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Furbo.org brings word of the iPhone/iPod Touch Backup Extractor. What is it?

This application converts the iPhone / iPod Touch backups that are created by iTunes into readily usable Mac OS X files. It is designed to run on Mac OS X Leopard only.

Twitterrific creator Craig Hockenberry, among others, claim this tool is invaluable for debugging and decoding.

Freeware, but donations appreciated.

Michael Alvarez is the CEO of Avantar, the company behind iPhone applications like One Tap Movies, Showtimes, Calculator AXL, Yellow Pages, AirYell, and Munch. As part of TiPb’s ongoing interview series and our look at the iPhone App Store, Michael was good enough to discuss Avantar’s views on Apple’s new mobile platform, where it is, and where it’s going.

TiPb: Avantar has a wide range of apps on the market. Most appear to focus on quickly acquiring and succinctly displaying useful information like movie times, business listings, and restaurant options. What made Avantar choose these particular apps for your initial iPhone offerings?

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UPDATE:

The New York Times gets clarification from Opera (via Daring Fireball):

“We stopped the work because of the prohibitive license,” to Mr. von Tetzchner wrote in an e-mail.

Turns out it was an internal project.

ORIGINAL POST:

So we, along with half the interwebs, picked up a paraphrased comment by Opera’s president that pretty much indicated Apple had rejected popular mobile browser Opera Mini from the App Store.

Well, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball did some digging and found out that it just ain’t so:

My understanding, based on information from informed sources who do not wish to be identified because they were not authorized by their employers is that Opera has developed an iPhone version of Opera Mini, they haven’t even submitted it to Apple, let alone had it be rejected.

Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad of Tapbots are the breakout designers and engineers behind Weightbot (iTunes link), one of the most original user experiences released on the iPhone App Store to date. Continuing the iPhone blog’s behind-the-scenes look at iPhone application development, Mark and Paul were kind enough to take time and discuss their ideas on interface and interactivity, and how what more we might expect from Apple’s next generation mobile platform.

TiPb: How was approaching the iPhone interface for this App different than how you would have approached an interface for another platform?

Mark: It was really different coming from a web design background. 320×460 isn’t a lot of space to work with and then you have to factor in the huge difference in input devices. A person’s finger is a lot less accurate than a mouse cursor. At the same time, I wasn’t designing a website so I was freed from a lot of rules and conventions I’ve been following over the past 8 years. So my initial approach was pretty simple. If Weightbot was an actual physical device, how could I make it usable and fun at the same time?

Paul: The thing I found challenging about dealing with the iPhone interface is that users want a silky smooth and yet the iPhone and iPod touch are both very slow compared to any modern Mac. I spent a lot of time juggling things around in order to get a consistent 60 fps for all the various animations within Weightbot. Coming from our current Multi Gigahertz, Multi Gigabyte and Multi Core world where for the most part you don’t have to worry about performance to a platform like the iPhone where every cycle and byte counts is a big change.

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To no one’s surprise, but perhaps to a few’s disppointment, Apple may have denied entry to the iTunes App Store to Opera Mini. Says the New York Times (via Daring Fireball):

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

Opera doesn’t state what the terms of rejection were, be it “duplicative functionality” like PodCaster, they dared touch Steve Jobs’ sacred dock, or whether they were trying to parse JavaScript against the terms of the SDK. Whatever the reason, however, there remains uncertainty for developers and a deafening lack of justification from Apple. (Perhaps even more ironic, given Valley Wag’s assertion that Opera was once considered by Apple to be the iPhone browser!)

For those not familiar with Opera Mini, on the Windows Mobile, Palm, and even Blackberry platforms that have been woefully under-served by the likes of Blazer and Pocket IE, Opera Mini has become one of the first things installed in a desperate attempt to get at least something closer to the actual internet on their devices (though this is changing with the likes of Android, and devices such as the Blackberry Thunder). Opera has also found a niche in embedded systems (e.g. video game platforms).

However, Opera Mini pre-crunching all data on their own servers before shipping it to handsets sets off a “Gibsonian response” in my central security core, so while it wouldn’t appeal to me on the iPhone, I would prefer to reject it myself rather than have Apple do so perfunctorily on my behalf.

What about you? Anyone seriously bummed there won’t be Opera for the iPhone any time soon?

James Thomson is the acclaimed developer behind DragThing for Mac OS X and PCalc RPN Calculator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Following up on his recent blog postings about the challenges involved navigating the still-nascent App Store business model for developers, and TiPb’s own look at whether or not there’s a “long tail” potential for the market, James was gracious enough to sit down (virtually) and share his thoughts with us about the issues facing 3rd party iPhone developers going forward.

TiPb: James, you recently blogged about PCalc in the context of a “postmortem”. What was the reaction like to that article, and did it bring about any changes in your current thinking or how you plan to proceed with PCalc going forward?

James Thomson: Reaction was interesting. Many iPhone developers contacted me privately, and via the blog, to say they had encountered similar problems with sales after the recent changes to the App Store.
Some pointed out the “Availability Trick” to change the App Store release date for your software when you do an update, to make it sort higher up in the listings. I talked about that a bit in a follow-up post here. It’s unclear whether it really is a trick, or just what you are supposed to do, but it does seem to work.

I’ve also tried a few other suggestions, like renaming the app to “PCalc RPN Calculator” to make sure it appears during searches for the word “calculator” which it didn’t before. So far, there has been a relatively small boost to sales, but I’m not sure how much of that is due to my changes, and how much is just down to the overall publicity that the article generated.

I’m working on a small 1.1.1 update at the moment to fix a few things, and I’ll likely add some more layouts and themes. The real question is what will happen to sales then. If they remain flat, with all the other changes, then I’m going to have to try some more traditional marketing beyond the Google AdWords adverts we are already running. To a certain extent, the blog itself /is/ a form of marketing – I don’t think I can really deny that, given it is raising the profile of our software.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump…

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(“Unique” by Hamed Masoumi, licensed under Creative Commons)

On Monday, TiPb Senior Editor Dieter Bohn debuted his new bi-weekly feature, TiPb of the Avalanche, by asking about the iPhone App Store and the “Long Tail” business model.

Looks like he’s not alone. PCalc developer James Thomson (via Daring Fireball) recounted his struggles with Apple’s new policy of listing Apps by original release dates, ignoring update dates, and forcing older Apps to the frozen hinterlands of the last few pages in a list growing well past 5500. Under the old model:

Sales started to slow down over time, but with each of the 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 updates they went back up into the stratosphere as PCalc moved to the front page of the Utilities section again.

And now?

As it stands, the App Store is too crowded to find anything if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for by name.

So while, according to Apple Insider, the App Store may still be climbing faster than iTunes Music did, GigaOm is pishing the posh on the iPhone bump in general.

During Apple’s Q4 conference call, Steve Jobs said that the App Store would reach 200 million downloads today spanning over 5500 Apps in 62 countries. How will Apple’s (continuing?) tweaks on App Store organization help or hinder developers moving forward? And will they, as Dieter is suggesting, have to start putting as much time, money, and effort into marketing as they do coding? Or are there no easy answers?

Yup, Kevin Rose is back, back again, this time with a sneak peak at Qik for the iPhone, the online video broadcasting App that everyone and their Twitter-feed was “going live” with on the Nokia N95 last year.

Not a jailbreak, but a real honest-to-Steveness App Store application, Kevin says it will be available soon. We say… will Apple approve it? And if they do, what will it say having internet broadcast video capability on a device that still lacks support for local video recording?

Who knows? As Dieter points out, Apple’s cagey approval/rejection process is still incomprehensible.

Qik looks to be One Sweet App, however, and we can’t wait for it to “go live.” Can you?

Updated: Now available via the iTunes App Store

Want to get attention for your App? Innovative and drop dead gorgeous UI is one heckuva way to do it. Enter Weightbot from Tapbots. Killer mascot, even more interesting user experience. These are the kinds of high-polish Apps we’ve been waiting for (no pun intended!)

Anyone else pushing the iPhone envelope? Please let us know!

Thanks to Mark for sending this in!

Wow. From NDA zero to 24 cities around the globe in one week flat! I guess it really is cheetah’s that change their spots! Apple’s Developer Connection (via Apple Insider) has all the details, locations, and schedules:

Apple technology evangelists and engineers will soon be traveling the globe bringing iPhone development expertise to a city near you. Learn about the tools and technologies you’ll use to create great iPhone applications, then work with the experts to optimize your code, refine your user interface, and apply the knowledge you gain from the sessions to enhance the capabilities of your iPhone application.

Interested? Going? Which one? Let us know!