Room to Grow

Posted on May 11th, 2012

Yesterday Philip Baeten wrote a really fantastic post for A New Take, evaluating the possibility a second ‘dot-com bubble‘ with the rapid growth of Apple and Google. It really is a must-read.

The problem some economists see is that giant tech companies such as these won’t be able to maintain this immense growth in the future. There seems to be a general disbelief of the continued future growth of technology companies, especially with knowledge of the gloomy past lingering in the back of people’s minds. After all, history has shown multiple times that unhindered growth at such a rate is nigh on impossible. At some point, growth will stop or decline sharply.

Apple and Google along with everyone in the mobile space still have a lot of room to grow though, I think. According to Horace Dediu of Asymco, as of November 2011 the smartphone market has now reached over 30% of shipments within the whole phone market, with 69% still resigned to “dumb phones”. That is an insane number which I think we often ignore in our common world-view saturated with iPhones, Droids and the like. Apple and Google still have an awful lot of room to grow into the market currently held by dumb phones.

I think Apple are working hard to penetrate this market by maintaining availability of the iPhone 3GS for free on contract, and with Tim Cook at the helm improving operations to reduce costs breaking into emerging markets is going to become a larger priority than ever before. They don’t want to find themselves in the same position as RIM though, and I don’t think they will, because they know to innovate, as Philip says.

I also think John Gruber is right with his recent comments on The Talk Show that the opinions of writers in the media about Apple are coloured by their first impressions of the company and its beginnings as a computer company rather than a consumer electronics company. The same may apply to Wall Street analysts, worried that Apple can’t continue their fantastic growth. I tend to disagree.

A Dangerous Mentality →

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Posted on May 13th, 2012

Robert Falck:

What I’m talking about is a mentality that is both harmful and erroneous, bordering on pure incompetence. It’s the thought process I would like to label as “I don’t like this, therefore it sucks for everyone” or “I don’t understand this, therefore it sucks for everyone”.

New Maps in iOS 6 →

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Posted on May 11th, 2012

Mark Gurman, again:

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.

The first rumour i’ve heard about iOS 6, sounds like it should be a nice addition to iOS with 3D mapping from C3 Technologies, and a worthwhile competitor for Google Maps.

 

Notes and Reminders in iCloud Beta →

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Posted on May 11th, 2012

Mark Gurman:

We know that Apple has been busy tweaking their iCloud.com website and testing new features like iOS 5-like notification banners, and now it appears that Apple is expanding the website’s web-application library. If you head to beta.icloud.com, you will see a beta-version of the iCloud.com website that includes new Reminders and Notes applications. Currently, we are unable to login, but we have been able to load the new icon grid. It is hard to tell if these new apps are something Apple trashed for the original iCloud website release or if Apple is planning on bringing them to the site.

I doubt the Notes and Reminders apps were planned for the launch of iCloud, then canned. I think it’s far more likely they are new additions, one’s we’ll probably see at WWDC this year, maybe as part of a wider expansion of iCloud’s functionality to encompass more app’s available across OS X and iOS, CloudOS?

Education iOS 6 Wishlist →

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Posted on May 10th, 2012

I think anyone working in education, enterprise or retail would appreciate these optional features to lock things down. It always annoys me when I go into an Apple store and all of the iPad displays are colour inverted.

 

(via Federico Viticci)

Placing Blame on the Status Quo →

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Posted on May 9th, 2012

Shadoe Huard, on people on ads:

The only thing that’s particularly striking to me: A bunch of writers – running Apple centric sites, placing blame on the status quo and waiting for change to come to them. Strange right?

Right.

“Status Update” →

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Posted on May 9th, 2012

Alexia Tsotsis sets the record straight about what is happening at TechCrunch:

So first things first: We’re not being sold! Instead, we’ve just hired a bunch of brilliant writers and a new COO. Also, we’ve seen a resurgence of community support (with over a thousand people attending our NYC meetup last night, for example), are back at around 12% on the much-lauded Techmeme leaderboard and are gearing up for our NYC Disrupt conference.

Also, the feature image is fantastic.

“Nothing Left There to Sell”

Posted on May 9th, 2012

In an interview today with AdWeek, CEO of AOL Tim Armstrong denied the rumours originated from this post on PandoDaily that the company was planning to sell on Engadget and TechCrunch for $170 million, instead he suggested that they were planning on “investing ourselves”.

AOL reported a 4% drop in average monthly visitors to AOL owned-and-operated properties, when it reported first-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Among these properties are TechCrunch and Engadget, but CEO Tim Armstrong said the properties aren’t for sale, refuting a report in the tech blog PandoDaily that said AOL was seeking buyers for the sites. “We are planning to invest in those properties, not sell those properties,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview with Ad Age. He admitted the company has spoken with outside entities about partnerships that would lead to increased investments in TechCrunch and Engadget, but that right now AOL is leaning toward “investing ourselves.”

Following the news, this pretty interesting conversation between Ben Brooks and Dave Caolo ensued:

 

As sadistic as it sounds it’s actually been pretty interesting to watch the decline of Engadget and TechCrunch over the past few months, and I tend to agree with Ben Brooks on this, there is “nothing left there to sell”, they have little chance of bouncing back unless they do something radical to rethink the way they do things, and it’s not going to be a redesign which fixes that.

I want to talk specifically now about why I personally have stopped reading Engadget in particular, after the launch of The Verge, I still read Engadget for a while, and listened to the podcasts, and the Engadget Show, I gave them a fighting change. Now I only listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, for Myriam Joire exclusively. The reason for this can be well explained in this photo posted to the forums on The Verge in a thread called “Why I Switched from Engadget to The Verge”.

Two Words: The Community.

Not just the community of flaming commenters though, I try not to read those, but the community of writers, I much prefer a site with objective, non-snarky writers whom I can trust to get reliable information from – it’s a news site, not Twitter. So over time I’ve stopped visiting Engadget, instead typing theverge.com when I want to read some news is second nature to me. The only way I could start reading Engadget again would be for them to turn it around, start producing better content which competes with that of The Verge, I just don’t think they have it in them.

Simple for iPhone →

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Posted on May 9th, 2012

This app is pretty as punch. If and when they expand to the UK, I’ll be all over this.

Instacast 2.0 – Podcasts Just Got Social

Posted on May 7th, 2012

Today Instacast got its most substantial update yet, the app has been updated to version 2.0. Instacast is easily the most-used app on my phone, every day of the week I have a pretty lengthy commute to college there and back, and Instacast is the main thing that keeps me entertained. It’s up there with Twitter.app on time spent in the app.

This update to Instacast ditches the Reeder-style layout of old for a fresh new look, nesting the three views from Instacast 1.x (Unplayed, Downloaded and Favourites) as smart playlists under the Playlists tab, one of the new features in version 2.0. The new layout also adds a tab for ‘Bookmarks’ yet another new feature of version 2.0. The bottom bit of interface chrome in the app is now occupied by a listing of how many podcasts I’m subscribed to, and how much space my downloaded episodes are occupying, something I was always checking in Settings before. This whole new hierarchy of the app is going to take some getting used to for me, but I’m loving it so far.

One thing with originally attracted me to Instacast and has kept me with it is the native feel, the minimalist design sensibility of the app makes it look like it was built into the OS, and they’ve managed to sustain that with version 2.0, even with all the stuff that has been added.

The update has also brought a revamped player interface, it looks much of the same except for two grips either side of the player controls, drag up on one and it reveals Instacast’s own player tray, complete with linen. The tray includes volume controls, playback speed controls and AirPlay like the original player, as well as a share button for bookmarks, the tray also included two other buttons, honestly I’m not quite sure what they do1, maybe I’ll find out in regular use.

The player interface also adds a persistent button to reveal links and bookmarks, this used to exist for enhanced podcasts with chapter markers, graphics, and links like the ones Engadget publish, but now Instacast parses show notes for links to provide this for all podcast episodes. This is a feature I see myself using day-to-day as a quicker way to find links mentioned in podcast episodes without having to look through the actual show notes.

With the update to the app, Vimedio have also come up with a new pricing model: the app is cheaper and now costs only 69p, with an in-app purchase for “Instacast Pro” which costs £1.49 and add’s features “that novice users won’t need most likely, but power-users will appreciate when using the app on a day-to-day basis”:

For now it includes the ability to manage playlists, add your own bookmarks, configure settings on a podcast-by-podcast basis and receive push notifications for new episodes. Every other new feature is going to be delivered to previous owners for free. This way everybody has the opportunity to stay up-to-date on the latest architectural advances, but opt-in for new features.

Frankly these are features I wouldn’t have been able to live without, and I’ve bought the in-app purchase already. I’ve already put together two custom playlists for all of the shows I subscribe to from 5by5 and 70Decibels.

The killer feature of this update though is bookmarks, something I had wanted for a while with the Favourites functionality was a way to comment on why I had “favorited” the episode, the addition of bookmarks allows me to do this personally and a lot more with the bookmarks socially. Podcast’s have been a siloed medium where there’s no way to directly link to the part of an episode which you’re talking about on Twitter, Instacast 2.0 fixes that. Podcasts just got social. While listening to a podcast you can add a bookmark and name it and then share it by email or Twitter (or just copy the URL) and post it, like this, then people can respond and comment on the discussion from the bookmarked part of the episode. It’s really awesome.

Overall this is a solid update to Instacast, I admit I had one false start on my first launch of the app, which got me pretty worried, but everything has been working fine since then. If you were on the fence about getting Instacast, now is the time to act, and if you have just updated, check out Instacast Pro, you won’t regret it.

  1. Please enlighten me if you know. ↩

Fixing IAPs From the Perspective of a Consumer

Posted on May 4th, 2012

Crackpot theory: What if the Dropbox SDK controversy1 is Apple setting a premise before the submission of Google’s own competing app for Drive. Dwell on that for a moment. To me it seems like a very real possibility, but a possibility which shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

In my mind, the In-App Purchase system works best with and should be limited to products and services confined to Apple’s ecosystem: the Instapaper search subscription, a subscription to the Bloomberg Businessweek app, new levels in a game. Instead the IAP system is blanketed and enforced for any app which wants to sell anything to anyone in the App Store, even services which pre-date the introduction of the IAP, like Dropbox, for example, or Amazon’s Kindle book store, or even the Readability subscription. The reason the IAP system doesn’t seem to work for services like these is because the IAP is built for either one time purchases where the only persons involved are Apple, the developer and the customer (for things like new levels in a game), or subscriptions, which again only involve Apple, the publisher and the customer. For this limited selection of cases, the system is actually great, it offers an optional extended revenue stream for apps like Instapaper after the user has actually bought the app outright.

Where the system falls down is with these stores and services like Dropbox, Amazon and Readability where there are more people involved in the payment process wanting to take their share. Readability was crippled because with their system they take 70% of payments they take from their subscription and give it to publishers, keeping to other 30%, but in the App Store with the IAP system, Apple take that 30%, leaving Readability with, you guessed it: 0%. That isn’t a nice place to be, and it’s a place Readability couldn’t be, it delayed their launch in the App Store by months. Dropbox and these apps using the SDK are in a similar position in that there are again multiple companies involved in the transaction process if they were to use the IAP system to sell storage space. How would it be handled for an app using the SDK? They would have to collect the money, not Dropbox. Before you even start to consider that though there is the issue of whether Dropbox could even afford to give Apple a 30% cut – they already run file hosting through Amazon, the main reason why they haven’t been able to compete with Google Drive on pricing, they don’t have the flexibility there and might not even be able to afford to lose that 30% to Apple.

The argument from most, including Dan Benjamin on The Talk Show this week, is that Apple is enforcing the IAP to offer a better user experience where they have control over any money changing hands inside apps on the store, so if an app attempts to make charges maliciously, then they can deal with it. Others have argued that Apple should offer a way to hook up the IAP interface to your own payments back-end, maintaining the good user experience of the IAP system but allowing apps to roll their own or pay the 30% privilege to have Apple just handle it.

I personally think Apple should limit the range of the system to the likes of he Instapaper search subscription, a subscription to the Bloomberg Businessweek app, new levels in a games etc. so only they can take advantage of it, allowing those who clearly deviate from this to manage their own payments on a case-by-case basis, as Apple already put a good amount of resources into the reinforcement of the IAP system. Making the system what it says on the tin, an In-App Purchase, any product which extends beyond the App Store, you don’t have access to it, even if you want to.

  1. Where apps leveraging the SDK were rejected for the Dropbox sign up interface used including a link to the desktop site, which in turn allowed people to buy storage for Dropbox, supposedly circumventing Apples In-App Purchase system. ↩

“Worship”

Posted on May 4th, 2012

Replies imply a selective process.
People with a lot of followers simply can’t reply to everybody who mention them and perform some kind of selection.
This selection process – the work provided by the person who is worshipped – is valuable and can be leveraged in the form of following suggestions for the worshipper.

A nicely done post by Dom Leca of Sparrow about discovery on Twitter, suggesting Twitter add a function which was considered back in the early days of its creation: worshipping. Like Dom, I think i’d use the feature too. Twitter try hard to suggest “users you might like” and “users similar to you”, but this would be a very personal way of discovering people, done by the user independently, not with Twitter encouraging them to, because they want to discover more interesting stuff and more interesting people.