Demian's Blog

Another case of iPhone devs reporting the full lifecycle of their AppStore experience.  These guys used a third party to develop their app and earned back their $5k dev costs quite quickly.

An interesting read.

Here’s an interesting way to hack IAP in the AppStore, reported by Kevin from ablepear.com.  Am surprised this is possible.

• Group: iPhone Developers - www.iPhoneintouch.com
• Subject: New comment (14) on “Are “in app” purchases successful?”

I especially like the model that Storm 8 impliments – and it’s a strange one indeed, but works around a “limitation” of the in-game “store-kit” limitation. That is to say that, as Steve Jobs said, “Free games remain free.” So there should be not charge to this. Well Storm 8 has a series of games that have made it into the top 10 several weeks running. The game is free, but there is a certain type of currency that you can purchase “in-game”.

The currency comes in the form of an additional app you download from the App Store, basically the same app with a little hook to say that your account has downloaded one of it’s packages and to add a certain number of “coins” to you main account. Once this has happened you can delete the “second” game or the “first” as they are both the full game.

A very interesting use of the app space and somewhat bypasses the in-game purchasing.

Check out the Mashable story for full details.

Creating the interface for Beats, an iPhone app from Marc Edwards on Vimeo.

I have a lot of customers who are confused about the pros and cons of selecting web versus native development solution for the iPhone.  And now that Google has clearly bet the farm on all mobile development going web with HTML5, it’s good to hear some other opinions on the matter.

This article gives some valuable insight:

1. Offline Mode — The ability to continue to use an application when you are not connected to the Internet.
2. Findability — If you’re not in the App Store, people won’t be able to find your application.
3. Performance — Javascript on mobile is too slow to use for application development.
4. Device Attributes — The need to access things like the camera, gps and the accelerometer.
5. Monetization — The ease with which people can and will buy your application.

Thanks to Dave at Midsummer Books for pointing out the amazing ‘augmented reality’ feature hidden in Yelp.  To activate the feature you have to shake the phone 3 times!  More detail from Lifehacker.

Here are some very handy guidelines for avoiding rejection in the Appstore:

• Must have more than “minimal user functionality”
• Cannot transfer excessive data volumes over cellular network
• Cannot simulate failures or errors
• Cannot use PhoneGap
• Cannot duplicate the functionality of a built-in app
• Cannot collect personal data without permission
• Must notify the user on internet connection failures
• Cannot facilitate a checkout, transaction, or purchase
• Unfiltered internet access must be rated 17+
• Avoid public figures, celebrities, and Apple
• Free/Lite version can’t up-sell (tricky)
• Cannot go anywhere near Apple’s trademarks
• Cannot mention prices in Description or app
• No contests, giveaways, or charity donations

There’s so much talk about in app purchase but just try finding an example of a live app that’s using it.

I found one, but it took me over an hour of Googling. For the benefit of future searches you can try out in app purchase in Tweet Push, an app that costs 99¢ and has “successfully” implemented the feature.

I say successfully, in fact the first purchase I made, 99¢ for 30 days of Twitter push notifications (yes I know I can get this for free with Boxcar) just hung. I waited around 5 minutes and the purchase confirmation just hung, ie, spinning wheel.

Then when I tried to purchase the credit again I was informed I had already purchased it! Only then did the indicated “30 days credit” update to “60 days credit”.