I still believe that the best way to “manipulate” any App Store rankings is to have a great product and a strategy of getting the word out. I think most people would agree with the former but few are able to do the latter.
Bingo.
PermalinkApple has started promoting games that don't have any In-App Purchases on the front page of the App Store. Currently featured in the UK App Store and likely expanding to the U.S. store later today as part of the App Store's weekly refresh, the section is called 'Pay Once & Play' and it showcases “great games” that don't require users to pay for extra content through IAPs.
Interesting addition by Apple. Games with IAPs have long been a complaint of users. Personally, I’d prefer to pay $10 for a game and have full access than download it for free and not be able to continue without paying a ton of money or only opening the game every few days.
Permalink
I don’t often like email newsletters, but this one is stellar. I’d totally send a dozen red arrows to my wife.
PermalinkChristians who tell others not to watch Fifty Shades are being legalistic. It would be legalistic or judgmental to say only people who follow the rules are loved by God. But it’s not legalistic to say something is harmful or that those who revel in pornography grieve the Holy Spirit, hurt themselves and others, and need the Lord’s healing grace. While there might be occasion for cultural critics or individuals to read a book or see a movie like this to fight against it, the idea that these stories can be read or watched for entertainment by Christians without grieving the Lord is perhaps the greatest myth of all.
Do not see this movie. Don’t read this book. It is pornographic poison, attempting to change the culture’s view on sexuality and trying to make pornography commonplace, removing the rightfully existing stigma.
Permalink
Gosh darn, I love Jimmy’s lyrics and even more his spoken word music. The Gospel.
Permalink
This upcoming game from Snowman reminds me of Tiny Wings. Gorgeous design, simple concept.
PermalinkApple iPhone 6 Plus owners outpace all other iPhone owners in data consumption, doubling the amount used by iPhone 6 owners and exceeding iPhone 3GS owners by a factor of ten. As reported by Citrix, the data consumption pattern of iPhone 6 Plus owners mirrors that of tablet users.
Not horribly surprising. I love my iPhone 6 Plus for all sorts of stuff I could never love my iPhone 5 for. There are many days that I don’t touch my MacBook Air or iPad. That big screen just rocks for reading, surfing, watching video, and much more.
PermalinkLast week Samsung was accused of listening into conversations around televisions, a feature required for voice commands, and sending all data through third parties for processing. This week we have this gem.
PermalinkThere's been a string of complaints online by customers using third-party video apps such as Plex and Australian service Foxtel, with most referring to rogue Pepsi ads interrupting their viewing. "After about 15 minutes of watching live TV, the screen goes blank, and then a 16:9 sized Pepsi ads (taking up about half the screen) pops up," wrote a professed Samsung smart TV owner on Foxtel's support forums. "It's as if there is a popup ad on the TV."
In order to optimize scrolling performance, we knew that we needed to keep paint times below 16ms and limit reflows and repaints. This is especially important during animations. To avoid painting during animations there are two properties you can safely animate: CSS transform and opacity. But that really limits your options.
As an iOS developer and a web developer, the biggest difference I’ve seen is in the handling of performance. The average web developer doesn’t think for a second about optimizing rendering for mobile, preventing reflows and repaints, and far less garbage collection. If an iOS developer acted the same, their app would never run.
The engineering that went into producing Flipboard for the mobile web is absolutely stunning. The easy route would have been to make it with HTML and CSS, but the performance would have been very poor. To make it with Canvas required a lot more thought, but produced something magical.
PermalinkAn experiment to show how designing for The Fold can be treacherous. Each line below is from a random sampling of past-visitors' viewport heights. Take care when making assumptions about people's screen sizes on the web.
Pretty cool. I hate the term "above the fold" when applied to the web.
Permalink