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[perkiset]

So, Sun thinks that their proposed Java Store will make the iTunes store and iPhone applications look like a "rounding error."

http://blogs.eweek.com/developing_stories/content/general/can_suns_java_store_make_apples_app_store_look_like_a_rounding_error.html

I'm having a hard time believing that, or even to stop laughing, because there's no new technology that the Sun store is suddenly going to "fill the gap" for. Where is the held back mass of people simply dying for a way to purchase Java apps? Where is the gigantic market hole that they are going to fill?

Am I just missing something here? This isn't about the iPhone or Apple or any of that (it was just a funny comparison) - I just don't get how they think that Java, in and of itself (and because there are lots of developers) will suddenly change the purchase path of millions and millions of people.

[nutballs]

They don't get it.

It's a CEO creating an ROI statement to justify an expenditure.

The reality is that people don't care about where their app comes from.
they dont care what OS it uses.
they dont care what language it is written in.
They also dont care if its portable, if the device they currently use it on is good.

Sun is creating a market need that doesnt exist.

now on the otherhand, it CAN become successful if they open it up to desktop.

One thing I have thought is missing from the iPhone Appstore, is the ability to run those apps on your desktop.
Then, non-iphone people could use them, AND it would be a selling point for the iPhone.
"WOW i could do this while sitting on the train going to work or waiting at the Dr office?"
All they would need to do is create a small iphone emulator that runs the app in a same format window.
But meh, what do I know about squeezing pennies from the crowd...

Java wont be able to do that though, because it is not tied to any single phone or device.
It is also limited because of that...

[perkiset]

Thanks, thought I was missing it. I'm on exactly the same page.

And BTW, I think that the rumored Media Tablet that Apple is working on is precisely to start to target the gap you are speaking of.

[nutballs]

yep i agree.

the challenge will be to create a framework that will allow the same apps to work on either device.
obviously the tablet would have more power. But the screen would be an issue being bigger (even if we assume the same aspect ratio). They would need a way to make it easy for the devs to create a single app, but with multiple resource packages. When you buy from the appstore, you would get the same exact app as the iphone, but the resource package of graphics and such would be different and contain higher or lower res graphics and audio.

If they make it so that the devs need to create two completely seperate apps, i would be surprised.

[perkiset]

Hmm. I'm inclined to disagree with part of that - since we have not seen iPhone apps execute effortlessly on existing desktops, I'd say they are fine making devs do work to accommodate multiple platforms. IMO you are 100% right that allowing apps to access different resource packages (akin to using different CSS files based on device) would make perfect sense ... and I think that this direction would lend itself to even more acceptance of the Mac platform. IE., buy one app, it runs anywhere and is "mode specific" - it has different faces and capabilities based on where you are using the app.

This also offers a new revenue model: purchase for a platform, or purchase platform independent. Competition would stiffen around people that think ahead and make their apps portable (or at least convertible). Another sticky point will be that the new table it supposed to be VERY gesturely controlled, even to the point of 4 finger chording ... since neither a desktop or phone is there yet, that makes for different programmatic efforts and visual metaphor, so the coder would have to be at our (Cache member's) caliber to abstract the functionality sufficiently from the interface.

I guess that leaves the entirety of the M$ coding staff out 

[isthisthingon]

I think he said it best:

"So with my myopic blinders on ..."

   In some ways or at least historically, Java represents complicated, expensive and slow.  I agree with the general sentiments of @nutt & @perk. 

A strategy for success hinged on the brand value of Java seems like someone's    but who knows.  It's never the platform, language, etc.  It's always about the killer app(s) 

[nop_90]

You are right perks but wrong at the same time.
Java is slow clunky and a POS for user apps.
I read an article like 10 years ago, it said that 75% of software is "cooperate" software as in in-house software.
For example with the oil industry, accounting etc.
Think is in the cooperate world, the best choice as an employee is not the "best choice" but the "safest" choice.
Java is a "safe choice". You can see the amount of followers of java how much java programmers are in demand etc. All of these guys are cooperate coders.
And you know to get a java app to stop being clunky and slow is just to buy a bigger machine / machines which is not a problem with a large company.
You can see even with Java itself in the web-browser Sun discontinued that (for all intents and purposes). They blamed it on MS. How come flash never had a problem ?

A good example is TI. They made a good consumer products. I think they even made the first commercial pocket calculator. Even thier personal computer they made for the price was a good computer. They where getting sales etc. Then TI announced they where going to discontinue all "consumer products". Makes sense why waste your time trying to convince people to buy a pocket calculator etc, having to market etc. When you just get the contract to supply the electronic components for some ultra-top secret bomber/fighter.

Probably that entire article is just spin for corporate CEO to read, so that way s/he at the next board meeting have ammunition to justify why they are still using Java Since most of the board members are old clueless farts, they heard of apple (thier grand-kids nagged them to buy them an ipod)

Big problem in the cooperate world is that "policy" is more important then results. Even if you are right and but you break policy then you will lose your job or get into big shit.

In contrast with the military, results are more important then policy. The military encourages daring commanders. So if you break policy but are successful you will be rewarded, (on the other hand if u fail u usually are dead so the failure is of no consequence). Also in war there is no #2. Only #1.

Countless examples of this.
Shrapnell rounds. Before that artillery used "canister round" (basically a large shotgun shell). Shrapnel made a new round, then proved that each gun could kill more guys.
Gatling. If i remember tried to convince congress to buy his new machinegun. No politician wanted to approve it incase he made a bad choice. Finally Gatling just went straight to a general, convinced his to try it out in a battle. The general was so happy with the carnage it created, that he right away approved it .

Tommy Foker. Same story. Took his plane up shot down 2 british pilots in 1 morning. Sold. Military generals are not concerned about "minor details" like how airplanes work etc. Just this contraption is good at killing people.

I remember when I got out of the military and I got a job (gov't). I remember I wanted to get something done. So i went to the person who was in charge. I was then told a decision could not be made since the person was on "vacation". I asked how long was the person on vacation. Two weeks. I then asked who his 2ic (man automatically in charge while IC is away). No one. I was baffled. So basically no one is running this sector until the IC comes back ? In the military if IC is away/dead 2IC automatically takes over. While he is in charge any decisions he wants to do he can do. Granted if he fails he will be punished. But on the other hand if his decisions get results, even if his methods are un-orthadox no one really cares. And if he gets results, next promotion time he will be at the top of the list since he has proven himself.

Often you do not see things to a few years after the fact. I was reading an article about most dangerous professions. It said that "lumber jack" was with 0.1% severe injuries a year. I then thought about it. In the infantry battalion I was in (500-600 front line men) in 3 years with one operational tour I think we had atleast 5-6 killed (I can not remember). Severe injuries we did not even really think about.
Heck just before xmas we would have a huge smoker (big drunk fest). Highlight was the broom-a-loom game between NCO and Junior officers. Broom-a-loom is like field hockey except you get a sawed off broomstick, you use a ring instead of a puck. And there are no rules. Beside get the ring in the other guys goal and stop them from getting it in your goal. Ussually 10 guys per side to make it fun . If you are fast and light like I was, you use the stick to trip the other guy, beat him with it etc. Or if you are big and slow you just bulldoze your way thru. Game was not considered a success unless someone ended up with a broken leg,fingers or there was massive ammounts of blood . So thinking about it we racked up our 0.1%+ of severe injuries in just a few hours of fun .
Thinking about it. I realized that the "games" ussually had "no rules" all that counted was results. Also they where designed to maximize aggression.

Anyway it probably it a good think the military does not run cooperations. Imagion this.
Yahoo commanders having a war talk. Gentlemen as you can see Google has 60% market share, and we only have 23%. Our cold war tactics of attempting infect thier systems with viruses etc are not stopping them from increasing market share. Unless we strike a decisive blow we will be eliminated. But as you can see Google has been stupid and concentrated all of thier assets in GooglePlex that is thier mistake and they are vunerable.

At 2300 hours our forces will surround googleplex and begin preliminary bombardment. By 23:30 the target will be softened up and our assualt teams will be in position. They will then rush the googleplex. Remind your men that when they rush googleplex they will see confused geeky looking guys running arround in panic clutching a laptop. It is important that these guys are captured so they can be debriefed by our intelligence teams. Let me remind you that these geeks are to be captured with minimum force and not to be harmed. It is believed that once these geeks can be converted to our side. Hearts and Minds gentlement. (Geeky guy what would you rather have ? Hmmm lets see. Door number 1. Living the rest of your life in an internment camp or re-education camp or what ever u want to call it. Door number 2. After 6 months to make sure you are not going to sell us out, You can do your same fun geeky things, except now for us, instead of google. Yes a very smart decision, I see you have seen the evils of google and now will help us).

(patriotic mumbo jumbo, standard ending. Bring up some heart crap about previous ancient battles and rubbish like that).
Remember the regiment. Remember when our ancestors fought altavista. Remember the how they destroyed the evil altavista despite overwhelming odds.
The eyes of the world are upon you. Right now we are at a turning point. For never before have so many counted on so few. The world is facing another dark age perverted by the evils of modern computing. And we are that van gard stopping it.

(Just randomly read other patriotic speaches. Possibly it might be more affective if you just feed the best patriotic speaches into some sort of markov chain. Then just yell 5 minutes of the crap. What you say really does not matter as long as it is used with lots of enthusiam. Once the men are in that almost hypnotic state content does not matter too much, just delivery.  )

Yep thinking about it probably a good thing military guys do not run cooperations 

[isthisthingon]

Big problem in the cooperate world is that "policy" is more important then results.

    

Nice post @nop_90

Yep thinking about it probably a good thing military guys do not run cooperations

There's a blurry line between the private sector and our military

[perkiset]

Excellent post Nop, but I think you miss my point: my argument is not counter-Java - Java has it's place and is a powerful tool. It has it's place in the sun and I neither deny or begrudge that. I don't like it, but a lot of folks really do. That's all cool.

My argument was more to the comparison of the iPhone store and a Java store. People (especially corporate people) already have channels and mechanisms to purchase whatever software they need, regardless of OS/Language flavor. The thing that makes the iTunes store so successful is that it fulfilled a huge need - people with iPhones wanted apps, and they couldn't get them unless they jailbroke. The store was a massive flood waiting to run. I don't see where there is a massive flood of customers chomping at the bit to have an easier way to purchase apps, Java or otherwise. So the argument that the possibility for such a marketing move would be so huge as to make "the itunes store a rounding error" just seems like a rookie marketer trying to gin up excitement around something that is utterly unnecessary.

ITTO is writing software for the SalesForce market - here again we see something similar to the iTunes market - a repressed, concerned body of people that want things and the store provides that outlet. I just don't see where the notion of a generic Java Store fills a need. It's a store based around a language, rather than a need. Fools errand IMO.

[nop_90]

@perks
you are 100% correct, but i blabbed to much and you missed my point
I think that the "java app" store might be pure vapour ware. Just to get publicity. They are very good at doing that.
Standard crap that big companies do to make PR .
I always get a laugh when i go to starbucks in PH. The equivelent for $3+ for a cup of coffee here.
Meanwhile rent and wages are a fraction of what they are back in USA. Probably the barista for an entire days work only makes like $6.
Then they have some glossy posters on the wall, on how they sent like 200 kids to school in PH (it only costs like $100 per year) and how they built a fuking playground some place. Ohhh yah starbucks cares lots about kids . They probably spent more money printing up those advertising posters then they did on the entire playground and the 200 kids.
Too bad starbucks when they buy coffee grown in PH does not increase the amount they pay to the farmer (or for that matter coffee grown anywhere).
Maybe then the farmer would not be joining the insurgents because he can barely make enuff to feed his family.

Basically you have to look at sun's strategy and apple's strategy.
Sun caters to cooperations/big companies vs apple caters to "average joe".

You can see that sun basically does not give a shit about "average joe" where joe is a consumer or a developer.
A prime example is the webkit control. Every major GUI has it now. QT,GTK and WX.
Java developers have been crying for it for the last 2 years. Sun only has 1-2 developers working on it part time they revealed a demo last year.
As of now they have not even released a beta. I am sure that a huge cooperation could spare more then 2 part time developers.
A prime example of how sun does not care about "average joe".
They basically have an old fashioned IBM view. Sell 1 large thing for big $$$ instead of lots of little things for $1.

Most cooperations do not buy software, they have it taken care of in-house.
How many large cooperations are still running ancient vax type systems (granted on an emulator since the origional vax died long ago).
I know half the fuking airline booking software appears to be running on some sort of ancient vax still. How many banks ? etc.
Again it is because on the balance sheet at the end of the day, to get a new software system will not show immediate profit.
But it will show is a "loss" for the immediate quarter, which is all presidents/ceo and share holders are concerned about in "traditional" companies.

You probably have more experience working with big wig dudes of cooperations then me.
But as you know most presidents/ceo of large companies are accountants.
They pick up thier latest copy of "Harvard Buisness Report" read some shit about "Java app store".
Then they will make some comment to you, Yah i heard about this Java thing, I know all our software of accounting system /  what ever all works with java.
Hence Java must be good. And for them it is good . They do not have to get ahead really, all they have to do is maintain current postion.

The technical ignorance of high up guys in even technological companies is mind baffling.
I once at a party met a general manager for asian division of a major computer manufacturer.
We started chit chatting, he then told me how fast his net access was, i asked him how fast was it, he replied 100MBit/second.
I was ohhh wow. But later I found out that is was just a regular DSL connection (for once i bit my tongue and kept quiet so not to embarrash him )

Hard to explain what i mean
Basically I think Sun just wants to reinforce in high up minds that Java is a good choice. And ride on apple's popularity

I am not knocking java. Even the language arguement does not hold much water since there are ruby/python/lisp/scheme compilers that target the Java VM.
Granted it is slow, but it does not matter if you are targeting large powerful machines.

As usually I need a military analogy
It is like the cold war between USA/Soviet Union. Regan claimed that they had "star wars" that could shoot down all soviet missiles.
The soviets believed him. Hence they started fighting something that did not exist.
Later events showed that "star wars" never existed when USA in the first iraq war had problems shooting down even crappy scudd missles.
But Regan achieved one thing. He got lots of attention
Java app store will fail. But it will achieve one thing. Probably every stupid magazine will be writing about it
How much is that worth in publicity

[perkiset]

Totally agree Nop, it's a publicity stunt - and your point about "making Java an OK choice" for the corporation is spot on as well. The real problem is, again you-re right: The Java boys are old IBM school thinking - but the world has shifted quite a bit since then. They will have trouble pushing that model today.

As I mentioned, I don't care for Java - I looked at it, JBoss and EJB seriously for about 6 months while I was deciding which direction to shift a few years back. It just didn't work for me. And I notice that most of the folks we hang out with (here and Syndk8) are not Java folks. I wonder if the wave of Java has already passed and it is already on it's mature and relaxing stage, rather than building. I wonder. Perhaps this is just a way to try to get some momentum for the language back.

[vsloathe]

I don't do Java because it's not a logical choice for me. I have nothing against it.

Our parent company is a Java shop, we're a PHP shop and they rag on us about how awful our page load times are. Depends how you're going to use it. Certain development methodologies are easier to fit together with a particular language, and if you've found a language that works with the way you code and doesn't force you into any paradigms that you don't like, good for you.

[perkiset]

Our parent company is a Java shop, we're a PHP shop and they rag on us about how awful our page load times are.

Your PHP guys just need some tweaking then. Used correctly, it is not a slowpoke. In fact, I'd doubt that your Java boys could produce pages much faster than my stuff. In a straight head-to-head single-proc no DB test they'd almost certainly beat me ... but in a real world app they'd have their hands full, I think.

[arms]

i don't think anybody except developers knows what java is so i don't get their marketing.

but just want to point out java isn't slow anymore. i stopped using it for many reasons but not because it was slow.
it has a slower startup time than say a python app, but run it get running it can be blazing fast. even for web, if jsp or servlets are precompiled it can be very fast.
i don't know about faster than x language, but it can hold it's own.

what it is, is greedy with memory. what would be say 50 mb of memory in python would be 200 mb in java. on top of that, swing, its gui toolkit is unresponsive.

it is well marketed to the pointy hairs with liberal use of the word "enterprise". blah blah "security", blah blah "enterprise".

[perkiset]

but just want to point out java isn't slow anymore. i stopped using it for many reasons but not because it was slow.

... wasn't claiming it to be a slowpoke, only that PHP, used correctly is no piker either. It's all in the wrist.

it is well marketed to the pointy hairs with liberal use of the word "enterprise". blah blah "security", blah blah "enterprise".

Friggin' spot on man.