Category Archives: Technology (General)

Writings on technology that is not laptop or smartphone related.

Web Browsers: Power User Feature

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If there is any better demonstration for the lack of computer knowledge as the comments on this ReadWrite Web article, I don’t know what is. Here’s the short story: this article shows up high in searches. Users apparently enter Facebook in the address bar of their browser, click on this page, and can’t figure out how to log in.

I feel like I’ve had a crusade against Apple for the past year regarding Safari and web sites. I’ve insisted that web apps should be using the browser instead of an application, reformatting for the smaller screen rather than creating an app for their site.

Apparently, I’m wrong.

This may be the most instructive lesson in how people use web sites in the history of the web. Apparently we do need apps for that as users clearly don’t understand what a web site is, how you access it, and what it represents. Apparently, the browser is a power user feature.

I can’t help but wonder if telephones got off to such a rocky start, too.

Apple is Open… and So Is Android and Windows and…

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This is ridiculous. Open isn’t what you think it means. Open means anyone can use it and expand upon it and modify it.

Apple makes open systems, folks. Last time I checked I can write apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac OS X. I can do the same thing for the web, for Windows, for Android and Chrome OS, among other platforms. Even Kindle is open. From that perspective, they are all open systems.

So Google let’s me muck around with the source code. So what? How many people really do that?

We used to say Microsoft is open because people can make whatever hardware they want. Well, they all made the same hardware and no one could see the source code. So how open is that?

Google’s different, since you can play with source code. And look at what that’s doing for developers, creating a device-by-device decision rather than supporting the platform. Will it be on more devices? In time it could. Could there be more Android devices than Apple devices? Of course that’s possible. But it’s still not an issue of open. That’s a licensing decision.

Google and Microsoft believe in specialization. They make the software, someone else makes the hardware. Apple’s fundamental belief is that consumer markets require the whole stack. They must be able to rely on the device, the monitor, the software, the whole enchilada.

That doesn’t make Apple closed. It makes Apple different.

Spreadsheet Redux

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I’ve always taken the quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana) phrase to heart.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the early history of the spreadsheet. I believe that the process and capabilities apply to Infinity Softworks’ work with FastFigures. And I think, like the creator’s and publisher’s of VisiCalc, it’s something new and different that is defying standard definitions.

The following includes selected thoughts on this complicated story: Dan Bricklin’s thinking around the design of VisiCalc, how they marketed the product, the relationship with their software publisher, and how Lotus 1-2-3 replaced VisiCalc as the de facto standard in spreadsheets.

  • The real power of the spreadsheet was not it’s calculating capabilities but the fact that an end-user, with no programming skills, could write a program for the first time.
  • Everyone struggled to describe the spreadsheet in the early going. “Though hard to describe in words,” starts the musings of a Morgan Stanley analyst, “VisiCalc comes alive visually. In minutes, people who have never used a computer are writing and using programs.”
  • We think of the spreadsheet as a calculating tool. But many people use it for data collection and charting as well. It really is a broad and powerful toolset.
  • What’s amazing about the spreadsheet is that fundamentally, even today, it hasn’t strayed from Dan Bricklin’s design. He conceived a mouse-driven scratch pad. You type stuff into cells and then create formulas by pointing to other cells. He conceived of features like split screen (implemented in version 1.0), graphing, and basic data collection.
  • You have to be there to play. Lotus 1-2-3 picked the winning platform for its time — MS-DOS — and then improved the speed and performance. It also integrated features customers wanted but never implemented into VisiCalc: basic databases and charting/graphing capabilities (with calculation making up the 1, 2 and 3 in the name).
  • Lotus lost out to Excel not for a feature set but because they didn’t move fast enough to Windows. Lotus picked the wrong horse, staying loyal to IBM and OS/2. By the time 1-2-3 was ported, it was too late.

And finally, a few conclusions:

  • It strikes me that every change in standard platform has resulted in a change in standard-bearer for calculating tool. Before PCs, it was the calculator. With the rise of the Apple II, it was VisiCalc. With the rise of DOS, it was Lotus 1-2-3. And then windows interfaces — Mac and Windows — precipitated the switch to Excel.
  • Platform evolution seems to take on the following software curve: small applications, custom development, specialized applications, software platforms. Right now, small applications and custom development are dominating mobile, with specialized apps starting to rise in popularity.
  • I’m not convinced the spreadsheets make sense on mobile devices. Do I want to see my spreadsheets? Sure. But it’s not the way I think most people will use calculation on a mobile device. Of course, I’m betting everything that I’m right.

Dear Microsoft

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Steve Ballmer
Microsoft
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-8300

Dear Mr. Ballmer:

I am concerned about Microsoft. The last decade has not been good to the company. Sure, it still owns the desktop operating system business, dominates the office suite and makes big money on servers and development environments. But there is something missing. To be honest with you, I think Microsoft has lost its way, it mojo so to speak. And I can tell because the developer community is no longer afraid of you.

Your business is assaulted from every direction. Linux has grabbed hold of IT departments. Google has become the thought leader on the web, destroying you on search and starting to challenge you in office suites. Open source is providing a bevy of development environments, all for free. Firefox is eating away at your dominant browser position. Apple has wrestled design and thought leadership away on mobile devices and laptops. Amazon is winning the race to be the web’s “operating system.” Nintendo outplayed you in game console systems.

Once upon a time, Microsoft was a visionary company. You took a concept like email and incorporated it as one piece in a grand vision to organize and manage personal information. That changed the game and wiped out Eudora, the market leader at the time. I think you can do the same kind of thing now, change the rules of the game and bring computing power to the masses, only this time on the web.

The strategy I am proposing here is perfect for Microsoft as it all relates to your existing businesses. Only this time, it’s on the web:

1. It’s about data. I am end-user and have data everywhere. I have it on cell phones used by everyone in my house and business, I have it on multiple computers, I have it on a personal server, I have it across the web. What I need is someone who knows how to extract all this information, put it in one secure central place so it can all be accessed on the web and on all the devices. Microsoft can do this. And it just so happens that you have a head start: you already have the technology to do this. Exchange works with all kinds of computers, servers and mobile devices. But what we need is not Exchange for IT pros but Exchange for the rest of us. I want to be able to enter an appointment on my BlackBerry and see it appear on our family’s web site calendar and my business calendar and on my business partner’s BlackBerry so she knows not to schedule that phone meeting then. And I want to buy a new song and have it appear on my wife’s laptop without having to think about it. And the same for pictures and video and every other piece of personal information. There’s plenty of money here. And that should make your shareholders happy.

2. It’s about developers. What was amazing about Windows is that it made operating systems useful for all of us, not just the nerds in the IT department. I don’t have to remember obscure keystrokes to make it work, it just works. This time it is not about end-users, though, but about people with ideas, whether they are developers or bloggers or just need to promote themselves. The web is still a bit like DOS. I have to know how to set up a server, databases, load balancing, run-time environments and such. It’s a real pain. And, of course, then I have to keep it running and make sure I don’t run out of server space or bandwidth or… I think you get the idea. I don’t really want to deal with this stuff. I want to create amazingly cool web apps. I want to share my ideas. I don’t want to be a systems administrator, as the current web provider’s require me to be. Microsoft could be the infrastucture for the world wide web, providing a platform for developers who wish to pay (think monthly fees) or don’t (think search placements).

3. It’s about business. It used to be that when you needed an application to run your business, you turned to Microsoft. But this is going to change as apps move online unless Microsoft moves too. Let’s face it, today this web-only approach by Google and others doesn’t work all that well. It’s slow and a little painful to use and I have to worry about working on my spreadsheets on the airplane. What they are really good at, though, is getting feedback on something as the web makes a great place for collaboration. You are uniquely positioned to offer online and offline versions of the products every business relies on. I know you risk cannibalizing your business, but for $50 a year you could charge for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, giving users both an online account and the software to load locally on their Windows or Mac computer. Anything I do locally automatically syncs to the server and others — with permission of course — can review and make changes and share their thoughts, wiki or subversion-style, all of which gets synced back locally. Now, I never have to worry about being out-of-date on my software and you have taken a big headache out of my daily life: sharing and soliciting feedback happens automatically.

One thing Microsoft has been amazing about in the past is re-inventing itself. It did this with operating systems, dropping DOS line entry system for a Windows interface. It did this with browsers. This, of course, is a bigger transformation than what the Company has done before. But it’s time, before we in high-tech start thinking about Microsoft like the rest of the country thinks about General Motors.

I hope you will take my suggestions seriously. After all, the last thing we need now is only one behemoth, destroying innovation and taking advantage of small companies. With both you and Google at each others throats, fighting like Mothra and Godzilla over dominance of the web, we’ll all be a little better off.

Godspeed.

Elia Freedman

Opening the Closed Door

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Was the desktop operating system a fluke? A rip in the space-time continuum? It’s starting to look that way.

Before Microsoft/Intel/IBM relationship in the early 80s, operating systems were either free (relatively given that there was not Internet distribution) or were controlled with the hardware. IBM and DEC, for instance, owned everything about the computer. Apple, too.

But thanks to the IBM relationship, Microsoft established a value for the operating system separate from the hardware and was able to build a massive business out of it. A lot of industry veterans argued at the time that this was the natural evolution of the industry, this separation of church (hardware) and state (software). Even Apple and Palm tried to license their OS’ for a while.

It seems, though, that the pendulum has swung back the other way. Operating systems are once again either free or controlled by the hardware vendor. Look at the mobile landscape:

  • Apple iPhone: proprietary operating system
  • RIM BlackBerry: proprietary operating system
  • Google Android: open sourced, free operating system
  • Symbian: open sourced,free operating system
  • Windows Mobile: proprietary, licensed operating system

With Nokia’s acquisition of Symbian and its subsequent open sourcing, this makes Windows Mobile the odd-ball. Apple re-pioneered the closed operating system with iPod and its resurgent Macintoshes. Now, I don’t hear much about licensing the OS any more.

Does the new world order spell the end of licensed operating systems? Does this hurt Microsoft or make them more powerful as the only licensing partner in town? In an era of micro-computing — where computers are in everything and we carry tons of them with us — do only these models (and a hybrid where proprietary systems are build on a Linux core) work?

There’s a lot of money riding on the outcome.