Category Archives: Thoughts on the World

Not from My Cold, Dead Hand…

Posted on 2 August 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

My regular correspondent Malachy Martin recently posed another of his “research” questions:

What would work look like if you only had an iPad as your computing device?

My first reactions focused on whether my iPad could replace my laptop. Then I had a horrible second thought:

“I hope he doesn’t mean taking away my phone!”

I suppose I could go back to carrying a separate phone (or bag of 20p pieces), diary, address book, alarm clock, notepad, dictaphone, GPS, map, camera (well, I do do that, but that’s different), puzzle book, music player…

Yes, the iPad can do all of these, but it’s just too big to carry around all the time. I’m certainly not going to strap it to my arm in the gym, or hold it to my ear in public. So let’s assume I’m allowed to keep my phone, and focus on my first interpretation of the question. Could the iPad replace my laptop? What couldn’t I do without the latter?

First, say goodbye to a lot of content creation. The iPad touch keyboard is just too slow and inaccurate for entering large amounts of text. The ZaggMate keyboard which comes combined with a cover for the iPad screen is great, and at least allows you to navigate and select text accurately, but it suffers from some nasty key bounce and the keys are a bit too small for my fingers. Even ignoring physical text entry problems, you’ve got the challenge that there’s no truly compatible version of MS Office for the iPad, so creating properly compatible structured Office documents is almost impossible.

The problem is even worse in respect of graphical content. Set aside the fact that I do a lot of image processing on my laptop, which requires both substantial horsepower and a proper PC-level operating system. The iPad just doesn’t hack it for fine graphical manipulation. I can reliably drive a PC with a mouse to an accuracy of 1-2 pixels (in 1280 on my laptop, and 1600 on my desktop). The iPad is designed for operation with a 1/2″ paintbrush, and is realistically limited to operations suited to such a tool.

I do a lot of development work, with 2 full scale databases, 2 web servers, various modelling tools, a Java development environment and no fewer than 6 versions of Visual Studio on my laptop, plus a couple of virtualised alternative PC operating systems. That’s not going to work on my iPad! I could cheat and move to “thin client” (Remote Desktop) access to the equivalent running on a server somewhere, but that would function only when I’m connected (I’m often not when I want to do such work), and the navigation and text entry limitations of the iPad would drive me bonkers.

Even for general “office” work the limitations of iOS would rapidly challenge my sanity and productivity. For example, when I’m developing complex documents I do a lot of multi-tasking, working across multiple open documents each of which needs to be in a fixed known state under my control. I also make a lot of use of drag & drop and working with multiple windows visible at once.

The other big problem is iOS’ lack of content management separate from the “apps”. I manage about 200GB of “content” on my laptop: client files, my own documents, photos, technical library, publications etc. This is all synchronized to the big desktop/server at home, but available offline. The thought of all of this being tangled up with individual applications is just horrific.

So no thank you Malachy, the iPad isn’t going to replace the laptop or the phone any time soon. Now if someone can come up with a Windows 7/8 slate with the same performance and capacity as my laptop, and the same battery life as my iPad, and capable of operation with either a finger or a stylus…

Posted in iPad, PCs/Laptops, Thoughts on the World, VMWare | Leave a comment

Turning Points

Posted on 18 July 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

A regular correspondent of mine just posed an interesting question: “The Web has significantly evolved over the past 15 years. What have been the major milestones in the web’s evolution either in business or technology?”

 

That’s quite a big question… 🙂  I didn’t have time for a detailed answer, but came up with the following main “turning points”:

  • 1996-7: The “ubiquitous web” becomes useful. This was the point at which someone with an average PC and dial-up connection could perform real tasks as well as or better than going to a traditional intermediary, e.g. for booking holidays.
  • c2003: Composite applications and services start to become a reality (e.g. Amazon marketplaces). This required a number of technological advances (RSS, web services), but also a shift from human-computer to computer-computer interactions. I was never completely convinced about “web 2.0”, but in hindsight I suppose this was what it meant.
  • c2005: The web becomes “the main way of doing things” for things like banking, tax & interactions with the government. Before that date I was often frustrated either by not being able to use the web, or frustrated because of the services’ limitations. Since that sort of date I’ve only had to perform a handful of such transactions by other means, and they’ve usually been a disaster!
  • c2009-10: The web starts to deliver on the mobile “information everywhere” vision, as per things like Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead. It’s the confluence of decent large-screen hardware, standards-based services and well-designed apps. Put it another way – this was the point at which the computing in Star Trek, the Next Generation started to look out of date, just as the original series did by 1987.

I’m aware that this is very focused on practical, e-commerce type uses. I’m not personally convinced that social networking represents a watershed in itself, rather than another exploitation dimension, which probably has a very similar set of milestones. The same is probably true of several other content / application areas.

What do you think? Have I nailed it, or have I missed a big one?

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…And Then Three Come Along All At Once

Posted on 12 July 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
Jon Lord and Rick Wakeman perform "It's not as big as it was" at Superjam 2011
Camera: Canon PowerShot S95 | Date: 08-07-2011 23:03 | ISO: 800 | Exp. bias: -2 EV | Exp. Time: 1/40s | Aperture: 4.9 | Focal Length: 22.5mm | Location: Upper Rissington | State/Province: England | See map | Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Reflections on an excellent Summer for live music

I understand why buses come in threes. If you’re interested, it’s simply because the one at the front does most of the picking up and setting down, and the others just catch up. However, I don’t understand why live music appears to work the same way.

We normally manage at least a couple of “big” concerts each year, but we didn’t find much to inspire us in the whole of 2010. Then suddenly the famine turned to feast, and between the beginning of March and the end of July I’ll have managed a total of nine live music events! These have really covered the range: from reggae to rock, from a tiny dinner jazz gathering with two musicians to the extravagant production of Roger Waters The Wall, and from classic rock acts to classical violin.

By very weird coincidence having never seen any of the classic American rock bands apart from Chicago, we then added four more scalps in three weeks. Journey, Foreigner and Styx (see this post) were followed in short order by Toto, at the much better venue of the Hammersmith Apollo. This was an excellent concert, and the youngsters now fronting up Journey would do well to go and view the older masters at work. All the great hits, good interaction with the audience and each other, and a decent sound mix. That’s how it should be done.

However, the best of the lot, heading rapidly for a place in my all time top ten, was also one of the oddest. Superjam 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall last week was a charity concert in aid of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. The organiser is one Jackie Paice, wife of Ian, so naturally the music revolved around Deep Purple and their friends. And what a bunch of reprobates turned up…

After a lengthy charity auction (where those of us in the cheap seats got to have a distant look at the sort of people who can splash out 20 grand in a good cause) the music got going at about 9.30. The first act set the tone for the evening, with Newton Faulkener doing a version of Bohemian Rhapsody, complete with the complicated bits, as a solo with just an acoustic guitar. Various guests followed, each doing their own party piece, typically a tribute to another great musician, alongside one of their own works. Joe Bonamassa did a great version of BB King’s The Thrill is Gone, and Gary Brooker turned up with Good Golly Miss Molly, followed, of course by Whiter Shade of Pale, which I certainly never expected to hear live by the original singer.

At this point there were still two Hammond organs and a big bank of synthesisers sitting unused on the stage, but that was about to be rectified. First by Jon Lord, who after a rocky first number then produced a spine-tingling version of Sarabande, with the both talented and attractive young violinist Anna Phoebe, and then an ethereal version of his ballad Pictured Within. Jon handed over to Rick Wakeman, who amused us with variations on Eleanor Rigby in the style of Prokofiev, as only he can, and then brought Jon Lord back on for a duet for Hammond organ and synths. This work, composed for the concert, was humorously about two old men comparing their “organs”, with the wonderful title It’s Not As Big As It Was :). Finally everyone came back on stage for the first half finale, Life On Mars, which Rick Wakeman apparently co-wrote with David Bowie.

After a short break, the second half started with Bill Bailey doing a very funny, but very odd, act with a six-neck guitar (!), followed by an even odder, even funnier medley of rock anthems in the style of Chas and Dave. At last Deep Purple took the stage, and belted through several of their classics. They were characteristically generous to the younger musicians, including Joe Bonamassa coming on guest guitarist on Maybe I’m A Leo.

But they left the best till last. The finale was Deep Purple doing Smoke On The Water – “nothing new there” I hear you say, but wait … – with Bill Bailey out front playing the infamous riff – on a set of cow bells! Musically spot on, and very possibly the funniest live music performance I have every seen. 😀

Maybe this wasn’t the most polished set of performances ever, and maybe the sound quality up in the back row of “the gods” wasn’t the greatest, but who cares? The music was stirring, the evident friendships and goodwill heartwarming, and I laughed like a drain. If there’s a better way to raise some money for a good cause I’m not sure I’ve experienced it.

Location:Bicester,United Kingdom

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Journey, Foreigner and Styx

Posted on 29 June 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
Foreigner at Wembley, 4th June 2011
Camera: Canon PowerShot S95 | Date: 04-06-2011 20:26 | ISO: 1000 | Exp. bias: -2/3 EV | Exp. Time: 1/20s | Aperture: 4.9 | Focal Length: 22.5mm | Location: Wembley Arena | State/Province: England | See map | Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

A few weeks ago I attended a concert bringing together three classic American rock bands: Journey, Foreigner and Styx. It was not a bad evening’s entertainment, but left me with mixed feelings and musing on what makes for great live music.

The venue was Wembley Arena. It’s not our favourite venue by a long chalk. The main problem is that it’s long and thin and most of the audience are facing at right angles to a proper view of the stage. It also seems to suffer much worse than other venues from “fidgety audience syndrome” – I’m not sure whether this is related to the layout or not. What I do know is that watching a concert at Wembley is a constant battle with people coming and going to the bars and WCs, with no vestige of consideration for those actually trying to enjoy the show. This time people in the row behind us chose the middle of “Cold as Ice” to have an argument about tickets – surely they could have enjoyed the number from the side and then sorted things out?

I hadn’t really appreciated the relative ranking of the bands, so was a bit surprised when Styx led off the show, very much as the junior band working on a thin strip at the front of the stage. Another surprise was the musical style, prog rock rather like an American Yes, whereas I went in thinking of the ballads like “Babe” and Dirk DeYoung’s solo work. Even if it wasn’t quite what I expected, the performances were solid and varied enough to hold our interest. While musically I had no complaints, I was really annoyed by a bright light shining straight into my face from head level on the left of the stage, which made photography or even concentrating on the performance a real challenge.

Foreigner were simply superb. They played all their hits, the sound quality was good, the lead singer interacted well with the audience, and we even had a sing-along to “Feels Like the First Time”. The lighting effects were excellent and the band moved around using the stage and each other very effectively. Plus that stupid bloody light had been reset sensibly! This was more like it, and I was sad their set only lasted about an hour.

After Foreigner there was a big gap, well over half an hour, as the stage was completely stripped and re-set for Journey, behaving very much as the headline act courtesy of the renewed success of “Don’t Stop Believing”. When the show finally restarted the opening was very promising, with a thundering number and the voice of the energetic young vocalist soaring overhead.

The trouble is, that was it. 3/4 of an hour in I was getting tired of thundering numbers with high pitched vocals. I can’t tell you what they played, because I couldn’t distinguish one song from another. Normally even if I’m not familiar with a band’s catalogue, I could describe “the acapella one” or “the one with the great drum solo”. Nope.

There’s a musical joke on Deep Purple’s “Made in Japan”, where Ian Gillan asks the sound man for “a bit more monitor if you’ve got it”, and behind him Glover or Blackmore shouts “yeah, we’d like everything louder than everything else!” The trouble is that Journey and their sound team didn’t understand this was a joke…

Add to that virtually no interaction with the audience, and the lighting guy now shining the whole bank of lights in our eyes at regular intervals, and Journey just didn’t work. We gave up and left before the end of the show.

As a seasoned concert attendee, I’ve long realised that the success of a band has very little to do with the excellence of their live performances. It’s just frustrating to see the headline act do something so badly, when the acts further down the bill are so good.

———–

Next: four US rock bands in three weeks. How did Toto compare?

Location:Leatherhead,United Kingdom

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iPad Communications Errors

Posted on 18 June 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

I don’t know whether any other iPad / iPhone users out there get the same problem, but I’d be interested to hear if you do.

Quite often I go to use an app which needs to communicate over the Internet, and it gets “stuck”, clearly trying to communicate but with nothing happening. Depending on the app it may just sit there forever, or the operation may time out with an error. The iPad as a whole is still responsive, I can switch apps and use those which don’t need comms, but at that point all comms from all apps appear to be blocked. The only solution I have found is to switch the iPad off and on again.

This is now sometimes happening several times a day. I thought Apple products were supposed to be so reliable they never needed a reboot? This is worse than a twenty year old Windows PC.

The problem seems to have got worse since I started using Twitter, and installed a couple of apps which wake up periodically to check for new activity. It therefore seems like there may be some common comms routine or resource which is essentially single-threaded and can get into a deadlocked state if there is more than one call on it.

Does anyone else suffer this, or know how to fix it?

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Enterprise Architecture Conference 2011 Day 3

Posted on 10 June 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Well the third day of EAC 2011 came and went. My talk went well. Despite the last minute scheduling change I got a decent audience, and once in front of real listeners managed to find my style and pace again. They seemed to appreciate it, but as none of the inveterate tweeters was in attendance I’ll have to wait for the feedback analysis to be sure.

This morning’s keynote was excellent, it’s just a shame that I had to leave early to set up for my own talk. It could have been subtitled “why ‘cloud’ means people trying to sell you stuff”, and was the most balanced discussion I have yet heard on cloud computing. The most interesting observation is that individual component reliability is very much subservient to scalability and “elasticity”, which has major implications for more critical applications.

The rest of the day’s presentations were a mixed bunch. Some were too academic, others very light on real content. The one exception was Mike Rosen talking about SOA case studies, which included both real successes and failures, and should be the yardstick for anyone looking to move to SOA.

One thing I have learned from this conference is a (arguably the) real purpose for Twitter. It’s a great way for a group engaged in a joint activity like this to have a shared background conversation. In many ways it’s the electronic reincarnation of the DeMarco/Lister red and green voting card system, but with wider and longer reach. It’s not without problems: it can be a distraction, some users can dominate with high volume, low value tweets and retweets, and Twitter’s search and the available clients (certainly on the iPad) are not optimised for hashtag-based operation. However, these are minor complaints.

The iPad makes a superb conference tool, and I was amazed by the number of them in use, for making notes, reviewing slides, and tweeting. Interestingly I think this trend will drive a move to standardise on PDF-format material: slides published this way worked very well, but some available only in PowerPoint format weren’t viewable.

My congratulations and thanks to the conference chairs and the IRM team for an excellent event. Time to start thinking about a topic for the next one…

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Falcon Rd,Wandsworth,United Kingdom

Posted in Agile & Architecture, iPad, Thoughts on the World | 1 Comment

No Plan B

Posted on 10 June 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

I don’t think the reason why the British travel infrastructure copes so badly with problems is actually down to a fundamental lack of capability or investment. The real problem is that the operators lack sufficient planning, and/or imagination, and/or flexibility to shift their services to alternative patterns better matched to changing circumstances. The only “plan B” seems to be “run what’s left of plan A and apologise”.

Take, for example, South West Trains, who run commuter services to the South West of London. There are two main lines out from Waterloo via Guildford and Woking, but also a number of parallel minor lines, like the secondary line to Guildford which runs past my house.

When North Surrey got a foot of snow for the first time in 30 years in February 2009, it was clear that no trains were going to run on any of these lines for a couple of days, but only a relatively short stretch of the lines was blocked. It was still possible, for example, to get from Surbiton (about 10 miles nearer to London than my home) to Waterloo.

I had to attend a course in London, and the roads were becoming passable, so I dug the car out and drove to Surbiton. It rapidly became clear that everyone else had had the same idea. How had SWT reacted? By running the same four commuter services an hour from Surbiton. These were, of course, enormously overcrowded and slow. What about the other trains which would, for example, have usually been running the express services carrying the rest of the traffic? These were nowhere to be seen, presumably sat in a siding near Waterloo. Would it have been beyond the wit of man to press some of these into use as additional shuttle services to carry the excess traffic from those stations which were accessible? Apparently so.

Last night, I got caught again. I got to Waterloo at 10:30 pm to see a blank indicator board. The cause of the trouble was signalling problems in turn due to cable theft at Woking. Now I don’t blame the rail companies for that, and I hope the perpetrators are found, hung, drawn and transported to South Georgia, but I do think the train companies’ response is inadequate.

True to form, they had reverted to “what’s left of plan A”, running a tiny number of overcrowded and delayed services under manual signalling procedures. Now theoretically my line should not have been affected. Not only should I have been able to get home, but my line is perfectly capable of carrying some additional “relief” traffic, as it does when there is planned engineering work on the main lines. (About once a month the 8 commuter services per hour are joined by about 20 express and freight services, and when planned that seems to work fine.) With a bit of ingenuity you could even alert taxi drivers at the intermediate stops to the sudden need for their services, at profitable late night rates.

Is that what happened? I should coco. Instead not even the regular services to my home station appeared to be running. I ended up on one of the overcrowded trains to Surbiton, and finished my day with a £40 cab ride.

Why is this so difficult for the train companies to get right? In both of these cases there was no fundamental problem with the remaining infrastructure or rolling stock. In both cases they even have a model for the alternative schedule. For last night it’s in a file marked “Saturday service with engineering work at Woking”. Staff flexibility might be the problem, but that must be resolvable, maybe via higher overtime rates?

There’s also an architectural lesson here. I design computer systems and networks. My clients run national power networks. In both cases the customers expect those systems and networks to be resilient, and to cope with growing demand without wholesale replacement. It’s not always possible to justify dedicated “DR” capacity, so you have to get inventive with alternative configurations of the capacity you do have, and then run tests and introduce clever asset monitoring and management practices to make sure those configurations can be used safely.

If we can do it, why can’t the transport operators?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cobham,United Kingdom

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Enterprise Architecture Conference

Posted on 9 June 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Halfway through, and this is shaping up to be the best EAC I have attended for a while.

I was umming and aahing about whether to attend yesterday’s seminar sessions, and couldn’t make up my mind which to join. In the end I made up my mind about the morning session while having a cup of coffee on the way, when I recognised one of the speakers, Lawrence Helm, as having given an excellent presentation a couple of years ago on NASA’s knowledge management problems. This time he and his colleague Robert Stauffer were talking about NASA’s adoption of Capability Modelling, and how they have put it to use supporting some very high level decisions about NASA’s future shape.

This was another stimulating session, and really benefitted from the extra space from making it a half-day session. Lawrence and Robert actually ran out of time, which was probably a testament to the depth of the material and the discussions it engendered.

The principle of relating capabilities to strategic objectives was not new to me, although the NASA examples certainly were. What did surprise me was the level of detail required for capability definitions in that environment. For example, the launch capabilities relate specifically to certain target longitudes and temperature ranges, and could not be moved to a location outside those ranges (for example Korou or Baikonur) without re-engineering the rocket platforms.

The afternoon session was also a bit random, as I got confused between Mike Rosen’s half-day seminar and his separate one hour talk for which I had the slides. Not a problem, the half day session on case study methods was very educational. The example, of how Wells Fargo created a federated model to integrate their various systems under a common customer model was interesting, and plays nicely into my EAI talk tomorrow. Like a good sermon, I didn’t learn much new, but I felt thoroughly validated that Wells Fargo did what I would have recommended, and succeeded with it. We had a very robust discussion on the importance of stable service interfaces, so hopefully that will drum up some support for my talk.

You get a very good class of attendee at these sessions. Alec Sharp joined the NASA session, and John Zachman joined the afternoon session, although he didn’t participate much.

Thursday’s highlights have probably been the two keynotes: this morning on how different companies have developed different strategies to come through and out of the recession, and this afternoon on “how to think like a CEO” and get your messages across to senior managers. However, there was also an excellent talk this morning by David Tollow on how EA feeds management and planning of long term outsourcing deals, from the supplier’s viewpoint. Very relevant to many of us in the current day and age.

Just to make things interesting, Sally has asked me to swap slots with someone else tomorrow, so my talk which was carefully trimmed to the constraints of the last slot on Friday will now be at 10 am. This may or may not be a good thing.

Wish me luck!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Portman Towers,Paddington,United Kingdom

Posted in Agile & Architecture, Thoughts on the World | Leave a comment

Compact Camera Alienation?

Posted on 25 April 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Are compact and cellphone cameras fundamentally unsuited to a significant subset of the population?

I am short sighted. With an SLR I look through the viewfinder at an image focused at the optical equivalent of about 1m, maybe a bit less with “diopter adjustment” applied, so I can view it fairly easily regardless of whether I need my glasses for the scene or not. With a compact camera I hold it at my natural reading distance of about 40cm (a bit less than 18″), which is both optically comfortable and a good distance at which to hold and operate the camera. The same will be true for those with normal sight.

This is not true for those who are long sighted, which includes a majority of those in middle age or older. These people will be comfortable looking at longer-range subjects without glasses, but will need them for shorter-range subjects.

The SLR, or even an “electronic viewfinder” camera with diopter adjustment, should be fine. As long as the effective optical distance of the focusing screen is 1m or more it should be viewable with glasses off if that’s correct for the target scene, and because it’s viewed inside a dark “tunnel” the effective distance is not an issue.

But a compact camera can be a real challenge. The user has to either hold it inside their comfortable viewing distance, and accept a blurred image and other display data, or hold it so far away that both camera shake and incident light become issues, or try switching between glasses to view the camera and none for the scene itself. None of these is a good option. The result is a camera which is effectively unusable by that person.

I saw this in action myself yesterday. I was sitting in a restaurant with Frances, and she had a good view of a potential photo, but I didn’t. Thinking it would be easiest, I handed her my little Canon Powershot S95. Useless. Eventually I rummaged under the table for the “big lump” (Canon 7D and 15-85 lens, all 1.6kg of it ;)). No problem.

I do wonder if the move to fewer and fewer small cameras having optical viewfinders is a wise one, or if it will alienate a significant proportion of potential photographers.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Posted in Photography, Thoughts on the World | 2 Comments

On the Cusp

Posted on 30 March 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Or, “What’s a cwt, Uncle Andrew?”

I was visiting my mother last weekend and picked up a science book which I read as a teenager, but which originally belonged to my grandfather. It’s a brilliant discussion of materials science by Sir William Bragg, based on some Royal Institution lectures he did. I was thinking of passing it on to the next generation, but then I read the following sentence:

“The weight of air in the Royal Institution lecture theatre is about 15 cwt; the weight of argon is about 18 lbs”

I realised that this might be a bit of a puzzle for a current youngster, but I was intrigued to find out how far such dreadful ignorance extends. I therefore conducted a moderately scientific test, by asking a group of friends, relatives and colleagues the following: “Who can, without cheating (e.g. Google, scientific calculators etc.), tell me what percentage argon is by weight on this basis?” The victims were all bright boys and girls, but represented a wide spread of ages (19-65) and educational and ethnic backgrounds.

I knew the answer, but I had to think about it.

What surprised me was that I only got one other correct answer. From Ken, who is “about 60”. None of my other respondents had a clue, even those who are slightly older than myself.

So I appear to be pretty much the last of a breed who can work with a system of units based on 12, 14 and 16 as well as 10. Does this bode ill for our mental agility?

If you’re interested in the answer, I’ll post it as a comment, so you can have a go without cheating!

Posted in Thoughts on the World | Tagged | 1 Comment

Tyrannies and Broken Business Processes

Posted on 19 March 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

I’ve posted previously about the inadequacies of the iOS/iTunes architecture, and in particular the content management nightmare it creates, but I haven’t really reflected on the commercial model of the iTunes / App Store. I’m afraid I can hold back no more.

First, some ground rules. I’m very happy to spend money on software which works and provides me with value. I don’t like being at the mercy of a monopoly, and I don’t like being forced to spend money on things which I don’t want.

In the PC world, there’s a very simple model which meets these requirements. It’s called evaluation software. It works for something as cheap and cheerful as a tiny utility, or as complex and costly as Microsoft Office or VMWare. You download the evaluation, which is typically fully functional but time limited, and try it. If it does what you want, you pay for it. If it doesn’t, you delete it. Now there is inevitably a certain amount of “piracy”, as some people try to cheat the registration/payment process, but most people are pretty honest. I certainly always pay for anything I keep using if I can, but for every software item I retain there’s at least one I tried and threw away.

Down at the level of the small apps and plugins we even have the “donation” model. Now I am prepared to admit that the proportion of users who make a voluntary donation if the software will work without it is probably well short of 100%, but that can readily be compensated by the way in which genuine service or ingenuity are rewarded. For example, another Bibble user recently sent me €5 for a plugin which I had modified to meet his requirements. Now that’s not much by the standards of my usual professional fees, but I learned it represented about 2% of his monthly income. As far as I am concerned, that’s a really big “thank you”.

Then we have the Apple App Store model. You have to buy an app based on about 1 page of text, or less, and a maximum of 5 screenshots, which may or may not portray the functionality you’re interested in. There’s no systematic “try before you buy” model – a few applications have a free evaluation version, but these don’t always reliably indicate the functionality or stability of the full version. When you’ve paid, you can try an application. Perhaps 33-50% of the time it works, and you’re happy. The rest of the time, the app doesn’t do what you want, and you’ve effectively wasted your money.

How about a refund, I hear you say? In theory, there is a refund concept in iTunes. In practice, it seems to have about the same status as the Easter Bunny. For a start, you can’t do anything on the web, or from the iPad itself, so if you have a problem when you’re away from your main PC/Mac, tough. Assume you are sitting at your PC, you open iTunes and navigate through the account areas to find the iTunes receipt which includes the problem item, and click “report a problem”. You have to choose the nature of the problem from a drop-down: there isn’t an obvious choice, the best one is something like “the software doesn’t work properly”. You then type in a description of the problem, including something like “I want a refund”, and press the OK button. In response a little message pops up, saying something like (I’m working from memory here) “Apple are not responsible for application functionality. Your message has been filed.” That’s it. No confirmation email. No reference number. No options for further action. So you go back and try and click “report a problem” to try again, but now you can’t, because “you’ve already reported a problem”. So you email the application developers and explain what’s wrong and the fact that they really should have disclosed certain key information in the App Store advert rather than immediately after purchasing the app, and they email you back very politely saying “we’re sorry you don’t like our software. refund requests have to be processed through iTunes”.

I’m not making this up! This is not a broken business process, it’s a process which has been deliberately and systematically ground into tiny pieces under the tracks of a tank driven by the ghosts of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.

OK so Apple don’t give a stuff about their customers. This is not news. But the model doesn’t work very well for developers either. There’s no way to reward a developer for special effort, e.g. to meet a specialist requirement, although I might often do so through the donation model. There’s also no way to charge for an upgrade, except by creating a separate new application edition, which will have to be purchased at full price, will have its own data set etc.

This is frustrating at many levels. Although most individual apps are inexpensive, evaluating applications to find the best fit to your own requirements can become very expensive. I can afford a few wasted pounds, especially as a business expense, but that’s not true for the man who donated for my plugin from a €240 monthly income. The worst thing is that it seems to be down to laziness or callous disregard on Apple’s part. Surely with the centralist control of iTunes it wouldn’t be difficult to provide full versions which are disabled after a trial period, but for which a license is only an app store click away?

Apple’s tyrannical control makes Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany look like models of libertarian freedom by comparison. This market desperately needs some competition to an abusive monopoly provider.

Location:Hill Drop Ln,,United Kingdom

Posted in iPad, Thoughts on the World, VMWare | Leave a comment

The Wrong Orientation?

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Posted on 9 March 2011 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

In an odd confluence, multiple streams of activity have come together to convince me that current IS thinking may be suffering from a bad dose of “the wrong orientation”. My work on data modelling at National Grid, an excellent course on business process modelling, my frustrations with the iPad software architecture and finally some exposure to Oracle’s latest SOA tools have all convinced me that we need to get back to designing systems with an “object-action orientation”, rather than the regressive move back to the alternative.

 

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Posted in Agile & Architecture, Thoughts on the World | 2 Comments