512 Pixels

This video is cool, but how it works might be just as cool.

I laid down the law about product release rumors over on Macgasm.

With the entire Internet thinking that OS X Lion would be out today, July 14, a lack of such a release has left many Macintosh users, fans and journalists¹ lost without hope.

I’ve spoken to several people in the Mac community today, and the story repeats itself all over the place.²

Ben Brooks:

It is unbelievable this day in age a company like Apple could be so cavalier with a release date of such a major product, leaving customers across the world high and dry, making many think the company shouldn’t be trusted anymore, with things like this. Is anyone at Apple care about the Mac anymore? I thought waiting for Textmate 2 was hard, I’m done.

Joshua Schnell:

We had extra sever hardware ready to go today for the strain Lion’s release would put on the site. We worked overnight last night, finishing editing Stephen’s Lion review. I’m tired, and there’s no Starbucks near my house. Fuck.

Shawn Blanc:

I’m just going to enjoy a cup of coffee and relax. It’s all groovy, except that my MacBook Pro is dying.

Arnold Kim:

Whoops.

Consumers are hurting, too. The world over, Mac geeks called in sick to work today to be able to spend hours watching the OS download from the Mac App Store. Some, on high-speed connections, were even hoping on getting some hands-on time with the OS late tonight, post-install.

One self-proclaimed “iNerd” reached out to me on Twitter saying:

I’ve always trusted the guys @9to5Mac with rumors. WTF. It’s like they killed Santa. In front of my kids. With a goddamn hammer.

Another guy tweeted:

I didn’t have any sick days left, so I quit my job for this. Damn it, Steve.

Whatever the reason OS X Lion isn’t out yet, it is clear that the Mac community is tired of waiting. Riots are forming in IRC channels. People are burning cars in front of Apple Stores.

Please, Apple. Stop our suffering.

Slow news day, guys?

On his Supersite for Windows:

I can see no reason why anyone with a Snow Leopard-based Mac wouldn’t upgrade to Lion. This upgrade features a ton of new features and is priced to sell. It’s a no brainer.

For Microsoft and, to a lesser degree, Windows users, Lion represents Apple throwing down the gauntlet. The company already dominates the mobile space with its iPhones, iPods, and iPads, and by taking the best and most appropriate ideas from iOS and applying them to the Mac, the company is announcing its intention to continue this success in Microsoft’s core market of PCs.

Those iOS-to-OS X changes are a mixed bag, of course. Some are very well intentioned–all the apps improvements, the quick resume and so on–while others, especially Launchpad, are misguided because they’re not necessarily efficient, even on iOS. But I think Apple’s doing the right thing by bringing the two product lines together where it makes sense, at least from a user experience standpoint. I may not agree with each design decision, but Apple will tinker with this and get it right over time, as they always do.

But Lion, overall, is in great shape. Where I’ve generally derided Apple for overpimping its largely evolutionary OS X updates over the years, Lion shows that there’s some life left yet in the Mac OS X side of the house. This isn’t just a collection of minor updates and refinishes. It’s a step away from the norm, finally, after a decade of steady and largely boring minor revisions. I’m excited to see where they take OS X next.

This blows my mind for a few reasons. (A) Lion isn’t out yet and (B) Paul Thurrott wrote something about Apple that wasn’t unabashed fanboyism for Microsoft.

It looks like a pretty good program, but there are still no such options for Mac App Store customers.

Jonathan S. Geller at BGR:

The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new component or trying to identify or even shape future trends. “One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,” a former executive said. “There was no three-year plan at RIM.” RIM would be proud of the fact that someone would only use 1MB of data in a month in 2005, and as a result, there wasn’t ever any extensive R&D done within the browser space. Over time, that misstep affected BlackBerry tremendously as competing devices began to deliver desktop-like Web experiences.

A lack of vision, for sure.

Dave Feldman, unveiling the TechCrunch redesign:

TechCrunch is bold. It’s raw. It’s fast-paced. With 50 articles crossing the home page daily we couldn’t simply redesign the reader-facing site; we had to think about the CMS too. We wanted to support you, the readers, because you read every article we post. We wanted to give you better context across posts and topics, new ways to slice and dice content so you can dig into what interests you. We get a huge amount of RSS traffic and wanted to keep providing a full experience to those readers too.

Good to see the staff members are still full of themselves, too.

I can’t wait for this film. Is there any doubt this is the best Batman series ever?

[via Justin Blanton]

Kourosh Dini:

One thing I actively work on, and have been actively working on for sometime, is maintaining a non-reactive mode of working. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as technology continues its steady advance promising “convenience”, I believe it’s not really a convenience which it delivers. Rather, it’s a shortening of a distance between thought and action. If I’m not careful, this can lead to a more reactive way of working - checking email, twitter, and the like reflexively.

This is one reason I’m working so hard to get over the hump with my notebook. I need this distance to be longer, not shorter, than it is today.

[via Minimal Mac]

New York Times tech writer David Pogue is in the news, but not as usual.

NYT Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane:

Journalists are accustomed to seeing public relations pitches in their inbox. I was surprised, though, when I recently got one on June 8 touting tech columnist David Pogue’s speech to PR professionals in which he credits PR with providing most of his ideas.

The pitch revealed that for $159 I could view a video of Pogue’s “Pitch Me, Baby” speech set for an online airing on July 11. The speech is derived from an earlier appearance at a public relations conference called the Media Relations Summit, staged by Ragan Communications.

Even to those not super familiar with the way newsrooms work, this should seem abnormal.

People working in public relations have a sole job — to get their company or product in the media. Of course, lots of little things go into this, like media packets, trying to schedule interviews and demos, providing review units and more.

In journalism school, a good bit of time is given to having proper relationships with PR professionals. If journalists get too close to the PR realm, the risk of tainted stories becomes a very real danger. In the better newsrooms, the mere appearance of this can get a journalist in trouble.

Of course, there is balance. PR people do help create stories about products, especially in the technology sector. But stories should be far more encompassing than just passing along some PR copy.

What About the Little Guys?

It’s a little different for those of us who write in the indie scene. Most of us with moderately popular websites get dozens of emails a week from PR firms about new websites, ad opportunities and more. For me, these are fairly easy to ignore.

It is much harder to ignore emails from individual developers. Many developers will offer App Store promo codes in exchange for a review.

Now, I don’t write many app reviews here or at Macgasm. I just don’t like reviewing software.¹

Any hardware reviews are of devices I’ve purchased myself.

Some writers — especially inexperienced ones — struggle with publishing negative² reviews. People don’t want to write something that could potentially hurt the business of independent developers.

The reality is that if a PR professional or developer reaches out for a coverage or a review, they should be prepared to receive the writer’s honest opinion.³

Writing a positive review out of guilt is stepping over the line for a journalist — but so is getting too close to PR people or developers.

But these problems aren’t just stumbling blocks for small publishers. Here’s Brisbane again:

Times readers deserve to be assured that journalists don’t get too cozy with the P.R. professionals who strive to influence coverage. A virtual army of publicists, media specialists and others stands ready every day to infiltrate the news with stories that help their employers.

[via Daring Fireball]

Pat Dryburgh is a genius.