From the category archives:

iPhone

This is why Apple’s subscription system fails for consumers

February 17, 2011

From Apple Subs: Publishers Seek Clarity, FT Concerned, Some Sign Up | paidContent: “We have a fair and open approach for customers whereby we offer digital access to FT journalism for one price and enable access across multiple platforms for no additional fee. It is necessary to have a direct relationship with the customer to [...]

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Apple’s subscription system: A mess

February 17, 2011

From ‘Apple Just Fd Over Online Music Subs’ | paidContent: “Music and video services do not have a 30 percent margin to give away to Apple NSDQ: AAPL. It means you’ll see them exit the market on iOS devices, paving the way for Apple’s own iTunes streaming.” Does the subscription system include music content? No [...]

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Apple denies content purchasing change, confirms content purchasing change

February 1, 2011

Apple’s Trudy Muller, talking to John Paczkowski: “We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” But wait… “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.” (my emphasis) [...]

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WiFi tethering and the iPhone: Battery life?

January 12, 2011

John Brownlee at CoM: “It seems likely, then, that as soon as the Verizon iPhone comes out, Apple will pump an official iOS update for all devices down the pipeline, bringing the Hotspot app to all devices, including iPads. Naturally, the carriers probably have some control over how a subscriber can use that Hotspot app [...]

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I don’t really see why this is worth a story

December 28, 2010

Brian X. Chen, for Wired: “The company recently approved an iPhone camera app that carries a special feature: the ability to snap a photo by pressing the physical Volume button rather than tapping the touchscreen. Oddly enough, about four months ago Apple banned a top-selling iPhone app for including the same “volume-snap” functionality.” Just as [...]

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Google is the carriers’ best-friend

November 1, 2010

Doc Searles has got a new iPhone, and muses on a few points: “I still see this as a phase, and not a bad one. Apple and Google have together cracked open the unholy death grip that phone makers and carriers have long had on the mobile world. At some point those two halves will [...]

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Just how bad is Flash on Android?

August 31, 2010

Pretty bad. In fact, if you’re thinking video, utterly unusable. Kevin Tofel of GigaOm and JKOnTheRun is someone who isn’t a dyed in the wool iPhone or Apple fan. In fact, he replaced his iPhone with a Nexus One in January (a process that I’ve recently gone through, more of which anon). And that’s why [...]

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The myth of “programming is the only creativity”

July 16, 2010

One of the often-used memes concerning Apple’s approach to iOS is that it’s for “passive consumers”, people who aren’t creative. In an interesting post on Google App Inventor, O’Reilly’s Mike Loukides dredges this one up again – and I think Mike is committing a classic geek error. Mike contrasts the approach of App Inventor, which [...]

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RedLaser iPhone app gets bought by eBay, goes free

June 24, 2010

RedLaser, the barcode and price comparison app that sat at the top of the best-seller list for a while, has been bought by eBay and is now free. What’s more, eBay is going to integrate the technology into its other apps: “eBay plans to integrate RedLaser’s barcode-scanning technology into its leading iPhone applications, including its [...]

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Marketing Week Live goes all iPhone AR crazy

June 24, 2010

I’m pretty skeptical about augmented reality applications in general, but there are some occasions when I think they’re actually quite useful. Events, for example, are a particular case where AR makes sense. The location is relatively small, but there’s usually a large amount of information surrounding particular areas within the event – seminars, press releases, [...]

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