I'm a not a Apple fanboy - no, really. So the announcement of the Macbook Air left me, well, underwhelmed. But I was having difficulty putting my finger on what exactly the problem was. And then I read this:Thinness is an aesthetic criterion, not a utilitarian one. Art triumphs over usefulness yet again, driven by Steve “One Button” Jobs.
Yup.
Here's a tired old meme that I've dealt with before, but, zombie-like, it keeps on coming back:The open-source software community is simply too turbulent to focus its tests and maintain its criteria over an extended duration, and that is a prerequisite to evolving highly original things. There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases. A closed-software team is a human construction that can tie down enough variables so that software becomes just a little more like a hardware chip—and note that chips, the most encapsulated objects made by humans, get better and better following an exponential pattern of improvement known as Moore’s law.
So let's just look at those statements for a start, shall we?There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases.
There's only one iPhone because the business of negotiating with the oligopolistic wireless companies is something that requires huge resources and deep, feral cunning possessed only by unpleasantly aggressive business executives. It has nothing to do with being closed. There are hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions because there are even more different kinds of individuals, who want to do things their way, not Steve's way. But the main, highly-focussed development takes place in the one kernel, with two desktop environments - the rest is just presentation, and has nothing to do with dissipation of effort, as implied by the above juxtaposition.chips, the most encapsulated objects made by humans, get better and better following an exponential pattern of improvement known as Moore’s law
Chips do not get better because they are closed, they get better because the basic manufacturing processes get better, and those could just as easily be applied to open source chips - the design is irrelevant.
The iPhone is just one of three exhibits that are meant to demonstrate the clear superiority of the closed-source approach. Another is Adobe Flash - no, seriously: what most sensible people would regard as a virus is cited as one of "the more sophisticated examples of code". And what does Flash do for us? Correct: it destroys the very fabric of the Web by turning everything into opaque, URL-less streams of pixels.
The other example is "the page-rank algorithms in the top search engines", which presumably means Google, since it now has nearly two-thirds of the search market, and the page-rank algorithms of Microsoft's search engine are hardly being praised to the sky.
But what do we notice about Google? That it is built almost entirely on the foundation of open source; that its business model - its innovative business model - would not work without open source; that it simply would not exist without open source. And yes, Yahoo also uses huge amounts of open source. No, Microsoft doesn't, but maybe it's not exactly disinterested in its choice of software infrastructure.
Moreover, practically every single, innovative, Web 2.0-y start-up depends on open source. Open source - the LAMP stack, principally - is innovating by virtue of its economics, which make all these new applications possible.
And even if you argue that this is not "real" innovation - whatever that means - could I direct your attention to a certain technology known colloquially as the Internet? The basic TCP/IP protocols? All open. The Web's HTTP and HTML? All open. BIND? Open source. Sendmail? Open source. Apache? Open source. Firefox, initiated in part because Microsoft had not done anything innovative with Internet Explorer 6 for half a decade? Open source.
But there again, for some people maybe the Internet isn't innovative enough compared to Adobe's Flash technology.
Seems like Microsoft isn't the only company copying the innovations of the open source world:Apple plans at Macworld to introduce a 12-inch Mac laptop with flash memory in place of a hard drive.
Wow, how original....
I seem to be one of the few people in the known universe that (a) does not have an iPhone and (b) does not want one. So I don't really care either way about this:In an effort to keep up with Apple's changes at a faster speed, the iPhone Dev Team is considering open sourcing AnySIM, the free unlocking solution for the iPhone.
But I can tell you one thing: it will be very bad news for Apple if they do open source it. Why? Because this is a classic arms race between Apple and the hackers; opening up will mean that there are more of the latter, thinking more quickly and more creatively. Apple, on the other hand, will still be Apple, thinking its closed little thoughts. No contest.
So Germany has decided to live in the past:Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telephone company, can block buyers of Apple Inc.'s iPhone from using the handset on competitors' networks, a German court ruled, overturning an injunction won by Vodafone Group Plc.
The Regional Court of Hamburg said in a statement today that it lifted an injunction obtained by Vodafone that stopped Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit from selling the device only with exclusive contracts or software that restricted use on competitors' wireless systems.
But there is a long-term silver lining to this short-term cloud, as this analysis points out:What might be the result of this? Hopefully Vodafone, and Verizon, will get a clue and offer more cooperation to Google’s Android, further opening their networks. They might also deliver a true Internet experience, rather than the walled garden of data services Verizon is noted for.
Lovely piece here on the underwhelming launch of somebody's phone thingy in the UK. Makes yer proud to be British....
I'm as keen as the next son of Albion to support Brit high-tech startups, but it's jolly hard when they insist on wedding themselves to the past rather than embracing the future. Take edocr (durable little meme, that), a new rival to Scribd:www.edocr.com allows business documents such as press releases, white papers, case studies, product updates, brochures, analyst reports, etc (any .doc and .pdf) to be interacted within the business community.
Hey, chaps, every heard of ODF? Google has, Apple has: seems to be getting quite popular. Maybe time to, er, read around the subject a bit...? (Via TechCrunch.)
At last:OpenDocument and Word 2007 Formats
Take advantage of TextEdit support for the Word 2007 and OpenDocument formats for reading and writing.
OK, so maybe not huge news in itself, but further evidence that the barriers to ODF are gradually falling. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)
Amazon just killed it with Amazonmp3:Our files are free of digital rights management (DRM) software, so you can burn your songs to CDs, play them on all your computers, and transfer them to all your devices. Songs are encoded at 256 kbps (learn more), which means you get high audio quality at a manageable file size.
DRM'd music just became unsellable.
"There's always a group of people that wants to undo the forces of industry that have given us so much in terms of wealth, and there's always people who want things to be free," Wozniak said. "The open-source movement starts with those sort of people. But it still has such good points that have nothing to do with whether it's free or not. The idea of developing something and then making your solution known. Spread the information so the world can grow from it."
Hilarious and yet sad. (Via The Inquirer.)
Younger readers of this blog probably don't remember the golden cyber-age known as Dotcom 1.0, but one of its characteristics was the constant upgrading of the basic HTML specification. And then, in 1999, at HTML4, it stopped, as everyone got excited about XML (remember XML?).
It's been a long time coming, but at last we have HTML5, AKA Web Applications 1.0. Here's a good intro to the subject:
Development of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) focused its efforts on changing the underlying syntax of HTML from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to Extensible Markup Language (XML), as well as completely new markup languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XForms, and MathML. Browser vendors focused on browser features like tabs and Rich Site Summary (RSS) readers. Web designers started learning Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the JavaScript™ language to build their own applications on top of the existing frameworks using Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax). But HTML itself grew hardly at all in the next eight years.
Recently, the beast came back to life. Three major browser vendors—Apple, Opera, and the Mozilla Foundation—came together as the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WhatWG) to develop an updated and upgraded version of classic HTML. More recently, the W3C took note of these developments and started its own next-generation HTML effort with many of the same members. Eventually, the two efforts will likely be merged. Although many details remain to be argued over, the outlines of the next version of HTML are becoming clear.
This new version of HTML—usually called HTML 5, although it also goes under the name Web Applications 1.0—would be instantly recognizable to a Web designer frozen in ice in 1999 and thawed today.
Welcome back, HTML, we've missed you.
So the BBC has brought forward its launch of the wretched iPlayer - it wouldn't be that they're trying to pre-empt things, would it?
This is particularly rich:Jana Bennett, Director of BBC Vision, said: "This is a significant moment, as it heralds a new era when viewers will have the freedom to watch programmes from the BBC's linear TV channels when they want.
Well, no, darling, not actually: freedom is precisely what it does not offer licence-payers such as myself. It offers only chains - kindly provided by Microsoft, ones of whose boys is joining the BBC (now there's a coincidence).
And not content with that slap in the face of freedom, there's this:
Developing a version for Apple Macs and Microsoft Vista is absolutely on our critical path.
Oh, right, let's make sure every Windows operating system is supported as a priority (don't forget the super-important Windows ME). No point wasting time supporting any of those irrelevant "free" platforms like GNU/Linux now that viewers have the much more important "freedom" to slip on Microsoft's slinky DRM so that they can watch all those groovy "linear TV channels".
Thank goodness for the OSC.
I seem to be one of the few people on this planet unaffected by the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field; indeed, I find the Fake Steve Jobs more, er, authentic. Desptie this, I have to confess I much enjoyed this Jobs profile by John Heilemann.
But in all its shrewd and witty analysis, it seems to miss the key thing about the iPhone: that it is not just expensive, but obscenely expensive in a world where many people earn less than $500 per year. In other words, the iPhone - rather like Jobs - is supremely narcissistic.
Perhaps that why Apple's products stick in my craw: with their self-assigned exclusivity and implicit sense of superiority, they are the antithesis of free software, which is inclusive and fundamentally egalitarian. The fact that MacOS is built on free software only adds insult to injury.
At first sight, news that Apple has released a Windows version of its Safari browser seems fairly ho-hum: it is hardly going to make any more of a dent in Internet Explorer's market share than Firefox already is. Nor is it truly cross-platform like Firefox. It seems likely that the move is to bolster Safari as a platform, since it will form a key part of the imminent iPhone.
But in fact this represents a win for both open standards and open source. Safari is based on Konqueror's KHTML engine; as such, it will help push Web standards, which in turn can only make things easier for Firefox. And anything that helps buck up the browser market, which is beginning to flag again after the excitement of Firefox's earlier irruption, is certainly welcome.
Here are some wise words on EMI's move to sell its entire catalogue without DRM:Reindorp said the move could help Microsoft's effort, loosening the tight bonds between the iTunes store and the iPod.
"This does open things up a little bit," Reindorp said. "It potentially makes the competition more on a device-to-device or service-to-service basis. It will force the various services to really innovate."
Hmmm: now that's interesting. Microsoft reckons that opening things up is a good thing, because it will help it fight Apple on the basis of innovation. So how about if we "opened up" office formats, by opting for the vendor-neutral ODF?
This is what we've been waiting for:
EMI Music today announced that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI's existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players.
The tracks are a little pricey:
Apple's iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI's new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.
but that's not the point. A taboo has been broken, and things will never be the same again in the world of digital content.
The FT has little votette underway:Should music companies drop DRM?
Steve Jobs, Apple’s charismatic chief executive, has proposed that record companies drop their insistence that music sold over the web be protected by digital rights management technology. DRM is designed to combat piracy but limits the ways consumers can use music they have purchased.
You may want to join in (no registration required)....
Oh, here's a good idea: let patent experts help decide whether or not to grant lots more patents. And if you need proof this is not going to be good for us, take a quick at gander who's endorsing the move:
The Business Software Alliance, whose members include Apple, Microsoft, Intel and IBM, was quick to hail the bill's approval.
A worryingly sensible viewpoint espoused here by Steve Jobs:Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
In a heartbeat? The cynic in me is suspicious: if DRM were dropped, then Apple would be subject to much more direct competition. So why would Apple ever do this? Is Steve Jobs angling for a Nobel Prize for Peace, or something? (Via Wired News.)
Update: Larry Lessig makes a good point here.
This looks an interesting project:
The Jazz research project seeks to extend the Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org) software development environment with collaborative capabilities to support coordination, communication, and awareness among a small close-knit team of developers. This involves creating connections to server infrastructure for messaging, awareness, and source control, building hooks into the Eclipse development environment to supply awareness of the developers' interactions with source code and source control, and integrating user interfaces for communication and awareness within the Eclipse environment to provide unobtrusive access to in-context team information.
Let's hope that this Jazz does better than the earlier one from Lotus (which was bought by IBM):Lotus Jazz was an office productivity suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985 for $595, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC. It was a commercial failure due to its low quality and aggressive competition.
Ah yes, I remember it well....
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