This week, everyone’s favorite international trio discuss a truckload of follow-up, then move on to talk about Apple’s developer site and quarterly results then Google’s new Nexus 7 and Chromecast TV dongle. Myke interrupts the show to find Federico’s alt rock band on MySpace. To wrap up, Chris Bowler files a report on Cloud.typography and Federico gives a tip about bookmarklets in Chrome for iOS.
Without a doubt, the episode recorded in the most original location to date. Get it here.
Jeffrey Grubb at VentureBeat:
The mobile-based future is here, and publisher Electronic Arts is reaping the rewards. EA reported today that it made more money through Apple’s App Store than any other retail distributor. That includes its own Origin digital-download service.
Here’s the thing: I don’t like EA’s shady practices (especially in Real Racing 3), I think that most In-App Purchase-based games should offer more value, but this is working for EA and others (see: Candy Crush Saga). And who’s to blame: consumers for being too credulous? EA and King? Apple? If anything, shouldn’t we be happy because Apple’s strategy is working out?
I, and thousands of old-school gamers like me, don’t like this modern idea of free-to-play games and nickel-and-diming players. I like to think that, eventually, Apple will start caring about quality games. But it’s when I read stories like EA’s that I conclude that, today, Apple doesn’t want to change In-App Purchases, at all.
Benedict Evans:
For the first two cycles Apple launched the new iPad in the June quarter and sales then rose in the September quarter (back to school?) and again in the Christmas quarter (presents) before falling in March (old product, new one coming). But then in 2012, iPad Mini rumours led to sales falling in September and then Apple launched the Mini and a 4th gen model in the December quarter. So sales shot up in the December quarter, held up well in March (newer product plus Chinese new year) and then slipped this quarter as it’s now a nine month old product.
Some solid analysis of yesterday’s Q3 results. The first chart really shows the seasonality of Apple products, and the inevitable decline of the iPod.
This is an amazing collection of workflows and tips by Patrick Welker, who explains how he automates list creation and management using AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro. The post also contains a modification of my recent Mail workflow to automate senders and signatures.
The hidden gem in the article, however, is the following sentence:
Since I’m deeply in love with Keyboard Maestro and want to preserve the just fallen in love kind of feeling in our relationship for as long as possible, I created a one-action macro to trigger the TextExpander snippet
The things you do for the apps you love.
Last week, I wondered whether Google’s new data compression feature for Chrome for iOS was partially motivated by the inability to use the Nitro engine to speed up page load times. Today, I have stumbled upon the technical document that details how the data-saving process actually works – in short, it uses Google’s proxy to optimize web traffic sent by Chrome.
The proxy server receives the request initiated on the mobile device, initiates a request for the required resource on your behalf, and then optimizes each asset before delivering it back to the client. The content optimization is performed by our open-source PageSpeed libraries, which are specifically tuned for the Chrome Mobile browser. The rendering of the page, and all JavaScript execution, is performed by the client’s browser.
Of note, the transcoding of images from JPEG and PNG to WebP:
Over 60% of the transferred bytes, for an average page, are images. Hence, the proxy takes great care to optimize and transcode all images to the WebP format, which requires fewer bytes than other popular formats, such as JPEG and PNG. The proxy supports the new WebP lossless format for certain images, and also optimizes the perceptual quality of each image based on device screen resolution and pixel density of your device.
I’ve never been a fan of speed optimization through proxies personally, but I’m curious to try out Google’s implementation. The feature is still rolling out for Chrome users on iOS.
iCab Mobile is one of the oldest third-party browsers for iOS, and, even though Chrome is my go-to browser on the iPhone and iPad, I was intrigued by a feature introduced in the latest iCab update, version 7.1. In short, iCab now lets you launch other apps using URL schemes and multitouch gestures. I had to play around with it. Read more
The peerless Federico Viticci visits the bar to chat naming your band/blog, the allure of Apple, Microsoft’s thick cake of middle-managers, the lovechild of Automator & Sublime Text, and making things that don’t suck.
I was invited on one of my favorite podcasts and we had a great discussion about Apple’s culture, the topics we pick for MacStories, and more. We also talked about my favorite upcoming app, Editorial.
Listen to the episode here.
Apple has today announced that they reached 1 billion podcast subscriptions in iTunes:
From comedy to hard news to sports to innovative educational content and so much more, podcasting has transformed the global media landscape. Podcasts on iTunes launched in the summer of 2005 and since then, we’ve seen countless episodes downloaded and streamed. But the heart of podcasting is finding your favorite voices in this exciting field and subscribing to the best ones. To celebrate 1 billion podcast subscriptions, we’re highlighting some of the most popular podcasts of all times, as well as a collection of captivating new shows.
Apple is celebrating the milestone with a custom iTunes page that features podcasts under Classics, What’s Hot, and New & Noteworthy. The Classics include This Week in Tech, This American Life, and Stuff You Should Know, among others.
Apple also gave additional numbers to Macworld, providing more insight into available episodes and podcast subscriptions.
In my review of Bugshot 1.0, I mentioned the app’s poor scrolling on iOS 6 devices and lack of Open In menu to send annotated images to other apps.
Version 1.1 is out today on the App Store, and it brings performance improvements, Open In support, and a Blur tool to pixelate sensitive information. I didn’t think about a Blur tool when I first covered the app, but it is indeed a great addition to Bugshot (with a cool implementation).
Bugshot is $0.99 on the App Store.
