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Keeping it simple rules mobile

January 25, 2011

Back in design school we had a professor who used to always quote someone who I cannot recall now. “Design is the absence of complexity”. I believe it was even posted on the wall for a long spell. And why not, it makes perfect sense. In a world with gadgets galore, more whistles that you can handle, and bells, yeah those too, we are understandably tempted to “doll it up” with all kinds of garbage we just don’t need. Correction: WE need it, our customers definitely do not. As with every tool, mobile is unique. It has its “thing”

Netflix queue relegated to website only

January 24, 2011

Movie giant Netflix made a puzzling decision recently: let’s make it more annoying to manage DVD queue’s for out customers. Now I suppose this is subjective but they did make it such that you could not manage your queue from anywhere but their website. While I admit I represent a minority of the population that is hyper tech-dependent, here is a newsflash: any product or service available to me that has an option of using it on the iPhone or only a website, the one that provides the mobile access is likely to win my business. In a world

Cresting 10 billion apps

January 21, 2011

Anyone who has ever been to McDonalds know that ridiculous sign that they had up forever with the burger calculator on it. At some point it just got silly to keep counting. We seem to be circling that number now with apps. The difference is that McDonalds had decades to sell that many hamburgers; Apple has had only a few years. (the app store opened in July of 2008). For those of you like myself who could not have done this math in any reasonable amount of time, that shakes out to about 60 apps per device out there.

4G is here and poised to blow us all away

January 19, 2011

That is what Verizon’s chairman/CEO Ivan Seidenberg said recently at CES. He is clearly referring to the impact that the proliferation of 4G networks will have on media companies and their ability to deliver content to anyone, anywhere, at ridiculous speeds. As app makers, this makes us very happy too. The unfortunate side of this is that while this is undoubtedly true, history tells us that it is going to take a bit to roll out. This means that I might have to buy a few more versions of the iPhone prior to having the experience I am envisioning.

Apple extends the app paradigm

January 17, 2011

In their quest to app-ify the world, Apple has now release apps for the Mac. Several notes of interest here indeed not the least of which being the ability for Apple to further entrench its users in adopting an “app-only” lifestyle. In other words, if it ain’t an app, I ain’t using it. Not for nothing, this isn’t far off from how many of our clients currently view the app experience. This is clearly evidenced by the amount of times in a day I hear the phrase “there should be an app for that”. Several of the usual suspects

Steve Jobs taking medical leave

January 17, 2011

Announcements today of Jobs’ medical leave of absence are everywhere. Cook will once again take over for Steve while he is gone. There is no argument that Jobs has been at the helm through an incredible growth period of Apple. With a slew of new things on the horizon, deal with Verizon, iPad 2, iPhone 5, etc, it will be an interesting time to see if the momentum will keep up in his absence. It is unlikely that it won’t. With the tablet wars fully in progress and Android taking off more by the day, 2011 will almost certainly

Apps to control your world

January 13, 2011

As mentioned here before, apps are playing an increasing role in the world around us. Recently the Wall Street Journal had a wonderful article about this phenomenon. This is not only interesting to a company like ours in terms of sheer interest in gadgetizing our worlds, but it is significant in where the world is rapidly heading. Perhaps the most noteworthy line in the article is as follows: “It’s going to get to a point where the hardware is worthless without the app,”. Wow. In terms of what this means it should be an indication that to even hang