GigaOM » Apple

New Apple app discovery tools welcome, but aren’t enough

Erica Ogg — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:33:26 +0000

The Verge has picked up on some small but potentially significant tweaks to the iOS and Mac app stores: a new Editor’s Choice feature and the first App of the Week to be completely discounted to free.

Editor’s Choice is exactly what it sounds like, a pick of the best apps from the App Store team intended to highlight something they don’t want to get lost in the shuffle of the 600,000 apps for sale in the iOS App Store and the 10,000 in the Mac App Store. The debut choice for iOS apps is Facebook Camera, a high-profile new camera app for iPhone, and the game Extreme Skater. For Mac Apps, Cobook and Deus Ex Human Revolution were the picks.

The first Editor’s Choice picks in the Mac App Store

Making the App of the Week free for the first time — it was for Cut the Rope: Experiments — is, as many will note, something out of Amazon’s playbook. A free app each day is one way Amazon helps people discover new apps in its Android Appstore. Who knows if Apple will ever do it again. It could have been merely an experiment — but it does show Apple is keen to try new things to improve app discovery.

It’s slightly ironic to me that Facebook Camera was one of the first choices for this new feature, particularly because when I tried to search for it in the App Store on my iPhone yesterday after news of its availability hit, the store returned the wrong results. Instead of Facebook Camera, it kept giving me Camera Awesome, iVideo Camera and iUploader for Facebook. What does it say about App Store search if the hottest new item can’t even be found by people trying to search directly for it? There are more drastic measures that need to be taken than just surfacing a few cool apps.

It’s obviously not a secret to App Store shoppers — or app creators for that matter — that sifting through hundreds of thousands of apps is tough. That’s why Apple has continued to introduce categorization features meant to more easily surface quality apps across different genres. There’s already the carousel of picks up top, the “New and Noteworthy” and “What’s Hot” sections, in addition to the top paid and free app charts, in addition to curated lists like Games, Education, and a variety of starter kits.

But it’s also not a secret to Apple. It’s presumably what was behind its purchase of app discovery tool Chomp back in February, believed to be for $50 million.

Not that any of these challenges have prevented Apple and its developers from making money on them. Apple has seen more than 25 billion downloads from the iOS store alone since 2008. But making that process easier is always welcome.

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RIM, Motorola propose truce in nano-SIM fight, plus 4 other Apple stories to read today

Erica Ogg — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:29:00 +0000

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

RIM and Motorola may have found a compromise on that nano-SIM battle with Apple. The Verge has the details.
iPod, iPhone, iPad…iCar? Near the end of his life, Steve Jobs was dreaming of building an interactive, well-designed car, according to Apple boardmember and J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, Fast Company reports.
The iOS App Store is a few months shy of its fourth birthday. MacStories talked to developers about what they hope to see in the App Store in the years to come. (Fair warning: It’s a really long post.)
The next iPhone, which is widely reported to have a larger screen, will also reflect the work of Steve Jobs, who Bloomberg reports had a hand in the development of the device.
Aaron Sorkin, who recently signed on for the screenplay version of Steve Jobs’ biography, says not to expect an exact movie version of the book. “It can’t be a straight ahead biography because it’s very difficult to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biography,” he said, according to Reuters.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user mroach

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Tips for making money on mobile apps in China

Erica Ogg — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:24:32 +0000

China is one of the fastest growing markets for mobile devices. We know device makers are making money off of this trend. But how do mobile app makers cash in on this ballooning market of upwardly mobile consumers? The short answer is make iOS apps, according to a study released Tuesday by mobile ad platform Guohe Ad.

The Chinese smartphone market is huge — as of November there were 118 million 3G smartphone owners counted — and this study, which surveyed 600 people, is admittedly a small but telling portion of that.

From Guohe’s findings we’ve compiled some instructive tips for app makers interested in making money in the world’s fastest growing mobile market. What’s interesting is how similarly useful they are for app makers targeting buyers in established markets, like the U.S. and Europe too:

Don’t believe the current conventional wisdom. Though there’s an impression that Chinese consumers just don’t like to pay for apps, that’s changing. The study found that almost two-thirds of iPhone users, or 62 percent, have purchased at least one app for their device. Seventeen percent have purchased more than 11 apps. A big part of this shift in buying behavior has to do with Apple’s decision to start taking local currency payments last fall through the iTunes store instead of requiring credit cards that processed U.S. dollars, says Guohe.
Target iOS devices for paid apps. If you’re looking to make money on paid apps and weighing Android over iPhone, iPhone owners in China are more likely to buy apps. Guohe found that just 23 percent of Android device owners had purchased at least one app, compared to iPhone’s 62 percent. This is similar to the dynamics the larger mobile market. Piper Jaffray calculated in November that of the 6.8 billion Android apps downloaded, just 1.3 percent, or 90 million, were paid for.
Target Android for ad-supported apps. Android growth in China has been huge and it is a good platform to reach the largest group of people. In fact, more than half (54 percent) of those surveyed for this study carried an Android smartphone. So, even if you want to distribute your app for free, an ad-based model will work in this market. “The opportunities sit on a data-driven approach to target the right audience from millions,” Guohe says. Of the Android owners polled, 63 percent said they’d prefer free apps with embedded ads, versus 13 percent who said they’d prefer ad-free apps they’d have to pay for. Again, this is very similar to download patterns in the U.S. and the larger Android market as a whole.
Plan ahead to make tablet apps too. Research firm Canalys ranks China as the second-largest market for tablets. The iPad in particular is doing well among the affluent in China, and for current iPhone app makers thinking about also marketing iPad apps, this is a great demographic to target, since members are more likely to purchase apps. According to Guohe:

“In our own research, we found that iPhone users are almost 2 times more likely than Android users to buy an iPad. The synergy of using the same system cross mobile phone and tablet is truly valuable for some of the heavy users. In that sense, the emergence of well-designed and reasonably priced Android tablets (e.g. Kindle fire in US market) could motivate these Android phone users to jump on the tablet bandwagon too.”

These statistics should be encouraging for app makers interested in selling apps in the China market. And while clearly the above chart shows that far more smartphones owners’ incomes lay on the lower end of the scale, that’s changing pretty rapidly. As the middle class there continues to grow, more people’s ability or desire to pay for things like apps will too.

Thumbnail courtesy of Tracy O/Flickr

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Readdle’s Scanner Pro jumps to iPad with improved camera

Erica Ogg — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:00:04 +0000

One of the most popular productivity apps on the iPhone is finally making the jump to the iPad. Scanner Pro, from the team at Odessa, Ukraine-based Readdle, is now available in the iOS App Store as a universal app. Scanner Pro, which scans and coverts images to PDF files, is a free upgrade for those who already own the iPhone version, but will cost $6.99 for new customers who want it for the iPad.

The app was introduced for Apple’s iPhone two years ago, and since then has seen more than 350,000 downloads and a long run at the top of Apple’s business/productivity app charts. So why debut on the iPad now? Apple finally made a tablet with the necessary hardware, says Denys Zhadanov, Readdle’s marketing manager.

“We tried [to test the app] with the iPad 2, but the results were beyond terrible,” said Zhadanov in an interview. “You just couldn’t read anything. The new iPad finally has good camera.”

But the new iPad’s 5 megapixel camera isn’t the only thing that makes this version of Scanner Pro different. Readdle says they took the opportunity to totally revamp the app — “every screen, every tap, every button. Nothing left intact – every idea and every feature had to prove its value for the iPad update.”The app is very simple and straightforward, so it’s no secret why it’s been so popular, even on a small screen. When you want to scan a document, book or magazine page, business card, white board from a meeting, or anything else you want to import or save in digital form, you open the app and hit the camera button. The app scans the image instantly. It will automatically find the right borders of your scan and crop out the stuff you don’t need, though you can manually fix if you need to. After tweaking the contrast and the brightness if necessary, you can save it to your iPad (as a JPEG or PDF) in Photos, iBooks or the Kindle app, send as an email, print, fax or upload it to your Google Docs, Dropbox or Evernote account.

A receipt I scanned with Scanner Pro and marked up with Remarks, both iPad apps from Readdle.

The most noticeable improvement in usability, however, might be its speed: Zhadanov says the reworked app scans 10 times faster than before.

Scanner Pro has added value because it’s not just a standalone app. Not only does it integrate with popular third-party apps and services like Dropbox and Evernote, but also hooks into Readdle’s own cluster of well-regarded iPad-based productivity apps like PDF Expert, Remarks and Printer Pro. Once you’ve got your PDF saved to your iPad through Scanner Pro, you can open it with PDF Expert and if it’s a contract, document or a form, you can sign or fill it out right on the iPad, mark it up in note-taking and annotation app Remarks or print it to any Wi-Fi-connected or networked printer with Printer Pro.

Readdle’s well-executed third-party integration and its own iOS-based ecosystem is yet another strong case for the integration of mobile, hyper-connected devices into work flows: the learning curve and barrier to entry are both incredibly low now. And that this is all coming together on the iPad first reinforces the Apple tablet’s importance in nudging businesses into the post-PC world.

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Finding the iPad’s 7 missing apps

Geoffrey Goetz — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:13:35 +0000

For those that owned an iPhone prior to purchasing the iPad, the first thing you will notice is that there are fewer apps installed on your iPad than on your iPhone when you start it up for the first time. Some of the missing apps are more obvious than others, like the Phone app. But others, like the Calculator app, are oddly omitted despite their utility on a tablet. Here is a list of suggested replacements from the App Store that will bring your iPad up to par with the functionality you have come to expect from your iPhone, right out of the box.

Calculator. It just seems funny to have one of the world’s greatest computing platforms in your hands and not be able to check your sums. It does not have to be too terribly fancy. Just something to keep you honest when your basic math skills are called upon. Calculator Pro ($0.99, Universal) from Apalon has a similar look and feel to the calculator app that comes on the iPhone. You can also select from different themes if you want something other than the classic look.

Clock. Something else that computers do well is count time. Up, down, forward and backward. Beyond simply telling the time or setting an alarm, you may also want an app that has a good stop watch and countdown timer. Clock Pro HD ($2.99, Universal) from the Alarm Clock Company has all of the features associated with the iPhone Clock like a world clock, stop watch, timer and alarm. You also get a chess clock and metronome.

Voice Memos. Some may think that with the new dictation feature of the iPad that voice memos are a thing of the past. But there are times when you are not connected to a network and you still want to capture that great idea — with or without the aid of speech to text. QuickVoice Recorder (Free, Universal) from nFinity is just a simple voice recorder that allows for quick and easy access to your recorded messages. It supports background recording and you can even e-mail your recorded messages or sync them to your Mac. The latest version will also record custom ringtones.

Compass. Knowing which way you are going is always a good thing. All versions of the iPad come equipped with a digital compass sensor on-board. Compass 54 Pro ($0.99, Universal) from Alexander Galstyan is a very attractive implementation of a compass that adds a few more features not present in the iPhone stock version, such as altitude, course, speed and weather.

Weather. There are certainly plenty of competing weather apps out there. So many, in fact, that weather is one of the leading app purchases just behind games and hence has its own category. The Weather Channel (Free. iPad) is the standard. Supporting daily and hourly forecasts with map views of radar data and even video updates of your local weather conditions, it even supports push alerts for severe weather conditions.

Stocks. If you have a portfolio to manage, then you likely are using your broker’s app rather than a generic stock app. But if you are just curious to see what is going on in the market place, MarketDash for iPad (Free, iPad) from Yahoo!has all of the functionality of the iPhone Stocks app, but takes full advantage of the larger iPad screen. You can even create a custom list of stocks to follow.

Phone. Yes, you can make phone calls to actual land lines directly from your iPad, and even use a Bluetooth headset while you are on the call. Talkatone (Free, Universal) from TalkMe.IM can actually place calls from your iPad using Google’s free Voice service. You can receive calls, access voice mail and even send SMS text messages. It’s like having a real phone on your iPad.

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Transfer your old data to your new iPad

Geoffrey Goetz — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:45:58 +0000

After owning several iPads, iPhones, iPods and iMacs, I must say that migrating from an existing iPad to a new iPad was much easier this time around. There are three different paths to take: Restore from iCloud, Restore from iTunes and Set Up New. Each one has its pluses and its minuses, which I’ll walk you through below.

Copy your data before you start

It is a good idea to copy as much of your old data off of your iOS device before you get started. Sure, there are backups, but accessing individual data files from a backup can be time consuming.

Sync photos to iPhoto. While it is likely that you do not have your most treasured family photos stored in the camera roll of your old iPad (given the quality of its camera), you may still want to ensure that you have synced your photos to an iPhoto Library on your Mac. Simply attach your iPad to your Mac via USB, open iPhoto on the Mac, select the iPad on the left and click on Import Photos on the right.

Import photos via Image Capture. If you are not a fan of iPhoto, or you do not want to sync your iPad photos to your iPhoto Library, you can use the Image Capture app on your Mac to export your photos to a folder anywhere on your Mac. Launch Image Capture and attach your iPad via USB to your Mac. Select a destination folder and Import All.

Save an app’s data files via iTunes. Many apps on your iPad will allow you to access your files via your Mac from within iTunes. From document files to images to waypoints and tracks, iTunes can provide convenient access to the documents stored on your iPad. Attach your iPad to your Mac via USB and launch iTunes. On the bottom of the Apps tab for the iPad you just attached, you will see a list of apps that support syncing docs via iTunes. Select the docs you want to save and copy them to a folder on your Mac.

Sync purchases to iTunes. It may be that you have yet to sign up for an iCloud account, you have not been tempted by iTunes Match, and you still manage your music, videos, books and apps by syncing your iPad to your Mac’s iTunes Library. If so, you will want to ensure that your latest purchases have been synced to your Mac’s iTunes Library. To do this, click on your iPad in iTunes and select Transfer Purchases from the menu.

iCloud backup and restore

With iOS 5 and the introduction of iCloud, Apple has made backing up an iPad to your iCloud account possible. These backups are done automatically when your iPad is connected to both a power source and a WiFi connection. Before you start up your new iPad, you will want to make sure that you have a recent backup of your old iPad.

Setup an iCloud account on your iPad if you have not done so already.
In the Settings app, click on iCloud and select the Storage and Backup setting.
Review your most recent back up by selecting Manage Backups.
Select Back Up Now if this is your first backup or if it has been a while since your last backup.

Since most ISPs do not offer fast upload speeds, this may take a while depending on how much information you have stored on your iPad and how long it has been since your last backup. And that is the downside of this technique: network speed. Once the backup is complete, you can start your new iPad for the first time and select Restore from iCloud Backup when prompted. If you have already started using your new iPad, you will need to access the Reset menu located in the General settings on the iPad in order to select Erase All Content and Settings. This is a great solution if you are out and about and want to get started using your new iPad before you have a chance to get home and sync to tour Mac.

iTunes backup and restore

A benefit of tethering your iPad to a Mac is that you will not have to re-download all of your apps when your settings and configurations are re-established.

Connect your old iPad to your Mac via USB and launch iTunes.
Select the iPad and choose Backup from the menu.
Ensure that all of your apps are up-to-date by selecting Apps in iTunes and clicking on Check for Updates.

Once the backup is complete, you can start your new iPad for the first time and elect Restore from iTunes Backup when prompted. If you have already started using your new iPad, you will need to access the Reset menu located in the General settings on the iPad in order to select Erase All Content and Settings. The only downside here is that you need to tether both your old as well as your new iPad to your Mac. Given that all of your apps are up-to-date on your Mac’s iTunes library, this is likely the fastest way to transfer all of your apps and data to your new iPad.

Start over with a fresh new iPad

The most time-consuming way to migrate from an existing iPad to a new iPad is to start over fresh and reconfigure your new iPad from scratch. What you will discover in both the iCloud as well as the iTunes backup before this setup method is that the new iPad will forget all of your passwords. So in both situations it would be wise to invest in some sort of password manager and get all of your accounts in order prior to migrating.

But for some, this may be a great time to start over and rediscover your iPad. Get rid of the apps you never use by installing only the ones you cannot live without. Even when starting over fresh, you will instantly have access to all of your Mail, Contact, Calendars, Notes reminders and Bookmarks via iCloud. All of your photos will be there waiting for you via Photo Stream. You music library is accessible via iTunes Match. And any prior App, iBook Music and Video purchases will be available to download again from the App Store.

The three options available should suit most needs. If you are on the go and want to migrate all of your current apps and settings, then restore from iCloud. If you have a lot of large apps and a slow internet connection, consider restoring from an iTunes backup instead. But if you have the time to invest, start fresh and only install the apps you really like. You may just find that backing up your iPad is becoming less and less important.

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Straight talk for businesses considering an iOS app

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:36:20 +0000

IOS development is not for the faint of heart, and a new blog post by developer Kent Nguyen (the creator of the Denso mobile video discovery apps) does a good job of pointing out exactly why. Nguyen’s target audience is companies who foot the bill for app development, in the hopes of lessening sticker shock and generally making it easier for non-developers to understand why devs need all that time and money to do what they do.

Nguyen goes into a lot of detail, and it’s a must-read for anyone thinking about commissioning an iOS (or really any mobile OS) application. Here’s one passage in particular that I know will resonate with a lot of freelance devs:

Converting an iPhone app to iPhone/iPad universal app: This is the worst ‘additional feature’ found in iPhone development contracts. Because an iPad app is not a frikin’ additional feature. The iPad app is always more complex than iPhone app, and most of the time requires entirely different interface and interaction mechanism. It’s like making an electric bicycle and then convert[ing] it to a fuel-powered motorcycle! They are very similar at what they do, but under the hood, the difference is immense. [Emphasis in the original]

A lot of companies may be interested in what an app can do for their business, but without a good sense of what kind of resources need to be invested in order to create the app in the first place, there is bound to be ample frustration on all sides. Nguyen’s no-nonsense primer is a good way to help avoid some of that frustration.

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Quick tip: Use Notification Centre as an app launcher

Dave Greenbaum — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:01:58 +0000

One of the jailbreak features I really wish would come to the platform legitimately is the ability to use launchers to quickly start an app without digging through multiple, crowded home screens. It makes it much easier to tweet something first, for instance, or check in to your favorite coffee spot on Foursquare. Luckily, you can mimic the behavior of a quick launcher with iOS 5′s Notification Centre.

In Notification Center, tapping on notifications launches the app they’re associated with. Your first instinct might be to clear out all notifications associated with each app to keep your Center clear. Don’t. Just leave one for each app, and then you can use the Notification Center as a quick launcher for those programs.

To save time, go to Notifications in Settings and optimize your Notification Center. You can do this by choosing the order in which notifications appear, how many recent notifications to display from each, and whether or not they appear in Notification Center at all. Experiment and find the combination that works best for you.

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Kayak: Lessons learned as it relaunches on the iPad

Erica Ogg — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:14:31 +0000

The first iPad app from Kayak arrived in March 2010, with the sweet deal of being handpicked by Apple as one of the few apps to be available at the launch of the original iPad. The only downside? Kayak’s designers had approximately two weeks to get an app together. Oh, and they’d never felt or seen an iPad before. So 22 months later, the team behind the most popular free iPhone travel app think they’ve got it right for the iPad this time.

On Tuesday, Kayak plans to launch a new app for iOS. It’s throwing out its old Kayak HD iPad app and making a universal Kayak app for iPad and iPhone.

We got a preview of the new app and the overall theme of the changes can most easily be summed up with the word “consistency.” For instance, now the navigation is all left-aligned, with the same icons that will be familiar to users of previous versions of the app. All the filters for searches (flight, cars, hotels) are on the left and the results on the right.

The designers in Kayak’s mobile development lab in Concord, Mass. spent a lot of time “nitpicking” and making the design language universal for the brand, said Bill O’Donnell, Kayak’s GM of mobile and chief architect.

“With this new release, we wanted to bring it up to modern iPad app standards and our own modern visual look we have in our iOS applications,” he said in an interview Tuesday. And making the way the app is navigated and making all the functions consistent (the UIs for flight and hotel search were different in the previous app) was a huge priority.

“It’s more consistent than before,” O’Donnell said. “Before, three different pieces of the app were developed by different people at different times.”

They also added in some features that have been on the Kayak website and in the iPhone app to this new universal iOS version, like rental car search and the Kayak Explorer (a favorite of those of us with wanderlust), an expanded trips management feature that allows you to send any reservation confirmation emails to the app, including concerts and restaurant reservations, and an auto form filler optimized for tons of travel sites Kayak works with.

Another major lesson learned is the implementation of direct booking of hotels. There’s a big impediment to being a an aggregator of travel deals when you’re working with mobile users: When you direct those customers to outside airline or hotel websites, you never know what exactly you’re sending them into.

“In mobile, you can get wildly varied experiences across airlines and hotel sites,” said O’Donnell. Some are Flash-based, some are just terrible quality. “And that’s a problem for us; we make money through referral fees. If you find something in our app and you can’t book it…we lose.”

Kayak introduced direct bookings for some hotels and flights a few months ago, but this is the first time it’s coming to the iPad app.

So what has the iPad team been doing these past two years? Since the 2010 iPad launch, Kayak has had a lot to figure out about the space — as in what users want, and what other developers are doing that’s cool and innovative — and learning to evolve with the maker of the iPad and arbiter of iOS app taste and style, Apple itself. “We had to learn all that. There’s no way around that except time and experience,” O’Donnell said.

It was also a challenge to figure out the difference between designing for a tiny iPhone screen, a much larger computer browser and an iPad screen. It takes far more time to design well for the iPad, according to O’Donnell.

“When you’re dealing with an app on an iPhone or an iPad, your application is the only thing on the screen. The big thing you control is edge to edge and top to bottotm; there’s nothing else to distract the user. To some extent, you can get away with a plain or sparse or austere website, because it’s framed in a Safari window or a nice Mac desktop or Windows desktop,” he said. But, “when you’re the only thing on the screen, that can look really bad. You have to pay attention to use of white space, lines, separation of colors and spend more design time on it.”

There’s also something in here for users of Kayak’s iOS apps to learn: The new app, as mentioned before, is universal. So if you have the old iPad HD app, that one’s dead now and won’t be updated again. The new iOS app, which is still free, will have to be downloaded anew. It will detect if you’re downloading it on an iPhone or an iPad. It should be in the App Store later today.

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Flipboard adds 1M subscribers: Good lesson for iPad apps

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:36:36 +0000

For Flipboard, making the move to the smaller screen of the iPhone seems to have been a risk well worth taking; the personalized news delivery service has already added 1 million new users since the iPhone app launched (via TechCrunch). Since its launch in July of 2010, the iPad app had accumulated over 4 million users, so 1 million in a single week is a significant quickening of pace — a trend that other iOS news and periodical app publishers would do well to note.

Engagement is also up significantly thanks to the iPhone version. In terms of usage, Flipboard went from around 650 million “flips” (page turns in the Flipboard app) per month to a pace of about 2 billion per month post-iPhone launch. The iPhone version requires users to flip more often to view the same amount of content, but that’s still a remarkable improvement.

Obviously, this is great news for Flipboard’s reach, but it has implications for the larger iPad app market, too. Specifically, branching out may be a good idea even for apps which traditionally depend on the larger screen of the iPad to deliver their content.

Flipboard isn’t the only app out there branching out from iPad roots to iPhone implementations. News app and competitor Zite also released an iPhone-formatted incarnation last week, and streaming video apps like those for networks CityTV and Global in Canada recently introduced updates to their apps that make them universal, or usable across any iOS devices.

It’s a move that makes sense for companies who want to increase the adoption rate of their software product. Apple has previously stated that there were as many as 100 million iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide; that’s more than double Apple’s total iPad sales to date, let alone the device’s active users. It makes sense that iPhone apps reach a broader potential audience as a result.

Flipboard’s success is not just the result of repackaging an iPad app for a smaller screen. Instead, the app’s designers re-imagined it in a way that totally makes sense for the iPhone. That’s no small feat for an app like Flipboard, that takes its cues from magazines and definitely benefits from more available screen real estate. If publishers like those offering apps through Apple’s Newsstand want to reap the benefits of also offering iPhone products, they have to likewise bring a tailored experience, instead of just a shoehorned app that leaves you missing the iPad. Sadly that’s exactly how I’d describe many current iPhone Newsstand titles.

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