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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Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Daniel Eran Dilger Apple is marketing the idea of there being “no new features�? for Snow Leopard and instead promising an overall improvement in how Mac OS X works under the hood, thanks to a diligent code optimization and refactoring cycle discussed in the previous article. At the same time, there are plenty of significant new features coming in Snow Leopard to look forward to. Here are ten big new features (plus a few minor ones) that you probably haven't heard much about from anywhere else, including my previous articles on the subject that already described QuickTime X, Grand Central, and OpenCL. WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint Pulling Invisible New Features into Snow Leopard. Apple's increasing collaborations with the open source community have pulled back the veil of secrecy on several new but mostly invisible enhancements that will be showing up in Snow Leopard. One relates to LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler architecture project originally founded at the University of Illinois. Apple began contributing to LLVM development in 2005, and started using it Leopard to expand support for OpenGL hardware features. Lower-end Macs that lack the silicon to interpret that specialize graphics code can now do it in software. LLVM is also working its way into Apple's Xcode IDE, initially as a highly efficient optimizer and code generator that works as a bolt-on upgrade to components of GCC, but eventually as a complete compiler replacement. That project, known as Clang, was opened up last year. LLVM compiler technology not only makes developers more productive, but also results in code that runs significantly faster on the same hardware. Apple's other open secret: the LLVM Complier The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure Project Another openly hidden secret in Mac OS X is CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. Beginning with Jaguar in 2002, Apple adopted and licensed CUPS from its developer as Mac OS X's printing engine. It then purchased the project outright. CUPS is also the de facto printing system for Linux distros and is available for BSD and other commercial Unix systems. That means Apple owns the project that develops the printing architecture for Linux. That's not an issue because Apple has established a reputation in open source as a strong contributor and open sharer. According to a review of bug fixes and improvements in CUPS software, 24% of the enhancements came from Apple while 76% came from free and open source software contributors working with Linux, OpenSolaris, and other projects. Of course, 100% of both sides benefited from that sharing. CUPS collaboration has resulted in high quality code and the advancement of new features. CUPS 1.4, the version sources say Snow Leopard will use, adds performance enhancements and a variety of security improvements that use sandboxing to prevent malware attacks on the printing system from being able to read sensitive documents that may be in use by printers. Common UNIX Printing System A third significant new feature originating from an open source project in Snow Leopard is ZFS support, portions of which come from the OpenSolaris project (along with Sun's DTrace technology, which Apple uses in its Instruments performance profiling tool). Leopard debuted read-only ZFS features, but Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server will provide both read and write support for Sun's new 128-bit file system. ZFS was designed to provide “simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability.�? ZFS hype during the development of Leopard helped the new file system reach buzzword status as news of the three letter acronym swept through blogs and the tech media. It is frequently described as being the imminent replacement for the Mac's native HFS+. However, the benefits of ZFS including as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots all apply primarily to servers and higher-end workstation users who deal with multiple disk drives. ZFS isn't going to replace HFS+ outright in Snow Leopard, and has limited relevance today to desktop and laptop users, particularly those who never move beyond the single disk drive installed in their system. More Predictions for WWDC 2007: Solaris, Google, Surround Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Developer Tools - Instruments Symbiotic: What Apple Does for Open Source Apple's Open Source Assault Pushing Visible New Features in Snow Leopard. Apple's extensive work in developing push support for Exchange Server on the iPhone will also be included in Snow Leopard's Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Push support in those client side apps are also being used to power MobileMe's push messaging subscription service and Snow Leopard Server's push messaging services. Apple will be offering both in parallel as alternatives to Exchange, thanks to smart planning on the part of Apple's engineers to develop an interoperable push architecture in Mac OS X and on the iPhone. There is also a fourth application of push that has developed alongside push messaging: Apple's new Push Notification Service. PNS allows iPhone and iPod touch users to set up server side notification alerts that don't require mobile applications to stay running in the background just to update users of the external events they track. Along with Bonjour discovery, PNS will keep iPhones wirelessly connected in all sorts of sophisticated ways that third party developers can imagine in their applications. Whether Apple will integrate a listener for the same PNS system into the desktop side of Mac OS X remains to be seen, but it would allow a single, unified interface for alerting client users of new events. I proposed a system wide, Growl-style notification system in the Leopard Wish List published back in 2005. Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint Apple’s Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh With the strong push into push messaging, Apple will make mobile devices even more tightly integrated with its desktop products. Leopard delivered Back To My Mac as a novel way to use Wide Area Bonjour's dynamic service registration as a mechanism for sharing resources served from home to any location without configuring static naming services for address lookups. Because any software can register itself with .Mac/MobileMe, this opens the door to third party developers with the vision to exploit the potential of these enabling technologies. A Global Upgrade for Bonjour: AirPort, iPhone, Leopard, .Mac Ten Big Predictions for Apple in 2008 Among the technologies profiled earlier in Myth 3 that have been trickling from the iPhone into Mac OS X, there's at least one idea I proposed for the iPhone that will be in Snow Leopard's Safari: self contained web apps. The new feature will allow users to run web applications as a local app in its own window, essentially making the web platform into a native-looking app that can run outside of Safari. I proposed a similar feature as a possibility for the iPhone prior to the announcement of the Cocoa Touch SDK: web apps packaged up into a set of files that could be run on the device as a Dashboard widget-like standalone app, even when off the network. Why Apple hasn't pursued such an obvious strategy is a little hard to figure out, but it seems they've got the ball rolling on the desktop. That ball will be rolling even faster thanks to SquirrelFish, a new JavaScript interpreter that will make Safari and any other WebKit-based browsers, standalone self contained apps, and Dashboard widgets all a lot faster. Apple's MobileMe, Yahoo's Flickr, and Google various web apps will all gain new speed thanks to faster JavaScript execution. SquirrelFish will also raise the bar in performance and efficiency in the Rich Internet Applications sector in general, giving Flash, Silverlight, and Java a faster, simpler, and more openly interoperable runtime to compete against. RoughlyDrafted: Leopard Wish List: 2005 How Open will the iPhone Get? Surfin’ Safari » Announcing SquirrelFish Microsoft's Application Features in Mac OS X, System Wide. Microsoft's business model of tacking on features hasn't been a total wash. The company's desperate efforts to invent novel marketing features for every new release of Windows and Office have pioneered a number of ideas that have later found their way into Mac OS X. One example is the idea of Fast User Switching, which Apple added to Panther. Windows XP pioneered the trick, but built it upon the kluge that is Terminal Services. Microsoft also helped originate the basis of Ajax web apps by inventing XMLHttpRequest in order to make its Outlook Web Access 2000 web app work decently within Internet Explorer. Today, standards-based web apps are eating a hole into Microsoft's monopoly on the proprietary desktop platform, and tools such as SproutCore and resulting products such as MobileMe are poised to tear down interoperability barriers and level the playing field. Microsoft may now regret having opened Pandora's Box in terms of standards-based web applications, but its efforts to seal the web back up with the proprietary Silverlight plugin, which turns web apps into .NET programs, will now be next to impossible. Another example of a Microsoft innovation are the fancy text features in Word, such as red underlining to highlight spelling mistakes and the green squiggle for grammar errors. Word also features a variety of word auto correction, smart dash insertion, and text replacement features (such as typing TM to get the ™ character). The former have already become system-wide features in Mac OS X, while sources indicate that the latter text processing features will find their way into Snow Leopard, and therefore every application that runs on it. RoughlyDrafted: Remote Display part 3: Terminal Server Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore Super Size Me. On top of injecting Word features into its OS for the use of every application, Apple will also expand the use of its own Data Detectors, a technology it invented in the mid 90s for identifying useful bits of text and making it actionable. Leopard introduced Data Detectors in Mail as a way to extract contacts and events for use in Address Book and iCal, but Snow Leopard will expose Data Detectors everywhere it draws text. Sources also indicate Snow Leopard will expand upon Font Book to provide full Auto Activation of any fonts requested by any application, using Spotlight to track them down. Snow Leopard is also suggested to have a new set of frameworks specifically for working with multitouch trackpad gestures, patterned after those introduced with the MacBook Air. Speaking of the ultra-thin Air, sometimes less is more. However, the high cost and relatively low capacity of Solid State Drives like the $1000, 64 GB SSD option offered for the Air means that one Microsoft feature Snow Leopard could do without is bloat. As one reader noted, “Currently, Leopard requires 9 GB of available disk space for installation and iLife requires an additional 3 GB. This means that a product such as the [SSD] MacBook Air comes with the hard drive 20% full.�? How the MacBook Air stacks up against other ultra-light notebooks Leopard Predictions for WWDC 2006 WWDC 2007: An Inside Perspective From the Halfway Point Think Small. Snow Leopard aims below the bloat to accommodate the coming wave of SSD-based systems. In the latest build, sources say Apple's own apps are losing weigh dramatically across the board. The apps in the Utilities folder all drop from 468 MB to 111.6 MB, for example. Other apps are similarly svelte, as the graph below indicates. Is this the product of just code optimization and shared resources? One factor likely relates to work on Resolution Independence, which substitutes bitmapped raster graphics (which define every pixel) with smaller vector graphics files (which draw GUI elements and controls by recipe). Vector graphics can be scaled to any size while retaining a high quality appearance, while bitmapped graphics can quickly look blocky when scaled up. Adding larger bitmapped versions can solve that problem, but at the cost of consuming more disk space. Apple earlier told developers it would be providing a library of shared, high quality vector graphics they could use instead of each packaging their own bitmapped art into every app. The dramatic size reductions in these apps must also involve more efficient Localization. For example, Mac OS X Leopard's Mail currently weighs in at over 285 MB, but the majority of its bulk comes from 18 language localizations inside the application bundle that consume 276 MB. The actual Universal Binary code is only a few megabytes and even its associated graphics and other resources only amount to 2.8 MB. Why does Apple default to dumping support for 18 or more languages in every app without providing any simple, centralized way to get rid of the unnecessary ones? Perhaps that question is answered in Snow Leopard, where Mail is reportedly just 91 MB. That's too big to simply to be an English-only, stripped down version for developers, but still far smaller than than Leopard's. Across the board, it appears Snow Leopard apps are about a third as large as their Leopard equivalents. And so while Snow Leopard paradoxically gains more useful features through code improvements and under-the-hood retooling rather than from a Microsoft-style new feature focus that aims to deliver “wow�? with flashy marketing gimmicks, the system is also getting smaller and tighter. There must also be some other subtraction, right? Will Snow Leopard scrape away the old Carbon API? That's the next myth. WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard WWDC 2008: Is Mac OS X 10.6 the Death of Carbon? 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! Technorati Tags: Apple, Development, Mac, Software

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on June 22, 2008
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Software Updates and New Releases for Week Ending 2008-10-04

My Apple TV woes managed to eat away at some of the time I would have dedicated to scouring for updates and new toys, but I managed to find some interesting applications and utilities. I didn't have time to put Stainless (a Google Chrome-like browser for OS X based on WebKit) through enough paces to really post, but wanted to give it a mention since it has some very interesting features and may be a glimpse into the future of Safari. I also wanted to take the opportunity to once-again thank Tyler Loch for his work on VisualHub (and other goodies) over the years. Your contributions to the OS X community will be sorely missed! AIM for Mac - Beta 1 - Much to the surprise of many, AOL decided to release a new beta of their instant messenger for OS X. The big question, as a result, is “Why?”. After testing it out, I can find no compelling reason to switch from iChat or Adium and no features that would make this a “must-have” application, but I welcome your thoughts in the comments. [10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] Free! Gimp.app - 2.6.0 - Hot on the heels of the official Gimp release comes the OS X native (non-X11) release, complete with enhanced toolbars/docks, full panning beyond the image border, much-improved free-select tool and snazzy improvements to brushes. Much of the enhancements were under-the-covers and provided a foundation for future crunchy-goodness by integrating GCEL (Generic Graphics Library), a powerful graph-based image processing framework (think “undo”) and support for a wider range of color models and pixel storage formats when reading or saving images. The developers also improved plug-in support.The interface is not exactly perfectly Mac-like and feels awkward and clunky at times, but it is definitely usable and has a good feature set. Would you use it over Photoshop or even some of the newer Flash-based online editors? Let me know your thoughts! [10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] Free! ReceiptWallet - 2.0.8 - This minor update will make folks in Switzerland happy (fixes an issue with that locale), but also fixes a couple of other annoyances (a “Cancel” button one that was – on occasion – catching me) and a few bugs. [10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] US$39.95 Apple iTunes - 8.0.1 & Apple TV - 2.2 - As you saw on TAB, iTunes and Apple TV received updates this past week. The former improves music playback during Genius playlist creation (along with other improvements), and the latter provides support for HD TV shows and tosses a Genius into the tiny box for good measure. [10.3.9 (Apple TV update)/10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] Free! Editra - 0.3.80 - Entering a candidate into the text editor fray on OS X takes guts. You are competing with the likes of BBEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler and many others, each of them having a loyal and vocal user-base. Editra is aimed squarely at the developers out there as it has most of the goodies you've come to expect (line numbering, commenting, indenting, syntax highlighting, etc.). The interface is straightforward enough, but it is obvious that the “0.x” version numbering is accurate since there is much room for many refinements. It already supports plug-ins (written in Python) and has the benefit of being cross-platform (it is written with the wxWidgets library), so you can use slide between platforms without losing your editing mojo. This application is definitely something to keep on your radar and in your RSS feeds. [10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] Free! Perian - 1.1.1 - The self-dubbed “Swiss-Army knife for QuickTime” releases a two-dot update that I would have missed since the “update” button in the PrefPane did not work (and I just happened to hit their site from the other button in the PrefPane). This minor update fixes a problem with H.264 in AVI files, corrects a frame skipping issue, adds some codecs and incorporates a few additional bug fixes and feature tweaks. [10.4/10.5; Intel/PPC] Free! Schnippselchen Pro - 2.0.1 - I've been slowly getting back into software development (that may or may not be obvious from my posts) and came across this code-snippet saver which allows you to store, track and fully manage your bits of useful source with full support for syntax highlighting and drag-and-drop to Xcode or TextMate. The Mail-like interface should be quite accessible to everyone and the builtin search makes it pretty simple to find what you are looking for (especially if you've commented the snippets well). You can add a custom icon to each snippet and backup, export or share your library. The manual states that the app “will only store the data as long as [it] is running” but all my test snippets have been available across multiple launches. [10.5; Intel/PPC] Free? Remember, drop me a note on Twitter (@hrbrmstr) or in the comments if there is something you'd like me to try!

• TheAppleBlog on October 7, 2008
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Software Updates & New Release Highlights For Week Ending 2008-08-02

Apple's Security Update and iTunes minor update received the bulk of the attention this week, but there were a few other post-worthy items as well: Sequence - 1.0.1 - The now $19.00USD innovative screen capture utility fixes a bug in video compression. I had not noticed the “é” in the name now (I believe that came with the actual 1.0 release) but am happy to report that QuickSilver still brings it up after hitting “se”. 10.5 only, tho, as it makes extensive use of a number of Leopard-only features. CLIX - 1.8.1d - After just mentioning it CLIX gets an update which adds built-in command-group sharing (.clix files) from within the application (sends an e-mail with an attachment, but thankfully does not open up Apple Mail to do so). It does incorporate address book lookups and enables you to choose from all available Apple Mail accounts (for the sending part). Again, it's free and works on 10.4 & 10.5 (Intel & PPC). QuarkXPress - 8.0 - I do not do much desktop publishing at all these days, and – when I do – Pages provides most of what I need. Back in the pre-OS X days I used to be a QuarkXTension developer and still attempt to use Quark shortcuts in apps where I am doing more publishing-like activities. The app link goes to their 60-day demo (warning: 517MB, but pretty quick over cable modem) download where you can try some of the web features (Flash and Web Authoring Tools) and enhancements to tools that I cannot believe took this long to get into the program. I realize both Quark & Adobe use the “it's for professonals” and “piracy” excuses for their software prices, but $799.00 seems a bit much, even for this highly extensible program. 10.4 & 10.5 compatible (Intel & PPC) Centre - 2.14.1 - This is a server-side app which requires a number of other components, but it can be setup on either OS X workstation or server and is a full-featured, web-based student management system that incorporates significant functionality into an open source program. I had not fully tried it on OS X prior to this release (I've done most of the installs on Linux), but this release works great and may be something institutions on a budget may want to investigate before the new school year starts. Free!, and OS X 10.1+ Citrix ICA Client - 10.00.601 - A minor update (fix for XenDesktop connections) to this mostly-enterprise tool for running Windows apps remotely (you need the Citrix server software for this to work). Free and 10.3.9+ Flip4Mac WMV - 2.2.1.7 - Telestream fixes a security vulnerability in their substitute for Windows Media Components in QuickTime and also improves some existing features. My installed version did not find the update (even with a manual check), so you, too, may want to grab this on your own and update manually if you use it. 10.3.9+ and pricing starts at free! Flip4Mac Drive-in - 1.0.0.72 - Flip4Mac has another app out (in beta) that requires a full review, but you need to go and grab this beta soon if you want an easy way to get DVD's (that you own!) onto your system and also want to avoid the full price of $59.00USD for the finished version (users who activate the beta prior to 2008-08-15 are eligible to purchase for $19.00USD). 10.4 & 10.5 (Intel & PPC) VMware Fusion - 2.0b2 - Again, this is an app that requires a full review to do it justice, but if you are a VMware Fusion user you really should kick the tires with this pre-release as it significantly improves so many aspects of running virtual machines on your system (and not just Windows). 10.4 & 10.5 (Intel-only) and $79.99USD (but you can often find great deals with much more palatable prices). Accordance - 8.0.4 - This great Bible search & reference tool (exclusively OS X) releases a minor update to fix bugs in 3D map processing. They support a wide range of Mac operating systems and pricing really varies depending on the packages you want (all related to license fees). OmniPlan - 1.6 beta 2 - I dislike Microsoft Project, but have enough large projects on my plate that I wound up grabbig OmniPlan when it first came out just to help keep things in some semblance of order. It is less complex than Project (which is Windows-only), runs on OS X and has all the features I need. This beta fixes bugs, but I encourage OmniPlan users to give it a spin and provide feedback to the Omni folks since they are a solid bunch of developers who do a great deal for the Mac community. 10.4 & 10.5 (Intel & PPC)

• TheAppleBlog on August 4, 2008
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Myths of Snow Leopard 8: It's Just An OS.

Daniel Eran Dilger Apple's limited comments on Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X due in about a year, have opened the playing field for rampant speculation. Here's a look at a series of myths that have developed around the upcoming release. The eighth myth of Snow Leopard: Snow Leopard is Just an Operating System Stretching the Meaning of OS. The definition of “operating system�? has grown dramatically throughout the history of personal computing. In the 70s, CP/M was little more than a boot loader. In the 80s, Apple's SOS, the “Sophisticated Operating System�? developed for the ill-fated Apple III, introduced the novel idea of a modular driver architecture for printers, disks, and files systems. After the company returned to making Apple II models, much of SOS was salvaged in ProDOS. Apple's parallel development of the Lisa not only delivered an operating system, but also a full suite of productivity apps as part of the included Lisa 7/7 Office System software, the first consumer office suite. It would be another half decade before Microsoft bundled its Word and Excel apps with its newly acquired PowerPoint to release Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, followed by a Windows version. In a 1987 interview with Dave Ottalini, Andy Hertzfeld said, “I did the Macintosh Operating System and I was very familiar with the Apple /// and especially in the I/O system of the Macintosh, I was influenced by the Apple /// [SOS] operating system.�? The Mac's System Software in 1984 added in the concept of developer Toolbox that enabled applications to share one set of code for drawing window controls, managing print and file dialogs, and later dealing with multimedia. Apple bundled fewer apps with the Mac than the Lisa due to complaints from third party developers. Instead, the company partnered with Microsoft to deliver the Mac's key productivity apps, a move that turned out to be Apple's worst decision ever. In the late 80s, NeXTSTEP built upon the idea of the Mac Toolbox; NeXT delivered high level, object oriented frameworks and visual developer tools for rapidly building applications on top of a Unix foundation. Steve Jobs' new operating system went well beyond just booting up the machine. It included speech-enabled email messaging, DSP audio processing, PostScript color and transparency, a documentation reference library, dictionary, and even the complete works of Shakespeare. Apple III FAQ File Lisa GUI Prototypes Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple iWork Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly The Expanding OS at Microsoft. Throughout the 80s and into the 90s, Microsoft continued to sell the simplistic DOS, largely based upon the 1970s CP/M. The company started to bundle DOS with a Mac-like environment it called Windows, which started to become popular with Windows 3.1 in 1991. Microsoft shipped Windows primarily to port its Macintosh apps to the IBM PC in order to abandon its software partnership with Apple on the Mac. After similarly backing out of efforts to work with IBM on a DOS replacement called OS/2, Microsoft next attempted to deliver Windows NT as an entirely new operating system for PC users, based loosely upon concepts from AT&T Unix-rival VMS, after Microsoft acquired Digital's VMS developer team in the late 80s. Despite touting NT in the early 90s as the next Windows, Microsoft was unable to ship NT as a replacement to DOS for mainstream users until Windows XP 2001. However, Microsoft's greatest contribution in expanding the definition of the OS came from its efforts to tie products together to leverage its monopoly DOS position in order to advance its applications business. Prior to transitioning DOS users to Windows, it told developers to target OS/2. That left a vacuum for Microsoft's own new Windows Office apps, which had not been wildly popular until then. By 1995, Microsoft was licensing Windows and Office together to PC makers as tightly integrated products, cutting out competition from third party apps. Starting in 1996, as the Windows platform began to face the threat of the Netscape Navigator web browser paired with Sun's Java, Microsoft began to insist that its acquired Internet Explorer was an integrated part of the OS, enabling it to expand its monopoly and stifle any competitive pressure. It has since tied in the Windows Media DRM architecture, and has also tightly integrated Office and the Outlook Exchange client. While sold separately, both have become very close to being an extension of Windows. The company is now working to sell Windows, Office, and the requisite OneCare security software updates as a $70 per year subscription package called “Equipt,�? basically making all consumer Microsoft software an über-OS for Windows PC users, and again shutting out the third party developers who have been flourishing in the vibrant niche of servicing Windows' malware, viruses, and other security problems. 1990-1995: Microsoft's Yellow Road to Cairo Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Five Factors Shifting the Future of Malware and Platform Security Enter Mac OS X. By the time the Mac OS X beta emerged in 2000, a desktop operating system was expected to include everything from an email and web client to audio/video playback and Office functionality. In order to compete against Windows, Apple had needed to partner with Microsoft to deliver Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Office on the Mac. As Mac OS X began reaching a mainstream audience in 2002, Microsoft pulled the plug on Mac development, putting Internet Explorer and Outlook Express into maintenance mode and making minimal advancement to the Mac version of Office apps. For Apple to keep up with Microsoft, it would need to develop its own applications. Mac OS X's NeXSTEP legacy gave it a leg up on putting together an application portfolio. Apple had already adapted NeXTMail, a pioneering email client, into a decent email program simply called Mail, and shipped a central Address Book and later iCal scheduling client with Mac OS X. In 2003, Apple shipped Safari as its own standards-based web client. It later shipped iChat instant messaging and other supporting applications that rounded out the OS. At the same time, Apple also began assembling a suite of multimedia apps in iLife: iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand. It has also put together an alternative to Office in iWork: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. While both are sold separately from the OS, iLife ships for free on new Macs and iWork comes bundled as a trial that can be ordered online. Why Apple Bounced Back AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Mail 3.0 The Future of the Web: Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer Mac OS X vs Mac Office? The expansion of Mac OS X means something particularly interesting for Microsoft Office. Apple is describing Snow Leopard's key feature as being support for Exchange Server messaging, a role formerly delegated to Microsoft. That makes it the next step in the company's incremental independence from Microsoft's software on the Mac, following its banishment of IE, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, and MSN. Snow Leopard promises to obsolesce Entourage. That being the case, it would make sense for Apple to bundle its Exchange savvy, Snow Leopard version of Mail, iCal, and Address Book into the next version of iWork for sale to PowerPC Mac users and others who don't meet the minimum requirements for Snow Leopard. That move would also directly position iWork against Office and expand iWork's user base on the Mac platform. Current Office users sometimes argue that Apple needs to allow Microsoft to maintain its monopoly position in Office to prevent Macs from being shut out of the corporate world. Businesses do prefer to train employees in one set of software; iWork does not work like Microsoft Office, forcing companies to settle on one or double their user training efforts. However, Microsoft has already began work to ensure that Office on Windows does not work or look the same as its Mac version. The Windows edition was given a Ribbon UI for marketing reasons, with a Start Button-style user interface branding to tie it into Vista. That wouldn't work on the Mac side, so Microsoft gave Mac users an oddball, clownish user interface that is neither Mac-like nor immediately familiar to Office users. Because iWork works like the rest of Mac OS X and is both consistent and intuitive, users will pick it up faster than having to learn the quirky, lipsticked pig that is Office 2008 for Mac. Even Windows users are likely to find iWork easier to figure out than Microsoft's Mac version of Office. Apple's iWork still has a ways to go in matching every feature of Office, but it offers a much stronger foundation to build upon than the current version of Mac Office. Safari on Windows? Apple and the Origins of the Web The Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari Microsoft's Scorched Earth Office Policy. Microsoft is radically changing the Office user interface on the Windows side to force companies to adopt Vista while also attempting to stave off the advance of the free OpenOffice productivity software, which is also sold by Sun as StarOffice and by IBM as Lotus Symphony. OpenOffice (and other competing suites, including some online productivity offerings) have worked hard to copy the look and feel of Microsoft's Office to facilitate adoption by companies while requiring minimal new training. Microsoft's response is to take Office 2008 in a patented new direction that competitors can't follow, a trick it used to kill competition in the DOS market when it released Windows as a product that only appeared to work with MS-DOS, and subsequently Windows 95, a product that integrated MS-DOS. With iWork, Apple didn't try to copy the old Office look and feel, which has made little progress since the late 90s. Instead, it has fleshed out its own productivity software interface with direct feedback Inspector panels; Mac OS X-native, customizable toolbars; and close integration with other OS features from advanced graphics compositing to media library browsing to native font and color selection panels. Office Wars 4 - Microsoft’s Assault on Lotus and IBM This All Happened Before. While Microsoft's strategy of driving Office into a unique, proprietary direction makes sense as a way to disrupt compatibility and familiarity with open software, it is also leaving the door wide open for Apple to enter. This is exactly what happened five years ago when Microsoft dropped Internet Explorer on the Mac, creating a vacuum that resulted in Safari, which is now teamed up with Firefox in an effort to eat into IE market share and break open Microsoft's proprietary hold over web development. With advances in Javascript and HTML5-style sophisticated web applications, Safari is now helping to erode not only IE's control over the web, but also break up Windows' hegemony in application development. MobileMe demonstrates how rich, open web applications can provide familiar email, calendar, contacts, and other features using the cross platform web rather than a proprietary development platform. While Apple hasn't announced plans to to deliver iWork apps on MobileMe yet, their current availability for the Mac not only makes up for the weaknesses of Microsoft's Mac Office 2008, but also directs attention to the Mac platform and its unique set of productivity apps. By offering Snow Leopard and “iWork 2009�? with Exchange 2007 support as well as integration with MobileMe and Snow Leopard Server's push messaging services, Apple will be able to aggressively push Mac OS X and the Mac into new territory long held hostage by Microsoft. Myths of Snow Leopard 4: Exchange is the Only New Feature Apple’s Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Myths of Snow Leopard 1: PowerPC Support — RoughlyDrafted Magazine Myths of Snow Leopard 2: 32-bit Support Myths of Snow Leopard 3: Mac Sidelined for iPhone Myths of Snow Leopard 4: Exchange is the Only New Feature! Myths of Snow Leopard 5: No Carbon! Myths of Snow Leopard 6: Apple is Out of Ideas! Myths of Snow Leopard 7: Free?! Myths of Snow Leopard 8: It's Just An OS. Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore Apple’s other open secret: the LLVM Complier Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard 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!

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on July 9, 2008
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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 premise was obvious: the Lisa wasn’t going to sell itself; it needed practical software applications to usher in the future of the graphical desktop. Apple developed an entire suite of seven productivity applications that shipped with the Lisa system in 1983, including word processing, spreadsheet, database, drawing, graphing, project management, and terminal emulation programs. It was seven years later before Microsoft would first package its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications together as Office 1.0 in 1990. In his February 1983 review of the Lisa for Byte magazine, Gregg Williams concluded: “As you can tell, I am very impressed with the Lisa. I also admire Apple for deciding to make the system without being unduly influenced by cost or marketing constraints. The Lisa couldn’t have been developed without such a deep commitment, and no other company I can think of could afford such a project or would be interested in doing it this way (the Lisa project reportedly cost over $50 million and used more than 200 person-years of effort!). In terms of the actual, as opposed to symbolic, effect it will have on both the microcomputer and the larger-computer market, the Lisa system is the most important development in computers in the last five years, easily outplacing IBM’s introduction of the Personal Computer in August, 1981.�?A year later, Lisa ended up being replaced by the much less expensive Macintosh, which delivered much of the Lisa’s functionality at a quarter of the price. However, the Mac did not include the Lisa’s expensive megabyte of RAM, its hard drive, or its productivity application suite. The Mac only shipped with a word processor and painting tools.Why Apple didn’t port its Lisa applications to the Macintosh is a confounding riddle, because it had more than a half decade of opportunity to do so. The main reason for this was a paranoid fear of alienating outside developers, along with jitters related to IBM’s rapid poaching of the desktop computing world after the arrival of its PC in 1981.[“The Lisa Computer System�? Reprinted from Byte, issue 2/1983] [The Lisa, Apple's First GUI-Based Computer System - VAW][How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One]Apple’s Lisa vs the Third Party Mac Platform: 1980 - 1984.Competition inside Apple between the Lisa development group and the Macintosh team led to a different software strategy for the Mac. Since the smaller Mac group didn’t have the resources to develop a full suite of applications in advance of its launch, it planned to leverage third party development in the same way as the Apple II had.Sales of Apple II computers had exploded in 1979 with the release of Dan Bricklin’s VisiCalc spreadsheet software. That success was a large reason why IBM decided to get involved in the microcomputer business with the PC in the first place. It wasn’t until 1984 that Apple began making lots of money selling AppleWorks, its word processing, spreadsheet, and database package for the Apple II. It continued to sell the software with only limited updates well into the early 90s.Apple management failed to see the potential for delivering its own suite of Mac applications as it had on the Lisa, and as it very profitably would later do for the Apple II. Instead, it became increasingly enamored with the idea of partnering with third party software developers and delegating away the work--and the profits--of creating its own Mac software. Motivated by fears of inhibiting a third party software industry like the one that had grown up around the IBM PC, Apple intentionally stifled its own internal software development efforts and later spun them off into the Siberian gulag of Claris. That move would prove to be a devastatingly expensive mistake that would nearly destroy Apple over the next decade.Incidentally, three of the most important products Apple would release during that decade of decline were software products: the profitable AppleWorks for the Apple II in 1984.the free 1987 HyperCard for the Mac.the free 1991 QuickTime for the Mac.[HyperCard: Apple and the Origins of the Web][1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds][QuickTime: The Secret Weapon Inside iTunes]A Fearsome Future VisiOn for the PC: 1981 - 1983.Another contributing reason for Apple’s rush to embrace third party developers on the Macintosh may have been related to the fear of VisiCorp’s new mouse-driven VisiOn graphical desktop environment. VisiOn originally appeared on the Apple III in November of 1981, but the complete commercial failure of that new machine after the delivery of IBM’s PC prompted VisiCorp to announce moving its support to the PC in 1982, with a promised release target of mid-1983. Apple was still scrambling to release the Lisa and the Mac, both of which had slipped repeatedly.While clumsy, slow, and expensive--the base VisiOn software and a mouse cost $790, each application cost between $250 and $400, and it required a $5000 hard drive upgrade on top of a $2000 PC--VisiOn was backed by the legendary VisiCorp, the company that had helped launch the Apple II to fame with VisiCalc. VisiOn also tapped into IBM’s “up is down�? PC, which despite its high price and low level of performance and innovation, had cut deeply into Apple’s business expansion plans, almost entirely due to IBM’s reputation and its monopoly position in business computing. After witnessing its first big failure with the Apple III, and then seeing a tepid response to the $9,995 Lisa in 1983, Apple was no doubt very concerned about IBM’s PC being converted into an ugly frankenstein Mac knockoff with that $7,500 VisiOn upgrade bolted on, cheered on by a press giddy at the prospect of being bamboozled by IBM’s overpriced and under delivering PC.The only way to compete with the threat of such a graphical system for the PC would be to deliver the new Macintosh as quickly as possible at a much lower cost with lots of applications from a variety of third party developers. Fortunately for Apple, VisiOn also slipped several months and wasn't delivered until the end of 1983. Right up until it completely fizzled, the press hailed VisiOn as a promising competitor to Apple’s Lisa and the forthcoming Macintosh.By 1983, VisiCorp had fallen apart; its star development manager Mitch Kapor had left to found Lotus Development. Kapor’s new spreadsheet product, Lotus 1-2-3 for the DOS PC, destroyed the remains of VisiCorp and its VisiOn.[VisiCorp Visi On - Toasty Tech][1980-1985: 8-bit Platforms]Frying Pan to the Fire: Apple Runs to the Arms of Microsoft: 1981.Finding developers willing to commit to investing in Apple’s next new platform was difficult after the failure of the Apple III and the wildly successful launch of the PC. Apple later found that its developer relations would suffer at the release of the “no other software needed�? Lisa. For the Mac, Apple decided to copy the PC model by directing the majority of its efforts into courting third party developers and downplaying its own software releases, which were only intended to serve as basic placeholders. Even so, many PC developers planned to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to supporting the Macintosh.Hoping to prime an early and explosive business success for the Macintosh in the same way VisiCalc had launched sales of the Apple II, Steve Jobs made plans with Microsoft to deliver a graphical Mac interface for its struggling Multiplan--a VisiCalc spreadsheet clone--and a new Chart application.Microsoft had also secretly begun another Mac app initially called MultiTool Word, based on the Bravo word processor developed by Xerox PARC’s Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie; Microsoft hired both in 1981. The company didn’t tell Apple about its new word processor project because the Mac team had already started developing a word processor for the Mac called MacWrite.[A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox - Folklore.org][An Office User Interface Blog - Microsoft’s Jensen Harris]Apple’s Problematic Partnership with Microsoft: 1981 - 1985Next to IBM, Apple was among the first companies to realize that getting into a business partnership with Microsoft was a really bad idea. Throughout 1983, Microsoft employees began intense discussions with Apple about how the Mac system software worked internally, involving issues unrelated to desktop application development. The reasons for this became obvious when Microsoft made a surprise pre-announcement at the Comdex trade show in November 1983 of a clone of Apple’s Mac environment for the PC called Windows, along with the release of a text-based Word for DOS using a mouse. Apple had previously worried about VisiCalc’s independent VisiOn appearing for the PC, but now its own partner had taken its internally developed graphical desktop work to deliver a competing product on IBM’s platform. Microsoft had discovered a loophole that allowed it to ignore its exclusive agreement with Apple because the contract had tied the year-long waiting period to the Mac’s planned ship date in 1982; that contract date wasn’t updated as the project slipped into 1984.It turned out that Word for DOS wasn’t very popular, since DOS PC users didn’t see much benefit from only using a mouse with a single application. It also turned out that Microsoft couldn’t deliver on its promise to ship Windows 1.0 by early 1984; it wasn’t actually available until 1985, and even then was a complete joke of a product and fully unusable. However, the problems Apple would suffer for trusting Microsoft were only just getting started. Windows 1.0 wasn’t much to look at, but it did offer an advancement beyond the neanderthal text interface of Word for DOS. Apple also had reason to worry when it found Microsoft was directly collaborating with IBM in 1985 to deliver a new DOS replacement called OS/2. [1990-1995: The Race to Deliver The Next New Platform][Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered]Apple Grows Dependent upon Third Party Software: 1985 - 1990.Apple’s partnership with Microsoft continued to worsen. Microsoft finally shipped its spreadsheet for the Mac in 1985, but threatened to also release it for the PC as well, prompting Apple CEO John Sculley to sign away rights to a variety of Mac system software details to Microsoft in 1985 in exchange for exclusive Mac development of the graphical Multiplan for two years. Microsoft’s Multiplan and Chart applications for the Macintosh were among the strongest software features Apple touted in its 1984 advertising. (Click to view full size).A very young Bill Gates appeared next to Mitch Kapor of Lotus Development in Apple’s Mac ads to observe, “To create a new standard takes somethings that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that captures people's imaginations. Macintosh meets that standard.�? Were he not trying to sell Windows Mobile today, he might say the same of the iPhone!Sculley had been arrogantly dismissive of Bill Gates’ July 1985 suggestion that Apple work quickly to broadly license its Mac technology to Northern Telecom, Motorola, and AT&T. Instead, Apple sought to retain control of the unique Mac desktop as a way to sell its hardware.At the same time, Apple grew increasingly reliant upon Microsoft to deliver updates to its applications for the Mac, and worried about threatening any of its third party Mac developers with its own internal application software efforts.However, in 1984 Apple had released AppleWorks for the Apple II. That program rapidly became the top selling software title of any computer platform, despite Apple’s minimal efforts to market it. It was nearly an embarrassment for Apple, which wanted to push the graphical new Macintosh, not a text-based 8-bit program. By 1987, Apple had spun off its own apps--including AppleWorks, MacWrite, MacDraw, and MacPaint--into the Claris subsidiary. Claris went on to profitably develop and acquire a suite of Mac productivity apps, but operated at an arms’ length distance from Apple. By 1990, Sculley realized the vast profit potential in application software. Apple had two solid platforms: the Apple II and the Mac. The company’s minimal efforts to market any software for them was clearly a huge mistake. Sculley subsequently decided to retain Claris as part of Apple rather than spinning it off, but that late decision shattered the subsidiary because its employees and managers had been given the expectation that a Claris IPO would make them rich. Many left in disgust.[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork]Microsoft Becomes an Applications Company: 1985 - 1989.At the same time, Microsoft’s graphical Multiplan for the Mac--which ended up being combined with the Chart app and renamed as Excel in 1985--became a huge seller for Microsoft. In contrast, the textual DOS version--which retained the Multiplan name--couldn’t compete with the top selling Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC side.Two years later in 1987, Microsoft’s deal with Sculley expired and the company released Excel 2.0 for the PC, along with Windows 2.0, which copied more of the Mac desktop, including the basic ability to display overlapping windows. No OEMs shipped Windows 2.0 on their PCs, but anyone buying the new Excel got a copy of Windows and a taste of the graphical Mac environment, albeit with Microsoft’s garish colors and its horrific MDI-style interface.Apple Sues to Stop Graphical Copycats, But Only On the PC: 1985 - 1988.While a number of companies delivered graphical environments in the pattern of VisiOn for various computer systems of the time, Apple was only threatened by those that promised to deliver the Mac look on the PC.For example, Apple ignored Berkeley Systems’ mouse-based, windowing GEOS environment, offered initially for the Commodore 64 and later Apple’s own Apple II systems.However, when CP/M maker Digital Research introduced its GEM/1 for the DOS PC, Apple sued and won an injunction that forced the company to remove certain features Apple had originally developed for the Mac, the most obvious of which was its use of graphics regions to draw sophisticated overlapping windows. At the same time, GEM/1 was also being sold for the 1985 Atari ST, but Apple completely ignored that product, enabling Atari to deliver a system so similar to the Mac it was commonly called the Jackintosh, after Atari CEO Jack Trammell. Apple also ignored overlapping windows in the 1985 Commodore Amiga, and a similar graphical desktop in the 1987 RISC OS developed by Acorn Computers. Apple was certainly aware of the British Acorn’s RISC OS, as the two companies had partnered to form ARM in order to develop a new generation of RISC based processors powering Acorn’s RISC PC and later, the Newton. Those same ARM processors now power iPods, the iPhone, and the vast majority of all mobile devices. [Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn't Symbian]However, Apple went ballistic upon the release of Microsoft’s Windows 2.0 in 1987. One reason was that Microsoft was pointedly using the product as a way to move its Mac applications to IBM’s PC, a move Apple correctly feared would quickly erode the unique value of the Macintosh. Additionally, Microsoft was also describing Windows as the basis of a new interface for IBM’s promised OS/2. Apple was livid that the trusted partner it had launched into the applications business would immediately sell it out and migrate those same applications to directly benefit its main hardware competitor. Despite the fairly insignificant sales of Windows 2.0, Sculley’s Apple sued Microsoft in 1988 over the use of Mac software details it had taken from Apple in its 1985 agreement. It also sued HP over a Windows 2.0 add on pack called NewWave, which supplied additional Mac-like features to the PC. Meanwhile, sales of Excel on the PC gradually began to grow and Microsoft worked increasingly hard to replace its Mac partner and then destroy it, using Windows as a tool to port its Mac applications to the PC instead. [Apple's Billion Dollar Patent Bluster: Patent vs. Copyright]Apple Loses Jobs, Opportunities: 1986 - 1988.In 1986--as Apple’s panic over Microsoft moving its Mac apps to the IBM PC was just getting started--Steve Jobs’ plans to rapidly move the Macintosh into the business and server arena were getting shot down by the more conservative minded Sculley. Apple’s board feared that increased investment in the Macintosh might spread the company too thin.[Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers]Jobs subsequently left Apple in frustration to form NeXT, Inc, and develop his own ideas for business oriented workstations. Sculley replaced him with Jean Luis Gassée, who shared Sculley’s vision for dabbling in impractical technology ventures like the Newton and keeping Mac models configured for high end markets.Apple continued to make outstanding profits from increasing sales of the Mac and continued sales of the Apple II, but the company had made a grave mistake in ignoring and avoiding the software business. Even worse, it was now dependent upon a rival company to maintain key software titles for the Mac.Apple was also losing key engineering talent to Jobs’ NeXT, which by 1988 was delivering the first release of what Apple itself should have been working on: its next generation of hardware and software. [Newton Lessons for Apple's New Platform][Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC: The History of NeXT]Sculley’s Apple Bungles Office Applications.While Sculley’s Apple fought Microsoft’s Windows in the courts, it did little to effectively compete in the marketplace, either with the Mac as a platform or in the applications arena to take on what would become the Microsoft Office suite in 1990. To deliver Office, Microsoft simply paired Word and Excel with PowerPoint, a Mac presentation application Microsoft acquired in 1987. Had Apple simply ported its Lisa applications to the Mac, it would have had a head start of several years to develop and refine its own applications suite, and could have maintained them as unique to the Mac without giving away its crown jewels to Microsoft in 1985. After ten years of trying, even Microsoft could eventually deliver a good enough copy of the Mac with Windows 95 in late 1995. After that, Microsoft pulled the plug on Office development for the Mac and didn’t release another update until 1998.[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork]Apple’s Squandered Opportunity in Software Sales.The bizarre thing was that Apple was making money selling AppleWorks on autopilot, and continued to do so from 1984 into the early 1990s. Additionally, the new ClarisWorks for the Mac easily captured the top spot in Mac software sales from Microsoft’s Works within its debut year in 1991. Even so, Apple did little to capitalize upon the discovery that software would indeed sell systems, just as Couch had foreseen back in 1979. Apple had a printing press for creating money, but simply left it idling while Microsoft delivered low innovation software titles and raked in millions of dollars in Mac software revenues. Sculley’s Apple essentially sat back and granted Microsoft full opportunity to clean out its entire business model without a fight, hoping that the law would rush in to correct the inequities at some point in the near future. Instead, the court deliberated for a tech eternity until 1994, and then threw out Sculley’s “look and feel�? lawsuit, largely on the basis that Sculley had earlier granted Microsoft limited rights to Mac ideas back in 1985 in his desperate bid to keep Microsoft as a Mac developer. The bitter irony was that between 1985 and 1995, Microsoft needed the Mac at least as much as Apple needed Microsoft. Even in 1997, Steve Jobs could get Microsoft to agree to a half decade of continued development of Office for the Mac by simply adding Internet Explorer to the Mac desktop. Jobs turned down the hardball demand that Apple kill QuickTime, and even got a public relations coup out of the deal by having Microsoft announce a $150 million investment in Apple.Sculley’s penny wise, pound foolish conservative greed destroyed Apple and directly transferred the vast potential wealth of value Apple had originated at great expense for its 1983 Lisa graphical office suite to Microsoft, which subsequently ran with it and deserted the company. [Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered][Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft]Microsoft Betrays IBM and Uses Office Against OS/2.Apple wasn’t the only partner Microsoft exploited, turned on, and then tried to drive out of business. The earliest and most obvious example was IBM, which had launched Microsoft into significance as a reseller of DOS. Microsoft betrayed IBM in the development of OS/2, first by pulling out of the operating system partnership, then by canceling Office for OS/2 after shipping an initial version for it in 1992. IBM later bought up Lotus and worked to compete against Microsoft’s growing influence with Office. Microsoft responded by using its new monopoly positions to punish IBM in various moves documented in the Microsoft monopoly trial. That story follows in Office Wars 4. Using the Office Monopoly Against NeXT.Jobs carried lessons learned from watching the implosion of Apple under Sculley to NeXT. His initial goal for NeXT was to build a software platform. However, nobody was shipping hardware up to the task of running an advanced operating system, so NeXT began following the business model of Apple, selling new hardware with advanced software.While Jobs had found it challenging to find software partners for the Mac at Apple, the task was even more difficult at NeXT, which Apple had forced into the ultra high end of the workstation market using a non-compete agreement. NeXTSTEP pioneered advanced rapid development frameworks to make it easier for third parties to deliver software for the new system. When Jobs discovered that Lotus was working to deliver a new spreadsheet paradigm for OS/2, he gave the Lotus team a NeXT system and got involved in refining the software to show off the features of his new platform. In contrast, Microsoft used the productivity applications monopoly it had been handed by Apple to impede adoption of NeXT. When asked about writing software for NeXTSTEP, Microsoft’s Bill Gates famously fumed, “Develop for it? I'll piss on it.�? Gates also announced plans to immediately deliver his own advanced operating system with object oriented development frameworks called Cairo, which turned out to be a vaporware lie Microsoft repeated from 1991 until NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997.[1990-1995: Microsoft's Yellow Road to Cairo]Microsoft’s Murderous Partnerships.Microsoft helped to ensure that neither NeXT nor OS/2 could acquire a broad enough computing platform to drive a self-sustaining software business. Apple was able to maintain a struggling niche platform on the Mac, but fears of stepping on third party developers’ toes actively prevented the company from actually building on that potential until the late 90s. Ironically, Microsoft did just that, by developing its solo PC platform with Windows and then using it to destroy third party developers it viewed as competitors. By tying its Windows and Office products together, Microsoft could strangle its own former partners--the top developers of MS-DOS applications--including WordPerfect, Lotus’ 1-2-3, database and developer products from Ashton-Tate and Borland, and really every major developer on the PC that in any way challenged Microsoft.Microsoft’s coldly calculated murder of every rival DOS application developer and later many of its Windows developers, from Novell to IBM and Sun to Netscape, is an oddly public fact treated as a taboo secret by Windows Enthusiasts, who avoid all mention of it as they talk about how Apple “can’t work with partners�? in the rich, supportive way Microsoft supposedly has. Any competition between Apple and third party developers--even with shareware programs--is paraded through the insufferable blogs of ZDNet and the pages of IDG’s InfoWorld/PCWorld/Computerworld and described as unconscionable conduct. This is from writers who all witnessed first hand Microsoft’s massacres of any and all “partners�? the company decided no longer suited its fancy. Have these wags all been brainwashed, or are they just lying for money? As a side note, the Office Wars and Microsoft’s monopoly position in applications provide interesting insight into how Apple is deploying its iPhone software strategy, which the next article will examine.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 10, 2007
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Microsoft's Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone

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