Crazy Apple News Site

Today we thought we’d do an in-depth, hard hitting review of the Mac App Store, Apple’s newest way to cash in on developers distribute software. But then we remembered we write  a humor blog, not one of those Gawker monstrosities. So instead we’re just going to make fun of it.¹

(App) Store? Huh. What is it good for?

The easy answer of course is “absolutely nothing”. But the problem with the path of “the easy answer” is twofold: first, it curtails actual thought, instead lulling us to sleep with its facile nature. Also, it makes for really short articles.

True, at first glance, the App Store doesn’t seem to add a lot to the end user’s experience. It gives you automatic updating…kind of. It’s automatic in the sense of “you get notified that there are updates every time you open the App Store, then you have to download them by yourself” instead of the sense of “happens, you know, automatically”. True, the Sparkle framework handles this much easier² and prompts you to update when you open the actual app, instead of the App Store, but that’s not the point. The point is that now the user, any user, can find a wealth of apps all in one place, without mucking about on the dirty messy scary internet. So that’s a benefit to the user.

Well, it would be, except the majority of the apps on the App Store are, well, terrible. Sure, you’ve got all the good ones, Like Scrivener, Mars Edit³ All of Apple’s awesome software, The Omni group’s usual offerings, etc. etc.

But these are well-established players in the game of Mac Software. For the most part they’re in the store just because it’s easy, and it’s more-or-less free advertising⁴ and a pretty high chance that they’ll be a featured app, and that just can’t be bad. But what about the stuff that’s never been available anywhere but the App Store? Are there any real standout players that are just getting into the game, and are getting into it via the shiny new Apple-sanctioned distribution channel?

Nope.

Sure, we’ve got a lot of iPad apps coming “Back to the Mac”. Apparently the refactor from magical touch-screen device to revolutionary and finely tuned desktop computer isn’t that difficult, and there are all kinds of Angry Birds on the mac now.⁵ But what about the rest of the store? Well, it’s…the kind of thing we’ve come to expect on the iOS app store. A tiny little app that costs you $.99 and lets you track your weight is acceptable on a phone, but it just looks stupid on a desktop. So what happened? Why aren’t we getting the kind of buy-in to the Mac App Store that made the iOS App Store such a huge deal and spawned a thousand copycats? Let’s look at it from the software creator’s point of view.

A Day in the Life of a Developer

So there you are, a fervent Apple fan boy or girl who has the best possible idea for a new app: the Kittenizer. Soon people worldwide will be posting pictures made better by the artistic and subtle addition of giant Impact-font additions to their images, all drawn from their Twitter and Facebook feeds. The muse grips you, and you must get your program out to the world. But how?

Well, who’s your audience? If you want to write in a cross-platform language, like Java or Flex, then you’re locked out of the Mac App Store. No big deal, you’ll write a Windows version later.

So, that means you’re learning Cocoa and Objective-C. Cool. So you start writing your app, and genius that you are, you have it ready to go in less than eight hours.⁶ Your beta testers⁷ all rave about the app, and it hasn’t had a major crash in minutes. So now you’re off to the races! Let’s get that App in the App Store and out where everyone can know the joy of your buzzword-powered masterpiece.

Not so fast! First you need to cough up $99. Just like the iOS Store, there’s a bar that says “you must be this well off to ride this ride” before you get into the Magic Kingdom. So you go to your beta testers and some other friends and scrape together the money, pay Apple, and make your way through their steps to get your product out there. And after you submit your app, you sit back, looking forward to the moment when your app goes on sale, when you’re getting rewarded for your brilliance. How knows, maybe you’ll even end up as a featured app, or maybe you’ll get a huge award at next year’s WWDC! Maybe your app will even get–

Rejected.

What? Why? You scan the email, and, it’s insanely vague. Don’t worry, young one, you’re not alone. Still undeterred, you spend a few minutes getting Sparkle built into your app⁸ and a few hours setting up a system that handles activations and whatnot. Finally, just before midnight the Kittenizer is up and for sale on your own personal website.

In the End…

It looks like we’re really really down on the Mac App Store. And while we don’t think it’s the best idea in the world, it’s not entirely terrible. But a platform that’s antagonistic to both the developer and the customer is a platform that could use some more love and attention, or else it’s going to end up like the Zune Marketplace, and nobody wants that.

1. Which may or may not involve hitting things hard. [↩]
2. and doesn’t cost the developer 30% of their sale price [↩]
3. which I would be using to write this post if I could afford a license. [↩]
4. App Store costs aren’t much higher than maintaining your own distribution channel or using other third parties, and are much lower than selling software the old fashioned way, with discs and boxes and stuff. Look, let’s not get into this here, okay? [↩]
5. Angry Birds just looks stupid on a 23” screen, by the way [↩]
6. I called this section “A Day in the Life” and I mean to stick to it. Even if it means becoming really really implausible in the process. [↩]
7. your mom, your sister, and your sister’s boyfriend [↩]
8. it doesn’t require any code changes, it lives in Interface Builder [↩]

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we seek for some solace in nostalgia with the advent of Bowtie, a skinnable iTunes controller.

Q: A What-able what now? What is the madness you are saying with your face?

A: Oh, come on, we were all there. Remember the early 2000’s when you were finally able to play music on your computer, and you had all these cool skins for your music player?

Q: No.

A: Sure you do. You could make it look like a brain, and the buttons were made out of wrinkles on the brain’s surface, or you could have it look like a big piano with the control buttons outlined on the keys, or whatever.

Q: Nope!

A: Wow, did you miss out. All the music players did it. Windows Media Player, Winamp, RealPlayer…

Q: All windows programs you’ll notice.

A: Er, well, see, I didn’t get my first mac until 2006, so…

Q: Well, for those of us who have always used good computers we’ve used boring, gray old iTunes and liked it. We don’t need your silly skinnable thingies.

A: But look, you’ve got a chance now! Bowtie is free in the Mac App Store, and you can have a little player that shows you what album you’re listening to, has all your controls, and is really really out of the way AND cool looking, all at the same time!

Q: I don’t really see the point…

A: AND it lets you love or ban songs on Last.fm, so people know what you think about the music you’re listening to! That’s something we couldn’t do back in the day, back with dumb ol’ web 1.0

Q: So there really isn’t a point.

A: The point is to have fun! Come on, it’s spring! The sky is bright, life is good, maybe you should loosen up a bit too! Sometimes things can just be fun. I’m using it to listen to the Tron: Legacy soundtrack right now, just because I can!

Q: Hmmm, not sure I can lower my standards of “fun” quite that far.

A: *sigh*. Okay, Mr. Boring Pants. Go watch your news programs and listen to your collection of the 100 greatest renditions of 4’ 33”. I’ll catch you later.

Q: What’s wrong with 4’33”?

A: Oh, it’s nothing.¹

1. I couldn’t resist [↩]

Fans of really slick interactions probably use LaunchBar will be excited to know that Quicksilver, the famous keyboard-based productivity app, is rising once again from the grave to speed your interactions with all them files on your hard drive.¹

Open Source wonks will tell you that this is the value of Open Source, that a project can live on beyond it’s original owner losing interest.² Guardians of Commercial software would gently point out that the whole point of paying for software is to ensure that you don’t have to wait for the developer to go on spring break to get new features. Maybe someday we’ll do a fireside chat ‘bout that, but for now, feel free to go get a new version of QS if you’re not already using LaunchBar and start doing really zippy things like pasting text into a file without opening it or whatever. 

1. We would like to point out that this would be an easy place to comment about the file the iPhone uses to follow you around all day, but we’ll refrain. [↩]
2. Which reminds us, we haven’t heard from ZRMS in a while [↩]

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week, it’s all about Twitter’s creatively named Twitter client: Twitter for Mac #stupidname #Ilikehashtags

Q: So what’s the big deal with Twitter in the first place? Lots of short messages flying around all over the place, forcing people to abbrev

Q: Ah, so we’re doing that, are we? all our questions and answers have to be less than 140 characters?

A: Yep! It’ll help you stop whinging(http://bit.ly/fZ73AZ) on about stupid crap. #justsayin

Q: So the point is to get us all to distill the essence of what we want to say, to refine our thinking and use every letter effectively?

A: Well, I think originally it was just because that was the length of a standard text message. @Pogue would know. He’s like, a Twitter god.

Q: 138, 139, 140. Wow, you’re way too good at getting EXACTLY 140 characters in there. Should I be scared?

A: Why? It’s just a way to communicate with people, and get a sense of what’s going on in the world around us.

Q: Okay, whatever. I’m going to allow–for the moment–that Twitter has validity as a form of communication. But why do I need an app?

A: Well, it makes it easier to see what’s happened in your feed, post replies…

Q: Easier than going to a web site? That does the exact same thing?

A: Well, for one thing, the app wastes far less screen space with stupid things like #trendingtopics. Seriously, I hate those.

Q: And yet you linked to a discussion about them. Odd.

A: Yeah, sorry about that. It gets to be a habit after a while. #Ijustcannotstopmyself

Q: Yeah, I’m still not sold. Not just on the client either. I don’t see a real point for Twitter in general.

A: Well, there’s not much I can say to change your mind. It’s all free, so you can try it out, see if you like it.

A: The name is very appropriate: there’s a lot of tweets, like birds in a tree, but they’re all really short and not a big deal. #nobigdeal

Q: Almost thou convincest me to become a…what exactly? Tweeter? Twit? Bird?

A: Yeah, nobody’s really sure. #ohwell.

Completely non-shocking news from Cupertino today as it’s revealed that only around 40% of Apple Employees actually use Apple’s new Ping service.

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to be very useful,” said Pre Tend, who asked to remain nameless. “I tried it for a while, but none of my friends are on there, and everybody’s already on Facebook. So I just use that.”

“I go through the motions. I mean, I’ll review a song or two every so often,” said P. Schilller, who asked that we not identify him in this article. “Just to keep Steve and Tim happy, you know. I’ll review a song or something. But really, who wants everyone to know when they’re listening to Inna Gadda Da Vida for the fifth time that day? Er, not that I’ve done that. I think…I think Scott does that.”

There are others who say that the service provides a vibrant link between fans and artists, and that it’s just getting started. Unfortunately we were unable to reach any of them for comment. Officially, Apple remains confident that Ping will eventually be like Facebook without the freedom. When asked for a comment on the results of the study, an Apple spokesperson said “hey that’s 40% than the national average! So things are looking up!”

Tim Cook: Listen, guys, we’ve got to get this right.

Phil Schiller: Okay, sorry, Tim. We’re ready this time.

Cook: Good. Okay, one, two, three, four!

Peter Oppenheimer: A-wheem a way, a wheem a way…

Jony Ive: In the iMac, the peaceful iMac, Lion’s been installed!

Scott Forstall: De-we-um-um-a-way!

Ive: On the MacBook, the 13” MacBook, Lion’s been installed!

Forstall: WEEEEEEEEEE-de-de-de a Whum-a-way!

Schiller: Hush my darling, iOS and Lion, share lots of good ideas. Full-screen apps and, gestures for actions, make Lion excellent!

Forstall: Hey! Hey! Whoa-a-wo! Whoa-a-wo a Wheem-o-whum-whum-a-way!

Schiller: Wait, wait, Tim, he’s doing it again.

Cook: What’s wrong Phil?

Schiller: Scott keeps singing his weem-o-whum-a-ways over the top of my words.

Ive: Also, I only have one line, despite the fact that I’m the best looking of us.

Forstall: I’m angry that my verse about beta testers being amazing was cut!

John Mayer: I’m mad that I’m not invited to sing at these events any more

Cook: Who let lizard boy in here? [on intercom] Security! John Mayer broke in again.

Oppenheimer: I still think it should be pronounced “Wheem o whip!”

Forstall: Look, Pete, we’ve been over this. That’s clearly not how you say it—

Schiller: Why are we worrying about how you say it? We should just worry about the fact that Scott keeps singing over my lines!

[everyone starts talking at once. Jony Ive seems to just be saying “rhubarb, rhubarb!” over and over again]

Cook: Listen, Listen! Guys, we’ve got to get this right!

Schiller: Okay, sorry, Tim. We’re ready this time.

At first, it just doesn’t make sense. Apple is selling, selling XCode, that amazing—and previously free—programmer’s delight of an IDE that is the gateway to the riches of putting your programs in the App Stores.

Don’t get me wrong, XCode 4 is a massive improvement on the previous versions, with everything integrated into a single window, a massive improvement on the previous versions’ tendency to spread windows over your entire desktop and eventually into other Spaces, just because there are so dang many of them. The new debugger is faster, more intuitive, gives you good stack traces, even on multiple threads, and actually tries to trace your local variables and display them in a way that makes sense to humans, again something at which XCode 3 struggled.

So many of us purchased XCode 4 from the app store, telling ourselves that, considering how much Windows developers pay for Visual Studio we were getting off easy. And we downloaded the 4.5 Gigabyte file, and we ran the installer, and everything was good. XCode 4 was installed! Life was happy. Blithely we deleted the Installer file that the App Store dropped into our Applications folders and started tinkering around with all the new features, like Git integration and a useful timeline view of code changes and whatnot.

Then, a few days later, Apple released version 4.0.1 of the app. Well, we had noticed a few things that were kinda buggy with the initial release, so that’s to be expected. We go into the App Store, expecting an upgrade notification and…nothing. The App Store says we haven’t installed XCode 4. But look! It’s running right there! Lo and behold, deleting the 4.5 Gigabyte installer file from our Applications folder is what told the App Store that we no longer had XCode on our drive. So we download the new version—all 4.5 Gigabytes of it—and reinstall. The awful truth dawns slowly: we have to keep that stupid installer file to get our “convenient” automatic updates.

This, I feel, is too coincidental. It is clearly a joke, played upon the Apple developer community and their ISP’s. Apple is too smart to saddle their developers with a gigantic dead weight file and massive downloads for every patch release. Fortunately, they’ve given us some clues. Look at the version number: 4.0.1. Does that suggest anything to you? Looks a lot like 4/1, doesn’t it? Yep, it’s an April Fool’s day joke.

Okay, Apple, you’ve had your fun. Now let’s make with version 4.0.2 getting rid of the annoyance factors. I’ve got better uses for that huge chunk of hard drive space. Thank you.

Cupertino Apple announced today that they are “concerned” that the number of Full-Screen Writing Programs may soon be more than the Apple Ecosystem can handle, and that they will be declaring an “Open Season” on the little blighters.

“It started out innocently enough,” said Sina Tamaddon, VP of Applications at Apple, Inc. “We had WriteRoom, which was a nice little app. I mean, get serious, it’s TextEdit stretched out and colored. But really, no harm done. Later some of the bigger writing apps, like Ulysses and Scrivener added full screen views. Heck, we added it to Pages. But now these little full-screen text editor programs are popping up like mice. OmmWriter Dana added some pretty music and background graphics, but this new Byword? It’s like Pages on the iPad for the Mac. We should have come up with that!

“The full-Screen Writing program epidemic is a small part of the larger threat,” said Dr. Weisman, a made-up pompous guy with leather patches on his elbows. No, no tweed jacket. “Like any ecosystem, the Mac app ecosystem needs to maintain a delicate balance. Too many graphics programs and the businessmen wander off. Too many spreadsheets, and there go all your artists,” at this point Weisman started to giggle. “I’m just kidding. Artists would be eaten alive on a PC. Two seconds after they brought it home it’d be so full of viruses and spyware they’d have to unplug it and take the battery out just to get it to stop shouting obscene phrases at them. But that’s beside the point. The point is, the number of writing programs currently in the mac ecosystem is threatening that delicate balance. Scrivener, we’ve got nothing against Scrivner. And Pagehand, we like Pagehand.¹ But these newcomers are starting to crowd out the long-standing, upstanding, outstanding old guys like NisusWriter or Mellel. Sure, the new ones are easy to use. But they don’t have history, or deep roots, and they don’t keep people from flowing downhill into PC territory.”

“Yes, exactly,” Tamaddon said, wresting control back from the somewhat creepy doctor. “so, starting in the summer of 2011, we will be selling tags for hunters to remove certain Full-Screen Writing programs from the ecosystem. We want to make sure it’s done humanely, no porting a program to Linux or anything like that. We’re thinking that tags will begin at $40, after you join the Apple Hunter Program, which is quite reasonable at $99/year, and includes a license for XCode 4.”

Tamaddon mentioned that Scott Forstall would be monitoring this program closely, and if it proved successful would be offering a similar system for “all those dang iOS ToDo list apps.”

1. Apparently Dr. Weisman also likes repeating himself. [↩]

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we pay a visit to the land of one of our favorite made up correspondents, Grug the Orc. Grug is sporting a shiny new interface in the update to his native land of…What is your native land called, Grug?

A: Grug not know. We call it “wooden gate”.

Q: So tell us, what makes Hordes of Orcs 2 such a great new addition to the H.o.O. dynasty?

A: This just sick, you know.

Q: Why?

A: Why you ask Grug about new ways to kill Grug’s family?

Q: Family. Really.

A: Well, all us orcs instances of same class. It like family!

Q: So, asking you about the new and improved gameplay feels a bit heartless then?

A: What improved? Now player can use big railgun to kill orcs. But orcs still not fight back much.

Q: You’re not really selling the product there, Grug.

A: Grug feel deep sense of orc pride, not want to send more members of family into trenches.

Q: I guess we can respect that. So…let’s talk about something else, then?

A: Okay. It your website. What questions you have?

Q: Ummm…what do you do in your spare time?

A: Grug teaching self to use ray tracing software. Make computer still life pictures.

Q: Huh. Well, that’s interesting. What have you done so far?

A: Oh you know, made a teapot, made a sphere on a column, a human getting shot by a lightning tower, all the basics.

Q: Riiiight.

A: Sometimes Grug suspects he has rage issues that need worked out.

Q: Well that’s all the time we have…

A: Grug never knew his parent class! Grug an orphan!

Q: Join us next time for more iFAQ’s and less…orc emotion.

A: Grug so lonely! All Grug ever wanted was a friend!

Welcome to another Fireside Chat. Today we have the latest hotness in in the Apple lineup: the iPhone 4 and the up and coming iPad 2. Gentledevices, welcome to the studio.

iPhone: Thank you, it’s good to be here.

iPad: What’s that, iPhone? You cut out there for a second.

Moderator: iPad, remember, we don’t do antennagate jokes here.

iPad: Sorry. Won’t happen again.

iPhone: No worries, cousin.

Moderator: Well, let’s get started. iPhone, what effect do you think this new generation of iPads will have on you and your sales?

iPhone: Well it can only be positive, can’t it? I mean, we’re not really in competition are we? I think of us as a team, two players on the same side.

iPad: I have to agree. It’s like asking what kind of effect my sales will have on the sales of Mac Minis. Sure, we cost about the same, but we’re totally different products with entirely different applications. Any one of us doing well only helps the others.

Moderator: So, iPad, you feel that your success will only help iPhone, is that correct?

iPad: Yes.

iPhone: I agree.

Moderator: So, do you feel that your competition benefits from this kind of synergy?

iPhone & iPad: Competition?

Moderator: The Android OS is looking to move into both of your spaces, and is definitely making inroads into your territory iPhone. And there are a lot of up and comers in your field, iPad.

iPhone: Well, there’s two questions there, really–

iPad: Yeah, the question of the threat posed by Android–

iPhone: And how well the Android players will work together.

Moderator: That works. Okay, feel free to answer those questions in any order you wish.

iPad: You first.

iPhone: Okay. Well, first: Android has its adherents. There are things that it does well. I don’t want to take that away from my worthy competitior. But what they don’t have is the integration–

iPad: or any real way to match the iOS experience.

Moderator: It seems to come down to iOS a lot of the time, doesn’t it?

iPhone: The experience is both our hardware and the software, it’s an integration. And that’s what’s missing in the Android universe.

iPad: Some Android software doesn’t work on some modern hardware, the speed of the updates is controlled by the carrier, it’s a rough world.

iPhone: So yeah, that’s a real advantage on our side.

iPad: Another is that we are working together, one company, one vision. We don’t have different manufacturers trying to outdo each other.

iPhone: Yeah, exactly. An iPhone is an iPhone, there’s no HTC vs. Motorola stuff going on here.

Moderator: That’s definitely a point. Although some would claim that the monolithic nature of your product line is a negative, not a positive.

iPad: Oh man, did someone let Zombie Richard Stallman in here?

iPhone: Wow, there hasn’t been a ZRMS joke on this blog since…wow, since before I was introduced. Anyway, carry on.

iPad: My point is just that it seems like the people that worry about that are just the Open Source fanatics.

Moderator: Some would say that Open Source is actually a useful and beneficial concept. In fact, OSX is based on the BSD, and Apple contributes to a number of Open Source projects.

iPad: but not us. We’re all Apple baby. At least, as far as you know. Good luck getting a look at our internals, too. We’re But seriously, what’s so bad about vendor lock-in?

iPhone: Look, you can have open source, or you can have a good user experience, but so far you can’t have both.

Moderator: Wow, that’s deeply insightful. And a little scary, really. Okay, one last question: Windows Phone 7? What do you think?

iPhone: Microsoft gave up and decided to fight a different battle. Has nothing to do with me.

Moderator: We’ve been chatting with a very confident, and not very funny, pair of devices ladies and gentlemen. And remember: around here, we don’t talk about Antennagate. Join us next time when we talk to the Mac App Store and iTunes and see how they feel about sharing an OS.