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Tech

Move to Apple Music

·3 mins
When Apple Music launched nearly three months ago there was only one option to move libraries and playlists from Spotify or rdio and it was cumbersome and time constrained at best. Now that we’re nearing the end of the three month trial I’ve needed to embark on migrating my wife’s music from Spotify over to Apple Music so we can cancel Spotify. Her Spotify music library is pretty small at about 1,000 songs spread across 5 playlists but manually migrating them was not what I was looking to spend my weekend doing. Last night I checked to see if there were any new solutions to automate this and was pleasantly surprised to find an app simply called Move to Apple Music.

Simple Eliminates All Fees

·1 min
Courtney and I switched to Simple for our primary banking needs almost two years ago. Today’s announcement is another reason we haven’t looked back since. Simple is a bank that treats it’s customers like grown ups (and I’m a fan of these types of companies). They work to build lifelong relationships that enhance their customer’s ability to manage their money in a more responsible way using technology with a human touch. Removing the few (and minimal fees) that they previously had is just another action that proves those intentions.

On App Review Mechanisms

·2 mins
Marco Arment on his approach to requesting app reviews from his customers in apps he’s developed. My strategy to get good App Store reviews is simple: Make an app good enough for some people to love it. By nature, you’ll lose some people along the way, but that’s OK: an app that strives to satisfy as many people as possible will usually only get people to kinda like it, not love it. Accumulate a huge surplus of goodwill from those customers with a combination of step 1, usefulness, delight, and adding more functionality over time. Make it easy to rate the app with a button that’s never annoying or in the way, like the Settings screen. This is one facet of why I love Marco’s apps and will choose to use them over others. The passive aggressive “Do you like our app?” which leads to two different options for providing feedback is one of the things that grates on my nerves1 the most in an app. Oftentimes it causes me to leave the app altogether to avoid having to make the right decision to get back to what I was doing in the first place. That’s a terrible experience for a customer to have and Marco’s advice is solid wisdom to other developers.