REALLY?

Haven’t we moved past this as an industry? I imagine there are a bunch of old-school assembly language programmers out there saying “yeah! And compiled code wastes so many cycles!!” At some point, the convenience to the developer needs to triumph.

I remember when the game industry went through this middleware conundrum. Back before Grand Theft Auto 3, the common sentiment was “…games that use game engines all look the same!” And arguably, games running on Criterion’s Renderware at that time did LOOK the same, but it wasn’t because of the game engine, it was because of the lack of capabilities of the graphics hardware. Once shaders became available, games suddenly dramatically diverged and looked QUITE different. As a point of fact, what Renderware gave developers was the ability to make their games more quickly and more cheaply, allowing them to experiment more with the game design and create more interesting CROSS-PLATFORM experiences that players loved. See Grand Theft Auto 3, for example. Renderware was a big win for game developers, which is why it quickly became hugely popular and then was purchased by Electronic Arts.

Steve’s argument is that cross-platform development tools result in “…developers [being] blocked from using [Apple's] innovations and enhancements because they are not available on [Apple's] competitor’s platforms.” In actuality, Apple’s developers wouldn’t HAVE to use Flash if it’s on the platform. They could still use Apple’s native APIs and would be able to access all the unique features of Apple’s platforms. Or, Apple could work with Adobe to help them enable platform-specific extensions to Flash. These are common practices in the game industry – game developers want to make their titles unique so that they stand out in the market, and one way they can do that is to use platform-specific features well.

I imagine there is more to the story than Jobs is able to share, because his argument just doesn’t hold up. Middleware is important to developers. Blocking middleware on your platform is a sure-fire way to alienate many of them. If he really wants to head down this path, I am more than happy to invite those developers to work on Google platforms. We LIKE making the lives of developers easier.

My second week was just as busy as the first, or maybe even busier. But at least I’m getting used to my productivity tools. I find myself mostly working on my laptop – a MacBook Pro – and while I still find the MacOS harder to use effectively than Windows 7, the hardware is an absolute joy. You mean I can close the lid without worrying about losing docs? Nice! And it auto-connects to wi-fi and holds the signal? Yay! And I can sweep two fingers on the trackpad to scroll up and down? Why didn’t anyone think of that sooner? (Oh yeah, no one else has multi-touch trackpads.) So, I’m not a Mac convert, but I’m getting along with it better and better.

I used Synergy to tie my Linux desktop’s mouse and keyboard to the Mac laptop, so when I’m at my desk I have a much more ergonomic keyboard and mouse and a couple much larger displays. That works out great.

On the software side last week I found myself bailing out of the cloud a lot. I just haven’t figured out a good analog to my hierarchical file system, so I have only been using Google docs for ToDo’s and sharing with others. Meeting notes etc have wound up in TextPad and on my desktop or in folders. I had to do a couple presentations last week and I tried used the presentation software in Google Docs, but quickly abandoned it in favor of using Powerpoint and then uploading the result back into the presentation app. I was just much, much more effective in Powerpoint, and I was in a hurry. Friday I got Keynote installed on the Mac, and I’ll give that a go today.

If there was some good hierarchical file storage in the cloud and the presentation software worked better for me, I would love to be doing more there. Maybe I’m missing some things… I’ll keep looking at it.

One of the amusing and wonderful things about the Google Mountain View campus (the “Googleplex”) is that it is near a lot of wild open space along the San Francisco Bay. Last week I kept having wildlife sightings – and in the morning when the campus is quiet, with its lush trees, it is quite peaceful. Or at least more so than my urban San Francisco dwelling. I appreciate that a lot. Here are a few shots (Pokemon Snap style, I guess) from last week

Wild turkey wandering around in one of the parking lots.

There have been some goats next door mowing the lawn.

This happy little bird was hanging out in the fountain at the garden.

The T-Rex doesn’t seem so mean in his old age.

My personal email is a massive graveyard at the moment, so I apologize if you’ve emailed me and I haven’t gotten back to you. I’ve been literally non-stop since starting at Google, including a trip on the weekend after my first week (though admittedly, that was for fun) and this past weekend, an IGDA board meeting all weekend. Still looking forward to taking a deep breath. Maybe next weekend.

Shuttle got to my building just before 8:30am. So from home to work, about an hour. Not bad – got a blog post written, time to check some email, time to imbibe some caffeine. We’ll see how the trip home goes!

My first week at Google was extremely busy. On my first day everyone was encouraging me to take the courses for newbies that they have all week – it sure seemed like a good idea on Monday. But after midday Tuesday, all bets were off, as my schedule filled with people to meet and things to work on. With so many interesting things going on, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a newbie class! (The good news is that they have them all recorded, so I’ll watch the videos later. )

One thing that has been incredibly marked for me has been the change in my productivity tools. I’ve gotten used to using Exchange, Outlook, and the suite of Office products. I really, really like the system I have down for file organization. And I’ve got a laptop with Windows XP and desktops with Windows 7. My first day at Google I got a Linux desktop and a Mac laptop. Beautiful pieces of hardware, but – woah! So different. And of course we’re using the suite of Google Apps products. I felt like not only did I need to learn a new environment and new job, but my productivity habits now also all needed to change. Yikes!

At first it felt a bit painful. As the week has gone on, however, I’ve realized just how valuable it is to have my data in the cloud. Mid-week, I converted my Nexus One over from my Gmail account to my corporate Google account, and suddenly all my business information – calendar and email in particular – was in my pocket. My manager was probably pretty happy, as I suddenly stopped missing meetings and messages. Then Thursday I started really using Google Docs. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am still having a hard time getting used to popping open a web browser to edit my documents, and I have yet to come up with an alternative for my trusty hierarchical file system. But the moment of epiphany came when, in the span of an hour, I had taken some notes in a meeting on the Mac, booted up my Linux box and made some edits, and then over a coffee meeting later I brought the doc up on my phone to review what I had written. Totally seamlessly, without worrying about copying files around or anything. Holy smokes! This whole cloud thing is pretty great. But it is definitely a shift in mindframe.

Right now I’m at the airport, as I mentioned earlier. Today I did a bunch of work in the Mac’s Text Edit program. When I got home, I suddenly realized I needed to copy all that stuff onto a USB stick, since I was bringing my personal laptop (my Windows XP one) on the trip with me. It wasn’t a big deal, but one point I lost the USB stick and couldn’t remember if I had packed it. What if I forgot it? After a few moments of argh, once again the idea of the cloud really sunk home for me.

So it’s been an interesting week to be sure (and that’s leaving out all of the most interesting parts!) But the idea of the cloud, which sounded good in theory but I hadn’t put into full practice, is really growing on me. I’ve loved my Android phone for months and months… but when I embraced Gmail, Google Docs and Google Voice, all the sudden my cell phone became so much more useful. It’s a very interesting transformation.

But it took quite some time to find the right Exchange app. The “Work Email” app that comes with the myTouch is competent at pulling down your email, but that’s about it. It didn’t handle contacts well, nor the calendar, nor tasks. The phone is really designed around using Google Mail, which I use, but not as my primary email system. For that I use an Exchange server that I pay monthly for, and it has made my life so much simpler that I am loathe to replace it!

I went through three or four Exchange apps, as well as a few small apps that claimed to just do contacts, or just calendar, and I only found two that worked well: RoadSync and Touchdown.

I used the RoadSync beta for two or three weeks, and it almost did exactly what I wanted. Email worked great and was pushed to the phone quite rapidly. Unfortunately there was no Tasks synchronization, the Calendar didn’t work and the Contacts did not synch all the information I needed (addresses, for example). After a few weeks I grew to not trust the app to synch data back that I had entered on the phone, and the lack of a useful Calendar really blew it for me. I liked a lot of things about RoadSync though, and when it’s out of beta I’m sure it will be a strong app, as they are definitely planning all those features.

Touchdown, on the other hand, has been rock-solid and already does everything that I want. It has solid Tasks and Calendar integration, it copies its Contacts to the phone and synchronizes them, and the email does HTML. I can rely on it for everything, it seems; it really has been no different than using a Windows Mobile phone. What makes me happiest is that it integrates into the phone in the same way as the stock mail and calendar apps, so I get alerts in the notification bar just as I do with Google-based mail and calendar events. And they are kept separate, which I don’t care about it either way, but I know some people need.

So if you are doing a Google search to try and find which Exchange-based app to use, I recommend stopping your search here and buying Touchdown. It was $19.99 when I downloaded it, and it is money well spent.