Sponsor: Tokens for Mac  →

Tokens is a Mac app for managing App Store promo codes.

Tokens gets promo codes from iTunes Connect, creates shareable URLs for each code and notifies you once they’re redeemed.

The first step to getting your app noticed is inviting bloggers to try it. Promo codes let you give away free copies of your app, but unfortunately they’re laborious to create, awkward to redeem and impossible to track.

With Tokens you create a code with one click and bloggers can redeem it just as easily. By naming the token you can tell who has tried your app and follow up with them. You can also reuse any unredeemed codes before they expire.

Tokens is available now at usetokens.com/syndicate. Shawnblanc.net readers get a special 20% discount until July using this link.

* * *

My thanks to Tokens for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: Tokens for Mac

Contemplating the iOS 7 Adoption Rate

Apple has stated that 93-percent of active iOS users are on iOS 6.

That’s fantastic. It’s great for us users because it means almost all of us are on the latest and greatest version. And it’s great for developers because it means they can have their apps support the latest APIs without fear of losing the vast majority of their potential customer base.

Based on some publicly available info from Apple, James Dempsey (Via Matthew Panzarino) put together this chart showing which iOS devices will be able to update to iOS 7 this fall. (You could preemptively add the new iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and iPad mini that will all (presumably) be announced and ship this fall with iOS 7 pre-installed.)

Note that there are two devices on Dempsey’s chart that can currently run iOS 6 but won’t be able to run iOS 7: the iPhone 3GS and the 4th-generation iPod touch.

The question is: of the 93-percent of active iOS users who are on iOS 6, how many of them are using a 4th-generation iPod touch or iPhone 3GS, and thus won’t be able to update to iOS 7 this fall?

It’s certainly not a majority, but also likely non-trivial.

Which means it’s a tricky line for 3rd-party developers to walk while considering updating their apps for iOS 7. As a developer, you want to adopt the newest APIs and technologies and go “all in” with the latest iOS version. But you don’t want to abandon your customers who are on older versions of iOS. And the alternative of having 2 versions of the same app (one that is iOS 7-only, and one that is for iOS 6) can be a nightmare on many levels (logistics, marketing, customer support, etc.).

However, Apple is pushing iOS 7 as the biggest deal since the original iPhone OS. And I’ve talked to many developers who are getting the hint and strongly considering making brand-new versions of their apps which are “all in” on iOS 7, or else they’ve got an aggressive plan to turn their current app into one that requires iOS 7 as soon as they can.

Certainly the ease of use for all the current iOS 6 devices to update to iOS 7 via an over-the-air update will fuel adoption rates. And there will be a flood of new devices shipping this fall with iOS 7 pre-installed.

So the questions in my mind are about the short-term iOS 7 adoption rate be? And how long will it take iOS 7 to be running on more than 90-percent of active iOS devices?

I’ve got a guess, but I’m still working the math out.

Contemplating the iOS 7 Adoption Rate

Go J Go  →

Thomas Brand is running in the St. Jude Memphis Marathon to raise money for St. Jude on behalf of Josiah Hackett, the son of my good friend Stephen Hackett. St. Jude is an incredibly generous hospital that has paid for over $2,000,000 worth of brain cancer treatment, allowing Stephen and his family to get vital medical coverage debt free.

Like last year, Anna and I are once again donating towards Brand’s marathon goal. All donations go directly to St. Jude so they can keep on helping children. I hope you’ll consider donating as well.

Go J Go

Rdio Radio

The latest update to Rdio’s iOS app includes Song Stations:

Start a station based on any song to hear more from that artist and other related artists.

It’s basically like Pandora — you pick a song you like and then Rdio does the rest. But you can chose to play songs from only the artist you selected, or you can play songs from related artists as well.

Rdio’s Song Stations are powered by The Echo Nest, which boasts over one trillion data points regarding their known songs, artists, and customer base of music providers (such as Spotify and Twitter Music).

I listen to Rdio most of the day, but the Auto Play feature that kicks in when an album or playlist is over usually stinks at picking songs I actually want to listen to at the time they come on. Because Auto Play is basically just a shuffle of my entire collection. Which means, say I’m listening to a John Mayer album, and when it’s over the instrumental version of Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” will come on (I don’t even know how that song made its way into my collection in the first place). Not exactly what you’d expect to hear next, is it?

Yesterday and today I’ve been listening to the new Song Stations and so far, compared to Pandora, they’re hit and miss. Pandora’s algorithms are second to none — when I set up a station in Pandora I almost always get nothing but good picks. It’s still my preferred way to listen to jazzy Christmas music.

I’d love for Rdio to incorporate a setting for Song Station so that when I’m done listening to an album, Rdio would use that artist as the basis for auto playing the next songs. Thus keeping in the same audio stream as opposed to just a random shuffle from my whole collection.

Rdio Radio

Chuck Skoda: A Week With iOS 7  →

Some great thoughts on iOS 7’s new look and apps, and he nails it at the end regarding Apple’s seemingly non-existent aversion to leaving things behind.

Also, I like Chuck’s comment on the new Siri:

The biggest win here are tie-ins to device capabilities like “turn on bluetooth” or “increase brightness” that we saw during the keynote. It makes Siri feel more like the voice behind your phone, not just another feature.

Agreed, and I love that this is the direction they’re going. One of my favorite tidbits seen in the new Notification Center is the natural language overview of your day regarding weather and events, as well as tomorrow’s events. Presumably that information is being parsed and the sentences are being written with the same technology behind Siri’s conversational tone.

Chuck Skoda: A Week With iOS 7

Chatology  →

When I ran the in-house design team for the International House of Prayer we worked in an open office. Seventeen people and their desks with no cubicles or walls. We loved it because it was open and refreshing and you felt connected to the team. And it worked because we honored a rule of no talking, and no interrupting other people at their desk.

Everyone had iChat (back then it wasn’t yet called Messages) open and if you needed to talk to someone, even if they were in the desk next to you, you’d send them an instant message. And if their iChat status was set to “away” then it meant they were busy and in the zone and you would just have to hold your horses for a bit.

In short, if you spend any amount of time using the Mac’s Messages app (R.I.P. iChat) for conversing with peers and/or co-workers, then Chatology is for you. Because a lot of useful, helpful, and random information gets shared and this app makes it a breeze to find those past chats and/or whatever links or files where passed. You can even filter your searches to only show chats with images or links.

Like Ben wrote in his review, Chatology isn’t for everybody, but those who could use it are going to love it.

Chatology

2013 World Aeropress Championship Recipes  →

The 2012 winning recipe is the one I’ve been using the most ever since I tried it over a year ago. I haven’t tried the 2013 winning recipe yet, it’s a bit more fussy — apparently it’s all the rage to hold your AeroPress at a 45-degree angle and slowly rotate it during bloom and brew time as a way to gently agitate the grounds. When I was a kid we drank drip coffee and liked it!

2013 World Aeropress Championship Recipes

Your TextExpander Tip of the Day

Last week I linked to the LaunchBar 5.5 update and commented about its new Snippets feature:

One great advantage of LaunchBar’s snippets is that you can access your whole list with a keystroke and then search for the one you want. Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I forget what abbreviation I assigned to this or that TextExpander expansion (especially ones I use infrequently). And so, for some cases, I expect I’ll be using LaunchBar snippets instead.

After writing that, I received some feedback from folks about a preference in TextExpander that I’ve been ignorant to: you can set a global hotkey which will bring up a search box to search your TextExpander snippets.

TextExpander Search Preference

Hitting the hotkey gets you this search box, which searches both the contents of the expansion as well as the shortcut:

TexExpander Search Box

Yes, some abbreviations are unforgettable, but not all of them. And so if, like me, you sometimes forget what abbreviation you’ve assigned to a TextExpander snippet, then this hotkey preference is for you.

Your TextExpander Tip of the Day

The iOS 7 Summer  →

I love this piece by Federico Viticci:

There will be apps that will mimic Apple’s Mail and Safari interfaces; there will be apps with custom UIs and personalities; and there will be apps that sit somewhere in between. But the potential that I’m excited to see this summer from developers is about the functionality of their apps, and how they will leverage new iOS 7 features to offer experiences that I’m not used to.

iOS 7 is far more than a radical aesthetic redesign — it’s the new foundation for the next era of Apple’s most popular operating system. I am becoming a fan of the more simplified look, and I look at certain screens within the operating system and I think: I can’t believe this is the operating system I get to use every day. The new Lock screen design, the magazine carousel of Safari tabs, the new Siri screen, are all gorgeous.

But what I too am most excited about are the things like the natural-language overview of the Notification Center’s Today view, the quick-access to settings and apps in the Control Center, the new APIs and how they will enable 3rd-party apps, the Z-Axis organization, and more. These are what will take iOS to its next stage of maturity.

The iOS 7 Summer

Sponsor: MightyDeals.com  →

Ask anyone who’s ever tried to knock in a nail with a screwdriver: having the wrong tools is a major hindrance. Access to the right tools saves time, increases the quality of your work and adds to the pleasure of doing a job well.

The trouble for designers & developers is that there are so many tools out there, it’s hard to know what’s worthwhile, let alone being able to afford half of the resources we want.

That’s where MightyDeals.com comes in. We negotiate promotional deals with suppliers and often manage to agree up to 97% off regular pricing.

And what’s more, these aren’t just any tools, some of the best companies on the web promote their products through MightyDeals.com.

So if you’re looking for great deals, or just want to stay in touch with the latest fonts, applications, themes and resources, visit MightyDeals.com or sign up for our newsletter today.

* * *

My thanks to MightyDeals.com for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: MightyDeals.com