Adobe 9
Mark Pilgrim on the latest version of Adobe Reader. Adobe today reminds me a bit of Apple ten years ago. Tremendous engineering and design talent in the company. A loyal base of users built over 20 years. But management that just doesn’t get it at all, and seems hell-bent on running the company into the ground. Historically, Adobe has provided terrific user experiences. Now, they’re a laughing stock. â
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Leopard and the History and Future of Mac OS X on PowerPC
Daniel Eran DilgerHow long will Apple continue to support existing models of Macs in the latest version of Mac OS X? Previous versions of Appleâs OS have drawn the line for officially supported Macs based on practical considerations, rather than just being arbitrary or artificial. Here's what the past suggests for Mac OS X Leopard and the version that comes after it.The Post-Copland Crisis.Apple carried along official support for the 1986 Mac Plus through Mac System 7.5.5 in 1996. That established an expectation for Mac users that any new Mac System Software would be able to run across a decade long generation of old hardware. Further, Apple had only begun officially selling System 7 as a retail product a few years earlier; many Mac users continued to think of the Mac operating system as something that was available for free, as it had been in the past. That unreasonable support expectation combined with the sense of entitlement held by Mac users had helped to complicate Appleâs mid-90s failure to deliver Copland as a successor to System 7 between 1993 and 1995, and would continue to dog the company in its plans to provide a significant system software update after Copland was mothballed. Faced with the task of maintaining full backward compatibility for both existing applications and a wide range of hardware--but without any assurance that a significant number of Mac users would actually pay for the upgrade--itâs no wonder why Apple was stuck at System 7 for over a decade (Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 were only retoolings of the System 7 operating system released in 1991), and why plans to completely overhaul System 7 with Copland and Gershwin failed.If Apple had the luxury of operating outside of a real market economy and could simply rely on guaranteed future sales at high retail prices, it could have plowed along for twice as long and eventually released something, as Microsoft did a decade later with Windows Vista. As Windows Enthusiasts like to point out, Vista will eventually get deployed no matter how bad it is. [The Secrets of Pink, Taligent and Copland][Has Leopard Fallen into a Copland-Vista Conundrum?][SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1990s]Spindlerâs Complications.By 1990, Apple CEO John Sculley had recognized that Apple needed to set a reasonable minimum hardware threshold for its operating system releases and to figure out a way to get Mac users to fund the expensive operating system development the company was doing. At that time, both Microsoft and IBM were charging PC users around $100 for retail copies of Windows or OS/2, neither of which were even really usable.Figuring out how to actually accomplish those goals never got done at Apple. Instead, Sculleyâs successor Michael Spindler attempted to imitate Sony by releasing ranges of Mac hardware under a variety of vaguely Latin sounding names--Quadra, Centris, and Performa--and a series of confusing, nondescript model numbers. Starting in early 1994, Apple also underwent a complex transition from its original 680x0 Macs to PowerPC hardware. Since much of the original Mac software was written in assembly language, the transition relied on emulation of the existing Mac System Software, which further complicated efforts to deliver significant new features without breaking existing software or prematurely cutting off support for existing machines. Non-PowerPC Macs continued to be sold into 1996.Spindlerâs Apple also began plans to license the Mac software to other hardware makers in late 1994, including APS, Bandai, DayStar, Motorola, Pioneer, Power Computing, Radius, and UMAX. That effort skimmed off the cream of Appleâs profitability and handed it to the cloners, leaving Apple to service the low end of the market at Sears with its Performas while also funding the development of nearly profitless Mac System Software to support an increasingly wide range of hardware. [Why Apple Failed]Simplifying the Mac Hardware Lineup Around the G3.When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company's product line was all over the place, although efforts were already underway to simplify things. Apple had only just discontinued the last of its 680x0-based Macs a year earlier. Under Spindler replacement Gil Ameilo, Apple had also scraped together a "Unity" release of System 7, newly rebranded as Mac OS 7.6. That release officially extended support back to all "32-bit clean" Macs, which included the eight year old Mac IIci from 1989.The installed base of Mac hardware not only spanned across two hardware platforms--680x0 and Power PC--but nearly each individual Mac model from Apple had also used its own highly customized and often uniquely quirky hardware design. The cloners were also introducing subtle differences in their own machines, too.Despite using the very modern PowerPC processors and Open Firmware, Macs in 1997 still incorporated old Mac ROMs to maintain software compatibility with the existing Mac OS. After taking control of Apple in the middle of that year, Jobs announced the release of a highly simplified product line using the new G3 processor. The G3 was such a significant leap over earlier PowerPC processors that even the entry level G3s were faster than the top of the line models Apple had been selling. So while Apple had a confusing array of eight different major PowerMac models at the beginning of 1997, by the end of the year it only had two: a desktop G3 and a tower G3. It also shipped a G3 PowerBook.[How CPR Saved Apple]Mac OS X 10.0 - 10.2: G3 Only.The introduction of the G3 processor created a clean line between it and the wide array of odd PowerPC hardware designed prior to 1997. The G3 also signaled the end of the line for the various models built by Mac cloners, who all refused to license new versions of the Mac OS at terms Jobs deemed reasonable. The G3 was also the first PowerPC processor optimized to run Mac software. That made it an easy minimum target for Mac OS X, which remained in development through 2001. In the meantime, Jobs bought out Power Computing--the largest Mac cloner--for $100 million, and terminated other clone agreements by releasing Mac OS 7.7 as âMac OS 8â? in mid 1997. That revision also became the first edition of the Mac OS to really be successfully sold at retail; over 1.2 million copies were sold within the first two weeks. The next fall in 1998, Apple released Mac OS 8.5, which was the first version to be PowerPC-only, limiting support to Macs sold over the last five years. In 1999, Apple shipped Mac OS 9. The new Apple had proved it could plan, ship, and sell regular releases of an operation system. The next task would be shipping Mac OS X as a major new leap past the classic System 7.Between 2001 and 2002, the 10.0 to 10.2 versions of Mac OS X limited support to the G3 desktop Macs, including those first introduced in late 1997. It did not support the original PowerBook G3 unveiled alongside the G3 desktops however. The first supported PowerBook was the "WallStreet" revision introduced in May of 1998. That maintained the roughly five year support window for machines to be updated with new versions of Mac operating system software. [Apple Sells 1.2 Million Copies of Mac OS 8 - Apple][Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Mac OS X 10.3: New World Macs Only.After moving its hardware line to the G3, Apple next delivered a revised "New World" platform which modernized the Mac's hardware and removed its old hardware ROMs, replacing them with âROM in RAMâ? software loaded from disk. The first New World model was the first iMac in 1998. The beige G3 Macs from 1997 were replaced with a single new "blue and white" G3 in early 1999, which used the same translucent plastic as the iMac. Apple shipped its first "New World" laptop in the Lombard PowerBook G3, distinguished by its translucent bronze keyboard. In July 1999, Apple released the iBook.The release of Mac OS X Panther 10.3 in 2003 extended support back to Macs with G3 processors and built-in support for USB. This wasn't due to an actual requirement for USB, but rather a shorthand way to describe a cutoff for the support of the significantly different architecture of "Old World" Macs designed prior to the iMac, as all New World Macs also provided support for USB. Panther retained a roughly five year support window for existing Mac models.Mac OS X 10.4: Modern New World Macs Only.In 2004, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 retained support for most New World Macs using G3 processors, but required support for built-in FireWire. Again, this wasn't related to a need for FireWire ports, but rather a way to exclude support for the earliest of the now five year old New World Macs, which Apple decided would not run Tiger acceptably, including: the original 1998 iMac.the original 1999 iBook.the 1999 "Lombard" PowerBook G3.These five year old machines can still run Tiger using XPostFacto, a third party enabler designed to force Mac OS X to run on earlier systems. However, significant differences in their hardware--coupled with their limited performance--prevented Apple from officially supporting them.In the case of the Lombard PowerBook, its DVD drive was never supported for movie playback under Mac OS X because the system did not have the power to decode DVD video in software; under Mac OS 9, it relied on a hardware decoder. Rather than holding up Mac OS X to develop custom support for the obsolete hardware decoder in the now half-decade old Lombard PowerBooks, Apple told its users to continue using the playback software it came with. [XPostFacto: OS X for Legacy Macs - Other World Computing]Mac OS X 10.5: 867 MHz Processor Required.For Leopard, Apple is specifying an 867 MHz G4. That excludes support for the now functionally obsolete G3s, and draws a line down the middle of the 2001 "Quicksilver" PowerMac G4s, excluding support for the 2001 G4 Cube and the first three generations of the Titanium PowerBook G4 up to late 2002. This again maintains official support for five to six years of Mac models.This break roughly corresponds to the arrival of the G4+, a revised version of the G4 with support for L3 cache and improvements to AltiVec. It is also near the line for supporting Quartz Extreme and the higher end Core Image, both of which are technologies used to delegate graphics work to the video card. However, Core Image is not a requirement for using Leopard; such a requirement would exclude support for all G4 desktops and laptops prior to 2003. Leopard Looms Large.That indicates Apple is being fairly liberal in officially supporting older models in Leopard. The obvious reason for this is that Apple wants to sell Leopard to as many Mac users as possible, even more than it wants to use Leopard to sell new Macs. Between 2001 and 2002, Apple sold just over 6 million Macs. From 2003 to the present, Apple has sold about 23 million Macs. Apple wants to target the broadest possible market for Leopard, so excluding support for older machines is done with some hesitation. By extending support back into 2001, Apple is selling to an audience of nearly 30 million versus 23 million.At the same time however, the likelihood of selling retail copies of Leopard to users of older Macs begins to drop as six year old machines go out of service or are no longer viewed by their owners as needing brand new software. This spring, analysts estimated an installed base of around 22 million active Mac users, an increase of 6 million over their figures from 2005.[Mac install base estimated at 22 million pre-Leopard - AppleInsider][Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC]Is Leopard the Last Hurrah for Power PC Macs?The reports of PowerPC's obsolescence have been greatly exaggerated. Last year, the rumor was that Leopard would be released only for Intel Macs. This year, with Leopard looming on the horizon, the new rumor is that Mac OS X 10.6--possibly named Lynx or Cougar--will be Intel-only. However this is only uninformed speculation. When this rumor came up earlier about Leopard, I posted the article, âUnraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth.â? It pointed out that Apple would not release an Intel-only Leopard for an audience of the roughly 3 million new Intel Macs sold in 2006 when it could reach an installed base of around 20 million Macs with a Universal Leopard.It noted, âIf Apple continues to sell new Macs at current rates, it will be 2008 before Intel Macs begin to outnumber PowerPCs, and that assumes that every year, 4 million old PowerPC Macs will be destroyed. There will be a significant proportion of PowerPC Macs still buying software well into 2010, and the market will accommodate them.â?[Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth]Why the Mac OS X Backward Compatibility Window May Increase.Appleâs Mac OS support troubles back in 1996 related to the support of multiple platforms, a wide variety of different models, and an inability to effectively market the Mac OS. Those issues are no longer factors today. Despite Appleâs maintenance of dual platforms since the transition to Intel began in 2006, technology has erased the barrier as a real problem.The majority of the installed base of around 22 million Macs is PowerPC; less than 10 million are Intel Macs. Apple has started to sell dramatically more new Macs at a faster rate over the last couple years--displacing the PowerPC majority more rapidly--but there will still be a lot of PowerPC Macs well into 2010. Worrying about 10.6 or even 10.7 being Intel-only shouldn't be among anyone's greatest concerns. By 2009, the likely ballpark release date of Leopard's successor, the trailing end of officially supported Macs would include over 8 million PowerPC Macs sold since 2004, even more machines--and more recent models--than Apple is targeting now by reaching back into 2001 to support QuickSilver G4s in Leopard. Further, supporting machines from 2003--including the first G5s--will be no difficult stretch, because the Mac architecture didn't change dramatically between 2003 and 2005 in the way that it rapidly did between 1997 and 2000. In addition, Mac OS X hardware dependancies have been designed to degrade gracefully. For example, the acceleration framework and Core Graphics libraries make use of specialized hardware if available, or simply run on the general purpose CPU if it isnât.It's also interesting to note that prior to 2000, Macs weren't sold with Mac OS X because it didn't yet exist. That means earlier versions of Mac OS X supported years of Macs that were never really designed to run it, while Leopard still supports the vast majority of the machines anyone ever bought with the expectation to actually use Mac OS X. New generations of Mac OS X will have fewer reasons to exclude support for existing hardware, leaving the support line tied to practical performance.[Why Apple hasn't used Intel processors before]Intel-Only Not Necessary.Around 11 million Macs were sold between 2003 and 2005, and all of them were PowerPC. It would be foolish for Apple to simply exclude that audience in the next revision of Mac OS X without good reason. As it works out, there really isn't any good reason for Apple to ditch PowerPC. Apple's Universal Binaries architecture makes it relatively easy to maintain support across multiple platforms. It's not like the move from Motorola 680x0 classic Macs to PowerPC, where old 680x0 software was emulated at significant cost on PowerPC, and new PowerPC code couldn't run at all on 680x0 Macs. That situation left developers to wonder which they should invest their support in and for how long. Universal Binaries means there isn't any tough choice to make.Universal Binaries not only support PowerPC and Intel, but also make supporting 32 and 64 bit architectures easy. Leopard supports all four Mac platforms in the same software release:32 bit PowerPC G464 bit PowerPC G532 bit Intel64 bit Intel Microsoft faces big problems in migrating its users to 64 bits, because it has no seamless architecture to waltz its 32 bit Intel users onto 64 bit hardware. Instead, Windows users have to obtain a separate 64 bit edition of their operating system, new 64 bit drivers, and new 64 bit applications. Supporting both is problematic, and deploying software across both is also trouble. Even Microsoft hasnât delivered its portfolio of applications for its 64 bit versions of Windows. Microsoft faces enough troubles selling Vista, let alone its deferred plan to deal with 64 bits and EFI at some point in the future. Apple already has both issues covered, allowing it to concentrate on more interesting tasks. [How Appleâs Firmware Leapfrogs BIOS PCs]Applications that are Intel-Only.For Apple and third party developers using Apple's Xcode tools, supporting both Intel and PowerPC architectures is really no more difficult than supporting just Intel Macs. In fact, Apple has also ported Mac OS X to the ARM architecture for use in the iPhone and the iPod Touch, demonstrating that it can flex its multi-platform muscle in several directions, not just as one-time, disposable transition plan. Universal Binaries isnât a crutch, its a powerful deployment technology.There are only three types of developers that will have any reason to deliver Intel-only Mac apps:Companies like Adobe, which base their applications on their own custom, internal cross platform architecture. Since Adobe maintains its own system that is based on Intel-centric development, its new apps such as Soundbooth aren't ever going to appear for PowerPC. If it used Xcodeâs Universal Binaries, this would not be a problem. Xcode doesn't target Windows though (at least not in a way Adobe can use!), so Adobe rolled its own system.â¨Software designed for Windows and ported to Intel Macs using a WINE-like engine. This is how EA is porting its new games to the Mac. They are actually Windows games running on a thin portability layer that emulates the Windows APIs. Since games don't integrate into the desktop UI, a full Mac port isn't very valuable for users or worth doing for the developer, particularly since the Mac gaming market is still pretty small. Porting over Windows games is far faster and keeps new releases in sync so that Mac gamers will have access to new titles sooner, and won't miss features such as network play. â¨Environment emulators and other software tied directly to the x86 architecture, including Parallels. These can't be ported to PowerPC for the same reason that it makes no sense to port Virtual PC to Intel. Apart from running Windows--which is tightly bound to the 32-bit x86 architecture--there is really very little software that needs to run on a specific processor.For most other software, including the vast majority of what makes up Mac OS X, it really isn't difficult to deliver both PowerPC and Intel versions, so as long as there are PowerPC Macs around, there'll be PowerPC software. That makes it extremely unlikely that Apple would drop support for PowerPC in the next generation of Mac OS X after Leopard.Maintaining and Growing the Mac Installed Base.What about the argument that Apple would prefer to âforceâ? users to buy a new Mac to get the latest system rather than simply upgrade their existing hardware? Consider that Appleâs Mac profit margins are around 20% or less, while its Mac OS X margins are closer to Microsoftâs 80% Windows margins. [Office Wars 2 - Microsoftâs Outrageous Office Profits]Mac users paying to upgrade to Mac OS X are likely to buy a new Mac eventually as a replacement, so Appleâs delaying that hardware sale for a profitable software upgrade makes more sense than forcing existing Mac users to go out and buy new hardware, which might involve comparing a new Mac against a PC running Windows.The more Macs that can run the most recent version of Mac OS X, the more attractive the target is for third party developers. Apple wants to maintain the majority of Mac users on the latest version of its software. In contrast, Windows Vista is competing against Windows XP, and the fact that Microsoft only earns 20% of its revenues from (the much more expensive) retail box sales indicates that most PC users upgrade when buying a new PC. More Mac users pay to upgrade their software.That fact contributes toward making the Mac platform far more valuable than Windows; despite having only 3% market share of the entire worldâs production of PCs, Apple makes more money on hardware sales than Dell with its 15% share of the market, and--after including Microsoftâs tremendous losses from its non-monopoly businesses--made half as much money in software as Microsoft did with its 98% share. Windows Enthusiast prefer not to think about this.Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business last year, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Appleâs 2% of the PC market doesnât seem so small anymore. [Can Apple Take Microsoft in the Battle for the Desktop?][Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC]What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone
Daniel Eran DilgerThe history of the Office Wars provides interesting context for Appleâs software strategy with the iPhone today. While third party software development offers all kinds of tantalizing potential for the new mobile, there are a half dozen reasons why Apple may not ever deliver the iPhone fully open to third party development, following the model of gaming consoles.Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Appleâs iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoftâs Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolySoftware Lessons For the iPhone: 1997 - 2007.When Steve Jobs gained the opportunity to retake control of Apple in 1997, he immediately set out to build and assemble a software business for the Mac platform. Apple restarted serious development of QuickTime, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, which had targeted its sights on quickly destroying it to make way for monopolistic expansion of its Windows Media. [Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime][How Microsoft Pushed QuickTime's Final Cut][Why Apple Failed][How CPR Saved Apple][Why Apple Bounced Back]In addition to repurposing NEXTSTEP as Mac OS X and buying and building a series of professional and consumer software suites, the new Apple also developed the iPod platform. The iPod used intuitive software to differentiate Appleâs hardware, launching the computer maker into a new market for sophisticated, data-driven consumer devices. Microsoftâs own efforts in consumer electronics have flopped miserably with the failures of its Handheld PC, Pocket PC, UMPC, Windows Mobile, Media2Go, Mira, SPOT, and Personal Media Center initiatives, among many others.[Appleâs NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft][The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile][Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV]Microsoft Outgunned in Software by a Hardware Maker.Microsoft was late to realize the software threat posed by the new Apple. Five major revisions and over thirty free updates to Mac OS X have ran circles around Microsoftâs capacity to deliver one desktop operating system software update and a couple service packs since 2001.[Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Apple also introduced three generations of iWork as an expanding productivity suite during the four year hibernation period Microsoft left since its last version of Office for Mac. Apple delivered support for Microsoftâs own proprietary OOXML file format on the Mac even before Microsoft itself could. At $79, iWork will eviscerate sales of the $400 Office for Mac, which has until now been a cash cow lazily ruminating for years between releases.This year, Apple also targeted and destroyed Microsoftâs fledgeling efforts to repurpose WinCE as a smartphone platform, seemingly overnight. That has given Apple a significant new platform in the iPhone, soon to be joined by the new iPod Touch. [Whatâs New in iWork 08][Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model][Curious Stuff About the New iPods]Six Reasons the iPhone Will Stay Closed.Will Apple give third party developers the keys to its new vehicle and allow them to drive off with the value it has created? It hasnât yet, and there are a number of reasons to think that Apple wonât. Note that I am not expressing an opinion that the iPhone should be left closed, but rather simply presenting why I think it is unlikely Apple will ever open it up in the same way the Mac is open to any and all development.First, the company has lined up a suitable outlet for third party expansion via the standards based web platform available within Safari. Thatâs not enough to do everything developers want to do--it has serious constraints for creating games, for example--but it offers a good enough alternative to serve more than 80% of most developersâ needs.â¨â¨[Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software]â¨[iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse!]â¨Second, the company has developed and begun production testing of online software sales through iTunes, currently limited to 5G iPod games. This mechanism appears too sophisticated to simply be designed for a half dozen $5 games. Apple is quite obviously going to distribute other software through iTunes for the iPhone. If it were going to be open, there would be no need for such a secure software distribution system.â¨â¨[Apple's New Dual Processor Game Console]â¨[Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works]â¨Third, historical perspective suggests that once a solid platform has been established, a vendor can sell software as fast as it can deliver it without even trying very hard. Appleâs Claris, Microsoftâs Windows, and the game consoles from Sony and Nintendo all provide examples of this. The iPodâs success suggests Apple can establish a viable mobile platform without the need for software partners. It can handle software transactions as fast as it can sell iTunes songs. Thatâs big.â¨â¨[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Appleâs iWork] â¨[Office Wars 2 - Microsoftâs Outrageous Office Profits]â¨[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]â¨[Nintendo Wii vs Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3]â¨Fourth, depending upon large third party developers has caused Apple--and Steve Jobs--some severe headaches. Microsoft's late 80s betrayal of the Macintosh led to Appleâs enslavement to Office, and induced CEO John Sculley to sign away broad intellectual property rights to Microsoft, which Microsoft then immediately used as a weapon against Apple.â¨â¨In the mid 90s, Microsoft led Adobe, Macromedia and other large companies to abandon the Mac platform. In the late 90s, those same companies refused to support Appleâs new Rhapsody plans following the companyâs acquisition of NeXT, forcing Apple to spend half a decade retooling the Mac OS, primarily so those developers could sell their existing apps to Mac users without much effort, even while they were earning fantastic software profits and delivering minimal innovation.â¨â¨In other words, Appleâs technology game plan was delayed for a half decade so that Microsoft could sell its $400 copies of Office and Adobe could sell suites of its $500 and up creative applications, all while Apple did all the work in adapting its $99 operating system to run their Classic Mac OS code with minimal effort. â¨â¨Prior to returning to Apple, Jobs experienced his own betrayal and abandonment at the hands of partners--including IBM, HP, Digital, Data General, and Sun--related to NeXT and OpenStep. â¨â¨In all of these cases, the third parties were simply acting in their own best interests. With the iPhone, Apple will act in its own best interests. It will carve out a phenomenally powerful software platform for itself.â¨â¨[Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC: The History of NeXT]â¨[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]â¨[Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody]â¨Fifth, open Application Programming Interfaces involve complex management and maintenance. This is not a problem unique to Apple; it exists for Microsoft and every other company that offers an API for developers to build upon. An API is an interfacing boundary between the software supplied by a vendor and the software supplied by third parties. â¨â¨Ideally, an API allows third parties to do everything they need very cleanly. That allows the vendor to make changes on their side of the API curtain without causing any compatibility problems for software on the other side. In reality, nearly every change and update has significant impacts for third party developers. The more complex and low level of an API being exposed, the more difficult it is to manage significant changes without introducing problems for third party partners. â¨â¨Apple has worked to develop objective APIs that are stable and resilient to internal changes, but if developers are unsatisfied with the level of performance or portability provided, they will work around the API boundary, almost guaranteeing that any significant changes made on Appleâs side will break their applications in the future. â¨â¨Microsoft has often accommodated such âbad programmingâ? by expanding APIs and creating new ones, and lugging around a legacy of old APIs to retain broad compatibility with existing applications. The result is that it is very difficult for Microsoft to actually innovate, or to offer OS level enhancements that upgrade existing applications. â¨â¨This is particularly a problem for Windows Vista, which is hamstrung between the problem of providing entirely new hardware driver APIs on one hand while also maintaining a boatload of crufty legacy APIs on the other. It is absolutely the worst of both worlds. â¨â¨[Five Windows Flaws]â¨[Leopard vs Vista 5: Development Challenges]â¨Sixth, as is the case with software APIs, closed hardware platforms offer a vendor open flexibility for future expansion, portability, and upgrades. â¨â¨With the Xbox, Microsoft didnât provide a wide open set of APIs for developers, only a subset for building very similar types of games. This closed API allowed Microsoft to move the console from Intel to PowerPC hardware in the Xbox 360 without extreme problems, something the company was unable to maintain earlier when it tried to deliver Windows NT for various hardware platforms in the late 90s. â¨â¨Apple has already benefitted from the flexibility of a closed hardware platform on the iPod. Had Apple allowed developers to write applications for the iPod, it would have to string along support for those old applications across every new generation of the iPod. Having to do that would complicate Appleâs own efforts to deliver new iPods. â¨â¨Additionally, customers would be upset with Appleâs iPod if the apps they downloaded crashed, installed spyware, or caused performance problems. While a rogue Mac app isnât likely to drain a laptop battery down dead, power management is far more critical on handheld mobile devices like the 11 mm thick iPhone. â¨â¨Given that many consumers are already flummoxed by the reality that batteries wear out after a few years, imagine their rage at finding out that Apple allowed them to install a some worthless Tamagotchi pet that destroyed their battery early. â¨â¨Similar problems plague Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. In particular, Microsoftâs attempts to provide a âone size fits allâ? solution and broadly license it to hardware developers results in API constraints that limit supported screen size resolutions, break compatibility with existing versions of applications, and severely limit the power management performance of those devices and their ability to deliver acceptable battery life. â¨â¨If there were any meaningful installed base of Windows Mobile phones, it would also be plagued with spyware and viruses, just as Windows is on the desktop. â¨â¨[Inside the iPhone: UI, Stability, and Software]â¨[Device Problems In Search of a Solution]â¨[David Sessions Tries to Milk iPhone Battery Panic in Slate]A Safe API Boundary for Third Party Development.The simple solution to all these issues is to not offer a custom, wide open API at all, and instead leave third party developers to build applications that make use of open web standards. Nothing new to learn, no barriers to adoption, no proprietary development tools to maintain, no pleading with developers to support a new platform that remains unproven in the marketplace, and no third party crisis to manage when the hardware and software are significantly upgraded.No API, no problem! Hackers can discover how to install tools and handy mini-apps, but Appleâs next software update or hardware revision won't have to figure out how to maintain compatibility with those hacks. That allows the hackers to hack without holding things back. Meanwhile, Apple can reserve the right to offer highly integrated applications of its own that take full advantage of the underlying system without revealing or sharing its intellectual property secrets with third parties that may choose to use those secrets against it--just as Microsoft did to Apple with Windows in the late 80s, or as Sony did to Nintendo with the original PlayStation just a few years afterward.[Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software]Closed Development Involving Third Parties is Not Open.Incidentally, this is the same closed model that resulted in great success for Microsoft and Sony after they betrayed and then supplanted their former partners. Microsoft set up the illusion of an open, developer-friendly platform with Windows, but then used its home field advantage to plot out the assassinations of any and all of the potential rivals it didnât want to compete against: WordPerfect, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Netscape, Sun, and todayâs targets such as Google and Symantec.The unsurprising result was that Windows users ended up using Microsoftâs Word, Excel, Access, Fox Pro, language tools, web browser, media software, desktop search, anti-virus, spyware management, etc ad nauseam. With Windows users completely enslaved to Microsoftâs own applications, it was easy to erect significant barriers to prevent the emergence of any new competitive applications from rivals. Clearly, Windows is only an âopen platformâ? in areas where it suits Microsoft. Further, Microsoftâs idea of who a âcompetitorâ? is can change. For example, Windows desktop search wasnât a rival feature for Microsoft to kill until it decided it wanted Googleâs business.[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Windows Enthusiastsâ Slavery to a Vicious Master. Whether Microsoftâs closed Windows platform is a bad thing is a matter of debate; Windows Enthusiasts celebrate their enslavement. It is my opinion that Microsoftâs closed Windows platform isnât bad simply because it is closed, but rather because Microsoftâs insatiable greed is holding back innovation that would otherwise flourish. One example is Microsoftâs Internet Explorer browser, which rapidly advanced until Microsoft destroyed Netscape. After that, it went into maintenance mode hibernation and didnât budge until Firefox began to threaten Microsoftâs position years later. Thatâs anti-consumer; Microsoft wonât do anything for its enslaved users until a would-be savior threatens to set them free. Microsoft isnât bad because it is closed; it is bad because it is disgustingly greedy. Windows Enthusiasts need to stop deluding themselves into thinking that they live in a free world of an open platform. They are slaves, and their master is not only vicious, but also incompetent and has no taste. [Safari on Windows? Apple and the Origins of the Web][Apple in the Web Browser Wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer][The Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari]Closed Without Pretense.At the same time, it is possible to voluntarily join a closed platform and benefit from its advantages. Nintendo carved out a closed video gaming empire that required third party developers to pay it licensing fees in order to develop any games to sell for its system. Nintendoâs closed business model worked better than Atariâs with the 2600, which had earlier allowed third party games developers to glut the market with bad games, resulting in the video game crash of 1983. Consumers were left thinking that home video games were done to death and would never recover.Sega, Sony, and Microsoftâs Xbox group have all similarly managed closed gaming platforms to deliver high quality expectations, even subsidizing game consoles to establish user interest. The only differences for Appleâs closed iPhone may be that:Appleâs iPhone hardware sells at a sustainable profit without a desperate subsidy, removing risk and allowing for regular feature upgrades. â¨Apple is likely to use software downloads as a way to integrate the iPhone into Mac hardware sales and its online services, rather than simply trying to make a killing selling $50 to $75 game software titles as the console makers do.[Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security]Software as a Great Differentiator.By offering free or low cost software in the model of $5 iPod games, Apple will be able to use its closed platform to deliver software designed to:attract more iPhone and iPod Touch hardware buyers.earn iPhone mobile service revenue fees.earn commissions from WiFi iTunes sales and related deals. direct new iPhone users to iTunes and Apple TV.draw attention to the Mac, which will offer iPhone integrated features Windows does not. Microsoft does some of the same things with Windows Mobile, which ties into the companyâs Windows Server products--including Exchange Server--and is also deeply integrated with the desktop sync services of Windows and its Office applications. The problem for Microsoft is that it does not sell phones or make money on service revenues as Apple does. Microsoft charges expensive client access and software licensing fees, but still canât make a sustainable profit on its Windows Mobile business. Itâs also stuck with lame vendors such as HTC, which make poorly integrated hardware that is embarrassing to use. Microsoft could make its own phone, but like the Zune it would alienate its existing hardware partners; further, the Zune disaster indicated that hardware sales isnât a core competency of the company anyway. [Phone Wars: iPhone vs TyTN, Treo, Pearl, E62, P990, Q][iPhone Sales vs Zune, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile]Selling Hardware with Software vs Selling Software Licenses.Using software to sell hardware fits in with Appleâs past and present use of free or low cost software to differentiate the Mac. In the distant past, that included HyperCard and QuickTime; today it includes the shareware-priced but highly regarded iLife and iWork apps. The full version of Mac OS X costs $129, while Microsoftâs Ultimate Windows Vista is an absurd $400, the same price as an iPhone!Appleâs strategy of using low cost, high quality software to differentiate its hardware plays well against the fact that consumers simply donât want to pay for software, while they think nothing of paying big money for desirable hardware. Nobody would pay much for an iPod âOSâ? or a software music player, but millions of people have paid hundreds of dollars for an iPod.That principle has worked in Microsoftâs favor in the past, as it hides the cost of Windows by invisibly bundling it into PC sales. However, its recent fantasy that consumers will widely upgrade their PCs to more expensive versions of Vista indicates Microsoft is highly delusional. Pro-Microsoft wags can chart out their predictions of âimpressive Vista adoptionâ? based entirely upon OEM bundled copies, but consumers donât want it, and no significant number of people are going to pay big money to upgrade to the $400 Vista Ultimatum. [Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995]The Commodity Future of PC Software.What will happen instead is an increasing commoditization of the consumer PC and its software, driven towards standards by an industry that demands interoperability. Microsoft couldnât hold back the web with its proprietary MSN a decade ago, and companies that once pushed Windows are now behind Linux, including Novell and IBM. PC OEMs are also rethinking their unilateral relationship with Microsoft as they struggle to survive in the shadow of Microsoftâs vast profits. Rather than paying $400 for a PC with a $50 OEM copy of Windows running IE and Outlook, nagging you to verify your software as Genuine and to upgrade to the $400 version of Vista and to hand your credit card number to the dancing paperclip recommending a subscription to Windows Live OneCare terrorism protection, the $250 PC of the near future will come with a standards based web browser and email client. It will be called an iPhone, and it wonât run Microsoft Office.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! 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An AIR of Invisibility
Al Mandel, who helped market the original LaserWriter at Apple and later had several high-level positions at AOL, used to say, "The step after ubiquity is invisibility," by which he meant that once a technology had reached the point where everyone had it, then people simply forgot about it and from then on assumed it would be there. Invisibility is a good thing because it means there will always be a market for your product. Invisibility is a high-tech annuity. There are very few technologies, however, that make it all the way to invisibility and most of those when it comes to PCs are hardware technologies -- DRAM, disk drives, Ethernet, MAYBE x86 processors. It is much more rare for software to become invisible. Microsoft Windows still hasn't made it, though html and zip encoding have. In terms of software applications, I can think of only two that have reached the point of ubiquity and hence invisibility -- Flash and PDF, both of which come from the same company, Adobe Systems, the promised subject of this week's column. Being the owner of two invisible technologies makes Adobe more powerful than most of us can even imagine. Adobe is a fascinating company both because of its techiest of roots and because it stands today at a corporate crossroads of sorts and has to decide what it intends to be when the company is all grown up. Adobe absolutely dominates nearly every market for graphical software and is a strong competitor in video, too. For the company to reach the next level of growth would require either absorbing or destroying Autodesk, thus taking over Computer-Aided Design, the last graphic niche Adobe does not control, or choosing to branch off in some new direction. Much to the relief of Autodesk, I believe Adobe has opted for the latter course. Adobe is moving into developer tools in a big way to support its grab for mindshare in the interactive/rich web application space where much of the excitement lately seems to be. Some people think of this as Browser Wars 2.0, but I think it is more fundamental than that. Here are the players. Microsoft is putting massive resources behind Silverlight. Sun is trying to take Java to the next level with Java FX. Mozilla is trying to improve its position through AJAX, Canvas support, and better offline support. And Adobe is leaning hard on Flash, Adobe Integrated Runtime or AIR (formerly code-named Apollo), and Flex. My money is on Adobe simply because of those two invisible weapons, PDF and Flash. What could PDF, Adobe's Portable Document Format, possibly have to do with this? It's a 30+ megabyte download living right now in more than a BILLION computers. Same for Flash -- a BILLION computers. That's more than 60 megabytes of Adobe code living in nearly every computer on every desktop or laptop in the world -- greater market penetration by far than even Windows enjoys. And what's IN there? Nobody outside Adobe really knows. Is there room in that 60 megabytes for the Adobe Reader, Flash, and a few hooks or applets Adobe might throw in to assist with some future product or service roll out? Sure, why not? That's the power of invisibility. But invisibility offers no advantage to those who can't follow through. That's not Adobe, by which I mean that's not Flash, which has grown to be so much more than it was ever intended to be. By itself, Flash has had an amazing evolution. We started with Java applets right? What happened to those? (They're actually making a slow comeback with many of the original issues fixed.) Flash did Java applets right. In fact they did it so right, I imagine Flash adherents will be offended with just comparing the two. The folks at Macromedia (now Adobe) saw some amazing shortcomings in other web-based execution systems and simply did it right. Java applets were fantastic with major shortcomings (huge Java runtime, poor performance, clunky and ugly interface, etc). Flash fixed all or most of those. And Flash does cross-platform so much better than Java ever did. If it sounds like I am more or less writing off Java despite Sun's recent announcement of Java FX to directly compete with AIR and Silverlight, well I am. Adobe is far more focused than Sun on this market segment and there are just as many Flash developers as Java developers. So where is Adobe headed with this? Traditionally we'd expect a fight with Microsoft for the desktop, but I think Adobe is headed in a different direction, toward mobile and embedded devices, with the desktop variants like AIR primarily intended to make sure there is something for all those mobile devices to link TO. Here's a clue. Describing why Adobe bought Macromedia (it was to get Flash) an Adobe employee said, "We tried everything, but we couldn't get Acrobat small enough to work on a cell phone. You can do a Flash interface that's a fraction of the file size." Expect Flash in everything and perhaps even Flash in a chip. Deploying software in hardware is the ultimate DRM. Think about anywhere you see a graphical user interface that isn't attached to a PC -- kiosks, high-end TV remote controls, touchscreens, ATMs, cell phones, digital cameras, VCRs, DVRs, GPS systems, set-top boxes, computer monitors, televisions, elevators, the Toyota Prius, medical equipment, Point of Sale systems, the "cash registers" at McDonalds -- everywhere, really. In each case, the user interface was probably developed by a specialized team for specific hardware. The team may have limited training in GUI design or usability, the interface may not be portable across new device models, and the development tools may not be very evolved, which would slow the GUI creation process. Flash potentially solves all those problems AND creates new opportunities. Flash is well understood, and the development environment is highly evolved and therefore efficient. There are many experienced Flash designers, so the pool of available talent is potentially much larger. GUI design can be done by people who don't require intimately specialized knowledge of the underlying hardware. GUI elements would be portable across device models and even device categories. Think how the right-facing triangle of the "Play" button started on tape recorders, moved to VCRs, and is now on CD players, DVD players, DVRs, iPods, and any hardware or software that records or plays back content. GUIs would evolve much more quickly and cost less to create. There could be standard interface libraries for all types of uses, and the similar GUIs would lower the learning curve for users. Talented interface designers would be in demand. User interfaces would be potentially upgradeable. More interesting, GUIs could be user-specific: the same cell phone might have a "Grandma interface" for one user, but a very different GUI for teens. And there's no reason why that should stop with cell phones. Funny, the latest release of Adobe Creative Suite lets you prototype interfaces for various cell phones, so this strategy -- at least in its embryonic form -- has now been expressed as code. But let's take it a step further. Once you own the interface to every mobile device you can make those devices talk more easily to your networked applications than possibly to those from Apple, Microsoft, or Sun. As we move toward a fully mobile Internet, compliance with mobile APIs will be more important than what operating system is running on the server, which is why I believe Adobe is putting so much effort behind AIR and Flex. It's a perfectly valid plan for taking from Microsoft the market leadership in software 10 years from now by creating yet another invisible platform. And if it doesn't work, well there's always Autodesk.
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Microsoft's Mojave Attempts to Wet Vista's Desert
Daniel Eran Dilger Nearly two years after Windows Vista was finally released, Microsoft has remained unable to shake off its reputation as being slow, incompatible with existing hardware and software, and generally a poor and overpriced product that nobody wants. Microsoft is now trying to reverse Vista's bad reputation by insisting that the software's problems are not technical but rather just the fault of ignorant customers duped in part by Apple's âGet a Macâ campaign. What's Vista's real problems, and will Microsoft's âMojave Experimentâ help solve them? Blame Apple! Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined Windows Enthusiast pundits in theorizing that Vista's image problems are primarily the result of Apple's advertisements that regularly poke fun at the problems in Vista. The company has now taken aim at shooting at the messenger with a $300 million ad campaign. In July, Brad Brooks, Microsoft's VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, addressed the company's business partners at its Worldwide Partner Conference, saying, âWe've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It's caused some impact. We're going to start countering it. They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message.â Another sad message Brooks had to deliver was that Vista's problems aren't really the fault of Apple. âWe broke a lot of things,â Brooks admitted. âWe know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in?â Vista: Pay it Forward! Brooks also noted that âWindows Vista is an investment in the long term. When you make the investment into Windows Vista, it's going to pay it forward into the operating system we call Windows 7.â Pay it forward? Is Windows 7 going to be a free upgrade to Windows Vista users, in the same way Apple is expected to offer the next Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release to existing users of 10.5 Leopard? That's highly unlikely, as Microsoft can't sustain its egregious profits collected through the Windows monopoly by giving away updates for free. Windows Vista raised the price of Windows, putting a new definition on the phrase âpay it forward.â Myths of Snow Leopard 7: Free?! Microsoft Admits Windows Vista Mistakes, Criticizes Apple Ads - InformationWeek Reality Impairment at Microsoft Talking out one's ass appears to be a job requirement for all Microsoft executives, starting at the top. A serious case of reality impairment has resulted in the paradox of the company both admitting that Vista is flawed and âbroke a lot of things,â while at the same time maintaining that Vista's reputation is entirely the fault of stupid customers and a comically unflattering portrayal by its competitor. In the âMojave Experiment,â Microsoft plans to dispel the notion that Windows Vista is problematic and incompatible by publishing a series of videotaped interviews with users who arrived with negative impressions of Vista and left excited about the new operating system. This was achieved by presenting the users with a demonstration of âMojave,â a new operating system that Microsoft later revealed to be Vista, much to the surprise of the interviewed users who'd heard so many bad things about it. However, the Mojave Experiment is so full of false information and saccharine gloss that it couldn't possibly appeal to anyone smart enough to turn on a PC. Even setting aside the fact that the ad experiment basically seeks to blame users for being dumb, the attempt by Microsoft to paint over Vista's problems is transparent and flawed, for a number of reasons. What's wrong with Mojave. Microsoft can't seem to decide whether it wants to admit that Vista has problems or not, and its waffling back and forth just makes the company look increasingly disingenuous. Is Vista a poorly launched, flawed product that the company is working to fix as quickly as possible, or is it awesome and wildly successful and just the victim of bad press? Microsoft tries to tell both stories at once, which is purely dishonest. In contrast, Apple said from the start last year that its Apple TV product was a âhobbyâ attempting to break into a difficult market. Critics lambasted it for not immediately taking over the market like the iPod had or iPhone later did. Apple's more recent problems in launching MobileMe were quickly noted by the company along with the intent to address complaints about it rapidly. Microsoft isn't alone in being able to stumble, but its complete lack of candor makes it hard to understand if the company realizes that it even has problems to solve. With Vista, Microsoft has issued a flurry of giddy press releases claiming widespread adoption based on the number of licenses sold and naming it âthe fastest selling operating system in Microsoft history,â ignoring the fact that Windows sales are increasing simply because they are tied to PC sales. Microsoft has no competition in the PC operating system market due to its monopoly position, so it could release Windows Wet Toast and still sell it faster than XP and ME and 98 Special Edition and every other version of Windows in the past that was tied to an increasingly younger and smaller hardware market. Vista Sales to Non-Users. Many of Vista's âsalesâ were free vouchers distributed with PCs sold in the holiday season prior to its launch. Even more than a year and a half later, PC makers continue to put Windows XP on their systems, even those sold with a Vista license, while corporate users almost always remove the default Vista to install an earlier version of Windows. There's also a busy third party industry developing around removing Vista for consumers. In late July APCMag cited Jane Bradburn, a manager for commercial notebook sales at HP, as saying, âFrom the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP license. However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.â The arrangement is supposed to end by January 2009, but HP is trying to extend the deadline because customers simply don't want Vista installed. EWeek also noted that between April 2007 and May 2008, its survey of business users indicated that Vista climbed from 2% to 5%, but that Windows XP jumped from 74% to 83%, three times the adoption of Vista. That growth came from migration from older versions of Windows. Even in its wildest projections, EWeek says Vista will only reach 28% adoption in businesses by the end of 2010. CNET reported that a Jully 2008 survey by systems management appliance company KASE found that 60% of companies surveyed have no plans to deploy Windows Vista, a ten percent increase in disinterest from late 2007. A full 42% were actively exploring Vista alternatives, and 11% had already made the switch to Mac OS X or Linux. Microsoft is simply lying about the level of Vista excitement, and it's gotten too obvious for the company to continue to do so. XP still killing Vista in sales volume: HP 60 percent skipping Vista, so Ballmer looks to Apple | The Open Road The Truth Is… oh Look a Distraction! At the same time, Microsoft notes on its Vista website âwe know a few of you were disappointed by your early encounter. Printers didn't work. Games felt sluggish. You told usâloudly at timesâthat the latest Windows wasn't always living up to your high expectations for a Microsoft product.â That's some brutal honesty for a company with a knack for spinning wild fantasies about fictitious product enthusiasm for a product never actually put to use in many cases. At the same time however, in trying to refute away Vista's real problems, Microsoft uses a variety of tactics that just return to blind fantasyland. Microsoft is a Marketing Company, not a Tech Company. The company plays its Mojave Experiment hand on a new website, incidentally designed using Adobe Flash rather than the company's own Silverlight. Despite the site's oddly designed, usability-impared interface, it's still possible to pull out lots of details from the experiment that say as much about Microsoft's crafty, misleading marketing as they do about its technical problems, underling the simple fact that Microsoft is first and foremost a marketing company that flogs third rate technology products. Mojave took 140 people and asked them to score Windows Vista. The average response was 4.4. After demonstrating Vista SP2 under the name âMojave,â respondents ranked Vista at 8.5, a stunning improvement. But what were they ranking? Microsoft notes that âmany said they would have rated it higher, but wanted more time to use it themselves.â That sounds good at first blush, but it really indicates that the responses were biased by hyped up enthusiasm rather than facts, and that participants realized it, reserving their final judgement until they could actually see more. The âMojave Experimentâ What does Mojave Prove? Mojave tries to represent that Vista's bad reputation is the fault of ignorant consumers who have heard bad things that aren't true about Vista, and have made up their mind without getting the facts. At the same time however, Microsoft also publicly admits that Vista âbroke a lot of thingsâ and that specifically, âPrinters didn't work. Games felt sluggish.â Did Mojave clear up mistaken notions for participants, or did it just erect smoke and mirrors in a carefully controlled demonstration that skirted around Vista's real problems, including those Microsoft admits? That's a question that answers itself. Mojave didn't send uses home with Vista in a Mojave package and then ask them how well it worked with their existing peripherals and games, or how fast it was in comparison to their existing PC software. This is Not the Droid You're Running Vista On. Instead, Microsoft sat them down in front of a HP Pavillion DV 2000 with 2GB of RAM. That's what HP called its âentertainment powerhouseâ laptop, although HP only shipped it with 1GB RAM. Microsoft maxed out the RAM for the purposes of the test, making the laptop a bit more expensive than its usual street price of around $1050. According to Windows enthusiast Joe Wilcox, PC laptops actually cost $700, âhalf as muchâ as Apple's laptops. At least that's the Average Selling Price for consumer retail PC laptops according to NPD's Stephen Baker, compared to Apple's $1500 ASP. Wilcox insisted that his spin on NPD's figures couldn't possibly be biased because he wrote his article on a MacBook Air running Leopard. However, his $2,700 laptop did help drive up Apple's stellar ASP for its laptops well above the entry price for Mac Books, discounting his theory that revolved around the assumption that every Mac buyer pays the average price of all the laptops Apple sells. Wilcox and Microsoft are both disingenuously dancing on both ends of the truth. Many consumers are actually buying cheap laptops at Target that can't run Vista ideally, while Microsoft demonstrates its Vista on a considerably better equipped system in the Mojave Experiment to suggest that Vista doesn't have the performance problems that users have heard about from the majority of their peers who bought cheap PCs and are seeing Vista run particularly sluggishly on them. Should You Pay Twice as Much for a Mac? I Did! You Get What You Pay For. The fact that Apple sells more high end laptops to pro users at retail, and that it does not sell anything in the range of the cheap junk being hawked at big box retailers like Wilcox' Target both result in Mac laptops fetching a higher ASP. That fact also means that Mac buyers will be happier with their purchase and have a more favorable impression of Mac OS X because they're running it on a better system. That's all obvious stuff. However, selling people cheap laptops that don't work well, and then demonstrating a fake ânew operating systemâ that appears to work well when running on a faster machine full of RAM is simply a dishonest bait and switch scam. Wilcox does nearly admit that PC makers are already stretching their credibility as they attempt to sell cheap boxes based on price alone, citing Baker as saying, âWe aren't seeing any particularly substantive moves down in price on the Windows side, either in desktops or notebooks.â PCs can't get cheaper because they're already unprofitable and consumers are already disgusted with their performance when running the increased overhead of Vista. Wilcox also sets up a tilted comparison between a Dell PC desktop with integrated graphics and an iMac with dedicated graphics and claims a price advantage for Dell, although noting that, while âDell offers more for less than the iMac,â âthat 'more' also means Windows Vista, which won't satisfy some shoppers.â Why Aren't Shoppers Satisfied with Vista? Like Microsoft, Wilcox and his Windows Enthusiast pundit friends can't seem to decide if Vista has any real problems or if it's all just an unfair taint suggested by Apple's Get a Mac ads. However, while Apple has taken shots at Vista's incompatibility with printers and other hardware and its scarce updates that have been few and far between over the last year and a half of its being on the market, Apple also notes in its Get a Mac ads that Macs can run Vista, and can run it faster than PCs. So Apple isn't inventing and publishing false reports on Vista, it's merely advertising its Mac hardware as superior to PCs. The Vista flaws Apple's ads have referenced are flaws Microsoft itself has admitted to its partners, so the Get a Mac umbrage frequently voiced by Windows Enthusiasts is both hypocritical and ridiculous. However, in the Mojave Experiment, Microsoft downplayed those well-known faults by only carefully demonstrating certain features on a high end machine, and without actually exposing Mojave/Vista users to 'a lot of things Vista broke,' 'printers that didn't work', or 'games that felt sluggish.' It Can't Even Print. In response to complaints that Vista doesn't work well with existing PC hardware, Microsoft's Mojave website says that âthe Windows Vista Compatibility Center lists compatibility status for over 9,000 products (5,500 devices and 3,500 software programs).â It even notes 2,000 printers, 200 scanners, and 500 cameras specifically. That sounds good until you realize that Apple ships support for over 3,100 printers in Mac OS X Leopard, a product that is targeted primarily toward education and consumers and which is not expected by users to run on any old hardware that might be in use by PC users. Vista is supposed to run on 95% of the world's PCs, and yet it doesn't even match the printer drivers that ship with Leopard, a number which does not include all of the third party drivers available for the Mac. Oh, but there's more. Not only did Microsoft dance around the truth to feed its Mojave Experiment participants a carefully controlled stream of garbage, but it also inadvertently revealed more serious problems related to Vista, which I'll consider in the following article. 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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â Up Flash Creek Without a Paddle
So there’s been a surge in speculation today regarding Adobe’s efforts to get Flash support on the iPhone, after Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said the following during Adobe’s quarterly finance conference call yesterday: “We have a version thatâs working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that weâve made to date.” In addition to my comments this morning regarding how, at a technical level, getting Flash running in the simulator in and of itself isn’t worth much, the more I think about it, the more baffled I am that Narayen said anything specific at all. Talking about technical progress only serves to focus attention on the fact that it is Apple’s decision, and by all appearances, Apple does not want Flash on the iPhone. Even if Adobe eventually gets Flash running well — by any standard for “running well” — on actual iPhone hardware, rather than just in the iPhone simulator, they can’t ship it without Apple’s explicit permission. What most people imagine when they think of “Flash for the iPhone” is a browser plugin that executes and displays Flash content inside web pages, just like how it works in desktop browsers like Safari, Firefox, and IE. That requires a content plugin for the browser, and MobileSafari does not support plugins of any kind. There is no way for third-party developers to modify MobileSafari or the content it is capable of displaying via the iPhone SDK. It is possible, of course, that Adobe is developing a Flash plugin for MobileSafari outside the confines of the APIs in the official iPhone SDK, with the permission and tacit approval of Apple. But at least as recently as March, Adobe indicated that no such deal was in place: In an emailed statement, Adobe said it had evaluated the iPhone software development kit Apple had released March 6 in beta, and could now “start to develop a way to bring Flash player to the iPhone.” “However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone Web-browsing experience, we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it,” the company said. But it’s worth taking a step back to consider that Apple doesn’t even support playing inline QuickTime content in MobileSafari web pages — clicking a QuickTime movie in MobileSafari takes you to a standalone QuickTime player. The iPhone is simply too performance sensitive to allow for inline media playback. So, if not a MobileSafari browser plugin, then perhaps Adobe is working on a standalone Flash player app for the iPhone. But if that’s the case, (a) it would still require help from Apple in order to allow users to tap on Flash links in MobileSafari to launch the standalone Flash player; and (b) it would contravene this portion of the iPhone SDK Agreement: An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Again, Apple could grant Adobe an explicit exception to this, but, as I’ve written before, it is not in Apple’s interests to do so. Lastly, if not a standalone Flash content player, the only other option would be for Adobe to build an entire iPhone web browser with Flash support built in. But, in addition to being an extraordinary amount of work (MobileSafari is a lot more than a “simple” wrapper around WebKit), this would contravene the exact same “no interpreted code” iPhone SDK terms that a standalone Flash player app would. Plus it would require Apple to allow for MobileSafari to be replaced as the default handler for the “http:” and “https:” URL schemes.
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â The $64,000 Question
A few various observations and comments regarding Adobe’s announcement that Photoshop CS4 will be available in a 64-bit version for Windows, but will only be 32-bit for Mac OS X. The first is that this is not, in and of itself, that big a deal, at least for the vast majority of Photoshop users. To a non-programmer, “64-bit” perhaps sounds twice as fast as “32-bit”, but that’s not how it works or what it means. According to Adobe’s John Nack, in most cases, for the vast majority of real-world files, Photoshop in 64-bit mode will be “around 8â12 percent” faster. But in cases involving massive data sets — those requiring more than 4 GB of memory (the 32-bit limit) — the speedup can be an entire order of magnitude: For example, opening a 3.75 gigapixel image on a 4-core machine with 32GB RAM is about 10Ă faster. Keep in mind that a Canon 1Ds Mark III — which sells at Amazon for $8,000 — generates 21 megapixel images. 3.75 gigapixels is 3,750 megapixels. You probably don’t have images like that. It’s also the case that unlike Leopard, which is a single OS that can simultaneously run both 32- and 64-bit apps natively, Windows Vista comes in wholly separate 32- and 64-bit versions. And as far as I can tell, the vast majority of Windows users use the 32-bit version. (If anyone can find market share information regarding 64-bit Vista, please let me know.) But faster is faster, and even a 10 percent gain is important to serious Photoshop users. The uncomfortable truth is that the fastest way to run Photoshop CS4 on a Mac will be to run it under Windows. It’ll be particularly interesting to see benchmarks comparing 64-bit Photoshop on Mac OS X using VMware or Parallels against the native 32-bit Mac version. The Cocoa Rewrite The big deal is CS5, the next-next version of Photoshop. The only supported 64-bit APIs on Mac OS X are Cocoa, and Adobe wants Photoshop run in 64-bit mode on the Mac, so they’re rewriting the app in Cocoa. That’s huge. Nack writes: No one has ever ported an application the size of Photoshop from Carbon to Cocoa (as I mentioned earlier, after 9 years as an Apple product Final Cut Pro remains Carbon-based), so we’re dealing with unknown territory. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. I don’t think Adobe can flat-out promise that CS5 is going to be Cocoa (or 64-bit) because they don’t know how long it’s going to take. The cross-platform angle is also interesting. Microsoft, for example, develops the Mac versions of its Office apps from an entirely separate application code base than the Windows ones. They ship on different schedules, have entirely separate engineering teams, and have very different UIs. Adobe, on the other hand, develops its Create Suite apps from a shared code base. New versions ship simultaneously for both Mac and Windows, and they have very similar, if not nearly identical, UIs (for better or for worse). Carbon and Cocoa are not competing application frameworks. Carbon is conceptually a lower-level technology than Cocoa. Cocoa is an application framework, but Carbon is a set of APIs that developers use to write their own application frameworks. What Adobe has done with the CS suite is develop a cross-platform C++ framework of its own. There’s a reason why most cross-platform apps use Carbon. In Adobe’s favor, though, is Lightroom — existence proof that a high-quality cross-platform Mac/Windows application can use Cocoa for the Mac side. Carbon 64 One aspect of the saga that Nack sidesteps — perhaps for political reasons, or perhaps because he’s gracious — is the degree to which Apple pulled the rug out from under Adobe’s feet at WWDC 2007 last June. When Leopard was first announced at WWDC 2006 nine months prior, it included full 64-bit support for both Carbon and Cocoa. 64-bit Carbon wasn’t promised to be coming “sometime”, like with, say, resolution independence. It was promised for 10.5.0. And it existed — developer seeds of Leopard up through WWDC 2007 had in-progress 64-bit Carbon libraries, and Adobe engineers were developing against them. Several sources1 have confirmed to me that Adobe found out that Apple was dropping support for 64-bit Carbon at the same time everyone else outside Apple did: on the first day of WWDC 2007. If Apple had shipped Leopard with the 64-bit Carbon support promised at WWDC 2006, Photoshop CS4 would run in 64-bit mode on the Mac. The unfortunate coincidence is that WWDC 2006 — when 64-bit Carbon was announced — was right around the time when Adobe was hitting the home stretch on CS3 and planning for CS4. (Photoshop CS4 is currently in beta testing, and so the CS4 suite is probably slated to ship soon-ish.) If Apple had announced then that the only 64-bit path was going to be Cocoa, would it have made a difference? It probably wouldn’t have made a difference for CS4, given that it was only nine months, but it would saved Adobe nine months of wasted time. My point here isn’t to cast blame on Apple, though. My take is that both Apple and Adobe made reasonable and honest decisions each step of the way. I think Apple meant what they announced, and in August 2006 fully intended to deliver 64-bit Carbon support in 10.5.0. But the situation and Apple’s priorities changed when Leopard fell so far behind schedule (or, perhaps better put, when it became clear just how far behind schedule Leopard had been all along). When Apple announced that Leopard would miss its original June 2007 ship date, they pushed it back four month to “October”, and as it turned out they barely made that. When facts change, plans change. One argument against Adobe is that they somehow should have known better and began a Cocoa port sooner. But the truth is that this 64-bit issue is the first really compelling reason for a developer like Adobe to port an existing large Carbon app to Cocoa. What users want are new and improved features; a port from Carbon to Cocoa is going to require a tremendous amount of effort just to re-implement what Photoshop already does.[2] Adobe perhaps also assumed — and reasonably so — that if the day were ever going to come that they’d be forced to port Photoshop to Cocoa, that Apple would give them enough lead time to plan for it far in advance. Remember, too, that Apple itself still has major Carbon applications. Final Cut, for example, is a prime example of the sort of memory-intensive media processing app (like Photoshop) that should benefit greatly from 64-bit support. And iTunes is a perfect example of the sort of cross-platform Mac/Windows codebase that’s a more natural fit with Carbon than Cocoa. So I think it’s hard to argue that Adobe should have somehow known the end was near for Carbon when even Apple didn’t know. Sources who, as they say, requested anonymity on the grounds that they enjoy their jobs. ↩ It’s certainly not the case that every line of code in Photoshop needs to be re-written. Clearly, many of Photoshop’s internal algorithms reside in cross-platform libraries that don’t involve the GUI. But there’s an awful lot of code that does, and it’s not all in one place. ↩
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â The iPhone and Web Apps
There’s some speculation that Apple’s plan to release a native iPhone SDK is bad news, in some way, for the iPhone as a platform for web apps. I disagree. I see it as no more bad news for iPhone web app development than Cocoa is bad news for regular web app development. The weird thing about web apps vs. desktop apps is that they don’t really compete head-to-head. Most good ideas for apps only make sense one way or the other. It doesn’t make sense to think of, say, Basecamp as a desktop app. Because web apps are currently the only sanctioned way to develop for the iPhone, yes, there are some iPhone web apps that will be obviated by native apps eventually. (Games and IM clients, for example.) But even after the iPhone SDK ships, there will be far more iPhone web app developers than native UIKit developers. I see MobileSafari-optimized web development as the Visual Basic for the iPhone as a platform. Easier, more approachable, and wide open to everyone. An existing web application written using best practices — standards-based markup, separation of style from content — can be optimized for display on MobileSafari in relatively short order by any competent web developer. Not so with native iPhone app development. Apple, someday, is going to be all over “web apps” as first-class citizens for its computing platforms. Perhaps not in the form of HTML/CSS/JavaScript alone, or not only in that form, but in some way, in the future, first-class Apple software will be run over the network rather than being installed on the device. If you think of “The Web” as HTML rendered in a browser, “web apps” might be the wrong word to describe what I’m talking about; “net apps”, perhaps, might be more apt. Imagine, for example, an Apple-designed next-generation competitor to Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight — an embedded runtime for net-based apps that “kills” Flash not by replacing it or becoming more ubiquitous (which at this point probably isn’t possible), but by out-classing it, by enabling Mac OS X- and iPhone-quality user experience in apps that reside on a server, not the client. Or maybe just give WebKit and Moore’s Law a few more years, and it really will just be HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Net-based apps — in concept — suit Apple perfectly: they’re more convenient for users and afford tremendous control to the developer. (Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is thinking along similar lines.) So, someday, yes. But that day isn’t today. It was never Apple’s intention for MobileSafari web apps, here and now, to be as good as native iPhone UIKit apps. If it were, instead of basing the iPhone environment around a mobile port of Cocoa, they could have simple based the UI environment around only the mobile port of WebKit. It just isn’t possible, today, to provide what we now know as the iPhone experience using WebKit alone. That’s why Mac developers were so irritated by Jobs’s description of MobileSafari web app development back at WWDC as a “sweet” iPhone SDK — if it were so sweet, then why wasn’t Apple using it for the iPhone’s built-in apps? But it really is sweet, in its own way, in that the iPhone is clearly the best handheld web client in the world. Let the web be the web and let native apps do what native apps do best — the iPhone does both better than any competing platform. Finally, a nomenclatural note: When writing about the native iPhone SDK and web apps written for MobileSafari, it’s both easier both to write and read to just say “iPhone” where I really mean “iPhone and iPod Touch”. Apple does the same thing. Long-term, I think the “iPod” brand has a stronger future than the “iPhone” brand. “iPhone”, to me, means mobile OS X on a device tied to a mobile phone carrier network. At some point in the future when ubiquitous long-range wireless IP networking is available, OS X-based iPods will be able to do everything iPhones can, with the same (or close enough) mobility and range. At that point the iPhone will just fade away — or at least slip beneath the iPod as the top-of-the-line Apple handheld.
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â The Ins and Outs of Snow Leopard
Here’s what I expect regarding “Snow Leopard”, the in-progress version of Mac OS X 10.6 which I expect Apple to talk about tomorrow at WWDC. Dropping PowerPC Support This is not going to be popular, and it does seem too soon, but my sources indicate that it is the case. Why would Apple do this, when it is clearly going to antagonize owners of late model PowerPC hardware? A few factors: (a) Snow Leopard won’t ship until next year, at which point even the newest PowerPC Macs will be at least three years old; (b) dropping PowerPC would significantly simplify the QA testing for Snow Leopard; (c) perhaps Apple will argue that there are technical merits, i.e. that by dropping PowerPC support, they’re able to implement certain performance improvements that can only work on Intel hardware. 64-Bit 64-bit support is a talking point for Snow Leopard, but I do not believe it means Apple is dropping 32-bit support in the OS. For one thing, many Intel-based Macs (those based on the older Core Duo, as opposed to the Core 2 Duo) don’t even support 64-bit. Dropping PowerPC support would be aggressive; dropping support for 18-month-old Intel machines would be insane. Plus, unlike PowerPC, the dual support of which in addition to the Intel architecture really does add to the development and testing effort of new software, 32-bit support isn’t weighing down OS X — I’m not aware of a single good reason why Apple would even consider dropping 32-bit support, and there are thousands of good reasons not to (to wit, the thousands of 32-bit Mac apps already in existence). ‘100 Percent Pure Cocoa Apps’ That’s a phrase that is circulating in Cupertino regarding the outline for tomorrow’s keynote. Some have interpreted it as meaning that the Carbon APIs will be dropped from Snow Leopard. I don’t buy that. Last year Apple dropped 64-bit Carbon from Leopard, clearly a sign that the Cocoa side of the aisle is where Apple’s attention lies. But dropping a planned future feature like 64-bit Carbon is a far cry from dropping Carbon completely. Even if you consider no apps other than Microsoft’s and Adobe’s, a Carbon-less Mac OS X 10.6 doesn’t seem feasible. If you thought it was bad when Photoshop and Excel only ran under Rosetta, imagine if they didn’t run at all. Crazy talk. My interpretation of the “100 percent pure Cocoa apps” line is that it’s an admonition for developers — not that they must use “pure” Cocoa APIs for their apps, but that they should, that there are performance and efficiency benefits to doing so that will not be available in other APIs. (Perhaps something to do with the LLVM compiler architecture? Optimizations to the Cocoa libraries to offload more computation to the GPU?) Multi-Touch This stuff with multi-finger gestures on this year’s MacBook trackpads is not multi-touch, at least in the iPhone sense. The marvel of the iPhone UI is the touch screen. I don’t expect to ever see touchscreen Macs. Touchscreen computers from Apple running OS X? Yes, I think, probably someday soon. But not Mac OS X. The user interface simply isn’t designed or optimized for it. Adding touchscreen support to a user interface designed for traditional mouse-and-keyboard access is a lipstick-on-a-pig design (cf. recent demos from Microsoft of Windows 7). The ‘No New Features’ Thing Major version upgrades, whether in an application or an entire operating system, have traditionally been about features, not fixes. Why? Because features are what people pay for. So how could Jobs sell this no-new-features idea in the keynote? One way would be by not selling anything, and announcing that Snow Leopard will be a free (or inexpensive) update. But I can see it being sold another way. The appeal of Mac OS X versus Windows is what? That it has more features? No. It’s that it is more elegant, simpler, more efficient, and more reliable. So I can imagine Jobs on stage announcing that Apple has assigned their best engineers to a year-long project to focus on just those things. Vista may or may not be getting an unfair rap in the press, but the public perception is that these are exactly the areas where Vista is most disappointing. Apple could press their current advantage by emphasizing efficiency, elegance, simplicity, and reliability.
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â Why Apple Wonât Buy Adobe
This one’s pretty simple. First, Steve Jobs wants Apple to feel like a small, focused company. They’re not a small company, of course — Apple’s most recent quarterly filing states they have 21,600 employees — but that’s what Jobs wants it to feel like. The company’s internal structure is a reflection of its product lines — simple and clear. Buying Adobe — a $20 billion company with a slew of products and nearly 7,000 employees — is not how you keep Apple feeling small and focused. And keep in mind that half of Apple’s employees are in retail. Second, Apple, under Jobs, is only interested in best-of-breed products and technologies. The iPhone is the best phone in the world. The iPod is the best media player. Macs are the best computers. Mac OS X is the best desktop OS. iPhone OS is the best mobile OS. (Reasonable people may disagree about one or more of these “best” assessments, but I’m talking about Apple’s perspective.) There are exceptions, but only at the periphery of Apple’s offerings. Mac OS X Server, for example, isn’t generally considered the best server OS in the world, but it doesn’t get much promotional oomph, either. .Mac is .bad, but you wait and see if Apple doesn’t knock it down and replace it with something reliable and more relevant and useful. What does Adobe have that Apple would want to own? Flash seems to be the most common answer amongst those who think Apple covets Adobe. Do you really think Flash is the best of anything? Or, more relevantly, do you really think Jobs and Apple’s engineering management think so? Flash is ubiquitous, but that doesn’t make it good. It’s the same reason why iPhone app development is based on Objective-C rather than a more popular, more ubiquitous language like, say, Java — because the decision-makers at Apple genuinely believe it to be decidedly better. If Apple wanted to own a technology like Flash they’d build their own technically superior version and distribute it to Windows users with iTunes. This goes double for AIR, which Apple, I’m certain, thinks they could do better than, and which unlike Flash doesn’t yet have any significant popularity. The CS apps, you say? Why? To make sure there there are good photo-editing, illustration, and desktop publishing apps for the Mac? Adobe is already doing that themselves, as an independent company. The only argument I’ve ever heard that makes sense for an Apple acquisition of Adobe is the idea that Apple fears that Microsoft might buy Adobe first, and then torpedo the Mac versions of the CS suite. But that would be a totally defensive move, and Steve Jobs is not a defensive thinker. Jobs plays offense. If it ever became necessary, Jobs surely believes that Apple could create their own replacements for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. And the whole idea doesn’t make much sense anyway, given that if Microsoft wanted to sink a suite of popular big-ticket Mac apps, they don’t need to buy Adobe. And so if Apple, under Jobs, is tightly focused, what is it that they’re focused on? It’s not the pro market. It’s mobility — iPhone, iPod, MacBook Air. Adobe is a good company with good products, but they don’t fit into Apple’s focus at all.
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â Keynote Roundup
Miscellaneous thoughts and observations from yesterday’s Macworld Expo keynote: Office 2008 I was interested to see whether Microsoft would get some demo time during the keynote to show Office 2008. The Mac BU hasn’t always gotten stage time, but, I think, they have always gotten stage time in keynotes when they have a brand-new major version of Office. Not this year. Jobs did mention the Office 2008 release, but there was no demo, and, in fact, much of what Jobs actually said about Office was negative — emphasizing that they were “finally” native for Intel, and that they were the last of the major developers to do so, even later than Adobe. Maybe it’s a result of competition in the office software space with Apple’s own iWork. Maybe it’s resentment over the time it took for Office to go Intel-native. Maybe it’s a sense, by Jobs, that Apple is no longer in a position where it needs to reassure the press and its own customers that Microsoft supports the Mac. I think it’s a little bit of all those things. ‘Four Things Today’ Jobs actually talked about more than four things; what he did, really, was break the keynote into four sections. The third “thing”, for example, included both iTunes movie rentals and the new Apple TV 2.0. I think the “four things” idea was a great framework for the keynote, though, and a subtle change from Jobs’s traditional keynote structure. Time Capsule I love the idea of Time Capsule, and, assuming it works as billed, it’s going to accomplish something awesome: it will save data that would otherwise have been lost, because there will now be more people backing up their data regularly. I think you can really make an argument that Time Machine is the most important feature Apple has added to Mac OS X in years, maybe ever, and support for doing it over the network makes it better. But, when I predicted something like this would be announced, I assumed it would coincide with the restoration of being able to back up to any USB hard drive attached to an AirPort base station. That capability was billed as a feature of Leopard and Time Machine right up until mid-October, and was present in developer seeds of Leopard. The word I heard was that very late in the beta testing of Leopard, Apple discovered some sort of bug or security problem with feature, and that while it was pulled from 10.5.0 (because it couldn’t be fixed in time), it was scheduled to come back in a future Leopard update. But so now Time Capsule is here, and there’s no word from Apple about backing up to hard drives attached to base stations. Which in turn is leading to the suspicion that perhaps the reason hard drive/base station Time Machine backups were pulled from Leopard was to make the feature exclusive to Apple’s own Time Capsule hardware. Check the comment thread on this article at Macworld to see some angry customers — people who bought hard drives and base stations in advance of Leopard specifically in anticipation of this feature. Again, I think Time Capsule is a great idea and a great product. But if Apple has pulled support for hard drive/base station backups to eliminate Time Capsule competition, that’s shitty, pure and simple. To be clear, though, it’s still an “if” at this point. 4 Million iPhones, 4 Billion Songs Those are big numbers. Assuming sales continue to grow, and that Apple will release new iPhones with lower prices for next year’s holiday season, their stated goal of selling 10 million phones in 2008 looks like a sure thing. As I expected, there was no word on DRM-free music from the other three major music labels. But I think Jobs’s aside that they sold 20 million songs on Christmas day alone was sort of a message that iTunes music sales are still growing strong. Even at just 10 or 15 cents profit per song, when you’re talking billions, that’s a lot of money. The $20 iPod Touch Update There were audible groans in the keynote hall when Jobs announced that the iPod Touch update costs $20. That’s an interesting difference between the Touch and the iPhone. One reason, I think, is that unlike with iPhones, Apple is not accounting for iPod Touches on a subscription bases — so they have to charge something to add features in order to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. But they could charge something less than $20. I wonder how frequently Apple plans to offer $20 feature upgrades to Touch owners. But, on the other hand, if Apple is charging for the iPod Touch upgrade to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, why is the Apple TV upgrade free? As far as I know, they’re not accounting for Apple TV sales on a subscription basis. I’m left with the feeling that they’re charging $20 for the iPod Touch upgrade simply because they can. Cost aside, it’s an utterly compelling upgrade for the Touch; it’s hard to imagine any Touch owner not wanting it. But it seems weird to pay $20 for a bunch of apps that already existed. Apparently the apps are already there on the 1.1.3 Touch OS, because the upgrade itself weighs in at just 9 kilobytes. Apple TV 2.0 There’s an old saying about Microsoft that, historically, their products always have terrible 1.0 releases, better 2.0’s, and then finally succeed at 3.0. The idea being that they stick with a product idea for years and don’t give up after early failures. I think Apple is taking this sort of dogged, determined approach to Apple TV. The big problem Apple faces with Apple TV isn’t technical — it’s content. They’re constrained by what the TV networks and movie studios will allow them to do. The most obvious limitation is the way that they’re forbidden from ripping movies from DVDs the way iTunes rips music from CDs. The movie rentals at the iTunes Store should do as much to sell Apple TVs as any of the actual changes to Apple TV itself in the new software. But the software update is very nice — the UI is improved, and the Flickr photo integration (even though the demo crapped out on-stage during the keynote) is very nice. Cutting the price to $229 strikes me as a little strange for Apple. They usually stick to nice, round $50 price increments — most everything they sell has a price that ends in 99 or 49. My only guess is that they’ve cut the price as low as they can to help the product gain traction — that if Apple TV were selling better, the new price would be $249. Multi-Touch Gestures With MacBook Air Trackpad It’ll be interesting to see how useful this is in practice. The only apps that support it out of the box are Apple’s own — iPhoto and Preview for image zooming and rotation; Safari for text scaling. To take advantage of this, apps need to handle new event notifications. Something more or less like “the user is pinching at these coordinates”. No existing apps other than Apple’s handle these events yet. It’ll be interesting to see when (or if?) the other MacBooks get similar trackpads. The UI for the gesture-related settings in System Preferences is really quite clever: big QuickTime movies showing exactly how to perform the gestures and what effect they cause. I’ve never seen a prefs UI like that before, but I think it’s very appropriate — it’s a lot easier to explain them visually than with words. It’s a clever way to allow the UI to serve as documentation. Randy Newman Randy Newman’s keynote-capping scathing anti-Bush administration song was quite a thing. I loved it, and it seemed like everyone around me in the press section was enjoying it thoroughly. But, quite obviously, for humorless Bush supporters, it must have been infuriating. The song is chock full of “I can’t believe he just said that” lines. It’s certainly hard to imagine any other major corporation in the U.S. that would invite Randy Newman on stage to perform a song like that.