The Talk Show: Live From WWDC
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Linked List: December 3, 2005

Saturday, 3 December 2005

The Annoyance of Haxies 

Corey Redlien on last week’s Rich Siegel-v.-Drunkenbatman haxie-compatibility imbroglio:

Still, how about all of those other users out there who don’t write in? They just had a bad experience with my software, and it’s not my fault! For every one person who writes in with their bad haxie-induced experience, there’s probably 100 that don’t write in, and therefore are likely to get the impression that my software stinks out loud. They don’t realize that their haxie caused the problem. I’ve just lost money because of some other program on their system. Money I would have loved to make by fixing my code to work with their particular haxie, except for the fact, that I probably can’t do anything about it!

Most regular users just don’t realize what they’re doing when they install stuff.

I could have done without yet another analogy comparing haxies to after-market car add-ons, but this is a good take from the perspective of an app developer.

Songbird vs. iTunes 

UI designer for Songbird (a cross-platform desktop music player) responds to critics who claim it borrows heavily from iTunes (i.e. the entire basic layout of the main player window) using silly lingo like “VisDe” and “UED” (both terms apparently Yahoo shorthand for “visual design” and “user experience design”, respectively), concluding:

Sure, a media player’s desktop feature set (e.g., rip, mix, burn, play, sync, etc.) is essentially complete, but the concomitant UED and VisDe of that set is still resolving. Moreover, a media player’s network feature set and concomitant UED and VisDe is nascent at best. We’re confident that Apple and other media player developers are going to recognize — and “steal” — Songbird’s UED innovations. Catch us if you can. ;)

I’m sure Apple will put someone on this right away.

Adobe’s Acquisition of Macromedia Expected to Close Tomorrow 

Completes the agreement made in April.