1 billion served

One key innovation of the iPhone (and iPod Touch) was the App Store, an online marketplace for 3rd party applications. Today, Apple will reach one billion applications downloaded through the App Store.

This has inspired many people to write applications for the iPhone. This week, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that amateurs are learning how to create applications for the iPhone.

Unfortunately, this shows. So many of the applications are garbage. How many fart and bikini girl applications do we need? Seriously, how many high school boys own iPhones?

As for the serious applications, many are ill-conceived or badly coded. For example, today I tried an application that is supposed to scan a UPC barcode and check prices. I grabbed a few items around my home but it failed to read every barcode. And it was so slow that I could have typed the numbers much, much faster. Granted, much of the problem is due to the limitations in the iPhone’s camera. But why didn’t the developer consider this before taking the time to develop the application?

Other good ideas are ruined with bad implementations. For example, I rely on an electronic grocery list – first for my Treo, now for my iPhone. But most of them for the iPhone force you to use its limited keyboard and menus for data entry. Why do this when you sync your iPhone with a full computer? (Those that realize this suffer from miserable desktop or web applications).

Furthermore, many applications really do not need to be standalone applications – they could be as good or better as pure web applications. However, the economics of the App Store rewards standalone applications, so I don’t expect to see much innovation in terms of iPhone web applications. That’s unfortunate.

I’ve read some iPhone ‘developers’ complain that iPhone applications have such a low selling price. The solution? Produce better applications. Considering the low quality of so many applications, I’m not willing to pay more than a dollar or two for most iPhone applications.

There are a few applications that really make my iPhone much more useful. The remaining 95% of applications are a waste. At least they don’t cost too much.

Meantime, I wish I had a bit more free time to write some Apps myself. I have a few good ideas but no time. Though I worry that only the fart and bikini apps are making real money.

Why I’m a Mac

The recent Microsoft TV commercials have spawned new debate on Mac vs. Windows. After a 10-year hiatus, I have been using Macs as my primary computers for the last two years. Here is my list of what I like and don’t like about the Mac.

What I like
I’m more productive on the Mac. With a Mac, most things just work. Install a new program, and it works. You don’t have to reboot your computer. No driver conflicts. With Windows, there’s a constant barrage of system updates and reboots. I generally go about a month between rebooting my Macs. With Windows, it’s hard to go more than a few days without a mandatory reboot.

The Mac is generally faster. Windows computers are buried under various security programs (antivirus, antispyware, etc.). These things tend to really bog down a system.

It’s also easier to maintain a Mac system. Backing up a Mac is super-simple, and I’ve been able to upgrade drives in a couple of hours. Upgrading Mac OS X is pretty easy, too.

I also love the way Mac software is sold. Most basic programs are quite affordable, and are often sold in “family packs” that allow you to install the software on multiple Macs. It’s rare to find ‘family packs’ for Windows software.

What I don’t like about Macs
#1 gripe is the lack of software and hardware. Not just obscure products but mainstream ones, too. Consider Quicken. Quicken for Mac hasn’t been updated in years, and the new, “Quicken Financial Life for Mac” is still vaporware.

My wife loves to print homemade greeting cards. But the greeting card program she uses has been orphaned. We looked at a few online sites, but they require ActiveX plugins that are incompatible with the Mac.

Same thing for hardware compatibility. I like my HP networked all-in-one print/scanner/fax. But HP was very slow in releasing drivers for OS X Leopard, and I fear that they may never release drivers for OS X Snow Leopard.

I also don’t like the fact that many models make it difficult to do basic memory and disk upgrades. I cannot upgrade the disk drive in my iMac without a complex disassembly that violates the warranty. Upgrading the disk on our Apple TV was not easy (and I found many errors in the hacker instructions online). Upgrading disks and memory should be an end-user task, and it’s annoying when Apple does not support this.

But given a choice, I’m not going back. I’d rather keep my Mac and run Windows under VMWare when I need it.

Kindle: Not Ready for Prime Time

If you believe the hype, the Amazon Kindle is going to revolutionize books. I’m very interested, but I doubt it will be as successful as the iPod, thanks to the ugly consequences of Digital Rights Management.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the Kindle application for my iPhone. The Kindle application has helped me to read more and more often. I appreciate the environmental benefits of reducing the manufacture and shipping of books. And I’m even interested in getting a Kindle device in the future.

But there are some huge issues with the Kindle. When you’re finished with an old-fashioned paper book, you can give it to someone else. You can donate it to a library. Not so with an electronic book for the Kindle.

Now consider music. You can legally copy your CDs to an iPod. And multiple online stores sell music for an iPod: Apple’s iTunes store, Amazon mp3, and even independent systems such as eMusic. What about the Kindle? No, you can’t copy your paper books to a Kindle. And you can’t purchase books from any store except Amazon. In other words, the Kindle is effectively limited to Amazon.

This is a business problem, not a technical problem. If Amazon wanted, they could extend the Kindle system to let you loan your electronic books to friends. (And that might even spur others to buy Kindle systems!). Amazon could open the Kindle hardware to other stores and collect a licensing fee, much like how videogame platforms license their systems to 3rd party software developers.

But ultimately, this is a question of money. In general, I believe that people are willing to accept restrictive digital rights management when they get content for a very low price.

For example, suppose Amazon didn’t sell electronic books, but they charged just a few dollars to rent them for 14 or 30 days. If it cost just $5 to rent a book for a month, my friends wouldn’t mind spending $5 to read a book that I recommend. And I might reread old books if I could pay a few dollars to get an electronic copy of a book that I purchased in hardcover or paperback.

Until Amazon addresses these issues, I think the Kindle is going to be a niche product.

There’s more to tech

For years, I’ve been listening to This Week in Tech. Once, I sat next to Leo Laporte on a flight from Toronto to San Francisco, and I showed him that I had the latest episode of This Week in Tech on my iPod.

Sadly, the show has gone downhill. My wife – a savvy tech grrrrl – stopped listening years ago. And I am quickly losing interest. First, the commercials are becoming painfully long – around 5 minutes for a single spot. I realize that Laporte needs to earn money from the shows, but I have been a paid subscriber for years. Why should I be subjected to the commercials as well?

But the bigger problem is the content. First, I now realize that they don’t talk about technology. They ignore the business market. They only talk about consumer electronics and “web 2.0″ sites. For example, they talk about how how the iPhone has killed Windows Mobile. Sorry, but Windows Mobile (and Blackberry) are the tools of choice for big business. No matter how wonderful the iPhone may be, it has nearly no market share inside big business. Whether or not that will change is worthy of discussion, but the panelists have a fundamental misunderstanding of the market.

And it gets worse. Now all they talk about is Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. I use and enjoy Twitter, but there’s far more to technology than a 140-character messaging system. Especially one that has no source of revenue.

I’m getting tired of hearing the guys talk on and on about the size of their … Twitter follower lists. I agree with John C. Dvorak that this is a dull and tired topic. In fact, I think his daily Tech5 podcast is much better; Dvorak seems to be much better informed about the industry as a whole. Especially now that This Week in Tech panelists include actors and others who have a narrow perspective on the technology industry.

If things don’t improve with This Week in Tech, I may stop making a donation. I think my local NPR station could put the money to better use.

What it takes to launch a site

You may or may not know that I’m working on two startups right now. The first launched today: EstiMike, a simple and straightforward way for estimating the price of a home.

What’s interesting is how these startups are getting built. I created EstiMike working all alone. I negotiated a contract with my data provider, I hired an artist to develop the mascot, and I coded the website. With just a small investment, I think I have created a pretty useful tool.

Now compare this with other websites that provide real estate information. According to CrunchBase, Zillow received $87 million in funding; Roost recently received $13.5 million.

Now, these sites are far more ambitious than my simple EstiMike site. But my point is that it doesn’t require an large staff and millions of dollars to create a useful website. It can still be created by one guy with an idea.

My predictions for MWSF 2009

Seems like everyone has some predictions for Macworld Expo, so here are mine:

• Apple refreshes the desktop computers – iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini – and makes the Mini DisplayPort the standard video connection. All other monitors will require a $29 adaptor.
• Apple replaces the Cinema Displays with new LED models that are similar to the new 23″ LED Cinema Displays. Like the current LED model, they all have speakers, an iSight camera and use the DisplayPort adaptor.
• Steve Jobs shows demos of Snow Leopard and gives a shipment date of early summer

These predictions are simply my educated guess. I have no sources at Apple. And if I did, I’d really love a MacBook Air with 128GB SSD…

Why people hate Microsoft

I’ve been working for months on developing a web application. One of my design goals is for the application to run in virtually any web browser – Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera. So I frequently test the application using a variety of browsers.

About two months ago, I discovered a bug in Internet Explorer 8 beta 2. I spent hours documenting the problem and posted a simple example to the discussion forums. Within minutes, I got a response. The person from Microsoft didn’t bother to look at my example, but he told me that all web browsers have bugs.

Instead of thanking me for my hours of time that I spent isolating the problem, I got a rude and condescending answer. After I complained, another person eventually responded and showed me that this bug was already registered in Microsoft’s bug tracking system. (Though they haven’t acknowledged when or if it will be fixed).

Today, I found a second bug. It’s very obscure: when you go from one page to another, some specialized graphics don’t get displayed properly. They do display correctly if you refresh the second page or if you go to it immediately. This bug was so obscure that it took me nearly the whole day to isolate the precise problem and write a simple example.

Again, I posted my example to the Microsoft discussion forums. And I got another condescending response: go read the FAQs. This didn’t address my question, and it shows that no one has bothered to take the 2 minutes to test my example. Nevermind that I spent hours to find the bug.

In both cases, I did an extensive diagnosis and posted a succinct example to Microsoft – about a dozen lines of code (isolated from my 1000+ line subroutine). My thanks? An obnoxious attitude.

Doesn’t make me want to help them in the future.

And they wonder why people hate them.

Where have all the posts gone?

Greg’s Rants is neither gone nor forgotten. However, most of my writing now goes into our corporate blog – Decidedly. Besides that, I’ve finally taken to Twitter, and you can find me as gglockner on Twitter. But I do have some rants in mind, and I’ll post them when I get a chance. See you in the ‘net.

Smart phones are a lousy input device

Having owned a Treo 270, then a Treo 650 and now an iPhone, I believe that the smart phones are miserable as input devices. Ever try to write an email longer than a couple of lines? Very frustrating. Then why do software developers continue to write applications that require you to type and type and type on the devices? Why not interface with a computer and sync the relevant information – either directly or via the internet?

My computer has a great screen, a nice keyboard and a useful mouse. No smart phone will ever be that powerful.

Computer question du jour

Are there more computers running Windows Vista or Mac OS X?