Jimtac.com

Apple got hacked a little while ago… Well not so much hacked as much as was exploited as the ultimate target of a likely spearfishing/brute-force password guessing attack. The purpose of this attack was to have a single individual’s app-store offerings take up 42 of the top 50 paid apps in the ebook category. While this in and of itself is fairly significant, especially since it involved so many people having their iTunes accounts compromised, and their money being used to fraudulently prop up a criminal’s attempt to get on top of a list.

So while this sucks all around… It has caused Apple to do what corporations do best, overreact.

This particular overreaction takes the form of having to sign in to download an app/song/video/book via iTunes, then get pulled out of the process to a page that has you once again sign in to re-verify your account information (specifically your credit card’s CCV2 number) then you get to go back to iTunes and restart your downloads, the whole process taking around 30-45 seconds. Oh, and you have to do this for updates, and FREE content as well. OH… Aaaaaand you have to do this EVERY time that you try to purchase anything on a different device. So far the only things that I have been able to download without this ridiculous dance have been podcasts.

Now I’m the prototypical media consumer/over-user and I have grown to love the polished Apple-bred super-consistent user experience that makes it waaaay too easy to get the apps/content you want, when you want it, wherever you are, and on whatever iTunes platform you happen to be carrying with you. While nearly all of my music/videos are from my CD collection or free video sources, (notably excepting the free tracks at Starbucks, and digital copies from DVD/Blu-Ray discs), it’s things like apps that take my fancy over-priced shiny toys and turn them into useful tools that do what I want, which are what I really want to be able to get at the moment when a particular need arises.

Since I use an iPhone, an iPad, and sync them both to a MacBook, I now find myself thinking “Now which one did I sign in with last?” before I even consider tapping on the store icon/app since this new policy has been implemented. I know that this is just another first-world problem, but I unapologetically live in the first-world, and hate when layers of frustration are added to any workflow, especially when it’s in my personal life; at least at work I get paid to deal with broken processes.

On the upside I have popped into the AppStore FAR less than I did before, only venturing in to check for app updates, or when I hear about an amazing new app. I have no desire to go-in, go-out, go-in, go-over, go out, then finally to wait for the download to complete and install. Those who know me and my recent predilection towards Cupertino designed devices may very well think of me as an Apple fanboy, I’d posit that I’m actually a fanboy for great user experience and few do the experience better than Apple. This is one of the reasons that I’m so disappointed with Apple with this “solution” for a problem that they could have done little to prevent.

What I would liked to have seen is similar to how you can only authorize your iTunes purchases on 5 computers at any given time. Why can’t we associate our IMEIs or WiFi MAC addresses to our accounts as a method to maintain persistent authentication on our mobile devices in order to prevent this? I can’t really say, maybe it will happen in the future, maybe it won’t. I just hope it gets fixed soon.

And this concludes my rant-casting day

Tim

Too much buzz goin’round these days… Last week we had the iPad in all it’s unibody fanciness. I [of course] will be getting one, though wether I spring for the 3G or just stick to the WiFi-only version really comes down to how much it’ll actually cost here in the land of the Canuck, and if we can get the same sweet “pay-as-you-go” 3G service as was shown off for the stateside crowd. At the moment I’m looking at the 32GB WiFi only, but if we get the 3G I’ll be rockin’ the 16 (or 32) w/ 3G…

This week it’s Google Buzz!!! All I’ll say is… Remember Google Wave??? Didn’t think so. If Twitter and Facebook weren’t so entrenched in the current collective internet consciousness this would be a bigger thing. I could see this become a widely used thing if it is completely open, and becomes fully interoperable with pretty much everything else out there. Which would drive people to use Google buzz as a single place to update their other social status updates, and I hope that eventually you can use “gBuzz” to update different social networks by checking off the networks that you want each status to go to. By having each status be selectable would allow for updates to be limited to 140 characters if you select Twitter (or other SMS rooted service), and if Twitter is deselected then it limits the length to the next shortest text limit.

The next buzz (or rather buzz-kill) is that even though it’s nice to have a job to keep me busy, I do find that it’s even more frustrating that I work for a company that’s an ISP, a Telco, and a Cable TV provider, which means that there are so many things that I just can’t discuss in a public forum, lest I be accused from within or without the company that I am acting as a mouthpiece of the company, and speaking on their behalf. BTW… I would never speak on behalf of my company [unless they decided to pay me tons of cash to do it, of course]. Throughout the 5 1/2 years that I was with TELUS I never spoke about the company, it’s business or anything related to the industry both for ethical, and for job-security [a.k.a legal] reasons. Why does this particularly frustrate me now, when it was simply par for the course before? Well to be honest, it’s because I see a company that preaches it’s open-ness with customers, but in the same breath attempts to force as closed an environment for it’s employees as possible.

On an aside… I think I may start posting about one of my favorite [non-tech] subjects: management faux-pas. It’s something that I avoided while working at TELUS because I was a manager there… But now I’m not a manager, so I feel like it’s less preachy, and just a bit whiny… we’ll see.

Until then,

Tim

TweetDeck even with it’s reliance on AIR is hands-down my favorite desktop client, and I’ve used [and paid for], but I keep going to TweetDeck on the iPhone only to be disappointed time after time. It crashed 4 times while trying to set it up, and at varying steps in the process which made it hard to blame one step that I could skip in order to proceed, one of which was that unlike the desktop app, you are required to allow TweetDeck to update Facebook [if you so choose to add FB access at all], or not be allowed to continue, which was also one of my crashes…

Once set up, I did like that there were decent options, and the ability to finally add multiple twitter accounts, though the MySpace account in the desktop version is not included, admittedly not a huge deal, but notable nonetheless. The look of the Light UI option was nice, but it does feel to me like it was tossed in as an option after other twitter apps included it. In the end I find that it’s with reservations added to my roster of twitter apps for the iPhone that will actually remain on my iPhone [if it remains crash free]. If TweetDeck adds push notifications, It’ll be my primary twitter app for the iPhone too. [I've also posted this to the related TUAW article]

HTC has confirmed today that they will be releasing a firmware update to their lauded Hero smartphone. This update is apparently designed to address many of the complaints with the device that were present at launch, including lag at inopportune times (including text entry), and the lackluster performance of the camera, with the latter generally being attributed to the software rather than the camera itself.

HTC has not provided an ETA for the update’s general release, but since there are already reports of it being pushed to handsets in Scandinavia, it shouldn’t be too long before it officially escapes Nokia country for the rest of the world.

So it’s my birthday,and so I’m not really going to post anything much.

Yesterday Motorola announced a new android phone that looks decent, and has a custom “user-friendly” skin called ‘Blur’ for the OS. What I think is most interesting is the proprietary sync system that they’re going to be using, to keep your data on your phone in line with your desktop. On one hand it allows you to be able to remotely wipe your phone if you lose your phone, and not lose all of your data, but on the other hand it also means that all of your data is kept on Moto’s servers. The ‘Cliq’ is expected to be out on T-Mobile for the holiday buying season.

Well I hope your September 11th is better than mine.

EDIT: I fixed the comment about there being 2 android phones. What happened was that there were 2 android announcements. One: Blur, the Moto Android skin, Two: the Cliq, the actual device which will initially be carried on T-Mobile in the U.S.
I had initially stated that ‘Blur’ was the name of another phone. That’ll teach me to skip parts of the presentation. Oh and, I’d have just used the strike-though function, but the edits are from the iPhone app.

The 09/09/09 Apple announcement came and went, and it was a yawner.

New version of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS (3.1/3.1.1 respectively)

New revision of iTunes, tweaked to be a little cleaner.

Apple’s new way of getting people to buy full albums at a time. iTunes LP is basically a downloadable EnhancedCD from the late ’90s. Pictures, video, and links. OoooOOooo…

New revision of all the iPods, tweaking the capacity and prices. The only exception is with the new nano which now has a microphone, speaker, video camera, and an FM tuner.

And that was pretty much the announcement…

Oh, and Steve Jobs is back giving keynotes thanks to a new liver. Glad to see he’s doing well.

Palm announced the Pixi… No slide out keyboard (it’s allways out), and it’s about the same size as an iPhone. Personally I think it’s a better form factor, but no self respecting guy will call buy something called “pixi”.

So today’s the big day for Palm, and for everyone who wants an iPhone, but not an “Apple phone”. Frankly speaking, this is one day that I’ve been looking forward to as well, (even as I’m writing this on by iPhone). Today is the day when a “true competitor” to the iPhone is released to the public.

Now some of you may be saying, “But wait… There are already a bunch of competitors out there now.” and to that, I say… Weeeeeeeell not reeeeeeally. When you take a good hard look at the phones on the market today, many have similar functions, and many have large touch screens, however they are all very different classes of devices.

RIM’s BlackBerry Storm is their response to the iPhone, but it’s still primarily a corporate device with consumer frills added on to an email device. In my experience, the Curve and the bold do better as consumer devices, mainly because RIM stuck to the format that their are good at, and made the tools better all around, instead of trying to make something different for that sake of being different, not to mention the gimmicky click screen that has garnered oh so many complaints.

Samsung’s offerings are kind of in the same boat, except that they tried to keep the interface relatively similar to the previous itterations and just add features which seem to be tacked on as afterthoughs… Including the touchscreen inteface. LG is right up there with them, but at least most of their touchscreen phones, have some kind of flip up keyboards, though they rarely make use of the great big screen.

Nokia is perhaps the best of the “major” manufacturers. I personally want an N97, but don’t want to pay €500 (~CDN$800) for one.

There are others like the G1, but this is supposed to be about the Palm Pre, and many of the points are the same.

I’m hearing a lot of buzz about how great the phone can/should/would/will be, and about how some are overlooking bugs because it’s a “1.0″ device, and that it’s not really fair to compare it to the iPhone, or other such Gen 2+ devices. To me that’s all crap… Of course it’s fair to compare them, it would be ridiculous NOT to. If a brand new company was to release an 8 bit console (a la the original NES) today and sold it along side the PS3 and Xbox 360 for the same price; would it be excluded from comparison BECAUSE it’s a 1.0 device? If a new car from a major manufacturer comes out that only gets half of the gas mileage of the competitors in it’s class, should it be forgiven because it’s a new model? Of course not. Nor should the Palm Pre (or the G1 for that matter) get the same pass in this arena.

It is to be noted that I have yet to get my anxious little paws on the Pre, which is why I’m not reviewing it. That being said, journalists should not be “forgiving” of any products faults, because it’s a new model. It’s simply reality that when you release a product it will be competing with the other “top of the line” models for all of your competitors, and fashionable it is to bag on the iPhone for it’s faults, I remember back to when it was first released, and even with the faults being pointed out, it still performed as advertised and didn’t rely on the “v.1.0″ excuse.

I hope the Palm Pre is a huge success, competition breeds innovation. The current smartphone space most certainly needs innovation. Just look at Apple’s announced features for iPhone OS 3.0, on the heels of the Palm Pre, even going so far as to say that they will be matching the Pre feature for feature upon 3.0′s release. I just hope that Palm’s history with the Treo (I still love mine) gives them the edge they need to be the number 2 player in the smartphone market, and force the hand of the other manufacturers in order to get them to make true smartphones, and not just phones that play mp3′s, take pictures, and sell them as smartphones.

Here’s hoping… GO PALM!!!