In my Techlog column in the May issue of our magazine--which subscribers will get in a week or so--I grouse that Facebook doesn't give me the ability to export my list of friends for use elsewhere. Damn you, print deadlines--there's news today that renders my gripe at least a tiny bit less relevant.
This post at Microsoft's Windows Live Developer blog explains it: Microsoft has struck an agreement with Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5, and Tagged to use the Windows Live Contacts API to shuttle contact information around. The results of the agreement are still a work in progress, but the blog post says that starting today, Facebook and Bebo will let you invite your Windows Live Messenger buddies to join those social networks. And Microsoft has set up a site to let you invite your social network pals to be your contacts on Windows Live Messenger, although every network except Facebook had a "coming soon" placeholder when I just checked.
(Here's a story on the news from our IDG News Service colleagues.)
Moving contacts between services isn't a new idea, but in the past, it's usually been doing through "scraping"--basically, giving a service your password to another service and thereby allowing it to log in as you and rummage around in your data. Microsoft says that this API approach is more secure, which makes sense.
Today's news hardly unleashes a nirvana in which you can effortlessly move your contacts between all the services in your life. Actually, if you don't use Windows Live Messenger, the news isn't very relevant at all, since it's all about enabling data exchange between that IM service and social networks. (Me, I'm mostly on AOL's AIM network, although the two IM clients I use most are Meebo and Apple's iChat.)
Microsoft is touting the Windows Live Contacts API as open, and presumably it's at least theoretically possible that Microsoft competitors such as AOL, Apple, and Google might jump on the bandwagon and support it, making it possible to zap contacts between all of the above social networks and Gmail and AIM and Apple's Mail and just about anyplace else that folks maintain address books. But such a scenario seems purely theoretical--it's tough to envision a world in which a Microsoft standard becomes universal if Microsoft competitors can prevent it from doing so. But if nothing else, it'll probably give Microsoft rivals an incentive to try and strike their own data-exchange deals.
And truth to tell, today's news isn't about real data portability--Microsoft very intentionally isn't enabling you to simply do mass dumps of your contacts between Windows Live Messenger and your social networks. Instead, what it allows you to do is ping your contacts, seeking ther permission to establish relationships in new venues. Selfishly, I kinda want to do bulk transfers without my contacts having to give their consent. But I can't squawk at Microsoft's decision to err on the side of giving both parties involved in a relationship the right to move it to other platforms.
So today's announcement doesn't render my column obsolete: I still want a simple, Facebook-approved way to export all my contacts and bring 'em into Gmail or Outlook or LinkedIn or any other tool I use to keep in touch. We still seem to be a long way from that being possible. But the Microsoft deal is a baby step in the right direction, and therefore an encouraging development..
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Which is kind of a shame, since Twitter is a heck of a lot of fun, if you give it a chance. The rapid-fire, short-form dialogs it enables have been referred to as microblogging, but Twitter has gotten so social and conversational lately that I think of it as something akin to Facebook on SlimFast. It's the most lightweight form of social networking I've ever encountered.
So herewith, some tips on how to use it in a way that'll maximize the chances that you'll "get Twitter." Disclaimer: While I've been Twittering for about a year, I'm still kind of a newbie--most of my Tweets have come in the past few weeks. And I don't even follow all the advice I give below yet.
Oh yeah--I'm harrymccracken on Twitter. Here's a link to my Tweets, such as they are...and here's one to PC World's account, which we use to share quick links to stuff on your site.
Okay, on with the tips:
1. Don't Twitter about boring stuff. It's boring. Just as with blogging before it, Twitter naysayers like to dis it by accusing it of being a place where people talk about what they had for breakfast. And some people do that. But it's just as easy to Twitter about interesting stuff you're doing, or at least to put an interesting spin on humdrum stuff. Simple rule: Don't ever write anthing in Twitter that you wouldn't want to read.
2. Don't Twitter into the void. When I first started Twittering, I wasn't just boring--I was boring in front of an audience of zero. Twittering is no fun unless you know that you're being read. Quickest way to get read: Use Twitter's "Follow" feature to track the Tweets of other people, be they pals or famously hardcore Twitterers like Robert Scoble. At least some of them will follow you back.
3. Make Twitter a dialog, not a monolog. Twitter's coolest feature may be the ability to respond to another user by starting a Tweet with an @ sign and that person's Twitter name (such as @harrymccracken). So respond to other folks' Tweets. They'll respond to you, too--and other people may join the conversation, or even Follow you. I know of Twitter fans who do almost nothing but respond to other users' Tweets.
4. Tweet your way. You can Twitter at the Twitter site, or via SMS. And if either or both of those methods work for you, great. But there are lots of other ways to use the service, including various desktop clients that are awfully convenient. TwitBin, for instance, is a Firefox extension. Many Mac-using Twitter addicts swear by Twitterific. And one of the reasons that Flock is my favorite Web browser is its nifty Twitter integration, which lets me Twitter and read other people's Tweets without leaving whatever site I happen to be on.
5. Mash up Twitter with other social networks. I was addicted to Facebook before I was addicted to Twitter, and for awhile, my Facebook addiction was an argument for avoiding Twitter--who has time for two addictions? But it's possible to feed multiple networks with the same amount of work. Twitter's Facebook application lets my Tweets automatically update my Twitter status. Hellotxt lets you update Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, Pownce, and other networks simultaneously. And FriendFeed lets you meld all your social networks into one feed of your activities.
6. Read and learn. Some people are just good at Twittering in an entertaining fashion. I like the Tweets of Rafe Needleman, a friend who works at a Web site which shall remain nameless (hint: its initials are CNET). He's pithy and funny and has influenced my Twittering.
7. Don't let Twitter overtake your life. You don't have to. Twitter brags that it "really shines" when you use it on your phone. And it's possible to tell it to alert you via SMS when people you're following update. I don't--I kinda like it better when I proactively decide to go to the Twitter site to read, or check out Tweets in Flock. (I said above that I'm addicted to Twitter, but that wasn't quite right--it's far from a full-time fixation for me.)
That's enough tips from me for now--but if you "get Twitter" and have more thoughts, I'd love to hear 'em...
I use twitter to log my thoughts for one. It helps me remember what I was think about before I got distracted. I know that sounds strange but it works. I also talk about my activities on there. I also note my observations as well. My tweets are found at http://twitter.com/olanb
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Hop over to www.pcworld.com/bestproducts and you can vote on your favorite products, choosing from hundreds of nominees in categories such as PCs, Web sites, software, and peripherals. The collective wisdom of everyone who votes will determine a list of 100 favorite products as choosen by the PC World community. (We editors will pick our 100 favorites, too. We're assuming there will be lots and lots of overlap...)
Need an added inducement to chime in? When you vote, we'll enter you in a drawing for a snazzy iPod Touch.
Two additional notes on all this:
Why is PC World choosing the best products of 2008 when the year is just getting started? Glad you asked. For many years, we timed our awards tabulation so we could give out trophies at PC Expo, a gigantic trade show in New York. PC Expo is no longer gigantic--well, actually, it's completely defunct. But we've never felt like messing up a good thing by fiddling with the timing of the awards--they're one of the most popular things we publish online and in print. Feel free to call them "The 100 Best Products at This Particular Moment in Time" if you choose.
We let folks vote in our very first awards and gave away a prize then, too. Our September 1983 issue reported on the results of what was then called the World Class PC contest. And we gave away a whopper of a prize--an IBM PC with a color monitor, a printer, and a cornucopia of software (Zork I! Zork II! Zork III!). That 1983 PC was worth $14,000--which, even before you adjust for inflation, is a heckuva lot more than the value of the iPod Touch we're giving away this year.
But consider this: The Touch has a vastly more powerful processor, a higher-resolution (albeit smaller) screen, and 125,000 times as much memory. If you'd had one in 1983--when pocket-sized computing devices tended to look like this--it would have been awfully impressive. The Touch has Wi-Fi; the 1983 PC made do with an external modem (I'm not sure if it was 300-bps or a zippy 1200-bps). And while the keyboards IBM manufactured in the 1980s remain impressive to this day, I'm fairly sure the 1983 PC lacked the Touch's multi-touch screen and built-in accelerometer.
Okay, enough footnotes. Please cast your votes for the best products of the year. Better yet, encourage all your friends to do so, too. We can't wait to report on the results...
On Friday, I attended the annual luncheon in New York at which American Business Media bestows its Jesse H. Neal awards. The Neals have been called the Pulitzers of the business press--and I'm thrilled to report that PC World received two of 'em this year--one for our ongoing coverage of Windows Vista, and another for my Techlog editorials. I'm also honored and humbled by the fact that I received the Timothy White Award, an ABM honor named after the late editor-in-chief of Billboard who was a fearless critic of the industry he covered.
More details on all of the above here.
(Note: I served as the chairman of this year's Neal competition--but wasn't involved in any category in which PCW or any of our competitors were nominees.)
WEll leave it to Microsoft to screw up a great platform. Seems as though they can't get people to buy into Vista as the best system so they are going to force people to change by taking off the market the one platform that works well & is preferred by the majority. One can only believe that Microsoft wants to re coop their development costs on Vista even with all its negative features. If they would design a platform that was stable, security safe & easy to use, then people would buy into changing, but not me.
Back on January 30th, I wrote about our sister site Infoworld's SaveXP.com campaign, formed to give people who aren't happy about Microsoft's plans to discontinue most sales of Windows XP after June 30th. I also included a silly little survey about XP and Vista. Much to my surprise, more than 3500 folks took it. It wasn't the least bit scientific, but the results make for fascinating reading...and if you've already guessed that the sentiment ran strongly pro-XP and anti-Vista, you've got a good gut for this kind of stuff.
Herewith, the responses to the the questions I asked (some of the numbers don't add up to 100% because of "other" votes and/or places where folks could "choose all that apply"):
Which versions of Windows are survey respondents using?
64 percent use Windows XP
18 percent use Vista
8 percent use various other versions of Windows
6 percent use Windows 2000
5 percent use Windows 98
Where are they using it?
62 percent use it both at home and at work
36 percent just use it at home
Only 2 percent just use it at work
How do they feel about Microsoft's plans to discontinue most sales of Windows XP?
67 percent are very unhappy about it
16 percent are somewhat unhappy
(That's a total of 83% who are nonplussed to some degree)
9 percent are neutral
2 percent are somewhat happy
6 percent are very happy
If Microsoft changes its mind and extends XP sales, what are the chances that survey respondents will choose it for their next PC?
56 percent say they'll definitely choose it
23 percent say they'll probably choose it
(That's 78 percent leaning towards it)
8 percent say they definitely won't choose it
6 percent say they probably won't choose it
5 percent aren't sure one way or the other
Why do those who don't want Microsoft to discontinue XP feel that way?
48 percent think XP is a better version of Windows than Vista
27 percent worry about hardware and software not working with Vista
11 percent think it's presumptuous of Microsoft to discontinue a popular product
6 percent just like choice, thank you very much
4 percent are done with XP but think others should have a choice
What do survey respondents think of Vista?
22 percent think it's blah
19 percent think it's really bad
18 percent think it's OK
17 percent think it's bad
12 percent don't know enough to have an opinion
6 percent think it's excellent
Whew. Like I say, this response isn't statistically valid and may or may not map to the opinions of the public at large. But it's sure strongly felt. So are the thoughts of the almost 1100 respondents who took the time to give us their thoughts in more detail. Here are some examples--including some pro-Vista ones as well as pro-XP ones (the vast majority fell into the latter camp):
Windows XP is the ultimate balance between consumer and professional users that Microsoft has been targeting for years. Windows Vista has so many issues and is way too focused on consumers that it will lower productivity for businesses. This is something that the IT department does not want to see after investing in updated hardware & software. Out of all the future releases out of Redmond; Windows 7, Vista SP1, the third Service Pack to this tried & true OS is what I am more excited for.
In Vista's favor, it does have many features that are superior to XP, most of which are buried deeply in the operating system. However, Microsoft cannot expect Vista to become a mainline operating system with so many bugs, not to mention all the incompatibilities with existing peripheral hardware.
I don't know what people are whining about. We've known that this was going to happen for years. People used to say XP sucks, now they're saying Vista sucks and XP is the best thing ever. Vista has pretty much all of its problems worked out, so It's probably best for XP to end.
I have two XP Pro computers and a Vista Home Premium Laptop running on the same network. The Vista machine is the most powerful of the three (more memory and higher speed processor) and yet is the slowest of the three. I see no advantage in the "pretty" display capabilities. Vista did integrate into my network with ease. We need choice - "pretty" or performance.
82490 Vista is not a bad product. However, what it replaces, XP Pro was a stable well thought out system. The biggest Vista problem is Microsoft requiring digitally signed drivers which Microsoft approves only after charging the software/product developer a fee. This stifles new product development and encourages obsolescence of our present peripherals. For example, my 2 year old Asus motherboard's chip set has been reclassified from "cutting edge" to a "Legacy" product with no manufacturer's Vista support and limited Nvidia support. The new Nvidia Vista drivers even "dummy down" my boards capabilities, adding insult to injury! I bought this board specifically to compliment Vista 64 bit computing. Is there any wonder that people are crying out for the continuation of the XP product line when the cost of going Vista is so unnecessarily (corporate greed at its finest) expensive? Microsoft greatly mis-stepped this time. This is not like the XP introduction which mostly replaced Windows 98 a notoriously unstable crash prone system. NT and 2000 users had stability so they did not switch to XP for years. Here, the whole computing public, both corporate and home user finally had what visionaries like Bill Gates imagined in the seventies, a functioning, stable, productive and affordable computer. How somebody could have talked someone as smart as Bill Gates into throwing that out and replacing it with Vista, is beyond me.
I have Windows Vista Ultimate in a VM. I think it's safe to say I haven't started it up since November. Why? Because it's terrible. They just changed things for the sake of changing them. Example: Add or Remove Programs is now Programs and Features. Why? It was fine the way it was. And what is with their network properties/info/management tools? It took me almost an hour to configure simple file sharing. I like Windows 2000 the most, and XP is just as good. Vista, in my opinion, is comparable to Windows ME, and that's bad.
Currently XP to Vista reminds me of how aweful the Win98 to WinME transition went. I've tried Vista and bailed out of it faster than I did out of WinME. May be their SP-1 will cure many ills and I'll try it; but not before ghosting my XP image first.
I hated Vista at first. But after customizing it to my preferences, I actually like it. Vista is not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.
Those of us in small business using a number of computers may have a lot of hardware and software that is "legacy" to Vista and unsupported or substandard. Heck, I'm just getting around to upgrading 98SE to XP on some machines (which usually goes pretty well -- XP is quite happy with a PIII 700 and 512MB). Small businesses often have small margins that can be dramatically affected by the cost of new equipment and software and the cost of learning curves. Please, just when we got comfortable with XP, let us enjoy the comfort for a while!
Vista has been out more than a year now, and it seems since the initial release things have gotten better with all aspects of the OS. Microsoft ending XP sales is just going to force those who are still in the past to come into the modern era. I don't think you'll see near as many complaints about Vista when more people actually start using it, especially with the upcoming non-beta SP1.
I'm more likely to buy a Mac than a windows Vista computer. I've been using XP over two computers for the last seven years, and have been pretty happy with it. Vista is slower, much more buggy, won't support all of my hardware and programs, and is just much less solid. If I don't have the choice of buying a computer with XP, I'm almost sure to buy a Mac.
I just bought a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop for myself as a Christmas present and one of the main reasons I bought it was because I could, and did, get it with XP loaded on it. If Vista was the only OS available I was seriously going to look at Linux!
Vista is INCOMPATIBLE with the software we use for our small business. XP works. We like it. We don't have to pay through the nose to upgrade all our software on all of our computers. My biggest complaint about Vista (yes, I do own a laptop with Vista pre-installed): if you do not have a laptop with a discrete video card and a decent CPU, it's pretty slow, even with 2GB of RAM. I tweaked Vista's services (turned off unnecessary services) and turned off Aero. It did make it a bit faster, but not responsive enough to my tastes. I installed XP onto the laptop -- dual boot with Vista -- and wow, XP runs much more quickly on my slow-CPU-with-integrated-video laptop. And this laptop was built for Vista! Vista also drives me crazy with incompatibilities: not recognizing my Sandisk Cruzer because the security software is not Vista complaint; not allowing me to adjust the printer settings on the network printer; many of my games cannot be played on Vista (this is a BIG ISSUE with me). In the end, Vista cost too much money (for software upgrades) and has too many incompatibilities. XP works. All our software are compatible. It's relatively secure with all the Service Packs, security software loaded onto them. Why upgrade?
Vista has nothing of the major changes that were promised -a bigger, bloated, slower O/S that requires more processing power just to chug the O/S along and 1 year later still has problems with drivers. Wake up - redo the O/S with a real new release and a new WinFS, don't support some older legacy HW+SW. Then you'd have a hot product. XP Pro is stable, faster & works - considering MS's poor track record why replace the great product with another overpriced poor one?
Bloat, bloat, bloat. That is what we've been hearing about Windows for years. Many users are concerned about how fat this product is getting. By now, you think someone at Microsoft would be hearing this chant and realize that a great population of Microsoft's customer base (mostly loyal, by the way) are looking for something slimmer in their operating system. Instead, Vista only made Windows 3 to 5 times fatter! Come on guys! How much code is really necessary just to provide the foundation for a computer, which is really what an operating system is supposed to do?
Harry here again...
If Microsoft does relent and simply keeps XP on the market past June 30th, I'll be startled. But I'd be even more surprised if the save-XP sentiment simply vanishes as of July 1st.
Any further thoughts?
I'm afraid that Vista will be the end of MS. It only turns the average computer into t big X-Box. It has no value where doing any work is concerned. Accounts in and out, orders in and out, vendors, contacts, licenses, catalogs (theirs and mine), inventory, communication and research have all gone out the window. It looks like XP Professional will be the end of the line for MS except for maybe the gaming community of which I've never been a part. I tried Vista but it's diagnostics had the audacity to tell me that my video card wasn't fit for gaming. (?) I've been doing this since 1992 without ever playing a game. I only hope that the various Linux writers will take advantage of this situation.
Although I might add that I still have all eleven flavors of Windows XP and am doing new installs for customers on a regular basis. Even several that have purchased new computers recently only to be hit in the face with Vista and couldn't figure out what it was for. I just told them to drop the computer off over here and I would take care of it. I have also been doing a lot of installs of Ubuntu and Xandros operating systems, both being Linux based systems, with no complaints.
I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about what Vista is all about. True, it is designed to look 'pretty' using the Aero theme, but this is easily disabled for machines that can't handle it.
Vista's real strength is security. In past operating systems, Microsoft allowed for programmers to be 'lazy' by allowing programs to write information to the windows and system32 folders. Vista does not allow this, which will reduce virus, malware, and adware problems. Most programs were written to write to folders they have no business modifying. By not allowing this, Microsoft 'broke' these old apps and are requiring vendors to re-write the code how it should have been initially.
The majority of users in XP are always logged in with an account with administrative rights. This problem is resolved by running as a standard user and using the 'run as admin' option in XP. Vista also takes care of this by limiting accounts and prompting users when administrative rights are required.
Jobs is explaining that it's been hard, historically, for developers to distribute their phone apps. Apple is fixing that with the Apps Store, which will be on all iPhones with the new software release.
He's demoing the Apps Store. There's a list of categories, like Business, Finance, and Games. There's a list of the Top 50 apps. And if you know what you want, you can search--for a backgammon game, for instance. Once you find what you want, you click a button and it's downloaded and installed, via cell network or Wi-Fi.
You can also browse and download apps via iTunes on your computer.
If a developer has updated an app, the Apps Store will tell you so and let you install the new version. "We think this is pretty cool..the Apps Store will be the exclusive way to distribute iPhone apps."
"Developers will say, 'this is great, but what's the deal--what's the business deal?'" Developers will choose the price and get 70 percent; Apple will keep 30 percent. There are no credit-card processing fees or marking charges. "This is the best deal going."
Many developers will decide how much to charge--and many will make applications free. When they do, Apple won't charge them anything, since both developers and Apple want to get lots of apps out there.
"There will be some apps that Apple will say no to," such as porn, malicious stuff, and privacy-invading ones.
The enterprise features and third-party pps will be part of the iPhones 2.0 Software Update. A beta release is going out today to thousands of developers and hundreds of companies. "We need the feedback." It will ship to all iPhone customers in June, and it'll be free. Applause.
"In just a few months, every iPhone user will have everything you saw today on their iPhone." And the update will also be available for the iPhone Touch. But the accounting for the Touch is different, and there will be a nominal charge for the update.
"This is our road map for the iPhone software." Many people will want to become iPhone developers. It's be easy, and you'll be able to download the SDK, starting in about an hour. You'll need to be a registered developer to run apps on real iPhones and iPod Touches and distribute your app. That will cost $99.
"That is our software roadmap, and we hope you're as excited about it as we are..thanks for coming...but we do have one more thing."
Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers is "the premier venture capital company in the world." Here's VC legend John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins. Applause. Kleiner Perkins loves Apple, and loves entrepreneurs. He's talking about how Steve started Apple in 1976, then left. It went downhill fast. Then he came back and restored its glory--while building Pixar. He's the "world's greatest entrepreneur." He asks the audience to applaud Steve.
He quotes Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." But the second best way is to fund it. Kleiner Perkins is launching the iFund, a VC fund for iPhone developers. It took $2 million to start EA, $8 million for Amazon, $24 million for Google. The iFund is $100,000,000--"enough to start four Googles."
The Mac and the iPhone are amazing platforms. And "today we're witness history." The iPhone is personal, with you always, and knows where you are. "That's a big deal--it's bigger than the personal computer."
Matt Murphy will lead the iFund, along with a bunch of other folks. "There's never been a better time than now" to build a revolutionary app. "I can't wait to see the great new companies we build together...thank you." Applause.
Jobs returns and recaps the day's news. There are refreshments outside. And the press can now ask questions. Applause.
Jobs, Schiller, and Forstall remain onstage.
Question: What does the $100 million fund do for the iPhone community? Jobs says it means that Kleiner Perkins thinks there's a big opportunity for small companies to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. Apple loves it. "It helps the whole ecosystem."
Question: A lot of apps will be written for the business world. Shold RIM be worried? What's the message? Jobs says you'd have to ask RIM, and the message is that Apple is trying to give customers what they've asked for. Schiller reminds. Jobs reminds us that the iPhone has been out for less than a year, and the update will ship at around the one-year anniversary. "We've been busy."
Question: What will Apple do to make sure the apps are safe and secure? Jobs says it's a good question. The iPod always works because it's closed. But a Windows PC involved fiddling to keep it working. Apple wants the best of both worlds--the power of third-party apps without danger. Developers will have to register and pay Apple $599. They get a certificate: "If they write a malicious app, we can track them down and tell their parents." And remove the app from the library. Apple is doing other things it can't talk about now--"We put a lot of thought into this."
Forstall adds that Apple is using sandboxing and other techniques to keep things safe. Jobs: "We'll do the best we can and learn as we go. " The questioner says, so the iPhone is less safe than the iPod? Jobs says yes, that's true.
Question: Will there be a VoIP app for the iPhone? And will that cause problems for Apple's carrier customers? Jobs says that "the initial take" is that that Apple will allow VoIP over Wi-Fi, but not over the cell network.
Question: Will you be able to sync over multiple systems--both Exchange and iCal, for instance? Yes, Jobs says, you will be able to--Exchange at work and Gmail for home, for instance. Forstall says you'll only be able to have one Exchange account.
Question: Will Apple being the sole distributor cause monopoly problems? What if a developer doesn't want to go through Apple? Jobs says that they won't be able to distribute apps, but that the Apps Store will "be a boon" since it'll reach every iPhone customer.
Jobs says that the idea isn't for Apple to make money off applications. The 30 percent it's keeping is just to break even. "We want to create an efficient channel for developers to reach every single iPhone customer." Forstall says that developers will still be able to make Web apps that don't go through Apple. Schiller says that for free apps, this will be great, and it'll be great for for-pay pps, too.
Ryan Block of Engadget asks a question: Will unlocking software be prohibited? Jobs: "Yes."
Question: How much will the upgrade for the Touch cost? Jobs explains that the iPhone tax accounting is based on a subscription over two years, but for the Touch it must charge. The price hasn't been set, "but we don't look at this as a profit opportunity."
Question: What is the IT situation if a company wants to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone? Schiller says IT staffs know and use Exchange, so it'll be easy. And Apple will provide tools for configuring lots of iPhones via e-mail or the Web.
Forstall says that Apple has created Profiles, which make dynamic setup of e-mail, VPN, and other stuff easy. "It's literally a single tap on a Web page...it's incredibly simple." Moving from BlackBerry to iPhone will be "dirt simple." And IT departments will love the SDK, since they'll be able to write apps. They'll love the Cisco VPN, too. "The possibilities here for enterprise...there's nothing like it."
Follow-up question: Will push performance be degraded? No, this is faster, because it's direct.
Jobs asks why CIOs aren't worried about e-mail security with BlackBerry, since everything goes through a connection in Canada. It's both a point of failure and a potential security breach, since someone at RIM could read your mail.
Question: Is this an international rollout? And can you create open-source apps? Yes, Jobs says, it's international. But you can't create open-source apps.
Question: Any plans for additional connection possibilities, like additional carriers or WiMax? Jobs says we're not here to talk about that.
Question: How will an enterprise distribute internal apps? Schiller says they're working on a system for enterprises to securely distribute apps to their users.
Question: CTOs might not want their employees installing apps from the Apps Store. Will they be able to disable that? Jobs: "I hope we have that problem...we really haven't thought about it." If it's a problem for customers, they'll fix it.
Forstall says that the update has some parental controls that might be extended to the enterprise.
Question from the SF Chronicle: Why did Apple change its initial stance? Jobs: "We at Apple change our minds a lot...but I don't really know what you're talking about." Clarification: Why did it move away from the Web as the sole app platform. Jobs says that the company heard from developers that they needed an SDK, and that it took awhile to make a "pristine" SDK. Forstall touts the SDK's attention to detail. "Everyone cares deeply..abut nailing those APIs." Schiller says the iPhone developer program is brand new, and the developer relations team has worked hard on it. "We've built up a whole new process."
Question: What's the carrier relationship? Traditionally, apps go through the carrier. Is Apple working with carriers, and is bandwidth an issue? Jobs says that Apple has a new kind of carrier relationship, with Apple responsible for the software. "We're running it." He won't say whether carriers are getting a cut, "but generally, we like to see the money flowing the other direction."
Question: Will developers get access to Dock Connector accessories, enabling stuff like GPS? Forstall says they won't get direct access for now.
Steve Jobs thanks us. Applause. The event ends. More thoughts later...
What happens to all the 1+ million unlocked phones being used today?
Phil Schiller turns the stage over to Apple's Scott Forstall to talk applications. Forstall starts by saying that Apple's initial strategy of enabling iPhone apps through Safari has been a hit. Facebook has a great iPhone Web app, and so does Bank of America.
"But today, what I really want to tell you about is the native iPhone SDK." Starting today, the APIs and tools that Apple uses to build apps will be available to all developers.
"There are a lot of pieces that make up an SDK." The most important are the APIs--the hooks into the OS. He's saying that OS X is the most advanced platform, and is explaining its various layers. Cocoa is the OS X application framework for Mac apps. It's great--but it's designed for keyboard and mouse input. But now Apple has created Cocoa Touch--a version of Cocoa enabled for the iPhone's touch input.
More details on the iPhone platform. It has the OS X Core OS, with the same kernel as on the Mac, but optimized. The iPhone's power management benefits from Apple's long expertise in power management for Macs, but it's even more advanced--it's automatic. "That's just a taste of the Core OS."
The iPhone's Core Services include the Address Book, the SQLite database API, and Core Location, which triangulates cell towersto figure out where the user is.
Media: "The Media layer is everything you'd expect from Apple...the iPhone is a great iPod." Core Audio is the low-level technology Apple uses for everything it does involving sound. OpenAL is an industry-standard audio API that enables three-dimensional sound--great for games. Video playback is built right in. So is Core Animation, which lets developers create layered animations, just as they can in OS X Leopard for the Mac. And OpenGL ES "is an absolute screamer for 3D graphics on the iPhone."
Cocoa Touch is built around touch input--single finger, multi-finger, gestures. It can utilize the iPhone's accelerometer, which is a full three-axis sensor. Web View is the Safari engine, available to other apps. There's an Image Picker, and access to the phone's camera.
"This is the architecture of the iPhone...it's the most advanced platform out there...we think we're years ahead of any other mobile OS."
Now, Forstall is talking about XCode, the environment developers will use to code iPhone apps. It has all the features and conveniences programmers will want, from integrated documentation to a great debugger that lets you plug an iPhone into your Mac and debug remotely.
Interface Builder is the tool for building iPhone user interfaces. "It makes building your interface as simple as drag and drop." You pick the elements you want and drag them onto your canvas. You can localize your app for different languages. "It's a fantastic tool."
Instruments is a suite of performance-analysis tools. "Just likethe debugger, it runs live-connected on your iPhone." You can monitor graphics performance, file system usage, memory leaks, etc., etc. and record them live. You learn from what it tells you, optimize your code, then run it again.
All these tools come from OS X, but have been optimized for the iPhone. And there's a new development tool: The iPhone Simulator. It simulates the entire iPhone API on your Mac, "which gives you an incredible turnaround time for development--it's fantastic."
"We have a fantastic set of tools in addition to this amazing framework that makes up the iPhone OS." Now he's doing a demo, showing how the Simulator is a Mac app that simulates the iPhone perfectly. The photo browser, Safari, and other apps work perfectly, with simulation of the multi-touch interface.
Now he's going to build the standard test program--making the text "Hello World" appear onscreen. He's in XCode, which is connected to the Simulator. He makes the simulated iPhone display "Hello World."
"It's just as easy to build and run it live on an iPhone." An iPhone is connected to his Mac. He tells XCode to build "Hello World" for the iPhone, which compiles it and downloads it to the phone. The real iPhone says "Hello World." He shows how easy it is to change the text color to yellow.
Here's an app that took two days to write--Touch FX. It lets you select a photo on the phone, then do what I still think of as Kai's Power Goo-style distortions, to pinch and stretch a face to make it look cartoony. Want to undo your changes? Jiggle the phone like an Etch-a-Sketch, and they go away. Applause.
Here's an app that took two weeks to write, with under 10,000 lines of code. It's a game, using OpenGL graphics and OpenAL audio--a 3D space shooter. You wiggle the phone around to steer your spaceship. Applause. "It's fantastic--it's two weeks of work, less than ten thousand lines of code." You can hear the audio move around in 3D.
Now he's back on the Mac, using Instruments to measure graphics performance, which it can do while you're playing the game. He's looking at a graph of peaks and valleys for frame-per-second performance. He can use that info to optimize his app.
"I don't want you to just take my word for how good this is." Apple invited developers to spend two weeks developing applications. Here's Travis Boatman, an Electronic Arts developer. Applause.
He thanks Apple and says they wanted to take their two weeks to build something that took advantage of the iPhone. So they built an iPhone version of Spore. You move the phone around to eat anything smaller than you, and avoid anything larger than you. You can use touch to customize your spore's capabilities and looks. If EA had had more than two weeks it could have added even more features.
It took EA about two days to get Cocoa Touch up and running. Once it did, it created eighteen levels of gameplay. Apple employees really like the game.
Here's a bit of iPhone video showing the spore making its way into the world. "And that's Spore." Applause.
Forstall returns: "That was two weeks of development...it's fantastic." He says that the iPhone SDK is also great for vertical apps. "Salesforce.com is an innovator." Here's that company's Chuck Dietrich. He too thanks Apple and says that Salesforce.com is excited. They're going to bring their 63,000 platform apps to the iPhone.
They moved a salesforce automation app to the phone, so salesfolk can stay productive while in a taxi, for instance. They can check out graphs of where they are in relation to their monthly goals. "They'd love if they could shake that graph into the green, but we're not going to let them do it." But you will be able to swipe your way around the application's interface.
Opportunities are "the deals that a salesperson is trying to close." Here's a list of them. Maybe a rep wants to sort by the deals that are most likely to close. It's easy to do that. "The rep knows exactly where to focus."
The Salesforce app ties into native iPhone apps like the phone features and Maps. "It's very cool stuff." All this was done by one developer in less than two weeks. The 70,000 Salesforce.com developers are gonna love this.
Forstall: "It's absolutely amazing." Here's Rizwan Sattar of AOL to talk about building AIM for the iPhone. He too is excited.
He shows off the AIM client, complete with buddy icons and status member. "What's really amazing is that I never developed for the Mac before." They had a live buddy list up and running in five years.
We see a demo of chatting with an AIM buddy. Doing that for the first time "was one of those 'c'mere, Watson' moments." You can switch between active chats by swiping. Applause. You can update your status easily, and choose photos you've taken with the iPhone to use as your avatar. "We're really looking forward to working with Apple to bring AIM to the iPhone."
Forstall returns: "It's amazing the progress we made." The built-in networking helped.
Next: EPocrates, which develops healthcare software. One of its developers comes onstage and praises the iPhone environment compared to other mobile platforms. Cocoa Touch makes it far more powerful. He's showing how you can look up information on drugs on the iPhone. The data is stored in the SQLite database, and the screen's high resolution lets the app show images of pills. The company used Core Animation for MultiCheck, which lets doctors see if taking multiple medications might cause problems. You can zip between screens, with animated transitions. He demos more features. Applause. This'll increase the quality of medical care in this country.
One more third-party developer: Sega's Ethan Einhorn. When Sega and Apple talked about games, Super Monkey Ball was "an obvious choice." We're seeing a demo involving the game's 3D graphics. "Even if you've never played a video game before, you'll know exactly what to do with the iPhone," which lets you jiggle the phone to control your monkey. "This is not a cell phone game--this is a full console game." If anything, Sega underestimated the iPhone's graphics power--it had to fly in an extra artist to improve the graphics. Applause.
Back to Forstall. The third-party developers blew away Apple. Next question: How do you get these apps on your phone? "I'd like to turn you back over to Steve."
And I'll start a new post...
I'm at Apple headquarters in Cupertino for the most important iPhone-related event since the release of the iPhone: the official launch of the software development kit that will allow companies other than Apple to develop native iPhone applications. And here's Steve Jobs.
"We're real excited to share some great news with you about the iPhone software roadmap." As is his wont, he's beginning with impressive stats: The iPhone now has 28% smartphone marketshare, second only to RIM's BlackBerry. Applause.
Jobs says the iPhone is bringing the real Internet to phones for the first time. Mobile Safari has 71% usage among mobile browsers, far ahead of Pocket IE and other browsers.
Here's Apple's Phil Schiller. "I'm really excited to be the one talking to you about iPhone in the enterprise." Many customers have told Apple they want to use iPhones, such as Genentech. "They have thousands of iPhones deployed across multiple organizations." Quote from Genentech CTO expressing enthusiasm for the iPhone.
Universities like iPhones, too--such as Stanford. Photo of Stanford campus. They're using hundreds of iPhones there. Quote from Stanford CIO.
Schiller praises the iPhone and its user interface. "It's an incredible device for enterprises." But some things have held it back, and Apple has been listening and thinking.
Enterprises want great push e-mail--"huge request." And push calendar information. And push contacts. And a global address list. And Cisco IPsec VPN, and a variety of security-related options. And automated configration options, and remote data wiping just in case the phone is lost or stolen.
"I'm really excited to be the one telling you today we're doing all these things in the next release of the iPhone software." Applause.
Back to push. Customers have asked for built-in Microsoft Exchange information. Apple has licensed the ActiveSync technology needed from Microsoft to support Exchange.
Schiller explains how old-school push is complicated and unreliable, then says that ActiveSync is modern, simple, and reliable. iPhone apps like its e-mail and calendar will support it.
He walks over to a podium to demo all this. His phone has no contacts, no events, and no e-mail. But the screen for adding e-mail has a new option: Exhchange. He's skipping that, but is turning on an Exchange account he had pre-configured. He wants to use ActiveSync for contacts, calendars, and e-mail. He turns them on. "And that's it."
His contacts show up, as do his appointments and his e-mail. Apple's Bob Borchers is in the audience on Wi-Fi helping Schiller with a demo. Schiller creates a new contact, and Borcher confirms that it was instantly synched via Exchange and has shown up on his device.
Next, Schiller goes to mail. Borchers sends him an e-mail. And there it is on Schiller's phone. Applause. "This is exactly what enterprise customers have asked for."
Schiller's looking at his calendar. He asks Borchers to move a meeting up, and the schedule change shows up on Schiller's iPhone. "All that is happening live."
Schiller says the last part of the demo is the most fun. He's saying that maybe he's lost his iPhone. He asks Borcher to wipe the phone remotely. He does, and Schiller's phone loses all his data. Applause.
We see quotes from Nike and Disney expressing enthusiasm for the new stuff: "As you may know, we have an executive relationship with Disney." Schiller says people will be blown away: "The iPhone is the best mobile device ever in the enterprise."
Just a quick note to say I'm at Apple in Cupertino for the official unveiling of the Apple SDK, plus related news relating to enterprise stuff on iPhones. Will we learn anything utterly surprising? I dunno. But connectivity permitting, I'll blog everything I learn as it happens, starting about 45 minutes from now...
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In this early version, IE 8 is not an upgrade that's going to bowl you over with amazing new functionality. Microsoft is touting its better compliance with Web standards. (Shouldn't the world's dominant browser already be super-compatible with the Web?) It says that IE now recovers from crashes more gracefully. (Wouldn't it be nicer if it didn't crash?) A feature called Activities lets developers add functionality to IE in a way that doesn't seem radically different from things clever sites have done for years with plain ol' bookmark buttons; Web Slices, which let sites create widgety little snippets of information that you can view by clicking a bookmark button, are kind of interesting--but they'll only take off if they're widely supported by major sites, and they're not radically different from Apple's Web Clip feature in Safari, which works with all Web pages, not just ones designed to support it.
IE 8, in other words, may turn out to be an improvement on IE 7...but it would appear to be a minor upgrade. (I respect adherence to Web standards and stand to benefit from them...but that doesn't mean I can summon any visceral excitement for them.) It's not Microsoft-bashing to call it dull: Firefox 3, also in developer-preview mode, has a much longer list of improvements, but most are fit-and-finish niceties or fixes for things that were kind of broken in Firefox 2, like its memory management.
By any measure, we're in the middle of one of the most exciting eras the Web has ever seen. Everyone from behemoths like Google to tiny companies such as 37 Signals is developing Web-based services that are powerful and fun to use. Google Gears is taking Web apps offline; Adobe AIR is taking them out of the browser and onto the desktop. The rush of creativity is downright inspiring.
And yet the people who design browsers, the applications we use to get to most of the Web, seem to be short on fresh ideas. (One exception: social browser Flock, which I spend most of my time online in these days.) Part of the problem is clearly the maturity of the products in question: IE 8's very version number reveals its advanced age, and given its origins, Firefox 3 is essentially...um, well Netscape 8 or so. Both browsers have most of the features they need, and have for years.
But it still seems to me that there's plenty of room for browsers to evolve. I use multiple PCs and want a browser that silently and reliably syncs every bookmark and every setting between multiple iterations of itself on every PC. I want a better way to keep track of hundreds of sites than bookmarks, which have barely changed since 1994. I want a fast and easy way to save pages to my hard drive. I want printing options that are better than anything in any current browser. I want smarter password managers and form-fillers.
Most of all, I want to be surprised--the way I was when I used my first browser (Mosaic, back in late 1994). Or when I first encountered tabbed browsing (in Maxthon, I believe, back when it was called MyIE2). Or when I saw what a gigantic improvement Firefox was on earlier Mozilla browsers. Or, most recently, when I discovered that Flock is in several ways a better Firefox than Firefox.
Come to think of it, I felt the same sense of happy surprise when I first used Microsoft Office 2007, which was an upgrade to a product even older than any Web brower--and a wonderfully inventive one. So so I think it's theoretically possible, at least, that Microsoft may give us a genuinely exciting new Internet Explorer someday--but IE 8 won't be it, unless the company springs new features on us before it ships the final version...
In addition to Flock, there have been a few interesting new twists on browsers recently, including SpaceTime (3D browsing), Kirix Strata (data analysis) and Wyzo (media/BitTorrent). Hopefully we'll continue to see more innovations like this to come...
Couldn't agree more. The time of the plain old browsers is gone - the future lies in merging desktop and web technologies in rich desktop clients. Flock is definitely the leader of the hurd, but you may as well keep an eye on Hydra (http://hydrabrowser.com). It's fun to see how Office 2007 ribbons fit in with browser software.
The boring era is officially over. If you want a happy surprise and genuine excitement from your browser, take a look at what we just released at videovistas.com.
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