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I’ve had some time to think about today’s release from Apple, the iPad. I’m finding that the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am. But I know why: The iPad was not created for us (and by us I mean the tech crowd).
Take a look at today’s release. Remove all of the changes to the software and the new iWork/iBook products. If you look solely at the hardware and the device itself, there is nothing revolutionary here. There are no revolutionary new input methods, no new integrated additions (like the compass was to the 3GS and the camera to the Nano) and nothing new in form factor (aside from size).
Now look at the software. While the default apps like Mail, Safari, Photos, and Calendar got a refresh, the OS itself is fundamentally the same. The home screen simply has more space in-between the icons and a background image. In fact, even though you have a bigger screen, you still have the same number of icons per page. There is no multitasking, no OS-wide gestures, and no major APIs opened to developers.
The problem is the tech community expected to see iPhone OS 4.0 today. We expected to see something we hadn’t seen before.
All Apple did today was release the same product they already have, only bigger.
And you know what? It’s going to work.
The iPad is targeted towards all of the users who simply need a device to browse the web, check email, watch videos, go on Facebook, and play a little Farmville. And as Apple knows, this market segment is a LOT bigger than the ‘I need multi-tasking and Minority Report style input’ crowd. I bet that for the majority of people in Yerba Buena Center today, the iPad will not be their mainstay machine. Most of them will buy it, play with it, or develop on it, but most of our computing will be done on laptops and desktops.
The iPhone and iPod Touch have been incredibly successful. If Apple released a new device today that required a steep learning curve with revolutionary input controls and a new OS unlike anything we’ve seen before, your mother would not care. Your non-tech-savvy friends would not use it. What Apple is doing is simply taking something that works very well and making it reach a little farther.
So what I’m really disappointed about is how much I got sucked into the hype cycle this round. I’m actually really excited to read, watch, play, and develop on this device. The iPad is a going to be a great device, it’s just not the technological savior we were looking for. Still, as I look back at all of the really amazing things we all hoped the iPad would be, I realize that these ideas are now out there. It may or may not come from Apple, but now it’s just a matter of time.
Trust me, I know how badly the App Store’s review process can burn you (*Ahem*). In fact, while I’m on the verge of trying to push out Read It Later 2.0 as the busier holiday season approaches, I’m expecting even more frustration.
Since Joe Hewitt quit the iPhone platform, a strong discussion has emerged and a lot of good ideas have been surfaced. However, one bad idea that both Apple and I know will never happen is: ditching the review process all together.
Over the last few weeks, people have talked a lot about how the review process is bad for the open web. What I think is interesting about this concept is that the one company I believe is probably the most open of all, Mozilla, has a review process for extensions. All of those free, open extensions you have in your browser? Those go through a far more rigorous review process, have their actual source code looked over, and sit in a line generally longer than the one at Apple. Yet, even though this has been happening for years, I would bet no one has heard of any controversies there.
I know this because of my time building add-ons but also because around the time of Firefox’s 3.0 release, I was an AMO Editor (extension reviewer). (Technically, I still am, but have simply not had the time to volunteer recently.)
The review process is absolutely necessary. Mozilla’s reviews stop a LOT of junk from getting through to the end user. When you browse the AMO directory, you can be assured that every add-on in there is useful to some purpose and more importantly, it’s safe. It’s not going to steal personal data, it’s not going to install additional programs or do anything not clearly described in the description.
Mozilla’s process, though longer and more in depth, differs from Apple’s in only a few ways. Yet, these make all the difference between controversy and satisfied silence.
1. Experimental Add-ons
Anyone can submit an add-on to AMO (Mozilla’s add-on directory), it will appear immediately and be available for download. However, this add-on is flagged as ‘experimental’ and when the user views/tries to install it, it warns them of the potential consequences of using untested software.
After the add-on has been submitted it can be nominated for public status. There are a number of criteria your add-on must meet in order to be considered. Overall your add-on has to be useful to a wide portion of users, well tested, and has been received favorably from those who have tried the experimental version.
Once it’s been nominated, it enters the review queue for an AMO editor to look over and eventually reject/approve it.
This means that anyone can get into the directory immediately and start having people try their add-on. Once it’s flushed out further, they can push it through to the more public, much more lucrative (download wise) public side.
If it’s an add-on that is only useful to a small number of users, it will stay as experimental and won’t clutter up the main AMO directory.
2. Responsiveness
If you send an email to the AMO editors, you can almost always expect a response within a day. I am still on the email list for the editors address and from time to time check in, but I always see the editors responding quickly and generally with helpful information to answer the developers question. Often there is thoughtful conversation between the editors trying to determine the proper response before replying.
This is the most important factor in a successful review system. A developer should be able to get any and all questions answered in satisfactory way as quickly as possible.
In the way that Apple works, it’s generally pretty difficult to illicit much response from their blackbox. In the past year I’ve sent several emails over to Apple’s side and was often met with silence or in one case a month long delay before a response. This is unacceptable.
I will say however, the most recent email I sent to the review team was replied to within 17 minutes. Though the response was short/vague it may mean things have certainly improved since earlier this year.
3. Quick Modifications to Rejections
When an add-on is rejected, you receive an email with the reason why and the name of the reviewer. Generally, if the reason for rejection was something that can be fixed relatively quickly, you can email that reviewer back, say you resubmitted the fix and they’ll take another look at it. You won’t have to restart the lengthy wait to be reviewed for something that took you 10 minutes to correct.
This is one of the loudest complaints you’ll hear from iPhone developers. If you wait in line for 2 weeks and then ultimately get rejected for something as minor as an icon, it’s incredibly frustrating to have to start all the way back at the beginning of the queue. The 2 week long wait will seem a lot less unbearable if you know you can still get approved given a minor oversight (or problem with policy).
…
Mozilla’s system is far from perfect. It also suffers from one of Apple’s biggest problem in that updates to existing add-ons can take a while to get through the queue. However, the responsiveness offered by AMO’s team, means that if you are rejected for something arguable or minor, that you can still get through just after a few emails and a few changes to your code.
Apple’s current process is running on ground that cannot stand for much longer. The number of apps is growing rapidly, and unless they hire hundreds of reviewers, it’s unlikely that all of these applications are getting thorough testing. From what we, as developers, have seen is that the review generally lasts a minute or two. From stat tracking to server logs, a lot of developers can see that the reviewer doesn’t even use all of the functions within the app. If this is the case, then the usefulness/stability of the apps appearing in the store are a lot less credible.
They have over 100,000 apps in the store, but let’s be honest, a huge number of those are crap. It would be far more useful to the end user to have an app store that had less apps, but higher quality than vice versa. By implementing some sort of intermediary (like Mozilla’s experimental stage), they could offer developers a place to stand on their platform while being able to dedicate more time to those in the main app review process. More time means, better reviews, more responsiveness, and less of a wait time.
The App Store review process certainly could use some improvement, but we need to accept that it’s there for good and push harder for smarter changes to improve the review process, rather than waste our time trying to abolish it.
Today, I am taking on Read It Later, iPhone development and Idea Shower projects full-time.
Two years ago, I worked for a small web design agency in the Twin Cities and on one random night after work I built a little project. A few months later I decided that I really liked making these little projects and made the call to leave my job and focus more time on my projects while doing contract work part time.
I had big plans.
And I started off strong.
But as the last two years have gone by, in order to make a living, I found myself working full time on contract work and having little time to apply to my own ideas. And again, two years later, I have found myself seemingly in the exact same place again.
However, this time, one thing is different. That little project I started 2 years ago has started to do something I never planned on: it started making money. It’s not enough to quit working and live on an island and it’s not enough to cover my previous contract income, but it is enough to make me believe that I can finally get to where I wanted to be all along: making a living from users, not clients.
It is not going to be easy. Yet, as nervous as I am to take this risk, I’ve found that in my short 25 years on this planet, I’ve never regretted doing something. My only regrets have ever come from not trying something. In the end, if I fall, I can pick myself up and try something else.
Idea Shower is coming back. I’ll be launching the 2.0 version of Read It Later (which is going to rock, I’ll have you know), and then I’ll be moving onto 3 other projects I plan to launch within the next 6 months.
Stay tuned.
As I watch the receipt start printing, I always have the same thought in the checkout lane: “Why?”
That piece of paper the clerk is about to hand me is going to get shoved into my pocket and is going to end up god knows where. My desk, in my mail stack, in the lint trap, or discovered next winter when I pull my jacket from the closet again. No matter it’s destination, it will have lived a fruitless life, serving no purpose but to clutter my life.
A growing number of stores are beginning to ask the question: “Would you like your receipt?” But the overwhelming majority still happily prints you this waste of paper.
Though these point of sale encounters vary, there is generally one common element: a place to run your credit card.
I rarely carry cash with me anymore, paying with a credit card is far more convenient. And generally I am only using one card for all of these different stores. What I’d like to see is either on the store side or ideally at the credit card level, a way to set your preferences for receipts and even bags.
What if the system knew when I swiped my card that I did not want a receipt? I would not have to wait for it to print and I could be on my way with one less thing to throw away.
In the app store, it is very common to find that paid apps have an accompanying free or lite version. It’s a great way to let users get a taste of an application or game without having to blindly purchase it.
It’s so common that often when I’m browsing through the store and I find a game or an application that looks interesting, I’ll open up the search tab and look to see if they have a free version to try first. This has saved me from spending money on some terrible games but also has lead me to purchase a ton of games that I got hooked on using the free version.
Since this has now become almost a standard for a lot of applications, I think the App Store can do a better job at bundling these free and paid versions together. I’d like to skip the extra steps involved in having to seek out free versions whenever I find a cool app while browsing the store (especially in the new Genius section).
If developers were able to link free and paid versions together through iTunes Connect, Apple could then display a small shortcut on the paid version that lets users know there is a free version out there to try. Even a small ‘Try It’ button underneath the purchase/price button would save a lot of hassle.
It would benefit users by allowing them an easier way to try out applications before dropping money on them. It would benefit developers by giving them one more chance at hooking a customer who might have otherwise balked at the price at first.
If you are iPhone developer, I’d highly recommend preparing Featured Artwork files ahead of time. If Apple contacted you and wanted to feature your app, would you want anything to stand in the way of that happening?
I received a brief email from Apple in early in August requesting artwork for a ‘potential marketing opportunity’. The opportunity turned out to be Read It Later being featured in the Apple App Store.
The email came in late on a Tuesday and had requested artwork files for first thing Thursday morning. In reality, this gave me about a day to put everything together and send it.
However, during that time I was scrambling to get some other work finished before I left for a trip at the end of the week. There was no way I was going to miss the chance for whatever this opportunity was so I ended up having to forfeit some other important tasks in order to make room for this.
It would have been much better if I had this work ready to go ahead of time. In fact, details about having these files are in the ‘developer guide’. The guide is linked to from the bottom of the iTunesConnect window and the details of the featured artwork are buried near the end of the PDF. Admittedly, I had never seen it, and from the developers I spoke with, a lot of others haven’t either.
I wanted to share my experience so in case other developers were not aware of this they could be better prepared than I was. Though it meant I had to put off some other work that week to put the files together, the result of being featured was definitely worth it.
The Requested Artwork
They request two artwork files. The Apple designers will actually take bits/pieces from these and rearrange them as they see fit based on the image they are trying to create. (More on that below)
Title Treatment - This is a 600 x 600 image of your logo/title. The background should be transparent and it should exclude tag-lines if the text will not be legible at a small scale.
An example of the Title graphic for Read It Later is shown to the side.
Background Treatment - This is a 900 x 530 layered PSD. What you put in this file is fairly open. Apple states: “The background image, texture, color or gradient should correspond to the application or compliment the title treatment. It may include elements of the application itself, but should not be or include screenshots.”
The approach I took was to provide them with a gradient background in one layer and then a main graphic that could accompany the logo.
My Submitted Artwork
Just as an example (you wouldn’t send this together), here is a close up of the combined artwork:
Apple’s Design
As I mentioned, Apple will take the artwork you send them and put it together in a way they see fit. You should try to keep all the graphical elements in separate layers in Photoshop to make this easier for them. If you have some graphic elements that must be laid out in a specific way, I’d suggest merging the layers so the designers do not break them apart as they will not consult you prior to the graphics being made.
Here are the three images that I saw during the time it was featured. As you can see, they significantly rearranged the graphics I sent them. (I think they turned out nice, just making the point that this may happen).
On the featured tab of the App Store App:
Big promo on the main App Store page in iTunes:
Mini promo on the main App Store page in iTunes:
During my trip to Japan, I used one of the most helpful iPhone applications I’ve downloaded yet.
Offmaps, in essence, is the iPhone’s native Google Maps application, that’s usable offline. This means you can still use GPS on your phone to get around a foreign town without incurring insane international data roaming costs.
There were multiple occasions while walking around Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto that having the built in maps, gps, and compass on my phone were incredibly useful.
Again, the application is designed very similar to that of the native map application. You are able to pan/zoom around the maps in the same way you would in Maps and the ‘find me’ button / compass view (on 3GS) works in the same manner.
Offmaps is very simple to use. Before heading out of the country (or off of wifi), you drag a bounding box around the area/city you want to download, select the zoom max zoom level, wait for the maps to download and you’re done! The app itself sets no limits to the number of maps you can download but it is obviously limited to the disk space you have available on your phone.
There are a few quirks with using Offmaps that you should be aware of.
The first one isn’t Offmaps fault, but if you are traveling abroad and do not have a data connection, you should know that it takes a very long time to get a GPS fix on the iPhone. Normally, your phone uses the cell towers nearby to help find your location fairly quickly. Without these, the phone has to rely strictly on the GPS satellites and this may take up to 10 minutes. If your phone cannot find your position after the first try, just keep trying, eventually it’ll find you. If you are in need of quick help and have some data to spare, turn on your data roaming, locate yourself, and then switch the data roaming back off.
The other issue is the maps. Offmaps does not use the same maps provided by Google in the native Maps app. It uses open source maps from OpenStreetMap. These maps are not as up to date nor as detailed as Google’s. This is understandable, but just be warned there may be some cases where you may not be able to discern where you are going just based on the map alone. If you have some known locations ahead of time, I’d suggest dropping some pins and bookmarks on the maps to help you find your way when you are there. Additionally, you might find it helpful to drop a pin when you get off the subway so you can find your way back.
The final issue was the search. At the time of writing, it didn’t seem that this worked offline. I would imagine making the search work offline would be very difficult due to the amount of data it would require but when you try to search offline, it does not prompt any messages or take any action after hitting ’search’. So quite frankly, I’m uncertain of what the developers intentions are there. Because of the lack of search, I did have to switch to the normal maps app and use my data roaming in a few instances when I needed to find a specific restaurant or location.
Overall, this application is invaluable. If you travel or have a limited data connection, you need to have this app, period.
Fushimi Inari ShrineWhen your job does not tie you to one place, there exists the romantic possibility of breaking off the concrete and setting off wandering the globe. The idea of traveling around the world, working from my laptop is a thought that I’ve always entertained but never executed. Simply because as time has gone on, I’ve learned that a job is not the only thing holding you to the ground, there are other reasons to stay in one place, namely friends, family, and a sense of ‘home’.
Yet, travel is still my biggest interest, by far. And if you know me personally, you know that it’s just about the only thing I spend my money on. I don’t spend money on gadgets, big screen TVs, cars or clothes (I own about 5 shirts, half of which are probably a few years old). So as the first-year-of-business-craziness has started to level out, I’ve had time to revisit this travel dream.
This past week I returned from a 2 week trip to Japan. It was the longest trip I’ve taken since I started Idea Shower and began working for myself. More importantly, it was the farthest away I’ve been from my primary computer, a (less insanely expensive) data connection on my iPhone, and work life that I am accustomed to. It was a great way to peer behind the curtain of the globe-trotting, laptop-carrying worker I’ve long dreamed to be.
Data
As much as I’d like to run free, there is one cable that you can’t let go of as a web developer and that’s an internet connection. I think without a doubt, this is the biggest hurdle I see to a mobile work life: It’s incredibly expensive.
AT&T offers 50MB of international data for $60/mo and good luck if you go over, because at $0.005/KB viewing the homepage of Techcrunch once would cost you $2.50 alone. 50MB is hardly enough to get you through a month, and probably not even enough to get you through a day or two of solid internet use.
SoftBank, the major carrier of the iPhone in Japan’s prepaid SIM cards for international visitors were comparable in price as well.
In order to conserve my precious MBs, I kept my phone’s data connection disabled unless I absolutely needed it. The result meant that during the day, while I was out and about, it was used primarily to keep tabs on things, while everything else was left for the morning and night where I could use the connection where I was staying.
Reverse Teathering
While in Japan I stayed at both a friend’s house and for a few days, a hotel. At both locations, no wireless was provided, but instead a hard LAN connection. This meant that I was still unable to use my iPhone without cracking open the data connection. But with a laptop, I discovered that you can use it has a router to create your own wireless network from the hard line and use that to connect your phone! I wrote a separate post on how to set that up here: Reverse Teathering
Offline Everything
The other way I conserved my data was by making use of the WiFi connection to download everything I’d need for the day. For websites and train schedules I used Read It Later (shameless plug!). However, the most important thing to have when traveling? (Well, outside of a towel) Maps.
With an iPhone, you get very accustomed to having an always accessible GPS in your pocket. But with the limited and expensive data, you’ll surpass the cost of your college loans within minutes of panning around the Maps application. The answer is an excellent little app called OffMaps which allows you to download maps for just about anywhere so you can use your GPS offline later on. I’ve written a separate post about that here: OffMaps - Offline Maps and GPS
Batching
The whole point of traveling is, well, traveling. Moving, getting out, seeing, doing. But it’s difficult to do this when your work is piling up in front of you. This is why it’s incredibly important to make your time count as much as possible. While I was abroad I didn’t answer any emails or messages on Twitter until two specific times in the morning and at night. Generally people are happy as long as they get a reply back within a day so the delays were acceptable.
By grouping everything together and tackling it all at once, it made getting through my work significantly faster. During the time I was there, I never felt overloaded or feared things were not getting done. By spending 1-2 hours in the morning and some time at night to clear my plate, it left the rest of the day for me to get out and play.
The Life
Sunrise from the top of Mt Fuji after an 8hr night climb.The self employed life offers a lot of opportunities and the chance at a mobile life is certainly one of the most intriguing. And as much as the idea of setting sail and not looking back sounds adventurous and almost cinematic, I believe the reality of it is far less doable.
Even though this trip was meant to be more vacation than work, it still gave me a sense of what that life may be like. As romantic as it sounds, it does not provide the most stable or effective work environment. More importantly, for a web based job, the fear of being disconnected is far to great.
For example, a few friends invited me to what sounded like an epic trip: spending several days at a ’surf island’ in Panama, where as you might guess, you can spend the entire time surfing on a remote-ish island. But it’s impossible for me to even consider it because of the single cable wrapped around my leg. It’s incredibly hard to be away from an internet connection for more than a day at a time. Servers go down, opportunities arise and as a solo developer without employees, you are the only thing standing in the way of imminent issues.
I think, for now, launching mini trips from a home base is far more of a reality. I’d much prefer to make the best of my time while traveling, then spend it working. Using batching you can effectively get work done during travel, but you still need time in between trips to handle the big tasks and jobs.
The mobile work life is great but sometimes it’s nice to home docking station to come back to and recharge.
How do you stay connected while traveling?
I am very excited to announce that Read It Later has come to the iPhone and iPod Touch and is now available in the App Store. » Get the Details
90 Second Demo Video
Sort By Quality with PostRank
Read It Later is a great tool for saving things to read later, but now it’s great for helping you actually READ those pages too! By sorting your list by PostRank (from AideRss), you can quickly find what’s worth a read and start with your best content first.
Google Reader Integration
If you use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds, you’ll now find the familiar Read It Later checkmark right next to the Google Reader star. You can now save directly to your reading list from Google Reader!
Customize Read It Later
Now you can take full advantage of all the features of Read It Later without the UI bloat. Almost all of Read It Later’s components can be hidden and/or customized to your liking. You can use all of the provided elements or even run Read It Later from a single 10×10 icon in the location bar.
New Appearance Options:
- Choose between two list views (Normal and Condensed)
- Open Read It Later in the sidebar
- Select how many items to show per page
- Use a scrollable list instead of a paged reading list
- Enable/Disable Read It Later context menus and additional toolbar buttons
Updated Online Access
Read It Later isn’t just for Firefox anymore. You can manage your list online at readitlaterlist.com and use the provided bookmarklets to maintain Read It Later’s core functionality regardless of the browser you have. So if you have Firefox at home, Internet Explorer at work and an Iphone in between, you won’t have any problem keeping your list up to date.
Privacy Controls
It’s your data. It’s that simple. You can now delete individual items from Read It Later’s online storage or even wipe your entire account. And of course if you don’t want any of your list saved online you can still disable the online access and Read It Later will only save locally.
Additionally, you may now password protect your RSS feed to ensure privacy while still taking advantage of the online features.
Improved Existing Features
Syncing
A new syncing system has been implemented to provide stability and ensure your list stays up to date no matter how many computers you have. Updated sync options and setup gives you easier control over your sync setup.
Offline Mode
You can now have Read It Later automatically save an offline copy of every page you add to your list. And the new Offline Cache Manager will allow you to control/view what has been saved.
Additional Updates
- Firefox 3.1b compatibility
- Full Ubuntu support
- Option to control how ‘click-to-save’ checkmarks appear
- Option to hide the plaintext password inside the sync settings
- Ability to select a Read It Later folder in the Bookmarks Toolbar
- Improved foriegn characters support
- Read It Later button can be ctrl/shift/middle clicked with the same behavior standard Firefox links
- Option to close the current tab when saving a page
