Worlds Colliding Violently
Programming, Drumming, Cooking, Cars, Mozilla, and the Trials & Tribulations of a Geek from New Jersey.
Surprise Surprise
The Shifty Jelly blog gives us yet another reason to be wary of investing any serious time, effort, or money into Apple’s walled garden. After several posts defending Apple’s review process, Apple goes ahead and rejects his MyFrame product…not because it had broken any of Apple’s existing rules, but because they implemented a new rule.
And that rule is no widgets. Quoth Steve Jobs:
We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry.
It’s a shame because it looked like a very nice app. In fact, too nice for Apple’s liking. Looking at the feature list, I can see what Apple doesn’t want happening:
- iPod/Music controls and create your own Playlist
- International Weather with current weather & 3 day forecast ºF/ºC
- Birthday/Anniversary reminders (from Address Book)
- Twitter feeds
- Stickies: leave a reminder note on the screen for partners or the kids
Looking at the photos of it, it would also show battery life and other pieces of useful information in a very attractive way. Too much useful functionality bundled into one app. We can’t have that, no can we?
But of course, we also can’t have too little functionality either, or else Apple won’t let you through the gate. That developer was later told over the phone that iPad-only apps were being held to a higher standard than iPhone-only apps, and so he had to add more features if he wanted to be on the Supersized iPod. And where does it say that in a developer agreement? Oh wait, it doesn’t.
So there you have it, developers. If you want to invest your time and money into developing for the iPad, make sure you put in more than basic functionality into your app. But not too much.
And people wonder why I don’t own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
Posting from an iPad
Ok, I’m going to attempt to type this entry on my company iPad. Although I’ve used it for small note taking, I haven’t tried writing anything of length. I’m already making huge mistakes and finding it frustrating.
The typing position is uncomfortable, I have to be hunched over the whole time. Thank the gods for spell correction as I go. Every time I try to hit shift, it switches me to the numerical layout, which is annoying as hell. It just autocorrected hell to “he’ll”, and just to “joust”. Lame. I’m not going to correct myself anymore after this sentence.
I can’t see a point to
Th
Is
A
THIS thiNg. Why is that n capitalized? WTF iPad?
I have to keep quitting
All my apps so that I can. Adjust my iTunes playback.
Wait, how
Do Iq move uqp in this text box? There’s no scroll ing. In text areas?
For any serious data entry this would be beeayayond a nnoyingq. I hate not being able to rest my fingers, it’s frusTrating. Goddamnit, i did not hit a shift key. Back there! Or a period there! Argh!
I hate that Apples remote app for iTunes hasn’t bee updated for this thing, and that it doesn’t multitask yet. It really needs arrow keys for the. Cuirsor here.
Why can I. Not jUst open an arb itrary file from a server? Oh sure, I c an run vnc and control my. C o muter, but gods forbid i want to play a flocking iso! That should say Sfucking.
GODDAMNIT.
I’m done. I hate this th
Ing
Seri ously.
More Fuel to the Flash Fire
Hulu has released a new video player, and for a number of excellent reasons (listed in the aforementioned link), they’re not moving to HTML5. Yet.
For all the hype & promise of HTML5 video, Hulu is right, it’s just not there yet. It isn’t feature-rich enough to do what they need it to do, and it won’t be for quite some time.
AppHoles
Jon Stewart’s AppHoles commentary last evening on the Gizmodo/Apple kerfuffle is, as usual, hilarious, witty, and overall insightful.
Plus, the shots at AT&T were more than welcome:
If you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable… as a phone!
Let’s see if Gruber actually bothers even mentioning it. Anyone care to wager a few bills that he won’t?
How not to handle a resignation.
Let Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis show you what not to do.
In fairness to Jason, here is his response to that email in the TWiST #49.
No Cool Stuff For You.
You know all those cool gestures that Apple has in their promotional videos for the iPhone and iPad?
Well guess what? You can’t use them.
As it turns out, the Pinch-to-Expand gesture is limited only to Apple’s in-house apps, they won’t put hooks into the API for it, and if you try to recreate it from scratch, they won’t let you through the gates of the App Store.
It doesn’t matter how cool your app is, it can’t be made as cool as Apple’s own releases.
Public Access
When I was a kid growing up in South Jersey, I remember finding a public access TV station that would play some of the most bizarre material in the world. One that has stayed with me to this day was a parody of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”, entitled “Teddy Bears’ Rallies”. In fact, I still remember every word and the incredibly weird marching stuffed animals that went along with it. Amazingly, Google turns up nothing on this, so it must have disappeared completely into the ether.
So to try to prevent the loss of this amusing silliness, I’m going to retype the words here, from memory, circa 1992.
If you go into the woods today,
you’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go into the woods today,
you will not believe your eyes.For everywhere you’ll see Teddy Bears
all drawn up into orderly squares
‘Cause that’s the way the Teddy Bears have their rallies.We learn unquestioning discipline,
and how to use M16s.
Our sergeants drill us until we are
robotic killing machines.Amongst the brooks where nobody looks,
We burn the piles of forbidden books!
‘Cause that’s the way we Teddy Bears have our rallies!
Then it broke into a different tune altogether but still Teddy Bear themed, and I cannot recall the name of the original song it was parodying. But the gist of it was that the teddies were climbing into your bedroom in your sleep and slicing your throat open.
It was all wondrously disturbing and I’d love to meet whoever came up with all of it!
Vancouver Clowning
Dear in-attendance fans of US athletes at the Vancouver games,
Please, for the love of the gods, stop painting your chests and put your shirts back on.
I’m sorry, but this is just embarrassing. I’ve watched 3 different events so far where US competitors had a small group of guys cheering them on with body paint, standing there shirtless. In case no one told you, this is the Olympics, not a Green Bay Packer’s game. We look like a bunch of goddamned rubes. You would think that we could find a way to cheer for our athletes without looking like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel.
Oh, and Shannon Bahrke…you’re 29, and you have bright pink Manic Panic hair. What, did you just make your first trip to Hot Topic? Also, your wild gesticulating during the national anthem at the medal presentation was downright insulting. You’re representing the entire country, act like an adult for 30 seconds!
Sincerely,
A Curmudgeonly Philadelphian
The iPad is Confusing
I might be pulling a Rob Malda here, but…
No USB, no camera, no IR or RF, no multi-tasking, stuck on AT&T. Lame.
In all seriousness, I am at a loss with this product release. It’s not even a larger iPhone, because as we all know, an iPhone has a camera and a GSM chip. The iPad, on the other hand, is just a large iPod Touch.
Firstly, Apple blatantly ripped off Delicious Library with their iBook software. Conveniently, Delicious Library’s iPhone app was rejected from the iTunes store recently…
The unit itself is lousy for an ebook reader, it’s not an e-ink screen, and costs twice as much as a Kindle. The lack of a USB port means you can’t easily hook up normal peripherals, forcing you to buy custom 30-pin dock connector compatible devices, like a camera connection kit. Why couldn’t they just include a USB port?
Any rumors of home automation were obviously false, which is a shame given the potential this could have had. Imagine wall-mounting an iPad into a slick holder, and having it be a digital picture frame. Then, touch it and it’s a jukebox-style controller for your stereo, or your thermostat. Take it down and it can control your entire entertainment center with custom per-device controls. An on-screen wheel for volume, scrubbing controls for playback on your TV…it had such potential. It could have revolutionized every gadget-center living room.
Instead we’re stuck with this odd combination of various devices. It can’t play arbitrary video formats, so you’d have to transcode everything. It doesn’t play flash, so while that’s fine for YouTube, there goes Hulu, The Daily Show, the BBC iPlayer, etc. And while HTML 5 supports native video, Mobile Safari’s implementation leaves much to be desired, not to mention none of the popular streaming sites use it yet. Obviously this is yet another attempt to generate revenue by iTunes store purchases. Pretty lousy for those of us who like to keep their movies in their original format without transcoding.
The most perplexing thing about it is that there’s an available keyboard dock that lets you mount the screen vertically while typing on a keyboard in front of it. You know, like a $#@*$&% laptop! I mean, if that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. If Apple’s device was so revolutionary, why would you need a hardware keyboard sitting in front of it in a configuration that’s been around for 20 years?
The consensus seems to be that most of us were expecting an Apple tablet form of a MacBook. Instead, we got a tablet iPod Touch, and no one is really sure what to make of it. To me, this feels like Apple swung and missed, big time. We’ll see in 60 days when it’s finally in the hands of users.
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