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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.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
...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.
Perhaps Microsoft can send them a few developers to help out? Together, I'm sure they can really mess it all up :)
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[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*...
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
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?
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!
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
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
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
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."
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>.
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.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Let's all call it "Apple Simple Syndication (ASS)" and see what happens.
rewriting history since 2109
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
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.
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".
"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.
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.
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
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 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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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
Hello, everybody! See my strawman here?
I was going to moderate you but decided to reply instead.
His past comments and recommendations have no bearing on what Apple did - i.e., not adhere to a standard in one of their implementations.
You could go on blaming him and finding fault (well, it's an Apple discussion, who expected anything else), but it doesn't change anything. How do his opinions and past comments change what Apple has done?
It does not, and these kinda strawman arguments don't change a damn thing.
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.