Apple becoming as bad as Microsoft with iApps

Check Mac OS X hints for a work around.

<a href="http://www.macoshints.com" target="_blank">http://www.macoshints.com</a>

So how are Apples iApps as bad as Microsoft? I'm missing your point?

this would have been better as a topic in GeniusBar, not as a rant.

Trevor,

His point is that Apple is now using their "OS monopoly" to allow preferential treatment of Apple iApps, in the way that Microsoft apps instantly activate Explorer.

Except that they don't.

System Preferences -&gt; Internet

Click on the Mail tab, set your mail app to whatever you wish... voila. ALL mail triggers(*) will now use the app you select, no matter what app it is.

* Assuming that the app doing the triggering was written according to Apple's guidelines. If, instead, it is hardwired to trigger a specific mailer application, then you're stuck.

This is nothing like what MS does, sorry. This is called playing fairly.

EDIT: Reread the original post... looks like iPhoto *doesn't* use the proper triggering guidelines. (Can't say as I've ever tried this.) My guess is that because of its OS9/Carbon background, this is one of those things they haven't gotten around to updating for X yet. Bad, BAD Apple. No biscuit.

Is this the only iApp that does this? If it is, it's a bug. If not, it's a disturbing trend. Right now it looks like a bug.

[ 12-29-2002: Message edited by: Kickaha ]</p>

Well, Mail has a hook to iChat/AIM where you can see whether someone in your mailbox is online. Look under View&gt; Columns&gt; Buddy Availability.

iPhoto feels rushed in many respects. I see this issue as being evidence of that.

[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:
<strong>iPhoto feels rushed in many respects. I see this issue as being evidence of that.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think most of the iApps are really bad, but I've been over that a long time ago. I use iView Media Pro instead of iPhoto. (and lately I've just used Photshop's built in browser).



[ 12-29-2002: Message edited by: MacLuv ]</p>

The only iApp that is great is iTunes. The rest are just so so. iCal sucks the most.

and iSync...?

iMovie is a good app, it just hasn't been updated in a while.

Yeah I think the only few apps Apple has on its side at this time is iTunes, which could use some work, and iMovie, which I have a lot of fun using, although it could be a little more powerful. Unfortunately when I paid over NZ $3000 for my eMac it was a little too much considering I'll never be able to upgrade this paperweight. This may be my last Mac and I knew that when I purchased it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA anyone who says apple is getting like microsoft has clearly never really used much from microsoft. Every product apple makes has been an utter joy for me, yet every second i spend on any pc fills me with rage due to some of the horrific crap i have to put up with. A simple bug such as not respecting your email client choice does not mean apple are becoming ms, for **** sake your hard to please its easy to overlook such a small problem especially when most people use mail because its a damn fine email program.

...He complains about an (admittedly, on my side) Microsoft-like bug(?) in iPhoto, but is himself using Outlook Express, a Microsoft product, by choice.

I think he's just looking for something to complain about.

[quote]Originally posted by Kickaha:
<strong>My guess is that because of its OS9/Carbon background, this is one of those things they haven't gotten around to updating for X yet. Bad, BAD Apple. No biscuit.</strong><hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
iPhoto? OS X ONLY
Mail? OS X ONLY

sorry, guess again...
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote][Laughing] [Laughing]
iPhoto? OS X ONLY
Mail? OS X ONLY<hr></blockquote>
Why bring up Mail--its iPhoto that has the hardwired trigger to Mail?
And iPhoto is a carbon app and technically has an OS9 background, from whence most Carbon APIs came.

[ 12-30-2002: Message edited by: cowerd ]</p>

iPhoto was one of the main reasons why i wanted to try OS X...

only after did i find out how much it sucks...

i guess this is why <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

they shoulda made an os 9 version, would have been faster...

[quote]Originally posted by cowerd:
<strong>
Why bring up Mail--its iPhoto that has the hardwired trigger to Mail?
And iPhoto is a carbon app and technically has an OS9 background, from whence most Carbon APIs came.

[ 12-30-2002: Message edited by: cowerd ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

Thank you cowerd. Paul missed the point, apparently.

Although in all fairness I will admit to having a brainfart when writing that and thinking that iPhoto was also an OS9/Carbon capable app, like iTunes. Silly me. I guess I can be forgiven though since I haven't run &lt; X in, er... four years? (Beta tested Rhapsody, I did. )

The Carbon libs at the time iPhoto was produced had some serious sharp edges when it came to inter-app workings. (They were trying to replicate Internet Config in Carbon, and clean it up at the same time... almost worked.) Cocoa's support for such is pretty sweet, and Carbon has since been pretty well fleshed out in this arena, but until iPhoto is updated, it can't use the newer Carbon libs. (Silly non-dynamically bound languages.)

So the iPhoto team likely took a shortcut to get around the Carbon problems, and it stuck. Bad Apple. No biscuit.

But of course we've all sent feedback to the bug reporting page... riiiiiiiight?

Never said you made it up. Just pointing out that you don't complain about not being able to click on a link in OE and use anything other than Explorer, while you feverishly moan about iPhoto's inability to use anything other than Mail.

sounds like a legitimate complaint to me. he has his settings, they don't work in iPhoto. Mail.app is the only option. that sucks if you don't use Mail.

-alcimedes

don't know why you're giving him a hard time. it's the same crap, just a different company.

If you're wondering why I and others are giving him a hard time just read the thread title.

This is a single app with a single design flaw that you found at a mere 1.x version.

You take this to mean that Apple is being like Microsoft in that it is using its gazillion-dollar monopolistic super-powers to bully an entire industry into using certain products? Oh please.

Thank you.

[quote]don't know why you're giving him a hard time. it's the same crap, just a different company.<hr></blockquote>You mean iPhoto opening the Mail.app is the same as shipping a non-standard java VM and then dropping platform java support, or forcing users to register a PASSPORT account to use IM, or breaking file formats from one version of PC Office to the next. We won't even get into Open Licence v6.0, or the MS-Linux FUD-fest.

If any Apple behavior has been MS-like its the whole theme issue. This is just bad coding.

A legitimate complaint is one thing, a hyperbolic comparison is another. He should have just gone straight to NAZI.

By the way, from the front page:

Digital Hub
Discussion of digital peripherals and the iApps.

So, moving now...

[quote]Apple has not released the necessary information to allow companies to make cd's that boot into OS X from the cd. (I own Norton and know how much heat they have taken for this)<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.bombich.com/mactips/bootx.html" target="_blank">http://www.bombich.com/mactips/bootx.html</A>
Symantec is either inept or lazy, or lying.

[quote]Originally posted by iBrowse:
<strong>and iSync...?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Oh ya....

iSync is practically useless to me.... I dun even consider it an iApp. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote]Originally posted by trumptman:
<strong>

Fine some more examples...

Forced migration to OS X..</strong><hr></blockquote>

What, they came to your house and put a gun to your head until you installed X? Man, talk about your personalized customer service!

Ohhhhhh, you mean how they decided that OS9 was a developmental dead end, so they aren't going to update it to run on future hardware at some point. Yeah, darn them. And darn them for not updating GS/OS to run on my B/W G3 too.

You're welcome to stick to 9 if you prefer, you know. Criminy.

[quote]<strong>Appleworks shipped with translators for all different products thanks to an agreement to Datavis. Apple issued an update that broke all these translators. Later they issued an update that put a few of them back.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Er, you mean Dataviz didn't update their translators... Dataviz had the translator market sewn up on OS7/8, then just got lazy, AFAICT. It wasn't that AppleWorks was updated, it was that the system was updated, and Dataviz didn't keep up. *NONE* of their translators worked, but they let the market just die out once they had a, oh, what's that word again... a monopoly.

[quote]<strong>Apple has repeatedly bought out smaller companies and made their technology Apple only.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Like who? The only company I can think of that's gone from cross-plat to Apple only in recent memory was... er... blast it. Video related. FCP maybe? (Come on, someone help me out here...)

They've purchased several companies and products and made them into Apple-branded products, but duh, that's what acquisitions *do*.

[quote]<strong>Apple does not require you to sign up for .mac (passport) however they terminated several free services that were advertised as part of the operating system for those who chose not to sign up. This included the mac.com email address and iDisk.</strong><hr></blockquote>

This is an admitted grey area, but one that everyone's got their own opinion on.

[quote]<strong>Apple has not released the necessary information to allow companies to make cd's that boot into OS X from the cd. (I own Norton and know how much heat they have taken for this)</strong><hr></blockquote>

Bollocks. There are command line tools to do just that. Symantec has been long known to point the finger when the going gets tough.


[quote]<strong>Apple made people pay for Quicktime Pro keys advertising it as coming with the MPEG2 codec. They then turned around and charged AGAIN for use of that codec.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Hmmm. Taking a look at <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/," target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/quicktime/,</a> it's pretty obvious that MPEG-2 is an extra product you need to buy. MPEG-*4* has been hyped all to heck, but MPEG-2 hasn't, in my experience.

And further, looking at the QuickTime Pro page, there's no mention of MPEG-2 anywhere. Nor on their 'More about QT Pro' page.

Sorry, I think this may be a case of wishful thinking. If you can point to a webpage or literature that advertises QT Pro coming with MPEG-2 playback/authoring, then you'll have a point.

[quote]<strong>Apple has refused to allow iDVD to work with anything but an internal superdrive. People and companies have offered driver support or workarounds and then had to withdraw them under legal threat because Apple wanted to sell more high end macs.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Fair cop. I'm not all that comfortable with it myself, but as a business plan it's good.

[quote]<strong>I could go on... heck I could go back to when Apple killed the clones when Motorola had a G3 clone lined up ready to sale several months before Apple did. However I think that is enough for now.

Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>

Oh please. The clones thing was a fiasco from day one... the clones were designed to *expand* the Mac market. That was a primary tenet of the contracts... but what happened was that the clones ended up cannibalizing more Mac sales than they added to the whole. They were killed off because it was a failed experiment, and the cloners were as much to blame, for going after the core market that Apple stated was theirs to protect.

So you've got .Mac as a possible point, and the iDVD authoring as a possible point... anything really substantial?

[quote]Forced migration to OS X<hr></blockquote>

I don't where to start or end on that one. You expected them to develop for OS 9 and OS X all these years after they said they wouldn't? Are they forcing existing machines to OS X? This is just either naive or dumb.

[quote]Appleworks shipped with translators for all different products thanks to an agreement to Datavis. Apple issued an update that broke all these translators. Later they issued an update that put a few of them back.<hr></blockquote>

What's so sinister about this? It was stupid, not advantageous. What did Apple gain from this? How is this abusive, save maybe the self-inflicted type?

[quote]Apple has repeatedly bought out smaller companies and made their technology Apple only.<hr></blockquote>

Fair enough except that this isn't creating or abusing any monopoly in any of those markets. Welcome to business.

[quote]Apple does not require you to sign up for .mac (passport) however they terminated several free services that were advertised as part of the operating system for those who chose not to sign up. This included the mac.com email address and iDisk.<hr></blockquote>

I've always been a bit on the fence about this, though I'm sure Apple was just doing business in the end. They offered iTools services. iTools is no more. In one sense you can get mad at them for removing features, but you can't get mad at them for creating .Mac. But I suppose the way in which they abused their position is that they carried some user accounts over from one service to the next.

[quote]Apple has not released the necessary information to allow companies to make cd's that boot into OS X from the cd. (I own Norton and know how much heat they have taken for this)<hr></blockquote>

I thought Drive 10 had a bootable X CD?

[quote]Apple made people pay for Quicktime Pro keys advertising it as coming with the MPEG2 codec. They then turned around and charged AGAIN for use of that codec.<hr></blockquote>

Undoubtably licensing issues. I don't recall what they promised or how myself so I should assume your take is accurate.

[quote]Apple has refused to allow iDVD to work with anything but an internal superdrive. People and companies have offered driver support or workarounds and then had to withdraw them under legal threat because Apple wanted to sell more high end macs.<hr></blockquote>

Lawyers. Yeck.

[quote]heck I could go back to when Apple killed the clones when Motorola had a G3 clone lined up ready to sale several months before Apple did. However I think that is enough for now.<hr></blockquote>

Well, you could, but they could also be out of business today as an alternative in that case.

[quote]Originally posted by Frank777:
<strong>Trevor,

His point is that Apple is now using their "OS monopoly" to allow preferential treatment of Apple iApps, in the way that Microsoft apps instantly activate Explorer.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Thanks for explaining that to me. I see what is meant by this topic now. Off course I dont agree 100% as the OS allows you to choose what apps you wish to use.

maybe one of the OSX gurus can help me out on this.

just to check this out, i tried to mail a file to myself.

from the "services" option i tried to mail a file to me. it oppened mail.app even though Entourage is set as my default mail program in the Internet settings.

is there some way to change this? is there a way to do it outside the command line if it's possible at all?

now, to be fair, this is exactly what people get pissed at MS for. it would be nice if Apple didn't follow in their footsteps.

Normally, yes. But iPhoto has a bug in it where it hardcodes to using Mail.

It's a bug that should be reported to Apple, and nothing more.

Now if ALL the iApps start hardcoding to each other, in the presence of app-choosing alternatives, then that'll be sticky. Mail's ability to see if that person is online with iChat isn't something I see as a hardcoded tie-in... there's no general framework for other mail apps to also tie into, or for other IM apps to publish their online buddy lists. I'd love for there to be, and perhaps if we all *hint* mail feedback to Apple *nudge* asking for this *cluex4 whack* then we may just get it.

The amount of user choice for application interaction is *huge* under OS X compared to Windows (no real choice) or Unix (lots of choice, no standards to speak of for user interaction).

[quote]Originally posted by alcimedes:
<strong>from the "services" option i tried to mail a file to me. it oppened mail.app even though Entourage is set as my default mail program in the Internet settings.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Services *too*? Frickin' frackin'... File a bug. File an avalanche of bug reports, everyone. This is not conformant with the public guidelines, and they really need to bring it up to speed. Bad BAD Apple. No biscuit, no kibble, and you're sleeping outside tonight.

EDIT: Waitaminnit, just realized something. Services are published *by the application*. Mail itself is publishing this Service suite. Technically, it is correct. Now, if Apple were to pull this Service module out into it's own little applet, and let it use the Internet Sys Prefs for Email, it'd do exactly what you expected. (And honestly what I'd hope it would do.)

File that feedback report, but now you can do so with a more informed starting point.

[ 12-30-2002: Message edited by: Kickaha ]</p>

got a link kind sir?

i check at apple under "file bug report" and got nothin'.

i'd love to though. this really needs to stop. i don't think that trumptman was out of line with his post or his comparison.

i'll see if there are any more iApps that do this....

The whole services thing never works for me. Is it just me or others having the same problems?

<a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/" target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/</a>

Head to Apple, click on the MacOS X tab, then Feedback in the Jag-u-bar.

There's even a link in the top right to go to separate iApp feedback pages. (For some of them.)

The more clearly you can state what the current problem is (the Mail service is somewhat misleading, since 'Mail' is a generic term as well as the name of the specific app, and behaviour is not as expected), and what you expect (that is should respect the setting in the Internet-&gt;Email tab in SysPrefs), and a possible solution (pull out the Mail application service into it's only module, like the others in /System/Library/Services/), the more likely they are to listen.

Likewise, send a feedback for iPhoto, stating that it should likewise respect the user settings.

Be specific.

Be clear.

Be concise.

Trust me, if you go off on a rant, their bozometer goes off, and it goes to the bottom of the pile for consideration. :/

Oh wait a *minute*... trumptman, did you really say you're using OE in *Classic* and you want it to be used by iPhoto??

Oh man... does anyone know what the state is for cross-*OS* interapp cooperation? I have a funny feeling that this may be part of the problem. Is it *just* iPhoto that does this, or do you see, say OmniWeb using Mail over the expected OE as well?

See, this may not be iPhoto after all. It may be that it can't fulfill your request (mail this) using OE because it's a Classic app, and is, instead of popping up an obscure error message, falling back to a mail client it knows it can use.

This is just speculation, but it's something to pursue.

You said you use Mozilla, which is of course going to use it's own email client if you click on a link (presumably). Try downloading OmniWeb (not IE - it may have it's own, er, *special* way of accessing a particular mail client), and see what app comes up when you click on a link. (OW definitely respects the user Email app prefs.)

If it's Mail, then it's definitely a system-wide problem, probably due to the Classic OE.

If it's OE, then the problem is iPhoto.