Mazdak Rezvani

Time for different methodologies

Apple’s software development methodologies, especially when it comes to iCloud services, are not competitive in this day and age. Apple won by releasing OS X updates on a yearly basis when the competition was Microsoft and major Windows update cycles were 3-5 years long. The competition is now Google (and possibly Facebook), so the rules have changed.

Facebook has already declared war on Google and Apple by announcing that Facebook Home, their Android home screen replacement, is going to be updated on a monthly basis. This is not to suggest that Apple needs to release monthly iOS updates, but to say that a new strategy is needed. One such strategy could be to separate certain application updates from the system wide release cycle. Do we really need to wait one year for improvements and innovations in Safari? Maps? Calendar?

Server side software lends itself very well to a rapid iterative release cycle. It’s not only an advantage, but a requirement. Internal iteration might work for the client side, but server side software can can, and should, be rolled out to production more rapidly. It makes for a nice keynote slide to say that a new OS has 150 new features, but it makes for happier customers if 50 of those features were made available throughout the year.

For years Apple has intrigued us with the big reveal. It’s certainly one element of their success, but the fact is that releasing updates to iCloud are not the same as launching a new iPhone. Many, including myself, will happily wait for a year for a new iPhone, or a new version of OS X, but no one should have to wait for improvements to Maps or iCloud syncing. The rules and the competitive landscape have changed significantly, so Apple needs to adapt quickly to remain competitive.

UPDATE: Read this excellent article by John Siracusa. His point about Google becoming a bigger contributor to WebKit and having to eventually take it inside by forking it, as Blink, is another excellent illustration of the problems Apple will face if they don’t take certain aspects of their development process and adopt a Google-like rapid development & release model.

Safe to say: Would not have happened under Steve Jobs

It’s easy to call Apple’s new hire, Kevin Lynch, the former Adobe CTO and Flash evangelist, a ‘bozo’, but I think you need to look at the guy’s entire body of work before passing judgement.

While he did act over the top on Flash back in the day, he might have also been responsible for its removal from further development in mobile.

It’s hard to say what he’ll be doing at Apple, but let’s not forget that the team at Adobe worked on a lot of non-Flash projects that are quite nice.

People are entitled to radically change their mind about technologies. No one was better at that than Steve. Flash, justifiably, lost the battle. Time to move on.

Only time will tell though.

UPDATE: Good piece called ‘Lynch Mob’ by John Moltz

Top 5 reasons Tim Cook is doing a terrible job as Apple CEO

5 – Apple refreshed its entire product line in 2012.

4 – Revenue in China (the world’s largest population) is growing at an incredible rate.

3 – Apple generated $1B of profit per week, and its best quarter on record. That quarter’s profit is more profit than Amazon has ever made.

2 – iPhone was the top selling smartphone in the holiday quarter for both AT&T (80%+ of sales) and Verizon (65%+ of sales).

1 - Apple hasn’t innovated enough because they haven’t released a super cheap, yet high margin iPhone with a 5+ inch screen.

iOS 7 Wish List

Is it too early to talk about what I wish we had in iOS and how iOS 7 might be the answer? I think not. I’m going to throw in a few OS X things in here too, since it too is on a yearly release cycle.

So here, in no particular order, is my wish list:

Mail.app

Mail is pretty good, but there is always room for improvement. In the case of the search functionality, the room for improvement is more like a football field. It’s a combination of client and server side improvements, and although unlikely, better integration with Google as I believe some of the search problems with GMail accounts are not just Apple.

I don’t know where the Apple obsession with speed has gone (especially in the early OS X years), but Mail.app on Mountain Lion really needs a speed boost, particularly when loading big threads and messages with images in them.

Preview.app

Preview on OS X is amazing. I love the signature feature introduced in Lion. We really need it on iOS as well. It’s not just reading PDFs, but filling out forms, making notes, etc.

Update: Found an app called ‘DocuSign Ink’ with the signature feature. However, I’d still like to see Preview.app, even as a separate download.

Sharing

The above wish would require a mechanism to allow iOS apps to ‘share files’ with each other. The current iOS security model is prohibitive of such actions. I think every developer would appreciate a mechanism to do this, not to mention that it opens up a ton of new possibilities for apps like Preview that like to save changes to a document owned by another app.

Live Icons

Why is it that the calendar app shows the right date, but the clock app shows the wrong time? Hopefully this comes with a sweet developer API.

Learn from the Mac

This is not about apps, but underlying technologies. Apple has already been doing a great job with transferring knowledge and tech back and forth, but I get the feeling that iOS might be further behind than OS X (see aforementioned PDF handling). It might just be device constraints getting in the way, but I suspect iOS 7 can drop support for older hardware without much fuss.

iCloud & iTunes Match

It’s great that it exists, and it works 99% of the time. But why is it that it’s got strange bugs and behavior going back to iOS 5? I don’t see my full album list when I connect to the car. It used to work in iOS 5. There is no option to change this behavior. If I’m in shuffle mode and a song is not on my device does it wait or skip? I can’t figure out what’s going on… Having control over this would be nice.

If I download an app on my iPad, it auto downloads on my iPhone. Great. Why is it then when I press update on my iPad and the same app is on my iPhone, it doesn’t auto update? (I’m being super picky now)

Update: Sharing is another key missing feature. Shared Photo Streams and Shared Reminders are a great start, but this needs to be broadened to include more apps

Update 2: Password sync between Safari on Mac, and iOS… Please!

Update 3: Given the recent management shuffle, I have high hopes for OS X + iOS integration

Update 4: I like items 3, 5, and 6 from Ars Technica’s iOS 7 Wish List: Multi-user mode for iPad, AirDrop, and a more powerful Siri with more APIs.

I’m sure there is more…

On the value of working well together

Yesterday’s Apple management change announcement was a bit of a shock if you weren’t paying detailed attention to what goes on inside Apple, but it does send a very clear and interesting message. The news prompted several people to chime in on the matter. Maps, Siri, executive-level personally conflicts, and major differences of creative opinion were all cited as possible reasons for the firing of Scott Forstall.

In my opinion, it all comes down to one key factor and they could not have made it any more clear: Apple is a company built on tight integration of software, hardware, and services. It’s their secret sauce and their magic formula. Any disruption of this key operating principle will not be tolerated.

This philosophy closely reflects my own. I firmly believe that no individual, no matter how brilliant, is worth keeping around if they are disruptive to cooperation within a company. This applies to companies big, and small. I have seen the devastating effect of these types of personalities in teams, and I have seen the positive impact of getting rid of such individuals.

Tim Cook has put his proverbial money where his mouth is.

More on the iTV

First, an update on my previous post on this topic: There was no Apple TV apps announcement. In retrospect, it was naive to think they would release an SDK for an unreleased product.

Second, the recent announcement that Bob Mansfield is not retiring and he’s basically the Senior Vice President of nothing working on “future products, reporting to Tim Cook”, all but confirms that he’s staying around to finish his work on the iTV product. 

Last but not least, in reading my own thoughts on this topic, I must say that I missed the point on a few key pieces. To answer the question of what such a device must be like, one must first answer the question “what’s wrong with televisions today?” The truth is that television sets are just fine for the most part. The latest TV sets from the likes of Samsung and Sony are beautifully designed, thin, with big beautiful screens. The “smart TVs” might not be all the way there yet, but add an Apple TV box and you’re good to go.

What’s truly wrong with television is not the box, but the distribution of content. Now, I am no expert in the television business model, but I can tell you that I can’t get many of the shows I want the legal way. I have no patience for the “cable TV” model. I haven’t had cable for over three years now, and I don’t miss it. I don’t like channel surfing, I don’t like commercials that interrupt a 20-minute program 5 times, and I don’t want 90%+ of the content on TV. What I want is being able to watch the latest and greatest program, when I want, and I am more than happy to pay for it.

So, for the iTV to be a success, it must come with a game-changing distribution model. It must do for TV what iTunes did for music. I won’t complain if it comes in a beautiful television set.