Simon Willison’s Weblog

Programmers don’t use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. They use it because it yields the best results. By obstructing that process, Apple is making them do bad work, and programmers hate that as much as Apple would.

— Paul Graham # 19th November 2009, 10:13 pm

This is very interesting technology. But that Adobe would go to this length suggests that they suspect that Apple will never allow the Flash runtime on the iPhone.

— John Gruber # 6th October 2009, 7:33 am

Look at Sony, or Microsoft, or Google, or anyone. They still don’t get it. They’re still out there talking about chips, or features, or whatever. Or now they’re all hot for design. But they think design means making pretty objects. It doesn’t. It means making a system of pieces that all work together seamlessly. It’s not about calling attention to the technology. It’s about making the technology invisible.

— Fake Steve Jobs # 28th September 2009, 10:40 pm

Developing for the iPhone at the moment is like picking up dimes in front of a bulldozer.

— Tim Bray # 21st September 2009, 5:30 pm

When we get the tools to do distributed Twitter, etc., we get the tools to communicate in stanzas richer than those allowed by our decades-old email clients. Never mind Apple being anti-competitive, social networks are the peak of monopolistic behaviour today.

— Blaine Cook # 13th August 2009, 1:06 pm

Unlike progressive downloads, HTTP Live Streaming actually does stream content in real time, although there can be a latency of as much as 30 seconds. [...] the content to be broadcast is encoded into an MPEG transport stream and chopped into segments that are around ten seconds long. Rather than getting a continuous stream of new data over RTSP, the new protocol simply asks for the first couple clips, then asks for additional clips as needed. This works great through firewalls, and doesn’t require any special servers because any standard web server can deliver the chopped up video segments.

— Prince McLean # 9th July 2009, 12:52 pm

Perhaps it’s just frustration speaking here, but when Apple ties my hands behind my back and lets users punch me publicly in the face without allowing me to at least respond back, it’s hard to get excited about building an app.

— Garrett Murray # 22nd April 2009, 12:17 pm

The App Store has an inscrutable, time-consuming, whim-dependent approval process. The App Store newsgroup postings are full of angry claims that this is a bug, but I bet it’s a feature. If you can’t get an app approved until it’s working perfectly, and you have to wait a week or two -- or more -- between approval rounds, you’re much more likely to put a lot more effort in up front to get it right.

— Marc Hedlund # 12th April 2009, 1:49 pm

I can’t question that [the App Store] is probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies.

— Steven Frank # 17th August 2008, 11:15 pm

Using the patent application as a guide, Apple appears to be making room on the iPhone for flash memory, which means an end to Apple’s standoff with Adobe (ADBE) that’s kept iPhones from easily viewing a plethora of Internet videos.

— Ben Charny # 6th June 2008, 9:08 pm

The strain due to the fact that most business desktops are locked into the Microsoft platform, at a time when both the Apple and GNU/Linux alternatives are qualitatively safer, better, and cheaper to operate, will start to become impossible to ignore.

— Tim Bray # 3rd January 2008, 1:08 pm

The companies that couldn’t beat Microsoft have all died, and evolution has resulted in three very different types of companies that are each immune to Microsoft’s strategies in their own way. Yet all are still vulnerable to the same thing: a better product. For the end users, this is a good position for the industry to be in.

— Ian Hickson # 6th December 2007, 3:43 pm

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

— Steve Jobs # 17th October 2007, 6:04 pm

I thought the big draw for Apple hardware was that “It Just Works.” By breaking it, you must know you’re giving up the “Just Works” factor, so what’s left? Rounded corners?

— Mark Pilgrim # 5th October 2007, 4:32 pm

For any song you already own on CD, Apple is asking you to pay three times for it in order to use it as a ringtone on your iPhone: once for the CD you’ve already purchased, again to buy a needless duplicate of the track from the iTunes Store, and a third time to generate the ringtone.

— John Gruber # 14th September 2007, 8:15 am