Apple's path to domination: first web apps, then the world
In February, I wrote about Apple’s updates to Safari:
Apple is positioning Safari as the premier platform for web applications. They’ve got something up their sleeve, with last year’s port of Safari to Windows and with MobileSafari on the iPhone — should be fun to find out what it is.
Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted.com may have the answer:
Apple is refining Cocoa for deployment within the web browser to enable developers to build those so called “Rich Internet Applications” that Adobe wants users to build in Flash/Flex/AIR, Microsoft in Silverlight, Sun in Java, and so on.
I’m not sure how or why Eran is reporting all of this as fact, but this is a really intriguing idea — that Apple may be positioning Cocoa, its primary OS X application coding environment, as a platform for web app development. This could explain why Apple ported Safari to Windows, why Apple is pushing for faster Javascript performance in WebKit (the open-source browser engine behind Safari), and why Safari includes built-in database storage.
What this means for web apps is that programming web apps could, by and large, look exactly like programming for OS X. From my limited knowledge, programmers who code in Objective-C/Cocoa love it; I doubt the same is true for AIR, Silverlight (or .NET for that matter), or Java. Plus, the platform for distribution, according to Eran, would be completely open. This gets at one of the things I find so wrong about Flash: web development shouldn’t have to rely on proprietary app development tools. (My guess is Apple feels the same way, though surely their opinion involves more than my aesthetic dislike.)
But how does Apple benefit from an open web framework? A RoughlyDrafted reader offers some interesting, though of course highly speculative, thoughts: by creating an OS-neutral platform for not only their own apps (like the MobileMe apps), but for web apps at large — and one that web developers will actually flock to — the importance of the OS as a “platform” becomes meaningless, because the platform is the web. However, you still need an OS to get to the web, so the OS’s qualities as a program (security, performance, UI, etc.) become paramount. When the question of install-base and entrenchment no longer matter, the OS battle lines can be drawn up over the operating systems as apps themselves. OS X will, of course, win that battle.
(I think this is actually a large part of why Macs are already increasing in market share so dramatically: 95% of what people use their computers for is (web-based) email and browsing the web. You don’t need Windows for that.)
12:36 AMZappos bribes employees to quit
Amazing commitment to creating a gung-ho corporate culture (if you can call it “corporate”):
…When Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.
After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!
Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later.
I’ve never bought from Zappo’s myself, but my wife has and had only positive things to say. I’m tempted to shop there if only to experience their customer service. There aren’t many companies I can say that about!
(Via Mark Hurst.)
09:46 AMCNN Headline T-shirts: the very definition of Postmodernism
Tasteless. Shameless. Ironically un-ironic.
09:52 AMIt should be possible to admire a film with subject matter you deplore, or positions you despise. The critic can make that clear in a review, but he should acknowledge the qualities of the film.
03:20 PMThere’s a great difference between 50 years of experience and 1 year’s worth of experience repeated 50 times.
…The people who work for you through whatever period will be more or less the same at the end as they were at the beginning. If they’re not right for the job from the start, they never will be.
Enterprise PC shop's switch to Apple hits an unexpected snag
“I didn’t see this coming at all,” said Dale Frantz, CIO of Tacoma, Washington-based Auto Warehousing Co.
See the technology nightmare that changing over to Macs would be, right? Nope. The reason for Auto Warehousing Co.‘s difficulties isn’t the technology; it’s employees thinking that an Apple infrastructure is exorbitantly expensive, when, according to Frantz, it’s actually about $1.5 million cheaper than Microsoft’s.
04:13 PM[Frantz] spent the next month explaining to everyone who would be affected the many reasons for the technology swap. Among those is the more than $1.82 million the company calculates it will save over the next three years. That’s what it would cost to upgrade [Microsoft] software licenses if the company remained on PCs; in contrast, the total cost of switching to Macintoshes is $335,000.
Dvorak: The iPhone is No Desktop
Venerable PC Magazine curmudgeon John C. Dvorak’s most recent rant argues that the iPhone is not going to replace the PC. Only problem is, no one ever said it would.
Everyone thinks that the iPhone is going to be the next major computing platform. Some even hope that it will replace the laptop as the primary PC platform.
Who, exactly, is hoping the iPhone will replace the laptop as the primary PC platform? And what does “primary PC platform” even mean?
Dvorak goes on to conflate the terms platform and form factor, and then introduces the problematic term model:
The desktop computer—whether it’s a Mac or PC—is the best model for computing—certainly better than an iPhone.
What are we talking about here? What does “best model” even refer to? What kind of “computing” are we talking about? Working on a giant spreadsheet, or checking our email in a cab?
This article showcases a complete lack of intellectual rigor. Dvorak, in typical form, is making cooky, idiotic, unsubstantiated statements to draw attention to himself. Either that, or he’s just an idiot.
01:08 PMRosencrans Baldwin on Obama
My sentiments exactly.
And then I say Obama is the first candidate in my voting experience who seems like he means what he says, and says what I feel. Who is of my generation; whom I get, and who inspires me. I’ve read his book, I’ve watched his speeches; I am head over heels, with no compunction. Because I feel myself taking a risk when I say I believe in him, since in my reflexive skepticism I rarely say I believe in anything. If Obama is elected president, of course the game will stay crooked; and instead of speeches we’ll get compromises; and something will fall apart. But for now I prefer the fantasy of what might come to pass, rather than the realpolitik of recent history.
From his letter published in The Morning News, March 18
11:22 PMA new era in web typography starts today
Apple released Safari 3.1 today — the first major browser that I’m aware of to include downloadable web font technology using the CSS @font-face rule. This means that you can now spec non-standard fonts for your web pages without using workarounds like sIFR. Of course, this won’t become widespread until more browsers implement this technology.
Check out this test page (it’ll only look impressive in Safari 3.1) and the A List Apart article on how to implement it.
Immediate drawbacks I see:
- could raise font pirating concerns, since URLs for downloading the source fonts are publicly accessible
- it only appears to work with TrueType fonts, not PostScript or more modern OpenType fonts (though this makes sense since only TrueType has truly widespread support)