Apple Crumble Grumble

OK I know; Apple doesn't get a whole lot wrong does it? (Although I drafted this blog before seeing the lead story “Firefox chief fumes over Apple Safari update” on ZDNET this morning.) So it's sometimes tough to have a decent grumble. Speaking as an owner of a pair of Mac laptops and a nice shiny iPod I'm hardly best placed to start venting my spleen, but I think I have grounds here…

First, there was the incident of my browser imploding on my old PowerBook G4. OK, so I'm only running Panther and the new Safari upgrade is for Tiger upwards. So why did the software updater let me install and then decide to send all copies of Safari down a spiralling staircase of thermonuclear destruction?

Software updates come at you so often with Apple that sometimes it becomes a case of 'click to update' without giving it too much thought. Thinking about it more closely, it's usually just an upgrade to iTunes so they can sell me more "stuff" to download. Note to self for more caution in future - Firefox it is from now on then.

Then, after doing some digging around in the FAQ department of the online Safari support pages I noticed that there was a glaring lack of 'mobile development' info to be had. As I rifled through the reams of pages on best practices for development I thought, hang on – they have to be kidding, no web for mobile?

This was because I was already too far in – Apple appears to keep its 'development for iPhone' section separate to its web development section. I think this is a strange move from a strategic point of view based on the consensus from the rest of the industry. Mobile device access is a natural extension of all development, web or otherwise – isn't it?

Thinking about this little rant, I did speak to Apple's VP of developer relations Ron Okamoto a couple of years back. He's a lovely chap for sure, but our chat was all 'big picture' stuff and I wasn't able to write up a Q&A from it. Does Apple invite us developer-focused journalists to the Apple Developer Connection? They do not. Go figure.