Apple’s iTunes Store Patent

Patently Apple (via MacNN):

As a graphical user interface produced by an application program, one embodiment of the invention includes at least a browse window generated by the application program. The browse window enables a user of the application program to browse through a plurality of media items. The browse window includes at least: a first list of first selectable items, with at least one of the first selectable items being capable of being selected by the user; a second list of second selectable items, with at least one of the second selectable items being capable of being selected by the user; and a third list of third selectable items, with at least one of the third selectable items being capable of being selected by the user. The second selectable items of the second list are dependent on a first selection by the user of at least one of the first selectable items from the first list.…

This just sounds like column view (which Xerox’s Smalltalk had in the 1970s) applied to media items.

As a graphical user interface produced by an application program, one embodiment of the invention includes at least an application program window generated by the application program. The application program window concurrently includes at least a sub-window and a next control. The sub-window displays media information for a first set of media items. The media information for the first set of media items is received by the application program from a remote server over a network. When the next control is activated, the sub-window displays media information for a second set of media items. The media information for the second set of media items is also received by the application program from the remote server over the network.

This seems pretty ridiculous.

Apple Hates Brunettes

iKamasutra (via Craig Hockenberry, who calls it “Every developer’s greatest fear”):

After several years and 13 million users, Apple summarily removed iKamasutra from the App Store on February 20, 2012, ostensibly for adding brown hair coloring to our drawings. Then, on March 14, it was just as arbitrarily pulled from the Google Play Store. I have been trying to understand Apple’s and Google’s sudden concerns and address them, but with limited feedback and no real dialog from them, despite all our efforts, our options have dwindled.

They added brown hair to improve usability, Apple complained, so they changed it back, and then Apple rejected the app for duplicating apps that were already in the store. The irony: iKamasutra was the first app of its kind.

The New Yorker Rate Reduction

Lee Wochner:

I just got a “Rate Reduction Notice” from The New Yorker magazine. Evidently, as a “preferred subscriber,” I am entitled to “specially reduced rates” when I extend my subscription now. In this case, my special rate reduction would put me at $64.99 for the year — an incredible savings of $216.54 off the cover price!

I got one of these letters today, and it’s not a reduction for me, either. If you subscribe by phone, you can ask for the “professional” rate of $39.99 per year. I’d rather read it on my Kindle, but I get the the dead tree version because it’s the only one that makes it easy to save the articles that I like. Cutting them out and feeding them into my scanner produces much better results than trying to save pages from the subscribers-only Web site.

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