just like most of PopCap's games, it's so addictive it should probably be regulated by pharmacologists. It's a universal binary, too, and right now it's only $10 (50% off from a sale on PopCap's site). Be prepared to disappear from your relatives for long stretches of time over the holidays, though-- anyone who can only play one round of this at a time is either not human or just in serious trouble with their spouse.And MacNN reports that Bomberman has now appeared on iTunes as well. Hudson Software has produced an official port that features an "intuitive control scheme" (that I'd be interested to see), an exclusive boss stage for the iPod, and the option to play the game's music or your own during gameplay. Wild. That game is $5 and available as a download from iTunes.It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas for Mac gamers-- turns out there may be more underneath the tree than we hoped earlier in the year.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments

  • Leopard and the History and Future of Mac OS X on PowerPC

    Daniel Eran DilgerHow long will Apple continue to support existing models of Macs in the latest version of Mac OS X? Previous versions of Apple’s OS have drawn the line for officially supported Macs based on practical considerations, rather than just being arbitrary or artificial. Here's what the past suggests for Mac OS X Leopard and the version that comes after it.The Post-Copland Crisis.Apple carried along official support for the 1986 Mac Plus through Mac System 7.5.5 in 1996. That established an expectation for Mac users that any new Mac System Software would be able to run across a decade long generation of old hardware. Further, Apple had only begun officially selling System 7 as a retail product a few years earlier; many Mac users continued to think of the Mac operating system as something that was available for free, as it had been in the past. That unreasonable support expectation combined with the sense of entitlement held by Mac users had helped to complicate Apple’s mid-90s failure to deliver Copland as a successor to System 7 between 1993 and 1995, and would continue to dog the company in its plans to provide a significant system software update after Copland was mothballed. Faced with the task of maintaining full backward compatibility for both existing applications and a wide range of hardware--but without any assurance that a significant number of Mac users would actually pay for the upgrade--it’s no wonder why Apple was stuck at System 7 for over a decade (Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 were only retoolings of the System 7 operating system released in 1991), and why plans to completely overhaul System 7 with Copland and Gershwin failed.If Apple had the luxury of operating outside of a real market economy and could simply rely on guaranteed future sales at high retail prices, it could have plowed along for twice as long and eventually released something, as Microsoft did a decade later with Windows Vista. As Windows Enthusiasts like to point out, Vista will eventually get deployed no matter how bad it is. [The Secrets of Pink, Taligent and Copland][Has Leopard Fallen into a Copland-Vista Conundrum?][SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1990s]Spindler’s Complications.By 1990, Apple CEO John Sculley had recognized that Apple needed to set a reasonable minimum hardware threshold for its operating system releases and to figure out a way to get Mac users to fund the expensive operating system development the company was doing. At that time, both Microsoft and IBM were charging PC users around $100 for retail copies of Windows or OS/2, neither of which were even really usable.Figuring out how to actually accomplish those goals never got done at Apple. Instead, Sculley’s successor Michael Spindler attempted to imitate Sony by releasing ranges of Mac hardware under a variety of vaguely Latin sounding names--Quadra, Centris, and Performa--and a series of confusing, nondescript model numbers. Starting in early 1994, Apple also underwent a complex transition from its original 680x0 Macs to PowerPC hardware. Since much of the original Mac software was written in assembly language, the transition relied on emulation of the existing Mac System Software, which further complicated efforts to deliver significant new features without breaking existing software or prematurely cutting off support for existing machines. Non-PowerPC Macs continued to be sold into 1996.Spindler’s Apple also began plans to license the Mac software to other hardware makers in late 1994, including APS, Bandai, DayStar, Motorola, Pioneer, Power Computing, Radius, and UMAX. That effort skimmed off the cream of Apple’s profitability and handed it to the cloners, leaving Apple to service the low end of the market at Sears with its Performas while also funding the development of nearly profitless Mac System Software to support an increasingly wide range of hardware. [Why Apple Failed]Simplifying the Mac Hardware Lineup Around the G3.When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company's product line was all over the place, although efforts were already underway to simplify things. Apple had only just discontinued the last of its 680x0-based Macs a year earlier. Under Spindler replacement Gil Ameilo, Apple had also scraped together a "Unity" release of System 7, newly rebranded as Mac OS 7.6. That release officially extended support back to all "32-bit clean" Macs, which included the eight year old Mac IIci from 1989.The installed base of Mac hardware not only spanned across two hardware platforms--680x0 and Power PC--but nearly each individual Mac model from Apple had also used its own highly customized and often uniquely quirky hardware design. The cloners were also introducing subtle differences in their own machines, too.Despite using the very modern PowerPC processors and Open Firmware, Macs in 1997 still incorporated old Mac ROMs to maintain software compatibility with the existing Mac OS. After taking control of Apple in the middle of that year, Jobs announced the release of a highly simplified product line using the new G3 processor. The G3 was such a significant leap over earlier PowerPC processors that even the entry level G3s were faster than the top of the line models Apple had been selling. So while Apple had a confusing array of eight different major PowerMac models at the beginning of 1997, by the end of the year it only had two: a desktop G3 and a tower G3. It also shipped a G3 PowerBook.[How CPR Saved Apple]Mac OS X 10.0 - 10.2: G3 Only.The introduction of the G3 processor created a clean line between it and the wide array of odd PowerPC hardware designed prior to 1997. The G3 also signaled the end of the line for the various models built by Mac cloners, who all refused to license new versions of the Mac OS at terms Jobs deemed reasonable. The G3 was also the first PowerPC processor optimized to run Mac software. That made it an easy minimum target for Mac OS X, which remained in development through 2001. In the meantime, Jobs bought out Power Computing--the largest Mac cloner--for $100 million, and terminated other clone agreements by releasing Mac OS 7.7 as “Mac OS 8? in mid 1997. That revision also became the first edition of the Mac OS to really be successfully sold at retail; over 1.2 million copies were sold within the first two weeks. The next fall in 1998, Apple released Mac OS 8.5, which was the first version to be PowerPC-only, limiting support to Macs sold over the last five years. In 1999, Apple shipped Mac OS 9. The new Apple had proved it could plan, ship, and sell regular releases of an operation system. The next task would be shipping Mac OS X as a major new leap past the classic System 7.Between 2001 and 2002, the 10.0 to 10.2 versions of Mac OS X limited support to the G3 desktop Macs, including those first introduced in late 1997. It did not support the original PowerBook G3 unveiled alongside the G3 desktops however. The first supported PowerBook was the "WallStreet" revision introduced in May of 1998. That maintained the roughly five year support window for machines to be updated with new versions of Mac operating system software. [Apple Sells 1.2 Million Copies of Mac OS 8 - Apple][Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Mac OS X 10.3: New World Macs Only.After moving its hardware line to the G3, Apple next delivered a revised "New World" platform which modernized the Mac's hardware and removed its old hardware ROMs, replacing them with “ROM in RAM? software loaded from disk. The first New World model was the first iMac in 1998. The beige G3 Macs from 1997 were replaced with a single new "blue and white" G3 in early 1999, which used the same translucent plastic as the iMac. Apple shipped its first "New World" laptop in the Lombard PowerBook G3, distinguished by its translucent bronze keyboard. In July 1999, Apple released the iBook.The release of Mac OS X Panther 10.3 in 2003 extended support back to Macs with G3 processors and built-in support for USB. This wasn't due to an actual requirement for USB, but rather a shorthand way to describe a cutoff for the support of the significantly different architecture of "Old World" Macs designed prior to the iMac, as all New World Macs also provided support for USB. Panther retained a roughly five year support window for existing Mac models.Mac OS X 10.4: Modern New World Macs Only.In 2004, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 retained support for most New World Macs using G3 processors, but required support for built-in FireWire. Again, this wasn't related to a need for FireWire ports, but rather a way to exclude support for the earliest of the now five year old New World Macs, which Apple decided would not run Tiger acceptably, including: the original 1998 iMac.the original 1999 iBook.the 1999 "Lombard" PowerBook G3.These five year old machines can still run Tiger using XPostFacto, a third party enabler designed to force Mac OS X to run on earlier systems. However, significant differences in their hardware--coupled with their limited performance--prevented Apple from officially supporting them.In the case of the Lombard PowerBook, its DVD drive was never supported for movie playback under Mac OS X because the system did not have the power to decode DVD video in software; under Mac OS 9, it relied on a hardware decoder. Rather than holding up Mac OS X to develop custom support for the obsolete hardware decoder in the now half-decade old Lombard PowerBooks, Apple told its users to continue using the playback software it came with. [XPostFacto: OS X for Legacy Macs - Other World Computing]Mac OS X 10.5: 867 MHz Processor Required.For Leopard, Apple is specifying an 867 MHz G4. That excludes support for the now functionally obsolete G3s, and draws a line down the middle of the 2001 "Quicksilver" PowerMac G4s, excluding support for the 2001 G4 Cube and the first three generations of the Titanium PowerBook G4 up to late 2002. This again maintains official support for five to six years of Mac models.This break roughly corresponds to the arrival of the G4+, a revised version of the G4 with support for L3 cache and improvements to AltiVec. It is also near the line for supporting Quartz Extreme and the higher end Core Image, both of which are technologies used to delegate graphics work to the video card. However, Core Image is not a requirement for using Leopard; such a requirement would exclude support for all G4 desktops and laptops prior to 2003. Leopard Looms Large.That indicates Apple is being fairly liberal in officially supporting older models in Leopard. The obvious reason for this is that Apple wants to sell Leopard to as many Mac users as possible, even more than it wants to use Leopard to sell new Macs. Between 2001 and 2002, Apple sold just over 6 million Macs. From 2003 to the present, Apple has sold about 23 million Macs. Apple wants to target the broadest possible market for Leopard, so excluding support for older machines is done with some hesitation. By extending support back into 2001, Apple is selling to an audience of nearly 30 million versus 23 million.At the same time however, the likelihood of selling retail copies of Leopard to users of older Macs begins to drop as six year old machines go out of service or are no longer viewed by their owners as needing brand new software. This spring, analysts estimated an installed base of around 22 million active Mac users, an increase of 6 million over their figures from 2005.[Mac install base estimated at 22 million pre-Leopard - AppleInsider][Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC]Is Leopard the Last Hurrah for Power PC Macs?The reports of PowerPC's obsolescence have been greatly exaggerated. Last year, the rumor was that Leopard would be released only for Intel Macs. This year, with Leopard looming on the horizon, the new rumor is that Mac OS X 10.6--possibly named Lynx or Cougar--will be Intel-only. However this is only uninformed speculation. When this rumor came up earlier about Leopard, I posted the article, “Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth.? It pointed out that Apple would not release an Intel-only Leopard for an audience of the roughly 3 million new Intel Macs sold in 2006 when it could reach an installed base of around 20 million Macs with a Universal Leopard.It noted, “If Apple continues to sell new Macs at current rates, it will be 2008 before Intel Macs begin to outnumber PowerPCs, and that assumes that every year, 4 million old PowerPC Macs will be destroyed. There will be a significant proportion of PowerPC Macs still buying software well into 2010, and the market will accommodate them.?[Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth]Why the Mac OS X Backward Compatibility Window May Increase.Apple’s Mac OS support troubles back in 1996 related to the support of multiple platforms, a wide variety of different models, and an inability to effectively market the Mac OS. Those issues are no longer factors today. Despite Apple’s maintenance of dual platforms since the transition to Intel began in 2006, technology has erased the barrier as a real problem.The majority of the installed base of around 22 million Macs is PowerPC; less than 10 million are Intel Macs. Apple has started to sell dramatically more new Macs at a faster rate over the last couple years--displacing the PowerPC majority more rapidly--but there will still be a lot of PowerPC Macs well into 2010. Worrying about 10.6 or even 10.7 being Intel-only shouldn't be among anyone's greatest concerns. By 2009, the likely ballpark release date of Leopard's successor, the trailing end of officially supported Macs would include over 8 million PowerPC Macs sold since 2004, even more machines--and more recent models--than Apple is targeting now by reaching back into 2001 to support QuickSilver G4s in Leopard. Further, supporting machines from 2003--including the first G5s--will be no difficult stretch, because the Mac architecture didn't change dramatically between 2003 and 2005 in the way that it rapidly did between 1997 and 2000. In addition, Mac OS X hardware dependancies have been designed to degrade gracefully. For example, the acceleration framework and Core Graphics libraries make use of specialized hardware if available, or simply run on the general purpose CPU if it isn’t.It's also interesting to note that prior to 2000, Macs weren't sold with Mac OS X because it didn't yet exist. That means earlier versions of Mac OS X supported years of Macs that were never really designed to run it, while Leopard still supports the vast majority of the machines anyone ever bought with the expectation to actually use Mac OS X. New generations of Mac OS X will have fewer reasons to exclude support for existing hardware, leaving the support line tied to practical performance.[Why Apple hasn't used Intel processors before]Intel-Only Not Necessary.Around 11 million Macs were sold between 2003 and 2005, and all of them were PowerPC. It would be foolish for Apple to simply exclude that audience in the next revision of Mac OS X without good reason. As it works out, there really isn't any good reason for Apple to ditch PowerPC. Apple's Universal Binaries architecture makes it relatively easy to maintain support across multiple platforms. It's not like the move from Motorola 680x0 classic Macs to PowerPC, where old 680x0 software was emulated at significant cost on PowerPC, and new PowerPC code couldn't run at all on 680x0 Macs. That situation left developers to wonder which they should invest their support in and for how long. Universal Binaries means there isn't any tough choice to make.Universal Binaries not only support PowerPC and Intel, but also make supporting 32 and 64 bit architectures easy. Leopard supports all four Mac platforms in the same software release:32 bit PowerPC G464 bit PowerPC G532 bit Intel64 bit Intel Microsoft faces big problems in migrating its users to 64 bits, because it has no seamless architecture to waltz its 32 bit Intel users onto 64 bit hardware. Instead, Windows users have to obtain a separate 64 bit edition of their operating system, new 64 bit drivers, and new 64 bit applications. Supporting both is problematic, and deploying software across both is also trouble. Even Microsoft hasn’t delivered its portfolio of applications for its 64 bit versions of Windows. Microsoft faces enough troubles selling Vista, let alone its deferred plan to deal with 64 bits and EFI at some point in the future. Apple already has both issues covered, allowing it to concentrate on more interesting tasks. [How Apple’s Firmware Leapfrogs BIOS PCs]Applications that are Intel-Only.For Apple and third party developers using Apple's Xcode tools, supporting both Intel and PowerPC architectures is really no more difficult than supporting just Intel Macs. In fact, Apple has also ported Mac OS X to the ARM architecture for use in the iPhone and the iPod Touch, demonstrating that it can flex its multi-platform muscle in several directions, not just as one-time, disposable transition plan. Universal Binaries isn’t a crutch, its a powerful deployment technology.There are only three types of developers that will have any reason to deliver Intel-only Mac apps:Companies like Adobe, which base their applications on their own custom, internal cross platform architecture. Since Adobe maintains its own system that is based on Intel-centric development, its new apps such as Soundbooth aren't ever going to appear for PowerPC. If it used Xcode’s Universal Binaries, this would not be a problem. Xcode doesn't target Windows though (at least not in a way Adobe can use!), so Adobe rolled its own system.
Software designed for Windows and ported to Intel Macs using a WINE-like engine. This is how EA is porting its new games to the Mac. They are actually Windows games running on a thin portability layer that emulates the Windows APIs. Since games don't integrate into the desktop UI, a full Mac port isn't very valuable for users or worth doing for the developer, particularly since the Mac gaming market is still pretty small. Porting over Windows games is far faster and keeps new releases in sync so that Mac gamers will have access to new titles sooner, and won't miss features such as network play. 
Environment emulators and other software tied directly to the x86 architecture, including Parallels. These can't be ported to PowerPC for the same reason that it makes no sense to port Virtual PC to Intel. Apart from running Windows--which is tightly bound to the 32-bit x86 architecture--there is really very little software that needs to run on a specific processor.For most other software, including the vast majority of what makes up Mac OS X, it really isn't difficult to deliver both PowerPC and Intel versions, so as long as there are PowerPC Macs around, there'll be PowerPC software. That makes it extremely unlikely that Apple would drop support for PowerPC in the next generation of Mac OS X after Leopard.Maintaining and Growing the Mac Installed Base.What about the argument that Apple would prefer to “force? users to buy a new Mac to get the latest system rather than simply upgrade their existing hardware? Consider that Apple’s Mac profit margins are around 20% or less, while its Mac OS X margins are closer to Microsoft’s 80% Windows margins. [Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits]Mac users paying to upgrade to Mac OS X are likely to buy a new Mac eventually as a replacement, so Apple’s delaying that hardware sale for a profitable software upgrade makes more sense than forcing existing Mac users to go out and buy new hardware, which might involve comparing a new Mac against a PC running Windows.The more Macs that can run the most recent version of Mac OS X, the more attractive the target is for third party developers. Apple wants to maintain the majority of Mac users on the latest version of its software. In contrast, Windows Vista is competing against Windows XP, and the fact that Microsoft only earns 20% of its revenues from (the much more expensive) retail box sales indicates that most PC users upgrade when buying a new PC. More Mac users pay to upgrade their software.That fact contributes toward making the Mac platform far more valuable than Windows; despite having only 3% market share of the entire world’s production of PCs, Apple makes more money on hardware sales than Dell with its 15% share of the market, and--after including Microsoft’s tremendous losses from its non-monopoly businesses--made half as much money in software as Microsoft did with its 98% share. Windows Enthusiast prefer not to think about this.Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business last year, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple’s 2% of the PC market doesn’t seem so small anymore. [Can Apple Take Microsoft in the Battle for the Desktop?][Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC]What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone

    Daniel Eran DilgerThe history of the Office Wars provides interesting context for Apple’s software strategy with the iPhone today. While third party software development offers all kinds of tantalizing potential for the new mobile, there are a half dozen reasons why Apple may not ever deliver the iPhone fully open to third party development, following the model of gaming consoles.Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolySoftware Lessons For the iPhone: 1997 - 2007.When Steve Jobs gained the opportunity to retake control of Apple in 1997, he immediately set out to build and assemble a software business for the Mac platform. Apple restarted serious development of QuickTime, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, which had targeted its sights on quickly destroying it to make way for monopolistic expansion of its Windows Media. [Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime][How Microsoft Pushed QuickTime's Final Cut][Why Apple Failed][How CPR Saved Apple][Why Apple Bounced Back]In addition to repurposing NEXTSTEP as Mac OS X and buying and building a series of professional and consumer software suites, the new Apple also developed the iPod platform. The iPod used intuitive software to differentiate Apple’s hardware, launching the computer maker into a new market for sophisticated, data-driven consumer devices. Microsoft’s own efforts in consumer electronics have flopped miserably with the failures of its Handheld PC, Pocket PC, UMPC, Windows Mobile, Media2Go, Mira, SPOT, and Personal Media Center initiatives, among many others.[Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft][The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile][Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV]Microsoft Outgunned in Software by a Hardware Maker.Microsoft was late to realize the software threat posed by the new Apple. Five major revisions and over thirty free updates to Mac OS X have ran circles around Microsoft’s capacity to deliver one desktop operating system software update and a couple service packs since 2001.[Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Apple also introduced three generations of iWork as an expanding productivity suite during the four year hibernation period Microsoft left since its last version of Office for Mac. Apple delivered support for Microsoft’s own proprietary OOXML file format on the Mac even before Microsoft itself could. At $79, iWork will eviscerate sales of the $400 Office for Mac, which has until now been a cash cow lazily ruminating for years between releases.This year, Apple also targeted and destroyed Microsoft’s fledgeling efforts to repurpose WinCE as a smartphone platform, seemingly overnight. That has given Apple a significant new platform in the iPhone, soon to be joined by the new iPod Touch. [What’s New in iWork 08][Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model][Curious Stuff About the New iPods]Six Reasons the iPhone Will Stay Closed.Will Apple give third party developers the keys to its new vehicle and allow them to drive off with the value it has created? It hasn’t yet, and there are a number of reasons to think that Apple won’t. Note that I am not expressing an opinion that the iPhone should be left closed, but rather simply presenting why I think it is unlikely Apple will ever open it up in the same way the Mac is open to any and all development.First, the company has lined up a suitable outlet for third party expansion via the standards based web platform available within Safari. That’s not enough to do everything developers want to do--it has serious constraints for creating games, for example--but it offers a good enough alternative to serve more than 80% of most developers’ needs.

[Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software]
[iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse!]
Second, the company has developed and begun production testing of online software sales through iTunes, currently limited to 5G iPod games. This mechanism appears too sophisticated to simply be designed for a half dozen $5 games. Apple is quite obviously going to distribute other software through iTunes for the iPhone. If it were going to be open, there would be no need for such a secure software distribution system.

[Apple's New Dual Processor Game Console]
[Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works]
Third, historical perspective suggests that once a solid platform has been established, a vendor can sell software as fast as it can deliver it without even trying very hard. Apple’s Claris, Microsoft’s Windows, and the game consoles from Sony and Nintendo all provide examples of this. The iPod’s success suggests Apple can establish a viable mobile platform without the need for software partners. It can handle software transactions as fast as it can sell iTunes songs. That’s big.

[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork] 
[Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits]
[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]
[Nintendo Wii vs Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3]
Fourth, depending upon large third party developers has caused Apple--and Steve Jobs--some severe headaches. Microsoft's late 80s betrayal of the Macintosh led to Apple’s enslavement to Office, and induced CEO John Sculley to sign away broad intellectual property rights to Microsoft, which Microsoft then immediately used as a weapon against Apple.

In the mid 90s, Microsoft led Adobe, Macromedia and other large companies to abandon the Mac platform. In the late 90s, those same companies refused to support Apple’s new Rhapsody plans following the company’s acquisition of NeXT, forcing Apple to spend half a decade retooling the Mac OS, primarily so those developers could sell their existing apps to Mac users without much effort, even while they were earning fantastic software profits and delivering minimal innovation.

In other words, Apple’s technology game plan was delayed for a half decade so that Microsoft could sell its $400 copies of Office and Adobe could sell suites of its $500 and up creative applications, all while Apple did all the work in adapting its $99 operating system to run their Classic Mac OS code with minimal effort. 

Prior to returning to Apple, Jobs experienced his own betrayal and abandonment at the hands of partners--including IBM, HP, Digital, Data General, and Sun--related to NeXT and OpenStep. 

In all of these cases, the third parties were simply acting in their own best interests. With the iPhone, Apple will act in its own best interests. It will carve out a phenomenally powerful software platform for itself.

[Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC: The History of NeXT]
[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]
[Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody]
Fifth, open Application Programming Interfaces involve complex management and maintenance. This is not a problem unique to Apple; it exists for Microsoft and every other company that offers an API for developers to build upon. An API is an interfacing boundary between the software supplied by a vendor and the software supplied by third parties. 

Ideally, an API allows third parties to do everything they need very cleanly. That allows the vendor to make changes on their side of the API curtain without causing any compatibility problems for software on the other side. In reality, nearly every change and update has significant impacts for third party developers. The more complex and low level of an API being exposed, the more difficult it is to manage significant changes without introducing problems for third party partners. 

Apple has worked to develop objective APIs that are stable and resilient to internal changes, but if developers are unsatisfied with the level of performance or portability provided, they will work around the API boundary, almost guaranteeing that any significant changes made on Apple’s side will break their applications in the future. 

Microsoft has often accommodated such “bad programming? by expanding APIs and creating new ones, and lugging around a legacy of old APIs to retain broad compatibility with existing applications. The result is that it is very difficult for Microsoft to actually innovate, or to offer OS level enhancements that upgrade existing applications. 

This is particularly a problem for Windows Vista, which is hamstrung between the problem of providing entirely new hardware driver APIs on one hand while also maintaining a boatload of crufty legacy APIs on the other. It is absolutely the worst of both worlds. 

[Five Windows Flaws]
[Leopard vs Vista 5: Development Challenges]
Sixth, as is the case with software APIs, closed hardware platforms offer a vendor open flexibility for future expansion, portability, and upgrades. 

With the Xbox, Microsoft didn’t provide a wide open set of APIs for developers, only a subset for building very similar types of games. This closed API allowed Microsoft to move the console from Intel to PowerPC hardware in the Xbox 360 without extreme problems, something the company was unable to maintain earlier when it tried to deliver Windows NT for various hardware platforms in the late 90s. 

Apple has already benefitted from the flexibility of a closed hardware platform on the iPod. Had Apple allowed developers to write applications for the iPod, it would have to string along support for those old applications across every new generation of the iPod. Having to do that would complicate Apple’s own efforts to deliver new iPods. 

Additionally, customers would be upset with Apple’s iPod if the apps they downloaded crashed, installed spyware, or caused performance problems. While a rogue Mac app isn’t likely to drain a laptop battery down dead, power management is far more critical on handheld mobile devices like the 11 mm thick iPhone. 

Given that many consumers are already flummoxed by the reality that batteries wear out after a few years, imagine their rage at finding out that Apple allowed them to install a some worthless Tamagotchi pet that destroyed their battery early. 

Similar problems plague Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. In particular, Microsoft’s attempts to provide a “one size fits all? solution and broadly license it to hardware developers results in API constraints that limit supported screen size resolutions, break compatibility with existing versions of applications, and severely limit the power management performance of those devices and their ability to deliver acceptable battery life. 

If there were any meaningful installed base of Windows Mobile phones, it would also be plagued with spyware and viruses, just as Windows is on the desktop. 

[Inside the iPhone: UI, Stability, and Software]
[Device Problems In Search of a Solution]
[David Sessions Tries to Milk iPhone Battery Panic in Slate]A Safe API Boundary for Third Party Development.The simple solution to all these issues is to not offer a custom, wide open API at all, and instead leave third party developers to build applications that make use of open web standards. Nothing new to learn, no barriers to adoption, no proprietary development tools to maintain, no pleading with developers to support a new platform that remains unproven in the marketplace, and no third party crisis to manage when the hardware and software are significantly upgraded.No API, no problem! Hackers can discover how to install tools and handy mini-apps, but Apple’s next software update or hardware revision won't have to figure out how to maintain compatibility with those hacks. That allows the hackers to hack without holding things back. Meanwhile, Apple can reserve the right to offer highly integrated applications of its own that take full advantage of the underlying system without revealing or sharing its intellectual property secrets with third parties that may choose to use those secrets against it--just as Microsoft did to Apple with Windows in the late 80s, or as Sony did to Nintendo with the original PlayStation just a few years afterward.[Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software]Closed Development Involving Third Parties is Not Open.Incidentally, this is the same closed model that resulted in great success for Microsoft and Sony after they betrayed and then supplanted their former partners. Microsoft set up the illusion of an open, developer-friendly platform with Windows, but then used its home field advantage to plot out the assassinations of any and all of the potential rivals it didn’t want to compete against: WordPerfect, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Netscape, Sun, and today’s targets such as Google and Symantec.The unsurprising result was that Windows users ended up using Microsoft’s Word, Excel, Access, Fox Pro, language tools, web browser, media software, desktop search, anti-virus, spyware management, etc ad nauseam. With Windows users completely enslaved to Microsoft’s own applications, it was easy to erect significant barriers to prevent the emergence of any new competitive applications from rivals. Clearly, Windows is only an “open platform? in areas where it suits Microsoft. Further, Microsoft’s idea of who a “competitor? is can change. For example, Windows desktop search wasn’t a rival feature for Microsoft to kill until it decided it wanted Google’s business.[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Windows Enthusiasts’ Slavery to a Vicious Master. Whether Microsoft’s closed Windows platform is a bad thing is a matter of debate; Windows Enthusiasts celebrate their enslavement. It is my opinion that Microsoft’s closed Windows platform isn’t bad simply because it is closed, but rather because Microsoft’s insatiable greed is holding back innovation that would otherwise flourish. One example is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which rapidly advanced until Microsoft destroyed Netscape. After that, it went into maintenance mode hibernation and didn’t budge until Firefox began to threaten Microsoft’s position years later. That’s anti-consumer; Microsoft won’t do anything for its enslaved users until a would-be savior threatens to set them free. Microsoft isn’t bad because it is closed; it is bad because it is disgustingly greedy. Windows Enthusiasts need to stop deluding themselves into thinking that they live in a free world of an open platform. They are slaves, and their master is not only vicious, but also incompetent and has no taste. [Safari on Windows? Apple and the Origins of the Web][Apple in the Web Browser Wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer][The Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari]Closed Without Pretense.At the same time, it is possible to voluntarily join a closed platform and benefit from its advantages. Nintendo carved out a closed video gaming empire that required third party developers to pay it licensing fees in order to develop any games to sell for its system. Nintendo’s closed business model worked better than Atari’s with the 2600, which had earlier allowed third party games developers to glut the market with bad games, resulting in the video game crash of 1983. Consumers were left thinking that home video games were done to death and would never recover.Sega, Sony, and Microsoft’s Xbox group have all similarly managed closed gaming platforms to deliver high quality expectations, even subsidizing game consoles to establish user interest. The only differences for Apple’s closed iPhone may be that:Apple’s iPhone hardware sells at a sustainable profit without a desperate subsidy, removing risk and allowing for regular feature upgrades. 
Apple is likely to use software downloads as a way to integrate the iPhone into Mac hardware sales and its online services, rather than simply trying to make a killing selling $50 to $75 game software titles as the console makers do.[Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security]Software as a Great Differentiator.By offering free or low cost software in the model of $5 iPod games, Apple will be able to use its closed platform to deliver software designed to:attract more iPhone and iPod Touch hardware buyers.earn iPhone mobile service revenue fees.earn commissions from WiFi iTunes sales and related deals. direct new iPhone users to iTunes and Apple TV.draw attention to the Mac, which will offer iPhone integrated features Windows does not. Microsoft does some of the same things with Windows Mobile, which ties into the company’s Windows Server products--including Exchange Server--and is also deeply integrated with the desktop sync services of Windows and its Office applications. The problem for Microsoft is that it does not sell phones or make money on service revenues as Apple does. Microsoft charges expensive client access and software licensing fees, but still can’t make a sustainable profit on its Windows Mobile business. It’s also stuck with lame vendors such as HTC, which make poorly integrated hardware that is embarrassing to use. Microsoft could make its own phone, but like the Zune it would alienate its existing hardware partners; further, the Zune disaster indicated that hardware sales isn’t a core competency of the company anyway. [Phone Wars: iPhone vs TyTN, Treo, Pearl, E62, P990, Q][iPhone Sales vs Zune, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile]Selling Hardware with Software vs Selling Software Licenses.Using software to sell hardware fits in with Apple’s past and present use of free or low cost software to differentiate the Mac. In the distant past, that included HyperCard and QuickTime; today it includes the shareware-priced but highly regarded iLife and iWork apps. The full version of Mac OS X costs $129, while Microsoft’s Ultimate Windows Vista is an absurd $400, the same price as an iPhone!Apple’s strategy of using low cost, high quality software to differentiate its hardware plays well against the fact that consumers simply don’t want to pay for software, while they think nothing of paying big money for desirable hardware. Nobody would pay much for an iPod “OS? or a software music player, but millions of people have paid hundreds of dollars for an iPod.That principle has worked in Microsoft’s favor in the past, as it hides the cost of Windows by invisibly bundling it into PC sales. However, its recent fantasy that consumers will widely upgrade their PCs to more expensive versions of Vista indicates Microsoft is highly delusional. Pro-Microsoft wags can chart out their predictions of “impressive Vista adoption? based entirely upon OEM bundled copies, but consumers don’t want it, and no significant number of people are going to pay big money to upgrade to the $400 Vista Ultimatum. [Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995]The Commodity Future of PC Software.What will happen instead is an increasing commoditization of the consumer PC and its software, driven towards standards by an industry that demands interoperability. Microsoft couldn’t hold back the web with its proprietary MSN a decade ago, and companies that once pushed Windows are now behind Linux, including Novell and IBM. PC OEMs are also rethinking their unilateral relationship with Microsoft as they struggle to survive in the shadow of Microsoft’s vast profits. Rather than paying $400 for a PC with a $50 OEM copy of Windows running IE and Outlook, nagging you to verify your software as Genuine and to upgrade to the $400 version of Vista and to hand your credit card number to the dancing paperclip recommending a subscription to Windows Live OneCare terrorism protection, the $250 PC of the near future will come with a standards based web browser and email client. It will be called an iPhone, and it won’t run Microsoft Office.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!