Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
Who Is iOS5s Twitter Integration For?
Some pundits have questioned the reason for iOS 5 Twitters integration. It’s important to think back to Apples previous, recent, integrations into their operating systems and applications to understand why. For Photos those include: Flickr and Facebook for iPhoto, and now Twitter for iOS. Apple also had support in iPhoto for Mobile Me sharing but shortly that is suggested to be going away. They’ve added the most popular services (Facebook and Flicker) for people to share their photos but Twitter was still without a dedicated photo service.
A few weeks ago Twitter announced it would now support a dedicated Photo posting service and Apple is hooking into that service. What is Apple trying to achieve by helping people post photos? Simple enough: it’s part of your digital life as they say and it’s about convenience. Embedding Photo posting to Twitter into the operating system makes is very quick and easy to publish photos you want to share online. The real question is, why not Facebook? More about that later.
This Twitter integration goes beyond photos - it includes web links and videos and a few other things too, but Apple aren’t supplying their own Twitter client - given that they needed Twitters blessing for this integration it’s quite obvious that Twitter may it clear Apple were not allowed to make another client. That’s fine though as Apple want people to get used to using their products to post on services like Twitter to make their next step a no-brainer.
Apple are trying to get themselves into the social networking game. Between Ping (something that Facebook intelligently blocked) and then Game Centre Apple is trying to get on board with social. Twitter is still growing and with Facebook not playing Apples game, Apple integrating with Twitter is the next natural step. The next question is when Apple will launch an iCloud based social networking service for OSX and iOS that integrates SMS, MMS, iMessage, photo sharing and so on. How popular would that be if it’s free and has no ads?
There is no doubt that iOS 5 will attract a lot of new Twitter users so it’s a win for Twitter, but in addition those users will begin using Twitter exlusively from their mobile devices (most existing users avoid the web interface for Twitter like the plague anyway). It’s also a stepping stone for Apples future social plans and is fundamentally targetted at simplifying the process of posting social information on the web from your iOS device.
Twitter integration is for the basic, occasional existing users and more so for new users. Bringing them into the social fold by making it so easy gives Apple a more compelling product and a leg-up for the next step in their social strategy.
Patent Bile Part 4: Apple motions to intervene in Lodsys-App Developer Lawsuit
Apple have stuck to their principles and are going in with all guns blazing. Uploaded by Foss Patents are the actual documents filed to the courts and they make for solid reading. In them Apple state: “Apple…hereby respectfully moves to intervene as a defendant and counterclaim plaintiff in the…action brought by plaintiff Lodsys…against seven software application developers…for allegedly infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 7,222,078…and 7,620,565… Apple seeks to intervene because it is expressly licensed to provide to the Developers products and services that embody the patents in suit, freefrom claims of infringement of those patents.” It goes on to cite a long list of prior court rulings that may apply to the case and so on. The documents are very long and an interesting read (if you like that sort of thing) but there are two messages here: Apple will not abandon its developers (they dare not or their platform won’t fare so well in the longer term) and this response was not thrown together in a few hours.
As I covered previously the more voices in this chorus of opposition to Lodsys the better, but we’ll have to wait and see if any others join in. So far the other players in this game (namely Google and Microsoft) have been relatively quiet - at least publicly. They may be taking the back seat and waiting to see how Apple fare or they may be playing behind the scenes. Whilst Lodsys may move to dismiss their intervention, given that the issue in question would not have occurred without Apples creation of the iOS platform, the court is unlikely to dismiss Apples intervention.
Whatever happens from here - this is unlikely to end soon. At least developers know that they have some friends in Cupertino.
Why the Biggest WWDC Keynote Announcement wasn't really iOS5 or Lion
When Apple announced Lion and iOS the only mention of a cloud was the removal of tethering for iOS devices. Then, with the OS stuff out of the way they began to explain iCloud. The change, as Steve Jobs explained it, is that Apple no longer see your Mac/PC as the digital hub of your life: it’s now “the cloud” and that changes everything. The entire approach that Apple are now taking is more akin to Googles cloud strategy, but giving the end user the choice between web-apps, iOS apps or Mac apps to interact with their data.
Finally Apple have provided a system level API (that means developers can use it in their own apps) for document/file synchronising with the Cloud. This feature - this ONE feature alone is the single biggest annoucement Apple made at WWDC. To understand why it’s important to understand why document editing across multiple devices is so critical. As more people have A) more devices they use each day and B) collaborate and share documents in business, keeping documents in sync with each other is essential to avoid lost work and unnecessary frustration. At this time a handful of apps provide this functionality and it is mostly provided through Google Docs and through use of file storage services like DropBox. Now any developer, with any piece of software with settings or documents that work on more than one platform (iOS or OSX) can now access fully featured sync without a dollar spent all using Apples own maintained cloud storage solution.
The possibilities for iOS 5 applications is endless. Congratulations Apple for finally waking up, realising this is the future, and fingers crossed - for delivering it. Let’s not forget announcing products doesn’t equal flawless delivery. Expect teething problems, expect early frustration and then expect something amazing.
Androids Open App-Store Affecting End-Users?
An interesting comment shows a slightly less biased than usual perspective of how Android is affecting end-users when Sanjay Jha (CEO Motorola Mobility) mentioned during a webcast at the “Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology” Conference earlier this week that 70% of the returned Android units were returned due to bad application performance. Of course let’s take our grains of salt here: the applications on the phones are not likely to be Motorolas own skins/apps but could be those of their carriers or those from the Android Market or from side-loaded applications. The next point is that the 70% refers to only Motorolas Android phone models that are returned. For all we know the return rate could be incredibly small - say <1%. If you believe this Boy Genius Reports article then it may well be that the number of returns is very small but there are no concrete figures.
That said, it is still interesting that Motorola are blaming Android applications for the majority of their phone returns. Very interested in how this data is collected and by whom and whether Sanjay Jha is speaking based on personal opinion or on quantified internal memos and reports.
If we take it at face value then it would seem the Open App-Store is affecting end user experience through poorly coded applications. I just find it hard to believe that if the store was curated it would catch that many more applications that were problematic (crashing, background use of system resources). From personal experience Apple lets through applications that are buggy all the time. If that were the point perhaps then one could say a curated App Market would cut the number back from 70% to something less. Perhaps so.
Then again (if we take the number given at face value) one could argue that the architecture of Android allows developers to create problems like those Jha reported. iOS handles memory and resources very differently to Android and it has been long established that Apple don’t allow “true” multitasking - only certain specific functions that Apple provide with a well documented API. One could say that Androids core architecture is more to blame than the App Market being open for these perceived problems. Again, if you believe the numbers. Not really sure I do.