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June 20, 2011 1:47 pm

Why the $100 iTunes gift card back to school promotion is a great deal for Apple and iWorks

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by    in Opinion

There have been a couple of posts lately on why the $100 iTunes gift card is better than the previous iPod touch promotion. I fully agree that the economics are greatly in Apple’s favor since they get to make back the 30% on apps from the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store, books from their iBooks bookstore, and whatever their cut is of music purchased. But I have another reason why I think it is an amazing idea:


One of the main questions I get from people buying iPads is “how do I edit Word documents on the iPad?”. Right now there is no great solution for this. You can buy 3rd party apps that will let you open documents from your dropbox folder and edit them – but as anyone who have tried this can attest – there is a very high probability that any document edited in a 3rd party app will look very different when you open it on your PC in Word later. At best the fonts and alignments may be off at worst you may have just lost all the tracked changes that someone made.


I am sure that this is a huge factor for people wanting to use the iPad for work. People have told me that they are using citrix or remote desktop clients to access PCs so they can edit docs on the iPad, which just seems to defeat the whole purpose of having an iPad.


By Apple giving $100 to students they are giving a big discount on the iWorks suite (or maybe the students will just use it on music and games and ask their parents for $ for the iWorks suite). I hope that this will increase the number of people that adopt the Apple document platform and get people away from Word. With iCloud coming soon we will be able to open our Pages/Numbers/Keynote documents on the iPad / PC / Web (??). Personally, if the iPad could do documents well I would not need to bring a laptop when traveling anymore.

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June 4, 2011 1:23 pm

On constructive critizism

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by    in Opinion,Programming

There has been a couple of blog posts lately regarding the bloggy criticism of iOS applications by other app developers as well as general tech bloggers. These posts seem to suggest that iOS developers should band together and not criticize each others applications. I generally agree with the statement “be excellent to each other” – but if that means patting each others backs and saying good job even if the application has flaws then the iOS platform is in trouble. I think that one of the great things about the iOS platform is the constant push to make something that is greater and more amazing than what has been done before.


Getting criticism, be it from users through app reviews or emails or from bloggers, is a great way to push everyone to make better applications. I can clearly identify with the fact that developers have an emotional connection to the applications that they make. None of my applications make a huge amount of money and my main motivation is to provide people with great tools to use on their phone – so getting emails or reviews saying “this app sucks” is a feeling not much different than helping a complete stranger just to have them spit at you.


In my opinion, the app review system setup by Apple is one of the greatest innovations of the iOS platform and has been instrumental in the success of the App Store – before this the only way to give feedback was to email the developer and then they could do whatever they wanted – you had already paid for the app so they had no incentive to actually fix the issue. With public reviews and a rating system the incentive to fix issues brought up is much greater and this is something that will push apps to become better. Several times this has brought great new features to my apps and alerted me to features that were not as intuitive as I had originally thought.


Like many other Apple enthusiasts I was very excited for the launch of The Daily. Like many others I was disappointed at the initial product. I think that a lot of people expected the app to be Apple Great (like Maps, Garage Band etc) because of the hype and media buildup for the app and the apparent endorsement of the app by Apple. However, the app has several short falls which were pointed out and suggestions for improvements with implementation were posted. I do not understand why the developer of the app would be surprised that the app got a harsh reception when the developer admits himself that there were issues with the app that if they had longer time could have been sorted out.


I hope that the iOS developer community is grown up enough that we can accept criticism of our work and that we can learn from this and all strive towards making excellent if not perfect apps.

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April 9, 2010 10:45 am

iPhone OS 4.0

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by    in Opinion

Great news for all the running/biking/hiking iPhone applications yesterday – OS 4.0 will not only allow you to run location based apps in the background – but you can now also have much richer overlays for maps.  These updates to the  iPhone OS will make it possible to make running apps that will really take advantage of the iPhone hardware and bring great experiences to the active people using these apps.

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March 30, 2010 5:10 pm

My take on iPhone vs android phones

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The android phone to me is a me-to device.  When meeting people with android phones the first thing that comes to mind is not “wow cool phone” it is “poor guy – he was not able to get an iPhone”.  I am in the same boat – I am on T-mobile and I refuse to buy a $300 hand-me-down iPhone on e-bay so I still use my 2 year old blackberry phone.  I do not believe that anyone goes to their carrier to get a new phone and think “I really want an android phone” (except for a few hardcore geeks and lifehackers) – but people are very excited to get their first iPhone.

Now, I was very excited at the end of 2008 when rumors were that Google was going to launch their new phone and totally change the customer/carrier cell phone relationship.  Obviously I was sorely disappointed when the Nexus One came out and it was still tied to a carrier plan (true it is not absolutely tied but at the price of $500+ for a phone I consider it as such).  In retrospect the interesting thing is that I was not excited to get an android phone – I was excited to get an iPhone-like phone and to be able to break the contractual relationship between me and my carrier.  Don’t get me wrong – I love T-mobile – that is the only reason why I am still using my old blackberry.  But for a phone to really be revolutionary it would be great to get it without a 2 year jail sentence called a “contract”.

Depending on what comes out this summer and for what carrier I may sign up for another go to jail card and finally get the device that I have been developing for for the last 2 years.

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