Dave Metzener's Weblog

If the headline is a true statement, then Apple needs to get off it’s backside and work out a way to protect applications from being pirated.

Via: 24/7 Wall St.
Apple and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over 3 billion applications downloaded since the App program began. Bernstein analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, estimated that between 13% and 21% of those downloads are from paid applications. According to this analysis, the average price of an application purchased at the App Store is $3. Sacconaghi estimated that Apple’s revenue from the App Store is between $60 million and $110 million per quarter. That amount has certainly increased since this research report was published because of the rapid growth of the number of applications.

If what that article is saying is true, then it’s clearly up to Apple to solve the problem. If for no other reason than to save the $135,000,000 that Apple is losing per 18 months.

There are folks out there that question the $450 million number and I must say that I have to wonder a bit too. The only way people can pirate iPhone/iPod touch apps is to jailbreak their iDevice. There are those that are doing this. In fact, some say that 10% of the iDevices out there are jailbroken. That comes to about 7.5 million jailbroken devices. Now, are we saying that, on average, each jailbreaker pirates $60 of software every 18 months? That sounds like a doable number. However, I really doubt that every jailbreaker is also a pirate. Now, what percentage of jailbreakers are pirates needs to be figured out.

The article states that 40% pirate, so now we are talking about 3 million jailbroken pirates would need to be stealing $150 worth of apps per 18 months. This still sounds like a doable figure. I mean we are talking less than 1 $0.99 app per month per jailbroken iPhone/iPod touch pirate. Assuming all the numbers are close to accurate.

If this is all true, then Apple is loosing way too much money to be sitting back and letting it happen. They must be working on something. If Microsoft can put together a system to prevent Xbox 360 pirating, then Apple can sure do something.

With all the whining about Apple’s review policy in the AppStore, its a little comforting to read about fraudulent applications getting into the Android Marketplace:

12.22.09 Rogue Android Smartphone app created
We recently learned that a fraudster developed a rogue Android Smartphone app. It creates a shell of mobile banking apps that tries to gain access to a consumer’s financial information. Droid09 launched this phishing attack from the Android Marketplace and it’s since been removed. It’s called phishing because scammers go fishing for information about you or your financial account that may be used for identity theft. Please note that this attack didn’t target First Tech accounts. Accessing your First Tech account from your phone’s web browser is completely secure. If you did download the Droid09 app, please remove it from your phone and take it to your mobile provider to ensure it’s completely removed. As a reminder, we don’t currently have an app for the Android phone.

It’s interesting that Google doesn’t seem to have much to say about the incident. If I were an Android user, I would want to hear from Google about the issue to know that they are doing all that they can to prevent future occurrences of similar incidents.

I know I have been one of the many voices complaining about the review process in the AppStore. However, I am well aware that the main purpose of that review process is to prevent just such occurrences as the one that Android is dealing with now.

With more than 100,000 apps in the AppStore, we have yet to see any malicious applications appear. Sure, there have been some apps that AT&T didn’t like (tethering and video streaming) and some that were just rude (the Baby Shaker app comes to mind), but overall, the applications we have had were very safe to use.

Its a shame that Apple was proven correct by this incident. I would have liked to see an open marketplace for mobile applications. However, now that mobile apps are taking off in popularity, they are going to be attracting all kinds of unsavory developers and open marketplaces are going to be very dangerous places to be purchasing/downloading mobile applications.

A group of developers have got together to offer most if not their entire collection of programs for a pretty darn good discount of 20% off. There is a website that points to all the developers that are participating located at: http://www.onefingerdiscount.com/.

At the time of this writing, there are 57 developers participating. I even managed to take advantage of the discount for Voodoo Pad.

Check it out if you are thinking about getting a piece of software to see if the developer you are about to buy from is one of the participating developers.

OK, what the hell is the matter with you Apple! This blackmail tactic of threatening to remove an application from the AppStore because you don’t like a feature is really getting very very old!

I just learned that Apple is threatening to remove iStat from Bjango if they don’t remove a feature in the application that attempts to free up memory that is otherwise not being used.

As you can see from the screen shot to the right, the first section of the applications data is a pie chart of memory usage. Wired and Active is memory that is currently being used by applications, Inactive and Free is memory that is not being used. The “FREE MEMORY” button to the right of the pie chart allows the user to attempt to free up memory that is not being used at the time.

For this example, tapping the FREE MEMORY button would probably free up about a quarter of the memory currently being colored in the pie chart. This has been my experience with the app. It probably attempts to fill the device with used memory by allocating as much memory as it’s allowed, then freeing it up. This will force the device to “Page Out” memory, freeing up some memory for other apps.

Typically, the Mail, Phone and iPod apps don’t quit when you press the Home button. So they take up memory that may not be needed if you are not listening to music. You don’t need Mail in memory if you are not reading messages and you don’t need “most” of the Phone app in memory either.
The news hit Twitter just a few hours ago directly from Bjango. Here are the tweets from their Twitter account: http://twitter.com/bjango

We’ve been asked to remove iStat’s free memory feature. This leaves us with two choices. Resubmit with free mem gon (cont) http://tl.gd/dme8 You all know who asked Keep the replies coming. User feedback is a VERY important part of this decision. Those who want more info: we simply don’t have any. It is exactly what it is. All the detail we have: iStat will be removed from the store unless the free mem feature goes. If you don’t update iStat to version 1.1, then yes, you get to keep 1.0 as is, free mem included. On the plus side: If we remove the free mem feature, we will be able to update iStat with all the features we’ve been wanting to add. We haven’t made a decision yet but it seems like people would rather have updates even if it means free memory is gone.

Now, there were a lot of folks chiming in with suggestions including myself. I would personally like to keep iStat as is, and purchase a new iStat app that doesn’t have the free memory feature, but has the new features that Bjango is promising. Were not talking a huge amount of money here. If I paid full price for the app, it was $1.99. I would gladly eat that for a way of freeing memory other than turning off my phone, then back on. That is so annoying and is just because there is no memory free to run the application I am attempting to run.

I have seen symptoms in several apps I run. With PandoraBox, I’ll see application entries with all blank data, meaning that there wasn’t enough free memory to load the app description and icon into memory to display. I’ve seen apps shutdown seconds after starting. After I free the memory, the applications work fine.

I have to wonder what in the world Apple doesn’t like about the ability to “Page Out” memory not being used presently by other applications. It’s what a Paged Memory Management system is designed to do. If the “embeded” version of OS X is not capable of PMM, I would have to question Apple’s saying that the iPhone/iPod touch uses an Embeded OS X.

As usual, Apple is not stating way Bjango has to remove the feature from its app. Just that they remove it or the app is removed from the store. I’m actually surprised that Apple actually gave Bjango a warning that they would remove the app if they don’t comply. We have clearly seen examples of Apple pulling the plug on an application and surprising the developers with the news after the fact.

So, come on Apple, get your head out of your collective asses and fix this AppStore problem, or you are not going to be seeing the applications you would like to see in your wonderful AppStore in the future. Just hundreds of thousands of “Bulk” apps that we all enjoy so much right now. (You know what I’m talking about, don’t you Brighthouse Labs?)

Jump-Parkour Game Coming Soon To iPhone Gameplay Exclusive

I came across this video of an amazing looking game for the iPhone/iPod touch in development. It reminds me of Mirror’s Edge for the PS3, XBOX 360 and PC.

Can’t really tell what the controls will be like for it, but man, it looks killer. If the music used in the video is actually in the game, that would really make it rock. Probably not though. Since the song is My United States Of Whatever by Liam Lynch (YouTube Video), so probably not.

Here’s hoping that this game actually sees the light of day.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and use Feedburner.com for my RSS feeds instead of what WordPress creates. No huge deal, and I suspect that there are not that many people out there that are actually subscribed to my feeds. If you are, this is a note to let you know that you should probably re-subscribe to them. I suspect the old WordPress feeds will stop updating now.

I’m making this change mostly for the statistics and also to support a great service.

Thanks for hanging in there with me and I hope I’ve been helpful in some way to you in my writings.

What is it with Apple blogs and watching everything that Apple does? Is it always “a slow news day” with those blogs? Every, and I do mean every time Apple closes the Apple Store, there are literally 100+ blogs that post a blog entry telling it’s readers that the store has closed down. Then they start speculating what the close means. A new computer, iPhone, iPod, a modification to an existing computer, etc…

Its kind of sad really. I have to assume that there are hundreds of scripts running all over the place checking the Apple Store web site to see if that little yellow post-it note that says “We’ll be back soon.” is being displayed. Those scripts must set off pagers, notifications, emails and all sorts of other ways to let these bloggers know that it’s time to post a new blog post about the store being down.

The Apple Store isn’t the only place that these folks keep a keen eye on. Press releases, news from Apple business partners, the fiscal quarter conference calls, health reports of Steve Jobs to name a few. Hell, if Steve were to bruise himself and then have a picture taken with the bruise, there would all of a sudden be at least 50 blog posts speculating that the discoloration was a cancer, or some strange and exotic disease.

I love Apple and Apple products just as much as these blogs do, but my life doesn’t revolve around the company and its CEO. I love keeping up on what is happening at Apple just as much as the next Apple fanboy, but having to skim past 50 blog posts just because Steve Jobs took a shit is just a bit more than I can stand these days.

40 Years ago, this very day, man changed the world as we know it. From that day on, man actually stood on a soil other than Earth’s. There are those who believe that America fabricated the whole thing. I pity those people. There are people who are too young to have actually seen, live, the first pictures of man walking on the Moon. All that they have is video footage stored for prosperity.

The website wechoosethemoon.org is playing out the entire Apollo 11 mission as if it were happening today. All the audio transmissions from Mission Control to the spacecraft are being played in realtime. There is a mission clock to let you know how much time remains before the landing on the Moon and the next stage of their replay. As of this writing, it’s 6 hours, 26 minutes and 20 seconds before the Eagle lands on the Moon. Just under 4 hours before the next stage occurs.

Here are a couple of YouTube videos of the event just to save you from having to search YouTube yourself:

One of the few events of my childhood I remember was sitting in front of our television in the living room watching and waiting for the landing and then finally, the time when Neil and Buzz got out of the LEM and started their EVA’s on the Moon. It’s fuzzy now, but I’m pretty sure it was around 9pm. Which at my age of 8 years old, was past my bedtime. At least it was summer and I didn’t have to go to school the next day.

Something I am very happy to report is that all three astronauts are alive and well, although they are definitely showing their age.

So for those of you out there that are old enough to remember this day 40 years ago, enjoy the remembrances that will be broadcast today. For those of you who are too young. This is a perfect time to learn about all that happened on the mission. Aside from the multitude of websites that cover the event, I suggest renting/buying the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon. A wonderful account of the entire space race from President Kennedy’s 1962 speech to the last flight to the Moon by Apollo 17’s Eugene A. Cernan, Harrison H. Schmitt and Ronald E. Evans.

I’m sure this letter will never see the light of day at Apple HQ, but I feel it really needs to be written. If not for me, for all the other iPhone/iPod touch owners out there that collect AppStore Applications like philatelist collect stamps. You see, we have this unique problem with our beloved device. Organizing our applications in the devices SpringBoard.

I’m sure there are not many of us. Otherwise, Apple would be selling 20,000,000,000 (Billion) applications by now instead of just over 1 billion. That said, there is an average of 25 purchased applications per iPhone/iPod touch.

Now, 35 (10 Applications by Apple that can’t be deleted and come with an iPhone or iPod touch taking into account various OS versions and device versions) applications can easily be managed by existing means. In fact that’s barely 2 full pages on the SpringBoard.

However, there are a few of us crazy people that have way more than 25 purchased apps. I’m currently just 5 shy of 500 in iTunes.

(Link to full image of all apps in my iTunes Applications list)

Clearly, not all of those apps are in my iPhone. Here is what my SpringBoard looks like currently:

You’ll notice that several of the SpringBoard pages have only 15 of 16 icons on them. This is because, even with the 3.0 OS, moving icons in the SpringBoard app causes all kinds of problems with other pages as you scroll from one page to another to another.

In the 3.0 OS update, Apple allowed users to take an icon, drag it over to the right or left edge of the screen which causes SpringBoard to move to the next or previous page. If you don’t move your finger while on the edge, SpringBoard will continue to move to the next/previouos page until you move your finger back into the screen. This should allow a user to move an icon from page one to page 9 without messing up icons on pages 2 through 8. However, this is not the case. I don’t understand why, unless they just have a bug, but it causes all kinds of problems with the intermediate page icons.

Say you have all your pages full from page 1 to 11 except for one space on page 10. Also, you want to move an icon on page 1 to that open space on page 10. You hold your finger on the icon you want to move. SpringBoard starts jiggling all the icons. You drag your finger and the icon to the edge of the screen and SpringBoard starts sliding pages from left to right. For some reason, when sliding past page 3, SpringBoard gets confused and thinks you moved your finger back into the screen. This causes the last icon on page 3 to move to page 4, the last icon on page 4 to move to page 5, etc all the way to page 9 which moves its last icon to page 10. It stops on page 10 since there was an open spot.

Now you have a problem. You still want to get that icon to page 10, but doing so will knock the last icon on page 11 off the SpringBoard completely, assuming you are able to get the icon to page 10 without further incident.

Leaving an empty space on most pages allows for this weird error to happen and not mess up your organization.

A very bright person setup a Keynote presentation showing his/her ideas of how to use iTunes to help organize applications in the SpringBoard app:

Now, this video only shows two SpringBoard pages, but it would still save much time using iTunes to layout your apps and then sync to make the adjustments in your iphone/iPod touch.

Apple, you have made some great strides in the iPhone OS to make our beloved device the best that there is. However, there is always room for improvement. The SpringBoard app is one place that definitely needs improvements. Please, do something to make organizing applications on the iPhone/iPod touch as easy as the rest of the functions of the devices are to use.

Welcome to Dave Metzener’s Weblog!

The purpose of this site is stricly for myself to post thing that I find interesting or surprising and feel that others should know about them or just marvel at.

The older site I used to run, Weblog of a Switcher, has unfortunately been lost to the bitstreams. The only piece of it I have left is a backup of SQL commands that “in theory” should recreate all the databases and data. Unfortunately, none of the plugins or tools I have access to allow me to restore the data to the old site. So I have put it to rest and have the old web address forwarding to here.

Don’t expect hundreds of posts a day. I would expect to see one post a week and if I am feeling really creative, maybe 3 a week.

I hope I can enlighten here at least as much as I did at the old site if not more.