The Disappointing Surprise From Apple | Hacker News Reader

The Disappointing Surprise From Apple

amberweinberg.com

184 pointsUdo145 comments

I do think Apple was right to remove support for their crappy reader. In any domain where you have tons of options (like rss readers) I'd rather have no feature than a poorly executed one. No feature means I'll go out and get a good version of it. A poorly executed feature (especially from apple) means I'll probably put up with it longer than I should.

However, given that they were going about destroying access to user's data (the collection of rss feeds), I think the classy move would have been to run a script on install that checks if the user is subscribed to any feeds. If they are, export them into a well formatted file on the desktop, and give the user an alert through that highly touted new alert system, and give them a link to the app store that searches for rss readers that can receive the exported file. They'd get to introduce a bunch of new features that they seem to be very proud of, and they wouldn't destroy[1] a user's access to their own data. Which does seem like a pretty big deal to me.

[1]Yes, I know she was able to access her data eventually. That seemed like an unacceptably difficult process to go through for the sort of users Apple is trying to appeal to.

They didn't destroy the data [1] but regardless a migration path should have been provided. It wouldn't have been to much effort to check to see if they used the RSS feature and then basically tell them "this feature is not supported, but we see you use it - how about we make an export so you can use one of the other great readers out there". The upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion did something similar when it decided to change the trackpad direction, so the functionality to notify the user is definitely there!

[1] Sorry: I do see that you mention that later on. Though, in general I'm not sure why so many HN comments think it did when the article said that it was still available?

     They didn't destroy the data

No, they just left it hidden and in an unreadable format.

The version that created the data reads it just fine. The new version just isn't backwards compatible.

The correct thing to do is give a warning before the upgrade:

"This new version can not read your old data. Please export it before continuing."

Does Apple provide release notes for the OS? Did they at least document this in the upgrade/release notes?

Added bonus: it would give them a natural way to advertise the App Store.

Oh, and it is not "if the user is subscribed". The installer would have to check all user directories. And then, it would be a (small) privacy invasion to gather that information. Some sysadmins, on principle, would not want to know that at least one of their users subscribed to RSS feeds.

We've found the only user in the world that used RSS in Mail! I feel a bond, as I was apparently the only user of RSS in Safari. (as confirmed by informal polling of friends and family).

I moved my stuff into Google Reader and also went to Reeder on the Mac, but tried Newsify on the iOS devices and have to say that a custom newspaper is a much better experience than the hundred takes on master-detail drill down you find in the typical RSS reader.

I resent Apple killing my feature, but I am better off going forward. I should have switched long ago. And I don't live in Stockholm.

I guess I'm still hanging on to old tech too. I likes rss in mail because I leave mail open all day and use several feeds more as a notification system. Now I have to remember to open another app and leave it open all day as well which is annoying.

I understand somebody has written a plugin to add rss back to safari. I'm kinda hoping somebody does the same for mail.

And I'm the last person who uses the NetNewsWire desktop client. It's kind of buggy, and a better user interface would be nice, but it works well enough most of the time.

I still use it too.

It's the only RSS reader I can find for OS X that lets me set it up in my preferred "River of News" display format (what NNW calls 'combined view'). All feeds in one big stream, no 3-panel Mail-style separation of titles and content. Just scroll and read.

If anyone knows a cleaner, less ugly, less buggy RSS reader for OS X that can display feeds in this way, I'd love to hear about it.

Reeder. It unfortunately syncs with Google, but otherwise, it's tops.

Really? Nothing in any screenshots suggest it can be set up this way.

Instead it looks like there's a list of synopses on the left which you must click to view a full story on the right?

I navigate without mousing:

https://homonculus.net/images/reeder.png

What Reeder shows on the left is the summary of the article; one can read the original by right arrowing. Many of my feeds put the full article into the summary. I navigate up and down the list (which is all of my feeds sorted by date ascending) with the j/k keys. I don't know how NNW does it. Or did it.

It sounds nice and all, but it's definitely not a River of News style reader.

RoN style is one pane, all of the stories from all feeds laid out, newest to oldest, in one pane, and you just scroll through them reading when something looks interesting. Think the way planet aggregators work.

Got it. I'd like that, actually. I approximate it now, but I'm not concerned with the feeds themselves, just the new items. Hmm.

There's an actual app called River of News for the iPad that does it quite well, but no Mac version, sadly.

NNW can be configured to work this way, but it's a bit clunky. Everything else I've seen seems to go with a standard Mail-type setup.

No way. Tons of people use NNW. The original and still the best. :)

NetNewsWire for the win!

I had just finished implementing RSS on a website I was working for a client, making sure it worked for Safari, and that was yesterday.

Your work is not in vain, it's not as if everyone is going to switch to Mountain Lion anyway, if we look at the poor adoption numbers of Lion. http://imgb.mp/ivu.jpg

A lot of that is because of the hardware that supported Snow Leopard that wasn't supported in Lion. I'm one of those. Contrary to popular belief, no not all and probably most Mac users do not replace their MacBooks every year or two. I will be using Snow Leopard until the hardware I have completely dies.

Hear, hear. I have just recently donated (to a friend) a fully functional (and very fast) early '06 Mac Mini with an SSD upgrade running 10.6.

6 years has been kind to that machine, with minimal upgrades (RAM 3 years ago, SSD and 10.6 last year).

That is a bit disingenuous, as the article this comes from (http://insights.chitika.com/2012/mountain-lion-roars-capture...) claims Mountain Lion looks like it will do much better than Lion.

For more fun, let's look at the adoption numbers of Jelly Belly or whatever the Android crowd calls it these days. Let's not even open the can of worms that is Windows adoption rates.

...in this case, poor adoption is useful.

:-) Not just the only user in the world that used RSS in Mail.app, but one of the few who uses Mail.app, period!

I have tried to use Mail.app (always with Gmail) many times, and have always gone back to use either the web interface, or more recently, Sparrow (R.I.P.).

I used it in mail, didnt need a separate app for it. Only problem was that it didnt sync, like I assume reeder does with google services

In a word Amber, yes, of course you are right to feel violated. Apple removed your data without your consent. The fact that you were able to recover it is impressive, and far beyond the ordinary user.

The fact that you are in the minority because you used a tool and technology (RSS) that is passe if not unpopular, should be no excuse to ignore this kind of treatment. That feed collection was your data, and Apple had no right to remove it or make it inaccessible.

The correct behavior would have been to replace the RSS reader component with a button that a) explains what happened, and b) offers a path to save your data (perhaps a data export or even a link to a MacAppStore app). It would have been particularly slick for Apple to partner with a 3rd party RSS reader to support automatic "cross-grading".

This is not a hard problem, and the fact that Apple didn't even think to solve it is, in fact, disheartening. Hopefully you (and everyone affected by this) will get an apology from them and some sort of redress.

> The fact that you are in the minority because you used a tool and technology (RSS) that is passe if not unpopular, should be no excuse to ignore this kind of treatment.

It seems like just yesterday my NASA rocket scientist friend was asking me what this new-fangled RSS thing was. I explained, and his response was, "So they just reimplemented USENET?"

Other than the fact that RSS and NNTP are both built on TCP, they have virtually nothing in common neither technically, architecturally nor in terms of use case they are trying to solve.

IOW, wat

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4306232

In particular, my friend asked what people use RSS for. At the time, lots of people used it to stay current on news.

Looks like your explanation of RSS was not entirely successful, as RSS has very little in common with Usenet except for the fact that they both deliver information using pull model. RSS resources are individual data streams, Usenet groups are unstructured assemblies of multiple messages. RSS resources are delivered automatically by site aggregators, Usenet messages have to be posted. Usenet needs NNTP servers that store huge amounts of data, RSS doesn't need anything but reader. Usenet is centralized, RSS is distributed.

In short, calling RSS "reimplementation of Usenet" makes very little sense.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4306232

What you say is true, but my friend asked what it's used for. At the time, it was largely used too keep up with news.

No wonder the space program has stalled! Your friend's memory has failed him, usenet bears no resemblance to rss in anyway. Usenet was a discussion forum, rss is link syndication.

In the early days of RSS, Dave Winer himself compared RSS to Usenet, so it's not a completely ignorant thing to say.

Except for the mailing list, RSS is the only relatively-heavily-used thing on the internet that shares Usenet's "openness" virtue: namely, there is no single "gatekeeper" organization that a reader must rely on to follow the authors in his RSS feed -- the sudden trouble that the OP experienced when upgrading to Mountain Lion is about the most disruptive thing that could happen to a reader's relationship with the authors in her RSS feed.

(If the assertion I was responding to had been that the designers of RSS should have tried harder to emulate Usenet's subtler virtues, I would have agreed.)

I remember back the late 90's when these formats were being created (I was involved with cdf's inception) and while I'm sorry this woman has been disrupted with mountain lion's removal of rss from the mail app, I disagree with you on the claim that rss is anything like usenet. Rss is, like cdf, a content delivery format which is just a simple agreed upon set of XML tags for title, snippet and so on. If rss had discussion or comment capability, it might be reasonably compared to usenet, but rss has nothing in common with usenet as it stands, it's a one-way protocol, I subscribe, or I publish, there's no discussion, as there is with usenet. In that it's open, with no single gatekeeper, it is no different to http, but comparing rss to http would also be pointless.

What kind of virtues you mean?

"No, because RSS actually exists, while no one has yet successfully reimplemented USENET."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4306232

> the fact that Apple didn't even think to solve it is, in fact, disheartening

Probably Jobs would have caught it, his attention to such details was painful, probably both for him and the ones at the other end of the table.

Simplicity is an amazing difficult thing to get right. If you don't have the right man, well, just look at Gnome3's Unity or even at this incident: RSS removal could have easily been done in the name of "simplification" by someone who doesn't get it. The sad fact is that his supervisors didn't either.

Would this be the Steve Jobs who ditched floppy disk drives when people still had piles of disks around, and Firewire ports when people still had plenty of devices requiring them, etc.?

If I buy a new computer, I hopefully understand what features it has and lacks.

It is another thing altogether for a operating system upgrade to purposefully destroy user data.

As the article indicates, the data wasn't destroyed, just obscured. Maybe equivalent for some users, but somewhat overstating things, especially here.

Even with expert advice, she had to manually recreate the data, going from snippets she could see. Surely that counts as 'destroyed' or at least 'damaged'.

Dropping a feature is one thing. Silently making a user's data disappear is something else altogether.

His attention to detail only extended as far as things that excited him. I'm sure he wouldn't even notice the RSS feature was gone. OS X and iOS had lots of small oversights like this even when Jobs was around.

I remember was taken aback when one of my coworkers showed me his newly-acquired iPhone toy and it turned out it does not have copy-paste function, so if you want to copy URL from some place or take a phrase and put it in the search you have to re-type it on that cute small on-screen keyboard where your finger covers three letters at once. I was repeatedly told since then nobody really needs copy-paste function - up to the day Apple finally implemented it and it turned out everybody need it. So when I hear Apple never misses an UI detail I say "yeah right! and moon is made of swiss cheese!"

Classic example being the replace instead of merge of a folder when you put another folder with the same name at the same path.

RSS is passe? That's news for me. I've been using RSS almost exclusively to get my news/blog/entertainment feeds for years now, and I know many others do the same. So what's the cool thing now to use instead?

Actually, when Google Reader removed social features, I stopped using it, and actually I don't miss it much. It turns out that HN and Reddit do a better job of curating the same sort of feeds I was reading anyway - and selecting the best posts from a much wider variety of sources, to boot. The simple fact is that its a rare site that consistently publishes things I want to read. Anecdotally, it turns out that forming a community with others with similar interests provides a far better experience consuming information. (I say this because the "hit ratio" on the HN home page is much much higher than my feed ever was. And I'm not sure if it was ever possible for me to achieve that high of a hit ratio on my own just through subscribing to feeds).

That said, I think that everyone probably has 2 or 3 primary content sites (as opposed to aggregator sites like HN or Reddit or Google News) that they should probably read all the time, because it aligns so closely to their core interests, and RSS in a mail reader isn't a bad solution for such a small number of sources.

That depends on what do you seek. I never seriously used GR social functions (though I miss "share" a bit but I can just copy the URL, not a big deal), I use it as information source, not communication medium. I usually know what I need and I am capable of choosing my sources. I would never trust the Reddit crowd to curate my news intake (if anything, any mass internet forum like that makes phrase "wisdom of crowds" sound like an oxymoron) and while I do read and enjoy HN, I would never limit myself to it as the only source.

I have literally dozens of content sites I read (or skim, depending on value) via Google Reader, and RSS is still the best way to do it. I haven't heard about anything being even close to it by utility for me. That's why I was surprised reading the claim that "RSS is passe".

They didn't remove her data. They removed the app. The data is still in the original location. The fact that she was able to "recover" it is unimpressive.

OMFG, seriously? When someone rapes you, takes secret pictures of you naked, or wears your underwear while you are out and then puts them back without you knowing, then you have a right to feel violated. When a company removed a feature, but leaves your data intact, you have the right to be annoyed. Seriously, use the correct term so when you are actually violated, I don't assume that you're just being a whiny little...

"A computer shall not harm your data or, through inaction, allow your data to come to harm." -Jef Raskin's first law of interface design

Shame to see the Macintosh violating the first law of the Father of the Macintosh.

Jef Raskin was not the "Father of the Macintosh". At least not according to Andy Hertzfeld, who actually worked on the Macintosh.

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=The_Father_of_The...

Not only that, but to do it to an (apparently unpopular) minority of users is indeed shameful.

If you read the article, the data wasn't harmed, it was just moved. Therefore, the law wasn't violated.

It wasn't even moved, it remained in ~/Library/Mail/RSS/ - it's original directory and a very logical one at that. It's surprising that a developer wouldn't have been able to figure this out, considering ~/Library/ is the directory where all application data and preference files are stored..

From the LinkedIn profile of the guy who implemented Safari RSS:

Social-Software Introvert

Apple, Inc.

February 2004 – January 2008 (4 years)

Part of a very small team that implemented the news-reading (RSS/Atom) features of the Safari browser in Mac OS X 10.4, and the public news-reading framework for 10.5, used by Mail and 3rd party applications as well as Safari. I also prototyped some wild and crazy social-software applications I can't talk about here, and researched technologies like social networking, P2P, identity systems, and delta encoding.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jensalfke

Obviously there's noone at Apple picking up the slack that Jens Alfke left behind. He's stated repeatedly on his blog that Apple is decidedly not a social software company. Which is ultimately the reason why they removed these features. The reason is not that "RSS is the past" bullshit.

Wait.. so the reason Apple removed RSS was they don't have the talent to implement RSS? Apple simply couldn't figure out to implement RSS in a way that they liked. I am sure they had lots of data about the usage of RSS in Safari and mail. Yeah they should have offered an export option, but I for one think RSS isn't going anywhere as a user facing technology.

As for not being a social software company, well; they want to build social features around existing applications and platforms. Things like iCloud sharing and even deeper integration of iMessage into existing applications are coming.

Check out Jens Alfke's blog post when he left Apple, I really can't say this better than he did:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110714114434/http://jens.moosey...

Congratulations. You are now what's called a "power user". That means your argument is invalid, because normal users don't know what RSS is. Normal users don't need RSS. RSS is dead. (Obviously nobody has any detailed studies on this, us software devs just assume that the general user is a blithering idiot who needs regular reminders to remember breathing)

I guess I don't understand why people are cheering about RSS being replaced with tighter twitter/Facebook integration. Seems to be trading an open format that allows us all to publish for a proprietary one that is tied to specific sites with which Apple has a business arrangement.

I can understand why Apple wants to do this, but I'm surprised by the RSS hate from the tech community.

"All this to say, that I still run out and buy the new OS as soon as possible. The affordability and ease of doing so make it ridiculous not to. But this time I’m disappointed for one very specific reason."

"run out and buy the new os"

If you are a user to the extent that your usage depends on having access to all or certain features [1] is probably isn't the wisest thing to upgrade immediately or even upgrade on the existing disk without doing some testing.

I typically wait some time until the immediate bugs get squashed, and even then I will try to install on a different cpu, migrate things over and test before switching over what I would consider my "main" desktop machine (or laptop).

If you only have one cpu you can take the existing disk and partition it so you can boot from either the old OS or the new OS. You can setup the new OS and then use migration assistant to move over your old data. Or you can clone your existing OS on the partition (using "Super Duper") and then install the new OS on that extra partition. Which isn't a bad idea anyway in case something goes wrong.

All this of course takes having enough space to create the two partitions. But as an alternate you can also attach a USB drive and do the same. That way you can boot from either and do your testing in a controlled manner. (Note migration assistant doesn't work when filevault is on so you have to turn it off.)

The amount of effort you put into this all depends on how critical certain features are to you.

[1] I have a dns server running under 10.5 Mac OSX and the admin utility (hate it but have to use it) that runs under 10.6 or above won't allow you to access the 10.5 server. So I have to keep 10.5 running on a CPU (or as mentioned above) in order to control that server. Or I have to upgrade the 10.5 server which I'm not really looking forward to taking the time to do.

Please don't use the word CPU when you mean computer. The audience on hackernews knows what a CPU actually is, and will do a double take trying to work out what multiple CPUs has to do with running multiple different OS. I know I did

"THERE were my RSS feeds! They weren’t deleted at all, just left in an unusable, unreadable format no app could use." - this is the most important part I think. Many software vendors - and Apple is definitely one of the most prominent in this regard - think that if they need to store user data, it's completely OK to store it in undocumented non-standard way without any possibility of export. Of course, that enhances vendor lock-in, so why not? But the users should be aware that inevitably will lead to stories like this - my software vendor screwed me over and I have no way to recover my data now! Fortunately, in this case there were third-party tool that were able to export the data - but in many cases the same vendor would fight tooth and nail with such tool vendors to shut them down for "copyright", "patent protection" and whatever else reasons.

Lets not get of topic: A new version of the software refuses to read the old version's data.

It's unworthy of a modern day app, especially a non-third-party app.

It's especially unfortunate that this upgrade is bundled with a larger OS upgrade. Likewise that a proprietary format was used for the data.

This falls short of the integrated experience and "just works" attitude that Apple prizes itself on.

Backward compatibility has never been a strength of Apple's. Floppy, Classic, PowerPC, and recently optical discs have fallen to the wayside.

The data is not deleted. That's significant especially in principle.

This has little to do with other policies of Apple, such as their "control the user experience" attitude. Nothing about their policy prohibits handling this better.

They also kicked the web-Sharing configuration. :( I got to work and wondered why my localhost did not respond. I installed mountain lion the night before. so I thought I have to re-enable websharing but couldn't found the confit anymore. After some googling I got the answer: it has moved to a so called "Server" App for round about $20. It provides many things I didn't use ... and the "old" websharing. :/ Remember Steve's promo quote? "it just works" ... the new one should be: "it just worked before"

$ cd /web/folder $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Free, already on your machine.

Apache is there, and on my system it was running after an install. What is gone is the UI to start and stop it and the configuration that makes ~/user/Sites available under http://localhost/user. I haven't tried, but I guess the httpd.conf~previous file I find in /etc/apache2 could be used to revert those changes.

http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html or indeed http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html

brew install $YOUR_WEBSERVER_OF_CHOICE

Apple removed rss from Mail because it was pretty crappy. Anyone interested in RSS should hit the appstore and snag one of many RSS readers that blows Apple's offering off the planet. When I discovered Reeder I knew my browsing habits would change forever, it's that much better.

Yes, but this misses the point: An OS upgrade hosed her data. Only the fact that she is (apparently) a small minority prevents this from being a big deal, a fact which itself sort of concerns me.

Not that it is obvious in any way, but apparently you can still get the list of subscribed RSS feeds with the command-line tool "pubsub list".

Not exactly. They removed the feature but left the data behind. I assume they did this on purpose so it could be salvaged by the user if needed. I suspect Apple Support could have helped or perhaps third party RSS readers could look for the data and automatically import it. The only thing they could have done differently is to maybe do a runounce in Mail that tells the user RSS is gone, point them to a support KB article, and maybe point the user to the Mac App Store to search for RSS readers.

Perhaps she should have invested in Time Machine backups?

It was crappy for reading articles, but I had a few message feeds ("hey folks, everyone who wants to be notified about events x on server y subscribe here") which was really handy to have in his message inbox.

Apple products are meant to be used how Apple wants you to use them, nothing else. It's an all-in decision, either you take the good with the bad or get a computer that allows customization. "Apple power user" is a sad, unfulfillable concept.

Not true for MacOS, though Apple is not exactly going out of the way to make it easier. Closer to the truth for iOS, where all "advanced user" stuff is not only not made available - but applications making it possible are explicitly banned. I know there are reasons for that - like if you can do power user stuff, you probably can circumvent Apple restrictions that bring them that juicy 30% payment cut - but the fact is the fact.

However, this is the iOS picture, on Mac picture is much better - I could do on Mac almost every power user thing I did on Linux, albeit I'd have to do more research to find the proper docs and the proper tools, and some of the tools may be not free (in either sense).

Bullshit extreme

One of the comments notes that this was a well publicized change, citing page 9 of Siracusa's in-depth review. I'm sure every affected user will have read through his entire review before upgrading.

You would still hope that an OS upgrade wouldn't leave your data in an unusable state! As someone above pointed out, it would've been pretty easy for the OS install to determine if you had feeds and export them into an open format and let the user know where they had been exported too so that they may then do something with it.

I don't think the lack of the feature is the main complaint in the article it's that her data seemed to be suddenly gone (I know she eventually found it but it took a third part tool to try to export the proprietary format into something usable).

My problem with Mountain Lion, and Lion, and I cant rember if it were true with snow leopard, was that I needed to re-install all of my unix dev tools

It's become a ritual for me that I have to rebuild imagemagick with each new upgraded version of OS X.

I used Ubuntu for laptops for about 6 years. I moved to Mac because Linux laptops were no longer allowed for the new company.

I don't really understand the shock from early adopters that core things have changed. In Ubuntu, I wouldn't compete to update right away. Just wait a week or two. Why would you do it for Mountain Lion?

Apple isn't really any better than Ubuntu with saying what will 'break' and what won't. It's either a positive change or a UI breakage, depending on the person.

While it sucks for the few users that did use RSS reader in Mail.app, the truth is most people didn't actually use that feature in Mail.app and I actually like that Apple has removed feature bloat from Mail.app on a feature that has nothing to do with mail.

I think the only thing they should have done is the first time you start the new Mail.app is a warning comes up saying your RSS is gone and an option to export to some "easier to read" file on your desktop.

I wrote a script that solves the problem: https://github.com/DaNmarner/ExtractMailRSS

For direct download: https://github.com/DaNmarner/ExtractMailRSS/zipball/master

I have no love for RSS, and even if I did, there are many third party apps that fill the niche, but I will say (as a regular Final Cut Pro user) welcome to the club. When Apple does their famous "cutting out the cruft" there are always users like us that are jilted because they depend on that cruft.

There's a big difference between eliminating features and effectively eliminating existing user data around those features. At the least provide an export path. This was careless implementation, not design elegance.

So many people are missing the key point...it is never ok to to remove data without warning.

I think the even bigger point is it's never ok to organize data in a way that removal of the UI leaves you with no access to the data at all, even though you could use another tool to do UI if only the vendor gave you proper access to the data. E.g. if Apple stored their RSS feeds, say, in OPML - migration would be easy. If they exported the feed to OPML on upgrade - migration would be not very hard too. Since Apple did everything the wrong way there, the user had to use 3 tools and spend hours of manual work to get her data back.

This is especially bad coming from the company that is known for their neglect to BC and overhauling UIs in most radical way. Their developers must have known the possibility of UI change exists - and still stored the data in a format that turns this possibility into a major problem for the user.

Compare, for example, to Firefox that stores bookmarks in HTML(-like) file. If ever something happens to Firefox project or their bookmark functionality, I can always take the HTML and get the info out with the simplest of tools, and probably I won't have to, since these tools would already exist - since the format is easy to use.

I don't think Firefox has stored bookmarks in HTML since the bookmark and history systems were unified in Firefox 3. Now they're stored in a single SQLite database. The schema is sensible, so it's easy enough for a programmer to work with, but it doesn't have the automatic portability/transparency of a text-based format like HTML.

The article goes on to say that the data wasn't removed - only the feature. Regardless, Apple should've provided a simple migration path for those that DID use the RSS feature rather than just assume they had the knowledge to find and export the data manually.

Feed readers are dead. Not at all feeds themselves, but the process of using a reader like mail to pull in feeds to a desktop app is going out the window. When consumers buy products, they should be able to look into the future. If you choose technology that is a bit behind the times, understand that you should be careful before upgrading, as old features are often cut from Apple products.

This happened in every industry, not just the computer industry. The problem here is that the computer industry abandons old features at a MUCH faster rate than other industries, but for good reason.

> Feed readers are dead.

At least as far as standalone desktop apps are concerned, I think you're right. I can't even remember a time when I was not using Google Reader. I do hope RSS-fed reading in general is not going extinct though.

As I got to this page via FeedDemon I think "dead" is an exaggeration.

Sprained seems reasonable though :->

That's a pretty gratuitous assumption that you're making. And I don't see what the "good reason" is. Let's face it, they just dropped a feature that people were using, without clear upgrade path. Few people were using it ? Maybe. That doesn't make it a good decision, only (at best) a sad but necessary compromise.

Frankly, a feed reader that is already there, and works, needs next to zero maintenance. It's not like RSS format changes everyday.

But a feed reader inside another program that IS changing does indeed require maintenance. Even just testing to make sure it still works isn't free. It also adds complexity to the user interface.

To remove something is ok. But you should clearly inform the user and give him the possibility to easy get his data back and really cool would be to provide a solution for the now existing problem. Maybe to point him to an App Download. Just dropping a feature without any response is bad practice.

If they didn't test it, it might have broken. That outcome is still better than what happened, where they ensured it became completely unusable.

This isn't as much about abandoning features as it is deleting content. It would have been great to say "Hey, we're about to delete all of your feeds, would you like to export them?".

most industries have some thought for their customers, and are not so dictatorial. They will at least give some advance warning of feature removal. Feed readers are far from dead, and I find there are more people than ever using them, mainly through Google Reader. as there are huge advantages to having globally maintained read/unread content.

You know what still has RSS feed support? Windows Live Mail, the free MS email client. I don't think feeds will be dead anytime soon.

Apple removed it because more and more of their client apps are just desktop versions of iCloud. iCloud isn't getting RSS syncing anytime soon.

Honestly, I could see this coming a mile away. I've always distrusted Apple for a variety of reasons. Probably more than Microsoft.

Complaining about Apples f-ups with RSS feeds is like complaining that Hitler used to litter. Big Woop!

I don't have a lot of sympathy for her. 1. She could have read up on what was changing with ML. 2. She could/should have a backup of her data, especially before an OS upgrade. 3. Her data wasn't rendered "unusable" or "lost" it was left where the old RSS client kept it. 4. Her real beef seems to be that she lost the RSS functionality and wasn't told about it.

For all of the commentators saying that Apple should have exported her data to the desktop in a neat file/folder with an alert, get real. This is such an edge case that it doesn't warrant the effort from Apple nor from HN.

I don't know why this was downvoted. This is a very accurate representation of Apple philosophy in a nutshell.

No, I'm pretty sure "move fast and break things" is Facebook.

And Apple is a shining example of backwards compatibility and concern for the 20%.

Prioritizing tasks, focusing their efforts, and consciously deciding not to support some users or pursue some customers is why many people on HN hold Apple in high esteem, and now someone's downvoted for explaining this?

Maybe not everybody likes this philosophy...

And downvoting someone on HN is going to make Apple abandon this philosophy?

No but it will make people feel better :)

How is using a functionality that comes with the OS, and then upgrading the OS an "edge case"?

Imagine that Apple decided in the next OSX release to discontinue Safari. Would Apple need to include a utility for users to export their bookmarks/cookies etc before upgrading?

She's a developer, a self-proclaimed "Apple fan girl" but she didn't read up the release notes for ML.

The world changes, features come and go. Expecting them to stay static or to provide you with with air bags in case of impact is unrealistic.

I actually don't think that would be unreasonable at all! Somebody might have important stuff in there, even if most people don't use it.

I didn't know that this feature was removed. I don't know where the release notes that you refer to are to be found, but this page http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html doesn't mention it and neither did the two articles I read before upgrading. I wasn't using it so it doesn't matter to me but the more general point that I should check whether features that I rely on still exist doesn't make much sense. Of course, features are removed from time to time as they should be, but I do think that if that means removing data that I have created, I should have a warning or a way to export my data.

And Apple doesn't aim to please everyone. Note the discontinuation of optical drives, of floppy drives, of hypercard etc.

Most of the reviews I've read (particularly John Siracusa's) point out that the RSS functionality is gone. Now maybe we've gotten to a point where people are treating OSX upgrades in a cavalier fashion, but I think that's a mistake. I always wait a few days if not a week or so to let the early adopters experience the pain.

Actually, for bookmarks you don't need an utility, since they're stored in plist file. It is not as good as it could be, since it's not human-readable and needs plist tools, which AFAIK are available only on Apple platform, to read - but it can be easily converted using these tools to XML format which then can be processed by any tool. So in this case Apple is not good for regular user, but tolerable for power user.

OTOH, Firefox has its bookmarks in HTML file which you could just open in any browser.

I think you're onto something.

"OS differently."

But do you mean Linux or Windows?

Exactly.

There are plenty of RSS reader apps.

The fact that they may collect your personal data for future mining shouldn't concern you.

Apple always removed what they found weak and this is a part of why OS X is a strong and well integrated operating system.

I can't see what all the fuss is about. I remember Apple removing many features in ten years of usage and it always been for the best.

If you can't stand this anymore, to to the app store where's there's way better options such as Reeder and NetNewsWire.

Removing RSS functionality: A defensible decision, I think. Many excellent third-party RSS readers are available and this fits Apple’s overall theme of simplifying the OS: there are more system apps but each does less and only a very specific thing (Mail was split in Mail and Notes, iCal was split in Calendar and Reminders), iTunes being the big exception. RSS was never a good fit for Mail, why should Apple have to schlepp around that ballast for all eternity?

Removing user data: That is indefensible. There should be a painless way for users to export their RSS feeds on first launch (an OPML file would be minimum, better would be some even tighter solution that is not as painful and annoying as dealing with an OPML file.

(Yes, I know that technically Apple didn’t remove the data – but no one should be expected to conduct such a preposterous rescue mission for their data. This is also not meant as a criticism of her, it’s pretty clear that she is more or less ok with Apple removing the functionality, just not the data.)

I would expect a decent third-party solution to scan for folders like this, just as every third-party browser grabs (or at least offers to grab) Safari's data.

So, how would e.g. Google Reader do that, exactly?

Are sandboxed applications from the Mac App Store able to access these files? Sincere question, I'm not sure what the sandbox limitations are.

If you don't like a product, don't use it.

If you don't properly research a product, don't complain about its features.

Do some research next time.

Take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming others.

These are elementary principles.

Speaking as someone who finds RSS to be useless (having tried all kinds of ways to consume it) and knew support had been dropped from ML, I think you're being condescending. It's not like apple advertises unfeatures on its product page. I would have no problem if RSS support were hidden by default for people not obviously using it, but this is pretty stupid. apple has gone from shoving RSS down our throats (default crap in Safari, etc.) to not supporting it at all with no warning for typical users.

Doesn't affect me, but it's stupid.

Whether it is stupid, even if we're just going to assume such a thing can be viewed objectively, is beside the point.

If you think it is stupid, don't use it. If you want your money back because you bought something that you didn't properly research, why not ask for it instead of whining about it on your blog?

And, on the point of Apple not advertising 'unfeatures' (I like that term), we, as consumers, make decisions in these situations about how much we're willing to research different investments ahead of time. Likely, for most, an OS is not something to research in depth when it's only $20. But it's only $20. Downgrade if you hate it so much. Live in the past. But don't claim you feel violated... when you made the decision. She violated herself if anything.

So if you take your car in for service and a computer software upgrade is necessary and they remove a feature you use, that's OK?

Clearly Apple continues to show just they truly do not care about customers. It's Apple's way or GTFO. And along the way a legion of fanatics has been conned into accepting this abusive behavior. Here's hoping these nitwits aren't in charge of any other important decisions for anyone else.

Who said who was "violated".

When Apple switched to QuickTime Player X they left QuickTime Player 7 around for people who needed its features. Likewise iMovie. all Appl had to do was leave the old version of Mail.

I expect an OS to mostly stay out of my way and let me do stuff. If an upgrade is going to damage my stuff in some way it's the most minimal of courtesy to warn me and give me options.

Mountain Lion changed the internal functioning of mail so rss would have had to be architected. Yes, I think an export option would have been nice.

This is interacting with one's tools as a human being. But Apple's customers are self-selected to want to avoid that responsibility.

The fact that she should have done that is completely irrelevant to whether Apple should have provided a way to export her data, much like you can't just run over a pedestrian on a crosswalk just because he forgot to look both ways.

I agree, I'm also saying its unfair and unrealistic to criticize these consumers for being how they are.

yawn!

I don't understand what the article is about. Is she trolling for page views? I don't understand why she considers herself "violated" by Apple. Don't people make backups anymore?

You didn't read the article carefully. What would it matter if she made a backup? The data was in a proprietary format squirreled away in a random file and only a period-appropriate utility let her pull it out. She should be thankful, I suppose, that Apple didn't actually delete this database. RSS feed files can get quite large.

But your reaction is a powerful anecdote about the existing narratives around Apple. People tend to treat Apple like this powerful paternal figure. Father knows best, and so unless you are personally smacked down by Father than you tend to defer to him.

In reality, Apple handled this poorly but people will use the "none > bad" logic. Can you imagine if Google closed down Reader and didn't offer an export format in Takeout? But that's because there is a narrative around Google "not getting humans" even though their entire business is understanding your preferences.

> I don't understand what the article is about.

The article is pretty clear. She was using Mail app for rss feeds and the upgrade seemed to totally delete her rss feeds and her subscriptions. Mail app upgrade should have checked if the user has subscribed to RSS, and could have exported the feeds and subscriptions. The least the upgrade could have done to notify the user to manually export the feeds and subscriptions before going through the upgrade.

> Is she trolling for page views?

Trolling isn't defined as whatever you disagree with.

> Don't people make backups anymore?

Take backup of what? Taking a disk backup would have given her the proprietary on-disk blob which only Mail app could read, and now the Mail app refuses to do so.

Never mentioned I disagreed with her. Where did you get that assumption?

> Never mentioned I disagreed with her. Where did you get that assumption?

>> I don't understand what the article is about. Is she trolling for page views? I don't understand why she considers herself "violated" by Apple. Don't people make backups anymore?

Let's try this again. She complained an upgrade shouldn't have made her existing rss feeds and subscriptions inaccessible.

You said you don't understand what the article is about, she is trolling and implied what's the fuss about since everybody should make backups.

Because they removed not only a feature but the access to her data. While she was able to recover it, it wasn't easy.

I guess it's because Apple removed a useful feature, with no reasonable upgrade path, even if you do have your old data?

I could have written a similar article about the upgrade to Xcode 4 - but, because I'm a relative newcomer to this whole Apple "thing", perhaps I'm just more acutely aware how useless it would be, if I told anybody apart from Apple about this (radar bugs: 11405857, 11252538, 11207936, 10985344, 10779669, 10596415, 10596323, 9624250), because you just don't get any sympathy. And I didn't even use Xcode Interface Builder plugins!

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