To me, its clear that Apple has been moving towards making Mac OS X run on touch based tablets since Snow Leopard.
I’m thinking this fall might be the announce. Cook said they were working on a major new launch this quarter. I’m surprised there’s been so little writing about it.

I predict another device that splits the difference between a Macbook Air and an iPad. I’m thinking a 10-11″ touch screen likely with an optional keyboard, running Lion but via a touch interface.

It might be an ARM processor. Maybe it would run iOS, iphone/iPad apps in some sort of compatability mode, or Mac apps recompiled in XCode to be Intel/ARM…. Universal apps, like they used to be, except not powerpc/intel but ARM/Intel.

Anyone disagree?

Active competition between Google’s ecosystem and Apple’s. Hard to tell who will win between them, but almost definitely, the consumer will win… and is already winning.

Many believe this is an attack at Adobe. I believe it is at least as much an attack against Google’s Android. Apple wants to prevent the creation of cross platform mobile applications. They’re trying to do everything they can to prevent developers from writting for Android. It might work while Apple has 60+% marketshare… or it might not if developers have moved to Android anyway.

But the problem is worse than that. It is the latest in an ever increasing series of attempt for Apple to exert unreasonable control over its customers and partners with the express purpose of squeezing out as much profit as possible while locking them in to the Apple platform. Locking in not by innovation, nor because Apple products are superior. Instead they’re now resorting to building disfunctional products that disable the ability to work with non-Apple facilities, using legal terms and conditions to threaten action if behavior doesn’t meet their approval, and to sue when competitors get too close to Apple’s jewels.

Recent actions include:

• Appstore: Steve Jobs originally billed the restrictions on the store altruistically. Meant to protect the carrier’s network from failure and to prevent malware. This has twisted over time to become a blatant filter, removing anything that Apple decides it doesn’t like or might be competitive with current or future products. Apple has come to enjoy this level of control over its users.
• iPad: The iPad is a powerful full function computer. But Apple has tasted the drug of total control with the app store. They purposely neutered a full function computer so that consumers are only allowed to obtain software for it from Apple’s app store. You can see where this evolution is going. Can a Mac app store be far behind?
• Terms: Adobe Flash and any 3rd party interpreters on the iPhone are a threat to Apple’s control and 30% of sales revenue stream from the appstore. Apple doesn’t want to allow users to circumvent their control over what users can run. When Adobe tried to get around it by cross compiling, Apple changed the terms… after Adobe had spent millions to develop their product.
• Android: Apple finally has a worthy competitor. 3 years in the making but finally here. Does Apple compete by producing a superior product? Sadly no. Their reaction is to sue HTC as a protected way to sue Google. The change in developer terms was not only meant to hurt Adobe, but to prevent mobile applications to be written for Android. Apple wants developers locked into Apple tools and wants them to have a hard time porting to Android.

Steve Jobs has let success go to his head. The iPad is a joke. These terms and how whimsically Apple changes them, make it unreasonable for a business to invest in making iPhone/iPad software. Yet somehow they think they can get away with this.

Maybe its inevitable. Small, rapidly growing companies historically often succeed against larger competitors by being more open, giving more choice and benefits to consumers and partners.

But eventually, if they become large enough, they become consumed with protecting their own turf. They no longer come up with sufficient innovation to drive growth. They turn to protecting their turf, put up walls, try to control and harm anyone who dares to challenge their products.

Ultimately its a loosing strategy but may signal a maturing company. No longer growing. Stagnant at best, or a slow decline.

IBM became a mainframe monopoly. To this day they still fiercely defend their mainframe turf.
Microsoft with Windows and Office. Seen any innovation there?
Now Apple. A amazingly lame iPad, terms which exhibit an unthinkable hubris, sue your competitors (HTC/Google).

I can’t recall a company changing their ways once this inward focus consumes them. Too hard to give up the remembrance of success. Likely Apple and Steve Jobs will be in denial for many years.

Apple’s recent success has been ignited when they made platforms more open, not closed.

• The move to Intel processors didn’t create a wall around Mac OS, instead it welcomed Windows to run native on the machine.
• The original iPhone broke the choke hold carriers had on consumers by controlling what websites could be visited and what applications could be run while charging unrealistic prices always measured in dollars each month.
• The iPod success was launched when Steve Jobs negotiated more reasonable prices and greatly reduced DRM restrictions for users, provided users with more control over their own music.

Sad that Steve has forgotten a key reason why Apple has become successful and chosen to lock consumers and developers in by only obtaining software from the appstore and having the hubris to attempt such heinous developer terms.

I had hoped for better.

Related posts:

Stop the Madness Steve Jobs

iphone agreement bans flash compiler

steve jobs response on section 3-3-1

Google has made their mark and been successful at least partly because of their ‘do no evil’ motto. Their advertising has always been low keyed and pertinent to what you’re doing. Not random banner flash ads in popup windows on random things you don’t care about. Usually subtle little text ads remarkably relevant to what you’re trying to find.

Now Google is abusing their power buy advertising in the most important place on the web, where no one else can advertise at any price. And the ad is not targeted in any way. Its a blanket ad for everyone regardless of interest.

This hints at the eventual abuse of power that the Google empire allows. When all searches run through Google, you run a Google browser on your Google operating system tied to your Google phone, all your ads are served by Google’s Admob, your videos come from Google’s Youtube… When they tie together all of your activities on your PC, phone (including voice), when they run voice recognition on your phone conversations and index them for your benefit…
Too much power. Like big brother watching everything you say and do. Indexing, cross referencing. Able to sell this information for all sorts of advertising. To the highest bidder, or for their own uses.
Even now, they could easily check who does searches about cell phones, and target ads on Admod to appear on your iPhone to sell you a Nexus one.
Simply spooky. Privacy erodes one step at a time, often without notice, until its too late and the genie can’t be put back in the bottle.

or

The other media that is often mentioned these days is the use of hard drives. There are some points to be made regarding their longevity.

• The protocols used to communicate with hard drives evolves over time, generally more quickly than optical media. ATA, ATA133, SATA, SATA2 and external drives, USB2, Firewire, eSATA, FW800. The point being that they evolve over time and you may not be able to access it in the future.
• Fragility. Hard drives are fragile. Can’t handle them too rough, careful to avoid static electricity.
• Time. Hard drives are mechanical with moving parts. Over time lubricants can migrate and degrade making them less reliable.

I’ve made some of these points before, but never actually experienced any issues. In fact I have never had a personal hard drive fail, although I have had many corporate issue hard drives fail.

There’s always a first time.

I went through my stack of old hard drives to see what I could use.

I have 15GB and 30GB drive made in 2000 that are ATA, but both failed to communicate properly with my external enclosure.

I have recently been using a 120GB Maxtor drive that was made in 2005. I thought that was pretty recent. I’ve used it extensively of late and decided to copy some files to archive.

A few days later I went to access the files, powered up the drive to be met with total silence. The hard drive failed to spin up.

I ended up twisting the drive rapidly trying to get the platter moving just after turning it on. It eventually did the trick and it reluntantly spun up. The drive worked well enough to copy all my critical files off of it. The entire next day the drive worked fine, spinning up and down all day. I let it cool off over night to be greeted again by total silence and no spinup. With the twisting trick I was able to get it to spin up but its not having errors reading from the drive.

This has taught me that the possible issues with hard drive archival are real. Optical media is looking more promising. Lowest prices I could find today include DVD+RW for $0.67 each, DVD+DL for $0.97, BD-RE25GB for $7, BD-RE50GB for $25.

For the same $199 as before (and as the Palm Pre), you now get double the memory (16GB), much faster performance, support for 7.2mbps HSDPA, compass, voice control (!), auto focus (not fixed focus like the pre) 3MP camera with auto macro, and excellent video capability (VGA at 30fps).

The current 8GB 3G model will still be sold for $99 and the new top of the line is 32GB for $299.

Seems good enough to ward off the Palm Pre. The Pre is now much less capable for the same or more money (rebate required) with almost no applications available for it.

However, I wonder who will buy this new phone. Anyone who’s wanted an iPhone in the last 2 years would have bought one by now and it probably still locked into their existing contract with steep upgrade prices.

As far as I’ve been able to tell the prices are as follows:

I don’t see most current iPhone users upgrading for a while. The only phone that seems appealing is the $99 iPhone 3G for those who see the initial price as an impediment. However, the monthly service fee with the $30/mo data plan is still there and is the more serious cost issue.

What didn’t make it:

• Front facing camera. I think I would really like this. Dick Tracy style video phone calls.
• Rumored AT&T lower price for limited data plan.
• Tethering plan from AT&T

On an unrelated note, they made surprising but helpful updates to the Macbook Pro line adding FW800 into the Macbook Pro 13. But conspicuously missing were any updates to the white Macbook.

This latest iPhone killer seems the most promising. It has blatantly copied many of iPhone’s basic UI. Gestures, multi-touch. I was frankly surprised at the ooos and aaahs during the January demo when they showed off the same UI that the iPhone has had for 18 months (at the time).

The Pre adds a physical keyboard, real uninterrupted multi-tasking, higher resolution camera. Most importantly it is a CDMA phone available on Sprint today, but Verizon tomorrow (early 2010).

So I was eager to check out the Palm Pre on its launch day. You can tell that I am somewhat biased against it, but I’ve also read lots about it and had high expectations.

In general, the phone seems like the best competitor yet, but doesn’t seem to me to deal any mortal blows to the iPhone. In fact, I am surprised at how positive the reviews have been so far. Several of the items in reviews seem a stretch at best or downright incorrect.

Keyboard: With some difficulty, it has been explained to me how some people really want a physical keyboard. I can imagine that they become accustomed to feeling the key under their fingers before pressing. You can move your finger around to figure out where the proper key is. But then the effort to actually press the key  can often cause 4 or more keys to press on such a small keyboard as the Pre.

The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is much larger, wider spaced, tells you clearly which key you pressed. Part of the trick is not to touch the screen until you want to hit a key, and to press very lightly. With this technique I can type remarkably fast. Many errors, but it has excellent correction that fixes most errors.

Verdict: If you must have a physical keyboard, the Pre has one. But I’d strongly suggest really giving the benefit of the doubt to the iPhone keyboard. The Pre keyboard is passable, but an experienced typer can type faster on the iPhone.

Screen: This was most surprising to me. The Palm Pre sports a 3.1″ screen vs. the iPhone’s 3.5″. Reviews had said it is not that noticeable. I strongly disagree. The iPhone walks a very fine line between being compact enough to fit in a pocket and be used as a phone, yet big enough to just barely be able to surf the web as if you were really on the PC. The Pre’s screen is much smaller than the iPhone and crosses that line towards being more of a phone than a personal web communicator.

Verdict: Its hard enough surfing on the iPhone. The Pre is a worse experience because of the smaller screen.

Misc: I’d heard comments about the keyboard edge being sharp. I agree, it is sharp.

Build quality: Reviews had said it has a cheap feel to it. I think the iPhone seems sturdier because it has no moving parts and has a very strong rigid glass face. However I didn’t think the Pre felt cheap at all. The build quality of the unit I tested seemed good.

WebOS: I didn’t see anything dramatically good or bad vs. the iPhone. Multitasking is a definite plus, although I was struck with how hard it was to test. The phone doesn’t come with anything you’d want to multi-task that you can’t do similarly with the iPhone. The iPhone ends programs when you switch, but when you get back to them they are where they left off. For most things like web pages, google maps, etc. that is sufficient. Playing music continues on either phone uninterrupted. On the iPhone you can even maintain a conversation on speaker while surfing the web. It is very useful for looking up directions and telling the other party. You cannot do that with the Pre because EVDO does not allow simultaneous voice and data communications.

The two most useful applications to run in the background would be Pandora for internet music, and an instant message client.

Verdict: Multitasking is surprisingly not useful in the phone out of the box, but can be very useful with a few add on apps.

App store: As a developer, the biggest problem with the iPhone app store is that there is no way to try an application before having to commit money to buy it. This inevitably drives prices down towards zero. If its a $10 application, you’re reluctant to buy it without trying it. But for $1, what the heck, its only a buck.

The Palm Pre app store has a button to try the application. This is a huge plus for the platform, for Palm and especially for developers.

Meanwhile, Apple is rumored to be launching an update to the iPhone within a few hours that will likely double the amount of memory in the base model to 16GB, increase the processor speed by 50% while doubling RAM (big speed boost), upping the camera to a 3MP autofocus, still for $199.

This will make the Pre look expensive at $299 before a $100 mail in rebate. Who would want to pay as much after the hassle of a rebate for a copy cat phone with 1/2 the memory and no applications vs. the 40,000 applications available for the iPhone.

The only folks I can see buying it are those already at Sprint who don’t want to leave because of a SERO plan or other heavy discount, or folks that dislike AT&T and/or Apple.

The real interest in Palm will be if the Pre is good enough to make them a takeover target by Nokia. They would be smart to buy them. Otherwise Nokia seems doomed with no serious iPhone killer in the works.

A few hours until the new iPhone. Then we’ll see how the competition really stacks up.

In a nutshell, the available APIs for doing file manipulation could stand some enhancement.

NSFileManager is the predominant way in Cocoa to do file operations. Yet it has many drawbacks including:

• Limited error handling
• Inability to cancel an operation in progress
• Single threaded. If you invoke a length operation from the main thread, your UI will hang (beachball) until the operation is complete.
• Inability to get status information during an operation even if you do run in a secondary thread.

A more flexible approach is available as part of older C based frameworks. I’m not clear its relation to Carbon, but its base of Core Foundation.

There is a file manager service which you can access. An example operation is FSCopyObjectAsync. This function solves all of the issues with NSFileManager. It automatically handles running the copy as part of a run loop you specify (usually the main run loop). It can call back a function you provide allowing you to get status while the operation is going on and allows you to cancel the operation. And it provides richer access to error information.

Drawbacks? It shouldn’t have any, but it does. Being a C function, you are suddenly immersed in a world of Apple specific C data types. A random mishmash of conversion routines. As an example, FSRef is the data type used to reference files. It is an 80 character opaque internal data representation of the file system object identifier. There are functions to convert from a pathname to and from FSRef.
Getting status from the call back involves a CFDictionary which is a C version of a dictionary, not a NSDictionary.
CFNumber is also used. Unlike FSRef, this data type has “toll free bridging”. Essentially meaning that is can be used interchangeably with an NSNumber.

Overall the function is nice but hard to use for the programmer who knows Cocoa but not Core Foundation.

This reminds me of the world of Microsoft. MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) are largely object oriented wrappers of non object oriented Windows functions. Much of the class library is fine, but sometimes you see wierd artifacts due to its Windows heritage.

I am surprised that I have not been able to find wrappers for Apple Core Foundation functions. In particular this File Manager service is clearly in need of a Cocoa wrapper to hide the data conversions which are necessary to make it work easily in Cocoa.

I “assume” that this is easier to find.

I am the founder of Broad Reach Software. A software development company producing Mac and iPhone applications and consulting services.

I’ve been involved with computers and tech since the birth of the PC and that interest continues.

I have lots of opinions to share on technology.

And I’m on a voyage of discovering working to make my software business a success.