Via Tom Merritt’s twitter
I’m sort of bummed, but everyone knows that she couldn’t stay forever. Amy and Rory have definitely been my favorite of the new companions.
I don’t normally post links for app updates, but I am with this because they serve as perfect examples for how not to make an iOS app. Which is to say non cocoa/obj-c and instead basically just a wrapper for a web app.
That said, the Gmail app is noticeably quicker, but it still suffers problems that it shouldn’t. Also, when are you going to get with the program and allow multiple logins, Google?
Let’s check back in a year.
That would be hilarious if true, given Andy Rubin’s previous stance:
I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant
Good luck with that, Andy.
Via Daring Fireball
How is this going to be any different in 6 months? That’s the time frame that Eric Schmidt said it should take for developers to start choosing to develop for Android first.
Let’s see. We’ve got a guy calling out Apple blogs for calling shitty products shitty. He says they’re “assailing the misinformed or pointing out how wrong or disliked the Android competition is.” To support his opinion, he offers no facts and nothing objectively measured.
Oh, and he uses my favorite ad hominem: fanboi. Just so you know, the moment you type this word, you make clear to the rest of the people listening that you are a moron. Fanboi is essentially the literary equivalent of truck nuts - you might like it, but everyone else around you is going “what a moron.”
The only attempt to justify his opinion uses a weak Xyboard (great name, by the way) to iPad comparison. Of course, he does that without supporting that comparison at all, other than to say the Xyboard is thin and light, and he can use the voice nav in pretty much the same way as Siri. No comparison of apps, design considerations, usability, pricing, support, hardware quality. The best comment he can give it is that you can use the Voice Nav “pretty much the same”. Well, there’s a ringing endorsement.
Shawn Blanc:
If Tweetie was designed by a user, the new Twitter app was designed by Twitter’s senior management.
This is a very cogent point, and I do not see this as a good thing.
Ben Brooks:
What is absolutely crazy — what drives me nuts — is the ditching of the swipe-to-act gesture. In previous versions you could swipe left or right on a tweet to slide open an action menu. From there you could quickly favorite, retweet, Instapaper, or reply to the tweet.
Amen.
John Gruber:
Sad, because Tweetie was truly a great app, and today’s Twitter is no Tweetie. I wouldn’t hesitate to hold Tweetie up as one of the best iPhone apps ever made, period. It was every bit as polished and clever — if not more so — than Apple’s own apps. No app is perfect, no app will please everyone, but Tweetie came damn close.
I fully agree with this, and the thing that I hate most about the new Twitter app for iPhone is that they killed one of the best examples of what an iOS app should be. Seeing this app, I can’t help but think that is why Loren Brichter (Tweetie’s creator), left Twitter.
While I like some of the new features, I’m appalled by the things they killed with this update that could have easily fit into what they released this week.
it has got to be a testament to what shitty company HP has become than to watch them squander what was once a very viable product. WebOS should have been a success, but HP has had no idea what to do with it.
And while I generally like things becoming open source, I really don’t think a mobile OS is going to be better for it. At best, I’d say what might happen now is if you get tired of your current OS, you might have a shot at installing a buggy version of Web OS onto your device.
I recently downloaded Instacast HD on my iPad, and in while there is a lot of uncertainty from developers about how iCloud should work, I’d say the guys at Vemedio have it figured out. The key - I don’t think about it. I listen to a podcast on my iPhone, then go pick it up on my iPad. Everything is right where it should be.
A lot of developers are sort of in the dark about what they think iCloud is supposed to do, and to those guys I would tell them to look at Instacast. Granted, the waters get muddied when you start talking about user files. But for quite a lot of tasks and things you want sync across devices for, this is the simple answer. And I think this is the kind of thing that iCloud solves.
Quite a lot of apps are using Dropbox for just this sort of functionality. Due, Todo, pretty much every plain text editor - all of this is now solved more elegantly with iCloud. For apps of this type, either storing preferences and app data on Dropbox, or simple files like .txt, it’s time get with the program. Not only is iCloud easier for the user (it’s set up once - when you do the initial setup on the brand new device), it’s also faster. I have yet to notice an iCloud sync occurring. At best, it seems to take less than a second, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s happening in the background.
Anyway, Instacast HD is a definite buy if you like listening to podcasts on your iPad, or if you just want to see how iCloud should work.
Via marco.org
Marco:
Why does Google let Eric Schmidt speak publicly? Has it ever turned out well?
That about sums up how much sense this makes. As Marco points out, the simple question is to ask which of these problems Android 4.0 is going to solve:
What about that is going to change so much in the next 6 months that it will make sense to develop for Android first? Or even develop for Android at all.
Personally, I am just shocked that watching a bunch of douchebags who are famous only for being douchebags has a negative effect on one’s intellect.
Via Technologizer
Zuckerberg’s own pics were downloaded. Hilarious. I guess there’s something to say for using your own products, though.
Pretty interesting look at how Google changed one of the world’s most popular services without really screwing anything up along the way.1
Technically, whether you like the design is another matter. ↩
