Mac App Store Fallout

With the recent Mac App Store announcement,  wide spectrum of bloggers and well known tech sites are expressing concerns.
What especially caught my eye is the comment from Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch's (from http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/1369652253/mac-app-store) which reflects one of my primary concerns about Apple. He writes:

"Apple, a corporation with billions and billions of dollars in the bank, is taking 30% of small Mac developer’s revenue — an outrageously high fee, more than three times what popular high-end fulfillment provider FastSpring charges. Worse, Apple keeps customer data away from developers, standing in between developers and their users. Customer service and technical support suffer — Apple won’t even allow refunds to dissatisfied customers."

There is no doubt in my mind that Corporations exist solely for making profits. However what I dislike about the way Apple does is that it rips them off folks so badly all the while drawing strict boundaries on what one can or can't do (See iPhone: 4% of market, 50% of profit)
Some thoughts on the same can be found at
5 Criticisms of Mac App Store (And Why They're Wrong)
What Software Is Apple Going to Sell in the Mac App Store?
Devs voice concerns over Mac App Store terms
Apple's Mac App Store Review Guidelines Posted

Are Apple user's the happiest with everything Apple does?

Apparently not unless you live inside reality distortion field. One thing I really dislike about Apple is that they would produce what they think is the best for everyone. You heard it right, Big Brother Apple knows the best when it comes to deciding what you would prefer. So I sympethze with this user who shared his experience with his iLife 11 upgrade.

I just upgraded to iLife 11, only interested in iPhoto. I use it to store and display photos I edited in Lightroom and PS and so far up to this fateful day I have been perfectly happy with the flickr export, the slick look, the fullscreen, the easy mail and the other features.



So I was pretty happy when Apple touted the new iPhoto. Now I'm stuck with it and boy does it suck! Seriously I can't believe how bad it is. It's all in the details, the things you only see once it's on your system. Here's just a starter of shit:

• No fullscreen viewing. That's right, you cannot view your pictures without toolbars on top and bottom all the fucking time. Fullscreen, the main feature they advertise about iPhoto 11 is actually taken away. And no, i will not use the obnoxious diashow that throws music at me every time I open it!

• Mailing pictures. Before it was easy and fast. Click on whatever you want to send, Mail.app opens and you choose the size of the pictures and you're good to go. Not anymore, no sir, because there are templates now and Apple will make sure you goddamn use them. They all look ugly as fuck and most if not all of them will crop your pictures to match the template. And WHAT THE FUCK you can only mail 10 pictures max! What is wrong with the people who developed this? This is unusable even for my mom. Oh and when you actually send your less than ten pictures in a shitty cropped template of your very limited choice you can't do anything while it's sending. I was in fullscreen mode and it blocked the computer for several minutes. Well, you can do one thing and that is editing the mail while it's being sent. Why, Apple?

• When viewing albums all the flickr exports are displayed as albums as well. Because I exported most events to flickr it's like mixing the events with the albums. When I click albums I want albums. And stop using this cheesy photo pile look, Apple!

• EDIT: No zooming in anymore! I don't even...

• EDIT: Oh, and one more thing: Exporting now crashes my iPhoto because it's stuck trying to log on to Flickr. Everytime, without a chance do disable the Flickr issue.

I can't invest more time into this rant for health reasons but basically Apple has ruined iPhoto so utterly I can hardly believe it. And yeah, downgrading is nearly impossible without using a backed up version of the library. I just have the impression that the whole thing was rushed so Steve Jobs can present it himself. I hope he at least knows how bad it is.


It's shit like that Steve, shit like that!

Edit: Does anybody know a good program to simply display jpgs and have them neatly organized in events? I use Lightroom, so Aperture just for viewing is overkill.

Full post at http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/dvmf0/iphoto_11_fuck_you/. Someone mentioned that it crashes a lot too! And the comments are fun to read

UPDATE: There are more horror stories about iPhoto deleting their entire album etc. See discussion forum thread at Apple at Topic : WHERE are my PHOTOS????? . There is also WARNING!!! iPhoto 11 Erases ENTIRE iPhoto Libraries

Competition is good! Thanks Andriod

It is a good day. Cause of euphoria is : Statement by Apple on App Store Review Guidelines. Specifically the part

"In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

Hurray! I have no doubt in my mind that Andriod is putting intense pressure on Apple to keep developers to stay with Apple's ecosystem.

Andriod surpasses iPhone in new activations

Since the beginning of this year, Andriod has been selling like hotcake. It recently have surpassed iPhone in terms of activations per month. THANKS for voting with your wallet.

Some recent articles
http://blogs.computerworld.com/16883/android_apple_market_share
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/quantcast_android_eats_into_ios_lead_of_mobile_browsing/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-02/google-s-android-passes-apple-among-new-u-s-users.html
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=52&articleid=20100803_52_E3_ASonyE564851
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-02/google-s-android-passes-apple-s-iphone-among-new-u-s-smartphone-shoppers.html

The Anti-Social Ping

There are millions who believe Apple could do no wrong. However, I really don't care about those who are blind followers. I am as crtical of Apple as any other company. So I am glad that media is taking a critical look at Ping and commenting on what it is. While it is true that Apple can fix some of the issues in future updates/releases, Apple's image as a company that delivers great experience from the get go is crumbling. My rants aside, this fortune article summarized the issues with Ping very nicely

Excerpts
•TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld. The Problem with Ping: "The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web."


•All Thing D's Peter Kafka: Ping Averts Its Gaze. Apple's New Social Network Doesn't Really Want to Know Much About You: "This isn't about Apple's walled garden that keeps Ping walled off from Facebook and other services. It's about Apple's decision to wall off Ping from your own music collection."

•Scripting News' Dave Winer. Ping: It's even worse than it appeared: "Ping is not a social network, by any realistic definition of the term... My guess as to why we can't post to the timeline is that Apple is afraid we might say something harsh about them or Ping."

•Xconomy's Wade Roush. The Leaning Tower of Ping: How iTunes Could Be Apple's Undoing: "Adding a social networking interface, on top of all of iTunes' other functions, is like grafting another limb to the forehead of an octopus. It's just too much."

•Cthulhu and other crazies' Swizec. Apple's Ping is a big pile of steaming dung: "Meh I give up, there is nothing worth following on Ping. The artists I do find are labeled as users and everybody knows it's not really them there, it's some automated bot thing to keep us notified of their stuff."

Steve Jobs is a control freak!!

Story: Steve Jobs Wants It Both Ways

Alan Deutschman is the author of many best selling books including The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. In his interview for "The Motley Fool" he shares the hurdles he had to cross to publish his book about Steve Jobs. Excerpts

Deutschman: That's right. Not only did Steve Jobs refuse to cooperate with the book, but he blocked a number of sources from cooperating and then about a month before the book's scheduled publication, he telephoned the chief executive officer of Random House and tried unsuccessfully to have the book killed. Jobs also bought the rights to the photographs that my publisher was trying to license to use on the dust jacket cover, preventing us from using that photograph, even though it was a very appealing photograph of him, and forcing us to scrap the dust jacket and design and print a new one at considerable expense. Jobs really went out of his way to try to prevent and then frustrate the publication of my book, which was an independent book by a journalist doing a lot of reporting, who was going to have an independent voice.

Arrogance is a weakness. His obsession with control, which we have seen in the, most recently in the so-called jailbreak issue about whether consumers can basically hack their iPhones to use their own software that hasn't been approved by Steve Jobs. The man is an incredible control freak. That has had a big upside -- putting his passion into making great products and harnessing the creativity of other brilliant people and having this passion for perfection -- but it also has a downside. And I think where Apple is vulnerable now is Jobs is once again trying to control every aspect of his products. With the iPhone, it has led to incredible early success where they have been able to design the hardware, the software, approve the Apps, completely orchestrate the entire experience for users and do a wonderful job with it. But it leaves Apple vulnerable to open approaches of, for example, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) with its Android operating system for mobile devices. You kind of wonder whether, as in the personal computer industry years ago, whether Jobs' desire to control everything is leaving him vulnerable to other people who are giving up control, who are putting out their technologies for other people to adapt and modify and potentially creating a much bigger market for less expensive products.

Does anyone truly believe we should all encourage his bad behavior? Please vote with our wallet.

The Beginning of the End of Apple

Story: Time Inc.’s iPad Problem Is Trouble for Every Magazine Publisher

"...Last month, the publisher was set to launch a subscription version of its Sports Illustrated iPad app, where consumers would download the magazines via Apple’s iTunes but would pay Time Inc. directly. But Apple rejected the app at the last minute, forcing the Time Warner (TWX) unit to sell single copies, using iTunes as a middleman, multiple sources tell me.

Since then, Time Inc. executives “have been going nuts,” trying to figure out how to get Apple (AAPL) to approve a subscription plan. One of the more desperate suggestions, which apparently didn’t get traction: Pulling the publisher’s apps out of the iTunes store altogether...."

This isn't the first time someone spent all their time and energy and developed a really cool app only to be rejected. If Apple's fundamental claim for tigher control of AppStore is to ensure quality, how come Time Inc's application is being rejected? It is completely unfair of Apple to want a cut on every transation. I pity the magazine publishers who are working with really thin margins but still have to give a share of their revenue to Apple just because it controls the ecosystem.
 
If Microsoft came any closer to any of the things Apple has been demanding, folks would have screamed "Anti-Trust". I really think Apple is taking the path of self destruction on many fronts. I have been telling many of my friends that Year 2010 would be the best year for Apple. Let's see if I am right next year.