No. No, you don’t. You plan a trip, buy tickets, get everything lined up long before you go. It’s been my contention for some time that buying a new computing device – smartphone, tablet/slate or other, is just like taking a trip. Also, unlike years ago where when we bought a computer, it was guaranteed to come with Windows and run all the old apps that for some reason we hang on to like hoarders on a TV show, today’s new devices come with a Baskin-Robbins assortment of operating systems – none of which will run Windows applications as-is (and that’s fine, as long as enough other apps are actually available for the device being considered).

With all due respect to the people of Dubuque, I call the act of buying a device without regard to how you’ll actually use it, “taking a trip to Dubuque“. I have been to Dubuque once, briefly while moving cross-country, but I can’t speak with authority as to the activities that avail themselves there (I’m sure there are some fun and interesting things to do). But having come from a similarly small town in Montana with a less catchy name, Dubuque works better as a destination that you’re going to want to plan for before you arrive, or you might be a little bored.

I was a fan of Microsoft’s Tablet PC platform when it first came on the scene – in fact my main computer at Microsoft for almost two years was a Motion Computing “slate” device (not a convertible, though I did order a Motion USB keyboard too). Unfortunately, my experience was that handwriting recognition, though handy, wasn’t perfect – and with my horrible handwriting, resulted in an archived database of my handwriting, not anything searchable or digitally usable. In essence, OneNote and a few drawing applications ( I didn’t have Photoshop, but surely it would be useful as well) were the only real applications that took advantage of the Tablet PC platform. That hasn’t changed much. Today the main reason why you’d buy a Tablet PC running Windows 7 is for pen input, not broad consumer scenarios (Motion Computing, which still makes great hardware has become soley focused on medical and services for exactly this reason). Though Windows 7 actually does have full multi-touch gesture support, most people don’t even know this, as witnessed during a recent webinar we had at work where people asked when Microsoft would introduce a version of Windows with touch support (they already do!) - and few applications make the most of it. I haven’t tried using Microsoft Office 2010 with a touch-focused PC, but I can’t imagine it being a great fit. Office, to date, is written to be driven via  a mouse (or a stylus, acting as a proxy-driven mouse). Touch requires a very different user interface design.

The iPad was successful from day 1 because it took advantage of the entire stable of iPhone applications, and simply doubled their resolution (to varying success), and used that to cantilever into motivating developers to build iPad optimized applications. No Android slate has established anywhere near the same market, most likely because of this aspect – when you get the device, what do you do with it? Sure. You’ll browse the web and check email. What else? How many consumers really want to pay $800+, plus data plans for a device that can just check email and browse the web? That’s not very viable. Today, HP announced new, pretty good looking all-in-one TouchSmart devices. Though one section of that article mentions them being consumer focused, the article ends with a fizzle, stating the systems are “designed with the ‘hospitality, retail, and health care’ industries in mind”. Yes, that’s right. Without a stable of consumer-focused multi-touch applications, devices like this, as great as they may sound at first glance, become just simple all-in-one PC’s for most, and touch-based only when damned into a career within a vertical industry with one or more in-house applications written just for touch, that they’ll run day in and day out until the device is retired.

It’s quite unfortunate how touch hasn’t taken off in Windows. ISVs don’t write apps because there aren’t enough touch-based Windows computers and no way to monetize to the ease and degree the Apple App Store has enabled, and yet people don’t buy touch-based Windows PCs for the same reason they don’t buy 3D TV’s – it’s a trip to Dubuque. Like most consumers, I’m not going to buy a ticket there until we’ve got some clear plans of what we’re going to do on the trip.

Enter the word, “unlimited”. Really now. Not many things are actually unlimited. Stars and planets exist for a long time, but unlimited? No. The universe goes on for quite a long distance – as a species, we’ll likely never know the answer to the question of, “is the universe finite or infinite” – so even our universe may not be “unlimited”.

I’ve been known to say, “if something advertises itself as being ‘green’, it probably isn’t”. Not always true, but a good rule of thumb to ensure you always question, “is it really?”

In the past two years, we’ve seen AT&T  move from selling tens of millions of iPhones with unlimited data to a new model with a capped 2GB a month, plus overages. You can’t even get unlimited unless you’re grandfathered in under an old unlimited plan. Bear in mind, 2GB is a LOT of data for most consumers to burn through in 30 days on a phone (even a really smart one), and I have to work really hard to try and bust through the 2GB cap in order to self-validate having the retained unlimited plan.

Verizon? Yeah – they have unlimited for the new iPhone – but that is just to lure people like me away, and will end in time.

I noticed Mozy, the popular online backup utility, ended their unlimited backup plan.

I’ve noticed a growing trend of seeing “unlimited” as a loss leader to get people hooked into a subscription product, only to see the model change at a later date. I’m not necessarily calling this a bait-and-switch, since many companies handle the transition well, grandfathering in the early subscribers who usually led to the services economics no longer making sense, as their demand on the service exceeded the supply that was within plan. But it is troubling to see so many companies throwing out the word “unlimited” as marketing bait only to lure you back in to a constrained model at a later date.

The reality is, unlimited isn’t unlimited – almost every service or product I can think of grows to the point where unlimited is actually available for a limited time only.

“We are very excited about the full set of partners for the next version of Windows.
NVidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are working on SoC designs based on the ARM architecture.
Intel and AMD will continue to innovate on the x86 platform, including the new low-powered SoC systems that will be fully supported by Windows and will include support for native x86 applications.”

To paraphrase the above, x86-based SoC systems will of course include x86 application support, but new ARM-based SoC systems will not provide any emulation support for native x86 applications. Applications and device drivers will have to be recompiled and/or rewritten to run on Windows on ARM.

This is very significant, as it is both a pro and a con. The pro is that legacy x86 applications not optimized for gesture won’t likely cross into ARM, and new applications will likely be written that both take advantage of the ARM processor, end-user scenarios anticipated for the device (not sitting at a keyboard using a mouse, running Lotus 1-2-3), and be designed for the small/mobile form factors we can anticipate. The con is of course that application compatibility is what made Windows what it is today – most major applications make the leap from version to version of Windows,  and Microsoft makes a concerted effort to ensure legacy application compatibility. If you have an ancient x86 app for Windows 7 that you love, it may not be waiting for you (but a new version or an entirely new app may be) when you get there. This is uncharted territory for Microsoft. I can recall major burps Windows has hit along the way – 95 (loss of some 16-bit apps and many devices), ME (loss of real-mode DOS apps, XP (loss of many more DOS apps and many devices), Vista (mostly loss of devices). But this will be the most major hiccup I can think of in terms of application compatibility. Honestly, I feel that is a mixed bag, and Windows on ARM shouldn’t be noted as a “it’s a stupid idea because…” as I think a new generation of apps, designed for the form factor, CPU, scenarios, and end-user needs will be far more valuable to Microsoft than 20 year old applications that don’t need any of the new functionality delivered by systems using the ARM SoC architecture. Another significant benefit to excluding emulation support for x86 on ARM is operating system size. In order to support x86 applications with an emulation layer, the operating system would likely need to be nearly twice the size of an ARM-only version.

As I alluded to yesterday, Windows on ARM is step 1 of 4 to building computers (tablet/slate or other) that can compete with the iPad. This first step is significant – but it shouldn’t be touted as a move that will make a Windows PC on ARM an immediate alternative/equivalent for a consumer considering an iPad or other ARM-based slate or ARM-based notebook. To do that, Microsoft has to do the three additional steps, below.

1. Natively support Windows on the ARM (or low-powered x86 SoC) processor architecture (including streamlining the OS to minimize background services and processes that blow CPU time/battery life)
2. Emphasize gesture-based APIs as an equal mode of interaction with Windows vs. mouse/stylus
3. Work with OEM partners to come up with system designs that are feature/value competitive, unique, and that consumers fall in love with
4. Evangelize and enable an ecosystem of gesture-based applications and games before the platform arrives

Windows NT, upon which all full versions of Windows today are based, was designed from day one to be a “portable” architecture. Though the Intel x86 (and the architecturally derived 64-bit AMD64/x64 platform) has always been and continues to be the principal architecture supported by Windows, it didn’t start out that way (the first architecture supported by NT wasn’t x86 – it was the Intel i860 RISC processor – explicitly to force a portable architecture).

Throughout it’s life, NT has supported quite a few non x86 architectures – but in the end, every one has been deprecated – even the Intel Itanium (IA64) architecture is now end-of-lifed – leaving x86 and it’s descendant x64 as the sole Windows architectures. Again.

It is surely possible that the Windows codebase could be ported to support the ARM architecture. But let’s stop for a second and asses what Windows on ARM would really mean. Assume Microsoft released a version of Windows 7 (say at the same time as Service Pack 2) or it simultaneously shipped Windows 8 for ARM at the same time it shipped for x86/x64 in the assumed Q4CY2012 timeframe. What would Microsoft really gain?

As many people say Microsoft should port ARM to Windows, I think it’s important to note what Microsoft would and would not gain by adding support for ARM. This list is not perfect, it is comprised of some fact and some opinion, and I welcome your feedback and will tune it accordingly. But I believe anyone saying, “Microsoft needs to port Windows to ARM” should carefully consider this maneuver. Microsoft has never sustained Windows on any platform besides x86. What would make Windows on ARM succeed where others have failed?

Truths of Windows on ARM

• Windows on ARM is possible. TRUE – Microsoft has ported the Windows codebase to RISC architectures before, and could surely do it again. The low power constraints of ARM provide a unique challenge, but it could be done. See the next point though; this is only part of the battle.
• Windows applications could be ported to ARM. TRUE – Though key applications and APIs are designed explicitly for the x86 or x64 architecture, it would not be insurmountable to port them to ARM – again, this still isn’t the most significant problem facing Microsoft to provide an iPad counterpoint – gesture-based navigation and low power consumption are.
• Windows on ARM could provide a desktop platform as well as a tablet platform. TRUE – certainly Windows optimized for tablets could run on desktops as well, and would likely provide a great thin client platform (as Windows CE and now Windows Embedded Compact have done for some time). Touch enablement may not be as logical here, though and a focus on thin clients would risk mindshare and potentially marketshare of Office users unless an ARM-based, gesture-focused version of Office was also available.

Fallacies of Windows on ARM

• Windows on ARM will provide a counter to the iPad. FALSE (technically) – Architecturally porting Windows is step one. Gesture-enabling the entire operating system and providing gesture-focused development APIs are step two. OEMs must then provide devices as compelling as or more compelling than the iPad, at a competitive price and with reasonable non-WiFi connectivity options (see the recent $100 Galaxy Tab price drop for an example here). Simultaneously, Microsoft would need to nurture an ISV application ecosystem in a way they have not in some time, and with urgency they haven’t really ever done – all while not randomizing the Windows Phone 7 platform or ISV ecosystem.
• Windows applications and games will work on Windows on ARM. FALSE – no way. Windows has used legacy application compatibility as a cantilever to induce upgrades from one version to the next. Not only is that not possible in this scenario, it becomes a liability. Every aspect of Windows and any application would need to assume that there may never be a mouse or physical keyboard attached to the system, and must focus on gesture-based navigation at all times – if it is to provide a true counterpoint to iOS. In addition, Microsoft would need to provide Flash and Silverlight for this platform, or full HTML5 in the browser in order to enable multimedia playback. If Microsoft included a full Flash runtime, it would need to be gesture enabled as well, and would likely encounter power consumption and/or performance issues. Android and other ARM-based platforms running Flash have been criticized for high power consumption, as have full Windows systems running on single-core Atom processors (simultaneously criticized for their performance – resulting in the need for dual-core Atom processors).
• Windows on ARM provides a significantly better solution than a gesture-enabled Windows running on Atom. False – though a power-optimized, gesture-enabled Windows with API support is hardly trivial – it is an easier task than porting Windows, and would result in legacy applications working – though that is potentially a detriment, not a benefit.
• Windows on ARM provides a significantly better solution than Windows CE or a “Windows Tablet 7” derived from Windows Phone 7 would. FALSE – Windows Phone 7 has shipped, and will be updated throughout 2011. It is gesture-enabled now, runs on ARM processors today, and supports gesture-enabled application development. Though no legacy x86 applications would be supported (I believe this actually to be a net benefit), it would be considerably easier to derive a Tablet/slate focused version from Windows Phone 7 than porting Windows.
• Devices for Windows would work with Windows on ARM. FALSE – no devices would make the shift. Though this has traditionally been a detriment to Windows (lack of application and device driver support precluded Windows XP for x64 from being widely adopted) this would actually be a net benefit if considering a competitor to iOS. You don’t want mice. You don’t want legacy keyboard, display drivers, or game controllers. Those are baggage. In a gesture-enabled Windows, the cut line needs to be clear, or customers won’t understand, and OEMs won’t “go big” with new platforms.

Recently I discussed three devices that today may not seem terribly similar. However, I believe that in the next 1-2 years, you will see these three devices, and the three companies behind them, going head to head.

• Microsoft – Xbox 360
• Apple – Apple TV
• Google – Google TV

At first glance, you’re probably shaking your head saying maybe the last two have some things in common. But compare them deeper using the appendix provided below, and you’ll see the devices aren’t terribly different – and will be meeting in the middle over the coming year or two.

In the end, all three platforms provide, or could/will provide 1) Media content, 2) Applications, and 3) Games. All become “diversion in a box”. Microsoft’s is predisposed as a gaming device, Apple’s as an iTunes consumption device, and Google’s, seemingly focused on attempting to integrate the web into the television (to a content-provider limited end at this point).

There is an important differentiation I want to make here – consoles, generally, are social devices. So is the Apple TV and most content on Google TV. However I believe that there are two types of applications on consoles/media boxes – single user and multiple user.

Twitter and Facebook, though often touted as “TV Applications”, aren’t. Your Twitter feed is yours – how interesting is it to your family, really. Same with much of your Facebook feed – especially where school or work meets family. MLB At Bat on the other hand? Generally pretty multiple user – as much so as live TV of the same event would be. Many games or applications on the iPhone/iPod Touch won’t port well to an Apple TV environment – for example note-taking applications or Mahjongg, which are generally solitary applications. Instead, the applications I believe will be successful on these types of devices are social ones. Imagine a multi-user Angry Birds with iDevices (or Androids for Google TV users) as Wii-like motion-sensing remotes, or also look  at games such as Pinball Remote, which uses an iDevice for a controller and a Mac for the display – replace the Mac with an Apple TV and a television – same concept.

As Kinect moves Microsoft more into the casual games market (to date the happy spot for the Wii), the announced apps market does the same for Google TV, and a potential App Store would for Apple TV, it’s not hard to see these devices going head to head to become the center of your family room – providing you content, multi-user games, and social applications.

Appendix:

Xbox 360:

• Primary role: Gaming device
• Price: $199-$399, based upon storage and inclusion of Kinect
• Controller: Proprietary gaming controllers, optional proprietary entertainment remote, Kinect gesture controller
• Third-party applications: Games only, though limited “applications” have been made available (Twitter, Facebook). I anticipate this may change by 2012.
• Content sources: Zune – subscription based music, rental based video, or purchase of music/video, Media Center PC streaming, U-verse, Netflix.
• Live TV: Yes – Either as a Media Center Extender streaming from a Windows Media Center PC, or if you are an AT&T U-verse subscriber, it can also serve as a secondary head unit.
• Special functionality: Gaming console, U-verse secondary box, Windows Media Center Extender
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, cost, may not appeal to non-gamers.

Apple TV:

• Primary role: Media pass-through device
• Price: $99
• Controller: Simple proprietary remote or comprehensive iPhone/iPod Touch Remote application.
• Third-party applications: Not yet, and not announced. Anticipated in Q3CY11.
• Content sources: iTunes store – rental based video, sharing/AirPlay from iTunes on a Mac or PC, AirPlay from iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, Netflix, YouTube.
• Live TV: No
• Special functionality: Significant content rental availability, AirPlay streaming from iDevices, streaming from iTunes.
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, no content purchase from device, no music purchase from device (regressions from prior version).

Google TV:

• Primary role: Media pass-through device
• Price: $229 and up
• Controller: Most offer full-QWERTY keyboard controller, Android/iPhone remote application available as well.
• Third-party applications: Limited third party applications included. No marketplace for others yet, but announced. Anticipated in Q1CY11.
• Content sources: Live TV routed through device, but only for DISH Network subscribers, streaming video from web (if allowed by site provider – a problem to date) or Netflix or Amazon VOD.
• Live TV: Yes – DISH Network only.
• Special functionality: Web browser with Flash support, content search, key applications such as Pandora integrated in.
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, cost, complexity, lack of content at the present time (artificially constrained by content providers).

Product: Mobile maps (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, any other mobile device)
Problem: When looking up directions to a destination – why not provide parking resources too?
Proposed solution: You’re looking up directions to a theatre, pub, or some other venue that you want to go to – and almost any mapping software can get you there. But if you’re traveling to any densely populated area, such as downtown in a major city, a theme park, or other major destination – getting you there is only half of the battle. Where do you park?

1. When looking up directions you should be able to specify include parking as an option, or set it as the default for your mapping product.
2. Type in the destination.
3. Click Route
4. The directions include steps to get you to the destination by offering you nearby parking, which you can select and then be offered walking/bus/transit directions to get to your destination.
5. Bonus points:
   1. Easy: Include options to categorize available parking by type:
      1. Street|Lot|Garage
      2. Free|Pay
      3. Cash|Credit
   2. Harder: Include pricing information
   3. Hardest: Include availability, and even offer the option to reserve a space using a credit card/Paypal.

Next time you go to a restaurant or concert, and you find parking a challenge, listen to the feedback around you – you’re not alone. I’ve noticed it’s a common thread that people have difficulty finding parking near their destination.

Name: Route builder
Product: Mobile maps (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, any other mobile device)
Problem: When you need to run three errands, why can you only put in one destination?
Proposed solution: Say you need to go to Target, your Chase bank branch, and a Hallmark store. Sure, if you’re in your home town, or going to stores you always use, it would be limited in use. But when going to stores, parks, or other destinations you dont normally visit or when travelling to other cities, it would be useful.

1. Click Build Route
2. Type in each of the destinations. I envision a spot for a single destination, with a + to append additional destinations.
3. Click Route
4. Route builder finds the most efficient route to visit all three of those destinations.
5. Bonus points:
   1. I should be able to tell my mapping app my home address, work address, and add addresses of family members by way of the address book, allowing me to use them as a destination (or if I’m at one of them, the source).
   2. With any route, the user should be able to specify that they want to complete a round trip to their current location. In doing so, the route could be optimized either by the order I need or want to visit them, or by the most efficient route.
   3. I should be able to save a route for access later if I want to.
   4. This could easily be modified to append additional destinations after you’re on your way to destination 1.

As an iPhone owner, I’ve often wished for this functionality in the iPhone’s built in Maps application – and I doubt I’m alone.

One of the most common questions I’ve heard about Chrome OS is, “Why? Google already has an OS. It’s Android.”

Recall Google’s mission statement:

To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Noble goal, and seemingly altruistic. But at the end of the day, Google makes revenue not from web searches, but through advertising displayed on the results of those searches. In short, every moment of face time you give Google or one of their web properties is an opportunity for ad revenue for them. In addition to being smart about search results, Google is smart in that ads are only served to you if they stand some chance of being relevant (cynically, one could say, “some chance of monetization” instead).

The more time you spend online, ideally having something to do with Google’s properties, the happier Google is (because they have a better chance of monetizing you). People expected that Google would have a hissyfit because telcos are bastardizing Android instead of shipping it in the “pure” form offered by Google in the form(s) of the Nexus One and Nexus S. Google hasn’t. Why would they? Unlike Apple and Microsoft, their imperative isn’t the purity of the platform. It’s that more users are online, and more often than not, by being connected directly to Google’s services. Apple will only sell you their mobile OS if you buy their device, Microsoft requires manufacturers to pay royalties for Windows Phone 7, as they did with Windows Mobile. Google? Android is completely free for manufacturers to use. Because that’s not where Google sees, or gets, value in the transaction.

Think for a second – effectively every product Google makes is dedicated to getting you, or keeping you, on the Internet. The Chrome browser isn’t setting speed records because Google cares about you in a deep, meaningful way. It’s to make the time you use on the web, and on your computer, so painless and effortless that it becomes the way you always do things. Google’s true mission statement could to some degree actually be reduced down to:

To become your conduit and guide to everything, via the Internet.

Though both based upon a Linux kernel, Android and Chrome OS are totally different. Android uses packaged binaries and some web applications. Android is a great mobile platform, and I think it will wind up adapting well to be a strong tablet competitor to the iPad, and continue to pull ahead of the iPhone in net sales, if Google’s partners realize that that is what their competition is. Google doesn’t care. It’s not about devices in hands. It’s about traffic coming from those devices. It’s about more people using their Android or iPhone on the road. Android is mobile devices, today. It’s the here and now, optimized for mobile devices.

Early in 2009, Google first mentioned Chrome OS – immediate confusion set in. Why? What is this? What about Android? How can you beat Microsoft at the desktop game? Cynics abound when it comes to Chrome OS – and frankly I’m still on the fence – Google has a lot of really gory technical work, and some huge barriers of entry. But Chrome OS isn’t about now, about displacing Windows immediately. Chrome OS is tomorrow, it’s tabula rasa. It’s about 3 years. It’s about 5 years.

Chrome OS takes the huge bet that everything you need to do can be done in the web browser - and for a lot of consumers and some knowledge workers, that’s true today, even if you have to include Flash to do it. Don’t believe me? Watch this (rather pedantic) Google video “introducing” Chrome OS. It’s about appealing to the cadres of consumers who use Windows to connect to the Internet, search the Web, send email, print documents and pictures, and get directions to the new restaurant. It’s about doing the same thing to the home computer that Apple and Google have done to the phone – turning it into an always-on appliance that just so happens to really, really want you to spend all of your time in Google’s browser, connecting to their services. Odds are, if you’re reading this post, you’re potentially not a logical customer for Chrome OS, unless you’re already “all-in” Google’s cloud (or other Internet-only services) with little or no dependency on local software. Geeks everywhere note that Chrome OS won’t be able to play their legacy games or run Photoshop. That is true – but it’s also a red herring. Not every consumer runs hardcore games (if they did, everything Dell sells would look like a gaming rig) and not every consumer edits (let alone digitally stores) their own photos. Note that if you think Chrome OS is insane in it’s approach, you should consider the RIM PlayBook and it’s AIR-based UX insane too – it’s got the same long race to run in order to win (realistically the iPhone and iPad did too – they started with no apps or extensibility at all).

Success with Chrome OS to Google looks like more and more consumers having an always-on connection, straight to Google, and enterprises where Google gets revenue by providing cloud services that also keep users always on the Internet, always in a browser. Some have even theorized that Google might subsidize Chrome OS systems (especially to consumers) in order to build a market. It might be an interesting loss leader, but it would be a huge gamble – but they’ve done that before. Google also has considerable work left before next year to add device support, so consumers can plug in some level of peripheral devices (cameras, etc) and use them in concert with the device. Like many pundits, I believe this is one of the largest challenges that Google will face with Chrome OS, and it’s significant.

So is it a two horse race? Sure it is! Because Google doesn’t care which horse wins. They’re not even in that race, but they’ve bet on almost every horse in it – they get revenue regardless, unless someone can beat them at search. It’s the same reason why Google has free food and snacks all over campus, and almost any employee at an Apple store can serve as your cashier – anything that keeps you from breaking out of the thread you’re in keeps you on that thread driving it to completion, and in Google’s case, usually drives regular monetization.

Take a look at the timeline below, including some gratuitous guesses (in gray) I’ve taken as to when I see future major versions of Chrome OS and Android shipping (I see minor updates in between the major versions of each released in 2011 and 2012, of course):

Many have said that the iPad killed the netbook, and there’s no market left for Chrome OS – they can’t – they don’t even know the price yet. If Google delivers a device under $250, it’s in a totally different market than the iPad, with reliability and affordability that Google on Tuesday seemed to say Windows netbooks can’t deliver, and with better usability and extensibility than I believe Linux netbooks can deliver. Chrome OS is in it’s own market – and unless Apple retains and drops the price of the current iPad, they’ll continue to be in different markets. The Chrome Web Store delivers “apps” that will work in Chrome – whether it’s in Chrome OS or Chrome on a Windows or Mac system. Over time, expect a growing number of “applications” (rich web pages in HTML 5 or Flash) that work in Chrome. I would be surprised if Google does not deliver apps for Chrome on Android with “Honeycomb” (3.0) anticipated in early 2011 (rumored to be more Tablet-friendly than Android to date). With that, convergence of some sorts begins.

In time, Chrome OS will have to extend some local functionality – but nobody, including Google, knows how much. In the meantime, it’s a starting point, while Android can provide for a different market, and will likely grow more and more “Web app” friendly. I don’t see 1:1 parity (with one “horse” going away) anytime soon, or perhaps ever, but if “application” (web app) developers step up to the plate and build applications for Chrome OS and then Android, it makes both platforms stronger. Android is such an immense platform that, if Google does tablet-optimize it and create a Web app store as well, they create a great network effect that will pull app vendors into extending Chrome OS as well.

Since the original Xbox shipped almost 9 years ago, Microsoft has been fighting a war for the family room, in order to be the hub of your entertainment (gaming, and to a degree, larger) world. They’ve also thrown down several other gauntlets. Microsoft’s efforts to break in to the “last mile” of video for some time resulted in the Windows CE-based UltimateTV platform used by DirectTV (discontinued in 2002 amidst aggressive competition) and now providing the Mediaroom platform used by AT&T U-verse and Deutsche Telekom, among others, which has recently added the ability to view live content on the Xbox 360 as if it was a native receiver and use Windows Phone 7 to schedule or view recorded content.

Windows XP Media Center Edition (“MCE”) really began the process of Microsoft exploring the family room with their own “standalone” platform beyond the Xbox, albeit on traditional OEM PC’s decked out with TV Tuners, high-end video cards (and significant HDD space and RAM). MCE was initially a special version of XP that honestly only the geekiest, most Windows-centric videophile could stay in love with – I was in love with it for awhile – until the system began misbehaving and costing me recordings – reminding me that PC’s aren’t appliances. MCE was complete with it’s own thin clients (Media Center Extenders or “MCXs”, including the Xbox 360). A platform that puts a Windows PC at the heart of your entertainment world isn’t something most consumers were willing to buy into, and the irony is that MCXs were created to let you move your MCE system back out of the family room into an office or other location – so even if MCE was to be your entertainment hub, it was to be relegated to somewhere less thermally and acoustically challenging than a stack of dedicated A/V equipment. Devices that acted solely as Media Center Extender devices were short-lived and now no longer exist – the Xbox 360 remains the sole “extender” available, and was the only one ever able to view HD-quality content.

Even with a software development API that allowed integration into the Media Center Edition user interface, there was never any vibrant third-party application ecosystem for Media Center in the manner that there is for the iPhone or Android devices. In true Microsoft form, the focus was on providing a content platform – at best, a user-experience – to the standard consumption of “dumb tv” content*. Microsoft provides applications and platforms – that’s what they do. Media Center functionality remains available, and is included as a component of many versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Interestingly, the original MCX form factor from Linksys (also white-labeled by HP) were dead-silent solid state devices not unlike the new generation of Apple TV hardware (MCXs ran Windows CE whereas the Apple TV runs iOS – the latter is effectively an 8GB iPod Touch with no accelerometer or display) – though extenders were designed in a form factor that blended in with A/V hardware, versus the Apple TV’s diminutive size that hides well but frankly looks odd tucked into (onto?) a stack of components. MCX systems though, were dumb terminals with limited local CPU. Using a technically impressive “mashup” of sorts with RDP (Microsoft’s Remote Desktop protocol) and QoS-managed streaming video to a small transparent window on the RDP display, MCX systems gave the illusion that you were running the Media Center experience locally. But critically, this thin-client approach resulted in a platform that cannot support locally installed applications. To my knowledge, the Xbox 360 uses the same thin client approach as a MCX, but of course has a much more robust platform locally that is used to develop games – a derivative of which has been used for development of applications and games on Windows Phone 7.

Apple TV units began shipping last month. Google has now shown hardware from Sony and Logitech running their Google TV platform. At this point, Apple TV appears to be largely about consuming any iTunes content that you already have, or using it to stream rented iTunes or Netflix content or  kiosk (Apple’s objective being getting you to consume media content). Unsurprisingly, Google TV will be largely focused on consuming web content and making other content easily searchable (Google’s objective being ad revenue on the way to helping you find what you want), as well as helping you navigate recorded content and programming schedules. Though for now it appears that there will be limited exposure to data mining of TV viewing habits while using Google TV, it will surely become part of their exercise in organizing the world’s information. In it’s first incarnation, Google TV will be delivering a narrow portfolio of built-in applications, and Google has announced a broader plan to provide for an open app ecosystem not unlike that for Android phones.

Given the fact that Apple TV is in essence a current generation iPod Touch, running iOS, it is all but certain that there will be a similar app story for the Apple TV platform – especially taking into account that Apple put out the original iPhone with no app platform, but rectified that not long afterwards. I’m not privy to Apple’s internal planning, but while it’s got a horribly absent third-party app story now, I’ve got a theory about what an Apple TV app platform could possibly bring with it that could make it truly a game changer. I’ll shortly follow up with my next post discussing the coming war for the family room. A war which will have three familiar players (perhaps not the three you’re thinking of), considerable opportunity, and an amazing set of possibilities for new consumer functionality.

*When I say “dumb TV”, I mean wrapping classic broadcast content up in a pretty, time-shiftable candy shell. MCE is effectively a DVR that can also play back music, movies, and photos. The alternative is creating either a platform that consumes licensed content (a-la iTunes) at the benefit of the consumer in order to avoid watching ads by paying for the content explicitly, or the option I expect Google to execute, which will focus on making the advertising more dynamic/custom – in time. After all, Apple is now a content company, and Google is an advertising company.

On Slashdot today, an article covered my friends from F-Secure discussing the barriers that are precluding the antivirus industry from making inroads in protecting iPhones from malware.

Indeed, they are correct, you cannot build A/V into the iPhone platform – the API is explicitly designed to forbid that. However, I have to counterpoint. I mentioned in a tweet several days ago:

“The constraints keeping security s/w from diving deeper into the iPhone platform are the same ones precluding any need for them.”

Yes, you read that right. I’m saying that the iPhone doesn’t need antivirus. Instead, Apple’s bigger problem is the lack of a mature platform management solution for the iPhone. Let me show you why.

When I went to Winternals, we rapidly discovered a giant chasm in security as Mark and I discussed how UAC (LUA at the time) would fall far short of creating a security boundary for Windows Vista (and continues to do so for Windows 7). The chasm is the latency between these steps:

1. Exploit is identified
2. Malware is authored and released
3. Malware spreads
4. Malware is identified
5. Malware can be contained

You see, the flaw is that step 4 has to exist at all.

The fundamental flaw is blacklisting. Instead of fighting the good (but intractable) fight trying to identify all of the bad code, whitelisting relies on the premise that only known good, known trusted, code can start at all.

At Winternals, we created Protection Manager to respond to this hole in the security market. The key goals of the product were to only let known trusted code run, and to optionally run it with least privilege. In 2006, Microsoft acquired Winternals and, regrettably, discontinued the Protection Manager product. While Windows 7 features AppLocker, which theoretically applies whitelisting to Software Restriction Policies, I believe AppLocker has some fundamental shortcomings that I’ll discuss in a future post. Some aspects of Protection Manager, most notably the premise that a Digital Signature (code signing) is the best way of authenticating that code is:

1. From a trusted source and
2. Not been tampered with since publication

After Winternals, I worked on whitelisting again at CoreTrace, where the Bouncer product evolved to also recognize the importance of Digital Signatures, as one of the sources of Trusted Change. Only known trusted code is allowed to execute first off, and only code with specific properties is allowed to enable new code to be added to the whitelist.

Today, you hear mention all over the Internet of the rickrolling iPhone worm. Many have mimicked the code created on a whim by Ashley Towns, the worm’s creator. But the fundamental issue here isn’t the iPhone’s susceptibility to malware. Nope. Not at all.

You see, all existing worms that have compromised the iPhone rely on the fact that the iPhone must be both jailbroken and it must then have SSH installed, with an unmodified root password. Both qualify as best of breed “worst practices” from a security perspective.

In fact, those of us who haven’t jailbroken our iPhones (not arguing the ethics of that – that’s a separate conversation for another time) were not, and are not, susceptible at all. Why? Because the iPhone infrastructure as defined by Apple utilizes whitelisting. Only applications signed by software vendors that Apple has authorized (and that have signed the code) are ever countersigned by Apple and pushed through the App Store to be downloaded for purchase. Similar, but not as restrictive, constraints exist for Apple’s Enterprise program for application publishing.

To date, I have not seen any published malware that runs on an iPhone that has not been jailbroken or otherwise forced to run unsigned code (see Law #1 in the 10 Immutable Laws of Security. Any hack that does ever do so will rely on somehow compromising the signature infrastructure used for application publishing on the iPhone by Apple.

You may recall my original point – that the problem was the lack of enterprise management software of the iPhone itself. At CoreTrace, we were approached by an organization we were already working with that was realizing the growing number of Macs – and of even more concerning, the number of “rogue” iPhones (phones brought in by employees, and connected to the local wireless network and/or Exchange Server without IT ownership at any level).

The more we dug into it and researched, including the limited analysis necessary of the iPhone API and two fun, but largely circular conversations with Apple in Cupertino, the more we realized that they weren’t asking for, nor could we deliver (at least on non-jailbroken hardware) any form of “Bouncer for iPhone”.

Instead of security, the problem posed to an enterprise admin by the iPhone is that as an organization, you don’t need to control what is running on your iPhones from a “bad code” perspective, rather that the iPhone needs hardcore, Apple provided (and secured) management in order to control how “renegade” the devices themselves are. That means the ability to:

1. Prevent connectivity of jailbroken hardware to an organization (Exchange, wireless, Bluetooth, or other)
2. Prevent jailbreaking of connected hardware (or sever connectivity at a hardware level when it occurs)
3. Explicitly control which Apple or Enterprise published applications can be downloaded or run on connected iPhones (don’t allow games, allow only these 10 applications, etc)
4. Explicitly control the iPhone’s software image, configuration, and settings (much as Group Policy can do with Microsoft Windows systems) – NOT trying to reverse engineer how images get pushed out in a decentralized way via iTunes itself
5. Explicitly control how applications can access any PII on the device or in documents (GPS location, email addresses, address book or call history info, etc)
6. Explicitly control document DRM on the platform as IRM/RMS can do for Microsoft Office and Windows

Today (even following those conversations with Apple), KACE is the only vendor I’m aware of that performs any aspect of this kind of work, besides Apple’s weak Configuration Utility. KACE’s is very comprehensive – but both approaches suffer from the fact that they are after the fact management solutions, not built into the hardware and software of the iPhone itself.

From the time that I was at Microsoft, I kept hearing more and more “security experts” talk about how the impending doomsday was coming for handhelds. It still hasn’t really come. I believe that through their native use of whitelisting, Apple has fended this threat off for the foreseeable future for the iPhone platform. Instead, I believe that the biggest problem facing the iPhone isn’t “potential attackers” – there will be plenty of those – but their chance of success is very low.

Instead, it is the iPhone’s impending success eating into the enterprise market from the bottom up that is the problem. The lack of an enterprise management solution that is built into the deepest aspects of the system will not preclude the iPhone’s success at building up a rogue enterprise following. But it will both leave a bad taste in the mouth of the IT admins fighting the good fight to try and keep their organizations secure, and potentially introduce some bad compliance-related headaches in organizations already struggling to keep/retain compliance, due to the lack of DRM and platform control over the device itself and any information on it.

Apple itself needs to come to terms that the iPhone (and the Mac platform itself, frankly) need proper security and policy management at the lowest levels, or de-emphasize their viability as an enterprise platform on both counts.

Sorry for the length of this post – but this topic has been burning in me for a bit – I needed to get it all down for the record.