Over the past few days, I’ve methodically deleted 165 apps from my iPhone, about 54 percent of the 305 apps I had on the phone when I started culling the herd. When I was done, I had significantly decreased the phone’s clutter: I’d gone from 15 home screens to eight, and reclaimed nearly 8GB of free space, about a 24 percent gain in my case.
And:
But this isn’t one of those columns about digital housecleaning or how to free up more space on your iPhone, valuable as those are. It’s easier to save space by offloading most photos, video, and music to the cloud anyway. No, this column is really about the fact that I think the novelty of the app itself has worn off. We’ve reached peak app.
And:
Before going on, I want to make it clear that I am not against apps as a software type. Just the opposite: I believe them crucial to mobile devices. I personally find that, for many targeted tasks, a well-designed app is much better to use on even a large phone than is a mobile web browser, even if both the app and a web page are tapping the same online services.
For instance, I’d use Facebook and Twitter much less on my phone if I had to use them through the browser, partly because they make it easy to open and close referenced web pages right inside their apps, with just a click.
And it’s still possible to create a sensation with a great app that introduces genuinely new experiences — like Pokémon Go with its augmented reality interface. But one reason that Pokémon is so newsworthy is that such blockbuster apps are rarer and rarer.
It’s easier to make a wave in a pond than an ocean, and that’s where we are now. The same is true in the businesses of movie/TV/journalism production. It is harder and harder to make content that stands out in that ocean of content that you’re competing against. That is the nature of any maturing business.
Needham & Co. Managing Director Laura Martin estimates that “Pokemon Go” could generate $3 billion in revenue for Apple in the next 12 to 24 months as the game expands into more countries. Since the game achieved penetration of 6 percent of the U.S. population after just 10 days, Martin predicts 20 percent penetration at maturity.
And here’s the key:
“I think the point is that while Nintendo has gone up 20 billion and they do have IP risks, Apple does not,” Martin said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” “It is hedged because the next genius that makes a hit game, Apple shares on that one too. So while this one may be transitory, Apple has an option on all future hit games over the iOS platform.”
At the core of the App Store’s business model is this risk disparity. Apple took the vast majority of their risk at inception, when they built the App Store infrastructure. Now that risk has been paid for and the current risk all lies with the developers.
Graham Spencer takes you on a behind-the-scenes guided tour through the App Store’s Top Grossing chart.
From the wrap-up:
If you regularly browse the App Store’s Top Charts most of these results would likely serve to confirm what you had already assumed. Most obviously, if you were to randomly pick an app from the Top 200 Grossing charts, chances are extremely high that you would pick a free app with IAPs and it would most likely be a game. But what is particularly suprising is the degree to which free apps with IAP dominate the charts with essentially no paid apps or no apps without IAPs.
The use of an Apple ID for a perfectly legal purchase was the key piece of evidence that has enabled the Department of Homeland Security to identify the man they suspect to be the owner of the biggest pirate website on the net, KickAssTorrents.com (KAT).
On Wednesday, the newspaper began blanking out, for some users, a percentage of words in articles symbolizing the percentage of the company’s revenue that comes from advertising.
The proportion of words blocked isn’t scientific, and the Financial Times doesn’t break out the exact chunk of revenue that comes from ads, said global advertising sales director Dominic Good. “It’s more illustrative than specific,” he said.
The test group comprises registered desktop computer visitors who don’t pay for a subscription, about .075% of the company’s desktop traffic. Some ad-blocking members of this group won’t see any new messaging, some will be asked to whitelist the website’s ads but can still read regardless, some will see articles with many words blanked out if they won’t whitelist the site, and some will be blocked outright if they don’t whitelist the site.
The company will evaulate the results after three or four weeks.
I wonder if this is a potential move to open up the gates, allow visitors through the paywall who agree to accept advertising. Interesting to see how this plays out.
There has been some speculation today that Apple purchased cloud-based music provider, Omnifone. According to my sources, that’s not the case.
Clearly with my interest in music, and Apple Music in particular, I began checking around as soon as I saw the report. While the report indicates a “mystery buyer” did purchase Omnifone’s tech business and assets, that buyer is not Apple, my sources said.
Omnifone worked with a number of companies, including LG, Samsung, Vodafone, BlackBerry, and Sony, to launch music services. However, it appears the company has not been doing well financially of late.
It’s not often you can say the pretty woman in the bikini is the second most beautiful and graceful thing in a video but I can honestly say it’s true in this case. I’d love to go diving with these amazing creatures.
Rebroadcast of Cronkite’s coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing starts in 10 minutes here.
If you are too young to have seen it live, watch it here. Or, relive the incredible memories of this day, 47 years ago, when mankind first stepped on the moon.
UPDATE: “it was originally posted in 2009”. Dammit. Never mind.
Sometimes, displaying our most beloved books on a shelf just doesn’t cut it. And when it comes to doing justice to the extent of our bookwormery, loud and proud is the way forward.
Pippa Branham of Liverpool, UK, decided to go all out with her love of books and paint her staircase with her and her husband’s preferred reads.
This is really cool. If I had any painting or design skills or even stairs, I’d give this a try.
ChefSteps recently introduced Joule, a small and easy-to-use sous vide tool, the first of many of the products planned by Young and his team of over 50 chefs, scientists, photographers, writers and engineers.
It’s not often you hear of a person with this combination of attributes. Interesting interview.
One of the two oldest methods of applying color to web pages, named colors remain very useful in web design and development today. Consisting of 149 distinct keywords (shown above, with their hexadecimal equivalents) CSS named colors have a few special features
The decision to drop a paywall can provide insight into how a news organization’s “values intersect with its commodification strategy, its technology design, and its brand identity” as outlets of all stripes are still deciding how much their reporting should cost.
This discussion has been going on for two decades.
Modi’s cabinet on Wednesday is likely to approve a three-year exemption on local-sourcing requirements for foreign single-brand retail companies with “cutting-edge technology,” according to the people, who asked not to be identified due to rules for speaking with the media.
This is great news, although I’m not sure what happens after the three-year exemption.
Jim Papadopoulos has spent much of his life fascinated by bikes, often to the exclusion of everything else. He competed in amateur races while a teenager and at university, but his obsession ran deeper. He could never ride a bike without pondering the mathematical mysteries that it contained. Chief among them: What unseen forces allow a rider to balance while pedalling? Why must one initially steer right in order to lean and turn left? And how does a bike stabilize itself when propelled without a rider?
As kids, we “counterbalanced” by instinct. When I was learning to ride a motorcycle, the explanation of “steer right, go left” confused the living daylights out of me.
There’s no shortage of word processing software in the world, but few have the cult following that Scrivener does. Long available for OS X and Windows, it’s finally ready to be downloaded by anyone who owns an iOS device for $20.
I’m not much of a writer so I’ve never used Scrivener but many of the writers I know swear by it and have been waiting impatiently for this app for their iPads.
This is a bit hard to follow, but it is a pretty ingenious scheme. In a nutshell, the scammer sets up a pay phone line, a phone number that people have to pay to use. They then use that number as a verification number with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and take an action which causes that number to be called.
By automating the process, they bring in a nice little wave of money. That’s the theory, anyway. This was pieced together by a security researcher who raised the issue to get companies to put barriers in place to prevent this hack.
This sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but take a look at this resume. Not effective in a traditional sense, since it can’t be printed and won’t fit in with most job search engines, but still, great job.
Just call 917-ASK-NYPL, and a live librarian will try to answer your question, using vast archives collected over 120 years.
And:
Set up in the 1960s, the line is manned by nine librarians and information assistants. The team gets a lot of calls from people who want to fact-check things they’ve heard on the news, says Caballero-Li.
What I find amazing is that this service still exists, has not been overwhelmed with demand. Fascinating read.
Garry Marshall, who created some of the 1970s’ most iconic sitcoms including “Happy Days,” “The Odd Couple,” “Laverne and Shirley” and “Mork and Mindy” and went on to direct hit movies including “Pretty Woman” and “The Princess Diaries,” died Tuesday in Burbank, Calif. of complications from pneumonia following a stroke. He was 81.
Marshall went from being TV writer to creating sitcoms that touched the funny bones of the 1970s generation and directing films that were watched over and over: “Happy Days” helped start a nostalgia craze that has arguably never abated, while “Mork and Mindy” had a psychedelically goofy quality that catapulted Robin Williams to fame and made rainbow suspenders an icon of their era. “Pretty Woman” likewise cemented Julia Roberts’ stardom, while “The Princess Diaries” made Anne Hathaway a teen favorite.
“Happy Days” star Henry Winkler credited him for launching his career, tweeting “Thank you for my professional life.”
Garry Marshall was a huge influence, sending out waves far beyond the specific content he created.
The new episodes of Making A Murderer will provide an in-depth look at the post-conviction process of convicted murderer Steven Avery, and his co-defendant, Brendan Dassey, as their respective investigative and legal teams challenge their convictions and the State fights to have their life sentences upheld.
Like many people, I was glued to the TV set watching this series.
Gawker Media LLC founder Nick Denton faces personal bankruptcy after a U.S. judge refused on Tuesday to extend protections shielding him from liabilities resulting from a lawsuit over the invasion of privacy of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.
Version 2 sports the world class, professional photo editing that you users of Camera+ for iPhone have been enjoying via The Lab. But the iPad version takes photo editing to a new level by supporting selective brushing of the various edits and filters. And those of you who own an Apple Pencil will appreciate it even more because we’ve also added Pencil support, enabling you to get very fine, precise control over brushing with it.
Camera+ has a lot of tools and is certainly worth a look if you are into photography on your iPad.
