Apple iOS, Google Android or Microsoft Windows?

At some point most of us would like to be a Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Larry Page - Famous and rich and a part of our history. So do I.

Therefore I decided, it is time to do something which makes me rich and unforgettable. I decided to build an app.

The question is what the desired platform should be.

Let us start with a mobile app for Android OS. The SDK is free to download. There is a one-time $25 fee for registering to distribute apps on the Market:
http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113468&topic=15866
This seems to be right I can (with almost no costs) get an app into the android market. But I can't sell an app over $200 at Android market place.

Min and max prices of android apps:
AUD: 0.99 AUD - 200 AUD
CAD: 0.99 CAD - 210 CAD
CHF: 0.99 CHF - 200 CHF
DKK: 6 DKK - 1200 DKK
EUR: 0.50 EUR - 100 EUR
GBP: 0.50 GBP - 100 GBP
HKD: 7 HKD - 1500 HKD
JPY: 99 JPY - 20000 JPY
KRW: 999 KRW - 220000 KRW
NOK: 6 NOK - 1200 NOK
NZD: 0.99 NZD - 280 NZD
SEK: 7 SEK - 1500 SEK
SGD: 0.99 SGD - 270 SGD
USD: $0.99 - $200

If I want to use google cloud to develop my app, because I don't want to buy hardware for testing and developing, then the costs go up.




But of course I would save a lot of money for hardware and resources. But using the full service costs $500 and more a month.
Developing apps on Google App Engine takes one-fourth to one-tenth of the resources and one-fourth of the time compared to building something ourselves.”
Gary Koelling, Director of Emerging Platforms, Best Buy

Pricing seems alright but the big issue is the big chaos of different OS versions and devices available on the market. Google is not regulating very strong their OS distribution and is not telling the vendors what hardware to use. To develop an android app which should reach 90% of Android users must be tested on over 200 android devices. Ouch. There is no chance to build a professional enterprise app because the max sell price is too low and the testing to expensive.

May 2011:
Android activations swelling to over 100 million worldwide (112 countries) on 215 carriers and 36 manufacturers with 310 different Android devices


Developing an Android app might not cost a lot for licenses nor does Google take a lot for having an app in their store, but I am not willing to hire 20 testers to to test my app nor do I want to develop years to get my app running on all android devices.

Quote Netflix:
Because the platform has evolved so rapidly, there are some significant challenges associated with developing a streaming video application for this ecosystem. One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback. We are aggressively qualifying phones and look forward to expanding the list of phones on which the Netflix app will be supported.

Maybe I should try Apple.
As we know there are only a handful devices we need to support and would still reach 100 million users. The iOS is running only on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Each of them have only a few versions in hardware and not many iOS in the market. 84% of iOS users are already on iOS 4.
The iPod touch has same screen size as the iPhone. These all sounds reasonable for me for developing an app. I can easily afford to by from each one device and would not spend more than $1,000 (phone contract not included). Apple allows to sell apps over $200. I have seen a few for $999 (there are 20). However the store is so full that it is almost not possible to create an app which not somebody else already did.
Total Apps Approved for US App Store: 589,391
Total Active Apps (currently available for download): 471,319
Total Inactive Apps (no longer available for download): 118,072
Number of Active Publishers in the US App Store: 106,423


Getting access to developer tools is inexpensive as well between $99 and $299 a year.



But there are some issues.
Apple has very strict guidelines how to develop an app. An app can be denied because the developer does not follow the guidelines.
An other issue is, that Apple will take 30% of each sale of an app. This can be very cost intensive. I was thinking about an enterprise app, which I want to sell 40,000 times for $23.99. This is $287,780 for Apple just because I use their app store. Yes I get maybe free promotion and the user does know where to go to find my app, but this a lot of money. I could build an app outside of the app store and publish it only for my enterprise clients, which Apple allows, but I might still pay 30% when Apple find out that I sold the app outside of the store. Apple allows corporations to develop apps which are not the app store, but only for internal use and not for sale of the app.
And then Apple is heavily promoting the iPad and iPhone as a game computer and not as business computer.



I don't want to get rich and make Steve Jobs richer.


As alternative I could develop software for Windows. There are of course many different hardwares to consider, but if I build a web based app with .Net then I could concentrate on 4 browsers (IE, Chrome, Google and Safari) to get most of the users a working app.



The investment would be $11.899 for Visual Studio ultimate with MSDN which gives a lot of developing tools 78 Microsoft products like office etc and $3,500 worth of Microsoft Azure cloud.





This is a lot of money for a startup, but cheaper than Apple in the long run, if I sell more than $35k a year in software.

Interesting is that the same package cost in Germany almost the double $20,900)





This is as much as two Fiat Panda cars.




The last alternative would be the amazon app store.
The Amazon marketplace has considerably less competition than Android store or the Apple app store, I actually might have better results there.
Just make sure that if you agree to be the Free App of the Day, you completely understand what you’re getting yourself into.

Anyway, Amazon has gone ahead and sweetened the deal just a bit: beginning September 2011, anyone who submits an app to the Amazon App Store store will get a free chunk of change to check out the Amazon Web Services suite (amazon cloud).

But apparently Apple isn’t the only company running an App Store with a penchant for secrecy.

In a blog post in August, mobile developer Shifty Jelly has publicly called out Amazon for covertly offering the company featured placement on its unofficial Android Appstore as the ‘free app of the day’. This is a well-known promotion that Amazon has openly talked about, but there’s a twist: instead of paying developers 20% of the app’s List Price, which is what it had previously promised, Amazon is asking them to take a 0% rev share.
People were very clearly told that even if Amazon decided to make an app free, developers would still be making 20% of their list price. In other words, they’d still make money. But not anymore as seen above. This means my $23.99 app which might have downloaded on the free day 20,000 times would cost me not 80% of my potential revenue but all.

I learned that developing an app is more than just being a developer. It is important to choose the right platform.

During my research I learned something really interesting. For PCs, everybody is talking about software. But for mobile devices and OS any kind, we only talk about app. I wonder what is the different between software and application.

After all I decided not to build an app to be as famous as Steve Jobs and that I am going to brew my beer and to sell it to restaurants by delivering it with one of my two new Fiat Panda.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad. Please follow me @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Apple is killing app prices

Remember a few years back when we had to pay for an ok game at least $29 for our PC?
Or if we searched for other software, we had either to pay at least $80 or needed to get freeware or shareware. Most of the freeware or shareware apps were just not working right.

And then came Apple with a smart phone as powerful as computers in 2004. The iPhone and Apple changed the software landscape. In 2008 the app store opened and in just a few years the store has over 449,000 apps with an average app price of $2.40 (games $1.05) and almost 40% of the apps even free.
Granted most of the apps are not very well coded or don't have a lot of functions.
But there are less than 500 apps over $80 or less than 1% over $50.

As an example Tiger Woods 2010 golf from EA sports costs for the iPad $10 and for the iPhone $5. Similar game for the PSD was $39.00 when it came out. Now it is only $9.99.



The biggest problem is that the iPhone started without app platform but did allow users to put website links on their phone. After less than a year Apple opened the platform for developer and offered a centralized store for these apps. This move did regulate the low price for apps. because nobody thought people will download apps on the phone and the prices started low. Now that everybody is installing apps, it is hard to raise the prices.

It is so common for us to go to the app store and search for an app and buy it. Only a few years ago, developers had not only to build an app but as well create a nice package, burn CDs and distribute the applications to resellers. Because there was no real centralized place to find apps, they had to do a lot of marketing. Therefore apps did cost a lot more than just developing it. In matter of the fact developing the app did cost much less than all other parts around till the product reached the consumer.

Today (because of the app store) all the expensive packaging and shipping does fall away which helps the developers to keep the price low. However most of the apps are still very limited in functions.

I can understand it for the iPhone. It is a mobile device which we use when we wait for the cab, when we have a smoke break or when we wait at the bank. And even Apple says that developers should develop for the iPhone very light apps which open fast and are easy to use.

But I think this should not be applied for the iPad. The iPad is not as mobile as the iPhone, it is in long term a notebook replacement. We use our iPad during breakfast. Arriving at work we use it again, but when we take a smoke break then we take our iPhone with us and not the iPad. The iPad is a perfect device to read and use where we want, but we don't even try the effort to start the iPad when we have 5 minutes to wait for a train. I believe the smart phone is the perfect device for 10 minutes or less, basically the computer on the go (literally). The iPad is a perfect device when we know we will spend 20 minutes or longer on it.

In average we use our smartphone 3 hours a day but in total 90 times, which is in average 2 minutes per use. The iPad is 2 hours a day in use but only 5 times. This is an average of 24 minutes instead of 2.

However the developers do not understand this concept. They are still thinking that the iPad is similar in use like the iPhone. But I see the iPad as the future notebook.

The other problem is the low average price for apps. It is almost not financial possible for a software developer to make their living to develop an iPad app and have the app many features. Imagine you sell an app for $4.99 which is for the iPad an average price. You might have worked with 2 developers 6 months on the app, you would need to sell it at least 30.000 times just to cover the costs. one of the top downloads is Angry Bird HD for $4.99 with 1 million downloads on the iPad.
A dream for a developer, however Rovio spends millions on marketing. GoodReader (PDF reader) for the iPad has over 100.000 downloads and costs $4.99. Goodiware the maker of GoodReader is an exception like Angry Birds. Most of the paid apps have less buyers (exception are Apple apps like iMovie, pages etc)

Apple did kill the app prices which is good for the consumer but bad at the same time. Bad, because the quality of the apps are not yet good enough to have the iPad as a notebook replacement. The low prices helped to get so many apps in the store and therefore so many iPads sold. If the prices would not have been so low the iPad would not made it so far.

But as a developer we should not be frustrated, the real money is in consulting ware. The big brands want to have apps on the iPhone or the iPad and here is the big money. A moderate app takes 6 to 12 weeks to develop or even less if it is just a branding app. These brands apps are driven by marketing companies and they have no iPad developers, therefore they hire 3rd parties. A simple iPad (6 weeks development max) goes today for $80k. A single developer can build 8 of them in a year which is $640k, not bad, is it?

If you are a developer and you believe you want to build an app for the iPad, you should consider to get in contact with agencies who are looking for apps to build. They don't ask for lot. Maybe a location finder, 3 or 4 functions and fancy design. But they are willing to pay even for a newcomer $40k. Build a few of them for living and then build your own app for the store. You might make it then into Apple top picks and this helps to sell it over 100.000 times.

Overall I am disappointed that there is only a few good professional apps for the iPad available to replace my notebook, but even these apps are still limited. Take from Appel keynote, pages and numbers. Very important productivity apps but still much less functions than on the iMac. I think as soon Apple makes these apps full functional, the better will other apps get and the iPad will replace the notebook.

I can't wait for the day I don't need to carry my 6 pound notebook around.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

And there is no app for this

Steve Jobs like to say that there is an app for this. And i thought, he might be right having over 50.000 iPad apps and 400.000 iPhone apps in the app store.

My wife and I planned a motorcycle trip for the upcoming 4th of July weekend. She did build a route together and told me, we should on the way buy a map.I said "can't we use our phone or iPad?". She said we could but where we go is most likely no cellphone reception.

Furthermore my wife asked me to find motorcycle shops on the way of our trip.

So I decided to look for a map app which can download maps to your iPad, in case there is no Internet connection. And a map which allows to build a round trip with 10 stop points.

I was hoping to find an app where I can plan the trip and then add points of interests.

The idea was that I can build the trip see the route then search for motorcycle shops or restaurant and would see the ones which are nearby the route.

Searching for maps gave me thousand of results.



GPS search still almost 2000 apps.




Searching for route planner much less.


But most of them are city maps, and only a few route planner. I found one which seemed the thing need. A route planner where I can put in multiple stops.
I found one app which was free and allowed to save the map and did not require GPS.



Route4me is easy to use, however I did not find how I could save my trip and it has no function to search for nearby restaurant or other Points of Interests after the route is defined.
This app like, all other routing or GPS app, have interesting rating. Each app has a few good ratings and a few really bad ratings but nothing between. And when I am reading the comments then always the complains are the same, bad UI or hard to understand how to use. A lot of people are missing same function as I was looking for.

The iPad could be such a great map replacement but for some reason no company has yet understood to build a good map. Of course you can find maps for your iPad but mostly for cities. And there are 16 route planners with GPS with partly a lot of functions (the expensive ones) but non which can what I was looking for.

I think it is not asked too much to have an app to plan your trip and then to search within the trip for POI.

As sales person it might be critical not only to plan the faster trip but as well to plan up front where to get gas or to stop to eat.

Maybe there is an app for Europe, I understand that in America we don't use so much the car for long distance and searching a restaurant is easy. Just go off highway and there are tons of restaurants from Mc Donald to Wendy's.

Non of the map or routing applications could connect or import from a CRM or outlook to get the addresses to plan the trip, this means the user has to do twice the work.

Steve,
I have been disappointed. I really thought your are right, that there is an app for it.

I did end up to buy me a paper map and we will stop at a bike shop when we see one. Just the old fashion way. Maybe riding a bike does not fit into high-tech.


- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

The Apple iCloud is already here - partly

I don't know if anybody did notice, but all your iOS devices have a new function. When you go to settings and then click on store Icon you have three options.




The interesting part is that this function addition seems to be done over air not with an update of the iOS through iTunes. At least I did never saw it before June 3rd.

When you switch music, apps and books on then a nice thing happens, your device will get new app installed even if you bought it on another device.

I recently bought Atari games for my iPad. And when I came home the app was already installed on my iPhone.

Steve Jobs talked about this feature being a part of iOS 5. This means you don't need to buy an app anymore for multiple devices. The Atari app has in app buying function and even this worked. I bought with the iPad games within the app and when I started the iPhone app it asked me if I want to restore these games for no extra charge.





You can see all purchased apps which are not yet on your device, when you go into your app store on your iOS device.




My iPad has 64GB and my iPhone only 16GB, therefore I have to be careful which app I want to have on the iPhone. For this I switched automatic download for apps on the iPhone off. Instead I go to my app store and choose the app I want to have on the iPhone.

Interesting is the feature for apps like NYTimes. They charge you for each device extra (in app purchase). Unfortunately with NYTimes you have still to pay extra, but maybe not for long anymore because this is against Apple's agreement.

Unfortunately the automatic download does not work yet with the app store on MacOsX, these apps are still separated from the iOS apps.

It might be that this function is a long time available, but all friends I asked did bot know about it.

I don't know if Apple is just testing this function or if they introduce us to iCloud step by step like the recent update for iTunes. Either way I like it. This will save us money. Why to pay for an app three times only because I have two iPhones and an iPad.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Facebook's problem with underage kids

Facebook the number one social network with over 550 million users has a big problem with underage kids as members. Every day Facebook is deleting 20,000 accounts mostly of them from users which are under 13.
Facebook is rated PG 13 but many kids under this age are signing up in Facebook by lying their age.

When FB started, there was no problem with too young members. You had to have an email address from accepted universities. If you are not an extraordinary genius you might not be able to attend an university under the Age of 16 or 17.



But everything changed when FB went viral. Underage members are for a private company not the biggest problem, because FB clearly says you need to be at least 13 and you have to provide your age.
But there is no real control anybody can choose any age.
But a company in public, like Facebook, can't afford to have news about 12 years old girls rapped through Facebook contact. And if Facebook is trying to go public then this could be a problem if Facebook does not get it under control.

20,000 members a day is 730,000 a year this is less than 0.2% of total members but this is only the members FB could identify as too you young.
Mostly FB is looking at images, wall entries and friends to determine if a member could be too young. And there are as well FB members reporting fake or underage accounts.

The question is how FB can get this under control. If FB would only be available in America then they could use the SSN for verification, but this would not work with other countries. And even if these countries would have a similar system it might not be allowed by law.

Another method could be to use a credit card to sign up, but then FB would lose all members who are under 16 and members in countries where many people don't have credit cards. There could be an estimated lost of 100 million members. But it would help to reduce extremely sign ups of under 16 and people with multiple fake accounts (actually i am wondering how many of all accounts are fake anyway).

Having the users credit card could Brin a lot of revenue. Once an user has stored his card information it is easier to buy FB credits and therefore we would spend more.
I see this with the app store at Apple. I never bought so much crap under $10 than I did so far at Apple. And only because it is just too easy.
Maybe Facebook is going to charge a membership fee which can only be paid with CC or Paypal. Imagine everybody would pay $3 a month. The would be a revenue of $18 billion a year.

Another approach (my favorite) could be, to develop a Facebook for 13 and younger. Instead of deleting accounts or to denying kids access, they could still sign up, but would only see and read their age appropriate information. People can only befriend if they are family member or not older than 13. If parents have a FB account then they can monitor and control the content of the underage FB member.

Or maybe new members can only access FB if they got recommended from somebody in FB who claims to be the parents or big brother.

Either way we will soon see a change in FB. They must attack the underage issue before too many bad news will reach the air.



- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Amazon’s app store - Apple does not like it

Apple is suing Amazon for its app store name. The Amazon app store is a great deal for Android users, finally a store to find easier apps. The best thing is that Amazon offers every day a paid app free. At the moment it is Angry Birds Rio.

Amazon is starting with 3800 apps for now, but the big difference to Google’s app store is that Amazon is testing all apps before they go into the store. Apple sees Amazon as a threat, which they are right.

Amazon has like Apple a lot of experience in micro payments, and even more experience with e-commerce. Amazon offers video streaming, music downloads and now apps for Androids. Soon Amazon might bring their mobile device or will offer the Kindle with Android OS.

Fighting for the app store name is just a small step but a clear identification that Apple sees Amazon as a big competition. The biggest advantage of Amazon is their cloud knowledge. They have such a advantage as one of the biggest cloud providers.

Apple knows that most of the things we own today will go into the cloud. In a few year we will not have any more big hard drives to store music and video or documents. We will store most of the not too critical data in the cloud and here is Amazon the clear leader against Apple. Google is good in cloud too, but they are concentrated to offer everything as open source which is too much destructing to be really a global player in the future. They might offer the platforms but other companies like Amazon will actually utilize it to grow their user base.

Example the app store: Google uses an open source system therefore Amazon is allowed to sell Androids apps. But the big difference is that Amazon will decide the price of the app and not just the developer and each app will be screened. The screening is missing at the Google app store, therefore a lot of apps with bad user experience or harmful for your device. Amazon goes into the apple direction, however they are only verifying that the apps are working or don’t have malware (but developers get as well 70% of revenue like Apple model). Apple goes a step further and decides if an app is not within their moral.

We all should watch out Amazon (as I wrote in an earlier post), they are clearly coming strong to the mobile market. The idea is great, take the best out of both worlds (Google and Apple) and build your own system.

The Amazon store works very well, it has categories to click through or you can search for apps. The recommendation system works perfect. I looked for First person shooter. There was no Android app for this but it offered me Xbox version of such game. And then Amazon is really good to know you and your taste and offers good software selection. Amazon was always good in this and is good with it with the app store.

Amazon has as well some exclusive apps like Angry Bird Rio for Android. You are only able to get it on Amazon. And for now as special even free, later for $0.99

But of course there are some small not perfect things like “Date first available at Amazon” and Release date.

Technology News app shows at Amazon that it was available at Amazon September 9, 2010. However the store was not open in September 2010
.

I am pretty sure that soon somebody will build an android app for Amazon apps to search for like AppShopper for the iPhone.

I only could find around 40 tablet apps and unfortunately the app store does not allow yet surfing by tablet or smart phone. I am pretty sure it will come as soon more tablet apps are available.

Nice feature would be as well to search by Android version. Not every phone does support latest Android. The description page for the apps is a little poor, it is too much same look and feel like for books.

There can be some improvements. I heard rumors that Amazon will install an Android render machine that users are able to test the games on the website before downloading and buying, this would be a great addition.

Angry Birds in Space

I friend of mine (Michael Fogleman) released just few days ago his first game in the apple iPhone store. I had the luck to test the game during development and i have to say the final product got much better than the test version which was already pretty good.
The game is called star rocket and costs $0.99. There is no advertisement which easy justifies the Dollar to pay.




The idea of the game is pretty simple. You are navigating your rocket through space by trying to collect the stars.

The developer did a very nice job in advancing the levels. It gets pretty interesting around level 28.



Like angry birds, the levels are advancing the further the game goes. There are astroids, planets, teleports and shields etc.

Each of them have other little functions. The rocket is not allowed to hit an astroids or planet and the bigger they are the stronger is the gravitation. A teleport jumps you to another place in space. And the shield keeps your rocket save against astroids but not planets.











Even if the game is so simple to understand it comes with a good tutorial.

The idea is to finish the levels as fast as possible to advance to the next level. You have basically unlimited lives, you can try as often you want a level even if you managed a level you can play it again.
The faster you manage a level the more stars you get (up to 3). I believe the app has right now 85 levels. But I am not able to pass 39.

Once you start the game to play you don't want to finish. It is like a drug. I basically replaced my angry birds with star rocket.

The only few things i am missing is an iPad version and the ability to see an overall high score. However you will see for each level current time and your best time.

The game has a lot of helpful details. For each level you see a preview and during playing you see how many stars are left and a green arrow indicates where the nearest star is.
They thought about everything. The user can even switch the controls around if the user is left handed like me.
i am just wondering what ghost on means.
The designer did a really nice job, especially the planets have a lot of details. Sound effects are nice too.

Overall I will give this game 5 stars and i am pretty sure we will see a lot of cool new features coming up and maybe an iPad an Apple app version.


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Mac OsX App store is here

I updated my Mac OS today to get the new app store. The OS update did require a reboot and a positive side effect was that my exchange account is working again. This means email, contacts, calendar and Microsoft IM work again with my office exchange. The last update before which should have improve the exchange did break it.

I went ahead and opened the app store. It looks almost the same like on the iPad.
See left side of the image below.



The app store has already 1000 of application and the most of them are apps we know from the mobile app store like Angry Birds. Angry birds got at the first day already 560 ratings, and if in average 10% do rate an app and the numbers are real then they had over 5000 downloads and a gross revenue of $25,000 minus 30%.





I went through and tried to count by ratings how many apps have been downloaded and put the numbers together. If I am not mistaken than Apple had at the first day over 80.000 downloads which an average price of $15. This is a revenue of $1.2 million for the first day and an estimated one year revenue of over $400 million in the first year, which would leave Apple at least $120 Million.
The mobile app store had last year a revenue of $2 Billion or around $600 Million for Apple.

The most applications like "the cat in the hat" are between $19.99 and $29.99. However I believe the apps which are as well available on the iPad have already the same price as for the iPad or will be soon the same price and not anymore higher. We can assume that most Apple Computer owner will have as well an iPad. Why should somebody buy a software on the Mac if the software like "the cat in the hat" just a fraction of the price available for the iPad.

A small icon in your dock appears with download status, when downloading an app. The app will automatically put in your dock when downloaded, no extra install needed. You can anytime delete the app from the dock.




I did not see yet free apps with iAds, but pretty sure it will come.
Some apps ( like Angry Birds) are in full screen mode, especially if they have been before available for the iPad, as Steve showed at the September keynote. If you have two screens the app will only run on main screen. The more expensive apps which are not available for the iPad are working like normal apps where you change screen size and the tools are their own windows.

We will see a lot of iPad apps coming to the Mac, because it is pretty simple for a developer to port an existing iPad app to the mac store.

Interesting to see that Apple developed apps are cheaper than as packed apps. Aperture costs only $79.99 instead of $199. Pages, keynote and numbers together only $59,97 instead of $79 if you would buy iWork from the shelf.

Apple is bidding on the long tail. They are offering blockbusters like pages, numbers and keynote to a low price with the hope the consumers will buy more of the apps which Apple has no costs but makes money of them (30% of retail).

The store offers a lot of free apps like twitter etc. This will attract many users. You can image that this new app store will bring more users to Apple for their PCs.

Apple sold so many iPhones, iPods touch and iPads, that consumers who already know how easy it is to install and buy software, will switch with their PC to Apple. It is just a logical step. I think the iMacs and MacBooks market will grow very fast in consumer niche to over 20%.
A very smart move. There has been always 3 big arguments why people did not buy Macs.
1. Price
This changed a little back, since Apple is not so much more expensive anymore. The MacBookAir starts under $1000, which is not much more than a Dell notebook with similar quality.
2. No apps available
Almost every major software is now available for Apple. And with the app store are soon more high quality inexpensive apps than for windows in one place.
3. Don't want to switch to new System
With worldwide over 100 Million iOS devices shipped, there are now many consumers who are firm with Apple and the new app store is basically the same as on the iPhone. Nothing new to learn.

To this three points are coming 3 other important aspects.

1.Apple has almost no virus and because the apps are sold under the complete control through Apple the risks of viruses will be even reduced as long the consumer only downloads apps from this store.
2. Kids will ask for Macs in the future with the argument that there are more educational software than for Windows computers. For parents it is almost a no brainer because the parental controls are much more sophisticated than for Windows.
3. Buy once and install as often as wanted on your computer. A big annoying part with Windows is, that anytime when we buy a new Windows computer, we have either to find the original software CD, remember the serial number or have to buy the software again.
Apple figured out that serial numbers are old school. For me it is the best invention ever that apps don't need anymore serial numbers, you just need to remember your apple ID. One ID for all programs.

Overall the app store is a great idea and a perfect marketing tool.

E-commerce made perfect. Apple has a big store where everybody can buy software, Apple does not need to create any product pages (because the developers are putting the info in) but at the same time controlling that only Apple approved products are getting bought.

Interesting is that there are no adobe products in the app store available. A good friend of mine believes because of Adobes price politic. Adobe is in Europe much more expensive than in the US and Apple philosophy is that the software price is everywhere in the world almost the same. Plus Adobe does not like that Apple (which is not a big Adobe promoter) would get 30% of their revenue.

We see if he is right, but his explanation does make sense for me.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Mark Z. And Steve J. had dinner together - and now?

Last week Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg did meet for a dinner. Since then there were many speculations that Apple will buy Facebook.
I think the main reason was their celebration of better Facebook integration into iPhoto, a picasa photo manager on steroids. iPhoto got recently updated with iLife 11.

But the dinner could have some other topics. If we compare Steve and Mark we find a lot similarities. Both started a company very young and both skipped school to proceed their dream. Both believes they want to make a better world and scarified revenue to get closer to their dream. Apple keeps his OS only on their devices which prevent Apple to get a market share like Microsoft. Facebook did wait with their ad system a very long time to give users a cleaner interface.

Both outperformed their competition in usability which gave them big advantage and the credential to be cool. Both are extremely controlling their growth. Facebook rolled out in steps, school by school. Apple does not just develop products, they make sure they work very well before they go on the market, which gives a 12 months release cycle, in comparison the competition has a 3 to 6 months cycle.

Both needed Microsoft as an investor to help them to survive. Both are now much more growing than Microsoft. Both companies have Google as their main competitor.

Steve and Mark are eccentric and only wear certain clothes for public appearance. Mark is always wearing his zip up sweater and Steve a black sweater. Both like to control and prefer not to wear shoes in the office (when they have been young).

Both have one of the biggest crowd sourcing developer base. Apple has over 600,000 developers and FB over 1,000,000 world wide.

Both companies like the magical number 30. They both take revenue shares based on 30%.

Both could be a part of Lord of the Rings. Steve as Golem and Mark looks like a hobbit (no offense, I am such a big fan of LotR that this is a compliment).

Looking at the picture below we could almost say Mark is the lost son of Steve.



Now, Apple has enough cash to buy facebook, but I am a little doubting Mark wants to sell, or that Facebook would be a good fit for Apple.
Steve usually buys cheap companies and grow them. He is mostly interested in the technology and not reach. Facebook technology is based on open source and Steve likes to have his own closed open source system. Open to developers to use but controlled by Apple.

It is apparent that both either like each other for similarity or hate each other. There is nothing between.

Either way I believe they are going to build an alliance against Google.
Most likely that Apple will invest a billion into FB to get a few % shares and Steve Jobs might get one of the director seats in FB. Mark still has one position open he never filled.

As a return, FB gets stronger integration into iOS and both developer crowds can build easier apps which work on iOS and integrate into FB or vice versa.

Apple social music network could have instantly 500,000,000 members.

Facetime could be a part of FB. 100 times more Facetime users with one switch of a button.

FB will sell some of their ads through the iAds system at Apple. FB could increase revenue without having too much ads on their platform.

Facebook has the most chaotic application pool. It is almost not possible to find apps, maybe FB will get their own app store and starts to have not only free apps but paid apps, this could boost the revenue as well.

Apple might be integrating Facebook credit in their app stores as payment method. However both don't like to give money up but at the same time to take a big piece of the pie. This would be an interesting fight.

An alliance could be strong. Apple is perfect in design and usability. FB knows social and has the biggest member base in the world. Imagine iPhones will have perfect integrated FB, what would we buy as a smart phone? Android or an iPhone? If Androids are not so perfect in FB.

Apple opens iPhone to other carriers, this and FB as native app on iPhone will instantly double sales.

I think any force against Google is good and healthy. Google is great, but I never like to have one player dominating. Competition is healthy and always best for consumer.

Let us see what we will hear from Apple and FB in the near future.

Any thoughts from you?


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Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Apple new stunning features and taking more control

At the latest keynote from Apple we first heard how well the Mac sales went in the last five years and if Apple would separate the Mac Computers from the rest of the company then those company would be still #101 in the Inc 500 list. This is pretty amazing.
Plus auto desk is coming back to Apple OS and finally Windows will offer outlook, the best mail program in my opinion.

The next part was the introduction of iLife 11. A lot of changes to see with iLife. The good part is, if you just bought iLife 09 you can upgrade for less than $7. Otherwise the upgrade is $49 or if you buy a new computer it comes free.

iPhoto:
iPhoto has now a much nicer full screen mode, albums are displayed like on the iPad. It has nice Facebook and flickr integration. You can see within iPhoto to each photo what your friends did post to your photo in facebook.




Now we know why Steve had a dinner with Mark Z. Last week. They celebrated their new relationship. I will talk about my opinion to the dinner in another blog.

iPhoto got much more cool slideshows templates and new book templates. It is fascinating how Apple can build such beautiful function which so much logic behind. Both slideshow and books will analyze your photos and bring the photos together either by places, by theme etc. Example if 3 photos have same clouds in the background then these will put close together. Or if images have similar time stamp and so on.

Apple knows how to do the work. Geeks would say they want more freedom, but for rest of us it is so easy now. But still the user can make any changes in order or size etc. We are only limited by the themes Apple offers, we can't create our own themes. With iPhoto 09 I thought there were too less themes but I think now are much more and maybe we can buy more in the future.

iPhoto can now send photos via email without leaving the application. There you can send the photos as attachment or use the apple templates for a cool html email.
And we learned now what Steve Jobs email address is, see image below.




The last new feature is the letterpress card function. We can now order beautiful crafted cards with our text and photos. iPhoto has a video which shows how the letterpress cards are made. The best part is the machine is from Germany. A real Heidelberger press.

iMovie





iMovie got a big overhaul with 5 new features. Audio editing was in iMovie 09 pretty poor but now you can edit audio in many ways, a whole clip or only a part of a clip. You can easily change the volume, fade sound in or out or apply cool sound filters.
One step effects allows you to instantly make instantly replays or highlights of scenes.
With people finder iMovie recognized people which are tagged in iPhoto to instantly give them names or group scenes by people.
iMovie has 15 more themes with music taped in London with a symphony orchestra.
The coolest part is movie trailers. Within a few minutes users can create the most stunning trailer, not sure for what we need it but it is very cool.

Garage Band
I am not getting deep in garage band because I never used the old one and i am not so much interested into making my own music.
The new feature in garage band is that you can see how good you played, otherwise some of the existing features like guitar and piano lessons got upgraded.




How do I play is like a game, you can see if the timing is off, wrong note played and your overall performance in %. the beauty part is that the professional taped orchestra is playing with you. Get an USB keyboard or guitar and start. As soon garage band will come with drums, i will start using it.





Facetime
Facetime is finally coming to the Mac. No set up to perform it just works and even turns the image if somebody uses the phone and turns the phone. Facetime is since today as beta available.

The new Mac Os X (lion)
Mac OS X will get many features from the iPad. The new Macs will have a bigger touchpad with multiple touch rather than a touchscreen. Apple believes vertical touchscreen does not work, the arms will get fatigue.
The app store concept will come to the macs. Macs will have their own app store to download applications. If you lose an app you can download the app again with no charge. What happens when Apple's DB crashes? I don't know.
Lion will have home screen similar like the iPad and groups like the the iPhone.
Any app can run in full screen mode, if wished, like on iOS, but it is not clear how it works when you have two screens attached to the computer. Can we run two apps at the same time in full screen?
Any native app will save constantly open documents and if you leave an app and reopen it, the latest status will auto resume. Which does not always work on the iPad and for sure will be sometimes frustrating on Lion.




Overall Apple takes more control especially with the app store, no easy way for people to cheat anymore. With CDs you buy an app and install it as often as you want on as many machine as you wish. The app store will take full control to deny this.
The Mac OS will come much closer to iOs and pretty sure in 24 months both OS will look and work the same. A clear identification that Apple is building their own cloud with their own idea what a cloud is. Get the software from the cloud but install it on your device. I call it the Apple app cloud hybrid.

At last, Steve presented the new MacBook Air which is lighter than the old one, has as well no CD drive (which we don't need with the app store) and the starter notebook with 11 inch costs the same like the MacBook cheapest model. I believe the MacBook will disappear. Interesting is that the MacBook Air has not solid state drive it uses flash drive only.

All new things are pretty cool and interesting but not really unexpected.
Look at some statements I made a few days ago in my blog:

....But the big question will be, what is new?

We can expect that iChat gets upgraded to face time. The OS will have stronger integration of Apple's social hubs like ping.

Most of all the OS UI might slightly change to more look and feel like the iPad. The dock could look like in iOS.

Apple will prepare their Mac OSX for touch screens for their upcoming touch screen iMac.

http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com/2010/10/apple-will-give-sneak-preview-for-next.html

I have been off with touchscreen iMac but multi touch pad on the MacBook is pretty close to it.

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Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

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