This week’s activity in the tech sector seems guided by the rest of the economy, as the world holds its collective breath while waiting for the other, or any, shoe to drop. The presidential race seems to have stabilized with a significant if not conclusive lead for Obama. Apple announced refreshes of its laptop line, Microsoft sold off its Silverlight 2.0 news in advance of the PDC, and pictures and videos of the Gphone surfaced.
The Silverlight press conference produced a few interesting factoids, including the news that Silverlight penetration has reached 1 in 4 households after the launch at the Olympics and subsequent coverage of the Democratic National Convention. I asked Scott Guthrie how Chrome, Android, and iPhone support was coming, and got back: progress, optimism, and fuggetaboutit. Some subtle hints about data caching capabilities, forthcoming application announcements, and Silverlight code serving dual purpose within both browser and desktop code suggest Guthrie’s role within the company is continuing to expand.
Apple’s conservative approach to the so-called Netbook segment comes as no surprise. Each new announcement seems to roll up the last’s technological progress, which today centered on the MacBook Air’s build process being ported up and down the MacBook line. More forward-looking was the continued integration of Tim Cook and other executives into the presentation, with Cook in an increasingly active posture including some of the Jobsian humor long reserved for the boss. The net effect was of orderly consolidation of Apple’s transformation into the dominant architecture of the mobile Net.
The thread that ties so much of what’s visible of the tech iceberg together is the success, or difficulty, of managing the flow from old to new guard in the Cloud era. Age is really not a factor, as Jobs is signaling by changing Apple’s rhythm from Big Bang to continuous partial innovation. Microsoft is struggling not with the technology so much as the challenges of messaging, essaying the transition from structured to unstructured media so personified by the Twitter phenomenon.
And then there’s Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz, who broke a several-year moratorium on conversations with me with an intriguing new open source announcement. Whatever you think of the business model, certainly Schwartz continues to be a trailblazer in the leveraging of social media fundamentals.
Steve,
I like this.. it’s all about small steps forward… so if you are on a path to fail, at least you fail quickly.. ;-)
I guess it takes the Suns, IBMs, and Oracles of the enterprise world a while to acknowledge social media and the rest of the revolution. Though IBM, to its credit, seems to be pretty active. E.g., their “Employee-Centered Social Media” initiatives and the “Bluehouse” (https://bluehouse.lotus.com/) thing. I signed up for Bluehouse, will see where they take it.
Aahahaha :) Excellent video
The dominant architecture of the mobile Net won’t include Silverlight? I thought Silverlight *was* the future of mobile architectures?? Or was that Mesh? Nevermind.
Hahaha! Too funny - well done Steve!
Thanks for the video…classic and reminiscent of the follies in the Muppet Show. This is a nice way to illustrate the challenges in innovation, which is usually incremental because phenomenal “big bang” innovation is really difficult, unless you are basically creating an entirely newly, never-before-addressed market. Sun is an odd duck. Sun suggests that open source offerings will lead to a higher propensity to buy Sun’s hardware products. But they are also challenged because “free” also lowers the barriers to entry for their competitors in similar markets, and you’re not earning any money. On the production side, there is just way too much reliance on the good will of content creators to develop a strong product. Also, free doesn’t create brand loyalty, and as Apple has demonstrated in the consumer iPhone market: you can create expensive, high value products that people are willing to buy.
Clara comments are lucid. Open Source is an elegant concept. The challenge was in execution and in the definition of “free”.
Sun is one of the nicest company to work for, if we can keep alive our jobs. Open Source must be adapted by (1) not leaving the probability of profits in the hands of developers and content creators only, (2) sell branded services and branded utilities instead as selling the products themselves. How? I think the sale of branded software products will diminish and we all use Cloud Computing Services to “emanate” services , just as the Sun emanates light. In forum like this, it takes a few minutes to state ideas. Jonathan has great ideas. What it is need a clever, seductive, for profit, implementation of Services. Google, Yahoo, etc did it for day to day apps. Sun is perhaps best equipped to deliver the services in Enterprise Applications and High Performance computing, sparing customers of the enormous headache of setting up complex, complicated, one of kind data center monsters gobbling money and people. I am amazed how no one in the industry has not noticed this valuable potential of Sun.
Steve,
You’ve earned my admiration… It’s OPEN SOURCE
It’s sad to watch Sun die before us.
Will the technology business be a better with or without Sun.
I think worse off without Sun, so sad..
I think I could’ve handled the video if it was about 1/2 or 1/3 the length.
Beyond that it gave me a headache and I was sorry I’d watched for more than a minute.