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The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

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Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#11

Post by mullr »

Wilya wrote: post #10
JacksonGariety wrote: post #4

Feed readers are dead. Not at all feeds themselves, but the process of using a reader like mail to pull in feeds to a desktop app is going out the window. When consumers buy products, they should be able to look into the future. If you choose technology that is a bit behind the times, understand that you should be careful before upgrading, as old features are often cut from Apple products. This happened in every indu…

That's a pretty gratuitous assumption that you're making. And I don't see what the "good reason" is. Let's face it, they just dropped a feature that people were using, without clear upgrade path. Few people were using it ? Maybe. That doesn't make it a good decision, only (at best) a sad but necessary compromise. Frankly, a feed reader that is already there, and works, needs next to zero maintenance. It's not like RS…

But a feed reader inside another program that IS changing does indeed require maintenance. Even just testing to make sure it still works isn't free. It also adds complexity to the user interface.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#12

Post by sonnenkiste »

They also kicked the web-Sharing configuration. :( I got to work and wondered why my localhost did not respond. I installed mountain lion the night before. so I thought I have to re-enable websharing but couldn't found the confit anymore. After some googling I got the answer: it has moved to a so called "Server" App for round about $20. It provides many things I didn't use ... and the "old" websharing. :/ Remember Steve's promo quote? "it just works" ... the new one should be: "it just worked before"

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#13

Post by bstar77 »

Apple removed rss from Mail because it was pretty crappy. Anyone interested in RSS should hit the appstore and snag one of many RSS readers that blows Apple's offering off the planet. When I discovered Reeder I knew my browsing habits would change forever, it's that much better.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#14

Post by shpoonj »

If you don't like a product, don't use it.

If you don't properly research a product, don't complain about its features.

Do some research next time.

Take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming others.

These are elementary principles.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#15

Post by to3m »

signalsignal wrote: post #6

I don't understand what the article is about. Is she trolling for page views? I don't understand why she considers herself "violated" by Apple. Don't people make backups anymore?

I guess it's because Apple removed a useful feature, with no reasonable upgrade path, even if you do have your old data?

I could have written a similar article about the upgrade to Xcode 4 - but, because I'm a relative newcomer to this whole Apple "thing", perhaps I'm just more acutely aware how useless it would be, if I told anybody apart from Apple about this (radar bugs: 11405857, 11252538, 11207936, 10985344, 10779669, 10596415, 10596323, 9624250), because you just don't get any sympathy. And I didn't even use Xcode Interface Builder plugins!

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#16

Post by Tloewald »

shpoonj wrote: post #14

If you don't like a product, don't use it. If you don't properly research a product, don't complain about its features. Do some research next time. Take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming others. These are elementary principles.

Speaking as someone who finds RSS to be useless (having tried all kinds of ways to consume it) and knew support had been dropped from ML, I think you're being condescending. It's not like apple advertises unfeatures on its product page. I would have no problem if RSS support were hidden by default for people not obviously using it, but this is pretty stupid. apple has gone from shoving RSS down our throats (default crap in Safari, etc.) to not supporting it at all with no warning for typical users.

Doesn't affect me, but it's stupid.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#17

Post by rauljara »

I do think Apple was right to remove support for their crappy reader. In any domain where you have tons of options (like rss readers) I'd rather have no feature than a poorly executed one. No feature means I'll go out and get a good version of it. A poorly executed feature (especially from apple) means I'll probably put up with it longer than I should.

However, given that they were going about destroying access to user's data (the collection of rss feeds), I think the classy move would have been to run a script on install that checks if the user is subscribed to any feeds. If they are, export them into a well formatted file on the desktop, and give the user an alert through that highly touted new alert system, and give them a link to the app store that searches for rss readers that can receive the exported file. They'd get to introduce a bunch of new features that they seem to be very proud of, and they wouldn't destroy[1] a user's access to their own data. Which does seem like a pretty big deal to me.

[1]Yes, I know she was able to access her data eventually. That seemed like an unacceptably difficult process to go through for the sort of users Apple is trying to appeal to.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#18

Post by jakejake »

jws wrote: post #8

We've found the only user in the world that used RSS in Mail! I feel a bond, as I was apparently the only user of RSS in Safari. (as confirmed by informal polling of friends and family). I moved my stuff into Google Reader and also went to Reeder on the Mac, but tried Newsify on the iOS devices and have to say that a custom newspaper is a much better experience than the hundred takes on master-detail drill down you f…

I guess I'm still hanging on to old tech too. I likes rss in mail because I leave mail open all day and use several feeds more as a notification system. Now I have to remember to open another app and leave it open all day as well which is annoying.

I understand somebody has written a plugin to add rss back to safari. I'm kinda hoping somebody does the same for mail.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#19

Post by javajosh »

bstar77 wrote: post #13

Apple removed rss from Mail because it was pretty crappy. Anyone interested in RSS should hit the appstore and snag one of many RSS readers that blows Apple's offering off the planet. When I discovered Reeder I knew my browsing habits would change forever, it's that much better.

Yes, but this misses the point: An OS upgrade hosed her data. Only the fact that she is (apparently) a small minority prevents this from being a big deal, a fact which itself sort of concerns me.

Re: The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

#20

Post by sonnenkiste »

mullr wrote: post #11
Wilya wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty gratuitous assumption that you're making. And I don't see what the "good reason" is. Let's face it, they just dropped a feature that people were using, without clear upgrade path. Few people were using it ? Maybe. That doesn't make it a good decision, only (at best) a sad but necessary compromise. Frankly, a feed reader that is already there, and works, needs next to zero maintenance. It's not like RS…

But a feed reader inside another program that IS changing does indeed require maintenance. Even just testing to make sure it still works isn't free. It also adds complexity to the user interface.

To remove something is ok. But you should clearly inform the user and give him the possibility to easy get his data back and really cool would be to provide a solution for the now existing problem. Maybe to point him to an App Download. Just dropping a feature without any response is bad practice.
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