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?
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 third-party offerings are all “classic.” But anyway…click the link above to see the rest of my post about the sexy-apps-banned debacle.
Many people are arguing that Apple shouldn’t be selectively choosing which apps go into the App Store, and that they should instead fix their “parental controls” system. While I agree with the latter sentiment, I completely disagree with the former. I don’t see anything wrong with kicking assholes out of your store for ruining things for everyone. There comes a point when you say “Okay guys, we were willing to kinda just let it happen when there were only a few of you. Then there were hundreds. Then there were thousands. Now, everyone who isn’t a decades-old provider of this kind of stuff, kindly fuck off.” I can’t blame them.
But the point about the parental controls still stands. As has been widely noted, many apps in the App Store are labeled as “17+” simply because they allow unfettered access to internet content, textual or otherwise. As a result, applications like Instapaper have been saddled with warnings like the following:
You must be at least 17 years old to purchase this application.
Applications in this category may also contain frequent and intense offensive language; frequent and intense cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence; and frequent and intense mature, horror and suggestive themes; plus sexual content, nudity, alcohol, tobacco and drugs which may not be suitable for children under the age of 17.
What’s worse, until a recent update to the iPhone OS, the Restrictions part of Settings.app didn’t actually work correctly. So, when you customized the settings “Allow apps rated 12+” the OS would actually disable whatever apps you had which were rated 12+. Thankfully, Apple has fixed that problem, but it’s still rather ridiculous that Instapaper — one of the most consistently adored apps in the community — comes with such a hefty warning label. All it serves to do is to a) dilute the meaning of such a warning, and therefore b) discourage people from using the parental controls at all.
It would make a great deal more sense to simply add one more category to the Restrictions system: “Unrestricted web access.” Put it at the bottom of the list, as the final level of restriction before “Allow all apps.” Alternatively, it could be made into a secondary option, where you could activate or deactivate apps with unrestricted access, while also performing deactivations based on the age-based ratings.
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 exists.
As an example, let’s take Pandora. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just fire up Pandora, exit the app, and go browse through NetNewsWire? Well sure, it would be fantastic for the end user, but I can easily see how Pandora’s advertising revenue would go directly through the floor. Same thing with NetNewsWire: if you can leave it running all the time, downloading your feeds in the background, that will dramatically decrease the amount of face-time each user gets with those ads.
Now, I’m not suggesting that this is a Bad Thing. Clearly, the platform needs to evolve enough to allow some form of multitasking, and I even think the “blessed apps” model could be the perfect solution. But the problem, really, is that there are several new types of “economies” that have sprung up from within the confines of this platform. And when you change a fundamental operating structure of said platform, it is bound to have consequences to those economies — some predictable, and others unpredictable.
We’ve seen this type of thing before, with the ongoing complications that arose from the initially-forbidden-and-later-granted ability for paid upgrades from within an app. Those problems were less about screwing up revenue streams for the developer, and more about maintaining a consistent business relationship with the end-user, but the basic problem is quite the same: when you fail to implement a certain facet of your OS in the most logical way, from the get-go, there will be consequences, either for the developer or the consumer.
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 problem that stems from some corrupted file within the backup that iTunes creates for you on every sync. So, even if you completely restore the software on the device, the problem will return unless you “set up as a new iPhone.”
The problem with that, of course, is that you’ll lose all of your saved games, top scores, mileage logs, to-do items, and about a million other things you failed to think of. Granted, many apps do provide methods of backing up “to the cloud” or to MobileMe. But, seriously…when you’re trying to fix your phone, are you really going to take the time to go into each of the 80+ apps and back up all of that data? Or are you going to forget?
If nothing else, there really should be a way to “restore from backup, but kill all non-third-party preferences.” Of course, this speaks to the fact that iPhone is decidedly a “computing platform,” rather than just a mobile gadget. And it’s difficult to add options without also introducing complexity. But, with the latest version of iTunes and the iPhone OS, Apple has proven that more options don’t necessarily crud up the user experience.
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 jailbroken iPhones. Having never paid much mind to Last.fm, I found myself suddenly hooked. Then, when AppStore put my MobileScrobbler in a walled garden, I lost all interest in Last.fm. It just wasn’t passive enough to be useful to me anymore, and that’s really a shame.
But y’know, ok, we get it. There’s no backgrounding. Many app developers have come up with some pretty inventive ways to get around the limitation, or at least mitigate it to some extent. The problem with the music apps is this: I can’t do anything else without quitting the app and losing the music.
Now, I know this is gonna fly in the face of our usual high standards, but why can’t we (they) incorporate a basic web browser into these apps? That way, at least, we users can post to Twitter or Tumblr, or maybe catch up on our RSS feeds while we’re listening to streaming music. Hell, they can even keep their ads at the bottom of the browser, I don’t care. it’d be better than the lack of integration we have now. Again, I’m not usually a fan of tacking on features to an app that should stay lean and mean. But Apple has kinda tied everyone’s hands. And if Atebits cam put their “popularity enhancer” option into their prefpane, why can’t the same thing be done for a tack-on UIWebView in apps where it would help greatly?
I don’t know, I guess I’m just getting the feeling that a lot of app developers are still just in denial about the current state of affairs vis-a-vis backgrounding (thanks, Merlin). Sure, there are rumblings about (possibly, maybe) Apple allowing one or two “blessed” third-party apps to run background processes. But I don’t see why anyone should hold their breath and allow their app’s user experience languish due to the current limitations.
As you may or may not know, mint.com has been bought by Intuit. You may also know that Intuit is…well…not highly regarded among people who care. Lots of people have been deleting their Mint accounts upon hearing the news.
Here’s my dilemma: there’s a fresh new update for Mint.app in AppStore. The “feature list” contains some appealing stuff, so my first instinct is to install it.
But.
What if there’s something else in this update? There are no standards for what goes into those “changelogs,” if you can call them that. I’ve been burned before when an app update conveniently neglected to tell me about some new “feature” or the removal of a feature that I didn’t want removed. Or ads.
iTunes used to keep archived older versions of iPhone apps in the Mobile Applications folder. Somewhere in the last few versions, it stopped keeping those old versions. Rolling back to an old version isn’t as easy as it once was.
So. Do I install this update? If I don’t, do I really want to be staring that damned badge on AppStore.app in perpetuity?
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 having a plate in front of me, but I wasn’t allowed to eat…I was only allowed to push my food around my plate.
“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 that choice? To get to this modal dialog, I had to tap on a button labeled $2.99, and then tap another button that said “Buy Now.” If I didn’t already own the app, I’d be charged immediately (or prompted for my password, if I haven’t entered it within the past several minutes).
AppStore knows I’m logged in. It’s capable of finding out if I already own the item at which I am looking. So, why am I given a rather superfluous decision to make, when I’ve already made a more important decision based upon insufficient data (not to mention misleading UI)? More to the point, who in hell would ever tap the “Cancel” button, upon reading this dialog? “Oh, it’s free this time? Well, nevermind then, I guess I didn’t mean it when I tapped the ‘Buy Now’ button.”
