jeff yen

WordPress: Schwag

Wow. Well, the good folks at Automattic decided to send me some "schwag," as their PR lady Maya calls it... basically promo materials and goodies. I wonder if they send this to everyone who writes a plugin, or because I just happened to hit that 100,000th check-in milestone.

I guess I don't really care... this stuff is pretty awesome either way. I got a green T-shirt, a navy hoodie, and a whole sack of stickers, pins, temporary tattoos, and pencils.

I don't have that much use for this stuff, but I can probably take them on my trip... although, given our former president, the letter "W" may not have the biggest fanbase abroad right now.

And now pics, just because I know Han will be bugging me for them:

Apple sucks, still.

I had a decent idea for an iPhone app, decent enough that I was willing to sign up as an iPhone developer and download a few sample programs to learn my way around the development process. This, despite my loathing for nearly all things Apple.

I imagine you can tell from the title of this post how that went.

Yes, I immediately started to run into issues.

First, none of their "iPhone Developer Center" is accessible unless you've registered as an iPhone developer. This means, even if I just want to poke around and browse a few classes or events, and fulfill a vague curiosity about how difficult it will be to conceptualize and execute my program idea, I have to go through their retarded registration process. Which, really, is just a normal registration process, but obnoxious and annoying. Until I register, I can't even look at their programming references. Already, Apple is forcing me through their retard hoops.

Second, their SDK is only available for MacOS, and requires iTunes. I find it baffling that so much of their operating system is dependent on a buggy, bloated, and broken music management program, but there you go. I guess it's the most substantially and easily monetized portion of their business plan at this point, so it's understandable.

So right off the bat, I had to go searching for third party solutions, because I refuse to install iTunes, and I don't own a Mac. I found winChain, which is a third-party installer for the iPhone SDK that works through CygWin, so you can run it on Vista.

Gee, a Google Code /open source project improving on an Apple product's nonsensical limitations? Shocking.

So I begrudgingly start downloading winChain and the appropriate libraries, and start browsing through the iPhone's classes. Interesting... I can't find any information about the class types I need, so I turn (once again) to Google, and immediately find the information I need.

Ah, okay. Apple has failed to include any but the highest-level  access to incoming call events on the iPhone... basically three:

• Your app has become inactive (by an incoming call or the user locking the device)
• Your app has become active (by user ignoring the call or unlocking the device)
• Your app will be terminated (by user accepting the incoming call or pressing the Home button)

Essentially making my app idea impossible within the standard SDK.

Browse over to the Android page, and... gee; easily accessible documentation, SDK downloads for Wintel, Linux, and MacOS, and... joy of joys... a full-featured SDK with reasonable access to telephony events.

The funny thing is, I probably won't ever make this app. As tasty as the Android development ethos is compared to Apple's horseshit on a plate, the sad fact is that Apple has the best monetization infrastructure. If I made it for the iPhone, I could throw it up on the App store (provided it was approved) for a buck, and I could potentially make in the ones of dollars. Sure, for Android there's the Android Market, but after browsing that site for a couple minutes, it seems really unfinished, and I can't imagine the size of its audience in any way approaching that of the iPhone App store.

So again, it's a marketing decision.

At this point in their existence, Apple really reminds me of Sony in the mid-late 90s.

Let me explain.

Sony in the mid-90s was the undisputed king of consumer electronics. Their TVs, CD players, stereos, and A/V equipment was the best. Their computers were stylish, slim, and shockingly expensive for their technical features. The fact was, they had style and good marketing, and nobody really gave a shit that their $50 Sony CD player didn't do its job any better than the $30 Panasonic player... it was a Sony.

Fast forward a couple years, and digital music distribution is starting to hit. Computer users everywhere are downloading MP3s to their computers, or ripping all their CDs to MP3s so they can just take one of those slick new 64MB MP3 players instead of a CD player and a couple CDs to class.

Sony thinks, hmm... we have to get in on this.

So they make one of the coolest, smallest, and just all-around lust-worthiest MP3 gadgets around.

Except one thing... it doesn't play MP3s.

Yes, Sony decided to go proprietary, and developed their own music compression algorithm with built-in DRM, etc, etc (they are, after all, also a big music distribution company).

It also has (gasp) expandable memory!

Using Sony's proprietary and ludicrously expensive memory sticks, instead of the cheap and common Compact Flash.

Naturally, nobody bought the damn thing, because frankly it was a stupid idea. I mean, why would you want an MP3 player that locks you into a single company's distribution system (or requires you to hack around it), costs more than its competitors, and has fewer -- or no more -- features?

So people went out and bought the Phillips, Creative, Panasonic, and Samsung MP3 players... and realized, "Hey, this stuff is just as good or better."

This is exactly how I view the iPod family of products.

The only difference between Apple and Sony is that Apple has extraordinarily good marketing, and arguably better design. They also have a legion of fans whose loyalty rivals that of fundamentalist cult members, which baffles me. These people have adopted the pinch zoom as a sacred gesture, and Apple is prepared to sue everyone in the world to protect its flock, even though the pinch zoom has been around since... well... 1984. (Hi, Larry Niven and Xerox PARC!)

Apple is very much like George W. Bush in this way; they have somehow managed to retain a populist image with their followers, while their every act contradicts that image.

Apple fans sacrifice their dollars at the iTunes altar, when Amazon's MP3 store lets them legally download music DRM-free. They say Apple products "just work," when they clearly don't. They insist that the iPhone is great, because you can jailbreak it and install programs that Apple doesn't want you to.

My question is... why would you want to give your money to a company that restricts you like that?

I won't deny (except to Jishnu) that the iPhone is a useful tool. In fact, it's the first Apple product I've thought about purchasing. The only thing stopping me was that it was an Apple product.

And as much like a jab that might sound, it really isn't. It's not the Apple logo or the douchey stereotypical users or the lame misleading commercials. At least, not this time.

It's the fact that everything is such a black box with Apple, and for no good reason. You can't replace the battery? iTunes is required? You can only use AT&T? You can't legally get apps except through their store? You can't even copy and paste without jailbreaking your phone?

Seriously, now.

I'll just leave you with this thought. Pretty much everything related to Apple now requires iTunes. Want an iPod? You need iTunes. Want to watch Quicktime trailers? You need iTunes. Want to try developing an app for the iPhone? You need a Mac AND you need iTunes.

There's another program that has a similar omnipresence in another operating system... what was it... hm.

Oh yeah... Internet Explorer.

Apple still sucks. That is all.