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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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!

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

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

• RoughlyDrafted Magazine on September 30, 2007
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Microsoft's Mojave Attempts to Wet Vista's Desert

Daniel Eran Dilger Nearly two years after Windows Vista was finally released, Microsoft has remained unable to shake off its reputation as being slow, incompatible with existing hardware and software, and generally a poor and overpriced product that nobody wants. Microsoft is now trying to reverse Vista's bad reputation by insisting that the software's problems are not technical but rather just the fault of ignorant customers duped in part by Apple's “Get a Mac” campaign. What's Vista's real problems, and will Microsoft's “Mojave Experiment” help solve them? Blame Apple! Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined Windows Enthusiast pundits in theorizing that Vista's image problems are primarily the result of Apple's advertisements that regularly poke fun at the problems in Vista. The company has now taken aim at shooting at the messenger with a $300 million ad campaign. In July, Brad Brooks, Microsoft's VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, addressed the company's business partners at its Worldwide Partner Conference, saying, “We've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It's caused some impact. We're going to start countering it. They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message.” Another sad message Brooks had to deliver was that Vista's problems aren't really the fault of Apple. “We broke a lot of things,” Brooks admitted. “We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in?” Vista: Pay it Forward! Brooks also noted that “Windows Vista is an investment in the long term. When you make the investment into Windows Vista, it's going to pay it forward into the operating system we call Windows 7.” Pay it forward? Is Windows 7 going to be a free upgrade to Windows Vista users, in the same way Apple is expected to offer the next Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release to existing users of 10.5 Leopard? That's highly unlikely, as Microsoft can't sustain its egregious profits collected through the Windows monopoly by giving away updates for free. Windows Vista raised the price of Windows, putting a new definition on the phrase “pay it forward.” Myths of Snow Leopard 7: Free?! Microsoft Admits Windows Vista Mistakes, Criticizes Apple Ads - InformationWeek Reality Impairment at Microsoft Talking out one's ass appears to be a job requirement for all Microsoft executives, starting at the top. A serious case of reality impairment has resulted in the paradox of the company both admitting that Vista is flawed and “broke a lot of things,” while at the same time maintaining that Vista's reputation is entirely the fault of stupid customers and a comically unflattering portrayal by its competitor. In the “Mojave Experiment,” Microsoft plans to dispel the notion that Windows Vista is problematic and incompatible by publishing a series of videotaped interviews with users who arrived with negative impressions of Vista and left excited about the new operating system. This was achieved by presenting the users with a demonstration of “Mojave,” a new operating system that Microsoft later revealed to be Vista, much to the surprise of the interviewed users who'd heard so many bad things about it. However, the Mojave Experiment is so full of false information and saccharine gloss that it couldn't possibly appeal to anyone smart enough to turn on a PC. Even setting aside the fact that the ad experiment basically seeks to blame users for being dumb, the attempt by Microsoft to paint over Vista's problems is transparent and flawed, for a number of reasons. What's wrong with Mojave. Microsoft can't seem to decide whether it wants to admit that Vista has problems or not, and its waffling back and forth just makes the company look increasingly disingenuous. Is Vista a poorly launched, flawed product that the company is working to fix as quickly as possible, or is it awesome and wildly successful and just the victim of bad press? Microsoft tries to tell both stories at once, which is purely dishonest. In contrast, Apple said from the start last year that its Apple TV product was a “hobby” attempting to break into a difficult market. Critics lambasted it for not immediately taking over the market like the iPod had or iPhone later did. Apple's more recent problems in launching MobileMe were quickly noted by the company along with the intent to address complaints about it rapidly. Microsoft isn't alone in being able to stumble, but its complete lack of candor makes it hard to understand if the company realizes that it even has problems to solve. With Vista, Microsoft has issued a flurry of giddy press releases claiming widespread adoption based on the number of licenses sold and naming it “the fastest selling operating system in Microsoft history,” ignoring the fact that Windows sales are increasing simply because they are tied to PC sales. Microsoft has no competition in the PC operating system market due to its monopoly position, so it could release Windows Wet Toast and still sell it faster than XP and ME and 98 Special Edition and every other version of Windows in the past that was tied to an increasingly younger and smaller hardware market. Vista Sales to Non-Users. Many of Vista's “sales” were free vouchers distributed with PCs sold in the holiday season prior to its launch. Even more than a year and a half later, PC makers continue to put Windows XP on their systems, even those sold with a Vista license, while corporate users almost always remove the default Vista to install an earlier version of Windows. There's also a busy third party industry developing around removing Vista for consumers. In late July APCMag cited Jane Bradburn, a manager for commercial notebook sales at HP, as saying, “From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP license. However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.” The arrangement is supposed to end by January 2009, but HP is trying to extend the deadline because customers simply don't want Vista installed. EWeek also noted that between April 2007 and May 2008, its survey of business users indicated that Vista climbed from 2% to 5%, but that Windows XP jumped from 74% to 83%, three times the adoption of Vista. That growth came from migration from older versions of Windows. Even in its wildest projections, EWeek says Vista will only reach 28% adoption in businesses by the end of 2010. CNET reported that a Jully 2008 survey by systems management appliance company KASE found that 60% of companies surveyed have no plans to deploy Windows Vista, a ten percent increase in disinterest from late 2007. A full 42% were actively exploring Vista alternatives, and 11% had already made the switch to Mac OS X or Linux. Microsoft is simply lying about the level of Vista excitement, and it's gotten too obvious for the company to continue to do so. XP still killing Vista in sales volume: HP 60 percent skipping Vista, so Ballmer looks to Apple | The Open Road The Truth Is… oh Look a Distraction! At the same time, Microsoft notes on its Vista website “we know a few of you were disappointed by your early encounter. Printers didn't work. Games felt sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest Windows wasn't always living up to your high expectations for a Microsoft product.” That's some brutal honesty for a company with a knack for spinning wild fantasies about fictitious product enthusiasm for a product never actually put to use in many cases. At the same time however, in trying to refute away Vista's real problems, Microsoft uses a variety of tactics that just return to blind fantasyland. Microsoft is a Marketing Company, not a Tech Company. The company plays its Mojave Experiment hand on a new website, incidentally designed using Adobe Flash rather than the company's own Silverlight. Despite the site's oddly designed, usability-impared interface, it's still possible to pull out lots of details from the experiment that say as much about Microsoft's crafty, misleading marketing as they do about its technical problems, underling the simple fact that Microsoft is first and foremost a marketing company that flogs third rate technology products. Mojave took 140 people and asked them to score Windows Vista. The average response was 4.4. After demonstrating Vista SP2 under the name “Mojave,” respondents ranked Vista at 8.5, a stunning improvement. But what were they ranking? Microsoft notes that “many said they would have rated it higher, but wanted more time to use it themselves.” That sounds good at first blush, but it really indicates that the responses were biased by hyped up enthusiasm rather than facts, and that participants realized it, reserving their final judgement until they could actually see more. The “Mojave Experiment” What does Mojave Prove? Mojave tries to represent that Vista's bad reputation is the fault of ignorant consumers who have heard bad things that aren't true about Vista, and have made up their mind without getting the facts. At the same time however, Microsoft also publicly admits that Vista “broke a lot of things” and that specifically, “Printers didn't work. Games felt sluggish.” Did Mojave clear up mistaken notions for participants, or did it just erect smoke and mirrors in a carefully controlled demonstration that skirted around Vista's real problems, including those Microsoft admits? That's a question that answers itself. Mojave didn't send uses home with Vista in a Mojave package and then ask them how well it worked with their existing peripherals and games, or how fast it was in comparison to their existing PC software. This is Not the Droid You're Running Vista On. Instead, Microsoft sat them down in front of a HP Pavillion DV 2000 with 2GB of RAM. That's what HP called its “entertainment powerhouse” laptop, although HP only shipped it with 1GB RAM. Microsoft maxed out the RAM for the purposes of the test, making the laptop a bit more expensive than its usual street price of around $1050. According to Windows enthusiast Joe Wilcox, PC laptops actually cost $700, “half as much” as Apple's laptops. At least that's the Average Selling Price for consumer retail PC laptops according to NPD's Stephen Baker, compared to Apple's $1500 ASP. Wilcox insisted that his spin on NPD's figures couldn't possibly be biased because he wrote his article on a MacBook Air running Leopard. However, his $2,700 laptop did help drive up Apple's stellar ASP for its laptops well above the entry price for Mac Books, discounting his theory that revolved around the assumption that every Mac buyer pays the average price of all the laptops Apple sells. Wilcox and Microsoft are both disingenuously dancing on both ends of the truth. Many consumers are actually buying cheap laptops at Target that can't run Vista ideally, while Microsoft demonstrates its Vista on a considerably better equipped system in the Mojave Experiment to suggest that Vista doesn't have the performance problems that users have heard about from the majority of their peers who bought cheap PCs and are seeing Vista run particularly sluggishly on them. Should You Pay Twice as Much for a Mac? I Did! You Get What You Pay For. The fact that Apple sells more high end laptops to pro users at retail, and that it does not sell anything in the range of the cheap junk being hawked at big box retailers like Wilcox' Target both result in Mac laptops fetching a higher ASP. That fact also means that Mac buyers will be happier with their purchase and have a more favorable impression of Mac OS X because they're running it on a better system. That's all obvious stuff. However, selling people cheap laptops that don't work well, and then demonstrating a fake “new operating system” that appears to work well when running on a faster machine full of RAM is simply a dishonest bait and switch scam. Wilcox does nearly admit that PC makers are already stretching their credibility as they attempt to sell cheap boxes based on price alone, citing Baker as saying, “We aren't seeing any particularly substantive moves down in price on the Windows side, either in desktops or notebooks.” PCs can't get cheaper because they're already unprofitable and consumers are already disgusted with their performance when running the increased overhead of Vista. Wilcox also sets up a tilted comparison between a Dell PC desktop with integrated graphics and an iMac with dedicated graphics and claims a price advantage for Dell, although noting that, while “Dell offers more for less than the iMac,” “that 'more' also means Windows Vista, which won't satisfy some shoppers.” Why Aren't Shoppers Satisfied with Vista? Like Microsoft, Wilcox and his Windows Enthusiast pundit friends can't seem to decide if Vista has any real problems or if it's all just an unfair taint suggested by Apple's Get a Mac ads. However, while Apple has taken shots at Vista's incompatibility with printers and other hardware and its scarce updates that have been few and far between over the last year and a half of its being on the market, Apple also notes in its Get a Mac ads that Macs can run Vista, and can run it faster than PCs. So Apple isn't inventing and publishing false reports on Vista, it's merely advertising its Mac hardware as superior to PCs. The Vista flaws Apple's ads have referenced are flaws Microsoft itself has admitted to its partners, so the Get a Mac umbrage frequently voiced by Windows Enthusiasts is both hypocritical and ridiculous. However, in the Mojave Experiment, Microsoft downplayed those well-known faults by only carefully demonstrating certain features on a high end machine, and without actually exposing Mojave/Vista users to 'a lot of things Vista broke,' 'printers that didn't work', or 'games that felt sluggish.' It Can't Even Print. In response to complaints that Vista doesn't work well with existing PC hardware, Microsoft's Mojave website says that “the Windows Vista Compatibility Center lists compatibility status for over 9,000 products (5,500 devices and 3,500 software programs).” It even notes 2,000 printers, 200 scanners, and 500 cameras specifically. That sounds good until you realize that Apple ships support for over 3,100 printers in Mac OS X Leopard, a product that is targeted primarily toward education and consumers and which is not expected by users to run on any old hardware that might be in use by PC users. Vista is supposed to run on 95% of the world's PCs, and yet it doesn't even match the printer drivers that ship with Leopard, a number which does not include all of the third party drivers available for the Mac. Oh, but there's more. Not only did Microsoft dance around the truth to feed its Mojave Experiment participants a carefully controlled stream of garbage, but it also inadvertently revealed more serious problems related to Vista, which I'll consider in the following article. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? 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 13, 2008
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Jean-Louis Gassée Returns from Obscurity… to Talk About MobileMe

Daniel Eran Dilger MobileMe has attracted more vulture critics than Apple TV, the last product Apple launched without immediately earning billions of dollars from it. Joining the frothing dogpile of critics who can't get in enough edgewise on the bumpy rollout of MobileMe is none other than Jean-Louis Gassée. Who? Oh yes, him. The Infamous JLG. In the early 80s, Gassée was the manager of Apple France. John Sculley brought him to Cupertino to replace Steve Jobs in 1985 after wrestling away control of the company that Jobs had founded with Steve Wozniak a decade earlier in 1976. Sculley and Gassée then took the phenomenally successful Apple empire of the mid 80s, crafted from the idealistic, early 20-something visions of Jobs the marketer and Wozniak the technical genius, and pointed it toward the ground, sending the company into a frightful trajectory that nearly resulted in its complete destruction within the next ten years. While much of Apple's early 90s failure can be pinned on “I Was A Terrible Manager” Sculley, Gassée contributed his own fingerprints of disaster. It was Gassée who ridiculed Jobs' strategy for marketing “the Macintosh Office” to businesses, referring to it as “the Mac orifice.” Gassée also refused to license Apple's technology or to partner with vendors to expand the Mac experience outside of Apple's niche markets. The Gassée Way: High Prices, Low Innovation. Following Sculley's leadership of tacking a $500 marketing tax on top of the $1995 price of the original Macintosh, which had been set as low as possible by Jobs and his engineers, Gassée replaced Jobs' vision for bringing “insanely great” technologies to the mainstream with an effort to idly profiteer from the intellectual property Apple already held. Between 1986 and 1990, while Jobs' independent NeXT developed and delivered a high performance, UNIX-based workstation with advanced development frameworks and innovative hardware features that pushed the state of the art, Apple's Macintosh group under the direction of Gassée only made incremental updates to the same old technology, and then sold its machines at prices higher than NeXT was charging! By the time Gassée bailed from Apple in 1990 to start his own company as Jobs had done, Apple's only affordable Mac was the Mac Classic, a pathetically recycled version of the five year old Mac Plus. The Mac IIfx was being sold as its $12,000 high end workstation, but it was still running the same crippled classic Mac OS from the early 80s and used an 030 processor. By that time, NeXT was already selling an 040 in the NeXTcube for less, which also offered the option of an Intel i860-powered NeXTdimension board for handling futuristic 32-bit PostScript color and video sampling. NeXT didn't have a low cost model because Sculley's Apple had sued the company to prevent it from entering the consumer market in competition with Apple. Platform Crisis: The Lazy Dinosaur 4 1990-1995: NeXT, Be, and the Mac PC Newton Rising: Is the Next iPhone Device a G3 MessagePad? Byte's original NeXT review Gassée's Plan Be. After slashing Apple's tendons and leaving it to slowly bleed to death, Gassée left to start Be, Inc. The company developed a nice looking interface for a hobbyist system running oddball hardware. It then copied Apple's PowerPC architecture before moving to a platform based on Intel-standard PCs. However, between 1991 and 1996, Be was unable to reach beyond offering an early developer preview of its new operating system. It demonstrated some new ideas, but lacked even a basic printing architecture and had no provision for a multiuser security model. NeXT had developed a far superior operating system and set of development frameworks in a much shorter period of time, and had matched the transition to PowerPC (and several other architectures) and then Intel. By that time however, the Sculley-Gassée mutilation of Apple in the late 80s had resulted in the rise of an opportunistic, malignant boil on the computing landscape. Just like Australia's rabbit plague or Jim Henson's fatal 'flesh eating bacteria' strep infection, the wild landscape and creative potential of personal computing was overrun and destroyed by the scourge of Microsoft's soulless Windows PC. There was apparently no longer any room for innovation in the PC world, thanks to Sculley's opening of Pandora's Box (by handing Microsoft a free license to most of Apple's Mac-related intellectual property) and Gassée's efforts to make sure that Apple didn't open its own. It was Gassée who pulled the plug on Apple's partnership with Apollo to create Unix workstations with the Mac OS interface, and it was his decision to rebuff AT&T's advances toward licensing the Mac human interface for its systems. Microsoft didn't earn the Windows monopoly; it was simply handed it by the incompetence of Sculley and Gassée after the duo ignored Bill Gates' suggestions on how to promote the platform. Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers Undoing the Sculley-Gassée Crisis. In its last gasps of breath in 1996, the old Apple briefly considered buying Gassée's BeOS before realizing that Jobs' NeXT operating system was vastly superior, already proven in the enterprise market, and could easily run on existing PowerPC Mac OS systems because of its inherent portability. After acquiring NeXT, it took Apple another six years to commercially rerelease it as a mainstream operating system in Mac OS X, and it has taken nearly another six years for the media to recognize the new significance of a Mac platform based on NeXT's technology. Apple's Macs are now profitably selling with a regular 40% growth year over year, despite the overall PC industry barely finding 4% growth and while many PC makers are losing money. Apple has since parleyed it technology into Apple TV as a set top box and the iPhone and iPod touch as a new mobile platform. Gassée's own Be, Inc. was bought out by Palm and went nowhere. He now serves as a partner at venture capital firm Allegis Capital. Having poked the computing industry in the eye, Gassée might be expected to live out his term quietly. Instead, he has resurfaced to squawk about MobileMe, and actually makes some interesting points amid his long winded, “white man in a suit” corporate-speak (and apparently ghost written) blog entry. Can Apple Take Microsoft in the Battle for the Desktop? SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1990s Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody Patting the Back Once Stabbed. Gassée's blog entry on MobileMe makes mine look short and to the point. He starts off by musing, “doubts linger: Is Apple able to run a worldwide wireless data synchronization service for tens of millions of users?” After weary paragraphs that drag on for seemingly hours about nothing, Gassée observes: “Apple 'pushes' somewhere between 100 and 200 megabytes of [Mac OS X Software] updates per month to each Mac user. Last week, the iPhone 2.0.1 update was announced, I connected two iPhones within minutes, the 200Mb files were downloaded and installed without a hitch and I haven’t heard any blogosphere complaints on the matter. iTunes has sold billions of songs, serves tens of millions of customers everyday and everything works with very few exceptions. In other words, some very large scale Apple systems do work.” Gassée then noted, “last week, parts of the Gmail service were down for 15 hours or so. Last month, Amazon’s respected Web Services went down. And, last year, RIM’s servers went down for about half a day in the Western Hemisphere, freaking out Wall Street investment bankers and management consultants. Even the best players must endure their share of false notes.” “Back to MobileMe today: if you ask subscribers who’ve never experienced a Blackberry’s smooth delivery of sync, they love MobileMe. It works, it’s easy to set up and in the simple (most frequent) case of a PC/Mac with an iPhone, it does the wireless (OTA, Off The Air) sync job as now advertised. We’ll see how this scales once iPhones are sold in 21 more countries, 43 total starting August 22nd.” Gassée's final three paragraphs are remarkably relevant and astute. It's too bad he didn't just publish them alone, as most readers probably couldn't make it down the page that far to ever see them. Launchpad Chicken: MobileMe and Sync Trouble | Monday Note Faith in Jobs Means Forgiving JLG. Now that Apple is back in its leadership position thanks to Jobs' miraculous powers of corporate resurrection, we can forget about the whole “who-killed-what and left us with Windows.” It's too bad that the last fifteen years were tainted by a dominant third rate platform that introduced malware, viruses, spyware, and adware and undid much of the work that early Apple engineers did to usher in a classy, consistent and attractive user interface, but that's all in the past now. JLG, you may have forced me into a pitiful career arc that involved supporting Windows through most of my youth, but the sweetness of the current Apple world is even easier to appreciate after having experienced the pestilent famine of a lack innovation and class in the Windows heyday that you kicked off while illegitimately standing in Jobs' shoes. I can't exactly thank you for that, but consider your sins forgiven. I might occasionally write them up again here and there however, but only for the purposes of historical interest. It's nothing personal. 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 12, 2008
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Apple announces deadline for Design Awards

Filed under: Software, WWDCApple has announced the submission deadline for the Apple Design Awards (ADA). The ADA take place every year during the World Wide Developer Conference, and recognizes the best efforts in several categories including user experience, overall application, student project and more. Previous winners include Coda (best user experience 2007), CSSEdit 2.5 (Best Developer tool, 2007) and Comic Life (Best New Product for Mac OS X, 2005). New this year is the iPhone category, which should be very exciting. The deadline for the 2008 ADA is May 12.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments

• The Unofficial Apple... on May 6, 2008
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★ Macworld Expo Predictions

Predictions and advance commentary for tomorrow’s Macworld keynote, some based on consensus rumors, some based on no more than wishful thinking on the part of yours truly. This is all conjecture and tea-leaf-reading (well, mostly), so, please, no wagering. I keep two questions in mind when evaluating Apple product ideas: Would people run out to stand in line to buy this immediately? If not, is there a long-term strategic reason for Apple to start selling this now? If the answer to both questions is “no”, then Apple isn’t going to do it. The iPhone is a perfect example of a #1; the Apple TV is a #2. New Sub-Notebook MacBook: Yes Apple hasn’t had a small notebook in its lineup since the 12-inch PowerBook G4, which I still see in wide use. If you’re using a portable as a portable, smaller size and lighter weight make a tremendous difference. The demand for a good notebook smaller and lighter than standard MacBooks is strong; I think it’s a sure thing that Apple is set to announce one. (Of course, I said so before last year’s Macworld, too.) I say the consensus rumors are right: super-thin, no built-in optical drive, widescreen 12-inch display. It will use a hard drive, not flash memory, for storage. (Look no further than the iPod Classic to see how hard drives don’t keep a device from being super-thin). Rumors are already running strong that it’ll be called MacBook Air. (I like it, not sure though if Nike would.) Newton-y Tablet Thing: No I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right. (Recall Steve Jobs’s statement to Walter Mossberg that he’s as proud of some of the products Apple decided not to ship as he is of the ones they did.) Like the iPhone, it runs “OS X” but not Mac OS X, does not run Mac apps, and will not be called a “Mac”. The big problem with a “tablet” computer of any sort is that 15 years of industry history indicate that people do not want to buy tablet computers. But the iPhone, arguably, is a tablet computer — a sub-tablet, if you will. The key mistake with failed efforts like Microsoft’s Tablet PC (and even Apple’s own Newton) was that these devices attempt to do too much. It’s seen as a feature that Tablet PCs run the full version of Windows. But why force software UI’s designed for traditional hardware form factors upon a totally different device? A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes). There’s still the “what would I use it for?” factor. It seems to me it would need to be something more than just an iPod Touch with a larger screen — if that’s all it is, then what’s the point of buying one instead of a smaller, poctetable, iPod Touch or iPhone? I simply lack the cleverness to imagine what that hook might be — but I can’t imagine Apple releasing such a product without an obvious “Oh I gotta buy that” hook. Anyway: I do think something like this is in the works, but I don’t think it’s coming out now. I’d love to be wrong. Ubiquitous Wireless Networking for MacBooks: Please After using my iPhone for a few months, it started feeling weird that my PowerBook doesn’t have ubiquitous wireless networking: Wi-Fi when available, and seamless, instant switchover to something else when it isn’t. Just what that “something else” is, I don’t know. EVDO? WiMax? A Bluetooth connection to share an iPhone’s EDGE connection? I don’t care. But I’d pay for it. Ubiquitous networking is certainly the most intriguing thing about Amazon’s Kindle. It just feels crippled that I can’t get a network connection — even a slow one — once I’m outside the range of Wi-Fi. Wireless Time Machine Backups: Yes Time Machine is very cool; the first backup that qualifies as “you don’t have to do anything, it just works”. But currently it only works using a storage device connected via USB or FireWire. Tethered backups are irritating with notebooks — and MacBooks are the fastest-growing segment of Apple’s Mac hardware sales. The problem is that when you want to use your portable away from your desk, it’s a pain to disconnect mounted USB and FireWire drives. You can’t just pulled the plugs — you’ve got to unmount them in the Finder first. And, once you do so, to get Time Machine backups running again, you’ve got to re-tether your storage drive. Leopard developer seeds all supported network backups to USB drives connected to an AirPort base station. The feature was also demoed at WWDC. It was removed (or, better said, disabled) very late in Leopard’s development, supposedly because of a security problem that was discovered, but I expect the feature to return, perhaps in 10.5.2. It’s a terrific idea, perfect for multi-Mac homes and small offices. But so why not sell a device as a dedicated product — a big 500 GB or larger hard drive (or array of them) with built-in AirPort networking. No need to attach it to a separate AirPort base station, no temptation to use the device for anything other than one purpose: backing up via Time Machine. Just plug it into a power outlet, run through a simply configuration tool a la AirPort Utility, and it’s ready. When it first appears on your network, your (Leopard-running) Mac could prompt to ask if you’d like to use it for Time Machine, the same way it prompts when you first plug in a new USB or FireWire drive. iTunes Movie Rentals: Yes This one seems like such a done deal that it barely qualifies as a rumor. It seems obvious: Unlike with music, there’s been a strong market for movie rentals for as long as there’s been a home video market. Most movies aren’t worth watching more than once. Reports (based on leaks from studio executives) indicate rentals will cost $3-5, and will expire after 24 hours. If true, presumably that means they’ll expire 24 hours after you beginning playing them, not 24 hours after downloading. It’d be nice if the terms were a bit more flexible than that. One of the best things about Netflix, and something which makes it far more ap