Life Is Rich

I was a bit saddened today to see that the sexiest single U server on the market was being discontinued. That very delineation is probably part of the reason for it’s abandonment. Apple makes hardware (and software) designed around the user experience, and while the Xserve was no exception, the target user isn’t necessarily all that concerned about user experience in the server commodity market. The concern is cost, density, power, cooling, performance, and host of other non-UE concerns. Often, those responsible for purchasing aren’t even involved in the act of deploying or maintaining the boxes – the ultimate IT dissonance effect. Unfortunately, in the server space, users aren’t going to rebel from the IT mantra of “make my life easier”. The datacenter is also a rapidly changing market itself, with a number of very powerful cost drivers that definitely lend to a space very contradictory to Apple’s core values. Density and virtualization are the words of the day, and I can’t imagine Apple wanting to spends it’s limited resources remaining competitive in this space.

Interestingly, Apple could maintain a very strong presence in this market without jeopardizing it’s vaunted control. It might even be what Apple is doing in it’s own new NC data center. What if Apple partnered with VMWare to offer a VM only variant of Mac OS X server that could then run on commodity hardware? This would allow for the requisite controlled hardware and driver environment. The Hackintosh community is already doing this anyway on bare metal. The risk isn’t any greater by offering it in this manner if limited only to the more expensive Server variant. Leave enterprise server hardware to the domain experts in those areas, HP, Dell, IBM, and still maintain a presence in that market – and a revenue stream.

Could you imagine a partnership with Dell selling a datacenter of Blades running OS X under VMWare? Sign me up!

Another year, another WWDC. I generally blog after every WWDC, and this year I’m a bit behind. Honestly, I’ve been torn between watching all the WWDC video sessions and taking care of the house of woe (my whole house has been sick or demobilized for one reason or another for three weeks – including wife, both kids, and one of the two dogs).

Overall, this was the best WWDC for me yet — although this one was a bit different than past years. First, I realized, this was my 5th WWDC. That’s a bit mind boggling to me actually. It just seems like yesterday I started tinkering with Objective-C and Cocoa and cursing the bizarre syntax filled with brackets. It took at least a year I guess before I fell in love with the expressiveness and self-documentation of Objective-C, to the point where I prefer it now much more than anything else I have to deal with.

Probably the more significant difference from previous years was the near total focus on the newly coined, iOS platform – all things iPhone and iPad (and probably more in the near future). Whereas most of my opportunities at my day job and even in my free time were focused on Mac OS X projects, the last year has slowly seen my desire to play more with the iPhoneOS rise. The release of the iPad has pushed me over the edge (although the iPad pushed me over like a Mack truck hitting me at 100mph). I have no doubt that the iPad is revolutionary to mainstream computing – much of which can be credited to iOS, and to the applications being developed in Objective-C and Cocoa. So, the timing of this years totalitarian focus on iOS caught me at the perfect peak of my interest.

The sessions this year felt very well focused, well organized, and much more helpful than years past. Not that the quality was poor before – I just think the solitary focus greatly increased the cohesiveness and content of the sessions. Better yet, these sessions have been made available within 3 weeks to practically everyone for FREE (versus past years where they cost non-attendees $500+ and generally took multiple-months to release). This is truly awesome. You can’t see everything at WWDC – this year even more so than in the past. Often, the videos are so delayed, their timeliness has passed and they’ve already gone a bit stale. Not so this year. I’ve been filling all my spare time obsessively watching these things – including the sessions I had already attended. They also look great on the iPad.

As far as aprés sessions, I did a couple things different this year. First, I took the pilgrimage to mecca and visited Apple headquarters on Sunday. A couple folks (Jeff LaMarche and Scott Knaster I believe) graciously organized a chartered bus from Moscone down to Cupertino for a small fee. Amazingly, I’ve never been to Apple HQ, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to set foot at Infinite Loop and talk with a bunch of great folks on the way there and back.

Of course, Tommy’s was excellent as usual (I went twice). And I definitely like Anejo better than Reposado (which I guess makes sense). Wholly different this year, I generally avoided the crowded parties and opted for dinners and drinks and such with smaller groups.

The yearly Stump the Experts was excellent as usual, minus some commentary that it might be the last year for the even. I certainly hope not — this would be a travesty and also eradicate one of the last vestiges of history and homage to the Mac, and everything that has come before. Not to mention, it’s just plain fun. In “honor” of my experience a couple years back, I got introduced to the crowd at the start of the show again and given free goodies. It keeps my Stump t-shirt streak alive at three!

For those who weren’t able to attend this year due to the sellout, please make sure to buy your ticket on the 2nd day after they go on sale to insure getting a ticket (2nd day – since I’ll be ordering mine on the first day and I don’t want to take any chances!)

The last week has seen quite the bristling of a hypocritical and vociferous group of “developers” and technical pundits. The best recapping of this whole situation can be found at John Gruber’s blog: initial discovery and assessment. The two loudest crowds seem to be the Adobe Flash fans and the C# Mono folks.

Let’s just leave the actual “rule” from Apple aside for a moment and just speak from a user experience perspective.

First, let’s talk performance… The fact that you can make a good performing app with an intermediary language certainly isn’t proof that it isn’t much more likely to have a performant application that is written in a more native language. I mean, if hardware had not gotten faster, we would all be programming in assembly (or C). Abstractions are great for developers but not great for machines. There is a reason Java and C# haven’t taken over the desktop or game development – and the examples that can be given of the few sparse games in those two languages / platforms doesn’t change the fact that other than casual web games and a few Xbox toys, they aren’t used seriously by professional game studios. With mobile platforms, the hardware is going in the opposite direction from desktop hardware. Not to mention, I’m curious about the incongruities of a cross-compiler from a managed memory model to one that isn’t, but hey – maybe they’ve figured it out.

As for user experience, Gruber nailed it. The Kindle application is a very good example of the problem with many cross-platform libraries…. I’ve never seen an application for the Mac written in a language / library other than Objective-C / Cocoa that felt right – and that includes applications written in the Apple approved C / Carbon libraries (which are slowly being deprecated)… If MonoTouch is that good at traversing the paradigms between .NET and Cocoa, that’s damn impressive, but I don’t believe it… The problem is, that on every other platform, interface incongruities are just the norm – expected, so cross-platform libraries are not abhorred as greatly – the users aren’t as discerning. On the Mac and it’s derivatives, consistency of behavior and user experience are tightly defined. I haven’t seen people getting up in arms about the HIG (human interface guidelines). Did you know that you can be rejected from the app store from not complying with the HIG? Now, most would say that’s just more Apple restrictive behavior, but it’s not – it’s protecting the user experience and the platform. Obviously, most didn’t see the HIG requirements as offensive though, although these new requirements are truly enforcing the same thing.

Again, languages and frameworks are not difficult for any experienced developer to pick up. For most programmers, the basics of Objective-C and Cocoa can easily be picked up in days… proficiency can be attained in a couple weeks. Once proficient, why would you choose the targeted platform over another? .NET is a bit a richer than Cocoa, but certainly not worth forsaking the native platform, the tools, the documentation, etc. provided? Flash has no real benefits for a traditionally trained programmer.

As an aside, I think Mono outside of Novell is pretty much dead anyway. I can’t imagine it will ever make major inroads outside of certain niches – folks who need to develop for Linux but have a lot of .NET experience. Many couldn’t be doing Mono right now if they weren’t also Novell partners. Microsoft’s threats have gone a long way in making corporate lawyers nervous, and it’s only through the negotiated protections offered by the Novell / Microsoft partnership that have allowed some to move forward.

As much as everyone has belabored this iPhone OS issue, the rancor towards Microsoft and their general destruction of C# and .NET has never reached similar fervor. The real reason Microsoft has stifled these technologies is often applied to Apple – an anti-competitive bent of protectionism. I don’t deny – I’m sure there is a significant element of this in Apple’s intentions as well – but at least they have a pretty good logical and conceivably more benevolent reason as well.

Even Icaza said it:

“The most important part is that Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant thread of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem. Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java virtual machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by Ballmer that they would come after people that do not license patents from them.”

Of course, Google is our angel – savior from the capitalistic bastards facing us in Cupertino and Redmond. If anyone thinks Google is any more noble and less evil, keep dreaming. Why aren’t they releasing all their new apps for platforms other than Android? Why did they buy AdMobile (which they knew would be a problem with the SEC) in a move to block Apple from acquiring it? To think that Google is any different is naiveté at its extreme.

In the end, I would rather the new iPhone/iPad platform be more open – or at least have more than one pathway to sale and deployment. But, the raucous rancor and fervor exhibited over the last week is nothing but hypocrisy. Bitter hypocrisy…

April 3rd arrives, and with it, the delivery of a new paradigm of end-user computing. Mine happened to be delivered by the UPS woman, all the way from Shenzen, China, molded and formed in the bowels of Cupertino at the bidding of one Steve Jobs. Even as I opined mere months ago in an attempt of prophetic speech, it could not have been anticipated by anyone who’s finger had not laid presence on the device how significant this day would be etched in the computing annals of some future era.

The future is now, and I have seen, nay, caressed it.

Ok, I wax dramatic. It’s some freaking glass, silicon and metal – a small computer with a 9″ screen. This isn’t a technological miracle – this is not some technical innovation that breaks all new barriers of speed, power or even size. What has been brought into this world is a design – albeit an incredible design, that breaks the mold of current end-user computing. After spending a half-day marveling at this device, all I can say is that it truly is a new way of approaching the end-user computing experience, and in every way I have experienced, a vastly superior one.

As of today, 95% of all end-user computing tasks, and probably 100% of most folks typical computer needs, are met with this single device. Not only met, but improved in ways I thought unlikely. This is the first real computer that my parents will ever own that will perform magical incantations of computing without getting in the way. This will be the only computer they will ever need (well, they both will need their own, actually). Amazingly, very few tasks are yet unattainable through this device, and most are external hardware related. Other than software development and some multimedia content creation, I can see even myself almost completely satisfied with this single device. I have no doubt a wave of innovation will appear as the masses explore the capabilities and potential of this device.

No doubt, the iPad has a laundry list of needed improvements and years of maturation, but even in this initial release, it exceeds any and all expectations that I had conceived. It needs a camera (maybe two). It needs some form of 3rd-party application multitasking. It needs better integrated cloud synchronization of data. It would be really swell if the homogeneous application conduit was more open and equitable. Most of the flaws will be fixed, functionality will be amended and increased, and the last vestiges of end-user computing yet attainable by today’s iPad will fall with it, leaving the era of personal computing changed forever.

I’ve been intending to make my obligatory post about the iPad. I mean, how can you have a technical blog with an Apple bent and not? Fortunately, Frasier Spiers has already done a good job at capturing many of my thoughts. (UPDATE: Another good post by Steven Frank)

Even though the “closed-ness” of the iPad (and iPhone) frustrates me, it’s more because I know that the computer world is making a dramatic change that’s no longer focused on me – the geek – and more on everyone else – “normal” folk, where open = complexity and advanced training. Apple has finally made the transition of offering a computer that *is* as easy and approachable as the TV or the standard appliance. This is the future of computing. Not that the open desktop and laptop of today will go away, but they will be relegated to the tinkerers and geeks – which will inevitably mean smaller markets, fewer choices, etc.

The one thing that I haven’t seen anyone comment on greatly is Apple’s recent North Carolina datacenter. I had an aha moment last night. Combine iPad with the cloud, and you have the future of computing for the “common man”. A continuously connected device that is always with you that always has access to your datastore sitting on the future me.com cloud services. It makes sense. Back ups, local storage – it’s not the realm of normals. You can’t make it easy enough. It works great for me, but it never will for my parents – or 90% of the folks out there. The future for the bulk of the population is a device like the iPad along with cloud storage. They can have the entire experience they really want from a computing device without all the mess. Saddens me somewhat, but Frasier is right – partially because the normals will no longer have to rely on me to make the magic work.

This isn’t the technology world I want to live in, but that’s ok. I’ve just gotten accustomed to living in a world where the only way to play the technology game is to be a tinkerer, a geek. That’s coming to an end — it was inevitable — and in the end, that’s a good thing.

I really like Apple products – particularly their OS (be it for the Mac or the iPhone). I’ve never been particularly fond of Apple the company – primarily due to their apparent indifference to developers and even customers – an almost elite aloofness that states, we’re better than you, our products are superior – you’ll do it our way or you can go elsewhere. Often, it’s worked – at least over the last half-dozen years or so – because their products really are that good.

Unfortunately, I think this attitude has hindered broader acceptance and success. I’ve blogged before about Apple’s abysmal customer support, maintenance and repair policies – or lack of them (see previous rant). Limiting customers to a single avenue of hardware repair that can take days and weeks, including long waits at a retail store, is just reprehensible – especially if you expect to sell to businesses.

The iPhone app store is another good example of this arrogance. Marco Arment at Marco.org has an excellent blog post about Apple’s indifference to the issues developers are currently facing.

This arrogance and disregard for customers and developers will lead to Apple’s downfall if not corrected. It may be slow. It may be years. But it will happen. You can’t treat your partners and your customers this way forever – even with superior products.

Last year at WWDC I had a near out of body experience. I related most of that here. To recap, I used some software that I work with at my day job (Landmark Digital Services) that I had shoehorned into an iPhone to identify a number of songs at an event at the Apple WWDC conference. To this day, I still consider it my 15 seconds of fame. I even have the audio someone in the audience captured of the event. A few months later, everyone with an iPhone would have access to this technology via the Shazam iPhone application (Shazam is a licensee of the Landmark Digital BlueArrow technology).

This year at WWDC, I was once again looking forward to Stump the Experts – the event that gave me my 15 seconds. I wasn’t planning on trying to identify any music this year. Everyone has the technology now, and I knew that if Fred Huxham and Mark “The Red” Harlan – the masterminds of this event were going to continue with the music identification tradition, it wouldn’t be recognizable by any published methods. I had my time in the sun. I was looking forward to meeting Mark again after his comments on this blog about the event last year. He even promised me a copy of his book on Texas Hold’em (which I’ll be reading on the plane ride back home).

I was a bit taken aback when at the beginning of Stump this year, I was invited onto the stage to sit with Apple Experts in front of a couple thousand people where the previous years events were retold and I was congratulated for “breaking” a part of the Stump. It was an amazing honor, and I thank Fred and Mark for extending my 15 seconds for a few more.

It amazes me how many times I’ve overheard people at the conference this year retelling the story of “that guy at the Stump”. Now that I spend more of my time managing developers and working with finance and business development, I have little opportunity to extend my geek cred with programming projects. Sure glad that I spent some of my spare time on that little skunkworks development project – it has definitely paid back in spades. It also reminds me why I started programming computers back on an Atari 800XL some thirty odd years ago – the thrill of creation and seeing a piece of code deliver its magic…

NOTE: If you happen to have any photos of the beginning of Stump this year, please let me know. I really would like to have a photograph of myself up on the stage!

Nice little article on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Macs – with references to some really great analysis.

So, the keynote is over, and it was pretty unexciting. Phil just doesn’t have the RDF (reality distortion field) working for him. Probably good that this was the last keynote: no Mac Minis, no Apple Cinema Displays, no updated Mac Pros or iMacs, and no mention of Snow Leopard. Some of that hardware hasn’t been updated in years, and really needs to be. iWork and iLife both look awesome as usual, but spending almost 75% of a two hour keynote demoing them?

But, the real travesty… a laptop with non-serviceable battery? Are you kidding me? I don’t care if it is supposed to last for 1000 charges and 3+ years! It’s supposed to last 3x current batteries. I’ve had some current batteries only last 3-6 months. Going to meetings twice a day, I may have 3 charge cycles a day – that would be less than a year. What do you do when it’s dead? It sounds like you have to exchange your laptop for a new one. Even if it is depot-replaceable part, you’re going to be out a computer for some period of time… not to mention going through the frustrating technical support process that Apple has foisted upon us.

Apologizing in advance, but this is rant worthy… Apple support is HORRIBLE for equipment repair and service. I grimace every time I have a failure because I know it means — signing up for an appointment at the Genius Bar, generally during an inopportune time, fighting crowds at the mall to get to the Apple store, waiting an hour or more with a bunch of other pissed off and frustrated customers because they’re behind and understaffed, then having a Genius ask me a bunch of questions like I’m an idiot then tell me that he’ll have to send it off for repair and I’ll get it back in a few days (which often ends up being a week). I don’t know if it’s just bad luck or what, but I’ve had to do this with almost every laptop both my wife and I have owned from Apple and one desktop. With practically every “real” PC vendor, I’ll have a repair or replacement in 24 hours and I don’t have to go anywhere (and that’s not BS. That is the type of service I received when I purchased Dell). I would even pay a premium for that service (even though I feel like I’m already paying a premium for Apple hardware and the laughable AppleCare). If Apple had real service plans or reasonable exchange programs, then the thought of a non-customer serviceable battery might not be that bad.

I (usually) really like Apple hardware, but it’s frustrating as a Mac user to wish that Dell sold equipment with Mac OS X on it… (or Dell sold Apple equipment with Dell’s service plan). It’s even more frustrating when you’re trying to push Mac OS X in the enterprise… How do you think the above flies with IT departments? It doesn’t. Apple’s response? You need to have your IT staff certified as Apple techs so you can order / warehouse replacement parts and do the repairs yourself. What do we do? Keep spare laptops on hand and have a constant train of repairs going back to an Apple Service Center (that is not an Apple store, so you can drop it off and pick it up a week later without a scheduled appointment and wasting a half hour with a Genius).

Ridiculous. How I hope Apple wakes up to the needs of professionals, enterprise users, and normal everyday people who don’t want to be treated like cattle… By the way, of all the time I’ve spent in an Apple store (which is quite a bit) – including Apple Stores in London, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc, I’ve never seen someone leaving a Genius Bar satisfied. Never. Never. I’ve never left a Genius Bar satisfied. I’ve never spoken to someone who has left a Genius Bar satisfied. I always see displays of frustration. I always see unhappy, upset customers (not to say that all customers are nice / happy people). No matter, nice, knowledgeable Genius Bar folks don’t make up for the fact that this process is broken and is more fitted to broken B&W TVs in the 1960s than modern, expensive computers – nearly boutique computers. Aren’t Apple Computers the BMWs or Mercedes of the computer world? Not by the way they treat their customers in respect to hardware repair.

Rant over… Guess I’ll be heading to the Apple Store soon to pick up my iLife / iWork…

Update: The battery is “supposedly” replaceable by an Apple service center for $179. The price is fine, although it better be a 5 minute Genius Bar appt. The big question now – it appears that the memory and hard drive are not user-serviceable either, meaning your stuck buying memory from Apple (at 6x the current price everywhere else) and not able to flip in and out hard drives as you like – which I find indispensable on my new Macbook Pro. These are huge steps backward if true. Still trying to find out…

Update 2: …representatives who Ars spoke with on the Macworld Expo floor went with an “anywhere between one or two hours, up to a week.” Still no word on memory and HD.

I’ve been watching with a bit of glee as the indie Mac / iPhone development community is starting to rally behind the insanity that is the iPhone App Store and it’s related policies. My only question – what the hell took you so long!?!?

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While I still have some pretty serious issues with Apple and their Gestapo-like tactics with respect to the iPhone, I’m still quite engendered to the device. The big news this week is the release of the first much-anticipated Google Android based phone, the Google G1. The Google Android mobile phone operating system has been seen as a possible modern competitor to the iPhone hegemony, supporting the coolness but dropping the stranglehold lock on the consumer.

What a steaming pile. So much for openness. Android was supposed to herald freedom to the consumer – freedom from carrier lock-in, freedom from hardware and software lock-in, freedom from all forms of anti-consumer pro-corporation ass-hattery. Yet, I’m forced to use Google, forced to use proprietary accessories (no headphone jack), forced to use T-Mobile, forced to use YouTube for any video, forced to use a completely locked-down Bluetooth. Some of these will hopefully be remedied by 3rd-party software developers. Many can not.

What a crock. To resort to the well-worn cliché, EPIC FAIL.

On the technology historical timeline reflected upon a couple decades hence, I’m curious how the iPhone will be represented. I’ve talked about the iPhone before; it’s an amazing device – possibly even revolutionary. For someone with a laptop superglued to my fingers, the thought that I could almost survive with just an iPhone for a day must be a sign of the apocalypse at least.

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