South by Southwest, or SXSW, is a set of festivals and conferences for film, music, and technology (’interactive’) held in Austin, Texas. While the music portion is likely the most famous, SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) is also quite large, and gaining steam. Perhaps most famously, Twitter first gained traction on the web during SxSW 2007. Thousands of designers, developers, and technologists come to SXSWi. This year, there’s an iPhone application for SXSW called my.SXSW. To put it delicately, the app has some issues. Schedule Filtering When you first open the app, you’ll likely want to look at the schedule so you can mark off what you plan to attend. If you know the name of a session, you can just enter it into the search field. For instance, you may wish to see “Marketing Strategies for Social Wait Now I’m Lost”. You don’t remember the exact name though, so you type in ’strategies’: “Oh jeez”, you realize, “it’s a first-word filter?” Indeed it is. That’s not search, and it’s not very useful. Radio Button While looking at an event such as “Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom”, you can indicate you’re planning to attend, so it will be added to your own customized schedule. But…how? The initial screen, before you’ve added the session You might stare at this for a good 30 seconds, because you thought it was still loading. Nope! That single radio button? That’s what you need to tap. The screen after you’ve tapped ‘No’ Are you going? If yes, tap ‘No’. Time Zones Ok, you finally found your sessions and added them to your schedule, but when are they? You know you’re getting in Friday afternoon around 4, and the first session you want to see, Battledecks 2010, is right around then. Hey, there it is, and it doesn’t start until 4:30 – perfect, you can just make that! Well, no, not really. You see, when you opened the application, you were in Boston and the Eastern time zone. SXSW, however, is in Austin and the Central time zone, an hour behind. So, once you get to Austin, you’ll learn that the session was actually at 3:30 PM local time. Yes, the application shifted the times for your current time zone. This is likely an artifact of never testing outside of Central time. Nevertheless, it’s still incredibly wrong and actively harmful. Messaging “Hey,” you think, “I had to make some crazy account with ‘Dub’ just to use this app. I should see if I can tell folks I won’t be able to make Battledecks. I’ll just go to that messaging area”: “Oh.” I first saw this before the show, so I thought the issue was that I hadn’t yet checked in. After I picked up my badge, I tried again, and no dice. Apparently, messaging simply doesn’t work, period. Conclusion One lesson here is that a simple but well-done web app like SitBy.us can be vastly superior to a full-fledged but terrible iPhone application. SitBy.Us provides everything you need, and nothing you don’t, and it even works with your Twitter account, instead of requiring yet another account. I can only hope SitBy.Us is used at many more conferences in the future. Another lesson is that if you’re going to make an application for thousands of designers and developers, it probably shouldn’t suck. There are many more issues, from the fact that it can’t seem to keep a profile picture to the schedule not auto-scrolling down or hiding past events to the updates downloading every launch, but you’ve seen enough. Let’s just log out. Of for the love o-Well, at least they understood just how emphatic the “Yes” button needs to be.

In addition to appearing in videos, we also spoke to several other sites while at Macworld. Michael Rose from The Unofficial Apple Weblog stopped by. We talked about some of the great improvements in Radioshift 1.5, as well as what’s new with Airfoil. Adam Christianson from The MacCast also stopped by and did an interview. That interview can be heard right on The MacCast’s site. As I did in our first post of Macworld interviews, I’ll again link to Macworld’s site for free Macworld 2011 registration. As reported by TidBITS, The Mac Observer, and many other sites, 2010 was a great show. Be at Macworld in 2011!

We’re back from Macworld 2010, and it was a resounding success! Of course, being at Macworld put us in front of plenty of media types. If you missed us at the show, you may be interested in some links. Today we’ve got several short video links. First up, I did two interviews with MacBreak, with my friends Andy Ihnatko and Merlin Mann. Andy and I discussed Radioshift 1.5, which we were featuring at our booth. Hear all about it, then check out Radioshift. Merlin and I had a goofier overview of all Rogue Amoeba does. I also spoke with Ryan from The Digital Lifestyle, discussing Airfoil and Radioshift, as well as the iPad and what it means for us. You can see that video here. Finally, Chuck Joiner from MacVoices stopped by, and we too discussed Radioshift (it’s sort of been our marketing focus). I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point you to a link for free Macworld 2011 registration. 2010 was a great show, and 2011 should grow and mature, in the post-Apple era. 2010 made it clear that Macworld still has tremendous value – you should be there in 2011.

Recently, we received a letter here at Rogue Amoeba HQ from a very satisfied customer: Dear Paul, I have been using your Radioshift software for quite some time now, and recently purchased Fission in order to edit some of the audio I have stored in Radioshift. I wanted to write to say a heartfelt thank you for both products. I’ve been using software packages for over two decades, but rarely have I come across anything that is so brilliantly designed and so pleasurable to use. The love and attention to detail that has gone into Radioshift in particular, is clear for anyone to see, and the speed and usability of Fission is a work of pure genius. I use the two packages for recording the plays from BBC Radio 4. They go out in the middle of the afternoon here in the UK, which is when I’m dashing in and out of meetings, etc. Using Radioshift I can grab them when they are broadcast, and the use Fission to top-and-tail the audio, which takes less than a minute, and then sync them straight to my Blackberry via iTunes. So easy! I just spent a week on business over in Egypt. On the flight over I caught up on several business recordings and each night I was there I enjoyed one of the radio plays I’d previously recorded. All of that was down to the brilliance of your two packages. They kept me informed and entertained. So, please pass on my thanks and appreciation to your colleagues and tell them to keep up the great work. Sincerely, Paul Smithson Though this was addressed to me, the whole team of course deserves credit for our work. Everyone at Rogue Amoeba contributes to our products, and we all enjoy hearing about how our customers use our products. As such, we make sure to share all manner of feedback we receive throughout the company. We’re always looking to hear more from our customers, both praise and problems. Our contact form is geared towards support, but that’s not all you can email us about. If you have a feature request, a problem you’re looking to solve with our software, or just want to tell us what you like and what you hate, please, let us know! We listen to everything, and that feedback helps shape our future products. So step right up, and don’t be shy! Macworld 2010 Do it in person – come visit Rogue Amoeba at Macworld!

The recent release of Pulsar 1.5.6 added support for XM Radio’s new Canadian “XM online+” service. While Canadian XM users previously used the normal “XM Online Radio” service, XM/Canada appears to have gone out on their own and created a custom player. When this new XM online+ first appeared, back in December, we were rather alarmed by it. Previous SIRIUS and XM players were mostly HTML/JavaScript-based, but this new service is entirely Flash-based. Concerns about iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad support aside, this meant our typical methods of web scraping would not work. We needed an entirely new approach to get it working in Pulsar. Upon further investigation, we saw that the site was using Adobe’s RPC system known as Action Message Format (AMF) for transferring data (such as station info, track titles, and more) between the Flash client and XM’s servers. This was discouraging as well. Rather than having easy access to data in simple plain text or JSON, getting it out of AMF would entail spending weeks implementing and debugging an AMF decoder/encoder in Objective-C. Two things came to our aide though. The first is that although Pulsar has a user interface implemented in Cocoa/Objective-C, the backend that talks to SIRIUS and XM’s servers is implemented entirely in Python. The second is a lovely little Python library called PyAMF. As you might gather from the name, PyAMF implements full support for Action Message Format in Python, including RPC. And thus getting the necessary data from XM online+, a task we thought would take us weeks to do, was up and running in under a day. Adding complete support for XM Online+ took us under a week in total, from start to finish. We’d like to give our thanks to the PyAMF team for making their wonderful little library available. We’ve made a small donation, of 0×100 hex bucks (that’s $256 USD) to PyAMF, and we’d like to publicize them as well. For anyone that ever runs into an AMF problem like ours, we can say look no further than PyAMF.

With Pulsar 1.5.6, we’ve added support for XM Radio’s new Canadian “XM online+” service. While Canadian XM users previously used the normal “XM Online Radio” service, XM/Canada appears to have gone out on their own and created a custom player. When this new XM online+ first appeared, back in December, we were rather alarmed by it however. While previous SIRIUS and XM players were mostly HTML/JavaScript-based, this new service is entirely Flash-based. Concerns about iPad support aside, this meant our typical methods of web scraping would not work, and we’d need an entirely new approach to get it working in Pulsar. Upon further investigation, we saw that the site was using Adobe’s RPC system called Action Message Format for transferring data between the Flash client and XM’s servers. We were further discouraged by this, as it would entail spending weeks implementing and debugging an AMF decoder/encoder in Objective-C. Two things came to our aide though. The first, is that although Pulsar has a user interface implemented in Cocoa/Objective-C, the backend that talks to SIRIUS and XM’s servers, is implemented entirely in Python. The second, is a lovely little Python library called PyAMF. As you can imagine, PyAMF implements full support for Action Message Format in Python, including RPC. And thus what we thought would take us weeks to do, we had up and running in under a day. Adding complete support for XM Online+ took us under a week in total from start to finish. And so, we’d like to give our thanks to the PyAMF team for making their wonderful little library avaliable. For anyone that ever runs into an AMF problem like ours, we can say look no further.

Macworld 2010 is fast approaching, so I thought I’d post one more reminder for our readers. Come join us at Macworld! We’ll be demoing the newest versions of our internet radio player/recorder Radioshift and our audio streamer Airfoil. Even if you already use all of our software, we’d love to chat about how you use it, so stop by! In addition, I’ll be doing a couple events on Friday the 12th which should be fun. They’ll also be open to all attendees, so come check them out on the Main Stage, booth 1848 in North Hall! First up, at 10:30 AM I’ll be participating in the Mac Pundit Showdown. This is usually done in podcast form (search for Mac Pundit Showdown), but we’ll be doing it live, on-stage. It’s sure to be amusing, or at the very least, embarrassing. Later that day at 2:15 PM, I’ll be presenting with Crazy Apple Rumor’s John Moltz and Associate Editor at Macworld Dan Moren. Our presentation is entitled Apple and the 21st and a Half Century – A comedic journey through Apple’s history. We’ll talk Apple, we’ll use the word ‘beleaguered’, and we’ll make stuff up! It should be a fun time. So, come by our booth, come see the presentations, or just come enjoy Macworld! Macworld Details Dates: February 11th – February 13th, 2010 Times: 12 PM – 6 PM (Thursday), 10 AM – 6 PM (Friday, Saturday) Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco Do you still need an Exhibit Hall pass? Register now and use Priority Code RAMW2010 (type it in then hit the Return key) to get your free Exhibit Hall pass.

It’s been two months since our satellite radio player Pulsar last saw an update, but version 1.5.6 is now available. This update fixes an issue caused by server changes at SIRIUS.com, leading to SIRIUS users being entirely unable to log in. As always, we worked hard to get this update out as fast as possible, so hopefully Pulsar users didn’t miss too much of their favorite content! This update also includes full support for XM Canada, which was recently updated, and fixes a rare crashing bug with the Account Assistant. Of course, this update is recommended for all Pulsar users, and SIRIUS customers won’t be able to use Pulsar at all until they update. If you’re already using Pulsar, be sure to update (for free) by choosing Check For Update from the Pulsar menu, or downloading right from our site. If you haven’t used Pulsar before, you can see what you’ve been missing with satellite radio by downloading Pulsar. You’ll need a SIRIUS or XM Online radio account, so if you don’t have one yet, be sure to check out their free trials as well.

Today we’re happy to be shipping the newest update to Radioshift, our popular tool for playing and recording internet radio. Radioshift last saw an update way back in May, but we’ve been hard at work on a major update, and it’s finally arrived. If you’re already using Radioshift (and you’re on Mac OS X 10.5 or Mac OS X 10.6), you can update immediately by choosing Check For Update from the Radioshift menu, or click to download from our site. For this update, we’ve focused on improving many different aspects of Radioshift. To start, Radioshift now supports thousands of new streams which were previously only available via web-based players, including some of the world’s most popular streaming stations. In addition, Radioshift now better supports hundreds of other streams in the Windows Media Pro and QuickTime formats. We’ve worked to improve Radioshift’s reliability as well. With version 1.5, when errors are detected with a stream, Radioshift will attempt to get the stream playing again by restarting it. It will also attempt to load backup streams when available. Even with less reliable streams, Radioshift will be working to make sure you get your audio, automatically. There are plenty of other updates in Radioshift 1.5, from an improved interface to support for transmitting its audio via Airfoil, and much more. Best of all, all of this is entirely free for owners of Radioshift. So if you already use Radioshift, update now! If you’ve never used it, try Radioshift free, today! Even if you’ve tried it before and didn’t purchase, Radioshift 1.5 is worth a second look. Visit the Radioshift page for more information on our great internet radio player and recorder, or just click to download now.

Right now here at Rogue Amoeba, we’ve got two open positions on our Jobs page. First up is a new position for a Windows (.NET) software engineer. We’re looking for someone to help us with Airfoil for Windows, as well as Airfoil Speakers on Windows, Linux, and possibly other platforms. This is not our usual crowd of readers on Under The Microscope, but perhaps our readers (that’s you!) can help spread the word to qualified applicants. Our second position, for a senior Cocoa user interface software engineer, has been open for some time. We’ve received many good candidates for this position, but no one has been quite right just yet. We’re looking for a developer with extensive experience with Objective-C and Cocoa, and leading a product from conception to release is a major plus. So if you’re interested or know someone who might be a good fit, take note of the Jobs page for more detail.

Every day, more and more users are finding out just how great it is to send audio around their entire house, wirelessly, with Airfoil. We’re not slowing down either – today, we’re happy to announce that Airfoil 3.5 is now available! Users of Elgato’s EyeTV will be very pleased with this update. If you’ve ever tried to watch EyeTV video while sending the audio remotely, you’ve seen that the audio and video don’t sync up. We’ve teamed up with Elgato to work around this issue. Now, with EyeTV 3.3 and Airfoil 3.5, local video is delayed to perfectly sync with remote audio – excellent! We’ve also vastly improved the process of pulling audio from both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop. To grab their audio you’ll need the Instant Hijack component installed, via the Install Extras… window in the Airfoil menu. Once that’s installed, just choose Fusion or Parallels in the Source pop-up at the bottom of the Airfoil window, and Airfoil will take care of the rest! Airfoil for Mac 3.5 is a free update. Just choose Check For Update from the Airfoil menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Airfoil before, grab the free Airfoil trial.

We recently received a postcard out of the blue, showing off Tim Klein’s Yarn Car. The Yarn Car is a 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperial covered in over 4 miles of yarn to create a stunning design. Crazy? Yes. But also very cool. Tim mailed us to let us know he’s using Fission and Audio Hijack Pro on audio he later plays in the car.

Update: Thanks guys – we’re all set, there’s no need to email any more sessions lists. Thanks again! In order to help us design the next generation of Audio Hijack applications, we need to know more about how you (yes, you!) use Audio Hijack Pro. Knowing the answers to questions like “How many sessions do you have?” or “What are you recording?” will help us greatly. So, we’re collecting information on how people use Audio Hijack Pro. Please send us your Audio Hijack Pro sessions! E-mail them to hello@rogueamoeba.com. Your session list itself is stored at ~/Library/Application Support/Audio Hijack Pro/SessionList.plist. That SessionList.plist file is the only one we need, so attach that to an email and send it over. So send us your sessions, to hello@rogueamoeba.com. Just attach that session list file (~/Library/Application Support/Audio Hijack Pro/SessionList.plist). And thank you for your help in shaping the future of audio recording!

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.2 is now available in the App Store, as well as Airfoil for Mac 3.4.3 to go with it. This update restores functionality we reluctantly removed at the behest of Apple, in order to ship Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1. Following a conversation with Apple last week, we submitted this update to Airfoil Speakers Touch on Friday, and it has already been approved (in one of the shortest reviews we’ve ever seen). If you’re already using Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers Touch, please update for free now. Just choose Check For Update from the Airfoil menu, or click to download from our site to update Airfoil. To update Airfoil Speakers Touch, just visit the App Store. Updates take some time to roll out across Apple’s servers, so if 1.0.2 isn’t yet available, just check back in a few hours. If you’d like to understand more about what happened, we’ve prepared a helpful Q&A below: Q: What changed in Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.2? A: With Airfoil 3.4.3 and Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.2, we’re once again showing the computer artwork and application icons from your sending computer, as seen below. Q: What changed? Why is this allowed now? A: Following our post detailing the ordeal we had getting Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 through the store, we were contacted by Apple. They indicated that, due in part to our post, they were changing their internal policies and would allow the desired behavior and artwork to be displayed. In short, they changed their minds. Q: Is the developer SDK agreement being changed? Did you receive a special exemption? A: No, this is purely a change to Apple’s internal policies, which are opaque to developers. We received no special exemption; the policy is purportedly global, applying to all developers. Q: But I heard Airfoil Speakers Touch was violating the SDK agreement, and that the rejection of version 1.0.1 was wholly correct. A: Reality tells a different story. Judging by Phil Schiller’s comments to Business Week, Apple had overly-strict internal policies on appropriate use of Apple trademarks. These policies failed to account for many entirely reasonable uses of trademarks, and have now been relaxed. Q: So why did Apple forbid this behavior in Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1? A: Their internal policies told them to. As for why the policies said that, you’d have to ask Apple. The developer-signed SDK agreement remains unchanged. Q: What about all those people who said Apple was forced to do this to defend their trademarks? A: We’re not lawyers, but it would appear that Apple now disagrees with this viewpoint. Q: Why did Apple change their minds? A: Again, only Apple can tell you their exact reasons. In our conversation with them, they indicated that our blog post, linked across the web and seen by tens of thousands of readers, was a force for change here. As for other problems that don’t generate this much exposure and backlash? They may be less likely to be fixed, and that’s unfortunate. Q: But this particular change is a good thing, right? A: Sure. Previously, there was an inconsistency between what Apple’s SDK agreement said, and what their internal policies dictated. That particular inconsistency appears to be gone now. Q: Does this mean you’ve changed your mind and will develop more iPhone applications? A: It does not. The problems of the App Store go well beyond our own relatively minor case. We pushed this update to Airfoil Speakers Touch out because we wanted to restore functionality we had to take away from our users. We’re happy to be able to do that. That said, the App Store and iPhone platform still have myriad problems, detailed in many places. Among other issues, the potential remains for months of effort to be wasted as an app sits in limbo, or is never even released. As well, the long lead times needed before updates reach users are still in place. At this time, we don’t believe it makes good business sense for us to commit much in the way of resources to the iPhone. We’ll make sure our existing applications continue to function, of course, but that’s all we have planned for now. Q: When will you return to iPhone development? A: If and when we feel it makes good business sense, we’ll again develop for the iPhone. We don’t have our heads in the sand, nor are we blind to the enormity of this platform. That said, the Mac still remains a much more developer-friendly platform, and that’s where we’ll be concentrating our resources.

Hot on the heels of last weekend’s SIRIUS server changes, XM Radio Online had their own major server updates yesterday. As a side effect of these updates, our XM and SIRIUS streaming radio application Pulsar was no longer able to receive XM streams. We again worked through the night to correct this, and today we’re happy to announce Pulsar 1.5.4, which restores XM Radio streaming. If you’re already using Pulsar, be sure to update (for free) by choosing Check For Update from the Pulsar menu, or downloading right from our site. If you haven’t used Pulsar before, you can see what you’ve been missing with satellite radio by downloading the Pulsar trial. You’ll need a SIRIUS or XM Online radio account, so if you don’t have one yet, be sure to check out their free trials as well.

James D. emailed to share a great set-up using Airfoil, Audio Hijack Pro, and Nicecast. Just wanted to send you guys this diagram showing how I am using your fantastic software products. Many members of my fire department work outside the range of our radio pagers but have an email capable phone which can play mp3 files. This setup allows me notify firefighters in near realtime of an incoming fire call. Once notified they can respond or switch over to the live stream and hear what is happening on the fire ground. Thanks again for the great software. As you can see, James is using Audio Hijack Pro to automatically record fire calls and email them out to other firefighters. As well, he’s sending the scanner stream throughout his house with Airfoil, and across the web with Nicecast. Awesome! James, thanks for sharing – we’re glad our software can help the fire department! Are you using our products in an interesting or obscure way? Let us know!

Since our post on Airfoil Speakers Touch and our decision to stop developing for the iPhone, we’ve seen a lot of coverage on the issue. Recently, I had a chance to sit down and chat on two different podcasts, to go into more depth on the problems we saw and problems with the App Store in general. First up, I spoke with Chuck Joiner on MacVoices, which is always a good time. Chuck and I went in depth on the benefits and problems of the App Store. As well, I was part of the show on the iPhone Alley Podcast, with Michael Johnston, Jeff Gamet, and Adam Christianson. We covered some of the same ground, as well as discussing what other developers have seen and experienced. Ultimately, we at Rogue Amoeba want to see the iPhone platform be viable for us to develop on. It’s a young platform, and Apple is learning, so talking about this helps. As we pointed out on the iPhone Alley podcast, you can share your own feedback directly with Apple, via their Feedback page.

Over the weekend, SIRIUS Online radio had some major server updates. As a side effect of these updates, our XM and SIRIUS streaming radio application Pulsar was no longer able to receive SIRIUS information. We worked hard on this problem over the weekend, and today we’re happy to announce Pulsar 1.5.3, which restores SIRIUS streaming. If you’re already using Pulsar, be sure to update (for free) by choosing Check For Update from the Pulsar menu, or downloading right from our site. If you haven’t used Pulsar before, you can see what you’ve been missing with satellite radio by downloading the Pulsar trial. You’ll need a SIRIUS or XM Online radio account, so if you don’t have one yet, be sure to check out their free trials as well.

Since we posted our article on our difficulty in updating Airfoil Speakers Touch on the iPhone App Store, we’ve had a lot of great feedback. However, we’ve also had some feedback that appears to be based on misconceptions about just what the trouble is or just what Airfoil Speakers Touch is actually doing. I’d like to take a moment to address these and more fully explain exactly what’s happening behind the scenes. The AirTunes protocol, which Airfoil uses to communicate to remote speakers, supports sending album art to remote speakers. We initially used this capability to display a badged screenshot on the Apple TV, as detailed in a previous UTM post. Airfoil Speakers Touch just displays this same image coming from Airfoil. I’d like to address some specific points that people have brought up. None of these icons are shipped in our apps On the iPhone side, Airfoil Speakers Touch just displays a generic “album art” image that comes from Airfoil. On the Airfoil side, both the Mac image and the application icon are fetched using public Cocoa APIs. The call we use to fetch the computer image is [NSImage imageNamed: NSImageNameComputer]. Behind the scenes, the system has a store of machine icons stored away in the /System directory, and matches up your computer’s model identifier with their artwork to return an icon. The call we use to get the target application’s icon is -[NSWorkspace iconForFile:], which can be used to obtain the icon for any file on the system. Applications such as the Finder would use this call to display the icons of files and applications on the hard drive when browsing its contents. The code is not specifically designed to send Apple’s icons The code is fully generic and simply sends the icon of whatever application the user chooses on the Mac side. Apple applications are popular audio sources for Airfoil, but it’s entirely possible to send third-party applications like Firefox, Spotify, Last.fm, our own Pulsar, and others, and many users do just that. Use of these icons does not infringe trademark or copyright Airfoil Speakers Touch’s display of these icons falls under fair use. If there’s any doubt to this, look at all the places where Apple displays other people’s icons without their explicit consent, like the Finder, the Dock, Spotlight, etc. Daring Fireball also has a good, in-depth discussion of various arguments put forth, including a look at just what the iPhone SDK agreement says. Ultimately, this is not a trademark issue, but simply a matter of Apple enforcing arbitrary and inconsistent requirements for iPhone applications. There’s no legal requirement for them to forbid use of their icons, and no benefit to them in doing so. By insisting on not allowing us to display their icons, Apple is simply wasting everybody’s time, including their own, and inconveniencing our mutual users.

First, the basics: Airfoil Speakers Touch version 1.0.1 is now available in the App Store. This update fixes issues with audio sync that could be heard when audio was playing to multiple outputs. If you haven’t used Airfoil, it will let you send any audio from your Mac or PC out to the AirPort Express, Apple TV, other computers, and with Airfoil Speakers Touch, to your iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s a bigger story here, however. It’s one that’s been told before, but until things change, it needs to keep being told. Simply put, the App Store is broken. Over Three And A Half Months Our problems began back in July, when we first submitted this bug fix for Airfoil Speakers Touch to the App Store. While we generally disliked the restrictiveness of the review process, we’d never had any direct problems with it. Further, this was a mere bug fix – it just improved the way audio was received. It was functionally identical to the already-approved version 1.0.0. As such, we expected to have this update available by the end of July or early August. Not. even. close. Today, over three and a half months after we initially submitted our bug fix update for review, it’s finally available. So what happened? Our First Two Rejections After our first submission back in July, Airfoil Speakers Touch was rejected, for using “Apple Logo and Apple-owned Graphic Symbols”. Apple Logo and Apple-owned Graphic Symbols: You may not use the Apple Logo or any other Apple-owned graphic symbol, logo, or icon on or in connection with web sites, products, packaging, manuals, promotional/advertising materials, or for any other purpose except pursuant to an express written trademark license from Apple, such as a reseller agreement. It wasn’t clear what precisely this was about, but if you’ve used the application, you’ve likely seen something similar to this screenshot: As you can see, Airfoil Speakers Touch displays an image of the sending Mac, with a screenshot showing the source application. If you’re sending from an iMac with Safari as your source (as pictured), it shows your iMac running Safari. If you’re sending from a MacBook Pro, it shows a MacBook Pro, and so on. These computer images are provided by Mac OS X itself, using a public function expressly for this purpose. We also show the source application’s icon – Safari in the above example. This icon also comes from a public function provided by Apple as part of Mac OS X. These functions are expressly made to enable developers to get this artwork, and use it just as we are. We’ve done this before, in Airfoil on the Mac and Windows, when we talk to the Apple TV. It’s a nice little bit of polish, but it’s also functional – it lets the user verify what machine they’re receiving from, what source application, and what that source application is doing. Nonetheless, it seemed from this rejection that Apple wanted it out. Naively, we simply re-submitted the application without changes, in the hopes of getting a more sensible reviewer. A full four weeks later, on August 31st, we were rejected again. Our Third, And Final, Rejection At this point, we knew we needed to talk to a real person. Perhaps, we reasoned, an app reviewer was simply reading their guidelines and following them overzealously. Following Craig Hockenberry’s advice, we sent an email to the App Review address, explaining how our application worked and why we felt there were no trademark issues. Eventually, on September 2nd, we were told to resubmit the application for further review. Then we waited. On September 12th, we received a form email stating that the review was taking longer than expected. No other information was given. On September 21st, we emailed to ask where we were in the process. On the 22nd, we were again told it was “still undergoing a review process”, with no additional detail. Finally, on October 5th (over a month since the most recent submission, and almost two and a half months since our initial submission), we were contacted by an Apple employee via phone. We were told that despite our explanation, Apple was unwilling to ship this update, and it would again be rejected. However, later that day a second Apple employee phoned. He was a fan of our products, and wanted to take another crack at getting this approved the way it was. With a mixture of hope and trepidation, we provided him even more details, and awaited his reply. In mid-October, he called again, saying that there was nothing for it. In order to ship our update, we had to stop showing both the computer images and Apple’s app icons. It didn’t matter that Apple provided us with code expressly to enable us to show these, nor that the same functionality had been previously approved. We’d reached the end of the road – if we wanted to ship this update, we had to remove the functionality. “When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.” Needless to say, we were quite upset. There was no change between the approved 1.0.0 and the new 1.0.1 – this functionality had already been approved once. Further, if simply showing another application’s icon is a trademark issue, then the software world is going to need to make some drastic changes, and Mac OS X’s Dock will be the first to go. Worst of all, however, Apple left 1.0.0 in the store, a buggy version being downloaded hundreds of times per day. The exact same “infringing behavior” could be found in 1.0.0, and they weren’t taking that down. As such, the only thing Apple’s process was doing was preventing a needed bug-fix from reaching the hands of our mutual customers. Bend, Don’t Break Of course, being angry wasn’t helping our users, and that’s always our goal. We didn’t want to remove functionality to do it, but we had little choice, because Apple controls the means of distribution for iPhone software. We had to compromise. Now, when you receive audio on Airfoil Speakers Touch, you’ll see a generic computer screen, not your specific Mac. Further, if you’re receiving audio from an Apple app, such as Safari, QuickTime Player, or iTunes, you’ll see this: If you tap the artwork in Airfoil Speakers Touch, you’ll be taken to this page, providing a pithier summary of the situation. Is it likely to change anything? Probably not. But it was the only way we could remove this functionality and still sleep at night. What Now? As noted on that page, we urge you to do two things. First, be aware that Apple is acting as a gatekeeper, and preventing you from getting the software that developers such as ourselves are trying to provide you. We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple. All the while, our buggy, and supposedly infringing version, was still available. There’s no other word for that but “broken”. Second, consider donating to the EFF. The change we made to Airfoil Speakers Touch wasn’t their idea, nor have they endorsed it. However, in addition to being one of Rogue Amoeba’s favorite charities, they’re also the organization defending the rights of both consumers and developers in the digital world. If Apple is to change, it may take such an organization to make it happen. Focusing On The Mac In the future, we hope that developers will be allowed to ship software without needing Apple’s approval at all, the same way we do on Mac OS X. We hope the App Store will get better, review times will be shorter, reviews will be more intelligent, and that we can all focus on making great software. Right now, however, the platform is a mess. The chorus of disenchanted developers is growing and we’re adding our voices as well. Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare. The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we’re focusing on the Mac.

Yesterday, I had the honor of appearing on GeekSpeak, broadcast on KUSP and heard across the internet. The show started with a discussion of various technical stories, then discussed several pieces of Rogue Amoeba’s software. You can check out the show right here – have a listen!

Here at Rogue Amoeba, we sometimes hear about interesting uses of our software that are worth sharing. Starting today, we’ll be doing just that, in an occasional series called Software in Action. After seeing some tweets about how he was using Airfoil Speakers, we got in touch with Joachim Bengtsson, who gave us a great overview on how he’s using Airfoil Speakers. I work for Blekinge Institute of Technology, more specifically their labs (called REAL), where I write Cocoa and Erlang all day long. The Mac Minis are for running the distributed simulation engine we’re working on there. The same day I had performed this experiment, which you probably saw on my twitter; I had been tasked to prepare the minis, install erlang and xcode on them and such, and I just couldn’t help but to throw Airfoil into the mix. When my coworkers aren’t around, I max the iMacs (four of them) plus my own computer for some pretty good sound (like in the video on my blog); sometimes one of them hiccups a bit and gets de-synced, but I’m always impressed every time it re-syncs without even stuttering or noticeably changing pitch or anything like that, within a second. While he normally uses Airfoil and the free Airfoil Speakers with a half-dozen machines, in the screenshot you can see Joachim playing audio through fifteen different machines. We’ve stress-tested Airfoil with multiple AirPort Express units, as well as multiple machines, but this tops any testing we’ve done. Thankfully, Airfoil is up to the challenge! Are you using our products in an interesting or obscure way? Let us know!

The end of 2009 is fast approaching, along with the beginning of 2010, and that’s got us thinking about Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I’ve talked about Macworld 2010 before, but a reminder may be useful, as we’re now just over 3 months away. Details Dates: February 11th – February 13th, 2010 Times: 12 PM – 6 PM (Thursday), 10 AM – 6 PM (Friday, Saturday) Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco If you’ve been to Macworld before, you know what to expect. There will be hundreds of Mac vendors coming together with tens of thousands of Mac users to talk about the software and hardware we all use every day. If you’ve never been, now’s the perfect time. In fact, Exhibit Hall passes for the Expo are $25, but we’ve worked with Macworld to get 500 free passes for our readers. Register now and use Priority Code RAMW2010 (type it in then hit the Return key) to get your free Exhibit Hall pass. Once you’ve registered, mark down 2/11/2010 through 2/13/2010 in your calendar, and put our booth number (#1545) in there too. We’ll see you in San Francisco!

Just over two weeks ago, we released a major update to Airfoil, the first version built on our new AudioHijackKit2 framework. We’ve been very happy with how well it’s done in the wild, but there were some bugs. Airfoil 3.4.1, immediately available, aims to squash those bugs. To start, Safari hijacking is much improved when the Instant Hijack component is installed. Users with non-English systems will now be able to properly hijack Safari. As well, if Safari is already running, Airfoil will always grab from it, without needing to relaunch. As well, hijacking of other apps has also been made more robust. Airfoil will now properly pull audio from Front Row, by simply selecting it in the Source list. Dashboard hijacking has also been improved to fix several bugs that could prevent Airfoil from getting audio. Pulling audio from VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop has also been updated. To grab their audio you’ll need the Instant Hijack component installed, via the Install Extras… window in the Airfoil menu. Once that’s installed, launch Fusion or Parallels, then hold the option key when clicking the Source pop-up at the bottom of the Airfoil window to show hidden processes. For Fusion, the process you need to select is called vmware-vmx and for Parallels it’s called prl_vm_app. Select that, and Airfoil will pull all audio from the virtual machine. There are lots of other rare and minor bug fixes, and this is a free update for all licensed owners of Airfoil for Mac, so be sure to update if you’re on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. Just choose Check For Update from the Airfoil menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Airfoil before, grab the free Airfoil trial.

MyMac Magzine recently took an in-depth look at Audio Hijack Pro. The whole review is certainly worth reading, but the summary? Audio Hijack Pro by Rogue Amoeba is the best audio recording program for the Mac platform We’ll certainly take that!

If you haven’t visited our Staff page recently, you may have missed a recent update. As of October 1st, Rogue Amoeba now has two new employees, Dan Wineman and Christa Mrgan! Dan joins us after doing a programming contract for some backend work that will make its way into the upcoming Radioshift 1.5. He’s continuing to work with Jeff on Radioshift, and we hope to have a final release of version 1.5 out before the end of the year. Dan is a great addition to our team of coders. Christa, meanwhile, is filling a new position for us, that of designer. For years, we’ve used various contractors to provide artwork, and done a great deal of our design in-house. Eventually, we decided it worthwhile to have a full-time employee handling all the artwork we need, as well as work with us on interface design. Christa will be filling that role for us. She’s already added artwork to Airfoil (in the Radio Tuner window, seen when using a RadioShark), as well as icons for Instant Hijack and SoundSource, and we’re looking forward to releasing prettier software in the future. It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve still got one open position, a senior Cocoa User Interface Software Engineer position. We’ve had plenty of great applicants for this position, including some we’re still considering, but no one has been quite perfect yet. You can read more about it here, and apply there as well.

You may already be familiar with our audio broadcasting tool Nicecast. With just a few clicks, you can use Nicecast to create an internet radio station that’s accessible around the globe. College radio stations, amateur DJs, professional musicians, and many other groups have all used Nicecast to provide an internet radio stream to listeners. Recently, however, we’ve seen an interesting trend: musicians on the road using Nicecast to receive rough mixes of audio from the studio. This audio isn’t yet intended for public consumption – the goal is to listen to a rough cut and hear different edits as quickly as possible. By adding Nicecast to the editing workflow, the editing can be done in one place and the listening in another. We first took note of this when John Mayer mentioned using Nicecast this way on Twitter, as seen above. Others have since mimicked the idea to good effect. Really, it just makes sense. If you’re not in the studio but want to hear audio, Nicecast helps avoid the tiresome process of saving, editing, and uploading dozens of different MP3 files. Instead, just pull a live feed off a sound board, and share edits on the fly! We’re always glad to see new uses of our applications, and this is an especially novel one. Whether you want to create a station for the whole world to tune in to, or just ship audio across the internet for a single listener, check out Nicecast.

After many months of development, we’re happy to unveil a major update to Airfoil, our tool for streaming any audio all around the house – to the AirPort Express, Apple TV, other Macs, PCs, and Linux boxes, and even iPhones and iPods Touch. Airfoil 3.4 is now immediately available. You can read on for more information or just download Airfoil right now. Here’s What’s New On its face, Airfoil actually looks much the same. The biggest feature is one that won’t be immediately obvious: improved hijacking. Hijacking in Airfoil is now improved for many different applications. This includes hijacking of apps with sub-processes for audio, such as Google Chrome, as well as other outliers like Dashboard, where audio is now helpfully grouped into one source for simpler hijacking. As well, capturing audio from QuickTime Player, Safari and other WebKit applications now works instantly, with no need to quit and relaunch, if you’ve got the Instant Hijack component installed. Airfoil 3.4 also includes an update to the Instant Hijack component, one which fixes several rare but serious conflicts on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). If you saw any issues with quicklookd crashing or conflicts with some Kodak printers, grab Airfoil 3.4 and update the Instant Hijack component, and you should be set. Finally, if you’re using Griffin’s Radioshark USB radio with Airfoil, you’ll see our updated Radio Tuner window. It features improved graphics as well as access to important radio settings for Japanese and European radio bands. A New Beginning? This update to Airfoil somewhat akin to Apple’s own Snow Leopard update. There aren’t a lot of flashy new features, but we’ve worked incredibly hard on the backend of Airfoil, particularly the hijacker (the piece that pulls audio from other applications), to make it all work better than ever. As time passed since its original release, it became more and more difficult for the underlying hijacker to grab all audio. We’ve had struggles with applications with audio-playing sub-processes, background applications like Dashboard and other oddities. The updated hijacker in AudioHijackKit2 works to handle all of this and more. Earlier this year, we talked about AudioHijackKit2, the next-generation framework that will power our applications. Our XM/Sirius client Pulsar was the first application to make use of this, and now Airfoil is too. We’re confident this update will position Airfoil to work well with nearly every app now and for years to come. Go on, Download It Enough reading! Whether you’ve used Airfoil for years, or you want to check out streaming audio all around your house, you should visit the Airfoil page and download Airfoil 3.4!

It’s been some time since we’ve had an update to Radioshift, our internet radio recording tool, but we’ve been hard at work on improvements. After several months of work, we’re nearing the release of Radioshift 1.5, featuring loads of fixes and some important new features. Before that release, however, we want to share a beta with some of our users so we can iron out any issues. What’s New in Radioshift 1.5? First up, Radioshift now supports many additional radio streams. Older versions of Radioshift were unable to play streams which use web-based players. With Radioshift 1.5, you’re now able to tune in to those web-based streams and that means Radioshift can play thousands of additional radio streams! In addition to supporting more streams, Radioshift 1.5 provides more reliable recordings. Radioshift now attempts to reconnect to streams when they disconnect and also makes use of backup streams where they’re available. This will result in far fewer failed recordings, and who doesn’t want that? Finally, Radioshift’s user interface is in the process of being updated and improved. Some of these elements have been updated, and some are still awaiting their updates, but you should be able to see some useful changes in this beta. Get The Download If you’re a fan of Radioshift (and own a license for it), now’s your chance to preview this great update, before the full release. Radioshift is working quite well for day-to-day use, so if you’re feeling adventurous, send us an email. We’ll send you a link to Radioshift 1.5 so you can try it out. Once you’ve tested Radioshift 1.5, you can use the integrated form (right in the Help menu) to send your feedback instantly. You’ll be experiencing the future of Radioshift and helping us improve Radioshift even more!

Airfoil has been well-reviewed by Macworld before (receiving 4.5 out of 5 mice in both 2006 and 2008), but today Kirk McElhearn has really nailed it. In this article, Kirk goes over the basics of using Airfoil to send any audio to your AirPort Express, Apple TV, or other Macs, Windows and Linux boxes, as well as using Airfoil to send audio to an iPhone or iPod Touch. Head over to Macworld’s website and have a read to learn more about Airfoil, then come back here to download the free trial and try it out!

Today we’ve got two big releases, Airfoil 3.3.3 and Audio Hijack Pro 2.9.3. These updates bring us to full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), so we’re now encouraging all our users to upgrade both our software and if they like, their OS as well. Both updates feature a new version of Instant Hijack, version 2.2.1, for grabbing audio from already-running applications. Also included is a Snow Leopard-compatible version of SoundFlower, the extra needed for capturing all System Audio. You should be prompted to update Instant Hijack and Soundflower if you have them installed, but you can also install by choosing Install Extras… from the Airfoil or Audio Hijack Pro menu. The Airfoil update also fixes several small but important issues that cropped up on Mac OS X 10.6. DVD Playback in Airfoil Video Player will now play with proper colors, and the Mute option in Airfoil Speakers now remembers the previous state. Of course, these are free updates for all licensed owners of Airfoil and Audio Hijack Pro, so everyone (on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher) should update. Just choose Check For Update from the Airfoil or Audio Hijack Pro menu, or download from our site. Of course, if you haven’t used Airfoil to send audio all around your house, or Audio Hijack Pro to record any audio, you can download free trials as well. Additional Notes If you use the Instant Hijack functionality to grab audio from already-running applications, you may notice a small difference on Mac OS X 10.6. When hijacking Safari and QuickTime Player, the application will still need to be restarted in order to have its audio grabbed, even if Instant Hijack is installed. This occurs because these applications run with multiple processes in 64-bit mode, preventing us from grabbing their audio. Restarting forces them in to 32-bit mode, and their audio can again be grabbed. We’re currently investigating ways to better handle this, but it’s not clear if it will be possible to hijack multi-process apps in 64-bit mode in the foreseeable future. For more information, please see this page. It’s also worth noting is that both Airfoil and Audio Hijack Pro now require Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. It’s been our general policy to support the current OS as well as the previous OS, and with the release of Snow Leopard, that means we’ll be support Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac OS X 10.5. So if you’re still on Mac OS X 10.4, be sure to stick with Airfoil 3.3.2 and Audio Hijack Pro 2.9.2 until you update your OS.

Today we’ve released an update to Nicecast, in the form of version 1.9.8, which brings with it full Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) compatibility. This update features a new version of Instant Hijack for grabbing audio from already-running applications. You should be prompted to update Instant Hijack if you have it installed, but you can also install it by choosing Install Extras… from the Nicecast menu. It’s also worth noting is that Nicecast now requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. It’s been our general policy to support the current OS as well as the previous OS, and with the release of Snow Leopard, that means we’ll be support Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac OS X 10.5. So if you’re still on Mac OS X 10.4, be sure to stick with Nicecast 1.9.7 until you update your OS. This is, of course, a free update for all licensed owners of Nicecast, so everyone (on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher) is encouraged to update. Just choose Check For Update from the Nicecast menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Nicecast before, check out the easiest way to broadcast audio from your Mac, with a free trial. And fear not, Airfoil and Audio Hijack Pro users – updates for both these applications are coming very, very soon as well.

Earlier today we released SoundSource 2.5, an update to our audio device switcher. SoundSource is a handy little tool for rapidly adjusting the audio input and output devices on your Mac (switching between microphones or various speakers or headphones, for instance). Our new version 2.5 features full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and now requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. Although SoundSource 2.5 does not have any new features, it has changed dramatically internally. The first place you will notice this, is right after you expand the .zip file it comes in: SoundSource is now an application. A bit of background is probably needed here before that statement will make much sense. On MacOS X, there are two ways to display little icon-and-menu-thingys in the menubar. The first method, is something called a “menuExtra”. All of OS X’s built-in menubar bits are done with menuExtras: the Volume control, the Clock, the Airport menu, and so on. You can see the whole list of them at: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras. MenuExtras offer several nice features. First, if you double-click them they will load in the menubar, and automatically open again each time you login. As well, you can command-click on them and drag them around, putting them in any order you like. Finally, if you want to remove one, you can command-click on it and drag it right off the menubar. They’re very nice all around. Unfortunately, their usage is limited to Apple applications only. The second method for getting an icon-and-menu-thingy into the menubar, is something called an “NSStatusItem”. Nearly all third party applications that put things in the menubar, for example Airfoil Speakers, use NSStatusItems. Unlike menuExtras, StatusItems have no nice features. They display in the order they are opened in, they can not be reordered, and removing them from the menubar typically means quitting the application that is providing the StatusItem. All around, StatusItems generally provide an inferior experience compared to menuExtras. NSStatusItems do have one very important feature on their side however: Apple officially supports their usage. Because menuExtras run as a plugin within the system process SystemUIServer, Apple does not allow third parties to create their own. Various methods of getting around this limitation (such as MenuCracker and MenuExtra Enabler) have long existed. For all versions of SoundSource until now, we have used MenuExtra Enabler to allow SoundSource to exist as a menuExtra. This enabled it to behave like it was any other built-in system component, with full drag-and-drop support. As of SoundSource v2.5.0 and Mac OS X 10.6, we’ve finally given in, and converted SoundSource to be an NSStatusItem running as its own standalone application. The reason is primarily one of defeat. With every new release of MacOS X, MenuExtra Enabler breaks and requires updating. We simply no longer care to fight Apple on this front. When it was relatively easy to improve SoundSource’s user experience by making it a menuExtra, we did so. We now also believe that providing a good user experience in this area is Apple’s job and not ours: NSStatusItems should simply behave as menuExtras do, and if they don’t, the burden of fixing that is on Apple. That all said, SoundSource running as its own application is not all that terrible. It is a little annoying to not be able to move it around the menubar, but there are some benefits. We no longer need an installer for it and it can live in your Applications folder like any other application. It’s also easy to open and close, and delete when you are done with it. And if we’re lucky, SoundSource may even work on OS X 10.7 without requiring an update. That, and we got a pretty new icon for it.

Looking to buy software for your Mac or iPhone? Do it through the PMC Software Charity Fundraiser, and you’ll raise money for charity too. You can find our own apps on the site, as well as many others.

Update: We’ve discovered (and fixed) a potentially serious crashing bug in Fission 1.6.5. We’ve already released Fission 1.6.6 to take care of this, so if you haven’t yet moved up, get Fission 1.6.6 now. If you’re already running version 1.6.5, update to 1.6.6 as soon as possible. Today we’ve released an update to Fission, in the form of version 1.6.5, which brings with it full Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) compatibility. This update also has several new features along for the ride. First up, it’s now possible to drag tracks from iTunes right onto Fission’s icon to open them up for editing. As well, we’ve added a button for the very handy Split at Playhead command, so that you can play until the exact point you want to make a cut, then pause and click Split at Playhead. Finally, in addition to a myriad of minor fixes, Fission 1.6.5 has smoother, more pleasing fades on lossless audio formats. This is a free update for all licensed owners of Fission, so be sure to update whether you’re on Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6. Just choose Check For Update from the Fission menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Fission before, see how easy audio editing can be with a free trial.

Update: Our software is now 100% compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), so update now! This morning, Apple announced that Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) would be arriving in stores and on doorsteps this Friday, August 28th. So, it’s time to update you, our customers, on the compatibility of our software with the new OS. We’re currently hard at work on updates for almost all of our Mac OS X applications for Snow Leopard. While Radioshift, Pulsar, and LineIn all work fine already, and we’ve already updated PongSaver for compatibility, other applications will need updates. Specifically, Airfoil, Audio Hijack Pro, and Nicecast require updates to the optional Instant Hijack component. We’re hard at work on Audio Hijack Pro, Airfoil, and Nicecast updates. Meanwhile, Fission needs an update to handle changes in the decoding of Apple Lossless files. We hope to have these updates out by Friday, but we’re not certain we’ll make that deadline. Your best bet is to check our site for updates over the next couple weeks and be sure to install the latest versions when they’re released. So keep your eyes on our status page and we’ll have more updates soon. Note: Some users might notice the MemoryCell is absent from this page. At this time, we have no plans to update MemoryCell for Mac OS X 10.6, due to increasing technical challenges and time constraints. MemoryCell has always been open-source, so for those who may be interested, the source code for MemoryCell is free to all here.

Three weeks ago the Federal Communications Commission wrote a letter to Apple to inquire about their rejection of the Google Voice iPhone application, and subsequent removal from the App Store of other iPhone applications related to Google Voice. Apple’s rejection of this app brought up a lot of questions in the community about Apple’s relationship with AT&T and the openness of the platform, and it seems that the FCC had similar thoughts. This was bound to produce something interesting from Apple because, while Apple may ignore most people in the community, they were not likely to ignore the FCC. Today Apple replied to the FCC and made this reply available to the world. Since Apple is usually reluctant to provide any information at all about the App Store, this letter provides an interesting inside look. Introduction The beginning of the letter reveals that Apple is justifiably proud of what they’ve achieved with the App Store. This is not directly related to the FCC’s inquiries, but Apple clearly wants to put their reply in context. They note 65,000 iPhone applications, less than three months after they announced 50,000 apps. The platform is certainly not hurting for developers. They also point out that AT&T has no direct say in what applications are available for the iPhone, which was an unusual situation in the US at the time. Those of us who look at the iPhone from a personal computing perspective tend to see it as restrictive, but from a cell phone perspective it’s relatively open, at least relative to American smartphones circa 2007. While I personally believe it needs to be much more open still, this is still an interesting point to consider. Protection Next, Apple explains why they have a review and approval process for iPhone apps. They state that they review apps, “in order to protect consumer privacy, safeguard children from inappropriate content, and avoid applications that degrade the core experience of the iPhone.” These reasons are interesting. The first one, privacy, is completely justified and I won’t spend any more time on it. The next one, “safeguard children”, is much less justified in my eyes. It’s certainly a noble goal, but the vast majority of iPhone users are not children. Restricting what content is available on my phone does nothing to protect children, as no children ever get to use it. The last reason is the most interesting to me. They state a wish to, “avoid applications that degrade the core experience of the iPhone”. How would an application actually accomplish this? It’s an interesting thought experiment. The iPhone presents a highly restricted environment to applications. Apps can’t run in the background, can’t access files belonging to other apps, can’t prevent the user from quitting them, and in general can’t really do much that’s harmful. If the user isn’t running your app, then you can’t do anything to degrade his core experience. What is Apple afraid of here? The answer can be found in Apple’s response to the FCC’s first question, regarding why Apple rejected the Google Voice application. This answer starts off with a wonderful piece of doublespeak: “Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” In other words, it hasn’t been rejected, it just hasn’t been approved! I can’t fathom why Apple wants to make this distinction, or draw attention to the fact that they often leave apps in limbo for weeks or months without an explanation. Back to the degraded core experience. Apple talks about how the Google Voice application replaces the standard telephone functionality of the iPhone with Google’s version, which looks and acts differently. Google Voice provides its own system for receiving voicemail, using SMS, working with contacts, and performing other related tasks. In short: “[Google Voice] appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality….” This would be a decent justification… if it were even remotely true. The fact is, Google Voice can’t replace anything. As I mentioned above, iPhone applications run in a restrictive environment. It is completely impossible for an application to replace another application, or indeed affect it in any way. No, all Google Voice does is provide an icon, a regular application icon like any other, which the user can use if they wish. As with any other iPhone application, if the user doesn’t launch it, it doesn’t run. The user can continue to use all of the normal built-in iPhone functionality exactly as they always have. It would seem that Apple’s true concern with the Google Voice application is that it “duplicates functionality”. It’s well known that Apple hates applications which duplicate functionality that they already provide. Apple rejected a podcast app because it duplicated the podcasting functionality of iTunes (on the desktop!). They rejected a GMail app because it duplicates the functionality of the Mail app. And now they’ve apparently rejected several Google Voice apps because they duplicate the functionality of the Phone app. But the way they explain it, saying that they work “by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality” is misleading at best, if not an outright lie. They provide an alternative, but do not, and can not, replace it. Terms of Service The answer to the third question provides an interesting window on the relationship between Apple and AT&T. It states: “There is a provision in Apple’s agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T’s cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T’s permission. Apple honors this obligation, in addition to respecting AT&T’s customer Terms of Service, which, for example, prohibit an AT&T customer from using AT&T’s cellular service to redirect a TV signal to an iPhone.” Ignoring the question of why it’s Apple’s job to prevent their customers from breaking AT&T’s terms of service, it’s interesting to note just how much this policy is centered on the United States. The iPhone is sold in dozens of different countries and works with dozens of different cellular carriers all over the world. You can be certain that each one of those carriers has different terms of service. Why is AT&T so privileged that their terms of service, and theirs alone, are the ones that Apple looks at when deciding whether to reject or accept any given app? It’s quite likely that people all over the world are missing out on great iPhone apps that their cellular carriers would permit them to use just because AT&T does not permit Americans to use them. Cluelessness The answer to the fourth question is just classic: “Apple does not know if there is a VoIP element in the way the Google Voice application routes calls and messages, and whether VoIP technology is used over the 3G network by the application.” So let’s see. Apple rejected Google Voice on July 27th. It typically takes at least a week before Apple gives any response to an app submission, so we can assume that Google Voice was submitted on July 20th or earlier. And let’s not forget that Apple says that they “continue to study it” in its supposedly non-rejected state. Apple has been studying Google Voice for over one month now and still doesn’t know if it uses any VoIP technology? Give me a break! Just how are they carrying out this study? Overload The answer to that last question is revealed, implicitly, at the end of the letter. Apple claims, “There are more than 40 full-time trained reviewers, and at least two different reviewers study each application….” No problem there. They also claim, “We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week….” Also no problem. But what happens when we put them together? There are 8,500 App Store submissions each week. Each submission gets reviewed twice, so there are 17,000 reviews per week. There are “more than 40″ full-time reviewers; let’s give Apple a nice cushion and say that this means 45. Let’s also assume that these reviewers work a standard full-time 40-hour work week1. With 17,000 reviews per week and 45 reviewers, that means each reviewer performs 378 reviews per week. At 40 hours per week, this is 9.4 reviews per hour, or one review every 6.4 minutes. Think about that figure for a moment. You put in literally months of work on your product, slaving over it and struggling with the half-baked developer experience. And then, at the end of all that, everything rests on a go/no-go decision from two people who collectively spend thirteen minutes evaluating your months of work. And Apple shouts this to the world as though we were supposed to take it as a good thing. Footnotes 1. In reality, Apple being Apple, their reviewers probably work significantly more than 40 hours per week, and thus spend proportionately more time on each review. But even if they worked, say, 80 hours per week, this would only leave 13 minutes for each review, which is still a very small amount of time. It would also means they’re proportionately overworked, and is that really better for the review process? ↩

Jonathan Zittrain: If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate.

Earlier today, Apple updated both the AirPort Express firmware (to version 7.4.2) and Apple TV firmware (to 2.4), causing Airfoil to stop sending audio to these devices properly. We’ve been working to get this issue straightened out, and are now releasing Airfoil 3.3.1, which is fully compatible with these updates. Along with those fixes, we’ve also made some minor improvements to Airfoil Video Player, along with other small bug fixes. This is a free update for all licensed owners of Airfoil for Mac 3, so all existing users should simply choose Check For Update from the Airfoil menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Airfoil before, check it out now with a free trial. Airfoil for Windows users: We’ve now released a similar update for Airfoil for Windows, version 2.7.1. This brings the same compatibility fixes for AirPort Express firmware 7.4.2 and Apple TV firmware 2.4, so be sure to download the update from our site.

Since the release of our XM and SIRIUS application Pulsar, we’ve had a lot of requests for an iPhone version of the application. While we have no plans for an iPhone port of Pulsar, SIRIUS XM have recently released their official iPhone listening client, available here. If you’re an XM or SIRIUS subscriber, you should definitely check it out. It’s free with your subscription, and gives you one more way to access your radio. And of course, if you’re listening to XM or SIRIUS online with your Mac, you should check out our own Pulsar. If you own any of our current Mac products, you can obtain a complimentary Pulsar license. Otherwise, the full version of Pulsar can be unlocked for just $15 through our store.

Milind Alvares over at Smoking Apples has taken some time to review Airfoil, and he’s pronounced it magical. Who are we to argue? If you’re using Airfoil, you already know how great it is. But if not? Check out the writeup, then grab Airfoil for yourself. You could even win one of two licenses from Smoking Apples, but if not, Airfoil is of course available for purchase from our store. Thanks to Smoking Apples for such a great in-depth look at Airfoil!

Each January for the past 25 years, Mac users from around the world have gathered in San Francisco for Macworld. An expo, conference, reunion, and carnival all in one, Macworld provides the absolute best chance for Mac users of all stripes to connect and re-connect with one another, as customers, colleagues, and friends. Macworld is a powerful celebration of the thousands of products and millions of people that make up the Mac universe, an annual reminder of just how important the products we use everyday are. Late last year, Apple stunned us all when they announced that after 2009, they would no longer be exhibiting at Macworld. They said trade shows were outmoded, and the Apple Stores did many times the foot traffic of the Expo. It was too expensive and just not worth their time. Many worry this announcement may spell the end of Macworld. Apple’s withdrawal from the East coast Macworld show quickly led to its collapse, after two years of sparsely-attended shows. The fear is that the West coast show could meet a similar fate. I too worry about the future of Macworld. Macworld 2010 is still on track, with new dates now scheduled for February. However, Apple has long been the biggest draw of Macworld, and without them it will certainly be a different show. There will be no enormous Apple booth, nor any announcement on the scale of 2001’s iTunes or 2007’s iPhone. I don’t believe we’re going to see an expo on its deathbed though. I think that we may well see the birth of a new expo. Macworld 2010 will be less tied to Apple, but it will still have plenty of the same familiar faces. Friends you’ve met over the years will be there, and so will hundreds of the Mac universe’s beloved developers. Macworld exists because of everyone who goes, not just because of Apple’s presence. Macworld can easily be as relevant in 2010 as it was in the years before. All it takes is two things: attendees and exhibitors. We’ll be there – Come join us! With that in mind, I’m delighted to be able to plant a flag and say that in 2010, Rogue Amoeba will again be exhibiting at Macworld. We still believe in Macworld and all that it provides. We believe it’s relevant, useful, and worth having. We believe that meeting new customers, talking to existing ones, and sharing a great time with all manner of Mac friends, is still worth doing. If you want proof of this belief, look no further than booth #1346, where we’ll be demoing great audio software under the banner with the strange name and crazy mascot. I’m hopeful that Macworld 2010 will continue to be the celebration of the Mac community that Macworld has long been for many of us. In a global economy where customers and companies are tens of thousands of miles from one another, Macworld may actually be more important than ever, as a means of providing face-to-face contact. Simply put, I still believe in Macworld, as both a user and a developer. That’s why we’re exhibiting and that’s why we hope you’ll be attending. Details The Macworld Expo Hall will be open from February 11th to the 13th 2010, in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, and you can register for a free Expo Hall pass right here. So mark the dates, and remember our booth (#1346). Come see the beginning of something special. Come see the new Macworld. Macworld 2010: We’ll see you there.

Things have been relatively quiet here at Rogue Amoeba, but we’re always working on updates and new releases. Today, we have a minor but important update to Pulsar, with the release of version 1.5.1. This update includes several important bug fixes, including a fix for a potential hang when a channel cut out. This is a free update for all licensed users. If you’re new to Pulsar, visit the Pulsar page for more information or just click to download now. If you’re already using Pulsar, just choose Check For Update in the Pulsar menu to update right inside the application. We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Dogstar Radio, who help make Pulsar what it is. Dogstar provides the world with live artist and track title for every SIRIUS channel. Although XM Radio publishes this data online, SIRIUS does not. To collect the data, Dogstar Radio manually pulls data from hardware SIRIUS radios which are continuously scanning stations and noting what the currently playing song is. The track title data is then uploaded to the web, and made available to many different applications that stream SIRIUS, including Pulsar. We’ve recently made a small donation to Dogstar to help pay for additional server capacity, and would like to personally thank Mike for all the work he’s done to make this all possible.

I really don’t even know how to express the ridiculous nature of this rejection. Read about it for yourself, then decide if you think the App Store process is working the way it should. Update; It’s worth mentioning that there’s a PG-13/R rated domain, Twitter account, and Twitter #hashtag for just this sort of thing.

Back in December, immediately after we released Radioshift Touch, I sat down to solve the sales data problem we had. Although Apple provides AppStore developers with sales data, the raw numbers are only available for the past 7 days. We’re accustomed to having sales data going back…well, forever. For example, on this day six years ago, we sold 7 copies of Audio Hijack. Wanting to have this same level of historic data, I set about building a sales data collection system for iTunes Connect and our iPhone applications. Luckily for me, someone had already went down this path. Kirby Turner had released AppDailySales, a python script that would automatically log into iTunesConnect and fetch the raw sales data. This would provide the base for what would become iTunesConnectArchiver. My first task was rewriting AppDailySales to use BeautifulSoup for web scraping. BeautifulSoup is a wonderful little library that I will probably talk more about in a future post (we use it in Pulsar). This conversion gave us a web scraper that I could trust wouldn’t break every other week, as such things are prone to doing. Next I set about adding some basic data parsing and munging. Raw sales data out of iTunes Connect is almost impossible to make any sense of, and needs to be heavily massaged to give you even a simple “I made $X today” figure. A big part of this is dealing with all the various currencies. iTunesConnectArchiver attempts to convert every foreign currency it sees into USD, basing it on the exchange rate for the day of that sale. No more will you be lulled into a false sense of richness because you made 25,000 yen. The final piece of the puzzle was persistence. For this, I dumped all the parsed sales figures into an SQLite database. A big worry here was “missing a day”. A lot of people seem to collect their iTunes Connect sales data by hand, and if they forget to grab a day, it can disappear and never be seen again. Thus, iTunesConnectArchiver downloads all available data (typically 7 days worth of sales) and merges all of that into the database. It can miss as many as 6 days, and still not lose any data. We’ve been running it nightly with a cron task, and have a complete set of sales data thus far. I also hacked in some basic ASCII charts and graphs to get some basic idea of how things are doing, but didn’t go too far down this road, as my main concern was just getting the data into storage for future usage. After I finished the script in December, I decided to test it out for a few weeks to see if there were any bugs before releasing it. And sure enough, 4 months later when we shipped Airfoil Speakers Touch, there was a divide-by-zero bug (because AFSTouch is free!). With that sorted out, I am finally releasing it here: iTunesConnectArchiver.zip v1.0.0 It requires python 2.5 2.6 or later with the sqlite3 module, and BeautifulSoup (which is included). Also included is a ReadMe that describes in more detail how it works and how to use it. I should note that I mainly intend this as something for others to build their own tools from. I will accept bug fix patches, but will probably reject any feature patches or feature requests which I don’t use myself. So, feel free to take this script and steal whatever you need from it for your own projects.

It’s been almost three months since we released Pulsar Public Preview 2, our last update to our XM and SIRIUS satellite radio player Pulsar. Since then, we’ve been hard at work on many back-end improvements, as well as new features. Today, we’re pleased to announce that Pulsar has exited the Public Preview stage, with the release of Pulsar 1.5 1. First among Pulsar 1.5’s many new features is the much anticipated space-saving mini-mode, accessible by clicking the Zoom (+) button. This update also brings support for recording with Audio Hijack Pro. Just right-click a channel and choose Record in Audio Hijack Pro, and a new Session will be made in Audio Hijack Pro, perfect for instant or timed recording. And with Pulsar’s improved interface, there’s no more hunting for the Play button, when you can just click a channel in the list to play it. Pulsar 1.5 includes all this and much more, and it’s a free update for all licensed users. If you’re new to Pulsar, visit the Pulsar page for more information or just click to download now. If you’re already using Pulsar, just choose Check For Update in the Pulsar menu to update right inside the application. Footnotes: 1. We originally intended to ship the first non-Preview version of Pulsar as 1.0. Of course, force of habit meant that we accidentally used 1.0 as the version number for Pulsar Public Preview. Our version checking is based on that version number, so Preview 2 was 1.1, and now the final release is 1.5. So it goes. ↩

I always have a good time chatting with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices, and this weekend’s conversation proved no exception. We discussed Airfoil and our new Airfoil Speakers Touch, as well as developing for the iPhone in general. You can have a listen, right here.

Using our custom Airfoil Speakers software in conjunction with Airfoil, you can already turn any computer into an AirPort Express audio receiver. You can then send audio from your Mac or PC to any other Mac, PC, or Linux computer on your local network, in addition to sending audio to AirPort Express and AppleTV hardware. Today, we’re happy to welcome a new addition to the Airfoil Speakers family, with the immediate availability of Airfoil Speakers Touch. Using Airfoil Speakers Touch alongside Airfoil for Mac or Airfoil for Windows, you can now send audio from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch on the local network. It’s a mobile audio receiver, right in your pocket! Of course, we’ve also got updates to both Airfoil for Mac (now at version 3.3) and Airfoil for Windows (now at version 2.7), to provide full compatibility with Airfoil Speakers Touch. Both of these are free updates for registered owners, and they both bring many minor bug fixes on top of Airfoil Speakers Touch support, so get them now! Finally, for users of our unsupported, but still very cool, Airfoil Speakers for Linux, be sure to update to version 2.7. This update fixes several issues with crashes on Ubuntu. So, those are our Airfoil updates. If you’re new to wireless home audio, you can download free trials of Airfoil for Mac and Airfoil for Windows, or visit the Airfoil page for more information. All users, new and old, should be sure to check out all our versions of Airfoil Speakers, including the brand-new Airfoil Speakers Touch, to send audio to computers and devices throughout your home! Update: For those wondering about Airfoil for iPhone, or Airfoil Remote for iPhone, please see this post. The short version is that much as we’d like it, it’s not at all feasible at this time.

Today we’ve got a couple links for software by Friends of Rogue Amoeba (FoRA). First up is a new version of Snapper, a Windows screenshot utility from our good friend David Hammerton. We mentioned it when the initial version came out a few months ago and it’s better than ever. The new version has a [...]

Today we’ve got a couple links for software by Friends of Rogue Amoeba (FoRA). First up is a new version of Snapper, a Windows screenshot utility from our good friend David Hammerton. We mentioned it when the initial version came out a few months ago and it’s better than ever. The new version has a [...]