By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: March 6, 2008
Thursday, 6 March 2008
- Regarding Ryan Block Asking Steve Jobs if SIM-Unlocking Apps Will Be Allowed ★
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I have to say, I side with Block on this one. Just because the answer is obvious doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fair question. I don’t have a problem with Apple serving as a gatekeeper with approval over all apps, but if that’s the role they want, their policies should be explicit. In the presentation, they only listed things like porno and “malicious” apps as things that wouldn’t be tolerated. Clearly, something that impedes on their carrier contracts won’t either.
It’s probably a moot point because of the data sandboxing (iPhone apps only have access to their own files, not the files of other apps), but would Amazon be allowed to write an OS X Touch app for buying songs from the Amazon MP3 store? Again, I’m not saying it’s outrageous if the answer is “no”, but if that’s the case, it’s only fair to get it on the record as to whether Apple plans to disallow any app that impedes on an Apple revenue stream.
- Development Details Gleaned From the SDK Documentation and License Agreement ★
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Ken Aspeslagh has culled some of the highlights from the SDK documentation and license, including:
Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs.
Regarding which Ken quips: “Imagine if they had this rule on the Mac, just how stable things would be.”
- Jason Fried on Apple’s Touch Platform ★
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Bold statement:
What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile.
- Video From Today’s Event ★
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Not sure if this is a permalink. If the URL doesn’t work for you, try the main QuickTime page for keynotes.
- iPhone SDK Scorecard ★
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What’s there, what’s missing, and what would be ideal.
- Andy Ihnatko on the iPhone Event ★
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Andy Ihnatko:
Note how carefully this event is being orchestrated. Apple has carefully lined up a series of white porcelain plates at the far end of a shooting gallery. Each one is labeled with a known percentage of the marketplace that “can’t” buy an iPhone for specific technical reasons. Annnd… plink! plink! plink!… they’re knocking them all down.
Best summary of today’s event I’ve seen.
- iPhone Developer Program ★
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Apple’s entire developer.apple.com domain is stone cold dead as I type this — overwhelmed, I presume, with requests for the iPhone SDK.
- iPhone Enterprise Beta Program ★
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So the enterprise news is that Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft. This lets the iPhone do a slew of things deemed essential for the enterprise market — push email/contacts/calendars, device configuration, remote wipe, and more. This opens an entirely new market to the iPhone, the one currently dominated by RIM’s BlackBerry. Apple’s pitch on this is that with ActiveSync, the iPhone talks directly to Exchange, whereas with BlackBerrys, they go through proprietary intermediary servers of RIM’s.
This doesn’t make the iPhone a BlackBerry killer, but the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.
- From the DF Archives: Exchange Exchange ★
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This one is not aging well.
- Macworld’s Live Coverage of Today’s Apple iPhone Event ★
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Live updates by Jason Snell from today’s “iPhone Roadmap” event on Apple’s campus. Update: Jacqui Cheng’s updates at Ars Technica are in the right order (newest at top).
- PodWorks 2.9.3 ★
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Nice update — and great release notes — to Buzz Andersen’s nifty $8 file transfer utility for iPods.
- OpenDNS ★
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OpenDNS is a totally free service that provides very fast DNS service to anyone, with a bunch of other optional features. Not new, but somehow I’d never heard of it before. Came in handy for me today after Comcast’s DNS servers crapped out.
- Android and Flash ★
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An honest question for everyone who thinks good Flash support for the iPhone (a) isn’t a significant engineering problem; and/or (b) is so important as to be essential. What about Android? Android’s browser is based on WebKit, and the platform is open. But I can’t find a word about Flash support for Android anywhere.
Also, I’m pretty sure I once saw a movie called “Android and Flash” on MST3K.
- Pogue on the Sony Alpha A300 DSLR ★
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Interesting new digital SLR from Sony: it gives you a live preview on the screen, so you can compose shots without using the eyepiece. The trick is that it uses two sensors: one to record the actual photo, and a second one to provide the preview image. (Other DSLRs have “live preview”, but not with autofocus.)