The eBook is dying. I'm the only person on earth who blames the DRM.

My main workaround for eBook misery has been to buy from Google Play, strip the Adobe DRM, and store the ePub (really should be written EPUB but nobody does that) files in folders in Google Drive.

I do this because Apple is incompetent and, among other things, can’t produce a workable iOS eBook reader (Wait, audiobooks are now worse). A set of folders and descriptive file names is the most scalable solution we can manage across iOS and OS X. Yeah, I could leave Apple — if I cut off my right arm. Apple and Google live and breathe customer lock-in, and i’m well locked.

Since iOS 9 and some Google Drive update this no longer works. It still works for dropbox, so this is probably Google’s fault.

Nonetheless, it makes eBooks suck even more. 

Which brings me to those recent articles pointing out that people now buy paper books, not eBooks. I’ve read explanations ranging from mystical beauties of paper to the high cost of digital books. Nobody mentions the DRM (FairPlay, Adobe, etc) and the data lock, including proprietary file formats, that block development of decent cross-platform eBook solutions.

I feel like a raving loon. Or like the sighted man in the country of the blind ranting about the approaching lava flow.

Damnit Jim, it’s the DRM. 

How data lock destroys the customer experience - Apple edition.

But for FairPlay, I would not use iOS 9 audiobooks. I wouldn’t swear every time it loses its place. I wouldn’t be pissed at Apple.

But for proprietary data formats I would not use Apple Aperture. I wouldn’t be pissed at Apple.

And so on.

Fixing the iPad: Family share and iBooks

It’s a geek consensus - the iPad is on its last legs. Mostly this is because it’s nuts to have both a single-user iPhone 6 and a single-user iPad. You gotta be both top 2% for assets and have time to burn. Everyone else will do with either an iPhone 6 or 6+ (or Android equivalents).

There are obvious future fixes. One is for Apple to sell an iPhoneMini, based on tech developed for the failing aWatch [1], and a complementary iPad. That complementary iPad would work standalone, but it would also seamlessly switch between iCloud/iPhone user profiles — so a family of four iPhones might start with one iPad but move up to three (see also). [2]

There’s something else that’s gotten lost though — and I want to call this out. eBook adoption has stalled. That includes eTexbook adoption — my daughter’s school backpack is still 25 lbs. The iPad has dramatically failed to delivery on reading device expectations.

That’s big — because reading is what the iPad does best. Chromebooks have clobbered iPads in the classroom because, without the reading advantage, Chromebooks win on cost, durability, ease of management, lack of theft appeal, and suitability to traditional educational models. Video? Easier to watch up close on a lighter phablet, or rest your arms and use an AppleTV.

So it’s not enough to fix the iPad’s standalone single-user device model. Apple has to make the iPad a first class reading device. Google owns the K12 market now, but there’s still an opening in the post-secondary textbook market. More importantly, there’s the global market for books and magazines.

For that market, Apple needs to rethink its DRM approach. Sure, keep FairPlay proprietary for video — but use something else for books. Something that’s owned by an independent standards body and licenses for free along with a cross-platform authoring tool. Or, more radically, start paying authors up front for non-exclusive book distribution and then publish without DRM.

Be creative Apple. The iPad is too good an idea to die quietly.

[1] There’s an emerging consensus that aWatch 1.0 has failed. I expected it to fail in the US, but we need to see what happens in China. There’s a lot of room for improvement beyond 1.0 though: "A waterproof $150 iOS 8 Nano-clip replacement in Sept 2015 will be interesting. Splitting the cellular phone into multiple components, for which iPad and Apple Watch are interaction elements will be interesting. Standalone Apple Watch 4 running on next-generation LTE will be interesting.”

[2] Apple’s FairPlay Family Sharing, iCloud enhancements, and iOS 8 handoff do point in this direction.

Who killed American broadcast TV time-shifting -- and how did they do it?

I’ve been gnawing on this story for a year or two, figuring that sooner or later a real journalist would solve the mystery for me. That hasn’t happened, or perhaps Google’s increasingly lousy search results [1] just can’t find the article.

So it’s time for me to try to solve the mystery. Who killed broadcast (over-the-air, OTA) TV time-shifting in America?

Yes, there was a murder. Americans used to easily time shift broadcast television. From 1975 to through the 1990s we use VCRs (a marvelously complex device). In 1999 ReplayTV and TiVo introduced products that could digitize analog television and store data on an internal hard drive; early versions would even automatically delete commercials, which produced some tension. During the early 00s we saw many simple devices for digitizing analog signals, typically sold for under $100. 

During this golden age of OTA time-shifting there was some serious tension— especially when ReplayTV auto-zapped commercials (and was litigated to death). A series of court cases walked a fine balance between consumer and corporate interprets. Then, around 2007, it all went to heck, and low cost time-shifting was doomed. 

So what happened to change things in 2007?

The precipitating event was digital TV — after long delays it was coming to the US. Not just coming, but coming in high definition with an unencrypted signal that would be trivially easy to capture as binary MPEG — much easier than digitizing an analog signal or building a VCR. It costs only a few dollars to add recording to a digital TV (storage extra) [5], and a tuner and encoding device could profitable be sold for under $50 (storage extra). There was no easy way to prevent capture and HD res redistribution of an NFL game or a broadcast movie. This was disruption on a colossal scale, the same kind of disruption that transiently [2] broke the music business.

In this case impending doom focused minds - and, in America, the threat was crushed. As of May 2014 there’s exactly one company offering a quality OTA HDTV recorder, TiVo, and their current entry level product costs $700 [6]. Worse when TiVo goes out of business today’s devices will stop working (older devices will still work).

This surprises a lot of people who bought OTA DVR devices between 2007 and 2012. They think products like Elgato’s EyeTV are still sold. Well, they are, just not in the US:

Elgato does still sell products that stream to iPads; just not to a television — and they’re not the only ones. It’s the same story with devices like Simple.TV and Tablo. They may stream to an iPad or Android tablet [3], but direct connections to a TV are off-limits. There’s no HDMI out;  Tablo’s excuse for the missing HDMI is amusingly coy. I assume there’s something about omitting a direct connection to a television that dodges the TiVo patent and “TiVo tax”. The only subscription-free devices I could find with HDMI out were the expensive and poorly reviewed Channel Master DVR+ (lousy tuner, and I suspect soon to sued into the ground) — and a rapidly iterating array of very low quality pure-China patent-dodging devices (sue them and they come back under a different name).

So murder was done, but we still don’t know who - and how. We know of at least 3 suspects with abundant motivation and shady records: Comcast/NBC, Viacom/CBS, and DIsney/ABC. All three had motivation, and the means of the US patent and legal systems….

Digital video recorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On July 14, 2005, Forgent Networks filed suit[31] against various companies alleging infringement on U.S. Patent 6,285,746 [teleconferencing!], entitled “Computer controlled video system allowing playback during recording”. The listed companies included EchoStar, DirecTV, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Comcast, Time Warner, and Cable One.

… Motorola requested that the United States Patent and Trademarks Office reexamine the patent, which was first filed in 1991, but has been amended several times.[32]

On March 23, 2007 Cablevision Systems Corp lost a legal battle against several Hollywood studios and television networks to introduce a network-based digital video recorder service to its subscribers.[33] However, on August 4, 2008, Cablevision won its appeal. John M. Walker Jr., a Second Circuit judge, declared that the technology "would not directly infringe" on the media companies' rights.[34] An appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected.

In court, the media companies argued that network digital video recorders were tantamount to video-on-demand, and that they should receive license fees for the recording. Cablevision and the appeals court disagreed. The company noted that each user would record programs on his or her own individual server space, making it a DVR that has a "very long cord."[34]

In 2004, TiVo sued EchoStar Corp, a manufacturer of DVR units, for patent infringement. The parties reached a settlement in 2011 wherein EchoStar pays a one-time fee (in 3 structured payments) that grants Echostar full rights for life to the disputed TiVo patents upon first payment(as opposed to indefinite and escalating license fees to be constantly renegotiated), and Echostar granted TiVo full rights for life to certain Echostar patents and dropped their counter-suit against TiVo.

In January 2012, AT&T settled a similar suit brought by TiVo claiming patent infringement (just as with Echostar) in exchange for cash payments to TiVo totaling $215 million through June 2018 plus “incremental recurring per subscriber monthly license fees” to TiVo through July 2018, but grants no full lifetime rights as per the Echostar settlement.

In May 2012, Fox Broadcasting sued Dish Network. Fox argued Dish's settop box with DVR function, which allowed the users to automatically record primetime programs and skip commercials, was copyright infringement and breach of contract. In July 2013, the 9th circuit rejected Fox's claims.

No, I can’t tell who won either — Wikipedia links out in a bewildering array of suits like including…

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.
Sega v. Accolade
Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.
CoStar v. LoopNet
Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network, LLC 

My best guess is that the our “murder” suspects came to a mutual agreement with TiVo and other patent holders to build a solid patent wall - augmented by DMCA’s ability to block bypass solutions [8]. That patent collection and a limitless legal defense fund ensured the end of low cost OTA digital TV recording in the United States. The HD digital apocalypse was averted; at $700+ a device TiVo is no threat — it’s just a patent holder and patent licensor whose primary value is keeping a lid on OTA recording…

• TiVo Settles Patent Suits with Cisco, Google and Time Warner Cable | Variety … “The payments from Google and Cisco bring the total from awards and settlements related to the use of TiVo’s patents to roughly $1.6 billion, including previous deals with Dish Network, AT&T and Verizon, according to TiVo…TiVo entered into cross-licensing agreements with Google and Cisco and agreed to grant Arris Group (which acquired the Motorola set-top unit from Google) a limited license to four patents…

We have a body, motive and means — but only circumstantial evidence. With a bit of digging we could build a real case, but there’s a minor detail I’ve left out of the story.

The minor detail is that nobody cares - the victim was a homeless bum. Americans who don’t pay for Cable TV are either poor non-voters or relatively wealthy skinflint whackos - like us. Of the whacko cord-cutting skinflint contingent, only a small portion really want to do time-shifting. If not for our #1 son’s sports love we wouldn’t even bother with a TV antenna (the other kids watch iTunes rental movies once a week or so, I don’t watch TV at all).

So we’re talking a niche of a niche. Meanwhile there’s enormous economic pressure to turn broadcast spectrum into IP traffic - and end broadcast TV altogether. Sooner or later the market will find a way to do that; today’s DVR murder will be just a minor foreshadowing of the end of broadcast TV.

Still, it’s a fascinating story — to me at least. I love figuring out how “the system” solved the HD TV apocalypse - even if the results frustrated my family. Honestly it makes me feel better about global warming — complex adaptive systems can be extremely inventive.

In the meantime there’s a bit more story to play out. The combination of a Roku 1 ($50, HDMI) and Tablo TV ($210, no-HDMI) [7] will be interesting to watch — not least for the expected blizzard of lawsuits. Chinese manufacturers may improve the quality of their false-flag patent-dodging devices. MythTV might revive (announcements stopped 9 months ago), or maybe small businesses will sell Raspberry Pi solutions. Perhaps niche manufacturers will split the “smart” TV; a standalone digital tuner with HDMI output to receiver and downstream display and sound would make it much easier to hack a DVR into the mix …

See also

• Toshiba - Digital Media Server (DVD Player/TiVo DVR Combo) - SD-H400 3/2004. In the pre-HDTV era we had a lot of choices.
• Tivo Lays Off Most of Its Design Team as It Transitions to the Cloud | Gadget Lab | WIRED
• Gordon’s Tech: ViewTV At-163 OTA Digital TV recorder - my review a patent-dodger from China, alas it sucked 5/2014
• Gordon’s Tech: How to clean up the Samsung Smart TV you shouldn’t have bought 12/2013 - in most of the world you can record HD OTA TV to a USB device attached to this TV.
• Gordon’s Notes: After the Smart TV debacle: what we really want 1/2014
• Watch and record live TV on your Raspberry Pi: | News | TechRadar 5/2013

- fn -

[1] Another story that’s not been told. Is it just me, or is Google search really going South? If so, why?

[2] And therein is a lesson about managing disruption. Sure, the music business was on the rocks — but then file sharing services were slowly beaten into the ground. At the same time CDs started to disappear, as first digital downloads and then streaming took over. With CDs gone and file sharing essentially crushed, revenues are set to return. Streaming prices will rise, DRM may return to downloads, and the disruption will be history.

[3] Walmart now sells a 7” tablet for $70.

[4] $300 on Amazon for a device that should cost a fraction of that price. I assume much of that is patent fees.

[5] Our Samsung Smart TV ships with a USB connector for external storage and a remote with a record button - both disabled in the US.

[6] Yes, $700, as below. Of course it’s usually sold with a mandatory subscription, so this cost is paid out over a few years. The initial retail price is only a downpayment. One teardown estimates the TIVo Roamio costs $170 to make, but of course most of us would be happy with a less deluxe advice. We don’t know how much money TiVo pays for patents or to run their listing service.

[7] Canadian, which may help with the expected litigation. Tablo can be used without a subscription, so although it’s far more expensive than it should be for our purposes, the combined cost of Roku and Tablo is still less than 1/2 the cost of a TiVo. I suspect much of the cost is direct patent fees and costs secondary to patent workarounds.

[8] DMCA made it illegal in the United States to interfere with an encryption chain; I suspect that law prevented some patent block workarounds.

Epilogue

Some people solve Rubik’s cube. That never interested me much; I like to puzzle out this kind of story. I think I’m done gnawing this bone, but if I find a better discussion of what happened I might add some updates. Meanwhile I’m looking for pre-2010 Elgato and TiVo devices — I may even try a Hauppage Windows device in a VM.

Android's curious advantage: lawbreaking made easy

Remember when Apple made ads about ripping CDs? iTunes and the iPod made it elegantly easy [1]. The ads were coy but clear -- wink, wink steal that music. Used CD stores made good money loaning out CDs for extraction. This was after Napster launched digital music, but before legal DRM-free tunes crushed CDs.

Now, of course, Apple is again virtuous, and iOS is a hard target. There's still no iOS 7 iPhone 5s jailbreak. Not only is IOS more secure, there's also less interest in iOS jailbreaking. The hacker community has moved to Android. 

With good reason, because Android is oddly easy to jailbreak. Almost as though bypassing DRM were to Google and Samsung's competitive advantage. Which, of course, it is.

That's interesting, albeit unsurprising, but it gets better. Not only does Google keep Android rootable, the Google Play store sells apps that require rooting to work. Wink one.

It gets better still. WiFi Tethering, one of those root-requiring apps, exists only to bypass carrier restrictions on tethering. So Google sells an app that's designed to at least violate contract terms. Wink two.

That shouldn't be a big deal to carriers who charge for data [3], but for 'unlimited data' [4] carriers like Sprint and TMobile it's money out the door. A single LTE connection can support quite a bit of traffic.

Story done? Not quite. There's one more interesting bit. Nobody writes about this [5]. It's a de facto conspiracy -- because we all hate carriers [6]. Wink 3.

I suspect Google will clean up its act soon. With 80% of the retail market this is a good time to go straight. Android will become harder to root, Google will make more money from DRM, and the Play store will stop selling apps that bypass tethering restrictions.

The wild days will become a passing memory. Who remembers now when Apple was rad?

- fn -

[1] iTunes was a LOT simpler in those days.

[2] Really, that is remarkable.

[3] I dislike AT&T as much as the next geek. Go get 'em!

[4] Of course carriers play games here -- data rates can get pretty slow after first few GBs and unlimited data plans have become pretty expensive in the US. So the real advantage is people who are holding on to low cost legacy unlimited plans. I am so jealous of these (mostly) guys -- they have the equivalent of a rent controlled apartment in Manhattan.

[5] Yes, of course there are a zillion articles about how to bypass tethering restrictions. I mean nobody writes about Google/Samsung's business strategy. By contrast when Apple made ripping CDs easy there was a lot of coverage. Fortunately i'm not giving anything away here -- my readership is very small.

[6] Even people who work for them. Ok, maybe we don't hate Ting - notice they don't have unlimited data.

My eBook misadventures. Not ready yet?

After much thought, I decided to build my digital library on DRM-free EPUBs. That means buying from DRM-free sources like TidBITS, O'Reilly, and some science fiction books from Tor/Forge or buying from Adobe Adept DRMd Google Books and using DeDRM.

It was a relief to get that all sorted out. Now I just needed a handheld eBook Reader other than my too small iPhone 5 [2]. I gave up on the Nexus 7 last year, and I don't love the current crop of iPads [1], so I took the advice of some appnetizens and tried "freedom-friendly" Kobo. I really like the idea of moving EPUBs on and off the device with a simple SD card.

Alas, Kobo seems to have abandoned the US market. I found some dusty old Kobos at a local independent bookstore, but one was broken and the other was too small. I tried ordering the HD Aura but Kobo's webstore checkout failed repeatedly. Then I tried to order a Kobo Glo on NewEgg and found they were selling a $120 device for $150.

I finally decided Kobo has effectively exited the US marketplace.

Then I thought the Nook might be the closest thing to an American Kobo - never mind that B&N is at the edge of extinction. I ran off to my local B&N (once we thought these were scary, now, like Microsoft, they seem sad and vulnerable) to give an eInk Nook a try.

The page turn flicker killed me. I felt like someone was tapping my head with each page turn. Maybe there was something wrong with those floor models, the wee Kobo I tried didn't seem so bad.

That leaves the Amazon Paperwhite. I've already sold my soul to Apple, I don't need another closed shot wannabe monopoly owning my stuff.

Which brings me back to those iPads I don't like, or the new "retina" Nexus 7.

Or I could wait anther six months.

Bummer.

[1] The Mini seems small and isn't Retina. The iPad Retina is too heavy. In both cases I really miss the convenience of a simple SD card.

[2] The iPhone 5 has the right screen, but for technical book reading I need something bigger. 

iCloud, iOS, and identity: The end of app sharing

I don't think we'll actually get to DRM RetinaLock (retinal enhancements enforce video DRM), but we are pretty much at the "Palladium" future I'd written about 8 years ago.

That's what I concluded after migrating a friend's iTunes and iOS content, and navigating the chaotic intersection of Digital Rights Management (FairPlay), identity management, ownership identity, and Cloud vs. multi-device iTunes vs. multi-user OS X. Not to mention the MobileMe vs. iCloud migration.

Really, has anyone figured this out? I mean, I think I'm pretty good at this stuff, but we're talking combinatorial explosion here. Different rules for email, calendar, music, video, apps, across multiple identifies and platforms -- with no way to merge or reconcile multiple identities...

Apple IDs and iCloud

... Enter the Apple ID you want to use for iCloud in Apple () menu > System Preferences > iCloud. Enter the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match) in iTunes > iTunes Store... [1]

... You cannot merge two or more Apple IDs into a single one...

... You can switch the Apple ID you use for store purchases at any time. However, you can only change the account you use for any iTunes in the Cloud features once every 90 days...

and (emphases mine)

iTunes Store: Associating a device or computer to your Apple ID

... Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID for 90 days...

... : Removing a device from your Apple ID does not override the 90 day timer. The timer must complete 90 days from the day the device was associated before it can be associated to another Apple ID....

Only a post-singular AI could truly visualize all the options here.

It's fairly clear, however, where Apple wants us to go.

Today my family's five devices sync to one iTunes instance. Each devices has the same AppleID for store purchases, but different MobileMe identities. The family can share movies, apps, music and so on. [2] Mail and Calendars for each device go to the Cloud.

The future is quite different. There will be no more iTunes, no more shared media libraries, no more shared app libraries. Each iOS device will be associated with a single identity for both purchasing and iCloud services. (Though a child's identity may be associated with a parent's credit card, or purchases will be iTunes credit only.) OS X will become only a way to access Cloud media, and that access will be tied to identity as well.

My sympathy for piracy grows.

- fn -

[1] In reality, when I reviewed my friend's devices, it was not possible to set a different Apple ID for iCloud.
[2] Heaven knows what the licensing says we can do. Only some older music is DRMd.

See also:

• Apple IDs and iCloud
• iTunes Store: Associating a device or computer to your Apple ID
• Apple Scrambles To Merge Apple IDs To Stave Off iCloud Sync Mess | Epicenter | Wired.com 9/2011 -- they didn't manage the merge but there's a transitional role where the Apple ID and the MobileMe ID can live together for MobileMe users and perhaps even into iCloud. I'm going very slowly with my family's iCloud migration.
• Gordon's Notes: The sharing challenge: access, topic and identity. Why G+ fails. 11/2011 - a different sort of sharing problem
• Gordon's Tech: The multi-iPhone family - two approaches 7/2010 - the good old days.
• Gordon's Tech: Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008 - the .mac to .me transition stunk

Update:

More on the peculiar 90 day limit here. It seems to pertain to 'downloading past purchases' or iTunes Match. It applies to the entire computer rather than a user account. What a friggin' mess.

Update 2: More thoughts as I replay this post

• I wonder if the 90 day limit will eventually be a standard for transferring ownership of digital purchases. I can't find any information on how that duration was established.
• I suspect in a few years there will be a lot of digital material in the family repository that only I will be able to use. Ownership transfer would be "nice". Hacking FairPlay is more likely (eventually 2012 FairPlay should be pretty hackable).
• With Apple's new regime there are significant advantages to combining Apple hardware with Google and Amazon products. After all, they can't fit into Apple's model. In the new world we can't share our iBooks, but everyone can share Kindle books. A shared Apple identity may prevent use of iCloud, but it won't prevent use of gCloud.
• Curiously, this may mean the return of family night at the movies! Instead of sharing across multiple devices, we'll be back to sharing on a single device with a large screen.

Apple's FairPlay DRM, subscriptions, and the cost of MLB At Bat

Last year I bought MLB.com's At Bat for something like $10 or $15. Then it was an "App". That meant, based on Apple's FairPlay DRM, I could install it on multiple devices as long as each device was synchronized to an iTunes instance that was associated with my App Store/iTunes ID (and credit card). In our home that can be up to five devices, though in practice only my son used it.

No consumer loves DRM, but FairPlay was well named. It struck a Jobsian balance between buyer and seller, like those .99 songs we used to have. It didn't get in my way very often.

It's too badFairPlay doesn't work that way any more. This year MLB.com At Bat 12 is just a shell for a $15 subscription -- and Apple's subscription/In-App purchase policies are an inelegant mess ...

iTunes Store: About In-App Purchases

... Non-replenishable In-App Purchases are items that only require you to purchase them once, and can be transferred to multiple devices authorized with the same iTunes Store account.

• Bonus game levels
• City guide maps

Replenishable In-App Purchases are items that have to be purchased every time and cannot be downloaded again for free.

• Extra health
• Extra experience points

Subscriptions are one-time services that must be purchased again once the subscription period expires. 

• One-month subscriptions
• Location service subscriptions

Auto-Renewing Subscriptions are services that can be purchased with different renewing subscription durations.

• Weekly newspaper subscriptions
• Weekly magazine subscriptions...

... Subscriptions and replenishable In-App Purchase cannot be transferred or synced to another iOS device. Non-replenishable In-App Purchases  and auto-renewing subscriptions can be transferred to another iOS device authorized with your iTunes Store account. For example, if you transfer a game from an iPhone to an iPod touch, only the game levels will sync over, the extra ammo and experience points will not be transferred...

Four different classes of In-App purchase, each with different policies on renewal, transfer, and multiple device use.

So which rule applies to MLB.com's At Bat 2012? Is it a non-replenishable In-App purchase that can be transferred between devices? Or is it Subscription that cannot be transferred? I couldn't tell from the description, but the answer is in a customer review [1] ...

... if you make the in-app purchase it is available on another device ... regardless of whether you make an in-app purchase or not banner ads are still displayed ...

So, for this year at least, the effective cost of MLB At Bat is still $15; it behaves like an In-App Purchase if you pay the $15 up front. On the other hand, I wonder how it behaves if you pay the subscription fee ...

FairPlay was a Jobs-class compromise. Apple's subscription plans are post-Jobs; I hope they'll take a second look at the mess.

[1] This is unrelated to my post, but I have to say it's rude behavior to show ads in a paid app. It's worse than rude really -- banner ads typically include clickable links that break Apple's feeble parental controls.

Why Apple's thunderbolt cables have inline computers ...

Coverage of Apple's $50 thunderbolt "active cable" focuses on performance advantages  ...

The technology inside Apple's $50 Thunderbolt cable

.... Apple didn't respond to our requests for further information about the "firmware in the cable," but an EETimes article from earlier this year noted that in addition to having different electrical characteristics from Mini DisplayPort, Thunderbolt also uses active cabling to achieve full duplex 10Gbps transmission...

Maybe. I'm skeptical though. I suspect it's all about the DRM.

Bright side: Apple's computer for the rest of us

It's not the best of times. Long Depression 2.0 grinds on. China is increasingly unsettled -- and it's sitting on one of history's great bubbles. American corporations may have decided the American middle class is finished, done in by globalization and IT enabled automation and outsourcing. Spear phishing (Chinese?) caught white house "aides" (Obama?). Core security systems have been compromised. Peak Oil. Pakistan, North Korea, Yemen. The ChromeBook costs 200% too much. Weather badness and rising CO2.

Worst of all, I can't buy a quality dehumidifier at any price.

It's a bit much, even for me. I've got to find some happier things to say -- even if I've got to dig deep.

Today's happy thought - in Fall 2011 Apple will be make my Jan 2010 prediction true ...

Gordon's Notes: Computing for the rest of us: The iPad and the ChromeBook (Jan 2010)

.. The iPad's a pretty thing, but the combination of iVOIP and the return of the Mac Plus and the keyboard and $10 iWorks apps and the $15/month no-contract 250MB limited data plan might shorten Jobs time in Limbo.

... the 2010 [3G] iPad is more than $500 - but by 2011 the device will sell for under $500 with 3G-equivalent capabilities. An additional $15 a month will provide basic VOIP phone services (uses very little bandwidth) and access to email and Facebook Lite -- even before the advertising subsidies kick in. Of course free Wifi access, such as in libraries, McDonald's, schools and so on will provide access to full internet services....

... Think about your family. If it's big enough, your extended family will have at least one person who's, you know, poor. They may have cognitive or psychiatric disabilities. Or you may have a family member who, like most of American, can't keep a modern OS running without an on call geek. These people are cut off. They can barely afford a mobile phone, and they won't have both a mobile phone and a landline. They will have little or no net access. They may have an MP3 player, but it's dang hard to use one without a computer.

By 2011 the combination of a $400 iPad (and iTouch for less) and $15/month VOIP access will start to replace a number of devices that are costly to own and acquire, while providing basic net services at a rate that other family members can subsidize. Not to mention something pretty, which, speaking as someone who grew up poor, ain't a bad thing...

Apple's iCloud [3] and iOS combination mean most families won't need an energy sucking, loud, unstable, unsupportable, malware infested winbox. They will buy a signed-code curated app library iPad with integrated backup and offline media libraries [1]. They will also, unwittingly, accept FairPlay DRM -- which is the best balanced DRM system I've lived with [2].

This will make the world a better place.

Of course there's a silky black lining to the silver cloud, but let's not go there just yet ...

See also:

• The $80 ultra-portable - in unexpected form 9/2010
• Cricket’s $149 Android and the future $4000 Dell desktop 10/2010 - Post-PC predictions
• Buying my Chrome OS (XP) Netbook 7/2009 (Except I didn't. Now I'm buying a MacBook Air.)
• Why you will live in an iOS world 12/2010 - Signed code, curated software
• Computing for the rest of us: The iPad and the ChromeBook 1/2010
• I, Cringely - iCloud’s real purpose: kill Windows

[1] If money is tight however, and a user foregoes home internet service for the $15/month iPad data plan, they really don't want to be streaming their media library. They'll want to do their iPad backup at a local cafe or library.
[2] It's so good it's silently accepted. It's freakin' brilliant and Apple gets no credit. Of course they don't want credit -- because they don't want anyone to notice it. 
[3] In all the iCloud discussions so far there's mention of Apple's prior efforts at iTools, .Mac, and MobileMe. Few remember the 1980s AppleLink (later the basis of AOL when it was interesting) and the 1990s eWorld. Sixth time lucky?

Where now for the iOS Borders eBook reader?

Borders is in bankruptcy. Its future is quite uncertain.

Of course the books we bought there are still good. The paper ones that is ...

Borders launches eBook reader for iPhone

... Borders has entered the battle for dominance of the iPhone eBook market. Well sort of. Today Borders launched an official eBook app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. But it’s basically just a rebranded version of the Kobo app which has been available since last week.

Kobo and Borders are partners in the eBook space, with Kobo powering the Borders eBook store. Kobo also sells a physical eBook reader with an E Ink display that competes with the Amazon Kindle, and which has access to the Borders eBook store...

I've read elsewhere that Kobo is still in business, though I suspect Borders was their primary partner. This is probably not a good time to buy a Kobo reader.

The average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company is 40-50 years. I think we can assume that the lifespan of file formats in general, and Digital Rights Management standards is significantly less than that. Make your purchases accordingly.

iPhone apps and the Philip Morris business model

Once upon a time tobacco companies distributed abundant free samples. It's a good business model when you're selling an addictive product.

This holiday the kids have been piling up iOS games on their phones, mostly at $1 each. Since FairPlay DRM works on an iTunes/account basis, each app goes to four (soon five) iOS devices.

At 20 cents/app/phone this looks like a heck of a bargain -- but appearances are misleading. Increasingly the apps are entry points to a series of in-app purchases [1]. The real price is a cumulative sum; I'm guessing the average cost is more like $5 than $1. iOS games are rediscovering the Philip Morris business model.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing - for games. It means we can try quite a few games, and only spend money on those we really like.

It's certainly not a bad thing for experimental economists! The App Store is a wonderful model for exploring pricing strategies ...

[1] I don't know how FairPlay treats these. Are they tied to a particular devices or to the account? I suspect the former, which means the FairPlay redistribution (our five devices) becomes a feature, not a problem.

The iPhone iAd framework and parental controls

iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) come with parental controls. Android OS, interestingly, does not. This is rarely discussed [1].

Parental controls should be important to parents with children who, by age or disability, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and injury. They are, of course, also important for cultural reasons.

Even though Apple's iOS includes parental controls, they are very weak. Disabling Safari does not disable embedded browsers, and many, many applications embed WebKit browsers. It is not hard, for example, to navigate from the NYT's iPhone App to Google's image search.

The worst offenders use Google's AdMob/AdSense/Mobile Ads platform. That platform, unsurprisingly, uses WebKit. A product that uses Google's Ad Platform breaks iOS Parental Controls.

Apple has an ad platform too. It's called iAd. It's not based on WebKit, it's an Objective C (Cocoa) framework. This morning I viewed the Tron iAd featured on the New York Times iPhone app. The Ad was ... impressive.

Clearly Apple's iAds have a high barrier to entry. Perhaps not as high as a television or major print advertisement, but much higher than traditional web advertising. The one I saw was essentially an application. iAds will need to scope their material to the parental control rating of the container application.

The Tron Ad did not have an obvious WebKit escape. Whether one exists or not, it is clear that iAds can achieve their goals within a fully constrained environment. Apple's iAds are Parental Control friendly, Google's Mobile Ads are not. If Apple were to enable a Parental Controls block for embedded browsers, they'd break Google's Ad Platform on iOS devices. Children are an important advertising target. This should be interesting.

[1] Another unmentionable is that iOS comes with FairPlay DRM (digital rights management), Android OS lacks a DRM standard. Even Gruber, a giant of fan blogs, does not seem to get this. FairPlay is worth billions to the iOS App market.

Thunder in the Cloud: Lessons from my hacked Google Account

It was just another week in the age of insecurity. Yet another low tech Windows-only trojan spread throughout American corporations, costing a day or so of economic output and probably acquiring a rich bounty of passwords. Twitter implemented a defective OAuth security framework. Oh, and my Google (Gmail) account was hacked.

The last of these was the most important.

Cough. Go head, laugh. Check back in three years and we'll talk. For now, trust me on this. There are some interesting implications.

First though, a quick review. Nothing obvious was done to my Cloud data by the hacker, I only know of the hack because of defenses Google put in place after they were hacked by China. Secondly I used a robust and unique password on my primary Google account and I'm a Phishing/social engineering hard target. So, in order of descending probability the security flaw was

• Keystroke logging > Google false alarm (no hack) > iPhone app credential theft > WiFi intercepts >> Google was hacked > password/brute force attack.

I changed my password, but that doesn't deal with the real security problems (keystroke logging, WiFi intercepts, App credential theft). The other changes I'm making are more important.

That's the background. Why is this interesting? It's interesting because of what we can infer about motives, and the implications for the future of Cloud computing, iOS devices, and Apple.

Consider first the motives. The hackers owned my Google credentials for 24 hours, but they did nothing. They didn't change my passwords, they didn't send any email. The most likely explanation is that the next move was to identify and attack our mutual fund accounts by taking advantage of harvested data (58,000 emails, hundreds of Googel Docs), accessible internet data, and the stupidity of mutual fund security systems.

We're not rich by American standards, but emptying our accounts would be a good return on investment for most organized criminal organizations.

Secondly if I can be hacked like this, anyone can. I am the canary in this coal mine, and I just keeled over.

Ok, maybe the impractically pure and young Cryptonomicon live-in-a-thumb-drive-VM-with-SSL geeks are relatively safe, but, practically speaking, everyone is vulnerable. Windows, OS X or Linux - it doesn't make a difference. (But the iPhone/"iTouch" and iPad do make a difference. More on that below.)

When history combines motive (huge revenue hits) with opportunity then "Houston, We have a Problem". Sometimes freaking out is not unwise. 2010 network security is a market failure. The business model of Cloud Computing is in deep trouble.

I think I know how this ends up. Somehow, some day, we will all have layers of identity and data protection, designed so that one layer can fall while others endure. Our most critical data may never be committed to the network, perhaps never on a digital device. If I were running Microsoft, Google or Apple I'd be spending millions on figuring out how to do make this relatively seamless.

That part is fuzzy. What's clear is good news for Apple, though everyone else isn't far behind. Untrusted devices, untrusted software, and untrusted networks are all dead. That means shared devices are dead too. Corporations need to own their machines and trust systems, we need to own our machines and trust systems, and when we have both a corporate and a personal identity we need two machines.

Practically speaking, we all need iPhone/iTouch/iPad class devices with screened and validated software that we carry everywhere [1]. That means the equivalent of iOS and App Store, but software apps that provide Google access need to be highly screened. Practically speaking, they need to come from Google or Apple.)

We need secure network access. For the moment, that means AT&T 3G rather than, say, Cafe WiFi (Witopia VPN is not quite ready for the mass market). Within the near term we need Apple to make VPN services a part of their MobileMe offering with seamless iOS integration. Apple currently provides remote MobileMe iPhone annihilation, we need the iPhone/iPod Touch FaceTime camera to start doing facial/iris biometrics.

Yes, Apple is oddly well positioned to provide all of these, though Google's ChromeOS mayb be close behind.

Funny coincidence isn't it? It's almost as though Apple thought this through a few years ago. I wonder what they're planning now to enforce trusted hardware. Oh, right, they bought the A4.

The page is turning on the remnants of 20th century computing. Welcome to the new world.

-- footnotes

[1] Really we need iPhone/iTouch class devices with optional external displays. Maybe in 2013.

See also:

Post-hack posts (past week):

• My Google (gmail) account is hacked - by ductus.com
• After the Google Hack: Life in the transparent society
• After the Gmail hack - passwords and security

Pre-hack posts

• CrashPlan Fail - you still can't remove an account
• Nimbophobia: Why you should fear the cloud - Google's performance problems
• Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Simperium?
• Cloud Lesson #72: The risk of letting Google own your web site

And some warnings of mine that were premature -- because Team Obama converted Great Depression II into the Great Recession.

• Dapocalypse Now
• Dapocalypse now. Grab your data and run. RUN.

Managing the Google-Apple war: keeping options open, expecting the Android bicycle computer

The Google-Apple war continues, with a new front opening last week. The notorious Larry Ellison, close ally of the infamous Steve Jobs, has attacked Google from the left flank. With Schmidt, Jobs and Ellison business is personal. They are more like feudal kings than the mythical servants of the board imagined in business schools.

On the main front Apple continues to block iPhone customers from delicious Google (Android) Apps (emphases mine) …

Practical Traveler - Google Maps Add a Feature for Bike Riders - NYTimes.com

… “For Google Maps not to have bike directions is like the Gap not selling underpants,” said Eben Weiss, the author of the BikeSnobNYC blog. “Even though it’s not 100 percent reliable, it’s still better to have it than in no form at all.”

Yet the reviews within the biking community, notorious for its outspokenness, have been mixed at best. There are the technical glitches, like its unavailability on the iPhone (it’s available only on BlackBerrys and Androids) …

At the moment my family is still best served by the iPhone/iTunes/App Store/OS X ecosystem, but between iOS weaknesses and Android strengths the balance continues to shift towards Google. I can imagine the day when I’ll call on resolution 242 and write-off the sunk costs of our FairPlay investments for the entire family.

Towards that day we keep our family domain in Google Apps, and use only Google’s Calendaring, Contacts and Mail services. MobileMe is the enemy, Microsoft’s (!) ActiveSync is our friend. I track my Apple dependencies, with a close eye on Apple’s Data Lock.

I’m also expecting to see an Android showing up in special purpose devices, such as Android bicycle computers and Android car computers. I’ll be favoring those as a partial end-run around Apple’s failures.

Life would be a lot easier if Jobs and Schmidt weren’t replaying the 10th century. Given Jobs undeniable genius, I’d love to see Schmidt take early retirement.

Apple's iBookstore and a FairPlay DRM review

I'd delayed updating to iTunes 9.2, but the upgrade seems to have gone well.

I can now browse my "Protected book " (FairPlay 2) in iTunes, but of course I can't read them on my Mac. Surprisingly, I can't buy a iBooks.app "books" [1] using iTunes...

... the iBookstore is only available through iBooks on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch at this time.

That's a curious limitation. I wonder if the publishers insisted on it. If they did, I assume it has something to do with copy protection.

 

Apple's book DRM rules are similar (identical?) to their app rules (emphases mine) ...

Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own...

Apple says "five computers", not "five user accounts". A single computer can have a very large number of separate accounts, and each account can have a distinct iTunes account.

From past experiments I believe it is correct that Apple authorizes at the computer level, not the user level. The FairPlay DRM however is iTunes Store account specific. I don't think there's any documented limit to how many user accounts can share the same iTunes account, so in principle a single machine could have 100 iTunes accounts that could all share the same iTunes store account and thus the same FairPlay material. In turn each account can sync to an unlimited number of iDevices (I thought there used to be a limit!) -- though technically one person should "own" them. (How is that established?)

This DRM implementation means that DRMd material can be shared by a group of people so long as one person is making all the purchases ("ownership"). It's not a bad proxy for a "family of residence". So books can be shared within a family, as can music, video and apps.

It's never noted anywhere but on my blog, but this makes iPhone apps much cheaper for families than apps on other platforms (example: Wii).

The strategic impact of Apple FairPlay is underrated. It seems to suit everyone to keep it that way.

[1] Apple needs a word for the "books" that are rendered by iBooks.app.

Google TV, Flash, iPhone and Curated Computing - it's all about the DRM

Imagine that Drexler'sengines of creation were real. Imagine we all had devices that could make diamonds, phones, cars and the like on demand. All we needed were some raw materials and energy.

This would be disruptive. DeBeers wouldn't last the day. Economies would collapse. Hellfire would rain down.

Eventually, however, I suspect our complex adaptive world would return to a balance. A new generation of improved replicators would replace the old ones. The new ones would come with controls that made it, for example, impossible to replicate currency. Civilization wants to survive.

We saw this with VCRs. The first recorders were amazing at capturing movies, but later generation devices incorporated "macrovision" copy protection. Recording features became less common, VCRs became largely playback devices. The rebel was subverted.

We're seeing it now with the digital replicators of our era. First generation devices made perfect copies of CDs and even DVDs. Slowly, however, the market is moving from general purpose computers with computers that won't replicate some DRMd video to iPad-style "curated computing". Surprise -- the iPad won't rip a DVD. It won't even rip a CD. (If record companies aren't buying 2nd hand CDs and destroying them they deserve to perish.)

In 20 years, it will be fairly hard to replicate many things. In a world with limited local storage, you may find your purloined media won't survive long in the cloud. The system is strong, It wants to live.

If you think about DRM, a lot of things make sense. Why are Apple so virulently opposed to Flash [1]? Why is Adobe dissembling when they say Flash is open (they published the specs)? Because the video codecs in Flash are not nearly as important as the DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology in Flash. That is most assuredly not open; it's as closed as Apple's FairPlay. What's Google up to with Google TV and their app stores? Check out the DRM to understand. Why are Hulu and Netflix reluctant to sign on the iPad? Because they'd have to substitute FlashDRM for FairPlay. That means Apple would own them.

This battle will rage for a time, but in 20 years it will be largely forgotten -- and the digital replicators will have been tamed. Resistance is futile.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: The limits to DRM: my new car stereo (in 2007 I was still resisting)

[1] Personally, like virtually all Mac geeks, I despise Flash and consider Adobe to be as decrepit as Microsoft. I agreed with pretty much everything Jobs wrote about Flash in his open letter. I think, however, that even if none of those things were true Apple would be at war with Adobe. Part of Jobs evil genius is that he's a master magician -- he distracts with one hand while he moves with the other.

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Stross on the post-PC world – mostly right

Charles Stross is in good form with an essay on the post-PC world. It’s the world we’ve been expecting since Netscape Constellation (1996) and Larry Ellison’s proto-netbook (1995). That world became real for me in 2007 (yes, it was that long ago) with the iPhone and in 2008 with the Target netbook [1].

I agree with almost everything he wrote, with one big exception….

… Moreover, the PC revolution has saturated the market at any accessible price point. That is, anyone who needs and can afford a PC has now got one…

Uhhh, no. PCs are not cheap. Not at all. The iPad is cheap [3], but PCs are very expensive.

Yes, you can buy a “PC” for a pittance. It makes a crummy boat anchor though. If you want it to do something useful you need to buy internet service. Where I live that’s about $600 a year – year after year. Unless you bought a Mac, or are geek enough to go without, you need to buy antiviral software. In theory you also need to $150 or so for Microsoft Office. And good luck with backup.

But that’s not the real cost.

The real cost is that you need an IQ-equivalent of 110 or higher, and a love of debugging and troubleshooting. For most of the population, that’s absolutely unaffordable.

PCs are very, very, expensive. The iPad 2.0, or its rivals to come, can be the poor person’s computer [4].

So Charlie got this one point wrong – but it only strengthens his overall argument. My four month old quad core iMac running 10.6 is an anachronism [2]. Its era is passing. Welcome to the third era of the personal computer.

[1] I thought things would blow up in 2009. Didn’t happen! Microsoft dropped the price of XP to about nothing and crawled back enough control of the netbook to stun the market (same thing they did with Palm in the 90s by the way). It’s still going to happen, but that’s not the first time I’ve been wrong on transition times. I’ve since learned to take my time estimates for technology transitions and triple them.

[2] Charlie also omits the role Digital Rights Management (DRM) plays in driving this transition. DRM is one of the reason there’s so much good software being produced for the iPhone. Your CDs may be worth money some day.

[3] Not least because of the pay-as-you-go capped data plan. That’s as big a deal as the device. Yes, I know iPad’s require a PC-as-peripheral, but that will change within the year.

[4] Of course that’s what the original Mac was – the “computer for the rest of us”. Closed architecture. All applications were to be vetted by Apple. Strict UI standards. Heavy investments in usability and design. Single button mouse. It worked too – it really was easy to use. Much easier to use than OS X. Almost as easy to use as the iPad. History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it spirals.

How removing my car stereo gave me my Apple iSlate prediction

[Update: iPad is the name. My post-release verdict is even more flamboyant.]

Geeks are all tingly in the run up to Steve Jobs' iSlate/iPad/whatever announcement. The last time I remember this level of geek thrill was just before the Segway was announced.

Oh, you don't remember that? Well, it wasn't the Segue of a thousand jokes back then. It was a mysterious product that was going to transform the world. (Who knows, when gas is $12/gallon maybe it will.)

The Segway is a cautionary tale, but I'm rooting for Mr Jobs. Even his mistakes are interesting, and if anyone can make a slate exciting it's the man in the black shirt. Personally I'm much more interested in the $150 Chrome OS gBook, but I'll be tracking the fan sites nonetheless. I expect the slate to solve at least one problem I have, and to solve it in a way that will work for my iPhone and desktop too.

I expect Mr. Jobs to come up with a Digital Rights Management scheme for books that we can live with -- just as he (and his team) have done for video and apps. (BTW, do you think anyone notices that balanced DRM is the key to Apple's App Store windfall? The industry hasn't missed this, even though the media has.)

I want Apple to do this, because this morning I couldn't figure out how to get my ultra-geeky SONY car stereo out of my dying 1997 Subaru Legacy (we bought the Forester, not the whacked new Outback). I knew Crutchfield would have great directions, but they charge $10 for detailed directions unless you're buying a stereo -- and they US Mail them.

The price was a bit steep, but the real problem for me was US Mail. They do this, of course, because if they let users download a PDF they'd sell one copy of the directions.

What Crutchfield and I needed was a DRM approach that was a reasonable balance between their interests and mine. If they had that, they might sell the directions electronically for a more appealing $5.

That's my iSlate prediction. That Jobs/Apple will include a DRM solution for printed material that will, like their DRM for Apps, be a reasonable balance between the rights of publishers and the interests of consumers.

--

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Personal computing 2020: More and less

OpenDoc was ambitious (emphases mine) ....

OpenDoc was a multi-platform software componentry framework standard for compound documents, inspired by the Xerox Star system ...

...The basic idea of OpenDoc was to create small, reusable components, responsible for a specific task, such as text editing, bitmap editing or browsing an FTP server. OpenDoc provided a framework in which these components could run together, and a document format for storing the data created by each component..

... OpenDoc was one of Apple's earliest experiments with open standards and collaborative development methods with other companies...

... OpenDoc components were invariably large and slow. For instance, opening a simple text editor part would often require 2 megabytes of RAM or more, whereas the same editor written as a standalone application could be as small as 32 KB...

... each part saved its data within Bento (the former name of an OpenDoc compound document file format) in its own internal binary format...

OpenDoc failed of course. It's easy to say it was ahead of its time, but it may be more correct to say it was a part of a future that will never come.

In recent years even the much more modest Open Document Format seems to be fading away. The modern trend is to simpler user environments with smaller feature sets and fewer user demands. In many ways, we're returning to the pre-multifinder world of MacOS Classic system 6.

This makes sense. It's increasingly difficult to live in the modern world without net access, but it's obvious that the vast majority of humans cannot live in the world of Win 7 or Office 2010 or OS X -- much less the virus infested XP boxes in most homes. My best guess is that less than 15% of the American population can keep a single net connected computer running well - much less a family network.

So what will things look like 10 years from now?

Simpler.

This will be hard on us geeks. We aren't going to get DateBk 6 on our iPhones. We're going to have get used to a world in which computers are simultaneously more powerful and less capable. We will finally have a single integrated calendar view of personal and work calendars, but those calendaring and information management capabilities will be a shadow of what we once had in Ecco Professional or DateBk and other lost tools of the 80s and 90s.

I really don't know how the DRM wars will turn out; aggressive Digital Rights Management (copy protection) may ironically sustain the (rogue) classic personal computer.

Progress is funny. I think our computing world will be better and more productive in 10 years, but the geeks among us will have to get used to losing tools and capabilities along the way. We'll have to ... (yech) ... be flexible ...

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