I’ve had a long relationship with Realmac Software, and their applications. The first time I came across one of their products with Little Snapper, which I’m pretty sure showed up in my email because of a MacHeist bundle I had purchased early on in my Mac life.

Since then, I’ve come to rely on Courier for moving files around to multiple web services, and Analog for our header images on Macgasm. Let’s not forget about Clear either, that’s a fine, fine application.

This week, Dan Counsell and his team at Realmac Software released a teaser about a soon to be released iOS application called Analog Camera.

I thought it would be a good time to send him some questions about his new app, his company, and where he sees this industry going in the future.

Q: There’s probably a bazillion filter apps, and camera apps on the App Store for iOS and the iPhone in particular, why release a competitor now?

A: For a while now the trend in camera apps has been to add as many features as possible, it’s like they are in an arms race. We’ve taken exactly the opposite approach, and removed all but the essential features and focused on making an app that’s quick and fun to use.

Q: None seem to be as simple and straight forward as Analog Camera. What lessons have you learned from Clear that you were able to apply to this particular project?

A: Don’t be afraid to throw out features and strip things back to the essentials.

Q: Everyone’s relying pretty heavily on Apps and web services these days for their photos. Having a 17 month old daughter, close to 99.9% of all of the photos I’ve taken of her are on my phone or in the cloud. Am I setting myself up for misery for trusting them there? How do you save your precious photos and videos?

A: Probably, especially if it’s a free service. I store all my Photos in Aperture, and use TimeMachine and CrashPlanPro to backup everything – You can never have too many backups!

Q: Analog camera seems to have (feel free to correct me) the typical sharing features –– Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, etc –– can we expect an iPad app too, more in line with the desktop version of Analog, that will let us send photos there for editing on a bigger screen?

A: I couldn’t possibly comment on that at this time, but I will say that I’m a strong believer in the iPad being a great replacement for the Mac.

Q: I’m a huge fan of most of your apps. It all started with Little Snapper, then followed up with Courier, Analog and now Clear. There seems to be a focus change underway from focusing on Mac apps to iOS apps for a lot of developers lately, including you guys. With the new Analog for iOS release, can we expect that trend to continue at Realmac Software?

A: Not at all, it just so happens that a few of our iOS projects are finishing up right now, so they’ll be first out the door. Later this year we’ll have plenty to talk about on the Mac.

Q: Is it less profitable, and a bigger risk these days to develop for the Mac?

A: I don’t think so, on the Mac it’s the same as it’s ever was. I think it’s far more risky to develop for iOS, competition is fierce and it’s much harder to stand out from the crowd.

Q: Have any exciting new projects on the horizon for the Mac?

A: Yup.

Q: Do you think we’re on a collision course with the PC? Can people really live their lives with nothing but a phone and tablet?

A: Without a doubt. Right now it’s harder for content creators, such as designers and coders but it’s getting easier everyday. Tablets area still very much in their infancy, and while Macs are not going away anytime soon, I can easily see a future without them.

Q: How does that influence your decision to build new apps?

A: It doesn’t really, as a company we’re committed to fully supporting both Mac and iOS.

Q: If you were starting-up Realmac Software today, would you start with building Mac apps or iOS apps?

A: I love both platforms and I’ve always been a diehard Apple fan and still am. But if I’m honest I think it’d be iOS first.

Q: Or, what about web apps? There was a post on your blog from Ben that explained why Native apps were winning these days. Is there any hope for web apps at all, or is it a lot of wishful thinking?

A: For the foreseeable future it’s just wishful thinking in my opinion. Users want great experiences and only native apps can truly offer that. I mean, when was the last time you used a web app that offered a better experience than a native app?

Q: What are you rocking on your home screen?

A: Evernote, 1Password, Fantastical, Pocket, Flipboard, Instagram, Analog, and Clear.

Q: What’s your most used app (excluding Realmac Software applications) these days?

A: Don’t know, possibly Mail.app, Safari, or Photoshop, or maybe iTunes… they are all open pretty much 24/7.

Realmac Software will be taking on some monstrous competitors with Analog Camera in the coming days. We’re big fans of their apps around here, and we certainly wish them the best of luck with anything they plan on releasing in the near future.

The post Interview With Realmac Software’s Dan Counsell appeared first on Macgasm.

Let’s pretend the Internet is a nice place and people are inherently good to one another (please stop laughing). Would it be wrong to assume, then, that when someone puts some effort into making something, that thing won’t be ripped apart and disgraced by people with significant audiences and even more significant egos?

Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and nobody can create anything without having to endure the inflated opinions of others (this also includes my inflated opinion for those reading this who are ready to pounce).

The most recent “how dare you” moment came in the form of a new iOS concept video from digital marketing firm Simply Zesty.

The designers, Philip Joyce and Denes Farkas, took a decidedly more flat and “Windows Phone-esque” approach to their idea of what the next iOS could/should look like, which prompted the following responses from across the blogoscape and Twitterdome:

Mediocre designers love “flat design” because it takes minimal effort to execute. Rounded square + pick a color + use free icon = done.

— Mike Rundle (@flyosity) May 10, 2013

How nuanced.

David Chartier also got in on the snark:

Here is an iOS concept video link

It’s shiny and that indie music really makes it pop.

Don’t worry about the massive usability challenges we didn’t realize exist, or the ones we simply decided to ignore.

Damn this video looks awesome.

John Gruber actually had a positive note to add at the end of his “why does this video exist?” article:

His animations and transitions do show how going “flatter” doesn’t necessarily mean eliminating playfulness, though.

But this statement from the previous paragraph illustrates Gruber’s (and many others’) lack of awareness to the real crux of the situation:

And certain of Joyce’s details are oddly tone-deaf branding-wise. The shape of app icons is not going to change from round-cornered squares to sharp-cornered ones (or any other shape for that matter). Apple owns this shape; this shape says “iOS app” in everyone’s mind.

So what? Why does it matter if a 3rd party concept takes liberties that won’t end up in the final product? Last I checked, none of the people who make these videos work at Apple. These aren’t final renders, they’re “what-ifs”, and while many elements may not be well thought-out (slide-to-unlock at the top?), there’s always something to glean from a new design.

…Unless you use social media, or you have a blog, or you’re a designer. Then the world is black-and-white and every decision must follow the rule of Highlanderism: There can be only one.

Every criticism I’ve read has mistaken the critic’s personal preference for what constitutes “good” design as it relates to Apple. Worse yet, each person who’s shat upon Joyce’s and Farkas’s work has missed the big picture: It was never about Apple.

I’m sorry to be the one to burst all the artisanal ego bubbles out there, but these concept videos aren’t targeted at critics on social media – they’re targeted at potential clients and employers:

Jan-Micheal Cart has made quite a name for himself designing impressive new concepts for the iOS operating system, such as the dynamic icons concept you see above, and an awesome system for implementing widgets which we covered back in May.

However, it seems it’s not just iOS users who have been impressed with Cart’s work. The Apple camp in Cupertino has also picked up on it, and they’ve hired him as an intern.

These designs, regardless of how realistic they may be when compared with Apple’s design guidelines, are less about expectations and more about building résumés. To waste pixels and time deconstructing how un-Apple like they are misses the point entirely.

Simply Zesty is a digital marketing firm and among the services it offers are:

• User interface consulting
• Video and motion graphics
• Design, photography, imagery, animation

How many new apps get released that feature fun demo videos with computer recreations of their interfaces set to vibrant music? How many of those developers could benefit from the services offered by Simply Zesty? And how many potential clients might not have heard of Simply Zesty before its video went viral?

Also, don’t forget about film and television studios that need futuristic interfaces built for the latest sci-fi epic or Avengers sequel. The possibilities may not be endless in the realm of contemporary software design, but they are in La La Land. And as we’ve learned from Star Trek, science fiction has a tendency to turn into science fact over time.

Whether you think a concept design fits the device or not, there is always something to be learned from it. No designer is perfect and no design is perfect. Everything is subjective and what one person finds unintuitive, someone else may find more user friendly than anything else out there. There is no “one size fits all”.

For example, the widgets Joyce and Farkas built into Notification Center clutter the interface and feature tap targets that are too small (so, no different than the tap targets we currently have), but if Apple was going to incorporate more functionality into Notification Center in iOS 7, I’d like to think it would be something similar. A small calendar view, shortcuts for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and more music playback controls would work really well in Notification Center and perhaps give me more of a reason to use it.

Of course, what do I know? I’m not a designer. I’m just an average user who thinks in shades of gray.

We won’t know what iOS 7 will look like until June. Until then, enjoy these mock-ups and concept videos for what they are: job applications.

The post This Week in “Nerds Ruin Everything”: iOS Concepts appeared first on Macgasm.

Back when the first jailbreak was announced I was pumped, but then immediately disappointed as my phone become less than stable, and crashed at the most inopportune times. I didn’t last a month without reverting back to a clean install of iOS. A lot has changed over the years. Jailbreaking is a lot more stable these days than in the past, despite Apple’s continued cat and mouse game to close loopholes in iOS to prevent jailbreaking.

I’ve found, surprisingly, that pulling off a successful Jailbreak experience requires quite a fair bit of restraint. Sure, there’s a billion Scarlett Johansson themes that you can install, but the more you avoid in the Cydia store, the better your experience will be with a jailbroken iPhone. Selectivity is key.

A measured, selective, and minimal approach to installing tweaks is something you should be doing. Not the “ohmygod, install all the things” approach that your trigger finger is certainly pushing for every time you open up a new cydia tweak.

Here’s what I’ve installed, and I’ve been bug free most of the time.

Atom

I’m tired of the old-busted lock screen in iOS, so I went looking for something new. Right around the time I began installing packages on my iPhone, Atom went live in the Cydia store.

Atom is a lock screen replacement that lets you quick launch six of your favorite applications from a circular grid (can a grid be circular?) directly from the lock screen. It was working out great until I put the Google app into Atom. Now I rarely even unlock my phone.

Kidding aside, Atom has been a great time saver. I’ve had zero problems with bugs, crashing, and unstable usage while using this tweak. It’s worth installing

Auxo

The iOS multitasking bar could also use some love from Apple in iOS 7. Auxo’s take on what the multitasking bar should look and feel like is a bit of a revelation. It’s an updated, and needed, approach.

App icons are replaced with screenshots so you can see what’s happening in an app. A screen brightness slider is put back into the multitasking bar, just like the one on your iPad. There’s also toggle buttons for a host of iPhone features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Cellular, and other things you may want quick access to while you’re out doing what you do on a daily basis.

Again, this one’s been bug free and works like a charm.

Parallax

Parallax is completely cosmetic. The tweak lets you have a wallpaper that scrolls while you scroll between pages in iOS. You can set the rate that the image moves in the background. You can set it to move a lot, or just slightly.

Parallax gives your iOS device some depth, and it’s a nice change up from static wallpapers. You’ve probably seen these feature on a couple of android phones over the last couple of years.

SLightEnhancerSearch

This tweak is something I wish Apple would build right into iOS. Spotlight search in iOS, and OS X too actually, could use some deeper integration with other web services. SLightEnhancerSearch lets you search App Stores, iTunes, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and a whole host of other stores and web applications from directly within Spotlight. The tweak lets you pick and choose which are activated and which you’d rather not use, thereby cutting out a lot of unneeded clutter. I only have the App Store and Google turned on and they work flawlessly.

I know that I said that these have provided a bug free experience, and for the most part that has been true. SlightEnhancerSearch did give me some problems early on, but an update seems to have killed off any bugs I was facing. This is the only tweak that I’m reluctant to include on this list. Your success may vary.

The Catch

Like all applications in iOS, you get what you pay for when picking up tweaks in Cydia. In my experience, and there are a few exceptions to the rule, I rarely have problems with tweaks that I pay for and research before buying. Don’t assume things will work out of the box. There are a lot of glitchy and buggy tweaks on the Cydia store.

Cydia isn’t a free-for-all. Sometimes you do have to pay for tweaks. All of the tweaks mentioned above I paid money to download. The cool thing about Cydia is that you can pay with PayPal, so you never have to give them a credit card number. Honestly though, I have no problem paying for applications. It’s worth every dollar.

If you’re bored with iOS, and you want to change things up a little while we wait for iOS 7, I’d recommend jailbreaking your phone. It’s easy to go back to a clean iOS install if you hate it. Chances are you may find something worth sticking around for though, so don’t write it off before trying it out.

The post I Hated Jailbreaking Then I Figured Out What Tweaks To Install appeared first on Macgasm.

Something is wrong with my homescreen. No it’s not cracked or sporting some godawful wallpaper, it has been overrun by third-party apps.

So why is this a bad thing? Isn’t having the best selection of apps, not just quantity but quality, the biggest iOS advantage?

Undoubtedly it is, but my homescreen being taken over by third-party apps is a signal, a flashing neon sign that tells me something is wrong here.

Let be me clear, I love third-party apps, Mailbox, Fantastical, Tempo, Yahoo! Weather, Google Maps, Simplenote and Clear have taken over my home screen to the point where my “Apple” folder–the one everyone has to hide the stock apps because they can’t be deleted–is overflowing.

However a quick glance at my homescreen confirms my suspicion, Apple has some catching up to do.

I’m the type of person who, all things being equal, would rather use a stock app than a third-party replacement. It’s part laziness, part blind trust and part calculated genius, but I really have to be convinced to move away from the apps that Apple designs and includes in iOS directly out of the box.

Default iOS apps have the advantage of being hooked directly into iOS, they’re defaults which give them an edge over other apps. I put a certain amount of faith in Apple, much as I would with my car or my refrigerator, that the stock features are designed and tuned to work best with my device.

News that Sir Jony Ives will be applying his Dieter Rams-inspired brand of minimalism to iOS is certainly a start, but the flat vs. skeuomorphic debate, even though they are not really opposites, masks the real issue.

Leather bound trim and yellow ruled paper are not my style per se, but the real issue is a lack of features, poor user experience and a plethora of better options available on the App Store.

Any time a new buzz-worthy app comes out I will inevitably download it, after all who wants to miss out on the next Color, but only out of curiosity. To make it to my main screen–to replace one of Apple’s built-in apps–it needs to significantly improve my experience, not just an ornamental upgrade with Helvetica in all the right places.

For every neat feature, I ask: does this feature justify the added annoyance of being a non-default app? Does this new app justify leaving behind deep integration between Apple’s applications?

So it is with this high bar in mind that I have come to the conclusion that iOS 7 has some major catching up to do in the application department.

Of course the easiest app to pick on is Notes. The default Notes app is garbage. The faux yellow ruled paper, the default felt marker font, complete lack of tagging or categories of any kind all contribute to its uselessness. But wait, even Notes has a few things going for it: Mac OS X Mountain Lion syncing and Siri integration being the biggest features, and a prime example of the deep interconnectedness between Apple’s core applications that you have to leave behind when using third-party applications. Even a dud like Notes requires a cost-benefit analysis–it just so happens that the result is not even close when comparing to apps like Simplenote or Evernote.

Whether it’s Simplenote’s dummy-proof syncing and simplicity or Evernote’s amazing power user features like tagging, notebooks and web clipping, the result is a ledger that makes abandoning the Apple default a no-brainer.

It gets even trickier from here for Apple’s default applications:

• Maps is a toss-up, largely based on how integrated you are with Google services as the map data has never been much of an issue in my city.
• Email was a stalwart Apple domain until recently when Google finally decided to take iOS development seriously and a number of other competitors like Mailbox, and the now defunct Sparrow sprung up.
• Reminders has Siri integration and some cool geo-fencing options, but power users who want a feature packed experience can go to AnyDO, while those, such as myself who prefer a more minimalist experience have options like the gorgeous Clear app.
• iCal of course has some strong hooks directly into iOS, but if you use Google Calendar, like I do, then jumping to something like Fantastical, Tempo or Sunrise is relatively painless.

Of course many companies have already noted this weakness and are beginning to exploit it by setting up their own mini-ecosystems within iOS. Google’s suite of apps gets better every day and, combined with their great cloud services, makes it easy to stay within their ecosystem even without being on Android. Just the other day, Gmail iOS enabled users to select Chrome iOS as their default browser, a trend that other developers are picking up on.

Even Facebook, with it’s Messenger, Camera and Poke apps, is developing its own fiefdom within iOS.

Walled garden indeed.

It was only recently that it occurred to me that my Phone and Photos apps were the last remaining bastions of Apple’s presence on my home screen, then I realized that maybe it’s time for a significant iOS upgrade.

Many would argue that having a plethora of apps is exactly Apple’s advantage, their plan even, but I think we are now past the point where having choices is an excuse for poor default experience.

The counter-argument suggests rather than worry about better default apps, Apple should just allow users to select defaults other than their own, similar to how it works on Mac OS X. While this option would be nice, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of having a weak out-of-the-box experience. For non-power users the apps that come preinstalled on the device are the essence of the experience. Just ask anyone who has ever had to download Google Chrome on their parents computer to replace Internet Explorer.

My parents will never download AnyDo, Brewster or Solar, but they will express frustration at the limitations of their iPhone whenever I visit, and more specifically some of the default applications.

In the end, that’s the audience Apple has to please, not the app-addicted power users, but the masses who just want a phone, often now their primary computing device, to work and make their lives earlier right out of the box.

“There’s an app for that” has become a catchphrase, but it shouldn’t become a crutch.

The post Apple’s Aged iOS Apps Tell The Whole Story appeared first on Macgasm.

From the fully-fledged reporter at a top newspaper to the citizen journalist or revered blogger, getting the news across to your online audience in a coherent timely manner is key. A lot of the time, this means you’re not at your desk when the greatest story breaks.

In addition to getting the story, you need to stay organized too. Fortunately, there are a number of great apps at your disposal to help you out in those situations — and ultimately helping you up your reportage game.

Reeder

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: $2.99 for iPhone, free on iPad

Available across all Apple devices, Reeder is one of the sleeker RSS readers. For writers and bloggers trying to update with the latest news regularly, this is a great app for checking out various sources at a glance. You can organize feeds into specific folders, mark items you want to come back to, or share items of interest to your social media feeds. They layout of articles is simple too, helping you focus on the content.

Pick it up on the App Store.

CardMunch

• Available for iPhone
• Cost: Free

You’re a journalist — chances are, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people to add to your contacts list. Rather than waste time manually adding business card details into Contacts though, get an app like CardMunch. This useful freebie takes a picture of a business card and automatically pulls the information into a contact for you, then finds them on LinkedIn. Two birds, one stone.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Google Drive

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

If you happen to use a Google Account, you should start using Google Drive to the best of its ability (if you don’t already). Google Drive makes sharing with others on your team easy, be it sharing a document if you can’t access typical word processing software, to co-editing lists in spreadsheets. Seeing as this Google service relies on the Cloud, you can return to it on any device too.

Pick it up on the App Store.

PCM Recorder

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

While you could record that all-important quote using the in-built Voice Memos app, PCM Recorder offers a lot more functionality. First off, in addition to saving your sound bite, you can share the clip straight to the likes of SoundCloud. There are plenty of output options for you to tinker with, without being complicated. What’s more, the app records in a higher quality, despite using the internal microphone.

Pick it up on the App Store.

iA Writer

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: $0.99

iA Writer is a simple design to match a simple, but effective, concept. This app is possibly better used on an iPad than an iPhone, but still worth having across any iOS platform. There’s no fancy settings to fiddle with here, just type out your story or memo, then each time you save, rest easy knowing it’s saved on your Mac, iPhone and iPad — you can also sync it up with iCloud and Dropbox.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Evernote

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

Everyone on the editorial ladder needs to keep it together when covering big news or events, and I like to keep track of writers and editors tasks using Evernote. Write out your task lists, assign them to people, and sync those notes or lists across platforms, so no one can say they’re out of touch! If someone on the team’s slacking, record an audio note and give them a stern warning. You can also invite others to edit tasks too, and keep notified on progress with email. What’s more, it’s a pretty app to look at.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Wunderlist

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: From free

If Evernote seems a little fussy for your tastes, Wunderlist is another nicely designed to-do list app, stripped down a little. You can invite others to share your lists, however this one feels like it has a bigger emphasis on directing you to the tasks assigned to you. Those worried about missing a looming deadline needn’t worry, as Wunderlist will constantly remind you. This one is even better for editors purely trying to delegate tasks too.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Mindmeister

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

Thinking up the perfect feature story to pitch to your editor can be hard, but tricks like mind mapping can help focus your ideas. Rather than turning to pen and paper, Mindmeister lets you record and add new ideas on your iPad or iPhone. The app has enough functionality for you to do simple things like move between colors and sharing the maps, to adding links, images, themes and turning it into a presentation. This also means you won’t forget that awesome idea you had before you fell asleep last night either.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Blogsy

• Available for iPad
• Cost: $4.99

For bloggers, there are a variety of blogging platforms you are either writing for or hosting your own blogs on. A lot of blogging platform apps aren’t up to much still, which is especially frustrating on the move. Try something like Blogsy, as this app can switch seamlessly between different platforms, and uses a straightforward editor based on dragging things around with your finger to help you type that post up.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Camera+

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: $0.99 (on sale)

Right place, right time doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you need to be ready with a camera. Beyond grabbing the photo, you need to make sure it looks perfect to really get the moment across to the reader. Camera+ will give you useful options both before and after taking the picture, so you can make sure both the shooting mode, conditions and after effects are perfect.

Pick it up on the App Store.

1st Video

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: $9.99

This app has a steeper price point in comparison to the other apps in the list, but it’s worth it to edit good videos. 1st Video might not be the best looking app going but it does have two video tracks for mixing clips and good audio editing. Once you’re done, you have the option to send straight to YouTube or SoundCloud too. There are a lot of settings here, so make sure you get familiar with the user guide first.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Pocket

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

While Pocket isn’t necessarily something you’d open while out on assignment, it’s handy for doing a bit of research with or expanding your knowledge on a topic. The popular app is great for storing interesting links for you to get to later on, and once synced, it doesn’t require an internet connection for reading.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Dropbox

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: Free

This syncing app is perhaps a little obvious. Personally, it’s greatest use is for uploading photos on the go for other members of your team to access. You can however use it for a variety of other files, and access it on your computer or the web interface later on. Again, great if you’re in a sudden breaking news situation where media needs drip feeding to the editorial desk quickly.

Pick it up on the App Store.

Penultimate

• Available for iPad
• Cost: Free

You may wonder why a handwriting app would be useful on a list of reporting apps. Well, there’s never any harm in brushing up on your shorthand, or if you manage a news website or publication’s design, its good for sketching out new page layouts. Doodle until your heart’s content with a pen and paper style of your choice, then share it as a PDF with colleagues. Though learn to take criticism, as you can collaborate on sketches if others have this app.

Pick it up on the App Store

Tweetbot

• Available for iPhone, iPad
• Cost: $2.99

If all of these go out of the window for you, head to a good Twitter client. It’s proved time and time again that news breaks and spreads well on Twitter, so you need to get in on that too. Tweetbot is a excellent client if you want less of an emphasis on the Discover function and more about your own news feed. The fourth tab in the navigation bar is customizable too, so you can have quick access to your own profile, lists, retweets or search.

Pick it up on the App Store.

The post 15 Great iOS Apps For Budding Bloggers And Journalists appeared first on Macgasm.

I swore that I wouldn’t write stuff like this. “No, Ian”, I said, “skewering the stupid is pointless. You only end up bitter and twisted by maintaining the necessary level of vitriol required.” But sometimes… you’ve just got to do something.

When I learned to be a journalist, we had one rule: We did what was the right thing for the readers. That sometimes meant annoying companies like Apple, if “doing the right thing for the readers” meant giving them details of an unannounced Mac. Sometimes it meant giving large advertisers bad reviews. But whatever it meant, it always meant giving them the truth: facts we found out, put into context so the readers could understand what was going on better.

By those standards, David Gewirtz’s piece over at ZDNet entitled “iOS developers abandoning sinking Apple mothership: biggest drop ever” isn’t just bad journalism. It’s beyond that. It’s anti-journalism. Where journalism is about fact, Gewirtz brings us speculation. Where journalism adds context to make things clearer, Gewirtz removes it in order to make things more difficult to understand.

So that you don’t have to read it (no way am I giving it a link): Gewirtz starts with a piece of research called the Tiobe Programming Community Index, which measures the relative interest in programming languages through the number of references to each one online. There’s nothing wrong with what Tiobe is doing. It’s a nice, simple but (as I’m sure they’d admit) unscientific indicator for how much interest there is in a programming language.

If you take a look at the graph showing how the index changes over time, you can see that ratings go up and down over the short term. C, for example, had a little peak in the second half of 2012, but fell quite a bit around the turn of the year. You can see long term trends, like Java’s slowly-waning interest since its peak in the early 2000′s, but month by month variance is pretty random.

Enter Gewirtz and his anti-journalism. His first trick is to grab something and remove all of the context that Tiobe supplies. In this case, he takes the graph for Objective-C, stripping out all the other programming languages so you can’t see how Objective-C compares. Stripping out the context makes it impossible to see that every programming language has short-term variances, so, it makes the dip of Objective-C’s rating over the last quarter look much more radical. You don’t see, for example, that interest in C showed a much bigger drop over the previous quarter, then staged a little recovery. You don’t see that interest in C# fell off a cliff at the end of 2010, only to recover steadily since then.

Denuded of context, the graph for Objective-C makes less sense, gives you less information, and gives readers a distorted sense of the truth.

In other words, anti-journalism.

Then, of course, Gewirtz throws in some speculation: that this means developers “abandoning the sinking Apple mothership”. There is nothing about that headline that’s factual. There’s no evidence here that developers are abandoning Apple – dropping over a quarter isn’t unusual when you see it in context. In fact, if you look on an year-to-year basis, interest in Objective-C grew more than any other language. There’s no evidence that the “mothership” is “sinking”. Nothing. Just a headline that’s purpose-designed to stir up emotion – or “starting a conversation” as the bullshit-artists often call it.

It’s anti-journalism. Truth? Pah! Helping readers understand more? Get out of here!

Gewirtz may be a brilliant example of anti-journalism, but he’s really just a symptom of how low technology journalism has sunk, and how the average pageview-hungry “anti-journalist” treats readers with contempt.

Maybe this is in part down to “readers” no longer being a defined group who regularly read a publication, but simply a swarm of who-knows-what people arriving from Google. Maybe it’s because all the readers are, to anti-journalists, is a number on a screen which adds up to more ad impressions, and thus more cash in their back pockets.

What they see you as is a big nest of ants: they poke in a big stick and watch you all scurry around, outraged at their “opinions”, responding blindly to their ever-more outrageous manipulation of facts and context.

To these guys, you’re not people anymore: you’re insects they can manipulate at will, for cash. Personally, I think it’s time we all stopped letting them manipulate us – and started getting the kind of journalism real human beings deserve.

Image by ihsankhairir

The post Just How Did Apple “Journalism” Get This Bad? appeared first on Macgasm.

It’s that time of year again. Digitimes rumors are in full swing, everyone’s playing we got the rumor first, and the rest of us are left wishing Apple would just release the iPhone 5S and get it over with at this point. Wait, is the next iPhone even going to be called the iPhone 5S? Or is it going to be the iPhone 6? There are plenty of great points on both sides of the equation, but what exactly is Apple going to call this thing anyway?

First, calling the next iPhone the iPhone 5S would fit into the normal naming conventions that have been used for regular iPhone releases since the iPhone 3GS. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple just went with the flow and released an iPhone 5 with a nice little ‘S’ attached to the new device. David Caolo, one of my favorite online writers, had this to say about the “S” moniker:

While some customers might poo-poo the S models, I see them as the perfected version of the full-number upgrades. The iPhone 3G was a nice device; the 3GS a lot nicer. Likewise, the iPhone 4S is a more appealing phone than the iPhone 4.

The argument, in reference to a Ken Segall article published earlier this week, is a valid one. Every single S model phone that has been released has been the best-of-the-best when it comes to an iPhone model. Caolo articulated the point nicely, so I won’t restate it in full (read it), but every single S model iPhone is a better version of the same phone released before it. You could possibly even argue it’s the iPhone Apple should have released the year before it released an ‘S’ model. Things that are intentionally left out are usually included in an S model phone. That’s a great excuse to keep pushing along with the iPhone release paradigm that we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. Release a drastic new phone in year one, and in year two iterate and add a few new things to the phone, then release one with “improved braking” that has some kind of notation that lets everyone know it’s version 2.0 of the device.

Do People Care More About The Phone Without The ‘S’ Notation?

Are consumers running out to buy phones with an S, or are the shiny new iPhones every second year getting the bulk of sales? That’s an important question. From what I’ve noticed, given search traffic and Google search trends, people are looking for a drastically updated iPhone over iterative releases. We’re not the biggest site on the planet, but iPhone 6 searches have outpaced iPhone 5S queries by an almost 2 to 1 ratio. Same goes for the iPhone 5 over 4S, but that was a weird one since major tech press swore that Apple was going to jump the 4S and go straight to a “tear-drop” iPhone 5 (we know that didn’t happen).

From a marketing perspective, you would have to assume that the term iPhone 6 holds more interest and intrigue with the general population than an iPhone 5S. I’m no marketer, so you guys can call bullocks in the comments, but it seems painfully obvious that anyone not patrolling tech blogs for rumors is actually out there looking for an iPhone 6 by default because 6 comes after 5, and 6 has to be the next iPhone, right?

Enter side-stage, a conundrum for Apple.

Stick with the normal naming convention, or drop the “S” from its lexicon. How about neither? I prefer neither. Let’s just kill the S and numbers altogether.

Is Apple Going To Drop The Numbered Naming Convention Anyway?

We heard the rumors about skipping an “S” release when the iPhone 4S was released. Since then, Apple’s killed off another number based naming convention with the iPad. The Cupertino company has already stopped referring to the iPad as the iPad 2, or iPad 3, or iPad 4. Instead, we now know these devices as the “new iPad” or the “iPad mini.” It’s never been the Apple TV 2 or 3, it’s never been the MacBook Air 2, 3, or 4. Why is the iPhone any different? Apple’s probably pretty annoyed they ran with the 3G moniker with the iPhone 3G.

If I had to hazard a guess, the fours, fives, sixes, and Ss that have adorned the iPhone for all these years are about to disappear. If not with this release, then soon. It may not be immediate, but it’s certainly feeling more and more like an eventuality with every year that passes by, right?

Apple, do us a solid and kill off the “S” and numbers. I’m tired of debating naming conventions year after year. “The new iPhone” has a nice ring to it. Let’s go with that.

The post Some Thoughts On The iPhone 5S, 6, Or Whatever You Want To Call It appeared first on Macgasm.

If you needed further proof Apple is a hardware company first and a software company second, look no further than its Internet-based syncing platform, iCloud.

Several articles have emerged from sites like the Verge and Ars Technica, which focus on developers’ plights in implementing iCloud and Core Data Syncing into their apps. Says Bare Bones Software’s Rich Siegel in an interview with Ars:

In concept, the service is pretty simple. A central iCloud server holds the truth: the canonical version of the user’s data for an app. As the user manipulates an app’s data, iCloud tracks and reconciles the changes into the central truth and makes sure that all copies of the data, on each computer, are brought up to date,” Siegel told Ars. “In order for this to work, though, a lot has to happen behind the scenes. What we casually refer to as iCloud is many parts, each with a role to play.

Perhaps we “casually refer” to the service as simply “iCloud” because even Apple claims on its website iCloud is “the easiest way to manage your content. Because now you don’t have to.” However, from an end-user perspective, it’s not about not having to manage my content – it’s about not being able to manage it.

Many of the articles being written about iCloud’s problems approach the subject from the perspective of the developer. It’s not surprising, seeing as how the developer is the one who’ll have to implement iCloud in the first place and doing so has its advantages.

Elements developer Justin Williams says:

As much as I like Dropbox both personally and for Elements, I want to support iCloud because it’s one less barrier to entry for customers who don’t have or don’t want a Dropbox account just to sync files.

That’s what we’re told as customers, right? All of our pictures, documents, music, books, podcasts, and browser tabs will be available everywhere because, as Apple again states on its website, “iCloud is seamlessly integrated into your apps, so you can access your content on all your devices. And stay up to date everywhere you go.”

That may be the case for most Apple apps. In my usage, I’ve run into very few problems with Apple’s own apps syncing data over iCloud. iBooks has never lost a bookmark or highlight, and Photo Stream does a stellar job of beaming my photos automatically to my Mac and my Apple TV. These are the kinds of experiences I’d like to have with all of iCloud’s offerings. Unfortunately, things haven’t worked out that way.

Take the popular podcatching app Instacast by Vemedio. It included support for iCloud syncing in version 1.4, which meant my podcast subscriptions, playlists, and playback positions were going to match up between my iPhone and iPad. I was supposed to be able to stop listening to an episode on one device and pick it right back up on the other without missing a word.

Instead, Vemedio had to remove iCloud sync:

It’s gone, thank god. Making iCloud reliable is nearly impossible for a 3rd party developer. The app APIs are confusing, unclear and unreliable. There were so many problems on so many levels that we decided to roll out our own sync solution. If something now does not work correctly, we at least have the possibility to fix it ourselves. Another advantage is that the new sync is much faster and works instantly, at least when both devices are on the same local network.

“Unreliable” is an understatement. In my experience with iCloud sync, Instacast and Instacast HD on the iPad never played well together. Podcasts I’d unsubscribed from on one app remained subscribed-to on the other, playback positions were lost or not carried over at all, and when syncing actually did work, it took forever for everything to beam down from the servers. Waiting isn’t always a problem, but it can be when you’re trying to make your morning train with a phone full of new episodes.

And this experience is not limited to podcatching apps, either. The productivity app 30/30 recently released an update that doesn’t remove iCloud sync, but instead forces the user to manually initiate it:

Instead of trying to always stay in sync, there are two new buttons: Upload to iCloud, and Download from iCloud.

I thought iCloud was supposed to be “seamlessly integrated” with my apps so I didn’t have to manage my data this way?

Whether or not you believe Apple broke a promise about iCloud’s reliability doesn’t matter. What matters is that users are noticing things don’t “just work” as they were led to believe.

iCloud doesn’t seem to have any problems in the Apple-branded apps I’ve used. Notes, Pages, Reminders, Contacts, and Calendar all sync data without any hiccups, and why wouldn’t they? They’re the apps most iPad and iPhone users are going to try first. They come with every device. They’re demoed in-store to potential customers. If they don’t “just work”, then the customer becomes disinterested. Apple scrutinizes its own products to make sure they look and function at the Apple Store the same way they do onstage or on TV.

But the level of scrutiny Apple pours into its own goods — the chamfered edges, the reel-to-reel tapes, the richness of the Retina displays — isn’t being directed toward the platform that will wind up becoming the most important part of Apple’s ecosystem.

Everything is connected. Everything happens on the Internet. Everyone carries more than one device with them. And more often than not, if someone has one Apple product on them, more can’t be far behind. I’ve got a MacBook Air, an iPhone 5, and an iPad 4 and making sure my data is in sync everywhere I go is a top priority. Apple’s relevancy in an increasingly untethered society, especially one in which its devices are now ubiquitous, all depends on iCloud’s reliability.

Many apps sync files and data via third party solutions, like Dropbox or Google Drive, and for some, that’s just fine. But for the majority of iOS users, baked-in syncing means one less app to download, one less directory in which to store files, and one less barrier to entry.

John Gruber linked to a piece by Brent Simmons in which Simmons advises app developers not to implement iCloud at all — even if it worked:

Here’s the thing: half the mobile revolution is about designing and building apps for smartphones and tablets.

The other half is about writing the web services that power those apps.

How comfortable are you with outsourcing half your app to another company? The answer should be: not at all comfortable.

It makes sense from the developer’s perspective, since Apple’s been a company that’s prided itself on controlling as much of the ecosystem as possible. Why shouldn’t developers follow the same mantra? Unfortunately, there’s another aspect Simmons ignores: fragmentation.

Instacast has its own syncing solution, as does Simplenote, and other developers, noticing iCloud’s penchant for pooping the bed, have also begun rolling out their own sync services. So, if I expect my data to go with me everywhere, I have to sign up for a new sync service for each of my apps. That gets cumbersome.

I’m not implying iCloud should be the only option for syncing, but it should be an option and only if Apple can get its act together. Obviously, the company’s track record with cloud-based services isn’t entirely spotless.

Every day, our computing needs move more and more to the Web. Chromebooks, social networking, writing, and news sources all require Internet connections to be useful. The things we keep locally on our devices, however, must move back and forth with ease and that’s the promise we heard from Apple when it unveiled iCloud two years ago.

I don’t want another proprietary service. I don’t want to have to remember another set of login credentials. I want to access my content on all my devices. And stay up to date everywhere I go.

I want my iCloud.

The post I Want My iCloud appeared first on Macgasm.

Apple rolled out a new iPhone 5 page on its website this weekend, and the results have polarized a few people. On the one hand, some people seem to think that the company’s marketing department is pretty fired up. On the other hand, some find the move a clumsy sign that the company may be starting to feel the heat on its heels.

I’d argue it’s both of those things.

John Gruber, over on Daring Fireball:

New iPhone page on Apple.com. Marketing team is fired up.

David Chartier, on his blog:

Whether you think Apple’s going on the offensive or defensive, the new iPhone 5 product page it whipped out feels… different, but not in the good way. There’s a fair amount of crufty copy, awkward sentences, and non-sentences

These two snippets got me thinking a little. Why now? What has changed at Apple?

To me, Apple’s always had the image of an underdog. Its marketing and advertising campaigns over the years leaned heavily on the motif when it was appropriate. A little guy took on big blue. A women wanted to end 1984 before it began. A skinny Mac guy smuggly stuck it to a bigger, huskier PC any chance he got. Apple was counter-culture, and Apple was looking to change the world.

Apple in a lot of ways is now the big guy, and in my experience it seems like fewer people see the company as the underdog. It’s hard to be resolutionary revolutionary, when you’re the company everyone is looking to pass in the marketplace. It’s harder to play the underdog role considering the role reversal over the last three years.

If I had to hazard a guess, the marketing people at Google, Samsung, et al., are aware that Apple’s image has undergone a transformation in the psyche of consumers these days. A non-stop onslaught from the competition makes it hard not to notice. Samsung, and others, make a big deal out of it constantly; whether they’re right or not doesn’t really matter in this battle of perception. If you tell someone something long enough, people start to believe it (70% of people think Saddam Huessin had something to do with 9/11. Thanks mainstream media.) While Samsung is out there telling everyone they’re the better upstart, the little guy in this fight, someone has to be the Goliath to Samsung’s David. What’s Apple going to say? “No, we’re the little guy. Look at our little guy street cred.”  The new campaigns, including the smarmy “There’s iPhone. And then there’s everything else,” mark a huge shift in marketing approach from Apple. The company has gone from telling people “we’re better than the big evil corporate types” to “no, we’re the best, despite what these other guys are telling you.” It seems like splitting hairs, but that slight difference tells a very, very large story.

There may be a crisis of identity at play in the personal computing market for a number of companies. There are new underdogs and new top dogs in this space as compared to the 1990s. It looks like the various marketing departments at those companies in competition with Apple realize it, and they’re looking to exploit it, much like Apple did back in the 90s and early 2000s. But, by the looks of it, Apple’s also found itself in a new position, and they’re trying to figure out how to exist in their new top-of-the-food-chain, but still revolutionary house.

The post Apple’s Polarizing New iPhone Page Gets A Bit Lippy, Tells A New Story appeared first on Macgasm.

Apple: Once, a company that could do nothing right and was doomed to failure is now a company that can do nothing right and is still doomed to failure.

And that is to be expected. “New media” publications (read: tech blogs) rely less on facts and more on the desultory ramblings of analysts who tend to confuse cogent analysis with the aftermath of their Chipotle burritos.

But there’s a new game the kids are playing these days and the goal is to, well, make themselves feel better, I guess? I’m not exactly sure based on the source material.

Yesterday, Jay Yarow wrote a piece for Business Insider called “Apple Blogger Praises Apple For Making Insignificant Improvements To Apple Maps” (no link because we here at Macgasm value your brain cells).

In the missive, Yarow takes Apple writer and commentator Jim Dalrymple to task for saying nice things about the company. Really.

Dalrymple is one of the most pro-Apple bloggers in the world. He’s constantly attacking Apple rival Samsung (see here) and disparaging anyone that speaks ill of Apple (see here).

The maps blog post is mostly about Apple improving “flyover” coverage, which is the 3D renderings of buildings with satellite photos, as well as some improvements in Japan and China.

The flyover stuff for Apple is pretty much useless, so bragging about fixing it seems silly. You don’t need flyover for anything. It’s neat to look at, but it doesn’t help you get where you’re going.

Jim has an opinion. He digs Apple and loathes Samsung and that opinion is not hidden or misconstrued in any way on the Loop. Anyone who thinks an article with the title “Asshole Samsung” is vague needs to go back to school.

That’s Jim’s prerogative. His site is an extension of himself and his opinion is part of it. A disagreement with the sentiments expressed within his piece is understandable — a disagreement with its existence is not.

But since Mr. Yarow seems to be an expert in “real” journalism, let’s take a look at some of his recent articles:

1. “Don’t Want To Alarm You, But Analysts Think Apple Is Having A Truly Terrible Quarter”
2. “The First Analyst To Become Negative On Apple Now Thinks The Stock Is A Buy”
3. “Samsung’s Ad Budget Grew By 5X To $401 Million Last Year, Crushing Apple”
4. “The Only Thing That Has Really Changed At Apple Is That There’s No More Reality Distortion Field”
5. “And Now ANOTHER Analyst Thinks Apple Might Miss Its Own Guidance”
6. “Apple Has Two New Boring Ads for the iPhone”

And that was all just on the first page of results.

Two of the articles that mention analysts quote Walter Piecyk from BTIG. If you’ll recall, Piecyk claimed just a few days ago that Apple was headed for the same fate as RIM, Motorola, and HTC. Mmm, do I smell barbacoa?

The other analyst article quotes Peter Misek, a man who once thought he saw the mythical Apple Television just before it slipped under the water, never to be heard from again.

So, if we’ve learned anything from Yarow, it’s that Samsung is “crushing” Apple by spending more money on terrible TV ads, the latest iPhone commercials are “boring” because they actually show you what the product is capable of, and Apple is doomed because people who are professionally wrong said so. Excuse me while I queue up my “Anti-Apple Blogger Criticizes Apple for Being Apple” article.

But I’m not here to shred Yarow’s numerous straw men. This is about his screed against Jim Dalrymple and the Loop. My question is: what was the point? If Yarow had an issue with the Apple Maps piece, why didn’t he just make it about the information instead of a whiny rant about Jim’s admiration for the company? Was this supposed to shame him into being more critical for criticism’s sake?

It didn’t help when Yarow’s cohort at Business Insider, Steve Kovach, chimed in on Twitter:

But seriously. @jdalrymple‘s Apple Maps post from last night was just atrocious.

— Steve Kovach (@stevekovach) March 13, 2013

Pretty rich coming from the co-author of the hard-hitting journalistic endeavor, “How To Make Your Tumblr Look Incredible”. Pulitzer-winning stuff right there.

I could sit here all day and make jokes about Business Insider‘s laughable lack of credibility, or how it’s run by a guy who was banned by the SEC for stock fraud, or how it robs page views from other sites that actually publish well-written, thought-provoking content.

But instead, I’ll quote John Martellaro at the Mac Observer who penned a great article about this whole situation called, “The New Apple War: Targeting Pro-Apple Writers“:

The simple fact of the matter is that there are distinguished, capable writers whom you can trust when you read their thoughts about Apple. Mr. Dalrymple is one and has long been considered one of the most authoritative writers about Apple. Just because he points to errors of omission and errors in logic and analysis by others doesn’t make him a biased, brainless Apple fanboy. Not every opinion is valid, and we as writers must write plainly so readers can judge us on the merits.

Sites like Business Insider aren’t in it for the facts. They’re in it for the page views and like I said before, ain’t no party like an Apple-hating party. Apple certainly does things to invoke criticism and when said criticism is presented both logically and coherently, then there shouldn’t be a problem. No company is infallible, even when it’s running circles around the competition (article provided by Jay Yarow, who manages to squeeze in at least one diss at Apple near the end).

However, it’s impossible to take a writer like Yarow seriously when the crux of his complaint isn’t the content of the article, but rather the article’s creator. When the Macalope pulls apart a piece, he counters a point with proof to the contrary. Yarow may as well have called Jim a “doody head” and kicked over his sand castle.

But we don’t read Business Insider for its maturity. We read it because Here Comes Honey Boo Boo doesn’t return for another two weeks.

The post Daft Punks appeared first on Macgasm.

Taking pundits apart over woeful coverage of Apple is such a well-trodden path in the world of Mac writers that I’m loathe to take part. John Gruber does it well enough for all of us, and what Gruber doesn’t dispatch with a well-placed piece of sarcasm the semi-mythical Macalope takes care of.

But occasionally, something comes along that is such a horror that it deserves to be skewered from a hundred directions. Such a piece of work is “Why Apple is ailing”, written (possibly originally in crayon) by “economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland” Peter Morici.

Morici begins with the obvious: the continuing (and reason-defying) tumble of Apple’s share price since the highs of last year. And that’s about the only thing in his article that’s based in the world of facts. After that, he veers off into a whole new world of weird. Morici isn’t about to use his undoubted experience as an economist to point out that Apple’s price to earning ratio is remarkably low, or that the market appears to be operating on sentiment rather than reason. Oh no. Instead, Morici blames a liturgy of cliches, piling them on so thick and fast that the entire post resembles a sandwich made by a five year old from all his favourite ingredients. There’s baloney, peanut butter, jelly, noodles AND green beans. It makes no sense, but that’s not going to stop Morici from adding more stuff into the mix.

By the second paragraph, Morici is diving in with a point about how Apple is struggling “without the genius of Steve Jobs for neat, wholly-new products”. By paragraph four he’s talking about how “Apple customers eventually evolved into an elite cult”. He adds his own unique spin by claiming Apple “offshored and outsourced too much manufacturing, separating in critical ways product design and manufacturing” (ignoring the fact that the entire tech industry does the same thing), and that “Apple produces a high priced, high cost to make product—Samsung does not”, ignoring Apple’s margins and expertise in managing suppliers and the supply chain.

And on and on it goes. Apparently “the late Steve Jobs was able to circumvent this kind of competitive disadvantage by coming up with wholly new products” (as if he designed them personally, no doubt on a napkin in a vegan pizza parlour). Morici, though, has an answer that doesn’t rely on using a Ouija board to get Jobs to communicate product plans from beyond the grave: Apple must “bring home manufacturing and acknowledge the requirement of competing for the masses”. I’m not sure which masses Morici means – obviously not the masses who are buying iPhones in the US. Yes, in various parts of the world Android sells way more, but when it comes to actually making phones that make a lot of profit, Apple remains the company to beat.

The scary bit is that on Wall Street, someone somewhere will read this nonsense and take it seriously. They will ignore the fact that Apple’s last quarter – which “disappointed” many financial analysts – was the fourth biggest quarterly profit of any company in history. They’ll forget that last year Apple made more total profit than any technology company in history – in fact, greater than any company not called “ExxonMobil”.

Morici, after all, is actually former chief economist at the International Trade Commission, which you’d expect would qualify him to understand a little bit about business. That he’s also had a sideline advertising copiers from Kyocera won’t have damaged his credibility – but genuinely atrocious, ill-thought and half-baked articles like this one certainly will do.

Image by Jeffrey Beall

The post And The Record For Most Apple Cliches Goes To… appeared first on Macgasm.

This might be strange to say on a Mac site, but does anybody miss the old Microsoft? Do you remember when the sheer mention of the Redmond, WA, giant would send Mac geeks into apoplectic rants, and Linux geeks refused to spell the company’s name without that $ in place of the s? Juvenile as it all was, Microsoft was an evil empire that you could properly fear. Maybe it was the DOJ, maybe it was Gates’ retirement, but something is missing at Microsoft. There was an evil genius quality that the company used to exude that this guy just can’t seem to match. Ballmer is all bluster, while Gates was silent until he was already twisting the knife.

You have to watch the staging in that video of Macworld in 1998. Bill is in full-on Big Brother mode. He is literally towering over one of the biggest egomaniacs in the computer industry and forcing him to graciously accept his new bankroller. Granted, it’s a simple exchange that allowed Gates to keep the feds off of Microsoft’s back and Steve Jobs to keep the company afloat until he could turn things around. In the Issacson biography, Jobs said that the whole thing made him look small and Apple look small. Though Gates said he was “embarrassed”, it was clear to everyone who had the power in the relationship.

Instead Ballmer mistakes moves like Scroogled! as the way to win customers back. Microsoft realizes that they have a significant investment in Facebook, right? Outlook is supposed to become a web brand to replace the aging Hotmail, which was such a concern for Bill Gates that he bought the company. The Surface and investment directly in Dell feel like the moves of a company worried about its place in the industry.

Anything that threatened the idea that the only relationship any company’s IT department needed was Microsoft was bought up and integrated or shut down. Microsoft didn’t name call, it shot your mother in the face and sold your house while you were at work. Bill Gates was the don, and he let everybody know. When Netscape caught Microsoft off-guard, they licensed IE from spy glass and didn’t pay them any royalties since they never actually sold any copies of the software. They also managed to push Netscape off a cliff with the free browser, as IE was integrated into the next version of Windows. That is how you smite a competitor and take over a smaller company. Now everyone in the industry has a hand in everyone else’s business and they all have to play nice. Google is paying for access to Apple’s search queries, Google maps on iOS distracted from the Apple maps issues, Amazon even made an App Store for Android, and it’s working to get toasters and refrigerators to have the Kindle app preinstalled.

Like our own Harry C. Marks said, Microsoft isn’t going anywhere. You could even cede the point that Apple is the new evil empire, but they’re just Imperial China, building walls to keep the barbarians back. Google is the USSR obsessed with peeking inside everyone’s business, and always ensuring everything’s fair. The villainous evil Microsoft was the Mongol empire: brutally efficient and the sort of villain you had to admire. Sadly, Scroogled proves that  the mongol Microsoft is long gone, replaced with a petulant salesman angry that you’re not buying his wares.

The post Missing The Evil Empire: Bring Back Microsoft appeared first on Macgasm.

Dear Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

You know that I loved you guys. I really did. There’s always been a space underneath my TV for your stuff. From the Sega MegaDrive through to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, I’ve bought pretty much all of them. Heck, I even bought a Sega Saturn, although sadly I think that I was probably one of the handful of people who did.

But I think I’ve bought my last games console. The farcical press conference “unveiling” the next PlayStation — although it’s fair to ask if it’s an unveiling when there’s nothing physical unveiled — was just the last straw. Yes, I’m sure that the next Playstation will be incredibly powerful, leading to a glut of games that rely on the shock and awe effect of their visuals, as opposed to good gameplay.

And that will only be after two years, when the game developers have actually managed to get their heads around the unique and probably pretty difficult to understand architecture. In the meantime, there will probably be one good flagship title and a lot of mediocre retreads of old favourites.

This is where Apple comes in. Because at present, as long as you’re not a hardcore shoot-em-up addict, the best gaming platform out there is iOS. From Letterpress to Osmosis to one of the thousand tricky little throwaway games that cost next to nothing on the App Store, the iOS games market is creative, fun, full of new ideas – and for users, cheap. You don’t have to spend $50 on a game only to find that it’s a half-baked rip-off of something you played on the original Xbox years ago.

There’s just one little piece of the jigsaw missing: A way to play all these incredible games in the living room. Yes, you can use AirPlay mirroring and an Apple TV to get your games on the big screen in the corner, but it’s an experience best described as… sub-optimal. But a faster, more powerful version of the same tiny black box could easily run iOS games all by itself, either with dedicated Bluetooth controllers – or using other iOS devices instead.

I know it’s coming. You know it’s coming – and I don’t for one second doubt that Sony, Microsoft and the rest know it’s coming too. Never mind getting the same old boring TV shows on the big screen – I want to play, to interact, to do crazy stuff. Not just sit back and watch the same old boring shows.

So sayonara Sony, goodbye Microsoft, and so long Nintendo. You guys were great. But there’s going to be a new player of games in town. And I’d much rather hitch my wagon to Apple than pay you yet more hundreds of dollars for a console with a handful of decent games (at indecent prices). Those days are over.

Love and kisses

Ian.

Image by Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

The post Apple To Games Consoles: Your Time Is Over appeared first on Macgasm.

Why, I remember it like it was yesterday. Every tech journalist, blogger, and pundit had his (or her, lest I get angry emails) finger on the pulse of a hot new television set coming out of Apple R&D. Actually, it was only yesterday. Following that gem came rumors of a larger iPhone because four inches just isn’t enough anymore.

Now, the Apple rumor factory (which, I’m assuming, is responsible for that rancid odor we all smell when a breeze wafts by) is rife with word of Jony Ive’s latest aluminium-clad objet d’art: a smartwatch.

The New York Times’ consistently wrong Nick Bilton has more:

In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products.

The “people familiar with the matter” must be the same “top men” currently examining the Ark of the Covenant.

I don’t doubt Apple is currently experimenting with different form factors for future devices — watches, glasses, contact lenses, vibrators — you name it, there’s probably a chamfered edge on it. But why all this fuss over a watch?

As I’m constantly being told on “the social media,” kids these days don’t wear watches. That’s what cell phones are for. My question: Why would an Apple-branded watch change that?

The other thing I’m told, and I’m told a lot of things, is to not think of it as a watch. Okay, let’s rename it. How about “the lazy man’s lock screen”? Or “wrist-mounted pornography transmitter”? They’re not as catchy as “iWatch”, but they get the basic premise across.

Writer and podcaster Mike Schechter wrote a piece arguing in favor of an Apple smartwatch after a polite argument we’d had on App.net:

Some of the mockups I’ve seen try to take what’s best about the iPhone and figure out what it would look like as a watch. How do we watch videos on the watch? How do we respond to texts? How do we check our email? Can we make calls on it? I think we’re making a mistake when we do this.

Why is this a mistake? If wearable computing is the future of tech, then the whole point of an “iWatch” will be to replace the phones in our pockets. Let’s dissect a few of the key features of this non-existent device people like to speculate on:

1. Making/receiving phone calls: Sounds easy enough. Tap the button and initiate a call. But if this comes out within the next year, will current iPhone users drop their 4-inch screens for 2-inches, or will they just add a new phone to their existing plans? ”Well, it’ll simply tether to your iPhone using Bluetooth,” is a common belief. Sounds great — a phone that already barely makes it through the day on a single charge will have one more thing sucking the life out of it for eight hours. And how will we talk into a watch-phone? I don’t feel comfortable screaming into my wrist in the middle of a Starbucks, so will Apple bundle a Bluetooth headset in the box, or will we be required to provide our own?
2. Nobody makes calls anymore. This will be for data: I love this argument, because it assumes a watch will be capable of providing nearly all the features currently offered by an iPhone or iPod touch. I can’t wait to surf the web on a device most likely no wider than a sixth-generation iPod nano. The thought of all that pinching and zooming gets me all tingly, like when I used to climb the ropes in gym class. And watching movies? So much cozier than on the gargantuan 4-inch iPhone’s screen. Seriously, who needs that much room?
3. But the main use will be to provide a glimpse at recent notifications: the same notifications present on the iPhone in your pocket, less than one foot away. We’ll be able to see new text messages, emails, tweets, and other alerts without having to go through the arduous task of reaching into our pants and whipping out a cumbersome slab of metal and glass. Could someone explain to me how useful that would be? If I get an alert for a new text message, I’ll want to respond to it immediately. That’s what a “wrist computer” is supposed to allow me to do. It will be nearly impossible to type on a screen so small, so what forms of input will an iWatch take? Dictation? This speaks to the concerns about speaking at one’s wrist in public.

Compounded on the awkwardness of yelling into your watch, there’s also the issue with dictation on iOS. Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant, requires an Internet connection in order to work. Dictating text messages, asking for directions, and looking up restaurant reviews all need a persistent connection to the Web. Sometimes, even that’s not enough.

It’s tough to argue that the biggest problems Siri faced at launch, and continues to face today, is that it sometimes doesn’t work, and oftentimes when it does, it’s annoyingly slow. Part of that is due to the network. Literally everything you send to Siri needs to go to Apple’s servers for parsing and back to your device before you get a response. That’s certainly understandable if the result set includes information stores on the internet, but for local tasks like setting an alarm, it’s a single point of unnecessary congestion and all too frequently, failure.

If an iWatch’s only method of input is voice and Siri is still unreliable even with a solid data connection on a phone, then no matter how fun or interesting this new device is, it will not be a useful tool.

But there’s another theory, which Mr. Schechter mentions near the end of his post:

I hope the iWatch can serve as the place where we see things, but do very little. I hope it shows me only what’s essential rather than attempting to show me everything.

Why? What’s the point of being able to see something flash on your wrist, only to have to pull out a second device in order to act upon it? Many of us would like to have better self-control when it comes to using our phones at the dinner table, but another expensive piece of machinery isn’t going fix the underlying problem. It may exacerbate it even more.

David Chartier also wrote up his “pro-iWatch” stance on his own site and likened Apple’s potential foray into wearable tech to its entrance into the smartphone market:

If wearable tech is The Next Big Thing, a watch is a great, focused canvas on which to start small. Unlike HDTVs, the smartwatch industry has not already been carved to pieces by a bunch of dominant competitors who starved each other of margins and innovation long ago. In fact, there aren’t any notable smartwatches to speak of—kinda like another market Apple just walked into six years ago.

He’s not wrong about the lack of compelling smartwatches currently available. Here’s an excerpt from Jamie Keene’s review of the Sony SmartWatch for the Verge:

A couple of issues do really stand out, though, especially the price. The extra $60 over the LiveView is largely explained by the improvements to the screen and materials, but $149.99 is a hefty chunk of change for something that’s a novelty for most people. Secondly, while the app selection is wider than I expected, with a niche product like this it could be an uphill struggle to get support from major developers. Its functionality is also inherently limited, with each of the apps providing only a few features and often forcing you to pull out your phone to react. The concept shows potential, but the SmartWatch doesn’t quite reach it.

A niche device that’s expensive, difficult to use, with apps less feature-filled than their phone-based counterparts. Doesn’t seem compelling. Nor is the idea of a “small, focused canvas” as Chartier calls it. There’s a reason painters paint on large swaths of cloth and not postage stamps. The less room you have to work, the less you’re able to accomplish.

Finally, the belief that most people do not wear watches is a myth. I sat in a conference room today with fifteen people and nine of them — men and women — all had wrist watches on. Each watch was different and each one was chosen for a specific reason, be it for its functionality or how it complemented that person’s attire.

I’ve written about this before, so I won’t rehash the “watches aren’t utilitarian, they’re jewelry” argument, but there’s a key part of all this not being addressed. Look at who is in favor of an Apple-branded smartwatch:

• MG Siegler
• David Chartier
• Mike Schechter
• David Caolo
• Nick Bilton
• Rob Bates
• Ariel Adams
• Bruce Tognazzini

Each one of those individuals is a guy. A dude. A man. In my quick, unscientific Google search for “Apple smartwatch”, I found only one article written by a woman — Nancy Blair for USA Today — while the rest were written by men. And even that article was just a re-report of the original reports of the rumors. She didn’t take a side.

In fact, all the articles I could find in favor of an Apple watch were written by men. Where are the women who want a large hunk of metal strapped to their wrists? Why haven’t we heard their voices?

If any women who read this site would care to weigh in, please leave a comment. I’d love to get a female perspective on this topic.

It’s obvious wearable tech is starting to come into…forgive me…fashion. The moderate successes of the Pebble smartwatch and the Nike+ Fuelband have solidified a future where our phones and computers will one day be worn somewhere on our bodies, but an Apple watch isn’t going to do anything better than what an iPhone is capable of today. It’s a form factor limited by its size and potential clientele.

Nerds may be clamoring for a tiny wearable computer, but I’m clamoring for a tiny usable one.

The post Candidly Speaking, An iWatch Is A Dumb Idea appeared first on Macgasm.

Tell me if you’ve heard the one about the 5-inch “iPhone Plus”. Turns out, when it goes swimming, it becomes the iPhone 4S [rim-shot].

A new rumor has been making the rounds and it predicts the arrival of a larger iPhone from Apple. This rumor was originally started by Chinese and Taiwanese news outlets, claiming Apple plans on releasing three new iPhones this year, all at different sizes and price points:

“Apple will announce three new iPhone models in 2013, and two of them, the 4-inch iPhone 5S and 4.8-inch iPhone Math (both featuring 8-mega-pixel cameras), will hit markets before the end of June.”

Marco Arment saw this rumor as being plausible and wrote an in-depth post about it:

“The recently rumored, larger-screened ‘iPhone Math’, or more likely ‘iPhone Plus’, is plausible as an additional model (not a replacement) alongside the 4” iPhone. And there’s a good chance that it would have a 4.94”, 16:9 screen.”

He even mocked up a few renderings of what a 5-inch iPhone might look like alongside the iPhone 5 and iPad mini and many people seem to agree with him. David Chartier is one:

“Regardless, Marco is right. However crazy a phone this size sounded back around 2007 and 08, they’re a staple now, and plenty of customers are surely passing up the iPhone based solely on the perception of a smaller, and therefore inferior, screen size.”

It wasn’t as far back as 2008 when people thought over-sized phones were “whack, yo” (we were still saying that back then, right?). Just last year, Jonathan S. Geller at Boy Genius Report wrote a piece titled “Samsung’s Galaxy Note is the Most Useless Phone I’ve Used“:

“The phone is too big. You will look stupid talking on it, people will laugh at you, and you’ll be unhappy if you buy it. I really can’t get around this, unfortunately, because Samsung pushed things way too far this time.”

Here’s Marco’s response:

“If even a BGR writer is saying this, I think we’ll look back on the last few months as the period when a trend even bigger than the Galaxy Note jumped the shark.”

Obviously, the Note is half an inch larger than the rumored 5-inch iPhone and it’s certainly possible that Marco changed his mind in the last year, but what is the use case for a 5-inch iPhone? Where’s the necessity? What isn’t currently achievable on an iPhone 5 or iPad mini that could be done better on an incrementally-larger iPhone?

It was only a few weeks ago when Apple had to release a smaller, cheaper iPhone in order to compete — that without an inexpensive iPhone nano available off-contract, Apple was doomed to fail. Now Apple is supposed to release a larger, more expensive iPhone, otherwise it’s doomed to fail? Or should Apple release both, thus expanding the iPhone line to four phones at four different sizes and price levels? Will we then cheer the choices Apple has afforded us because hey, at least they’re not Android phones?

Felix Salmon wrote about this when Apple unveiled the iPad mini:

“Apple’s job, when it developed this device, was not to create something to compete with the Nook HD+. Rather, it was to build something which fit easily into the existing lineup, right between the iPod Touch and the iPad, and which would delight its customers as much as those two products do.”

It’s a widely held belief Apple does not enter a product into the market unless said product has a purpose for being there. The iPhone was a revolution in response to years of terrible smartphones. The iPad re-ushered in a new era of computing. The iPhone 5 and iPad mini were built to answer the very real demand for slightly larger phones and smaller, more portable tablets, but what question does an even larger iPhone answer? Do these cargo shorts have big enough pockets to accommodate my insecurities?

When netbooks were all the rage several years ago, pundits and bloggers proclaimed Apple dead in the water without a netbook of its own. Then came the iPad and netbooks all but vanished back into the cheaply built primordial ooze from whence they came.

Microsoft reacts to other companies’ products. BlackBerry reacts. Samsung reacts. Google reacts. Apple influences. Apple releases what it thinks will sell and only if the product has a place among its siblings. An “iPhone Plus” doesn’t scratch an itch. Just because the Galaxy S III is wildly popular doesn’t mean a 5-inch iPhone is necessary in an already tight device lineup. And contrary to popular belief, customers aren’t exactly passing up Apple’s current offerings.

I won’t go so far as to make the mistake of saying Apple will never release a larger iPhone — we’ve been surprised before — but I don’t see a need for one as long as the iPad mini and iPhone 5 are around.

The post The iPhone Plus Is A Potential Minus appeared first on Macgasm.

The Apple rumor mill is all fun and games until it starts to affect the stock prices. Not just Apple’s stock price, but the stock prices of their suppliers, partners, and everyone else they seem connected to these days. Even Seeking Alpha can’t help itself from pointing out that some of Apple’s partners didn’t fare so well on the Japanese exchange because of “flat earnings” reported yesterday. Heck, according to the BBC, Sharp and ACC, makers of displays and speakers for the iPhone 5 respectively, are both facing a decline in their stock price after rumors surfaced in a Japanese newspaper that Apple was halving its component orders for the iPhone 5. This is where the usual Apple rumor mill begins to have real consequences for Apple’s business partners.

It’d be hard to imagine Apple news without the rumors. The company’s PR team is notoriously tight-lipped, and secrecy is the only real cult inside Cupertino. The story from the Nikkei newspaper did diverge from the usual Apple supply chain rumors; it wasn’t about what was coming next, but about the company facing a real shortcoming in demand for its flagship device. This report hit the Wall Street Journal and the entire Internet seemed to be at their keyboard, reading what was being said. Instead of giving you the play by play, you can look at the Branch discussion here to get the idea what the heavy hitters in Apple’s corner were thinking at the time. Long story short, a poorly sourced rumor turned out to be just that.

Here’s the thing, this time Apple writers were more than happy to take the time to suss out exactly how poorly sourced this rumor was, which is something that doesn’t really happen too often these days. Hell, we’re guilty of it ourselves. The only reason they did this was because this story was massively negative about Apple, and seemed to be so out of step with the company’s normal performance. What happens if you apply this logic to almost every rumor you hear about the next iPhone, Touchscreen Macs, and, the unicorn of Apple rumors, the TV. Most of those don’t hold up either. Thing is, it’s not just Apple that this is happening to these days either. Just yesterday fake claims about the upcoming Xbox 720 circulated the Internet like wildfire, only to end up being a giant hoax.

Journalists who did some actual digging about the constraint rumors turned out to be right, because when Apple released its earnings, there should have been more than enough growth to quash many of the doubters. iPhone sales were up ten million, and iPad sales were up seven and a half million. The Mac and iPod stories showed a less rosy story, but these aren’t enough to begin calling the company a has-been. Tim Cook actually called out the supply rumors directly in the earnings call. Sane pundits were proven right again, as they have been in the past. Apple has a tremendous quarter, but for some reason, stocks were down, down, down.

There is an entire ecosystem writing about Apple news: granted most of us are doing our best to write about apps and tools, and only reporting on the rumors that become too big to ignore. Where does this voracious appetite for rumors come from? Apple’s insistence to remain in radio silence except in controlled releases. Of course the company shouldn’t be commenting on unreleased products, but responding to almost every press inquiry with an emphatic “No Comment” is not necessary. There was a lot of back and forth about the legality of commenting on these rumors, but it’s clear their refusal to comment is now affecting their business partners.

Sharp and AAC are both going to face some insistent questions from their board about the significant drops in their share prices. If the answer to that question is Apple’s radio silence, it may be more trouble than it’s worth to keep selling to Apple in the long run. That is still a long way off. The company still has a lot of sheen left from a decade of solid innovations, and they sell enough that these companies are generating enough revenue to put up with Cupertino’s eccentricities. However, competition is going to get tougher in smartphones and tablets, not easier. A headache can become a migraine in no time at all.

That isn’t to say that we’re about to watch the company descend into an 80s era funk until it’s back at the verge of bankruptcy. Anyone who tells you that Apple is doomed didn’t pay attention to Steve’s allergic reaction to recreating the past. The cult of secrecy in Apple was all about ensuring the buzz around every product was cacophonous. Pay attention to the press story around every release of an Apple product, and after getting past the gee whiz factor and the fact sheets, you’ll see that the next story is a run down of what the rumor mill got right.

Apple shouldn’t spend its time confirming every new rumor about an in-development product, but they could start squashing the outright delusional. Stupid is stupid, and stupid should be pointed out where possible. That’s a small step that would help with the disappointment that inevitably comes when rumors outpace reality. Then you have these types of number rumors that we see from the supply chain. These can be commented on without disclosing new tech. Apple may not want to deal with the press, but it’s created an economy of rumor. It’s done a lot to generate buzz for the company but a failure to understand that economy could cost Apple its business partnerships.

Tim Cook, during the latest financial call, did address the supply constraint rumors in his own way. From the looks of it, we could be entering a new era for Apple. Calling B.S. rumors B.S. is a noble pursuit, and we would welcome the change. It would be nice to have someone setting the record straight when garbage rumors come across our desk.

The post Is Secrecy Apple’s Real Achilles Heel When It Comes To Wall Street? appeared first on Macgasm.

Apple releases its financial results, which show growth pretty much across the board despite a short quarter and availability issues. It banks another $16 billion or so to bring its cash hoard to close to $140 billion. And it reveals that it’s made a colossal $50 billion profit for the year.

The response? A stock price that drops massively in after hours trading.

For the average Apple fan, the most likely response is to wonder what exactly Wall Street is smoking. While companies like Amazon barely turn a profit but appear to be darlings of the stock market, Apple gets pounded while having more in the bank than the GDP of Hungary, and making the fourth largest quarterly profit of any company, ever. What the hell is going on?

Trust me: it’s not that everyone on Wall Street is a secret Google and Microsoft fanatic who gets bought lunch by Larry Page on a weekly basis. But in order to begin to understand what’s happening, you need to know a little bit about markets and how they work, and remember that they are only semi-rational at the best of times.

One indicator of how the market considers a stock is the price to earnings ratio (P/E), which is simply the market price per share divided by annual earnings per share. A high P/E usually indicates that the market believes that although the company might not be making so much profit per share right now, it has the potential to earn a lot more in the future, usually by growing the company. A low P/E, on the other hand, particularly compared to stocks in the same sector, usually means the market thinks it’s likely to decline in value.

If you look at the P/E, Apple is nowhere near over the top in price compared to other tech stocks in the same category. Prior to the fall in share price yesterday, its P/E was around 11. That puts it closer to companies in declining markets or companies that are having problems, like Dell (around 8). For comparison, Acer – not exactly setting the world on fire at the moment – has a (slightly insane) P/E of 117. Lenovo, which is pretty much only in the declining PC market, is at 20. Microsoft, which is largely owned by investors for its dividends these days, has a P/E of around 14.

Effectively, Apple’s current share price is only rational if you believe that not only will its future revenues not grow – they’ll actually decline. Given that its two largest product segments – smartphones and tablets – are ones where the size of the overall market continues to grow (and in the case of tablets, is actually at the bottom of the growth curve), you’d have to believe that Apple products will, at some point in the not-too-distant future, simply stop selling.

In growing markets, that would take a Nokia-esque fumble. It would require Apple’s product development and management team to go, overnight, from proven high quality to RIM-style “headless chickens”. It’s about as likely as Sergey Brin skydiving into Cupertino to present Tim Cook with a gold-plated Nexus.

All of this makes little sense, but it makes me wonder whether Wall Street is effectively “punishing” Apple for how it’s using its cash significant dividends. Did investors buy the stock believing it would have to start paying big dividends soon, simply to stop its cash pile growing?

Apple could easily do this. A regular $2–4 per share dividend would probably not even eat into the cash pile at the rate it’s been growing (it would amount to about $2–5 billion per time – and it added close to $16bn to the cash pile in the last quarter alone). This might (artificially) bolster the share price, and make shareholders happy in the short term.

But you have to assume that Tim Cook and his team have better plans for the money than simply giving it to shareholders. What those plans are, no one outside Cook and his team really know. And until Apple starts to give stronger signals of what its plans for that cash pile is, it will be hard for Wall Street to work out exactly what its prospects for future growth – or dividends – might be.

Image Credit: Michael Daddino

The post Why Does Wall Street Think Apple Is Worth So Little? appeared first on Macgasm.

Are you ready to give your soul over to a higher power? Sorry, that seems a bit preachy. What I meant to say was, “Are you ready to tell Facebook even more about yourself?”

This Tuesday, Facebook held a press event to unveil its new Facebook Graph Search feature, which it’s slowly rolling out to the service’s one billion users in the coming months.

Facebook Graph Search allows you to execute a series of natural language queries, such as “Friends who like Star Wars and are under 25 years old”, and then use the filtered results to…um…do something. Maybe plan a movie night for people who can’t yet rent cars? I don’t know.

Regardless of its uses to users, Facebook certainly knows how it’s going to exploit use this data and it rhymes with “flonetization.” As usual, the more Facebook knows about you, the better it can target ads at your face while you surf the site. Of course, this assumes you use Facebook the way Facebook expects you to use Facebook.

Many of my Facebook friends are average users, they post politically-charged and ill-informed status updates, photos of their lunch, and play any number of games ending in “ville.” For the most part, however, they don’t take advantage of the other services Facebook offers, such as the Foursquare-esque check-in feature when they post from specific locations. They don’t go crazy “liking” stores or restaurants without otherwise being coaxed by coupons or free offers.

In other words, my friends don’t give Facebook enough information to make this feature worth the forthcoming apology about privacy settings Zuckerberg has probably drafted by now. Obviously, this is just anecdotal evidence and may not be evidence of how others view or use Facebook, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out many users are afraid or reticent to hand over their data. Remember, tweens aren’t the only demographic there anymore — old farts like me are using it more (and I’m not even 30 yet).

Part of the problem is that Facebook doesn’t exactly make it easy for users to change their privacy settings and once they have, those same settings change again when Facebook rolls out a new update.

The other issue — and the far bigger one — is that Facebook has grown so big, it’s become untrustworthy. Like the Microsofts, Apples, and Googles that came before, Facebook has grown from a cool site to stalk your ex-girlfriends with, to “OMFG Facebook is stalking me!”

Adriana Lee wrote about this for TechnoBuffalo in August 2011:

Technically, Facebook does mention contacts syncing in at least some of their mobile terms. And technically, they do give people the ability to turn it off, which isn’t actually that hard to do — but only if (a) you know how, and (b) you can find where to do it. But good luck with all that, since any guidance from Facebook is also not very obvious. (To make this easier, we put some guidance for you below, at the bottom.)

There’s only one word that springs to mind here: Obfuscation. It’s like they’re hiding things in plain sight.

And here’s the kicker: Now that people have caught on to this, the company’s asking us to trust that it won’t do anything sneaky with the data — the same data that too many people didn’t even realize they were sharing.

Facebook has depended on its labyrinth of settings and its lack of granularity to — if not confuse its users — make it increasingly difficult for them to hide their information from prying eyes.

Compounded upon the lack of trust is the increasing irrelevance of “liking” brands and celebrities. When Facebook first started, we simply typed out comma-separated lists of bands, books, movies, stores, and other ephemera because it was all we could do to identify ourselves. We didn’t have “pages” for Amazon or Visa. There was no Bubble Witch Saga to distract us from our daily lives. In my day, we had status updates and profile pictures and we liked it. Not like kids today, with their newfangled skinny jeans and Instawhatsits. When I was a kid, all my pictures had lens flares because I was a terrible photographer. Now I can upload a picture that looks like crap because I wanted it to look that way.

Sorry, I blacked out for a minute there. Where was I?

Oh, right. We don’t have to adorn our profiles with numerous “likes” anymore. That’s not how we personalize our “brands” (oh, that word) on Facebook. We do it by sharing photos and links to articles we’ve read. We tell the world what’s making us sad and then click on an ad for a depression clinic under our timeline. Who we are on Facebook is defined less by what we like and more by what we share. How does this factor into the Graph Search? If we’re “liking” less — if we’re not taking the time to visit a bar’s Facebook page and leave a review — then how useful will a search like, “Bars nearby that my friends liked,” be? Don’t we typically use Yelp for that sort of thing?

But, perhaps I’m not seeing the “big picture” here. Maybe something like Facebook Graph Search will nudge us to share more, to interact with Facebook more often and on a deeper level. This new feature could end up being the “killer app” Facebook needed to remain popular while so many other services are vying for our attention. And from a technical standpoint, this is something I’d love to see spread across to all sorts of websites like Amazon and Netflix.

“Which movies starring Humphrey Bogart do I not own on Blu-Ray?”

“Which of my friends had the industrial-size barrel of personal lubricant on their Wishlists?”

The possibilities are endless.

Though, crossing the streams like that might result in some less-than-pleasant social experiences:

Amused, I posted it to Facebook with the line “A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.” And then I went on with my life.

A week later, a friend posts a screen capture and tells me that my post has been showing up next to his news feed as a sponsored story, meaning Amazon is paying Facebook to highlight my link to a giant tub of personal lubricant.

Other people start reporting that they’re seeing it, too. A fellow roller derby referee. A former employee of a magazine I still write for. My co-worker’s wife. They’re not seeing it just once, but regularly. Said one friend: “It has shown up as one on mine every single time I log in.”

Facebook: Bringing us closer together, one slimy handshake at a time.

The post Facebook Wants a Deeper Look Inside Your Kimono appeared first on Macgasm.

This week, I was lucky enough to see a creature so rare I was getting to the point where I thought I’d never see one. Yes, sitting in a cafe there was someone who I thought only really existed in Steve Ballmer’s fevered imagination: a real, live Microsoft Surface user.

Predictably, they weren’t using it as a tablet. Instead it sat on the table with its little kick-stand folded out and its keyboard ready, being typed on, just as if it were a regular laptop. Which, I’d argue, is actually closer to what the Surface is good for than the conventional idea of it as a competitor to the likes of the iPad or Android’s finest, the Nexus 10.

When you consider the bigger picture from Microsoft’s perspective, the Surface makes a kind of sense. Over the past few years, Microsoft has watched as the average selling price of a Windows-running laptop has dropped, thanks largely to netbooks and ever-cheaper laptops of all kinds. In 2008, the average selling price of a Windows laptop was $700. Today, it’s down to $429. By comparison, the average Mac laptop sells for over $1,400.

Microsoft’s aim with the Surface is two-fold. First, of course, it needs to stem the tide of iPads entering the enterprise market almost by stealth. Microsoft regards enterprise sales as its home territory, so when blue-chip corporations like Barclays are buying thousands of iPads because of demand for them from employees, they need to do something, otherwise they’re going to end up in deep trouble. The Surface is good enough for enterprise IT guys (and gals) to try and persuade their users that “you can’t have an iPad, but you can have one of these”. Although the “bring your own device” trend is widely viewed as the future of corporate IT, the Microsoft-loving techies still have enough clout to push users towards a Microsoft solution if they have to.

But the Surface is more than just a defensive move to protect enterprise IT accounts: it’s also designed to tempt people to replace all those millions of netbooks that were sold a few years ago, and which are going to start to need upgrading pretty soon. Netbooks were a disaster for Microsoft, because the minuscule margins that PC makers got from them made the price they paid to Microsoft for Windows a big proportion of the cost. When you’re selling a laptop for $250 retail, paying Microsoft its $50 for Windows looks like bad business.

Te Surface is more expensive than the average netbook, but even its harshest critics would acknowledge that it is a much more capable device than the low-end, plasticky rubbish that’s become synonymous with the whole netbook concept. For anyone considering an upgrade from a netbook, the Surface looks like a good deal: you get a machine that looks laptop-like, but can also function as a tablet if you want it to.

The Surface is designed to be a netbook that you can also use occasionally as a tablet. This is the reverse of the approach that Apple has taken, because the iPad is a tablet first and foremost, but can be used like a netbook if you need to. Apple sought to create an entirely new category of product: the Surface is a hybrid designed to get people to dump their netbooks in favour of something familiar, but more modern – and more expensive.

Will the Surface be a success as a potential upgrade to the netbook? It’s possible, although Microsoft will have to do a lot better with its distribution and availability if it wants to sell the Surface in serious numbers. But Microsoft doesn’t have a choice: the Surface has to work, because if the product doesn’t, Microsoft risks the gradual erosion of its market position in the enterprise and at the low end of the PC market. And that would leave it in serious trouble.

Photo courtesy of bfishadow

The post The iPad And The Surface: A Tale Of Two Tablets appeared first on Macgasm.

It’s the talk of the town all over the blogosphere…mainly because there’s nothing else to talk about. A bug in iOS 6 appeared at the start of the new year that affects users of the system’s Do Not Disturb feature. Normally, Do Not Disturb automatically deactivates at a set time each day, but this bug prevents that from happening, which means the user must painstakingly go into Settings, then flick the Do Not Disturb switch to the “Off” position. How dreadful.

The “DND Bug”, as it is being referred to on Twitter, is only a few days old and will automatically fix itself come January 7th, but that won’t stop the tech press from beating their collective chests and performing what I like to call, “The Hell-Block Tango”.

I shall now perform a one-man version of this number in three parts.

Cue the chorus: “He had it comin‘, he had it comin’, he only had himself to blame…”

Step 1: The Name

Every Apple flaw, from the littlest non-issue to the mildly annoying, needs a catchy title — something that looks good in a headline and equates a minor glitch to one of the biggest political scandals in history. So, what shall we call this one? “Do-Not-Disturb-pocalypse”? How about “DND-tastrophe”?

I know: “Do-Not-Disturb-gate.” Yeah, that will look great plastered across the top of the Huffington Post’s Tech page and every article Dan Lyons writes from now until the next Mayan Apocalypse.

I can picture the headlines now:

• “Does Do-Not-Disturb-Gate Signify a Chink in Apple’s Armor?”
• “10 Reasons Why Apple Must Hold a Press Conference About Do-Not-Disturb-Gate”
• “Do-Not-Disturb-Gate: The End of the Age of Jobs at Apple?”

Step 2: The Outrage

“…If you’d have been there, if you’d have seen it…”

Now that we have a name in place, let’s focus on how we can leverage that name for maximum page views and retweets. The headlines are already written, but what about the content? Easy.

First, every article should start with a story about how I grew up with Apple products and have been using them for the last 20 years. Bonus points if I’ve ever waited in line for any of them.

Once my credibility as a commentator on anything Apple has been established, I need to convey a tone reminiscent of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a tone of disappointment and fatherly condescension.

Observe:

“For years, Apple was an innovative engine with an uncanny attention to detail. Under Jobs’s watch, Apple released only flawless products and something like Do-Not-Disturb-Gate never would’ve happened if he was still alive.”

I know the truth is only a Google search away, but as a tech writer with an agenda, the truth would hurt my narrative, so I’ll blissfully ignore reality and substitute my own instead.

That kind of article will be satisfactory for a site like ZDNet or CNET, but for the heavy-hitters of link-baiting like Business Insider and Gizmodo, I’ll need something even more cringe-worthy. It needs to be an article so awful, it makes people who read it think, “This man is unwell.” I know — I’ll write an open letter. No, wait — a break-up letter.

“Dear iPhone,

You and I have had some pretty great times together. There was that trip to Antigua we took last year where we went swimming with the dolphins. Well, I went swimming — you stayed on the boat like a big scaredy cat and took pictures. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel, I poured us some champagne, and…

Then there was this past Christmas when we went to visit my parents. They loved you, but they thought you were too skinny. They said you looked better a few years ago when you had some meat on your bones. I told them they were crazy and that I was a grown man and if I wanted to sleep with my phone in the same bed, I had a right. It didn’t matter that we weren’t married yet.

Those were all good times, but lately, you’ve been dropping the ball. First, there was the antenna fiasco where you wouldn’t let me touch you when you were naked. You said I was holding you wrong. After that, there was “Mapsgate”. You kept getting us lost even though you swore you knew where you were going. And now you won’t talk to me during the day, but you’ll keep me up all night with alerts and messages thanks to “Do-Not-Disturb-Gate”.

Well, iPhone, I’ve had enough.”

See? This job is so easy, any chimp with a keyboard and access to Business Insider’s CMS could do it. The best part is I don’t have to worry about editors mucking up my prose with “facts” and “context.” This is pure, unadulterated crap direct from the manufacturer.

Of course, these articles fail to convey the immediate, reactionary anger I feel the way Twitter does, so I’ll rattle off a few surly tweets to my many followers, all of whom will retweet me as willful endorsers of the man unafraid to stand up to the glossy-white monolith.

Here are some examples:

• “Missed a whole bunch of @ replies this morning due to DND bug. #AppleFail”
• “DND glitch let three text msgs get through @ 3am. So angry. And tired. COFFEE. #AppleSux”
• “Switching to Android. Not sure if Galaxy Nexus S III myTouch 4G Only On Verizon is running latest software, but it won’t have DND bug. #ByeByeApple”

By now, the damage is done and my chances of ever receiving an invitation to an Apple event have dwindled into negative numbers. Where do I go from here?

Step 3: Who’s Next?

“…I betcha you would have done the same.”

The beauty of faux Apple scandals is that when one ends, another is just a hit-piece away. Someone’s iPhone bowed while it was in his back pocket under the weight of his tuchas?

• “Apple Must Recall iPhone 5 Due to Fatal Design Flaw”

Tim Cook sold a large amount of shares for millions of dollars?

• “Apple CEO Loses Faith in Company, Sells Most of His Stock”

Google just released a new app for iOS?

• “Google Destroying Apple from the Inside-Out. Here’s How”

So many trivial bugs pervade Apple’s product line, there’s no end to the number of poorly researched articles one could write about the company. And this Do Not Disturb fiasco is just one of the many we’ll forget until the next “Gate” surfaces.

To paraphrase Billy Flynn toward the end of Chicago, “You’re a flash in the pan. In a few weeks, no one’s gonna give a crap about you.”

That’s the tech press.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Do-Not-Disturb-Gate Sparks Imaginary Outrage Among Tech Press appeared first on Macgasm.

The rumours of an Apple smart watch remind me a little of Jack Nicholson’s character in Kubrick’s epic The Shining. Just when you think he’s gone, he reappears, even more crazy.

And crazy is what I think this rumour is. The more you look at it, the more the idea of an Apple smart watch sinks into a morass of stupidity. It makes about as much sense as an Apple coffee grinder – in fact, coffee is probably a better bet.

If you look at Apple’s recent history, it’s all about entering a growing market early with a high-margin, premium product, preferably in a form that revolutionizes the entire category. The iPhone was launched into the nascent market for smartphones, with margins that dwarfed the competition, and completely reshaped what smartphones were all about. The iPad took a product type that had been moribund for years – the tablet PC – and breathed new life into it, leaving competitors scrabbling to catch up.

On the surface, the market for smart watches looks a bit like tablet computers. The concept has been around for years, but has never taken off. Previous smart watches have been clunky, with poor user interfaces and limited connectivity. They’ve also often looked like they’ve been designed by a committee of geeks, determined to fit as many buttons and dials on to the watch as possible.

With a market like that, maybe it makes sense for Apple to sweep into the smart watch market and remake it, as it has with the iPad and iPhone in their respective markets. But there are a few problems.

First, watches aren’t generally a growing market, and nor are they new. Wearing a watch is something that less and less people do, as they have access to the time on more and more devices. When I’m working, I have my laptop in front of me, which has the time in the corner. When I’m out, it’s almost as easy to pull out my iPhone as it is to look at my wrist.

Where watches are still popular is mostly at the luxury end of the market. Expensive watches don’t sell in the massive volumes that the average wrist watch used to, but they are proving to have enduring popularity, particularly among male style aficionados.

But despite its big margins, “luxury”, despite the perception, isn’t really what Apple does. As one of John Gruber’s readers pointed out, Apple makes premium products rather than luxuries. And luxury watches are not something that people buy and replace on a regular basis. You buy a Patek Phillipe once in your lifetime, if you’re lucky. Even with a high margin product, that’s not the kind of market that Apple wants to get into.

The one area where Apple could make a splash with a watch-like accessory that would made sense is a low-cost, premium accessory for the iPhone and iPad. Something like the Nike Fuelband, with a simple design and limited functionality for controlling your iOS device, would be an option. But that’s not so much a smart watch as a smart remote control.

But that’s a long way from the smart watch of geek fantasy, and an even longer way from the all-singing, all-dancing watch of The Jetsons. Don’t expect that from Apple any time soon.

Image credit: krunkwerke

The post Why There Won’t Be An Apple Smart Watch appeared first on Macgasm.

And then one day, that same social network comprised of black-and-white pictures of artisanal lattes makes an inconsequential and logical change to the existing terms of service, thus setting off a chain of incensed blog posts proclaiming the end of days.

The culprit in question is Instagram and here’s the updated legal jargon it recently hoisted upon users:

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

This legalese sounds ominous and “Draconian,” but it’s actually not too far from Facebook’s own terms of service:

Facebook Ads are sometimes paired with social actions your friends have taken. For example, an ad for a sushi restaurant may be paired with a news story that one of your friends likes that restaurant’s Facebook page.

This is the same type of news story that could show up in your News Feed, only we place it next to a paid advertisement to make that ad more relevant and interesting.

The things you share and “Like” on Facebook can influence the ads you receive in your timeline, as well as be used by advertisers to promote their own products or services.

At least Nilay Patel at The Verge took the time to sift through Instagram’s legalese and provide a clear picture of the situation:

The new terms actually make things clearer and — importantly — more limited. That “on, about, or in conjunction” with language is dead and gone. Now you’re only agreeing that someone else can pay Instagram to display your photos and other information only in connection with paid or sponsored content. These phrases have very specific meanings — Instagram can’t sell your photos to anyone, for example.

But by the time his explanation was published, it was too late. The pandemic had already spread to a sensationalistic tech media that didn’t read Instagram’s terms of service the first time.

Once again, Nilay Patel:

Instagram has always had the right to use your photos in ads, almost any way it wants. We could have had the exact same freakout last week, or a year ago, or the day Instagram launched.

Every time a company makes changes to how they handle user data, all hell breaks loose and outrage spreads across the other social networks like an STD of crazy.

But why? Why do we get so upset about every little modification to the terms of use for services we don’t actually pay for?

Part of the problem stems from a fear of change. We get used to our timelines looking a certain way and how our photos are shared with our followers.

We became comfortable with Instagram as our preferred method of sharing our photos from our iPhones, but then the filters changed and they weren’t as good as what we had before.

After that came the Android app and suddenly iPhone users weren’t the cool kids anymore — even Phil Schiller closed his account.

Finally, Facebook bought the company for $1 billion and many users thought that was the end of Instagram. Zuckerberg was going to absorb the team, kill the apps, and build the filters into Facebook. That didn’t happen, but it didn’t stop paranoid and angry blog posts from being written.

Fear wasn’t the only thing fueling paranoid bloggers. There was also a feeling of betrayal. It was us, the users, who had made Instagram a $1 billion success. We uploaded photographs of our lattes adorned with lens flares and shared them on Twitter. It didn’t matter that we weren’t paying for it because this is the Internet and everything good should be free because exposure and open and bits.

It was this kind of mentality that led to angry, entitled articles like the one by Nathan Bransford at CNet:

WordPress shouldn’t be able to publish books pulled from people’s blogs. The makers of canvas and paint don’t own a painting. Providing the platform shouldn’t mean the company then owns and profits from the creation.

You may not think much of your friend’s pet photos. You may even think Instagram is a bastion of hipster artistes who are getting their just deserts (filtered in Lo-Fi, natch). But if there’s money to be made directly off of someone’s content, it should accrue to the creator.

The whole “slippery slope” argument regarding social networks is a non-starter. First, WordPress makes its money from third-party advertising on its free sites and from the users who pay for additional upgrades and services. WordPress isn’t self-publishing minimal linked-lists for the Amazon Kindle.

Secondly, how is a company that refuses to accept payments from users supposed to make money? Instagram did not offer paid accounts as an option and as much as we would’ve loved to have handed over our credit cards for a premium version of the service, it was never going to happen. The only two options were to either get bought by a bigger company or introduce ads to the service. Instagram (with Facebook’s help) did both.

The feeling of betrayal is understandable for about five seconds, and then it’s simply petty and childish. This was a “free” photo sharing service with no income other than what was provided through venture capital investments. It was also another social network in a long line of social networks that clearly stated its intentions for user-generated content with regard to advertising and monetization. Terms of service exist for a reason and those who choose to skip them (or pull quotes out of context) and click “Accept” have no right to complain.

But lo, what light through yonder Lo-Fi filter breaks? It is a blog post from Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom clarifying the new terms for the people who didn’t take the time to read them the first time:

The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.

This sounds like a cop-out, an appeasement to a few angry bloggers who (once again) blew the situation out of proportion and published their panicky FUD without getting their facts straight.

But, regardless, it’s a clear answer to a non-problem stirred up by the tech media. So, place your pitchforks and torches on the ground and go back to your homes. There’s nothing more to see here. You got what you wanted: An apology from a company that gave you something for nothing, then dared to make money from it. How awful of Instagram to think it had any right to do such an evil thing as monetize its business in order to sustain itself.

I forgot that on the Internet, no one likes ads and no one wants to pay for what they use. That must be why there are so many startups operating out of the kindness of their hearts.

The post Incensedagram appeared first on Macgasm.

Finally, it’s here: the saviour of iOS 6, the biggest thing to hit the platform since, well, forever. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the one you’ve all been waiting for – it’s Google Maps!

That, of course, is a little bit of an exaggeration. There will be bigger and more important apps to hit the platform, but there will be few that have as much of an impact on the public. When an app release makes the pages of national newspapers – in print, no less – you know it’s gone well beyond the circle-jerking, gossip-laden geek blogosphere. So much for Maps being “in limbo“.

And Google Maps isn’t just a quick and dirty port of the Android version, or a lame window that just pulls in the website. Its interface actually makes the Android Maps app look like something put together by a group of part-time open source coders. If I was Phil Schiller, I’d add Google Maps to the list of apps to use for a side-by-side comparison in keynotes, showing off how much better iOS apps are.

It’s not just Maps where Google’s iOS programmers are showing up their Android colleagues. The recently released update to Gmail has had some Android users wondering if Google is neglecting them.

The fact that Google is, on one hand, creating great applications for iOS and, on the other, fighting tooth and nail for market share against it makes me wonder if the company is divided into two factions, with a battle raging between them over its future direction. On one side, there’s the group that want to promote Android as a coherent product, and beat Apple into a pulp with it. Whenever Eric Schmidt talks about Android as “winning” against Apple, or Vic Gundotra appears on stage talking about iOS representing a “Draconian future”, they’re speaking from the heart of the “Product” faction.

On the other side, there are the “Pragmatists”. These are the ones who realise Google makes its money from advertising, not directly from selling products. And creating more effective ads needs data, which it gets from people using its services. The data that Google gathers from iOS users using its maps is valuable. That data, and the more-effective ads it enables, is what makes Google its money.

To think about it another way, if you’re an Android user, you’re a Google services user almost by definition. If you’re an iOS user, you’re not — and so Google has to work harder to keep you within its ecosystem. It’s iOS apps HAVE to be really good. If they are not, there’s a decent chance that iOS users will, sooner or later, stop using Google services altogether in favour of their Apple equivalents. And that means no data, and no data means no money to keep Larry Page in rollerblades

At the moment, I think the Pragmatists within Google are in the driving seat. However, that’s not necessarily always going to be true. Having the world’s most popular smartphone operating system is a once-in-a-century opportunity, a chance for Google to break out of its services and advertising niche. There’s no doubt that the company has cast a jealous eye at Apple’s seemingly unstoppable rise, and the attendant profits being made up in Cupertino.

If the Product faction wins out, one day there will be an end to the kinds of excellent iOS apps that make the Android fans turn green with envy. But until that happens, we should all take time tomorrow to look a little smug, and show off how much better our Google apps are than theirs.

The post What Google Maps For iOS Tells Us About The Battle For Google’s Future appeared first on Macgasm.

An article recently made the rounds declaring Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 as failures, stating that Microsoft is not only unable to compete in markets currently dominated by Apple and Google, but that it has begun its rotation around the drain.

Microsoft has gone from a position of overwhelming power in software and games to one where they have to pay developers to port. This is usually the death knell for a platform, and most developers are already looking away to greener pastures. The strongest draw for consumers died with Windows 8, and pay to play is not sustainable even with Microsoft’s deep pockets. The sales of products will never justify third party investments at this point, without Windows 7 and earlier compatibility, there is no market.

So, Microsoft is struggling to find developers to write apps for its new platforms, namely Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. It’s also losing market share to Apple, as Apple is the only company consistently growing in the PC market. This story sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?

Ah, that’s right: TIME, January 23, 1996:

The smaller Apple’s market share gets, and it’s now at about 10 percent, the less appeal it has to software developers.” As a result, Apple is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up in a market that places a high premium on new software applications. Jackson concludes: “That doesn’t mean that the Mac operating system will disappear, but it may mean that the Apple company will disappear.”

We all know what happened after that. Steve Jobs came back, resurrected his company, and grew it into the behemoth we all think we know and sometimes love when it’s convenient.

Microsoft is not Apple. No company is like Apple and no CEO — especially Ballmer — is like Steve Jobs, but pundits are writing companies’ obituaries well before the doctor calls the time of death.

Here’s a little perspective:

Apple’s sales figures for fiscal year 1996 were $9.83 billion with a net loss of $816 million. That was down from $11.1 billion in sales and up from $424 million in losses the year before. This was the time when analysts and industry insiders were declaring Apple “dead in the water” and unable to regain footing in a Microsoft-dominated computing landscape.

Microsoft’s earnings for fiscal year 2011 were as follows:

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record revenue of $69.94 billion, a 12% increase from the prior year. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the year were $27.16 billion, $23.15 billion, and $2.69, which represented increases of 13%, 23%, and 28%, respectively, when compared with the prior year.

Apple’s revenue adjusted for inflation would’ve amounted to $13.63 billion, a whopping $56.31 billion less than what Microsoft made last year. We can joke about the Surface RT’s “modest sales” and how the iPad is killing competitors, but don’t mistake Surface’s initial bombing for a complete failure by the company.

As of November 27th, Microsoft had sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses to customers, businesses, and OEMs. Windows has always been Microsoft’s big money maker and it looks like that trend is continuing, even in an increasingly mobile-dominated world.

Obviously, the company has serious inroads to make in mobile and buying Nokia was a good start. Now it has to gain support from both carriers and developers to make Windows Phone 8 appealing for customers. Otherwise, articles like the aforelinked “death knell” piece will become more relevant as our computing behaviors shift away from the desktop and into our pockets.

But let’s turn our attention to another company consistently teetering back and forth on the edge of a cliff erected by armchair CEOs: RIM.

James Faucette of Pacific Crest Securities told investors that the long-delayed OS is unlikely to be met with real enthusiasm and, in all likelihood, will fail.

“We believe BB10 is likely to be DOA,” he wrote, and effectively advised RIM shareholders to cash in their chips while they still can.

“We expect the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail,” Faucette added.

Ten years ago, PCs were not nearly as prevalent in households and businesses as they are today, so for Apple to command roughly ten percent of a growing market was quite a feat, especially considering its pre-determined demise prior to Jobs’ return.

RIM’s story is actually worse than Apple’s:

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) fell the most since June after the BlackBerry’s U.S. market share shrank to 1.6 percent, hurt by Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone winning more customers.

The stock dropped 11 percent to $10.72 at the close in New York, the biggest decline since June 29. While the shares have rallied more than 35 percent in November, they are still down 26 percent this year.

For RIM to sink in market share to 1.6 percent of a potential consumer base several hundred million strong is dismal, but RIM, like Microsoft, has only itself to blame.

First, RIM attempted to compete with the iPhone with its BlackBerry Storm, which turned out to be an abject failure. Then it did its best with its “iPad killing” PlayBook tablet. Guess who’s still standing? Those misses, combined with the loss of its co-CEOs, BlackBerry 10′s repeated delays, massive layoffs, as well as enterprise clients and government agencies giving up their BlackBerry fleets in favor of iPhones and Androids did immeasurable damage to the once-great Canadian device maker.

The third quarter 2012 results tell the tale:

RIM released its fiscal Q3 2012 earnings report today and although the numbers are dismal, the company remains chipper about what lies ahead. Profits fell to just $256 million with a revenue of $5.2 billion, just shy of the projected $5.6 billion for this quarter. These numbers are down from $329 million in profit from the previous quarter and $911 million from the previous year.

It sounds like I’m being hypocritically harsher on RIM than I am on Microsoft. Joshua Schnell sent out a tweet several weeks ago related to the topic:

I have a hard time bagging on RIM when companies like Apple were in the exact same spot at one point.

I would have a hard time, too, except Apple had a hell of an ace up its sleeve in the form of Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Scott Forstall, and the NeXT development team. The difference between Apple and RIM is that RIM’s former management were not highly regarded prior to their exit.

One might think Steve Jobs wasn’t universally liked and that he almost ran Apple into the ground, so his firing was the best thing for the company at that time. This Fortune article from 1985 says differently:

Many insiders are shocked by his removal; they fear Apple has lost the spirit and vision that made it into a business phenomenon. Says one: “They’ve cut the heart out of Apple and substituted an artificial one. We’ll just have to see how long it pumps.”

It pumped for quite awhile before Apple purchased NeXT. What followed was a series of mixed reactions at Jobs’ decisions, including getting cheered and booed at Macworld ’97 for getting Apple involved with Microsoft, and this gem from Stewart Alsop at Fortune:

You can’t justify it. Apple did precisely the wrong thing. Now the only future for the company is to get smaller and smaller until there’s nothing left. In fact, the only sensible conversation to have about Apple is the one in which you argue about how long it will take to die.

Jobs also sold 1.5 million shares of Apple in 1997, which sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point in 11 years. Some industry analysts believed he’d lost faith in the company he’d just taken back. For every great thing someone had to say about Jobs’s return to Apple, there was someone else waiting to knock it down.

In hindsight, taking back its founder and former CEO was the best decision Apple made. The same cannot be said for RIM, though it could be argued Microsoft would do better under Bill Gates’s leadership once again. Neither company seems to have executives asking designers and engineers, “Stop. Think. What’s best for the future of computing? What’s best for the user?” and the customers are answering with their wallets.

However, Microsoft and RIM are still making money. They might be making less than they used to and a lot less than their competitors, but green is still flowing within their walls. Let’s give Microsoft more than a month to get its feet wet with Windows 8 before we start shutting off the power. And why not wait to see if RIM ships BlackBerry 10 at all before we start looting its supply cabinets for sticky notes and White-Out?

As tech writers, we think we know everything about the companies we cover. We think we know exactly how they operate, or worse, how they should operate. But we’re just as in the dark as the average Alsop. It takes an immense amount of effort (or lack thereof) for titans of industry like Microsoft and RIM to close up shop, so until the headlines start using words like “bankruptcy protection” and “top executives flee sinking ship,” bloggers might want to hold off on the thousand word obituaries. For now.

The post In Defense of Reality: Premature Ruination appeared first on Macgasm.

There are a couple of ways you can add tracks to the Up Next Queue. The first way is just to drag them from the iTunes library window onto the iTunes LCD area right at the top (where the song title of what’s playing now is). You can drag a single song, a whole playlist, an album, etc. The iTunes LCD window will show a blue boarder around it to show that something has been added and the Up Next icon will flash with a cover art of what you’ve added.

The second way to add to the Up Next playlist is to press the Option key while holding your mouse cursor over an item in the iTunes library window.The track number beside the track name will change to a dark gray plus icon. Clicking on it will add it to Up Next and then iTunes will play that track next.

Image Credit: robinadr

The post Tip: Easily Add Songs To iTunes 11′s “Up Next” Feature appeared first on Macgasm.

If you haven’t yet downloaded the new version of iTunes, you can get it by going to the Apple Menu on your Mac and selecting software update. Otherwise, you can also download it by going to Apple’s download page. Once iTunes 11 is installed and running, here’s what you do to view and then delete history:

1. Click on the Store icon in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window.
2. You’ll then see a small three-lined Preview History button in the same location. Select it to view your iTunes Store history (the list will include everything you clicked on to preview, including songs, TV shows, or movies).
3. To delete the history, just click on the Clear button in the upper-right corner of that drop-down.

If you’ve found a song that you might want to buy from your history:

• Click the album cover of any song to play its preview again.
• Hover over the item and click the price to buy it.
• Or just click the title to bring you to the Store page.

Another neat tidbit is that if you’re using another device that you’re signed into with your iCloud account, your history will sync. So even if you preview something on your iPhone you can still buy it later on your Mac.

Image Credit: AppleInsider

The post Tip: Viewing And Clearing History In iTunes 11 appeared first on Macgasm.

Here’s the truth of the smartphone wars: all the big players, with the possible exception of Microsoft, are winning if you define winning as “achieving the goals they’ve set themselves”. Android is winning. iOS is winning. And at the end of the day, you and I are winning too.

Of course, we all know that Apple is doing alright for itself. As was recently pointed out, the company makes more in profits than Google’s entire revenue. Its profits are spectacular. On the tablet side, leaving aside the fact that the iPad reinvented the entire category, nothing comes close.

Then there’s usage. Talk to mobile developers, and most of them want to do iOS first, because it’s where the money is. iPhone users install more apps, pay for more apps, and use their apps more frequently.

Only in one area – the sheer number of smartphones sold globally – does iOS lag behind Android. Of course, this has led to some commentators to claim that Apple is doomed, because all that matters is the number.

Of course, that makes lots of people working on Android at Google very happy. Despite their smiley, colourful, “we’re open, like flowers in the sunshine!” image, the boys and girls down in Mountain View are as tough a set of competitors as you’ll ever meet. They want Android in everyone’s hands.

But that’s not why Android exists, and ultimately it’s not the factor which will mean Android is a success or a failure for Google. Android doesn’t have to be the dominant phone platform in order for Google to win, because all that Android is designed to do is to stop Apple – or RIM, or Microsoft, or whoever comes next – from being the only game in town.

Go back two years, to Google I/O 2010, to hear Vic Gundotra spill the beans. Talking about why Google got into the phone business, Gundotra said “If we did not act, we faced a draconian future where one man, one phone, one carrier was the future. That’s a future we don’t want.”

But why would Google care about that? Despite Gundotra’s smiley repetition of the mantra of “open” vs “draconian”, it’s not because Google is a care bear of a company that can do no evil. It’s simply that it could not take the chance that its services, primarily search where it makes a massive chunk of its money, could be locked out from the majority of phones. In other words, it couldn’t take the chance that Apple would, say, one day dump its mapping app from the iPhone.

Sounds like Vic got that one right, anyway.

And in that sense, Android has succeeded. Even if Google makes a loss from Android, it will have stopped Apple or anyone else being able to permanently lock them out of mobile. Had it not created Android, Maps would still be gone from the iPhone (Apple always wants to control the technology it relies on) and Google would be locked out of a treasure trove of local data, gathered anonymously from phones. Being able to stay in that game alone is probably worth the money Google has spent on Android so far.

This is why the debates over which is “winning” – iOS or Android – are irrelevant. Android and iOS aren’t really in the same game for their creators. But the biggest beneficiaries are you and me, normal users, who get to watch (with popcorn) as two great companies push each other hard to improve their products.

The post In The Smartphone Wars, Everyone’s A Winner Baby (That’s The Truth) appeared first on Macgasm.

You may know Aaron Ash from his jailbreaking utility Muiltiflow. He recently released a new Twitter app for iPhone, Flurry, that has garnered quite a bit of attention. We recently interviewed Aaron about Twitter’s new API as well some general questions about development in the Apple world.

MM: Were there any challenges in developing Flurry in regards to Twitter’s new API?

Aaron Ash: Yes, the biggest two being access to the necessary API for push notifications, and the user token limit. I learned early on, maybe in April, that they weren’t going to give us access to their “Site Streams” API, which is necessary for push. This was a big disappointment, but Mathieu and I kept working anyway. A few months after that, Twitter announced the token limit, and we were quite disappointed (and even considered switching everything over to app.net and never launching a Twitter version). I still use Twitter much more frequently than any other social network, so we pushed on with Twitter.

Are you tempted to create a client for App.net or any other Twitter competitors?

For sure! App.net looks the most promising. It’s unlikely that it will ever get as large as Twitter because of the financial barrier to entry, but its growth so far has kept people excited about it. Their mentality of empowering developers makes it an attractive platform, although I’m too exhausted to jump on it immediately after working on Flurry for so long.

Beyond the changes to Twitter’s API, what other barriers do you feel developers face with Twitter?

Uncertainty. It seems Twitter is looking to monetize though promoted tweets, trends, users, or other methods, but they’re not being upfront about it. Twitter has proven that they’re not afraid to shut off developers, and anyone looking to create for the platform must now take this into consideration. Twitter has recently added a number of features (“Interactions” data, for example) that are not accessible via the API.

Any plans to bring Flurry to the iPad? Any other mobile or desktop platforms?

Flurry for Twitter on the iPad is unlikely, but Flurry for something else is much more possible. With Twitter acting the way it is, it’s a gloomy future for exciting software for Twitter.

After Flurry, what is your next project?

I’m interested in making another jailbreak tweak if/when an iOS 6 jailbreak is released. There’s an element of fun about jailbreak development that doesn’t exist in App Store dev. There’s an interesting private API I’ve been reverse engineering and experimenting with recently. If I can come up with something cool that takes advantage of it, I’ll be happy to release another tweak. Meanwhile, I’ll keep improving things on Flurry, but it’s hard to get as excited about it as when Twitter’s developer relations were better. App.net still keeps my hopes up though.

What is your favorite app on your iPhone right now?

The Camera app, it never gets old. Of course its entertainment value is augmented by other apps like Camera+, Instagram, Twitter, etc, but keeping an eye open for that interesting shot is what helps us enjoy the non-digital world around us.

What’s your favorite app on your iPad right now?

Anything with written content, mostly saved Instapaper articles and browsing the web. I also enjoy the 500px iPad app, which is filled with wonderful photos. I wish 500px would get more popular, but it’s targeted a bit too much at professional photographers to see viral growth like Instagram.

What’s you favorite Mac app right now?

iTerm 2. It’s a bit better than OS X’s built in Terminal app. When you’re spending a lot of time in a Terminal type environment, a little bit goes a long way.

What’s your development rig?

A maxed-out Retina Macbook Pro plugged into Apple’s awesome 27-inch Thunderbolt monitor, Apple’s standard bluetooth keyboard, and a Logitech MX518 mouse for when I’m not using the magic trackpad.

What’s your portable set-up?

Just the rMBP and an iPhone.

Flurry is an iPhone Twitter application, you should grab it before it hits the user token limit. You should also take a look at Aaron’s various jailbreak apps. Even if you don’t jailbreak your phone, they’re impressive design experiments nonetheless. You can follow Aaron on Twitter here and add him to your Google + circles here.

The post We Sit Down With Aaron Ash From Flurry, New Jailbreak Tweaks Coming? appeared first on Macgasm.

In response to an email, British Airways has confirmed that the ba.com team is already looking into Passbook support. A representative wrote, “Please be assured that we will get our Passbook-compatible functionality live on ba.com as soon as we can.”

British Airways currently offers digital boarding passes through its official iOS application, but does not yet offer Passbook support. This would be a major addition to the Passbook feature for Apple, as British Airways has 249 aircrafts and serves 169 total destinations.

One of the first major companies to add Passbook support was Major League Baseball, which offered digital passes for four teams at the end of the 2012 season. The league was amazed with the initial success rate for Passbook and found that the service accounted for 12 percent of MLB tickets.

Passbook already supports some other major airlines, including Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Virgin Australia.

Image Credit: WeGo

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To buy movie tickets, you’ll simply have to ask Siri to buy tickets for a certain movie. When you ask Siri, she brings up showtimes and theater information. Then you click on the buy movie tickets button, which brings you to the Fandango app from the App Store. If you don’t already have Fandango installed, Siri will provide a button to download it.

So far, developers who have tested the feature say it’s not compatible with all theaters. Luckily the compatible theaters that Siri lists have a small movie ticket icon.

Siri already offers some movie theater features, like the ability to look up showtimes, get movie reviews, and play trailers. Fandango’s integration with this just goes to show Apple’s expansion efforts with third-party apps like Yelp and OpenTable that really extend what Siri can do.

Image Credit: 9to5Mac

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The departure of Scott Forstall wasn’t so much buried as drowned under Hurricane Sandy, three new devices from Google, and an entire new mobile operating system from Microsoft (Windows Phone 8).

Of course, that only made it the second-biggest story in technology of the day (sorry, Microsoft, you just don’t rate that highly). Plenty of others have covered that ground, but what interests me is the challenge that faces Apple and in particular the new head honcho of all Internet services, Eddy Cue. Because the biggest challenge facing Cue isn’t just getting Maps and Siri to work better: it’s integrating the software services that Apple provides in a richer and more meaningful way.

Consider the way that Google Now — the Android answer to Siri — now pulls information from your Gmail account to give you reminders about flights and travel plans. Or how it monitors your calendar and gives you travel details for how to get to a meeting from wherever you are.

This kind of proactive use of data in an integrated way is exactly where Apple should be with Siri, but isn’t right now. But that may not be true forever. With all of Apple’s online services — Siri, Maps, iCloud, and so on — now under one roof and the capable hands of Cue, Apple has a chance to at least keep close to Google. If you’re an iCloud user, Apple knows when you get meeting invites. It knows where you’re going, at what time, from your calendar. It knows the routes you should take to get there, thanks to Maps (at least in theory). So why isn’t Siri, which is supposed to be the smartest assistant around, suggesting this stuff to me without me having to ask? Apple even has patents that cover exactly this kind of feature.

In my head, whenever Eddy Cue takes over a new part of Apple, he appears like Jack Nicholson in The Shining: bursting through a locked door at Cupertino, shouting “Heeeere’s Eddy!” with a maniacal grin on his face. He has a reputation as Apple’s Mr. Fixit, capable of taking apart and putting back together a project that isn’t working in quite the way Apple needs it to.

The only fly in the ointment is that Cue’s track record doesn’t include much in the way of serious integration between services. He’s widely-regarded as a great negotiator, having faced down the record labels in the early iTunes era. He’s also regarded as someone capable of delivering direction to a team and ensuring it delivers a higher quality product on time.

But integration between complex software services? Iterating fast, something that’s essential if Apple is going to keep up with Google’s services? Not so much. Those aren’t strengths that Cue has shown much of, at least not so far. It’s time for Eddy to prove he can really push a service along, as well as simply saving it from doom.

The post Eddy Cue’s Top Priority: A New, Super-Smart Siri appeared first on Macgasm.

Australia was supposed to get the feature this month but, according to Apple’s website, Australian users won’t be getting turn-by-turn navigation until sometime in November. The feature is already available in 52 countries around the world, with Australia being the last remaining country to have the feature enabled.

When Apple Maps was released in Australia, a number of landmarks were mislabeled, like Apple’s own Sydney store. The original feature, Directions, which is different from turn-by-turn navigation, would send Australians into the middle of bodies of water and through buildings. This is the same issue with turn-by-turn that many users outside of Australia are complaining about.

News of this delay in Australia comes shortly after it was reported that Scott Forstall’s upcoming departure from Apple was due to the fact that he wouldn’t sign the apology letter for Apple Maps, which was subsequently signed only by CEO Tim Cook. From the sounds of it, it seems that Apple wants to make sure they get this right before releasing it to the public.

Image Credit: Al Arabiya News

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iTunes in the Cloud for movies is now available in countries around the world, including the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Some countries, like Germany, Spain, and Japan, have unfortunately been left out. More details on which countries can now access this service can be seen on the Apple website.

For those that don’t know, iTunes in the cloud allows any previously purchased content to be re-downloaded on various Apple devices, including Macs, iPhones, iPads, or Apple TV.

However, not everything that has been purchased will be available for this service due to licensing agreements. Some studios are not on board with this feature at all. Both Universal and Fox were missing from the cloud, but Universal movies and Fox movies were recently made available with their movies now on this service.

Source: Macrumors via SlashGear
Image Credit: Macsessed

The post iTunes In The Clouds Movies Now Available Outside Of U.S. In 37 New Countries appeared first on Macgasm.

Last year when Apple announced iOS 5, they brought a new feature to the table called iCloud. Many have heard of iCloud, but do you know exactly what it can do for you? The main goal of iCloud is to help you organize your digital life better. But how do you get the most out of iCloud? Let’s explore iCloud’s features and discover exactly what they can do for you.

iCloud is a free service from Apple, and it’s not only for iOS devices; most all of the features work across the board with your Mac as well. Starting out you’re given 5GB of free iCloud storage (upgradable up to 50GB), and a free email account with an “@me.com” extension. When iOS 6 is released Apple will begin issuing “@icloud.com” email extensions.

Getting iCloud Set Up

Setting up iCloud is a breeze. If you’re a Mac user, go to iCloud within System Preferences. Here you’ll have the opportunity to sign in with your Apple ID. If for some reason you don’t have one, you’ll be able to created one.

On your iOS device iCloud setup is just as simple. Navigate to your Settings app, scroll down a swipe, and tap on iCloud. Sign in with your Apple ID and you’re all set.

Sync Your Life

The main purpose here is to get all your content on all of your devices. Starting out on a Mac you’ll have the option to Sync your contacts, calendars, and bookmarks between your Mac(s) and other iOS devices. You’ll also be able to activate Find My Mac, which will really help if you ever (for some unholy reason) accidentally leave your $1000+ Mac somewhere or it’s stolen.

Once iCloud is set up on your Mac or iOS device, you’ll be given a list different features waiting to be enabled. Choose the options you wish to sync across your devices. Let’s take a look at what iCloud has to offer.

Mail

For the most part, syncing Mail is exactly what you’d think. When you initially set up iCloud, you were given a free “@me.com” account, or an “@icloud.com” account if you’re reading this after iOS 6 has been released. Using the Mail option, iCloud will push email from that email account to whichever devices you’ve enabled. It can come in very handy, but only if you decide to actively use the free iCloud email account.

Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders

Enabling contacts will sync your Contacts/Address Book across all of your devices, including your Mac. Keeping your contacts in the cloud will keep them up-to-date on any connected device. For example, let’s say you just added a contact on your iPad. That same information will automatically be synced with your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, etc…

The same rules apply with Calendars and Reminders. Using iCloud with Reminders can be extremely helpful. Currently Reminders is not available on Mac, but will be as soon as Mountain Lion is released in the very near future. Setting up a reminder with iCloud enabled will ensure you remember your important task, no matter what device you’re using.

Calendars are no different. Organize your schedule on any enabled device and enjoy the simplicity of having your important dates on both your Mac and iOS devices.

Bookmarks and Notes

Have you ever been browsing the web on your iPhone or iPad and are faced with a situation where a full-scale web browser would really come in handy? With Bookmarks in iCloud, just bookmark the page you’re on and open it up on your Mac. It’s that simple. The same can be done between iOS devices. All of your Safari Bookmarks are synced with any Mac / iOS device as long as you’ve enabled Bookmarks.

Taking notes can be important. Having your notes available on any of your iOS devices or Mac can be a lifesaver. Currently this option is only available between iOS devices, but like Reminders, Mountain Lion will add a new Notes app that also works with iCloud. But until Mountain Lion is released, you can still get the most out of Notes with iCloud across your iOS devices.

Photo Stream

Using Photo Stream will upload and store the last 30 days of photos on iCloud and push them to all your devices. So if you take a picture on your iPhone, it will be available on your iPad or Mac. It’s a very convenient feature if you’d like to possibly print or edit photos from a Mac. With the upcoming release of iOS 6 this fall, you’ll have the option to share your Photo Streams with whoever you want, creating a personalized pictorial.

Documents & Data

Apps with iCloud integration are also able to help you stay organized. With an iCloud enabled app, as long as you have Documents & Data on, anything done or created within that app will be uploaded to iCloud and become available on any other device with the app installed.

For example, if you created an amazing drawing in an app with iCloud integration, you’re able to open that app on another supported device and either finish or edit your creation. This integration is present in many App Store apps including Apple’s own Keynote, Pages, and Numbers apps. Documents & Data is by far one of the best overlooked features for iCloud.

Find My iPhone and iCloud Backup

If you enable Find My iPhone (or Find My Mac), you’ll be able to quickly locate the geographic coordinates of your device. Hopefully you’ll never have to use this feature, but it’s guaranteed to come in handy if you ever do.

If for some reason you’ve had a device replaced from being broken or lost, iCloud backup can really come in handy. Having iCloud Backup enabled will backup your “camera roll, accounts, documents, and settings” when your iOS device is locked, plugged in, and connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Upon setting up a new iOS device, you’ll be given the option to restore it from an iCloud Backup. No cables required, though it may take a little longer as your information is being beamed down from the clouds.

It’s on the web too!

Yup… In case you were unaware, Apple has an online portal for iCloud as well. If you head over to www.icloud.com you’ll find that many of these features are available in a web browser. Currently only Mail, Contact, Calendars, Find My iPhone, and iWork are available online but Apple is working on adding more features soon. The release of iOS 6 should expand on some of the core features that make iCloud great!

Overall, iCloud is the perfect solution to keep your digital life organized, but knowing how to use all the features is the important part. If you’ve never poked around in iCloud, give it a shot and find out how simple it can make your life.

The post How To Get The Most Out Of iCloud appeared first on Macgasm.

From The Guardian:

[quote]He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.[/quote]

It didn’t take long before my brain was spouting out evidence to the contrary. Evidence that, much to Brin’s chagrin I’m sure, would put Google front and center in the war against an open web. Let’s start with some simple examples of just how terrible Google is at a fair and open web. Five minutes of fact checking online turned up five examples of Google abusing its power and doing things in direct contrast to a free and open web.

Google Discriminates Against New Websites In Favor Of Old Sites

It may not be the glass slipper, but the fact that Google even remotely plays favorites with content on the Internet is a pretty large slap in the face to anyone paying attention while reading the Guardian article.  Google’s PageRank system is supposed to help separate the wheat from the chaff, but in reality, it’s placing a priority on some content over others. It may make sense in Google’s attempt to help put better articles in front of readers, but the unintended results stand in direct contrast to the philosophy of a  free and open web that Brin likes to talk about these days. I’m not sure about you, but someone or some algorithm determining what content is better than others, based on arbitrary and irrelevant information like the lifetime of a website, stands in direct contrast to the definition of free. A free web from giving certain websites weight over others, but that’s not how Google works. Google found itself in hot water over page rank back in 2002:

From an AlterNet article back in 2002:

[quote]Google’s no good. Brandt believes that the search engine is unfair, and it doesn’t — as many people think — return the best search results. Brandt runs google-watch.org, a new site that he hopes will act as “point of reference for privacy advocates, journalists and bloggers” who want to know the truth about Google … What is the truth according to Brandt? Google’s PageRank algorithm, the celebrated system by which Google orders search results, is not, as Google says, “uniquely democratic” — it’s “uniquely tyrannical.” PageRank is the “opposite of affirmative action,” he has written, meaning that the system discriminates against new Web sites and favors established sites. [/quote]

A few weeks back we broke the news that an ex-Apple employee claimed that the current Apple TV UI was tossed out by Steve Jobs years ago. It was pretty big news. Guess who got the love on Google News? PC Magazine, CNet, and AppleInsider. All of those publications linked to us as a source of the story. All of those stories were glorified re-writes of our original post. Yet Google sent them traffic, and not us. PageRank and preferential treatment in search results is a huge reason why that happened.

Here’s the Google News listing for that story. Check out how far down the page we are listed.

Google Favors Its Own Content Over Others

This one is a little more obvious. Head over to Google and do a search for something. Heck, search for “moving boxes.” That’s a pretty generic search that someone who was moving would search for. Look around the page. How many Google products do you see listed above the first actual search results? I see three Google advertisements above all the site listings in the main content box, then down the sidebar I see Google Maps and more ads. Again, preferential treatment for all things Google. Hell, I don’t even blame them. It’s their website and their service. Do what you want with it. Just don’t feed me a line about the competition being in the way of a free and open Internet when you’re shoving your products down my throat every time I do a search. If I go and buy an ad for “moving boxes,” I immediately jump above all the other listings. Long story short, pay Google and get a top listing spot. Can someone remind me how this is a free and open company again?

Heck, this got so bad that Google was called in front of the Senate and asked if they cooked the books.

Google Make Sites Mysteriously Disappear

Back in 2006 Google faced a lawsuit from a web startup that was looking for direct compensation from the search giant for downgrading its sites ranking, despite never getting in contact with the company. One day everything was fine and dandy and the next, KinderStart found itself buried deeply in the search results. This type of thing isn’t unheard of, and it’s actually quite common among website publishers.  We’ve even seen our rankings rise and fall over the years.  We’re less concerned with our rankings, and more concerned that a company that claims to be the last bastion of an open Internet is tweaking, changing, and making value judgements on what content is good and which is bad. Which sites get high page rankings, and which get buried into the seven depths of Internet hell — pages two through forty of a Google search. In the case of KinderStart, Google’s process of discriminating against its content wasn’t all that open. No one let the business know they were being penalized; instead, Google buried the service. Given Google’s marketshare, Google pretty much has the power to lift up or bury websites.

The antithesis to this whole argument is that Google is simply attempting to eliminate poor results from their customers’ searches, but there’s an inherent problem with that task: Google is determining what is and what isn’t acceptable on the Internet today. Some will inevitably argue that actively participating in the ranking system is a necessary evil, while others would state that Google’s influence over the Internet on the whole is advantageous to a free and open Internet. In my opinion, the moment someone or some computer makes a value judgment on what will and won’t be included in a search listing, the service is no longer free and open; instead, it’s curated and controlled. That’s a problem.

Google Censors Search Results If You Have The Money To Pay A Lawyer For A DMCA Takedown

By this point, you might think we are flogging a dead horse, where the horse is Google’s continued censorship of the Internet. You’d be dead wrong. As it turns out, customers can pay money to have competition and negative commentary removed from Google. All you have to do is hire a good lawyer and file a DMCA takedown notice. That’s exactly what the Church of Scientology did in 2002, and Google caved quickly and removed the offending sites from its listings.

From F.A.C.T.n.e.t:

[quote]Andreas Heldal-Lund, webmaster of http://www.xenu.net/ , got a DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act] notification letter from Google earlier today. In the letter, a long list of URLs were listed as infringing, and Google apparently complied with the DMCA request by removing them.[/quote]

The only problem was that the website mentioned Scientology. The result, Google took down and delisted a lot of the site’s content. We’re not lawyers, so we’re not exactly sure how Google could have been held responsible for listing content on another website, but delisting the site is exactly what they did. I’m not one for “hate speech,” but in a land that flaunts First Ammendment rights any chance it gets, it’s a little surprising that a company would pull down a site’s listing based on a DMCA request. You can see a list of links here: http://mcgsm.co/HSiHM9. Again, not exactly the most free and open Internet on the planet, unless Brin means free and open unless it conflicts with Google’s corporate interests.

Sadly, this story doesn’t end there either. Google also closed down an adsense account for a website that was openly critical of Scientology, taking with it all of its earned revenue. Again, a stark contrast to the free and open Internet that Brin seems to be championing these days to news agencies the world over.

Google Willfully Helped China Censor Dissident Opinion And Historical Facts

Here’s the kicker: Until they found themselves under tremendous public pressure, Google was filtering results for Google.cn to remove any references to Tiananmen Square, and anything related to Tibet, Taiwan, and the Falun Gong movement. This is by far the biggest and most troubling of all the injustices against a free and open Internet, especially if we consider that among Brin’s tirade against Apple and Facebook today, he also included increased government control of communication tools as a main problem.  Yup, Sergey Brin not only publicly called out governments for meddling in the Internet, but his company also played a large role in creating and maintaining the Great Firewall of China by filtering historical fact in search results. It doesn’t end in China either. Governments from around the world petitioned Google 27,625 times in 2010 for information on its users. The US alone was responsible for 30 percent of the requests.  If Google was willing to pay such a cooperative role in stymieing dissident opinion on China, how do we know it’s not going to happen again somewhere else, and more importantly at home?  Teachers tell us to learn from history, and here we are, smack-dab in the middle of the censorship argument again.

Final Thoughts

Google’s definition of a free and open web starts where they can begin collecting your information, and ends right when they can sell that information to advertisers. It’s the only thing that matters to the company, and like we pointed out above, a free and open web is at the bottom of the company’s priority list. It’s comical that the two companies that Sergey Brin point out as glowing examples of problems with the web, Apple and Facebook, are the two companies that don’t pander to Google and give consumer information to the search giant. Neither Facebook nor Apple are glowing endorsements of an open web — far from it actually — but they’re also very far from the root cause of the problem. History shows us exactly where these companies stand on a free and open web, much like it does with Google in this case. The root cause of the free and open problem on the web is mainly caused by the company responsible for aggregating content from around the Internet, reorganizing it, and then displaying it to the masses. Google, despite Reddit’s claims, is actually the front page of the Internet. Any problem with a free and open Internet begins and ends on their homepage. Clearly, Brin doesn’t own a mirror, because if he did, he wouldn’t like what he sees.

Ironically, most of this information was found with a simple Google News search.  Maybe someone should teach Brin how to use the tools that his company builds.

The post Sorry Brin, But Google’s The Main Actor Standing In The Way Of A Free And Open Web appeared first on Macgasm.

If you’re a gamer, or just somebody who likes to play the occasional game on your iPhone, you’ve seen them; game splash screens. They tell you that, yes, your are indeed playing the game that you selected a few seconds ago on your iPhone home screen, and they tell you who made the game, and if you’re unlucky, they’ll also tell you who the person was who fetched coffee for the developers, who paid them and who walked their doggies.

I’m exaggerating of course, but in my opinion game splash screens need to die!

The reason why they exist is a pretty simple one: brand awareness. Companies want you to remember who made that great game you love playing in every spare minute you have. They want you to remember the fun you have with it and associate it with their name; so when you see another game by the same company on the App Store, you’ll be more inclined to buy it.

One of the ways to produce brand awareness is by repetition, which every person who has seen one feature film on TV will know: During every commercial break you see ads for the same products. While commercials are generally annoying when you just want to sit down and watch a movie, it makes sense for the advertisers, because you have to sit through them — well, you really don’t, since you can always get up and grab a new drink in order to miss the ads. People basically accept that they are there, because on some level they realise that these commercials pay for the shows and movies they watch.

But with games it’s a different matter. Showing splash screens when a game starts keeps a person from the thing she or he wants to do: playing the goddamn game. When the ad becomes a hindrance and one you cannot ignore, one you have to wait through, it’ll make you angry over time. This is even worse when you’ve already given the company money for the game (I’m deliberately ignoring “free”, ad-supported and freemium games in this article and focusing on paid games).

Let’s show you a few examples of particularly bad game splash screens:

Real Racing 2 HD

As you can see — or maybe even have experienced — this game has four splash screens, and only after viewing each and every one can you start the game:

• Picture of the game name; not skippable, more than two seconds
• Video with the developer’s logo; skippable after about one second
• Video of the game; skippable after about one second
• Picture of the game name, which becomes the loading screen; more than two seconds

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 – 4

You get five screens with this game followed by a short loading sequence and then you can start of the game:

• Picture of the Warner games logo; not skippable, about two seconds
• Picture of the LEGO logo; not skippable, about two seconds
• Picture of the Tt Games logo; not skippable, about one second
• Picture of the Tf Fusion gaming engine logo; not skippable, about one second
• Warner Brothers licensing information; not skippable, about three seconds

A few more examples without pictures:

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

• Splash screen; not skippable, about three seconds
• Video; skippable after about five seconds
• Splash screen of a safety notice; not skippable, about three seconds

Infinity Blade II

• Video, showing multiple companies; not skippable, twelve seconds
• Video with an animated logo of the game’s name; not skippable, eight seconds (doubles as loading screen)

Auditorium

• Splash screen; not skippable, about three seconds
• Loading screen

In these examples the time before the player can start to enjoy the game ranges between seven and twenty seconds, just so she or he can be shown a company logo over and over and over again. Game splash screens have existed since video games were first created and gamers on PCs and consoles have accepted that, because with these — what some call — ‘serious games’ you sit down to play for more than a few minutes, so a few seconds won’t matter to you. But with the advent of the Wii and even more so the proliferation of iOS devices as portable game consoles, people increasingly play so called ‘casual games’. These you start on your daily train commute or while standing in line at the grocery store — to name only a few situations. You play them to spend time on something fun that you otherwise would’ve spent waiting. In these and other situations, ten seconds of loading time becomes annoying.

As consumer behaviour researchers will tell you, negative experiences with a product are cumulative and lead to a negative attitude towards a brand that is hard to overcome by advertising and even better experiences in the future.

There are positive example of course.

Fruit Ninja

This game has only one splash screen that doubles as the loading screen, and after that the game starts. This casual game starts fast and is great for a quick round of fruit slicing when you have a few minutes to kill. Other casual games such as Astronut, Cut the Rope and Jetpack Joyride have one or maybe two screens of which one is a loading screen indicating to the player that the fun will start shortly.

Galaxy on Fire 2 HD

This game has three splash screens:

• The company logo; skippable
• The logo of the game engine; skippable
• A loading screen after which the game starts

The other “serious games” — where a quick startup might not be essential — such as Ash (a Zelda style RPG), Death Rally (a top down arcade racer) and Deadlock (an online multiplayer shooter) don’t make the player wait through splash screens that aren’t skippable.

If splash screens have to be there, they should at least not annoy the customer more than necessary and there are ways to do them right:

• Show splash screens, videos and licence information only during the first start-up, or
• Make these introductory screens deactivate-able by the user, or
• Make them skippable, especially if there are multiple screens, or
• Make the splash screen(s) double as a loading screen for the game (even Microsoft managed to do this during the installation process of Windows operating systems), or
• Combine multiple splash screens into one, like in the example below, or
• Combinations of the above.

In general game studios and developers shouldn’t make their customers wait, just to self-advertise. Apple has built their devices (especially iOS devices) so they are responsive, fast and don’t force long waiting times on the user. The same should hold true for games, apps that are there to give the user enjoyment. A bad user experience can limit the enjoyment a gamer takes from the application and might even mar a company’s image in the long run.

What do you think about game splash screens? Tell us in the comments or on Twitter @macgasm

The post Clearly game splash screens in iOS need to die appeared first on Macgasm.

The new iPad has been out for a couple of days now, and while most early adopters have had their minds made up since the announcement a couple of weeks ago, there are still a lot of people on the fence about whether or not the new iPad is worth the upgrade. Instead of giving you just one opinion throughout the review, Grant Brunner and myself teamed up to provide you with a collborative review of the new iPad. Who says what isn’t that important, but we’re hoping that it provides a more even keel to our review. We also provide three very distinct conclusions in our footer so you can see what a few of our writers think about the new iPad.

We hope you enjoy what we have to say. Let’s get started.

The Display: Retinafied

Easily the most hyped element of the new iPad, the Retina display was bound to turn some heads. It’s funny, up until opening up the new iPad, I would have sworn that the iPad 2 was crisp, and that we didn’t really need a Retina display in the iPad. As it turns out, I was painfully wrong. The new iPad’s display is so clear that it feels like I’m looking at print quality graphics. It’s really difficult to put into words just how magnificent the Retina display is in the new iPad. I mean, after spending five minutes with the new iPad, I’m starting to wonder how I’ve been able to stand looking at my Cinema Display for the last couple of years. It’s that good.

The new iPad’s display, by the numbers, has a whopping 2048-by-1536 resolution, 3.1 million pixels, and 44 percent greater color saturation over the last edition of the iPad. When putting that much information onto a 9.7-inch display (the same as the last two iPads), the color depth and clarity of the device is astounding.

The display: icons and pixels

We lined up two apps that were updated for the Retina display, and compared them to two apps that haven’t gotten any Retina love yet. As you can see, Calendar and Safari are way clearer in the screenshot. For clarity’s sakes, the above image is a direct screen shot taken from the new iPad, and then cropped to fit out post box. We have not resized the image in any way, shape or form. The screenshot, pictured above, exaggerates the clarity a little bit because the icons above appear bigger in size than they would on the iPad. That being said, this example illustrates the extra pixel available to developers on the iPad.

In-app differences

The first thing you’re going to notice is that text is ridiculously sharp on the new iPad once an app supports the Retina display. Again, it’s difficult to get an idea of just how clear the text is on the new iPad through images alone, but above is a side-by-side comparison from Readability. The article I’ve used for illustrative purposes is Jim Dalrymple’s excellent iPad 3 review. The text on the left (above) is all from a non-Retina iPad, while the text on the right is from the new iPad. As you can see in the larger example, text is a lot clearer at the same size. Again, you should probably look at the displays side-by-side and draw your own conclusions; these images just aren’t doing the display justice. For clarity’s sake, in the above image we shrunk the third generation’s text to match the older generation’s display in the top half of the image, and then we expanded the second generation’s text to match the size of the new iPad in the last part of the image. We figured it would be best to show you both ways, so you can get a better idea of how clear the text can be at similar sizes on both iPads.

New iPad, Same iPad Size

We’re pretty sure that the biggest thing you’re worrying about is having to update all of your cases and docks for the new iPad. The height of the iPad is 9.5 inches (241.2mm), the width is 7.31 inches (185.7mm), and finally the depth of the device comes in at 0.37 inches (9.4mm). How does that compare to the original iPad and the iPad 2?

Sizing info

Moving from an iPad 2 to the new iPad (iPad 3) won’t be that big of a deal for you. The majority of the cases you currently own for your iPad 2 will work for your new iPad. We’ve tested the new iPad in a number of cases we had kicking around the office, and in every single test, the new iPad fit snuggly in the iPad 2 case. Results may vary depending on the case, but like we said, you should be fine with your iPad 2 case.

The dimensions

To compare, here are the dimensions of the three iPads:

New iPad (3): height: 9.5 inches, width: 7.2 inches, depth: 0.37 inches.
iPad 2: height: 9.50 inches, width: 7.31 inches, depth: 0.34 inches.
iPad 1: height: 9.6 inches, width: 7.47 inches, depth: 0.5 inches.

Weight info

One thing you’ll notice is that the new iPad is heavier than the iPad 2, but lighter than the original iPad. Right out of the box we noticed the weight difference. It’s only 0.115 lb (49 g), but we would be lying if we said we didn’t notice. That being said, having spent an entire year with the original iPad, we didn’t find the weight to be an issue, so we doubt that the new iPad will put much strain on your arms.

While we’re not 100 percent sure where the extra weight comes from, we’re pretty confident that the added bulk is due to the new battery, which is denser than the old one (needed to power the Retina display). If the cost of a Retina display is only 0.115 lb, we’re not going to complain. The trade off is worth it.

The skinny

Here are the weights of the three iPads:

New iPad: 1.44 lb (650 g)
iPad 2: 1.325 lb (601 g)
iPad 1: 1.5 lb (680 g)

Comparison to the previous iPads

If you want to see a higher resolution version, just click here.

Yes, the new iPad is slightly thicker than the iPad 2, but you can barely notice it. Laying out the third and second generations of iPads next to each other, it is almost impossible to tell them apart with their screens off. The difference is so minor, it is pretty difficult to get it to show up in pictures in any meaningful way.

That said, the new iPad is significantly thinner than the first iPad. In fact, looking at them side by side, it seems almost cute that we thought that the first iPad was thin. Compared to the new iPad, the first generation is a hulking beast. Compared to the iPad 2, the new iPad is almost imperceptibly thicker.

Under the Hood: We Need Moah Powah

Like the iPad 2 before it, the new iPad has received a pretty substantial upgrade under the hood. This time, the new iPad has a full 1 GB of RAM and an A5x processor that features a quad-core GPU that Apple claims is four times more powerful than Nvidia’s Tegra 3 setup. Early reports have the A5X, ARMv7 dual-core processor clocked at 1GHz, which weighs in at the same speed as the iPad 2. Those reports, based on Geekbench benchmark results, failed to take into account the GPU power, so the new iPad could be quite a bit quicker than its predecessor; it certainly feels like it is at this point.

Actually, how does it feel?

It feels faster than both my iPad 2 and my iPhone 4S, which isn’t all that surprising given the spec differences. This thing not only boots up a lot quicker than the previous version, but it also simply outshines the iPad 2 when it comes to what matters the most — gaming. Apple wasn’t joking around when they said during the keynote that this iPad has more power under the hood than the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii. Take Air Supremacy and Infinity Blade II as cases in point. Both games work just fine on the iPad 2, but on the new iPad they load quicker, have smoother transitions, and way less pixelation. All of those things are a direct result of the power under the hood that drives the Retina display.

The Front and Rear-Facing Cameras

A lot of time was spent on the cameras in the new iPad during the big keynote earlier this month. Apple, and more specifically Phil Schiller, pointed out that, “when that camera gets of such quality and capability that you’re proud to use it as an everyday camera for photographs we call it … an iSight camera.”

The rear iSight camera has a 5-megapixel backside illuminated sensor, the optics system from the iPhone 4S, a five element lens, and an IR filter. I was pumped when I heard all that goodness was coming to the iPad.

How does the camera do?

I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed. I know a lot of people get high quality photos out of their iPhones and iPads, but I’m not one of those people. Under ideal studio lighting, the cameras look great for me, but anytime I’m trying to take a video or photo in real life, they’re often grainy and leave a lot ot be desired. The new iPad is more of the same. Since most of us use these cameras in the heat of the moment, hoping to capture stolen moments, I thought I’d try to replicate such scenarios to test out the new iPad’s cameras. So I just whipped out the camera, focused in on a note card I had lying around on my desk, and  snapped some picks. Once I was done there, I set off outside to quickly take a photo of the neighbouring backyard, with the sun at my back (it was pretty cloudy out). In my opinion, these are fairly normal situations that occur every day in an iPad user’s life, making it an ideal experiment to test the iPad’s cameras. Here’s how it all played out:

Indoor – Front-facing cameraIndoor – Rear-facing cameraOutdoor – Front-facing cameraOutdoor – Rear-facing camera

Now, it could just be my abysmal photography skills that made these pretty bad, but when I snapped a shot, things got pretty grainy in a hurry. The best images by far, both in the sample above and others taken after my little experiment, were those taken outside.

It is important to note that most people probably use an iPhone to snap pictures over their iPads, so the camera in the new iPad isn’t nearly as important as the camera in the iPhone 4S. That being said, I had a very difficult time getting quality shots from the iPad.

Voice Dictation, No Siri

Thoughts on dictation

Typing on the iPad, while not at all bad, is less than productive. Schlepping around a bluetooth keyboard is missing the point of a tablet, no? Well, we think the addition of voice dictation to the new iPad is just perfect. Traveling with an iPad is super easy — especially in the United States. Laptops usually have to come out of your travel bag during security scans at airports, but an iPad can just stay in your backpack. It makes a big difference in the weight of your bag and the amount of hassle you have to go through at the airport. And now, with voice dictation, we can dictate an email with minimal editing and send it, all on the iPad. With this added functionality, the need for a full-fledged laptop has gone away for a non-trivial number of people.

Sorry, Charlie, no Siri

What is somewhat strange is the lack of Apple’s now famous personal assistant Siri. Clearly, the voice recognition in the iPad is good enough for dictation, but the rest of the Siri functions are unavailable. Well, many people are subscribing to the theory that since Siri’s servers are already struggling under the iPhone 4S’s load, a huge wave of new iPads trying to use Siri would take out the poor girl. When Apple takes Siri out of beta, we hope to see the third generation iPad get full Siri support, but we won’t hold our breath.

Charging Times

The new iPad comes with an amazingly high capacity battery. That means you’ll get great battery life even though you’re looking at four times the pixels and surfing on LTE. The small downside to that great capacity is that it takes longer to charge the device than your previous iPad. While this new iPad hasn’t been out long enough for us to do any serious charging time tests, reports are coming in everywhere that, while it does take longer, it probably won’t affect you very much. That makes sense since the iPad’s charge lasts so damn long. Big deal if it takes a little longer to charge when you only have to charge it every three or four days. This is just simply a non-issue.

Video to Apple TV

1080p playback to Apple TV 3

The third generation of Apple TV that was just released will output 1920 by 1080 (1080p) content to an HDTV. That means that if you have shiny new 1080p content from iTunes (or your own *cough* alternate content) on your iPad, when you play the video on the Apple TV over AirPlay, it will now show full 1080p content. That’s right — your iPad wirelessly streams video of roughly the same quality as a Blu-Ray to the new $99 Apple TV. Damn, that is pretty impressive. We’d love to see any other tablet that can do that as quickly or as seamlessly.

Screen mirroring

Now that everything has such high resolution, your iPad has never looked so good. Its Retina display has over a million more pixels than an HDTV, but that doesn’t make the screen mirroring function any less cool. Your brand spanking new iPad will take advantage of the (Black) Apple TV’s HDMI connection to show off whatever is on your screen. Keep in mind, the Apple TV 2 is less powerful, so your milage may vary.

LTE

While the industry talks up how great LTE is, people outside of major metro areas aren’t even likely to have LTE yet. Luckily, Dover, DE, is covered by Verizon 4G LTE, so I was able to test it out.

Verizon LTE speed test in Dover, DE

Eh, it’s not slow, but it’s no 70 MBps.

About 10 minutes north of Dover is a town called Smyrna. This town only has Verizon’s 3G EVDO service.

Verizon 3G speed test in Smyrna, DE

That is slow and pretty terrible.

Even if you have LTE coverage, it might not be exactly what is hyped. While we can say that some locations like the Denver Airport have great 4G speeds, not everywhere does. That said, it is only going to get better from here on out, so this gripe is time sensitive and really fairly minor.

Final Thoughts

Joshua Schnell

Buying this iPad over the iPad 2 is going to be a hot debate for a lot of people. The cash savings on the iPad 2 (now $399.00) versus the Retina display and extra horsepower in the new iPad is what the internal mental dialog should be weighing at this point. Everything else is secondary. The new iPad is quicker, and the screen is substantially better than the iPad 2. If you’re not keen on saving your cash, the upgrade for the Retina display alone is worth it. But, if you don’t think you’re going to need that ultra-sharp display, I lean towards recommending you wait for the next edition of the iPad. If you decide to save some cash and go for the iPad 2, I very strongly encourage you to never, and I do mean never ever, look at someone’s third generation iPad. Once you do, you’ll never look at that iPad 2 screen again in the same way. The love affair with the iPad 2 will be over faster than it started because the new iPad’s display is just that amazing.

Grant Brünner

Using the new iPad for more than a couple of minutes makes using an old, non-Retina iPad seem a lot harder. If the only user-facing feature was the updated display, the price of entry would be worth it. As it stands, the Retina display, updated camera, LTE capability, and slight increase in speed make the new iPad worth every penny. If you’re interested, and you have the money to spare without starving or missing your bills, pull the trigger. You won’t be disappointed if this is your first iPad or third. You’ll love it, hands down.

I have owned the first generation Wi-Fi-only iPad, the Wi-Fi-only iPad 2, and now an LTE-enabled iPad. I was somewhat surprised that I could notice the weight difference right off the bat, but that faded to the background immediately. It feels much the same as the iPad 2, but so much clearer and more vibrant. I’m thrilled with the purchase, and I can’t wait for each and every app I use to be updated to take advantage of the Retina display. Playing games at Retina resolution is absolutely wonderful and helps the immersion factor immensely. Go get your own, and come back and tell us why you love it.

Nic Lake

The first time I saw the home screen of the new iPad, I was hooked. Everything just looks so stunning and crisp. Retina-ready apps like Tweetbot and Reeder dazzle, while some apps that have yet to update seem fuzzy and low-tech. Many of the apps will obviously be upgraded, so have no fear. The system still blazes, with apps ready to go almost as soon as you launch them. The “fingerprint-resistent glass” still sucks, and I’m constantly wiping it down with the case or the microfiber cloth I have, but this is to be expected with a screen that I’m practically salivating over. And while the battery will run for 10 hours, the increased capacity means that charging is much, much slower than the Apple devices that I’m used to. Not a deal breaker, but something to be aware of.

Should you buy it? If you’re looking to get your first iPad, this would be a great one to pick up. iPad 1 owners (who, in my eyes, were the primary target of this update) should also feel no hesitation about pulling the trigger. iPad 2 owners might need to mull this over a bit more, but there are many retailers like Gazelle that will still give you a fair chunk of change for your old model. And this screen looks really, REALLY nice.

The post A new iPad (3rd generation) review: it’s all about the Retina baby appeared first on Macgasm.

Tomorrow is a big day for Ravenous Games. Just over a year ago, they brought one of the best retro style platformers to iOS: the critically acclaimed League of Evil. With big shoes to fill and high expectations to meet, the much anticipated sequel, League of Evil 2, is launching tomorrow. I was lucky enough to be able to chat with Derek Doucette, the owner of Ravenous Games, about the League of Evil franchise, the development process, and some other really interesting stuff.

So, as some people may not be aware, the first League of Evil game was originally a web based Flash game that was created by Woblyware. What can you tell us about the role Ravenous Games played in bringing it to the iOS platform?

When I originally came across League of Evil, I knew immediately this would be a great iOS title. I contacted the author, Woblyware, and we worked together on bringing it to iOS. I ported the game from Flash to Objective-C, and Woblyware created additional content for release. Through updates within the year, we nearly tripled the original launch content. Ravenous’ role in all of this was creating the critically acclaimed control scheme that has made LOE1 so popular with its fans. We are also responsible for the marketing of LOE1 and continue to build the brand.

How did that process change with the development of League of Evil 2?

Development changed a LOT compared to when we worked on LOE1. This time around, we didn’t have much for existing assets. Woblyware created about half of the new maps, a few new enemies, and all the music for LOE2. They were also responsible for making sure that LOE2 felt and played similarly to the original. Bulletproof Outlaws created all new game art, and designed an interesting plot to play through. Code wise, the game is based off the same engine, but I had to rewrite and refactor a lot of code to improve the game and add in the new stuff we are supporting. The game should play a lot smoother, control even better and look fantastic.

So, LOE2 is basically the lovechild of Ravenous Games, Woblyware, and Bulletproof Outlaws. What was it like working with three entirely different teams on one title?

Yes, LOE2 is a collaborative effort between three teams. Working with three teams at times is a little tricky. However, the guys I worked with on this are very talented, and we didn’t have any obstacles we couldn’t overcome.

That’s equal parts awesome and impressive.

Thank you.

You said the controls were a major contributor to the massive success of LOE1. Did you even dare to try to improve them for LOE2?

We didn’t dare try and change the size or placement. We did try to make sure the character was more responsive to the controls. LOE2 feels faster, more responsive and plays tighter.

Retina quality graphics seem to be a big deal for LOE2, and we’re stoked to see it. What else can your fans expect with this release?

Lots! We’ve added costumes, a couple new baddies, BOSS BATTLES! [We also added] higher frame rates, tighter controls, and comic book-style cut scenes.

Are there any plans in the future to port LOE 2 to the Mac App Store? What about Android?

There is some discussion happening about bringing the game to the Mac App Store. No plans on porting to Android right yet.

What made you choose to start developing content for iOS instead of Android?

Android didn’t really have much traction when we first got into iOS development. Now that Android has the install base, Android users don’t seem to want to pay for apps. This makes developers look at other revenue sources such as advertisements in their apps. We don’t want to put ads in our games, so until the paid market shifts, we probably won’t be on Android.

That makes sense. Can you give us any hints about what’s in the pipeline for Ravenous Games?

Now that LOE2 is completed, we are going to work directly with Woblyware to bring out two or three more pixel games before the year is out. We’ll send along more details when we have them.

EXCITING! One final question: the LOE franchise clearly pays homage to the 8-bit era of gaming. What’s your favourite game from that time?

Double Dragon!

I’m not sure about you guys, but holy moley, tomorrow can’t come soon enough. Between the improved graphics, the new boss battles, and the overall improvements to gameplay, there’s no question that this game will be a hit. It combines everything that retro gamers love with a healthy side of current generation game quality. If it’s anything like the first one, we’ll also be able to look forward to content out the wazoo.

And if you thought it couldn’t get any better than that, League of Evil 2 will be available tomorrow at a special launch price of only $0.99.

A few of my friends and I have spent the last week replaying League of Evil 1, trying to clear every level with a 3-star rating. Now we’re ready for more. Are you?

The post Getting down and dirty with Ravenous Games on League of Evil 2 appeared first on Macgasm.

This article is supposed to serve as a dispassionate evaluation of the current situation.

Ecosystem Lock-in

What the authors are usually describing in one way or another is “ecosystem lock-in” or “vendor lock-in“; the practice of binding a customer to a company’s product ecosystem by various means.

This practice is not new, neither in the business of selling physical goods, nor in the business of selling digital goods:

• Car manufacturers have done this by producing specialised replacement parts that the customer can only find at licensed service contractors.
• Printer manufacturers try to force customers to use specialised ink cartridges for their printers.
• Distributors of digital media use methods of digital rights management and non-standard file formats, trying to bind the customer to their offerings while at the same time trying to stop uncontrolled redistribution of the content.

This kind of ecosystem lock-in essentially doesn’t allow the customer to take the content and move to another ecosystem/platform. There’s another kind of ecosystem lock-in — or lock-out for that matter — which sometimes goes hand in hand with the first one: prohibiting the user to (easily) consume content that originated from a different source/ecosystem. This can be achieved by limiting a device’s file format compatibility (1), or by limiting the ways in which a device can be loaded with content.

Both kinds essentially create sunk costs for the user. In the case of content it means that the customer has to deal with the prospect of not being able to transfer and enjoy his purchases on devices by a different manufacturer in the future.

The extent of Apple’s ecosystem lock-in

The devices that constitute Apple’s iTunes ecosystem are Apple computers and Windows PCs running the iTunes software, iOS devices (2), iPods (3) and Apple TVs. The types of content Apple offers or helps distribute and which could be subject to ecosystem lock-in are the following:

• Music
• Video (movies, TV shows and music videos)
• Books (including audiobooks)
• Podcasts (including the offerings of iTunes U)
• Applications for iOS devices and Apple’s computers

These will hereafter be examined regarding the existence and extent of ecosystem lock-in.

Music

Before January 6, 2009, audio files were protected using Apple’s own FairPlay DRM solution (4). With the advent of iTunes Plus, Apple offered to its customers a paid option to upgrade to DRM free files.

All music sold in the iTunes Store after April 7, 2009, is DRM free and stored in the standardised AAC file format, allowing playback on a wide variety of devices from different manufacturers.

From the iTunes Terms and Conditions:

(i) You shall be authorized to use iTunes Products only for personal, noncommercial use.

(vi) iTunes Plus Products do not contain security technology that limits your usage of such products, and Usage Rules (ii) – (v) do not apply to iTunes Plus Products. You may copy, store, and burn iTunes Plus Products as reasonably necessary for personal, noncommercial use.

It should be noted, however, that Apple doesn’t leave iTunes Plus audio files without any kind of protection. Each file contains information about the person who originally purchased the specific song, making it traceable to a certain degree (5).

Video

As of today all video content sold through iTunes is DRM protected.

From the iTunes FAQ regarding video content:

Videos purchased from the iTunes Store have FairPlay digital rights management embedded in the files and are in a format that can be readily synced to a video-capable mobile device. Just like with music you purchase from the iTunes Store, you own the videos you purchase. You can authorize up to five computers to play purchased videos, and you can sync the video to as many mobile devices as you like. A single device can contain purchased content from up to five accounts; iTunes will not allow you to add data from a sixth account.

This means that movies and TV shows bought (6) in iTunes will not be playable on devices outside Apple’s ecosystem with one exception: The user can stream video content to TVs using the TV-out functionality of their Apple device or by using an AirPlay enabled Apple TV as a recipient. When streaming purchased high definition content to a HDTV it must be done using a protected HDMI connection.

All video-enabled iPods and iOS devices are capable of playing video encoded in certain standardised formats. This type of video can be synchronised to the devices using iTunes on a Mac or PC (see 4, 5, 6). iOS devices offer an even greater range of compatible video formats, when using apps like AVPlayer(HD) (7).

Books

With iBooks Apple offers both copy protected books as well as books without DRM on its iOS devices (8). As with video, copy protected books cannot be read on non-Apple devices, but the application accepts standard ePub and PDF files, meaning that customers can import legally purchased, non-DRM books into the application using iTunes.

Furthermore Apple does not prohibit users from reading books bought in other eBook stores, given these companies provide an iOS application that adheres to the App Store developer guidelines. An example would be the Amazon Kindle software for iOS.

Files created in iBooks Author with the extension *.ibooks are subject to ecosystem lock-in on the supplier side, meaning that Apple limits the author’s options for distribution and thus commercial use to its own store offering, if books make use of the features of the iBooks file format.

In the case of audiobooks, Apple seems to (9) source all content from Audible.com. These books are generally offered in file formats with embedded DRM protection (10). Because Apple only acts as a reseller, books bought in iTunes (thus from Audible) can be played on all devices compatible with its file formats.

Users also have the ability to import audiobooks with the m4b extension into iTunes and transfer them to compatible devices.

Podcasts

Podcasts and iTunes U content is DRM free, as the iTunes application on OS X and Windows only acts as a podcast client (11); the rights remain with the creator of the content. Thus all podcasts can be easily transferred out of Apple’s ecosystem. Further information can be found here.

Applications

This type of “interactive content” works a bit differently than the other kinds of media discussed previously. Applications purchased in the iOS App Store inside iTunes or on the respective devices are associated with the Apple ID of a person and subject to different terms and conditions than music and videos. The same applies for OS X applications purchased in the Mac App Store.

Should a customer decide to switch from an Apple computer to a Windows PC or Linux PC, or from an iOS device to an Android or Windows Phone 7 device, respectively, there is no way to transfer the previously purchased applications to a device outside of Apple’s platform.

This effectively forces the user to forego his previous purchases and search for alternatives or check if the desired applications are available on other platforms as well (12).

Conclusion

Several types of content available for purchase in iTunes are subject to ecosystem lock-in, with applications on iOS and OS X leading the way, as they cannot be used on anything but the OS they are written for.

Videos purchased in iTunes can only be played on devices compatible with the FairPlay DRM and the same holds true for copy protected books.

Audiobooks are a slightly different matter; They are bound to one platform, but to Audible’s not Apple’s. This is good news for the user to a certain degree, because a large number of devices is compatible with Audible’s DRM.

The only two types of media free from any kind of restrictions are music and podcasts. They can be transferred freely between any number of devices that support the standardised AAC file format.

It is worth mentioning however that — with the exception of native applications on iOS — Apple doesn’t stop or impede its customers from using media from sources other than its own stores, as long as it is present in a number of standardised formats supported on its devices.

The post The state of Apple’s ecosystem lock-in, and where we’re at today appeared first on Macgasm.

The fingerprints of iOS encroaching on OS X may be more tangible than realized. As I’ve watched Apple — in particular its video offerings — over the years, it occured to me sometime last year that if you want to know where Apple is taking OS X with regard to iOS, here’s a sure bet: Watch iLife.

2007

Two things happened in 2007. The first is well-known. In January of 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone to the world, and the world hasn’t been the same since.

The other event was a bit of a PR nightmare for Apple. In August, amidst the wake of the June release of the first iPhone, Apple rolled out iLife ’08, which included, among its standard offerings, an updated iMovie. iMovie ’08 had been completely redesigned by one Randy Ubillos — originator of Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and now Final Cut Pro X.

iMovie ’08

Upon its release, David Pogue said, “iMovie ‘08 is an utter bafflement… incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable…”

And look at all the changes — no processor-intensive effects, no plugins, one project at a time, and support for a limited amount of codecs, revolving primarily around MP4, which even Final Cut didn’t support at the time.

As I mentioned last year:

[quote]I believe Apple, with a team headed by Randy Ubillos, redesigned iMovie around a core set of priorities, which were not primarily about editing, and therefore lost some of the editing tools in the process.[/quote]

Because it was a 1.0 program, the “missing features” distracted everyone from the big UI overhaul. It’s on the list, but I think it is primarily the UI that drove Apple to resort to, as Pogue says, “throwing away a fully developed, mature, popular program and substituting a bare-bones, differently focused program under the same name.”

So coming at it from a positive angle, let’s look at what was gained with iMovie ’08 over its predecessor: one project at a time with one video viewer at a time, MP4-based editing, large regions and formed scrollable windows within a single application framework with lots of dragging versus precise clicking.

In short, it was made to be touched, not clicked.

D8

There’s been speculation about a touchscreen Mac for a long, long time. Back at D8, Steve Jobs famously spoke of how the tablet had been in the development stages for a long time, but advancements, primarily in touchscreen technology, caused Apple to opt for redirecting resources to the design of a mobile phone.

Today, the touchscreen Mac is really already among us — a quite capable personal computer running a version of OS X, albeit slightly different. We know it as the iPad. The touchscreen Mac of tomorrow may simply be an evolution of today’s robust iPad, handling tougher, more demanding processes and situations.

iMovie for iOS

Three years after the relase of that first iPhone, three years after the complete redesign of iMovie, we see iMovie for iOS — one of the first Apple-made, non-system, powerful apps for iOS that was built for the every day user. For you. For I.

And man, looking at iMovie for iOS during that keynote revealed one thing: the app looked a lot like that redesigned iMovie ’08 for the iLife suite. What started off as a surprising redesign that people like Pogue didn’t understand at the time began to make absolute sense. It was no surprise when we found out that the man behind iMovie for iOS was the same Randy Ubillos that redefined iMovie with the ’08 edition earlier.

If the iPhone is really five years ahead of the competition like Jobs suggested, that could very well mean that the concept of iMovie for iPhone and iPad could have been floating around as early as 2005, right about the time iMovie was not doubt being rewritten from the ground up. Think about that for a moment. Done? Can you see where this is all going? The picture is certainly starting to get a little bit clearer.

iOS X?

Near the end of his thoughts on the iOS-ification of OS X, Viticci asks, “Will Mac-only applications (and thus Mac-like from a UI standpoint) like Aperture, Final Cut and iBooks Author ever be ported to iOS, triggering an iOS-based rewrite and redesign? We don’t know yet. But soon, maybe?” He then proceeded to link the word maybe to potential specifications for the rumoured upcoming iPad 3.

My guess is that with new hardware on the way for both iOS devices, with iOS 6, and a new Mac OS already well into planning stages at Apple, porting the code for these programs will be a small, final roadblock, should the company decide it’s time to completely bring its professional applications to iOS. Heck, there’s even recent reports that a graduate student was working on testing OS X on ARM architectures while working on his thesis.

Video Apps

This brings us to the most iOS ready professional application in Apple’s portfolio — Final Cut. The UI changes in Final Cut Pro X really start to make sense now. I don’t recall anyone wanting FCP to look more like iMovie, do you? Few of the UI changes facilitate the other new conceptual designs of the FCP underbelly. My only thought is that — as I suspect with the iMovie ’08 changes — they must be preparing us for the inevitable touchscreen Mac.

With iMovie ’08, Apple found itself on the receiving end of  garrish backlash from dedicated users. Pogue’s critique of iMovie ’08 sounds eerily similar to today’s critiques of FCPX. Now, Apple has no doubt fumbled the release of FCPX, but even if everything from 10.0.3 had been present back in June, there still would have been a mass outcry regarding the UI redesign. Once again, just like with iMove ’08, the limitations of an app have distracted us from seeing the potential future.

Photography Apps

What about Aperture? Go look at it. It embodies the iLife-ification of Apple’s pro application lineup. It’s recent changes have mirrored iPhoto updated: face recognition, UI tweaks, bigger buttons, fullscreen modes, etc.

iBooks Author

There’s no way this app was developed inside Apple without someone thinking about making the software touch-friendly So, where does that leave us? Look again at Apple’s first power apps for iOS — iWork — and their desktop doppelgangers, and iBook’s path to iOS is pretty clear.

iCloud

Viticci contends that iCloud is the place to look if you want to know where iOS and OS X are headed. Obviously, I disagree. For the near future, sure. But I see iCloud as an extension of the operating system, a new part of it that doesn’t exist on your device. It’s huge technology that bridges the gaps between our existing day-to-day computing, and sometimes in small ways we now don’t even think about. Casual consumers aren’t taking notes about iCloud. iCloud is plumbing, only noticed when it breaks.

Conclusion

So, I still say, if you want to know Apple’s grand vision for the future, watch iLife.

We now have GarageBand on iPad and iPhone, the iOS Photos app has incorporated some of iPhoto’s editing capabilities, and no doubt a lot of learning from iOS can be seen in iLife ’11, as Viticci handily points out.

While maybe not what some might call the “core” of Apple’s business, it’s no doubt that the casual computer user (aka “consumer”) is the broad base that keeps Apple’s bottom line nice and cushy. Apple sneaks its newness into our every day lives in ways we don’t realize, bringing these new elements into our relationship with our devices; sometimes we don’t see it happening until we’re told that it’s actually occurring.

Tapping into the future

There are certainly many areas in which Apple is navigating the winds of an ever-changing technology industry and a demanding market. There are no doubt many occasions where us fanboys credit Apple with vision when in reality they are figuring it out as they go. I may be doing that here, but I firmly believe that a personally-interactive, wireless, smart, ultra-portable tablet was Jobs’ vision from the beginning decades.

Like a stereogram, the image before us today is beginning to come into focus. Jobs and Apple painted the picture a long, long time ago. It’s only now that it’s starting to make some actual sense.

Photo Credits: eoshd.com, TidBITS, WIRED, socialphy.com

The post I’ve seen the future of iOS and OS X, and it starts with iLife appeared first on Macgasm.

This is unfortunately where Final Cut Pro X finds itself today. Here’s another great simile from cinematographer Chris Marino: ”…with CS6 on the horizon and MC6 making strides, fcpx is like the ex girlfriend trying to get back together with a new haircut.”

The FCPX disconnect

It’s interesting to me, because parts of the whole FCPX saga are so un-Apple. Now, don’t get me wrong — the part where they completely revamp a program, stripping it of essential features, then roll those features back in? Very Apple.

But historically, Apple is not about specs, but rather the sense, the feel of the device/OS/app. And normally, this works out great for them — iPod, OS X, iPhone, iOS, iWork, iCloud, etc.

But with FCPX, it has completely backfired, which I think gets to the heart of the argument from professionals that Apple “doesn’t care bout them”.

The specifics about the specs

Pros do care about specs — not in the way mobile phone nerds enthusiasts care about specs, but because a small difference in specs can mean the difference in hours or days when you’re dealing with pro media, especially high-definition video.

And not just hardware specs. Software features matter. Multi-cam? XML? Going from machine to machine, app to app, being able to find what I need? I bought THIS monitor for THESE reasons (read: THESE specs); will my editing software work with it? Other companies who have constantly tried (and frequently succeeded) to out-spec Apple know and understand this and, in the wake of Apple’s bumbling of FCPX, are doing everything they can to win back formerly loyal customers.

Specs for the pro user are about two things (other than the obvious quality): flexibility and time.

At the release of FCPX, there were workarounds for many of these issues, plugins for others. Some of us were just SOL with some of the things we needed. Overall, inflexible and time consuming.

FCPX 10.0.3 or FCP7?

But a lot of that is moot now. FCPX 10.0.3 has the specs, which get at most of the core of the flexibility issues. And most workarounds have been scrapped for actual, built-in features (great concept, Apple!).

That, and a lot of third party companies are meeting the needs of professionals that were left in the wake of FCPX’s new “strengths”. The new 7toX tool lets you finally import your FCP7 projects into FCPX (get it now for $9.99 on the Mac App Store with the link below). And the Blackmagic Design kit allows broadcast monitoring. The X2Pro utility will send your edit to ProTools, bringing FCPX back into the professional post pipeline. These concerns were certainly among the biggest.

FCPX now has everything necessary in an editing application for me — not for everybody, probably, but for me.

Yet, tomorrow, when that client calls needing something edited by early next week, I’ll reach for my iMac and pull up FCP7.Why? Time. The UI and approach are so drastically different in FCPX, I just haven’t had time to get it under my fingers yet.

So much in FCP7 is second-nature to me. During long editing sessions, I often find myself tapping out Shift-Command-A, Command-S while eating lunch to make sure my food doesn’t suddenly disappear from my table. It’s muscle memory. We’re talking about literal biological neuropathways wired into my brain after regularly using an application that’s barely changed in ten years. My brain physically cannot understand the new program. It’s going to take some re-wiring. Possible, but surpassingly inconvenient at best.

The “new haircut”

FCP desperately needed a facelift — more than a facelift: an overhaul. But as I mentioned in my first thoughts on this subject:

[quote]Likewise, Final Cut Pro will likely not develop a user interface identical to that of iMovie any time soon. They no doubt plan on making it more touch-friendly, but I don’t know if the installed FCP user-base will accept a giant shift in UI between versions. General home users raised enough of a stink when it happened to iMovie. With Final Cut Pro, where a lot of people depend on the software for their livelihood, a giant redesign could be a huge PR nightmare for Apple. FCP is so customizable, you have all different kinds of power-users. Some rely on buttons. Some on keyboard shortcuts. Some are mousers. Corporate commercial guys use it one way. VFX guys use it another way. Filmmakers another. To drastically change the UI is to break one or more systems for a group of professional users that need it to work today. A complete FCP redesign has the hard task of being written in new code, updating to beyond today’s expected features, and yet still remaining compatible with the user base and, more importantly, the industries. This doesn’t mean it can’t ever change; it just means change has to be slow and inclusive.[/quote]

So I was wrong about it not being like iMovie, but dead on about the consequences of doing so.

Apple and the OS success

I think Apple’s mistake was in approaching this as an app redesign (like the new iMovie) without realizing that for professionals, FCP is as crucial to their Mac as OS X or QuickTime. If any piece is out of order, the whole system is useless, and a crisis is on our hands. Many of us have more than one machine for precicely that reason. We keep one machine with the oldest, most solid setup in case the new shiny takes a big dump on our workload.

Not that anyone’s asking me, but I think Apple would have been much wiser to have approached FCP like an operating system. There were no doubt a lot of frustrated people with every iteration of OS X as different features and specs were end-of-life’d. But it seems that in most instances, Apple left some options open for people to give them (users, developers) time to adapt — Classic and Rosetta being examples.

OS X has been (and continues to be) wildly successful — so successful, in fact, that the OS X strategy is perhaps the most vital “spec” of the iPhone and iPad, even more so than the OS X kernel itself.

I’ve suggested here and there that Apple should approach the cloud from an operating system standpoint, rather than an app standpoint. They seem to kinda be doing that, and it seems to kinda be working.

By not sticking with what they know best, Apple released an amazing editing application redesigned from the ground up — with no bridges back to the existing (not past… present) version, existing projects, existing workflows. This has alienated a lot of users — users like me that see Final Cut as the operating system for their business.

And even with the updates — calling it 10.0.3 and not 10.3 — it’s as if Apple is saying, “Yeah, these things aren’t really important to us.”

The future

I might as well cut and paste from previous articles for this part.

FCPX is the best editing application I’ve ever used, and with major updates released on a faster schedule than promised, the glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel is starting to look less and less like an oncoming locomotive.

Just over six months out from the intial release, many users have not transitioned to anything new yet. I think anyone that has waited was wise to do so, as it is my opinion that, if you have to learn something new anyway, learning FCPX is much less time-consuming (and less expensive) than completely overhauling your post machines.

The naked truth

Which brings me back to the nudity. Will FCPX ever shake the “naked lunatic,” desperate ex-girlfriend vibe? Well, many ex-girlfriends find new mates (believe me), and many naked lunatics move on to new towns (believe m– i mean, look, a deer!).

Beginning with 10.0.3, Apple will start building a whole new user base of Final Cut Pro users. If the user base even has to rebuilt from the students up, it will survive. I suspect it will continue to grow and reclaim its prominence as the industry-standard editing app. It’s just a shame FCPX set back Apple’s lead, undoing ten years of steady growth.

Guess I better break out those training videos if I want to keep up with the kiddos…

PS – Don’t forget that Apple has a 30-day free trial available at http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial.

The post The naked truth about Final Cut Pro 10.0.3, and where it stands today appeared first on Macgasm.

The popularity of filter-rich digital photos has shaped our cultural aesthetics. For people that view photography as more than just a break in the work day, I’ve decided to put together a sort of iPhone Photo Theory 101, detailing the processes I use nearly every day and the apps that make it possible. This page contains just shy of a bazillion photos, so… warnings for those of you on dial-up.

And I promise to go into more details than Marco Arment’s famous how-to.

Acquire

Camera.app

iOS 5 has made access to the built-in Camera.app quick and easy. Often, this is a fine enough place to capture images quickly. The built-in HDR functionality gives you a little better image to work with (sometimes). Usually, though, I have the time to take a controlled image. When possible, I use other apps to acquire my image.

An aside about RAW

Most DSLRs on the market offer the ability to shoot in a RAW format. By “raw”, the manufacturer means that all data collected by the photosensor is saved into the file.

Most digital photos go through two steps before they are committed to storage — processing and compression. Processing is typically determined by your camera’s settings (like white balance, exposure, etc.). Your camera may have different compression level settings, but most cameras use JPEG-type compression. The resulting image is much smaller with often little discernible difference in quality.

You can achieve a great large, lightly compressed JPEG image with most digital cameras. So why use RAW? Raw images are especially helpful when you plan on really manipulating the colors and light values in an image. It gives you the most data possible, comparable to what the film world (literal celluloid film, darkroom processing, Ansel Adams types) might refer to as a “thick” negative.

While you can certainly take RAW images with your DSLR and import them with the affordable iPad/iPhone camera connection kit (and process using an app such as PhotoRaw for iOS), there’s no way to get raw data from the iPhone camera, nor would you probably want to.

But there are ways to cheat, ways to get a rich image with which to begin.

ProHDR

ProHDR is without a doubt the camera app that I use most. It allows me to take a manually controlled couple of photos, which the app then aligns, merges, and tonemaps based on its built-in algorithm. It often gives me a great image straight out of the box, but being the control freak that I am, I will usually mess with the controls a little bit to get what I feel is the best starting point.

A good “thick” image may actually not look like a great photo. It will be milky and low contrast, though it might be fairly saturated color-wise. The aim is to make sure not to push or pull anything too far so you have plenty of room to play later down the path.

Camera+

The downfall of ProHDR is that while I can have manual control over where I expose my two photos, it still uses the built-in camera in all its automatic, untamed glory.

Occasionally, I will incorporate Camera+ into the mix. This gives me the control to focus on one spot while using another area of the image for exposure. The added ability to lock white balance is a feature critical for photos outdoors or in mixed lighting scenarios.

With focus and white balance locked, I take two photos of differing exposure levels to get the widest range possible of image data.

Some options

Owle Bubo + Canon lens adapter

If you want to get super fancy, you can get the Owle Bubo to snap onto your iPhone. An optional lens connector (for Canon or Nikon lenses) from EnCinema gives you near-DSLR power. The combo, however, approaches the price of a low-level Canon or Nikon, so unless you plan on shooting some movies with your iPhone, your money may be better spent on a DSLR body with a kit lens.

AutoStitch Panorama

You can make some great panoramas out of your images by using AutoStitch. I’ve found it’s better to AutoStitch your unfiltered bright and dark images before importing the resulting panoramas into ProHDR, but it’s tough work. The photos need to be the same size (resolution) and should end up with roughly identical fields of view. But if you have the time to play with it and get it right, the results can be really great.

Editing your photos

Once you’ve acquired a beautiful image with which to start, the real work begins. While there are a number of photo editing apps available for iOS, the one I have fallen in love with is Photoforge2 from GhostBird Software. (I’ve written about it before, here.)

Photoforge2

Aspect ratio

The shape of your photo may seem like a simple thing, but it can often have a subtle psychological effect on the viewer. Usually, my photos end up the same size as they were acquired. But every now and then, I’ll crop it for one reason or another.

A common reason is to crop out unwanted areas of the image. But among the cropping options in Photoforge2 are various locked-in aspect ratios. The two I use most commonly are 16:9 and 1:1.

The 1:1 or square aspect has obviously been part of photography for ages, but it has recently been re-popularized by Instagram. Of course, it first came to pop culture through the Polaroid camera, and the retrophile culture loves to throw back their photos with this simple adjustment. The square shape intimates a moment frozen in time for posterity, something from the past worth holding on to.

Because most photos we see all day are rectangles, the square look also instantly brings a retro-hip neo-tech air to your photo. In my opinion, getting a good composition in a square aspect is very difficult, but if achieved, it can be very powerful.

The 16:9 ratio has, of course, been established by widescreen digital television. And though 16:9 (or 1.78:1) is a relatively new widescreen format for motion pictures, using this preset is a quick way to bring a cinematic feel to your shot. Many compositions fit nicely in the 16:9 cropping, and with the right treatment, your photo can feel like a still from some movie we’d all like to see. This subtle adjustment can give your viewer the sense of a captured moment from a larger scene.

(…maybe I’m thinking too much about this.)

Layers

One of the most powerful aspects of any photo-editing application is the ability to use layers as a non-destructive way to edit your photos. Photoforge2′s layer support is surprisingly robust.

With masking, blend modes, and opacity controls, most of the things for which you’d use layers in a pro-app like Photoshop are available to you in Photoforge2. I’ll share some practical uses of layers along the way.

Curves and other controls

I prefer the look of older film stocks (which these days would be ALL film stocks, I guess). From studying old photos that have been digitized and from the guidance of much more talented colorists than I, I’ve learned a bit about the way the old stocks (negative and print) took light. I use this knowledge a lot for my films, but I bring the same sensibilities to my personal photos.

While there have been great advancements in digital photo technology, no one has really captured the filmic curve. So no matter how the image is acquired (even with an expensive DSLR), my first adjustment is to take my thickened negative and give it a filmic coloring.

Sometimes this is just a subtle adjustment, but often I want to bring some nostalgia and timelessness to the photo. The other day, my mother remarked that a photo I sent her “looks like something from an old calendar”. I considered this a high complement. Just looking at the photo immediately took her mind to something from the past — timelessness achieved!

Vignettes and other effects

Apart from the various image controls, Photoforge2 offers up some built-in effects, most of which I don’t use.

I do make a lot of use of the vignette feature, though. I often layer multiple, very light vignettes as a way of highlighting a focal point. Even greater control may be achieved by using layers and masking, but painting a mask with Photoforge2 is kinda clunky, especially on the iPhone. (If GhostBird Software ever adds in a Gradient painter, the layer mask would be the better way to go.)

Layers and masks are pretty useful for blurring vignettes. I don’t use them often, but it’s really the only way to make that happen. Dupe the layer, add a Gaussian blur, add a mask, and fingerpaint with concentric shapes from black to white (transparent to opaque) to get close to what you want.

Textures

One interesting feature of the PopCam! FX is the ability to add textures to your photos. Especially if you’re going for an old photo look, this can be a neat way to color, stain, or grunge up your photo. But the developers have given you even more control over this functionality in the Photo Properties pop-up. Choose a built-in texture and choose a blend mode and opacity level.

Curation

Cleaning up your Camera Roll

Having your photo go through multiple stages is great for your photo, but makes a mess out of your Camera Roll. iOS 5 gives you the ability to create photo albums so you can quickly locate your selects. When you go to clean up your camera roll, Photos.app will let you know if one of the images you’ve selected for deletion has been put into an album.

Note that Photoforge2 projects are BIG. I’ve filled up my 32GB iPhone with them more than once. Once I’ve created my final image, I will usually delete the Photoforge2 project. The only reason for keeping the project is if I think I might tweak the photo some more or if I particularly like the overlays and textures. I can open the project, create a new layer above the base layer by importing another image to give it the same treatment as the original.

Photo Stream could be another way to back up the photos in your camera roll. While these methods make for a messy camera roll (and therefore a messy, un-editable Photo Stream), it’s good for snapping pictures on your iPhone, then using your iPad for Photoforge2.

Catalog and Share

While you can catalog your photos on your Mac using iPhoto or Aperture, Photoforge2 allows you to export to a number of online options such as Twitter, Facebook albums, flickr, Picasa, tumblr, and Dropbox.

I use Photo365 to remind me to take a picture every day. Even though I’ve missed a few days, it’s made a nice visual journal, reminding me of where I was and what I was doing on a given date. It also exports to Twitter, Facebook, and flickr.

If you’ve amassed some really great photos, a cool way to share them with family or friends is as a gift. iPhoto allows you to create coffee table books of your photos. A number of online sites, such as CanvasPeople, will put your photos on canvas for a reasonable price, turning your pocket hobby into a gallery masterpiece.

The new iOS Cards.app allows you to send custom greeting cards using photos from your iPhone’s Camera Album. While I initially rolled my eyes at the Cards app when it was announced, I’ve used it several times. It’s a great way for a hi-tech geek who doesn’t even use pen and paper any more (like me) to connect with someone who still has an appreciation for a personal paper card in the mailbox (like my mom).

Conclusion

This is a ton of info about what should be a simple process of snapping a camera phone pic and showing it to people. While I’ve gone into a great bit of detail, realize that I rarely spend more than a few minutes doctoring these pictures. Sometimes I do it on the spot, sometimes I do it while conversing with my travel companions, and sometimes I’ll use it as a way to wind down in the evening before bed.

The key is to find out what resources are available to you, use them often, and do not fear adding to the complexity of your process.

And what’s more? The total current cost of every iOS app I’ve mentioned in this article is $19.94 (and over half of that is just for PhotoRAW). Head to the links below to learn more.

Your story

What apps do you use? Is there something you use that’s indispensable that I’ve failed to mention? Do you have quick tips or tricks that might be valuable to our readers? Leave it in the comments.

Photo Credits: App Advice, The iPhone Nerd, The iOS Post, Studio Nemo, James Boyd, Anandtech

The post iPhoneography 101: Get great photos, and great control in iOS appeared first on Macgasm.

Podcasting has come a long way from its beginnings near the end of the 20th century. It began to catch hold with people in late 2004 with groups like Dawn and Drew of The Dawn and Drew Show, Kris and Betsy Smith of Croncast and Dan Klass of The Bitterest Pill. However, former MTV VJ Adam Curry is credited with coming up with the concept altogether. His idea? Find a way to automate the delivery and syncing of textual content to portable audio players. Fast forward a few to June 2005 when Apple released iTunes 4.9 with native support for podcasts. From there, things just took off.

For many of us, podcasts make up a good portion of our week. After all, who doesn’t like listening to other people – talk? Whether that be the famous Diggnation by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (which just ended), TWiT TV, 5By5, or our very own Macgasm Podcast, there’s always something to watch or listen to. However, there were a few problems in the way we consumed podcasts. Most of us just learned to bear with what we had, but Martin Hering of Vemedio decided he’d make the changes necessary. His answer: Instacast.

Enter Martin Hering, the creator

Martin Hering

Before making his way to the App Store, Hering graduated with a computer science degree from a smaller university in northern Germany. ”Lucky for me the studying part wasn’t that hard and so I had plenty of time on the side to develop some shareware Mac apps. It was a great time and the income from selling my apps payed for a lot of fun time.”

He later got his first experience with iOS in 2005 when he entered Equinux in Munich, Germany, as a Mac/iPhone software engineer. He was the developer behind its digital television technology and also created the ‘The Tube’ application and some accompanying products.

[quote]“It was fun and I gained a lot of experience in real hard-core programming. Before that I didn’t know that pushing bits and bytes so close to the metal could be that fun. We started to do some stuff right after the first native SDK was released. Before the SDK we fiddled around with HTML5, but that was not very promising.”[/quote]

Now, Hering wasn’t always into podcasts, mostly because of time restraints and “the lack of real quality talk entertainment.” However, in the fall of 2010, Dan Benjamin and John Gruber of 5By5 restarted “The Talk Show.”

[quote]“The quality of the 5by5 shows got me hooked and I fiddled around with iTunes and listening on iOS. But that became cumbersome and annoying quickly because there are too many steps and there is no integrated way of staying up-to-date. So I looked around a bit in the App Store, but I wasn’t really blown away by what was available. Everything seemed to be over-engineered already and too complicated for a beginner like me. And the apps weren’t very good-looking either. So I decided to start a podcast client project on my own.”[/quote]

So what was wrong anyway?

Not too much it seems. Hering just wanted something simple that worked for him. So he created an app that would fit his basic podcast needs, but he quickly realized that potential users were really demanding “perfection” when it came to their workflow. After all, who’d want an app that required other apps to go along with it? Or an app that broke after the first launch. This fact fueled his ongoing development. ”I wasn’t really hoping for a lot of success,” he said. “I knew most of the apps in the App Store might have some success at the beginning but after some time users lose interest and the project gets kinda stale. So, I was very surprised that this seemed not to be the case with Instacast. Users were sticking with it and recommending it to their friends.” To be specific regarding Hering’s success, Instacast currently has around 40,000 active users.

[quote]“That’s not much compared to some success stories of the App Store, but I think it’s a lot for a niche product like a $2 podcast client when iTunes gives the basic functionality away for free. But it really doesn’t matter that much to me. I just like to make the best podcast app.”[/quote]

Version one of Instacast came out March 1, 2011. This followed a three month period of development. At first, reception was slow, but the first user reactions were both positive and encouraging. “From version to version, from iteration to iteration, Instacast got more users and current ones were not running away anymore. So it’s gotten to a point where I can safely say that Instacast is the most accepted podcast client on the App Store with 4 to 5 stars constantly.”

What exactly is Instacast?

In the words of its creator, “Instacast is a fun application on iOS for consuming radio and television shows in the form of podcasts. It is really easy to learn and master and it provides endless time of entertainment.” The app, along with its beautiful interface, gives you instant access to your podcast subscriptions. You can stream or download episodes wirelessly, follow show notes and enjoy audio and video podcasts on-the-go. Not to mention, there’s an awesome search built-in for finding renowned and upcoming podcasts.

The app gives many features that we often overlook, but would easily notice if it weren’t present. It saves your playback state and syncs it via the cloud so that you can pick up where you left off on any iOS device. It shows you the rankings of podcasts by genre and overall ranking. It preloads over Wi-Fi to save bandwidth and doesn’t download episodes to the device to save memory. The app includes fine-grain tuning and speed-up/slow-down controls for those interesting or long episodes. There’s also a built-in browser for easier following of the show notes and push notification. All in all, Hering took his time in meeting the expectation of the user.

When did he realize the need for an iPad app?

After the successful reception of the iPhone/iPod Touch app, everyone wanted to know if an iPad app was in the works. I, for one, thought the same thing. In fact, I began using the iPhone app on the iPad at 2x resolution, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who did so. After all, the app was great, there wasn’t really a good alternative, and I was done with the built-in music and video app. However, it seemed that for some time, an iPad app wasn’t even being considered.

[quote]“I wasn’t really sure at the beginning if an iPad app was really necessary. But I got a lot of Twitter and email feedback about it and users were demanding it, so I made one. But I realized that simply copying the functionality of the iPhone app wouldn’t do the trick. You want to use your iPad differently than your iPhone. That’s why I put more focus on video and show links.[/quote]

That extra time put into making the iPad app unique took a long time. Hering started the first sketches in June 2011, put the whole project on hold for three months, then restarted it in September 2011. Instacast HD for the iPad was finally released in late November 2011 and the reception was incredible. In the end, “the iPad and the iPhone app share the same basic data model, but on top of that both app technologies are very different.” That’s the story of how this app came to be.

What’s next for Instacast?

For that, Hering had a quick response. “There will be an updated version for iPad shortly and I started work on a 2.0 for the iPhone. Can’t say much about it at this point, only that it will improve a lot of functionality that is kind of basic right now.”

Now from the story of Instacast’s origins, we see again the “get it done yourself” nature of its developer. He wanted something better for podcasting, so he set out to build a product with both him and the consumer in mind. Once again, we can take from this a simple lesson.

Remember this from the Day One interview:

[quote]We often sit around and wait for something to be done for us. In the case of apps, we notice a problem that needs to be addressed. However, we assume that with time someone will eventually build it for us. Why can’t we be that someone? Why can’t we set out to build it ourselves? It’s clear that the app platform is a great place to show your creativity.[/quote]

Yeah. The same applies here. Have a solution to a problem? Want something to work for you? Get out there and build it.

The post Making something work for you isn’t hard. A talk with Instacast creator, Martin Hering. appeared first on Macgasm.

Email. It’s a technology that, once upon a time, excited us. It was an incredible feeling to get a message from someone without physically seeing them; however, as time has passed, email has become annoying. With the majority of your inbox being spam these days, and the remainder consisting of reminders to pay your bills, the whole thing has become a burden. Even for those whose inbox was their job, email was just, blah. It went from being a productive communication technology to a burden pretty quickly.

Some people ditched email almost entirely, and even traded it for a Twitter account. Others found other sources for communication, especially in the work force (Yammer, Basecamp, etc). Resumés now include links to Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+ as primary means for contact, instead of the cumbersome email address of the past. While the savvy are off experimenting with other forms of direct communication, what  happens to those that still require email? What about those that still use it on a daily basis? What about them? What can they do? Thankfully, two Frenchmen had the same problem and wanted to do something about it — they created a next-generation email client, its name: Sparrow.

The foundation of Sparrow: Enter Dominique Leca

Prior to Sparrow, Dominique Leca attended HEC Paris, the first business school in France, where they put a strong emphasis on internships. Leca took part in many different opportunities, including investment banking, acquisitions, advertising, and even law, his original career interest: “everything seemed a little bit too sad for me, so I just founded a company just a few months after the release of the first iPhone. Of course, we were building unofficial apps because the App Store wasn’t created yet. We were releasing some jailbreaked apps, but when Steve Jobs announced that an iOS App Store was going to be created, we were ready.”

Dominique Leca, Co-founder of Sparrow

From there, Leca and his team began releasing iPhone and iPad applications for newspapers, brands, and anything else they could at the time. Leca and his team found it to be an interesting business because of how quickly companies were realizing the benefits of mobility. The only thing that upset Leca was that he was creating “trash software. Things people would use three times and then push to the side.”

In the beginning, designing throw away apps was more than enough to scratch the itch, but once people started tossing away their apps for the next app of the moment, Leca knew things had to change.

Leca then decided to dabble in creating little games, eventually leading to the creation of GeoMaster, a game that tested your world geography knowledge. But still, the endeavour left something to be desired for Leca and his team. Leca struggled to find that one project that he’d devote all of his time to, so he left his current company and went on a hunt to find something he was passionate about, something he could do to help change the world. To get closer to finding that project, he asked himself what exactly needed to be fixed. Two months later Hoa Dinh Viet, Dom’s future co-founder, told him about a project he’d been working on for ten years – a mail engine:

[quote]He told me he had appreciated the work I had put into UI/UX at the previous company where we had worked together. He told me ‘let’s give it a shot. Let’s try to design something for the Mac. Then we could release it as a beta as fast as we can. So, we did it in the summer of 2010, if I remember well, and we released the first beta in October.[/quote]

They started off on a simple note, and Leca and Viet weren’t expecting the response they would receive. In the first week alone, the beta of Sparrow, their new email application, was downloaded over 70,000 times and during the whole beta phase, nearly 200,000 beta testers joined. “We knew that we had something,” said Leca.

That something was going to be huge; it was going to be the next generation email client. Clearly, based on the interest in the beta, consumers and professionals were looking for an alternative to the traditional email client, the traditional Outlook and Mail.app just wasn’t cutting it for most people anymore.

“We had this idea that mail was broken,” said Dom on why he started Sparrow. “We weren’t using Mail.app on the Mac because we found that it was taking up too much screen space and it was a huge application for something that shouldn’t be.”  Leca and Viet wanted email to be as simple as sending out a tweet – literally. So, in the beginning, they switched from Mail.app to Gmail. After all, Gmail was the most powerful solution to the email problem that currently existed and there were many “slim” apps and plugins to support it, but most of those slim applications just didn’t seem to be slim enough, or minimal enough to really pull off a streamlined email client.

They had an idea – it needed a design

With a framework, and email system in place, all the Sparrow team had to do was come up with a design that stayed true to the simple and minimal approach that they were looking to accomplish, but it didn’t come without a bit of controversy. Contrary to popular belief, Sparrow did not rip off Loren Brichter‘s famous Tweetie app. Rather, Leca believed in simplicity and thus contacted Brichter from the beginning of the project:

[quote]I wanted to ask him about the design of his sidebar. I said, man I’ve been thinking of a better way to switch accounts in a mail mac application. I’ve not found anything better or more efficient than what you’ve done. So can we just borrow it and use it? He said, “Hey man, do what you want.” So we just started this way and Loren helped us a lot. He tweeted about it so all his friends and many blogs picked up on it.[/quote]

Just like that Sparrow had found its muse.

Sparrow can’t be discussed on its design merit alone, despite its impressive interface. There is also the fancy technologies that have been built into the application. Technologies that are not available in other email clients. Sparrow brought Cloudapp and Dropbox support into its new-age email client, both of which are market-leading cloud technologies with great APIs. You may be asking yourself why Sparrow needs these technologies, but once you figure it out, it makes a lot of sense. For most, especially those using free email services like Gmail, size-limits on email attachments can be quite problematic. The Sparrow team has bravely attempted to solve the attachment limits through the use of popular cloud storage services. With a drag and drop, you can now upload a file of almost any size, without having to worry about the email being bounced by the recipient’s email server for size violations.

From start to finish, Sparrow had two major schedules that were met to bring the application to fruition. First, the mail engine side project took a decade to complete and there were a total of six engines altogether, whereas the idea for the app itself took around seven months to become reality.

What’s next for Sparrow

As for Sparrow’s future, the company hopes to make their application even faster. The next thing, naturally, is tackling more email platforms. “We’ve seen stats that shows there’s still a lot of people on services like Hotmail and stuff like that,” says Leca. A necessary update, but it’s unlikely the sexy rumor everyone wants to hear about at this point.

What about an iOS app? And the answer is – yes, it’s on its way to your iOS device. When can we expect it? Soon. That’s all I can say – for now.

As for Sparrow 2.0, Leca had this to say:

[quote]The main idea we have for version two is that the concept of messages will be thrown in the background and people will take a central place. It will be a people centric app. You won’t look for the last message you received, but for the last people who talked with you. In terms of navigation, and the way you will treat your mail, the functioning of labels, folders and stuff like that – it changes the way it works a lot. [/quote]

Minimal has remained the theme of Sparrow to date. The company believes that the technology already exists, but presentation is everything, and as it stands, it’s severely lacking. A saying from the Vedas claims that, “speech is the essence of humanity.” All of what humanity thinks and ultimately becomes is determined by the expression of ideas and actions through speech and its derivative, writing. Likewise, design is the essence of technology. Sparrow hasn’t changed electronic mail in terms of its bits and bytes; however, they have changed its presentation for the better. Email is broken, but Sparrow has brought a bag of tools and hopes to fix it.

The post Email is broken and Sparrow wants to fix it. A talk with its founder, Dominique Leca. appeared first on Macgasm.

There’s no doubt about it. The publishing industry is booming. There’s news all around us that must be covered, and there are people that want to read it. Simple, right? Wrong. The workload of life has tremendously increased, but for some reason there are still only 24 hours in a day. This means that content consumption needs a helper. The smartphones and the tablets came in and did what they could. They allowed us to consume our daily dose of news and other media on the go, but the readers wanted something better. They wanted a dedicated source. FLUD wanted to be that source — and now they are for some people.

FLUD? I think you mean flood.

Bobby Ghoshal and Matt Ausonio wanted to work together for a little while, so they decided to build a news application on the side. However, the idea kind of rested at that. But, when the iPad launched, they soon realized that news on the go was going to be a big deal. According to Ghoshal,”news-readers were kind of hot and we just said hey, what are you doing tonight? Want to build an app?”

Bobby quickly put together a prototype, the two liked it, and within a month they launched Flud v1.0. As for the name, there’s some speculation behind it. However, I think it went something like this: For half an hour, Bobby was throwing out crappy names. Barton Smith, their friend, got irritated and yelled out FLUD, or something like that. Although he was joking, Bobby thought it was fantastic and the name stuck. The response to the name was great, but a woman whose profession revolves around names wrote an entire piece on how much she hated the name. Now, someone else might sunk into their founder seat and sobbed, but ”when a professional takes the time to write a really long blog post about your company’s name, you’ve done a good job.” Ghoshal and Ausonio took the criticism, moved on, and here they are today, on the brink of releasing a major upgrade to their application.

What makes Flud different than the rest?

News reader apps are in abundance. You have Pulse and Reeder, and then you have news magazine apps like Zite, Flipboard, and AOL’s Editions. So what made Ghoshal and Ausonio think that they could possibly enter the crowded party and get noticed? After all, there’s not much difference you can portray between two news readers. Apps are similar, the UIs are similar, and the content is the same, right? Well, it seems that the Flud team put their focus on the content and the way it reads rather than just trying to keep up with what the competition was doing with their apps. They’ve now also partnered with AOL to display its six top blogs in a pretty unique way. They’ve put emphasis on pictures and logos, and have also divided the content providers into three tiers.

• Tier 1 is NY Times, WallStreet Journal, CNN, etc.
• Tier 2 is TechCrunch, Macgasm, Mashable, Engadget and the rest.
• Tier 3 is the blog your noisy neighbor started about fish yesterday.

From there, the company tackles each tier one by one to bring you, the user, the best content in the most visibly appealing manner possible. Now isn’t that just nice? Flud is also attempting to solve another problem — the lonely experience of reading news. Yes, some will argue that there are social elements within news content. You have things like Storify, tweeted links, and of course the comments — but that’s as far as it goes. Where is the whole sense of community? The conversation between people about one article that inspired or infuriated them? Do people really want to be social while they’re reading the news?

Ghoshal has an answer, and you can tell he’s passionate about where social news sharing and news in general is heading:

[quote]Much like how people love to share their music playlists, or their photos on Facebook, or their favorite YouTube videos because their taste says something about them… the same can be said about what you read. Everyone wants to be the first to read something and influence what their friends read as well. It’s fun and it gives you credibility.[/quote]

But the real question here is whether or not people actually want to share their news socially, and then have a profile built on what they consume. How often do readers click a social sharing button? Is music and news analogous in today’s world? We’re not certain it is. After all, most of us are pretty quick to make music recommendations to people, but speaking from experience here at Macgasm, only a small percentage of people actually click on the social sharing icons. But that’s where Flud also services things up  a little differently than most: “In Flud we sort of meet users halfway. We don’t expect them to tweet and we don’t expect them to share 100% of the content they read, but if they like something they can simply “Flud” their followers by touching the heart icon … all the stuff you Flud is public. If I looked at Joshua Schnell’s Flud, it’s an instant curated page of the best content that you thought was interesting. You now become a news source for me.”  It sounds a lot like the influenced become influencers in the next major release of Flud. A site like Macgasm may influence a  particular reader, but from there the influencer can then influence those people who don’t read our content. That’s pretty cool.

What’s coming?

Like a lot of startups, there’s a real pressure to focus on creating verticals and revenue streams that line the coffers of investors and owners, but when it comes to Flud, the focus is somewhere else right now:

[quote]Making money for us? That’s not the focus. We’ve got a longer roadmap for 2012. We’re just showing the world the tip of the iceberg of what we’re building. We’re building an entire network for news. In late 2010 and early 2011, we were just all about consumption, but now we’re fusing consumption with social and bringing it together in a really cool way.[/quote]

There’s a reason why app version names come with decimals. A quick change, a bug fix, or removal of a feature will result in a 1.2.3.456 etc. Why? Well, because not much was changed. The reason why these decimals go on forever is to give the developer more and more time to reinvent their product. This glorious occasion simultaneously occurs when the version number goes from 1.x.x to 2.0. FLUD, currently at 1.1.6 (not too shabby), is preparing to bring you v2.0. Clean name, right? As for the details, I won’t go into them too much, simply because I don’t want to ruin the surprise; however, what I can tell you is that this San Diego based startup wants to do something that hasn’t been done before, and it looks great. If you’re looking for proof in the pudding, just stop and think about what a truly social news aggregating application could mean for the industry on a whole. If it’s done right, it could be a game changer.

What can we take away?

Ghoshal and Ausonio have shown that you can enter a room filled with veterans of the trade and make your mark. It’s not a matter of the room being too full. No, no, no. When you enter a space with the sole goal to be noticed, trust me — you will be noticed. All you have to do is bring something interesting to the table. Come next week, the Flud team will be bringing a Christmas bag filled with even more goodies. We can’t wait.

Past Interviews:

• Paul Mayne, Creator of DayOne app
• Mark Johnson, CEO of Zite

The post Mobile news consumption meets social. A talk with FLUD founders Bobby and Matthew. appeared first on Macgasm.

Keeping a journal was hard. Now it’s easy.

Everyone wants to keep a diary. Okay, a journal for you masculine men out there. However, not many can keep up with the tedious process of sitting down daily to recollect all the events of the day and jotting them down in a tiny notebook. Besides, the ink smears, pages crinkle, and… and… – you get the point. Now for some, things would have ended there. However, a few enthusiastic customers waited for change, waited for someone to solve the age old digital-journal conundrum. Some programmers decided to take up the challenge by relocating the notebook to something that doesn’t annoy the majority. Their efforts, on the whole, often missed the market entirely. A whole myriad of journaling apps hit the market, but users weren’t content with the results.

One user in particular decided to do something about it.

Users complained of apps not backing up, apps crashing, apps this and that. Once again, a lot of developers called it quits, moved on, but there was one developer who remained. There was one who followed the saying, “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” That person is none other than Paul Mayne, and his product? The often celebrated Day One.

Day One is by far the best journal app on both App Stores (iTunes and Mac App Store). Its interface is beautiful and it’s obvious that the creator has a thing for design. Not only is the app on the iPhone, iPad, and the Mac, but they all integrate seamlessly. “Day One is designed and focused to encourage you to write more,” says Mayne. “Using the Menu Bar quick entry, Reminder system, Calendar view and inspirational messages, your memories and thoughts will be preserved. Dropbox sync allows easy backup and syncing with the both Day One iPhone and iPad applications.”

How was it built?

Mayne was just like any of us. He searched through the App Store every now and then, looking for the perfect journaling app. But, nothing really suited the need that he had. “They were all so cumbersome when I just wanted simple,” he said. Eventually he regressed to journaling his day in TextEdit. “Hey, at least it was simple… and it worked.” However, during this time an idea began to develop in his mind. Mayne wanted to create a simple app that would solve his problem. When Apple announced the Mac App Store, Mayne knew the moment was right.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs before him, he had an idea, but didn’t know where to start. Mayne had been a UI designer for several years and did Flash development, but it was mostly visual, front end stuff. Two years ago, he decided to go full-freelance and focus on iOS design projects; however, programming wasn’t exactly his — you know — forte. While he did help out with the popular I.TV app and a few other clients, they only whet his appetite for iOS. By being in constant contact with the developers, he began to visualize the possibilites that this promising platform had in store for him. It was time. He was ready to tackle his own project.

[quote]I’m a big believer in this. If you are a designer and you don’t program anything, you still need to understand the technology behind it. If you don’t know it, or you only know a little, knowing what the possibilities are and what the limits are will make you more efficient. You’ll make better products.[/quote]

Although he was armed with enthusiasm and some skills, Mayne was faced with some challenges. “On the Mac, I didn’t realize how difficult it was to do custom UI stuff,” he said. “Coming from the web design field where you can customize anything, I was surprised that there wasn’t a lot of custom UI elements in Mac apps.” That’s when Mayne realized that he’d have to bring someone else on board. “I found a guy that was really good and ambitious. He was willing to take my stuff and program it as I envisioned it.”

While the app is already a success, Mayne is just getting started:

[quote]There’s still a ton more that I want to add to it, but people accepted that. I think it was a good project that can be launched and upgraded in phases and still be useful. As long as there’s the syncing and the text entry, naturally.[/quote]

What can we take away from the Day One origin story?

We often sit around and wait for something to be done for us. In the case of apps, we notice a problem that needs to be addressed. However, we assume that with time someone will eventually build it for us. Why can’t we be that someone? Why can’t we set out to build it ourselves? That’s exactly what Mayne did. He’s a successful example of just how far the can-do attitude can carry someone. Yes, he had a design background, but when he entered the iOS and OS X field, he was as new to it as anyone else. But, instead of remaining stationary, Paul sought out help and persevered to the end.

From start to finish, Day One took about five months to develop, which also happened to be two months longer than Maybe originally planned. However, his app, Day One, has already been featured in the New and Noteworthy section of the App Store. Day One has already hit the number one spot twice, and reached the top 10 list for paid apps on the Mac App Store. Heck, it still remains in the top 20-30 paid apps on the Mac App Store. The iOS app has had similar success.

With all this said, and after having a great dialog with Mayne, my advice to you today is this: It’s clear that the app platform is a great place to show your creativity. Have a solution to a problem? Get out there and build it. However, don’t expect everything to go according to plan. “Originally I had planned on doing the iOS app first,” Mayne said, “but by chance, they ended up being ready around the same time and launched at the exact same time, which turned out to be a better solution.”

The post Make it yourself! A lesson from Paul Mayne, creator of Day One. appeared first on Macgasm.

There’s no denying it. Tablet technology is growing faster than anyone could have predicted. Just two years ago, the field was seen as stagnant with a tiny user base. Then, everything changed when Apple stepped in and did what they do best. Led by Steve Jobs, they entered the unpopular field and made it the hottest kid in town. Now, the industry made up by the iPad, Android, WebOS, and Blackberry will be taking up the space under the Christmas trees this year.

Regardless if tablets are attractive, they wouldn’t be sexy if it weren’t for apps. They’re the icons that populate your homescreen/dashboard and they make your experience enjoyable. Whether that’s getting an article done on the way home, playing Angry Birds while waiting for the doctor, or using the camera to connect with loved ones, apps make the world go ’round. However, there are some crappy ones out there and there are those that are so good, CNN would want to buy them.

More on that later.

Today we’re surrounded by a ton of news. We sort through the various sources with Reeder, Pulse, and other RSS readers. But let’s be honest with ourselves: Do you feel happy when the badge on Reeder, a popular RSS app, reads 972 unread articles? I sure don’t. In fact, I catch myself selecting “Mark all as read” more often than not. What does this tell us? News is great, but only when it’s not overwhelming. An app that solves such a problem would definitely catch the eye of CNN.

Enter Worio

In 2005, a group of guys aiming to change Internet searches came together and founded Worio (Web of Research Iteration One). The goal? Give users the ultimate social web search engine. Today, it still remains as a must-have Chrome plugin that lets you get results from your friends, Twitter, Facebook and the most talked about blogs. However, the vision didn’t end there. This same group wanted to redefine search on the newest platform — tablets.

Enter Zite

Launched on the iPad on March 9, 2011, Zite is the personalized magazine we’ve all longed for. It searches the web for the articles and stories that would be of most interest to you. Think of it as the Leprechaun who picks out the cereal from your box of Lucky Charms and only leaves the marshmallows. In other words, it leaves behind only what you want to read.

Mark Johnson, Zite CEO

To get a better look at what Zite is and hopes to be, how it’s utilizing the tablet space, and what it sees for both the platform and it’s own future, I sat down with Mark Johnson, Zite’s CEO.

According to Johnson, “Christmas season this year is going to look really big in terms of tablets, but I think Christmas season next year is going to be insane. Like, everybody is going to have a tablet under the tree.”

Mark, a Standford alumni, and a guy deeply in touch with tools for searching the web, leads Zite as it continues to grow and expand. According to him, it seems that a lot of economical issues are going to encourage people to buy tablets. Textbooks, regular books, and reading in general, cost less on the thin device that you can carry and use anywhere compared to their more traditional formats, according to Johnson.

[quote]We’re dealing with a very new area here. You know, the idea of content discovery is an old one, but we’ve never really had the technology to do it before. For example, the social graph didn’t really exist four years ago, but now everybody is a member of the social graph and those kinds of things can really deliver great results.[/quote]

For starters, Zite looks at what’s interesting on the web. They look at millions of stories a day to find out who’s sharing them, how they’re sharing them, if they’re bookmarking them, commenting, etc., to get a general idea of what’s important. Then, it decides what to deliver to you, the reader. This is done through content analysis; what the story is about, what style it was written in, its length, and so on. All of these attributes are compared to the kind of content you like to read. By comparing the stories it gets back to the categories you selected as interesting, Zite populates your screen with great content. Then, in each article, there are options on the right to like/dislike, and ask for more on certain topics within the article. The best part? It doesn’t end there. Rather, Zite learns your preferences over time. In fact, Mark says, give it a week, and Zite will know you.

[quote]Here at Zite, we strive to utilize iOS to the maximum. We won’t stop innovating until we reach the limits of Apple’s SDK. Even then, we’ll do more. We’ll do better.[/quote]

There’s a whole lot more that goes into Zite and the way it works. However, let’s focus on this: What makes it a piece of technology that the industry can look towards for insight into the future? This answer began to unravel when CNN, the news media giant, bought the startup in August for around $20 million.

[quote]I feel that Zite is kind of like… where Google was against alternates sites. Where, you knew that Google is way better than anything else that you were trying, but it still failed at times. I think I see the same thing with Zite where we do a really darn good job. Better than anyone else, but I want to do even better.[/quote]

Zite made the transition from just an app to a company with a solid product when they realized that users want an awesome tablet experience. Good enough is just not good enough. Why? Because, frankly, we haven’t come to the point where a tablet is necessary, per se. Therefore, with every iteration of your app, you must ask yourself, will this bring something to the user that you can’t get somewhere else? If you go blank on that question, try again. Zite surely answered this, and will continue to answer this in the future. With plans to expand the product on to multiple platforms, it’s definitely paving the way for other products.

Mark and the rest of his team understand the tablet industry. Yes, it’s just a baby. But just like it’s predecessor, the smartphone, it’s more than meets the eye… and the fingertip.

The post A look at tablet technology with Mark Johnson, CEO of Zite appeared first on Macgasm.