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The Internet Businesses Apple

Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting 270

Posted by Zonk from the watch-where-you're-putting-those-tags dept.
Barry Norton writes "VNUNet reports that the Photocasting feature in Apple's iPhoto application violates core XML and RSS standards. Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong. Dave Winer, essentially the creator of RSS, says, 'It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace.'"
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Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting More

Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting

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  • RSS Validation Utility? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:25AM (#14519458) Journal
    I know there are plenty of RSS Validation tools out there that will go to a website and tell you whether or not the RSS Feed is valid based on current standards but what about for applications?

    What does Dave Winer (or anyone who works with RSS daily) recommend we use to validate applications and websites? What's the best tool to quickly and efficiently evaluate our work in parsing and assembling RSS?

    I've used nifty tools like XML Spy for validating XML and XSD forms and I was wondering if there is an equivalent for RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 formats.

    • Re:RSS Validation Utility? (Score:5, Informative)

      by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:29AM (#14519492) Homepage Journal
      The source code for FeedValidator [feedvalidator.org] is freely available on SourceForge [sourceforge.net]

    • Re:RSS Validation Utility? (Score:4, Funny)

      by GoodOmens ( 904827 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:40AM (#14519593) Homepage
      Well I'm going to lose some sleep tonight over this :-(

    • Technically, validation in the context of markup languages refers to checking the syntax of a document to ensure that it conforms to the specification. So you can't meaningfully "validate" an application.

      If I understand you correctly, what you are looking for are testcases - sample documents intended to test whether an application understands the format correctly. The feed validator that GeorgeH linked to not only contains a validator that checks documents, but also numerous testcases to check applica

    • ' Load up the src doc
      Set srcDoc = CreateObject("MSXML.DOMDocument")
      If Not srcDoc.load("C:\temp\try.xml") Then
      WScript.StdErr.WriteLine "Could not load source document"
      WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Error: " & Trim(srcDoc.parseError.reason)
      WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Line: " & Trim(srcDoc.parseError.line)
      WScript.StdErr.WriteLine vbTab & "Char: " & Trim(srcDoc.p

  • Wow, a 1.0 release is buggy? This has never happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chriss ( 26574 ) * <chriss@memomo.net> on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:26AM (#14519462) Homepage

    This is stupid. And false. To quote TFU:

    Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.

    and

    But early tests showed that the feature fails to work with some feed readers because it deviates from common RSS practices.

    Apple fucked up the implementation of photocasting. Technically they didn't break it, but didn't use it in a way some feed readers expected. This seems to be the result of incompetence, not an attempt to create their own proprietary RSS version.

    This looks like a case of a 1.0 version. Common wisdom is that commercial software sucks before 2.0. iPhoto 1.0 was dog slow when you had more than a coupe of hundreds of pictures in your library. Aperture 1.0 messed up some image correction parameters. All this was fixed in the following releases. Open Source software avoids this by staying below 1.0 for a decade. Since Steve Jobs made a big point about photocasting being compatible with existing readers during the MacExpo keynote and there being no sign of intended "embrace and extend", we can assume that this will fixed with the next iPhoto update.

    Nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report. Please move along.

    • Re:Wow, a 1.0 release is buggy? This has never hap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:37AM (#14519560) Journal
      Ummm... This isn't Apple bashing.

      The guy is just bashing a product that doesn't work like all the others.

      Remove Apple and insert Google, MS, [Your favorite company here]
      Since Steve Jobs made a big point about photocasting being compatible with existing readers during the MacExpo keynote and there being no sign of intended "embrace and extend", we can assume that this will fixed with the next iPhoto update.
      NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update, if anything, it's an even greater reason to rag on Apple for releasing a broken feature.

      In TFA, the guy says he would have been willing to sign a NDA to help Apple straighten this out before they released it.

      You seem to be a bit touchy this morning. To much coffee?

      • Re:Wow, a 1.0 release is buggy? This has never hap (Score:5, Insightful)

        by chriss ( 26574 ) * <chriss@memomo.net> on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:02PM (#14519778) Homepage
        You seem to be a bit touchy this morning. To much coffee?

        Coffee? Me? NEVER! Pepsi, actually. But I think this is not really related to my caffein level. I keep it at a very high level, so my brain adapted.

        It's about the header: Apple Breaks RSS with Photocasting. I read it, but sort of didn't believe, because this would be contrary to Apples former behavior. So I read the article, which is somewhat sensational by itself, but in the end gives the clear impression that this about a bad implementation, not about an intended design. Barry Norton took the most sensational parts of the article, added some conspiracy and got it posted on slashdot

        So maybe the thing I should be really annoyed about is me still being naive and believing that there is a connection between a sensational post on slashdot and reality. Unfortunately, sometimes there is, so I wont simply stop reading slashdot.

        BTW, I agree with you that Apple should not have delivered an unfinished version. But I'm not surprised they did. Maybe they didn't realize it, because it works with most RSS readers (the article says some readers don't work). If the post would be titled "Apples Photocasting incompatible with some RSS readers" I would have simply ignored it. But most likely it would never have been posted on slashdot in the first place. Bad "journalism" works.

      • NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update

        I don't understand. Why would you not want this fixed?
        • My point was that he shouldn't be taking the mindset that releasing a broken feature is okay & can be fixed in the next update/patch cycle.

          It isn't something that should be fixed in the next patch, because it wasn't something that should have gotten past QA.

          "IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.

          "It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997. It

    • It would seem the problem is more with RSS readers in this particular case, more so than it is with Apple and Apple's implementation.

      If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem. The same should hold true for RSS readers. They have to be developed in a way to deal with bad data, and if they aren't then they are a low-quality software product.

      Does anyone have a list of the readers which were affecte

      • Re:A problem with the readers or with Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Nope, that's what got us to the point of such pain in HTML. What makes XML great is that if it's not to spec, it's rejected by the reader, etc.

        Really, authoring to XML specs is very easy -- even when you're, say, scripting out (in which case it's trivial).

        The way to handle bad data is to say, "Whatever you requested is not working at the moment." Not attempt to divine the intent of the author through crufty and broken xml.

      • Re:A problem with the readers or with Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:16PM (#14519927)

        If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem.

        Please don't speak for anybody but yourself. Having to handle whatever garbage is thrown its way is one of the reasons why alternative browsers have such a difficult time rendering all websites "properly".

        It's a big problem, it works not unlike an arms war - as soon as the most popular browser understands a particular type of garbage, the others have to race to catch up. It's completely unnecessary work. So the authors of the XML specification required all XML parsers to immediately stop parsing upon encountering garbage, to ensure that another "arms race" doesn't happen in future.

        Postel's Law only works when both sides of the equation are balanced. The producers on the web have made it perfectly clear time and time again that they are not willing to take care with what they produce. So attempting to be liberal in what is accepted is a losing strategy, because you just have to work more and more just to stay in the same place.

        RSS is a format based on XML. As such, no, RSS readers should not work in the same way as browser tag soup parsers, otherwise we'll have exactly the same situation we have with HTML all over again.

      • That settles it.

        Apple fanatics will find an excuse for ANYTHING apple does.

        Sorry for the flamebait, but it's true... every time I see something written about Apple doing something wrong... and they do... they spin it around to look like it's someone elses fault, or it's just plain good.

        With users like that, Apple really doesn't need a PR department.
      • It would seem the problem is more with RSS readers in this particular case, more so than it is with Apple and Apple's implementation.

        If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem.

        When it's IE not following CSS specs, it's Microsoft's fault. When iPhoto doesn't follow RSS specs it's all the readers' faults?

    • Re:Wow, a 1.0 release is buggy? This has never hap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:38AM (#14519567)

      Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.

      RSS is XML. As such, processors need to conform to the XML specifications. iPhoto doesn't do this, it gets various things wrong, such as not requiring documents to be well-formed, and ballsing up namespaces.

      While it's true that RSS allows you to introduce your own element types via namespaces, that doesn't give you leeway to do whatever the hell you want and call it 'RSS'.

    • Open Source software avoids this by staying below 1.0 for a decade.

      HOW, exactly, does that FIX the problem?

      Naming really is arbitrary and ceremonial. Whether it's called 1.0 or 0.5.4.6, if it's released at the same point in development it's released at the same point in development.

      That's like saying "I'm not going to name my kid until he's toilet trained."
    • This is isn't Apple bashing; just bashing of a stupid mistake. The RSS/XML specs aren't really that complicated. Apple is either stupid or just don't give a crap whether there stuff actually works.
    • My (extremely limited, so please correct me where necessary here) understanding of RSS is that the "ungoverned by a standards body" thing doesn't mean "you're free to do whatever you want, go hog wild", it means "you may extend this standard as you see fit". Moreover, as far as I know, the method by which RSS is to be extended is very specific. The impression I had was that there is a base standard, and you could define specific extensions for your nonstandard features.

      When you actually listen to what the g

    • Re:Wow, a 1.0 release is buggy? This has never hap (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sporkmonger ( 922923 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:19PM (#14519959) Homepage
      Nonsense. RSS doesn't have to be governed by a standards body for Apple's actions to be "wrong." The spec can be found at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss [harvard.edu] quite easily. And there's nothing stopping Apple from visiting http://feedvalidator.org/ [feedvalidator.org] to make sure their code works. They clearly didn't bother to do that.

      This isn't Apple bashing either. Many of the people who are most upset about this, myself included, are diehard Apple users.

      Apple screwed up photocasting, pure and simple. And they screwed up their podcasting spec too by releasing poorly designed specs (and I'm being generous here by calling their first attempt a "spec") and then changing things later. And they've made processing of some of their elements amazingly difficult. For instance, the itunes:keywords element can either be delimitted by commas or spaces. There's nothing in the xml itself to indicate for sure which you're dealing with, you just have to guess. Check if there's a comma present, if so, split by commas, otherwise, split by spaces. But what happens if they meant to use the single keyword "bad apple" instead of "bad", "apple"? There's no way to know for sure. The whole point of a spec is to avoid this kind of rediculous imprecision.

      So yeah, Apple doesn't seem to have the first clue about generating valid RSS or XML any of that stuff. And all they had to do was ask. Secrecy is not always your best friend.
    • Open Source software avoids this by staying below 1.0 for a decade.

      Oh, please. Pre-1.0 is so last millennium. Beta is the new hotness now.

      It's Web 2.0 baby - get on the bus!

    • "This looks like a case of a 1.0 version. Common wisdom is that commercial software sucks before 2.0. iPhoto 1.0 was dog slow when you had more than a coupe of hundreds of pictures in your library. Aperture 1.0 messed up some image correction parameters."

      Version 2.0 of Apple's audio and video conversion too, Compressor, sucks worse than version 1.0 [apple.com].
    • "Nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report. Please move along."

      Nice, if Apple fucks up, reporting it is "nothing to be seen here besides another sensational Apple bashing report".

      If Microsoft fucks up, reporting it is "literally saving the world from the evil Micro$oft OMG! OMG!"

      Sigh, if you don't want the objective truth, fine, but some want it.
    • This seems to be the result of incompetence, not an attempt to create their own proprietary RSS version.

      I'm reluctant to attribute incompetence to anything that can be as easily attributed to premature release (for sales/marketing reasons).

      I have little doubt an Apple developer is saying "Yup, it isn't finished, and it's a piece of crap. I know it, but I had twenty minutes until we started stamping CD's. I've got it patched, but it won't be released for a few weeks."

      In other words, I'm reluctant to blame

  • Instead of assuming the worst... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:26AM (#14519465)
    ...and throwing up our arms and collectively running around like chickens with our heads cut off as if we're helpless to do anything, which is what seems like everyone is doing in the context of this 'OMG! Apple breaks RSS!' brouhaha, since Apple prides itself on embracing open standards when possible, why not simply report these as bugs and presume they will be fixed, since Apple, you know, is fairly responsive to community concerns [yahoo.com] and actually likes fixing these sorts of problems that tend to break things for everyone?[1]

    - http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html [apple.com]
    - http://bugreport.apple.com/ [apple.com] (trackable, but requires free Apple Developer Connection account [apple.com])

    [1] Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. [...] anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.
    • I've always liked the collective-chicken-flailing thing. Meh, to each his own I guess. You go on and be rational if that suits you.
    • since Apple prides itself on embracing open standards when possible, why not simply report these as bugs and presume they will be fixed

      Maybe they will be.

      And maybe Apple will finally properly implement the ID3V2 tag standards -- they use a non-compliant tag (TCMP is not a valid ID3V2 tag, and they use it on all "compilation" albums; there are many other tags that could be used instead and still comply with the standard) in all of their implementations and their ID3V2.4 implementation is completely fucked.

      An

  • I doubt they're trying to be malicious. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:27AM (#14519475)
    This sounds far more like a case of them trying to rush the the product out. As often happens in such situtations, the quality of the product can suffer. This doesn't strike me as a malicious action in any way.

    I wouldn't be surprised if these issues were fixed by an update in the near future. Of course, some may question if the software should have been released in the first place, but regardless, it has already been released. Considering Apple's goodwill towards the community, I'm quite confident that these problems will be resolved promptly.

    • This sounds far more like a case of them trying to rush the the product out.

      I would tend to agree, except...

      Apple managed to get the "hard" part (the actual content) reasonably correct, while screwing up the container.

      And what hellaciously complex container did they need to get right? XML!!! Not exactly rocket surgery.

      Thus, looking at this and calling it an honest mistake takes a certain degree of suspention-of-disbelief. Like a kid in a spelling bee getting "kroxyldiffific" right, blowing it on

  • Microsoft to the rescue? (Score:5, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:28AM (#14519485) Homepage
    Perhaps Microsoft can send them a few developers to help out? Together, I'm sure they can really mess it all up :)

  • Summary of TFA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:28AM (#14519490) Journal
    "Assuming that [Apple's] intentions are good, and they're not trying to kill RSS, why don't they put some of us under [a non-disclosure agreement] and let us help them get the bugs out before they ship," he suggested.

    Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.
    Summary: Whoever coded iPhoto farked up, but they can fix it.

  • Apple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kris_lang ( 466170 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:30AM (#14519504)
    Hmm, I'll have to check this out on my box when possible. Maybe Apple is finally getting big enough, with its large iPod base, to think it's morphing into a 366 Kg gorilla and that it can start its own extensions, much like MS tried to break Java. But then again, maybe it was careless unchecked buggy prototype code that was released into the wild. Either way, it shows a carelessness and thoughtlessness that shouldn't be coming out of apple products. This saddens me since I've been an Apple fanatic since the ][+ .

    • Re:Apple (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lpangelrob ( 714473 )
      No, it shouldn't, so most likely someone's getting fired. Not using a validator to check one's own code? I suppose most corporate sites get away with that (along with being IE only), but software developers shouldn't.

      Probably will see iPhoto 6.0.1 around the corner, in the meantime.

    • Re:Apple (Score:4, Funny)

      by greginnj ( 891863 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:46AM (#14519636) Homepage Journal
      I was about to compliment you for your metric conversion, then decided to see for myself to guess at your source, but...

      800 pounds = 362.873896 kilograms [google.com]

      Correct to 6 decimal places is funny; being off by more than 3 kg isn't... Use the power of Google [google.com], people!

      • brain cell misfire: add more caffeine, try again. (Score:5, Funny)

        by kris_lang ( 466170 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:53AM (#14519694)
        damn, i used my brain cells with 2.2 pounds ~ 1.0 Kg,
        so that made it 800 lbs / 2.2 or kinda 400 / 1.1,
        1 over 11 is 9.090909..., so its 360+3.6+.36, so oops
        I erred in my head, I should have had 363.(63)* repeating, which would have been DAMN closer. Damn the power of brainware. Who taught this AI system??? But hey, it was just a side-bar in a comment, and close enough is close enough for a commentary. It's not like I was scheduling a fly-by for Saturn's moons or anything.

        Or perhaps Apple's diet made it a little leaner, yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. I was commenting on how it STILL is not quite a complete 800 lb gorilla. Yeah, that's what I meant!
        • No, not Saturn, not even a Mars lander... :) Cool, no problem, glad you took it well ... what makes it even funnier was that the subject was 'lack of proper validation' and you were going on about "it shows a carelessness and thoughtlessness" which was what made me think that you'd gone to Google in the first place...

          Time for more coffee. For us both.

  • Jumping the gun (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ithika ( 703697 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:31AM (#14519510) Homepage
    Just about every single comment so far has been berating other commenters for "Apple bashing" and automatically assuming that this was done intentionally and maliciously.

    Methinks they prostest *too much*...

  • Do it right baby, yeah! (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:31AM (#14519513)
    Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.

    Maybe someone should send them a copy of 'The Joy of Sex?'

  • I find this odd... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by scolby ( 838499 )
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Safari the only browser that passes the Acid2 standards test? Odd that they would put the effort in to make their browser standards compliant, then not bother making something like Photocasting standards compliant. Was this intentional, or did they just nerf it up?
    • They stopped publishing their wordprocessor's XML file format because it was getting nutty, and they refuse to support OpenDocument so far. It seems that they're just not very good at the whole 'XML' thing.

      It's a shame, because the original XML format they had for the wordprocessor was apparently pretty reasonable. Maybe they lost their XML experts or something.
    • Konqueror 3.5 passes the Acid2 test.
    • My guess is that Photocasting was probably implemented by different actual people than those who are on the Safari team.

  • Apple XML Challenged (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baavgai ( 598847 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:36AM (#14519559) Homepage
    Not real surprising. I was all excited that iTunes had an XML export facility for the library, until I saw it.

    I'd expected to apply some kind of transformation to the document to make it suit my needs, but this was tragic. It was painfully obvious that whoever wrote the export didn't even remotely "get" it. It was some horrid hodgepodge of tags all slapped together around what amounted to a CVS dump. It was well formed, basically useless as an XML document.

    I'd have been happier is the export was a simple delimited file or even a binary dump, at least it would have been smaller.

    RSS fubar? Yep, they still have the same people doing their XML. Let hope this makes them rethink that...
    • I was going to post a longer example from by iTunes library, but this is all that i could squeeze past the lameness filter. Basically as the parent said, its quite annoying to try to translate to other more usable formats. ...
      <dict>
      <key>115</key>
      <dict>
      <key>Track ID</key><integer>115</integer>
      <key>Name</key><string>Violently Happy</string>
      <key>Artist</key><string>Björk</string> ...
    • I was all excited that iTunes had an XML export facility for the library, until I saw it.

      Yeah, it's an amazingly crappy XML format -- it's a wonderful example of what not to do with XML.

      That said, it's in plist xml format -- if you can find a library that knows how to deal with plists (in XML), then you're set. Any decent library will transform it into something more useful. I found a decent plist parser for python [shearersoftware.com] that works on top of SAX. I'm still playing around with it, but it's a lot less work than rei

  • Winer is not a reliable source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:38AM (#14519570) Homepage Journal
    One thing it's important to understand is that Dave "by name and by nature" Winer has had a grudge against Apple ever since they shipped AppleScript, which made his enormously overpriced Userland Frontier Mac scripting system irrelevant overnight. That's why he tried to reinvent it as a web application platform.

    Of course, Winer knows all about incompatible changes to standards. His RSS 0.91 was gratuitously and completely incompatible with the RSS 0.9--that was invented by Netscape, not him. And that was just the start--look at the Wikipedia article on RSS to see how Winer deliberately broke the standards process time and time again.

    As to Apple's intentions, it should be noted that they've published DTDs and namespace declarations for their podcasting extensions to RSS implemented in iTunes. I assume they'll do the same for iPhoto, and they just haven't gotten around to it yet. As for bugs in date format, report 'em and see if they get fixed before assuming it's deliberate.
    • I assume they'll do the same for iPhoto, and they just haven't gotten around to it yet.

      Winer, whom you gratuitously insult petty name-calling in your post may actually have a grudge -- or not. You, however, come off sounding like an apologist for Apple for things you admit you only assume to be true.

      If Apple is going to do this, they should have done it already.

      • Sorry, but I'm in a fun mood this lunch break:
        If Apple is going to do this, they should have done it already.
        This is an interesting philosophy. Can you tell me why I should not extend this to "If they are going to build a building over there, they should have done it already?" or something equally strange when confusing the requisite temporal sequencing of intent and execution?
    • Well put. There is a story here, but because its Dave Winer as its source, its completely untrustworthy. Maybe some more sober-minded people will do an analysis and we'll hear more from Apple, but in the meantime I'd trust Winer's objectivity as much as Scott McClellan's.
    • Another thing it is important to understand is that metamatic appears to have had a grudge against Winer since at least June 15, 2004 [slashdot.org].

      So here it is not surprising that he has chosen to attack Winer rather than evaluate the merit of Winer's statements.

      Oh yeah, if you are reading Dave--thanks for RSS and OPML :-)

      • I never used Dave's software, so it didn't matter to me at all when he suddenly increased the price from $0 to $900 a year. So no grudge at all.

        If you really want to see my first publically posted criticism of Dave Winer and his software pricing, you'll have to go back to at least 1992 [google.com]. Nice try, though.

        Perhaps you missed the bit about how Dave Winer did not in fact invent RSS--he co-opted Netscape's invention and pretended it was his own.

        I guess he has sycophants, just like he has enemies. I just think he' [xciv.org]
  • WTF is wrong with you people? It's Apple we're talking about here! This is version 1.0, these differences in interpretation of the "standard"* are just some bugs, caused by single person who had a bad day! Nothing to see here, please move along.

    *There's no agency which governs RSS, so it's not really a standard anyway.

  • From the perspective of an RSS neophyte (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yardbird ( 165009 ) * on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:39AM (#14519578) Homepage
    I happen to have RSS on the brain at the moment, since I just this week implemented RSS 2.0 for my personal webpage. The comments on the linked articles mostly go like this:

    - It works for me!
    - It doesn't matter that it works for you; it violates standards!
    - But there are no standards for RSS!
    - Are too!

    and so on.

    For a counterpoint, check out this blog entry:

    http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/01/18/Photoc asting-Hyperbole/ [intertwingly.net]

    The whole flap is quite a learning experience if you're interested in RSS.

  • one word... (Score:2, Funny)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 )
    OOPS
  • The only information from the article is that the photo date is not in a place that would have been better for it - what about the Photocasting breaks XML standards though? That's a bigger deal it seems to me as it could blow a feed reader right out of the water if it's expecting valid XML. Or was that a mistake on the part of the story poster?

    Also I have to wonder if there are "multiple ways to attach a date" how all those mutliple ways got there, and if some of them shouldn't be there either.
    • Or was that a mistake on the part of the story poster?
      Not me - I got it from the quoted source. I believe that relates to the namespacing issue touched on there...
      • The story quoted someone saying Apple "knew nothing about XML" - like you I assume by not using a namespace for the date element. However that is quite a different matter than "breaking" XML. It's still perfectly readable and usable and parsable without a namespace, it's just not using the same convention as other RSS sections.

        You must be very careful when submitting stories with the distinction between "broken" and "badly designed". "Broken" means if I point an XML parser at it I mat get an unreadable d
  • promptnews: "Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions."

    This is the part of the article that really killed the title of it. Apple is not cheating on the RSS standard, they are just changing it to suit their own views. Although I see that what Apple has done will upset many people because of a lack of compatibility, I still wonder about what they have done. Apple di

  • We're Apple (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:47AM (#14519651)
    this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.

    Hey, we're Apple! Whatever we do is by definition Right. Now go change the standard to conform.

  • oh noes! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
    It's RSS... not something more important like DNS or whatever.

    Who cares if they have their own spin on it. People with compliant RSS readers will be able to see other compliant feeds.

    It isn't like Apple is the ONLY source of RSS feeds.

    I dunno, I've been out of the "hip tech" for a while, is Apple the only place to get an RSS feed?

    Tom

  • What about iTunes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ase ( 39429 )
    Apple just release its updated specifications for iTunes and Podcasting. Are there similar breaks with respect to RSS 2.0? If so, then perhaps Apple is in fact changing their approach. If not, then perhaps the Photocasting situation is not necessarily the result of evil intentions.

  • New Standard (Score:5, Funny)

    by JustOK ( 667959 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:01PM (#14519765) Journal
    Let's all call it "Apple Simple Syndication (ASS)" and see what happens.
  • From the article:

    ""We use industry standard RSS so that anyone can subscribe. You do not even need a Mac," he told delegates at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.

    But early tests showed that the feature fails to work with some feed readers because it deviates from common RSS practices."

    This honestly sounds like the developers just got really lazy and didn't bother to check their code. Apple always says they embrace open source, and work with a lot of open source items. Odds are that they fi

  • Doesn't surprise me... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grouchofan ( 921134 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:07PM (#14519817) Homepage
    Apple has always been more about making a big splash in the media with some technology than about releasing something solid and fully tested. This is the sort of thing that should have been found in beta testing [mikesalsbury.com], but then Apple's never been too big on doing that because it might spoil their "one more thing" at the next Steve Jobs keynote. Better to fix it after it's in the wild [mikesalsbury.com] than risk a leak to the media. I'm not the only one [sjgames.com] questioning their quality control. There are lots of others [insideapple.com]. Just look at the mess they've made of font management in OS X [mikesalsbury.com]. It's causing graphic designers no end of problems. The really bad part of this is that the kind of people who'll be using this application will be less-technical users who won't know why violating these standards is a bad thing and wouldn't be able to fix it if they did know. For a company that once had the best quality control and the best operating system, they've sure gone downhill. Sadly, Apple isn't learning the right lesson because their sales (thanks largely due to the iPod) are doing well and the Mac Faithful seem willing to live with the flaws just because "it's a Mac".

  • Crackers and cheese, anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kronocide ( 209440 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:14PM (#14519890) Homepage Journal
    "It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace," said Winer.

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:20PM (#14519962) Homepage
    Did I miss something or did that article have basically no content? It didn't outline the actual problem - it just said there was one and, boy, it was sure terrible! It seems unlikely to me that Apple would try to destroy RSS as they've spent a considerable effort in building Safari into a nice and simple RSS reader. I think they know how to do it. Perhaps it's just a case of that feature having been rushed into iPhoto with an upcoming patch that might clean things up a bit. That is, assuming it's actually got a serious problem to begin with. Hard to tell.

  • Watch where you put that hyperbole... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Max Nugget ( 581772 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:20PM (#14519966)
    Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.

    Yeah, seriously. I, for one, am outraged that Apple has merely made mistakes in implementation, and is not making deliberate attempts to hijack an open standard. It just doesn't get any worse than that.

  • Nooo! (Score:2, Funny)

    by zqad ( 612317 )
    Why did you betray us Steve? We used to read that specification together..

  • [Developer to Steve Jobs]: The new iPhoto allows us to exchange information between users.

    [SJ]: How does it work?

    [D]: Well it is a bit like RSS.

    [SJ to World]: iPhoto use RSS.

    [D]: Shit.

    Anyone who has done developement probably been in this situation where you learn from the press release or sales pitch that you apperently coded feature X or used standard Y and now you got all weekend to make it happen.

    Presuming no evil intentions this looks a lot like a developer was tasked with adding something that t

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