MyAppleMenu

The Plaza-Subsidy Edition Saturday, January 6, 2018

What's Wrong With This Australian Apple Store?, by Kriston Capps, CityLab

The whole reason for consolidating cultural institutions in a purposively designed (if funky and angular) civic square is to ensure their mutual success and their access for all. Apple, which is currently the largest public company in the world, does not need the public subsidy of a beautiful plaza to thrive. And as Melbourne residents have shown over the last 15 years, Federation Square doesn’t need an Apple Store to get by, either.

Track Hyper-Local Weather Conditions With The Netamo Weather Station, by John Voorhees, MacStories

If you enjoy the geeky data side of tracking the weather, there’s no better way satisfy that interest than by collecting measurements yourself with a weather station like the one made by Netatmo.

Panic To Discontinue Development Of Transmit iOS, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Panic has announced that it will remove Transmit iOS from the App Store soon. In a blog post today, Cabel Sasser explains that the revenue generated by the paid-up-front app was insufficient to justify its continued development.

Bottom of the Page

There are at least two paths to address the productivity-apps-not-suriving-on-iOS problem. One path, as many app developers are experimenting now, is to raise prices while doing a subscription model. I am not sure a FTP-app can move into that business model.

The other path is for Apple to make software development less labour-intensive, so that something like Transmit can be continously developed with less than half a developer. An unintented consequence, though, could be competition will drive the selling price down such that the business doesn't make sense again?

~

I don't think there are any public square here in Singapore.

~

Thanks for reading.