Wednesday, Nov. 3 —
A third of the way around the world from home, I’m at least as well connected in Hong Kong — and maybe better — than at home.
The Hong Kong University guest residence where I’m staying has Ethernet ports in every room. I got an Internet proxy setting from the university computer folks, put it into my browser and voila, I was online.
But in many ways the most formidable connection is the one I’m carrying around: a mobile phone. It’s uses the GSM digital system here, and is astoundingly clear. I called my boss and the signal was almost as good as calling from home in California.
One of Hong Kong’s serious bragging rights is its wireless capabilities, among the most advanced in the world. The density of the population, plus fierce competition in the local market, have combined for some outstanding service and rates. And the best is yet to come.
Yesterday I went to a Nokia announcement regarding its soon-to-be-launched services using the Wireless Application Protocol, also known as WAP (the link goes to some Nokia propaganda but it’s useful for background). Like everything new in technology, WAP has been over-hyped, but it does seem likely to transform wireless communications in coming years.
In Sunday’s column I’ll tell you more about WAP and Hong Kong’s remarkable mobile communications capabilities. I’ll also tell you why the U.S. is pathetically behind the curve.
Scott Talks
Wednesday, Nov. 3 —
I mentioned yesterday that Scott McNealy, chief executive at Sun Microsystems, was in Hong Kong, less than a week after Microsoft President Steve Ballmer came through. Both announced deals with major telecom and real-estate interests. Ballmer couldn’t fit me into his schedule, and I was denied access to a daylong conference co-sponsored by Dow Jones and Microsoft.
McNealy was more willing to talk. At a luncheon Tuesday with major Sun customers from this part of the world, he pounded hard on his longstanding insistence that computing and communications are moving away from the Microsoft-dominated systems of today. The complexity belongs on the network, he said, not in the PC. You’ve heard that before.
But at lunch and in a conversation afterward (in the Presidential Suite of the Grand Hyatt — amazing digs, and an awesome view), McNealy had some interesting things to add. Sure, some of it was the typical McNealy overstatement of reality, but whatever he and his colleagues are doing these days is clearly working.
Uncharacteristically, McNealy acknowledged that the network computer in its early incarnation was a failure. “We weren’t very good at it the first time,” he said. Besides, “nobody wanted to give up the PC…and (its) productivity tools, and nobody trusted networks” to be reliable enough.
The latest network computer from Sun, dubbed the Sun Ray, is the ultimate in a thin client. There’s no microprocessor, no operating system or main memory, just a display engine that renders what’s coming down from the server computer. The model to think about with Sun Ray, McNealy says, is a TV tuner and receiver, where every Sun Ray is effectively gets its own private channel from the server.
“This one’s going to do better,” he said, adding an intriguing caveat. He noted that Windows went essentially nowhere until it hit version 3.1, and suggested Sun Ray is at about 2.5 on the network-computer scale at the moment — there’s still a lot of work to do, he implied.
Sun may not approve of Microsoft or its business practices, but lately it’s been working hard to emulate one of Microsoft’s chief assets: soup-to-nuts productivity software and development tools. McNealy said Sun has assembled some major pieces. He noted several recent acquisitions including Star Division (StarOffice productivity software), Forte (e-business applications) and NetBeans (Java tools).
The StarOffice deal has received the most attention, as it’s the most direct challenge yet to Microsoft from Sun, which is giving the software away. If Sun somehow captures a majority of the market this way, it’ll be inviting scrutiny from the Justice Department…
NetBeans is especially intriguing. I first met the NetBeans more than a year ago, when they stopped by my office in San Jose to show me their Java development toolkit. It blew me away, and has only gotten better.
Java has become a favored language, especially on the server. I think Java has a real chance to make inroads on some kinds of client devices, though I doubt it’ll ever be all that useful on PCs, given the horrible compatibility problems on various Java virtual machines (the layer of software, typically included in Web browsers, in which Java applications run), not to mention Microsoft’s largely successful moves to poison the atmosphere for consistent client Java applications.
Still, Sun is beginning to tell an interesting story for developers. It has a long, long way to go before it’ll begin to match Microsoft-style care and feeding of programmers, but the progress is real.