Ethics people!

Apple employees may have trouble keeping corporate secrets in their pockets, but the folks who find obviously confidential stuff seem to face a moral dilemma figuring out what to do with the things they find. A recent Gizmodo post, "Man Get Hard Drive Full of Secret Apple Documents", details how one Apple Store inadvertently gave a customer the store's back-up hard drive rather than a broken hard disk that the store replaced for the customer. Ok, ok, simple or complicated mix-up that can be blamed on "amateur hour" or "lack of adult supervision" at Apple, but the fact that the customer turns around and tries to sell the hard disk to the press is just plain stupid. Really, where are your scruples? Or at very least your sense of avoiding arrest? Semi-Bravo to Cult of Mac for telling the customer the right path, but only after publishing screen shots. Who knows if the right thing was done.

It's not always about being first

NPR interview with Malcolm Gladwell on innovation. Debunking personal computing myths and how complex innovation is not always realized by the developers. In other words, sometimes it's good to make a good idea better.

BTW if you have a New Yorker subscription you can read the related article "Creation Myth:Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation."

Dawn of a New Day « Ray Ozzie

I finally had some time today to read - with full attention - Ray Ozzie's Dawn of a New Day memo. I'm sure you've seen this floating around today, especially if you hang around the tech world of Lotus and Office. I actually had a few reactions that may be different from the rest of the blogisphere:

1. Its is increasingly clear the commoditization of devices (the PC-less future) is boiling down to the individual and will get harder for the enterprise (maybe not the small business) to navigate. Good news for Apple. The real Steve Jobs seems to get this, and the numbers seem to prove consumer markets are big money. See the blog posts I made on Friday about iPad apps traction and Apple deprecating Java (if you haven't already).
2. The birth of a new meme, "continuously connected." Ray's status as a tech visionary means that many of his words enter the tech lexicon once he's uttered them. I predict heavy use of these words or this term when talking enterprise tech.
3. Despite Ray's visionary status I doubt his equivalent of the "Space Race" rally cry will ripple outside of the tech cloud. (Pun intended). It will reach the edges for sure. Ray expects that too based on his edges commentary:

But the power and responsibility to truly effect transformation exists in no small part at the edge. Within those who, led or inspired, feel personally and collectively motivated to make; to act; to do.

In taking the time to read this, most likely it’s you.

But will it cross over into the public mind without a Time cover? Bill Gates can get that coverage but Ray is still relegated to the covers of tech media (despite the fact I think Ray has contributed more to IT than many IT folk who have graced cover of Time or Wired). Actually I think this idea is at the foundation of FSJ's reaction to the memo; techies can over-think things. I laughed out loud when I read the FSJ commentary...too bad he didn't read the whole post; I suspect that he really did for his day job.

BTW If you have only been reading about Ray's memo in the blogisphere, don't be a FSJ! Take time to read it all the way through. The blogisphere gets a bad rap for distilling information into bit-sized chunks for us, which can be handy, but please make your opinions after you've actually read it.

Overall I think it's compelling to read, and while I don't think the PC-less future is coming all that quickly, the idea that we can consider one does make interesting design decisions. Personally I like reading stuff like Ray's memo, but then again I'm in the club. ;-)

Dawn of a New Day « Ray Ozzie

Apple deprecates Java

In its typical hyperbolic yet truthful manner, The Republic reports this Wednesday's Apple announcement to deprecate Java on the new Mac OS.

On Wednesday, as Apple cult leader Steve Jobs unveiled a future Mac OS incarnation dubbed 'Lion' and a new Mac App Store, the company released a Java update for Mac OS X 10.6 — and the release notes revealed that the platform isn't long for Jobs' world. 'As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated,' the notes read.

And,

In an obviously related move, Jobs also banned Java apps from the upcoming Mac App Store. 'Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected,' the store's developer guidelines say.

The Republic does not see this as a coincidence pointing out that the biggest loser in this move will be developers since they potentially won't be able to run Eclipse in future versions of the Mac OS. The main impetus looks like a strategic block of Android, as one interviewee states:

I guess Steve really, really doesn't like Android, does he?

More salient is whether or not this continued balkanization of third party run times on Mac operating systems will radicalize developers and IT decision makers. Clearly the consumer market has been good to Apple and it will continue to sell its shiny, sexy stuff, but what does that do for the businesses and users that want to use shiny, sexy stuff AND have cross platform functionality?

Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac • The Register

Anntomy of a meme and partnering nightmares

Interesting article in Wired on the acrimonious relationship between Apple and AT&T at the root iPhone customer dissatisfaction. The first part of the story gets into how a meme like #attfail grew out of AT&T's control. An interesting read on its own. The second part gets in the to meat of the issue, one that was pretty obvious from the outset of the Apple/AT&T partnership.

What is clear is that AT&T’s role will always be that of parsimonious gatekeeper, dictating to its customers how much data they can have and how much they’ll pay for it. It is precisely the role the company hoped to avoid, the reason that carriers long refused to give phone manufacturers and software developers the kind of influence that Apple now wields. In a fate that will soon befall the rest of the wireless carriers, AT&T has become a mere toll-taker on the digital highway, an operator of dumb pipes that cost a fortune to maintain but garner no credit for innovation or customer service. Meanwhile, the likes of Apple and Google will continue to pump out products that push the limits of what the carriers can provide, training customers to use more and more data. The carriers will be locked into a grim series of adjustments — continually raising prices or invoking ever more stringent data usage caps.

And every time they do, they can expect to be the targets of customer rage...#attfail.

It's like a Chinese finger trap, anything AT&T tries to do makes it look worse. Of course AT&T has itself to blame. I live in LA and AT&T service has always been terrible. I switched from AT&T to Verizon pre-smarphone. I tried AT&T 3G broadband for my computer in the early days only to drop it for Verizon's. I'd switch to Verizon today for my iPhone in a heartbeat, if it was available, willingly paying the highway robbery Verizon data prices. I remember shortly after the release of the iPhone, when about everyone in Hollywood had bought an iPhone, AT&T canceled its contracts with cellular partners literally causing production schedules to stop abruptly in a collective dropped call. After that you saw iPhone users talking on the phone outside their house. Good thing it doesn't rain much here.

Still it is the consumer that's losing here. When other nations are leveraging the full capabilities of smartphones (e.g., tethering, video messaging, faster bandwidth) the US wireless/cell carriers (not just AT&T) are still nickle and diming customers. And while carriers and device providers bicker in board rooms, little progress is being made to improve bandwidth issues or the reasons our phones are being hobbled. At least I get to pay top price for a devices I can only use 2/3rds of and only get a break if I promise to stay with an abusive carrier for at least 2 years.

In a small victory for the customer: a friend in NYC got $49 back (i.e., credit) from AT&T when they were caught lying about their service coverage in her neighborhood. AT&T told customers that it had 4 cell towers in her hood when there were only 2. Small victories!

Bad Connection: Inside the iPhone Network Meltdown | Magazine