There is lots of proof of open source actually working, unfortunately for CloudFuture it?s all packaged in real business models, not idealist good v. evil dreamscapes. For instance BSD, Darwin, WebKit, and a couple others.
open in the context of open vs. closed does not equate to open-source.
Apple is a closed vertical business model for the most part but it uses and contributes to open source.
Google will keep supporting Mozilla. Google just wants to flood the market with alternatives to Internet Explorer, its only real competition for its core search business. every point of market share IE loses to any other browser, Google picks up most of that search business.
likewise Android is aimed dead-on at Win Mo. taking the OEM's away from MS is exactly what it is designed perfectly to do. same with all the Google cloud services. Nokia, RIM, and Apple make their own phones and have their own solid market niche, so they are not the target.
Google, not Apple, is the MS Slayer of ... the Future!
I agree with all this. To make it worse, Google has figured out a way to run Chrome browser within iE. I don?t know how well the uptake will be, but it?s just another front that can potentially hurt?s MS? premise on the web.
Before I get absolutely flamed for my post, I'm a recent switcher to the Mac - I have a MacBook Pro and absolutely love it I should have bought a Mac years ago.
It's only words.
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As a software developer who's been in the industry for 15 years though, I find the closed-ness of the iPhone as a development platform rather off putting. I've invested the last 11 years of my career to developing enterprise systems with Java. To develop apps for the iPhone I have to learn Objective-C. Hmm. Well I did some development with C back in 1996, but I'm not planning on spending any effort into learning Objective-C right now. Sorry to say guys, but the world has moved on, and the future of software development is not C or C++. Ok, so it's not Java either - Java is in it's prime right now, but there's going to be 'the next big thing' come along to replace it any time now.
You should know that the only important thing is making money. The tools to make money are fairly irrelevant. How the industry shifts from one tool or another, I'm not so sure follows any sound reasoning other then we're at the whims of market spiralization or cultural feedback loops.
Ie, did Java really truly make you more productive than using a C based language? I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be better off with staying with assembly language.
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Secondly, I'm not going to invest tens of hours developing an app for the iPhone to have it reviewed by Apple and possibly rejected as not suitable for the Store. This is not my day job (if it was then I wouldn't have any issues) - I write software as a hobby outside of my day job. I'm not going to invest the time and effort developing an iPhone app to have it possibly rejected and waste my time.
That's perfectly fine. Business is a very risky endeavor.
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Google made an incredibly sensible decision to base their development language for the Android platform on Java. Think about it. The software industry right now is full of Java developers. Computer Science degree courses use Java as their teaching language.
This is where I say it is irrelevant. The only relevant factor is whether the platform business model will move cash from consumers pockets to developer/platform provide pockets.
I really don't get all this promotion of one environment over the other. It's merely a tool. It's like 10% of the work. The remaining 90% is the design of the app, which the development platform has no help with. The other remaining 90% is the business oriented parts such as market research, advertising, pricing/sales, etc. Then another remaining 90% to have the guts to pull it off. Then another 90% just to be lucky.
The language in which is used to code the app, listed as a platform advantage, has got to be the poorest reasoning I've ever hear. It also keeps on being repeated. If anything, if I hear Java, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Flash, etc, being touted as an advantage, that's when I start thinking about what's wrong.
Making it easy for developers to code isn't the problem. The problem is making it easy for developers to make money. Apple's App Store model appears to be the first one that really works.
Palm, PPC/WM, Java ME, Nokia's neutered C++ all have followed the "open" business model. There success appears to be fleeting if they were even successful in the first place.
Now there are advantages to platforms, and Apple has a leg up compared to basically all other platforms right now, but that's really different from the language. Oh, the another 90% is learning the development environment!
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I've started writing apps for Android... because I can. It was incredibly easy to pick up the Android platform specific APIs and there's still plenty of the core Java APIs being leveraged by the platform. Plus, when I uploaded my apps to the Android market, they were available to download from my Android phone instantly.
Are you going to tell us how much money you make? You don't have to, but are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
Google will keep supporting Mozilla. Google just wants to flood the market with alternatives to Internet Explorer, its only real competition for its core search business. every point of market share IE loses to any other browser, Google picks up most of that search business.
likewise Android is aimed dead-on at Win Mo. taking the OEM's away from MS is exactly what it is designed perfectly to do. same with all the Google cloud services. Nokia, RIM, and Apple make their own phones and have their own solid market niche, so they are not the target.
Google, not Apple, is the MS Slayer of ... the Future!
My rumination was how much Mozilla was going to keep on supporting Mozilla. If it is perceived to be only a tool for Google's purposes, I can very easily see abandonment by Mozilla developers.
Perhaps Google's intentions are to kill MS, but I don't think so. If Schmidt was trying to do that, I would vote to fire him immediately. His first and foremost responsibility is to make money. Google is selling advertising through its free services. They've decided that offering free operating systems, browsers, services, etc, is the way to increase advertising dollars. Sounds good to me. If MS is in the way and they have to die as a consequence, great!
But you understand my subtlety? I don't need the CEO to have a fixation on MS. The fixation should be making money.
Now, MS may be the casualty here with Google's strategy, but Apple has got to realize they could be a casualty too, be it from enemy, friendly or frenemy fire. Apple shouldn't be trusting Google one little bit right now. If I were any tech company, I wouldn't trust Google one little bit.
Khooke, are going to move to the NDK or stick with Java? I have a feeling that to really harness the power of the Android platform and the hardware it’s running on you’ll have to move to the a C-based language.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
You don't have to, but are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
I’d like to know this, too. Oh, and welcome to the forum.
The fact that Apple adapted existing desktop frameworks for the iPhone, instead of adapting existing mobile frameworks, is part of it's success IMHO. It meant that the first developers to the platform thought of it as a little computer (and wrote apps accordingly), instead of thinking of it as a big pager. I'm not saying that's why Apple did it, just that it's had a positive side effect.
That is the exact thinking that will keep Apple from advancing anymore.
HTML5 is years away from being common regardless of what Steve Jobs tells everyone.
Adobe made it simple for all to see that on the iPhone Apple is blocking it. Thank You Adobe for letting the world know that it's Apple that is holding back technology that Adobe has made available. If Apple wants it to work better on their products then Apple needs to work with a partner to give optimal performance. Steve doesn't want Flash.
That is the final nail in the coffin. Every other mobile phone will have Flash but the iPhone.
Apple is trying to hold all of the cards and it's deck is getting smaller with each move they make. Steve doesn't like partners. He wants it all, vendors and consumers are tired of it.
RFID Chip the iPhone and loose more customers.
This has been in the work for years and Google has continued to build partners in every sector. Apple burns bridges with vendors.
If you are going short in the Market. Apple is a great play. If you are going long then Google is for your 401k.
Steve dies and Apple stock sinks. What average consumer even knows who the CEO of Google is.
Google is on a company buying frenzy. Apple is on a Patent a day frenzy.
Apple is trying to patent air. Steve will give it to you if you buy it from iTunes.
The fact that Apple adapted existing desktop frameworks for the iPhone, instead of adapting existing mobile frameworks, is part of it's success IMHO. It meant that the first developers to the platform thought of it as a little computer (and wrote apps accordingly), instead of thinking of it as a big pager. I'm not saying that's why Apple did it, just that it's had a positive side effect.
But this is the beauty of using Java as the development language for Android. I've never developed an application for a phone before and it took me a couple of hours of browsing the docs and coding my first app. Admittedly I have 11 years of Java development experience, but this is exactly the point. It was easy for me to develop an Android app because I already know Java. I just had to pick up the basics of the Android platform specific APIs. This is exactly my point. Any Java developer can easily develop apps for Android. The barrier to entry to develop apps for the iPhone is significantly higher, unless you're already a Mac developer and you already know Objective-C. I guess you could turn this argument on it's head and say 'oh, well if you were already developing apps for the Mac then you can easily develop apps for the iPhone', but the fact is there is a huge developer base of Java developers who can easily develop apps for Android. I don't know any developers who know Objective-C, and I've never come across any in 15 years. Admittedly I work in a Java centric world, but that's what I see around me.
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Originally Posted by solipsism
Khooke, are going to move to the NDK or stick with Java? I have a feeling that to really harness the power of the Android platform and the hardware it’s running on you’ll have to move to the a C-based language.
No, I don't see any need to, when I can develop apps in Java that I have years of experience with. If I was developing 3D games then maybe I'd answer this differently...
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Originally Posted by Shrike
The tools to make money are fairly irrelevant. How the industry shifts from one tool or another, I'm not so sure follows any sound reasoning other then we're at the whims of market spiralization or cultural feedback loops.
When we're talking about development tools though, it makes sense to pick a tool/platform where you can get the resources with the skills with those tools. Lets say I am about to start a local business developing mobile applications. I need to hire a team of 5 developers to work on a project. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to hire any Objective-C developers locally, but there are a huge number of Java developers within my city area. So in this respect, the tools are important. I have a very slim chance of staffing my project with Objective-C developers, but I know I can have an almost endless list of Java developers to interview and recruit from.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
Ie, did Java really truly make you more productive than using a C based language? I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be better off with staying with assembly language.
This will always be a hotly debated question, but IMHO yes, of course, with no doubt. The design goals of Java as a language were to address the software development's concerns and issues with C and C++ based languages and to avoid the pitfalls of both C and C++. Although Java is still considered a 3rd generation language in the same category as C and C++, the evolutionary enhancements are like asking 'so, does coding in assembly language really make you more productive than coding in machine code?'. Ok, so the jump isn't that pronounced, but you get my drift.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
I really don't get all this promotion of one environment over the other. It's merely a tool. It's like 10% of the work. The remaining 90% is the design of the app, which the development platform has no help with. The other remaining 90% is the business oriented parts such as market research, advertising, pricing/sales, etc. Then another remaining 90% to have the guts to pull it off. Then another 90% just to be lucky.
I'll agree with this. If you don't have a good idea then it's not going to sell. That's pretty obvious. However, my main point is that given the number of Java developers in the industry, there are a substantially larger number of developers who are immediately able to develop for Android, where there is a significantly smaller number of developers able to develop for the iPhone. This is where I see the benefit of the Android approach.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
The language in which is used to code the app, listed as a platform advantage, has got to be the poorest reasoning I've ever hear. It also keeps on being repeated. If anything, if I hear Java, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Flash, etc, being touted as an advantage, that's when I start thinking about what's wrong.
See my answer above.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
Are you going to tell us how much money you make?
Outside of my day job I code for fun. If I make some money too, great. I'm not doing this to pay the bills.
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Originally Posted by Shrike
are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
This is where you are missing the point. The Android platform can be enhanced to support different hardware devices, but the Dalvik JVM that runs on the Android OS is the same and offers the same programming API across all devices. The apps that I have written (and all other apps) can be downloaded from the Android Market on any Android device and run on any Android device. My apps already run on all available Android devices. I don't have to make any additional changes to support the different devices. This is the absolute beauty of this approach by Google, since once there are more phones from more manufacturers and across all the different carriers, you start to see how amazing this approach is - developers can write apps to run across ALL these devices. You're not targeting one phone from one manufacturer, it's a common platform across all the devices.
The only exception to this is of course if I take advantage of new features added in 2.0, the app won't run on any version prior to 2.0, but that's expected.You can't add new features and keep backwards compatibility too.
This is where you are missing the point. The Android platform can be enhanced to support different hardware devices, but the Dalvik JVM that runs on the Android OS is the same and offers the same programming API across all devices. The apps that I have written (and all other apps) can be downloaded from the Android Market on any Android device and run on any Android device. My apps already run on all available Android devices. I don't have to make any additional changes to support the different devices. This is the absolute beauty of this approach by Google, since once there are more phones from more manufacturers and across all the different carriers, you start to see how amazing this approach is - developers can write apps to run across ALL these devices. You're not targeting one phone from one manufacturer, it's a common platform across all the devices.
This is what I don?t understand. How can you write one Java app for Android that will work ideally with slow small Android phone with a 2? inch display, for example, and also have it be ideal for a device like the Droid or even a netbook without running into complications. What if your app needs an accelerometer but the netbook doesn?t have it or if the simpler phone?s accelerometer is too slow to be usable, or some other hardware component isn?t good enough to make it function accurately.
Yeah, 'cause that "open" OS has done so well in dominating the desktop. What's that Linux desktop market share again? Still less than one percent?
And, BTW, RFID-chipping the iPhone could well be the next big thing. Plenty of people in Japan use chipped phones every day for quick and easy purchases from stores to transportation to vending machines.
Or Apple could go in with Visa to embed credit card payment systems into the phone. Who knows? We could eventually replace our wallets with our phones too, just as many of us have replaced watches, pocket cameras, dedicated MP3 players, Gameboys, and GPS's and other devices...
This is what I don?t understand. How can you write one Java app for Android that will work ideally with slow small Android phone with a 2? inch display, for example, and also have it be ideal for a device like the Droid or even a netbook without running into complications. What if your app needs an accelerometer but the netbook doesn?t have it or if the simpler phone?s accelerometer is too slow to be usable, or some other hardware component isn?t good enough to make it function accurately.
I don't see it as a major problem for general purpose apps. Mac OS X apps work on both Hackintosh netbooks and octo-core Mac Pros with dual 30" monitors without issue. The problems will come with games, which need a minimum level of performance to be viable.
And don't forget that although manufacturers can do what like they like with Android, they have to conform to Google's guidelines if the device is to use the Google/Android branding. There won't be any Google-branded phones with a 2" screen.
On a different point, it always surprises me how quick people are to dismiss Symbian. More phones are shipping with Symbian than ever have before. Let's take the worst case scenario - only Nokia is using Symbian in three years time. Because of Symbian's low hardware requirements and it's $0 license fee, it's likely to find its way onto half of Nokia's portfolio. At today's levels, that's around 180 million phones a year. Whilst the iPhone is a very desirable piece of kit, not everyone in the developing world can afford one. Nokia is very big in India and China but that's not immediately obvious if you only read US-centric websites like AI.
WinMo's latest phones are actually looking good enough to compete with Android
Don't make me laugh. As soon as you get off the home screen you still pretty much require a stylus or the very end of your fingernail to interact with the UI. WinMo is too stuck in the dark ages with their desktop-to-Mobile UI (almost direct port of desktop UI) and as far as corporate market goes, they can't change it.
They made their bed, now they're going to have to sleep in it until it dies!
Open wins and that is why I've moved a large portion of my portfolio to Google. I'm young enough to wait for the return.
You might then be too young to remember just how fast Google blew by the current search engine king of it's day, Alta Vista.
Alta Vista was a highly regarded search engine that lost its lead seemingly overnight, when Google launched their popularity-based search engine that delivered better results.
The point being that search audiences are fickle creatures, and another site is just be a click away on the web. Let some hotshot developer figure out how to properly do something like true contextual search, and people could flock "from" Google just as fast as they flocked "to" it.
Or to put it another way, you might consider diversifying your portfolio....
At today's levels, that's around 180 million phones a year. Whilst the iPhone is a very desirable piece of kit, not everyone in the developing world can afford one.
True, but does Apple care? Apple has shown time and again that they have little to no interest in market share simply for the sake of market share. As with PC's, they're more than happy to let other manufacturers undercut each other to make pennies on the low end, while Apple takes your dollars on the high end.
In fact, they're extremely happy to let everyone else fight for table scraps, because that means that everyone else is too busy to take them on at the high end.
True, but does Apple care? Apple has shown time and again that they have little to no interest in market share simply for the sake of market share. As with PC's, they're more than happy to let other manufacturers undercut each other to make pennies on the low end, while Apple takes your dollars on the high end.
I agree, the overlap of the iPhone and Symbian's markets is small even today and will reduce further. Apple don't need to worry too greatly about Symbian. However, for people to totally discount Symbian from the future smartphone market is dumb. Symbian will be around and will retain a large chunk of the market.
As a software developer who's been in the industry for 15 years though, I find the closed-ness of the iPhone as a development platform rather off putting. I've invested the last 11 years of my career to developing enterprise systems with Java. To develop apps for the iPhone I have to learn Objective-C. Hmm. Well I did some development with C back in 1996, but I'm not planning on spending any effort into learning Objective-C right now. Sorry to say guys, but the world has moved on, and the future of software development is not C or C++. Ok, so it's not Java either - Java is in it's prime right now, but there's going to be 'the next big thing' come along to replace it any time now.
I think you made a reasonable post, but I disagree. As in "totally disagree". I invested the last 10 years of my career to develop for Mac OS. The decision Apple made is good for me. You might not be aware, but Apple already tried the waters with Java when Objective-C was widely unknown outside of the small circle of NEXT developers and Java was the buzzword of the day. The idea that Java will help bring developers on board failed miserably back then. I was not a NEXT guy and learned Objective-C in 2-3 days. It was the frameworks that took much longer. Objective-C is not the best language on the planet by a big margin, but Apple had lots of reasons to stick with it, and they made the right decision.
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Originally Posted by khooke
Secondly, I'm not going to invest tens of hours developing an app for the iPhone to have it reviewed by Apple and possibly rejected as not suitable for the Store. This is not my day job (if it was then I wouldn't have any issues) - I write software as a hobby outside of my day job. I'm not going to invest the time and effort developing an iPhone app to have it possibly rejected and waste my time.
You read too much into online crap posted here and there. As an iPhone developer who worked on several apps for 2 different companies I have to tell you that Apple does not reject the apps on a "I like this / I don't like this" bases. I am pretty sure Apple would like to remove lots of crap from the AppStore (and I would support them), but they don't, because they are following certain rules. The number 1 reason for rejection, by a big margin, is app crashing. The #2 was age rating I think. There are a couple of high-profile cases discussed online, but as a developer you are pretty safe to make whatever app you like, as soon as it meets the officially stated rules. Oh, and I don't think those rules are too restrictive.
But this is the beauty of using Java as the development language for Android. I've never developed an application for a phone before and it took me a couple of hours of browsing the docs and coding my first app. Admittedly I have 11 years of Java development experience, but this is exactly the point.
If you have that much development experience you should be able to pick up new languages very easily. I don't think using a different programming language to other platforms is that a big of a deal.
The room seems a little quiet and I seem to read fear of the future for Apple.
I think Fortune was saying good bye to the past and thanks for everything with the award.
The Future does seem to all about 100's of phones on all carriers and application developers climbing over each other to get on the Google Wave.
Good Bye Steve...
It was nice knowing you. The 90's all over again and still a closed system. You'd think Steve Jobs would be smarter 20 years later.
But he's a billionaire now he doesn't really need the money anymore.
While this is a trollish post, I can see why you'd say it. But like I said, I don't think it's the same thing over again. I think these are different times and phones are not the same thing as "computers". They might be more powerful, and can do computer-y things, but people don't look at them that way - they look at them as their phone. I look at it more like the iPod business. It's not the same thing, despite how the all geeks perceive it to be, and despite having similar code. The average user doesn't no what the f*** code is. If you're playing with your iPhone no one will ever call you a geek, they'll ask for a go.
Microsoft introduced its own modified copy of CP/M under the name MS-DOS, partnered with IBM to widely deploy it, and then became very successful in selling a standardized, proprietary version of what had been a loosely open standard (open in the sense of being widely used by multiple companies, not in the sense of open source or an open specification).
This is not entirely accurate. MS-DOS had some similar features to aid porting from CP/M but was a new system. CP/M was the more "open" standard in the sense that it was designed from early on to be portable, and eventually ran on quite a wide range of hardware platforms, but MS-DOS was initially targeted specifically at the IBM PC and clones (all architecturally similar) came later.
One of the more persistent myths is that it's necessary to be an "open standard" to be successful, and this is why MS beat Apple on market share. While CP/M was more open than MS-DOS, it lost out. Microsoft won because they had the benefit of riding IBM's coattails when business wanted a PC supplier that wore suits, and were willing to buy market share with low prices. Once in a monopoly position, MS stopped being inexpensive. The "open standard" here was the IBM PC's crude design that couldn't easily be protected against reverse engineering, not MS.
Fast-forward to today: iPod is a virtual monopoly. Does it need to be an "open standard"? I don't think so. Let's see how iPhone goes. Given the momentum of 100,000 apps and the huge ecosystem going with iPods, I wouldn't bet against it. I just hope Apple doesn't waste their market dominance the way MS has.
I think you made a reasonable post, but I disagree. As in "totally disagree". I invested the last 10 years of my career to develop for Mac OS. The decision Apple made is good for me. You might not be aware, but Apple already tried the waters with Java when Objective-C was widely unknown outside of the small circle of NEXT developers and Java was the buzzword of the day. The idea that Java will help bring developers on board failed miserably back then. I was not a NEXT guy and learned Objective-C in 2-3 days. It was the frameworks that took much longer. Objective-C is not the best language on the planet by a big margin, but Apple had lots of reasons to stick with it, and they made the right decision.
I would have to pretty much agree with this, except for perhaps the size of the margin between Objective-C and the "best language on the planet"; I don't think it's that large. But, yes, an experienced Java programmer could learn Objective-C in a day. (Java is derived from Objective-C, after all.) And, as with learning to program on any platform, the language itself is pretty simple, the frameworks take 99% of the learning time.
I remember when Apple announced "Rhapsody", Mac programmers were freaking out about having to learn Objective-C. All those funny square brackets all over the place! How could they ever program like this! There were proposals to change Objective-C to use a C++ style dot notation (which, unfortunately, was added to Obj-C 2.0; amazing how many grown men couldn't deal with square brackets), proposals to make Java the programming language for Rhapsody, and so on. (They did move WebObjects to Java, which certainly didn't help there.) Fortunately, after a while, most everyone calmed down and realized that Objective-C wasn't really a big deal.
Comments
There is lots of proof of open source actually working, unfortunately for CloudFuture it?s all packaged in real business models, not idealist good v. evil dreamscapes. For instance BSD, Darwin, WebKit, and a couple others.
open in the context of open vs. closed does not equate to open-source.
Apple is a closed vertical business model for the most part but it uses and contributes to open source.
Google will keep supporting Mozilla. Google just wants to flood the market with alternatives to Internet Explorer, its only real competition for its core search business. every point of market share IE loses to any other browser, Google picks up most of that search business.
likewise Android is aimed dead-on at Win Mo. taking the OEM's away from MS is exactly what it is designed perfectly to do. same with all the Google cloud services. Nokia, RIM, and Apple make their own phones and have their own solid market niche, so they are not the target.
Google, not Apple, is the MS Slayer of ... the Future!
I agree with all this. To make it worse, Google has figured out a way to run Chrome browser within iE. I don?t know how well the uptake will be, but it?s just another front that can potentially hurt?s MS? premise on the web.
Before I get absolutely flamed for my post, I'm a recent switcher to the Mac - I have a MacBook Pro and absolutely love it
It's only words.
As a software developer who's been in the industry for 15 years though, I find the closed-ness of the iPhone as a development platform rather off putting. I've invested the last 11 years of my career to developing enterprise systems with Java. To develop apps for the iPhone I have to learn Objective-C. Hmm. Well I did some development with C back in 1996, but I'm not planning on spending any effort into learning Objective-C right now. Sorry to say guys, but the world has moved on, and the future of software development is not C or C++. Ok, so it's not Java either - Java is in it's prime right now, but there's going to be 'the next big thing' come along to replace it any time now.
You should know that the only important thing is making money. The tools to make money are fairly irrelevant. How the industry shifts from one tool or another, I'm not so sure follows any sound reasoning other then we're at the whims of market spiralization or cultural feedback loops.
Ie, did Java really truly make you more productive than using a C based language? I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be better off with staying with assembly language.
Secondly, I'm not going to invest tens of hours developing an app for the iPhone to have it reviewed by Apple and possibly rejected as not suitable for the Store. This is not my day job (if it was then I wouldn't have any issues) - I write software as a hobby outside of my day job. I'm not going to invest the time and effort developing an iPhone app to have it possibly rejected and waste my time.
That's perfectly fine. Business is a very risky endeavor.
Google made an incredibly sensible decision to base their development language for the Android platform on Java. Think about it. The software industry right now is full of Java developers. Computer Science degree courses use Java as their teaching language.
This is where I say it is irrelevant. The only relevant factor is whether the platform business model will move cash from consumers pockets to developer/platform provide pockets.
I really don't get all this promotion of one environment over the other. It's merely a tool. It's like 10% of the work. The remaining 90% is the design of the app, which the development platform has no help with. The other remaining 90% is the business oriented parts such as market research, advertising, pricing/sales, etc. Then another remaining 90% to have the guts to pull it off. Then another 90% just to be lucky.
The language in which is used to code the app, listed as a platform advantage, has got to be the poorest reasoning I've ever hear. It also keeps on being repeated. If anything, if I hear Java, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Flash, etc, being touted as an advantage, that's when I start thinking about what's wrong.
Making it easy for developers to code isn't the problem. The problem is making it easy for developers to make money. Apple's App Store model appears to be the first one that really works.
Palm, PPC/WM, Java ME, Nokia's neutered C++ all have followed the "open" business model. There success appears to be fleeting if they were even successful in the first place.
Now there are advantages to platforms, and Apple has a leg up compared to basically all other platforms right now, but that's really different from the language. Oh, the another 90% is learning the development environment!
I've started writing apps for Android... because I can. It was incredibly easy to pick up the Android platform specific APIs and there's still plenty of the core Java APIs being leveraged by the platform. Plus, when I uploaded my apps to the Android market, they were available to download from my Android phone instantly.
Are you going to tell us how much money you make? You don't have to, but are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
Google will keep supporting Mozilla. Google just wants to flood the market with alternatives to Internet Explorer, its only real competition for its core search business. every point of market share IE loses to any other browser, Google picks up most of that search business.
likewise Android is aimed dead-on at Win Mo. taking the OEM's away from MS is exactly what it is designed perfectly to do. same with all the Google cloud services. Nokia, RIM, and Apple make their own phones and have their own solid market niche, so they are not the target.
Google, not Apple, is the MS Slayer of ... the Future!
My rumination was how much Mozilla was going to keep on supporting Mozilla.
Perhaps Google's intentions are to kill MS, but I don't think so. If Schmidt was trying to do that, I would vote to fire him immediately. His first and foremost responsibility is to make money. Google is selling advertising through its free services. They've decided that offering free operating systems, browsers, services, etc, is the way to increase advertising dollars. Sounds good to me. If MS is in the way and they have to die as a consequence, great!
But you understand my subtlety? I don't need the CEO to have a fixation on MS. The fixation should be making money.
Now, MS may be the casualty here with Google's strategy, but Apple has got to realize they could be a casualty too, be it from enemy, friendly or frenemy fire. Apple shouldn't be trusting Google one little bit right now. If I were any tech company, I wouldn't trust Google one little bit.
You don't have to, but are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
I’d like to know this, too. Oh, and welcome to the forum.
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That is the exact thinking that will keep Apple from advancing anymore.
HTML5 is years away from being common regardless of what Steve Jobs tells everyone.
Adobe made it simple for all to see that on the iPhone Apple is blocking it. Thank You Adobe for letting the world know that it's Apple that is holding back technology that Adobe has made available. If Apple wants it to work better on their products then Apple needs to work with a partner to give optimal performance. Steve doesn't want Flash.
That is the final nail in the coffin. Every other mobile phone will have Flash but the iPhone.
Apple is trying to hold all of the cards and it's deck is getting smaller with each move they make. Steve doesn't like partners. He wants it all, vendors and consumers are tired of it.
RFID Chip the iPhone and loose more customers.
This has been in the work for years and Google has continued to build partners in every sector. Apple burns bridges with vendors.
If you are going short in the Market. Apple is a great play. If you are going long then Google is for your 401k.
Steve dies and Apple stock sinks. What average consumer even knows who the CEO of Google is.
Google is on a company buying frenzy. Apple is on a Patent a day frenzy.
Apple is trying to patent air. Steve will give it to you if you buy it from iTunes.
Who's the evil one in the market these days?...
Cut it out, Techstud.
The fact that Apple adapted existing desktop frameworks for the iPhone, instead of adapting existing mobile frameworks, is part of it's success IMHO. It meant that the first developers to the platform thought of it as a little computer (and wrote apps accordingly), instead of thinking of it as a big pager. I'm not saying that's why Apple did it, just that it's had a positive side effect.
But this is the beauty of using Java as the development language for Android. I've never developed an application for a phone before and it took me a couple of hours of browsing the docs and coding my first app. Admittedly I have 11 years of Java development experience, but this is exactly the point. It was easy for me to develop an Android app because I already know Java. I just had to pick up the basics of the Android platform specific APIs. This is exactly my point. Any Java developer can easily develop apps for Android. The barrier to entry to develop apps for the iPhone is significantly higher, unless you're already a Mac developer and you already know Objective-C. I guess you could turn this argument on it's head and say 'oh, well if you were already developing apps for the Mac then you can easily develop apps for the iPhone', but the fact is there is a huge developer base of Java developers who can easily develop apps for Android. I don't know any developers who know Objective-C, and I've never come across any in 15 years. Admittedly I work in a Java centric world, but that's what I see around me.
Khooke, are going to move to the NDK or stick with Java? I have a feeling that to really harness the power of the Android platform and the hardware it’s running on you’ll have to move to the a C-based language.
No, I don't see any need to, when I can develop apps in Java that I have years of experience with. If I was developing 3D games then maybe I'd answer this differently...
The tools to make money are fairly irrelevant. How the industry shifts from one tool or another, I'm not so sure follows any sound reasoning other then we're at the whims of market spiralization or cultural feedback loops.
When we're talking about development tools though, it makes sense to pick a tool/platform where you can get the resources with the skills with those tools. Lets say I am about to start a local business developing mobile applications. I need to hire a team of 5 developers to work on a project. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to hire any Objective-C developers locally, but there are a huge number of Java developers within my city area. So in this respect, the tools are important. I have a very slim chance of staffing my project with Objective-C developers, but I know I can have an almost endless list of Java developers to interview and recruit from.
Ie, did Java really truly make you more productive than using a C based language? I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be better off with staying with assembly language.
This will always be a hotly debated question, but IMHO yes, of course, with no doubt. The design goals of Java as a language were to address the software development's concerns and issues with C and C++ based languages and to avoid the pitfalls of both C and C++. Although Java is still considered a 3rd generation language in the same category as C and C++, the evolutionary enhancements are like asking 'so, does coding in assembly language really make you more productive than coding in machine code?'. Ok, so the jump isn't that pronounced, but you get my drift.
I really don't get all this promotion of one environment over the other. It's merely a tool. It's like 10% of the work. The remaining 90% is the design of the app, which the development platform has no help with. The other remaining 90% is the business oriented parts such as market research, advertising, pricing/sales, etc. Then another remaining 90% to have the guts to pull it off. Then another 90% just to be lucky.
I'll agree with this. If you don't have a good idea then it's not going to sell. That's pretty obvious. However, my main point is that given the number of Java developers in the industry, there are a substantially larger number of developers who are immediately able to develop for Android, where there is a significantly smaller number of developers able to develop for the iPhone. This is where I see the benefit of the Android approach.
The language in which is used to code the app, listed as a platform advantage, has got to be the poorest reasoning I've ever hear. It also keeps on being repeated. If anything, if I hear Java, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Flash, etc, being touted as an advantage, that's when I start thinking about what's wrong.
See my answer above.
Are you going to tell us how much money you make?
Outside of my day job I code for fun. If I make some money too, great. I'm not doing this to pay the bills.
are you going to tell us how much work it is to support DROID, DROID Eris, G1, myTouch, Hero, and other flavors of Android at least?
This is where you are missing the point. The Android platform can be enhanced to support different hardware devices, but the Dalvik JVM that runs on the Android OS is the same and offers the same programming API across all devices. The apps that I have written (and all other apps) can be downloaded from the Android Market on any Android device and run on any Android device. My apps already run on all available Android devices. I don't have to make any additional changes to support the different devices. This is the absolute beauty of this approach by Google, since once there are more phones from more manufacturers and across all the different carriers, you start to see how amazing this approach is - developers can write apps to run across ALL these devices. You're not targeting one phone from one manufacturer, it's a common platform across all the devices.
The only exception to this is of course if I take advantage of new features added in 2.0, the app won't run on any version prior to 2.0, but that's expected.You can't add new features and keep backwards compatibility too.
This is where you are missing the point. The Android platform can be enhanced to support different hardware devices, but the Dalvik JVM that runs on the Android OS is the same and offers the same programming API across all devices. The apps that I have written (and all other apps) can be downloaded from the Android Market on any Android device and run on any Android device. My apps already run on all available Android devices. I don't have to make any additional changes to support the different devices. This is the absolute beauty of this approach by Google, since once there are more phones from more manufacturers and across all the different carriers, you start to see how amazing this approach is - developers can write apps to run across ALL these devices. You're not targeting one phone from one manufacturer, it's a common platform across all the devices.
This is what I don?t understand. How can you write one Java app for Android that will work ideally with slow small Android phone with a 2? inch display, for example, and also have it be ideal for a device like the Droid or even a netbook without running into complications. What if your app needs an accelerometer but the netbook doesn?t have it or if the simpler phone?s accelerometer is too slow to be usable, or some other hardware component isn?t good enough to make it function accurately.
All closed OS's that are the past.
Yeah, 'cause that "open" OS has done so well in dominating the desktop. What's that Linux desktop market share again? Still less than one percent?
And, BTW, RFID-chipping the iPhone could well be the next big thing. Plenty of people in Japan use chipped phones every day for quick and easy purchases from stores to transportation to vending machines.
Or Apple could go in with Visa to embed credit card payment systems into the phone. Who knows? We could eventually replace our wallets with our phones too, just as many of us have replaced watches, pocket cameras, dedicated MP3 players, Gameboys, and GPS's and other devices...
This is what I don?t understand. How can you write one Java app for Android that will work ideally with slow small Android phone with a 2? inch display, for example, and also have it be ideal for a device like the Droid or even a netbook without running into complications. What if your app needs an accelerometer but the netbook doesn?t have it or if the simpler phone?s accelerometer is too slow to be usable, or some other hardware component isn?t good enough to make it function accurately.
I don't see it as a major problem for general purpose apps. Mac OS X apps work on both Hackintosh netbooks and octo-core Mac Pros with dual 30" monitors without issue. The problems will come with games, which need a minimum level of performance to be viable.
And don't forget that although manufacturers can do what like they like with Android, they have to conform to Google's guidelines if the device is to use the Google/Android branding. There won't be any Google-branded phones with a 2" screen.
On a different point, it always surprises me how quick people are to dismiss Symbian. More phones are shipping with Symbian than ever have before. Let's take the worst case scenario - only Nokia is using Symbian in three years time. Because of Symbian's low hardware requirements and it's $0 license fee, it's likely to find its way onto half of Nokia's portfolio. At today's levels, that's around 180 million phones a year. Whilst the iPhone is a very desirable piece of kit, not everyone in the developing world can afford one. Nokia is very big in India and China but that's not immediately obvious if you only read US-centric websites like AI.
WinMo's latest phones are actually looking good enough to compete with Android
Don't make me laugh. As soon as you get off the home screen you still pretty much require a stylus or the very end of your fingernail to interact with the UI. WinMo is too stuck in the dark ages with their desktop-to-Mobile UI (almost direct port of desktop UI) and as far as corporate market goes, they can't change it.
They made their bed, now they're going to have to sleep in it until it dies!
Open wins and that is why I've moved a large portion of my portfolio to Google. I'm young enough to wait for the return.
You might then be too young to remember just how fast Google blew by the current search engine king of it's day, Alta Vista.
Alta Vista was a highly regarded search engine that lost its lead seemingly overnight, when Google launched their popularity-based search engine that delivered better results.
The point being that search audiences are fickle creatures, and another site is just be a click away on the web. Let some hotshot developer figure out how to properly do something like true contextual search, and people could flock "from" Google just as fast as they flocked "to" it.
Or to put it another way, you might consider diversifying your portfolio....
At today's levels, that's around 180 million phones a year. Whilst the iPhone is a very desirable piece of kit, not everyone in the developing world can afford one.
True, but does Apple care? Apple has shown time and again that they have little to no interest in market share simply for the sake of market share. As with PC's, they're more than happy to let other manufacturers undercut each other to make pennies on the low end, while Apple takes your dollars on the high end.
In fact, they're extremely happy to let everyone else fight for table scraps, because that means that everyone else is too busy to take them on at the high end.
True, but does Apple care? Apple has shown time and again that they have little to no interest in market share simply for the sake of market share. As with PC's, they're more than happy to let other manufacturers undercut each other to make pennies on the low end, while Apple takes your dollars on the high end.
I agree, the overlap of the iPhone and Symbian's markets is small even today and will reduce further. Apple don't need to worry too greatly about Symbian. However, for people to totally discount Symbian from the future smartphone market is dumb. Symbian will be around and will retain a large chunk of the market.
As a software developer who's been in the industry for 15 years though, I find the closed-ness of the iPhone as a development platform rather off putting. I've invested the last 11 years of my career to developing enterprise systems with Java. To develop apps for the iPhone I have to learn Objective-C. Hmm. Well I did some development with C back in 1996, but I'm not planning on spending any effort into learning Objective-C right now. Sorry to say guys, but the world has moved on, and the future of software development is not C or C++. Ok, so it's not Java either - Java is in it's prime right now, but there's going to be 'the next big thing' come along to replace it any time now.
I think you made a reasonable post, but I disagree. As in "totally disagree". I invested the last 10 years of my career to develop for Mac OS. The decision Apple made is good for me. You might not be aware, but Apple already tried the waters with Java when Objective-C was widely unknown outside of the small circle of NEXT developers and Java was the buzzword of the day. The idea that Java will help bring developers on board failed miserably back then. I was not a NEXT guy and learned Objective-C in 2-3 days. It was the frameworks that took much longer. Objective-C is not the best language on the planet by a big margin, but Apple had lots of reasons to stick with it, and they made the right decision.
Secondly, I'm not going to invest tens of hours developing an app for the iPhone to have it reviewed by Apple and possibly rejected as not suitable for the Store. This is not my day job (if it was then I wouldn't have any issues) - I write software as a hobby outside of my day job. I'm not going to invest the time and effort developing an iPhone app to have it possibly rejected and waste my time.
You read too much into online crap posted here and there. As an iPhone developer who worked on several apps for 2 different companies I have to tell you that Apple does not reject the apps on a "I like this / I don't like this" bases. I am pretty sure Apple would like to remove lots of crap from the AppStore (and I would support them), but they don't, because they are following certain rules. The number 1 reason for rejection, by a big margin, is app crashing. The #2 was age rating I think. There are a couple of high-profile cases discussed online, but as a developer you are pretty safe to make whatever app you like, as soon as it meets the officially stated rules. Oh, and I don't think those rules are too restrictive.
But this is the beauty of using Java as the development language for Android. I've never developed an application for a phone before and it took me a couple of hours of browsing the docs and coding my first app. Admittedly I have 11 years of Java development experience, but this is exactly the point.
If you have that much development experience you should be able to pick up new languages very easily. I don't think using a different programming language to other platforms is that a big of a deal.
The room seems a little quiet and I seem to read fear of the future for Apple.
I think Fortune was saying good bye to the past and thanks for everything with the award.
The Future does seem to all about 100's of phones on all carriers and application developers climbing over each other to get on the Google Wave.
Good Bye Steve...
It was nice knowing you. The 90's all over again and still a closed system. You'd think Steve Jobs would be smarter 20 years later.
But he's a billionaire now he doesn't really need the money anymore.
While this is a trollish post, I can see why you'd say it. But like I said, I don't think it's the same thing over again. I think these are different times and phones are not the same thing as "computers". They might be more powerful, and can do computer-y things, but people don't look at them that way - they look at them as their phone. I look at it more like the iPod business. It's not the same thing, despite how the all geeks perceive it to be, and despite having similar code. The average user doesn't no what the f*** code is. If you're playing with your iPhone no one will ever call you a geek, they'll ask for a go.
Microsoft introduced its own modified copy of CP/M under the name MS-DOS, partnered with IBM to widely deploy it, and then became very successful in selling a standardized, proprietary version of what had been a loosely open standard (open in the sense of being widely used by multiple companies, not in the sense of open source or an open specification).
This is not entirely accurate. MS-DOS had some similar features to aid porting from CP/M but was a new system. CP/M was the more "open" standard in the sense that it was designed from early on to be portable, and eventually ran on quite a wide range of hardware platforms, but MS-DOS was initially targeted specifically at the IBM PC and clones (all architecturally similar) came later.
One of the more persistent myths is that it's necessary to be an "open standard" to be successful, and this is why MS beat Apple on market share. While CP/M was more open than MS-DOS, it lost out. Microsoft won because they had the benefit of riding IBM's coattails when business wanted a PC supplier that wore suits, and were willing to buy market share with low prices. Once in a monopoly position, MS stopped being inexpensive. The "open standard" here was the IBM PC's crude design that couldn't easily be protected against reverse engineering, not MS.
Fast-forward to today: iPod is a virtual monopoly. Does it need to be an "open standard"? I don't think so. Let's see how iPhone goes. Given the momentum of 100,000 apps and the huge ecosystem going with iPods, I wouldn't bet against it. I just hope Apple doesn't waste their market dominance the way MS has.
I think you made a reasonable post, but I disagree. As in "totally disagree". I invested the last 10 years of my career to develop for Mac OS. The decision Apple made is good for me. You might not be aware, but Apple already tried the waters with Java when Objective-C was widely unknown outside of the small circle of NEXT developers and Java was the buzzword of the day. The idea that Java will help bring developers on board failed miserably back then. I was not a NEXT guy and learned Objective-C in 2-3 days. It was the frameworks that took much longer. Objective-C is not the best language on the planet by a big margin, but Apple had lots of reasons to stick with it, and they made the right decision.
I would have to pretty much agree with this, except for perhaps the size of the margin between Objective-C and the "best language on the planet"; I don't think it's that large. But, yes, an experienced Java programmer could learn Objective-C in a day. (Java is derived from Objective-C, after all.) And, as with learning to program on any platform, the language itself is pretty simple, the frameworks take 99% of the learning time.
I remember when Apple announced "Rhapsody", Mac programmers were freaking out about having to learn Objective-C. All those funny square brackets all over the place! How could they ever program like this! There were proposals to change Objective-C to use a C++ style dot notation (which, unfortunately, was added to Obj-C 2.0; amazing how many grown men couldn't deal with square brackets), proposals to make Java the programming language for Rhapsody, and so on. (They did move WebObjects to Java, which certainly didn't help there.) Fortunately, after a while, most everyone calmed down and realized that Objective-C wasn't really a big deal.