iPhone boosted by Avaya download

Apple's iPhone, which looks like being one of the hottest stocking fillers this Christmas, is set to gain a business edge after Avaya, the mobile phone software developer, unveiled a new download that makes the device compatible with most corporate telephone networks.

Apple's iPhone, which looks like being one of the hottest stocking fillers this Christmas, is set to gain a business edge after Avaya, the mobile phone software developer, unveiled a new download that makes the device compatible with most corporate telephone networks.

  • What's Next from Apple: New iPods Sept 22, iPhone OS 2.1, iTunes 8.0

    Daniel Eran Dilger Kevin Rose has been trying his hand at making broad sweeping generalizations about the next generation of iPods, but sorry, no digg. Most of his predictions are not even original, and those that are are so vague that they're really just worthless. Here's what you can really expect. Rose likes to suggest what's next from Apple, but his guesses only approach reality when they're based on leaks that occur days prior to an announcement. His flat out guesswork tends to be yet far further removed from reality, indicating that he has no special inside track on things at Apple, nor much of an imagination tempered by realistic appraisal. A month before the iPhone was unveiled, Rose predicted it would be available from CDMA providers, have a pull out keyboard, and sport two batteries, one for music and one for the phone. Of course, splitting a battery in half is not really a brilliant solution to prevent music playback from running down your phone, but the simple fact that Rose didn't know about the exclusive deal with Cingular (come on, it was Apple's only mobile partner to date) and the unlikelihood of Apple tacking on an HTC-esque keyboard makes his guesswork easy to dismiss. I had imagineered the iPhone as a web browsing iPod (“based on Nokia’s mobile contributions to Safari”) with SMS messaging features, contacts, calendar, and a camera… six months earlier. And CDMA? I recommended Apple “leave Verizon alone and partner with Cingular, TMobile, and MetroPCS using GSM technology.” The difference between my ideas and those from Rose, apart from mine being six months earlier, is that I presented mine as only reasonable ideas with some rationale behind them; Rose insisted he had special knowledge from reliable sources. Generation 6 iPods An iPhone Worth Talking About The Real iPod touch Deets. Now he's predicting new iPods. The iPod touch is supposed to get “fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.” Sorry, wrong. The iPhone is only $199 in the minds of consumers. It gets a subsidy from AT&T, which is why you can't just buy one for $199 and walk out the door without signing a phone contract. The iPhone's $2,000 service contract offers plenty of distance between it and the iPod touch. The iPod touch is not possibly going to get cheaper than the iPhone for a couple reasons. First, obviously, it costs nearly as much to make. The lack of a subsidy pretty much balances out its lack of mobile radio components. Second, Apple isn't desperately trying to sell the iPod touch. It exists as a product to sell to users who can't or won't buy an iPhone because they're tied to Verizon or don't want a phone. Rose worries that the iPhone is “cannibalizing sales of the iPod,” but there's nothing more Apple would like to do than to feed every iPod user an iPhone. Sure the bonehead analysts will have another field day complaining about how there's only minor growth among iPod sales while they ignore iPhone numbers, but these guys aren't easy to reach with basic facts. Apple has been giving away the $300 iPod touch to students buying a laptop; that looks like an effort to broaden the iPhone platform. Apple wants college kids playing iPhone games and interested in creating their own iPhone software. Left to their own devices, most kids would buy the old hard drive iPod Classic because they think they need to walk around with their entire torrent library of stolen music. (Get off my lawn!) In any case, we all knew the iPod refresh was coming. I'm pretty sure they're coming on September 22. I'm also pretty sure that the 8GB iPod touch is going away, making the 16GB model the new $199 version. That outrageous price drop, facilitated by today's cheaper Flash RAM, would kill the remaining market for the hard drive-based iPod Classic, converting Apple's entire lineup to Flash RAM. Additionally, it would migrate even more iPod buyers into the installed base of iPhone App Store users and hasten the cannibalization food chain that leads toward the iPhone. The 16GB iPod touch will be sold next to the existing 32GB model, which was just released earlier this year. For that reason, I don't see a larger capacity model being introduced now. I don't see tremendous demand for carrying 64GB of music from people who are also ready to pay for 64GB of Flash. Nano 4: Zune 2007? Rose says the Nano will get a redesign that makes it look like last year's Flash RAM Zune; iLounge already predicted this a month ago, although Rose embellished his version with the idea that “the actual plastic on the outside will be curved,” presumably like a TV from the 80s. How nostalgic! I miss having a wildly distorted tube picture, almost as much as a scratchable plastic iPod screen. Oh the good ol' days. Will Apple expend significant resources to make the Nano 4 into a widescreen tall/long player and define a new 4GB hardware model to fit into a niche that is only $50 less than the new 16GB $199 iPod touch? How much room for differentiation is there under $200? Seems more likely that Apple will instead only release a cheaper version of the existing 4GB Nano that's closer to $99, leaving room for a $149 8GB Nano in between. That will pull Shuffle buyers up into splurging on a full video Nano. If you want to watch video sideways, you can get an iPod touch for $199. What kind of widescreen cinematic experience can you get with a long/tall Nano/Zune? When I reviewed the Flash Zune, one of the complaints was that half (but only half) of the controls reconfigure when you hold it sideways. Plus, existing iPod Games wouldn't work in the widescreen orientation; both the display and the controls would be messed up. On top of that, regular video playback would be forced to play back wide, and/or look bad because its stretched. Microsoft has no qualms with playing video in an odd aspect radio, but the iPod is made by Apple, which has some aesthetic boundaries that constrain its behavior. Winter 2007 Buyer’s Guide: Microsoft Zune 8 vs iPod Nano iPhone 2.1 Rose says Apple will also release “iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.” We already all knew the iPhone 2.1 update was coming, and that it's going to be significant, and that it is due for release around the same time as the new iPods. Whether the new iPod touch will ship with it in advance of the iPhone would depend on whether iPhone-only features in the release hold it up, but Rose doesn't suggest any special knowledge or rationale behind this claim. iPhone 2.1 is supposed to usher in new GPS features and the push Notification system, but the real demand for downloading it will be that it fixes a major problem that currently causes third party iPhone apps to crash on launch and randomly when running. Apple needs to get this out quick before it blows the reputation of iPhone software stability in the minds of users. That's reason to believe that iPhone 2.1 might ship even before the new iPods, rather than the other way around. Because software developed using the iPhone 2.1 SDK won't run on iPhone 2.0.x, expect everyone to need to update their software to download a new generation of 2.1-only apps. This will be free for iPhone users, but might incur a nominal fee for iPod touch users due to accounting rules. Myths of Snow Leopard 3: Mac Sidelined for iPhone Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard iTunes 8.0 Rose says iTunes 8.0 “it's a big update with new features,” but doesn't say what they are. He also says it will be “a real point upgrade” deserving the 8.0 name. However, there is little rhyme or reason to Apple's iTunes version numbering, and no real correlation between the amount features introduced and the version number increment. iTunes 2.0 added iPod support after ten months of iTunes 1.0, but iTunes 3.0 only added minor features the next year. It was replaced by iTunes 4.0 a year later, which added the Music Store and AAC support. Two years later, iTunes 5 introduced some cosmetic changes and was immediately replaced with iTunes 6.0 only a month later, without any major new features. Another year later, iTunes 7.0 arrived with a new look, video game support, and Coverflow. It has since seen loads of new features, from support for Apple TV to the iPhone to new iPods and new movie rentals, all of which were only numbered as minor updates. We've had iTunes 7.x for two years now, so iTunes 8.0 is not really ballsy prediction at this point. Of course, Apple is just as likely to skip ahead and release iTunes X. And if iTunes X isn't ready, we can might even get iTunes 7.8 and 7.9 over the next couple years. Oh my sides. With the likelihood of entirely new iPod touch or Nano models being quite low (after all, the Zune isn't going to get a refresh until late next year, and Apple isn't facing any tough competition at the moment), Apple's iPod announcement might end up more about a new iTunes than the iPod. Rose doesn't make any iTunes 8.0 feature predictions, instead jumping ahead to suggest that Apple is working to make sure Mac OS X 10.5.6 will provide support for Sony's BluRay, the competition to iTunes that nobody cares about. Hmm. Steve Jobs has so little regard for optical discs that he basically shunned iDVD last year when showing off iLife 08, but now he's going to resurrect BluRay and excite customers by including it on the company's laptops, where any resolution advantage it offers over DVD would be nearly invisible? Oh ho ho my sides. iTunes Unlimited? The rumor mill is talking about subscription music in the next iTunes. Steve Jobs has opposed subscription music since iTunes got started. He worked for years to convince the labels to let go of the dream of billing users to essentially listen to the radio. Subscription music has always revolved around outrageous DRM that requires the (historically Microsoft PlaysForSure) player to sync up and check in every month or lose its music. I've written up lots of reasons why subscription music was an awful idea that wouldn't fly. I doubt Apple will actually float it as rumored (“iTunes Unlimited” for $129 sounds awful). However, enough has changed in the last two years to reconsider how subscription music could be delivered. For starters, the iPhone and iPod touch are now wireless, so they can both stream and verify exploding media DRM. Apple's iTunes, modern iPods, Apple TV, and the iPhone also now already handle exploding DRM for movie rentals, which blew over last year without any complaint, although it doesn't look like iTunes' movie rentals have had a massive impact on the world due to their relatively high price point. Offering movie rentals appeared to be a requisite concession leading up to convincing the movie studios to agree to movie sales in iTunes. Apple could sell access to subscription music directly from the iPhone and iPod touch that worked similar to movie rentals, and the labels might even allow users to freely copy rental tracks between computers linked to the same iTunes account. Such an arrangement hasn't found mainstream popularity elsewhere, but nobody else had been able to sell music prior to iTunes either. While the rumors suggest there could be a discount for MobileMe users, it would be a lot smarter to make it part of MobileMe instead. That would limit subscribers to Apple's loyal base, easing in the system rather than exposing a brand new subscription service to ten million handheld users and 150 million iTunes users and all but promising another meltdown. At least by making it part of MobileMe, Apple could add lots of subscribers and upgrade existing subscribers to a $99 “unlimited music” additional fee. Keep in mind that all this is highly speculative. I doubt “unlimited iTunes” will fly, as the idea was not leaked but rather simply invented. How Apple Could Deliver Workable iTunes Rentals The Online Music and Movie Rental Myth Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth As Long As We're Speculating… If Apple does convert its entire iPod line to Flash players, it would make sense to incorporate a new audio codec setting that maximized the amount of songs you could copy into an 8GB player. For years, Apple's major selling point on the iPod what that it offered massive hard drive storage capacity. Now it's migrating to Flash, which is more expensive but considerably more shock resistant and suitable for a handheld computer device like the iPod touch. Working to cram more music into tighter spaces would allow Apple to make the iPod touch and iPhone more competitive against a hard drive player. AAC is already optimized for low-bitrate playback. Apple also needs to add remote functionality for controlling Apple TV to iTunes, just as you can already do via the free iPhone app. And how about direct streaming of content between iTunes, Apple TV, and the iPhone, such as for movie rentals. Currently, to get a rented movie from an iPhone to Apple TV you have to do two syncs involving a middleman iTunes PC. iTunes also needs to expand on the options for syncing media to the iPod and iPhone. In addition to syncing specific playlists, it should be able to automatically sync over a smart “Party Shuffle” mix of music that fills a specific proportion of the device, such as 50% music, 10% podcasts, and then the specific movies, TV, and audio books the user selects. Then shuffle out the listened to tracks and add new music every time it's synced. Allow users to hide songs from iTunes just as you can hide photos from your iPhoto album to simplify the view without deleting anything. Add Time Machine support so you can go back to see earlier play counts and browse your media library as it appeared in the past. Add integrated support for viewing PDFs and other QuickView document types, so you could use iTunes as a metadata-rich document browser with search and playlist features. Or give Preview an iTunes metadata document database interface. More Music Deals. Add other corporate sponsors to the Starbucks deal, so you can discover their playing music and buy tunes over their WiFi link. And isn't it about time Apple and AT&T got together and hammered out that plan to open iPhones to AT&T's hotspots? I'd debit a 99 cent WiFi access fee from my iTunes account if it were necessary. What's the point of setting up $8 per hour WiFi services for the zero people who use them? And on that tangent, how about rolling out my Ubiquitous WiFi idea for allowing other mobile users to borrow your AirPort's WiFi signal? I'd also like to see Apple get AT&T to allow users to place calls over their WiFi link as a concession for not having a functional 3G network in place yet. I also think AT&T should sell or rent AirPort base stations to its millions of broadband users, with all of them open to WiFi sharing so that iPhone users could place a freaking call and access the web at faster than EDGE speeds between now and whenever AT&T actually gets 3G rolled out. Apple also really needs to deliver some sort of central media server, possibly tacked onto Apple TV. Just add a USB hard drive and have it serve up the contents as a Bonjour-discoverable iTunes library to your local network. This would allows users to dump all the media off their laptop. And then allow WiFi sync to optionally copy fresh media to the iPhone from the central media server library. There's plenty that could be tacked onto iTunes, but the biggest new thing in the iPod announcement actually might be something entirely different than last year's iPods for cheaper and a new rev to iTunes. I'll spill that in the next article. Ten Big Predictions for Apple in 2008 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!

  • Forbes Prints Insanely Self Serving Attack on iTunes by MediaNet CEO Alan McGlade

    Daniel Eran DilgerForbes, best known to many readers as the soapbox Daniel Lyons used to promote--perhaps unwittingly--a pro-Microsoft agenda backing SCO and vilifying Linux and open source, has taken another opportunity to present outrageously false information serving the interests of Microsoft: an impassioned outcry of rage over the success of iTunes.This time, rather than using a journalist Forbes gave its bullhorn to Alan McGlade, the CEO of MediaNet Digital. Although not identified as such by Forbes, his company supplies the music library behind MTV's Urge, Yahoo, FYE, and the Zune Marketplace, all of which are Microsoft’s partner Windows Media DRM stores. I wonder if he has anything bad to say about Apple and its music business?[Daniel Lyons: Fake Steve Jobs and the SCO Shill Who Hated Linux]Tear Down This Wall!In a rapturous plea to abandon Apple, McGlade complained that "In a flat, digital world, walls don't need to be torn down. Thanks to online file sharing and social networking, people are able to go over, under and through walls." No doubt the company stocking Microsoft's Windows Media stores would like nothing more than an open playing field where everyone could compete. Oh wait, companies already can. Stores like eMusic profitably sell MP3s online next to iTunes, and Apple has made no efforts to erect barriers to sales of open music on the iPod. Apple does stop DRM providers from using the iPod, and this incenses DRM providers like Real and Microsoft.The other problem for companies selling egregious DRM is that customers hate their business models. People don't want to pay to rent music, or they would be. They have had lots of opportunity to do so.McGlade is bitter to have partnered with Microsoft--the most deviously anticompetitive and monopolistic company in technology and the biggest proponent of the most restrictive types of DRM--only to lose out in the music business to more permissive and liberal stores like Apple's iTunes and the popular iPod, which will not support anti-consumer Windows Media DRM at all.[Of Apple And Oranges - Forbes]McGlade Cries Over His Own DRM Failure. McGlade weeps out a portrait of his own failure, writing, "How is it then that one of the world's most innovative technology companies has managed to erect its own exclusive, and so far impregnable, kingdom? A relatively small percentage of world music sales occur through digital downloads. But, those that do, happen mainly through iTunes, Apple's online music store. "It's hard to remember any one company establishing such total control over a segment of our culture as Apple has on digital music. The iPod accounts for 70% of personal music player sales, while iTunes is estimated to direct more than three-quarters of all music downloads."Yes it is easy to forget about Microsoft when you are bound to the company's teat. With some objective perspective, perhaps even McGlade could recognize that he bought into a deal that was 'guaranteed to win' because of Microsoft's 97% monopoly hold over computers worldwide. But he lost, and miserably so, as he points out. Now he wants the market to pay him without having to compete. McGlade expects the world to ‘correct’ his defeat because he is simply owned profits for offering DRM in partnership with Microsoft. Sorry McGlade, you have to earn your money.[Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits]Double Locked Down!"Apple has maximized its dominance of the digital music market with a double lockdown." McGlade says, but leaves it somewhat unclear what either of those locks are. "The combined clout of iPod and iTunes is mutually reinforcing and gives Apple enormous marketing leverage." Is the iPod at all locked to iTunes music? No, in fact we know, as McGlade earlier pointed out, that downloads only amount to a small percentage of music on all music players, including iPods. Most music comes from users’ own CDs.McGlades' comment is particularly saturated in hypocrisy because the stores he represents--as a competitor to iTunes--are mostly geared toward subscription plans, and therefore lock users to to a specific store and lock them to a monthly fee. That's the real double lock down, but McGlade doesn't want his readers to think about that. He just wants their money.[BBC Prints Irresponsible Rubbish on Apple]Remember: Apple is the New Microsoft.McGlade then describes how Apple is defining popular music, and that it has the power to promote music on the front page of iTunes. He warns that "as digital devices diversify [through the imminent adoption of Microsoft-partnered players]... music lovers will inevitably seek digital music from a multiplicity of sources [selling music from MediaNet]."This makes lots of sense! I know when I find a grocery store offering good deals on everything I need, I run to competitors to see if I can pay more to sign up for subscription memberships that will bill me whether or not I shop with them.McGlade then describes Apple as the Orwellian "Big Brother of the digital music scene." In case you didn’t get the memo that’s being passed around by every flack in the business of shilling, Apple is the New Microsoft, and so consumers should revile the company and flee to the safe harbor of Microsoft, which is now, logically, less of a Microsoft than Apple.Forbes’ Lisa DiCarlo paints ugly pictures of Apple at every opportunity, but really outdid herself with the 2005 headline “Is Apple The New Microsoft?? which castigated Apple for its lawsuits against bloggers. In the same year, Daniel Lyons advised in Forbes’ “Attack of the Blogs? that, “you can't stop bloggers from launching an allout attack on you or your business if that's what they decide to do--but you can defend yourself.? So which is it Forbes?Since then, the idea that “Apple is the New Microsoft? has been aped by such objective thinkers as Paul Thurrott of Windows Supersite, and supreme shill Mike Elgan, the former editor of PCWorld. How they can claim that Apple is bad for being like the company they have made excuses for over the last two decades is difficult to explain. Fortunately, they’re still wrong.[Microsoft Surface: the Fine Clothes of a Naked Empire][Paul Thurrott's Merciless Attack on Artie MacStrawman][Myth 4: The iTunes Monopoly Myth]Forbes' Fraud in Photos.We don’t expect much from Thurrott and Elgan. We might expect more from Forbes. However, in a move that erases any suggestion that Forbes is objective and honest in the information it publishes, McGlade and Forbes put together a slide show of stomach churning, false information that goes far past disingenuous and lands directly in a patch of flat out fraud.The first slide depicts a “DRM is Killing Music" t-shirt featuring an iPod. McGlade says "It's through proprietary DRM software that Apple enforces iTunes/iPod exclusivity." Except that that is a lie. The iPod doesn’t use DRM at all unless users chose to buy tracks online, which only a minority of users do.He then notes that things are changing, starting, he says, with Universal and WalMart. He also notes that "Apple, to its credit, has embraced this shift, offering DRM-free downloads on its site. However, every other retailer chose to offer-DRM free in the open MP3 format except for Apple."This is all very convincing except for the fact that we all know that Apple shocked the industry by announcing the first DRM free deal with EMI. Other groups slinked along later, offering a few MP3s only when browsing Windows-only sites as WalMart does. Apple sells its music in AAC format, which is as open as MP3, but more technically sophisticated and easier to license. McGlade is working hard to associate DRM with the iPod, but he’s withholding the truth to do so.The second slide of misinformation depicts the clunky failure of the Zune, along with a McGlade caption that notes "Serious competition [to the iPod] has emerged in the past year or so, and its impact is beginning to be felt." No it hasn't. The Zune is a joke and a major failure. Microsoft is losing billions in its consumer electronics efforts in order to establish a monopoly position in music with Windows Media, but is failing. McGlade is just sorry to be on the losing side, and is scrambling to tell us that up is down. [Ten More Myths of Zune]More Promotional Zune Fraud.McGlade dives deeper into the toilet to fish out a third slide, which depicts a man in a wireless cafe using a Titanium PowerBook, photoshopped to obscure its Apple logo and further tampered to include what appears to be fake Intel and Windows stickers. To what further fraud will Forbes stoop?Dear Forbes: your next assignment to is photoshop a VW Beetle to look like a generic car, and then use it in an article assailing Volkswagen for being too much like General Motors in the 1970s.But what does a doctored Apple laptop at a hotspot have to do with the music industry? "Samsung, Sandisk and Microsoft's Zune were the first to innovate with features like wireless, access to music subscription services, unprecedented battery life and larger screens,? the caption announced. “Fast wireless puts the 'music anywhere' dream within reach.?The Zune did include WiFi, but it was completely worthless for anything apart from draining the battery. Microsoft limited it solely for use as a way to send exploding commercials to other Zune users. It was Apple that delivered the first and only WiFi music store, delivering the supposed 'dream' of buying music anywhere. McGlade makes no mention of this because he makes no money on sales through iTunes.[iPod vs Zune: A Buyer's Guide]Enter the iPhone."While Apple has scored another hit with the iPhone, the company will posses only a tiny segment, about 1%, of the global cellphone market in the product's first year." McGlade wrote. He should have said, "1.5% of the market in its first month," but his version sounds better for rivals. Why would he need to lie about the iPhone in a music article? "By 2008, hundreds of millions of these phones will employ standard Microsoft software that will make them compatible with most download stores and subscription services." Because that "standard Microsoft software" would sell McGlade's MusicNet content, he has to desperately overreach to suggest that the future will suddenly change and consumers will somehow get excited about Microsoft's truly awful Windows Mobile products, despite their being a complete failure on the market even prior to the release of the iPhone. Microsoft only has a tiny scrap of the smartphone market, about 5%, despite representing a broad selection of phone makers for half a decade. Apple outsold every one of those models in its debut month, selling at a premium price. That adds up to a wide spectrum of flacks, shills, and desperate CEOs ready to bad mouth Apple for their own loss in supporting Microsoft.[Secret iPhone Details Lost in a Sea of Hype and Hate][Apple: iPhone Now Costs Less than Ballmer's Lame Motorola Q]Music Anywhere.The next slide describes diverse devices that can play digital content, and depicts a Pioneer car CD player, which can play MP3 CDs and the radio. That means it can play CDs burned with iTunes, including purchased tracks, but not subscription music or WMA DRM.It strangely makes no mention of AirPort Express or Apple TV and their ability to play iTunes content wirelessly to home stereos or TV, or Apple’s lead in iPod integration with car makers, or its deals with airlines to plug the iPod into in-flight audio and video playback systems. That would undermine the intent of the photos. Besides, Forbes just printed an article by Scott Woolley which pretended that Apple TV was a huge failure compared to the massive losses behind Tivo (tens of millions per year) and Microsoft (billions).As reader Timothy Bandy pointed out, “overall, TiVo-owned subscriptions totaled 1.71 million, up 136,000 on an annual basis compared to the year ago-period.“So if Apple sold 250,000 Apple TVs, it's already doubled the amount of new customers Tivo made last year; or to put it another way, they already have 1/7th of Tivos' customer base without hardly trying. And as you pointed out, I doubt they've lost several million bucks in the process.?[Scott Woolley Attacks Apple TV in Forbes, Gets the Facts Wrong]Double Locked Down Subscription Services.Touting the double locked down rental music business McGlade represents, the next slide notes, "subscription services, which allow unlimited access to millions of music tracks for an average set monthly fee of $10 to $15, have been around for some time." Yes, and have failed miserably! "But with the advent of wireless-enabled players, phones and home devices, they are just now poised to deliver on an awesome promise: access to virtually all recorded music, anywhere, any time." How? Ubiquitous networking "may soon render the idea of exclusive music ownership obsolete." In other words, no CDs for you. You will rent what MusicNet sells you, and you'll like it at whatever price they set. You can rent access from any Microsoft/MusicNet store you chose, and play it on any Microsoft PlaysForSure or Zune player you pick, just not both, because they’re aren’t compatible with each other. Both are, however, double locked down.Music You Want.Speaking of which, McGlade reaches out embrace Latinos and Christian music buyers by advertising two specialty web stores that sell music from... well, you-know-who: MusicNet. For this shameless and desperate advertisement / hit piece masquerading as news, Forbes gets a Zoon, as does MusicNet and its shameless CEO, Alan McGlade. Good luck trying to sell it, they’re worthless! I crank them out like paper money.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!

  • Curious Stuff About the New iPods

    Daniel Eran DilgerApple's iPod Event introduced a flurry of new features that raises some interesting questions and uncovers some new information on Apple’s worldwide plans to expand the iPod’s reach. The Standard iPods.The entire existing iPod lineup got a revamping, with the Shuffle simply getting new colors, the Nano getting video playback, video games, and Coverflow, and the 5.5G iPod, commonly called the "video iPod," getting more capacity, a facelift, and new official designation as the "iPod Classic."Those three products all maintained existing price points with several new features:The Video Nano, leaked under the name "Fat Nano" and called the “3G Nano? by Apple, gets a 2? 320 x 240 screen for video and Coverflow features, as well as video game compatibility with the 5G iPods. It ships with three free games: Apple's Vortex, Klondike, and iQuiz. The Nano also remains the only iPod that works with the Nike+ system.Nano is rated for 24 hours audio playback, 5 hours video playback and comes in two 6.5 mm thick versions:4 GB $149, silver8 GB $199, silver, black, red, blue, greenThose new colors match the iPod Shuffles, which remain at $79.The iPod Classic is mildly revised, thinner, and offers a new top capacity of 160 GB. This is the only remaining hard drive based iPod, and comes in silver or black. It is rated for 40 hours audio playback, 7 hours video playback, and comes in two versions:80 GB $249, silver, black, 10.5 mm thick160 GB $349, silver, black, 13.5 mm thickNew OS X iPods.Many assumed an iPod based on the iPhone would be a natural, but I originally didn't expect Apple to release one this fall. Rumors called for an “iPhone nano,? which I argued against back in July. Rather than a new smaller iPhone, Apple released an iPod with iPhone features. [Kevin Chang, iSuppli and The iPhone Nano Myth]Called the iPod Touch, it has the same display as the iPhone, WiFi, and an even thinner case: 8 mm vs 11 mm. Its WiFi works with same Safari browser and YouTube client as the iPhone, the it delivers the same Coverflow features and multitouch photo and video playback. It also adds a new WiFi Store application for buying songs from iTunes. Oddly, the iPod Touch appears to lack the Google Maps, Weather, and Stocks widgets of the iPhone, which is a curious omission. It also lacks a Mail client, Notes, and a camera. It does have the iPhone’s Calendar and Contacts--making the new iPod Touch a full fledged PDA.Interestingly, Apple has also added dictionaries for UK English, French, and German, and localized support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, and Polish.Clearly, Apple plans to blow out the new iPod touch worldwide at a scale far faster than is possible with the iPhone, which is tied to service provider agreements in every location. That may also explain why Apple isn’t advertising the US based stocks, weather, and Google Maps applications with the iPod Touch, although YouTube is there, and Mail should be.It appears Apple is ready to establish the iPod Touch around the world to prime the market for the iPhone. Also, there’s no longer much reason to try to get around activation for the iPhone.Put a Mail and VoIP client for this device, and the mobile phone market may change dramatically worldwide, shifting from cellular to WiFi. At $300 - 400, this makes a very cheap Internet mobile computer. The iPod Touch also offers 8 or 16 GB of Flash storage, twice that of the largest iPhone.8 GB $299 8 mm thick16 GB $399 8 mm thickThe iPhone meanwhile, got an aggressive $200 price drop and the smaller 4 GB model was discontinued. I did not expect Apple to cut its price so soon or so much, particularly given the fact that sales appear to have surpassed all other smartphones and even tied the popular LG Chocolate feature phone.8 GB $399, 11 mm thick.This will be painful news for mobile makers already struggling to live up to comparisons with the iPhone. Motorola is banking on the RAZR 2, which is just another flip phone with slight improvements in its crappy software. Nokia demonstrated the iPhone as its own vision for the future. Things don’t look good for mobile makers, or their service provider partners, particularly the CDMA2000 Sprint and Verizon in the US. The iPhone was already cheaper, now it’s no contest. Say goodnight, Palm and Windows Mobile.[Ten Fake Apple Scandals: Phony Rage About iPhone Price and Profits]The New WiFi Store Steve Jobs also demonstrated a new WiFi Store, a custom application that will be released for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone later in the month. Through the new store, you can search for songs, browse popular tracks or by genre, listen to samples and buy songs at the same $.99 price. Downloads are saved to the device and synced up to iTunes for backup. Interestingly, Apple doesn’t use mobile networks to download songs; as I had pointed out, WiFi is far faster. Also, there’s no provision for subscription music, keeping the iTunes DRM simple and consistent. No exploding media, and no prohibition from using your own music on CDs. One thing I thought would be impractical was a mobile iTunes store; Apple’s slick custom app version makes me wrong on that point. “Will iTunes sales jump if the iPhone gets a more difficult to navigate mobile interface that is slower, more complex, and more restrictive?? As it turns out, Apple didn’t add any Janus style DRM.One missing feature on the iPhone and iPod Touch is no Internet streaming music capacity. Even if this was only available over WiFi, it would make a lot of sense--as a feature, certainly not as a way to sell downloads. But since Apple makes its money selling hardware and not on selling music, adding iTunes’ Internet radio features might make sense. The reason for no offering it may be that WiFi streaming would kill the battery too quick.[Using iPhone: File and iTunes Sync Via USB, Wireless, and Over the Air]Starbucks’ Hot Spots.Apple announced a partnership with the ubiquitous Starbucks to allow devices running the WiFi Store app--including the iPod Touch, the iPhone, or a laptop running iTunes--to connect at Starbucks locations and download purchased songs at no additional charge. Starbucks will also popup its list of songs being played in the store, you can browse and buy them. The new service is to get rolled out in the thousands of Starbucks stores over the next year. Missing in the deal was any offer for free WiFi access in general, which is a bit lame. Apple offers free WiFi in its own 200+ retail stores, but it would be great to form a federation of WiFi providers that offer low cost access. Even a cheap subscription service--or free hotspot access with a purchase--would be great.What's also interesting is that the WiFi access at Starbucks locations is sold by T-Mobile. Why hasn't that company jumped to offer low cost WiFi plans for iPhone users? It's currently trying to sell WiFi VoIP phones; perhaps it should remember that it is a service provider, and offer service to phones, not try to sell more equipment. Offering a $20 HotSpot-only plan would allow T-Mobile to pickup a lot of iPhone--and now iPod Touch--users, customers it would otherwise never gain. WiFi providers now need to think past just laptop users, and cellular providers with hotspots need to think past cell phone users. While Jobs was in error to call the iPod Touch the first music player with a web browser, it will certainly have far more impact than the existing Archos devices. Jobs demonstrated a custom app for Facebook. Other recent sites geared toward the iPhone version of Safari include a client from WebEx and various third pary games and utilities.[iPhone Appr]New Ringtones in iTunes.Rather than selling static song clips for $2 like the mobile service providers, Apple appeared to ready to add ringtone syncing with the iPhone back in January; screenshots taken during the original iPhone event caught a new Ringtones tab in iTunes. Instead, the tab failed to ever appear and the iTunes contract was revised to say that songs couldn't be used as ringtones. Clearly, the genius of music executives got involved in the process.So now, the compromise is revealed. Of a select half million songs on iTunes, users will be able to upgrade a purchased song for an extra $1, and then be able to edit their own section of the song within iTunes for use as an official iPhone ringtone. There are also standalone apps for putting DIY ringtones on the iPhone, but Apple can't tell you that. Ringtones can also be used to set alarm sounds.The new version of iTunes is scheduled for availability later today.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!

  • The Google Connection

    I am in Hong Kong this week, my first visit since I was here with a PBS camera crew a decade ago for the handover when the former Royal Crown Colony was given back to China. I remember the surreal experience of watching Prince Charles sail away that evening on the Britannia then turning to find Boy George standing next to me. Not nearly as bizarre but even more disturbing was my experience this morning firing up Google Docs to write this column and finding the entire user interface in Chinese! A Google server somewhere detected my presence in China and very helpfully provided me the Chinese version of the networked application. I'm sure it is a simple matter of resetting preferences, but how? I can't understand a damned thing. Or is this a feature? The notebook computer I am using is both borrowed and brand-new so it doesn't have any of my favorite software, hence my overconfident reliance on Google Docs. Fortunately it was a simple matter to download demo versions of the apps I normally use and I am up and running long enough to get through this trip. This kind of cross-cultural experience is exactly what lies in store for all of us as we come to rely more and more on server-based applications. They usually work fine, then take a trip to China and.... Which brings us back to last week's column about Apple's decision to release Safari for Windows and how that is at least in part related to the huge sucking sound of Apple removing (or hoping to remove) money from the treasury of AT&T, Apple's U.S. partner on the new iPhone, which is scheduled to ship on June 29th. Remember I described Safari for Windows as a key component for integrating Apple's networked applications, many of which will be tied into the iPhone. I've written about the iPhone before. It's a stellar piece of engineering, of course, and nearly as good as Apple claims. There will be early problems, of course, many of them probably related to Apple and AT&T's decision to use the mobile carrier's EDGE network (G2.5) rather than its much faster G3 service. Why hobble with lousy bandwidth a $500 cell phone? Because lousy bandwidth is being viewed inside Apple as the very reason for the iPhone's probable success. Huh? Safari for Windows is a mystery only because it is a product without an associated revenue stream. Like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and nearly every other web browser, Safari is free, so why would Apple, a minor player in the world of Windows software, -- even bother to do a version for Windows? Last week's column (it is among this week's links) goes a ways toward explaining that, but it turns out there is much, much more. Safari for Windows is part of a PLATFORM in the same sense that iTunes is part of the iPod platform or vice versa. In this case the platform in question is the iPhone and an as-yet unmentioned partner in that platform is Google. The iPhone absolutely needs AJAX applications for the phone to be a success on AT&T's EDGE network. By pushing more functional logic into the browser, the bandwidth consumed per http round-trip is significantly reduced, making the phone apps faster and helping to justify that big price tag. The problem with this is that AJAX apps don't always work the same (or at all) on every browser. The iPhone has real browser support, which is good, but remember AJAX is based on JavaScript, which in this case is not so good. JavaScript isn't statically typed and each browser has its own version of JavaScript. Developers are typically forced to hand-code different versions of their AJAX apps for different browsers. With the AJAX economy dictating that browsers with big market share like IE and Firefox get most of the effort, that leaves Safari as a second-class browser and, potentially, a liability for the iPhone. Whaddayado? Introduce a Windows version of Safari, get a million people to download it in the first week, and scare developers into moving Safari customization higher on their AJAX priority list. Where Google comes into this story is with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), an open source compiler that compiles Java source code into optimized browser-specific JavaScript code. GWT makes writing AJAX apps like writing regular apps in the sense that developers can use many of the tools they are used to. And GWT adds the advantage that the GWT compiler handles all the problems of working with specific browsers. Now imagine you are the developer of an AJAX application and you suddenly have an urgent need to support Safari for Windows. The easiest way to accomplish that is through GWT. What this means for Apple is better and broader iPhone support. What it means for Google is the chance to become the dominant player in Web application development. This is not to say that GWT wasn't already doing fine on its own, but with the added power of Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field, it can't help but succeed. In a very broad sense this is good, too. It is good for the iPhone, which will get a far broader base of applications it can support, and it is good for Google. And in the sense that what's good for Google is good for the Web, it will help all of us. Or maybe that's the Reality Distortion Field talking. Apple and AT&T's decision to deliberately use the EDGE network makes more sense now in part as a way to justify that big iPhone price tag, but there is another way in which Apple deliberately chose to hobble the iPhone, at least for now. That's, ironically, through a decision involving the vaunted iPhone user interface. Remember that a key component of iPhone marketing is that the device will run a version of OS X, making it more computer than phone. When the iPhone finally ships and some techies have voided their warranties and torn the thing apart, they'll probably find it uses a processor running at a gigahertz or more -- by far the fastest processor ever put in a mobile phone -- a processor more powerful than that in my Mom's PC. With all that power locked inside, of course some users will want to imagine their iPhone AS their PC, which Apple -- at least for now -- would rather not enable because it might hurt Macintosh sales. So they've hobbled the iPhone with essentially the same crappy text entry capability as on any other phone. You can do a lot on an iPhone, but writing the Great American Novel is probably not on the list. But it could have been. There is a text-input technology called ForWord Input that could be easily used on the iPhone to allow users with almost no training to input text with their index finger at 50 words per minute, which I have to admit is faster than I can type on a QWERTY keyboard. ForWord Input uses a finger, not a stylus (nothing to lose), is patented, and comes from developers who already have other applications running in 500 MILLION mobile phones. If I could type 50 words per minute on my iPhone, I wouldn't need a computer, which defines both the opportunity and the problem facing Apple. They are aware of ForWord Input. Maybe we'll see it in a future iPhone software upgrade. Next week: Where the heck is Adobe in all this?

  • The Seduction of AT&T

    This week was Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), the biggest news from which seemed to be the beta version of Safari (Apple's web browser) for Windows. Why the heck would Apple even produce such a product? Readers and pundits alike have been wondering ad nauseam. I know why. There are two theories being widely floated: 1) this is a challenge to Microsoft, and; 2) this is a strategic platform for Apple to offer its own web-based application suite. To a certain extent both may be correct, but I think there is a lot more to this story, which is sorely missing context in those many explanations. Let's start with that context, which is Apple's WWDC, an event sorely lacking in both substance and controversy if we ignore this Safari story. Mac OS X 10.5 still isn't ready to ship. The iPhone is coming in a couple weeks but Apple is so far only hinting at opening the product to third-party developers. In other words, Steve Jobs had bupkus when it comes to creating press this week UNLESS he throws Safari for Windows into the mix. Apple had to come up with something and this version of Safari, which reviewers have found to be buggy and definitely not ready for primetime, was it. Maybe Apple intended to do a Safari for Windows or not, but I'm guessing they had a version running in the lab as an exercise in Intel compatibility. When Steve realized that he had so little to hype, this alpha code suddenly became a beta "product." This isn't to say that Safari for Windows wasn't always intended to be a product, but its current state of development strongly suggests that it wouldn't have been in Steve's presentation if he had much else to show. Microsoft is not threatened by the announcement of Safari for Windows. Bill Gates isn't pissed off that Apple has challenged him. Gates is worried about Firefox, not Safari, and even Firefox is just a minor annoyance or else Microsoft would be doing a better job of competing with it. Beyond garnering some press, Safari for Windows is about AT&T. Steve Jobs is the best salesperson in the entire universe, but he doesn't like to waste his time. That means that, having seduced AT&T (nee Cingular), Steve will try to sell them more and more stuff until they have bought everything he has. He will invent stuff specifically to sell to AT&T as long as it acts as a bridge to yet more stuff he wants to sell them. Steve wants AT&T to see him not just as the answer to their prayers, but as the answer to their EVERY prayer. What could AT&T be praying for? Plenty of things, but the most obvious theme I see is how to compete with Verizon, Comcast, and all the national cell phone providers. With Verizon, AT&T has to defend its decision to stick with a copper broadband infrastructure instead of the more expensive optical fiber Verizon has picked. With Comcast, AT&T has to defend its copper plant against Comcast's copper plant, which is about to gain a LOT more bandwidth thanks to new modems using more advanced modulation techniques. And against the other mobile operators, AT&T has to defend its decision not to go full 3G with the iPhone. Are you noticing a trend here? AT&T is facing a potential bandwidth crisis when it comes to customer perception and it is logical to assume that Apple helped create that crisis. After all, the iPhone could easily have been made to work with 3G. Since AT&T HAS a 3G network, the decision not to use it was probably complicated and some of that complication may have come from Steve Jobs saying, "We don't need it. The iPhone will be insanely great with G2.5, thanks." Here is the complex package of goods Apple is trying to sell to AT&T: There's the iPhone, of course, but there is also the Apple TV as a potential set-top box. Three hundred dollars for a set-top box? You have to be crazy! Not so crazy. Compared to not spending the kind of money Verizon is spending on fiber, Apple TVs are cheap even if AT&T gives them away. Remember that $400 rebate you used to be able to get on a new PC by signing up for two years of MSN? That didn't appear to make sense, either, yet it ran for years. For Apple TV to be successful as an IPTV set-top box, Apple has to convince us that we really want to download our video, NOT stream it. Not incidentally, this is also the key to iTunes' long-term success. Downloading makes much more efficient use of network resources, works fine on a copper wiring plant, and fits our emerging TiVoesque world view. Steve will tell us that we are busy dynamic people who really ought to plan our viewing. And enough of us will believe him to make AT&T's copper video service a credible success. Beyond downloading video and audio, Apple's other technique for limiting AT&T's bandwidth hit, while simultaneously locking in the company as a customer for years and years, is building clever software services. The more processing that can be done in the data center the less data that will have to be carried between that center and the device. So AT&T will need a broad array of web services to offer its customers, most of whom will be using Windows computers, not Macs, which brings us back again to Safari for Windows -- a product Apple had no choice but to build. This move isn't about taking down Microsoft, it isn't about making Macintosh computers the dominant computing platform, it IS about performing a massive cashectomy on AT&T. But to Apple's credit the company doesn't want anyone to see this as theft, but rather as a technical triumph, simply because when AT&T's exclusive is over in five years, Apple will want to do similar deals with all of AT&T's competitors. Next week we'll have more on the iPhone, what it is and isn't and why. But before then, last week's column on the Whistlebox video-response application generated a lot of reader comments, many of them negative and some even nasty. Just to save you the trouble of reading them all, here is the gist: "Bob, you are lazy and/or stupid. Whistlebox is nothing new. There are plenty of products available right now that can do all Whistlebox claims and more. And even if there weren't, it would take at most a few days to build one, NOT two man-years. We are disappointed in you, Bob." Wrong, wrong, wrong. Of course there are Whistlebox competitors. User-generated video has been around since the days of CU-SeeMe. What the folks at Whistlebox have done isn't invent a technology so much as DEVELOP it. The distinction is clear: it is easy to cobble together a demo or prototype but altogether something else to build a tested production system that is easy to use and scales well. It would be close to impossible to ship in a few days or weeks a tested, refined application that DOES NOTHING (has a functioning interface but no underlying application engine), much less a tested, refined application like Whistlebox that actually does something. Anyone who claims otherwise has never shipped a product. Whistlebox was designed and built for the business and advertising markets to be integrated by non-computer scientists and used by non-nerds. But it isn't just the usability that matters, it is the reporting and management tools that give the application value for business customers. Whistlebox isn't the first such application and won't be the last, but it is the first I have seen that is offered in a form that can be easily used by organizations of all sizes and levels of technical sophistication. That's what makes it unique so far. None of the other applications offered up by readers as examples of prior art can do this. None of them are turnkey. This lack of turnkey capability in those other products may be seen as an advantage, not a disadvantage, by my geekier readers. Yes, YOU can customize the heck out of them. But can your Mom? Still, I was appalled by the nasty tone of many comments. Anonymity makes it so easy to criticize. At some point this column will probably have a video version. Then it is a short jump to video responses using a service like Whistlebox. When that happens, I wonder how many readers will be as critical on video as they are today in text? I can't wait.

  • Will Windows Mobile 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 first segment in this series will look at Windows Mobile as a possible “DOS-attack” against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Google's Android, Nokia's newly opened Symbian, and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? This All Happened Before… But Things Have Changed. It's easy to try to predict the future with the help of hindsight. However, while we know history keeps repeating, events always do so in slightly different ways that keep us surprised, as anyone who has tried to salvage fashion and wear it again a generation later has found. In this case, we have two historical events serving as potential foreshadowing events. Which will win out: a DOS model or the iPod model? Windows Enthusiasts had been confidently praying for Microsoft's Windows Media platform to save them from the iPod ever since Apple released its music player. When the PlaysForSure world came crashing down, they rushed to support Microsoft's own solo attempt to compete against the iPod with Zune. Things really got ugly when the iPhone arrived. Meditative prayers for deliverance from the iPod turned into incessant voodoo chanting against the iPhone, accompanied by spirited dancing around the truth and needling attacks. Philip Solis of ABI Research shifted his attention from conducting interviews that suggested a mass Zune migration to issuing reports denying that the iPhone was a smartphone at all by his own definition. Rob Enderle jumped from hopeful optimism for the Zune (“Microsoft is trying to encompass Apple and turn them into a bit player. The strategy is brilliant, but the question is can they execute?”) to angry condemnation of the iPhone, calling it “damned” and “not a good phone” months before he had ever even touched one. Enderle is now serving as a consultant to Dell's plans to resurrect its failed “DJ Ditty,” and offering up opinions on how to compete with the iPod, despite having no experience in guiding companies into competition apart from a long career of cheerleading Microsoft's monopoly position, which was devoid of any functional competitors. Mike Elgan initially wrote that the Zune “scares Apple to the core,” and was confident that Microsoft would “leverage the collective power of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Soapbox (Microsoft’s new ”YouTube killer“) and the Xbox 360” to kill Apple's iPod business. After the Zune failed and the iPhone took off, Elgan complained that Apple was “arrogant” and “the new Microsoft” and needed to be stopped. Since then, Microsoft has canceled XP, Vista has floundered, Soapbox went nowhere, an the Xbox 360 has done nothing to advance Zune sales. Paul Thurrott similarly called iTunes a dangerous monopoly despite the wide open market for iPod alternatives, and warned “Apple should be stopped before the abuses get too great and harm too many consumers.” However, Thurrott himself has chosen to bravely negotiate those dangers and use iTunes, iPods, the iPhone, and pays for MobileMe. He celebrates his use of Apple products in front of Mac users, and then bad mouths them in his Windows-oriented blogs. Lately he has been increasingly unable to find anything good to say about the Zune or Windows Mobile either, however. More Absurd iPhone Myths: Third Party Software Panic Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security Arrogance Unleashed: The Foul Stench of Computerworld’s Mike Elgan Forrester Research: Epic Terror of iTunes and Apple TV Windows Mobile is Not the DOS You're Looking For. Even the most devoted, hardcore fans of the Zune and Windows Mobile are having a hard time praising their current incarnations. The next version of each, both of which promise to address their huge gap in functionality compared to the iPhone and iPod touch, is scheduled for late 2009 or 2010. That is an eternity away, particularly considering that the iPhone went from rumor to 2.0 over the same period of time. A year and a half from now, the iPhone will be splitting atoms and curing cancer (so to speak). While Apple has received some appropriate criticism for releasing iPhone 2.0 with considerably less stability and polish than the original iPhone 1.x software, updates improving the situation have been released regularly, with two just in the last month. Windows Mobile users are lucky if they get a minor bug fix once a year, and many users have to wait months after an update is released before their hardware manufacture or mobile provider approves the update for download. The original iPhone also had some teething problems that were quickly addressed in a series of regular updates over its first six months on the market. In comparison, Windows Mobile has been out for over half a decade. It has not only rarely received updates, but has never performed admirably. It is known for poor battery life, rampant instability, and a poor development architecture that is well behind the iPhone's Cocoa Touch frameworks. Over the last two years, Apple delivered eleven updates to the iPhone OS compared to two from Microsoft, despite the fact that Apple only sold the iPhone over three fourths of that period. Over the next two years, Apple will likely ship another dozen updates while Microsoft only plans to ship one: Windows Mobile 7 DOS Model Problems. In addition to the faults of Windows Mobile that can be directly blamed upon Microsoft, there are also serious flaws within the model for selling a universal operating system across a number of hardware devices. The “DOS model” has demonstrated problems for PC makers, but in a mobile device, those problems have even greater significance. Microsoft is troubled with having to support a wide range of Windows Mobile phones that all support different features. PDA-style “Pocket PC” Windows Mobile devices use a larger stylus tap screen, while “Windows Mobile Smartphones” such as the Motorola Q, only provide a tiny screen with no touchscreen capacity. Also, only a few Windows Mobile phones have an accelerometer, or WiFi, or GPS, and the camera in each is unique. These hardware differences complicate developers' ability to release software that takes advantage of the features of each phone appropriately. Should a game provide accelerometer controls that only work on a few Windows Mobile phones? Should a document viewer application attempt to take advantage of a larger, interactive tap screen or try to cram into a tiny screen driven only by hardware buttons? The iPhone has one screen interface and a single set of hardware features for developers to target. While new iPhone models will eventually broaden those features, Apple will be managing the transition, and has the power to deliver software that abstracts different abilities seamlessly, just as it has on the Mac. For example, location services on the iPhone 3G works identically to those on the original iPhone apart from lacking GPS, and the iPod touch works the same way despite only being able to use WiFi to find its location. Developers don't have write to a specific profile, they simply ask the device for a location and the software uses the hardware available. Supporting devices from different manufactures all trying to differentiate themselves is simply far more difficult. Wait, Stop, Come Back. Microsoft's core inability to deliver a decent mobile operating system after a decade of trying, on top of the fact that supporting a wide variety of hardware is simply more difficult to pull off compared to Apple's integrated model, makes it simply hard to make the case that Microsoft will float out a third generic platform to overtake the smartphone industry following its DOS and Windows for the PC, both of which were actually more the product of fortunate positioning and existing market power. In reality, while Microsoft talks up its plans to take over the smartphone market, Windows Mobile has been dramatically losing market share among smartphones despite having taken over the software reigns at Palm and snuffing out the Palm OS to take its position as heir to the Treo dynasty. The Windows desktop monopoly has done nothing to shore up Windows Mobile's declining market share, which according to Canalys has slipped from 23% in 2004 to around 12% today. Instead, Apple rose to match and then exceed Microsoft's market share among smartphones in the US within just three months of sales. It not only maintained its lead in the US, but with the release of the iPhone 3G appears to have caught up to Microsoft's entire worldwide shipments across all of its providers in its first weeks on going on sale. Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone DOS and Windows Then… When Apple released its Macintosh in 1984, the IBM DOS PC had already captivated the market and was widely established. The majority of PCs being sold had already migrated away from CP/M and other DOS competitors, leaving Apple to compete against a strongly entrenched platform led by the much larger IBM, which had monopolized business machines for decades prior to entering the new personal computing market. Apple also had a severe price premium to overcome when selling against DOS PCs (most of which were sold with a fraction of the RAM or graphics capabilities of the Mac), and Apple itself was doing a poor job of marketing the Mac, with CEO John Sculley choosing to promote “Apple II forever” while Jean-Luis Gassée pulled plans to push Macs in business and targeted the high end desktop publishing niche instead. When Microsoft began successfully promoting Windows in 1991, it was selling to that same DOS PC audience, which had only become further entrenched over the last eight years. The Mac was already hammered into a tight niche and Apple had done little to advance its technological lead over the PC. On top of all that, Apple had handed Microsoft a wide open license to use its Mac interface conventions, and then embroiled itself in unsuccessful litigation to undo the damage. By the time Windows began shipping broadly, Sculley was focused on his political career while Gassée was getting ready to start his own company. Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered Jean-Louis Gassée Returns from Obscurity… to Talk About MobileMe … and the iPhone Now. Today, the circumstances are wildly different. Windows Mobile does not enjoy any dominant position in the US (where RIM is far ahead) or worldwide (where Nokia is leading by a dramatic margin). Competition between Windows Mobile and other alternatives has left Microsoft's product looking unattractive outside of a few niche markets among Microsoft IT shops, many of whom are now considering the iPhone instead. The iPhone has broad appeal leveraging Apple's iPod, Mac, and retail store successes. Apple is actually marketing its products effectively now through its own retail stores. AT&T and other mobile partners are also working to sell the iPhone because it generates more money for them; ten years ago, Apple could barely get retailers to stock its products, let alone market them. Not only are Apple's sales outpacing those of Windows Mobile devices, but users are now browsing the web four times more frequently from the iPhone than from Windows Mobile. Apple not only has a huge mindshare and technical lead, but has a co-development platform spanning the Mac desktop and the iPod touch handheld that shares technology with the iPhone. While Microsoft sells some Pocket PC PDAs lacking mobile service that are not counted in its smartphone market share, Apple sells a vast number of iPod touch devices that likely outnumber sales of the iPhone by a wide margin, and those are similarly not counted in Apple's smartphone market share. Considering the entire WinCE platform, which includes Windows Mobile Smartphones, Pocket PC (mobile and non-mobile), Zune, and other PlaysForSure licensed Portable Media Center devices, Microsoft's influence over handheld devices is insignificant compared to Apple's with the iPod and iPhone, despite the fact that the iPhone and the iPod touch are barely a year old. In the US, where Apple sold the majority of its iPhones in 2007, it outflanked all Windows Mobile sales in its first quarter of sales. A Better DOS than MS-DOS. Who will pick up the torch Microsoft has dropped? The most likely contender may be Google's Android. Microsoft's leading Windows Mobile partner HTC certainly thinks so, as it is hedging its bets to become a member of Android's Open Handset Alliance. Can Android play DOS to the iPhone for commodity smartphone hardware manufacturers, and will Google end up with a Microsoft-like role among phone makers? The next article will take a look. 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!

  • Microsoft's Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone

    Daniel Eran Dilger What secret partner has Microsoft discovered to bail water from the deck of Zune and its Zune Marketplace music store in a last ditch attempt to take on Apple's iTunes, the iPod, and iPhone? Microsoft's own Windows Mobile, of course, with some help from Windows Vista! Who Else Will Help Zune? Certainly not Nokia, as one Zune fansite tried to suggest last week. Nokia has nothing to gain by promoting the Zune. A more credible sounding rumor, as long as we're inventing stuff, would be to instead suggest that it could be Sony Ericsson that is interested in putting the Zune software on its new phones. At least Sony has already demonstrated its complete failure at selling music on its own, and actually has a Windows Mobile phone in the works. The simpler reality is that Sony Ericsson may have no choice in the matter. Microsoft is clearly out to wed the Zune with Windows Mobile in a effort to get the two failures to prop each other up in its “I'm not dead yet!” fight against the iPhone. Microsoft is likely to make inclusion of its Zune Marketplace a mandatory feature that its Windows Mobile partners will have to swallow, just as it forced its PC licensees to bundle its Internet Explorer browser and later Windows Media Player, while prohibiting them from seeking their own bundling deals with other companies. Microsoft took quick steps to block Compaq's licensing of QuickTime, for example. Those deals were bad for HP, Compaq, Dell, and the other PC makers, bad for competition within the tech industry, and subsequently bad for consumers. However, they did enable Microsoft to use its powerful Windows monopoly position to push proprietary standards and or anti-interoperable technologies designed to expand its monopolized control, while making big money selling Windows in a market that lacked any alternatives. Will Nokia Rescue Microsoft’s Zune? Haha No. Apple in the Web Browser Wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime A Lot Has Changed. This time around however, all Microsoft has to leverage is Windows Mobile, a struggling platform with little respect in the industry, now in a distant third place. Further, the technology Microsoft is trying to push is essentially its Windows Media DRM, which has already been swept up and trashed by Apple's iTunes, QuickTime, and the iPod. The dismal fate of Windows Media was sealed with the failure of PlaysForSure. The Zune's new, albeit incompatible, reincarnation of Windows Media DRM never stood any chance of making any headway. However, the most problematic part of Microsoft's strategy of pushing its Zune Marketplace store on its Windows Mobile partners is that music stores don't make money. Apple's iTunes Store is the biggest online music store on Earth, and does tremendous volumes of sales. Still, Apple reports minimal profits from the store. It recently warned its investors that it's now selling so much through iTunes that the low profit, high volume venture may have a negative impact on the company's overall profit margins. As problems go, that's certainly a nice one to have. Apple is not at all worried about turning a big profit with iTunes because it runs the store exclusively with the intent of ensuring new content for the iPod, iPhone, and Mac. That in turn sells its hardware. However, Microsoft doesn't have hardware sales to nurture. It has barely sold two million Zune units, many at fire sale prices (compared to 150 million iPods, 93 million of which have been sold since the Zune's release). It now faces impossible odds in tilting against the momentum of iTunes' rapidly spinning windmills, with no possible upside in terms of eventual music store profitability. There's simply no way that any amount of investment in the Zune Marketplace could deliver profits, because Microsoft is competing against Apple's non-profit motivation behind iTunes. Further, Windows Mobile is similarly a big loser with no potential because Microsoft has little ability to profitably license its mobile software. It's competition is the iPhone OS, which Apple develops for free to sell iPhone hardware (Microsoft does not sell its own phone hardware); RIM's mobile OS, which is also free for BlackBerry hardware; the Symbian OS, a partnership between hardware makers; and various mobile distributions of Linux, including Google's Android, all of which are also run as profitless ventures to support hardware sales (or in Google's case, service sales). The Great Google gPhone Myth Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing 10 FAS: 7 - Apple’s Hardware and Dvorak’s Microsoft Branded PC Good Money After Bad. All that unpleasant reality hasn't phased Microsoft. Its executives haven't found a way to make money in consumer electronics yet, and the company's attempts just keep getting more and more expensive. Barron's recently featured the speculation of one Microsoft investor who hoped the company would spin off its hemorrhaging online services division as well as its profitless entertainment and devices unit, which includes the Zune, Xbox, and Windows Mobile. The investor calculated the value of Microsoft's other businesses (its high profit Office, Windows, and server divisions) and decided that the market wasn't assigning any value at all to Microsoft's consumer electronics and services products divisions. No wonder; they're nothing but a huge drain on Microsoft! Even so, the investor seemed to think there must be some value to obtain from selling off the black holes, citing the market value of the highly profitable Nintendo. The investor's real intent seemed to be finding a way to “discourage the company from overinvesting in the business.” Microsoft's stock has only appreciated by 6.3% over the last decade. Apple has appreciated 1,822.6% in the same period. Microsoft is trying to develop new markets as Apple has, it's just failing to do so. Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits Strength in Bundles. Microsoft has always been interested in promoting its products by using strong ones to prop up weak ones. From the start, it bound its strong Mac apps to the rather weak Windows offering to invent the PC platform, and has since tied Word and Excel to a suite of otherwise fair to marginal apps under the Office banner. Once Windows became established, the company tied in an unfinished, third-rate web browser and was able to rapidly build it into a strong competitor through market inertia. On the server side, Microsoft similarly ties in tragic products into package deals that often (but not always) enable the weak bits to gain some traction. So Microsoft is again working to stitch together its various properties to support each other, but now most all of its recent products are in flames and desperately need reinforcement. There's only so much one failure can do to support another. Even worse, Microsoft's historic strengths are no longer working. The Windows monopoly was supposed to brace up Windows Media Players, Windows Media Center, Windows Mobile, Windows Live Search, Windows Live Soapbox, and a series of other cobranded products that haven't gone anywhere. Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly Office Wars 4 - Microsoft’s Assault on Lotus and IBM Why Does Microsoft Really Want Yahoo? Certifiable Failure. Windows itself is now in the throes of crisis, as the failed launch of Vista nearly two years ago has signaled the undoing of Microsoft's ability to rely on its desktop monopoly to advance failures into strength. Is Vista going to put out the Zune's flames by beating with its own flame-engulfed wings? That's part of Microsoft's current strategy, which included rebranding PlaysForSure as 'Certified for Windows Vista.' The Zune is also Certified for Windows Vista, despite not being compatible with the Certified for Windows Vista PlaysForSure. Confused? You needn't be for long, as the remnants of Microsoft's one-time strategy for creating an 'ecosystem of hardware, service, and software partners' to provide choice and freedom in the music industry is pretty much dead now. All of Microsoft's significant PlaysForSure store partners, including AOL MusicNow, MTV URGE, Musicmatch Jukebox, Wal-Mart Music, Yahoo Music, and Microsoft's own MSN Music have now unplugged their PlaysForSure stores, ironically making the brand among the least accurate names for a service ever. The remaining stores making use of PlaysForSure music, principally Rhapsody and Napster, are now on death's door. PlaysForSure video stores such as CinemaNow, which once worked with Microsoft's PlaysForSure-certified Portable Media Players no longer do. Even Amazon's UnBox service, which is supposed to sync with some devices that are PlaysForSure-certified, has not bothered to get certified under Microsoft's program. Incidentally, the failure of Yahoo Music and Microsoft's MSN Music (and the company's outrageous plan to simply unplug its customers from DRM authentication) caused CNET to wonder if Apple might be next in line to make users' music purchases unplayable, echoing the poorly conceived idea that Microsoft's Vista failure, its mobile platform incompetence, and desktop viral malware security crisis all somehow also predict a similar certain doom for Apple at some point in the future. For some reason, CNET saw no connection between the failure of Yahoo and MSN (hint: PlaysForSure), and no reason to speculate about the future of other media stores facing actual failure and likely disbanding in the near future, including Rhapsody, Napster, UnBox and Microsoft's own Zune. Nearly all of the recent DRM deactivation controversies, including Major League Baseball's, have been related to Microsoft's software, although Google decided to similarly to dump users of its paid video when it pulled the plug on Google Video last fall. Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Forrester Research: Epic Terror of iTunes and Apple TV But Wait, What About This Ecosystem Failure Sounds Familiar? The complete failure of Microsoft's PlaysForSure hardware and software licensing program paints a damning prophetic picture foreshadowing the fate of Windows Mobile. Pundits often dance around this fact by spewing Microsoft's talking points: Window Mobile has lined up scores of hardware partners! Windows Mobile has lots of software partners! Choice is good! Oh wait, that's the same stuff they said about PlaysForSure in explaining why the iPod couldn't stand a chance once Microsoft could deliver its Windows Media Player reference designs and the Windows Media DRM that would enable PlaysForSure stores to open their doors. The only real difference between PlaysForSure and Windows Mobile is that the former was expected to prove that the Windows licensing model would work well among mobile devices, while the latter has already proven for some time now that it can't. Windows Mobile has been a snowball of failure ever since it launched a half decade ago with clumsy-looking phones running buggy, poorly architected software with abysmal battery life that makes the iPhone 3G look exceptional in comparison. Windows Mobile simply shares too much in common with the PlaysForSure failure to escape the event horizon if its blackhole. Pairing software from one vendor to hardware from another is problematic in the PC market, but completely untenable among highly integrated mobile devices. Microsoft tried to blame PlaysForSure incompatibilities on its music store and hardware partners, but the real problem was the model. Microsoft's own software problems didn't help either of course. The issue on Windows Mobile is even more significant because having functional mobile phone service is far more critical than being passively entertained by an MP3 player. Unchecked diversity among the devices of a platform is a bug, not a feature. The mantra of choice and freedom, hailed among Windows enthusiasts and homebrew hackers alike, makes for a great mission statement but in reality delivers products that just don't work. It's great to be able to compile your own servers from free and open source software, but most consumers don't want the accountability that comes along with that freedom when trying to dial 911 from their phone. For that matter they don't even want to troubleshoot the installation of a firmware update, or deal with why software designed for a tall screen looks awful on a square screen. With an integrated product like the iPhone, they can complain to Apple for a fix. With Windows Mobile, you get passed around by Microsoft from the mobile operator to the hardware maker to the third party software developer. Everyone is responsible but nobody is accountable. The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile Count the Flames of Windows Mobile. And so, in terms of failing platforms, Windows Mobile is closer to PlaysForSure on the flames meter than it is to the only smoldering Vista, which is a moderate success by comparison. If attaching the Zune, Microsoft's phoenix on fire, to Vista's train wreck didn't have any impact on the relative salvageability of either, what will Windows Mobile 7 do for Zune 3 a year and a few months from now in late 2009 at the earliest? That's Microsoft's current schedule, barring any customary delays. By then, Apple will have had the iPhone in international distribution for more than a year, the App Store will be a year and a half old, and the WiFi iTunes Store will be more than two years old. What in Windows Mobile 7 will make a difference for smartphone buyers? According to Microsoft: copycat touch controls hobbled by an interface trying to look like Vista (below, and yes they did spell Internet Explorer wrong, as well as putting a space in ActiveSync), and no doubt a major new push to force Zune Marketplace media sales down the throats of Windows Mobile users in imitation of Apple. Microsoft is no Apple. The problem of course, is that the market for Windows Mobile phones is almost exclusively among corporate IT users, who don't give a rats ass about downloading music from the Zune store. So there's really little potential for cross pollination between Windows Mobile and the Zune. In contrast, Apple originally marketed the iPod and iPhone to consumers, who do buy up music to the tune of billions of tracks every year. Apple now has success to build upon, and has targeted its year-old iPhone platform toward the enterprise, with development tools, a software deployment infrastructure, and management utilities that in most cases meet or exceed what Microsoft has delivered over past decade on WinCE and Windows Mobile. On top of that, the iPhone platform has a far superior, standards-based web browser, development frameworks recognized to be easier to use than Microsoft's mobile .NET, and a core OS that is simply more stable, not to mention a user interface that's designed to look good and be simple to use rather than to match the flashy branding of a failed desktop OS. WWDC 2007: Kevin Hoffman Presents .Net vs. Cocoa The Other Problem: Windows Mobile is Going Down. Anyone banking on Microsoft's promises to deliver Windows Mobile 7 on time by the end of 2009 should also consider the company's track record in delivering Windows Mobile updates. The company initially intended to get Windows Mobile 5 out next to Longhorn [Vista] in mid to late 2004. Windows Mobile 5 was actually released in May 2005, and Vista finally popped out “officially” at the end of 2006, although one couldn't actually buy it until it was relaunched to consumers in early 2007. Even after Microsoft “released” its subsequent Windows Mobile 6 nearly a year later (based upon the same underlying WinCE 5), it took six months or more for many of Microsoft's partners to approve it and set up distribution so that users could actually get the software on their phones. In contrast, Apple releases regular iPhone updates every month or two that are always available to users immediately after their release, directly from Apple. Microsoft doesn't exactly have years of leisure at its disposal. Windows Mobile has already been hit hard by competition from the iPhone and from other rivals, including RIM in the enterprise market and Symbian internationally. That competition has resulted in Microsoft's mobile market share slipping year over year. This year, Microsoft failed to meet its frequently repeated goal of selling “more than 20 million units” through all of its various hardware partners, and instead only sold 18 million. Microsoft senior vice president Andy Lees blew off the missed goal as a “rounding error.” He cited numbers from IDC that indicated Windows Mobile had grown from 11% to just under 13% of the worldwide market for smartphones, growing faster than the overall market, and that unit sales of Windows Mobile phones have both outpaced sales of BlackBerry phones and outsold the iPhone by a factor of two. Windows Mobile misses target Oops, Microsoft Fibbed a Bit There. Canalys reports that Microsoft actually started out with a 23% share of the smartphone market in Q1 2004, which fell to 18% in Q1 2005, then down to 12% in Q1 2006, where it remained in its Q4 2007 figures. Apple ranked at 7% worldwide in Q4 2007, but that was based on sales in one market, of one model, and on one mobile provider, after only being on the market for six months. Smart mobile device shipments hit 118 million in 2007, up 53% on 2006 (Canalys press release: r2008021) If the best Microsoft can do is to claim victory for selling twice as many phones as Apple, worldwide across all of its partners despite having a many years long head start and that great ecosystem of manufacturers behind it, then it should probably just not say anything. Incidentally, with the release of the iPhone 3G, AT&T is reporting having doubled its sales volumes, not to mention all of the other new markets the iPhone 3G is now being sold in worldwide, at half the price of the original model. Within just the US smartphone market, which was Apple's only market last year and is also Microsoft's strongest market for Windows Mobile, the iPhone grabbed a 27% share in its debut third quarter of 2007, and maintained a 28% share in the fourth quarter 2007, behind RIM with 41%, but ahead of Palm at 9%. Adding up all of the Windows Mobile manufacturers selling in the US, Microsoft could only claim to have its software on 21% of the phones sold, a significant step behind Apple. Canalys, Symbian: Apple iPhone Already Leads Windows Mobile in US Market Share, Q3 2007 iPhone Grabs 27% of US Smartphone Market Also, all of these figures bundle in all of the “convergence” Pocket PC mobile devices sold by Microsoft's partners, but none of the iPod touch units Apple sells, which are likely to be in well in excess of its iPhone sales. So Apple's mobile WiFi platform is actually far larger and growing much faster than market statistics companies report under their smartphone category. Anyone hoping that Windows Mobile 7 to going to reverse that trend when it arrives over a year from now is seriously delusional. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? 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  • iPhone Development Postmortem

    The big day has come and gone and we have many more details regarding the iPhone Development Program. Much of what I discussed in the previous post regarding enterprise support has been adopted by Apple, though only the privileged few that were allowed into the enterprise beta program know the full details (and I am not one of them). It does appear that the iPhone will take its place beside BlackBerry devices and Windows Mobile phones in bathroom stalls across the globe, though Apple still has a long way to go in terms of winning the hearts and minds of corporate finance & architecture committees. The main problem: there are a large number of applications, ranging from SAP to SalesForce.com that work fine on existing mobile platforms. If they didn't work well, organizations wouldn't be using them. While the iPhone may be great for future adoption, the ROI will be a bit difficult to justify if businesses want to bring them in to replace existing solutions, even if vendors create iPhone-specific versions of the programs. Do you really need an iPhone to run that ACME CRM application? I can speak from direct enterprise experience, however, that even non-techies were watching Apple's announcement since the integration folks at my company received at least five calls immediately afterwards with the same questions: “So, when are we enabling support for my iPhone?”. DevelopersWanted? Unfortunately, the enterprise features may be the most positive message coming from the announcement, at least initially. While over 100,000 budding iPhone developers took Steve Jobs seriously and gave up their precious personal information to download the SDK, many – including this friendly neighborhood blogger – were ultimately very disappointed to learn that Apple was not interested in our $99.00USD and that they should go read a book…or something. Anything, really except to expect their cool apps to be running on an actual iPhone, rather than an emulator. I can understand Apple needing to slowly roll out memberships, at least initially, but their “thanks, but not right now? e-mails were taken pretty hard – and justifiably so – by very real and talented developers (as opposed to hobbyists like me). Apple needed to do a much better job communicating the rules of the game before soliciting participation and they should have just tagged their “A-list? candidates separately before pseudo-opening program to all. I have and can still develop applications for BlackBerry devices, Windows Mobile and even the Sharp Zaurus. I paid nothing for that privilege and spent no money on development kits or membership. I realize Apple makes its own rules and that the iPhone is a vastly different device but why open the floodgates only to let a few drops of water out (or in, as it were)? I doubt this will dissuade budding iPhone coders, but it has definitely stunted the fervor of some of Apple’s more influential indie allies. NoLimits? If the developer exclusivity is the first shoe to drop, the other is the limitations expressed in the SDK around what you can or cannot do with the device. While other blogs have commented on some specifics, I’m still not comfortable enough with Apple’s legal department when it comes to relating details from documents Apple has expressly forbidden disclosure of. Suffice it to say, certain applications will require a great deal of creativity in order to work the way developers wish (don’t expect SMS-like notifications of chats or tweets). Developers have also expressed concern regarding the double-edged sword that is iPhone application distribution model. While some are thrilled to have their applications presented via the iTunes store front, others are concerned that there would be no support for try-before-you-buy offerings or allowing of add-on modules post-install (via direct download, either free or purchased). Further more, augmenting applications with small scripts/actions may be forbidden as well. Hope Lies With2.0? Unlike programming for “real? computers (Macs or Windows PCs), coding for mobile platforms with actual limitations on processing speed, memory and storage space requires different ways of thinking. It will be challenging enough making decent applications without Apple’s current restrictive climate. Hopefully, we will start seeing further details about wider-scale participation in the program as we get closer to the magical summer release of iPhone software version 2.0. Tags: Commentary, developer, Development, iphone Related posts Why Starbucks/Apple Collab is soInteresting (13) While You're Waiting For The iPhoneSDK… (3) Which Way IsUp!? (12) What Did You Endure for aniPhone? (15) Waiting for Rev B of TheiPhone (8)

  • The Mac OS X malware myth continues (and no, Mac OS X isn't based on Linux)

    Continuing a non-story that will never die, Wired Magazine has an article about the threat of Mac OS X malware, in which I was quoted. I spoke with the author, Ryan Singel, by phone yesterday, and disputed the premise that Apple's market share grows, it will be subject to the same degree of malware that Windows is. Unfortunately, something got lost in the translation. Here's the quote: But Carl Howe, an Apple analyst at Blackfriars Communications, disputes the security researchers' theories. He thinks that OS X's Linux heritage makes Apple systems less vulnerable to attack than Windows-based platforms. He argues that even if hacking Macs hasn't been profitable in the past, attackers would have done it anyway if they'd been able -- just for the attention."I think the market-share thing has always been a myth," Howe said. "It's a good story to talk about."What I actually said was Mac OS X's Unix heritage, not Linux. I've written Ryan about the mistake, but haven't seen a correction yet. I just wanted my readers to know I don't have my *nix's mixed up.But overall, I do stand by my statement that the whole Mac OS X malware story is one of those urban myths that just won't die, just like Craig Shergold, the child with cancer who wanted to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for the most business cards (which, by the way, was true in 1989, but he survived and no longer needs cards). For an ordinary consumer, it's easy to think that since Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows both looks somewhat similar, that they must be similar underneath and exhibit similar vulnerabilities. Therefore, the reasoning goes, the difference in malware must just be due to market share differences. The only problem is that it isn't true. The two platforms have completely different business philosophies, architectures, and decisions behind them. And those differences matter when it comes to security.Microsoft Windows evolved from a hardware platform philosophySee, it's important to remember who Microsoft's biggest customers are. Those big customers aren't consumers; they're hardware vendors. That's why it's nearly impossible to buy a HP or Dell computer without Windows -- HP and Dell are Microsoft's customer, not you. And these hardware vendors are the people who drove Microsoft's growth.When Microsoft designed Windows for the ability to run on as many hardware platforms as possible, it had to make its system easily extensible. Therefore, Windows needed ways that anyone could plug their software into, be they a motherboard maker, a peripheral manufacturer, or a software designer. That meant easy ways for outside companies to modify Windows to their needs. This doesn't just apply to device drivers, but other OS components like dynamically loadable libraries, graphical drivers, and the like. And with thousands of Windows vendors involved, developers became very creative at adding their software into Windows. And Microsoft, responding to Steve Ballmer's chant of "Developers, developers, developers....", put application programming interfaces (APIs) -- some of them public, some of them not -- so developers could install these add-ons. And this extensibility didn't stop at hardware devices. When Microsoft found itself falling behind Netscape and its use of Java in Web browsers, it felt it had to allow Web designers to extend its OS as well. So it added a Windows-only extensibility feature called ActiveX, which allowed Web designers to add code to the browser and to the user's desktop environment. I noted publicly that this was a mistake in Web security in 1997. But in its quest for market share and Internet dominance, it didn't really care about security.Now in 2004, Microsoft recanted on that view, and Bill Gates declared security its top priority with its Trustworthy Computing initiative. But by that point, Microsoft had millions of pieces of driver code and software add-ons that had to be allowed to insert themselves into Windows for its ecosystem to continue functioning. The company was left with two choices: be compatible or be secure. Guess which choice worked best with Microsoft's business model? Apple chose a secure software foundation and rigid platform controlMac OS X, on the other hand, never went through this same "we must be all things to all developers" evolution. It based its OS on a tried-and-true platform, the Berkeley Source Distribution (BSD) version of Unix. The APIs into this system are few and well-publicized. BSD's security model is also both open source and well tested, having been used by educational, government, and commercial researchers for about 30 years. Yes, Apple made changes and extensions to the system, but they were done to make Mac OS X run well on Mac hardware, not a million different Frankensteinian combinations of hardware from thousands of different vendors. And in fact, Apple still exercises very tight control of its platform and operating system software by building in security features that prohibit Mac OS X from running on other Intel hardware, even though it quite easily could allow it.The result: Mac OS X remains a much tougher nut to crack for malware developers. Why? There are actually a lot of reasons, but I'll stick with just my top three. Unlike Windows, Mac OS X users don't run with administrator privileges. Until Windows Vista, almost every Windows user had all privileges to install and modify their OS at all times. Mac OS X, on the other hand, always has users run without such privileges. That means you have to type a password to install or change any critical system software. That minimizes the damage that Web- or email-based malware can do. And unlike Windows, there is no compatibility requirement for ActiveX binary code insertion into the user or kernel environment via the Web in Mac OS X. Mac OS X has less spaghetti code. Ask any security guru and he or she will tell you: a simpler software model is easier to secure than a complex one. Any Unix has only about 200 entry points into the secure kernel environment. And while there are many libraries in the Mac OS X system, most of those don't have enough privileges to do anything really bad (see bullet point above). For a nice graphical comparison of the relatively low complexity of Linux (not the same as Unix, but similar in security philosophy) compared with the high complexity and threat profile Windows, see these lovely charts.Mac OS X mail doesn't automatically run attachments.One of the poorest security decisions that Microsoft made was that back in 2000 or so, it configured its Outlook and Outlook Express mail systems to automatically execute script code on incoming HTML email without any user action required. This was one of the big vectors for virus proliferation earlier this decade. Microsoft has since patched that problem, but it remains a headache for the entire Microsoft ecosystem because unpatched systems still exist. Meanwhile, Apple mail systems have never run attachments or HTML code automatically, so this very common vector for virus transmission just doesn't exist in the Apple world.Apple can actively manage and verify its hardware Apple doesn't need to sacrifice security for compatibility with a million different hardware configurations. In fact, as we've seen in its latest Leopard launch, Apple actively prunes the number of hardware configurations it supports. And Apple has demonstrated with its iPhone that it is no stranger to locking down its hardware/software products to guarantee a good user experience. As a result, Apple doesn't have to provide insecure compatibility interfaces for old hardware or software systems -- and therefore can minimize its threat exposure.Now I'm not saying that Apple has an invulnerable or even a "requires-an-MIT-Ph.D.-to-crack" security system. It doesn't, and smart security guys like Thomas Ptacek have written about Leopard's latest vulnerabilities. There will be security problems, both now, and in the future. But I think it's important to distinguish between having two exploits on the roughly 50 million Mac OS X computers (the latest of which is actually a Trojan Horse, and not a virus) and the roughly 140,000 viruses extant for the hundreds of millions of Microsoft Windows computers worldwide.. Two vulnerabilities don't make an epidemic. And given that Mac OS X is a harder target to penetrate, I don't expect those ratios to change dramatically any time soon.One final note: I noted above that the vulnerability that is being publicized this week is actually a Trojan Horse, not a virus. What that means is that the user actually has to 1) explicitly download a piece of software, which the author advertises as a QuickTime codec, 2) choose to install that software, and 3) type in their administrator's password before the code becomes active. The fact that this threat requires three explicit user actions to activate and has no other way of spreading itself means it will never infect millions of computers the way worms like Storm or MyDoom do. All that said, if you want information on what and how it works, you can see a pretty good presentation here at the SANS Institute.Technorati Tags: Security, Apple, Mac OS X, Windows, Malware, Microsoft, Viruses

  • Faster iPhone faster! Kill!! Kill!!

    My challenge here is to write the one zillionth iPhone story (and MY third) without repeating too much what has been written before or failing to include at least a couple new items which -- trust me -- you'll find below. This column is mainly about how to properly manage the introduction of a disruptive technology, which is harder than most people would guess. It's also about how Apple plans to make this an iPhone Christmas. Being better is not enough, as Steve Jobs learned at least twice before with the introduction of the original Macintosh computer and later with his own NeXT computer. Both of those products had spectacular introductions, rave reviews, and boffo initial sales, which shortly thereafter fell off a cliff. That's the way it is with many new technologies: you can't rely on early adopters alone. There are some people who will buy almost anything that is new, but there aren't enough of those people to help most companies bridge the sales gap that follows a fantastic introduction after all the true believers have bought and the rest of us haven't yet made up our minds. It hurt the original Mac, but then Apple had Apple II sales to rely on. It darned near killed NeXT. It HAS killed many a start-up. Steve Jobs has learned a lot about product introductions in the years since NeXT and nearly all of it comes into play in the way he has managed the iPhone introduction. Here are the rules, if you are keeping score: Set expectations. The iPhone was announced months before it shipped. This was not only because FCC filings would have outed the phone anyway, 90-120 days before it shipped, but also because you have to get people in the mood to buy something that costs $500-600. Months of anticipation helped the hype and helped the sales. Deliver on those expectations. Early reviews are generally pretty positive for the iPhone. It's not enough for the thing to be pretty; it also has to work. Follow up on any problems. The fact that Apple sees the iPhone as a hugely important platform for the future can be seen in the company's decision to give a top-of-the-line iPhone to every Apple employee, even part-timers. This is frigging brilliant. EVERY Apple employee becomes an iPhone evangelist. EVERY Apple employee participates in ongoing stress testing and customer feedback. You can bet that every technical problem will be addressed quickly, simply because the entire company will be experiencing these problems. Have no shortages. Apple is a big company that makes millions and millions of gizmos. The success of the iPod has made Apple the Big Kahuna with Chinese manufacturers, which shows in the complete lack of product shortages despite the success of this rollout. The expected gray market pretty much didn't happen for exactly this reason. Have an upgrade plan for the future, which is to say Christmas. Yeah, what about Christmas? Apple couldn't risk introducing the iPhone at Christmas. They had to get all the bugs out before Christmas in order for the iPhone to be a risk-free gift. Knowing that the phones work, and work well, people can get used to the idea of giving them as gifts. That's one reason why it is easy to predict that iPhone sales for Christmas will be robust. Only for Steve Jobs "robust" is not enough. He wants iPhone Christmas sales to EXPLODE. How do you make that happen? Well, you could lower the price, but don't expect that. Apple WON'T lower iPhone prices before (or probably even after) Christmas. I would expect AT&T to eventually come up with some sort of two-year iPhone subscription deal that effectively lowers the price, but even that won't happen until after the holidays. Incentives don't happen until incentives are needed and with the iPhone they aren't needed yet. The trick to spurring even greater holiday sales is to make a good thing better. It would be nice if Apple and AT&T could come up with some little extra boost for Christmas sales like, for example, a software upgrade. That was pretty much inevitable, don't you think? The idea that the iPhone could go even three months without a significant firmware upgrade would be ignoring the reality of modern consumer electronics. Apple or AT&T will have got a few things wrong that will require a firmware upgrade to fix. And while they are at it, I'm sure the companies will add a feature or two, like TRUE 3G DATA SERVICE. It is my understanding that Apple and AT&T are planning a fall rollout for full 3G iPhone service, with technical trials already underway in certain AT&T markets. AT&T's (formerly Cingular's) 3G uses a technology called HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), which is a combination of GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution). It provides average mobile data download connections between 400 kilobits per second (kbps) and 700 kbps. Not as fast as any of us would like, of course, but the new service will be 3-5 times faster than the current EDGE network alone, making your iPhone suddenly 3-5 times faster than it was before, right? I think so. The question here is whether 3G is already built into the iPhones shipping now or whether it will require a new model? Given that it is coming so soon after the iPhone introduction, I can't believe that even Steve would make us buy new phones. It is very likely that a firmware upgrade will awaken the 3G within all you iPhone owners. And there's that bump needed to make Christmas iPhone sales explode. Nobody likes the slow performance on the EDGE network, so jacking up the speed by 3 to 5 times will give people something more to talk about as well as making it even easier to give an iPhone to those you love. We'll get excited all over again. Actually, AT&T really has no choice but to move to 3G with the iPhone, given the problems iPhones are creating for the EDGE network (see this week's links for more). And what we're getting excited about is much more than a phone or a media player, it is a whole new computing platform. Talk to anyone with iPhone experience and they'll tell you it feels more like a computer than an iPod or a phone. This is Apple's platform for the 21st century that I am sure we'll see revved and augmented in a variety of ways carefully over time. It won't replace desktop or even notebook computers, but this iPhone platform, properly augmented and with the help of Moore's Law, has a chance to do some major market-share grabbing from old Apple partners/competitors, notably Microsoft. Take THAT, Bill.

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