#The inkist full version
#The inkist update
#The inkist upgrade
#The inkist full
#The inkist tv

An HBO app, with a paid subscription (as Apple already supports in the app store) that gives access to current HBO programming would by itself sell millions of Apple TVs. The fact that we all pay subscriptions for packages of channels, most of which we’ll never watch, is almost insulting. The linear nature of preprogrammed material is contrary to what we’ve come to expect thanks to the magic of the Internet. It’s a common sentiment in my generation.

#The inkist tv

What Apple TV Apps Could MeanThis is entirely speculation, and partially a list wish, but I do think the addition of apps to Apple TV couldâ€”by itselfâ€”be the game changer people have been expecting Apple to eventually produce. On the other side of the coin, in app purchases would allow me to charge for new features, but this sort of nickel-and-dime charging per feature is antithetical to my ideals of simply charging a fair price for a quality product, and what I think a good user experience is.

#The inkist update

I also want to be able to use the update screen to let customers know the new version exists rather than having to search for it on the app store.

#The inkist full

I want to charge $0.99 to existing customers for a major update, rather than having them pay the full $3.99 for the new functionality as if I were to release a separate app. In this (entirely understandable) case, existing customers lose, as they have to pay full price a second time for the app.

However, a number of other developers have gone the route of releasing a new app for their major update. So far, the consumer has won if they’re purchasing from me. Well, that came in 2011 and I didn’t end up charging. When I first released Filterstorm back in 2010, my plan was to charge money for the update that added layers to the app. Yes, mapping could be improved (and it will be) and yes, iOS could support better communication between apps, but there’s something else that is missing that hurts both consumers and developers. There has been a lot of talk and speculation over what Apple will announce tomorrow at the WWDC keynote, but the one thing I’ve been waiting for for the last couple years has barely been mentioned, if at all.

#The inkist full version

If I’ve played it right, hopefully I’ll see the word spread and sales of the full version will go up, too. I think there is a danger that I’ve made the limitations too loose and most people will be happy with Inkist Lite, but as Filterstorm is the vast majority of my income, this is a risk I can afford to take.

#The inkist upgrade

This makes it a powerful enough app that people can get real use from it, and many may want to stick with the lite version, but limited enough that more serious users will all want to upgrade to the full version. Instead I simply set a limit of 3 layers available to the user. I thought about doing the same limitation as Sketchbook Express, but having a flattened image on save would hurt people who start working on an image in Inkist Lite and want to finish it when they upgrade to Inkist. That seems to me to be a good way to do things, give people a good taste of the abilities of the program but with enough limitation that people will want to upgrade. Sketchbook Express is a free version of Sketchbook which flattens the images when they’re saved (there are probably other limitations, but that’s the only one I’m aware of). So I decided to go in a different route, by which I mean “shamelessly copy from Autodesk’s strategy with Sketchbook”. I like going through the app store, though, and demo versions don’t work for that. My first thought was a demo version, something that expired after 30 days you could get from the Inkist website. I did have a big banner feature which helped, but not enough. Of course, it turns out there are fewer mouths to spread the word when people have to pay $9.99 to get the app.

I set the price where I wanted it to stay, and simply released it hoping again that word of mouth would spread it. Inkist’s launch was a very different story. The reason I launched it as a free app wasn’t business savvy (though in hindsight I’m glad I did), it was simply that I had developed Filterstorm without access to an iPad and I didn’t trust it to run properly â€” and at first it didn’t. It was a free app at the time of iPad launch, and thanks to an early staff favorites feature, it hit number 11 on the free apps sales chart.