Categories
Cloud

Evernote to use Google Cloud

Evernote: “Until now, Evernote has owned, configured, and maintained its own servers and networks. This approach gave us the ability to build the service we wanted the way we wanted to build it. But it is also limiting—expensive to maintain, slow to upgrade, and difficult to scale. And while the infrastructure we have now is perfectly suited to support Evernote as it runs today, it lacks the speed and flexibility we need for tomorrow.”

It’s interesting to see Evernote make this move. It almost feels like they’re hoping Google will purchase them. We’ve all heard that Evernote is in trouble and only time will tell if there’s anything to that rumor.

Evernote has maintained their own hardware all this time and decided to go to hosted. On the flip side we see Dropbox move the exact opposite direction. Opting to move from Amazon Cloud Services to their own hosted infrastructure.

I’m a big fan of Evernote. It’s one of those rare applications I use everyday. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

Categories
Apple

Tim Cook’s Spinal Tap Moment

NDTV: “Well we launched a pencil not a stylus, first of all, and there’s a big difference”

When I heard that all I could think of was Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel explaining how their amps go to 11.

I know, I know, Apple Pencil is different because it has some smarts in it.

It’s still funny.

Categories
Business

Exeter: Internet Backwater

Watch out! It's a blog fly!The Sun Gazette: “The first time Frontier will be asked for an update on their progress will be the end of next month, when it is required to present the first of its semi-annual (twice per year) report to TURN and ORA. The first milestone won’t happen until Dec. 31, 2018 when Frontier is required to add 100,000 homes with service at speeds of 25/2-3 Mbps in households where fiber optic service is not currently available as part of an effort to bridge the digital divide in both urban and rural areas.”

I have Frontier‘s service and I actually feel lucky to have it. When we moved back to Exeter I hadn’t considered internet services. Heck, we had Comcast in Visalia and it was a decent 50Mbps unlimited, which was just fine. When we met our real estate agent to get the keys to our new place she asked “What are you going to do for internet service?” Silly me, I said we’d get Verizon DSL, like we had back in 2008. Turns out Verizon was at capacity. Whoops. We went with Dish Internet, which is not so good. It’s satellite which is good for the desperate, I guess I fit that description. Desperate. We bought it but it had restrictions on use; 15Mbps down, 2Mbps up, 50GB per month data limit. When we hit the 50GB limit mid month (every darned month) we were throttled to dial-up speeds. We got by but we couldn’t do any streaming or play games. It just wasn’t good enough for that once you bake in the delay from the ground to the satellite.

After struggling with Dish Internet for about a year we were relieved when Frontier took over Verizon’s network. I set a reminder to call them the day it became Frontier’s and signed up. Luckily we managed to get in. I’m now the proud user of a 2Mbps connection without data limits. We can now stream, which we do all the time, and overall I’m really pleased with their customer service. They’ve been really great. We’ve also had a couple visit from their tech’s and both have been outstanding. They actually know what they’re doing, YES!

Does that mean it’s perfect? No. It’s not. I’d love for our tiny hometown to get a few decent network options. We basically have one plus a bunch of scavengers that offer satellite or ground based radio systems that are expensive and not overly useful, except for the desperate. Which, as I’ve said, all of Exeter is desperate for decent internet.

I can’t imagine trying to run a business with this level of service. It’s been solid, but the numbers need to jump up.

If we can manage to get 25Mbps, or even 15Mbps, consistently? I’d be thrilled to death.

Categories
Apple iPad

iPad Pro and Developers

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.Moshe Berman: “But expecting app developers to build professional apps with the current UIKit is like asking a chef to make a pizza with only flour, and water. Without more ingredients it’s not pizza.”

This is a really nice piece by Moshe and I’d encourage you to read the entire thing. Moshe has some really good suggestions for Apple, but overall the responsibility to create great professional apps lies with developers. I’m guilty of putting too much blame on Apple for poor App Store sales. It all comes back to the developer of apps to figure out their audience.

When I think of Pro applications for iPad my mind instantly turns to drawing, diagramming, and design applications. Things like FiftyThree’s Paper, Sketch, Acorn, Photoshop, Flinto, and even Adobe’s new Experience Design. All of the apps I just listed, with the exception of Paper, are Mac only.

There is definitely a feeling amongst App developers that people don’t want to pay for Apps. It’s proven to be true time and again as Indies fail with solid applications. Some shops, like The Omni Group in Seattle, have managed to keep their apps in the App Store (Mac and iOS) and by all accounts continue to do well. Something you’ll notice about Omni is the price of their iOS Apps. They actually charge real money for them, not some silly $0.99, more like $99.00 for the Pro version of OmniGraffle for iOS.

There are signs that even the best of software shops struggle to keep revenue for their iOS Apps where they’d like them. Panic, another of the best Mac developers in the business, noted in their 2015 report.

iOS Revenue. I brought this up last year and we still haven’t licked it. We had a change of heart — well, an experimental change of heart — and reduced the price of our iOS apps in 2015 to normalize them at $9.99 or less, thinking that was the upper limit and/or sweet spot for iOS app pricing. But it didn’t have a meaningful impact on sales.

As a result they mentioned raising prices. That’s not a bad thing. People that depend on Panic software to conduct their day-to-day operations will happily pay more for their awesome software.

That brings me back around to the Pro angle. We have shops like Omni and Panic creating Pro level applications with the existing features of UIKit. In the end it’s all up to developers to build Pro apps, find a pricing model that works for them, and market their apps.

Categories
Cloud Indie iOS

Vesper: A Post Mortem

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.John Gruber: “What went wrong was very simple. We never made enough money. Why we didn’t make enough money, what we should have done differently to make more money — those are complex questions (which I’ll tackle below). But what actually sunk Vesper was not complicated. Even as a relatively popular app at a relatively high price (for iOS), revenue was never high enough. Brent took a job at the excellent Omni Group in September 2014, and from that point onward the writing was on the wall. We could have, and probably should have, shut Vesper down a year ago. But we loved it too much. Or at least I did.”

Brent Simmons: “This is the last app on the App Store where I wrote all (or almost all) of the code. Odds are excellent that there will never be another app written largely by me on any app store.”

It’s hard to make decisions like this. Vesper was the result of a lot of hard work by a small group of dedicated people. Vesper will be missed, by them the most.

The most fascinating part of this entire post mortem from John and Brent is the belief that creating a Mac App first may have lead to success. Obviously these guys know their Mac brethren better than I, but I always thought a subscription model was a better option for them, and I wrote about it in 2015.

I think the idea of a sustainable business is the right way to look at this, but pricing an app at $9.99 isn’t the proper solution. The proper solution is to charge for their “fast, reliable, unlimited sync.” That’s the value, the app is just a way to get to your data.

Obviously there are a few really great companies out there making a go of it but the market has changed so dramatically from the time Brent started Ranchero. At the time the Mac wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today and the App Store model didn’t exist. Sure, you still needed a great product and had to work hard to get the word out, but people still understood the value of software. Today iOS and Mac Apps have been reduced to commodities and commodity pricing. Most people expect free and get it from companies that make their money other ways, including services, which is why I think the service is the most valuable component. Does it mean you should only do services and not native clients, no. The client side provides the great experience and the service opens the door to the magic of data flowing from one point to another. Without both sides you can still have a great experience but it may not be as great as it could be.

Thanks John, Brent, and Dave for giving us Vesper.

Categories
Apple

iPad as MacBook Pro Replacement

On a Slack channel some friends were having a discussion about using the iPad as a daily driver replacement for a MacBook Pro. This is how I feel about the idea. Is it an impossible notion? No, not at all, but it would have to be a true replacement, it would have to change to fit me, not the other way around.

“If I could get an iPad Pro (9.7) that was as powerful as my 15in MacBook Pro, could run Xcode fine, and would detect proximity to a full size keyboard, monitor, and mouse and let me use them? Sign me up.

Until then. Can’t use it as a daily driver.”

That’s it in a nutshell.

Categories
Apple iOS Mac

Post Mac Apple

Recently Vivek Wadhwa of The Washington Post wrote:

Apple should release a version of iOS for non-Apple devices. This suggestion will seem like heresy to the brand’s loyalists, but it may be necessary for the success of the company.

Imagine those Samsung, LG, and Xiaomi smartphones having an original Apple operating system on them rather than the imitations they are presently running. Offered the choice, users would upgrade in droves. And those users would download new applications and sign up for Apple’s subscription services, giving the company a cut of everything they purchased, as well as valuable data and marketing opportunities. Google’s Android business would finally have a formidable rival.

First off, I don’t think Apple is in bad shape because they own less of the mobile market than Android. In fact, they make more money than all Android devices combined. So the thought of being a formidable rival is kind of moot, but that’s not what I wanted to write about, just an observation.

I think macOS would be a much better OS to OEM. Why? Well, Apple is paying so much attention to iOS based devices, the iPhone in particular, they’ve ignored their laptop and desktop computers for a very long time. In fact most of their computers are rated Don’t Buy by Mac Rumors.

Mac Rumors
Mac Rumors

Of course they’ve tried this before. Before Steve Jobs returned in 1997 Apple had OEM’d Mac OS to a few partners. Those partners were doing fine at the expense of Apple. When Jobs returned it was one of the first things he killed so Apple could focus on their core business, the Mac. Fast forward 20 years and Apple is as unfocused as ever. They’re building all kinds of stuff looking for the next iPhone. Here’s a hint Wall Street, I don’t think you’ll get another iPhone-like success for many, many, years.

Anywho, back to macOS on other hardware. Since Apple hasn’t shipped new Mac hardware for professionals in a long time professionals have either created their own solutions or switched to Windows or Linux. Yes, people are switching to Windows because their Macs are not up to the task. Those of us that live on the platform feel strongly about it. I love using the Mac and macOS to do my work but most people just see it as a hammer. They don’t have an attachment to the OS or the hardware. If you can get a PC with Windows that blows the doors off a Mac Pro and your production software runs fine on Windows, why not switch?

What if there were another solution to the problem? What if Apple selected a single OEM and allowed them to create high end hardware that runs macOS? That’s what I’d prefer to OEM’ing iOS to other mobile phone makers. The professional market may appreciate it too.

I know the iPhone and iOS are killing it revenue wise. That idea seems to be the driving force behind Mr. Wadhwa’s piece, but it would be really nice to have alternative hardware designs that don’t focus purely on thinness and lightness. I still love my SUPER FAT 15in 2011 MacBook Pro. It’s perfectly suitable for people creating iOS Apps or small Mac Apps. Folks editing Audio and Video or making movie magic the likes of Pixar and ILM need powerful computers. I’m sure they’d appreciate faster Macs every year or an OEM that could deliver faster, specialized, expandable, repairable, Mac alternatives running macOS.

Categories
#twitter Tumblr

Twitter + Tumblr

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.Imagine, if you will, Verizon purchasing Twitter now that they own Yahoo.

I don’t really want that, but at times I’ve wanted Twitter to have the ability to go beyond the 140 characters it allows. What if Verizon bought Twitter then did an interesting integration between Twitter and Tumblr so anything longer than 140 characters became a Tumblr post with a really nice embed for the tweet? Maybe Twitter could adapt Tumblr’s post types?

While they were at it they could use Tumblr for photo storage and allow at least a little bit of markup in the Twitter stream. I’d start with italic, bold, and native links. Oh, I’d also allow folks to use Markdown (yes, this is the Canonical Markdown) as an editing choice. Maybe just provide a rich editor that supports italic, bold, and links and a basic text editor for those of us that would prefer Markdown? The point is it would be nice to have some very basic formatting for a tweet.

Video has become so important to the web. Making it easy to record video, store it on Tumblr, and adding an embed to a tweet would be quite nice. It could be the next evolution in video from Twitter. First we had Vine, then Periscope. Tumblr could be the final version. It could complete with Facebook’s Live Video.

It feels like there is an interesting product in that mix somewhere.

Categories
Apple Podcast

Big Co Podcasting

This morning I was listening to Recode Media’s show with Jacob Weinberg of Slate. I was listening mainly because I agree with Mr. Weinberg when he says “I think this guy’s a menace and a danger to democracy”, but that’s not what I’m going to write about.

AHHHHHH!There were two things that stood out in the interview. First off Mr. Weinberg mentioned he was working with a company called Panoply, a podcasting network. That’s great, we need more podcasting networks, but something he said didn’t sit well. Mr. Weinberg said part of what Panoply was doing was “tracking and advertising”. It sounds like this is going to become a reality. While checking into Panoply I also discovered ART19. Both sound like they’re creating systems that report back to them. How much of the show you’ve listened to, did you fast forward, rewind, or skip over the ads. It looks like ART19 has a way to update ads in a podcast episode so they never go stale. If this is something they can do using open standards, more power to them. If they have to create closed systems to pull it off, that’s not good for anyone, except them of course.

Another thing Mr. Weinberg said was “Apple was the gateway to podcasting.” This simply isn’t true. Apple provides a free podcast directory service built on open standards. Apple is not a gateway to podcasting.

To make a podcast is really, really, simple. You record something, upload it, and make an RSS feed so people can subscribe and you’re done. That’s the 20,000 foot view, but that’s how you do it in a nutshell. You don’t need Apple to publish a podcast. Let me say that again. You don’t need Apple to publish a podcast. You need some shared drive space; Dropbox, Google Drive, your own web host, any number of companies can provide you cloud space to keep files and share them.

Having Apple’s Podcast Directory is super nice. They supported podcasting long before it was popular and chose to use open standards, like RSS. RSS supports namespace extensions, so Apple created their own. They used an open standard and an open extension mechanism to create their directory.

Knowing that, can you call Apple the gateway to podcasting? No. Definitely not. Anyone can create their own podcast directory using RSS feeds. In fact, others have, like iPodder. It just so happens Apple’s directory became super popular once they had a built in audience due to the popularity of the iPhone.

Having said all that. If you want to get into podcasting, go for it. You will probably want to list your podcast on a few different directories, including Apple’s, but that’s something for you to decide. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into.

Categories
Apple

One Photographer’s Take

Dave Rogers: “Allow me to vent my spleen here briefly on what an utter piece of crap Apple’s Photos app is on iOS, and the Photos iCloud architecture. The MacOS app is slightly better, but it’s still crap too.”

RibbitBeing a fan of Apple can be frustrating in the modern era. It’s no longer focused on creating the best tools for professionals like it once was. We’ve entered the 800lb Gorilla phase in Apple’s life. They’ve switched focus to creating the best experience for the lowest common denominator, they are now the everybody company. This isn’t a bad thing overall, it’s just different. Apple still creates the best integrated hardware and software experience on the planet, but it’s aimed squarely at the masses, not professionals or, as in the case above, power users. We’ve seen this with the abandonment of Aperture and the lack of hardware upgrades in the Professional Mac hardware lineup (the flip side to this is my 2011 MacBook Pro is still plenty of computer for iOS development.)

The land rush that has been iOS App Development is beginning to lose its luster. The market is full of crummy games that milk users for cash to buy their way past levels. That market is really designed for the attention deficit. I’d love to find the time, money, and energy to focus on the Professional Mac using market. I really believe there is something to be had there as a developer and a user.