“The Photocasting feature in Apple’s updated iPhoto application violates numerous internet standards, according to several dignitaries from the RSS community,” Tom Sanders reports for vnunet.com. “‘Photocasting centres around a single undocumented extension element in a namespace that does not need to be declared,’ stated Mark Pilgrim, a software developer who conducted a number of tests in an effort to document the feature. ‘IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.'”
“Photocasting allows Mac users to share photos with friends and family. The feature will automatically upload the photos to a server and publish an RSS feed. Other users subscribe to those feeds through iPhoto or a feed reader, allowing them to automatically receive updates when new photos are posted,” Sanders reports. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs claimed at the unveiling of the application last week that the feature adheres to the RSS standard. ‘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. ‘It’s pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, and there are elements that are not in RSS that are not in a namespace,’ said Dave Winer, who is considered the creator of RSS.”
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple blasted by RSS community leaders for ‘proprietary’ iTunes Podcast implementation – July 05, 2005
Heh heh, Dave Winer. What a name. And now he’s whining about Apple’s new products.
Seriously though, I would hope that Apple would adhere to standards on these new products to help them to work seamlessly with other products. It always bugged me when Microshit would make HTML that didn’t adhere to HTML standards.
Dear Steve,
Please fix this.
Best regards, PeaPod
Oh, quit complaining, you know its awesome…you are just complaining because you dont have the majesty which is Mac
Come on Apple. Sort this out and leave the non-standards nonsense to Redmond.
PeaPod:
Update coming soon.
Best Regards, Steve
Thanks Steve!
See. That was easy. A fix is on the way.
Winer is one whose name fits, especially when it comes to Apple. He was whining pretty bad about Podcast feeds as well. But when it comes down to it, Dave H said it best: ignoring language standards established for this sort of thing is a level of arrogance typical of Microsoft. Not getting date formats right, if true, is just plain stupidity. As for non-standard elements — if Apple found RSS insufficient for its needs wrt Photocasting, then again there are well-established ways of documenting these elements, in particular identifying those non-standard elements with a namespace and pointing at a publicly-available DTD or Schema. If Apple isn’t doing this … well, again, it’s either ignorance or arrogance.
From the article:
“It ignores 95 per cent of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining five per cent wrong.”
Now that is incredibly uncharacteristic of Apple.
The article also said:
“”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”
Actually, a good point!
However the same article also states:
“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.”
Go figure…
Tom Sanders wrote: “several dignitaries from the RSS community”
Why do I picture a dozen guys living in their mom’s basement who all look like Hurley from Lost?
Par for the course with Apple. Some fatal flaw.
I’m repeating myself, but nobody’s listening. Apple behaves more and more like Microsoft every single day.
Why do I think somebody’s going to get a pink slip?
Typical corporate behavior. Don’t fix it until somebody complains loudly enough. Apple wanted to basically lock you in to iPhoto.
“Why do I picture a dozen guys living in their mom’s basement who all look like Hurley from Lost?”
I was thinking the same thing…
This isn’t cool… i hope it gets fixed
Even though i love the Photocasting feature of the new iPhoto, i wish it adhered to industry standards for RSS…this is something that MS would pull…not Apple
Hopefully a fix is in the works.
The Steve should just create a new competing “standard” with basic RSS compatibility and enhanced features enabled by Apple’s proprietary standard. Then when the Apple standard takes off and becomes the new (better) de-facto, make up with the Whiners and merge into a new “RSS 2.0”.
If you own the standards, you own the industry.
Rock on SJ!
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Sucks.
MacMania: “If you own the standards, you own the industry.”
Tell that to Sony Beta video recorders….
Remember folks the name of the game is “Capitalism”. And capitalism is a contact sport.
If you don’t want to get hurt, stay on the sidelines or at least wear your cup.
bad carma apple! this is the way MS fu_ks up 🙁
and what’s with you people bashing someone for pointing out that apple does somthing wrong? can’t you accept that the world’s greatest company can screw things up once in a while?
Ah, Ka-Ching, I hope your not comparing the massively successful iPod to Betamax. Of course not; that would be pretty fsking stupid and you wouldn’t do that.
Rock on Steve!
Emil, not wanting to be a spell-check Nazi, but I think carma is with a “K”.
I agree with Dave H:
“Come on Apple. Sort this out and leave the non-standards nonsense to Redmond.”
A mac Addict- http://cg5addictmacpage.blogspot.com/
Don’t like it, don’t use it. And bite my a$$.
Bah. Its not a critical flaw, or a serious problem, just a software update in the future.
I’m with Dave H:
“Come on Apple. Sort this out and leave the non-standards nonsense to Redmond.”