Amazon has an Apple Store?

I didn't realilze Amazon had an Apple Store. I've always found Apple stuff there by searching on it, this is much better. Unfortunately today they are listing very few iMacs, I wonder if the supply has run out.

Incidentally, the above link is from Gruber's Daring Fireball, so if you use it and buy I think he should get the credit.
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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Using OS X 10.5 iCal with Google CalDAV - cleaning up import disasters

I don't have a rich enough vocabulary to fully express my opinion of OS X iCal. Can a worse calendar program exist anywhere or anywhen?

And yet ... Google lists iCal as one of precisely two products that will work with Google's CalDAV services. I now use CalDAV with my iPhone, and at the moment I prefer it to iPhone ActiveSync.

That's nice, but not enough to make me bother -- until a recent Google Calendar import misadventure. Google doesn't give users a way to remove all events from a Calendar without deleting the calendar. I need something more powerful than Google's anemic calendar interfaces.

I decided to give iCal CalDAV a try with Spanning Sync as my backup.

First I had to clean out the old calendars, now abandoned since I'd moved my calendaring to Google. It was easy to delete all but the Home Calendar. You can't remove the iCal Home calendar [SEE UPDATE: This was a bug, you should be able to remove it.], and there's no UI to delete all Home Calendar entries (the iCal List view, in particular, having been famously deleted in 10.5 and replaced with the bizarre "." workaround).

I tried the "search on ." method to find entries in a list view and delete them, but there were several undead entries. They returned after deletion. Besides, iCal is sickeningly slow at delete operations.

In the end I had to remove all data in iCal using the Finder:

... Navigate to the folder ~User/Library/Calendars
Delete the contents

Navigate to ~User/Library/Application Support/iCal
Delete the contents...

Once that was done I followed Google's CalDAV setup directions. I now have about five of my Google Calendars in iCal. It's a good way to view a lot of Calendar data in one place.

In early testing, things look promising. I can in fact edit and delete CalDAV entries and the changes are reflected back to Google -- at one time I believe that didn't work. Alarms, however, don't get set in Google even when they're set in iCal.

Update: The directions work for Google Apps domains as well as standard Google Accounts. See also.

Update 11/29/09: You should be able to delete your Home calendar. I found this out while setting up iCal on some of our other machines. When I right clicked on Home the Delete function was black, it had been gray on the first machine I worked with. I went back to the initial machine, my old G5 iMac, and I was able to delete it there as well. I think this was related to the "zombie" recurring appointments (dated 2002) that I couldn't remove. When I deleted all the Calendar data in the Finder I cleared up that problem -- and the problem of the unremovable "Home" calendar. The most likely cause? Permissions, of course. The OS X permissions model needs to be shot.

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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

When you can't use a signature with iPhone mail ...

The iPhone Mail.app was originally designed to work with a single account. So it had a set of preferences that made sense for a single account.

When Apple added support for multiple accounts, they did a pretty good job redoing Mail.app. Except, of course, for the preferences.

Even though I now get my business email and personal email on my iPhone, I have only one signature. Since the only thing that's common between my business and personal email is my name, there's not much use for that signature. I've removed it.

Since you don't see the signature when you compose a message, this is a bit of a subtle problem. It could even be embarrassing if, for example, your personal signature was a bit risque.

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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Why is the App Store boring and buggy?

I visit the iPhone App Store fairly often. Excluding games, most of the Apps that I look at are either dull or buggy -- and even good 3rd party apps are slow compared to Apple's apps. Even some of the apps I used to use, like Byline.app, have become unacceptably buggy. Others are clones of applications I'm currently satisfied with.

Why is this?

I'd like to know. I'll hazard some guesses.

My first guess is that the current iPhone APIs are buggy. Apple's own iPhone apps are pretty responsive and reliable, but, obviously, Apple developers have insider knowledge. Perhaps Apple can use less buggy private APIs, or knows what to avoid.

My second guess is that it's very hard to write an innovative iPhone App. You can't use Location, because there's no background API for that [Corrected thanks to a comment]. You can't mess with the Calendar, because there's no API for that. You can't do anything resembling an Apple product because your App will be rejected. Maybe the dev environment is so challenging that, in addition to the above, you have to be a real hot developer.

A contributing factor is that the non-game developer market is oddly small. For competitive reasons Adobe and Microsoft don't do iPhone development. Apple itself doesn't sell iPhone apps. Google would like to play, but Apple's effectively banned them.

If you add up all of the above, there are very few people have both the capability and the motivation to do non-game iPhone development.

So the (non-game) App store is boring and buggy.

Any other explanation?
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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Why Apple's Notes.app and Voice Memos.app are newly on my home screen

One of the design principles of the original PalmPilot was "no delays". In the time it took to get to the Newton's note pad, the PalmPilot and Palm III user would have entered their task item and put the device away.

I miss that philosophy. It takes about 30 seconds for may of my 3G iPhone 3rd party apps to accomplish simple tasks.

Apple's apps are much faster - though still not as fast as the Palm III native apps. So even though I like the 3rd party alternatives much better, Apple's Notes.app and "Voice Memos.app" are back on my home screen. The better apps are just too slow.

Google Reader: Experiments with notes, following and sharing

Google has been trying to make Official Google Blog: Google Reader and Reader Mobile more "social" -- and more Twitter-like. You can "Like" items, you can "Share" with or without a Note ("followers" see the shared items), and you can Comment on items others have Shared. When you "Like" an item Google tries to suggest similar items. More interestingly it puts you on a "Liked by" list; I use those lists to find new people to follow.

You can also inject "naked" comments into your shared item stream, and you can use the "Note in Reader" bookmarklet to create a Reader stream note on any web page. It's microbloggy-twitter-statusy-social-graph stuff.

I've been using this stuff on the standard and mobile web clients [1] for months, and it works for me. I don't have much use for Twitter, but I use my Reader Notes as a way to track ideas that might turn into blog posts, and to create an annotated repository of things I find noteworthy. That repository is searchable in Google Reader.

These notes are shared as well, but Google tells me no more than 2-3 people are following my Shared items (My wife reads them too, but as an embedded feed rather than via Reader. She's my favorite reader by far).

Whereas I'm not well "followed" (sniff) I truly enjoy reading the items shared by those I do follow, such as Jacob Reider, Thomas, Rahul, Jesse Stay and John Munro [1]. Their crowd-sourced items and notes have significantly broadened and improved the quality of my knowledge stream.

Reader gets more love than most Google products, but there are still issues. Here's a quick summary of stuff to watch out for ...

1. Features are scattered and surprising. In writing this, for example, I found a "Comment View" that shows comments on my posts -- I didn't know there was a way to see these. Sorry Rahul, I've just now appreciated your comments!
2. There's a strange intersection between Google Contacts "Groups" and the ability to "Comment" on a shared item. I don't know if it's necessary, but I added the people I "follow" to a Google Contacts Group I created called "readers".
3. When I read a shared item with a Note, I want to reshare it with a Comment. However if I add a Comment it doesn't show up in my Shared or Notes view or my shared item feed. Comments are an awkward design fit.
4. I sometimes Star items that I also Share w/ or w/o a Note. Sometimes the Starred Item shows the Note and the Noted item shows a Star, but sometimes I get separate Starred and Noted items.
5. The Mobile version of Google Reader is due for an update. It's missing several of the key features of the standard version such as "Like" and "Tweet".
6. If I read an item, I don't want to see it again. Sometimes this works, but if several of the people I follow share an item I may see it 4-5 times.

I hope Google's ADD holds off a bit and they continue to invest in Reader. At the moment it's one of their best products.

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[1] I used to read on my iPhone using "Byline", but their quality fell off a cliff about six months ago. I gave up on them.

[2] His Profile taught me how to get a "Verified Name" badge, a strong identity stake on a Google Profile. This turned out to be more than a bit odd however, so it needs another post.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: More of me: My Google Reader Shared Item Feed
• Google's confusing social graph strategy: Google reader friends via Google Chat
• Gordon's Tech: Google reader shared items to Facebook
• Gordon's Tech: Google Reader: Feed Bundles and Shared Items

Update 12/16/09: Ooops, it's wrecked. I'll give it another go in Feb 2010.

Google Profile now an OpenID URL

I’ve been using MyOpenID as an identity provider. I’ve been disappointed with their two factor authentication strategy, but I like their Persona support.

As of today, however, I’m supposed to be able to use my Google Profile, http://www.google.com/profiles/jfaughnan (note vanity ID), wherever OpenID is accepted …

Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs (Tech Crunch)

… Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.

What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your Google Profile domain…

I just tried it with Slashdot, and my credentials were accepted. Slashdot also allowed me to bind my Google OpenID to my old Slashdot account.

I have appreciated MyOpenID, but it’s hard to beat the convenience of having my Google account as an OpenID provider. If only MyOpenID had listened to to my critique of their two factor authentication procedure …