Unlike many of the people interviewed, I actually have hope that many of the things I wish for will happen. But a few of them are beyond the pale of probability (especially the one regarding software patents.)

Since Michelle had to edit my answers down, I decided to publish my complete original comments here, with a couple of links added:

• I wish that Apple would take the best practices of the individual iApps, and make them consistent across the whole suite. For example, why does iTunes support Rendezvous for local area sharing, but iPhoto does not? We need some equivalent to the original apple human interface guidelines, updated for the network era, to state a vision of the consistent behavior expected of internet era applications. These best practices include Rendezvous (zeroconf) for local area discovery and sharing, scriptability, exposing data via web services, consuming data via web services, consistent cross-application integration and services. Apple's a smart company, so I really hope I'm not spitting in the wind on this one; there's no good reason why we shouldn't see some progress on this front announced at MacWorld, and I hope more will come throughout the year.

• I wish that Nat Friedman (of Novell/Ximian) would finish up Dashboard for Linux, and that everyone from Apple to Microsoft Longhorn would copy his ideas, since Dashboard is one of the smartest user-centric innovations I've seen in a long time. (Dashboard instruments applications for data sharing, so that when I'm in an app, my dashboard automatically shows me related data from other apps, so that when I'm reading someone's email, their other contact info is automatically retrieved from my address book, any recent search results (including photos of them) are displayed, and in general, I see as much appropriate context as my dashboard can find.) I want it. Unfortunately, Novell's got a lot on their plate, and innovation may have to wait in the queue behind various kinds of integration and catchup efforts.

• I wish that the various web services data vendors (including Amazon, Google, EBay, Salesforce.com, and many others) would realize that they comprise the building blocks of a future "internet operating system", and act accordingly, engaging with each other to interoperate. It seems to me that the original Unix/Linux architecture, and the architecture of the internet, are based on a model of "small pieces loosely joined" (to quote David Weinberger). Web services can also operate on this model. However, there are alternate visions, including .Net and J2EE, in which there is a quest for "one ring to bind them all." There's a history in our industry in which application vendors mark out new territory, but then lose that territory to someone who figures out how to control that space with platform-level APIs. If instead, we can consciously keep to the current open standards model of the internet, we will continue to leave opportunities for new innovations, and new market entrants. Unfortunately, I worry that the competition between Amazon, Google and EBay will lead them rivalries that make them forget the foundation of their success in the open internet. (But I'm hopeful that the companies in question are smart enough to avoid this trap.)

• I wish that Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Intuit, and other companies saddling their users with product activation would go back and study the lessons of the early 80's, when product activation met with such user revulsion that companies that tried it lost market share to those that didn't. As Lao Tzu says, "fail to honor people, they fail to honor you." I'm pretty sure that this wish is going to come true -- the only question is when, and how much additional legal baggage (DMCA and sequels) will be in the way before the industry gets its collective brains back, and throws off the fear-mongering by the content industries that sent them "like half-witted Gadarene swine" (to quote P.G. Wodehouse) back over this fatal cliff. I'm not saying that some level of content protection and identity management isn't appropriate, but we need some sanity, and we need to assume that users basically want to do the right thing.

• I wish that Adobe, Macromedia, and other leading PC software vendors would port their products to Linux, since we're just about at a tipping point for Linux on the desktop. I remember this great quote from Warren Buffett, which went something like this: "Sometimes Mr. Market offers his wares cheaply, and sometimes they are dear. I've never understood why people hate to buy them when they are cheap, but rush to buy them when they are dear." Linux application market share is cheap right now, so that makes it a great time to enter the market. My guess, though, is that most folks will wait till 2005 or later, and then be rushing to catch up to the leaders who moved early.

• I wish that the USPTO would make it a requirement that any software patent application be accompanied by source code that demonstrates the invention in question. The original tradeoff in the patent system was that you gave up your trade secrets -- teaching everyone else how to do your invention -- in exchange for a limited monopoly on your invention. This one stroke would restore some balance to the patent system, since it would force companies to choose between real disclosure and patent protection, rather than having their cake and eating it too. Of course, it would also help if the patent office made companies sign an affidavit that they had actively searched for prior art, rather than following the current "don't ask, don't tell" approach. Of course, anything so reasonable is unlikely, because there are so many entrenched interests here that Washington resembles a taffy pull between those interests far more than it reflects an attempt to find real solutions to what is becoming a very serious handicap for software innovation.

• I wish that applications that manage contact information (from Outlook to Palm organizers and cell phones to Apple's Address Book) would stop making Roach Motels, and make it easy and consistent to share data. There's usually export and import, but it has all kinds of selective lacunae designed to keep the user locked in. I'm thinking that as we move into the next decade, we're going to find more and more of our data locked up in application data stores that others control, that companies are going to find that keeping their users' data is a good way to keep their users locked in, and that as a result, we're going to end up with a "free data" or "open data" movement analogous to today's open source movement.

• I wish that MapQuest or maps.yahoo.com (Vicinity) would open up a free or low cost API to their data. I also wish that they would take a lesson from Amazon and let users annotate the data and build out additional value on top of their sites. I'll bet that the first company to do this is the one that ends up the winner in the highly important geolocation server space. Right now, my money is on Microsoft's mapinfo. Even though they don't have the high internet application profile of the others, they do have a web services API. They charge a lot for it, but at least they know that geolocation is an important platform capability for the coming Internet Operating System.

• Rael Dornfest, author of Google Hacks and the mobilewhack weblog adds: "I'd like to see consumer mobile devices--palmtops, hiptops, and handsets--scriptable. It was scripting that drove the Web, taking it from a static online catalogue of content to an operating system. Gaining simpler programmatic access to the contacts, calendars, and other assorted user-data; bluetooth, messaging, image capture and minipulation on the phone will open up the mobile to the people prototyping the next generation of applications." I agree completely with Rael. Scripting opens up development to users, letting them show vendors where they want the technology to go, filling in the gaps between the vendor's paid offerings. It's an incredibly important part of the open source landscape, and one that doesn't get enough attention. As Hassan Schroeder, Sun's first webmaster, once said, "Perl is the duct tape of the Internet." Where's the duct tape for my cell phone?

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to Foo Camps ("Friends of O'Reilly" Camps, which gave rise to the "un-conference" movement), O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Gov 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Expo. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. In addition to O'Reilly Media, Tim is a founder of Safari Books Online, a pioneering subscription service for accessing books online, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early-stage venture firm.

Comments on this weblog

Showing messages 1 through 12 of 12.

• My Wish
  2010-07-06 02:40:39  MotorolaVE440 [View]
  
  
  I wish iPhone makes no more mistakes in their new upcoming smart phones.
  Motorola VE440 (http://www.cdmacellulars.com/)

• Where do you see it?
  2004-01-15 15:41:31  jeffreymcmanus [View]
  
  
  Tim,
  
  I'd be interested to see how you see competition between Amazon, eBay and others as coloring the way we offer our platform technologies to developers. I suspect you might be seeing something that isn't really there, but I'd like to know more about what you meant to be sure.
  
  Jeffrey McManus
• Where do you see it?
  2004-01-18 10:15:57  Tim O'Reilly | [View]
  
  
  Jeff,
  
  I don't see destructive competition now. I worry about it for the future, if marketplaces get more competitive and it starts to look like a winner-takes-all dynamic. I always like to invert Kurt Vonnegut's warning at the end of Mother Night: "You are what you pretend to be, so you'd better watch what you pretend." This same dynamic can be used to make ourselves better than we might otherwise be. If we pretend to a conscientiousness and an idealism that seems excessive now, we may save ourselves from going down the slippery slope when the opportunity presents, as it inevitably will.

• Mobile scripting and Toyota Prius
  2004-01-13 19:33:35  codemonk [View]
  
  
  I was thinking about open APIs the other day and the Prius's support of Bluetooth. Imagine the possibilities if they offered hooks into all of the cars services... Streaming mp3s from your bluetooth enabled iPod to the car stereo. Car LCD integration w/ your bluetooth GPS unit. Logging mileage and other info to your laptop for reimbursement purposes. Instantly dialing 911 on your cell phone if your airbag goes off.
  
  Sigh, when will the realize that opening up APIs to users gives them free developers and features developed for free.
  
  
  

• . . . and these!
  2004-01-12 15:45:52  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  http://slashdot.org/~master2b/journal/

• Shared iPhoto at Keynote
  2004-01-06 13:28:59  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  The wish of RendezVous sharing in iPhoto has come true today in Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote. Not the most revolutionary advance we could see but surely step in the right direction.

• Scriptable Phone
  2004-01-03 01:53:23  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Your wish is granted. New mobile phones running Pocket PC Phone Edition 2003 include the Compact .NET Framework, which means users can write their own utilities of full-blown apps in their choice of VB.NET, C#, JavaScript, or any other language with a CLR-targeted compiler. Can't wait to get one myself...
  --Richard Tallent (www.tallent.us)

• My PDA has scripting... it is a Zaurus
  2004-01-02 18:21:18  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  My Zaurus is scriptable in multiple languages... bash, perl, python... etc. Works great and there are a number of hacks to give graphical prompts and dialogs to the graphical Trolltech QT environment...
  
  Switch to the Zaurus

• Ste-Chappelle & Le-Rat-Race
  2004-01-02 10:26:42  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Could it be that the semantic standardization fundamental to web services reverses the roles of the institutions contrasted in the title of Raymonds' noted essay, where he compares the design of a splendid communal edifice with the chaotic but productive kludgery conducted across the commons, knee deep in squalor?
  
  Tim seems to be concerned with the establishment of proprietary models for the back office provision of web services, but the essence of web service functions is their accessability and use out on the commons, on the net. The net is the OS, and the APIs to deep data bases provided by some vendors whose activities broadly correspond to areas of interest do not bestow any divine rights as essential resources (the broadest possible search, per se, being the unique and crucial function, at this stage).
  
  (Maybe ten years ago I got a cattle-call email when ORA was making the great portage from Boston to Berkeley in which Tim introduced himself as a classics graduate, so I should make it clear in what follows that I have "no latin and less greek".)
  
  What about
  
  
  The ideal of the semantic web can be boiled down, as Jon Bosak has put it citing Wittgensteins' famous line, "the meaning is the use", to a

• For #7 check out SyncML
  2004-01-01 21:36:21  adpsk [View]
  
  
  http://www.openmobilealliance.org/syncml/
  
  

• Wishing for people to fix Linux... =)
  2004-01-01 19:38:19  kollivier [View]
  
  
  Whenever I hear people say "Linux is just about ready", I twinge a bit. There is certainly truth to its increased adoption and suitability for the enterprise, but for the creative professionals that Adobe/Macromedia/etc. market to, how is Linux ready for them?
  
  Linux still is not really for this market at all. For those who aren't hobbyists, or working within an enterprise enviroment (with a dedicated IT team), Linux will probably be overwhelming and cause them to run back to Windows.
  
  What the "Linux desktop system" lacks is a coherent battle plan to target this market. There are some strides being taken here, but IMHO they are still in their infancy and things will change dramatically for Linux in the next two years. Commercial companies who made a significant investment could find themselves forced to adopt new tools and distros due to a changing market, just around the time they're finishing version 1.0 of their Linux port. When the desktop system emerges, I think the Adobes and Macromedias of the world will jump on it. Maybe someone will beat them to it... But having a great app on a desktop that most creative professionals aren't using (and won't knowably use in the near future) just seems like a potentially big failure, ala the Java office suite.

• Giving It A Name - INOS
  2004-01-01 02:24:06  sumankm [View]
  
  
  Tim's been talking about an Internet Operating System for a long time now. Since IOS is a widely known Cisco operating system, we might call Tim's Internet Operating System INOS. It's as good as any acronym in our alphabet soup.

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