Posts tagged App Store

Today’s a big day for me. 

After a ton of hard work I can finally share what I’ve been working on with the rest of the world – Checkmark for iPhone.

It all started last year when I began using Reminders for iPhone during the iOS 5 developer preview. Reminders quickly became my favourite app for iPhone, specifically due to the ability to set location-based reminders. 

Setting location-based reminders for my to-do’s ensured I always remembered to do them when I was able to. I was in love.

After a few weeks of heavy use I realized how annoying it was to set these location-based reminders with the Reminders app. It’s almost as bad to set a date/time based reminder too.

Of course with Siri it’s not a huge hassle but who wants to talk into their phone when they’re out with friends to set reminders?

A bit of research confirmed my suspicion – most of the people I spoke with only use Siri to set reminders if they’re driving. A few people mentioned that they use it if they’re alone, but usually they just enter them manually because they’re used to doing that. Nobody wants to be heard saying “Shave when I get home” when they’re out at a restaurant with a group of friends.

So I set out to build an app that would greatly improve the reminder creation process for both location and time-based reminders. And that’s how Checkmark came to be.

We brought the reminder creation process down to 3 steps from 11 for location-based reminders, and from 8 to 3 for date/time reminders.

Along the way we decided to add some other cool things, like the ability to add a time delay to a reminder (props to Adam Lisagor for the idea) so that your phone doesn’t alert you while you’re walking in the front door with your arms full of groceries – set it to remind you 15 minutes after you arrive. We can also show you a list of everything you have to do, sorted by how far things are from your current location, and more

This is just the beginning for Checkmark. We have a ton of plans for the future and we’re already hard at work on some exciting new things.

I can’t wait for everyone to try it.

Visit www.getcheckmark.com for a sneak peak. We’ll be shipping soon!

There are a few things I hope Apple addresses in iOS 6:

The App Store download experience

A lot of people have already written about search, discovery, and curation (see Federico Viticci’s article on MacStories), so I won’t talk about that.

Back in 2010 I wrote an article about the download experience in the App Store and since then not much has changed (other than an increase from a limit of 20mb to 50mb for downloads outside a Wi-Fi connection).

Most of my time spent browsing the App Store (outside of work-related purposes) has traditionally been while I’m out, away from a Wi-Fi connection; as a passenger in someone’s car on a long drive, while I’m waiting in line at the bank, waiting for a movie to start, or while I’m out with a friend who’s recommended an app to me.

I’ll find an app I want to check out and when I try to install it this happens:

I realize it’s up from 50mb but there are still a lot of apps that are above that limit.

I know Apple isn’t hurting for money but I’m sure this must have a negative effect on App Store revenue, even if it’s small. There’ve been several times that I’ve been unable to purchase an app while I’m out, only to forget about it later.

There should be an “Add to Queue” option, that adds the desired application to a list of apps to be downloaded when a Wi-Fi connection is realized. The apps would automatically download when you get home, back to the office, etc. It could even use iCloud to notify your Mac and/or iPad that have a Wi-Fi connection to download them.

Another thing that bugs me about the App Store is that it pushes you out of the store when you choose to download or install an application.

Why does it need to send the user back to the Home screen?

If a user is interested in placing the new app in a specific position/folder, they can do this when they choose to leave or when they’re done shopping.

I usually like downloading a few apps each time I’m enjoying an “App Store session” and this really gets in the way.

In the iTunes app, there’s a Downloads tab that displays all current downloads (see image below).

If Apple adopted a similar strategy to the App Store, users could quickly tap-to-download several apps, without leaving the App Store. This could also be a place to display applications that will begin downloading when a WiFi connection is realized.

Third-party developer access to custom Lock Screen Notifications

It’d be great it developers could create their own (within strict guidelines) Lock Screen notification “widgets” to perform simple tasks like “snooze” or “mark as complete”, etc.

Currently I’ve only come across this in Apple’s own Clock app for alarms, like this:

Saved Images Album

Why are images saved from Mail and Safari placed into the Camera Roll on iPhone?

The Camera Roll album in the Photos application should contain images of people, places, and things I’ve photographed – not the images I’ve saved from within the device (and screenshots taken with it).

The Photos application needs a “Saved Images” default album to store these photos.

Adding a “Downloads” album for saved images and screenshots would enhance the experience when browsing the Camera Roll and when searching to recall a saved image or screenshot taken with the device.

Choose your own thumbnail for videos in Camera Roll

I wrote about this last year but figured I’d bring it up again:

Whenever I go to a track day event I shoot a lot of video with my iPhone. 

I then end up with a Camera Roll that’s filled with a bunch of videos – sometimes upwards of 20 or 30 clips.

Afterwards, when I go to show a friend one of the videos I’ve taken, I’m forced to flip though several videos until I find the one I’m looking for.

As you can see from this screenshot below (videos were taken at a drift event last summer), it’s hard to tell one video apart from another. 

Being able to “favourite” videos would be useful, but sometimes it’s not a favourite video that I want to show – it could be a video of a certain car, etc.

Having the ability to choose your own thumbnail for a video would help solve this problem.

Here’s what YouTube does:

In this case, the second of three thumbnail options best represents the video.

If this video was part of a large Camera Roll library (I have over 1,500 items in mine), it would be easy to identify right away.

More often than not, the thumbnail your iPhone uses for a video (the first frame recorded) does not represent the video very well.

This shouldn’t be a forced option when creating a new video, but rather an option in the pop-over menu you can bring up when looking at a video in your Camera Roll. Along with “Email Video”, “Message”, and “Send to YouTube”, there could be “Custom Thumbnail”.

Easy access to Brightness setting

It’d be great it if worked the same as iPad, however I can see how the smaller screen real estate held them back from doing that. Perhaps they’ll work this into Notification Center or do something new.