Category Archives: iOS

NYT on “pay up or wait” freemium games

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In my prior post, I detailed how (from my perspective) Rovio has managed to just about ruin what had been one of the best game franchises in history: Angry Birds. The crux of the problem was the introduction of in-app purchases that are now required to get the best scores — combined with incessant nagging during game play to get you to spend money on these purchases. This strategy may be working well for Rovio’s short-term profits, but it comes at a cost that may well have a long-term negative effect.

As gamers no doubt know, this is not just restricted to Angry Birds. As it turns out, the front page of yesterday’s New York Times ran an article about increasing complaints regarding the spread of “freemium” games — where you download the game for free but then have to shell out significant money to actually play it:

…the freemium model is encountering some resistance. Regulators here and overseas are taking a closer look at whether some free games mislead consumers about the true costs of playing them and whether vulnerable players, like children, might be duped into spending money.

I don’t entirely oppose the idea of freemium apps. They can even be a good way to allow a “try before you buy” method for distributing a game. For example, after downloading a free game, you could play the first 5 levels, but then have to pay a reasonable fee to unlock the remaining levels.

What I object to is, as described in the New York Times article, more like the situation for the recently released Dungeon Keeper app:

The free mobile version of the game began its solicitations for in-app purchases early and with gusto. Players faced waits of 24 hours to dig out sections of earth to create their dungeons unless they spent real money to accelerate the process. A demon character taunted them to pay up.

Let’s hope that game developers, such as Rovio and Electronic Arts, begin to see their miscalculations here and that the pendulum begins to swing back in the other direction. I doubt freemium games will vanish from the landscape, but they can be made much less annoying, misleading, demanding and intrusive.

The 3 biggest takeaways from WWDC keynote

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Dreams really do come true.

That’s the mantra I kept repeating to myself as I watched this year’s WWDC Keynote. Make no mistake: this was a historic keynote. It’s hard to overstate what Apple did today. An incredible number of groundbreaking features were revealed for both the OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 — due out this fall.

Consider this for starters: Apple announced Health (new iOS “health and fitness apps that can communicate with each other, with your trainer, and even with your doctor”), HomeKit (software that provides control of home automation devices from your iPhone or iPad) and an entirely new programming language (Swift). These announcements alone (actually, even just one of them) would be sufficient to satisfy most companies as the entirety of a media event. And yet, for this year’s WWDC, Apple only had time to briefly mention them. If you blinked,  you missed the topics altogether. That’s how much was going on here.

But I digress (which is very easy to do with today’s announcements). Back to my dreams coming true. Of the new features Apple announced, three in particular stand out for me. That’s because they each represent Apple delivering on items that have been on my wish list for more years than I care to count.

Continuity

Over the years, I have written numerous articles about the potential “iOS-ification” of OS X. Loosely defined, the term refers to making OS X run more like iOS. As I pointed out, this could be either a good thing or a bad thing.

Apple could have chosen to make OS X increasingly mimic iOS system attributes — such as a lack of access to system software and the removal of the Finder. To me, that would be a disaster.

The better side of iOS-ification is to have OS X work ever more seamlessly with iOS, while not changing the basic OS X structure. This is the direction Apple has been going in previous iterations of OS X. Maps is a perfect example — with its ability to send a directions map directly from OS X to your iOS device. Another example is the similarity of interface and shared content of Notes across both OS X and iOS apps.

My dream was that Apple would continue down this road and avoid the dark path altogether. Happily, this is precisely what Apple has done. With OS X Yosemite, Apple not only expanded similarities of apps across platforms, but doubled down with the introduction of an entirely new set of features called Continuity.

One aspect of this (called Handoff) allows what you do on one platform to be instantly picked up on another. This means, for example, you can start working on an email on your Mac and finish it up (and send it) from your iPhone.

Via Continuity features, you can also access capabilities from one platform to use on the other. For example, with Yosemite and iOS 8, you’ll be able to answer and make phone calls on your Mac via a connection to your iPhone. Your Mac can also make an instant Hotspot connection to your iPhone, for online access when no Wi-Fi is available.

[Update: Almost forgot to mention: AirDrop will finally work between iOS and OS X devices.]

This is potentially huge for Apple. If all of this works anywhere close to as well as it appeared in the demos, it will have the added benefit (to Apple) of selling more Macs. If you currently own an iPhone and a PC, it forces you to consider how much better your workflow would be if you instead had an iPhone and a Mac.

iCloud Drive

At least since 2010, I have been complaining about iOS file-sharing — especially sharing documents between Macs and iOS devices. I have lamented about how complicated (and sometimes impossible) it has been to make such transfers. More recently, while noting improvements to document sharing, I still lamented remaining limitations — such as that files saved to Documents-in-the-Cloud are accessible only from the app that created the document. This meant, for example, that there was no way to take a TextEdit document saved to iCloud on your Mac and open that file in any iOS app.

My dream was that Apple would someday relent and provide Dropbox-like access to files in iCloud. With iCloud Drive, Apple appears to have granted my wish. [It’s sort of a mashup of the now extinct iDisk with iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud.]

Although I still have questions about how exactly iCloud Drive works, it is at least a welcome step in the right direction. On the Mac, it appears that you drag documents to the iCloud Drive window/folder. Having done that, you can work on (and save changes to) these documents directly from within that location. More importantly, iOS apps can bring up an iCloud Drive panel to have access to (and thus be able to open) these same files, regardless of the app that created the file on the Mac. At last!

Extensibility

Over the years, one of the most frustrating features of iOS has been the inability to extend the reach of third-party iOS utilities system-wide. Two obvious examples: Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily access TextExander shortcuts from any iOS app? Or access 1Password’s data from within Safari?

I have maintained hope that, despite the restrictions due to sandboxing, Apple might some day allow such options. With iOS 8’s new extensibility, Apple appears to have delivered on this third dream of mine. I’m not yet certain whether it will allow TextExpander or 1Password to do what I want, but it’s definitely moving in that direction. As demo-ed at the Keynote, you’ll certainly be able to do things like add filters to the Photos app, add your own choice of third-party apps to Shared sheets, add custom widgets to Notifications, and even (trumpets blaring here) add system-wide third-party keyboards!

This is huge. Mega-huge. It will take awhile before third-party developers update their apps to take advantage of all of this. But it could well turn out to be the most significant new feature in iOS since the App Store opened.

Wait! There’s more…

So those are three items at the top of my WWDC announcements list. But they are hardly the only ones that generated excitement. Here’s a sampling of other features that are sure to generate buzz in the months ahead:

• With the new Messages app, you’ll be able to speak a message and have it delivered as audio to the recipient. No need for you to type or even dictate your text message.

• With Family Sharing, you can share data with up to six other people — allowing all to automatically share photos, calendars, reminders, music, movies and more.

• With QuickType, iOS devices will predict, based on your prior typing, what you intend to type — before you even enter the first letter of the next word.

• Among the expanded options in Siri, you’ll be able to use Shazam to analyze and recognize songs.

• With Apple’s new Metal SDK, games will be able to process information up to 10X faster, allowing for true console-level performance in iOS.

..and on and on.

Apple didn’t address every item on my wish list. Multi-tasking (as with a split-screen) and simplified copy-and-paste (especially across apps) remain as big items for the future. But I’m fine with that. When I look at all Apple delivered this year, I’m more optimistic than ever about what Apple can do in time for next year. At this rate, I may even be able to throw out my wish list altogether in a year or two.

I know there are nay-sayers out there, grumbling that Apple did not announce any new hardware at the Keynote. I admit that this surprised me as well. At least it did until I considered the full weight of what Apple did announce. Given the scope of what was covered in a fast-paced two hours, there was no room for new hardware. I’m not worried. Before the year is over, I am certain we’ll see new iPhones and new iPads, and almost certainly a new Apple TV, new iMacs, and some sort of wearable technology.

WWDC started the ball rolling with its almost overwhelming number of software announcements. The hardware will soon follow.

No other company besides Apple has such complete control over both the hardware and software ends of the market. This is what allows Apple’s devices to work so well together. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the product integration we saw on the WWDC stage today. That’s why I believe today’s announcements will allow Apple to go beyond its current lead in innovation and lap the competition altogether. They are that significant.

Deleting, archiving and reinstalling iOS Apps

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Recently, Kirk McElhearn posted an article discussing what to do with apps that you no longer want but are still in your Mac’s iTunes Library. He pointed out that, when a forgotten and unwanted app shows up in your Updates list, you can Control-click the app’s icon to delete the app directly from the Updates view. You don’t need to shift to the All or List views to delete the app. Good to know.

However, this got me thinking that it was time I did a major clean up of my own app collection. I have over 600 apps in my iTunes Library and I no longer use the majority of them. I suppose I could simply delete the dormant apps. However, the hoarder in me wanted an easy way to keep track of what I’ve deleted as well as retaining the capability to quickly reinstall deleted apps without having to re-download them from the App Store. In other words, I wanted some sort of Archive/Unarchive function.

Unfortunately, iTunes does not provide such a feature. Still, after a moment’s thought, I realized I could manually perform an equivalent action. This may already be obvious to you. If so, you needn’t read further. For the rest of you, here’s what to do:

1. Go to your apps list in iTunes and select the apps you want to delete, either singly or in groups.

2. Control click to bring up the contextual menu. Select Delete.

3. From the first window that appears, select Delete App.

4. From the second window that appears, select Move to Trash. But do not empty the Trash.

5. Repeat as needed until you are done with all your deletions.

6. Open the Trash window. Drag all the apps there to a new folder (title it App Archive or something similar). You can locate this folder anywhere, even on a hard drive separate from the rest of your iTunes Library.

That’s basically it.

Now, whenever you want, you can open the App Archive folder to see a complete list of all the apps you’ve deleted. Additionally, if you double-click any app in the folder, it will reinstall itself in your iTunes Library. The archived copy of the app will remain in place, so you’ll need to separately delete it if you no longer want a duplicate in the Archive folder.

If the app has been updated since you deleted it, you should soon be presented with the opportunity to update the reinstalled app.

Why I look forward to CarPlay

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Apple announced CarPlay yesterday, its renamed iOS in the Car technology that gives drivers of compatible automobiles direct access to iPhone features connected via the Lightning cable. The first cars to include CarPlay are due out before the end of the year.

Existing car systems can already do something similar: a driver can access an iPhone to play music using the car’s built-in software. With CarPlay, it’s more like the iPhone takes over the car’s user interface, offering access to music, maps, text messaging and various other apps. In some cars, you may still have to use physical buttons and dials with CarPlay, but the better systems will provide a touchscreen much like the iPhone itself.

I’m very much looking forward to CarPlay. In fact, I’m certain that the next car I buy will have it (given that I’m years away from a car purchase, that’s a safe bet).

As I see it, there’s a big upside and a smaller downside to CarPlay.

The upside

The big upside is the “unification” of disparate systems.

For example, as it stands now, if I want to set up directions for a trip prior to getting into my car, I can do it on my iPhone. Even better, I can do it on my Mac, using Maps, and have it automatically transfer to my iPhone. In either case, it offers no connection to my car’s built-in GPS navigation system. Once in the car, I would either have to depend on the iPhone (probably using a windshield mount so I could see it while driving) or re-enter the data in my car’s system.

If I wind up taking my wife’s car on another occasion, I confront a navigation system that’s different both from the ones in my iPhone and my car. It’s admittedly a “first world problem” — but I have the hassle of dealing with three separate independent systems. It works fairly well in spite of this, but it could work a lot better.

Enter CarPlay. If both of our cars had CarPlay, I could enter an address on my iPhone, connect it to either car and have the directions instantly accessible, with both cars using almost the exact same familiar iPhone-like interface. Perfect!

Now imagine that rental cars came with CarPlay. I could preload my iPhone with various destinations points, prior to a vacation. When I pick up my rental car, I attach the iPhone and…presto…I’m good to go.

Accessing music, either via my iTunes Library or via streaming services such as Spotify, would similarly be simplified and unified across vehicles. The iPhone interface would replace the often awkward controls in current car systems. For example, with the system in my wife’s Nissan Leaf, there is no Pause button to halt a song that is playing.

You get the same “unification” benefits for making phone calls. Finally, CarPlay offers capabilities not available in most existing car systems, such as the option to send and receive text messages.

With CarPlay’s inclusion of Siri, almost all actions can be accomplished via voice commands and spoken responses — allowing you to keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel.

I wouldn’t buy a car today, no matter how good it otherwise is, unless it came with a USB port and was compatible with my iPhone. It’s easy to stick to this requirement because almost every current car meets it. Within a few years, I expect the same will be true for CarPlay. That’s why I can be confident that my next car will include CarPlay. It’s not essential yet, but the day is coming.

The downside

Despite all of these advantages, there remains one likely downside to CarPlay. CarPlay-equipped cars may be dependent on an iPhone. This is not so for current car systems. For example, with my Ford Fusion, I can use its built-in GPS even if I don’t have my iPhone with me.

I’m still not exactly sure how carmakers will bundle CarPlay. But I expect there will be an option to have CarPlay installed in lieu of a built-in GPS. Such a setup might similarly eschew other “smart” features that would otherwise be built-in to the car. With this type of setup, you are dependent on the iPhone to access the absent features. That will mostly be just fine with me. After all, using the iPhone is the whole point of CarPlay. Still, I’m sure there will be times when I (or someone else driving my car) would be prefer a built-in system.

I am hopeful that, to compensate for this downside, CarPlay will be significantly less expensive than current car systems. After all, with the iPhone doing all of the heavy lifting, CarPlay should cost less to install. But who knows? If carmakers believe they can successfully sell CarPlay at current premium prices, I’m sure that’s what they’ll do.

At least in the beginning, I expect there will be an additional option to have a combined traditional system and CarPlay installation. This will allow you to have your proverbial cake and eat it too — but at a presumably higher cost.

No matter what the installation details turn out to be, and despite whatever competition emerges, CarPlay will be successful. We’ll see a rapidly expanding popularity of the technology over the next few years. And the more widespread CarPlay becomes, the more useful it will be for iPhone owners to have CarPlay — creating a sort of positive feedback loop. Similarly, the more prevalent CarPlay becomes, the more incentive there will be to own an iPhone. And that, of course, will be good news for Apple.