October 3, 2008
The Macalope Weekly: Enter the Macalope
Posted Oct. 3, ’08, 1:55 PM PT by The Macalope
Category | Macalope
[We at MacUser have long been fans of the Macalope, and so it’s with pleasure—and, okay, a vague sense of presumably unwarranted trepidation—that we bring you the first installment of his weekly retrospective on Mac news. -DM]
The horny one’s not going to make a big deal over this, but a monumental joining of two powerhouses such as MacUser and the Macalope deserves some note. For this mythical beast it’s like a homecoming because, apart from having a Mac for a head, he’s also a Mac user. No, really. It’s true. Yeah, sure, it’s hard with the hooves and all, but it’s a labor of love. Hey, you want to talk about a real labor of love, though, you should try the iPhone with hooves. Phew.
Anyway, let’s do this thing!
An E Ticket Ride
Apart from the Macalope joining the ranks of MacUser, this week was notable for something else. Hmm. Let’s see. What was it? Well, while the Macalope’s trying to remember, he’ll just take this opportunity to open his quarterly investment statement and OH, MY GOD! AIIIIEEEE!
Oh, yeah, that’s what it was! This was the week witnessed the Revenge Of The Stocks App. You know that little iPhone app that everyone pooh-poohed and shoved to the app ghetto with YouTube? Well, if the Stocks app could talk, this week it’d be all “Oh, now you need me, huh? Well, maybe I don’t want to show you what’s going on!”
Apple’s stock (of which the Macalope owns a minuscule amount) took a beating early in the week on reports that even Apple is not immune to the effects of gravity. The Macalope didn’t put much stock (ha!) into those reports, really. Sure, even Apple can’t ignore the effects of gravity forever, but remember that it doesn’t have to grow the market, it just has to steal some of it. And Microsoft of late has really left a lot of its delicious market share pie unattended and cooling on the windowsill. A clever bear could easily make off with some of that pie.
Darn analogies. Now the Macalope wants pie.
Isn’t He Sweet?!
Oh, my god, you guys, you’ll never guess what Steve Ballmer did! He is so nice that he took time out of his busy schedule swerving Microsoft’s advertising campaigns all over the highway like an 18-wheeler driven by three drunken forest gnomes (“You work the wheel and the pedals and I’ll shift!”) to lend some helpful advice to Apple on how to sell mobile phones! Isn’t he the best? Totally. Now, you’re not going to believe this, but it turns out — this really is an amazing coincidence — that the way you sell mobile phones is to do exactly what Microsoft does and separate the hardware from the software! No. Way.
Yes, way.
We should totally send that guy a fruit basket.
And then continue to ignore everything he says.
NDA RIP
Say, did you hear that sound around mid-week? It was a larger exhaling of air from Apple programming nerds than when they served that bad bean dip at WWDC. Yes, Apple lifted the great yoke of oppression that was the iPhone NDA from the masses huddled around their simulators, yearning to be free. People will tell you you can’t fight city hall or Steve Jobs but, while the Macalope wouldn’t recommend it if you’re an Apple employee, it turns out he does actually listen to others. Now that we know we have this power, we should use it to get Apple to commit to defining actual rules for what can and cannot appear on the App Store. After that, let’s get Major League Baseball to revoke the designated hitter rule.
TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
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Welcome, oh horned one! The Hair and I are thrilled to have you tramping these plains.
Too bad Gruber, and the rest of the echo chamber, are totally off the mark about the "duplicate functionality" argument: http://etherkiller.tumblr.com/post/52826602/daring-fireball-the-fear
Be honest here: You thought up that 18 wheeler description near the start of your hiatus and have been itching to use it, haven't you?
Because it was @#$%ing awesome.
Welcome to MacUser! It's great to see you again. I've long been a follower of yours!
Seems like a better fit than Cnet!
OK. So who hacked our Macalope's pic up there? Everyone knows that he ain't got no hands. Golly jeepers! He even said so in the piece.
Boom!
By "weekly" you mean "more often than not" yeah?
I can't even emoticon how pleased I am that the Macalope is posting here now. It is teh awesomesauce, as the kids say these days.
Oh my, it is really tough to read your copy without hearing Sarah Palin in my head. It's got that sort of folksiness... try reading it with her in mind... sorry, now I've ruined it for everyone.
Glad to have you back anyway!
Where's the Macalope-specific RSS or ATOM feed? I don't want all the MacUser articles.
@sdf
I suspect that the picture of the 18 wheeler driven by 3 forest gnomes is stolen from Terry Pratchett's excellent Bromeliad trilogy. A good choice, only steal from the best.
etherkiller, I'll respond to you here since your website provides no way to contact you.
You're completely missing your own point on this issue. The "without providing sufficient differentiation" point does nothing to make Apple look any more like the good guy. They could say that about anything, regardless of the truth.
What is an excellent point, though, is that in the e-mail you quote, they provide a specific remedy:
"The app should launch Safari when the “Go!” and “Log” buttons are selected, instead of navigating within the app."
There was a concise description of HOW the app was confusing to users and what to do to remedy the confusion. With Podcaster, the developer either did not receive or did not disclose such an explanation. Here's all we know from Podcaster's rejection e-mail:
"Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes."
That sentence is structured differently from the one you quote, and says nothing about "user confusion." Furthermore, it's about duplication of functionality FROM A DESKTOP APPLICATION. I hardly see how that could possibly lead to user confusion, since it's ON A DIFFERENT DEVICE.
So now all of a sudden, when we step back and look at the facts, and the whole picture, we see that the truth is far less rosy in this case than in your irrelevant digression.
That's the Chuckalope, a long forgotten cousin.
Anyway, are you sure it's weekly? Please don't play with my feelings.
Regrets, I don't have a clue about who you are (the Macalope Knockname brand is unknown to me).
It doesn't matter though as you are a good writer with a great sense of humour.
I laughed out loud a couple of times there.
Had to readjust my brain diaper. I will return to guffaw some more and learn too.
@etherkill
It is also clear, when we look at the entire text of a “duplicate functionality rejection” that the issue is not duplicate functionality. To use Apple’s own words, with added emphasis:
(…) duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Safari ***without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion***.(...)
And all of a sudden, when we step back and look at the facts, and the whole picture, we see that the truth is far less dramatic than the hysteria that has driven tens of thousands of page views.
Erm, dude, you realize that Apple's reply is vague and useless, right? I mean what is "sufficient differentiation"? After all, Podcaster added more than enough of this "differentiation" thingy, including features needed by many of us but unavailable on the iPod iPhone app.
The fact that Apple used the same excuse before does not matter at all. It was lame and dangerous then, and it is still the same now.
All in all, an indifferent attempt at a hack job on Gruber.
etherkiller:
You seem to be missing at least two important points:
1. Not allowing demo versions of apps is quite different than not allowing an app at all. Many people prefer to not have lots of demo apps around, and you can easily do a feature-limited light version of an app.
2. When you give the example of developers taking the no-demo-app rule in their stride, you ignore the fact that there's a big difference between "You have to market your app without a demo version" and "An app that does what you are doing is never going to be allowed, ever."
You seem to be claiming that, if Apple ever made up a new rule before, any future complaints about new rules that Apple makes up must be of no greater magnitude than the previous complaints. Or perhaps there is some statute of limitations going on - if I didn't notice something that I disliked immediately, then I must not complain about it in the future.
@etherkiller: In what sense are they off mark. Please state Teh Truth As You Know It.
That was an awesome post. You are MUCH better off at MacUser than CNet.
CNet just wasnt the right place. It seemed too politically correct and serious for your type of humor.
Etherkiller, you have triumphantly missed the point entirely, which is that developers don't have a realistic idea of what they need to do to avoid an arbitrary ban by Apple. Apple is enforcing an arbitrary and undefined rule. There is no alternative mechanism to app store distribution on the iPhone. Developers will jump ship to a more open platform, even if the UI sucks, if they are assured that they can actually release the app they've worked so hard on. This is how they feed their families.
You're right about Palin, of course.
Mite pleased ta have ya back in the headlights, 'lope!
Missed ya.
Well, not that I was aimin' for ya.
Honest!
Okay. Well I guess this will be alright.
I'll be expecting a Macalope RSS feed. Otherwise I'll be lost and confused. Oh wait, I'll be lost and confused in any case, but I still want the feed.
I heard there would be snacks. No? Dang.
Erik, I think for now you have to filter via Yahoo Pipes.
Finally. Humour!
I think you stole “You work the wheel and the pedals and I’ll shift!" from Terry Pratchett, but I don't care... it was funny!
Welcome Back Macalope - your hiatus was wide and deep but thankfully a thing of the past now.
Now, if only we had Macalope-specific RSS feeds...
Having a Macalope specific RSS feed would be very nice.
Other than that, it's nice to the Horned One back and hopefully updating every now and then.
YEA! No signing in to post comments! I've never been to MacUser but it's gotta be better than CNet; that always felt like an odd fit. Feels a lot homier here too.
Sorry to hijack the comments on your new home, Mr. Macalope. I look forward to reading more from you again, its been lonely in the woods out here.
For all the haters, think about this for a minute:
We have on one hand, Podcaster's Almerica, a developer who is obviously pushing an agenda. He posted a minimal excerpt from his rejection email, and proceeded to then made a substantial amount of money clearly and knowingly abusing the Ad Hoc process.
On the other hand, we have Geopher's DadGuy who wanted to get his app in the store. He took the setbacks in stride, posted the entirety of the letters he received, and worked to resolve the issues. Hell, he even got pointers from Apple on how to resolve it.
If you feel comfortable assuming Almerica posted the *entirety* of his email from Apple, and that it contained no additional information about the problem, as DadGuy received, then I feel comfortable assuming he didn't post the entire email, and exploited the blogosphere echo chamber for personal profit.
At last count there were somewhere between a thousand and a swillion-skillion apps in the App Store. So far there are less than a dozen developers whingeing about how badly they've been mistreated by the Abusive Apple Apparatus.
That seems like pretty good odds.
I'm still looking for BookWorm Deluxe.
Oh, and I bought some more AAPL.
I thought this was supposed to be weekly?
Seriously, I'm jonesin!