Arnold Kim has written a great article for MacRumors about the upcoming sandboxing restrictions on OS X. I admit to not really thinking about this a great deal, but it’s clear Apple’s new approach could be a very big problem for any Mac user who uses anything beyond pretty basic apps:

Examples of Mac Apps that will be affected include iTunes controllers (Tagalicious, CoverSutra), inter-app communication (Fantastical), apps that browse the file system (Transmit), system-wide keyboard shortcut utilities (TextExpander), file syncing, and backups utilities.

From what I’d heard in the past, apps that require ‘deep’ system access and hacks were most at threat, but it’s clear that such access and hacks are actually pretty commonplace. For example, if apps that browse the file system (beyond, I suspect, Open/Save dialogs) are at threat from being booted out of the Mac App Store, that’s practically every app related to web design.

Jason Snell commented for Macworld about the plans:

Not only does this approach risk turning the Mac App Store into a wasteland of arcade games and one-trick-pony apps, it risks dumbing down the Mac app ecosystem as a whole.

What’s clear is that Snell might have been being optimistic here, since many of the very best one-trick-pony apps are those that provide extra functionality to existing apps. A case in point: I Love Stars, which shows a rating for the currently playing iTunes track in the menu bar and enables you to amend it by clicking dots/stars. It’s pretty depressing to think that even apps like this might soon disappear.

Snell:

While developers can always opt out of the Mac App Store, they’re reluctant to do so.

There are good reasons for this. First, most Mac users never buy new software, but Apple is using the Mac App Store to change this, training users to buy apps in much the same way it did on iOS. But I suspect it’ll be increasingly rare for people to stray beyond the store, and so if your app isn’t included, you risk losing a lot of sales. Secondly, I still suspect the Mac App Store is only temporarily an optional means of installing Mac software. At some point, it’s going to become the only way, perhaps with OS X Whatever 10.8 Is Called, in 2013. If this all comes to pass, we really will have seen a lot of iOS come back to the Mac—perhaps a bit too much.

Note: I’d welcome any comments from developers on this article, not least if I’m misinterpreting how things might come to pass next year on OS X.

Jason Gilbert for Huff Post Tech Argle Wargle (a couple of those words might be wrong, but they somehow get the direction of the site across better) argues Google are huge idiot-faces for making a Gmail app for Apple’s iPhone, a phone that, note, is somewhat popular.

One of the biggest advantages of owning a Nintendo (or Super Nintendo, or N64) when I was growing up was Super Mario Brothers.

Ooh, ooh, let me guess: you’re going to make a half-arsed analogy about the advantages of device lock-in for goodies, despite, you know, Google generally (and, lately, sometimes failing to) advocate openness?

[argle wargle bargle…]

Checking your Gmail on an Android phone carries with it a similar sense of superiority. For all the disagreements between Fandroids and the Apple partisans, there should be no dispute that the native Gmail for any Android phone is far, far better than however you’re checking your Gmail on an iPhone. It is one of the great selling points of Android devices over iPhones: The ability to star conversations, the real-time push notifications, the feeling that the inbox was truly integrated to the phone. If you were only buying a smartphone to check Gmail and surf the web, you would be crazy not to get an Android phone that fit your specs.

Also: you’d be crazy. Anyway, Gilbert is surprised that Google might be able to unleash an iOS client.

Which is why it is so surprising that Google is apparently going to release a Gmail app for the iPhone.

See?

Why is Google doing this?

Why indeed? TELL US, GILBERT! WE NEED TO KNOW!

Why, after three and a half years of ignoring the App Store,

Ignoring, obviously, its 11 apps that are currently in the App Store…

and after surpassing iOS with their own mobile operating system,

With lots of low-cost devices made by manufacturers thinking that the 1990s and 2000s was a great time to build Windows PCs, because everyone made SO MUCH MONEY…

would Google relent and give up one of its great, tangible, unarguable advantages over Apple’s iPhone? You’re in a vicious, ugly, man-on-man tussle with Apple, trying to win over every customer you can to your operating system. Apple doesn’t have a weapon in this fight, and you’re going to let them borrow your knife?

It doesn’t compute.

Perhaps because Google is an advertising company and everything else it does is a means to an end? Or perhaps because Google’s board aren’t complete dicks and recognise that  because iOS is a massive market, Google can ultimately make more money by working with it as well as fighting against it?

Argle wargle fargle bargle.

Yes, well, that’s quite enough of that.

Update: Or perhaps Google really does hate iOS. Twitter dev Loren Brichter says on Twitter:

The Gmail app is a fucking web view. Even the list of messages. Why?

Personally, I blame Jason Gilbert.

You’ve got to love old rockers. Pete Townshend comes across a bit like today’s Mr Bonkers, blaming iTunes for not offering everything a record label does, and instead acting like an uncaring shop. That’s probably because iTunes is, in fact, an uncaring shop and not a record label.

The interview is summarised on Mac Observer (hat tip: Adam Banks, and full transcript on MusicWeek) and it’s quite illuminating:

Mr. Townshend, the leader of iconic rock ban The Who, argued that once upon a time, the music industry as a whole (including publishing and record labels) used to offer eight different forms of support to artists, including editorial guidance, financial support, creative nurture, manufacturing, publishing, marketing, distribution, and payment of royalties.

He said that if you look at artists who distribute through iTunes, they get only the last two forms of support, distribution and payment of royalties.

Because iTunes isn’t a record label.

“Now is there really any good reason why,” he asked, “just because iTunes exists in the wild west internet land of Facebook and Twitter, it can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire [UK bank] Northern Rock for its enormous commission?”

Because iTunes isn’t a record label. As for it bleeding artists’ work like a digital vampire, iTunes is one of the main reasons why anyone pays for digital music at all. It wasn’t the first of its kind, but it rapidly embedded itself in the collective consciousness of device and Mac/PC owners, and it made it natural to spend a few quid on a digital album download, rather than go hunting for a torrent, which would be much closer to Townshend’s digital vampire.

Townshend goes on to say Apple should employ A&R people to guide artists, and so perhaps he isn’t misunderstanding what the iTunes Store is, but is instead arguing that Apple should be assisting artists due to the label ecosystem crashing and burning in slow motion. I suspect he suggests Apple because of its clout, since he doesn’t make the same demands of Amazon, WalMart or Tesco.

The thing is, Apple’s never really had much truck with creating media—it just provides the platforms on which people can create and sell—and so there’s no proof it’d even be any good at being a record label. In iOS gaming, Apple’s made a single game—Texas Hold’em—and it simply lets devs get on with it, rather than interfering. To that end, I can’t see Apple going all ‘record label’ in the music space, nor really why it should. It’s providing an outlet—an easy way for people to buy. And you can bet if Apple did pump resources into helping music artists, it’d alienate people working in other fields, lacking such support, and probably also piss off remaining record labels, too, potentially making things worse for many musicians.

Townshend continues to offer suggestions:

He would also like to see Apple choose 500 worthy artists a year and provide them with free Macs and the training to use them when creating music. Those artists could be identified by the above-mentioned A&R folks, who should then follow the progress of those artists throughout the year.

So, Apple should not only provide advice, but also free hardware. What about their own radio station?

“Yes Apple, give artists some streaming bandwidth,” he said. “It will sting, but do it. You will get even more aluminum solid state LURVE for doing so.”

How about groupies and drugs?

…

OK, so there is some kind of line.

Still, Townshend does come up with at least one nugget of solid-gold sense:

The biggest change that he advocated during his speech was that Apple stop requiring independent bands to go through third party aggregators to be in the iTunes Store. He believes Apple should pay these artists directly so that more of the money from their music downloads gets to them. He acknowledged that some of the third party aggregators offer some label-like services, but argued that most are just middlemen sitting between the artists and iTunes.

This is the one thing that’s always surprised me a little about the iTunes Store. You can make and upload your own game, and, unless I’m mistaken, you can self-publish a book. But music? Too bad. You have to pay a third-party service a buck or more per track, for each store you want a presence on. And that isn’t a particularly modern, ‘Apple’ way of thinking.

Got yourself an iPad? YOU IDIOT! As Laptop, the “pulse of mobile tech” shows, it’s merely a round-one contender in a 2011 Tablet World Series. (Hat tip: Brooks Review.) As you can see, if you nip through to the site, the tablet champion of champions is in fact the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, which has taken the world by storm and has sold millions since you started reading this article.

Laptop says:

With strong features like a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, support for enterprise-level security software / encryption, and an optional active stylus, the ThinkPad Tablet simply dominated the game this weekend. Users were undoubtedly also attracted by the ThinkPad Tablet’s productivity-centric software, including its note-taking app and file manager. Full-size USB ports and SD card slots also helped the ThinkPad tablet’s case.

Or: readers of Laptop (responsible for the voting and final outcome) are deluded anti-Apple nutters, given that they had the ASUS Eee Pad Slider win out over the iPad 2. (It’s one thing to prefer another system over the iPad—fair enough—but the Eee Pad Slider? Really?)

Laptop again:

Could the ThinkPad Tablet’s win herald a new appreciation for productivity

Goddammit, now I have to delete all my productivity apps from the iPad again, because, apparently, it’s not a device for productivity. Only the wonderful Lenovo ThinkPad, with its unique Documents to Go (enabling you to edit, view and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and not at all available on, say, iOS) gives you productivity!

and for pen-based input?

In other news, perhaps we could get rid of those nasty touchpads and mice and return to keys alone on the desktop. And those cars? Horrible. Horse and cart, please. And sanitation? DISASTER! Let’s wallow in mud, consider the sun a god, and kick each-other’s faces off for instead thinking something else is a god, such as the moon, a tree, or a particularly dashing squirrel.

Extra points to the Laptop readers for voting the Amazon Kindle Fire—a tablet that isn’t out yet—into round two. Dreams beat reality, I guess, which perhaps is another reason why the ThinkPad Tablet won out overall.

Hog Bay Software just released WriteRoom 3. It’s available now from the Mac App Store, and its price has plummeted from $24.99 to just $9.99.

WriteRoom is one of two apps I use daily for writing (the other being Scrivener), and it was the earliest of the full-screen, streamlined Mac text editors that was worth a damn. Over time, rivals eclipsed WriteRoom in terms of looks and price, but the original retained the mix of customisation and efficiency that I require, and so I stuck with it (although on iPad I’ve been seduced by iA Writer, which on the Mac I find has a few too many shortcomings). Now, the latest release is sleeker, cheaper and bounds ahead of its rivals in most ways.

I’ll be reviewing the app in an upcoming issue of MacFormat, but if you’ve been mulling over checking out WriteRoom for a while, I wholeheartedly recommend jumping on board right now.