iTunes might be a big bag of digital poo, but it’s still disappointing and worrying to hear from One FPS that half of users never sync their devices after the initial set-up:

A little birdie says that about 50 percent of Apple Store customers who need to get their iPhones swapped have never plugged them into iTunes after the initial activation and sync. This is a big reason, according to this birdie, for why Apple Store Geniuses are excited about iCloud.

I’ll bet.

My advice (at least until iOS 5 rolls around): if you don’t care about your iOS data at all, don’t back it up. But if you do care about your data, you should regularly sync your device with iTunes. And if you really care about your data, make regular manual copies of  ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ on the Mac, \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ on Windows 7 or \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ on Windows XP. That way if you do a sync and iTunes screws it up, you still have a copy of your app data stored somewhere safe.

Note that it’s also currently possible to make back-ups of a single application’s data (which isn’t possible to extract from the Apple back-ups) by directly pulling /Documents and /Library folders from an app’s bundle. My tool of choice for this is PhoneView for Mac, but iPhone Explorer will do much the same for Mac and Windows, albeit in clunkier fashion from a browsing standpoint.

Oh, Business Insider. Were you not satisfied with Henry Blodget spewing spew of bonkersness all over the internet? Now you’ve got Aaron Holesgrove in on the act, in an attempt to counter the viewpoint that Windows 8 is a flawed response to iOS.

Ahh John Gruber. He only ever writes long articles when it comes time to defend Apple, doesn’t he?

Man, anyone’d think he’s an Apple pundit or something. Gosh, I wonder whether you’ll start moaning soon that Jason Snell, Editorial Director of Macworld, talks about Macs a lot.

I have strangely found myself liking his content lately and found that he’s been making some good points – and even being *gulp* fair. Then he goes and writes this nonsense.

“Gruber had been saying nice things about Windows Phone now and again, but he’s MADE ME MAD due to not liking Windows 8, the git.”

So, without any further delay, let’s rip his article to shreds.

Yes, let’s!

If not for the existence and success of iOS, Nokia wouldn’t be in trouble (and thus, Elop wouldn’t even be its CEO), HP wouldn’t have bought Palm (and Palm wouldn’t have come up with WebOS), and Windows 8’s innovations wouldn’t primarily revolve around how it looks and works on thin touchscreen tablets.

Yeah John, Apple is the ONLY reason for all of this stuff going on in IT recently. I’m not trying to disagree for the sake of it but I would argue that Apple (and iOS) aren’t the biggest enemy of those three companies; for them, their biggest enemies have been themselves.

Yes, but the point Gruber and everyone else is making is that iOS devices have thrown the lack of innovation in the smartphone industry on to the stage, with its pants around its ankles. Had Apple stayed away from touchscreens, people would probably still be citing the traditional BlackBerry as the pinnacle of smartphone loveliness.

If Apple never released the iPhone, we’d be sitting here today talking about how if it weren’t for Android, those three companies wouldn’t be making all of those same changes or something like that

This being the Android that changed rather dramatically when the iPhone arrived.

For Windows 8 in particular, Microsoft might definitely have some Apple envy but at the end of the day, they would have still designed the same kind of interface for Windows 8 no matter what happened outside of their own walls.

Which explains why Microsoft stuck with Windows Phone 6.x forever, rather than moving on and beating Apple to market with a super touchscreen OS.

Microsoft had to learn the hard way that the shell needed to change far more drastically than it did in order to actually BE touch ‘friendly’ and here we all are today seeing the Metro interface in Windows 8 on a tablet. Keh?

You know that Gruber, Snell and co. were mostly complaining about the ‘shell’ aspect of Windows 8 over traditional Windows, right? As compared to iOS being designed for touch from the ground up? Just checking.

iOS IS built on top of Mac OS X and its core principles. It is common knowledge that it is a modified version of OS X with a touch centric shell on top.

Blurgle? OS X and iOS may share certain core components, but they are not the same—and that’s because of the aim and direction of the devices. Design is as much about what you don’t do as what you do—it’s about saying no. iOS devices therefore are touch-only, forcing companies to design software for a touch interface. Windows 8 doesn’t have such an assumption, meaning we’ll probably get botch jobs: traditional Windows apps with minor concessions to touch—an Embiggen Buttons option, perhaps.

And – don’t forget that Windows 8 tablets aren’t supposed to just be iPad clones, they are being designed to be docked and used like real computers too.

Unlike iPads, which, if you ignore GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, SketchBook Pro, and several hundred other apps, aren’t ‘real computers’ and are only mildly useful for watching YouTube videos.

Win8 tablets aren’t competing with the iPad, they’re competing with iPad + MacBook or iPad + iMac.  More on that later.

I can’t wait.

iWork isn’t a ‘beast’, it’s a sexed up equivalent of Google Apps – a competent, entry level productivity application suite. What neither of those applications are, though, is Microsoft Office – say all you want about Microsoft products but Office has no peers, particularly in the enterprise, and has three times the amount of features of anything else. There are no comparisons to be made here.

Holesgrove makes a reasonable point here (SHOCK TWIST), although ignores the fact that iWork is, in fact, pretty powerful these days, and that most people don’t need many of the features Office has, hence Google Apps becoming so astonishingly popular. Anyway…

Now, the deal with iWork for iPad is that it’s a skinny rip-off of iWork for Mac because Apple’s original pitch for the iPad is that it’s a consumption device, not a creation device.

That was Apple’s pitch? Really? I recall that being the pitch of idiot tech pundits who couldn’t see the benefits of the iPad. OH MAN, I AM SO STUPID.

With iWork, Apple are making glorified document viewing programs that have simple editing features.

Or, you know, document creation apps that have enough features for the vast majority of users, rather than lobbing in everything but the kitchen sink, and then a kitchen sink. And then another kitchen sink, JUST TO BE SURE.

In the future, Apple are going to slowly wean people into the idea of using their iPads more and more for creating but we are hardly at that day today.

Eek, yeah, you’re right. *deletes Korg apps* *deletes art apps* *deletes web design apps* *deletes office apps* *deletes iA Writer* PHEW! I AM NOW ONE WITH THE HOLESGROVE!

Microsoft, on the other hand, are looking to make tablets that are full screen computers which you can do anything/everything with – dock them as full computers, do full-screen computing using things other than touch – off screen gestures, voice control, etc. It’s a totally different kettle of fish.

Or a totally different kettle of fish/monkey/sparrow/lizard hybrids. FLY, WINDOWS 8, FLY! But I’ve only got one wing and I weigh as much as a monkey! OH NO!

There is no basis for comparison of the two tablet strategies and neither approach is necessarily wrong yet because we are talking about a new category of computing that is currently a fad

That 30-million-sales fad, eh?

and will evolve into a mainstream category over time – and that will be shaped soley by consumer demand, not by what companies like Apple and Microsoft want us to think

Because consumers always know what’s best.

“The ability to run Mac OS X apps on the iPad, with full access to the file system, peripherals, etc., would make the iPad worse, not better.” (Gruber)

Agreed – but just because that’s true of Mac OS, that doesn’t mean that the logic auto-applies to Windows as well. Mac OS has been through a giant state of flux – Mac apps used to be written in Carbon which was an afterthought in the migration towards 64bit IntelCPU’s and now Apple are becoming more partial towards their own CPU’s and designs. That situation is a mess currently.

Much like that bit of your article.

[T]he iPad succeeds because it enables you to read websites whilst sitting on the toilet and play casual games in bed. It’s a toy. You can’t eliminate complexity when there was never any complexity in the first place – Apple went and threw a 10″ screen on the iPod Touch and iPhone and called them the iPad and iPad 3G, respectively.

In case you’re keeping tabs and still awake, we should at this point remember that:

• A 10-inch screen obviously makes no difference regarding app interfaces to much smaller screens.
• Low complexity is bad.
• People weren’t already using iPhones and iPods for surprisingly complex tasks.

Otherwise Holesgrove’s argument looks a bit silly, and it would be rude of us all to point that out.

[The lack of ‘Mac’ backwards compatibility for iOS] works well for Apple products because basically no one could care less about them up until about five years ago. With Windows it’s different – people would expect Windows tablets to have backwards compatibility with old Windows apps because if it didn’t, they could have just settled for an iPad instead and been one of the trend-setters. Sure some apps in Windows 8 tablets will look ugly but at the end of the day, backwards compatibility with legacy Windows apps isn’t a drawback – it’s a feature, because that’s what the market will demand.

I’m sure everyone will love the usability disaster of trying to use old Windows apps on their touchscreens. I’m sure everyone would hate an iOS-like ‘new Windows tablet thing’ ecosystem that more or less forces loads of creative people making brand-new apps that are far more suitable for touchscreens, rather than not bothering because of a reliance on the old and crusty. And I’m also pretty sure that more than “no-one” cared about Apple before 2006.

Microsoft wants your tablet to be your total solution and just because Apple can’t do it, doesn’t mean that someone else can’t either

Anyone for a second believe that Apple can’t do this? Me neither. It didn’t want to.

Apple are obsessed with pushing this agenda of crippled iPads being acceptable devices because it’s cheap to make devices with 256-512mb of RAM inside of them and there’s a lot of margin to be made in selling this stuff in the $500 range – all the while still managing to convince people that they also need to buy overpriced Mac computers as well and get the 2nd half of what the other device was supposed to do for them in the first place.

In case you’re wondering, Holesgrove isn’t an Apple fan.

The tablet is destined to also become your ‘PC’ and there is nothing that anyone can do about it, including Apple.

Apple’s already done plenty about it, even before the PC-free iOS 5 announcement, but, you know, feel free to ignore that. Oh, you have.

According to MacRumors, iWeb is dead:

One concerned iWeb/MobileMe user emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs to ask about the fate of the offering, and reportedly received confirmation that users will indeed need to find alternative hosting for their sites once MobileMe is officially discontinued. All existing MobileMe users have received free subscription extensions through June 30, 2012, at which time the service will cease to exist and the transition to iCloud will be complete.

Assuming the email is genuine, Jobs replies in typically succinct fashion; the user asks “Will I need to find an alternative website builder and someone to host my sites?” and Jobs replies: “Yep.”

Frankly, this isn’t exactly a shock. iLife was updated in 2011, and iWeb was noticeably unchanged from its 2009 incarnation. The app also didn’t make it to the Mac App Store, unlike iPhoto, GarageBand and iMovie. It’s almost certain that iDVD has also been shot in the head.

I’m in two minds as to the news itself, though. As a web designer, I always found iWeb ‘quirky’ (that’s putting it as kindly as I can) and its fixed-page means of creating sites (and, worse, blogs) seemed anachronistic in an age of WordPress and Facebook. Nonetheless, I know a lot of people who find the application easy to use and they will be disappointed to see confirmation of its demise. Still, this is a good opportunity for the likes of RapidWeaver and Sandvox to grab some users, along with enterprising developers to create iWeb-import tools for said apps.

Desperately sad news from the BBC today as it announced the first phase in the sale of Television Centre, White City, London. The BBC’s putting a brave face on this, claiming it’s all about making a smaller, fitter BBC, but the building is where many famous shows were born. More importantly, it’s a central hub for the BBC, which will now be fired in all directions across the UK, into cheaper real estate.

The real reason, of course, for the sale has nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with successive governments trying to kill the BBC by removing chunks of its funding, causing a massive shortfall. It’s depressing to note that regardless of whether you back the Tories or Labour, both of them want the BBC dead. Rupert Murdoch must be laughing his arse off right about now.

With MacFormat’s ex-deputy editor and massive fan of great text editors busy editing Tap!, I was asked by the magazine to review Scrivener 2. A version of the review is on TechRadar; safe to say, I loved the app, but there was one thing I disliked: the new two-up page view didn’t provide an easy way to ‘snap’ to the top of each set of pages. This meant I’d be stuck using (*shudder*) Word for the body copy of large features, where I’d roughly hack things into shape and then flit back and forth, making edits and rearranging blocks of content.

So I decided to mention this to the app’s author, thinking perhaps I’d be able to switch over to Scrivener more fully at some distant point in the future. Later the same day, a whopping email came in: it was a beta of Scrivener. The feature was there, in the form of two little arrows on a lower toolbar. I thanked the developer but said keyboard shortcuts are what everyone really pines for, so hands never stray from the keyboard. “Oh, that’s easy,” I was told, shortly before receiving another beta. A week or two later, the next version of the app shipped, with this new feature, which I hope was worth the dev’s time in being useful to people other than me.

What this all shows isn’t OH MY GOD CRAIG IS SO CLEVER AND SHOULD DESIGN YOUR SOFTWARE, but that rapid iteration and developer interaction can change the way software development works. Clearly, developers shouldn’t weld every feature request to their wares, but when someone asks for something you think might benefit many of your users, or  you’ve a large number of people asking for something and are small enough to respond relatively quickly, it can pay to do so.

Another recent incident along these lines concerned iA Writer for iPad. I was sent a promo code for the original release, had a quick play, then put the app aside. Later, I started trying to integrate the iPad more into my workflow and was dismayed to find iA had binned the app’s character count in favour of word count. For many of my articles (including those for Tap!), I’m commissioned to write a specific number of characters, and this made iA Writer useless for the tasks I most needed it for. A quick enquiry resulted in the discovery that Americans had complained en masse about the character count (saying, of course, that everyone used word count), and so iA had switched it to a word count. “We then got moaned at by European writers as they predominantly use character count,” said a contact at iA. “Suffice to say, a toggle is coming in the next version.” And, sure enough, iA Writer for iPad now displays both of these counts, making it massively more useful for all professional writers. And further feature-request demands and suggestions have recently filled chunks of my Twitter feed, with journo chums and the guys behind iA Writer for Mac and Byword (another streamlined Mac text editor) swapping ideas.

This kind of interaction and revision cycle is a far cry from what happens at certain larger companies. I know people who’ve been part of beta runs for some very large products and watched, every time, as revolutionary ideas are discarded; the monolithic software vehicle then barely manages to turn a fraction of a degree before churning out its next version. And from what I see in the Mac App Store, now is a good chance—on the Mac at least—for fleet-of-foot indies to capitalise on this, by making use of the biggest testing pool possible: their customers.

So if you’re writing software (be it creative, utilities, games or anything else), don’t hide behind a website with no contact details or Get Satisfaction integration that you never bother to answer. Instead, encourage as much feedback as you possibly can—get on Twitter and talk to your customers, and iterate quickly when good ideas come your way. The big companies can’t or won’t do this, but you can; and by getting great word of mouth and being a responsive, alert, savvy developer, you could increasingly be the one getting plaudits and making money.