The upside to Apple's control freakishness

Google attracts an ever-growing horde of Android-loving developers. But can Google's developer growth outpace Apple's?

It's not clear, especially as the developer battle spans both client and cloud.

I'm a big fan of Google's open-source approach, but there are signs that Apple's control-all-delete-competitors approach is working and will continue to work. That is unless, of course, Google can effectively counter consumer lust for Apple gadgets with compelling cloud services that tie to a broader range of devices.

Google, while making a lot of progress with Android, has a long road ahead of it. However … Read more

Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

COLUMBIA, S.C.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might agree with The Who that "the kids are alright," but he's unlikely to appreciate their changing taste in programming languages and operating systems. But then, neither will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

After all, according to at the Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking here Thursday at the 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, the rising generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby and PHP than Java or .Net, and increasingly opt to develop and deploy enterprise and Web applications on Linux rather than Windows or Unix.

The beginning of the … Read more

Can Mozilla be bigger than Facebook?

Mozilla has made a name for itself by taking on Microsoft Internet Explorer in the browser market, claiming as much as 30 percent of the global market with its open-source Firefox browser. Mozilla's second act, however, promises to be much more difficult, with increased competition from Microsoft but also from open-source competitors like Google Chrome.

What should Mozilla do next?

"More of the same" probably isn't going to cut it for the open-source foundation. Though Mozilla's progress is admirable (and, in some ways, amazing), it's also "an anomaly," as Mozilla executive Mitchell Baker has opined, … Read more

Are Microsoft Office and OpenOffice irrelevant?

Boy Genius Report has posted screenshots of the new Microsoft Office 11 for Mac, suggesting that it looks "absolutely delicious."

Do you care?

I don't mean that in any anti-Microsoft fashion. I'm just asking, "Do you still care about an office productivity suite?" I mean, in the traditional sense of that product category?

I don't, and I'm not exactly sure when my concern for Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice, for that matter) dissipated. At some point in the last few years, e-mail became my office productivity suite, with a sip here and there … Read more

Microsoft's mobile strategy should learn from Android

Microsoft just closed the door on Firefox development for its new Windows Phone 7 Series. It didn't overtly discriminate against Firefox developers. Instead, it did what we increasingly see platform owners like Apple do:

Microsoft set up rigid development parameters that favor its own technology over alternative approaches.

I don't think Microsoft did this because it's evil. I suspect it simply wants to create an Apple-like experience where everything "just works" because the experience is tightly controlled.

But that doesn't make the decision wise. And it's not actually consistent with Microsoft's past, … Read more

Suddenly the native app is cool again

If the future is cloud-based applications, we still have a long way to go to realize that vision. Ironically, we may actually be getting ever further away from it even as the cloud assumes central importance in the computing landscape.

Running applications in the cloud is an ambitious dream, but one that keeps stumbling against the reality of dedicated, native applications, particularly those running on mobile devices.

This thought struck me while using Facebook. I find the Facebook UI somewhat cluttered and busy on my laptop, but on my iPhone? It's fantastic.

The same is true of other dedicated … Read more

What Apple's and Microsoft's patent threats mean for start-ups

Perhaps retirement doesn't suit former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

Just weeks into his post-Sun life, Schwartz offers some delicious anecdotes in a blog post, summarizing Apple's and Microsoft's threats to sue Sun for patent infringement as more about bluster than substance.

But that's not the lesson I learn from Schwartz's commentary.

Instead, what is immediately obvious to me is that a) the technology industry is a morass of conflicting patent claims, b) since there's really no way to completely avoid others' patents the best defense is to have a hefty counterbalancing patent portfolio … Read more

Microsoft's desktop future may look like a phone

Competition in the personal computer market is heating up, even as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish just what we mean when we talk about a PC. Airline flight attendants seem to be able to discern the difference between mobile phones and personal computers in their in-flight announcements, but the vendors who make and sell them increasingly can't.

It is precisely this fuzziness that offers Google and Apple a chance to get a leg up on Microsoft, but is also why Microsoft may be able to cement its lead.

Google is clear about its aims: it wants to get … Read more

Novell's buyout and its effect on the industry

For years, Novell has served as an odd bargaining chip between Microsoft and enterprises looking to move to Linux.

Novell's Suse Linux distribution, while a distant No. 2 to Red Hat's leading Linux server business, has helped Microsoft keep some measure of control over its open-source competition--or, at least, to keep a close eye on it.

With Novell now up for grabs through a $1.8 billion buy-out offer from Elliott Associates, what is likely to happen to the Linux market, and to Microsoft, if it goes through?

The easy view is that Red Hat will benefit and … Read more