My New Favorite App: SpotON Radio For iPhone
I recently caved and bought a premium Spotify subscription. This means that I get millions of streaming tracks on all my devices for only $9.99/month. It’s a much more fluid experience than using iTunes Match, and I like having the peace of mind that I have instant access to any song I could want to play (most of the time).
SpotON Radio is a gorgeous app for the iPhone that lets you create and listen to Spotify radio stations. It’s like Pandora, only you can skip as many tracks as you want and add them to your Spotify playlists. I love the entire experience, and the app is so well designed that I find myself using it more than my stock Music app.
The best part of all? SpotON Radio is totally free in the App Store. What are you waiting for?
Apple Has Helped Create 466,000 U.S. Jobs Since 2008
Apple recently announced that it has payed over $4 billion to third-party developers since the launch of the App Store on July 10, 2008. Apps are an essential part of the modern smartphone, and Apple continues to pave the way with the growing success of the App Store year after year.
Sparked by Apple’s initiative, 466,000 U.S jobs have been created through what is now called the “App Economy.” Jobs include those that now develop for other platforms, like Android and Windows Phone.
A Site Dedicated To Showcasing Beautiful Android Apps
You’ll be surprised to find that there’s more than 5.
Two App Stores
Marco Arment:
App Store A: Simple, shallow games and apps with mass-market appeal. These live and die by the App Store’s “Top” lists, so success is difficult to achieve and is short-lived at best, but with the largest potential payoff for the lucky few at the top. These apps are developed quickly and cheaply, and are rarely updated once their initial popularity (if any) dies down. Very few are priced above $0.99. Impulse-buying is king, with most purchases happening on the phone itself, and most buyers don’t know or cares whether you’re an established developer unless your name begins with “MLB”. Nearly every best-selling app falls into this category.
App Store B: Apps and games with more complexity and depth, narrower appeal, longer development cycles, and developer maintenance over the long term. These tend to get little attention from the “Top” lists, instead relying on the much-lower-volume App Store features (e.g. “Staff Picks”), blogs, reviews, and word of mouth. More of their customers notice and demand great design and polish. More sales come from people who have heard of your product first and seek it out by name. Many of these apps are priced above $0.99. These are unlikely to have giant bursts of sales, and hardly any will come close to matching the revenue of the high-profile success stories, but they have a much greater chance of building sustained, long-term income. Due to the likely lower revenue cap, these are usually developed on small budgets by individuals who can do most or all of the work themselves.
These two stores exist in completely different ecosystems with completely different requirements, priorities, and best practices.
I totally agree with Marco on the division. I see the importance of App Store A, but I get really excited about App Store B.
Your Apps Know A Lot About You
The Wall Street Journal has shared the results of an eye-opening investigation on how apps share personal data. Since the success of the App Store, apps have become the backbone of what makes or breaks a successful, mobile device. The Journal looked into how some apps (both iOS and Android) actually behave with your phone’s information, and examined the personal data that most don’t know is shared through apps. The results were a little disturbing…
