Thoughts & Stuff

The Solution to Movie Piracy

Hey Hollywood, I have a secret to share with you. I think you’ll really like it. It’s how you can put a dent in piracy, in one easy step!

See, here’s the thing. Most people pirate movies because they can get around the bullshit, like this, or this. See, people want your media, and most are willing to pay you for it. But when you make consuming your content such a pain in the ass that it’s easier for a potential customer to just log on to The Pirate Bay and steal your movie, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

This is something the music industry understands (thanks to some prodding from Apple), and is why we have such wonderful services like iTunes and AmazonMP3. There is nothing like that for movies right now. Yes, both iTunes and Amazon have movie download services, but the selection sucks, and it’s ridden with DRM. 

Fighting piracy by pushing our government to pass rights-infringing censorship policies is not the best way to get people to like you. Sure it might curb piracy, but all those people will probably be so enraged with your stupidity, that they won’t give you a penny, ever. So…not really a win, is it?

For an industry that’s hellbent on destroying evil pirates, you’re completely overlooking the easiest solution to all your problems: make accessing your content easier! Drop DRM, don’t force people to wait 2 months just to rent your movies, drop all that limited availability bullshit, and embrace digital distribution and streaming by putting all your movies up for digital download. 

I know, it’s a big scary world out there, but it will all be fine. Giving your customers what they want isn’t going to bring about the end of civilization. Everything will be perfectly fine. Your customers will get what they want, and they’ll be giving you money for it. That’s how business works. 

Now, I am not a pirate. I have never pirated a movie, because I don’t think it’s right to do that. That being said, if I buy a movie on BluRay or DVD, I reserve the right to do whatever I can to find ways around your DRM and rip that movie to my computer for personal use. I’ve never shared my rips, and I don’t ever plan on it. 

So, get over yourselves, take a deep breath, and embrace change.

Launchpad

It’s been around half a year since Lion was unleashed upon the world, and honestly I thought I had written about why I hate Launchpad before. Evidentially I did not, because all I could dig up was this gem. I feel it basically glazes the whole issue.

My first criticism comes from the fact that it’s very similar to what Microsoft is trying to do by shoehorning Metro into Windows 8. The Launchpad UI is obviously based on the iOS Springboard, which is designed for a touch interface. It just isn’t as intuitive to use with a cursor. What’s the worst thing about it? To delete apps, you do the exact same thing you do to delete apps on iOS, except for the fact that you do it with a mouse instead of your finger, which makes it very…awkward to say the least. 

Secondly, it shows every .app package on your hard drive (or SSD, depending on how you roll), even if it’s in the dock, which is displayed alongside Launchpad. On iOS, you can’t have an app in the dock and on one of your home screen pages. If they’re trying to imitate iOS with this feature, then why overlook something so mind-numbingly obvious? In addition, if your app came with an uninstaller, that will also show up in Launchpad, but that’s a minor annoyance compared to the dock thing.

Thirdly, and this is technically more a criticism of the Mac App Store, Launchpad should not be shoved in your face when you make a purchase from the Mac App Store. I understand what Apple is trying to do, they’re trying to get people to think of Launchpad as the home for their apps. It could be great for new users who are just getting Macs after using an iPhone or iPad. Unfortunately for the rest of us, for the past 10+ years of OS X we’ve been trained that applications go in the Applications folder. No matter the level of tech-savvy people I know have demonstrated, they all have that simple fact ingrained in their heads, so thank you Apple for confusing my grandmother. 

And finally, the bugs. Even putting all my other criticisms aside, the bugs completely destroy the UX of Launchpad. And they’re not just minor bugs, like icons turning upside down. This one bug, that has not been fixed in the 2 updates since Lion’s release is…all your carefully arranged icons move by themselves. You expect iPhoto to be the second app on the 3rd row? Not today! Because Launchpad decided that iPhoto should be on the next row, second from the last icon. Don’t bother arranging your icons because they will be in whatever random order Launchpad decides they will be in. And whatever possible usefulness this feature may have had is basically dead until this is fixed. 

So in short, Launchpad is buggy, doesn’t act the way you’d expect it to, breaks the established norm of OS X and it’s just not conducive to a point-and-click interface. Honestly, Launchpad feels like something they tacked on. In some ways it reminds me of the original Front Row, which was absolute garbage. Perhaps we’ll see Launchpad’s issues resolved in Mac OS X 10.8, but thats at least another year and a half away, so hopefully we’ll see some fixes that will at least make Launchpad somewhat usable.

Or even better, maybe they’ll give us the ability to turn it off completely. 

Developers, Developers…

Ok, when is Intuit just going to throw in the towel and stop making Mac software? It’s clear they have absolutely no desire to, they just do it to make a little extra cash on the side. Their flagship product, Quicken, hasn’t been updated for Mac since 2007 (and now doesn’t even work well on Lion). Today they listed their half-assed version, Quicken Essentials for Mac, on the Mac App Store. They were extremely anxious to let potential buyers know, “this is not a new release of Quicken Essentials for Mac.”

Honestly, I never used Quicken. There are so many Mac-friendly alternatives that, unless you absolutely have to use Quicken for some reason, you would be stupid to keep using Quicken for Mac. iBank is one that get’s a lot of recommendations.

It’s quite depressing to see Mac users get tossed aside by many companies that seem to still think we’re in the 90’s. And when PC developers do make their product for the Mac, it’s usually a half-assed concession, as if to say “hey you guys wanted our software for your stupid computer? Here ya go! We may nor may not continue to update it. Enjoy!” Yes, it’s better than nothing, but it’s also rather patronizing.

Cider is another thing that really pissed me off. When Macs switched to Intel CPUs, a company called Transgaming discovered it would be rather trivial to make a wrapper for Windows games (using an open-source Windows compatibility layer, called WINE) and sell it to game developers to make “Mac games”. What they failed to mention was that these games take a pretty hefty performance hit, because WINE…err…I mean Cider is translating the Windows code on-the-fly to something the Mac OS X APIs can understand. 

Electronic Arts is a company that used Cider for a time. It seemed like a miracle, instead of waiting months for Aspyr to make a native port of The Sims, we would get a far inferior version of the game wrapped in WINE. 

Adobe is probably the best in terms of large, multi-platform developers. But even they can’t seem to get it right. They hardly ever fix glaring bugs until the next major release, and they’re always behind on Apple technologies. Their apps weren’t even Cocoa apps (therefore could not be Intel-compatible) until they released brand new version over a year after the first Intel Macs started shipping (I don’t even want to know how Photoshop ran under PowerPC emulation). 

Then there are tools like Adobe Air that are supposed to make cross-platform development easier. Wether you’re a Windows or Mac user, you should find these tools insulting, because it’s impossible to build a tool like that and let the developer use platform-specfic features. A program built with Adobe Air has to function with the lowest common denominator when it comes to platform features, and visual style. 

Fortunately we have some great, smaller developers who give great care in crafting the best software they can for the Mac platform, and I am always happy to support them, and their apps.

Open Letter to the Food Industry

Dear Mainstream Food Industry,

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to make food entirely with ingredients the layman can pronounce. Instead of filling our food with chemicals like preservatives and other nasty things, which do a wonder to keep food from going bad, but also do a number on the bodies of the people for which this food is intended. 

For example, with my lunch today I had some potato chips. Normally I tend to steer clear from these flakes of mostly cholesterol and salt, but these are different. They have no cholesterol, and very little salt. They’re also made of potatoes, canola oil, and salt. Thats it! Now if you look at the mainstream variety of potato chips, you’ve got a whole checklist of things.

What the hell is “desodium phosphate”? 

So how about this, instead of poisoning your customers (the phrase “bite the hand that feeds you” comes to mind), why not use all natural ingredients? If you’re feeling extra ambitious, why not go completely organic? Yes, natural foods are more expensive, but that’s because there are only a handful of smaller companies producing this stuff. If you, the mainstream food industry, were to jump on the all-natural bandwagon, healthy food will be affordable for many more people. 

While I’m at it, I want to say how much of a blight fast food and chemical sweeteners are on society. Those are the two worst food phenomena I can imagine. So bad, that honestly they should be illegal. Fast food is the main cause of obesity and associated health problems, and chemical sweeteners cause cancer. Sounds wonderful!

So, the point is, stop poisoning America, and the rest of your customers around the world. Make real food. It’s not that hard.

Sincerely,
Concerned World Citizen

Apple Packaging

I had an interesting thought this morning. Next to my dresser, I have a small stack of Apple boxes (MacBook Pro, iPad, Apple wireless keyboard) which I kind of looked at for a while. 

I realized just how far Apple has come in making their packaging more efficient. It used to be monstrous. I remember my first iPod came in a giant cardboard cube that could have held 5 iPods. My first Apple laptop  (the 12” PowerBook G4) came in such an enormous box they could have fit another 2 laptops in there. 

Hell, before Leopard, Mac OS X (actually, all of Apple’s  software) shipped in boxes that we’re about the size of the boxes iPads come in today. Each box had around 1 to 6 disks, depending on the format (CD or DVD) and software you were buying. Still, even for 6 disks a box that size was overkill.

The first Apple product I bought that came in anything resembling efficient packaging, was the 1st generation iPod Nano. It was tightly packed in its little box, but it wasn’t really up to par with what we have today.

Obviously, Apple does it to save money on materials and shipping. The only question is; why not do this sooner? I think it’s odd considering Steve Jobs was a stickler for making things as small as physically possible. There’s an interesting story regarding that about the first iPod.

From what I’ve read, evidently during a meeting Steve was meeting with some engineers about the first iPod, and he was shown a prototype. He took the prototype and dropped into a fish tank, saw bubbles some out and said “you can make this smaller”. I probably butchered that story, but I’m sure you get the gist of it.

You could argue that Steve didn’t really care about the packaging, but if you’ve read the biography, you know that the packaging was always very important to him. So why package Apple products in boxes that could hold 3 more of the same thing? I have no idea. What are your thoughts?