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.
This seems to be a new trend going on in Apple’s App Store as of late. A few weeks back TiPb mentioned how Coors was being sued for 12 million dollars by a small time iPhone developer of a small gimmicky app, iBeer. Well yesterday we received a news tip telling us the story of how Zippo has allegedly stole the idea of the small developer regarding their app store application, iLighter. [iTunes link] I say “allegedly” because I want to fair to both parties and we only have one side of the story here. We did contact Zippo and Moderati to get a response to the accusations, we’ll let you know if they have any official comments they can make.
You can read the developers full story at www.zippostolemyapp.com. Be warned, it is a bit lengthy but I can give you a quick overview. An iPhone developer claims to have brought the idea of iLighter to Zippo. Zippo seemed to be interested in working together to get the app to the App Store. Communication was then ended abruptly by Zippo when they sent a letter demanding to remove their name from the app. A few months later, surprise, Zippo had a lighter app available on the App Store - Virtual Zippo Lighter. [iTunes Link]
If this is indeed all true that is a hit below the belt from Zippo. Especially for such a large company, very poor move on their part. On the other hand, there were a few other lighter apps in the App Store before either iLighter or Virtual Zippo Lighter ever appeared. So what is your take on all of this? Sound off in the comments!
iPhone 2.2 style Google Maps Street-view, Transit, Walking Directions, and Location Sharing still not enough Google love for the iPhone? Want just that much more proof of affection? How about this: Google Earth is coming to the iPhone!
According to CNet, Google Earth for the iPhone runs almost desktop-class well over WiFi and taps into CoreLocation Services, just like Maps. The accelerometer can be used to adjust the angle of the view, and multi-touch gestures are likewise supported. Geo-tagged photos, and Wikipedia tags round out a pretty dang impressive offering!
Says Stephen Shankland:
What’s most interesting to me, though, is that the iPhone’s multitouch screen actually made using the application easier than the PC versions. Dragging a fingertip across the screen slides the view appropriately, of course. Two-finger pinch gestures not only zoom in and out, but also, by adding a little twirling rotary motion, steer the view’s orientation in one direction or another.
Google isn’t monetizing the app with ads yet, but doesn’t rule it out at some point. Likewise, they’re not talking about an Android version yet (sorry AC!)
[The Lightning Reviews are over, but from their ashes rise... the Forum Reviews! TiPb has assembled a crack team of App-aficionados, and every week we'll be bringing you a few of their very best reviews right here on the blog. And be sure to check out TiPb's iPhone App Store Forum for even more!]
Kooaba allow you to take a picture of a movie poster, then looks up the info about the movie.
You just push the camera icon on the main screen, snap a picture and it load (takes a long time – 30 secs+), then it opens safari and displays the movie details.
You can also view the history of your searches (if you ended up wasting that much time)
It looks like Dexter will be hacking his way into the App Store and onto your iPhone!
If you have not watched Showtime’s Dexter on Sunday nights you have no idea of what you are missing. And what a time it is right now to be a fan, as Showtime has just extended Dexter for another 2 seasons. (I know forum member Reaktor5 will be pleased with this information.)
According to G4tv.com:
Developed by Icarus Studios, the video game debut of Dexter will stay true to the TV series, putting players into “investigative” style gameplay. In the show, the main man Dexter Morgan is a blood-splatter analyst for the police, although his fascination for blood isn’t professional at all times. In the game, players will analyze crime scenes, uncover evidence and ultimately decide whether to turn in a suspect to the cops or have Dexter do what he does best–yes, just like the TV show.
Keep your eyes open for Dexter coming to the iPhone sometime before the end of the year.
So yesterday Chad put Jaadu and Mocha VNC through a no-holds-barred round of App vs. App for the title of best solution for controlling your PC via the iPhone. Well, the iPhone won’t let those big bully PCs have all the fun!
ReadWriteWeb brings word of Veency, a solution that let’s your iPhone via the PC!
Developed by Jay Freeman, the creator of the Cydia and Cycorder apps, Veency is a free app that allows iPhone owners to remotely control their iPhone from the comfort of your PC or Mac desktop via a VNC client. Some of the neat things you can do with Veency are: Launch applications on your iPhone, Reply to emails, text messages, and more, Rearrange icons, Lock/Unlock your iPhone, Browse through Photos and Contacts
So, anyone itching to get their remote iPhone access on?
Let me just start off by saying, no this will not take the place of a real MMS app. I think that ball is in Apple’s court. But Fliq will come in handy if you have a few friends with iPhones and are connected to the same WiFi network.
What is Fliq? Fliq was created by Mark/Space and is a “social networking application that allows iPhone and iPod touch users to instantly send, or “beam”, photos and contacts to one another”.
Now this is all fine and dandy but one thing I wish this app allowed you to do to is send data via a 3G or EDGE signal. Because lets face it, how often do you share a WiFi signal with a bunch of friends with iPhones? None the less, this app is worth trying out and for the low price of free at the App Store you really have nothing to lose. Give it a go and let us know what you think in the comments!
Big Canvas PhotoShare offers easy uploading and sharing of photos, with comments and all the usual social networking trappings, for your iPhone. How does this fair compared to built in, but social-less services like MobileMe, or 3rd party support for giants like Facebook and Flickr?
[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Review! Last week, it was the To Do/Task App Showdown, with Things squeaking out the victory. But which blog commenter won a copy of the winning To Do/Task App? Alex! Congratulations!
This week, the TiPb iPhone Forums voted on their favorite Remote Desktop/VNC Apps, we took the top two, and now they're going head-to-head. But wait -- there's more! One of the forum voters has already won a copy of the winning App... Congrats avt! Want another chance to win? COMMENT BELOW! and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK Remote Desktop/VNC Showdown is on!]
Like Brian, I use my iPhone for just about everything. So wouldn’t it be nice to use your iPhone to access your computer(s) when you are not at your desk? At work (no pun intended) I rotate with team members to “take” call, meaning, if something needs resolved on a weekend or evening, it is up to me to fix it. My work does not currently supply a broadband card, so it is up to my own devices to have Internet access wherever I go to remote into my PC. The VNC applications Jaadu and Mocha allow me to do just that! For those of you that don’t know what VNC is, it allows you to remotely control another computer. Now, this ability is available on your iPhone (side rant, why doesn’t Apple give us this ability as part of our MobileMe subscriptions? Ah, I digress…)
I can now leave my laptop behind and just use my iPhone to connect to my work laptop at home or my iMac desktop and save the day! Let’s take a look at these two VNC apps!
Any of you looking to add some life to your iPhone’s camera with some new options? It is no secret that the camera lacks any type of features besides point and click. So once again, where Apple let us down, a 3rd party developer comes to our rescue.
Now let me introduce you to Pano. Pano was created by Debacle Software, and enables you to take panoramic photos using the iPhone’s camera app. Here’s how it works:
For Pano, stitching photos together is a three-step process. First, it uses pattern-matching techniques to find out exactly how each pair of adjacent photos overlaps, and then it finds the best way to align them. Second, Pano applies a colour-correction gradient across each pair of photos to correct for the iPhone camera’s autoexposure and white balancing. Finally, all the photos are blended together and the image cropped to a neat rectangle. Voila! All in a matter of seconds.
Pano is now available in the App Store with a price tag of $2.99. It really is a worthy application for what it does. If you use your iPhone for taking photos I definitely recommend checking this one out.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
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