d00dism

It’s been rather quiet on the Mac front. Well, that’s not entirely true, we have the continuing saga of Apple versus the rumor sites. Very little has been decided in the courts, but that hasn’t stopped the Mac community at large from giving their fifteen cents. Unfortunately, the battles being waged are being clumped into one, making the debate wandering and unfocused. We have one group shouting “This is a freedom of speech issue!” while the other says (quite accurately) “This particular decision is not.” A pissing contest ensues.

But I digress. That quiet seems to be the calm before the storm that will be the release of Tiger. It’s making me nervous, much like being alone in a house for the first time. Boo! With rumor sites including the now infamous Think Secret predicting a release announcement tomorrow, the buzz may start to return to the Mac community. Then again, most of that buzz will likely be “Have you put your order in yet?” Now that I think about it, the release following the announcement by only a couple weeks seems a little strange. That leaves very little lead time for ordering. That’s significant because it will make it harder to estimate initial demand for the OS.

As for whether it’s appropriate to be releasing Tiger now, that’s entirely up to Apple and their software development people. However, by reading many messageboards, you’d think that the decision should be decided by Apple fans. We have overzealous fans who have heard through someone else that there are major bugs in Tiger and as such, they should delay until May.

There’s a few things wrong with that. First, it’s coming through a third-party source, which amounts to “friend of a friend of a friend” many times. “My brother knows this guy that has a friend that’s a developer that has access to Tiger builds and he says they are buggy” is not a reputable source for information. I’ve heard conclusively that Tom Cruise is gay that way.

However, let’s assume that the source isn’t made up. The next part of the argument that fails muster is the definitive way in which Tiger is being pronounced “buggy”. A developer is saying this. We are assuming that the program the developer is working on doesn’t make assumptions about the behavior of a particular API (which happens all the time) or use a deprecated API call. Maybe, just maybe, the program is buggy, and not the OS. This of course goes back to the fallacious logic gem “it worked before, therefore the blame lies with what changed”. This doesn’t always apply when programming.

If an API call is faulty in some way, we are making the gross assumption that its severity is high, affecting daily computing. Further, it makes the assumption that the bug actually causes something to fail or even does something that’s not cosmetic. Also ignored is the number of bugs. What about the complexity of the issue as far as diagnosing, fixing, and testing go? Software engineers working on Tiger itself are most likely incapable of properly estimating these things. Their managers might better be able to do this, but then again, it’s only an estimate (and may not be right).

That’s a whole lot of assumptions. I’ll put them into a list to better summarize them.

• The source is:
  • Trustworthy
  • Right
  • Aware of the scope of the issues
• The bugs affect usability.
• The bugs are non-trivial to:
  • Diagnose
  • Fix
  • Test

That seems like a rather tenuous position to take now, doesn’t it? I’d love to see Tiger’s release announced tomorrow, but I won’t freak out if it isn’t either.

All right, so I’m way behind the curve on this, but one of the neat side-effects of widespread RSS adoption is a phenomenon known as Podcasting. RSS feeds (at least as of version 2.0) allow for a field called enclosures. It’s a bit of a misnomer, but a useful part of the spec.

It basically specifies the location of a file that’s associated with a post. At the current time, it’s generally an audio file (MP3, WMA, AAC, etc.). In some cases it’s a video file (but that’s much less frequent due to increased cost associated with production and bandwidth). The natural extension of this capability is transfer to iTunes and then one’s iPod (hence, podcasting). New RSS readers aim at handling these feeds (and in particular, the enclosures). There are the open-source iPodder and iPodderX (which are free and $20 respectively).

NetNewsWire Rocks

That’s well and good, but I didn’t want to use yet another RSS reader. In my age, I’m starting to get a little bit stubborn about my software (especially when I’ve paid for it). NetNewsWire 2.0 has podcasting support built-in (full version only). With this addition, I’ve been able to get interested. My listening list is currently limited to MacCast, WineCast, YourMacLife, and Leo Laporte. I can see myself subscribing to more, but I simply haven’t found the time to explore. Maybe one of you has a favorite podcast for me to check out?

Management is Stupid

Now that I’ve subscribed to these podcasts, the issue becomes how to manage them. I don’t want to become my father, listening to something over and over, not realizing that I’d heard it before. This is one of those times that leveraging iTunes’ Smart Lists becomes a brilliant thing to do. When NetNewsWire inserts these files into my library, it can label those files with a genre. In this case, I like “Podcast”. It also allows me the option to insert into a playlist. For some, this is a sufficient mechanism for managing these files. One just deletes the files out of the playlist once they’ve listened to them. The problem is that it’s not automatic. If I forget what I’ve listened to, how can I be expected to remember managing that playlist?

Instead, it’s smarter to use a capability built-into iTunes and the iPod, the play count. This attribute of song files get incrememented when you finish the file and it’s done by both iTunes and the iPod. This is easily leveraged into an automatic management system. One simply makes a new Smart Playlist. I call mine, oddly enough, “New Podcasts”. Next, I set it to contain files whose genre is “Podcast” and play count is 0 (zero). Now, when I want to listen to my new podcasts, I simply go to that playlist. Not only are the contents of that list synchronized from iTunes into the iPod, but iPods will reevaluate Smart List rules every time you enter that playlist. For example, this morning, I went through my entire “New Podcast” list. When I navigated out and back into the list, it was empty. Keep in mind that you don’t need to listen to the entire list either. Listening to a single file once will remove it from the list the next time you enter it. Sweet.

Another Reason Satellite Radio Sucks

Satellite should take notice of this new technology. It’s not going to cut into subscriptions by people interested in live broadcasts such as sports. Those people find value in nationwide access to live information. However, part of satellite radio’s value is meant to be derived from the broadcasts that they facilitate that can’t or won’t be done via traditional radio. That includes shows like Howard Stern. However, his content’s value isn’t in being live. It’s topical to be sure, but one could listen at any point within a couple days and still enjoy it.

Imagine, if you will, having that content as a podcast. You could download it to your computer. You could either listen to it there, or download it to your MP3 player of choice, then listen to it in the car or at work. You listen at your convenience. If necessary, they could charge a subscription fee for the feeds themselves, restricting others from access. Users could timeshift all their content. That’s going to be huge (as evidenced by the phenomenon that TiVo is). Clear Channel is already aware of this. It’s only a matter of time before this goes really mainstream.

Software Updates

A point that I may not have made more apparent earlier is that enclosures in RSS 2.0 feeds don’t need to be media files. They can be any file. To this end, Fraser Speirs had the brilliant idea of delivering sofware updates via a feed. To keep the nomenclature consistent, he calls this appcasting. It’s a new spin on how to use this.

Who’s Misnomer? Why isn’t there a Misternomer?

As I said before, calling this attribute in RSS feed items “enclosure” isn’t quite correct. It implies that the data being referenced is contained within the feed itself. It’s not. I shudder to think about the amount of bandwidth that would be consumed (one change in the feed and every enclosure would be redowloaded with the feed). Rather, feeds just point. Sure, functionally they are enclosures, but I’m a nitpicker.

I got an email from Don MacAskill, CEO and Chief Geek (his words, not mine ;)) over at Smugmug. He informed that they are working on feeds for their content, which is absolutely terrific. I’ll be able to add more pictures and eliminate my little lack of inline-block support problem.

As a little side-note, Don was also very friendly in his email, so anyone passionate about sharing their photos should check out their service.

I like to read a variety of blogs and get a variety of opinions. Instapundit is still the best way to do get a full sampling. I forgot how I found Wizbang, but I enjoyed reading a lot of the content.

Fast forward to a few days ago. Contributing Editor Paul decided to go into “I told you so” mode because a news story suggested that evolution was more complex than simple genetic inheritance. His expert interpretation was that evolution was severely flawed. Naturally, he got lots of flak for this. Instead of letting it go, he made felt the need to post again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Notice a pattern? This is immaturity at its most embarrassing. He continued to get lambasted with criticism in the comments.

Feeling the tide overtake him, he resorted to deleting comments. He also edited them. Those two steps weren’t enough for him to engineer “winning” the argument apparently though. He’s turned off comments for the latest stories.

It’s sad and way below Wizbang’s standards (or at least I assumed it was based on the quality of posts by both Kevin and Jay Tea of the same site). Considering their colleague’s recent behavior, maybe it’s time they put him in time-out, revoking both his posting and comment system manipulation, or kick him off the site completely (which wouldn’t be a big loss). I’d like to keep reading their site, but if they don’t help curb Paul’s immaturity or offer a way to subscribe to all the posts not written by Paul, I’ll have to remove it from my RSS reader.

Update: And again. Who’s the nutty one here? Will someone at Wizbang take control before the site turns into “The Paul Raging at Evolution Happy Hour”?

Update 2: And again. Again, the guy is a six year old.

Final Update: Thank you Kevin.

Update Redux: I can’t be sure that it’s not just an April Fool’s joke, but Paul posted again. That prompted Kevin to put Paul on hiatus. This was followed by a post by Jay. Again, this may prove to be an April fool’s joke. It was. Lame.

I’ve hit a major milestone in my involvement in Macworld’s Forums. I’ve written 10,000 entries there. I’ve learned many, many things. I’ve taught and told people many things. I was even afforded the opportunity to have the prestigious title of moderator.

To celebrate this moment, I’d like to share what I’ve learned.

• The way to learn to love writing is the act itself. Would you believe that I wasn’t a big fan of writing prior to my involvement in the forums? The only reason I didn’t despise it was the encouragement I got in my college writing class. The problem was that the class ended and I didn’t really get to explore the subject matter that excites me. I found myself an outlet. I started sharing the bits and pieces of knowledge I had accrued from troubleshooting my own machines and obsessively reading Mac news and software sites. Sharing this information was my passion. All that reading I did wasn’t satisfying, it’s fuel for my writing.
• Patience takes time. As curt as I am now, I once had a lot more contempt for some people. Whether I perceived ignorance was caused by stupidity or laziness, it didn’t matter. Now I realize that some people really lack the knowledge to even research answers, even if it is as simple as running a Google search. I’m still impatient with some people, but that usually because of an attitude.
• Don’t participate to get moderator status. Becoming a moderator was incidental to me. If you go into it trying to get something, you’re not going to get anything. It’ll feel like a job and you’ll ultimately resent every other member.
• Don’t post just post count. You’re going to sound like an idiot if you post every thought you have. It’s annoying. Here’s a good rule of thumb. If your entire post is I wholeheartedly support X, then it’s probably not worth saying. Give a fresh perspective or an interesting view point.
• Know when you’ve said all that you can say. This will get you out of a lot of pissing contests. I still haven’t mastered this. It’s easy to get caught up in an argument and want to get the last word in. When you start repeating your arguments, it’s time to move on. Some people think that developing a reputation is about winning every argument (and starting them if they don’t already exist).
• Some people don’t want to be your friend, but most do. It’s hard to tell when someone is being a troll or is just really frustrated. The best way to figure this out is offer solutions to what they’re bitching about. If they don’t find value in any of the suggestions and thank you, they’re a troll. Either ignore them or tell them you’re sorry you couldn’t help and get out of the conversation. They’re not interested in discourse.

That’s all I’ve got for now.