ɔimoɈɒ

CoreData is Apple’s answer to EOF. A standardised way of saving local data which should be addressable in several ways, not least through a sqlite interface.

Google Gears is a method of storing “web data” in an offline mode. For example, making it so that GMail could be available when not “connected”. It’s got similarities but it’s very different.

Wouldn’t that be neat? I’d see that as really being useful to a device like iPhone. When your “low cost” WiFi connectivity might be unavailable, you have an offline cache which saves you having to use your per-MB 3G connection.

A product we’ve got on the drawing board is a a trouble-ticket system. Initially we’ve designed it to support an Apple Authorised Service Provider so it handles booking in machines for repair and goes through the whole process for them. Next, we’re going to be integrating it with Apple’s online systems for checking warranty status and ideally, part availability. After that – a remote rich client so that engineers can work on repair documentation while not in the office (rich clients are so much nicer than web interfaces). After that, an offline mode so that the engineer can create and update repairs on the system and have them synchronise with the server when a link comes up again. There’s more to this, enough to keep us busy.

Google Gears looks very interesting in this light. Even moreso when you realise that it also uses sqlite…

A couple of days ago I ragged on Microsoft for announcing what everyone else was about to ship just as they usually do when caught on the hop.

That said, the Scobleizer has a heap more detail on Surface

• There are a few roadblocks to getting one of these in your home. First, it’s expensive to build one because it needs holographic glass, an enclosure, a projector, two cameras, and a computer.
• Second, they still are working on software so that it actually does something beyond the whiz-bang demos they showed off this morning on stage.
• The demos you are seeing of photos flying out of a digital camera when placed on the device? That requires that digital camera to be synced and “tagged” with a bar code. The table can see bar codes on things, but you’ve gotta stick a bar code on them first.
• Some of the scenarios I saw demoed included scanning of paper and documents. That isn’t yet included in the current version.

Not quite as wiz-bang is it? I honestly don’t see why this will take the world by storm, why popular mechanics is so enthralled with it. A company with bazillions of dollars which has allegedly been working on this since the early 90s has only managed to outshine Jeff Han now? A year after his multi-touch quicktime movie did the rounds? I reckon it took them a year to knock up a demo? (and would it be prudent to ask where all the money went for surface computing since the early 90s if this is all they have to show for it)

As someone in Scoble’s comments put it:

Let me see. Microsoft didn’t make the software. I suppose they didn’t make the hardware either, unless the mouse and keyboard team got involved, right?

Or is it this?: $6 billion to make videos of products that don’t exist.

Quite.

Another comment:

Does it say “End of line” in a menacing deep voice when it shuts down? I’d love to watch Tron on it if that’s the case.

OK. If it has that, I’m buying two.

I want an iPhone and I want it now.

I need a phone with WiFi. I need a phone with a decent browser. I need a phone with a decent mail client. I don’t want to carry a laptop around any more.

And my alternative is to sign up another 18 months with a crapola carrier in order to get a Nokia e65 or n95, neither of which I really want.

My work consists mostly of reading email, responding to same and using Safari for web pages. I have very few needs outside this. None of the smartphones I’ve seen can even manage this half as well. I’m excited about the full-size screen which should give me some decent real estate to work with rather than the postage stamp screens on most phones.

So, I want an iPhone and I want it now.

Todays announcement from Microsoft of “Surface” just smacks of the original Mac-Windows competition from more than 20 years ago.

Apple pre-announced the Mac and then there was a hoopla of bluster from Microsoft about their new Windows platform. Which of course didn’t ship for more than a year and was nowhere near as feature complete. But it got people thinking and waiting for the next big thing.

This time round we had some hubbub about Jeff Han’s multitouch user interface and then Apple pre-announces a product with it – the iPhone. To ship mid-June this year, it’s a great deployment of a fascinating technology (I always speculated that computers should have at least two mouse pointers for manipulation). It has similarities to Jeff Han’s interface for picture manipulation but the interaction with the iPod side of the interface and the way it uses gestures for safari is pure gold.

Microsoft, ever the innovator, has cloned Jeff’s interface. And that’s about it. But, aha, you say – they’ve made it horizontal.

MSNBC (a subsidary venture of Microsoft) says in a rather gushing interview:

When you place your wi-fi enabled digital camera on the table, for example, Surface ‘sees’ the camera and does something extraordinary: It pulls your digital pictures and videos out onto the table for you to look at, move, edit or send. Images literally spill out in a pool of color.

I ahve a funny feeling it won’t be as simple as that unless this is a new breed of Windows that doesn’t require drivers at all. And what if you didn’t want your photos to spill out onto the table. What if you just wanted to use it as a table. These demos are all very well but they’re not really related to reality. To my mind it’s a great toy but one that requires infrared sensors placed around the room to enable the table to see your interactions. It’s not just a table. And not really as interesting as the Reactable.

Microsoft did manage to get Popular Mechanics to gush about how revolutionary this coffee table would be.

Gates could hardly contain himself as he left his fingers play along a surface of smooth plastic which displayed rippling water.

It was just like a pool of water…but without the wet, cool effect.

This device will be shipping by 2008 and will cost $5000 – $10000. Or you can get the iPhone in about 14 days (if you’re in the US) or by 4Q07 in Europe.

My prediction: This will be a success of Mira-esque proportions. Simply relegated to replacing the touch screen kiosks we see everywhere….

Wil Shipley writes a rumour-starter that the iMac is due to be EOL’ed this year. In the interests of getting this started, let’s examine it.

When the Apple Product Matrix was young, it made sense to have an iMac. It fit – showing the product as a friendly consumer-oriented device:
Powerbook
PowerMac
iMac
iBook

Everything else has gone through a rebranding exercise. The PowerMac has become the Mac Pro. The Powerbook, the awkward MacBook Pro. The iBook retired as well in favour of the MacBook. The Mac moniker comes first – it’s a deliberate reinforcement of the Mac brand certainly in areas where it was missing completely (Powerbook, iBook).

So what of the iMac

I think that in a world where Apple has rebranded again, it might be worthwhile wondering where the “Mac” went. We have the MacBook Pro and the MacBook. We have the Mac Pro and then we have the …. Mac mini and iMac.

What I’d like would be for Apple to keep the current lineup and complement the Mac mini with a MacBook mini (something analogous to Sony’s TX-series subnotes) or even the new Metro concept design from Intel.

What Apple will do?

Microsoft announced late on Thursday May 24 that it has cancelled the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) that was slated for this October.

I’m having fun thinking this is because Leopard was delayed until October and Microsoft would need a few months to replicate some of the features.

As the last two PDC conferences (2003 and 2005) were all about Longhorn a client-side operating system that never shipped, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft has nothing to talk about.

As Scoble says: this means a couple of things: no new Windows and no major new Internet strategy this year.

Scoble also writes:There still is a ban on .NET code in core parts of Windows. They aren’t getting enough performance yet from .NET. … letting Microsoft’s developers write .NET code for Windows would unleash a bunch of innovation.

??? I don’t think the coding environment is the most important thing for innovation. Having a culture of innovation is much more important. And that’s not been at Microsoft for such a very long time.

He brings up another point: if Microsoft is unwilling to use it to develop Windows or Office, why should the rest of us base our life on it?

This reminds me of the Win32 API fiasco.

and lastly:

Some other things I’m hearing from the Windows team? That they are still planning out the next version of Windows. So, I don’t expect to see a beta until 2008 (probably second half of the year, if we see one at all) and I don’t expect to see a major new version of Windows to ship until 2009.

You’re kidding, right?

They haven’t finished mapping out what it does mid-2007. And you’re saying we won’t see a major new version until maybe 18 months later? I’m tempted to give this one a major DUH! (especially seeing my comments above on the content of the last two PDC shows). Even on the long finger, expecting a major new version of Windows before 2.5 years has passed seems a rather bewildering measure. It took them how long to get Windows Vista out? Considering it was ON TIME…

Still a grumpy bugger today. Orange still on my mind.

In an earlier post I whined about Skype and Orange.

Without fanfare, SkypeIn now seems to be working. It’s still a little slow connecting first time and sometimes requires a second connection to get the link up but that’s progress at least.

Now. Orange.

They didn’t get back to me.
They sent me another bill for £174.
That means they lied twice. Firstly in saying they would get back to me, secondly in promising that everything would be fixed in the next bill. Their solution now is that their billing integrity team will work it out by the NEXT bill and I have to cancel my direct debit to them. So there’s a good chance (based on the fact that they’ve been unable to keep any promises so far) that I’ll be cut off when they try to get payment on the 2nd June despite their assurances to the contrary. And apparently giving them a month is not enough for them to have sorted out a problem.

Orange will tell you, when you call them, that they are dedicated to providing great customer service. Absolute rot.

I’ve spent countless minutes on the phone to them and right now I hate them. Passionately. It didn’t help that I had three call drops while on the phone to their customer services people. And I wasn’t moving. It meant explaining the issue in full FOUR TIMES. It brings into sharp relief the OTHER problems I’ve been having with:

• Dropped calls while moving. Every time. Seems the software used to handover calls from tower to tower is simply just shit.
• Poor connectivity in Lisburn. And Mallusk. And East Belfast. Which I presume is pandemic because they couldn’t just be picking on me, eh?
• Fast downloads are impossible as every time it fails over from GPRS to GSM and the data rate is pitiful. This happens everywhere. Centre of Belfast. On a hill with direct LOS to a tower. Everywhere. It’s pathetic.
• The general crappiness of the Sony Ericsson K800i. It’s refusing to charge from the wall charger this week and the joystick seems to take notions on when it’s going to work. And the keylock isn’t reliable enough for keeping the phone on your pocket. Muting the sound means you can’t get keyclick back. And the button for surfing the internet is too close to other important keys so I’m continually connecting to OrangeWorld when I just want to hit the “back” button. I won’t wax on about how clunky the email client is or how poor the battery life is. It’s just a crap phone. And I’m beginning to hate it.

So, what are my options. Looking at the other providers, there are very few compelling deals for the UK and the myth of 3G connectivity is proving to be just that.

I’m being enticed by the thought of the Nokia e65 or n95. A phone with decent WLAN would be nice. But is it worth waiting for the iPhone which will undoubtedly be crippled by our local providers insisting on branding it or will it even have a sniff of 3G coverage.

Until our mobile operators sort this out, we’re forever going to be in a technological backwater. It’s certainly not the kind of result you want if you’re a bedouin worker wanting a a good service from a respectable telecoms provider.

As for Orange. They’ve certainly made me passionate about them since they convinced me on bended knee not to leave them in January. Avoid them like the plague. I stayed on with them and talked about the great tariff I was promised. I was very passionate about it. Now – after months of bad billing and customer services representatives who freely admit they’re only there to TALK to you and not actually to SERVICE you, I’m at the end of my tether.

They’re going to have to pull something out of their ass to change my mind now. Starting with their finger.

You can have my heart
Though it isn’t new
It’s been used and broken
And only comes in blue
It’s been down a long road
And it got dirty on the way
If I give it to you will you make it clean
And wash the shame away

You can have my heart
If you don’t mind broken things
You can have my life if you don’t mind these tears
Well I heard that you make old things new
So I give these pieces all to you
If you want it you can have my heart

So beyond repair
Nothing I could do
I tried to fix it myself
But it was only worse when I got through
Then you walked into my darkness
And you speak words so sweet
And you hold me like a child
Till my frozen tears fall at your feet

(Best performed by Juliet Turner IMO)