The tyranny of two screens.

I have this habit that I've developed. On both of my iOS screens (iPhone and iPad) I try, whenever possible, to have all the same apps and icons in the same places. The reason I do this is because in thinking about it, I like the idea that no matter where I am, and on either device, I always have a quick mental map of where apps are located and the stuff I want is always where I expect it to be. It's sort of interesting to go between the devices quickly and it certainly seems to work pretty well when I'm using my devices in tandem.

However, the truth is that I don't really use the devices the same way. I have certain apps on my home screen on the phone that make no sense on the iPad. Like Messages, for instance. Used constantly on the phone, almost never on the iPad. Because the whole 'get your messages wherever you are' thing only works if everyone sends messages to your email address. And uses iOS. And not everyone does, and the years-long habit of using phone numbers to message people is not going away, no matter how much Apple wills it.

So I find myself using my iPhone intensely for a few days, then reaching for my iPad after a period of not using it, to find everything needs to be rearranged. And because I have mental problems, I often feel the need to do this before I do anything else because I've been looking at things the other (new) way so much on the phone that it doesn't feel right the way it is now on the iPad.

I start to wonder about just setting up apps completely differently on both devices, as I did when I first got the iPad, the way most people probably do. Is it more valuable to have the perceived speed gain from mirroring the app layout in both places, or should my specific use for each device dictate how apps are arranged? Does anyone else ever think about this or should I just start looking for a decent therapist now instead of waiting?

Maybe I'll just move them around.

Jim Dalrymple, guiding light.

Dan: "So... there are people out there... who're suing Apple, because they couldn't replicate the 'Rock God' commercial."

Jim: "Yep."

Dan (incredulously): "I mean-what is that? Really?"

Jim: "They should just be punched in the face."

from Amplified Episode 7, "If It Says Stomp, I Stomp"

Adding "value".

Instacast released its 2.0 update yesterday to some Twitter fanfare. As a regular user of the app, I updated immediately. Now, to be clear, I don't love Instacast. In fact, I have lots of personal issues with it. But as a regular listener of podcasts, it sucked the least of all the apps I've tried, and I've tried many. I wish so much that Apple would add even the most basic subscription support for podcasts to iOS within the native music app, but they haven't, and it doesn't look like they will any time soon.

What I found after updating was an interface that remained just as abstruse as the initial one, with the "added value" of reduced functionality. Most notably, the default behavior for podcasts downloaded within the app was altered. The original behavior of the app was that when podcasts were downloaded, they would stack up in a list, from oldest at the top to newest at the bottom. Now that order is reversed, to list the newest at the top. Which fundamentally changes the only way I listen to shows.

For a $1.99 in-app purchase, it appears that I could add functionality that would allow me to edit this playlist, and (I assume) change the order to something more palatable. I'm assuming this because I'm not going to make that purchase. And believe me, it's not because I'm cheap. I buy tons of apps. I buy apps I don't even plan on really using if I want to support the developer, because I believe in doing things like that. I won't be adding that in-app purchase for two reasons:

1) because I don't like paying again for what I was getting as a previous paying customer

and more importantly

2) because I have a hard time supporting something I don't even really enjoy.

Instacast was originally a purchased app, not a free one. I understand completely if the developer of a free app wants to monetize through in-app purchase, but having paid for the app initially, and not expecting anything more than the basic continued functionality I was experiencing, to be forced to use the app differently is annoying, but then being told that I can use it the way I was using it if I pony up a few more bucks is really annoying. I'm not talking about adding new abilities or allowing some additional features. I'm talking about simply making it work the way it was previously working, one day earlier.

Furthermore, as I said, I don't really love this app. And I know I might be in the minority, but I paid for and used the iPad app too, and I don't like it either. Both UIs are needlessly complex, and expose inconsistencies throughout. The iPad app is almost unusable in my opinion because between the arcane controls and the spotty iCloud integration, I can never tell what's actually happening within the app, and as such, I just stopped using it. I know a lot of people who wrote great things about it when it launched, and it was pretty as all get-out, but I'd be curious to know how many people are still actually listening to podcasts on their iPad at this point with it.

Listen, despite how this all came off and how my cranky tweets read, I don't hate this app, nor do I hate the developers, their families or their pets. I just really believe very strongly that if you're going to refine a UI, then really refine it. Don't add things that seem like new controls yet obfuscate purpose. Don't take gestures that were slightly difficult to discover but very useful and replace them with even more confusing options. If you have an overcomplicated hierarchy, make it simpler. And for the love of all things holy, don't up-end the way people (especially previous paying customers) use the app and then tell them they can buy "great new features" in order to restore the basic way they'd been using the app to begin with.

I'm fully aware that these choices were most likely not arbitrary, and actually based on feedback. They represent a conscious choice on the part of the designers and developers to respond to feedback and provide what they feel is an improvement to the existing model. Choices are hard. I get it. The craziest part of all of this? Instacast is still, after all of this, significantly cleaner and easier to use than almost every single other podcast app in the App Store. Don't even get me started on the other app everyone endlessly recommends to me (because I have it, surprise, and I have even fewer things I can point to as good).

Bottom line: creating in-app purchase options is a tricky choice, and I give a lot of credit to devs who pull it off successfully. But this kind of purchase isn't adding value. The only thing it's adding is frustration.

Update on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 by Seth

This post was picked up at iMore and there's some discussion over there about it. I was challenged as to the harshness of the post, and I defended my reasoning behind writing it if you're curious about my motivations. (Hint: it wasn't because I wanted to conduct a witch-hunt today.)

Locked in.

One of my favorite things about the changes to OS X and iOS is the interoperability between the platforms. This will only be increased as OS X moves to Mountain Lion, with tighter links between the devices joined with iCloud as it becomes more robust. On top of this, the iTunes App Store is an unbeatable location for software downloads, and barring jailbreak, your one-stop shop for your iOS devices.

The strongest guiding factor in how I chose a mobile platform in the past (dating way back to the early-mid-2000s) was the availability of software for my device. I began on Windows Mobile, because at the time, they seemed more exciting than their Palm counterparts. WM had a ton of software, but installing it wasn't elegant or particularly easy. The devices were middling at best, and required some serious hacking to even be usable. After that, I moved quickly through BlackBerries in a six-month tryst. I didn't purchase the original iPhone because the idea of not being able to install apps was just unacceptable to me. But when the App Store launched, it made something I'd been doing laboriously for years exquisitely easy. I landed on the iPhone 3G shortly after it launched, and never looked back.

Well, that's not entirely true. I've looked back lots of times. With Android, with webOS, with Windows Phone. I continue to look back whenever something catches my attention. That's how I am. Something's different now, though, and I've only recently been able to identify what that is. The idea of a platform lock in based on software purchases is not a new one; it's happened on desktops for years. If you put a good deal of money into a platform, it's hard to pull away from it when something new comes along. Psychologically, you attempt to add value to the decision based on the money you've already spent that is irretrievable. We know this as the sunk-cost effect.

However, I've discovered something far more compelling than a financial imperative to stay with a particular phone/platform. It's something that isn't as easily quantifiable, and can't be assessed in a rational way as easily because there is an innate emotional component that ties directly to how I feel in the course of a given day. At its simplest, it's my time, but that time is based and built upon complex workflows that I've refined over the course of years. Years spent on one platform (iOS) and strengthened by the addition of fantastic products and services that enable me to work more efficiently from wherever I am. I take great pleasure in discovering new apps that allow me to do things more smoothly or that add value to an activity in which I'm already engaged. That pleasure (and time-saving) translates directly to my dopamine receptors in some nerdy way, because I enjoy this stuff in a way that most people don't, and can't even understand. It's a pure love of great software, but compounded with the benefits of enhancing (at least that's what I tell myself) my daily life.

Sure, there are some apps that appear on many platforms. I live in Dropbox, and I can get it almost everywhere. There are plain text editors for every phone, I'm sure. I can scan documents with my phone and sync them as PDFs with a lot of different apps. But this isn't always the case, and sometimes even though an app may appear on other platforms, it's not as useful because to the developers it may be an afterthought since iOS is the main platform for which they build. More importantly though is not that I can get apps everywhere, but that I find myself unwilling to trade off to inferior versions of these apps or add steps to the processes that I can perform more easily on iOS. When I find a really great way to do something, I want to stick with it. I don't want to spend time figuring out a new way to do something that probably isn't as good as the way I've been doing it. And those words "spend" and "time" are more salient to me than any amount of money I can spend on software. I can always make more money; I'll never get back my time - or at the very least, the perception of time.

The problem I'm facing as a lifelong lover of technology is that my excitement for new devices is still there, but slightly diminished because immediately after I feel the thrill of seeing something cool, there's a part of me, however deep in my subconscious that surfaces a thought: "this is great, but it's not going to fit". It sounds dumb. Why can't I just enjoy things? What's my problem? As our devices become more interconnected, I dont see as much value in having any that aren't. And as more manufacturers chase the idea that people are going to own all of their individual devices (as I do with Apple gear), it's getting harder and harder to get the most out of things when they exist outside of your workflows.

I used to switch phones with what could only be described as alarming frequency. The only constants were that I'd enter my IMAP settings, add a few phone numbers, and that was mostly it. No platform interconnection, no syncing over the air, no compelling apps I simply couldn't live without. Because they just didn't exist. In the years since I've adopted iOS, I've created stores of application data, some of which I rely on heavily both personally and for business, and some of these can only be used within iOS and in some cases with a Mac. It's not enough for me to try other platforms - I really can't leave until I see a path on which to travel. For now, I'm locked in. Quite frankly, it's a good problem to have.

What does Gatekeeper mean for jailbreaking on iOS?

The sudden (at least to most people) announcement of OS X Mountain Lion this week came with many new features and talking points. One of the most talked-about involves security and the Mac App Store, called Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper is a new feature in ML that allows the user to select levels of security for his/her computer. The default setting is to allow Mac App Store apps and apps by identified developers who have opted to sign their apps with Apple. The two other settings are Mac App Store only and "allow everything".

For the entire lifespan of the Mac, third-party software has been a driving force in its success. With the arrival of the MAS and the sandboxing restrictions Apple put in place for applications, many developers were either unable to include their apps in the Store or chose not to because it would have required hobbling functionality to achieve Apple's goals. However this new feature connects a developer's identity with the trusted status of the application, which essentially bridges the middle ground between outright malware and the sanitized App Store experience, providing many devs with a sense of relief. How it plays out remains to be seen, but the idea is that devs would no longer have to make the choice of App Store or go it alone, and can offer a high level experience on par with Apple's expectations in their own way.

But as Apple moves to unify iOS features and OS X features as we've seen with the inclusions of apps such as Notes and Reminders this week, it begs the question: will Apple ever allow Gatekeeper to function in the same way on iOS? And if so, what does this mean for the jailbreak community? Apple has quietly taken both inspiration from, and (presumably) umbrage with the moves that the jailbreak community has executed in the past few years, but with the exception of closing exploits to ensure a more secure system has done little overtly to quell the actual jailbreak process itself. It's mostly a "no comment" situation for Apple, and when comments come, they are aimed squarely at securing the platform first and foremost, not stifling innovation.

There are many legitimate and extraordinarily talented developers working on jailbreak apps that simply can't exist in the iOS App Store. But what if Apple allowed them the same privileges it will allow OS X devs? I'd love to see a world in which not only do fantastic apps like LockInfo and SBSettings exist, but in which they can be installed with the equivalent of Apple's blessing, provided that the dev signs the code with Apple and the user is savvy enough to change the settings in the OS. This kind of a move would definitely show that Apple is serious about enabling creative development on iOS outside of the App Store walls, while still preserving the notion that security is a paramount concern for the platform. It'd be a bold answer to the cries of iOS being a closed system to Android's open one (a tenuous claim if there ever was one) and in one fell swoop obviate the need for jailbreakers to cling to security holes to run apps and enhancements they've grown to love. A more secure platform for Apple, and the freedom to really own your device's functionality even more seems like a huge win for everyone.

Plenty of people have called for "expert settings" on iOS for years now, so this is not a new idea. But the existence of Gatekeeper in OS X and the strive to unify the platforms experientially leaves at least a little hope that Apple's getting the message.