I've Got Nothing (Hypercritical 20)
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I've Got Nothing is episode 20 of Hypercritical, a show ruminating on exactly what is wrong in the world of Apple and related technologies and businesses. |
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Episode Description
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss John’s upcoming trip to WWDC, Twitter’s strange gaps in functionality (and the third-party developers determined to fill them), the sale of NetNewsWire to Black Pixel, and dealing with changes to your favorite applications.
Episode Information
Initially Released June 4, 2011
Runtime 46:01
Episode Page I've Got Nothing
Recurring Topics and Characters
Discussion
Dan is studio-less, almost homeless, and recording with a USB microphone. The horror!
John's Upcoming Trip to WWDC
- John's longest airplane flight.
- Probably going to be John's only trip to WWDC due to costs.
- Wants to see the Lion videos before Lion launches.
- John is going for pleasure, not to work for Ars Technica.
Follow Up
- Twitter annotations were announced but never shipped.
- Twitter then announced Tweet Entities which are similar to annotations.
- Is it something that only Twitter can use or can 3rd party apps or the user work with it as well?
- Why isn't Twitter integrating Tweetmarks and Tweet Library?
- Joshua Topolsky mentioned that Twitter search doesn't go back past ~5 days. Why are they not accessible?
- Similar to how Apple didn't add obvious features to OS X for a while like the clock in the menu bar and WindowShade.
- John still uses classic window layering.
NetNewsWire Sale to Black Pixel
- Black Pixel is also the company developing the 5by5 iOS app.
- NetNewsWire changed the way John used his computer and he lived in the app.
- Used single keystrokes to do most commands in the app.
- Brent Simmons let NewsGator aquire NetNewsWire to give him support with updating the software.
- For quite a while, NetNewsWire was the most popular RSS client in the world.
- NetNewsWire's iOS apps have to compete much more with other iOS RSS competitors.
- John was concerned that NetNewsWire was going to move away from his needs and more to the mainstream.
- John hopes that this means that the next version of NetNewsWire will still nestle into his workflow while introducing new features.
- If Black Pixel has more time to work on it, then that can only be good.
Dealing With Changes to Your Favorite Applications
- A user starts to get a sense of ownership of the features they use a lot.
- BBEdit and Photoshop have radically changed over the years, but they have managed their transitions very well and shepherded their user base along with them without alienating too many.
- Final Cut Pro X may be another case of this type of successful transition.
Quotes
You are the Linus Torvalds of Ars Technica.
–Dan Benjamin, to John Siracusa.
I think I can, as I usually do, turn this around and make it about me.
–John Siracusa, on the NetNewsWire acquisition.
In my pantheon of developers, there's a few little places in the Mt. Olympus of developers... And the people up there are Brent Simmons, Rich Seigel, Bruce Horn, and John Knoll.
–John Siracusa
