JavaFX

First, watch for important new developments in the JavaFX platform.  I expect there’ll be more than a few announcements relating to JavaFX.   Up until now, JavaFX has really been of interest only to innovators and early adopters.   It hasn’t been suitable for the so-called “early majority” - a big group of developers that will only begin to adopt new technologies when they’re close to being ready for prime time.  That’s because JavaFX has been missing key features - such as off-the-shelf GUI components, and good visual tool support - that make it easy and productive to develop applications.   Expect big developments on these fronts to be released and/or demo’ed at this year’s JavaOne.   The first real JavaFX Mobile handsets should also be demo’ed too - so people will, for the first time,  get a really good idea of how well these will work.

I’m also hoping for a couple of JavaFX surprises too.  For example - it would be great to see more new partners for JavaFX Mobile announced; and great to learn about the road map for the new integrated JavaFX 2-D/3-D scene graph, that will see JavaFX gain capabilities for high-performance 3-D graphics.

Project Vector aka The New Java App Store

Second, watch out for a brand new offering from Sun called “Project Vector”. Details of this one are sketchy.  What is known is that it’s an app store that leverages the distribution power of the Java installer on Windows; which means that apps might have the potential to be placed in front of hundreds of millions of possible users every year.   Clearly, the devil is in the detail on this one… How will it work?  How will apps be targeted to customers?  How smooth will the installation process of apps be?  How much will it cost?  How will free apps be handled?  How will payments be handled? Will it work for mobile Java ME and JavaFX Mobile apps?  What about the Mac platform?  And Linux and Solaris?  Expect the announcements and demos at JavaOne to answer at least some of the more important questions for this new, potentially rather large app store.

All in all then, this promises to be a rather interesting JavaOne.  It runs from 2 June through 5 June, with CommunityOne starting earlier, running 1 June through 3 June.

Twitter was built using software tools like Ruby on Rails, which is provided as part of Mac OS X

However, Apple forgot to say that for the meat of its systems, Twitter is actually moving increasingly to Scala - a language built on the Java platform.  Why? Because the Twitter folks believe that the Ruby platform isn’t up to the job.  So much for Java being some “heavy-weight ball and chain that no-one uses” (as Steve Jobs once famously said)

Vision 1 - The Boring Option

Vistion 1 is very much “Steady As She Goes”, or what I’d call, “The Boring Option”. The vision here for the new combined organization is essentially - “Oracle as it was before,  but with incrementally  increased revenues and profits from making Sun profitable”

For example, increased revenues would be achieved by selling Sun hardware running Oracle/Sun software; and incremental increases in profits would be achieved by running the Sun business unit profitably through immediate, substantial cost-savings.  There might also be a goal set to increase revenues and profits from Java e.g. from increased license fees. You can dial in the level of instant profitability (leaving out re-structuring charges) here by defining the cost-savings required, and thus the number of jobs that need to be lost.

This is an easy enough way to do M&A; and it can work well enough with the right kind of assets.  It has the benefit that it’s easy for auditors, shareholders, and integration planning teams to understand.  However, whether this is the right way to proceed with Sun’s assets is an open question.  There’s a risk here that “boring”  might become “terminally dull”, with “terminally” being the operative word.

Vision 2 - The Exciting Option

Vision 2 is transformational for Oracle.  It’s what I call “The Exciting Option”. What is it?  Well - ask yourself the question: what does the future of computer systems look like in a ten-year time horizon?   I don’t think there’s any doubt.  It looks like amazing software applications, both “thin” and “rich”, running on all types of client hardware - cell phones, TVs, personal computers - connecting to amazing services running in the cloud.

It’s a huge opportunity, just huge.  The interesting thing is - the combined Oracle / Sun has all the pieces it needs, along with the required resources, to go after it.  So, the exciting vision is something like, “Oracle is the biggest, most profitable computing company in the world, defining the future of how people use computer systems running on any device, for business and pleasure.”

Here, the instruction to the teams is to take a step back, and really try to figure out what can be done with all the combined company’s existing assets today - both in the data center, and on the client; what further investment is needed to accelerate the company towards achieving its new goals; and what barriers to success need to be broken down.  This is not about incremental increases in revenue and profits.  Rather it’s about going after ten times increases.

I know which vision I’d rather pursue.  If history is anything to go by, however, Oracle’s leadership will take a different, rather more conservative view.  You never know, though.  Sun represents a rather different kind of opportunity compared to previous Oracle acquisitions, which only ever had the possibility to deliver incremental benefits; but I’m not holding my breath…

By the way, as a footnote,  if by some chance, Oracle’s leadership is up for a bit of revolution, rather than the usual simple Darwinian evolution, Larry Ellison might even be able to get some kudos from developers by smoothing out some of the smaller bumps in the road himself… like convincing his close friend, Steve Jobs, to allow a fabulous version Java/JavaFX on iPhone

According to Larry Ellison, the key drivers for Oracle wanting to buy Sun were based on Oracle’s core strategy of purchasing industry-leading technologies. In this case, that’s: Solaris - which Oracle rates as substantially the best Unix platform in the world; and Java - the most important software asset Oracle has ever bought, deployed on billions of devices.   Buy owning hardware as well as software, Oracle aims to to deliver complete systems (as opposed to components) engineered to provide superior reliability and security, at no additional cost to the customer.

Oracle says it plans to increase investment in Java.  There are some obvious questions about Oracle’s commitment to the Java platform on the client (at its heart, Oracle is a server-side company - database and middleware).  However, Oracle has been developing client Java applications for a long time so hopefully it understands: the economies that come from allowing the same technologies to run both client and server side; and the value of having one of the largest developer communities in the world, building systems that run on billions of devices.   Hopefully, Oracle also understands that Sun has a deeply impressive software stack (Netbeans IDE, Java/JavaFX, Glassfish, MySQL, VirtualBox etc), favored by some of the smartest developers around the world.  With increased investment, this stack has the potential to dominate the industry.

That’s the story.  It makes some sense at a high-level.  The devil is in the detail when it comes to these things, however - so only time will tell if this is good for customers or not. It will be interesting to see if IBM is now content to sit on the sidelines, or whether it believes there is room to  offer more to Sun’s shareholders, in the form of  hostile bid, than Oracle’s offer, which has the full support of Sun’s Board (Oracle is offering to pay $5.6B for Sun net of debt and cash).

• Do you think that smart Solaris developers will entertain the idea of migrating to AIX?
  • The answer is that they won’t.  They will prefer either Linux, or Windows, or Mac OS X.
• Do you think that smart Swing and JavaFX desktop and mobile developers will entertain the idea of migrating to SWT?
  • The answer is that they won’t.  They will prefer to focus their time on JavaScript web apps, Flex/Flash apps, iPhone apps and .NET apps instead
• Do you think that smart Glassfish developers will entertain the idea of migrating to Websphere?
  • The answer is that they won’t.  They will prefer to focus their efforts on JBoss instead.
• Do you think that smart MySQL developers will entertain the idea of migrating to DB2?
  • The answer is that they won’t.  They would prefer to focus their efforts on PostgreSQL.

I won’t go on.  You get the idea. The point is this:  one of the things that IBM will get when it buys Sun is a bunch of technologies that smart developers really like.   The Sun technology stack of Solaris, MySQL, Glassfish, Java Swing/JavaFX, and the Netbeans IDE is incredible.   Sure, IBM can kill as much of this as it wants.  However, if it isn’t rather careful, it won’t benefit from doing so. Rather, it will push dollars into the hands of others such as Microsoft, Dell, Adobe, Apple, and RedHat; and cost IBM folks their jobs down the line.

I will end this entry with a message to the folks at IBM that are about to wield their axes.  It’s the same message I once gave to someone who was about to make a big mistake on a Friday afternoon during a rationalization exercise I was part of years ago, and it goes like this… The people you fire will leave the company and get on with their lives. You, however, are staying - so this is all your responsibility now;  and you are just about to screw everything up and destroy the opportunity.  When people understand what you have done, it’s your job that will go next.  So, if I were you, I’d take the weekend to think very carefully about whether you really think you’re doing the right thing, or just satisfying a misguided personal agenda.  It’s not too late -  there’s still time to fix this…

In that case, I got a phone call first thing Monday morning to say that, on reflection, they’d changed their mind and decided to fall into line with my views.   However, I’m not optimistic this blog will have an analogous affect on IBM, given I have zero influence there ;-)  But hey, it was worth a try…

Assuming the deal goes through, there would be a major review of the combined company’s key products, software, technologies and services.  The aim of the review would be to decide which of these to keep, and which to kill.

Here are some what you might call “detail” questions that Sun customers will want to know the answers to:

• There’s a lot of BS thrown around on this topic, but the truth is that Sun is much more committed to making software freely available to developers than is IBM.   Will IBM kill the Sun strategy here?
• There are many Sun products and technologies that compete with offerings from IBM.  Will IBM kill these or cripple these; or will IBM contemplate killing IBM products while keeping Sun ones?  For example, what would IBM do with software products and technologies like: Solaris; Netbeans; Glassfish; MySQL
• There are many aspects of the Java platform that don’t compete with IBM offerings directly; but are these of any interest to IBM?  For example, is IBM interested in JavaFX?  Or does the company actually believe that SWT is the way forward?

For customers, the problems with the above are that: such decisions are often not made rationally in M&A integration processes; and, in large organizations such as this, customer views and needs will simply not be taken into account.   Rather, at the top, the process will be designed such that the outcome is pre-defined to be “the answer they first thought of”; and all the detailed decisions will be taken by people with personal agendas, who are focused on keeping their jobs and building their careers in the new, combined organization.    What’s good for the customer won’t even be on anyone’s radar.

The Really Big Question

All of the above is detail, though. There’s a much bigger question that needs to be answered. It’s this.  For IBM, would it be worth $6.5B to make the whole of Sun essentially “go away”? I haven’t done the arithmetic to figure out the answer, but I suspect that it’s very possibly the case that IBM could be interested in buying Sun, simply to shut it down.

Don’t look to IBM to answer that one directly, by the way.  CEOs of public companies almost always lie to their shareholders about the real reasons for M&A, particularly when it’s a big acquisition.  Because of the consequences of doing that, they almost always lie to everyone inside the company too, spinning them the same story that they spin shareholders.  So, we’ll only find out the answer after the acquisition has gone through.

No matter what the answer, though, in event of IBM buying Sun, I’d expect massive consolidation with many great Sun offerings being canned.   I’d also expect the prices of Sun offerings that survive to increase.   As I said at the start of this blog, it’s difficult to see how this is good news for customers.   The problem is that the alternative - of IBM not buying Sun - might not be good news for customers either…

There’s no doubt about it. From a hardware/OS design perspective (e.g. gesture-based, multi-touch user interfaces) and a business model perspective (e.g. app stores that put all developers on a level playing field), Apple’s iPhone continues to set the agenda in mobile. However, both Palm’s senior management, and Palm’s investors believe that, with the Pre, they have the iPhone firmly beaten into second place when it comes to making the world’s most desirable mobile handset.  Are the Palm folks right? And if so, how might Apple respond?  Herewith, some thoughts…

Pre vs Current iPhone

Are the Palm folks right, or have they been inhaling their own PR?

I’m not sure the answer to this question is as clear cut as the Palm folks seem to believe.  However, I think the Pre looks like being a strong iPhone competitor; not least because unlike the rest of the mobile industry, Palm hasn’t simply tried to clone the iPhone.  Rather, the company has built a differentiated product; even if the style  in which the product has been presented so far makes it look like the Palm staff had been studying Steve Jobs presentations 24 hours a day 7 days a week. So (sub)Jobsian were they, that I found myself surprised not to hear them saying, “Boom!” every other word However, differentiating Pre from iPhone is a very “Good Thing” ™ .  At the very least, it means consumers will understand that the Pre a different product to iPhone.  The other day, I was reading through the comments on a new Vodafone viral video promoting the Blackberry Storm. A commenter said something like, “Love that they’re using the iPhone for this.” The point is - if you simply clone the leading brand, regular people won’t even know your product exists; and when you try to promote your product, you’ll actually be your leading competitor instead.

Not only is the Pre different to iPhone, though. I suspect it also might have iPhone beaten in at least one of its core competencies.  Specifically, the Pre might well crush iPhone when it comes to web browsing.  Why? Well, the Pre’s TI OMAP3 processor is likely to be much faster than the iPhone’s ARM11-based system.  That’s because on 3G mobile devices, the speed at which you see web pages come up on screen is not so much to do with the speed of the Internet connection as it is to do with how fast the phone can process the incoming data.  The net-net of this is that I’d guess the Pre might render web-sites two, or even three times faster than the iPhone does.  If so, that would be a huge win for the Pre.

As I mentioned above, the Pre is differentiated from iPhone.  In the areas where it’s different, there’s a great opportunity to also do things better. Probably the biggest point of differentiation is that the Pre has a physical keyboard; whereas the iPhone has a virtual keyboard.    In principle, this could be another big win for the Pre over the iPhone.  Why?  Not only because, to many people, physical keys are better for typing on than virtual keys (people’s mileage clearly varies on that point), but also because a physical keyboard doesn’t cover up half the screen when you’re typing.   That could be important for e-mail, web browsing, and many other activities where data entry is a key part of the user experience.

How Might Apple Respond?

So, it seems the Palm folks might have some good reasons to be confident in their new product. However there’s a problem: the iPhone’s hardware is essentially two years old.   In so much analysis of potential future trends in the mobile market that I see, people seem to assume that Apple won’t be making any changes to the iPhone.   That strikes me as being rather unlikely.   Clearly, Apple will move forward with iPhone to respond to competition in the market.  Here are some ways Apple might respond to Palm and other competitors such as RIM:

1. Put industry-leading processing capabilities into the iPhone.  Getting on for a year ago, Apple bought a chip design company called PA Semi.   Clearly, Apple intends to innovate in this area.    What iPhone needs is:  the fastest processing (particularly for rendering web-pages, recording/playing video, and gaming); combined with the best power efficiency (battery life is a real issue when using phones as both phones and as computers running applications).   If the PA Semi team’s R&D has gone well, Apple can use that technology and have a unique advantage; otherwise, it is free to source the best components elsewhere.
2. Improve the capabilities of MobileMe. At the moment,  Apple’s server-side offering for iPhone could use some work.   One feature that would be transformational would be to allow integration of e-mail for people’s and company’s domains, rather than forcing them to use Apple e-mail addresses.   I’m pretty sure you’d see millions of Blackberry users swapping to iPhone if Apple implemented just this one feature.
3. Change the game by adding a second model to the range. Rather than only having a goal to overtake the Blackberry (which will surely be an important goal for Apple), I suspect Apple folks might think it’s time to take things to the next level in terms of device sales.  That means, in addition to updating the existing iPhone hardware to give it industry leading performance, there’s a need to either change the existing form factor, or add a second iPhone to the range.   One of the things holding back iPhone sales is the physical size of the device.   Making a smaller device (in terms of height and width, and ideally thickness too) would generate many more sales; just as the iPod mini, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle increased iPod sales historically.
4. Address the fact that typing on iPhone is difficult. Some people love the iPhone keyboard; but many don’t. It counts as a weakness because so many people find typing e-mails on an iPhone difficult compared to typing e-mails on a Blackberry.  I’m not sure what the right answer is here; it’s a tricky problem.   If Apple can come up with a compelling improvement to data entry on iPhone, though, it will be a huge win.
5. Introduce a range of colors. There’s a reason the latest iPod comes in such a wide range of colors.  Lots of people want their phone in their favorite color, and it can be a key factor for many people in deciding which handset they purchase.

In Summary

When the the iPhone was announced in January 2007, it was truly revolutionary. For the last two years, the current iPhone has set the agenda in mobile.   With the upcoming Pre, Palm appears to have created a phone that will be a serious competitor to the two-year old iPhone.  However, it is not even close to being revolutionary.  Thus, the question is: when the Pre launches, will Apple announce a new device(s), or even another game-changing move, that will prevent the Pre from gaining any traction in the market?  Watch this space…

The day Steve Jobs announced iPhone, 9 January 2007, I think it was obvious that it was a truly revolutionary product.  On that day, I wrote:

No doubt about it. This (iPhone) is the most exciting phone to come along in a long time

And the following day,  the Jan 10, 2007,  I wrote,

The iPhone catapults Apple into the lead in the mobile phone space. Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft should be very worried.

So, here we are, over two years later in March 2009, and nothing from any mobile handset maker, including Android phones,  has come even close to matching iPhone.   When Android was released, the thought I was left with was, “OK.  So they thought the Java platform wasn’t good enough; so they invented their own platform to run Java code.  We’ll have to see if that makes any sense or not.  My guess is - it makes, at best, marginal sense.” That in itself wasn’t the biggest issue for Android, though.  The really big issue was the hardware; specifically, the lack of great hardware.  My concern was that Android device hardware, like just about every phone that isn’t an iPhone, would be mediocre in the extreme.  When I look around at mobile devices on the market at the moment, I have to say - I’m not overly impressed.   What I see is a bunch of pretty ugly phones, alonside some rather weak, unattractive iPhone-influenced “designs”.  In fact, extant device designs are so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised to see mobile device sales decline this year.  That’s not because of the global economic downturn.  It’s because I think that consumers will think that their current phones are still more appealing than the new devices on offer from manufacturers.   As an  example - one of my current phones is a Nokia 6500 Classic that I bought in October 2007.   It’s 9.5mm thick (thin), and feels like it’s made out of a solid block of aluminium. Is there a thinner, better made phone on the market today?  I’m not sure there is. So, why “upgrade”?  I accept, though, that I may have missed something. For those that believe that Andoid is poised to outsell iPhone - please tell me, what are the special, unique selling ponts of Android devices that will see these overtake iPhone?

Now, in the early days of iPhone, I wrote that:  1) the high price; 2) the lack of SDK; and 3) the lack of 3G would all hold back iPhone sales.   Apple addressed these issues, and sales have rocketted.  I also mentioned, however, a third issue.  That is - physical size.  iPhone is physically too big - as in height and width - to go really mass-market.  I’m expecting Apple to address this issue in the near future.  They might call it an iPhone nano; or they might call it something else.  Make no mistake, though, when Apple releases a smaller version of iPhone , sales will go through the statosphere.  What will be the Android response then?  Yet another pale iPhone copy?  Sorry, that ain’t gonna be good enough…

]]> http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2009/03/12/reality-check-iphone-vs-android/feed/ http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2009/03/02/why-windows-mobile-65-honeycomb-isnt-so-great/ http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2009/03/02/why-windows-mobile-65-honeycomb-isnt-so-great/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:29:22 +0000 simon http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=929 I see from Techmeme that today people are discussing the latest “innovation” in Windows Mobile 6.5 - the honeycomb touchscreen.  I can’t get to the original article - the site appears to be down right now; however I looked at the discussion.   It seems that I’m not quite so impressed as others; for a couple of reasons (btw - as a caveat, I should say I can’t be sure about the details of the MS software implementation, because I haven’t seen it.  It may be that the MS implementation of this idea is materially different from the IBM implementations, such that the points made below do not apply to MS ).

Firstly, IBM patented this in 1996, so it’s hardly anything new or original (see the patent at the US Patent Office).  From the IBM patent, the invention is summarized as:

A computer in which entry of data from an area provided on a display, touchscreen or the like is facilitated by the provision of a “soft keyboard” having keys configurable as hexagonal cells. Hexagonal cells enable display of larger areas for engagement by the finger or other input pointer used by a user of the computer of this invention.

Pretty clear, I think. Of course, while the fact that IBM already patented this invention more than a decade ago renders this feature in Windows Mobile 6.5 uninnovative (is that a word?!), it doesn’t make it a bad idea.   Which brings me to my second point; because I don’t think this is that great an idea.   The IBM patent throws some more light on the reasoning behind the invention.  From the IBM patent…

Wasted space in soft keyboards is a serious problem, especially on small screens such as are provided in mobile client systems and especially when there are a lot of keys (e.g. alphanumeric keyboards)…. Hence, soft keyboards need another shape for keys besides the rectangle. The new shape must have the following properties… The new shape should approximate a circle or ellipse as closely as possible. It should avoid ninety degree corners like a rectangle since this is what wastes space… The new shape should interlock so that space between the keys is not wasted.

This section demonstrates clearly both the reasoning behind the invention, and also why the idea is, in my opinion, not so great.    Here’s the mistake I think both IBM and Microsoft made - ” The new shape should interlock so that space between the keys is not wasted” Errrrrrrr…  NO!!  Space between keys is NOT wasted space.  Quite the opposite in fact.  Space between keys is actually vitally important in keyboard/keypad design because it reduces “user interface errors” i.e. it reduces the number of times that the user hits the wrong key on a keyboard/keypad by mistake.

IBM almost got it right when they said, “The new shape should approximate a circle or ellipse as closely as possible.” However,  it shouldn’t approximate a circle/ellipse (e.g. by making it a hexagon), it should actually be a circle/ellipse.    With circular/elliptical shape keys on a touchscreen, the usable key surface area is maximized, while simultaneously enabling space to be left between the keys.

Just thought I’d mention…  Anyway, if you’re a maker of mobile devices, you’re very welcome to have that idea for free ;-)  Not that I’m claiming that pointing out  that close-packing keys on a touch interface (hardware or software) is a bad design idea, is particularly insightful.  I’d just be happy to see some people (other than folks at Apple) implement some good ideas relating to mobile handset design for a change… ‘cos I tell you, there are some shockingly bad handsets on the market at the moment…

So, I thought I’d experiment with creating a custom, gesture-aware control using JavaFX.  I wanted the first mobile-style control I came up with to be super-original in concept; and yet be easy to learn, and easy to use.  I think I succeeded - I’ve not seen anything quite like it anywhere else, on any mobile platform.   See the screen shot below:

Anyway, if  you head on over to JFXStudio.org, you can run the app and read some short notes on this little experiment in creating a mobile UI by using JavaFX Script…