We live in exciting times! McAfee has just launched McAf.ee (beta, obv.), which will revolutionise the internet by… adding another URL-shortening service to all the existing URL-shortening services that shorten URLs. Wow, McAf(ee), how exciting! It’s almost as if some dolt in PR figured you could get down with the kids, without stopping to think whether or not the world needs another URL-shortening service (hint: it doesn’t).

McAfee’s effort does stand out in two ways, though. First, the site is one of the ugliest it’s possible to imagine. It’s about 80 per cent likely to make your eyes explode, so be warned. Secondly, it enables you to create a ‘safe’ short URL, unlike all those deadly ones we’ve all been using previously. I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve used bit.ly my iMac has rocketed off the desk and banged on the ceiling, so McAfee is the Best Thing Ever on the internet. Unless, of course, I’m being hugely sarcastic and wish McAfee’s service would McAf.uckoff.

*thinks*

Oh.

Of late, I get asked quite a lot whether someone should buy an iPad or a Kindle. I’ve been struggling to come up with a really good analogy with other tech for these devices, and have usually gone down the ‘if you read a lot of books, get a Kindle, otherwise get an iPad’ route. This doesn’t always work well, because people then start rattling on about web access and games, and if I tell them to ‘go and get both devices then’, they yell “do you think I’m made of money?” before throwing spoons at me and storming off in a huff.

Over the weekend, it struck me that there’s a better, faster analogy out there: the Kindle is a television. Bear with me on this one.

The point here is that people still watch televisions, due to the user-experience. They have PCs, on which they can easily enough watch TV, but doing so is pretty hateful. Even if you’ve a shiny new 27″ iMac in your living room, it’s going to offer a worse TV experience than a far cheaper flatscreen TV, because the TV is designed for watching TV, and that’s something people do a lot of.

The Kindle is the same. People enjoy reading books on it, due to the user-experience. On a tablet PC, you can easily enough read a book, but doing so is pretty hateful. Even if you’ve a shiny new iPad in your living room, it’s going to offer a worse long-format reading experience than a far cheaper Kindle, because the Kindle is designed for reading books, and that’s something… well, that’s something some people do a lot of.

Of course, television manufacturers are rapidly trying to screw up my analogy by welding ‘apps’ to their flatscreens—the bastards; but I figure I’ve a few months left yet before I have to think of something else, other than walking about the place wearing a ‘Look, just buy whatever the fuck you want’ T-shirt.

Austin Seraphin, on ‘Rejoining the Apple Family’:

I joyfully look forward to the day when blind people finally catch on and realize that for $700, HALF the cost of JAWS for Windows, the most popular software used or rather pushed on the blind, they can get a fully functional computer that delivers a superior experience and comes with a superior screen reader with superior speech. May the Mac relegate Windows to the recycle bin, where it properly belongs.

Macworld reports that Warner has declined Apple’s invitation to offer 99-cent rentals for Apple TV. It reasons that the low price would harm the sales of full seasons of hit shows, and said it didn’t want to “open up a rental business in television at a low price”. Instead, Warner wants to continue charging viewers three bucks per TV episode.

Warner doesn’t get it. TV—even good TV—is relatively throwaway, but people are willing to pay if the price is right. $2.99 for a TV show is terrible value. $0.99 is directly in impulse purchase territory. For that price, people would try out way more stuff, and would be likely to grab each new episode as it came in, or just buy a season pass if they’d ordered a couple of episodes of a show that they ended up liking. Also, when prices fall and availability is immediate, people can’t be bothered to deal with torrents. For 99 cents, someone will pay for the latest Doctor Who. For three bucks, they’ll instead fire up their favourite BitTorrent client.

But wait! The industry says that lower pricing results in studios becoming paupers, right? Not quite. Stuart Campbell has written about premium versus low-end pricing in the iOS games market. With well-known properties—which TV shows mostly are—lower pricing equates to higher revenues overall, as shown by Pac-Man leaping into the top-grossing chart when at 99 cents (59p) and then disappearing without a trace when Namco returns to its rather ambitious pricing for a conversion of a 30-year-old arcade game. With TV shows, there are a lot of Pac-Mans, but, sadly, a lot of Namcos that own them

Apple’s thinking with TV is in enabling viewers to free themselves from buying loads of crap they don’t need in return for grabbing what they do at a reasonable price; it’s about low-cost entry but long-term profits, for Apple and for studios. It’s a pity Warner doesn’t get it, but it almost certainly won’t be alone, and I suspect the future for Apple TV may well be bleak unless studios wrench themselves out of the 1990s and embrace the idea of more flexible delivery mechanisms and pricing for TV shows.

Given Apple’s recent guidelines stating that developers must not mess with hardware controls for fear of confusing users, it’s a pity to discover Apple’s killed the screen rotation lock on the iPad. Numerous sources, including The iPad Guide, state that iOS 4.2 changes the lock button to a mute switch.

Apple’s argument will probably centre on hardware consistency, rather than legacy consistency—the iPhone 4 uses its equivalent button for mute, but I think Apple’s making a mistake. On a phone, the need for muting is common; on an iPod touch—a very portable mobile system—one might make a similar argument. However, on the iPad, muting is not such a common requirement, but the screen rotation lock is regularly used, especially in-app, notably in browsing environments (Safari, Instapaper, Reeder, etc.) and when reading electronic books.

At present, you can lock the screen rotation temporarily, whenever you need to, moving the iPad in and out of the locked-screen state as and when required. All this needs is the click of a button. As of iOS 4.2, the process will change to match that on an iPhone or iPod touch:

1. Double-click the Home button, to access the multitasking bar;
2. Swipe right to access controls;
3. Locate and tap the rotation lock.

Even for seasoned users, this is ungainly, awkward and time-consuming. Worse, for newcomers to the platform, these controls are twice hidden: not only do users need to know that the multitasking bar exists, but also they need to be able to find the controls by swiping to them. I suspect that many will never see them, reducing the usability of the iPad. (For muting fans, it’s also worth noting that the iPad currently provides fast access to mute by click-holding the volume-down setting of the volume rocker switch.)

I hope Apple provides some kind of option for users regarding the functionality of the soon-to-be-mute button. Losing the rotation-lock option by default wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if I could get it back with a quick trip to the Settings app. Sadly, this isn’t the way Apple rolls, and so I guess we’ll all be waving goodbye to a great piece of iPad functionality come November.