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“Quietly Doing Just Fine”→

Well, I think a lot of us are out there, quietly doing just fine. HoursTracker had its best year ever in 2014, and five years of best ever years before that. If you can solve an important problem in a way that resonates with a sizable group of people, you can find success. There’s always room for a fresh take on an already well-served problem, too.

We often hear about the frustrations of indie developers who are trying to make a living on the App Store, which has essentially become the default narrative for many (I often talk about this topic, too). Carlos Ribas, developer of HoursTracker, has a good article about the opposite scenario and how he managed to turn his app into a profitable business. Well worth a read to get a fresh and different perspective, and a good reminder that there are indie developers who are doing fine after years on the App Store.

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Why Skeuomorphism Is Like a Classic Car→

We could sit and listen to Neven talk forever. Like so many of our interviewees, the guy has insight for days and the work to back it up. We knew this gem in particular would be a great addition to the ongoing conversation around design aesthetic. So we’re letting it fly the nest early for your enjoyment.

One of the projects I’m most excited about is App: The Human Story, which I covered last year.

I believe this is a project that matters because the stories of people behind apps go largely unnoticed. Covering the details and stories of apps has always been one of my personal motivations behind this site, but a blog can only do so much to expose the general public to what it means to be an app maker.

The team has posted a short clip featuring Panic’s Neven Mrgan today, and it’s about the transition from skeuomorphic design to simpler and modern UIs. I love the comparisons and the style of the video, which further confirms that this documentary is going to be extremely important for the indie iOS development community.

You can watch the clip below and pre-order App: The Human Story here.

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Virtual: Ticci Mansion→

This week Federico and Myke talk about the New 3DS Ambassador Edition and theorise a mobile strategy for Nintendo.

And don’t miss the last part of the show where I mention the odd mix of Python and Nintendo Miiverse in my workflow (seriously). You can listen to the episode here.

For context, you can watch the Nintendo smartphone app concept below.

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A Teenager’s View on Social Media→

Andrew Watts has an excellent take on modern social media from a teen’s perspective:

Those are some reasons why many people my age tend to use Instagram more than they do Facebook. Everything about the application makes it less commercialized and more focused on the content, meaning more teens are inclined to visit it. When we do visit the application it is a much more pleasant experience so we are more inclined to Like and interact with the posts more. This increases our interaction with the application, meaning we will use it more, etc.

Facebook gets all of the photos we took — the good, the bad, etc—while Instagram just gets the one that really summed up the event we went to. It is much more selective, and honestly people spend more time on the captions to make them relevant/funny. On Facebook we just throw up everything we got so people can tag each other and show our family members that we’re still alive.

Do not dismiss this article, as Andrew makes some astute observations about how apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are used. Most of my non-geek friends are slightly older than Andrew’s (they’re under 25), but I also see the same behaviors mentioned in the article. WhatsApp is obviously huge in Italy (as he notes), but everything from Facebook Groups to Instagram’s massive popularity and Twitter’s struggle to become huge is true for my circle of friends as well. Recommended read.

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Apple Announces New App Store Numbers and Milestones→

With a press release, Apple today announced new App Store numbers and milestones, as well as updated statistics on job creation in the United States and globally.

From the press release:

Apple today announced that the first week of January set a new record for billings from the App Store with customers around the world spending nearly half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases, and New Year’s Day 2015 marked the single biggest day ever in App Store sales history. These milestones follow a record-breaking 2014, in which billings rose 50 percent and apps generated over $10 billion in revenue for developers. To date, App Store developers have earned a cumulative $25 billion from the sale of apps and games. The introduction of iOS 8, the most significant iOS update ever, gave developers the ability to create amazing new apps and offers innovative features which proved wildly popular with App Store customers around the world.

In the press release, Apple announced that 1.4 million apps are now available on the App Store, with 725,000 of them made for iPad. Apple estimates that the “iOS ecosystem” has created 627,000 jobs in the US, and, in an updated job creation webpage, they put that number at slightly over a million for jobs “created or supported” by Apple. The same mini-site includes other numbers related to the company’s future Campus 2, US-based customer support, and more.

The App Store numbers come at an interesting time for Apple – the company has been criticized for some of its App Store practices over the past few months, but the stats shared today appear to paint a more positive picture in terms of overall growth and health of the market. Below, I’ve included some tweets by Horace Dediu for further context and analysis.

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Ten Years of Mac Mini – A Timeline→

This weekend marks the ten year anniversary of the first Mac mini. I feel confident in saying that no one has watched this little machine grow more intently than I have watched it. It’s the center of everything I do here at Macminicolo.

Macminicolo’s Brian Stucki has put together a timeline with highlights from the past 10 years of the Mac mini. It’s fun to look back at the original “iHome” rumor and I’m glad the mini (the small but powerful machine that runs this website) is still around today.

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Connected: 50% My Duty→

To ring in 2015, the boys spend some time with weird old browsers, Hackintoshes, the rumored 12-inch MacBook Air and Federico’s attempts to reinvent his nerd life.

This week’s Connected includes notes about my experiments with new apps and services as well as a good discussion about the rumored 12-inch MacBook Air. You can listen to the episode here.

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The 2014 Panic Report→

Panic is one of my favorite software companies and I’m happy to see Cabel Sasser posting this today:

Panic is a multi-million dollar business that has turned a profit for 17 years straight.

It just hit me, typing those words, that that’s a pretty insane thing to be able to say. (And, sure, we barely qualify). Believe me, I know it won’t last forever — but wow, what a kind of crazy deal.

All the problems mentioned by Cabel in the post are related to the App Store. If you look closely, the 2014 Panic Report is also a well written summary of areas where Apple’s App Stores (plural, for iOS and Mac) could improve.

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Improving iOS 8 Keyboards→

David Chartier sums up my feelings on custom iOS 8 keyboards so far:

As interesting as iOS keyboards can be, their initial implementation at the OS level is severely flawed. They’re cumbersome to setup, switching between them is needlessly tedious, and limitations make it difficult to teach users about keyboard features. As far as I can tell, all these problems require solutions and improvements from Apple at the OS level.

I only use custom keyboards that solve a specific problem: Clips, for copying multiple bits of text; KuaiBoard, for visual snippets; Emoji++, because it’s better than Apple’s emoji keyboard. Even with these keyboards (which I only activate when I need them – as utilities) I’ve been annoyed by the system’s tediousness in switching between them and lack of consistency.

I haven’t been able to stick with any replacement keyboard as my primary one. In the first version of iOS 8, keyboards were too buggy to be used as daily drivers, but even after fixes I can’t use a non-Apple one on a daily basis. I’d miss the system autocorrection, QuickType, dictation, and shortcuts that I’ve grown to know over the years. Hopefully Apple will soften its stance on what’s off-limits to custom keyboards with iOS 9. Personally, I quite like Apple’s keyboard – I just wish it supported multiple languages at once.

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