...more recent posts
A lot to process in Apple's recent developer's preview of iPhone OS 4.0 (which will be the next iPad OS as well.) I'm going to try to just give a quick run down.
Multi-tasking is finally arriving which has been a big missing piece at least in the sense of people talking about it being missing, if not in the sense that people actually ran into situations very often where they really needed it since the OS actually did multi-task - just not for 3rd party apps. In any case, it's here, and it looks to be pretty sophisticated in the sense of operating transparently to the user and not harming battery life very much. The trade off is that the implementation only allows specific activities to go on in the background. But these should cover what people want (allowing for VoIP, turn by turn GPS navigation, non iTunes background music streaming like Pandora.)
Apple also announced an in App ad platform, iAd, which allows developers to easily place ads inside their applications. This is something they could already do by themselves, but this makes it much easier. Ads are built completely in HTML5 and do not take you out of the application when clicked on (presently ads open in Safari, taking you away from the app.) Apple takes 40%, but does all the hosting and takes care of the transactions. Personally I don't care too much about this, but it seems like an okay deal if you're a developer and there are certainly lots of apps that I wouldn't mind advertising to be a part of if it means I can download them for free. In terms of AAPL this could be a pretty big deal I think.
And the giant Apple is great / evil debate continues to rage. Cory Doctorow is clearly the leader of the anti Apple camp with his post Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't either). Gizmodo's Joel Johnson takes the bait other side with Cory Doctorow you are a consumer too. And these same arguments are played out in countless blogs and bulletin boards across the web. It's really interesting how polarizing the iPad (the iPhone OS really) is. I think I can see the danger that people like Cory are warning about. And I definitely feel the excitement of a new computing paradigm taking shape that iPad fans are swept up in. Like many things I don't think there is a clear side to come down on. Maybe I'm closest to Nicholas Carr's take which, if you're at all interested in this debate, I think is worth a read.
And lastly, now that the iPad has been in people's hands for a week we're starting to get some really thorough reviews. I'll go more into this later, but the major thing for me is what appears to be the only big negative. Apple just doesn't have document sharing and syncing worked out. This is exhaustively documented here. This is related to the general and radical way the iPhone OS deals with files. That is, the way it does away with the whole notion of a file system. This of course ties into the great debate above as the anti Apple camp sees this as only a bid for control while the other side sees it, variously, as the evolution of computing and a way to get this technology into the hands of everyone. But that debate is something of a trap I think if it stops us from thinking the real problem through. How can we make computers more simple, but not lose computing power in the process? Google's Android is perhaps way ahead in this one area as they really know how to use the cloud for storage. Apple is firmly tied to syncing through iTunes (attached through USB no less!) This could be the chink in Apple's armor. I don't think they have too long to get it right.
Oh yeah, and also there was a change in the developer's tools terms of service which kills Adobe's plans to allow Flash developers to cross compile to the iPhone (and Android, and Windows 7, etc...) Much ink is being spilled on this as an extension of the great debate but really this is a sideshow in my opinion. If I have time I'll put a short summary in comments but basically this part of the debate (although not necessarily the whole debate) is being blown out of proportion.
It's not clear yet if this amounts to more than a small effort by some niche group inside the company, but Google has created a grant to fund TheorARM, an ARM optimized version of the Theora video codec. This is a good thing even if it's the case that Theora can never be as sophisticated as h.264 (which seems true to me although is clearly beyond my expertise.) I think the idea here would just be to have a "good enough" fall back codec that is free in both senses.
But is google just funding it, or are they going to push it too? The post doesn't say anything about them actually using it (like, say, switching YouTube to it.) I can't imagine they would do that. Or how about on the hardware side? Are they going to order a couple million chips for the Nexus Two with TheorARM decode hardware? Having the optimized codec is great, but if it's not present in commodity chips than it won't matter and it probably won't get into chips unless someone big orders a huge amount of them.
And then there is the unclear patent situation. MPEG-LA has hinted that they may have patents that Theora violates (but I guess of course they would hint that.) And of course there are tons of other patent trolls out there as well just waiting to sink this ship (or any ship for that matter.)
Still, this makes me a little hopeful. It's certainly a small step in the right direction. We'll see what the analysis is from people who know more than me.
I got to play around with an iPad last night for a few minutes. Not much to report except that it feels exactly like I thought it would. Which is to say perfect. But you knew they'd get the size and shape and weight right. That's what they do best. Beyond that it's hard to say too much from such a brief encounter. The screen is gorgeous (although being night time I didn't use it in direct sunlight.) It is 100% responsive opening and switching between apps. And everyone at the table, including several people who hadn't heard of it and really don't care about such things, were crowded around looking at it completely enthralled.
Fake Steve Jobs has an open letter to the world that's pretty funny in an accurate way. Or is that accurate in a funny way? Dear human race, First of all, you’re welcome.
A couple of super geeky video related links. Super technical but I thought Mark might be interested at least:
From the Diary of an x264 Developer: Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video which is of course dealing with the HTML5 video codec debate.
Objections to the Ogg container format
Microsoft unveiled their new mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 Series. Outside of the classically bad microsoft naming, pretty much everybody who saw it was impressed. I haven't seen such positive buzz about a Microsoft product ever. This is good for everyone, as competition drives innovation. Three competitors is better for consumers than only two.
On the mobile browser front it will be the only OS that matters that isn't using a WebKit based browser. And in addition, like both WebKit and mobile FireFox, the mobile Windows Phone 7 Series browser (based on Internet Explorer) won't have Flash support at launch. It's just too resource intensive for mobile devices. Adobe is in danger of losing their incredible advantage with Flash as we move from a desktop to mobile computing world.
Surprised I've never stumbled on this before. JetProfiler for monitoring MySQL. Looks very cool. Can't afford the $395 price, but the free version seems helpful enough. Kind of cool that you run it remotely. I have it on my laptop now collecting data from the server.
Google announces plans to build experimental fiber to the home networks in select communities:
We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.1Gb/s? Sign me up.
Amazon buys Touchco a New York based start up that specializes in touch screen technology. They will be merged with Amazon's Kindle group.
FaceBook releases the HipHop PHP to C++ cross compiler as open source
HipHop for PHP isn't technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features — such as eval() — in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP's runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.Wow. At first I thought this was just another opcode cache like APC or eAccelerator but it looks like this is much more. It will be very interesting to see real world numbers on speed improvements, but if FaceBook is happy with the results that is a pretty strong endorsement.
Couple quick thoughts on the iPad:
It's pretty much what I expected. I thought there might be a camera (front facing, for video chat,) but I'm not so surprised there isn't. I didn't expect there to be a keyboard, so I'm a little surprised at that external option.
The price is a little lower than I expected. Apple is clearly gunning to dominate this space in a way they never tried with personal computers.
People are complaining that it's just a big iPhone, but I think John Gruber has it right that the truth is the other way around: the iPhone is a small iPad. This is the product Apple has been trying to make for many years, but it wasn't possible until now. A few years ago they took a lot of the ideas from the then still incubating tablet and made what they could at the time: the iPhone. But this is what they wanted to make, and they just had to wait for the reality of what is possible to catch up with their ideas.
As I predicted, lots of people seem to be enraged by this device (and all the hype around it). They point out, with some accuracy, that there isn't anything new here. Or worse, that there is even less here than lots of other devices that have been on the market for far longer. But this misses the point. The iPod was arguably worse (certainly had less features) than the Creative Jukebox when the iPod debuted. And there was this same sort of "Apple is doomed" talk at the time. How'd that work out for Creative?
The Apple branded CPU ("Apple A4") is interesting for how little Apple will say about it. This isn't to keep things secret, but just because this isn't a product for people who care about the hardware details. But for people who do care, like me, it looks like it's basically an ARM Cortex A9 that Apple tweaked and mated with a GPU (again, pretty much what we thought.) I'm hoping more details come up, but I doubt they'll be from Apple.
And finally, yes, I still think it will be a winner. But remember, it's not the tablet (I think iPad is a bad name, but I absolutely don't think it will matter) that is key. It's the whole hardware / software ecosystem they are building. Nobody else is even thinking on this scale. And that's why it's interesting.
I guess there is some interest in the question of openness. Clearly this isn't an open device. That's the point, Apple wants to completely control the experience because they think they know better than "most people". And while I don't personally like that aspect of it (for instance, I don't think I'll be buying one) that doesn't really have much to do with anything. When it comes to computers most people are not like me. But still, in the abstract, there's nothing ethically wrong with closed computing systems. Nobody complains that they can't load their own software onto a remote control; or that they can't reprogram their refrigerators. If Apple was somehow pushing to make general purpose computers illegal - then there would be a problem. But they're not, and they won't be. Personal computers will continue to exist, with a variety of open and closed architectures and operating systems. The iPad is something different. If someone doesn't like the closed nature, then they shouldn't buy it. But I think a ton of people are going to.
What will the entry level price for the iPad be by Christmas? $399 seems like a not too extravagant guess. $349 maybe? $299 possibly? Probably that's too low too soon, but you get the idea. Can anyone catch up? Does anyone else control the whole stack (from CPU through the OS and all applications? Does anyone else have the volume (iPad + iPod + iPhone - all sharing a ton of components) to drive prices down? I don't think so.