Disqus - Latest Comments for seekbus

Re: No new Apple TV at WWDC

Rusty Mitchell — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 09:51:35 -0000

I'm anxious to see what Apple's next steps in this space will be, but I'm also a bit leery. When I sit down in front of my TV, I'm pretty much admitting that I don't want to think. Part of what makes the Apple TV work so well now is that the UI is baked in and standard/predictable. Sure this means that the interface is somewhat boring, but it typically also means the apps load quicker and are easier to understand than apps on competing platforms.

Navigation of all Apple TV apps use two or three stock navigation approaches and video player controls are identical for all apps. The fact that the player controls are the same can't be understated. Use a few video apps on Xbox One, PS4, Amazon Fire TV, or Android TV. Player controls are different across most apps on these other platforms, and it can be incredibly frustrating.

As for IMDB and RottenTomatoes integration, you are starting to see this in show guides for Comcast's newer X2 service and similar offerings. I think that is definitely going to become more prevalent.

Re: The evolution of Apple’s Map and Spotlight location icons

Rusty Mitchell — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 16:55:39 -0000

Glad to hear that it is working properly now and that you enjoyed the writeup.

Re: The evolution of Apple’s Map and Spotlight location icons

Rusty Mitchell — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 14:52:42 -0000

Spotlight can be a bit finicky sometimes. You may try restarting your device and then give it a minute after restart before searching. When iOS 8 first came out, the feature was pretty buggy and would reboot my iPhone if I performed several Spotlight searches back-to-back. Also try searching by category for "hospital" or "gas station." If the Spotlight icon results are enabled in your area, those categories should have a pretty high success rate.

Re: The evolution of Apple’s Map and Spotlight location icons

Rusty Mitchell — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 10:57:08 -0000

Where are you located? I have noticed that in some countries, location results don't appear at all in Spotlight. It is also possible that you may be in an area where the locations haven't been defined with categories yet.

Re: Why The Pull-To-Refresh Gesture Must Die

Rusty Mitchell — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:09:05 -0000

There are times when it makes sense to leave control of when to refresh the list of stories in the hands of the user. A lot of the news organizations we have worked with editorially manage the order of their stories instead of automatically listing the most recently published story at the top of the feed. This makes what is being proposed here a bit more complicated because story order can often shift upon refresh.

Re: The Definitive Guide to iPhone App Market Sizing

Rusty Mitchell — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:53:41 -0000

Hey Jonathan, I was really pulling a number out of thin air, but this TechCrunch article about the Tap Tap Revenge 2 launch which came out in March mentions total installs of 6 million. http://www.techcrunch.com/2...

I did a little further digging, and Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem stated 11 million installs in a phone call with TheAppleBlog in June. http://theappleblog.com/200...

My guess is that Decrem is referring to total installs for all seven available versions of Tap Tap Revenge. I'm pretty sure Tap Tap Revenge 2 was a new install instead of an upgrade from Tap Tap Revenge, so all of its install numbers are probably just being added to the pile. My guess is that the total install numbers for the original Tap Tap Revenge game to date are around 7.5 to 8 million and the numbers on Tap Tap Revenge 2 are much less. 3 or 4 million would be a fair guess.

None of this really matters much other than to say that obviously Admob's device estimation in April was way off, and I'm fairly certain that comScores numbers were as well. I think if we had actual top 100 overall free install numbers, apps at the bottom of that list would be at 2 million installs or less. 2 million is still nothing to sneeze at, but it is far off from the numbers quoted. And as you mentioned in one of your comments, if you take the total number of apps in the store and compare it to installs, average installs per app are in the 20-30k range.

Bottom line for free apps is that you either have to be willing to give it away, or you have to have a business plan that focuses on not just getting lots of installs, but keeping those people using the application regularly. That is the only way the ad or in-app purchase models really work.

Re: The Definitive Guide to iPhone App Market Sizing

Rusty Mitchell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:53:26 -0000

The comScore numbers in this article don't add up.

In the comScore article (from April 09) linked to next to "The most frequently downloaded free apps reach approximately 30% of devices", they claim that Tap Tap Revenge is installed on approx 32% of all iPhones.

VentureBeat took this information and using an approx U.S. user base from Admob of 15 million, estimated that Tap Tap's 32% equalled 4.8 million users. http://venturebeat.com/2009...

Thing is, here we are four months later with Apple's earnings reports showing sales of 45 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices at the end of the past quarter.

Let's assume that Tap Tap did have 4.8 million installs in April 09. I actually think that is a fair number, considering that they passed 1 million in August 08. I might even put them somewhere in the 6 million range. At 4.8, that would mean that the most installed app in the app store has only been installed by just over 10% of the total number of iPhone / iPod Touch owners. 6 million is still under 14%.

What you have to keep in mind as well, is that even in comScores top 25 overall, the drop off between their estimated #1 and #25 was already almost 20%.

Re: Win a $500 Griffin Technology Shopping Spree!

Rusty Mitchell — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:16:50 -0000

There are more sexy front facing features, but the magnetometer/compass built in to the iPhone 3G S will be looked back on as the most important addition to the new iPhone.