Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use? | John Battelle’s Search BlogJohn Battelle’s Search Blog

A genius “rant” about Apple usability – I’m glad someone has actually said it. It’s been the elephant in the room for a couple of years. He’s certainly not an outlier! I have the same issues with iPhoto (really what’s the point?), iTunes (another UI, really?) and iOS (I am not fat fingered).

Quick excerpts below but you really need to go read the full article by  John Battelle here.

“… the fact that Apple doesn’t respond in its forums about this (or any) issue? Ridonkulous.”

iTunes

“… just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.”

Without going into detail, my little rant about Calendar, iPhoto, Address Book, et al goes for iTunes as well. I even bought a piece of software to try to fix iTunes myriad issues (Rinse). I can’t figure out whether or not Rinse has fixed anything, to be honest, and so far, all it’s managed to do is marry the wrong album art to about 100 or so songs which previously didn’t have any imagery. Which is kind of funny, but a tad annoying. And just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.

iOS

“Seriously, how can an adult finger ever touch that little search icon without either hitting the “A” or the “+”????”

Have you ever done a search in your iPhone contacts? You need the fingers of a poorly fed six-year-old to activate that search function. No, really, I must waste four or five minutes a day trying to make that damn thing work.

 

via Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use? | John Battelle’s Search BlogJohn Battelle’s Search Blog.

Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register

“Apple is a terrible Google, which is a terrible Amazon, which is a terrible Apple.”

It’s become a truism that the way to win in mobile is with an end-to-end, hardware-to-software-to-cloud strategy. I just wish this were as good for consumers as it seems to be for vendors. If I could get any wish fulfilled for 2013, it would be to have Apple and Google, in particular, go back to doing what they do best – rather than doing “all the things” in an attempt to squeeze out maximum value from a captive consumer.
via Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register.

The Web We Lost – Anil Dash

Really interesting article afrom Anil Dash about how the web has changed, a few points I like are his views on single-sign-on – In 2003, if you introduced a single-sign-in service that was run by a company, even if you documented the protocol and encouraged others to clone the service, you’d be described as introducing a tracking system worthy of the PATRIOT act. There was such distrust of consistent authentication services that even Microsoft had to give up on their attempts to create such a sign-in. Though their user experience was not as simple as today’s ubiquitous ability to sign in with Facebook or Twitter, the TypeKey service introduced then had much more restrictive terms of service about sharing data. And almost every system which provided identity to users allowed for pseudonyms, respecting the need that people have to not always use their legal names.

Also his view on personal websites – In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company’s site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.

via The Web We Lost – Anil Dash.

New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web

“If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.”

Late last year, the closure of the uber-popular Installous marked the end of a promiscuous era in iOS app piracy.

Now, several new services are on the rise that are filling the gap and offering easy installation of pirated apps, even on devices that have not been jailbroken.Updated with statement from Zeusmos’ developer below.The two that have risen to the forefront are Zeusmos and Kuaiyong. While the former has been around for a few months, it has gained significant steam since the exit of Installous. The latter has appeared seemingly from nowhere over the past couple of weeks.Both of these services are dangerous for app developers because they offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and do not require that devices have been jailbroken in order to do so. This is an enormous problem, as it opens up the arena for their use from the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices — as was the case with Installous — to any unscrupulous users of iPhones and iPads.

If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.

via New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web.