Tag Archives: sync

Google Reader RIP

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Google just announced that their RSS Service, Google Reader is slated to be shutdown on July 1st, 2013. This upsets me greatly but I’m not really surprised. There was never any real traction for the service and they let the web component of it languish in the past. There was some noise that they were going to integrate the social features into Google Plus. Good luck with that.

What does this mean for the majority of users out there? Nothing really. I would say that if Google is going to pull the plug, essentially pull the rug out from under their customers by surprise like this, is that you get exactly what you pay for. Google Reader was great, and it was free and now it’s a dead service walking.

I can’t really see Google Plus succeeding against Facebook. That’s the battle to come. So they are reorganizing their infrastructure and pointing it to failtown. Okay. I would say that if you use any other Google product, like Picasa or Blogger, that you should migrate to something else like Flickr or WordPress as soon as you can, because if they kill Reader, who’s to say what’s next? The only thing I am planning to use now is Google Mail, which may be the last refuge for these scoundrels. It’s best to leave of your own volition than to be unceremoniously tossed out on your ass by surprise.

Google Drive Failure

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Google Drive is a failure.

Google Drive was released yesterday, and I clicked the button on the website letting Google know I was interested in their product. I received an email late last night informing me that my Google Drive was ready. This morning, on a lark really, I went to the Google Drive website and clicked on the download link for the sync application to add to my work iMac. I downloaded the DMG fie without a problem and opened it up. I copied the Google Drive app to my Applications folder, like you are supposed to with Macintosh, and then I sat back and marveled at it. Google Drive, finally.

I’ve been a loyal Dropbox customer for years and back in January I sprang for the $100 a year expansion of my Dropbox up to 50GB. Everything I use connects to my Dropbox via the Dropbox API and just for the record, I am totally in-love with Dropbox. There is no reason for me to leave them as a customer. But even if you are loyal, it doesn’t mean you can’t explore. I have a professional account with Box.com through my work, and we arranged that after drop.io was consumed by the wraiths at Facebook. I have a personal Box.net account with 50GB but I don’t use it because Box only allows sync with paid accounts, so it’s not worth my while. Google Drive was just along these lines, just another option to look into.

So I started Google Drive on my iMac and I was asked to authenticate, something I expected. Then nothing. I started the app again and nothing. I opened up the Console app and here is what I found:

4/25/12 7:17:44 AM Google Drive[22481] *** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x2e2ba80 of class OC_PythonString autoreleased with no pool in place – just leaking

4/25/12 7:17:44 AM Google Drive[22481] *** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x2e37440 of class OC_PythonString autoreleased with no pool in place – just leaking

4/25/12 7:17:44 AM Google Drive[22481] *** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x2e332f0 of class NSCFString autoreleased with no pool in place – just leaking

4/25/12 7:17:44 AM Google Drive[22481] *** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x2e32600 of class NSCFString autoreleased with no pool in place – just leaking

4/25/12 7:17:45 AM [0x0–0x221c21a].com.google.GoogleDrive[22481] 2012–04–25 07:17:45.119 Google Drive Icon Helper[22488:903] Inject result: 0

So, it’s broken. This isn’t the first time a new app was built that failed horribly on my iMac. If anyone cares, and perhaps if anyone from Google is reading, this is a standard 2009–2010 iMac running Mac OSX 10.6.8. The only thing different about this particular Mac is that the account has it’s home on an AFP-connected OD-domain’ed Apple xServer. A network home. This causes headaches for Adobe Acrobat Reader so it’s probably the reason why Google Drive collapses on startup.

Since I can’t run the application, and since it wasn’t designed elegantly to take into account those people who have network-based computers like mine – unlike Box.com’s sync app or Dropboxes sync app, I can only state that Google Drive is not ready for prime time. Google Drive is not ready to compete in the marketplace and Google has to go back to the drawing board and try again.