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Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting
Barry Norton writes "VNUNet reports that the Photocasting feature in Apple's iPhoto application violates core XML and RSS standards. Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong. Dave Winer, essentially the creator of RSS, says, 'It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace.'"
I know there are plenty of RSS Validation tools out there that will go to a website and tell you whether or not the RSS Feed is valid based on current standards but what about for applications?
What does Dave Winer (or anyone who works with RSS daily) recommend we use to validate applications and websites? What's the best tool to quickly and efficiently evaluate our work in parsing and assembling RSS?
I've used nifty tools like XML Spy for validating XML and XSD forms and I was wondering if there is an equivalent for RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 formats.
My work here is dung.
This is stupid. And false. To quote TFU:
and
Apple fucked up the implementation of photocasting. Technically they didn't break it, but didn't use it in a way some feed readers expected. This seems to be the result of incompetence, not an attempt to create their own proprietary RSS version.
This looks like a case of a 1.0 version. Common wisdom is that commercial software sucks before 2.0. iPhoto 1.0 was dog slow when you had more than a coupe of hundreds of pictures in your library. Aperture 1.0 messed up some image correction parameters. All this was fixed in the following releases. Open Source software avoids this by staying below 1.0 for a decade. Since Steve Jobs made a big point about photocasting being compatible with existing readers during the MacExpo keynote and there being no sign of intended "embrace and extend", we can assume that this will fixed with the next iPhoto update.
Nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report. Please move along.
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...and throwing up our arms and collectively running around like chickens with our heads cut off as if we're helpless to do anything, which is what seems like everyone is doing in the context of this 'OMG! Apple breaks RSS!' brouhaha, since Apple prides itself on embracing open standards when possible, why not simply report these as bugs and presume they will be fixed, since Apple, you know, is fairly responsive to community concerns and actually likes fixing these sorts of problems that tend to break things for everyone?[1]
- http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html
- http://bugreport.apple.com/ (trackable, but requires free Apple Developer Connection account)
[1] Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. [...] anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.
this is because Apple is prepping iPhoto for Windows? They saw what went down with podcasts and would like to be everyone's one stop shop for "photocasting"
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
This sounds far more like a case of them trying to rush the the product out. As often happens in such situtations, the quality of the product can suffer. This doesn't strike me as a malicious action in any way.
I wouldn't be surprised if these issues were fixed by an update in the near future. Of course, some may question if the software should have been released in the first place, but regardless, it has already been released. Considering Apple's goodwill towards the community, I'm quite confident that these problems will be resolved promptly.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I thought Apple could do no wrong? Oh that's right, they are still just another corporation after all. Accept things for as they are, not as you would have them.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Perhaps Microsoft can send them a few developers to help out? Together, I'm sure they can really mess it all up :)
Get your own free personal location tracker
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You actually are insinuating that Apple intentionally and maliciously wants to kill RSS and XML, two critical open standards it holds quite dear across all of its products, from iTunes and iPod to Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, by inserting new elements to support "photocasting" in iPhoto?
At least be a little more believable next time.
It's Apple, so it's cool.
sudo eat my shorts
I expect this is purely accidental, and that it comes from assigning people work that they have little understanding of. It will probably be fixed, now that it has been observed. From what I've observed, shoddy workmanship is typical of Apple. It's just that usually you do not see it because it is hidden behind Apple's excellent industrial design work. The difference is that in this case the internals are public, and the low quality is visible to all.
Hmm, I'll have to check this out on my box when possible. Maybe Apple is finally getting big enough, with its large iPod base, to think it's morphing into a 366 Kg gorilla and that it can start its own extensions, much like MS tried to break Java. But then again, maybe it was careless unchecked buggy prototype code that was released into the wild. Either way, it shows a carelessness and thoughtlessness that shouldn't be coming out of apple products. This saddens me since I've been an Apple fanatic since the ][+ .
Just about every single comment so far has been berating other commenters for "Apple bashing" and automatically assuming that this was done intentionally and maliciously.
Methinks they prostest *too much*...
the layman's guide to computer science
Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.
Maybe someone should send them a copy of 'The Joy of Sex?'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It seems I am seeing more negative apple stories here on slashdot as of late. Looks like Emporer Gates issued "code 66". All cult-of-mac are now enemies of the Republic(NasdaqNM:MSFT).
I was wondering why the Slashdot RSS feed wasn't working right in my home-built RSS reader. Now I know: Apple broken RSS.
Sometimes standards are extremely difficult to follow. Now, the RSS standard isn't an overly large one. But there are some industrial standards that when printed run to five or six volumes, 900 pages each. It's very difficult for one person to have a solid grasp of all that material, especially when there are deadlines to meet.
Of course, interpretation of standards can cause problems, too. Often times what appears to be a broken application is just a matter of other applications it must interact with not following the standard, either.
In any case, it is quite obvious that Apple was not trying to create an anti-standards service there. When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Safari the only browser that passes the Acid2 standards test? Odd that they would put the effort in to make their browser standards compliant, then not bother making something like Photocasting standards compliant. Was this intentional, or did they just nerf it up?
Indeed. How can you screw up a date format? (Not that I haven't seen endless examples of it.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Maybe I missed the boat, but how exactly did they make BSD proprietary? Last time I checked you can get darwin for the x86 platform (and PPC too obviously) for free and modify it as you please. At any rate, it's hardly threatening, as you have plenty of other options for this kind of OS and platform unlike with Microsoft Windows versions.
Now they're evil again!
But it's buggy with things that would have been very very obvious from very very simple testing. Is it a case of just doing things wrong, or a case of doing things wrong and expecting the world to follow these changes?
Not real surprising. I was all excited that iTunes had an XML export facility for the library, until I saw it.
I'd expected to apply some kind of transformation to the document to make it suit my needs, but this was tragic. It was painfully obvious that whoever wrote the export didn't even remotely "get" it. It was some horrid hodgepodge of tags all slapped together around what amounted to a CVS dump. It was well formed, basically useless as an XML document.
I'd have been happier is the export was a simple delimited file or even a binary dump, at least it would have been smaller.
RSS fubar? Yep, they still have the same people doing their XML. Let hope this makes them rethink that...
The guy is just bashing a product that doesn't work like all the others.
Remove Apple and insert Google, MS, [Your favorite company here]
NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update, if anything, it's an even greater reason to rag on Apple for releasing a broken feature.
In TFA, the guy says he would have been willing to sign a NDA to help Apple straighten this out before they released it.
You seem to be a bit touchy this morning. To much coffee?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Huh? is there even an RSS standard?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
It would seem the problem is more with RSS readers in this particular case, more so than it is with Apple and Apple's implementation.
If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem. The same should hold true for RSS readers. They have to be developed in a way to deal with bad data, and if they aren't then they are a low-quality software product.
Does anyone have a list of the readers which were affected by this? If so, we should immediately contribute fixes for the open source readers, while avoiding the rest in the future.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
RSS is XML. As such, processors need to conform to the XML specifications. iPhoto doesn't do this, it gets various things wrong, such as not requiring documents to be well-formed, and ballsing up namespaces.
While it's true that RSS allows you to introduce your own element types via namespaces, that doesn't give you leeway to do whatever the hell you want and call it 'RSS'.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
One thing it's important to understand is that Dave "by name and by nature" Winer has had a grudge against Apple ever since they shipped AppleScript, which made his enormously overpriced Userland Frontier Mac scripting system irrelevant overnight. That's why he tried to reinvent it as a web application platform.
Of course, Winer knows all about incompatible changes to standards. His RSS 0.91 was gratuitously and completely incompatible with the RSS 0.9--that was invented by Netscape, not him. And that was just the start--look at the Wikipedia article on RSS to see how Winer deliberately broke the standards process time and time again.
As to Apple's intentions, it should be noted that they've published DTDs and namespace declarations for their podcasting extensions to RSS implemented in iTunes. I assume they'll do the same for iPhoto, and they just haven't gotten around to it yet. As for bugs in date format, report 'em and see if they get fixed before assuming it's deliberate.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
WTF is wrong with you people? It's Apple we're talking about here! This is version 1.0, these differences in interpretation of the "standard"* are just some bugs, caused by single person who had a bad day! Nothing to see here, please move along.
*There's no agency which governs RSS, so it's not really a standard anyway.
to hear the spin on this one. We all saw what you guys write about MS's embrace and extend. How are you going to put a positive spin on this one?!
I look forward to reading your posts...
Just remember that whole "intellectually honest" thing... i know many of you hate to play by those rules, but this is a case where you can prove me wrong by not just jumping in line.
I happen to have RSS on the brain at the moment, since I just this week implemented RSS 2.0 for my personal webpage. The comments on the linked articles mostly go like this:
c asting-Hyperbole/
- It works for me!
- It doesn't matter that it works for you; it violates standards!
- But there are no standards for RSS!
- Are too!
and so on.
For a counterpoint, check out this blog entry:
http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/01/18/Photo
The whole flap is quite a learning experience if you're interested in RSS.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
OOPS
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
How can you screw up a date format?
YMYDDYMY
This guy's the limit!
The only information from the article is that the photo date is not in a place that would have been better for it - what about the Photocasting breaks XML standards though? That's a bigger deal it seems to me as it could blow a feed reader right out of the water if it's expecting valid XML. Or was that a mistake on the part of the story poster?
Also I have to wonder if there are "multiple ways to attach a date" how all those mutliple ways got there, and if some of them shouldn't be there either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Agreed.
It appears that Hanlon's Shaving Utensils probably have something to say about this...
This is the part of the article that really killed the title of it. Apple is not cheating on the RSS standard, they are just changing it to suit their own views. Although I see that what Apple has done will upset many people because of a lack of compatibility, I still wonder about what they have done. Apple did not grow to its size by being stupid, and if there wasn't an alternative motive here, they would not have strayed from the RSS standard.
What I want to see are tests done on the standard RSS and Apple's version, and a comparison. Perhaps Apple has made RSS more efficient, and using their influence are trying to sway people to a new standard. Perhaps Apple couldn't do what they wanted to with the current RSS standard (I don't know much on the workings of RSS). But does that mean that they just pulled a stupid move and released a really buggy program?
There are only a few possibilities I see for this release, being: 1) Their code i more efficient. 2) Lack of usefulness for Apple. 3) Someone in Apple isn't doing their job properly. 4) Apple has no intentions of promoting compatibility between their Photocasting and the third party.
The point of view that Apple has a reason behind their choices gets confused however when you look at the this part which confuses me. Why would Steve Jobs say "We use industry standard RSS so that anyone can subscribe. You do not even need a Mac" if they were trying to adopt a new way of approaching RSS? There are also the issues about XML and HTTP compatibility. A more technical look shows that iPhoto is having huge amounts of trouble all over the map.
Overall, the idea of iPhoto is great and I could see myself using it, however until Steve Jobs or another Apple representative comes forth with the explanation for their own personal RSS standard, I can't see myself even attempting it.
do.what.promptcmds
Do you thing the world will change its way of handling RSS due to Apples implementation of photocasting? I guess some readers will accept Apples RSS misbehavior as an alternative to be compatible, like web browsers accept shitty HTML pages. But most will not. If they even care (Apple is still a dwarf in the RSS world), they will simply wait if this will not be fixed in a couple of weeks. Apples own RSS reader is Safari, used by 2%-3% of all surfers. Not really something you worry about being picked up by users as an alternative to your RSS reader temporarily without photocasting compatibility.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
What a suprise an apple fanboy comes and explains how apple could never do anything wrong.
If it's dead, you killed it.
Hey, we're Apple! Whatever we do is by definition Right. Now go change the standard to conform.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product.
Except the standards that iPhoto breaks includes using a different date stamp than is usually used in RSS (I wonder if this would include the iTunes podcasting client). This isn't about going beyond where standards have gone before, this is about actually messing with pre-existing standards.
I am generally inclined to err on the side of goodwill towards Apple, but I wonder whether this is a case of Apple and the .mac service recognizing the threat of services like Flickr and Picasa and trying to ensure that cross-compatability of the services doesn't come easily.
By the way where is that RSS Schema?, OPML Schema?(lol)......
Time to Feed the Greasemonkey!
Is anyone able to provide some exact examples of the broken XML code from this application? I'd like to see for myself where the problems are, just to see if they are in fact as bad as is being described.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Wow! An Apple fan is making apologies for them when they screw up!
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This is not a Troll. It accurately reflects the views promulgated by many Apple fanboys upon the rest of us ad nauseum about every latest pronouncement from Steve Jobs -- no matter how much he contradicts what he was saying only last year, month, or week.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
damn, i used my brain cells with 2.2 pounds ~ 1.0 Kg,
so that made it 800 lbs / 2.2 or kinda 400 / 1.1,
1 over 11 is 9.090909..., so its 360+3.6+.36, so oops
I erred in my head, I should have had 363.(63)* repeating, which would have been DAMN closer. Damn the power of brainware. Who taught this AI system??? But hey, it was just a side-bar in a comment, and close enough is close enough for a commentary. It's not like I was scheduling a fly-by for Saturn's moons or anything.
Or perhaps Apple's diet made it a little leaner, yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. I was commenting on how it STILL is not quite a complete 800 lb gorilla. Yeah, that's what I meant!
And, as Mark Pilgrim's original email which is the basis of TFA points out, Apple haven't even implemented XML namespace support correctly.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Does anyone find it funny that this guys last name is Winer?
It's RSS... not something more important like DNS or whatever.
Who cares if they have their own spin on it. People with compliant RSS readers will be able to see other compliant feeds.
It isn't like Apple is the ONLY source of RSS feeds.
I dunno, I've been out of the "hip tech" for a while, is Apple the only place to get an RSS feed?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Open Source software avoids this by staying below 1.0 for a decade.
HOW, exactly, does that FIX the problem?
Naming really is arbitrary and ceremonial. Whether it's called 1.0 or 0.5.4.6, if it's released at the same point in development it's released at the same point in development.
That's like saying "I'm not going to name my kid until he's toilet trained."
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Apple just release its updated specifications for iTunes and Podcasting. Are there similar breaks with respect to RSS 2.0? If so, then perhaps Apple is in fact changing their approach. If not, then perhaps the Photocasting situation is not necessarily the result of evil intentions.
This is isn't Apple bashing; just bashing of a stupid mistake. The RSS/XML specs aren't really that complicated. Apple is either stupid or just don't give a crap whether there stuff actually works.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Let's all call it "Apple Simple Syndication (ASS)" and see what happens.
rewriting history since 2109
Say it ain't so!
....Hello? .....I'm right aren't I?
This is like the first time he's EVER complained about something isn't it?
Guys?
Looking through his past writings, it looks like he knows what's best for Apple, even saying they shouldn't have gone to OSX (dig deep, this was quite a while ago). I bet Apple would be in a much better position today had they listened to him, instead of...um...where they are now. Ok, forget that...
I'm sure he's right about all this guys. He's Dave Winer for Christsakes!
No, not Saturn, not even a Mars lander... :) Cool, no problem, glad you took it well ... what makes it even funnier was that the subject was 'lack of proper validation' and you were going on about "it shows a carelessness and thoughtlessness" which was what made me think that you'd gone to Google in the first place...
Time for more coffee. For us both.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
Coffee? Me? NEVER! Pepsi, actually. But I think this is not really related to my caffein level. I keep it at a very high level, so my brain adapted.
It's about the header: Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting. I read it, but sort of didn't believe, because this would be contrary to Apples former behavior. So I read the article, which is somewhat sensational by itself, but in the end gives the clear impression that this about a bad implementation, not about an intended design. Barry Norton took the most sensational parts of the article, added some conspiracy and got it posted on slashdot
So maybe the thing I should be really annoyed about is me still being naive and believing that there is a connection between a sensational post on slashdot and reality. Unfortunately, sometimes there is, so I wont simply stop reading slashdot.
BTW, I agree with you that Apple should not have delivered an unfinished version. But I'm not surprised they did. Maybe they didn't realize it, because it works with most RSS readers (the article says some readers don't work). If the post would be titled "Apples Photocasting incompatible with some RSS readers" I would have simply ignored it. But most likely it would never have been posted on slashdot in the first place. Bad "journalism" works.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Oh come now. You're making Apple fanboys sound like Democrats.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From the article:
""We use industry standard RSS so that anyone can subscribe. You do not even need a Mac," he told delegates at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.
But early tests showed that the feature fails to work with some feed readers because it deviates from common RSS practices."
This honestly sounds like the developers just got really lazy and didn't bother to check their code. Apple always says they embrace open source, and work with a lot of open source items. Odds are that they figured they had it settled, didn't check it, and put it into production anyways. This is really blown out of proportion. This quote in particular strikes me as a little odd:
""Assuming that [Apple's] intentions are good, and they're not trying to kill RSS, why don't they put some of us under [a non-disclosure agreement] and let us help them get the bugs out before they ship," he suggested."
That comes off as really arrogrant begging to me. He was a project, but doesn't want to seem like he's desperate.
Look at the property lists which are used in executable bundles and application preference files. Supposedly in XML, but not making good use of XML syntax.
Apple Usage:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AppleSavePanelExpanded</key>
<string>NO</string>
...
Would it have killed them to make use of XML attributes to simplify parsing?:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<PrefItem key="AppleSavePanelExpanded">NO</PrefItem >
Apple has always been more about making a big splash in the media with some technology than about releasing something solid and fully tested. This is the sort of thing that should have been found in beta testing, but then Apple's never been too big on doing that because it might spoil their "one more thing" at the next Steve Jobs keynote. Better to fix it after it's in the wild than risk a leak to the media. I'm not the only one questioning their quality control. There are lots of others. Just look at the mess they've made of font management in OS X. It's causing graphic designers no end of problems. The really bad part of this is that the kind of people who'll be using this application will be less-technical users who won't know why violating these standards is a bad thing and wouldn't be able to fix it if they did know. For a company that once had the best quality control and the best operating system, they've sure gone downhill. Sadly, Apple isn't learning the right lesson because their sales (thanks largely due to the iPod) are doing well and the Mac Faithful seem willing to live with the flaws just because "it's a Mac".
MMDDYY for example ;)
Apple broke ipp, smb and cifs protocols in their operating systems. For example, it's common for IPP protocol for printer to have an address ipp://name:port/printers/printer_name - Apple does it ipp://name:port/ipp/printer_name (if you add printer via printer utility). Latest updates for OSX destroyes Samba (Finder crashes when trying to access shares on Linux+Samba).
If you ask me, Microsoft respects standars much more than Apple and it would be a tragic day if Apple would sell more OS than Microsoft. Bottom line: Apple sucks.
"It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace," said Winer.
My (extremely limited, so please correct me where necessary here) understanding of RSS is that the "ungoverned by a standards body" thing doesn't mean "you're free to do whatever you want, go hog wild", it means "you may extend this standard as you see fit". Moreover, as far as I know, the method by which RSS is to be extended is very specific. The impression I had was that there is a base standard, and you could define specific extensions for your nonstandard features.
When you actually listen to what the guy's saying, though, it's very vague. It almost appears that all Apple did was define an extension and fail to document it. If so, that's not so bad.
However the article also says Apple gets things wrong "about XML". What does who now? If they're actually producing malformed XML that's entirely unacceptable behavior. Similarly if they are using existing features or extensions of RSS in a nonstandard or incorrect way, that's also quite bad because existing readers can't just add an "iphoto" module or whatever, they have to change more basic things.
So I guess if it just comes down to what it was Apple did. If all they did though was define an extension, fail to document it, and fail to put their extensions in some kind of "apple-proprietary" namespace... well, my response is pretty much just "stop complaining on slashdot and start reverse engineering, silly".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update
I don't understand. Why would you not want this fixed?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Using an tag in HTML is invalid HTML; did apple do things wrong with quicktime? Obviously that is irrelevant, but why don't you take a look at this HTML validation:
w .apple.com
w .mac.com
d n.microsoft.com%2F
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww
or how about this one?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww
or maybe even Microsoft?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fms
I think that these web standards are excellent, but the errors you pointed out are completely trivial. Now, if Apple were pulling a Microsoft and trying to add extra javascript variables that were Safari exclusive, we would have a huge problem.
Lt. Colombo: Oh, excuse me, but there's just one thing still bothering me. How is it that you managed to get this right on every other important product, but botched it so badly here? I'd just really like to know.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How can you screw up a date format?
Ask me again after 2038.
(at least it's not like the Aztec gods, who created the whole universe with a screwed up date format built in to the foundations)
Nonsense. RSS doesn't have to be governed by a standards body for Apple's actions to be "wrong." The spec can be found at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss quite easily. And there's nothing stopping Apple from visiting http://feedvalidator.org/ to make sure their code works. They clearly didn't bother to do that.
This isn't Apple bashing either. Many of the people who are most upset about this, myself included, are diehard Apple users.
Apple screwed up photocasting, pure and simple. And they screwed up their podcasting spec too by releasing poorly designed specs (and I'm being generous here by calling their first attempt a "spec") and then changing things later. And they've made processing of some of their elements amazingly difficult. For instance, the itunes:keywords element can either be delimitted by commas or spaces. There's nothing in the xml itself to indicate for sure which you're dealing with, you just have to guess. Check if there's a comma present, if so, split by commas, otherwise, split by spaces. But what happens if they meant to use the single keyword "bad apple" instead of "bad", "apple"? There's no way to know for sure. The whole point of a spec is to avoid this kind of rediculous imprecision.
So yeah, Apple doesn't seem to have the first clue about generating valid RSS or XML any of that stuff. And all they had to do was ask. Secrecy is not always your best friend.
Common wisdom is that commercial software sucks before 2.0.
What about software released directly as 2.0 beta ?
Did I miss something or did that article have basically no content? It didn't outline the actual problem - it just said there was one and, boy, it was sure terrible! It seems unlikely to me that Apple would try to destroy RSS as they've spent a considerable effort in building Safari into a nice and simple RSS reader. I think they know how to do it. Perhaps it's just a case of that feature having been rushed into iPhoto with an upcoming patch that might clean things up a bit. That is, assuming it's actually got a serious problem to begin with. Hard to tell.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Okay, let me get my head around this one. Because other standards are big -- really big -- that completely explains the failure to follow this much smaller one that you've already successfully implemented in several other products.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.
Yeah, seriously. I, for one, am outraged that Apple has merely made mistakes in implementation, and is not making deliberate attempts to hijack an open standard. It just doesn't get any worse than that.
Why did you betray us Steve? We used to read that specification together..
Oh, please. Pre-1.0 is so last millennium. Beta is the new hotness now.
It's Web 2.0 baby - get on the bus!
"This looks like a case of a 1.0 version. Common wisdom is that commercial software sucks before 2.0. iPhoto 1.0 was dog slow when you had more than a coupe of hundreds of pictures in your library. Aperture 1.0 messed up some image correction parameters."
Version 2.0 of Apple's audio and video conversion too, Compressor, sucks worse than version 1.0.
"Nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report. Please move along."
Nice, if Apple fucks up, reporting it is "nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report".
If Microsoft fucks up, reporting it is "literally saving the world from the evil Micro$oft OMG! OMG!"
Sigh, if you don't want the objective truth, fine, but some want it.
They should just switch to RSS 3.0.
;)
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
The story quoted someone saying Apple "knew nothing about XML" - like you I assume by not using a namespace for the date element. However that is quite a different matter than "breaking" XML. It's still perfectly readable and usable and parsable without a namespace, it's just not using the same convention as other RSS sections.
You must be very careful when submitting stories with the distinction between "broken" and "badly designed". "Broken" means if I point an XML parser at it I mat get an unreadable document, "badly designed" means that I may not properly interpret one element but the rest would be readable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought the whole point of vouching is that it is not anonymous. When you vouch for somebody, you're putting your credibility on the line by making a declaration about somebody's character or honesty. I don't see how you can "vouch" as an AC.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
[Developer to Steve Jobs]: The new iPhoto allows us to exchange information between users.
[SJ]: How does it work?
[D]: Well it is a bit like RSS.
[SJ to World]: iPhoto use RSS.
[D]: Shit.
Anyone who has done developement probably been in this situation where you learn from the press release or sales pitch that you apperently coded feature X or used standard Y and now you got all weekend to make it happen.
Presuming no evil intentions this looks a lot like a developer was tasked with adding something that to him looked a lot like RSS so he looked at RSS and then just adopted it to his needs without ever worrying about straying from the format, he used RSS as an example to work from NOT as a guideline. Why should he if iPhoto was never meant to work with other readers?
Then someone in marketing read the buzzword RSS and all of sudden iPhoto is RSS compliant and the poor developer is left to clean up the mess.
Either that or Apple is pure evil. Nah, can't be. We surely can't have two evil computer companies in the world.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No. Atom (which Apple also claim to support, but don't fully) is XML. RSS is a-bit-sort-of-XML-like-in-a-poor-light. It allows (for example) the inclusion of HTML (note just XHTML), which prevents it from being XML. Unless it doesn't this week - there are at least three different (incompatible) RSS 'standards,' with completely meaningless version numbers.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This seems to be the result of incompetence, not an attempt to create their own proprietary RSS version.
I'm reluctant to attribute incompetence to anything that can be as easily attributed to premature release (for sales/marketing reasons).
I have little doubt an Apple developer is saying "Yup, it isn't finished, and it's a piece of crap. I know it, but I had twenty minutes until we started stamping CD's. I've got it patched, but it won't be released for a few weeks."
In other words, I'm reluctant to blame a developer who may have had the task dumped in his lap with little or no time to develop it before it shipped.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
So here it is not surprising that he has chosen to attack Winer rather than evaluate the merit of Winer's statements.
Oh yeah, if you are reading Dave--thanks for RSS and OPML :-)
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' Load up the src doc
Set srcDoc = CreateObject("MSXML.DOMDocument")
If Not srcDoc.load("C:\temp\try.xml") Then
WScript.StdErr.WriteLine "Could not load source document"
WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Error: " & Trim(srcDoc.parseError.reason)
WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Line: " & Trim(srcDoc.parseError.line)
WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Char: " & Trim(srcDoc.parseError.linepos)
WScript.Quit 4
End If
Nope, That acronym is already taken by AppleScript Studio
It isn't something that should be fixed in the next patch, because it wasn't something that should have gotten past QA.
That's a pretty harsh assesment
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
No, it allows the inclusion of HTML that has been escaped according to XML syntax rules. The way you are talking, it sounds as if you think you can just put HTML in directly. This is not the case. RSS is XML.
By the way, Atom also allows you to do this - check out things like <content type="html">. That's exactly how RSS handles HTML inclusion.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Or could it be a way for an Apple user to try and use something else for photocasting, have it fail, and then switch back to iPhoto to lock them in?
Wouldn't be the first time a corporation tried to lock somebody in to their product.
If you get modded up for this kind of crap again, I will scream.
This cookie-cutter response is almost as bad as your "I'd just like to thank XXXXX..."
It fixes the problem by MARKETING. The trick is the definition of the problem.
Version numbers obviously will never fix technical problems. But they are important for perception. Originally anything before 1.0 was considered alpha or beta and usually not released to public. Today several open source products are used in production for years before reaching 1.0. This basically moves the responsibility to the user. If his production system fails, it is his fault, because he used "unfinished" software. No company (besides Google) could afford to have user work with beta versions for years. And even Google only gets away with it because their betas are really 1.0 version for which they have not yet found a way how to make money with. The version schemas below 1.0 are basically pointless for users and should be reserved for developer releases only.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
After reading detailed description of the problem I agree that ASS is best way to describe it.
Film at 11:00....
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Today several open source products are used in production for years before reaching 1.0. This basically moves the responsibility to the user. If his production system fails, it is his fault, because he used "unfinished" software.
So essentially, it's a massive cop-out.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
paraphrasing: when you can't attack the argument, attack the person making it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally "argument to the man") or attacking the messenger, is a logical fallacy that involves replying to an argument or assertion by attacking the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself.
but in the end gives the clear impression that this about a bad implementation, not about an intended design
I don't really understand the relevance of that distinction. I'm a developer and if I break something, nobody cares if I did it through inompetence or because I thought it would be a good idea to do so. And why should they?
... about your choice of brand that you have to knee-jerk defend it at any cost. What's the matter? Chose wrong but too proud to admit it? You must admit that you are really coming unhinged here and well, honestly you aren't doing your loved ones any favours by looking like a crazed and beared zealot in front of the crowds.
In fact, this always makes me wonder - why a little article like this always sends the Apple people spinning off in wild tangent while most other brands don't. Is it because the foundation is so insecure? Apple doesn't get any more bashing than most of them, actually Slashdot is pretty Apple-friendly, but there's always this reaction, which it isn't to Google, KDE, MS, or even Debian or Gnome - there's just the occassional protest no matter the accusation. But with Apple, the tiniest word is a call to arms. Just look at this thread!
Just makes you look really insecure - almost like you regret a choice. Hmm?
If the answer is yes, they didn't break a thing. If the answer is no, they have a bug. That may not be *technically* correct, but that's what the end user is going to think.
Either way, can someone tell me why this is being cast as something maliciously done? As far as I can tell, there aren't many RSS readers that this doesn't work for. Why assume this was malicious, when it seems more likely that a developer coded this stuff up, some testers checked that it worked with well-known RSS readers? Whiner, eh?
Sure, Apple needs to patch up their XML so it's more correct... but let's not pretend this is some sort of Microsoftian embrace-and-extend strategy from Apple. When Apple wants to create an incompatable technology, they create something proprietary. These are bugs in a 1.0 product, folks. File bug reports... save your freak out for the next release if the problems aren't fixed.
"When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product."
The X in XML is from eXtensible....
Sure there maybe technologies that don't fit XML well, but if a document declares itself to be XML and isn't valid, then someone goofed.
A bit like saying...
'This sentence is all in British English, so warum kannst du nicht es verstanden, merci ?'
If it breaks because you are incompetent, you will be fired. If it breaks because you decided it should break, you will be sued for sabotage.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
It's buzzword compliant, isn't that enough for you folks!
:)
Seriously though folks, did you expect Apple to release something that non-Mac people could use? What would be the point in that?
(Disclamer, I own multiple fruity boxes, save the flames
"It's Web 2.0 baby - get on the bus!"
Actually it's called "Web 2.0 beta ", baby.
sig? Oh, that sig...
I have not read this particular article, but I saw the initial reports about iPhoto RSS and the demo of it being broken.
Apparently the RSS generated by iphoto is badly broken in a way which will confuse many RSS news readers. Unsurprisingly, Safari doesn't have a problem with the iphoto RSS. Surprisingly, neither does Net News Wire - BUT the windows news readers I tried all complained of XML errors.
Clear, Dark Skies
I don't actually accuse Apple for MS-like malice and embrace/extend-tactics, although they aren't any good guys in my book either what with all litigation and DRM they get their hands dirty with these days. I'm just pointing out that there is plenty and good reasons for strong reactions to this, we do not want history to repeat itself on this.
.
Spine World
Apple Breaks RSS? What is wrong with the editors?
The correct headline should be something like: "Apple iPhoto's RSS Broken". It's not as though RSS no longer works because of Apple.
Not that we all don't love some hyperbole...
"We are lucky that many companies follow an open standard, but we aren't entitled to it. We will be a little more humble in the future."
Say it to yourself 20 times and then go listen to some music on your iPod and you'll feel right as rain.
and i've put my money where my mouth is. i had a macbook pro on order which i have cancelled pending an announcement of a remedy to this situation.
MORTAR COMBAT!
When MS does something like this all that can be seen are flames about how they ignore standards and push proprietary functionality. Apple (and Linux) gets a pass when anything gets changed. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Either use standards as standards or use them as general guidelines - just be consistent.
However, unlike validation, testcases cannot definitively say that an application is conformant
True, you can't prove a negative (impossibility of non-conforming output) without proving correctness of the whole program, which is generally considered intractable. But if you've produced a wide variety of test cases that when put through a program result in conforming or non-conforming documents, you can state with a high statistical confidence level how much work needs to be done to reduce the probability of non-conforming output from the program to an acceptable minimum. You might find essay "When is a proof?" by Keith Devlin interesting.
Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.
I didn't say they 'broke XML'
Sorry, you did say "Violated Core XML and RSS standards" right below a headline of "Broke RSS standards".
However to me "violating XML standards" would mean a document was unparseable. After reading all the issues core XML standards do not seem to be violated at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's a much more balanced review of this here: http://intertwingly.net/blog/2006/01/18/Photocasti ng-Hyperbole/
i've been called a fucking idiot by an AC! my life is complete.
MORTAR COMBAT!
The central problem with this entire stink is considering iPhoto as an RSS client. It is not an RSS client.
iPhoto is a Photocast client. It is only designed to accept and work with Photocasts. Note that I am capitalizing Photocast as it is a proprietary name for a propietary service.
As Sam Ruby points out here, Photocast feed generation hews closely enough to standards to allow any reasonably good RSS client to accept and interpret Photocasts. This is pretty close to what Jobs advertised in the keynote--anyone with an RSS client can subscribe to your Photocasts.
What he did not promise is that iPhoto is now a standards-compliant client for all RSS feeds. So I have a hard time understanding why it's being held to that standard.
Photocasts are available as feeds but are not in and of themselves standard-compliant feeds. Further, I don't see why they need to be. I can see why it would be nice and ideal, but that is a different conversation (what Apple "should" do vs. what Apple has "failed" to do).
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
His argument is not an example of a straw man fallacy. It's an example of an ad hominem attack. Since you were wrong about the particular fallacy, your other point must also be wrong :) (That's an ad hominem attack for those of you not paying attention)
My other sig is extremely clever...
I erred in my head, I should have had 363.(63)* repeating...It's not like I was scheduling a fly-by for Saturn's moons or anything.
And a good thing, too. With an error like that instead of doing a fly-by of Saturn's moons, that gorilla would have slammed into Uranus!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Unless you're throwing all that data into a block, you'll have to use XHTML the same way the Atom specification says.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Uh dude, 800lb 366kg.
Fatter yes, leaner no.
if I break something, nobody cares if I did it through inompetence or because I thought it would be a good idea to do so
Isn't that actually the same?
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
They should be held to different standards! Microsoft is a monopoly. When they do tying is illegal, when a non-monopoly company does it is savvy business (if they pull it off). But every time someone else does it, the comparison with Microsoft surfaces even if the other company is not a monopoly (or not even a company, like Linux). You are right... The Hypocrisy IS Staggering... But is the ones doing the unfair comparison who are the hypocrites.
Addendum to my previous comment:
By "Apple," I mean the specific departments involved in the lousy extensions -- the iTunes and iPhoto people. There *are* people within Apple who understand RSS, Atom, and XML.
In case you wonder, aside from Apple-bashing, why this might be such a big deal, please consider:
.Mac subscription
1) iPhoto is part of Apple's $79 iLife suite, not part of OSX.
2) To use photocasting requires a $99
3) RSS is freekin' simple to implement and validate
So for US$170 you get RSS feeds that look like they were cobbled together by the kid in the next cubicle?
I at least expect Apple to maintain the *illusion* of quality software for premium prices.
and my original post was sarcasm!
MORTAR COMBAT!
MS is already held to a different LEGAL standard since there has been a finding of monopoly power abuse. I am talking only about technical issues re: functionality & features of an application. Tying is the bundling of applications to prevent competition and has no place in my argument. MS could completely adhere to standards and still tie the app with the OS. That is an issue of WHAT you do with the product - not how you code it.
I am not defending MS in this - I expect vendors of all types to not break things because os bad engineering. Everyone, MS included, should be pilloried for shitty coding. That is my point. I see a lot of "so what - it works for the end user" justification to avoid criticizing Apple here. The problem is that if if this goes too far then we will turn back the clock to where different vendor products will work differently enough that there will be no integration.
So how does "Violated" not equal "Broke"? Would you care to describe the exact difference or are you too busy practicing your Smug Asshole typing style?
I was wrong only in wording, not in content, your alarmist rendition of the story really did very little good for anyone as it clouded the real issue at hand.
Sicne you appear to lack the reading comprehension to understand my full post, I'll put it more simply: the onus is upon you to describe what you mean by "Violated" since it doesn't appear to do that either. I was trying to be nice to you as I realize we all make mistakes (especially you since of course you just made a doozy) but you seem rather undeserving of any pity or help at this point. So once again, where is the vilaation? Put your massive intellect to the task and let us know.
I'm waiting. We all are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's quite OK to post that really you don't understand XML or RSS and just thought you could get away with bluffing in the story post - I've been working with both for quite a long time and understand how they can be tricky to comprehend if you've not had a lot of practical experience with them. Just keep at your studies and you'll get it eventually.
It's really better if you fess up right away though as otherwise you'll just find yourself digging a deeper hole that may eventually come back to haunt you if you are looking for a job someday. The first job especially can be hard to get so you want to be careful to keep your rep clean as someone who can argue constructivley and admit when you are wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Attacking the person is relevant when the vector of attack is relevant to the topic. For instance if someone posted a long analysis of a Supreme Court ruling, it would be relevant (and not ad hominem) if I pointed out that they had been convicted twice of practicing law without a license. Qualifying the source is an integral part of critical thinking. That's not to say that the analysis itself will necessarily be wrong; but it will color how people analyze it, and how closely.
Now if the response had been something like "I don't believe Dave Winer because he is a registered Democrat", or "Dave Winer is a fat bastard who smells bad," that would be ad hominem.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
snowwrestler is not a reliable source
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It isn't something that should be fixed in the next patch, because it wasn't something that should have gotten past QA.
But since it got past QA, it should now be fixed.
All sorts of bugs get past QA. This one is pretty mild. Really.
That's a pretty harsh assesment
And pretty overblown as well.
IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.
Both obviously false.
It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997.
It's not a web browser. I clearly does not need to support all features of HTTP. The "features" he's referring to are listed as optional in the standard.
It ignores 95 per cent of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining five per cent wrong.
Again, obviously false (if it only supported 5% of RSS and Atom, and got that 5% wrong, it wouldn't even work!). It's not a general purpose RSS/Atom feed/reader. It's a specific subset relevant to photos.
The Photocast feature, for instance, uses a new element to indicate the date on which a photo was taken, even though there are already numerous alternatives that perform the same function. IPhoto, however, will not recognise the standard date elements.
The date elements referred to are US-centric and are inferior to the standard Apple uses. There is nothing wrong with doing this at all.
What Apple has done wrong is:
- A flaw in the name space.
- Lack of compatibility with all existing feeds and readers.
Essentially, it needed more testing, and a small amount of refining. I fully expect iPhoto 6.0.1 to address these issues. It's Apple's way. This is just like the iTunes 6.0.2 "spyTunes" debacle. Apple got it mostly right (it's easily turned off, they fully disclosed what the feature does, and it doesn't actually spy on you), but people wanted opt-in. So they fixed it.
Remove Apple and insert Google, MS, [Your favorite company here]
The problem is that, most of the time, Apple actually honestly tries to be compatible and honest with the consumer. They try to do "the right thing". Similarly, Google tries to "do no evil". MS doesn't really care about the right thing or about not being evil. They just care about market dominance. It's not bad to seek commercial success, but as a consumer, there's most definitely a difference when judging Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's actions.
Apple isn't 100% right, Google isn't 100% non-evil and MS isn't 100% dominant, so you will always be able to find a counter-example. The thing is, though, that those attributes describe those corporations fairly well.
NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update, if anything, it's an even greater reason to rag on Apple for releasing a broken feature.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Apple should fix it in iPhoto 6.0.1, and we should rag on Apple (although Winer isn't very good at tactful ragging--that's part of the reason we have RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and ATOM, all different, none very well designed).
In TFA, the guy says he would have been willing to sign a NDA to help Apple straighten this out before they released it.
That's weird. I'd bet that fewer than 1% of all RSS software out there sought the consultation of Dave Winer. That's not to say his advice wouldn't have likely caught these issues before iLife '06 shipped, it's just that it's a weird thing to expect to actually happen.
iPhoto 6.0.1 will probably be out shortly, and will probably fix all the actual breakage issues. So that gives us, what, perhaps a month where iPhoto photocasts don't work in some newsreaders? And some photo RSS feeds don't work in iPhoto?
That's really not that big of an issue.
Now, doing the "replace with MS" thing, MS would probably not fix it and merely expect all the RSS feeders and readers to comply with the MS standard if they want interoperability.
Of course, if Apple doesn't fix these minor errors, hand me a torch and a pitchfork and I'll join you in Cupertino. But that case would be the exception, not the rule.
No, I think you're getting things confused. According to the article title, Apple broke all the RSS. Everywhere. That blogosphere you've been hearing so much about? Gone.
Thank God. The insufferable blogwords were blogging me off blogtime. Fuck that Smurf talk, man.
The PHOTOCASTING terminology is misleading... the streams will NOT work with iTunes or iPods.. only iPhoto, and will not sync to the iPods as currently supported iPod photos or podcasts.
If apple chose to support the enclosure tag, ALL blogs and photoblogs would instantly become subscribable RSS "podcasts" meaning that iPods would become portable blog / news
I don't understand why Apple don't want to do this, other than to promote iPhoto / iLife.
Cheers,
Dylan (http://deography.com/ photoblog)
When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product.
Except that pheed and flickr have both extended RSS to add photo gallery options without violating the standard.
Try opening a photocast RSS in firefox, you actually get *redirected* to a page that says to use safari or iphoto. That is an unacceptable practice.
See for yourself
"This is isn't Apple bashing; just bashing of a stupid mistake. The RSS/XML specs aren't really that complicated. Apple is either stupid or just don't give a crap whether there[sic] stuff actually works."
And you, sir, are either stupid or just don't give a crap whether you express your ideas clearly (hence, stupid).
The article actually only says Apple breaks with common rss practice. RSS isn't a standard anyway, at best it is like html in the early days, widely adopted, but browser, or in this case feed readers, are dominating how rss should be. I don't see the harm in this, especially if RSS doesn't really do what iPhoto needs, do all browsers render pages the same? Maybe we should look at why RSS only supports one date format, and maybe re-title the article "Apple helps improve RSS" just a thought.