Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Category: Apple iOS

iOS (originally iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. and distributed exclusively for Apple hardware. It is the operating system that presently powers many of the company’s mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

  • Monetisation Strategy A Business Lesson from Cinema Theatres and Online Ticket Booking Portals.

    Back Story:

    The year was 2001/2/3, and there was a new movie experience on the block. And there was new mall culture introduced in Mumbai for my age individuals.

    Early Success:

    Somehow I got to know about R-Adlabs Playes movies for INR 50.0 only.

    Now every day I find myself watching at least one movie, or sometimes three in a row.

    At that time, classmates would find themselves bumping into each other as theatres went house full.

    First Evil Thought of Money Making:

    After say half a year, cinema hall increased price to INR 250.0, and suddenly all shows were abandoned and empty with no people, or 4 or 5 people per show. Sometimes they have to cancel the shows.

    Then brought down price to INR 150.0, then people started visiting cinema halls again but lost all houseful boards that existed at start with a 50 rupee price tag.

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

    One fine day I was returning from one destination to home through a cab booked over Uber Cabs. While travelling, I snacked and drank 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 had been charged INR 100 for tipping the driver for a safe ride. In disbelief, I thought about how that happened, as I was not planning to tip the driver.

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  • Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

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

    In 2009 I worked 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 standard competitive tool used in both domains.

    I was using an iMac at that time. Adobe After Effects was bundled in Creative Suite, 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 early 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, which was a waste of time and energy. The software skill you acquired doesn’t exist in the world, or there is no demand for your talent 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

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

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

    I have used 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 the operating system, 2GB was for Apps that were able to fit it, 2GB was for Photos that I captured, then I had 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 had sciatica. So I used to walk for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening or night. So I just walked 850 kilometres in a month to eliminate sciatica pain. I used to maintain my diary of walking approx kilometre completed in a day/week/month/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 to track my outdoor walking exercises, ECG, Heart Rate Monitoring, Calory burning, Exercise hours tracking, Standup Hours tracking, receiving notifications, receiving phone calls on my watch, reading SMS/Messages on my watch itself etc.

    I was thrilled.

    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

    In the old golden day, music came on cassettes and 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 emerged.

    With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Moreover, even if 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 didn’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…!!!

    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.

    After experimenting with various apps, I ventured into an educational language-earning app in 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 an upfront paid pricing model, I was forcing my users to purchase them without allowing them to try them before they bought. As a result, I had significantly fewer 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 undoubtedly helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

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  • Apply UIVisualEffectView & UIBlurEffect to any Views in iOS / iPadOS or macOS app.

    Apple describes UIVisualEffectView & UIBlurView in its support document as follows:
    Depending on the desired effect, the effect may affect content layered behind the view or content added to the visual effect view’s contentView. Apply a visual effect view to an existing view and then apply a UIBlurEffect or UIVibrancyEffect object to apply a blur or vibrancy effect to the existing view. After you add the visual effect view to the view hierarchy, add any subviews to the contentView property of the visual effect view. Do not add subviews directly to the visual effect view itself.

    In other words, you don’t have to use Adobe Photoshop to get a blur effect and fake superimpose it on your UIView. Instead, you can programmatically get the same effect for every situation without hassle.

    Note: If you are using UIVisualEffectsView in your app, I would strongly suggest you use a system setting called ‘Reduced Transparency’ to condition code it. If the user doesn’t want transparency, Blur, or Vibrancy effect for all of the apps on his iPhone, iPad, or Mac, he can do it with a single switch in the settings app. Another note view that you are applying effect should preferably be the Popover View Controller. Another thing to remember is to replace the blue color below with the UIColor of your choice with alpha channel transparency.

    For UITableView and UITableViewCell, use the following code in your UITableViewController’s viewWillAppear function:

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  • Get the iOS, iPadOS, and macOS operating system names, versions, and model identifiers programmatically.

    Programmatically get iOS, iPadOS, macOS Catalyst Operating System Name and Version and a model identifier of iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

    Here is a simple way to programmatically get the operating system name and version of your iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

    The code below will also return the value of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac Model identifiers to help you determine whether the device is a MacBook or iMac in a Mac case, an iPhone 11 Pro, or an iPhone 13 Pro.

    Step 01:
    First, import IOKit. It is only required for macOS Catalyst app-specific code.

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