The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

I can’t remember exactly where I picked this bit of wisdom up, and I feel it was more eloquently explained than I’ll be able to. Perhaps it was in a Marketing class back in my glory days at TCU (GO FROGS!). In any regard, the bit goes something like this: in advertising, the bigger guy doesn’t ever acknowledge the smaller guys attacks in the media… until the smaller guy starts to matter.

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What is the future of the Apple Store? The answer is directly tied to another question: what is the future of mobile app technology? Put on your imagination cap for a moment. Imagine an Apple Store that doesn’t sell only tablets, computers and smartphones, but an Apple Store that sells appliances that will interact with your iPhone and iPad through apps tailored to those objects. This may sound a little nutty, but we’re closer than you think. Apple stores will soon start carrying a unique brand of lightbulb called Hue. These LED powered bulbs will not only last for 15 years, but they will allow you to change their brightness, intensity and color from your mobile device. We’re quickly heading for a future where you wil adjust your lights, air conditioner and washing machine from your tablet…and Apple is leading the charge.

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Next week, Apple is going to unveil the iPad Mini, the culmination of the Worst Kept Secret In The History Of The Planet. However, there’s no way they put together an entire press conference just to announce one thing. So what else is on the menu? How about four new iMac models? Huh. So much for living in the “post-PC” era…

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Is it just us, or does the Kaspersky mobile security app sound like the coolest thing ever? For an admittedly steep $19.95, you get the last best chance of recovering a stolen Android smartphone. You get the features you’d expect from a security app, like being able to track your phone’s location and scan for malware, but the coolest feature is like something out of a spy movie. You can trigger the front-facing camera to start secretly taking pictures, hopefully capturing the identity of your phone’s thief. Now that’s awesome.

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(Talksauce is a weekly editorial that represents the opinions of Tapsauce editor-in-chief Jacob Hall, not Rocksauce Studios. If he says something stupid, blame him and him alone.)

When Microsoft unveiled their new logo earlier this week, my immediate reaction something along the lines of “meh.” It washed over me like a wave of nothing and all I could do was shrug. The minimalism of it felt like a desperate, failed attempt to replicate the simple iconography of Apple. In fact, I had so little to say about the logo that I turned to Rocksauce Studios CEO and designer extraordinaire Q Manning and asked his opinion. He responded with: “It’s terribly boring, with mediocre typography. No energy or excitement. Homogeneity incarnate.”

So, the first expert I asked was not impressed. Was this a case where the designers agreed with a plebe like me? That this new logo, Microsoft’s first major branding change since the company’s creation, was a failure? Although Talksauce is usually the place where I run off my big mouth, I decided to open the floor to the entirety of Rocksauce Studios and get everyone’s opinion on this thing.

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Well, Microsoft has a new logo. That’s it, right above this sentence. The goal behind the new look is to “signal the heritage but also signal the future — a newness and freshness.” It’s simple design feels like an attempt to capture the sleek minimalism of Apple, but is it successful? I’m not a designer, so I took it to Rocksauce Studios CEO and master designer Q Manning, who had this to say: “It’s terribly boring.” He later expanded: “The new Microsoft logo is boring, with mediocre typography. No energy or excitement. Homogeneity incarnate.” Strike one! What do you think?

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

What do you think about integrating phones with game systems and televisions, particularly with technology like Microsoft’s Smart Glass?

Integration with television and apps has already started to happen. Apple has Air Play, which allows you go go right from your iPad to your Apple TV, so you can play Angry Birds on your television, which is kind of awesome. We’ve also seen some of this with Nintendo’s Wii U, where this kind of technology will be allowing you to get information about the game as you play it. In a game of Madden football, you’ll be able to see your plays on your tablet instead of the typical set-up, where you see and select your plays on the screen. As far as games being on both, it shows how mobile games are going to become more and more prevalent.

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In case you haven’t heard, there are a handful of tech giants hoarding loads of cash. Their respective bankrolls are as follows:

• Apple – $76.2 billion, which, interestingly, amounts to more cash than the U.S. Government has on hand at the time of this      post. Apple has not made any major acquisitions in 2011.

• Microsoft – $52.7 billion. Noteworthy here is there recent purchase of Skype. Maybe we will finally get an iPad native app? One can only hope.

• Cisco – $43.3 billion. Cisco has made three acquisitions this year (which pale in comparison to other tech companies’ investments)

• Google – $39.1 billion. Google has made over a dozen acquisitions in 2011.

With a collective cash value of over $210 billion, the question remains: what are these behemoths going to do with all of their money? Certainly there are higher returns to be had than keeping this kind of money in short-term accounts … don’t you know it goes bad after a while?

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