Apple

Apple Inc. (commonly known as Apple) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services.

Uber Driver Tip, A illegal/unlawful/unthoughtful user interaction

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apps, Art & Design, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

One fine day I was returning from one destination to home through a cab booked over Uber Cabs. While travelling I was snacking and drinking water, and my hand was wet. Once I arrived I made a trip payment through an online card or Amazon Pay.

About to get out of the car I was scrolling on my iPhone through my wet fingers to rate that trip.

In the next second, I received an in-app notification that you have been charged INR 100 for tipping the driver for a safe ride. In disbelief, I was thinking how that happened as I was not planning to tip the driver.

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Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple watchOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

First Story that I want to share today is from past experience

The year was 2009 I was working as an Animator and E-Learning Courseware Creator and Designer. And I was planning to switch the design domain to HCI/UX i.e. Human-Computer Interaction/User Experience Design.

And software like Apple Shake and Adobe After Effects was a common competitive tool that was used in both domains.

I was using an iMac at that time. Adobe After Effects was bundled in Creative Suite at that time, costing around INR 45,000/- in India. Apple Shake was way cheaper as it was a standalone offering from Apple.

It was the day of 30th July 2009 that I was going to start to learn the Apple Shake as Apple offered all tutorials on their website for free. And it was the same day that Apple discontinued Apple Shake. When I woke up early in the morning to start to learn I saw the news on their portal. I was devastated by the news. But I was relieved as I saved my time as if I started learning it two months ago and then they discontinued it then it was the waste of time and energy. As the software skill that you acquired doesn’t exist in the world or there is no demand for your skill in your industry is a total waste of time.

There is another story that I can share with you today.

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Recover accidentally deleted Apple Address Book Contacts, Calendars and Safari Bookmarks from Apple iCloud

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iCloud, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple watchOS, Tutorials Leave a comment

Apple’s iCloud is for iPhone, iPad and Mac cloud data syncing platforms activated by default for every Apple ID on any Apple device. Apple iCloud was introduced by Apple after the failure of MobileMe cloud offerings for Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac.

In day-to-day life, it may happen that you may accidentally delete or lose your Apple Address Book contacts or Safari Bookmarks or Calender data. But there is a way to restore in the case of loss. You can go to iCloud.com to restore your missing data from an earlier version.

Once you restore old data with current data, the existing data will get replaced. The restoration process can be undone in case of any glitches.

Restore your contacts, bookmarks or calendars from an earlier version

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Web/Mobile App Monetisation & Revenue Generation Strategies

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Animation Film Design, Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Print Design, Reviews, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

All business survives on net profit.

In accounting terms here is how you calculate Net Profit. i.e. (Total Business Revenue) – (Total Business Expenditure) = Net Profit

In the business world, there are two types of industries Service and the Product industry.

So if you are in the service industry you survive on paycheck by paycheck or hourly charges to the client. You have to work every hour of every day to get ends meet.

But if you are a product company you create a product based on your market research and user research. You find consumer problems/requirements/gaps in the market and then you try to solve them by creating your product in that category. So building a product is based on solving problems that your users are having.

In my case, I was a designer by profession. I graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) in Advertising. After my first two jobs, I tried freelancing in the web, UX, print, branding and animation film industries. I was the lone proprietor of my business. I was doing everything talking to clients, executing a project, delivering it and then waiting for the final payment to be released. It was too much for me at that time.

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My Experience Using Apple Watch for 5 Years and Apple’s Gamification Strategies

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple watchOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Hardware, Inspiration, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

In the year 2019, I bought myself an Apple iPhone 11 Pro 256GB and Apple Watch 5.

I use to use an Apple iPhone 5s with 16GB since 2016. But I was dissatisfied with the storage that it allowed me to use. Out of 16GB, 10GB was operating system 2GB was for Apps that were able to fit it 2GB was for Photos that I captured then I have to delete to make space for the next ones and 2GB was for other apps’ data.

It was total dissatisfaction with the Apple iPhone 5s.

In the year 2016, I was having sciatica. So I use to walk for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening or night. I just completed walking 850 kilometres in a month to get rid of sciatica pain. I use to maintain my walking approx kilometre completed and days walk in week/month and a year. But I was out of sync with my blood pressure, heart rate, calories burned etc.

When Apple iPhone 11 Pro and Apple Watch 5 got released impressed with features like ECG, Fitness app, and Health app capabilities. And I choose 256 GB storage for my iPhone as that’s what I require to sustain all photographs, music, videos and other data for a year or two without deleting it.

I used Apple Watch daily for three years for tracking my outdoor walking exercises, ECG, Heart Rate Monitoring, Calory burning, Exercise hours tracking, Standup Hours tracking, receiving notifications, receiving a phone calls on my watch, reading SMS/Messages on my watch itself etc.

I was totally happy.

But one day I broke my Apple Watch’s Crown or Wheel. I was devastated. I contacted Apple Service Centre they said Apple Watch is unrepairable. And you are out of warranty too.

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Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple iTunes, Apple macOS, Apple Music, Apps, Reviews Leave a comment

In old the golden days music used to come on cassettes and then compact disks (CDs).

With the evolution of better faster stable internet with Gigahertz processing power for computers better stable computer applications came along with the invention of gesture-based high-tech mobile devices like the iPhone modern always accessible pocket-friendly apps came along.

With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Even mobile devices got more than 64/128/256/500 GB and 1 TB of internal storage people will never have to come to desktop/laptop computers to back up and free up storage.

Apple first introduced Apple iTunes with a CD Ripping facility to convert already bought music cd collections to mp3 for easy listening on Mac computers and then a range of iPods. iPods don’t have to have internet in the early days then they were internet ready after a few years. The video on iPods and then an iPhone introduction.

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My side of the story of selling Apple iPhone apps on the Apple App Store while doing a day job…!!!

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Personal Experience Leave a comment

I am selling apps on Apple App Store since 2012, Tried free apps with excellent sales but no revenue or no Apple iAd revenue or very little. I kept doing that for two to four years. Then I removed all of my apps from the sale and kept my account inactive with no apps on ready for sale for almost one or two years.

Then Swift language was introduced with support for Unicode while watching Apple’s Keynote presentation, I got the idea of Learning Devanagari Script apps with support for Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Languages.

It got almost 3 months of the year 2016 for me to record 500 audio samples and videos with proper code to get to the level of MVP i.e. Minimum Viable Product.

Next three years I finished recording audio and designing videos and vector illustrations. So it was a total of 700 Audio Recordings with statements and alphabets (Vowels, Consonants and Barakhadi), and 422 animated videos for stroke by stroke guide. Then almost 500 vector and raster illustrations.

With Covid and Corona Epidemic and forced leave from March to November I finished and upscaled all of my apps with visual and performance quality for my Mudrakshar, Swarakshar and Chitrakshar apps.

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My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Apps, Reviews Leave a comment

After experimenting with various apps I decided to venture into an educational language-earning app in the year around 2013/14. I developed three apps Mudrakshar for tracing Alphabets, Swarakshar for Pronouncing Alphabets and Chitrakshar for Alphabet Charts with Illustrations and audio pronunciation. All three apps were dedicated to Devanagari Script. Mainly Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Language. For Chitrakshar I added the English Language with Latin script.

I am developing my apps for Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. Here is my Apple Developer Profile if you want to check it out.

I think the In-App purchase / StoreKit framework was not introduced back then that’s what I remember. So I used paid app business model to support my app development and time invested.

Maybe because I started sailing my apps with upfront pricing. I was forcing my user to purchase my apps without allowing them to try them before they buy. I was having very less downloads or sales. But over the years I sold almost 1,000 units of apps or more. I also utilised App Store Connects’s App Bundles feature at that time. App Bundles surely helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

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With the release of macOS Big Sur & macOS Monterey, the user cannot format External Hard Disk to ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)’ format as there is no option to do the same.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Company, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials 1 Comment

With the release of the macOS Big Sur Mac Operating System, Apple has removed the option under Disk Utility to allow users to format External Hard Drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format.

Now there is only one option for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but no option with encryption. It only allows users to format Hard Disk with Apple File System APFS without encryption, with encryption & with case sensitivity.

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