By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: May 4, 2006
Thursday, 4 May 2006
- Microsoft and Gall’s Law ★
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Interesting post from Marc Hedlund regarding Microsoft’s stated goal of building data centers to rival Google’s. He invokes a quote from John Gall, known as Gall’s Law, which I’d never heard before but which I like very much:
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked…. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
—John Gall - Dave Winer: Apple Apps Promote Lock-In ★
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Dave Winer, yesterday:
Another one — the apps Apple bundles are marvels of lock-in. Try to get your data out of them. No no, says Uncle Steve. We own your ass. Or at least your data.
I’m not sure what Winer’s talking about here. iPhoto stores your photos as JPEGs and lets you export as JPEG. iTunes lets you share any music file that isn’t from ITMS by just dragging it out of iTunes. (And you can share ITMS songs with up to five other computers.) iMovie imports and exports standard movie file formats. iCal publishes and subscribes to the open-standard iCalendar (ICS) format. Address Book imports and exports open-standard vCard files.
What’s his beef? That they don’t use OPML for anything? (Update: That’s obviously not it, since Winer has previously praised iTunes’s OPML export. Thanks to Jeremy Phillippe for the link.)
- Apple Responds to Rumors of Aperture’s Demise, Releases Update ★
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Official statement from Apple’s Kirk Paulsen, senior director of pro application marketing, regarding the company’s commitment to Aperture. Plus they released a 1.1.1 update to the app.
- Thermal Greasy: Apple Sics Lawyers on Something Awful ★
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Gizmodo:
After a Something Awful denizen took apart his MacBook Pro and discovered that Apple had slathered on far too much thermal grease, he found that using a more modest amount dropped his MacBook Pro’s temperatures by several degrees. Now the forum has recieved a threatening letter from Apple’s legal staff, requesting a link to this image [pictured above] be removed because “The Service Source manual for the MacBook Pro is Apple’s intellectual property and is protected by U.S. copyright law.”
That’s just sad, and it shows how tone-deaf to PR Apple’s lawyers can be. They’re going to get way more bad press out of this story (deservedly so) than they would have had they simply let this go. Not only does it paint Apple as a corporate bully, but it draws more attention to the MacBook Pro heat problems.
- Lucas to Release Original Unaltered Trilogy on DVD ★
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Lucasfilm Ltd.:
In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
Bastards. I broke down and finally bought the current DVD trilogy collection just a few months ago — now I’ve got to pay for it yet again just to get the versions of the films that I really want. If they ever diddle with the Han-vs.-Greedo scene again, they ought to have Han shoot George Lucas.
- Camino 1.0.1 ★
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Bug fixes and security updates to my second-favorite browser for Mac OS X.
- The Dishonor of Blue Security ★
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Great post from Jason Levine showing how yesterday’s hours-long outage at Six Apart (which included all TypePad and LiveJournal sites) was the result of a cowardly act by a company called Blue Security:
The best analogy I can think of is that it’d be like you dealing with a water main break in your basement by hooking a big hose up to the leaking joint and redirecting the water into your neighbor’s basement instead.
(Via Andy Baio.)