Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Check Your Feeds! (Issues With NetNewsWire and Other Mac RSS Readers)

I actually really like NetNewsWire. It is the most beautifully designed newsreader for the Mac, IMHO. Unfortunately it has some severe flaws in its basic features. I missed some news entries recently just because for some feeds …

… NetNewsWire is not able to update the feed correctly, so it won’t show the latest entries.

For one feed NetNewsWire even claimed the latest entry to be about a year old, while the feed actually was up-to-date.

This kind of behaviour of course renders the app almost completely useless. The whole point of an RSS reader is to get the latest news. So I can’t but call this a catastrophic bug (for a newsreader, that is).

I have switched to Vienna for the moment. It is a pretty good replacement (and free).

Update:
It is even worse. Although Vienna (unlike NNW) gets the latest feed entries, both apps – NNW and Vienna – sometimes do not load updates to feed entries. So if a blog entry gets changed, you won’t notice unless you visit the blog website. That is totally inacceptable! I am currently evaluating NewsFire.

Update 2:
Though NewsFire does not notify you of changes (like the other apps) it at least gives you the correct (i.e. updated) text when you read an entry. So I am sticking with NewsFire!

Safari does not update rss entries as well. Maybe it is PubSubAgent that sucks and all three apps (NNW, Vienna, Safari) rely on it. I do not know but it is bad! Luckily there is at least one working newsreader left.

Update 3:
Well at least the Safari issue almost certainly has something to do with PubSubAgent. If the feed is bookmarked entries will not get updated. If the feed is just reloaded it is completely refreshed, including any changes to feed entries. So, Safari users, don’t bookmark your RSS feeds or you might read outdated news!;)

Update 4:
NewsFire has two minor flaws. Firstly it does not notify changes of entries. Secondly it was not able to load one feed I had on my list. So, unfortunately I had to conclude that it was very difficult to find any fully functional RSS reader for the Mac. Fortunately I found the following listing: »Top 9 Mac RSS News Feed Readers and News Aggregators« and right the first entry is a hit: »Shrook«. It is not a beauty and has a funny name, but it does it all: find new items, notify changes and — most importantly — display the up-to-date version. It even keeps a change log. I guess my RSS nightmare is over.

Update 5:
Vienna is actually capable of checking for updated feed entries but it is an option that needs to be set. To enable the function do the following:

  1. Quit Vienna.
  2. Open Terminal.
  3. Enter the following command:
    defaults write uk.co.opencommunity.vienna2 CheckForUpdatedArticles -bool yes

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The iMac and Noise

I actually really like iMacs. They are beautiful and sufficiently powerful machines that can do pretty much all that you want to do with a computer. But…

One fundamental problem of the iMac is (or at least can be) the noise it produces.

It’s not that an iMac is particularly loud or noisy. But they do have fans and hard drives and some of them are plagued by display noises like a high pitched tune or a crackling or buzzing sound.

The screen noise problem could be the same with every other computer. (In fact I have already returned two other displays because of their whining noises.)

With the noise that comes from fans and hard drives however the iMac has a particular problem because the fan and hard drives are standing right in front of the user, behind the display. Thus an iMac has to be particularly silent to not be heard by the user. And that is a problem. You can hear the iMacs I know quite clearly. A modern and silent »normal« PC in contrast cannot be heard at all because all components that make noise are located behind or under the desk.

So personally I would like Apple to produce an ordinary headless PC: cheaper than the PowerMac, faster and more capable than the Mac Mini. An iMac with a separate display, so to say.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Wave’s Google Problem

Google has announced that it will axe its Google Wave product due to insufficient demand. Wave is a real-time communication system that could potentially replace e-mail, instant text messengers and collaborative text editors. It also has a plug-in system to include further functionality.

Some think it is the extended or mixed functionality that lead to Wave’s lack of success. IMHO Google Wave has an excellent feature set.

I think Google Wave basically lacks just one thing: a native client.

You just can’t replace native app functionality and system integration with browser pages. HTML 5 won’t change that fact either. John Gruber is right when he says Wave is a very Google-y product. In this case Google’s browser-centric approach was just the problem.

Addendum:
To prove my point, just ask yourself: Would you use Twitter without a Twitter client?

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The New iPhone’s Camera: Sensor Size and Pixel Count

The just announced Apple iPhone 4 has a new 5 MPix camera. Now, 5 MPix cameras are not uncommon but Apple did not do what most other manufacturers do. They did not just stuff more pixels into the same sensor size. No, Steve Jobs even took the time in his iPhone 4 presentation keynote (00:51h) to explain the fact that if there are more pixels on the same sensor size, this means a smaller sensor area per pixel, and that means each pixel can capture less light (less photons).

The website 6mpixel.org explains this phenomenon.

So Apple did not only increase the pixel count but also increased the sensor size to keep the sensor area per pixel the same. This is just one of the reasons why I love Apple products.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Videos on New Features in Adobe CS5

This is something for designers! Terry White presents new CS5 features on Adobe TV. Some of the new features are really cool and Terry is an awesome presenter. I watched:

  • Illustrator (Best feature: new line-width/stroke options.)
  • Photoshop (Best feature: new selection/edge tools)
  • InDesign (Best feature: new Illustrator-like layer/elements palette.)

By the way:
A good part of the new features concern Flash and interactive electronic content. Though I don’t like Flash and can understand some of Apple’s motives to not let Flash run on iPads/iPhones, it is very interesting to see Adobe’s very design centric approach to user interfaces created in CS5/Flash. I can imagine Adobe’s tools to be attractive to print publishers who want to put their content on mobile devices. Apple and Adobe might eventually become direct competitors as software platform providers for an emerging market for electronic publishing on iPads and other slate devices.

Addendum:
Obviously Adobe is already working on a native publishing solution for the iPad: »Introducing WIRED Magazine on iPad«. IMHO that looks much more promising than any Flash-based approach.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Apple Still Can Blow It

As mentioned in recent posts: With the iPhone OS, the App Store and the iPad Apple has a huge potential to change how people will use computers and read books and magazines.

But …

Apple still can blow it

… if they do not change their admission policy to the App Store and/or allow users to install other software than apps delivered via the App Store.

On the publishing side the main problem is political censorship by Apple. That of course should be totally unacceptable for any newspaper or magazine publisher.

On the software development side the main problem seems to be the vagueness and/or obscureness of Apple’s criteria for the rejection of software from the App Store.

Update:
If Apple just continues to behave like this, they can have the best system in the world technologically (IMHO they have), but will still loose against their competitors.

Friday, February 5, 2010

The iPad Will Revolutionize Publishing (And That’s Not All)

Despite the iPad’s negative reception in the tech blogoshere (for example the Engadget team’s reaction, or compare this »Fake Steve« video or David Appleyard’s somewhat feeble defence of the iPad) …

I am convinced that the iPad will not only revolutionize modern computing but also will revolutionize publishing.

Today there are printed journals, HTML-web-pages and—already—iPhone (and iPod) apps for many journals, which have their own native interface. Since iPhone screens are very small those native clients are an addition to regular printed journals or web pages but certainly no replacement.

Now imagine those native journal clients optimized for the iPad!

That is a whole new world for publishing. Journals will have full multimedia capabilities, no restrictions due to HTML, CSS or Javascript limitations (although those clients will almost certainly use these technologies), and most importantly …

they will be able to use micropayment via the AppStore and In App Purchase.

Thus Publishers will eventually be able to earn money with their electronic publishing just like the can charge for their printed journals. Even more, they can easily introduce new payment options like time-based subscription, pay-per-article, pay-per-quota, you name it! They can even create opt-in or opt-out models for advertisement. People who despise most ads (like me) can pay for ad-free publications. Or people who don’t care or even like ads might be able to pay a budget price for publications with ads.

Apart from that I still think that the iPad shows us today how computing for the masses will work tomorrow. Apple IMHO has just released the most important electronic device of the new century. Just watch the revolution take place!

P.s.:
I surely didn’t come up with this; check Om Malik’s article from back in February 2009: »Can Apple Please Kick-start Micropayments?«

Or read the following article by the German news magazine »Die Zeit«, with a more skeptical undertone but recognizing the iPad’s potential: »Symbol der neuen Ordnung«. Google translation: »Symbol of the new order«. Or view this pro/con discussion: »Is the IPad (sic) Publishing’s Saviour?« or watch this video on Forbes: »Apple iPad: Publishing Saviour?«.

P.p.s.:
I must say that I wrote some of the above in some sort of naïve ardour. Much depends on how strong the momentum (i.e. market share) of the iPad will be. Paying options depend on Apple’s terms for the App Store. But I still think that to a large extent the future of reading is electronic, now that I have seen a device that, both, aesthetically and in terms of usability, can compete with books and journals.

Update:
The CEO of Axel Springer, a German newspaper publishing corporation, says the iPad is starting a new era, says Steve Jobs is saving the publishing industry:

  • Article on Heise Online (German).
  • A video of the interview (English). Note: You should ignore the second half of the interview in which the CEO expresses his right wing conservative political views, although it is interesting, almost funny—and a little frightning—how fond this self-proclaimed defender of democracy and freedom is of China’s non-democratic version of capitalism (“It’s a very interesting version! You don’t have to discuss. You just do. You’re very efficient!”).

Update p.s.:
Of course the content industry can always screw up, also on the iPod. It seems the first Axel Springer newspaper app is terrible: Article on Netzwertig.com (German).

Monday, February 1, 2010

The iPad—A new type of computer

I agree with this blog post by Panic Inc.’s Steven Frank. Apple’s iPad is not only a new handheld device but a starting point for the development of a new type of computer, equipped with a simpler, easier to use interface than today’s computers, an iPhone-like application installation process and hopefully a new simple (abstracted away) file management system.

Via John Gruber’s »Daring Fireball«.