Busking in the age of the Internet – TechHive Beta Blog: “The reaction was… interesting. Although no one took me to task or, as far as I can tell, unfollowed me over it, the contributions didn’t pour in. As I write this—fewer than 24-hours after my initial pitch—my $200 contribution has been matched but not much more. The 12 people who kicked in were nearly all strangers to John and myself rather than friends or people In The Biz. Also interesting was that none of my pitches were retweeted.”

(Via. Tech Hive Beta Blog)

This was an interesting experiment. As one of the 12 contributors, I can add that my decision to go ahead and kick in some cash to John was not motivated out of a sense of charity. I had been reading John’s blog for a while, on the advice of John Gruber, who had pointed it out in his feed a while back, and I liked what I had read so far. But I was unaware he even had a donation button on his site or that he was attempting to make a go with writing full time. So when another writer I admire, Chris Breen, pointed this out, it only made sense that I kick in a few bucks to help the guy out. I’m a big believer in paying for things I like. I hate the entire ad-sponsored Internet. So if I’m given the opportunity to support good content with some direct cash, I almost always do that.

Otherwise, I’d be a hypocrite, wouldn’t I?

If John were to set up a regular subscription, the way Jim Dalrymple over at the loop has, or Marco Arment has done with Instapaper, or Shawn Blanc, etc. I’d probably be a regular contributor.

Maybe I’m weird. I’m definitely in the minority, based on this experiment. But I almost always have a few bucks to toss to someone who is trying to bust out of the cubicle world. If you’re providing a quality product, and I’m consuming it on a regular basis, why wouldn’t I want that to continue?

Daring Fireball: More on Apple’s Removal of Airfoil Speakers Touch From the App Store:

“It’s not enough to comply with the letter of the rules; developers must comply with the spirit of them as well. Finding a loophole in the letter of the rules doesn’t grant you a Get Out of Jail Free card in the App Store. It will (hopefully) just lead to Apple adding a new rule to close the loophole. (This is not to imply that Rogue Amoeba saw themselves as taking advantage of a loophole; rather, I think it was a reasonable misunderstanding of the spirit of the guidelines.)”

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Gruber is always at his best when he digs in and does some in-depth investigative reporting like this. Note, he doesn’t make a judgment on whether or not Apple is in the right here, and he doesn’t try to blame Rogue Amoeba, either; he’s simply laying out what are most likely the reasons for the removal. And his argument makes perfect sense.

All app developers run the risk of bumping into Apple’s prerogative. It’s part of being on the App Store. If you try to be innovative and come up with creative ways to add features that Apple doesn’t provide in the OS itself, you run an even higher risk.

Keep in mind, however, that it’s not in Apple’s best interest to remove an app for frivolous reasons. And because Apple is so secretive as a company, the real reasons for removals like this never become 100% clear.

AirPlay is one of those things that probably scares the crap out of the execs in music industry. I can’t imagine Apple didn’t have to have a few discussions involving lawyers to settle the fears of those execs about what could and couldn’t be done with this wireless music streaming technology. If you think about why AirPlay doesn’t already do what Airfoil Speakers Touch added in this version, there are only three possibilities; either Apple didn’t think of adding that feature themselves, they couldn’t figure out how, or they were forbidden by their licensing agreements from doing so. Which one is the most likely?

When an app developer comes along and extends what AirPlay can do, that seems obvious and awesome to us, but we have no idea whether or not it violates some agreement Apple has with the labels, in other words.

I have no idea if this is the case, of course. But that’s the point. None of us knows. I’m just pointing out that there could be a variety of reasons that Apple will never talk about and that we aren’t in a position to judge.

Having said that, this still sucks for Rogue Amoeba and the state of the App Store ecosystem. The more good developers get punished for being clever, the more likely the App Store gets reduced to crapware and boring software that never takes a risk. Apple needs to come up with some better way of avoiding these sorts of abrupt removals from the App Store, and it needs to find better ways to communicate with the developer community. Getting rejected sucks; being removed one morning for no apparent reason is every developer’s worst nightmare.

Here’s another pro tip: When you write me an email that requires some information from me, and I don’t get back to you in a while, go ahead and check in with me to see if I’ll respond. But try me once to see what’s up, in case I might actually have a reasonable excuse for the delayed response, before CCing my and your boss to try and make me look like a fool. I’ll appreciate that you had the guts to call me out face to face, instead of getting your big brother to come beat me up.

Didn’t we learn this in grade school, people? You escalate when you’ve exhausted all of your other alternatives, not before. Otherwise, you’re a big wuss, and you’ve lost the respect not only of me, but of your superiors, too. They don’t want to be bothered with your petty squabbles.

Is there no honor amongst people anymore?

→ Coda 2 released, half-price today:

I’ve previously done all of my web development in TextMate, but I bought both Codas today and I’m going to give them a shot. Panic’s other apps are so great that I trust them enough to take the chance.

(Via Marco.org)

I agree with Marco on this point completely. Panic has such a good track record that I was willing to pick up both of these apps just to give them a shot. I don’t expect to be dropping BBEdit and Textastic any time soon, but I’m open to the possibility. It’s fun to see how different companies, especially really great ones, handle the same problems in design. The approach in Coda is foreign to me at the moment, but I can totally see the elegance and beauty in its approach. And I’m forced to question whether I prefer other apps out of habit, or because they are truly better.

I have to disagree, however, with Marco’s (and Gruber’s, and Shawn Blanc’s) assertion that Diet Coda is a great iOS app name. “Diet” suggests lite to me, as in Coda on the iPad is watered down, stripped down, not as powerful as the real thing. That happens to be true at the moment, but three or four years from now, when tablets are the main computers most web designers are using full-time, Diet Coda is going to have to be as fully featured and rich as its Mac counterpart. And then the Diet name will seem silly and derogatory.

And I’m just not in the camp of people who believe that the iPad is somehow a “lesser” computing device. Given time, the iPad will do the same thing the original Mac did for computing; it will become the de facto standard way of getting things done, and make the mouse-driven desktop look like the command line.

United Airlines ends coach preboarding for children – CNN.com: “Kate Hanni of flyersrights.org calls the move ‘very anti-family.’
‘There are very few things a parent can count on when it comes to air travel these days, but one of those things was always the ability to board first to get your children settled in and all of their needs met before the throngs of people board the plane,’ said Hanni in an e-mail to CNN. ‘I hope United changes their mind.'”

(Via cnn travel.)

Here’s a better idea than making parents board with their kids along with the rest of us. How about one flight a day that’s “adults only”? I know I’d go out of my way to get on that one. I’d go to a different city, even, if a no-kids flight was an option.

I love the arrogance of a parent like this woman who thinks that her kids’ “needs” outweigh the needs of literally hundreds of other passengers. We should all stand around and wait until her kids are comfortable? You have to be kidding me.

I’m not saying parents shouldn’t be able to fly with their kids. I’m certainly not “anti-family.” I just don’t think that having a kid makes you special or entitles you inconvenience everyone else.

I’ve always assumed letting the parents strap their kids in first was time-saving. I thought it made the boarding process more efficient. Clearly, some airlines have crunched the numbers and determined otherwise.

So if scrapping this old policy helps us all get off the ground faster, than that’s the right thing to do. Period.