Android, iPad & iPhone Application Development Washington, DC, App Savvy Author

Let’s Talk iPhone – By the Numbers

Here are the key numbers from yesterday’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event.

Mac

Users: 58M

iOS

Devices: 250m
iPhones: Half on the market are iPhone 4′s
App Store: >500k apps; 140k iPad apps

Accounts/Downloads

App Store: 18b; $3b paid to developers

If you compare these numbers to the WWDC keynote just four months ago (or so), what stands out to me is that there is a 55% increase in the total number of iPad apps (90k iPad apps then).

For more comprehensive stats and visuals, see MacStories post The (Big) Numbers Apple Touted At Their iPhone Event.

Apple and The Paradox of Choice

Phone Too Much Ahead of the “Let’s talk iPhone” event tomorrow, it’s possible that Apple may indeed unveil two iPhones: a 8GB version of the iPhone 4 and the new “iPhone 4S,” which is just an update to the iPhone 4. That really equates to one new iPhone and a new flavor of the iPhone 4. This approach continues to match with Apple’s iPhone and larger product strategy that less is more. And it’s this paradox of choice that is helping them win the mobile market.

If you aren’t familiar with it, the book Paradox of Choice lays out why having too many purchasing options is actually crippling to consumers. Americans in particular face angst when looking at the seemingly infinite number of options to make purchases. For example, at a local grocery market author Barry Schwartz finds 75 iced teas and 285 varieties of cookies. Then consider the paradox of choice at work for larger and more expensive purchases, such as electronics or cars. Nearly everything is customizable and the stress of making a decision can be paralyzing.

Apple has largely removed this complexity from their purchasing process. In fact, the iPad 2 launch was probably their most complicated iOS product to date. Consumers had to choose a color, size, and what kind of network capabilities they wanted. If they wanted a Wi-Fi + 3G model, they then had to select AT&T or Verizon.

Still, selecting a particular version from those twenty-four different possible combinations is only a decision that must be made once a consumer believes he wants an iPad. Essentially, the choice is a single iPad versus any other tablet. The paradox of choice is at least one reason the latest numbers have 25M iPads on the market compared to 3M tablets of everything else.

iPad 2 From a development perspective, the paradox of choice also makes building apps for iOS significantly easier, because in general, there are at most about three generation of devices that need to be supported. But it could be possible to get away with two. For example, at the moment most of the non-tablet market could be covered by supporting third and fourth generation iPod touches and iPhones (i.e., the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4). Since Apple phases out older products, it makes device support fairly predictable.

Even on the design side, there are only two screen sizes, one for the iPod touch and iPhone, and one for the iPad. Of course, there’s Retina display but Apple’s made it more straightforward for designers by just doubling the pixel dimensions. Compare this simplicity against building for Android, where there are many different screen sizes, many different hardware specifications, and little consistency available to developers and designers. This lack of standardization is one reason most Android Market reviews focus on why the app doesn’t work on a particular device instead of addressing actual features of the app.

Ultimately, it’s a win-win for Apple. Consumers aren’t overwhelmed when deciding to “buy Apple” and developers can better support their apps. The Apple philosophy of less is more is apparent in all of their culture and it’s apt considering the subtitle of The Paradox of Choice which reads, Why More is Less.

Flux for iOS

One of my favorite tweaks for the Mac—Flux—is now available in Cydia. It takes your blinding iOS screen and applies a clever dimming effect to save you from nighttime glow.

To try to capture the new “candle” effect, I snapped a few photos of my iPhone 4. The picture qualities aren’t phenomenal because I used an iPhone 3GS but I think you can see the difference. The screen on the left shows Flux enabled.

Because the iPhone 3GS camera was attempting to adjust the lighting, I also took these shots of the Flux settings. Note that the photo with the applied “Candle” effect had to be snapped as Flux was being enabled, so that the camera would not adjust its lighting. That’s the reason for the discoloration at the top of the screen.

I’m a big fan of this tool. It should ship with iOS itself.

On Standing Desks and the Cornell University Field Tests

A week or so ago, the blogoshphere lit up with the comments from Cornell University, which in part contradicted the health of standing while working. Using a standing desk since the start of the year, I was surprised by the conclusions until I actually read the blurb.

For some background, the problems of sitting for long periods of time are clearly and extensively documented. I’m not going to link to all the data and research but here’s one article I saw only yesterday from CanadianBusiness.com,

What we generally see,” says the Canadian-born Katzmarzyk, “is that people who sit more during the day have a higher risk of dying from any cause, and in particular, mortality from heart disease.

The comments from Cornell don’t try to debunk these kinds of studies but they also seem to downplay them with only a short paragraph on the perils of sitting. More importantly, their criticism of standing desks seem to only consider them when they are used improperly.

Their first issue with sit-stand workstations, “is that when you raise desk height for keyboard/mouse use you need to also raise screen height above the desk or you get neck flexion.” This “problem” seems like no problem at all if the screen height is above the desk…I haven’t seen many sit-stand workstations that don’t work that way. The second observation seems like a similar non-issue because standing can fix posture no more than sitting can.

But here’s my big problem with their piece and why they seem not to prove much. They write,

In our field studies of sit-stand workstations we have found little evidence of widespread benefits and users only stand for very short-periods (15 minutes or less total per day). Other studies have found that the use of sit-stand stations rapidly declines so that after 1 month a majority of people are sitting all the time.

It seems to me that they’re not seeing widespread benefits because as they observe, people are actually not standing. So, how does that prove that it’s not actually healthier? It doesn’t. They’d need to compare people who actually stand versus those who sit (which is what the studies that compare the health benefits of sitting versus standing do). Just because people who have sit-stand workstations don’t stand doesn’t mean there are no benefits; it just means those they observed were being lazy. And that’s what I consider these observations…a bit lazy.

Papercut for iPad

Interesting video on Computer Arts magazine covering the guys at ustwo and their new reader for the iPad called, “Papercut.” Whether or not you love the app, we need more in our industry to keep boldly experimenting with mobile interfaces like Chief WONKA and his crew.

Lion UI Kit (Preview)

I’m releasing this Mac OS Lion UI Kit for those who need to create mockups. This is free to use, but please link back here for download!. I believe I have all the ‘most used’ UI elements covered, but let me know if something important is missing.

While any useful mockup tool piques my interest, I’m particularly intrigued by Lion UI Kit, as we are eyeing Lion and the Mac App Store more and more.

Automating Customer Support with Gmail

While I’ve grown the savvy apps team considerably this year, we’re still not a big shop (and never plan to be). So, when our latest in-house iOS app—Agenda—became a phenomenal bestselling app on the App Store, we weren’t immediately prepared for the onslaught of feature and support requests we received. For some context, in Agenda’s first month on the App Store, we processed just about a thousand emails.

Thankfully though, our experience with some of our other apps put us in a position to quickly deal with this significantly increased volume. Here’s how we did it.

1) In App Emails with App-Specific Subject Lines

In app emails are probably the best way to provide customers a way to get in touch with you. You’ll find that including this element in your apps will drastically increase customer contact with you (and that’s a good thing!). If you’re not doing this already (and many are), check out InAppSettingsKit.

Don’t stop with populating the in app email with your support email address only. Add two more elements. The first is a subject line that is app-specific. For Agenda, we use, “Agenda – Support Request.” I’ll discuss why adding the subject line is particularly useful momentarily.

The second item to add is diagnostic information for troubleshooting issues (hat tip to Dave Smith). We include the device type, device OS, and application version in the footer of the in app email. This information let’s you start assessing any issues right away and can reduce email volume by 50%.

Iapemail

2) Form Submissions with App-Specific Subject Lines

Some customers won’t use in app emails. Instead, they’ll visit your website to try to find help. That’s why on our Agenda website, we have a web form at the bottom of the page. This form also generates an email with the “Agenda – Support Request” subject line. Between these two channels, almost all Agenda emails being sent to us have the “Agenda – Support Request” subject line.

3) Gmail Canned Responses

A powerful feature of Gmail is “Canned Responses.” They allow common responses to be saved as drafts. That text can then be inserted quickly into any message. You can read more about Canned Responses on the Gmail blog or Lifehacker.

We have a canned response for every one of our popular support or feature requests. But we actually often don’t have to use them. What’s even more useful is the “master” canned response we have setup for any email sent to us with the “Agenda – Support Request” subject line.

4) Filters with a Canned Response

Combining the master canned response with a Gmail filter for the “Agenda – Support Request” subject line, most Agenda inquiries are answered without our interaction. Our canned response immediately gets customers a response from us, sets their expectations about turnaround time, includes some frequently asked questions (with a link to all of them on the Agenda website), and provides the release notes from the last update. After each release, we update all canned responses (as needed), including the master canned response with the latest release notes.

Mplsupport

The downside to this approach is twofold: 1) It’s slightly more impersonal. 2) Customers will receive the auto-response for additional inquiries. But for the 1-2 customers who complained about that, many, many more appreciated their questions being answered instantaneously.

Concluding Note

This solution is not perfect but it has allowed us to provide stellar customer support and answer almost all actual inquiries within our stated goal of 1-2 business days, even with the high volume of inquiries.

By focusing on real issues or requests, we’ve been able to better triage what bugs and features need to be addressed. While selectively inputting issues into our bug and feature tracking solution (Unfuddle), we also circumvented costly and complicated customer support solutions that really aren’t necessary for independent software developers.

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