Future Trends For Media Delivery - Where will RunRev Be?

[Richard Gaskin]

Sivakatirswami wrote:

> A bit OT here, but I like to query the group on future trends from time 
> to time just to sound the waters, ""blue sky" "what do you think about 
> it" ...

> The general sense is (and it is already happening) that users want to 
> download a digital "product" and read it off line.

In the short term offline modes for applications will remain important, 
since the 'net is approaching ubiquity but still some years from 
actually being so.

The role of the browser will continue to grow, but even Google 
recognizes that it lives as part of the desktop and has announced that 
they'll be delivering a new desktop OS to do all the things that just 
don't make sense within the confines of that one application's windows.

For these reasons I see continued healthy growth for desktop 
applications in addition to web apps; Google Earth, Widgets, Gadgets, 
and millions of other apps benefit from providing environments 
thoroughly dedicated to specific tasks, as I wrote a few days ago in a 
post with tips on integrating Internet connectivity in standalones:
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2009-July/126152.html>


>  Or download a PDF, print it locally and read it physically, away
> from their computers.

We offer print-on-demand manuals for many of the products I manage. 
Each year we get fewer and fewer takers.

As screens get easier on the eye, recycled pixels are the future: more 
cost effective and greener than dead trees.


> Now we have also
> 
>  iPhone apps
>  Kindle
>  Sony Ebook Reader
> 
> So where this all appear to be headed is that not only will print media 
> "sales" drop, but also page views of the web via a browser on a PC, will 
> fall off, while downloads of digital "products" that  can be accessed 
> "locally"  will rise -- printed, or read or used on a small device that 
> does not carry the big foot print of a Person Computer Where Even A 
> LapTop Has A Big Foot Print and Price Tag....

There's huge growth in the netbooks sector, and I would expect that to 
continue as a logical mid-point between a heavy laptop and a tiny 
smartphone.

I suspect this will change within just a few years with heads-up 
displays, eyeglasses-mounted units with much larger apparent "screens".

Right now much of the cost and most of the weight and power consumption 
of handheld devices comes from the built-in display, and yet even the 
best of them are smaller than the smallest laptop screen you can buy, 
requiring new work habits for the user and radical redesign for 
developers who had just become accustomed to screen resolutions getting 
ever larger.

As with railroads, the benefits of standardization in most large systems 
far outweigh what few gains there are from being unique.  Man-made 
macrosystems have a natural tendency toward standardization, or at least 
seamless interoperability,

I see the differentiation of handhelds, netbooks, and laptops dissolving 
over the next few years as heads-up displays allow small devices to get 
smaller and cheaper while allowing users and developers to enjoy a 
larger screen.


> So, while the new Revolution plug in is really super/hot and I can't 
> wait to create things for it... Where will RunRev/stackware/xTalk be as 
> a player in the field of digital products for small devices?

This is one area where interoperability has been notoriously slow and 
more often completely nonexistent:  OS APIs.

We Rev folk -- able to use a single API for the most part to deliver to 
netbooks, laptops, and servers -- don't have to deal with the harsh 
realities of life under the hood.  But it's a mess down there: 
handhelds have their own APIs which differ from even the same vendor's 
desktop APIs, and even though all major OSes compile to the Intel 
instruction set none of them allow you to write once and run anywhere. 
Except of course Java, Rev, and a few others which have chosen to 
virtualize the APIs by providing a higher-level "glue" which takes care 
of the OS-specific details.

Given the investment OS vendors have in making their APIs incompatible 
with others, I don't know what will become of this.  But in the meantime 
it bodes well for very-high-level multi-OS languages like Rev's.


> I envision some little gadget that has a complete Linux OS running on it 
> that fits in the palm of your hand and can access the internet. You 
> download little RunRev standalones and  use them in your "gadget" for 
> all I know this is already happening and will roll over us before we 
> know it.
...
> But the ultimate would be a full OS without contraints... our vision 
> being very biased by the not-so-unconscious wish to be able to run 
> RunRev apps on this futuristic device.

It's not just us Rev folk.  I think most people would like to just 
continue doing what they do regardless of the device they're doing it 
on, but at this very early stage of the Internet Age they're willing to 
accept limitations and incompatibilities in exchange for portability.

Netbooks fill a nice niche between the limitations of handhelds and the 
bulk of a full laptop, and while Apple publicly keeps their cards close 
it's been noted that they've placed a large order for 10" screens for 
delivery in Q3:
<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/11/apple_orders_10_inch_touchscreens_for_mystery_product.html>

The Wall Street Journal suggests this new device is Steve Jobs' pet project:
<http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/12/steve-jobs-is-back-hell-lead-apples-netbook-efforts-says-wsj/>

Netbooks aren't the answer for the handheld market, but will play an 
increasingly strong role in this transition toward heads-up displays 
over the next few years.

IIRC, various Asus netbook models were the #1, #3 and #9 bestselling 
laptops at Amazon for several months running.  Apple's forthcoming entry 
into this market will help legitimize such a choice beyond the early 
adopter segment.

Amazon's Kindle is an interesting in this context:  on the one hand it 
would seem to also help validate the market for the netbook/tablet form 
factor, but as essentially a single-app device it raises the question, 
"Why not just buy a netbook and run everything for the same price, 
weight, and size?"  After all, it's not like there aren't options for 
buying and downloading ebooks for PCs.

For this reason I suspect the Kindle will either morph into a more 
generalized netbook, or be left behind within a couple years.


>  yet, if the substance of their reference material is "digital" (since 
> we will no longer be using ink on paper and burning oil shipping books 
> around the world...) then how will they be interacting with it, if not 
> on a laptop? And will RunRev be there?

It can be, but with developers increasingly migrating toward open source 
systems I believe the long-term strategy for RunRev may be best served 
by considering a FOSS model.  It need not happen now, nor even next 
year, but unless the trend reverses itself there may come a point where 
even free systems which are sole-source proprietary technologies will 
eventually be struggling.

That said, I don't think it's as simple as Eric Raymond describes in his 
paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".  It will take some consideration 
to discover and implement a sound FOSS model which raises RunRev's 
profitability.

But they won't be alone:

> p.s. Anyone know what Kindle uses to run it's ebooks?

I don't, but I'm willing to bet it's a variant of Linux.

The recession's abatement will be slow, and even when we enter the next 
boom phase there will still be a cost-consciousness driving most markets 
for years to come, requiring vendors to accept slimmer margins as even 
Apple has begun doing in spite of their history of having an uncommonly 
dedicated base and the largest margins in the industry.

One of the benefits of Linux is its cost.  It adds zero to the cost of 
any laptop bundling it, reducing the consumer price by about $100 
without affecting manufacturer margins.

That is, unless the manufacturer is also an OS vendor.

Since Microsoft makes proprietary OSes but makes no computers 
themselves, they are especially vulnerable.  Their marketshare is in 
slow decline for many reasons already, and I expect them to drop below 
50% within five or maybe 10 years at the outside.

How Apple might work through such a transition is unknowable, but at 
least they make good hardware to subsidize OS development.

And fortunately for both Apple and Microsoft, Linux is currently 
hampered by severe usability and marketability issues, limiting consumer 
adoption even as it dominates servers.

As a subscriber to the GNOME usability list (see 
<http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability>), I've been impressed 
by their methodologies and the advances they've made.  But those 
methodologies are slow, perhaps for much of the same reason as the MC 
IDE's development is slow: it's no reflection on Klaus Major's excellent 
work keeping it up to date, but to keep its user base happy radical 
revision requires a sort of committee process which simply takes time. 
GNOME is no different, and has orders of magnitude more stakeholders so 
it takes orders of magnitude more time. :)

Ubuntu and other distros have taken Linux a long way from a past in 
which it had only geek appeal to being suitable for many mainstream 
users.  But desktop adoption has slowed in the last couple years, and it 
remains the fastest-growing OS only because it started out so far behind.

But all that said, the limitations of Linux for desktop dominance are 
relatively minor compared to its technical strenghts, flexibility, and 
truly unbeatable price.  These limitations can be solved with relative 
ease through organizational/methodological changes only; the underlying 
technology is quite sound.

With the extreme cost-consciousness of netbooks there's been a renewed 
interest in Linux, with several distros dedicated for netbook use.

While this means a lot of work for RunRev, it bodes well for us Rev 
developers:  as new markets continue to favor Linux, RunRev will be 
increasingly motivated to enhance their Linux engine.  Currently Linux 
represents what I guess is a very slender percentage of sales, but over 
time its importance to developers will grow very strongly, and to meet 
that demand the Rev Linux engine will have to become a high priority.


That's my $0.04 worth.  Your mileage may vary; contents may settle 
during shipping; objects may be larger than they appear in the mirror.


To make this lengthy post hopefully worth reading, I'll leave with this tip:

WSVGA ("Wide Super Video Graphics Adapter") is the most popular screen 
type for netbooks, with a resolution of 1024x600.  While the resolution 
of the forthcoming Apple devices has yet to be known, with a 10" screen 
size it seems likely they'll also be using WSVGA; almost certainly 
nothing lower.

For application designers this affords us almost all the flexibility we 
have with deploying to a target of 1024x768, requiring only that we be a 
little more forgiving of shorter heights.  Allowing our windows to 
resize as short as 600px lets us deploy well to desktops, laptops, and 
the growing netbook market.

I'm in the middle of major upgrades to most of our products, and all of 
them are being designed to accommodate 600px minimum heights gracefully. 
  It wasn't that long ago that 800x600 was the plausible minimum so it's 
not too different from how we've been designing anyway, and helps ensure 
our apps will be useful additions to the netbook user's workflow along 
with every other computer user.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com