Apple rejects iBook with links to Amazon’s store:

Before anyone starts yelling about censorship, keep in mind that this is Apple’s playground, and it can take its ball home whenever it wants, no matter how inane the reason. But this reason seems particularly inane — Apple can’t really be worried about one link in a ebook promoting a competitor’s sales, right? Not to mention that the book in question was a hardcover copy, and unless I’m mistaken, wasn’t even sold on Apple’s iBooks store anyway.

(Via TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Well, actually, it’s several links to Amazon’s store, not one. And I don’t find that an inane reason at all. I don’t remember ever going into a Target and buying a product there that gave me several tips on how to buy things at Wal Mart.

This argument is silly to me. It’s simply bad form to try and sell a product in one store that repeatedly refers customers to another competing store. End of story.

Clear Version: 1.0.1 Review | iPhone and iPad Productivity App | Macworld: “I don’t object to Clear’s efforts at using non-traditional actions; I support a developer’s right to be clever, and I freely admit that it’s both fun and cool to drag down to create a new task, or pinch to go back up a level. But it sometimes feels, perhaps, cuter than necessary. Is it really a benefit to lack buttons like New Task or Back?”

(Via . Macworld)

I’m glad Lex Friedman had the guts to say this. He seems to be the only one. From the press going around Clear over the past few weeks, you’d think Realmac had invented the wheel, or something.

Now, I do like Clear; I find it great for entering quick lists of tasks, now that I’ve gotten the hang of it. But all the praise it’s getting for it’s “brilliant” UI seems to be more of a piling on of designers stroking each other than anything else.

Yes, simplicity is always a goal. Yes, the Steve Jobs philosophy of removing rather than adding is a great driving force. But there is such a thing as taking it too far, and I think Clear is just on the cusp of taking it too far.

There’s a point where you make the thing so simple that it becomes less useful than it could be.

All the raving about the pinching for everything in this app is just weird to me. Pinching on an iPhone is not something I want to be doing all the time. For starters, I have to use two-hands to pinch, and that already is a big fail on a phone. And 9 times out of ten, when I’m trying to pinch something open, Clear mistakes my pinch for something else, or does nothing. So I’ll come out and say it: the pinching in this app sucks, to be frank.

As soon as I realized that I could accomplish all the same things without pinching I was happier. But that in and of itself is practically an admission that pinching constantly is awkward. So why base your whole UI on it?

And while the app is clever in its use of minimalism, you can’t honestly say that it’s intuitive. The tutorial that comes at first launch is nice, but it’s also absolutely necessary; this app is not easy to figure out without it. Hand Clear over to someone without that tutorial, and he or she would be lost. Heck, I know a few people who watched the tutorial and STILL didn’t get it.

Friedman is right on when he says “you can expect to make the wrong thing happen with alarming consistency.” I’m constantly swiping the wrong way and deleting, rather than checking off, a completed task. And pulling down to go back up in the hierarchy (while better than pinching) is somewhat of a “crapshoot” as he puts it. I’m very often creating new tasks whether I intended to or not.

And don’t get me started on the character limit. There’s no reason for it, other than someone on the design team didn’t like the way longer tasks “looked”. Aesthetic over function. Not a good thing.

I get that this is a 1.0. I get that Clear will be adding an iPad and Mac version soon, and I assume, synching all your tasks between them. That’s good. I’m sure even some of these weird quirks will be overcome. This app is coming from a great development team with a good track record, so it’s likely the app will get even better over time. But in it’s current state, it’s more interesting and promising than it is great.

And I would still even recommend Clear to some people, because it is very good for entering tasks very quickly, and it’s only 99 cents, for crying out loud. But hailing it up as the most amazing example of super-duper designed app genius seems a bit over the top to me. It’s a solid app with some decent innovative thinking behind it. Let’s just leave it at that.

I’m hearing tons of complaints about the new Messages Beta for Mac released on Thursday. But my experience with it has been great so far.

My favorite feature: the way Messages handles multiple alerts on different devices. This is one of those things that is just about impossible to make perfect, but I think what Apple has done here is clever, and probably the least annoying way to handle it.

The problem? I have an iPhone, an iPad, and three different Macs I use on a regular basis. (A desktop at home, a desktop at work, and my Air for cafe/travel use.) I have Messages running on all of these machines at once. So what happens when I get a new message from someone? Well, I get an alert on my iPhone, my iPad, and all three of my Macs. Considering I have at least three of these devices within arm’s reach most of the time, that means I get three different alerts showing up in my face, and two others on the other machines that I’ll have to address later. All for the same message.

The wrong way to handle this would have been to force me to dismiss this alert on all five machines manually, or worse, to try and “guess’ on which machine I want the alert to appear. (While that approach sounds good, in practice, it would probably guess wrong more often than not.)

Apple took a better middle road and had the alert go off on all machines, but as soon as I acknowledge the alert on any one of my machines, it goes away on all five. So I only have to dismiss or reply to the message once, and all my other machines get updated. My iPhone and iPad take the alert badge off the Messages icon and remove it from Notifications center. The Macs do the same. I’ve read the message once on one machine, but all the others still have the message, so I can still reply on whichever machine I like later.

How can you complain about that?

Now sure, it doesn’t always work perfectly. I’ve had to dismiss a message on two of the five machines a few times. But it gets it right most of the time.

If it doesn’t work this way for you, there’s probably something wrong with your configuration. Make sure all your devices are set to the same Apple id, and your iPhone is set up to get messages from your email, not just your phone number.

This works so much better than the way Apple has historically handled Calendar Alerts. I can only hope they apply this same logic to those soon.

And as far as the noise goes, if you don’t want multiple devices beeping at you, do what I do. Mute all your devices except the iPhone. For me, the iPhone is the one device I’m guaranteed to have on me at all times. So that’s the one that becomes the official attention grabber. When I’m working on my Mac, I hear the iPhone SMS sound go off, but I can check the message using my Mac.

My iPad is also always set to silent. I don’t even have my iPad vibrate on new alerts, as, again, all of those will go off on my iPhone, which is always with me. Problem solved.

Google explains how and why Safari privacy settings were circumvented:

In response, Google says the WSJ report is off-base when it comes to what Google is doing with its advertising cookies on these devices. Google says it was using a known bit of Safari functionality to provide features that were only enabled when users signed into Google using their browser. Google used this functionality to provide personalized ads and the ability to +1 items for signed-in Google users.

Google then pins the problem on Safari; the statement says the browser “contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.” The search giant said it didn’t expect this to happen and is now “removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.” Google insists that the original cookie enablement was done anonymously and no personal data was collected.

(Via TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

If this incident had happened in isolation, I’d probably be more inclined to trust Google’s explanation. But with all the other happenings around Google and it’s behavior lately, it’s hard to take anything they say at face value anymore.

That’s what you get when you hold yourself to an elite standard and then drop that standard when it becomes inconvenient.

Messages is a good idea, but is not ready for prime time:

Messages, like the rest ofMountain Lion, is the logical next step in Apple developing its instant message programs and making them available across a lot of its devices. But like last year’s FaceTime beta, there are a lot of bugs to be worked out, and I wish Apple had taken a cue fromAdiumin designing Messages. If you do plan to stick with the program, Erica will be offering some tips and tricks on making it useful.

(Via TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Um, it’s a BETA. That, by definition, means it’s not ready for prime time.

Has Google’s bastardization of this term really convinced even the technically literate folks at TUAW that beta just means version 1.0? I hope not.

I realize that historically Apple has not released betas very often to the public. (The more I read articles like this, the more I realize why.) But since Apple seems to be trending towards releasing betas a little more often nowadays, I think it may be time we all re-evaluate the true definition of the term.