Apple backs down over subscriptions in iOS

According to MacStories today, Apple has amended it's subscription policy, which was the subject of much hue and cry a few weeks ago. With the 30 June deadline drawing near, they have decided that accessing content subscribed to from outside the App Store is OK, and publishers can sell both in-app subscriptions and non-app-based subscriptions at whatever price they choose. The only caveat is that there can be no link from within the app to the external subscription/store web presence. This allows, for instance, Amazon to sell books on their online store in Kindle format at their price, and also offer newspaper or magazine subscriptions in-app. Users can access all their content in the same app with no limitations.

Publishers were complaining about the earlier verbiage, which required the internal and external prices to be identical, and required in-app offerings if there was an external method for subscribing. With the razor-thin margins in today's publishing market, this was a losing proposition, and Apple realized that many publishers, while desiring iPad readers, would go the way that the Financial Times went earlier this week, when they created a web-app version for their subscriptions, eschewing the App Store channel completely. While this allows mobile users outside the iOS market to access the content, it does not allow offline reading without learning a few special tricks. This is not what many iPad users would be able to do, and removes the exclusivity that Apple likes to have with their app offerings.

Is The Daily the future of newspaper publishing?

To great fanfare, News Corp released their new twice-daily paper, The Daily, a few weeks ago. It is digital only, and exclusive to the iPad. Updates have been frequent for such a large undertaking, which is both a good sign and a bad one. Good, because they are listening to their users (at least a bit) and fixing things that need it. Bad, because it shows just how far from a true iPad experience it was at the beginning.

With the iPad users I have talked with (which is quite high, given my Apple-oriented friends and co-workers), the reaction has been mixed, but cautiously positive. Within that positive hope, however, is always the growl of irritation at various interface flaws. Having to wait for new issues to download (almost) every time the app starts and not having any control over sound are two large items that come up frequently. Not being able to filter things like Sports and Gossip from the main download is also huge. Why should I have to wait and download stuff I'm not going to read? I toss out those sections in papers I buy on the newsstand, but that's one-size-fits-most, not like digital publishing, where things can and should be custom tailored to each reader's needs. The app disables auto-sleep, which can be nice, but what if I'd rather it not do that? I want to make it work my way, not the publisher's way.

The first few updates introduced a lot of crashing, which has gotten better, but is still not gone. I had actually deleted The Daily from my iPad last week, but reading about the extended trial, I decided to give it another go. I've never in my life subscribed to a newspaper, so I may not be a good demographic, but I've not heard anyone rave about the app either.

The things that make the iPad unique are being able to customize your experience: pinch and zoom photos and web pages, resize columns for ease of reading, copy and paste to an email for instant sharing, saving content to a place for off-line reading, turning off sounds or music that is not wanted without affecting the rest of my apps and not having to turn the device to a certain orientation for specific content. To the extent you frustrate these activities, you alienate and irritate your intended readers.

I have a suggestion for the developers of The Daily: find a group of people who have been using iPhones for a long time (2-3 years), and who were early adopters of the iPad. Show them the user interface, watch their reactions as they interact with your app, and correct where necessary. My suspicion is that few, if any, of the designers working on The Daily ever used iOS before they decided to write an iPad app. There is a rich history and understanding of how things work that dates back to mid-2007, and ignorance of this underlying developer knowledge will usually result in thinking that you can force your page-oriented views onto the platform. It doesn't ring true to the user experience of most apps, and this is the reason most newspaper apps out there cannot get paid subscribers. Users of iOS want things on our terms, not yours. We'll read your content, but we want it in a form that we prefer, not in static layouts with a little bit of flash thrown in.

LifeHacker shows you how to build your own walled garden, with help from Malware Detection Software.

There's a recent post at Lifehacker called "How can I Tell if an Android App is Malware?". Just the question alone is hilarious to me as an iPhone user.

I have read and heard taunts from Android users all telling the iPhone community that we're idiots for allowing "Big Brother" to filter our apps into an Apple-controlled walled garden. Yet, part of that wall is the App review process, in which submitted apps are tested to make sure they do not interact with any private documents of other apps, and that they only access system information (which includes user data) through proper means. (Those "proper means" include asking the operating system for the data, and the OS asking the user if it's OK. An example of this is Location Services. The app should ask the OS "Could we know the current location?" and the OS presents the dialogue box: "AppName wants to share your location. Allow/Don't Allow". If you can see no real reason for, say, Angry Birds, to share your location, you click "Don't Allow" and the app has to suffer in ignorance. If you allow it, they can broadcast it as they please.

On Android, the "open" alternative, any app can access any part of the OS, data, or other apps, and do anything it feels like. (Anything the developer programmed it to, actually, but I like to think of programs as sentient beings. Blame TRON.) If you have your credit card numbers stored in a data manager, any app can pry into that data and send the information to anyplace it wants to, without you knowing it. Thus, the need for malware detectors on Android. The only problem is, there is no clearinghouse for apps to go through to be vetted, so the only way to know if some rogue process is digging through your dirty laundry is to install an app to continuously monitor all activity and compare it to a set of "normal" activity and guess if it's OK for that to happen. So, only when something bad happens will your Malware Protection Software jump in to save you. If the hack is written well enough, this may be quite a long time after your data has been compromised.

So, the choice is yours: Live in the policed garden of polite, well-behaved and vetted apps, or grab a shotgun, circle the wagons, and head for the wild west where you're on your own.

Call me a wimp, but I'm not ready to take on every Android hacker in the world single-handedly.

The iSpot becomes MySpot

As a geek, I have to be connected to the Internet. It's part of my DNA. All geeks understand and can relate to this. With my iPhone, I can grab my region's 3G connection, which, despite the national media and some of my friends' experiences, is not too shabby. Sure, it's not like the WiFi in my house or place of business, or even most coffee shops, but it'll do until I can get to a place that has better service.

Well, recently, Clearwire has released a device that has made my connected wandering the stuff of dreams. The iSpot is a small, white device the size of a bar of bath soap (4" x 2.25" x .5"), and it connects to Clear's 4G WiMax network to offer a hotspot for my iPhone, iPad, and any other iOS device I choose to allow have the password.

During an introductory offer, I saw it was only $25 or so, and the service is $25/month for unlimited data, month to month with no contract. It can serve as the access point for as many as eight iOS devices. From my understanding, it filters the devices out by MAC address, only allowing those that fall within the range of the handhelds. I've not seen any slowdown or delay as I've connected to indicate anything else is happening behind the scenes.

Connecting to the hotspot has clean and easy, and managing the unit via the free software I downloaded from iTunes is simple as well. Getting a signal has sometimes been a bit of trouble, however. In our area, we have quite a bit of coverage, but in some buildings and low-lying areas (such as my neighborhood!), the signal strength drops off to zero. I tried it out in some other, mostly outside areas, however, and the results were nothing short of amazing. Having the Internet in my pocket while on a bike ride means I can stop and edit or write using my server accounts or Evernote, without using my AT&T data minutes. I've biked out to places before and wanted to spend some time there, but had online things that needed attention, so had to leave. Packing this and my iPad will mean I can work online from anywhere - at least within the Clear coverage area.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Testing a new publication medium

I've not been posting a lot lately, mostly because I've not been near my computer except late at night while at home. Since early April, my iPad has been my mobile device of choice, and the web interface to Blogger is less than friendly to log into. (1password notwithstanding)

Today, while reading a friend's blog, I noted several entries with signatures similar to the one below, so thought I'd spend the two bucks to give it a try. Set up has been relatively painless, so maybe I'll be able to share more of my thoughts on life and technology with you lucky souls.

I can hear the silent anticipation of millions of souls holding their breaths in excitement all ready.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Washington St,Cary,United States

I have seen the future, and I like it!

I remember longing after those AT&T commercials back in the '80s - "Ever attended a meeting in your bare feet? You will." "Ever sent a fax from the beach? You will." I recently reviewed them on YouTube, and chuckled at how much was wrong, and what was spot on. No one calls home from phone booths any more, they all call from the plane as soon as it's off the active runway. And attending meetings in bare feet may actually happen in an office building, due to cultural changes as the Boomers aged up into management and brought their jeans and sandals along to the executive suite.

But the most far-reaching change, which will affect computing for the next decade or two, launched in early April 2010. Holding an iPad, using the same Internet we've been using for the past 15-20 years, you know you'll never be happy surfing with a limited phone browser or a netbook again. And that mouse is really looking long in the tooth!

In the few months that I have been using it, my iPad has become my Internet tool of choice. I'm irritated if a place doesn't have wifi so that I can surf with it. I take it to lunch and read, email, and catch up on writing articles in progress. With or without my Bluetooth keyboard, it's a great typing experience, but, then, I'm not a touch typist. The iOS which started powering the iPhone and now powers all manner of portables (iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads) is head and shoulders above the rest in user-friendliness and real-world usability. There are those who prefer tweaking things themselves, and, for them, the openness of Android and WebOS will be better, but for the majority of humans, the iOS experience is bringing us the future we've been promised since Uhurrah first handed a PADD to Captain Kirk in 1969.

Next up, flying cars!

Thoughts on Readers, eReaders, studying, and content

I'm not a big reader, but am a huge browser of content. I'm not sure if it's my ADD or just the pace of information coming across the threshold of my life that causes this, but it's the way things are. I've been hanging around "book people" and software engineers a lot for most of this century, and have noticed a few things about books, learning, and software design. I also have listened to a lot of user stories (read: complaints) on interacting with eBook software and how it could be improved. While I'm excited that various companies have decided to take on the task of bringing more content to market in electronic formats, I think the current obsession with an eReader device is a little off the mark. Let me explain.

First, readers and students have vastly different methods of accessing content. Readers chew through it from upper left to lower right, rarely back-tracking or caring where they are within the structure of the book. It's all about the story. News readers are even less focused: they're all about the article. Students, however, range all over a book. They start a section, flip over to the index to find another reference to a term they are unfamiliar with, mark a sentence, go back to cross reference with a previous highlight, skip ahead because of the lecture order their professor has chosen - in short, they rarely, if ever, attack a book from upper left to lower right, line by line the way a mere reader does. That is why most current eReaders fail them.

Second, Students don't want another device. They want something that works with the two devices they already carry: their laptop and their phone. They want the most powerful yet smallest device that will let them surf, Facebook, email, Twitter, shop, check horoscopes, listen to music, and watch video without thinking about the technology. To anyone over 35, this is a nerd. To folks under 25, this is just using the stuff you're used to using. Sure, some of them will pick up a Kindle, and the really voracious readers in the demographic will like it and maybe buy it, but the majority will see the $300+ price tag and say "No, thank you." (Actually, it will be much more off-color, but allow me the license.)

It's also high time we move beyond just porting the page of a book over to the screen. Sure, reading is great and all that, but since we can insert graphics or video or animations or whatever into the eBook to enhance understanding of the material, why handcuff ourselves to slavishly copying the dead tree format? There are companies doing more with ebooks than putting the page on a screen. One of the problems in adoption is that professors are usually reluctant to adopt the new model. ("I've given them page numbers for years. Why should I give them a link?"). Having to re-organize their notes and classroom materials to accommodate new scholarship and new sources is something many tenured profs don't want to do. They'll never admit it (and there are many who aren't this way), but there are a good percentage that have this mindset. It will take a generation for this population to age out of the system.

Students also complicate the issue by not being willing to pay for actual scholarship. If you're reading a report of a test that cost millions of dollars, or watching a video that is professionally produced and edited, or viewing an animation that clearly explains a complicated process, you're going to have to front some coin. Students will pay $15 to see "Star Trek" at the IMAX for 2 hours, but to delve into something that will affect their personal and professional lives for years into the future, they're fine with half-baked, mangled stories from various web sources with no more professional credentials than the guy playing guitar for spare change on the street, or a page that has so much advertising and collusion with the product sponsor as to remove all credibility.

Publishers, for their part, have multi-layered sales and authoring systems that sometimes hinder actual scholarship and drive up costs. They want to pay a salesperson, an editor, an agent, and three executives the same amount per copy distributed that they want to pay the researcher who actually knows the material and spends the time preparing it for students to consume. Would you want to write something, knowing that everyone up the chain and back down was going to pinch off a little of your pay for relatively little value added?

I don't care to use any special-purpose device, if there are multi-use devices that can easily perform the same function well. My laptop (my only computer) is much more feature-rich than any eBook device, no matter how thin and easy to use. My iPhone is always in my pocket, and reading on it is quick and efficient for short sessions. I have read many books over the years on Palm devices that had much worse screens than the iPhone. For textbooks, not being able to highlight, search, link to outside materials, and collaborate with colleagues around the content hampers learning. There are eBook readers for my laptop that allow me to do this. I feel certain there will soon be applications for the iPhone (and other smartphones) that will provide these scholarly functions as well. I don't need to pay $300-$500 more to add another device to my bag.

(Disclaimer: I do not speak for any company in any way. These thoughts are based solely on my personal anecdotal experience. I have been introducing eBook technology to students and professors for the last 8 years, as well as working with many publishers, training and supporting their use of eBooks.)