Secret iPad
thinkfractional.blog
Secret iPad
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Re: Secret iPad
#2I love these behind the scenes accounts of stuff.
Re: Secret iPad
#3If you like this kind of behind the scenes, i highly recommend Ken Kocienda's book "Creative Selection" about the development of some parts of the first iPhone.
Re: Secret iPad
#4I’m surprised they weren’t told about it at all in advance. Is that standard for Apple nowadays?
Re: Secret iPad
#5Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! (magical, even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been reduced to nothing but feeds to scroll through, clients for online services, and crappy games.
What in the world happened?
Edit: Some people are mentioning the quality productivity apps available, particularly on the iPad Pro. I didn't mean to suggest there aren't quality apps, I meant to suggest there aren't interesting apps that turn these devices into wondrous multi-tools. Apps that use the sensors in novel ways to interface with the real world; that make your phone or tablet more of a device and less of a screen.
I also want to say I didn't mean to imply that there are no quality games on mobile; it's just hard for them to survive (Apple Arcade is an interesting workaround for this), and also games in general just usually don't have the kind of novelty I'm talking about here.
Re: Secret iPad
#6Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…
There's no money to be made in the app store, for the most part. OTOH, there's plenty to be made in monthly service revenue (and 30% of it isn't taken by apple in most cases).
Re: Secret iPad
#7Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…
It turns out you can make more money repeatedly selling $0.99 token packs for simple dot puzzle game powerups than one-time $1.99 or even $2.99 whole-app purchases. There are also more people who play silly puzzle games in waiting rooms around the world than people who play guitar.
There is still tons of innovation in the App Store. It’s just on Skinner Box mechanics now.
Re: Secret iPad
#8Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…
There really is no excuse for the lack of "real" software on the iPad (using "real" as in desktop quality). Only a small amount can be blamed on the system itself, appealing to a very niche audience (like XCode).
Arbitrary Javascript code written on the iPad can run, as evidenced by Play.js. Arbitrary Python code written on the iPad can run as evidenced by Pythonista. Arbitrary Swift code can run as evidenced by Swift Playgrounds. There's a Github app, there's a file explorer app, you can connect USB drives and keyboard and as of very recently, a mouse.
So where is VS Code for the iPad? Where is desktop-class software for the iPad? Why is this [1] article from 8 years ago still the best-in-class way to write code on an iPad? Is there still some kind of missing support I'm not seeing?
[1] https://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook...
Re: Secret iPad
#9Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…
I would guess that there are more great apps published daily than ever before. The issue is probably discovery. Even if you build something great, you are competing for attention, and people who can pay for ads get the most attention.
Re: Secret iPad
#10Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…
There's no money to be made in the app store, for the most part. OTOH, there's plenty to be made in monthly service revenue (and 30% of it isn't taken by apple in most cases).
The money thing is more a power law thing. There is DEFINITELY money to be made in the app store (I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it) but it’s almost all going to the winners in a specific category.