A common refrain is that computers are too complicated for ordinary people to use. Yet mostly when I see people sat with a notebook on their lap I don’t see frustration. The confusion tends to come when something doesn’t work as expected. Naturally bad design plays a big part in this but the biggest stumbling block comes when a dialog box like this pops up:

What is an average user to do when confronted with this? Everything after the first line is utter gobbledygook. Even to a software developer much of this is unintelligible — you’d need the source code to get much a clue about what’s going on and most vendors do not share.

So, if almost no-one has a chance of understanding this, why are users asked to make a choice? It’s bad enough that the application crashed but why force the user to make a decision about something they don’t understand?

Worse, let’s remember that this is actually an improvement over what has come before. Remember the “Unrecoverable Application Error” in early versions of Windows?

I was therefore fascinated when I realised what my iPhone was doing. Initially I thought that the software was just very reliable, which was pretty naïve of me.

When an iPhone application crashes you just get returned to the home screen. No nasty error message with impenetrable text and confusing options; often you’re not even aware that anything bad has happened. Behind the scenes the crash is recorded and is reported back to Apple next to you sync with your computer.

It would be easy to conclude that “no error message” is the way to go, however the iPhone has a couple of other qualities that makes it work. Firstly the applications seem to save their state regularly, which means that even if there is a crash you rarely lose anything of significance. Contrast this with most PC application which tend to crash only when you have an hour of unsaved work. Secondly, while not automatic, relaunching the crashed application is almost instant.

The result of these three elements together is that users are not punished for finding defects in the software. Isn’t that the way it should be?

There’s this feeling in the Mac community that you should avoid the first iteration of any new Apple product. Yet back at the beginning of this decade I went out and foolishly put £350 down on a first generation iPod. Sure, it looks clunky now. It’s bigger and lower capacity than the current revisions, has a monochrome screen and the scroll-wheel actually rotates. But for a version one product it was remarkably well rounded.

The same is kind of true of the first generation iPhone. Most complaints have been about missing features like GPS or 3G data. This side of the Atlantic there have been complains about the lack of MMS (which is pretty lame for such an expensive phone). But, for me, the only significant missing feature is a to-do list. Yes, I know I can use the Notes application, but will that sync with iCal? (No in case you didn’t know.)

In fact, Where I Think iPhone Went Wrong is probably not something that will make any list of bullet points on a Jobs Keynote. It’s pretty much a single use-case: one handed operation.

One of the things that really bugged me about Windows Mobile¹ is that almost everything required the use of the stylus. Not only was the stylus small and easy to lose, it requires both hands to operate the phone. Not great when you’re trying to make a call while carrying a latte or juggling several items at the supermarket and calling your significant other for advice on which to purchase.

The iPhone is way better than Windows Mobile in this regard, but there are two areas where it doesn’t work quite so well:

• Multi-touch. Clearly this is a key feature for Apple, and rightly so. The pinch gesture is unique as far as I know, intuitive and works well. But you need two hands! One to hold the phone, the second to swipe the screen. Let’s say you open a graphical email message. The sizing is all wrong of course and you need to zoom in. In addition to the pinch you can also double-tap. Except that’s quite tricky to do with your thumb and half the time you end up accidentally tapping a link and switching over to Safari. What I’d like to see is something like the Photos application. If you’re holding the machine vertically and a landscape image appears you simply rotate the handset. The same trick works with wide web-pages, but not mail messages. Pain.
• Orientation awareness. This is kind of related. Why does Safari know which way you’re holding your phone but mail does not? Worse, except by experience, how can you know which applications support switching orientation and which do not? (You can’t.)

These probably sound like very small points but when everything else works so well they stand out. I don’t think this is really a fundamental problem. It’s just fit-and-finish, that final 10% of software development that takes 90% of the time.

I am hoping that Apple gets around to fixing it soon — I need this much more than the much-hyped and almost due “enterprise” functionality — but if not then the title of this post allows me two follow up posts entitled “Some More of iPhone’s Greatest Mistakes” and “Who is this iPhone Person Anyway?”² I am looking forward to not having to write them.

1. The version with the stylus is, I think, these days known as Windows Mobile Professional. There’s also a version for actual phones rather than PDAs with built in phones that works only using a key-pad. Maybe I chose the wrong WM device.↩
2. This is a reference to Oolon Colluphid’s god-busting trilogy.↩

In a previous post about Internet Service Providers I hinted that their current business model — where it’s possible to download as much as you like when you like — was unsustainable. Since I’ve had a few people asking me about that I thought I’d dig into the subject.

The first question that we need to ask before we get any further is, What does your ISP do? This may look like a silly question at first glance but exactly what data they pass where is the key to understanding how they make (and lose) money.

Unfortunately the answer gets rather complicated very quickly so I’m going to make some assumptions. First I’m going to assume that you’re in the UK. Second, that you’re using ADSL and not cable or something more exotic. And thirdly I’ll assume that your ISP hasn’t “unbundled the local loop.” If you don’t know what this means¹ you can be reasonably sure that the following is, if not correct, then fairly close to the truth.

Let’s look at what happened when you tried to download this web page.

1. The request went from your computer to your router or modem.
2. Your phone line is owned by BT, so they (and not your ISP) pick up the request.
3. BT move your request around the country trying to find the nearest connection to your ISP.
4. BT hands over the request to your ISP.
5. Your ISP does not have direct access to every site on the Internet. Instead they probably pass your request onto another supplier. This is called “peering.”
6. This other supplier actually ends up talking to the machine that this web site is hosted on.

The interesting thing about this is that the bit that your ISP directly controls is actually fairly small. Of course there’s much more to it than I have listed above and it’s clearly an important part, but fairly small nevertheless.

Your ISP pays both BT and the peer for their services. BT get paid both for the number of customers and for the amount of data flowing the over the network. And the peers also charge by the amount of data transferred.

Yet you most likely pay a fixed fee for your Internet connection.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a supplier receiving a fixed payment and paying a variable fee. This happens all the time. For example your mortgage may well be fixed rate even though the rate that your bank pays to borrow the same money is highly variable. And the wholesale price for gas and electricity varies on an hour-by-hour basis yet your tariff only changes once or twice a year.

However, two things have been happening in the consumer Internet connection world.

Firstly usage has been rocketing upwards. An increasing number of people are using high-bandwidth sites such as YouTube and the BBC iPlayer, and services such as movies downloads and iTunes².

On the other side prices have been pushed down, with companies offering free broadband when taken with another service and other ISPs having to respond.

The cost of bandwidth does, of course, drop over time and ISPs are also consolidating which also reduces their overhead, yet I think it’s fair to say that usage is increasing faster than costs are dropping.

Okay, so that’s the problem. What is the solution?

An unrealistic solution, and one I see fairly frequently from the people that tend to download the most, is that the ISPs should just bite the bullet and provide the service that they promised. They said “unlimited” so they should mean unlimited. I have a certain sympathy for this argument, in the sense that it’s a problem that the ISPs have made for themselves. However it should be clear that the numbers just do not add up.

The ISPs are choosing a second option: either selling their users surfing habits to third-parties or billing popular websites for access to their customers. Both seem to be abusing their own customers, and yet there is still no guarantee that these new revenue streams will cover the increasing costs.

It seems to me that the only solution that would work on a large scale is to charge end-users for the bandwidth that they actually use³. This may not be popular in the short-term, but it’s a whole lot better than them limiting what services you can use and when.

1. If you do know what it means any want the hard numbers, have a look on the plus.net blog.↩
2. Some people pin the blame on illegal downloads over peer-to-peer services. I deliberately left that off the list as typical bandwidth usage is drastically increasing even if you exclude infringing activities.↩
3. Of course the most likely scenario would be “bundles” of bandwidth, much as you buy bundles of texts or minutes for your mobile phone.↩

Daniel Jalkut in his recent blog discusses a generally positive review of a useful Mac utility that closes with the suggestion that it “should be free.” The crux of his piece seems to be:

In short, if the product were free as in charity, would the product even exist, and be good enough to mention on MacBreak Weekly, where Leo could wish that it was free?

People have different motivations for making good software¹ but I think it’s fair to say that the most polished software usually has some form of income stream, whether that’s a licence fee, banner adverts or something less direct.

Of course one problem about selling software is piracy, but fortunately Brad Wardell wrote a great blog entry about just that and the effect that it has on his games company:

It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

How, you might ask, is this connected with Jalkut’s argument? Well, the simple truth is that reviewers of your software are not paying customers. Their needs and desires and value judgements are not the same as yours². Of course reviewers can raise the profile of your program but unless it results in more sales and not just more usage of your software then adding features or lowering the price only to please them is a waste of time.

If you want to sell software, your first priority should be keeping your customers happy, not reviewers.

1. Jesper notes his reasons for offering his software for free. His argument makes complete sense but does not invalidate Jalkut’s complaint.↩
2. I’m reminded of the comparative reviews of word processors that you got before there was little alternative to Microsoft Word. No matter how fully featured the program was, disregarding how user-friendly it was and regardless of the quirky or unique innovations it had, no word processor would ever get an unreserved recommendation without a decent word count feature. How many people even use a word count?↩

• Everything you ever wanted to know about "Rickrolling"… - The man who sang "Never gonna give you up," the classic Stock-Aitken-Waterman pop song, makes an unexpected come back. (What's wrong with Debbie Gibson by the way?!)
• Lies and Statistics - Most people in Britain believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Or do they…?
• Our Bad. Wired Had Some Tips For Apple — We Were Wrong. - Fascinating to see how much things have changed in the last ten years.

One of the big technology debates in the US goes by the thrilling title of “Net Neutrality.” In the UK we seem to have skipped this part of the debate and moved on to the next, all without many consumers even knowing that anything has changed. As we’ll see, this does not work out well for many end-users and exposes hypocrisy and dishonesty on the part of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The first question you might be asking is, What is Net Neutrality?

To cut a long story short, this is all about ISPs wanting to prioritise some types of Internet traffic to the detriment of others. At first glance this makes some sense. The ISPs have a finite amount of capacity with which to connect all their users to to the wider Internet. By design, all traffic on the Internet is traditionally considered to be equal. That’s to say that my movie download from iTunes gets the same priority as your video chat and my neighbours web surfing.

Is that fair? You’ll get delays and jitters in your webchat if the performance of your Internet connection isn’t good enough. My neighbour doesn’t have quite the same requirements as you. She doesn’t want to be waiting too long for that page to download, but the odd outlier isn’t going to cause any significant issue. And me, well, my movie is going to take a while to download anyway and I’m not planning on watching it immediately.

Right, so it makes sense for you to get full speed and my connection should be throttled back?

Let’s not be too hasty.

As I understand it, there are two main arguments given against traffic shaping (as it’s called), one technical, the other political. The technical reason is fairly simple: the Internet was designed with the assumption that all traffic was equal and we don’t really know what effect large scale traffic shaping would have. It could be the butterfly flapping its wings in Japan that causes a tornado in Florida.

The political reason is probably why the ISPs really want an end to Net Neutrality: they are not entirely impartial when it comes to deciding which traffic gets priority. These same companies want to sell music and movies and voice over Internet services, so what’s to say that they wouldn’t give their own voice traffic priority over Vonage or Skype?¹

This debate never really happened here in the UK. While the big print in the adverts usually says “Unlimited Downloads!”² the small print typically hints at traffic shaping. I suspect this already affects many people without them knowing about it; they just blame their PC or Bill Gates without realising that the problem is actually further downstream.

But as I hinted back in the first paragraph, in the UK three of the major ISPs are taking one further step: they are planning on selling our surfing habits to a third-party so that they can send us context-sensitive adverts.

It can’t be just me that thinks that this is creepy.

Advertisers love the idea as they can see exactly the sites that everyone³ is visiting and not just those that, for instance, have DoubleClick or Google banners.

In return, consumers get some nebulous “security” protection, details of all their web surfing sent to a third party without their consent and even more adverts⁴.

Where does the hypocrisy come in? Well, recently the UK government suggested that ISPs should police the Internet for copyright infringement. Three offences and your connection is shut-down. These offences, incidentally, seem not to require any legal process or evidence — it’s pretty much the suspicion that seals your fate.

In response to this, the ISPs say:

“ISPs cannot ‘monitor or record’ the nature of the data flowing over their network, argues [the ISPA]. UK data protection laws make deep packet inspection illegal … and even if it wasn’t, complete monitoring is impossible. ‘ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope,’ says the ISPA.”

Hang on!

When they can make money selling those records it’s just fine. And when this transaction hinders their own users experience by flashing up adverts without their permission, that’s also dandy. But when it comes to scanning the traffic for law enforcement purposes then it’s both illegal and impossible?

Being an Internet Service Provider has gone from being an almost glamorous, high margin business in the mid-nineties to one barely above commodity level today. It is, perhaps, no wonder that they are trying every last trick to eke out every last penny, but is selling out their own customers really the best strategy?

1. My parents ISP chose to throttle all P2P software, which may not be a bad choice per se. Unfortunately they also included Skype in this category. I’m not sure whether this was purely an accident or because they are mainly a phone company who are providing “free” broadband and are trying to push people away from VoIP.↩
2. Are people really so gullible as to believe that they can reasonably get unlimited anything? ISPs clearly think so as I am only aware of a few that have bandwidth quotas.↩
3. They are three of the biggest ISPs in the UK. So while this isn’t actually everyone, they cover around two-thirds of British broadband subscribers.↩
4. One of the most creepy parts is that if you opt-out then there is still the possibility that you’re still going to be tracked anyway.↩