Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » TAG: Apple

March 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Will Apple give iPhone developers the SDK they want?

TAGS: Apple

Unless you were one of the lucky ones to get an invitation to the Apple event in Cupertino tomorrow where Steve Jobs will unveil the iPhone SDK (Software Developer Kit), you’ll have to wait for the news reports to find out how much power Apple will give to third party developers.

In advance of that I thought I’d ask a few ISVs what they’d like to see in an SDK.

[ Get the whole scoop on the iPhone SDK, how to make the iPhone fit in the enterprise, and the latest security issues that the popular smartphone raises in InfoWorld's special report. ]

Ronjon Nag, CEO of Cellmania, is an ISV with a large community of developers that use the Cellmania platform for mobile applications.

Nag says at a minimum level, developers need access to the iPhone APIs for phone book, address book, location-based and GPS-based services plus access to the media player functionality.

However, Nag says Apple is likely to be wary of handing out too much control to the developers lest they interfere with the carriers service and network.

On the business side, Apple has to answer the most important developer question of all, how can I make money? And, Nag warns, if any one of the parties that share in the revenue stream gets greedy the whole ecosystem breaks down.

Antonio Rodriguez, former CEO of Tabblo, a photo sharing site since acquired by HP is now the general manager of HP publishing services.

Rodriquez would also like to see programmatic access to location-based services and access to the iPhone camera.

However, Rodriguez has his doubts as well if this will happen.

If you rate Apple from 1 to 10 on how much they want to control their environment, Rodriguez says, he would give Apple an 11.

"Apple will come out tomorrow and probably sand box developers from using the network altogether. If they do grant access to the network it will have to go through some sort of certification process like they do with iTunes," said Rodriguez.

Rado Kotorov, Technical Director of Strategic Product Management at Information Builders, a business intelligence ISV says it’s all about VPNs [Virtual Private Networks].

"The key problem is there is no enterprise level security and no enterprise level VPN," Kotorov said.

Without that, Kotorov’s customers have no secure way of logging into dashboards, sorting or doing calculations. Kotorov loves the UI which would allow users to jump from chart to chart and dashboard to dashboard but without enterprise level security it just won’t happen.

Odd as it may sound, Kotorov says that although the iPhone screen is way small in comparison to a laptop users know how to create the report parameters that make sense for the screen size but are still useful when away from their main device.

Then there’s Tony Meadow, principal at Bear River Associates, a mobile ISV.

Meadow has been working with mobile systems since Apple’s Newton in 93.

What is exciting for developers is that Apple has redefined cell phones the way Mac redefined personal computers, says Meadow.

iPhone's strong emphasis on usability not just graphic design is what developers find attractive. Meadow points to moving from the point and click metaphor to the pinch and squeeze interface as an example of why usability on the iPhone goes deeper than just graphics.

"It’s a gestural interface," Meadow says.

Meadow’s hope and he says the hope of most Mac developers, is that they will be able to write native applications that live on the iPhone.

"While there are amazing things you can do with Web-based applications using Java script, which is what Apple suggested when the iPhone first came out, there are a lot of things you can’t do that well with a Web-based app," says Meadow.

Meadow expects an SDK similar to what is available for the Mac using a high level language like Objective C.

What he really hopes is for transportability between Mac and iPhone applcaitons.

"I would like to think of it as writing for the Mac but this one runs in the palm of your hand," Meadow said.

Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group, is not a developer and he looks at the SDK from a different perspective.

"Apple should maintain a lot of control over development because there is no [consumer] tolerance for an unreliable phone," Enderle told me.

On the other side of the coin, Enderle thinks developers don’t trust Apple to allow them to talk to customers directly.

The friction between what Apple wants and what the developers want is where the drama comes in, says Enderle.

If you give a lot of control over to developers and Apple does not maintain the high quality of what goes on the iPhone, "the market will move elsewhere," he says.

We will have our answers tomorrow.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on March 5, 2008 02:05 PM

July 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Macs and motorcycles

TAGS: Apple

Apple's cult appeal has a somewhat unlikely predecessor: Harley-Davidson

In an attempt to explain the phenomenon that is Apple and why it has such a loyal following, I thought I would take a look at a company that achieved that haloed status first, by about 80 years. It's one of the few that can claim a similar kind of loyalty among its customers: Harley-Davidson Motorcycles.

Aside from the fact that hardly anyone gets the Apple logo tattooed onto their body, both companies have a lot in common.

One of the more curious similarities that Harley and Apple share is the fact that both have a charismatic leader whose roots go back to the company's founding and who, after losing the company, took it back from the philistines.

In Harley-Davidson's case, it was Willy Davidson, grandson of the founder, who became part of the group that bought the company back from bowling ball company AMF. In the case of Apple, of course, it was Steve Jobs, once ousted by his own board of directors but who returned in triumph as CEO.

The similarities don't end there.

When I bought my first Harley, the salesman rolled it out of the showroom and into the street and started it up for me. The first thing it did was backfire two or three times.

I was worried. Why did it do that, I asked?

"It's a Harley. If you want perfection, buy a Japanese bike," he told me.

Way back in the early '80s, while editing a car and motorcycle magazine, I became fascinated by the new world of high tech. I decided to leave publishing and got a job selling computers at one of the first computer retailers on the East Coast.

If memory serves, the Apple II -- not the Apple II Plus or the Apple IIe -- sold for about $2,495. Sometimes, only days after having bought one, a customer would come back into the store carrying the Apple in his arms like a baby and announce, "My Apple is sick. Can you fix it?"

Unlike the Harley salesman, I didn't say, "What do you expect? It's an Apple," but it did amaze me that someone could be so good-natured about forking over $2,495 for a brand-new, nonworking machine.

Love, even for an inanimate object, does not spring from perfection. Rather, I suspect it is the imperfections of the object of our desire that make it lovable.

As for Harley, its bikes were never the most comfortable machines to ride. In fact, a kidney belt was recommended before the company recently rubber-mounted its engines. And its V-twin engine is way out of date in terms of motorcycling engineering.

In the beginning, far fewer programs ran on Apple than the IBM standard. For the most part, Apple innovated more slowly, late to the table on the hard-disk drive and lagging in memory. Its first business machine, the Lisa, was a total flop.

And now, even the flaws in the iPhone are meaningless to the faithful.

Another attribute both Apple and Harley share is their status as an underdog. By the late 1960s, British motorcycle companies had all but died, and the Japanese had the fastest, most reliable bikes on the street. Harley was tired, unreliable, and doomed, it seemed, to memory. But it came back through a series of shrewd business decisions and the help of the U.S. government, which put a tariff on imported bikes to help make the local marque a bit more palatable.

For its part, Apple has been counted out too many times to mention. As soon as IBM introduced its first PCs, Apple became the underdog. I was there in that first computer store when the owners brought in Big Blue. It took over immediately, riding its trusted name in business to account for nearly 80 percent of the store's PC sales almost overnight.

What's interesting, however, is that whereas Harley keeps its image old-school, playing off tradition to keep its audience loyal, Apple appeals to modernity to keep its edge. Either way, though, Harley or Apple, both companies make products that are eye candy to their followers.

Yet to perpetuate their appeal, each company must win over new customers. And this is where the two companies may really diverge.

Next time you're on the street, take a good look at the Harley riders as they pass. I will wager you will see gray hair and a somewhat weather-worn face beneath the helmet. Harley owners are aging, and so, in search of a more youthful demographic, Harley took two bold steps. It revamped its line, adding the sporty Buell to its big-cruiser-only product line. And even worse, to attract more buyers, the company produced the first non-air-cooled engine, a move anathema to traditionalists.

Unfortunately, neither strategy has proved to be a roaring success for Harley.

On the other hand, Apple was able to transition its systems from the PowerPC processor to Intel, the very brains that power its archrival Windows PCs, with barely a complaint from the faithful.

The company also diverged from its core business when it introduced the iPod and now the iPhone. Not only have both products sold extremely well -- the iPod becoming a huge success and the iPhone likely heading in a similar direction -- but they are driving new customers to consider other parts of the Apple product line.

In fact, longtime Apple watcher Tim Bajarin, principal at Creative Strategies, estimates that 50 percent of the people coming into Apple's stores are new to Apple.

For both Harley and Apple, customer loyalty has provided a tremendous competitive advantage. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that the next generation will be as loyal as the previous one.

So far it looks like Apple has come up with the right answers. I hope Harley does, too. In the meantime, it will be exciting to see how both companies evolve to keep their phenomenon factor going.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on July 24, 2007 03:00 AM