The Daydream Blog

Note that this article is intended for developers and may not be of interest to a wider audience

If you, like me, have migrated from using Subversion to Git, you may be missing the ability to link commits with FogBugz cases. I have adapted the Subversion integration post commit hook to work with Git.

It should be noted that integration with repositories hosted on GitHub can be found by clicking on this link, to appropriately enough, GitHub (via a blog post on FogBugz). These instructions are for use with local repositories.

I have simply taken the Subverson integration script, that is available at this link on the FogBugz website and adapted it for use with Git.

To use, follow the instructions below:

• Install Perl in the unlikely situation that it is not already installed on your system
• Install wget. On Mac OS X, you can install via MacPorts by simply typing sudo port install wget in a Terminal window.
• Download post-commit and logBugDataGit.pl by clicking on this link to GitFogBugz.zip
• Unzip the archive and copy the two scripts to your [Path To Project]/.git/hooks directory and make sure they are both executable
• Edit logBugDataGit.pl as follows:
  • If you are using the free FogBugz version set $BUGZ_URL_FINAL to https://yourdomain.fogbugz.com and set $IS_TRIAL to 1.
  • If you host your own FogBugz installation, set $BUGZ_SERVER to your domain without http:// and set $IS_TRIAL to 0.

That’s it, there is not step 6!

With rumours swirling of a 3G iPhone, I have long wondered why the lack of 3G has received of so much criticism. The few people I know who have used 3G phones report a sorry history of bulky, buggy handsets, dropped calls and little benefit over regular mobile phones. Is 3G a real, glaring omission from the iPhone? Are users pinning their hopes on Apple delivering them from 3G purgatory? Or, is it just a case of the media trying to find something to criticise about the most hyped handset in history?

Performance

Steve Jobs has stated that the iPhone lacks 3G due to poor battery life, and that a 3G iPhone would be released when this issue was resolved. Soon after the iPhone’s release, AnandTech did an in depth analysis of this claim. They found that 3G does indeed use significantly more power than the iPhone’s EDGE network on a device that supports both. The article demonstrates that WiFi actually uses less power than both 3G and EDGE, whilst offering significantly better performance. WiFi’s inclusion in the iPhone, in place of 3G, therefore makes considerable sense. In addition, 3G has the biggest impact on battery life when being used for a phone’s core function; telephone calls. Although a sensible implementation would fall back to GSM for phone calls, this has serious implications for key 3G selling points – making calls whilst transferring data and video calling.

The AnandTech article also touches on another key issue – identifying applications where the bottleneck is the CPU, not the network. Interestingly, the iPhone has a CPU that balances performance with battery life.

The question is now whether users are willing to sacrifice battery life for networking performance? Has Apple made the right compromise on their behalf?

My Feature List is Bigger Than Yours!

The criticism levelled at the iPhone has been a typical list of feature-envy. The lack of 3G, “only” a 2 megapixel camera, no physical keyboard, no GPS, no removable battery and no expandable memory.

Similar criticisms have consistently been levelled at the iPod. With hind sight, it is easy to demonstrate why Apple made the decisions it did with the iPod. A non-removable battery allows for a more durable portable device. Early iPods used smaller physical Hard Drives, which had smaller capacity than their rivals, but also made them more portable. Using a better quality music format, AAC, rather than MP3, mitigated this issue. Instead Apple included FireWire, in place of its competitors’ USB 1.1, allowing for fast transfer of thousands of songs.

For its Portable Music Player, Apple focused on the portability, the music and the player experience. They looked at the whole experience, rather than aim to have the longest feature list simply for bragging rights.

With the iPhone, the 2 megapixel camera is a sensible option. In a small device with limited optics, a larger resolution camera would only give marginally better quality photos, whilst eating up limited storage space. No GPS? Cell tower and WiFi hot spot triangulation are good enough, without additional electronics and greater expense. No Physical keyboard? Sacrificed in favour of a larger screen and robust enclosure.

Apple has consistently foregone a long list of features, in favour of products that focus on doing a limited number of things, very, very, well. When Apple does add new abilities to their products, they are complete solutions, rather than half baked features included just to add to the list.

The Business of 3G

Some of the rumours about the 3G iPhone have come directly from Apple’s mobile network partners. Many network operators have invested huge sums on 3G licenses and deployment. Many seem to be struggling to recover these costs. They have stuck to their traditional business model – subsidised handsets, basic tariffs, supplemented by expensive, “value added services”, such as sports clips, video calling and pseudo-internet services. With business-as-usual, networks are struggling to recoup their investment in 3G.

The iPhone has shown them that there is another way. The handset is not subsidised and is only available with an expensive Pay Monthly tariff but includes unlimited data usage. Apple has also identified the killer application for mobile data services – the full Internet. Despite its “painfully slow” EDGE network, iPhone owners use the internet more than those of any other handset, including other Smart Phones and the beloved Blackberry. Little wonder then, that Apple’s partners are desperate for a 3G iPhone.

Oddly it is not anything about 3G itself that begs for it to be included on the iPhone. Nothing about the technology, with its high dropped call rate, and the under-whelming value added services, is particularly appealing. Instead it is Apple’s redefinition of the mobile phone business model, that makes 3G an appealing technology.

Even more ironic is the fact that iPhone’s expensive tariffs have also received a lot of criticism. And yet, it is precisely that all-you-can-eat data pricing that has led iPhone users to embrace mobile browsing and justify the need for 3G.

Imagine a cheap, subsidised, Pay-As-You-Go iPhone, with a sand boxed internet in place of Mobile Safari and metered data charging. 3G has little appeal in this environment.

3G or 4?

When Apple introduced the iPhone, there was little appeal for 3G and yet, perversely, they have created the killer handset and killer apps that could make 3G a success.

There is also another question raised by the iPhone’s success. If WiFi already performs better than 3G, shouldn’t Apple simply wait for the next generation, WiFi based 4G networks to be built? There can be little question, with the history of mobile networks, that 3G will be replaced sooner rather than later. 3G has been available around the globe for over six years. Limited uptake of 3G suggests that, like High Def DVD, it may be a technology that is leapfrogged by the market place.

Should Apple perhaps ride out the criticism about the lack of 3G support? Or should it popularise the stagnant technology, as only it can, with the combination of the iPhone’s rich mobile internet experience and unlimited data plans?

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for 3G, Apple should probably introduce a 3G iPhone once battery life improves. Unfortunately, with the investment the network operators have made with 3G, they are unlikely to build 4G networks before they have recouped their 3G investment. The window before 4G becomes available is just too great. 3G support will deflect criticism, whilst being an anti-climax for those who see it as some nirvana for mobile internet use.

Toshiba’s impending announcement that it is ending production of HD-DVD players, crowns BluRay as the next-generation DVD format champion. It may, however, be a pyrrhic victory and High Definition DVD’s may be an evolution in video player technology that simply gets leapfrogged.

Travelling in China some years ago, I noticed the prevalence of VCD, at a time when the developed world had largely migrated from VHS to DVD. DVD was only beginning to catch on in China at the time. I realised that there were a couple of reasons for this. A dearth of interesting Chinese broadcast TV meant that the recording capabilities of VHS were not required. But also, it seemed as if VHS had been too expensive in China whilst it was growing in popularity in the West. When the Chinese could afford these sorts of devices, VCD was the latest and greatest technology and was widely adopted.

Meanwhile in the developed world, VCD never really took off. With relatively little quality improvement over VHS, there was not a compelling reason to adopt the standard. Consumers were happy enough with VHS. Similarly LaserDisc was skipped until DVD came along.

Skipping a generation of technology seems to be quite common, with less developed markets being out of sync with the developing world’s cycle. So whilst we skipped from VCD and LaserDisc to replace our VHS systems with DVD players, the Chinese adopted DVD quite a few years later.

Similarly in audio technology, some technologies have been skipped, such as MiniDisc, in favour of MP3 players. The US adopted analogue cell phones and took a long while to adopt digital mobiles, whilst analogue never really got going in Europe and the developing economies. 3G does not seem to have captured the market’s imagination, as the iPhone’s use of EDGE’s “2.75G” technology demonstrates.

Whilst there are some features to the various technologies that help to explain this, it also has a lot to do with entrenched technology, and with the next generation not providing enough of a step change to unseat the incumbent. The market needs bigger changes in convenience and capabilities before moving forward en-masse.

High Definition for Television programming is not particularly compelling. Is there any need for HD when watching Lost, 24 or Prison Break? Few are going to purchase a BluRay player and spend extra for buying or renting TV shows in BluRay format.

This leaves Movie sales and rental. HD does offer a significant improvement in video quality over DVD. However some of that advantage is lost, with a large number of HD TV’s only being capable of 1080i or less, rather than the full 1080p. The mere fact that there is such a confusion of choice over display resolutions, input cabling, viewing angles, contrast, brightness and life span for many flat panel displays, makes for a very consumer unfriendly market place.

In contrast, Apple has patiently waited for average broadband speeds in the US to rise to the point where downloading 720p feature length movies is viable. With recent studies showing that BluRay provides only slightly better quality video than Apple’s movie rentals, BluRay’s major selling point is less compelling. With having to go to a physical store, or waiting for it to be sent through the post, BluRay compares poorly in terms of convenience.

Apple’s Video rental DRM restrictions may seem weak relative to Netflix keep-it-for-as-long-as-you-like approach. But, as has been suggested elsewhere, Apple’s service is effectively video-on-demand in all but name.

Apple’s aggressive price cut on the AppleTV, significantly reducing margins, is a shot across the bows of the BluRay consortium. BluRay backers will need to bring player & content prices down rapidly to ensure widespread adoption. Unfortunately for BluRay, the next year or two will see improved networking bandwidth and with it a likely increase in Apple’s video resolution, removing BluRay’s key selling point, altogether. BluRay’s backers, however, may not appreciate the threat and will, I suspect, rest on the laurels of their success over HD-DVD. BluRay players are still expensive, and are likely to remain so until the 2008 holiday season, at the very least.

BluRay has only a limited amount of time to establish itself as the replacement for DVD, before the inevitable migration to internet distribution for video. The long battle with HD-DVD may have forestalled any chance of High Def DVD becoming widely adopted. I predict that BluRay, despite a lot of press and winning its battle, will run out of time and will be leapfrogged by more convenient, consumer friendly, internet distribution.

Lost in the mists of time and in the obscurity of a niche platform, many do not realise that the Web was invented on a NeXT machine running NEXTSTEP (whichever form of capitalisation was prevalent at the time). And that NEXTSTEP is the precursor to Mac OS X. The MAKE blog has some photos of the NeXT machine that hosted the world’s first website.

The first browser, WorldWideWeb, was written in the precursor to Cocoa, the tools used to create most of the great, new, software on the Mac, including Differencia.

As I mentioned in “Web 0.9 beta“, Tim Berners-Lee always envisaged the web to be read/write, presaging Web 2.0, as can be seen in this screen-shot.

What is fascinating is that if you read the text in the about box, you can see that Berners-Lee already had the concept of helper applications. In this case, specifically for a NNTP news-reader, presaging RSS links on pages being opened by a third party news reader application such as NetNewsWire or NewsFire.

I used to be surprised that Apple did not make more of its Web heritage, but I guess you cannot really say much about how great your current products are, based on a third party product developed 17 years ago for a platform created by a company that you paid $400m to do a reverse take over of yourself.

I woke up this morning and thought I need to post on Apple’s Year of Hubris, only to find that Wil Shipley had beaten me to it.

Apple has hat its “Year of the laptop” and “Year of HD” and this year seems to be the “Year of Hubris”. A number of decisions this year have led to major backlashes from their normally ultra loyal customer base.

Most of the controversy has centred on the iPhone. Before WWDC there was strong demand for an “iPhone SDK”; a set of tools to allow developers to create iPhone applications. Steve Jobs tried to fob developers off with web based tools. Many felt Apple would have been better stating they were not offering a proper SDK, rather than patronise intelligent developers, by telling them Web 2.0 tools were just as good.

Then there was the dramatic iPhone price cut. Whilst I appreciate the humour that suggests that this “was a repeal of the nerd tax“, it highlights that whereas most handsets are subsidised when on a contract, the iPhone was actually sold for two months at a $200 premium.

Ring-tones for the iPhone are another sore point, with users having to pay an additional $0.99 to use a snippet of a song they already own and no way to create ring-tones from songs not bought from the iTunes Store. John Gruber covers this issue far better than I can. Though I would point out that long before the iPhone, ring tone buyers have shown a bizarre willingness to pay through the nose for poor quality song snippets. The best that Apple can say is that they are pricing below the current market rate.

Of course in the UK, at the current exchange rate, the iPhone should be priced at around £200 before tax or £235 incl. VAT. The extra £34 for additional business costs seems a little excessive.

Some criticism from the press feels contrived to avoid appearing to pander to Apple. Unfortunately in the UK, we all to often like to bring success stories down to earth. For example, the criticism of the iPhone’s lack of 3G seems perverse. 3G has hardly lit up the UK market since its release in 2003 and it appears to be a flawed technology. Jobs’ complaints about 3G battery consumption are completely valid. Power consumption should have been resolved long ago, given how long 3G has been available. I, for one, am happy that Apple is not championing a technology that benefits networks looking to sell content, more than is solves problems for consumers.

As with each succession of the iPod, the press are always keen to point out missing features without justifying the customer benefit for those features.

Away from the iPhone, Apple’s decision to charge more for DRM free tracks from EMI has surprised many, given Steve Jobs’ open letter of criticism of DRM. Apple’s recent public stance on DRM has also been somewhat confused.

iMovie ‘08 has also generated criticism for being a step backwards in many ways. Apple, fully aware of this, quietly ensured that iMovie ‘06 was still available for free to iLife ‘08 purchasers. Whilst there is a need for an app like iMovie ‘08 in this modern Max Headroom / YouTube era, there is still a need for iMovie ‘06 type app as well. Many feel that Apple should have found some way to have both applications coexist within iLife and update the original iMovie, rather than replace it.

And finally there was considerable disappointment at the “Top Secret” features in Leopard and the redesign of key UI elements in the new OS. There will undoubtedly be further backlash if Leopard is delayed again beyond its October time frame. The lack of new seeds for developers and testers, suggests a delay is more than possible. I personally predict that Leopard will be delayed until MacWorld in January.

Many of these issues come down to poor PR or Marketing, or simply bad timing. They suggest some hubris on Apple’s approach to its existing customer base. As Wil Shipley says:

That sure reminds me of the old, crappy Apple. The one that almost went bankrupt because of its hubris.

Apple will undoubtedly learn from the backlash, but more worrying than the Marketing missteps are the ring-tones pricing and restrictions, along with Apple’s drive to increase gross margins despite strong sales volumes. It appears that Apple is trying to maximise returns from loyal customers. Fortunately, Apple continues to produce great products to increase its customer base, unlike its previous period of hubris.