Posts in news

Apple Launches Three-Week Mac App Store Productivity Sale

As first noted by MacRumors, in its weekly refresh of the App Store homepage Apple today launched a three-week “productivity sale” on the Mac App Store. The sale includes discounted apps from the “Get Stuff Done” section: Clear, Things, 2Do, Due, Todo, TaskPaper, The Hit List, and BreakTime. The custom Mac App Store page says “Week 1” and includes apps of the “Prioritize” kind; it’s safe to assume Week 2 will feature “Organize” apps, ending with “Utilize” apps in Week 3.

Interestingly, the old link for the Get Stuff Done section no longer displays apps that had been assigned to that section, suggesting that Apple may be picking only some apps previously collected in “Get Stuff Done”.

Both on iOS and OS X, Apple has been curating a series of custom sections for the past two years. As we’ve noticed before, after a redesign of the App Store in mid-2012 with the first iOS 6 betas, Apple started increasing its curation efforts – an area that several developers indicated as Apple’s best option for showcasing apps from the App Store. However, in spite of sections being a shared effort across the iOS and OS X App Stores, some changes remained exclusive to iOS: recent examples include App and Game collections, or redesigned categories.

The timing for this sale is interesting. The App Store turned 2 in early January, and in my look at two years of Mac App Store, I noted how many developers had progressively grown tired of Apple’s unclear Sandboxing policies and restrictions.

Sandboxing has undoubtedly left a scar that won’t go away any time soon. While the world hasn’t ended, Sandboxing – and Apple’s vague stance on some technical aspects, not the best policy when combined with multiple delays – has led to a dichotomy: in spite of Apple’s best efforts, developers are still dealing with two ways to sell their apps – the Mac App Store, and their own websites.

In the same article, I noted how – after a whole year – the Mac App Store charts were still dominated by the same number of Apple apps, and how – according to AppShopper data – growth had considerably slowed down. I offered a variety of reasons to try to motivate how developers felt in regards to the Mac App Store, and what users should expect going forward.

A sale is interesting for two reasons: it highlights great software and it helps third-party developers. Apple can only benefit from letting users know that great apps for a simple, immediate concept such as “Get Stuff Done” are available on the Mac App Store. The obvious consequence is that promotions typically help sales: developers can still make a fair amount of money even at 50% off; users are happy because they can buy at a discounted price from Apple’s own store; and – at least theoretically – the featured apps should go up in the Top Paid charts.

At the moment of writing this article the Get Stuff Done apps are still not listed in the Top 10, but they’re rising quickly (plus, the Mac App Store homepage was refreshed only a few hours ago). The Mac App Store benefits from charts that aren’t dominated by 8 Apple apps out of 10.

Effectively, Apple is now doing app promotions. There have been similar initiatives in the past – Two Dollar Tuesday comes to mind – and even “bundles” grouping multiple apps together, but they weren’t Apple-sanctioned promotions. (Update: there were some apps on sale for Apple’s Back to School promotion in the summer of 2012. However, we can’t dig up any screenshots or links. Apple is also doing a similar “Back to Uni” initiative in Australia now, but there are no apps on sale.)

It’s easy to imagine how, in the future, if this will also be extended to the iOS App Store, developers will look forward to being included in Apple’s official promotions. Developers will get the exposure of the front page, the benefits of built-in social sharing on the App Store, and, possibly, a tweet from the @AppStore account – which has been posting links to apps on a daily basis. Apple is mixing the editorial aspect of the App Store (only apps “chosen by Apple” – therefore synonym of “quality” – end up in a section) with the universal appeal of discounts to generate word of mouth, sales, more variegate charts, and, ultimately, a nice 30% cut for the company.

Right now, this is just the first week of a first promotion Apple is only doing on the Mac App Store. It might as well be an isolated experiment that Apple won’t repeat again. Perhaps they will simply return to launching some promotions for Back to School in the summer. But considering the popularity of their Free App of the Week initiative, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more frequent Apple-approved promotions in the future. Apple needs a healthy, thriving third-party ecosystem, and third-party developers need Apple’s promotional and marketing machine. Old-fashioned sales might just be what (some) developers needed.

Apple Q1 2013 Results: $54.5 Billion Revenue, 47.8 Million iPhones, 22.9 Million iPads, 4.1 Million Macs Sold

Apple has just posted their Q1 2013 financial results for the quarter that ended in December 2012. The company posted revenue of $54.5 billion ($13.81 per diluted share), with 22.9 million iPads, 47.8 million iPhones and million 4.1 Macs sold. Apple sold 12.7 million iPods. The company reported quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion.

We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

“We’re pleased to have generated over $23 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “We established new all-time quarterly records for iPhone and iPad sales, significantly broadened our ecosystem, and generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever.

Compared to last year’s Q1 – which had an extra week – Apple made $8.2 billion more revenue, but the same profit. Read more

Sponsor: Newer Technology NuGuard KX

My thanks to Newer Technology for sponsoring MacStories this week with NuGuard KX.

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The NuGuard KX is a protective case for the iPhone 4/4S and iPhone 5. The KX offers protection against accidental drops, impacts, and scratches without sacrificing looks or adding bulk. It’s been certified by Quanta Laboratories to withstand Shock Test Method of the MIL-STD-810G (U.S. Military Standard). And, unlike common military-impact test grade iPhone case materials, the NuGuard KX uses “X-Orbing gel” technology to absorb and evenly distribute kinetic energy. In one piece, the NuGuard KX offers access to all ports and buttons while offering an advanced protection.

Find out more about NuGuard KX here.

ReaddleDocs Relaunches As Documents

ReaddleDocs, Readdle’s file manager and document viewer for the iPad, has relaunched today as Documents, a free update for existing customers that introduces a refreshed interface and some new features.

In terms of functionalities, Documents basically shares the same capabilities of ReaddleDocs. The app can open the same file types, it can organize items in folders, sort them, and display them in icon view or list view. Unlike the OS X Finder, sub-folders in List view aren’t opened in the same column, but they’ll require you to open a different view that will display a Back button with the name of first level. As with ReaddleDocs, buttons to create a new folder, sort by name/date/size, and change views are displayed in a bar at the top that you can reveal by swiping down. A shortcut to create a new text file has been placed in a sidebar that you can reveal by hitting the Edit button.

To understand what Documents does, you can read our original review of ReaddleDocs 3 for the iPad. There are a series of web services supported by the app (including Dropbox) that you can access in the Network tab on the left. In the sidebar, the app also offers access to iCloud storage (which doesn’t come with List view), a built-in browser (to download webpages or part of them just like ReaddleDocs 3), and “Recents”. This last section provides quick access to the last five opened documents: as you re-open one, it will go to the top of the list again. Read more

Poster 2.0

Tom Witkin’s Poster is my favorite WordPress blog editor for iOS. Poster comes with a clean interface, support for Markdown (the app can convert plain text Markdown to HTML before publishing), and full WordPress integration. The app’s excellent support for WordPress features like custom fields, drafts, slugs, and images means I don’t have to write on the iPad and later “adjust everything” on a Mac before publishing. Poster is, in fact, a core aspect of my iOS automation workflow.

Poster 2.0 is out today, and it’s another fantastic update that reassures me Tom is committed to making this app the best WordPress editor for iOS. The interface has been further refined, and it’s now easier on the eye with an even deeper focus on content rather than UI chrome. I don’t use these for MacStories, but Poster now supports WordPress custom post types and excerpts, alongside the “sticky” functionality that we use every once in a while to pin a post to the top of the site.

What I like about Poster 2.0 are the “minor” additions that make for a much better workflow. Custom fields can now be given a local label so that a friendlier name will be displayed in Poster instead of the actual name (e.g. “URLCustom_linked” becomes “Linked post”); the Markdown preview and HTML conversion now handles en and em dashes (something that annoyed me in the previous version of the app); if you edit a published post (as we usually do when we catch typos or make corrections), you can now save the edited draft locally before publishing. I also appreciate how the “Copy to Clipboard” action now only received a post’s URL (Poster 2.0 builds on the solid foundation of Poster 1.0 for post sharing), and the app is noticeably faster at syncing multiple posts at once.

There are two more changes I want to mention. You can now insert images at any point in the editor by tapping & holding and selecting the “Insert Image” option from the popup menu; I tend to do all my image insertion beforehand, but this is a welcome addition for those times when I may forget about an image. And last, Poster now supports Greg Pierce’s x-callback-url to return to a specific URL after completion. Poster already had support for a URL scheme that allowed post creation from other apps, but now you’ll also be able to create a post and return to another app.

Here’s a bookmarklet I made to grab a browser’s selection and use it as text in Poster, get a webpage’s title and use it as post title, open Poster, and return to the browser. This kind of URL callback enables a streamlined workflow for, say, discovering links in Safari, quickly posting them to WordPress, and going back to Safari again.

javascript:window.location='posterapp:///create?text='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'&callback_url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href);

I also made a quick video showing the process in action. Unfortunately, getting the browser’s selection only works on the iPad.

Poster is a great app, and while not revolutionary, the 2.0 update refines several aspects of the previous version and adds more powerful functionality for WordPress users and iOS automation geeks. I highly recommend it.

Measuring iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4S availability→

Measuring iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4S availability

Horace Dediu of Asymco today wrote and shared data on the availability of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S by potential buyers - measured by the subscriber counts of the carriers that sell the iPhone. It’s an important and valuable extension of an article I wrote last week, discussing the international rollout of each generation of iPhone and iPad. That analysis had a weakness in that I treated all countries as equal which isn’t necessarily true (depending on why you’re looking at the data).

Announcing availability in Mauritius is not nearly as important as announcing Madagascar. A better measure would be to track the countries’ populations being added, or, better still, the populations which subscribe to operators who have a distribution contract with Apple.

So instead, Dediu looked at which carriers held the iPhone in each country and what their approximate subscriber count was. By calculating the availability this way, you can now see the potential number of iPhone buyers, as seen in Horace’s graph here.

That’s a handy measure: the iPhone 5 was 30% more available than the iPhone 4S. The big contribution was having China and Indonesia available during the fourth quarter rather than in January 2011.

Make sure to head over to Asymco to read the full article and all of Horace’s observations, it’s an interesting read. If you didn’t catch my article last week, it’s also available to read here. Just note that if you are trying to compare Dediu’s graph with the one in my article (shown here), Dediu went with actual dates whereas I went with relative time. This is because I wanted to look at the first 110 days of every iPhone, Dediu was specifically looking at the fourth quarter availability.

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Apple Launches Back To School Promotion In Australia & New Zealand

Apple has once again launched a ‘Back to School’ promotion ahead of the start of the new school year in Australia and New Zealand. Students who purchase a Mac will receive a AU$100 (NZ$125) gift card and students who purchase an iPad with Retina display will receive a AU$50 (NZ$65) gift card - virtually identical to the ‘Back to School’ promotion held in North America and Europe last June.

The promotion is open to any student, parent or staff member of a K-12 or higher education school with any purchase made between January 15th and April 1st. Products included in the deal include any iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or Mac Pro (including refurbished models), but the only iPad that is valid with this promotion is the iPad with Retina display - refurbished iPads, the iPad 2 and iPad mini do not qualify.

Apple has also put together a short list of great Mac and iOS apps that might appeal to students - as well as a buying guide that includes various accessories, bags and software that is targeted towards students.

Sponsor: PDFpen for iPhone

My thanks to Smile for sponsoring MacStories this week with PDFpen for iPhone.

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PDFpen for iPhone is the mobile version of Smile’s award-winning PDFpen for Mac. With PDFpen for iPhone, you’ll be able to make corrections and changes to PDFs, sign contracts and return them, or fill out an application – while you’re on the go.

I like PDFpen because it provides iCloud and Dropbox support, so you can edit your PDFs seamlessly on your Mac, iPad and iPhone. My friend David Sparks has created a series of screencasts for PDFpen, and the app is available at $4.99 on the App Store for a limited time.

Find out more about PDFpen for iPhone here.

Tim Cook Meets With China Mobile Chairman, Discusses “Matters Of Cooperation”

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, today met with China Mobile’s Chairman, Xi Guohua, after earlier an earlier meeting this week with China’s Minister for Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei. Today’s meeting with China Mobile is notable because the Chinese carrier is the world’s largest mobile phone operator with roughly 700 million subscribers and does not yet offer the iPhone to its customers.

China Mobile said in a statement that Tim Cook and Xi Guohua “discussed matters of cooperation” but declined to go into specifics due to a confidentiality agreement that was signed by both parties. Apple has been negotiating with China Mobile over carrying the iPhone since at least May last year, but the two have struggled to come to an agreement over the terms of revenue sharing.

Tuesday’s meeting with the Chinese Minister for Industry and Information Technology saw the two chat about innovation, China’s IT industry and the mobile industry. Yesterday, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller were spotted visiting an official Apple reseller in Beijing. Whilst today Tim Cook gave an in-depth interview to Sina Technology News where he said Apple expects China to soon become their largest market. In noting this, Cook also unsurprisingly revealed that Apple will be expanding its retail presence in China from 11 stores to more than 25 (no time frame is specified, but presumably in 2013).

[Sources: Reuters, AllThingsD, TUAW]