Pretty bad. In fact, if you’re thinking video, utterly unusable.

Kevin Tofel of GigaOm and JKOnTheRun is someone who isn’t a dyed in the wool iPhone or Apple fan. In fact, he replaced his iPhone with a Nexus One in January (a process that I’ve recently gone through, more of which anon). And that’s why this video over on NewTeeVee of his experience with Flash video should be required watching for anyone who thinks Flash on mobile is a reality, today.

What does this demonstrate? Simply that the idea that Apple could simply magically put Flash on the iPad (which runs a processor in the same class as the Nexus One) is fantasy. Ignoring the broader reasons for Apple wanting to keep Flash off its platform, it’s clear that Flash is simply too processor-intensive to work properly on mobile-class processors as currently specified.

Related posts:

1. Why Apple doesn’t want Flash on iOS
2. And that’s why there will never be Flash on the iPhone
3. ARM’s experience shows why Steve Jobs is right on Flash

If you want to understand what happens when you allow the mobile carriers to dictate hardware, look no further than the fate of the Samsung Epic 4G:

“The Galaxy S will eventually hit Verizon rebranded as the ‘Fascinate’, but it won’t have the front-facing camera. Likewise, AT&T will get the phone, rebranded as the ‘Captivate’, but will lose both the front-facing camera and the LED flash.”

If AT&T or Verizon customers want a front facing camera, that’s just tough: they doesn’t want you to have one. Or, in AT&Ts case, an LED flash. You might take too many picture or something.

Apple broke the “carriers define the phones” model. Google tried to follow suit with the Nexus One, but decided that it was better off doing what Verizon told it to in return for major backing for Android. And it’s customers that suffer.

Related posts:

1. Why you should take reports of an iPhone on Verizon with a pinch of salt
2. Idiot post of the day (The Return of TechCrunch edition)
3. Who owns the platform? Adobe? Google?

Remember the story about how Apple was stealing a third-party app developer’s work and patenting it?

At the time, I explained in a long post that the patent was nothing to do with FutureTap’s excellent WhereTo? application. And, after consulting a patent lawyer who managed to get in touch with Apple’s patent lawyers, that’s exactly how it’s panned out. In a post on their blog, FutureTap’s Ortwin Gentz quotes Apple’s senior patent counsel, Anand Sethuraman:

“The patent application in question does not claim as inventive the pictured user interface nor the general concept of an integrated travel services application.  We appreciate your taking time out to discuss the matter and will keep you updated.”

So there you have it. This was a long-way from the “evul Apple!” that many sites went for – but, as I said at the time, this says more about how Apple is currently perceived than its actual behaviour.

Related posts:

1. No, Apple isn’t patenting developers’ work. But it still has a bigger problem
2. Adobe set to sue Apple?
3. Is Apple making progress in the enterprise?

UPDATE: I’ve just spoken to Richard, who did me the courtesy of doing something I didn’t – he rang me up.

Richard was, in fact, the victim of some really amazingly shoddy subbing. His original piece included all the correct details of what Apple products can and can’t use – but this was cut out.

This is, in fact, a classic case of two worlds colliding. Online, there’s no need to cut to fit. In print, there is. But it’s also my fault. So, sorry Richard.

Dear Richard Rogers,

Can you spot the elementary error in this one?:

“The company is celebrated for its sleek design and hassle-free software, but there is growing resistance to the ‘closed shop’ nature of its products, the ‘Mac monopoly’ that means users must buy their music through iTunes and that all ‘apps’ must come pre-approved from the Apple store.” [I've made it easy, Richard, but take your time.]

Imagine making this kind of elementary mistake in the motoring section. “BMW’s are highly-rated cars, but you have to purchase all your tyres through BMW”. Can you imagine how much your friends would laugh at you? Can you?

But you wouldn’t actually get the chance to write that in a motoring section, because motoring is a “specialist” bit, while technology, apparently, is thought of by The Observer as “something which we can get any freelancer capable of stringing two words together without making the sub-editors grumble to do”.

Naturally, as I’m a former full-time, professional technology journalist who still does the odd bit of freelance so that I can pretend I’m not really in marketing, you might understand why I find that a little annoying.

(UPDATE: I’ve deleted a bit here, basically because – mea culpa – I got it wrong. I would leave it in, but frankly I’m too pissed off with myself to do so. Will reinstate when I’m not so pissed off)

Here’s a side note to whoever commissioned Richard to write that piece: next time, just get a journalist with a passing acquaintance with technology to write for you. You have plenty of good ones on tap.

But whatever you do, don’t ask a self-described “playwright, poet and freelance journalist whose last play was a one-man adaptation of Hamlet performed at the Camden People’s Theatre in London by the El Mono Theatre Group” to write it. When there are so many good technology journalists out there who need the work, it’s pretty fucking insulting to use someone who’s going to make elementary mistakes of fact.

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In search of a headline, Marketing Magazine cites a YouGov survey as showing that the iPad is only “reaching out to the converted“:

“In the two months since the iPad launched in the UK, YouGov has found that 96% of the 713 iPad owners surveyed owned products such as an iPod, iPhone or Mac.”

Why would this be a surprise? Given that Apple utterly dominates the MP3 player category with over 70% market share, it would be a surprise if most people surveyed hadn’t owned an Apple product. When you’ve sold over 225 million music players alone, you’d be hard-pushed to find anyone likely to buy something like the iPad who hasn’t bought an Apple product.

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Patents are hard to understand. If any government wants to reduce the costs of running a business quickly and easily, it should revamp the system of patents to make them easy for people who aren’t lawyers to read, and harder to actually get in the first place.

So it’s no surprise that there’s been a massive amount of misreading of Apple’s patent application on “Systems and methods for accessing travel services using a portable electronic device”. What’s made it easier to misread is Apple’s – frankly stupid – use of FutureTap‘s interface for its excellent Where To? application in the descriptive part of the patent. FutureTap, understandably, are miffed because it looks like Apple is trying to steal their ideas.

And the coverage on the back of it follows suit. John Brownlee at Cult of Mac titled his “Apple submits software patent for other developer’s app, including title and design“. Om Malik at GigaOm (probably my favourite tech site) was so astounded by what he thinks Apple is doing he had to preface his post title with “Not a joke“.

What the patent isn’t

However, I think that FutureTap, John and Om have got this one completely wrong, although I can absolutely see why. First, of all, looking at the patent it’s pretty clear that what’s not covered is either the title or the design. Although those are in the diagrams (they really are just the Where To? interface), they’re not covered by the patent. This isn’t, in fact, a design patent at all, as it doesn’t cover the “ornamental design” of the product. Neither is there a claim on copyright of the interface.

What’s worth remembering is that drawings in patent applications are illustrative, not descriptive. That is to say, they illustrate kind of thing the patent is talking about, but don’t form part of what’s claimed. For example, patent illustrations will often include branded products – like a specific kind of car if its an automotive patent – but the specific car isn’t part of the patent claim.

What the patent is

Dig deeper into the patent itself, and it’s actually clear that what Apple is claiming bears almost no relation to the functionality of Where To?. The summary is this:

“This is directed to systems and methods for integrating travel services in a single application available to a portable electronic device. Using the single application, a user can access and control travel services before arriving at the initial location of travel, on arriving at the initial location of travel, during travel, and after travel. Such services can include, for example, reserving a travel itinerary, checking-in remotely for a reservation, providing airport information, providing for social networking, obtaining dining or entertainment during travel, controlling and requesting cabin services, providing arrival notifications to third parties, providing destination location information, and the like.”

What does that actually mean? Basically, what Apple is seeking to patent is software systems consisting of a back end and a GPS-enabled device capable of sending and receiving location data in the context (specifically) of air travel.

These systems then allow a traveler to create an itinerary and access services based on that itinerary as they travel. These services could include electronically unlocking doors of travel service providers (so, for example, giving you access through your iPhone to an executive lounge) or distributing on-the-fly upgrade offers based on location. They would also allow you to automatically check in, by letting a booking system know that you had arrived at an airport.

WhereTo? doesn’t actually do what Apple is describing. It allows you to manually search for services close by, using a really nice interface. But it doesn’t communicate with service providers’ systems, or provide you with location-based offers based on an itinerary. It’s a much more simple system – a really nice app, but absolutely not what Apple is seeking to patent.

The lesson Apple should learn

Reading patents is tough, but there should have been enough information in the summary for the patent for FutureTap to realise that what Apple was claiming wasn’t anything like their software. Of course, they would be understandably anxious about their interface appearing in a patent – and the first lesson that Apple should learn is never, ever include someone else’s software design in a patent, particularly when it’s a valued member of your developer community.

But the traction this story got illustrates another challenge that Apple now faces: automatic mistrust.

In press conference called over the iPhone 4 antenna issue, Steve Jobs said this:

“Apple’s been around for 34 years. Haven’t we earned the credibility and trust from some of the press to give us a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, of our motivations, and the fact that we’re confident we’re going to solve these problems, we’re going to take care of our users?”

The problem is that for some users, and particular the press, the answer is no. Apple hasn’t done enough to be given the benefit of the doubt, to be trusted not to do whatever it needs to do to make a profit.

When sensationalist bullshit sites like Gizmodo jump to the conclusion that Apple is “teh evul”, I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it. If a horde of Slashdot commentors berate Apple for not letting them develop malware and distribute it via the App Store, who, really, cares?

But the fact that smart, rational guys like Om Malik might believe that Apple was simply trying to patent another company’s idea and screw over developers in the most crass way possible should raise some flags at the company. Om is a clever guy, with a lot of perspective – he wouldn’t have run this story unless he thought there was something in it.

And Om is by no means the only one. Talk to the majority of journalists, and they regard Apple somewhere between “to be approached with caution” and “don’t believe a word they say”.

Relearning the fine art of proactive PR

I’d put a lot of the blame for this firmly at the doors of Apple’s marketing and PR policy since the return of Steve Jobs. Essentially, Apple’s PR policy can be summed up as “say as little as you can get away with to the press. Be professional, courteous, but as essentially give away nothing.”

This, of course, contributes to the overall secrecy which, in turn, makes it possible for Apple to do its fantastic event marketing, which makes each product launch something that attracts worldwide coverage. But the flipside is that the relationship between Apple, the press, and other influencers is remarkably shallow. The kind of face-to-face, deep, personal relationships that encourage trust for a company from the media simply isn’t there.

Consider this: Why did it take a major PR foobar like the iPhone 4 antenna for Apple to open up and show off its state of the art antenna design and test labs? This is not, in any way, something that tells you anything about future products – except “they might have antenna”, which I would think anyone could work out. Had Apple shown this off at the iPhone’s launch, with a press tour and techies on hand to talk about how proud they were, the press would have taken the whole iPhone 4 story with a much bigger pinch of salt. Any other technology company in the world would be screaming from the roof tops about it.

This kind of thing is basic, proactive PR – but it appears that basic, proactive PR is just not on the agenda at Apple. Instead, the concept is that the only thing that anyone should care about is the end product. That’s a fine aim, and it avoids the elementary mistake of attempting to use marketing and PR as “lipstick on a pig“. But the problem with it is is that if a deeper story needs telling, you’re forced to tell it reactively, putting you on the back foot and making you look like you’re not in control of the situation.

Related posts:

1. Apple reassures FutureTap: “We’re not making a patent claim on your work”
2. Adobe set to sue Apple?
3. Could Apple’s attitude to developers get any worse?

One of the often-used memes concerning Apple’s approach to iOS is that it’s for “passive consumers”, people who aren’t creative. In an interesting post on Google App Inventor, O’Reilly’s Mike Loukides dredges this one up again – and I think Mike is committing a classic geek error.

Mike contrasts the approach of App Inventor, which is designed to encourage simple programs for Android, to the higher barrier of entry for development on iPhone, and concludes that it’s a cultural difference:

“But Google has taken another direction altogether: the user’s experience isn’t going to be perfect, but the user’s experience will be the experience he or she wants. If you want to do something, you can build it yourself; you can put it on your own phone without going through a long approval process; you don’t have to learn an arcane programming language. This is computing for the masses. It’s computing that enables people to be creative, not just passive consumers.” [My emphasis]

Here’s Mike’s first error: Conflating “creativity” with programming, and “passivity” with, well, everything else. Mike isn’t the first to do this – I think my friend Cory Doctorow is responsible for the meme, as I pointed out in an earlier post. I’d argue, in fact, that the history of computing teaches us the exact opposite: the less people are required to learn programming in order to be creative with computers, the more creative work you get.

The history of computing over the past 30 years is a move away from requiring people to engage with computers “on their own terms” via programming, and towards enabling users to do creative things through applications. The flowering of creativity this has enabled has been the main creative triumph of the computer. Think of how much less creativity there would be without Photoshop, QuarkXPress, iMovie, or Final Cut, to pick just a few.

These tools have democratised creativity for millions of people. To claim that simply because a platform doesn’t have simple programming tools makes it “only for consumers” is as absurd as claiming that a platform which doesn’t have a easy-to-use DTP package is “only for consumers”. It’s the arrogance of assuming that your chosen mode of creativity is the only mode of creativity.

Look at the iPhone, which is the most pertinent example. Despite having crappy camera hardware, the iPhone made it very simple to take and upload an image, something that wasn’t true for most previous camera phones. What’s more, and this is important, it was a playful experience, one which was enjoyable.

Are all those images “not creative” because the iPhone doesn’t have easier to use coding tools?

Get thee to the engine room, slave!

Mike also brings in an analogy which I think fails:

“It’s sort of like travel: you can go to Club Med or take a cruise ship if you want a crafted experience. But you won’t find out anything about the local culture, you’ll only eat the local food in controlled settings, you’ll never hear the native language spoken. You’ll just do the limited set of things the organizers want you to do.”

I’d argue that the approach he’s taking, which encourages users to get deeper into the hardware and software, to (as he puts it) “find out about the local culture” is actually more like requiring the passengers to do their stint maintaining the engines of the ship, whether they want to or not. The price they “have” to pay for getting on the ship in the first place is to become engineers.

But in the end, the reason why Mike’s argument falls down comes down to choice. The problem is that App Creator isn’t “programming for non-programmers” – it’s “programming for people who want/need to learn programming”.

And most people simply don’t want to learn (or to have to learn) programming. If there’s anything that the history of the personal computer should show clear, it’s this. HyperCard died, not because it wasn’t brilliant (it was, and WAY easier than App Creator) but because 99% of people who got it free with their Mac never found a use for it. It was capable of wonderous things, but most users didn’t even notice when it died.

Most people don’t program not because of lack of simple-enough tools, but because of lack of desire. They want to get on with creative things like taking and editing pictures, writing novels and blog posts, editing home movies, and compiling their family history. And they want to do all that without having to learn to program to do it.

The geek era is over

The geeks – the people who have, so far, been the dominant part of culture in technology and the Internet – are like priests of a religion that finds themselves no longer the centre of their culture’s world. They are displaying all the standard behaviours of a dying religion: Flocking to new prophets, who aggresively promote their message; lashing out bitterly at the heretics who are “betraying” them; and even trying desperately to preserve their way of life by saying “look how easy it is to become a priest!”

What they don’t understand is that their place in the universe has changed. They’re still an important part of the culture, but they no longer run the world. They’re just a part of it, and their creativity is no more – or less – important than anyone else’s.

Related posts:

1. Why Google TV is doomed to fail
2. Google App Inventor: Not for everyone
3. The best summary of the Apple/Adobe war

It’s three months since the launch of the iPad, and the much-heralded “Android iPad killers” are somewhat thin on the ground.

HTC, probably the best Android hardware company around, isn’t making one. Neofonie’s WePad isn’t just missing in action – its site has vanished is still around, although the WePad has metamorphosed into the WeTab and still hasn’t been released. MSI hasn’t released its 10in Tegra-based tablet. Dell, of course, has brought out the Dell Streak, but that’s not really in the same league as the iPad. And LG has announced… something. For the fourth quarter of this year.

Of course, Microsoft is still claiming that it will have tablets which will make the iPad look second-rate, despite the quiet demise of the HP slate that Steve Ballmer showed off earlier this year. Whether these slates will actually have what it takes to be a success is moot: certainly, so far, Windows-based slates haven’t proved popular.

The only company to make a successful business out of them has been Motion Computing, which wisely focused on the kinds of vertical markets which need both Windows compatibility and a well-built slate format.

Mary-Jo Foley, one of the most astute observers of Microsoft around, puts it thus:

“All that said, there’s more to a slate than just the physical form factor. If there isn’t longer battery life, instant on/off and some kind of app store with not just the usual business apps, but also consumer-focused apps and games, I’m not so sure users are going to bite…”

Amen to that.

Related posts:

1. Good luck with making money from Android apps
2. Is the iPhone 4 micro SIM really “not compatible” with iPad?
3. Sometimes, closed is better than open

I’m currently trying to get some thoughts down on the contrasting approaches of Google and Apple to the future of technology. There’s a whole host of stuff buzzing around my mind: are they yet another instalment of the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus? Do they represent yet another clash between C. P. Snow’s “two cultures”? And what is it about both of them that provokes loyalty and hatred in equal measure?

While writing, though, I’ve come to see that we’re entering a new era of computing, one where the paradigms and expectations of the world of the PC won’t give us much guidance. This new era is all about simplified computing, technologies where what’s important is the ability to sit down, get something done, and put down the device. Fast, simple, and most of all requiring as little knowledge about the underlying technology.

Google’s approach to this is to “put it in the cloud”. The only thing you need to do is be able to run a web browser, and the ultimate expression of that is ChromeOS, where there is very little the hardware does except run a web browser.

Apple’s approach is to keep the physical expression of the hardware as simple as possible, to remove options, to pare back the software so that you can only do a limited number of things, all of them “Apple approved”. Of course, the “limited number of things” currently runs to around 200,000 different applications, and you can still access HTML/JavaScript-based web applications too… but you get the idea.

Despite the scare stories, this era of simplified computing doesn’t mean an end to “freedom”. You’re still going to be able to buy computers which let you hack around and do stuff, just as you might have a new car which still lets you dig around under the bonnet. But the people who value the ability to just press the button and get something done will have devices that do exactly that.

One last thought: In all of my thinking about this, I have yet to find a scenario which requires Google to lose in order for Apple to win, or vice versa. The “war” between to two of them is, to my mind, not a war at all – they compete, but both of them are leaders and both of them will end up vastly-bigger companies.

Related posts:

1. The myth of “programming is the only creativity”
2. Cloud computing makes me nervous
3. How much was Power Computing worth? At today’s prices, $7.2 billion

RedLaser, the barcode and price comparison app that sat at the top of the best-seller list for a while, has been bought by eBay and is now free. What’s more, eBay is going to integrate the technology into its other apps:

“eBay plans to integrate RedLaser’s barcode-scanning technology into its leading iPhone applications, including its eBay Marketplace, eBay Selling, StubHub and Shopping.com applications, providing more than 10 million users with access to product information for fast and easy selling and comparison shopping. The technology is designed to help consumers find great deals online for virtually any product with a barcode, and for eBay sellers to quickly create listings by accessing pricing trends and product details for millions of items in eBay’s catalog. “

Smart move from eBay. Not only is RedLaser itself a really nice app, the technology behind it will be a good match for eBay’s core business.

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