Uncarved

I received a bit of feedback, on- and off-blog, about my Apple "netbook" rumor speculation, with a number of folks remarking that such a device as I’d described would essentially cannibalize MacBook sales. As reader Andrew23 puts it:

adding the finder would make it far too macbook-ey, and I think they’d want to keep that distinction [from becoming] blurry; neither a macbook nor an iPhone, something else entirely. By that token I wonder if the “hybrid mode” is realistic, since it reduces the need to have a macbook…

Now, I’d given this matter some consideration myself, but I don’t see any real danger of that.

The “iBook” [again, a name I personally resurrected for it] is clearly neither iPhone nor an iPod Touch: it’s not pocket-sized and doesn’t place or receive calls. In fact, as I thought about the iPhone in relation to this device, I wondered if maybe “tether” mode might have as much to do with this new device, as with MacBook users.

With respect to resembling the MacBooks or iMacs, this machine will be comparatively underpowered and simply won’t have the software (read: no iLife). Additionally, there will be a huge difference with respect to display; this new device will likely not offer an external display connector of any sort, either. I believe display size alone may be enough to incentivize a consumer capable of affording the extra cash towards an alternative system.

So, while it’s fair to expect there will certainly be some cannibalization, I don’t foresee it happening to any greater degree than the extent to which the iPhone cannibalized iPod sales, or the iPod Touch cannibalized iPhone sales.

And, as Steve Jobs once himself said: if someone’s going to cannibalize Apple’s sales, better that it’s Apple.

Plus, with as well as the App Store has performed for Apple, I would venture to guess that whatever they might lose in minor cannibalization will likely be more than compensated for on the app sales side of the unit purchase.

Speaking of apps, another commenter to my original post, Richard Monson-Haefel, writes:

It’s my theory – and that’s all it is – that the 10” screen will be a new video platform. Where the iPod came to dominate music players and the iPhone has become a seemingly unstoppable force in the mobile phone industry, the 10” mystery device will be Apple’s foray into a portable video game and video movie players. [...] And I tell you another thing: the 10” tablet is not intended for productivity applications any more than the iPhone was meant for word processing.

I sure have to agree with respect to the media and gaming opportunities on this thing; in fact, I’m willing to wager that games will port over from the iPhone relatively easily (at least as compared with many of the other apps), as they tend to use customized UIs largely based on CoreAnimation and OpenGL.

I must, however, disagree with the argument that a 10″ screen would be unsuitable for productivity apps, as the Eee PC 10″ models—now in its third generation—are performing well with respect to sales (and even sell units with 9″ and even 7″ screens. I’m confident that 10″—particularly with a good pixel density—will be fine for rudimentary productivity needs.

Having a Mac Pro at home, I’d personally opt to trade my MacBook in for this hypothetical hybrid device.

Relatedly, my skepticism about a June announcement may prove overly-conservative, as Apple is apparently taking bids for the manufacture of this device; that’s not something that can happen until all the hardware decisions are locked down.

Predictions Apple, follow-up, netbook, prediction, tablet

Google recently posted about its new support for recognizing canonical URLs for page content.

A canonical URL is simply the “official” URL for accessing the item in question. Google explains it thus:

If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, [specifying a canonical URL] provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.

Canonical URLs become useful in sites like Amazon or YouTube, where the same product or video page may be accessed by a number of different URLs.

Consider, for example, the following two Amazon URLs:

• http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS6530-5143-16-Inch-Dual-Core-Processor/dp/B001GGLW3G
• http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS6530-5143-16-Inch-Dual-Core-Processor/dp/B001GGLW3G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1239978328&sr=1-2

Both point to the same Acer laptop product page on Amazon. I found the second URL from Amazon’s Acer laptops page, and you can bet that the URL contains information about where the user found the link, and more.

Thanks to canonical URLs, however, every link Google (as well as Ask, Microsoft Live Search, and Yahoo!) finds around the web that winds up landing on this page will all consolidate under a single URL, which will—as post linked above explains—bolster the page’s ranking in search results placement.

Using our example above, all Amazon would need to do to take advantage of this is to add the following special tag in the <head> of the product page:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS6530/dp/B001GGLW3G" />

So canonical URLs super simple to implement are clearly useful for SEO.

Another context in which I believe they’d be useful is the URLs of asset files (images, videos, PDFs, etc) and RESTful web services. Unfortunately, these are all cases in which server’s response data will not be HTML, in which case the solution shown above simply cannot be used.

I believe, however, that I have stumbled upon a solution worth borrowing to solve this problem.

Earlier today I was reading Robert Spychala’s proposals for URL auto-discovery, which proposes a means to include URL auto-discovery information in HTTP response headers. It struck me immediately as a great idea which can directly translate to a solution for allowing non-HTML data to specify a canonical URL.

Specifically, the canonical URL header data for the Acer laptop example from above would look like this:

Link: <http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS6530/dp/B001GGLW3G>; rel=canonical

And the canonical URL of its primary photo:

Link: <http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS6530/img/B001GGLW3G/primary/medium.jpg>; rel=canonical

Since Google, Yahoo!, and the rest all index images, videos, and other non-HTML resources, I believe that supporting canonical URL declaration in the HTTP response headers is an idea worth seriously considering for all the same reasons it makes brilliant sense for HTML documents.

General Thoughts canonical url, http, RESTful

WARNING: wild conjecture ahead. Please note that all that follows is complete and utter conjecture; I do not claim to have any sources inside Apple.

That said, it seems increasingly likely that Apple will reveal a new product intended to compete in the netbook product space in the near future, with the world largely expecting an announcement at this year’s WWDC in June.

Steve Jobs was famously quoted in 2008 as saying:

We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.

Indeed many pundits in the tech media have criticized Apple’s lack of a netbook offering.

A number of critics have even cited Apple’s absence from this market space as evidence of their inability to recognize market trends, or complete disconnect from the realities of consumer tastes… because there’s no company in the world with quite as poor a sense of trends and consumer tastes as Apple.

But when Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, was more recently asked about whether Apple had plans to ship a netbook, during Apple’s Q1 2009 conference call, he responded:

We’re watching that space, but right now from our point of view, the products in there are principally based on hardware that’s much less powerful than we think customers want, software technology that is not good, cramped keyboards, small displays.

We don’t think people will be pleased with those products. It’s a category we watch, we’ve got some ideas here, but right now we think the products are inferior and will not provide an experience to customers they’re happy with.

While some critics have interpreted Cook’s statement as further evidence that Apple is altogether snubbing the product category, it seems to me instead that Tim is rather simply stating that they’re not competing in that space because they’re working on fixing everything that sucks about the products presently in the category.

And with news that Apple has placed an order for a batch of 10-inch LCD screens from Wintek, it seems like they may feel like they’re on the verge of solving these problems since nothing on their current product line utilizes that screen size.

And so I strongly anticipate a new Apple product that will occupy a slot between the MacBook and the iPhone / iPod Touch.

But what will it look like? Read more…

Predictions Apple, netbook, prediction

Another painfully insightful piece by John Gruber.

If there’s a formula to Apple’s success over the past 10 years, that’s it. Start with something simple and build it, grow it, improve it, steadily over time. Evolve it.

I wish this were something I wrote for Uncarved.

Check it out

My brother and I had been suffering from a chronic affliction for roughly the last decade. You see, every year or so, we’d have to reinstall Windows on the PCs in our father’s office. The reasons for the re-installation ranged from viruses, to a hosed registry, and even hard drive failures; the poor man’s PCs have seen it all.

It was a cycle that looked something like this:

1. the computer starts behaving strangely (random crashes of applications or the system, mysterious prolonged lock-ups, etc)
2. my brother or I get called in to diagnose
3. we discover the problem
4. we attempt to fix
5. sometimes the problem is resolved, but other times it’s necessary to reinstall
6. we attempt to backup the most recent data (if it’s not somehow corrupted), or use the latest weekly backup
7. boot the Windows installation disk
8. clear the hard drive
9. install Windows
10. activate our copy of Windows
11. install anti-virus software
12. install the latest Windows Service Packs, as well as any other security updates
13. install the necessary software
14. restore the backed up data files
15. wait for the cycle to start again

Some folks reading this far might argue that we should have moved him off Windows a long time ago, and saved ourselves the trouble. Why not just give him a Mac or install Linux and put the worries aside?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

He needs to run Windows because he runs his business on an accounting software package called PeachTree. The fact that alternatives exist is immaterial; all the business data is already stored in there, Dad and his book keepers know how to use it, and nobody involved feels like learning some other convoluted accounting software.

Windows simply cannot be removed from the equation.

Unfortunately, we were trapped in what seemed like an interminable cycle. It had practically reached the point where my brother and I developed the capability to do the job drawing purely on muscle memory to lead us through.

But muscle-memory or not, installation demands time.

Even after the Windows installer itself would do its job, we would then have to download and apply the most recent Service Packs, install his software, and reconfigure his desktop so that everything is “in the right place.”

In our case, the reinstallation process would typically consume about a full 8-hour workday, and occasionally more if there are network connectivity issues or other mishaps. Naturally, since both my brother and I have day to day responsibilities of our own, the effort would always wind up consuming one of our weekend or holiday days.

It happened again in February of 2009… specifically, on my brother’s birthday weekend. My father took the family out for a birthday brunch, after which my brother and I accompanied him to his office to do the dirty work.

But this time, a new strategy occurred to me: surrender.

I decided to accept the eventuality that Windows will, in time, shit the bed on us. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. It may be some sort of malware, or just a badly-written (but perfectly legitimate) installer that hoses your registry.

Once I’d accepted this, and the denial had melted away, my goals changed from protecting Windows from malware to working out how to make the restore suck less.

Since we’d managed to get them in the weekly practice of making weekly backups of their business data, the worst part about restoring their computers was simply investing the time it takes wait out all the damned progress bars of the process. Installer after installer would run, many needing an attentive human present to click “OK” or to accept license agreements.

The faster we could get from empty hard drive to functional Windows system, and the less attentive effort it required of anyone, the better everyone’s life would become ever more.

The goal was to reduce the restore process to a simple file copy.

And with this thought, I suddenly knew what had to be done: all we needed was a bunch of free software (and a RAM upgrade for one of the computers), and we could install and configure Windows—and all of his software—for the last time, ever.

We erased the hard drives of his PCs and installed Ubuntu Linux on all of them. We then installed Sun’s free and open source virtualization software, called VirtualBox, and carried out our routine installation and configuration of Windows — and all the necessary software — into a virtual machine.

We added free DropBox account service to the picture, just to bulletproof the backup strategy for his business data.

Once everything was installed and properly configured, we stopped the VirtualBox virtual machine and created a master backup copy of the new virtual machine’s hard drive image file. This master copy of the hard drive image now contained a fully-configured, pristine version of Windows.

Moving forward, a full Windows restoration process for the accounting PC can be conducted over a lunch, instead of the course of a full workday.

And because Windows is running in a virtual machine, we’ve even managed to reduce the amount of time that would be required to replace the entire machine: simply wipe its hard drive, install Linux on it, copy over the Windows virtual machine’s hard drive image, and we’re up and running with all of our user settings and latest business data in place. And because Windows only ever “sees” the virtualized “hardware” presented by VirtualBox, it won’t require a reactivation.

I should finally note that the accounting machine is used as a fulltime Windows machine. That is, from the moment of startup, VirtualBox is launched, and the Windows desktop is used in full-screen mode, with nary a though given to the Linux environment, until they’re ready to shut the machine down.

So from now on, when Windows does eventually punk out in one of its many—and, at times, even innovative—ways, we’ll be ready.

Tutorials