PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] has 30 promo codes to give away to TiPb readers willing to help them out with a little survey. Here’s the thing: since “free apps no longer have to stay free”, and in-app purchases are now available to everyone, they’re interested in knowing just which in-app purchasable features interest YOU.

Ready? Here’s what you need to do:

• Download the free version of PCalc Lite [iTunes link]
• Try it.
• Rank the following features from the full version that you’d like to see made available as in-app purchases, in order of preference:
  1. More keyboard layouts with additional functions aimed at engineers and programmers.
  2. More themes, digit styles, and key click sounds.
  3. More unit conversions and constants.
  4. A virtual paper tape and display of memory registers.
  5. More advanced settings for controlling things like number of decimal places shown, thousands separators.
  6. Hex / octal / binary mode.
  7. Multi-line display and multiple memory support.
  8. A coupon code to save $9 on PCalc for Mac OS X.
• Suggest one cool new calculating feature they’ve inexplicably forgotten to include so far (real or fantastic).
• Email your feature ranking and new feature suggestion to survey[at]dragthing[dot]com
• Best suggestions received in the next 24 hours will get a promo code for the full version of PCalc in return. (US App Store only — Apple’s rules, not ours.)

Here’s what a sample entry would look like:

Got it? Good. Go get it and get to it!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Give Away: PCalc Wants Your Input — Has 30 Promo Codes to Prove It!

UPDATE: Just so everyone is clear, the developer did this as a parody, Apple didn’t censor anything. B’okay? Read the full 8008135 story on Three Letter Acronym…

PCalc RPN Calculator [$9.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone has just updated to version 1.8, and the update is… rather unique:

Have you, or somebody close to you, ever turned your calculator upside down and accidentally seen a mildly suggestive word? Have you ever been in a maths class, and had to put up with groups of giggling boys performing elaborate calculations that are not part of the lesson?

Yes, it’s one of the main problems affecting the calculator industry today, the so-called “calculator words”. These otherwise harmless devices can be made to display smut at the press of a few buttons. Added to that, the iPhone App Store is very strict about having inappropriate content in apps. Nobody wants their app to get a 17+ rating, or worse, to be rejected entirely.

Which is why we are happy to announce that the latest version of our PCalc scientific calculator for the iPhone contains a new patent-worthy profanity filter.

Simply enter a number such as “5318008″, turn the calculator upside down, and the offending word will be discreetly censored. Many common calculator words have been included as standard, and we plan to increase this over time via software updates.

The new version also comes, you know, calculator features, and a $9 off coupon for the Mac version (which doesn’t seem to change when you turn your Mac upside down… hmmm… feature parity?!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App Update: PCalc RPN for iPhone 1.8… With Censorship?!

James Thomson wrote in to tell us about PCalc 1.7 [$9.99 - iTunes link], and as usual, the prose is almost as good as the app. Almost.

One year ago, as the doors of the iPhone App Store first opened to the public, PCalc was there. One of only four hundred applications available, and a mere handful of calculators. Now, there are more than sixty-five thousand applications in the store, and calculators are second only to Twitter clients in terms of near-pestilential ubiquitousness.

Metaphorgeddon aside, while we mentioned the new version already, after using it for the day, it was obvious it deserved a closer look. Here are the updates again:

• Faster startup!
• Three and four-line display modes, including complete control over what appears on each line.
• Multiple-memory support.
• Optional HP48-style RPN behaviour.
• Much nicer number display with the “Easier To Read” digits option. It’s now actually easier to read!

It is indeed. I’m not a mathmagician like Leanna, but this really is the built-in calculator on Hulk-serum. Check out the screenshots after the break, and if you give PCalc 1.7 a try, let us know what you think!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: PCalc 1.7

Jaadu VNC [$24.99 - iTunes link] adds support for cut, copy, and paste, remote copy support, and full screen view.

AutoStitch [$1.99 - iTunes link] includes cropping and support for higher resolution out for iPhone 3GS

PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] highlights include 3 and 4 line display modes, more memories, option to prevent rotation (Apple needs to add this system wide!), HP48-like mode, copy tape to clipboard, “easier to read” now even easier. to. read. and button easier to press.

QuickOffice [$12.99 on sale - iTunes link] now supports iPhone 3.0 cut, copy, and paste and shake to undo/redo, access email attachments, text wrapping, aligned overflow, and user-friendly indent and align control for docs.

Fring [Free - iTunes link] now offers Push Notification.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App Updates: Jaadu, AutoStitch, PCalc, QuickOffice, Fring

PCalc developer James Thomson is one of our favorites because he not only makes great apps, but he seems to love doing it, and always figures out new, positive, and productive ways to get our attention.

This time around it isn’t just the release of an iPhone 3.0 compatible version of PCalc for iPhone ($9.99 – iTunes link) that includes support for copy and paste (and a couple of new vertical button layouts, one for engineers, one for programmers), it’s how he built one version of the app that supports both iPhone 2.2.1 and iPhone 3.0 at the same time. An iPhone version of Apple’s “universal binary” concept, as it were.

We’re not sure he’s the first to do this — and according to Twitter he isn’t either — but we hope he does write up the process when the 3.0 SDK NDA (non-disclosure agreement) lifts so other developers can do it as well. It’s an elegant solution to say the least.

Now to see if we can not only paste some complex calculations… but understand them!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

PCalc 1.6 Now Live in App Store — As iPhone 3.0 “Universal Binary”?

Ok, not many applications currently in the App Store worthy of our Apps for Less. Although, the ones we did end up finding are not bad deals.

First up we have Terminator Salvation [iTunes Link], if you have not checked out the trailer we post two weeks ago what are you waiting for? This is one of the top games in the App Store and it seems like Gameloft has gotten the hang of programming games for the iPhones hardware. The best thing about this game now is it’s price – it has dropped from $9.99 to $5.99. People complained about the higher price and Gameloft has listened. I feel bad for the early adapters as we always get the short end of the stick in terms of price but that’s to be expected.

Next up we have PCalc [iTunes Link], now on sale for $4.99 An excellent app for anyone who needs a feature-rich calculator that the stock app on the iPhone simply can not match. Features are as follows:

• Switchable button layouts – choose from many different horizontal and vertical layouts to suit your needs.
• Calculator themes – pick your look, all the way from minimalist to striking.
• An RPN mode with one button access to the stack and optional two-line display.
• Hexadecimal, octal and binary modes, complete with a variety of bitwise operators.
• All the extensive unit conversions and constants from the desktop PCalc.
• A simulated paper tape to keep track of your calculations.
• Multiple undo and redo. Just flick the LCD to the right and left to reveal the past and future.
• Stylish, consistent user interface.
• Shake to clear! Two shakes to clear, three shakes to clear all.

If you are a developer and have a great app in the App Store at a great price, we want to hear about it!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apps for Less: Terminator Salvation and PCalc for iPhone

The App Store, even with 25,000 applications, is still a new market and one we’re all, developers, users, and media alike, trying to figure out. Developer James Thomson recently did an experiment to see how Twitkitteh, a fun little app, would compare in terms of sales and earnings, to his acclaimed PCalc in the App Store.

The results? Thomson talks about them in a blog post entitled Where Did it All Go Wrong?

Since Twitkitteh released about a week ago, we have sold exactly a hundred and one copies, at roughly 99c each. That makes it about £50 in terms of income at current exchange rates after Apple’s 30% cut. About 14 quid of that went on the domain name for a year, and about another 11 quid on hosting the domain on our existing server.

That leaves us £25 profit for three week’s work. Oh, and minus the 120 or so engineer-hours spent designing, writing, and promoting it that could have been spent on something else. So, depending on exactly how much you rate iPhone engineers at on an hourly basis, you can calculate exactly how much we lost on the whole project.

The good news is, with his grand Twitkitteh experiment completed (for now?), PCalc and PCalc Lite have received updates:

PCalc [iTunes link] gets a brand new engineering layout, with hyperbolic trig functions, hypotenuse, leg, gamma, delta percent and more. You also get a classic theme taken from PCalc on Mac OS X, and six new key click sounds you can choose from too.

PCalc Lite [iTunes link] gets just two of the click sounds, and some other small improvements. PCalc Lite remains completely free however, and completely awesome. If you want to get a feel for how the full PCalc works on the iPhone, just try it out.

Here’s hoping quality apps like PCalc and others will sell well enough that developers won’t have to spend their limited time working on the next great fart app to makes ends meet.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Experiments: From PCalc to TwitKitteh and Where it All Went Wrong

TiPb has been exploring issues surrounding the App Store, especially how developers can earn a living, the various attempts to market apps in a sporting manner, as well the gaming and foul play going on.

In the bright lights category, developer James Thomson (ha! spelled it right that time!) has taken a decidedly humorous approach with the launch of his updated PCalc 1.2 (iTunes link) calculator app:

I think we got off to a bad start last time with version 1.1. It was my fault entirely. I came out with this big release I’d spent months on, sent out my press releases, and not a soul ran a story with the exception of that nice Mr Gruber fellow [Although TiPb did run an interview -- thanks again, James!]. Sales were quite poor and we both said some things we regretted in the morning.

But I understand, don’t worry. You’re tired of the deluge of iPhone press releases, and everything you see just starts to look the same after a while. I didn’t do anything to make it an interesting read and, let’s face it, I’m kind of fighting a losing battle with a calculator which – I’ll be the first to admit – is next to the flashlights and to-do list apps in terms of reaching saturation point on the store.

Not quite. I rock PCalc on my iPhone, with narry a flashlight in sight!

While PCalc chose humor, some others have gone decidedly darker…

Another recent TiPb interviewee, Yellow Pages (iTunes link), has a negative review plastered to the top of their app from someone (iTunes link) who also negatively reviewed a White Pages app, recommending instead the competition (which is “part of the new AT&T“). Strangely, over on phonescoop.com, that userid turns up stating an association with AT&T. D’oh! I think most of us would prefer real users giving us real recommendations, with developers sticking to promoting their own products and not wasting time worrying about the competition. B’okay?

Last up, via Daring Fireball, comes a great post from Andy Finnell of Order N on “How to Price Your iPhone App Out of Existence“. The whole article is definitely worth a read, but the conclusion is killer:

There will be an iPhone app bust. The current prices simply aren’t sustainable. Either developers will crash out of the market when they discover they can’t make a living off their current prices, or the gold rush developers will lose interest and leave when they realize they can’t make a quick buck off the store. The developers left standing will be the ones who set reasonable prices for their applications.

I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. I currently have an iPhone app in development, and when it comes out, I will price it $9.99 or higher. I’ll let you know how it goes for me.

Dieter has spoken at length about the Long Tail of App Store business, but could the race to bottom really be putting things in short order? I’d gladly pay $10 or $20 for desktop quality apps or PSP/DS quality games, especially if it feeds developers’ families and ensures we, you know, actually get those kinds of apps. What about you?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

State of the Apps: PCalc Hits 1.2, Dirty Tactics, and a Warning to Developers: Charge More for Apps!

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…

TiPb has been looking at the App Store and whether or not there is a “long tail” for developer income. Do you think there is currently a long-term business model for developers of niche-apps?

I think it’s a much harder market than it was back in July. It’s well publicised that the store is pretty crowded now, and it’s getting increasingly harder to find things.

I think that when the App Store launched, the initial sales numbers were so high, that many developers – myself included – ended up with cartoon dollar signs for eyes, multiplying the first few months of sales figures out to a whole year. Now that there are many thousands more applications on the store, I don’t think we’re ever going to get back to those early days.

I think it’s certainly possible to have a big “hit” application that breaks the top 50 and stays there for a while, generating significant income, but I don’t think the store is geared towards more substantial applications that will be updated over a long time. Our sales are still non-zero however, so perhaps the level of the tail is just lower than expected.

Also, to be honest, this isn’t happening in a vacuum – the state of the global economy isn’t really helping matters. A lot of the software on the store isn’t essential – PCalc excluded of course – so people might think twice before purchasing if they are worried about their savings. How much of that is a factor, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it helps sales.

Since Apple and the App Store is the only way for developers to make their Apps available, does this shift some of the promotional responsibility to Apple? I.e., does Apple have some duty to promote Apps and provide as much visibility as possible, or do iPhone developers, like traditional devs, have to take on the marketing aspect for themselves?

I think Apple does bear some responsibility, at least in so far as making the store as easy to use as possible and helping customers find what they want. And more importantly, highlighting the best examples the store has to offer. If thousands of people are buying something, but it has a lot of one star reviews, why should that be more “popular” in the listings than something that has all five star reviews, but only a handful of people have found it?

I’d like it if a new iPhone user was looking for a more advanced calculator, they could quickly see that PCalc has 70-odd five star reviews and a very loyal group of customers. How you would represent that on the phone, I don’t know. But Apple has lots of very talented user interface designers who could come up with something

Of course developers need to do some marketing themselves. But Apple gets 30% of the sales, so I don’t think they are completely off the hook.

PCalc is a $9.99 App, which many have said seems to be the “sweet spot” for paid apps at the moment. However, we see some vendors switching from paid to free and back, or running short-term “sales” to either benefit from volume pricing or drive up their popularity before switching back. Is this a reality in the current App Store model, and is it something developers now all have to consider, both for their Apps and competing apps?

That’s a really good question, I don’t honestly know. Of course, you’ll always get people who say that if your software was just that little bit cheaper, they’d buy it on the spot. How accurate that is, I’m not sure. If PCalc was $4.99, would I sell more than twice as many copies? If it was 99c, would I sell more than ten times?

It’s a little tempting to just try it, and get some empirical data, but if you reduce the price and find that it doesn’t actually help sales that much long term, then you’re just losing out. And if the market tends towards lower and lower pricing, then I think the quality of software on the store will suffer.

I priced PCalc at what I thought was a fair price for what I’ve made, I can’t really do much more than that. As it was there on day one, we didn’t know what the prices of our competitors were going to be, so we tried not to worry about it too much. As it is, there are calculators on the store from free up to twice the price.

I do think it’s equally hard for customers to know whether something that’s priced at $9.99 is ten times better than something that’s 99c…

What steps could Apple take, short term or long term, to help developers gain greater visibility in the App Store?

Short term, I’d add more categories, perhaps add another level below each of the main categories. Put all the calculators in one place so you only need to look at 20 things in a given section, rather than 2000. Perhaps some filtering options, so you don’t see apps with lots of very low ratings. Even just a sorting option to sort by rating would help.

Long term, I think there needs to be a way of presenting what the “best” apps are on the store rather than just those that sell the most copies. I want to see apps ranked by quality, perhaps some combination of sales and rating, maybe with an editorial component. I don’t think Apple has the time to do that right now, given that an app still takes a week or so to show up on the store after submission, but I hope they are thinking about it.

Some way to support limited trial versions in the store would also be very useful for customers. The Xbox Live Arcade store on the Xbox 360 has the right model for this – everything on it is a demo version that can be converted to a full version within the app itself.

The iTunes model for music doesn’t work as well for selling software.

Last question: does “backspace” belong on a virtualized Calculator? (That’s a cheap shot at Apple channeling my counterpart at Crackberry.com… )

Wow, I never even noticed that the Apple calculator doesn’t have one. Yes, it certainly does

James, thanks for your time and generosity in sharing your insights with us and our readers!

Dragthings.com is James Thomson’s website and blog, and his highly-regarded calculator application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, PCalc is available from the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Interview: PCalc Developer James Thomson Talks iPhone App Store and “Postmortems”

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?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

“Long Tail” Redux: App Store Boom a Bust for Store Apps?