Fraser Speirs, the developer behind the top-shelf iPhone Flickr interface "Exposure", echoes the complaints we've heard from many developers about the iTunes App Store:

Apple requires that every single update to every app go through the same vetting process (although who knows exactly what this involves?). I submitted Exposure 1.0.1 to the App Store last Friday and, five days later, one version is "In Review". The other is still, mysteriously, "waiting for upload", even though I already did.

If Apple can't guarantee a maximum 24 hour review process, they should drop it.

Walled gardens aren't entirely without usefulness. (Yes, I said that.) There's something to be said for being able to buy a bunch of software with a single account. But the approval process to push software to the App Store isn't just slowing down updates for customers, it could also put developers and users at risk. As Speirs explains, if there were a serious security flaw in an iPhone application, an approval process of several days could be a catastrophe.

I really like the App Store, but Apple needs to invert the approval process. If a developer has shown that they've uploaded quality code in the past, they should be able to push updates with a minimum of fuss. If there's a problem later — and it appears the only problems Apple is scanning for are SDK violations — then nuke the program and the developer account.

The DRM-ladened App Store is just one of five reasons the Free Software Foundation doesn't want you to buy an iPhone. Three more points: iPhone uses and endorses DRM; the iPhone doesn't play Ogg Vorbis (really?); the iPhone isn't the only option. I have a few incidental quibbles with most of those but I get where they're coming from.

One complaint, however, is just flat out wrong: "iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge."

First of all, the iPhone OS now prompts you every time it is about to query Core Location for your coordinates. (I actually wish it wouldn't, as I think that hitting a button or opening an application built specifically around location services should be approval enough.) Secondly, iPhone applications don't run in the background, making passive tracking only possible if there were an SDK-violating application available via the iTunes App Store — ironically the walled nature of the DRM-infested App Store makes this rogue tracking software claim even less possible.

As for the iPhone exposing your whereabouts? I kind of think most people knew that already, since that's the whole point of GPS on a phone. And guess what? All cell phones now have GPS or a GPS-like tracking system inside as mandated by the federal government. Most don't give you access to that data like the iPhone does.

I hate the vetting process of the App Store quite a bit, but don't salt a perfectly reasonable argument with factually murky paranoia.

[via ★]

My replies page (twitter.com/replies) has been down for over a month. "That page doesn't exist!" Reply from Twitter: It's a bug. No duh.

Those who have played Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone basically all agree that its a cuspid-clamping affair. The merest tilt is enough to send your bubble-contained simian flying into an existentially terrifying purple vapor, Super Monkey Ball's metaphor for chimpanzee death.

So what's the deal? Why is the iPhone's accelerometer so crap at steering? An EA developer put it this way: "Think of it as a loose analog stick...you get lots of random data."

As developers have more time to figure out their various iPhone accelerometer smoothing algorithms, controls should get better (just as they did after the Wii's release), but using the accelerometer to steer or control an on-screen character is just never going to be as responsive or exact as a D-pad.

Which is fine. I think we all knew that: the iPhone is not magic. But I suspect we're going to see a gaming culture on the iPhone based more primarily around multi-touch. It's notable that the iPhone port of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is using the accelerometer only as a means to move your character to set waypoints, where you then fight in a static position using touch gestures. Very on-rails.

It'll be interesting to see how developers approach the iPhone when they have more than a few months to come up with an app: on the surface of things, the iPhone has both the advantages of a Wii and a Nintendo DS as a controller, but the roux is very watery, and there's all sorts of crap floating in it.

The iPhone is more powerful than the DS but sucks as a controller [Gizmodo]

San Francisco's government, according to reports, permitted one of its techs to create a network mastered with a single password. Then it permitted the man who knew that password to screw it over. The courts will sort out the truth — Terry Childs, the suspect, is now behind bars after refusing to disclose the password — but this is far from an isolated incident. Wired's Threat Level blog recounts some of the dumbest hacks of all time, a list that includes database deleters, login louts and other offenders.

"At least one can be thankful that when someone in the IT department goes postal, they tend to take down the mail server, not pick up an assault rifle," writes author Ryan Singel.

San Francisco Held Cyber-Hostage? Disgruntled Techies Have Wreaked Worse Havoc [Wired: Threat Level]

They very first piece of commercial Apple software — a primordial flavor of BASIC originally released in 1976 that took thirty seconds to load — has been perfectly and authoritatively extracted from a yellowing audio tape and converted into a 38 second MP3, playable in iTunes. Plucky, hyper-intelligent beardos are now dissecting the file and learning its secrets, but their findings are a bit above my head. You can read them in full at the link below. All I feel worthy of commenting upon is the song itself, which is rather catchy — a Music to Make Love To Your Old Lady By as interpreted by antediluvian 70s cyborgs.

1200 Baud Archeology: Reconstructing Apple BASIC from a Cassette Tape [Pagetable via Crunchgear]

Outside the Mattress Factory art gallery in Pittsburgh, a ruined yard resembles a locale from Ico's sun-washed and abandoned castle. Normally, the space is silent save for water trickling down a stone gulley that divides it. For the next few weeks, however, a relentless tock tock tock surrounds any who explore the area, thanks to an army of robotic woodblocks hidden in the grass. Though seemingly placed at random, they speak to one another under the command of John Conway's Game of Life, responding to neighboring calls using an simple algorithm that yields surprisingly chaotic results.

Created by artist Keny Marshall, "Crickets" will be on display throughout BigBots, Pittsburgh's summer robotics festival. More photos after the jump.

There are certain fantasies that I try to forget: cheap solar batteries in every device; a wireless, Model M clone keyboard with a Macintosh key layout but real buckling springs; that one with the octopus and I think my hair is in a bun?

And that one that Apple just triggered again with MobileMe: all my data, email, contacts, scheduling, and media accessed and synced through a single sign-on.

I signed up for the MobileMe trial on the day it was opened to the public, if only to grab my preferred username. Still, perhaps I could make the magic happen. I'd always been intrigued by .Mac, but had never been compelled to pay $100 for a service that Apple put out to pasture.

Bear in mind that I am not a heavy calendar user, although I always feel like I should be integrating more tools into my organizational system. (I recall telling a friend a few weeks ago that I read 43 Folders primarily because I liked reading about tools, not because I had any hope that I'd implement them with any discipline.)

So my needs are modest: email, which doesn't even have to be push-to-the-minute; a few appointments here and there, very infrequently added from my phone instead of at my computers; a unified list of contacts; a virtual drive for backing up important files; a place to store and share my photos.

I've found that as a heavy Google user, Mobile me is not a terribly good fit, despite owning both a Mac and an iPhone.

In the rush to be at the alphabetical beginning of the iTunes App Store list, iPhone developers are channeling the spirit animals of so many countless IRC users who have taken advantage of a few preceding exclamation points to get their #!!!cybersex channel to the top of the /list.

The problem is the iTunes App Store alphabetizing algorithm. Less reputable developers have discovered that all it takes to get an app knocked to the beginning of the list is to precede the actual title with a space. So "Aaron the Aardvark" gets knocked out of the first place in the list by Yiffy Furson Software's "_Zoobilee Zoophilia" datebook app.

But it gets better. Because apps with a space at the beginning can be bumped from the alphabetical top spot by preceding an app title with two spaces, which can then be trumped by three spaces, then four. And so on! The iTunes App Store is the battleground of a massive war of attrition in which the personnel and ordinance are replaced by a limited number of spaces, at symbols and exclamation points.

Doubtlessly, a fix will be forthcoming. In the meantime, Jirbo's Solitaire City holds onto its cherished alphabetical top spot by dint of its astonishing prologue of fifteen spaces before the application name.

Unfair Practices In The App Store [TUAW]

Short answer: No.

Long answer at Ars Technica: They can at least stop being PR wallflowers about it.

Microsoft has stayed relatively tight-lipped about the issues Vista faces. All the while, competitors like Apple have harped on problems like driver support and slow performance with nary a word from the Microsoft camp. Microsoft now admits that it should have fought back sooner. ...

With its hand forced by high-profile companies like Intel and GM refusing to upgrade, Microsoft doesn't really have a choice but to get the word out. Ars Technica's suggestions center on promoting Vista's security and the fact that for all the whining, it's sold far more copies of Vista than Apple could ever dream of shifting anything whatsoever. Finally, it needs to stop Osborning itself with all this "Windows 7" talk.

Scarily, the entire article doesn't offer a single suggestion for actually improving Vista, the operating system. A subtle insult? Or is lipstick really the only weapon Microsoft's got?

How Microsoft can turn the negative Vista PR tide [Ars]

Despite accusations of negligence, I spent the better part of the day yesterday browsing the iPhone App Store for you. The search for the best applications for your iPhone is something that I don't take lightly. I am pleased to report that the paragon of iPhone application development has been discovered. Other iPhone developers: please put your pencils down.

Masayuki Akamatsu's "Alarm Free" will wind up a modest klaxon and flashing light when it detects that the iPhone has been dropped. According to the info page, it appears that it is to be used for self-defense: simply drop your entire iPhone to distract any would be assailant; failing that, use the flashing phone to distract your attacker while you sucker punch him with a left hook.

If the free version can do all this, I can't wait to see what we'll find in the for-money version!

Alarm Free [App Store (iTunes Link)]

Consider all these cursory overviews at best, as I've just spent a few minutes with each. All testing was done over Wi-Fi, not EDGE or 3G. Most of these first applications are the ones I'm recommending. I'll be adding listings for applications I've been less impressed by later.

Each 'Price' hyperlink connects directly to the App Store page for each application.

Twitteriffic
Price: Free
Should I?: Yes

The latest build of Twitteriffic from Icon Factory adds location-aware tweeting, picture uploading, and a variety of interface options including a left-handed mode. It's giving me errors that imply my login is incorrect but is still pushing and pulling tweets. As with all things Twitter, this may be a problem with the service, not the software accessing it.

Like the free desktop version of Twitteriffic, the iPhone version has in-line ads that are nominally intrusive. If you'd like to ditch them entirely, a premium version is $10.

All-in-all a very polished application that will give Twinkle a run for its money.

Remote
Price: Free
Should I?: Yes

With a single download, Apple's official Remote software for the iPhone and iPod touch pretty much negates the need for something like the Sonos music system for most households. Remote adds an interface for controlling your computer's iTunes or an AppleTV that is nearly identical to the iPod interface on the iPhone, minus a few niceties like Cover Flow.

Album art is slurped up over the air; frames from movies being played are occasionally sent to the phone to show you what part is being watched. It's top-quality integration of various platforms.

It only works over Wi-Fi, so no turning on music at home while you're at work to confuse the dog.

Remote is going to go over great at parties. Now someone just needs to find a way to use the iPhone to dim the lights. (Expect Apple Ambiance products late 2011!)

AIM
Price: Free
Should I?: Maybe

The official AOL Instant Messenger client is a solid first entry, capable of easily bringing down lots of contacts and holding instant message conversations. It does not appear to work in the background even using the Apple messaging server that was revealed weeks ago. That's a huge disappointment, but one I expect will be remedied soon, either by AOL or a third party.

It's free, though, so no harm in slapping it up there. It is better than nothing.

Jott
Price: Free
Should I?: Wait

Jott is an interface to the free Jott.com voice-to-text service. Tap to record a short message and soon you'll have a text message inserted back into the Jott iPhone app's to-do list.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Jott app is quite ready for production. On my first attempt the message didn't come back within a couple of minutes. (This may be typical for Jott; I've never used the service before.)

Worse, when I tried to open the app later to check if my message had been delivered, the app crashed. They'll get it worked out soon, I'm sure.

Loopt
Price: Free
Should I?: Yes

A location-aware mobile service that ties into Facebook, Twitter, and other platfors, Loopt will show you not only where your other Loopt-using friends are at, but highly rated nearby restaurants. It has an easy mechanism for inviting friends to Loopt as well as determining which of your contacts are already using the service. So far I have zero friends that have accepted my invites — hrm! — but the potential for connecting with other people in the real world is going to be incredible.

One irritation: Loopt (and other applications that use location data) prompts for permission each time it accesses the GPS (or GPS-a-like services of the iPhone EDGE). I would like to grant the app a permanent proxy to that service, but it's not a huge deal.

Loopt could be a massive hit but like all social services it needs more users to become ubiquitously useful.

Super Monkey Ball
Price:: $10
Should I?: Yes

While many of the games available for iPhone 2.0 are sort of embarrassingly unpolished, Super Monkey Ball is bright, pretty, and immediately accessible. That's not to say that it's easy — I threw my poor monkey off several platforms before getting the knack, but my very cursory play (about 10 minutes) give me an inkling that I'll be rolling my monkey around with less-deadly precision in no time.

One quirk: I couldn't figure out how to get out of the play field back to the main menu without quitting the app entirely.

If nothing else, this is a good app to show off the phone to your friends. However, there doesn't appear to be a free demo, which is a shame.

Exposure
Price:: Free
Should I?: Yes

Fraser Spiers' Exposure is a mobile gateway to Flickr, with full access to your contacts' photos, nearby images based on geotagging, and complete search of the Flickr library from your phone. It's the best mobile interface to Flickr I've ever seen. And it's free, although ad-supported. A $10 version called "Exposure Premium" comes without ads, but frankly I didn't find the ads in the free version to be distracting at all.

Essential for Flickr users.

Midomi
Price:: Free
Should I?: Yes

Midomi lets you hum a song into the iPhone (10 seconds or more is best), then tries to match that snippet with a real song. I just hummed the only song that is ever on my mind — Kelly Clarkson's masterpiece "Since U Been Gone" — and was presented with a selection of options for the correctly identified song in seconds, including links to buy it on iTunes or options to watch it on the iPhone's built-in YouTube viewer.

What would be an amusing trick in a web browser is an impressive and handy application on a mobile phone. It's totally free — and a total hoot. Get this one immediately. (I expect it won't be quite as instant over EDGE, but on 3G it should be fine. Also, the first time I tried Midomi the app stalled out on me, but it appears to be working fine now.)
More coming, but I wanted to get these going. Please chime in with your discoveries!

"To do? Meet Todo."

("How do you do?")

One of the delicious new freebies in the iPhone 2.0 software update: a lovely little app that will turn your iPhone or iPod touch into a remote control for your Apple TV or within iTunes. It works over WiFi and even hoovers up the cover art or preview image of what you want to play. The Shuffle-like Apple remote magnetically attached to the side of my monitor seems so quaint now.

Got an iPhone? Fire up iTunes and take a look. You'll need iTunes 7.7.

Bart Decrem, perhaps best known as the founder and CEO of Flock, the social fork of the Firefox web browser, talked to us earlier today about Tapulous — a wholly new company that's building iPhone and iPod Touch applications. He's showing off the first three applications from Tapulous: Friend Book; Tap Tap Revenge; and Twinkle.

Friend Book
Friend Book is an application that adds much-needed functionality to the default iPhone address book. Decrem called it a sort of "super Address Book" which adds visual "face dialer" that lets you call by clicking from a gallery of contact images, check for duplicate contacts, and more easily manage deletion and addition of contacts right on the phone.

The coolest feature without a doubt is the new "Handshake": put two iPhones running Friend Book together, shake them up and down, and the personal contact information of the phones' owners will be beamed through the net to the paired phones. Handshake doesn't work through a device-to-device connection, but instead passes location data back to Tapulous' servers — two shaking phones in the same location means it's time to swap information.

Tap Tap Revenge
A popular game on jailbroken iPhones has been Tap Tap Revolution by Nate True, with over 700,000 downloads via Installer.app. Tapulous has hired True as a contractor to revamp TTR as "Tap Tap Revenge," an updated version of the rhythm game. It's got a refreshed interface, custom high-score leaderboards (that can update to Twitter via Twinkle), and an all new two-player simultaneous mode.

It addition to the previous three-pronged tap interface, Tap Tap Revenge now also monitors the iPhone for shaking, adding an additional input for rhythm gaming.

Twinkle
Twinkle made a name for itself as the Twitter client that also captured location data as it passed along tweets. Now Tapulous will be selling the latest version of Twinkle via the App Store.

Here's the most interesting thing, though: You can use Twinkle without a Twitter account. It seems Twinkle is just one of many Tapulous applications that will be connected via Tapulous's account servers; it sounds like they're making a play to do some social networking on the iPhone using their apps as a foot-in-the-door. I don't know how much success they'll have, especially in light of the soon-to-be dozens of other location-aware social networking applications to hit the iPhone this Friday, but even if it only remains a nice way to pass data around within Tapulous-branded apps it could be a useful addition.

The first three Tapulous applications will be available Friday with the launch of the App Store and the iPhone 2.0 firmware. Decrem says we should expect many more from Tapulous soon — over thirty half-a-dozen* are in the pipe already.

On price: "The apps will be available for free on launch," says Decrem, "with premium editions and exclusive content for sale in the not too distant future."

* I misheard that when talking to Decrem earlier. While there were about thirty-or-so apps from the Tapulous family of programmers on Installer.app before, not all of them are being polished up for release.

Update: Mike Lee, Chief Architect at Tapulous, has a cheerful post about shipping their first three apps. Apparently the current version of the iPhone SDK doesn't allow access to the iTunes song library on the phone.

Ryan Paul at Ars Technica takes a walk through the OpenMoko smartphone platform, a Linux-based system that is not obviated by Google's Android, he claims:

There are a lot of very significant differences between OpenMoko's software stacks and Google's upcoming Android platform. Android takes a more top-down approach and completely eschews native code. Android offers one standardized Java-based API and One True Way to integrate with its platform. Google's approach vastly simplifies development and neatly avoids fragmentation and portability problems, but it also imposes extreme constraints on flexibility, isolates Android-based phones from the existing Linux software ecosystem, and obscures a lot of the inherent strengths of a Linux-based platform. By comparison, OpenMoko's software enthusiastically embraces the power and diversity of Linux but does so at a high cost in performance, consistency, reliability, and ease of development.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who get excited by seeing a terminal prompt on their phone and those who find it as appealing as a car with a transparant hood. Neither is more right than the other, but I'm afraid I'm drifting into the latter camp these days.

First Look: OpenMoko's Linux-based open smartphone platform [ArsTechnica.com]

XBMC is the best media center platform I've ever used. Originally developed for Microsoft's Xbox (and where I first used it), the free media center software stood out as one of the few open-source and free software projects to truly exceed both the capability and user experience of commercial projects. XBMC was — and is — as easy to use as any neutered media center platform like AppleTV or the Roku Netflix box but just as capable with behind-the-curtain magic as anything from Sony or Microsoft.

Then it was ported to the Mac. And that was good, as the original Xbox hardware was getting long in the tooth.

Now XBMC for Mac has been rebranded "Plex". I like it. It's snappy and memorable.

But what I like even better is this gorgeous theme skin called "Aeon" for Plex, spotted by Crunchgear's Nick Deleon. Granted, it's the cover art that makes it all really hang together, but it all looks fantastic. It almost makes me wish I needed a media center application; these days I'm just clicking on files with my keyboard and mouse. Plus my media and gaming desktop is running Vista, not OSX. (That will probably be changing by the end of the year.)

Announcing Plex [OSXBMC.com via Crunchgear]

Update: XBMC Project Manager Andreas Setterlind writes in to correct some of my mistakes:

XBMC (at the xbmc.org website) is and always will be the original upstream version of XBMC (and forks like Plex, Boxee, and MediaPortal will probably always continue to copy code updates from the original XBMC, same as we do from them if they implement a new feature or function that we like, that is the nature of open source).

Now to the recent history and reason of OSXBMC being renamed to PLEX; Elan Fieldgold, as then a Team-XBMC developer member, originally ported XBMC for Linux to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard later forked away from XBMC and called his fork OSXBMC (I will not go into details but the fork was due to development practice differences), Elan and Team-XBMC at that time agreed that it would then be best if he renamed it from OSXBMC to something else as Team-XBMC plan on continuing our version of XBMC for Mac to avoid the confusion from having two Mac OS X version out there with "XBMC" in the name. Now almost months later Elan has announced that the new name of OSXBMC is Plex, and that a new domain will be followed soon called plexsquared.com.

Andreas' whole email clears up a lot of the confusion; I've pasted the whole thing after the jump.

In China, Hello Kitty will play the adorable nurse to your anthropomorphic computer with Hello Kitty brand anti-virus software. Why is the influential feline icon of cute playing Florence Nightingale to your computer? It could be she felt responsible for this particularly nasty strain of digital influenza which carries her likeness.

Hello Kitty Antivirus and Firewall Software [Kitty Hell via Gizmodo]

Openmoko's Neo FreeRunner, an open-source cellphone that weds freely-available CAD plans with custom-cut Linux software and beefy specs, is now yours for $400 at its online store.

Though it lacks 3G data, it has 128MB of RAM, 256MB of flash, a 2.8" 480x640-pixel touchscreen display, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, aGPS and motion sensors.

Product page [Openmoko via Wired: Gadget Lab

Apple has filed a patent for a new multi-touch gesture language that will allows us program gestures into our computers. Similar to the zoom and rotate gestures currently programmed into the iPhone and MacBook multi-touch touchpads, the new patent describes a Sign Language for touch screens, which uses a minimum of twenty five chords, thirty one combinations and thirteen different motions to tell the OS what it is you want to do. Additionally, the patent specififies the Control, Alt, Shift and Command keys as modifiers.

The patent itself is very interesting, but what is most fascinating to me is that it seems like Apple's getting serious about not only touchscreen phones and iPods, but computers as well. This patent has "touchscreen iMac" written all over it. I wouldn't be surprised if they announce one sooner rather than later.

Apple wants to teach us multi-touch gesture language [Unwired View]

While endless Eee-caliber mini-notebooks tumble to market, most looking like tiny idiot clones of the iBook, the question remains when Apple will jump into the fray. The answer, for various reasons, is probably never, or optimistically "no time soon." But the good news for Mac fans is that the trusty MSI Wind — currently the best-of-breed in the mini-note pageant — can apparently be hacked fairly easily to run OS X. This isn't so unusual, and the usual trouble spots remain: resolution and WiFi aren't adjustable yet. But with so much progress made on getting Leopard running before the Wind is officially released, MSI's little 10-incher is looking like a good investment for the OS X aficionado.

OS X on MSI Wind [Insanely Mac]

Some of us own Macs so that we may compute in peace, away from the old world of tweaking unstable monster gaming PCs. Get back off the wagon with this Mac overclocking utility from ZDNet. Soon, there will doubtless be benchmarking software too, so that human-imperceptible performance differentials may be measured.

It's also a bit amusing how ZDNet reports something it did as an "exclusive." If you didn't get the exclusive, guys, something would have been very wrong.

Exclusive: ZDNet overclocking tool enhances performance of Mac Pro via Gadget Lab

Intel's decided to stick with Windows XP, skipping Vista until the next edition of Windows comes steaming out of Ballmer's pores. The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian sums up the issue:

"When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says get stuffed, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows MS has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a black and white way though. Reassuring, like a warm cup of tea, or a public kick to the corporate crown jewels.

His conclusion: "Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines... ever."

Intel won't touch Vista [Inquirer]

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer offers an example of the kind of missive Gates fires off "nearly every day..."

---- Original Message ----

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

You may stop emailing this in now.

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant [seattlepi via
techdirt et al]

Here at Boing Boing Gadgets, we leave the foaming rants about the uselessness of MIDs to Beschizza, who can't post about one without hunting down a gazelle, ripping out its throat with his teeth and smearing its blood all over his pasty British torso while screaming and staring directly into the sun. Suffice to say, Joel and I feel similarly about them, without all the festering primal rage: Beschizza can be our avatar in this.

With that said, Canonical has quietly released their own MID-specific version of Hardy Heron for mobile internet devices. The big features include a Gecko-based browser with screen zooming for tiny displays and the usual, lovely Linux OS, optimized for all current and last generation Intel MID chipsets. If you've got a McCaslin or Menlow-based MID, you can download it now. It looks great, though doubtless that's simply because they seem to have jettisoned the merconium-brown default color scheme for this release.

Ubuntu MID Edition [Ubuntu]

When you use iTunes, please don't use it to make weapons of mass destruction, guide your nuclear missiles or inject a highly-virulent, 21st century bio-plague into the heartland of America. A EULA clause prohibits...

…including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture, or production of nuclear missiles or chemical or biological weapons.

But it's okay to use iTunes to save lives, right? No.

The Apple software is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, life support machines, or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.

Music of Mass Destruction [Freakonomics via, image the Apple Blog]