All Articles Tagged Development

A short time ago we mentioned that Standford’s iPhone Application Programming course was being made available as a video podcast via iTunes U. In addition to two lectures a week, the course offers special Friday sessions, one of which recently featured Atebits‘ Loren Brichter (iTunes link), the developer behind popular iPhone (and now Mac) Twitter client, Tweetie (see our review).

Brichter, though he worked for Apple on the first generation iPhone, had no actual app development experience when he set out to make Tweetie, yet the app has become the most successful iPhone — and mobile — paid Twitter client in terms of both revenue and user base, hitting the #6 position in the App Store at one point. How’d that happen?

At the beginning of the lecture, Brichter shares his App Store daily revenue graph (sans actual dollar amounts) for Tweetie, which he says he made simply because he wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing clients. Focusing on a mix of functionality and simplicity, and an Apple-like experience, Brichter credits luck, quality, and marketing for Tweetie’s success. Part of that marketing, after a small initial sales spike due to friends and family, was the semi-facetious introduction of PEE (”popularity enhancers” like a flashlight and fart sounds) that garnered a lot of media attention and quintupled growth for a while.

Other growth occurred when Apple featured Tweetie on their main page, but the biggest growth-booster — also thanks to Apple — was when Tweetie 1.3 was rejected by the App Store due to the term f**kitlist just happening to be a trend on Twitter’s search results that day. Press jumped on it and users bought it up. (Apple reversed their decision later that same day).

The final two growth spikes occurred after Twitter itself began highlighting Tweetie as part of their sidebar factoid promotion, and after the press surrounding the recent introduction of Tweetie for Mac.

Being part of the Application Development course, Brichter also touches on some of the things he did from a programming standpoint to boost Tweetie’s performance.

Looks behind the app development curtain, especially in academic settings with some back-and-forth questions and answers, are rare enough in the iPhone world that anyone interested should definitely consider checking out the whole session.

Apple’s Ad-Hoc iPhone distribution method allows developers to register up to 100 iPhones or iPod touches so they can run their applications on them without having to go through the App Store. This is priceless for beta testing, educational environments, and other non-public environments.

Dragthing’s James Thomson, however, has posted on a problem that just might bite a few developers right in their beta tests:

Reading between the lines, and discussions on the forums, it sounds like every time I deleted or modified an entry, I was getting one closer to the magic figure of 100 device IDs you have entered since the beginning of time. When you hit the limit, regardless of how many total device IDs you have listed in the portal, your ability to further edit the list is removed completely.

In other words, if you change your beta testers — if you change your own device — you might just end up locked out of your own Ad-Hoc distribution.

Check out the full post for more on this problem and what, if nothing, Apple is currently doing to help developers fix and/or work around it.

Meanwhile, let us know if you have any ideas as well…

Maybe this explains, at least in part, the new iPhone 3.0 Beta 5released yesterday? Looks like Apple is super-eager to get developers testing and submitting 3.0 compatible applications.

We’re really eager to see what developers are coming up with to leverage all those great 3.0 features as well. Really, really eager. Ahem.

Full text of Apple’s email to developers:

All apps must be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0

Millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers will move to iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved.

Existing apps in the App Store should already run on iPhone OS 3.0 without modification, but you should test your existing apps with iPhone OS 3.0 to ensure there are no compatibility issues. After iPhone OS 3.0 becomes available to customers, any app that is incompatible with iPhone OS 3.0 may be removed from the App Store.

Begin testing now

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 and iPhone SDK 3.0 beta 5 are now posted to the iPhone Dev Center. Start testing today to ensure your application runs on iPhone OS 3.0. Visit the iPhone Dev Center for additional development information including iPhone SDK Release Notes for iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 and Getting ready for iPhone OS 3.0.

(Thanks DevX for the tip!)

Read Write Web has posted the findings of mobile analytics firm Flurry. They break it down as follows:

• Apps (see charts above) put the iPhone staggeringly ahead in terms of active developers, applications developed, and consumer usage. (note: lack of analytics use by BlackBerry devs likely skews those numbers).
• Smartphones are being used more than ever
• iPhone apps, if they’re marketed effectively, are making strong development houses millions of dollars.
• iPhone apps are becoming “hit-driven” like the music industry.
• Free versions help sell paid apps
• Only 10% of users update their apps (we’re not sure if that’s skewed by other platforms, Apple makes it simple to update).

It’s important to remember that with this type of analytics, results are hyper-dependent on what’s included (and what’s missing) from the data set. If nothing else, however, iPhone developers are getting more attention from, and making greater use of, market analytics at the moment.

That said, anyone surprised by these numbers?

I was just listening to Dieter and Mike’s latest PalmCast, where they were crowing in duet about how sweet it was that the Palm Pre has an app that can book movie tickets and automagically add the movie event information to the Palm Pre calendar.

I know, I know. If they love the Palm Pre so much, why don’t they just marry it? (Dieter is, in fact, looking for a state that may allow it…) But they raise an excellent point — where’s the iPhone version of that functionality? Why can’t we push a button on our movie ticket app, or concert tour app, or tradeshow app, or whatever and have that slice of time booked off for us in our calendar?

While the iPhone SDK allows access to the Contacts database to do all manner of glorious, 3rd party app-powered magic, Apple has thus far not surfaced any APIs to do the same for calendaring. I don’t believe the new 3.0 SDK has announced any improvements in that area either.

What makes calendar so different? MobileMe and ActiveSync push both. Apple’s even giving Calendar some much-appreciated CalDAV and subscription love, with no CardDAV that we’re aware of for contacts.

We’re sure developers would appreciate it. We know users would adore it.

Anyone have any idea why we don’t have this yet?

Ars Technica’s iPhone wonder woman, Erica Sadun, has put together what must be the first expert level how-to: Pushing tweets to your iPhone with Apple Push notifications

Ars shows you how to create a Push-based Twitter update notification system for the iPhone without actually showing you any of the details due to the ongoing NDA. (But don’t worry, we tell you exactly where to find the instructions.)

Nin. Ja.

Now if you need help getting your code on, it just so happens that the Stanford iPhone Application Development course (the one being offered via iTunes U) looks like it has “make your own Twitter client” on the agenda.

Ready? Set? Push Tweet!

iTunes U has posted the first in what promises to be a series of video lectures on iPhone Application Programming [iTunes link] from Stanford University. Led by Evan Doll and Alan Cannistaro, it’s recommended for people with previous C, UNIX, object oriented programming languages, and graphics tookit experience, but will likely prove of value to anyone interested to in coding the next great iPhone app. Ars Technica says:

Videos of all the lectures, lead by Apple engineers, will be posted on iTunes U two days after each class meeting [...] The slides from the lectures will be available to download as well. The school notes that the material will be the same that enrolled students get, but unfortunately, following the lessons via iTunes U won’t make you eligible for college credit.

So, who’s adding it to their feed?

An app that barks at a dog to get it’s attention so it can then snap the dog’s picture? Now that’s some cunning canine camera creativity right there. We imagine, however, a barking dog might get the attention of all sorts of other snap-able subjects.

Bow Cam comes from Appliya, a Tokyo based iPhone developer house. We’re hoping to see more from them, but we’ve also heard that waiting in the increasingly long line for app approval is even more problematic internationally, with some iTunes branch reps simply telling devs to contact the US for support (regardless of language differences.)

Let’s hope the post-holiday season slows down a little, Apple adds both staff and a modicum of transparency, and the process as a whole matures into 2009, b’okay?

Tried Bow Cam on your pooch? (or prowler?) Let us know how it worked for you!

David Perry of Didev Studios wrote in to tell us about Bugz for the iPhone, and was kind enough to send along some interesting insights into the game, developing for the iPhone, and the App Store.

On the origins of Bugz as a PSP game:

Bugz was originally conceived about 2 years ago as a PSP game. It took me around a year of coding, design, graphics and audio work before I made a release into a competition that was being run at the time. Bugz was well received in the competition and received first place. The public seemed to like Bugz and it’s quirky cuteness.

On moving Bugz to the iPhone:

Recently I decided to look at iPhone development and Bugz was an obvious choice as a first project. The initial version of Bugz for the PSP only had 17 levels – this would obviously need expanding for the iPhone version. Whilst contemplating the iPhone port of Bugz, I asked a friend to join me on the project, he accepted and Didev Studios was born.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back before my iPhone was torn from me (sniffle) for the Round Robin, Twitteriffic was (and will be again) my mobile Twitter client of choice. Since TiPb has also been looking into App development and iPhone UI lately, this all added up to make Craig Hockenberry’s post today on furbo.org especially interesting. Hockenberry talks about the importance of making choices in development, about what features to add and what to leave out, and perhaps most importantly to us, in variety of different approaches:

There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own.

If you’re at all interested in a behind-the-curtains peak into what makes a good app great, be sure to read the whole article.

Also, let us know if you’re currently using Twitterrific, if what he mentions was already obvious to you, or if you’re using another Twitter client, what you’re using and why you prefer it?