MyAppleMenu

The Repsectful-Balance Edition Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Monetizing While Staying The “Good Guys”: The Tao Of Red Herring, by Erica Sadun

Between its respectful balance of free-and-paid elements, and its commitment to ensuring high-quality puzzles, Blue Ox has evolved from a one-man effort to nearly a dozen employees servicing a core family of applications. If you’re starting your own games business, there are a lot worse business models you could follow and few that get it right more than this.

War Stories: What It’s Really Like Working On AAA Games At Ubisoft, by Maxime Beaudoin, BackChannel

I was never as happy at Ubisoft as during those two projects. I worked with very talented and motivated individuals. Because of the smaller team sizes, I had my say on the creative side of things. This was a nice change — being more of a technical guy, I could never do that before. And I absolutely loved it. When you work on a small project, your contribution is huge. So is your ownership. And your motivation.

One of my former colleagues nailed it when he said that I tasted the forbidden fruit. Once you’ve have that feeling, you can never go back.

Stuff

Apple Stores Now Offering Belkin Screen Protector Application, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

As of today, Apple Stores across the United States and around the world are offering a new system that allows Apple Store employees to apply Belkin-branded screen protectors for iPhone 6, 6s, 6 Plus, and 6s Plus customers.

iCloud Photo Library Requires Copying Images To The Photos For OS X App, by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

Photos lets you reference images as well as duplicating them into its library, but it won't upload them to iCloud.

Finding A Replacement For Free iTunes Radio, by J. D. Biersdorfer, New York Times

Withings' New Hy-Result In-app Software Could Replace Your Physician, by Joe White, AppAdvice

In order to make its assessments, Hy-Result “combines blood pressure data with information about the individual user to determine interventions that will best deliver results.” This begins with simple questions based on the user’s medical history, and continues with Health Mate’s request to take six blood pressure readings over a five-day period using either the Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor or through inputting the data manually.

1Password 6 For Mac Review: Enterprise Features And Lots Of Small Improvements, by Marco Tabini, Macworld

While 1Password remains my favorite digital vault, I must say that the product is falling behind its competitors in some aspects; for example, several other password managers now support the ability to automatically change passwords on many popular sites—something that can greatly increase security by reducing the effort it takes to keep all your logins fresh and cryptographically sound, and that is not yet possible with AgileBits’s app.

Its great feature set, longevity, and ability to rely on multiple synchronization services, however, still make this app one of the very best of its kind. Here’s to hoping that, now that the folks at Agile Bits have had an opportunity to complete their work on its enterprise features, they will once more turn to improvements that have a more direct impact on helping users get a handle on their digital lives.

Adobe Bridge CC 6.2 Brings New Speed And Features, by Michael Zhang, PetaPixel

CloudMagic Is A Great Cross-platform Email App, by Mihăiță Bamburic, BetaNews

Sonos To Officially Launch Apple Music Support On Feb. 10, by Dan Thorp-Lancaster, iMore

Notes

Apple Should Not Be Too Excited Over India, by James Crabtree, Financial Times

The trickiest dilemma Apple faces in India, in common with other potentially lucrative frontier markets such as Indonesia, is far simpler: price.

Microsoft Officially Acquires Zikera’s Groove App For iOS, by Mark Coppock, WinBeat

When Microsoft rebranded the Xbox Music service to Groove Music, some people thought that perhaps the Redmond company had purchased Groove, an iOS music player that specialized in intelligent music discovery. At the time, no such acquisition was in the works. However, it looks like everything has come full-circle, as Microsoft is indeed acquiring Groove.

Bottom of the Page

I am using an iPhone 6. There are days when I feel that the screen size is just right, and days when I feel that the screen size is too large, but never days when I feel that the screen size is too small.

What this means, I believe, is that if Apple does come up with a state-of-the-art iPhone with a smaller screen, I will seriously consider switching to a smaller size. Either that, or I will have many days where I can't make up my mind on which phone to upgrade to.

~

Thanks for reading.