I bought a G5 at the SouthPark (really) Apple store a couple of days before the Intel version came on the market. I'd driven there (some 85 miles) because my laptop had gracelessly expired in the middle of a project. When the guy at the Genius Bar (sneer not) who worked on it for nearly two hours (no charge) couldn't fix it (but he did get the data off, bless him), a new Mac was in order (which explains the idiocy of buying a new system with Macworld about to start). Needless to say, I quickly found myself with what felt like a brand-new dinosaur. It took me three weeks to call the Apple Store, and about one minute of conversation with the fellow who answered to realize I was out of the return period and out of luck. Except I wasn't. Without my even asking, he graciously offered two more days to repack the system and bring it on up. Which I did.

Then I lost the rebate receipts. Called the store and a new set arrived two days later.

This has long been my experience in dealing with Apple (20 years' or so worth) - and one of the chief reasons I never buy anything but.

In contrast are my conversations today with the folks at Sprint. Having a few weeks ago called customer service to be sure that my contract had expired (the customer service rep assured me it had), I switched to another cell carrier. Imagine the surprise when a bill arrives this morning with cancellation charges. The customer-service rep I spoke with this morning - and her manager - said the first customer-service rep was mistaken, there is a contract, and about those cancellation charges? Too bad.

I may sound cranky but I'm not alone here, as reviews on my3cents.com (here's another) and an article in The Detroit News show.

What's the moral? That technology is only part of what you're buying. The ongoing element is apt to be the vendor's customer-service policies. If the customer is an afterthought, even the best technology (which in my experience Sprint's is not) is apt to prove inadequate. No mass-market company can afford to be high-handed with customers - especially if it wants to keep them or maybe get them back in the future. Those unhappy customers are apt to talk - or blog.

Those people at Apple's SouthPark store could give lessons. - zander

Protection of intellectual property is one of the bugaboos of high tech. But at the same time that companies and individuals are making progress in discouraging would-be cyberthieves, here comes the European Commission (European!!) throwing Microsoft to the mat. Microsoft, to comply with a 2004 ruling that it was violating antitrust laws, is in the position of having to license portions of its source code to competitors. That’s like . . . What? The sixth-grade bully who would leave you alone only if you handed over your crayon box.

Is there another industry that has to put up with this nonsense? Can you imagine Mr. Toyota turning over some chapters from his quality-assurance manual to Mr. Ford? It’s fun to bash Microsoft—as a confirmed Apple-ite since the mid-80s, I know I enjoy it—but you have to wonder what the broader effect on technical innovation will be. Microsoft played an essential role in putting a desktop on every desk—i.e., in bringing technology to the masses (sorry, Mr. Jobs, and yes, it should have been you). We’re not at the end of the technological road. But we may be ending the incentives to follow it. - zander

Bill Gates says the world is changing (again), so we had all better be ready. A report from Deloitte says that convergence is upon us, this time for real. EE Times reports that the number of “big�? IPTV networks is expected to grow eightfold over the next four years (isn’t it fun to forecast growth multiples of small numbers?).

These breathless announcements are very reminiscent of the late 90’s, so much so that it is very tempting to mark them up to bubble nostalgia. One difference is that there really is communications bandwidth to support the claims, as opposed to the earlier time when companies were writing checks that their networks couldn’t cash.

It is certainly technically possible for each of these things to come to pass. Google is already building the network-centric applications that Microsoft is describing. Devices that can fulfill multiple duties can certainly be built. IPTV can exist even on today’s networks by trickling shows down to big hard drives rather than by streaming in real time, which killed earlier attempts along these lines.

The real question is whether people will buy this stuff. The advertising model that Microsoft describes depends on people accepting intrusions. The last time I tried to watch TV live (rather than through my DVR) I didn’t make it through the first massive commercial break. Converged devices will suffer from overcomplication unless they can build a single use paradigm on top of the multiple technologies. The perils of IPTV are summed up in the fact that there was an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How to Watch TV�? that described how these technologies will work.

The enemy of all of these things is use complexity. Make them easy enough to use and people will try them. Make the learning curve too steep and they will go right back in the trash pile.

Larry Mittag

It’s no secret that embedded systems are becoming more complex, but what is not always evident is the growing degree to which they are driving secondary component markets. A recent EE Times set of charts described the growing influence of embedded systems on hard drive consumption, while another EE Times article argued that flash memory was increasingly driving or being driven by embedded designs. Even secondary components like batteries are increasingly being aligned with embedded systems sales, according to a third piece.

Component vendors have always known that the real volume action is in consumer and business devices, but the headline-grabbing wins for a long time have been in the PC markets. This attention has moved to the game consoles and other embedded systems as they have become more like “real�? computers. In fact, the lack of standardization in these devices has made competition for design wins much more intense. This is good news for device developers, who will enjoy better leverage against suppliers. The increased attention from the media is a nice ego-builder that also serves to fan these flames.

Larry Mittag

There is some angst being expressed around the recently announced reorganization of Microsoft in various segments of the embedded community. One item on msmobiles.com blamed the reorg on Longhorn being late and bemoaned the fact that the shakeup didn’t go deeper into the Windows Mobile management. Several of the outside consultants that have been involved with the embedded efforts at Microsoft are a bit concerned that the group will now be classified with the Xbox division.

There is good news and bad news in this for the embedded group at Microsoft. The good news is that Robbie Bach does seem to understand the CE (meaning Consumer Electronics, not Windows CE) market better than many that have been over the group in the past. Countering that is the bad news, which is the difficulty they will face being taken seriously by the business customers they are targeting in both embedded and their Mobile group. This could be a good time for Linux and other RTOS vendors to start raising some FUD of their own.

Larry Mittag

There are a lot of things happening in CPU design these days. The CPU selections for the next generation of game machines are old news, as is Apple’s conversion to the Intel camp. Now it appears that Intel is finally getting around to trying to kill off their XScale line as they bring out x86 models that finally don’t double as toaster ovens. A report on The Register talks about their plans to converge their architectures in future generations of low-power SoC’s.

This makes sense for Intel if they can really pull it off. They acquired the XScale line when they and Compaq split up DEC, and from what I heard they literally had no idea they were getting it or what they had. While they were trying to figure out what to do with it the design team got lifted out from under them, so there was real question whether they would just drop it. Instead they ran with it, and for quite a while that part of Intel was where the interesting work was being done. All of that has to be irritating Intel’s management, especially when they write royalty checks to ARM.

The questions are, first of all, whether they can pull the technology off. ARM is not just a low-power architecture, it is also fully static and is enjoying an unprecedented amount of support in embedded systems. Even the Single-Board Computer (SBC) vendors are forsaking their legacy PC-based designs and coming out with ARM (especially XScale)-based boards. One of them told me they are trying to make hay before this architecture also becomes commoditized.

The second question is whether designers will accept an x86 in embedded designs, even a low-power one. The major problem besides power has always been that x86 CPUs were too expensive. The only way Intel may be able to garner support in embedded designs may be to cut their profit margins, which may make the entire exercise problematic for them.

Larry Mittag

The hue and cry about outsourcing to India is old news, but we may be quietly entering the next phase of that trend. A small item on the EE Times site noted that India is in the process of opening a technology center in Moscow. A large part of this smacks more of mutual political back-scratching than it does of a major trend, but it is notable nonetheless because it involves India reaching out to technical resources and touting their business acumen.

Eastern Europeans (and Russians in particular) have long been respected for their knack of getting the most out of scarce technical resources. This is also a part of the world that provides technical talent at even cheaper prices than India. This is particularly true given the fact that only about 6% of India’s population is college-educated. This fact is often forgotten in the panic over outsourcing. There are those that conjecture that a relatively fixed percentage of any given population is even capable of advanced engineering work, and the implacable law of supply and demand is at work in India, where turnover has approached 50% per year and salaries are quickly rising for a number of contracting companies. This speaks of a tight labor market, rather than the infinite one it sometimes appears to be.

This leveling still has a way to go, and India still enjoys such a lower cost of living that we shouldn’t expect it to reach parity with the US market anytime soon, but there is something comforting about the fact that in some places the outsourcers are getting outsourced.

The maquiladora manufacturing phenomena of the last decade is a good example of this happening. The factories that were built in Mexico suddenly got quiet when their costs rose above those in China. Many of these Mexican companies have adapted by emphasizing how close they are geographically to the US and concentrating on boutique-style low-volume manufacturing.

The one constant in the world is change.

Larry Mittag

Intel is taking yet another shot at becoming the de facto home media device with their recently-announced Viiv campaign. This has gained new importance for them with all of the attention on the Xbox 360 / Playstation 3 contest to define the next home game machine, which is widely seen as the new generation of the home PC. The fact that both of these contenders are based on PowerPC architectures is surely not lost on Intel.

The press releases are predictably upbeat, but there is a fairly insightful analysis on the Register. They bring up Intel’s dependence on Microsoft’s Media Center Edition, which personally I haven’t been that impressed with. This leaves Intel dependent on a partner that is also betting on another hand – a weak position at best.

It is possible that the Viiv architecture will allow the creation of a series of creative PC-based embedded devices. The emphasis on lower power will certainly make it more attractive than it currently is, but the question is whether the profit margins will be at the levels that Intel demands. The x86 architecture is not as special as it once was. Is Intel thrashing here or are they really defining the future?

Larry Mittag

At pretty much the top of the Internet bubble I remember reading about applications such as a toaster or a microwave oven with a Web browser on it. I remember thinking at the time that there was something very wrong here, that technology had gotten too far away from what real people wanted to do with it.

I got the same feeling recently when I heard about Verizon�s vCast television service on cell phones. I�ve done video on cell phones. I know there are selected niche applications such as security where it makes sense, but I also know that it sucks down batteries very quickly and the quality can be bad. Even when it is at its best I can�t much imagine people staring at their cell phones for very long.

There is some evidence that at least some people agree with me, but in some respects that is not the interesting point here. The interesting part about the bubble was that technologists stretched their imaginations and tried to change the world. Yes, many of their ideas were stupid, and many of them died a well-deserved death later than they should have, but the point was that people weren�t afraid to try. Once the bubble popped I got the feeling that these dreamers stopped dreaming. Since then there has been an explosion of innovative devices, but no one seems to be trying to reinvent the world. When will that swagger start to return in earnest?

Larry Mittag

It is an article of faith among most engineers that R&D is a Good Thing. There has been significant grumbling lately that the U.S. has not been doing enough of this activity, which is going to cause us to lose our lead on the rest of the world and demote us to the status of a third-world debtor nation. This fear has descended on Washington, where our erstwhile leaders have decided that Something Must Be Done. Hence, they have formed a committee to study how they should be studying the problem and in the meantime how they can make it sound like they are doing something really important by releasing pronouncements about what they are doing.

There have been significant results from past R&D efforts. The Internet grew out of early studies funded by DARPA, a number of interesting things came out of NASA, and subsidy of the Bell phone monopoly gave us UNIX. I have to wonder, though, if the R&D process has been left in the dust.

The recent Internet boom happened largely because the idea pantries of numerous companies all got raided at once. Things were changing at Internet speed, with new paradigms being spawned every other week. At some point the whole house of cards fell apart because it was largely built on sand. Since then, we have been reinforcing the foundations and are just now starting to see some of the ideas come to life in a more solid form, one that is ready for prime time.

Right now it seems like there is a dearth of new ideas because we are still working off the creations of the last generation. Behind he scenes research is being done much more effectively using previously unheard-of worldwide leverage. MIT has open-sourced much of its curriculum, a move comparable to the invention of the printing press in terms of how it can spread knowledge to those who can use it.

Is the era of government-sponsored R&D over? Does the future belong to empowered individuals?

Larry Mittag

Bumper sticker seen in Silicon Valley: "Just one more Internet bubble - Please!".

This guy may just get his wish, according to an article in Business 2.0 that declares the coming of the Fifth Wave of computing. According to them, the combination of embedded devices, web services, abundant bandwidth, wireless communications, and open-source software add up to the Next Big Thing.

The immediate response is, of course, "Duh!".

Now that I've got that out of my system we can reflect on the fact that there do seem to be a lot of factors lining up. Investment capital is looking for something to get excited about, there is a lot of dark fiber left over from the last party, and the web services infrastructure is a lot more real than it was the last time we talked about Internet appliances. People also seem to have gotten over stupid ideas like putting browsers on toasters and may be ready for a brand-new round of stupid ideas. There is the lingering feeling that people can't have memories that are that short, but the capacity for self-deception should never be underestimated. Maybe things really will be different this time around... (snicker)

Larry Mittag

Congratulations to NASA for their successful Deep Impact mission, as reported by Scientific American. You have to feel good for the engineers there who have the biggest playground in the universe (because it literally IS the universe) and who finally get the chance to blow something up. The Mars Lander was very cool in an intellectual sort of way, but there is something about whapping a comet up side of its head that really appeals at a gut level.

Yes, I know, the primary mission of NASA is science. There was certainly a generous helping of that involved in the mission, since the resulting explosion exposed matter the composition of which dates back to the early days of our solar system. The complexity of the mission had at least the normal level of complexity for these projects as well. It's easy to underestimate just how hard it is to get such a project off the ground, so to speak.

Again, good job, guys.

Larry Mittag

"Embedded systems will be everywhere", says Ken Sakamura, a University of Tokyo professor in the keynote at the Embedded Systems Expo as reported in an article by EE Times. Is this still news to anyone?

The question is not whether this is going to happen. It already is happening. The question is who is going to control the information. The endgame of this scenario can be anything from a massively cooperative network that enables all of us to be all that we can be to governmental monitoring and oppression that make Orwell's 1984 look tame in comparison. The difficult part is that the same scenario can look like both of these situations, depending on which side of the monitors you are sitting.

Consider traffic cameras, for example. Right now they are most evident when they are catching people running red lights or misusing commuter lanes. This is an intrusion into privacy, but it is only the bad people that are being intruded upon, so that is OK. Most modern highways include traffic monitors that track vehicle speed. These can be combined with cameras to catch speeders automatically. Again, it's only the bad people, but my Corvette has put me on the other side of that line once or twice.

For that matter, my Corvette not only allows me to break the law by speeding but it could rat me out as well. Black box monitors in cars are old news, and insurance companies are pushing to get more access to the information contained in them.

All of this information is not good or evil. It just is. The question is what can be done with the information and who has control of it. This is an area where society had better catch up with technology in a hurry.

Larry Mittag

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/03/malware_blitz/]

The concept of a botnet isn't new, but over the last year or so the exploits have gotten more and more organized. So organized, in fact, that only one company to date, Prolexic [http://prolexic.com/], has demonstrated the ability to withstand the blistering packet storms that the current generation of botnets can dish out.

According to the article, the infectious agents of the current botnets all target weaknesses in Microsoft Windows-based computers. "Apple, Linux and those few souls out there still running OS/2 are all immune, as usual", it adds.

What can embedded developers and product vendors learn from these kinds of announcements? First, the security of any embedded system is at least as important as whether the product performs its intended function or not. Imagine what would happen if botnets could be built from compromised cable or DSL modems, or consumer-grade switches and wireless access points...

Second, you'd better base your product on something that maintains itself, because while the current dominant player in the desktop operating system world is doing a so-so job of providing a secure system, its users can't be counted on to install security updates to their own computers.

Both points argue compellingly in favor of Free and Open Source software. Getting the source code lets you see where security issues may reside, and empowers you to fix them rather than relying on an upstream vendor to work it into their release schedule. Furthermore, an impressive array of existing Free and Open Source software tools like nmap and tcpdump help you evaluate the security of any system prior to its deployment. And finally, closed exploits remain closed, as the associated patches find their way back into the community for other projects to adopt.

Your thoughts?

[Posted for Bill Gatliff]

A friend of mine once found himself in the situation of having contracts with both the Coke and Pepsi bottling companies. Each of these companies is very jealous of their domains, of course, and each wants their suppliers to salute the proper flag. My friend solved the problem by installing Coke machines at the North end of his building and Pepsi machines at the South. Each company would then be routed appropriately when they showed up for meetings and care would be taken to avoid having the other's cans and bottles laying around.

I thought this was an extensive dance, but it is nothing compared to the gyrations that IBM must have been going through over the last few years. While they were working with Sony on the Cell processor for Playstation 3 they also were courting Microsoft for a design win in XBox 360 for the PowerPC. It's no wonder that Apple began to feel like the prom date left forgotten at the punchbowl while all this was going on and ending up going home with Intel at the end of the evening.

The real question from our point of view is the effect all this will have on CPU selection. Historically, the top CPU architecture is driven by a few very high-volume design wins. That volume drives the price down for both the CPU itself and the associated tools, which makes it more available for embedded systems. It appears that IBM has scored an important pair of victories here, although the ARM architecture is still the choice for portable devices and the overall volume leader.

IBM is offering up PowerPC as last year's model that still has some life left in it and Cell as the hope for the future. Is this a compelling set of offerings for your applications, or are they still out of touch?

There is an interesting excerpt from a new book available on the EE Times website. The book, "Sustaining Profitable Growth", looks very interesting as an analysis of the process of disruption in an industry that has been responsible for so much disruption in other industries. There is an inevitableness about that which is very compelling.

Based on the excerpt there is a certain amount of statement of obvious truths in verbose ways, but they are truths nonetheless. For example, they talk about the tendency for companies to be blindsided by new technology that changes the value proposition underneath them. This has been a staple of every startup since the beginning of time. Electronics has been used as the lever to change that proposition a lot in the last decade, so it just makes sense that sooner or later it would also be changed itself.

The real challenges show up when the entire production chain gets disintermediated. The seeds of this are starting to appear in low-volume production techniques such as those described in Neil Gershenfeld's new book entitled "Fab". If complex systems and electronic components can be manufactured in desktop factories then the manufacturing investments in large facilities start to look pretty irrelevant.

We are used to change management in our engineering cycles, but my sense is that we as an industry are no better at it than any other.

While there may be disruptions in process or in the distant future, it appears that the short term is in fine shape for some companies. That was the message from a conference call by Texas Instruments as reported on by CNN. TI upped expectations in sharp contrast to recent downturns by Infineon and STMicro. What does TI have that these others don't?

The short answer is a thriving business in cell phone CPUs and an established calculator business. This one-two punch puts them on top for the moment, but the world will turn again. Congratulations to TI in the meantime, though.

The Supreme Court has just passed the equivalent of a lifetime-employment act for media lawyers in their ruling on the MGM vs. Grokster case. A report from Wired magazine's online site provided some of the best coverage of a very murky decision. The ruling basically said that software and device manufacturers could be held liable if they encouraged the illegal use of their creations.

The recording industry loved it, of course. Ambiguity increases the FUD factor, which is their stock in trade. After all, the winner in a world of unclear precedents is the company with the biggest bankroll and that industry has had much more money than sense for quite a while. The loser is the small software or hardware manufacturer that is building something people actually want to use. Now it is up to them to decide whether people will use it for legal purposes or not.

I ran into this myself recently while trying to bring up a new Linux box. I set up a bittorrent feed to download the latest version, only to come back after a bit and find it frozen. It took a reboot of my cable modem to get access going again. Another try led to another freeze. I ended up getting it by spoonfeeding the download, but I am fairly convinced that this was an attempt by my cable company to limit illegal activity. Based on this ruling, I can't much blame them. ISPs can be targeted as well.

Larry Mittag

One of the more bizarre twists on the apparently-imminent housing crash is a story in EE Times about how the resulting global crash might affect the semiconductor industry. This is like saying that a landslide that takes down your house may also affect your cable reception. Get a clue, guys. Under the scenarios I have seen that could be the least of our worries.

Actually, media and entertainment tends to do very well in depressions. They also report that Microsoft is preparing to go head-to-head with Sony yet again, supporting the HD-DVD standard in conjunction with Toshiba and in opposition (kind of) to Sony's Blu-Ray format. There was some weasel-wording that would allow MS to support the latter as well, depending on which way the wind blows, but at least for now the world is moving forward. It's nice to know that we will be able to watch plenty of HD content in the tents we will be living in after the housing world ends.

Larry Mittag

One of the great fears of Single Board Computer (SBC) venders is commoditization. Their nightmare scenario is a PC motherboard that sells for practically nothing because anyone can build one and they are all the same. They have been trying to capitalize on the ARM market with high-margin SBCs quickly while they were still considered special. They may already be too late.

Case in point: Gumstix. This is a seriously cool line of SBCs based on Intel ARM processors that starts (just barely) under $100 quantity one. These guys have a line of very small Linux-powered boards that have been used in a number of robotics applications, including tiny versions of military tactical Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), as reported in an EE Times Article. I'm already finding myself imagining projects for these little guys.

This is the kind of board that has potential to reach large enough quantity to drive down the pricing curve even further and is a good example of the fact that ARM architectures are no longer considered scary. This good news for any number of embedded applications that can be built more easily as a result.

Larry Mittag

Much is made of Moore's Law, which deals with advances in semiconductor density, but we seem to be moving into a more complex world now where the relevance of it is diminished. No one cares that much how fast you are running if all you are doing is laps around an isolated island. Increasingly computing is defined more by cooperative systems that distribute information than by gate counts.

There is evidence of this all around us. Broadband access is finally becoming the default for Internet access in the home, and that access is driving new applications like VoIP and IPTV. Corporate computing is being redefined by virtualization, which uses networks to distribute computing power more effectively. These and other applications depend heavily on fast networks, which are getting faster with every iteration. This year alone should see the introduction of 802.11n and 10 Gbit Ethernet.

In a very real way the network is indeed the computer, as Sun's PR department has reminded us over and over. this represents a real opportunity for embedded systems to play a larger role in the computing infrastructure, since this world works more on machine-to-machine communications than computers that have a face (i.e. a user interface). Embedded systems can become the sensors at the edges of this new computer, as well as the distributed resources of the device itself. Could this be the dawning of the all-dominant supercomputer that has been the staple of science fiction?

Larry Mittag