I’m surprised by the fuss about Apple’s iBooks Author licensing terms. The terms prevent you from selling your iBooks Author-created works outside of the iBooks Store (although they can be distributed for free). You can still export and repurpose the content therein, but you can’t sell the complete, packaged layout file created by iBooks Author in another store. This […]

The iPad has a reputation for being difficult to type on. It’s generally accepted that the iPad is okay for short emails and notes, but is not suited to longer documents. The anecdotal consensus seems to be that an on-screen keyboard, with no tactile feedback, leads to more errors than a physical keyboard with real […]

One of our clients came across this yesterday: Bill Gates predicting the future, in a 2005 edition of The Guardian. “You’ll be able to use the camera to take a picture of a sign in a foreign country and software will send it up to a server and bring it back to your phone fully translated.” […]

Publishing has had many saviours in recent years. Apple, Amazon and Google have all been touted as potential messiahs by an industry desperate to work out its role in an uncharted digital world. Big technology companies haven’t been the only saviours. Small independent producers such as Touch Press.com and Inkling.com have experimented with the boundaries between books and apps, with interesting results. Today sees […]

What do I mean by “apps that work”?  Well, the most successful apps – those that really work for users, those that are used time and time again – are apps that make the best of what a mobile device can do. To make apps that really work, we need to answer three questions: Do we need […]

Lots of suggested iPad downsides on the Internet this morning. Thought I’d tackle a few. It doesn’t have a camera It’s 9.5″ by 7.5″ wide, and 0.5″ thick. You want to try taking a picture with something that shape? Besides, you’ve got a camera-shaped iPhone in your pocket. It doesn’t make phone calls It’s 9.5″ by 7.5″ […]

One of the more interesting additions to the updated iTunes 9 Store is a new “Top Grossing Apps” view.  This is displayed bottom right on the main App Store screen in iTunes, and has also been added to the Mobile App Store in iPhone OS 3.1, under the Top 25 tab. As a developer, this view is […]

I’ve struggled to find a way to deduce if an iPhone OS device has the ability to make phone calls or not. There is a way to do so in iPhone OS 3.0, but I want to compile my code against the OS 2.0 SDK to enable it to run on as many devices as […]