When someone unsubscribes from your newsletter, don’t send them a confirmation email letting them know they are now unsubscribed. Also, don’t make them fill out a survey telling you why they are unsubscribing. You know why they are unsubscribing. Because you suck. Focus on the you suck part,  not on the how you can get them to stay even though you suck part.

Dear iOS app developers (including you, Apple),

When my iPad doesn’t have an Internet connection for whatever reason, popping up a dialog box to tell me it has no connection is somewhat annoying, but understandable. After all, it’s good to communicate what’s going wrong to some extent. You can probably find a less obtrusive way than a box that takes over my whole iPad until I tap it, but whatever.

Popping up the same box 15 times in three seconds, and constantly popping it back up as soon as I dismiss it, again and again until I hit the home button to shut you up, is just plain stupid. And it makes me want to stab you in the eyes with a hot poker.

I got it the first time. No connection. Check.

And Mail app, I don’t need to know you couldn’t get mail from each one of my accounts in a separate dialog box. Just tell me you have no connection; I can deduce from that that none of my accounts will get new mail.

Really? Retry is my only option here, Netflix? How about “Stop Trying?”

iTunes: Time to right the syncing ship | Macworld:

The iTunes we’ve all come to know has had a good run, but it’s reached the point where it is a crazy agglomeration of features and functionality. If someone were to design it today, it wouldn’t remotely resemble its current state. And as a portal to iOS devices and the iTunes Store, iTunes is too crucial to Apple’s business to ignore or run on auto-pilot.

(Via www.macworld.com)

I think just about everyone who uses iTunes, which is everyone, agrees with the sentiment here. iTunes is definitely over bloated, and it’s trying to do way too many things at once.

But I think it was John Gruber who pointed out a while ago that iTunes is one of very few cross-platorm apps for Apple. The reason they packed so much into that one app is that they don’t want to be in the business of building and maintaining several Windows apps. Sooner or later, something is going to have to give, but that’s how we got here, anyway.

What I do is limit my need for iTunes as much as possible. Podcasts? I use Downcast for that. Movies and TV Shows? All done with iCloud on my Apple TV and iPad at this point. Photostream and Dropbox takes care of most of my photo needs.

So the only thing I really sync with iTunes anymore is music. I could use iTunes Match for that, of course, but that’s still so buggy I can’t rely on it. I expect that will get better over time.

I think Apple’s strategy isn’t to break up iTunes into several new apps, but rather to eliminate the need for iTunes almost entirely. Turn it back into a simple music store/music player for the Mac, and replace everything else with iCloud.

We’re just not quite there yet.

Google’s Page: Apple’s Android Pique ‘For Show’ – Businessweek:

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

(Via www.businessweek.com)

You lost me there, Larry. See, it was one thing to say that you thought Steve was using a “ramped up” or “fake” anger over Android to rally his troops. At that point, I just think you’re naïve and a poor judge of character. But then when you say you personally think you’re better than Steve because you “shoot higher” and ignore your competitors, now you sound like the pompous ass I always took you for. And a hypocrite, too.

Man, it’s pretty hard to deny that the people at the top of Google’s food chain are elitist snobs. And terrible at PR. Someone should lock these Ivy League nerds in a lab where they belong and hire some spokespeople who don’t come off as creepy or arrogant 100% of the time they are being interviewed.

Mac McClelland Was a Warehouse Wage Slave:

Several months prior, I’dreported on an Ohio warehousewhere workers shipped products for online retailers under conditions that were surprisingly demoralizing and dehumanizing, even to someone who’s spent a lot of time working in warehouses, which I have. And then my editors sat me down. “We want you to go work for Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc.,” they said. I’d have to give my real name and job history when I applied, and I couldn’t lie if asked for any specifics. (I wasn’t.) But I’d smudge identifying details of people and the company itself. Anyway, to do otherwise might give people the impression that these conditions apply only to one warehouse or one company.Which they don’t.

(Via Daring Fireball)

I guess we should think about this story next time we’re complaining that an Amazon order took two days instead of one to get to the house.

People like to think that simply building everything in the US would make poor working conditions go away somehow. But the sort of abuse we see over in China is happening right here, too. The problem is unrealistic expectations, built up over decades of promises companies can’t deliver on without pushing the limits of what’s legal, let alone what’s morally right. I don’t even know if this can be reversed at this point.

Convenience always comes at a cost. It might not be our cost, but someone always pays.