http://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/15/apple-explores-delivering-location-based-content-to-iphone-users/

An example used is Starbucks. If the rumor turns out to be true, iPhone 2.0 would be a perfect testing ground for experiments in social networked location based services. Sitting at Starbucks, order favourite beverage on iPhone, see what’s happening in Facebook on iPhone, use a location based service and see if anyone else is around. Have seen one ad for this kind of service in Facebook so far, but it would be very slick to have it working on 3G GPS iPhone….

In the broader RIA space, JavaFX would be at a distinct advantage over Silverlight and Flash if it is both the most open, and also the most secure. Microsoft and Adobe have an existing image problem worldwide and Sun would be in a good position to manipulate this to it’s advantage….

I’d be surprised that the applications drag out the browser didn’t become a java webstart application - if your interested in security of those - google is your friend - I believe it’s not bad - Sun do take security very seriously - it’s one of the key strengths of the java platform.

I don’t think JavaFX and Apple are really competing at this point. If JavaFX is successful as Sun hope, then lack of support on the iPhone will damage sales in the enterprise where there is often a long tail of custom applications specific to the enterprise that are simply too numerous to clone, but in each individual case is killer for that business.

If that ever becomes an issue for apple it would be an easy step for them to support JavaFX - it’s suppose to open source after all.

Sun’s strategy isn’t to own the market it’s to make sure that no-one else does and locks everyone else out. I’m sure you don’t want to see a Windows like monopoly in the phone space.

If Apple can keep innovating in the hardware space - ie if some of those cool patents every make it to product - then their position in the phone market is assured and will continue to grow apace.

Trying to go for all screens is a big mistake and will be a huge security problem..

Will we need new options and buttons in web browsers to allow/disallow JavaFX out of the browser? Then the security settings and options to turn on/off JavaFX would need to be available and built into the OS rather then just the web browser - moving Java out of a controlled browser environment opens up a new Pandora’s box - How many years would it take for Sun to work with supported OS vendors, like MS, Linux, Mac OS X, to implement the required new security features? I don’t think Schwartz has any focus on this…

Are there any new mechanisms being developed to make sure this new out-of-browser Java technology doesn’t open up new frontiers for system and OS weakness?

I know what you mean about the “in-house” interview thing, but I thought they gave a nod to knowing that it was an odd situation by making it light-hearted (e.g. when will JavaFX be on iPhone?!). I can see how some people would be turned off by that though.

I thought Jonathan Schwartz made a good interviewer; although clearly, there weren’t any tough questions. For example, I’d like to see someone press Jonathan and Rich a bit on this “Java runs on 2 billion phones” thing… and explain how JavaFX is going to eliminate the fragmentation problem. If it does, it’s going to be a truly revolutionary change…

BTW I suspect the reason that tech journalists often don’t ask tough questions, is because they don’t what the tough questions are. That’s not their fault. It’s just that given the spectrum of what they have to cover, and the small amount of time they are able to spend on any particular topic, it’s just impossible for them to do a whole lot of in-depth research.

If you listen to Podcasts like the Gillmor gang, it’s clear that the guys who are really “doing it” know the most, simply cos they’re totally emersed in their subject. So, for example, when Jason Calacanis (Mahalo CEO) is being serious (which isn’t that often - he likes to take the piss a lot!!), he demonstrates better understanding of particular topics than others on there, both from his own work and also, I guess, from networking with high-quality colleagues at Sequoia Capital.

Anyway, as you say, we will get some idea shortly… clearly, the team still have lots of work to do to get JavaFX out of the door. I think Sun has shown they have the ability to ship good-quality software, so I think that now they’re focussed on the consumer side, they will figure out how to do a great job over the coming months…

One of the interesting aspects of this is the realization that if you replaced one of them with a typical journalist the interview would have probably been pretty much the same - as they often discuss all the questions and answers before-hand rather than having a Paxman like battle - it’s often a requirement of getting the interview in the first place.

When Update 10 is out and widely available, when the new plugin is shipping as default, and when JavaFX ships then we will know what they have really achieved.

Sun has some really good engineering talent working on Java, JavaFX, Netbeans, Glassfish etc, including some very good recent recruits.

Despite the talk about being late in the game -
it’s actually a really good time to be writing a new graphics engine/api framework - widespread availability of programmable shaders etc is a massive change that current api’s are not easily able to take advantage of - if they are smart - and I believe they have some very smart people - they will be able to write something that’s extremely fast, feature full and yet have a much simplier basis that the current implementations of graphics libraries.

Search for Neoptica white paper for examples of this type of view.

Anyway we will see shortly…

I’ve updated the content of the blog to reflect that. For more information on JavaFX, I recommend reading Jonathan Schwartz’s blog @:

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/rocking_the_free_world