The App Store today turned five, and Apple’s been celebrating by making a bunch of apps and games free. (Top tip: they’re all worth a download.) Today’s app landscape is incredible. Apple reckons over 900,000 apps are available, and devs have made billions of dollars from iOS. Not bad for a platform that on launch had just 500 titles.

But which apps have really stood out over the years? Which have influenced those that came later? I knocked heads with Stuff’s editor and we came up with ten apps that changed everything. Doubtless, you’ll have your own thoughts on which apps were hugely important; if so, please leave a comment on the Stuff article (or here, if you like).

I hope you enjoy reading the feature and that it brings back some warm memories!

You’d think the BBC might have learned, but after mis-quoting Paul Chambers’ Twitter Joke Trial tweet as part of a general ‘bereft of senses’/social media shitstorm, it’s now done much the same with Justin Carter case: Should online jokes be criminal?

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, US teen Justin Carter unwisely posted something stupid online and an anonymous tip-off led to him languishing in jail on suicide watch, faced with a potentially lengthy jail sentence. What did he post? Well, according to the BBC, this:

I think Ima shoot up a kindergarten

And watch the blood of the innocent rain down

And eat the beating heart of one of them.

Dumb, right? I mean, really dumb. But, you know, he’s a teenager, and, as reported by the Washington Times and plenty of other places:

the next two lines were lol and jk,” said Jack Carter, Justin’s father.

You won’t see those lines in the BBC’s article.

I don’t doubt people should think more before they rattle off some kind of obscene stupidity online, and it’s true online ‘anonymity’ leads certain people to be, frankly, arseholes, safe and secure in the knowledge the person or people they’re broadcasting to won’t be able to retaliate. However, organisations like the BBC do no-one any favours by shaving off bits of the story. An exclamation mark and word or two in the Chambers tweet, and the ‘lol’/’jk’ additions in the Carter case totally change the context of what was written.

Fortunately, the BBC’s article subsequently at least attempts a level of balance, exploring both sides of this kind of incident. That said, I do worry that we’re now seeing government agencies attempting to make examples of people, in order to stifle any kind of online dissent. If not, they’ve actually lost the ability to distinguish between idiotic banter and genuine threats, which is just as big a concern.

I’ve on my press page compiled articles that explain ways in which app and game developers can better their chances of coverage in publications, but Travis Jeffery counters for 37signals, arguing app devs should ‘design’ their App Store screenshots in a more marketing-oriented fashion. He provides the following advice:

• Include a slide from the developer, saying: “Hi, I made a thing! Here’s some information about the thing!”
• Add examples of what the app does (see Vine and Pocket)
• Show how to use the app by overlaying gesture information (like Currency – Simple Converter)

His reasoning is these grabs will be seen elsewhere, such as on Twitter cards, they are “not boring”, and they “communicate explicity, often using words”. He argues it’s “cool seeing the apps from the perspective of being on a phone and in someone’s hand,” and such grabs convince him that “the makers of the app care”.

Needless to say, I largely disagree. By shoehorning in a load of marketing/explanatory copy and imagery, the space left for your app is significantly reduced, lessening its impact. Additionally, as I’ve said in articles linked from my aforementioned press page, if you upload five images of your app that’s also full of marketing junk, or set at exciting jaunty angles (with overlays) or fake swipes, you’ve just lost press coverage.

Perhaps sales increases if you took Jeffery’s advice would outweigh providing clean grabs to potential customers along with whatever you’d get from press coverage these days. (Additionally, some websites now seem content to use App Store grabs whatever state they’re in, thereby encouraging marketing guff being shoe-horned in.) I’d certainly love to see some before and after figures for that. However, my advice would be:

• Take the best clean screenshots you can, and communicate your app’s functionality or how your game plays in that initial shot. Before releasing it, show the grab to friends and colleagues  to see if they can figure out what the app does or how the game plays. If it doesn’t work, see if you can rework your initial grab before plumping for added text and images.
• Remember that there’s nothing wrong with using a mock-up/edited grab if what you show is possible within the product. For example, game grabs are fine if partly composed in Photoshop, to get elements into a more ideal position for your grab if they show something that’s possible within the game. (What’s not acceptable is to design something that’s not possible.)
• If you do feel the need to add anything to your screenshot, reduce that to a bare minimum, thereby adjusting your original grab as little as possible. The smaller you make the image of the product, the less your potential customers can see of your app/game, even if they now have some words to help explain what it might do. Aim for clarity at all times; ensure you don’t end up deceiving your audience in some way.
• If you do amend your grabs in a more marketing manner, ensure that least one of them (and preferably more) remains ‘clean’, so your customers can at least see the app at the biggest size the space on the App Store allows. Also, ensure you have a set of entirely clean grabs on your press page, for use in the press. (Also, ensure you have a press page!)

Dear Apple,

One of the most impressive things about your company is your inclusive stance when it comes to users. OS X and iOS alike both have plenty of options for the visually impaired, people with motor issues, and those who require other kinds of assistance when using technology.

Despite this, I worry a little about iOS 7, on the basis of my own problems with motion sickness. I’ve heard the parallax effect (a known trigger) can be disabled, but Charles Skoda has written about new motion-sickness triggers in Messages, and this on a system already packed full of large/full-screen transitions, which are also a big problem on OS X.

Perhaps this is down to pain points. Maybe no senior figure at Apple has similar problems or knows people who do. But every time I accidentally invoke full-screen on my iMac or forget to close my eyes during an iPad Kindle page transition (mercifully, iBooks uses a page-turn animation under iOS 6), I wish you could feel what I feel—that sense of nausea that knocks me for six and makes using a device or Mac anything but pleasurable. And then I wish you’d do something about it.

I should state for the record that I’m perfectly aware my problems aren’t life-threatening and aren’t nearly as serious as those that affect many, many other people. I’m certainly not comparing temporary dizziness and sickness to being blind, say; I’m not suggesting motion sickness is as severe as motor limitations that would limit someone to not being able to use a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen with any degree of precision. However, accessibility is fundamentally about catering to all, and by peppering your operating systems with so much animation that cannot be turned off, you continue to make things a little less magical for many people.

By default, I wouldn’t want anything to change, but it can’t be beyond the abilities of Apple engineers to provide settings that disable certain animations or switch them to something that’s not likely to trigger problems (crossfades rather than full-screen slides, for example); and like other aspects of accessibility, such controls would potentially benefit other users too, who for their own reasons would prefer a system without screens and panels sliding around.

Yours hopefully,

Craig Grannell

Further reading on this site

Why iOS 7 is making some users sick
What Apple should do regarding motion sickness triggers in OS X/iOS 7

The Macalope, on Apple innovation being roundly dismissed by tech hacks:

This is probably how this is going to go down. Apple remakes a product category every three to six years. During the “lulls,” as it iteratively improves its products, pundits will shout “Where’s the innovation?!” While we all point out the logical fallacy, they’ll pretend not to hear us. Then, when Apple does remake a category again, they’ll say “The old Apple is back!” When, really, it never went away.

Not quite. When Apple does remake a category, most hacks still say “Where’s the innovation?!”

• It’s just an MP3 player—those have been around for years!
• It’s just an expensive mobile phone—it’ll never catch on!
• It’s just a massive iPod touch—who would want one of those?

Rinse. Repeat. Apple’s screwed if it does and screwed if it doesn’t. Well, apart from in terms of sales, profit and the exec team rolling around naked on piles of lovely, lovely cash and skeuomorphism’s dead corpse.