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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.'"
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 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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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*...
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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?
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!
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.
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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.
If this was Microsoft doing the same thing I'm sure this would have been a rant about how Microsoft is trying to strong-arm the industry to it's will and that even if there is no standard that MS should follow the current trend....
Apple fanboys are such asses.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
Well there are a lot of loose RSS validators. They are part of the problem.
For example, livejournal.com and sun's java developer RSS feeds are both invalid from an XML perspective. I can't parse sun's feed IN JAVA using the XML parser. Now thats sad. Some guy probably created a servlet (intern?) that does like out.println or something.. No validator should probably display either feed since its not XML friendly. That would mean the feed fails when the developer tests it and then this can never happen. Apple's safari implementation is VERY loose on invalid RSS feeds which in turn causes their developers to make this invalid feed. I think its safe to say apple tested it with their own browser. Wouldn't you?
Obviously, one could write their own parser for an RSS feed without relying on the fact its XML and treat it like an HTML 2.0 document. You know.. write your own parser, don't assume documents are valid.. everything XML was supposed to save us from.
I don't know about others, but when i generate XML documents I often find it difficult to know what characters are safe to escape, etc. & for example is a pain in the ass as are . If you escape them like the suggested escape for iso latin1 < then you are using an ampersand. Oh no... Sometimes parsers react to ' and " as well.
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