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Apple caught cheating on RSS standard

/v3-uk/news/2000106/apple-caught-cheating-rss-standard

20 Jan 2006, Tom Sanders in California , V3

RSS community blasts Apple's Photocasts

The Photocasting feature in Apple's updated iPhoto application violates numerous internet standards, according to several dignitaries from the RSS community.

"Photocasting centres around a single undocumented extension element in a namespace that does not need to be declared," stated Mark Pilgrim, a software developer who conducted a number of tests in an effort to document the feature.

"IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.

"It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997. It ignores 95 per cent of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining five per cent wrong."

Photocasting allows Mac users to share photos with friends and family. The feature will automatically upload the photos to a server and publish an RSS feed.

Other users subscribe to those feeds through iPhoto or a feed reader, allowing them to automatically receive updates when new photos are posted.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs claimed at the unveiling of the application last week that the feature adheres to the RSS standard.

"We use industry standard RSS so that anyone can subscribe. You do not even need a Mac," he told delegates at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.

But early tests showed that the feature fails to work with some feed readers because it deviates from common RSS practices.

"It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, and there are elements that are not in RSS that are not in a namespace," said Dave Winer, who is considered the creator of RSS.

"Assuming that [Apple's] intentions are good, and they're not trying to kill RSS, why don't they put some of us under [a non-disclosure agreement] and let us help them get the bugs out before they ship," he suggested.

Strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong. RSS is not an official standard governed by a standards body, and anybody can make changes and introduce new elements and extensions.

Microsoft, for instance, plans to introduce several new elements when it starts shipping Internet Explorer 7 later this year, allowing the inclusion of files in a feed.
This would enable a sports team, for example, to publish an RSS feed with dates for upcoming games that is imported directly into the players' calendars. The Windows screensaver will also be able show images published by a photo blog.

But while Microsoft's efforts have generally been received as a welcome addition to RSS, Apple is introducing new elements that aim only to replace existing ones.

The Photocast feature, for instance, uses a new element to indicate the date on which a photo was taken, even though there are already numerous alternatives that perform the same function. IPhoto, however, will not recognise the standard date elements.

Introducing new elements not only prevents common feed readers from accessing Photocasts, it makes it harder for third-party applications to introduce similar features that interoperate with iPhoto.

The non-standard elements could prevent the Windows screensaver from displaying iPhoto Photocasts, for example.

Google's Picasa photo viewer and editor could easily introduce a photocasting feature, but the use of non-standard elements could prevent a Picasa user from subscribing to an iPhoto feed and vice versa.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the RSS issues.

Do you agree?

RSS STANDARDS!!

Get it right. If there are not RSS rules how can you cheat.

Posted by Steve, 21 Jan 2006

too many standards

there are standards already the problem is there are too many of them by people that want to things just a bit diffrently. There's the original RDF standard then rss .91, rss .92, rss 1.0 and rss 2.0 then there's atom which is basically a combo of html and rdf. all have basically the same features and functionality. we really don't need MS or Apple poluting the streams even further or splitting the standards even farther. we need inovation with elegance not strong arm tactics like embrace and extend which is like the bord assimilation, resistance is futile.

Posted by pjkix, 21 Jan 2006

Syndication standards

The article got it wrong. There are standards for RSS and ATOM and if Apple is violating those standards they are claiming they support, then they deserve to be outed. The article probably meant that there is no international standards organization controlling the RSS standard, but the spec is defined and published (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss)
and ATOM, which is *the* modern standard for content syndication *IS* defined by the IETF in RFC4287. Both of these standards are extensible, so Apple could define custom elements for their feeds; however, they need to define these elements in their own namespace. The article implies that they aren't doing that though.

Posted by William McVey, 21 Jan 2006

yet another example

that jobs is on the dark side of the force

Posted by smallcaps, 21 Jan 2006

Idiotic reporting at its best.

This site makes this seem like standard journalistic practices are being used but the sensational and biased nature of this article leaves something to be desired. You are taking a page right from Fox News.

You defeat your own purpose in writing this when you admit that there are no standards. You condemn Apple, yet go on to praise Microsoft for the same practice?

I wonder if there is any editorial board for this website?

Posted by Jim, 21 Jan 2006

RSS "Standard"

Nice title.

There IS no RSS standard, and this is version 1.0 software we're talking about.

I suggest you report the bugs to Apple before bashing a potentially useful feature, and see what their response is. Regardless of the web performance in SOME readers, it happens to work fine in the software itself, and I seriously doubt these 'bugs' are intentional.

Posted by Matt, 20 Jan 2006

interesting, but i don't think "cheating is the right word" but hey, ya never know

apple is getting big now.. hopefully they don't turn into microsoft ;)

Posted by louis Abate, 20 Jan 2006

Sweet Irony

Of course, the most ironic part of all of this is that this is the exact type of behaviour that Mac users have had to endure from most other software vendors for years. How many websites have Mac users not been able to use because they weren't using Internet Explorer on a Windows machine?

Software compatibility a two way street. Apple makes a decision to produce software that doesn't work with something that someone is running on a Windows machine and the world is up in arms. But if some major corporation or bank puts up a website that will not let 25 or 30 million Mac users access their banking data, no one seems to bat an eye.

I really don't get why it's big news when Apple produces something that does to Windows users that Windows developers have been doing to Mac users for years.

Posted by Dan, 20 Jan 2006

Stop the insanity!

I have to take issue with the entire article. On the one hand your title implies Apple is "cheating on RSS Standard" yet later say there in fact is no "standard" and "strictly speaking Apple is not doing anything wrong." The reality is that these self-anointed "dignitaries" like Dave Winer have been forever trying to keep RSS technologies within their defined view of what it is without any official capacity or function. They crawl out and get print space every time something they don't like comes forward. I'm tired of it and would welcome some kind of standards body etc., but until then it's just out there to be exploited to the advantage of the vendor that outs it to work. My advice is if you're displeased with events and developments like this to devote your efforts to pushing for standards and a standard body adoption. That will accomplish far more than this junk. Frankly I'm honestly tired of Winer. This so reminds me of the AppleScript vs.Frontier days and frankly Scarlet...

Posted by jeffsters, 20 Jan 2006

What standard?

I've been told there is no standard for RSS. How could they be cheating?

Posted by Steve, 20 Jan 2006

Yet another example of the rotten apple

Apple is developing quite a track-record for thinking the world revolves around them.

it's a damn shame too. i think they produce quality hardware and software for the most part, but these types of ever-increasing transgressions coupled with their ever-lovable liar Steve Jobs prevents me from ever wanting to step too deep into the apple-world.

Posted by janos, 20 Jan 2006

cheating?

very eyecatching title lol

Posted by fatleg, 20 Jan 2006

Cheating on something that's not a standard?

How is this possible? You can't cheat on something that is not a standard....

and Micro$oft didn't cheat??? On no, they're as pure as the driven snow...

Posted by Ben Dover, 20 Jan 2006

Who cares!

Please Winer is out from under his rock I see! I mean come on "Apple kill" RSS? It's Apple, you know the 2-3% market share company! They don't matter right? Not relevant right? They're a niche player. Worse iPhoto is used by how many people? Then how many of those are using this feature? What, are we down to .003% of the computers on the internet now? Please. Let's find something else to get our names in the press.

Posted by JeffG, 21 Dec 2006