The American Dialect Society has chosen “app” as 2010’s word of the year, which isn’t surprising considering the media’s focus on all things “apps.” Apple took the phrase and injected it straight into the heart of commercial marketing as they continually aired commercials for both the iPhone and iPad showcasing apps available on the App Store, while Verizon’s Droid Does commercials showcased the “limitless potential” of the Android Marketplace. 2011 will continue this trend as devices like the iPad introduce more powerful gestures, and as the iPhone penetrates Verizon for the first time. If 2010 wasn’t the year of apps, do you think it would have been the year of the iPad? I think so.
Well Things Just Got Interesting→
Well Things Just Got Interesting
A recent update to the popular MobileRSS application was inappropriate. It appeared to be an almost identical one-to-one clone of another application: Reeder.
Inspiration and imitation are a natural part of competition, especially in a market as tight as news readers. But in this case, I personally felt that MobileRSS went too far. As a solo developer, I rely on app sales to support myself. A lot of other iOS developers do the same, including Reeder. We simply don’t do things like this to each other.
As a result, I have decided to disable MobileRSS’s API key for the time being. This is not an app that I would like ReadItLater to be a part of in its current form.
Nate Weiner of Read It Later condemns MobileRSS because they’ve blatanently ripped off Reeder’s unique user interface, but at the same time offers his apologies to his customers who use MobileRSS as their utility of choice. While he regrets disabling a major function of MobileRSS, Nate honorably offers to offset the cost of this inconvenience if his customers feel their service has been disrupted. It’s a shame that a developer in our own community has had to take such a stance thanks to the actions of another, but good on Read It Later for stepping up and simply saying, “No.”
Update:
After speaking with a number of other developers, including Silvio from Reeder, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is re-enable MobileRSS’s API key. The developers who made MobileRSS have a number of other apps with Read it Later support (on Twitter, iPhone and iPad). I’ve discovered that all of these apps use the same API key so disabling it unfairly affects an enormous number of innocent Read It Later users using the developer’s other apps.
While the intentions were good morally, business is business. Ultimately I agree that it’s up to the end user to decide whether or not to support an application that has unfairly (and blatantly) copied the user interface of a competitor, though I applaud Read It Later for bringing awareness to the situation. I find it interesting that Silvio Rizzi of Reeder understood the financial implications and felt that such a damaging proposition was unfair. Undoubtedly the developers of MobileRSS have enough to deal with considering this afternoon’s lash out against the company.
BusyToDo Syncs Tasks Through iCal & MobileMe
If you happen to live buried in a desktop calendar like BusyCal, assumedly it’s become your central hub for tracking the waterfall of meetings and seemingly endless to-do’s that direct your daily actions. Being mobile, we hate being tethered to our desktops or using clunky software on our phones when tasks could be simplified: BusyToDo from BusyMac free’s iCal’s To Do list and keeps your personal agenda synced across the cloud with MobileMe. Push notifications may remind you via any alarms you’ve set, and BusyToDo will update in the background as you move to other applications on your iPhone. Whether it’s checking off URLs, adding new items for next week’s agenda, or simply looking for the perfect mobile companion for BusyCal, BusyToDo is a brand new release that’s launched for $5 on the iTunes App Store.
TellMeLater Review - iPhone Reminder Utility
TellMeLater is an extremely useful utility for the iPhone to remind you of those routine things that always slip your mind but that you don’t want cluttering your to do app. Not only it’s an extremely simple app to use it also looks beautiful on the Retina Display.
The iPod shuffle and the iPod nano: Click and Clip
Today we saw the return of the 2nd generation iPod shuffle as a smaller, 4th generation upgrade that features VoiceOver and a familiar scroll wheel in pale yet lovely shades of silver, blue, green, orange, and pink. Arriving in similar hues with savvy graphite and slick (PRODUCT)RED coats, the iPod nano has truly become the nano charm I’ve always wanted: a no-camera, no-video mini music player featuring an interactive multitouch interface and a clip-able form factor that’s perfect for my morning jog. I’m incredibly satisfied with this year’s offerings, and the click-and-go functionality of Apple’s latest iPods are great.
Pastebot: Clipboard Savvy Music Syncing
When iOS 4 landed on the iPhone and iPod touch, a lot of people expected there to be this explosion of multitasking applications that would enable us to do things like automatically copy information to our Pastebot clipboard. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. Private APIs are still a sorry subject for developers in Apple’s community, so the folks at Tapbots had to get creative. “How do we avoid touching Apple’s Private APIs?” It’s all done through the sound of music. Or the lack thereof.
Apple Showing Continued Interested in Ad-Supported OS
Where exactly is Apple going with this? An old Apple patent “Advertisement in Operating System” was republished as a continuation this week, garnering interest in whether a model like this would be pursued or if it would even be popular.
Test Cloud and Mobile Apps at Scale Before Deployment with New Tools
Admittedly developers and teams can have a helluva time testing at scale. Bugs are squashed, the experience is perfect, yet you don’t want to be left releasing a slew of updates through the next month to fix potential issues. Worse, if you’re a cloud based service, you want to make sure you won’t get absolutely crushed by a positive influx of consumer interest. So what do you do? Test at scale before releasing the next greatest alternative to Dropbox, that’s what.
iOS 4 On Half of All iPhones One Month After Release
I wasn’t under the impression that iOS 4 had penetrated so much of the iPhone world already, but according to Chitika Research, iOS 4 is running on nearly half of all the iPhones currently in consumer’s hands. As of July 15th, ten percent of current iOS 4 users have updated to 4.0.1.