I keep thinking back to 1989. Apple had just introduced the Macintosh II. This was way back in System 6.x days. A long, long time ago. But why did that year matter? Well, Apple was way way way ahead of the rest of the industry. I remember being in a computer science class back then where they forced us all to use DOS. In the journalism department we had just gotten brand new Mac IIcx’s. I think that’s one reason I went into journalism rather than trying to please my dad and become an engineer or a computer scientist.
Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. Apple’s equipment was just so brilliantly designed. They had the best printer, the best network, the best GUI, the best applications. Remember, back then Microsoft’s apps on Macs were WAY ahead of Microsoft’s apps on DOS and Windows was still a joke.
So why didn’t Apple win?
Well, go back to Rich Cameron’s classroom and look again. He wrote a ton of Hypercard applications for his journalism classes. That’s how we learned how to cover press conferences and all sorts of other things. Many of his tests were done in Hypercard too.
But Apple didn’t realize the power of developers. They ignored Hypercard. Never really improved it. Never gave developers really great tools. I remember meeting software developers who worked on Apple applications and they were always complaining about how hard they were to use, or how many rules they had to follow to make sure their apps were “Apple compliant.”
Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.
Look at what Microsoft did for developers between 1990 and 1995 and you’ll see that THAT was a huge reason that Microsoft became dominant with Windows 95. I remember when Visual Basic came out that lots of Apple developers would look over at it and say “that’s what Hypercard should have become.”
In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.
So, why do I say that Steve Jobs is not an idiot?
Because he’s had to learn the lesson of 1989. Give developers tools to build apps easily and extend your product or else they, and the market, will go somewhere else.
Anyway, right now Apple is acting a lot like Apple did in 1989. Apple is miles ahead with its iPhone. It’s pretty. The folks I’ve talked to who’ve had their hands on one say it pushes the experience of using a cell phone ahead a mile and is way ahead of, say, my little Nokia N95 that’s sitting next to me right now.
But, why is Steve Jobs telling iPhone developers to pound sand? Dave Winer posits that Apple isn’t opening up the iPhone because they don’t have to.
Oh, but 1989 reminds us that chosing to remain non-friendly to developers will work for a while, but long term will doom you to second rate status.
Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot.
So, what do I think will happen? Oh, I can see the Steve Jobs keynote in 2008 right now. “We’ve sold eight million iPhones, more than we expected” and “remember how I said iPhone apps needed to be done with JavaScript and HTML? Well, we heard from all of you that you wanted to play games on Pogo.com so we added Flash. And we’ve been working on our own iPhone applications for more than a year now and we’re sharing the developer tools we use internally.”
Go back to 1989. What if Apple HAD invested in developer tools? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had released Visual Basic? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had taken the “consumer coolness” that they had in the Apple II line and made it so that a geek working inside some big company could make a business justification to use Macs instead of Windows machines? (Hint: a big part of that is how easy it is to make business applications).
Maybe Apple is happy with its 5% market share, but I doubt it. Steve Jobs is not an idiot.
Watch him open up the iPhone next year. Until then at least Dori Smith should have a job (she’s one of the world’s experts on JavaScript and is out looking).
Or, do you think Apple will keep the iPhone closed and tell developers to pound sand forever?
Steve Jobs is not an idiot.
Scobleizer 
I got the iMac in our office weeks ago. I still have no idea how to develop Desktop applications for it. I only installed Eclipse and Komodo on it.
So I don’t think it’s changed very much since 199X.
The Apache and GNU software that comes bundled with OSX tiger is SO old, that it makes me wonder why I should use it instead of Linux to develop web apps. The freaking apache is 1.3 for god’s sakes. None of the recent modules compile.
As for using Cocoa, I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Where is Apple Visual Studio?
Let me know and I’ll download it. Right now all I see is far outdated GNU packages that look like they belong on Debian Sarge.
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I got the iMac in our office weeks ago. I still have no idea how to develop Desktop applications for it. I only installed Eclipse and Komodo on it.
So I don’t think it’s changed very much since 199X.
The Apache and GNU software that comes bundled with OSX tiger is SO old, that it makes me wonder why I should use it instead of Linux to develop web apps. The freaking apache is 1.3 for god’s sakes. None of the recent modules compile.
As for using Cocoa, I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Where is Apple Visual Studio?
Let me know and I’ll download it. Right now all I see is far outdated GNU packages that look like they belong on Debian Sarge.
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You mean like he’s opened up the iPod and AppleTV platforms? I’ll bet you a nickel you’re wrong.
I’m an Apple Select Developer and I STILL don’t have my 9A466 distro of Leopard. All the in-person attendees have it tho.
Nah, they’re paying lip service to the us b-list and below developers. The ONLY sanctioned place developers have to yak about emerging stuff is at WWDC. There’s no place online we can discuss things (even under the watchful eye of Apple). That’s sad and tells me they don’t REALLY value the developer the way they should.
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You mean like he’s opened up the iPod and AppleTV platforms? I’ll bet you a nickel you’re wrong.
I’m an Apple Select Developer and I STILL don’t have my 9A466 distro of Leopard. All the in-person attendees have it tho.
Nah, they’re paying lip service to the us b-list and below developers. The ONLY sanctioned place developers have to yak about emerging stuff is at WWDC. There’s no place online we can discuss things (even under the watchful eye of Apple). That’s sad and tells me they don’t REALLY value the developer the way they should.
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Robert,
“Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.” With this phrase Guy Kawasaki like to summarize the downfall of Apple. Yes you are right, software to everyone was the main problem. Also the connectivity of the hardware was also part of the same problem.
The large part of the big success of iPod is because they can use in PCs too. iPhone is having the same business model. It will have a dozen of third party applications in few weeks.
You are right, Jobs one of the smartest people in the business.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
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Robert,
“Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.” With this phrase Guy Kawasaki like to summarize the downfall of Apple. Yes you are right, software to everyone was the main problem. Also the connectivity of the hardware was also part of the same problem.
The large part of the big success of iPod is because they can use in PCs too. iPhone is having the same business model. It will have a dozen of third party applications in few weeks.
You are right, Jobs one of the smartest people in the business.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode
Nevermind. It wasn’t installed by default. I have to pull the DVDs back out of the little apple box and install it.
Sorry Steve Jobs. My bad. my bad.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode
Nevermind. It wasn’t installed by default. I have to pull the DVDs back out of the little apple box and install it.
Sorry Steve Jobs. My bad. my bad.
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Robert, why you think, THIS is the biggest obstacle. I think the biggest obstacle is that only handful (globally I mean) people can buy iPhone. I’m not talking about the price, I’m talking about Steve’s decision to sell only through one operator, with contract and with iTunes account. Is there iTunes in China or India or Russia, or Turkey?. There is no on BIG operator in Europe, if he chooses just one for Europe then 99% whole Scandinavia (area with biggest penetration of moble phones and home of Nokia and Ericssson) will pass. Steve is freaking busy of thinking ways how NOT to sell those iPhones. What next? Probably Steve will accept only American Express.
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Robert, why you think, THIS is the biggest obstacle. I think the biggest obstacle is that only handful (globally I mean) people can buy iPhone. I’m not talking about the price, I’m talking about Steve’s decision to sell only through one operator, with contract and with iTunes account. Is there iTunes in China or India or Russia, or Turkey?. There is no on BIG operator in Europe, if he chooses just one for Europe then 99% whole Scandinavia (area with biggest penetration of moble phones and home of Nokia and Ericssson) will pass. Steve is freaking busy of thinking ways how NOT to sell those iPhones. What next? Probably Steve will accept only American Express.
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You left the door open, so… Having Silverlight and perhaps a full fledged .NET CLR on the iPhone (and on the Mac) would be even better. But then, that would take Jobs and Microsoft to realize once more that it is not a zero-sum game.
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You left the door open, so… Having Silverlight and perhaps a full fledged .NET CLR on the iPhone (and on the Mac) would be even better. But then, that would take Jobs and Microsoft to realize once more that it is not a zero-sum game.
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Priit: breaking into the carriers is a major pain in the ass. Microsoft spent more than $500 million before they broke in. I’m sure that Steve Jobs will expand iPhone to more carriers eventually. That’s how these things work. You get one, then more come and beg to get your phone cause they notice enough of their customers are leaving.
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Priit: breaking into the carriers is a major pain in the ass. Microsoft spent more than $500 million before they broke in. I’m sure that Steve Jobs will expand iPhone to more carriers eventually. That’s how these things work. You get one, then more come and beg to get your phone cause they notice enough of their customers are leaving.
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Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
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Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
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🙂 And I would be shocked too if Microsoft did it. But as I said, this would take both to get a new perspective (for Apple, that they really want the developers to come). Also, Silverlight is almost there, technically.
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🙂 And I would be shocked too if Microsoft did it. But as I said, this would take both to get a new perspective (for Apple, that they really want the developers to come). Also, Silverlight is almost there, technically.
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@1
Beer, Macs come with bundled with the XCode IDE. That’ll get you writing Mac apps (Cocoa and Carbon) a lot easier than Eclipse or Komodo ever will.
Force-feed Linux OSS cruft onto a Mac, and you get nothing but OSS Liunx cruft on a Mac. Use the Mac as a Mac rather than some lame Linux distro. Then you’ll see why the Mac blows away Linux and makes it look like the utter garbage that it really is.
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@Chris:
Glad you found Xcode.
About the Apache thing: Apple seems to follow a Debianesque philosophy regarding some of the GNU apps bundled with OSX. That is, the “stable” is really really old. But it’s trivial to install a newer version if you want/need it.
You might want to check this out: http://finkproject.org/
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@1
Beer, Macs come with bundled with the XCode IDE. That’ll get you writing Mac apps (Cocoa and Carbon) a lot easier than Eclipse or Komodo ever will.
Force-feed Linux OSS cruft onto a Mac, and you get nothing but OSS Liunx cruft on a Mac. Use the Mac as a Mac rather than some lame Linux distro. Then you’ll see why the Mac blows away Linux and makes it look like the utter garbage that it really is.
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@Chris:
Glad you found Xcode.
About the Apache thing: Apple seems to follow a Debianesque philosophy regarding some of the GNU apps bundled with OSX. That is, the “stable” is really really old. But it’s trivial to install a newer version if you want/need it.
You might want to check this out: http://finkproject.org/
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If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
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If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
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I do think there is the possibility of an actual SDK in the future, but I don’t think the iPhone development compromise was telling developers to “pound sand.” As you said, Jobs is not an idiot. I think he may be seeing the rise of “Web 2.0” apps and noticing that while many of these developers may love using a Mac in their work, they don’t know Mac programming and with a 5% market share, it probably isn’t worth their time to learn. So, how can Jobs get a developer community around the iPhone in this situation and without totally opening up the phone? You allow those Web app developers to do what they have been doing and leverage the connectivity of the iPhone to provide access to those apps. I actually think it is a good move on Apple’s part and may help grow the ranks of Apple developers.
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@SuzyQ: Exactly!
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I do think there is the possibility of an actual SDK in the future, but I don’t think the iPhone development compromise was telling developers to “pound sand.” As you said, Jobs is not an idiot. I think he may be seeing the rise of “Web 2.0” apps and noticing that while many of these developers may love using a Mac in their work, they don’t know Mac programming and with a 5% market share, it probably isn’t worth their time to learn. So, how can Jobs get a developer community around the iPhone in this situation and without totally opening up the phone? You allow those Web app developers to do what they have been doing and leverage the connectivity of the iPhone to provide access to those apps. I actually think it is a good move on Apple’s part and may help grow the ranks of Apple developers.
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@SuzyQ: Exactly!
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So, you mean, if in 1989 — or better, in 1985 — Apple had released something like MacBASIC, things might all be different?
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So, you mean, if in 1989 — or better, in 1985 — Apple had released something like MacBASIC, things might all be different?
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Greg: oh, I totally forgot about that. Nasty stuff that Microsoft did back then. Diego: read the post that Greg linked to. That might give you some insight into why Apple might not want to let Microsoft anywhere near its iPhone.
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Greg: oh, I totally forgot about that. Nasty stuff that Microsoft did back then. Diego: read the post that Greg linked to. That might give you some insight into why Apple might not want to let Microsoft anywhere near its iPhone.
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Stephen: the developers I talk with took what he said as “pound sand.” Telling a company like Kyte, or Radar.net, or Google, or other companies that rely on Flash or Java or .NET that they now need to use JavaScript and HTML is quite condescending, don’t you think?
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Stephen: the developers I talk with took what he said as “pound sand.” Telling a company like Kyte, or Radar.net, or Google, or other companies that rely on Flash or Java or .NET that they now need to use JavaScript and HTML is quite condescending, don’t you think?
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Actually my theory is a bit different. I’m guessing that the OS of the iPhone is too close to that of the iPod, so opening up the iPhone to developers would put the iPod at risk of hack, and they can’t really have that. It’s the back bone of the corporation.
So they can’t open up the iPhone to developers, at least not until they get a chance really lock down the kernel and the OS, which they haven’t had a chance to do since they have rushed it to market.
I Predict there will be a bevy of patch and security updates to the iPhone OS this year, and then, maybe they will open it up.
I posted this theory on my blog today, but I don’t exactly ge the Scoble traffic. 🙂
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Actually my theory is a bit different. I’m guessing that the OS of the iPhone is too close to that of the iPod, so opening up the iPhone to developers would put the iPod at risk of hack, and they can’t really have that. It’s the back bone of the corporation.
So they can’t open up the iPhone to developers, at least not until they get a chance really lock down the kernel and the OS, which they haven’t had a chance to do since they have rushed it to market.
I Predict there will be a bevy of patch and security updates to the iPhone OS this year, and then, maybe they will open it up.
I posted this theory on my blog today, but I don’t exactly ge the Scoble traffic. 🙂
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Wolfman: that theory might have water if Steve Jobs hadn’t told everyone that it’s OSX underneath. If the iPhone has security problems then OSX would have had those too.
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Yes, but business users are not going to buy iPhone v1. It is not going to happen! That’s why it is going to flop. Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost. iPhone will not get the majority of the market. Maybe it will be like the Zune (which is a wonderful device!). Maybe iPhone will be Number 2, but it isn’t going to take over the world.
I’m not even sure that the iPhone is *lightyears* away. Remember, its the same Steve Jobs that stood on that same stage and showed “Leopard” *cough* that looked a lot like Vista *cough*. He talks about innovation like it just flows through his veins. He isn’t a developer. Thats why he doesn’t get it sometimes.
You are terribly wrong about the Flash thing, though. They aren’t just going to “Tack on Flash” like it can be done right this moment. Adobe has to write a plugin for Safari on iPhone first. For that to happen, old Stevey has to open up the iPhone.
You’re right, though. Steve is not an idiot. He knows what’s up. He is the world’s Number 1 salesman in the technology industry. That’s why his market share has been up lately (yes, I said “his” because Steve really IS Apple).
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Wolfman: that theory might have water if Steve Jobs hadn’t told everyone that it’s OSX underneath. If the iPhone has security problems then OSX would have had those too.
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Yes, but business users are not going to buy iPhone v1. It is not going to happen! That’s why it is going to flop. Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost. iPhone will not get the majority of the market. Maybe it will be like the Zune (which is a wonderful device!). Maybe iPhone will be Number 2, but it isn’t going to take over the world.
I’m not even sure that the iPhone is *lightyears* away. Remember, its the same Steve Jobs that stood on that same stage and showed “Leopard” *cough* that looked a lot like Vista *cough*. He talks about innovation like it just flows through his veins. He isn’t a developer. Thats why he doesn’t get it sometimes.
You are terribly wrong about the Flash thing, though. They aren’t just going to “Tack on Flash” like it can be done right this moment. Adobe has to write a plugin for Safari on iPhone first. For that to happen, old Stevey has to open up the iPhone.
You’re right, though. Steve is not an idiot. He knows what’s up. He is the world’s Number 1 salesman in the technology industry. That’s why his market share has been up lately (yes, I said “his” because Steve really IS Apple).
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Robert: I think those companies you mention are a different group of developers from the ones targeted by the iPhone compromise (as an aside, doesn’t Google have a native app on the iPhone?). I don’t disagree that a full SDK should exist and I agree that it will probably come. I’m just saying that there are two worlds of developers out there (to oversimplify things), and the Web developers who build primarily HTML and Javascript apps have only recently started being targeted by the big tech companies. It is a shame that in appealing to one group, the other feels slighted. But, ultimately, there are probably more Web developers out there than Mac developers and providing a way for them to target the iPhone platform is a good move. It should not be the only means of developing on the iPhone and it will limit the kinds of apps that can be written, but if an SDK is eventually released, then we’ll have the best of both worlds. Too bad it couldn’t happen out of the gate, but I think this is better than having no developer access at all.
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Robert: I think those companies you mention are a different group of developers from the ones targeted by the iPhone compromise (as an aside, doesn’t Google have a native app on the iPhone?). I don’t disagree that a full SDK should exist and I agree that it will probably come. I’m just saying that there are two worlds of developers out there (to oversimplify things), and the Web developers who build primarily HTML and Javascript apps have only recently started being targeted by the big tech companies. It is a shame that in appealing to one group, the other feels slighted. But, ultimately, there are probably more Web developers out there than Mac developers and providing a way for them to target the iPhone platform is a good move. It should not be the only means of developing on the iPhone and it will limit the kinds of apps that can be written, but if an SDK is eventually released, then we’ll have the best of both worlds. Too bad it couldn’t happen out of the gate, but I think this is better than having no developer access at all.
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“So why didn’t Apple win?”
Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford. Duh.
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When I first heard the Safari-as-SDK from the keynote live feeds, I thought it was actually a contradiction of what Jobs has been promoting with the iPhone. If Safari on the iPhone IS the “REAL” internet, then why bother writing new apps? Why wouldn’t I just keep going to my regular sites, do a little multi-touch zoom, and experience THE internet in its’ full glory? It just seemed like the opposite of what they are trying to promote. It seemed like a whole separate iPhone version of the internet was being promoted. I do understand that some neat functionality and interaction can be done by developing iPhone specific webapps to work with Apple iPhone apps, but it still seems overrated. I didn’t even think that Apple needed to release a full SDK. I thought that even an iPhone plugin or the like for Dashcode would have been satisfying to a degree. But like you said…Jobs is not an idiot.
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“So why didn’t Apple win?”
Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford. Duh.
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When I first heard the Safari-as-SDK from the keynote live feeds, I thought it was actually a contradiction of what Jobs has been promoting with the iPhone. If Safari on the iPhone IS the “REAL” internet, then why bother writing new apps? Why wouldn’t I just keep going to my regular sites, do a little multi-touch zoom, and experience THE internet in its’ full glory? It just seemed like the opposite of what they are trying to promote. It seemed like a whole separate iPhone version of the internet was being promoted. I do understand that some neat functionality and interaction can be done by developing iPhone specific webapps to work with Apple iPhone apps, but it still seems overrated. I didn’t even think that Apple needed to release a full SDK. I thought that even an iPhone plugin or the like for Dashcode would have been satisfying to a degree. But like you said…Jobs is not an idiot.
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Zack: you’re right. But no one has ever made the claim that this will get more than a few percent of marketshare. At least not in the next year.
Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.
I disagree about the Zune, though. It is a wonderful device if it were out in 2002. For 2007, though, the bar is a bit higher.
That said, if Microsoft gets a widescreen Zune out before Apple that could all change around!
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Zack: you’re right. But no one has ever made the claim that this will get more than a few percent of marketshare. At least not in the next year.
Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.
I disagree about the Zune, though. It is a wonderful device if it were out in 2002. For 2007, though, the bar is a bit higher.
That said, if Microsoft gets a widescreen Zune out before Apple that could all change around!
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Thanks for the link to the MacBasic story. But I don’t think this is a strong reason for Jobs to be wary of Microsoft as long as he stays away of “sugared water” exectutives 🙂
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Thanks for the link to the MacBasic story. But I don’t think this is a strong reason for Jobs to be wary of Microsoft as long as he stays away of “sugared water” exectutives 🙂
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John: >>Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford.
That’s not why I switched from Macs to Windows around 1993. The fact is that Windows machines started doing more than Macs did because more developers were kicking out more software. A big part of that was the better developer tools on Windows. I saw this first hand as an associate editor at Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal.
As for cost: yeah, that is a factor. Businesses don’t like paying more than they have to but if Apple had kept up their developer tools and treated developers better they would have had more market share than they do now.
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I have shown people my Zune and most are like “Wow… this is cooler than my iPod!”. It is all opinion, however.
I thought it was determined (by who, I’m not sure) that the iPhone wasn’t really running OSX. I guess we will find out. If it is, though, then Apple would have to open up the iPhone. Then, and only then, Adobe would port Flash onto the iPhone and make it work with Adobe *magic*.
Oh, that reminds me, I saw an interview of an Apple Developer (guy who develops apps for Mac… not works for Apple) and he suggested that Apple will only open the iPhone up to “select partners”. That is sort of pointless.
You have to admit, Steve acts like the iPhone will be the biggest thing since sliced bread. Maybe he needs to try a Windows Mobile 6.0 device… maybe he can turn his photocopier on full blast! (No offence!)
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John: >>Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford.
That’s not why I switched from Macs to Windows around 1993. The fact is that Windows machines started doing more than Macs did because more developers were kicking out more software. A big part of that was the better developer tools on Windows. I saw this first hand as an associate editor at Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal.
As for cost: yeah, that is a factor. Businesses don’t like paying more than they have to but if Apple had kept up their developer tools and treated developers better they would have had more market share than they do now.
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I have shown people my Zune and most are like “Wow… this is cooler than my iPod!”. It is all opinion, however.
I thought it was determined (by who, I’m not sure) that the iPhone wasn’t really running OSX. I guess we will find out. If it is, though, then Apple would have to open up the iPhone. Then, and only then, Adobe would port Flash onto the iPhone and make it work with Adobe *magic*.
Oh, that reminds me, I saw an interview of an Apple Developer (guy who develops apps for Mac… not works for Apple) and he suggested that Apple will only open the iPhone up to “select partners”. That is sort of pointless.
You have to admit, Steve acts like the iPhone will be the biggest thing since sliced bread. Maybe he needs to try a Windows Mobile 6.0 device… maybe he can turn his photocopier on full blast! (No offence!)
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Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
As to Zune: do you have a recent iPod too? Most people have old iPods.
Anyway, what did they find so cool about the Zune? I have shown mine to lots of people too and they don’t find it so interesting.
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Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
As to Zune: do you have a recent iPod too? Most people have old iPods.
Anyway, what did they find so cool about the Zune? I have shown mine to lots of people too and they don’t find it so interesting.
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Apple had the best network?
Ha! Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha!! LOL! ROFL!
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Apple had the best network?
Ha! Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha!! LOL! ROFL!
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Chas: Apple’s networks were easy to setup by anyone and they worked with their laser printers easily and MUCH better than the other networks that were around for small groups. Keep in mind I was putting networks into classrooms with 30 computers.
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Chas: Apple’s networks were easy to setup by anyone and they worked with their laser printers easily and MUCH better than the other networks that were around for small groups. Keep in mind I was putting networks into classrooms with 30 computers.
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Apple’s problem back in the late 80s/early 90s was that they rested on their laurels. Make yourself a list of when PCs and Macs added Color graphics and Hard disk storage. I think folks would be shocked at how many years behind Apple was on what now look like must-have features. In truth, when they did add color graphics they did a good job. Apple allowed itself to be pigeonholed into graphics/publishing tools and once again it was a remarkable event when PC hardware passed Apple in Photoshop or Illustrator performance.
As for Networking, remember that AppleTalk was competing with Novell Netware and MS LanManager. All three are inferior to what we use today, but TCP/IP and 10-base-T hardware weren’t ubiquitous yet.
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Apple’s problem back in the late 80s/early 90s was that they rested on their laurels. Make yourself a list of when PCs and Macs added Color graphics and Hard disk storage. I think folks would be shocked at how many years behind Apple was on what now look like must-have features. In truth, when they did add color graphics they did a good job. Apple allowed itself to be pigeonholed into graphics/publishing tools and once again it was a remarkable event when PC hardware passed Apple in Photoshop or Illustrator performance.
As for Networking, remember that AppleTalk was competing with Novell Netware and MS LanManager. All three are inferior to what we use today, but TCP/IP and 10-base-T hardware weren’t ubiquitous yet.
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“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Too many people are already forgetting how much of a challenge it is to get full web page rendering working smoothly on a phone, and are failing to understand just how much of an additional strain Flash would be.
We may well see Flash added in some form in the next year, but I reckon it’ll be restricted to a ‘click to activate’ approach where a single Flash movie can fill the screen, grabbing just about enough space and processing power to be worthwhile in some cases.
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“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Too many people are already forgetting how much of a challenge it is to get full web page rendering working smoothly on a phone, and are failing to understand just how much of an additional strain Flash would be.
We may well see Flash added in some form in the next year, but I reckon it’ll be restricted to a ‘click to activate’ approach where a single Flash movie can fill the screen, grabbing just about enough space and processing power to be worthwhile in some cases.
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What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?
In 1989, NeXT Computer was delivering the NextStep programming environment. NeXT was even less successful than Apple, despite delivering a better programming environment.
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What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?
In 1989, NeXT Computer was delivering the NextStep programming environment. NeXT was even less successful than Apple, despite delivering a better programming environment.
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geniver: I was using Aldus Pagemaker, and Microsoft Excel and Word back in 1989. I don’t think those ever shipped on NeXT.
Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/
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geniver: I was using Aldus Pagemaker, and Microsoft Excel and Word back in 1989. I don’t think those ever shipped on NeXT.
Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/
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“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Only problem with this is, while the iPhone runs OS X, there’s no mention anywhere of it being an intel processor. Let alone an x86 one. Given that, they’d need to get a plugin compiled for whatever the (RISC?) architecture is, and then of course deal with all the auto-magical scaling that Safari on the iPhone does. Maybe that side could be handled by Safari, though.
Two minutes would certainly be a gross understatement.
On the other hand, I’ll be interested to see if Google can get gears on to the thing, and if developers could get an icon in the menu. Boom you’ve got offline support, an icon to launch your app. Sure you still don’t have core animation or multitouch (and you might have to watch for things to figure out that you’ve had your orientation changed), but I’m pretty sure you could do most of the (non-multitouch) stuff with just HTML anyway. Has any one made a “coverflow in html” using javascript and canvas? Just wondering is all.
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“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Only problem with this is, while the iPhone runs OS X, there’s no mention anywhere of it being an intel processor. Let alone an x86 one. Given that, they’d need to get a plugin compiled for whatever the (RISC?) architecture is, and then of course deal with all the auto-magical scaling that Safari on the iPhone does. Maybe that side could be handled by Safari, though.
Two minutes would certainly be a gross understatement.
On the other hand, I’ll be interested to see if Google can get gears on to the thing, and if developers could get an icon in the menu. Boom you’ve got offline support, an icon to launch your app. Sure you still don’t have core animation or multitouch (and you might have to watch for things to figure out that you’ve had your orientation changed), but I’m pretty sure you could do most of the (non-multitouch) stuff with just HTML anyway. Has any one made a “coverflow in html” using javascript and canvas? Just wondering is all.
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“Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/”
Yes, that’s a subset of the full plugin, used to create small standalone Flash apps separate from the browser, rather than offering a way to view existing embedded content. I was referring to the unrealistic expectation to have full Flash content within pages, and musing that some form of the full plugin may be possible somehow.
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“Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/”
Yes, that’s a subset of the full plugin, used to create small standalone Flash apps separate from the browser, rather than offering a way to view existing embedded content. I was referring to the unrealistic expectation to have full Flash content within pages, and musing that some form of the full plugin may be possible somehow.
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Jobs is not an idiot. The idiots are the brainwashed Mactards.
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Jobs is not an idiot. The idiots are the brainwashed Mactards.
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In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.
Robert, i love you sometimes. What was Apple’s largest market share between 1976 and today? If you think Apple had anything resembling a majority market share after IBM introduced the PC, you’re wrong. Quite wrong in fact.
So why didn’t Apple win?
Because at that time, IBM/Microsoft/Novell ran IT departments, and if you weren’t that, or high end Unix, you didn’t get in. The Mac, circa 1989, was not going to be included in that outside of graphics shops. (The 68040 wasn’t introduced until 1991, and a Mac IIfx cost something like $10K, thanks to Sculley being a fucking idiot) The developer issue was very minor when compared to the influence that IBM/MS/Novell wielded at that time.
Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.
Look how long it took PC video and sound hardware to get to where they could have fully supported the Mac OS. VGA wasn’t even *introduced* until 1987, at which point, the Mac was supporting far better displays both in color and resolution. When the Mac came out, you had EGA, which was 16 color at 640×350. So while the PC had color first, it took three years to get to the resolution that the Mac had from the start. It took into the 90s for PC standard hardware to get to the level of what Apple had been shipping for years, so Apple couldn’t have cloned off the OS to generic PC hardware at that time even if they wanted to.
What, you were going to have the Mac OS running
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In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.
Robert, i love you sometimes. What was Apple’s largest market share between 1976 and today? If you think Apple had anything resembling a majority market share after IBM introduced the PC, you’re wrong. Quite wrong in fact.
So why didn’t Apple win?
Because at that time, IBM/Microsoft/Novell ran IT departments, and if you weren’t that, or high end Unix, you didn’t get in. The Mac, circa 1989, was not going to be included in that outside of graphics shops. (The 68040 wasn’t introduced until 1991, and a Mac IIfx cost something like $10K, thanks to Sculley being a fucking idiot) The developer issue was very minor when compared to the influence that IBM/MS/Novell wielded at that time.
Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.
Look how long it took PC video and sound hardware to get to where they could have fully supported the Mac OS. VGA wasn’t even *introduced* until 1987, at which point, the Mac was supporting far better displays both in color and resolution. When the Mac came out, you had EGA, which was 16 color at 640×350. So while the PC had color first, it took three years to get to the resolution that the Mac had from the start. It took into the 90s for PC standard hardware to get to the level of what Apple had been shipping for years, so Apple couldn’t have cloned off the OS to generic PC hardware at that time even if they wanted to.
What, you were going to have the Mac OS running
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Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
it’s going to require the silverlight plugin to need a LOT less than 30MB of space to just sit there and do nothing.
If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
It’s still in unstable beta, it’s a space and resource pig, it requires plugins…yeah, all Jobs’ fault.
Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost.
This history of the Razr, and it’s insanely high initial cost says you’re wrong.
Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
Only if everyone else is as ignorant as you are about what an OS is.
Full flash-style support in a memory limited device is not something that’s easy to do. The long term answer is going to be a move away from plugins.
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Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
it’s going to require the silverlight plugin to need a LOT less than 30MB of space to just sit there and do nothing.
If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
It’s still in unstable beta, it’s a space and resource pig, it requires plugins…yeah, all Jobs’ fault.
Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost.
This history of the Razr, and it’s insanely high initial cost says you’re wrong.
Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
Only if everyone else is as ignorant as you are about what an OS is.
Full flash-style support in a memory limited device is not something that’s easy to do. The long term answer is going to be a move away from plugins.
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Robert,
Let’s look at this logically.
You start with the premise that “Jobs is not an idiot”
You follow it up with a series of events demonstrating that he is.
You follow that with the latest idiotic decision he’s made.
And then draw the conclusion that the last idiotic decision is secretly not really what was decided by your initial premise which you never demonstrated and made a good case for being false.
Face it. Jobs doesn’t like developers. He likes control.
He was the one insisting that the Mac only come in one size and format in 1984.
He was the one saying the Mac would never have color in 1985.
He was the one who thought the market in 1989 was Unix workstations for $10K sold only to college students.
He was the one who thought the “Killer App” for NeXT was a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare.
Now, why should we assume that when he told developers to pound sand on Monday he really didn’t mean it?
Seriously.
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Robert,
Let’s look at this logically.
You start with the premise that “Jobs is not an idiot”
You follow it up with a series of events demonstrating that he is.
You follow that with the latest idiotic decision he’s made.
And then draw the conclusion that the last idiotic decision is secretly not really what was decided by your initial premise which you never demonstrated and made a good case for being false.
Face it. Jobs doesn’t like developers. He likes control.
He was the one insisting that the Mac only come in one size and format in 1984.
He was the one saying the Mac would never have color in 1985.
He was the one who thought the market in 1989 was Unix workstations for $10K sold only to college students.
He was the one who thought the “Killer App” for NeXT was a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare.
Now, why should we assume that when he told developers to pound sand on Monday he really didn’t mean it?
Seriously.
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Mike: cause I am thinking that Steve will look back on 1989 and learn something and avoid making the same mistake. Of course, if he hasn’t learned from his mistakes, then he’s doomed to repeat them. In such a scenario Microsoft and Nokia wins.
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Mike: cause I am thinking that Steve will look back on 1989 and learn something and avoid making the same mistake. Of course, if he hasn’t learned from his mistakes, then he’s doomed to repeat them. In such a scenario Microsoft and Nokia wins.
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Robert,
The problem is that you offer no evidence that he HAS learned from 1989. At least as far as making development for any platform a priority. And there are a lot of examples where he had the opportunity since then and didn’t show any change.
If you look at it from a recent history POV, you’d be likely to predict that in a few years what we’ll actually see is an Apple “Official” dual boot tool to let iPhone users quickly switch over to Windows Mobile…
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Robert,
The problem is that you offer no evidence that he HAS learned from 1989. At least as far as making development for any platform a priority. And there are a lot of examples where he had the opportunity since then and didn’t show any change.
If you look at it from a recent history POV, you’d be likely to predict that in a few years what we’ll actually see is an Apple “Official” dual boot tool to let iPhone users quickly switch over to Windows Mobile…
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Mike: I think you hang out with too many Microsofties. One reason that a lot of developers use Macs now is that OSX is based on Unix and actually is very friendly to developers. That’s why you are seeing more and more Mac apps lately.
By the way, Steve Jobs didn’t work at Apple in 1989 so what happened there couldn’t be seen as his fault.
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Mike: I think you hang out with too many Microsofties. One reason that a lot of developers use Macs now is that OSX is based on Unix and actually is very friendly to developers. That’s why you are seeing more and more Mac apps lately.
By the way, Steve Jobs didn’t work at Apple in 1989 so what happened there couldn’t be seen as his fault.
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John Welch has it dead on. While Apple did a terrible job supporting developers, those years Steve Jobs was running NeXT. He’s got to roll out the iPhone world wide in the next 18 months. Do you seriously believe he will jeapordize that marketing venture with poorly coded independent applications? Corporate client sales are not in his sites during the roll out. Apple hasn’t the infrastructure to cater to big business, nor does Jobs like to be told what to do. He’s going to partner with other biggies and make them provide the hooks for web 2.0 applications to utilize them in delivering services. After the initial roll out I suspect they will open it up more; but it will likely never be the kind of openness that Microsoft delivers with their pathetic Windows Mobile.
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John Welch has it dead on. While Apple did a terrible job supporting developers, those years Steve Jobs was running NeXT. He’s got to roll out the iPhone world wide in the next 18 months. Do you seriously believe he will jeapordize that marketing venture with poorly coded independent applications? Corporate client sales are not in his sites during the roll out. Apple hasn’t the infrastructure to cater to big business, nor does Jobs like to be told what to do. He’s going to partner with other biggies and make them provide the hooks for web 2.0 applications to utilize them in delivering services. After the initial roll out I suspect they will open it up more; but it will likely never be the kind of openness that Microsoft delivers with their pathetic Windows Mobile.
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Robert,
I think you’ve been spending too much time in the Valley. (Next you’ll be telling us how the SUN Workstation was THE breakthrough product in computing like the displays at the museum in Mountain View would imply…)
btw: I didn’t pick 1989 as an example date, you did. I picked examples from when he WAS running the company into the ground from the top office.
Please, cite just one example when Jobs running Apple has done anything to target developers? It IS, after all, your premise and the entire basis for your, frankly wierd, prediction.
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Robert,
I think you’ve been spending too much time in the Valley. (Next you’ll be telling us how the SUN Workstation was THE breakthrough product in computing like the displays at the museum in Mountain View would imply…)
btw: I didn’t pick 1989 as an example date, you did. I picked examples from when he WAS running the company into the ground from the top office.
Please, cite just one example when Jobs running Apple has done anything to target developers? It IS, after all, your premise and the entire basis for your, frankly wierd, prediction.
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Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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Mike, here are some examples:
Jobs released Xcode for free with Mac OS X.
Jobs reduced the price of WebObjects, then made it free. (Yeah, I know you’ll say who cares?)
Jobs built up WWDC by killing off MacWorld Boston/New York. Even though the two are not targeted at the same audience, the lack of a summer event caused media and even consumer attention to switch to WWDC.
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Mike, here are some examples:
Jobs released Xcode for free with Mac OS X.
Jobs reduced the price of WebObjects, then made it free. (Yeah, I know you’ll say who cares?)
Jobs built up WWDC by killing off MacWorld Boston/New York. Even though the two are not targeted at the same audience, the lack of a summer event caused media and even consumer attention to switch to WWDC.
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“Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. ”
They did. Windows is an upside down backwards carbon copy of Apple’s work.
This is news?
Apple paid for Xerox access with stock, and lots of it, they took the GUI concept and ran with it. Did MS pay for ‘access’ to Apple’s innovations?
How much of Bill Gates’ contributions to Africa are actually Steve Jobs’ money?
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“Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. ”
They did. Windows is an upside down backwards carbon copy of Apple’s work.
This is news?
Apple paid for Xerox access with stock, and lots of it, they took the GUI concept and ran with it. Did MS pay for ‘access’ to Apple’s innovations?
How much of Bill Gates’ contributions to Africa are actually Steve Jobs’ money?
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“What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?” geniver asked.
Are you asking what programs did Apple itself offer or that were available for it? I studied graphic design in college, and was working in imaging service bureaus in 1989 and beyond, running Yale’s in-house facility for a year, and then later working with more advanced gear at an arm of Kodak up in Maine.
Windows in 1989 was essentially unusable. System 6 had Quark, PageMaker, Illustrator. My college paper, a weekly that started up in 1985, was PageMaker based and all Macs. We managed to produce a newspaper on deadline (our daily rival used Quark).
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“What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?” geniver asked.
Are you asking what programs did Apple itself offer or that were available for it? I studied graphic design in college, and was working in imaging service bureaus in 1989 and beyond, running Yale’s in-house facility for a year, and then later working with more advanced gear at an arm of Kodak up in Maine.
Windows in 1989 was essentially unusable. System 6 had Quark, PageMaker, Illustrator. My college paper, a weekly that started up in 1985, was PageMaker based and all Macs. We managed to produce a newspaper on deadline (our daily rival used Quark).
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I think this whole thing is considerably simpler than most folks are making it out to be. I think Apple knows and has known from the start that the iPhone has to be open to developers, and that they very likely have had plans to make that happen since the earliest days of the iPhone. The real question is when and how.
The thin edge of the wedge is this unholy webapps compromise that no one will really be satisfied with, But I think they’re trying to thread the needle between controlling the launch and getting through the first six months as smoothly as they possibly can – and also (later) engaging a solid, committed developer community who will be able to work on a platform that will have already been established as viable and worthwhile. At least Apple hopes so.
The one lesson of the smartphone and PDA world is that even with a complete piece of junk out of date OS, Palm still competes pretty well in the marketplace – because there are tons of apps at every price point, and in some verticals it still completely dominates. Apps = success, even if you’re selling marginal stuff. Jobs certainly knows this.
Is Apple taking a risk by trying to move things along in a very measured way? Sure they are. And some of that may be due to a certain kind of arrogance and control-freakery that we’ve seen for years. Does that mean there is no plan, though? I highly doubt it – as you say, Robert, Jobs is no idiot.
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I think this whole thing is considerably simpler than most folks are making it out to be. I think Apple knows and has known from the start that the iPhone has to be open to developers, and that they very likely have had plans to make that happen since the earliest days of the iPhone. The real question is when and how.
The thin edge of the wedge is this unholy webapps compromise that no one will really be satisfied with, But I think they’re trying to thread the needle between controlling the launch and getting through the first six months as smoothly as they possibly can – and also (later) engaging a solid, committed developer community who will be able to work on a platform that will have already been established as viable and worthwhile. At least Apple hopes so.
The one lesson of the smartphone and PDA world is that even with a complete piece of junk out of date OS, Palm still competes pretty well in the marketplace – because there are tons of apps at every price point, and in some verticals it still completely dominates. Apps = success, even if you’re selling marginal stuff. Jobs certainly knows this.
Is Apple taking a risk by trying to move things along in a very measured way? Sure they are. And some of that may be due to a certain kind of arrogance and control-freakery that we’ve seen for years. Does that mean there is no plan, though? I highly doubt it – as you say, Robert, Jobs is no idiot.
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I think you nailed it Michael. It looks to me like the plan is to get as many iPhones out in the market as quickly and smoothly as possible, while Serlet’s people are working on the SDK. Who knows … if the target becomes popular enough, they might even be able to charge for those SDKs.
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I think you nailed it Michael. It looks to me like the plan is to get as many iPhones out in the market as quickly and smoothly as possible, while Serlet’s people are working on the SDK. Who knows … if the target becomes popular enough, they might even be able to charge for those SDKs.
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To complete the thought that oddly got truncated in 46…
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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To complete the thought that oddly got truncated in 46…
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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OK. Completing it in sections…
…
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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OK. Completing it in sections…
…
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
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Ah, the website doesn’t like the less than symbol…
Let’s try this again
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.
So, we’ve got…
an OS with a tiny user base (less people use Macintosh than believe the moon landing was faked on a sound stage).
An OS producer with lousy developer tools and even lousier developer outreach and evangelism.
An OS producer who touts that the solution to their lack of apps is that they have really good ways to run Windows apps. (See Jobs Top 10 Features speech to see just how important they think Bootcamp, Parallels and VMWare are)
Sound familiar?
Think IBM OS/2 which did the same thing with their “Better Windows than Windows” marketing. For those of you not old enough to remember it, IBM pushed OS/2 as a better platform for running Windows apps than Windows 95. And it was pretty good at it. The result was that nobody bothered writing native OS/2 apps since they were at best marginally worth the effort and since WinApps were acceptable and they were already writing them…
The results were, of course, totally predictable and thus ended the OS Wars of the early ’90s.
So, lets look at the message Apple gave their developers at their annual developer love fest…
—
“Isn’t it funny how few copies of Vista have been sold” followed by the announcement (for those who can do basic arithmetic) that OS X has, in all versions, a smaller installed base than Vista had after one month.
Hey, we’ve got a great story running apps for those of you who want to give up on OS X and write only for Windows.
So, now that you realize it’s silly to invest in OS X, perhaps you’d like to develop for out actually successful product, the iPod? Nope. That’s not going to happen.
Alright, before you decide to throw us into the Bay, we’ve decided that the new mass market product that we’re going to hype a LOT is not going to be totally closed like we threatened. And hey, despite all those stories, we’re here to tell you it runs REAL OS X. So, take all those OS X dev skills you’ve learned, take all that Carbon and Cocoa and any other C words you’ve learned, take all that C and C++ and Objective C skills and…
Toss them out.
Yes, if you want to write for our only product likely to sell in significant numbers we expect you to have NO advantage from being Apple Registered Developers. We expect you to have NO advantage for spending lots of money to come here. We expect you to have NO advantage for being loyal to Apple through good times and bad. We have decided that you can write some web pages and we won’t block the scripting. Yes, you along with every person out there who learned AJAX and JavaScript is now starting on an equal footing to develop mediocre half-apps.
Oh, and remember that they’ll, of course, have to compete against the real apps that we and a select group of partners that we trust have developed with the real SDK and tools that we used to write the bundled apps.
—
Go pound sand is a very nice way of saying what they told their Developer Partners.
Now tell me Robert, does that sound like “Not an idiot”?
Compare and contrast what Jobs and company did to their developers with what Nevet Basker and Tom Button did to build the VB 1.0 developer community back when you were my editor at BasicPRO…
Mike
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Ah, the website doesn’t like the less than symbol…
Let’s try this again
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.
So, we’ve got…
an OS with a tiny user base (less people use Macintosh than believe the moon landing was faked on a sound stage).
An OS producer with lousy developer tools and even lousier developer outreach and evangelism.
An OS producer who touts that the solution to their lack of apps is that they have really good ways to run Windows apps. (See Jobs Top 10 Features speech to see just how important they think Bootcamp, Parallels and VMWare are)
Sound familiar?
Think IBM OS/2 which did the same thing with their “Better Windows than Windows” marketing. For those of you not old enough to remember it, IBM pushed OS/2 as a better platform for running Windows apps than Windows 95. And it was pretty good at it. The result was that nobody bothered writing native OS/2 apps since they were at best marginally worth the effort and since WinApps were acceptable and they were already writing them…
The results were, of course, totally predictable and thus ended the OS Wars of the early ’90s.
So, lets look at the message Apple gave their developers at their annual developer love fest…
—
“Isn’t it funny how few copies of Vista have been sold” followed by the announcement (for those who can do basic arithmetic) that OS X has, in all versions, a smaller installed base than Vista had after one month.
Hey, we’ve got a great story running apps for those of you who want to give up on OS X and write only for Windows.
So, now that you realize it’s silly to invest in OS X, perhaps you’d like to develop for out actually successful product, the iPod? Nope. That’s not going to happen.
Alright, before you decide to throw us into the Bay, we’ve decided that the new mass market product that we’re going to hype a LOT is not going to be totally closed like we threatened. And hey, despite all those stories, we’re here to tell you it runs REAL OS X. So, take all those OS X dev skills you’ve learned, take all that Carbon and Cocoa and any other C words you’ve learned, take all that C and C++ and Objective C skills and…
Toss them out.
Yes, if you want to write for our only product likely to sell in significant numbers we expect you to have NO advantage from being Apple Registered Developers. We expect you to have NO advantage for spending lots of money to come here. We expect you to have NO advantage for being loyal to Apple through good times and bad. We have decided that you can write some web pages and we won’t block the scripting. Yes, you along with every person out there who learned AJAX and JavaScript is now starting on an equal footing to develop mediocre half-apps.
Oh, and remember that they’ll, of course, have to compete against the real apps that we and a select group of partners that we trust have developed with the real SDK and tools that we used to write the bundled apps.
—
Go pound sand is a very nice way of saying what they told their Developer Partners.
Now tell me Robert, does that sound like “Not an idiot”?
Compare and contrast what Jobs and company did to their developers with what Nevet Basker and Tom Button did to build the VB 1.0 developer community back when you were my editor at BasicPRO…
Mike
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Now, on to some speculation on what’s really going on at Macintosh land. And, remember, this is only speculation…
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
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Now, on to some speculation on what’s really going on at Macintosh land. And, remember, this is only speculation…
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
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Why is everyone so wow-ed by the iPhone? I’ve just upgraded to an Orange E650 here in the UK, which seems to have all the iPhone has and more. It runs Windows Mobile, so plenty of development opportunities. It runs Windows Media, and I’ve put in a 2Gb micro-SD card, so it’s not far short of an iPod. It’s got Wi-Fi, which is great in Bristol (UK) as many of the cafes have got free Wi-fi access. And it’s got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard which makes it almost as useful as a laptop – particularly as it’s already got Office Mobile installed. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
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Why is everyone so wow-ed by the iPhone? I’ve just upgraded to an Orange E650 here in the UK, which seems to have all the iPhone has and more. It runs Windows Mobile, so plenty of development opportunities. It runs Windows Media, and I’ve put in a 2Gb micro-SD card, so it’s not far short of an iPod. It’s got Wi-Fi, which is great in Bristol (UK) as many of the cafes have got free Wi-fi access. And it’s got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard which makes it almost as useful as a laptop – particularly as it’s already got Office Mobile installed. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
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Apple is just a really snobby company. Up to this day, most of the hardware and software have to be Apple compliant or else it’s just crap.
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Apple is just a really snobby company. Up to this day, most of the hardware and software have to be Apple compliant or else it’s just crap.
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Robert, you have summarised perfectly what I’ve been thinking in the last few days. It seems to me that Apple is being cleverer than we think. It is clear to me that the SDK isn’t ready yet, hell they may not have started working on it, but I think it’s planned. Ars’s John Siracusa also believes that this is the case (http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2007/06/04/the-frontier).
There is a bit of a back-door play going here too m’thinks. With AJAX/Web 2.0, the barrier of entry for any kind of development on the iPhone has been lowered substantially, meaning that (if it takes off), Apple will have lasso-ed a huge number of initial developers, whether they be Win-based, Mac-based or open source-based. Once they’re hooked, release the SDK (probably dual-platform) and watch the platform explode.
Of course, the iPhone may fail completely, in which case talk of an SDK may be completely academic…
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Robert, you have summarised perfectly what I’ve been thinking in the last few days. It seems to me that Apple is being cleverer than we think. It is clear to me that the SDK isn’t ready yet, hell they may not have started working on it, but I think it’s planned. Ars’s John Siracusa also believes that this is the case (http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2007/06/04/the-frontier).
There is a bit of a back-door play going here too m’thinks. With AJAX/Web 2.0, the barrier of entry for any kind of development on the iPhone has been lowered substantially, meaning that (if it takes off), Apple will have lasso-ed a huge number of initial developers, whether they be Win-based, Mac-based or open source-based. Once they’re hooked, release the SDK (probably dual-platform) and watch the platform explode.
Of course, the iPhone may fail completely, in which case talk of an SDK may be completely academic…
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mike is right. The big “what-if” is “what if Xerox PARC stuff (including the 1973 Alto which Jobs saw and used for Lisa the Mac predecessor) was even semi-competently marketed?
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mike is right. The big “what-if” is “what if Xerox PARC stuff (including the 1973 Alto which Jobs saw and used for Lisa the Mac predecessor) was even semi-competently marketed?
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I am not a developer, so dont know much about it. But I am something more than a developer, a user. The biggest mistake which Apple did and is also doing, is that they dont see world outside US. For them it seems, that if world is buying their products its well and good, but Apple will somehow never move ahead and visit users doorstep in the world outside US, which is quite big. Come to India, and students in secondary know who Bill Gates is, but people in colleges dont know who Steve Jobs is. This makes a difference. There are people who can shed lots of money, if they do not know about your product, then its not their but yours fault. No matter if you arr making the most advanced product. They did same with iPod, iPod in India is only driving its sales from international media, and on other hand if you take Nokia5300, which is in no way a comparison to ipod, but can act as a pretty good music device is more visually known than iPod.
I read somewhere that one problem with iPhone can be that it is coming on just one network. They could have done same internationally… but no they didnt. If Apple is ever going to think beating MS in market share, then they must arrange some tutor for their top cadre, who can tell them about the world outside.
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I am not a developer, so dont know much about it. But I am something more than a developer, a user. The biggest mistake which Apple did and is also doing, is that they dont see world outside US. For them it seems, that if world is buying their products its well and good, but Apple will somehow never move ahead and visit users doorstep in the world outside US, which is quite big. Come to India, and students in secondary know who Bill Gates is, but people in colleges dont know who Steve Jobs is. This makes a difference. There are people who can shed lots of money, if they do not know about your product, then its not their but yours fault. No matter if you arr making the most advanced product. They did same with iPod, iPod in India is only driving its sales from international media, and on other hand if you take Nokia5300, which is in no way a comparison to ipod, but can act as a pretty good music device is more visually known than iPod.
I read somewhere that one problem with iPhone can be that it is coming on just one network. They could have done same internationally… but no they didnt. If Apple is ever going to think beating MS in market share, then they must arrange some tutor for their top cadre, who can tell them about the world outside.
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There are more theories for why Wintel has beaten Apple than for the disappearing of dinosaurs.
Here’s mine: Software Piracy.
Back in the mid, early 90’s you could get any software (and games) easily for PC. You needed stupid serial # for Mac. So everyone bought PC because the software was “cheaper”.
http://agilesoftwareaddiction.blogspot.com/2005/08/why-pc-platform-beat-apple.html
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There are more theories for why Wintel has beaten Apple than for the disappearing of dinosaurs.
Here’s mine: Software Piracy.
Back in the mid, early 90’s you could get any software (and games) easily for PC. You needed stupid serial # for Mac. So everyone bought PC because the software was “cheaper”.
http://agilesoftwareaddiction.blogspot.com/2005/08/why-pc-platform-beat-apple.html
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Wow, i didn’t know this, to be honest i’m one of those people who thought that the reason microsoft ‘won’ was because of the licensing of windows to be installed on third party machines.
I have to say though, fair enough apple didn’t open up the iPhone to develop native apps for it, to say, ones that would put an icon on the home screen. But maybe they never intended to do that, or maybe there is no way to do that without completely ruining the software on the phone.
It seems to me that development for the iPhone and Leopard has been far too rushed – they moved developers around and pushed release dates back, which all says to me that they’ve only done what they NEED to do in order to get the iPhone out there.
I think that once it’s out, the developers will start working on new firmware that will probably allow better ways to develop apps or widgets for the native iPhone platform, but to be honest, i’m not sure apple themselves know how they could open up the phone beyond AJAX and Javascript. Not yet, anyways.
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Wow, i didn’t know this, to be honest i’m one of those people who thought that the reason microsoft ‘won’ was because of the licensing of windows to be installed on third party machines.
I have to say though, fair enough apple didn’t open up the iPhone to develop native apps for it, to say, ones that would put an icon on the home screen. But maybe they never intended to do that, or maybe there is no way to do that without completely ruining the software on the phone.
It seems to me that development for the iPhone and Leopard has been far too rushed – they moved developers around and pushed release dates back, which all says to me that they’ve only done what they NEED to do in order to get the iPhone out there.
I think that once it’s out, the developers will start working on new firmware that will probably allow better ways to develop apps or widgets for the native iPhone platform, but to be honest, i’m not sure apple themselves know how they could open up the phone beyond AJAX and Javascript. Not yet, anyways.
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As long as Apple doesn’t repeat the Windows Mobile 5.x debacle that I experience daily on my PPC-6700, I’ll be happy. – Tim
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As long as Apple doesn’t repeat the Windows Mobile 5.x debacle that I experience daily on my PPC-6700, I’ll be happy. – Tim
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Tim,
I’ve had a 6700 with Windows Mobile 5 for a while now (with Sprint) and it’s been solid. The worst thing I’ve run into is a 3rd party app that sucks the battery dry if I use it a lot (but I can swap out batteries if need be)
What’s the problem you’re having? (I assume you have the Verizon version since you call it a PPC-6700)
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Tim,
I’ve had a 6700 with Windows Mobile 5 for a while now (with Sprint) and it’s been solid. The worst thing I’ve run into is a 3rd party app that sucks the battery dry if I use it a lot (but I can swap out batteries if need be)
What’s the problem you’re having? (I assume you have the Verizon version since you call it a PPC-6700)
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@SuzyQ – wrong. Silverlight is not the way o go. It will be Safari on Win that is the trojan horse to ensure the flow in the other directon.
Scoble – i agree. Jobs today is not going to make the same errors as in 1989. One year from now we’ll see the iPhone in a totally different light! “First Apple takes A&T, and then….”
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@SuzyQ – wrong. Silverlight is not the way o go. It will be Safari on Win that is the trojan horse to ensure the flow in the other directon.
Scoble – i agree. Jobs today is not going to make the same errors as in 1989. One year from now we’ll see the iPhone in a totally different light! “First Apple takes A&T, and then….”
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Mike Galos wrote: “Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.”
Mike, have you ever heard of Direct X? Ever hear of the Fahrenheit API project that was to unify Direct3D and OpenGL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_graphics_API
In a nut shell, Microsoft failed to deliver it’s part of the project since it really didn’t assign any significant amount of developer resources to produce it. Microsoft pretended to work on an open standard while, in reality, re-invented the wheel with own 3D API.
This stalled the entire project and SGI sold what it developed to Microsoft, which it rolled in to it’s own Direct 3D API. Typical Microsoft tactics.
Since most games are now use DirectX on Windows, Game developers would have to do a significant re-write of each game to run on Mac OS X using OpenGL. This is exactly the intended result that Microsoft wanted.
Using the Cider wrapper provides a simple way to work around this dependency without having to do a significant re-write.
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Mike Galos wrote: “Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.”
Mike, have you ever heard of Direct X? Ever hear of the Fahrenheit API project that was to unify Direct3D and OpenGL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_graphics_API
In a nut shell, Microsoft failed to deliver it’s part of the project since it really didn’t assign any significant amount of developer resources to produce it. Microsoft pretended to work on an open standard while, in reality, re-invented the wheel with own 3D API.
This stalled the entire project and SGI sold what it developed to Microsoft, which it rolled in to it’s own Direct 3D API. Typical Microsoft tactics.
Since most games are now use DirectX on Windows, Game developers would have to do a significant re-write of each game to run on Mac OS X using OpenGL. This is exactly the intended result that Microsoft wanted.
Using the Cider wrapper provides a simple way to work around this dependency without having to do a significant re-write.
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Scott,
The real question is why was a quick port using a 3rd party translation layer worth a key slot at the only developer’s conference? It doesn’t help developers. It doesn’t open new markets. It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.
It was filler to pad a feature free keynote geared toward lowering expectations.
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Scott,
The real question is why was a quick port using a 3rd party translation layer worth a key slot at the only developer’s conference? It doesn’t help developers. It doesn’t open new markets. It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.
It was filler to pad a feature free keynote geared toward lowering expectations.
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Jobs simply had nothing to show at WWDC and he couldn’t bear to give a boring keynote and endanger all that free press coverage he always gets.
Apple has been trying to finish iPhone and Leopard, THAT is the reason there is no real SDK, it’s not some big thought out strategy, it’s just crunch time as the hard ship deadline for iPhone approaches. SDK sounds simple but there’s just. No. Time.
The only thing new and remotely ready to show at WWDC? Safari. They’ve been porting it to the phone and PC at likely the same time, one code base targeting three platforms (incl Mac).
So that’s what they showed — the only they COULD show. You can tell they were desperate based on all the holes in Safari for Windows.
Jobs then compounded the problem by making it sound like Safari was being released in place of an SDK. Saying AJAX is the way to program the iPhone is less embarassing than saying “we have no time to make an SDK yet, in fact we’re still learning how to code for this phone ourselves, the API is changing every minute.”
So Jobs endangered precious developer goodwill to preserve his ego and PR value. Surprise surprise.
Galos and Scoble are both right. Jobs IS an idiot in the small sense because he rolled out immature product at WWDC and alienated developers. Scoble is right that Jobs is not a BIG idiot, he’ll release an SDK eventually, I’d bet an iPhone on it.
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Jobs simply had nothing to show at WWDC and he couldn’t bear to give a boring keynote and endanger all that free press coverage he always gets.
Apple has been trying to finish iPhone and Leopard, THAT is the reason there is no real SDK, it’s not some big thought out strategy, it’s just crunch time as the hard ship deadline for iPhone approaches. SDK sounds simple but there’s just. No. Time.
The only thing new and remotely ready to show at WWDC? Safari. They’ve been porting it to the phone and PC at likely the same time, one code base targeting three platforms (incl Mac).
So that’s what they showed — the only they COULD show. You can tell they were desperate based on all the holes in Safari for Windows.
Jobs then compounded the problem by making it sound like Safari was being released in place of an SDK. Saying AJAX is the way to program the iPhone is less embarassing than saying “we have no time to make an SDK yet, in fact we’re still learning how to code for this phone ourselves, the API is changing every minute.”
So Jobs endangered precious developer goodwill to preserve his ego and PR value. Surprise surprise.
Galos and Scoble are both right. Jobs IS an idiot in the small sense because he rolled out immature product at WWDC and alienated developers. Scoble is right that Jobs is not a BIG idiot, he’ll release an SDK eventually, I’d bet an iPhone on it.
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Didn’t Steve say that the iPhone is running Mac OS? So just as with the AppleTV we already have the development environment on our desktops!
And just as AppleTV is a Mac running a new version of FrontRow, I believe iPhone is a Mac running a new version of Dashboard. In that case Leopard will ship with an iPhone dev environment, Dashcode!
Why else would Apple spend so much time (and hype) to create this? Just to help people develop little, seldom used widgets? I think not.
Also Leopard is jam packed with awesome developer features, no one who has looked at it would say Apple is leaving independent devs behind.
Sure they cut a mean path, but they are making all of the good code publically available (coreData, CoreImage,CoreAnimation) so writing a top notch Mac app is getting easier, not harder…..
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Didn’t Steve say that the iPhone is running Mac OS? So just as with the AppleTV we already have the development environment on our desktops!
And just as AppleTV is a Mac running a new version of FrontRow, I believe iPhone is a Mac running a new version of Dashboard. In that case Leopard will ship with an iPhone dev environment, Dashcode!
Why else would Apple spend so much time (and hype) to create this? Just to help people develop little, seldom used widgets? I think not.
Also Leopard is jam packed with awesome developer features, no one who has looked at it would say Apple is leaving independent devs behind.
Sure they cut a mean path, but they are making all of the good code publically available (coreData, CoreImage,CoreAnimation) so writing a top notch Mac app is getting easier, not harder…..
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Mike, as an accurate source of Apple speculation, you’re a great VB dev.
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Ah yes, the “only market share counts”. Really? care to tell us why you drive non-mainstream cars? What’s Lotus’ market share? What’s the market share of everything you own?
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
It wasn’t a public retraction. By definition, only Sun can do that. Apple has never publicly, outside of NDA forums, said that ZFS would be the default file system on Mac OS X, and anyone thinking clearly would have realized that ZFS is not going to work as a consumer FS. However, the fact that you get your Apple news from Sun shows how well you do there.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Even if we did, we couldn’t really comment on it, since real-world ZFS/Mac OS X interop is still under NDA. But that’s rather convenient for you, now isn’t it. It’s rather convenient to be able to argue when the refuting points require breaking a contract.
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
You rag on Apple’s market share, then you talk about DESKTOP UNIX SALES? Dude, you’re getting early-onset Alzheimers. Schwartz and Sun realized, rather intelligently, that they suck at the desktop, so they are now going after the Salesforce.coms of the world, because large scale reliability IS what they’re good at. Far better than WIndows.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
Only if you’re smoking a lot of Crack on your breaks from all that LSD.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
I applaud the complicated shapes you twisted yourself into for that bit of neuron-driven silliness. Apple is going to bet the farm on a company that has nothing to do with their business model.
Tell me
Seriously
Have you been outside since 1991?
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
Dude, that news is ten years old, no, wait, closer to 20. I really recommend you check out the rest of this brave new world, lots has changed since you came out of that bad trip.
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Mike, as an accurate source of Apple speculation, you’re a great VB dev.
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Ah yes, the “only market share counts”. Really? care to tell us why you drive non-mainstream cars? What’s Lotus’ market share? What’s the market share of everything you own?
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
It wasn’t a public retraction. By definition, only Sun can do that. Apple has never publicly, outside of NDA forums, said that ZFS would be the default file system on Mac OS X, and anyone thinking clearly would have realized that ZFS is not going to work as a consumer FS. However, the fact that you get your Apple news from Sun shows how well you do there.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Even if we did, we couldn’t really comment on it, since real-world ZFS/Mac OS X interop is still under NDA. But that’s rather convenient for you, now isn’t it. It’s rather convenient to be able to argue when the refuting points require breaking a contract.
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
You rag on Apple’s market share, then you talk about DESKTOP UNIX SALES? Dude, you’re getting early-onset Alzheimers. Schwartz and Sun realized, rather intelligently, that they suck at the desktop, so they are now going after the Salesforce.coms of the world, because large scale reliability IS what they’re good at. Far better than WIndows.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
Only if you’re smoking a lot of Crack on your breaks from all that LSD.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
I applaud the complicated shapes you twisted yourself into for that bit of neuron-driven silliness. Apple is going to bet the farm on a company that has nothing to do with their business model.
Tell me
Seriously
Have you been outside since 1991?
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
Dude, that news is ten years old, no, wait, closer to 20. I really recommend you check out the rest of this brave new world, lots has changed since you came out of that bad trip.
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Galos is hardly worth sweating, John. He has a badly written blog that hardly anyone reads or comments on. So, he decided to come to a blog people do read and publish piffle in the comments. I knew he was off his meds when I saw the early comment in which he claimed to have damaging information about Steve Jobs that none of Jobs’ biographers do. The other giveaway is Galos focus on Apple’s alleged failures. A company that has been around three decades and is currently taking mindshare and the stock market by storm must have done something right.
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Galos is hardly worth sweating, John. He has a badly written blog that hardly anyone reads or comments on. So, he decided to come to a blog people do read and publish piffle in the comments. I knew he was off his meds when I saw the early comment in which he claimed to have damaging information about Steve Jobs that none of Jobs’ biographers do. The other giveaway is Galos focus on Apple’s alleged failures. A company that has been around three decades and is currently taking mindshare and the stock market by storm must have done something right.
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Podesta, Oh, I know. But it was just SO ridiculous that it begged comment. I mean, seriously, bringing up the AIM alliance? A lot of his points had nothing to DO with Steve Jobs.
LSD is not good to take when posting.
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Podesta, Oh, I know. But it was just SO ridiculous that it begged comment. I mean, seriously, bringing up the AIM alliance? A lot of his points had nothing to DO with Steve Jobs.
LSD is not good to take when posting.
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Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t help developers.”
Demonstrating that mainstream games can be cost effectively delivered on Mac OS X doesn’t help developers? When developers sell their applications, they make money, which is pretty darn helpful in my book.
Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t open new markets.”
The ability to run existing DirectX games with little to no modification on Mac OS X isn’t opening a new market? You’re kidding me, right?
Mike Galos wrote: “It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.”
I can somewhat understand your point here, but the task of writing cross platform applications is far from easy. And that’s a huge understatement.
A significant amount of up-front planning is needed to separate an application into a core platform-independent layer and multiple platform-dependent UI layers. And you need developers with the right skill sets to actually pull it off. This simply isn’t practical or financially feasible in all cases.
Yet companies such as Id and Luxology are using Mac dev tools and Apple’s OpenGL implementation to do just that. Another good example is Adobe Lightroom. It’s a cross-platform app that uses Cocoa for the UI on Mac OS X and MFC for the UI Windows. And it works.
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Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t help developers.”
Demonstrating that mainstream games can be cost effectively delivered on Mac OS X doesn’t help developers? When developers sell their applications, they make money, which is pretty darn helpful in my book.
Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t open new markets.”
The ability to run existing DirectX games with little to no modification on Mac OS X isn’t opening a new market? You’re kidding me, right?
Mike Galos wrote: “It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.”
I can somewhat understand your point here, but the task of writing cross platform applications is far from easy. And that’s a huge understatement.
A significant amount of up-front planning is needed to separate an application into a core platform-independent layer and multiple platform-dependent UI layers. And you need developers with the right skill sets to actually pull it off. This simply isn’t practical or financially feasible in all cases.
Yet companies such as Id and Luxology are using Mac dev tools and Apple’s OpenGL implementation to do just that. Another good example is Adobe Lightroom. It’s a cross-platform app that uses Cocoa for the UI on Mac OS X and MFC for the UI Windows. And it works.
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Sorry but Galos was spot on with this comment:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/06/14/steve-jobs-is-not-an-idiot/#comment-609609
The personal attacks only underscore that he hit a nerve.
And since when is “mindshare” a success metric? Mindshare can be won with hype as easily as with good ideas.
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Sorry but Galos was spot on with this comment:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/06/14/steve-jobs-is-not-an-idiot/#comment-609609
The personal attacks only underscore that he hit a nerve.
And since when is “mindshare” a success metric? Mindshare can be won with hype as easily as with good ideas.
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PS And it’s not hard to fool Wall Steet with, say, fraudulent stock options accounting or, hmmm, premature product announcements that have become increasingly detached reality.
I happen to think Apple has a bright future ahead but this is not assured by the company’s longevity, nor by its stock price, nor by “mindshare.”
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PS And it’s not hard to fool Wall Steet with, say, fraudulent stock options accounting or, hmmm, premature product announcements that have become increasingly detached reality.
I happen to think Apple has a bright future ahead but this is not assured by the company’s longevity, nor by its stock price, nor by “mindshare.”
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Mike,
Granted, I’m having more doubts about the iPhone, particularly when I hear that it won’t directly support MMS, but the 6700 does NOT work well as a phone. It’s a great PDA, and an acceptable pocket PC, but it’s a lousy phone.
Problems with the phone portion:
– Display virtually unusable in daylight
– Volume of the handset is very low
– Touch-screen is inconsistent when dialing numbers
– Mysterious Bluetooth problems with a Motorola H700
– Unbelievably complex EVDO setup/config procedure
– Many UI elements are virtually unusable without the stylus, which disappeared (both of them) within two weeks of owning the phone (they appear to just sling out if you’re walking at a normal pace with the phone in your hand)
– Possibly the most ignorant email-to-SMS interface ever created by man, requiring you to “know” the phone number of the gateway, and somehow “know” that you have to embed the destination email address at the beginning of your text message
For the features that it does well (PDA & Pocket PC), everything’s not perfect either:
– Possibly the worst phone-based browser in existence
– Synchronization problems with an SSL-protected Exchange Server (I’ve been told to contact a local “Exchange guru,” which seems like a dumb thing to have to do on a phone that’s using an MS OS, connecting to an MS application on an MS server, in an MS AD)
– The same thing that people slam the iPhone for (inability to add 3rd-party apps) is the opposite slam for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices… they seem to REQUIRE 3rd-party apps to do anything of substance
– Horrible limitations of built-in memory, requiring you to add a mini-SD card if you’re going to store anything other than your address book and one or two pictures
Lastly, the original list for this phone was exactly the same as the projected list for the iPhone, but nobody bitched and moaned about it. For me, it doesn’t work like a champ… it works like a chump. I want my Sanyo-8500 back. At least it worked well as a phone. – Tim
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Mike,
Granted, I’m having more doubts about the iPhone, particularly when I hear that it won’t directly support MMS, but the 6700 does NOT work well as a phone. It’s a great PDA, and an acceptable pocket PC, but it’s a lousy phone.
Problems with the phone portion:
– Display virtually unusable in daylight
– Volume of the handset is very low
– Touch-screen is inconsistent when dialing numbers
– Mysterious Bluetooth problems with a Motorola H700
– Unbelievably complex EVDO setup/config procedure
– Many UI elements are virtually unusable without the stylus, which disappeared (both of them) within two weeks of owning the phone (they appear to just sling out if you’re walking at a normal pace with the phone in your hand)
– Possibly the most ignorant email-to-SMS interface ever created by man, requiring you to “know” the phone number of the gateway, and somehow “know” that you have to embed the destination email address at the beginning of your text message
For the features that it does well (PDA & Pocket PC), everything’s not perfect either:
– Possibly the worst phone-based browser in existence
– Synchronization problems with an SSL-protected Exchange Server (I’ve been told to contact a local “Exchange guru,” which seems like a dumb thing to have to do on a phone that’s using an MS OS, connecting to an MS application on an MS server, in an MS AD)
– The same thing that people slam the iPhone for (inability to add 3rd-party apps) is the opposite slam for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices… they seem to REQUIRE 3rd-party apps to do anything of substance
– Horrible limitations of built-in memory, requiring you to add a mini-SD card if you’re going to store anything other than your address book and one or two pictures
Lastly, the original list for this phone was exactly the same as the projected list for the iPhone, but nobody bitched and moaned about it. For me, it doesn’t work like a champ… it works like a chump. I want my Sanyo-8500 back. At least it worked well as a phone. – Tim
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On the plus side, the PPC-6700 is slow. – Tim
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On the plus side, the PPC-6700 is slow. – Tim
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Tim,
I totally agree about the loose stylus but a lot of the other features I’ve never encountered. My volume is fine, EVDO was set up correctly with nothing to do on my part, sync with an SSL Exchange server worked fine by just entering the server name, user name and password.
I wonder if it’s a Verizon vs Sprint thing on a lot of it.
On the other hand, I’ve found no features except changing folders in email that require a stylus. btw: if you’re having touch screen inconsistancies it’s usually dirt caught under the edges of the screen – try cleaning under the edges with some paper.
Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.
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Tim,
I totally agree about the loose stylus but a lot of the other features I’ve never encountered. My volume is fine, EVDO was set up correctly with nothing to do on my part, sync with an SSL Exchange server worked fine by just entering the server name, user name and password.
I wonder if it’s a Verizon vs Sprint thing on a lot of it.
On the other hand, I’ve found no features except changing folders in email that require a stylus. btw: if you’re having touch screen inconsistancies it’s usually dirt caught under the edges of the screen – try cleaning under the edges with some paper.
Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.
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Mike Galos wrote: “Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.”
And you call this a “smart phone”? Why should users even need to know anything about storage cards, boot times or system volumes? This is a red flag for bad design. People shouldn’t need to be become “smarter” just because their phone does. It’s simply ridiculous.
Users simply want to turn on their phone and use it. Whether their phone is really a computer or not is simply irrelevant. It should be just as simple to use as a “dumb” phone. And Jobs knows this.
While the current smart phone market may be willing to put up with this sort of crap, there’s a whole segment of the market that won’t. That’s the market Jobs is targeting. And it’s huge.
As such, until adding third-party apps is as seamless as syncing songs to your iPod, there will be no public API for the iPhone. And my guess is that it’s simply not ready yet.
As a developer, am I happy about this? No. But I understand that I’m not the target market that Apple is shooting for. And when the API is ready, I’ll have a much bigger market because of it.
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Mike Galos wrote: “Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.”
And you call this a “smart phone”? Why should users even need to know anything about storage cards, boot times or system volumes? This is a red flag for bad design. People shouldn’t need to be become “smarter” just because their phone does. It’s simply ridiculous.
Users simply want to turn on their phone and use it. Whether their phone is really a computer or not is simply irrelevant. It should be just as simple to use as a “dumb” phone. And Jobs knows this.
While the current smart phone market may be willing to put up with this sort of crap, there’s a whole segment of the market that won’t. That’s the market Jobs is targeting. And it’s huge.
As such, until adding third-party apps is as seamless as syncing songs to your iPod, there will be no public API for the iPhone. And my guess is that it’s simply not ready yet.
As a developer, am I happy about this? No. But I understand that I’m not the target market that Apple is shooting for. And when the API is ready, I’ll have a much bigger market because of it.
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Scott,
Yes. I call it a smart phone. I don’t call it one that has no flaws. See, I can do things like add actual programs and I can do things like add more memory and I can do things like replace the battery.
On the other hand Saint Steve the Wonderous’ iPhone can’t (but those aren’t “flaws” until 2.0 replaces it and he tells people they are and how could they possibly live with iPhone 1.0 with all it’s flaws and they buy 2.0 at full retail for the point release updates.)
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Scott,
Yes. I call it a smart phone. I don’t call it one that has no flaws. See, I can do things like add actual programs and I can do things like add more memory and I can do things like replace the battery.
On the other hand Saint Steve the Wonderous’ iPhone can’t (but those aren’t “flaws” until 2.0 replaces it and he tells people they are and how could they possibly live with iPhone 1.0 with all it’s flaws and they buy 2.0 at full retail for the point release updates.)
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Oh, and Scott?
The correct thing to do when somebody offers to help you when you can’t figure out how to use one of your toys is to say “thank you”.
If you’re a developer, I have serious worries.
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Oh, and Scott?
The correct thing to do when somebody offers to help you when you can’t figure out how to use one of your toys is to say “thank you”.
If you’re a developer, I have serious worries.
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Mike,
This is a perfect example of the philosophical differences between Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft, thinks smart phones should work and act like a computer. As such, they expect users to put up with all of the complexity and problems that computers bring. Jobs thinks smart phones should simply be smarter without all the baggage. The fact that it’s a computer is irrelevant.
The fact that you even have access to different storage pools or have to think about boot sequences is the “flaw” I’m referring to. Yet, It’s quite obvious that “Wondrous” Microsoft doesn’t think this is a problem at all since it keeps cranking out versions of Windows mobile that expect users to micromanage their phone. It’s simply ridiculous. These sort of core architectural design flaws should have been ironed out along time ago.
Yet, when Apple decides to launch a smart phone without initial support for any native third-party apps at all, instead of releasing a poorly designed product like everyone else, the industry cries foul.
If Apple does allow third-party apps to be installed, history indicates you won’t have to know anything about external cards, system memory or boot processes. You’ll simply sync your apps and data to the iPhone using iTunes. In fact, unlike Windows Mobile or even Palm OS, it’s likely that none of the internal workings of the phone, except for the amount of free storage space, will be visible to the user. Period. And since the iPhone comes with 6-8GB of memory, compared to 64MB in the 6700, you really don’t need expansion cards.
In other words, for all the power users who like to tinker with the internal workings their phones, install memory management utilities, app launchers, etc., the iPhone probably won’t be a good fit – even if third-party apps are allowed. Which leaves them feeling left of out of the party.
And, In case you’ve forgotten, there are already at least 100 million users who are “smart enough” to use iTunes to sync music to their iPod. By using the same incredibly simple model for installing apps, Apple would have a huge, built-in audience that wouldn’t need to become “smarter” to use their “Smart Phone.”
Again, my guess is that the API and application management system needed to pull this off simply isn’t ready yet.
Oh, and Mike?
Tim was the one who’s “toy” wasn’t working, not mine.
And, as a developer, I’m most helpful when I design software that shields users from these sorts of issues in the first place. Sometimes that means waiting to release features until they are done right.
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Mike,
This is a perfect example of the philosophical differences between Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft, thinks smart phones should work and act like a computer. As such, they expect users to put up with all of the complexity and problems that computers bring. Jobs thinks smart phones should simply be smarter without all the baggage. The fact that it’s a computer is irrelevant.
The fact that you even have access to different storage pools or have to think about boot sequences is the “flaw” I’m referring to. Yet, It’s quite obvious that “Wondrous” Microsoft doesn’t think this is a problem at all since it keeps cranking out versions of Windows mobile that expect users to micromanage their phone. It’s simply ridiculous. These sort of core architectural design flaws should have been ironed out along time ago.
Yet, when Apple decides to launch a smart phone without initial support for any native third-party apps at all, instead of releasing a poorly designed product like everyone else, the industry cries foul.
If Apple does allow third-party apps to be installed, history indicates you won’t have to know anything about external cards, system memory or boot processes. You’ll simply sync your apps and data to the iPhone using iTunes. In fact, unlike Windows Mobile or even Palm OS, it’s likely that none of the internal workings of the phone, except for the amount of free storage space, will be visible to the user. Period. And since the iPhone comes with 6-8GB of memory, compared to 64MB in the 6700, you really don’t need expansion cards.
In other words, for all the power users who like to tinker with the internal workings their phones, install memory management utilities, app launchers, etc., the iPhone probably won’t be a good fit – even if third-party apps are allowed. Which leaves them feeling left of out of the party.
And, In case you’ve forgotten, there are already at least 100 million users who are “smart enough” to use iTunes to sync music to their iPod. By using the same incredibly simple model for installing apps, Apple would have a huge, built-in audience that wouldn’t need to become “smarter” to use their “Smart Phone.”
Again, my guess is that the API and application management system needed to pull this off simply isn’t ready yet.
Oh, and Mike?
Tim was the one who’s “toy” wasn’t working, not mine.
And, as a developer, I’m most helpful when I design software that shields users from these sorts of issues in the first place. Sometimes that means waiting to release features until they are done right.
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Scott and Tim,
First off sorry for confusing you and Tim…
Now, back to the points you’ve raised.
If we look at the objections you raised, they’re all with extensions that iPod aren’t allowed to have.
Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Yes, it is a philosophical difference. iPhone is like Jobs original Mac plan. One configuration. No choices. Like it and be one of us. Don’t like it? Tough.
Now as to the rest, there’s where we get Mac Fanboism showing it’s head (both in your post and with Scoble’s conclusion)
You both assume that because a feature you want (a real SDK) isn’t in the product it must be coming later even when Apple specifically says it isn’t. And not only is it coming, it’ll be ever so wonderful and oh so much better than that nasty old Microsoft has.
You both make this assumption because you want it to be true. Jobs has NO history of catering to or supporting developers and has not only not hinted that he’ll release the SDK used by Apple and a few 3rd parties to develop the real apps bundled with the phone but has explicity said that you don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.
And, please, let’s not get into “If Apple does it it will be ever so much easier”. The real difference is that when Apple screws up their users think they did something wrong. I’ve seen Apple users send their computers back to Apple three times in one year for hardware failures and still insist that they must have done something wrong. (No, it was lousy design and quality control and if it were, say, Dell, they’ve be screaming how they’d never buy a Dell again)
This all reminds me of how, back in the old Mac vs Windows days you’d hear
“Mac is better because they don’t have 3 letter extensions”
(They have 4 letter creator codes but that’s totally different)
“Mac is better because they don’t have a CONFIG.SYS” (They have INITS and expect users to twiddle their load order but that’s totally different)
etc…
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Scott and Tim,
First off sorry for confusing you and Tim…
Now, back to the points you’ve raised.
If we look at the objections you raised, they’re all with extensions that iPod aren’t allowed to have.
Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Yes, it is a philosophical difference. iPhone is like Jobs original Mac plan. One configuration. No choices. Like it and be one of us. Don’t like it? Tough.
Now as to the rest, there’s where we get Mac Fanboism showing it’s head (both in your post and with Scoble’s conclusion)
You both assume that because a feature you want (a real SDK) isn’t in the product it must be coming later even when Apple specifically says it isn’t. And not only is it coming, it’ll be ever so wonderful and oh so much better than that nasty old Microsoft has.
You both make this assumption because you want it to be true. Jobs has NO history of catering to or supporting developers and has not only not hinted that he’ll release the SDK used by Apple and a few 3rd parties to develop the real apps bundled with the phone but has explicity said that you don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.
And, please, let’s not get into “If Apple does it it will be ever so much easier”. The real difference is that when Apple screws up their users think they did something wrong. I’ve seen Apple users send their computers back to Apple three times in one year for hardware failures and still insist that they must have done something wrong. (No, it was lousy design and quality control and if it were, say, Dell, they’ve be screaming how they’d never buy a Dell again)
This all reminds me of how, back in the old Mac vs Windows days you’d hear
“Mac is better because they don’t have 3 letter extensions”
(They have 4 letter creator codes but that’s totally different)
“Mac is better because they don’t have a CONFIG.SYS” (They have INITS and expect users to twiddle their load order but that’s totally different)
etc…
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BTW: Another parallel between the “New Apple” under Steve Jobs and IBM back in the OS/2 days…
When OS/2 had a lack of driver support and 3rd party apps their marketing department’s response was:
OS/2 – Freedom From Choice!
I suspect Apple picked up some members of that marketing department during the Taligent/Kalaida/PowerPC days…
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BTW: Another parallel between the “New Apple” under Steve Jobs and IBM back in the OS/2 days…
When OS/2 had a lack of driver support and 3rd party apps their marketing department’s response was:
OS/2 – Freedom From Choice!
I suspect Apple picked up some members of that marketing department during the Taligent/Kalaida/PowerPC days…
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Now as to core philosophies, you’re right. There is a vast and key difference.
Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Apple’s key philosophy is “We know better than you about what you want and what you should and shouldn’t do. Do what we say, do exactly what we say and we’ll get along fine.”
Apple does target a different user and cultivates them. It targets people who are insecure about their abilities, like a strong leader, want someone to tell them what to do and live in fear.
The difference between how they think of their users – it’s the difference between respect and arrogance.
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Now as to core philosophies, you’re right. There is a vast and key difference.
Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Apple’s key philosophy is “We know better than you about what you want and what you should and shouldn’t do. Do what we say, do exactly what we say and we’ll get along fine.”
Apple does target a different user and cultivates them. It targets people who are insecure about their abilities, like a strong leader, want someone to tell them what to do and live in fear.
The difference between how they think of their users – it’s the difference between respect and arrogance.
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Mike,
I’m going to ignore your last couple of paragraphs, because they demonstrate the “MS love fest” that causes so much Apple loyalty to morph into “fanboism. I will point out, making broad generalizations about customers and companies is usually unproductive.
Back to the questions at hand (which I’m sure most everyone on this thread have lost interest in).
Sprint is my carrier. They have been uniquely unhelpful with this phone, and seem clueless about Windows Mobile in general. Oh well.
Is it a coincidence that 99% of Windows users don’t need to know the file extension anymore? Is it coincidence that the 8.3 filename limitation is now hidden from them? If this was such a necessity, why do you have to work so hard to see it? Is it because that level of geek-ism was actually *limiting* the market acceptance of Windows?
Don’t need the stylus? Let’s say I want to switch screen orientations. How do I do that on the 6700? Well, there’s a little icon in the corner of the window that will rotate it 90%. It’s about 1/16th of an inch square. The Comm Manager icon is the same size, and is right next to it. (I’m in that window all the time to start/restart Bluetooth to deal with the connectivity problems I mentioned earlier.) These are the two most obvious examples, but there are more.
No problems with Exchange Server? Did you have to load a local SSL certificate on your 6700? No? Then your Exchange Server must not be accessible to the Internet (for Web access). Adding this layer makes the entire process *very* difficult, and in my case, it doesn’t work at all. I finally gave up.
Haven’t had the problems with the display in bright light, or the volume in a noisy environment? This is not just me complaining about this. The 6700 forums are *filled* with these two complaints. Why, on a $500 device, is there not a polarized lens on the screen?
Ultimately, the extensibility of the phone is what you’re saying is a Microsoft virtue. I will not dispute that this *can* be a good thing. However, if expandability and extensibility come at the expense of usability, then Microsoft tends to not see this. The MS product space is littered with this, with the exception of the 1st gen X-Box. That product provided *limited* expansion options, looked *nothing* like Windows, and ended up appealing to a new market.
Lastly, much of this discussion comes down to the D.I.C.E. acronym that Guy Kawasaki put on paper several years ago. Products that are successful over the long haul generally have these features:
D – Deep. They have features that appeal to both passengers on a cruise ship, and the sailors. If you don’t want to mess with settings on your camera, can you use it to point and shoot? If you’re a pro, can you dive down and adjust everything under the sun?
I – Intuitive. Can you pick up the device and figure out how to use it without a book?
C – Complete. You don’t need anything else to use it, it stands by itself. (This doesn’t mean you *can’t* add something else–just that it’s not required.)
E – Elegant. This is the subjective part, but Kawasaki compared to watching Fred Astaire dance. You can’t see the thousands of hours of practice and work that went into his dancing. Instead, you were so in awe of the beauty and grace of the movement and flow… it seems effortless.
The market will decide whether or not the iPhone hits these marks. Some of them, it appears to. Others, I’m starting to have my doubts. However, I know that the PPC-6700 doesn’t. Based on what I’ve seen from Win CE (in the industrial controls market), Windows (in the consumer market), and Windows Mobile (via this phone), I suspect we’re still several versions away from something usable by the average person. – Tim
– Tim
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Mike,
I’m going to ignore your last couple of paragraphs, because they demonstrate the “MS love fest” that causes so much Apple loyalty to morph into “fanboism. I will point out, making broad generalizations about customers and companies is usually unproductive.
Back to the questions at hand (which I’m sure most everyone on this thread have lost interest in).
Sprint is my carrier. They have been uniquely unhelpful with this phone, and seem clueless about Windows Mobile in general. Oh well.
Is it a coincidence that 99% of Windows users don’t need to know the file extension anymore? Is it coincidence that the 8.3 filename limitation is now hidden from them? If this was such a necessity, why do you have to work so hard to see it? Is it because that level of geek-ism was actually *limiting* the market acceptance of Windows?
Don’t need the stylus? Let’s say I want to switch screen orientations. How do I do that on the 6700? Well, there’s a little icon in the corner of the window that will rotate it 90%. It’s about 1/16th of an inch square. The Comm Manager icon is the same size, and is right next to it. (I’m in that window all the time to start/restart Bluetooth to deal with the connectivity problems I mentioned earlier.) These are the two most obvious examples, but there are more.
No problems with Exchange Server? Did you have to load a local SSL certificate on your 6700? No? Then your Exchange Server must not be accessible to the Internet (for Web access). Adding this layer makes the entire process *very* difficult, and in my case, it doesn’t work at all. I finally gave up.
Haven’t had the problems with the display in bright light, or the volume in a noisy environment? This is not just me complaining about this. The 6700 forums are *filled* with these two complaints. Why, on a $500 device, is there not a polarized lens on the screen?
Ultimately, the extensibility of the phone is what you’re saying is a Microsoft virtue. I will not dispute that this *can* be a good thing. However, if expandability and extensibility come at the expense of usability, then Microsoft tends to not see this. The MS product space is littered with this, with the exception of the 1st gen X-Box. That product provided *limited* expansion options, looked *nothing* like Windows, and ended up appealing to a new market.
Lastly, much of this discussion comes down to the D.I.C.E. acronym that Guy Kawasaki put on paper several years ago. Products that are successful over the long haul generally have these features:
D – Deep. They have features that appeal to both passengers on a cruise ship, and the sailors. If you don’t want to mess with settings on your camera, can you use it to point and shoot? If you’re a pro, can you dive down and adjust everything under the sun?
I – Intuitive. Can you pick up the device and figure out how to use it without a book?
C – Complete. You don’t need anything else to use it, it stands by itself. (This doesn’t mean you *can’t* add something else–just that it’s not required.)
E – Elegant. This is the subjective part, but Kawasaki compared to watching Fred Astaire dance. You can’t see the thousands of hours of practice and work that went into his dancing. Instead, you were so in awe of the beauty and grace of the movement and flow… it seems effortless.
The market will decide whether or not the iPhone hits these marks. Some of them, it appears to. Others, I’m starting to have my doubts. However, I know that the PPC-6700 doesn’t. Based on what I’ve seen from Win CE (in the industrial controls market), Windows (in the consumer market), and Windows Mobile (via this phone), I suspect we’re still several versions away from something usable by the average person. – Tim
– Tim
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Actually, yes, my Exchange server was set up correctly so I didn’t need to load a special certificate to access it over the Internet. It was, literally, enter name, password, domain, exchange server URL and sync. Worked perfectly first time, every time.
Sorry your Exchange admins screwed up but that’s hardly reason to blame Windows Mobile.
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Actually, yes, my Exchange server was set up correctly so I didn’t need to load a special certificate to access it over the Internet. It was, literally, enter name, password, domain, exchange server URL and sync. Worked perfectly first time, every time.
Sorry your Exchange admins screwed up but that’s hardly reason to blame Windows Mobile.
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Hmmm… apparently, you’re the only person using this device who hasn’t had to install a private SSL certificate on this device when connecting to Exchange Server that is accessible via OWA. The forums are filled with Q&A’s about this. This *is* a Windows Mobile issue, and not something that the OS handles well.
One of the best summaries of the process is here, but the basic idea is the same. To be certain, our Exchange guy is very inexperienced, but the configuration on the device, even when it works, is very non-intuitive. For more hits, here’s a Google search that brings up a couple more pointers to the process. – Tim
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Hmmm… apparently, you’re the only person using this device who hasn’t had to install a private SSL certificate on this device when connecting to Exchange Server that is accessible via OWA. The forums are filled with Q&A’s about this. This *is* a Windows Mobile issue, and not something that the OS handles well.
One of the best summaries of the process is here, but the basic idea is the same. To be certain, our Exchange guy is very inexperienced, but the configuration on the device, even when it works, is very non-intuitive. For more hits, here’s a Google search that brings up a couple more pointers to the process. – Tim
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Here’s the first link, which was stripped:
http://blogs.technet.com/vik/archive/2006/08/29/Generating-and-Installing-an-SSL-Client-Certificate-to-a-Windows-Mobile-Device-_2800_Pocket-PC_2F00_Smartphone_2900_.aspx
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Here’s the first link, which was stripped:
http://blogs.technet.com/vik/archive/2006/08/29/Generating-and-Installing-an-SSL-Client-Certificate-to-a-Windows-Mobile-Device-_2800_Pocket-PC_2F00_Smartphone_2900_.aspx
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Here’s the second link:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%22windows+mobile%22+exchange+SSL+certificate&btnG=Google+Search
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Here’s the second link:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%22windows+mobile%22+exchange+SSL+certificate&btnG=Google+Search
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Nope.
I’m not the only one.
Not even close.
I personally know quite a few who do plus a lot more with other brands of WM5 devices.
Logic 101: Finding other people who are like you doesn’t mean everyone is like you.
For example, I have more than one friend who has had hardware problems with their Apple laptops. By your “logic” I should be able to claim that anyone who has a working Apple laptop is “The only one” and thus imply that virtually all Apple laptops are unusable.
Hey, by that logic, I know more than one person who uses Macintosh, therefore everyone does (Despite an installed base smaller than the people that believe the moon landing was faked) Why, Steve Jobs is amazing…
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Nope.
I’m not the only one.
Not even close.
I personally know quite a few who do plus a lot more with other brands of WM5 devices.
Logic 101: Finding other people who are like you doesn’t mean everyone is like you.
For example, I have more than one friend who has had hardware problems with their Apple laptops. By your “logic” I should be able to claim that anyone who has a working Apple laptop is “The only one” and thus imply that virtually all Apple laptops are unusable.
Hey, by that logic, I know more than one person who uses Macintosh, therefore everyone does (Despite an installed base smaller than the people that believe the moon landing was faked) Why, Steve Jobs is amazing…
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Mike,
Doesn’t Logic 101 say that identical functionality in Microsoft products is usually achieved with similar behavior? Why aren’t there posts in the forums I quoted that say “BS… all you have to do is enter the server, username, and password”? Did MS make your Exchange Server (and your buddies’) work differently from other Exchanges Servers? Does WM5 magically (and transparently) download the private cert for you, but not for me (or apparently, hundreds of other users)?
Is that logical? Does that make sense to you?
Here’s what makes sense to me: I search for info on Windows Mobile, Exchange Server, and SSL certificates, and I get very specific instructions for copying the cert to my device. Why would ANYONE do this if they didn’t have to? That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: The problem that I have experienced appears to be very common, and the proposed solutions are all virtually identical. If the problem is that my Exchange admin is an idiot, apparently, that’s a common problem too. Does this mean that all Exchange admins are idiots? No, but it does suggest that it’s very easy to screw things up. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: Right after we configured OWA, but before we put our own SSL cert on it, things actually worked. However, when I pointed out that our butt was horribly exposed, we installed the certificate, and things went crappy. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
What does Steve Jobs reality distortion field have to do with any of this? I’m talking about WM5 stupidity here. The only possible relationship is that continued behavior like this on MS’s part may make Jobs look like a genius if he just screws up less.
Maybe that’s the new marketing strategy for the iPhone… “Sucks less than Windows Mobile!” – Tim
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Mike,
Doesn’t Logic 101 say that identical functionality in Microsoft products is usually achieved with similar behavior? Why aren’t there posts in the forums I quoted that say “BS… all you have to do is enter the server, username, and password”? Did MS make your Exchange Server (and your buddies’) work differently from other Exchanges Servers? Does WM5 magically (and transparently) download the private cert for you, but not for me (or apparently, hundreds of other users)?
Is that logical? Does that make sense to you?
Here’s what makes sense to me: I search for info on Windows Mobile, Exchange Server, and SSL certificates, and I get very specific instructions for copying the cert to my device. Why would ANYONE do this if they didn’t have to? That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: The problem that I have experienced appears to be very common, and the proposed solutions are all virtually identical. If the problem is that my Exchange admin is an idiot, apparently, that’s a common problem too. Does this mean that all Exchange admins are idiots? No, but it does suggest that it’s very easy to screw things up. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: Right after we configured OWA, but before we put our own SSL cert on it, things actually worked. However, when I pointed out that our butt was horribly exposed, we installed the certificate, and things went crappy. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
What does Steve Jobs reality distortion field have to do with any of this? I’m talking about WM5 stupidity here. The only possible relationship is that continued behavior like this on MS’s part may make Jobs look like a genius if he just screws up less.
Maybe that’s the new marketing strategy for the iPhone… “Sucks less than Windows Mobile!” – Tim
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Hate to break it to you but corporations run different versions of Exchange, they have different settings, they have different networks, they have different firewalls, they have different VPNs and they have admins that are more competent or less.
If EAS in WM5 works out of the box on a correctly configured Exchange server and doesn’t work with a different Exchange server, the problem isn’t EAS and WM5.
Oh, and again, the same logic error shows up. Your Exchange wasn’t set up correctly so you read that as “All Exchange admins are idiots” as the only other read from blaming the part that’s working fine.
Again, you are not the entire world and what happens to you doesn’t represent the entire world.
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Hate to break it to you but corporations run different versions of Exchange, they have different settings, they have different networks, they have different firewalls, they have different VPNs and they have admins that are more competent or less.
If EAS in WM5 works out of the box on a correctly configured Exchange server and doesn’t work with a different Exchange server, the problem isn’t EAS and WM5.
Oh, and again, the same logic error shows up. Your Exchange wasn’t set up correctly so you read that as “All Exchange admins are idiots” as the only other read from blaming the part that’s working fine.
Again, you are not the entire world and what happens to you doesn’t represent the entire world.
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Mike, rather than continue to debate the logic of this scenario, where we both see this technical issue very differently, and aren’t likely to change our opinions, I’ll leave the discussion where it is. Game, set, match… you win. – Tim
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Mike, rather than continue to debate the logic of this scenario, where we both see this technical issue very differently, and aren’t likely to change our opinions, I’ll leave the discussion where it is. Game, set, match… you win. – Tim
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Well, then I’ll bring it back on topic.
This side discussion summarized nicely the exact Mac vs Windows users that this thread’s really been about and is shown in the two perfect examples here:
In the “Windows” case (actually Windows Mobile 5) we had a badly configured or administered server and the user jumped to the conclusion that his Windows device was badly designed and that the error must not be with the service or himself.
In the “Macintosh” case (actually iPhone plans) we had Apple give horribly bad news to their developers and the pundit jumped to the conclusion that Apple must not have meant what they said because Apple would do what he thought was the right thing even when they explicitly said exactly the opposite.
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Well, then I’ll bring it back on topic.
This side discussion summarized nicely the exact Mac vs Windows users that this thread’s really been about and is shown in the two perfect examples here:
In the “Windows” case (actually Windows Mobile 5) we had a badly configured or administered server and the user jumped to the conclusion that his Windows device was badly designed and that the error must not be with the service or himself.
In the “Macintosh” case (actually iPhone plans) we had Apple give horribly bad news to their developers and the pundit jumped to the conclusion that Apple must not have meant what they said because Apple would do what he thought was the right thing even when they explicitly said exactly the opposite.
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Mike Galos wrote:
“Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
Last time I checked, there were over 14 Games available for the 5G iPod. And they’re installed simply by syncing with iTunes. No needed to worry about system pools or memory cards. Five are from Electronic Arts and two are from Namco. In addition, there are hundreds of third-party hardware add-ons. Some, like the XtremeMac MicroMemo, with their own UI that runs on the iPod. Again, only a simple sync is required.
“Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
The iPhone has 6-8GB of memory. Since the 6700 comes with only 64MB , you need an expansion card run these wondrous third-party apps or do just about anything.
“Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Right. However, not everyone is willing to deal with complexity for the sake of flexibility. It’s a trade off. I used to build my PCs by hand, but got sick of dealing with bad parts and installing drivers. It’s simply not worth it for me. I want a product that is designed to work as a single unit. And it’s clear I’m not the only one who feels the same way.
If you want a portable computer that can make phone calls, then you want Windows Mobile. The iPhone is for people who want an iPod that can make phone calls and access email & web. Which will attract the most customers? Consumer sales and demand will speak for themselves.
“Microsoft give you a choice.”
And Microsoft gives you a choice of five different versions of Windows Vista. I can see two or maybe three, but FIVE? It’s ridiculous.
“You both make this assumption because you want it to be true. Jobs has NO history of catering to or supporting developers and has not only not hinted that he’ll release the SDK used by Apple and a few 3rd parties to develop the real apps bundled with the phone but has explicity said that you don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.”
First off, I said “if”, not when. Second, third-party games for the iPod didn’t show up until the 5G model. Third, Apple would be making a huge blunder if installing third party apps on the iPhone wasn’t as simply as syncing with iTunes since it would alienate the primary demographic they’re marketing to. Prematurely releasing anything else would be shooting themselves in the foot.
You’re trying to compare the iPhone with the rest of the traditional smart phone market. The problem is that Jobs isn’t interested catering specifically to this existing market, nor does he even have the same definition of smart phone as everyone else. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
“The real difference is that when Apple screws up their users think they did something wrong. I’ve seen Apple users send their computers back to Apple three times in one year for hardware failures and still insist that they must have done something wrong.”
Yes, Apple has quality control issues, like everyone else. However, I’ve had three Apple laptops and two desktops that have worked flawless. Your mileage may vary. The rest of the market isn’t any different.
“This all reminds me of how, back in the old Mac vs Windows days you’d hear…”
So, why is it 20 years later that when I accidently click on drive A: in the shell in XP, it still gives me an error message “Please insert a disk in to drive A”? While I don’t have access to Vista at the moment, I’m guessing it does the exact same thing. Why? Because Microsoft doesn’t see it as a problem. It’s part of their philosophy of flexibility at the expense of usability. If there is no floppy in the drive, why is there an icon for me to click on?
Microsoft expect users to put up with this sort of crap on the desktop because it’s a “computer.” Based on the same mentality, they expect people to put up with the same kind of unnecessary complexity on in Windows Mobile because it’s a “Smart Phone.” It’s simply ridiculous.
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Mike Galos wrote:
“Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
Last time I checked, there were over 14 Games available for the 5G iPod. And they’re installed simply by syncing with iTunes. No needed to worry about system pools or memory cards. Five are from Electronic Arts and two are from Namco. In addition, there are hundreds of third-party hardware add-ons. Some, like the XtremeMac MicroMemo, with their own UI that runs on the iPod. Again, only a simple sync is required.
“Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
The iPhone has 6-8GB of memory. Since the 6700 comes with only 64MB , you need an expansion card run these wondrous third-party apps or do just about anything.
“Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Right. However, not everyone is willing to deal with complexity for the sake of flexibility. It’s a trade off. I used to build my PCs by hand, but got sick of dealing with bad parts and installing drivers. It’s simply not worth it for me. I want a product that is designed to work as a single unit. And it’s clear I’m not the only one who feels the same way.
If you want a portable computer that can make phone calls, then you want Windows Mobile. The iPhone is for people who want an iPod that can make phone calls and access email & web. Which will attract the most customers? Consumer sales and demand will speak for themselves.
“Microsoft give you a choice.”
And Microsoft gives you a choice of five different versions of Windows Vista. I can see two or maybe three, but FIVE? It’s ridiculous.
“You both make this assumption because you want it to be true. Jobs has NO history of catering to or supporting developers and has not only not hinted that he’ll release the SDK used by Apple and a few 3rd parties to develop the real apps bundled with the phone but has explicity said that you don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.”
First off, I said “if”, not when. Second, third-party games for the iPod didn’t show up until the 5G model. Third, Apple would be making a huge blunder if installing third party apps on the iPhone wasn’t as simply as syncing with iTunes since it would alienate the primary demographic they’re marketing to. Prematurely releasing anything else would be shooting themselves in the foot.
You’re trying to compare the iPhone with the rest of the traditional smart phone market. The problem is that Jobs isn’t interested catering specifically to this existing market, nor does he even have the same definition of smart phone as everyone else. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
“The real difference is that when Apple screws up their users think they did something wrong. I’ve seen Apple users send their computers back to Apple three times in one year for hardware failures and still insist that they must have done something wrong.”
Yes, Apple has quality control issues, like everyone else. However, I’ve had three Apple laptops and two desktops that have worked flawless. Your mileage may vary. The rest of the market isn’t any different.
“This all reminds me of how, back in the old Mac vs Windows days you’d hear…”
So, why is it 20 years later that when I accidently click on drive A: in the shell in XP, it still gives me an error message “Please insert a disk in to drive A”? While I don’t have access to Vista at the moment, I’m guessing it does the exact same thing. Why? Because Microsoft doesn’t see it as a problem. It’s part of their philosophy of flexibility at the expense of usability. If there is no floppy in the drive, why is there an icon for me to click on?
Microsoft expect users to put up with this sort of crap on the desktop because it’s a “computer.” Based on the same mentality, they expect people to put up with the same kind of unnecessary complexity on in Windows Mobile because it’s a “Smart Phone.” It’s simply ridiculous.
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Flash is garbage. The fact that Safari on the iPhone has great CSS support is ten times more interesting to me than whether Flash or (gah) Silverlight ever makes it to the platform.
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Flash is garbage. The fact that Safari on the iPhone has great CSS support is ten times more interesting to me than whether Flash or (gah) Silverlight ever makes it to the platform.
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You caught me. I meant to say iPhone and not iPod in the comparison with Windows Mobile 5.
But, as my point was the problems listed (memory cards, 3rd party apps) were not available at all with iPhone you could just not add them and, poof, no problems. Pretend the features don’t exist and you’re at parity with iPhone.
Now, as for versions of Vista. Sure. Microsoft COULD have said “Everybody gets Vista Ultimate” whether they needed it or not but it seems some people like having choices. (oh, and before we get into “Ultimate is SO much more expensive than OS X) let’s look…
Mac OS X 10.0 – included with computer
Mac OS X 10.1 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.2 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.3 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.4 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.5 update – $129.00
Total —————– 645.00
Windows XP Pro – included with computer
Windows XP SP1 – Free
Windows XP SP2 – Free
Windows Media Center 2004 – Free
Windows Media Center 2005 – Free
Windows Vista Ultimate Update – 259.95 (Street price)
Total —————– 259.95
Now, I wouldn’t know about clicking on Drive A. All my drives have the drive name and (in parens) the letter in case you have old software that needs it. When I click on a removable drive (say my SD card) and the media is removed, it tells me to insert a disk in that removable drive not into “Drive A”. I’m on Vista, I don’t know what you’re running.
Now, why is there an icon for an empty drive? Well, in some cases its because you can cache data for that drive prior to inserting the media. Why do I eject a disk on a Mac by deleting it? What’s intuitive about a cloverleaf key?
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You caught me. I meant to say iPhone and not iPod in the comparison with Windows Mobile 5.
But, as my point was the problems listed (memory cards, 3rd party apps) were not available at all with iPhone you could just not add them and, poof, no problems. Pretend the features don’t exist and you’re at parity with iPhone.
Now, as for versions of Vista. Sure. Microsoft COULD have said “Everybody gets Vista Ultimate” whether they needed it or not but it seems some people like having choices. (oh, and before we get into “Ultimate is SO much more expensive than OS X) let’s look…
Mac OS X 10.0 – included with computer
Mac OS X 10.1 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.2 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.3 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.4 update – $129.00
Mac OS X 10.5 update – $129.00
Total —————– 645.00
Windows XP Pro – included with computer
Windows XP SP1 – Free
Windows XP SP2 – Free
Windows Media Center 2004 – Free
Windows Media Center 2005 – Free
Windows Vista Ultimate Update – 259.95 (Street price)
Total —————– 259.95
Now, I wouldn’t know about clicking on Drive A. All my drives have the drive name and (in parens) the letter in case you have old software that needs it. When I click on a removable drive (say my SD card) and the media is removed, it tells me to insert a disk in that removable drive not into “Drive A”. I’m on Vista, I don’t know what you’re running.
Now, why is there an icon for an empty drive? Well, in some cases its because you can cache data for that drive prior to inserting the media. Why do I eject a disk on a Mac by deleting it? What’s intuitive about a cloverleaf key?
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Oops. I forgot that OS X 10.0 was so buggy that the upgrade to 10.1 was free for people who were trusting enough to buy it. So, to be fair, that’s:
Taking an OS X 10.0 computer to 10.5 – $516.00
Taking a Windows XP computer to Vista Ultimate – $259.95
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Oops. I forgot that OS X 10.0 was so buggy that the upgrade to 10.1 was free for people who were trusting enough to buy it. So, to be fair, that’s:
Taking an OS X 10.0 computer to 10.5 – $516.00
Taking a Windows XP computer to Vista Ultimate – $259.95
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“But, as my point was the problems listed (memory cards, 3rd party apps) were not available at all with iPhone you could just not add them and, poof, no problems. Pretend the features don’t exist and you’re at parity with iPhone.”
Actually, you’re not. You yourself said, “Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given.” Can mere mortal users figure this sort of thing out on their own? Why should they even have to in the first place? And What about all the complaints that WM 5 needs third-party apps to do much of anything useful? Even if you don’t use these features, You’re still left with unnecessary options that clutter the UI of the phone and provide the potential to confuse users or cause configuration errors. In some cases less isn’t just less, it’s more.
And, when creating a whole new platform like the iPhone, releasing a half-baked API to the public can cause legacy issues that impact all future versions. Just because features work and can be shipped in a product it doesn’t mean they are done right.
“Now, as for versions of Vista…it seems some people like having choices”
Are you saying that people are glad they’re confused as to which of the five versions of Vista they should buy? Perhaps you’d like to back that up with consumer data that collaborates this claim. Why not Basic, Ultimate and Business instead of *five* options? And what about the support nightmare this complexity causes IT departments?
Also, why doesn’t the business edition of Vista include BitLocker encryption? Wouldn’t business expect a higher level of security than the Home Edition? One could ask the same question about video and audio editing tools in the home edition. You get all of these features in the single client edition of Mac OS X at no extra charge.
“Now, why is there an icon for an empty drive? Well, in some cases its because you can cache data for that drive prior to inserting the media.”
Yet, on Mac OS X, I can cache data for a DVD or other removable storage devices without having a icon for that drive hanging around when it’s empty. Guess this clutter isn’t really necessary, is it?
This is a legacy issue that’s been in Windows way before SD cards and DVDs, when the only removable media a floppy disk. I’ll never see this error message on Mac OS X because disks simply don’t show up until they have media inserted. Apple just didn’t decide to pop-up an error message, they designed Mac OS to prevent the entire situation that requires such error messages in the first place. And they made the decision to do so back in the early 80’s before the product was launched. Meanwhile, in 2007, it’s still present in Windows because Microsoft doesn’t see it as a problem. This is the philosophical difference I’m referring to.
“Why do I eject a disk on a Mac by deleting it?”
Right. This was one of the few unintuitive parts of Mac OS, and it was addressed years ago with the release of OS X. As soon as you click and drag a drive, the trash turns into a eject symbol.
“What’s intuitive about a cloverleaf key?”
Do you really want to go there? Windows is full of inconstancies and poor design. Another example is how using CTRL-C for copy conflicts the command shell and requires users to use menu items to do something as simple as cut and paste. it’s simply ridiculous. I could go into more depth on this subject, but this is not the venue for this sort of discussion.
Again, by approaching the smart phone market with the same mentality as the desktop market, Microsoft expects users to put up with significantly more complexity for a smarter phone. However, not everyone is willing to put up with complexity to gain more features. And, in many cases, there are ways to include more functionality with out adding unnecessary complexity.
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“But, as my point was the problems listed (memory cards, 3rd party apps) were not available at all with iPhone you could just not add them and, poof, no problems. Pretend the features don’t exist and you’re at parity with iPhone.”
Actually, you’re not. You yourself said, “Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given.” Can mere mortal users figure this sort of thing out on their own? Why should they even have to in the first place? And What about all the complaints that WM 5 needs third-party apps to do much of anything useful? Even if you don’t use these features, You’re still left with unnecessary options that clutter the UI of the phone and provide the potential to confuse users or cause configuration errors. In some cases less isn’t just less, it’s more.
And, when creating a whole new platform like the iPhone, releasing a half-baked API to the public can cause legacy issues that impact all future versions. Just because features work and can be shipped in a product it doesn’t mean they are done right.
“Now, as for versions of Vista…it seems some people like having choices”
Are you saying that people are glad they’re confused as to which of the five versions of Vista they should buy? Perhaps you’d like to back that up with consumer data that collaborates this claim. Why not Basic, Ultimate and Business instead of *five* options? And what about the support nightmare this complexity causes IT departments?
Also, why doesn’t the business edition of Vista include BitLocker encryption? Wouldn’t business expect a higher level of security than the Home Edition? One could ask the same question about video and audio editing tools in the home edition. You get all of these features in the single client edition of Mac OS X at no extra charge.
“Now, why is there an icon for an empty drive? Well, in some cases its because you can cache data for that drive prior to inserting the media.”
Yet, on Mac OS X, I can cache data for a DVD or other removable storage devices without having a icon for that drive hanging around when it’s empty. Guess this clutter isn’t really necessary, is it?
This is a legacy issue that’s been in Windows way before SD cards and DVDs, when the only removable media a floppy disk. I’ll never see this error message on Mac OS X because disks simply don’t show up until they have media inserted. Apple just didn’t decide to pop-up an error message, they designed Mac OS to prevent the entire situation that requires such error messages in the first place. And they made the decision to do so back in the early 80’s before the product was launched. Meanwhile, in 2007, it’s still present in Windows because Microsoft doesn’t see it as a problem. This is the philosophical difference I’m referring to.
“Why do I eject a disk on a Mac by deleting it?”
Right. This was one of the few unintuitive parts of Mac OS, and it was addressed years ago with the release of OS X. As soon as you click and drag a drive, the trash turns into a eject symbol.
“What’s intuitive about a cloverleaf key?”
Do you really want to go there? Windows is full of inconstancies and poor design. Another example is how using CTRL-C for copy conflicts the command shell and requires users to use menu items to do something as simple as cut and paste. it’s simply ridiculous. I could go into more depth on this subject, but this is not the venue for this sort of discussion.
Again, by approaching the smart phone market with the same mentality as the desktop market, Microsoft expects users to put up with significantly more complexity for a smarter phone. However, not everyone is willing to put up with complexity to gain more features. And, in many cases, there are ways to include more functionality with out adding unnecessary complexity.
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Scott,
On the “you need a good, fast miniSD card”, that was for a user who was capable of actually reading a manual. Now, as I said, for a person who isn’t capable of working with 3rd Party apps or interchangable memory cards, they could, as I already said, achieve parity with a 6700 (or better one of the newer WM5 or WM6 devices since the 6700’s already been replaced by the Mogul) by just not buying anything else. The difference is that, as I said, with Windows Mobile Pro devices, they have that option. With iPhone it’s “do what we say, how we say. You haven’t earned the right to make decisions”.
As for the “Gee, they must have a really good API but it just isn’t really finished yet” tone. Again, and this was the point of my initial post, state the evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK.
Not only isn’t there any, there are direct statements from Jobs that there is no SDK going out to developers. All you’re going on about secret future plans for a really powerful and thoroughly unchanging and polished API is “I want it to be true so I’ll pretend it is” which is a fairly silly way of planning. Oh, and the SDK must have been finished enough for the internal and external developers that Apple cares about to have developed the 16 or so apps bundled with the iPhone (depending on how you count them)
Now, onto your thoughts on Windows Vista versions being too confusing for you. Yes. People like to buy what they want and not a one choice had damn well better fit all solution. Ford tried that with the Model T and it worked for a while but he learned better eventually. The nice thing about Vista’s versions is that if you buy a cheaper model you can always upgrade. Try asking Ford to do that with your vinyl seats. (Or try telling Apple that you don’t need a video editing tool for your business and you’ll take your copy of 10.5 without it for, say, $40 less per copy)
Next you wonder why not limit Vista to only Home Basic, Ultimate and Business. Is there a reason you don’t like Home Premium and Enterprise in particular? Do you really think businesses really want to buy Ultimate for thousands of employee’s desktops if those employees don’t need its features? Do you think people with older computers want to pay for features that their older systems can’t take advantage of? (Well, I guess you believe the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials…)
Oh, and since you counted five versions, I assume you were counting Enterprise but feigned ignorance of it. Assuming you do know about Enterprise, you’d realize that’s where BitLocker gets added in for the Business series since the encryption key storage is best managed by an AD Secure Store and Enterprise customers get all those neat Active Directory tools. Oh, and since it’s targeted at corporations with infrastructure and staff, it’s sold through the licensing channel since they’ll do their own setup system and licensing. (Again, probably not something your average home user wants)
Now as for why the different versions? Simple. Home users rarely need things like Active Directory management and businesses tend not to need Media Center. (And quite a few other pairings of trades). Now, again, Microsoft COULD say one size had better fit all but they don’t force users to buy products they don’t need and seem to have done a pretty good job of balancing the number of choices. If it makes you feel better, though, you could just pretend all the other versions except Ultimate don’t exist (btw: you forgot Starter) and then like pretending the 6700 doesn’t have a memory slot or 3rd party apps, your ignorance would leave you with the same choices, and still less cost, than Mac OS X.
As for the “Do I really want to go there” on UI quirks, that was my point when you brought up a UI item that you, personally, found confusing. If you really DO want to go there, feel free. I think my examples did a good enough job to put paid to the mythos of the “intuitive” interface on Mac OS X (and if that didn’t check with Tog on his thoughts about the Dock)
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Scott,
On the “you need a good, fast miniSD card”, that was for a user who was capable of actually reading a manual. Now, as I said, for a person who isn’t capable of working with 3rd Party apps or interchangable memory cards, they could, as I already said, achieve parity with a 6700 (or better one of the newer WM5 or WM6 devices since the 6700’s already been replaced by the Mogul) by just not buying anything else. The difference is that, as I said, with Windows Mobile Pro devices, they have that option. With iPhone it’s “do what we say, how we say. You haven’t earned the right to make decisions”.
As for the “Gee, they must have a really good API but it just isn’t really finished yet” tone. Again, and this was the point of my initial post, state the evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK.
Not only isn’t there any, there are direct statements from Jobs that there is no SDK going out to developers. All you’re going on about secret future plans for a really powerful and thoroughly unchanging and polished API is “I want it to be true so I’ll pretend it is” which is a fairly silly way of planning. Oh, and the SDK must have been finished enough for the internal and external developers that Apple cares about to have developed the 16 or so apps bundled with the iPhone (depending on how you count them)
Now, onto your thoughts on Windows Vista versions being too confusing for you. Yes. People like to buy what they want and not a one choice had damn well better fit all solution. Ford tried that with the Model T and it worked for a while but he learned better eventually. The nice thing about Vista’s versions is that if you buy a cheaper model you can always upgrade. Try asking Ford to do that with your vinyl seats. (Or try telling Apple that you don’t need a video editing tool for your business and you’ll take your copy of 10.5 without it for, say, $40 less per copy)
Next you wonder why not limit Vista to only Home Basic, Ultimate and Business. Is there a reason you don’t like Home Premium and Enterprise in particular? Do you really think businesses really want to buy Ultimate for thousands of employee’s desktops if those employees don’t need its features? Do you think people with older computers want to pay for features that their older systems can’t take advantage of? (Well, I guess you believe the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials…)
Oh, and since you counted five versions, I assume you were counting Enterprise but feigned ignorance of it. Assuming you do know about Enterprise, you’d realize that’s where BitLocker gets added in for the Business series since the encryption key storage is best managed by an AD Secure Store and Enterprise customers get all those neat Active Directory tools. Oh, and since it’s targeted at corporations with infrastructure and staff, it’s sold through the licensing channel since they’ll do their own setup system and licensing. (Again, probably not something your average home user wants)
Now as for why the different versions? Simple. Home users rarely need things like Active Directory management and businesses tend not to need Media Center. (And quite a few other pairings of trades). Now, again, Microsoft COULD say one size had better fit all but they don’t force users to buy products they don’t need and seem to have done a pretty good job of balancing the number of choices. If it makes you feel better, though, you could just pretend all the other versions except Ultimate don’t exist (btw: you forgot Starter) and then like pretending the 6700 doesn’t have a memory slot or 3rd party apps, your ignorance would leave you with the same choices, and still less cost, than Mac OS X.
As for the “Do I really want to go there” on UI quirks, that was my point when you brought up a UI item that you, personally, found confusing. If you really DO want to go there, feel free. I think my examples did a good enough job to put paid to the mythos of the “intuitive” interface on Mac OS X (and if that didn’t check with Tog on his thoughts about the Dock)
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Mike wrote: “…the 6700’s already been replaced by the Mogul.”
Which still only has 64MB of RAM compared to 6-8GB in the iPhone. Again, you implied that users would need a SD card to do anything remotely interesting with their phone.
Mike wrote: “The difference is that, as I said, with Windows Mobile Pro devices, they have that option. With iPhone it’s “do what we say, how we say. You haven’t earned the right to make decisions”.
So you’re saying that Apple should publicly release the current iPhone API at launch just because consumers want it and similar products support similar features? What if Apple has yet to finalize the API, but it’s still mature enough to be used in production? Shouldn’t Apple’s decision on whether an API is “final” supersede the users desire to have said features? After all, they’re the ones developing the features in the first place and would be far more knowledgeable than users, or even developers like me.
Mike wrote: “Again, and this was the point of my initial post, state the evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK.”
Apple under commits and over delivers. If such an API were in the works, we wouldn’t hear about it until it was done and ready to be released.
However, we do know from public statements is that the iPhone is running a version of OS X and apps are developed using Cocoa. This means that, theoretically, developers could build apps for the iPhone today using the same Cocoa APIs and tools they’re using now. They could even reuse large parts of their existing applications. What we’re missing is a version of XCode that can target the iPhone CPU and specific frameworks that allows Cocoa apps to interface with the iPhone’s radio and touch screen. Also, the iPhone is probably using the same version of Cocoa that will ship with Mac OS 10.5, which hasn’t been publicly released yet.
Mike wrote: “Oh, and the SDK must have been finished enough for the internal and external developers that Apple cares about to have developed the 16 or so apps bundled with the iPhone (depending on how you count them)”
Apple has two types of frameworks: Public and Private. Public frameworks represent APIs that are frozen and optimized for use across a wide range of applications. Developers expect the interface to these APIs be fixed and rarely change, if ever. Private frameworks represent APIs that are still open for architectural changes, but are mature enough to be used in production. As such, they often have a narrow focus and can change at any time without warning. A perfect example of this is Core Image – a GPU based image processing API. Before 10.4, some of this functionality was implemented a private API used by Apple’s video effects application, Motion. With the release of Tiger, Apple included a general-purpose public API that allows third-party developers to use this technology in their own applications.
By shipping without a developer SDK, Apple can put the iPhone in the hands of consumers this month and still make major changes to the OS at a later date without breaking third party apps. Once the API has stabilized and refactored to support a wide range of application needs, Apple can deliver an SDK to developers so they can write their own third-party apps.
Mike wrote: “Now, onto your thoughts on Windows Vista versions being too confusing for you.”
It’s not confusing for me. It’s confusing for non-technical consumers. Unlike you and I, not everyone has the knowledge to select which version they need. Some users don’t have a clue and shouldn’t have wade though five different versions to pick a version of Vista to buy. I’m aware of the enterprise edition, but it’s being sold to IT departments who are capable of making complex decisions, not consumers.
Again, a small business owner would expect a business edition to have more security than a home edition. Why should they need to buy the ultimate edition (which I’m pretty sure supports BitLocker without AD and comes with video editing apps that they might not need) for a secure laptop. It’s simply unnecessary complexity that allows MS to charge a premium prices for features that should come by default.
Mike wrote: “As for the “Do I really want to go there” on UI quirks, that was my point when you brought up a UI item that you, personally, found confusing.”
Again, It’s not about me, it’s about the 80% of the market who doesn’t think like you and I and doesn’t even read this blog. It’s about unnecessary and avoidable complexity that most of the technology industry expects everyone to put up with.
Another example? Wi-FI. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had Windows users come up to me in a cafe and ask if I can get online. It’s somewhat improved in Vista, but it’s still ridiculous. Mac OS X encapsulates Wi-Fi management into a single pulldown menu. You don’t need to deal with profiles, long lists of check boxes to auto connect, no god awful dialog boxes that don’t even clearly tell you what network your connected to. And Mac OS X even visually separates infrastructure and ad hoc networks so you can tell what type your connecting to at a glance. You can even create networks using the same menu. Again, I could go on and on, but it’s off topic and not the forum for this sort of subject.
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Mike wrote: “…the 6700’s already been replaced by the Mogul.”
Which still only has 64MB of RAM compared to 6-8GB in the iPhone. Again, you implied that users would need a SD card to do anything remotely interesting with their phone.
Mike wrote: “The difference is that, as I said, with Windows Mobile Pro devices, they have that option. With iPhone it’s “do what we say, how we say. You haven’t earned the right to make decisions”.
So you’re saying that Apple should publicly release the current iPhone API at launch just because consumers want it and similar products support similar features? What if Apple has yet to finalize the API, but it’s still mature enough to be used in production? Shouldn’t Apple’s decision on whether an API is “final” supersede the users desire to have said features? After all, they’re the ones developing the features in the first place and would be far more knowledgeable than users, or even developers like me.
Mike wrote: “Again, and this was the point of my initial post, state the evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK.”
Apple under commits and over delivers. If such an API were in the works, we wouldn’t hear about it until it was done and ready to be released.
However, we do know from public statements is that the iPhone is running a version of OS X and apps are developed using Cocoa. This means that, theoretically, developers could build apps for the iPhone today using the same Cocoa APIs and tools they’re using now. They could even reuse large parts of their existing applications. What we’re missing is a version of XCode that can target the iPhone CPU and specific frameworks that allows Cocoa apps to interface with the iPhone’s radio and touch screen. Also, the iPhone is probably using the same version of Cocoa that will ship with Mac OS 10.5, which hasn’t been publicly released yet.
Mike wrote: “Oh, and the SDK must have been finished enough for the internal and external developers that Apple cares about to have developed the 16 or so apps bundled with the iPhone (depending on how you count them)”
Apple has two types of frameworks: Public and Private. Public frameworks represent APIs that are frozen and optimized for use across a wide range of applications. Developers expect the interface to these APIs be fixed and rarely change, if ever. Private frameworks represent APIs that are still open for architectural changes, but are mature enough to be used in production. As such, they often have a narrow focus and can change at any time without warning. A perfect example of this is Core Image – a GPU based image processing API. Before 10.4, some of this functionality was implemented a private API used by Apple’s video effects application, Motion. With the release of Tiger, Apple included a general-purpose public API that allows third-party developers to use this technology in their own applications.
By shipping without a developer SDK, Apple can put the iPhone in the hands of consumers this month and still make major changes to the OS at a later date without breaking third party apps. Once the API has stabilized and refactored to support a wide range of application needs, Apple can deliver an SDK to developers so they can write their own third-party apps.
Mike wrote: “Now, onto your thoughts on Windows Vista versions being too confusing for you.”
It’s not confusing for me. It’s confusing for non-technical consumers. Unlike you and I, not everyone has the knowledge to select which version they need. Some users don’t have a clue and shouldn’t have wade though five different versions to pick a version of Vista to buy. I’m aware of the enterprise edition, but it’s being sold to IT departments who are capable of making complex decisions, not consumers.
Again, a small business owner would expect a business edition to have more security than a home edition. Why should they need to buy the ultimate edition (which I’m pretty sure supports BitLocker without AD and comes with video editing apps that they might not need) for a secure laptop. It’s simply unnecessary complexity that allows MS to charge a premium prices for features that should come by default.
Mike wrote: “As for the “Do I really want to go there” on UI quirks, that was my point when you brought up a UI item that you, personally, found confusing.”
Again, It’s not about me, it’s about the 80% of the market who doesn’t think like you and I and doesn’t even read this blog. It’s about unnecessary and avoidable complexity that most of the technology industry expects everyone to put up with.
Another example? Wi-FI. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had Windows users come up to me in a cafe and ask if I can get online. It’s somewhat improved in Vista, but it’s still ridiculous. Mac OS X encapsulates Wi-Fi management into a single pulldown menu. You don’t need to deal with profiles, long lists of check boxes to auto connect, no god awful dialog boxes that don’t even clearly tell you what network your connected to. And Mac OS X even visually separates infrastructure and ad hoc networks so you can tell what type your connecting to at a glance. You can even create networks using the same menu. Again, I could go on and on, but it’s off topic and not the forum for this sort of subject.
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Scott,
Long post. I’d have appreciated it if you’d actually replied to what I said but…
Re: The htc Mogul has limited memory…
Again, it has a slot for users who need more (Note: not available at all on an iPhone – one choice damn well better fit all, again) Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM
Re: The odd reply to my paragraph about Windows Mobile Pro users having choices and iPhone users not being allowed any. (The odd part of the reply was that it had nothing to do with that and went off on the unsubstantiated theory that Apple has an API that isn’t ready… YET but will be released despite what Apple said)
Apple choosing whether or not to support developers doesn’t change the locked design of the iPhone. No expansion slots, no changable battery, no 3rd party apps.
When I asked for any evidence that there was ANY plan for a public API, the response was a, frankly, strange reply about under promising and over delivering. By that logic, I could just as easily say that it’s OBVIOUS that the iPhone will have a permanent power supply that uses broadcast energy using secret, suppresed designs by Nicola Tesla. Apple just hasn’t made the announcement yet because they don’t want to over promise.
As for iPhone using OS X therefore Cocoa and XCode MUST OBVIOUSLY work on it…
Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Only internal developers (and Google and YouTube) will, apparently ever know. You, and every other 3rd party developer don’t rate knowing.
As for “Private and Public” frameworks. No kidding. I already said that internal developers have an SDK. That’s what everyone unblessed by Cupertino has to compete against with their AJAX half-apps. Must be fun to compete on a playing field where your partner gives the good stuff to your competitors and expects you to “pound sand”. The wierd thing is the Mac developers who actually defend that.
As for “If they publish an SDK then they have to be backward compatible”. No, really? Gee, that’s been true for only every API published since the Mark I and Univac. That’s part of releasing a product.
Now, on to Vista
Apparently, Scott thinks that the Vista versions aren’t too confusing for him but only for some mysterious consumer who can’t read a chart. (Apparently that mysterious consumer must be less than 5% of the population)
Next, he seems to think that Small Business owners desparately want BitLocker hard drive encryption more than other consumers.
Well, Microsoft doesn’t think so but if Scott knows that market better than they do, I guess they’ll buy Vista Ultimate for their laptops. See, that’s why choice is good.
As for this letting Microsoft charge more for features that should be there. I already went through that complete with numbers and everything but Windows Vista Ultimate has been cheaper than Mac OS X and using versions LESS than Ultimate is even more savings. Are you saying Microsoft shouldn’t offer less expensive versions so Apple wouldn’t look as bad by comparison?
Next is the amazing factoid that 80% of the market don’t think like either Scott or me and therefore Mac UI is great and Windows UI is confusing. I have no idea either where that number came from or what any of that’s trying to mean.
And, Scott follows up with a diatribe about how confusing WiFi is in Windows (It’s answering “yes” to a dialog about “Do you want to connect” in both Vista and XP SP2 in the case of a discovered new network – the coffee house example he talks about) and tells us all how wonderful it is in Mac. Obviously without having used Vista. although, he says it’s better than XP which he apparently hasn’t used either for WiFi in a public hotspot.
sigh
Again
Here’s the initial question
For at least the third, unanswered time
Given that there is NO evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK for iPhone and explicit, direct statements to the contrary from both Apple Corporate and Steve Jobs, why do you insist that Apple is lying to all their developer partners?
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Scott,
Long post. I’d have appreciated it if you’d actually replied to what I said but…
Re: The htc Mogul has limited memory…
Again, it has a slot for users who need more (Note: not available at all on an iPhone – one choice damn well better fit all, again) Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM
Re: The odd reply to my paragraph about Windows Mobile Pro users having choices and iPhone users not being allowed any. (The odd part of the reply was that it had nothing to do with that and went off on the unsubstantiated theory that Apple has an API that isn’t ready… YET but will be released despite what Apple said)
Apple choosing whether or not to support developers doesn’t change the locked design of the iPhone. No expansion slots, no changable battery, no 3rd party apps.
When I asked for any evidence that there was ANY plan for a public API, the response was a, frankly, strange reply about under promising and over delivering. By that logic, I could just as easily say that it’s OBVIOUS that the iPhone will have a permanent power supply that uses broadcast energy using secret, suppresed designs by Nicola Tesla. Apple just hasn’t made the announcement yet because they don’t want to over promise.
As for iPhone using OS X therefore Cocoa and XCode MUST OBVIOUSLY work on it…
Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Only internal developers (and Google and YouTube) will, apparently ever know. You, and every other 3rd party developer don’t rate knowing.
As for “Private and Public” frameworks. No kidding. I already said that internal developers have an SDK. That’s what everyone unblessed by Cupertino has to compete against with their AJAX half-apps. Must be fun to compete on a playing field where your partner gives the good stuff to your competitors and expects you to “pound sand”. The wierd thing is the Mac developers who actually defend that.
As for “If they publish an SDK then they have to be backward compatible”. No, really? Gee, that’s been true for only every API published since the Mark I and Univac. That’s part of releasing a product.
Now, on to Vista
Apparently, Scott thinks that the Vista versions aren’t too confusing for him but only for some mysterious consumer who can’t read a chart. (Apparently that mysterious consumer must be less than 5% of the population)
Next, he seems to think that Small Business owners desparately want BitLocker hard drive encryption more than other consumers.
Well, Microsoft doesn’t think so but if Scott knows that market better than they do, I guess they’ll buy Vista Ultimate for their laptops. See, that’s why choice is good.
As for this letting Microsoft charge more for features that should be there. I already went through that complete with numbers and everything but Windows Vista Ultimate has been cheaper than Mac OS X and using versions LESS than Ultimate is even more savings. Are you saying Microsoft shouldn’t offer less expensive versions so Apple wouldn’t look as bad by comparison?
Next is the amazing factoid that 80% of the market don’t think like either Scott or me and therefore Mac UI is great and Windows UI is confusing. I have no idea either where that number came from or what any of that’s trying to mean.
And, Scott follows up with a diatribe about how confusing WiFi is in Windows (It’s answering “yes” to a dialog about “Do you want to connect” in both Vista and XP SP2 in the case of a discovered new network – the coffee house example he talks about) and tells us all how wonderful it is in Mac. Obviously without having used Vista. although, he says it’s better than XP which he apparently hasn’t used either for WiFi in a public hotspot.
sigh
Again
Here’s the initial question
For at least the third, unanswered time
Given that there is NO evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK for iPhone and explicit, direct statements to the contrary from both Apple Corporate and Steve Jobs, why do you insist that Apple is lying to all their developer partners?
LikeLike
Mike wrote: “Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM”
This clearly contradicts your own statement about an SD card being a “given.” Perhaps you’d like to clarity that statement. Again, the iPhone comes with 6-8GB standard, not 64MB.
Mike wrote: “…doesn’t change the locked design of the iPhone. No expansion slots, no changable battery, no 3rd party apps.”
Mike, unless you haven’t noticed, with the exception of third party games on the 5G model, the iPod has these same limitations. Yet it’s one of the most popular music devices on the market. Clearly, this indicates there is a large market for devices that put simplicity and usability over more features at the expense of complexity.
It all boils down to what your definition of a smart phone is. If you want a portable computer that can make calls, a Windows Mobile, Palm or Symbian phone might be a better fit. However hard it may be for you to believe, some users simply want a turn-key device that works right out of the box, has plenty of built in memory and has a broad range of well designed an integrated apps built in and happens to also be an iPod. Period. They are unwilling to learn the internal workings of their device just so they can use it or even upgrade it. Apple is targeting this market, which has a built-in audience of millions. This is in addition to an untapped market that has yet to purchase a smart phone because they look and act like a hand held computer instead of a phone that is simply smarter.
Unlike the desktop, Microsoft doesn’t dominate the smart phone market. It’s wide open. As of Q3 06′ it’s estimated that Windows Mobile only has 5.6% of the market. Apple is creating a brand new platform and is under no obligation to follow the rest of the market’s lead. And, from what I’ve gathered, a major complaint with most smart phones is stability.
One only has to search on Google to hear horror stories about users installing apps that screws up their phone to the extent that they end up nuking it and starting from scratch. This can leave such a bad taste in a users mouth that they switch devices or carriers looking for greener pastures.
http://www.geardiary.com/2007/06/06/deleting-files-in-windows-mobile/
If Apple can proved an extremely well designed, stable phone with a core suite of built-in features, it could capture a significant amount of the current smart phone market and attract a huge number of first time buyers.
Mike wrote: “Given that there is NO evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK for iPhone and explicit, direct statements to the contrary from both Apple Corporate and Steve Jobs, why do you insist that Apple is lying to all their developer partners?”
The lack of a public iPhone API announcement at WWDC07 does not prohibit the release of a SDK in the near future. It simply represents Apple’s official position at that moment in time. Apple has a history of not announcing future products and has even made statements shortly before releasing a product that contradicted said statements. The video iPod is a perfect example.
Again, If the iPhone frameworks are indeed still private or pose a risk to the stability of the phone, It’s quite likely that Apple would not announce anything publicly or give a specific release date. Waiting also gives time Apple to make changes to the iPhone UI and APIs based on public feedback from of real users.
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Mike wrote: “Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM”
This clearly contradicts your own statement about an SD card being a “given.” Perhaps you’d like to clarity that statement. Again, the iPhone comes with 6-8GB standard, not 64MB.
Mike wrote: “…doesn’t change the locked design of the iPhone. No expansion slots, no changable battery, no 3rd party apps.”
Mike, unless you haven’t noticed, with the exception of third party games on the 5G model, the iPod has these same limitations. Yet it’s one of the most popular music devices on the market. Clearly, this indicates there is a large market for devices that put simplicity and usability over more features at the expense of complexity.
It all boils down to what your definition of a smart phone is. If you want a portable computer that can make calls, a Windows Mobile, Palm or Symbian phone might be a better fit. However hard it may be for you to believe, some users simply want a turn-key device that works right out of the box, has plenty of built in memory and has a broad range of well designed an integrated apps built in and happens to also be an iPod. Period. They are unwilling to learn the internal workings of their device just so they can use it or even upgrade it. Apple is targeting this market, which has a built-in audience of millions. This is in addition to an untapped market that has yet to purchase a smart phone because they look and act like a hand held computer instead of a phone that is simply smarter.
Unlike the desktop, Microsoft doesn’t dominate the smart phone market. It’s wide open. As of Q3 06′ it’s estimated that Windows Mobile only has 5.6% of the market. Apple is creating a brand new platform and is under no obligation to follow the rest of the market’s lead. And, from what I’ve gathered, a major complaint with most smart phones is stability.
One only has to search on Google to hear horror stories about users installing apps that screws up their phone to the extent that they end up nuking it and starting from scratch. This can leave such a bad taste in a users mouth that they switch devices or carriers looking for greener pastures.
http://www.geardiary.com/2007/06/06/deleting-files-in-windows-mobile/
If Apple can proved an extremely well designed, stable phone with a core suite of built-in features, it could capture a significant amount of the current smart phone market and attract a huge number of first time buyers.
Mike wrote: “Given that there is NO evidence that there is ANY plan for a publicly available API or SDK for iPhone and explicit, direct statements to the contrary from both Apple Corporate and Steve Jobs, why do you insist that Apple is lying to all their developer partners?”
The lack of a public iPhone API announcement at WWDC07 does not prohibit the release of a SDK in the near future. It simply represents Apple’s official position at that moment in time. Apple has a history of not announcing future products and has even made statements shortly before releasing a product that contradicted said statements. The video iPod is a perfect example.
Again, If the iPhone frameworks are indeed still private or pose a risk to the stability of the phone, It’s quite likely that Apple would not announce anything publicly or give a specific release date. Waiting also gives time Apple to make changes to the iPhone UI and APIs based on public feedback from of real users.
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Mike wrote: “Next, he seems to think that Small Business owners desparately want BitLocker hard drive encryption more than other consumers.”
No, I’m saying that a Business edition should come with BitLocker encryption because it says Business right on the box and it’s being marketed to consumers as a solution for business. People don’t read manuals and charts. Nor should they have to. And, as you mentioned earlier, why should a business have to buy a version that gives them video editing tools when they might not need them?
Mike wrote: “Windows Vista Ultimate has been cheaper than Mac OS X and using versions LESS than Ultimate is even more savings. ”
So you’re comparing XP to Mac OS X? Vista is the only thing that comes close, and was only released late last year. Meanwhile, users have had public access to OS X and developers have had real world development experience with Mac OS X for about six years. If you assume that Vienna will be released in 2008, which seems optimistic, consumers will have had a whole two years of Vista compared to six-seven years of Mac OS X. Doesn’t seem like much of a “savings” to me.
Mike wrote: “although, he says it’s better than XP which he apparently hasn’t used either for WiFi in a public hotspot.”
I have several friends that have XP on their laptop. Connectivity to my Linksys router at home and public hotspots is very intermittent and the UI is pathetic. I’ve probably helped over 30 Windows users connected to Wi-Fi hotspots in the last few years. While, I’ve had limited experience with Vista, it’s quite obvious that Microsoft still hasn’t make Wi-Fi access as easy as it is on Mac OS X since you need a third party gadget to see something basic as signal signal strength on the desktop. Nor does Visa clearly separate infrastructure networks from Ad-hoc networks, which is important for security. If I walk into an airport, Apple’s Wi-FI menu extra clearly lists ad-hoc networks as “Computer to Computer” networks, so I can tell if someone’s laptop is trying to spoof a t-mobile hotspot and intercept my traffic.
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Mike wrote: “Next, he seems to think that Small Business owners desparately want BitLocker hard drive encryption more than other consumers.”
No, I’m saying that a Business edition should come with BitLocker encryption because it says Business right on the box and it’s being marketed to consumers as a solution for business. People don’t read manuals and charts. Nor should they have to. And, as you mentioned earlier, why should a business have to buy a version that gives them video editing tools when they might not need them?
Mike wrote: “Windows Vista Ultimate has been cheaper than Mac OS X and using versions LESS than Ultimate is even more savings. ”
So you’re comparing XP to Mac OS X? Vista is the only thing that comes close, and was only released late last year. Meanwhile, users have had public access to OS X and developers have had real world development experience with Mac OS X for about six years. If you assume that Vienna will be released in 2008, which seems optimistic, consumers will have had a whole two years of Vista compared to six-seven years of Mac OS X. Doesn’t seem like much of a “savings” to me.
Mike wrote: “although, he says it’s better than XP which he apparently hasn’t used either for WiFi in a public hotspot.”
I have several friends that have XP on their laptop. Connectivity to my Linksys router at home and public hotspots is very intermittent and the UI is pathetic. I’ve probably helped over 30 Windows users connected to Wi-Fi hotspots in the last few years. While, I’ve had limited experience with Vista, it’s quite obvious that Microsoft still hasn’t make Wi-Fi access as easy as it is on Mac OS X since you need a third party gadget to see something basic as signal signal strength on the desktop. Nor does Visa clearly separate infrastructure networks from Ad-hoc networks, which is important for security. If I walk into an airport, Apple’s Wi-FI menu extra clearly lists ad-hoc networks as “Computer to Computer” networks, so I can tell if someone’s laptop is trying to spoof a t-mobile hotspot and intercept my traffic.
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Scott,
All of which boils down to:
On Vista: “I’ve had friends of friends who heard about somebody who had problems so I’ll act as though the problems actually exist and I know about them”
On the fictional plans for an API: “I want it to be so ever so much so it must be true”
Or, exactly where we were. A no fact zone.
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Scott,
All of which boils down to:
On Vista: “I’ve had friends of friends who heard about somebody who had problems so I’ll act as though the problems actually exist and I know about them”
On the fictional plans for an API: “I want it to be so ever so much so it must be true”
Or, exactly where we were. A no fact zone.
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Mike wrote: “On Vista: ‘I’ve had friends of friends who heard about somebody who had problems so I’ll act as though the problems actually exist and I know about them”
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009.html
These screen shots clearly represent the philosophical differences between Apple and Microsoft. On Mac OS X, everything most people need is simply a mouse click away and signal strength is always visible. Also, infrastructure and ad hock networks are clearly identified. I can even turn wireless on and off in the same menu.
In Vista, selecting a network requires a separate dialog that is found several menu items deep. Signal strength is not clearly indicated at all times and infrastructure and ad hoc networks are not identified in any way. Turning wireless off requires finding the network interface dialog for that interface and clicking the disable button (which appears to be a regression from XP.)
Mike wrote: “On the fictional plans for an API: ‘I want it to be so ever so much so it must be true’
Wow, still twisting my words. The only fiction here is your claim that Apple can’t release an iPhone API in the near to mid term because of Jobs’ statement at WWDC. Given Apple’s history of keeping product features and development a secret until release, what evidence do you have to back up this claim?
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Mike wrote: “On Vista: ‘I’ve had friends of friends who heard about somebody who had problems so I’ll act as though the problems actually exist and I know about them”
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009.html
These screen shots clearly represent the philosophical differences between Apple and Microsoft. On Mac OS X, everything most people need is simply a mouse click away and signal strength is always visible. Also, infrastructure and ad hock networks are clearly identified. I can even turn wireless on and off in the same menu.
In Vista, selecting a network requires a separate dialog that is found several menu items deep. Signal strength is not clearly indicated at all times and infrastructure and ad hoc networks are not identified in any way. Turning wireless off requires finding the network interface dialog for that interface and clicking the disable button (which appears to be a regression from XP.)
Mike wrote: “On the fictional plans for an API: ‘I want it to be so ever so much so it must be true’
Wow, still twisting my words. The only fiction here is your claim that Apple can’t release an iPhone API in the near to mid term because of Jobs’ statement at WWDC. Given Apple’s history of keeping product features and development a secret until release, what evidence do you have to back up this claim?
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Scott:
On Vista, to connect to, or disconnect from a wireless network you right click on the (always visible) network icon in the tray and select “Connect to a network” (which brings up a list of available networks) or Disconnect from (with a list of the networks you’re connected to). Always visible. Always accessable.
(Again, you should really use a product before telling people how it works)
As for the Signal Strength Indicator, it was removed as a distraction people didn’t need. What replaced it is an always visible tray icon that shows whether your network has full access to the Internet, limited access or no access which actually works by monitoring traffic.
(See, a signal strength meter is what Mac fans traditionally would have bashed had it been there for being geeky but not useful. If your networking works you don’t need to watch meters, if it doesn’t you need more data than just a few bars.)
As for the fictional API, again Apple says there’s no API and there isn’t going to be. Period. I’m agreeing with Apple. You are saying you want it to be true so it must be true no matter that there’s no evidence (and note that neither you nor anyone else has presented any).
So, my evidence is that Apple says so.
Your evidence is that Apple lies sometimes.
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Scott:
On Vista, to connect to, or disconnect from a wireless network you right click on the (always visible) network icon in the tray and select “Connect to a network” (which brings up a list of available networks) or Disconnect from (with a list of the networks you’re connected to). Always visible. Always accessable.
(Again, you should really use a product before telling people how it works)
As for the Signal Strength Indicator, it was removed as a distraction people didn’t need. What replaced it is an always visible tray icon that shows whether your network has full access to the Internet, limited access or no access which actually works by monitoring traffic.
(See, a signal strength meter is what Mac fans traditionally would have bashed had it been there for being geeky but not useful. If your networking works you don’t need to watch meters, if it doesn’t you need more data than just a few bars.)
As for the fictional API, again Apple says there’s no API and there isn’t going to be. Period. I’m agreeing with Apple. You are saying you want it to be true so it must be true no matter that there’s no evidence (and note that neither you nor anyone else has presented any).
So, my evidence is that Apple says so.
Your evidence is that Apple lies sometimes.
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Right. Three clicks on Vista vs. one click on Mac OS X. This is quite evident in the screen shots I linked to. I can turn on / off Wi-Fi in a single click as well, instead of digging though a number of tabbed dialog boxes.
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-12.html
In addition, Mac OS X switched from signal strength to network speed in Tiger, but uses the same four bar menu extra display format.
Mike wrote: “So, my evidence is that Apple says so. Your evidence is that Apple lies sometimes.”
Quote from September 2005 interview with Steve Jobs @ Paris Expo:
Jobs took some time to discuss video on personal devices, like the much-rumored Video iPod. While some companies are making moves in the video market, Jobs said that the market isn’t yet right for personal video devices.
“You can already download movies on the iTunes Music Store, and some albums offer video as an incentive to buy the music,” said Jobs. “We also offer video podcasts, but will people buy a video device just to watch this video? So far they haven’t. No one has been successful with that yet.”
Apple released the 5G video iPod about a month later.
Again, Apple’s iPhone statement was an indication of support developers were going to receive receive at WWDC07. However, Apple is free to add additional methods to develop iPhone applications at any time without pre-announcing anything to the press or developers. It’s done this sort of thing in the past and can do it again in the future. This could be select third-party developers, such as EA games on the 5G iPod, HTML based Dashboard-like widgets or a full blown API and SDK. And it could happen before version 2.0. Or it could be nothing.
But, unless you clairvoyant or have some kind of inside information, I fail to see how you can substantiate your claim that “there isn’t going to be [an iPhone API]. Period.”
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Right. Three clicks on Vista vs. one click on Mac OS X. This is quite evident in the screen shots I linked to. I can turn on / off Wi-Fi in a single click as well, instead of digging though a number of tabbed dialog boxes.
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-12.html
In addition, Mac OS X switched from signal strength to network speed in Tiger, but uses the same four bar menu extra display format.
Mike wrote: “So, my evidence is that Apple says so. Your evidence is that Apple lies sometimes.”
Quote from September 2005 interview with Steve Jobs @ Paris Expo:
Jobs took some time to discuss video on personal devices, like the much-rumored Video iPod. While some companies are making moves in the video market, Jobs said that the market isn’t yet right for personal video devices.
“You can already download movies on the iTunes Music Store, and some albums offer video as an incentive to buy the music,” said Jobs. “We also offer video podcasts, but will people buy a video device just to watch this video? So far they haven’t. No one has been successful with that yet.”
Apple released the 5G video iPod about a month later.
Again, Apple’s iPhone statement was an indication of support developers were going to receive receive at WWDC07. However, Apple is free to add additional methods to develop iPhone applications at any time without pre-announcing anything to the press or developers. It’s done this sort of thing in the past and can do it again in the future. This could be select third-party developers, such as EA games on the 5G iPod, HTML based Dashboard-like widgets or a full blown API and SDK. And it could happen before version 2.0. Or it could be nothing.
But, unless you clairvoyant or have some kind of inside information, I fail to see how you can substantiate your claim that “there isn’t going to be [an iPhone API]. Period.”
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Nope. Right click, pick the item off the menu. Easy enough for even a Mac Fanboi.
As for the rest. You’re left with “Apple lies and I want this lie to be true so it must be true”
Wow.
Speaking of falling back on the Psychic Friends Network…
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Nope. Right click, pick the item off the menu. Easy enough for even a Mac Fanboi.
As for the rest. You’re left with “Apple lies and I want this lie to be true so it must be true”
Wow.
Speaking of falling back on the Psychic Friends Network…
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So, you’re saying this screen shot is incorrect?
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-8.html
Because it clearly doesn’t list any SIDs. You’d have to click on the icon in the system tray to bring up the menu, click on the “Connect to a network” menu item, then click on a SID from the dialog. The first comment on the article was posted 02.20.07, which indicates it’s a RTM review of Vista.
Again this is in contrast to Mac OS X.
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-1.html
In which I can click, hold and select an network in one step.
Mike wrote: “As for the rest. You’re left with “Apple lies and I want this lie to be true so it must be true”
Apple is deferring iPhone revenue over a 24 month period.
http://sec.edgar-online.com/2007/05/10/0001104659-07-037745/Section2.asp
From the Revenue Recognition section.
“…the Company plans to provide future unspecified features and additional software products free of charge to customers. … As such, the Company defers the associated revenue and cost of goods sold at the time of sale, which will then be recognized on a straight-line basis over the currently estimated 24 month economic life of these products. Costs incurred by the Company for engineering, sales, and marketing will continue to be expensed as incurred.”
Unless Apple has decided to use a more complex method of accounting for no reason, it appears that Apple will be releasing significant features to the iPhone in the next 24 months. Whether these features will include a SDK is unknown, but if a major update is in the pipeline, delaying the release of SDK certainly makes sense from a developer perspective.
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So, you’re saying this screen shot is incorrect?
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-8.html
Because it clearly doesn’t list any SIDs. You’d have to click on the icon in the system tray to bring up the menu, click on the “Connect to a network” menu item, then click on a SID from the dialog. The first comment on the article was posted 02.20.07, which indicates it’s a RTM review of Vista.
Again this is in contrast to Mac OS X.
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-54009-1.html
In which I can click, hold and select an network in one step.
Mike wrote: “As for the rest. You’re left with “Apple lies and I want this lie to be true so it must be true”
Apple is deferring iPhone revenue over a 24 month period.
http://sec.edgar-online.com/2007/05/10/0001104659-07-037745/Section2.asp
From the Revenue Recognition section.
“…the Company plans to provide future unspecified features and additional software products free of charge to customers. … As such, the Company defers the associated revenue and cost of goods sold at the time of sale, which will then be recognized on a straight-line basis over the currently estimated 24 month economic life of these products. Costs incurred by the Company for engineering, sales, and marketing will continue to be expensed as incurred.”
Unless Apple has decided to use a more complex method of accounting for no reason, it appears that Apple will be releasing significant features to the iPhone in the next 24 months. Whether these features will include a SDK is unknown, but if a major update is in the pipeline, delaying the release of SDK certainly makes sense from a developer perspective.
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Vista
On an unknown network…
1) Right click on network icon
2) Connect to a Network…
3) Select network (if it isn’t the default)
4) Click Connect
(or)
3) Double click on network name
On a known network…
0) Network is automatically reconnected with no user input
Compared with…
Mac
Either
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on network name
or
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on other…
3) Select network name from resulting dialog
4) Connect to selected network
Um. Wow. That’s just SO much different.
As for the rather odd assumption that Apple did deferred accounting because they want to introduce a secret API? Wow. You are really, really grabbing at straws to try to back up that fantasy that Apple really is doing what you want them to do no matter what they’ve actually said.
After all, there could be no other possible changes to iPhone in 24 months except for the one feature they’ve explicitly said they’re NOT doing.
2) Click on
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Vista
On an unknown network…
1) Right click on network icon
2) Connect to a Network…
3) Select network (if it isn’t the default)
4) Click Connect
(or)
3) Double click on network name
On a known network…
0) Network is automatically reconnected with no user input
Compared with…
Mac
Either
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on network name
or
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on other…
3) Select network name from resulting dialog
4) Connect to selected network
Um. Wow. That’s just SO much different.
As for the rather odd assumption that Apple did deferred accounting because they want to introduce a secret API? Wow. You are really, really grabbing at straws to try to back up that fantasy that Apple really is doing what you want them to do no matter what they’ve actually said.
After all, there could be no other possible changes to iPhone in 24 months except for the one feature they’ve explicitly said they’re NOT doing.
2) Click on
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Mike wrote: “Again, it has a slot for users who need more [RAM] (Note: not available at all on an iPhone – one choice damn well better fit all, again) Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM”
What if someone wants to play music on their phone? You can’t fit much in 64MB. My iPhone currently has 5GB of music and 1.5 GB of video with room to spare. Guess normal users could find use for have the need for a memory card after all.
However, the biggest MicroSD card I could find on the market is 4GB. The biggest MiniSD card: 2GB. Assuming a phone’s OS actually supported that much memory, you still wouldn’t’ have as much memory as even a 6GB iPhone. Storage technology would need to double in size before you’d even gain parity with my current 8GB iPhone. Of course the HC Mogul only supports 2GB MicroSD cards, so you’re stuck with a 2GB ceiling regardless.
Mike wrote: “Compared with…
Mac
Either
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on network name”
No, on the Mac you don’t need to release the button for the menu to appear. Nor do get different results when clicking with different buttons – Both work just as well. (Perhaps you’re the one who needs to try using a product before telling people how it works)
[1] Click and hold Wi-Fi menu extra – drag mouse over SID you want to join and release.
Previously joined networks are automatically connected.
Again, I can also turn WiFi on and off in the same way (one click).
Mike wrote: “After all, there could be no other possible changes to iPhone in 24 months except for the one feature they’ve explicitly said they’re NOT doing.”
So perhaps you’d like to show me the quote where Apple says that Web 2.0 is the ONLY way you’ll ever be able to develop apps on the iPhone? Apple said, this is what we’re giving you today at WWDC. There was no mention of exclusivity.
Also, it seems that a group has gained access to the iPhone System Restore disk image. Guess what they found? Two different framework directories, just like on Mac OS X:
/System/Library/Frameworks
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks
Why would Apple go the trouble to create two different framework folders, one labeled Private, that contain different libraries if they didn’t plan on releasing an SDK?
While this adds additional support to my argument, it’s still speculation. So, I’ll refrain from posting here until Apple makes an announcement, or until the release of Leopard in October.
See you then!
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Mike wrote: “Again, it has a slot for users who need more [RAM] (Note: not available at all on an iPhone – one choice damn well better fit all, again) Also, note that for a user who isn’t adding on apps (again, as an iPhone user must) there isn’t need for more RAM”
What if someone wants to play music on their phone? You can’t fit much in 64MB. My iPhone currently has 5GB of music and 1.5 GB of video with room to spare. Guess normal users could find use for have the need for a memory card after all.
However, the biggest MicroSD card I could find on the market is 4GB. The biggest MiniSD card: 2GB. Assuming a phone’s OS actually supported that much memory, you still wouldn’t’ have as much memory as even a 6GB iPhone. Storage technology would need to double in size before you’d even gain parity with my current 8GB iPhone. Of course the HC Mogul only supports 2GB MicroSD cards, so you’re stuck with a 2GB ceiling regardless.
Mike wrote: “Compared with…
Mac
Either
1) Click on network icon
2) Click on network name”
No, on the Mac you don’t need to release the button for the menu to appear. Nor do get different results when clicking with different buttons – Both work just as well. (Perhaps you’re the one who needs to try using a product before telling people how it works)
[1] Click and hold Wi-Fi menu extra – drag mouse over SID you want to join and release.
Previously joined networks are automatically connected.
Again, I can also turn WiFi on and off in the same way (one click).
Mike wrote: “After all, there could be no other possible changes to iPhone in 24 months except for the one feature they’ve explicitly said they’re NOT doing.”
So perhaps you’d like to show me the quote where Apple says that Web 2.0 is the ONLY way you’ll ever be able to develop apps on the iPhone? Apple said, this is what we’re giving you today at WWDC. There was no mention of exclusivity.
Also, it seems that a group has gained access to the iPhone System Restore disk image. Guess what they found? Two different framework directories, just like on Mac OS X:
/System/Library/Frameworks
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks
Why would Apple go the trouble to create two different framework folders, one labeled Private, that contain different libraries if they didn’t plan on releasing an SDK?
While this adds additional support to my argument, it’s still speculation. So, I’ll refrain from posting here until Apple makes an announcement, or until the release of Leopard in October.
See you then!
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sigh.
Again. Apple says No SDK.
Playing make believe really doesn’t change anything.
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sigh.
Again. Apple says No SDK.
Playing make believe really doesn’t change anything.
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How many people actually use 3rd party apps on their “smart phones”? I get the feeling that people making the most noise about the iPhone’s lack of an SDK, have neither written nor bought a Windows CE/Mobile app and most likely never will. Yeah like I really want to edit video or work on a spreadsheet on a frigging phone. Its bad enough doing so on a small laptop. I reckon a great majority of punters nowadays buy a computer and only use a web browser, a mail client and iLife apps. The iPhone is an amazing piece of kit and is a remarkable extension of a computer. All the critics are just missing the point. Chances are if you bothered to buy an iPhone, you already own a computer that you can use for productivity apps. At the end of the day, its the greatest phone ever but its still just a phone. What next, cry to BMW to provide the SDK for the on board computer so Joe Developer can knock out a mean tetris? All this choice is way overrated. If you want to slice your own chunky slices of bread, have fun cleaning the crumbs and such. I’ll opt for the pre sliced branola over here. Thank you very much. Whining developer wannabes should leave my iPhone alone and go finish a decent linux desktop. If it can’t be done with js, css, ajax etc, me thinks its too complicated for the phone.
Oh and maybe *you* should figure out how not to burn your toast before you call Steve an idiot. The bloody nerve 🙂
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How many people actually use 3rd party apps on their “smart phones”? I get the feeling that people making the most noise about the iPhone’s lack of an SDK, have neither written nor bought a Windows CE/Mobile app and most likely never will. Yeah like I really want to edit video or work on a spreadsheet on a frigging phone. Its bad enough doing so on a small laptop. I reckon a great majority of punters nowadays buy a computer and only use a web browser, a mail client and iLife apps. The iPhone is an amazing piece of kit and is a remarkable extension of a computer. All the critics are just missing the point. Chances are if you bothered to buy an iPhone, you already own a computer that you can use for productivity apps. At the end of the day, its the greatest phone ever but its still just a phone. What next, cry to BMW to provide the SDK for the on board computer so Joe Developer can knock out a mean tetris? All this choice is way overrated. If you want to slice your own chunky slices of bread, have fun cleaning the crumbs and such. I’ll opt for the pre sliced branola over here. Thank you very much. Whining developer wannabes should leave my iPhone alone and go finish a decent linux desktop. If it can’t be done with js, css, ajax etc, me thinks its too complicated for the phone.
Oh and maybe *you* should figure out how not to burn your toast before you call Steve an idiot. The bloody nerve 🙂
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Nu Claves,
I use several 3rd party apps on my smart phone. I also use Word and Excel – not often for editing but I use Word to do fast edits on documents and reading docs when I’m on the road and Excel worksheets brought over from my desktop for custom calculations. It IS, after all, a lot easier to type in one number and get a result than to do a 20 step calculation with look ups over and over again.
No, nobody’s going to do serious video editing on a phone but that isn’t the point, is it?
As for the flawed BMW analogy, a closer one would be if Acura, Mercedes, Audi and Cadillac already had onboard computers with a dozen features and an SDK and then BMW came out with one that had ten features and no SDK.
Releasing a new product into an existing market with less features and less growth potential than the existing competitors is not a good place to be. (Hence Scoble hyping a text editor as a “Word Processor”. Lowering the bar seems to be the only way to get “equivalece”)
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Nu Claves,
I use several 3rd party apps on my smart phone. I also use Word and Excel – not often for editing but I use Word to do fast edits on documents and reading docs when I’m on the road and Excel worksheets brought over from my desktop for custom calculations. It IS, after all, a lot easier to type in one number and get a result than to do a 20 step calculation with look ups over and over again.
No, nobody’s going to do serious video editing on a phone but that isn’t the point, is it?
As for the flawed BMW analogy, a closer one would be if Acura, Mercedes, Audi and Cadillac already had onboard computers with a dozen features and an SDK and then BMW came out with one that had ten features and no SDK.
Releasing a new product into an existing market with less features and less growth potential than the existing competitors is not a good place to be. (Hence Scoble hyping a text editor as a “Word Processor”. Lowering the bar seems to be the only way to get “equivalece”)
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Mike,
That same argument was made about the iPod lacking a radio, a recorder plus tons of features that most people do not care about. Guess what, its the most successful player in the mp3 arena. I think having less features should be considered a feature in its own right and its been used successfully by apple to differentiate their products. If Apple had people like you working for them, the iPod nano and shuffle would never see the light of day.
Why should Apple compromise the iPhone experience just so 3 nerds can play bejeweled on their daily commute? You need to appreciate that the experience extends beyond the physical device. There are support issues as well. I shouldn’t have to wait in line for support because technicians are tied up trying to resolve some issue caused by a third party app. There is also the risk of having a lousy 3rd party app ruin the iPhone’s reputation in the introductory stage. From what I’ve noticed at my office, when outlook hangs, Dell gets cursed maybe windows but never outlook.
I know its hard to accept but some things are good enough and can stand on their own. The iPhone is one of those. Its a bit like the new white stripes album. I don’t want the option of adding a 50 cent verse or replacing the music with a henry mancini instrumental.
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Mike,
That same argument was made about the iPod lacking a radio, a recorder plus tons of features that most people do not care about. Guess what, its the most successful player in the mp3 arena. I think having less features should be considered a feature in its own right and its been used successfully by apple to differentiate their products. If Apple had people like you working for them, the iPod nano and shuffle would never see the light of day.
Why should Apple compromise the iPhone experience just so 3 nerds can play bejeweled on their daily commute? You need to appreciate that the experience extends beyond the physical device. There are support issues as well. I shouldn’t have to wait in line for support because technicians are tied up trying to resolve some issue caused by a third party app. There is also the risk of having a lousy 3rd party app ruin the iPhone’s reputation in the introductory stage. From what I’ve noticed at my office, when outlook hangs, Dell gets cursed maybe windows but never outlook.
I know its hard to accept but some things are good enough and can stand on their own. The iPhone is one of those. Its a bit like the new white stripes album. I don’t want the option of adding a 50 cent verse or replacing the music with a henry mancini instrumental.
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Nu Claves,
Nice try but you’re now answering a different question than you raised.
You asked if people really used 3rd Party Smartphone apps (actually you opined that they didn’t)
They do. Lots and lots of them do. Commerial apps, custom corporate apps, home made apps…
Whether there’s a market for people who are happy only using what Apple lets them is a different issue. Certainly, some people will fit in that category. That isn’t in question. There are people quite happy with a free, minimal phone. Your argument of “There’s a market for this exact feature set” would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone.
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Nu Claves,
Nice try but you’re now answering a different question than you raised.
You asked if people really used 3rd Party Smartphone apps (actually you opined that they didn’t)
They do. Lots and lots of them do. Commerial apps, custom corporate apps, home made apps…
Whether there’s a market for people who are happy only using what Apple lets them is a different issue. Certainly, some people will fit in that category. That isn’t in question. There are people quite happy with a free, minimal phone. Your argument of “There’s a market for this exact feature set” would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone.
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Oh, and to put that analogy into one you’ve brought up…
Its a bit like getting a Henry Mancini instrumental album. With a smartphone that has an SDK, you could replace the tracks you don’t like with the new White Stripes album. With the iPhone model, you’d have Apple telling you that you only need to like Mancini and there’s no reason why you should like anything else.
After all, some people don’t want the option of adding a 50 Cent verse or replacing the music with the White Stripes new album.
And you shouldn’t have the choice because it might upset Apple’s tech support staff.
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Oh, and to put that analogy into one you’ve brought up…
Its a bit like getting a Henry Mancini instrumental album. With a smartphone that has an SDK, you could replace the tracks you don’t like with the new White Stripes album. With the iPhone model, you’d have Apple telling you that you only need to like Mancini and there’s no reason why you should like anything else.
After all, some people don’t want the option of adding a 50 Cent verse or replacing the music with the White Stripes new album.
And you shouldn’t have the choice because it might upset Apple’s tech support staff.
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Mike wrote: “would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone”
Features != Experience.
You can have two devices with the same set of features which provide completely different experiences.
Apple has access to the same frameworks and developers used to create professional realtime motion graphics software, such as Motion, and it shows. There’s even a version of Core Animation (LayerKit) running on iPhone that’s using OpenGLES and drives the entire UI. And Apple is leveraging this technology in a mobile device before it’s released on it’s desktop OS.
For example, sending a photo via email with iPhone is one seamless transition. The photo shrinks to about half size, a new email message slides in behind it, then the photo expands and slides into place into the body of the message. This kind of attention to detail is seen thought the entire UI.
And Google Maps on iPhone is leaps and bounds above anything I’ve seen on any device.
The only company remotely capable of doing something like this is Microsoft, using WPF. So where’s the version of Windows Mobile that uses WPF as part of the core UI?
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Mike wrote: “would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone”
Features != Experience.
You can have two devices with the same set of features which provide completely different experiences.
Apple has access to the same frameworks and developers used to create professional realtime motion graphics software, such as Motion, and it shows. There’s even a version of Core Animation (LayerKit) running on iPhone that’s using OpenGLES and drives the entire UI. And Apple is leveraging this technology in a mobile device before it’s released on it’s desktop OS.
For example, sending a photo via email with iPhone is one seamless transition. The photo shrinks to about half size, a new email message slides in behind it, then the photo expands and slides into place into the body of the message. This kind of attention to detail is seen thought the entire UI.
And Google Maps on iPhone is leaps and bounds above anything I’ve seen on any device.
The only company remotely capable of doing something like this is Microsoft, using WPF. So where’s the version of Windows Mobile that uses WPF as part of the core UI?
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Scott,
The “would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone” was about there being a group of customers who want exactly the features and experience offered by that specific product.
And, while Apple may have access to “the same frameworks and developers used to create professional realtime motion graphics software”, the problem (and the whole point of this thread) is that nobody else does.
Again, if you are in the exact group who wants no more and no less than what Apple deigns to give you, iPhone’s a good choice (if the cost is worth it to you). If you want anything else. Tough. Apple knows what you want better than you do.
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Scott,
The “would as equally apply to a refurbished FireFly as to an iPhone” was about there being a group of customers who want exactly the features and experience offered by that specific product.
And, while Apple may have access to “the same frameworks and developers used to create professional realtime motion graphics software”, the problem (and the whole point of this thread) is that nobody else does.
Again, if you are in the exact group who wants no more and no less than what Apple deigns to give you, iPhone’s a good choice (if the cost is worth it to you). If you want anything else. Tough. Apple knows what you want better than you do.
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Mike,
You didn’t answer my question.
Don’t you think developers would like create Windows Presentation Foundation / Silverlight based apps for Windows Mobile? Since the UIs on most WM apps look like they’re stuck in the year 1995, I’d say the answer to that question would be a resounding “yes.”
However, third-party developers can’t create WPF apps for Windows Mobile because there is no Windows Mobile SDK for WPF, or even Siverlight for that matter.
Nor can Microsoft ship WPF apps for Window Mobile because there is no runtime support for WPF or Silverlight in .NETCF.
The end results is that Windows Mobile users can’t run WPF apps on their devices, because NO ONE can developed them. Not even Microsoft.
Yet, there are approximately a million users running Core Animation apps written in Cocoa (Apple’s equivalent of WPF and .NET) on their iPhone right now. Not only that, but the entire core UI of the iPhone is based on Cocoa and Core Animation – email, web, maps, music, video. Everything.
When Microsoft does get around to shipping a version of .NETCF that supports WPF, it’s likely that Windows Mobile will not immediately adopt WPF as it’s primary UI. Yes, Microsoft and third-party developers will ship individual apps that leverage WPF, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the core Windows Mobile UI and apps will continue to use Win32, just like Windows Vista continues to use Win32 for IE, the Explorer Shell, etc.
By decoupling the artificial constraint of shipping a runtime and SDK at the same time, Apple can put a device in end users hands that can run rich applications and has a rich core UI. Today.
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Mike,
You didn’t answer my question.
Don’t you think developers would like create Windows Presentation Foundation / Silverlight based apps for Windows Mobile? Since the UIs on most WM apps look like they’re stuck in the year 1995, I’d say the answer to that question would be a resounding “yes.”
However, third-party developers can’t create WPF apps for Windows Mobile because there is no Windows Mobile SDK for WPF, or even Siverlight for that matter.
Nor can Microsoft ship WPF apps for Window Mobile because there is no runtime support for WPF or Silverlight in .NETCF.
The end results is that Windows Mobile users can’t run WPF apps on their devices, because NO ONE can developed them. Not even Microsoft.
Yet, there are approximately a million users running Core Animation apps written in Cocoa (Apple’s equivalent of WPF and .NET) on their iPhone right now. Not only that, but the entire core UI of the iPhone is based on Cocoa and Core Animation – email, web, maps, music, video. Everything.
When Microsoft does get around to shipping a version of .NETCF that supports WPF, it’s likely that Windows Mobile will not immediately adopt WPF as it’s primary UI. Yes, Microsoft and third-party developers will ship individual apps that leverage WPF, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the core Windows Mobile UI and apps will continue to use Win32, just like Windows Vista continues to use Win32 for IE, the Explorer Shell, etc.
By decoupling the artificial constraint of shipping a runtime and SDK at the same time, Apple can put a device in end users hands that can run rich applications and has a rich core UI. Today.
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Scott,
I didn’t discuss WPF or Silverlight on Windows Mobile because we’re discussiong the lack of an SDK for iPhone and the bizarre insistance of Apple fans that despite Apple’s very clear statements on the subject there IS a native SDK that Apple will release soon.
You talk about all those Core Animation Cocoa apps that are on iPhone. The issue isn’t that Apple can write what they want. The issue is, and always has been in this thread, that nobody but Apple can write anything but AJAX/DHTML half-apps, that Apple has locked out their development partners.
…
Oh, and to answer your off-topic question, Silverlight 1.0 is only in beta. Silverlight 1.1 is only in alpha. Where they’ll go in the future is open for speculation.
Windows Mobile, Windows CE and the .NET Compact Framework have gotten more and more powerful with each release, have new versions in development and Microsoft’s development partners continue as they always have in working with Microsoft SDKs and resources to take those platforms to places that meet their customers’ needs and wants.
By comparison, iPhone is out now but Apple’s development partners need not apply.
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Scott,
I didn’t discuss WPF or Silverlight on Windows Mobile because we’re discussiong the lack of an SDK for iPhone and the bizarre insistance of Apple fans that despite Apple’s very clear statements on the subject there IS a native SDK that Apple will release soon.
You talk about all those Core Animation Cocoa apps that are on iPhone. The issue isn’t that Apple can write what they want. The issue is, and always has been in this thread, that nobody but Apple can write anything but AJAX/DHTML half-apps, that Apple has locked out their development partners.
…
Oh, and to answer your off-topic question, Silverlight 1.0 is only in beta. Silverlight 1.1 is only in alpha. Where they’ll go in the future is open for speculation.
Windows Mobile, Windows CE and the .NET Compact Framework have gotten more and more powerful with each release, have new versions in development and Microsoft’s development partners continue as they always have in working with Microsoft SDKs and resources to take those platforms to places that meet their customers’ needs and wants.
By comparison, iPhone is out now but Apple’s development partners need not apply.
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And, in case anyone really IS interested, you could, of course, check out the interview from back in May with Scott Holden, the Product Unit Manager for the .NET Compact Framework team from Microsoft’s MIX07 “Conversation” in Las Vegas where he talks about Silverlight on devices and shows a prototype Silverlight app running on a Windows Mobile phone.
It’s available at http://blogs.msdn.com/lokeuei/archive/2007/05/03/checkout-silverlight-on-windows-mobile.aspx
But, that’s not going to help you write apps for the iPhone. (I’d guess the only thing that could do that is applying for a job at Apple)
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And, in case anyone really IS interested, you could, of course, check out the interview from back in May with Scott Holden, the Product Unit Manager for the .NET Compact Framework team from Microsoft’s MIX07 “Conversation” in Las Vegas where he talks about Silverlight on devices and shows a prototype Silverlight app running on a Windows Mobile phone.
It’s available at http://blogs.msdn.com/lokeuei/archive/2007/05/03/checkout-silverlight-on-windows-mobile.aspx
But, that’s not going to help you write apps for the iPhone. (I’d guess the only thing that could do that is applying for a job at Apple)
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Mike,
I don’t see how this is off-topic.
Apple is using Cocoa 2.0 and Core Animation to create a completely new user experience on mobile devices. And it’s shipping right now. I’m not talking about simply running stand-alone apps, like gadget or sports widgets, I’m talking about the entire UI – end to end.
The iPhone is would be the equivalent of a Windows Mobile device entirely based on WPF / Siverlight / .NETCF3.5, but without legacy Win32 and .NETCF 2.0 APIs. Apple doesn’t ship the iPhone with legacy APIs because there is no Cocoa 1.x mobile API to ship. It’s a clean slate.
Apple may not have a third-party SDK at the moment, but it’s does have a mobile device based entirely on a mobile Cocoa 2.0 and Core animation runtime, which is in use by about a million customers right now.
While Third-party developers can ship legacy Win32 and .NETCF 2.0 based apps for Windows Mobile, they can’t ship Sliverlight stand-alone applications because there is no Sliverlight SDK for Windows Mobile. Nor can Microsoft can’t deliver an entire WPF based device because there is no WPF runtime for any mobile device.
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Mike,
I don’t see how this is off-topic.
Apple is using Cocoa 2.0 and Core Animation to create a completely new user experience on mobile devices. And it’s shipping right now. I’m not talking about simply running stand-alone apps, like gadget or sports widgets, I’m talking about the entire UI – end to end.
The iPhone is would be the equivalent of a Windows Mobile device entirely based on WPF / Siverlight / .NETCF3.5, but without legacy Win32 and .NETCF 2.0 APIs. Apple doesn’t ship the iPhone with legacy APIs because there is no Cocoa 1.x mobile API to ship. It’s a clean slate.
Apple may not have a third-party SDK at the moment, but it’s does have a mobile device based entirely on a mobile Cocoa 2.0 and Core animation runtime, which is in use by about a million customers right now.
While Third-party developers can ship legacy Win32 and .NETCF 2.0 based apps for Windows Mobile, they can’t ship Sliverlight stand-alone applications because there is no Sliverlight SDK for Windows Mobile. Nor can Microsoft can’t deliver an entire WPF based device because there is no WPF runtime for any mobile device.
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Scott,
It’s off topic because, like any other part of the SDK, it’s not available to 3rd party developers.
Oh, and it’s particularly fanboi-ish of you to insist on what can be done with a non-existant Apple SDK while also insisting that you know what will and won’t be in future versions of Windows Mobile and insist that “they can’t ship Sliverlight [sic] stand-alone applications” when in a previous post I pointed you to a prototype Silverlight stand-alone application on Windows Mobile. Whether it will ship or not is a valid question. Whether it CAN be done clearly isn’t.
It’s getting rather sad, actually.
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Scott,
It’s off topic because, like any other part of the SDK, it’s not available to 3rd party developers.
Oh, and it’s particularly fanboi-ish of you to insist on what can be done with a non-existant Apple SDK while also insisting that you know what will and won’t be in future versions of Windows Mobile and insist that “they can’t ship Sliverlight [sic] stand-alone applications” when in a previous post I pointed you to a prototype Silverlight stand-alone application on Windows Mobile. Whether it will ship or not is a valid question. Whether it CAN be done clearly isn’t.
It’s getting rather sad, actually.
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Mike,
It’s relevant because, as of today, neither third-party developers nor Microsoft can ship iPhone like applications on Windows Mobile. The technology currently does not exist in a form that can be delivered to end users. Period.
And I don’t insist to know what will be in future versions of Windows Mobile. I’m merely stating facts. Your the one who claims to know what will and won’t be available regarding future third-party iPhone development support.
Here’s the facts as of this very moment.
– Apple has a shipping mobile runtime for Cocoa 2.0 and Core Animation
– Apple has shipped a device that’s using said runtime, not just for stand-alone apps but the entire UI
– Apple has not delivered an SDK for this runtime, allowing third-parties to develop applications
– Customers are using Apple developed applications on said device and runtime in the wild
– Microsoft does not have a shipping mobile runtime for WPF or Silverlight
– Microsoft can’t ship any devices that use this runtime because it does not exist in deliverable form
– Third-party developers can’t create or ship Silverlight apps for mobile devices because a production mobile SDK for Silverlight does not exist
– Customers can’t use mobile WPF or Silverlight apps on moblie devices.
It’s also quite obvious that the iPhone delivers a end-user experience that could only be approached by using WPF or Silverlight thought the entire UI. Yet there is no runtime or SDK that developers or even Microsoft can use to ship such apps. In addition, the prototype video only shows a stand-alone application widget. Creating an entire version of Windows Mobile built on WPF or Silverlight is something completely different.
Mike wrote: “Whether [Silverlight stand-alone application on Windows Mobile] CAN be done clearly isn’t [a valid question].”
Clearly, the facts as of today show it can’t be done. Just like, as of today, third-party developers can’t develop apps for the iPhone.
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Mike,
It’s relevant because, as of today, neither third-party developers nor Microsoft can ship iPhone like applications on Windows Mobile. The technology currently does not exist in a form that can be delivered to end users. Period.
And I don’t insist to know what will be in future versions of Windows Mobile. I’m merely stating facts. Your the one who claims to know what will and won’t be available regarding future third-party iPhone development support.
Here’s the facts as of this very moment.
– Apple has a shipping mobile runtime for Cocoa 2.0 and Core Animation
– Apple has shipped a device that’s using said runtime, not just for stand-alone apps but the entire UI
– Apple has not delivered an SDK for this runtime, allowing third-parties to develop applications
– Customers are using Apple developed applications on said device and runtime in the wild
– Microsoft does not have a shipping mobile runtime for WPF or Silverlight
– Microsoft can’t ship any devices that use this runtime because it does not exist in deliverable form
– Third-party developers can’t create or ship Silverlight apps for mobile devices because a production mobile SDK for Silverlight does not exist
– Customers can’t use mobile WPF or Silverlight apps on moblie devices.
It’s also quite obvious that the iPhone delivers a end-user experience that could only be approached by using WPF or Silverlight thought the entire UI. Yet there is no runtime or SDK that developers or even Microsoft can use to ship such apps. In addition, the prototype video only shows a stand-alone application widget. Creating an entire version of Windows Mobile built on WPF or Silverlight is something completely different.
Mike wrote: “Whether [Silverlight stand-alone application on Windows Mobile] CAN be done clearly isn’t [a valid question].”
Clearly, the facts as of today show it can’t be done. Just like, as of today, third-party developers can’t develop apps for the iPhone.
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Now, as for your statement “It’s also quite obvious that the iPhone delivers a end-user experience that could only be approached by using WPF or Silverlight thought the entire UI.”
I’ve generally found that when somebody starts out with “It is obvious” they are hoping nobody will notice that the statement they’ve made has no basis in fact. The existance of 3rd party clones of iPhone UI eye-candy on Windows Mobile and Apple’s own insistance that an acceptable iPhone “Experience” can be had with AJAX put paid to your odd assumptions that you so clearly paint as indisputable truths.
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Now, as for your statement “It’s also quite obvious that the iPhone delivers a end-user experience that could only be approached by using WPF or Silverlight thought the entire UI.”
I’ve generally found that when somebody starts out with “It is obvious” they are hoping nobody will notice that the statement they’ve made has no basis in fact. The existance of 3rd party clones of iPhone UI eye-candy on Windows Mobile and Apple’s own insistance that an acceptable iPhone “Experience” can be had with AJAX put paid to your odd assumptions that you so clearly paint as indisputable truths.
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Oddly, my initial reply to your post 134 didn’t show up so let’s try it again:
Apple iPhone
No SDK
A public statement that there will be no SDK
A public statement that developer should use AJAX
Microsoft Windows Mobile
SDK
Multiple developer tools
Multiple generations of sample code
Developer support programs
Peer developer communities
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Oddly, my initial reply to your post 134 didn’t show up so let’s try it again:
Apple iPhone
No SDK
A public statement that there will be no SDK
A public statement that developer should use AJAX
Microsoft Windows Mobile
SDK
Multiple developer tools
Multiple generations of sample code
Developer support programs
Peer developer communities
LikeLike
Mike wrote: ” I’ve generally found that when somebody starts out with “It is obvious” they are hoping nobody will notice that the statement they’ve made has no basis in fact.”
Unless you expect third-party developers to write full blown apps (and Microsoft to create a mobile operating system) using hand coded animation and game development APIs, It’s quite obvious.
Do you actually know what WPF / Silverlight is and what features it provides? There’s nothing like in Win32 or .NETCF2.0. Developers simply describe what elements should look, where the want them to go and how they should behave – the framework does all the hard work of animating and rendering the entire scene in a separate thread. Developers might be able to hack together a scrolling list in .NET, but creating a full blown animated application or an entire OS is something completely different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation
Core Animation provides a similar set of features using Cocoa 2.0, which Apple is leveraging throughout the entire iPhone UI. This includes all the built in apps, such as the email client, web browser, Google Maps and even device preferences, not just iPod functionality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Animation
Also, both WPF and Cocoa support data-binding, which make it possible to create data driven animated applications very rapidly.
Mike wrote: “The existance [sic] of 3rd party clones of iPhone UI eye-candy on Windows Mobile and Apple’s own insistance that an acceptable iPhone “Experience” can be had with AJAX put paid to your odd assumptions that you so clearly paint as indisputable truths.”
Scrolling lists and app launchers doesn’t begin to compare to how Apple has integrated Core Animation into the entire iPhone UI.
Where are all the clones of the rest of the iPhone UI elements, such as the dials that allow users to easily and intuitively set times and select values from multiple options? What about all of the graphical elements that seamlessly animate between applications?
http://www.thinksecret.com/archives/iphoneinterface/source/iphone04.html
Without WPF, this kind of functionality simply isn’t possible unless you drop down to lower level APIs, such as DirectDraw / Direct3D, and/or write your own animation routines.
I’m not saying that third-party developers can create native iPhone apps using AJAX. I’m saying that neither Apple or Microsoft have third party SDKs for WPF or Core Animation on mobile devices. Yet Apple has a runtime and entire mobile OS that’s shipped on about a million mobile devices in only a few weeks.
Microsoft doesn’t have a runtime and it has shipped zero WPF / Silverlight capable devices. While it’s possible Microsoft could ship a runtime that supports stand-alone widgets and apps in the short to mid term, it’s a reasonable conclusion that Microsoft won’t be releasing a entirely WPF / Silverlight based version of Windows Mobile anytime the near future.
In my opinion, the only way Microsoft can come close to matching the iPhone end-user experience is to pull a Zune: create a completely new, yet incompatible, WPF based mobile OS, API, sync system and possibly even it’s own store. Since only Microsoft can put content on the Zune, they gained complete control of the customers’ experience- end to end. However, in the process, they alienated their Plays for Sure developer partners and caused significant confusion for consumers in the marketplace.
Mike wrote: “A public statement that there will be no SDK”
Show me the statement that explicitly states there will be no SDK.
Apple’s announcement at WWDC stated that developers would need to use Web 2.0 / AJAX if they wanted to develop apps for the iPhone when it ships. Period. Coincidentally, the iPhone just happens to have the best web, CSS and javascript support of any mobile device.
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Mike wrote: ” I’ve generally found that when somebody starts out with “It is obvious” they are hoping nobody will notice that the statement they’ve made has no basis in fact.”
Unless you expect third-party developers to write full blown apps (and Microsoft to create a mobile operating system) using hand coded animation and game development APIs, It’s quite obvious.
Do you actually know what WPF / Silverlight is and what features it provides? There’s nothing like in Win32 or .NETCF2.0. Developers simply describe what elements should look, where the want them to go and how they should behave – the framework does all the hard work of animating and rendering the entire scene in a separate thread. Developers might be able to hack together a scrolling list in .NET, but creating a full blown animated application or an entire OS is something completely different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation
Core Animation provides a similar set of features using Cocoa 2.0, which Apple is leveraging throughout the entire iPhone UI. This includes all the built in apps, such as the email client, web browser, Google Maps and even device preferences, not just iPod functionality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Animation
Also, both WPF and Cocoa support data-binding, which make it possible to create data driven animated applications very rapidly.
Mike wrote: “The existance [sic] of 3rd party clones of iPhone UI eye-candy on Windows Mobile and Apple’s own insistance that an acceptable iPhone “Experience” can be had with AJAX put paid to your odd assumptions that you so clearly paint as indisputable truths.”
Scrolling lists and app launchers doesn’t begin to compare to how Apple has integrated Core Animation into the entire iPhone UI.
Where are all the clones of the rest of the iPhone UI elements, such as the dials that allow users to easily and intuitively set times and select values from multiple options? What about all of the graphical elements that seamlessly animate between applications?
http://www.thinksecret.com/archives/iphoneinterface/source/iphone04.html
Without WPF, this kind of functionality simply isn’t possible unless you drop down to lower level APIs, such as DirectDraw / Direct3D, and/or write your own animation routines.
I’m not saying that third-party developers can create native iPhone apps using AJAX. I’m saying that neither Apple or Microsoft have third party SDKs for WPF or Core Animation on mobile devices. Yet Apple has a runtime and entire mobile OS that’s shipped on about a million mobile devices in only a few weeks.
Microsoft doesn’t have a runtime and it has shipped zero WPF / Silverlight capable devices. While it’s possible Microsoft could ship a runtime that supports stand-alone widgets and apps in the short to mid term, it’s a reasonable conclusion that Microsoft won’t be releasing a entirely WPF / Silverlight based version of Windows Mobile anytime the near future.
In my opinion, the only way Microsoft can come close to matching the iPhone end-user experience is to pull a Zune: create a completely new, yet incompatible, WPF based mobile OS, API, sync system and possibly even it’s own store. Since only Microsoft can put content on the Zune, they gained complete control of the customers’ experience- end to end. However, in the process, they alienated their Plays for Sure developer partners and caused significant confusion for consumers in the marketplace.
Mike wrote: “A public statement that there will be no SDK”
Show me the statement that explicitly states there will be no SDK.
Apple’s announcement at WWDC stated that developers would need to use Web 2.0 / AJAX if they wanted to develop apps for the iPhone when it ships. Period. Coincidentally, the iPhone just happens to have the best web, CSS and javascript support of any mobile device.
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Scott,
Yes. I know all about Silverlight (1.0 and 1.1) and the other new features in alpha and beta for Windows. Thanks for asking. They’re very cool and if you’re running Windows or Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher on Intel or PowerPC, I’d highly suggest learning them.
Again. Microsoft provides OS access, APIs, a full SDK, multiple tools and promotes 3rd parties to provide development tools as well for it’s phone system.
Apple, on the other hand says: Want to develop for iPhone? Want to take advantage of all that hard learned OS X and Unix and Carbon and Cocoa experience? Don’t even try. But, hey, we’re not locking you out. It’s OK with us if you want to build a web page that users can browse to.
Gee, thanks Apple…
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Scott,
Yes. I know all about Silverlight (1.0 and 1.1) and the other new features in alpha and beta for Windows. Thanks for asking. They’re very cool and if you’re running Windows or Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher on Intel or PowerPC, I’d highly suggest learning them.
Again. Microsoft provides OS access, APIs, a full SDK, multiple tools and promotes 3rd parties to provide development tools as well for it’s phone system.
Apple, on the other hand says: Want to develop for iPhone? Want to take advantage of all that hard learned OS X and Unix and Carbon and Cocoa experience? Don’t even try. But, hey, we’re not locking you out. It’s OK with us if you want to build a web page that users can browse to.
Gee, thanks Apple…
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btw: to be fair, there has been speculation and hopes that Microsoft will port Silverlight (again, an unreleased alpha and beta product) to Windows Mobile in the future.
To be equally fair, there has been speculation and hopes that Apple will release some variety of SDK for the iPhone in the future.
The difference is that I’m commenting on what’s available and not people’s hopes and dreams and fantasies and the discussion on this topic has compared present reality on one platform against hopes for the other.
So, if you want to compare hopes and dreams and fantasies, feel free, but do it for both.
I’d rather compare what’s available for both platforms in reality since it’s awfully hard to develop using a fantasy SDK and hard to sell a product that only exists in dreams.
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btw: to be fair, there has been speculation and hopes that Microsoft will port Silverlight (again, an unreleased alpha and beta product) to Windows Mobile in the future.
To be equally fair, there has been speculation and hopes that Apple will release some variety of SDK for the iPhone in the future.
The difference is that I’m commenting on what’s available and not people’s hopes and dreams and fantasies and the discussion on this topic has compared present reality on one platform against hopes for the other.
So, if you want to compare hopes and dreams and fantasies, feel free, but do it for both.
I’d rather compare what’s available for both platforms in reality since it’s awfully hard to develop using a fantasy SDK and hard to sell a product that only exists in dreams.
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Mike wrote: “The difference is that I’m commenting on what’s available and not people’s hopes and dreams and fantasies and the discussion on this topic has compared present reality on one platform against hopes for the other.”
Mike, I’m comparing facts, not fantasies.
You’re criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s next generation Core Animation based mobile platform, (which is shipping right now) when Microsoft doesn’t even have a generation mobile runtime or device, let alone an SDK. Not even in early beta.
Rumor has it Sliverlight, Microsoft’s WPF based browser plug-in, will ship in late 2008 and run on top of the existing Windows Mobile OS. But that’s just a rumor. And I don’t see Microsoft creating an entire OS using a browser plugin.
Until Microsoft is shipping an next generation mobile platform based entirely on WPF and an SDK, I’d say Apple is way ahead at the moment.
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Mike wrote: “The difference is that I’m commenting on what’s available and not people’s hopes and dreams and fantasies and the discussion on this topic has compared present reality on one platform against hopes for the other.”
Mike, I’m comparing facts, not fantasies.
You’re criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s next generation Core Animation based mobile platform, (which is shipping right now) when Microsoft doesn’t even have a generation mobile runtime or device, let alone an SDK. Not even in early beta.
Rumor has it Sliverlight, Microsoft’s WPF based browser plug-in, will ship in late 2008 and run on top of the existing Windows Mobile OS. But that’s just a rumor. And I don’t see Microsoft creating an entire OS using a browser plugin.
Until Microsoft is shipping an next generation mobile platform based entirely on WPF and an SDK, I’d say Apple is way ahead at the moment.
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Scott,
Nope. You’re comaparing your hopes for a theoretical SDK on an existing product with a released SDK on a released product.
In other cases, you’re comaparing your hopes for a theoretical SDK on an existing product with some future guesswork on distribution of a future technology.
Here in the real world, Apple’s ONLY answer to developers is write an AJAX based web page and optimize it for their device.
I’m not “criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s next generation Core Animation based mobile platform”.
I’m not even criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s currently shipping mobile platform. I think is a brain-dead choice but it’s their choice to make.
I’m criticizing Apple fans for believing in magic – for pretending that Apple IS releasing an SDK for it’s currently shipping mobile platform despite Apple’s statements to the contrary.
What Microsoft will or won’t do at some future point in the future is pretty irrelevant. They have a solid solution now. Apple does not. It’s that simple.
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Scott,
Nope. You’re comaparing your hopes for a theoretical SDK on an existing product with a released SDK on a released product.
In other cases, you’re comaparing your hopes for a theoretical SDK on an existing product with some future guesswork on distribution of a future technology.
Here in the real world, Apple’s ONLY answer to developers is write an AJAX based web page and optimize it for their device.
I’m not “criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s next generation Core Animation based mobile platform”.
I’m not even criticizing Apple for not releasing an SDK for it’s currently shipping mobile platform. I think is a brain-dead choice but it’s their choice to make.
I’m criticizing Apple fans for believing in magic – for pretending that Apple IS releasing an SDK for it’s currently shipping mobile platform despite Apple’s statements to the contrary.
What Microsoft will or won’t do at some future point in the future is pretty irrelevant. They have a solid solution now. Apple does not. It’s that simple.
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Mike, I’ve clearly stated that Apple may never decided not to release an SDK for the iPhone from the beginning.
However, unlike Microsoft, it’s quite obvious that Apple does have an next gen SDK it could release at any time. We know this is a fact because Apple is using said SDK to ship existing apps on an existing device. This isn’t some pie in the sky prototype runtime or device. It’s shipping right now and customers are using it.
I’ve also provided several plausible reasons why Apple would wait to release an SDK.
Another of which is that the iPhone is running OS X. This make is quite likely it has dependencies on Leopard and XCode 3.0, with hasn’t even shipped yet and can change between the iPhone’s initial release and October.
It’s critical for Apple to release an Leopard SDK to developers because there are thousands of existing Mac apps that must work when customers upgrade their systems. The iPhone, on the other hand, doesn’t have any existing apps that had to run when the iPhone shipped. If developers released apps for the currently shipping version of the iPhone, they would break if there are significant changes when Leopard and XCode 3.0 ships. Sure enough, if you look at crash dumps from the iPhone, you’ll see that the iPhone has shipped with at least one framework with a depreciated name, “Layer Kit.”
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2007/06/MobileMail-2007-06-29-204206.crash
Since Apple uses the public name of frameworks, such as CI for Core Image, it’s almost certain these class names and header files will be depreciated or made obsolete in a few months from now. Developers would need to update all references to these classes when the GM of Leopard is released and the iPhone is updated. As such, it would make perfect sense for Apple to wait three months to release an SDK.
However, You’re claiming that it’s impossible for Apple to ship an SDK in October because of non-existent statement you claim that Apple has made.
Again, show me the explicit statement that excludes the release of an SDK. You can’t because there is none. This is is the crux of my point.
Furtherer more, what’s ironic about your claim is that, If there’s anyone who can’t ship an SDK for their next generation mobile device, it’s Microsoft. Why? because there is no indication it even has a next generation mobile device. None. And, unlike Apple, Microsoft usually makes announcements far in the future.
There is no shipping runtime, no shipping devices. Nothing but a prototype of an existing Windows Mobile based device running an existing Silverlight sports widget using a browser plug-in. Hardly what I’d call a next generation mobile device.
Mike wrote: “What Microsoft will or won’t do at some future point in the future is pretty irrelevant. They have a solid solution now. Apple does not. It’s that simple.”
I think it’s quite relevant. iPhone is running a version of the same kernel as Mac OS X and mobile versions of the same frameworks as Mac OS X, including Core Animation. Even if it waits until next year to release an SDK on a 2.0 device, Apple will have had a entire year to refine an existing product and API. And Developers will have been using the same frameworks with Leopard.
However, based on what we know, all Microsoft will have is a browser plugin running on top of it’s pre-existing Windows Mobile platform, which uses a completely different kernel than Vista and isn’t entirely based on WPF. While you might be willing to invest time and money into what is effectively a poorly designed legacy “solution”, I’m not.
Again, it’s pretty clear that Apple has a huge technical advantage in a space where Microsoft isn’t the dominate player. In other words, Windows Mobile will have to compete on it’s own merits instead depending on users being locked into legacy solutions and proprietary protocols. Without a next generation mobile OS, annual sales of the iPhone could approach or even surpass those of Windows Mobile in the next 12 months. Since Microsoft’s mobile / embedded division only made two million dollars last year (after consistently loosing millions of dollars annually since 2003) this isn’t an unrealistic scenario.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/50755EA6-A759-42FD-84ED-EBB5A060AF16.html
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Mike, I’ve clearly stated that Apple may never decided not to release an SDK for the iPhone from the beginning.
However, unlike Microsoft, it’s quite obvious that Apple does have an next gen SDK it could release at any time. We know this is a fact because Apple is using said SDK to ship existing apps on an existing device. This isn’t some pie in the sky prototype runtime or device. It’s shipping right now and customers are using it.
I’ve also provided several plausible reasons why Apple would wait to release an SDK.
Another of which is that the iPhone is running OS X. This make is quite likely it has dependencies on Leopard and XCode 3.0, with hasn’t even shipped yet and can change between the iPhone’s initial release and October.
It’s critical for Apple to release an Leopard SDK to developers because there are thousands of existing Mac apps that must work when customers upgrade their systems. The iPhone, on the other hand, doesn’t have any existing apps that had to run when the iPhone shipped. If developers released apps for the currently shipping version of the iPhone, they would break if there are significant changes when Leopard and XCode 3.0 ships. Sure enough, if you look at crash dumps from the iPhone, you’ll see that the iPhone has shipped with at least one framework with a depreciated name, “Layer Kit.”
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2007/06/MobileMail-2007-06-29-204206.crash
Since Apple uses the public name of frameworks, such as CI for Core Image, it’s almost certain these class names and header files will be depreciated or made obsolete in a few months from now. Developers would need to update all references to these classes when the GM of Leopard is released and the iPhone is updated. As such, it would make perfect sense for Apple to wait three months to release an SDK.
However, You’re claiming that it’s impossible for Apple to ship an SDK in October because of non-existent statement you claim that Apple has made.
Again, show me the explicit statement that excludes the release of an SDK. You can’t because there is none. This is is the crux of my point.
Furtherer more, what’s ironic about your claim is that, If there’s anyone who can’t ship an SDK for their next generation mobile device, it’s Microsoft. Why? because there is no indication it even has a next generation mobile device. None. And, unlike Apple, Microsoft usually makes announcements far in the future.
There is no shipping runtime, no shipping devices. Nothing but a prototype of an existing Windows Mobile based device running an existing Silverlight sports widget using a browser plug-in. Hardly what I’d call a next generation mobile device.
Mike wrote: “What Microsoft will or won’t do at some future point in the future is pretty irrelevant. They have a solid solution now. Apple does not. It’s that simple.”
I think it’s quite relevant. iPhone is running a version of the same kernel as Mac OS X and mobile versions of the same frameworks as Mac OS X, including Core Animation. Even if it waits until next year to release an SDK on a 2.0 device, Apple will have had a entire year to refine an existing product and API. And Developers will have been using the same frameworks with Leopard.
However, based on what we know, all Microsoft will have is a browser plugin running on top of it’s pre-existing Windows Mobile platform, which uses a completely different kernel than Vista and isn’t entirely based on WPF. While you might be willing to invest time and money into what is effectively a poorly designed legacy “solution”, I’m not.
Again, it’s pretty clear that Apple has a huge technical advantage in a space where Microsoft isn’t the dominate player. In other words, Windows Mobile will have to compete on it’s own merits instead depending on users being locked into legacy solutions and proprietary protocols. Without a next generation mobile OS, annual sales of the iPhone could approach or even surpass those of Windows Mobile in the next 12 months. Since Microsoft’s mobile / embedded division only made two million dollars last year (after consistently loosing millions of dollars annually since 2003) this isn’t an unrealistic scenario.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/50755EA6-A759-42FD-84ED-EBB5A060AF16.html
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Sigh
The discussion is whether “Steve Jobs is Not an Idiot”
That discussion is about claiming that there is some magic plan that Apple is executing that makes the pathetic story from the developer’s conference less than just “Go pound sand”
The reality is that “go pound sand” is nicer than what Apple told their development partners.
Here’s a reminder…
On Macintosh:
Apple stressed how well Windows Applications ran on Macintosh
On Computer Games:
Apple had partners come in to show how well their Windows Games ran on Macintosh
On iPod:
No developer story
On iTV:
No developer story
On iPhone:
No developer story
(but Apple patted themselves on the back with the show’s BIG announcement that Apple won’t block iPhone users from visiting AJAX sites on their 2G EDGE connection and you can tweak your site to look like, but not function like, an actuial iPhone application, sort-of)
This was the DEVELOPER conference. The only one for the year.
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Sigh
The discussion is whether “Steve Jobs is Not an Idiot”
That discussion is about claiming that there is some magic plan that Apple is executing that makes the pathetic story from the developer’s conference less than just “Go pound sand”
The reality is that “go pound sand” is nicer than what Apple told their development partners.
Here’s a reminder…
On Macintosh:
Apple stressed how well Windows Applications ran on Macintosh
On Computer Games:
Apple had partners come in to show how well their Windows Games ran on Macintosh
On iPod:
No developer story
On iTV:
No developer story
On iPhone:
No developer story
(but Apple patted themselves on the back with the show’s BIG announcement that Apple won’t block iPhone users from visiting AJAX sites on their 2G EDGE connection and you can tweak your site to look like, but not function like, an actuial iPhone application, sort-of)
This was the DEVELOPER conference. The only one for the year.
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MIke wrote: “That discussion is about claiming that there is some magic plan that Apple is executing that makes the pathetic story from the developer’s conference less than just “Go pound sand”
And where were the announcements from Microsoft about their next gen mobile device at their last developer conference?
Where was the announcement of a Web 2.0 compliant browser that runs on Windows Mobile?
Where were the developer announcements for the Zune? It doesn’t even have games from major developers, like EA on the iPod.
In fact, Microsoft has so little to announce that it unexpectedly canceled it’s flagship developer conference, PDC, which it uses to announce new technology.
http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/24/microsoft-cancels-pdc/
Apparently, if you have nothing new to announce, this is what you consider the “right” way to approach your developers?
And where are all the announcements about Windows 7? About all we know about the next version of Windows is designed to ensure a more consistent release schedule. Microsoft has even become tight lipped about the release date of Vista SP1. There is no release date at all. All Microsoft is committing to is a beta released sometime this year.
http://www.windowsconnected.com/blogs/joshs_blog/archive/2007/07/19/no-public-windows-vista-sp1-this-week.aspx
I guess Microsoft can’t ship SP1 this year, since there is no public announcement of a ship date. Which I find odd since Microsoft knows many organizations are waiting for the first service pack to deploy Vista.
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MIke wrote: “That discussion is about claiming that there is some magic plan that Apple is executing that makes the pathetic story from the developer’s conference less than just “Go pound sand”
And where were the announcements from Microsoft about their next gen mobile device at their last developer conference?
Where was the announcement of a Web 2.0 compliant browser that runs on Windows Mobile?
Where were the developer announcements for the Zune? It doesn’t even have games from major developers, like EA on the iPod.
In fact, Microsoft has so little to announce that it unexpectedly canceled it’s flagship developer conference, PDC, which it uses to announce new technology.
http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/24/microsoft-cancels-pdc/
Apparently, if you have nothing new to announce, this is what you consider the “right” way to approach your developers?
And where are all the announcements about Windows 7? About all we know about the next version of Windows is designed to ensure a more consistent release schedule. Microsoft has even become tight lipped about the release date of Vista SP1. There is no release date at all. All Microsoft is committing to is a beta released sometime this year.
http://www.windowsconnected.com/blogs/joshs_blog/archive/2007/07/19/no-public-windows-vista-sp1-this-week.aspx
I guess Microsoft can’t ship SP1 this year, since there is no public announcement of a ship date. Which I find odd since Microsoft knows many organizations are waiting for the first service pack to deploy Vista.
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Scott,
Again, I’m not speculating about the future or which gossip column’s predictions are right or wrong.
Apple, at their only developer’s conference (contrast that with Microsoft’s large number of conferences with developer tracks including TechEd and MIX) told their developers to pound sand. And that was at the conference right before an OS rev and with a new product line.
That’s reality. Deal with it.
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Scott,
Again, I’m not speculating about the future or which gossip column’s predictions are right or wrong.
Apple, at their only developer’s conference (contrast that with Microsoft’s large number of conferences with developer tracks including TechEd and MIX) told their developers to pound sand. And that was at the conference right before an OS rev and with a new product line.
That’s reality. Deal with it.
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Mike wrote: “Again, I’m not speculating about the future or which gossip column’s predictions are right or wrong.”
Again, I know of no statement from Apple that excluded releasing any other development options in the short to mid term. As such, your claim that Apple can’t release an SDK in the near future is purely speculation and FUD.
And, Apple has a shipping next generation mobile device that’s sitting here on my desk. Microsoft hasn’t even demoed a prototype WPF based mobile device yet.
That’s reality.
Unless the conversation changes direction again, I’ll be back when Apple makes an announcement or when Leopard ships, which is currently scheduled for October.
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Mike wrote: “Again, I’m not speculating about the future or which gossip column’s predictions are right or wrong.”
Again, I know of no statement from Apple that excluded releasing any other development options in the short to mid term. As such, your claim that Apple can’t release an SDK in the near future is purely speculation and FUD.
And, Apple has a shipping next generation mobile device that’s sitting here on my desk. Microsoft hasn’t even demoed a prototype WPF based mobile device yet.
That’s reality.
Unless the conversation changes direction again, I’ll be back when Apple makes an announcement or when Leopard ships, which is currently scheduled for October.
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Again, for, what, the 12th time?…
Right now:
Windows Mobile developers have an SDK and tools and documents and resources and much, much more
iPhone developers have vague hopes for the future
Compare and contrast…
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Again, for, what, the 12th time?…
Right now:
Windows Mobile developers have an SDK and tools and documents and resources and much, much more
iPhone developers have vague hopes for the future
Compare and contrast…
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In the meantime, AT&T activated something in the neighborhood of 146,000 iPhones during the second quarter. This is roughly 1/10th of Windows Mobile’s share of the smartphone market in Q1 of 2007, and approximately 1/3rd of Windows Mobile’s share in Q1 2007. This is a platform (the iPhone) that is brand-new to the market, competing against a platform that has been in place for several years, and is now up to version 6.0.
Mike will attribute this impact on the market as negligible, or due to the lack of sophistication of the iPhone buyer. Mike thinks Scott is an Apple Fanboi, who is deluded about the future of an iPhone API. Mike sees more hope for Windows Mobile devices and prefers the MS approach.
Scott will look at the same figures and consider the iPhone’s impact to be phenomenal–a result of judging accurately what the broader market truly wants. Scott thinks Mike is a MS bigot, and sees the MS roadmap as being littered with broken promises. Scott thinks Apple’s non-statements speak more positively than MS’s statements.
Amazingly, the same data makes both of them happy.
Tim
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In the meantime, AT&T activated something in the neighborhood of 146,000 iPhones during the second quarter. This is roughly 1/10th of Windows Mobile’s share of the smartphone market in Q1 of 2007, and approximately 1/3rd of Windows Mobile’s share in Q1 2007. This is a platform (the iPhone) that is brand-new to the market, competing against a platform that has been in place for several years, and is now up to version 6.0.
Mike will attribute this impact on the market as negligible, or due to the lack of sophistication of the iPhone buyer. Mike thinks Scott is an Apple Fanboi, who is deluded about the future of an iPhone API. Mike sees more hope for Windows Mobile devices and prefers the MS approach.
Scott will look at the same figures and consider the iPhone’s impact to be phenomenal–a result of judging accurately what the broader market truly wants. Scott thinks Mike is a MS bigot, and sees the MS roadmap as being littered with broken promises. Scott thinks Apple’s non-statements speak more positively than MS’s statements.
Amazingly, the same data makes both of them happy.
Tim
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Actually, Tim, I’d say that 1st month sales on a “must have” “fashion accessory” say nothing either way about its success in even the short run.
I’d guess that at least 100,000 of those were bought sight unseen so it speaks to the marketing of the iPhone rather than the unseen product. What sales the product actually generates will not be seen until people have lived with it for a while.
Ask me again in two months and then we can see if you can predict my words.
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Actually, Tim, I’d say that 1st month sales on a “must have” “fashion accessory” say nothing either way about its success in even the short run.
I’d guess that at least 100,000 of those were bought sight unseen so it speaks to the marketing of the iPhone rather than the unseen product. What sales the product actually generates will not be seen until people have lived with it for a while.
Ask me again in two months and then we can see if you can predict my words.
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Well, we didn’t have to wait two months to see prices slashed to fire sale levels. So much for high sales rates past the initial wave of the “we’ll pay anything” Apple faithful.
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Well, we didn’t have to wait two months to see prices slashed to fire sale levels. So much for high sales rates past the initial wave of the “we’ll pay anything” Apple faithful.
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Mike wrote: “Well, we didn’t have to wait two months to see prices slashed to fire sale levels.”
I don’t think Apple will have any problems making a profit on the iPhone.
Apple announced the price cut after just releasing the iPod touch, which shares a large number of components and technology with the iPhone. This additional volume helps reduce component costs across both platforms and provides additional return on R&D.
However, considering that Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded division has lost over half a billion dollars over the last four years, I guess Microsoft has been selling WM technology at fire sale levels (a loss) for years.
Mike wrote: “So much for high sales rates past the initial wave of the “we’ll pay anything” Apple faithful.”
Actually, Apple said it was already on track to reach it’s short term sales goal before reducing the price. In fact, it sold it’s one millionth iPhone a full three weeks ahead of schedule.
Of course, the industry has made up their own sales goals, so it could turn around and claim that the iPhone isn’t selling very well.
Apple is simply adding more fuel to accelerate what appears to be an existing brisk market demand.
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Mike wrote: “Well, we didn’t have to wait two months to see prices slashed to fire sale levels.”
I don’t think Apple will have any problems making a profit on the iPhone.
Apple announced the price cut after just releasing the iPod touch, which shares a large number of components and technology with the iPhone. This additional volume helps reduce component costs across both platforms and provides additional return on R&D.
However, considering that Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded division has lost over half a billion dollars over the last four years, I guess Microsoft has been selling WM technology at fire sale levels (a loss) for years.
Mike wrote: “So much for high sales rates past the initial wave of the “we’ll pay anything” Apple faithful.”
Actually, Apple said it was already on track to reach it’s short term sales goal before reducing the price. In fact, it sold it’s one millionth iPhone a full three weeks ahead of schedule.
Of course, the industry has made up their own sales goals, so it could turn around and claim that the iPhone isn’t selling very well.
Apple is simply adding more fuel to accelerate what appears to be an existing brisk market demand.
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Apple to release iPhone third-party SDK in February: Currently the top item at http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
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Apple to release iPhone third-party SDK in February: Currently the top item at http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
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Yep. Looks like five months is what it took for Apple to realize that running every process on the iPhone as root (Full Administrator Privileges) with a known password was a bad idea and got their programmers to rewrite everything that couldn’t run in a low privilege account…
(Seriously, what kind of idiots write an always connected to the Internet, Unix based computer with every process running as root. Is there nobody on the entire iPhone product group that has ever heard of security?)
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Yep. Looks like five months is what it took for Apple to realize that running every process on the iPhone as root (Full Administrator Privileges) with a known password was a bad idea and got their programmers to rewrite everything that couldn’t run in a low privilege account…
(Seriously, what kind of idiots write an always connected to the Internet, Unix based computer with every process running as root. Is there nobody on the entire iPhone product group that has ever heard of security?)
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Mike,
Since it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’, are you implying that it took Microsoft over a decade to “realize running every process as root” was a bad idea?
Of course, we both know there were other considerations in play, such as backwards compatibility, time to market, development resources, etc. Had Microsoft really wanted to make security it’s number one priority, we could had seen Vista like account controls much earlier.
(Instead, Microsoft helped create a massive network of zombie PCs that are used to send spam and perform denial of service attacks. Gee thanks!)
The iPhone is based on Mac OS X and dependent on Leopard technology, such as Core Animation. Since Leopard was delayed by six months, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if iPhone v1.0 was a contingency / temporary solution until OS X 10.5 shipped and the real v1.0 was complete. Of course that’s just speculation.
On the other hand, we no longer have to speculate on a third-party iPhone SDK since Apple has done the “impossible.” Apple has a next generation device, OS *and* SDK.
So, the question remains: where’s Microsoft’s next-generation, Windows Mobile platform, OS and SDK?
Still haven’t seen any indication Windows Mobile will gain WPF-like functionality beyond unofficial demos of Silverlight. And, last time I checked, it’s rather difficult to write a next generation mobile phone OS using a browser plugin.
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Mike,
Since it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’, are you implying that it took Microsoft over a decade to “realize running every process as root” was a bad idea?
Of course, we both know there were other considerations in play, such as backwards compatibility, time to market, development resources, etc. Had Microsoft really wanted to make security it’s number one priority, we could had seen Vista like account controls much earlier.
(Instead, Microsoft helped create a massive network of zombie PCs that are used to send spam and perform denial of service attacks. Gee thanks!)
The iPhone is based on Mac OS X and dependent on Leopard technology, such as Core Animation. Since Leopard was delayed by six months, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if iPhone v1.0 was a contingency / temporary solution until OS X 10.5 shipped and the real v1.0 was complete. Of course that’s just speculation.
On the other hand, we no longer have to speculate on a third-party iPhone SDK since Apple has done the “impossible.” Apple has a next generation device, OS *and* SDK.
So, the question remains: where’s Microsoft’s next-generation, Windows Mobile platform, OS and SDK?
Still haven’t seen any indication Windows Mobile will gain WPF-like functionality beyond unofficial demos of Silverlight. And, last time I checked, it’s rather difficult to write a next generation mobile phone OS using a browser plugin.
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Thirteen Years.
Thirteen Years?
I could understand you being off by a year or two but you’ve actually got the timeline off by THIRTEEN YEARS.
The Windows NT family (Which includes Windows XP and Windows Vista) has been around since July 1993 – not “last year”, not even 2001 (when Windows XP became the first NT architecture OS to become the dominent OS in the world) but 1993.
1993 – you know, back when Apple was touting the benefits of Macintosh OS 7.1 while working on Copland, Gershwin and (With IBM, Taligent “Pink”), all of which failed when Apple realized they didn’t have the skills needed to architect a modern operating system.
Since 1993 Microsoft has been selling an operating system to the public that was certified by the NSA as meeting their Trusted Computer System criteria at level C2. (No Apple product ever met their tests and, aside from the Windows NT core OS, only a very few specialized “Hardened” OS products designed for the military and intellegence agencies have been at the C or higher level)
All the Windows NT family operating systems ever built have processes running in various levels and as part of being a C level product architected at the B level, it isn’t even possible to have an object that doesn’t have a full set of ACEs and ACLs. There has NEVER been a Windows NT based OS that ran every processes as the equivalent of root. (The Windows security model is MUCH more sophisticated and granular than typical Unix designs so there really isn’t such a crude concept as a “root” user)
On top of that, Active Directory, COM+ and .NET added additional granularity and managability to the security model including .NET’s evidence based object security model.
(Oh, just to get the timeline right, Apple didn’t succeed in getting an OS out the door with ANY security model until 2001 – eight years after Windows NT set a bar that Apple still hasn’t reached)
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Thirteen Years.
Thirteen Years?
I could understand you being off by a year or two but you’ve actually got the timeline off by THIRTEEN YEARS.
The Windows NT family (Which includes Windows XP and Windows Vista) has been around since July 1993 – not “last year”, not even 2001 (when Windows XP became the first NT architecture OS to become the dominent OS in the world) but 1993.
1993 – you know, back when Apple was touting the benefits of Macintosh OS 7.1 while working on Copland, Gershwin and (With IBM, Taligent “Pink”), all of which failed when Apple realized they didn’t have the skills needed to architect a modern operating system.
Since 1993 Microsoft has been selling an operating system to the public that was certified by the NSA as meeting their Trusted Computer System criteria at level C2. (No Apple product ever met their tests and, aside from the Windows NT core OS, only a very few specialized “Hardened” OS products designed for the military and intellegence agencies have been at the C or higher level)
All the Windows NT family operating systems ever built have processes running in various levels and as part of being a C level product architected at the B level, it isn’t even possible to have an object that doesn’t have a full set of ACEs and ACLs. There has NEVER been a Windows NT based OS that ran every processes as the equivalent of root. (The Windows security model is MUCH more sophisticated and granular than typical Unix designs so there really isn’t such a crude concept as a “root” user)
On top of that, Active Directory, COM+ and .NET added additional granularity and managability to the security model including .NET’s evidence based object security model.
(Oh, just to get the timeline right, Apple didn’t succeed in getting an OS out the door with ANY security model until 2001 – eight years after Windows NT set a bar that Apple still hasn’t reached)
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Mike,
You’re right. NT 3.1 was technically capable of running processes as “non-root”. However, as with most Microsoft products, it wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist – the implementation was the problem. NT was a targeted at the workstation / enterprise market and it was very impractical for general use.
For example, since Mac OS 7 lacked preemptive multitasking and protected memory at the time, I used NT 3.1 – Win 2K as my primary desktop OS until 2003. However, I found it very painfully difficult to run NT as non-administrator since it conflicted with how security was implemented across the entire Windows platform. (I simply refused to run 9x. While NT shared it’s poorly designed UI with 3.1/9x, at least it was more secure, stable and didn’t become corrupt nearly as often)
Many third-party applications (and even some apps from Microsoft) assumed that the end user had full administrative privileges. These apps simply wouldn’t run correctly unless you were logged in as admin. Microsoft’s “solution” was to develop two parallel distributions: NT and 9x, with the promise of eventually merging them into one.
Again, these issues remained not because because Microsoft simply “hadn’t figured out it was bad yet”, it was a choice of convenience, time to market and compatibility vs. security. Microsoft’s own Jim Allchin paints a clear picture of the situation here…
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/23/security-features-vs-convenience.aspx
With the addition of features such as UAC, integrity levels, session 0 isolation, UIPI and data redirection in Vista, only recently has Microsoft created a OS where it’s truly practical for non-enterprise users to run under a non-adminstrator account – but at the expense of compatibility.
Mike wrote: “1993 – you know, back when Apple was touting the benefits of Macintosh OS 7.1 while working on Copland, Gershwin and (With IBM, Taligent “Pink”), all of which failed when Apple realized they didn’t have the skills needed to architect a modern operating system.”
Sounds allot like 1988. You know, when Microsoft was hyping Windows 3.0 while working on OS/2 1.0, which was effectively still born. Microsoft realized they didn’t have the skills to architect a modern operating system, so it hired David Cutler and a small army of developers from Digital to re-implement VMS in C as a host for Win32. And, of course, let’s not forget Microsoft’s own unsuccessful venture to build a modern OS with IBM : OS/2 2.0.
Mike wrote: “There has NEVER been a Windows NT based OS that ran every processes as the equivalent of root”
You seem to have forgotten there was nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1 where even enterprise users couldn’t buy a Microsoft OS that didn’t run every process as “root.” This decade had a huge impact on the entire Windows architecture, Windows application development and end user expectations. Having performed tech support for several business running Windows 3.x, I’m quite familiar with the limitations of these versions as well.
Mike wrote: “(Oh, just to get the timeline right, Apple didn’t succeed in getting an OS out the door with ANY security model until 2001 – eight years after Windows NT set a bar that Apple still hasn’t reached)”
So then why do we see armies of zombie Windows PC sending spam and DOS attacks? Again, because most XP users found it impossible or very impractical to run as a non-administrator account.
P.S. Still looking for signs of Microsoft’s Microsoft’s next-generation, Windows Mobile platform, OS and SDK.
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Mike,
You’re right. NT 3.1 was technically capable of running processes as “non-root”. However, as with most Microsoft products, it wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist – the implementation was the problem. NT was a targeted at the workstation / enterprise market and it was very impractical for general use.
For example, since Mac OS 7 lacked preemptive multitasking and protected memory at the time, I used NT 3.1 – Win 2K as my primary desktop OS until 2003. However, I found it very painfully difficult to run NT as non-administrator since it conflicted with how security was implemented across the entire Windows platform. (I simply refused to run 9x. While NT shared it’s poorly designed UI with 3.1/9x, at least it was more secure, stable and didn’t become corrupt nearly as often)
Many third-party applications (and even some apps from Microsoft) assumed that the end user had full administrative privileges. These apps simply wouldn’t run correctly unless you were logged in as admin. Microsoft’s “solution” was to develop two parallel distributions: NT and 9x, with the promise of eventually merging them into one.
Again, these issues remained not because because Microsoft simply “hadn’t figured out it was bad yet”, it was a choice of convenience, time to market and compatibility vs. security. Microsoft’s own Jim Allchin paints a clear picture of the situation here…
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/23/security-features-vs-convenience.aspx
With the addition of features such as UAC, integrity levels, session 0 isolation, UIPI and data redirection in Vista, only recently has Microsoft created a OS where it’s truly practical for non-enterprise users to run under a non-adminstrator account – but at the expense of compatibility.
Mike wrote: “1993 – you know, back when Apple was touting the benefits of Macintosh OS 7.1 while working on Copland, Gershwin and (With IBM, Taligent “Pink”), all of which failed when Apple realized they didn’t have the skills needed to architect a modern operating system.”
Sounds allot like 1988. You know, when Microsoft was hyping Windows 3.0 while working on OS/2 1.0, which was effectively still born. Microsoft realized they didn’t have the skills to architect a modern operating system, so it hired David Cutler and a small army of developers from Digital to re-implement VMS in C as a host for Win32. And, of course, let’s not forget Microsoft’s own unsuccessful venture to build a modern OS with IBM : OS/2 2.0.
Mike wrote: “There has NEVER been a Windows NT based OS that ran every processes as the equivalent of root”
You seem to have forgotten there was nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1 where even enterprise users couldn’t buy a Microsoft OS that didn’t run every process as “root.” This decade had a huge impact on the entire Windows architecture, Windows application development and end user expectations. Having performed tech support for several business running Windows 3.x, I’m quite familiar with the limitations of these versions as well.
Mike wrote: “(Oh, just to get the timeline right, Apple didn’t succeed in getting an OS out the door with ANY security model until 2001 – eight years after Windows NT set a bar that Apple still hasn’t reached)”
So then why do we see armies of zombie Windows PC sending spam and DOS attacks? Again, because most XP users found it impossible or very impractical to run as a non-administrator account.
P.S. Still looking for signs of Microsoft’s Microsoft’s next-generation, Windows Mobile platform, OS and SDK.
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Scott,
At least you could do your homework.
Just because you had applications that had to run a higher level (Most likely Power User and not Administrator) in Windows NT 3.1 did NOT mean that every process ran with full privileges. The OS processes themselves ran in lots of other levels. It isn’t as though somebody at Microsoft was so incompetent as to think that every item in the entire machine has to run as root. (unlike, apparently, every single person connected with the iPhone from the lowest level to Steve Jobs)
As to security being a trade-off with convenience. Of course it is. When I’ve taught security it’s always a part of the opening lecture. When I’ve done security planning for production products that’s always been the trade-off.
It’s kind of like comparing the security requirements for a 1980s PC which connected for a few hours a week to dial-up proprietary bulletin board systems over a 9600 baud modem and a 2007 device designed to have a permanent (relatively) high-speed connection to the Internet. Interestingly, Apple thought the latter could get away with being even less secure than the 1980s dial-up PC. Mind-boggling. Just mind-boggling.
As for your attempt at a history lesson, I was there at the dawn of the Third Age of PCs…
In 1988, Microsoft and had shipped OS/2 1.0 (and 1.1 late that Fall) and Gordon Letwin and his team at Microsoft were working on OS/2 2.x with IBM’s teams in Boca Raton, Florida and Hursley in the UK with IBM’s requirement that it had to run on the 80286 architecture and not use the 386 because IBM didn’t want PCs to cannibalize the System/36 market. Apple was releasing Macintosh System 6.0 and later that year, releasing 6.0.1 and 6.0.2. DEC had Dave Cutler and his team at the DECWest lab in Bellevue, Washington working on Prism untile DEC cancelled Prism in the Fall. At that point, he took his team the 3/4 of a mile from DECWest to Microsoft Main Campus to work on the next generation of IBM/Microsoft software. Now, in 1989, IBM and Microsoft started feuding over supporting the 80386 architecture in OS/2 and they agreed that IBM would take over the 80286 specific OS/2 2.0 and Microsoft would start on OS/2 3.0.
Should you like to actually learn how a modern operating system (Like OS/2 or Windows NT) I’d suggest reading Gordon Letwin’s Inside OS/2 and Helen Custer’s Inside Windows NT. Both are excellent and available used.
Perhaps you can give us a little history lesson on Gershwin? Or Copland? Or Apples wonderful success working with IBM on Taligent and Kaleida or CHRP or PREP? (Ask anybody who worked in that “joint venture” whether a PC can have a parallel port some time. It’s an amusing story of idiocy.)
As for the rest, again, you seem to confuse Windows NT with Windows. That’s kind of like my saying OS X doesn’t support color because Macs in the 1980s didn’t.
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Scott,
At least you could do your homework.
Just because you had applications that had to run a higher level (Most likely Power User and not Administrator) in Windows NT 3.1 did NOT mean that every process ran with full privileges. The OS processes themselves ran in lots of other levels. It isn’t as though somebody at Microsoft was so incompetent as to think that every item in the entire machine has to run as root. (unlike, apparently, every single person connected with the iPhone from the lowest level to Steve Jobs)
As to security being a trade-off with convenience. Of course it is. When I’ve taught security it’s always a part of the opening lecture. When I’ve done security planning for production products that’s always been the trade-off.
It’s kind of like comparing the security requirements for a 1980s PC which connected for a few hours a week to dial-up proprietary bulletin board systems over a 9600 baud modem and a 2007 device designed to have a permanent (relatively) high-speed connection to the Internet. Interestingly, Apple thought the latter could get away with being even less secure than the 1980s dial-up PC. Mind-boggling. Just mind-boggling.
As for your attempt at a history lesson, I was there at the dawn of the Third Age of PCs…
In 1988, Microsoft and had shipped OS/2 1.0 (and 1.1 late that Fall) and Gordon Letwin and his team at Microsoft were working on OS/2 2.x with IBM’s teams in Boca Raton, Florida and Hursley in the UK with IBM’s requirement that it had to run on the 80286 architecture and not use the 386 because IBM didn’t want PCs to cannibalize the System/36 market. Apple was releasing Macintosh System 6.0 and later that year, releasing 6.0.1 and 6.0.2. DEC had Dave Cutler and his team at the DECWest lab in Bellevue, Washington working on Prism untile DEC cancelled Prism in the Fall. At that point, he took his team the 3/4 of a mile from DECWest to Microsoft Main Campus to work on the next generation of IBM/Microsoft software. Now, in 1989, IBM and Microsoft started feuding over supporting the 80386 architecture in OS/2 and they agreed that IBM would take over the 80286 specific OS/2 2.0 and Microsoft would start on OS/2 3.0.
Should you like to actually learn how a modern operating system (Like OS/2 or Windows NT) I’d suggest reading Gordon Letwin’s Inside OS/2 and Helen Custer’s Inside Windows NT. Both are excellent and available used.
Perhaps you can give us a little history lesson on Gershwin? Or Copland? Or Apples wonderful success working with IBM on Taligent and Kaleida or CHRP or PREP? (Ask anybody who worked in that “joint venture” whether a PC can have a parallel port some time. It’s an amusing story of idiocy.)
As for the rest, again, you seem to confuse Windows NT with Windows. That’s kind of like my saying OS X doesn’t support color because Macs in the 1980s didn’t.
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Oh, yet, to make sure nobody thinks you got this timeline right either…
You said, “You seem to have forgotten there was nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1 where even enterprise users couldn’t buy a Microsoft OS that didn’t run every process as “root.” ”
The first IBM compatible PC with hardware that supported a protected mode was the Intel 80286 based IBM PC-AT in 1984. The first Microsoft OS for that architecture that supported processes running in different privileges was Microsoft OS/2 1.0 which was out less than 3 years later.
Less than 3 years is one big stretch of “nearly a decade”.
Oh, and since you said “nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1” let’s look at your nearly a decade for Windows rather than for non-protected mode OSs. Here we do get closer. The gap between Windows 1.0 and Windows NT 3.1 was 7 1/2 years so while it’s technically silly, you’re only exagerating by 33% rather than 300%.
Of course, there were virtually no “enterprise users” of Windows prior to 3.0 so that would be more like 3 years and we’re back to 300% exageration and Windows 3.1 really was the one that took Windows into corporations so now your “nearly a decade” is 2 years.
And, to really see how far off you are, since Windows 3.1 was the first Windows that had any real penetration into “Enterprise users” and it shipped 3 years after Microsoft OS/2 1.0 which didn’t run programs as “root”, you’re, what, a negative percentage of exageration? An imaginary number? We’ll leave naming it to anybody reading.
BTW: the first Microsoft OS that supported multiple security modes was Microsoft Xenix which shipped on the Tandy 6000 running on a Motorola 68000 in 1983. (It isn’t that Microsoft didn’t know about Unix, they just realized it was getting long in the tooth even back then)
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Oh, yet, to make sure nobody thinks you got this timeline right either…
You said, “You seem to have forgotten there was nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1 where even enterprise users couldn’t buy a Microsoft OS that didn’t run every process as “root.” ”
The first IBM compatible PC with hardware that supported a protected mode was the Intel 80286 based IBM PC-AT in 1984. The first Microsoft OS for that architecture that supported processes running in different privileges was Microsoft OS/2 1.0 which was out less than 3 years later.
Less than 3 years is one big stretch of “nearly a decade”.
Oh, and since you said “nearly a decade of Windows before NT 3.1” let’s look at your nearly a decade for Windows rather than for non-protected mode OSs. Here we do get closer. The gap between Windows 1.0 and Windows NT 3.1 was 7 1/2 years so while it’s technically silly, you’re only exagerating by 33% rather than 300%.
Of course, there were virtually no “enterprise users” of Windows prior to 3.0 so that would be more like 3 years and we’re back to 300% exageration and Windows 3.1 really was the one that took Windows into corporations so now your “nearly a decade” is 2 years.
And, to really see how far off you are, since Windows 3.1 was the first Windows that had any real penetration into “Enterprise users” and it shipped 3 years after Microsoft OS/2 1.0 which didn’t run programs as “root”, you’re, what, a negative percentage of exageration? An imaginary number? We’ll leave naming it to anybody reading.
BTW: the first Microsoft OS that supported multiple security modes was Microsoft Xenix which shipped on the Tandy 6000 running on a Motorola 68000 in 1983. (It isn’t that Microsoft didn’t know about Unix, they just realized it was getting long in the tooth even back then)
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Mike,
Again, you’re missing my point (or trying to dodge the issue) You’re initial comment was….
“Yep. Looks like five months is what it took for Apple to realize that running every process on the iPhone as root (Full Administrator Privileges) with a known password was a bad idea”
I simply pointed out that..
– At least one version of Windows ran all processes with root privileges for significantly more than five months. This had significant impact on the architecture of Windows, users and third party applications.
– The ability to run applications as non-root in versions of Windows based on the NT kernel was difficult to impractical in non-enterprise settings for significantly more than five months. This was due to the way security was implemented across the two parallel development paths of Windows (NT and DOS based).
To be fair, I also pointed out that the fact that either of these situations existed had nothing to do with Microsoft not “realizing that running everything as root was a bad idea.” It was a decision based on convenience, time to market and compatibility vs. security. While I don’t agree with many of the choices that Microsoft made, I can see the rational behind them.
Yet, when I outlined several reasonable and logical scenarios as to why Apple would delay shipping a SDK for the iPhone, you dismissed them as utter and complete fiction. Sound familiar?
Now, it seems that you’re the one who doing the speculating by assuming Apple was incompetent instead of simply dealing with release schedules and setbacks as every other OS developer has done in the past. Care to back up that claim with any real proof? Otherwise, you’re merely one of the many Microsoft shrills and stockholders creating FUD about the iPhone. (For the record, I do not own any Apple stock, although I wish I did)
And, to return to the original topic of the thread, it appears that Apple has done what you claimed was impossible – shipping a iPhone SDK in January. Apple will have a next generation platform, OS and public SDK based on Core Animation.
So Mike, I’l ask again. Where is Microsoft’s next generation platform OS and SDK based on WPF? All I’ve seen from Microsoft was an alpha demo of Silverlight running a sports widget. And, last time I checked, you can’t write a next generation mobile OS using a browser plugin. However, since there isn’t a shipping platform or even a OS that’s been publicly released, nor have there haven’t been any official announcements my Microsoft, any information you might have would be purely…. speculation on your part.
Are you going to dodge the question for a third time?
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Mike,
Again, you’re missing my point (or trying to dodge the issue) You’re initial comment was….
“Yep. Looks like five months is what it took for Apple to realize that running every process on the iPhone as root (Full Administrator Privileges) with a known password was a bad idea”
I simply pointed out that..
– At least one version of Windows ran all processes with root privileges for significantly more than five months. This had significant impact on the architecture of Windows, users and third party applications.
– The ability to run applications as non-root in versions of Windows based on the NT kernel was difficult to impractical in non-enterprise settings for significantly more than five months. This was due to the way security was implemented across the two parallel development paths of Windows (NT and DOS based).
To be fair, I also pointed out that the fact that either of these situations existed had nothing to do with Microsoft not “realizing that running everything as root was a bad idea.” It was a decision based on convenience, time to market and compatibility vs. security. While I don’t agree with many of the choices that Microsoft made, I can see the rational behind them.
Yet, when I outlined several reasonable and logical scenarios as to why Apple would delay shipping a SDK for the iPhone, you dismissed them as utter and complete fiction. Sound familiar?
Now, it seems that you’re the one who doing the speculating by assuming Apple was incompetent instead of simply dealing with release schedules and setbacks as every other OS developer has done in the past. Care to back up that claim with any real proof? Otherwise, you’re merely one of the many Microsoft shrills and stockholders creating FUD about the iPhone. (For the record, I do not own any Apple stock, although I wish I did)
And, to return to the original topic of the thread, it appears that Apple has done what you claimed was impossible – shipping a iPhone SDK in January. Apple will have a next generation platform, OS and public SDK based on Core Animation.
So Mike, I’l ask again. Where is Microsoft’s next generation platform OS and SDK based on WPF? All I’ve seen from Microsoft was an alpha demo of Silverlight running a sports widget. And, last time I checked, you can’t write a next generation mobile OS using a browser plugin. However, since there isn’t a shipping platform or even a OS that’s been publicly released, nor have there haven’t been any official announcements my Microsoft, any information you might have would be purely…. speculation on your part.
Are you going to dodge the question for a third time?
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Nope. You said “… it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’…”
That’s clearly wrong and meant to imply that Windows prior to Vista was as stupidly broken as the iPhone.
Rewriting history is bad enough. Doing when the original statement is availble by scrolling up the page is just sad.
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Nope. You said “… it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’…”
That’s clearly wrong and meant to imply that Windows prior to Vista was as stupidly broken as the iPhone.
Rewriting history is bad enough. Doing when the original statement is availble by scrolling up the page is just sad.
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Mike wrote:”Nope. You said “… it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’…””
To which I replied “You’re right. NT 3.1 was technically capable of running processes as “non-root”. However, as with most Microsoft products, it wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist – the implementation was the problem. NT was a targeted at the workstation / enterprise market and it was very impractical for general use.” and clarified my statement.
Guess you’re still dogging the question.
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Mike wrote:”Nope. You said “… it was only with in the last year that Windows even had the ability to run specific process as ‘non-root’…””
To which I replied “You’re right. NT 3.1 was technically capable of running processes as “non-root”. However, as with most Microsoft products, it wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist – the implementation was the problem. NT was a targeted at the workstation / enterprise market and it was very impractical for general use.” and clarified my statement.
Guess you’re still dogging the question.
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Nope. The thread was my stating how ludicrous it was the Apple shipped the iPhone (iVirus? iTrojan?) with every process running as root with a low quality easily broken (as in less than a week after ship) password.
You said MS did the same thing for a decade.
I showed they never did.
You tried to pretend you said something different. (But still wrong)
I didn’t let you change history.
You tried to pretend again that what’s clearly readable by scrolling up didn’t happen by acting as though some user apps were the same thing as all processes in the system.
I called you on rewriting history (and getting the tech wrong again)
And that’s where we are today…
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Nope. The thread was my stating how ludicrous it was the Apple shipped the iPhone (iVirus? iTrojan?) with every process running as root with a low quality easily broken (as in less than a week after ship) password.
You said MS did the same thing for a decade.
I showed they never did.
You tried to pretend you said something different. (But still wrong)
I didn’t let you change history.
You tried to pretend again that what’s clearly readable by scrolling up didn’t happen by acting as though some user apps were the same thing as all processes in the system.
I called you on rewriting history (and getting the tech wrong again)
And that’s where we are today…
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Mike, It’s seems that you’re not listening.
I concede that you are correct as to the exact dates. A version of Windows was technically capable of running processes as non-root much earlier than a year ago. I do not deny these facts. However, the exact dates and capabilities I mentioned are not critical to the point I was making and you know it.
You claimed that the announcement of an iPhone SDK in January somehow proved that Apple “it took Apple five months to figure out running running the iPhone as root was bad.” As if it was incompetent.
My point was, to quote my original post,
“[In regard to gaps in the ability to run Windows apps as non-root] Of course, we both know there were other considerations in play, such as backwards compatibility, time to market, development resources, etc. Had Microsoft really wanted to make security it’s number one priority, we could had seen Vista like account controls much earlier.”
If you can’t actually run the Windows apps you need to run as non-root (or if it’s extremely inconvenient to do so) the existence of this technical ability is effectually moot. This is like having a car that technically comes with an alarm, but you can only turn on in specific parking places. In addition, Microsoft was among the developers who released apps that must be run a user with administrative rights. This clearly illustrates how Microsoft inconstantly implemented security across the entire Windows platform.
Until the release of Vista, this was an significant issue that existed for significantly more than five months. However, unlike your claim about the iPhone and Apple, I acknowledged from the start that there was more to the situation than just Microsoft “only recently figuring out that running everything as root was bad.”
Microsoft knew what it was doing and choose to let this issue go unresolved instead of breaking compatibility and making Windows less convenient to use. Claiming Apple was incompetent for taking five months to deal with release schedules and setbacks, as every other OS developer has done in the past, compared multiple gaps of several years in Windows, is speculation and hypocrisy. This was the point of my original post.
And it seems a refresher on the original topic of this thread is needed:
– –
Mike: Apple can’t release a SDK for the iPhone. Says I’m speculating.
Scott: Apple has a shipping platform, OS and working private SDK. Apple has in no way explicitly excluded the public release of a native SDK.
– –
Scott: Asks were Microsoft’s Next Gen mobile platform, OS and SDK.
Mike: Says it’s irrelevant since Apple can’t release an SDK.
– –
Apple: Announces public iPhone SDK
– –
Mike: Makes a claim that Apple “just recently figured out running the iPhone as root is bad” since it will have run as root for 5 months.
Scott: Points out that gaps in Windows ability to run apps as non-root did not imply Microsoft “just recently figured out running Windows apps as root is bad.” Makes specific claims about these gaps. Notes that now Mike is speculating.
Scott: Asks again for Microsoft’s next fen Mobile platform, OS and SDK since iPhone SDK is no longer speculation.
Mike: Says I’m technically wrong about specific gaps.
Mike: Doges question on next gen Mobile platform, OS and SDK.
Scott: Concedes that Mike is technically correct about specific aspects of these gaps, but notes that premise still stands. Points to blog post by Jim Allchin that confirms signifiant problems running apps as anyone but administrator did exist until recently fixed in Vista.
Mike: Keeps pointing out details about the gaps were technical wrong (dates, etc.), which I already acknowledged. Ignores central point.
Mike: Keeps dogging question about non existent next gen Microsoft Window Mobile platform.
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Mike, It’s seems that you’re not listening.
I concede that you are correct as to the exact dates. A version of Windows was technically capable of running processes as non-root much earlier than a year ago. I do not deny these facts. However, the exact dates and capabilities I mentioned are not critical to the point I was making and you know it.
You claimed that the announcement of an iPhone SDK in January somehow proved that Apple “it took Apple five months to figure out running running the iPhone as root was bad.” As if it was incompetent.
My point was, to quote my original post,
“[In regard to gaps in the ability to run Windows apps as non-root] Of course, we both know there were other considerations in play, such as backwards compatibility, time to market, development resources, etc. Had Microsoft really wanted to make security it’s number one priority, we could had seen Vista like account controls much earlier.”
If you can’t actually run the Windows apps you need to run as non-root (or if it’s extremely inconvenient to do so) the existence of this technical ability is effectually moot. This is like having a car that technically comes with an alarm, but you can only turn on in specific parking places. In addition, Microsoft was among the developers who released apps that must be run a user with administrative rights. This clearly illustrates how Microsoft inconstantly implemented security across the entire Windows platform.
Until the release of Vista, this was an significant issue that existed for significantly more than five months. However, unlike your claim about the iPhone and Apple, I acknowledged from the start that there was more to the situation than just Microsoft “only recently figuring out that running everything as root was bad.”
Microsoft knew what it was doing and choose to let this issue go unresolved instead of breaking compatibility and making Windows less convenient to use. Claiming Apple was incompetent for taking five months to deal with release schedules and setbacks, as every other OS developer has done in the past, compared multiple gaps of several years in Windows, is speculation and hypocrisy. This was the point of my original post.
And it seems a refresher on the original topic of this thread is needed:
– –
Mike: Apple can’t release a SDK for the iPhone. Says I’m speculating.
Scott: Apple has a shipping platform, OS and working private SDK. Apple has in no way explicitly excluded the public release of a native SDK.
– –
Scott: Asks were Microsoft’s Next Gen mobile platform, OS and SDK.
Mike: Says it’s irrelevant since Apple can’t release an SDK.
– –
Apple: Announces public iPhone SDK
– –
Mike: Makes a claim that Apple “just recently figured out running the iPhone as root is bad” since it will have run as root for 5 months.
Scott: Points out that gaps in Windows ability to run apps as non-root did not imply Microsoft “just recently figured out running Windows apps as root is bad.” Makes specific claims about these gaps. Notes that now Mike is speculating.
Scott: Asks again for Microsoft’s next fen Mobile platform, OS and SDK since iPhone SDK is no longer speculation.
Mike: Says I’m technically wrong about specific gaps.
Mike: Doges question on next gen Mobile platform, OS and SDK.
Scott: Concedes that Mike is technically correct about specific aspects of these gaps, but notes that premise still stands. Points to blog post by Jim Allchin that confirms signifiant problems running apps as anyone but administrator did exist until recently fixed in Vista.
Mike: Keeps pointing out details about the gaps were technical wrong (dates, etc.), which I already acknowledged. Ignores central point.
Mike: Keeps dogging question about non existent next gen Microsoft Window Mobile platform.
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No. Once again…
Apple has EVERY PROCESS on the iPhone running as root.
You claimed Microsoft did this until last year.
Microsoft NEVER did this with any operating system that had different privileges.
Microsoft Xenix NEVER DID
Microsoft OS|2 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows NT NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows 2000 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows XP NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows Vista DOESN’T
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 beta DOESN’T
Microsoft Windows CE NEVER DID AND DOESN’T
It’s that simple.
Now, deal with that and we can change the subject to one you’d rather talk about. But, first, deal with that.
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No. Once again…
Apple has EVERY PROCESS on the iPhone running as root.
You claimed Microsoft did this until last year.
Microsoft NEVER did this with any operating system that had different privileges.
Microsoft Xenix NEVER DID
Microsoft OS|2 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows NT NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows 2000 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows XP NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 NEVER DID
Microsoft Windows Vista DOESN’T
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 beta DOESN’T
Microsoft Windows CE NEVER DID AND DOESN’T
It’s that simple.
Now, deal with that and we can change the subject to one you’d rather talk about. But, first, deal with that.
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Testing. 1 – 2 – 3.
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Testing. 1 – 2 – 3.
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Mike wrote: “Apple has EVERY PROCESS on the iPhone running as root.”
Don’t deny this at all. However, I do deny your claim that this fact implies Apple just recently figured out running all process as root was a bad idea. It’s pure speculation on your part.
Mike wrote: “You claimed Microsoft did this until last year.”
To which I admitted that, technically, I was incorrect.
Mike wrote: “Microsoft NEVER did this with any operating system that had different privileges.”
I do not dispute this.
However, Microsoft never added the ability to run processes as ‘non-root’ to any of the following versions of Windows.
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 1.0 was shipped in 1985. Windows ME was shipped in 2000. This was a span of 15 years. However, this in no way implies that Microsoft didn’t realize it was a bad idea to effectively run all processes as ‘root.’
While Microsoft did ship home and enterprise versions of Windows that supported different privilege levels, many users ran as administrator due to lack of a lease-privileged security model and legacy Windows architectural issues that had yet to be resolved.
In 2006, Microsoft released Windows Vista , which added User Account Control, providing support for lease-privileged operation, and Data Redirection, which virtualizes the registry and certain parts of the file system to applications requiring elevated privileges to function correctly. These changes, among others, made it significantly more practical for users to run applications as ‘non-root.’
Now that we’ve cleared that up, do you have any support to backup your original claim? Otherwise, you’re simply speculating. Sound familiar?
And since the original topic of this thread, an IPhone SDK, is no longer in the realm of speculation, I’ll ask again. Where is Microsoft’s next generation mobile platform, OS and SDK?
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Mike wrote: “Apple has EVERY PROCESS on the iPhone running as root.”
Don’t deny this at all. However, I do deny your claim that this fact implies Apple just recently figured out running all process as root was a bad idea. It’s pure speculation on your part.
Mike wrote: “You claimed Microsoft did this until last year.”
To which I admitted that, technically, I was incorrect.
Mike wrote: “Microsoft NEVER did this with any operating system that had different privileges.”
I do not dispute this.
However, Microsoft never added the ability to run processes as ‘non-root’ to any of the following versions of Windows.
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 1.0 was shipped in 1985. Windows ME was shipped in 2000. This was a span of 15 years. However, this in no way implies that Microsoft didn’t realize it was a bad idea to effectively run all processes as ‘root.’
While Microsoft did ship home and enterprise versions of Windows that supported different privilege levels, many users ran as administrator due to lack of a lease-privileged security model and legacy Windows architectural issues that had yet to be resolved.
In 2006, Microsoft released Windows Vista , which added User Account Control, providing support for lease-privileged operation, and Data Redirection, which virtualizes the registry and certain parts of the file system to applications requiring elevated privileges to function correctly. These changes, among others, made it significantly more practical for users to run applications as ‘non-root.’
Now that we’ve cleared that up, do you have any support to backup your original claim? Otherwise, you’re simply speculating. Sound familiar?
And since the original topic of this thread, an IPhone SDK, is no longer in the realm of speculation, I’ll ask again. Where is Microsoft’s next generation mobile platform, OS and SDK?
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I’d also note that – as you repeatedly mentioned – the iPhone will have been without a SDK during the five months it ran everything as root. As such, no debuggers or compliers were provided to created executable code that could run on the phone. This makes it extremely difficult to find and create exploits for the device.
Only though the unprecedented effort the world wide iPhone developer community were third-party debuggers and compliers were created for the device.
And Mike, I’m still waiting on details of Microsoft’s next-generation mobile platform, OS and SDK.
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I’d also note that – as you repeatedly mentioned – the iPhone will have been without a SDK during the five months it ran everything as root. As such, no debuggers or compliers were provided to created executable code that could run on the phone. This makes it extremely difficult to find and create exploits for the device.
Only though the unprecedented effort the world wide iPhone developer community were third-party debuggers and compliers were created for the device.
And Mike, I’m still waiting on details of Microsoft’s next-generation mobile platform, OS and SDK.
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Now you think it’s OK to have every process in an always connected device run as root because there isn’t an official SDK so not having an SDK is a good thing…
Yeesh.
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Now you think it’s OK to have every process in an always connected device run as root because there isn’t an official SDK so not having an SDK is a good thing…
Yeesh.
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re: I’m still waiting on details of Microsoft’s next-generation mobile platform, OS and SDK.
What do you mean by “next generation”?
Microsoft’s mobile platform is on it’s 5th Generation
There has been an SDK and developer tools for every release since it came out
It’s mobile OS was architected for portable devices in the late 1990s
Apple’s mobile platform is still waiting for it’s 1st Generation (After all, even you admit it isn’t mature enough for an SDK, yet – kind of feels like a Linux project that’s in a perpetual 0.9.x.x release since they never get it quite clean enough to call it a 1.0)
There has never been an SDK or developer tools for it and we have no idea what Apple will or won’t allow to ship via their “we’re the only place you can get software” channel.
It’s OS was architected for minicomputers doing telecommunications work in the late 1960s.
So, define “next generation” and we can talk. It looks to me like Apple has a very, very long way to go.
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re: I’m still waiting on details of Microsoft’s next-generation mobile platform, OS and SDK.
What do you mean by “next generation”?
Microsoft’s mobile platform is on it’s 5th Generation
There has been an SDK and developer tools for every release since it came out
It’s mobile OS was architected for portable devices in the late 1990s
Apple’s mobile platform is still waiting for it’s 1st Generation (After all, even you admit it isn’t mature enough for an SDK, yet – kind of feels like a Linux project that’s in a perpetual 0.9.x.x release since they never get it quite clean enough to call it a 1.0)
There has never been an SDK or developer tools for it and we have no idea what Apple will or won’t allow to ship via their “we’re the only place you can get software” channel.
It’s OS was architected for minicomputers doing telecommunications work in the late 1960s.
So, define “next generation” and we can talk. It looks to me like Apple has a very, very long way to go.
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Mike wrote: “Now you think it’s OK to have every process in an always connected device run as root because there isn’t an official SDK so not having an SDK is a good thing…”
Quite the contrary.
I’m simply noting that another valid reason why Apple would delay the release of an iPhone SDK. This is in contrast to your previous claim that Apple couldn’t release a SDK because it didn’t explicitly pre -announce it.
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Mike wrote: “Now you think it’s OK to have every process in an always connected device run as root because there isn’t an official SDK so not having an SDK is a good thing…”
Quite the contrary.
I’m simply noting that another valid reason why Apple would delay the release of an iPhone SDK. This is in contrast to your previous claim that Apple couldn’t release a SDK because it didn’t explicitly pre -announce it.
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Mike wrote: “What do you mean by “next generation”?
How about a OS that can run more than 32 processes at a time. Or an OS with a UI and application framework based on a version of WPF?
Since Microsoft is touting WPF as the next-generation graphics architecture in Vista, we know it will eventually show up in Windows Mobile, but the question is when? However, Windows Mobile isn’t running NT, it’s running CE 5.0.
While Photon will be based on CE 6.0, Microsoft can’t simply retarget it’s NT implementation of WPF. Instead, it will need to create a separate implementation for mobile devices (Just as it creates a separate CLR for the XBOX 360 and WM) and a whole new mobile UI to take advantage of it. This isn’t a simple task.
Mike wrote: “Apple’s mobile platform is still waiting for it’s 1st Generation (After all, even you admit it isn’t mature enough for an SDK, yet …)”
Yet the iPhone already supports Core Animation (WPF like, hardware assisted animation used in Leopard), Cocoa application frameworks and runs on the same cross-platform Objective-C runtime and XNU kernel as found in Mac OS X. From an architectural perspective, the iPhone already has a significant advantage. And if the SDK is anything like what we get with Mac OS X, it should have a rich, well-designed API built on an object-oriented foundation that’s been maturing since NeXT STEP in the early 80s.
Mike wrote: “It’s OS was architected for minicomputers doing telecommunications work in the late 1960s.”
Which is precisely what allows it to scale from a hand-held devices, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch to multi-processor workstations, such as the Mac Pro.
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Mike wrote: “What do you mean by “next generation”?
How about a OS that can run more than 32 processes at a time. Or an OS with a UI and application framework based on a version of WPF?
Since Microsoft is touting WPF as the next-generation graphics architecture in Vista, we know it will eventually show up in Windows Mobile, but the question is when? However, Windows Mobile isn’t running NT, it’s running CE 5.0.
While Photon will be based on CE 6.0, Microsoft can’t simply retarget it’s NT implementation of WPF. Instead, it will need to create a separate implementation for mobile devices (Just as it creates a separate CLR for the XBOX 360 and WM) and a whole new mobile UI to take advantage of it. This isn’t a simple task.
Mike wrote: “Apple’s mobile platform is still waiting for it’s 1st Generation (After all, even you admit it isn’t mature enough for an SDK, yet …)”
Yet the iPhone already supports Core Animation (WPF like, hardware assisted animation used in Leopard), Cocoa application frameworks and runs on the same cross-platform Objective-C runtime and XNU kernel as found in Mac OS X. From an architectural perspective, the iPhone already has a significant advantage. And if the SDK is anything like what we get with Mac OS X, it should have a rich, well-designed API built on an object-oriented foundation that’s been maturing since NeXT STEP in the early 80s.
Mike wrote: “It’s OS was architected for minicomputers doing telecommunications work in the late 1960s.”
Which is precisely what allows it to scale from a hand-held devices, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch to multi-processor workstations, such as the Mac Pro.
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Mike wrote: “So, define “next generation” and we can talk.”
Was my definition not clear enough?
Mike wrote: “Actually, Tim, I’d say that 1st month sales on a “must have” “fashion accessory” say nothing either way about its success in even the short run. … Ask me again in two months and then we can see if you can predict my words.”
Q3 2007 sales show the iphone captured 27% of the US smart phone market and 3% of the overall US cellphone market.
http://tinyurl.com/39lrju
This puts the iPhone is second place behind Blackberry and slightly ahead of Windows Mobile. Even though, as you’ve so clearly pointed out, the iPhone doesn’t even support third-party applications. Yet.
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Mike wrote: “So, define “next generation” and we can talk.”
Was my definition not clear enough?
Mike wrote: “Actually, Tim, I’d say that 1st month sales on a “must have” “fashion accessory” say nothing either way about its success in even the short run. … Ask me again in two months and then we can see if you can predict my words.”
Q3 2007 sales show the iphone captured 27% of the US smart phone market and 3% of the overall US cellphone market.
http://tinyurl.com/39lrju
This puts the iPhone is second place behind Blackberry and slightly ahead of Windows Mobile. Even though, as you’ve so clearly pointed out, the iPhone doesn’t even support third-party applications. Yet.
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If Apple were to partner with Adobe and have Flash installed on both the iPod Touch and iPhone then both companies would need to agree on terms in respect to compete.
QuickTime vs Flash for video, given the Scobles of today get eyeballs, whom wants to retain that format and why is an entire conversation on that topic alone.
Ecosystem to support the formats, ok both have socket influence and given Final Cut Pro does compete with Adobe CS3 Master Suite for example there is going to be some rules of engagement there that need drafting.
Finally Adobe AIR vs Safari, as if Apple are going to keep pushing Safari out the door as a proposed Web solution, given Adobe AIR uses a key ingredient of thus solution + flash capabilities. Well this is were it also can get murky.
I have serious doubts Flash is ever going to make it onto the iPhone / iPod Touch and we haven’t even touched on the OEM pricing for Flash Player (ie assume there is still a price negotiation to be had as will Adobe forgive this possible sale?)
*shrug* just some random thoughts to throw out there..
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If Apple were to partner with Adobe and have Flash installed on both the iPod Touch and iPhone then both companies would need to agree on terms in respect to compete.
QuickTime vs Flash for video, given the Scobles of today get eyeballs, whom wants to retain that format and why is an entire conversation on that topic alone.
Ecosystem to support the formats, ok both have socket influence and given Final Cut Pro does compete with Adobe CS3 Master Suite for example there is going to be some rules of engagement there that need drafting.
Finally Adobe AIR vs Safari, as if Apple are going to keep pushing Safari out the door as a proposed Web solution, given Adobe AIR uses a key ingredient of thus solution + flash capabilities. Well this is were it also can get murky.
I have serious doubts Flash is ever going to make it onto the iPhone / iPod Touch and we haven’t even touched on the OEM pricing for Flash Player (ie assume there is still a price negotiation to be had as will Adobe forgive this possible sale?)
*shrug* just some random thoughts to throw out there..
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Scott,
The iPhone uses a hardware decoding solution to play H.264 video in realtime. Flash on Mac OS X uses OpenGL to accelerate drawing. These pose significant challenges to Flash on the iPhone.
However, both of these issues may be resolved if Flash drawing can be remapped to the iPhone’s implementation of OpenGLES and the playback of Flash video content was restricted to H.264, which Adobe recently added support for in the latest version of the Flash player.
It’s possible that OpenGLES may not have enough functionality to accelerate the entire Flash drawing API as it is a subset of the full OpenGL standard on Mac OS X. But it seems a safe bet that Flash H.264 playback could be decoded by the iPhone’s hardware decoding chip. The legacy On 2 and Sorenson Spark codecs probably couldn’t be accelerated and would likely be unsupported.
Of course, this doesn’t address the CPU time required to execute ActionScript 3.0 code, interpolate keyframe values, etc.
And, as you mentioned, licensing is a completely different issue.
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Scott,
The iPhone uses a hardware decoding solution to play H.264 video in realtime. Flash on Mac OS X uses OpenGL to accelerate drawing. These pose significant challenges to Flash on the iPhone.
However, both of these issues may be resolved if Flash drawing can be remapped to the iPhone’s implementation of OpenGLES and the playback of Flash video content was restricted to H.264, which Adobe recently added support for in the latest version of the Flash player.
It’s possible that OpenGLES may not have enough functionality to accelerate the entire Flash drawing API as it is a subset of the full OpenGL standard on Mac OS X. But it seems a safe bet that Flash H.264 playback could be decoded by the iPhone’s hardware decoding chip. The legacy On 2 and Sorenson Spark codecs probably couldn’t be accelerated and would likely be unsupported.
Of course, this doesn’t address the CPU time required to execute ActionScript 3.0 code, interpolate keyframe values, etc.
And, as you mentioned, licensing is a completely different issue.
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