All Articles in Development

Is Apple’s iTunes App Store broken, a combination of developers racing to the bottom and users getting conditioned — and feeling entitled — to pay less than what an app is worth? Or, are some developers not yet savvy enough in terms of planning and marketing to take advantage of the App Store business model?

Since we covered Ramp Champ this morning, it’s timely to cover both the thoughts of the developer, Gedeon Maheux, and a response from Tumblr and Instapaper developer Marco Arment that are currently surrounding it.

The crux of Maheux’s post, Losing iReligion, is that the App Store is broken, that it’s too hard to gain visibility, and that if you miss the immediate exposure-on-landing of hitting a top list or featured spot, you’re doomed to obscurity.

In order for a developer to continue to produce, they must make money. It’s a pretty simple concept and one that tends to get lost in the excitement to write for the iPhone. It’s difficult for me to justify spending 20-50 hours designing and creating new 99¢ levels for Ramp Champ when I could be spending that time on paid client work instead. I would much rather be coming up with the sequel to Space Swarm than drawing my 200th version of a magnifying glass icon. But I’d also like to have some assurances from Apple about reducing the length of the App Store approval process, having the ability to respond to factually incorrect iTunes reviews, not be limited to 100 beta testers, or that large, prominent developers won’t always get preferential treatment. In short, I’d like to know things will be fixed and I don’t mean merely posting a page of marketing text in iTunes Connect.

Arment, argues that there are The two App Stores. The first is superficial, geared to Top Lists and $0.99 apps that are basically disposable by both users and their developers alike. These make quick money and then disappear. The second are the profound apps, which flourish only from user word-of-mouth and online coverage, and while they don’t get the initial boom, they have a longer tail before it comes to bust. He further argues that it’s when developers mistake one App Store for the others, and miss-target their efforts, that frustration occurs.

The Iconfactory’s apps are able to compete strongly when people choose apps based on research, reviews, or feature comparisons. But that’s not how App Store A’s customers operate. Whether Ramp Champ is a better game than Skee-Ball is irrelevant to them because they’ll never take the time to find out.

Anyone interested in development and why we get the apps we do (and the ones we don’t) should take the time to read both posts (linked above). Then come back and let us know what you think. Are there two App Stores? Which one do you shop at? And why?

Daring Fireball has been linking to some interesting discussions on Adobe’s recent announcement that Flash CS5 will compile “ahead of time” native iPhone binaries that can be submitted, as is, to Apple’s iTunes App Store.

First up, KickingBear reminds everyone to give it a chance before burying it just on concept or principle:

Let’s be frank here – **** the tools. If you’re as deep a fan of the Cocoa tool-chain as I am then you likely came to them as I did – after years of dealing with the drastically inferior. Do I believe Cocoa is still the best tool? Yes, I do. But let’s not pretend that it’s the only tool. Some crazy people may prefer other tools, and we may well think they’re insane for doing so. The proof, however, is in the pudding. And it’s the pudding that our customers buy. I’m in love with my oven and at this point I doubt I’ll ever change it but I have no illusions that fashion won’t pass me by. If Adobe, or anyone else, can produce tools that provide a more compelling application on the iPhone then good for them.

On the flip side, /dev/why takes a look at what’s generated by the current process:

Now, the notion that what this thing emits is indistinguishable from something Xcode emits is laughable. They are very different, and not in a good way. While the apps may get acceptable frame rates on an iPhone 3GS, they don’t on earlier hardware, and they almost certainly uses substantially more power battery than native games.

If you’re interested in the topic, give both articles a read and then let us know what you think.

To go along with iPhone OS 3.1.2 (and the iPod touch equivalent) released earlier today, Apple has sent an email to registered developers informing them that:

Phone SDK 3.1.2 is now available on the iPhone Dev Center. If you have updated your development devices to iPhone OS 3.1.2, you will need to download and install the new iPhone SDK to continue your development.

A version of iPhone SDK 3.1.2 is also available to developers who are running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Please ensure you select the appropriate SDK based on your development environment.

Developers Bjango posted an interesting — and informed — reply today to Newsweek’s sensationalist scoop on the iPhone App Store goldrush, and how the “rushies” might not be finding them much gold any more.

Could it be, the era of the fart-app fortune is… over?

Um, yeah. Anyone (other than the few who first staked their claims) banking — literally — on an everlasting gold rush to make their app fortune, rather than a clear, calculated business plan, is playing the lottery. And we all know the odds of winning those. So what’s the alternative model for the iTunes App Store? The same as it is anywhere, and with anything, else — focused effort and luck, with those who have better focus and more effort finding themselves luckier on average.

Countering Newsweek’s assertion that it takes six months, full time, and costs between $20K and $150K to make an iPhone app, Bjango and indie developers who shared their own stats averaged only a few months, a couple developers, and a mix of full and part time work. Moreover they point out that good ideas are a dime a dozen, and that people passionate about their projects, realistic about their potential, and smart about controlling the bottom line, may just fare better. The best advice, however, is at the end:

There is a mid-point between overnight hit and disastrous failure. However, if money is your primary motivator, then you’ve probably already lost the battle.

Users — the people who buy the apps — don’t care a hoot about some pseudo-devs get-rich-quick crApps. They care about great apps, and developers who make great apps probably want great apps themselves, not lottery tickets. If a great developer gets hugely successful along the way, everyone benefits.

[Thanks Melwan for the tip!]

Apple has now weighed in with regards to AT&T’s announcement today that they would be changing their policy and allowing VoIP (Voice over IP) to operate over their 3G network (something they’d previously asked Apple not to allow). When reached for comment, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told TiPb:

We’re very happy that AT&T is now supporting VoIP applications. We will be amending our developer agreement to get VoIP apps on the App Store and in customers’ hands as soon as possible.

Hopefully this means users on other carriers, liberated by AT&T along with the rest of us, will now also get VoIP over 3G apps. If any international carriers do decide to ban VoIP themselves at this point — yeah, we don’t see that going over well at all.

Following up on a rumor earlier today that AT&T would be announcing a new, friendlier policy towards Skype and Google Voice, Skype President Josh Silverman posted on the official Skype blog, saying “Good move, AT&T”:

All of us at Skype applaud today’s announcement by AT&T (in an FCC filing to be published shortly) that it’ll open up its 3G network to Internet calling applications such as Skype. It’s the right step for AT&T, Apple, millions of mobile Skype users and the Internet itself.

Silverman reveals that 10% of all iPhone and iPod touch devices have downloaded the Skype app (which makes roughly 5 million installs, if our math is right), and while they give AT&T the requisite kudos, Silverman states that it’s the government and industry regulation that should ensure open networks — in line with the FCC’s recent move to establish “net neutrality“.

Of course, AT&T announcements and Skype enthusiasm are one thing, let’s see how long it takes to get Skype 3G into the App Store.

(And, of course, that still leaves Google Voice)

Since Adobe can’t get Flash on the iPhone — yet — they figure the next best thing is to let Flash CS5 and ActionScript 3 compile native iPhone apps that can be submitted to the iTunes App Store and run on iPhones and iPod touches everywhere.

In fact, Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, The Roach Game, and Red Hood — all already on the App Store — we also all already developed using Flash and converted to the iPhone.

Like the earlier announcement from Novell about MonoTouch letting .NET compile iPhone apps, Flash is using the same “ahead of time” compilation instead of “just-in-time” to build the native apps.

Some will say this lowers the barrier of entry for developers to gain access to the App Store. We just hope it doesn’t make it so low they trip over it on their way in.

Again, from our point of view, it’s ultimate not about making things easier for developers, it’s about making things better for end-users. It’s not about us getting more apps, it’s about us getting better ones.

If a bunch of brilliant Flash (or .Net or Java or whatever.runtime) developers suddenly cross over and decide to make brilliant apps for the iPhone, then, yay! However, in our experience the truly brilliant developers are the ones who care so deeply about their apps they edit them down to the last sub-pixel level, and tweak the code until it behaves like it was born to the metal. In other words, those developers likely already picked up Cocoa like it wasn’t no thing.

The other ones, the ones who just want to pump out as many $0.99 CrApps as possible — yeah, we’re worried they’re turning our direction, and we have enough of them already, thanks very much.

Are we overly pessimistic? (Though we’re hardly the only ones). Do you think a lot of great Flash games will suddenly make the jump to the iPhone now? If so, name us your favorites, and let us know!

Ngmoco sent us word of new teasers for Eliminate, the first-person iPhone (and iPod touch) shooter they showed off on Apple’s Keynote stage for iPhone 3.0. Now, I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of the teaser concept. Rather than build interest, I find they just cause me to tune out after a while. Literally, too much of a good thing.

However, Eliminate really is looking to be a good thing, if not a great thing, so I’m posting the one video so far that makes us really, really want them to get this game out. See, to me the fun in Golden Eye and Halo was never the game. It was hunting down and picking off my friends. Now, if they can ever get live streaming audio to work in real time with the game, and I can hear my friends complain that “it’s not fair” their “controller doesn’t work” and “stop killing me the moment I re-spawn” (okay, those are all actually things I say to them. Shhh!) it would be perfect. But given that it will push challenges and let you play over 3G and WiFi, and using ngmoco’s plus+ network, it could just be dang near perfect.

Now I just have to make sure Chad and Jeremy never get my gamer code…

Adobe is working on Flash 10.1, which is a version that’s finally supposed to suck less — battery power and cpu cycles, that is. Meaning, it might just be a contender to finally bring acceptable performance to mobile clients like the iPhone sometime in 2010, even if everyone BUT Apple has signed on at this point.

Back up: since the iPhone debuted with the first mobile web client that actually rendered “just the internet”, some users have clamored for Flash. And why now? They were used to that also being on “just the internet”. However, the iPhone was still a mobile device and Flash is still notorious for bloat, bugs, and otherwise non-Mobile friendly behavior (and no, we won’t mention the increased attack vectors runtimes bring to the table, nor the privacy concerns over Flash-cookies, again, okay?)

Steve Jobs himself famously blamed Adobe for having a desktop version that was too big, and a Lite version that didn’t really work, and said Adobe was missing a middle version that would be “just right”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Moren of Macworld has an interesting post up about this year’s C4 Independent Developers Conference, and how the indie devs seem to have cooled towards iPhone development and turned their attention back to the Mac. Why? Not the technology, of course. They’re up on the handset and almost everyone had at least one. No, it was dissatisfaction with the state of how Apple runs the iTunes App Store, of course.

Lack of control over elements like release times was cited as one issue. Profitability, another:

The problem is that the prices in the App Store, which tend towards the lower end, make it harder to recoup the investment put into developing the program in the first place. Sure, there have been over two billion downloads from the App Store, but remember there’s more than 85,000 apps available. Even if your 99 cent application gets downloaded 10,000 times, after Apple’s 30 percent cut that’s just $7,000 in revenue—not profit, mind you, just revenue—and if you spent the last six months of your life working on that application, you better hope you’re still working a day job if you want to cover living expenses.

Rather than abandoning the platform, however, some devs had suggestions for how Apple could help make things better, including upgrade pricing (to avoid Tweetiegate situations), creating a mechanism for demos, and something we’ve heard before from Craig Hockenberry — having a higher-priced developer account option that comes with a better service level from Apple ($999 platinum account, for example, in addition to the current $99 version).

With the current volume market, Apple may not care since they’ll make their 30% off Apps and CrApps alike. But here’s hoping their pride wins out, and Apple decides they don’t merely want the most successful App Store, but the very best one as well — for users and developers.