Apps:
No matter how many times developers compare their apps to coffee... apps are not coffee. The question is not: How many coffees does an app cost. It's: How many apps does a cup of coffee cost? And the answer is: Apps are not coffee but coffee machines.
iA Writer for Windows 1.4 is now available and it brings Style Check in a free update. We launched Style Check on Mac and iOS this past summer and we have never received so much praise for a new feature. You sent us request after request to bring it to other platforms. We doubled our efforts to bring it to other platforms as soon as possible. It's ready for Windows as of today. We are working on bringing it to Android next.
Apple will lower its commission to 15% if you make under one million US dollars per year. For small developers, this is fantastic news and overall it’s a good step in the right direction. In the bigger picture, more steps need to follow.
Why should Facebook—the biggest beneficiary of the iPhone, its tools, and its infrastructure—pay nothing, when small developers have to pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Google has built a complete monopoly on search. Amazon uses the sales data of its resellers to continuously expand and solidify market dominance. Facebook copies the competitors that they can’t bully into being bought to keep their dominant market position. Apple is partying in antitrust land forcing its competitors to hand out 30% of its revenue. The game is rigged. And no one is enforcing the rules. Except for Epic, the maker of one of the most successful games of all time.
2019 was a good year for iA Writer. Sales were good, reviews were good and in the end we got rewarded for our work with the App of the year prize from MacStories.
iA Writer 5.3 is ready for iOS13. It now comes with multi-window support, Dark Mode, and Content Block improvements.
Facebook fishing for our email passwords, Roomba is hovering up all the data on our homes, Amazon is listening to our conversations for laughs, Tik-Tok spying on our kids. And that we see so much dirt on the surface makes it likely that under the surface it's even worse. The solution for all of this: "Ethics". Design ethics! Tech ethics! Business ethics! Ethics for AI!
Creating the latest update to iA Writer was a slow burn. Beginning with some basic maintenance and then improvements for the new iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, the Kraken was released in the final weeks of preparation. The all new Tags and x-callback-urls are so hip they'll take you to funky town.
Both iA Writer for Mac and iOS are localized in English, German, Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. For this update, we've decided to add a little present: 17 beautiful wallpapers for your desktop, mobile phone, or tablets.
Microsoft Word is the classic do-all text editor used by... just about everyone. How does it compare to a modern, focused writing app like iA Writer?
Sending too much traffic too the App Stores might negatively impact your App Store ranking.
Technology evolves from raw to complex to simple. From the fist to the hand axe to the hammer. From carts to the Model T to Tesla. From switchboard-operated phones to digital phones to smartphones. From SMS to Facebook to Messenger. From the crude to the cooked to Sushi.
We're tracking the performance of iA Writer with a wonderful app called AppViz from ideaswarm. AppViz not only allows you to track your own sales—you can also use it to evaluate how much other apps make, if you have comparable sales numbers. My first question was: How much does WIRED make?
When asked which four iPad apps he couldn't live without Stephen Fry replied: IMDB, Instapaper, Soundhound, and Writer. “Astonishingly simple. Everything goes away except for the writing experience.”
I wasn’t expecting this. In three weeks, we’ve sold over 13,000 apps and every day we seem to climb up another rung in the App Store. While selling apps makes the product feel real and secures future development, the biggest personal satisfaction comes from the feedback our app gets from professional writers.