Last week, during an investor and analyst presentation, Nintendo revealed it had a free-to-play game in the works, due to debut before the end of the year. The publisher also indicated it wouldn’t use franchises like Mario or Pokemon for its new pricing experiment, due to the “degree of trust” that had already been built with consumers with regards to pricing. But at E3 2013, Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto revealed to IGN that the franchise his company has targeted is none other than Steel Diver.
I’m interested to see how free-to-play fares in an ecosystem that isn’t directly conducive to paying for content.
The air of drama at WWDC this year was founded somewhat in the anxiety of redesigning apps to match Apple’s new design direction. “I’m excited about it, but I’m also bewildered,” says Apple Design Award winning-developer Jeremy Olson. “Apple is now using words instead of icons. How do we respond to that?”
I’m feeling similar things at the moment. After the keynote, I was ready to sit down and code. However, I found I couldn’t because the new UI was such a departure, I was effectively dumbstruck. Even after reading the documentation, I can’t firmly pinpoint the characteristics that makeup a great iOS 7 application. My confusion was compounded by the fact that the current developer seed of iOS 7 is full of weird UI inconsistencies. It is unclear if these areas are simply unfinished or whether they are true representations of how Apple wants apps to look and behave going forward.
Hours after the keynote, I used the phrase “blindsided” to describe my reaction. Today, that continues to be a good description of how I feel. Right now, I’m stymied.
During the WWDC keynote, a short teaser video for the new Mac Pro played then Phil Schiller quipped, “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.” He was met with loud cheering and celebration by the developers in the audience who had just heard one of the most representative statements in recent times. This new era Apple takes on naysayers full-force. This new era Apple can admit that virtual cows were being harmed with previous skeuomorphic calendars and the wood in Game Center might not have been best for the environment.
The self-deprecating jokes are certainly uncharacteristic, but I felt like they were apt given the current situation Apple finds itself in. By addressing the ‘Forstall era’ directly, they effectively distanced themselves from it. It was a separating point, and implied this was in the past. Portraying awareness of their missteps was important, as it (subtly) showed that Apple knew what needed changing and where it needed to go next to maintain its position as market leader. It’s almost as if the new Mac Pro was revealed as proof that this hypothesis is valid.
I made this guide to show the app icons from iOS6 vs the new icons from iOS7.
Phone is better.
Reminders is worse.
Passbook is better.
Newsstand is worse.
Mail is worse.
Music is worse.
Photos is better.
Videos is worse.
FaceTime is better.
Messages is better.
Safari is worse.
Game Center is worse.
Maps is better.
Contacts is worse.
Notes is better.
Compass is worse.
Stocks is worse.
Camera is worse.
App Store is worse.
Calculator is better.
Weather is worse.
Calendar is worse.
Clock is better.
iTunes is way, way worse.
The look of the Home Screen icons is probably my least favourite aspect of the new design. Some of these icons desperately need to change.
I’m blindsided. Some parts of it are gorgeous, other parts are hideous. The Home Screen icons seem particularly terrible. I can’t make any sort of conclusions on this stuff now. The changes are much more sweeping than I expected them to be. It isn’t just a theme, the OS behaves in new ways, like the fact navigation controllers can be interactively pushed and popped with a swipe gesture. It responds to device motion, for goodness sake.
Rich texture has been drained away almost unilaterally. iOS 7 relies heavily on perspective effects, translucency and borderless buttons to form apps that are hardly recognisable as iOS apps.
It’s different … I don’t know what else to say right now.
We’re expecting to see some improvements to the aging iTunes Connect portal, but we’ve also heard a few other things on the table for next week. It’s possible we could see Apple launch a competitor to Parse, the cloud app platform that provides “a scalable and powerful backend in minutes” for mobile app developers. We’ve been hearing whispers of the service, but it’s not clear if Apple is going through with the project.
Something else you’ll likely see next week: Live code previewing in Xcode, with features similar to Google’s new Android Studio tool. Other possibilities could include OS level XPC support and other inter-app communication APIs for iOS.
All of these things are music to my ears. I’d love Apple to announce this stuff. Using the real Parse in a project is toxic now, having been recently acquired by Facebook, so I would love Apple to provide a first-party solution that doesn’t have the hanging risk of startup exit strategy culture. In a way, this may be Apple’s new solution for cloud-syncing databases, replacing the flawed integration iCloud has with Core Data currently.
Rather than try to fix iCloud and Core Data, Apple could supersede it entirely with a Parse-esque service. This eliminates many of the race condition problems developers experience with the current ubiquitous Core Data API, because the server backend model is much more centralised and controllable. Whereas now it is setup so Apple’s frameworks manage multiple copies of the Core Data database across the user’s devices, the Parse model puts the server as the centralised endpoint. Client apps then pull and push to the central store, similar to how several Twitter apps stay in sync by pulling data from the Twitter API.
On the topic of Xcode 5.0, I can envision live code previewing being a significant productivity boon for development and I also think Apple is working on it. Xamarin Studio, an Xcode competitor, showed off live UI previewing in Xamarin Studio Designer a few months ago at their Evolve conference. Apple doesn’t feel competitive pressure from other IDE’s, but features found in those products have a funny knack of appearing in Xcode eventually.
With the iOS banner, the ‘7’ is given focus, with its multi-coloured fill, and the background is subtle. In contrast, the OS X banner gives prominence to the background rather than the letter. It is obvious that the letter is supposed to be the main message, but it isn’t forced. It is sort of paradoxical; the ‘X’ is in the center of the frame but feels tucked away. When looking at both side-by-side, I think the iOS banner is akin to an advertising poster whereas the OS X one much more closely resembles a moodboard.
The two banners are distinct enough to feel like they came from two different design teams. I don’t think you can infer anything about Apple’s product plans from it, but it’s interesting that strict uniformity isn’t on the agenda.
Apple requires developers to submit iPhone app artwork at incredibly large sizes, currently maxing out at 1024x1024, but it’s hard to find these large icon assets online, as I found out when I needed to get big artwork for one of my own projects.
I thought I would make a utility to make finding these images easier for others. This tool uses the iTunes lookup API to retrieve the bigger images straight from Apple’s servers.
Why do these icons not have rounded corners?
When a developer uploads app assets to Apple, they upload their icons as square images. Later, Apple applies a mask which creates the rounded corner effect. This tool returns the image assets before they have been masked, hence they are square.
Why am I sometimes not getting a 1024x1024 image back?
The App Store does not have 1024x1024 icons available for all apps on the store, because not all developers have provided these assets yet. This tool will always return the largest image that is available for a particular app.
What! I am pasting but nothing’s happening?
This hasn’t been tested on every platform and web browser combination known to man, so I don’t guarantee compatibility. That being said, on any modern setup, it should be perfectly fine. Please contact me if you are experiencing issues.
We were told that carriers will be an important part of the go-to-market strategy for Apple’s TV ambitions and subsidize the $1,500-$2,500 “iTV”, offering customers a single bill that will include a wireless plan (i.e., iPhone, iPad), Internet connection services, an “iTV” plan and other services.
The main roadblock to revolutionising TV is access to content outside of a cable box. The ideal situation would be that the content providers license their shows for playback on the iTunes Store the same day as they air and, by proxy, their programming would be available on the iTV as well.
As has been discussed a million times, the cable providers don’t want to be commoditised. By offering premium tier services, these companies believe they can extract higher margins from customers. As the cable providers also hold rights over TV content, at least in the US, they currently block deals with Apple and other entrants to ensure they remain more than ‘only’ dumb pipes.
Up to now, this has been the ultimate barrier. Google TV and the Xbox One try to get around this with passthrough video inputs and IR blasters, but this is known to be a sub-par experience.
To revolutionise TV, you need to control the UI. To control the UI, you have to have direct access to the content. Therefore, if Apple can appease the parties who have typically been seen as the “enemy” financially, it could get them onside and convince them to allow Apple free reign over their live channels and rich back-catalogue.
These financial incentives could come from a bundle deal which combines phone service, 3G tablet service, a subscription to TV content, home broadband and more. By making iTV a tenet of the proposal, Apple goes along way in coercing the incumbents into complying, because there is the potential for big profit margins for the service providers, if Apple gave the companies reduced prices on hardware. Essentially, Apple exploits the immense popularity of its iOS devices to make the idea more attractive and swing the bargaining power in their favour.
Rather than try to circumvent the TV providers, Apple embraces them via the draws of increased profitability. Obviously, this speculation has limitations (for instance, whilst it works in the US — where the carriers are also the cable providers — it might not apply so well internationally), at some level, it does solve the issues of content availability. I think the idea has merit.
Engineers and sales staff in Apple’s iAd business have been charged with supporting the new digital-radio service, which the company plans to debut as early as June 10 at its annual developers conference, said the people, who asked not to be named because the moves aren’t public. The music service won’t be publicly available until later this year, when Apple’s iOS 7 mobile-operating system is released, one person said.
Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is shifting how the company courts advertisers after failing to make much headway against Google Inc. in the $4.11 billion U.S. mobile-ad market. Apple will seek to land big brands for the new streaming-radio service — akin to Pandora Media Inc’s business model — scaling back its role as a network that places marketing messages in mobile software from its App Store.
Fill rates on iAd, to date, have been pretty poor. It will be interesting if they can do any better with audio ads. Unlike Pandora, which is only available in the US, Apple has to sign deals around the world for their service.
In fact, anything involving ads and Apple is interesting because it is a new area for them. What other Apple product is supported by advertising? In the past, Apple has presented itself as a company that shuns advertising. For example, at WWDC 2011, Jobs stressed that iCloud Mail would be ad-free.
As part of a shift to lower repair costs, Apple has begun replacing iPhone 5 screens at its retail locations. The new display replacement service is priced at $149 and can be purchased with or without AppleCare+.
Changes to Apple’s repair policies first surfaced last month, where a town hall session revealed that Apple would begin in-house repairs of displays in June in an effort to save approximately $1 billion per year.
This initiative is aimed at benefitting Apple, by saving Apple money. Assuming the actual service is good, at only $150 per repair this is a big plus for customers too, in my view. This is very competitively priced for an “official” repair.
Apple’s dedicated app for its Worldwide Developers Conference arrived today, and it offers a look at some of the sessions happening during the event next week, but it also shows off a dramatically different UI compared to past iterations of the app. The changes sound a lot like what’s said to be on tap for a visual refresh in iOS 7. It also might be a good early indication of what Apple will be bringing not only to its own apps, but also what it will expect from those from the developer community, as well.
The developers of the WWDC app have no insider-knowledge communication to the team who are responsible for making iOS 7. It is possible that somebody told them to design the WWDC app in a manner that replicates iOS 7’s look, but this is by no means a certainty.
Of course, iOS 7’s design is going to change and is going to be ‘flatter’. This has been reported by a myriad of people in the last few months. The design of the WWDC app though, shouldn’t be relied on as a foreshadow for next week’s unveiling. For instance, the WWDC 2012 app had an inexplicable silver theme.
If you want to do some fruitful speculation, I’d look at the black-outs in the schedule, as Panzarino has done.
Instead of entering passwords and secondary codes from a key fob all day, you could just take a vitamin authentication pill every morning. The pill features a small chip with one switch that uses your stomach acids to activate creating an 18-bit ECG-like signal inside your body. Dugan, who came to Google from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), likened taking the pill to having a super power. “My hands are like wires, my arms are like alligator clips,” Dugan said. “When I touch my phone, my computer, my door, my car, I’m authenticated.” The FDA-approved pill is produced by Proteus and currently used for medical applications such as detecting heart rate, physical activity, and resting state.
Having to swallow a pill every day to authenticate is just as much of a hassle as entering an alphanumeric string into a textbox. To catch on, alternative methods of authentication need to be more convenient than the password.
Tim comes off as trying too hard to not say that Apple will play in the wearables space. If it turns out to be true that Apple doesn’t dabble in glasses, I think that’s a huge turning point in Apple’s culture. So far Apple hasn’t avoided a new category just because it might fail.
I disagree. They are known for making great products because they say no to the things that will fail until they believe they are good enough to be successful. That’s Apple’s culture.
Walt on whether Apple might allow others to make changes to the home screen or keyboard. On Android, third parties can give you a choice. Have you given any thought to a little less control?
Cook: As for opening up more programming hooks, “I think you will see us open up more in the future,” he said. “But not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.”
We think the customer pays us to make certain choices on our behalf. Some want full control, but not the masses.
“But will we open up more,” Cook said. “Yes.”
Its not clear whether Cook is providing a direct response to the question or not, which makes discerning the meaning in his answer impossible. His answer is vague enough that it could just mean ‘adding more APIs for developers in the future’ (which is an inevitability) rather than adding more APIs for integration with Mossberg’s specific examples, like the keyboard and the home screen.
Personally, I would expect Apple to relax their control over iOS to a degree, but I think custom keyboards are out of bounds. I think third-party keyboards fall into the “risk of having a bad experience” category.
