As recently highlighted by a Tesla Model 3 owner on Reddit, your connected car knows when you've hacked it, and it might be logging that data to use against you in a future warranty claim. The Drive reports: The image you see above is a warning message popped up on the man's Model 3 infotainment screen after he installed the latest over-the-air OS update from Tesla a couple weeks ago. Prior to the update, he had also added an aftermarket module from an outfit called Ingenext that allows the dual-motor Model 3 to achieve its quickest 0-60 mph time without Tesla's requisite $2,000 "Acceleration Boost" option. Its presence didn't trigger a warning prior to the software update, and though the car still drove normally, the owner couldn't get the display to clear. Ingenext is a Canadian company focused on activating the latent performance and comfort features baked-in to Tesla vehicles. One particular modification developed by the company is called "Boost 50," a $1,458 upgrade which claims to shave up to a half-second off the zero-to-60 MPH time when installed in a Model 3 equipped with dual motors but not the performance option.
[...]
Ingenext's founder Guillaume Andre told The Drive that he feared Tesla could use the detection of aftermarket parts to justify blocking vehicles from using the Supercharger network and make customers "a prisoner of the Tesla system". The owner of the Model 3 that began getting the pop-ups told us that he planned to visit a Tesla Supercharger to ensure normal functionality, but has not yet reported the results of his findings. [...] Ingenext got to working on finding just how Tesla detected its "undetectable" mod. After some prodding, it was determined that the vehicle had used a separate communications network to detect the presence of the module and ultimately determined that a second small hardware module could be installed to combat the detection. Ingenext dubbed its fix the "Nice Try Module" and has already begun shipping it to customers.

The Tesla community is torn on this matter. Some argue that owners who purchased the module knew the risk of not going through the official channels, akin to using a cheat code to unlock a DLC upgrade in a video game. Others bring up the very valid point of right to repair -- but does that also include right to modify? After all, you do own the vehicles you spent upwards of $40,000 on. Nearly every enthusiast-focused vehicle has an off-the-shelf tune of some sort that can be purchased. Ingenext says that this is only the beginning of a fight that it anticipates will be an uphill battle, if not for it, than for all aftermarket companies who develop performance mods for Teslas.

Google today launched Android 11, the latest version of its mobile OS, and pushed the source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). From a report: Unlike previous major versions, Android 11 is not only arriving as an over-the-air update to Pixel phones first, but also on OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Realme phones "with more partners launching and upgrading devices over the coming months." That's a major departure for Android, updates for which take months to arrive thanks to carriers and device makers dragging their feet. It doesn't help that Android is the dominant mobile operating system available on thousands of different device configurations, powering over 2.5 billion monthly active devices. [...] Android 11 brings a long list of new features. Google originally split them into three themes: People, Controls, and Privacy. But there is also support for 5G, new screen types, and call screening. There's even a frame rate API for helping apps and games adopt variable refresh rates, which will be a big focus over the next few years as phones and TVs adopt the feature from computer monitors. Google also expanded the Neural Networks API for running computationally intensive machine learning operations.

This week saw the release of the 2020 Ruby on Rails Community Survey Results: 2,049 members of the Rails community from 92 countries kindly contributed their thoughts on tools, frameworks, and workflows in their day to day development lives. From these responses we hope to get an understanding of where Rails stands as a framework in 2020.

Some of these questions have been asked since our original survey over a decade ago, and show how the community has evolved over the last twelve years. Inside.com's developer newsletter summarized some of the results: - The typical Rails developer is self-taught, has been working with Rails 4-7 years, and works remotely...

- Rails developers overwhelmingly choose lightweight solutions like jQuery over larger frameworks.

- Most of the developers surveyed feel Rails is still relevant, although they were split on whether or not the Rails core team is moving in the right direction, with 48% totally agreeing with that sentiment.
According to the results, 24% of survey respondents primarily developing on Linux, while 73% used Mac OS X (leaving just 3% using Windows or "Other"). Yet the most popular editor was Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (used by 32% of respondents), followed by Vim-based editors (21%), Sublime (16%), RubyMine (15%), Atom (9%), Emacs (3%), and TextMate (2%).

The survey also asked the size of development teams for "your primary Rails application."

• A team of one - 17%
• Two to four - 35%
• Five to eight - 19%
• Eight to 15 - 13%
• 16 to 25 - 6%
• 25-50 - 5%
• 50-plus - 5%

Meanwhile, in a recent talk, Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto confirmed that Ruby 3 will finally be released this Christmas, December 25, bringing a new pattern-matching syntax, right-hand-side variable assignment, and numbered block parameters.

He also promised improvements to help make Ruby more fast, more concurrent, and more correct. (Though "We don't pursue completeness nor soundness of the type systems, because, you know, Ruby is Ruby. Ruby is basically dynamically typed...")

Since Huawei's latest smartphones have no access to Google's Play Store, many crucial apps aren't available. David Phelan from Forbes reports that TomTom Go Navigation has launched on Huawei's own "AppGallery" app store, filling the void of navigation apps and making AppGallery a potent alternative to Google's Play Store. Phelan writes: TomTom [...] is an unquestionable big beast in the world of mapping with huge name recognition. It also has an offline setting, something that's strikingly important for navigation apps, since you may well be using it abroad where roaming costs can be high. With TomTom Go Navigation, detailed 3D maps are stored on the phone. TomTom specialities include moving lane guidance which helps drivers navigate intersections by indicating which lane is best. You can also customize maps by adding or deleting regions as needed. The only downside is that TomTom Go Navigation, unlike Here WeGo and indeed Google Maps, is not free. There's a 30-day free trial, after which it costs $12.99 per year, $8.99 for six months or $1.99 per month.

This is not TomTom's first collaboration with Huawei. The company uses TomTom's mapping solution in its Huawei Mobile Services kits, which developers can use â" ride-share apps need mapping kits, for example. Those are not accessible to consumers, of course, but this app, based on the same mapping, is. Oh, and that's not the end of the story. Huawei's own Maps app is coming and is being developed in conjunction with TomTom. It Huawei gets it right, it could diminish the loyalty to Google Maps decisively.

New submitter bondman writes: Windows 95 was released a full quarter century ago today, on August 24th, 1995. Long gone, nearly forgotten? I'm surprised to not have come across a retrospective article yet. I've linked to the Wikipedia article.

As for me I still haven't grown to re-like The Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" yet. I got so sick of hearing it with all the pre-launch and post-launch hype, as the song was tied heavily to the Win 95 launch event. Microsoft paid the Stones a princely sum to use it.

I still remember how exciting it was to see the full-length, full-screen video included on the installation CD-ROM, "Buddy Holly" by Weezer. Mind-blowing to watch a whole music video on your computer. Crappy resolution by our standards today, and a very limited palette to my memory. But as I said, amazing in the day.

Windows 95 had many fans and many critics. At the time, I recall it as an exciting OS (or GUI on top of DOS, if you prefer). PC users were riveted to all the magazine and other media coverage pre-launch. I remember it fondly (with all the obligatory respect due Mac OS, the Amiga, and all the other early GUIs of course).

Slashdot reader #16,185 wrote regularly for the newsletter of a small-town computer users group. Now they've written an article for Ars Technica reminding readers that "The Homebrew Computer Club where the Apple I got its start is deservedly famous — but it's far from tech history's only community gathering centered on CPUs." Throughout the 70s and into the 90s, groups around the world helped hapless users figure out their computer systems, learn about technology trends, and discover the latest whiz-bang applications. And these groups didn't stick to Slacks, email threads, or forums; the meetings often happened in real life. But to my dismay, many young technically-inclined whippersnappers are completely unaware of computer user groups' existence and their importance in the personal computer's development. That's a damned shame... Computer groups celebrated the industry's fundamental values: a delight in technology's capabilities, a willingness to share knowledge, and a tacit understanding that we're all here to help one another...

Two things primarily made user groups disappear: first was the Internet — and the BBSes that preceded them. If you could articulate a question, you could find a website with the answer. But computers also became easier to use. Once personal computers went mainstream, troubleshooting them stopped being an esoteric endeavor.

The typical computer user group is gone now. For the exceptions, you can find an incomplete and mostly out-of-date list via the Association of PC User Groups, though online exploration may lead you to more options. For example, the Toronto PET Users Group (TPUG) is the longest continually operating Commodore user group. Washington Apple Pi is still going strong, as is the Triangle Linux Users Group. IBM's user group, SHARE, began in the 1950s and continues to support enterprise users, though it's primarily a conference these days...

Hopefully tech will continue to inspire ways to get together with other people who share your enthusiasm, whether it's Raspberry Pi meetups, Maker days, or open source conferences such as Drupalcon or PyCon. You also continue the computer user group ethos by finding ways to help other tech enthusiasts locally. For example, Hack Club aims to teach skills to high school students. Hack Clubs are already in two percent of US high schools across 35 states and 17 countries, with about 10,000 students attending clubs and hackathons each year.

So even if computer user groups largely are a thing of the past, their benefits live on. User groups were the precursor to the open source community, based on the values of sharing knowledge and helping one another. And who knows, without user groups promoting a cooperative viewpoint, the open source community might never have taken off like it did.
The article includes photographs of the OS/2 community's magazine Extended Attributes, the M.A.C.E. Journal (for Atari users), the Commodore Eight Bit Boosters newsletter, and the 1979 publication Prog/80 ("dedicated to the serious programmer.")

And it also includes video of a 1981 visit to the Boston Computer Society by a 25-year-old Bill Gates.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2005, before the iPhone, Apple purportedly helped a U.S. Department of Energy contractor modify a 5th-generation iPod to secretly record and store data. The exact reason why remains a mystery, but an ex-Apple engineer involved in the project thinks it could have been a surreptitious Geiger counter. This bonkers story comes courtesy of David Shayer, a former Apple software engineer who was with the company for 18 years and worked on devices such as the iPod and Apple Watch. Shayer, who wrote the story for TidBITS, recounts a "gray day in late 2005" when his boss's boss, the director of iPod software, told him that he was assigned to a top-secret project with two engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a "special iPod." In actuality, the two engineers were from Bechtel, a U.S. defense contractor for the DOE. The request was to build a normal, functioning iPod that could also secretly record data onto custom hardware. In other words, some spy-level shit. At the time, the iPod wasn't a particularly easy device to modify. That's because according to Shayer, the iPod's operating system wasn't based on any other Apple operating system. Instead, it was based on a "reference platform Apple bought from a company called Portal Player" and cobbled together with code from Pixo, a company started by former Apple engineers who wrote a "general-purpose cell phone operating system." TL;DR -- the iPod OS was complicated, and there wasn't an easy way to figure out how it worked without help from Apple.

In the name of security and privacy, Google is taking away the ability for users to select third-party camera apps in Android 11, forcing users to rely on the built-in camera app. Android Police reports: At the heart of this change is one of the defining traits of Android: the Intent system. Let's say you need to take a picture of a novelty coffee mug to sell through an auction app. Since the auction app wasn't built for photography, the developer chose to leave that up to a proper camera app. This where the Intent system comes into play. Developers simply create a request with a few criteria and Android will prompt users to pick from a list of installed apps to do the job.

However, things are going to change with Android 11 for apps that ask for photos or videos. Three specific intents will cease to work like they used to, including: VIDEO_CAPTURE, IMAGE_CAPTURE, and IMAGE_CAPTURE_SECURE. Android 11 will now automatically provide the pre-installed camera app to perform these actions without ever searching for other apps to fill the role. Google describes the change in a list of new behaviors in Android 11, and further confirmed it in the Issue Tracker. Privacy and security are cited as the reason, but there's no discussion about what exactly made those intents dangerous. Perhaps some users were tricked into setting a malicious camera app as the default and then using it to capture things that should have remained private.

Not only does Android 11 take the liberty of automatically launching the pre-installed camera app when requested, it also prevents app developers from conveniently providing their own interface to simulate the same functionality. I ran a test with some simple code to query for the camera apps on a phone, then ran it on devices running Android 10 and 11 with the same set of camera apps installed. Android 10 gave back a full set of apps, but Android 11 reported nothing, not even Google's own pre-installed Camera app.

Google today launched ChromeOS.dev, a new site that aims to help developers get started with building Android apps for the company's Linux-based operating system. With today's update, Google is also making it easier to build and test Android applications on Chromebooks. From a report: The new ChromeOS.dev site, which is available in English and Spanish for now, is meant to "help developers maximize their capabilities on the platform through technical resources/tutorials, product announcements, code samples and more," a Google spokesperson told us. As Google notes in today's announcement, in the last quarter, Chromebook unit sales were up 127% year-over-year in the last quarter, compared to 40% for notebook sales in general. To help Android developers do all of their work on a Chromebook if they so desire, Google now offers the full Android Emulator on Chrome OS to test apps right on their Chromebooks. The team also made deploying apps on Chrome OS (M81 and newer) much easier. Developers can now deploy and test apps directly without having to use developer mode or connect devices via USB.

Today, Google announced that Google Maps for iOS will be adding both an Apple Watch app and support for CarPlay Dashboard, increasing the likelihood that Apple users will reconsider Google's potential contribution to their walks and rides. VentureBeat reports: Google Maps for Apple Watch appears to be a very stripped-down version of the iPhone app, offering users step-by-step directions and estimated arrival times -- but only for destinations already stored within the app or shared from the connected iPhone. You can tap on a list of destinations you've saved to conjure up directions from your current location -- otherwise, navigation needs to start on the phone. Simple icons, foot/mile distances, and street names are indicated when walking, bike riding, or driving. Public transportation support is also included. In addition to displaying full-color maps, Apple's own Watch app includes voice recognition, handwriting input, access to contact lists, and a variety of point-of-interest categories to help users navigate without using a phone. It's unclear at this point whether Google will actively try to add more functionality to its Apple Watch app -- the Wear OS version of Google Maps includes voice input and map browsing features.

On the CarPlay front, the iPhone version of Google Maps is gaining the ability to work in the Dashboard mode already supported by Apple Maps, such that the screen is split into a moving map on the left, turn-by-turn directions at the upper right, and music, podcasts, audiobooks, and calendar appointment details at the bottom right. CarPlay Dashboard was opened to third-party developers in iOS 13.4, and while Google Maps isn't the first app to take advantage of the feature, it and Waze are arguably the ones most people have been waiting for. Google has supported CarPlay with a full-screen Maps mode since 2018. Google Maps' CarPlay Dashboard support is available now for all CarPlay vehicles, while the Apple Watch app "starts rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks." Both should be accessible from the iOS App Store's Google Maps app.

Long-time Slashdot reader philml writes: Popular Mac developer Charlie Monroe woke up to find that none of his users could run his software. Instead, Mac OS was giving a message saying that it "will damage your computer".
Monroe described the ensuing hassle in a blog post titled "A day without business." In a later update he added that Apple "has called and apologized for the complications. The issue was caused by my account being erroneously flagged by automated processes."

But 9 to 5 Mac describes how Apple's mistake affected Monroe's apps: Users were unable to open them, and a message flagged them as malware, advising users to delete the apps to avoid damaging their Macs.

Developer Charlie Monroe, creator of the Downie video downloader, among other apps, said that Apple didn't even send him a message saying it had happened, and for several hours he didn't know whether he still had a business or not⦠He said that it took Apple 24 hours to partly fix the problem, removing the flags, though that still left him having to recompile, re-sign, and redistribute everything... Most app users will never know the story behind this, only that they bought an app, Apple told them it was malware, and they deleted it as instructed.

It also seems unlikely to help Apple's antitrust battles, where many are arguing that the company holds too much power over users and developers alike.

Twitter on Wednesday disclosed a new security vulnerability that may have exposed the direct messages of users who access the service using Android devices. CNBC reports: Specifically, the vulnerability could have exposed the private data of Twitter users running devices with Android OS versions 8 and 9, the company said. "This vulnerability could allow an attacker, through a malicious app installed on your device, to access private Twitter data on your device (like Direct Messages) by working around Android system permissions that protect against this," the company said in a blog post.

The company said there is no evidence that the Android vulnerability has been exploited by attackers. Regardless, Twitter said it has begun informing users who could have been vulnerable. The company has also updated its Android app to remove the vulnerability, and it is requiring anyone who may have been impacted to update their Twitter for Android app. Twitter said it is also identifying changes to its processes to better guard against issues like this. "Your privacy and trust is important to us and we will continue working to keep your data secure on Twitter," the company said in its blog.

The public beta of macOS Big Sur, the next major release of Apple's Mac operating system, is now available. From a report: The new update brings a big visual overhaul to macOS while also adding a number of brand-new enhancements. If you're thinking about installing the macOS Big Sur public beta, be warned that it's still, well, a beta. That means you could experience some unexpected bugs, and software you rely on may not work with the new OS just yet. Before you install Big Sur, make sure all of your important documents are backed up somewhere safe, and if at all possible, you should only install this on a secondary Mac. But if you do roll the dice and install the Big Sur beta, you'll immediately see that it looks much different than previous versions of macOS, as Apple has made significant design changes across the entire operating system. Windows have a whole lot more white, for example (unless you're using dark mode, in which case, there's still a lot of black). Apple's app icons have received a major facelift and are now rounded squares, like iOS's app icons. And the menu bar is now translucent, blending into your wallpaper.

Google has already discontinued the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, its flagship phones that were released in October of last year. Both devices are out of stock in Google's store in the US, though some variants are still available in other regions for the time being. A Google spokesperson told The Verge that the company will honor its three-year commitment on timely OS and security updates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As promised, popular weather app Dark Sky ended support for Android and Wear OS over the weekend. Android Dark Sky users report that the app is no longer working and that it presents the user with a message saying that the "app has shut down." The impending shutdown was first announced when Apple acquired the company in March of this year. Despite the end of support for the world's most popular mobile operating system, Dark Sky's developers wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition that joining Apple means they could "reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone."

The Dark Sky Android app is not the only popular service on the chopping block as a result of the acquisition. Several app developers on both iOS and Android have used Dark Sky's API for weather data for a while now, but like Android support, that's going away. There's a little more time in that case, though: developers have until the end of next year to find and implement alternative data sources. When the acquisition was first announced, Dark Sky was slated to stop working on Android on July 1. That deadline was extended by one month, but it went into effect as planned on August 1. The Web version of Dark Sky was scheduled to end today, but Apple has extended that deadline, though embeds have been disabled. A new date for the Web shutdown has not been specified. That version will remain an option for Android users for now until it, too, stops working.

Microsoft announced this week plans to remove all Windows-related file downloads from the Microsoft Download Center that are cryptographically signed with the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1). From a report: The files will be removed next Monday, on August 3, the company said on Tuesday. The OS maker cited the security of the SHA-1 algorithm for the move. "SHA-1 is a legacy cryptographic hash that many in the security community believe is no longer secure. Using the SHA-1 hashing algorithm in digital certificates could allow an attacker to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks," it said. Most software companies have recently begun abandoning the SHA-1 algorithm after a team of academics broke the SHA-1 hashing function at a theoretical level in February 2016.

SUSE has released the next versions of its flagship operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 Service Pack 2 and its latest infrastructure management program, SUSE Manager 4.1. ZDNet reports: SLE 15 SP2 is available on the x86-64, Arm, IBM POWER, IBM Z, and LinuxONE hardware architectures. This new Linux server edition is based on the Linux 5.3 kernel. This new kernel release includes upstream features such as utilization clamping support in the task scheduler, and power-efficient userspace waiting. Other new and noteworthy features include:

- Support for migration from openSUSE Leap to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). With this, you can try the free, community openSUSE Linux distro, and then, if you find it's a good choice for your business, upgrade to SLES.
- Extended Package Search. By using the new Zypper, SUSE's command line package manager, command option -- zypper search-packages -- sysadmins can now search across all SUSE repositories, even unenabled ones. This makes it easier for administrators to find required software packages.
- SLE Software Development Kit (SDK) is now integrated into SLE. Development packages are packaged alongside regular packages. - Python 3: SLE 15 offers full support for Python 3 development. SLE still supports Python 2 for the time being.
- 389 Directory Server replaces OpenLDAP as the LDAP directory service.
- Repository Mirroring Tool (RMT) replaces Subscription Management Tool (SMT). RMT allows mirroring SUSE repositories and custom repositories. You can then register systems directly with RMT. In environments with tightened security, RMT can also proxy other RMT servers.
- Better business continuity with improved SLE Live Patching. SUSE claims Live Patching increases system uptime by up to 12 months. SLE Live Patching is also now available for IBM Z and LinuxONE mainframe architectures.

As for SUSE Manager 4.1, this is an improved open-source infrastructure management and automation solution that lowers costs, identifies risk, enhances availability, and reduces complexity in edge, cloud, and data center environments. With SUSE Manager you can keep servers, VMs, containers, and clusters secure, healthy, compliant, and low maintenance whether in private, public, or hybrid cloud. That's especially important these days thanks to coronavirus pandemic IT staff disruptions. SUSE Manager 4.1 can also be used with the Salt DevOps program. Its vertical-market brother, SUSE Manager for Retail 4.1, is optimized and tailored specifically for retail. This release comes with enhancements for small store operations, enhanced offline capabilities and image management over Wi-Fi, and enhanced virtual machine management and monitoring capabilities. Simultaneously it can scale retail environments to tens of thousands of end-point devices and help modernize point-of-service rollouts.

New submitter kimmmos shares a report from BetaNews: An unprotected database belonging to the VPN service UFO VPN was exposed online for more than two weeks. Contained within the database were more than 20 million logs including user passwords stored in plain text. User of both UFO VPN free and paid services are affected by the data breach which was discovered by the security research team at Comparitech. Despite the Hong Kong-based VPN provider claiming to have a "strict no-logs policy" and that any data collected is anonymized, Comparitech says that "based on the contents of the database, users' information does not appear to be anonymous at all." A total of 894GB of data was exposed, and the API access records and user logs included: Account passwords in plain text; VPN session secrets and tokens; IP addresses of both user devices and the VPN servers they connected to; Connection timestamps; Geo-tags; Device and OS characteristics; and URLs that appear to be domains from which advertisements are injected into free users' web browsers. Comparitech notes that this runs counter to UFO VPN's privacy policy.

Google announced that Android is seeing the fastest adoption rates of any version of Android. The Verge reports: According to Google, Android 10 was installed on 100 million devices five months after its launch in September 2019 â" 28 percent faster than it took the company to reach a similar milestone for Android Pie. Google credits the faster adoption rate to improvements the company has been making over the years, like Android Oreo's Project Treble and Android 10's Project Mainline, which makes it easier for hardware companies to create new updates.

But while those numbers are impressive, Google's post is notably missing some crucial information, like what percentage of Android devices are running Android 10 -- a number that's sure to be lower than Google would like. In fact, Google has effectively stopped publishing the breakdown percentage of which Android devices are running which version of Android entirely, following a similar announcement last August that looked back at Android 9 Pie adoption rates. (At the time, Android Pie had been installed on 22.6 percent of Android devices ahead of the release of Android 10.)

John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: Feel free to file Google's release this week of an update to their iPad Gmail app with support for split-screen multitasking under "better late than never," but this is so late it borders on the absurd. It's like the difference between showing up fashionably late and showing up a week after the party. Split-screen multitasking was introduced for the iPad back in 2015 with iOS 9. Five years to add support for a foundational element of the iPad user experience. And an email client is near the top of the list of the type of apps where someone would want to use split-screen. Five years. Google makes a lot of software with terrible user experiences for users who have poor taste. Their iOS software, in particular, has for the most part never suggested that it was designed by people who like -- or even use -- iOS. It's the blind leading the blind. But yet the Gmail app is currently the number one free app in the Productivity category in the App Store.

On the surface, it's tempting to blow this off. To each their own. Whatever floats their boat. Who cares if millions of iPad users are satisfied using an email client that is a poor iPad app, so long as actual good iPad email clients are available to those who do care? But what about those stuck using the Gmail app not because they want to, but because they have to? Who can help them but Apple? I worry that it's not tenable in the long run to expect Apple to continue striving to create well-crafted -- let alone insanely great -- software when so many of its users not only settle for, but perhaps even prefer, software that is, to put it kindly, garbage. There have always been popular Mac and iPhone apps that are objectively terrible apps -- where by "popular" I mean much-used, not much-loved. But what made Apple users Apple users is that they complained vociferously if they had to use a terrible app. Word 6 was a sack of dog shit Microsoft dropped off and set aflame on Mac users' porch, but we all knew it was a flaming bag of dog shit, and even those of us who didn't even use Word were angry about it because it was an insult.

I worry that this sort of "Who cares, it's better than nothing" attitude has seeped into Apple itself, and explains how we wound up with barely modified iPad apps shipping as system apps on the Mac. But more than anything I worry that this exemplifies where Apple has lost its way with the App Store. What exactly is the point of running a strict approval process for apps if not, first and foremost, to ensure that they're good apps? An iPad email app that doesn't support split-screen multitasking for five years is, by definition, not a good app. I'd like to see all the vim, vigor, and vigilance Apple applies to making sure no app on the App Store is making a dime without Apple getting three cents applied instead to making sure there aren't any scams or ripoffs, and that popular apps support good-citizen-of-the-platform features within a reasonable amount of time after those features are introduced in the OS. I don't know exactly how long "reasonable" is, but five fucking years for split-screen support ain't it.