Dear Blizzard Entertainment:

You make really cool games. I’ve enjoyed playing all three iterations of Diablo on my various Macs over the years.

But your account security nonsense is completely out of hand.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop on a rare slow morning, and I really feel like playing a little Diablo III right now, since I haven’t gotten much time to play in months, and I kinda want to blow off some steam after what’s been a pretty stressful few weeks of work and other various life activities. I’m not a huge gamer, or anything, but slashing monsters in dungeons sounds like a bit of fun right about now.

Instead of slashing monsters, though, I’m writing a blog post. Because you suck.

Simply logging into my account (with the correct password by the way) should not have been considered “suspicious activity.” That’s, in fact, expected behavior. I bought the game, and occasionally I might want to play it. Just because I’m on a different network than I was last time, that doesn’t mean I’m a malicious user, or some sort of bot out to destroy the server.

You see, Blizzard, a few years back, the laptop was invented. And people tend to take their laptops to coffee shops, relatives’ houses, foreign countries, etc. Laptops will be connected to different networks all the time. This is not suspect. It’s, again, expected behavior. It’s why we buy laptops.

I appreciate that you’re in a neverending battle with the assholes who make everything suck by hacking and creating havoc all over your servers. I know somewhere in your misguided mind you think you’re actually protecting me with these layers of security insanity.

But you’re not going to beat them by ruining my day. If you can’t figure out how to keep them out while keeping me in, well, then you’ve got to try harder. You’re failing.

Repeat after me: treating paying customers like criminals is never a good idea. Any idea your security experts bring to the table that involves making my life less convenient is an instant fail. Go back to the drawing board and start again.

Oh, and by the way, lest you think I’m just whining, that I shoud have just reset my password, unlocked my account, and got back to slashing and looting: I’ve tried resetting my password a dozen times now, and I keep getting the same error message.

The least you can do is make sure the process of unlocking my account actually, you know, works.

It occurs to me that the people trading barbs about the whole maps controversy on iOS are wasting time and getting bent out of shape about nothing. There’s a very simple and logical way to decide which maps app, Google’s or Apple’s, you want to use.

• If you live in an area where Apple’s map data sucks, use Google.
• If you live in an area where Google’s map data isn’t as good as Apple’s (Yes, those places exist.), use Apple’s.
• If you need transit directions, and you aren’t satisfied with the many third-party transit solutions out there for your home town (or you just don’t feel you should have to rely on a separate app for this) use Google.
• If you live in one of the many areas where the mapping data is good enough on either, try them both and decide for yourself which one works best for you. (I know, hard to believe this is possible, but it is.)
• If you’re uncomfortable with your location being tracked and your data being sold to third parties without your consent or knowledge, you can use Google, but be sure to opt out of that tracking.
• Use the app you like, and then shut the hell up about it. It’s not your job to convert the world to your way of thinking. It’s not your job to tell other people that the app they prefer, the one that works best for them, is terrible, or that they’re an idiot for prefering it. It’s a maps app. Get a life.

I’m sure Apple’s and Google’s apps will both get better over time. So revisit both on occasion if you feel your chosen solution is letting you down for whatever reason. Or don’t. That’s entirely up to you.

This is what that famous ‘competition’ so many people claim to love looks like. Be happy we have choices. If you can’t admit that both solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, you’re being a zealot, not a rational judge of the true merits of either solution. Which is fine, as long as you’re aware of that.

25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in  <6 hours For the time being, readers should assume that the vast majority of their passwords are hashed with fast algorithms. That means passwords should never be less than nine characters, and using 13 or even 20 characters offers even better security. But long passwords aren’t enough. Given the prevalence of cracking lists measured in the hundreds of millions, it’s also crucial that passwords not be names, words, or common phrases. One easy way to make sure a passcode isn’t contained in such lists is to choose a text string that’s randomly generated using Password Safe or another password management program.

via Ars Technica

The operative phrase in that quote is “for the time being.” You can increase the number of characters in your password all you want; some guy is just going to build a 35-GPU cluster and crack it next week.

As I’ve said before, the concept of username and password needs to die a quick and horrible death.

Just as the TSA has it all wrong, treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent, so too does computer security waste time and money targeting the wrong people. And, similarly, it’s terrible at stopping actual criminals.

The current crop of security experts keeps reacting to this issue with more and more user-hostile solutions. Make the passwords longer. Make sure they don’t use complete words. Force them to have at least one number, one special character, one capital letter. Change it every three months. Take off your shoes. No more than 3-ounces of liquids…

I’m sorry, but that’s crap. If you walk up to me, I can tell whether it’s you or not immediately, without you doing anything. My phone needs to do the same thing, or at least something similar.

Imagine a world where a computer simply recognizes you, and you go to work. The burden rests on the computer, not on the user.

I know that’s not easy. So get some money together, assemble a team of the smartest people in the world, and get on it. There’s billions of dollars to be made for anyone who solves this problem. Is that not exactly the sort of thing Silicon Valley startups are supposed to be doing with all that venture capital?

Or are we just going to be finding new ways to share pictures of bacon for the next ten years?

Buy More Apps | Outside Xcode: “And just like the friend who explains how good, proper coffee tastes, and that it’s worth the effort… From time to time tell your friends and family that developers put a lot of effort into building well designed apps – and that quality is worth paying for.”

(Via. Outside Xcode)

Exactly. It seems like a small thing, but just talking amongst your friends and family about what goes into developing a great app, just reminding yourself that this is craftsmanship and that it should be valued, goes a long way to bolstering public opinion about software and its inherent worth to the greater community. Educating the public, selling your skills to the uninitiated, is part of your job as a software engineer or designer. If you’re not willing to be an evangelist for yourself and your craft, why are you in the software business?

You have to believe in the value of what you do enough to not be uncomfortable telling others about it. Every small businessperson is in Sales, whether he or she wants to be or not.

Many great points here by Gavin Hope, reacting to my Loren Brichter article from last week. I love that my little piece is echoing around the web a little, getting even more people to talk about this topic, keeping the conversation going. And I get to discover some new voices I hadn’t discovered yet.

I’d recommend checking out the rest of Gavin’s blog. Some really good stuff there.

In September 2011, I attended 360iDev for the first time. At the time, Fantastical for Mac was a very new app, and I was happy to see that one of its creators, Michael Simmons, would be giving a talk. After his talk, I told him how much I liked Fantastical and that I was hoping he’d make an iPhone version. He gave me a coy “We’re looking into it” response, and I went home thinking it was likely coming in the next six months or so.

Fast forward to September 2012, and I’m giving a talk at 360iDev. This time, Michael Simmons would be watching me speak, and Fantastical for iPhone was still a few months from release. The day before my talk, I bumped into Michael at the elevator, re-introduced myself, and told him again how much I liked Fantastical. He immediately invited me to hang out with him and his friends for dinner and introduced me to many of the other speakers.

My point here is that Michael is an extremely approachable guy. We had a great conversation over dinner about App Store pricing, and he gave me some valuable advice. He also attended my talk the next day and gave me lots of encouraging feedback.

Fast forward to yesterday, and Fantastical is finally released for iPhone. Somewhere in the middle of the day, I see this tweet from Michael:

Take that, Angry Birds AND Star Wars! instagr.am/p/SoU8GeumQ-/

— Michael Simmons (@macguitar) November 29, 2012

For at least a few hours on launch day, Fantastical for iPhone was the number 1 iPhone app. It was beating out Angry Birds Star Wars, a game that combines two amazingly powerful brands held by two multi-million (billion in the case of Star Wars) dollar companies. Flexibits is a small, independent operation. This shouldn’t be possible.

But the image he attached actually tells an even more important story. Angry Birds Star Wars sells for $0.99. Fantastical was selling at an “introductory rate” of $1.99. So that means Fantastical, for at least a few hours yesterday, was making more than double the amount of money that Angry Birds Star Wars was. With a non-game app made by an indie shop that was more than $0.99.

That’s mind-numbing.

Imagine my shock when exactly no one in the tech press wrote that story yesterday.

(Correction: Matthew Panzarino did in fact write this exact story for thenextweb.com. I apologize for the error. And kudos to him for bringing this story some bona fide media attention.)

What’s my point in all this? Well, on Wednesday, I said that you should forget the top charts on the App Store, that you’re never going to get on them. And I still stand by that advice. Because you’re not Loren Brichter, and you’re not Michael Simmons, either. But seeing Loren and Michael break that barrier, get themselves up on these lists as small independent shops, should be encouraging to you, as long as you don’t take away the wrong lessons from their successes.

You see, neither Michael Simmons nor Loren Brichter were trying to get on the top charts. The goal was to create a great app first and then get it into as many hands as possible. The fact that they reached the top of the chart is evidence that they succeeded in their goal, not the goal itself.

Loren made it to the top of the chart with a freemium game. Michael made it there with a $2 productivity app. The price had less to do with either success than most people think.

Another thing I said two days ago was that most iOS developers are great at code, terrible at business. Guess what Michael Simmons is amazingly good at?

You need both a great app and a good head for business to succeed at this thing. If you’re confident that you’re making the best apps you can possibly make, and you’re still not really breaking through in the App Store, it’s probably time to start studying sales and marketing.

Time will tell how long Fantastical will stay high up on the charts. I suspect that it will fade slowly down to a comfortable spot in the top fifty or so, like most popular apps do. But that amazing launch day alone netted Flexibits more money than most apps make in a lifetime. And the giant user base of mostly happy customers who bought Fantastical yesterday is going to evangelize the crap out of Fantastical, bringing a nice steady stream of sales for years.

In short, Fantastical is a role model for how to succeed on the App Store as an independent developer.

So if you want a tip from your old pal, Joe, here it is: Keep an eye on Flexibits. When you come across interviews with Michael Simmons, particularly ones where he reveals some secrets about how to have a successful launch, read or listen to them. When you see he’s speaking at some event somewhere, go watch him talk. And introduce yourself afterwards.

And as you begin to succeed on the App Store yourself, and you bump into someone you don’t know who tells you he or she likes your work, take a few moments to be gracious and encouraging, and share some of your wisdom. Having a reputation for being a genuinely nice, generous person never seems to hurt.