Facebook's next major breakthrough is not going to be some nifty new feature, or yet another higher valuation, but its push for HTML5. It is going to be a major breakthrough for the industry at large when Facebook is not a native app on your smartphone or tablet but rather still a browser experience. That would be Mark Zuckerberg going toe to toe with his icon Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs felt snubbed by Mark when Mark did not play along with some kind of a "social" idea Jobs had for his music offerings. Jobs retaliated by integrating Twitter into his very operating system. Snub to Facebook. Mark retaliated by thumbing HTML5 in Jobs' face.
Image via CrunchBaseJust yesterday I was reading this post and found myself shaking my head.
TechCrunch: “It Just Works.”: Apple is now going all-in with their cloud strategy. But they’re not doing it by simply tacking on cloud storage to their existing arsenal of products. They’re attempting to redefine what the “cloud” is..... With iCloud, Apple is transforming the cloud from an almost tangible place that you visit to find your stuff, to a place that only exists in the background. It’s never seen. You never interact with it, your apps do — and you never realize it. It’s magic. ....... Amazon, has essentially turned it into one giant server/hard drive that anyone can use for a fee ...... Apple’s belief is clearly that users will not and should not care how the cloud actually works. ...... You’re working on a document in Pages on your iPad, you move over to Pages on your Mac, and there it is. It even remembers where you were last editing. You download a song to your iPhone, you pick up your iPad, there it is. ....... With iPad/iPhone and now OS X Lion, you don’t save documents anymore. They save automatically — but an easier way to think about it is that they just exist, as is, in realtime on all your devices. ....... Files are something Microsoft worries about. Files in the cloud are something Google and Amazon worry about. Apple’s iCloud is about opening an application and the thing you want to access being there. ...... Chrome OS is perhaps the closest thing to Apple’s iCloud vision. When you boot up a Chromebook and enter your password, everything appears. Again, like magic. ...... this is the point where we may really start to see some truly fundamental differences between Google and Apple after the past few years going head-to-head with feature matching. Apple is going after consumers who have absolutely no idea what the cloud is, and don’t care. ........ Apple has rethought and rewritten their apps — including their desktop apps — from the ground up to be woven with iCloud fabric that a user won’t see. ..... And Apple doesn’t believe that Google can match them even if they wanted to because they don’t have complete control of their ecosystem in the same way that Apple does. ...... Apple is now more clearly than ever betting that will not be web software, but native software backed invisibly by the web.
Steve Jobs is a living legend, and rightly so. At one point I compared him to Mozart, although it was an impulsive move on my part, I would not do it again. But I have some fundamental philosophical differences with the guy. I am not big on native software and that is why I think HTML5 is such good news.
Apple seems to feel about the mobile space like Microsoft used to feel about the PC space. Before Bill Gates retired he had threatened to eat up anti-virus services like Norton. During the span of Bill Gates' career numerous companies got eaten up. It was like the Sun would expand and eat up Mercury, and then it would expand some more and eat up Venus. Apple seems to be doing something similar.
In capitalism though, it is about the consumer. I am not an Apple person, so this does not affect me much.
I have had my cloud a long time. It's called the browser.
Image via WikipediaApps are makeshift. It's like when the bridge collapses, the army puts in place a temporary suspension bridge until the bridge is rebuilt, or at least that is what I saw done in Nepal. Wireless broadband is not where it needs to be, which is everywhere. HTML5 is not here yet.
Steve Jobs is this genuinely amazing guy who I have fundamental philosophical differences with. After having replaced the browser with apps on his smartphone he has started to talk in terms of an app store also for the Mac computer. We are going backwards in time, folks, if we keep following the pied piper.
The Official Google Blog: App Inventor For Androidanyone—programmers and non-programmers, professionals and students—to create mobile applications for Android-powered devices. .... “I used to think that no one could program except CS people. Now, I've made dozens of applications for the Android phone!”
ComputerWorld: Google's App Inventor For Android Is A Game-ChangerApp Inventor has the potential to do for mobile app creation what VisiCalc did for computations -- move it out of the exclusive realm of specialists in glassed-in data centers (or, in the case of mobile apps, programmers who can use a conventional SDK) into the hands of power users as well as make it easier for IT departments to create corporate apps. .... a fair number of components available, ranging from text labels to motion sensors .... you can hook up your phone to your computer while using App Inventor in order to see your app in action. ..... App Inventor for Android is one of the smartest things Google could have done in its battle with Apple for the hearts and minds of smartphone power users. ..... friendly to non-coding power users.
ComputerWorld: Android App Inventor: Another Slap To Apple's Closed ModelGoogle's new App Inventor for Android might just be magical -- and maybe even a little revolutionary. ..... apps created with App Inventor won't even be published to the Android Market as of now. .... The satirical likening of Apple to a communist regime doesn't always seem so far-fetched. ..... While Apple has long bragged about the 47 bazillion apps in its App Store, analyses suggest the vast majority of them actually sit unused.
New York Times: Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation SoftwareGoogle is bringing Android software development to the masses. ..... Google App Inventor for Android (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), has been under development for a year .... as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves. .... he helped initiate M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare program, which offers free online course materials used in teaching the university’s classes. ..... similar to snapping together Lego blocks ..... A student at the University of San Francisco, Mr. Abelson said, made a program that automatically replied to text messages, when he was driving. “Please don’t send me text messages,” it read. “I’m driving.”
This is not only the future of Android app creation, this is the future of programing itself. Computer programminglanguages have been on a one way ride to simplicity all these decades. This was bound to happen. Creating an app is now like putting together legos.
This is about thinking of software as utility, as commodity. You don't need a degree in electrical engineering to flip that switch, do you?
Used to be you needed to buy and upkeep servers. Then Amazon came to the rescue. This is a similar big shift in programming.
In The News
Techmeme Offers Tech News at Internet Speed New York Times Techmeme could become a model for other industries as a useful way to harness the increasingly unwieldy Web and arm readers who are preparing for business meetings or cocktail parties. ...... “Techmeme is our go-to primary source,” said Marshall Kirkpatrick, an editor and lead blogger at ReadWriteWeb, a tech blog. ..... Techmeme combines all three strategies, automatically searching the Web, employing editors and accepting tips from readers. .... its 260,000 readers, who check it three million times a month. .... Bijan Sabet, a venture capitalist at Spark Capital who reads Techmeme daily, also visits other aggregators, like Hacker News, because they have more diversity. Casualties Of War: OfferPal Downsizes As Facebook Chooses Competitor TechCrunch Offerpal is currently the largest offers and alt-pay provider world-wide. Offerpal’s business continues to grow and expand in numerous other areas including an exciting new agreement with Yahoo!, and on the mobile iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, with more to come. We are projecting continued strong growth going forward as well as sustained profitability. Man Claims Ownership of Facebook Wall Street Journal Waging war on Wordpress: Posterous prepares the switch Guardian
Granted Apple did not invent the mobile space or the digital music space like it invented the Personal Computer space, but it has done a very good job of reinventing. You could argue Microsoft was not first with word processing, spreadsheets and operating systems, but it did a slam dunk job of defining and totally taking over that space, the PC software space.
It is interesting to me how Apple has so reinvented itself. The creative genius of Steve Jobs has been at play. You could argue Yahoo did not perform a similar second act. Maybe Yang made the big mistake of making someone else the CEO for a few years. Also Yang never declared that Google won the search war like Jobs declared Microsoft won the PC war, that war is over, he said upon taking back the helm at Apple in the late 1990s. But then it is hard to see many directions that Yahoo could go right now. How would it differentiate? Or has it become an old, tired company?
But Apple continues to be at the high end market. It sells its products to people who will buy at any price. It is about cool, not cheap.
Apple's mobile space has been sizzling. It keeps relaunching its hit products. Like there would be Windows 95, then again Windows 98, the iPhone is the god that keeps giving. And with the genius stroke of opening up the platform to outside developers, perhaps learned from Facebook, things really took off, both for Facebook and Apple.
The ecosystem of the computing experience has become so much richer. More is to follow, for sure. The company continues to fascinate, the founder continues to fascinate. And all the while Apple keeps tinkering with the PC space, its original space.
For Apple, 2008 Was a Very Good Year PC World Over the past twelve months, the number of Apple-branded products on the street has become so broad and ubiquitous.... a year that easily ranks as one of the most significant in its 31-year-history. ..... all data on a lost or stolen phone to be remotely wiped .... The App Store concept may prove more revolutionary to the smart phone industry than the iPhone itself. ...... In March, iTunes became the No. 1 music retailer in the world, ousting Wal-Mart from the top spot. ...... With Snow Leopard, Apple will focus on performance and code bloat -- aiming to speed things up and reduce the amount of hard drive space the software required. ..... a leaner and significantly faster operating system. .... innovation ruled Apple in 2008 .... Apple has always been an innovative company, but perhaps no more so than in 2008. Even as other companies pull back from exploring new ground because of the economic downturn, Apple continues to be a pioneering company on a variety of fronts. I won't speculate at this point about what's ahead for the company in 2009, but I expect that there will be at least one or two surprises. What 2009 May Bring for All Things Google Dell Turnaround Hits Bump With Reorganization Woes CNNMoney.com the 10-month-old restructuring program of the world's second-biggest computer maker is in trouble. ..... Since the beginning of the year, Dell's stock price has fallen 58%. ..... Jarvis was in charge of a corporate image makeover intended to promote the company as an innovator of cutting-edge products, rather than a discount maker of commodity PCs. Is Hewlett-Packard eyeing stake in Satyam? Economic Times The global market for computer services is estimated to be around $748 billion. .... IBM has over 73,000 professionals in India and Accenture some 37,000. I woke up this morning and my Zune was gone CNET News Yahoo, Intel have high hopes for Internet TV CNN Intel concluded that unlike the PC, TVs are social. ..... Another difference from PCs: it must be simple and reliable .... People in the U.S. spend about 5 times more time watching TV than using a computer, Bell said. Globally, it's a factor of 25 ...... advertising-supported television ..... And nobody wanted yet another remote control. .... Few, though, wanted a full-on Web browser, nor a keyboard to clutter up the room. Has Chrome Pushed Google Over The Evil Edge? eWeek If you have a browser, you wield a great deal of influence over the Internet software market. ...... Imagine if Google could duplicate the ad-serving success of search on Chrome. .... Chrome effectively put Google in Microsoft's league, just on the Web instead of the desktop. Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less)Washington Post Google's main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). ...... YouTube would be second with 70 million unique U.S. visitors, and Blogger would be in the top 5 with 23.5 million .... Book Search visitors are now at 8.4 million vs. 7.4 million for Google News What 2009 May Bring for All Things Google PC WorldAndroid will at best keep pace with Apple's mobile juggernaut in 2009 A Tough Year for Yahoo New York Times the failed merger negotiations with Microsoft and the failed advertising partnership with Google ...... two rounds of layoffs, seemingly endless rounds of reorganizations and a sense that they were riding on a rudderless ship. ..... a peek at one of the company’s high profile product efforts: a version of its popular Yahoo Mail that was rebuilt into a powerful communications hub Alaska Air Taps Oracle To Build Customer Loyalty InformationWeek IBM ThinkPad T43 Laptop: $394.99, save $355.01 Cheap Laptop IBM bares next five tech innovations Inquirer.net SOLAR technology in clothes, “talking” to the Internet and personal “digital shopping assistants:” ...... “thin-film” solar cells, a new type of cost-efficient solar cell that can be 100 times thinner than silicon-wafer cells and produced at a lower cost. ....... your doctor will be able to provide you with a genetic map that tells you what health risks you are likely to face in your lifetime and the specific things you can do to prevent them, based on your specific DNA — all for less than $200. ...... Genetic mapping will radically transform healthcare .... In places like India, where the spoken word is more prominent than the written word in education, government and culture, “talking” to the Web is leapfrogging all other interfaces ...... “voice sites” Micron Links with Sun to Bolster Lifespan of Flash-Based Storage Trading Markets You Need AMD In 2009 Motley Fool Russia prepares to halt gas supplies to Ukraine Reuters Microsoft: Zune Glitch Caused By Leap Year Clock Bug CNNMoney.com
There’s Gold in Them iPhones Washington Post The mobile-computing space looks a bit like the early days of personal computers, when different operating systems were competing to be king.
A Backlash Grows in Bangalore Over Tech Revolution BusinessWeek fewer than 5% of Bangaloreans have ever been inside an airplane ..... The software industry, he says, has turned the city into a glorified sweatshop. "Where is the innovation?" ....... with growing tax revenues, the city has been able to add bus lines and is building a subway system Bringing Broadband to the Urban Poor Tesco: 'Wal-Mart's Worst Nightmare' Tesco will continue to grow at an average of 11% annually through 2012, enabling it to overtake France's Carrefour (CARR.PA) to become the world's second-largest retailer by 2012. ......... unrivaled ability to manage vast reams of data and translate that knowledge into sales ....... the best and broadest range of house brands from any retailer. ...... runs the world's largest and most successful online grocery operation and is Britain's biggest private-sector employer, with 280,000 staff Ten Stories that Defined Broadband in 2008 more than 400 million broadband users around the planet .... In sharp comparison to the U.S., WiMAX technologies are taking off in emerging telecom economies such as India, a trend that is predicted to gather momentum in 2009 and 2010. GigaOM Network: On Twitter, Followers Aren't Really Friends GigaOM Network: Cisco's Misguided Foray Into the Living Room GigaOM Network: Apple's Got a War Chest of Cash Gazprom Stokes European Energy Worries Slovakia Joins Decade-Old Euro Zone Britain's GDP Will Decline at Fastest Pace Since the 1940s expects the UK’s gross domestic product to decline by 2.9 per cent in real terms over the next year ..... Business investment – forecast to collapse by more than 15 per cent in 2009 ..... “Despite the public declarations by the government that the banks ought to be lending more it is clear that the primary concern of many of our largest banks is to shore up their balance sheets and, for those on the end of the government bail-outs, to pay back their Treasury paymasters.” ...... “With few incentives for banks to behave otherwise, credit availability to businesses may become even worse during 2009.” More and More Africans Risk Sea Crossing to EU Right wing interior minister Roberto Maroni said on national radio that the migrants will be swiftly thrown out. ...... a significant proportion were also fleeing conflict zones, such as Somalia and Eritrea. .... Malta recently passed a law to automatically detain illegal migrants for 18 months ..... since 1988 at least 9,400 people have died at sea trying to get to Europe
Image by Getty Images via @daylife(Article first published as Facebook's Next Major Breakthrough on Technorati.)
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