June 2011
1 post
Neven Mrgan: Commoditize your complements →
mrgan:
here are some other ways Apple makes money:
Share of wireless carriers’ plan fees
Unrelated to the conversation at hand, but it’s something I’ve seen mentioned several times, by several different people, over the past month or two. Do we know that Apple still gets any share of carrier revenue? From the original iPhone launch, I was under the impression that this revenue...
May 2011
3 posts
5 tags
WatchiOS 5 Wish List, Item Two
It was almost a year ago when Chris Clark wrote a post called A Services Menu for iPhone, and it still resonates with me today.
Every single day, I wish I could pull up the dictionary from iBooks or Instapaper, while I’m using Reeder or Safari. I constantly wish I could send a clipping to Pastebot from any app at any time. I want to invoke Readability (which is...
iOS 5 Wish List, Item One
As of now, I’ve spent the longest chunk of time since the original iPhone release with no real wish list for the next device/OS revision. I still don’t have any notable hardware wishes. I could probably live happily with my iPhone 4 for years. But on the software front, my wishes are starting to come from unlikely places.
My first wish is to have a reliable, fluid connection between...
January 2011
2 posts
Who's Afraid of the Verizon iPhone? →
marco:
Whenever I’ve overheard conversations about smartphones in real life, by “normal people” (not geeks like us), it has always been clear that the true battle happening in the U.S. phone market wasn’t iPhone versus Android, but iPhone versus Verizon.
The decision that people were discussing wasn’t “Do I get an iPhone or an Android whatever?”
It was always “Do I get an iPhone or do I stay...
Neven Mrgan: Redundant data in the Weather app →
mrgan:
If you’re a serious weather junkie, you might use a special weather app to get your daily klimate kick. And if you’re Edward Tufte, you might think the iPhone weather app is “a bit thin”. Me, I don’t mind it - it’s a nice, big dashboard view of the weather features I care most about.
But here’s something crazy: the app shows the same exact data twice. Look:
Today’s high and low...
December 2010
1 post
10 tags
Text Selection in Android and iOS
Release Candidate One:
Engadget (via Daring Fireball):
In the browser, you long press on text to bring up your anchors, then drag and tap the center of your selection — boom, copied text. In text editing fields, however, in order to select a word you must long press on the word, wait for a contextual menu to pop up, and then select “select word” — a completely counterintuitive process. In the...
July 2010
2 posts
5 tags
3 tags
Spotlight for AppStore
So iOS 4.0 comes with extra added benefit in Spotlight where you can search the web or search Wikipedia if you haven’t found what you’re looking for. But how hard are they gonna collectively slap their foreheads when they realize they could quite nicely put a Search the AppStore item in there?
May 2010
1 post
5 tags
typonautobcorrection
By far, the most common typo I make on the iPad virtual keyboard is typing an “n” or a “b” instead of a space. So, I end up with a large number of combined words like “combinednwords” or “largebnumber.”
One thing I noticed is a bit different between iPhone OS 3.1 and 3.2 is that 3.2 will auto-correct “thisthing” to “this...
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
February 2010
3 posts
3 tags
On Having Standards (Double or Otherwise) →
Apple is essentially acting as the new-world publisher, and publishers have always had standards by which they’ve said “nope, we won’t publish that.” Anyone from the past century with a dusty manuscript in a drawer, which was rejected by a publisher, knows that this is just how the game works. You can’t get a bodice-ripper accepted by a “classics” publisher.
Not that Apple’s other...
2 tags
Pre-caching Google Maps
In thinking about the iPad, whether I would want one, and if so which version would I buy, I thought of a good idea for added functionality to Maps.app.
When you get ready to go on a trip, you pack your bags and toiletries, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll double-check your iPod (or iPhone) to make sure you’ve got whatever music and videos you’ll want on the trip.
...
1 tag
Feature checklist dysfunction
Marco gets it. Read his whole post.
marco:
The tech press loves checklist comparisons. Let’s evaluate the iPhone to see whether it’s a good product:
Sounds like a terrible product. I bet it will fail.
January 2010
7 posts
3 tags
8 tags
iPod plugins
Perhaps the biggest reason to allow multitasking on iPhone OS — for me, at least — is to allow media apps like Pandora or Last.fm to continue playing while you’re messing about in other apps. Honestly, when I try to come up with other reasons to allow multitasking, I have great difficulty coming up with scenarios that can’t (can’t) be solved with push notifications. Of course,...
11 tags
Message Control
It’s what they do. They’re working on computing products that are several years out from production (or even introduction), and not a single person will ever open his or her mouth about it. And honestly, I think that’s a great way to do it. Mystery breeds curiosity, and in Apple’s case, fanaticism. And sometimes it pays off big, but only when they also master the messaging...
“When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said:...”
– Alan Kay
I disagree. I think it’ll take us perhaps one more year to realize that they absolutely NAILED IT with the iPhone. The weight, the size and the ergonomics of the iPad are going to eventually prove themselves as sub-optimal in terms of everyday use. Better value than a Kindle or Nook?...
3 tags
Getting it right the first time
One would imagine that this post should be wrapped into my multitasking post from the other day, but I felt it necessary for this point to stand on its own:
If, by some strange chance, Apple finally allows us to multitask in the next major release of iPhone OS, I urge every currently-published developer to really take a moment to assess what it will mean to their revenue stream as it currently...
3 tags
The Obligatory Multitasking Post
As I’ve mentioned, I’m not one to hop onto the hot-button topics. I just don’t see the point. Why state what’s obvious to everyone?
But, in the case of multitasking on the iPhone, I’ve felt for quite a while now that nobody is really putting a finger on what multitasking could mean for the iPhone, were it to show up tomorrow. And I think a large part of that is...
6 tags
Maps.app and Google’s “My Maps”
I have to say, it is a continual breath of fresh air whenever I go into YouTube.app these days. My favorites are pulled right from my YouTube account, my subscriptions are readily available, my posted videos are there. It was painful, for so long, to go into YouTube.app, only to be greeted with a glorified search engine. Having true integration with the web service is just where it’s at.
So...
November 2009
1 post
2 tags
The tenuous nature of in-app purchases
Having owned an iPhone (of varying flavors and capacities) for over two years now, I’ve had to have the thing replaced more than a few times under warranty. Which I love, because I feel very confident that I’ll never get stuck with a lemon.
But every once in a while, a problem on iPhone can’t be fixed by just replacing the hardware. It’s rare, but sometimes there will be a...
October 2009
1 post
5 tags
The YouTube Plug-In Needs Some Lovin'
If you were to tap an embedded YouTube video on a web page, it would slide into full-screen view, and you’d watch it in all its glory. But, what if you want to mark it as a favorite? Perhaps you’d like to see who published it, or what commentary they posted with it. Of course, that’s kinda the point of YouTube: it’s a social video site.
But, alas, even though there is a dedicated YouTube app on...
September 2009
10 posts
5 tags
Don't Just Sit There, Wishing
There are certain types of apps that are really hamstrung by the lack of backgrounding for third-party apps. For me, the biggest example would be music apps: Pandora, Last.fm, etc. The hardest thing I had to get used to was the removal of Last.fm scrobbling for tracks played by iPod.app. Before the advent of AppStore, the Last.fm iPhone app was known as MobileScrobbler, and worked beautifully on...
6 tags
3 tags
What's Playing?
Apple and Starbucks have this nice joint feature/service: if you like the music that’s playing while you daintily sip your grandé double half-caf mocha Frappuccino™, you just open up iTunes.app on your iPhone. You’re automatically logged into the Starbucks WiFi network (just for this narrow purpose, natch), and you get a handy-dandy icon to click and see what’s playing right now,...
Your App Choices Don't Matter, Puny Human
I (like many others) have a bazillion apps. But, I only keep four screens of apps on my iPhone at a time. And, if I’m honest, I could probably pare it down to three, perhaps even two. Sure, I do love all those games I’ve bought over the past year or so, but I just really don’t have the time to polish my chops at Ramp Champ. Four screens of apps are enough ADD-fodder for me. So,...
6 tags
Those Fancy 3.0 Features
I’m in Safari. I tap a link for a map. I’m taken out to Maps.app.
I’m in Maps.app. I view details on a business, and tap the listing for its website. I’m bounced through the Springboard to Safari.app.
I open up WhereTo.app, search for cool stuff to do, and it’s plotted on a map. Right in the app. Amazing, huh? Now, get this: I tap a pin on the map, check out the...
4 tags
iDisk
I religiously checked AppStore for it every single day, multiple times a day, starting when they first announced it. I think it was at least a month.
I deleted it a few minutes after I installed it. Sure, it’s great to share things from your iDisk while you’re mobile. But seriously, I can’t upload anything directly to iDisk via the iDisk app? Having the app on my phone was like...
4 tags
This Accessory is Incompatible With Your Device
…even though it’s worked exactly as designed for the past two-plus years since iPhone launch.
Also known as the “Gratuitous Solicitation for Accessory Purchase” dialog. At first, I fully bought into the notion that Apple just wants to make sure that everyone knows that cell phones don’t have to make that horrible noise in your car/desktop speakers. Very nice of them. But, truth be...
4 tags
Are You SURE You Don't Want to Pay Twice?
“You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK.”
Now, I’ll admit that this does indeed provide me with a tiny bit of useful information. But if I look at it as a choice, then it starts to look ridiculous. Because, at this point in the transaction, the only choice I need to make is whether or not I want to pay for the item. But…haven’t I already made...
2 tags
So, if I can trim/edit video clips on iPhone, why can’t I perform a simple photo rotation? It’s not as if the accelerometer is fool-proof.
1 tag
I'd Rather Rant to an Empty Room
I’m not going to post this stuff to Please Fix the iPhone anymore. I tried it for a while, and it didn’t work out. I blame the parents.
I also try to contribute to the iPhone discussion on another site that I frequent, but that usually goes poorly. From now on, I’ll bring my thoughts back home with me and document, rather than discuss. I’d rather post my thoughts in a...