by Christopher Paul on July 25, 2012 Daniek Jalkut, founder of Red Sweater Software who make Mars Edit, wrote a Safri extension he wrote:
The motivation behind my foray into Safari extension development was my early adoption of Safari 6 during the beta phase. I noticed they had removed the long-standing, built-in “RSS” button near the URL bar. This button makes it easy to subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed for a blog, or any other site that offers such a feed.
I’m disappointed by Apple’s decision to remove the button, but when life hands you lemons …
I’m still installing Mountain Lion but toyed with Safari 6 while it was downloading. It was an obvious change that I wish Apple hadn’t made. But I’m going to enjoy Daniel’s lemonade.
by Christopher Paul on July 25, 2012 MacStories has a new eBook on Mountain Lion and 30% of all proceeds go to the American Cancer Society.
Supporting MacStories is enough for me to want to buy it. But’s a mere $6.99, Shawn Blanc wrote the forward for it, and a large percentage of the proceeds go to a worthy cause?
Sold.
See the table of contents and grab a copy here.
by Christopher Paul on July 24, 2012 After hearing Sparrow (effectively) got shut down by Google, I started wondering who would step in and create it’s replacement. Little did I know its been in development for some time.
Mail Pilot looks like it could ne that replacement. I’d go so far as to say it looks even better that Sparrow but I’ve only seen screen shots. Because I just discovered it, I didn’t have the chance to back it but I would have – especally since Sparrow never had support for client side rules.
I can’t wait for the final product.
via Lifehack
by Christopher Paul on July 24, 2012 The Google talent hire and subsequent shelving of Sparrow conversations just won’t die. And for good reason. I think we’re in a crossroads of sorts and both “sides” all make great points. But I challenge some of them.
Kyle Baxter wrote this earlier today on what purchasing an app entitles:
It certainly entitles them to updates—fixes to the application they purchased, which means it better fulfills its original promise—but not future upgrades, or new functionality. Why should it?
But what is a fix and what is a feature?
Take iOS 6. The new OS will require API calls and security checks for address book access. Presumably, Sparrow will not get the ability to understand that. So does Sparrow have a bug with iOS or does it lack the feature of address book access?
I grant that some minimum versions of iOS are required for some things to work. But in iOS 5, address book integration worked well. Now, it won’t. I see that as defect in the app.
I don’t care if Apple changes it’s policy. Something worked one day, now it doesn’t. Apple’s consumers who pay don’t make the distinction. Respect for the customer is important and to say to them you don’t get shit because of a semantic debate doesn’t earn anyone new customers. Now, people might say that falls under future support. But users don’t care about the difference.
It’s bad for all future app developers to let the terms of an acquisition kill their product. And, in Google’s case, they are not earning the users’ respect by not supporting the app for at least a year after the deal closes.
by Christopher Paul on July 24, 2012 Joel Bernosky on his ideal cloud music service:
“My ideal cloud service would let me buy or upload high quality MP3 or lossless music files, while letting me choose which format to stream or download those lossless files in. A combined iTunes Match and Spotify would fit my needs perfectly. Let me buy music that I want access to forever. Also let me pay a monthly fee to stream music, but allow me to list the streaming albums I like in the same library as my bought music.”
But that would mean the music industry has to provide value which is directly opposed to what they currently do and what they really want (which is locking up control).
And he wraps up his thoughts by stating the obvious to everyone except the “industry” by saying:
“The current state of online music services is one of limited choice and utility. A listener has to choose between a multitude of storage services, apps and streaming music sites, most with some sort of lock in, or barrier between ease of listening to the same music using other methods and services. The ability to pay a fair sum for the ability to use one service to buy, upload and stream music from is, in my mind, the ticket to digital audio nirvana, and to my growing digital clutter problem.”
People are begging… begging the music industry to come up with something valuable. iTunes Music Match only goes so far; Apple means well, I’m sure, but there are limits to what mobile can do right now (you can’t stream a lossless album over 3G or even LTE without the carriers crying about network abuse). And look at how upstarts like Spotify struggle to get “approval” from the rights holders. It’s next to impossible. The RIAA and it’s member firms have the lock, key, and door to huge digital profits. And yet, they can’t or won’t do it.
Keep dreaming Joel.