Monthly Archives: July 2008

Apple Domination

July 29, 2008 in Tech

Chris Seibold wrote an interesting article about where Apple might take the iPhone brand moving forward. He closed with an interesting comment:

One thing seems certain: the only company that will ever make a viable iPhone killer will be Apple.

Since the return of Steve Jobs, Apple has consistently rolled out products that blow away the competition. The iPhone absolutely shattered the playing field, and no competitor has come close since.1

It’s going to stay that way, for now.

Who can overtake the iPhone?

No other company has been able to pull off an interface as usable and consistent as Apple has. Microsoft’s devices are complex, and their software platform isn’t anything to write home about. I’m an advocate of open source projects, but the iPhone’s closest competitor, Google’s Android, has problems of its own. Android’s UI and API aren’t as polished or consistent.2

It takes a tremendous amount of collaboration to make a product like the iPhone. Hardware makes the job even tougher, but we haven’t even seen a piece of software that could match the iPhone, let alone hardware.

The same goes for OS X / Cocoa’s programming interface; Cocoa’s MVC-oriented architecture has given applications model-view separation by default, enabling developers to present data in different ways without re-architecting the application. OS X’s systemwide integration and excellent APIs have encouraged developers to create usable, well-designed applications.

The iPhone wouldn’t be here today if Apple hadn’t laid a stable foundation with OS X.

No other operating system comes close. We won’t see an iPhone-killer until we see an operating system that can give developers the ability to build rich applications with a system-wide consistent UI. It’s all about the user experience.

The iPhone isn’t perfect.

Granted, the iPhone has plenty of room to improve. It still lacks certain features like cut-and-paste, stereo bluetooth, etc. Apple prefers simplicity whenever possible, but just like with OS X on the desktop, they’ve laid the foundation upon which they can improve the iPhone incrementally. Good luck finding a company that can provide a similar experience today.

We won’t see an iPhone killer any time soon. I predict that any true iPhone-killer will need to innovate and bring something new to the table; simply copying the iPhone now won’t suffice. Clones aren’t killers.

My Predictions

I think a true iPhone-killer will integrate itself with many facets of our lives: calendars, to-dos, home automation, phone, e-mail, IM, and more, but in a much more active way than the iPhone. GPS targeting will provide a boost for location-based services, which can bring a lot of innovation.

The future lies in always-on connectivity to the internet. It’s not really the device that matters at all — the real innovation will come with the ability for us to be connected to the cloud — always, and everywhere.

Ubiquitous connectivity will define the next generation of devices.

More on that to be discussed another time.

  1. It doesn’t matter whether or not you like the iPhone; the fact remains that the iPhone’s technological power and user experience are tremendously better than any phone on the market. Period. ↩

  2. I haven’t actually played with an Android device, but from the information I’ve seen, it doesn’t compare to the iPhone’s usability and consistency. ↩

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Beyond REST: Building Data Services with XMPP?

July 24, 2008 in Tech

XMPP and REST are two of my favorite tech areas, so I was glad to find this slideshow via Hacker News:

Beyond REST? Building Data Services with XMPP PubSub

While the “Beyond REST” moniker seems propaganda-ish (REST is a great architectural paradigm), I found the XMPP information to be a good clarifying review of how one could integrate XMPP into their architecture.

I have been looking into XMPP in the past few days as a messaging solution for one of my current projects, and this slideshow couldn’t have come at a better time. I understand XMPP and have read the protocol documents several times, but for some reason this slideshow was the first time I really grokked the “integration process.”

XMPP and REST will both continue to be important protocols/architectures as the web evolves. They each have their place. I’m glad to see XMPP beginning to take hold in areas other than Jabber; hopefully they can continue to refine XMPP to heal some of its warts.1 I foresee XMPP becoming the de-facto standard for the “push” web as time passes, much as HTTP forms the foundation of the “pull” web.

  1. I won’t detail here, but people have raised concerns about its overuse of XML namespaces, the plethora of extension documents (in comparison to actual implementations thereof), verbosity of presence stanzas, etc. ↩

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Total Control

July 20, 2008 in Tech

The tight integration of hardware and software makes for a more manageable, predictable system. A closed system limits choice, but it is more stable and reliable. An open system is far more fragile and unreliable—this is the price of freedom.

— Leander Kahney (via Inside Steve’s Brain)

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A Quote from Steve Jobs

July 20, 2008 in Tech

The finest dozen computer scientists I know are musicians.

— Steve Jobs (via Inside Steve’s Brain)

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You Can’t Please Everyone

July 16, 2008 in Life

From the wisdom of Aesop:

A man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market. As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?”

So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their way. But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: “See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.”

So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.”

Well the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor Donkey of yours—you and your hulking son?”

The man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the Donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the Donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together, he was drowned.

“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them:

“Please all, and you will please none.”

Wisdom of the ages that I would do well to remember.

It’s important to do the right thing, and to aim for a win-win all the time. Sometimes, though, even that won’t be enough to please everyone.

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Five-Star Ratings Considered Harmful

July 13, 2008 in Music, Tech

Five-star rating systems will chip away at your time, your songs, and your patience. My iTunes ratings had lost their meaning, but I’m fighting back.

Five-star ratings express excellence; One-star ratings imply crappiness. At least that’s how I treated ratings until recently. But in the case of digital music and photo libraries, that mindset will warp and twist your rating system until it becomes meaningless. Read More »

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