Category: Observation

The First Apple Channel

Dear Tech Media,

While you’re looking for meaning in the shadows of an Apple press invite, you’re missing something important: Apple is producing content for its own distribution channel.

For the month of September, Apple is letting customers view live shows through a combination of apps, the web, and Apple TV. It’s the fourth year of the iTunes Festival in London, but this is the first year that it’s been broadcast via iTunes.

Why is this important? Let’s look at what this means for the various players involved:

Artists

As an app developer, I know what it’s like to be featured by Apple in one of its promotions. It sells a lot of product. And that, in turn, funds our creative efforts.

I’m sure the featured artists will gain fans as a result of their performances. I’ve watched a few shows and have already seen some bands that I’ll be keeping my eye on.

A lot of these artists are also probably working with Apple for the first time and getting a feel for what a more direct relationship with a distributor feels like.

Customers

As a customer, I’m all too familiar with the hassles and restrictions on digital content. It’s an eye opener to be able to play this content wherever and however I want. No crap, just good shows.

Tickets for the events are also free: seeing your favorite band in a small venue where all you have to buy are the drinks? Sign me up!

Apple has chosen the artists wisely. I couldn’t care less about some of the bands, but you should have seen my niece’s eyes light up when I told her that she could watch a free One Direction show on September 20th. Talk about keeping your customers happy!

Media Industry

The iTunes Festival shows everyone above what a world without a middle man would be like. We’re loving it: they’re fearing it.

Apple

You need an iTunes account to view these shows. If you didn’t have one already, you’ll certainly get one to see your favorite band.

The best viewing experience for these shows is on a $99 Apple TV. That’s less than the cost of a couple of tickets to see the big name acts. The drinks aren’t watered down, either.

It also sets a precedent for the future. Could this be akin to HBO creating premium content for it’s subscribers? Or Netflix producing its own shows to make it’s streaming service more desirable?

Apple first got its feet wet in the content business with music in iTunes. What we’re seeing here may be the company’s first effort in the video business.

Updated September 6th, 2012: I’ve heard from several sources that last year’s iTunes Festival was an iPad-only app (with AirPlay capabilities.) Apple has taken small, calculated steps with the Apple TV platform and this is another example of that approach.

Written on September 5th, 2012 for Observation, Opinion

Responding to App Store Reviews

When developers talk about wanting to respond to reviews, many of them haven’t thought through the social implications of what that means. Matt Gemmell has. As Marco Arment points out, replying publicly also leaves iTunes (more) open for abuse by unscrupulous or uninformed developers.

One idea I’ve had is giving developers the ability to add a support link to a review. This helps both the developer and customer in several ways:

  • The customer who reported the problem could be notified that a support link was added to their review and would be directed to a site which is designed to help them out. This could also lead to direct contact if there are other issues to be resolved.
  • Potential customers that are reading reviews can see how a developer responds to problems. If you come across a product with lots of support links, you know that’s a developer who cares about his customers.
  • Putting customer service front and center in iTunes makes it desirable for developers to create and maintain sites that provide helpful information. There are far too many products where the customer support link just goes to a product page that’s unhelpful.

Of course, restrictions would be needed to prevent abuse of these external links. For example, Apple could decide to only allow links to a developer’s support domain. There could also be limits on the number of support links a developer has at their disposal (like promotion codes, we would then use them judiciously.)

Finally, these thoughts only cover the information we exchange with the customers publicly. I still think there are cases where private contact via email is vital.

Written on June 30th, 2012 for Observation, Opinion

ARC and copy

Like many of you, I’ve recently starting coming to terms with automatic reference counting (ARC) in Objective-C. For the most part, it’s gone remarkably smoothly. The only hard part is remembering to not type autorelease!

ARC lets us get rid of the retain/release pairs in our code. But can you spot the bug in the following code?

@interface MyObject : NSObject

@property (copy) id ivar;

@end


@implementation MyObject

@synthesize ivar = _ivar;

- (id)initWithIvar:(id)ivar
{
  self = [super init];
  if (self != nil) {
    _ivar = ivar;
  }
  return self;
}

@end

The ivar instance variable is a strong reference, not a copy. Since I think it’s a bad idea to use accessors during -init the copy semantics defined by the @property are never used and ARC happily retains the reference instead of copying it. Also of note: the static analyzer doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the code above, so you won’t see any warnings that you’ve screwed up.

In my case, this initializer led to a bug where several worker threads were modifying the same instance variable and, well, you know how that goes. The fix, as usual, was painfully simple:

    _ivar = [ivar copy];

It’s important to remember that ARC primarily affects how we use -retain and -release. As Matt Drance points out the way -copy works hasn’t changed significantly. Just because we can forget about typing “retain” and “release”, doesn’t necessarily mean that we can forget to type “copy”, too.

Updated May 4th, 2012: A Radar about the static analyzer not issuing a warning has been filed: rdar://11386493

Written on May 4th, 2012 for Development, Observation

iTunes Manglement

I think we can all agree that iTunes is in need of a major overhaul. So why isn’t it happening?

Apple has shown no fear of rethinking and innovating with the user interfaces that manage our own personal data. Both the iMovie and iPhoto apps are great examples of this: they’ve gotten much simpler to use over the years (especially as they’ve moved to the iOS platform.)

This makes me think that there may be another factor that’s holding back iTunes; and I fear that it’s contractual.

Much of iTunes functionality is based around content that Apple or the user doesn’t own. And as we all know, the media companies that own the content are particularly paranoid about how digital assets are managed. In the 10+ years that iTunes has been in existence, I’m sure there’s a tangled web of legal obligations that makes improvements a huge technical headache.

To give you an idea of how painful this must be, imagine being a developer at Apple and having to consult this before implementing or improving a feature in iTunes. And when you’re done wrapping your head around those conditions, make sure you have thought about restrictions in other parts of the world. Having fun yet?

Written on April 11th, 2012 for Development, Observation

Homebase

A lot of people I know and respect have been commenting on problems associated with the iPhone mute switch:

John Gruber – On the Behavior of the iPhone Mute Switch
Andy Ihnatko – Unmuting on The Mute Question
Marco Arment – Designing “Mute”
Guy English – Mute This

Both sides of the argument have valid points-of-view. This really is a situation with no right answer given the current mechanisms.

That got me thinking that there might be something missing that’s causing this ambiguity. I’ve come to the realization that this is a problem bigger than just alarms going off at inopportune moments. What we really want is for the devices in our pocket to behave differently depending on where they’re physically located.

Let’s imagine a new feature in iOS called “Homebase”. A user would be presented with a simple UI that lets them select a location that’s a “safe” environment. After the setup is complete, your Homebase would be recognized by GPS coordinates and/or available Wi-Fi networks. The important thing here is that the user gets to define where they feel safe with their device.

With that information developers can make smarter decisions:

  • Alarms that go off while the mute switch is on make noise at Homebase and just vibrate elsewhere. There’s no need to worry about alarms going off in public places (such as concert halls) and you won’t oversleep when you go to bed with a mute switch on.
  • The lock screen doesn’t need to display a Passcode lock at Homebase. People who use the Remote app with their Apple TV will no longer be annoyed by an unnecessary security precaution, nor will folks forget to turn their Passcode lock back on when they leave for the local bar (where they’re certain to get a Poopin’ tweet.)
  • Apps, like Find My Friends, could use cached Apple ID credentials at Homebase and avoid asking the user for them over and over and over and over again.

Of course, this feature is needed most by people who don’t even know the Settings app exists. It’s my opinion that if developers are careful with this additional knowledge about the user and device, default behavior can be adjusted appropriately without additional confusion. It’s analogous to the Energy Saver on the Mac: people don’t question why the screen dims when the power cord is removed because it just “makes sense”.

The examples above use Apple’s own apps, but the Homebase status would be useful for third-party developers, too.

If you’d like to see something like Homebase in iOS, please be sure to file a duplicate Radar.

Written on January 16th, 2012 for Development, Miscellaneous, Observation
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