Craig Hockenberry (Iconfactory & Twitterific) is looking to encourage more developers to request Apple to support the use of Mac OS X Client (Desktop) virtualization and not just the Server version of Mac OS X :

http://furbo.org/2008/03/21/vote-for-virtualization/

Of course I have a vested interest in this and am not without bias on the issue - but all the same he raises valid points…

There’s been some ‘grumbling’ (here and here) about some of the restrictions that are placed on application developers and their products if they use the iPhone SDK.

Many of the commenters seem concerned that the SDK is much more restrictive than ‘regular desktop’ development, with restrictions on running in the background, a lack of access to certain parts of the platform, and pieces of functionality present in desktop Mac OS X but missing from Cocoa Touch.

Why are things so different ? Technical challenges ? No. The reason - in two words is: Legal Liability.

I think Apple is very concerned that there is a danger someone would try to use their iPhone in an emergency (to dial 911) and have it fail because of a failure (or out of control) third-party application. If that happens and lawyers get involved I don’t think they’re going to  go after small  one-person software developers with buggy code. Rather they’ll go for the deep pockets at Apple.

Yes Mac OS X uses protected memory, and is a pre-emptive operating system. But it’s still vulnerable to people using too many resources and there are places in the OS where the failure of one application at the wrong time can lead other applications to fail (for example Disk Notification on the desktop  Mac OS X can cause Finder to stall if you fail to respond to the notification request in a timely manner).

Personally I’m grateful for a little care, attention and large walls in this space - my phone is probably more important than my desktop, especially in an emergency, making sure it’s always there when I need it is very important.

Part of the iPhone SDK is a requirement to spend $99/year if you wish to distribute your application through the iTunes Store.

The $99 also gives you the ability to load your application into your own phone for testing without needing to use the store. Apparently it does this by giving you a certificate which you can use to sign your application, the same certificate needs to be installed into the phone for the application to run.

This is part of Apples mechanism to ensure that only approved (blessed) applications will be distributed through the store - apps on the store will be signed with a different certificate that Apple will control and that certificate will be installed on all iPhones running V2.0 of the iPhone OS.

What about beta testing your application on a larger pool of users than just your phone - testing is always a good thing - but right now it’s unclear how you can distribute your application to a pool of testers and let them install it. Using the store won’t be a good thing because that exposes the app to everyone. Require every tester to have paid $99 for the tools to self-sign (as it’s called) and install the app on their phone ? That seems expensive. Distribute your certificate with each app and have testers install it alongside the app ? Better - but still the question of exactly how is the app installed.

How to test the fruits of your labours seems quite unanswered right now !

One of the things that Google announced with Android (though they’ve revised the rules once already) was a competition with between $25,000 and $275,000 in prize money for the best mobile applications on Android.

Today’s ‘One More Thing…’ announcement from Steve Jobs during the iPhone SDK event was for John Doerr from the VC Partners Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers announcing that they’ve created a $100 million fund to invest in the development of applications for the iPhone. You can find the FAQ here - Kleiner has one of the better track records of picking good tech firms to fund. Gaining their funding would be a huge leg up for any developer !

Frankly I prefer Apple’s approach - it seems a little more professional and a little less like a competition for students !

It what was probably one of the most anticipated and predicted Apple Hardware announcements - Apple today announced new MacBook Pro’s and MacBooks.Like many I’ve been waiting since the beginning of the year to upgrade - my order is now in, it’s supposed to arrive by March 3.  

John Gruber writes :

But, on the other hand, if Apple is charging for the iPod Touch upgrade to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, why is the Apple TV upgrade free? As far as I know, they’re not accounting for Apple TV sales on a subscription basis. I’m left with the feeling that they’re charging $20 for the iPod Touch upgrade simply because they can.

Actually I think Apple did say that they would account for AppleTV revenue on a subscription model - it was one of things that made me realize there would be new features for it, and one of the reasons I was happy to purchase. Unfortunately I cannot now find a reference for that statement.

Also if you’ve not watched Randy Newman’s post keynote performance, you really should - he may be getting old, but he’s still great.

In a post Macworld interview with John Markoff of the New York Times Jobs is quoted :

 “Having created a phone, it’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said. “We’ll see how good their software is and we’ll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted.” In seeking not to get locked out of the mobile phone world, “I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It’s just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners.”

This seems to repeat the assumption of many people that Google will make money from the applications on the platform itself, or from the simple increase in the number of web users (or hours of web use) and the associated likelihood of eyeballs seeing Google provided advertising on the new platform.

I disagree…

I think Google’s most likely stream of revenue from the phone is from delivery contracts with the mobile operators. Today mobile web browsing is a ‘OK’ but problems of poor wireless speeds are compounded by what is a somewhat inefficient approach to the movement of modern web pages, their graphics and the associated elements of the web experience. Google has a widely deployed (Internationally now as well as domestically) topology of data centers and the exceedingly fat pipes that link them. If Google is in a position to ‘own’ the software on the handset and is confident of localized connectivity between the handset and a nearby Google datacenter they can do many things to improve the handheld browsing experience :

• Localized caching of information
• Compression of certain elements above and beyond what’s already done
• Wholesale replacement of the HTTP protocol between the handset and the datacenter to further accelerate browsing.

These sort of things are services that a wireless operator would like to see to differentiate themselves from the competition, it’s also the sort of thing the operator would pay for directly with Google - a single large source of revenue. It can also be easily made part of any opensource project, indeed even done on the iPhone ! Since the real ‘magic’ is the datacenters, their performance and the smart software therein.

Don’t forget that the lead developers of the Android project are the folks from Android Inc. (an acquisition Google made a few years ago). This is the same team behind Danger and the T-Mobile Sidekick - a platform that has a significant service component for which Danger receives revenue from T-Mobile for operating, providing and upgrading.

This sort of thing is a great way for Google to leverage their widely deployed high bandwidth network and datacenters and start getting revenue to cover the cost of all the ‘dark fiber’ they apparently snapped up many years ago.

What’s VMware showing at Macworld ?

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Server in a virtual environment.

This is an ‘out of the box’ install of Leopard running in an early (preview) version of a future VMware product for Mac OS X - yes it’s based on Fusion.

I’m really excited to be able to contribute to this (though I’ve done nothing yet, I’ve only been there a week - and I think that lots of people out there are looking forward to being able to use it too !

I’m writing this ‘live’ whilst I watch the stream of details from MacRumorsLive - I’ve not posted it until the end of the keynote though.

• Airport Extreme with Hard Drive (aka TimeCapsule) - reasonable product idea and the price seems OK. I really hope this means those of us with ‘original’ Airport Extremes can now use Time Machine to an attached drive (otherwise I’m going to be upset).
• iPhone update - looks nice, not a lot to say. Maps with location detection sounds good - depending on accuracy.
• Movie rentals - seems reasonably restricted, price is good too, less than my local movie store and on a par with On Demand pricing from FIOS. Hopefully the catalogue is fully featured.
• Apple TV Take 2 - this sounds like a new box ? Can I upgrade my current Apple TV in any way ? It’s physically capable of much of the listed features, like HD and Dolby 5.1 (though HD playback beyond 720p24 is not currently specified).  If the box is upgradable to the newer software this makes the iOnTV project even better since it can transcode to the HD formats now - just needs AppleTV to support the playback. Aha - apparently it’s a free update in a couple of weeks, and the price for the base AppleTV is cheaper now too, only $229.
• New MacBook Air - certainly thin and lightweight, as a programmer though I don’t think I’m in the sweetspot for this device (though I am looking for a new notebook). 13.3″ screen - larger than some, but probably still too small for me. Does have the multi-touch trackpad - could make for some interesting interaction behaviours - but as a developer would I want to develop and app just for this device (can you reasonably mix two control metaphors - multi-touch vs. mouse ?) Does have a hard drive though, that’s a little surprising since I know Apple has some serious brains looking at Flash based storage right now, aahhh but it has a 64GB Solid State Drive - that makes sense. Core 2 Duo processor, but a little slower than current MacBook Pros. Single USB 2.0 port, but no Firewire so you can add external optical drives (and hard drives), but you’re not going to be capturing video with this. $1799 for a machine with 80GB harddrive and 2GB memory, not bad - but I think the MacBook Pro fits my needs better even if it’s more expensive. I do see Michele looking longingly at this when she does her next notebook upgrade.
• Randy Newman is starting to look a little old - I wonder what song he’s performing (the MacRumorsLive feed doesn’t say) ?