iPad App Pricing – Nice analysis of iPad and iPhone application pricing.
The Value of Ideas – "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." Or actions speak louder than words.
The IBM Muppet Show – "IBM. The Muppets. Two venerable institutions-but not ones we tend to associate with each other. Yet in the late 1960s, before most people had ever seen a computer in person or could identify a Muppet on sight, the two teamed up when IBM contracted with Jim Henson for a series of short films designed to help its sales staff."
Tits and Apps – About most of the 'sexy' iPhone apps being pulled last weekend: "What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you’re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren’t being built because developers don’t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them."
Infer.NET – Seen at the BCS/IET Turing Lecture by Chris Bishop. Looks interesting.
A Sense of Entitlement: Tweetie 2 – I think Apple needs to do more here — to allow for paid upgrades — but I also congratulate the author of Tweetie for having the nerve to charge for a significant update. He'll come across a lot of resistance but it's absolutely the right thing to do and it, potentially, paves the way for smaller developers to do the same thing.
Peep Show ‘won’t change’ for anyone – Looking forward to this. Slightly worried that it might overstay its welcome — how can you top eating a family pet in terms of gross out? — but then I thought that for the last couple of series too…
Fail Yet Succeed? – Nice discussion of the kind of things that all software projects go through. Really this is about half of my job!
Microsoft's Long, Slow Decline – "The evidence is staring Microsoft’s leadership in the face that they have lost the most lucrative segment of the market, but, judged by their actions and public remarks, they seem to think it’s all a big joke. They should be sweating this but they’re laughing it off."
Year two – Nice analysis of where the App Store need to change in order to keep both customers and developers happy.
Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspective – "[Google are] starting to look like the new Scott McNealy. Remember him? Ran a company called Sun, which had a great little business going until McNealy became obsessed with Gates and started doing things like paying millions of dollars to buy StarOffice so he could get into that booming free software business."
Rejected. – "It’s just frustrating when the problems crop up, because compared to nearly everything else about the whole setup, the problems seem so arbitrary, avoidable, and developer-hostile. For instance, this problem wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if approval, even for minor updates to established apps, took less than 7-14 days." Not that I'm bitter than a minor update to Yummy recently got rejected or anything…
Photography, opinions and other random ramblings by Stephen Darlington
