Sarah Perez at TechCrunch:
There aren’t a lot details being offered about the analytics service’s feature set at this time, but Apple says the service will offer developers the ability to track how often customers visit an app’s page on the App Store, find out how many users open the app over time, check on app and in-app purchase sales, create custom campaign links and follow the success of marketing campaigns, and understand which websites refer the most users.
A fun app for a great cause. This one should be on your iPhone, folks.
This week’s show involves a lot of nose tapping:
This week, they boys break down Apple’s Q2 results and walk with Myke as he spends a day with Apple Watch.
Thanks to these three sponsors:
A new conference coming in October:
You need more than technical chops to succeed as an independent developer. You need business sense as well. So this October, join some of the most experienced entrepreneurs and leaders in our community as they gather to talk about the business of iOS and Mac development.
Myke is speaking and we’ll both be there for the whole thing. I’m really looking forward to this.
With iOS and OS X on an annual release cycle, some Apple watchers have expressed a desire for a “Snow Leopard” moment this year.
But what does that phrase even mean? How does it apply today, six years after Mac OS X Snow Leopard was announced?
Released in 2009, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will best be remembered by this slide at its announcement:
That “0 new features” slide doesn’t tell the whole story, however.
Apple:
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 second quarter ended March 28, 2015. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $45.6 billion and net profit of $10.2 billion, or $1.66 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.8 percent compared to 39.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 69 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
It’s weird to quote myself, but here goes:
I’ve listened to Apple podcasts for a long time, and with over 250 episodes published, Mac Power Users has been a constant listen of mine for years.
Mac Power Users isn’t just a podcast; it’s an institution. The guest list is impressive, with greats like Rod Roddenberry, Merlin Mann, Aisha Tyler and David Allen making appearances.
That’s why today’s announcement is so exciting: MPU is joining Relay FM.
Blink: Better Affiliate Links is a universal iOS app for anyone who wants to earn commissions from the iTunes affiliate program. Creating affiliate links on iOS is time-consuming and fiddly. Blink simplifies the process by saving your tokens and other preferences so they are always at your finger tips, literally.
Blink converts existing appsto.re, itun.es, tw.appstore.com, tw.itunes.com, apple.co, appstore.com and itunes.com links into affiliate links. And if you don’t already have a link, Blink can search across Mac and iOS apps, film, TV, music, audiobooks and iBooks all at once, making it easy to grab the link you want.
Apple has updated its guidelines for marketing App Store apps. There are some real gems concerning Apple Watch:
Apple Watch is awkward to talk about, much less write about. Apple’s removal of articles before their product names isn’t anything new, but the whole collection business is a new world of hurt.
Scarlett Kilcooley-O’Halloran, writing for Vogue:
“We don’t think about what we do in those terms,” said Ive. “Our focus has been doing our very best to create a product that’s useful. When we started on the iPhone it was because we all couldn’t bear our phones. The watch was different. We all loved our watches, but saw that the wrist was a fabulous place for technology, so there were different motivations. I don’t know how we can compare the old watches we know, with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.”
New from Google: a pay-for-what-you-use, invite-only, Nexus 6-only cellular plan that stiches together service from Sprint, T-Mobile and a Wi-Fi networks.
I can’t think of anything more Google-like.
This week, on the world’s most jetlagged podcast:
Federico, Stephen and Myke discuss Apple Watch shipments, search on Android, Chrome on iOS and music on the go.
These awesome companies made it possible: