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Posts Tagged ‘Sarcasm’

Developer quacks about ‘minimal user functionality,’ but it’s not a new rule

Filed under: Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Since the early days of the App Store, it’s been a virtual Wild West out there — people can release apps that do whatever they can imagine, from a virtual cowbell to a mirror, silly as the functionality may be. Still, there has always been a (very low) hurdle for the least an app can do; once again, Apple has rejected an app for the reason of “minimal user functionality.” To be clear, despite what you may be reading elsewhere, this is not a new rule, but one developer thought that his rejection under a long-standing reviewer’s option was a reason to raise a little heck.

The creator of the just-rejected app (which, for the record, shows a picture of a duck and makes the iPhone quack like a duck) emailed TechCrunch looking for a little justice, and all he got from them was sarcasm. We don’t have anything he’ll want to hear, either: with hundreds of thousands of applications in the store, Apple is entitled to use its veto power on the non-functional apps. And so far, that’s a good thing for consumers like us.

Deleting apps for sexual content is one thing, but deleting apps for lacking all redeeming value is another. Of course, the standards are just as sticky (what if someone really does need a quacking sound?), but at least someone at Apple does have a standard somewhere in terms of making an app serve a purpose. I don’t mind the sex apps (and I think an Explicit category is the right way to go), but I would appreciate Apple stepping up the line on quality, especially now that the store is full of great apps already.

TUAWDeveloper quacks about ‘minimal user functionality,’ but it’s not a new rule originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wolfram Alpha Does The Math, Slashes iPhone App Price (Sort Of)

There’s a lot to love about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app. But as regular readers will know, one of them is not the price. At $50, it’s just way too hard to justify the purchase when you can get all of the information online, for free. So just in time for the holidays, Wolfram Alpha is doing something about it: Slashing prices!

The app will be on sale for a much-more reasonable $19.99 starting tomorrow and running through the end of the year. I’m still not sure that that isn’t a little high ($9.99 seems more a bit more in-line with the current app economy, but obviously that’s entirely up to Wolfram Alpha). The company also notes that despite the three-week discount, they absolutely plan to jack it back up to the regular $50 price after the first of the year.

I asked the company to give me some sales figures, but they declined. They did say that the app sales are “robust” and have “beaten our expectations solidly.” Those two things can mean just about anything without some solid numbers, obviously. At the same time, the company noted that it was very much thinking about other discounts/promotions in the future for the app. In other words, it might not be the smartest thing in the world to shell out of the $50 even if you do think it’s worth it.

Curiously, they also decided to remove the iPhone-formatted version of the website a while back in a move that I’m positive was in no way meant to spur app sales. That was sarcasm.

But again, the app is solid, and if you’re looking for a better than 50% off deal on it, check it out tomorrow in the App Store. The company also has a little blog post about some holiday-themed searches you can do with it.

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Apple: Time to Drop Anti-PC Sarcasm from TV Ads

I always looked forward to seeing new “I’m a Mac – I’m a PC” ads on television. As a long-time Mac fan and a marketing pro, I really admired these spots. They were smart and edgy, yet friendly. They were fun. They differentiated Macs from PCs. From a marketing perspective, they were appropriate to Apple’s David fighting Microsoft’s Goliath. And they worked really well, perhaps better than any other mass-market technology product ads.

Now I wince every time I see a new one, hoping its smug attitude and condescending tone doesn’t go too far.

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This guest post was written by Frank Cioffi.

I also relished how Apple’s spots unhinged Microsoft, prompting the Goliath to produce its own, usually inept, TV ads that broke a major rule of marketing: never appear reactive to a smaller competitor. Microsoft’s PC ads and the flurry of Ballmer-isms that accompanied them, all on the heels of the Windows Vista catastrophe, actually seemed to reinforce Apple’s point.

But what has worked for Apple over the last three years doesn’t seem to work as well now. Call it a psychographic observation, but the theme is getting tired, and the emotional impact of the ads has shifted. The superior, mocking tone of the ads sometimes goes too far, especially now as the new Windows 7 is being well received. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker. I like sarcasm. But for me, edgy has gone over the edge in some of these ads.

Do we Mac users tend to feel superior? Of course. We know we enjoy the world’s most elegant operating system. But when a Mac evangelist like me starts feeling mildly apologetic about these spots and empathizing with the PC guy, something is amiss.

Does Apple’s research show that prospective Mac customers, their intended audience, still like these ads? I assume so. But perhaps Microsoft’s jab at Apple in its TV ads earlier this year (the one in which PC buyer Lauren says, “Maybe I’m not cool enough” to be a Mac person) was accurate, signaling that Apple’s approach borders on arrogance, especially as it gains ever greater market share.

While Mac’s market share still pales in comparison to Windows, Apple is no longer a David. With its omnipresent retail stores, the iconic iPod and the runaway popularity of the iPhone, Apple is a real and perceived leader. It has a market cap of over $170 billion and more cash than Cisco or Microsoft. Its TV ads, its recent mishandling of App Store developer issues and criticism from prominent tech journalists show that the Apple perception machine is showing cracks. The company is starting to appear arrogant.

To its credit, Apple’s iPhone television ads are clean and crisp, relaying useful features and the latest apps. And not all of the Mac-PC ads are disdainful. The recent one with actor Robert Loggia as PC’s coach is fun. But the spot portraying a top-of-the-line PC model as a semi-sleazy sales guy? That’s when I cringe. The new spots reacting to Windows 7? Not so bad, but they still rely too much on criticizing Microsoft. There’s a difference between conveying product superiority and having a superior attitude.

For this Mac fan, these ads are past their peak. They were great fun for a while. But it’s time to shift the tone or move on. Certainly Apple’s creative teams can come up with a follow-up act that is informative, entertaining and edgy, without sounding smug. Otherwise, Apple runs the risk of (gasp!) emulating Microsoft.

Guest author: Frank Cioffi is editor and publisher of Apple Investor News, the Apple-only news aggregator and part of the Tech Investor News network..

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We Hold Twitter Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars

37signals founder Jason Fried probably had the post of the day today mocking Twitter’s $1 billion valuation on its latest rumored round of funding. The post, titled “PRESS RELEASE: 37SIGNALS VALUATION TOPS $100 BILLION AFTER BOLD VC INVESTMENT” is very funny. But it’s also disingenuous.

By way of sarcasm, Fried raises a number of points. But the key ones he hits on are valuations, revenues (or lack thereof), business models, and hype. And he chose an easy target in Twitter, which has no shortage of naysayers who simply cannot believe the amount of funding and valuation the service keeps getting. But Fried undoubtedly knows how the game is played, and by picking on the current “it” company, a few people noted that his post looked more like a case of sour grapes. But his points are still definitely worth talking about.

Valuations

Fried jokes that 37signals is valued $100 billion based on a group of people who are paying $1 for 0.000000001% of the company. His point is that valuations based on investments are ridiculous. But that’s not entirely true.

Certainly some are — Microsoft’s investment in Facebook that pumped its valuation to $15 billion is a great example. But the key point there is that Microsoft wasn’t making an investment in Facebook hoping to get rich when the company eventually has an exit. Rather, it was making a small (1.6%) strategic investment mainly to keep Google away. At the time, everyone went mad over the $15 billion number, but it was never realistic to begin with. Since then, Facebook (which has grown a lot in size) has raised real money at valuations that are much less. So did Microsoft get screwed? No, because it was never about the money.

But in Fried’s example, lets assume that the $1 investors are putting money in hoping to eventually get it back. If they really are paying $1 for 0.000000001% of the company, putting the valuation at $100 billion, those investors are going to want an exit of more than $100 billion (leaving out the various types of deals and options they could have surrounding an exit). So that $100 billion number does have meaning.

And likewise, without knowing the details of its latest round, the $1 billion number probably does have meaning for Twitter. If an when it closes this latest $100 million round, those investors are going to be looking for an exit of more than $1 billion. You can bet that T. Rowe Price wants to make money on this deal, as do the firms involved. And they clearly think Twitter is worth more than $1 billion dollars. And they’re hardly alone.

Revenues & Business Models

Fried jokes, “In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues.” And continues, “Once you have profits, it’s impossible to just make stuff up.” That is absolutely true, and Mike wrote a great post recently about that very dilemma Twitter could well face shortly.

But this is Fried pulling out the tired “Twitter makes no money” card. Let’s be clear: If Twitter wanted to right now, it could make money. (Well at least revenue, if not profits.) They would simply have to turn on advertising (which they can now do thanks to a recent change in their TOS) and some amount of money, and probably not an insignificant amount, would start rolling in.

At the same time, if it did that, investors would have a better idea of their business potential and that could make some wary of sky-high valuations if the numbers weren’t stellar — which both Fried and Mike rightly note.

But as Twitter has stated numerous times, its real intention for making money (at least right now) is not to go the way of ads, but instead to do professional accounts and tools. It would seem that Twitter is getting closer to rolling that out, and they’ve said the plan is to start making money before the end of this year. We’re closing in on that, so it seems safe to assume that new investors have a pretty good idea of Twitter’s strategy here. And if that’s the case, they clearly like what they see enough to pour in $100 million (again, assuming that round closes).

With this rumored new round, Twitter would have some $130 million in the bank. Like Facebook before it, that would give the company plenty of time before they had to start making any meaningful amount of money. Actually, Facebook just this past quarter went cash flow positive for the first time — after taking over $700 million in funding throughout the years. Twitter seems downright svelte by comparison.

The point is, they will have plenty of cash, and as such, plenty of time to worry about getting the right business model in place. And these investors would not be investing if they didn’t think that would happen, obviously.

Hype

“Bhatnagar admits the math [for valuations] is mostly a guess but points out that ‘the press eats it up.‘,” Fried writes. That’s undoubtedly true, we the press do eat this stuff up. Big numbers are sexy, and lead to interesting, or at least lively, discussions. But again, this is Fried suggesting that valuations based on investments are crazy. In some cases, they are, but not always. And provided that both the writer and reader understands how they work (which, admittedly, is quite often not the case), they can be a useful point of reference.

“37signals will lead the new global movement filled with imaginary assumptions on growth and monetization potential,” he continued. “We’re excited to roll out a list of unconfirmed revenue possibilities that involve crowdsourcing, a robust set of widget creation tools, 3G, augmented reality, social stuff, and an app store. Also, everything we make will include a compass,” Fried concludes.

Though he later backtracked from it, it seems pretty clear that Fried is suggesting that Twitter is pretty much all hype. We touched on this a bit yesterday, but ultimately, this still remains to be seen. But what’s humorous is that on the sidebar of his very post, Fried himself has a Twitter widget, and it’s actually above his list of 37signal products. This isn’t quite as bad as the people who loudly proclaim that Twitter is all hype — on Twitter.

But regardless of where you fall on the hype debate, all that really matters is that the investors obviously don’t think it’s hype. And they’re apparently still pouring money into it with the belief that it will be the next big thing. How big? Big enough to have an exit north of a billion dollars. How do I know? The valuation told me.

[photo and video: New Line Cinemas]

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Late To The Game: Adobe Now Lets You Share Videos On Photoshop.com

With online video hosting still in a rather embryonic phase, it’s only natural for Adobe Systems to lead innovation in the space by making it possible for users to upload and share motion pictures with friends and family online. Well, that would have been a good story lead five years ago, and then some. But please forgive my sarcasm for Adobe is lauding the new support for video on its Photoshop.com property today as if it were remarkably cutting-edge.

With the newly added video upload capabilities, Photoshop.com users can now upload videos up to 200MB in size through their browsers, or up to 2GB through the Adobe AIR Uploader in most file formats. The videos can subsequently be viewed directly on Photoshop.com (like this one). All Photoshop.com users receive 2GB of free storage.

Since Photoshop.com is (obviously) mostly known for its smooth photo-editing features, there doesn’t appear to be an option to edit videos yet, although I suspect these capabilities will be added soon enough.

Adobe is also debuting a Group Albums feature in Photoshop.com today, enabling users to group specific photos and videos together into one album and easily share that with your friends or relatives.

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