It’s totally shocking to me that Google and Microsoft are just letting Amazon take developers over this way.

So writes Robert Scoble. And he’s correct, but their behaviour isn’t surprising because Google and Microsoft are not in the same game. Unfortunately, this could be their undoing.

Google and Microsoft are driven by technology, by things that they think are ‘cool’. This is evident in their scattershot approach to product development, either by releasing products that contradict and supersede their own, or by random purchases of other companies, or by ‘innovating’ through ‘emulation’. Their suite of internet offerings are for people who use the internet.

Amazon however have had several years’ head start when it comes to their web services. They’ve had to solve problems whilst building up the company and their increasing customer base. The result is a set of architectures that support their massive e-commerce system and they have realised that these architectures can be packaged and used by others. Their suite of internet offerings are for people who build the internet – developers and innovators. It’s these people who can disrupt Google and Microsoft’s agenda.

What do Google and Microsoft need to do to prevent this from happening, or at least ensure it doesn’t affect their long-term revenue? Buy Amazon. It’s interesting to note that in Wikipedia’s definition of Googlezon Google has the storage infrastructure and Amazon the social networking. In reality, the opposite is becoming true.

Perhaps the most critical of missing pieces to Amazon’s suite of web services launched yesterday. SimpleDB is Amazon’s database service.

Some people think that this is competing with enterprise database systems or the plethora of web-friendly databases such as MySQL. This isn’t really the case because SimpleDB differs in a number of respects:

• It’s schemaless, typeless and auto-indexed. This provides a more organic (some might think ‘ad-hoc’) architecture for storing and retrieving data. Everything is stored as UTF-8 strings.

• Each table (a ‘domain’ in SimpleDB terminology) is automatically replicated, but critically, consistency between copies can take seconds. Depending on the application, this is something that can be ignored, or needs to worked-around.

• The query language is very simple and queries that take longer than 5 seconds are likely to time-out.

• It is not possible to query across tables. This might appear to be a big problem, but whilst more traditional databases would require multiple tables to achieve an appropriate architecture, the typeless and schemaless nature of SimpleDB enables more to be done within one table.

• It is not possible to query and update in one operation. Instead you need to retrieve the result set, then perform the updates one by one. Similarly, there is no sorting of query results.

You might wonder after reading this, what good is SimpleDB? Well, if you need fast access to fuzzy data sets, SimpleDB would suit you fine.

If someone in your household wants an iPhone for Christmas, it’ll be either for ‘show’ or because they realise it’s the next leap forward. Perhaps it’s also too expensive – upfront costs and monthly fees certainly look expensive when compared to other mobile phones.

If someone in your household wants an Xbox 360 for Christmas, please don’t get them one. They’re quite expensive – Curry’s sells them for £279. Then there are the games – new ones are around £30 – £40 each, and you know they’ll get tired, fed up, or bored with them after, say, a month.

Get them an iPhone instead.

Most of the world’s population is satisfied with ‘good enough’. Designers, manufacturers, service providers, customers and vendors are perfectly happy with providing and receiving ‘adequate’. Not because they strive but fail to improve upon this benchmark, but because they are unable to see or imagine beyond it. So, if you’re one of the people who has bought a Linksys Media Streamer from PC World this weekend [PC Pro Review], please look away now. This review is not for you.

I’ve read the reviews of the iPhone and I’ve read the many comments by those in the ‘good enough’ camp. They’re the ones complaining that it’s technically inferior, too expensive or is missing ‘obvious’ features. They’re also the ones who don’t recognise that design means everything.

It’s been a few weeks since I received my iPhone, which makes it about time to give my initial impressions. You may have read countless reviews each of which will have gone through the iPhone’s features, so I’m not going to repeat them here. Instead I’ll concentrate on how it works for me and why I think it is the best personal device ever created. It may even be the best anything ever created by man.

I’d never seen an iPhone in person prior to getting mine from the Apple online store and despite reading the specs I didn’t appreciate how small it is. It can easily fit in a trouser pocket and doesn’t feel bulky or oddly shaped. This makes it easy to carry and crucially something that you want to carry around.

The overall styling is sleek and unobtrusive. It doesn’t scream at you – most phones are garish, what with their colours, styles and nobbly keyboards. The iPhone has no markings bar the rounded rectangle on the home button and the Apple logo. Nor does it blink or display anything when it is sleeping, but it’s still functional and therefore able to receive mobile communications such as calls, texts and emails. This simplicity actually makes it trustworthy because it doesn’t demand my attention except on my terms.

Thoughts on the user-interface

The multi-touch display rightly renders physical keyboards and scrollers obsolete on such a device. The sheer range of interactivity and the ease of achieving tasks makes getting work done pleasurable. Pinching, scrolling and flipping through information is completely natural.

When it comes to the pop-up keyboard I guess some people get it and some don’t. After a couple of days I found it to be quicker to use than the marvellous Graffiti. The autocorrection is excellent and it learns both what you type and how you type it. This means non-dictionary words can be used. Just ‘use the force’ and much of what you type will turn out fine. The visual feedback is almost subliminal when typing quickly, making the lack of tactile feedback a non-issue. If you notice it predicting correctly whilst typing a word just press the spacebar and the word will be completed. This is excellent for long words. For other corrections and navigation the zoom loupe is innovative and very usable. I’m yet to be completely happy with using both thumbs to type. Instead I just use one finger or one thumb. That turns out to be plenty quick enough.

Thoughts on the applications

One important factor about the built-in applications is that you shouldn’t ‘feature compare’ with other mobile devices or desktop applications. The overriding aim of each application is to get something done as quickly as possible. Get in. Get out.

For example, unlike my Palm T3, the iPhone makes its own mind up about connecting to networks. I wake the iPhone from sleep and it’s still in GPRS or EDGE mode. Within a second or two it finds my wireless network and connects to it. No acknowledgements, no permission request. It just does it.

Mail seems to go against this, because it doesn’t support push e-mail. Instead you need to grab mail manually or set up an automatic schedule (starting at 15 minute intervals). I’d argue that push e-mail is a technology driven solution. A gimmick that solves no problem. Why? Because e-mail is an inherently inefficient way of communicating timely information. If you need to communicate with someone urgently, use SMS messages or actually speak to them. When was the last time you received an e-mail that needed to be responded to within 15 minutes of the author sending it to you?

A lot of thought has gone into how events are notified. Alarms occur only briefly and are not repeated. This is, after all, a device that you keep with you so you’ll probably always be near it when something happens. If you’re not then you’re not using the iPhone to its fullest extent. Audible interruptions subtly punch through anything you’re listening to then fade away again. I smiled the first time I received an e-mail whilst listening to music. If you receive an SMS whilst the iPhone is asleep, the text of the SMS is immediately displayed when you wake it up (i.e. on the Unlock page). The same applies to missed alarms. There is no ‘Today’ screen and this is actually a Very Good Thing because ‘Today’ screens clutter your mind and ignore context.

The iPhone renders a number of filetypes. The most useful of these are Microsoft Word, Excel or Adobe PDF formats. Whilst you cannot change such documents reading them is straightforward. Because you can’t modify these document types, there’s no extraneous user-interface to get in the way. For example, you’ll see a ‘Page x of y’ marker over the top of a PDF document whilst flipping through the pages, but it disappears shortly after you’ve finished scrolling, leaving just the document on view. This ‘less is more’ approach is a fundamental tenet of the iPhone.

A side effect of this is how Safari works. You can browse the full internet. Providing you don’t need Flash or Java you won’t notice any difference. The ability to double-tap to zoom in on a portion of a page allows you to focus on content without the noise of competing material such as advertisements. I’m a proponent of the view that the iPhone will re-invigorate and re-invent the internet: there are many websites which have a better user-interface on the iPhone than their desktop equivalent. Particularly Facebook, Google Reader and Remember The Milk.

But this has also applied to two other in-built applications: YouTube and the iTunes. YouTube was my first killer application on the iPhone: Get In, search or browse, view and/or bookmark, Get Out. iTunes is the same. I prefer buying music on iTunes on my iPhone than I do on my MacBook and because the iPhone knows how to handle iTunes music links, weekly alerts or website links to the store works seamlessly.

What about Notes and To Dos? Mac OS X Leopard is an unmitigated disaster in this area. Apple Mail 3 promised so much and in its first iteration delivered shambolic half-working unreliable Notes and To Dos. So much that I’ve almost abandoned them. The iPhone has its own little Notes application which works nicely. I even like the font it uses. There is no synchronisation and without third party applications such as iPhoneDrive, the only way you can get a Note out of the iPhone is to e-mail it. However because Notes are temporal fragments of thoughts, the rather simple nature of the application proves beneficial. I now use Notes as a direct replacement for my 3×3 sheets of paper.

To Dos are ignored, even those created in iCal. Even if support was provided, To Dos are non-repeatable. Instead, I use Remember The Milk, which has a custom iPhone version (this link only works correctly on the iPhone) and is currently the killer web application for the device.

Google Maps is a curious beast. In some respects it works wonderfully, especially when you need to find directions. The main problem with it is persuading it to find addresses. Part of this problem is that existing Contacts need to be formatted according to their country. Otherwise you’ll find Google Maps looking to the US for locations in the UK. Oh and sometimes Scotland turns up as a County. As part of my investigation into what works and what doesn’t I’ve found a useful side-effect. It’s easier to add a new Contact to your Address Book via Google Maps on the iPhone than any other means. Simply type in the postcode, or use Google Maps’ excellent search feature, then tweak the contact details as required.

You’ll have noticed I’ve not mentioned the Phone or Voicemail features. They don’t need to be mentioned. That’s a testament to their brilliance.

Conclusion

Until the iPhone appeared, there was only one other mobile device I wanted to carry with me wherever I went: the iPod. The iPhone has taken its place and allows me to do so much more when I’m away from my Mac. It goes everywhere with me. The upfront cost, the ongoing monthly cost and the 18 month contractual tie-in to O₂ are irrelevant because of the benefit it provides to my life and my work. It’s about time I used the R-word: remarkable.

I usually reserve my less musicy posts for my Tumblr, but this has to be an exception. RoughlyDrafted Magazine is one of the best written and researched technology blogs (although its author Daniel Eran Dilger does write about other things too). His latest post Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing is an eloquent deconstruction of both the Zune and the ever-faltering-but-inexplicably-successful Microsoft empire, and includes this snippet of knowledge (my emphasis):

Today’s Zunes claim to uniquely provide wireless sync, but they require being plugged in order to do this! That means Microsoft’s wireless sync has as many wires as Apple’s USB sync, it’s just 20 times slower. That’s not an advantage nor a feature. It’s a marketing lie.

In light of the recent mishap with 25 million records going missing whilst in transit from HMRC to the National Audit Office I thought I’d share my experiences with HMRC – as it stands now and before the two organizations were merged:

• Advice I receive on the same issue varies depending on who you ask
• Promises of follow-up information to underwrite such advice are never fulfilled
• Integration of accounting software and HMRC’s electronic submission service doesn’t always work – but the test submissions do
• It’s not always possible to electronically change such submissions. Instead you have to provide a paper revision
• If some electronic payments are not due I have to write (not email) to the HMRC to tell them

At some point I’ll post some detailed thoughts and opinions of the iPhone, now that I have one, but here’s a few to be getting along with:

1. The iPhone demonstrates so dramatically what’s wrong with user interaction on desktop and laptop computers, and that extends to applications, websites etc.. For the majority of its use, the mouse – a device pioneered by Xerox and then Apple – seems antiquated now that we have touch screens.
2. I wrote before about the dawn of ubiquitous computing. The iPhone really does mark this event, but it does so in ways that I never imagined. What could be more personal than the Personal Computer? Even PDAs and the Apple Newton still feel like computers when compared to the iPhone. I’m not in a position to describe how it makes me feel, or indeed what my relationship will be – but it could be that the iPhone is the first truly personal digital assistant (if I may use such a vulgar term).
3. YouTube is the killer application, because it’s more personable, quicker and easier to use than its web equivalent.

Reading David Pogue’s review of the T-Mobile Shadow made me wonder why the mobile phone industry appears to be so incapable of releasing dismal products. The reasons are plentiful, but here are some obvious ones:

1. Consumers don’t know or care

One of the problems is that consumers don’t know or care what to expect. Take this example: my four year old Motorola phone uses fundamentally the same software as my friend’s new Motorola RAZR phone. The only difference is that the logos are more colourful and animated. The user interface is still dire and the metallic keypad make it difficult to read in strong light. Then there’s Java. On mobile devices this means “write once test everywhere.” Nevertheless, these phones get purchased.

2. Consumers are attracted to shiny objects

Leading on from the above point. Apple knows this as do the majority of mobile phone companies. First impressions count mightily and in the case of phones, it’s what they look like. Never mind if they can’t be used. Most consumers don’t recognise usability anyway – otherwise 90% of the world wouldn’t be using Windows. Snag a customer by a cute or sexy looking piece of kit and the usability doesn’t count. Or rather, it doesn’t count if you can lock the customer into a contract – because that’s where the money is made.

Beyond this impression, it appears that choices are governed by lists of features. This is another admission that phones are generally unusable.

It’s no coincidence that the first set of advertisements for the iPhone actually showed it being used. This was a first for any kind of mobile device. Once you see these advertisements you realise that it’s the obvious way to promote and distinguish such a device.

3. Mobile phone companies don’t value phones

Contract services with expensive ‘get out’ clauses are an admission that the product you sell is rubbish. Mobile phone companies know this: this is why you’ll frequently find that you can get a phone for free, mere months after it was first offered for sale.

The physical object: the phone – beyond its initial shinyness – is without value. There is therefore no incentive to improve it, other than satisfying demand 2 above. Make it more shiny and visually desirable, then stick some crap software on it. Don’t believe this? See GigaOM’s review of the Nokia N81. Ask yourself too why the HTC Touch needs a veneer of extra software to run on top of Windows Mobile 6.

Will the Open Handset Alliance help?

The mere existence of this group admits that the current mobile device experience is poor and that no one company seems capable or inclined to re-visualise what customers need (note: this isn’t what they want). Throwing more companies at the problem won’t resolve this fundamental issue, and as I read elsewhere Google only give things away for free that they don’t sell. The Apache v2 license doesn’t oblige contributors to fold their work back into the code base, so it’s likely that fragmentation will occur.

Then there’s the inevitable conflict between phone makers and the networks. For example, Nokia (not part of the OHA) has its own music service but this doesn’t run on Orange’s network, because they have their own music service. The OHA will allow both device makers and mobile phone networks to pick and choose what runs on which device and which network. So no change there either.

I’d like to think that a project like OpenMoko would work. OpenMoko seems to hark back to the early days of personal computing: hobby projects with dedicated (committed) developers. From what I’ve seen of this however, it’s merely reinventing the wheel in an open source environment. I don’t care whether something is open or closed source so long as it’s remarkable. Nothing I’ve seen in twenty years of mobile phone development comes close to remarkable except one product: the iPhone. Something not developed by a mobile phone company.