Archive for July, 2010
Diacarta App [Update]
I just downloaded one of the coolest looking apps ever onto my iPhone. But I don’t use it.
Diacarta is a calendar app that lets you create and view calendar events in a rather unique way. I don’t want to try to describe it when a picture is worth a thousand words, so here:
You have an AM and a PM for every day, and you can graphically see when your appointments are, and you can associate one of many icons to each appointment. It’s a very beautiful app, but there were a couple of problems:
- When an event goes over an AM/PM boundary, it is confusing to see what is going on.
- Some very basic icons are missing. There’s no icon for a meeting. Or for games.
- I still don’t know what the button in the bottom-right of the screen does.
- No iOS 4 support. It would be nice if it had fast switching, but it doesn’t.
- Many of the icons are small and hard to touch. Often, there’s space around them that could be included as touchable area, but isn’t.
- I thought I’d be able to change the start and end times of an event by dragging my finger on the circle. No such luck.
All these things are forgivable, though. There is one thing that is not forgivable. There is no iCal or Google Calendar integration! I spend quite a bit of time looking for it, because I just could not believe that a calendar app would not have this feature. It’s not in there. So now I have to see if they’ll ever come out with an update with Google Calendar support. I won’t use the app until it does.
Update: The developer contacted me and told me that several updates are in the works. Several of my wish list items will be addressed, including the big one! Can’t wait.
New App Almost There
I submitted my Crate 33 app to Apple on Monday but yesterday I pulled it because I found a bug. Disappointing, I know, but don’t want there to be any obvious bugs in my app.
So I fixed the bug and now I’m going through the app again to make sure there aren’t any other bugs I’ve missed.
This will be the first app I create for myself that I’m going to charge money for. I’m almost hesitant to release it for fear that it won’t do well.
I hope to resubmit to Apple this weekend.
Emotion Tugging
When I watched the new iPhone 4 commercial at Apple’s iPhone 4 unveiling, I knew that Apple had a new hit commercial on their hands. Now Apple has unveiled four more commercials touting the iPhone 4′s FaceTime feature.
I saw one journalist write about these new ads, and the fact that his (almost) Luddite friend wanted an iPhone 4 because of the FaceTime commercial. (Sorry I forget where I saw this.) It’s all about the emotion. Who can help feeling a throat lump when a father convinces his daughter to smile in spite of her new braces? Or to feel a pang of sympathy when a far-away soldier beholds his unborn child on a monitor? This is powerful stuff.
Never mind the fact that this is a feature that many of us will use once or twice for the novelty, and then ignore. The only people I know with iPhones are people that I mostly correspond with via IM and email anyway. I rarely talk to them on the phone. Now if my parents got an iPhone, that would be great. I could get my children to video chat with them, and it would be great. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
FaceTime will draw people to the iPhone 4, but I think it’s the Retina display that’ll keep them coming back for more.