marks.dk
Apple has changed section 3.3.2
Matt Drance found a change in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement—in particular, section 3.3.2 that pissed off a lot of people. It used to read:
No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
Now it reads:
Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing, no interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Notwithstanding the foregoing, with Apple’s prior written consent, an Application may use embedded interpreted code in a limited way if such use is solely for providing minor features or functionality that are consistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application.
As Matt points out, this could open up the window for some of those that were really fucked over by this—game developers in particular.
(And no, this does not “open up the platform”, but it removes a fraction of what some of the critics were most pissed off about.)
— Apple Outsider » Hello, Lua.
Khoi VInh on Apple’s use of typography
Creating a beautiful display and patting yourself on the back for having good typography is disingenuous, I think. It’s a little like saying a high-definition television set makes for better television shows; an absurd claim at best.
— Subtraction.com: Better Screen, Same Typography.
Walled gardens as misguided metaphor
Neven Mrgan’s reaction to the term “walled garden” as something that can be described as despicably closed, when the benefits of having something that is closed and cared for can also be of immense beauty:
A software store is not an actual garden, not literally. But enough people have used this metaphor that it’s worth thinking for a second about what it’s actually supposed to mean.
I’m assuming we’re supposed to compare this approach to the freer alternatives such as community gardens and city parks. Ignoring for a moment the fact that these gardens are also regulated by serious restrictions on what one can and can’t do, it still puzzles me that the ‘walled garden’ is presented as an obviously undesirable structure.
Recommended reading for everyone that wants a nuanced view on the closed app store vs. open web discussion.
— The Walled Garden – Neven Mrgan’s tumbl.
No wonder there’s a shortage on iPads
“So much for it being a niche product! Apple says it has sold two million iPads in 60 days since the launch of the tablet device. It sold the first million iPads in 28 days. It is hard to find some of the 3G enabled iPads in their retail stores. The pace of iPad sales is way ahead of the early results for iPhone, which took 74 days to sell the first million. According to some estimates, iPad is outselling the Mac itself.”
— GigaOm: Apple Selling Million iPads a Month.
Flash works on touch-based devices
Interesting to see how “Rollover Effects” and Hover states work on the Dell laptop. The reason why it won’t work on the iPad is the way it recognizes touch events (look at the double clicking – it resembles the way a mouse works, not how your finger works with the iPad/iPhone).
That being said, it is interesting to see them finally try to show Apple that the technology does work.
(I’d still like Flash to never be an option on the iPhone, though, but that might just be me…)
Link: http://theflashblog.com/?p=2027
/via Tony Hanna
Will it axe?
Niels Hartvig has posted a video of his iPhone being axed.
Literally.
(Well, if you want to walk the talk, this is how to do it. I’d still have sold it off, but that’s just me, I guess.)
What Apple really meant at the iPhone OS 4 preview event
They could easily just have said this:
- Multitasking = “let’s take quick context-changing and call it multitasking. Are you bitches happy now?”
- Preventing developers from compiling apps using “intermediary translation” tools = “Fuck you: Adobe, Unity 3D etc.”
- Folders = “Springboard will only get you this far, so let’s create something we’re trying to remove everywhere else.”
- Unified inbox = “We know it took a long time, but we just want you to tap tap tap that screen as much as possible.”
- Multiple Exchange-accounts = “Let’s please the enterprise customers.” (I’d have loved to have this while working at Vodafone, though)
- Game Center = “Fuck you: Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.”
- iAd = “Fuck you Google. Who likes to read text ads anyway?”
Apple is quickly becoming the fierce bitch of the tech world, and some people (in this case Niels Hartvig in particular) are taking this very seriously:
I’ll still buy Apple products, simply because there is nothing better, but their willingness to bitch slap everybody standing in their way is definitely not a route I’m happy they’re pursuing.
Apple’s approval process is not just annoying, it’s really really weird
Why is this rated 12+? Because my friends sends me pictures of violent, nude, smoking, whisky-poundin’ fantasy babes?, originally uploaded by marksdk.
This app is an alternative to Mail.app on the iPhone.
It’s rated 12+ because the following things can happen when using the app:
- You might hear an offensive joke
- You might see a breast (I wish)
- You might find a reference to mild alcohol use.
- etc.
I don’t get it.
Or do I just have the wrong friends?
On experiences and the value of those
I’ve started jotting down the ideas I have for blog posts in Things, which is not a groundbreaking idea, but I actually want to fulfill some of the promises I’ve made myself and wrote about last week. One of the promises is to blog a bit more – say, once a week – and this is one of those posts.
So far this year, the biggest change in my everyday intake of information is the “newness” of the stuff I read. I’ve removed almost everything resembling news sites in my Google Reader, and started focusing a lot more on crafted blog posts as well as visual blogs about architecture and interior design. Now, when I flip through the items in Google Reader, I rest more; I spend a bit more time reading every blog post than I did before, and I appreciate the ones that are well-written a whole lot more (plus I get to look at nice photos of people’s homes).
It’s a change that has already happened in other aspects, without me thinking about the pretty obvious connection. I don’t listen to music on CDs and I don’t watch movies on DVDs anymore – I stream it from my iPhone, Mac or a hard disk plugged into my tv (an absolutely beautiful feature), and I do it because it’s easier.
It also means that I tend to rush through it without thinking about what I listen to, or sometimes even what I watch (unless it’s The Wire which is the best series I’ve ever watched – more on that in another blog post).
So, the other day I put on a vinyl, sat down and studied the cover, sleeve, lyrics, artwork. The whole package. And I thought about how much work had gone into making the album – it was so more than the music. It was a complete experience.
An experience I actually want to pay for – and that’s the rub.
The other day, we had a long, and heated, discussion on “Bølgen“, a Danish magazine published and maintained by Bjarne Tveskov on Google Wave, about the future of newspapers. I argue that the problem with newspapers lie in the name; it’s news. On paper. Paper is slow. News are fast. They are mutually exclusive now.
Where did I learn about the earthquake in Haiti? Twitter. Where do I keep getting the latest updates about it? Yes. Twitter. It’s too fast for even the newspaper’s websites, so why do they even keep on fighting the battle? (Oh yeah, advertising. Forgot about that.)
If I want something on paper, it needs to be something more than yesterday’s news, because I won’t appreciate it – nor pay for it.
Make me a weekly magazine in Google Wave, curated by a guy I like to follow on his blog, Twitter-profile etc. and I’ll gladly pay for it. Which I did. Same goes for Daring Fireball; I love that blog and read it religiously, so when John Gruber printed a new round of t-shirts, I bought two. Panic also made a new t-shirt with the leaf from Coda embroidered – bought one of those as well. Mikkel Malmberg releases an EP every year around Christmas and I happily paid for that as well.
It’s the stuff that I feel is of the highest quality, and relevance, I want to pay for. It’s the stuff that I know people cared about creating that I can truly appreciate, and are willing to pay for; whether it’s a magazine in Google Wave, a well-written blog, a piece of software, an iPhone app, an album on 220g luxury vinyl with included poster signed by the band etc.
Create value for me by giving me an experience, and I’d be happy to pay for it. Try to keep up with every startup in the world, give me yesterday’s news, pour gallons of water on the rumor mill or cover every ridiculous celebrity’s latest steps, and I’ll take my money with me elsewhere.
Update: To those of you who want to see what I read in Google Reader, you can follow my shared items at 2kg.dk/shared and/or see the whole list of feeds I subscribe to at marks.dk/greader.
How to download the Spotify iPhone application without a UK credit card
- Go to the iTunes Store and change country to UK (at the bottom)
- Find the Spotify application
- Click “Download”
- Create an account (remember that you need to use an email-address different from any other iTunes-account you might have).
- Choose “none” as payment method and provide your UK-address
- You now have the Spotify application.
Proof that the option appears:
Of course you can not do this if you are not a UK resident as the EULA says, but you already knew that, right?