Adventures in Open Source

Just a heads up to everyone who has missed it – American Airlines has a sweet new iPhone app.

Last fall I bought an iPhone 3GS. It was a hard decision, but one I haven’t really regretted. Note that I don’t make many phone calls, so I was mainly interested in having a 3G iPod Touch, but I did have the requirement of having a GSM phone since I travel overseas a lot.

Last week, as you know unless you have been living under a rock, Apple introduced the iPhone 4. It was enough of a redesign that it triggered my “don’t by Rev 1 products from Apple” rule, so I was in no real hurry to get one. But then my wife, who is a runner, kept borrowing my iPhone for the MotionX GPS app to track her progress so I got permission to spend the extra money and get the iPhone 4 so she could have my old one.

After a week of playing with it, I have to say I’m pretty happy. The biggest weakness of the iPhone 3Gs (at least the way I use it) was the camera, and the new iPhone camera is much, much improved.

Of course a lot a press has been devoted to the “retina screen” and it is beautiful. I wear contacts that I take out every night, and one of the first things I do when I get up in the morning is pick up my phone to check e-mail. I have to bring it close to my face to see it, and it is almost impossible to make out the individual pixels. Think about it – the iPhone 4 is 640 pixels wide and the pictures I post on this blog I crop to 450 pixels.

I have also noticed much improved battery life. The iPhone 3Gs wasn’t bad and it would last me about a day of heavy use, but the iPhone 4 seems to go about twice as long.

However, the only real “wow” feature has been FaceTime. I was chatting with OGP member Mike Huot and it worked amazingly well. In fact, I think the audio quality over FaceTime was equal to or not better than what I get over AT&T with a normal phone call (FaceTime is Wi-Fi only). Another cool feature is that you can switch between the front and the back cameras by tapping an icon in the lower right side which means you can show your caller what you are looking at without having to rotate the phone.

On the downside, much has been made about the attenuation of the signal when the device is being held. Unlike the other iPhones, the iPhone 4 is surrounded by a metal band that is also used by the antenna. I can tell you that the problem is quite real. While this may be hard to believe, I have never had a call drop from the office, and the first call I received on the new phone dropped within the first 10 seconds. Of course I was gripping in my left hand, which is apparently a no-no.

I think it is pretty easy to figure out how Apple missed this. In all of the real word tests the phones were in cases to hide the fact that they were new. This probably helped the signal and the fact that in Silicon Valley AT&T drops calls often, so the testers probably didn’t notice. In any case, I ordered my $30 rubber band which should help. I’ll know more when it arrives next week.

I’m not unhappy with my purchase as the camera improvements mean I can leave my point and shoot at home now, but barring the fact that my wife wanted my old phone I would not have bought at this time. Always, always wait for Rev 2 if you can help it.

Of course, programming on the iPhone can be painful. I usually spend 45 minutes just sorting out my certificates, although the new Xcode makes it a little easier. I only use it to play with the new OpenNMS iPhone app, but it is considerably harder than anything I’ve done on Linux.

I do have a little bit of guilt about buying such a closed product, but my reasons for buying my original iPhone still stand. However, I saw on MacRumors that there is a new project called “marble” which may actually become Xcode 4, and it got me to thinking. Since Apple now owns it’s own chip company, it could use Xcode to be the only way to compile on it (although Ben tells me that it would be much harder than that to lock it down). Then Apple could move all of their Macs to that chip and seriously lock down those as they have the iPhone/iPod/iPad. Thus OS XI or whatever would be as closed a platform as we’ve ever seen (well, at least on that scale).

A long shot I know, but scary.

So you might be asking “why in the world did you buy another iPhone, you freedom hatin’ conformist?” In part it is because I don’t view it as a development platform like I do a standard computer. I don’t need to have access to the code in my microwave or my car, for example. And I am seriously hoping that Android is able to catch up. I think it will, eventually, but that it will take time. Apple has a larger market cap than Microsoft, so they have a lot of money to throw at the product, and it is hard for a free, distributed community to compete with that as quickly.

But with enough time and interest, all commercial software becomes a commodity.

Just a quick post between a lovely weekend at the beach and the Open Source Business Conference.

Last year I managed to visit Dresden where I saw for the first time, in person, the ampelmännchen. These are the rather unique street crossing lights that can be found in the former East Germany. It wasn’t the first time I was introduced to them, however. That was at the house of Jonathan Sartin (OGP) in the UK, where his son Eddie had plastic toy versions of them.

In fact, there are a number of shops dedicated to the symbols.

However, I was unable to find ampelmännchen cufflinks. Since I live in a area that has a high density of artisans, I decided to have a pair made.

I think they turned out rather well. They were made by Sandra McEwen in silver and enamel.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

- Oscar Wilde

David was telling me about a program he watched on the Marriott hotel chain, where the founder was saying that he spent 100% of his time thinking about the business. That pretty much seems to jive with my experience, as rarely a moment goes by that I’m not thinking about OpenNMS.

I don’t think this is healthy, so I am trying to find some sort of hobby to occupy my mind that doesn’t involve computers. In the summer I raise vegetables but I wanted something for the winter as well.

I have a mental “bucket list” of things I want to do before I die, and I’ve accomplished several of them. I’ve jumped out of an airplane, gone trout fishing in New Zealand, had sushi in Tokyo, etc. but one thing stood out as a good choice for a hobby.

Learn to play the guitar.

In fact, I have always wanted to play a particular brand of guitar. Many years ago (I’m an old guy, remember) there was a short-lived television show called “Key West” with Fisher Stevens (who played the Indian character in the Short Circuit movies and the bad guy in Hackers). In “Key West” he ran a bar, and in one scene the camera pans across the bandstand and I saw the most amazing guitar. I described it to friend of mine who knows such things and they identified it as an Ovation Adamas.

After many years of wanting one, through the power of eBay and a bad economy, I finally own one. It’s a 2000 Millenium CB edition, one of only 75 made, and while my wife doesn’t like it at all, I think it’s beautiful.

It also has the most unusual artwork on the fret board, featuring all nine planets (remember, in 2000 Pluto was still a planet).

I’m carving out an evening each week for lessons, so perhaps at the next users conference we can all get together and play a little music.

I’ve blogged in the past about my issues with Netflix, and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with them, but at the moment I am pretty happy as a Netflix customer. While I’m still not very satisfied with their customer service, they are making the right moves in other areas.

One is that streaming is now available on the PS3. I have heard that, in order not to break an agreement with Microsoft and the Xbox, there could not be a downloadable app, but they sent me a disk which allows me to stream from the PS3 to my television, which is only slightly annoying (I have to insert the disk versus just turning on the machine).

So I read with amusement that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment negotiated a 28 day delay before new releases would be available on the Netflix service, in exchange for more favorable terms and more content to be available via streaming.

I think this is a great deal for Netflix and a pretty stupid move on the part of Warner Bros. Their reasoning is that the availability of renting a DVD the day it is released cuts in to DVD sales. I’d love to see the numbers after this change, but my guess is that they will stay pretty flat.

My reasoning in simple. If someone loves a movie enough to buy it, that buying decision is made without regard to if it can be rented. Either they get it close to the day it is released since they like it so much, or they get it as a gift at some later point in time. In my own informal poll, people tend to buy movies they’ve already seen, and thus those that are sold in the first few weeks of release are sold to people who have already seen the movie in the theatre. This is unaffected by the availability of the title on Netflix.

I just don’t see someone going “Jeez, I can either wait four weeks to see ‘Final Destination 3D‘ for free as part of my Netflix subscription or drop $15+ to buy it from Amazon – ooh, hit that one-click” especially when a monthly Netflix subscription costs about the same if not less.

But this is a great deal for Netflix, especially if they get better access to the Warner Bros. back catalog for streaming. I don’t think anyone will argue that in ten years (if not sooner) almost all video will be delivered via streaming, and so seeing Netflix positioning itself as the best streaming service is a smart move.

I think there are parallels here with open source. You have a legacy company like Warner Bros. trying to understand a new distribution model in much the same way you have commercial software companies trying to come to grips with open source. Netflix, on the other hand, is similar to OpenNMS as a company that “gets it” and is laying the groundwork to become a dominant player.

The biggest thing we struggle with is trying to break people out of the mold that good software must be purchased. People have the expectation that software comes in shrink-wrapped boxes with a DVD and a license key, and anything else is just wrong. In much the same way, Warner Bros. thinks that having early access to the physical media is important to a consumer’s buying decision.

Now the streaming service provided by Netflix does not compare with, say, the quality of a Blu-ray disk, but are you willing to bet against it getting close in the near future? In much the same way, OpenNMS is not a complete replacement for suites like OpenView or Tivoli today, but with large improvements year over year it will be. My guess is that companies that understand open source today will be the dominant players in the software markets of tomorrow.