Technovia

Why Apple will have a Mac App Store

Given that Giles found it interesting enough to want to write a post about, it's probably worth delving a little deeper into why I believe that Apple will end up producing an online store for the Mac similar to the App Store for iPhone.

It comes down, as you might expect, to the same two reasons it works for the iPhone: convenience, and security.

A single online repository for all software is undoubtedly convenient for users. You only have to look at the number of applications on the average iPhone to see that having one place to find software makes it easier to buy. You don't have to worry about putting your credit card in, it's one click to purchase, and – importantly – you're notified of any updates automatically.

Would you want that level of convenience for the Mac? I would. In fact, one of the strengths of using Ubuntu is the repository system, which means that the majority of applications can be found under one menu item – Add/Remote Applications – and updates are pushed out whenever they're ready. It makes finding and installing software easy, and that's something most users will always go for.

The second reason why Apple will have a Mac App Store is security. “But wait,” I hear you say, “the Mac is secure. There's no malware for it. So why would you need a store to fix a problem which doesn't exist?”

The problem is that, sooner or later, the problem will exist. As “Perry the cynic” put it in a comment over at Under the Microscope:

“In a sense, the Mac is living on borrowed time - viruses and worms and other nasty bit-critters will surely come our way”

Now I can almost hear you shouting “FUD!” at the screen. This guy is obviously some fired-up Microsoft FUDster, right?

Wrong. “ Perry the cynic” is, in fact, a senior Apple engineer, who designed and implemented the code signing system in Leopard. Although – like many Apple employees – he tends to hide behind a nom de plume when posting to mailing lists and the like, I believe he is probably Perry Kiehtreibert, one of two Apple employees credited as inventors of Apple's patented method for incremental code signing.

If an Apple engineer like Perry is saying that “the Mac is living on borrowed time” when it comes to security, I tend to believe him.

In fact, the discussion over code signing was one of the things which prompted me to believe that Apple will have a Mac App Store sooner or later. Code signing isn't really much use for security unless you can use it to totally lock down a device – i.e. only applications signed by Apple (or a trusted third party) are allowed to run. And that requires, as part of its infrastructure, a central, trusted point of distribution – a store.

I'm not really going to get into whether such a store would be obligatory (it depends – but it wouldn't matter, because most people wouldn't buy from anywhere else) or whether it's a good thing overall. It's not something I would ever use, but you may find that the convenience factor and knowing that you can buy something that's 100% guaranteed malware-free is valuable to you. Personally, I value having an open platform not dominated by a single huge corporation more than buying able to buy the latest version of Worms with one click. But your mileage may vary.

If your Add/Remove applications has no applications in it, here's what to do

It looks like there's an interesting bug in the current version of Adobe Air for Linux which, if you install it, can affect the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications programme.

So, if you find that after installing Air, you have no applications at all listed in Add/Remove Apps, do this:

In terminal, type sudo update-app-install

If that doesn't work, reinstall the Add/Remove Apps application:

sudo apt-get --reinstall install gnome-app-install

This should do the trick. According to Rohit Kewlani of the Adobe Air team (posting in the above thread), this should be fixed in an upcoming Air release.

How much will the Palm Pre be?

Palm Pre Sprint’s pricing update and sales volumes » Unwired View

"The earlier quoted $399 price for Palm Pre was actually for a handset without contract on Sprint. And it is only one of the possible price points Palm is contemplating. Another one is $499 for a phone without contract. So when Palm Pre starts shipping on Sprint in summer of 2009, the actual pricing should be either $399/$149 or $499/$199 for no-contract/2-year contract Pre. However, the final decision will be based on the competitive landscape, when the next gen iPhone and Storm devices will make their appearances around that time."

If this is correct, and the Palm Pre costs $399 without a contract (about £299 in proper money), I'll get one.

Sniggering at John Dvorak is harsh, but fun

Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac - Apple 2.0:

San Francisco Examiner, John C. Dvorak, 19 Feb. 1984: "The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices."

It's a little bit unfair picking on John, as I'm sure that everyone who's ever written about technology has got at least one thing equally badly wrong. But hey, it's fun - and John's made an excellent career out of pulling no punches and hedging no bets in his writing.

Why Dave Winer is not an economist. Thankfully.

Over the weekend, Dave Winer posted a blog entry which suggested that it would be fine to pay off America's debts simply by printing money. I wouldn't normally bother responding to something like this, but Dave has a quite a bit of standing with some people, and it would worry me if no one bothered to counter what he's saying.

That's because what he's suggesting is a dangerous course, one which should only be used in the direst of emergencies, and which could potentially end up withe U.S. economy heading into Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. More importantly, to me at least, it's a path that the British goverment is reported to be considering, too.

How my computing needs affected switching to Linux

In response to my post about switching to Ubuntu Linux, Charles Arthur tweeted a question asking about my computing needs. It's a good question, because - obviously - how you use your computer will often determine your platform of choice.
My needs are pretty diverse, but largely I'm a media monkey. Text is the most important medium I generat, which means that OpenOffice is probably my most-used application. But, like most journalists, bloggers and writers I also need to mess around with images, edit the occasional video and play with sound.
On the Mac, the applications I used for these tasks were:

• Graphics: an ancient copy of Photoshop.
• Video: iMovie, although I hated the "upgrade" to 08 with a passion.
• Sound: Fission, and GarageBand for multitracking stuff.

With Ubuntu, these have been replaced with:

• Graphics: The Gimp.
• Video: Kino
• Audio: Audacity

Could I switch to Linux if, say, I was a professional video or audio editor? Probably not. For both of those tasks, specialist applications like Final Cut Pro mean that Linux isn't really an option (no doubt someone will pop up now to contradict me!) But for what I do, all the tools I need are there. Some of them (like Kino) are actually better than what i had before. And, importantly, they're free - in all the sense of the word.

Switching

You might have gathered from some of my more recent posts that I've switched platform. My main machine is now a Dell laptop, running Ubuntu 8.10.

I've been using Macs since 1986, and have owned one more or less continuously since 1989. Machines that have been through the mill of my day-to-day keyboard bashing include the Mac Plus, LC 475, PowerBook Duo, iBook and MacBook Pro. I've earned a living writing about Macs and attended more Macworld Expos than I can count.

But unless Apple has a change of direction and creates some very different machines, I think that I've probably bought my last one.

Virgin Atlantic 25th anniversary ad

This is an utterly awesome ad - well done to however did it. My only question is the same as Chris Reed's: why on Earth haven't the agency involved created an official embedded version?

Apple announces MacBook Wheel

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard The production values on this put many news programmes to shame...

Repeat after me: browsing share is not market share

How many times are we going to have to go through this? Computerworld reports that "Windows lost nearly a full percentage point of market share for the second month in a row in December". Except, of course, it's not market share.

In fact, they're "reporting" (I don't think it actually justifies that label) the Net Applications survey of Internet use, which the company itself erroneously describes as "market share". It isn't. It doesn't indicate sales, only a particular kind of usage.

And that's something Net Applications acknowledges itself, in a roundabout way. As it notes on its page on "market share" at present, "the December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage."

That's the important word, here: usage. And usage doesn't tell you much about the number of machines being sold, or the installed base. So to draw out a headline which makes it sound like the sales of Windows machines are on the wane, as Computerworld does, is either hype or sloppy journalism.

UPDATE: TUAW gets on the same bandwagon, with the same dumb headline and opening line. Look, I know that an Apple blog is going to want to say that Mac market share is "almost 10%", but reporting this without the caveat that it's not really market share AND ignoring NetApplications own warning about Windows being under-reported is either consumate spin or stupidity. Are reporters no longer supposed to look at things like this critically?