Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a
completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps
program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an
Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to
the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but
it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable
experience.
While Apple has always had full control of the actual iOS Maps
application design, the backend has belonged to Google. That will change
with iOS 6 thanks to their purchases of Placebase, C3 Technologies, and
Poly9; acquisitions that Apple has used to create a complete mapping
database.
Now that the application is fully in-house, it is being referred to
simply as “Maps” (some people call the current version Google Maps
because of the backend). We reported prior to the launch of iOS 5 that
Apple and Google had extended their Maps deal, and now it is obvious
when that deal ends.
Signifying the application’s complete re-write is a new logo for iOS
Maps: it is basically a redesigned version of the current iOS Maps icon
with a view of Apple’s 1 Infinite Loop Campus, but redrawn with a new
color scheme. Apple’s replacement for Google Street View will likely
also be an in-house solution. C3 Technologies worked on street view
capability as shown in the photo above.
The most important aspect of the new Maps application is a powerful
new 3D mode. The 3D mode does not come enabled by default, but users
simply need to click a 3D button that is conveniently and visibly stored
in the app. Perhaps under the fold like the current traffic, pin, and
map view buttons. This 3D mode is said to essentially be technology
straight from C3 Technologies: beautiful, realisitic graphics based on
de-classified missile target algorithms.
"We’re thrilled with sales of over 35 million iPhones and almost 12
million iPads in the March quarter … The new iPad isoff to a great
start, and across the year you’re going to see a lot more of the kind of
innovation that only Apple can deliver.”
Here are the IOS 6 features:
1. Siri support for iPad 3, 2, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S devices
2. New Notification Center interface
3. Facebook Integration
4. IM Support in Messages
5. iPhone / iPod Touch Multitask Gestures
6. New 3D Maps
6. GPS integrated into 3D Maps
7. AirDrop for iOS
8. New iCloud with Notes,iPhoto Album, Reminders
9. Ability to delete default apps
10.New Notification banners
Since the beginning of the iPad era, one of the most appreciated
features in the tablet has been the possibility to read magazines and
newspapers.
Practically all major publishers (and a lot of minor) have created their
own magazine and newspaper apps and the first in-house experiments have
grown with increasingly better applications. Besides a lot of software
companies followed this path, the major ones by providing their own
publishing system and a lot of other start-ups simply exist to offer
their services to create custom apps for their customers.
While Apple in the time applied several regulations, e.g. limiting
the possibility to purchase issues outside the In App Purchase system,
or introducing a subscription mechanism, it behaved before iOS 5 mainly
as an observer, limiting its own participation in the app arena with the
iBooks app, dedicated to books. But with iOS 5 we assisted to the first
important step of Apple towards introducing a coherent methodology for
magazine and newspapers applications, by providing a feature, called Newsstand, and a developer a framework, called Newsstand Kit,
that provides a common hub for all magazine and newspapers apps and a
new completely different way to interact with an application. It is
important to highlight the fact that each developer or publisher can
still present the content in the preferred way, Apple currently doesn’t
provide any specific solution for content presentation, apart the
generic HIG guidelines and of course the moltitude of services aimed to
present content (PDF, images, media). We will not be surprised if in the
next future Apple will change its SDK rules by requiring all apps to be
Newsstand compatible to be eligible for the App Store.
So how a Newsstand app differ from other apps? first of all the icon
presentation: a Newsstand compatible application will not see anymore
its icon in the springboard, but a different and customizable icon will
be shown in a special icon group called Newsstand. This icon
will not be the typical square icon but instead it will be the cover of a
magazine and furthermore this cover can be customized and keep aligned
with the current latest issue available in the store.
Besides an app that decides to live behind the Newsstand umbrella
will benefit of background downloading of new issues and the device can
be informed, and proceed with automatic download eventually, of new
issue by receiving special push notifications.
In order to achieve these, and several other features, an application
must take in consideration several aspects, from icon management, to
push notifications, inside the code and up to the iTunesConnect
definition. In this tutorial we’ll try to build a simple Newsstand
compatible app from scratch.
Application setup
Basic app
Prerequisite to follow this tutorial is to have XCode 4.2 and iOS 5
SDK installed. Even if most of the new features can be tested directly
in the iPhone Simulator, the push notifcations and In App Purchase part
of this tutorial require an iOS Developer Account.
So let’s start with a simple approach: open XCode and create a new
“Empty” project, feel free to choose the target device between iPhone
and iPad. Then create a new view controller, call it StoreViewController,
and inside the app delegate instantiate a new object for this
controller and put it inside a new navigation controller. Finally define
a new icon, add it inside your project and run it in the simulator. The
obvious result will be something like this, with our icon in the
springboard and the app showing an empty screen:
Enabling for Newsstand
Now we need to instruct the system that we want our app to be
compatible with Newsstand. The first requirement is to create an icon
specific for Newsstand: this icon is different from the usual app icons
at it must appear as a cover of our magazine. In our case we prepared a
simple 130 x 190 px icon and imported in XCode. Besides we need to add
or modify three new fields in the application Info.plist. The first new field is UINewsstandapp that must added and set to YES. The second is to create or modify the CFBundleIcons
dictionary item by adding the Newsstand icons. Finally, if we want to
support background download of new assets, we need to add the newsstand-code in the application background capabilities. The newly added plist items will appear in xml syntax as:
Note that the CFBundleIconFiles section still exists for backward compatibility but in the new iOS 5 syntax it has been copied inside the CFBundlePrimaryIcon section of CFBundleIcons.
These new settings appear in XCode as in the figure below, we have
displayed here the values instead of the key names for the Info
parameters, just to let you see how the new icon files structure is
marked with an iOS 5 tag:
Let’s build and run the app again, the result will appear as below:
our original icon has been removed from the springboard and replaced
with the cover-like icon inside the Newsstand group; if we open the
group then we’ll be able to click in our app icon to move it to
foreground. Note that the classic style icons are still required by the
system, as they are used in spotlight, for push notifications, in the
App Store.
Displaying and downloading magazines
It’s time to now to start writing some code. The first operation is
to link our project to the NewsstandKit framework. Don’t forget to
import the NewsstandKit headers in the classed that need it:
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#import <NewsstandKit/NewsstandKit.h>
For simplicity we suppose that the list of available issues (all free)
is inside a plist file that can be downloaded from the publisher server.
So for the purpose we define a class called Publisher which
will take care of downloading the current list of items. As soon as the
items have been downloaded they will be presented to the user. The plist
is quite simple: it is an array of dictionaries, each dictionary
represents an issue by providing the identifying name (unique), the
title (visible to the user), the publishing date and the URLs for
thumbnail cover image and content (PDF file) downloading.
At startup the StoreViewController will download the issues list from
the server, parse it and will present this list in the table.
Concurrently it will download the covers thumbnails and will show them
in the table. This is quite typical code still not related to Newsstand
so I will not explain the details. At the end of the loading the view
will present itself in this way. You will simply the list of items
together with their cover and a hint that invites to tap for download.
Now one of the most interesting things about the Newsstand framework
is that the system manages for us the issues library by giving us access
to a shared class called NKLibrary. Once we get the library,
we’ll iterate through our issues list downloaded from the server and we
will add our issues into the shared NK library. This can be done using
the NKLibrary’s addIssueWithName:date: that needs as input only the unique name and publishing date for the issue and will return an NKIssue
instance. Note that this data is only a subset of the data we need for
our application (our simple issue dictionary contains in addition the
display title, and the content and cover URLs), so we’ll need to
maintain our own list and keep it in sync with the NKLibrary content.
Also consider that once an issues has been added it will be permanently
saved into the system NK library repository, even on subsequent runs of
the application, this is because the operating system needs to maintain
the status of all of our issues: this means that will be forbidden to
add an issue with the same name twice, doing this will raise an
exception and will crash the app. Going back to our code, concurrently
with the downloading of the issues from the publisher’s server we’ll
update the NKLibrary issues by adding only the ones not added yet:
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// Publisher.m// "issues" is the array of issues downloaded from the publisher's server-(void)addIssuesInNewsstand{// shared NKLibrary instanceNKLibrary*nkLib=[NKLibrarysharedLibrary];// we iterate through our issues and add only the one not in the NK library yet[issuesenumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(idobj,NSUIntegeridx,BOOL*stop){NSString*name=[(NSDictionary*)objobjectForKey:@"Name"];NKIssue*nkIssue=[nkLibissueWithName:name];if(!nkIssue){nkIssue=[nkLibaddIssueWithName:namedate:[(NSDictionary*)objobjectForKey:@"Date"]];}}];}
Note the way we manage the static information coming from the
publisher with the dynamic information present in the NKLibrary. In
particular we can link a given publisher’s issue with the corresponding NKIssue by the unique name identifier, thanks to the fact that NKLibrary exposes the method:
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-(NKIssue*)issueWithName:(NSString*)name
Thanks to this link we are able to populate our table cells with a mix
of static and dynamic information. This cell view infact other than
providing the Title information (retrieved from the publisher’s
list) will show an action label that will be “TAP TO DOWNLOAD” or “TAP
TO READ” according to the fact that the magazine has been downloaded or
not. Besides if the issue is under downloading we’ll show instead of the
“TAP” message a bar that will show the download progress. We know the
magazine status by checking the NKIssue status property, which has three possible values: NKIssueContentStatusAvailable, NKIssueContentStatusDownloading or NKIssueContentStatusNone.
Downloading an issue
Let’s explore now how issue download happens while the app is in
foreground. This will be done by introducing a new class, called NKAssetDownload. First of all a few important concepts:
each issue is composed of a single asset (as in this case: we just
have a PDF file) or multiple assets (e.g.: pdf, images, videos,
thumbnails); in the latter case the recommendation is to pack all files
in a single zip and then download this single file.
the final local destination path is established by the Newsstand
framework and consist of a system assigned directory inside the app
sandbox cache, so compliant with iCloud requirements
this local destination can be retrieved from the NKIssue’s contentURL property
we can build our final destination path by appending to the
contentURL path our own file name, as we did in the piece of code below:
So in our code when a table cell is tapped and the corresponding
issue has not been downloaded yet we need to start the download. The
code below retrieves the NKIssue object, then ask the Publisher instance
for the original server URL where to download the issue (in a more
complex app this request will require, for example, the In App Purchase
receipt for validation before returning the download URL) and finally
we’ll ask NKIssue for a new NKAssetDownload object that will be queued
for downloading. Note that we store in the NKAssetDownload userInfo
property the actual index of the table view cell. This is required as
during our download we want to update the progress bar that can be
retrieved only by querying for the right cell in the table. Even if this
userInfo is a dictionary its storage is limited to plist-valid objects
only, the penalty will be a runtime exception, so be careful!
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// let's retrieve the NKIssueNKLibrary*nkLib=[NKLibrarysharedLibrary];NKIssue*nkIssue=[nkLibissueWithName:[publishernameOfIssueAtIndex:index]];// let's get the publisher's server URL (stored in the issues plist) NSURL*downloadURL=[publishercontentURLForIssueWithName:nkIssue.name];if(!downloadURL)return;// let's create a request and the NKAssetDownload objectNSURLRequest*req=[NSURLRequestrequestWithURL:downloadURL];NKAssetDownload*assetDownload=[nkIssueaddAssetWithRequest:req];[assetDownloadsetUserInfo:[NSDictionarydictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[NSNumbernumberWithInt:index],@"Index",nil]];// let's start download[assetDownloaddownloadWithDelegate:self];
In the code above we set the assetDownlaoddelegate property to self.
This allows the view controller to monitor the download progress
implementing the NKURLConnectionDownloadDelegate which is an extension
(or a specialization) of the already known NSURLConnectionDelegate protocol. This protocol defines three methods:
The first method allows us to monitor the progress status of our download. Thanks to the connection’s newsstandAssetDownload
property we can retrieve the NKAssetDownload associated to the
connection and then we’ll be able to retrieve the table view cell
associated to this asset’s magazine thanks to the Index property we previously stored in the userInfo dictionary:
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-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection*)connectiondidWriteData:(longlong)bytesWrittentotalBytesWritten:(longlong)totalBytesWrittenexpectedTotalBytes:(longlong)expectedTotalBytes{[selfupdateProgressOfConnection:connectionwithTotalBytesWritten:totalBytesWrittenexpectedTotalBytes:expectedTotalBytes];}-(void)updateProgressOfConnection:(NSURLConnection*)connectionwithTotalBytesWritten:(longlong)totalBytesWrittenexpectedTotalBytes:(longlong)expectedTotalBytes{// get assetNKAssetDownload*dnl=connection.newsstandAssetDownload;UITableViewCell*cell=[table_cellForRowAtIndexPath:[NSIndexPathindexPathForRow:[[dnl.userInfoobjectForKey:@"Index"]intValue]inSection:0]];UIProgressView*progressView=(UIProgressView*)[cellviewWithTag:102];progressView.alpha=1.0;[[cellviewWithTag:103]setAlpha:0.0];progressView.progress=1.f*totalBytesWritten/expectedTotalBytes;}
While the implementation of the progress method is optional, all in
all we are not strictly required to monitor the progress status, the
next two methods must be implemented. One method informs us that the
downloading of an asset has been resumed and that we can update our
progress; we’ll see this detail later, for the moment we behave exactly
as in the method above, by updating the progress bar. The other method
instead needs to be implemented as it informs the delegate that the
download has finished and that the downloaded content (currently stored
in a temporary area) can be moved to its final location (that we know is
given to us witth the contentURL property of NKIssue.
Our implementation then moves the new content to its final location and
refresh the table by removing the progress bar and replacing with the
new “TAP TO READ” message:
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-(void)connectionDidFinishDownloading:(NSURLConnection*)connectiondestinationURL:(NSURL*)destinationURL{// copy file to destination URLNKAssetDownload*dnl=connection.newsstandAssetDownload;NKIssue*nkIssue=dnl.issue;NSString*contentPath=[publisherdownloadPathForIssue:nkIssue];NSError*moveError=nil;if([[NSFileManagerdefaultManager]moveItemAtPath:[destinationURLpath]toPath:contentPatherror:&moveError]==NO){NSLog(@"Error copying file from %@ to %@",destinationURL,contentPath);}[table_reloadData];}
If your issue is made of multiple assets, of course you can queue
them all. In such case other than monitoring the single assets downloads
(at least to copy them in their final destination directory) you may be
interested to know when all queued assets download have finished. In
such case you can register to the NKIssueDownloadCompletedNotification that will be posted (without userInfo) by the interested issue.
An interesting point we would like to highlight is the way we’re
downloading the magazine covers for our table. If you have a look at the
code, you will see that as soon as the controller needs to provide the
image for the table cell view, it will query the Publisher class sending
the index of the cover to be retrieved and a completion handler block
that will be executed by the publisher instance. The publisher instance
infact does an async download of the cover data and when done runs the
block that will update the table. This works perfectly but it can be
done in a different way by using the Newsstand capabilities: infact if
you consider that the image cover is, after all, an issue asset, you can
still add this asset request to the system and in the connection
delegate you can re-load the affected cell with the new item. We didn’t
cover this aspect in this code, as we preferred to focus on the content
download, but you may consider for your applications this approach which
is more elegant.
Background downloading
One of the most interesting features of Newsstand is that once an
asset downloading has started it will continue even if the application
is suspended (that is: not running but still in memory) or it is
terminated. Of course during while your app is suspended it will not
receive any status update but it will be woken up in the background in
order to process the download completion operation: in this case you
will have the chance to copy the downloaded asset in its final
destination or, for zipped content, to unpackage it.
In case that app has been terminated while downloading was in
progress, the situation is different. Infact in the event of a finished
downloading the app can not be simply woken up and the connection
delegate finish download method called, as when an app is terminated its
App delegate object doesn’t exist anymore. In such case the system will
relaunch the app in the background and then the UIApplicationDelegateapplication:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: will be called with the UIApplicationLaunchOptionsNewsstandDownloadsKey key in the launchOptions
dictionary. If defined, this key will contain the array of all asset
identifiers that caused the launch. From my tests it doesn’t seem this
check is really required if you reconnect the pending downloading as
explained in the next paragraph.
Another important thing to consider is that each time the app is
relaunched, we need to check for existing pending downloads. If there
any then we must reconnect them to the download delegate. If we don’t do
this, then all not-reconnected downloads are considered abandoned by
the system and they will be cancelled:
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// inside the app delegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: and after the view controller has been initializedNKLibrary*nkLib=[NKLibrarysharedLibrary];for(NKAssetDownload*assetin[nkLibdownloadingAssets]){[assetdownloadWithDelegate:store];}
New content notification
One of the most interesting features related to Newsstand it the
possibility to receive push notifications when new content is available:
this means that the app will be able in background to automatically
download the new content and update the cover as appears inside the
Newsstand group.
The implementation of this feature requires some preliminary setup. I
will not enter in the detail of the operations required to have push
notification working in your app, so I will limit myself to summarize
the required steps:
In the developer portal, create a Bundle ID specific for your app, without wildcards
In the developer portal, enable the Bundle ID for push notifications and create the server certificate
Install the server certificate in your push notification servers. If
you don’t have one, you can refer to external services such as Urban Airship (which is free for development and free up to some limit for production)
Check in your Info.plist that the Bundle ID in your code is the same that you used in the developer portal
In the developer portal create a provisioning profile for the app
and use it when compiling and installing the app in your device
It is initially suggested to test if push notifications are working.
So register the app for receiving basic push notifications and try from
your push server to send a message. If you get it you’re ready to
continue with Newsstand integration.
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// APNS standard registration to be added inside application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:[[UIApplicationsharedApplication]registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:(UIRemoteNotificationTypeBadge|UIRemoteNotificationTypeSound|UIRemoteNotificationTypeAlert)];}
Newsstand Kit adds a new remote notification type, called UIRemoteNotificationTypeNewsstandContentAvailability
which informs the app that it is able to receive new content updates
through push notifications. As our app is not interested in receiving
other kind of push notifications, we can replace the code above with:
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// APNS standard registration to be added inside application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:[[UIApplicationsharedApplication]registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:UIRemoteNotificationTypeNewsstandContentAvailability];}
When you start the app the first time you will get a new kind of
alert. If you don’t get it then your setup is invalid and I suggest to
implement and check the error message passed with the - (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didFailToRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithError:(NSError *)error method.
At this point you’re ready to send a push notification to your device
informing Newsstand that a new issue is available. The push
notification message has the same syntax as standard push notifications
with the only difference that the payload must contain the content-available key set to 1:
There is one importation limitation related to the frequency of
pushes: to limit the consumption of resources due to background
downloading (which, by the way, we’ll happen only if the device is
connected to a Wi-Fi network) Newsstand push notifications are coalesced
and only one background download is permitted per day. For testing
purposes you can remove this limit by setting an appropriate key in the
user defaults (do this at startup in your App Delegate):
When a notification is sent your app can be in two possible states:
running in the foreground or not. In the first case you must respond to
the UIApplicationDelegateapplication:didReceiveRemoteNotification:,
and your action could be simply alerting the user or starting the new
download automatically or asking the server for the new issue data
(title, cover, and so on). In the other case your app will be activated
in the background again with a call to the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: and what this method has to do, in addition to the other things is doing, is to check the launch options for the UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey
and retrieve the payload. In this case what can be done is to start a
background task that will fetch the latest issue from the server of get
the list of all issues and starting downloading the last one for
example. Normally this background task should be completed in a couple
of seconds, which is the time assigned by the operation system to start
the automatic download. If this time is not considered enough, because
you have to query your server before, then the suggested approach is to
run this procedure inside a beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: call thus getting about 10 minutes for the whole job.
The example below shows how the app can behave in case it is not
running (neither in the foreground nor as inactive). In this simple
example we assume the latest magazine is “Magazine-4” (but we could have
given the name inside the notification payload) and then just schedule
the download. At this point the app will terminate again but when the
download terminates it is resumed, thanks to the internal rules of NK
previously explained, and then the magazine is moved to its final
location.
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NSDictionary*payload=[launchOptionsobjectForKey:UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey];if(payload){// schedule for issue downloading in backgroundNKIssue*issue4=[[NKLibrarysharedLibrary]issueWithName:@"Magazine-4"];if(issue4){NSURL*downloadURL=[NSURLURLWithString:@"http://www.viggiosoft.com/media/data/blog/newsstand/magazine-4.pdf"];NSURLRequest*req=[NSURLRequestrequestWithURL:downloadURL];NKAssetDownload*assetDownload=[issue4addAssetWithRequest:req];[assetDownloaddownloadWithDelegate:store];}}
Updating the Newsstand icon
A new special feature introduced with Newsstand is the possibility to
update the Newsstand app icon according to the last updated cover. The
recommendation from Apple is to use the cover of the last updated issue.
Another interesting possibility is that we can mark this icon with a New
sash to mark that an issue is new and has not been read yet. Of course
as soon as the app is restarted or the new issue has been read it is
good practice to remove this marker. The way we can change the icon and
set the sash visible is quite easy, just put this code somewhere after
your download did finish and your issue has been safely saved in its
destination path (never show the cover before it is available!):
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// update the Newsstand iconUIImage*img=[publishercoverImageForIssue:nkIssue];if(img){[[UIApplicationsharedApplication]setNewsstandIconImage:img];[[UIApplicationsharedApplication]setApplicationIconBadgeNumber:1];}
Your screen will appear like this: the Newsstand icon badged, your
app icon cover update to the new cover and the “New” sash on top of it.
Conclusions
In the next article
we will talk about the interaction of a Newsstand app with the In App
Purchase system and how to manage it using the iTunesConnect service.
The full source code to be used more than a reference to better follow
this tutorial than a real example to be run, can be found on GitHub.
At this point you may ask yourself if adding Newsstand for your next
apps makes sense or not. There are several advantages but also
drawbacks. The main drawback is that Newsstand works on devices that
have migrated to iOS5. At the time of writing, after few days from iOS 5
distribution to the customers, the adoption rate is 1/3. We may expect
by the end of 2011 an adoption rate greater than 80%. Anyway consider
this point before starting delivering a magazine app with Newsstand and
if you are doing this for a client then talk with her/him about this
point. If you have a magazine already in the App Store and you’re
considering to migrate it to Newsstand, then of course you will not lose
your existing customer base as releasing an update will not impact all
users that have installed the previous app versions, provided you don’t change your back-end,
that is the server side web service remain compatible with old app
versions. Clearly new users potential still stuck to iOS4 will not be
able to install the newer iOS 5 versions.
The major advantages in using Newsstand are that from the point of
view of user experience, it is improved as the user feels more natural
to pick its magazine from a single stand; besides some features as
latest cover and automatic download will be greatly appreciated. From
the point of view of the publisher having an app in the Newsstand will
bring a marketing advantage as Newsstand presents itself as a separate
area in the store, quite visible and well promoted by Apple. Finally
from the point of view of the developer you will be able to take
advantage of many features, including a shared issues library and an
efficient background download system, whose development from scratch can
be difficult and requires care of many details: now some of the
possible issues are managed by the framework and you, as developer, can
spend more time on delivering a good user experience.
With its billion-dollar sale to Facebook, Instagram instantly became the latest poster child for startup success. In just 551 days, the photo-sharing mobile app zoomed from zero to 30 million-odd users, and 10 million U.S. visits by March 2012, up 1000% since December 2011. Its valuation outstrips that of the 116-year-old New York Times.
An amazing run, and it wasn't all just luck, though the company enjoyed plenty of that. To boost its chances to win the startup lottery, Instagram did eight very important things right.
1. Instagram Operated as a Nimble Start-up
Despite its meteoric growth, Instagram kept its overhead low with a total of only 13 employees, and its headquarters weren't anything to brag about, either. Instagram is housed in Twitter's old digs on 164 South Park Street in the trendy but still slightly seedy SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco.
More important, it stayed nimble enough to switch gears from its original idea of a location-based social network called Burbn to an iPhone app focused solely on photo-sharing. And instead of hiring workers or looking for revenue, the company was able to focus on growing the platform, its community and its aesthetic offerings.
2. Instagram Cashed in on the Mobile Explosion
Instagram's timing was perfect, capitalizing on a historic increase in smartphone use. Starting out as an iOS app, it successfully targeted the burgeoning legions of hip iPhone-app users. It waited until Android reached nearly 50% mobile marketshare to launch the long-awaited app on that platform. Meanwhile, Instagram mostly ignored the no-longer-as-hot Web space, although there is a Web version called Webstagram.
3. Instagram's Interface Stayed Junk-Free
Spend 20 minutes on Instagram and chances are you'll be hooked. Beautiful pictures filtered through hazy lenses flow down an otherwise cold, glass screen. Instagram charges up a smartphone screen, filling it with emotion - not piles of distracting controls and icons. On Instagram, the image stands alone. Instagram successfully created a new world where images - not functionality - are the main focus.
4. Instagram Didn't Get Creepy
Instagram managed to keep its creep vibe low. It doesn't push users to post, to share or even to like - it is an open space, available to use as you wish. Stay on the sidelines and just observe - no one will ever know. Pop into a conversation and then quickly leave. You won't be the only one: Instagram users are notoriously fickle.
That's why Instagram's easy follow/unfollow option doesn't require a commitment as heavy-handed as "friending" on Facebook. Follow whomever you want, or just wander off and find new images to look at. You won't accidentally see some old fling pop up in the Instagram stream, unless you purposely follow that person.
5. Instagram Married Visceral, Visual Communication & Community
Instagram built a devout community based on a single idea: capturing and sharing beautiful images. Powerful images are inherently emotional - think about The Atlantic's In Focus section.
Instagram gave people an easy way to connect around images, without the added pressure of complex social relations. Communities popped up organically around filters, around using too many filters and around just friends.
"There are a lot of things in [a] photo that someone can respond to, [that] promote conversation - then you get a wonderful interaction out of it," says Piictu Community Manager Zachary McCune. "I hope that continues, because that's what's beautiful about being able to relate to photographs."
A talented photographer can capture a single emotion in a square image, and make the viewer stop and feel something, if only for a moment. Instagram makes that moment easier to share.
6. Instagram Created a Valuable New Data Set
Every time an Instagram user snaps a picture, the app can capture a rich set of data, including location, time of day and other data points that can be associated with a smartphone's sensors, explains ReadWriteWeb's Dan Rowinski in How Instagram Will Help Facebook Monetize Mobile.
Instagram may not have been monetizing that data, but you can bet Facebook will. "Facebook is adding another crucial set of data points/edges to analyze people's activity online," says PixableCEO Inaki Berenguer. "With Instagram in the fold, Facebook can now quantify what people are taking photos about based on the tags they put on their photos."
7. Instagram Didn't Worry About Making Money
In its short 15-month lifespan, Instagram focused on building its community, user base and functionality rather than worrying about how the platform was going to make money. By not chasing the dollar, it was able to focus on making the app better.
Of course, Instagram did pay attention to acquiring VC funding. Right before the Facebook acquisition, it closed a $50M Series B round from Sequoia, Thrive, Greylock and Benchmark, valuing the company at a sweet $500 million.
8. Instagram Embodied a Cultural Shift Toward Photo Inboxes
As the future of photo-only inboxes approaches, and more people use photo-sharing apps to connect with their friends, the need for more visual communication will only intensify. The idea that social interactions will increasingly become visual and mobile is attracting widespread interest.
"Increasingly, we see people using photos to share an experience with a friend, whether it's to tell them what they had for lunch, show them a cool spot in their city that they found or to share special moments like birthdays or weddings," says Pixable's Berengeur. "The ultimate goal of sharing mobile photos is to broadcast your life to your friends instead of keeping a memory. The rise of smartphones, photo apps and social networks have made taking and sharing a photo easier than ever."
What Other Startups Can & Can't Learn From Instagram
What worked for Instagram isn't guaranteed to work for every startup. It's always easier to look back and uncover the right and wrong strategic moves. Only in retrospect is it clear that Instragram did everything right. Along the way, there were plenty of critics carping at just about every decision the company made.
There is, however, one thing that other startups can certainly learn from Instagram: Timing is everything. If Instagram had come along six months later, things might have turned out very differently. Some other company might have already executed on its ideas and it would be the one preparing to cash some very big checks
Besides an app that decides to live behind the Newsstand umbrella
will benefit of background downloading of new issues and the device can
be informed, and proceed with automatic download eventually, of new
issue by receiving special push notifications.
Let’s build and run the app again, the result will appear as below:
our original icon has been removed from the springboard and replaced
with the cover-like icon inside the Newsstand group; if we open the
group then we’ll be able to click in our app icon to move it to
foreground. Note that the classic style icons are still required by the
system, as they are used in spotlight, for push notifications, in the
App Store.
Now one of the most interesting things about the Newsstand framework
is that the system manages for us the issues library by giving us access
to a shared class called NKLibrary. Once we get the library,
we’ll iterate through our issues list downloaded from the server and we
will add our issues into the shared NK library. This can be done using
the NKLibrary’s addIssueWithName:date: that needs as input only the unique name and publishing date for the issue and will return an NKIssue
instance. Note that this data is only a subset of the data we need for
our application (our simple issue dictionary contains in addition the
display title, and the content and cover URLs), so we’ll need to
maintain our own list and keep it in sync with the NKLibrary content.
Also consider that once an issues has been added it will be permanently
saved into the system NK library repository, even on subsequent runs of
the application, this is because the operating system needs to maintain
the status of all of our issues: this means that will be forbidden to
add an issue with the same name twice, doing this will raise an
exception and will crash the app. Going back to our code, concurrently
with the downloading of the issues from the publisher’s server we’ll
update the NKLibrary issues by adding only the ones not added yet:
At this point you’re ready to send a push notification to your device
informing Newsstand that a new issue is available. The push
notification message has the same syntax as standard push notifications
with the only difference that the payload must contain the content-available key set to 1:
