So you see what it takes to get me to write. There have been many things I wanted to write about over the last little bit. But I've been so doggone busy. The Google Reader imminent shutdown really made me want to write. But this... this makes me write. You can see what's near and dear to my hard: Podcasts.
The internet is abuzz with the the news of Podcasts 1.2. <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2031574/hands-on-podcasts-1-2-is-the-one-apple-should-have-shipped.html">Chris Breen has a good rundown</a> of the new app. And I agree that this is the version that should have shipped in that it is far better than the previous app. But it still has some serious flaws that make it not worth using for me. Believe me, I want to use it, I want it to work. I was genuinely excited for the update. The addition of playlists stations is nice and brings it on par with Instacast in that way. And the stilly and quaint reel to reel playback screen is gone, for better or worse (I sort of liked it, but it was a wee bit hard to use).
Here is my biggest frustration. The reason I want this to work is because I spend as much time working at my Macintosh computer as I do out and about with my iOS device. iTunes, with which my phone syncs every night when I plug it in, has podcast subscription capabilities. But I rarely plug my phone directly into my computer. It syncs overnight and so podcasts could sync that way, but I might work at my computer for a couple hours, then head out in my car and want to pick up my podcasts where I left off. Without a physical sync this was impossible. And what if I subscribe to a new podcast on one of the devices? It's cable (or Wi-Fi sync) time to get everything on the same page.
Apple is touting full subscription sync for this version of the app, but here, as I have found, is the rub: that subscription syncing is only between iOS devices, NOT between iOS and it's sync master, iTunes (isn't that quite odd? iTunes syncs with the iOS, but only iOS devices can sync podcasts with each other over the air). This is growing beyond frustrating. Let me explain my experience.
Being excited as I was for this new version of the app, I went and downloaded it, and added a couple of my favorite podcasts to the app. I let the latest episodes download, then I fired up iTunes and waited, and waited, and waited. No podcasts were added to the podcasts section of iTunes. This must be some sort of mistake. So I closed iTunes, forced the podcasts app on the iPhone to refresh and tried again. Still nothing. So I manually subscribed to the podcasts in iTunes and played the latest episode for a few minutes. To my great delight (perhaps the only delightful part of this experience), even though the subscriptions don't sync over the air, the playback position does IF both devices have subscribed to the same podcast and downloaded the same episode. Yay.
So then I subscribed to a couple podcasts on iTunes. As expected from my experience trying it the other way, these podcasts did not automatically show up in the podcast app on iOS. A manual sync with a cable did make them show up. But here is the rub. THE SUBSCRIPTION SWITCH IN THE IOS APP DID NOT GET TURNED ON. You have to manually do that. So even though the podcast was synced over from the iTunes library, the podcast app does not consider that a subscription, it's just sort of parked there.
<img src="/images/uploads/IMG_9178.png" alt="">
LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME!
This does not seem that hard to get right. I don't understand why Apple is making this so painful? I don't get it. I want the features to work as advertised.
Here is what else I would be giving up to switch away from Instacast:
<ul>
<li>Push Notifications for new episodes</li>
<li>Show notes (why does Apple refuse to support this when this is such a standard now?)</li>
<li>More robust media management</li>
</ul>
I must admit that I am not thrilled with Instacast 3's slightly more dumbed down media management, but it is still way better than what Apple's app offers.
And I am excited because Instacast has teased that a Mac client is in the works with full sync. As a podcast geek and power user that will make me extremely happy. I will finally have what I have been longing for these many years.
But the real bottom line for me is that there are still not good and easy podcast solutions for the average person. Apple's app still adds complication by not working quite as advertised, and by trying to hard to make things easy. Sometimes trying to make things easy adds unexpected complication. And solutions like Instacast simple are not easy for mainstream consumers to grasp. Podcasts remain just out of reach for many average consumers in my opinion.
What is so maddening is that Apple could make this so easy and so good, but they just can't seem to manage it.
P.S. That icon is still hideous.
<hr>
Here is the orginal article I wrote about podcasts, and a quick follow up to that.
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2012/06/27/podcasts">Podcasts »</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2012/06/28/podcasts-a-quick-follow-up">Podcasts - A Quick Follow Up »</a></li>
</ul>

Apple's Podcast App Revisited


So... this is just about the craziest bug I have EVER seen! Seriously. If you type the following into a standard plain text entry field in OS X, the app WILL crash. I mean, CRASH!. Thankfully, I'm using WYGWAM for ExpressionEngine for entries and I can type the offending text in the WYGWAM field because it's not a standard OS X text entry field. But I couldn't type it in the title field for this entry because that is a standard plain text entry field. Here's the crasher text:
File:///
Yep. don't type that unless you want your app to crash. And it has to be with a capitol "F". I've reproduced the crash in Safari, Chrome, TextEdit, Coda, and Mail. As far as I can tell, it's any plain text entry field generated through standard OS system controls. Pretty crazy.

Don't Type This On a Mac Unless You like Crashing Apps


<blockquote>
It turns out we may have been over-thinking it.
If the invite sent out this morning by Apple is any indication, the next iPhone is likely to be called the “iPhone 5″. No, it doesn’t technically make sense — it is the sixth iteration of the iPhone — and yet, at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world. It’s the iPhone 5 because that’s what everyone is calling it. Sometimes it is that simple.
</blockquote>
It's still strange though, because I counted on my fingers and toes, and the next iPhone will be the 6th generation iPhone. Calling it the iPhone 5 just seems odd. But, Apple will do what Apple wants to do I suppose.
Also, I love MG's headline.

MG Siegler writing on TechCrunch

MG Siegler says iPhone 5. Because Of Reasons.

<blockquote>
A New Jersey teenager was arrested this weekend for allegedly attempting to shoplift a pair of headphones from the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan, reports Macworld. Eric Shine says he scanned the barcode of a pair of Bose headphones, and navigated the EasyPay purchase process to the final screen, but failed to complete his purchase. Upon trying to leave the store, he was stopped by store employees who accused him of shoplifting and called the police to have him arrested.
</blockquote>
Two things.
<ol>
<li>Honestly, this is why I was never comfortable with the whole EasyPay thing. It felt weird.</li>
<li>What. On. Earth. Apple?!? You had the guy, he claimed to be trying to use your system. You had him. Make him pay and let him go. No harm, no foul. Not good customer service. NOT GOOD AT ALL!</li>
</ol>

MacRumors

Arrested for Using Easy Pay

<blockquote>
I recently released a new little Mac app, Sticky Notifications. It’s not currently in the App Store, and accordingly I went through a process that many Mac developers face: deciding whether to release software on the App Store, or outside of it (or indeed both).
</blockquote>
Some of the details in the second half of the article get pretty boring, but the first half is well worth the read. I think it highlights well the places where Apple is really messing up the App Store experience for both developers and users.

Matt Gemmell

Matt Gemmell Talks About the App Store

<a href="http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/08/16/apple-boss-tries-to-gut-retail-operation/">Jim Dalrymple on The Loop</a>:
<blockquote>
One of the smartest decisions that Apple made over the last decade was to open retail stores worldwide, giving users a chance to get some hands on time with its products. One of the worst decisions came recently when the new vice president of retail John Browett decided to gut the operation. Luckily, he admitted his mistake.
</blockquote>
And:
<blockquote>
This has the stench of a man looking to make a name for himself, not someone that’s doing what’s best for Apple or more importantly, its customers. To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes an Apple store what it is, just doesn’t make sense.
</blockquote>
Please read all of Dalrymple’s article. It is, as usual, great. What I want to talk about here is a little different. I want to talk about how we got here.
Ron Johnson was the genius behind the Apple Retail Stores. For reasons known only to himself, Ron <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/01/apple-retail-chief-ron-johnson-officially-departs/">left Apple to become CEO of the ailing J. C. Penny</a>. Tim Cook <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/apple-hires-john-browett-dixons-retail.html">hired John Browett</a> to replace Ron Johnson. There were <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/01/apple_ceo_tim_cook_allegedly_defends_new_svp_of_retail_amid_criticisms.html">questions</a> about <a href="http://9to5mac.com/2012/02/01/tim-cook-calls-new-retail-svp-john-browett-the-best-by-far/">this decision</a>. But we “Apple Fanboys” as we are known tried to give Tim Cook the benefit of the doubt.
It looks to me from this vantage point like our concerns were well founded. What makes the Apple Retail experience great — best in class even — is the customer service. The decision to cut employ hours, as Jim Dalrymple put it, to “gut the operation” is endemic of what we find in most retail chains. There is a disconnect between pinching pennies, and the customer service a retail chain needs to be truly great. Saving pennies right now often results in a very poor experience for customers, which results in a lack of customers, which results in the need to pinch pennies, which results… well, you get the idea. Apple’s strategy of success was being abandoned by Browett. It is good that the mistake was recognized and corrected. But I have a bigger question.
Why on earth was this man hired? I really hate to ask this next question because it will be taken completely the wrong way. I mean I really hate to ask this question. But I’m going to. Would Steve Jobs have hired this man? And by that, I don’t mean, “What would Steve do?” I mean, would the principles Steve operated the company on have allowed for this man to be hired? Steve hired “A” players. Steve did not put up with “B” team players. It may seem cruel and mean — I certainly don’t think I could ever make the cut of an “A” team player at Apple — but that’s the way it is, and it’s how Steve was able to bring Apple back from the brink of the abyss.
I have to admit, I had my questions about Tim Cook’s ability to really lead Apple. I mostly kept them to myself because they seemed mean spirited on my part. And I didn’t and don’t want to be a member of the “Steve Jobs fanboy” club. Steve made a heap of mistakes and decisions I don’t think were the best thing for Apple. But there can be no doubt he was great for the company.
But now I ask the question, is Tim Cook right for the company? To me, the decision to hire a “B” player to run what is arguable Apple’s most important division is not a good sign. Tim was absolutely the right choice to be COO. He was able to increase Apple’s profit margins significantly, and was a major player in making the company healthy again. Of that there can be no doubt. But I really wonder if he has the vision and fortitude to lead the company.
I don’t want to be mean to Tim Cook. I want Tim to do well, I want Apple to do well. But I don’t want to see the company simply coast on Steve Jobs’ momentum until it runs out. I hope Tim sees what happened here and learns from it. I really hope this is just one of those decisions that we all make once in a while that leave even ourselves scratching our heads.
Time will tell.

Fixing What's Not Broken Makes it Broken


<a href="http://www.emptyage.com/post/28679875595/yes-i-was-hacked-hard">Read the details of Matt’s hack attack here →</a>
I haven’t had anything to say about this yet. In fact I know I haven’t had much to say about anything lately. I’ve been really busy working on editing projects, launching the MovieByte website and all sorts of jazz like that.
But I do want to say some things about the Matt Honan hack.
First of all, it’s scary. Really scary. I think all of us who’s lives are very much lived in the digital world fear stuff like this. The fact that it is not really likely to happen to very many of us because most of us are not on anyone’s radar as targets is no matter. It still scares us.
You know what is even worse. It wasn’t really Matt’s fault. Sure, perhaps he shouldn’t have had all his accounts so closely related, but seriously, who would have thought that having his me.com email as a password reset for gmail, or keeping his credit card stored in what he thought was a secure amazon account (can you even choose not to have your card on file at Amazon if you bought something there?) would cause problems. The fact of the matter is that 99% of the blame for this lies on two parties, Amazon, and Apple.
That the hackers were able to add a bogus credit card to his Amazon account with a phone call, with no verification, then call back and get a password reset because they knew the info of the bogus credit card is absurd.
Even more absurd is that Apple let the hackers reset Honan’s iCloud account password because they knew the last four digits of Honan’s legitimate credit card, which they were able to see because they gained entrance to the Amazon account.
Apple did wrong. Apple did very wrong. I don’t care what arguments can be made in favor of easy password resets and ease of use for the customer. The fact is if you loose/forget your password, it’s your fault and you should be inconvenienced for it. You should be made to prove who you are by much stricter means. And you should most certainly not be able to so easily regain entrance to your account without your password. This is your problem, not Apple’s (or Amazon’s or whoever the account holder may be in any given case).
Increasingly, our passwords are the keys to our lives. And in this case, Amazon and Apple held two really big keys to a room where backdoors from other digital places were located. I know I will certainly be thinking about how to keep my digital life more secure.

Matt Honan

<blockquote>
The portion of my post above is what Apple kool-aid at it’s best looks like. In truth, I think the ads stink. Most people like the idea of the Genius Bar. And those same people will shake their heads and ask themselves, “What was Apple thinking???”
</blockquote>
Pretty funny. Until I got to this portion of Joseph’s post, I was ready to drive the five hours it takes me to get to his house and personally beat him black and blue. When I got to that though, I saw exactly what he was doing.
There is no excuse for Apple. And actually, this is worrying. This is the first sign I have seen that there may be a leadership problem at Apple. I think I have said, though I cannot find it, that if there is a leadership problem at Apple after the passing of Jobs, it will manifest itself very slowly at first. Apple is running on a lot of momentum. And if nothing else like this happens, we can just call it a mistake, or a bad judgement call. But it is just a bit worrying. These ads are tasteless, classless, and simply not very well thought out on any level. I wish Apple would pull them. This is the most embarrassed I have ever been to be an Apple guy.

Jiving Jackalope

The Jackalope Speaks on Apple's New Ads


Terrible! Simply and astoundingly awful!

Apple.com

Apple's new TV spots


Being in the midst of several projects which require my only Mountain Lion compatible computer in my possession to remain stable — which means not taking a chance that Mountain Lion might break something in a bad way — I am sadly not upgrading to Mountain Lion right away. But I didn’t want to feel completely left out, so I upgraded to Safari 6 in Lion.
I actually ran the beta for about a week some time back but wound up rolling back due to serious and quite nearly show stopping bugs and crashes. The release version of Safari 6 feels better but there are still some disappointments. But there are also some things I like.
<h2>The Good</h2>
<h3>Omnibar</h3>
I do not use Google’s Chrome as my primary browser, but I do keep it around. One of the things I really admired about Chrome is it’s omnibar. Why is it, I asked Safari one day, that we have to have two boxes up there, one for typing in URLs and one for typing in Google Searches. Safari explained to me some gobbledygook about user confusion. I told Safari I had never once been confused by Chrome’s omnibar. Safari mumbled incoherently and shuffled off. But here we are in Safari 6, sporting this quite borrowed feature. And it’s great. I am still re-training my muscle memory not to tab over to the Google Search field, but it really is great.
<h3>Faster</h3>
When Safari 6 is working properly (we’ll get to that in a minute), it seems to be faster than Safari 5. Noticeably so.
<h3>View Source</h3>
As a web developer, I often times need to view the source of a web page. Chrome was again ahead of Safari in this way and often times I would use Chrome to view source. The primary reason for Chrome’s superiority was because Chrome provided code coloring that made sifting and sorting through the code much easier for my brain to decipher.
Safari 6 leap-frogs Chrome. Right-clicking and selecting “Show Page Source” brings up the web inspector in code view with one click. Code is colorized, and you get a few more goodies too, such as a sidebar to show resources and frames for instance.
<h3>Password Management</h3>
Safari for Mac has always been able to prompt you to save passwords you just entered for when you visit the site again, and made use of the Mac OS system Keychain. Which, really is great. I love Keychain. There is, so far as I know, no direct equivalent for Windows, certainly not first party, and I know of no good third party equivalent quite like Keychain. I have never had to worry about forgetting a password if I saved it in Safari (or any other password that gets saved in Keychain for that matter). With a couple clicks, and my computer local account password, I can get any username and password I need.
Safari 6 still makes use of the Keychain, but it also now has an interface in the Safari Preferences for managing the usernames and passwords right in Safari.
<h2>The Bad</h2>
<h3>Tabs</h3>
I was one of those people who loved tabs on top in Safari 4 Beta. But I never loved that the tabs changed size, with one tab taking up the entire tab bar, and shrinking with each new tab. It breaks muscle memory very badly, not to mention it looks stupid. Safari 6 takes us back to changing tab sizes. But the tab bar remains, stubbornly, at the bottom of the tool/address bar. So Safari 6 has none of the upsides of the tab bar from Safari 4 Beta, and all the down sides. Not to mention it makes one of my favorite use cases unavailable. It was my habit to double click the tab bar to create a new tab. Since the entire tab bar is taken up with the tab(s) now, there is obviously no way to do this anymore.
Seriously, I hate the tab bar so much in Safari 6 that I’m still considering researching the option of downgrading back to Safari 5. It probably won’t happen, but my loathing for the tab bar cannot be explained with any known words in the english language.
<h3>RSS</h3>
I don’t remember anymore which version of Safari it was, Safari 2 perhaps? But early on, RSS was touted as a big feature of one of the upgrades. And RSS is such an integral part of the web experience I can’t imagine anymore an internet without it. Even users who know nothing of RSS and have no idea what it is benefit from it. Many people use Twitter in place of RSS, but often, even the sites they follow make use of RSS to populate their Twitter feed.
RSS support in Safari has always been minimal and feature lacking, but it was my first RSS client and introduced me to the world. And I know the same is true for many others. It brought awareness and understanding to the world of RSS.
Well, Safari 6 has no RSS support. Or I should say, no user-facing RSS support. If you enter a URL to an RSS feed, or click on a link to an RSS feed, you are given the option of adding the RSS feed to Mail, <a href="#fn:rssmntlion">1</a> and even that has cryptic language so that a typical user probably won’t even understand what they are seeing. What’s worse, there is still no way to view the source of an RSS feed so I’m still forced to use Chrome for that. I’ve dinged Chrome before for not supporting RSS feeds except to show you the XML source, and now Safari has sinned far worse. I make no excuses for Apple, this is simply very poorly done.
<h3>“Safe” “files”</h3>
The option to “Open “safe” files after downloading” is still in the preferences. Since I upgraded my installation, and the first thing I do to Safari is turn that egregious option off, I can’t say for sure if the default is for that to be on, but the very fact that this is even an option tells me Apple is still not taking this area of security very seriously. And this is not good. NOT GOOD. I cannot tell you how dangerous having this setting turned on is for the security of OS X. Sure Apple keeps a list of safe files updated, but that does nothing to stop a new threat for the first few hours. This setting should not even be available. This is a MAJOR problem that Apple should remove.
<h3>Stops Loading Sites - Restart Required</h3>
Occasionally, Safari 6 just stops loading sites. I thought it was my internet connection at first, so I grabbed my iPhone, and it was loading sites on my network just fine. So I restarted Safari and amazingly, sites were loading again. This has happened to me about 3 times so far and I haven’t even been using Safari 6 for twenty four hours yet. This was one of the problems in the beta that made me go back to Safari 5. Admittedly the problem was much more frequent in the beta, but I’m disappointed that Apple did not really fix this problem in the final release.
<h2>Quibbles and Annoyances</h2>
<h3>Downloads</h3>
I have not been a big fan of the downloads popover window, and it is still here in Safari 6. Admittedly it is better than the separate window we had in days of yore, but bringing popover windows to OS X from iOS for iPad is not ideal. This UI mode simply does not work well in a desktop OS environment with a mouse. It is, I think, better than a separate window. But what I wish they would do is make it a sidebar (like reading list). But, I suppose I’ll live.
<h2>Mixed Bag</h2>
That’s about all I have for now. Suffice it to say that I have pretty mixed feelings about this update to my beloved Safari.
<hr>
<ol>
<li>At least this is the behavior in Lion. Since RSS support in Mail for Mountain Lion is MIA, I have no idea what this behavior will be like. <a href="#fnref:rssmntlion">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Safari 6

Marco has a few thoughts, and harsh words:
<blockquote>
The problem with sandboxing isn’t that any particular app is incompatible with the current entitlements. It’s a deeper problem than that: Apple is significantly reducing the number of apps that can be sold in the Store after people have already bought them.
Apple’s stance seems to be pretty typical of them: comply with the new rules or leave. This usually works for them, but this time, they’ve made a critical strategic error: leaving is often a better option, or the only option, for the affected developers. Many of them have already left, and many more will.
</blockquote>
It’s a tad early to call it a mass exodus, but this is becoming a common refrain among the apps I use all the time. And it’s not like I’m using weird apps or anything like that. And I can tell you this, I am seriously considering buying my apps outside the App Store when that opportunity is available for the apps I want to buy. I have simply lost confidence in the App Store. I think Apple is seriously jeopardizing it’s third party developer ecosystem. It seems like a really strange thing for Apple to run all the fish out of it’s pond, when the fish in the pond are a major part of the attraction to the pond.
Go read Marco’s whole article, but I must quote his last paragraph here:
<blockquote>
The Mac App Store is in significant danger of becoming an irrelevant, low-traffic flea market where buyers rarely venture for serious purchases. And I bet that’s not what Apple had in mind at all.
</blockquote>
Hey Apple, hint: you’re doing it wrong!

Marco Arment

App Store and Irrelevance

<a href="http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/07/1password-on-the-mac-app-store/">Gabe at Macdrifer »</a>
<blockquote>
Roustem Karimov of AgileBits tweeted that the latest 1Password update was rejected for sandboxing entitlements.
</blockquote>
He goes on to say how he is not upset or unhappy with the Mac App Store.
<blockquote>
As someone that is a power-user, you might think that I am upset with the Mac App Store. I am not. I have seen no indication that Apple plans to block traditional application installs.
</blockquote>
Well I am. I am both deeply concerned, and very upset with what Apple is doing. Apple’s approach was already restrictive when they first opened the Mac App Store. But now they are turning the screws even tighter.
Consider the disparity between versions of Coda 2. Now, Coda 2 is absolutely a power user’s tool, you use it to write code, connect to FTP servers, and SSH for crying out loud. But there are certain advantages to being in the Mac App Store, namely iCloud syncing of saved sites. I had a really hard time making up my mind about whether I wanted Mac App Store Coda 2, or Direct Download Coda 2. At any time, Apple could tighten down the screws of the App Store even tighter and kill real functionality that I use all the time in Coda. Coda 2 slid in before the Sandboxing deadline, and there is no way Coda would be nearly as good or useful if it adhered to Apple’s Sandboxing. But certain features are not available to the non App Store version of Coda 2.
The problem is that Apple is starting to fence off parts of the operating system for Mac App Store apps only. Clearly Apple believes if you want to develop a good Application, then you should be distributing it through the Mac App Store where the best APIs and services are available to you. And make no mistake, I believe the only reason the Mac is open to software outside of the Mac App Store is because pandora’s box was opened almost 30 years ago. If you want proof, look at iOS. If Apple created the Mac today… well, news flash, they did create the equivalent of the Mac today, it’s the iPhone and iPad.
And, I’m not even saying that it’s not the right model. I’m saying that Apple’s approach to it is starting to become a little too tight fisted. Here’s a question, how many of Apple’s own apps in the Mac App Store adhere to sandboxing policy? Do you really think Final Cut Pro X adhere’s to sandboxing policy?
Consider iBooks on iOS. iBooks is allowed to adjust system brightness. No other app is allowed access to that API and would be rejected from the app store if they tried (we know because some apps have tried that). But Apple’s iBooks available freely in the App Store does just that.
Look, Apple can do what it wants to do, I’m not arguing that it’s technically wrong. I am arguing that they need to step back and take a good, long, hard look at the issues here. I don’t personally use 1Password, but it’s a great app, and it’s not like it’s some system level utility or anything. If it can’t be in the app store, there are some deep issues here.

Posts tagged “Apple Stupidity” from the blog