Something for the Whiner (Actual GNOME Content!)

I presented at Open Source in Mobile USA in San Francisco last week on different approaches to mobile device development--pretty successfully, I guess, from the reaction, although maybe people were applauding because they were just happy that they were finally getting to go to lunch.

At any rate, one of the more interesting things I saw at OSiM was a selection of netbooks running to 1.0.1 version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, courtesy of Canonical. On the strength of that, I ran over to the Best Buy in Capitola and picked up an HP Mini 1030NR for a little over $300. It came with "Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition for Ultra Low Cost PCs" (no kidding) pre-installed, and I booted XP exactly once before I slammed UNR into it. It works flawlessly: installation was smooth as silk, WiFi, Bluetooth, trackpad, etc., all work perfectly, no tweaking needed. It's a pretty impressive device, given the price, and--for the part of my day that consists of email and web stuff, i.e. a fair amount of it--it's just fine. I guess if I had an immediate critique it's that the "remix" seems to mainly consist of a different desktop launcher and a patch that maximizes all app windows and changes the tab structure. I'm going to give it a few weeks and a fuller review; I also plan to try the Moblin v2 alpha on it as well, and will report back on that, too.

Netbooks are an interesting kind of interim device; I suspect that they may be displaced by actual "mobile internet device"-style tablets as time goes on, but I guess we'll see. It's definitely a very handy sort of a device to have when I travel, I expect, and I may well leave the MacBook at home on my upcoming trip to London, but we'll see...

Notebook Pr0n

Having spent a year or three experimenting with digitally capturing stuff that would ordinarily be handwritten (on Newtons, via Graffiti on various Garnet OS devices, on various Windows Tablet PCs, etc.), I've always come back to the conclusion that paper and writing implements have been around for millennia because they just work. Digital devices (for capture, as opposed to retention and access) still don't really have it over paper, in my book (so to speak).

I mentioned recently that I'd come across an interesting organizer system from Germany called an "X47". I managed to suffer through the web site's German-only, excruciatingly slow back-end and ordered some stuff from them, which finally arrived this last Monday. In short, it's fabulous stuff.

I got an A6-sized leather notebook, and a number of different inserts. What's unique about this system is that, rather than using a ring binding, this uses a system where the binder has three pairs of pins, one of which is spring-loaded:

The inserts, which come in a variety of styles, have a metal tube stapled into the spine, which fits into the pins:


This arrangement has several happy side-effects: the amount of available writing space is increased to the full page, since there aren't rings and holes taking up space, the width of the spine is reduced to a minimum, and you can use the page opposite your writing hand without having rings in the way. The variety of insert types encourages you to design your own organizer: I've got a one-day-per-page insert for my calendar, a "databank" insert (12 tabbed 6-page sections, good for collecting project-related "next steps"), and a lined insert (which I use for my "Autofocus" list).

Apparently, it's possible to buy this stuff retail in Amsterdam, so I'll be checking that out toward the end of next month while I'm there for a meeting sponsored by FSF-Europe. It's not cheap, but it's really well-made and the design is incredible. The same company makes a more inexpensive line, the X17, which uses rubber bands looped over the spine rather than the pin-and-tube arrangement of the X47.

The system comes in three sizes, A5 (too big), A7 (too small) and A6 (just right!) The A6 binder I got fits quite nicely in the back pocket of a pair of Levi's and has two ribbon markers as well as a number of business-card-sized pockets.

Every once in a while, you come across something that's just perfectly conceived and executed. This product gets my vote.

"It Never Ends!"

I gave a presentation at eComm on "Governance for Mobile OSs" this past week, I think the audience enjoyed it, especially after the droning quality and inability to finish within the timespan allotted shown by some of the previous presentations. One of the issues I pointed out was that developers face, particularly in developing for the iPhone, huge uncertainties that they cannot resolve independently.

The biggest of these has to do with Apple's position as the unappealable gatekeeper for the store. Developers, as shown by quotes last week, are understandably concerned at "keeping their fingers crossed and hoping for the best" after having sunk considerable design and development time into their application, knowing full well that Apple can give them the "Thumbs-down" for any reason, or none at all, and that--having done so--they won't spare a second's effort to discuss it with them or even tell them what the issue is.

So (as I actually predicted some time ago), extra-curricular "iPhone App Stores" are springing up, according to a story reported initially by the Wall Street Journal. Apple's threatening to play the DMCA card to stop jailbreakers--although reports are that at least one of the non-Apple stores won't require a jailbroken iPhone to install apps--but it remains to be seen how that's likely to play out.

In a story from yesterday, iPhone developers are "tearing their hair out" over the growing delay in getting applications approved for the iPhone App store: the wait has gone from a matter of days to months, even for free applications. And, of course, Apple doesn't return calls. And, not surprisingly, "developers, who are increasingly being discouraged by a process that in many cases prevents them from getting their first real foothold in the App Store. Without clear signs that Apple is addressing the problem, companies and individuals alike are questioning whether they should continue to produce iPhone apps in the first place." (My emphasis)

Like I keep telling people, it's a big world, and "Who's winning the mobile space?" won't be decided for a good, long time. Situations like the one detailed about show the downside of Apple's store model. Developers are clearly looking for a platform that treats them better...

Just a Few News Items That Caught My Eye

Proving that the world of mobile devices is indeed an extremely large and varied place, it turns out that it's evidently not possible to even give away an iPhone in Japan. (If you've ever used the iPhone's Japanese input, you might have an inkling as to why...)

(On a vaguely related note, Apple is pulling down all apps that enable "emoji" on the iPhone. If you want it, you'd better hurry on up and get it: Spell Number was a free application still available yesterday which enabled the Emoji keyboard....)

Also, Apple inexplicably trusts its iPhone developers more than Google trusts their Android developers: if you shelled out for an Android developer phone, you're not allowed to access the "paid applications" section of the Android store.

I'm going to be presenting on behalf of the LiMo Foundation at the eComm conference in Mountain View this coming week, and I plan to be attending (at least) Open Source in Mobile USA in San Francisco the week after that. If you're going to be around for either, drop a comment!

In other developments, I've come across an awesome organizer/notebook from the folks at X47, and a good resource for would-be learners of Japanese at KnowIt! Check 'em out. Fair warning: the X47 site's backend is slower than molasses and entirely in German, so if you decide to order something, you're going to need both linguistic skilz and patience...

I'm also becoming more interested in ELGG, an open source platform for Facebook-like social networking, as well as OpenPlans.org and The Open Planning Project....

The Store Story: A Follow-up

I'd noted previously, that Apple's opaque and inexplicable policies (soi-disant) about which apps make it into the App Store are a direct disincentive to developer investment in the platform. That's underscored by an article in PC World which talks to developers of ten rejected iPhone applications, and gets some relevant quotes:

• "We spent a lot of time and money on this product. It sucks to develop an app and get it rejected for reasons that you weren't aware of."—Patrick Alphonso, CEO, Swamiware
• "Their policies and approval are shrouded in mystery. Whenever an app is submitted, it seems like playing Russian roulette."—Hardy Macia, Catamount Software
• "Their reasons for banning us really didn't add up...After that, they pretty much stopped talking to us or returning e-mail and voicemail."—Sam Magdalein, Air-o-matic
• "In a word, I was upset. I tried contacting Apple to see if there was any way to resolve their concerns, but they never answered my e-mail."—Josef Wankerl
• "Apple's 'reasonable judgment' seems to depend largely on an individual reviewer's judgment rather than any simple-to-gauge metric."—PJ Holden
• "By the time you get rejected, you've already wasted all the development time and expense, and there's no recourse to get [the application] accepted."—Alec Vance

The Store Story

(This was originally posted earlier this week on the LiMo Foundation's MWC Blog...)

A lot of the news coming out of MWC this year seems to be about what isn’t there. In particular, there’s been a fair amount of commentary on the relative dearth of new Android handsets, the notable exception being the HTC Magic, coming out from Vodaphone before long. Other than the lack of a hard keyboard—the Magic is touchscreen only—it’s pretty similar to the G1.

What’s more interesting are the announcements around applications stores coming from various parties. Google has finally enabled paid applications on its Android store, a few months late, and Nokia has announced the Ovi Store for Symbian phones. In addition, Microsoft is going to have a Windows Mobile store (and reportedly brick and mortar stores as well) to push their mobile solutions. Stores, stores, stores.

Obviously, all of this has been driven by the success of Apple’s iPhone and its associated App Store. Apple, in a big comeback from their original position on development for the iPhone, has managed to do what prior mobile platform vendors, like Palm, always had a lot of trouble accomplishing: they’ve made adding software to your phone mainstream. Prior to this, while a lot of people carried “smart phones” of various kinds, relatively few ever took advantage of the capability of those devices to do things beyond the set of capabilities they shipped with. That’s a situation which is clearly changing.

Some interesting situations have already arisen, which display the difference between the various store “governance models”, if you will, as well as the security capabilities of the various platforms. Apple exerts tremendous control over its developers, to an extent pretty much never-before-seen, with the iPhone store. Essentially, developers for the iPhone have to do their work “on spec”, in the hopes that Apple will approve it for sale in the store. There have been several interesting cases where Apple’s either disallowed applications, or even removed them after initially allowing them for sale, on various grounds, as well as a number of situations around content—the author of an electronically distributed novel was obliged to remove several instances of “the F-word” in order to satisfy Apple that his content was okay for distribution.

That’s a situation that, in the long run, is calculated to provide a strong disincentive for major development projects on the iPhone: what organization is going to be willing to invest man-years of effort in developing an application that they may, ultimately, find themselves unable to effectively sell? In addition, Apple controls the effective marketing of those applications to a large degree, with its “Staff Picks”, and so on. The iPhone store is a market, but not a free one.

In contrast, the Android store is a pretty wild and wooly place, especially in the commentaries on some of the applications. Google exerts almost no control (although there are, indeed, terms and conditions associated with selling applications through the Android store, but they’re a cakewalk compared to Apple) over what gets listed there, which is fine as far as it goes. Where things get problematic is the intersection of the freedom around the store and the weaknesses of Android’s security model.

In the past few weeks, stories came out about an Android application which purported to “optimize” the memory usage of your Android phone. Sounds good, right? Of course, the app, when installed, dutifully reported the things it wanted to do, and of course, users all agreed to allow the application to do those things. The application then apparently went ahead and deleted pretty much every single bit of data on the phone, which I suppose represents an “optimization” of sorts—”There’s more now!”—but isn’t what the users of the application had in mind, certainly.

Both situations are caused by the same symptoms: lack of a policy-based security model. All Android applications are self-signed by their developers; all iPhone applications are effectively signed by Apple. However, neither of these models offer much granularity: either you install an application on your iPhone or G1 or you don’t; when you go to run it, either you agree to allow it to do whatever it does (implicitly on the iPhone, more explicitly on an Android phone), but once you’ve done that, if the application misrepresented what it does, you’re out of luck.

In contrast, policy-based models allow “levels” of signature, such that—for example—for an application to delete contacts, it would need to be signed by an authoritative source. Alternately, that specific capability would be brought out to the use for explicit approval, rather than a generic “This application wants to access your contacts”. This is one of the strengths of platforms—like the recently-announced LiMo reference platforms—which incorporate a policy-based model from day one.

Over the next few years, better security models, and broader availability of platforms which implements them, such as those being used by LiMo Foundation members, are going to be creating a real marketplace for developers, one which allows them to sell (or give away) their goods as they see fit, but also one which has some real consumer protection built in.

Greetings from Brussels!

I'm in Brussels, arrived yesterday for FOSDEM this weekend. Actually, FOSDEM semi-officially begins this evening, with the traditional "beer event", being held this year at the Café Délirium, near the Grand' Place. (Tomorrow night's the GNOME Beer Event, at La Porte Noire...)

I got here around 9 in the morning yesterday, was lucky enough to be able to snag a room at the hotel that early, and crashed out for several hours. I met up with my pal Carlos, who happened to be in town, but not for FOSDEM, yesterday evening and we wandered out to get mussels and beer on Boulevard Anspach, an excellent dinner.

I expect to be meeting up with a couple of other friends Monday before I fly back to the States on Tuesday. I should be getting a bunch of pictures from FOSDEM, I'll try to post the best of them here... I'm also going to be doing a little Mobile World Congress blogging on behalf of the LiMo Foundation week after next...

Who else is going to be at FOSDEM this year?