The iPad has just launched in the UK, queues are long, stock is short, and it is yet another successful new product from Apple. The iPad has frustrations, like no Adobe Flash support for web browsing, no Java, no printing, and the general sense that you do things the Apple way or not at all. Still, users love it and are willing to pay for it, and in the end that is what matters.
Does this shiny gadget have any relevance to the more humdrum world of business IT? I think it does, especially when taken together with other factors. Here's a remark from Apple CEO Steve Jobs from an informal email conversation with Ryan Tate:
The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
Yes, it's a Bob Dylan reference; read the entire thread to see why. Jobs is marketing his company's stuff, of course, but a few days later the stock market put some solid evidence behind his claim. Apple's market capitalisation surpassed that of Microsoft for the first time since 1989. Microsoft remains more profitable; but the figures reflect the market's judgment that Apple has better prospects for growth.
Another sign of change comes from one of Microsoft's most important partners, HP. At the end of April it acquired Palm, and with it the WebOS operating system for mobile devices. Whether HP can make a success of WebOS is uncertain; it will not be easy going up against Apple and Google Android. What is more significant is the implication that HP has finally lost faith in Microsoft's ability to get it right in mobile.
Despite some positive buzz around Windows Phone 7, Microsoft did not help its case when it announced a major reshuffle in its Entertainment and Devices division on May 25th. This follows the bewildering launch of the Kin phone - bewildering because it seems right out on its own in terms of strategy - complete with typical Microsoft flaws according to this thoughtful review:
But the obtuseness of this user experience doesn't stop with the Spot -- it permeates the entire interface as though decisions about how things should work were made almost arbitrarily, without anyone stopping to test them in the real world. The Twitter implementation is a great example of that. You can add your Twitter account to the phone and see updates from people you follow, and you can update your status from the top of the Loop... but that's all you can do. You can't retweet something, you can't send a direct message, you can't go to single person's feed to see all their updates, and you can't even open a link in a Twitter message from the Loop!
Windows Phone 7 will have to be much, much better if Microsoft is to claw back any ground in mobile.
I digress. All that matters is that the world is changing, and looking less Microsoft-shaped with each passing day.
In saying that, I don't mean to diminish the excellent work which I see coming out of some parts of Microsoft - Visual Studio 2010, for example - or to ignore the continuing dominance of the company in many areas of business IT. Many companies still standardise on Windows, and Microsoft Office remains the only productivity suite I come across in work.
All true, but the two great IT trends of today are not centred on Windows and Office. One is mobile, the other is cloud computing; and of course there is synergy between them. Apple's iPad is a further advance for mobile, and will drive increasing mobile data usage and increasing demand both for iPad/iPhone applications and for web applications that work well on those devices.
Mobile devices are today's development battleground. Timing is everything: I recall Borland's 2003 conference when it introduced an extensive mobile development strategy based on the ill-fated C++ BuilderX, with SDKs from Nokia and Symbian. The sessions drew sparse attendance and Borland later abandoned the product, returning to the Windows-oriented C++ Builder.
So what changed? In part, devices have become more powerful and mobile internet access faster and more pervasive, making the platform more attractive. A bigger factor though is Apple's iPhone. In hindsight, the mobile vendors and operators made mobile development too difficult, with fragmented platforms and locked-down devices. Microsoft has had some success extending Windows to mobile devices, for enterprise development in either C++ or .NET, but its market share is too small, the devices insufficiently well liked, and the deployment obstacles too great. Java had some success too, but write-once, run anywhere never really worked for mobile.
Enter iPhone, with a single platform and easy deployment through the App Store. The "easy deployment" part has to be qualified, since developers have been confronted with limited access to the device, restrictions on what they can develop, and an opaque approval process; but it has worked, and the potential of the mobile platform - about which we have known for years - is now being unlocked.
Other vendors are belatedly rising to the challenge. I'm just back from Nokia's Qt Developer Days, and saw the energy the company is putting into creating a cross-platform, open source mobile development framework. Windows Mobile, Maemo and Symbian are on the immediate roadmap. On the deployment side, Nokia has the Ovi store. I've also been at Adobe's MAX in Los Angeles, where broad mobile support for the Flash runtime was the big story. The Flash runtime is not coming to iPhone yet, but Adobe has a native compiler for Flash applications which targets iPhone. Adobe also has app store plans. Google Android is another platform where all the pieces are in place, and Palm Web OS a new hopeful on the scene.
This means developers now have numerous choices for mobile development, as well as more pressure to create or extend applications to embrace mobile clients. It is not an easy choice. An AJAX application will work on the iPhone and elsewhere, but there is no offline support or access to device features, and the capabilities of mobile browsers vary greatly - though Webkit is becoming a standard on non-Windows devices. Native iPhone works great on Apple's device, but nowhere else. Flash is becoming interesting, but devices with 10.1 will not be around until next year and it is an unproven platform in a mobile context. Windows Mobile will trudge on, though Microsoft's mobile story seems particularly incoherent at present and I expect declining market share. Java on mobile has not gone away either; and Google Android is pretty much a Java platform. C++ will always be attractive for lean, fast applications.
It is fun to pick winners and losers, but impossible to tell how all this will shake out. Here's two safe bets. The first is that mobile, internet-connected applications are in many ways the future of the client. The second is that focusing on a strong web services API (of whatever flavour) is the right place to start. What's your mobile strategy?
Tech media pundits talk incessantly about migration to the cloud, but it is always interesting to get reports from the trenches. Two recents ones interested me. The first is from Patrick McKenzie, who sells a niche Java application. He's just posted a detailed and entertaining blog entitled Why I'm Done making Desktop Applications. His application exists in both desktop and online versions, and he says he was a staunch defender of the advantages of desktop apps - "You can keep your Google Docs, Excel is superior in almost every way." Then he made an online version of his app with if anything fewer features, and tracked the statistics. He discovered the following:
His conclusion:
The next major release will almost certainly be its last. The webapp, and my future webapps, seem to be much better investments.
Does any of this apply to corporate development? It's true that life is easier in some ways if you do not have to make a sale; and there are still some things that desktop applications do better, like integrating with Microsoft Office through COM automation, or continuing to work offline on the train or plane - though see Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson's You're not on a plane for a contrary view.
Still, many of the other factors do apply. Lower support requests, zero installation, accurate usage monitoring - all these things have immediate financial benefit.
It is no longer web application developers who have to justify their case, but rather those who still advocate desktop development.
If you need any further persuading, take a look at this survey of 1400 Microsoft's small business customers by Accredited Supplier. Apparently 62% prefer business applications that work through a browser, and only 18% prefer desktop applications. The more chilling news for Microsoft is that 13% actively intend to switch to Google Apps - with all that implies for sales of Windows server, Exchange, and Office - while only 36% are sure that they are not switching.
All that cloud talk is translating rapidly into business decisions. I'm not sure whether the future of the business application client lies more with AJAX and HTML 5, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex, or something else; but for sure it is not a desktop technology.
I've been mulling over the implications of the news that Sun's JRuby team leaders, Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, are leaving Sun because of uncertainty about the future of their project after the Oracle acquisition. They will be joining Rails specialist Engine Yard. This is the key quote from Nutter:
To be honest, we had no evidence that Oracle wouldn't support JRuby, but we also didn't have any evidence that they would.
JRuby is by all accounts excellent - I'm aware that developers at ThoughtWorks use it, and Ruby advocate Martin Fowler (who works there) told me that it works very well for them, observing that some enterprises who would be reluctant to deploy the native Ruby runtime are more comfortable with running Ruby applications on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It is foolish of Oracle to let the JRuby guys slip away, particularly bearing in mind the trend towards dynamic languages (like Ruby) rather than static-typed languages (like Java).
What does this suggest about the future of Java itself under Oracle's stewardship? If Oracle could have done more to reassure Nutter of its continuing commitment to JRuby, so too it could do more to reassure the rest of us that investment in Java and its community will continue as strongly under Oracle as it did under Sun. Maybe it will, maybe it won't; though culturally I suspect the new company will be averse to Sun's habit of investing heavily in projects with little obvious potential for direct revenue. The failure to monetize Java fully, along with the failure of its bold experiment in open source, is one reason for the acquisition itself.
That does not imply that Java will go away - Oracle itself is a heavy user, and defending its future was likely a factor in its willingness to purchase Sun. Still, it would not be surprising if the community is a little less warm, and Oracle's investments more focused on its own needs rather than those of the wider platform.
Despite Oracle, there is no reason to be gloomy about Java's future. There is another way to look at the move of the JRuby team, which is that they've found a way to continue working on the project with or without Oracle's support. Java is bigger than Oracle, just as it was bigger than Sun.
IBM worked tirelessly to free Java as far as possible from Sun's control, developing its own JVM and creating the Eclipse tools project to foster alternative tools and frameworks. Those efforts will have a new context and relevance.
Maybe Oracle will do great things for the Java platform. Maybe it will do little, and momentum will shift to those outside the home company. Either way, investment in Java development is as safe as anything can be in our uncertain industry.
Question: which is best for cross-platform, managed code using a runtime such as Java, .NET, or Flash, or is it native code? When Java arrived in 1996, Sun promoted write-once-run-everywhere as one of its key benefits. The arrival of just-in-time compilers for all the runtimes mentioned above removes many performance concerns. So is managed code the best solution?
My assumptions about this were challenged when I spoke to Embarcadero's CEO Wayne Williams last week. His company is the one that now owns Delphi and C++ Builder, the RAD software development tools, after acquiring Borland's Codegear division last year. Williams told me that taking Delphi and C++ Builder cross-platform is now the top priority for the team working on those products. Concerning native code, he said: "It's crystal clear. If you want a small, fast, GUI-rich application, and you want to target the popular platforms, there's only one game in town." That means at least x86 code for Windows, Mac and Linux, and he added, "there's no reason mobile devices shouldn't be on that roadmap as well."
What's wrong with Java then? "There's always been two approaches to target multiple platforms. One is interpreted, where you shield the code the developer is writing from those differences. The Virtual Machine is responsible for that, and if you want to add another platform, it's all centralised. It's easier, but the result is poor, it's a least common denominator approach.
"It's a bigger investment and it's more difficult to cross-compile, where you natively target these platforms, but the end result is much better. You're running true native code with full access to whatever hardware there is on that platform."
It was like going back in time: I recall similar arguments about Java back in the nineties. Since then, we've had not only JIT compilers but also huge increases in hardware performance. Is Williams living in the past?
Before dismissing what he says, it's worth noting that native code has never gone away. I use cross-platform native code applications all the time, from the SQLite database engine to the Audacity sound editor, and I enjoy their small size and fast performance. Over at Google, the Chrome team is hard at work delivering a new web browser, and it is mostly written in C++. Most of Windows is written in C++, despite Microsoft's commitment to .NET; and Java is an afterthought in Apple's OS X.
Although hardware performance has improved, the increasing numbers of mobile devices with constrained resources is a counter-balance to the idea that hardware takes care of inefficient code; and although managed code is fine for many business applications, it's hard to quibble with Williams' contention above that "If you want a small, fast, GUI-rich application, and you want to target the popular platforms, there's only one game in town."
There is another argument for managed code, which is that applications are quicker to write and safer to run when they are under the control of a runtime virtual machine. That is generally true as well. Still, Delphi does a great job of hiding the complexity of native code development. It may be just a little anachronistic, but if Embarcadero successfully deliver a cross-platform Delphi compiler, I think there will be plenty of take-up.
Williams says we may see cross-platform Delphi as soon as next year.
Last week Sun launched JavaFX, its Java-based platform for Rich Internet Applications. Sun picked up the high level of interest in Adobe's Flash as an application runtime, and perhaps Microsoft's Silverlight as well, and hurriedly developed its own equivalent. JavaFX is a new scripting language that runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and is optimized for graphical effects and multimedia. It brings to Java animation features like timelines and motion paths, support for a variety of audio and video codecs, and a way of coding a graphical user interface without the supposed complexities of Swing with its Model/View/Controller (MVC) design. JavaFX applets can run within or outside the browser. One innovation is that you can drag an applet out of a web page and onto your desktop. If you close the browser, the applet keeps running, thanks to support for out-of-process plugins in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox.
So far JavaFX has received a mixed reception, and it is easy to see why. The launch was rushed, and some early visitors to the site had a bad experience, with videos that would not play or samples that did not run. Videos running in JavaFX flash unpleasantly if you resize the browser. The install experience is not as smooth as for Flash or Silverlight in my experience, because you need to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) as well as the JavaFX plugin. The download size is larger, although this is disguised by Sun's slimmed-down initial install. The idea is that you get up and running quickly, while the rest of the JRE installs in the background. The SDK does not yet run on Linux or Solaris, although the applets themselves should run because they only require the standard JRE plus a runtime jar (add-on library) and can be executed using Java Web Start. The latest NetBeans has JavaFX support, but another downer is the lack of any dedicated visual design tools. Sun only offers an export add-on for Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator, or a converter for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). There is no 3D API yet, though it is promised.
It is easy to be negative; but some of these problems will disappear as JavaFX matures. A visual design tool is in the works, as is a mobile version that will be shown at the Mobile World conference in February next year. JavaFX will have a place for Java developers who are envious of what Flash and Silverlight can do. While it may not match Flash in terms of broad runtime deployment, I'm guessing that Sun will outpace Microsoft in this respect. JavaFX also has a couple of advantages over Flash, including more sophisticated client-side security and better code performance in some scenarios. The Java VM is mature and well optimized. Adobe's ActionScript virtual machine does have a just-in-time compiler, but seems slower than either Silverlight or Java for code execution. Speed of graphical effects is another matter, and while I have not seen any comparisons yet, I suspect Adobe's long multimedia experience may come into play here.
JavaFX will be welcomed then by Java developers who need more expressive graphics in their applications, and will be an interesting option for those developing games for mobile devices. Try as I might though, I'm finding it hard to believe that this is a huge section of the market, or that Sun will have much success persuading designers to target JavaFX rather than Flash, or that JavaFX will win much market share from Adobe for web-hosted video. Swing works well these days, its MVC architecture has merit, and it is well-suited to the kinds of Enterprise applications which commonly have Java clients. JavaFX is a useful addition to Java, but I doubt that Adobe is losing sleep over its likely impact. That said, I'm keen to hear from developers with plans for JavaFX applications, so don't hesitate to let me know.
