Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category
« Older Entries |Apple announce App Store Volume Purchase Program
Monday, August 9th, 2010
Apple just sent to all their developers an email announcing a new App Store Volume Purchase Program that will allow educational institutions to buy applications in bulk for their students at a discounted price.
We’re pleased to announce the App Store Volume Purchase Program. Education institutions in the United States now have a new way to purchase your apps in volume for distribution to their students and faculty. You can also elect to offer special education pricing on your app when purchased in volume.
Developers will be able to choose to offer special pricing that is 50% of their list price to education institutions when they purchase 20 or more copies of their app.
Tags: App Store, Applications, Education, iOS
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Things I use: my menu bar collection
Friday, May 28th, 2010
As you can see from the image above, I have a quite few application icons in the menu bar of my Mac, so I decided to write a post about them. I think those are really great application and I’m sure some of you could find them helpful too. From the left:
Notify: It’s a really minimal email client, that completely run from your menu bar, you can read and send email, perfect for quick emailing, and it also links you to your mail application. Perfect if you use Gmail or other web email services.
Dropbox: This is my main file sharing platform. I use this daily to share files with the rest of 39′s team so we always have the latest version of what we are working on. And you don’t have to do anything, just add it to your Dropbox folder and it just works.
Little Snitch: It’s a great application to make sure that anything can go in or out from your Mac without your permission, and also monitor your network usage.
CloudApp: This is another file sharing tool, just simply drag a file to the icon and it will be uploaded to a server and the link to it will be placed in your pasteboard. I mostly use the screenshot feature, so that every time I make a new screenshot, it automatically uploads it to the cloud and creates a link to it.
Snippets: I use this application to manage all my snippets of code or portion of test I need to use often. It has a great shortcuts support and it makes writing boring stuff (code included) much faster.
Alfred: This is a quicklaunch application (similar to Quicksilver), really fast, beautifully designed. I’m so used to it that I use it even to switch to already opened applications.
Air Display: This is the latest addition to my menu bar. This application lets me use my iPad as an external monitor over wifi. Really handy if you ask me.
I hope some of these apps could help you as well. Now the question is: what’s in your menu bar?
Tags: Applications, Review, Software, Things I use
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The new Twitter iPhone app is out
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
Just updated Tweetie 2 to the new version simply called Twitter. In order to update it I needed to use “update all” from iTunes and sync my iPhone. At first glance you can see they changed the icon (I liked the old one much better) and when you first open the application, it shows you trending topic and suggested users even without logging in.
The same interface is used for the search page as well. I also noticed you can updated your account informations (bio and such) but I’m not 100% sure that this wasn’t possible before.
Tags: Apple, Tweetie, Twitter
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Bill Gates talking about Apple’s mobile ecosystem… 4 years ago
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Sounds familiar? Just as a note, the iPhone at the time had been presented but not yet released to the public.
Tags: Apple, Interview, iPad
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Is the Gizmodo iPhone HD scoop a fake?
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Talking with a friend about the new iPhone HD revelations by Gizmodo, we noticed how the logo on the letter Apple sent them to repossess the iPhone prototype wasn’t their latest version. Not only the logo, but on the bottom right the font used is the condensed Garamond that Apple used to use years ago. This is exactly Apple’s stationery circa 2005. Here’s a comparison between Gizmodo’s letter and others Apple sent to other individuals. Let’s see if you can spot the differences.
Gizmodo’s letter:
Comparison n.1:
Comparison n.2:
What can we deduct from these images? We have 3 possible scenarios:
1) Gizmodo got seriously punk’d
2) Gizmodo really received the mail but they were too lazy to scan it so they just recreate one themselves
3) Somebody at Apple should update Mr. Sewell’s stationery
What do you think about this story?
Tags: Apple, iPhone HD, News
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The real reason why Apple is banning some applications
Friday, April 16th, 2010
I’m not sure why I haven’t thought about this before, but now the reason why Apple has been banning “arousing” apps looks so clear to me: iAd.
A while ago I was talking with Peter Martinez, co-founder of Pikchur, and he was explaining to me why they have to make sure to filter out all pictures with adult or questionable content. Even if these images were driving huge amount of traffic to the website, it was driving away higher CPM networks and advertisers that have policies against advertising on sites with questionable content.
This is exactly the reason why Apple went back on his steps and banned from the iTunes App Store all the bikini/boobs/too-much-skin applications. And this is confirmed by another fact: Apple started banning those applications one and a half months after they acquired Quattro Wireless. Doing so at that time they made sure that the mainstream audience (not nerds, the only ones who care about changes in the 3.3.1 of the TOS) would focus of what the last event introduced and not what Apple banned.
A lot of people often complain about Apple’s decisions, when they ban applications or other things. My guess is that those people probably forgot that they are a business, and 99.9% of their decisions are business driven.
Tags: App Store, iAd
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Goodbye Laptops
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Ok, maybe it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it won’t be long before it will happen.
originally from: http://superamit.tumblr.com
Tags: Apple, iPad
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Memory Zoo: our first iPad application
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
I’m proud to present our first application for iPad: Memory Zoo, a simple memory card game for kids. We already have many ideas on how to expand the application but we decided we really wanted to be in the store on the launch day. The application has already been approved by Apple, now it’s just a matter of waiting for those iPads to be shipped and for people to start downloading the app.
Memory Zoo features one and two players mode, two difficulty levels, best times chart and awesome animal illustrations for kids.
Check out few screenshots from the app:
Tags: Apple, Games, iPad Applications
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Embrace all your users… even the pirates! ARRGH
Friday, March 5th, 2010
On my Twitter client I always have a search running for all the names of the things I build. The other day, looking at the search for SquarePik, something caught my eyes:
So I decided to play along and I posted:
I was expecting to be either ignored or to be insulted in some way for asking money for an application like SquarePik (many people seems to have problems accepting the fact that applications could cost more than free). Instead I received these message:
And not only he’s an active user, apparently he’s also very passionate about it:
What did I learn from this? Simple. What’s done is done, so just try to make the best out if. A user is a user, no matter how he arrived to use your product. Yes, I could have made an extra $1.40 if he paid for the application, but at the end an passionate user is worth much more than that. And maybe now that he sees that there is a person behind this application, he will consider to buy it.
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Goodbye bikinis, hello gambling!
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Apple recently surprised everybody, me included, with its new policy about “overtly sexual content” on the iPhone, taking down from the store all the apps with questionable content. One of these apps was Featured Pinups by PinupLifestyle.com. This is an application we built at 39, in partnership with the owners of Pinup Lifestyle, to showcase the featured pictures posted on the site itself. No doubt there were few mildly erotic pictures, but all very artistic and in a clear pinup style. We can’t help it if pinups are sexy. Geeks aren’t sexy. Pinups are sexy, it’s their thing. For sure it wasn’t one of those “Hot bikini not-technically-naked-but-you-can-imagine-the-rest” apps; pictures were very tasteful and professionally done. Anyway, our app wasn’t the only one to be taken off the store, and some of the other developers actually called Apple and found out what are these new guidelines they forgot to mention to us.
The new guidelines are that Apple will be removing all applications featuring bikinis and lingerie in the next 48 to 72 hours.
Yes, no more filthy apps on iTunes. But don’t worry guys, Apple is great, and while with one hand is taking away, with the other one is giving back. In another very recent change of their guidelines Apple cleared the way to some sort of pseudo-gambling:
3.3.17 Your Application may include promotional sweepstake or contest functionality provided that You are the sole sponsor of the promotion and that You and Your Application comply with any applicable laws.
What do I think about these changes? Well, about the “overtly sexual content” problem, we’ll clean up the app and submit it back. For sure if you have any kind of photography app that doesn’t have to do with barely dressed models, this is the right time to submit them because there is going to be much less noise in that category. About the gambling, I’m sure we will see a large use of it as a tool to promote the applications as well or to collect leads. Will I do that? Maybe.
Tags: Apple
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