Mobile – Page 12 – ɔimoɈɒ

iPhone developers: demand outstrips supply

Raven Zachary on the Inside iPhone O’Reilly Blog writes: I love talking with entrepreneurs and people passionate about their ideas. It’s one of the things I look forward to most in my week. Unfortunately, we are at a phase in the growth of the iPhone ecosystem where there is a significant gap between individuals with … Continue reading “iPhone developers: demand outstrips supply”

Raven Zachary on the Inside iPhone O’Reilly Blog writes:

I love talking with entrepreneurs and people passionate about their ideas. It’s one of the things I look forward to most in my week. Unfortunately, we are at a phase in the growth of the iPhone ecosystem where there is a significant gap between individuals with the ideas and those who are actually capable of turning the ideas into iPhone applications. This gap is almost entirely financial in nature. The demand for iPhone developers exceeds the supply and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

This is a good thing. We have a situation where it is realised that while ideas do have merit, they are worthless without execution and unless you have the ability to execute it, or the money to have that execution funded, then your idea has only merit going for it.

This is why I think xCake, though not fully formed, has some amazing potential as a way to increase the iPhone development skills in the province. The problem being that I don’t know anyone locally who has the expertise and the time to do justice to it. Stuart Gibson and I are meeting weekly and setting homeworks to improve our iPhone/Cocoa development knowledge but it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.

How long does it take to become a Mac/iPhone developer? I’ve seen a lot of iPhone developers out there who have ten years of developing on the Mac and some with more (based on being developers for Mac OS 9 and/or OpenSTEP). It takes time.

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 … Continue reading “XCake.org is now back up.”

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.

EyeCandy reactions from the general public

(These people are queuing for the Apple Store in Belfast which opened 20th September) Related posts: Translink Annual Report – #freepublictransport Talking about public transport on the Twitters…. Public Education was a challenge in the 19th Century. Public Transport is our challenge. EyeCandy “Masked Marshall” on the App Store.

(These people are queuing for the Apple Store in Belfast which opened 20th September)

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 … 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.

Vivendi Games Mobile out the door?

PocketGamer writes: It’s an open secret that Vivendi Games Mobile isn’t long for this world, at least in its current form. Newly-merged parent company Activision Blizzard recently described it as a “non-strategic business unit” after all. … With Activision Blizzard now the world’s largest games publisher, it’s hardly a resounding vote of confidence in mobile … Continue reading “Vivendi Games Mobile out the door?”

PocketGamer writes:

It’s an open secret that Vivendi Games Mobile isn’t long for this world, at least in its current form. Newly-merged parent company Activision Blizzard recently described it as a “non-strategic business unit” after all.
…
With Activision Blizzard now the world’s largest games publisher, it’s hardly a resounding vote of confidence in mobile that it sees no need to have an in-house mobile division. Vivendi Games Mobile has recently seen big success with its Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D game for iPhone.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D was really successful but you have to ask what is success for a mobile game?

Desktop games these days are built with a huge budget and command huge profits. A mobile game would, in theory, be built with a smaller budget and due to the lower prices command much lower profits.

Is the mobile division unprofitable or just not profitable enough?

Dreigit, from Craic Design

Bit of a shout-out to John Kennedy of Craic Design, a software company producing games for the iPhone which so far has a single game on the App Store, Dreigit and an opportunity to highlight some of the work being done by local software developers. It’s an asteroids clone with updated graphics and some neat … Continue reading “Dreigit, from Craic Design”

It’s an asteroids clone with updated graphics and some neat features of John’s own making. As well as being one of the guys who pushed to get XCake on the map, John is on record on the Belfast Open Coffee Club mailing list for:

Once you have the knowledge and some experience, you will be surprised
what you can do. I (apparently) have started a successful company
using my laptop and my spare time on the Dublin – Belfast railway.

Available from the App Store.

Murderdrome BANNED by Apple

From the InfuriousComics web site: By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in â€˜appleâ€™s reasonableâ€™ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can … Continue reading “Murderdrome BANNED by Apple”

From the InfuriousComics web site:

By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in â€˜appleâ€™s reasonableâ€™ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R rated films available to download on iTunes.

As a result, PJ has put all of the frames of MURDERDROME on the Infurious web site so people can get a chance to read it. Now, hark back to the post I made a few days ago of films without ratings on the iTunes Movie Store.

It’s also been covered on the “Lying in the Gutters” blog by Rich Johnston (the most popular and longest running comics column on the internet):

A remarkable plan.

Slightly scuppered by Apple telling the creators that “Murderdrome cannot be posted to the App Store because it contains content that does not comply with Community Standards” and “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Please give your opinion on the InfuriousComics web site.

I think it’s a shame that it has to come to this but it’s notable that there is no content guideline for applications on the App Store. For “Games” there is a guideline for suitability that is used by some and not all and, as we have seen, Apple is inconsistent in the use of the ratings system for their film content. How many books on there might be said to have explicit content – would you consider Candide (with it’s religious, political and intellectual views), or Dracula (with it’s Victorian examination of sexuality) or Tales of Terror and Mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle (It’s horror!) – don’t you think these are as effective as the visualisations possible through comic art?

Might be useful to note that AMERICAN PSYCHO is available WITH A PREVIEW, without a rating. Is it that writing (or the spoken word of writing) is less effective? Less able to rile the emotions?

Comics.

Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone. There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader … Continue reading “Comics.”

There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.

The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn’t have time to play with.

Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you’ll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil’s Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.

See the Youtube video for more

Paul has some entertaining ideas on how this is going to work into a business model on the iPhone and iPod touch but you’ll definitely find some information on that on Paul’s blog, “Notes from the Drawing Board“.

Does anyone care about Android?

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“: A few things. Michael Arrington is funny. There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) … Continue reading “Does anyone care about Android?”

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“:

A few things.

Michael Arrington is funny.
There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) on mobile (using his $700M on games quote) but this doesn’t represent the mobile web to me. I’ve got to agree with Omar Hamoui that the mobile web really represents what can be done on the internet as a whole (and not just used to download applications).
People obviously feel very passionate about the subject to the point where they may ignore protocol if they feel their voice isn’t being heard.

A more sober view on iPhone application development

Steven Frank of Panic software writes about the iTunes App Store. I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application … Continue reading “A more sober view on iPhone application development”

Steven Frank of Panic software writes about the iTunes App Store.

I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies. And we don’t even have anything for sale on there yet.

I can’t disagree with anything Steven says.

Panic are one of the companies out there producing insanely great software and being remarkably transparent about the ins and outs of being in Apple’s ecosystem.

Go and read Steven’s post again. No, really. Don’t just read it, digest it.

Now read this from iPhone app developers, TapTapTap.

Weâ€™ve finally received our financial reports for the month. At this time, weâ€™re still missing some territories, such as Canada, but overall the US overwhelmingly makes up the bulk of the sales (>90%) so the final-final numbers wonâ€™t vary by much.
…
The sales are reported for the period of June 29th to August 2nd. But because the App Store opened July 10th, the period is actually 24 days. So over the course of those days we took in an average of around $2,200 per day.
…
We went from selling around 450/day when we were ranked around 50 to around 250/day when falling below. And we dropped like a rockâ€¦ in just two days we fell to around the 75th rank.

TapTapTap made $52,815 in the month of July and though they admit the numbers are dropping fast in August, it’s still not a bad thing at all and makes you think what might be achievable. Their premier application hovered around #50 on the App Store so imagine the numbers for applications which score much higher on the list.

On one hand you have the tenets by which Steven Frank designs software and on the other hand you have the potential to spend six months building an application and then making $52 000 in a month. It’s no wonder that some people see iPhone as a quick way to make a name, earn some money and set themselves up as an independent software vendor. Working as a code-slave for some mindless $BIG_COMPANY? Hack for a while and maybe make enough dough to enable you to spend a few more months hacking away. Sounds like fun to me.

I think that now the furor has died down, it represents a very personal decision on whether you want to develop for iPhone. There are obviously advantages but there are also disadvantages. The winner of course is Apple. They’re selling shedloads of everything (including the alleged 200 000 iPhones to HSBC).