Author Archive | David Worthington

Microsoft: iPad’s Closed Platform is “Humorous”

Posted by David Worthington on January 28, 2010 at 11:37 pm

[Note: The original headline on this story was “Microsoft: iPad is “Humorous.” Microsoft PR head Frank Shaw tweeted that he found that title misleading. After contacting him and listening to his complaint, we’ve changed the headline to make it more specific.]

It’s an understatement to say that Apple’s iPad generated a lot of chatter when it was announced on Wednesday; the scuttlebutt actually slowed down the Internet. Even Microsoft couldn’t help but weigh in, criticizing the iPad for being a “locked down device.”

“It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple,” Brandon Watson, the director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft, told me in an interview yesterday. With Microsoft’s platforms, developers can build whatever they want, and target a broad array of devices using the same skill set, he added.

Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.

It’s certainly true that there has been some griping about Apple’s development policies, and not every app is a winner. Facebook developer Joe Hewitt famously protested against the control Apple is exerting over its hardware (he is now praising the iPad), and argued that Apple is setting a “horrible precedent.” The Free Software Foundation protested the iPad on Wednesday for being an “unprecedented extension of DRM” into a new class of computers.

I think that the FSF’s argument may have merit, but Microsoft’s criticism misses the target altogether. What Apple has envisioned with the iPad isn’t a traditional PC–it’s more of an appliance. You don’t tinker with your television; you turn it on and consume services. The iPad’s Apps are like services. And despite what Watson said about iPhone developers failing to make money, some are clearly doing exceptionally well.

When Microsoft released its Tablet PC back in 2001, it grafted handwriting recognition onto Windows. That capability extended Windows into new (such as engineering and medical services), but the Tablet PC was still essentially a PC running Windows. Windows 7’s multitouch enhancements create a more natural user interface for PCs, but a PC is still a PC.

The iPad isn’t a PC. I’ve gone on trips to Boston and Washington DC over the past several weekends, and spend hours riding Amtrak and on Wi-Fi-enabled busses. I didn’t bring a laptop with me, because I didn’t want to lug one around, and didn’t really need to have a full fledged computer with me. My iPhone provided me with entertainment along the way. Truth be told, I would rather have had an iPad with me to surf the Web, listen to music, watch movies and read. If the price comes down even further, Apple’s got a winner.

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Clues Point to a Microsoft Zune Phone

Posted by David Worthington on January 26, 2010 at 11:03 pm

Technologist Long Zheng’s watchful eye caught a clue that points to the likely existence of an upcoming Zune phone, according to blog post he published today.

A Zune software update (version 4.2.202.0) includes a USB device driver package that reference hardware IDs for an as of yet unknown Microsoft Zune product. Zheng noted that USB body regulations forbid vendors from masking devices IDs, so the device must be from Microsoft. There are three variants of the ID that may point to different models, he added.

There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Microsoft will make its own device. I was in the “yes” camp over a year ago, because I believe that Microsoft will attempt to maintain parity with Apple’s product mix. It acquired Sidekick creator Danger Inc., and tasked executive Roz Ho (former head of its Mac business unit) to absorb Danger into its Entertainment and Devices division.

It’s true that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile business model has been reliant on third parties, but that model hasn’t given the platform much wind in its sails as evidenced by the OS’s sinking market share. However, it isn’t exactly backing off from supporting its IHV partners. It’s also sticking to its story that it has no immediate plans to build a Zune phone.

Last year, it was reported that Microsoft was giving devices makers reference designs to use to build their own next generation Windows Mobile devices. It is also working on Zune-branded services, code-named “Pink,” “Skybox,” and “SkyMart,” to standardize the user experience across devices.

My bet is that Microsoft is in the mobile device market for the long haul. The fact that Apple is now selling a substantial number of connected devices, which contributes solidly to its bottom line, is not escaping Microsoft. It will try many things.

The company realizes that people are accessing information and services from a growing number of devices, and has technology planned to accommodate that change both in the short (Silverlight) and long term (Midori OS).

We are going to have to wait and see what Microsoft is doing; it’s a big company that has a lot of coals in the fire. Keep a close eye out on Mobile World Congress next month.

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Apple Beats Earnings Estimates

Posted by David Worthington on January 25, 2010 at 6:30 pm

Ahead of Apple’s anticipated unveiling of its tablet device later this week, the house lights have turned on, and the opening band is playing. Apple managed to (temporarily) break through the hullabaloo by announcing its 1st quarter earnings today.

Apple posted a net quarterly profit (US GAAP) of $3.38 billion on $15.68 billion in revenue. That earned stockholders $3.67 per diluted share as compared to $2.50 per diluted share for the same period one year ago. Among the highlights are:

International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Macintosh computer sales increased 33 percent over the year-ago quarter. 3.36 million were sold.
Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter (a 100% increase)
Apple sold 21 million iPods in the quarter (an 8% decrease).

“We are very pleased to have generated $5.8 billion in cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $11.0 billion to $11.4 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.06 to $2.18.”

Doubtless to say, Apple’s tablet will affect its revenue into the foreseeable future – one way or another. We are also witnessing a shift to a product mix heavier in connected devices. One lingering question is: what is going to happen with Apple TV? Hopefully the company will answer more questions than it raises on Wednesday– the orgy of prognosticating is killing me.

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Patent Trolls: They Do Exist

Posted by David Worthington on January 7, 2010 at 1:59 am

Stanford University has announced a new service for analyzing and tracking patent lawsuits called Lex Machina. Its use of legal informatics has already led to some interesting findings about the nature of patent lawsuits in the US software industry.

The database helped Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law and the director of the Law, Science Technology Program, determine that patent trolls account for nearly 30% of suits in the IT industry, depending on who is defined as a troll, he said. The clearinghouse data shows that trolls are “disproportionately owners of the most-litigated patents — the ones that show up in dozens of different lawsuits,” he added.

Lemley has conducted research to identify the characteristics of patent trolls, and has testified as an expert for the US Senate on the topic of patent reform.

“I do think [trolls] have a larger impact than the percentage alone would suggest, especially in the IT industries,” Lemley said. He added that the data will help dispel myths about patent litigation from who sues to who wins, and how much defendants have to pay. “We are giving the world access to the facts in a way they’ve never had before.”

Lex Machina is an outgrowth of a research project called the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC). IPLC was developed to provide scholars, policy makers and citizens with open and instant access to data about intellectual property litigation in the United States.

The database grew so vast that Lex Machina was spun off as a separate venture to sustain development, according to Stanford. It now contains over 100,000 cases, over 10 million docket entries, and automates the parsing of that data. “The company includes more computer scientists than lawyers, and has people working at the very forefront of machine learning,” Lemley noted.

I applaud Stanford’s work, and hope that the IPLC database is used to drive patent reform, demystifying a complicated issue. Higher quality patents will protect investments in intellectual property while preserving the ability of start ups to do innovative things.

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Apple’s Next iPhone Must Resurrect the Wow Effect

Posted by David Worthington on January 7, 2010 at 1:52 am

The arrival of Google’s Nexus One smartphone is like the Beatles following Elvis Presley. Elvis revolutionized music and retained his immortal status, but The Beatles were great in their own right. The technological advantage that Apple had when it introduced the iPhone is diminishing (think Fat Elvis). And so the next iPhone will need to be another game changer for Apple to remain on top.

With the original iPhone, Apple addressed the shortcomings that most devices in the category had with fresh, innovative ideas. Initially, there were many second rate imitators, but now, products including the Palm Pre and Nexus One match if not surpass the iPhone in numerous ways.

I love my iPhone, and couldn’t imagine life without my apps. However, there are great alternatives for people who have not yet upgraded to a smartphone or want to save on their monthly service fees.

Case in point: A few months back, a friend and I were sitting in an East Village bar waiting for a bossa nova show to begin. We both whipped out our phones (his was a Pre) and had the proverbial “size contest.” I couldn’t knock the Pre, and he is very happy with it.

Moreover, AT&T’s decision to carry five Android phones is prescient–Android has no place to go but up. While it’s still not fully mature, Android is a great operating system for device manufacturers that do not have their own OS, and that is somewhat reminiscent of the early days of Microsoft Windows.

What is Apple to do? It will do very well due to the strength of its brand, and dedicated users like myself, but those strengths will eventually decline into inertia. Even a phone that leaves the Pre and Nexus One in its dust will not be good enough–Apple must bring back the “wow” factor in order to maintain its leadership of the market (or cede and focus on another groundbreaking product).

I’m confident that Cupertino has enough tricks up its sleeve that it could leave the rest of the industry chasing the iPhone again. There is room to play as the smartphone category grows, but anything less than a revolutionary product simply isn’t good enough for Apple.

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Microsoft Extends 50% Windows 7 Discount

Posted by David Worthington on January 4, 2010 at 6:23 pm

Sometimes Microsoft’s biggest competitor is itself. Huge numbers of businesses are still using Windows XP, and Microsoft is acting aggressively to migrate them to Windows 7 by extending a promotion that offers Windows 7 and Office 2007 for half price.

Windows Vista is by many accounts a better operating system than XP, but nearly 90 percent of businesses bypassed the upgrade, and opted to stick with Windows XP, because it was “good enough” for them. Office XP presents Microsoft with a similar problem.

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DRM Dashes Avatar Preview

Posted by David Worthington on December 18, 2009 at 9:03 pm

German sci-fi fans who were lucky enough to score tickets to an early 3D preview of Jame Cameron’s Avatar were stymied by a failure in the movie’s DRM system. Some theaters were unable to decrypt the video, and some exasperated projectionists reverted back to the 2D version, according to reports.

The film’s digital masters were ‘protected’ by a DRM system that was comprised of certificates and time-sensitive keys that were necessary to authenticate a theater’s equipment–from hard drives down to the projector. That system, which incidentally sounds like it was designed by Rube Goldberg, failed to perform as required to…play the movie.

I understand the studio’s desire to protect its intellectual property. Scores of people doubtlessly worked very hard to produce the film, and it was a $237 million investment. Bootleggers will be trying to obtain the film, and probably eventually succeed in pirating the movie across FTPs and torrent streams.

Let’s be serious: DRM will not stop a carefully concealed camcorder. With such draconian DRM in place, there should have been failsafes so that it would not affect the moviegoers’ experience.

DRM should be seamless and invisible to the user, but I don’t get why the theater had to use the system anyway given the file size was reported to be 150GB. How many people would actually share that? Screener DVDs are a more likely source of piracy.

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Will the EC’s Watchful Eye Hobble Microsoft’s Ability to Innovate?

Posted by David Worthington on December 16, 2009 at 11:05 pm

Microsoft may have settled its differences with the EC over the antitrust complaint Opera Software’s levied against it, but I do not expect that the European Commission’s scrutiny of Microsoft will lapse. I just hope that the EC is judicious in exercising its regulatory authority against the company in the future.

Opera filed a complaint with the EC in 2007 alleging that Microsoft illegally bundled Internet Explorer with Windows. That complaint was settled today when Microsoft and the EC came to an agreement over a browser ballot for Windows that lets the end users choose which browser they would like to use as their default.

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What Microsoft’s Surface Can Mean for Businesses

Posted by David Worthington on December 15, 2009 at 4:36 pm

Microsoft put its weight behind touchscreen applications at its Professional developers Conference (PDC) last month, but that does not translate to immediate adoption by real people. That could change –sooner rather than later—as companies that develop business-oriented applications for Microsoft’s Surface tabletop computer try to take Surface out of its niche and into the office.

Last month, I reported on how Microsoft’s Surface tabletop computer team has graduated from being a Bill Gates pet project to a group that stands up on its own, and contributes back into other parts of Microsoft. Companies that work with Surface are riding its coattails.

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