October 2011
1 post
Testing App Store Promo Codes
I’m launching Tweet Speaker on Thursday and have begun sending promo codes out to friends and acquaintances in the press. With the avalanche of pitches, press releases, and SPAM flooding their inboxes, I sometimes don’t hear back and wonder if they even saw my email or had time to redeem the promo code I sent. Apple doesn’t provide a direct method of checking the validity of...
September 2011
4 posts
Great Developers Steal Ideas, Not Products
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about intellectual property and the underlying moral and legal issues. In blogging and tweeting about these thoughts, I’ve tended to use the word “borrow”, but at times I’ve used the word “steal” to assert the implicit moral judgment.
As I thought more about and researched these ideas today, I came across this excerpt of an...
On User Interface Chrome
While watching Microsoft’s overview of Metro, its new user interface paradigm, it struck me as somewhat odd how much emphasis was placed on the removal and abstraction of user interface chrome.
Though we act directly on many objects in our day to day existence, many of those objects are themselves tools for acting on other objects. We are, in fact, completely surrounded by object interface...
The El Camino of Computing
I have to admit I was rather charmed watching a demo of Microsoft’s Windows 8 tablet. I bounce back and forth between my iPad and MacBook Pro quite often during the day, so merging the two into a single device looked appealing. After a few minutes daydreaming about the unification of iOS and OSX, it struck me that I don’t want an El Camino.
My wife, Liz, and I share a 2001 Honda Accord for a...
App Producer
Upon making an acquaintance…
THEM: So, what do you do? ME: I develop software. THEM: Software? ME: iPhone apps. THEM: Oh! I’ve got this great idea… ME: [listens patiently] THEM: So, you’re a programmer? ME: No. THEM: So, you’re a designer? ME: No. THEM: What do you do then? ME: A lot, actually.
It’s difficult to succinctly communicate what it is I...
August 2011
1 post
The Fair Use of Ideas
I’ve tried my best, but just can’t reconcile the complete abolishment of software patents with my innate sense of justice. The patent system is an utter mess, but let’s not be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Among the friends I’ve made in the indie iOS development community, there is a sort of unwritten honor code related to software innovation. If...
July 2011
2 posts
Everyone Borrows, Google Flaunts It
In “Everything is a Remix” Kirby Ferguson makes a compelling and fascinating case that innovation and creativity lean heavily on prior art. That’s always been the case in technology, especially software, but I can’t recall a single company going so far in “borrowing” from product after product as Google has done recently.
I can, however, recall various groups that unabashedly borrow from other...
Apps and the Apple TV
The speculation surrounding Apple’s fall announcements has been focused on new versions of the iPhone and iPad, but we’ll undoubtedly see additional “Apple TV will get apps” speculation as the event nears. Developers, the tech press, and even tech savvy users have been fascinated by the possibility of running iOS apps on the Apple TV. And that fascination reached a fever pitch last...
June 2011
6 posts
The Social Implications of Circles
Circles within Google+ look really interesting, but I wonder if they’ll lead us further down the rabbit hole of multiple online personas. I’ve often thought that I’d rather not hear about a person’s dog/kid/food/fun/etc on Twitter. I mostly follow people in the iOS/tech space and it’s often time consuming to wade through the noise looking for the information...
iUnicorns
Yesterday I wrote a rather speculative post about something Apple probably won’t do. This morning I woke up and thought for a few minutes about what I’d written. At first I felt a bit embarrassed. Sure I made a half decent case, but seeing Apple release a $49 Thunderbolt cable kind of put their MO into perspective. Apple may release a cheaper Apple TV, but the odds are definitely...
The Case for a $49 Apple TV
Rumors of Apple releasing a TV have surfaced once again… it’s apparently the new Verizon iPhone. I bet they have a few prototype TVs hidden somewhere in Cupertino, but I wonder if their short-term strategy is something much less sexy—a dirt cheap Apple TV.
As many have pointed out, the TV industry is a mess of commoditization. Apple could be working toward a hardware/software...
The Eleventh App
In his post on the 37signals blog, David Heinemeier Hansson makes a very good point about the small number of mobile apps most people actually use regularly. If most of us use just ten or so apps on a daily basis, do we really need hundreds of thousands of apps? His answer is a rather emphatic no, but I think he’s having trouble seeing the forest for the trees.
As an iOS developer...
Winning the Mobile Platform Race
I’m not much of a racing fan, so forgive me if the analogy breaks down rather quickly, but it struck me today that Apple’s disciplined approach to building its mobile platform looks somewhat like a well managed racing team. While competitors have been taking risks and cutting corners in an attempt to catch up, Apple has been meticulously preparing for the race ahead.
RIM bolted a...
Twitter's Unfortunate PR #Fail
In light of Twitter’s amazing integration in iOS 5 and conversations I had with Twitter employees after their developer meetup, I’d like to present a “glass half full” reinterpretation of recent events.
“…developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.” -Ryan Sarver on Twitter...
May 2011
1 post
Orchestrating Magic
I’ve really tried to like The Daily. I want ambitious projects to succeed on iOS. I want to see the delivery and consumption of news reinvented on the iPad. But I just don’t look forward to launching The Daily. It hasn’t become part of my daily reading routine.
A distaste for the editorial voice may be part of my hang-up, but I do actually enjoy many of the stories when I take...
September 2010
1 post
Bass Ackwards
The knee jerk reactions of our government in the wake of the 2008 “mortagage meltdown” have screwed me over in just about every way possible.
They start a first time home buyer tax credit, but I don’t qualify because I responsibly bought a condo that I could afford in 2006 (a year before Liz and I got married). Then they start a program for move-up buyers, exactly what Liz and I...
August 2010
3 posts
The App State of Mind
The other day I was chatting with my brothers about travel plans and trying to figure out if I could plan my trip to visit them around the opening of football season. To figure that out, we needed to know the fall schedule of the Cowboys and the University of Texas. Rather than launching Safari and Googling “Cowboys 2010 schedule” my first impulse was to go to the App Store and search...
iPhone 4 Antenna WIN!
My wife and I were out in the boondocks picking up my mother-in-law from a local day spa. I called my mother-in-law with my iPhone 4 (to her iPhone 4) to let her know we had arrived. The call went through, but we could hardly hear each other. With all the hoopla surrounding the iPhone 4 antenna, I decided to take a look at my wife’s iPhone 3GS. Sure enough, no signal at all. The spa staff...
Sparkle for iOS Beta Testing?
I’m not sure this would even work, but I wanted to post the idea incase anyone smarter than me (and with actual coding experience) wants to run with it.
After reading this post (by @iamamused via @chockenberry) yesterday, I was brainstorming ways to further streamline beta distribution.
Here’s the basic concept from Jeffrey’s post:
With the new iPhone iOS 4, you can...
July 2010
1 post
The Magic Trackpad is Just a Better Mouse
For all the hyperbole about the mouse being dead, no one has called out the Magic Trackpad for being what it really is—just a better mouse. Though it is touch based and enables certain gestures, the power of a real touch based OS like iOS is in direct manipulation via a touch screen. Here’s how I put it in my chapter on iOS UI in iPhone User Interface Design Projects:
“One of the keys...
June 2010
1 post
Anti-Competitive AND Potentially Creepy
I’m at WWDC and don’t have time to fully polish my thoughts, but I thought this was important enough to post a rough draft… please excuse the rough edges and rambling. I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but the story just didn’t go deep enough into my thoughts about this fascinating turn of events.
The new terms in section 3.3.9 of the iOS developer agreement are...
March 2010
1 post
Made, Is Making, or Will Make?
Properly conjugating a verb helps distinguish among past, present, and future events. Mobile developers and the tech press seem to have an awful time with conjugation, often making bad decisions or writing misleading headlines on account of that apparent confusion.
Gas Cubby *made* $32,446.54 in the 30 days following March 25th, 2009—the day it was selected by Apple as the Staff Pick of the Week...
January 2010
3 posts
Greener Pastures in the App Store
Monday night I finally decided to pull the trigger on a decision I’ve been debating for quite some time. I moved Gas Cubby from the Utilities category to Productivity.
As the App Store grows, the “Top Paid” list (the top 100 apps by sales volume) in each category has become crowded with various levels of crap, soft porn, and cheap apps. I don’t know the exact number, but...
Touch Screen Edge Cases
While fiddling with the Nexus One last week, I was incredibly annoyed at how many times I accidentally tapped the Home button while trying to tap the space bar on the software keyboard. I posted this little note on Twitter about the issue: “DON’T EVER PUT BUTTONS FLUSH WITH THE BOTTOM OF A SOFTWARE KEYBOARD. PEOPLE WILL ACCIDENTALLY TAP THEM AND BE PISSED”...
Quick thoughts on the Nexus One
Overall I don’t think Apple has much to worry about with the Nexus One, but Google sure is trying. The thing is, my 55 year old mother LOVES her iPhone. I could never recommend something fiddly like the Nexus One to my parents (who took to the iPhone like a duck to water). The logarithmic growth in smart-phones is happening in the non-techie crowd and Apple clearly has the best device for...
