Huibert Aalbers Portfolio

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Geneva, Switzerland

Madrid, Spain

Bayonne, France

Bordeaux, France

Montreal, Canada

Mexico City, Mexico

WWDC 2013

June 9, 2013

Wwdc13 This year, for a third year in a row, I unfortunately won’t be able to attend WWDC. I certainly hope to be back next year though, as I really miss the excitement and the creative energy that you can feel during the week long event. When you are used to attend large customer events organized by corporations like Oracle, IBM or MS, a smaller event like WWDC, filled with passionate developers from all over the world, is a breeze of fresh air.

As a developer, I have a limited set of requests for Apple. First on the list is fixing iCloud. I have no doubts they fill finally get their act together and solve the issue. Second, I would love them to release a new charting API, both for OS X and iOS. Having a standard API everyone could use would certainly be great news for developers. Drawing charts is not difficult, but starting from scratch every time an app requires a nice looking chart is really a pain. Finally, I would like to have an improved JavaScript-Objective-C bridge that would make it simpler to script Cocoa apps, without having to use a WebView. The state of the union keynote tomorrow afternoon should give us a good idea of what Apple is planning for the future and it is in many ways much more interesting than what will be discussed during the morning address. I am really looking forward returning from work and listen to it while working out on the treadmill.

As a user, I have much higher expectations, though and I can imagine that this will be the case for most of the people who will listen to the keynote tomorrow. There will most likely be some hardware announcements, but given the fact that there have been no serious leaks from Apple’s supply chain, I wouldn’t set my expectations too high.That means no new iPhones, iPads or even iWatch tomorrow. There may be some upgrades to the laptop models, with faster wireless networking and new CPUs, but nothing really ground breaking. The lack of news seem to indicate that the announcements will come primarily from work performed at Apple’s HC in Cupertino, under a shadow of secrecy. That means new system software (we already know about iOS 7 and OS X 10.9) and new services (iRadio, which has now be rumored for months). While I do believe that much time will be devoted to iOS 7 (and a little less to OS X), I think most of the surprises will come from the services side. Apple has spent billions over the last few years on their data centers and we still don’t know exactly what they plan to do with them. While they serve billions of apps, movies, songs, notifications and iMessages every day, in addition to syncing devices and provide remote backups, there is a perception in the industry that the cloud services capacity they have been building is well above what they are delivering right now. As a result, I expect Apple to emerge tomorrow as a new Cloud powerhouse. What does that mean? Well, I am not sure, but I am convinced that they will announce an expanded and improved set of services as well as outline a vision for the future that will be both compelling and credible. Allow users to edit iWork documents in their browsers and offer improved collaboration options? Maybe. Share video on-line? Most probably. Improve syncing? Absolutely. A completely new service? I think we should count on it.

Tomorrow will be an important day for Apple. These announcements should allow them to further differentiate from the competition, making hardware even less important than it is today, while putting emphasis on the ecosystem. Users may be slightly disappointed in the short term, as many of the announcements will not be available immediately, but will benefit immensely as soon as the new OSes are released, in the Fall.

Mad at Oracle

January 15, 2013

Images Yesterday Oracle updated their Java JRE to fix yet another zero-day exploit. It seems that lately Java has become the new Flash, with new exploits being found on a daily or weekly basis. It really looks like they are dropping the ball on the security aspect of Java. This is specially upsetting since the whole idea of Java was built on security from day one, yet since Oracle acquired SUN it is obvious that the situation, far from improving, has gone downhill ever since.

It is true that Java has become a monster. I recall the early days were all you could do was perform simple animations on a browser, but there was no standard way to connect to a database. Those days are long gone, and now there are zillions of APIs to do almost anything you can dream of in Java. That is a strength of the platform, but also a weakness, as it is becoming harder and harder to spot bugs. I do understand, and it may be time to remove some APIs from the platform, but it doesn’t have to be like that. There are alternatives to the Oracle JRE and not all are affected by this bug. For example, IBM’s JRE does not have this bug. That is because IBM spends money to harden the security of its own product. It can therefore be done, it is just a matter o spending additional time and money on quality testing. My issue is not that there are no better options available, it is that Oracle’s failure to secure Java is casting a long shadow on the future of the platform, and all of us who have invested in it.

I think it is time for Oracle to clean their act. They have always to solve their problems through heavy marketing spending? Remember when they advertised their database as being Unbreakable? That, obviously wasn’t true. Their product wasn’t sub-par, but it hardly was above the pack, specially if you compare it to DB2 on the mainframe. The same can be said for their applications, which require regular fixes, which address serious security issues. Marketing, allowed them to enjoy a reputation they didn’t deserve. Now they have to deal with reality. I think this is something new for them. The only way out is to invest in their product and solve the issues. In other words, more engineering and less marketing. Otherwise, Java will go the way of the Dodo.

Disclaimer, I have always worked at companies that have competed with Oracle. However, this is personal, these problems do affect me and my career directly, as well as hundreds of thousands of fellow Java developers.

How I got my baby back

January 3, 2013

Find my iPhone Last Friday I flew from Mexico City to Madrid to spend the New Year Celebration with my parents. I had loaded my iPad with plenty of games and videos to keep me busy during the 10 hours flight. Unfortunately, the plane couldn’t land at Barajas airport because of bad weather and we were rerouted to Valencia. Therefore, with no power left on my iPad, I had to switch devices and start using my iPhone to keep me entertained until we finally made it to Madrid, four hours late. It was a great opportunity to play Karateka, a great game that I first enjoyed on my Apple II as a teenager. The landing was rough and everything I had laying on the seat next to mine fell to the floor. I picked up my iPad as well as my headphones, but failed to realize that my iPhone had also fallen to the floor.

I left the plane, and moved to immigration. When I was searching for my passport, I realized I had left my iPhone on the plane. Since I wasn’t allowed to get back to the plane, I immediately moved to the Aeromexico counter. I explained the situation and they notified the airplane crew. After a few minutes they told me that they hadn’t found the phone, but that the cleaning crew would return it to me if they found it. As soon as I got home, I used Find my iPhone to lock it remotely and get a notification as soon as it was found.

The next day, Aeromexico informed me that the phone had not been found and that the plane had returned to Mexico.

The phone was in airplane mode when I lost it, which meant Find my iPhone would not work until that mode was switched off and after a day, the phone had likely run out of power. I kept checking Find my iPhone twice a day, but the phone kept appearing as turned off. My hopes of recovering my iPhone were quickly fading.

On Tuesday, four days after losing my phone, I was working on my MacBook Pro, while watching a movie on my iPad mini. Suddently, the following alert appeared on both devices.

iMessage

As you can see, Messages was asking me if I wanted to add a new phone number to my iChat identity. I had the phone number of the person who had found my phone! Not only did I have his phone number, I had his full name (probably obtained from the SIM he inserted). I immediately used Find my iPhone on my iPad to try to obtain the location of this person, but the phone had already been turned off. I tried to call him, but nobody answered the phone.

At that point, I didn’t know if the person who was in possession of my iPhone was a passenger, a member of the crew or an employee of some company in charge of cleaning the plane, but I decided to go back to the airport and present the information I had collected. From there on, the events unfolded very quickly. The Aeromexico person that listened to my story knew the person who had my phone. He was a contractor working for the cleaning company. The manager said he would take care. The next day, they sent me my iPhone home. The only thing missing was my micro-SIM, which I assume was thrown away. I am very pleased with the way Aeromexico handled the situation.

I think this is an interesting story because I was able to recover my phone without using Find my iPhone. I fact, I never got an e-mail notification that my iPhone had been located from the iCloud service, nor was my phone locked remotely, probably because the person who “recovered” my phone removed its SIM. However, Messages notified me as soon as a new SIM was inserted. In this case, Messages clearly saved the day.

Pittsburgh’s smarter city challenge

October 25, 2012

Pittsburgh The Smarter Cities Challenge is a competitive grant program awarding $50 million worth of technology and services over 3 years to 100 cities around the globe. These grants are designed to address the wide range of financial and infrastructure challenges facing cities today. It is an opportunity for cities around the world to get free expert consulting. For more information on the IBM Challenge you can visit the IBM website.

Last year, Pittsburgh, PA applied for such a grant to get ideas on how to solve their traffic congestion problems. After a thorough selection process, they were chosen to become one of 32 cities that would receive free consulting from IBM experts in 2012.

IBM built a team of six executives from around the world (India, Sweden, Mexico and the US) to work on the problem. I was chosen to be part of the team because of the work I had been doing on an internal white paper on traffic as well as my software experience as a senior certified executive IT architect, but each member brought a different skill set to the team. Most of us had never been to Pittsburgh before, and that was a conscious decision, as the program leadership wanted us to take a look at the situation with fresh eyes.

We spent the first ten days of our assignment performing over sixty interviews to a wide array of stakeholders. As expected, they all had their particular point of view on the challenges facing the city, even though several popular themes quickly emerged. During this period we didn’t have many opportunities to visit Pittsburgh, as most of our work was performed at the city Town Hall, located just a couple of blocks from our hotel. However, after we completed the interviews, we had the opportunity to tour the city and visit several boroughs, including East Liberty, Oakland, Shady Side, South Hills and South Side. This allowed us to better understand the complaints we had heard, as well as evaluate the proposals that had been made. By the way, if you have never been to Pittsburgh, you should. The city is really nice and deserves to rank higher as a tourist destination. Each borough has it’s own style and character. I am not surprised Pittsburgh was named the most livable city in the U.S., as it seems a great place to live, work and raise kids.

After completing our analysis, we spent the last days (and nights) of our stay working on our report. On our last day we presented a preview of our findings at a meeting hosted by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl at Carnegie Mellon University.

Producing a report in just three weeks, about a city we didn’t know was a real challenge. Despite all the hard work, and our experience, there are many topics we didn’t have the opportunity to dive deeply into. The city, the Allegheny Port Authority, the county and the state, to name just a few of the stakeholders, already have many experts who understand very well the issues at hand. The problem, as always with large organizations, is to get everyone to work together and to share information. I sincerely hope that our final report, to be published shortly, will help them reach that goal. Since everyone we met was so willing to help improve the city and work has already started on some of our recommendations, I am confident they are on the right track.

Update 1: The event was covered by the local press: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Trib LIVE

It’s finally over

October 23, 2012

Graduation picture About two years ago, on a Friday evening, one of the managers in my team asked me about the possibility to pursue an MBA. This is something that IBM will usually pay for their top talent employees, so I went to HR to ask about the deadline to submit requests. It turned out that the deadline was that very same day and that they had forgotten to notify me. My HR partner sent me a form, which I forwarded to the employee who had asked for it. Since I couldn’t leave the office because I had to wait for him to complete the form, I took a look at the different options that were available. The Executive MBA program at IPADE, which ranked among the best in LA, seemed interesting because it focused on people management, which is a set of important skills techies like myself usually don’t develop naturally . So, without spending too much time thinking about it, I decided to also submit my application.

A couple of days later, IBM’s local education board approved my application and the very next day I had an interview with the head of the program, as the selection process was already well under way. One day later, I passed the admission exam. Now that I think about it, since I had never attended a private school (public schools in Europe were very good back when I studied there), I honestly thought this was just a minor requirement and that anyone willing to pay the ridiculous tuition costs, would be automatically accepted. So, I wasn’t really surprised when I got my acceptance letter. I later learned that 9 in 10 candidates were turned down. That is when I realized that I had been extremely fortunate to be accepted and that I had to take this endeavor extremely seriously.

The fact is that this MBA program didn’t really seem that hard to me, but you certainly need to commit to it. You need to spend many hours a week reading and preparing cases. The school warns you, but I think that it is fair to say that nobody I spoke to realized the level of personal investment required to complete the degree, including my wife.

The Executive MBA program (MEDEX) was, in many ways, a refresher of my undergraduate degree in Economics. I feel that students who had law or engineering degrees had a much harder time than I did. For them, learning basic Economics and Accounting in a short amount of time was a real challenge. There were however, many new things I learned during these two years, and I must say that I really enjoyed most of the sessions.

One thing that the school should have told me is that in order to get my degree I had to present a recent birth certificate, proof that I had completed high-school as well as all my university credits. When I enrolled, they assured me that my university diploma was enough and that turned out not to be true. Well, getting all those documents in time for graduation is easier said than done when you were born in the Netherlands, completed high-school in France and got your undergrad degree in Spain, but looking at the bright side, it justified a nice European vacation.

If I had known about all the papers I needed, how hard it was to be accepted, and the amount of work required on top of an already demanding day job, I probably wouldn’t have considered enrolling. This shows once again that important decisions don’t always require much data. Now that it is over, I can say that I am extremely happy I completed the program. I learned a lot and made many new friends. I don’t expect this diploma to be a career changer, that was never my goal, but it certainly was a worthy experience.

So, you now all know why my blog went dark for the last two years. The good news is that I’m back now and that I should have time to update my site regularly.

MBA tuition, US$50,000. Wearing a ridiculous hat on graduation day, priceless…

Apple’s market cap surpasses IBM’s

September 16, 2009

Although the markets haven’t closed yet, Right now Apple’s market cap stands at 156.9 billion, 400 million more than IBM’s. This is simply remarkable. After years of being the underdog, the Cupertino based company has left most of its current and past competitors in the dust. Dell, HP and now IBM have all been unable to keep up with the explosive growth of Apple since Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

If someone had told me back in the 90s, when converting someone to the Mac was nearly impossible, that Apple would be able to stage such a comeback, I simply wouldn’t have believed it. Even I who have been a loyal Apple customer since the early 80’s came extremely close to throwing the towel in the late nineties. Then came Steve Jobs, the iMac and the iPod and the rest is history. I am really happy to see a company that has always believed in innovation succeed in the market. Jason Calacanis summed it up very well in a recent TWIT episode saying that if you want to be rich you look up to Bill Gates, if you want to be great you look up to Steve Jobs.

However, market valuations do not always reflect the true health of a company. Apple’s revenue depends on the sales of a very small set of products and therefore is extremely vulnerable to sudden market changes. Companies like IBM which offer a wide selection of software, services and hardware can better adapt, and that is why they have been able to survive for so many decades. For Apple to continue growing they need to offer a wider range of products. They know it and that is why they are investing in a new datacenter in NC and why they will probably launch pretty soon their rumored tablet computer. When Steve Jobs said “See you soon” at the recent iPod media event, he probably meant it.

My expectations for WWDC ’09

June 3, 2009

On Sunday I will fly to San Francisco to attend WWDC. This will be my fourth WWDC in a row. From what I see, most of the sessions will be a rehash of what we saw last year. That isn’t too bad as it will allow me to focus on what is new in Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0 and spend more time at the labs.

People seem to have very high expectations from this WWDC, which isn’t unusual. Most expect new handsets and a hopeful handful still expect the mythical Apple Tablet to be finally announced. I am not that interested by new hardware. New handsets will come at some time, that we know, and since we know that they will be running iPhone OS 3.0, which is already available for current devices, I really don’t care if they are announced at the show or two months from now. As for the tablet, my guess is that we will have to keep waiting.

However, most people seem to be much less interested by Snow Leopard. That is probably a mistake. Apple has deliberately set low expectations for this release and is probably set to over deliver in several areas, even though nothing has been announced. Regarding the new features that we know about, like Grand Central and OpenCL, we have no exact idea what kind of impact they will represent in terms of performance gains. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Like last year, I will keep my finger crossed for Windows and iPhone versions of iChat which would make the Mac version more useful.

On the iPhone front, I have high expectations for significant third party hardware device announcements that can be controlled from the phone. Building a strong ecosystem around the iPhone is key to its long term success and Apple has been very clever to open the development of non-trivial hardware extensions to third parties. It would be nice to see Arduino work with Apple to allow hardware geeks easily create new hardware gadgets for the iPhone. That would open a new market for the phone in universities all over the world.

CityListBuilder for iMovie ’09 released

June 3, 2009

CityListBuilder You may have noticed that I have been quiet for the last few months. I was busy working on a new Mac application. As you may have guessed, I don’t have a lot of time to work on personal projects. My job at IBM from Monday to Friday, with extremely long working hours, and my family to which I devote week-ends take most of my time. As a result, I have to be smart and use any spare time wisely. Working on multiple projects is definitively not an option.

The application I have just released, CityListBuilder for iMovie ’09, is quite simple. It is designed to help non-technical Mac users to add support for additional cities to the new animated travel map feature. This can be done by hand quite easily by just editing the contents of a flat file, but I thought that Mac users deserved a better solution.

From a technical perspective though, writing this app was a very interesting exercise. It gave me the opportunity to work with REST services (to interface with the Google Maps geocoding service), WebKit and the authorization services. I think that the strategy of releasing relatively quickly small apps that allow me to learn new technologies is quite effective. I have already started to look for new ideas for my next project. One candidate project involves using Bonjour and Quartz Composer, two technologies I have never used so far and that I believe are quite interesting. It would also allow me to work on an iPhone client which is quite exciting. I will let you know more once I actually start coding.

What to expect from the next iPhone models

March 24, 2009

When Apple announced the iPhone OS 3.0 last week, most users where pleased. This new version addresses most of the problems that customers have been complaining about since the launch of the 3G iPhone. Features like cut, copy and paste or the ability to finally sync the Notes application with a Mac or a PC will definitively make a lot of people happy.

However, despite all the improvements that Apple has included in this new release, it is clear that this is just a transition product that will improve the user experience but that nobody can seriously define a revolutionary. Those who expected the iPhone OS to run on new types of devices, like a larger tablet or a smaller, cheaper phone are probably disappointed. There seems to be nothing in this release that allows existing applications to run on different form factor devices. That doesn’t mean that we won’t see a new generation of iPhones relatively soon. In fact AppleInsider has already reported on some of the features the new phones are expected to sport when they are released this summer. However, these products will be evolutionary (better camera, improved speed, etc), not revolutionary.

So, what should we think of those rumors that tell us that Apple has been shopping for 10” LCD screens? They might be still be true, but they just won’t be for a device running the iPhone OS. That probably means that if Apple chooses to release a Netbook later this year, it will most likely be a Mac, or at least a device much closer to a Mac than to an iPhone.

On Tuesday we will know

March 12, 2009

Earlier today Apple sent out invitations to the media for a special event next Tuesday to be held in the Apple Town Hall on Apple’s Cupertino campus to discuss the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software and SDK.

Immediately rumors started to fly about possible new features to be included in the new version of the OS. While this update may bring us some new features like cut & paste support or tethering that users have been clamoring for over the last few months, this is not likely to be the most relevant part of the announcement.

Why do I believe that? I will start with a disclaimer, I do not have sources within Apple. This is just logical reasoning, based on what we know. So, what do we know? Apple could implement tethering, MMS support or cut and paste without having to release a new SDK, months before launching a new device. There is more to this announcement than building excitement for the next OS release. Apple needs the developer community to start working on their applications to provide a smooth migration path for users.

I can only think of three reasons that could explain this urge from Apple to mobilize its developer community. The most obvious reason is that it includes major changes that require programmers to test their applications for compatibility. The next one is that it includes significant new capabilities that the developers could leverage to create new applications. Finally, Apple could be releasing a new version of the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that would make development much easier for unexperienced programmers.

So, what does this mean for the average user? Well, it depends on which of the previous options turns to be true.

What would require widespread testing of all current applications? There has been much discussion over the Internet about new form factors for the device. Some wish Apple would release an iPhone nano, while others are waiting for a larger iPhone tablet. Right now, this cannot be achieved, because the GUI is not scalable. Applications are designed for a 480*320 display. If Apple is planning to release new models with larger or smaller screens, this will have to change and it will require significant work from developers. Look for “Resolution Independence”. Other hardware changes, such as a higher resolution camera or expanded sound capabilities could also require changes to the APIs that would require less but still significant testing. We may not know how the new iPhone models that Apple will certainly launch later this year will look like, but we will have a pretty good idea as to what to expect feature wise.

There is no doubt that the App Store has been a total success. With over 25,000 applications released since its inception, the iPhone is now the mobile platform that offers the largest software catalog. Still, many enterprises find it difficult to hire the talent to create business apps. If Apple wants to fully crack the corporate market, it needs a simpler development environment for those reluctant to learn Objective-C. I do not really believe that Apple is moving in this direction, but it is a possibility.

Finally, there could be significant new APIs added to the SDK. For example, currently support for SOAP and REST services, as well as XML, is spotty at best. These new APIs could open the door to a whole new generation of applications without requiring Apple to release radically new products.

The good news is that these options are not exclusive, and therefore, we may see all of them turn true next week. However, that is probably wishful thinking. On Tuesday we will know.

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