Apr 23

Boycott Gizmodo

We all enjoy reading the latest rumors about upcoming Apple products and play the guessing game of what Steve will unveil next. But this week Gizmodo went over the line. (If you have been immersed in coding this past week, here’s an excellent recap.) By their actions Gizmodo have caused great harm to an Apple engineer who made an unfortunate mistake. And they seem to take great pride in this.

The Apple engineer is one of us. He probably works 100-hour weeks building the gadgets we love to use and which we ultimately make our living from.

Therefore I encourage you to follow Craig Hockenberry’s advice and boycott Gizmodo. Since it’s clear that the only thing they care about is page views, let us all deprive them of the same.

Mac & the iPad, History Repeats Itself

An excellent article by Bruce Tognazzini (Apple employee #66) on Apple’s design process that leads to great products like the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad.

Increase iPhone App Downloads by A/B Testing App Names

A very smart technique for testing and finding the most effective name and icon for your app.

Core Data Tutorial: How To Use NSFetchedResultsController

If you haven’t looked at Core Data for your apps yet, you should. This article is the third part in a series, and deals with NSFetchedResultsController. This controller is by itself one of the best arguments for using Core Data in an iPhone app. (Although beware of this gotcha.)

How To Integrate Google Analytics Tracking Into Your Apps In 7 Minutes

I’ve written about Google Analytics for iPhone apps before. This is a nice tutorial with screen images. (Although given the recent change to paragraph 3.3.9 in the iPhone Developer Agreement, you may want to hold off on adding analytics to your app.)

written by Nick

3 Responses to “Five On Friday”

  1. Brian Hoffman Says:

    While I appreciate your opinion on the whole GizModo debate, I find it highly ridiculous to boycott a blog. I really just don’t understand how this really affects Gray Powell as far as outing him goes. I mean Apple already knew he lost it and I don’t think the results of this really affected him career-wise. If they were going to get all Gestapo on him they would have well before the article came out and secondly this whole early reveal doesn’t hurt Apple in the slightest bit. In fact, it increases the hype and suspense of the whole situation. Buy into SJ’s distortion vortex or whatever if you like, but either way Gray Powell is like a mini-celebrity over this and has not lost his job.

  2. Nick Says:

    @Brian: There was simply no reason to name the Apple engineer who lost the phone. The scoop was to reveal the new iPhone’s features. The identity of the engineer added absolutely nothing to this. Seemingly the only reason Gizmodo did this was to ride the story for one more day. And to cash in on the additional page views.

    What made me really upset was the gleeful tone of the identity reveal. They were clearly gloating in the misery of another human being. If he still has a job at Apple or if he was fired or demoted is irrelevant.

    It’s also irrelevant if Apple was harmed or benefitted from Gizmodo’s scoop. This is all about human decency towards a fellow man and engineer in our business.

  3. Martin Says:

    I agree with what Nick wrote. Apple has changed my life and lifestyle. I am upset with Gizmodo’s actions toward this.

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