Assorted tech fails related to Copy.com

Lots of fail to go around today.

A. just tried to share some photos with her mother via Copy.com (disclosure: this is a referral link, because why not, although as you'll see I don't recommend using Copy much in its current state). Her mother's sole computing device in Taipei is an iPad.

Fail no. 1: Although the photo folder was shared with the email address that A.'s mom used to sign up, the folder is not accessible anywhere I can find via the iPad app UI. Blame goes to: Copy's developers, who either failed to implement sharing correctly or hid it behind some undiscoverable UI.

Fail no. 2: The Copy website's image viewer page crashes Safari on iPad. Blame goes to: the Copy developers for failing to test this configuration; the iOs browser developers, for implementing a crashy browser (note that current Chrome desktop doesn't crash, so WebKit/Blink alone is not to blame).

Fail no. 3: Downloading Chrome onto her mom's iPad reveals that the crash occurs again, so the crashing defect is with WebView, not Safari-specific wrapper code. On an even marginally more open OS, Chrome (and Firefox, and every other browser vendor) would be permitted to ship an alternative browser stack, and I'd probably be able to download a browser that wouldn't crash. Blame goes to: Apple's business strategy bosses, for being control freak jackholes.

Fail no. 4: Searching for "Copy.com" safari ipad crash on Google is annoyingly filled with garbage. Blame goes to: Google for failing to recognize that when I write "copy.com" in quotes, I really don't care about web pages that merely contain some subset of the segmented lexemes in that query*; also the leadership at Barracuda networks, who gave Copy a ridiculously search-unfriendly name for branding reasons, thus guaranteeing that tech support queries for their service would be frequently frustrated by the current generation of search engine technology. (Also pity all the future users, of any operating system, who need some help with a copying feature not related to Copy.com.)

Welcome to the "post-PC era", where your storage is in a cloud you can't access because your shit crashes and your ecosystem overlords prevent you from installing workarounds.

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*To be more precise, for this search, Google does prioritize "copy.com" over web pages that contain "copy" and "com" or even "copy com" (with a space or other punctuation between the two words). The absence of useful results for this query is due to the fact that there's just no relevant content on the web. I just wish the result page would make it more obvious that Google doesn't think there's any good match for this query, and it's scraping the bottom of the barrel for some weakly related content, so that I could give up my search sooner.

Stross on ebooks

Disclaimer: Since 2006 I have been employed by Google, which sells ebooks and related technology, and therefore competes with several of the companies involved in the subject matter. My opinions are my own and not those of my employer.

Charlie Stross has a compelling analysis of the book publishers' position, in light of the recently opened Department of Justice lawsuit against Apple for alleged price fixing. (Incidentally Stross's comments are usually decent and he engages with his readers as well, so they're worth a skim.)

Stross's post reminds me a lot of something I wrote about 2 years ago. Rereading that post today, I find that I have very little to add to it.

There is one additional thing from Stross's post, though, that I find particularly galling:

. . . if your boss is a 70 year old billionaire who also owns a movie studio and listens to the MPAA, you don't get a vote. Speaking out against DRM was, as more than one editor told me over the past decade, potentially a career-limiting move.

Publishing companies like to portray themselves as scrappy underdogs locked in heroic battle on the side of knowledge against the forces of ignorance. In fact, they are merely subordinate tentacles of large, stupid media conglomerates; they aid the forces of knowledge when it is convenient for business, and do whatever they can to muzzle open discourse when that is convenient. (Fortunately their power to silence critics is fairly limited in a free society.) Critics have been repeating for years that ebooks should be convenient and DRM-free. Publishers never listened; instead they threatened the careers of people like Stross's editors for even bringing it up.

Anyway, I can't comment on the substance of the DoJ lawsuit (and anyway, I know nothing about the facts of the case, so my comments would be pointless), but I find it hard to muster much sympathy for these people. The solution to their problems has been staring them in the face for as long as ebooks have existed. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat less sanguine than Stross that publishers are going to learn the lesson. They seem pretty impervious to persuasion.

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p.s. See also Tim O'Reilly's Plus post.

Computer science and the iPhone developer agreement

Full disclosure: I work for Google. However, this blog reflects my personal opinions only.

Programming and computer science are not synonymous, but obviously the two are deeply intertwined. The fundamental activity of programming is the construction of abstractions. Programming language design and implementation is one of the fundamental forms of abstraction building. It is central to the field, and has been so nearly since its inception. One of the oldest and most important research conferences in computer science is named Programming Language Design and Implementation.

This suggests a particular understanding of what Section 3.3.1 means. Section 3.3.1 says: "Thou shalt not build abstractions other than those we prescribe." It bans one of the fundamental activities of programming.

This would be a mere curiosity, except for Apple's unusually influential position in the computing industry. All trends point towards mobile devices* becoming much more pervasive than all other general-purpose computing devices. Indeed, the combination of mobile and cloud computing may someday replace all other user-visible hardware except what's needed to support input and output (screens, cameras, etc.). And Apple has the credible goal of becoming the preeminent mobile device provider, setting standards for the industry and defining the entire computing experience for a huge swath of future computer users.

Section 3.3.1 therefore constitutes a direct attack on computer science, delivered by a powerful and well-funded organization that aims to transform laypeople's interface to the field. As long as 3.3.1 stands, for a computer scientist to purchase an iPhone or iPad is akin to a biologist purchasing a textbook that advocates against teaching evolution. Full stop. Go ahead and do it if you can't resist the shiny, but understand the moral weight of the decision you're making.

I can already hear people ready to trot out the standard roster of excuses. Hit the comment box if you want, but realize that I've anticipated the common objections and the only thing stopping me from preemptively rebutting them all is the fact that I'm moving soon and I have a huge number of boxes to pack. To pick just three examples:

Q: "The iPad isn't for people like you. Why do you care?"
A: "This post isn't for people who don't care. Why are you reading it?"

Q: "Apple has a right to do whatever it wants with its platform. If you don't like it, you shouldn't use it."
A: "Thank you for agreeing with me."

Q: "You can program whatever you want in HTML5 and access it through Safari."
A: "Yes, the web is an open platform, which Apple fortunately does not control.** I'm talking about Apple's rules for programming on the platform that it does control."

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*A.k.a. "phones". Incidentally, I think the British slang "mobile" is more elegant and generalizes far better any of the {cell,smart,super,...}phone terms that are used on this side of the pond.

**Although I will remark that it's naive to imagine that a platform can be preeminent for very long without influencing the market of content and applications to which non-participants in the platform regime have access. There's a reason Hulu used to work on Flash only. But that's a post for another day.