DrunkenBlog

Must be a devil between us

Paul @ Rogue Amoeba, on realizing the supplier for MacWorld (GES) has a website that doesn't work in Safari and completely chokes FireFox:

Fantastic, no? It finally worked in IE (*shudder*), and even after I registered, I was unable to sign in using Safari. You'd think perhaps the company running a large portion of the biggest Macintosh show in the world would have a website that worked in Safari. You'd think.

The first screenshot had me in absolute stitches, only partially from having met him and being able to picture his expression when he saw it...

Chances are if you're a Mac or Linux or Unix user you're often around sites built or tested against them, as there's a sort of self-segregation that occurs. Then you stray into the rest of the world, and your minority status is smacked across your forehead like a brick. It may be general weirdness like the above, or error messages saying your browser isn't supported or pop-ups saying such-and-such plugin isn't supported.

It does seem like I'm forced to fire up Internet Explorer less and less as time goes on, but I've found I get way more annoyed now than I used to when I hit a site and something doesn't work because it's expecting Internet Explorer (or just thinks it needs it). I'm guessing some of this has to do with changing expectations as Safari has improved, as for a good chunk of it's life it's been pretty unreliable even without straying from the Mac and Linux ghettos.

When it was first pushed out, I couldn't use it for 70% of my own sites because it couldn't handle personal SSL certificates, and I know I couldn't use my bank online originally with Safari, then could in Panther, then I couldn't initially Tiger, and now I can again... although its always worked with FireFox or Camino so my guess is the blame goes both ways there, if not directly at Safari. However, I can bank with it right now, and while I like things about other browsers I expect Safari to actually work within the realms of the Mac or Linux web, and we react differently to wonkiness when we half-expect it to fail than when we're expecting it to work.

Unfortunately some marketing people figured that out, and we've been dropped into perpetual-beta land, but that's another rant...

As long as you don't stray far, you can almost forget the feeling that it's now Microsoft's web, and we're just allowed to live in it. One could argue that in choosing to use a Mac or Linux or anything non-standard, one is accepting those concessions as a trade-off and to deal. Actually I'd argue that, but it doesn't change how it feels when it happens.

I, and I think others, keep expecting this to get better, and it has -- to an extent. I read many more blogs now, and those have a habit of being fairly conscious about this sort of thing unless you drop into a dante-ish circle of non-compliance akin to a service like myspace. However, blogs and such aren't a lot of help when you're trying to register a damn hotel reservation.

I know I don't click around in Yahoo, because most of it's community-building stuff is going to be wonky in browsers I use. I'm in and out of Ain't-It-Cool and such as quickly as possible because it whores up the flash, and a combination of flash being poorly optimized for OS X combined with how Quartz deals with that type of media (animated .gif's are up there too) means you'll be chugging.

While it's easy to fire up your ire at Microsoft, remember it didn't take Apple long to start adding in platform-specific "enhancements" once it had its own browser, and there's a reason why they're focusing on the network for widgets. The jobs of those at Apple and Microsoft are to increase shareholder value, and given rhyming positions and circumstances they all have a habit of following similar patterns.

Apple has you locked in with their FairPlay DRM, which means you have no choice but to buy an iPod if you want to take your purchased iTunes song with you, and you have no choice but to use a Mac or Windows machine to use them at all. This doesn't have the user's best interest at heart, and people like Microsoft are quite annoyed at it.

However, you can bet if the situation was reversed they'd be doing precisely what Apple is doing, and Apple would be pimping FairPlay to whatever company wanted it.

After its earlier glossing over, Microsoft latched onto the internet and sunk its hooks deep into the web. While the protocols were primarily open -- it isn't as though HTTP stopped working -- actually experiencing the web is sub-standard on anything but a Windows PC outside of the platform-neutral cubbyholes.

You can't drop into Yahoo and play games or chat, even though it's Java, because it ties its Java into MS technologies. I can't just find an online crossword thing with a friend overseas. When someone pushes you towards their new-uber--myspace-whatever-clone and you can't click what you're supposed to be able to click and all kinds of junk pops up saying you need xyz... The easiest answer is to say you didn't need to see that content anyways, and didn't want access to that content anyways, but you'd be missing the point that while one specific edge-case scenario won't bug you, eventually something will.

That's what's in the best for Microsoft, as if they have the best experience while using the web, it raises the annoyance hurdle for using anything else. It's not best for everyone, including Apple or even someone like Google or Yahoo or AOL, but with Microsoft being the ecosystem of the world's computers they've had to work within it. Google has taken on increasing power and importance, and luckily Google likes FireFox because it's something not under Microsoft's thumb, and that's best for Google as anything under Microsoft's thumb can be twisted to slowly work best with other things Microsoft.

If things work in Firefox, this means Linux and other alternative platforms are taken care of, as that's again what's best for Google for a variety of reasons. If it works in Firefox it can be made to work in Safari, which is great for Apple yet not ideal, because Apple ideally doesn't want a level playing field, it wants a playing field tipped to it's advantage.

Much of the above is remedial, but I'm laying it out there so as to give a look at who's interests aren't represented in the above situation: The user. If the user's interests are looked after, it's a byproduct of wanting users and competitive pressure. However, once they have a suitably dominant position, it's all over for the user and then begins the squeezing.

Theoretically a company could adopt a business strategy of long-term customer loyalty, and adjust its actions accordingly. However, in the current world of meeting or beating the street every quarter, this is a rare thing in a public company that isn't flush with IPO cash and an on-the-rise stock price. Huge Pension Fund Z™ wants to see their investment grow, or their funds go somewhere else.

This is not evil, and it's arguably not even wrong, it's just the ruleset they play in, and within that ruleset a good employee is one who is doing their part to increase shareholder value. If this means going above and beyond to give the user what they want at the price they want, they do so, but if the user is hooked and they can squeeze or coast, they'll do so.

Yes, this sucks when you're filling up at the pump at the moment, but if your mutual fund has invested in Big Oil companies you're not complaining. The tech industry isn't somehow operating outside of basic business fundamentals just because we are personally attached or averse to a brand -- the principles all have corollaries.

Weirdly enough, I can't think of any company's whose interests I have at heart. Consider me selfish, but while there are larger companies I gravitate towards because they've done well by me, I basically have my interests at heart, which then gets extrapolated out to other users. In the end, the only things I'm aware of that have the user's interest at heart are:

• Open protocols

• Open formats

• Open source

Across the board, users always win when things are open. One of the reasons why the underdog in any competition in the tech world pushes for openness and the um... overdog... pushes to up the inconvenience factor is that openness creates options. If the underdog competes well enough, you might actually go with them -- provided it's not to much of a hassle or inconvenience to do so.

Open source is protected legally, and I'm not too worried about it. There are issues around it -- not the least of which are OSS authors not registering their copyrights -- and edge cases where uncool stuff is going to happen. However it's protected by copyright, and Congress loves copyright because the lobbyists love copyright. In the long-term, the popular licenses are so well put together that they make the game work for them. Software patents there are a concern that will come to a head in a big way once the big companies feel the squeeze, but it's a ways off.

Open protocols are always something to have a concern about, because while standards like TCP-IP are somewhat self-correcting, where if you don't play nice no one wants to talk to you, what rides above them can get nasty. As in, without technology akin to SAMBA, which reversed-engineered the Windows networking protocol (mostly) successfully, Mac and Linux and FreeBSD boxes would be a lonely boxes on most networks. This already isn't ideal, and it could get worse, but it doesn't feel immediate.

Open formats are heading for a train wreck, because if you can corrupt the format the previous two lose much of their importance. There are a few things going on here:

• The continued bastardization of what is supposed to be standardized.

  We're sort of a major make-or-break moment when it comes to XML, which was shaping up to be sort of catch-all format for everything. An XML file is defined by a schema, which is sort of a map key as to where things are supposed to be within a file.

  As an example, Apple has published the schema for Keynote presentations, which anyone can download and then know how to deal with Keynote files, and has been moving a lot of their stuff to XML, even when it makes me miss a plain text file. Open Document Format (ODF) is built upon XML and is gaining real traction and mindshare outside of the Mac.

  On a different tact, Microsoft will be moving to XML for Office 12, which many people think is actually very close to cool, yet has enough backdoors that there's no cigar, and it looks like there'll be two competing "standards." (MS's side of it) One of the more worrisome aspects of these formats is that while the schema itself may be open, binary and proprietary data can be contained within them -- it may be limited to ancillary info for now, but in 10 years?

  Patent and legal issues aside, adopted formats can be changed, with slight incompatibilities added as "new features demand them", probably starting as extras -- as it looked as though all of Microsoft Office's accessibility data would only be accessible via Office and stored as proprietary info within the open file.

  While Microsoft is in the hot-seat at the moment, given the opportunity Apple could start doing the equivalent, as their file format is not set in stone. Just remember, the underdog company has to play nice. It's not altruism, it's business, and if the situation changes the behavior is likely to also.

• DRM makes much of the above irrelevant

  Having a document in a format your software knows how to parse does you very little good if the parser is unable to reach the data due to a layer of encryption. To go back to our easy example, lots of devices can decode AAC files, but to be able to play a song from the iTunes Music Store (which is AAC-encoded) one needs to be running iTunes to deal with its DRM which has wrapped the file in an encrypted coating.

  Yes, there are ways to crack it if you're l33t, but it's suitably inconvenient so as not to be a major issue. Right now, one can password-protect a .doc file with easy, setting it so that someone has to open a password to read it, as well as another for editing it.

  DRM layered into the OS routines will make this type of functionality the default -- if more transparent -- and unless someone is running Office (Mac, Windows) it puts the file out of reach. If you're on Windows, this is nothing, as there are a bunch of utilities bundled if you don't own Office that can deal with it. If you're on a Mac and have paid your $400 (or less if you're a student) you can work with the file. However if you're on Linux or haven't paid up for Office on a Mac, you're in tattooed-and-screwed territory.

  A user will be able to spit out a .doc from Office that anyone will be able to read on any platform, however it'll be extra steps to do so, which means files being output in that way will be in the minority, and it won't just be limited to .doc -- it'll be across the board for your .PSDs, JPEGs, music files, home movies, and even just preference files. They'll be tied to you and the platform's DRM by default, which is made all the more dangerous by their being legitimate scenarios where you'd want that. I fear anything so dangerous by default with a ready-made marketing hook.

The ready-made marketing hooks is scary indeed, and one of the things that wigs me out when it comes to the brave-new-DRM-laden world coming our way. I actually know users who wish a computer was more like a console, as it would be: better-tested, less prone to crashing, and have simpler maintenance. They'll be getting their simpler console-ish environment, just not through better testing and coding but rather though lock-down, and then in 10 years they'll be wondering why the computer asks us to kneel before making a request of it.

There's been a lot of to-do around governments, whether state or national around the world, slowly moving towards OSS code and open formats.

Basically, everything should be open. There's even been talk around that there should be a mandate that governments should only be using public dollars towards OSS code, which isn't something I've been swayed one way or the other on. I lean towards like both, and seeing the need for both, and haven't heard a good answer to arguments put out there by people like Joe Marini. I've sort of fallen off the fence when it comes to open formats in a big way though, and have come to think if you're not a proponent of them you are:

• Possibly nutty, and yes, if you aren't an employee or shareholder and value what's best for Apple or Microsoft or Sun or SGI as above what's best for you as a user, let alone other users, you are rounding the horn from fetish to nutjob in my book.

• Protecting some advantage or leverage you don't want to lose.

The problem with open formats is that they have a serious tendency to become less-than-open over time, and just like politics, power has a tendency to corrupt. As mentioned, the company you might rally behind as being pro-xyz will, once it has the power, have a tendency to start abusing it because they aren't pro-xyz, they're pro-shareholder, and your interests and theirs just happened to coincide for a time.

Any real solution has to take into account that the company you like today may be the company you hate tomorrow, and to protect against the companies we haven't seen yet. It's entirely circular, and tiring as it just keeps repeating itself over and over within the same segments (say, word processing formats) and whenever new types of audio and video and such come online.

If the government would mandate that any software they purchase for public use must be based upon -- and interoperate with -- fully open formats, we might actually see the circle made smaller until it's broken. The ideal would be the government seriously getting religion, with even Universities taking Federal funds having to comply.

Closed-source, OSS and platforms would be competing with each other entirely upon merit, and that's certainly within the user's best interest, and to really break the circle it would have to be the whole hog. No bowing to allowing a company to use a license for their formats that is "thought to be compatible", yet contains back-doors in their best interest. Every single format through standards bodies, with legalese so patents -- especially submarine patents -- are made a non-issue. This would also have to include DRM, as using an open format and then wrapping it in encryption creates a new format.

Locked-down formats wouldn't go away, it would just be a powerful incentive away from them if you wanted government dollars in any shape or form. The worrisome niggler here is that much of the movement we've seen towards open formats and open source has been around short-term economic interests instead of long-term ideals. Not all of it has, and a major argument for some of the state governments has long-term storage of publicly-owned data in proprietary formats and what that means decades down the road, and they should be commended. However, the majority has just been simple short-term economic interest.

As OSS software has improved, companies and governments have been looking at also using alternative platforms and software packages because their budgets are being squeezed and -- let's just be blunt -- Office is great software it's incredibly expensive. They own the market, and they squeeze. However, if you switch your tens of thousands of desktops to an Office package that is one quarter of the price, formats become a huge deal and switching packages without switching the format is setting yourself up for nightmare incompatibility scenarios both internally and externally.

Companies know how to deal with short-term economic interest, and it's one of the reasons why Steve Ballmer was flying all over the world sprinkling Office and Windows price-cuts to any government that seemed to be chafing a bit. There's a limit to what can be given away while still turning a profit, but they're not anywhere near that point yet, and it allows them to reset the clock on the migration while they figure out how to make switching either less desirable, whether by competing better on price and performance, making it more inconvenient so it becomes a less attractive scenario or -- and this is the ideal -- a practical impossibility.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    December 19, 2005, at 10:23 AM