a herenot at large

gruber adds on android's open hardware approach.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:06:15 GMT

Gruber quotes what I wrote about android, cool.

I agree with the addition of the CPU and GPU as another hardware permutation factor. I didn't write about that in the original post because I wanted to keep the post focused on the physical UI aspect of the totally-open hardware specification of android and what I think are the consequences for mobile app development.

there are some cool comments about this on my original blog post too. I particularly like the comparison of the iphone platform to a console gaming platform - which are even MORE rigid as a platform the the iphone is.. as there is only ONE hardware profile to develop for - the iphone has 3 three sets hardware permutation thus far (iphone, ipd touch and the 3g iphone).

android's main disadvantage against the iphone (and blackberry, openmoko, others)

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:09:58 GMT

Gruber at daringfireball writes, in a post about android vs iphone as a platform:

"The big advantage Apple has with the iPhone is that they control the entire product, top to bottom. The case, the chipsets, the OS, the user interface.".... "Google’s dependence on hardware and carrier partners puts the final product out of their control — and into the control of companies whose histories have shown them to be incompetent at design and hostile to users."

I Agree.

Moreover, it's not just a big problem from a user perspective, or the quality of the end product from Googles point of view. It presents an even bigger problem from a development point of view too.

Developers working on android apps are put in a position where they need to guess and program for different physical UI scenarios (none of which actually exist in the wild, yet):

Does the target phone have physical buttons?
What is the button configuration?
Does it have a touch screen?
What about different resolutions?
What sensors do you code for? camera? accelerometer? proximity? touchpad?

It's hard enough to code effective UIs for a unified platform - coding for different hardware UI configuration adds complexity which is an order of magnitude harder to do effectively. and it presents a problem for the end user market too - in disseminating the platform (educating: how to use the platform, what does the user expect from the platform, what is the BRAND experience from an android phone? is there one at all?)

Google's approach, as determined by Google's GOAL (proliferation of an OPEN platform so there is no way for one company to lock access to the web) is to let the market decide. this is great, and very democratic, but when you look at the way major platform evolve - you see that standardisation takes TIME.

If you look at platforms that have a differing hardware UI footprint to them you see the problem with this approach pretty clearly - the web is the classic example for resolution based problems - even now, many websites don't scale well on differing resolution screens - and most sites are coded to a standard resolution (around 800 pix wide or so) - which took time, around 10 years to get too.
In the PC world the market standardised itself over the course of ten years on keyboard+mouse.
If you look at Linux (and earlier on the fragmentation of UNIX which allowed Microsoft access to the enterprise market through "divide and rule") you'll see why many standards (UI toolkits, package management, dependencies on different libraries, different shells) = no homogenised platform which allows for the more perceived cohesive platform to win in the market place.

no homogenised platform = no advantage to android as a recognised platform.

this is not to say that android won't be a huge success, I think it will, but it's going to be a different kind of success then the kind of success that the iphone will have (and has) as a development platform - it will probably kill the OS licensing to cellphone makers market, kill data access crippling by the carriers and this way will remove a big threat to Google's core business model. but I doubt that android will sustain a long term development community and hardware platform in the way that apple's iphone is likely to achieve.

Apple dropped the other shoe.

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:52:01 GMT

SDK announced. If you're a programmer and you are reading this. well.. I advise you to download the thing and play with it.

they announced a lot of buisness oriented features that are boring (exchange support, push mail, blah).

they demoed games working on the thing (including a mobile version of spore and some sega stuff).

But there were to things that really amased me. both happened at the Q&A session:

amazing moment number 1:

Q: What will happen if someone does a VOIP app?
A: We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi.

well people, it looks like Ebay might not have been stupid buying skype, after all. they could make a killing if they port it to iphone. question is... well... are they?

if they do - there might not be any reason to unlock the sim in the iphone in the first place, just use it as a skype phone where you have wifi. which, by the time this goes on-line - is likely to be anywhere. welcome to the 21st century.

amazing moment number 2:

there always has to be a village idiot, in this case it's Ryan Block from engadget:

Q: Will SIM unlock software be considered software not allowed in the app store?
A: (pause) "... yes.".

animated history of middle east control by empires.

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:55:11 GMT

Pretty cool 90 second history of the middle east ~~re-enacted by bunnies~~ flash animation.

a longer instrument is exactly what I need!

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:47:36 GMT

this found its way into my inbox:

yeah! exactly what I need!

88 keys instead of 61!:

Android's BIG problem.

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:13:34 GMT

hardware control of a pro-tool system using an iphone/ipod touch. (via cdm)

a good example of why Google's android is going to fight an uphill battle against a platform which is more unified - one standardized hardware interface rather then many different ones, one software GUI - and MANY MORE users (specificly when putting the ipod touch into the equation). if I was a developer I would concentrate on understanding apple's platform now, specifically - since the official API will be out on February.

ahh yeah.. and right now there is a user base of 2-5 million users of apple's Multi touch platform. android has a user base which is considerably lower then that.

as this example shows - developers in vertical markets are already making some really cool stuff for a platform that exists now, without an official API - I'm not sure what interest do developers have to code stuff for an API that has no product in the market - and in it's own echo system the input devices and UI's are probably going to be non-homogeneous.

a bit of Fry and blogging.

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:04:03 GMT

Steven Fry has a blog now. (of a bit of fry and laurie, jeeves and wooster, and many MANY other things, fame)

If you have an hour or so to waste - check it out.

it's very cool. I've always like the man.

(I apologize for the silly title)

a short thought about integrety.

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:01:55 GMT

people who have no integrity in their art, seldom have integrity in their daily life.

revenge will be mine.

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:38:53 GMT

herenot: yo.

adistav: hey

herenot: how was the cultura eve?

adistav: very nice. people like it, especially the non-technical people (which was the idea)

herenot: cool. am I right in assuming that moshe will be the next one?

adistav: yes. on a subject closer to you

herenot: yah, I read as much on his blog. you know what that means?

adistav: what?

herenot: I will have to kill both of you when I come back. I could accept one of you giving a talk in my absence about a subject I'm interested in. but not two. ok. that's it, need to find new friends when I return. (that is after I dispose of the bodies)

adistav: ah. when are you back?

herenot: 15th of october

adistav: i felt a little funny to tell noa "let me give a lecture in 4 months"
adistav: moshez has less of an excuse...

herenot: doesn't matter.

adistav: actually i think you would not find much new with my own lecture, dax would've enjoyed it more

herenot: work out your wills. you have a month and a half.

adistav: okay :)

herenot: I'm serious.

adistav: okay.

herenot: I'll shop for the knifes today after work. ze germans have great knifes.

skype's lame excuse

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:48:56 GMT

skype's outage this weekend has been resolved, and all is well now. Skype issued an explanation which I find hard to believe: according to thier blog - a microsoft software patch which requered rebooting flooded thier netword with log-on requests and a software but caused thier servers to crash.

If this is true can anyone tell me: why now?

why did this never happen before. I mean, it's not like this was the first software update microsoft has issued which initiated a computer restart...

why did the skype network crash now, and not before?

any ideas?

heroes.

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:17:56 GMT

Ok, so we watched a few chapters of this series (8 chapters of season 1). Basicly, it's pretty good. the thing is that the first few chapters get you riveted but after a while it gets somewhat repetative.

the structure of each chapter is very similar, and the plot isn't really moving at the pace I would hope. we are watching 3 or 4 episodes at one sitting - which is probably a good reason to why I'm slightly overdosing on heroes at the moment.

a typical episode:

previously on heroes -> some atmosphere shots of a setting and annoying narration on top -> various stories -> Hiro Nakamora comic relief -> some scary stuff with Syler -> more stories -> more annoying narrations -> cliff hanger -> to be continued.

rinse repeat.

I like the comic book references and influences on the series ethos and feel, a lot of Xmen influences, obviously. I even dare to say.. some Buffy influences (the cheerleader-girl next door turned superhero) and some geek shik (Nakamura, which is, obviously, my favorite character).

but, basely, it's a soap opera. I hope it becomes less rigid in structure, or just more interesting as it moves along.

stuff from zoreria

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:11:24 GMT

Ok, so we're in .de now. we have begun a blog that chronicals our impression of the place and stuff that happens. you might want to check it out. feel free to tell people about this, if you like.

internet access is kina sporadic here, but we'll post when we can.

H & D.

mission impossible II

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:31:05 GMT

Your mission, should you choose to except it..

so.. I have this thing on friday, and I'll be demoing the bunny. so, I need to rework the bunny and make a better looking version. this is during the time I'm working on icecube, which is a rather complex project in itself.

nahh...

I'll just build a new one. from start to finish, including high-quality finishing, within less then a week.

-----

sunday - find a keyboard, work on icecube.

monday - hack keyboard, define design. some more work on icecube.

tusday - build it. send icecube files to the 3d printer.

wednesday - fit and finish. write some code for icecube.

thursday - rehearse

friday - perform.

saturday - rest (and write code for icecube).

-----

easy. sleep is for the weak.

[update, friday morning] that plan above looks funny.. I did manage to get a new bunny to work, and I didn't sleep much (four hours tonight, thats relativly a lot for this week, yesturday I forgot to eat - the normal pre-presentation shinanegins)

the object looks pretty spiffy, but it's not compleatly done. will be presented later today. yeah.

stop designing products.

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:21:01 GMT

Start designing experiences.

great article

synths. yum.

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:04:19 GMT

First, The most awesome synth. EVER. (click on the link. trust me)

--

reason 4.0 was anounced. the usual suspects still absent (VSTi support, audio in). the cool stuff: formant filters (Yey! you can make a speech synth), better sequencer. the nice to have stuff: arpeggiator . the WTF stuff: grove mixer? oh well.

--

And the electronics for icecube is done. All that's left is the software and the Industrial design part. whoohoo!

no multitouch macs for you! come back 5 years!

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:49:08 GMT

So I've finally listened to Walt Mossberg's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates joint interview at D5.

I'm kind of sorry I didn't listen to it prior to the wwdc keynote, 'couse if I did it would be clear that there would be not multitouch announcement for leopard (and the fact that new macbook pros were announced a week before - with no MT screens... would also have been a good hint).

below is what steve says about Multitouch, but it's long and tedious. this is the cliffs notes version:

They will not do anything radical on the mac, we have too many apps, and too many people to educate. We will do the crazy shit on new devices with less baggage. like the iphone and ipod.

we'll probably have to wait till the version after leopard.

Walt: Bill discusses all his secret plans. You don’t discuss any.

"Steve: I know, it’s not fair. But I think the question is a very simple one, which is how much of the really revolutionary things people are going to do in the next five years are done on the PCs or how much of it is really focused on the post-PC devices. And there’s a real temptation to focus it on the post-PC devices because it’s a clean slate and because they’re more focused devices and because, you know, they don’t have the legacy of these zillions of apps that have to run in zillions of markets.

And so I think there’s going to be tremendous revolution, you know, in the experiences of the post-PC devices. Now, the question is how much to do in the PCs. And I think I’m sure Microsoft is–we’re working on some really cool stuff, but some of it has to be tempered a little bit because you do have, you know, these tens of millions, in our case, or hundreds of millions in Bill’s case, users that are familiar with something that, you know, they don’t want a car with six wheels. They like the car with four wheels. They don’t want to drive with a joystick. They like the steering wheel.
And so, you know, you have to, as Bill was saying, in some cases, you have to augment what exists there and in some cases, you can replace things. But I think the radical rethinking of things is going to happen in a lot of these post-PC devices."

damn PG and his oily hide!

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:35:30 GMT

Peter Gabriel is doing a tour in europe.

Peter Gabriel is playing in Germany. Now.

Peter Gabriel's set list from last night includes 'Big time' and 'humdrum'.

I will be in Germany just as he finishes the tour (in england).

DAMN.

I should state that the show he gave in Israel in 94 was my favorite performance ever (I like it more then the U2, bjork, Mcfarrin, sting, Regina and others that I've seen here over the years). those two songs he DIDn't play then.
I might just catch the show in Denmark, if I'm lucky. But I doubt it.

short stuff and thingies

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:23:10 GMT

----

the meteorological report:

on the 29th I'm going to show some of what I've been working on this year. Bunny II : the Bunny strikes back.

I'm thinking of building a new bunny for the occasion. Bunny III : the revenge of the bunny.

I'll also make another demo film next week. There might be a show sometime next week.

more on that soon.

----

Icecube is moving slowly, and with that event on the horrizon, I might freeze it next week so I'll be able to prepare.

----

less then a month to go to the whole Germany thing. nothing is final yet.

----

well... keynote summery:

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:45:44 GMT

if you hate itunes, you're sure not going to like the new mac os.

the 80/80 Rule. (or, damn! another iphone post)

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:44:34 GMT

Today I've heard that the iphone is going to be a dissapointment (by someone who knows his shit - he's developing apps for cellular phones).

I just smiled and waved (ok, forget the waving part).

his rational was that it's:

a) overly expected. Any small hindrence will drag the satisaction of it to the ground.

b) not that much of a breakthrough.

I didn't reply, for various reasons (mostly being that I don't like to reply before I thought was I was going to say through).

After I thought about it for a bit I think he is wrong on both two counts:

the expectation part is true. sorta. it is hyped, people are in a frenzy. if something will not work properly (battery, touch, LCD) people will be pissed. BUT

But the expectation part is also wrong. Actually we know very little about the device. It was unvailed six months ago and no new information has surfaced since. nothing. we know nothing about the apps (apart for the obvious calender, ipod, and such).

for example: nobody mentuned anything about games for it, yet. Trust me - you're going to see games running on it when it comes out - that is if apple checked its competition in the marketplace.

Apple is in a very good position to surprise us further with this device.

The second part I compleatly dissagree with.

True - LCD multitouch, maps, calenders, ipods, and that jazz - Everything has been displayed before - there is nothing new here.

So what..

what counts is integration and user interaction. and that is the differentiating factor. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard a hotshot programmer say that "ICQ was nothing new (and they were lucky..)" I'd probably have had a nice meal at a macdonalds somewhere. but I digress..

where was I? ah.. yes.. User interaction. 80% people will be able to use 80% of the functions of this phone easly. NOT 80/20 or 20/80 or whatever the heck that "rule" is. People are going to go and get iphones.

The same thing HAPPENED before. that product dosn't have any perticular tecnological advantage (apart of user interaction and integration). sounds familler?

80/80/80.

80% of the market.
80% of the people using
80% of the features.

thats the ipod.

some news.

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:34:26 GMT

well then..

Icecube is moving along nicely. I have a working 8*8 LED matrix now.

as some have alwredy saw BunnyTNG now transmits gesture information (thanks to the wiimote). this really changes things - it transforms a cool gizmo into a REALLY cool thingy.

looks like things are progressing nicely of that front. more on that soon.

---

looks like the grant that we expeted for D fell through. it's sad but we'll live.

a big day for multitouch tech.

Wed, 30 May 2007 13:43:37 GMT

well then..

As Steve and Bill get ready to rumble today the next computing hardware paradim battle is about to begin in earnest.

Today, a few months after apple, microsoft has just unveiled their multitouch technology, and it looks cool and slightly vaporous, as usual.
there are even a few innovations* there. this looks very cool, but Microsoft is going to loose this battle. Apple has alwredy won it. lets do the math:

Microsoft's multitouch: supposedly costs 5-10K$ - is a table. it uses back projection and a series of cameras. will go on the market twards the end of the year to people who can shell out that kind of cash. it's not going to be mass produced in the next few months (or years).

Apple's multitouch: costs 500$ - LCD device. going to the market in TWO WEEKS. pretty obvious that next generation OS is going to have multitouch hooks for the dev's to use. feature compleate beta: two weeks. release version: in three months. it's a cellphone, not a desk - but it can probably be a laptop LCD, or a monitor or anything LCD-y.

As I said when the iphone was reveled, it's becoming even more clear why Apple bought fingerworks two years ago. this steve guy is pretty smart. first with that whole laserprinter postscript thing and now this. this guy KNOWs where to place the chips on the table.

Ah yes.. and palm** are supposed to announce something today too.

* ms innovation: using cameras to detect physical stuff on the device a-la MIT's hiroshi's sensetable, but detecting wireless products and interfacing with them on the table is an idea I didn't see anywhere else (the get and manipulate photos from a digital camera, by placing the camera on the table). I guess they do a check of the dimention of the product and see which wirless device connected has that profile. pretty cool.

** who? [update: it's so feable, I don't see a reason to even mentune it here. nothing to see here, move along]

lightning strike.

Wed, 30 May 2007 09:48:02 GMT

a life time, or so, ago I worked at intel.

when I joined (together with about 15 other people) we had a few days of orientation seminars. in one of those session some big-whig* spoke about intel's history. The subject of intel's monopoly over the PC-cpu market was mentioned and the historical events that led to it.

the obvious event being IBM's decision to design the PC based on intel's x86 architecture rather then motorola's 68X series, for example, which was regarded the superior CPU architecture, at the time.

someone said that this was a lot to do with "luck". the bigwhig responded that there are varing amounts and kinds of "luck".

it's one form of "luck" to be hit by lightning in the middle of the city.

It's quite a different form of "luck" to be hit by luck by climbing to the top of the lightning rod on top of the highest skyscraper in town, in the middle of a thunder storm.

------

Ok, so back to the present day.

at the moment I'm on the skyscraper,it took some time to climb, but I'm at the top now. It seems that there's some static electricity in the air.

we'll see.

[update: for clarification purpuses, I just want to say this is good lightning, not bad lightning :-)

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* It might have been Dov Frohman**. I'm not sure.

it's been a good week thus far.

Tue, 29 May 2007 12:43:51 GMT

wiimote hacking and 3d printing.

welcome to the 21st century.

good times.

Jobs by piven.

Thu, 10 May 2007 14:47:58 GMT

I just found this Hanoch Piven portrait of Steve Jobs, pretty cool.

found it here.