The iPhone SDK – Apple’s Trojan Horse to build an army of Mac developers?

Well I’m not sure how much this figured into the Apple’s plans when the released the iPhone SDK but one of the interesting benefits that Apple will get out of all this interest in developing iPhone apps is a signficantly expanded Mac developer base. This may have some interesting ramifications for the viability of MAC as a mainstream platform.

Let me explain – despite all the new conventional wisdom about the the web being the next operating system, there are still many mainstream computing applications that are run as native client-side code. Consider, word-processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), music player (iTunes), chat (YahooIM, Skype), and P2P (BitTorrent and Kazaa) and gaming are all still run predominantly run as native apps be they Windows or Mac apps. One can still make the case that that health of a platform can be measured by the number of developers it has.

If that is true, the ability for the MAC OS platform to maintain and grow market share will be dependent on the number of OSX developers Apple can bring under its stable.

Luckily the iPhone SDK does just that. You see, the iPhone is essentially a little palm top computer that runs a stripped-down version of Mac OS on a computer with a slower CPU and smaller memory. iPhone developers will write iPhone apps using the same development language (Objective C), tools (XC0de) and writing against almost all the same API’s (COCOA, Mac OS X and BSD functions) that are needed to write a MAC program. To writ, by learning how to write an iPhone app, you teach yourself how to write an Mac OS app.

The net result – a well trained iPhone developer will automatically know about 85% of what is needed to write an Mac OS app. Given the 100,000 iPhone SDK’s that have been downloaded in the 4 days since it was released and the thousands more can be expected to , how many of those do you think will take a peek next door and try their hand at developing Mac OS X Apps?

Granted I doubt we will see an multi-billion dollar MAC only software company spring from all this. But what we will see is that with a increasing number of trained MAC developers, existing software companies will have a larger pool of talent to port their existing Windows only applications to Mac OS X. This of course kicks starts the fabled “virtuous circle” of network effects we see in technology industry – more programs for Mac means Macs increase their attractiveness mean more MAC users means more programs and so forth.

One other thing is that we should consider is how easily iPhone apps can be ported to MAC. It’s interesting that apps usually start life as a desktop app before migrating to a mobile application. However, with all the VC $$ pouring into iPhone applications (witness KPCB’s $100m iPhone fund), and the fact that users want applications that span all their devices from phones to laptops, it’s not inconceivable to consider the day all those iPhone apps start-ups might offer a desktop version of their product to the MAC OS first just given how easy it would be deliver this. Simply recompile (if even) and go. Do you think an MAC first release might sway folks on the fence about their laptop OS to consider switching? It very well might.

So there you have it. Apple’s iPhone’s SDK as a brilliant strategem to increase the attractiveness and viability of the MAC OS in Apple’s home computing segment – where Apple still earns the majority of its revenues and profits. Apple is already a $110B company with only 2.8% worldwide market share, albeit heavily skewed in more pricey segments of the computer market and in North America.

That iPhone will continue to drive demand synergies for the MAC (Apple is predicting 10M iPhone sales by next year and has already sold 100M iPods) and now supported with an swelling ranks of MAC developers only increase the favorable picture Apple can expect to see in its core business in coming years.

 Appended: I forgot to mention one other thing – the iPhone SDK will power MAC sales.  This is because the SDK (surprise, surprise) only works on a Mac.  Have a windows machine?  You are out of lunch.  So, conservatively assuming even 1/3 of the all iPhone SDK downloaders are Windows switchers, that’s another $36M -$75m in the bank depending on which Mac they get (Let’s say somewhere between a Macbook and a mid-range MacBook pro)…

 

Gumstix: Lego for hard core engineers

To all the robotics nerds, engineers and other geeks already bored with their sets of Mindstorm NXT out there, check out www.GumStix.com. 

They are this crazy company based out of Portola Valley off the 101 that sells – get this – pocket sized Linux computers about the size of pack of chewing gum.  The idea is that these ultra mobile computers can be used as the hardware platform for a new generation of mobile devices be it robots, pocket size computing appliances, do-it-yourself cell phones or even GPS devices.

Wow.  To quote Syndrome, “I’m geeking out.”

Because the underlying system is Linux, developers are able leverage existing Linux expertise and technologies already available in the marketplace.  They sell a variety of add-ons extend the capabilities of the GumStix for a variety of uses including WiFi and Bluetooth modules for connectivity, audio add-on to build the next ipod, flash card slots for additional storage, robotics microcontrollers for integration to drive mechanical devices.  In effect, Gumstix is Lego for grownups with engineering degrees.

Besides appealing to the hobbist segment, GumStix has also targeted a variety of relevant segments including military, education and OEMs.  Talk about crossing the chasm.

Future Prospects

Playing the role of technology marketer, Gumstix has a potentially bright future as the platform of choice for the emerging market of ubiquitious computing devices.  By going after education segment it is essentially training up a whole generation of hardware engineers to build products on its generic mobile device platform. 

Because it is based on open source Linux software and off the shelf hardware components, it current lacks barriers to imitation that would prevent a third party from easily coming in and stealing market share with copy cat offerings.

One way it can create a degree of lock-in and thus some measure of protection from imitators is to develop a GumStix specific integrated development environment (IDE).  Currently customers develop on GumStix using a variety of off the shelf tools and technologies that are not integrated together not optimized for GumStix.

I think an additional barrier to imitation can be created if it can somehow develop a proprietary HW spec that governs how the computer core and add-ons interface with each other.  It can then license the spec to 3rd party add-on manufacturers  (Actually, I don’t know the first thing about hardware so I’m actually taking a wild guess with one here.)

Of course, the whole point of open source is to drop technical barriers to imitation.  And this has not stopped some valuable companies to be created based on open source products such as RedHat (though less valuable as of late).

It can dominate this market simply by leveraging the heck out of its first mover advantage; innovate to take advantage in hardware to continually develop new smaller, lower power, yet power devices; be top of mind in current and future generation of hardware engineers and simply grow with the market being the largest supplier of reliable and easy to integrate mobile computing components in the marketplace. 

It’s still early days in the mobile computing components market.  However you subscribe to the fact that computing will become ubiquitous that more and more everyday objects will have some computing component built into it, it’s a good bet GumStix is going to around to cash in when that happens.

 

The Canadians Strike a Blow Against ‘Net Censorship

In the early days, the Internet was hailed a vehicle that promoted free speech to all citizens of the world, free from censorship of authorities.

Today we know that it is possible to censor the Internet by specifically regulatng where the Internet traffic can enter a country thus creating a natural chokepoint that authorities can filtered.  As an example Wikipedia is heavily censored in China with many pages on censorship and June 4,1989 limited from the eyes of its citizens.

In response the Canadians at the University of Toronto have created a distributed utility, Psiphon.ca, that allows people in the ‘free Internet’ to act as mini routers/proxy servers to routing restricted traffic to folks in the ‘censored Internet’ such as Iran and China.   

Though the technology has been available for a while, what makes this initiative work is that is distributes the actualy deliver of the information to all the citizens of the internet making it difficult for censorship authorities to identify specific IP addresses to ban.  Think of it as P2P technology applied to the problem of censorship.

Combined with a boost of marketing to generate awareness (media converage in New York Times, Wired, Slashdot, etc.)  to get folks to actually use the application and create a critical mass of proxy servers and you get a potent weapon against Internet censorship.

This is initiative gets my vote as savvy use of Internet technology and marketing smarts to forward a socially-conscious objective.  Let’s hope there are more initiatives like this in the future.  Go Canada!