I think that’s all very interesting, but fundamentally a side issue. I think this suit is actually all about the iPad.

Apple is an extraordinary company. They completely revolutionised the computer industry not once, but twice. In 1977 they brought the desktop computer to the masses. For the first few years of its existence, the Apple II was dominant. It had by far the most market share. This was a result of three factors working together. Firstly, the platform. There’s no denying the originality of their invention. Steve Wozniak wrote of the game-changing concepts begun with the Apple I and continued with the Apple II in his biography, iWoz:

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that day, Sunday, June 29, 1975 was pivotal. It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them.

Secondly, the programs. With Dan Bricklin’s Visicalc, all of a sudden here was a unique use for these things – the world’s first personal spreadsheet – that would justify the cost. A function you couldn’t perform any other way than with an Apple II running Visicalc. The final factor that contributed to the dominance of the Apple II, for a time, was the lack of serious competition. IBM was just too slow getting their act together. Of course once they did they screwed it up, and a collection of “PC compatible” knock-off merchants running MS-DOS became the dominant platform. Once that competition was in place, the Apple II was just too expensive, and Apple couldn’t make it any cheaper. They tried releasing successors, but they all, essentially, failed.

Interestingly, this is what Woz has to say on the subject of the Apple II patents:

We ended up with five separate parts of a patent. It was a good, secure patent that was going to wind up being one of those patents in history that become very, very valuable. It was going to be the heart of lawsuits to come. For instance, it would come in handy when people tried to copy, or clone, the Apple II and other products after that.

But with the advent of the PC – based on entirely different hardware and running an entirely different OS – these specific hardware patents were no defence.

Then in 1984, Apple began another revolution by championing the idea of the user experience. Once again, with the Mac they brought out a fantastic platform that – although it was not in itself unique, since they had “imported” the concept of a mouse-controlled desktop and icons from Xerox PARC – what it did bring to the table was programs. Uniquely, on a Mac, at least until Microsoft woke up, you could create documents with vector-drawn fonts. You could connect a laser printer and output “print-ready” artwork. You could publish a magazine right there on your desktop. Oh, and incidentally, you didn’t need to be a computer geek to make it work. You could even set up a basic LAN network without really needing the assistance of a tame geek. These were all extraordinary firsts. But again, once Microsoft eventually brought something to the table, and once its legions of cheap hardware manufacturers got hold of the idea, no matter how inferior it was in terms of user experience the basic fact was that it was cheaper. Apple simply couldn’t compete on price, and once again the market share went to the PC. Apple retained a certain cachet amongst the creative community where the higher price of the Mac could be justified. Even today, despite more competitive pricing, Apple is a premium brand.

Fast-forward to the iPad. On the very cusp of being released is a device which allows the user to perform complex computing functions without ever being aware of the computing. The platform is so good that for the first time we have a device that requires no computer knowledge. The user doesn’t even need to know how to install things. And while we’re on the subject of installing things: the App Store. Coupled with this device, we have both a library and a method of installation of software the like of which we have never seen, and which completely changes things for both developers and users. Apple is without doubt revolutionising the computer industry for the third time.

But this time, they’re making sure the perfect storm is not thwarted. This time, they have the platform, the programs and the price. But they can only have that third vital element for so long as the cheap knock-off makers can be held at bay. They know they’re secure on the hardware – no competitor in their right mind would try to create an “iPad-compatible”. What they need to defend is the software, or more specifically, the user experience. And today, instead of Microsoft there’s a new kid on the block. We’re not far from a world where there is a functional-if-shit Android tablet OS, just like there was a functional-if-shit Windows OS, running on commodity hardware, connecting to a Google app store. Google might make the same mistakes, suffer the same early hiccups and late-to-move errors as Microsoft did with Windows, but they will get there in the end, and history tells us they will win if they’re cheaper.

So I think this time, this time, Steve is not going to let the party be spoiled. This time it’s going to be Apple with the dominant market share – that’s the legacy Steve will want to leave behind. So the HTC thing – it’s a warning shot. Others have likened it to a nuclear first strike. OK, maybe so, but like the Little Boy, it’s going to be a first strike that ends the war.

This time, Steve is bringing the perfect storm: platform, programs, price and protection.

I especially like:

My dream here is that if you can make it economic and meet the CO2 constraint, then the skeptics say, “OK, I don’t care that it doesn’t put out CO2, I kinda wish it did put out CO2, but I guess I’ll accept it because it’s cheaper.”

I’m getting educated:

Just to be clear the ECJ ruling doesn’t make private wire illegal. It does require that private wire networks allow third party access. In other words, if I operate a private wire network I have to allow other electricity suppliers access to my customers.

One person who doesn’t find the idea of a Chinese human mission [to the Moon] worrying—although for an unconventional reason—is Norm Augustine, chair of last year’s Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee. “I worry less about that,” he said in an after-dinner speech Tuesday night at an event hosted by the MIT Club of Washington. “If the Chinese go to the Moon, it will certainly be a wakeup call, but it will also be, ‘Well, we did that 50 years ago.’”

“My worry,” he continued, “will be that the Chinese will land on an asteroid and scare the hell out of us, as they could do relatively soon if they decide to do it. Maybe if they’re smart they won’t do it, because it probably will wake us up like Sputnik did.”

Foust also links to an article by Dwayne Day on the Space Review blog, where he points out there’s actually no hard evidence of the Chinese planning a manned mission to the Moon anytime soon.

The recent, yet to be fully detailed changes to the US space programme speak of a great difference in the nation’s outlook and sense of itself.

This change is not recent. It began, I think, in the eighties and has been building to a turning point that was catalysed by the financial crisis. From Apollo to Shuttle to Constellation… nothing? NASA is now to be focussed on “capabilities rather than destinations”. One could argue that the space station is not much of a destination, being only a few hunded kilometres above the Earth’s surface. So in reality the Shuttle program was little more than an expensive holding pattern, making a loss at commercial satellite delivery and providing questionable scientific benefit. Maciej Cegłowski wrote a great essay on this subject back in 2005.

Meanwhile India and China have made extraordinary advances and have both announced Lunar expeditions. Whilst the cold war fuelled a space race that was no doubt inflated beyond what the US would have done alone, the relative space ambitions of today’s nations seem still to reflect their superpower status on the world stage. China and India are in the ascendancy, Russia is competent, workmanlike but essentially static, and the US is in decline.

What will become of the American identity without a frontier?

For the sake of brevity, let’s call this neighbourhood power generation, or n-gen.

Now, it’s all very well wanting to save the world from global warming, but the technology isn’t quite there yet to allow us to power ten or twenty homes from a solar array and make a profit – not unless someone can set a robust price for carbon, which seems ever more unlikely after Copenhagen. Nor will the average council be particularly keen to shout down residents’ complaints regarding the erection of large wind turbines right in the middle of dense housing. However, the immediate goal is to disrupt the grid and the commercial model that underpins it; we can deal with the carbon footprint at a later date. Of course, since we’re removing the losses incurred in hundreds of miles of overhead transmission lines, we’re naturally reducing our overall energy demand by about 7% (energy losses in the U.S. transmission and distribution system were 7.2% in 1995).

I mentioned in my earlier post that this is already happening. There is a large project which has been running for some years in Woking, England. Here’s an iTunes link to an Open University program which talks about the Woking “private wire” network (the episode is “Power Generation in Woking”). It’s just over 13 minutes long, and well worth a watch. Of particular interest are the figures quoted on profits made by Woking Council operating as a power supplier.

In the UK, it’s the Councils (local government) who are responsible for granting licences to run cables under the street. This seems to be the only potential barrier to a successful business. The technology exists to generate the power using CHP (combined heat and power) as in Woking, or other systems powered by wood chips or natural gas. The cables can be run in a private wire configuration, as Woking Council has demonstrated. The business is profitable – not least because of a direct-to-customer supply model, avoiding the 40-60% cut that the electricity retailers take. In fact, Woking Council ploughs the profits back into renewable energy projects, such as solar arrays.

It’s surprising that Woking seems to stand alone in having implemented a system like this.

On reading Neil Gaiman’s list, it immediately rang true not only for writing fiction, but for writing code. Particularly for the indie developer looking to “make it” in the industry. Indeed, the parallels between authors and “freelance hackers”, if I might borrow a phrase from Neal Stephenson – another great writer, are significant and worth paying attention to. Here’s my paraphrased version of Mr Gaiman’s list:

1 Code.

2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3 Finish what you’re coding. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4 Put it aside. Use your program pretending you’ve never used it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5 Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to build the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7 Be proud of the good code (actually – NG here said “Laugh at your own jokes” – I think everyone should put a good joke or two in their code. For some reason I’ve noticed .NET programmers never do this).

8 The main rule of coding is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for coding. But it’s definitely true for coding.) So code your app as it needs to be coded. Code it carefully, and code it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

With deference and respect to NG, who is a far better writer than I will ever be a coder!

I tend to be an optimist. I’ve had some pretty shitty things happen to me in my life, and sometimes I’ve found myself in a tight corner, but on the whole, things have tended to work out. Not always the way I’d planned or expected, but nevertheless I find myself some weeks or months later in a different place. Hard to say if that’s the cause or effect of my optimism.

Nonetheless, I take it for granted that things, on the whole, improve. I take it for granted that there’s a way out, a solution of some sort, even if it’s not the one I envisage at the time.

And this, strangely enough, is a useful tool for my work in developing software. We programmers tend to be an obsessive bunch. We like to have it all worked out before we do the next bit. My personal demon is that once I’ve thought of an optimisation, I physically can’t implement any new features until I’ve gone back and refactored everything. It’s like deciding halfway through laying the tiles in your bathroom that actually, yes, underfloor heating would be a much more elegant solution, and ripping out all the tiles, jack-hammering up the concrete, laying that underfloor heating, then re-pouring all the concrete, re-laying the tiles and then, only then, even thinking about looking in the Philippe Starck catalogue.

Ha – that just reminded me of a friend of mine who bought a kitchen and they forgot to sell him any drawers. For the cutlery. Not pants.

Anyway, yes – taking things for granted. At various times I’ve had the joy of running teams of developers, and without exception they have been delightful, intelligent, curious and engaging people. However it must be said that they share a tendency to obsess about problems for which they do not yet personally have a solution.

An example: I remember working with a very smart chap who had the job of implementing an application, part of which involved a serial control protocol for a piece of video equipment. He was convinced that the protocol prohibited the sending of instructions to the VTR which would cause it to pre-roll with frame accuracy. I became aware of this conviction when, after three weeks, none of the rest of the application had been started. His conviction had caused him to lose faith in the final goal, and he had been largely procrastinating because, like, what’s the point of building the rest of the app if it’s doomed to failure anyway, right?

I said to him that surely we could take it for granted the protocol did in fact allow for this feature because we could observe VTRs prerolling with frame accuracy under this same serial protocol by the VTR operators in our own video facility every day?

He blinked. Then he went back to his desk and solved the problem that afternoon.

Now this chap was smart, like I say. He was a great programmer, but he was lousy at the big picture. Not an uncommon description when it comes to developers, and I include myself. The solution, I strongly suggest, is just to take more for granted. Look around, see what other people are doing. If it looks like a solved problem, take it for granted that you, too, will solve it.

It’s very easy for obsessive people to go down a rabbit hole, and good developers are by nature obsessive. Sometimes, you just need to back the truck up, park it, and move on to something else.

And inevitably that something else will be far more important to your users.

As a controller at a small busy airport in Florida, my story is about a student pilot talking to ground on an IFR morning (IFR means Instrument Flight Rules, necessitated by cloudy skies). At the time the transmission was made, there was an 800 foot ceiling (of cloud) with 2 miles visability in a light mist. Here is the communication – Student pilot: Ground, this is N12345 student pilot, and my instructor wants to know what the height of the ceiling is in the tower. Ground Controller: Cessna 12345…it’s about eight-and-a-half feet. There was then a pause in which both an Eastern pilot and a National pilot made similar comments. The student pilot came back on the radio. Student pilot: OK.. my mistake.. what is the reported weather ceiling at this time? Ground Controller: 800 overcast.

ROFL! Oh oh but wait, there’s more:

From ‘an aircraft mechanic’, Jan 2008 – My instructer for My A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) training told a funny story from the 1980s… He had landed in Egypt to refuel the Gulfstream he was flying. On take-off he noticed a guard standing in what looked like a refrigator box. With the the guard behind him my instructer goosed the throtles – which sent the guard head over heels for about 20 yards…

LMAO! Oh (wipes eyes) those _guys_!

OK, so they’re not all bad:

A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down. San Jose Tower noted: “American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadalupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport.”