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Panic’s iOS Apps in 2015→

Cabel Sasser, writing for the Panic blog on their iOS apps and how they did on the App Store in 2015:

iOS Revenue. I brought this up last year and we still haven’t licked it. We had a change of heart — well, an experimental change of heart — and reduced the price of our iOS apps in 2015 to normalize them at $9.99 or less, thinking that was the upper limit and/or sweet spot for iOS app pricing. But it didn’t have a meaningful impact on sales.

More and more I’m beginning to think we simply made the wrong type of apps for iOS — we made professional tools that aren’t really “in demand” on that platform — and that price isn’t our problem, but interest is.

So, once again, we will investigate raising our iOS app prices in 2016, with two hopes: that the awesome customers that love and need these apps understand the incredible amount of work that goes into them and that these people are also willing to pay more for a quality professional app (whereas, say, the casual gamer would not).

You have to wonder if Apple should come up with new ways to incentivize the creation of these types of pro apps, or if Panic shouldn’t have lowered prices in the first place. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

I don’t think Panic made the wrong type of apps for iOS. Panic’s apps are fantastic pieces of software, and Apple should be proud of having them on the App Store. Panic’s commitment to their iOS apps is laudable, and their taste, unsurprisingly, impeccable. Coda 2 and Transmit are some of the finest productivity software you’ll find on the App Store.

As usual, I’m going to say that a possible solution lies somewhere in the middle. I’d like to see Apple improve the App Store with tools and developer relations that help companies like Panic, and I’d urge more developers to place the correct value on their apps. The Omni Group is a good example to follow here. It may sound old fashioned, but I think quality software deserves an appropriate price.

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MindNode 4.2 with Reminders Integration→

Nice update to MindNode, a great mind-mapping app for iOS and OS X, which can now attach tasks to items and (optionally) sync with iCloud Reminders:

Mind Maps are a great way to kick off a new project and Tasks are often a major part of this workflow. MindNode now offers native Tasks support. You can turn any child node into a task and check off completed tasks directly on the canvas. To help you stay on top of your tasks, MindNode will also show a task progress indicator on parent nodes that have children with tasks.

If you prefer Apple Reminders to manage your tasks, you can also export your Tasks to Reminders and MindNode will keep the completion state in sync with Reminders. For example when you mark a task as completed in Reminders, it will also be marked as completed in MindNode. This feature works across iOS and OS X.

Even better, if you use Reminders with 2Do, you’ll be able to work on a project with a tree structure in MindNode, then share to Reminders and complete tasks either from 2Do or MindNode. Clever integration – though it would also be useful to import lists from Reminders and visualize them as mind maps in MindNode.

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Barclays Confirms It Will Support Apple Pay by April→

Update: Engadget accidentally miscalculated the expected launch dates, that has now been fixed.

Barclays customers in the United Kingdom finally have a date for when Apple Pay will be supported by their bank, reports Matt Brian at Engadget.

After first declining to comment at launch, the bank quickly changed its mind and voiced support for the service. It then made customers wait months before offering an “early 2016” launch date at the end of last year. Following another few months of silence and hundreds of irate customers tweets, Barclays CEO Ashok Vaswani has confirmed that Apple Pay support will roll out by April at the very latest.

In an emailed statement to Barclays customer Oli Foster-Burnell, Vaswani said the service will go live “within the next 60 to 75 days.” Depending on the company’s plans, card support could be enabled between March 12th and March 27th. That’s stretching the “early 2016” launch touted last year, but it may be enough to stop some disappointed Barclays customers from switching to another bank.

Barclays will be the last of the big four UK banks to support Apple Pay. By way of a quick update, Apple Pay is now supported by 966 financial institutions in the US and 15 in the UK (not including Barclays). Apple Pay also launched in Australia and Canada – but only for those (limited) few who have a credit or debit card issued by American Express. American Express customers in Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong will also get Apple Pay sometime this year. But in a more substantial rollout, Apple Pay is set to launch in China early this year as a result of a partnership with China UnionPay. Unlike the American Express only roll outs, Apple Pay will launch in China with the support of 15 of China’s leading banks.

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Improving the iOS Emoji Keyboard→

Steven Aquino, writing at The App Factor:

What I’d like to see Apple do is not necessarily make the emojis themselves bigger — the keyboard only fits a finite space, after all — but rather change how they’re presented to the user.

Here’s my suggestion: Apple should take the magnification animation it already employs on the text keyboard and apply it to the emojis. Every time I press on, say, a smiley face, the face would “pop up” in the same manner a letter does when you press its corresponding key. Taking this a step further, it would also be helpful if you could use the magnification loupe (for moving the insertion point) to scrub through emoji. The only caveat here is that Apple would need to make the loupe larger, which is something I wrote about in my aforementioned article. As it is now, the current magnification level wouldn’t do much good to compensate for the small size of the emoji.

Looking at the emoji keyboard from an accessibility perspective, Steven’s suggestions make a lot of sense. Existing features such as Dynamic Type and Character Preview could also be used for emoji, but I like Steven’s loupe idea better.

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Ben Brooks on Moving to 2Do→

Ben Brooks has a spot-on comment on task managers after his move to 2Do:

That is: if you are using every part of the task management system when things are light, then problems will arise when things get busy. It’s not that OmniFocus was overkill for me, it’s that it was too rigid. That rigidity is great when I am suffering decision fatigue from the amount of work I have, but it is a burden when I am not suffering that fatigue.

Further: when you aren’t busy your task management system should be easy. The system should scale, not permanently be operating as if you are the busiest person in the world all the time.

At its core, this is what I love about 2Do: its flexibility makes it either extremely simple or incredibly advanced – or both at the same time if you just switch views in the app. Unlike other task managers, 2Do adapts to your needs.

(Side note: after Email to 2Do, I wouldn’t mind paying for all sorts of optional add-ons in the app.)

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Canvas, Episode 2: Document Providers→

Federico and Fraser go in-depth on the Document Picker and Document Provider system in iOS 9.

In the second episode of Canvas, Fraser and I discussed what is perhaps one of the most underestimated features of iOS 8 and iOS 9 – Document Providers. The document picker is often overlooked, but knowing how (and when) to use it can enhance your iOS workflow to make you save time and better integrate apps with each other.

You can listen to the episode here.

Featured workflows:

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Google Paid Apple $1 Billion to Keep Search Bar on iPhone→

Joel Rosenblatt, reporting for Bloomberg:

Google Inc. is paying Apple Inc. a hefty fee to keep its search bar on the iPhone.

Apple received $1 billion from its rival in 2014, according to a transcript of court proceedings from Oracle Corp.’s copyright lawsuit against Google. The search engine giant has an agreement with Apple that gives the iPhone maker a percentage of the revenue Google generates through the Apple device, an attorney for Oracle said at a Jan. 14 hearing in federal court.

It’s not surprising at all that Google is paying Apple for the benefit of being the default search engine on iOS, but this is the first time it has been confirmed, and a dollar figure provided. But it is also an awkward revelation for Apple, which has recently started to more aggressively position itself as the company that protects its user’s privacy. Remember Tim Cook’s note on “Apple’s commitment to your privacy”?

A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.

Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.

Apple’s subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) privacy dig at Google looks a bit absurd and hypocritical in light of this court transcript. Apple may not build a profile on its users to sell to advertisers, but it lets Google do that (by default) and then profits from Google’s actions.

Unsurprisingly, Google and Apple weren’t happy about the disclosure by an Oracle attorney and sought to seal and redact the transcript. As Bloomberg reports;

The specific financial terms of Google’s agreement with Apple are highly sensitive to both Google and Apple,” Google said in its Jan. 20 filing. “Both Apple and Google have always treated this information as extremely confidential.”

The transcript vanished without a trace from electronic court records at about 3 p.m. Pacific standard time with no indication that the court ruled on Google’s request to seal it.

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Apple Opening Europe’s First iOS App Development Center in Naples, Italy→

Interesting announcement from Apple this morning: the company will open the first iOS App Development Center in Europe – the second globally, as noted by VentureBeat – in Naples, Italy:

Apple today announced the creation of Europe’s first iOS App Development Center in Italy, to give students practical skills and training on developing iOS apps for the world’s most innovative and vibrant app ecosystem.

The iOS App Development Center, to be located at a partner institution in Naples, will support teachers and provide a specialized curriculum preparing thousands of future developers to be part of Apple’s thriving developer community. In addition, Apple will work with partners around Italy who deliver developer training to complement this curriculum and create additional opportunities for students. Apple expects to expand this program to other countries around the world.

Details are scarce at this point, but according to Repubblica, Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi lauded Apple’s commitment to innovation for “over 600 people” (a figure only Renzi shared) and announced he is going meet with Tim Cook tomorrow to discuss the initiative.

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Google’s Second-Class iPad Pro Apps→

Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore:

Despite receiving several updates in the last few months, Google’s apps haven’t been updated for Apple’s larger tablet. And there’s no hope, as there is with Facebook, of using Google’s in-theory-HTML5-and-therefore-iPad-compliant website: Google’s standard web view on an iPad flat-out punts you to the apps—if the website even correctly detects you have the app installed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen the websites try and send me to the App Store to open a spreadsheet, when I clearly have Sheets already available.

Trying to request the desktop version of the website won’t work, either: You won’t be able to scroll, or tap on anything that requires a double-click, and any link you do manage to make work will send you right back to the mobile environment.

As I’ve tweeted for the past two months, Google’s suite of Drive apps for iOS is an embarrassment.

Compare Google’s subpar iPad Pro “work” to Microsoft, which was quickly ready for the iPad Pro, iOS 9 multitasking, and Apple Pencil. I’ve switched to Office 365 for my personal spreadsheets and Word documents, and, if the situation doesn’t improve, I’ll consider other solutions for collaborative docs as well.

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