Something new and exciting for Disney theme park fans…

What is it? Can’t tell you yet. But visit the Wishing Stars site and follow Wishing Stars on Twitter and you’ll be among the first to know.

My first iPhone app

I released my first iPhone app a few weeks back, Countdown Calendar, based on the OS X Dashboard Widget I created a couple of years ago.

I’d been in love with the idea of writing iPhone apps for several months, and though I was overflowing with ideas on what to write, due to the success of the countdown widget, it made sense to build off of an idea that I knew people liked.

But I was stymied in that I wanted to make an app that was a pay-for app, and preferably one that would cost at least $2.99. (Any less, I thought, couldn’t make money, and I still think that’s the case unless you get pretty lucky.) How could I make a Countdown Calendar app into something worth $2.99?

I could could make the thing look really nice, and polish the experience to the point that it felt like a well-oiled machine…but that didn’t seem like enough. Then lying in bed one night, it occurred to me: what if I added a social component to the app? What if I let people mail countdowns to each other, and download them from a central repository that had all sorts of interesting dates…movie premieres, sporting events, important dates in geek history: the launch of the Apple II; the premiere of Star Wars… Would that be worth $2.99? Maybe. At least, I had my hook.

And here it is. Sales have been strong, though I’ve been a little dismayed at the way that iTunes Store ratings work. I recently put out a new release that lets you attach notes to countdowns, and out of the blue I got hit with some anonymous 1- and 2-star reviews. No idea where those came from–until then, reviews had been all 4- and 5-star–but because they happened at the same time a new version premiered, and because the iTunes Store wildly overpromotes “current version” reviews over “past version” reviews, my app effectively had a rating of 2 stars. And if there’s one thing that’s clear to me now, it’s that people don’t buy 2-star apps: sales plunged 75% immediately. Fortunately, a few days have passed and my ratings are back up along with my sales.

And I absolutely love writing iPhone apps. More to come, featuring some ideas that, if I do say so myself, are pretty fantastic. Keep watching this space…

The iPhone’s “Killer App.” (Boy, do I hate that term.)

John Gruber linked to a Paul Thurrott post this morning about the apparently delusional Windows Mobile team (prediction: Microsoft will buy RIM within 24 months). What caught my attention, however, was Thurrott’s assertion that the iPhone App Store is “arguably the biggest innovation of the iPhone.” We saw a similar sentiment expressed earlier in the week at USA Today.

No doubt the App Store is great, but I can’t say that any app I’ve purchased is truly important to me. NetNewsWire comes the closest, but still, the iPhone’s “killer app” (god, do I hate that overused term) is its usability. Nothing else comes close. I don’t know anyone that has purchased an iPhone because of the App Store; I know perhaps a hundred people that have purchased one because of its usability. (With Apple aggressively marketing iPhone games, perhaps this will change in the future; regardless, it hasn’t happened yet.)

The other mis-read of the iPhone’s success comes down in the comments, where several people assert that the iPhone is “consumer-targeted,” with the implication that if the Windows Mobile team had simply trained its sights on that “niche” market, of course they’d have something as usable as the iPhone. There are exactly two things wrong with that assertion.

The first is that the Windows Mobile team would know how to develop a consumer product. Here’s something people don’t get: developing consumer software is harder than developing enterprise software. If you’re developing enterprise software, you make money every time the customer calls you with a question. If you’re developing consumer software, you lose money when they call you. That simple fact turns the product development equation on its head: you have to make a product that completely explains itself to people who don’t want to read a manual or take a training class. That Apple developed a smart phone that my mother can use is something that the Windows Mobile team could not have pulled off.

The second is that the iPhone is, in fact, “consumer-targeted.” It’s not: it’s “user-targeted.” Not the same thing. The Windows Mobile team will likely never admit this to itself because it’s easier to accept their fate if they think that they and Apple are aiming at different targets. But iPhone 1.0 wasn’t a product unsuitable for the enterprise by design; iPhone 1.0 was unsuitable for the enterprise simply because a couple of features were left out. That those features have now been added (and that another feature–a keyboard–I suspect will be added in the future) betray the idea that the iPhone is merely “consumer-targeted,” something that will be abundantly clear when iPhone beats Windows Mobile–and probably RIM, too–in that market.

Come to the Pacific Pinball Expo this weekend

I’d be remiss if I didn’t encourage everyone to come to the Pacific Pinball Expo this weekend. If you’re within a hundred-mile radius of the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, California, you owe it to yourself to be there. And frankly, even if you’re further away than that, you should still mull a visit over in your head for at least a minute or two.

This show is amazing (see photos); last year’s was the first, with over 300 pin games on display, almost all of them playable. This year’s show will have over 400 games, which makes it the biggest pin show I’ve ever heard of by a factor of two.

I’ll be at the show all day on Saturday and almost all of Sunday; if you happen to be there, contact me on Twitter and let’s meet up! And if for some reason you haven’t seen TILT, I’ll be showing it at 3:30 on Sunday, and probably 8pm on Saturday as well.

Hope to see you there. You won’t regret making the effort to come.

See TILT in San Jose on July 19

TILT will be showing at the wonderful California Extreme video game and pinball expo this Saturday, June July 19 in downtown San Jose, California. Showtime is tentatively set for 7pm, though that could change…keep watching this board for updates. Please come by, check out what will certainly be an amazing show, watch the film, and come say hello! (I’ll hang around for Q&A both before and after the film).

If you’re at all inclined to attend the show, staying until midnight on Saturday at lodging at the beautiful and reasonably priced Hotel Sainte Claire is an amazing way to go.

Disney’s Biggest Theme Park Mistakes

This is a refinement of an earlier article I did for LaughingPlace.com.

It started last year, as my wife and I finished our day at Disneyland and walked back to our room at the Disneyland Hotel. Not for the first time, I noticed the iconic “Disneyland Hotel” red neon sign missing, and an old sentiment awakened: “what moron decided to get rid of that sign?” (For those curious, here’s what it became.) At the start of every Disneyland trip—short of seeing the Matterhorn from Harbor Boulevard—was anything more evocative than that old sign?

I know: there’s some new Anaheim zoning law that precludes giant neon signs illuminating a several-city-block radius. Maybe Disney put up a good fight to keep the sign, but still…it seems like there exist alternatives that could have preserved the sign’s essence (red LEDs?) while complying with the regulation. Didn’t anyone at Disney find that sign as special as I did?

I didn’t stop there. Coasting a wave of indignation, I thought: what other mistakes has Disney made? This sprawling list is the result. Unlike the Disneyland Hotel sign fiasco, I decided to focus on what I consider to be the big mistakes: genuine blunders that have cost the company either 1) millions of dollars, or 2) millions of dollars in goodwill. (The “little” mistakes, like leaving that ridiculous Epcot wand up for a decade, merit inclusion on their own list…just not this one.)

So in no particular order, here we go…

I Say iTunes Store Rankings are Rigged

It was just hours ago that I stared, disgusted, at my TV as Comcast’s OnDemand service pelted me with ad after ad for their newest pay-per-view offering, the Matthew McConaughey-Kate Hudson crapfest Fool’s Gold. I found this disgusting because of all the fantastic movies in the world Comcast could promote, they were wasting time on this terrible specimen. (If you didn’t realize, Fool’s Gold received a 0% rating on RottenTomatoes. Few movies achieve this.)

Why lousy product gets promoted in this manner isn’t a mystery: the movie studios pay for that kind of placement. And to grant Comcast a miniscule amount of credit, they weren’t claiming the movie to be the best of anything; they were simply running an excessive number of ads for the program. So imagine my surprise when I logged onto AppleTV tonight and discovered that Comcast wasn’t the only one who’d received some special attention from the studios: Fool’s Gold was the #1 iTunes rental.

Are you kidding me?

It’s implausible that any population would be gung-ho for this film, but AppleTV/iPhone/iPod customers? I’ll submit my next statement to you without feeling the need to offer supporting evidence: the people that own those devices do not like movies like Fool’s Gold.

And while I found that #1 ranking preposterous, I was barely prepared for what would hit me next: Fool’s Gold wasn’t just the number one iTunes rental, it was also the number one purchase. That’s right: Apple is claiming that more people are purchasing Fool’s Gold, for $14.99, for permanent inclusion in their libraries, than any other movie on iTunes. Note to Apple: this is ridiculous. If you’re going to do “Top 10″ lists, do not let the studios buy placement on them.

Do I know for certain that the iTunes store ratings are rigged? No, I don’t. But I’d be happy to listen to anyone’s even semi-plausible excuse for how this could be happening.

Does this ruin the iTunes store for me? Of course not. But anytime Comcast can show you up in the ethics department, it’s time to re-examine your practices.

Come see TILT at IDEO this Thursday

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to catch a public showing of TILT, please stop by the Palo Alto office of design firm IDEO at 5pm this Thursday, June 12. Given IDEO’s illustrious history, I’m hoping for lots of great product design-related discussion during the Q&A with me before and after the screening. Please stop by to catch the film, talk about pinball, Disney posters, or whatever else you’re interested in…

Hope to see you there!

Space Mountain imagery follow-up

Following-up on my earlier Space Mountain poster—created specifically to address the lack of high-quality Mountain-related imagery flowing out of Disney—the Vintage Disneyland Tickets blog proves me wrong with some beautiful stuff I’d never seen before.

This ticket image isn’t really done any favors with the its single-color palette, but the composition is great:

And this ’70s-era magazine cover really would have been a beautiful attraction poster in its own right, capturing that pencil-drawn, ’70s vignette look that is so emblematic of the era:

Again, check out the Vintage Disneyland Tickets blog for more info on these images…and thanks to its proprietor for digging them up!

WWDC iPhone Predictions

We’re still a ways away from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (June 9-13, 2008), but it’s not too soon to start the foolish and almost always incorrect speculation about what will be announced. Here’s my guess at what might happen with the iPhone.

Everyone’s taken it as a foregone conclusion that a 3G phone will be introduced, and by Apple’s non-reaction I think we can assume that’s correct. (If it’s not, Apple needs to start doing damage control right this second.) As I’ve said before, I believe this is less of an event than most think it is—EDGE network performance and MobileSafari rendering are a workable combination; better than most are used to, anyway—but analysts have been dying to find some chink in the iPhone’s armor, and this is the closest thing to it.

But beyond 3G, what will we see? I suspect we’ll see the iPhone line transition to two—and maybe three—distinct categories. What will happen to the current iPhone model is where I’m most confused, so I’ll start at the low-end: I think we’ll see an iPhone “mini”. The introduction of a mini model in the iPod line is the moment at which the iPod went from high-end curiosity to mainstream sensation; I think a cheaper phone priced at $199 is likely to do the same for the iPhone. What this iPhone mini will look like is a complete mystery to me, though I suspect it will leave off everything to do with the Internet in favor of straightforward phone, PIM, and iPod functionality.

Like I said, the mid- to high-end is where I’m less certain:

• Scenario 1: (75% probability) A relatively mild evolution of the current iPhone, with 3G networking. Maybe we’ll see 16 Gig ($399) and 32 Gig ($599) models.
• Scenario 2: (25% probability) The aforementioned 16 Gig model represents the “mid-range”, while the high-end 32 Gig model gets some additional blockbuster feature. Maybe it’s GPS, maybe it’s video conferencing…who knows. This model may then sell for even more than $599…maybe $699? If it’s a knock-your-socks-off feature, I have no doubt Apple could fetch that much cash, and with an iPhone mini in place, they can avoid the “overpriced” criticism that has dogged them.

If the iPhone mini does come to pass, I suspect we may see something in Q4 that many thought we might not see for years: the start of a downward trend in iPod sales. Some will try and paint this as a negative, but face it: the standalone MP3 player was obviously a goner in the long-term; that it’s happening sooner than some expected is a testament to how quickly the iPhone became a stunningly compelling product.

Now the wait…just exactly how wrong will I be?

Update: After the fact, I don’t feel too bad, though my predictions would hardly qualify as clairvoyant. No new category of iPhone, but I knew that was a long-shot given the complete lack of rumors around such a thing. I was dead-on in terms of $199 being a magic price point, though I (like everyone else) was shocked that it was the 3G-GPS iPhone that would hit that number. I still think there could be a market for a way-simplified iPhone that does far less than the current model. Too many people think the current iPhone offers too many features. (They’re wrong, though you can’t blame them for thinking that way given their experience with other manufacturers’ phones.)