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.'"

Comments

But. But.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's Apple! They wouldn't intentionally break something. This is clearly a mistake and not a malicious move.

- Apple Apologist #8845125

Standards? Who needs standards!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the problem with companies and just randomly breaking standards? If they really need/want to make their own format then why even bother trying to follow a standard in the first place? Embrace and screw up! Woohoo.

Apple now like M$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Apple now becoming evil like M$, in terms of embracing and extending? Sadly I think so. First they take BSD and make it proprietary, now this. Combine this with their bizarre DRM restrictions with the new Intel computers, and the general suckiness of iTunes DRM, and I think we can safely say there's a new threat in town.

The emperor has issued the order

[saboola]

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).

Re:Apple XML Challenged

[hunterx11]

Apparently you aren't the only person who dislikes Apple's use of XML, as the lameness filter doesn't seem to like SGML tags, I converted them to whitespace which hopefully shouldn't be too confusing.

<key>1000</key>
<dict>
key Track ID /key integer 1000 /integer
key Name /key string So What /string
key Artist /key string Miles Davis /string
key Album /key string Kind of Blue /string
key Genre /key string Jazz /string
key Kind /key string AAC audio file /string
key Size /key integer 18124218 /integer
key Total Time /key integer 565381 /integer
key Disc Number /key integer 1 /integer
key Disc Count /key integer 1 /integer
key Track Number /key integer 1 /integer
key Track Count /key integer 6 /integer
key Year /key integer 1959 /integer
key Date Modified /key date 2004-08-17T22:45:07Z /date
key Date Added /key date 2004-08-13T02:07:28Z /date
key Bit Rate /key integer 256 /integer
key Sample Rate /key integer 44100 /integer
key Play Count /key integer 1 /integer
key Play Date /key integer -1074420431 /integer
key Play Date UTC /key date 2006-01-20T02:21:05Z /date
key Persistent ID /key string F93F2F6B566C2E25 /string
key Track Type /key string File /string
key File Type /key integer 1295270176 /integer
key File Creator /key integer 1752133483 /integer
key Location /key string file://localhost/Users/christophermeyer/Music/iTun es/iTunes%20Music/Miles%20Davis/Kind%20of%20Blue/0 1%20So%20What.m4a /string
key File Folder Count /key integer 4 /integer
key Library Folder Count /key integer 1 /integer
</dict>

There are certainly valid complaints about Apple property lists (like how keys and values are associated sequentially instead of being enclosed in a parent tag), but I think it's pretty reasonable. And property lists can be saved in a binary form too (or converted with plutil), and iTunes keeps a binary copy.