The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

As of last weekend, it is illegal to unlock your smartphone? Good call or bad call?

This is absolutely, ridiculously stupid. What I do with the device that I own, that belongs me, shouldn’t matter. If I want to unlock it, jailbreak it or do anything else to it, I should be able to. Granted, I say this as someone who has never owned an unlocked smartphone (and has never had any plans to go down that route), but the thought of it being completely and totally illegal seems silly to me.

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You went car shopping recently. How important was finding a car that would interact with your smartphone?

Finding a car that would interact with my smartphone was pretty important. Even more than that, it was about having a strong onboard communication system that seemed cohesive, seemed to work together and had an overall solid interface. Many companies have disparate systems, which is the main issue we ran into as we looked at different cars.

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What was your favorite app of the year? What was your favorite device?

Right now, I’m leaning toward Skala for best app o the year, but I’m not sure if it really came out this year. If not Skala, then I’d definitely say The Room, which is an awesome Myst style game for the iPad and iPhone. It’s a little too short — I beat it in about two hours — but those two hours were really intense and fun. But Skala sends whatever you’re working on in Photoshop directly to your device, which is extremely helpful. My favorite device of the year is a toss-up between my iPhone 5 and my iPad Mini. The iPhone 5 ultimately wins out because of its screen, but if the iPad Mini had a retina display, it would win this hands down. It’s pretty fantastic. I’ve played with all kinds of tablets, but few are as good as this one. I just wish the resolution was a little deeper.

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You’re a big fan of the radically redesigned MySpace. In a nutshell, what do you like about it?

I’m excited about MySpace taking a much more clean, straightforward and succinct approach. They seem to be stripping down the superfluous stuff that made it such an unwieldy and terrible platform in the first place.  They seem to be embracing the homogenous profile concept that Facebook did but the interface is far more modern and new than what Facebook is currently doing.

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(Every week, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry.)

In January, RIM is going to announce the next version of their once-popular BlackBerry. What went so wrong? How did RIM because such an underdog in the past few years?

BlackBerry’s initial problem seemed to be an adherence to the old way of doing things. Just look at how long their phones were keyboard based and had those little scroll wheels on them! Then there was there software, which was extremely limited. If you wanted to install an app, you had delete another! The amount of space set aside for app use was ridiculous. They refused to embrace the app economy like Apple and Android did. They were behind the ball for too long. Even when they came out with their first touch phone, you still had to deal with extremely limited space for apps…of course, you had to find apps first and that was difficult. RIM didn’t do any outreach with developers and didn’t get anyone on board to make apps for them! Apple and Google have made it very easy to develop for them, hence their success (although if anyone from Microsoft is reading this, you should send Rocksauce Studios some Windows Phones so we can properly make apps for you!)

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(Every week, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry.)

There are rumors out there that Apple is fast tracking an iPhone 5S to come out in the next few months. If there is any truth to this, what do you think about it?

I think it is a terrible idea because there is already a misconception in the technology industry that Apple pushes out product too fast. I don’t think so. Look at Samsung or HTC, who tend to have a new phone out every three to six months with each one only being incrementally better than the last one. However, Apple has a much smaller product line and they only have a new device out about once a year, but each one feels like a bigger deal than your normal device. If they are fast tracking an iPhone 5S, it doesn’t make any sense. The complaints about the iPhone 5 generally revolve around it not being different enough, so there’s no way for a new version produced this quickly to be better. If there is any truth to this, it just adds further fuel to the fire and provides more evidence that Tim Cook has no idea what he’s doing running Apple.

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Recently, you took a break from your iPhone and took an “Android vacation.” Why did you do this? Which phone did you choose for this vacation and why did you choose it?

I chose to take a foray into the Android world because I’ve used an iPhone since the first generation of iPhones! Before this, I wasn’t as familiar with Android as I would’ve liked and my previous excursion across the aisle had been mediocre. However, with Android being a major player now and with the OS having gone through so many major changes, I decided it was time to see how things had changed and whether or not I’d be impressed (I also spent a week with a Windows Phone, but that’s a story for another day). The phone I selected was the HTC 1X, which was brand new and completely up to date. I chose this one because, being able to run Jellybean, it would be a great test device to have around the office for the Rocksauce team to use and experiment with.

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(Every week, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry.)

It’s been about two weeks since the iPhone 5 came out. Has your opinion on it changed since you picked it up or has it remained the same?

I’m still extremely happy with the iPhone 5. Since the iPhone 5 came out, I took the opportunity to play with an HTC One X and use it as my phone for about a week and I was very happy to get back to the iPhone 5 and the Apple ecosystem and the Apple interface. I’m very pleased with it. The camera, in particular, continues to impress me. This is the first iPhone that I’ve owned where I’ve liked the camera. In the past, the camera has always been terrible, even on the 4. I didn’t own the 4S, so maybe there was an improvement there, but I love the camera on the 5.

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When you helped found Rocksauce, what were your biggest concerns and worries?

No matter what you may hear in the media, the biggest concern with any start-up business (this is a soap box I like to be on and as a business owner, I promise you it’s important) is demand. Do people want what you’re selling? For us, it was “will people hire us to design an app for them?” That was our number one priority: how do we find customers? How do we get them in the door? How do we get them to trust us with their projects since making an app can be a costly endeavor?

Trusting in a start-up can be scary for a lot of people…it’s an unproven commodity. Our challenge was to show people that we knew what we were doing. We could take your money and make something great with it, that they could trust us. We did this by being very honest and open. Our goals have always been to make a great product, not to maximize profit. We create a great product, put our name on it, put it out there and prove that we can made wonderful apps. That’s how we grew demand.

That’s the challenge for any start-up in any industry: how do you create demand? With demand, you have to make more product, you have to hire more people, etc.

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Why is it important for an app developer to watch Apple so closely?

We pay attention to Apple because they always seem to be on the forefront of what the industry is going to do. If Apple adopts a new technology, you can expect everyone else to adopt that technology. Specifically, there’s been a lot of talk about NFC (near field communication) technologies. A lot of people believe that we don’t have a standard NFC system yet because Apple hasn’t embraced specific version, leading to a lot competing companies. We watch Apple because whatever they do and whatever tech they embrace will dictate what we’ll be working with.

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