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A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Mike Maginnis and Quinn Dunki from the Open Apple podcast, a monthly show about the Apple II. I had a lot of fun sharing some of the stories behind the development of SoundSmith and some of my other Apple II titles. I realize that not many people are interested in vintage computing, but if you are my age and had the pleasure to enjoy the early days of personal computing, you may be interested in listening.

Here is the link to the episode.

You may also be interested in subscribing and listen to older episodes. I particularly enjoyed the ones with Bill Budge (of Raster Blaster fame) and Mike Westerfield (The byte works), but there are many others also worth listening too.

This has been quite an exciting week. Apple has introduced over 4,000 new APIs for both OSX and iOS and most developers have been raving about how the “new” Apple led by Tim Cook has changed. They claim that the company now listens more to their customers and use the fact that iOS will support custom keyboards, allow for the use of the fingerprint reader and offer inter application communication mechanisms as proof that things have changed.

Frankly, I am not convinced that much has fundamentally changed. When Apple launched their Rip, Mix and Burn campaign in 2001, they were clearly listening to what customers wanted at the time. In order to do it properly, they had to plan for their vision, which included buying the application (SoundJam MP) that would eventually become iTunes and add the capability to easily burn CDs, which took some time, but they eventually released the product they wanted.

What happened this week was similar. Apple may have wanted to offer the possibility to install alternative keyboards for a while, but it took some time to deliver the capability in a secure form. What is so dangerous about alternative keyboards? Well, imagine that the keyboard logs all your key strokes and send them to some server in Ukraine. All your passwords, credit cards numbers would be gone. So, what is needed to make sure that supporting alternate keyboards is safe? Well, one way to do that is to avoid using the keyboard to enter credentials or credit card numbers in the first place. That is something that Apple has solved by releasing iCloud keychain in iOS 7 and by opening the use of the fingerprint reader in iOS 8. The other thing to do is to forbid internet access for the keyboard app if the user chooses to do so. That was also announced by Apple as part of iOS 8. It is likely that by the time Apple releases iOS 8, all new iOS devices will include a fingerprint reader and as a result, should be well protected against malicious keyboard apps. As you can see, opening iOS to support alternative keyboards is not something totally new that came out of nowhere, it is the result of careful planning and making sure that everything is in place before launching a new feature.

Swift, the new programming language launched by Apple at WWDC is another interesting example. This new language has been in the works for about four years now. It is a modern language with a lot of new cool features, but I would hardly call it revolutionary. What is interesting about Swift is that, as far as I know, it is the first language designed from the found up to make the use of an existing library much easier. Normally, a language is designed to solve a particular problem that other existing languages cannot handle well (multi-tasking, security, etc.). However, Swift seems to be designed solely for the purpose of giving the Cocoa framework a new lease on life. By basing variable types on Cocoa objects (for example strings are NSStrings) and hiding the complexity of handling structs, Swift makes it much easier to write code for Apple platforms without impacting the huge investment made by Apple and Next on Cocoa over the last 30 years (NextStep was launched in 1989). This makes a lot of sense, because it preserves Apple’s biggest asset while giving us developers what we want. Swift is therefore in that sense evolutionary and not revolutionary. It is the result of a plan launched years ago with the adoption of the llvm compiler, and the launch of Objective-C 2.0, and if Apple is really planning on eventually moving their Macs away from Intel, applications written in Swift will make the transition transparent for application developers.

WWDC 2014 was a great event because it saw the fruition of many initiatives started by Apple years ago, not because Tim Cook just started to listen to their customers and developers but because Apple seems to be accelerating the delivery of features that result from a carefully crafted plan. The success of Apple depends on maintaining a clear long and medium term plan to deliver their vision, as they have done so far, and not on delivering a long list of short-sighted features.

Once again, I won’t be able to attend WWDC. I am very excited though that on Monday we will be able to see what Apple has in store for us for the next few years, because I believe that this event will be more about announcing the foundation of things to come than actual products we will be able to buy in June. 

From a developer perspective, Xcode 6, iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 should include enough new functionality to keep us busy for the next few months. Support for larger iPhones will probably translate into a lot of work to prepare old apps for the official launch of the new devices. Something similar is to be expected for Mac developers who will have to deal with a flatter overall design including updated controls. I certainly hope that the changes are more than skin deep, because while appearance is important and having a uniform look and feel across Apple devices can make the user’s life much easier, when I use my Mac, it is all about what I can do with it, great looks come second.

What I would like to see announced at WWDC are improvements around iCloud, namely lower pricing and APIs for Windows, Linux and Android. Writing a cross-platform app that syncs data among devices is not very difficult, there are many scalable document based data stores than can handle this task (Cloudant comes to mind). The problem is persuading customers to pay for the service. Apple on the other hand can do that much more effectively because they already have a large customer base that use the free service or pay for iCloud once a year and get a lot of value by using the service with not one but multiple apps. The value proposition is much better. Sure, there are competing services, like Dropbox, but I like the Apple option better because I can easily assume that all Apple customers have an account.

On the hardware front, I do not have many expectations. Apple has been unable to keep hardware leaks from happening in China in the past and right now we haven’t seen enough credible information to believe a product launch is imminent. If there are any announcements it will be like last year’s MacPro, a simple preview with a launch date, to generate pent-up demand.

I have no doubt that WWDC 2014 will all be about announcing the infrastructure for things to come, namely new services that will be available only to customers with modern hardware (fingerprint reader and the M7 processor as well as future devices) which will generate a need to upgrade old devices and leave the competition in the dust for a while. Apple has had several years to build the infrastructure and plan for this moment. On Monday we will finally understand what Apple has been working on. We may not understand the full reach of these announcements until Apple launches their new devices in the fall, but it will be an exciting event. I will be spending a lot of time on the treadmill next week, watching the WWDC session videos on my Apple TV.

Earlier today I laid out my expectations for tomorrow’s Apple Event. That said, the prediction game is extremely entertaining and I do not want to miss a great opportunity to play it. So, here we go, these are my predictions:

• iPhone: As part of the introduction, Apple CEO Tim Cook will try to clarify that the iPhone 5S/5C has been a success and will provide some data to assure everyone that the iPhone 5C is not a failure. There will also be some talk about the quick adoption of iOS 7 and how this compares to the Android world. Apple will announce the availability dates for the new iPhones in additional countries.
• iPad: For the first time Apple will try to clearly differentiate the iPad mini from the iPad. The iPad will be promoted as a tool for content creators, and that claim will be backed by a powerful processor, the A7, and a smart cover that will include a keyboard. In addition, the iPad will include the same fingerprint reader built in the iPhone 5S for additional security (no multiple accounts for now). That is also why the new iLife and iWork applications will be showed off on the large screen iPad. The iPad mini will be pitched as a tool for content consumption with a Retina Display to enjoy movies, books, magazines and games. Apple will showcase the mini with third party game controllers made for iOS and games updated for iOS 7 that support the new APIs. The new iPads will not be available in multiple colors.
• iPods: This is no longer a strategic product category for Apple, and as a result I do not expect major changes to their 2013 lineup. That said, I believe that the iPod touch will be updated with an M7 chip, to prepare for the iWatch launch in the first half of 2014 (for more on this read my previous blog entry on this subject).
• Mac Pro: This is the ultimate machine for video professionals. As a result, Apple will use it to demonstrate new versions of their Pro software tools in addition to OS X Mavericks (which will be launched over the next two weeks). The demo will run on multiple screens, which means updated Thunderbolt Displays that will include two Thunderbolt 2 ports. There is a good chance those displays will support 4K (although there may be two versions of these displays, one with regular resolution, the other with 4K). The Mac Pro will be a very expensive computer, with a low entry point below US$3,000 but with customization options that will bring that price easily around or above 10K. In order to sweeten the deal for their target audience (and to fight agains Adobe and Avid) Apple will offer bundles that include single user licences of their Pro software, preinstalled. An upgraded Mac mini will be quickly mentioned with 802.11ac, an updated Haswell processor and maybe (this is a long shot) Thunderbolt 2.
• Mac Books: Apple will release updated Mac Books (including the Pro models) with 802.11ac and Haswell processors. The main selling point will be a significantly longer battery life. Retina screens may come to all models (this is also a long shot).
• Apple TV/iWatch: There will be no new product announcements this year, but we may see a price drop on the current Apple TV in order to better compete during the holiday shopping season. We will have to wait for another three to six months.

And that is it. There will not be a new product category this year, but it will still leave Apple with a solid product lineup for Christmas that should allow them to have a successful quarter.

What do you think?

Update: I was definitively wrong about iPad differentiation. Choosing an iPad is harder than ever. Apple covered all the price points but did not explain why people should choose one model over another depending on their needs. I think this is a mistake, most people need to be guided and confusion can be a sales inhibitor. The iPod touch wasn’t updated either.

Next Tuesday Apple will unveil a lot of goodies. It is widely expected that the Cupertino based company will unveil new iPads (probably with some new cover), updated MacBook Pros and a totally overhauled Mac Pro, as well as many software updates to both its consumer and professional software offerings. That should be more than enough to justify a lot of excitement among the Apple faithful.

That said, there are still many unanswered questions. Take me for example, I am looking to replace my first generation unibody iMac and would also want to buy a second monitor that I could use both as a second screen for the new computer and as the main screen for my Mac Book Pro when I need to do some work at home. The issue I have right now is that the 27” iMac does not align with the 27” Apple Thunderbolt Monitor. This is a big mistake that is preventing many iMac owners from buying a second monitor. Apple has to know about this issue, since there are complaints on its forums, and will most probably fix it at some point, hopefully on Tuesday.

Right now there is little chat about an update to the Apple Thunderbolt Display, but there are reasons to hope for an updated model. The first reason is that with the release a new Mac Pro with Thunderbolt 2, Apple needs to either update their Displays to support it or release some kind of Thunderbolt 2 dock. My money is on the first option. The second reason is that the current design of the Thunderbolt Display is reminiscent of the previous generation iMacs and that a slimmer design is long overdue. If Apple updates their monitors and they align nicely with the new iMacs, my problem is solved.

On the other hand, if Apple upgrades the Thunderbolt Display but does not fix the alignment issue, the solution is to buy two monitors and a Mac mini (or a Mac Pro, but that will likely fall out of my budget range). That is more slightly more expensive and I will get less bang for my bucks, unless the Mac mini is also updated on Tuesday (hopefully with Thunderbolt 2, a new Haswell processor and 802.11ac wireless networking, which would be nice. This is a possibility, but we don’t know for sure if this will happen, since no rumors point in that direction (although it would be logical to expect an update to the mini at this point).

Of course, there are other possibilities. Apple could choose to release new (expensive) 4K monitors for the Mac Pro and not update their current products. That would be great for pros, but would leave me wondering if I should invest my money in products that haven’t been updated in quite a while.

The fact is that even though we already know many details of what will be announced on Tuesday, for Mac users there still are many unanswered questions that will keep us excited. We may well be riding a truck in a car age, but what can I say, I still love my truck.

Update: It seems that i was overly optimistic. No new Mac mini and no new monitors. Who knows, there may be new monitors in store when Apple releases the Mac Pro in December. I will wait patiently…

This year, for a third year in a row, I unfortunately won’t be able to attend WWDC. I certainly hope to be back next year though, as I really miss the excitement and the creative energy that you can feel during the week long event. When you are used to attend large customer events organized by corporations like Oracle, IBM or MS, a smaller event like WWDC, filled with passionate developers from all over the world, is a breeze of fresh air.

As a developer, I have a limited set of requests for Apple. First on the list is fixing iCloud. I have no doubts they fill finally get their act together and solve the issue. Second, I would love them to release a new charting API, both for OS X and iOS. Having a standard API everyone could use would certainly be great news for developers. Drawing charts is not difficult, but starting from scratch every time an app requires a nice looking chart is really a pain. Finally, I would like to have an improved JavaScript-Objective-C bridge that would make it simpler to script Cocoa apps, without having to use a WebView. The state of the union keynote tomorrow afternoon should give us a good idea of what Apple is planning for the future and it is in many ways much more interesting than what will be discussed during the morning address. I am really looking forward returning from work and listen to it while working out on the treadmill.

As a user, I have much higher expectations, though and I can imagine that this will be the case for most of the people who will listen to the keynote tomorrow. There will most likely be some hardware announcements, but given the fact that there have been no serious leaks from Apple’s supply chain, I wouldn’t set my expectations too high.That means no new iPhones, iPads or even iWatch tomorrow. There may be some upgrades to the laptop models, with faster wireless networking and new CPUs, but nothing really ground breaking. The lack of news seem to indicate that the announcements will come primarily from work performed at Apple’s HC in Cupertino, under a shadow of secrecy. That means new system software (we already know about iOS 7 and OS X 10.9) and new services (iRadio, which has now be rumored for months). While I do believe that much time will be devoted to iOS 7 (and a little less to OS X), I think most of the surprises will come from the services side. Apple has spent billions over the last few years on their data centers and we still don’t know exactly what they plan to do with them. While they serve billions of apps, movies, songs, notifications and iMessages every day, in addition to syncing devices and provide remote backups, there is a perception in the industry that the cloud services capacity they have been building is well above what they are delivering right now. As a result, I expect Apple to emerge tomorrow as a new Cloud powerhouse. What does that mean? Well, I am not sure, but I am convinced that they will announce an expanded and improved set of services as well as outline a vision for the future that will be both compelling and credible. Allow users to edit iWork documents in their browsers and offer improved collaboration options? Maybe. Share video on-line? Most probably. Improve syncing? Absolutely. A completely new service? I think we should count on it.

Tomorrow will be an important day for Apple. These announcements should allow them to further differentiate from the competition, making hardware even less important than it is today, while putting emphasis on the ecosystem. Users may be slightly disappointed in the short term, as many of the announcements will not be available immediately, but will benefit immensely as soon as the new OSes are released, in the Fall.

Last Friday I flew from Mexico City to Madrid to spend the New Year Celebration with my parents. I had loaded my iPad with plenty of games and videos to keep me busy during the 10 hours flight. Unfortunately, the plane couldn’t land at Barajas airport because of bad weather and we were rerouted to Valencia. Therefore, with no power left on my iPad, I had to switch devices and start using my iPhone to keep me entertained until we finally made it to Madrid, four hours late. It was a great opportunity to play Karateka, a great game that I first enjoyed on my Apple II as a teenager. The landing was rough and everything I had laying on the seat next to mine fell to the floor. I picked up my iPad as well as my headphones, but failed to realize that my iPhone had also fallen to the floor.

I left the plane, and moved to immigration. When I was searching for my passport, I realized I had left my iPhone on the plane. Since I wasn’t allowed to get back to the plane, I immediately moved to the Aeromexico counter. I explained the situation and they notified the airplane crew. After a few minutes they told me that they hadn’t found the phone, but that the cleaning crew would return it to me if they found it. As soon as I got home, I used Find my iPhone to lock it remotely and get a notification as soon as it was found.

The next day, Aeromexico informed me that the phone had not been found and that the plane had returned to Mexico.

The phone was in airplane mode when I lost it, which meant Find my iPhone would not work until that mode was switched off and after a day, the phone had likely run out of power. I kept checking Find my iPhone twice a day, but the phone kept appearing as turned off. My hopes of recovering my iPhone were quickly fading.

On Tuesday, four days after losing my phone, I was working on my MacBook Pro, while watching a movie on my iPad mini. Suddently, the following alert appeared on both devices.

As you can see, Messages was asking me if I wanted to add a new phone number to my iChat identity. I had the phone number of the person who had found my phone! Not only did I have his phone number, I had his full name (probably obtained from the SIM he inserted). I immediately used Find my iPhone on my iPad to try to obtain the location of this person, but the phone had already been turned off. I tried to call him, but nobody answered the phone.

At that point, I didn’t know if the person who was in possession of my iPhone was a passenger, a member of the crew or an employee of some company in charge of cleaning the plane, but I decided to go back to the airport and present the information I had collected. From there on, the events unfolded very quickly. The Aeromexico person that listened to my story knew the person who had my phone. He was a contractor working for the cleaning company. The manager said he would take care. The next day, they sent me my iPhone home. The only thing missing was my micro-SIM, which I assume was thrown away. I am very pleased with the way Aeromexico handled the situation.

I think this is an interesting story because I was able to recover my phone without using Find my iPhone. I fact, I never got an e-mail notification that my iPhone had been located from the iCloud service, nor was my phone locked remotely, probably because the person who “recovered” my phone removed its SIM. However, Messages notified me as soon as a new SIM was inserted. In this case, Messages clearly saved the day.

Although the markets haven’t closed yet, Right now Apple’s market cap stands at 156.9 billion, 400 million more than IBM’s. This is simply remarkable. After years of being the underdog, the Cupertino based company has left most of its current and past competitors in the dust. Dell, HP and now IBM have all been unable to keep up with the explosive growth of Apple since Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

If someone had told me back in the 90s, when converting someone to the Mac was nearly impossible, that Apple would be able to stage such a comeback, I simply wouldn’t have believed it. Even I who have been a loyal Apple customer since the early 80’s came extremely close to throwing the towel in the late nineties. Then came Steve Jobs, the iMac and the iPod and the rest is history. I am really happy to see a company that has always believed in innovation succeed in the market. Jason Calacanis summed it up very well in a recent TWIT episode saying that if you want to be rich you look up to Bill Gates, if you want to be great you look up to Steve Jobs.

However, market valuations do not always reflect the true health of a company. Apple’s revenue depends on the sales of a very small set of products and therefore is extremely vulnerable to sudden market changes. Companies like IBM which offer a wide selection of software, services and hardware can better adapt, and that is why they have been able to survive for so many decades. For Apple to continue growing they need to offer a wider range of products. They know it and that is why they are investing in a new datacenter in NC and why they will probably launch pretty soon their rumored tablet computer. When Steve Jobs said “See you soon” at the recent iPod media event, he probably meant it.

On Sunday I will fly to San Francisco to attend WWDC. This will be my fourth WWDC in a row. From what I see, most of the sessions will be a rehash of what we saw last year. That isn’t too bad as it will allow me to focus on what is new in Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0 and spend more time at the labs.

People seem to have very high expectations from this WWDC, which isn’t unusual. Most expect new handsets and a hopeful handful still expect the mythical Apple Tablet to be finally announced. I am not that interested by new hardware. New handsets will come at some time, that we know, and since we know that they will be running iPhone OS 3.0, which is already available for current devices, I really don’t care if they are announced at the show or two months from now. As for the tablet, my guess is that we will have to keep waiting.

However, most people seem to be much less interested by Snow Leopard. That is probably a mistake. Apple has deliberately set low expectations for this release and is probably set to over deliver in several areas, even though nothing has been announced. Regarding the new features that we know about, like Grand Central and OpenCL, we have no exact idea what kind of impact they will represent in terms of performance gains. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Like last year, I will keep my finger crossed for Windows and iPhone versions of iChat which would make the Mac version more useful.

On the iPhone front, I have high expectations for significant third party hardware device announcements that can be controlled from the phone. Building a strong ecosystem around the iPhone is key to its long term success and Apple has been very clever to open the development of non-trivial hardware extensions to third parties. It would be nice to see Arduino work with Apple to allow hardware geeks easily create new hardware gadgets for the iPhone. That would open a new market for the phone in universities all over the world.

You may have noticed that I have been quiet for the last few months. I was busy working on a new Mac application. As you may have guessed, I don’t have a lot of time to work on personal projects. My job at IBM from Monday to Friday, with extremely long working hours, and my family to which I devote week-ends take most of my time. As a result, I have to be smart and use any spare time wisely. Working on multiple projects is definitively not an option.

The application I have just released, CityListBuilder for iMovie ’09, is quite simple. It is designed to help non-technical Mac users to add support for additional cities to the new animated travel map feature. This can be done by hand quite easily by just editing the contents of a flat file, but I thought that Mac users deserved a better solution.

From a technical perspective though, writing this app was a very interesting exercise. It gave me the opportunity to work with REST services (to interface with the Google Maps geocoding service), WebKit and the authorization services. I think that the strategy of releasing relatively quickly small apps that allow me to learn new technologies is quite effective. I have already started to look for new ideas for my next project. One candidate project involves using Bonjour and Quartz Composer, two technologies I have never used so far and that I believe are quite interesting. It would also allow me to work on an iPhone client which is quite exciting. I will let you know more once I actually start coding.