Tag Archives: Technology

The nexus of science, engineering and business.

Apple's Control Issues

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Section 3.3.1 of the new iPhone OS 4 preview SDK caused quite a firestorm on the interwebs. It tells developers exactly which tools they may use to develop apps for the app store. Apple must have known it would raise hackles and did it anyway. Now that’s thinking different. To those who say “they can’t do that!”, well, they just did. It’s pretty evil, but Apple has the users and the mindshare. Short of legal action (it’ll be interesting to see how much of this section is enforceable in court) it’s hard to see how Apple can be persuaded to change its mind. And this won’t result in a developer exodus — developers will flock to the iPhone as long as it’s a leading mobile platform.

It’s hard for me to sympathise with Adobe. Flash is a proprietary plugin that really only runs well on Windows. (In fact, most people forget that Flash’s ubiquity is a direct result of Microsoft bundling Flash with every copy of Windows.) Then Adobe got delusions of Flash’s platform-hood and is having trouble adjusting to the fact that one of the real platform vendors (Apple) didn’t like Flash very much, probably because Flash is a dog on OS X. Problem is, you don’t really become a platform by shipping plugins — the JRE browser plugin is a far more mature (and open source!) platform and it’s nowhere as ubiquitous as Sun/Oracle would like.

The other point against Flash is that it’s fundamentally pro-publisher and pro-advertiser and anti-user. Flash makes the user work twice as hard to maintain control over privacy by having its own hard-to-use settings manager and independent cookie store. This is the platform I’m supposed to get passionate about? And the recent iAd unveiling nicely showed how one can do “rich media ads” in HTML5.

All of this said, Apple’s hubris and control freakery will definitely turn off a lot of the tech crowd, many of whom are also early adopters. I’m sure Apple knows this but also knows you can’t sell 85 million units mobile devices by appealing to the tech crowd — and the ones who care about the best user experience will stay with Apple anyway. Apple’s competitors could always show Apple the folly of its ways by, you know, designing a better product that customers will want — the upgrade cycle on phones is a lot shorter than desktops and people aren’t that averse to changing phones if a new one is cheaper and/or offers a better experience.

Speaking for myself, although I like my iPhone, I’d like a bit more flexibility on a tablet, so I’ll wait to see if a good Windows or Android device comes along. But so far neither Google nor Microsoft has produced anything compelling enough. It’s sad to see the future of personal computing being ceded to a company that wants to turn it into a walled garden.

Tweaking IE's Security Zones Settings

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If you still need to keep IE around after all the security warnings, cranking up IE’s security settings is a great idea. Most people need IE for a specific few sites anyway, so it shouldn’t get in the way much. Here are the security settings to use for each zone (in Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab):

  • Internet: High
  • Intranet: High (especially if you are on a home network or you have a workgroup)
  • Trusted Sites: Medium-High (add the sites you need IE to work with to this zone)
  • Restricted Sites: High

(Yes, the zones security model is horrible and well past its sell-by date, but that’s the price you pay for keeping IE around.)

After you do this, you may notice that Firefox has trouble downloading files (a side-effect of trying to respect the new Internet security settings). To get around this, follow the instructions on this thread to tweak your security settings, or (less recommended) create an about:config entry called browser.download.manager.skipWinSecurityPolicyChecks and set it to true. Google Chrome doesn’t have this problem.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, please upgrade to the latest version (version 8) as soon as you can. And consider installing Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome as your default browser — you’ll be much safer on the web.

Update: this no longer works with Firefox 3.6 — the skipWinSecurityPolicyChecks setting has been removed (not very well thought out move, imho). I’d still recommend cranking up IE’s security settings, though — and using other browsers like Google Chrome or Opera for downloading EXEs (both of these ignore Windows’/IE’s security policies).

Platform.new()

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Taking platform management advice from a Mac person is like taking relationship advice from an autistic savant. His advice probably works for him, but Your Mileage May Vary.

Which brings me to John Gruber of Daring Fireball on OS opportunity:

If Palm can create WebOS for pocket-sized computers — replete with an email client, calendaring app, web browser, and SDK — why couldn’t these companies make something equivalent for full-size computers?

Short answer: look how many people are developing for Palm.

Long answer: Funny how an OS in some people’s minds (especially Mac users) stops at the web browser and email+calendaring. An OS as a platform is so much more. It took Linux 7-10 years depending on whom you asked to be taken seriously in the server world (it’s not quite there yet in the desktop world). Even the iPhone, with its seemingly unassailable 100k+ apps, has developers champing at the bit with its platform limitations. There is every likelihood that an open standard (whether in the sense of de facto industry standard or open-source, or both) like Android will do to the iPhone what the technically far inferior DOS and Windows did to the classic Mac.

Apple does particularly well these days well because it’s the equivalent of a BMW in the computer market — people buy it for fact that it’s a nice PC, and it has polish and grace for the basic tasks users need to perform: web, email, photo and video editing. But the Mac also has an amazing line-up of applications beyond these basics. Even discounting iWork, you can buy Microsoft Office for the Mac, and lots of Mac users appear to like it (indeed, Microsoft is the biggest ISV for Mac). Then there’s the all-star line-up of pro-grade DTP, photo, video and music manipulation apps – a niche the Mac has held on to for years. And yet even Apple has had to fight hard to convince even its top ISVs to keep the faith – witness the times the Mac community felt betrayed because Microsoft or (worse) Adobe seemed to prioritize the Windows version.

Nurturing a platform is hard work.

Sure a Dell or an HP could go its own and create a platform. But it’d have to stand by and commit to its platform for the 5-7 years it takes for a platform to gain critical mass. (Hint: you can’t commit and still sell Windows. That’d send a really bad signal about how committed you are.) Can Dell or HP take the sales risk? If all they want to do is escape the clutches of Microsoft, wouldn’t they rather throw a few pennies at Canonical and get Ubuntu on their low-end machines?

And no, Desktop Linux in its current avatar isn’t going to save PC OEMs. Apple bolted a proprietary, world-class consumer-grade GUI to an open-source Unix in 4 years. 12 years on, Linux desktop devs are still distracted with KDE v Gnome. Desktop Linux is very much a low-end user/advanced-user choice, not a solution for a mainstream user.

That said, I’m looking forward to seeing what Google’s Chrome OS has in store for us. Google’s heft in the marketplace would go a long way in assuring ISVs and OEMs of commitment. Slowly but steadily, they’ve been putting blocks like Gears, HTML5, Native Client and the Go language (it targets Native Client along with x86 and ARM) in place to make the beginnings of a compelling platform. And they have some of the finest minds in OS development working for them. If anyone can give the OEM market an alternative with polish and backing, it’s Google.

Interesting times ahead, for sure.

Fun with synthesized RSS feeds

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In an ideal world everyone would have full-content RSS feeds. Until then making your own isn’t that hard — and it’s getting easier by the day with mash-up tools like Yahoo Pipes. Here are some I’ve created:

Update: added links to source code.

CNN-IBN covers Blackle, gets most of the story wrong

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According to CNN-IBN “Google has done its bit to save energy by launching Blackle — a Google search page that saves energy”, based on the theory that black pixels take less energy to display than white pixels. (Here’s a screen-grab of the story.) There are at least two problems with this.

First, this is not applicable to LCDs — the backlighting on LCD displays uses energy no matter what colors you use on the screen. The good news is that LCD displays use far less energy than CRTs do, completely eliminating the need for display hacks. LCD monitors are still not ubiquitous in India, so if you wish to save energy you should probably buy one.

Second, Blackle wasn’t launched by Google. A quick look at its About Page would have told IBN that. Or a whois check. Apparently a “Google Custom Search” logo is enough to confuse IBN’s tech reporters. Good to see that India’s mainstream media continues to remain cheerfully clueless about technology reporting.

(Update: IBN has now corrected the story. See the screen-grab if you want to see the original.)

The Web Just Got an Upgrade

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Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. According to TechCrunch, one of the first demos to use Gears will be

… Google Reader, which will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection.

As I’ve written before, offline capabilities are an important step towards making the Web a truly ubiquitous platform. Wifi is still not everywhere, and it’d be great if browsers were useful when you are away from an IP tone.

The next logical step would be for browser vendors to get their act together and bake this into the browser. The last thing I need is a bunch of different “lite” SQL databases and replication engines consuming cycles in the background.

Happy 50th, Helvetica

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The BBC celebrates Helvetica’s 50th birthday. Check out the comments, where amateur font geeks have gathered to make bad font jokes (sample: “Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says, ‘sorry lads, we don’t serve your type.’”) and wistfully talk about their favourite fonts (“Helvetica’s sexier sister, Verdana”) (!).

PS. Windows users take note — Arial looks a lot like Helvetica, but isn’t.

The Network is the Computer (except from 11pm-12.30pm)

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This story about IIT Bombay (IITB) disabling internet access in its hostels between 11pm and 12:30pm is not at first glance as hair-raising as the one about Chinese Internet de-addiction clinics, but it improves upon acquaintance.

Consider the consequences: one of the finest research tools invented by man is effectively off-limits to students for half a day (Is that really right? Or did the Economic Times flip an AM into a PM?) Of course, in the name of compulsory ‘socialization,’ students will crowd into university clusters, which never quite have enough machines to accommodate the crowd.

Involvement in Open Source and Web 2.0 projects will drop because budding programmers at IITB will lose access just when many of them are most productive — given extremely hot Indian summers and the lack of air-conditioning in most (practically all?) dorm rooms, night-time is often the most comfortable time to start a long hack session.

Of course, the most enterprising students (especially in departments like Electronics and Computer Science) will probably use their ability to access department networks to get around this interruption in service, but a more interesting question is: in 2007, should students really have to wrangle for network time?

The point about regulations like these is that they demonstrate the knee-jerk short-term thinking that passes for leadership in many Indian institutions. Apparently the drivers for this decision included the death of IITB’s “hostel culture” (by which they mean late night vodka parties, night shows at cinemas and card games — oh wait, that was my misspent youth) and, rather more seriously, a string of on-campus suicides by some loners. Of course, while it is regrettable, it has to be asked: are the vast majority of well-adjusted (and not-so-well adjusted, trying-to-cope) students well-served by over-paternalistic regulations? Pre-Internet hostels weren’t exactly idylls.

And if IITB is scared of internet in the hostels, wait until they hear about this newfangled thing called wifi in classrooms:

“At any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 to 90% of the students were online,” Professor Herzog says. “And what were they doing online? They were reading The New York Times; they were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer; they were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco when their new job started…. And I was just stunned.”

There’s the paternalist, knee-jerk reaction of banning the undesirable, so typical of India (Here’s another great example). Then there’s the embracing of the new, and treating students like responsible human beings:

I also tend to wander around the room a lot (I’m one of those don’t-stay-behind-the-lectern professors), which may discourage some of that behavior. And I tend to call on the students who don’t seem engaged. But I don’t make any particular effort to ensure that students aren’t surfing or IM-ing or whatever. They’re grownups. If they’re willing to risk their grades, and to look dumb when they’re called on, well, I’m willing for them to do that too.

10 Things We Didn't Know Last Week

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There’s lots of cool content on the web that doesn’t have RSS feeds (or good RSS feeds). Thankfully, synthesizing feeds for most of them is pretty easy (Here’s an example in Python, from back when the Day by Day comic had lousy feeds that forced one to click to see the comic).

Now Yahoo Pipes makes it even simpler, at least for some feeds. The BBC’s Magazine publishes a blog with a great “10 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week” feature, but it doesn’t have its own feed! Thanks to Pipes, I was easily able to come up with a feed only for 10 things. Pipes won’t replace Perl anytime soon, but anything that makes it easier for people to remix data is great to find (and oh, their development environment is very cool indeed).

Update: As Aaron points out below, 10 Things does have its own feed, which I would have discovered if I had bothered to scroll down the page instead of clicking the Subscribe icon in my browser’s status bar (perhaps there’s a usability lesson in there somewhere?). Oh well, it was still a great way to get my feet wet with Pipes.

Update 2: It turns out the BBC 10 Things feed isn’t full-text but my Pipes output is, because the feed it’s based on happens to be full-text. So it turns out Pipes is useful after all. Hooray for remixing!

Subscribe to the full-text 10 Things feed.