The Remote Migrant

Here's an article I wrote for the British Computer Society about the pros and cons of remote working.

Over ripe Apple

This article about debunking Android myths is a good summary of why Apple's days are numbered, unless they can pull another rabbit out of the hat. It ties in to my long-held view that open software will always beat closed software.

Sure, if you're an investor, Apple is a reasonable bet: great brand, awesome margins, great history of innovation. Some might argue that its laurels are getting dusty (if not musty), but the financials are strong, and the innovation pedigree is still ostensibly there.

But Android is like bacteria. It simply evolves faster because it can. Android's biggest competitors are rapidly becoming... itself. Kindle's OS is based on Android. Firefox OS, same. Even Ubuntu, the most popular open source desktop OS on the planet, has a mobile version based on, yes, Android.

Even Nokia have released Android phones, right under the shadow of the Microsoft mothership. Do Microsoft care? Probably not. I think they've realised what Google long ago understood and thrive on: that there's no point in trying to lock people into your platform. It just pisses the customers off when your stuff doesn't work with their preferred stuff, and even if you succeed in cornering the market it just makes you complacent. So, the trick is just to keep evolving faster. That's ultimately what software is all about: being pliable and adapting.

Many argue that, in the age of cloud and devices, the operating system is fast becoming irrelevant. Mostly true, except if you're an app developer. While there are common frameworks, like Titanium and PhoneGap, there is still friction/effort/cost in developing for multiple OSes. More and more voices argue that this friction is needless. After all, what is its purpose? Why should Apple use a different OS to everyone else, and not let anyone else use that OS in their devices? It's certainly not for consumer benefit, despite what Apple may say. Sure, they are good, but better than the entire software industry?

 I use a macbook air and an iPhone 5, and I like them a lot. But my macbook has to run Windows in a VM for work. I have an old android tablet, with SIM, and, from an app perspective, it could readily replace my iPhone. There is nothing the iPhone can do that the Android cannot. The reverse is not true.

The iPad still outclasses its competitors, but for how long? As long as it takes for them to truly permeate the enterprise. Then the iPad is reduced to becoming what iBooks became: toys and ornamental computers for receptionists. The sheer volume and diversity of the rest of the ecosystem will overwhelm it.

Unless Apple adapts, its very incompatibility with the rest of the software world will be its undoing, once again.

Tech trends, with double insights

This is a good article. It's a summary and opinion on the latest Gartner Tech predictions.

I agree with most of the opinions. Gartner makes its money on research, and, as such, is prone to exaggerate some preferred predictions - possibly in the hope that the very act of proffering them will lead to them occurring. Given their influence, it's not unreasonable, but it is a bias. So it's always healthy to view such research through the lens of a few opinions.

I agree with most of Chris Taylor's opinions, with some caveats of my own. It will be fun to review this post in a year's time...

Mobile device diversity & management: I'm with Chris on this. Enablement always trumps caution in technology, for better or worse. Technologists are always more interested in whether they can do something, rather than whether they should, and especially in software (that's why it's 'soft', right?). So ubiquity will work by 2018. The only constraint to it will be vendor lock-ins, not policies or standards.

Mobile apps & applications: I think Javascript is coming to the enterprise, so more enterprise apps will become web-based (or, more specifically, more desktop software companies will be able to build desktop-equivalent apps for browser). However, mobile-native apps will continue in the consumer space because there are a lot of vested skills in iOS and Android out there, and because companies like the vanity of having an app.

Internet of everything: it's seeping out, rather than exploding as many enthusiasts predicted it would. All it needs is one killer app, though, and it could rapidly come into its own. I imagine that app to be something like a cheap, SD card-sized Raspberry Pi, with sensors, micro USB connectivity (2, one for power, one for device(s) and really simplistic, user-friendly dev software.

Hybrid cloud and IT as service broker: I'm mostly with Chris on this. The issue with cloud is not security (that's a perception to address, though), it is integration. But, living in a developing country, I would not be as dismissive of the connectivity and jurisdictional issues.

Cloud/client architecture: this is just the same as the old client/server arguments. It ebbs and flows in roughly 5-10 year cycles: it's all about the client, then all about the server etc. I see no reason for that to change just because those servers are moving to the cloud.

Era of personal cloud: Agree, but I prefer to see it in more simplistic terms. As Marc Andreesen once wrote (in the WSJ, I think): software is eating the world. As more of our media is encapsulated in software (be it music, documents, patient records, news feeds, address books, hotel bookings etc.) the amorphous, invisible nature of software is taking hold in a very personal way.

Software defined anything: see above. Same thing, just the developer side of it.

Web-scale IT: see above. Same thing, just the enterprise side of it.

Smart machines: bit ambitious of Gartner to make predictions to 2020 (that's a century in IT terms!), but I agree with the gist that there will be some inflection point ahead based on smart machines, when we'll look back on Siri and Google Now as quaint pre-cursors to the main event.

3D printing: not convinced that this is any more than a cottage industry enabler. It's like printing: nearly everyone has a printer in their office and in their home, but we only really use them for office and home stuff.  If we want business cards or brochures we still go to the professionals. Same with 3D printing: the key inhibitors will always be cost of materials and mass customisation (why print my own trainers, when Nike can build me a custom pair for $120?). So the main benefit may be contextual: it stimulates the customisation efforts of mass producers.

Chris' own list is good for 2014, I think. That's the near-term direction things are heading.

OSX Mavericks: free, because it's not worth paying for

Apple's reality distortion field often engendered a wry smile, even from hardened Apple fans. You knew they were stretching the truth horribly, but you forgave them because you knew that on most other dimensions they were surpassing your expectations.

The trouble with hyperbole is that it can tip from ballsy to bravado very quickly. Leading edge may become bleeding edge. Cool dude abruptly becomes 'bit of a dick'. So when I read a headline that
Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems my instincts prickled. Is it really a whole new OS? Or is it like Windows 8.1, which has some pretty drastic changes over Windows 8, but Microsoft decided to release as an update, for free?

Having duly upgraded installed the new OS X Mavericks, I could see little visible difference. No whizzy intro sequence like OSX of old. Hardly a 'new' OS, then. More an upgrade, which is fine unless you're spending a few $mill on pitching it as a new OS, with all the hyperbole trimmings.

So what has changed?

There were just a couple of extra icons added, without my permission, to my dock. Maps and iBooks: neither of which I use, or have interest in using.  I live in Barbados, which Apple Maps, until recently, rendered as a triangular blob.  It's slightly better now, but I still live in a field, according to Maps, so can't get directions to anywhere. So I'll stick to Google Maps/Earth, and forego the 'amazing' integration with Calendar, until I move to Cupertino, where I'm sure it works.

I live in the middle of a field, apparently.

As for iBooks, I think Apple's foray into books is faintly reminiscent of Microsoft's foray into music: Zune vs iTunes? Pah. iBooks vs Kindle? Good luck, iBooks, you will need it. Try supporting a couple of non-Apple devices for a start.

Almost all the other new Mavericks items are furniture re-arrangement:-

• Finder: Tags? Already had them, they're just more prominent. Tabs? Long overdue - 3rd party Finder replacement apps have had them for years. Still not as good as Windows Explorer, I'm afraid.
• Safari: reading list and bookmarks on a sidebar? So what? And a Sharing sidebar? Because it's too much effort to open Twitter in another tab?
• Multiple displays: is different to Airplay.. because you have the menu bar on each screen? Jaw dropping.
• iCloud keychain: so we're syncing my keychain to my iCloud account. That's just like syncing my bookmarks only with more encryption, right?
• Notifications: like my phone. So my mac is now almost as good as my iPhone? (But is it as good as my Android phone notifications? Or Google Now?)

Apple have always been confident in their dictatorial stance, eg. "you don't need removable storage or spare batteries in your phone". And after some initial whinging you usually come round to their way of thinking, which grows into an admiration that perhaps they know your tech needs better than you do yourself.  I had that with Apple from 2001 to 2011.

With this latest 'new' OS I think they're starting to look like a dick.  Have the balls to spare us the hyperbole for when it really matters, Apple.

Windows 8 verdict: daft UI

Here's the summary. Don't expect stats & benchmarks, just well-reasoned rhetoric.

Beware Android users

The most sophisticated bug for a mobile phone ever has recently been found by Kaspersky Labs.


Not only can it do real damage (eg. sending SMS to premium rate numbers), it has no user interface, no indication of the privileges it has (circumventing all of Android's usual 'this app can..' lists) and cannot be removed from compromised devices!

The hackers found no less than 3 unknown critical vulnerabilities, one even obfuscating the code to prevent analysis.

Details here (Securelist.com).

Kaspersky have notified Google, but this could cast serious doubts on the enterprise use of Android.

The battle for the living room

This article (ReadWriteWeb) makes a good case for the next big consumer electronics battleground being in the living room.

It mentions, but doesn't really expand on, the key success criteria too: content, intelligence and user experience. Two of these are radically from traditional media. User experience is generational: older generations are used to being served content, to 'tuning in' to a broadcast. Whereas kids these days are very selective, and fickle about their content - they have to be because there's so much of it. So how to find the middle ground? That will be the critical challenge, and I suspect Apple will crack it first because that's what they excel at.

Intelligence on the web is massive, literally: every click or tap you make is tracked by something, somewhere. At the very least, it's the site you are on, more likely it is tracked by Facebook (if you browser is aware of your Facebook account), Google (ditto) and a few of the common advertising cookie trackers. Attach that to your TV and movie watching habits and that's a considerable portion of peoples' lives fully mapped. But data capture is only half the story. To engage and monetize you have to use the data intelligently. That's where Google have the advantage.

Content (which the article mainly focuses on) is the same issue as traditional media: it is still king, but cheaper to produce than ever. Sure, good stuff is still expensive, but that's about production, not distribution.

There's one other aspect that the article does not mention, but that I think will be vital: social.  Sharing content is a big thing already, but there's still some friction when you do it. Imagine a monetized version where you get a micropayment whenever you successfully share a piece of content (like, say, a movie trailer). There's also the participation aspect of social: gaming. Currently, there are very few multi-platform online games: an Xbox player cannot play with a Playstation player online. On some games they can play against PC players, but for quick reaction games the PC players have the advantage of a richer, more responsive interface (a mouse has a greater more accurate range of movement, plus a keyboard has more programmable combinations than a gamepad). This limitation is tolerable because consoles are primarily about games, with media playing being a bonus feature. In the future living room, audiences will not tolerate being restricted to sharing only with others on the same platform.