Ones and Zeros

It’s curious.  In a world becoming more and more open-source and using more and more open-source software (OSS) Apple is thriving being proprietary.  They are using OSS in some areas, and are participating in open source projects as well.  WebKit in their Safari browser is one major example.  Yet much of their core system software is and will remain proprietary.

Certainly they’re successful.  Measured in name recognition, units sold, $20 billion plus of cash in the bank, or stock price they’re clearly a major force.  (I wish I still had my stock grant from my employee days!)

The argument in open source circles is that a proprietary effort like Apple’s will always fail in the long run when compared to open source.  IBM became a major driver of Linux, Microsoft has felt the pinch more and more, and even the federal government and DoD are proponents of Linux and open source software.  How is Apple not merely surviving, but thriving being proprietary?

I think it’s two fold.  First, while Apple is using open source software, they’re just using it where it’s not a key part of their company’s added value.  Second, they are using their proprietary software in an integrated ecosystem of software systems that all work together.  This provides a “user experience” that enough customers value over Apple’s competitors.

By leveraging open-source software (OSS) in non-key areas Apple frees up engineers and effort on their key proprietary areas.  This is a no-brainer.  Yet many companies fail to do this.  Apple’s using Mach UNIX as their base OS on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad avoiding rewriting the OS.  They spend their efforts writing more complex layers on top of the OS to provide a richer computing environment.  Better graphics, animation in the UI, richer audio, apps like iPhoto, Aperture, the iWork suite are all enabled by this as a random grab-bag of items.  By comparison Microsoft writes everything - they’re working twice as hard and getting rather less the same result.  Their last several releases have suffered by many measures.  Apple focuses only on writing the software that’s key to their system.

But Apple embraces the proprietary and customers (despite the grumbling about DRM) embrace the Apple products.  MP3 players existed before Apple, but the iPod massively expanded that market to the point where it is dominated by Apple.  Smart phones and smart phone apps existed before the iPhone,  but Apple’s remade that market as well.  Through these innovations they’ve fostered the development of things like podcasting, and created a whole new developer market for iPhone apps.

I believe they key to their success in proprietary software is that they’re creating a very well integrated software ecosystem.  Having an iPod is richer with iTunes, they enhance each other.  You get used to this, then find the iPhone works very well with iTunes too. It’s a natural upgrade path.  The lack of the involved setup and configuration necessary with many Windows software systems helps tremedously.  the Mac systems just feel right, things fit well.  The Windows seems clunky, a moved window isn’t refreshed smoothly - it’s the little things that make a system feel like it is working well.

It’s an ignored truism in software that customers just want to get something useful done.  It’s geeks like me that want to spend their time messing with software.  Yet even I want to focus on the things I want to play with - not the boring configuration & setup stuff on the way.  The Mac/iPhone software ecosystem allows me to do that.

This singular focus on how things feel and work smoothly comes, I believe, from Steve Jobs.  Certainly Apple is much larger that Jobs and all employees are important to Apple’s overall success.  But the leader stamps a personality on the company.  Jobs is famously driven a high standard of usability.  His equally famous control on information and access allows Apple to work on something till they’re happy with it and not be bound by a schedule to they are ready to release.

That’s a key point.  In engineering it’s said that there are three things: schedule, quality, and features.  You can control two, but the third must flex.  If Apple drives quality and features, then schedule must be flexible.  Their control on public information allows that.

So a way for companies to compete against OSS is to use their proprietary work to provide a smoothly integrated environment, a software ecosystem.  OSS efforts have a hard time with this since the level of coordination and interaction required is high.   Most OSS efforts (barring Linux itself perhaps) are smaller and more loose.  The weak point of current OSS projects is their democracy and openness.

(Note: I’m a proponent of OSS and have contributed to OSS projects.  I used OSS daily in my work. But I find it interesting that Apple’s been contrarian and successful in their proprietary efforts.  That probably isn’t a universal solution for companies facing OSS competition though.  Most companies can’t maintain the high standards of quality necessary the Apple solution.)

I’ve been studying safety analysis and process lately and I saw this item about the Washington DC metro:

A team of independent safety inspectors was nearly hit last month by a Metro train that appeared to be traveling at full speed and making no attempt to slow, as required by agency rules.

Wow, way to go; that’s how to impress those safety experts!  There’s a history of track worker injury and death with the Metro, and the article says there’s some history of antagonism between train operators and track workers.  I have no idea of the issues there - the article doesn’t go into that depth. But clearly the track workers get the short end of that stick.

Safety issues seem to be largely system issues.  Safety problems are caused less by single problems but by a set of things happening together in just the wrong combination.  In aviation that’s usually taught as the chain of errors leading to an accident.  Or sometimes as the swiss-cheese shield against errors - where the holes line up an error can get through.

But then there’s the obvious single problem here - slow down in a work area!

It’s been a pretty good while now, and my posting was getting sparse before that.  Despite the news with health care, various items of note in economics, and more recently a guy with a bomb in his pants I’ve not been around.

My day job has been occupying a very large portion of my time for the last three or four months.  In engineering project work it’s not uncommon to have a “push” where long hours are required.  This is usually a week or two, occasionally as much as a month.  Three months is not common and was due to budget shrinkage with no work shrinkage, I’m supremely glad that’s over.

There are plenty of other people doing year-end retrospectives; let’s look forward here in a few areas.

Economy:  It won’t be getting better for many of us.  If your idea of economy = Wall Street, you’ll probably be ok for a while at least.  But Wall Street can’t be isolated from the real world forever.  The hangover in the lack of jobs and the consequent poor consumer spending will affect us for some years yet.  The stimulus helped, but it was too small.  It will also be years before the housing bubble is resolved as housing is comparatively illiquid.  In short 2010 will be a lot like 2009 without some of the higher drama perhaps.

Politics: What can I say here?  The GOP is against everything and for nothing.  The Dems are trying to keep everyone happy - a losing game - and ended up with a weak and watered down health care bill.  The next year looks like the same: the GOP will continue to be the party of the irrational tantrum and the Dems will continue to ignore the progressives that got them elected.  Lawrence Lessig is right.  Without reforming the election process, there is no progress.

Aviation: For me 2010 won’t bring a new rating as it did last year.  (Unless my company funds it, which is very unlikely.) In a less self-centered view, I’m told that all the GA aviation companies are focusing on glass panel instruments now.  The AOPA show in Tampa had very few people that were pushing round dials.  So expect the technology revolution in aviation to continue and to probably accelerate into new areas. The FAA is continuing to move toward a GPS-based nav system.  The little problem of single points of failure is dictating some sort of backup.  But GPS and WAAS is the way they’re going.

Technology: It seems like Apple may kick off their tablet computer early in 2010.  Google will follow with theirs of course. They’re both planning to remake computing as  we know it again.  They’ll probably both succeed in some way too.  It’ll be a big year.  The “maker” movement will continue to pick up steam and is an outgrowth of open source tech.  This is a good thing and offers hope for future technical growth.  The risks in tech are the ongoing dilution of privacy and security for our information.  I’m more concerned about out government and our companies misusing information about me that I am with terrorism.  The former is infinitely more common.

If we can survive the economy and the political battles of officials who’ve forgotten how they were elected, we’ll be ok.  I do believe things are getting better over the long run.  It is hard to see that long run on a day-to-day basis sometimes.  Keep the faith, and may your new year be a good year for you.

I spend my working days analyzing, designing, writing, and testing software.  But I’m not a software programmer, I’m an engineer.  Just like a writer isn’t a typist, I’m not a programmer.  A writer’s job is to communicate effectively, not to type.  But typing on a keyboard is what a writer does when working. Programming is a tool I use in my job to create software, but the goal is to make the software to fit a given need.

Just don’t call me a programmer, my title is software engineer.  Just wanted to get that straight.