Our electricity came back late Friday afternoon. We’ll try hard to return all the emails and phone messages today. Apologies to everyone who was inconvenienced.
No Electricity Today
Our office lost power about noon today (Friday), and it looked very much like it was going to be down for a while, so if you’re trying to reach us, please try again Monday. Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.
Could Apple Do This? Would they?
I’d been thinking about how much Apple is able to do – when they want to – with iPhone App distribution, because of how they set it up.
And I’d been thinking about how much I’d like – both as a user and a developer – trial versions of iPhone apps. But I know what a can of worms is opened by giving developers the ability make and unlock trials.
And then I thought – could Apple handle trials themselves, completely, by making all apps in the iTunes App Store free for the first few days, and then processing the payments if the apps were still installed after that?
The answer, of course, is that I don’t know. I have no idea if this would work or even be possible. I’m sure there are a ton of issues and implications to be thought through. It may be technically impossible, financially unfeasible, or just a lot more trouble than simply letting developers handle trials on their own.
But I can’t help thinking how cool it would be if Apple pulled it off.
It’s clear that no one else could do this with their app stores – no one else has that kind of control. Or – let’s face it – the guts. And it seems to me that it would be very much Apple’s style: here’s a better way to do something, we can do it, let’s do it. And if it turns the existing software distribution model upside-down, that’s just a bonus.
Any thoughts? I can’t tell if this is a good idea, a terrible idea, or something in-between. And it’s probably just wishful thinking on my part. But it would – in my opinion – be a huge benefit to both iPhone developers and users.
(Here’s the short URL for this article, if you want to share it. We’re working on the better “share it” thing; apparently it’s incompatible with something else we do.)
No, Bob. “Password” Isn’t a Good One.
Hi Twitter Management,
Correction: This post was originally meant to be tongue-in-cheek, where we would offer Twitter employees a free copy of eWallet to keep track of their passwords. It’s not an offer for the general public.
It looks like you’re having a little problem with your passwords. I know you know that using “password” isn’t a good idea, but I imagine you’ve all probably been pretty busy lately.
We’ve got this program called eWallet – you may have heard of it. It not only lets you store passwords safely so that you don’t have to pick the ones anyone can remember – and hack – but it also has a built-in password generator so you don’t even have to think of one. It’s network compatible, so your trusted employees (though you might want to rethink them as well, from what I’ve been reading) can all use it, and it’s compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones.
I’d be happy to give you a copy! No charge – consider it thanks for giving us all yet another way to feed our internet addictions. Just get in touch with our Customer Service guys, and we’ll get you your copy.
A Snail Mail Story
Someone here – and I won’t name names – forgot to pick up our physical mail for a few weeks. Like 12. And none of us noticed.
If we’d done this years ago, we’d be in trouble. Our phones would have been turned off, as well as our internet, and we’d have racked up some serious late charges on the credit cards, if not had them cancelled as well.
But since we’ve been moving more and more of our bills to electronic only, it turns out that ignoring our paper mail for over two months wasn’t a big deal. Macworld sent a few testy “reminders” about our bill, and at least a few of us now have bigger than usual piles of stuff to read, but the only real problem was that Marc had ordered some live tadpoles to be sent here, and by the time we found them, they weren’t live anymore.
Sorry guys.
But it pointed out very clearly how unimportant physical mail has become. I wonder how long daily delivery will hang on.
iTunes Gift Card Blocking Workaround
I’ve seen some complaints online recently about people no longer being able to buy iTunes Gift Cards to be sent by email, or that iTunes Gift Card amounts are now being limited. In fact, our account is one of the ones affected by this: our company iTunes account suddenly became unable to buy Gift Cards on iTunes. We get the message:
A little research (links here and here) makes it clear that
- Other developers and users are seeing this as well
- Apple is acknowledging it, but not yet publicly providing very specific info or resetting the affected accounts
- It looks very much like it’s an anti-fraud action by Apple
Now, before everyone leaps to the wrong conclusion, I’m completely in favor of this. I’ve seen plenty of credit card fraud, and whatever anyone can do to fight it has my complete support.
So, to help out anyone who’s affected by this and hasn’t figured out what to do about it yet, here’s our simple workaround that Julie figured out.
- Go to the nearby drugstore and buy iTunes Gift Cards
- Email the codes on them to whoever you need to
I hope Apple will be able to come up with a solution that lets us go back to doing everything online, and I’m definitely still hoping that Apple will implement “Gift this App” for iTunes apps. But meanwhile, the above works fine.