Most people use iTunes (on a Mac or PC) or the App Store app (on iOS) to look for apps. However, I’ve long used iTunes Preview in the browser to grab information for the many app and game reviews I write. This is simply a speed thing—iTunes remains slothful and you can’t easily copy information from it; by contrast, grabbing information from the browser is child’s play.

Typically, the quick way to get to such pages was to type ‘iTunes [app name]’ into Google. With rare exceptions, the app would be the first result. A couple of months ago, this began to change. I noticed iTunes Preview pages sliding down the rankings or vanishing entirely. On March 19, I said the following on Twitter:

Searches in Google for “[App name] iTunes” (to access the iTunes Preview page) are often rarely #1 these days. In Bing, they usually are. I’ve noticed a big slide re those results in recent months. Must be algorithmic, unless Google’s now specifically penalising iTunes Preview.

During the rest of March, things got much, much worse, to the point I subsequently switched to Bing as my default search engine while working on the latest issue of Tap! magazine, on the basis Google was driving me nuts and wasting my time with its inexplicable wrecking of iTunes Preview rankings. Last week on Twitter, I called the changes “irritating” and “also deeply suspicious”. Although I wanted to give Google the benefit of the doubt, the fact remains it’s in a major mobile war with Apple and so hampering its competitor is beneficial from a business standpoint; and even if the change is purely based on adjustments to Google’s algorithm, the knock-on effect remains the same.

Yesterday, TechCrunch, The Next Web and The Verge all discovered what I’d noticed myself weeks ago, although TechCrunch then provided the inaccurate advice that adding the ‘iTunes’ keyword to a search query

appears to be necessary in order to see the iTunes URL returned to the top spot, which has long been a trick savvy Google users know to use to get the results ranked higher.

In fact, this does little. Adding ‘iTunes’, ‘App Store’ or ‘iTunes Preview’ results in little if any changes to the majority of searches; elsewhere, I’ve noticed when iTunes Preview is highly ranked, it’s often via an affiliate code (for example, games searches often have IGN’s affiliate URL near the top of the heap).

Google recently gave the BBC a slap for “unnatural links” and has now told The Verge:

We’ve been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes web servers, and as a result some people may have had problems finding iTunes apps in search easily. We’re working with the team there to ensure search users can find what they’re looking for.

I do hope this is the case, and that Google acts and fixes the problem promptly, because it’s supposed to be a search engine, not a manually curated set of links that mostly benefits Google. Still, with the results lists getting wrecked by sign-in preferences, Google+, advertising and other factors, part of me’s surprised Google’s responded at all. I also have that nagging feeling about this being a screw-up; it reminds me of when Google got caught short bypassing Safari security settings.

In the meantime, you’ve three options to get iTunes searches back:

1. Change your default search engine to something other than Google.
2. Use a launcher like Alfred that enables you to do ad-hoc searches in a non-default search engine. (For example, I have reverted my default search engine to Google, but use Alfred and ‘bing [app name]’ for iTunes Preview and some other searches.)
3. Use ‘site:itunes.apple.com’ before your search term in Google, which will usually return the app at or near the number-one spot.

Kevin Lynch CTO is joining Apple, and will report to Bob Mansfield as VP of technology. Before his stint at Adobe, Lynch was a major force at Macromedia (much like Apple SVP Phil Schiller, originally Macromedia’s VP of product marketing), working on software and product development. According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball (in claws out ‘meow’ mode), though, Lynch is a “bozo, a bad hire“. As if that wasn’t enough, Gruber then follows up with a second rowr, stating:

I get that the guy worked for Adobe and had to play for the home team, but as CTO he backed a dying technology for years too long. In 2007 when the iPhone shipped Flash-free, that was one thing. But for Adobe to still be backing the Flash horse in 2010 when the iPad came out — they just looked silly.

You play the cards you have. Adobe’s hand at the time wasn’t great, and it included lots of cards that said “Flash” in massive letters. That Adobe initially banked on Flash made sense, on the basis that while it wasn’t obviously suited for mobile, it did play into the ‘works everywhere’ ethos that underpinned the web. The company was presumably hoping Apple’s lead could be clawed back by Flash-armed competitors, and that Flash itself could improve rapidly on mobile. That obviously didn’t happen.

In 2010, Adobe was still banging the Flash drum, but again you play the cards you hold. Around that time, judging by subsequent releases of its software, Flash’s pivot must have been very much in progress by that point, with Adobe planning to reposition the product as a tool for app development and high-end online multimedia experiences, rather than it continuing as a ‘default’ component of the web. I imagine around the same time, Adobe’s Edge suite (several small apps for working with web standards) must have also been in the planning stages. But software and products do not happen overnight, and so you play your hand until you have something that competes in a specific sector, in largely the same way Apple dismissed small tablets until the second it unveiled the iPad mini.

Lynch wasn’t just an employee pushing the company line. As CTO, he was the guy who defined the company line — and his line had Adobe still pushing for Flash on mobile devices over three years after the iPhone shipped.

As CTO, he was presumably also the guy who defined the company’s rather rapid shift towards web standards, who at the very least okayed the savvy purchase of Typekit, and who, as noted, managed against the odds to keep Flash relevant, albeit to a smaller market.

That’s not to say I’m some kind of pro-Adobe drone. Edge remains flawed, some Adobe products are bloated, and the company’s repeated fumbling of Fireworks as a UI design tool is both baffling and depressing. (Top hint if you’re on OS X—use Sketch instead.) But branding Lynch a “bozo” purely on the basis of his advocacy for his company’s core technology—even after that technology had passed its best—makes little sense; what Lynch did doesn’t strike me as a bozo move, merely one rooted in reality while changes were made behind the scenes. As Ian Betteridge (who’s actually met Lynch) eloquently put it on Twitter earlier:

“That big product we make a lot of money from? Dead.” No exec, ever.

BlackBerry chief executive officer Thorsten Heins has growled menacingly (well, spoken to some tech hack) about how RUBBISH the iPhone is and how AMAZING BlackBerry is. To be fair, it’s not like he’s the only CEO to do this, and Heins does at least give Apple device a backhanded compliment:

Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market … They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that

He then followed up with:

And that’s why, for the most part, we’re copying Apple as much as possible.

Ha! Only joking! What Heins really said is Apple is doomed, he tells you, doomed. Here’s why:

History repeats itself again I guess … the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly.

Ah, the old ‘Apple isn’t innovating but everyone else is—at light speed’ claim. Or, in this case, ‘Apple did innovate once, in June 2007, but has not remotely innovated since, the lazy gits’.

The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.

Which would be terrible if that were entirely accurate, because, as everyone knows, it’s much more fun when interfaces radically change every six seconds, rather than improving through gradual and reasoned iteration. I for one am looking forward to my BlackBerry car, which replaces the steering wheel with a gestural system that requires me to mimic exciting karate moves, and eschews a gear stick in favour of an innovative Whac-a-Mole system, which is “far more fun” than just yanking a stick.

Paul Smith, Financial Review’s scribe for the aforelinked piece stopped quoting at this point, but nonetheless summed up another Heins nugget:

Mr Heins said one area that the new BlackBerry phones had surpassed the iPhone was in the ability to multi-task—running multiple apps at once—meaning that users could work in the same fashion on their smartphone as they liked to on a laptop.

There’s part of a good point in here. iOS is great for focussing on tasks, and its ability to perform certain basic tasks (audio playback, say) in the background but freeze others so to not kill battery life is useful, but it’s clear some people need a more traditional computing experience while working. On an iPad, having two-up app views could definitely be handy for performing certain tasks, although the user interface could take a kicking from a simplicity standpoint. But here’s the bit where it goes a bit squiffy for Heins:

… users could work in the same fashion on their smartphone as they liked to on a laptop

How big are these new BlackBerry devices? Do they have a battery the size of a truck?

Different devices solve different problems, and although an iPad or other tablet can conceivably be considered a laptop replacement if you’ve the right apps and services, the mind boggles that anyone could consider a smartphone a laptop replacement. And even if you get pedantic and argue Heins was merely saying BlackBerry would allow people to work similarly to how they do on a laptop, user experience isn’t always (or even often) about giving people what they want, but what they need.

Then there’s the reality of the system’s multitasking, which, when you do a direct comparison, doesn’t appear significantly different from multitasking on competing platforms anyway. Versus iOS, it appears there’s more potential to keep entire apps running in the background (a battery drain), gestures to move between them (available on the iPad, but not the iPhone—yet), and live thumbnail previews in the BlackBerry’s equivalent of an app switcher (versus iOS icons in the admittedly not very discoverable and very basic multitasking tray—something Apple could do with improving).

So it’s not very laptop-like and, from what I’ve seen so far, is really a case of gradual and reasoned iteration—exactly what I like in technology. Quite why Heins felt the need to trash iOS and claim it never evolved, then, is beyond me.

Also, to all commentators that are yelling about how BlackBerry’s now going to give iOS and Android a kicking, you might be wise to realise that companies do not sit still and let rivals take a lead. You can bet if Apple or Google has some improved multitasking ideas waiting in the wings (and, in Apple’s case in particular, if they don’t compromise the overall experience of the system), we’ll see them soon enough; any lead Heins thought BlackBerry had will be short-lived. Still, at that point I’m sure we can look forward to tech hacks running with a billion stories a second on how Apple ripped off BlackBerry (and precisely no stories if Google does the same, because that doesn’t get people rapidly clicking on links, in order to get annoyed about what they subsequently read).

Vlambeer did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) and were asked about IAP. Their response:

We know IAPs are the best and everyone loves them, but we decided not to put them in the game and instead charge outrageous up-front prices because we hate gamers and love money.

I think I’m in love. (Also: buy Ridiculous Fishing—it’s fab.)

Wired today has a small article on the three things Samsung needs to overtake Apple. Writer Christina Bonnington explains that Samsung is “almost there” in overtaking Apple (admittedly in part due to its substantially larger marketing budget, which Apple could match if Tim Cook acquires a penchant for flinging shit at walls and seeing what sticks). All it needs are the following three things:

Industrial design

Complete control over the consumer experience

Brand power

Sadly, the list appears to be missing a fourth entry, which is “a sneaky copy of Apple’s roadmap, so Samsung can copy what Apple’s going to do, before Apple does it itself,” along with a fifth entry, which is “figure out how to sell it to people without accidentally forgetting that it’s no longer the 1950s”.