Samsung Unveils Passbook-Like "Wallet"

Dan Seifert, writing for The Verge:

"The Wallet app is designed to let users store things such as event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards, and coupons in one central location, much in the same fashion as Apple's Passbook app for iOS."

Jordan Kahn of 9to5Google:

"As for the Apple influence, aside from the look and feel of the app and icon (pictured above), the Samsung Wallet app doesn’t seem to provide any additional functionality above and beyond what Passbook already offers."

Passbook has been around for a while now, but I have yet to be impressed by it in my personal life. In fact, I think it was a pretty poor launch on Apple's part.

Say what you want about their penchant for copying Apple, but this could have been Samsung's chance to blow the competition out of the water. Sounds like they blew it.

'About App Icons'

Louie Mantia:

"Consider walking down a candy aisle at a drugstore. If you have a craving for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, you know how to find it. Of course, it’s the bright orange wrapper with a bubbly yellow word on it. Instant. Most candy bars have very distinct brands which can be instantly recognizable at a glance of the entire aisle. This should be precisely how you approach your app icon design."

He goes on to point out some fantastic examples of app icon design, including some groups of apps that fit under a single brand and have been designed to make this fact prominent, such as Nike.

When I got to this part...

"If you take that same logic to app icons, any style you have in your app should be applied to your icon."

...I immediately thought of Check the Weather, whose icon does not match a single part about the app's interface at all. It's one of my favorite apps, but that icon is about as generic-looking as you can get. Which is a shame, since the app itself has a very unique design aesthetic.

Go read the rest of Louie's post, it's pretty fascinating.

iCloud Sync Headaches

Via Nate Boateng, I came across this blog post by developer Jumsoft, which discusses why they've reverted back to their older wifi sync system over iCloud:

"After many months of constant issues, we thought we saw a light at the end of the tunnel when Mountain Lion and iOS 6 came out, because we finally managed to build a Money version with an operational iCloud sync. However, as we can see now, it was a bit too early for champagne."

They're not the only developers tossing iCloud aside. A notable feature of Instacast 3 was the removal of iCloud sync in favor of a homemade Cloud Sync solution.

Some developers have had to publish webpages specifically to address iCloud issues for their customers. Two examples off the top of my head: Day One and Smart Notes. I'm certain there are others.

I agree with Nate that Apple should really sort these issues out, although I disagree with his assertion that it doesn't have to be for consumer-facing reasons. One of the first things listed in Day One's in-app FAQ page is a recommendation for the customer to use Dropbox sync over iCloud.

Maybe it's not a huge deal to people like Nate and myself, but it's definitely not the "It Just Works" sync solution for everyone that Apple claims it is. Not yet, anyway.

iOS Tip: Adding Bookmarklets

If you're like me, you've built up a nice little collection of bookmarklets in your desktop web browser of choice (mine being Google Chrome). For those that don't already know, bookmarklets are essentially bookmarks made up of JavaScript that perform special actions when clicked, rather than taking you to a website.

Some examples of bookmarklets I use:

• Several Instapaper bookmarklets, such as the one that reformats webpages in text-only form and even tries to compile all 'pages' of an article into a single readable page. I also have bookmarklets for each of the various Instapaper folders I've set up, allowing me to immediately save a webpage to its appropriate place and saving me the trouble of organzing my queue later.
• The Amazon Affiliate Link bookmarklet created by Justin Blanton. If clicked on any Amazon item page, it converts the URL to an affiliate link right there in the address bar, making it easy to copy/paste elsewhere.
• Paul Ford's fantastic new SavePublishing bookmarklet. Click this on any article and it will find the "tweetable" sentences, highlighting them in red and showing you a character-count on hover-over. Click the sentence of your choice and it will take you to a Compose Tweet screen with the quoted sentence followed by the article's URL. Very nifty for sharing articles easily.

While adding these bookmarklets to your desktop browser is a simple process—typically done by dragging a bookmarklet link from a webpage to the bookmarks bar—adding them to your iOS device is a bit more convoluted.

The easiest method is to simply sync bookmarks and bookmarklets via Safari and iCloud, but let's say you don't have that set up, or maybe you've come across a neat-sounding bookmarklet while on the go and you want to check it out without having to access your desktop/laptop first. These steps should help you out.

Note: The thing to keep in mind is that you need easy access to the JavaScript code for copying/pasting purposes. You can't simply tap-and-hold a bookmarklet link in Mobile Safari to access the code (the only option you get is 'Open' which doesn't help), so the bookmarklet creator needs to provide the code in plain text form so you can copy it. Some do, some don't.

To get started, open Mobile Safari to any webpage at all and tap the Share button on the bottom toolbar. Choose Bookmark from the list and then Save. There's no point trying to modify anything about this bookmark yet because it doesn't allow you to change the URL address until later.

Once you've got that dummy bookmark saved, go copy the code for the bookmarklet you're trying to create. As an example, here's the code for the Instapaper text formatter I mentioned above:

javascript:function iptxt(){var d=document;try{if(!d.body)throw(0);window.location='http://www.instapaper.com/text?u='+encodeURIComponent(d.location.href);}catch(e){alert('Please wait until the page has loaded.');}}iptxt();void(0)

Open your bookmarks list and tap the Edit button, then tap the dummy bookmark you created earlier. Remove the existing URL from the second line and paste the bookmarklet code there instead. It should look something like this:

From here, you can feel free to rename the bookmarklet as desired or place it in a folder of your choosing. Whenever you're finished, tap Done on the keyboard first, then again on the bookmarks list when it takes you back there.

Now you've got a fully functional bookmarklet waiting to be used. If you want to try out the one I used in this example, go to any webpage (for best results, find a long article surrounded by clutter), then simply tap the bookmarklet from your bookmarks list and be amazed.

There are lots of great bookmarklets out there, now it's up to you to find them and put them to good use. Hopefully this little article helps you with that.

On Dropbox and iCloud

Ben Brooks:

"Dropbox is a power user tool/service/feature — a damned good one — just not something the average user is going to leverage in the way that others do. iCloud is a consumer level feature. It’s good enough for power users if they are willing to relinquish control and trust Apple, but mostly it’s a drop-dead simple solution for everyone."

[...]

"In that light I truly believe that Dropbox is the past and not the future of cloud based file storage. Managing files is just not something that a user should need to do any longer."

I think Ben is onto something here, but I have reservations about this idea going around that Apple will build iCloud up to the point that nobody needs a service like Dropbox anymore. People have been saying the same thing about other Apple services for years.

Safari's Reading List, Podcasts.app, iOS camera improvements, Apple Maps, iMessage...these are all products that were expected to put entire swaths of 3rd-party services out of business, but it hasn't panned out that way because Apple isn't trying to cater to the same niche markets as those services. They want to reach the broadest possible audience, a tactic that works very well for them, but there will always be a group of people that demands more features and greater control than Apple likes to provide.

I think a key word Ben used in his piece is "trust". Users have to trust that their data is safe with another company, knowing that they have absolutely no way of interfacing with any of it outside of specific apps. iA Writer, an example used by Ben as a fully self-contained solution, could go out of business someday. What happens to that data? Does Apple allow you to export it for use in other apps?

Of course one could say the same about Dropbox, but at least those files exist in a place where you can see them, such as your computer. They're easily copied/pasted elsewhere, and can be backed up in the manner of your choosing. Most users may not care about this, but the aforementioned group of demanding power users will always care about it.

If Apple is really going to put Dropbox out of business, they'll need to allow users more direct control over their files, and that's simply not going to happen. One of the big selling points of iCloud is that it does away with all that muss and fuss.

iCloud and Dropbox are simply two products for two different crowds, and that's okay. There's plenty of room for both to exist.

App Store Best Of 2012

Tons of fantastic stuff to browse through here. Loren Brichter's game Letterpress even came in as runner-up for iPhone Game of the Year. Congratulations Loren!

One Night, Two Major iOS Releases

First up, Google Maps.

I've been playing with this app for the last hour, and I have to say that it's pretty nice. Animations are smooth, most settings are easy to find, and the voice navigation works well. One really cool feature: when using Street View at a particular location, tap the little double-arrow icon at the bottom left, and you can move the phone around to pan the camera on-screen, augmented reality-style.

One setting I disabled immediately was the 'Shake to Send Feedback' option. I won't be sending feedback to Google about incorrect map data enough for this setting to be useful, and in fact might be a hindrance if triggered accidentally. Also, when I first opened the app, I had the option to uncheck a tiny box that sends data to Google automatically. It's got to be one of the most difficult checkboxes I've ever attempted to tap.

In the end, I don't have any real reason to switch back from Apple Maps, but very nice work by Google here. Also, it seems that this app is only available for iPhone, no iPad version yet? Odd.

Next, 1Password.

Developer Agile Bits has released an entirely new version of their popular password generator/storage app. Everything has been redesigned from the ground up, and it looks great. Kinda reminds me of a Tapbots app, really (which is a good thing). The new icon is especially lovely. Currently on sale for $8, over 50% off from the normal price.

If you're at all concerned about password security, or if you're the type to use the same password for everything, you should get this app. You'll wonder how you lived without it before.

If you want a super-detailed review, Macstories has you covered.

Kind of a crazy day, what with these two apps plus Flickr's wonderful update earlier.

The Periodical Co

Earlier, Ben Brooks brought this project to my attention, and I'm already deeply interested.

Essentially it will be a CMS platform that allows non-coders to publish The Magazine-esque content to iOS Newsstand and the web, simply for a tiny cut of the subscription fees. The developers have been partially inspired by Craig Mod's Subcompact Publishing piece that I mentioned (and loved) the other day.

It would seem that Marco's early success with The Magazine has prompted somewhat of a 'gold rush' in self-publishing. There's been a lot of discussion on this topic going around lately, and I think we're going to be seeing a lot of micropublications coming out of the woodwork in the next year or two, especially as more of these publishing tools are released.

People are beginning to see how viable it is for a small-time operation (e.g. one or two people, rather than entire media corporations) to regularly publish fantastic content for just a few bucks a month and still make a tidy profit. Of course, writers have been doing this kind of thing on their blogs for years, but we are a mobile-centric readership these days, and the introduction of iOS Newsstand has seeingly reinvigorated the industry.

It may be that some readers — not myself, mind you — will more easily stomach the idea of an official 'magazine' subscription rather than some blogger's weekly newsletter, even if the content and pricing are similar. Either way, it's an exciting time for publishing and I can't wait to see what's around the corner. I only hope that publishers avoid the temptation to copy The Magazine's overall style and functionality, as may happen if they follow Craig Mod's subcompact manifesto to the letter:

• Small issue sizes (3-7 articles / issue)
• Small file sizes
• Digital-aware subscription prices
• Fluid publishing schedule
• Scroll (don’t paginate)
• Clear navigation
• HTML(ish) based
• Touching the open web

According to Hamish McKenzie over at PandoDaily, Periodical Co's product isn't quite ready for release yet but should be in public alpha by next week. I signed up to be notified, and I recommend everyone else do the same. I have a feeling this is going to be huge.

'The (Un)Obviousness of iCloud'

Chris Bowler:

“For the past couple of years, I’ve slowly added various settings to my iPhone and iPad; settings like backing up to iCloud and the syncing of purchases. I never paid a lot of attention to these changes — they simply made sense. When I walked back in my head, I realized that my last two computer upgrades did not involve syncing my iPhone and iPad.

iCloud had made that step unnecessary.”

Like him, I've been surprised by how much use I've gotten out of iCloud. I'm not about to switch to it wholesale from Dropbox or anything, but the little things like bookmarks, reminders, contacts, and notes being synced between devices make a big difference.

It's also nice to have the peace of mind that if I ever have to restore my iPhone, all of my apps, documents and even keyboard shortcuts can easily be synced right back to the device, all over the air. Or if my phone gets stolen, I can possibly remotely pinpoint its location with the Find My iPhone service. So cool.

'Implementing Smart App Banners'

Helpful tip by David Smith, ​showing web developers how to show an iAd-style banner at the top of their mobile sites that point to their companion app, rather than using a popup message that has to be dismissed.

“That’s it. Anyone visiting your site will now get this clean and context aware banner. If you are an app developer please take the 2 minutes needed to implement this. Gaudy popups promoting your app were detestable before but are now downright inexcusable.”

Hopefully more companies will start using this method of advertising and quit doing this:

'Regarding Passbook'

Rene Ritchie, writing for iMore:

“With Newsstand, Apple didn’t go the iTunes or iBooks route, didn’t establish a specific format and present the content is a consistent manner. They outsourced to publishers, and the experience suffered. With Passbook, Apple didn’t offer the iTunes transaction system, didn’t establish a specific process in a consistent manner. They outsourced to retailers, and the experience suffered.”

Couldn't agree more. I was one of the users who had problems with Passbook after upgrading to iOS 6, because tapping the App Store button at the bottom of the empty "wallet" would give me an error. Even when it started working days later, it was unclear what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

I went in expecting a seamless experience, but what I found is that you have to actually download all these other apps you don't need just so you can tell those apps to add a card to your Passbook. The whole point of Passbook, in my mind, was to eliminate the need for those dozens of other apps. It's pretty disappointing that Apple took such a great idea and released it this way.

Go read the rest of Rene's post, it's full of other insights.

My Experience with iOS 6 Maps

People have been piling onto Apple lately over the whole Maps debacle, but I wanted to give it some more time on my own before I came to any conclusions. After taking a trip out-of-state and relying entirely on Apple Maps throughout, this is what I've come up with in terms of odd behaviors:​

• At one point, when I asked for directions from my current location to a restaurant, it displayed the green pin for "Current Location" in an entirely different place from my actual location, marked by the little blue dot.
• Siri likes to give weird directions, even going so far as telling us to make a u-turn further down the street when we're already pulling into the parking lot of our destination.
• You can't scroll around map during turn-by-turn, like you can in Waze. You have to tap the screen for the controls to appear, tap the "Overview" button, scroll as needed, then tap "Resume" when finished scrolling. I'm very much a visual person, and I like being able to see the different turns that may be ahead of me, so I have a better idea what lane to be in after each turn.
• When approaching a toll zone on the turnpike, it kept ordering me to "stay to the left" even when I was supposed to temporarily exit so I could pay the toll. Obviated by common sense of course, much like many of these other issues, but I could see this getting some people into trouble.
• I had to submit an error to Apple because our hotel was entirely missing. It simply could not find it by name or display it on the map, although I could type in the address and that worked.

Overall, I think that Apple Maps is a good experience, albeit with the quirks that one might expect from a new service that absolutely depends on user input. The map data is obviously not going to be at the same level as Google Maps for a while, but with hundreds of millions of possible corrections being submitted to Apple all the time, people will eventually get over their initial hatred of the service.​

​I love the new vector graphics, they're much cleaner than Google's old map tiles. The turn-by-turn stuff is well-designed too, and when it works, there's no smoother experience in my opinion. Just wait until the data is there to back up the beauty on the surface, and Google will finally have a competitor in the mobile maps space to contend with. At least one worth talking about, that is.

A "Review" of Felix for App.net

I'm not an App.net (ADN) user. I've definitely considered becoming one, considering Twitter's behavior lately, but I'm still having trouble justifying the $50.​

​With that said, I've been hearing a lot about a new iOS client for ADN called Felix that just released today, and I thought this would be a good excuse to analyze some of the app's design from the perspective of someone who has no idea what using ADN is like.

Let's take it screenshot-by-screenshot.​

This is what I assume is the main screen in Felix, basically equivalent to a Twitter timeline. Initial reactions:

• The font choices are okay I guess, nothing special. Not sure I care for the cream-colored background. The actual ADN website has a textured gray background and white posts. If I were making a mobile client of that site, I'd probably stick with their color choices to make it seem more integrated.
• Something about having drop shadows under every avatar irks me a little.
• ​I can guess that the first two icons on the toolbar at the bottom are equivalent to 'Timeline' and 'Mentions' but I have no idea what the other three are for. The middle icon is highlighted blue in every screenshot, no matter what part of the app you're in, so perhaps it's a 'Compose' button. The globe icon might be a mobilized form of the public global feed, which is fine I guess but they could've used a better icon. The last icon looks like a speedometer which makes no sense to me.
• Each post has several actions that can be performed. The arrow button is probably a 'reply to this post'​ feature, but what is the speech bubble for? Maybe that's really the reply button and the arrow button is used for sharing a given post? The recycle icon is likely a 'retweet' equivalent, and the star icon is obviously an 'add to favorites' function.
• Seems weird and cluttered, having all of those icons inside every single post. Would be better to go the Tweetie route by swiping a post left or right and seeing the actions behind it, or the Tweetbot method of tapping a post and having a tray of options slide out below it.

I guess this is where the speedometer icon takes you. It's obviously a details screen for a specific post in this screenshot, but what happens if you're looking at your timeline and tap that icon? What does it do then? On its own this is a confusing icon choice.​

The 'compose' screen. The auto-complete hashtag bar in the middle is reminiscent of Tweetbot to me. The top toolbar is a bit weird.

• The 'x' button is probably meant to cancel the post, but I can't tell what the drawer icon next to it is for.  Perhaps an upload button of some kind, but what would anybody be uploading aside from photos, which the camera button is clearly for?
• The paper airplane is probably the 'publish' button but it's an odd choice over just having a button that says 'Post' or something. Maybe I'm weird, but it just looks like a "Send to Sparrow.app" button to me.
• The character count should probably be moved down to the middle bar (on the right-hand side of course, so as not to interfere with the hashtag auto-complete).

Don't have much to say about this one. The star button at the top right is interesting, can you favorite entire conversations on ADN? The colors of the posts (the blue being your own posts and the green being people you follow?) are similar enough that they're hard to differentiate​, to my eyes.

Ohhhhhh, I get it. The speedometer icon means 'dashboard'. Clever. I notice that there's an option to see your starred conversations, so I guess I was correct about that last screenshot. I would say that on this screen, it's okay to have a drop shadow under your avatar since it's meant to stand out. Still doesn't make sense on the timeline, though.​

Overall, this seems like a nice app, but there are some weird UI conventions going on. Obviously, this is v1.0 so it should only improve from here, and maybe if the developer reads this post they can understand what a new user might think when they first look at the app.

Either way, it's a fun thought exercise. I recommend that other app developers do this for apps they know nothing about too, so they can put themselves in the shoes of their own first-time users.

If you're on App.net and would like to try Felix out for yourself, it's $5 on the App Store and works with both iPhone and iPad.​

Review: 'Drafts' for iOS

Ever have an idea that suddenly popped into your head that was so good you needed to jot it down, but by the time you get a chance to write, you've forgotten what it was? Or do you have an idea that isn't yet ready for the big time and needs to be refined first? You need an app like Drafts.

​Drafts is designed to help you get your ideas out of your head into text form in the quickest way possible. When you open the app, it promptly greets you with a blank white canvas and a keyboard. No searching for previous notes, no need to add a title first, no distractions. Once you open the app, you simply start typing.

After you've finished typing, you can tap the '+' icon on the center toolbar and save it for later, or you can tap the 'Share' icon on the right side and export it to many different places, including Evernote, Tweetbot, SMS, Facebook, Reminders, Dropbox, ​Omnifocus, Sparrow, Agenda Calendar, and a lot more.

Drafts supports ​Markdown as well, if you're into that sort of thing. I've personally been using it as a tool for practicing Markdown on the go, since it includes options to preview the HTML output of your Markdown or send it elsewhere for use.

​If you would like to go back and see all of your previous drafts, just tap the 'paper' icon on the tool bar and the keyboard will slide down, revealing the drafts list underneath. There's no organizational structure that I'm aware of (like folders or tags), but if you need to find any specific thing you can just use the search feature (obviously, it's the magnifying glass icon on the toolbar).

​Drafts has become extremely useful for me, because I often have an idea spring to mind that I forget by the time I can get it into text form. I could just open Evernote and create a new note there, but Drafts feels so much more direct and I don't feel like I'm going to forget anything by the time it opens because it only takes a second or two.

With Evernote, I have to wait for the notes list to finish syncing, then tap the 'New Note' button, then tap in the body area to start typing. Those extra seconds really do matter, especially when you're doing those same things every single time you open the app. Plus, with Evernote, I'm tempted to properly tag and title each note when I'm done, but with Drafts I don't feel that compulsion. In this case, simple really is better.

There are plenty of other features in Drafts that I haven't even talked about here. For such a simple app, it's pretty powerful, and I highly recommend it. The iPhone version is $2 and the iPad version is $3.

iOS Annoyances

I jumped the gun a little early and un-jailbroke my phone. I've been running stock iOS 5.1.1 for about 8 days now. I didn't have any special reason to do this early, other than that I'd like to try out the OTA update process whenever iOS 6 drops.​

​Since then, I've noticed a definite speed increase in regards to typical usage. Apps seem to load faster, the lockscreen rarely hangs, and keyboard taps feel more responsive. I've even noticed a marked increase in battery life, which is great.

But it's not all a bed of roses. I'm remembering exactly why I jailbroke in the first place, and I put together a list of things about iOS that irritate me or could use some added functionality. I would hope that someone at Apple reads this and passes it along, but I'm just some guy without a lot of clout so there's no reason to expect such a thing. Anyway, here we go:

Notification Center

• ​On the lockscreen, you can't mark items as 'Read' or even delete the alerts. All you can do is swipe right on a particular alert and it will unlock the phone and take you to that app.
• You can delete the alerts from the pull-down Notification Center menu once you're logged into the phone, but even that can't be done on an individual basis; you have to tap the 'X' icon for an entire group of notifications (i.e. all SMS messages, or all emails, or all Facebook notifications, etc) and then tap the 'Clear' button that appears in order to make the notifications disappear. And doing so still doesn't mark the items as read within those apps, so you still have to open them afterward.
• Let's say I've already read a series of emails on my desktop machine. These emails are now marked as 'Read' on the desktop AND within the iPhone email client as they should be, and yet when I sign into my phone​, I still get a bunch of different alerts at the top of the screen about stuff I've already read. Pointless.
• There should be easier access to certain toggles at all times, for things like wifi, airplane mode, volume, brightness, bluetooth, etc.​
• ​The top-screen notifications are simply too big, and they interfere with usability. If I need to tap something at the top of an app screen, I either have to wait for the notification to go away, or I can pull down the Notification Center menu a little bit and then flick it back up to dismiss the notification.

The fixes: LockInfo, NCSettings, and ​SmallBanners.

Email/SMS/Contacts

• There is still no 'Quick Reply' or 'Quick Compose' functionality within iOS for things like SMS or email.
• I'd like to have photos next to entries in the Contacts list.​

The fixes: biteSMS​ and Cyntact.

​Homescreen

• ​There's still no way to get rid of the Newsstand icon or hide it within a folder, since it is treated like a folder itself.
• Perhaps they could allow us to have folders within folders. That would fix the issue above, and also allow gamers that have a ton of games to keep a single folder of Games with various folders inside for the different genres (RPG, Card, Racing, etc).
• Folders are simply too limiting by only allowing 12 apps at a time. ​I want functionality where folders are like mini-homescreens, each with the ability to contain multiple pages of apps.
• I wish I could have 5 icons on the dock. With only 4, there's not a lot to visually differentiate the dock from the rest of the homescreen. Also, I would bet that people are more likely to have 5 apps they use all the time and not just 4 (at least, that's true in my case). The OCD part of me also likes having one of the icons on the dock centered, which acts as my most-used icon. It's kinda like how some apps have a center button on their bottom toolbar where the main functionality exists (i.e. the 'Take Photo' button in Instagram, the 'Create Note' button in Evernote, etc).
• The​ multitask tray is pretty limited, and really only useful for switching between the last 2 (maybe 3) apps, or accessing media controls sometimes. A better option might be something like Multifl0w, which treats apps kind of like Safari tabs that you can browse between, maybe even with the added effect of having live previews of whatever the backgrounded apps are doing. Even if the multitask tray stayed the same as it is right now, it would also be nice if I could swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access it instead of double-clicking the home button. I feel like my home button will be worn down much quicker because of this thing.
• The multitask tray also cannot be used in landscape. If you're looking at something in landscape and open the tray, it forces you to switch to portrait.​
• I'd like to be able to move multiple icons on the homescreen at the same time.​

The fixes: NoNewsIsGoodNews, Folder Enhancer, Five Icon Dock, Multifl0w, Zephyr, Switcherland, and MultiIconMover.

​Other

• ​I wish I could have different sound profiles for everything. For example, it would be nice to have my ringtone and my SMS tone at different volume levels, because some of my ringtones are quieter than others and I need to turn them up to a level that can sometimes make my SMS tone unbearably loud. Also, different apps should have different volumes from one another. When I switch from Instacast (where I usually have to turn the volume up to hear people speak), to Spotify, the music can be crazy loud at first.
• Game Center is still an abomination of design. It's not the skeuomorphism; the thing is just garish​ in general. It should look more like Xbox Live's interface or something.

I'm not aware of fixes for either of these things yet.

​Overall, I'm still happy to be using iOS, and there are still some cool things built-in, but without these particular additions it just feels like a good OS and not a great one.

Can We Please Stop Complaining About Skeuomorphism?

Ah, skeuomorphism. Ye most hated of all design practices, ever since that Sam Biddle piece came out nearly a year ago. Before then, nary a whisper was heard about the practice. But ever since then, the number of blog posts full of derision have piled up into the stratosphere, and there seems to be no sign of stopping.

Take this one from today, for example:

“The issue is two-fold: first, that traditional visual metaphors no longer translate to modern users; and second, that excessive digital imitation of real-world objects creates confusion among users.”

Forget that this same site published a piece only a few months ago that asked people to please move on. Most of the negative pieces written on the subject have been variations on this theme of user confusion and lack of "pixel authenticity." The subject has been ground into a fine dust by now. There's even a Tumblr dedicated to finding instances of it.

We get it. You can stop with the hate-pieces now. Everyone knows you're a designer that would never think of creating such a thing in your products. That's fine. Please shut up about it. There are other things in the world of technology and design that are actually worth paying attention to, and this seems like more of a fad than anything to be truly worried or upset about.

Rethinking a Jailbroken iPhone

As I tweeted yesterday, I've been considering just having a stock iPhone experience rather than jailbreaking anymore. I was mostly kidding about the 'OldManism' thing, but perhaps this really is a sign that I'm getting older and have lost patience with the tinkering aspect of owning a smartphone.

Life as a jailbreaker

I've been jailbreaking my iPhone for as long as I've owned one. I started on the iPhone 3G back in 2008, ​and continued doing so once I upgraded to the iPhone 4S earlier this year. I've spent quite a few hours scouring the internet—forget searching within Cydia, it's not at all designed for discovery—trying to find great stuff I could try out.

I was pretty big on themes at first. I probably used all the big ones at some point, but eventually settled on switching between Glasklart and Illumine every now and then. Once I discovered how to make Glasklart icons for apps that hadn't been added into the theme's repository​ yet, I spent far too much time doing so because I liked having a uniform experience.

I've also grown accustomed to certain conveniences:

• biteSMS allows me to compose or reply to text messages from anywhere, even the lockscreen.
• The lockscreen itself started out as basically a clock and wallpaper, and Apple has made it a bit more useful with iOS 5's Notification Center, but I can still do even more with it if I want, using something like LockInfo.
• I always have easy access to toggles for wifi, volume, brightness, airplane mode, and more, using NCSettings (which replaced the beloved SBSettings on my iPhone a while back).
• With SmallBanners, the top-screen notification banners used in iOS are smaller and less obtrusive.
• With Folder Enhancer, I can put​ app folders inside of other folders on the homescreen. My folders are no longer limited to 12 apps, but instead are paginated much like the homescreen, and I can have as many pages as I want.
• Cyntact alters my Contacts list to show peoples' photos next to their names. Why this isn't default functionality is beyond me.
• NoNewsIsGoodNews hides that stupid NewsStand icon that I'll never use.
• DataDeposit lets me save all data from any given app into a folder within my Dropbox account, where I can restore from later if needed.​
• CallBar prevents an incoming call from overtaking your entire screen, and instead relegates it to a nicer notification bar at the top that you can swipe to answer.​

​​I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. There are truly some great things available to jailbreakers*, and I'm hesitant to give it all up.

*I'd like to note that I'm not one of those people who jailbreaks in order to pirate apps. Those kinds of repositories have never touched my phone, and they never will. In fact, there are several apps I've purchased from Cydia, and if I stay jailbroken, I have a few more that I'm willing to buy. I don't mind supporting good development, whether it's happening on the App Store or in Cydia.

​There's always a catch

Unfortunately, jailbreaking has its downsides too. Near the end of my iPhone 3G's life, it would often take incredible amounts of time to accomplish simple tasks like opening the camera app (which actually made me nearly miss some good shots of my son in the weeks after his birth). I didn't mind too much at the time, because that's just what I was used to.

It wasn't until I upgraded to the 4S that I realized how stupidly slow my phone had been. And due to the timing of my upgrade, my phone was running a version of iOS that hadn't been jailbroken quite yet, so I actually was running a stock phone for a little while. Once that jailbreak was publicly released though, I figured that this speedier phone should be able to handle it much better than the old one had. I was right, and soon I was back to my old-but-improved setup.

The problem is, some of the same old issues are still bugging me constantly.

To explain, over the last few years I've developed a habit of avoiding any iOS releases that didn't seem important enough to mess with. Each time I updated iOS, I would go through this whole rigmarole of manually backing up all my more personal stuff (like photos and contacts), deleting certain packages from Cydia that interfere with iPhone restores (which I don't believe is a problem anymore, thankfully), trying to save my SHSH blob in case I wanted to downgrade to the older version of iOS later, restoring the phone, installing the new iOS, re-jailbreaking, putting all my favorite apps back on the phone, and setting everything back up from scratch.

Why did I put myself through all that? Well, there's nothing quite like starting with a clean slate. Everything just seems to run better that way (although I admit this could be a placebo effect).

An unfortunate side effect of all this is, while I'm avoiding iOS upgrades, app developers of course continue to push out releases that sometimes break compatibility with my version of iOS. I have several apps that no longer support iOS 5.0.1 (my current version) and I simply cannot update them until the phone itself has been updated to 5.1.1 first (or iOS 6, when it releases this fall).​

Another irritant lately has been that, as time goes on, my phone gets worse and worse about hanging on to login data for certain apps. I haven't done anything different with the phone lately, yet certain apps like Facebook, Tweetbot, and Reeder keep asking me to login when they never did before. Tweetbot specifically has a problem with losing other internal settings too, like which 'Read Later' client​ I want to use.

​Apple's email app has been degrading lately, too. Sometimes I'll open it, only to find a bunch of emails on the list being shown with the 'unread' badge, even though LockInfo shows that I only have one unread email. Besides that, all emails on the list are showing as not having any content. Like so:

The only way of fixing this email thing, along with the apps that are losing random settings, is to do a hard-reboot of the phone. I've gone from hardly ever having to do that, to doing it once or twice a day. Annoying.​

Where am I going with all this? Well, I think that when iOS 6 drops, I'm​ probably just going to do one more fresh restore and then keep it that way. I'm getting to the point where dealing with this shit is more irritating than not having all of those conveniences.

This is where someone might ask, "why don't you just get an Android phone?" I've had an iPhone for so long that I've become pretty entrenched in their ecosystem. I've spent a not-so-small amount of money on App Store apps, and I'm not just going to throw all that away. Plus, I plan on getting other Apple products someday, like an iMac and an iPad. Why wouldn't I just keep using the phone that works best within that framework?

After iOS 6 launches, I'll gather some thoughts and post what I think about the experience.​

'Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 App Analogy'

​Josh Lehman:

“We’ve all seen the joke. Those of us in app development love to talk about how ridiculous it is that people will drop $4 every other day on a cup of coffee but will not “waste” 99 cents on our hot new app.
I hope by now we’ve learned something: This comparison doesn’t work.”

He goes on to​ make some pretty good points, but I still think the problem mostly exists within the mindset of the average consumer.

“I could be shoving $1 straight down the toilet again for all I know. Your app, good sir, is a total gamble. Sure, it’s only a $1 gamble… but it’s a gamble and that fact matters more than any price you might place on it.”

I don't dispute that buying apps can be a gamble, but this matter is typically cleared up with a little basic research. I don't buy anything from a place like Amazon without at least checking the reviews first, so why should I treat apps differently?​ There are built-in reviews in the App Store too, so there's no excuse to purchase blindly.

Personally, the way I discover apps (and most other things I purchase, really) is usually by word-of-mouth, whether it's from my friends, forums, or blog posts from writers I trust. This means that I've already got a solid foundation to work from, but doing a little research still goes a long way. I realize I'm in the unique position of someone who follows this kind of crap every day, so I'm less likely to buy apps without knowing something about them, but all the information you could ever need about an app exists out there on the internet, if you care to look hard enough.

Another thing about consumers is, they are entirely unsympathetic towards app developers. Some of these guys put a lot of time and money into their $1 app, and that app might be what they're depending on to support themselves and/or their family, and how do people repay them?

"Eh, $1? I think I'll wait until it goes on sale for free."
"I can't believe they're charging $5 for this, I can get [lower-quality clone] for only $1!"
"I don't pay for apps, I have cracked copies of everything."

I understand that it's in the consumers' best interest to get a good deal, but far too often I see people complaining about even the smallest of prices for apps. Heaven forbid someone actually try to make money for all their hard work!

Of course, app developers are partially to blame here. If they hadn't created a culture where everything is a race to the bottom in terms of price, or that it was okay to put your app on sale whenever you want, then consumers wouldn't have come to expect it all the time.​ Each time an app that deserves to charge more money sells for only $1-2, or inexplicably goes on sale within a week, it validates this expectation in the consumer's mind.

Despite all of this, I do think that the rest of ​Josh's piece is actually quite good and I agree with stuff like this:

“Great software masks its complexity. It works like magic. The customer is not likely to make note of the craftsmanship involved in your app mainly because the bulk of the craftsmanship lies deep below the visual layer.”

“One proven way to push this craftsmanship to the surface is to focus on solid app design. It’s the one thing that will visually highlight the effort you put into your app. At the code level it may be just as much effort to create your “Task Master 3000″ app with an ugly veneer as it would be to give it a nice paint job, but the paint job will be all the user sees.”

Please go read the rest of his post. I swear I don't mean to put his opinion into a negative light, ​I just disagree with him on a couple of points. I'll likely continue using the 'cup of coffee' analogy because I'm not a big believer in "the customer is always right."

Josh Lehman | Stop Using the Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 App Analogy​