Splash screens are evil. While branding is important, the proper place for it is in the iconography, optional “About” or “Info” screens, and App Store profiles. The most common interaction pattern with iPhone applications is to launch them frequently, close them quickly, and treat them as part of a set of tools that interact to comprise a single user experience. Splash screens break the perception of seamlessness.

The HIG offers a very useful suggestion for managing launch states, which may be quite slow, depending on the needs of your application. The suggestion is to provide a PNG image file in your application bundle that acts as a visual stand-in for the initial screen of your application. For example, if the main screen for your application is a table full of data, provide an image of a table without data to act as a stand-in. When your data is ready to be displayed, the image will be flushed from the screen, and the user experience will feel more responsive.

In this book, we will explore extensions of this, including a pattern for loading application state lazily

–Toby Boudreaux, iPhone User Experience, page 15; emphasis mine.

I’ve always hated splash screens, from the first time I turned on a computer. They get in the way of what I want to do. I want to write, or draw, or play — but if I launch Word, or Photoshop, or any game, I have to sit through a splash screen before I can get to it.

Branding a splashscreen is putting your name on a purely negative experience. Nobody wants to wait for their computer. Splashscreens, by definition, force you to wait. It’s hard for me to imagine why anyone wants to associate their brand with a computer not doing what customers want.

iPhone 4 Update

Fast App Switching, introduced in iOS 4, makes splash screens a much worse idea. They won’t consistently display, because sometimes the app will really be resuming, not starting for the first time, when the user “launches” it. Forcing a splash-screen to appear on a resume as well means breaking the “multitasking” experience.

MicroISV stands for “Micro Independent Software Vendor”, which in plain english means a tiny software company, usually on the order of one or three people.

Probably the best reason to buy software from such a small shop is passion. People who build and sell their own software directly tend to care very deeply about it. Their program is their baby. Nobody in a microISV is just in it for the paycheck. No matter how cool a large corporation is, at the end of the day everyone has to compromise on their dream to work together on it. But a one man shop never has to compromise or design by committee.

“Micro Independent Software Vendor” doesn’t communicate this agile vision. It sounds like the same kind of turgid enterprise think that drove the world’s largest software company to rename Netbooks, “low-cost small notebook PCs”. (You just can’t make this stuff up!)

Three people are never going to out-Big-Business a Big Business. So it just doesn’t make sense to label what they do with a Big Business Word. (And by word, I mean several words, because that’s how Enterprise Speak works.)

The most popular synonym for microISV I see in the Mac software scene is indy developer. I think it’s a fine term — better than microISV by about a factor of IBM’s income. But there are many other excellent alternatives to “indie”, like boutique, nano, one-man, etc. The exact term isn’t important; and it need not be short. If someone wants to open their own “Hand Cyphered Soft-Wares Emporium“, then more power to them! What’s important is that their taxonomy reflect the culture of commitment that goes into their unique software.

EDITED TO ADD: Small Batch Business is another fantastic name.

Tab Energy is the best tasting diet energy drink I’ve had. Period. To me it had a pomegranate flavor, but I’ve heard it described as “jolly rancher” and “watermelon”.

It’s expensive, even within the it’s-so-over-priced-you-should-just-take-some-pills-and-juice-instead¹ energy drink market. But the real shame, for me, is the fabulous branding. It’s not just gender issues, there’s nothing about the lifestyle the advertising promotes that I can embrace. Judge harshly for yourself,

So I’ve never put a pack of it in my shopping cart. Very rarely I’ve picked up single servings from convince stores — unlike the boxes, the cans don’t have “You go, Girl!” and “Shop till you drop!” printed on the front. I haven’t had a Tab Energy in over a year and a half.

¹Caffeine pills and B-vitiman supplements are an order of magnitude cheaper.