Month: April 2016

Apple refused requests for source code from China

Posted on by Paul Jones

MacRumors:

During the hearing today, which was entitled “Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption: Industry and Law Enforcement Perspectives,” Apple’s General Counsel Bruce Sewell continued to defend the need for strong user encryption. He also clarified, however, that Apple has refused requests from China for source code.

Can we compromise and make it open source?

More seriously, this is more evidence that Apple is taking the moral high road (never mind the functional high ground) instead of seeking publicity.

Apple updates MacBook

Posted on by Paul Jones

I’ve been speculating for some time that the Macs were due a refresh. Admittedly, I’ve had my trigger finger ready to move on a new Apple notebook for 6 months or so. When The rumor mill saw Best Buy pull the MacBooks from their shelves, I thought maybe something was coming! From Apple this morning:

“MacBook is the thinnest and lightest Mac we have ever made and it’s our vision for the future of the notebook,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are going to love this update to MacBook, with the latest processors, faster graphics, faster flash storage, longer battery life and a beautiful rose gold finish.”

Not quite what I’m on the market for in a professional notebook, but Schiller is absolutely right that those notebooks are beautiful. I bet the rose gold will be a hit. Here are some facts for nerds from MacStories:

The MacBook now comes with the sixth-generation dual-core Intel Core M processors that go up to 1.3GHz, with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1GHz. It also now comes with faster PCIe-based flash storage and faster 1866MHz memory.

These are luxury consumer-grade notebooks, because they’re expensive, undeniably thin, and equally undeniably underpowered considering other (admittedly bigger) options. I hope that the MacBook Pro update retains this aesthetic (including the color options!) but offers a state-of-the-art graphics card.

Fingers crossed for WWDC!

Tremors in distributed content

Posted on by Paul Jones

The economics of offering free hosting for user’s content and monetizing based on tracking and advertising is going to become more and more expensive for businesses. The reason for this is that tracking is there’s going to be more and more data, the competition is going to be fiercer (especially competition from self-hosted options), and ad-block is going to increasingly cut into profits (especially amongst “millennials”) . It came as no surprise to me to read Frederic Filloux‘s excellent article:

Leaked Buzzfeed numbers sent a jolt to the many who dreamed of jumping on the distributed content bandwagon. This particular genre of advertising business model might have been overrated.

It was a bad week in the distributed content sector where gazillions “content views” were once touted as the new digital digital bonanza. On April 12th, The FT.com reported that Buzzfeed, until now the genre’s gold standard, had halved its 2016 revenue projections from $500m to $250m, after making $150m in 2015, 30% lower than expected.

I struggle to sympathize with BuzzFeed because I find their brand of clickbait so pernicious to an Internet of quality dialogue, and I have to constantly filter out BuzzFeed from Reddit and Facebook, etc. What more, but sometimes I filter it out incorrectly, because they do have quality longform as well.

Serious app review flaws

Posted on by Paul Jones

If you submit your app to the App Store, Apple can do what they want with it. Will they approve it? Maybe, if you follow the rules. Will they promote it? Maybe, if you adopt the latest technologies, but probably not. Will you be removed from the store when you try to submit an update? Maybe, if your reviewer is in a bad mood. Here’s John Vorhees of MacStories on this issue:

I don’t know a developer who hasn’t had a run-in with App Review and wondered, ‘Maybe this is it. This is where my my app dies.’ That may sound a little dramatic, but read the results of Graham Spencer’s poll of developers– the feeling is real.

I can imagine that some at Apple may roll their eyes at this as an overreaction, or be a little offended at the implied lack of trust, but step into developers’ shoes. In the absence of meaningful communication by Apple of its intentions, it’s stories like the Reddit client take-downs that shape developers’ behavior. And as Federico noted, it’s not like this is an isolated story, it’s one of a long string of similar stories that make developers jumpy.

I was recently at a developer meet-up where the speaker was talking about external dependancies, like third-party libraries and services, like Parse or Facebook. The audience figuratively nodded in easy approval. But when this transitioned to “Who here trusts Apple?” and the claim that “Apple is our biggest dependency”, the uneasiness was palpable.

The App Store is not open-source or ruled by public committee: it is Apple’s. By and large, they do any excellent job in moderating quality and exercise fairness in enforcing the rules. But as with all rule enforcement, it can’t be done perfectly. If you want fair and equal, you should make your app open-source. If you want to charge money, Apple are taking their cut. And this is fair, considering their investment and effort in creating the platform.

But it would be nice to get paid upgrades and a Mac App Store that works.

Pay-to-play on the App Store

Posted on by Paul Jones

Ever since Big Money came to the App Store, it’s become harder and harder for independent developers to make a living selling software there, and I believe this should concern Apple. Here’s Craig Grannell from Revert to Saved:

Given that Apple doesn’t comment on rumours, take Bloomberg’s story Apple Pursues New Search Features for a Crowded App Store with a pinch of salt. The claim is that Apple has

constructed a secret team to explore changes to the App Store, including a new strategy for charging developers to have their apps more prominently displayed

For me, the key paragraph in the story is this:

If Apple goes through with the idea, “it’s going to be huge,” said Krishna Subramanian, the co-founder of Captiv8, which helps brands market using social media. “Anything that you can do to help drive more awareness to your app, to get organic downloads, is critical.”

Subramanian is right in one sense: if Apple does this, it will be huge. It’ll be huge in eradicating any sense that the App Store is a meritocracy when it comes to app visibility.

I doubt this is true, because I don’t understand this move at all. Apple makes their biggest margins on selling their hardware, and any potential revenue from App Store pay-to-play will be dwarfed by profits from their products. The App Store needs some work done on discovery, but it’s not to make discovery less egalitarian towards Big Money.

Microsoft is taking sign-ups to beta test its Word Flow keyboard for the iPhone

Posted on by Paul Jones

Microsoft have been doing a lot of good recently, developing world-class iOS apps, open-sourcing AI frameworks, and giving people a reason to use Twitter. Another project of theirs that’s coming to fruition is their new keyboard for iOS:

Earlier this week, we reported that the previously-revealed Word Flow keyboard for the iPhone was in private beta testing by Microsoft. Now the company has posted a sign-up page for iPhone owners to register their interest in trying out Word Flow.

At the risk of sounding like a grouch: a keyboard that makes network requests? No thank you. A keyboard that can be whatever color you want? No thank you. A keyboard that I can operate with one hand on my massive phone? No tha… Wait that’d be great.

Over 70% of App Store Purchases Are for Games

Posted on by Paul Jones

The hardest part of launching and running a platform is convincing developers to create things for it. It’s a classic marketplace problem, and the more you have one the more you get the other, and the entire system becomes more valuable for each member. Part of what kept the Mac alive in Apple’s troubled 90s was the market for indie, professional, and often design-orientated applications. Keep this in mind when reading these from Michael Tsai’s blog:

Mayur Dhaka:

According to the study, the top 5 categories where money is being spent are, in order: Games, Music, Social Networking, Entertainment and Lifestyle.

[…]

I, like Michael, would love for indie developers (at least the one who make productivity apps and the like) to see their apps climb the charts too. But an excellently designed calendar app just doesn’t make enough users feel the same way as winning a game against a friend. So when it comes time to choose between spending $5 on a better calendaring system or spending those five dollars in beating a friend at a game, which developer you think is buying themselves a coffee that evening?

See also: Jim Dalrymple, who talks about what he sees being promoted in the App Store.

It does worry me that what is at best trivia and at worst gambling is so foundational to the marketplace of the platform I develop on. While professional, productivity, and utility applications aren’t #1, I get the impression its still a huge market. Stranger still, the recent Game Center white-screen bugs seem to indicate that Apple’s incentives haven’t particularly swayed to providing to the needs of game developers, but the amount of new graphics APIs recently somewhat counter this. While worrying, this is likely more an expression of our (iOS users) own values over-and-above the values of iOS as a platform. So support indie apps!

The future for Apple Watch

Posted on by Paul Jones

With WWDC around the corner and a number of unrefreshed products, speculation on Apple’s next move is intensifying. Here’s MacRumors’ take on the latest on Apple Watch:

Few details are known about the Apple Watch 2 beyond a June 2015 report that said it will feature a FaceTime video camera and expanded Wi-Fi capabilities, while new bands and finishes are always a possibility. Kuo believes the Apple Watch 2 will feature mostly internal improvements, and possibly minor form factor changes, with a more complete redesign of the device not arriving until 2017.

I do kind of want a FaceTime camera on my wrist because it would be so futuristic, but I do question the utility. Namely, how long can I hold my wrist up to have a face-to-face discussion with someone? What will the latency between my wrist and my phone be? How much battery would I have if it connected directly to WiFi? These aren’t insurmountable, but I take them to be very hard problems for the Apple Watch to overcome.

This comes at a tough time for Apple Watch, because many articles recently have questioned it’s potential and utility. Here’s an example from Re/code:

More than half of those surveyed by the advertising technology company Fluent said they considered the Apple Watch a flop.

That sentiment — expressed by the majority of the 2,578 adults in the U.S. who responded last week to an online survey — reflects how the device is perceived by the tech press and industry insiders, many of whom have been pessimistic about the Apple Watch from the start. Asked whether they considered the Watch a successful product for Apple, 53 percent responded “no.”

While I think the Watch isn’t a breakout new category in the way the iPhone was, I disagree that its future is as dim as those 53 percent believe. In particular, notification are great on the watch, timing functions (including the calendar) are indispensable, and weather is on the watch his highly convenient. I think what we’ll see at WWDC for the Apple Watch will be a focusing of the product, as at least one of the ways of interacting with the Watch is essentially useless: the apps. The watch face is where all the utility is, in my opinion, and the glances are great for those secondary functions, to drill down and scroll around for an app is difficult on the tiny screen.