dudup

2009-10-27

Wherever you look, it's that 90/10 rule…

Finally, the issue of app store economics (especially customer purchase behavior) is something I’ve continued to publicly be befuddled by. However, Marco Arment’s widely-linked article The Two App Stores jogged a thought loose that I think finally made things jell for me:

The iPhone/iPod Touch, being available for both Mac and Windows, has a single source of software in the app store. That Mac AND Windows thing is key. The app store is not just a software market for Mac users. This is why it blows the minds of indie Mac developers like myself. It’s because it follows the rules of the general software market, not just the Mac software microcosm that we Mac indies enjoy.

Specifically, you have a large group of people who will download and suffer any old shit by the bucketload as long as it is free or extremely cheap. And you have 10% of people who are actually particular about software quality and are willing to pay for it.

In other words, you have the Windows market, and the Mac market, but within the app store itself. And you’d better be damn sure which one you’re targeting, and set pricing and development schedule accordingly.

2009-10-22

Why hasn't Vista sold well?

marco:

What’s driving computer sales? Well, in the ’80s and ’90s, we were making huge hardware advances that affected a large portion of normal people. Every few years, people needed to upgrade their computers for a new killer app or a massively improved generation of their existing apps.

But the rate of such changes that are relevant to average people has plummeted in the last decade. Graphical interfaces, multitasking, SimCity, porn, email, shopping, and dating sold a lot more new computers than nearly anything we’ve come up with since 2000 except malware. (I honestly believe that malware carried computer sales for most of the last decade. That only worked because we’ve taught people, with a combination of misinformation and omission, two great lies: that computers slow down over time, and that the only way to fix a malware infestation is to buy a new computer.)

Hardware, software, and the internet have all reached mature plateaus of dramatically slowed innovation. In 1998, when everyone was happily using long filenames and browsing the internet and playing their first MP3s and editing their first scanned photos to email to their relatives, a five-year-old computer couldn’t easily do any of these things.

But what common tasks in 2009 can’t be accomplished by a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 PC with Windows XP SP2 and a cable internet connection — the average technology of 2004? Not much that regular people actually do.

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How is it that everything about Microsoft’s business is backward looking? This is the real problem they have now. They’re fighting wars that are already over. They’re investing huge energy into defending things they already control, like Windows. As they do this, as they put so much effort into lost causes like search (Bing v. Google) they keep missing out on new things. So their problems just keep getting bigger and bigger, like a snowball rolling down a hill.

— Fake Steve Jobs (via marco)

Yea, i know it’s darn old, but in these busy times, it’s the perfect compliment to catching up with the news when I’m away from Twitter for too long. And yes, I don’t use Google Reader anymore, thanks for asking.

2009-10-06

In some places, it’s easier said than done. In others, it’s the other way around!

2009-09-29

“Hey, why don’t we place a button that do this for when users who are doing that…”

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Absolut versus Relativ (via www.totalleh.com)

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Vacation Infographic (via wtflabs.com)

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You can put visual effect layers on top of Windows or Linux, but it’s just painting a turd.

— Marco Arment

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Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Nitin Nohria (via xplanevisualthinking)

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From the director of ‘Helvetica’…

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What we do…

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simplify:

(via tmblg)

2009-03-15

New mix: Half The Tempo, Double The Bass

Finally, a new mix, and this time, in a very different mood: half-tempo drum and bass. Some of the rand new stuff I’ve been hearing a lot these days.

It’s a complete, geeky lounge stuff for working. Be mindful to wear your best headphones, because in this one the bass is surpassing all the limits!

2008-05-05

Charles : Web Debugging Proxy

Wonderful tool that act as proxy between your web browser and your computer’s internet connection. It allows you to see lots of info regarding page loading, script and flash optimization.

One of its greatest features is the ability to simulate a dial-up connection.

Differently of other simulators, which append directly to your network interface and saw your connection from time to time to simulate low speeds, this is a proxy: it receives all the data normally from the web server, and then streams it to your browser, not only giving a real speed, but latency as well — a HUGE difference when you got to do synthetic tests.

Best of all: it’s made in Java, which means it’s cross platform. Works like a charm on both OS X and Windows, and Linux, for you geeks out there! :)

I’ll definitely buy this one.