Archive for June, 2009
Apple Cuts ZFS from Snow Leopard?
Posted by tloverro in Apple, Operating Systems, Storage, Technology on June 10th, 2009
It’s beginning to look like Apple has cut the promising ZFS file system technology from even basic read/write inclusion from OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Snow Leopard Server. All previous mentions of ZFS have been removed as you can see (or not see more accurately) here, here and here. This is about as explicit as it gets. Apple lists the file systems for OS X Snow Leopard Server and ZFS is not there. (Somebody even already updated the Wikipedia page on ZFS already to reflect this.)
My guts tells me Apple made the decision for two interrelated reasons:
1) They want to keep Snow Leopard clean and MORE stable, not less stable because of new features…and file systems are a lot of work…per the recent WWDC Keynote.
2) ZFS is just not ready for prime time in production environments and Apple’s file system team realized this. ZFS has not itself been finalized and Apple’s going to have to do a lot of customization work to make it fit into OS X cleanly. This probably also means it will NOT be compatible with any other ZFS deployments / versions. So much for ZFS as a panacea.
Furthermore, for ZFS to be really useful for OS X customers, Apple will need to do the work to make it compatible as a boot disk which will require even more work and customization and Apple will also need to hide all of the brutal command line complexity and zpool crap and normal RAID levels that characterize ZFS. Getting ZFS to be easy to use is another ball of wax altogether! I bet that will take Apple 2-3 years minimum. In other words, kids please don’t hold your breath for ZFS.
Wow! Isn't this fun and easy! The dark side of ZFS...
While I think ZFS is extremely promising I get really concerned when I hear talk about it in mythical and impossibly optimistic savior-esque terms. In reality, it’s got a long way to go and most people only have such a positive impression of ZFS because they’ve never worked with it. Once you have, it tempers your enthusiasm about 50%-95%. Then again, HFS+ is pretty much ancient history at this point and could not be any less stable (particularly with external storage–needing to dismount? ahem?), so I think all OS X customers are long overdue for something bright and shiny.
My two Drobos I have running at home keep my data safe and don’t require me to understand the ZFS diagram shown. And when ZFS does replace HFS+ in OS X I am betting Data Robotics will make Drobos 100% ZFS compatible. Until then, I don’t really feel the need to run ZFS just yet. And remember folks, even if you are running ZFS that does not absolve you from needing offsite storage…
My New Ringtone: a 56k Modem
Posted by tloverro in Mobile, Personal, Technology on June 4th, 2009
It always nice to have some fun early on, so let us indulge for a moment.
While watching this YouTube clip of a 300 baud modem hooked up to a phone, it occurred to me how far the world has come since I first really stepped into the online world with my first Hayes modem. All those old pinging and clanging noises, boops and beeps that used to connect me to CompuServe and AOL (even before the web). How quaint! Well why not bring back those sounds in the form of a ringtone? What fun! Imagine the possibilities:
Scenario 1
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, excuse me. I just need to connect to the net to download some email.
Scenario 2
[iPhone ringing with loud modem chirps]
Person: Huh?
Me: Oh, that’s a fax. It’s urgent. I gotta take this.
I give you the ultimate new dork accouterment, the modem/fax ringtone (Creative Commons Licensing 1.0 this is a reformat of the original):
These are the sounds of a 56kbps modem according to my friend @chrismarcellino who can tell by just listening. My ideal ringtone though would really be the sounds of a 14.4kbps modem, which I know when I hear it. Thoughts?
File hosting for ringtones thanks to Dropio.com!
MSFT Product Marketing Fail
Posted by tloverro in Marketing, Technology on June 3rd, 2009
The effects of oversteering.
In the news today is word that a Marketing Manager at Microsoft is trying to steer the computing industry away from the word “netbook” toward something more…how shall I say…higher end, all encompassing and pricier sounding.
Product marketing is not the art of taking something that’s popular and going against the tide. Product marketing is about either setting the direction of the tide or going with the flow.
It’s going to be difficult to near impossible to replace an essentially organic and entrenched term such as “netbook” with something entirely artificial. MSFT doesn’t have the best product marketing track record to boot either. Have you seen Microsoft get embarrassed by Apple’s ads? Can you name something Windows Mobile is known for?
But please don’t take me for a Microsoft hater. In fact, I consider Microsoft Office the single greatest software suite of all time. I just take offense to much of their product marketing. They need to stop having more flavors of Windows than a Baskin Robbins. They need to convince computer makers to stop marketing primarily on MHz and long lists of tech specs. And they shouldn’t try to perform invasive surgery on the fledgling netbook industry just as its taking off. MSFT should think of netbooks as the most exciting thing to happen to them since virtualization (which, incidentally is another example of a force they reacted to with hostility at first in terms of Windows licensing before finally embracing.)
In summary, MSFT Product Marketing Managers, please listen up. Stop trying to fight the world around you for a moment just because it wasn’t conceived of in Redmond. Go with it. Be one with the people.
NAS is Overblown
Posted by tloverro in Marketing, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Storage, Technology on June 3rd, 2009
Dear Established Storage World,
I’ve got some serious issues with what you’re assuming consumers and SMBs want from their storage. Get your head out of the “cloud” and listen up. Here’s what people actually want:
1. Don’t f#cking crash and lose my family photos or tax returns.
2. See number one.
Why is it then that when you look at how vendors such as HP, Iomega or LaCie market their storage products, they either 1) promote a bunch of technical specifications that are 100% irrelevant to customers or 2) promote a bunch of esoteric NAS features that are only good for Alpha Geeks? Who the hell cares how much RAM or what MHz processor is in a storage product? Is 1GHz good or bad for storage? Have you ever tried using UPnP / DLNA? It blows!
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any problems with NAS per se. To me NAS is a great way of sharing storage/files across many computers. I use NAS (via SMB/CIFS) at home every day with a Drobo and DroboShare for the three Macs in my apartment. Here’s my problem: most storage vendors conflate NAS with multimedia streaming and “cloud” services, but this approach is bound to fail. NAS is first and foremost a way of sharing files, not streaming them.
FACT: Windows Home Server (WHS) is bound to fail, just as surely as Intel’s Viiv platform for the living room is now a laughable and faded memory. Why? It’s a freaking mule that doesn’t know whether it wants to backup your data or make sweet love to your TV.
Windows Home Server will never match the beauty or elegance of either 1) backing up to a direct-attached USB/FW/eSATA drive or 2) me walking up to my plasma screen TV and plugging my laptop in via HDMI–no need to convert videos between arcane codecs, download tons of buggy software or go through the headache of streaming. Intel’s Viiv failed because it’s really hard to put a general purpose computing device in the living room and have it do anything really well. WHS suffers from this same basic and fatal flaw. It’s really hard to put a general purpose storage device in the living room and have it do anything really well.
Sheer madness! Number of people who actually use this feature? Five? Ten?
At the end of the day WHS and most NAS devices fail my most basic of consumer/SMB litmus tests: I can’t explain what they do in one sentence or less. If you need further proof of their lack of consumer appeal, simply visit HP’s Home Media Server website. The first thing you’ll notice is a page about “Why a Home Server?” Um, if you need to have that page, you should realize you are selling a solution and technology in need of a problem.
"Redmond, we have a problem. No one wants these things."
How about this for a novel approach: we start with the needs of consumers and SMBs first? It’s what I did at Data Robotics (and they will continue to do) and we took the industry by storm. Here’s a cheat sheet for the Established Storage World , please refer to the beginning of this blog entry for what people want from their storage. Hint: it doesn’t have the words “Cloud 2.0.1″ in it.
My Background
Posted by tloverro in About this Blog, Biographical on June 2nd, 2009
You’re likely to see some common themes appear in this blog that have roots in my educational and professional background. I’ve worked in technology both on the finance side, as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and a venture capitalist with RRE Ventures, and on the entrepreneurial/startup side, as the Director of Product Marketing at Data Robotics, Inc. and the founder of a handful of ventures and websites dating back to 1996. I grew up on Long Island and then earned my BA from Stanford during the height of the dot com bubble and the nadir of the bust. I’ve spent roughly five of the past ten years in Silicon Valley and five in New York City. I’d like to think I can bring the best of both perspectives to the table.
This means I don’t fit in perfectly with the cultures of either the Valley or NYC. I am rarely if ever impressed with technology for the sake of technology and I shudder at thought of making a living purely off of financial engineering. I like to see companies created, teams built, problems solved and value created. Maybe that’s why I’ve decided to spend the next two years of my life living in the Midwest (attending the Kellogg School of Management).
You can expect blog postings about topics within technology and finance that I have experience in as an operator, investor or consumer including:
- Storage
- Mobile
- Consumer HW & SW
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