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Sponsor: DraftCode

My thanks to Freeridecoding for sponsoring MacStories this week with DraftCode.

DraftCode is a new PHP development tool for iPad. With built-in offline PHP code execution (using standard PHP 5.4.10), DraftCode lets you build and run PHP projects right on your iPad. In addition to offline PHP execution, DraftCode also includes CGI handling and fully supports working with POST and GET forms, includes, and linking to other PHP files in your workspace. Via its built-in webkit based preview, DraftCode lets you work on javascript/AJAX, HTML and CSS in conjunction with PHP, making it a full featured workspace to develop your PHP website.

Other features of DraftCode include the possibility of sending files to other iPad apps, an extended keyboard, and an easy to use workspace for all your files.

DraftCode is available on the App Store for $8.99, and you can find more information here.

Delicious Library 3 Announced→

MacRumors’ Arnold Kim published a preview of Delicious Monster’s upcoming Delicious Library 3, a major update to 2008’s Delicious Library 2. In version 3.0, the app will evolve from being a catalogue of the media you own to become a recommendation tool based on the products you own:

We’re centered on the idea of your books (movies, cds, whatever) being an aspect of your unique personality, and our app does neat things with your personal data—like give you cool graphic summaries, or really good composite recommendations.

I have been struggling in the past months to find a system to help me keep track of things I want  to buy. Initially, I set up a Pinterest board, but I ended up not liking the service’s focus on social and sharing; then, I started appending URLs to a text file in Dropbox, but I missed the richness of Pinterest’s image thumbnails. Right now, I’m  using Evernote with a mix of rich text and inline photos/screenshots, but the solution isn’t ideal (although I believe it’s better than what I was doing before).

I’m intrigued by Delicious Library’s new focus on recommendations. I look forward to trying the app’s engine and iOS version (with sync – I assume).

Make sure to read MacRumors’ post for more information and screenshots.

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AppShopper Is Back On The App Store

Speaking of App Store discovery services, AppShopper is back on the App Store today (after last year’s removal) with a brand new iPhone app called AppShopper Social:

Our original AppShopper app was removed from the App Store due to a conflict with a new set of App Store rules introduced last year. Since that time we’ve been hard at work creating a new app to continue to provide useful functionality to our users and also remain in compliance with Apple’s rules. Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve released AppShopper Social. The new version of the app still contains the core Wish List functionality that we’ve always had, but also introduces a social discovery portion to the app.

AppShopper is, by far, my favorite service when it comes to finding new apps and receiving notifications for updates and price changes. I have been beta testing AppShopper Social for the past months, and I think the new version makes a lot of sense: rather than offering a better interface for the App Store charts, the main area is now a Stream of app recommendations from people you follow. You can follow websites like AppShopper and TouchArcade, or log in with your Twitter account and find friends who are using AppShopper. When I say that App Store discovery needs more human curation, this is exactly what I mean (in addition to the work Apple itself is doing with sections and collections).

The new app resembles the old version of AppShopper, if only with a fresh coat of paint. In the Stream, you can view All/iPhone/iPad/Universal apps, filter by category, type of app, and paid/free/both. Tapping on an app in the list opens the usual single app page with “I want it/I own it” buttons (the Wish List is still there), screenshots, description, changelog & app activity, and ratings by websites with a link to their reviews. Presenting App Store ratings mixed in with reviews from writers who do this professionally is a very welcome addition in my opinion.

There are some things in the new AppShopper that could be improved: the process of adding friends from Twitter could be further developed with a screen showing how many Twitter friends are also using the app, and, currently, it’s not possible to view a user’s complete profile to show all the apps he/she is recommending to others. I like the refreshed design of the app pages, but I’d like to see a list of friends who have recommended the app in there as well. And, of course, the app isn’t Universal yet and essential features like What’s New haven’t still been enabled as the AppShopper team is figuring out how to get them past Apple’s review process. Fortunately, the team also says they’re working hard on improving the app, and I’m looking forward to the next updates.

The App Store doesn’t come with any social features (besides sharing) or connections to reviews from trusted sources, and I believe AppShopper Social fills an important gap in terms of app discovery and recommendations.

The AppGratis Removal

Jean-Louis Gassée has a solid summary of the whole story behind AppGratis’ App Store removal. If you missed it, here’s Apple’s official stance.

I did comment on the topic – six months ago:

Second, we should consider the manipulation of charts. While not specifically mentioned in the new rule, it’s easy to imagine Apple doesn’t want marketing and promotion campaigns to be capable of altering their ranking algorithm for the App Store. Apple has been rumored to dislike these promotion campaigns in the past, tweaking its ranking algorithm to reflect “real” popularity of an app among users. But maybe that’s not enough at this point, and Apple really does want to limit the relevance of this kind of services by, well, enforcing rules that would get them out of the App Store.

And:

This is pure speculation on my side. But I’d consider this: Apple recently revamped the App Store homepage with its own Free App of the Week initiative (alongside a new Editor’s Choice). Would it be a surprise if they thought all these other “free app a day” and “free app download” services could be confusing to the user?

I also added this in regards to “gaming the system”:

But more importantly, rule 2.25 could be enforced for those marketing tools that get users “rewards” for downloading other apps for free — a technique that, consequently, also increases the popularity of the apps that get downloaded as part of the promotion. The problem is that users download those apps only for the rewards — they’re not really interested in them. For this reason, developers could — even slightly — game the system and, to an extent, trick Apple’s algorithm. I don’t see how that can be a good thing.

Back to Gassèe’s article:

Apple isn’t wrong to reserve the right to make such decisions. Although insiders may depict the company as obsessive control freaks, “normal” customers seem to appreciate Apple’s efforts to keep the App Store a Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

But maintaining a stony silence when imposing a judgment call is a bad choice, it distances developers, and it inevitably triggers controversy. A few words of explanation would invite respect for having courageously taken a difficult stance.

This is a fair point. Here’s what I wrote – again, in October 2012:

After talking to several developers today, my understanding is that rule 2.25 has been enforced on some cases, but that it’s not clear how much Apple will enforce it going forward. Apple has notoriously made exceptions in the past: there used to be a rule for apps that “duplicated” existing functionality, but then Apple started approving third-party browsers and, recently, email clients. For all we know right now, it is possible that rule 2.25 will never be seriously enforced and that it’ll slowly “fade away” with time. Or more simply, developers will find ways to work around the rule.

“It’s not clear”, I said. My sources were correct. Here’s John Paczkowski for AllThingsD:

Sources familiar with Apple’s thinking tell AllThingsD that AppGratis’ ouster was a first step in a broader enforcement action generally targeted at app-discovery apps that run afoul of clauses 2.25 and 5.6.

And:

If it has been confusing, it’s because Apple, while being quite clear in citing the rules it is enforcing, has been unclear and scattershot in their actual enforcement.

I don’t know if this BusinessInsider’s report is true. AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat calls their business model “just regular advertising”; Jason Calacanis says this is “lame on Apple’s part” and that “this is not gaming, this is called forecasting”.

I didn’t link to the AppGratis story previously because, frankly, I thought Apple’s position on the matter had already been amply discussed last year. The way I see it, nothing has changed in regards to how Apple sees third-party apps that mimic the App Store’s appearance while simply linking to other apps. And I thought it was pretty clear that Apple didn’t appreciate developers who kept coming up with advertising models to circumvent the Guidelines and “connect” users with promoted apps in the top Charts. But, apparently, AppGratis’ ouster was publicized enough to make a French minister comment on the matter. Read more

Why Colin Donnell Is Using Evernote→

Colin Donnell:

Besides Finder, Evernote is the only app I know of that you can really just throw anything at — PDFs, images, text notes — everything. And it’s not just that you can put everything into it, it’s that it treats most of those things the same way (through OCR), so that doing a text search is going to bring up results from all of the above.

That is indeed one of my favorite aspects of Evernote (which, last month, was also updated to support search inside iWork and Office documents). The other, as Sean said, is saved searches.

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Designing An x-callback-url Action With x-cancel Parameter→

When we design an x-callback-url action, we tend to focus on the x-success parameter because we want to get more things done. Yet, when we use these actions, especially the ones that involve two or more chained actions, sometimes we feel the need to cancel the first task and either return to the original app or continue with the second task. Either way, based on our most frequent use cases, we may need to revisit these chained actions and redesign them to include the x-cancel parameter.

Great point by Eric Pramono.

In my articles, I tend to omit x-cancel or only mention it in passing. But it’s essential if you want URL scheme-based workflows to fail gracefully.

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The Cost of Launching a Mobile Game→

Edge:

This is in no way atypical for some of the more successful game developers, and all of that is done in hopes that the new games get featured on a variety of app stores, causing that oh-so-important spike in early sales.

The post refers to Jessica Lessin’s article on The Wall Street Journal about the launch of ZeptoLab’s latest game:

Overall, ZeptoLab says it will spend around $1 million launching “Cut the Rope: Time Travel,” which traces the adventures of the green monster Om Nom as he meets versions of himself in time periods like the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. On top of that sum, which includes the costs of animation, the company is counting on some free help by promoting the game inside its other titles.

After nearly five years, the App Store is a huge market and game developers are throwing big money at it. In ZeptoLab’s case, add the fact that the game has also launched on Android – it doesn’t always happen, though – and you understand why large companies are capitalizing on the installed base of mobile devices.

There’s another side of the coin: indie developers with great ideas but limited budgets. Take this Polygon article about Ridiculous Fishing as an example:

We did everything…I literally didn’t sleep for three days before the launch, just working and making sure that every reviewer and every website and every person that I could send the game to had the game.

Different games, different needs. Vlambeer doesn’t have the same resources of ZeptoLab and they opted for a different pricing scheme.

Smaller indie developers aren’t “less important” than established, popular game companies: because of the freedom that generally comes with independent creation, indie games tend to explore concepts and game mechanics that larger studios are more skeptical about. With the rise and consolidation of app stores and digital delivery platforms, indie games have become a fundamental piece of any device’s catalogue. Ask Sony. Ask Nintendo. Take a look at Kickstarter, with well-funded game and hardware projects.

On our end of the spectrum, I’d say that Apple is doing a good job overall. The App Store’s front page is skewed towards free-to-play games from large studios and publishers, but, on the flip side, Apple has featured indie titles numerous times in the past, and it also differentiates between “big name publishers” and smaller titles in their curated sections.

And yet, for a successful Ridiculous Fishing, there are hundreds of indie games with solid, original ideas that don’t get the recognition they’d deserve, either for a lack on the developer’s side (poor marketing skills is a common culprit) or an obvious inability to get noticed on the App Store. Other times it’s because the market is simply saturated, but, again, indie games tend to innovate and explore new ideas.

There’s a variety of improvements Apple itself could consider to help indie game (and app) developers, many of which I elaborated upon last year. Let developers offer videos alongside screenshots for those game/experiences that are hard to grasp in a couple of images; give more prominence to human curation and weekly sections; protect game makers against scams and rip-offs that are still far too present on the App Store.

Launching mobile games is expensive, especially for large companies. I hope Apple will keep working on finding the right balance between “big name games” and indie gems on the App Store.

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The Market for Paid iOS Apps→

Marco Arment:

I haven’t always used these particular apps to solve these problems, but it takes a lot to change my mind on one. If you make another RSS reader or Twitter client, there are certainly a lot of people who could use it, but you’ll need to compete with very mature, established apps. Competing in these categories isn’t about price: it’s about relevance and attention. If you can’t find enough customers here, it’s probably not because you’re charging $2.99 instead of $1.99 or $0 — it’s because your app isn’t convincing enough people that it’s worth using over the alternatives.

This is also the same problem I run into every time I’m sent new apps to review: is this going to be better than Tweetbot, Fantastical, or Drafts for my workflow? Should my readers know about this app even if I won’t use it every day? How do I balance the expectations of my readers, who want to know about new apps, with my personal opinions and workflow preferences?

I’ve thought deeply about this, and I concluded that, ultimately, my readers prefer honesty over quantity of mediocre app discoveries. When a new app comes around and it improves substantially on my workflow, they deserve to know about it. From my perspective, I have chosen to remain curious while having high standards for the apps I’m interested in.

From a developer’s standpoint, I agree with Marco’s article. The 2013 app market is fine if you have the right idea, executed well at the right time. In four years of writing this site – it was launched 9 months after the App Store – I’ve learnt this: people like new apps, but they expect a certain degree of quality and functionality from modern iOS apps.

Again, like Marco says, the bar is higher today. But it doesn’t mean developers can’t still raise it.

Today, the App Store has other problems.

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