Linked List: August 7, 2009

Friday, 7 August 2009

Comics by ComiXology 

My thanks to ComiXology for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Comics, their new iPhone app. It’s a combination comic book store, reader, and library, all on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can browse and purchase new comics using the new iPhone OS 3.0 in-app purchasing system. The app itself is just 99 cents, and comes with over 30 free comics.

Check out the screencast guided to tour to see how it works. The reading interface is very well-designed, including thoughtful features like the option to auto-rotate the display depending on the orientation of the current panel. Very clever design, and a perfect example of in-app purchasing.

Vacation ’58 

John Hughes’s “Vacation ’58” story for National Lampoon, which he later adapted into the screenplay for National Lampoon’s Vacation.

See also: Hughes on how he wrote it.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Chart 

That’s a lot of blue boxes.

Making It Up as They Go 

Buzz Andersen, responding to the aforelinked piece by Daniel Jalkut:

My guess would be that Apple had to set up a large organization to do this reviewing very, very quickly and ended up with a bunch of people who can quickly go down a very literal laundry list of things to check, but don’t have the time, expertise, or incentive to make nuanced judgements about an app’s suitability.

I suspect that almost every complaint people have about the App Store is related to the fact that Apple set it up practically overnight by the standards of a large software project. They’re making it up as the go along, and it shows.

I think Phil Schiller’s email regarding Ninjawords hints at this too.

And I keep thinking about the fact that they’ve built the App Store on a foundation that was originally intended for music and movies.

App Store Mercenaries 

Daniel Jalkut has a thoughtful theory on what’s going on with the App Store:

Why would somebody waste time typing profane words into a dictionary, gathering screen captures, and sending them to developers, except to defend their prize “catch”? If perfecting the product was the goal, we’d see a lot more nuance and thoughtfulness. But excellence is one goal, and collecting proof of “doing one’s job” is quite another. I think I know what many App Store reviewers aspire to.

Why Ninjawords Drew a Response 

Jason Kincaid on Schiller’s public statement regarding Ninjawords:

All of that said, I find it totally bizarre that Phil Schiller took the time to write this lengthy explanation without saying anything about the myriad of other problems with the App Store (it is possible that Gruber omitted portions of the letter, though it doesn’t sound like it). No mention of the Google Voice fiasco, nothing on the awful support developers have seen from App Store representatives, nothing on the inconsistent and nebulous approval policies.

To be clear, the unpublished portions of Schiller’s email were not substantial, and did not touch upon any other topics regarding the App Store. Of course, I’d love to engage Schiller in a similarly detailed discussion of Google Voice. I agree that it’s a far more important topic. However, it’s also far more complex. No one from Apple is going to discuss it on the record. (Note to Phil Schiller: I’d love to be proven wrong.)

The Google Voice issue involves Apple’s contentious relationship with AT&T (and, eventually, when Google Voice is available outside the U.S., Apple’s carrier partners around the world), and Apple’s competitive relationship with Google itself.

The beauty of the Ninjawords story — what drew me to it like a magnet — is not that it is a particularly important case, but rather that it is particularly simple. The problems are clear, uncomplicated, and, I think, undeniable.

MacJournals News: On Phil Schiller’s Credibility 

MacJournals:

We do not offer an opinion as to whether Schiller is being truthful in the App Store censorship matter. We only point out that his past statements when Apple was under fire mean that he does not get the benefit of our doubt. If Apple’s policy truly is not to censor applications for “including references to common swear words” (or ask their developers to do so to gain approval, either explicitly or implicitly), we’ll see the results in the App Store, and Schiller will have won back some credibility.

His statement was encouraging, but all that matters is whether it results in actual changes to the App Store review process.

Virtual Keyboards on iPhone and Android 

Must-read comparison of the virtual keyboards on the iPhone and Android HTC Magic, by Lukas Mathis:

A virtual keyboard lives and dies by the details. It’s not that there’s a single feature which makes the iPhone’s virtual keyboard better than Android’s; it’s death by a thousand cuts. A number of small differences end up making a huge difference.

(Android does win on one count: its auto-correction feature shows a menu of suggestions, rather than the iPhone’s, which only shows one.)