Movies Now!

During the iPad launch keynote, when Steve Jobs pulled out the iPad, I noticed he opened up Safari and browsed Fandango, which got me thinking….Does the iPad require a native Movies App to browse the latest movies and buy movie tickets?

At first, I was very skeptical but after giving it some thought, it struck me. Its not just about buying tickets and browsing the latestmovies. Its about how personal and intimate you can make this experience for a user. And with the iPad you can do just that.

I’m sure most of you have tried browsing a content heavy site on an iPhone. If you haven’t, I must tell you that its a nightmare:

• Problem #1 – The screen just too small.
• Problem #2 – Each element on the website is designed with a point & click based input in mind
• Problem #3 – It can be extremely slow at times

For example, see the pic below. It is clearly not optimized for a touch based input. One would clearly have to double tap to zoom in to ensure a tap on the desired element is achieved.

Now, imagine your browsing that website on the iPad. The screen is bigger so that eliminates Problem #1 but Problem #2 still persists (and in some cases Problem #3). Even though HTML 5 is gaining traction, the experience is clearly not as smooth as a native counterpart especially for content heavy sites and from what I’ve seen in the iPad demos and heard from the early reviewers, a native application is way quicker than a WebApp

And then theres the issue of Flash i.e. iPad doesn’t support flash. Many of the Websites including Fandango use Flash to stream their trailers whether in HD or SD. They also use Flash for many of the Ads they have in place.

That said, a recent Wired article talked about Britghcove’s new HTML 5 content delivery platform. To quote, “The apps may not be ready, but Brightcove’s HTML5 video support is being seen as a big deal, and rightly so. Without it, many prominent websites (Wired.com included) that typically use Flash to stream their videos would have been in a bind as far as iPad and other iPhone OS devices go.”

I guess its a matter of time before Websites start supporting both Flash & HTML 5 content delivery. (For a list of iPad ready sites click here).

Its also important to note that Websites such as Fandango, Movietickets.com, Odeon, Cineworld have absoultely no integration into Twitter & Facebook to allow users to interact with their Friends and post ratings etc.

Taking into account all issues discussed above, we have decided to develop a version dedicated for the iPad.

Its called ‘Movies Now! HD’ and we would love to show to you. Its absoutely gorgeous. Check it out as follows:

Featured

New featured screen to shocase the latest most popular movies out in cinemas.

Movie Info

Easy to access Movie Information. Tap a movie and it flips over into a PopUp.

Cinema + Now!

Cinema View with a dedicated Map View and a dedicated Now! PopOver.

We would love to hear your feedback on these designs! We’re still in early stages of development and expect to have this ready by the end of second week of April.

Keep an eye out for more updates on both the iPhone and iPad versions. We’ll have lots more to show you next week!

We’ve been re-thinking our strategy for this app and there are a few points I would like to discuss with you. As you all know Movies Now! itself is a ‘Free’ app on the App Store. Users have an option to purchase a Premium Version of the app that costs $2.99 that gives them access to new features such as Push Notifications. The aim was to expand this list and add other features such as Landscape Poster View and Better Social Integration but clearly we haven’t delivered solely due to roadblocks we’ve faced implementing these new features.

‘Basically, we do not want to ship buggy features just for the sake of getting them out quickly’

Since we haven’t delivered on the feature set, our users felt that the upgrade was too expensive for the features given in return (even though many of you did upgrade in support of the app). We felt the same way and as of yesterday we removed the upgrade from the app.

As we’ve been working on Movies Now! 2 (iPhone), we realized that this is a completely new application built up from what has made Movies Now! so great – its beautiful UI. We’ve re-done almost every single feature in the app from Movie Poster View to the Now! feature. At its core this is a completely new app. I’ve been using the app for a day now and I have to say it will blow you away! Its much faster.

To that extent, we have decided that we will be launching Movies Now! 2 for the iPhone as a completely separate app i.e. this will not be available as an upgrade to current Movies Now! users. This second rendition will include every single feature we have promised you till date – Push Notifications, Landscape Poster View and most importantly a much superior performance to its predecessor.

‘Movies Now! 2 will be priced at $0.99 and will be available around the last week of May’

We will submit one last update to Movies Now! (v1.2.2) that will tackle all the small issues that remain and continue support for it up till one month after the launch date.

Those of you, who purchased the upgrade, I encourage you to contact us at upgrade@kodu.co.uk and we will do everything in our power to give you a refund (See ‘Refund Note’ below).

Refund Note:  I would ask you to follow the steps on this Website - http://bit.ly/b1FIVw but since its almost impossible to get a refund through iTunes we are more than willing to refund the entire $2.99 for the Upgrade Purchase directly to you. Unfortunately, the only way we can do this is through Paypal. For those of you who do not have a Paypal account or feel this is too much of a hassle we will send you a copy of Movies Now! 2 free using the ‘Gift an App’ feature on iTunes.