December 17th, 2007

Google's GMail product manager: 'User data should never be held hostage'

Posted by David Berlind @ 12:22 pm

Categories: Apple, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Video, Web technology

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, JavaScript, E-mail, IMAP, E-mail Providers, Internet, David Berlind

Last week, while in California, I made the rounds, capturing on video as many interviews as I could with interesting people that would be fun to hear from. One of those was Google Gmail product manager Keith Coleman who, in the attached video, gives us a status update on where Gmail has been, where it’s at, and where it’s going (showing us a thing or two in the current user interface along the way). If there were two things that stood out to me in the discussion, it was (1) how a complete rebuild of the Javascript engine was needed (and completed) in order for Gmail to take some of its next evolutionary steps and (2) how strongly Google feels about a user’s data (like his/her e-mail) — strongly enough that even though Gmail is an advertising-supported Web service, that the company has no qualms about letting users have access to it through user clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, BlackBerries, iPhones, etc.) to which that advertising never flows.

The recent addition of IMAP support demonstrates that philosophy in spades. Normally, when third party clients are used as a front-end to an e-mail service like Gmail, it is done through a protocol known as POP3. But POP3 is extremely limited in what it can do. For example, if you receive a Gmail e-mail into your copy of Outlook and file that e-mail into a folder, your Gmail account remains oblivious to that organizational context. That e-mail may reside in a folder in your Outlook, but it stays in the inbox on Gmail.

Although Gmail’s full support of IMAP is limited to certain clients (as far as mobile is concerned, only Apple’s iPhone is “officially supported”), IMAP support is what makes it possible for mail items that are filed into certain folders on the client side to be automatically tagged with a label on the Gmail side. Today, Gmail eschews folders in favor of what are referred to as “labels” (considered by many to be “tags”). That said, I’m relatively certain we’ll see folders pretty soon in Gmail. In the interview, Coleman says the company is hoping to add foldering capabilities soon — capabilities that would include the ability to drag and drop emails from the inbox to a folder. According to an entry on the official Gmail blog regarding colored labels (mentioned below):

We actually kinda like folders. In fact, we’re doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality. Stay tuned.

Going back to the broader discussion of IMAP, enhancing client-side functionality with something as powerful as IMAP when the client-side essentially strips Google of its ability to contextually serve advertisements onto the e-mail page does speak highly of Google’s willingness to set users’ data free.

According to Coleman:

One of Google’s core philosophies is that user data should never be held hostage. We want people to be able to take their data and do whatever it is they want with it. This isn’t something that’s really standard for e-mail services. Particularly Web mail services that rely on ad revenue. There’s a risk if you let people get their mail in Outlook or some other client that they’ll stop using the Web interface and they’ll end up just reading their mail in a desktop client. We believe that if we give users the best possible product and if we create a good Web interface, and let them use their data in these clients like Outlook or like their BlackBerry, that they’ll overall have a better experience and be happier with the product. So, we’ve made a point throughout Gmail’s history to give people this freedom with their data.

We launched POP access back in 2004 which lets users read their mail in these clients and then just recently, we launched IMAP [support] which is a lot like POP except it keeps your data in synch no matter where you are. Let’s say you’re reading your mail in Outook and you read a message and when you go back to go back to your Gmail, you want that message to [to be marked as having been] read there as well. That works with IMAP. With POP that doesn’t work.

Regarding the updates to the underlying Javascript engine, Coleman talks about how, as a result of those changes, not only has the Gmail team been able to add eight new features in as many weeks (colored labels [mentioned above], keyboard shortcuts, instantly opening e-mails [via prefetching], integration of AOL Instant Messaging, group chat, etc.), but about how the pace of change will be very fast which means a great many more enhancements (barring foldering capabilities, none of which Coleman would let slip in the interview) are coming Gmail’s way (some experimental, some not). However, one feature that’s here now, that Coleman did slip-in, is that the storage limit for users of Gmail currently exceeds 5 gigabytes.

One downside to all this upside news is that, for users of the Google Apps-based version of Gmail (the one that organizations would subscribe to), many of the features being rolled out to the larger Gmail population — for example, prefetching and colored labels — are not yet available (I tested this and was disappointed to see that, as a Google Apps, some of these very cool and useful features didn’t work for me). Off camera, and via e-mail, Coleman confirmed this and said that the reason is that the new Javascript engine hasn’t yet been introduced to the Google Apps-based users of Gmail. Wrote Coleman:

Colored labels are currently only available on the version of Gmail that uses the new Javascript implementation. The new Javascript is currently live for Gmail accounts on Firefox, IE7 and Safari 3, and we’re actively working to launch it for Google Apps accounts and IE6….As with colored labels, you’ll see the speed improvements [from prefetching] once we roll out the new [Javascript] to Google Apps accounts.

Finally, as we were packing our video gear up, I asked Coleman why Google still refers to Gmail’s status as being “beta.” After all, the service has been running since 2004. After a bit of joking around about this, Coleman mentioned that the company would like to stabilize a few more of Gmail’s features before officially declaring the beta program over. Although he made no promises, from what I heard, it sounded like that too could be expected relatively soon — probably sometime in 2008.

December 6th, 2007

Shrewd moves: Will Adobe's 90 percent price drop on its media server wag the Flash dog?

Posted by David Berlind @ 1:12 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Phone, Price Drop, Media Server, Sun Microsystems Inc., Rich Content, Handset, Server, Flash Media Interactive Server, Flash Plug-in

In case you missed the episode of the Dan & David Show that my colleague Dan Farber and I recorded this past Tuesday (early, because Dan is off to Taipei), one of the news bits we discussed was Adobe’s 90 percent price drop on its high-end Flash Media Server. It wasn’t until we brought the topic up in the middle of the podcast that the ramifications of that price drop really hit me.

As I reported earlier this week, Adobe announced version 3 of its low and hi-end Flash Media Servers. As a part of that announcement, Adobe announced new pricing for the more clusterable of the two servers: the Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS). FMIS involves a load balancing architecture whereby the server that receives a request to deliver a Flash stream (for example, a video) is different from the server that services that request. In Adobe’s parlance, the “receiver” is called the “Origin” server and the “servicer” is called the “Edge” server. Prior to this week’s announcement of FMIS 3, this sort of configuration — what I refer to as quasi-clustering (Adobe’s Flash Media Server product manager Kevin Towes didn’t use the term “cluster” in my discussions with him) — was not cheap. A copy of FMIS cost $45,000. If you needed to configure a cluster of five servers (one Origin, five Edge) to handle a certain load of video requests, that would set you back a cool $225K before other costs (hardware, a high performance Storage Area Network, high performance Internet connectivty, etc.).

In other words, as markets go, FMIS was really only available to a small niche of customers with a lot of money to spend. Now that the price of FMIS has been slashed by 90 percent (to $4500), that niche could easily grow. When you realize at who’s expense, it isn’t hard to see that price drop for the brilliant power play that it really is.

For I don’t know how long, Adobe’s Flash has dominated the market as the go-to platform for delivering rich content to the desktop. Many of the original implementations (by content providers) delivered animation to end-users. Earlier this decade, when we invented something called the Internet X-Ray here at ZDNet (case studies that animated business processes and data flows on the networks of end-user corporations like UPS), Flash was the only developer solution on the market that could accommodate our needs. It didn’t hurt to know that most of ZDNet’s readers had the plug-in that was needed to consume the content. The Flash plug-in is on more desktops than any other plug-in, ahead of Sun’s Standard Edition of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) which never was a real contender for delivering Flash-type content. As platforms go (platforms that developers would target), only Microsoft’s Windows enjoyed more ubiquity.

In terms of total global footprint though, Java has reigned supreme thanks to the presence of its Mobile Edition (JME) in handsets. Invariably, in public appearances, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is always quick to remind his audiences that when most Internet users experience the Internet for the first time, it will be through a handset (phone, PDA, smartphone, and now, other devices like Amazon’s Kindle) and how Java’s presence in more handsets than developer platform greatly increases the odds that Java will play some role in most Internet user experiences. This point invariably leads Schwartz to the logical conclusion that lots of Sun-built Java infrastructure will be sold as a result, the profits of which will accrue to Sun (although I should point out that Sun’s competitors such as IBM and HP have solutions that can also scalably drive large Java-based user populations).

One challenge for Sun (and Java) however is that more and more of those first time Internet experiences are rich in nature. They’re either rich applications (now called Rich Internet Applications or RIAs) that involve lots of animation and graphics or they involve the delivery of video and or audio. Today for example, there’s a lot of video getting delivered to handsets in a way that bypasses Java altogether. It’s a spectrum of content and applications that Java was never really well-suited to. At least from the content developers point of view. But Flash is. Not surprisingly, in recognition of its market disadvantage from a functionality point of view (and looking to leverage its existing relationships and dominating global footprint), Sun is looking to fill the gap with a much more Flash-like version of Java called JavaFX. Conversely, in an effort to attain the same sort of global footprint that Java has across desktops, notebooks, and handsets, Adobe wants in on the handset business and is now driving hard on a mobile edition of Flash called Flash Lite.

The results of this battle (where Sun and Adobe are coming from their relative positions of strength)? Handsets like the Model 6263 that Nokia just unleashed through T-Mobile may look like your run of the mill handset, but they’re anything but. The 6263 has both the mobile Java and Flash Lite platforms built-into it. Not only that, even though T-Mobile doesn’t yet have its HSDPA high-bandwidth 3G network in place for pumping all that rich content and applications (rich content and apps that could be consumed by either the Java or Flash runtimes on a phone), the phone is 3G-ready for when that day comes. The phone is also a music machine, supporting stereo music as well as the stereo wireless headset profile of Bluetooth and it has a microSD slot for expanding its memory.

I’m not saying that this is the only device of its sort on the market. But, clearly, we’re at that tipping point where ordinary looking clam shell handsets like the 6263 are anything but ordinary. They can simultaneously support 3 distinctively separate Web applications platforms (Java, Flash, and one that I failed to mention: XHTML for Web browsing) and can connect to wireless broadband networks — making them capable of doing most anything on the Internet and doing most of it pretty well.

But with both Java and Flash looking to steal the other’s thunder (and let’s not forget Microsoft, who with Silverlight, will want to join the party and probably can given how robust handsets like the 6263 are getting), who is going to win?

Enter the 90 percent price drop on Adobe’s Flash Media Interactive Server.

It’s a shrewd move by Adobe but it makes perfect sense if, now that Sun and Microsoft are both presenting market threats to its Flash platform, it wants to leave nothing to chance in terms of that platform’s popularity. By dropping the price so dramatically on the high-horsepower version of Flash Media Server, Adobe is making it accessible as a rich content delivery platform to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of rich content providers — especially providers of video and audio — who might never have invested in those servers before.

In true wag-the-dog fashion, provided the price drop works and content providers buy-in, Adobe’s $40,500 per server price cut will not only help guard Adobe’s existing global Flash footprint (those considering Java or Silverlight for their applications will really have to think twice), it could help improve it by driving up the amount of Flash-based content being served up through the Internet which in turn will drive adoption in Adobe’s weakest spot: mobile. For example, how many more Flash-based content providers would it have taken for Apple to realize it had no choice but to support Flash in the iPhone?

Shrewd move Adobe. Very shrewd.

December 4th, 2007

Amazon's Kindle: Much needed revolution or book industry power play?

Posted by David Berlind @ 3:53 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, IT Matters Podcast, Mobile, Personal Technology, Podcasts, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Industry, Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Kindle, Quality Solutions, Digital Music, Digital Media, Podcasts, E-books, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics

Like Apple’s iPods and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) from which they can so effortlessly acquire their content, the transparency of the automation and infrastructure that makes Amazon’s Kindle work so effortlessly with the Amazon.com Web site is a marvel in terms of the user experience. But the same technology under the hood that makes the iPod’s seamless connection to the iTMS so convenient is also the one that keeps competitors at bay and the one that has been a significant leverage point for Apple over not just the portable digital media player market, but also over the music industry. In other words, in recent years, that proprietary connection between client and server has also become the source of much consternation.

With the Kindle, it only takes a few book purchases to notice the same degree of convenience. In fact, it’s even more convenient than the way Apple’s technologies work. With an iPod, you need a Windows machine or Mac running the iTunes software to act as an intermediary for gathering content from the iTMS and loading it into the iPod. It’s up to you to set that PC up and get it networked. With the Kindle (which, given Amazon’s participation in the digital music and video business, could easily be a harbinger of an Amazon-built iPod-competitor to come), the only thing you have to do is establish an account on Amazon.com, enable it for one-click purchases, and turn the Kindle on. There’s no intermediary required and the networking element of it isn’t even remotely your problem. It’s all built-in. Just turn on the Kindle and start shopping for books.

Nothwithstanding problems with its industrial design (the “Next Page” button is too inadvertently depressed, causing indigestion for many), from a user’s point of view, the Kindle’s turnkey lack of friction is something to behold. It works better than Apple’s approach (although we could argue that, compared to ebooks, multimedia is far more demanding on a device’s battery and therefore, excluding a wireless radio from iPods was a good design decision). To Apple’s competitors, not only do certain Apple technologies (like its FairPlay Digital Rights Management [DRM] system) lock them out, all that whizbang under-the-hood integration represents an impenetrable enigma. In the Kindle, not only does Amazon’s flavor of DRM play a role, given the built-in networking, the whizbang under-the-hood integration is even more of an impenetrable enigma than what Apple has to offer.

So, naturally, the next question is whether or not the Kindle’s iPod-like rise to stardom (the $399 devices are already sold-out at Amazon.com) will also result in an iPod-like ecosystem where the Kindle becomes a defacto e-book standard and Amazon becomes the the power that the rest of the book industry must reckon with. Given how collegial he is, you could argue that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is more the “do no evil” type and would therefore be more predisposed to allow his competitors to participate in the Kindle ecosystem than Steve Jobs is to allow Apple’s competitors to compete in the iTunes ecosystem. Then again, right now, the only place a Kindle can get its ebooks from is Amazon.com and the only device that can access the Kindle service online is Amazon’s Kindle. In this respect, the Kindle is actually worse than the way Apple has things set up. At least in the Apple world, you can experience the content you’ve acquired on your PC (in fact, on multiple PCs) and you can even burn some CDs (although the feature has its limits). With the Kindle, there is no corresponding software client for Windows or the Mac so that, in the event the only device you have with you is your PC, you can still read the same books that you have on your Kindle.

Another step backwards for the Kindle, relative to the iPod ecosystem, is that when iPods came out, they supported the prevailing music file format (and the one that still has the biggest global footprint): MP3. The Kindle, on the other hand, eschews the book industry’s international standard for ebooks, the International Digital Publishing Forum’s epub standard. Epub formatted books are not consumable on the Kindle nor are PDF files (PDF files can however be e-mailed to your Kindle’s dedicated e-mail address and Amazon will attempt to convert them and load them into your Kindle. For PDF the email conversion feature is experimental). The Kindle is capable of viewing its own AZW file format, TXT files, and unprotected .MOBI files or .PRC files. It can also consume audio content formatted in MP3 or Audible.com’s AA format.

In terms of the power-play like questions that Amazon’s Kindle raises, most of them start with the unique relationship that Amazon has with book publishers. It’s already a force to be reckoned with in the book business. Now that the Kindle is out, does Amazon represent even more of a threat to the status quo than it already did? While I know enough about standard and proprietary file formats to know that they’re often the tools of vendors looking to establish market advantage, I hardly know enough about the book industry to say whether Amazon’s Kindle is good or bad for it. So, to the extent that the Kindle is very much a Dell-like supply-chain story, I asked Fran Toolan, the president and founder of Quality Solutions to indulge me with a podcast interview. Quality Solutions is deeply involved in the supply chain side of the book industry. According to the company’s home page:

Quality Solutions offers the most powerful and comprehensive integrated Title Management database available for tracking book titles from acquisition through editorial, marketing, production, and other processes.

It sounds very supply chain-esque to me which is why I asked Toolan to come and share some of his insights into the Kindle and the impact it will have on the book industry. To listen to the podcast, all you need to do is press the play button on the Flash-based player above. Alternatively, you can manually download the MP3 file via the Flash-based player’s menu. Or, if you’re subscribed to ZDNet’s IT Matters series of podcasts (see how to subscribe), the podcast interview should already have been downloaded to your PC, your MP3 player, or both, depending on how you have your podcatcher setup.

November 30th, 2007

Some brutal honesty about the iPhone's faults, and about that need for 3G (or 3.5G)

Posted by David Berlind @ 2:07 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Telephony, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Apple iPhone, Web, HSDPA, Phone, Network, Battery, AT&T Corp., Apple Inc., Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, 3G

Back when the iPhone came first out and I bitched and complained about its significant faults (lack of a replaceable battery was tops on my list, but the slower of AT&T’s two networks and the soft-keyboard were others) to the point that I recommended waiting for v2.0, I took a bit of heat. Depending on who wrote to me (e-mail, via the Web, etc.), I began to think that I was the jealous bully who got up and kicked the other kids’ blocks over in kindergarten. A lot of that inbound came from people I didn’t even know and while I always like to hear alternative points of view from ZDNet’s readers, I really started to think I was the one who was nuts when people that I’ve grown to know and trust — ones who bought iPhones on their own — started telling me I was the one on drugs.

How much of what they were telling me was true and how much of it was just an unwillingness to admit that the damn thing has its faults? Or maybe they just weren’t taking advantage of everything the iPhone does and if they were, they just might find out that they might have been better off waiting for 2.0, provided 2.0 gets it right. For example, why buy an MP3-capable smartphone with a Bluetooth radio in it if that phone can’t work with stereo Bluetooth accessories (headsets, speakers, etc.).

<sidebar> There’s some speculation that the actual Bluetooth radio in the iPhone capable of supporting the A2DP stereo Bluetooth profile, it’s just that the derivative of Tiger that runs on the iPhone doesn’t fully support it. This theoretically could change if Apple offers an OS upgrade to a special iPhone derivative of Leopard.<sidebar>

But forgetting the Bluetooth stereo support for a minute, my biggest issue with the iPhone was its lack of a removable battery. If for example, you were using the iPhone to do all the great things that it can do, sometimes simultaneously (after all, if you’re not going to, why drop so much coin for it?), there was no way in my mind that the phone’s battery could last as long as you’d expect one that’s not replaceable to last. I forgive phone manufacturers like Motorola (I have the Q) who make phones that do lots of things (make calls, check email, browse the Web, play videos and music, take pictures, etc.) and as a result, drain batteries dry before dinner time. That’s OK (although I wish someone in the truth and advertising department would start to require the equivalent of a battery disclosure label, above right, on devices like the smartphone….. see more on my mock up here).

The laws of physics are working and while plenty of people think of Apple CEO Steve Jobs as though he’s some sort of god, even he can’t change the laws of physics in a day. What’s unforgivable to a lot of people is the idea that their phone won’t be available to them as a phone by the end of the day. For this, many people depend on the availability of replaceable batteries. I have two for the Motorola Q that I use and I keep them with me most of the time.

For people with big fingers (me in included), I also had a thing or two to say about the soft-keyboard. There are now several innovative handset designs out there that have figured out a way to conceal not just a hardware-based numeric keypad, but a separate hardware-based keyboard as well. Not that this is something I really expect Apple to change in v2.0, but Helio’s Ocean (see my video here) comes to mind. It’s very innovative and couldn’t Apple do something similar? I’ve used Apple’s soft-keyboard and like the idea that I if I press the wrong key, I can slide my finger to the left or right to get the correct one. That’s impressive (I wish other soft-keyboard would do the same thing). But it’s not the same as having the hardware keyboards.

I also thought Apple’s TV ads that claimed the Web experience on the iPhone wasn’t the “mobile Web,” that it was “just the Web” was off the mark. Perhaps Apple has a different definition of the mobile Web than I do, but to me, when I think of “just the Web,” I think of the broadband experience you get on your PC when you’re sitting at home or in a WiFi hotspot. The iPhone has a WiFi radio and its Safari browser is so superb that, as long as you’re connected to a WiFi hotspot, I’d agree, it’s the Web (or as close as you going to get to it on a screen of the iPhone’s dimensions). But most of the people I’ve spoken to (OK, not everybody) agree that the majority of the time they have their iPhone with them, it’s connected to AT&T’s network and not a WiFi network. And the slower of AT&T’s two networks at that.

Here again, in fairness to Apple and the choice it made, it’s not clear that picking the faster of AT&T’s two networks would have made a difference. Yesterday, fellow ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw posted a blog under the headline The three reason why [a] 3G iPhone won’t matter that much. To be honest, none of what he said resonated with me. For example, I don’t understand the point about how the slower radio didn’t matter to the so many people that purchased the iPhone. Really? A lot of people buy products only later to be disappointed by some feature. If there’s one point about the iPhone where the friends of mine who own say, “well, that’s true,” it’s the point about the Web experience being very slow — more like the mobile Web — over AT&T’s network (whew, at least some vindication).

More compelling however (on the question of whether 3G will really make a difference) were the arguments made by Carl Howe who wrote about how there’s more to 3G networks than performance. Like latency. And that there are other mitigating factors that could impact the performance of the final user experience besides just the raw bandwidth available to the end user. He answered his critics a day later, but that doesn’t change the fact that there could be some truth to what he’s saying. A 3G network, or even a 3.5G network may not matter. Or may not matter much. A WiMax network would matter (hmmmm).

The rumors are pretty strong that Apple will have a 3G phone in ‘08. One potential downside is that the 3G radio might drain the battery even faster than the current 2.5G rated radios. Of course, we won’t know the truth about the total impact of a 3G radio on the iPhone’s user experience or battery life until a 3G iPhone exists and we can compare. So, I’ll back off on the “wouldn’t buy one until it has 3G” point for now.

Even so, I wouldn’t buy one just yet. That’s because I think that now that the honeymoon has worn off, people are being more honest about their iPhones. People like Thomas Nelson Publishers president and CEO Michael Hyatt who, under the heading Second thoughts about the iPhone, wrote:

I’m thinking very seriously about giving up my iPhone and going back to my Blackberry. I know, I know. I was initially so enthusiastic.

I’m certain that same initial enthusiasm was the source of a lot of pushback I got on my iPhone assessment. Hyatt continues:

Initially, it was a good experience. I loved the user-interface and Apple’s elegant and simple solutions. However, I am now beginning to wonder if I made the right decision. Today, after a full day of travel, I am frustrated and ready to give up.

Hyatt goes on to elaborate on five points that are getting under his skin

• The battery life is insufficient
• The keyboard is more trouble than it’s worth
• AT&T coverage is often spotty
• The calendar doesn’t automatically sync
• I don’t use the other applications that much

Quite frankly, neither Apple nor AT&T bear any responsibility for points 3 & 5. I have a zillion times over said that the three most important things to think about when getting a smart or cell phone are coverage, coverage, and coverage. If you are buying a phone that has trouble connecting to its service provider while you’re at home, in the office, commuting, or at one of your other favorite haunts, you’ll end up being very disappointed. A handset that can’t connect to its network is of little use to anybody and no network has perfect coverage everywhere. This is why I often suggest that before you go buying a smartphone for all its great features, find out what service it attaches to, find someone else who has a phone or handset that’s provisioned by that service, and ask to borrow their handset for a few hours. Then make sure it works in all your favorite places and along your favorite routes. If it doesn’t, think twice about buying anything that works with that network.

On point #5, it’s not like the iPhone’s features weren’t public. Shame on anybody who pays a premium for a bunch of features in any product and ends up not using them.

The first two points however (the keyboard one of which is somewhat echoed on O’Reilly’s site) hit very close to home. They’re two of the primary reasons I can’t own an iPhone and that I’m looking forward to a future version of one that has replaceable batteries and a hardware-based keyboard.

Contrary to common belief, I don’t hate Apple. If it solves those two major problems and makes the iPhone available on a network that actually floats around my house (primarily Verizon, but I just noticed an improvement in T-Mobile’s signal), I’d probably buy one in a heartbeat. A MacBook Pro too, if Apple gave it a pointing stick (as shown in this “prototype”).

November 16th, 2007

Is Apple getting dragged (kicking, screaming, or suing?) into licensing OS X?

Posted by David Berlind @ 7:47 am

Categories: Apple, General, Hardware Infrastructure, Legal, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure

Tags: Apple Inc., Apple Mac OS X, Operating Systems, Software, Apple Mac OS, David Berlind

Are humans just naturally driven to want what they cannot have?

Apple may be resisting the OS licensing model that has traditionally worked so well for Microsoft and perhaps that resistance is finally paying off as Macs nibble away (albeit very very slowly and from a distant blip in Microsoft’s rear view mirror) at the market share of Windows-based PCs. Apple goes to great lengths — usually through its digital rights management technologies (what I call C.R.A.P.) — to tightly control the relationship between its software, its hardware, and, in the case of the iPhone, the relationship of both to carriers and the Internet (God forbid you should attempt to acquire new audio online for your iPhone — music, ringtones, etc — through anything but the iTunes Music Store).

But none of this seems to be phasing the tenacious mice (the hackers) who are managing to keep the Apple cat on its toes. Most recently, under the headline $399 Ultraportable Apple Laptop, Gizmodo has coverage of how OS X has been hacked to run on the Asus EEE PC. Based on the buzz around the Net, Hackintosh How-To author Adam Pash is already a folk hero in certain circles. But if a Hackintosh isn’t your speed, then maybe the Torrenttosh is. There’s apparently a pre-hacked version of OS X floating around on Bittorrent that takes most of the hacking out of Hackintosh. As I’ve said before, if I could have OS X running on a Lenovo Thinkpad (as a Trackpoint addict, I hate touchpads), I’d take it in a heartbeat.

But the best (worst?) evidence that Apple is losing the cat and mouse game with hackers is how the latest firmware update to the iPhone (1.1.2, now, finally being pushed through iTunes) is already “jailbroken.”

Perhaps Robert Scoble characterized Apple’s enigmatic ecosystems best when, this last Monday, he wrote:

Steve Jobs treats developers like crap. Doesn’t give them an SDK. Makes them hack the phones simply to load apps. And they create hundreds of apps anyway.

What other company has the problems that Apple has where the company is coming up with all sorts of restrictions (not just on the tech’s functionality itself, but how much of it we can buy) and even still, cult-like masses are climbing all over each other to push and even break through those limits?

Back to OS X, perhaps its time for Apple to reconsider its Apple-hardware-only policy and once again look into licensing OS X. Clearly, now that the switch to the Intel platform is well behind us, and given the the success that hackers are having at “porting” the OS, there are no technical barriers. And, compared to selling hardware, selling bits is like printing money. There’s no question the demand is there. And I’ll bet that, given some of the moves that have been made by desktop/notebook systems vendors like Dell in the area of Linux support, that they’d jump at the opportunity to bring OS X into the portfolio. Apple could, if it wants, roll the program out on a limited basis. For example, it could pick one or two other hardware partners (eg: Lenovo, who could give Apple huge access to the Chinese market) and work exclusively through them in a way that those vendors shoulder the lion’s share of supporting users.

Related: Adam Pash benchmarks his Hackintosh against the real McCoy.

November 7th, 2007

Mashup Camp Dublin or bust, Office Live Workspace (or bust), Laszlo's Switzerland of RIAs, Outlook '07, JGE, etc.

Posted by David Berlind @ 3:52 pm

Categories: Apple, General, Mobile, Open Source, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Telephony, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Office Live, Handset, Rich Internet Application, Laszlo Systems Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mashup, Laszlo Webtop, Microsoft Outlook

We here at ZDNet have been working on some podcasts and reviewcasts today and I’ve been trying to clear out my inbox as I prepare to jump on an Aer Lingus flight tomorrow to Dublin, Ireland for Mashup Camp’s first foray into Europe. I’ve been working with the developer community over there to make sure Camp meets their informational needs and, in addition to the traditional instructional and unconference components, we’ve got three keynotes lined up — speakers that the community members I’ve been working with specifically indicated interest in: Yahoo! Developer Network senior director Chad Dickerson, ProgrammableWeb.com founder/editor John Musser, and salesforce.com EMEA regional marketing chief Woodson Martin.

Unlike the American editions of Mashup Camp which typically run for four days during the week, Mashup Camp Dublin is a 3-day event that crosses the weekend (another request of the developers I’ve been working with over there). As usual, there will be a party on one of the nights — this one Sunday night at The Bankers, a pub in Dublin. Mashup Camp itself is taking place at the world famous Guinness Storehouse. Feel free to join us for any or all of Camp by registering on the camp Web site or just showing up (even at The Bankers!).

In terms of what we’ve been working on today, we finished some video takes for our forthcoming coverage of the beta release of Office Live Workspace. There’s been a lot of reporting on Office Live Workspace (for example, see Mary Jo’s coverage) since it was announced last month, but no decent previews of it. Microsoft has been pretty tight-lipped about the user interface. But once it opens the kimono, we’ll have the goods in video here on ZDNet with one of our review/democasts.

Speaking of reviewcasts, I should be publishing one tomorrow that features a demo of two solutions from Laszlo Systems — one is the OpenLaszlo suite of development tools, the other is Laszlo Web Top. If you know you want to go rich with your Web development — rich as in Rich Internet Application or RIA — but aren’t sure which of the RIA platforms out there to go with (DHMTL/Javascript, Flash, Java, or Silverlight), Laszlo’s RIA description language might be the better way to go since, by the time Laszlo is done, you’ll be able to deploy your app to one or more of the four primary RIA platforms in write once, run anywhere fashion. In his demonstration of the platform, Laszlo co-founder and CTO David Temkin shows me how, with one code-base, he can deploy the same application to DHTML/Javascript or Flash and the end-product in both cases looks and works the same way.

Rather than think of Laszlo as a Switzerland that allows you to switch targets (if at some point you want to move from DHTML to Flash or one of the others), I see it as a possible way to build apps that work the same on a variety of targets: for example … with one language, being able to deploy in DHTML/Javascript for the iPhone, Flash for the PC, and Java for something like the BlackBerry. The Laszlo Webtop is a different beast altogether ( you’ll see more tomorrow) but its related to the dev tools in that any app that’s built in the OpenLaszlo description language will run on the Lazslo Webtop.

Also today, I’ve been taking screenshots of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Outlook 2007. I’ve finally migrated to Office 2007 and now that I’m using it every day, I’ve got some likes and dislikes that I’ve been sharing with Microsoft and will be sharing with you. There are no deal breakers. I think Outlook 2007 is a big improvement over Outlook 2003 and am glad I finally made the move (I’ll share why with screen shots). But Microsoft left room for improvement too (I’ll share screenshots). One major bugaboo dating back to Outlook 2003 — I know it’s doing what it can to stop spam and phishing attempts — but I wish it would tell me more. Both Outlook ‘03 and Outlook ‘07 yielded and is yielding a significant amount of false positives (legitimate mail getting miscategorized as spam) but it doesn’t tell me why. If it did, I’d write back to the senders and tell them “Hey… Outlook hates your mail.. here’s why” so that they in turn can tweak their outbound e-mail to escape Outlook’s overzealous filtering.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Google Open Handset Alliance announced earlier this week. The more I think about it, the more I believe that, to the extent that it’s a Java/Linux platform, Google will be releasing its own implementation of a mobile Java that’s neither fish (JME — Java Mobile Edition) nor foul (JSE — Java Standard Edition). JSE (the version of Java that runs on PCs) is more robust than JME due to the handset horsepower limitations that JME respects. But the truth of the matter is that many handsets have outgrown JME and are ready for something that’s more JSE-like, but maybe not JSE. I’m calling this new edition of Java “JGE” or Java Google Edition. JGE will probably be a spec (one that in combination with Linux forms the Android platform) much the same way that JME, JSE, and JEE (Java Enterprise Edition) are also specs.  The code that Google will be releasing under the Apache Software License v2 will be Google’s implementation of that spec.

I talked about this a bit on the Dan and David Show today, but, if you look back on Google’s history of deploying its content and services into the mobile world, you can almost feel the company’s pain. Recreating the religious experience that Google created on the BlackBerry Pearl (Google Maps running on the BlackBerry’s implementation of Java) on other handsets like the Motorola Q (a Windows Mobile 5-based device) is simply not doable. This leaves Google (or any other online content provider) in the ugly position of having to rewrite their applications for every handset that they want to support. Apple’s release of the iPhone could not have done more to reinforce that pain. So, what’s a company with great developers and boatloads of cash to do? What else but look to create a more predicatable target in handset land through the release of an open platform that any handset manufacturer and carrier can consider for inclusion.

And, if you’re a handset manufacturer or carrier, you’re thinking, “Yes, I definitely want my customers, all of whom probably use Google for something, to have a great experience with that something.” Why, if you’re a manufacturer or carrier wouldn’t you want to take advantage of the fact that Google is willing to do most of heavy lifting? Enter Android. I guess we’ll know more soon enough.

November 2nd, 2007

Why Apple only takes credit cards for iPhones & the legal questions raised

Posted by David Berlind @ 3:45 pm

Categories: Apple, General, Legal, Mobile, Personal Technology, Security, Telephony, Video

Tags: Apple iPhone, Credit Card, Apple Inc., Video, Credit Card Number, Sales Channel, Financial Services, Sales, David Berlind

Earlier this week, in a post headlined Apple, hackenomics, and the waning anonymity (and obsoletion) of cash, I warned of how Apple’s practice of requiring credit cards to purchase iPhones wreaks of a future where our cash is no good and our privacy is sacrificed as a result of dealing in the far more trackable (and far less anonymous than cash) currency of plastic (credit cards, debit cards).

As I reported in that first piece, Apple hasn’t been very forthcoming about its reasons for requiring a credit card to purchase an iPhone. So, I came up with a list of my own possibilities, all but one of which were big brother-esque in nature. After all, why else would Apple require a credit card if it wasn’t going to retain that information which includes your identity for some reason? There is no information for a merchant to retain when you buy something with cash. Apple must want that information for something. Perhaps even more worthy of scrutiny, according to some members of the credit card industry that reached out to me, is whether Apple’s practice violates any legal agreements, standards, or laws when it comes to credit card processing.

That post drew a flood of Talkbacks; privacy is clearly a topic that people are passionate about and there’s nothing that outrages consumers more than an attempt to track them. But is it true? Is Apple not accepting cash for iPhones? And if so, are Apple Store personnel offering any explanations to customers? To find out, I paid an visit to a nearby Apple Store and we captured most of the conversation on video tape (show in the attached video). [Editor's Note: The video is not currently available. We apologize for the inconvenience.]

So, what did I learn. First, it is true that if you walk up to a cash register at an Apple Store with $399 in cash, you will be told that you need a credit or debit card. You can see this happening to me at the cash register in the Apple Store. As I’m taking four $100 bills out of my pocket, the clerk informs me that I must pay with a credit card.

Just as interesting however is the fact that you don’t need a credit/debit card for the entire purchase. When it became clear that my $399 in cash was no good at the Apple Store (for an iPhone), the clerk that I spoke with suggested that I pay $1 of the purchase price with my credit card and the rest in cash. This of course makes it clear that Apple needs the information on your credit card for something important. But what?

As you can see in the video, I asked the clerk as well as a manager for some explanation of the policy and all they would tell me is that it’s just the company’s policy. There was no explanation. Apple stores even have a small sign at the cash register that mentions the credit card requirement when it comes to iPhones. But this is where it got very interesting. When I pushed a little harder, the manager went over to a terminal near the cash register and said that there might be something he could do for me. He had to look something up. The line behind me was growing and it was at this point that I said I’d come back.

When I went back (we don’t have this part on video), I asked for the same manager. But this time, a woman came out and I told her that the first manager I was dealing with had offered to look something up. Before I could finish, she said “Your name.” She went on to explain that I was only allowed to buy a maximum of two iPhones and that, if they could determine with some confidence that I had not already reached that quota, that they could sell me one for cash. She did not however comment on the credit card requirement or explain the point of that policy. But Apple apparently is in a bind right now. It’s in a cat and mouse game with hackers who have made it possible to divorce (”unlock”) Apple’s iPhones from the AT&T wireless service that Apple is contractually bound to keep the phones married to. Why would hackers do this? One reason is that there’s a healthy gray market for unlocked iPhones in Europe where the handsets are fetching some steep prices that are very profitable to anyone who has a supply.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots. Apple has relationships that its contractually bound to protect and must do whatever it can to eliminate the gray market. As far as unique indentifiers go, credit cards are a pretty good token for authenticating someone’s identity. At the very least, Apple is probably retrieving (from the credit card) and keeping the name of every person who buys an iPhone. This way, when you go to buy another one, they can see if an iPhone has already been purchased by someone with the same name. But then comes the question of whether they are retaining your credit card number as well. How could they not?

After all, there are lots of people with the same name and the odds are pretty good that certain names have already exceeded their quotas. But certain names coupled with certain credit card numbers. No way. The credit card number is quite unique and if Apple’s database shows that two iPhones have already been purchased by someone who’s identity was authenticated with the same credit card, that would be a red flag against selling them a third phone. Are there ways to beat the system? Probably. All you need is another credit card. What isn’t clear though is the extent to which Apple’s system tries to determine a match. For example, if it does a credit card lookup and there’s no match on credit card, will it fall back to your name and geographic area (somewhat reliable, but not totally)? But then, there are more questions about the legality of what Apple is doing.

After publishing that first blog post, I heard from the credit card industry (in that post, I wondered aloud what Visa’s policies were with respect to Apple’s practice). Although nobody has yet to go on record, as it turns out, there’s a security and privacy standard called PCI DSS that practically every participant in the credit card ecosystem is required to adhere to. As far as I can tell, the standard policy potentially yields two important results. First, it protects the privacy of cardholders. Second, it helps merchants and card issuers manage risk. It does this by spelling out in fairly detailed terms what can and can’t be done with the information that’s retrieved off a credit card’s magnetic stripe and the lengths to which IT systems must go to protect data (eg: it talks about firewalls, encyrption, etc.).

While the PCI DSS documentation is vague about what data can be retained by a merchant and for how long, the explanation I got made it clear that if Apple is using credit card numbers for reasons other than completing monetary transactions — in other words, if Apple is using credit card numbers for the purpose of tracking (as seems to be the case here) — that Apple might not only be in violation of PCI DSS, it could also be breaking some laws (some of which are based on PCI DSS) as well as breaching the terms of its agreements with card issuers and credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, and American express (who, as you can see by the fines that Visa levied against TJX for the “worst data breach in the payment industry’s history,” guard the privacy of cardholders with relatively bloodthirsty lawyers).

Although my contacts at Visa say they’re working on it, several days have passed since that conversation began: more than enough time to answer the question of whether Apple has violated the company’s policies or credit card industry cardholder privacy standards. My educated guess is that Apple’s practices have kicked off a shitstorm of an inquisition in the credit card industry that has lawyers on both sides poring through the PCI DSS documentation, merchant contracts, and state/federal laws and that this isn’t the last we will hear of this.

October 30th, 2007

Apple, hackenomics, and the waning anonymity (and obsolescense) of cash

Posted by David Berlind @ 11:37 am

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, Hardware Infrastructure, Legal, Mobile, Personal Technology, Telephony, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Apple iPhone, Credit Card, Policy, Apple Inc., Noose, Sales Channel, Financial Services, Sales, David Berlind

The noose is slowly tightening. A hundred years ago — heck, even ten years ago — for the most part, we didn’t have to sacrifice our privacy just to participate in some transaction. Lots of merchants tried (some still do) to shake us down for our personal information before allowing a purchase. Radio Shack used to be notorious for this practice until it realized how many customers it scared away (including me.. that was one reason I hated going in there).

Earlier this year, while buying a digital photo frame at Micro Center in Fairfax, VA, I was accosted for all of my personal information (including e-mail address). When I declined to provide it (mostly fearing junk mail), the cashier conveniently didn’t know how to continue with the transaction (as if no one else declines). A manager came over to take care of business. But it was an uncomfortable moment. As the minutes ticked away, the stares of the people in line behind me were burning holes in the back of my head. They no doubt felt as though my privacy wasn’t worth nearly as much as their time. Screw them. If Micro Center doesn’t want fidgety people in its lines, it knows what to do.

A lot of places ask for my zip code. I don’t feel too violated when asked for this bit of data (it’s probably for research). But to be honest, when I’m paying cash, I’d rather not be asked for anything but my cash.

I don’t remember the exact context, but I think it was in the early 80’s when I heard Johnny Carson crack a joke about how the day might come when cash wouldn’t be accepted. Back then, he was kidding. Today, no one is kidding about it. For example, according to a recent InfoWorld report, Apple is apparently refusing to accept cash as a form of payment for its iPhones. Wrote IW’s Elizabeth Montalbano and Steven Schwankert:

People looking to walk into an Apple retailer and buy an iPhone with cash will be out of luck. The company is now accepting only credit or debit card payments for the devices so that it can track who purchases the phone, according to an employee at the Apple Store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.

The new policy is Apple’s attempt to prevent people from purchasing and then unlocking and reselling iPhones, a situation that has been a problem for the company. Apple won’t let anyone without a credit card or debit card in their name purchase iPhones, according to an unidentified Apple Store employee in a phone interview.

The part about “tracking who purchases the phone” really caught my eye. When Radio Shack, Micro Center, or some other merchant asks(ed) for my personal data, it’s not as much about giving them the information as it is about what they plan to do with it. If for example, the cashier said, “Hey, where ya from?,” I’d be happy to tell him/her. But, when the data is being programmatically absorbed into some database, that’s when I begin to envision all sorts of dasterdly usage scenarios. But tracking in the context of the iPhone unlocking debacle (which the IW story says is costing Apple millions)? Suddenly, Micro Center isn’t looking so bad.

Unfortunately, the IW story doesn’t contemplate Apple’s rationale for this so called tracking and what might happen should a phone connected with a credit card end up unlocked or in the hands of someone other than the original buyer. What makes this even worse is Apple’s complete lack of transparency regarding such an unorthodox policy. Nothing about Apple’s credit/debit card requirement has been published by the company and the InfoWorld report says the following:

Apple’s public relations team did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the new policy.

We’re left to assume that the requirement is indeed about some form of tracking — an idea which is quite frightening. What might Apple be thinking? Here are some guesses:

• Ultimately, it’s just a fear tactic. There isn’t much Apple can do with this information from a tracking perspective. It would have to go through an iPhone’s buyer’s card issuer to get at anything more personal than your name and credit card number at which point the trail would end. But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t create a perception that it has more access to your personal information that it does, thus scaring away would-be abusers of the iPhone ecosystem.
• Credit cards are a means of authenticating your identity which in turn serves Apple’s current maximum of 2 phones per person policy. Theoretically, through its systems, the policy could be enforced by either (a) keeping count of the number of phones purchased by credit card or (b) keeping count of the number of phones purchased by name (the name that appears on the credit card). The latter would be less reliable because of (1) people with common names and (2) people with more than one credit card. But maybe Apple looks for it anyway and will red flag it until one John Smith can prove he’s not the John Smith that’s already in the system.
• Whenever an iPhone is purchased with a credit or debit card, the serial number of the iPhone is married to that credit card in Apple’s database. If that iPhone should become unlocked or should Apple discover that it’s in someone else’s possession, it will charge your credit card with some sort of penalty fee. I don’t think this is legally allowable. But (1) Apple has traditionally been very litigious and (2) it could be contemplating a change to the legal language (if it isn’t already there) that comes in the box with the iPhone that paves the way to legally impose such financial penalties.
• Sort of a variant on the last bullet point, if you purchase one iPhone with your creditor debit card and Apple discovers that you’ve done something with the iPhone that it would rather you not have done, it can blacklist your credit card from (a) being used to buy any more iPhones or (b) being used in any Apple Store.
• Another variant on the previous two punitive bullet points; Apple could share the credit/debit card data with AT&T which in turn could terminate the existing services that it’s providing to any customer already associated with that credit card.

To better understand what Apple can and cannot do with your credit/debit card information, I’ve placed a call to my contacts at Visa who have promised to get back to me one way or another (so expect an update if not an entirely separate blog post on the issue shortly).

But, in the bigger picture, it’s already bad enough that our governments (federal, state, and local) are able to, with near impunity, take advantage of our digital breadcrumbs. But forcing us to leave such breadcrumbs behind as a means of controlling buyers is an act of seller indignance and buyer abuse that deserves a swift and unbending response from buyers. What’s next? Will Apple require credit cards to purchase both Apple systems and Leopard? That way, only authenticated owners of Apple systems can acquire Leopard (to offset the chances of it being hacked to run on a PC)? Under no circumstances should we allow such treatment by a merchant. Any merchant. Furthermore, Apple’s move sets an ugly precedent that undermines the longstanding tradition of cash as legal tender and the freedom it not only exemplifies, but stands for. Shame on any company that, because of its own inadequacies, strips us of that right.

Just like the way hackers have proved fallible the digital rights management schemes used by Apple to protect its grip on the music industry and the portable digital media player market, Apple’s technology has once again proven itself to be an impotent tool in the struggle to enforce its contractual obligations (for example, with AT&T). Strangely, it continues to make this bed and gets away with asking us to sleep in it. Go figure.

Update: I went to an Apple Store to double check the policy. See Undercover Video: Why Apple only takes credit cards for iPhones & the legal questions raised.