August 2011
6 posts
5% off everything.
As a general rule I hate leaving ‘money on the table’ whenever I buy something. There is something that just doesn’t feel right about buying something when I think I could be getting a better deal. This is a big part of why I despise sites that use coupon codes.
I realized that every-time I buy something from Apple I was doing just that. As part of my developer setup I have...
One Last Thing...
While listening to last week’s The Talk Show John and Dan discussed the prospect of Steve appearing at the iPhone 5 launch event. While I tend to agree with them that in all likelihood it will be Tim Cook and Phil Schiller talking through the lineup, I couldn’t help by try and imagine how it would go down otherwise.
Here is the result of letting my imagination run wild, a bit of...
What Steve really did.
There have been dozens of posts covering in far more eloquent ways the news of Steve Job’s transfer from CEO to Chairman of the Board.
At first I was saddened by the news. While it was not really unexpected, the realization that it had finally actually occurred was quite moving. I was privileged to attend two ‘Stevenotes’, and while I have never had the pleasure of meeting...
Peak Performance. →
It is important to remember that benchmarks measure peak performance, not typical performance. I’ve had FileVault on for a while now and noticed zero hit in my day-to-day use.
Kindle Cloud. Almost but not quite.
I played around a bit with the new Kindle Cloud Reader, basically this is a way in which Amazon is skirting the In-App Purchase rules. By creating a fully browser based application that allows for offline reading they are pushing the limits of modern web apps.
They have done an excellent job technically. It is probably the best example I’ve seen so far about just how close you can get to...
The Cost of Independence
When considering a move from salaried, full-time work to independent, self-directed work, there are a variety of factors that come into play. The changes in your commute, working hours, possibility for income, and enjoyment are just a few. I recall that when I went independent for the first time 5 years ago these were the factors that I was most focused on when weighing the relative value of...
July 2011
6 posts
Is Compilation CPU Bound?
While compiling my Mac Value Analysis, I started wondering how important the CPU performance of a machine is for a developer.
With all the talk recently about SSDs as the savior of computing performance, I had assumed that things like compilation had become I/O bound and therefore most sensitive to changes in hard drive. If that were the case then things like Geekbench64 become even more...
App Store Sales Volatility
After reading a tweet by David Barnard about the wild variability of sales in the app store, I was curious to see how my sales have varied this year. Below are the percent changes day-to-day and week-to-week for the year to date.
As you can see, daily swings in the 40% range and weekly swings in the 20% range are not uncommon.
If you make your living in the App Store, a strong...
Mac Value Analysis
As an extension of my previous post about the new Mac lineup I did a quick analysis of the cost per performance of the current entire range of Macs. Spoiler: The Mac Mini still wins.
Method
Select each Mac in the current lineup
Choose each available CPU option
Keep every other option (RAM, HD, etc) as base
Note the price
Head over to Geekbench Results Browser
Take the average of the 5 most...
Developer Machine Landscape
With all the exciting news announced yesterday I was particularly struck by how the answer for the best “Developer Machine” has suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. So I sat down and configured a base developer-class machine in each model. The rules was to get the cheapest machine with the following characteristics:
An Intel Core i7 processor.
8GB of RAM, upgraded via...
iAd isn't dead.
There has been a fair bit of trash talking recently regarding iAd. [Daring Fireball - Build & Analyze - Bloomberg] Much of it centered around whether iAd is a big flop for Apple and a bad deal for developers.
I have been running iAds since day one and in my experience it isn’t that iAd is doing poorly, so much as that mobile advertising is a horrible market.
iAd is actually the...
A Tale of Three App Stores
After reading this article, listing some of the troubles with the Amazon Appstore, my first thought was he missed the single biggest reason Amazon’s store is struggling: Sales.
My Audiobooks app is listed in the iOS App Store, Google Android Market, and the Amazon Appstore. It is available as either a free (Ad-Supported) or paid ($0.99) version. I pulled the numbers from the three stores...
May 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Instapaper & Reading List
While covered well in a few places already, I just wanted to throw in a few thoughts about how the Reading List feature in Lion will affect Instapaper. I think Marco is completely right not to worry. There is, however, one area he didn’t seem to address.
Once Reading List becomes a standard system feature Instapaper will likely no longer be something recommended by Apple. We’ve...
Netflix on Android marketbase
In John Gruber’s commentary on the announcement that the new Netflix Android app is only available for a limited number of handsets, he asked if anyone had a reasonable estimate of how much of the market that actually represents.
My Audiobooks app has been in the Android Marketplace for a little over a year. It is free, well reviewed and has around 660k downloads. Given those attributes...
March 2011
1 post
Decisive, Successful, Engaged.
After reading Jeff LaMarche and John Gruber talk about the tempest in a teacup regarding WWDC selling out so quickly, I couldn’t help but smile. I think the current system is perfect for creating the best developer event possible. I think that is true because of the kind of person this system encourages to attend.
I think we’ll find WWDC filled with decisive, successful, and...
January 2011
2 posts
