The Weblog of Jamie Murai

Dear RIM: Hire me as your Co-Co-CEO

2011-06-24T00:00:00-04:00

Co-Co-CEO. It has a nice ring to it. People will either think I’m one part of a powerful technology trio, or that I’m in charge of hot chocolate distribution. Either way, I’m pretty sure it would give me the authority I need to turn that sinking ship around.

By now, we’ve all heard the results from RIM’s latest earnings call, and they’re not good. Net income is down 10% year-over-year, layoffs are coming, and the stock got killed in after-hours trading, dropping over 20%. Clearly, this is a company that needs some changes, and I’m just the man for the job!

Qualifications? Who needs them! Experience? Totally overrated! What I can bring to the table though is fresh eyes, and I think that’s the one thing that RIM needs the most. I get the impression that there’s a fair amount of group-think going on in those buildings across the way, and I don’t even think that they really understand why their strategy isn’t working. If I were hired as the Co-Co-CEO, here’s what I would do:

Fire People Who Don’t Love Apple

The first thing I would do would be to call in all the decision makers one-by-one and ask them to tell me, in no uncertain terms, why the iPhone is better than the Blackberry. If they couldn’t do that, they would have to go. What would I do with the people who gave truly insightful answers? Promote the heck out of them and do whatever I could to keep them happy.

RIM is getting dominated by the competition right now, and if they don’t understand why the competition is beating them, there’s no way they’ll be able to figure out how to fix it. People who make the decisions at RIM need to fully understand why consumers choose the iPhone over the Blackberry, and that marketing is only a very small piece of it.
Stop Talking About QNX

From the moment RIM acquired QNX, they’ve been talking about it non-stop. Add The Astonishing Tribe into the mix, and RIM would have you thinking that their competitors may as well just close up shop. In my opinion though, there’s a fundamental difference in how RIM views it’s acquisition strategy compared to Apple and Google, who from here on out shall be referred to as Gapple (cut me some slack, the alternative was Goople!).

Every acquisition Gapple makes is viewed as a small addition, complementing their existing products and services. These acquisitions will not make or break Gapple, but they provide nice value-adds to already successful products. All new products, however, are always seen as coming from Gapple themselves.

RIM on the other hand, has decided to place the spotlight on their acquisitions, rather than on their own in-house talent. How many times have we heard RIM’s people go on and on about the virtues of QNX. Nobody sees QNX as having been developed by RIM, and so instead of giving people the impression that RIM is a technology powerhouse, they essentially send the message that they aren’t innovative anymore, and must buy their way into the market. This does nothing to inspire brand loyalty.

If I were Co-Co-CEO I would put the focus back on the in-house talent. There would be no more QNX. There would be Blackberry OS (or whatever I decided to rename it), and it would be developed by RIM in Waterloo. I would stop talking about how QNX runs nuclear reactors, and start talking about the beneficial experience that Blackberry OS is going to provide to my customers.
Create Disneyland for Developers

I was quoted in Reuters as saying the best and brightest graduates from the University of Waterloo don’t stay in town to work for RIM. Obviously there are exceptions, but on the whole, I stand by what I said. A few friends of mine work, or have worked, at Facebook. It’s hard to even imagine a work environment could be so fun. Three gourmet meals a day, unlimited snacks and drinks, dry cleaning, the newest Apple hardware, a vibrant social atmosphere, and most importantly, autonomy. Who wouldn’t want to work there? They’ve created an environment so conducive to fun and creativity, that people practically want to live there (and from what I hear, a few have tried!).

Now I don’t expect RIM to become Facebook overnight, but after talking to many current and former RIM employees, it’s much more akin to working at a giant corporate bank. If RIM wants to attract top talent, they need to make it an exciting place to work, and not the fall back plan that many students view it as. Sorry RIM, but Ice-cream Fridays just don’t cut it anymore.
Fire The Other Two CEOs

This whole Co-CEO thing is clearly not working. It may have worked in the past, before they had dominant competition, but just because something worked once doesn’t mean it will always work. RIM needs a strong, stable, and most importantly, accountable face for the company.

As the newly crowned Mono-CEO, I would also get a new chairman of the board. That’s right. ChairMAN, not ChairMEN (and just to be clear, I’d be perfectly happy with a Chairwoman). The CEOs need to start being accountable to the board, instead of running it.
Talk the Talk AND Walk the Walk

I think the most common complaint from third party developers is that RIM talks a lot about how they’re going to improve the developer experience, but never really does anything about it. The importance of apps is being debated, but if you believe that apps are important, as I do, then providing third party developers with a great experience should be a huge priority.

After "The Incident" I had the chance to interact quite a bit with some of RIM’s developer relations guys. They’re great, and if I was Co-Co-CEO I would put them in charge of the development tools team as well. Unfortunately, at the moment, they’re not, and the development tools suck. As Co-Co-CEO I would invest serious money and talent into the development of a world class set of development tools and frameworks. My work would be done the day some developer wrote a giant blog post to Apple complaining about how their development experience is so terrible compared to RIM’s.

So that’s what I would do if I were the Co-Co-CEO of RIM. It’s not an exhaustive list, but I think it’s a good start. People may accuse me of simply hating on RIM, but honestly I would love it if they turned it around. I may like Apple, but I love competition. Competition only works though if it’s credible, and I don’t think RIM is at the moment. Who knows what will happen though? I’m only a phone call away ;)

Last, but certainly not least, a hat tip goes out to Joe Stump for the inspiration for this post.

How RIM Can Get Its Groove Back

2011-05-15T00:00:00-04:00

Let’s face it, RIM has been pretty stagnant the last few years. Even the most die hard Blackberry loyalists will have a hard time disputing that fact. While Apple and Google have been dominating the news cycles with their respective mobile devices, RIM has been relegated to the status of “has been” by most of the tech press. Now don’t get me wrong, RIM has been showing solid revenues and growth, but they haven’t been doing anything to get people excited about their products. This can mainly be attributed to the fact that they haven’t really had any exciting products in the last few years. The iPhone caught everyone off guard, but only RIM and Nokia have failed to really do anything to stay competitive. The Playbook is the first device to come out of RIM since the launch of the iPhone that actually shows some real innovation. Will it be enough to bring the company back to its glory? I’m not sure, but it’s a good start. There are, however, a few things RIM can do to really get back on the path to being the company they once were.

RIM rose to power by becoming the company that provided high tech productivity solutions to corporations and governments. At the time, the consumer market for mobile devices was very small, having been limited by both price and technology. It was more profitable to sell expensive devices to corporations than it was to sell cheap devices to consumers. However, that is no longer true. The real money now lies in consumer devices, and RIM simply hasn’t had the experience in the consumer space to enable it to compete effectively with companies that have long histories with consumer devices. To be honest, I’m not even sure if they want to. It seems to be a common opinion that RIM’s upper management wants to keep their focus squarely on the enterprise market, and treat the consumer market as secondary. This has created some interesting constraints within the company that seem to be hindering the development of products that will immediately appeal to consumers. A good example of this is the decision to not include native email and calendaring with the Playbook at launch. At least with the first revision, you will need to tether it to a Blackberry in order to take advantage of native email and calendaring. This makes it much more attractive to corporate IT departments because they no longer need to integrate a new device into their communications infrastructure, but it also leaves consumers out in the cold. Considering these consumer have complete freedom to choose between the Playbook, an Android tablet, or the iPad, they will probably choose the one that does what they need it to do out of the box.

RIM still makes a lot of money from enterprise customers, so they obviously can’t just abandon that market. What they can do, however, is create a skunk works group that is at arms length from the rest of the organization, but has access to the engineering and financial resources that RIM has accumulated over the years. This provides the best of both worlds. No constraints based on legacy requirements, be it business or technical, but the resources to rapidly innovate in the consumer space. A key ingredient would be to recruit a very creative, and forward thinking leader to manage the project, and the group would have to have significant autonomy. If the current upper management at RIM were to be put in charge of the project, it would likely not have the desired effect. I think if RIM has any chance of getting back on top, or even back in the game, this is the path they need to take.

RIM Rant Follow-Up

2011-02-28T00:00:00-05:00

Wow. When I wrote my previous post about my frustrating experience with the Blackberry Playbook SDK, I honestly had no idea it would go viral in the way it did. I think I need to start by thanking all the people who took the time to read it and spread it around. A special thanks to all the users at HN who took the time to offer both praise and criticism. I was pretty worried that I was gonna take a beating in the comments, and was pleasantly surprised when they were almost unanimously supportive. Also, thanks to everyone who tweeted, and emailed me directly.

As I write this, roughly 70,000 people have read my post in the last 3 days, and it’s been linked to on Daring Fireball, Slashdot, Business Insider, and countless others.

For starters, I want to talk about why I think my post got so much attention. Again, when I wrote it, I wasn’t expecting it to go viral. I decided to write a simple Playbook app because I kept hearing how nice it was (they’ve been demoing it at select placed around the UW campus), and obviously because the free Playbook offer made it fairly attractive. I’ve been accused (by RIM supporters) of posting inaccurate statements. This is completely false. Everything I wrote was absolutely true, and this fact has been confirmed by many other Blackberry developers, as well as RIM itself. I did, however, put a decent layer of sarcasm on it, because I wanted it to be funny, and I think the comedy was one of the main reasons it got so much attention.

Another reason is that there hasn’t really been a canonical rant about RIM. There have been tens or hundreds of rants about Apple and Google from journalists, pundits, and bloggers alike, but RIM has kind of been flying under the radar. That’s not to say that many people haven’t been having bad experiences, but just that they haven’t written about them in the same accessible and funny way that I did. Even my technologically illiterate friends thought it was hilarious, without really being able to understand what it was about.

Finally, timing obviously played a big factor. We’re currently right at the beginning of RIM’s marketing push for the Playbook, and they’ve recently been doing some demos, tech sites have been getting some hands-on reviews, and the pundits are starting to actually give it some attention. This is clearly a bad time for a post like this to gain traction, but it’s also one of the reasons that it did.

Now I want to address some of the criticism. First off, as I mentioned above, the “inaccuracy” argument has been proven false already. Another common criticism was to take each complaint, point by point, and explain how it wasn’t really a big deal. This argument is completely valid, but you need to remember that the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. Each individual point is just a small hurdle (with the possible exception of the notary requirement), and by no means a show stopper. What these people have failed to understand though, is that a large number of little hurdles add up to a big hurdle. Maybe not for them, developers who have already committed to this platform and have a stake in it, but it matters to developers just arriving at the Blackberry platform. It’s also worth noting that the characteristics of the average developer have changed quite a bit from what they used to be. We’ve all seen the news items about the 12 year old iPhone developer, the homemaker turned iPhone developer, etc. For these developers, who have complete freedom to choose between Blackberry, Android, or iOS, all these little hurdles result in them choosing a different platform. Imagine going to a certain grocery store for the first time, and finding a single pricing error. Not a big deal, and one that you can easily forget. But then imagine going to the grocery store and finding a pricing error on almost every product you put in your cart. At that point, you’d probably assume the grocery store is incompetent and never shop there again. Now, if you’re an employee of that store, maybe you know of some legitimate reason for those pricing errors, but if you are new to the store the only information you have is that almost all your products were priced wrong. The point is that this rant has almost no relevance to veteran Blackberry developers. However, if RIM wants to succeed in the consumer space with regards to tablets and smartphones, they are going to need a ton of new developers, and are going to have to lure a lot of those developers away from other platforms. This will be the first time those new developers shop at the RIM grocery store, and if RIM wants to keep them, they’d better check their prices before opening the doors.

Another frequent criticism, which was directed more at RIM rather than myself, was that it took a frustrated blog post from a new developer going viral to get RIM to respond to these criticisms, when according to many, they had been expressed numerous times in the Blackberry developer forums, and through emails to RIM. This sentiment is completely understandable and I would feel the exact same way if I were on the other end of the situation. When I met with Tyler Lessard, head of the developer relations program at RIM, he did communicate to me that they absolutely care about the problems their existing developers are having, and even though it sometimes might not seem like action is being taken, these problems are being addressed. As I don’t work for RIM, I have no clue as to the accuracy of this. I’m just passing on what I was told, so please don’t shoot the messenger :)

The rest of the criticisms were mainly just ad hominem attacks, which really don’t need to be addressed. Obviously when you put yourself out there, there are going to be people who don’t like what you have to say. That’s just the nature of the game though, and I’m not really bothered by it at all.

I have to commend Tyler for taking action very quickly. The very next morning after the post started to gain traction, he emailed me to thank me for the criticism, and to offer to get together for coffee with me to chat about it. We met on Sunday, and talked for a couple hours, mainly about the points I had made, but also just about developer relations in general. I was really impressed with him. He clearly understands the problems that RIM is facing with respect to attracting new developers, and knows what needs to be done to solve them. In speaking with some reporters who cover RIM, and who know Tyler, it seems like that’s the general consensus as well. In my opinion, it’s going to come down to execution, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

As for me, I’m going to give the Playbook platform another shot. I’d like to give it a fair shake, and I’m not going to lie, a free Playbook is a pretty nice incentive to keep going. I’m also going to try out Windows Phone 7 development as well. After reading my post, Brandon Watson, head of Windows Phone developer experience, reached out to me to offer me some help getting started with WP7 development. Again, a really great reaction by someone who knows how to take advantage of this kind of press.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read or respond, and thanks to my friends who work at RIM for still taking my calls :)

You Win, RIM! (An Open Letter To RIM's Developer Relations)

2011-02-25T00:00:00-05:00

You win. I concede defeat. I no longer want to attempt developing an app for the Playbook. Are you happy now? Surely you must be. Considering how terribly designed the entire process is, from the registration right through to loading an app into the simulator, I can only assume that you are trying to drive developers away by inconveniencing them as much as humanly possible. Just in case you’ve forgotten, let me give you a little recap of the process you’ve put together.

Living in Waterloo, it’s hard not to be reminded of you. I walk by your campus every day, most of my friends have worked for you at some point, and you are the largest supporter of the university I attend. So it seemed like a rather good idea to at least attempt to write an app for the Playbook, your shiny new tablet that you hope will be able to compete with the extremely popular iPad and the up and coming Honeycomb tablets. Having already developed apps for the iPhone and iPad, I had a little experience with the process of signing up for developer programs, and naturally I assumed that yours would be different, but fairly straight forward none the less. Well, you know what they say about making assumptions!

First, I had to fill out a form with my personal information. No big deal, pretty standard. I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps. On Twitter, I believe that would colloquially be referred to as a fail.

After getting all my personal information in, and being thoroughly disgusted with your ignorant pricing scheme, I’m now ready to start the actual process of developing. With the iPad, all I need to do is download a single installer that contains the IDE, the SDK, and the simulator. You’ve decided that it’s better to make me download the Adobe AIR SDK, the Playbook SDK, and the Playbook simulator in three separate downloads. It’s not optimal, but I’m sure you have your reasons, right? RIM? Bueller? So I go ahead and download the Adobe AIR SDK. Of course, I’m a little confused when it doesn’t come with an installer, but is simply a collection of libraries and binaries. It reminds me of the good old days of command line Linux installs, but it’s about as far from user friendly as you can get. Just in case you forgot, RIM, developers are users too. Next up, is the Playbook SDK. For some reason, you want me to fill in an entire form of personal information. That’s odd, considering I did already when I first signed up. I guess I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your database crashed in the interim. So I fill out the form, and start the SDK download. Now I need to download the Playbook simulator. Again, you ask me to fill out a form of personal information identical to the one I just filled out to download the SDK. At this point, RIM, I seriously think you should get checked for some type of anterograde amnesia. Onward I go!

As I stated before, the Adobe AIR SDK didn’t come with an installer, but being a developer I obviously have a lib folder hanging around, so I just drop it in there. Next, I go to install the Playbook SDK. For some reason, it thinks that the optimal place to install software on a Mac is my home directory. Not /Developer, not even /Applications, where 99.99% of software is supposed to be installed. But whatever, I guess you have your reasons, right? RIM? Bueller? So I just manually change the default install folder, as any user friendly installer should require. Then I move on to the Playbook simulator. Oh, I forgot to mention that you also told me I had to download VMWare Fusion to run the simulator. Nothing says user friendly like making me buy an additional piece of $80 third party software to run YOUR simulator. Luckily, VMWare offers a free trial, which by the way, comes in a single installer (see what I did there?). I’m kinda of confused at this point though. The docs say that I need to install the .iso image into VMWare, but the file I downloaded from you was an installer? I decide that maybe the docs are outdated, and you’ve come up with a nice installer for the simulator that wouldn’t make me use VMWare. So I go ahead an optimistically run the installer. Turns out, you’ve decided to put the .iso image in an installer, and just have the installer copy the .iso into a folder on my sytem. Cause you know, that’s so much simpler than just letting me download the .iso directly. The next part turns out to be pretty simple, having to just create a new VM in the usual way. VMWare gets the credit for that though.

Ok, so to recap, I now have the Adobe AIR SDK sitting in a lib folder, the Playbook SDK is installed, and the Playbook simulator VM is installed into VMWare. Obviously the first thing I want to do is to boot up the simulator and play with it. So I click the nice little Play button inside VMWare, and am greeted by what I perceived to be a 1000000000 page license agreement in a DOS-like console window. So after having scrolled through the whole thing page by page with the spacebar, I am now greeted by the actual Playbook UI! My reaction is similar to that of Kristen Wiig when she plays the Target cashier on SNL. Since there’s only a web browser available, I launch it so I can see if the browser lives up to your claims, RIM. However, it seems that I can only get to about two pages before it stops responding all together. Oh well. I figured, at this point, I should try to get an actual app loaded on to the simulator. So I head back to the docs to learn how. First up, I have to put the simulator into development mode, which makes total sense because of those times when you don’t want to use the simulator for development. For instance, sometimes you’re obviously gonna want to load up the simulator on your laptop and use it like a Playbook, right? RIM? Bueller? But before I can do that, you tell me that I need to set a password, which is obviously very important, because if someone steals my laptop, that last thing I would want them to do is be able to put my Playbook simulator into development mode without my permission. Good thinking RIM! Next, I need to get the IP address of the simulator, because it’s running in a VM, and as far as my OS is concerned it’s an entirely separate device. Good design RIM! Making things easy and integrated (like Apple and Google have) only encourages those “artsy” types to try to develop software, which clearly should be left only to unix loving neck beards (I use that term endearingly).

Now I get down to the real work. Compiling and sending an application to the simulator. As your documentation suggests, I go ahead and download the sample app from your website. Your docs now tell me that before I can create the application package, I need to first create an application archive. Ok, that sounds alright with me, because obviously you’re going to tell me how to do that. Wait, you’re not going to tell me how to do that? Ok, well let’s just assume I figured out how to do that on my own. Now I need to go back to the command line, and type in a big command with lots of non-descriptive command line options that will transform my archive into the application package which can then be loaded on to the device. With package in hand (hehehe, I’m here all week folks!), I now need to type in another long command which will send the application to the simulator running in the VM at the IP address I had to get earlier.

At this point, I feel the need to compare and contrast to the Apple and Google way of doing things. If you are developing for iOS or Android, you can replace the entire preceding two paragraphs with one sentence: Press the button that says Build and Run (or the equivalent button within Eclipse for Android). Sarcasm aside, as it stands, the Playbook SDK is complete crap.

So it was at this point that I decided to surrender. Knowing what a pleasure it is to use Apple and Google’s tools, there was no way I could justify continuing with Playbook development. I thought this story would end there. Unfortunately, there was one more little jab you were still able to get in, RIM. This afternoon, Google Notifier informs me that I’ve received an email from you. Naturally, I assumed that it was just a confirmation that my App World account had been approved, considering I had filled out your forms truthfully and completely, just as you had asked. However, I was surprised to find that it was, in fact, a request for more personal information. You wanted me to print off a notarized statement of identification form, fill it out, take it to notary with government issue ID to have it notarized, and then return it to you so that you could be absolutely sure with 100% accuracy that I was who I said I was. I think it goes without saying at this point, but neither Apple nor Google require you to do anything even close to that.

So, my dear RIM, primary supporter of my local economy, I bid you adieu. You have succeeded in your quest of driving away a perfectly willing developer from your platform. On a more serious note, being the underdog, you need to make your process AT LEAST as simple as Apple’s or Google’s, if not more so. You need to make your tools AT LEAST as good as Apple’s or Google’s, if not more so. You have failed at both.

Update 1: It should be noted that I was using the WebWorks SDK and not the AIR SDK. A commenter on HN mentioned that if you’re using Adobe Builder, it will eventually get you to a Build and Run button, but that they experienced similar problems as well.

Update 2: RIM has posted a response on their Inside Blackberry Developer’s Blog.

Update 3: I’ve now posted a follow-up.

What's Wrong With Being Wrong?

2010-07-26T00:00:00-04:00

First, let me make something clear: I love to argue. I can argue about anything. However, it seems like people these days are afraid of argument. I’m not sure whether it’s the uneasy feeling that stems from confrontation, or whether they are simply scared of being wrong. Either way, argument seems to have picked up this negative connotation that should not exist. Argument is defined as:

A reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.

In theory, there is nothing negative about an argument. In practise, however, arguments seem to have this tendency to devolve into shouting matches and personal attacks. I think this stems from one main idea. People don’t like to be wrong.

I’ll admit that I can be very stubborn at times. When I take a position, it’s because I’ve thought about it rationally and logically, and have come to a conclusion about where I stand. I think that stubbornness is a natural by-product of that kind of thought process. That is not to say that I am never wrong. I’m wrong quite often. However, for me to change my mind, I have to be presented with another rational and logical argument that overcomes the conclusions I came to myself. I have no problem being wrong, as long as the counter argument is valid.

It seems that many people have a very hard time admitting they’re wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When these people are presented with an argument that invalidates their position, instead of accepting that they’re wrong, or coming up with a counter argument, they simply resort to using logical fallacies (ad hominem, straw man, etc.), or start making personal attacks on their counterpart. This tendency is very disappointing to me. I know for a fact that a large portion of the knowledge I’ve gained has been through argument. I learn something new every time I argue, and I value every argument I have. I know for a fact that if people could find a way to argue with logic and reason, without resorting to fallacies and personal attacks, the collective intelligence of our society would increase substantially.

So I ask: What’s wrong with being wrong?

Why Apple Doesn't Need Feature Parity

2010-06-08T00:00:00-04:00

With the successful launch of the HTC Evo, Apple detractors have been back on their soap boxes telling the world how iPhone 4 doesn’t even have all of the features of the Evo. What they still haven’t grasped is that consumers by and large don’t care about having the phone with the most features. They only care about having a phone that perfectly executes the features they care most about. For instance, 99% of users will not care if their phone has a kick stand or not. But they will care if the text is nice and crisp. They will not care if their phone can act as a wifi hotspot (albeit a nice feature to have), but they will care that their battery can last them the whole day. So instead of piling on feature after feature, as Google and their manufacturing partners have been doing, Apple has decided to add features more slowly, and spend more time refining and perfecting what is already there. The end result is a product that integrates seamlessly with your life. It feels less like a piece of high technology, and more like something that was designed just for you. Google is designing for engineers. Apple is designing for everyone else. This is the reason Apple will continue to dominate the mobile devices space.

$4 iPad Stand

2010-06-05T00:00:00-04:00

I was inspired to find a cheap iPad stand after reading this post on how to use a $0.69 business card holder as a stand. The only problem I saw with the business card holder was that it didn’t look quite as stable as I would like. After doing a quick search, I found that Staples sold a wireframe book holder for around $4 that was the perfect size to double as an iPad stand. The prongs that hooked around the front were just a little too long, and my friend suggested sawing them down with a hacksaw. Then we made little bumpers out of electrical tape on the spots where the iPad touched the metal, in order to eliminate the risk of scratching, and put electrical tape on the bottom bar to reduce slippage on the desk. It turned out really well. Sure beats spending $50 on a Griffin stand which does absolutely nothing extra than ours.

Quick Thoughts on the iPad

2010-06-01T00:00:00-04:00

I’ve had my iPad for about 4 days now, so I thought I’d write up some initial impression and thoughts I have about it. In a word, amazing! When the iPad was first announced, I had a few reservations about it. Essentially, I had the same thought I’ve seen repeated all over the web, that it was just a big iPod Touch. Now that I’ve had some time with it, I can honestly say that if the iPad is just a big iPod Touch, then a BMW is just a big clown car. Regardless of what you’ve heard, size matters. The increased screen size makes this a completely different device from the iPod Touch, and anyone who makes that comparison has either not used the iPad, or is simply in denial.

One of the things that stuck me the most was the feeling I got when browsing the web. You feel like you’re holding the web in your hands. It feels personal, rather than technological. I can’t stress enough how much more enjoyable it is to read a long blog article on the iPad, as opposed to on a laptop or desktop. Ever since I signed up for Instapaper, I’ve been pushing articles to it, and then never reading them because I couldn’t stand how unnatural it felt to do serious reading on my laptop. Well, in the last 3 days I’ve nearly cleared out my entire Instapaper queue that’s been growing for months.

I think the iPad has replaced about 70% of what I use my laptop for. The only thing I need my laptop for now is programming, and music production. Obviously, in it’s current form it could never fully replace a full, general purpose OS, but even as it stands it seems clear to me that this is the future of personal computing.

A Bad Day To Be An Apple Hater

2010-04-30T00:00:00-04:00

Sometimes things just seem to fall into place, and today was one of those days. The Apple haters have been going on and on for months about how the Microsoft Courier would kill the iPad, about how if you want a tablet you should buy a “real” tablet like the HP Slate which runs the full Windows 7, and about how Apple just doesn’t like Adobe and there’s no technical reasons why the iPhone shouldn’t support Flash. Let’s quickly go over what happened today.

Microsoft announced it was killing the Courier project.
The HP Slate was put on hold, so that they could move to WebOS instead of Windows 7, making it…wait for it…just a big Palm Pre!
Steve Jobs released a very concise letter detailing all the technical reasons why Flash sucks on mobile devices. I wrote on Twitter that Adobe just had their ass handed to them in the most elegant way possible.

All in all, a very good day indeed.

Gizmodo's Trade Secret Liability

2010-04-23T00:00:00-04:00

Jonathan Ballerano:

If the owner accidentally or mistakenly reveals a trade secret to X, and X knows that it’s a trade secret, X is liable for disclosing it publicly. § 3426.1(b)(2)(C). Therefore, Apple would only have to show that Gizmodo knew or [had] reason to know, before publication, that the prototype was a trade secret.

I’m no lawyer, but I’m wondering if an unreleased iPhone qualifies as a trade secret. To be classified as a trade secret, the prototype would have had to provide some economic benefit to Apple by virtue of being unknown. Gizmodo might have had a slightly better defence had they not posted pictures of a complete disassembly of the phone, however I’m still slightly unsure of the status of the device as a trade secret.

I still think it’s unlikely Apple will sue Gizmodo, as I don’t see any real benefits. With $40 billion in the bank, money is clearly not an issue. The only real benefit would be the disincentive for something similar to happen in the future. Given the anomalous nature of this situation, I don’t see a real need for that kind of disincentive, and if Apple sued, they would likely be viewed as an aggressor.

Legalities aside, I hope Apple does sue Gizmodo simply to punish them for their sheer incompetence in how they handled this situation, namely the way they “outed” the engineer who lost the phone.

Cross Compilers & Public APIs

2010-04-12T00:00:00-04:00

Some of the confusion around this whole public vs. private API debate seems to stem from the fact that some developers seem to think that a public API will be there forever. This is simply not true. An API that is defined to be public does carry with it an implicit notion that it will be around for the foreseeable future, but there is no guarantee it will be around forever. Public APIs are frequently deprecated and replaced with newer and better versions. When that time comes, third party developers who use that API will have to update their code in order for their app to continue functioning.

Many of the commenters on this topic have said that since Adobe’s cross compiler uses only public APIs, that Apple should have no problem with it because OS updates could never break it. That assumption is false, because it relies on the false assumption that public APIs are never removed. Let’s assume that at some point, 10% of the apps in the App Store are written in Flash using Adobe’s cross compiler. If Apple were to remove a public API that Adobe’s cross compiler was using, it would break that 10%. Now it’s important to look at this in two different scenarios:

Scenario 1: No Cross Compiler

In this scenario, I’m assuming there are no cross compiled apps, but the removal of a public API broke 10% of the apps in the App Store. In this case, a few thousand developers would have to update their apps. A small percentage of those apps have probably been abandoned anyways, and so they will be just be removed, but the majority will be updated because they provide some livelihood to their developers. In this case, the relationship is directly between Apple and the individual developers of the apps who have a vested interest in their ability to continue functioning. In other words, it is solely up to the developer to decide whether or not they want to continue selling their app.

Scenario 2: Adobe’s Cross Compiler

In this scenario, I’m assuming that the 10% of apps in question have been compiled using Adobe’s cross compiler. In this case, the same number of apps would be affected, however there is now a bottleneck. Instead of the individual developers being able to update their apps independently, they are now at the mercy of Adobe, who would have to first update their cross compiler. This gives Adobe a significant amount of leverage over Apple that they could use to extract concessions. Adobe could tell Apple that unless a version of Flash is included in Mobile Safari, they won’t update their cross compiler and thus will leave 10% of apps on the App Store unusable. Put another way, Adobe would hold 10% of the App Store hostage, with the ransom being the inclusion of Flash in Mobile Safari. If you look at Adobe’s previous patterns of behaviour, this is a very real risk.

So hopefully, you’ll now be able to better understand why Adobe’s use of only public APIs does not improve the situation at all.

The Moderate’s Position on iPad Openness

2010-04-05T00:00:00-04:00

Alex Payne:

By the end of the day, I was convinced. Human-computer interaction has found a sweet spot on the iPad. It’s all the power of desktop computing, plus the valuable constraints of mobile devices, minus the limitations of both. It just makes sense. Use one for a couple hours and your desktop or laptop will seem clumsy, arbitrary, and bewildering. It is, simply, how (most) computing should be.

A great opinion piece from Alex Payne, Twitters lead API engineer. He echos something that I’ve been telling my friends since the iPad was debuted. The apps are what is going to sell this thing.

He did say something that I found curious though, especially coming from a developer.

Apple should remove the concept of private APIs from its developer offerings. Give developers the same tools that Apple’s own programmers get to use. If an API is still too unsafe or experimental for developers to make use of, don’t ship it, or gate it to development versions. Don’t restrict third parties from taking full advantage of the device and its software.

On this type of device, and for a company like Apple who has a built a reputation around products that “just work”, I don’t think it’s a smart move to give third party developers access to everything. The distinction between safe and unsafe APIs isn’t black and white. It is possible for an API to be safe in the hands of in-house developers, who have knowledge of the device as a whole, and unsafe in the hands of third party developers, who really have no knowledge of the device outside of their own application space. Obviously you wouldn’t want third party developers to have access to your cars cruise control computer, and yet you are completely comfortable knowing that it was written by in-house engineers. Granted, if your car goes crazy, the consequences are far greater than if your iPad crashes, but as I said earlier, Apple has built its reputation around products that “just work”. So the choice is to either include functionality, but only offer it to in-house engineers, or not include it at all. Personally, I would rather have the functionality, even if it can’t be fully exploited.

Rupert Murdoch and The Laws Of Economics

2010-03-28T00:00:00-04:00

This is the story of a ~~young wizard~~ old media mogul, and his journey to find ~~the key to his existence~~ a way to maintain profits in the midst of a recession. Hmm, I guess the analogy isn’t quite apt. Rupert Murdoch is more like Lord Voldemort in this story.

We begin our story in a time long past, when newspapers were profitable, the web didn’t exist, and people had to pay to get their content. Lord Murdoch didn’t have a worry in the world. But then, something strange happened. The internet came along, and suddenly people were getting their news for…free?

This troubled the Dark Lord. He was used to extracting monopoly profits from the lowly muggles. But suddenly, with the advent of a wondrous spell called Google News, he was facing an enemy he had never encountered before. That enemy’s name, was Perfect Competition. Perfect Competition took the world by storm. All of a sudden, Lord Murdoch’s monopoly profits were nowhere to be found. So You-Know-Who did what any rational and magic savvy monopolist would do. He threw a fit. He yelled, screamed, and rolled around on the ground complaining about how Google was stealing their content and profiting from it. Eventually, once his executive assistant had given him his butter beer, and he had settled down, he started to hatch a plan to once and for all vanquish the evil Google News, and it’s spawn, Perfect Competition. His nefarious plan consisted of one line of text: Erect A Pay Wall!

“How could this NOT work?” he thought to himself. “People want to read my content, and if you can’t get to the content without paying, then logically, people will hand over their galleons.” Finally, Lord Murdoch’s critical thinking class was paying off! Unfortunately, it appears that that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, had spent a little too much time cavorting with the witches at Hogwarts School of Business, and not enough time paying attention in Mysterious Microeconomics. As any good little microeconomist knows, when you raise prices in a perfectly competitive market, your customers magically disappear.

However, Lord Murdoch was blinded by a little thing called The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ, as it is lovingly called in the wizarding world, is another one of the Dark Lord’s newspapers (along with the Daily Profit of course. See what I did there?). The WSJ is filled with all kinds of spells and magic that are of particular interest to a group of wizards called the Wall Street Warlocks, who willingly hand over their hard earned bailed out galleons every month in order to gain access to the secrets of the WSJ. These very greedy wizards use the spells in the WSJ to grow their collection of gold galleons. Therein lies the rub. It is no surprise that the Wall Street Warlocks are willing to pay for content that will help them gain more galleons, but that does not imply that normal wizards will also be willing to pay for content that is simply to entertain and inform, when they can get extremely close or even exact substitutes elsewhere for free.

This brings us up to the present time. Lord Murdoch has announced that he will implement the first of his unforgivable curses. He will have his deatheaters in the Ministry of Magic’s Department of Information Technology erect a pay wall around The Times, and The Sunday Times. Only time will tell whether his magical pay wall will bring back the profits he so yearns for, but when a Google News search for “Rupert Murdoch” yields 4,420 results, this wizard isn’t going to be holding his breath.

Note: This post made heavy use of Harry Potter references. If you haven’t read the books, or seen the movies, it might not have made much sense to you. Sorry about that :)

Not So Magic Mouse

2010-02-21T00:00:00-05:00

So the other day my MX Revolution mouse stopped scrolling downwards. I called up Logitech and they were really good about it. I should be getting a replacement in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I thought I would buy a Magic Mouse, and then if I liked it I would just sell the replacement I’m getting from Logitech. I don’t think that what’s gonna happen. Once I get my replacement mouse from Logitech, I’m probably gonna be headed back to Future Shop to return the Magic Mouse.

It’s not that I hate it, it’s just that it doesn’t even come close to comparing to my MX Revolution. It’s too thin, and so it feels weird in my hand. Having come from a moulded mouse, an ambidextrous mouse just feels awkward. The sensor on the Magic Mouse seems to be vastly inferior to the one in my MX Revolution, and so tracking isn’t as smooth. Also, I didn’t realize how much I had come to rely on having a separate button for right click. The Magic Mouse does, however, have one big advantage. The scrolling is nothing short of amazing. It’s absolutely seamless in both the vertical and horizontal directions. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough to compensate for the awkwardness.

I don’t what it is about the mouse, but in my opinion, Apple has yet to get it right. And with the move towards touch interaction, maybe they’ll never get the chance.

Update: Logitech sent me a Performance Mouse MX as a replacement for my MX Revolution. I have to say, I don’t feel that it’s quite as good as the MX Revolution overall. It seems like they may have cut some corners to reduce costs. It’s still a great mouse though, and in my opinion superior to the Magic Mouse.

Reset

2010-02-20T00:00:00-05:00

Wow, it’s been a while since I had a working website. If you came here looking for some of my old posts, such as my Slicehost review, or any of my other “techie” articles, you’re gonna be disappointed. I’ve decided to throw away the old, and usher in the new. A major part of that is starting this new site from scratch.

I’ve been thinking about switching to a Tumblr site for a while. It has a few benefits that I really appreciate. I think first and foremost is the simplicity. As far as web publishing systems are concerned, I don’t think it could get simpler or easier to use than Tumblr. It’s like the Mac of the blogging world. Keeping with the Mac analogy, Tumblr also looks great, thanks to the huge library of really gorgeous templates. I decided a long time ago that I was going to stop trying to do web design. I had some moderately nice looking Wordpress templates, but nothing that I was truly satisfied with. So I figured it was a better idea to just leave it up to the pros and use pre-made templates. Lastly, it’s such a good feeling not having to deal with hosting issues. All I need is a domain name, and a Tumblr account. No more root access, Linux installs, web server configs, firewalls, and on and on and on. It was cool to play around with, but it introduced needless complexity when I was just hosting my own blog.

I think I’m gonna try and tweak this template a little bit here and there. One thing I really want to do is start using some custom fonts with TypeKit. It’s an amazing service, and eliminates the need to use weird work arounds like Sifr. No offence to Sifr of course, I just think you should use web standards when possible. Also, I really hate Flash. A lot.

So what’s the theme of this re-born site you ask? Well, I think I’m gonna keep a nice mix of random funny stuff I find on the web, and opinions on topics in economics and psychology. You know, to keep it light in between the depressing news that our economy is crumbling and we’re all going crazy. I never seemed to be able to sit down and write huge blog posts, so I’m hoping the abbreviated nature of Tumblr will make it easier to write more frequently.

I think that’s about it for the update. I need to eat breakfast anyways. Yes, you heard me correctly. Breakfast at 11:00AM. Such is the life of an Arts student.