04 6 / 2012
Why Apple Won By Betting Against The Web
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09 5 / 2012
The Argument Against The Web
In March, the web browser accounted for just 18.5 percent of time spent online among US smartphone users. Mobile apps accounted for the rest.
That is 81.5% of time spent in native apps, for you math majors.
Soo my takeaway is that people like using apps, and even more importantly, they use apps.
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09 5 / 2012
The Argument Against Apps
When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn’t really link. The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens. For readers, none of that beauty overcame the weirdness and frustration of reading digital media closed off from other digital media.
This is not a limitation of apps, but instead simply a limitation of the way that apps have been implemented by certain (popular) developers.
People assume that the apps that exist today, as of May 2012, somehow represent the entire potential of all the apps that could ever be in the future.
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05 4 / 2012
Web App Vs. Native: Closer But No Cigar
Depending on the sort of app, the gap becomes much smaller or much larger. But the convergence is inevitable.
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15 12 / 2011
The Dream Of A Netflix For Text Media
You pay a monthly fee to your cable provider, and it all comes through the same pipes: the highbrow, the lowbrow, the middlebrow, and possibly the vile and unmentionable.
Isn’t this exactly how we consume news and commentary online?
So why can’t we have a similar subscription model? Why can’t I pay, say, $50 a month and get unlimited access to the New York Times,Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and who-knows-how-many-other publications?
Seems like a natural move that the industry will make over time… or will it? I see the bundle model actually in question right now with companies pulling out of Netflix, out of Spotify, to create their own products, most notably, apps.
This is the whole Apps Are the New Channels mentality - cable TV itself might get broken off into little branded chunks. Certainly brands will like this better (unless you are a brand no one cares about, but isn’t that what the “democracy” of the web is all about?)
I’m into the pay once, access many different content providers, but dividing up the payouts is a serious pain in the neck.
It’s not impossible, but still a ways off it seems.
In other news, I’ve never heard “text media” used before, so I am coining the term right now. Bam.
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21 11 / 2011
Apple's Paid Content Market Share Blows Android Away
- Since its inception, Google’s (GOOG) Android Market Place has generated about 7% of the gross revenue of Apple’s App Store.
- Apple (AAPL) has about 85% to 90% market share of the total dollars spent on mobile apps.
- Only 1.3% of Android apps are paid, compared with 13.5% of iPhone’s.
- Apple developers have made more than $3.4 billion since 2011, compared with less than $240 million for Google developers.
- Although Android is likely to grow its smartphone market share faster, Apple will probably maintain a 70%+ share of mobile app dollars spent over the next 3 or 4 years.
I have always known this in a general way, and have even made reference when explaining to clients why we don’t develop for non-iOS platforms (yet).
Now I have some concrete numbers to relay, and they are truly striking.
It’s a vicious cycle: not enough quality content on Android, so nobody buys, developers don’t make quality content because no one is buying, and so on.
This study shows that over next 3-4 years, Apple will maintain 70+%. That other 30% is still A LOT of people, and certainly worth exploring, but it’s hard to justify development now when the vast majority of money is being spent on iOS content, especially because whatever you develop now will be outdated so quickly anyway.
It’s not just the upfront dev costs, but the ongoing saga of keeping up with the times on multiple platforms.
Glad to have some data to justify what my gut has said for a while.
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16 11 / 2011
An iPad-Ready Website is Redundant
Just read this commentary by John Gruber and then the original post of Dave Winer of Scripting News talking about special layouts for iPad web browsing.
Original:
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/16/googleSearchOnIpad.htmlCommentary:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/16/winer-ipad
In short, they are saying that publishers don’t need to create special iPad sites because the iPad browser is a real web browser, not a dinky mobile one.
I’m looking at you, OnSwipe.
I think that native apps and web apps do have an important purpose on the iPad, but the value must be significantly more than just reorganizing the data that is already viewable on the normal website.
As the convergence of desktop/mobile/tablet gets closer to a singularity, the discrepancies between the browsing experiences will be even less (Lion and Windows 8 are clearly making a move toward gesture-based computing across the board).
The key is to make the iPad experience special and unique, which is a combination of the right content, the right layout, and the je ne sais quoi* that makes using really good iPad software so awesome.
* Note that it is literally my job to figure out what exactly that is and then create it.
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17 8 / 2011
How to Find a CTO on LinkedIn
I was never crazy about LinkedIn. I mean, who really is? And I am by no means a LinkedIn power user and yet I have experienced such a huge victory though the site, that I can never say anything bad about it ever again.
It all started with me exploring the Groups feature. Basically, I joined as many groups as I could find related to digital publishing, and tried to get a feel for the culture. Essentially these groups serve as forums where people post topics, comments, questions, etc. and then others respond. Some of the discourse is intelligent and interesting while other instances head into the downward spiral that is often the case with online chatter (see: comments on any YouTube video).
I decided to jump right in and start posting topics on every group I had joined (16 groups) about the iPad and apps. I wasn’t advertising MagAppZine, but instead trying to create a conversation on this topic. People started responding, and we had some cool conversations going in a couple of the groups, and I also started to receive some private messages as well, a few of which actually led to real meetings and relationships.
At some point I got a private message from a woman named Shikha Arora who explained that she currently worked at Adobe but was planning to leave to create a new company: a digital publishing platform aimed at democratizing the world of apps, very much like MagAppZine was already doing. I found this particularly interesting as most publishers use Adobe tools, namely InDesign, to create their content, and so someone who had knowledge in this area is a highly valuable person to know.
As it turned out, Shikha not only knew a lot about InDesign, but was actually on the InDesign team that helped enable the technology that drives the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite that some of the biggest publishers in the world use to build their apps. (for now anyway…)
I’m coming from Apple, she’s coming from Adobe… this really could be a perfect match!
We messaged back and forth like pen pals between New York and India, writing about varied topics and getting pretty nerdy and deep into some abstract concepts, and I thought, wow, she really knows her stuff!
Shikha and I set up a Skype call, no easy feat with the time difference, and we chatted about our individual goals and learned more about one another. It seemed there was a mutual benefit in having some sort of working relationship as we could really use an advanced digital publishing mind like hers (not to mention her expertise in general mobile and software development), and teaming up with MagAppZine would cut months if not years off the development, marketing, branding, and such of the company she was hoping to create.
It wasn’t only Shikha’s technical prowess that impressed my partner, COO Simon Baumer, and myself, but also her drive. She personifies ambition and enthusiasm with an energy that instantly elevates the performance of those around her, and does so in a way that is trusting and always good-natured. It is this mix of technical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and passion that one should be looking for in a business partner.
And so, after many more emails, conference calls, and much soul searching on both ends, we decided to make it official, and I am proud to announce that Shikha Arora is now the Chief Technology Officer of MagAppZine. She will be heading all mobile and tablet development, desktop development (!), and managing a team of developers in India, as well as leading our marketing strategy for Asia Pacific.
We are so thrilled to have her on board, and already we have been working on some amazing things together that will be released over the next couple of months that will take MagAppZine to a whole new level. I can truly say that MagAppZine is forever changed for the better, and I know we are only at the very beginning of what will be an amazing partnership.
I’ll be making some more big announcements over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
Congratulations to Shikha! Welcome to the MagAppZine family!
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