Sunday, July 12, 2009
Pastemaster released
Mere weeks after I submitted Pastemaster for approval to Apple, it is now available in the App Store. Pastemaster is a pasteboard (clipboard) manager for end users and developers alike. It provides simple tools to save and load pasteboards, but it also offers advanced functionality to examine its contents. The website will soon be updated to reflect this new release.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Introducing ObjectiveMagic
The wait is over! (I hope there was someone waiting for this.. someone?) I have created a Google Code project and released the first version of ObjectiveMagic. It includes a bunch of classes under a liberal license. And there is more on the way!
So check out http://code.google.com/p/objectivemagic
So check out http://code.google.com/p/objectivemagic
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Montage 3 and new website design
Long time, no see. I have been extremely busy lately, but Montage 3 has been awaiting approval for more than 3 weeks, and now it is finally available! Let's see what's new:
It's quite a big update, but to take it one step further, you can get is for just $0.99 in the next two days. So hurry up!
The website also got redesigned. I hope you like it! There is a new Open Source section as I will be releasing some classes I found useful in more than one application. I still have to clean up the code, but they should be available in a week or two.
- Save and load montages
- Multiple resolutions, landscape support
- In-app e-mail support, no need to upload your image
- Paste images into your montage
- Access thousands of public domain imagery trough the Open Clipart Library
- Insert previous montages into your current composition
- Improved performance, reduced crashes
- Flatten your montage when it starts to slow down (merge layers to conserve memory and avoid crashes)
- Improved color picker, pick your color on a Hue-Saturation-Brightness visual color picker
- Improved built-in help
- Set the style of the box of your text - rectangle, rounded rectangle or outline
- Selected fonts and colors are now saved and persistent across application launches
- Auto-save reliability improved
It's quite a big update, but to take it one step further, you can get is for just $0.99 in the next two days. So hurry up!
The website also got redesigned. I hope you like it! There is a new Open Source section as I will be releasing some classes I found useful in more than one application. I still have to clean up the code, but they should be available in a week or two.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Developer humor
I recently did a class-dump of UIKit library, and found a little message from the developers at Apple:
It's good to know they have a sense of humor.
BTW the next version of Montage is almost ready, it will be released sometime after the release of the 3.0 software update. I am currently fixing bugs, and there is a nasty one which I couldn't figure out: UITableViewController releases its view when a memory warning comes, and when it reloads it, the contents of the table start below the UINavigationBar (which is translucent). I was looking for a way to to disable this behavior when I came across this.
@interface UIViewController (UIViewControllerClassDumpWarning)
- (void)attentionClassDumpUser:(id)fp8 yesItsUsAgain:(id)fp12 althoughSwizzlingAndOverridingPrivateMethodsIsFun:(id)fp16 itWasntMuchFunWhenYourAppStoppedWorking:(id)fp20 pleaseRefrainFromDoingSoInTheFutureOkayThanksBye:(id)fp24;
@end
It's good to know they have a sense of humor.
BTW the next version of Montage is almost ready, it will be released sometime after the release of the 3.0 software update. I am currently fixing bugs, and there is a nasty one which I couldn't figure out: UITableViewController releases its view when a memory warning comes, and when it reloads it, the contents of the table start below the UINavigationBar (which is translucent). I was looking for a way to to disable this behavior when I came across this.
Friday, May 22, 2009
It's been three months already!
I started developing for the iPhone 3 months ago. I think it's time to write something about my experiences.
About the technical part
Many programming languages advertise themselves as simple and easy-to-use. Well, Objective-C is not one of them. Most languages start out as simple, and become increasingly difficult over time. Objective-C is hard to begin with - when I first started writing code in it, it was ugly, unreadable, and totally worthless. But over time it became simpler. It starts to show its beauty after long hours of coding. I never thought I would drop C# as my weapon of choice, but Objective-C has shown me a new world. Maybe it's just me getting better in general (I hope). But I must say that Objective-C impressed me, and if you see learning it as a barrier, you should know: it is absolutely worth the time invested.
About Apple
I'm no fanboy. I tend to look at things objectively. I do not think that Apple products are superior - in fact I do not think superior products exist. My experience is that their support staff is nice and helpful, even responsive - if they respond. Once you got in touch with them, you are in tech support heaven. But sometimes, they do no respond, or they send you some standard reply.
Their way of doing things can also be annoying (and I am not talking about being unable to maximize windows, I have learned to live with that). In the beginning, paperwork was tedious, and most of the time I had to rely on forums and blogs to help me out with some details. iTunes connect is slow as hell (more on that later). Approval policies are strange (so far my only problem was that I mentioned in my application description that blurry images on some devices is an OS bug - they didn't like that). But overall, I think they are better than most companies. And these annoyances are most likely necessary when you have to deal with so many users and developers.
About sales and reviews
Before I get to the numbers, there are some important conclusions to make. First of all: as the number of applications approach 30000, you have to chances: invest in marketing, or update regularly. It is all about visibility. If people can't find your product, they won't buy it. Being in Top100 lists also help. I have seen developers pushing out updates with descriptions like "Minor tweaks". I can't help it, but I think this actually means "I moved a few methods around, so Apple won't notice that this is essentially the same product". I always try to add additional features, or at least fix bugs whenever I release a new version.
I also noticed that some applications have glowing reviews minutes after they are released - I wonder why these comments have perfect wording, sometimes even ridiculous claims that remind me of this T-shirt. What I noticed is that the number of reviews and the number of downloads correlate best when there is a huge problem with your application. And most reviews are very like YouTube comments. I have seen some that are just a bunch of random characters.
Also, people tend to request new features in their reviews - and proceed to give your app a 1-star review to get your attention or because they miss a feature you never advertised. And the worst part: you include the feature they want, and then they forget about the review. It stays there, in all its one-start glory, while the feature they wanted is implemented, documented, advertised and in the end forgotten about.
So let's review sales numbers! I am going to show you some charts, but first, let's review my portfolio:
MovingBoxes
My first application. Okay, that sounds pretty bad. It doesn't have a fancy name, and it is a very simple game. It wasn't even my idea - but it is fun and addictive. It is also pretty much forgotten, has some glowing reviews, and was downloaded only occasionally before I made it free for a weekend. The free spike was pretty significant, then it was forgotten again.
PolySolve
I never expected this one to sell well. It was more like a proof-of-concept, an application very few can actually appreciate. It solves polynomial equations with the Newton method. On good days, 2-3 copies are sold.
Montage
My first serious application. Updated frequently, and with nice sales numbers - compared to the other applications. I have one thing to confess about this application: two weeks after I released it, I noticed that a similar application, Collage has already been in the store for quite some time. Of course you have every reason to believe that I just copied the idea, but to be honest, I didn't know it existed when I developed Montage. (Always do your market research. I searched for montage, but never for collage. As you must have noticed - if not, I am very happy - I am not a native English-speaker, and I just didn't think about the other word.)
Montage went trough quite a few updates, it was restructured and rewritten many times, and I think it is one of the most powerful photography apps out there.
Scissors
When shapes were introduced in Montage, I though you could use the same interface to crop photos. (Okay, I know, I'm cheap - I just recycled some code.) It is quite easy to use, but 1.0 had a huge bug, it couldn't handle image orientations correctly, so I made it free for a while, and eventually fixed the bug. While it was free, it was downloaded 7000 times.
Montage Lite
After I saw how much better free apps sell, I released a Lite version for Montage. The model worked, but I have yet to see the long term effects.
So let's see some graphs! This first one shows overall sales for the past month or so. I do not have detailed data from before that, as I started using AppViz around that time. (It is a fantastic application. I still have a few days from the trial, but once I get my money from Apple, it will be the first thing I buy)
That is not very informative, is it? As you can see, free application sales greatly outnumber paid ones. So let's break it down. Th next one details the sales numbers before I started making my apps free:
Spikes are updates. PolySolve had its best day on May 3 with 4 applications sold. And that was when I started experimenting with making applications free for a while. I had little to loose, and even less to gain :)
Only if these were paid sales... Still, when I started developing, I said if I make 100 bucks, I made money. And that goal was met within days.
Conclusions
I would probably do much better if I had more money for marketing. Then again, I am happy with these results. I am working on a lot of things at once - iPhone development being one of them - and this one at least pays :).
About the technical part
Many programming languages advertise themselves as simple and easy-to-use. Well, Objective-C is not one of them. Most languages start out as simple, and become increasingly difficult over time. Objective-C is hard to begin with - when I first started writing code in it, it was ugly, unreadable, and totally worthless. But over time it became simpler. It starts to show its beauty after long hours of coding. I never thought I would drop C# as my weapon of choice, but Objective-C has shown me a new world. Maybe it's just me getting better in general (I hope). But I must say that Objective-C impressed me, and if you see learning it as a barrier, you should know: it is absolutely worth the time invested.
About Apple
I'm no fanboy. I tend to look at things objectively. I do not think that Apple products are superior - in fact I do not think superior products exist. My experience is that their support staff is nice and helpful, even responsive - if they respond. Once you got in touch with them, you are in tech support heaven. But sometimes, they do no respond, or they send you some standard reply.
Their way of doing things can also be annoying (and I am not talking about being unable to maximize windows, I have learned to live with that). In the beginning, paperwork was tedious, and most of the time I had to rely on forums and blogs to help me out with some details. iTunes connect is slow as hell (more on that later). Approval policies are strange (so far my only problem was that I mentioned in my application description that blurry images on some devices is an OS bug - they didn't like that). But overall, I think they are better than most companies. And these annoyances are most likely necessary when you have to deal with so many users and developers.
About sales and reviews
Before I get to the numbers, there are some important conclusions to make. First of all: as the number of applications approach 30000, you have to chances: invest in marketing, or update regularly. It is all about visibility. If people can't find your product, they won't buy it. Being in Top100 lists also help. I have seen developers pushing out updates with descriptions like "Minor tweaks". I can't help it, but I think this actually means "I moved a few methods around, so Apple won't notice that this is essentially the same product". I always try to add additional features, or at least fix bugs whenever I release a new version.
I also noticed that some applications have glowing reviews minutes after they are released - I wonder why these comments have perfect wording, sometimes even ridiculous claims that remind me of this T-shirt. What I noticed is that the number of reviews and the number of downloads correlate best when there is a huge problem with your application. And most reviews are very like YouTube comments. I have seen some that are just a bunch of random characters.
Also, people tend to request new features in their reviews - and proceed to give your app a 1-star review to get your attention or because they miss a feature you never advertised. And the worst part: you include the feature they want, and then they forget about the review. It stays there, in all its one-start glory, while the feature they wanted is implemented, documented, advertised and in the end forgotten about.
So let's review sales numbers! I am going to show you some charts, but first, let's review my portfolio:
MovingBoxes
My first application. Okay, that sounds pretty bad. It doesn't have a fancy name, and it is a very simple game. It wasn't even my idea - but it is fun and addictive. It is also pretty much forgotten, has some glowing reviews, and was downloaded only occasionally before I made it free for a weekend. The free spike was pretty significant, then it was forgotten again.
PolySolve
I never expected this one to sell well. It was more like a proof-of-concept, an application very few can actually appreciate. It solves polynomial equations with the Newton method. On good days, 2-3 copies are sold.
Montage
My first serious application. Updated frequently, and with nice sales numbers - compared to the other applications. I have one thing to confess about this application: two weeks after I released it, I noticed that a similar application, Collage has already been in the store for quite some time. Of course you have every reason to believe that I just copied the idea, but to be honest, I didn't know it existed when I developed Montage. (Always do your market research. I searched for montage, but never for collage. As you must have noticed - if not, I am very happy - I am not a native English-speaker, and I just didn't think about the other word.)
Montage went trough quite a few updates, it was restructured and rewritten many times, and I think it is one of the most powerful photography apps out there.
Scissors
When shapes were introduced in Montage, I though you could use the same interface to crop photos. (Okay, I know, I'm cheap - I just recycled some code.) It is quite easy to use, but 1.0 had a huge bug, it couldn't handle image orientations correctly, so I made it free for a while, and eventually fixed the bug. While it was free, it was downloaded 7000 times.
Montage Lite
After I saw how much better free apps sell, I released a Lite version for Montage. The model worked, but I have yet to see the long term effects.
So let's see some graphs! This first one shows overall sales for the past month or so. I do not have detailed data from before that, as I started using AppViz around that time. (It is a fantastic application. I still have a few days from the trial, but once I get my money from Apple, it will be the first thing I buy)
That is not very informative, is it? As you can see, free application sales greatly outnumber paid ones. So let's break it down. Th next one details the sales numbers before I started making my apps free:
Spikes are updates. PolySolve had its best day on May 3 with 4 applications sold. And that was when I started experimenting with making applications free for a while. I had little to loose, and even less to gain :)
Only if these were paid sales... Still, when I started developing, I said if I make 100 bucks, I made money. And that goal was met within days.
Conclusions
I would probably do much better if I had more money for marketing. Then again, I am happy with these results. I am working on a lot of things at once - iPhone development being one of them - and this one at least pays :).
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Montage Lite now available
Apple finally approved the Lite version of Montage! It's free, so if you haven't purchased Montage yet, this is a great opportunity to try it. It was hard to decide what to leave out.
The Lite version has the same interface for manipulating your montage. You can still combine an unlimited number of images. The Shape, Frame, and Text functions were removed however. Your work isn't auto-saved either. But the basics are all there, so I think even the Lite version is a fully functional application.
Go ahead, try it, and if you like it, consider purchasing the full version!
The Lite version has the same interface for manipulating your montage. You can still combine an unlimited number of images. The Shape, Frame, and Text functions were removed however. Your work isn't auto-saved either. But the basics are all there, so I think even the Lite version is a fully functional application.
Go ahead, try it, and if you like it, consider purchasing the full version!
Friday, May 15, 2009
MovingBoxes free till Sunday
Okay, so MovingBoxes didn't sell so well. It is a simple yet nice game, with positive feedback, but with zero publicity. So let's try something different. I am going to give it away for the next 3 days for free. So go ahead, try it.
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