technolosophy

3G IPhone Costs $173 to Manufacture

2008-06-30T18:04:29Z

The mystery behind why the new iPhone is so cheap may be solved, with market researcher iSuppli saying it costs just US$173 to make.

Full story here...

Music - The Last Shadow Puppets

2008-06-16T14:41:41Z

A new British band, you just might like...

'Standing Next To Me'

Get more of the Last Shadow Puppets here.

New iPhone App Rocks Your Socks

2008-05-19T13:01:51Z

The native iPhone app is called "band" and created by the developer MooCowMusic.

Need I say more?

Youtube link here for visitors on iPhones.

Technology in the Presses: Hyped or Hyper?

2008-05-14T14:11:32Z

When a grain of salt won't do it.

I love industry websites like fiercewireless.com and theregister.co.uk. They keep us up to date with the goings on across wide swaths of the telecom and technology industries. However, I am rarely impressed with the accompanying analysis of many tech bloggers/writers. It seems that more and more the tech media lacks the broad technical expertise required to see much past press releases and industry hype. Often, some products are so over hyped that they have credibility bestowed upon them that they have not earned (i.e.: WiMax). In other instances, truly ground breaking and industry shifting products get labeled as over hyped, as is the case with the iPhone.]]>
To be fair, it is not always easy to see the deeper significance and impact products may have. Take the iPhone for instance. To understand the iPhones true potential you would have to be more than just tangentially versed in multiple disciplines across several industries;

               1. Wireless Carriers Practices and Politics
               2. Hardware, Processors and Manufacturing
               3. Standards Bodies and Intellectual Property (Patents)
               4. The history and evolution of Mobile Computing
               5. Application and User Interface Design
               6. Web 2.0 Strategies, Communities and Development
               7. Open vs Closed Source Development and Politics

In the case of the iPhone, the problem is your average cell phone industry analyst has never needed to know nor look at half of these issues before, simply because it was never necessary. No phone has every truly had a powerful processor, or 3D graphics, let alone a full and modern Operating System like Unix and a fully mature development environment in the form of the iPhone SDK. All together they form a proverbial iPhone "iceberg": It is what rests below the surface that gives it its true significance. The iPhone has injected an order of magnitude in complexity to the cellular industry ecosystem. Many industry savvy insiders often miss the profound nature of the iPhone's seeming unrelated computing focused architecture.

We the readers are left in the middle. On one side, we have industry "subject matter experts" saying why the iPhone is not competitive compared to, say, Nokia. Yet on the other side, you have a programmer/developer or other Apple "fanboy" saying how superior the iPhone is in every respect. Lastly, you have the user experience of the device itself, which to Apple's credit seems deceptively simple.

In a world of competing views, amid great complexity no single view will give you the insight you seek in order to determine the truth. This is the reader's dilemma, not just for the iPhone, but for many emerging technologies that cross disciplines and industry verticals. In a world where convergence is finally happening, who do we listen to?

iPhone SDK FTW

2008-05-13T12:54:35Z

I am a strong believer in the Apple way of doing business. I make no secret of that and after a spending a good deal of time researching it has become clear to me that the new additions to the Apple SDK to include support for rapid iPhone development is a death blow to the rest of the Smartphone industry, but it appears that it is not as obvious to my friends and colleagues why.

FTW is a common internet abbreviation of "For The Win" and it best describes what the iPhone SDK means for Apple.

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History's Lesson: A Smartphone is not an Internet Device

As I stated, all modern Smartphones owe their origins to a PDA somewhere in its history, except the iPhone, which began life as a modern, mature, full fledged internet enabled OS developed by Apple for the Macintosh line of computer. The iPhone is not a powerful PDA, it is a full fledged computer, and runs on one of the most sophisticated operating systems ever released for a personal computer, the Mac OS X.

Mac OS X is a distant cousin of UNIX similar to how Linux is UNIX's open source cousin. Almost any version of UNIX, properly scaled back and adapted to the less powerful processors used in small Internet Devices, such as the iPhone and Nokia 770/800, would make for an excellent and extensible development platform for a company looking to build an Internet Device. This is the exact reason Google's Android phone OS is based on Linux and also Nokia's non-phone Internet Device (the 770 and 800), However, Apple has gone the extra mile and built upon Unix's solid foundation (called a kernel) and custom written and coded a entire User Interface (UI) layer that is one of the pillars of Apple's rebirth as a company.

I think we all can agree Apple is the undisputed king of the user experience and that is because they did not relay on existing methods to create the user experience, but instead invested millions, dare I say hundreds of millions, in writing their own graphics classes, methods and libraries (called Cocoa) that give all Mac's their lovely and famously homogeneous user experience. It is Apple's near fanatical emphasis on consistent, stable and tightly integrated UI with the kernel that makes all Apple's products highly interactive while maintaining a small/lightweight code foot print which allows for Apple to quickly port the same user experience to a less powerful devices while losing none of the look or feel. Apple simply does more with the same resources than an older less streamlined OS's can. To his credit, Steven Jobs had the vision to invest not in bloat, but in optimization. Something Microsoft has not learned even to this day.

The level of integration and optimization that Apple has achieved has taken nearly a decade and probably another decade on top of that of mistakes with OS 7, 8 and 9 just to know what not to do. There is no single company currently out there with the intellectual property, culture, man power or OS experience to even hope to produce a competing platform as extensive and well thought out as the iPhone for at least several years. Even Google's Android is several years behind the iPhone and it is the single best hope out there. However, the lack of Androids HW integration leaves me to think it may be too late for them as well. Nokia certainly does not currently have the infrastructure and culture in place to write an entire OS from scratch in-house.

What about the SDK?

The Apple philosophy and approach to computing platform and software development is a critical component to understanding the how the iPhone has changed the game.

You may have noticed that when you buy a new Mac, you also get an entire suite of applications that would have to be purchased separately if you were on a PC. The basic/free ones include:

iPhoto - organize all your photos
iMovie - edit your home video
iWeb - make web pages
GarageBand - record and edit your own music
iDVD - create profession DVD's
Safari - web browser
iTunes - organize and purchase music directly from apple

Each one of these products is custom written from the ground up and very capable. So, you see, Apple is not just HW and OS and UI, but also software (SW), lots and lots of software. Now if you were writing a lot of software and it all has to work together and have a unified user experience you're going to need a powerful work environment that enables the thousands of Apple employed developers to create the consistency you expect and have built your brand on. Enter Xcode. Also know as the Apple SDK.

This is not a tutorial on Apple software development so I will spare you the details, but Xcode is the primary suite of developer tools used to build nearly all Mac applications and has been refined over many years. And, like most things Apple, it is highly respected as a tightly integrated and powerful development environment designed exactly like any other apple application, to get things done fast. And Apple just released it to the public with all the necessary classes and libraries that Apple used to build the iPhone's builtin apps. And it is free.

Apple has made an extraordinary amount of effort to allows any programmer with a foundation in Objective C, C or C++ to concentrate on their applications logic. It is this simplification of the development process that lowers the threshold and invites the average developer to join in on the process. Developing for the platforms such as Symbians (S60) or PalmOS is far more complicated and the steep learning curves on those platforms has always been the reason there are not many (if any) home grown applications for them.

I don't want to belabor the point, but developers are inherently what I call lazy-smart people. This is not exactly a bad thing in software development. You can always count on your developers to seeking the most efficient way to implement a solution and I have seen a coder spend twice as much time working on a shortcut rather than implement an unnecessarily complex method the way it was intended. My point is that developers will gravitate to the environment and platform that gives the most satisfaction and the iPhone SDK is engineered to deliver very high quality user experience in a short time.

Most people know that you can "Jailbrake" and hack an iPhone, but what is less know is the depth and breath of iPhone applications already developed by the underground community. The most popular of these home built applications are being "refreashed" with the new iPhone SDK and will be re-released on the Application Store when it goes live in June and available to the entire user base.

Here is just a taste of the wide variety of apps currently available in the underground community:

An iPhone app that tracks your music listening habits and posts it to your online profile.
A Doom like 3D game where you control your characters movements thru innovative use of the iPhones built-in accelerometers.
A Nintendo emulator.
A Skype client using the iPhone's earpiece and mic.
A mini version of Guitar Hero.
An app that downloads the lyrics to the song you're listening to and displays them synchronized with the playback.
A full recording studio with virtual instruments called "band". See video.

The list of free apps goes on and on. Many of them incorporating GPS support, unlocking the potential for truly compelling location based, collaborative applications. Something pundits have dreamed about for years.

It is not everyday a platform comes along that is designed from the inside out for the community to support and develop for and share profits in and it is my belief we are on the brink of a new era in cooperative 3rd party development and the iPhone is leading the way while the rest are still trying to figure out how to make a touch screen keyboard work

In my next article I will look at Apples Application store and what it means to the everyday developer who is eager to build, release and possibly make money from their work on the iPhone thru the Apple distribution channel.

Comment #9

2008-05-09T14:48:15Z

The title of this engadget post is "DIYer builds fully-functional NES controller coffee table, earns mad respect". But what was most entertaining about this quick hit comes after watching the video in the comments section.

My favorite is comment #9 by Irritant. "This video is clearly fake. The geek appears to have a girlfriend."

Enjoy...

Here is the original engadget post with all the comments

What is holding Internet TV back?

2008-04-08T22:01:25Z

Walt Mossberg speaks up about Internet TV...
But who's listening?
Worth the 7mins.

As a person who has not owned a TV in over 5 years, partly cause I have an unusually negative physical reaction to both advertising and the 5 o'clock NEWS, but strangely, I enjoy NPR, HBO and PBS, go figure. Mossberg's comments on the idiocy of forcing users to watch irrelevant TV ads for product they will never purchase resonated deeply with me.

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Mossberg goes on to slam DSL and Cable providers for over promising, under delivering and over charging for Internet services that they sell as "High Speed", but can't handle the demand of streaming HD video.

In a throw away comment, he also says a 3G iPhone will hit the streets within 60 days. As an influential writer on technology for WSJ he might know something we don't. A 3G iPhone seems imminent, what with rumors of new 3G chip orders and dwindling stocks for the current model.

Above: The new 3G iPhone?

Relevant links:
Mossberg's WSJ site
3G chip deal for Apple rumors
iPhone supply shortage

Baby Announcement

2008-03-16T00:14:11Z

March 15th, 2008:
At 5:11pm Sarah gave birth to our son Lucas Marcos Lara. Baby and Mother are both doing great. The baby is 6lbs 1oz and 20 inches long and the most content and happy little thing anyone could hope for.

Update March 16th, 2008:
Day 2 in the Hospital, Sarah gave birth in one of Ulster Hospitals new water birth suites here in N.Ireland. Water birth is an all natural delivery and Sara received no drugs, injections or assistance during the birth, other than constant monitoring, my supporting hand and Gas/Air. It was a truly amazing event to witness someone give birth all by them selfs then reach down and pick up their baby. That proves it, women are stronger than men. I am in awe of her fortitude and inner strength. Sarah is my little Warrior! Sarah's mother Pamela also gets big praise for her help and constant support.

And here he is, for your viewing pleasure may I introduce to you, Lucas Marcos Lara.

]]> Update March 17th, 2008:

Day 3 little Lucas gets a hearing test and a vision check and he passed with flying colors. Sarah is breast feeding him and those two are still trying to figuring out the routine. So, after a full exam we check out of the hospital and come home to spends his first afternoon by the fireplace asleep. I wonder how the cats are going to feel about all this?

Update March 19th, 2008:
Day 4, well they tell you it is going to be hard, that you won't sleep or have a moment to yourself, but it is not real, until it is REAL. And here, now, at 4am it is very, very real. Mind you, Lucas is an angel, he never "screams" and only cries if he wants or needs feeding, burping or changing. We are lucky to have such a content child. That said, he still needs feeding and changing EVERY 3 hours and I am grateful to have this time away from work and NYC life to spend here in Belfast with Sarah and the baby. I have no clue how I would be able to handle a full workload AND the overnight feedings. I am exhausted just thinking about it and have nothing but respect for those that have pulled it off.

I only have another 3 weeks with Sarah and Lucas before I leave for home (NYC). Sarah will be joining me in NY soon enough after I leave, but just the thought of being separated from the two of them for even a day is rough. I am turning into such a mushy papa... but it is so easy when they look up at you and smile your name...

Another thing that has been on my mind is how much I love and respect my parents. To think that they cared for me as much as I do for Lucas, sacrificed everything to tend to my every need for so long. And all I did was give them Hell from the age of 13 to 21. I just wanted to recognize them and that I now understand what they did for me. Big kiss to the parental units.

Ok, time to sleep, all three of us.

www.flickr.com

Even more photos here: http://flickr.com/photos/vrooom/sets/72157604169968309/show/

Update March 20th, 2008:
Day 5 was a big day for baby Lucas Lara, his wee belly button is finally free of his umbilical cord. It just popped off, clean as a whistle. He did not even take much notice of the fact, so i don't know why we did, but it was all the talk for a while. Ahh, so much joy in this 6lbs paper weight we call Lucas.

Update March 26th, 2008:
Day 11: Where to begin? Today we registered the birth of Lucas Marcos Docherty Lara at the Castlereagh Borough Council, a beautifully constructed build, I might add. He is officially exists.

I am on the night feeds, this give Sarah time to get some much needed sleep under her belt. It is working out well since I am basically still on NY time (5 hours behind Belfast). I head to sleep after Lucas' 4am feeding (equivalent to 11pm EST for me) and he sleeps until 7am GMT when Sarah takes over. A tidy little system that seems to be working well. I could go to bed with Sarah and just get up to tend to the feedings, but as it turns out, if Sarah hears the baby cry or fidget her body just wont let her sleep. Best if I keep Lucas downstairs where she can't hear him and let her get some deep REM sleep.

I am amazed on how synchronized the two of them are, breast feeding really binds them closely together and if she hears or see the baby cry she says she can feel it in her boobs. She says she actually feels the milk production happening in sync with Lucas' cries and in anticipation of his needs. I can verify it first hand. One thing this birth has done is renew my faith in mother nature and the natural cycles we somehow lose sight of as we go about our busy lives.

Here is a lovely photo of Lucas at day 8. Is that a hint of a smile?:

Update March 28th, 2008:
Day 13: Today I caught Sarah singing a lullaby to little Lucas. Enjoy, I know I did. The voice in the background is Sarah's mum.

Update March 31st, 2008:
Day 16: It has been 2 weeks since little Lucas has come in to this world and as I reflect on his development I can't help but make an observation. William Gibson once wrote that jet lag was an effect of the mortal souls virtual speed limit. That aircraft and your physical body can travel far faster than the metaphysical body can and as a result your spirit "lags" behind, slowly being reeled in to rejoin you in your new location. It is a masterful piece of writing:

"She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of get lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic." William Gibson - Pattern Recognition

Well, as I reflect on Lucas' growth and personality I can't help but return to this analogy again and again in my mind. To me it best describes our new born's first weeks of life. It's as if Lucas' consciousness has been slowly transferring into his body over a 56k modem and finally, like a download, he is compiled, installed, ready to execute and now fully here with us.

Update April 2nd, 2008:
Day 18: A little reminder:

in a life of suffering
filled with injustice and sorrows
all one can do is fall
as gracefully as possible

i hold high
and as teachers
those who do it with acceptance
quite courage
and love

after all
in a culture of commodities
where everything is for sale
and nothing sacred
what else is there to be thankful for
than the friends and family
such a life
most surely brings

April 24, 2008
It has been 5 weeks since Lucas was born and people from all over the world have sent their love and congratulations. No, I am serious, literally from around the world. Here is a map of the visitors to this web page over the last 35 days.

705 visitors from 204 cities in 35 countries! Thanks to each and every one of you...

Quick Note: If you wish to send your congratulations, just pop it in the comment section below this post instead of emailing it to us. We want to share them with everyone... Thanks for all your lovely emails.

iPhone 2.0 "PWNED" (unlocked)

2008-03-14T05:35:58Z

A quick hit for you.

From Gizmodo.com:
"The beta 2.0 firmware that comes with the iPhone SDK has been modified to unlock the iPhone and run any application. Part of the Pwnage Project, the hacked firmware will allow you to do anything you want, including the installation of both official and unofficial apps, and even patches. We got the exclusive details directly from the DevTeam, including the fact that it is going to be extremely hard for Cupertino to close this new hole:"

Relevant Links:
http://gizmodo.com/366751/iphone-20-unlocked-runs-all-apps
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9892315-37.html?tag=recentPosts

It is all about the content dummy

2008-03-10T14:09:50Z

There is a great quote that sums up George Bush the 1st's presidency. "It's all about the economy dummy".

Well, here we are at the end of another cycle in this business I fondly, and jokingly call the "InterWeb". the Web 2.0, as with the last phase, has hit a saturation point and it is time to let your 2.0 freak flag fly. If you have a facebook or a twitter account, you're already 2.0 enabled and may have not even known it. It's ok, that is why I am here, to share things like this excellent website that uses 2.0 features to create calendar goodness.

So on to the next phase (read more).

]]> "It is all about the content dummy".

The next internet wave is mobile content and the iPhone SDK and mass of companies committing to develop content for it are creating a sudden swell. This is going to be a huge set of waves, building from the N-NW with 30-40 ft swells. We're talking Waimea bay in winter time (Waimea bay, on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii is the birth place of big wave surfing).

I have no doubt in my mind that the iPhone and it's SDK is going to be seen as a pivotal point in history for mobile content. The inflection point that started mass adoption of custom apps on phones by the general public. All Mobile Content Development platforms, Android, iPhone SDK, Toolchain, Windows Mobile, or S60 will try to ride this huge market opportunity, some will wipe out, but all will have a shot.

Relevant Links:

iPhone SDK means a smaller world

2008-03-07T00:24:00Z

tonight you will find 5,777 results for "iPhone sdk" on technorati. all taking about what Apple's iPhone SDK announcement means, and how it may play out. personally i very happy with the SDK news and more specifically its details. and i am not excited for usual reasons you will read about. for what peaked my interest was not part of the main presentation given by Apple today, which btw was both impressive (tools) and bold (partnering with developers). no, the real jewel for me in the the SDK crown was only subtly mentioned in the press Q&A session with Jobs and Co. after the main audience was dismissed.
]]> it is VoIP on the iPhone, the same voice over internet technology that drives Skype, Lingo, Vonage and many others companies offering international calls for pennies a min. VoIP is the bain of every single POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) provider, leaking revenue out of of their pockets like a sieve. and now, for the first time, a US cellular carrier (AT&T) is faced with the reality of customers using VoIP instead of billable air time while on their mobile. historically, cellular carries have enjoyed an unprecedented strangle hold on the hardware and software allowed on their networks. they have used this control to limit users alternatives and maximize profits. but here comes Steve Jobs, breaking the strangle hold and effectively making AT&T do to itself what took $4.6 billion by Google and others (4.6b was the min bid required by the FCC at a recent auction of 700-MHz cellular spectrum to trigger an "open-access" to hardware and software requirement.)

this thing, this Mac you can put in your pocket is changing everything and today is the biggest day no one will notice, beyond analysts and geeks that is.

the SDK makes it now theoretically possible for any iPhone users to make VoIP calls from their iPhones. Something never seen on consumer phones in the US before. and for one good reason, why would you pay $1.67/min to call a UK mobile (AT&T Standard International Rate) if you had VoIP client on your phone that could make that same call for pennies/min.

loop the camera into the equation and we are talking Dick Tracy on your iPhone. actually one of Dick Tracy's side kicks would make a great name for the iPhone VoIP app.

caveats galore:
* we have to wait til June for the SDK public release
* no official VoIP client for the iPhone was announced, just the potential for it was mentioned.
* apple says that they will limit VoIP to WiFi only
* chances are it will be a third party that develops the first VoIP client for the iPhone.

Welcome Back...

2008-03-05T15:31:02Z

Technolosophy is back!

back and kicking...

i have not blogged regularly since 2004 and as often happens, technology is the reason why i am back. which is what this blog has ALWAYS been about. how technology affects me (and you), how it inspires me, bring us closer together, and more curiously, how bad technologies divided us.

as a Technolosopher, i am often asked how things work. i am personally more interested in why they work. what about us, and our quirky brains, makes some technologies work really well, while others are relegated to dust under my white boards.

this is what my blog has always been about.

this is what i am about and i invite you to join me while i connect the dots and wade thru the din of marketing hype to find those few nuggets of technology that are truly part of a larger picture i call Technolosophy.