A couple of days ago it was FairUse4WM, now it isQTFairUse6. The fact is that current DRM schemes are fundamentally flawed. Until we move to a system where the user and the content provider exchange encryption keys (asymmentric encryption), this will keep happening over and over again. Apple may be able to protect the content they sell on iTunes slightly better because unlike Microsoft (for now) they control the iPod hardware and can therefore easily update the firmware to change the encryption method once compromised, but that will only buy them some time before it happens again.

This spells deep trouble for the iTunes music store, but even more for all the music subscription services such as Napster. Today for a very small monthly fee you can sign-up for the service and download everything you want. Once you have all the content you need you can use FairUse4WM to strip the DRM protection and move the songs to your iPod. Imagine, millions of songs for free, as there even is a free seven days trial period.

So, what happens now? It is clear that neither DRM or the threat of the DMCA is stopping hackers to get what they want. It is very unlikely that it the near future every citizen in the world will have its own unique private key, issued by the government or a trusted organization. I guess that this leaves us only with two options, trust the consumers (unlikely) or prosecute harshly all those who illegally share music or videos (very likely), but this applies only in countries where the police are capable of doing so and actually care (which excludes more than half of the globe).

At the end, those who will suffer more are recording companies and artists. Gone are the days when a single hit could make you a millionaire and generate revenues for life. Artists will still make a lot of money but they will have to work harder to earn it. They will have to perform live and tour the world. Obviously, for those who just have a single hit it will be harder, they will probably have to tour with others, but hey, life is tough for all of us. After all, what shows like American Idol have demonstrated is that there isn’t a lack of talent. In every industry, when that happens, salaries go down. Why not in the recording industry?

Today many industries such as the radio, television, press, books and movies are all in jeopardy because of the Internet. Among those, music is the most likely to survive, because many people are willing to sing and compose songs for free, just or the fun of doing it, even though production quality will suffer. I care much more about some of the other industries affected by the Internet, and I think that so should everyone.

Ten years ago, I had just joined Informix and represented the company at a customer event. I had been hired because of my web experience, and although I had decent SQL experience, I had never worked in highly complex environments. So, when a customer asked if he required a product like Tuxedo to manage his transactions I looked to him straight in the eyes and said, Absolutely not! That will just add to your project complexity. The product I am presenting will handle this automatically.

Why could I say that, well because at the time I believed it. Technically the product could manage distributed transactions, but only if all the involved databases were Informix databases. The truth is that I had some doubts and checked the facts as soon as I went back to the office. I never repeated the mistake.

Why do I write about this today? Day after day I hear people claim facts that are just not true. Sometimes it may be a honest mistake, hey it happened to me, so why can’t it happen to others. But, having worked many years with salespersons, I really suspect that more often than not, people are just repeating buggy marketing messages without checking the facts, because they simply don’t know, don’t care or even worse, doesn’t serve their personal goals.

I am not really concerned about the lies most salespersons tell, I tend to think that it is part of their job description. I am really more interested in the professionals who highly recommend technologies without knowing or checking the facts. Fifteen years ago you could find developers saying that you didn’t need a relational database, since FoxPro was more than enough for all your enterprise needs. Today, it seems that many of these same people have adopted mySQL and are criticizing those who use products such as DB2 or Oracle without realizing that there are significant differences in availability, scalability and administration features. The same happens with PHP or Ruby developers who talk down Java. I can understand that not all projects require high-end products (which sometimes means expensive) but I cannot accept that people who do not understand in depth both technologies try to demonstrate the supremacy of the one they are familiar with.

This post was triggered by an episode of Podcast.net in which someone was basically saying that Java was obsolete and that everyone should now move to PHP because it is much simpler than Java. This is simply ridiculous. PHP cannot solve many of the problems that we face daily at IBM, like developing embedded applications for cell phones or PDAs. PHP is not a competitive EAI solution, nor does it allow to create client/server applications. That does not mean PHP is useless. I can see some developers choosing PHP over Java to create Web applications or to develop the front-end to an enterprise application, but that’s it.

There is a say in Mexico that says that if you repeat a lye a thousand times, it becomes the truth. This may be true, but it doesn’t help. As a technical person I want to use the best tools for each situation. I do not want ignorant people to drive the technology. The web has made it easier for everyone to publish their opinions. The problem is that the majority is not always right.

Even with Apple, a company I really do like a lot, because of their ability to simplify complex tasks, there are many times where they clearly over-hype a technology and end-users echo the message without checking the facts. Take for example the remote control that comes with most new Macs. Sure, it is simpler than the ones that come with Windows Media Center, but for now, you cannot really compare the functionality that both products provide. The same applies to iWeb, which is a simple application for beginners but does not meet the need of professional web designers or programmers.

We all want to have simple solutions to complex problems. However, sometimes, complex problems call for complex solutions, like it or not. Therefore, we may have to occasionally take the long, hard road. In some cases, we may find an easy solution to a complex problem, but this is not usual. If a company offers something that looks much better than everyone else is offering, make sure there are no drawbacks. Listen to the competitors. They may know something you don’t.

You can finally download the latest episode of IT Insight from iTunes. Even with my new Mac Book Pro, it still took me a lot of time to produce it. In this episode I discuss the challenges to develop a powerful web based presentation layer to an SOA based Entrerprise Application and some of the technologies that can help such as XForms or AJAX. Hope you all enjoy it.

I am back in the U.S.A. just a couple of days after returning from my trip to California. This time I had to travel to North Carolina to attend an IBM Technical Sales Managers meeting. The conference has been very informative so far, as I could learn from the wisdom of people who have spent much more time than I in this position. We even had some time to have fun at a place where we could race go-carts and play mini-golf.

However, the party was over at 10PM and it gave me some time to publish a new episode of IT Insight (Spanish). I will probably record the podcast tomorrow evening, so check iTunes on Thursday and you should get the new episode. Please send me your feedback.

After returning from WWDC I have started working on a new episode of IT Insight. I hope to record it next week in Durnham, NC while attending an IBM manager meeting. It will cover the different options available for developers and graphic designers who need to develop the presentation layer of a SOA application.

Attending WWDC gave me enough positive energy to start working harder on my current Cocoa project (Professional Crossword Designer), which allows to create all kind of different word puzzles. I have published current pictures of the application that show its current state. You can see them here.

I have just updated to my .Mac account some pictures that I took during WWDC two weeks ago. Enjoy! You can see them here.

Tonight Apple invited all the WWDC attendees to their headquarters in Cupertino. We had dinner in the central garden while listening to electronic music played by a quite decent DJ. During the event, many Apple engineers were available to answer any questions we may still have. The truth is that the answers I got from Apple engineers during the labs as well as during this party totally justified my trip to San Francisco. I may have to start saving for next year’s event. I hope to see you there!

As I wrote in a previous post, every time Apple updates its OS, it includes two kind of changes. A new OS (with new low level functionality which is mainly interesting for developers) and new utilities for the general Macintosh users. Inevitably it seems that for each new OS release there is some controversy around these new utilities.

Why does Apple add these utilities? Well, that is easy, to convince end-users to move to the new version of the OS. Without these utilities, upgrade cycles would be much longer and that is bad both for Apple and third-party developers alike who need to support their apps on multiple OS versions which is costly and slows the adoption of new technologies available only on the most recent releases of the OS.

Should third-party developers be afraid of Apple (or Microsoft for that matter)? Sure. Everyone must be concerned by competition from the big guys. But that shouldn’t be such a big concern either. It is just a matter of carefully choosing what you are going to develop.

Suppose that now that Apple has unveiled Core Animation you decide to use it to create a 2D animation product. Well, that doesn’t seem like a good idea. Since most f the value is provided by the API, it is easy for any company to create something similar to your application. On the other hand if you plan to create a different kind of application that uses Core Animation o more easily display the information to the user, you should feel safe. Basically what I recommend is not to stay in the middle of a freeway for a truck to hit you.

Very long ago, the first releases of GS/OS did not support “dead keys”. Therefore, if you had an American keyboard it was very difficult to write letters in French since you had no access to accentuated vowels (you had to switch the keyboard layout to AZERTY). Since I could not wait for Apple to solve this problem, I wrote a NDA (New Desk Accessory) that did the trick. In this case I did not sell the product, instead published it on a couple of BBS and gave it away for free. Unsurprisingly, Apple later updated the OS and fixed the issue. My NDA was useless. Was I mad? No. Was I surprised? No.

It is not my intention to defend Apple on every issue, but we must remain calm. Many of us would love Apple to include some type of limited (or full-fledge) image editing software with the OS. Why? Because Apple normally produces great software. Sure, there are third-party options, but I would like to get one from Apple. Would this be bad for Adobe or others? Probably. However, as a consumer I do not care. I want the best software for my Mac. If Apple releases a product that is not good enough for my needs, such as iWeb, well I will not use it and buy from someone else. It is called competition.

So, the messages for developers are clear. If you want to compete for a large market, you need to invest a lot in differentiating yourself and create a high quality product. This is not the case for niche markets.

It turns out that there is a new exciting API in Leopard that we can talk about without infringing the NDA. It is called the Core Text API and as its name implies is used to display text. From what I saw at todays session, adding support for multiple columns in any text editor or placing text in irregular shapes is now fairly trivial. Unlike Core Animation, most applications should benefit from Core Text and it shows that Apple is not forgetting traditional developers who focus on “normal” tasks. Of course Apple should be one of the prime beneficiaries of this new API since it opens a large array of new possibilities for both Pages and Keynote 08.

It is amazing to see how Apple is advancing on all fronts. Leopard is really going to be Vista 2.0.