The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

Smartphones have come a long way since 2008. Just compare what’s in your pocket to what was in your pocket five years ago. But after going so far, we only have one remaining question: what’s next?

Android OEMs seem to have embraced NFC (Google Wallet, Android Beam, etc), while Apple decided to leave that up to the carriers (Isis). There have been market experiments with built-in Pico Projectors, HDMI integration and super high screen resolutions. However, the new focus for all products seems to be on speed.

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The Apple Maps controversy may have reached its public apex, but for mobile app developers, it’s not over yet. The divorce between Google and Apple has left the dev community with serious questions about some pretty serious legal matters.

It’s no secret that companies like Apple and Google are very serious about their Terms of Service (terrifying capitalization is my own) and an unsuspecting (or ignorant) developer can be overwhelmed if they fail to comply with them. Sometimes, the rules stipulated in the Terms of Service can turn around and bite us in the butt. The Google Maps Terms of Service states that Google assets cannot be overlaid on a competitor’s map, so when Apple made the sudden switch to their own mapping system, developers who had countless apps that utilized Google Maps on iOS were left out to dry.

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It’s a simple truth: mobile advertising is annoying. But there’s another, less-talked-about simple truth: it doesn’t have to be!

I love my apps and I’ll always savor the option to download a free, ad-supported version of an app rather than drop a buck or two. Why argue with free, especially when it’s an app I may not overly excited about? So I know when I’m buying an ad-supported app and I know how important ads are to the bottom-line revenue of many mobile apps, but I’m still going to complain about them. Talk about first world problems, huh?

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Apps that push technology to its limit are far and few between. Not to mention the fact that most apps only cover one or two aspects of the hardware in most devices. This industry desperately needs to see more “proof-of-concept” apps come out into the wild.

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(In this special edition of Q & Answers, Brian Capelli responds to the same questions proposed to Q Manning yesterday.)

What’s your initial opinion on the verdict between Apple and Samsung?

The verdict is a detriment to the entire technology sector. The things that Apple sued over should be a given in design. Even clothing designers borrow ideas from everyone else. Look at cars, where rival companies produce similar products all the time. The IP that they should have been suing for wasn’t even involved! Look and feel should never have been a factor in the verdict at all.

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