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Jesper speaks with a clear and (in my humble opinion) wise voice in his post The Sliding Scale of Right.
The real takeaway is that when Apple does shit like this, it degrades Software Update and the extent to which people can unconditionally recommend it as a useful and convenient security precaution. Good security precautions don’t come with caveats.
Apple has dropped the ball here. And it is as simple as that. Automatic select-and-install of anything the user hasn’t specifically said “yes, please install application n, I approve that action by selection” by default is bad form. It’s wrong.
The Operating System in question is irrelevant, the principle is the same. Do not install shit I do not ask for, especially if you try and hide it as an “update”, purposefully or no. Apple’s software update hasn’t done this in the past (at least not on the Windows platform) and whilst it’s obvious Apple seeks to push their browser of choice, it should never be at the expense of user knowledge or by sneak attack.
The single best option is to revert the action back to what it had always been prior to the latest release of Safari. That is what the user expects. And thus that is what it should be — if I have not requested installation of the application, it remains un-installed.
Shawn Blanc writes one of the best review pieces I’ve had the pleasure to read in a long time:
For the past several weeks as I’ve been writing this article I have used nothing but Coda for web designing, and it has broken my age-old habits of CMD TABbing between multiple apps.
It’s an absolute epic. It will take you some time to read through the entire article — indeed i read it thrice — but the result is an intimate understanding of why Coda is stealing hearts everywhere. And yet to call it a review somehow still lands short of the mark.
The best insight into Coda you will read, ever.
MacHeist have released this year’s bundle:
“Last year’s bundle caused a frenzy in the Mac community, selling over 16,000 copies in a week. This year, we’re setting our sights a little higher, with a larger bundle, a two week sale, and what we believe to be a stronger collection of apps. Simply put, this is the best Mac software deal in history.”
I see some neat stuff here, even as a newly minted part-time Mac user I can recognise a few sweet deals in the mix that make it a tempting offer. Then there are the claims that a percentage will go to charity — always a crowd pleaser.
However, interest is tainted by previous antics in which much tom-foolery, claim, counter-claim and questions of ethics occurred, leading one to wonder just how much of a ‘deal’ this really is.
I would like to take a moment of your time, should you be a Windows Mobile user, as you should immediately check out Pointui:
“Take back control of your device with Pointui Home. No need to fumble for a stylus any more as Home is designed with generously sized controls.”
It is pitched as “the definitive user interface for mobile devices” — Microsoft, take note. This is what windows mobile should be capable of, right out of the box.
It’s still early days, however navigation already follows a pattern and you end up where you expected to go. And the UI is quite simply, outstanding.
This (freeware, no less) interface is no instant iPhone killer, for certain, but after little more than 5 minutes of use I simply cannot imagine ever returning to the cludgy stylus-and-menu structure that has haunted Windows Mobile for years.
If you want to free your windows mobile device, this is the answer.
Jeff Atwood has a great piece on the relentless pace of programming change:
“It’s no longer unique for something to be new, no longer interesting when something is shiny. Eventually, you grow weary of shiny new things.”
The Magpie Effect — no sooner do we finally get a chance to check out some new programming platform, it’s already obsolete and out-of-favour.
Why should anyone invest time and energy developing in the latest craze, when even it’s biggest proponents and drum beaters change their minds on the current framework flavour every other week?!
There in, gentle readers, is the moral of the story and why it’s a rare thing indeed to see such technologies embraced by a wider audience or why they seldom seem to gain much long-term traction, despite the hype.
The pace of change is such that both platform and programmer alike become their own worst enemy, dooming the platform before it has any real chance of taking wing.
Jeff Atwood fires a shot across-the-bow of the online content distribution model, via his take on The Sad State of Digital Software Distribution:
“Instead, I find that download options for commercial software are quite rare. Even when the download option is available, you end up paying the same price as retail or even more.”
This is a point-of view that crops up every so often, typically backed up by a small number of examples where a retail price (on sale) is less than the online option. On the face of it, that’s a pretty damning indictment of the online e-tail model, right? Surely it should be cheaper to procure a product via electronic download, rather than shrink wrapped? Of course. To a point.
Given pressing a DVD in a big run is typically counted in cents, with packaging and documentation costs substantively reduced on big runs the costs to actually manufacture a product typically pale in comparison to delivery and display costs. We pay for the convenience of being able to walk into a store and uplift a product. Why would the convenience of immediate delivery be any different? Doesn’t that have value, too?
And what is also frequently missed is that a great many products sold via the electronic model are not only available before they hit the store shelves but often launched, or pre-launched, at a reduced price. Which is totally unlike the typical retail model, where pricing starts off as high as the market will stand and then starts to drop as the distributor switches gears to try and offload as many units as possible.
Jeff picks out Steam as a good example of where price parity has taken a nose dive — because one or two titles are more than a retail sale price — title yet The Orange Box, one of the higher selling titles for Steam, can actually retail for more than the electronic download.
Don’t take my word for it, here it is in black and white. Other than Amazon — who continue their survival strategy by undercutting everyone else on principle — the pricing is at the very least on par (freight costs can cancel out online sale savings). If you take the walk-in-store approach, you will frequently pay more.
If you’re one of the many millions of potential customers not currently residing in the US of A, then digital delivery orders can result in massive savings. The very same Orange Box sold in the US for $49.95, retails for a good deal more here.
Jeff is highlighting that there are exceptions to any rule. Which is true. Just as one can pay three different prices for the same product at three different locations, online ordering may not always work out cheaper for every single instance of n at any single moment of time.
It’s not a perfect model and there can be both very good and very bad times to drop some coin. However.. the convenience, potential speed of delivery, reduction in packaging waste and early release offers, combined with frequent discounts both at-launch and on-going e-tailer sales, do still make them just as much a valid avenue as visiting the local electronic game store.
Jeff ends his article thusly:
“It seems to me that, in the area of digital distribution efficiencies, commercial software still has a lot to learn from the open source world– where everything is downloadable by design. I hope they can adapt before they’re forced into extinction.”
This is a great ethic to relate to. If we didn’t live in a world where capitalism is the order of the day. But we do. And this last comment seemingly ignores the trend where an every increasing amount of software is available and maintainable online.
It should also be noted that retailers want the electronic model to fail — and they’ll try real hard to crack pricing on a few select titles to make it look like it has. Scratch the surface though and typical higher-than-download shelf pricing belies that the old bait-and-hook retail model is still just as prevalent.
Like any purchase choice, shop around and find the deal that best suits you. Many options are infinitely preferable to none and ignoring the purchase-and-download model on the principle that there is still a price tag involved only serves to further limit options.
Jesper takes another cracking shot at why stuff keeps staying broke, despite constant development marching forward:
“Okay, stop. Guys working on larger capacity hard drives, flash drives, cheaper memory, better power supplies, fundamentally different CPUs and cures for cancer, you can keep going. The rest of you, spend five years fixing the fundamental issues.”
The problem is that fixing issues just isn’t sexy. Oh, sure, you can make debugging sound sudo pseudo-sexy, Joyent’s
constant
spruiking
of
dtrace to all who will listen is proof of that.
Fixing problems has always been the Achilles Heel of any software or hardware platform, because it’s often easier — both up-sell and manage — to build something new than fix the old one. The entire software and hardware industry is entirely geared up to consume and burn, not rebuild.
And that won’t change until the consumer and the market embrace the concept of “green” re-use and re-cycle concepts. Ironically it’s just as much our fault — for demanding change over improvement — as those controlling the product cycles. Makes you think, doesn’t it.
A recent entry over at The Blog Herald by David Peralty, seems to be polarising views somewhat:
Creating such a marketplace, to me, is basically saying that no themes can make money, unless Matt is getting a cut of the proceeds, and that doesn’t seem right.
It’s really not about the money, even if Matt sends occasional mixed signals. Nor does the latest yet-to-be-launched product out of the Automattic stables, have anything to do with theme sponsorship.
Rather it is clear that Matt is very strongly committed to product and brand control. Recent trends towards the strong commercialisation of wordpress.com and the GPL’d self-install Wordpress itself to an extent do illustrate that clearly.
Glenn Wolsey on supporting developers:
Twitterrific 3.0 can be used completely free of charge if you wish. Registering simply eliminates advertising from the tweet timeline.
I’m with Glenn on this one. Although not a full-time Mac user, I have and continue to use Twitterrific, whilst I may not necessarily pay for the privilege of posting to twitter given the number of alternative softwares available, I have absolutely no issue with the developer adding vetted, quality advertising via The Deck.
Joyent's David Young has a conviction that the days of the operating system are numbered, as part of his
Joyent Manifesto - Quo vadis, Computing he writes:
“The operating system is dead. Long live the operating system. If the future is network applications, the past is the operating system.”
I think David has oversimplified the concept of […]
Mr Hunt’s comment on my pet hate, the
cross platform user interface:
“I'm not against cross-platform libraries, or cross-platform applications. But giving the same UI to every OS isn't a good solution.”
It isn't a good solution, but one often mooted as the 'best' compromise. The downside of that middle ground choice is that it will offset […]
