Rants Archives

  1. On Reinstating Pete Rose

    I’m starting to see rumblings about Pete Rose’s potential reinstatement and a “he’s suffered enough” sentiment. I frankly just don’t get it. There are clear consequences stated for betting on baseball. Every player knows them. Baseball Rule 21 (emphasis mine): Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum…

  2. Siri, Still Not a Competent Digital Assistant

    So I tried Siri again today. I figured maybe it had improved since I tried it last a year or so ago. Me: What is a good place for lunch between here and {my destination}? Siri: This restaurant is near you: {restaurant info} (double-check, uh yep, that isn’t on the way – it’s actually in…

  3. An Open Letter to Email Client Developers

    Dear Email Client Developers, If you allow your users to send an email with more than 10 email addresses visible in the TO or CC lines without throwing up a warning that says: Hey, this is a bad idea. People will likely be upset that you just sent their email address to all the people…

  4. Not Readable by This Computer

    Last week I bought a CD of this Eric Clapton album because the CD was 45% cheaper than buying the MP3s. “I have a drive I can attach to my laptop; I’ll just create the MP3s myself”, I thought. Hah! I guess the joke is on me, unless someone knows a trick for making a…

  5. Signing up for MLB.tv is Hard

    It took me four days to successfully sign up for MLB.tv. The first three days, I kept getting this: I tried different phone number formats. I tried to sign up with a credit card and via PayPal. I used different email addresses. I tried for three days. I recently started using 1Password instead of PwdHash.…

  6. My Internet is Broken

    I came home this evening to non-working @centurylink DSL. I spent the next several hours on the phone with their tech support and the tech support for the NetGear modem. The CentryLink support insisted that my line tested fine and modem must have gone bad while I was at work. I thought this unlikely since…

  7. Sparrow for iPhone: Simple Failure

    I’ve been excited to try Sparrow on my iPhone since I saw it announced last year. I haven’t been a fan of the desktop app as I’m so hopelessly dependent on MsgFiler with Mail.app to support my email workflow, but I was hoping that Sparrow on the iPhone would be an improvement over the included…

  8. How to Annoy Your Users

    Wondering what you can add to your iOS app to really annoy your users? Here’s a good way. Push out an update to your paid app that forces your customers to click through a splash screen advertising some new version of your app that won’t be available for 5 months! Force your users to click…

  9. You’re Welcome

    This sort of thing frustrates me to no end: Ms. Bates, your carefully chosen words say volumes. Not to confuse people with the facts, but not only does Twitter Tools give you fine grain control over your decision to send (or not send) each post to Twitter, it even has a feature that prevents posts…

  10. Email Address Typos

    There are few things that annoy me as much as the following scenario: Someone sends a message to me via a feedback form. I compose and send a reply. My message (the reply) bounces back because they mis-typed their email address. Sometimes I can look at the address and figure out what the issue was…

  11. Mobile Devices and Input Accessories

    The iPad has sparked renewed interest in detachable keyboards, but to the surprise of folks who know me (and my attachment to physical keyboards on mobile devices) I’m not on board. I’ve been down this road before, with the Newton, the Stowaway keyboard for the Palm V series and the clip-on keyboard for the Palm…

  12. Mobile Regressions

    For all the attention paid to mobile computing these days and all the progress that has been made, sometimes I feel like we’re going backwards in some areas. Customizable launch/home screens, input mechanisms, etc. The Palm Pilot had this capability back in the late 90s, the iPhone, Palm Pre etc. only have it via jailbreak…

  13. Breaking News: WordPress is GPL

    There has been a lot of discussion about WordPress and the GPL lately. People are discussing/complaining about what you can and can’t do due to the license. It’s all a bit baffling to me. Whether you like the GPL or not, the license is as much a part of WordPress as PHP and MySQL. WordPress…