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iTunes Library Fixer TuneUp Raises $6.3M, Talks Cloud Plan
If, like me, you’re obsessed with keeping your iTunes library organized, neat and complete, then chances are you’ve turned to TuneUp to help manage the task. The Mac and PC iTunes companion application just secured an additional $2 million in funding, bringing its Series C funding total to $6.3 million. This latest investment comes from IDG Ventures, which has prior investments in the company.

I got a chance to pick the brain of TuneUp’s CEO and founder, Gabe Adiv, to discuss his company’s plan for the application’s future, and how it sees its role shifting as content moves to the cloud. Despite TuneUp’s role as a local media organizational tool, Adiv isn’t fazed by the prospect of a growing shift to store media remotely, rather than on a user’s own local machine.

Adiv plans to use this latest round of funding to grow the team behind TuneUp, with the ultimate goal being the introduction of new features and additional products:

TuneUp will soon be releasing what we believe to be the most intelligent track de-duplicator on the market and are aggressively pursuing opportunities with lyrics. Beyond that there are a number of ways that we feel we can bring real value to various cloud-based eco-systems. Videos are definitely something we are thinking about as well.

While he wouldn’t go into too much detail about the specific ways his company intends to address a cloud-based shift, he did suggest that end-users will still have to deal with improper track naming and sorting through duplications when they move their existing libraries online. Such libraries, Adiv noted, aren’t going anywhere just because music subscription services are arriving on the scene. “Personal music collections and music subscription services are not mutually exclusive,” he told me. “They’ll need to play nicely together in order to provide the most seamless consumption experience.” That definitely rings true to me. I’d never give up my personal collection, even if I did sign up for a subscription service, no matter the depth of its content library.

He also hopes to re-invest some money in marketing efforts in order to increase TuneUp’s visibility. I asked him about the Mac App Store, which seems so far to have had a positive effect on the visibility of other Mac software. Adiv said simply that right now they’re in the process of “figuring out the best way to present their offerings” in that venue.

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My Mac & iPhone GTD Philosophy: Less Is Perfect
This past weekend didn’t just mark (at long last!) the installation of my standing desk, or the moment I chose to wall-mount my life-size replica lightsaber; it also marked my return to using CulturedCode’s Things on the iPhone and Mac — and I gotta tell you, it’s a wonderful feeling having those apps back in my life.

Before that, I had been using The Omni Group’s venerable OmniFocus as my task management tool-of-choice, mostly because, in mid-2010, I convinced myself I absolutely needed over-the-air sync between my Macs and iPhone (Omnifocus has it; Things does not).

Now, if you’re like me, you probably follow the work of some notable figures in the Mac community; people like Ben Brooks, David Sparks and Merlin Mann. It seems that those guys are OmniFocus ninjas. There’s nothing they can’t do with OmniFocus. I’m just not that good, and I don’t think I ever could be. To make the most of OmniFocus, I feel like I need to become both a GTD guru and commit hours and hours of my life to learning the software. Things, on the other hand, is so simple it requires almost no learning. For someone as old and inflexible as me, that’s a bonus!

Fiddly Bits

In trying (for six months!) to really get to grips with OmniFocus, I discovered that its greatest strength can also be its greatest weakness — everything is just so endlessly tweakable! Start dates, due dates, priorities, flags, perspectives, custom folders, nested folders, projects, location awareness, contexts, actions and who knows what else all add to the mountain of fiddly bits of detail that can be added, edited and generally mucked-about-with. In fact, there’s so much scope for fiddly details that Omnifocus offers its own Inspectors to make it more manageable. To be honest, when I have to open an Inspector, I don’t feel like I’m using a to-do manager any more.

Let me be fair; OmniFocus is a wonderful tool. But I always felt like I was neglecting some awesome functionality that could make me super-productive. I suffered a kind of productivity anxiety with OmniFocus: a nagging worry that I wasn’t making the most of this fantastic software the Merlin Manns of the world talk about with such enthusiasm. Finally, though, I’ve arrived at something of an epiphany; I wasn’t missing anything other than the discipline to stop tweaking my to-do lists and just get things done.

Choices, Choices

Mac users today are spoiled for choice when it comes to powerful, beautiful productivity software. Don’t like Microsoft Office? No problem; use iWork. Don’t like Pages? There’s always WriteRoom, Scrivener or TextMate. Every one of those apps is a great word processor without the Microsoft bloat.

This philosophy of “less is more” should be familiar to us all; it’s baked-in to Apple’s DNA, and it seems poised going to become even more of a Mac feature with OS X Lion. It’s also the reason Pages isn’t like Microsoft Word, and it’s why the iPad isn’t a Windows 7 Tablet PC.

So why, when it comes to personal productivity software as fundamental as a to-do manager, do we often think we need more complexity, more sophistication and ever more bells and whistles? Could it be that we all trick ourselves into thinking that time spent poring over our to-do’s is time spent getting things done?

One of the primary reasons for my switching to the Mac was the Apple philosophy of design; everything that’s there — be it in the hardware or the operating system — is there for a clear and obvious reason. It’s simple; it’s easy, and it all just gets out of the way so I can concentrate on doing my work. That’s why I stick with Mail.app instead of using more sophisticated apps like Mailplane or Postbox. It’s why I use TextMate instead of Word. And I suppose I could even use TextEdit to keep a list of tasks; but then, that wouldn’t be as much fun as putting a tick in a box, would it?

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Last.fm Co-Founder Blasts Apple's 30 Percent Cut
Rhapsody has probably garnered the most attention for speaking out against Apple’s new subscription plans, but Last.fm co-founder Richard Jones probably takes the cake for most direct denunciation. Speaking in an IRC chat, Jones said “[A]pple just f****** over online music subs for the iPhone.”

Jones suggested that Apple was preparing to launch its own streaming music subscription service later in the year, which would account for the new policy. He argued that “many services can’t survive a 30 percent loss of revenue,” specifically referring to Spotify by name, saying he didn’t imagine its “margins are anywhere near 30 percent.” Jones’ comments echo statements made by streaming music company We7 CEO Steve Purdham, who told paidContent.org that a 30 percent cut to Apple “makes music subscriptions economically unviable.”

Apple still has yet to comment beyond Steve Jobs’ initial statement that “[o]ur philosophy is simple – when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing.” On the surface, it seems fair, but Jones points out that, “basically, people on the iPhone will *always* subscribe using iTunes, because it’s easier.”

If there’s enough evidence to support the accusation that Apple is squeezing out competitors in the music subscription business to make room for its own streaming service to be launched at a later date, then it’s possible that the company could be setting itself up for an anti-trust investigation. Similar problems could arise with books and video, where content providers operating on the iPhone — like Netflix and Amazon — would compete with Apple’s own products while having to pay licensing fees, which could be too much to swallow.

Ironically, Last.fm itself actually only recently became subject to Apple’s new policy. Until Feb. 7, Last.fm’s streaming radio features were free to registered users, on the web and in the company’s mobile apps. Now, streaming radio requires a paid subscription, meaning Apple will expect a cut as of Jun. 30.

While large-scale distributors and publishers might have a hard time swallowing Apple’s new rules, I’ve argued that the new system might actually be a boon to other developers and the App Store economy at large. Jon Crowley also has a good counterpoint at his blog to those quick to dismiss Apple’s move as nothing more than the product of unbridled greed. What’s your take?

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3 Alternatives to Twitter for Mac
Reactions to the design of Twitter for Mac have been mixed; some love it, and some hate it. Luckily, the official client isn’t the only game in town, even if you’re just limiting yourself to what’s available in the Mac App Store. Here are two other options available from the store, and one hidden gem you’ll have to grab from the web.

Twitteriffic

Twitteriffic for Mac was recently updated to 4.0, and it features a new interface inspired by the iPad version of Twitteriffic. When you click on someone’s picture, you get an iPad-style pop-up that shows that person’s profile. Twitteriffic is full of neat flourishes like that. When you compose a new tweet, a text field slides down from the top. When you get new tweets, a small purple notification bar appears at the bottom. It’s a great-looking client.

Unlike Twitter for Mac, you can hide the sidebar and the toolbar so that all you see is the tweet stream, providing an uncluttered view. Strangely, the controls to hide those elements are under the Window menu, and not in a separate View menu where I’d expect them to be. Also strange is that there’s a keyboard shortcut to hide the sidebar (Cmd-L), but not one to hide the toolbar.

Twitteriffic is available in the Mac App Store for $10, but you can download a free, ad-supported version from their website.

Echofon

Echofon has been around for a long time on the iPhone, and its user base is loyal. The Mac client offers a simpler alternative. It’s not as flashy as Twitteriffic, but it has more features, such as Highlights, which notifies you whenever a specified word appears in your stream. If, for example, you want to track what’s going on in Egypt; you could add the word “Egypt” to the Highlights pane in Echofon’s preferences, and a Growl notification would pop up every time Egypt is mentioned.

Echofon is available on the Mac App Store for $10, but there’s also a “Lite” (ad-supported) version for free.

YoruFukurou

YoruFukurou (“Night Owl”) can best be described as the power-user’s Twitter client. It has a tabbed interface, and you can add your own tabs, which can either be filters, searches or lists. It’s also very customizable. You can change the colors of every type of tweet, say if you wanted to change the color of selected tweets, you could do that, to any color you wanted. One of the neater features of YoruFukurou is the ability to easily paste the currently playing song from iTunes or the current page from Safari into the compose field.

It’s not as simple as Echofon, and not as good-looking as Twitteriffic, but it has the most features out of the clients mentioned here. YuroFukurou also has the most native look to it, so if you’re a HIG kind of guy, you should give this one a go.

YuroFukurou is available as a free download from its website.

What’s your favorite alternative to Twitter for Mac? Or do you think Twitter for Mac the best Twitter client out there?

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Apple and the Rise of the Subscription Economy
Apple this week introduced App Store subscriptions, and though people disagree on the fairness of the company’s 30 percent take of all revenue resulting from subscription sales, the feature is here to stay. Might its introduction signal a subtle shift towards a new paradigm for paying for mobile content and apps?

At least one person thinks so. Tien Tzuo, Zuora founder and CEO, and former CMO at Salesforce, suggested to me that by introducing in-app subscriptions to the App Store, Apple is joining a general trend toward a subscription-based economy. A subscription economy basically means that instead of a single lump sum payment, you pay a smaller, repeating fee for continued access to goods or services.

Examples of subscription-based economies can be found in just about every industry. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a prime example in the digital world, including accounting services like Freshbooks or project management tools like Basecamp. Dropbox provides subscription-based cloud-storage, as does Apple’s own MobileMe, and media companies like Rhapsody and Netflix are trying to move subscription-based music and video access into the mainstream. You can even subscribe to cars, via rental-sharing companies like Autoshare and Zipcar.

The benefits of paying by subscription are guaranteed continued support through the life of a product, and freedom from quickly outdated software or hardware in a rapidly shifting marketplace. If I buy Photoshop CS5, for example, that’s the version I’m stuck with until I cough up the money to replace it with a new one. If I become a Freshbooks subscriber, I always have access to the most recent version, and I don’t have to worry about the company dropping support for my product until it shuts off the lights for good.

The current App Store economy, while it may appear robust and healthy, actually has some serious problems. For many developers, a continued revenue flow depends on ever-expanding growth, since their apps are priced low and designed as one-time purchases, and customers have come to expect lengthy, free update tails for said apps. If they aren’t selling to new customers, there’s no income to cover the costs of ongoing support and iteration. Tzuo sums up the problems inherent in such a model quite nicely:

The relationship between people and businesses, and the products and services they use, is no longer a one-time event. In fact, why should get developers just get paid 99 cents, versus $5/year to continue to reinvest in their app?

Adopting a subscription model would give devs a bit of breathing room, and provide a truly sustainable model for apps. You could do much better with niche apps, selling to a small, targeted audience, and still have an income stream once you’ve reached market saturation.

While much of the early focus around in-app subscriptions has been around the publishing industry, Apple clearly wants developers in other areas to consider implementing the system. It sent out an email to developer account holders just yesterday announcing the new subscription features, using language clearly aimed at a general audience. And why not? If developers can entice iOS users to embrace recurring payments, Apple wins since it stands to receive more in app revenue.

Consumers also stand to gain, since a subscription model would help developers focus more on delivering a user experience that only gets better with time, instead of quickly becoming stale. They can reap the reward of investing in a service over the long term instead of buying a throwaway app for $0.99 that will get deleted after one day of use, or when something shinier and faster comes along.

A subscription-based app economy could also be hugely useful if Apple genuinely intends to create a cloud-based iPhone, as recent rumors suggest. Kevin pointed out one way Apple could keep onboard storage requirements down for such a device: selling apps as subscription services, with limited on-device lifespans. It’s probably more likely that Apple would use subscriptions to encourage developers to keep in-app rich media content stored off the device, accessible on demand via the cloud depending on a user’s membership level.

Of course, in addition to its many potential benefits, there are barriers and downsides to an App Store subscription economy, too. The first, and biggest hurdle, is developer criticism that Apple is asking for too much with its 30 percent share of all revenue. I think we’ll find, though, that if devs were content to hand over that much of their one-time sales, they’ll probably agree to do it with recurring revenue, too, so long the model catches on with consumers.

The second is that App Store customers are used to one-time payments, an abundance of free apps, and even free feature updates and app enhancements throughout the life of a product. Convincing them that paying repeatedly for a product or service is actually preferable won’t be easy, especially if that product or service is locked to a specific device (or set of devices). Apple will have to foster partnerships with some of the App Store’s most popular developers to convince users to come along for the ride, and developers will have to get creative with what they can offer in exchange for subscription payments to make such commitments irresistibly attractive.

In the end, the barriers blocking the wide adoption of a subscription-based App Store economy are significant, but they aren’t insurmountable. Freemium, a similar concept, is already a huge success in the App Store, and subscription-purchasing models have demonstrated their value in many other areas. All that remains now is for a few brave App Store pioneers to demonstrate that same value exists in App Store subscriptions, too.

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Prepaid Touch Panels Could Be the Secret to iPad's Success in 2011
Apple has reportedly prepaid for around 60 percent of the world’s touch panel capacity, leaving the rest of its competitors scrambling amongst themselves for the remaining 40 percent. Apple is expected to cause component shortages in a number of areas in 2011. It’s nothing new for Apple, and we’re already seeing signs of the strategy’s success.

DigiTimes reports glass capacitive touch panels, like those found on the iPad, are the components whose supplies will be the most limited as a result of Apple having reserved the majority of capacity from suppliers Wintek and TPK. AppleInsider points out that Apple COO Tim Cook told investors in January that his company had committed $3.9 billion to long-term component contracts, and Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty suggested the investment could allow for the purchase of 60 million iPad displays, or 136 million for the iPhone.

Prepaying for a bulk, long-term contract allows Apple to control pricing, causing scarcity in the market, which raises the prices of remaining component stock. Apple’s pre-bought parts then give it a price advantage when it comes to production costs, and one that could grow as the contract progresses. It’s something Apple’s been known to do in the past, specifically with NAND flash memory in 2005.

Apple is uniquely positioned to do this because no other device manufacturer can assume long-term sales success with the same degree of relative certainty. Analysts are predicting a massive year for the iPad in 2011 (43.7 million from iSuppli) , for instance, since it beat all expectations with 14.8 million sold in 2010. With the exception of Samsung, other major tablet-makers have no previous year figures to base expectations upon, and they wouldn’t be anywhere close to within that range even if they could. Besides sales expectations, Apple can also incur more risk because it has a massive chunk of cash on-hand, and alternate lines of business like the iPhone where it could easily use any excess display capacity that might result from an iPad sales shortfall.

Many have asked me why Apple doesn’t just use its significant cash resources to buy suppliers outright, thus guaranteeing itself the cheapest possible component prices and providing even more control over the supply chain. There are a couple of good reasons Apple won’t do that. For one, it already weathers a decent amount of negative press for the working conditions of its suppliers. It’s already a target for humanitarian organizations, and if it were to take over direct control of component factories, it would have to do much more than it currently does to improve conditions environmental standards, which would be costly and time-consuming.

Buying suppliers would also inevitably lead to serious and sustained antitrust scrutiny from the international community. If Apple can buy a company’s capacity without actually buying the company, it makes much more sense to do so. Finally, it could create a vacuum in the component supply industry, leaving a new third-party player to fill the void. Making components scarce is not the same as making them completely unavailable. In the first case, they become more expensive to those without large, pre-paid contracts, leading to higher-priced competitor products. In the second, unmet demand necessitates the creation of a replacement supplier, over which Apple no longer has any control.

Apple’s iPad looks likely to go another year without true competition, this time thanks to clever and far-sighted component hedging rather than just being the only player in the market. Don’t believe me? Just look around at the many recently-announced tablets. The proof is in the pricing.

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Will the Next iPhone Have a 4-inch Screen?
Recent rumors suggest that the next iPhone could have a 4-inch display, something which has long been suspected by my colleague Kevin Tofel. I strongly disagree, and chalk up his fantasies about Apple’s next smartphone to too much time spent among garishly oversized Android devices. We decided to hash out our differences via email in order to gain more perspective on the debate. Here’s the conversation that ensued:

Darrell: A 4-inch iPhone would make plenty of sense if Apple were just about any other phone manufacturers out there. We’ve seen competing Android device-makers ramp up the screen size arms race with predictable regularity. Apple, on the other hand, went for better screen quality rather than an increase in viewing area with the introduction of the Retina Display. The Retina differentiates, while a larger screen just says, “me too!” I think Apple will focus on making screen quality even better (color gamut, viewing angle, brightness/backlighting etc.) and keep any size increases very small (if indeed it changes this at all), to maintain the existing iPhone’s form factor.

Kevin: Yup, Apple went for better screen quality and the key word is “went,” because the 960×640 Retina Display is now eight months old. Since then, the high-end smartphone market has quickly changed: we’ve gone from a few, outlier, large-screened Android devices to 4-inch phones being the accepted minimum for this device class. Every highly-touted phone from last month’s CES, for example, used a larger display — and several offer a new qHD resolution, or 960×540, which to most folks will look nearly as good, if not as good, as an iPhone 4.

You make a good point about maintaining the iPhone’s form factor, but to be honest, the larger Android devices I’ve been reviewing or using aren’t that much bigger than the iPhone. We’re talking about 2 millimeters here or there at most. An edge-to-edge screen and/or dropping the hardware home button opens up larger display possibilities. But that may not matter; it sounds like you don’t see value added by larger screen. Would that be a fair statement?

Darrell: That’s definitely fair. To me, talking about screen size is just another facet of the specs discussion; it’s understandable that device-makers do it, because that’s long been the way we talk about computers, but ultimately it doesn’t mean anything to the average phone-buyer these days. I’d be willing to bet quite a lot of money that the average smartphone owner has no idea exactly what size the device’s screen is, and think about it at most once or twice, and even then only when first weighing their purchase.

Apple knows this, and that’s why its ads and events focus much more on device features and actual usage in real-world scenarios than on an exhaustive list of numbers and specs. A larger screen might add to the next iPhone’s perceived value, but not significantly enough that I think Apple would go out of its way to make big changes in that area with this iteration. Instead, it’ll introduce something amazing the new iPhone can do, while keeping the outside look the same.

Kevin: True, the device screen size is just another spec, and many folks probably don’t know what the exact screen size is of their current phone. And I completely agree that Apple focuses on the actual usage experience for their devices; that’s why I think this is a real possibility.

Larger screen devices — without much larger form factors, I might add — can provide a better user experience for many: Text is larger as is the software keyboard, for example, as is the media experience, especially as smartphones can play back higher-resolution video. Think of it as moving from a 32- to a 40-inch HDTV set, only on a smaller scale.

It’s not really about the screen size, or even about “keeping up with the Androids;” it’s about the improved experience that such a change can bring, and that’s not something you can see from a spec sheet. Think back to your recent experience using Samsung’s Galaxy Tab [I returned the Tab after a week of use because of UI issues, but loved the size - Darrell]: The 7-inch size brought additional portability that the iPad didn’t, which is something no spec sheet can tell you. Moving to a 4-inch display can make a great experience even better, and that extra half-inch of screen won’t even affect the Retina Display marketing term that much: 960×640 on 4-inches is still a very high 288 ppi, which is far higher than that of the iPad.

Darrell: I’ll concede the point about the iPad and Tab, but tablets and phones are very different things, and people have different expectations of each. I think Apple is in the sweet spot with phone size with the iPhone 4 (except maybe for thickness, since thinner pocket presence is always appreciated). Apple didn’t choose to keep the screen size the same on the iPhone 4 as it was on the 3GS because it couldn’t create a larger screen for a similar price; it did it because that’s the size it thinks is best for smartphones.

Apple could make room for the larger screen by removing the button, as you’ve suggested in the past, and still keep the device the same size, but I don’t think they will. Consumers aren’t ready for a buttonless device, at least not with the alternatives currently available.

And while the experience of using the device may be better on a slightly larger screen (though I’ve yet to come across a device screen that looks anywhere near as good, 4-inch or otherwise), I still think Apple won’t introduce the 4-inch screen with the next release, simply because they don’t have to. Keeping the same screen simplifies production, saves costs and encourages healthier margins, the benefits of which far exceed any risk the company might incur by not moving to a larger display, since it’s not something users seem to be clamoring for. Think about how much more Apple has to gain from improving its notification systems, for example, or adding live widgets to the lock screen. Provide either of those and you’ll generate more press, and subsequently, sales than you’d ever get with a slightly larger physical viewing area. Put simply, Apple will invest where it stands the chance of seeing the greatest return, and incurs the fewest additional costs.

I’ll even grant that at 288 ppi, a 4-inch retina display would be higher than the human eye can distinguish (287 ppi, according to retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones), so it would still carry the same benefits as the 3.5-inch screen. Even despite that, I think Apple will stick with a smaller screen for at least one more generation, frankly just because it knows it can.

Kevin: All good points from a business and economics standpoint. If Apple can continue to provide a premium brand experience while reducing costs, it’s likely to do so. But if that’s the case, then what exactly will be the big deal about the next iPhone, i.e.: where can it advance the hardware?

One could argue that the new device will be 4G-capable, so a faster HSPA+/LTE experience could be the “big reason” that folks will want to upgrade to the next iPhone. But that requires something beyond Apple’s control, namely that carriers quickly expand their mobile broadband capabilities. And if nothing else, “control” is one the top ways I’d describe Apple. It’s far more likely to me that the next iPhone has a noticeable upgrade in an area that Apple can control, and a larger screen is certainly one area where it can, especially when Apple is said to have made a massive multi-billion component investment. Flash memory is one possible component hedge, but given how many handsets are using larger displays, if Apple wants in on the 4-inch screen game, it may have to make that bet now.

Which side are you on? Continue the debate in the comments, as I’m sure Kevin and I have only just begun to scratch the surface.

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