iOS Archives - Sam Harrelson

New iPhones Get 5 Year Support

Now add in right-to-repair principles and more ethical mineral procurement (for batteries etc compared to the current terrible conditions and practices) and I’ll be happy!

Apple will update iPhones for at least 5 years in rare public commitment | Ars Technica:

Apple has taken a rare step and publicly committed to a software support timeline for one of its products, as pointed out by MacRumors. A public regulatory filing for the iPhone 15 Pro (PDF) confirms that Apple will support the device with new software updates for at least five years from its “first supply date” of September 22, 2023, which would guarantee support until at least 2028.

Thinking About Screentime

I’ve become much more of a book person as I’ve gotten older. Also, notebooks. That would seem quizzical to my younger self that reveled in every new productivity and reading app released on iOS or Android as I combed through blogs, subreddits, and Twitter lists, looking for the latest and greatest note-taking app.

Alas, getting old is interesting.

Screentime is definitely something that’s been on the front of my mind for the last few decades as I’ve welcomed children into this world (including Lily as of August 1!) and young people ranging from 12 to 18 into my classrooms.

I plan to read this book, so I’m using this as a space-saver for myself to return to when I’m done (and in the middle of the school year).

Screentime is a fascinating cultural concept. The amount of “screentime” we actually consume is lower than it’s ever been (no, really). But is the measurement of “time” really what we should be focused on or worried about?

Regardless, my students will still have their devices in the “off” mode, and we’ll focus on the great ideas with our brains, pen/cil, paper, and each other’s voices like we’ll continue to not have devices on during dinners or downstairs time here in our home…

A Different Way to Think About Screentime:

Parents have a hard time when they don’t know something. I’ve written this elsewhere, but I think one of the basic things that underlies a lot of the book bannings and pronoun panics from parent-activists on the far-right is the very simple fact that parents don’t know what their kids do all day. My daughter Maeve is 7, and I volunteered this spring to help with a field trip for her first-grade class. The bus was late, and so I ended up just sitting in her classroom for about 45 minutes while the day went on as usual. Maeve is very talkative, and she loves telling us stories about her day, but it wasn’t until I sat in that classroom that I realized how little I actually knew about what the ordinary beats of that day were like, what the social dynamics were, what kind of job her wonderful teacher — hello, Mr. Diego Fernandez — is tasked with doing.

On Notes and Note-Taking Apps

I’ve long been a fan of note-taking apps going back to my beloved Evernote in its early beta days of 2007 or so (I still have the t-shirt). I’ve used most every iOS and a slew of Android note-taking apps as well. All have the same promise that I’m looking to fulfill… a place to store things I come across that I don’t want to lose.

We need to forget. But we need to forget safely. That’s why we use note-taking apps.

I recently rediscovered my love of note cards and Zettelkasten while diving into the wonderful app Obsidian. I’ve long used notecards to process good thoughts, bad thoughts, interesting thoughts, and things I need to remember (or forget). I have a huge storage box of them. Somewhere along the way, I let that practice go in favor of more digital means of keeping notes.

But here we are in 2023 and I’m in love with notecards again.

This comment hit home…

Notes apps are where ideas go to die (2022) | Hacker News:

Writing is part of the creative process.

Writing it down helps to solidify an idea into the heap from the stack, maybe even take it from hot storage to cold storage. It allows you to jot it down while it is still fresh and offload it to focus on it later. This is super helpful in ideas, jokes, thought streams, todos, one pagers on some projects, etc. It does help you remember but also allows you to move to the next thing for now.

Writing down ideas is like a sketchbook, ideas/actions/iteration of thoughts both good and bad. It is important to write thoughts down though because how many times have you had a great idea and you are like “I’ll never forget this” and then a while later you are wondering what that was or you entirely move on because life moves fast.

Creatives, writers, comedians, developers, or just projects, are better when writing is involved in ideas to realization of those ideas.

Writing it down and notes is a form of brainstorming. Brainstorming allows ideas to be spontaneous and allows improvisation to get to better ideas. Even writing down bad ideas because somewhere in it is something good.

I use notes apps but more now just a repo (super easy with github.dev everywhere) and notes have easy history that way and you can freely add/remove without feeling like notes are lost. When I use notes apps or even Google Docs, yes they have history but it isn’t as fluid/quick as github for that. The important thing is find something that works for you that makes the barrier to writing it down almost non-existent. It needs to be very easy to write things down in between busy days and to capture these fleeting moments.

via drawkbox on Hacker News

Apple Shutting Down ‘Dark Sky’

I’m going to miss Dark Sky. It was one of those important iOS apps that made a generation of early adopters into lifelong users.

As a reminder, Apple says it will be shutting down Dark Sky on January 1, 2023. The popular weather app was already removed from the App Store in September and it will stop functioning for existing users starting tomorrow.

5 Years of Apple Watch

Wow, seems like yesterday… can’t believe it’s been five years.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Apple Watch launching on April 24, 2015.

Source: Looking Back on Five Years of Apple Watch – MacRumors

Putting the Days to Bed (My Paper Notebooks)

If you’ve met me IRL, you’ve probably noticed I have a notebook either in my shirt pocket or in my hand (or a stack of index cards tucked away somewhere). All of them make awkward appearances when I hear a good quote, someone has a question I need to look up, if I was trying to record a student’s robot time trials, or if the spirit moved me.

I’ve long been a doodler since my time in Mrs. Hinson’s 3rd Grade class where we learned that sketching helped with creativity (I might have made that up… but it stuck). When I got to Wofford College, my mentor Larry McGehee kept that alive by talking about his doodling process during staff meetings and other such nonsense. That was inspiring to me at the time, but his tips and tricks on the doodling life hack helped me survive countless staff meetings as a teacher myself as well as Board meetings and team meetings and all the meetings we have to go to when we decide to throw ourselves into grown-up world.

I’m at the point in my life now where I don’t have to attend so many mandatory meetings and for that gift I feel blessed (looking back, I do feel some regret for how immature/bored/inattentive/distracting I was during teacher staff meetings… I’m sorry Dear Administrators, but I do feel that I added spice to our gatherings by throwing out bombs to get everyone riled up and awake such as whether cursive was really necessary in Middle School). But with that gift comes a clear place of loss in my creative process. I have to make time to doodle now. It’s weird how you spend years thinking “Oh great, another meeting… it’s Doodling Time!” and then you find yourself secretly giddy because you know you’ll have 4 extra minutes to sneak in some surreptitious doodling while your toddler finishes their breakfast. But here I am.

So I’ve been thinking a good deal about my paper notebooks and my doodling and my journaling and all those Instagram posts that I heart on a daily basis displaying some young person’s admirable bullet journal or Panda Diary or a Mom’s Moleskine Menagerie (wow, that’s a great name… Moleskine can run with it… I’m just the idea guy). I’ve spent too many hours thinking over this issue and watching YouTube videos comparing GoodNotes and Notability on the iPad Pro while jogging off the extra weight I gained sitting in meetings and doodling and reading blog posts that compare paper journaling to “digital” journaling.

The issue is complicated by the fact that I’m typing this on an iPad and I do love this form factor and device. The iPad Pro really has become my main computer when I’m not chained to a laptop working on a piece of code or having to review artwork in Adobe Illustrator for a brand client (but the iPad is getting there!). I’ve always been the “digital” guy or “techy teacher” or the preacher that preaches with an iPad (I’ve also preached from a Blackberry, a Palm T5 (loved that thing), and a Palm m100 over the years), or the consultant who has all the fun tech toys. So when I show up with a paper notebook, it’s a little jarring to some people and frequently leads to a conversation about my note booking style or journaling preferences or the types of pens I prefer. I’ve bonded with many clients over the benefits of a Pilot G2 Extra Fine 0.5mm refill cartridge compared to the competition.

But year after year I go back to my paper notebooks when it’s time to put the days to bed on another year. This year is going to be no different it seems. I’m an old man stuck in his ways, what can I say? “I’ve got my drip pan, ready for my nap” as Lightning McQueen says at the ends of Cars 3 (again, I have a toddler). But there is magic in opening a new journal and getting ready for the year while looking back at all the collected thoughts, doodles, dreams, failures, completions, incompletions, interceptions, and incantations from the previous trip around our closest star. It’s really magical in a self-serving and privileged way to pull down a notebook from ten or fifteen years ago and do the same. There is probably some magic in doing the same with a backup file in Dropbox of a PDF exported from GoodNotes in 2013, but magic, like notebook and pen preferences, is subjective.

So my prayer for me and for you in 2019 is… Blow up your tv, throw away your Twitter, go to the country, find you a home, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own… and do some doodling.

The Apps You Should Really Be Concerned About with Your Privacy

After examining maps showing the locations extracted by their apps, Ms. Lee, the nurse, and Ms. Magrin, the teacher, immediately limited what data those apps could get. Ms. Lee said she told the other operating-room nurses to do the same.“I went through all their phones and just told them: ‘You have to turn this off. You have to delete this,’” Ms. Lee said. “Nobody knew.”

Source: Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret – The New York Times

Everyone is afraid of what Google and Facebook “know” about them and how much information they’re sharing with these services because of poor media coverage.

While those two services need to be investigated and questioned, it’s the “bottom half” of the advertising industry connected to seemingly innocent apps that you install on your mobile device to give you the weather or locations of gas or local sports scores that are really the most alarming in how they treat your personal location data.

Good report here by the NY Times (we need more of this type of journalism in the tech-sphere).

Welcome back, serifs

I’m a font nerd. I’m constantly working with (and sometimes against) clients who want a particular “look” for their website or app or presentation and trying to push them to look ahead. One of those conversations typically has to do with fonts.

One client I didn’t have to fight with was Guy Sayles. His new site is one of my favorite designs I’ve done in a long while. Part of that has to do with the font Adamina that was used for headlines. It’s whimsical and full of motion but also conveys wisdom and experience. It reminded me a great deal of Guy’s personality, so I had to use it. I think it looks just beautiful on the new From The Intersection site, and I’m glad he trusted my push to use a serif font for the design. We just launched the redesign this week.

The “design world” has been quickly re-adopting serif fonts for ads, apps, and websites over the last couple of years after they were mostly maligned in the early to mid 2010’s. However, as “mid-century modern” has come back into vogue stylistically for furniture and dress, we’re seeing the resurgence of serifs.

I installed iOS 12 betas on my iPhone and iPad this week for testing, and low-and-behold there are serifs! Apple is famous for its attention to detail and its use of Helvetica and then its own San Francisco font. Apple lead the way on San-serif fonts (such as the body text here), so it’s wonderful to see the serifs returning to apps like the renamed Apple Books (formerly iBooks), which makes sense. Apple has even created a new font titled “SF Serif” to mark the occasion.

So, keep in mind that even though you might think you know what “modern” is, there’s always a corner to turn. Find a good guide. And never ever use Comic Sans or Impact. For anything.

A few images from my Apple Books collection showing the new font:

iOS 11.4 with Messages in iCloud

Lots of good updates today for your iPhone and iPad, but Messages in iCloud is definitely something I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced last year. Better late than never.

Messages in iCloud is also now available as part of iOS 11.4. This feature lets you keep messages across devices in sync sort of like modern email. If you delete a message on one device, it will go away on all your devices. And if you set up a new device from scratch, your messages will appear without needing to do a full restore from an iCloud backup.

— Read on 9to5mac.com/2018/05/29/ios-11-4-airplay-2-homepod-stereo-messages-icloud/

10 most downloaded iPhone apps in the world

It might be surprising to Americans, but neither Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube is the most downloaded app on the iPhone anymore. As we continue to move into the 21st Century, we’re seeing the rise of Chinese apps and companies. This will only escalate in the coming years, especially as the US seems more preoccupied with tribalistic policies.

“Known as Douyin in China, Tik Tok is a music video and social media app. The app lets you shoot and edit short clips, then add music and special effects to them. Tik Tok is owned by the same parent company that bought social video app Musical.ly for $1 billion last year”

Facebook-owned apps dominated the App Store charts during the first three months of the year, but a Chinese-made music video app called Tik Tok took first place – Business Insider

Why doesn’t turning off Bluetooth on iOS actually turn off Bluetooth?

Another reason I tend to prefer Android is the ability to control things on a granular level. Does every user of a mobile device need that? Certainly not. Is Apple “wrong” for this “feature” design? That’s debatable.

But it’s interesting to see how Android and iOS continue to develop along their own trajectories when it comes to designing software for the Lowest Common Denominator of users…

Users can still completely turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi by digging into the devices menu settings, but essentially the button does not do what a user can reasonably assume Apple says it does, and that’s because Apple doesn’t trust you. This decision is the next logical step for what has always been Apple’s design ethos: It thinks it knows what you want more than you do.

via Apple Doesn’t Trust You – Motherboard

Apple fires back against Spotify

“We find it troubling that you are asking for exemptions to the rules we apply to all developers, and are publicly resorting to rumors and half-truths about our service,” it reads. “Spotify’s app was again [i.e. after being resubmitted on June 10] rejected for attempting to circumvent in-app purchase rules, and not, as you claim, because Spotify was simply seeking to communicate with its customers.”

Source: Apple returns fire on Spotify, calling out ‘rumors and half-truths’ over App Store rejection | TechCrunch

Ouch.

Spotify and Apple at odds

Spotify declined to comment; Apple hasn’t responded to request for comment.

For the past year, Spotify has argued publicly, and to various regulators in the U.S. and Europe, that Apple’s subscription policies effectively punish third-party music services that use Apple’s platform, while boosting Apple Music, the home-grown service it launched in June 2015.

Source: Spotify says Apple won’t approve a new version of its app because it doesn’t want competition for Apple Music – Recode

Well, this is not going to end well.

Thoughts on Evernote’s price hike

Evernote has been one of the leading note-taking services for some time, with clients for the Web and every major OS. The company recently announced sweeping changes to its “freemium” pricing strategy, which puts a big limit on the “free” tier and raises prices across the board for new and existing users.

Source: Evernote limits free tier to two devices, raises prices 40%

I’ve been an Evernote user since March 28, 2008 (got in before it launched in beta in June 2008) and immediately signed up for their Premium option when it opened up.

I was eager to support the app / service early on, because I saw the utility of being able to access my notes and create new ones from whatever device I happened to be on. That was already possible with the early iterations of services like Google Docs that had previously been Writely, but Evernote felt “new” in the sense that it was post-iPhone and looked ahead to a world where apps became the driving force of interaction, especially on mobile (after Steve Jobs relented on allowing apps to be installed and an app store for the iPhone).

Over the years, Evernote became more things to more people than just a note taking app. There were checklists, and document syncing, and PDF OCR, and business card storage. As a result, there were more and more calls for Evernote to get back to its roots and avoid bloat. I know I suffered through some of the “bloat” in 2011 and 2012 when Evernote seemed to really take off and started acquiring smaller and focused apps such as Penultimate, Skitch (still one of my favorites), Readable etc to round out their offerings. Then, there were the partnerships with the “offline” world such as Moleskine and Post-It Notes. We even saw an Evernote branded line of coffee mugs, backpacks, and lifestyle gear.

It was all too much.

I welcome this new period in Evernote’s story. I’m hoping they do “slim down” to some extent and even focus more on things like the current web version’s Google Drive integration (rather than being a document storage platform themselves). I’ve always thought of Evernote as more of an “Operations HQ” that ties into other apps I use like Trello or 1Writer on the iPad than a place to store all of my documents, pictures, and files.

I use Evernote everyday, and more so now that I’m trying to use iPad Pro as my main computer. It serves as my note repository, the place where I put PDF’s that I need for OCR, and a quasi-database of ideas for clients and research. It’s indespinsible to me, and I’m not sure how something “free” like OneNote or Google Keep could replicate that. I’m hopeful they continue to push forward on the excellent web version as well (and that doesn’t affect free members, which is a nice incentive for people to give it a try).

It’s painful when anything “goes up” in price. But the economic reality is that costs go up as we demand more from services and companies compete for skilled developers. Evernote did see the loss of a number of devs over the last few years, but I’m hopeful they’ll get their mojo back.

So, sign me up for another year of Premium.

Be careful with Emoji on different platforms 😁

Just seeing the difference in emoji presentations is revelatory in itself. But then it gets even more interesting. GroupLens researchers asked subjects to rate 22 anthropomorphic emoji from five platforms by sentiment, using a scale that ranged from strongly negative (-5) to strongly positive (5). And here’s where you start to see where “grinning face with smiling eyes” goes so very wrong. Apple’s average sentiment ranking was almost -1, while Microsoft, Samsung, LG, and Google all were 3 or above.

Source: That Emoji Does Not Mean What You Think It Means

My wife (and almost all of my close friends that I’d use emoji with) is an iOS user and I’m an Android user… that’s led to a few miscommunications before we realized that the emoji we were sending “cross-platform” didn’t carry the same intended meaning.

Perhaps that’s one of the beautiful aspects of emoji and symbolic language additions… the meanings are left to the receiver to first decrypt and then to import meaning into based on their own background, experiences, culture (and operating system).

Peak iPhone

Too Many iPhones

From earlier today before Apple’s Q1 Earnings call:

“When CEO Tim Cook reports Tuesday on Apple’s sales for the last three months of 2015, investors will be watching closely for any hints about how Apple’s signature smartphone is faring in the current quarter. Sales usually fall somewhat after the holiday shopping season. But analysts say it appears Apple has cut production orders from key suppliers in recent weeks, suggesting it’s lowered its own forecasts.”

Source: Is Apple Reaching Peak iPhone? | CBS

And from just now after the earnings call regarding the upcoming Q2 2016:

… The company expects to report between $50 and $53 billion in revenue. That would put it below the $58 billion it reported in Q2 2015 and would mark the first year over year decline in revenue for the company in years.The slight decrease can likely be attributed to falling iPhone sales, which have been predicted for some time now. In Q1, Apple reported sales of 74.7 million iPhones, which is just barely better than the 74.5 million it did in the same quarter last year. Apple did not say how many it expects to sell in Q2, but analysts have predicted declines as high as 25 percent.

Source: Have we reached peak iPhone? It’s complicated | The Verge

Apple sold an average of 34,000 phones per hour for 13 consecutive weeks. That’s incredible, but unsustainable, growth. If anything, Wall Street loves growth. With China’s economy on a rapid downturn and the U.S. economy weak due to a number of variables that could lead us into a potentially havoc Spring, Summer, and Fall, Apple is wisely hedging its bets on production. That’s especially wise since carrier subsidies for new devices are now non-existent in the U.S. and each new iteration of the iPhone undergoes a “meh, it’s not that different from my old one” period with potential upgrading users.

If nothing else, we’ve learned today that the media loves using the term “Peak iPhone” (give the term a google if you’d like to see).

Apple’s iOS Home Screen Problem

I flip back-and-forth between iOS and Android, mostly iPhone 6s Plus and a Nexus device, all the time and enjoy both operating systems (though I do enjoy Android more to be honest… much to the chagrin of my family and friends who all use iMessage on iOS and therefore I’m a “green bubble” when on my Nexus device).

However, I’m always curious as to why iOS users who transition or experiment with Android feel the compulsion to stack their home screens full of app icons.

Not that it’s a cumbersome way to navigate your mobile device (I think it is), but it’s a curious hold-over from the vision Steve Jobs and his devs had for the original iPhone in ’07. I’d wager that even he would think it’s time to move past that convention in 2016 (something which you can easily do on Android, but not so much on the aging iOS interface). Maybe Apple in the Cook Era is too deep in the institutional molasses.

Whenever someone wants to play with one of my Android devices who has previously been an iPhone and iPad only user for the last several years, they almost always respond positively and immediately to the widgets on my home screen.

“I like widgets a lot, and wish iOS had something similar.”

Source: A Week With Android — Medium

I do wonder how the masses will respond when / if Apple ever adopts widgets… the “rows and rows of apps” conventions has been successfully turned into a standard way of interacting with mobile devices here in the US.

However, that’s not the case in the Asian markets where Apple really wants to expand in the coming years as it has reached a relative saturation point in North America with devices. Apple is slowly sneaking widgets in via the Notifications shade, but I’m not sure how many users actually know / use / understand that interface.

Of course, I was totally wrong in 2007 about widgets and the iPhone, so what do I know?

Maybe the fear of being a “green bubble” will be enough to keep users on iOS, at least here in the US.

And don’t get me started on how / why the iPad Pro still uses the same “rows of app icons” convention…

Why Are Most Apps Free?

Interesting…

The History of App Pricing, And Why Most Apps Are Free: “Each time we download an app, we reveal a little bit about ourselves. A glance at the apps on your phone can indicate whether you are a fan of sports, gaming, or public radio, and whether you love to hike or cook or travel. But our choices of apps also reveal our individual tolerance for advertising, and how we feel about the trade-off between paying for content directly, or paying indirectly by (implicitly) agreeing to view ads.”

Evernote 5.4 Adds Skitch Support

Evernote is one of those apps I’ve always had an on-and-off relationship with. I’ve used it and quit it more times than I can count, but now that version 5.4 for iOS adds Skitch support, I’ll be using it a whole lot more for annotating images I use here and various other places (client work, etc)…

Neat. I don’t know what I’d do without Skitch on my MacBook and I use it from time to time on the iPhone to annotate screenshots there as well.

Evernote for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store: “Evernote is an easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity. Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders–and makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, at work, or on the go. ”

OmniFocus for iPhone Adds Background Syncing

One of my favorite (and indispensable catch-all) apps added background syncing today. Yes, I know that’s not a big deal to most people, but it’s insanely useful because it means I can set up various locations (such as my house) where OmniFocus will automatically sync my to-do items upon leaving. Nifty if you’re like me and forget to sync from time to time and wonder why you’re not getting “Due” alerts, etc (or maybe I’ve been doing it wrong?).

Nonetheless, OmniFocus is one of those apps that has a learning curve (and it’s not for everyone), but once you get it to work your way, it becomes a necessity. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy, but it’s well worth it if you’re ready to get serious about getting things done…

OmniFocus for iPhone for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store: “OmniFocus for iPhone brings task management to your fingertips. Keep track of tasks by project, place, person, or date. With OmniFocus for iPhone, you’ll always have your important information at hand, whether it’s a shopping list, agenda items to discuss at work, things to do at home—whatever you need.”

Sign of the times, I guess.

Original link via MacStories.

IFTTT Comes To iOS

This is huge:

MacStories: IFTTT for iPhone: A Different Kind of iOS Automation: “IFTTT brings a different kind of automation to iOS that doesn’t need URL schemes or bookmarklets, but that instead looks into native pieces of data to connect services together. It’s an innovative approach to monitoring photos, contacts, and reminders that are added or modified on an iPhone, but it should be familiar to users who already rely on IFTTT for their daily web automation tasks.”

After I hooked the service up to various services (WordPress blog, Pinboard, Instagram, et al) last week, I’ve once again fell in love with the idea of automating a few things that I do on the web. It’s a little nerdy and has a learning curve until you get things just the way you want them, but this service is hugely useful for both affiliates and publishers. I like it because it’s an easy way to bring things onto my self-hosted WordPress site (which I’m trying to make my home base for everything) without having much fuss about it because IFTTT works quietly in the background as long as everything is set up right and working.

Now that IFTTT is on iOS as well, there’s so even more potential with iOS7’s new background tracking for apps. The native features that you can use in the iOS app with Photos, Contacts, and Reminders aren’t much to shout about (yet), but the web recipes you can use are immensely powerful. I rely on IFTTT to do a lot of heavy lifting for me in the background and have it plugged in with various channels such as Pinboard, Instagram, foursquare, WordPress, a few RSS feeds, and even SMS. I’m kicking myself for not using the service more earlier because it’s added so many new channels and features in the past year.

Whether you’re an affiliate, a publisher, or just want a web service that does things in the background for you (e.g. back up your Instagram photos to Dropbox, text you the weather every morning, or really just about anything else), go try IFTTT. You’re missing out if you’re not using this service.

Here’s my recipes, btw:

IFTTT / devintonhaeuser’s Shared Recipes

GMail 2.0 and The Decision to Leave iOS?

We’re big fans of Google Apps for Enterprise and use the service for our email, docs, calendaring, telephony (via Google Voice’s integration with Sprint), analytics, feed reading and even backups with Google Drive.

So, we were excited to hear about the new GMail app for our main computing devices these days, the iPhone:

The Gmail app for iPhone and iPad: version 2.0 | Official Gmail Blog: “Six months ago, our team set out to completely rebuild the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad to give you you a faster, sleeker, and easier experience on iOS. The result? Version 2.0. With version 2.0 of the app, you’ll get a totally new look and feel, plus a bunch of improvements like profile pictures in messages, numerous new animations from swivels to transitions and infinite scrolling in the message lists.”

Between the new GMail app and the revised Google search app with its nifty and better-than-Siri response time and quality, we’ve had many internal conversations about whether it’s time to think about Android as a platform.

The iPhone and iPad make for great “Google” computers when paired with the stream of quality apps coming out of Mountain View. Mission critical apps such as Google Analytics are available to us via third party iOS apps like Analytics Pro. Our enduring reliance on RSS for alerts, status messages and a news stream is satiated with Google Reader’s plug into the Reeder app.

However, are we missing anything as a company by not being on the newest flavor of Android? While it’s getting mixed reviews, the Nexus 4 and its installation of 4.2 Jelly Bean looks pretty interesting.

While we go back and forth with this almost-religious decision, we’re constantly developing new apps for both iOS and Android (as well as the open web with HTML 5) and noticing new things popping up in both that point to exciting futures for developers and users on both platforms.

At the moment, in comparison to Android (and I hate to admit it), iOS (especially critical apps like Mail) seems… stale and even clunky.

So… what to do?

Analytics, APIs and Mobiles

We’ve been experimenting with Keen’s API-as-analytics platform (simply drop some code into your existing code) on a few of the apps we’re building for clients and have been mightily impressed so far…

Keen IO – Analytics APIs: “So many of the devices we use everyday are internet connected and could certainly benefit from great user analytics. And we want to be a part of it all. But, in the short-term, we’re spending our time on where we think we can make the biggest impact – mobile. We’ve got SDKs for iOS, Android, JavaScript, and Ruby ready for you today. Python and Windows Mobile are in the queue and coming soon.”

If you’re doing anything with iOS or Android (we haven’t ventured in Windows Mobile development), we can’t recommend poking around Keen enough. It’s not for everyone and doesn’t offer all the options of a custom solution, but definitely does the job if you need to tackle larger windmills in your app development.

Should You Develop iOS or Android Apps?

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is more complicated depending on your audience and where/how you need to be discovered…

iOS Devices Have Been Dominating Mobile Web Traffic For The Past 6 Months [Report] | Cult of Mac: “Android technically sells more smartphones than Apple, but iOS devices continue to dominate mobile web traffic. Chitika Insights has been tracking web traffic on the top mobile platforms, and iOS commands 67% of usage and Android only 33%.”

We generally start clients with iOS and web apps but don’t shy away from Android if the market is there.

Revenge of the Podcast on iOS6?

I, for one, love the sound of this…

Starting In iOS 6, Apple Might Introduce Paid Podcast Subscriptions | Cult of Mac: “With iOS 6 this may all change. The new Podcasts app that Apple has released today contains a strange ‘Redeem’ button, similar to that found in the iTunes and App Stores, present only on devices running iOS 6. Currently, this makes no sense. All iTunes podcasts are free, and don’t require any sort of payment method. The presence of this button in iOS 6 could, however, point to a paid subscription model for podcasts starting with the release of the operating system in fall.”

I’ve downloaded the app on my test iPhone running the iOS6 beta and I’m very happy to say the least. Fantastic app and if these rumors are true, it could mean very big things for the world of performance marketing podcasts.