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Posts tagged with "app store"

Apple Advertising System Apps and Features in App Store Search Results

This morning, I noticed a tweet by Lukas Burgstaller with a screenshot of Apple’s Safari browser showing up in App Store search results for the “browser” search query. I did some tests, and I’ve discovered other search results advertising built-in iOS system apps and features with banners and links to open an app or read more information about it. I’m not sure when Apple started displaying their own built-in apps in the App Store search results, but it’s an interesting (and, I believe, good) idea worth discussing.

If you search for common terms like “web”, “SMS”, or “movies” in the iOS 7 App Store you’ll see special search results for Apple apps like Safari, Messages, and iTunes with a large icon, a description, and a link to learn more or open an app (such as Safari). These results appear on the App Store for iOS 7 devices (I wasn’t able to display them on a Mac using iTunes) and, in my tests, they also worked for queries like “browser”, “messages”, “cloud”, “internet”, “Siri”, and “text”. I’ve tried several other queries, but I couldn’t see results for other apps like Reminders, Calendars, Mail, Photos, Music, or Notes. Read more

Fantastical 2 Review

Fantastical 2 for iPhone

Fantastical 2 for iPhone

Last month, I was discussing my schedule for this Fall’s check-ups with my oncologist. During our conversation, she asked me if I had a list of all the appointments and todos that I had saved for the next weeks because she couldn’t find the department’s calendar and she doesn’t save patients’ information in her personal one.

I know that my doctor has an iPhone, and I know that she uses Apple’s Calendar and Reminders apps to manage her own schedule, so I showed her the beta of Fantastical 2 that I had on my iPhone.[1] “You can search for events and reminders that match a keyword or location and get a single list showing all results”. She was intrigued. “For my appointments here, I save them with the hospital’s name, so I can just look for that if I want to see them all at once”. At that point, I’m pretty sure she was sold on the app. “But you can’t buy it yet”, I added with a subtle smirk.

Fantastical 2 for iPhone, released today on the App Store and on sale at $2.99 for a limited time, is one of the best iOS 7 apps I’ve tried so far and the best calendar and reminder client for iPhone, period. It improves upon several aspects of the original app and it introduces powerful new features while sporting a complete redesign that makes the app feel at home on iOS 7 without compromising its identity.

Fantastical 2 is, for my workflow, better than Apple’s built-in apps, and it builds upon the solid foundation of the original Fantastical to offer new functionalities and more flexibility. Read more

Tweetbot 3 Review: Human After All

Tweetbot 3 for iPhone

Tweetbot 3 for iPhone

Tweetbot is, by far, the iPhone app that I use the most on a daily basis. It’s not just that I keep Twitter open essentially all day to check for news, talk to friends, or post GIFs: since I got the first beta of the original Tweetbot three years ago, the app has become so ingrained in my workflow that I wouldn’t be able to switch back to any other client that doesn’t have the same capabilities. What started as a moderately advanced take on Twitter clients by Tapbots has evolved with time into a powerful app that spans three platforms and that comes with dozens of unique features and a solid engine that, for me, has no equal. I don’t say it lightly: because of Tweetbot’s feature set, I have been able to reliably communicate with other people (via DM or Mentions), reference tweets for articles, or build complex workflows that have allowed me to be more efficient, faster, and generally happier with Twitter.

That’s why I take major changes to Tweetbot’s overall structure and design, such as Tweetbot 3 for iOS 7, very seriously. Tweetbot 3, released today as a new app sold at $2.99 on the App Store (launch sale), is many things at once: it’s Tapbots’ first foray into the iOS 7 design aesthetic, which marks a radical departure from the small studio’s former visual style; it’s a profound reimagination of Tweetbot’s looks, animations, and sounds, which had gone largely unchanged since 2011; and it’s a confirmation of Tweetbot’s existing feature set with changes aimed at further enhancing the app’s functionality and making room for future additions. It’s iPhone-only, with a new version for iPad coming next.

I have been using Tweetbot 3 every day on my iPhone 5 for the past couple of months. I think that I have a good understanding of the decisions behind the app’s redesign, feature changes, and complete embrace of iOS 7’s visual and hierarchical approach to building interfaces. With version 3.0, Tweetbot, the robotic toy for your Twitter stream, eschews its mechanical roots and graduates to a modern, fluid, and fun assistant that, in the process, is still Tweetbot. I wouldn’t be able to go back to the old Tweetbot now, but I also think that getting used to the new app will take some time. Read more

Overview: Apple Updates iLife and iWork Apps, Makes Them Free for New Customers

Perhaps today’s most interesting announcements weren’t new iPads or Macs, but Apple’s range of software. It’s been a while since the iWork suite of apps have received updates on the desktop, and iLife apps such as iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand looked outdated as soon as iOS 7 arrived on iOS devices in September. You’re probably wonder what the skinny is around all the new apps and whether you qualify to get those apps for free. This won’t be an exhaustive overview, but ask and you shall receive.

Read more

Lucius Kwok On The App Store’s Gold Rush→

Even after the gold rush is over, there’s still gold in the hills. It’s just harder to make a successful app that gets noticed, and requires teams with the specializations and experience to quickly and efficiently release one, the same way that the remaining gold requires geologists who know the land and heavy machinery to get to it.

And later in the same post:

Free with in-app purchase or subscription pricing looks more sustainable than paid apps. We may need to form ourselves into small teams, because being independent doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. I see this as a challenge to figure out what’s next.

I still think that In-App Purchases don’t work for some niches of the App Store, and I wouldn’t want to see developers switching to the IAP model in what may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But with Apple leading by example, I believe we’ll see a lot of developers trying IAPs for productivity apps and utilities before next year’s WWDC.

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GarageBand For iOS Going Free with In-App Purchases→

MacRumors’ Eric Slivka:

Aside from the new icons, the updated page also reveals in a footnote that GarageBand will become a free basic download for all iOS 7 devices, joining the other five iLife and iWork apps that became free alongside the release of iOS 7.

GarageBand will, however, include in-app purchase content from Apple, with additional instruments and sounds available for a fee. Licensing fees associated with some of those sounds had been the presumed reason why GarageBand was left out the original move to make Apple’s iLife and iWork apps for iOS free of charge, and it appears that the company has settled on in-app purchases as a way around this issue, offering basic functionality for free and then premium content through the paid upgrade options.

The icons and text have been pulled by Apple since last night, but it seems fairly safe to assume this change will be officially confirmed tomorrow.

It’s interesting to see Apple switching to a freemium model while so many third-party developers are discussing new approaches to selling apps after five years of App Store. Also worth noting is how with iOS 7 they added support for new purchase receipts to automatically unlock IAPs for customers who already bought an app – I assume, likely what they’ll be doing with GarageBand and IAPs for old customers so they won’t have to buy the new IAPs again.

What parts of GarageBand will be free? Will Apple redesign the iWork apps (besides icons) and add IAPs to those as well (they already went free). And what does this change mean for education customers? I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s event.

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CameraSync Updated for iOS 7

CameraSync

CameraSync

In my Boxie review yesterday, I mentioned the role of the official Dropbox app on my devices:

Boxie is so feature-rich, I want more from it: there’s no iPad app at this point, and I would love for Tapwings to consider an automatic upload feature for photos that would allow me to completely eschew the official Dropbox app. Right now, the only reason I keep Dropbox on my devices is for the iPad client and automatic background uploads, but, for everything else, I’m doing just fine with Boxie and I enjoy the increased efficiency made possible by the app’s feature set.

I should clarify two points: the Dropbox app is also the easiest way to authenticate with your credentials for third-party Dropbox-enabled apps; and, in a sweet coincidence, CameraSync has been updated today with a new design and bug fixes for iOS 7, which means I have turned off Camera Uploads from the Dropbox app again. Read more

Boxie Review: An Alternative Dropbox Client for Power Users

Boxie for iPhone

Boxie for iPhone

Dropbox is my filesystem. Every file that I need to have available across devices and that doesn’t require the rich text and search capabilities of Evernote goes into my Dropbox account: screenshots that I share with coworkers; PDF copies of my receipts and invoices; articles written in Editorial are stored in Dropbox. Even my photo backup workflow relies on Dropbox as an archival system that’s always in the cloud, readily available and easily shareable. With the Packrat feature, a $39 yearly add-on, I get access to the full history of my deleted files and file revisions, which have saved me on several occasions in the past.

The official Dropbox app for iOS is good, but it’s not great for power users and it hasn’t been substantially enhanced for iOS 7 yet. That’s what Italian developers Matteo Lallone and Gianluca Divisi (together, Tapwings) want to fix with Boxie, a $1.99 third-party Dropbox client for iPhone packed with advanced features and navigation options. I’ve been testing Boxie for the past month, and I think that it’s off to a solid start. Read more

Weather Line Review

Weather Line

Weather Line

I am not a weather nerd. I don’t commute to work[1] and I don’t need to know the percentage of precipitation and humidity for the next three weeks. I spend most of my days in Viterbo and Rome, where the weather isn’t particularly crazy; I never get to try the fancy weather apps with Dark Sky integration and “radars” because those features don’t work here. You may argue that I’m forced to be a casual user of weather apps; I honestly believe that I don’t need to know everything about the weather to have a good day. I don’t travel much, and therefore I rarely need to plan my trips according to weather conditions. I enjoy simple weather apps like Today, Yahoo Weather, and even Apple’s built-in Weather app for iOS 7 because they display all the data I need without overwhelming me with terminology I don’t understand.

This is why I was curious to try Ryan Jones’ Weather Line when he emailed me a few weeks back. His pitch was simple: “I had this idea for a weather app, and I’m great at making charts”. Sure enough, I remembered Jones’ work on the iPad mini “price umbrella” chart from last year, and he seemed confident enough in his app to convince me to try it. Weather Line is available today at $2.99 on the App Store, it’s iPhone-only, and it is one of the nicest and most unique weather apps I’ve tried lately. Read more