After trying iOS7, and being an iPhone user since its inception, I finally had enough. I switched to Android and now I am in love with my new phone like I was with iPhone 1 back in the day. Shit like "no file system" and no ability to change the default apps for various actions are why I left. It's too stupid.
IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious as to why would engagement and retention be low? As regard's pay per download models...looks like "Attach" business model's are becoming more popular. "Attach" means charging for something outside of the app store. Dropbox, Uber, Square all do it. I remember seeing a Chris Dixon post about this on HN a few months ago.
I have several of the pay-for-use productivity apps mentioned, and my experience was like the parent comment said. Initially got the app to fix a problem (content creation/editing is difficult on an all-touch device). But just fooled around a little and never really got engaged. I still do that stuff on my laptop. My take-away was that I wanted precise pointing and a keyboard and a big screen for those tasks, because…
Every experience means a lot! People seem to be very purchase-friendly when it comes to mobile these days even though from a productivity standpoint, most work is still done on laptops/desktops. You need that larger screen, tactile input, etc., in order to complete complex tasks that involve switching among various tasks that require more than swipes and taps.
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#43> A number of productivity software startups are creating great new apps that are mobile-first, solving specific problems like...spreadsheets (Grid).
I'm not sure why they call Grid a spreadsheet. It has very little of the functionality that a typical spreadsheet has.
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have several of the pay-for-use productivity apps mentioned, and my experience was like the parent comment said. Initially got the app to fix a problem (content creation/editing is difficult on an all-touch device). But just fooled around a little and never really got engaged. I still do that stuff on my laptop. My take-away was that I wanted precise pointing and a keyboard and a big screen for those tasks, because…
Every experience means a lot! People seem to be very purchase-friendly when it comes to mobile these days even though from a productivity standpoint, most work is still done on laptops/desktops. You need that larger screen, tactile input, etc., in order to complete complex tasks that involve switching among various tasks that require more than swipes and taps.
Yep, I thought it would be fun to use a touch-based app for drawing diagrams.
Turns out that to get the lines straight, group/ungroup objects, line everything up, choose fonts and colors, etc., etc., it takes a lot of input that is not particularly well-done using touch.
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#45Typing is such a widely voiced complaint because it's new and difficult at first and requires practice . Instead of putting in the effort, almost everyone assumes the virtual keyboard paradigm is broken and simply throws their hands up in the air in frustration. It baffles me. Typing on the iPad virtual keyboard is fine. Just like when you were learning to type on a physical keyboard, it takes practice up front. I ca…
For me, the hard part about typing on a virtual keyboard is not hitting the keys, which are big enough on an iPad. It's switching to the non-standard keys like - or _, typing numbers, or even typing capital letters. Each of these requires one or more presses on a mode switch key, which changes all or most of the keys displayed, and then selecting the key to enter. Even for capital letters, you can't just press down Shift and then the key as you could on a normal keyboard. (You could rely on autocorrect if you need the capitalization at the start of a sentence, of course.)
Entering something like _ is especially poor because it requires two keypresses to get the keyboard into the right mode. So entering even a small bit of code on an iPad is painful if you use underscores in variable names.
Quite apart from the tactile feedback, I think mode switching is very disruptive to getting into the flow of typing -- "where did all my keys go?"
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that tactile feedback is an advantage to physical typing. I'm not ignoring that aspect when I say that virtual keyboard typing is fine . Virtual keyboard typing is not as fast as physical keyboard typing. I type 80 WPM on a physical keyboard and 50 WPM on my iPad. It's slower... but fine. My response to taude still stands. If you constantly need to concentrate on the act of typing then you need to train your…
Or buy a Macbook Air.
Big fan of the MBA.
Re: IOS productivity app market on the cusp of change?
#47A really good assessment of the situation. I really enjoyed the qltv and qtv analysis - but this being HN part of me was hoping there was an actual solution. For me personally, the keyboard is the most frustrating, second to lack of cross-app integration.
Yes. The keyboard problem is a big one. It was so painful that I had to buy a bluetooth keyboard just to work with my iPad. That's a hard one to solve until apple comes up with something better user input device. (e.g. thalmic labs, leap motion etc). After I bought my keyboard, the next problem I hit was the inter-app communication issue you raised. That's a software problem and solvable.
Is there a particular bluetooth keyboard you recommend?