apple – Page 4 – Kev's Development Toolbox

September 30, 2015

iOS and Mac OS X will not merge, says Tim Cook

Given Microsoft’s focus on a single, combined version of Windows for all devices, desktop, tablets and phones, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, has said in a recent interview that he believes desktop and mobile operating systems should be separate:

We don’t believe in having one operating system for PC and mobile … We think it subtracts from both, and you don’t get the best experience from either. We’re very much focused on two.

… and I have to believe this too. I can understand from a cost reduction point of view that if you’re developing a mobile OS for phones/tablets and also a desktop OS at the same time, the attraction of merging your development efforts to a single product would be attractive to reduce development costs from shared assets, smaller development team, combined testing efforts etc.

The problem with this approach that Cook mentions, is that a mobile device compared to a desktop (or even laptop device) are such radically different user experiences, that any attempt to combine the two to a single common product is going to be a compromise that is going to impact the ability to capitalize on the key features that differentiate a mobile device from a desktop device and vice versa.

I’ve thought this for a while now seeing Microsoft, in my opinion, struggle to find the right balance of common features across device types with Windows 8 and now Windows 10. And yet, haven’t they already been down this path before with Windows Mobile on smart phones back in the early to mid 2000s? Anyone rememeber trying to use the Start menu on a phone in the early 2000s with a stylus? It was a terrible user experience – worked well on the desktop with a mouse, but translated very pooly to a small screen either touch or pen based. But, Microsoft believes they can still get this right. Uhuh. Call us when you’ve got something worth looking at.

September 10, 2015

Wired: “Microsoft kisses up to Tim Cook in front of millions”

I was recently looking at the IDC global tablet sales and was surprised to see that sales of Microsoft’s Surface are not yet showing up. I thought I’d read somewhere that the were selling reasonably well, but I guess not enough to show up on the global sales numbers. That means they’re selling less that 1 million units a quarter because LG and Huawei, both selling 1.6 million in 2Q15 take slot 4 and 5 in IDC’s stats, and others (?) are grouped together as 20M, but who knows what’s counted in that category (there’s probably as many as 20M different companies flooding the market with Android tables at this point).

The only Surface sales I could find mentioned was a $888M revenue number that Microsoft announced in it’s last quarterly earnings statement. Given that the Surface price ranges from models around $500 up to $1700 for a full loaded Surface Pro 3 (why wouldn’t you just buy a MacBook Pro for that price?) let’s take an average: $888M at $1000 a unit, well, yeah, that’s 888,000 units a quarter. That’s not too many. Not when Apple are flogging 11M units a quarter and that’s even with their numbers dropping quarter after quarter.

So the Wired article really summed it up for me. I was about to write something witty about why Apple are producing a new tablet with a keyboard and a stylus, something that Jobs said people would never want or need. But 888,000 sales of Surfaces is 888,000 of lost sales to Apple, so, hey, why wouldn’t they produce one of those too.

Choice quote from the Wired article:

For Microsoft, it was a moment of apotheosis. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO last year, the company has pushed Office onto the iPhone as well as the iPad; open sourced its crown jewels of software development so people can build more Microsoft software that runs on Apple gear; and jettisoned its $7.6 billion effort to dominate the smartphone market with Nokia, a Finnish company famous for recent failure.

Kissing Cook’s ring was the next logical step.

And here’s the truth of the matter:

If you hadn’t noticed before, the mobile wars are over. For a while there, Microsoft was confident its Windows operating system would capture a sizable portion of the market. But that’s not gonna happen. The company still sells phones and tablets, but relatively few consumers will ever buy them.

That’s a harsh reality in a changing, post-PC world.

October 23, 2012

The legacy of the BBC Micro computer is all around us… literally everywhere

If you were interested in computers in the 1980s in the UK, then you were aware and maybe even owned a BBC Micro computer. Outside of the UK, the BBC Micro never saw wide success, but in the UK it was widely used for computer science education in schools and was also popular as a home computer. Originally the BBC Micro was developed as part of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, and was showcased on the BBC TV show ‘The Computer Programme’, used as the demo hardware to teach viewers of the show how to use a home computer and program in BASIC.

After the BBC Micro, Acorn, the company behind the BBC Micro, went on to design a RISC based CPU architecture that was used in the Acorn Archimedes computer. This machine was the first home computer based on a RISC architecture, and was the first computer based on Acorn RISC Machines (ARM) CPU architecture. The Archimedes was first sold in 1987. ARM Holdings, conceived by and spun off from Acorn was born.

Fast forward to the present day, devices containing ARM based processors are literally everywhere, thanks especially to the success of the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod – all the most recent devices all are based around an ARM CPU. Prior to the Apple device success, ARM CPUs have been used in many mobile phones, tablets, PDAs, as well as being used in many other electronic devices.

The Apple A4 CPU was introduced in the original iPad, and then later reused in the iPhone 4, the 4th gen iPod Touch, and second gen Apple TV. The A4 is based on the ARM Cortext A8 CPU. Later generations of Apple devices have also been based on ARM CPUs. The Apple A5 CPU is based on the ARM Cortex A9, and powers the iPad2, iPhone 4S, iPad (3rd gen) and the iPod Touch (5th gen).

Most recent Apple devices are powered by the Apple A6 and A6x, based on ARMv7 dual core CPU.

In case you’re thinking the widespread success of ARM powered devices is limited to Apple devices, ARM CPUs also form the basis of Nvidida Tegra chipsets – the Tegra 2 System-on-a-Chip is based on ARM Cortext A9 (yes, also the basis of the Apple A4 CPU) and is used in many highend Android devices (Motorola Atrix, Droid X2 and Photon phones, Xoom tablets, Acer Iconia tablets to name a few). The more recent Tegra 3 chipset, also based on ARM Cortex A9 but in quad-core configuration is used in the latest Android tablets, for example ASUS Transformer range and the Nexus 7, to name just a couple.

While it’s true to say much has obviously changed since the original days of the BBC Micro and the first ARM CPUs, I find it incredibly fascinating to realize that the heritage of today’s widely used consumer electronics devices can be traced back to origins in 1980s home and educational computing.

September 25, 2012

Would Jobs have released the iPhone 5?

Given the amount of issues that new iPhone 5 users are having with their new phones, I don’t believe Jobs would have let the new iPhone in it’s current state go out to stores. It’s just not ready. Sure, all new products have teething issues, but the iPhone 5 right now seems to have more than it’s share.

The new Apple Maps app is clearly not ready for primetime. Not only should it have a beta banner across the screen, it should also have a warning flashing on the screen every time you open the app: “Caution! Do not use for real world navigation! Maps shown by this application are for entertainment purposes only!”.

The Amazing iOS 6 Maps has some of the best screenshots so far. Some are just incredible, they’re almost art forms in their own right. Someone could had painted these scenes and put them on display in a gallery… and made good money from them too. Here’s some of my favorites:

It’s almost too easy to make fun of the hilarious screenshots right now because there’s just too many funny examples.

And not too mention the list of other issues that are coming up – CNET has a list of reported issues right now, including:

Needless to say, I’m pretty sure Jobs would not have let this product go out the door. Sure, the issue will get resolved in time, but this product is not currently worthy of it’s Apple logo.