Tech-no-media

Why web apps will need Google Native Client

2011-09-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Recently The Register posted a very informative article on Google Native Client and I got the feeling from from representatives from Mozilla and Opera that "this was not a good idea because web apps written in Javascript are good enough and more portable"

I beg your pardon? You think that the current crop of Javascript based web apps is good enough? What they seem to forget is that for a lot of things Javascript based web apps and by Web app I mean apps that run in your browser) have failed miserably.

- Gaming is one of them: why do web games look like some 2D thing out of the 90' ? Why can't I play Battlefield 3 or Skyrim quality games from my browser if my computer has the 3D hardware to do so? The only thing that currently looks like a decent "console quality games on the web" is OnLive and that's because all the processing happens on the server (and it needs a plugin anyway)! Why are most 3D MMORPGs downloads rather than web apps?

- Video is only remotely good with the flash plug-in. Youtube exists for years now but the only way to get decent (meaning hardware accelerated) web video on desktop and mobiles is still flash with no useable standard in sight. and don't get me started with video editing in the browser. Try to code a, Xvid decoder in Javascript and see the performance you get, I bet it will barely be usable.

- Mobile web apps are also a failure. Initially the iPhone was supposed to support only web apps, no app store. Have you seen how well that turned out: developers are fighting to get into the app store and the Android marketplace!

The fact is that current web apps and Javascript are OK for apps that mostly display data or do some limited data manipulation such as email, word processing or spreadsheet, but as soon as you want something more consistent there is not much. Where my web base GIMP (with all its filters and plugins)? where's my web based Audacity? Where is my web based premiere? where's my web base PowerDVD?

If the aim is to replace local applications and games by "browser hosted" web apps, then web apps need to be able to do all the tasks that users are currently performing with their computers with roughly the same level of performance, and that includes high-end gaming and multimedia, and currently there is no way to do that with Javascript.

The representative from Mozilla says that there was a 10 fold increase of Javascript performance in the last few years. To me this means that a few years ago Javascript was 10 time slower than a native application, and as an user I find that is not acceptable. I will not pay for a 3 Ghz computer to have the same performance with webs apps than a 10 year old 300 Mhz computer could provide with native applications.

Why the Tegra 2 sucks at video decoding

2011-06-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Recently several new Tegra 2 based Android tablets have been release by major manufacturers, such as the Motorola Xoom or the Eee pad transformer. Most of those manufacturers are claiming that their tablets have good multimedia capabilities and are proudly promising 1080P video decoding thanks to mojo from the Nvidia Tegra 2 chip. And in a way it makes sense: the Nvidia chipsets and video cards for PC are probably the best at decoding high definition H264 video. Most people purchasing these tablets to play high resolution video will probably be disappointed though because when you look at the specifications of the Tegra 2 platform you will notice that unlike its PC cousins the chip is unable to decode most 1080p H264 videos.

The issue is that there are actually several flavors of H264 videos. You have the Main profile that is relatively easy to decode and is used for things like Youtube and digital camera recordings. The Tegra 2 will have no problem with these. The other kind are the High profiles (yes there are several) that allow a much better compression vs quality ratio. This is used for most videos that you can actually download from the internet: Podcasts, fansubs, bittorent etc... There we have a problem: the Tegra 2 is incapable of decoding these videos in HD. What this means is that unless you are only using the video capabilities of your Tegra 2 tablet to watch Youtube, you will have to stick to lover definitions or transcode videos on your PC before watching them on the tablet, which defeats the point of having a tablet in the first place.

What is disturbing is that Nvidia "PC" chipsets such as the ION are perfectly capable of decoding High profile 1080p H264 video and that consumers purchasing Tegra 2 based tablets will likely expect the same level of functionality. It is only the next version of the Tegra chip (codenamed Kal-el) that will be able to decode HD video in a way similar to Nvidia ION chipsets a point that Nvidia should be much clearer about. If you want a tablet to watch HD, either purchase one with another chip or wait for Kal-el.

Why the iPad sells (to Apple fans only)

2010-04-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Apple announced that the first week-end of iPad sales (that actually includes about a month of pre-orders) totaled 300,000 units. This may seems impressive, but when you look in more details at the sales numbers this is not really good news for the iPad and here is why.

Apple sold to its fans only

A very interesting article from PC World points out that out of those 300,000 users, about 75% were already Mac users and about 66% percent were iPhone users. Now if you also take into account other Apple devices like the iPod touch it is clear that the very large majority of buyers where already major users of Apple products.

Informed people didn't chose the iPad

Another interesting statistic is that around 78% of the buyer did not consider any other devices. This can mean two things:
- First that 78% of the iPad buyers were indeed Apple fans that bought only on the "brand value" rather than on the device actual merits.
- Second that a lot of the people who did actually consider other devices did not choose to buy an iPad. Here is why I think that this scenario is likely:

Why people don't like the iPad

Ars Technica made another interesting poll: Will you buy an iPad, and if not why? About 37% percent of the readership said they would buy an iPad. Now if you consider that a large portion of Ars readership are Apple users and gadget addicts, this is actually not a large number. What is more important are the reason why people won't purchase an iPad. In other words, why did the people that researched the device choose not to buy it. the number one reason is that people don't feel the need for a tablet. the second reason is actual dislike of Apple as a company. The third reason is the inability to purchase apps outside of the app store and the fourth one is the price.

Apple policies are ensuring the iPad failure

If you think about it, reasons 2, 3 and 4 are not technical issues with the iPad but are purely due to Apple policies. If apple was selling the device at a more reasonable price (about $199 to $299 like other ARM based tablets) and was willing to change its policies, mostly regarding the app store and third party application / content they would probably double the number of possible iPad buyers (even I would buy one under these conditions). As it is Apple is currently paving the way for Android and Windows 7 tablets by creating demand for tablet devices but refusing to deliver a product that matches the customers expectations.

Conclusion: the iPad will run out of steam

What I think is that the iPad will initially gain a lot of market share on purchases made by its own customers , but that this will soon run out of steam as these "dry up". Non Apple customers will probably be driven away to competing tablets by Apple policies and the iPad shortcomings. In 5 years I expect Apple to keep about 20% to 30% of the tablet market share and most of the rest to be non Apple devices.

The year Apple lost its mojo

2010-03-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

For me 2010 will be the year when Apple lost its mojo. We are only in march but in the space of two months Apple managed to change my feelings of respect for one of the coolest tech companies to something close to the feelings I have for the likes of SCO. Don't get me wrong, Apple always was a company that was difficult to do business with, but until now its customers where its first priority. Now however Apple has turned against its customers and is destroying its brand.

Back then when Apple had its mojo.

If you looked at Apple a few years ago you would see one of the coolest technology corporations around. It's iPod line of music players was not only cool, but its iTunes software was a breeding ground for media innovation. It practically invented podcasts, allowing anybody to distributes its ideas and culture around in audio or video format. Steve Jobs was pushing the music labels to offer DRM-free songs. The OSX operating system build on BSD was considered the best customer OS, placing robustness, user comfort and usability above almost everything else. It was so good that some serious Linux geeks started using Macs. It is the company that scrapped the wildly successful iPod mini to innovate by releasing the iPod Nano. Apple was just plain cool for geeks as well as the man on the street.

Forward to 2010

Let's contrast this with the situation this year. For new year I purchased a brand new iPod touch, as I considered that the application ecosystem was finally mature. My primary interest was to read eBooks with the excellent Stanza reader, and also to play the games available in the app store. One of the main factors that pushed me toward the iPod was that a large number of adult themed games and applications had finally been accepted in the app store, something that in my opinion took much too long to happen. The fact that the iPod touch could also replace my old mp3 player was a bonus. Everything looked peachy at first, however this would not last long.

Problems starts

The initial setup of the iPod touch went flawlessly thanks to iTunes, but things quickly started to go wrong. First after the installation of Stanza I realized that I could not load my collection of unprotected ePub books purchased from Websciptions through my USB connection. This was possible before, but apparently Apple removed this much needed functionality. There was well a workaround that involved setting up a web server on my computer and downloading my books over my Wifi network. The thing is so involved for an end user that I have yet to do it. Since I choose an Apple product because they were easy to use I can say is that it is a major let down. Then one day most of the sexy games and apps that were such a big part of the iPod Touch attractiveness started to disappear from the app store. Despite contacting Apple to fix this it is still impossible for me to get that kind of content anymore. In the end I gave up, gave my iPod touch to my wife and purchased and Android phone (I needed a new phone anyway). Then a few day later I learned that Apple has started to play the patent troll with my new phone's manufacturer (HTC) to try to stop it from selling its Android devices, forcing me to use their own non-working products! Now as an Apple customer, how do you thing I feel. If you said "You'll never buy anything from Apple again" you nailed it, that exactly how I feel.

Turning against its customers

As I said, Apple has always been a company that was hard to do business with, but up until now they always protected their customers. What has changed is that now Apple is not only hurting their partners, but also their customers. One of the reasons that Microsoft windows is so bloated and insecure but still popular is that Microsoft has learned that once a feature of your products is used, you pretty much can't remove it unless you provide a better alternative. Whether you intended to provide the feature or third party developers created it as an "hack" is pretty much irrelevant: once your customers have started to rely on it, you pretty much have to keep it, or announce an "end of life" years in the future to give your customers the time to find alternative solution. Apple stopped doing this, choosing instead to leave the people who paid for their product out in the cold. This is not the behavior of a respectable technology company.

Not able to innovate anymore

If you look at Apple one thing is clear: they have not released anything new since the iPod touch / iPhone release. The only "new features" we have seen on these devices since their were released were things that should have been there from the start such as copy paste and a decent battery life or brought by third parties such as the Stanza reader. Look at the iPad: it is far from revolutionary: a big overpriced iPod touch! A $499 iPad cost little more than $200 to build, and there are many competitors such as Archos that have similar offerings for $200 to $400. What has Apple to show to justify the huge price premium? Very little as the iPad will be more limited than it competitors: it won't have sexy games, it won't have flash, and I bet it won't be easy to load your existing eBooks on it. What this looks like is a product from a company that is unable to innovate, wants to milk its customers dry for old technology and hopes to retain its user base by preventing other to innovate thanks to its patten portfolio. This is not far from the story of another company called SCO, and we all know how that story finished.

Lets hope Apple can get back on the right path before it is too late.

Why online resources are not free and ChromeOS will fail

2010-03-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

Nowadays there seems to be a big push for the use of online resources to replace offline functionality. New operating systems like ChromesOS or Jolicloud are mostly web based, and more and more audio and video services are moving from downloads to streaming. On the surface it looks like this is a big win for freedom as you are much less dependent on your operating system or proprietary applications, all is in the browser. There is a big caveat however: this makes you overly dependent on your internet connection, and in a world that is more and more mobile this is a recipe for disaster.

An internet connection is expensive

The problem with many online services and applications is that they do not take into account the price of the connection. If you have to pay for an ADSL connection at home, then a 3G connection for your smartphone, then a Wimax connection (or another 3G connection, or a Boingo account) for your netbook or iPad you are looking at a frightening bill at the end of the month, even if these services are available. It is likely that many people will only afford an ADSL connection and end up "stuck at home" if they rely on online services for their application and entertainment. Streaming a video clip from YouTube may seem cheaper than purchasing the song, but it is probably not the case once the connection bill is factored in. It may look like a good idea to use picnic for editing and storing pictures, until you have to do it away from home. Initiatives like Google ChromeOS or Jolicloud may seems revolutionary, but I think they will only work for people who do not require to be mobile.

Going in the wrong direction

For years we have been evolving toward a computing experience that leveraged the internet. We assumed it was a great idea to have everything online, close by hand, only we failed to see that this reduced our physical mobility. We assumed that the internet would be ubiquitous and that we would get more and more bandwidth, and to some extend it is true: at home, on our desktops. The problem is that this is the decade of the netbook, the tablet and the smartphone and as far as mobile internet is concerned sufficient bandwidth for everybody won't be available for years, if not decades. Current 3G networks struggle to provide barely adequate service because they are limited by available spectrum and technology. How will they fare if we all move to online streaming. What bandwidth is required to provide a fluid 480p YouTube or Hulu streaming experience to even 10% of the mobile subscribers on a wireless network? 3G won't do, 4G won't do, maybe 5G will do, but I doubt it. It will take at least 10 years to get there, if not 20, and we are only speaking about 480p, the performance that a portable DVD player has been delivering for years. Web developers assumed that we would get more and more bandwidth as the time passes, but users now want to access the net everywhere, meaning we get less bandwidth rather than more, and unreliable connections to boot. Most internet applications are now designed for ADSL and always on internet, but a lot of people are actually going the other way: lighter, more mobile machines, more infrequent connections, less bandwidth, less allowed transfer.

More and more laptops are sold but we are less mobile

More and more people purchase laptops or netbooks because they want to be mobile and take they computing infrastructure with them, but the increased dependence on our internet connection makes us less mobile. My wife has a nice Linux netbook she uses a lot at home, but whenever we get away from home she takes only her old Nintendo DS because most of the games she plays on the netbook are online Flash games and these don't work when the connection is lost. What does that says for the netbook mobility-wise? A failure! Who actually uses his or her netbook out of the house most of the time? Not many peopIe! Who uses his or her smartphone out of the house most of the time? Most people. In Japan mobile net access is overtaking fixed connections, soon the same will be true in the rest of the world. Soon tablets, smartphones and mini netbooks will be the way a lot of people use "computers".

Android will smoke ChromeOS

In the end I think that Android will crush Google's other operating system, ChromeOS because for the foreseeable future most people will still want to be able to take their applications, data, entertainment and games offline, or at least on a limited connection. That is something that Android is much better designed to do than Chrome. That's why streaming and Blu-ray will not destroy DVD sales for some time: impossible to rip the movie to a netbook or iPhone. That's why online games won't kill the Nintendo DS, why music streaming services won't kill iTunes. For these to take off much progress need to be make to ensure the resources are available offline since there won't be enough mobile bandwidth for all. All web applications and games should be cached. Any piece of music, video or web page that has been watched should be available for replay offline. It should be trivial to store online media or data for later consumption. Currently this is not the case and this would mean that browsers would have to be re-engineered, Flash would have to be completely re-engineered etc... Solutions like Google Gears or the HTML 5 specifications for online data don't go far enough as we do not only need to cache web data, we need to cache web functionality for offline use. Web applications and services needs to be designed for intermittent (not always on), low bandwidth mobile connections, not the monster ADSL many people have at home. What may happen is that smart developpers will create multiplatform offline applications using web technologies and tools such as appcelerator, but that will leave ChromeOS on the side.

Sub $200 Android tablets arrives: is the iPad doomed?

2010-03-02T04:33:00.000-08:00

When the $499 iPad tablet was announced last month, many journalists commented that the device was surprisingly affordable for an Apple product. This may not actually be the case however, as several sub $200 competitors running the Android operating system have appeared. Will the iPad be able to gain major market share when it costs more than twice the price of other tablets or is the iPad doomed to be a "high-end only" product like the Mac?

The $179 Archos 7 vs the $ 499 iPad

The Archos 5 inch tablet has never really been a competitor to the iPad, as the screen size did put it more in the MID / media player category than the tablet category. The new 7 Inch Archos tablet running Android on the other hand is clearly aiming at the iPad crowd. Its major selling point: the price, with some models going for as low as $179 (for the 2GB version), less than half the price of the iPad. Spec-wize the Archos tablet is somewhat inferior to the iPad: it uses an older ARM 9 processor (but then the iPad A4 processor is not very fast either), has less storage (but allows for an SD card to be used), has a lower resolution screen and a more limited choice of application, but on the other hand it has a better media player (more formats are supported), do offer a browsing experience on par with the iPad and may support flash lite (flash 10.1 won't be possible however). You probably will not get an integration as good as between the iPad and iTunes, but then you won't have to deal with Apple censorship (you can install ANY working application just by downloading the apk file) and Linux is officially supported as your desktop OS.

Can the iPad survive?

The big problem for Apple is that for most common tasks such as surfing, reading eBooks or playing audio and video the Archos tablet will will perform as well as the iPad for less than half the price. The only usage scenarios where Apple dominate is mobile gaming, will that be enough to justify the price? For some people most certainly, and you can expect a lot of Apple fans to be ready to pony up the cash too, but I am afraid that the average user won't see it that way and that the iPad will stay an high end device with limited market share. When Apple launched the iPhone they were miles ahead of the competition and thus could justify the premium price, but with the iPad they will have to face aggressive competition from day one, and not only from Archos. When you add to that the recent shenanigans concerning "sexy apps" (not so much a problem in the US, but much more here in Europe where we are not used to that kind of censorship) I can see Android tablets winning the tablet war on the long term.

Designing the best tablet device

2010-02-26T01:16:00.000-08:00

No one can deny that 2010 will be the year of the tablet. So many manufacturers have presented tablet designs during the last CES that some sites are now making tablet device roundups. This made me think about what the best tablet device would look like.

Tablet weight

Unlike a netbook that will be be sitting on your your lap or table, a tablet is made to be held most of the time. This makes the weight of the device pretty critical and in my opinion 2 lbs is the absolute maximum for these kind of devices, with a weight under 1.5 lbs being a major advantage.

Screen size

Tablet devices seems to fall in three categories: the 4' to 5', the 7' and the 9' to 10'. To me the 5' category is too small if you already own a smartphone. Why pay for another device just to gain one or two inches of screen real estate. The 7' category seem perfect to me: it is big enough to give a comfort level that is far superior to a smartphone screen, but at the same time stays small enough to preserver the device weight and battery life. The 9'+ category could be interesting if the manufacturers manage to fit such a big screen in a light enough device without sacrificing battery life, something possible if a PixelQi screen is used.

Screen resolution

800x480 seems to be the minimum to use a tablet device properly, but 1024*600 would be better.

Battery life

A tablet is a device that is not designed to be plugged in during usage. This makes battery life even more important than for netbooks. I think that an 8 hours battery is really a minimum, but a 10+ hours battery life would be a plus.

Processor

This would obviously be some ARM design. Tablet devices could be made with Intel Atom processors, but the current models would probably not be able to meet my current battery and weight requirements. Another factor is that most ARM designs also include 3D and video acceleration on the die, which is not the case for Intel Atom chips. To get the same feature set you would have to add an Nvidia Ion or a broadcom crystal HD decoder to your setup, which would degrade the battery life of the device and increase the price.

Operating system

Despite some rough edges the Linux based Android OS seems to be the most viable option. Android is free, stable, optimized for touch input and with more than 20,000 apps in the market the software ecosystem is fairly rich . Windows 7 could be a contender if it could run on ARM processors, consumed less resources and if the software library was better optimized for touch input. Windows CE is not really an option if you want to install third party applications as no "store" is available. The iPhoneOS could be an option, but I am not willing to invest in any Apple technology anymore because of their incessant changes of policy regarding what is acceptable on their devices. If Apple decided to give up its excessive control of the App Store content it could be an option in the future though. The other viable option is of course the other Linux based tablet OS: Meego. The only issue is that the project is still too new to allow me make an opinion of the OS, but this will probably be a contender in the future.

Price

This is difficult to estimate, but for me a price under $300 would be ideal. Like netbooks, tablets are meant to be secondary devices, not your main computer. The price should be low enough to allow most people to afford one in addition to a PC, and for me that means it should cost about half the price of your main computer. Since most PCs now sell for $600 that would make the $300 price point right. The Apple iPad would even follow this rule if we consider that the price of Macs is usually above $1000, however it would fare badly when compared to PCs.

Expansions

The most important expansion option for me is a SD or MicroSD card slot. Even on machines with a lot of on-board storage being able to plug in your camera memory card for a quick view on the big screen is a definite plus. Also with memory prices falling all the time this may allow for an easy upgrade in a few years time. A 16 Gb tablet may look impressive now, but it will look restrictive in two years time when 32 Gb SDs will sell for under $30. An USB connection to transfer files from your main PC is another obvious requirement. VGA, HDMI and USB ports are also nice to have, but they are not critical.

Input

A tablet by definition use finger as an input, so the software needs to be designed accordingly, and a multitouch screen is of course better than a "single touch" one but I do not feel it is mandatory. The possibility of adding a real keyboard through USB is also a plus if you intend to use the device for typing.

Software

Some software should be included with the tablet: capable audio and video players, a decent web browser with flash support, an e-mail client, a PDF and ebook (epub or mobi) reader, a picture viewer and a mean to install third party software and games. Most of the operating systems mentioned above cover most of these requirement from the start except for the iPhone OS (no Flash and arbitrary limits on third party software) and Windows CE. As soon as Android gets flash support (currently in beta) it will cover all these requirements quite easily.

Conclusion

I think that we will see a lot of interesting tablets this year, and that I'll probably be able to purchase one that fits most if not all of my requirements. It probably won't be the iPad because to justify all the restriction Apple puts on the App Store their devices should be vastly superior to the competition in most other respects, and this is simply not the case with the iPad. The Archos Android tablets are currently the best contenders, but I expect many other to appear soon.

picture cc by nDevilTV

Apple insult their customers, women, free speech

2010-02-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Last Friday Apple decided to insult most of their customers, and the funny thing is that most of them did not even realize it. Apple has unilaterally decided to remove all "adult oriented" applications from the App store. Not only that, but it seems that to Apple a woman in bikini is considered adult material unsuitable for the Apple store.

Am I nine years old again?

I am the only adult owner of an iPod touch or iPhone that finds it extremely insulting to be treated like a 9 year old? I am 34 years old actually, and I feel that I can decide what level of sex I want on my iPod, thank you. Apple apparently does not allow anything that can be "sexually arousing". When did I allow Steve Jobs to decide if I could be sexually aroused or not? Beside that, women in bikini may seem "arousing" for a 9 year old, they are nothing especially new to me. Speaking of which:

Apple insult women

Apparently Apple considers that a woman in bikini is an unacceptable sight. As someone pointed out, what should the women wear in video games following Apple censors, the Burqa? In a country where women are fighting for the right to go out topless (like men) I would find it very surprising if most women did not find Apple stance on the issue insulting.

Apple insults our freedom of speech

A more important issue here is that Apple want to limit our freedom of speech. Yes, in my opinion video games and applications are a form of artistic expression, and they should be protected like movies, songs and books. When an institution appointed by our elected representatives apply some censorship at least there is some form of democratic control on what is censored, but when it is done by a private organization like Apple there is not control. Steve Jobs and Co are free to decide what you should and should not see, this is almost Stalinian and is completely unacceptable in a democratic country.

I didn't know I purchased a $300 toy

The only justification Apple seems to be able to come up with is that they want to protect the children. First, it is not their Job to protect the children, it is the parent's job. Second an iPod touch or an iPhone are pretty expensive items, not toys. The design as well as the location where these are sold clearly make them adult gadgets. If this happened to a Nintendo DS I could understand because the Nintendo is clearly marketed as a toy: It is sold in toy stores at a toy price. An iPhone is sold in the Apple store, not in the Toy'r Us.

My last Apple purchase

I think that the iPod touch will be my last purchase from Apple, personally I am too disgusted by their behavior to still purchase anything from them. Thankfully I puchased an Android powered HTC Magic as well as an iPod touch when I realised that I could have both for the price the iPhone is sold at without contract. I will focus on the Magic (despite Android current flaws) and just let my wife play with the iPod, but I will probably never buy anything from Apple again until they start treating me like an adult.

What is wrong with Android

2010-02-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased an HTC Magic, my first device running Android, Google's Linux-based mobile operating system. Although there are a lot of things I like about Android, I also quickly realized that there are also a lot of things that either require urgent improvement or are going wrong altogether. Below is my not-so-small list of Android issues. A lot of them are related to the Android market because it is in my opinion the part of Android that requires the most urgent efforts.

The Android Market must be available internationally

Currently the paid apps are only available to a very few countries outside of the US, and the market itself is not available at all in many places. Google must urgently set up a worldwide market for free apps and bring paid apps to at least as many countries as the iPhone app store (currently they are FAR behind). The problem is that even in Brussels (which is one of the 2 capitals of the European Union, the second largest developed economy after the US) I can not purchase a paid application on the Android market. This makes the Android ecosystem look bad when compared to the iPhone and iPod Touch which do not face such issues. My only option is to install an alternative market like Slideme, but for most people finding the alternative market and installing client on their phone is a daunting task.

Create a computer interface for Android

The second issue is that they should really provide a computer based interface for the Android Market and for music management. It can be a website, an application or even a Songbird plug-in, but it is just not convenient for many people to browse the apps on their phone small screen and to manage their music by "mounting" the SD card. This would also allow Google to create a better front end for application promotion and maybe even to create an Open Source section in the market.

Force manufacturer to clearly state if the Android market is enabled

Another major problem with the Android Market is that some device manufacturers or operators do not include the market on their handsets or devices. This is very problematic because the main reason most people want to buy an Android device is to be able to install third party applications and games (otherwise they would buy a much cheaper feature phone). Google should reserve the term "Android" to devices that actually include the Android market and have devices that just use Android as an OS called "Android Lite" or "Android Powered". Currently when you buy an Android device you don't know what you will be able to run unless you scour the web for reviews.

Do not rely on OTA upgrades

Although OTA (Over The Air) upgrades of Android may be an acceptable solution in the US, it is not the case internationally. Some countries (like Belgium, where I live) require by law that the handset selling business is separate from the mobile operator business. This means that the operator that sells an Android handset has to sell it equally to user of all mobile networks, not only its own. This means that OTA upgrades are not possible because they would have to convince that other operators to upgrade also the devices on their network. Even in other countries, to allow an OTA upgrade to be deployed not only must the handset manufacturer accept to create the upgrade, but the operator must agree to distribute it. This means that a lot of devices won't be updated that way. This leads me to my next concern: fragmentation.

Do something about Android fragmentation

Currently the Android landscape is something like 20% Android 2, 25% Android 1.5 and 55% Android 1.6. This is obviously cause for concern for developers and users alike as it means that applications and games need not only to be coded for several screen resolutions, but also for different operating system versions. This makes it difficult for an user to know if he will be able to install the latest games and applications, and games and applications are what many people buy a smartphone for.

Fix Android 3D performance issues

As pointed out by Ars Technica, current versions of Android and of the Android NDK are not correctly optimized for 3D gaming. Nowadays a smartphone or tablet OS must also be a gaming platform, so these things are really important. Another issues is that versions of Android prior to 2.0 only support the mobile equivalent OpenGL 1.3. This may make it impossible for gaming companies to bring their OpenGL 2.0 iPhones titles to Android handset. What it looks like now is that Android handsets usually get ports of the phone versions of games rather than the more polished iPhone version. Look for example at the game Farm Frenzy on Android and on the iPhone, the difference is clear.

Android is still a good platform

Despite all this, Android is still my smartphone OS of choice because of the openess of the platform (at least compared to Apple offerings). I would however like to see all these issues sorted quickly so that Android has a chance to truly rival the iPhone and create real competition in the mobile and tablet market.

The death of Flash has been greatly exaggerated

2010-02-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

Following the news that the iPad would not support the Flash plugin, some people have been clamoring for the death of Flash. Not so fast cowboy, that horse ain't dead yet!. Although it is true that Flash is far from perfect it is currently a necessary evil because so many web games and web application are written in Flash.

It is a fact that the performance and stability of the Flash plugin on OSX and Linux are not as good as on Windows, they still mostly work and are kept up to date by Adobe. Don't forget that Flash is also supported on the Wii browser (even if that plugin is outdated) and should soon be available for Android and Linux devices running on ARM processors. Expecting the plugin to deliver the same level of performance and reliability on all these platforms is overly optimistic. Of course the performance and stability situation would probably be better if Flash was an open source standard like HTML5 or Canvas, but I don't see these technologies replacing Flash anytime soon.

As stupid as it sounds, I couldn't have my wife use a device that can't play Farmville to access the internet because these kind of games are a huge percentage of her web experience, and it is the same for more than 100 millions other users. Farmville not working is THE reason I won't buy her an iPad.

Before we can do away with Flash there needs not only to be good support for an alternative (HTML 5, Canvas etc...) on multiple platforms, but also good development tools for that alternative that can rival Adobe Flash CS4 and a large ecosystem of web games and applications. That's the chicken and egg problem: you need a good ecosystem to be present before you can profitably use the new technology, but you need to use the new technology to develop a good ecosystem. It think that we'll get there eventually, but not before several years.

So, until Farmville is available in HTML5 and Canvas, we're stuck with Flash. In fact, I think that the Flash support present in Linux and soon in Android will allow competing tablets from MSI and others not only to compete with the iPad on an equal footing, but even to gain a significant market share in the tablet space. I'll concede that the iPad do benefit from a large library of games and applications inherited from the iPhone and iPod touch, but they are competing with pretty much the whole online games phenomenon, and tablets based on Android, Linux and Windows will also benefit from these platform's respective software libraries.

I can be satisfied by games from the App store and a limited version of the web for a phone or PDA, but for a tablet I want the full web experience and currently that means Farmville and Flash, so for now it sounds to me like Apple does not want my business...

Why you should not pay for extended warranty if you use Linux

2009-12-17T00:15:00.000-08:00

I have read a rather sad story today. Apparently the Best Buy Geeks squad refused to service the machine of someone who had purchased an $80 extended warranty for its netbook just because he had installed Ubuntu Linux. This story not only shows how best Best Buy's Geeks squad is far from having anything even close to the technical knowledge of a geek, but also raises 2 other questions: are extended warranties worth it, and are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US? Let's dig into these two rather important questions.

Extended warranties for netbooks: are they worth it?

Nowadays many electronics shops such as Best Buy will offer you a 2 or 3 year extended warranty if you pay them a little more money, usually around 20% of the price of the purchased item. In my opinion for a netbook this is not worth the money, especially if you are using Linux. First, the Best Buy accountants can do the maths: if they ask about 20% of the price of the computer for the protection plan this means that the probability of the computer failing between the end of the "free" warranty and the end of the extended warranty is lower than that, meaning that the odds are against you from the start. Second, if you use Linux you are probably knowledgeable enough to fix software issues yourself and are protected from most virus damage, leaving only hardware faults to cover. Now it is very likely that most hardware defects would appear during the legal warranty, so the extended one is not very useful. Finally, if you run the risk of having service denied to you because you use Linux or any piece of software that the store owner does not like it is simply not worth the hassle. If your netbook breaks after the legal warranty, you are probably better to buy a new one anyway. The only case where these extended warranties may make sense is if you purchase an expensive computer that you would have trouble replacing if it failed, or if you don't know anything about computers and expect to go back to the store for every little issue (and I don't know if that is even covered).

Are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US?

What is more worrying to me is the concept that changing your OS to Linux could constitute an unauthorized modification of your computer. This would mean that the manufacturer are selling the software and hardware as "one unit". This is very worrying because if that kind of bundling was accepted the consumers would actually lose the freedom of installing and running the software they like on their own computers. This is very bad because not only would that remove consumer choice from the equation when it comes to software (never a good thing) but it would create a virtual monopoly. If Microsoft and Corel got a deal with Asus to have windows and WinDVD as the only "authorized" software on their computers anybody wanting to buy an Asus computer would have to use that to avoid losing their warranty, even if Linux and PowerDVD are far better. We would go from a situation where the best software is selling to a situation where the cheapest or most common software is selling. If this kind of situation start to emerge it is important that consumer laws are adapted to prevent that kind of bundling like it is in other countries outside of the US. A good example is France where consumer law considers Hardware and software as two different items that can't be bundled and force OEMs to reimburse Windows at the consumer request if it is not possible to purchase a computer "naked". Furthermore the amount of money reimbursed as well as the procedure to follow must be published beforehand (usually the "price list" and reimbursement forms are available on the OEM website). Add to that the fact that in Europe the minimum legal (aka "free") warranty on computers is 2 years and you can see that consumer protection laws in the US are far from being the best in the world, especially for Linux users, and should be revised to protect the consumer better.

Why ChromeOS is a Smartbook OS

2009-12-07T05:14:00.000-08:00

Now that Google's Linux based ChromeOS has been fully revealed and is actually available for some machines, one thing appears clearly: ChromeOS is more like a Smartbook OS than a Netbook OS. Let's sum up what ChromeOS is about: it is the Chrome Browser as an operating system. Remember a few years ago when people said that the browser would become the OS? That's what Google did!

Like Smatbooks ChromeOS is all about the web

ChromeOS is designed for one thing: let you surf the web quickly and cheaply. ChromeOS is designed to work with SSDs (and only SSDs) from the start. Since the objective is to get you online fast local storage does not need to be abundant: it needs to be fast and cheap. Nowadays 4 or 8 GBs of fast flash memory will be faster AND cheaper than almost any HDD, so Google choose to impose flash memory. Software-wise ChromeOS is little more than a Linux kernel, X , Clutter and the Chrome Browser, which is probably the fastest route to starting a browser. So thanks to it's minimalistic software stack and focus on local storage speed over capacity ChromeOS gets you online fast on inexpensive hardware. There are however some drawbacks.

Where ChromeOS fails

There is one huge drawback to this approach: if you can't get online, what you can do with the machine is severely limited. Of course the machine is not completely useless when offline: thanks to Google Gears you will still be able to write in Gmail or Google Docs, but that's pretty much it. That's where you see that this was not designed for netbooks, because netbooks are supposed to be able to still perform acceptably when offline, while with ChromeOS offline is an afterthought. Another difference is that a netbooks can run some pretty heavy applications: the GIMP works fine on an Atom processor and playing local video is OK as long as it is not in HD. ChromeOS on the other hand relies on Youtube and lightweight online apps to do pretty much everything, meaning you will not get the same level of functionality as a netbook, even when online.

The future of mobile computing?

ChromeOS is not the future of mobile computing, but a part of it. The way I see it mobile computing is branching in 3 main categories:

- Full laptops: These run mostly Windows (or in some cases Linux or OSX), have powerful processors, DVD drives etc... They only run for about 3 hours on batteries and weight 4 pounds or more but have a lot of local storage and are functional even without an internet connection.

- Netbooks: These run Moblin, Ubuntu netbook remix or Windows starter edition. They are lightweight multi-purpose computing devices that feature an Atom, Neo or CULV processor. battery life is up to 8 hours, local storage in up to 250 GBs. They can still work fairly well when not on the network.

- Smartbooks: These run ChromeOS or Windows CE. They are cheap single putpose devices that have one main function: get you on the web. They very portable and have exceptional battery life, but have little local storage and thus are not very useful when disconnected for long period of time (like when you travel).

The idea behind ChromeOS is really that consumers should have a full laptop or desktop as their main computers and purchase a ChromeOS device as a companion to use when on the road. This is close to the idea of the original EEPC 701. The problem is that in places where mobile bandwidth is still selling at premium prices and access points are rare ChromeOS devices may end up being either very expensive to keep connected or very useless as soon as the user's leave the range of their home's wifi network. Add to that the fact that a lot of online video content (like Hulu) is only available in the US and the usefulness of the machine as a source of multimedia is very compromised when you consider the international market. ChromeOS is a good idea in places where you have the network infrastructure and online media content to support the model. Unfortunately this is not the case in most countries beside the US.

Linux mint 8 is here

2009-11-30T04:18:00.000-08:00

Just a small post to inform you that Linux Mint 8 (aka Helena) is here. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu 9.10 (aka Karmic Koala), but includes DVD, java and flash support in the default installation, meaning that most users won't have to install any extra packages after the initial setup. For those that want the extras though a graphical software manager is available. The update system has been revamped: not only does it gives you a rating for the impact of most updates, but you can now configure the system to ignore updates completely, as well as configure what information appears in the update manager. It is also easier to perform OEM installs, a good thing if you are installing Mint for someone else. As usual the Linux Mint theme is very polished and looks very elegant. New user can rely on an updated user guide in pdf format to help get them started. On the technical side, you get the kernel 2.6.31 and Gnome 2.28 which include quite a few improvement if their own. You can download Linux Mint 8 from here!

Silverlight multi-platform support is falling apart.

2009-11-25T00:47:00.000-08:00

I had previously pointed out that the lack of supported platforms was a serious problem for Silverlight, especially when compared to Flash. The root of the problem was that Moonlight, the Linux version of Silverlight, is usually at least one release behind the Windows and mac versions of Silverlight. This caused confusion for developers as it was not clear which features would work on Linux. Rather than working to fix the problem it seems that Microsoft is making it worse by introducing Windows only features in Silverlight 4.

The need for COM

One of the most widely used api in Windows is COM. With it you can access almost anything on a Windows machine and that makes it a very powerful tool for developers. The problem is that it is a technology that only exists on Windows and that you can't easily retrofit it in OSX or Linux. Here comes a choice for Microsoft: either they give Silverlight developers access to COM, which will strongly increase the usefulness of Silverlight on Windows but will fragment the Silverlight market even more, or they don't and try to unify their supported base to compete with Flash. They choose the first option.

Silverlight gives the multi-platform market to flash

What I get from this decision is that the objectives Microsoft had with Silverlight have changed. It looks like competing with flash in the wider, multi-platform market is taking a back seat to the introduction of new functionality. What Microsoft is pushing is Silverlight as the default web based development platform for Windows, with some limited compatibility with non Windows platforms. This goes in the opposite direction to Adobe Flash which seems to favor a consistent set of functionality and compatibility across all platforms. Flash is not only available on Windows, Mac and Linux, but also on the Wii, and soon an ARM version should be released for smartbooks. And that does not even cover gnash, the open source version of flash that is more or less to Flash what Moonlight is to Silverlight. In short, Microsoft is giving up the multi-platform market to Adobe.

The impact for the developers

With many Linux based web devices based on ChromeOS in the works for next year and OSX market share on the rise, choosing Silverlight as a web development platform need to be carefully considered. The developer needs to be fully aware that some Silverlight 4 functionality will not be available if cross platform support is required (and on the web it is almost always required). If Linux support is to be assured the situation is even worse, as targeting anything above Silverlight 2 level could possibly break compatibility with Moonlight until late next year. This makes Adobe Flash the safer choice for Web development.

Is Silverlight COM support useless?

There are however cases where the COM support in Silverlight 4 will be useful: for enterprise development. If your company is a Windows shop you can use Silverlight 4 to develop very powerful web applications that run straight from the company intranet. You need of course to be sure that the application will not have to be made available to external customers that may use other clients. In these 'intranet' scenarios the addition of COM to Silverlight 4 is clearly a benefit and is indicative of the will of Microsoft to reposition Silverlight as an "enterprise" technology as well as a "web" technology.

Has PC gaming lost it's way?

2009-11-20T01:25:00.000-08:00

Even if I my Linux netbook is my main machine nowadays, there is one thing for which it can't replace my trusty Windows XP desktop: gaming. I have long been a fan of playing on the PC rather than on consoles because in my opinion a mouse is required for the type of games that I like (FPS, RTS, RPG) and there are many more quality games available on the PC in those genres, some of which are even free. The problem is that my recent PC gaming experience has been less than stellar, making me consider consoles more and more as an alternative. Here are some of the main issues with modern PC gaming:

It takes forever before I can play

I haven't played Battlefield 2 for a few months, but 3 weeks ago I wanted to have a quick game online, only to find that no servers were available. After investigation it turns out that a 1.5 Gb patch was released, and that I have to download it before I can play online. Granted, the patch adds many maps so it is not all negative, but there was no hope of a quick game: the soonest I would be able to play would be tomorrow. I had a similar issue with Runes of Magic, a free MMORPG inspired by World of Warcraft. I had not played for some time, and when I wanted to have a look there again, it started by several hours of patch downloads and installation (and I am on a 6 Mbps ADSL connection). Although I do like that game publishers add new free content to their games, the update mechanism clearly needs improvement. Either there needs to be a way for that patching to be brought to my attention before I want to play the game (because when I want to play the game, I want to play the game, not patch it!), or the publisher needs to ensure that the game can start while the client is being updated, for example by keeping some servers compatible with older versions of the client.

Selling half finished software.

Recently I started playing League of Legends, a very good free online RTS / RPG crossover that plays a bit like Demigod. The game was officially out of beta earlier this month. The game is great except for a few things: there are only 2 maps to play on (and one of those is still in beta), the rest of the maps have not been released yet. The in game store that allows you to get "Runes" will only open Monday 23 November, so that part of the game doesn't work yet. If this was a free game still in beta that would not be much of a problem, but not only is the game officially released for a few weeks, but the League of Legends Collector Pack that cost about $30 is already selling on Amazon. It is clear here that people are asked to pay for a game that is only half finished and that is simply not acceptable.

I needs an internet connection to play a single player game

I recently purchased BioShock, which is an excellent single player game. I was surprised however to notice that to play the game you required an internet connection. It is not a problem for me, but there are still people without a broadband connection in many areas of the world. Why don't the publisher give the option to use the internet or the DVD to prove that you actually own the game? It is not as if these "protections" will prevent pirates to copy the game anyway, so why cause a problem for those of your customers that don't have an easy access to the internet?

It's not all bad

Now there are still a lot of advantages to PC gaming. As mentioned a lot of games are free or cheap, extra content can easily be added, the mouse and keyboard interface is a must for some games and online play is often free, but publishers active in the PC gaming market should not fall asleep at the wheel: if the issues mentioned above are not fixed PC gaming will stop to be the platform of choice for a lot of gamers.

Is Ubuntu broken?

2009-11-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

There seems to be quite a few concerns and complains about recent Ubuntu releases. Are there really that many regressions and instabilities with the latest releases of Ubuntu? Probably! Should we accept that in a production OS? No, but there is something that a many people tend to forget: the primary objective of these interim releases is not stability. I think that a lot of people tend to dismiss the Ubuntu release cycle, and for a good reason: that cycle is not a perfect solution. Lets look at the problem in detail:

Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 regressions

No one can argue that the two most recent releases of Ubuntu have been full of problems. The 9.04 release brought a lot of regressions and instabilities with the Intel video driver, which unfortunately is the most common graphic adapter in use. The 9.10 version seems to have it's own share of problems with a lot of people reporting troubles after upgrading in the Ubuntu forums. This certainly discredit Ubuntu as a consumer ready OS, but the problem is that Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 do not aim to be consumer ready but merely a rehearsal for the next LTS version of Ubuntu!

Ubuntu's misunderstood release cycle

Let's look in more detail at the Ubuntu release cycle. Every two year we get a Long term support (or LTS) release. That release is supposed to be stable, consumer ready and widely used. Currently the LTS release is version 8.04 and there are very little issues with it as long as you install it on supported hardware. In addition every 6 month you get an interim Ubuntu release. That release is not intended for mainstream users but rather for people who want (or need) the bleeding edge in Linux packages, drivers and kernel. They are not meant to used for extended period of time, so they have a short support cycle of only 18 months. The long term releases on the other hand is supported for a much more comfortable 3 years, and you can upgrade from LTS to LTS without ever having to touch an interim release.

LTS releases are the true consumer Ubuntu

If you take the time to think about it the message is clear: if you just want to use your Ubuntu computer without having to muck around too much with the OS, just install the LTS release and skip the interims! My MSI wind running Ubuntu 8.04 is still working fine, but Ubuntu 9.10 would not work with it. Interim releases don't focus on stability and reliability, that's the job of the LTS release, they focus on new features. You are probably wondering then why so many people install interim releases and complain about stability then? Well, it is part ignorance, but also part of a far more sinister issue with LTS.

The problem of Long Term Support releases

There is a major problem with LTS though: If you just bought a brand new computer, there are chances that some of the hardware won't work with Ubuntu 8.04. After all, the OS was released more than 18 months ago, in the meantime new hardware has appeared, and it was not possible at the time to included drivers for devices that did not even exist. As an example I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One for my wife and wanted to replace Linpus Linux by a newer version of Ubuntu or Linux Mint. In the end I used Linux Mint 7 (based on Ubuntu 9.04) because there were too many driver issues with Ubuntu 8.04. In the end it was easier to fix the problems with the Intel display driver in 9.04 than to sort out all the other issues with 8.04. Note that I won't upgrade the machine OS anytime soon, maybe I will reinstall when the next LTS release is available if it solves the few remaining issues.

The problem with interim releases

Interim releases have the opposite problem: they include bleeding edges software and drivers, but these have not been tested by a large amount of users, and as a result regressions and breakages are fairly common. Canonical started working on Ubuntu 9.10 six months ago, while Ubuntu 8.04 probably has 2 years worth of troubleshooting and patching behind it. It is not difficult to guess which release will be the best as far as stability is concerned. In 3 to 6 months Ubuntu 9.10 will be a lot better as the biggest issues are fixed by patches, but when that happens people will only talk about Ubuntu 10.04, and most of them will say that it is not as stable as 9.10. In my opinion it takes 3 to 6 months after initial release for an Ubuntu version to be ready for mainstream users. The problem is that by that date most users consider it outdated.

So is Ubuntu broken

I don't think so, at least not more than most other Linux distributions. The problem is that we have two kinds of Linux desktops with their own problems. On one side you have the sedate LTS releases that are stable and ready for the average user, but may be incompatible with newer hardware and software. On the other side you have the bleeding edge interim releases with all the their problems and breakneck 6 month release cycles. Most problems arise when someone wanting a long term solution (a LTS) is forced to use an interim release instead because of hardware compatibility. Is there a solution to this? Ubuntu could make LTS releases every year, reducing the problem. They could invest more in backporting drivers and applications to the current LTS (although this can be problematic since drivers are part of the kernel). Better driver support from hardware manufacturers could probably help too. In the end there is probably no perfect solution.

Desktop Linux needs salesmen!

2009-11-04T03:33:00.000-08:00

Many Linux enthusiast are despairing of the low uptake of desktop Linux and its poor availability in high street shops. This is especially frustrating because most of the people using desktop Linux would consider it to be a superior solution to the Windows based machines on offer (and it probably is). I think I have fingered one of the causes for this problem though: desktop Linux needs salesmen!

To illustrate this principle I'll use the following anecdote from Rich Dad, Poor Dad:
One day a Journalist was interviewing the author of that best-seller. The journalist being a writer herself asked the successful author what she should do to produce a best seller like he did. Much to her surprise he told her: 'You should follow some sales training!' The Journalist was shocked and said: 'I want to be a writer, not a saleswoman, why would I lower myself by studying sales techniques?' The successful author took his book, turned it around and said: 'Here it says that I am a best selling author, not a best writing author!'

Now let's transpose that to the world of operating systems: there are many talented developers and programmers that are working on desktop Linux but there are very few talented salesmen that are working on selling desktop Linux. The result: desktop Linux doesn't sell! Of course, it sells to some people, the people "in the known", but it doesn't sell well to the mass market. It doesn't sell in high street shops because no one is selling desktop Linux to the big electronic retail chains. There is no advertising of desktop Linux so there is not an overwhelming demand for it, so the retailers won't stock Linux machines.

Let's try to see this from the point of view of the retailer. What he wants to do is sell as many computers as possible. He can do this 2 ways: either he sells a product that many people want, or convince people to buy what he has. Now predicting what people want is easy for heavily marketed items like iPods and iPhones, but it is much more tricky for computers. When it comes to computer operating systems a retailer is much more likely to stock something fairly generic and to convince its customers to purchase what he has, even if that is not the best product for that customer, or not exactly what that customer wants.

If we follow the reasoning above what desktop Linux needs is either:

- Salesmen who go "sell" desktop Linux to OEMs first, then to retailers and to a lesser extend consumers. This is the "top to bottom", sell what you have approach. The problem is that you need to have a very efficient selling structure and organization to do that. Ubuntu had some success selling Desktop Linux to Dell and Google seems to be gaining some traction with ChromeOS but beyond that there is currently not much progress being done.

- A lot of very visible advertising to consumers to generate a lot of consumer demand for desktop Linux. This is the "bottom to top", sell what the customer wants approach. The main problem is that this require not only a good marketing organization but also a large advertising budget, things that desktop Linux lacks right now.

The fact is that there are many projects and organizations devoted to maintaining and improving Linux, there are a few organizations devoted to the promotion of Desktop Linux, but there are almost no organizations devoted to the sales and advertising of desktop Linux. I think that one of the reasons why the Firefox browser is much more successful than desktop Linux is because the Mozilla foundation invested much more time and energy in advertising and promoting of Firefox as a product than most Linux distribution have. As long as Linux distributions focused on the desktop do not put much more effort in their sales and adverting desktop Linux will remain a "best writing" operating system rather than the "best selling" OS it deserves to be.

5 ways to connect to the internet while on holiday abroad

2009-10-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post I recently went on holiday abroad to the small Greek island of Kos. Since beside being a blogger I am also a stock investor I pretty much require to occasionally connect to the internet to check my emails and stocks. Even on a small foreign island there are several internet connection options, but some are more impractical or expensive than others. Here is a review of the possibilities you will be presented with when trying to connect to the internet from abroad.

Wifi connection in the hotel room

Some foreign hotels now offer the option of a wifi connection in your own room against some "per day" payment. This is the easiest option if you have a laptop or netbook: you can surf the internet in the privacy of your own room and on your own computer. additionally you do not have to move your computer, which can be significant advantage if you have a traditional 15 or 17 inch laptop instead of a netbook. The downside is that unless your hotel also has a conference center or is very modern that option is unlikely to be available.

Internet cafe in the hotel lobby

Most hotels that do not have wifi available do have a few computers in the lobby (or in a small room on the side) that you can rent. There are several disadvantages to this mode of internet connection: first it is usually expensive (in my case more than $5 an hour), then the computers don't look very well maintained, so the risk of viruses keyloggers is high, the browser software may be in a foreign language and finally privacy is not very good if the computers are in the hotel lobby.

Independent internet cafe

In a touristic place where internet connections in the hotels are not common you are likely to find independent internet cafes around the hotels. These have two major advantages over computers found in the hotel lobby: the price (less than $3 an hour in my case) and the state of the computer. Even abroad most internet cafe owners are somewhat knowledgeable and will keep their machines free of viruses and other nastiness. Privacy and foreign language software can still be problems though.

Bar with a free Wifi connection

These will require you to look around a bit, but some bars do offer access to a free Wifi connection to their customers. If you have a netbook or iPhone this is a great solution as this is essentially free (as long as you were going to purchase a drink anyway) and since you use your own equipment the risk of keyloggers is non-existent. The only problem is that it can get clumsy if you have a full size notebook rather than a netbook, as the tables are sometimes quite small.

Using your 3G connection abroad

Most foreign countries now have some 3G network that can support a mobile data connection and most operators will offer mobile data roaming when they customers are on holiday abroad. This is however a very bad solution because of one main factor: cost! In Kos for example the data roaming cost for me is $4 per MEGAbyte. This means that anything beside checking subject lines in you webmail or the overview of your stock portfolio can quickly become VERY expensive, so this connection method has to be kept for emergencies only!

Android begins to gain wider acceptance

2009-10-20T04:06:00.000-07:00

There are many Linux based mobile platforms available today: Maemo, Openmoko and Android. Of these, it is probably Android that has created the most noise in and out of open sources circles. Until now however there have not been many successful devices running Google's mobile OS, and the ones that exist didn't present much of a challenge to the iPhone. Things are starting to change however.

HTC: finally some decent hardware.

The first manufacturer to release an Android powered smartphone was HTC with the Dream G1 (pictured up left, picture cc by pandemia). This was far from being a success: the operating system felt unfinished and the hardware was clunky. The lack of a virtual keyboard and an headphone jack were inadmissible sins on something supposed to go head-to-head with the iPhone. Google and HTC quickly learned from their mistakes and released Android 1.5 with virtual keyboard support and the new HTC Hero with a standard 3.5 headphone jack (pictured right, picture cc by laihiu). This better model was followed by the HTC Magic, a slightly cheaper version without the headphone jack. HTC's offer is now completed by the HTC Tatoo, a cheaper model with Android 1.6 and an headphone jack, but with a lower resolution screen. This allow HTC to cover the full gamut of smartphones: an expensive all-rounder, an affordable surfing machine and a cheaper, music oriented phone.

The carriers are interested

Up until now carrier enthusiasm for Android was tepid at best. It looks like this changed yesterday when Verizon declared war on the iPhone in a commercial aired during the NFL football games. To my knowledge this is the first time that I see a wireless carrier make such a push for an open smartphone platform. It is true that there have been massive campaigns for closed platforms like the iPhone, but never for Linux based systems. I am pretty sure that the people in Redmond and Cuppertino are not happy right now!

Other manufacturers are joining HTC

If currently all Android phones are made by HTC, this is quickly changing. Motorola, one of the biggest global cellphone manufactures is fully commited to Android and is preparing to launch 2 models this year. The first one, the Cliq should be available soon. The second model, codenamed "shole" is more of a prototype, but could still be released this year. Motorola actually dumped its own 'in house' Linux based OS to join the Android cause. This is important because Motorola has a lot of experience with mass market phones and already released very successful models like the Razr. We should also soon see devices that are Android powered but are not phones, like the future "dual booting" Acer netbook.

Conclusion

With only 3 million devices sold and much critiscism over its app store, Google's Android platform failed to make a major splash this year. I think that this was because Android was a new untested and immature system. This year however the OS has matured tremendously, more devices have been released at attractive price points and carriers are finally getting on board. If 2008 was the year of the iPhone, 2010 will be the year of the Android.

Why the international Kindle is an achievement.

2009-10-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

Amazon announced earlier this week that the Kindle would finally be available for international orders, and with Wispernet included. That's right, for $279 you can now purchase a Kindle for use outside of the US. Non US readers like me are probably inclined to say: not too soon! When looked at in more details however, the challenges Amazon must have faced to bring the Kindle to the international market must have been huge.

International licensing right: a nightmare.

Remember when Amazon had to pull 1984 from the Kindles of everyone that purchased the book? That was because whoever sold them the rights to publish the book on the Kindle didn't have them in the first place. This shows how difficult it is for a company to manage copyrights when you have to "publish" a book to a new format like the Kindle. Now when you go to the international market these problems are multiplied: not only is there the possibility that the rights to a single book are owned by different publishers in different countries, but the copyright "rules" may also be different. That means that for each single book Amazon may have had to sign several contract with different publishers and on different terms.

Dealing with mobile providers

Filling the Kindle virtual library with books is only half of the problem, the other half is delivering them. This means that Amazon needs to have a "roaming" contract with a sufficient number of international network providers to make the whispernet financially viable. Don't forget that in some countries mobile bandwidth is much more expensive than in the US. negotiating something like whispernet in places where mobile bandwidth is billed above $1 per megabyte must have been a real challenge! To be honest, some "network heavy" features like the blogs will not be available to international users, and I suspect it is for that reason: the mobile bandwidth cost would make this too expensive in some countries.

Still, when looking at all the challenges that Amazon had to overcome to bring the Kindle to the international market you have to admire them for pulling it off.

European OS market share: the rise of OSX

2009-10-08T00:44:00.000-07:00

Most of you are probably aware of the huge market share gains made by Apple's OSX operating system in the US. Currently Apple practically owns the high end (above $1000) laptop market, and it's US market share is well above 10%. One problem for Apple was that these gains were limited to the US market and didn't extend to the international market. That seems to have changed in the last 6 months however.

The problems of Apple in Europe

The second largest market for Apple after the US is clearly Europe, led by Germany, France, Spain and the UK. These 4 countries alone probably represent a market of 200 million people. Up to this year however the market share of OSX stayed between 3 and 4 percent in Europe, mostly because of high price and low distribution. With the crash that the dollar experienced in the last 2 years Apple product have ended up being significantly more expensive in Europe than in the US. Here are a few examples: the cheapest Macbook available in Europe costs 949€, which translates to $1300. The cheapest Mac Mini goes for 599€, or around $850! Add to this the fact that until last year Macs were not widely available in Mediamarkt (the European equivalent of Best Buy) and you have poor conditions for Mac adoption.

The rise of European Macs

Things have changed the last year though: major electronic retailers are now selling Macs. The iPod craze allowed Apple to create a relationship with these distributors, so when consumer started to look for alternatives to the poorly accepted Windows Vista these shops started pushing Macs. The result is that following the latest study of the AT institute Apple managed to gain significant market share in Europe despite the high prices. Of the 4 countries analysed, only Spain still has an OSX population that falls under 5%. This is understandable because this was the poorest of the 4 countries covered by the study: in Spain Macs did start from a much lower market share because historically they were too expensive and could not gain any significant market share because of price.

More than 5% market share is significant!

Why is that 5% market share significant? Because it means that OSX can be considered a mass market in Europe, and not a US only phenomenon. This open the door for OSX to become a significant global player, and this at the expense of Microsoft Windows. In the last 6 months OSX market share gained close to 1%, Linux was either flat or progressed a little, and Windows fell. If we exclude Spain, Windows market share now hoovers around 92%, an all-time low. This indicates a significant change of attitude from European consumers that does not bide well for Microsoft.

Why Microsoft won't fight moblin

2009-09-28T01:45:00.000-07:00

There have been quite a few Moblin related announcements these last weeks: The release of the final version of Moblin 2.0, the Moblin Garage and the preview release of Moblin 2.1. More interesting is the news released by Microsoft's Silverlight team that they will develop Silverlight 3 for Moblin. Unlike Moonlight that is a Novel sponsored open source rewrite of Silverlight available for all Linux distribution, this looks like a binary only package that will be developed directly by Microsoft and made available only for Moblin. Microsoft porting it's technologies to Linux, WTF... Well it doesn't look that far fetched once you think a little bit further.

Intel has a problem

For the past 20 years Microsoft and Intel have been the best of friends: Intel was releasing more and more powerful chips and Microsoft released more and more powerful operating systems to use them. This worked well until a problem cropped up: Intel was not able to increase a processor's frequency anymore. To get out of the the problem Intel tried to put several processor cores on one chip. This only worked to some extent in the consumer market, as most users don't benefit much from having more than 2 cores in their computers. Intel management quickly realized that if they wanted to continue selling CPUs to consumers they would have to sell more chips for less money.

The rise of the Atom

To reach that goal they created the Atom processor, a chip that would propel the Netbook category to the forefront of personal computing and sell countless millions of devices. The chip could also be scaled to Nettops and in the future smartphones, set-top boxes and consumer electronics. Intel is on the verge of attaining its goal: selling a lot of cheap devices with it's processors inside. A problem appeared on the horizon however: Microsoft did not want to play ball!

The price of Windows

Most of these cheap new netbooks and nettop are breaking the relationship that kept Microsoft and Intel happy for so many years: the chips can't support new advances in operating systems (like Windows Vista). Worse, because of the low price of the machines Microsoft can't charge much for Windows on these machines, opening a market for Linux. Linux on netbooks is not much of a problem for Microsoft as long as the interface makes it clear that the netbook is a "device" and not a multi-purpose computer with a start menu and applications able to rival Windows. Once that consumers started to install Windows XP on netbooks and that Linux manufacturers started to release distributions that featured the same interface and capabilities as a Windows computer, Microsoft had no choice but to enter the marked with a very discounted version of Windows.

Moblin: the return to the computing device

Microsoft does not like the current situation, what they want is for the price and capabilities of netbooks to increase so that they can sell more expensive versions of Windows (such as Windows 7). What Intel wants is to continue to sell more and more cheaper chips, meaning that they want the price of netbooks to go down. For this they need an operating system that is not only cheap (or free) but also one that doesn't look like a traditional computer. Why? Because they don't want consumer to purchase these device to replace their computers but in addition of their current desktops or laptops. Because of this Moblin is designed with most of the capabilities of a full computer, but with an interface that is more suited to a mobile use than a desktop use.

What is in for Microsoft?

This is actually a win for Microsoft too as this clearly differentiates Moblin "devices" from Windows "all purpose" computers. Microsoft can continue to sell more expensive versions of Windows on more expensive computers with a traditional desktop interface without fearing too much the competition from the cheap Moblin powered netbooks: these don't look like Windows computers and are clearly for a different purpose. When an OEM complains about the price of Windows 7, now it can be told: use Moblin on your line of cheap netbooks that are companion devices and install an expensive version of Windows on higher end models that can replace a "full" computer. It is in Microsoft's interest to insure that Moblin is a good platform for basic tasks like surfing the web (hence the Silverlight port) to ensure that users don't install Windows in its place as long as the most advanced computing tasks are more intuitively done in Windows.

Moblin vs Windows?

Moblin is a Linux that is very different from Windows: the emphasis is clearly on web based applications, social networks, contacts etc... It is half way between a computer and a smartphone or PDA. It can of course run powerful Linux applications (otherwise users may replace it with Windows or a more desktop-like Linux distribution), but it is not the focus. Windows on the other hand is designed for desktop computing and powerful applications. The web takes a back seat to what is installed locally on the machine. Of course it can run web applications, just like Moblin can run local applications, but that is not the focus.

Conclusion

Moblin is the solution to the problem of Intel: providing a free, lightweight and powerful OS to sell cheaper netbooks and devices. This allows Microsoft to get out of the "bargain basement OS" market and to focus on a more expensive, higher end market with Windows 7. The differentiation between both OS is large enough to ensure that most people won't buy a Moblin device to replace their computer but to complement it. It suits Microsoft better if consumer purchase a Windows 7 desktop AND a Moblin netbook than if their purchase only a cheap Windows XP netbook.

I am back

2009-09-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

My regular readers may have noticed that i didn't post for some time. Well there is a simple explanation: I went on holiday to Kos, a nice little Greek island. This made me realize all the challenges of keeping yourself connected when you don't have an internet connection at home.

This also made me realized how helpful a netbook actually was in these kind of situations, as some bars do offer free access to their Wifi access points if you bring your own computer. Internet cafes were they "rent" you a desktop for an hour or two cost a lot on the other hand, so my netbook saved me quite a few bucks in the last 2 weeks!

How the web changed the way we shop: a keyboard retail story!

2009-09-09T03:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I went into town to shop for a new computer keyboard. I could have bought one on the web but I wanted the item before the week-end, so I could not wait for it to be delivered and decided to shop at retail. A computer keyboard is a fairly common item and I expected to find a suitable model quite easily, but I actually ended up at 7 different shops before I finally made a purchase. How did that happen? Ten years ago I would not have done that.

What happened was that I did perform some research on the web for the best keyboard and the average retail price of the models I might want to purchase. At the first shop they has a suitable model, but it was sold for a full 50% more than the average retail price if purchased on the web, so I walked out. The second shop I entered had very good price, but only offered one model and it was out of stock, so I was out of luck. I then decided to try the shop that sold Macs around the corner, but they only sold apple branded keyboards. Apple keyboardsare great, but I am not ready to pay the $50 retail price, it's only a keyboard even if it is a stylish one. Mac accessory retail is obviously a lucrative business. The 4th shop was also flat out of stock on keyboard, and the next one was exceptionally closed.

When I entered the 6th shop my attention was drawn by a big sign: "sale today: buy two items and the second is half price". My hopes of a retail bargain were quickly squashed though: the shop only carried fairly high end wireless keyboard models that were overkill for my purpose, and I did not have any need for anything else in the shop, so the wonderful retail offer was not so wonderful after all. Finally I purchased my keyboard on my way out of town at a large entertainment shop that is part of a local retail franchise. That shop had a wide assortment of keyboard models from Logitec and Microsoft, and the prices were close to the best deals I could find on the web. The Microsoft branded keyboard I purchased cost me about $20 and is very pleasant and silent to type on.

So how did the web change the way we shop at retail?

Ten years ago when a consumer entered a shop he or she usually had very little knowledge of what products existed and at what prices. Some compared the offers of 2, maybe 3 retailers, but that was it. The salesman could afford to sell equipment above the average price, or to carry only high end items. If the same situation had happened ten years ago I would have purchased either the overpriced keyboard of the first shop or the apple keyboard of the third shop. Maybe I would have waited for the first shop to restock, but I doubt it.

Nowadays a lot of consumers do some product research on the web and compare the prices and models on several sites before they go to the shop. When they push the store door they already know what category of product they want, how much they will pay for it and probably which models and which brands they would consider an acceptable retail purchase. The salesman job is not to convince his clients to purchase the items he has in stock anymore, but to have in stock what his clients have already decided they want to buy.

Also web retail has the typical consumer spoiled for choice. With practically every model available on the web consumers are much less willing to settle for a second choice or an unknown brand than before. If the model they want is not in stock they don't buy an alternative, they just go look somewhere else, confident in the knowledge that they can always buy the model they want on the webshould "brick and mortar" retail fail to provide it.

Why Linux does not look like Windows

2009-09-02T02:27:00.000-07:00

One interesting remark I read in some comments is that Linux distributions are not successful because they don't look enough like Windows. Apparently if someone completely copied the interface of Windows and slapped that on top of Linux, Windows users would migrate in droves and Microsoft would be bankrupt. Well, not really. Let me explain.

We can nor plagiarize the Windows interface.

A lot of people agree on the fact that Microsoft copied the MacOS interface when creating Windows. Does Windows look exactly like MacOS? Absolutely not, if it did you can bet that Apple's lawyers would quickly have sent cease and desist letters to Redmond. The same is true for Linux: if a distribution copied the Windows interface to the point that users could be confused in believing that the Linux distribution actually was Windows, that distribution would quickly be taken to court. Remember the story of Lindows? In that case it was only a name!

We should not copy the Windows interface.

There are two major reasons why Linux distributions should not blindly copy the Windows interface. First because it not the best interface for everybody. Most people switched to Linux for a reason, usually because they didn't like something with Windows. That may very well be the interface! Even if the Windows interface is very familiar to a lot of people that does not make it the best interface there is!

The second reason is that Linux is different from Windows, so the interface should reflect that. For example in Windows the "Add / Remove program" applet is not very important as it is only used to remove programs. Many people may never bother with it and it is OK to bury it somewhere in the control panel. In Ubuntu the "add / remove program" applet is much more important as it is needed to install new applications and customize your computer to your purpose. As a result it should have a much more important place in the interface.

Delivering a familiar interface.

Some distributions like Linux Mint manage to deliver a very Windows-like interface while remaining true to Linux. The start menu, system tray and windows switchers stay where they are in Windows, but the theme and colors are very different from Windows. This way new Linux users will find their bearings easily, but will never be unaware that they don't use Windows. The start menu has been customized so that the "Add / remove program" applet is much easier to reach to reflect it's bigger role on a Linux system.

The future

There is no doubt that the user interface is one of the most important part of a desktop operating system, and it is one that has been somewhat neglected up to now. Desktop distributions like SUSE and Ubuntu are starting to change this by making usability studies and polishing the look of their desktops. Soon people will maybe not want Linux to copy the Windows interface but the other way around.