Tag Archives: iphone

Opinion

iOS 6

Like all the best upgrades, iOS 6 is almost entirely invisible. It works just like iOS 5 — which is to say, pretty well most of the time — but with some convenient new additions. Also, unlike version five, it’s been relatively stable throughout the beta process.

What’s new and what will you like? I’ve grown so accustomed to most of them that I had to look up the “What’s new” page on Apple’s website. Really, that’s a good thing. Invisibility is the fate of a feature that’s quickly integrated with how you use a device. (The thing that makes it tricky is that it’s also the fate of a completely useless feature that you never use.)

Roughly ordered by how much I like them:

  • Do not disturb. This is the one feature that the Blackberry had that I missed in iOS. I only had a Bold for a few months but being able to switch off “work” between certain hours was brilliant, and the same is true of Apple’s implementation. You set a range of hours and it automatically mutes. This feature alone is worth updating for
  • Shared Photo Stream. This will be even better when I can share directly with other people’s devices, but being able to create a web gallery of Photo Stream pictures has already proved to be useful
  • iCloud tabs. This feature sat idle until Mountain Lion and then… great. The only thing I would ask is for this to work on my iPad!
  • New options when receiving a phone call. The “decline but remind me later” is a great option

Stuff I’m ambivalent about:

  • Maps. Apple switched from using Google’s maps to their own. I miss Street View but otherwise all the functionality seems to be there. Searching for stuff seems a bit hit and miss, just like with Google Maps. Search results differ but I’ve not used it enough to determine whether one is better than the other
  • Siri. I have an iPhone 4 and an iPad 1, the former of which doesn’t support Siri, the latter of which doesn’t support iOS 6
  • Passbook. This might be great when there are apps to support it. Right now, a waste of a spot on my home screen
  • FaceTime over 3G. Not sure if it will be supported in the UK. Rarely had the need to call when there’s been no WiFi

The only “bad” I can think of is that it doesn’t run at all on my two year old first generation iPad. I understand technically why they made this decision, but at the same time it’s a little galling to have such a relatively recent device be declared obsolete.

In conclusion, this is one of Apple’s “refinement” releases. They seem to have a big update (iOS5, Lion) and then a release that fixes some of the rough edges (iOS6, Mountain Lion). 2012 has been a year of two spit and polish releases. I’m not complaining.

Opinion

Glitches

It started with this image. Or rather the glitch that you can see in the middle of the screen.

It’s one of the screens in a new app that I’ve been developing. There’s lots of hard stuff in there but this is the first problem that has really stumped me. What it appeared to be was this: a text view (UITextView) on a table (UITableView) showed a nasty glitch when you tried to place the curser in the text box.

First thoughts:

  • Transparency
  • Scrollview (UITextView) within a scrollview (UITableView)
  • Image background

So I switched off the transparency. (No effect.) I switched off scrolling while editing. (No effect.) I made the background boring. (No effect.)

I was stumped.

I showed it to some guys at the London iOS Developer Group meeting. They too were stumped. (This was a bit of a relief. It meant that I wasn’t doing anything completely stupid, which is always a risk.)

So I tried writing a question for Stack Overflow. And, as I often do, I stumbled across the solution.

Note that the text view has a small border and rounded corners? Yup, that’s the culprit. Or at least, some of that code is. Here are the two lines that do it:

self.layer.cornerRadius = 5;
self.layer.shadowOpacity = 0.5;

(There were quite a few other lines adjusting the layer too, which is what took the time to narrow down.)

It was nothing to do with the table view or the text view per se. It wasn’t even any of the visible transparency effects.

Of course, in the screen I have no need for a shadow, indeed you can’t even see one, so the solution was easy. Quite why this combination causes such a weird effect have no idea, but I’m glad that I found the solution.

(I raised a bug report with Apple: rdar://11041657.)

Software

www.cut 3.0

I’m very pleased to announce the new version of www.cut, a major release including an almost complete rewrite of all the UI code and a bunch of stuff under the hood. You don’t care about that, but it does bring you iPad support, the ability to lengthen already shortened URLs and the ability to sync your settings between devices using iCloud.

The iCloud bit, as with lots of stuff under the hood, means that it will only work on devices that run iOS5.

On the “business” side, www.cut is no longer free. It is now a “tier one” app, that means 99 cents, 69 pence or your local equivalent.

The reason for this change is two-fold: advertising, despite what you may have heard, is not a massive money-spinner unless you have millions of users. www.cut, you won’t be surprised to hear, has nowhere near that. Secondly, and more importantly in some ways, I just don’t like adverts. I almost always pay for apps in preference to using an ad supported version. I think the app is better without them.

With the change, I have tried to be as fair as I can. All existing users will get the upgrade for free, including those who only have the free version. I thought it better to be generous to early adopters that screw over the people who actually upgraded.

Opinion

Do Apple take 40% in the EU?

If you look at the sales reports from iTunes Connect, it seems that Apple are taking nearly 40% of the sale price for downloads made in Europe. Of course they claim to take 30% and, indeed, that’s exactly what you see in the US store.

So what’s going on?

The good news is that Apple are not screwing you over. The numbers do add up. The difference is that prices in the US App Store do not include sales tax (VAT) but those in Europe do. This means that before Apple take their 30% cut, they first take off the tax that needs to be paid. If that’s not clear, let’s work through an example.

I know that my app sells for £1.49 here in the UK. I also know that I get ninety-one pence from Apple for each sale.

If we take that £0.91 and add back the 30% that Apple take we get £1.30. Then we add VAT, which in the UK is 20%, and we get… £1.56.

Oh.

It turns out that downloads are billed from Luxembourg where the sales tax rate is 15%. Because both countries are in the EU there’s a reciprocal tax agreement which means we don’t have to add UK tax as well.

If we do the same calculation as before but with a 15% tax rate we get… £1.49. Phew.

So there you go. You do get 70% of the money that Apple gets for each sale.

Update: Starting from 1st January 2015, VAT will be charged in the country where the purchase is made rather than where the company is based. Since Luxembourg has a very low rate and Apple appear not to be adjusting the prices, it means that developers will typically earn less money for each sale. (If it’s any consolation, so do Apple.)

Links

My delicious.com bookmarks for July 13th through July 22nd

  • The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer – "My fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll be going back to square one."
  • The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s choice is beyond belief – "But what these cases illustrate is that in certain areas compromise is not possible because the rights of different minorities are mutually exclusive. When one group refuses to fulfil its job description because it disapproves of another group, there is no middle ground, no give and take."