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

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

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on August 24, 2008
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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 Apple’s software strategy with the iPhone today. While third party software development offers all kinds of tantalizing potential for the new mobile, there are a half dozen reasons why Apple may not ever deliver the iPhone fully open to third party development, following the model of gaming consoles.Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolySoftware Lessons For the iPhone: 1997 - 2007.When Steve Jobs gained the opportunity to retake control of Apple in 1997, he immediately set out to build and assemble a software business for the Mac platform. Apple restarted serious development of QuickTime, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, which had targeted its sights on quickly destroying it to make way for monopolistic expansion of its Windows Media. [Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime][How Microsoft Pushed QuickTime's Final Cut][Why Apple Failed][How CPR Saved Apple][Why Apple Bounced Back]In addition to repurposing NEXTSTEP as Mac OS X and buying and building a series of professional and consumer software suites, the new Apple also developed the iPod platform. The iPod used intuitive software to differentiate Apple’s hardware, launching the computer maker into a new market for sophisticated, data-driven consumer devices. Microsoft’s own efforts in consumer electronics have flopped miserably with the failures of its Handheld PC, Pocket PC, UMPC, Windows Mobile, Media2Go, Mira, SPOT, and Personal Media Center initiatives, among many others.[Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft][The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile][Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV]Microsoft Outgunned in Software by a Hardware Maker.Microsoft was late to realize the software threat posed by the new Apple. Five major revisions and over thirty free updates to Mac OS X have ran circles around Microsoft’s capacity to deliver one desktop operating system software update and a couple service packs since 2001.[Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Apple also introduced three generations of iWork as an expanding productivity suite during the four year hibernation period Microsoft left since its last version of Office for Mac. Apple delivered support for Microsoft’s own proprietary OOXML file format on the Mac even before Microsoft itself could. At $79, iWork will eviscerate sales of the $400 Office for Mac, which has until now been a cash cow lazily ruminating for years between releases.This year, Apple also targeted and destroyed Microsoft’s fledgeling efforts to repurpose WinCE as a smartphone platform, seemingly overnight. That has given Apple a significant new platform in the iPhone, soon to be joined by the new iPod Touch. [What’s New in iWork 08][Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model][Curious Stuff About the New iPods]Six Reasons the iPhone Will Stay Closed.Will Apple give third party developers the keys to its new vehicle and allow them to drive off with the value it has created? It hasn’t yet, and there are a number of reasons to think that Apple won’t. Note that I am not expressing an opinion that the iPhone should be left closed, but rather simply presenting why I think it is unlikely Apple will ever open it up in the same way the Mac is open to any and all development.First, the company has lined up a suitable outlet for third party expansion via the standards based web platform available within Safari. That’s not enough to do everything developers want to do--it has serious constraints for creating games, for example--but it offers a good enough alternative to serve more than 80% of most developers’ needs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• on September 11, 2007
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★ Let the Tea Leaf Reading Begin

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

• Daring Fireball on October 19, 2007
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Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users

Daniel Eran Dilger It's great news that Google is planning to deliver a market for mobile software with its own centralized “Android Market.” It should give Apple's iPhone Apps Store competitive pressure to continue to innovate, and provide a safety net for smartphone users if Apple fails to deliver progress fast enough. If Apple and Google both fail, users will be stuck with the failed third party software models related to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian. Those high stakes make it all the more disappointing to find that the Android Market fails to answer the tough issues correctly. iPhone App Store vs Android Market. There's no doubt that there will be apps that make it into Google's Android store that aren't currently available from Apple, likely including WiFi tethering (for using your mobile's data plan to give your laptop Internet access on the road), a feature Apple forced NullRiver's NetShare to remove from the iPhone store. That was apparently at the behest of AT&T, which staunchly refuses to support tethering without charging an expensive additional fee. AT&T's 3G network is already strained to carry relatively light-duty mobile traffic; unrestricted amounts of data being dumped on the network from far more demanding desktop apps by millions of users is currently just infeasible to accommodate. Other providers have 3G EVDO bandwidth to spare, but will cut you off just as quickly when you reach their finite definition of “unlimited” data access. Finite bandwidth is not a problem Google's 'free and open' software market can solve, because Google is not the only link in the chain in providing mobile apps. AT&T isn't going to allow tethering from Android phones either, regardless of Google's intended store policies. And Verizon Wireless likely isn't going to allow WiFi on Android phones at all. So it's a joke to say Android will transcend every problem in ways that Apple hasn't. This isn't a case of Google acting like Netflix to offer unlimited content to rival Blockbuster's censorship; instead, Google is simply making great sounding campaign promises it won't be able to deliver. AppleInsider | Google reveals open Android Market to rival iPhone's App Store Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK But Wait, There's More (And Less). The Android Market will also deliver lots of problems Apple isn't, including a way to distribute malware that can't be remotely killed, or untraceable spyware that professes to be on the up-and-up when you install it, but then works behind your back and phones home sensitive data to a rogue developer's servers. Remember all the speculation last year about the possibility of developers being able to hack the iPhone open and install their own malicious tools to watch what you're doing? Under the iPhone SDK, access to that dangerous path is simply forbidden. Under Android, there's not so much as a handrail for users. Apple has already reprimanded iPhone developers who provided inadequate protection of their users' data, and then forced them to fix their problems immediately. With Google advertising its “see no evil, hear no evil” policy for its self-policing development community, Google won't even know if there's a problem. It will also lack any way to stop or reverse problems, and having renounced any accountability for protecting users with regulatory controls, Google will lack the leverage to push malicious or possibly just incompetent developers to take any action once it does discover problems. Malware and junkware on the PC is a big problem, but on a smartphone it is orders of magnitude more serious of an issue. Having to run spyware cleanup on a PC is a nusance. Having your phone subverted into a tool for advertisers or identity thieves could easily result in issues on the level of life safety. If you thought it was embarrassing to have Outlook send out spam in your name in 2001, wait until Android starts drunk dialing all your contacts to tell them about special offers, attaching your GPS location and perhaps a recent photo from your album so they know they can trust you about it. Google seems to think it can simply ignore security problems by asking developers not to take advantage of its users. This is absurdly ridiculous in our modern context. Google may as well be building unvented fireplaces in a tornado alley trailer park. Ten Myths of Leopard: 9 Apple is Spying on Users! The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Wired's Grotesquely Rank Hypocrisy in Mobile Security. Where did all of those mobile phone security experts from last fall run away to? They were abuzz about the imagined catastrophe that might befall the “can't even run any software” iPhone, but none have stepped forward to posit an opinion on why Android's exposed spinning blades in a dark room might result in the world's next Windows XP. Wired, which led the witch hunt against the iPhone last fall, published an article this summer titled “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web,” which went on breathlessly for days about how Android would solve the industry's problems with giddy can-do chutzpah. Nowhere did the article even suggest a criticism of its wide open, security-free business model. Instead, the author announced, “Engineers who write for just about any mobile operating system today have to spend time and cash obtaining security keys and code-signing certificates. Android would allow any application to be installed and run, no questions asked.” If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, don't bother. It ended right there on the “time and money savings” of not having any security model. Microsoft saved a lot of money by ignoring security, too, as long as you don't count the $11 billion malware industry. Shame on Wired for continuing its descent into hopelessly unplugged irrelevance. UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview Kim Zetter and the iPhone Root Security Myth High Risk, High Likelihood for Exploitation. The tech media more recently went into high alert to warn users that Apple's MobileMe web apps didn't perform SSL encryption, allowing the possibility for spies to target them in order to read their calendar and email transactions, were they to used the web apps over a public network. That's a valid concern to voice, but also an extremely unlikely threat for users to spend much time worrying about, particularly since there are a number of straightforward precautions users can take to avoid any risky exposure scenarios. There's also little business model behind sniffing calendar appointments and the kind of mundane email threads that .Mac users might engage in while drinking coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, malicious software and social engineering exploitation is a billion dollar industry, and organized criminals in Korea, China, Russia, and of course Nigeria are as desperate for new dollars outside of the PC desktop as Google is. Rather than the unlikely scenario of on-site spies targeting a specific individual to sniff out truffles from their browser's email, these people have organized and profitable methods for delivering viral payloads to wide audiences from the convenience of a position thousands of miles away. On a smartphone, they can take your money simply by having installed software send a paid SMS. This is a real threat, not a contrived bunch of hysterical nonsense dreamed up by fear-mongering pundits. It is simply criminally negligent for Google to design a smartphone software platform with nearly zero regard for the safety of its users. We can justifiably criticize Microsoft for its lax stance on security in the 90s that resulted in the Windows malware crisis, but many of the potential dangers of certain decisions weren't fully recognized back then. Google is organizing an olympic-sized skating party on a lake it knows has dangerously thin ice. Is Apple’s MobileMe Secure? Store vs Market? It's also worth mentioning that the media is comparing what Google only intends to do with what Apple has already pulled off; I could easily draft plans for a phone that sounds better than the iPhone, but I certainly couldn't deliver it. Apple has years of experience in media sales and micro-payments in iTunes. It began selling software through iTunes in 2006, and spent years refining its software deployment system to make sure iTunes would work as a true market place for mobile software once the iPhone was ready. Anyone can open a store. There are a dozen online music and video stores that have gone out of business trying to sell music like iTunes. Apple created a real market, where both buyers and sellers can have confidence that they're getting a fair deal. Google has tried to backhandedly condemn Apple's App Store for being called a “store,” negatively associating the word with a commercial endeavor as opposed to the community effort Google's marketing team has branded a “market.” Never mind that the words really mean the same thing; Google isn't really creating a market, because markets have enforced rules. Without rules and authority, there is too much risk involved to do legitimate business. If Android were only setting up a barter system between the company's altruistic and noble minded PhDs in the Google cafeteria, there wouldn't be an issue. However, Google is setting up shop in the most corrupt, chaotic, and criminal setting on earth: the wide open Internet, a dirty enough place to turn a brand new PC into a viral porn spam server within fifteen minutes of being plugged in. Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Can Great Google Getter Done? The company's Alfred E. W. Newman approach to security issues is more than a little alarming coming from a company that is fully aware of Internet scammers. Google's main job is identifying and scouring away the criminal tracks that SEO frauds try to leave behind in its search engine results. The company terminates its advertiser partners on a whim when it even suspects an irregularity, and the web is full or people complaining that Google has failed to pay them for hundreds of dollars of AdSense advertising without even a fair explanation. The company is hard edge and savvy when it comes to protecting its own revenues, so why is it being so soft and naive when the security of its users is on the line? Google's “do no evil” slogan, paired with its considerable contributions to society, from free search to free satellite imagery, and from its staunch support of the public interest related to WiFi and mobile broadband issues to its investments in progressive technologies to make the world a better place, all simply add up to leave its unreasonable stance on mobile security a mysterious puzzle. Can Google even pull its store off? The company serves up millions of free videos in YouTube, but remember that Google originally tried to build its own YouTube and failed; it had to buy YouTube to enter the market. Google also screwed the pooch when it dropped its own paid DRM video service and told its users to go fly a kite. That kind of customer-oblivious behavior isn't going to successfully lock horns with Apple's proven excellence in delivering the iTunes Store as a customer-friendly market place. Apple pulled together 14 year old torrent freaks and the RIAA's lawyers into the same room and made them play together. It turned the festering boil of the rotten mobile software market into a million dollar per day buffet. Google's Android Market not only faces the same challenges, but also has to fly in the face of the industry darling, starting at zero against Apple's ten million installed base of iPhones and its accelerating market share. The industry outside of Apple is working just as hard to grab its own slice as well. Google taking on the iPhone App Store is a bit like Sony deciding to build cars to take on BMW. That's all fine and good, but let's see the car before we start comparing its “planned” zero to 60 performance against that of today's cars with a proven legacy. And stop telling us that lacking both seat belts and brakes is a feature. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on August 28, 2008
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What's Next from Apple: New iPods Sept 22, iPhone OS 2.1, iTunes 8.0

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

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on August 23, 2008
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How Open will the iPhone Get?

Daniel Eran DilgerThere is obvious interest in iPhone development, and users of the device have good reason to demand a vibrant software ecosystem growing up around it. There are a lot of applications Apple doesn’t have the time or inclination to deliver, but which would greatly increase the value of the phone and subsequently expand sales. Apple needs third party help.At the same time, I have taken it upon myself to act as the tiny minority voice in explaining why I think Apple isn’t simply being foolish and shortsighted in the way that it is rolling out its iPhone software platform. Back in January, I explained why Apple might face resistance from third party developers, and why it might be best suited following a managed platform strategy in the model of video games, where Apple would developing its own apps and work with developers to co-publish, without setting up a wide open development platform like the Mac or Windows. [Inside the iPhone: Third Party Software]I also defended against the market-speak droids that came out in a vengeance against Apple’s so called “closed platform�? by highlighting the absurdity of ABI’s claim that not running third party software made the iPhone “not a smartphone,�? pointing out that the overwhelming majority of today’s third party mobile software either:solves problems in Windows Mobile that shouldn’t exist.fills voids left by Windows Mobile that Microsoft should have covered.exists without reason as frivolous garbage-ware.is overpriced trash.or will work on the iPhone already.[More Absurd iPhone Myths: Third Party Software Panic]With Journalists Like These, Who Needs to Report a Factual Story?In May, I went to Apple’s shareholder meeting (just barely; they use metal detectors for security and I have a metal plate in my arm from a motorcycle accident), and used the opportunity to ask Steve Jobs about iPhone development In front of all those rich stockholder and media types.“While Apple's closed platform policy may make sense for consumers,�? I asked, “does Apple recognize the needs of large, institutional buyers who are excited about the prospect of applying low cost, handheld computers with their own custom development?�?Jobs went on record to answer that Apple was working to balance the needs of software security and deployment with demands for custom development on the iPhone. The “real�? press, including Ellen Lee in the San Francisco Chronicle and Troy Wolverton of the San Jose Mercury News, failed to ask any interesting questions or even note the interesting answers. Instead, Lee published a diatribe about how Jobs was “feisty�? and “fired back�? at anyone who dare ask any questions. Lee also described an unhappy shareholder contingent based entirely upon--as reader David Barnes noted--conversations with two union leaders with clear political goals. She may as well have invented that story from her desk and saved herself a trip.Wolverton turned in a tepid report in May, but then tried to retell Lee’s story in August, in an incendiary article that spun the meeting’s vote--three months later--as a hotbed of shareholder outrage and discontent. Wolverton still hasn’t got back to me as promised to explain away his documented record of half-truths and negative spin on all things Apple. What a coward![Answers from Steve Jobs at Apple's Shareholder Meeting][RoughlyDrafted Forums - Answers from Steve Jobs at Apple's Shareholder Meeting][Troy Wolverton Documents Faux Apple Shareholder Outrage]An iPhone SDK at WWDC?Prior to WWDC in June, I explained why I didn’t think Apple would release a software development kit for it, and that it would likely orient apps around the web as Dashboard-like widgets instead. I outlined reasons why, in addition to pointing out that being “closed�? did not necessarily mean being a completely locked down black box, and that Apple’s viewpoint was subject to change as the surrounding circumstances did. [Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software][An iPhone SDK? Predictions for WWDC 2007!]An Open iPhone Software Plan.Days before the iPhone’s release, I pointed out that Apple had already gone on record about its plans for the iPhone back in an April earnings report:CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated, “We believe the iPhone is a revolutionary device that is years ahead of the competition. At Macworld, we demonstrated a number of the iPhone's breakthrough features, including its pioneering multi-touch display and user interface, visual voicemail, desktop class e-mail and web browsing, and of course, the best iPod ever. “We plan to build on this incredible foundation by continuing to develop new software features as well as entirely new applications and incorporate them into the iPhone. Since iPhone customers will likely be our best advocates for the product, we want to get them many of these new features and applications at no additional charge as they become available.“[Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model]Since then, I’ve pointed out the same thing: the iPhone isn’t likely to become a Mac-like open platform anytime soon, but its really not accurate to call it a closed platform either. Two recent articles presented more details on why, integrating in the historical events of the Office Wars.[Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone][How Closed Is the iPhone?]Reasons for Wanting an Open iPhone SDK.Reader Ken Tozier responded with three main reasons he thinks Apple should open up the iPhone to developers. He wrote:“A supported SDK would eliminate the negative ‘hacker’ stigma for third party applications. Since Apple never partners with anyone but large corporations, under the closed model, the little guy will never get a chance to legitimately write applications for the iPhone. Without this legitimacy, only a miniscule proportion of iPhone users will ever take the risk on hacked applications. The average user will just be too scared off by the label ‘hacked.’
“A supported SDK would bring a large percentage of developers, who want to create iPhone/iPod-Touch apps under Apple's control. It's just easier and faster to use Apple's Cocoa classes than plod through open source SVN trees trying to  stitch together disparate code fragments into your own ‘big idea.’
“Small developers are the ones who will be writing the most creative iPhone apps. Fleshing in the iPhone universe with myriad stars, that are just too small for Apple to bother with. Bar code readers based on the camera. Foreign language flash cards, Road trip license plate games for kids where, when they see a new license plate, they could press a button for info on that state. Lava lamps, virtual fish tanks. Carpenter's levels. Nail finders. The possibilities are endless and Apple will never do any of them.“The iPhone already contains a large chunk of ARM adapted Cocoa classes with the exact same method prototypes that have been in use for years in OS X. Apple isn't going to change classes like NSDictionaries, NSStrings, NSURLs etc for the simple reason that it's battle tested, ‘just works’ and changing these would break all their stuff too.“So, that just leaves a handful of high level iPhone specific classes. For example, I'd be a happy camper if, in addition to file read/write, Apple gave us the following iPhone hardware accessor classes:NSBasebandServiceNSBasebandClient
NSBluetoothServiceNSBluetoothClient
NSWiFiServiceNSWiFiClient
NSMultiTouchClientNSAccelerometerClient“With NSBasebandService and NSWiFiService, it would be possible to create a wireless modem application where your laptop talks to the phone in WiFi-ese and the phone talks to another phone on the other side of the world through the baseband. Teleconferencing from a camp site.“With NSMultiTouchClient, you could use the raw coordinate (and pressure?) data however you wanted. Keys on a virtual instrument, pads on a virtual drum kit, whatever.“With NSAccelerometerClient you could create really cool multi-player games and physics demonstrations for the classroom.“Apple needs to do this. I can't put an accurate percentage on it, but my gut feeling is that third party apps could increase iPhone sales by 10 to 15 percent. Maybe even more if someone comes up with something revolutionary.�?The Hacker Stigma.Tozier raised some good points. However, regarding the hacker stigma, what great or useful applications do people not use because of such a stigma? Mac the Ripper, Handbrake, and torrent apps and sites are wildly popular, even though they are known to be "grey area" and require thwarting of laws and jurisdictions just to host them. People might be afraid of putting unknown third party software on their mobile, but they should be. If Apple rubber stamped its approval on all third party software to remove this stigma, it would only confer all rage related to glitches, battery loss, spyware, and other problems directly upon Apple. Why would Apple want to take responsibility for a bunch of hobbyist apps when it faces regular petty lawsuits over "whether it adequately informed users that batteries might wear out" and other frivolousness?Frozen Cocoa: Tastes Great But Doesn't Flow.The hackers are already working to use Apple's Cocoa classes. There is no alternative system on the iPhone to use. Just as on the Mac desktop, many apps are existing Free and Open Source Software wrapped in nice Cocoa interfaces. That's what iPhone apps would largely be as well. But for Apple to offer official support for this, it would have to freeze its Cocoa frameworks and make them public.Apple already maintains private frameworks in Mac OS X; developers can't really use these, not because Apple wants to reserve them for itself, but because they are in flux. Apple commonly develops a framework privately, then after testing it in production and refining it, opens them up for developers to use in the next release of Mac OS X. If developers were allowed to build against the closed versions, their work would break as Apple made improvements. It's the same on the iPhone. If Apple opened up its internals as a public API, it would then be hamstrung to make any changes.We already know that Apple plans to make major changes to a number of things, particularly Notes and Calendar in relation to Leopard. If Apple allowed developers to go out and build a "Notes+" they would be angry after Apple released its own plans related to Notes, and "outraged Mac users" would be paraded around offering their opinion that Apple shouldn't step on developers shoes and should pay third parties before offering a similar solution to the same problem. Think of Watson and Konfabulator.An Expanding iPhone Software Ecosystem of Small Developers.At the same time however, Tozier raises salient points about the breadth and depth of software that Apple will never provide solutions to. I have an iPhone. I want to install cool things on it. I can imagine things that would be incredibly useful and powerful and fun. I'm surprised Apple hasn't made any allowance to even package up "local web apps" that developers could distribute that could do things without a network connection. It would be great if Apple could deliver a sandbox environment that would skirt around all the problems I raised and deliver a vibrant software ecosphere for the OS X devices.I can also think of a dozen other things It would also be great if Apple could tackle. Unfortunately, market realities mean that the company's abilities are constrained and it has to focus on the most valuable opportunities. As the company builds the iPhone platform, I think it will make sense to progressively allow increased access to third parties. Steps Toward Open.I think "local web apps" would be an extremely important first step, along with simpler Dashboard-like widgets similar to the iPhone’s Maps, Weather, and Stocks. Put them on a separate set of pages behind "Dashboard" or something. Very little risk.A second step would be to allow access to the cooler stuff via the web, so local web apps could access sensors and Bluetooth and other things. This begins to raise security risks and liability risks. The first apps are going to be used to copy around songs and pop up ads; there is too much money in "not paying for content" and "pushing messages at people." Look at Windows: open ubiquitous platform, satiated with software piracy and viral adware.I agree that the idyllic paradise is flowing with the milk and honey of third party software, but there are real threats to defend against as well. Which is why I brought up Mac OS licensing. Who would have guessed that software licensing would cost Apple more money that it made? Good ideas are sometimes really just ideas.But ideas are so much fun to speculate about. Let’s play Reverse Bingo for iPhone Software, by trying to correctly guess which icons will fill up the iPhone’s home page. I have a few ideas, but there’s still time to suggest your own.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? 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• on September 15, 2007
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Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly

Daniel Eran DilgerOffice Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolyMicrosoft’s Office monopoly gives the company more revenues and delivers nearly as much profit as its Windows software. How did it gain such a powerful position in productivity applications? The history of Office is rooted in decisions Apple made in the 80s with the Lisa and Macintosh, and also has an interesting correlation to Apple’s iPhone strategy today.The Origins of Office.While Microsoft has overwhelming power in desktop productivity applications today, it entered the market late. In the early 80s, Microsoft principally sold language software and struggled to license copies of AT&T’s Unix under the name Xenix. In 1981, Microsoft teamed up with IBM to license a copycat version of CP/M as the DOS for IBM’s new PC. Microsoft didn’t really get started in applications until Steve Jobs approached the company that same year with a proposal to develop for Apple’s new Macintosh.Entrusted with prototype Mac hardware and inside access to Apple’s development tools, Microsoft made an agreement with Apple in 1981 not to ship any mouse-based products of its own until a year after Apple introduced the Mac. In exchange, Apple promised to give Microsoft a rare opportunity to enter the competitive desktop applications market using its entirely new Mac platform as a launching pad.[SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1970s][SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s]Software Sells Systems!Prior to the Mac, Apple had released the Lisa as its first graphical desktop computer. Since developing new graphical apps for the Lisa was very different and required special training, Apple delivered its own complete productivity suite for the Lisa. It planned to open up the Lisa platform to third party development at some point after the initial launch, but the immediate focus had been to deliver a unique set of applications to demonstrate the power of Lisa’s new graphical interface.Recalling the software focus of the Lisa development team, reader Jim Hoyt emailed me several months ago in response to “Why Apple Bounced Back,�? an article crediting Apple’s recent internal software development efforts with a large role in the company’s turnaround over the last decade. Hoyt wrote, “In 1979, John Couch, the soon-to-be head of the Lisa project, was in charge of all software at Apple Computer. He commissioned this poster: Software Sells Systems.�? I’ve been meaning to publish the otherwise long since lost to history poster, so here it is, belatedly. Thanks Jim![Why Apple Bounced Back]Apple Delivers Lisa Suite Seven Years Ahead of Microsoft Office.The poster’s prem