I recently found some notes and tasks from March 2008 – 18 months ago – and it really brought home to me how Apple has changed the mobile software world.
Our biggest problem at that time was that people didn’t know they could buy programs for their smartphone or PDA. Apple’s fixed that one – even people who don’t own a mobile device know “there’s an app for that”.
eWallet for iPhone now lets you Copy your passwords and other information directly from the card face and FlexView. With this new update, you can tap and hold on any Card Face or FlexView text, and eWallet will pop up a Copy button. Click the button and the information from that field gets copied to the clipboard.
I’ve read some really interesting comments regarding the problems in the AppStore. One thing that came up a few times, however, is something like this: “Who cares? This sort of stuff has no impact on the consumer.” I’m posting today to explain why this is a myth – problems with the AppStore that developers are having directly and negatively impact the consumer.
If you’d like to hear why a silly icon rejection is a big deal to you, read on…
Apparently someone is on a graphics kick over at the Apple iPhone app approval center. Thanks to the iPhone card icon in our application, Apple has rejected the eWallet update. Even though the icon has been there since we released eWallet (the week the AppStore went live), apparently the icon is now a problem so we have to remove it.
We aren’t the only ones running into this sort of thing lately. The folks over at TapBots ran into almost the same thing – an icon that’s been in their app for ages that Apple has suddenly decided is a problem. Like I said, it seems more like an “issue du jour” than a real problem.
[Read more…] about New Wave of Apple Rejections – Including eWallet!
I’m a stickler for privacy, so the recent furor over Pinch Media‘s analytics is really interesting to me. The debate (in a nutshell) is whether information gathered by companies like Pinch Media through iPhone applications, for the purpose of developer marketing, is spyware. I thought I’d take a second to toss in my own 2 cents on this issue.
So, for my take on the subject, read on after the jump!
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.)
