With MacFormat’s ex-deputy editor and massive fan of great text editors busy editing Tap!, I was asked by the magazine to review Scrivener 2. A version of the review is on TechRadar; safe to say, I loved the app, but there was one thing I disliked: the new two-up page view didn’t provide an easy way to ‘snap’ to the top of each set of pages. This meant I’d be stuck using (*shudder*) Word for the body copy of large features, where I’d roughly hack things into shape and then flit back and forth, making edits and rearranging blocks of content.

So I decided to mention this to the app’s author, thinking perhaps I’d be able to switch over to Scrivener more fully at some distant point in the future. Later the same day, a whopping email came in: it was a beta of Scrivener. The feature was there, in the form of two little arrows on a lower toolbar. I thanked the developer but said keyboard shortcuts are what everyone really pines for, so hands never stray from the keyboard. “Oh, that’s easy,” I was told, shortly before receiving another beta. A week or two later, the next version of the app shipped, with this new feature, which I hope was worth the dev’s time in being useful to people other than me.

What this all shows isn’t OH MY GOD CRAIG IS SO CLEVER AND SHOULD DESIGN YOUR SOFTWARE, but that rapid iteration and developer interaction can change the way software development works. Clearly, developers shouldn’t weld every feature request to their wares, but when someone asks for something you think might benefit many of your users, or  you’ve a large number of people asking for something and are small enough to respond relatively quickly, it can pay to do so.

Another recent incident along these lines concerned iA Writer for iPad. I was sent a promo code for the original release, had a quick play, then put the app aside. Later, I started trying to integrate the iPad more into my workflow and was dismayed to find iA had binned the app’s character count in favour of word count. For many of my articles (including those for Tap!), I’m commissioned to write a specific number of characters, and this made iA Writer useless for the tasks I most needed it for. A quick enquiry resulted in the discovery that Americans had complained en masse about the character count (saying, of course, that everyone used word count), and so iA had switched it to a word count. “We then got moaned at by European writers as they predominantly use character count,” said a contact at iA. “Suffice to say, a toggle is coming in the next version.” And, sure enough, iA Writer for iPad now displays both of these counts, making it massively more useful for all professional writers. And further feature-request demands and suggestions have recently filled chunks of my Twitter feed, with journo chums and the guys behind iA Writer for Mac and Byword (another streamlined Mac text editor) swapping ideas.

This kind of interaction and revision cycle is a far cry from what happens at certain larger companies. I know people who’ve been part of beta runs for some very large products and watched, every time, as revolutionary ideas are discarded; the monolithic software vehicle then barely manages to turn a fraction of a degree before churning out its next version. And from what I see in the Mac App Store, now is a good chance—on the Mac at least—for fleet-of-foot indies to capitalise on this, by making use of the biggest testing pool possible: their customers.

So if you’re writing software (be it creative, utilities, games or anything else), don’t hide behind a website with no contact details or Get Satisfaction integration that you never bother to answer. Instead, encourage as much feedback as you possibly can—get on Twitter and talk to your customers, and iterate quickly when good ideas come your way. The big companies can’t or won’t do this, but you can; and by getting great word of mouth and being a responsive, alert, savvy developer, you could increasingly be the one getting plaudits and making money.

I feared as much. According to The Telegraph (interviewing label executives and music analysts), iOS 5’s iTunes in the Cloud features won’t launch in the UK until 2012 at the earliest. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that people in charge of record labels are fucking idiots.

A music executive at one of the major record labels, who wished to remain unnamed, said: “Tentative talks have begun between the major labels and Apple in the UK. However, all talks are at the really early stages and no one expects to see the cloud music service live on this side of the pond until 2012.”

Because the one thing a new feature needs is for people to instantly hate it by being denied access; and the one thing record labels need is for people to think “screw you, then” and carry on downloading music for free, instead of paying for it. Well played, labels! After all, it’s not like you’re not making money hand-over-fist from iTunes already and therefore don’t want people to react against it by stopping them from getting iTunes in the Cloud, you utter, utter pillocks.

Mark Mulligan, vice president and research director at Forrester Research, said: “Apple’s cloud music service will not launch in the UK until at least quarter one of 2012. These types of negotiations take a long time… For one thing the UK arms of all the major record labels are biding their time and waiting to see how the service affects download sales in the US before they sign up to anything.”

Now, this isn’t the record labels talking, but if Mulligan is right on this, then I really despair. Here are some potential scenarios for someone who might like to use iTunes Match (which, presumably, would cost a typical user about £20 per year in the UK) and how it would impact on record labels.

1. Old git Craig. Craig buys all his music on CD, because he’s some kind of masochist who likes to wait for audio thrills. He rips CDs to his Mac. With iTunes Match, the labels already have money for the CD and would double-dip for the service. Winner: THE FUCKING RECORD LABELS.
2. Downloader Dave. Dave likes iTunes. Ever since it first appeared, he’s used the service, and he even ritually set fire to all of his CDs after downloading his first iTunes music track. Yeah, Dave is a bit of an idiot. Anyway, he downloads stuff from Amazon and Bleep, too, so has loads of digital music files. With iTunes Match, the labels already have money for the digital downloads and would double-dip for the service. Winner: THE FUCKING RECORD LABELS.
3. Criminal Bob. Bob is naughty. When a new album comes out he wants, he’s straight to his favourite BitTorrent tracker to download it for free, yelling slogans about freedom of information and evil record labels (but, curiously, not starving indie musicians, because, frankly, Bob is an uncaring thieving git). Bob also likes convenience, so he’s prepared to pay for iTunes Match to make his pilfered music more readily available. With iTunes Match, the labels have made NO MONEY for these downloads. OH NO! But, wait! They HAVE made money with iTunes Match, and out of dodgy downloads, no less! Winner: THE FUCKING RECORD LABELS.

So, as we can see from my highly scientific insight, here’s how much iTunes Match will affect downloads: not at all. Only that is actually wrong. SHOCK TWIST! And that’s because if people like Craig (which may or may not be a character based on the ‘Craig’ who happens to write this blog) have access to iTunes Match and find out how convenient it is to have a personal music collection streamable on demand, that might actually encourage more download sales. In other words, iTunes Match will make the record labels more money through people using the service and more money through people buying more downloads. It’s therefore only logical that the labels will do everything they can to stop the service escaping from the US, because, as we’ve seen, record labels are run by total fucking idiots.

UPDATE: Possible counter from Gary Marshall (paraphrased): this isn’t necessarily the labels’ fault, because Apple’s only recently started talking to them. It’s possible, but the PRS says the talks are at an early stage, not that the talks have only just started. Also, labels are known for blocking progress—there is precedent for stupidity. Most importantly, though, an unnamed music executive is the person who said 2012 for the service to arrive in the UK, which seems a long way off. The silver lining is iOS 5 isn’t out until the autumn, and so perhaps the delay will only be a few months, or maybe labels will stop being idiots and sort things more quickly. But 2012 could conceivably mean ‘December 2012’ as easily as ‘January 2012’. Regardless, it’s utterly in the interests of record labels and Apple to get iTunes in the Cloud into international markets as soon as possible, rather than for the record labels to hold music hostage, gambling on, presumably, Apple offering a bigger cut.

Ben Brooks on Apple’s IAP subscriptions reversal:

This is actually a pretty big deal because […] I am pretty sure this means that Amazon can keep the Kindle app the way it is — they may just need to remove the link to the online Kindle store from the app. Though I am not 100% on this just yet.

The bold bit in the quote (my emphasis) is the one thing a lot of people are currently mulling over online. My guess: Apple will eventually either allow or tolerate a storefront link, but not a direct link to any particular single product or item that you can otherwise buy in iOS. It’s one thing to piss off Apple by saying “hey, buy that on our site for less money and stop Apple getting a cut” and another entirely to say “oh, by the way, our store’s over here, if you fancy browsing for a bit”. This is especially so when it comes to things like Kindle, given that Apple’s IAP infrastructure wouldn’t be able to cope with even a fraction of Amazon’s inventory anyway.

Interesting news from MacRumors:

Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”. There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.

The updated section 11.13 (now 11.14) of the App Store Review Guidelines now has no reference to content offered in the IAP having to be the same price or less than its price outside of the app. Apple now only demands apps not have a ‘buy now’ button that takes them outside of the app.

This is a smart move from Apple, not least with an Amazon touchscreen tablet rumoured to be on the way, from the one company that has the infrastructure and smarts to seriously take on the iPad in the areas where it matters.

I awoke this morning to flurries of happy activity in my Twitter feed: Reeder for Mac was finally out of beta, and available for £5.99/$9.99 on the Mac App Store. Reeder is a fantastic RSS reader that I totally fell for on the iPad, and I’ve used the Mac version since the earliest beta. A couple of iterations in, I binned NetNewsWire, because even a feature-incomplete Reeder suited me better.

As a Mac journo, I get a lot of free software, but there are a few cases—notably, indie apps that I use daily—where I transition from ‘free stuff’ to paying for the product myself. For me, Reeder was in insta-buy territory, but, helpfully, the Mac App Store wouldn’t let me pay for a copy. Instead, it told me:

A newer version of this app is already installed on this computer

Well, thanks for that, Mac App Store. I trashed the Reeder beta, went through my ~/Library folder to remove Application Support and Preferences files. Still no dice. I then trashed support files in a copy of my old computer’s home folder that’s lurking on my new Mac. Still, the Mac App Store stubbornly claimed a ‘newer’ version of the app was installed, even though Mac OS X’s System Profiler disagreed that any version of Reeder existed on the system.

Then it struck me: I have a back-up hard-drive attached to the Mac, which is a clone taken by SuperDuper!, and, sure enough, the Mac App Store seemingly cannot tell the difference between the active volume and the back-up—at least in this case. And so if the Mac App Store tells you that you can’t install an app and you’re using cloning software, try temporarily unmounting the clone and see if that helps.

UPDATE: Alex Chan says in the comments that this problem extends to additional hard-drive partitions with installed apps.