Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bullshit

⚭   marco.org

Marco Arment pointing out that Apple isn’t a saint:

Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to tolerate.

I think one of the reasons why I’ll rather put up with Apple than with, say, Google’s bullshit is that it seems to be directed more at people that analyze and/or invest in companies, not customers.

Fanboy theory

⚭   marco.org

Marco Arment shining light on the term “fanboy”:

I used to attempt to defend myself against accusations of being a fanboy, but I just don’t care anymore. It’s impossible to express a useful opinion to any significantly sized audience without inadvertently angering someone enough to hurl irrational insults at you.

It used to be that I simply loved him for bringing me Instapaper, but ever since he started publishing on his blog more frequently, I also enjoy his writing a lot.

2011: Now read about Last Year

⚭   TotalDickHead

The year in review over at the Total Dick Head:

It’s that time of year, dear readers, when every blogger, in order to have something to write about during the slow week after Christmas, looks back and reflects on the year just ending. Most people are talking about what a crummy year it was, and it was, if you were, you know, unemployed, or illegally detained, or swapped out for spare parts. But for Dick-heads, the year was pretty OK.

Hello spotify. This is Austria.

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This just changed everything. Well, maybe.

I’m really not fanatical about living in Austria, but even I have to admit that is has some perks. Relatively early access – especially given it’s size – to technology, at least in some cases (iPhone, no less) is right up there (with cheap, fast Internet and phone plans).

Crushed by outdated crap

Quote:   John Gruber

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Yesterday, I thought Marco Arment put it best. Today, John Gruber ups the ante:

Sometimes the next thing does less, and is better for it — not in every way, but overall. If we never let go of old technology, we’d be buried in complexity and crushed by outdated crap.

The first sentence is what technology pundits that try to talk down Apple’s success and (or because they) don’t understand it don’t get. The second sentence is pure gold – it’s everything I’ve ever wanted to say in regards to Flash (and others) in the most compact way of saying it. As clear and concise as Apple products.

 

Making tools, not politics

⚭   marco.org

Marco Arment precisely pinpoints why the death of mobile Flash is so awesome:

Since web browsing is booming on mobile devices, web developers must build in non-Flash equivalents to any Flash functionality. iOS’ popularity has made this effectively true for years, but now the most die-hard holdouts have no hope to cling to: widespread Flash support on mobile devices will definitely never happen now, so it’s irresponsible and against nearly every site owner’s best interests to make any Flash-only functionality today.

It may sound ridiculous, but when I read about the end of Flash on Mobile this morning (in Instapaper, of course) I felt incredibly relieved, as if a weight that has been on my (or rather, our collective) shoulders for years had finally been lifted. I applaud Adobe for taking this step; it was clear that Flash was the past and better be left there for many, but not all. Now that it’s officially being ended, even those that supported it just for the sake of supporting something that might hinder Apple will eventually realize that the future looks different. And that includes Adobe itself, which just regained a lot of the respect and sympathy they’ve lost over the past few years by trying to fight against windmills even after they’ve been told that it’s not in their best interest.

On some being more equal than others, security researcher edition

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Forbes reports on Andy Miller, renowned security researcher, being kicked from the iOS Developer Program after getting a proof of concept into the App Store:

Miller had, admittedly, created a proof-of-concept application to demonstrate his security exploit, and even gotten Apple to approve it for distribution in Apple’s App Store by hiding it inside a fake stock ticker program, a trick that Apple wrote violated the developer agreement that forbid him to “hide, misrepresent or obscure” any part of his app. But the researcher for the security consultancy Accuvant argues that he was only trying to demonstrate a serious security issue with a harmless demo, and that revoking his developer rights is “heavy-handed” and counterproductive. “I’m mad,” he says. “I report bugs to them all the time. Being part of the developer program helps me do that. They’re hurting themselves, and making my life harder.”

The problem, I think, is not that he demonstrated the issue; I think it’s not even that he demonstrated that one could slip it by the App Store review team. In my opinion Miller’s mistake was not taking the App down himself after he had demonstrated the exploit and caught it on video (at least the news reports didn’t indicate that to me). It would have still been against the rules, but there would have been no harm to Apple other than possibly bad publicity, and more importantly to no one other than Apple; Miller might have still been kicked from the developer program, but I would have understood his anger and disappointment in that case. But he simply left the App for everyone to download – again, from what I understood from the news reports – and therefore put customers in potential harm (especially since the App was free). And at that point it doesn’t matter that he’s a security researcher and maybe more trustworthy than “no-name-developers” – if Apple made some members of the ecosystem more equal than others, everything would start to crumble. While I don’t think anyone, including Apple, thinks of Miller as someone abusing that situation to harm users, that doesn’t mean he should be treated special. Not only would the line that has to be drawn begin to become fuzzy, not only would it become only a matter of time that Apple misjudges and gave someone special treatment that didn’t deserve it; it would also – and probably more importantly – require the users to think about the Apps they download and who creates them, and that’s the one thing Apple doesn’t want and need. And it’s not only about potentially putting customers in harms way. In Miller’s demonstration video he deploys a payload that changes the App’s behavior: On start, the App immediately quits again and instead sends the user to a website or YouTube-video. That in itself is enough to erode an inexperienced user’s trust and faith in the ecosystem; they become confused and wary of again installing an App – any App – because they don’t understand what’s going on and feel like they’re out of control.

So in all, it’s acceptable that Apple kicked Miller. They shouldn’t do it because he discovered and showed off a vulnerability, and had he done only that, I’d criticize Apple. However, by leaving it on the App Store, Miller didn’t act responsibly, and bringing forward the defense of “Apple should be thankful! I’m doing heir work for them”, he honestly seems a bit childish to me. Like a fed up child that can’t see why its parents won’t let them eat candy for breakfast. And while I’m certainly not a security researcher, I also don’t think it’s common practice in that field either. There’s simply no reason why the App should be available on the App Store; no one can benefit from that course of action, but a lot of people and systems are being compromised. Remember: there is no insight to be gained by downloading the App; for one, there is no way to really understand the inner workings (only releasing the source code, not just an already compiled version thereof would provide one), and since this whole proof of concept is based in part on code that runs on Millers server not even other researchers (the only group of people that might have a reason other than pure curiosity to download the App) could gain any insight.

 

Also:

Miller chalks up the difference to Apple’s new management. “I miss Steve Jobs,” he says. “He never kicked me out of anything.”

I guess we’re starting to see the first cases of “It’s because Steve’s gone” being used as an explanation for everything “wrong” that happens at Apple, no matter how ridiculous it may sound.

Steve Jobs’ Biography

⚭   ColbertNation.com

You won’t find a lot of negative reviews of Walter Isaacson’s Jobs-biography, so don’t miss this one by Stephen Colbert. Just like his Tribute to Steve Jobs, it is excellent and wonderful and shows how that man changed the world and how people (will) look at the world, especially those that are just starting to experience it.

There certainly are more touching, more impressive or simply better Steve Jobs remembrances out there, but most of them are written; Colbert’s are the best that on TV, and in fact the best that I could imagine in the medium of television. They are honest while avoiding stereotypical eulogy-material, instead staying true to Colbert’s (fictional) character.

Four months with Android

⚭   My Dinner With Android

After four insightful months, Ryan Heise ends his Dinner With Android and draws a conclusion:

I approached this experiment with a lot of questions, the primary of which was quite simple: why do people use Android? I had my own preconceived answers — they dislike Apple or couldn’t get an iPhone for one reason or another — but I dove in with an open mind regardless. After over four months of Android 2.3 on a Nexus S, I’m left mostly answerless. [...] To be frank, I still don’t know who Android is for.

He also offers a great analogy about the UX of the two OS’s:

iOS feels like a manual transmission being operated by a seasoned driver. Android is a dumb teenager constantly dropping the clutch, and seemingly getting more and more frustrated as time goes on.

I keep saying that I’m fine with people using Android, as long as they don’t try to convince other people to use it – if one doesn’t already know about it, the differences between Andriod and iOS and the advantages of the former, than one’s not in the group of people that actually benefits from those advantages. That is to say, only people that enjoy tinkering with and reading about their gadgets benefit from Android more than from iOS. Or as Ryan puts it:

I know there are people who simply choose to use it, and I accept that. I don’t really care. But I just can’t wrap my head around any of the arguments that come up in support of it.

So can’t any customer that isn’t tech-savvy and interested in the technology behind those devices enough to read up on them before going into a shop to actually buy one of them.

This wrap-up is an excellent read, and while a lot of Android-fans might not agree with everything in it, it’s about as objective as one can get. I envy Ryan for his experience, and while I’m not going to go Android-only for any amount of time, I’m still hoping that some day, some manufacturer will step up and offer an an Android-equivalent of the iPod touch that is actually somewhat easy to get and not crap spec-wise, plus has the Market Place so that I can further back my thoughts of Android with actual experiences.