Apple is regaining a place of central importance in the technology world that it hasn't held since the 1970s.
For decades, it was easy to dismiss Apple as a niche vendor of overpriced boutique systems – nice systems, but not mainstream, and certainly not viable targets for most development projects. But that view is obsolete. Apple's dominance of mobile platforms, and its ability to leverage that dominance across the laptop and desktop markets, make the company a formidable force in our field. And, increasingly, a magnet for development efforts.
Here's what's new at Apple:
2011 iOS sales surpass 28 years of cumulative Mac sales. A Finnish market analyst named Horace Dediu, who blogs at asymco.com, plucked some statistics from a presentation made by Apple CEO Tim Cook at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco last week. The really interesting conclusion is that Apple sold more iOS-based devices in 2011 than it sold Macintosh computers, ever. It's an astonishing accomplishment, and I think it's something developers should be thinking carefully about. You can read the transcript of Cook's presentation here and Dediu's short analysis – which includes a killer chart – here.
iOS apps are quietly acquiring and storing user data. Apple is the latest company to get stung by this sort of problem. It turns out that a bunch of the most popular apps in Apples App Store upload user data – including the user's entire contact list – to the software vendors' servers. The vendors hang on to this information indefinitely. The public outcry has been intense, and members of Congress are questioning Apple about the apps. This kind of bad behavior is already prohibited by Apple policy. iOS apps are supposed to notify users that their data will be uploaded and ask for permission. But vendors have not always observed the policy. Apple says it will address this issue, but no one really knows what that means. It could issue a statement to the development community, it could police the App Store more strictly, or it could modify APIs to require that permissions are acquired (and that data is encrypted before transmission). There's a pretty good article about this at Ars Technica.
OS X Mountain Lion will include iOS features. Apple is readying the next version of its OS X operating system for the Mac. Like all recent releases, it is based on the NextStep OS Apple acquired when it bought Steve Jobs's Next Computing and restored Jobs to Apple's top job. But the new version of the OS will apparently include a bundle of programs ported from iOS, including Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, Notification Center, Spare Sheets, OS-wide Twitter integration, and AirPlay Mirroring. Many of the apps will allow synching between OS X and iOS devices. Registered Mac developers can download Mountain Lion now.
Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper feature generates controversy. Apple has built a controversial feature into the new version of OS X. Gatekeeper is a “security feature” that, in its default configuration, prevents users from installing apps unless the apps come from Apple's App Store or a certified OS X developer. Users who wish to install other applications – those written by members of the IT department, say – must override Gatekeeper's default settings. It's one more way Apple is trying to isolate and maintain control over its users.
New iPad(s) to be introduced in early March. Rumor-mongers – including the Wall Street Journal – are predicting that Apple will introduce at least one new iPad in the coming weeks. The consensus is that the iPad 3 will have LTE support for 4G connectivity. Apple may also introduce a lower-priced version of the iPad with an eight-inch screen, perhaps to steal sales away from Amazon's Kindle Fire.
A labor rights activist group will audit Apple's manufacturing facilities in China. As you know from my previous posts, Apple is receiving lots of criticism for low pay, bad working conditions, and terrible living standards at the Chinese companies that manufacture, assemble, and package its hardware. (The same companies also work for other high-tech firms, but Apple has taken the brunt of the criticism because its connections with the Chinese firms have been widely publicized.) The most widely known of the Chinese companies is called Foxconn. Apple responded to the criticism by asking the Fair Labor Association to conduct an audit of its Chinese partners. Meanwhile, Foxconn has raised its workers' hourly wages, which were already high by Chinese standards. The Fair Labor Association's CEO has conducted a preliminary visit to Foxconn, and told reporters, “We're finding tons of issues.”
New CEO changes Apple culture in at least one tangible way. Under Steve Jobs, Apple was notoriously stingy when it came to charitable giving. Tim Cook appears to be changing that. One of the new CEO's first actions was to establish a matching program for employees' charitable donations, under which Apple will match employees' donations dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000 per year. In a recent companywide address, Cook detailed corporate level giving, including $50 to Stanford's hospitals and another $50 million to Project RED.
There's plenty more news. Apple has posted a new getting started guide for iOS on its Web site for developers, the iOS Developer Library. And every day brings more news regarding patent lawsuits, both those directed toward Apple and those initiated by Apple and directed toward others. The iPad is legally banned in some Asian locales because judges have ruled that the name infringes on a Hong Kong company's trademark, but it appears that Apple jumped through all the right hoops when it acquired the trademark a few years ago. And much much more.
Keep hacking.
Web recommendation: Long before the Agile Manifesto was written, Mark Twain was advocating Agile principles – or so say the troublemakers at Agile Scout, a site that mixes occasional humor with serious news about Agile development. J.D. says check it out.
J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He has been studying the field of business intelligence and has come to think this technology has real promise.