September 26, 2003
Apple's first step into blogging
Posted by bopuc at September 26, 2003 10:46 AM
Free iBlog Blogging SoftwareóUS$19.95 value
Offer good through Nov. 25, 2003
Easy-to-use iBlog lets you publish weblogs of news, reviews, commentary, and journals on the Internet without worrying about formatting, archiving, or site maintenance. Add photos and movies from iLife, and publish your weblog right to .Mac.
iBlog maintains local copies of your entries and uploads them, in HTML, to your .Mac webspace.
Of course, no comments or trackbacks built in. Tsk tsk. It's a start though...
They should bundle TypePad...
Comments
It is halfway there. One would think that since OS X Server, on which .Mac runs, has PHP and MySQL and all that nifty stuff built-in, that a comments/trackbacks system would be a cinch to add, but no....I don't even know if iBlog has an actual content management system (UUIDs etc.). And you have little to no control over templates etc without resorting to an external editor, AFAIK.
A web-based system would be much more elegant, allow Apple to roll out new features without 7 million users needing to download through Software Update, etc...It's a nice bundle, but Apple could do so much better. The nice thing about Blogger is that I can post from anywhere and anything that has a browser, so why would I want to tie myself to a Mac-only piece of software?
The .Mac webmail is a useful tool powered by WebObjects; maybe someone should develop an industrial-strength blogging tool and backend based on that.
Posted by: aj at September 26, 2003 03:42 PM