As a lover of the service known as Lala, this morning I was very saddened to receive an email that I hoped would never come:

Dear Raymond B.,

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

This letter was probably written the day that Apple purchased Lala over four months ago. It further solidifies my disgust with Apple and the way they do their business. In this acquisition and destruction of a perfectly good company, they’ve literally promised services to me in exchange for my money and now backed out of our agreement. I currently have over $25 in store credit on Lala and over one hundred songs to which I’ve purchased streaming rights. Beyond that, I’ve given dozens of songs to friends and family on the service.

Lala was the most innovative approach to music that I’ve seen in years, and I was extremely excited to evangelize the service and partake in it like some sort of Dionysian zealot. Now that’s all gone because Apple saw competition, they wanted technology, and when they had it they didn’t want to share. If Apple wants to make me happy they can give me copies of my MP3′s at a loss to them or send me a check for $50. Until that time, I’m looking to warn others of what happens when a closed, heavily proprietary company in bed with numerous neerdowells. This closure makes me furious, and I’m eager to see significant blow-back from Apple’s consumer-base.

UPDATE: It would cost me over $155 to get MP3 copies of the music I’ve purchased. Screw you, Apple.

Today, Steve Jobs released an interesting essay justifying Apple’s shut-out of flash in the iPad and iPhone market. Apparently, when you make your first jog toward the light at the end of the tunnel, you’re imbued with a natural inclination to blog more. Maybe I need one of my organs to fail? Anyways, my summary of the high points:

1. Open – Flash isn’t an open system, it’s closed source and Flash controlled.
2. Features – All those flash sites you claim are so important? Yeah, we’ve got apps for those…so shut it.
3. Security – Adobe has more bugs than a camel’s armpit, and twice as many security flaws.
4. Power Consumption – Because you don’t use hardware acceleration it winds up sucking more processor speed, and therefore power.
5. Touch – Have you ever used an iPhone? Yeah, we like touch.
6. Flash Apps – Yeah, we’re not going to let you get that foothold. You know how we do quality control. [BAN]

It’s largely concrete and controlled, but my favorite quote is the last paragraph where he unleashes the liver-fed lion:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

I largely agree with everything that Jobs is saying here, with one giant caveat: he shouldn’t have said it. Thousands of other people can say things like this and have it actually mean it, hell….even Ballmer would have gotten some respect from me for this kind of publication. But it wasn’t Ballmer, it wasn’t Zuckerberg, it wasn’t Brin, and it wasn’t even Bezos…it was Jobs.

Apple[Jobs] has created one of, if not the, most closed environments in recent history, barring the PRC. Every developer who wants to play in their app space needs to obey the censors and keep their noses clean, in addition to paying annual fees to enter the market. They continue to be criticized over, over, and over again for their blaze approach to censorship; Jobs even went so far as to tarnish the character of those who dare buy from the enemy. To say these things may seem like a logical attempt to regain trust from developers that “Steve’s really got our backs”, but it doesn’t take a psychology degree to see what his intentions are.

Jobs does not have the user or developers in mind. He’s pushed his teams to exclude flash from the iPlatform because he doesn’t want to lose control of the AppStore reigns. In a nearly-open system one can make the case that singular exclusions of technological compatibility are in the best interest of the consumer. Even Hu Jintao doesn’t whitelist Internet sites for his people. This essay has done nothing but push me closer toward a Verizon store and my first Android phone. I might even buy one of those wacky, now-imaginary Couriers.

Amazing, Steve, just amazing.

Salutations, earthlings. I rarely take the time to appreciate amazing services that I take advantage of today. One such service, Akismet, allows me to serve up content free from comment spam and malware links.

In the last 4 months, Akismet has blocked 6,402 nasty comments from view, all without a single wasted minute of review or annoyance. But you’re probably saddened by what you’re missing.

Some of it is just goofy. I’d probably click on it if it wasn’t clearly designed for me to do so.

Affiliate

Do Asians throw hamburgers at their weddings since American’s throw rice at theirs?

Pandering to my ego is a fantastic way to get by my sensors, but Akismet doesn’t seem to have that vulnerability.

Singapore Man

I have been reading this blog for quite sometime now, and this is my first comment. I would like to tell you that I enjoy reading this blog, and that I love thought provoking articles like this! (Sounds pretty good, until you realize I was talking about the NuWave Oven. Chicken breast is many things, but not thought provoking.)

get rid of acne scars

You are soooo gifted in writing. God is truly utilizing you in miraculous ways. You’re doing a great job! This was an awesome weblog! (Yes, I think God is utilizing me, but I must confess I haven’t done enough to spread the gospel of acne scar removal)

Chethasse

I do think this is a most incredible website for proclaiming great wonders of Our God! (Again, you’re right. Unfortunately in this article about Information Assurance…I guess I don’t know who ‘Our God’ is. Bruce Scheier? Yeah, and I bet Chethasse is one of Bruce’s aliases, that jerk.)

To be honest, I’m rather shocked by how much “Our God” and “the Work of the Lord” I saw in the comments. It makes sense, I suppose, as more and more churches are creating websites, and there are even more ad-hoc blogs being set up by Christians and other religious groups. The cool thing, for hackers, is that these groups are usually motivated by the thought of “doing good” in the world and rarely have the technical expertise to manage patching or installing addons to block spam. Spammers can be pretty clever about picking the low-hanging fruit.