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This is a video of ngmoco’s DropShip game for iPhone. I’m fascinated by the controls – described as ‘touch-anywhere, dual-analog’. The interface for the controls pops up where you place your fingers and the control (direction) of the thrust or weapons fire is directed by a short drag of your finger. It’s simple, it’s effective … Continue reading “Dropship showing what good UI is…”
This is a video of ngmoco’s DropShip game for iPhone.
I’m fascinated by the controls – described as ‘touch-anywhere, dual-analog’. The interface for the controls pops up where you place your fingers and the control (direction) of the thrust or weapons fire is directed by a short drag of your finger. It’s simple, it’s effective and it looks fucking amazing.
Well done, ngmoco.
Fame eh? You can download the Masked Marshall or Beatnik High direct to your iPhone for the excellent price of 59 pence each (that’s $0.99 for my American friends). Fabulous news for a Northern Ireland based innovator and content creator! Related posts: The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation) AppStore Wars starting to heat up… … Continue reading “Masked Marshall on Staff Favourites”
Fame eh?
You can download the Masked Marshall or Beatnik High direct to your iPhone for the excellent price of 59 pence each (that’s $0.99 for my American friends).
Fabulous news for a Northern Ireland based innovator and content creator!
NiMUG (The Northern Ireland Mac User Group) is meeting tonight (Monday 15th December) in Windsor Lawn Tennis Club. Agenda Mixing Music – using Ableton Live (courtesy of Sonic Academy). Sonic Academy were one of the winners of the DETI Broadband Initiative. They provide standardised, accredited and bespoke training for aspiring DJs both face to face … Continue reading “NiMUG Meeting tonight, Monday 15th December”
NiMUG (The Northern Ireland Mac User Group) is meeting tonight (Monday 15th December) in Windsor Lawn Tennis Club.
Agenda
The venue is Windsor Lawn Tennis Club which is located on Windsor Avenue in Belfast. There’s plenty of parking.
We’ll definitely have tables, WiFi and seats. Mac-Sys did buy a Projector we can borrow as well. The meeting will starts at 7 pm and we’ll aim to finish up at 9 pm. The format is still very fast and loose. We still want volunteers to give demos. The turnout will be the best gauge of success!
Damien Mulley, one of the most popular and prolific bloggers on the island of Ireland recently posted a survey about the iPhone for Irish users. Here’s the results. And some select slices… Irish iPhone users are highly loyal super-consumers who are immensely happy with their phone and 72% would recommend it to their friends. The … Continue reading “Damien’s iPhone Survey”
Damien Mulley, one of the most popular and prolific bloggers on the island of Ireland recently posted a survey about the iPhone for Irish users. Here’s the results.
And some select slices…
Irish iPhone users are highly loyal super-consumers who are immensely happy with their phone and 72% would recommend it to their friends. The vast majority have said their next phone will also be an iPhone despite battery life being an issue for 56% of users.
Just after the launch of the iPhone (but before the device became available) many mobile operators (and executives from Palm, RIM, Microsoft) scoffed at the possibility that Apple could waltz in and create something from nothing but it seems they have succeeded.
The iPhone may have its detractors (and it certainly has a list of faults) but it creates customer loyalty probably in excess of that of the Mac. I’ve certainly found myself able to leave the Mac at home and ‘survive’ just on iPhone for an entire day (yes, it leaves a backlog of things that I need to do but that’s not the essential stuff).
The iPhone proves that consumers will pay for music, applications and games on a phone and the amount Irish iPhone users are spending shows that future revenue streams for phone manufacturers and telcos will come in after the initial purchase of a device.
Apple have outdone themselves and, to be honest, shocked the mobile world by producing a success. Apple have more than 10 000 apps on the App Store currently and have reported over 300 million downloads (in less than six months). The size of the Apple App Store market is estimated to be worth $1 billion (which will allow Apple to pocket $300 million).
The ability to impulse-buy applications and music makes the App Store an instant hit. Issues remain on the policies from Apple regarding applications permitted on the store (which seems more and more arbitrary as time goes on) and on the different rules for different people on which APIs are permitted to be used.
I was recently told by InterTradeIreland that there may be a niche in the market for iPhone applications but they were concerns about whether there was a market in the niche. I think this information helps put those concerns to bed.
How many applications downloaded:
Average 26
300+ for some
Minimum 3
While it’s easy to fill up on Free applications, it’s also possible to spend hundreds of dollars easily when you consider how cheap a lot of applications are. With more than 16 million iPhones out there, a good hit will guarantee revenue and there are folk in the UK and Ireland making thousands per month from their App Store sales. Not something they may be able to retire on, but still considerable and also a market that didn’t exist six months ago.
Comment spam is a pain in the butt – to the point that XCake.org ended up with over eight thousand lines of spammer links and crap because I allowed open comments. This overhead caused a huge load on my MySQL server and it affected performance elsewhere so, in the end, it had to go and … Continue reading “XCake.org is now back up.”
Comment spam is a pain in the butt – to the point that XCake.org ended up with over eight thousand lines of spammer links and crap because I allowed open comments. This overhead caused a huge load on my MySQL server and it affected performance elsewhere so, in the end, it had to go and for just under a month, xcake.org has been sitting idle, dead.
Until tonight.
Tonight I trimmed the Comment spam and removed every single comment. I also required a user to be logged in before they can comment. Smart, huh?
So what is XCake?
Well, I’ve covered it before so go have a look.
Continuing in my “rag on Apple” run, we have “Backing up iPhone”: Related posts: Worst Videographer in the World Someone else’s urgency It could be a five legged chair? Actually, this is quite annoying
Continuing in my “rag on Apple” run, we have “Backing up iPhone”:
From MacRumors: “Hello Developer, We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store. It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review … Continue reading “1000 fans? And save yourself 30%”
From MacRumors:
“Hello Developer,
We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.
It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing.
Regards,
Victor Wang
Worldwide Developer Relations
Apple, Inc.”
Victor Wang, the name behind the callous rejection of the excellent MURDERDROME from the App Store, strikes again. Apple don’t have consistent rules for what applications do go onto the store. Seems they’re issuing takedowns based on whether anyone complains.
And “Limited Utility”? They have room for half a dozen tip calculators but not a Fart machine?
Anyway.
Note the recommendation.
Ad-Hoc Distribution allows you to distribute 100 copies of your app to 100 iPhones. Enterprise distribution allows you to distribute to 1000 iPhones. Neither method involves the App Store at all.
Can you see the silver lining here?
At 100 fans (for the $99 certificate), you could sell an extremely useful application on a subscription basis. Say, for instance, NetShare. And I bet you could find 100 people to pay $100 for it. Apple wouldn’t see it and you’d end up with the FULL $10,000 rather than Apple taking 30% and risking it being removed. How about $20 a month? That’s $2000 in income every month and if someone doesn’t pay up, you remove their iPhone ID from your certificate and *boom*.
At 1000 fans, things start getting interesting. Same situation – create an application that is worth $100 and distribute to 1000 fans using Enterprise Distribution ($299 certificate). You’ve now got $100,000. That’s not a bad rate and again Apple doesn’t see it at all and they certainly don’t get their 30%. The irony here is that distribution to 1000 iPhones isn’t likely to be enough for large companies.
So, you want independent application development for the iPhone? Time to lobby Apple. If you can get them to extend the Ad-Hoc distribution to 1000 iPhones and the Enterprise Distribution to 100 000, then you’ve got a real business to build. It requires constant excellence but then that’s what it’s all about.
Time to stop complaining and start talking.
( though O2 has a list of shops which have stock ) They also say: This list will be updated daily. The amount of 8GB and 16GB stock these stores have is still very limited and will therefore sell out quickly. We are expecting considerably more stock from Friday 25th July onwards. Soon after this … Continue reading “iPhone 3G supplies still limited”
( though O2 has a list of shops which have stock )
They also say:
Apple sold over 1 Million iPhones in 3 days. “iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” reads a PR statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.” and the AppStore … Continue reading “In three days…”
Apple sold over 1 Million iPhones in 3 days.
“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” reads a PR statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”
and the AppStore did okay as well:
Over 10 million downloads have been made from the newly-launched iTunes App Store, according to Apple.
Are we still wondering if the iPhone 3G is doing well?
I picked up my iPhone 3G this morning. There’s been mixed reports of how people got on with most people managing to get something. As a rule it seems to be that O2 Retail stores got 30-50 iPhones with about a quarter of them 16 GB models. O2 Franchise stores seemed to get less than … Continue reading “3G iPhone”
I picked up my iPhone 3G this morning. There’s been mixed reports of how people got on with most people managing to get something. As a rule it seems to be that O2 Retail stores got 30-50 iPhones with about a quarter of them 16 GB models. O2 Franchise stores seemed to get less than 10 iPhones. And Carphone Warehouse didn’t get any at all.
I’m not going to bore anyone with unboxing, just relevant detail.
Did you get yours?