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“For whatever reason, there are only a handful of people selling code components on the Apple platforms. I suspect that’s less about the market and much more about perceived worthiness; we do all tend to collectively reinforce the perception that only the very best stuff will do, and it’s incredibly difficult to convince yourself your code is even worthy of being open source, much less paid for in its raw form. I’ve had to twist the arms of so many Mac developers to convince them that they have a component worth sharing with others.”

From the iPad’s official webpage:

“The App Store will feature new apps designed specifically for iPad. You’ll find hundreds that make the most of its large display, responsive performance, and Multi-Touch interface. iPad apps appear in a special section of the store, so you can find and download them easily.”

A special section in the Store, which sounds like a category filled with other sub categories for different apps. Put in this way, it doesn’t sound like they’re pushing the thing too much.

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“After you’ve read your twelfth ebook, you don’t need the candy anymore. Ideally, the candy isn’t so distracting that you hate it, and what was once cute (swiping to flip the page!) turns into sheer utility (tapping to turn the page, which I have to believe will also be possible in iBooks.)

But that flip matters because it gets you going. And it gets going everyone who sees you reading your twelfth book in iBooks. How will you demo it to them? Will you tap or will you slowly turn the page? If your booklist was also available as a boring (and useful) black-and-white table, would that be the screen you’d show your friends?”

No, definitely. And just as they did with the iPhone, they need to push the simplicity effect, make it clear that there’s one and only one  way to browse and view books - and that way is beautiful. They could have used awkward thumbnails for Contacts.app on the iPhone, but they didn’t.  And like it or not, consistency and simplicity are what made the iPhone stand out.

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“iTunes preview pages rank well in Google search results because they are very search engine friendly for app names. The URL, page title, meta description, meta keywords, and the H1 tag are all loaded with the app name. These pages also have lots of incoming links from every blog entry, review, and so on that uses the iTunes link. I suspect that the Playboy app comes in at #7 because of all the recent news and opinion articles that link to the app as an example of a big publisher that escaped the iTunes sexy app purge.

It is interesting to note that the iTunes preview page uses the “nofollow” attribute for links to the app’s homepage, so the PageRank of the preview page does not convey any benefit to the developer’s site .”

Developers, take note.

With the iPad coming out in a few weeks, I guess many of you guys are doing some huge spring cleaning at your iTunes installation to cut down the garbage and assure that when the new kid will be in town, everything will be settled for a warm and polished welcome. You’d better do so, but I think this is all wrong.

Read more

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“For most people, listening to music is something you do while you’re doing something else, not an activity that occupies your entire mind. By contrast, the iTunes LP requires the same kind of attention that you might give to a movie or a book. While that might appeal to the serious music fan, it’s overkill for most consumers.”

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“As the Wall Street Journal reported, the mouse was considered a miss: “Useless,” said Charles L. Mauro, president of an engineering firm. “It isn’t all that easy to learn,” said Amy Wohl, president of a corporate consultancy. “I think it’s awkward,” added Clem Labine, a newspaper publisher. “Since it doesn’t get you away from the keyboard altogether, why go back and forth?”

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I guess they’re gonna publish a statement tomorrow saying that you can’t blame inspiration. And of course, we won’t believe that.

But you know, worst part is Mozilla could have used some copy for Firefox - next time choose wisely which project to rip off for.

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Interesting post over at Cocoia’s blog. It’s true, uninstalling flash precludes you to a lot of content on the current web - so you keep it installed on your computer.

And that’s exactly Adobe’s strongest point in why you shouldn’t uninstall Flash.