On the day Apple became the #1 vendor of cell phones in the U.S. with 26%, All Things Digital put out the headline: “Android Surges… Apple Flat”.  Now when you’ve just eaten up a quarter of the market, it’s very hard to call you flat, but I’ll digress.  They are looking at OS shipments rather than product shipments.  From Apple’s point of view, the two are the same, and since Android isn’t a first-party OS, Apple gets the last laugh as the market leader. Still, it’s funny that the editor can call Apple “flat” on such a monumental day, especially when Android marketers are a half-dozen deep and Apple is just one company, with just one (or two) handset.   One thing ATD did get right is the fact that Blackberry is dying on the vine.

Another example is in the marching orders of the press corps towards treatment of the Android “family” of products (from a half-dozen different vendors) being treated as a single, monolithic anti-iphone. This depsite the fact that there are OEM features and major platform functionality differences on every handset.   Just compare an HTC to any phone with MotoBlur.  They really feel like entirely different products, but none in such a way that you can say yep this one is the “iPhone of Android devices”.

So I wonder if these journalistic tendencies are driven out of the desire to see Apple take a few bruisings now that they aren’t clawing at Microsoft from the bottom of the 32-bit barrel.

Ie, would programmers be less likely to write highly productive code if less productive, less sophisticated code would yield the same result, given the availability of tons of hardware? And what would this mean in terms of energy conservation, and more importantly, the advancement of human thought?

Put another way, there are many ways to perform a certain computational algorithm, all yielding an accurate result, but all requiring various levels of computational intensity.  I’ll give an example.  First, the bubble sort.  This is a very simple, iterative method of sorting data into ordered lists–a method taught in basic computer programming classes. I first learned the bubble sort while taking Pascal at Cass Tech high school in Detroit.  I thought the bubble sort was awesome, although I later learned that there were other sorting schemes that were far faster and less computationally intense, ie. more economical.

So the hypothesis is this: innovation in more effective programming is lessened by the availability of horsepower.

Among Blackberry, Microsoft, Google, and Apple, Microsoft was the earliest player in mobile computing and smart phones, so why have they failed in this area?

With Windows Mobile 7 waiting in the wings, it occurred to me that I just don’t see people using Windows Mobile devices that much any more. In fact, at work, we’ve seen a shift from WinMo to Blackberry and iPhone, with the exodus split about 60/40 in favor of Blackberry. The market share shift has been swift and decisive.

Now I know this isn’t exactly news, but I was trying to figure out why.  Microsoft correctly foresaw the mobile market as being the next big thing for them and the software industry, and they had very early foresight that mobile was going to sweep our eyes away from our desktops in a major way. They had the timing right, but their solution is, and has been, inadequate.

The Value of Ecosystems

One key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that, while they both offer end-to-end ecosystems (Microsoft with XBox, Apple with iTunes/iPhone/AppleTV), they seem to use their ecosystems to different ends.  I believe Apple’s tightly-integrated iTunes ecosystem was primarily driven by the “digital paranoia” of the record industry in the early 2000′s, and it may not have been Apple’s idea to provide such a closed environment. But, in the end, consumers seem to prefer the “just works” ecosystem over the “bring your own interface” approach. For this reason, Microsoft can be seen to have failed at establishing a clear content-to-consumer delivery model based on Windows Mobile.

What’s worse, the Zune, which could have been a great launchpad for a simplified, stylus-free version of Windows Mobile four years ago, exists on yet another Microsoft island, limiting its value to the consumer. Rectifying this problem by bringing the ill-fated Zune line into the limelight of the Windows ecosystem would go a long way towards making Windows Mobile relevant again. Think iPod.

Failure to Recognize Consumer Patterns of Behavior

It was only a matter of time before the average consumer was using personal devices to manage nearly every aspect of his life. Yet Microsoft took the wait and see approach, preferring to believe that the corporate world would drive personal device adoption, where, in reality, we can see that personal, entertainment-oriented device use has driven the entire mobile industry for the last several years.  Two parts gear lust, and one part nerdification of the general populous, this movement is the exact opposite of the strategy Microsoft used for Windows Mobile.

Most People Lose Their Stylus

The user interface options available on Windows Mobile devices, until recently, have been based on resistive touch screen technology, generally used with a small, inkless pen called a stylus.  Blackberry, by contrast, has always offered its trademark “scroll wheel”, and Apple developed a slew of UI technologies, including groundbreaking iPod controls, that culminated in a stylus-free touch-screen control environment for the iPhone. Windows Mobile never employed either approach, so solving this problem (and Microsoft is solving it) will help.

Give Developers a Reason to Develop

The real trick isn’t coming up with the idea. The real trick isn’t coding the program.  The real trick IS getting people to notice.  Apple has more than solved this problem, for better or worse, with the Appstore.  You bring the code, we bring the customers.  While some web sites have served as communities of developers and consumers of WinMo apps, they exist outside the ecosystem and don’t provide turnkey delivery of content.

When Microsoft finally did show up on the scene with an official WinMo store, they stubbed their toe by naming it “Windows Marketplace for Mobile”.  Srsly?

Stop Trying to Look Like Windows

Windows Mobile shouldn’t look like Windows and shouldn’t even be called “Windows”, since a windowing environment on a 3″ screen is a useless idea anyway. Yet when we look back at the releases of Windows Mobile (and its mobile predecessors), we get the idea that Microsoft has always wanted WinMo to look as much like desktop Windows as possible. Only with Windows Mobile 7 has this pattern been broken. (See above screen grab.)

Blackberry never had this problem, as their main objective was to develop a good mobile UI, and they had no ties to an existing desktop environment.  Apple, who does have Mac OS X, decided not to bother bringing the X look and feel to their mobile device. This was a great decision, of course.

A fantastic example of this dynamic came to light today when it was announced that the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac will replace Redmond’s clunky Entourage e-mail app with an actual Mac OS X version of Outlook, the predominant e-mail application used in medium and large enterprises.  My company alone supports somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve-hundred Outlook nodes at about fifteen different firms.  So a Mac version of Outlook, as the t-shirt saying goes, is “kind of a big deal.”

But what’s an even bigger deal is that Outlook once ran natively on the Mac–on Mac OS 9 anyway–and shared a great deal in common with its Windows cousin.  And, suffice it to say, it was a better product than its redheaded stepchild, Entourage.  It makes me wonder why they ever canned Outlook on the Mac to begin with.

Now I’m beginning to understand that Microsoft is on an all-hands mission to get as many enterprises, large and small, as entrenched as possible before Google and other market players really step to the plate with something that competes with Microsoft, and in particular Outlook and Office.  (Anybody who suggests that Google Apps currently beats Microsoft Office is smoking some pretty harsh crack, sorry guys.)

Entrenchment is the key to damage control: keep the customer believing that it will cost them more in dollars and difficulty to move away from Microsoft, no matter how compelling the alternative, and they’ll stick with Microsoft.  This was how they (soundly) destroyed Lotus Notes, and Redmond’s incredible staying power may allow it to stave off Google Apps for quite a few years to come.

OK, does this name strike anybody else as particularly dumb?  On the syllable count alone, the marketing folks at Microsoft should’ve shot this one down before it had a chance to get into the wild.  Now, it seems, it’s going to have to stick.

Compared to Apple’s “Appstore” (2 syllables) or Nokia’s “Ovi” (barely 2 syllables) or even Blackberry’s “App World” (seeing a pattern?), Microsoft’s elephant-sized name for it’s application store clocks in at a whopping 8 syllables. Imagine the water cooler discussions that will never happen as a result:

“Hey man, where’d you get that sweet pinball game?”

“Well, I got it from Windows Marketplace for Mobile!”

Riiiight.  Who seriously is going to call it that?  Microsoft’s history of self-defeating brand names hasn’t been on display this starkly since “Microsoft Windows Server Base Operating Systems Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005“.  Srsly, who uses this wordy terminology?

With Apple having already coined the de facto term “Appstore”, why doesn’t Redmond take advantage of the growing strength of the Zune brand and call their wordy app store something like “Zune Store” or “Zune Place” or even just “Mobile World”?  Even HandMarket, a third-party app store for Windows Mobile, beats Microsoft to the punch in succinctness.

Apple is nearly past that point in their new platform’s life cycle.  If it’s an app platform–let it be.  Palm and Blackberry are still waiting in the wings, and Windows Mobile will be the centerpiece of Microsoft’s revenue strategy in the next ten years.  And, like it or not, whatever else Microsoft did that was crummy and evil, they never told a developer he couldn’t distribute an app.

An old friend, Fleecy Moss, who was among the architects of the independent takeover of Amiga in the early 2000′s, once gave a talk at a tradeshow in the nineties–and his espousal of the content designation to software was, at the time, a revolutionary concept.  As with many ideas that bubbled up from the ill-fated Amiga wellspring, this concept proved true, and was ahead of its time.  It would be another ten years before the idea was accepted by the greater community.

The app store paradigm has brought this idea to the forefront of the way we think about distributing content.  Yet there’s something holding up the adoption of online app stores to distribute software, and I can’t quite thumb it.  Shareware authors have been distributing license credentials through e-commerce sites for a decade already, yet Apple and Microsoft still don’t sell their developers’ software through their flagship web sites.

Perhaps even more silly is the fact that consumers, vis-a-vis bloggers, don’t already demand such a solution.  If I can buy and download a DRM’d episode of Lost, why can’t I download a credentialed, licensed copy of Squeeze, or Microsoft Office for Mac, or my favorite blogging application, Ecto?   Yet nobody complains.  Indeed, it seems that the idea of a desktop app store is some kind of new idea. Technologizer, the “smarter take on tech”, just ran a piece about it today.   Yet I was talking about it a year ago, and longer.

1 – Microsoft lost big when it walked away empty-handed from Facebook, and Redmond’s been regretting it ever since.

2- Microsoft’s unexciting efforts in the music-business, including the Zune, may now have renewed hope, as MySpace is probably the only real 2.0 music destination on the web (iTunes is hardly a 2.0 destination; nice try Apple fans).

3 – Silverlight sucks and nobody wants it except Redmond.  Those page takeover ads for the next Batman movie that you see on MySpace occur courtesy of Flash, not Silverlight.  Of course, this won’t change that, either.

4 – MySpace is desperate to clean up its image as the red light district of social networking.  Who better than squeaky-clean Microsoft to bring a little much-needed legitimacy to the table?

5 – There are a greater percentage of Mac users on Facebook than on MySpace.  OK, I’m guessing here. But I bet there’s a pretty Mac-favorable ratio on the Facebook side that doesn’t exist on MySpace.

6 – Windows Mobile is late to the social networking party, and not fashionably so.  Hey, wait, what party ISN’T Windows Mobile late to?

7 – Microsoft would consider making an offer for MySpace, if it weren’t for the horrible fact that MySpace is the world’s largest ColdFusion abuser.  Eek, that’ll scare off a .Net dev in a hurry.

8 – MySpace’s Hold ‘Em poker apps are better than Facebook’s.  (It’s true.)

9 – Microsoft holds in very high regard the design ethic of MySpace (which looks like a 1998-era web site and always causes people to wonder where in the hell the link to edit a photo album is).

10 – MySpace still garners some undeniable clout, even if it’s with a segment of consumers that are less likely to have graduated college and more likely to still be rocking a Pentium 3.

It’s that time of year again: tax time.  As we all pay buku to our local CPAs to fill out forms we’re either too incompetent or too uninterested to fill out ourselves, we cringe at the idea of a federal tax audit and dread dealing with IRS agents on the phone: people who won’t give you their first names and only want to be called Mister This or Mizz That.

At the same time, at least in 2009, Microsoft is introducingperpetrating the most ambitious domestic licensing compliance audit in its history, calling any company it suspects may be out of compliance and requiring them to demonstrate that they “own” all the Microsoft software they’re using.  Microsoft’s SAM group is using tersely-worded phone conversations and heavy-handed verbal and written threats about escalation, audits, and legal action in order to ensure compliance. Call it revenue preservation if you want.

I call it lawsuit bait and a huge waste of my clients’ time.  Yet, Microsoft isn’t going to wait until economic conditions have improved to do this. They’re hurting too, and the easiest way to shore up revenue is the horse technique: go back to the same trough and drink some more.  Call existing customers and make sure they’re loaded with all the licenses they could conceivably need.

This technique is a bit of a gamble, as those being audited are mostly volume licensing customers–precisely the type of customers who have been laying employees off the last year or so.  Indeed, these customers’ licensing requirements have in fact gone DOWN, meaning that, for many companies, the amount of Microsoft software that’s actually needed might be less than what the customer has paid for.  Of course, when I asked my SAM agent if Microsoft would compensate me for my time if we were found to be over-licensed, he promptly responded with a proverbial ‘hell naw.’

I then informed him that if he is going to make arbitrary decisions about how my clients’ consulting time is spend (it does take me time to fill out MS’s compliance paperwork properly), he needs to give me or the client more notice.  I can picture lean I.T. staffs whose projects have to be put on hold all because pouty Microsoft is throwing a licensing tantrum. So much for the server upgrade because Ballmer and the gang decided to foist this lofty audit on our I.T. guys. It’s more than a little absurd.

Microsoft, you’re going to piss off a LOT of customers with this behavior.  (Something tells me your biggest customers like NASA and General Motors aren’t getting harassed on the phone by a war-dialing twenty-something with an autographed copy of Introduction to Microsoft Licensing on his book shelf.)

Bottom line, is if you’re going to show up out of the clear blue, and require something of my time, ie. boss me around, you better be either the IRS or my Mom.  Those are the two people for whom I jump through hoops.

So how is it that you come to be the best at something that isn’t your core business, just so you core business can flourish?   Well, you avoid the pattern exhibited by Microsoft–cut into as many markets as possible while clutching onto second-rate products (Live Search) and outmoded business models (XBox Live).  Ultimately this will mean that Apple’s failures over the years–their poor product offerings like .Mac–were things that they wisely dumped instead of clinging stubbornly onto like Redmond always seems to do.

Apple recognizes that–when THEY put out a crap service like .Mac–they have to cut their losses. Hence no more .Mac.  Ultimately, the same will be true of Mobile Me, when Google and its ilk replace every feature of Mobile Me with something better. And then, Apple will likely dump Mobile Me rather than try to compete in an area where they aren’t wanted and can’t do better.

This is why Apple won’t embrace Live Search. If they’re willing to cut their own failed initiatives and recognize that somebody else can do something better (Google Sync, anyone?), then why in the world would they embrace Live Search.

Snow Leopard or not, I don’t expect a Microsoft/Apple search alliance.

Now that Gmail has bested the Outlooks of the world, it’s a good time to assess the state of desktop software. There are some things that work better on your computer (your music app, your photo editor, your spreadsheets), and there are some that work better online (everything else).

Everything else is better online?  You mean like iMovie, or podcast production, or something secretive, or multitrack recording?   See, cloud humpers like this guy from Slate only look at software from the vantage point of office productivity–and EVEN THERE, the rationale of the Cloud’s superiority is overstated. The Cloud offers no tightly-integrated, productivity-boosting desktop environment, after all. Drag and drop? Nope. Personalized formats and preferences?  Not so much. And what about CONTROL?

Over the last few years, we’ve seen many programs shifting from the first category to the second—now you can get spreadsheets and photo editors online, though they’re still not as good as programs hosted on your computer. But e-mail has crossed the line completely. Hosted services like Gmail are now the most powerful and convenient way to grapple with a daily onslaught of mail. If you’re still tied to a desktop app—whether Outlook, the Mac’s Mail program, or anything else that sees your local hard drive, rather than a Web server, as its brain—then you’re doing it wrong.

Oh, really?   Never mind the fact that most people who choose Outlook or Entourage do so because of the benefits of Microsoft Exchange.  Not to mention the fact that it simply may not be a good idea  for Google to be the “world’s hard drive”.   Limited contigous storage is one drawback of the Google Apps / Cloud approach.  So is privacy.

Please, talk about the net-based apps with all of their qualities, pro and con, instead of all this mindless babble about how Google killed Outlook…   Come on people, think critically!

The wording of the announcement is tantamount to admitting defeat on Vista:

Over the past few years, you’ve asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it’s time to share an early look at how we’ve used your feedback. Windows 7 is faster, more reliable, and makes it easier to do what you want.

We sent out our company newsletter today. Katie, my CRM manager, wrote a piece about Windows 7.  I don’t know why this release has so much buzz. Maybe it’s because Microsoft has returned to sane version numbering.  Or maybe it’s because they’ve kind of become the underdog, what with Google and Apple trundling all over what’s left of their Windows XP ego.

In any event, I’m actually looking forward to Windows 7 beta tomorrow. See you in the download queue.

Since I’m complaining, how about asking for an abvious answer on an entirely different subject? Does anybody else agree with me that Steve Ballmer is essentially a PR liability for Microsoft?

That is–NBC, Disney, and the traditional TV gang are concerned that localized use of these relatively low frequency channels will impeded delivery of television service.  To which I’ll say this.  Most folks who consume a lot of TV (me not included) already receive television delivery through cable, fiber, or satellite schemes, making interference a non-issue.  The remainder tend to be people who don’t watch a lot of TV or people who are of little interest to advertisers.

So the question is: what are the TV people so upset about? Control.

Their industry is vanishing under sands blown by the winds of change.   Consumers’ awareness of user-centricity has pushed the debate over good access technologies into the spotlight, and the stubbornness of local telcos and cable operators to deliver on the promise of post-broadband Internet services has forced the hand of those who benefit most from a heavily utilized Internet infrastructure: Microsoft, Google, and the like.

Not surprising. And definitely a welcome move from my point of view.

It will be interesting to see how the spectrum ends up getting used.  What devices will facilitate the use of these channels?  Will we see new kinds of access points, or will local service operators finally be able to deliver good wireless last mile access along with their other services? Imagine post-broadband speed from your satellite operator or even your local television broadcaster.  This opens up a lot of possibilities.

Or is Cloud Computing the latest in a series of niche technology paradigms that is receiving much broader credit and faith than it is due?

Time will be the ultimate judge, of course. Will the Cloud end up a buzzterm that in retrospect seems silly to have given so much due, joining previous dead buzzterms like “push content” and “webcasting”?

It seems to me that the Cloud’s best role is that of a shared infrastructure, where teaming creates economies of scale for data manipulation, high-intensity calculation (like rendering, indexing, and DSP), file sharing, content management, and other multi-node or multi-user tasks.

But why is the trumpet sounding so loudly on behalf of using the Cloud to host productivity applications? Who really wants to give up the comforts of desktop apps for the “greener” pastures of the Cloud?   Microsoft Office may be moving online, but does it really matter whether my launchpoint for the software is my local drive or a web server?  It’s not like I’m running out of hard disk space.  Moreover, there are many frustrating nuances to using productivity apps through the web.  Native drag and drop is missing.  Font management is effectively missing.  And what about bandwidth?   Ever try to embed a 300 DPI 11×17 RAW into a two-page spread using the Cloud?  Drink a cup of coffee, nom a doughnut, and it *might* be done by the time you’re finished with your snack.

Oh, and what if your Internet connectivity goes down.  Eh, sorry, there goes your document.  And, oh, by the way, you can’t relaunch the office suite until your Internet connectivity comes back up.  Just yesterday I had a Salesforce.com-using client asking me how to get web reports from Salesforce.com without Internet access. She was offline.  I told her to go find a WiFi hotspot. See what I mean?

We love things because they’re new and bold, and perhaps not because they warrant our adoration. Cloud Computing is just such a concept.  Not saying there isn’t a noble purpose for it, but farming processing tasks to the cloud is smart because it doesn’t slow the user down, doesn’t require an online-all-the-time user state, and doesn’t require desktop OE interoperability the way user-facing apps do.  That’s why I’ve never been a real big fan of Zoho or the Google apps, and why I’m unlikely to become a Cloud-based MS Office user.

I actually agree with Microsoft’s hesitation on this one. Sure, their arrival to the Cloud party is late, but look at what is being celebrated at this bash: something most people A) don’t need B) can’t use regularly and C) will actually experience better results by avoiding.

Google’s Gears technology seeks to bridge the gap between web-service-based apps (last year’s word for “the Cloud”).  Hardware-centricity still matters, because ultimately it’s hardware features that sell people into the Cloud to begin with.  So if web computing is the end-all-be-all of desktop apps, things like Gears are going to start coming from Microsoft.  If not, Microsoft will have saved a ton of R&D money.

Gadgets are sexy, and they are the face of the global network.  Imagine buying a suit from a store where all the sales reps are ugly, slow, and occassionally take a very lengthy lunch break during the middle of your measurements.  You wouldn’t come back to that store.   That’s why high end clothiers have well-dressed, well-groomed, attentive salespeople.  They’re on when you’re on, they help you at all times, and they look good.

The Cloud can’t possibly provide the same level of service when it comes to desktop apps.  Not today, not tomorrow. Probably not next year.  So I’ll keep buying my suits at decent stores and I’ll keep my productivity apps where they work best for me–my desktop.

What really cracks me up is the collective refusal by our industry talking heads to accept the fact that the market will not tolerate a third desktop OE competitor.  Add to that this notion of cloud computing (which itself is somewhat overblown, if not more compelling than the free software “movement”), and you’ve got all the evidence in the world that Apple and Microsoft NEED NOT WORRY about Linux, whether it’s Ubuntu, Fedora, or some other funny-named flavor.

The world (or 99.95% of it) just doesn’t care about Linux on the desktop, yet the commentators in the industry keep pulling for desktop Linux as if it was “the little engine who could”.    Show me something desktop Linux brings to the table that Windows and Mac OS X don’t, and I’ll show you a product that probably STILL won’t succeed against the established players, even when it’s FREE.  We’re too entrenched, too invested, and too resistant to learning curves to ever considering a sizable swing to desktop Linux.

So all you GNU purists and techno-hippies–give up the ghost already.   It’s over.

And I don’t mean the X11 port either.  This is a full-on Mac port.  I’m downloading it as we speak.

Yeah, like Microsoft bundling software with Windows. Remember that?

Well, as it turns out, Google has been pwning Yahoo at search for 6 – 7 years, and the white hairs in Washington are only now noticing the impact.  Of course, who’s complaining?  Google’s domination of the search space has:

- Put an extremely downward pressure on advertising costs (oddly enough, the opposite tends to occur when too few competitors are involved)

- Reduced barriers to entry for keyword driven advertisers

- Made it possible for smalltime publishers, many of whom never made a penny on the web, to, you guessed it, make money on the web

- Legitimized pay-per-click over pay-per-impression

The truth is, Google just does search better, and has for a long time. I guess the truth hurts when the previous king becomes the marginalized underdog, a la Yahoo. So, to all those pundits poo-pooing Google because of their absolute crushing of Yahoo (and Microsoft) in the search war, I would propose this one question: Which search engine do YOU use?

Starts with a G, don’t it.  Yup, thought so.

Depending on who you talk to, Windows Product Activation is a serious privacy violation, a headache, minimal protection against piracy, or all of the above. Lucky for us, Microsoft is finally seeing (some of) the folly of its overbearing ways, and has gone with a more permissive nagware method with Vista SP1. This as opposed to the regular method of routinely locking users out of their systems, which, wouldn’t you know it, tended to hurt legitimate users more than pirates.

This is the understatement of the century.  Almost any emmigration from the Office/Windows empire can be attributed directly to Microsoft’s pigheadedness, and WPA is the most visible expression of it.  Software activation is something that came out of the realm of shareware, and Bill Gates attitude about shareware and freeware (especially in the nineties) is well-document and decidedly sour.

Yet product activation takes shareware’s secret weapon and puts it in Bill’s products: “Pay for a code and activate me or I will stop working.”   I’m glad my car doesn’t treat me like that.