Archive for category Culture
James Gossling: “so long, old friend”
This is what James Gossling posted on his blog yesterday…
Like so many commenters, I also spent the majority of my professional career with Sun technologies, mostly Java. Whatever happens next, it’s a new era that begins. Fortunately, the company with a big G has embraced Java, and that is probably where the future lies, because I have strong doubts about what Oracle will do with Java.
The future of mobile apps is web apps
This conclusion comes from examining the following facts:
- modern smartphones are equipped with a recent, state-of-the-art, JavaScript/CSS capable web browser
- modern smartphones are most often associated with a “always connected” data plan
What this means is that if you need to develop a mobile application that should run on several mobile platforms, you have basically two possibilities:
- learn each different platform and associated SDK, develop and maintain a different version for each of them, not to mention you’ll have to manage distribution/deployment
- write a single web app that will run on all platforms, and be always up-to-date
Easy choice isn’t it? Now I should also add a third fact that will undoubtedly contribute to this trend:
- GWT and GAE make it ridiculously easy to build web apps (including for mobiles)
For example, my new Palm Pre doesn’t come with a facebook app. Why bother? it’s just a link to the mobile version of facebook.com. Maybe it’s not as rich as a native app, but it’s damn close, and the line will get thinner and thinner as HTML5 spreads.
Actually, the Palm Pre is a very good example of this convergence, since the standard SDK uses JavaScript as the development language. So basically, each app on the Pre is a web app!
You can read Alex Nicolaou’s blog post on the Google mobile blog for another view on this subject.
And the winner is.. Palm Pre!
Right the same day I posted an blog entry about my dilemma between Android and Palm Pre for my next phone, I got the latest LUXGSM folder in my mailbox, which features the Palm Pre (“Palm’s very expected tactile phone” according to the folder). So I decided that Android would have to wait, and I got myself the little beast as an early Christmas present…
The device was only available in german, I guess it’s the same version that is sold on the German market. The documentation is in German but I figured it wouldn’t be a problem; plus the device language can be selected at startup, and includes French and English. The keyboard is QWERTZ, but I already use one at work so no problem.
The thing is, you can’t do anything with the phone until you have linked it with a Palm profile, but to do that you must be on a supported network. Unfortunately my SIM card is Orange, so I had to use my wife’s SIM card (which is LUXGSM) to create my profile. After that I could put back in my Orange SIM card and the phone would start normally. Well almost, because I still couldn’t connect to Orange’s data network, even though there is an option to manually enter the data network parameters. As it turned out, this option is useless if your carrier isn’t in the built-in list of known carriers, which of course didn’t include Orange Luxembourg. Fortunately, there is a method to alter this list so that your carrier is recognized, as described in details in this post. After the manipulation, finally everything worked as expected.
I was truly amazed by the Synergy feature, which allows multiple online profiles to be managed seamlessly. In a blink I had added my corporate Exchange account, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, Gmail account and my private e-mail account. Similar contacts from different profiles were linked together (with only a few mistakes that needed to be corrected manually). Events from different online calendars appear together in the same calendar view. This is really a dream for those who might be victims of information scattering: synergy brings it all back together.
When I show my new phone to people, the reaction I get most often is “Ahh, it’s an iPhone copy…”. Actually, the Pre is better than the iPhone in several aspects. First, it has true multitasking, supported by an intuitive and efficient user interface. Second, it was built for the web; it’s OS uses JavaScript as the main programming language, and as I said above the Synergy feature is really a gift of God for those who juggle with several online profiles. Third, unlike the iPhone, you can install applications on the Pre without having to use an AppStore where someone decides which application is suitable and which is not.
So far I’m still amazed with the Pre, but it’s not all pink: for those who like using an app store, Palm’s application catalog is ridiculously small in comparison with Apple’s AppStore; only 51 applications are listed as of today, and no paid apps are available. Apparently Palm is delaying the availability of this feature in Europe for who-knows-what reason. The battery capacity is a bit weak, but I’ve been playing a lot with it so it remains to see how it behaves on a “normal” day. I also have to get used to the sliding keyboard, which is not very natural. But so far, I’m very pleased with my new toy 
10/GUI – 10 fingers interaction
I’ve always been conscious of the limits of today’s machine-human interfaces. Our most common interaction device, the mouse, has been what really allowed computers to become mainstream, but multi-touch devices and gesture-based interfaces open the possibility for a whole new level of interaction.
10/GUI takes the multitouch concept to its limit and imagines a 10 fingers desktop interface. Watch the movie, but try to forget the annoying background music…
Why I will not get an iPhone… or a kindle
Oh yes, the iPhone is a wonderful little device. It’s sleek, it’s easy and fun to use, it has internet connectivity and a browser that is quite usable despite the screen size (and that runs GWT applications fairly well…). It has GPS, doubles as an iPod. It has lots of cool and free or nearly free applications. And now the iPhone 3GS has bluetooth tethering, which was the last thing my old Treo 680 can do that the iPhone couldn’t.
I want an iPhone… but i won’t get one.
When I buy a computer, I expect to be the owner of the computer, and as such to be able to do whatever I want with it, namely installing software I choose. I don’t want to let anybody decide for me what is legal or what is moral to install. If I do choose to install something illegal or immoral, I should be responsible before the law or my own consciousness (or God, you choose), not before Apple, Inc. As much as I admire Steve Jobs for what he did for Apple when everyone thought the company was doomed, I strongly feel against Apple’s software distribution policy for the iPhone. But it’s not only about Apple.
Take the kindle case. Amazon has told us that e-books were so much better than paper books, we almost believed it. Then they sneaked into users’ devices and deleted copies of some Orwell books that users had very legally bought. It turns out the seller didn’t have the rights to sell them; but imagine how readers felt when a book they thought they had bought disappeared from a device they thought they owned ? of course I won’t get a kindle either.
Imagine if everytime you ran a program on your desktop computer, a request was being sent to Microsoft to make sure you are granted the right to use it? Oh wait.. isn’t this what Microsoft’s former Palladium architecture does? Well not yet, but if you’ve never heard about it, you should get informed before it’s too late.
Would you buy a car that could run only on fuel from one brand? Or a car that could decide which roads you could and couldn’t take? Or a car that could decide to jettison all gasoline because it was not purchased from an authorized reseller ? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then don’t buy an iphone. Or a kindle.
Google Chrome OS – the browser is the OS?
Last week Google announced its upcoming OS, Chrome OS. More than the fact that Google is entering the OS market, which was expected, the most significant thing about this announcement is the OS name. Chrome is already the name of the web browser that Google launched 9 months ago.
Chrome is without a doubt the fastest browser in existence. It doesn’t really show in standard static HTML/CSS web pages, however bloated they may be, because I believe all browsers are close to the maximum speed that can be reached when displaying this kind of pages. Where Chrome crushes the competition is when running AJAX applications. The GWT application I’m working on is so much faster on Chrome than any other browser, that you easily forget it’s an AJAX app. Firefox is already much smoother than IE, but Chrome is way ahead in terms of executing JavaScript and giving the user instant feedback. There was a time we considered optimizing the server-side processing or the network usage because we thought that was where most time was lost. Good thing we didn’t, because after trying our application on Chrome, we now know that this would have been useless. The slow parts of or applications were only slow because of inefficient JavaScript execution on IE and (to a lesser extent) Firefox.
So, Chrome gives the best user experience for AJAX apps. But what about the overall computer user experience? Google figured that if you “live on the web”, the OS in you computer is probably getting in the way, because it’s designed to do too many things instead of just letting you get on the web. It’s slow to boot, it’s big, it has a lot of things you don’t need and will never use. So the idea of Google is to remove everything but the bare minimum: a kernel (Linux), a windowing system (no details on that, except it will be “new”) and of course a browser (Chrome). The name Chrome OS was then a logical choice, since the most visible part of this OS will be the Chrome browser.
I read a lot of articles saying that Google was now set to fight Microsoft on the OS field. Is this true? Yes and no. Yes, because it will probably take away a significant part of Microsoft’s business, that is computers that are designed for online access. That includes netbooks, but not only: a large and growing part of computer users “live on the web” and don’t use their computers for anything else. No, because there will still be some use cases where Chrome OS will not be an option: gaming, video editing, development, all CPU-demanding activities. And we’re only talking about desktop users of course.
So we have a OS with a minimal Linux kernel, and adopting web technologies as the main application building bricks… does that remind you of anything? If not, have a look there…
Camels and Rubber Duckies
Although this is only remotely relevant to Java and OO, and was written almost 5 years ago, it’s still one of the most eye-opening blog posts I’ve ever read. And fun too.
If you are struggling to find the best price for your software, or simply want to learn “market segmentation for dummies”, read this:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html
Larry Ellison talks about the Sun acquisition…
…and does not even mention Java.
I know it’s only part I, but it’s a little scary anyway.
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Culture category.
