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Just prior to iPhone 3.0 there were rumors that Apple would introduce a Premium App Store which would let high quality apps in the $10 or $20+ range enjoy some breathing room away from the “race to the bottom” pressure of the current cheapy novelty app crowd. Why is this still a good idea? Well, AppCubby has run the numbers and it looks like $5 (down from $10) is the new ceiling for App Store apps:

With the average price in the App Store now at $1.39 for games and $2.58 for all apps, the App Store is killing the value perception of mobile software shoppers. Some would argue that this is just market economics at work, but I think there is a very strong case to be made for Apple being directly responsible for this trend. Whether they did so deliberately or inadvertently is still up for debate, but either way, the future of iPhone platform and of the entire mobile software industry hinges on the direction Apple takes with App Store 2.0. The downward spiral in app prices caused by the Top 100 list and Apple’s relatively hands off approach during the first year of the App Store has created completely unrealistic pricing expectations that may haunt the entire mobile software industry for years to come.

The logic is this: if developers can’t earn a fair living making great iPhone apps, they aren’t going to make great iPhone apps. (Think about it, would you work day and night if you couldn’t feed your family at the end of the week?)

Gizmodo adds in the gaming angle:

There’s no easy solution to this, which means that iPhone users shouldn’t expect much more complicated games than what’s already on there now. All the talk of the iPhone competing with the DS or the PSP in terms of quality may be moot if there’s nobody there to spend the effort developing that level of games.

We here at TiPb have long held that we don’t mind paying higher prices for higher quality apps. Why? Because we want them, we love them, and are happy to support them so we get more and better for years to come. The iPhone itself isn’t cheap and the idea that we can’t afford $10 (or more) for an amazing new game or innovative new app is just ludicrous.

Apple mentioned on their Q3 2009 conference call yesterday that they had room to improve on the App Store. A Premium App Store (or App Store Plus, or whatever name it goes by), perhaps combined with Craig Hockenberry’s idea of a premium developer membership, could be a great place to start.

Eurogamer spoke to Johnny Two Shoes (The Heist, Banana Dash), Normalware (Bebot) and Firemint (Flight Control) about how Sony’s new PSPgo platform may compete with the iPhone, and the answers were interesting:

• After an 80% price cut to PSP dev tool charges, bring the price down to $1500) it’s still much more expensive than Apple’s $99.
• Developers can’t target the existing PSP install base of 50 million, PSPgo has only just been released, and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch have an install base of over 40 million devices.

However, Apple growing the download gaming market and PSP games traditionally being bigger and longer (as opposed to casual iPhone gaming) were seen as positives for Sony.

“In the end,” Maxwell Scott-Slade concludes, “the consumer wins for choice and developers win for a more direct access to their audience.”

[via PS3blog.net]

Macro.org, from the developer behind Tumblr and Instapaper, has a post up highlighting the latest App Store controversy — that all web-embedded apps must be rated 17+ and now don’t get Promo Codes — and comes to this conclusion:

Apple thinks reviews can take 8-30 days and web-capable apps need nudity warnings and the management interface can be buggy as s**t and they don’t need us to be able to reach them and nobody really needs to take any of this very seriously. Because it’s working for them. They’re making a killing taking their 30% commission on the 1.5 billion copies of $0.99 top-25 games that they’ve sold. Who cares if the App Store discourages good developers from putting serious effort into it? Apple doesn’t need to care. And, clearly, they don’t.

The whole post is definitely worth reading, and brings to mind the classic riff — “any incompetence sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from malice”.

Here’s the the thing, though: Apple is not only serving developers. They’re being served with lawsuits. And their hyper-vigilant legal departments are no doubt saying — perhaps rightly — that if someone uses a Twitter client that embeds a WebView and happens to see the f-word or a nipple, they’ll sue Apple.

Ridiculous, sure. A poor solution, of course. But it’s the kind of rolling triage Apple seems to be doing as the App Store grows beyond even their expectations.

Don’t get us wrong, all the problems marco.org mentions are real, frustrating, and need to be fixed yesterday. For Apple to force 17+ Ratings on these apps, and remove Promo Code functionality, is intolerable — and we wonder why Mobile Safari, Mobile Mail, iPod, etc. aren’t forced to pop up the same warning under that logic.

It’s entirely Apple’s fault, setting themselves up as editors to the App Store, and then not implementing the policies or staff necessary to keep up with the content requiring editorial approval.

But we don’t think Apple doesn’t care. They surely do, and will no doubt continue to make slow, steady improvements and address developer and user concerns, while at the same time making other clumsy and what look like bone-headed decisions and mistakes. Lots of them.

Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry has written a long, considered essay on Furbo.org framing the changes Apple has already made to the iTunes App Store, what problems it still presents to developers, users, and Apple itself, and proposes some interesting solutions.

From the differences between selling music and apps, to the long delays and uncertainty surrounding the approval process, lack of viable upgrade options, ill-defined rules, inability to provide demos, inability to respond to iTunes reviews, and the lack of discoverability for apps, Hockenberry leaves few stones unturned — nor does he throw those stones, turned or otherwise, in Apple’s direction.

He comes off as a veteran developer more than a little frustrated not just at what is, but at not yet reaching the potential of what could be. One solution he proposes might be controversial — and we’ve heard it from him before — but is still more than promising:

Charge [developers] $999 for premium service. For professional developers, this cost is not prohibitive and would allow Apple to provide additional services…

He does, rightly, chastise Apple for not communicating effectively with developers — for failing to hold up their end of the platform partnership. However, by pointing out how far the App Store has come in just one year, it leaves us with hope that given Apple’s and developers’ shared passion for the iPhone, it can go further still in year two.

Right Apple?

Whether the idea of push notification for the iPhone Facebook app makes you want to do a happy dance, or just run screaming for the delete button, according to a recently published note, you won’t be getting it in the 98% completed Facebook 3.0 anyway:

Push Notifications, is in development but it won’t make it into 3.0. You can expect it in a 3.1 update later this summer.

So what will Facebook 3.0 bring? The “new” news feed, ability to “like” status, events with rsvp, notes, pages, better photo management and browsing, a new home screen, fixed comment notifications, SMS and call from friends screen, and auto-save so incoming calls don’t kill your unfinished messages.

[via Facebook, thanks @sil3ntrid3r11 for the tip]

Last week the first iPhone (and iPod touch) app to feature nudity was live in the iTunes App Store. Technically, however, it was simply a change in the server behind the app — the developer added nude images.

Subsequently, however, the app became unavailable. The developer first reported that their own servers couldn’t keep up with demand for the newly nudified images, but it turns out Apple laid the hammer down on the “soft-core porn” app:

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

Given that Apple has included new parental controls and App Store restrictions in iPhone 3.0, including a declaration for nude content, and given the eternal argument that nudity is available for age-appropriate viewers via iTunes movies, is there some contradiction still at work? Or is Apple drawing the line artificially close for now while it watches and gauges reaction?

[via CNN]

Zodttd (via Gizmodo) whets our appetites for iPhone 3GS jailbreaks to come:

I now have psx4iphone running very speedy on the 3GS. It’s at the point where Final Fantasy 7 is fullspeed at very least without sound. The build is rough around the edges, as you can’t switch games without restarting the emulator, and only memory card saves are currently working, no save states just yet. Both these issues are being worked on.

For those not into the jailbreak scene, that also whets our appetite for higher-end gaming to come as well…

Well, at least it took longer than push notification or turn-by-turn navigation, right?

As should be no surprise, given how the porn industry is typically among the first to adapt to new technologies, Macenstein reports that the first app to feature nudity has made it into the iTunes App Store.

The app is rated 17+ for frequent/intense sexual content or nudity, and frequent/intense mature/suggestive theme. This means the new Settings > General > Restrictions > feature for parental controls in iPhone 3.0 can be used to globally allow or block the app (or any app based on several age-based levels). MacRumors explains the results:

If an App falls outside of the allowed rating they will simply disappear off your home screen. Once you turn the restrictions off again, the affected apps reappear.

This should mean we don’t see any more app rejections for search-based language or content, but it also leads us to wonder how long it will be before we see major adult entertainment companies come knocking on the App Store door…

We all know Google isn’t a search engine company, they’re a company that makes googzillions of dollars monetizing search (and trying to monetize other things) via their AdSense advertising platform. For iPhones, this was previously constrained to the browser window of Mobile Safari (or Chrome Lite for Android users). Now, however, the Official Google Blog announces:

AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications. For our beta launch, we’ve created a site where developers can learn more about the AdSense for Mobile Applications program, see answers to frequently asked questions and sign up to participate in our beta. Advertisers can also learn about the benefits of advertising in mobile applications.

Advertising lets Google and others supply lots of free services to users. Will it be as successful embedded in apps as it is in the browser? Developers, are you interested in Google AdSense monetizing your apps? Users, would you put up with Google advertising if it meant cheap or free apps?

[Thanks to Icebike for the tip!]

Marco.org (via Daring Fireball) shares as much as he can:

The last session of WWDC ‘09 yesterday was about publishing on the App Store. The content of sessions is under NDA, so I can’t tell you what it was about. So I’ll tell you what wasn’t in it: the audience Q&A session that succeeded nearly every other WWDC session and usually provided invaluable access to Apple employees and useful additional knowledge to attendees. The session itself blew through its lightweight examples quickly, ending 45 minutes early. The majority of the audience was clearly there for the Q&A. As people lined up at the microphones around the room, the presenter abruptly showed a simple slide with only “WWDC” in plain lettering, thanked us for coming, and bolted off the stage. The Apple engineers, usually staying around the stage for one-on-one questions, were gone. The lights came up instantly, and it was the only session that didn’t end in music. The audience was stunned.

So are the rest of us.

Apple?