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DEVONTHINK

Store, Organize, and Work the Smart Way

Connected: Total Dude, with His Surface Hub→

This week Federico and Myke talk about Windows 10, Windows Holographic and unsubscribing from web services. The boys also consider the effect that old browsers are having on the show.

I wouldn’t have thought I’d have fun discussing a Microsoft event, but I’m actually intrigued by their announcements this week (especially for gaming). You can listen to thr episode here.

Sponsored by:

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Virtual: Vip 24:7→

This week Federico and Myke talk about their 3DS purchases, the death of Club Nintendo, Mario becoming self aware and Nintendo’s rejection of Minecraft.

Make sure to check out the show notes for some great articles to read. You can listen to the episode here.

Sponsored by:

  • Harry’s: An exceptional shave at a fraction of the price. Use code VIRTUAL for $5 off your first purchase
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The World of Indie App Developers

Here at MacStories we write about apps. A lot. Many of those we write about, perhaps even most, are created by individuals and small teams. And typically, those hard-working individuals remain unknown to the public who just know an app as something they use. Today we want to bring a bunch those indie developers to the forefront.

I wasn’t sure exactly where it would lead, but last month I asked on Twitter for independent developers to @ reply me and say hi. Amplified by retweets by Federico and many others, I got dozens and dozens of replies, ultimately totalling just under 200 responses.[1] That’s both a pretty huge number (trust me, it was a time consuming process documenting them all) and also incredibly tiny (there are around 250,000 active developers and over a million apps for sale).

It would be completely ridiculous to perform any kind of analysis on such a small sample size, but it was nonetheless great to have a relatively varied spread of developers from all over the world (illustrated in the above graphic). But more valuable was the list of developers and their Twitter accounts. So I’ve created a Twitter list that includes every developer that @ replied me. We’ve also included the full table of every developer we collated, links to their apps, location and Twitter account (see below). Please note that developers and apps shown in the full list does not mean they are endorsed by me, Federico or MacStories. If a developer met some very minimal criteria, they were included.

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‘Letterpad’ Game to Feature Apple Watch Support→

Jared Nelson, writing at TouchArcade:

A couple of weeks ago, NimbleBit announced that they were looking for testers for their new upcoming game called Letterpad. It’s a word game that gives you a grid of 9 letters and tasks you with coming up with words from those letters that relate to a certain topic. Well, the game is just about complete at this point, and today NimbleBit have additionally announced that Letterpad will be playable on the forthcoming Apple Watch. Here you can see a mockup of what Letterpad will look like on the Apple Watch.

A couple of points to keep in mind: this will actually be based on a WatchKit extension embedded inside the iPhone app. You won’t be able to run Letterpad natively on the Apple Watch initially. And, because there doesn’t seem to be a way for developers to monetize extensions in iOS apps, the Watch “game” will likely come for free in the main iPhone app. Still, I think the idea of iPhone games extending to the Watch is pretty cool (imagine having remote inventory for RPGs or glanceable information for simulator games on your wrist) and I’m excited to see how others will take advantage of WatchKit for gaming.

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Twitter Launches Tweet Recaps in Main Timeline→

After announcing (and rolling out) some initial changes to the timeline last year, Twitter is back today with the latest modification to the stream – a recap of popular tweets you may have missed.

A lot can happen while you’re on the go. To fill in some of those gaps, we will surface a few of the best Tweets you probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise, determined by engagement and other factors. If you check in on Twitter now and then for a quick snapshot of what’s happening, you’ll see this recap more often; if you spend a lot of time on Twitter already, you’ll see it less.

When Twitter started rolling out tweet recommendations based on accounts you follow, many complained about the fact that the change was breaking Twitter’s nature and making it more akin to Facebook, and therefore not intuitive. While I understand that position, I actually found the “tweet injections” to be not that terrible in practice:

Twitter is working on an instant personalized timeline that you don’t need to set up, but their willingness to bring discovery of tweets and users to the timeline is trickling down to existing users who have an account and already follow people. Like many others, I’ve started seeing tweets from accounts I don’t follow pop into my timeline based on what another person saves or follows. External tweets (as I call them) I’ve seen always came with a reason attached – “Joe favorited” and “Kyle follows” indicate why a tweet is being included in the timeline.

In my experience, these relevant tweets have been mostly good – I’d say 70% of the time I either laughed at a funny favorite I was being shown or got interested in opening the profile page of a user I didn’t know. The other 30% of external tweets were either American sports or duplicate tweets that I had already seen but that a person marked as favorite.

I don’t know if tweet recaps will be useful to someone who’s always reading his timeline (the only time when I miss tweets is usually at night). Twitter seems to be aware of the controversial nature of the change:

Our goal is to help you keep up – or catch up – with your world, no matter how much time you spend on Twitter. With a few improvements to the home timeline we think we can do a better job of delivering on that promise without compromising the real time nature of Twitter.

Apps like Nuzzel have shown that there’s potential in figuring out ways to let users catch up with news shared on Twitter, but Twitter’s feature appears to be much simpler, offering less controls. In theory, I think it’s a good idea. Most people still don’t get Twitter and how you’re supposed to keep up with news after you’ve closed the app. Offering small chunks of inline tweet recaps could help in letting relevant tweets surface more easily, but it’s too early to tell.

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Audio Hijack 3→

Jason Snell reviews Audio Hijack 3, the new version of Rogue Amoeba’s popular audio app for OS X:

Audio Hijack’s mastery of a Mac’s disparate audio inputs and outputs is amazing. OS X itself is pretty poor when it comes to this stuff—you can set a single input and output in the Sound preference pane, and some apps will let you override those settings to route audio elsewhere, but others won’t. If you’re trying to send some sound from some apps or microphones to one location, and others to another, it can all fall apart rather spectacularly. With Audio Hijack 3, it’s all there in blocks. You just need to drag them in and press the button.

I don’t use Audio Hijack, but this is exactly the kind of update that makes me want to try a new app because it sounds so incredible. You can create workflows to save inputs from multiple sources as separate audio files simultaneously and there’s a template chooser to start using the app based on common tasks. The whole idea of workflows – somewhat reminiscent of Quartz Composer and Alfred – seems amazing.

Make sure to check out the updated website and Jason’s interview with Paul Kafasis included in his review.

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Khan Academy Brings All Courses to iPad App→

Khan Academy – a personal favorite of mine when it comes to learning new things for free on the Internet in an engaging way – has brought its full catalog of exercises and videos to the iPad app, updated today.

Nathan Ingraham writes at The Verge:

That all changes today with the introduction of a completely redesigned app for the iPad — now, everything that lives on the site is also available to iPad users. That includes some 150,000 learning exercises, content that product director Matt Wahl said was “where the majority of people spend their time on Khan Academy today.” He also joked that looking at reviews for the current app revealed that adding those learning exercises was something that users really wanted — beyond just the app review, though Wahl says it is overall the most-requested feature for the app.

I’ve already started watching some Microeconomics videos in the app, and I like how everything is tracked in your profile and synced back to Khan Academy on the web. The app makes perfect sense on the iPad as a learning tool, and I can’t wait to start using it regularly. Khan Academy 2.0 is available on the App Store.

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The Shape of the App Store→

Charles Perry of Metakite Software spent some time digging through the Overcast sales and rankings data (provided by Marco Arment last week) and extrapolated some interesting findings about the distribution of App Store income:

At the top of the long tail, in position 871 on the U.S. Top Grossing list, an app still makes over $700 in revenue per day. That’s almost $260,000 per year. Even number 1,908 on the U.S. Top Grossing list makes over $100,000 per year. In fact all apps above number 3,175 on the U.S. Top Grossing list produce enough revenue to at least make its developer the United States household median income for 2014 ($53,891).

That’s the good news, because the bad news is that there are well over a million apps for sale and the earnings quickly fall as you go down the rankings. But Perry also makes the important point that many indie developers have multiple apps for sale simultaneously which can make a big difference.

So, with even fewer people than I expected making “yacht and helicopter money” in the App Store, I remain hopeful for my fellow developers. There’s a lot money circulating in the ecosystem, and a developer operating at indie scale only needs a little bit of it. It seems that even with the revenue curve tilted so heavily towards the big hits, the shape of the App Store still allows room for sustainable businesses to develop in the long tail. It seems that developers who work hard, mind the details, and treat their business like a business have a real chance of making it.

Keep in mind that Perry’s conclusions are extrapolated from just the one data source, being Overcast. I’d be interested to see if the sales and rankings patterns from other apps fit along Perry’s curve.

[via Hosam Hassan]

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Automatic: Your Smart Driving Assistant on Your Smartphone [Sponsor]

There’s a mountain of data inside your car waiting to be unleashed, and all you have to do is plug in a quick little connector and download a mobile application.

Automatic is a smart driving assistant that plugs into your car’s data port and lets you connect your smartphone (either iPhone or Android) with your car. By  talking to your car’s onboard computer and using your smartphone’s GPS and data plan to upgrade your car’s capabilities, Automatic will allow you to easily diagnose your engine light, never forget where you parked your car, and save hundreds of dollars on gas.

Automatic learns your driving habits and gives you suggestions through subtle audio cues to drive smarter and stop wasting gas. Thanks to a map view available on your phone, Automatic can display a trip timeline after every driving session, showing you how you’re doing with a Drive Score; the app can even track local gas prices and tell you how much you’re spending.

In case of engine problems, Automatic can decipher what the “check engine” light means and show you a description of the issue with a possible solution. And thanks to a feature called Crash Alert, Automatic can detect many types of serious crashes and automatically alert local authorities as well as your loved ones when you can’t.

Automatic is currently available in the US for iPhone and Android devices, with a 45-day return policy and free shipping in 2 business days.

MacStories readers can go to automatic.com/macstories to get $20 off and buy Automatic at just $79.99. For more information, check out Automatic’s website.

Our thanks to Automatic for sponsoring MacStories this week.