Back with more soon! Enjoy!
All Articles Tagged developers
No sooner did Apple flip the switch on Pull My Finger but 14 fart-themed apps have hit the App Store and according to Macrumors, leader of the app pack, iFart Mobile, generated $9198 in one day. I need to quit this blog and go make iDoody, or something (don’t tell Dieter!).
Daring Fireball weighs in on the use of private API’s, disagreeing not only with the practice of using them, but with the people who use and tell others hot to use them. A risky practice to be certain, and one that does endanger the user experience, but I like to think (or hope) developers are adults who will make their own informed decisions and take personal responsibility for those decisions, not try to lay blame on code samples or books.
Lastly, we have a rant sent in from PHARTGAMES developer Perry Hart who’s more than a littler frustrated with the continued delays and absolute opacity of Apple’s approval process:
I submitted ZombieMangle over a week ago now, Which was what i though would be a perfect time to release just before christmas. However, A few days after submission apple sends me an email stating that they require “Unexpected Additional Time For Review” with no reason whatsoever for the delay. So I do a search for any other developers who have received this email, and it appears there’s ALOT of them. What this email basically means is that your application has joined a queue which never gets looked at and your app wont be approved, or rejected depending on apples discression for months. One developer has been on the queue for three months, and received absolutely no information about what was wrong.
Emails to support were ignored, phone calls to support were outsourced and scripted, and complaints in the official forums have gotten boiler plate from the mods. Hart’s conclusion:
I think it’s time that all developers and potential developers know that they are working with amateurs.
Did Apple underestimate just how popular the App Store would be? Were they unprepared? And is their newness to the market — the newness OF the market — overwhelming them a degree such that they simply cannot cope? Or is this just Apple being Apple again, saying nothing and leaving people to increasingly frustrated assumptions?
Toby Vincent of SmudgeApps wrote in to let us know that along with general App Store distribution and the 100-device Ad Hoc method universities and beta testers have been using, Apple has just opened the door to a new system:
Apple has finally started allowing us to issue free promotional copies of their iPhone applications. Devs can issue 50 promotional codes for their application. The codes allow the recipient to download a full copy of the application for free. Codes can only be presently used in the U.S. iTunes Stores by using the “Redeem” link in the App Store.
This would allow developers to, among other things, get their apps more easily into the hands of reviewers, or give them away as part of a promotional/marketing initiative.
Vincent was kind enough to send along a promo code for their flagship App, Jam! Unfortunately, as a — I guess undeserving? — Canadian, I was barred from downloading it. Ah well, my loss will be the gain of one of our US based writers for now…
So, while this still keeps apps for the most part still locked into the App Store, does it give developers a little more wiggle room in their iTunes straight jackets? What else does Apple need to do to really help expose the now 10,000 strong catalog to end users?
First up, with the previous rejection of Gmail client MailWrangler, Engadget says another app which also dares to “duplicate features” found in a Dock App (Apple’s own MobileMail) has actually been accepted into the App Store. Did BdEmailer slip through the cracks? Or is this a sign of inconsistency on Apple’s part? Hot on the heels of the controversy surrounding Google’s Advance Voice Search using non-public API’s, developer confidence in the approval process might drop even further…
…Though Ars’ own Erica Sadun reveals the story of one developer who, after initially having their App rejected by Apple, tried and tried again, and without making a single change to the app, had it approved the second time around. Embarrassing for Apple, if the policies really are that inconsistent.
Speaking of embarrassing, Wired reveals that one developer actually got Amazon’s mechanical turk involved in paying for reviews. Users who get $4 — $2 to “buy” the app, and $2 in bonus for leaving a 5-star review.
Lastly, Erica Sadun is back to remind us that, with the release of iPhone OS 2.2, the NDA is now lifted regarding that firmware, and the public dumping can begin! Any guesses as to what goodies will be found?
This week: we can’t stop talking about the App Store and what it means for developers. We recorded before 2.2 came out, but expect it to be the topic du jour next week for iPhone Live!
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.
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…
(“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?
No, it’s not Deja Vu. No one has reset the Matrix (we think…) It’s just another Apple follow-along. To paraphrase Bertrand Serlet: Waterloo, start your photocopiers!
Not content with merely iCloning the iPhone look with the Bold or touchscreen with the Storm, during the Blackberry Developer Conference today, RIM basically repeated Apple’s iPhone SDK Roadmap Event announcements from back in March, note for note.
App Store? Check. Push Notification Service? Gotcha. Integrated Development Environment? Why not! iFund? App-solutely!
Scott Forstall, was that just the sound of you flinging your iPhone 4G through the screen of your 30″ DisplayPort Cinema Display? I think it was.
Check out the live blog now at Crackberry.com, and if you miss it, they’re sure to have all the news and roundups shortly thereafter.
(“Unique” by Hamed Masoumi, licensed under Creative Commons)
[Introducing TiPb of the Iceberg, our new, bi-weekly column from TiPb Senior Editor, and all-around Smartphone Expert, Dieter Bohn.]
The recent news that development house Tap Tap Tap is breaking up has me thinking about the App Store and developers again. Partially it’s because Tap Tap Tap has previously been mentioned here at TiPb as an example of developers raking in the cash and as an example of developers being open about how much they’re making and what they think of the industry. The break-up is interesting for a few reasons in this context.
After the break, some ruminations and thoughts on the State of the Apps from this layman’s point of view. Warning: as you can see from the title, this post includes hackneyed references to the Long Tail
