Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

C4 Cancelled

Wolf Renztsch has cancelled C4, his popular Apple developer conference, because he feels like he’s lost the fight:

Section 3.3.1 makes developers wholly reliant on Apple for software engineering innovation.

By itself Section 3.3.1 wasn’t enough to cause me to quit C4. I’ve weathered Apple lying to me and their never-ending series of autocratic App Store shenanigans.

But unlike previous issues such as the senseless iPhone SDK NDA, the majority of the community isn’t riled by 3.3.1. On this issue, Apple apologists have the loudest voice. They offer soothing, distracting yet fundamentally irrelevant counterpoints to Apple’s naked power-grab.

With resistance to Section 3.3.1 so scattershot and meek, it’s become clear that I haven’t made the impact I wanted with C4. It’s also clear my interests and the Apple programming community’s interests are farther apart than I had hoped.

On the one hand, I applaud this decision: a lot of us bitch loudly about Apple’s terrible business practices and then do nothing about it¹, but Renztsch is actually putting his money where his mouth is, and making a difficult decision based on nothing more than principle and ideals.

On the other hand, I can’t help but think this is the wrong way to go. C4 seems like a truly independent conference, completely separate from the propaganda swamp of Apple’s own developer events. Killing it is a bold statement, but I wonder if it’s bold enough to actually change anything: it feels like he could do more good by keeping it around, and using it as a platform for his ideals. If you want to convert developers over to your point of view, a well-respected and much-admired Mac conference seems like a really great place to do it.

Author Bio

I’m trying to write a bio for a short story I’ve got coming up, and am having the usual terrible time figuring out what to say. Here are some options:

Lapsed Cannibal splits his time between working on his perpetual stillness machine and looking for the end of Pi — where, he is given to understand, there are leprechauns. Sometimes he says the word “gastroenterologist” to himself, over and over again, because he very much enjoys the way it sounds. Occasionally he writes stories. This is one of them.

Or:

Lapsed Cannibal abandoned the sex-and-drug-addled life of a professional kazoo player to become a computer programmer, and has never looked back. He has taught himself to travel through time — but only forward through time, at normal speed. Sometimes he writes stories. This is one of them.

Or:

There is presumably some version of Lapsed Cannibal who enjoys alligator wrestling, blindfolded hand gliding, and small-island-nation-conquering, but this is not that version. This version did once put some uncomfortably spicy hot sauce on a taco, which he ate all of, but he doesn’t like to brag. He’s also written some stories about a bumbling wizard and his familiar, an invisible chair named Door. This is one of those stories.

Or:

Lapsed Cannibal recently became Dictator of English, and in that capacity will soon abolish the words “utilize”, “incentivize”, and “productize”, and then unbanish both split infinitives and sentences that end in prepositions (victims of the pitiless hegemony of Dictator Strunkenwhite). He will also introduce a new pronoun, “glubmar”, to fill the gender-neutral gulf between “him” and “her”. As in: “Hmmm, I wonder if glubmar is a boy or a girl?” He realizes that this is an ungainly pronoun, but he is Dictator, and can do what he wants. This is a story he wrote.

I could also write something accurate about myself, but my god that would be boring.

Update: Ok, I’m going to write something accurate and boring. Sigh.

iPad Hyperventilation

From the TidBITS iPad review:

In contrast, the iPad becomes the app you’re using. That’s part of the magic. The hardware is so understated – it’s just a screen, really – and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

First: Gag.

Second: if the iPad were able to, say, transform itself into a live ostrich that does your taxes for you, then I’d be prepared to call it magical. But what we’re talking about here is a beautifully-engineered, impeccably-designed tablet computer that only knows how to do one thing at a time. This is decidedly non-magical, and everybody really just needs to calm down.

The Dungeon of Hyperbole

I spent some time this evening watching iPad promotional videos, and came away seriously impressed with (a) Apple’s technical chops; (b) Apple’s design prowess; and (c) Apple’s hyperbole machine. That last in particular: nobody slings adjectives like Apple slings adjectives. Here’s a little sampling of some of the breathless modifiers one has to sit through to get a demo of this thing:

• Magical
• Stunning
• Unbelievable
• Incredible
• Phenomenal
• Unprecedented
• Extraordinary
• Gorgeous
• Amazing

And more. Much more.

I can’t imagine it’s easy to achieve this level of psychotic overstatement. They must have a small army of hyperbolizers working on it. I picture a roomful of enslaved linguists in the dungeons of 1 Infinite Loop, sitting in a dark windowless room, in two rows, chained to their desks. There’s an iPad suspended from the ceiling at the front of the room. A man stands beside the iPad, legs spread, arms akimbo, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, screaming at the assembled linguists, while an intern bangs steadily on a drum.

Feudal Lords

Lately, some Apple enthusiasts have been citing recent improvements in the App Store’s approval process as proof that the state of affairs in iPhone OS development has been getting better — and that people need to stop complaining about it. Marco makes that point in this otherwise excellent post:

But the problems keep getting fixed, and there’s very little left to complain about. Even Apple’s app-review process has dramatically improved over the last few months to be much faster and offer more detailed feedback for rejections, which eliminates or trivializes most of the problems with app review.

I don’t doubt that the process is getting better, I just think it’s besides the point. None of Apple’s process improvements change the fact that the contract under which developers operate is ridiculous. The EFF recently managed to dig up the details of that agreement, and it’s eye-opening:

App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple’s SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you’re prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia or Rock Your Phone. [Emphasis mine]

Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time.” Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.

We Never Owe You More than Fifty Bucks: Section 14 states that, no matter what, Apple will never be liable to any developer for more than $50 in damages. That’s pretty remarkable, considering that Apple holds a developer’s reputational and commercial value in its hands—it’s not as though the developer can reach its existing customers anywhere else. So if Apple botches an update, accidentally kills your app, or leaks your entire customer list to a competitor, the Agreement tries to cap you at the cost of a nice dinner for one in Cupertino.

This is what a monopoly looks like: the App Store’s feudal lords get to dictate insane/surreal/draconian/should-be-illegal terms, and — if you want to develop software for what is arguably the most exciting platform out there right now — you just have to deal with it.

It’s impossible to deny that the App Store has led to a fluorescence of innovation, and has on balance been a good thing for developers — today. But it seems to me that focussing on the current state of affairs, and effectively ignoring the havoc that Apple could wreak if they wanted to, is dangerous. Apple gets away with this shit because they can — not because it’s right.

Idealism

Ever since it became apparent that the iPad isn’t going to support Flash, John Gruber has been on a tear, throwing up post after post about Flash’s obsolescence, trying to single-handedly usher it into an early grave. And more power to him! I have no love for Flash. It’s a closed product that breaks the web in fundamental ways, overtaxes my CPU, makes online advertising even more annoying, and tempts web designers to do unseemly things.

But there is one area where Flash really is quite necessary: video. This is where Gruber has been mounting his harshest assault. His basic point is that the emerging HTML5 video standard — already supported by most browsers — is more than a capable substitute. This is true. The problem is that most sites still don’t stream HTML5 video. Flash is still, far and away, the most prevalent technology for watching stuff on the net.

Apple is going out on a limb here, dropping support for something before there are really any well-establishment substitutes. This is something they do. They were the first computer maker to drop internal floppy drives, back in 1998, and they did it before there were any good alternatives — this was the era before widely available broadband, USB sticks, cheap CD-R drives, etc. It was the right decision, if slightly premature, and the rest of the industry eventually caught up. Apple’s doing the same thing here.

I don’t really have a problem with any of this. I mean, yes, I would like to see the iPad fail, but that’s only because it’s going to be another platform for their horrible App Store. But as far as the Flash issue goes, I really can’t help but admire both Apple’s chutzpah and Gruber’s indefatigable cheerleading — because I suspect that this is at least partly an irrational decision on Apple’s part. There are good technical reasons to turn your back on Flash, but I can’t help but think that Apple’s main motivation is aesthetic: someone important in the company’s executive suite (whose name may or may not rhyme with Cleave Hobs) finds it distasteful. This is one of the things I love about Apple: aesthetics are at least as important as financials in their worldview.

Gruber’s kind of jumped the shark of late, though. He’s getting down into the weeds in recent posts, making the argument that H.264 — the proprietary, patent-encumbered video format that Safari’s HTML5 implementation supports — is preferable to its free, unencumbered-by-patent alternative, Ogg Theora. More specifically, he’s been ridiculing the Mozilla corporation for refusing to support H.264 in Firefox:

The practical effect of Mozilla’s current position will not be to drive adoption of Ogg Theora. What’s going to happen is that Safari, Chrome, and even IE9 users will be served HTML5 video, and Firefox users will get Flash.

..

So, even those using the latest version of Firefox will be treated like they’re using a legacy browser. Mozilla’s intransigence in the name of “openness” will result in Firefox users being served video using the closed Flash Player plugin, and behind the scenes the video is likely to be encoded using H.264 anyway.

I don’t disagree with the substance of what he’s saying here — the imperatives of the market really do trump open source idealism, more often than not. What boils my blood is his casual ridicule of openness — dismissively enclosed in snark quotes — in the face of market realities. This is a remarkable thing for an Apple enthusiast to say: the modern Apple would not really exist without open software. OS X is based on BSD, a free and open operating system developed in the seventies. Safari started out as KHTML, an open source Linux browser written by the good folks at KDE. Apple Mail, Aperture, and both the iPhone and iPod Touch use SQLite for data management. And there’s more: a lot more. It’s no exaggeration to say that Apple’s technology stack is predicated on openness.

The story of the modern internet is, at its core, a story about idealism: people with a passion for writing great software and sharing it freely with the rest of the world gave us the backbone of the internet, and the unprecedented, egalitarian explosion of information that it precipitated. Companies have made huge profits off of that idealism. The computer I’m typing this post on, the blog in which it will appear, and the web server that’ll distribute it, are all children of openness.

So I really admire Mozilla for sticking to its guns here. They may have to back down, eventually, but it’s nice to see someone at least trying to stand behind an idealistic commitment to the openness that built our networked world.

Epidapheles and the Insufficiently Affectionate Ocelot

I’m thrilled to say that I have a story in the latest issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s called Epidapheles and the Insufficiently Affectionate Ocelot, and it recounts the adventures of the decrepit wizard Epidapheles and his familiar, an invisible sentient chair named Door, in their quest to save a kingdom whose regent has fallen victim to an unhealthy fixation with his pet ocelot.

This is my third Epidapheles story. I started writing these things a long time ago, and they tend to arrive at the blistering pace of one every two years. The installment right before this one appeared, very unexpectedly, around the fifth week of Clarion, muscling aside a terrible case of writer’s block and introducing me to a valuable writerly strategy: jot down the most ridiculous title you can think of, and then write a story under it. It’s not a technique I’ve seen recommended in many writing books, which tend to emphasize things like “character development” and “plot structure” and “emotional honesty”, or whatever. I think ridiculous-title-based story construction is the wave of the future.

F&SF was the first magazine I ever submitted anything to, way back in the dark ages of 2003. Gordon van Gelder, the editor, sent me a very nice note explaining why that story wasn’t ready for prime time. It was my first real rejection, and I remember being very grateful to him for softening the blow.

It’s seven years later now, and I find myself grateful all over again.

The Code/Nazi Nexus

This diff is one of the most beautiful things that’s ever appeared on my monitor:

  filenameredacted.jsp (+159 -1038)

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating — there’s very little on this earth more satisfying than deleting code. It’s not the same with fiction: culling prose is like murdering your darlings; deleting code is like picking off nazis.

The Beagle and His Snow Tunnel

Mark Pilgram On Just Fucking Writing

Mark Pilgram dishes out some sage advice:

I’m a three-time (soon to be four-time) published author. When aspiring authors learn this, they invariably ask what word processor I use. It doesn’t fucking matter! I happen to write in Emacs. I also code in Emacs, which is a nice bonus. Other people write and code in vi. Other people write in Microsoft Word and code in TextMate+ or TextEdit or some fancy web-based collaborative editor like EtherPad or Google Wave. Whatever. Picking the right text editor will not make you a better writer. Writing will make you a better writer. Writing, and editing, and publishing, and listening — really listening — to what people say about your writing. This is the golden age for aspiring writers. We have a worldwide communications and distribution network where you can publish anything you want and — if you can manage to get anybody’s attention — get near-instant feedback. Writers just 20 years ago would have killed for that kind of feedback loop. Killed! And you’re asking me what word processor I use? Just fucking write, then publish, then write some more. One day your writing will get featured on a site like Reddit and you’ll go from 5 readers to 5000 in a matter of hours, and they’ll all tell you how much your writing sucks. And most of them will be right! Learn how to respond to constructive criticism and filter out the trolls, and you can write the next great American novel in edlin.

I agree with all this, of course, with one caveat: it does kind of help to use an editor that deals with plain old ASCII. The locked-down, prettied-up file formats that word processors force on us are prisons. Using plain text ensures that, if you do decide to atone for old sins by switching to edlin, it’ll be a painless transition into that pit of infinite pain.