neldabebbs: Editor's desk: What's next

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Editor's desk: What's next

Winter is still here, I'm still buried in snow, but March is at last on the horizon. Unlike the last few years, however, I'm not sure exactly what that means, though I have some ideas. Here's what we have to look forward to -- or not, as the case may be -- for Apple, Mobile Nations, the iMore app, and iMore in general this spring.

March un-madness

January has come and gone without a 2011-style Verizon iPhone event, or a 2012-style education event and -- so far -- OS X preview. Now March approaches. For the last 3 years, Apple's held iPad events in March. This year the iPad and iPad mini were both updated not 4 months ago, and the logical next steps -- a thinner and lighter casing for the iPad, and a Retina display for the iPad mini -- both look like they might take a little more time. If the iPad has been even semi-permamently switched to the lucrative holiday quarter for release, what does that mean for Apple's spring event? For a while, Apple was doing iOS SDK events in April, but they were also doing new iPhone debuts at WWDC in June. We have iWatch, iTV, and Apple TV SDK rumors -- we've been over most of them more than once -- but very little when it comes to imminent product release plans. Forget "winter is coming", I want to know what spring is bringing...

Podcast makeover

If you subscribe to our Mobile Nations podcasts -- and you really should -- you may have noticed the big makeover they got yesterday. So far reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, so thanks again to Marc Edwards for the template, and all of you for digging it. Earlier today we started pushing out the new look across our Twitter accounts as well. Nothing like some spring cleaning!

Wallpapers with those designs, for the many of you who've asked, are now available for Retina iPad in 2048x2048 in our iMore Wallpaper Forum. I'll add iPhone optimized versions later this week.

We're also trying to solidify the podcast schedule, so here's where it stands right now:

iMore show: Live Sunday night, posts Monday morning.
[MacBreak Weekly: Live Tuesday afternoon, posts Tuesday evening.] (Not a Mobile Nations show, but you can find me on it every week so we need to schedule around it as well.)
Debug/Iterate: Posts Wednesday mornings (alternate weeks, not recorded live).
Windows Phone Central: Live Wednesday afternoon, posts Thursday morning (every second week).
ZEN & TECH: Live Wednesday night, posts Thursday morning (every second week).
Android Central: Live Thursday night, posts Friday morning.
CrackBerry: We're going to get Kevin and crew on a schedule. They've been warned.
Adhoc: As the name implies, posts whenever we do it (not recorded live).
Mobile Nations: Live whenever we're all around and not traveling, posts later that day.

If we move anything around, I'll be sure to let you know!

iMore app 2.0

We're in late stage beta on iMore app 2.0. We couldn't get everything we wanted into it, but we've gotten a lot. Here's a teaser. We'll be submitting it soon, and then it'll be out as soon as it gets approved. Fingers crossed.

iMore app 2.0 teaser

iMore next

If the above didn't quite get the point across -- Mobile Nations is going through some fairly explosive growth at the moment, and iMore along with it. And running a site like iMore takes an enormous amount of time and energy, including as much if not more behind the scenes. Kevin has Adam helping him out full time on CrackBerry, Phil has Jerry and Alex full time on Android Central, and Chris and Simon, our full-time cross-site editors, help out a ton on both those sites as well (and iMore as well, when time allows).

But we need more. So I'm looking for someone to help out in a similar capacity full time on iMore. I'm not in a rush by any means, and I'll take as much time as I need to to find the right person, but to take iMore to the next level is going to take a lot of work, and more effort than even our current team of amazing part-timers and free-lancers can muster what with their real lives and all.

More on that, and on everything else, in the coming weeks...