think pink

a weblog by  Elliott Kember

PowerPoint? Ouch, dude.

@kahara I've added an RSS feed :)

Just added one John - hope that helps :)

@graulund Due to popular demand, line breaks have been added :)

@Grant: I see what you're saying, but I think that the ideas that don't make it are still "failures", so to speak. It's just the stigma associated with the word that I don't like. A cool way to look at it is: failure is an event, but success is a process.

Well, the application is still a failure in the general sense of the word. But that doesn't stop you learning from it. There's still the goal of "success" to look forward to. If every attempt is a success, then what is there to strive for? In other words, failure is necessary. You can't have success without failure.

@jamesgecko Oops! Spot on about trademarks, good call.

As for the guidelines, the comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. A copy of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement is available at http://j.mp/9WxKNF - although I'm not 100% on how current / relevant that version is, or whether that's published legally. If there's a better version I'd like to see it. It clearly states that Apple can choose to publish or not-publish apps as they see fit. You're putting yourself at Apple's mercy on this one, and I can't even begin to imagine how annoying it must be to be rejected - but if you've hit "accept" to this agreement, it seems a bit silly to argue their decision. As always, that's only my £0.02.

@ravcasleygera You can actually install apps via ad-hoc distribution - Apple supports that. I think it's limited to up to 100 deployments, but there you go - you don't have to be vetted.

As for Nokia phones, you're right, I don't see people fleeing in fear from Nokia phones - but I do see people moving from them to iPhones and noticing the difference. I had to use an N96 while debugging Twiggy, and it was an absolute nightmare, usability-wise. I'd happily advise any ordinary person to run in fear from a Nokia phone any day.

"[F]ree installation on Macs" isn't a risk to trademarks - tampering with the source code, like Psystar did, is.

I'm not sure "income for doing comparatively little" sums up what they've done with the App Store. They've developed and released a groundbreaking phone at a decent price, overturned the mobile market, and produced a platform and SDK. As for profit, I don't know how much Apple has made back on its investment in the App Store, but I do know that it's converted a lot of people to Mac users and enthusiasts. In the long term, I think that's a net win for Apple.

Thanks Sam! :)

@teabass: Good idea, but that's all set to change, both with 4.0's backgrounding ability, and Twitter's User Streams.

@asmitter: Maybe a dropdown, something more like 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. That seems to be the way other apps do it. Perhaps a slider with notches.