d00dism

Today has yielded two news items from Apple. One is wild speculation. The other is real news. Let’s start with the real news.

iTunes Podcast Support

Steve Jobs, at D: All Things Digital Conference, announced that iTunes 4.9 will have Podcasting support. iTunes will allow you to subscribe Podcast RSS feeds and automatically download the song files into your library. The update is due within 60 days.

In the meantime, I’ll still use NetNewsWire (and I may do so after). Apple adding this is almost trivial now that they have the Safari RSS backbone to use. The question in my mind is whether Apple will try to integrate a bittorrent client. I find podcast feeds that distribute using Bittorrent exceedingly irritating. Currently, the only feed that I subscribe to that does this is This Week in Tech. Ok, ok, so they probably have the largest listening audience out of any podcast, but having to screw around with Bittorrent completely defeats the purpose of podcasts (they’re delivered automatically without user intervention).

Macs to Use Intel Microprocessors

The annual (or is it bi-annual now?) rumor that Apple is thinking of going to Intel processors is back. According to the AP (via ABC News), Apple is in talks with Intel to put their microprocessors into Macs. Naturally, not understanding why this is highly improbable and costly even if it were to happen, the stock market jumped at the news. Yes, these are the same people that cause stock prices to go down shortly after a company posted higher than expected profits.

Wall Street was cheered by the Apple report as such a change could be the biggest shift in the Mac’s makeup since it came out in 1984 and could make the machines less expensive.

Geez. People read and believe this crap. God forbid that the AP do some actual research. Several things would be necessary for this move to take place.

First, Apple would need to maintain two versions of Mac OS X (in order to deal with the architecture differences). It’s not like that would be expensive. Nah. Imagine two codebases and making sure that any fixes applied to one works with the other.

Two, Apple would need to get developers to recompile their old apps for x86 and either distribute in a fat format (combined PowerPC and x86) or two separate versions. The former option would be space heavy and the latter is simply confusing. That sounds fabulous. That also assuming that Apple could get developers to go along with this and even if all active developers do, what about all those old gems that haven’t been updated for a long time? Users of the new x86 machines wouldn’t be able run them. That is unless Apple bundled an emulator (there’s more cost).

Three, related to the above, Apple would need to get developers to optimize their applications using Altivec and x86 specific chip features. I’m sure Adobe is chomping at the bit to do that. Programs that use low level bit manipulation are going to require major rewrites. Where do I sign up?

Despite those three facts, Wall Street thinks this will make Macs less expensive. Pass the pipe boys, cause that’s some good shit.

The only way for Apple to avoid all that and use Intel would be if Intel suddenly started developing PowerPC chips despite never having shown motivation to do so before. Even if they did, does anyone really think that Intel will be able to cheaply research, develop, and manufacture PowerPC chips starting from scratch with no prior experience? That’s even more laughable!

Someone must feel at least a little bit embarressed about publishing this over at the Associated Press. At least I hope. Maybe it’s time someone looked into making a syndicated tech news service because existing services are falling down onto their collective ass.

Update: Matt Deatherage thinks it’s a load of crap too.

Update: So does John Gruber.

I added my Feedburner feed to the site’s header to make it more easily accessible to users. Firefox users get to see the entire list of feeds. Safari users are less blessed. They can only click the singular RSS button in the location bar.

According to Apple, Safari uses the Atom Feed Autodiscovery standard.

When Safari displays a web page, Safari RSS looks in the HEAD element for a LINK tag that points to an Atom or RSS feed. The schema for these links is fairly standard and is supported by most news readers. It is described on page 40 of O’Reilly’s Content Syndication With RSS, and in Mark Pilgrim’s draft document on Atom Feed Autodiscovery.

Because Safari doesn’t list all the sources, it must adhere to the rule dealing with the single feed exception.

Clients who wish to choose exactly one feed without user input SHOULD choose the one pointed to by the first autodiscovery element.

Now take a look at the source code for this site. In particular, the link tags in the head.

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" 
       title="Feedburner Feed" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/godlikenerd" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml
       title="RSS 2.0" href="http://godlikenerd.com/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92"
       href="http://godlikenerd.com/feed/rss/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
       title="Atom 0.3" href="http://godlikenerd.com/feed/atom/" />

Note, first comes the Feedburner feed. The very last feed is the Atom version. Guess which version Safari will look at. It chooses the last one! That’s not right.

All right, well, what happens when you take out the Atom version? One would think that maybe Safari would do something consistent like use the RSS 0.92 version because it’s last. No dice. Then it decides to try the Feedburner feed.

What is this magical order based on? As best as I can tell, Safari sorts based upon the type and then by appearance order in the file. In other words, Atom feeds get precedence over RSS. If I change the type of the Feedburner feed to Atom (which is wrong), then Safari chooses that feed.

Bad! This takes away the publisher’s control over the primary feed. Apple isn’t adhering to the standard that they point to. Short of using semantically incorrect markup to force Safari to pick the Feedburner feed (which I will not do), I can’t make an RSS feed the primary feed if an Atom feed is available.

Now, as I interpret the Autodiscovery document, I would call this behavior in conflict and incorrect. However, as it is called “Atom Feed Autodiscovery”, did Apple choose to interpret that only Atom feeds can be part of the standard and that any checking for RSS feeds must only happen if no Atom feeds are available? It’s conceivable, but without getting a look at O’Reilly’s Content Syndication with RSS (page 40), I can’t be sure what their rationale is. Perhaps that book outlines some behavior for multiple feed types that’s not covered in Mark Pilgrim’s document.

If someone out there knows what the O’Reilly book says, please let me know. Otherwise, this behavior is going to drive me insane. It’s taking away my control.

I had to take this quiz because Henry took it. I expected to be classified as KING NERD (the highest rating), but I failed miserably. How can I possibly continue using this domain? It’s no longer appropriate.

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.4.1, the first update to Tiger.

In addition to the improvements below, Apple has fixed the Widget exploit that had so many panties in a twist. In fact, they implmented the fix exactly as I would have, by adding a confirmation dialog when downloading. Read the rest »

People that are big into blogging will recognize Dave Winer as a hugely important figure. However, like many great people, he suffers from an ego problem.

Wired ran an interview by Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing fame with Adam Curry, famous for various reasons, but currently because of the wildly popular Daily Source Code podcast.

In response to which, Dave Winer threw a fit. You know when people are taking the mature approach to an issue when they say things like:

At some point he’s going to need some friends, and then I’m going to kick him in the ass, and then look him in the eye and say “Shouldn’t have lied so much, dickhead.”

Lovely and eloquent. The last time I called someone a dickhead was… let me check my calendar… 3rd grade?

Adam took the ball and ran with it in his latest podcast. Needless to say, it was a slam dunk. Xeni even tried to placate Dave. She clarified (as Adam did as well) that Adam did give Dave credit, but it simply got cut due to article focus and length. It was nothing nefarious.

Better than leave it alone, Dave felt compelled to respond again. The complete lack of maturity on his part is simply astounding. It’s hard to believe that someone so instrumental in the blogging and podcasting communities can’t check his ego at the door and look at things for what they really are.

Anyway, Adam does take credit for work he didn’t do. You might want to check on that Xeni, it might be more interesting than the cookie-cutter bullshit puff piece you just wrote.

Rather than substantiating his claim about Adam being a glory hog (pot, meet kettle), he decides to take a cheap shot at Xeni. In fact, he seems to completely drop his original beef that Adam was taking all the credit in the interview. That’s telling.

Edit: Let’s not forget him throwing another fit at a lecture on civility. Yes, the irony is thick.