Federico Viticci

10779 posts on MacStories since April 2009

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.
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@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

An App Store Subscription Success→

Adrian Hon is the CEO of Six to Start, makers of the popular Zombies, Run! app for iPhone. They switched to a subscription model last year, and he has some words of advice for developers considering the option today:

So you need to do everything you can to reassure your users that you’re in this for the long haul. That means regular, consistent updates and bug fixes. You don’t need to release a new build every two weeks like Facebook, but you need to demonstrate commitment to _maintaining _a stable and reliable app — one that adopts useful new features (e.g. Healthkit, Apple Watch) in a reasonably timely manner.

This is the opposite of a big bang release once a year, laden with new features and new bugs. Frankly, it’s a much more sustainable, relaxed, and consdered mode of development. It means you can justify the time to achieve 99.9% crash-free sessions, as we’ve done.

With more subscription-based apps, faster review times are a necessity. Users expect continuous improvements to a service they’re subscribed to.

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Apps as Services

John Gruber, writing on the App Store changes Apple announced earlier today, makes a good point about app sustainability:

Developers have been asking for a way to do free trials and to sustain long-term ongoing development ever since the App Store opened in 2008. This is Apple’s answer. I think all serious productivity apps in the App Store should and will switch to subscription pricing.

You might argue that people don’t want to subscribe to a slew of different apps. But the truth is most people don’t want to pay for apps, period. Nothing will change that. But for those people willing to pay for high quality apps, subscriptions make sustainable-for-developer pricing more palatable, and more predictable.

The ideal scenario after Apple’s new subscription APIs: users will be able to try out different apps for free thanks to subscription trials, see which one suits their needs, and then subscribe, optionally choosing from different subscription levels. The best app wins. Developers don’t have to worry about new versions of apps to sell users on a major upgrade, and customers can keep using the app they like.

The problem, as I see it today, is that Apple is being (intentionally?) vague about which kinds of apps will be able to adopt this new pricing model. On their new Subscriptions webpage, Apple refers to “successful auto-renewable subscription apps” as the ones that offer content or “services”. They also mention that apps will soon be “eligible” for subscriptions – a wording that might suggest increased scrutiny on Apple’s part to see whether an app can implement a subscription or not.

Today’s changes have been reported as Apple’s answer to the requests of developers who have been asking for paid upgrade pricing, but, as far as I can see, nothing on Apple’s website indicates that any type of app – regardless of its functionality – will be able to switch to subscription pricing. As with most App Store changes, it’s probably best to take a wait-and-see approach here – there will be sessions at WWDC to clarify many of the aforementioned questions.

Subscription pricing is not for everyone or every app. I don’t see myself “subscribing” to an image cropping app that I might need once a year – and Apple is saying as much, too. But I also wouldn’t mind becoming a paid subscriber of the apps that I rely on to get work done on my iOS devices, even if they don’t offer a service in the traditional sense. Apps like Workflow, Ulysses, or Copied save me time every day. Their continued development is the service for me – I want them and need them to exist, no matter Apple’s classification of their “service”. I’m willing to pay a subscription to keep using the best tools for me, and I don’t think I’m alone.

I’m optimistic about subscription pricing for App Store apps. Not every app is a good fit for a subscription, but increasingly more of them are.1 Apple’s new subscription tools should help developers sell their software to their best customers on a regular basis, and I’m curious to see how the indie developer community will react. It’s great to see excitement around the App Store again.

  1. Case in point, Sketch. ↩

LiquidText 2.0 Brings Support for Multiple Documents

While I don’t work with a lot of PDFs for what I do at MacStories, I’ve had to annotate documents and collect research material in the past, and I’ve been impressed with LiquidText for iPad.

LiquidText is one of the most innovative iPad apps I’ve seen in recent years. The app lets you read and annotate PDF documents, but it looks nothing like a traditional PDF editor. Text can be highlighted and pulled aside with a delightful tap & hold interaction; multiple excerpts can be grouped together in a cluster of bits of text, and you can also add your own notes to the mix. LiquidText is uniquely spatial in the way it lets you organize notes and annotations visually, moving them around, and linking them together. I like, for instance, how you can tap an excerpt in the side panel to see where it links back in the original document. LiquidText is full of interesting, useful features like that.

Today, LiquidText has launched a major 2.0 update that adds the ability to work with multiple documents and easily import webpages in a single LiquidText file. I’ve been playing with the beta, and it’s solid: multiple documents can be opened simultaneously, and you can pull together annotations from different sources in the same space. You can also add notes that reference multiple documents, as well as search for text across all documents at once. I’ve never seen a PDF app for iPad that made annotating and referencing multiple PDF documents this simple and intuitive.

Given the option to import PDF documents and webpages in a single LiquidText file, I think I’m going to give this a shot as I prepare my research for iOS 10 this summer. LiquidText 2.0 can export every excerpt and note as plain text, which I should be able to import in Ulysses to start writing. I haven’t tried importing Apple’s developer documentation webpages in the app yet, but it should be possible. LiquidText’s annotation engine and option to compare files is perfect for that kind of research spread across multiple topics related to each other.

Finally, the upgrade price. LiquidText has always been free (which is crazy if you ask me), but the Multi-Document Pack is a $8.99 In-App Purchase. If you want to support and enjoy one of the most powerful, original iPad apps I’ve tried in years, it’s a no-brainer.

Daylite: A Business Productivity App for Mac and iOS [Sponsor]

This week is sponsored by Marketcircle, the developers of Daylite.

Daylite is a business productivity app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It organizes your contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, emails, projects, and new business opportunities all in one app. What’s special about Daylite is that it links all these things together so get the full picture. Daylite is used by small businesses world-wide in all different industries.

Mark McClung and his team at Starbuck Realty in Denver, Colorado use Daylite to segment customers for marketing campaigns. They also use it to track their sales funnel when selling properties, and to delegate tasks to each other.

Barbora Sablova and her team at Skyform in Slovakia use Daylite in their design studio to organize their clients and projects. Barbora loves that Daylite integrates with Apple Mail so her and her team can link all their client emails to each project. When a client calls, she can quickly see all the emails her team has had with the client, and where they are in the project.

Daylite is a native app so you don’t need an Internet connection to use it. When you do get an Internet connection, it syncs in the cloud across your devices and with your team.

To learn more about Daylite and how it helps businesses to be more productive, visit Marketcircle’s website.

iPads for India→

Fraser Speirs:

I’m starting a new short-term project to raise money to send iPads to the Barefoot College in India.

My friend Srini Swaminathan recently asked me if we had any iPads that we could donate to the project he’s working with in India. We didn’t actually have any right then but we are coming up to the end of our lease at school and I thought there might be an opportunity.

Our lease requires that we either send the iPads back to the leasing company or buy the lease out. To buy out, we would need to pay back the fair market value of the iPads, which is currently about £100 per unit and we have 110.

And:

Barefoot College, which was recently visited by Apple VP Lisa Jackson, is an organisation that trains women in rural India to build solar powered projects to help their villages. These projects include solar water heating, cooking, desalination and even data projectors for use in night schools.

Great initiative. You can donate here.

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Google Maps & Apple Maps: Cartography Comparison→

When I linked to Justin O’Beirne’s analysis of Google Maps in May, I asked:

It’d be interesting to see the same comparisons between Apple and Google, as well as between old Apple Maps and Apple Maps today.

Not only did Justin deliver (for context, he designed and led the development of Apple Maps’ cartography), he’s started an entire series detailing the cartography of Google Maps and Apple Maps.

At its heart, this series of essays is a comparison of the current state of Google’s and Apple’s cartography. But it’s also something more: an exploration into all of the tradeoffs that go into designing and making maps such as these.

These tradeoffs are the joy of modern cartography — the thousands of tiny, seemingly isolated decisions that coalesce into a larger, greater whole.

Our purpose here is not to crown a winner, but to observe the paths taken — and not taken.

(Can you tell he left Apple in 2015?)

I couldn’t stop reading the first post in the series, in which Justin compares the choices Google and Apple have made for displaying cities, roads, and points of interests on their maps. Utterly fascinating and amazingly detailed.

I’ve always preferred Apple’s overall design and balance of their maps (which Justin’s data confirms), but, in my experience, their data (POIs and roads) was either old or inaccurate. My area in Rome seems to have improved in the past year, and maybe I should try Apple Maps again.

I’m looking forward to Justin’s next entries in the series.

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Apple Updates WWDC App for WWDC 2016 with tvOS, iPad Multitasking Support

Apple updated their official WWDC app earlier today in preparation for the upcoming WWDC 2016.

The app, now at version 5.0, has received a new dark icon and a tvOS version to stream and download videos for WWDC 2016 on the big screen. It’s also possible to watch videos from previous conferences from the Apple TV. Live streaming is now possible on iOS and tvOS, and the iPad version also supports iOS 9 multitasking for Split View and Slide Over.

In addition to a dark interface, the update has brought a preliminary list of sessions that developers will be able to attend during the event. As it’s been the case for the past few years, Apple hasn’t included the real names of the sessions yet as they would reveal the company’s announcements beforehand. This year, Apple has opted for Swift-inspired session placeholders such as ourLips = sealedOnThisOneToo and aWatchedPot != boils. The full schedule of every technical session will be announced after the opening keynote on Monday, June 13.

You can get version 5.0 of the WWDC app from the App Store.