This Week's Sponsor:

PowerPhotos

The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac

Posts in links

iPad GUI PSD for Retina Display Now Available→

iPad GUI PSD for Retina Display Now Available

It has become a tradition for design studio Teehan+Lax – the minds behind beautifully designed software like Readability for iOS – to release a free iOS GUI PSD on every major iOS or device release from Apple. The PSDs, downloaded millions of times in the past few years, have helped designers and developers mock up their apps and iOS designs using Photoshop, while relying on graphic assets that look just like interface elements and controls of iPhones and iPads.

Today, Teehan+Lax released its updated iPad GUI PSD, updated for the Retina display:

We’re really proud to be releasing our latest version today. It’s based on iOS 5.1 and includes hundreds of retina assets available natively on the platform. In addition to the GUI assets, you’ll find perfectly scaled ‘New’ iPads to help you create the apps we’ll come to love in the future.

This time, the file has been made for Adobe Photoshop CS6, which is available for free while in beta. Weighing at 35MB, you can download the iPad GUI PSD here.

Permalink

Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”→

Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”

Simon Parkin of HookShot writes about their interview with legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto:

When we asked him what games he has been enjoying on his smartphone of late, he replied: “There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways. Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it’s one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first.

In the interview, Miyamoto also offers his take on the game’s control scheme, and how it could have been better on his company’s portable console, the DS. Nintendo’s guru, the mastermind behind an incredible number of successes and milestones in the videogame history, announced his intention to go back to creating new, fresh games to find the company’s next big hit. I previously discussed the position of Nintendo in today’s highly mobile gaming ecosystem here, and here.

Permalink

iTunes Manglement→

iTunes Manglement

Craig Hockenberry has a good counterargument about changes needed in iTunes (mine was a follow-up to Jason Snell’s piece at Macworld):

Much of iTunes functionality is based around content that Apple or the user doesn’t own. And as we all know, the media companies that own the content are particularly paranoid about how digital assets are managed. In the 10+ years that iTunes has been in existence, I’m sure there’s a tangled web of legal obligations that makes improvements a huge technical headache.

Many have asked the question “What’s keeping Apple from innovating in iTunes?”. Legal obligations to media companies may be the reason, though I wonder if such obligations are really keeping Apple from at least reworking some parts of the interface and syncing architecture.

Surely it is in the best interest of media partners (and app developers) as well to have a better iTunes experience for customers – the people who actually buy content? And more importantly, if this is the reason behind iTunes stuck in its own limitations, can Apple untangle the web of legal obligations, and come up with new ones that fit a new iTunes vision? As Craig points out, developers at Apple have to think about iTunes legal terms for other parts of the world, too.

In the past day, however, several readers also offered another possible explanation: iTunes for Windows. I don’t know why, on a technical level, it wouldn’t be possible for Apple to produce a great new iTunes experience on Windows, but I agree: when iTunes changes, it would make sense for it to change on Windows too.

Permalink

“Facebook Gets More Data”→

“Facebook Gets More Data”

Matthew Panzarino has a great take on today’s Instagram + Facebook news:

Facebook doesn’t need Instagram to make money. Instagram will probably never get ads.

I think it’s a win for everyone. Now Instagram doesn’t have to shoehorn a monetization model it would hate —and you would hate — into its service in order to survive. The users get a better experience. Facebook gets more data. Users that are quitting Instagram because the service may be ‘ruined’ are barking up the wrong tree. Facebook sees the value in the network as it is, a photo creation machine with a lot of user love.

While mobile ads could be a huge deal long-term speaking, it is true Facebook doesn’t “need” Instagram to make money right now. For a company as large as Facebook, this kind of acquisitions can be put on hold from a business perspective, to see how things evolve once users figure out they are effectively using a Facebook product. But you can’t put off the mobile explosion – it’s only going to get bigger – and can Facebook afford to miss out on “mobile advertisements done right”? What if someone else figures out a way to monetize millions – soon billions? – of users sharing photos from their smartphones?

It’s a good problem to have. And I agree that access to more data (patterns such as likes matched with photo captions, for instance, or location) is what matters for now. Let’s check back on ads and mobile monetization in six months.

More Instagram + Facebook coverage here.

Permalink

Facebook, Instagram, and Ads→

Facebook, Instagram, and Ads

Oli Watts thinks Facebook’s recent statement on revenue from mobile users offers a clear indication of things to come soon in newly Facebook-owned Instagram: ads.

I think the real reason for the Instagram purchase, and the incredible price tag, is access to a potentially lucrative mobile advertising product.

Mobile advertisements are potentially more lucrative than standard “desktop” web advertisements, yet most companies have been doing them wrong for years. The majority of mobile advertisements have tried to replicate the web’s model with simple images users can click to be directed to a website. Others, including Apple with iAd, have tried to do things a little differently, yet the numbers are smaller, and incredibly so, than, say, Google’s revenue with ads on search and desktop websites. Mobile advertisements could keep users more “engaged” with promoted products by leveraging aspects like location, cameras, touch, apps – yet only a handful of companies seem to be betting on the future of ads as richer experiences built for mobile, not extrapolated from computers.

Facebook is a company that along the way found a business model and a culture that allows them to believe they are doing good things. That’s in their IPO filing. With the Instagram acquisition, one can only assume Facebook will want to start making some money with it eventually, and because Instagram is mobile, and photos are huge on mobile, Facebook will find a way to monetize both Instagram and Facebook’s mobile products.

Like Instagram’s photo sharing model applied to a company like Facebook, the potential for different mobile ads is largely untapped.

Permalink

Why Facebook Bought Instagram→

Why Facebook Bought Instagram

Om Malik, writing at GigaOM:

Facebook and Instagram are two distinct companies with two distinct personalities. Instagram has what Facebook craves – passionate community. People like Facebook. People use Facebook. People love Instagram. It is my single most-used app. I spend an hour a day on Instagram. I have made friends based on photos they share. I know how they feel, and how they see the world. Facebook lacks soul. Instagram is all soul and emotion.

I am indeed interested to see how, on an emotional level, Instagram users will react to the Facebook acquisition. Will the “love” Om and others mention survive the migration to Facebook’s infrastructure? Or maybe Facebook will really keep Instagram as a truly separate product, perhaps only slightly more integrated with the social network – even if that doesn’t make much sense for a $1 billion acquisition? We’ll see.

In the meantime, it does appear the “social paradigm” Instagram reinvented (here’s my take from 2010) intrigued Facebook enough to give away 1% of its market cap.

Also worth keeping in mind: the photo sharing app Facebook was building, and the popular content on Instagram.

Permalink

“Sometime Down The Road”→

“Sometime Down The Road”

Yours truly, writing about the improvements to Instagram’s API in March:

Instagram, on the other hand, is taking an interesting path (no pun intended) that, sometime down the road, might turn what was once an iPhone app into a de-facto option for all future social sharing implementations. A few months from now, would it be crazy to think Camera+ could integrate with Instagram to offer antive uploads? Or to imagine built-in support for Instagram photo uploads in, say, iOS, Twitter clients, and other photo apps? I don’t think so. Just as “taken with Hipstamatic” stands out in today’s Instagram feeds, “Upload to Instagram” doesn’t sound too absurd at this point.

It took 19 days, and “upload to Facebook” has a different ring to it.

Permalink

Facebook’s Brilliant Move→

Facebook’s Brilliant Move

Smart take by Dan Frommer on Facebook acquiring Instagram:

The biggest threat to Facebook is a mobile-only or mobile-first social network that captures the increasing amount of time spent on smartphones in a way Facebook can’t or doesn’t.

In my experience, that’s exactly what Instagram does. I’m still addicted to Facebook on the old desktop-browser web, but when I’m on my phone, I gravitate to Twitter and Instagram. Path is another example, but Instagram is more developed — that’s the deal I’d make, too.

That’s exactly what Facebook should be doing: take the photos experience, and invest on a more intuitive way to share quickly and nicely from a mobile device. Instagram was the best choice.

Permalink