The iPhone App Developers’ Blog: iPhone Programming, Developer News, Interviews And Tutorials

Ask permission environments crush creativity and innovation. In healthy environments, when would-be innovators/creators identify opportunities the only thing that stands between the idea and its realization is work. In the iPhone OS environment when you see an opportunity, you put in work first, ask Apple’s permission and then, only after gaining their approval, your idea can be realized.

I’ve always worked at the edge; it’s where the interesting opportunities live. None of the startup I’ve created would have been possible in an ask permission environment. Normally, for the sake of the flow of the article, I’d elide the supporting examples, but today I’ll provide two:

In the mid nineties, ahead of even Amazon.com, I founded one of the earliest e-commerce companies. At that time, most banks forbid Internet credit card transactions. They were fearful, so they enacted policies that blocked innovation. Of course that wasn’t universal: a few banks bucked the trend and, together with entrepreneurs like me, created a new sector of the economy. Pedants will point out that we still needed a bank’s permission; more reasonable readers will observe that there was no single daddy entity whose approval we required.

Early last decade, at roughly the same time and in parallel, I created a company like PayPal. Person-to-person payments threatened the banking establishment to such an extent that we were routinely told PayPal-like transactions were criminally illegal. A decade later, Wired Magazine placed PayPal as the cornerstone of the future of money.

The innovation in both of these examples made the establishment uncomfortable — they’d have stopped us at the gates had they been able too. Apple can, at their least bit of discomfort.

That’s wrong. It’s been wrong. And, with the extension of this approach to the iPad, it’s becoming ever more wrong. And this week’s news that “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript” — making verboten Corona, iPhone Wax, and Unity 3D, destroying one of the most innovative areas in iPhone dev — is more wrong still.

Without exception, whenever I’ve taken built an app to capitalize on one of my ideas it’s run afoul of Apple’s policies. My most recent example: CodePromo is my promo code fetching iTunes Connects helper app. I created it knowing — and accepting — that it would never be accepted in the store. It’s an app for developers, so source or developer binary resigning are both technically feasible alternatives for distribution. However, Apple could decide that this violates the Ts&Cs and kick me out of the program, thereby taking away my ability to support my family.

I’m fine with Apple curating the App Store. If they want to treat the App Store as an extension of their brand, fine. If that’s their goal, they should decimate — literally — the store, stripping out the crappy-yet-inoffensive dross. But provide unrestricted, frictionless, off-store distribution a la Android.

I’m a principled person. Apple’s offended my principles. Consequently, I’ve decided to abandon iPhone development. I won’t work in this ask-permission environment any longer.

What About The Site/Podcast?

This’ll be the last Mobile Orchard iPhone post and there’ll be no further iPhone podcasts. I’ll leave the site online as long as I have the server. I’m proud of the content we’ve created and won’t punish iPhone devs by pulling it offline. Ari’s This Week In iPhone/iPad News column will also be discontinued; he says he’ll start posting iPhone/iPad news items to his blog, so go subscribe if you’re interested.

What’s Next For Me?

Mobile Orchard is — well, was — how I earned a living. Teaching iPhone dev classes, plus a little from advertisers and our holiday bundle, provided enough income for me to keep my kids and wife warm, clothed and fed. So I need a new source of income.

I think the chances of Google making me Tim Bray-like offer (i.e, to pay for me to do this for the Android market) are virtually non-existent. That said, Google, if you’re reading this I’m interested. I’m a hybrid in the iPhone world: I produce tech and business content and commentary. I’m a great voice for the developer-entrepreneur community. I could do the same in Android land. Lacking that, maybe you’d at least send me a Nexus One?

I have two startup ideas of my own that I’m weighing and I’m interested in external opportunities (startup or otherwise). I’ve posted my bio here. Reach me at dan@mobileorchard.com or 612-423-3694.

Do me a favor: please don’t unsubscribe/unfollow. I’d like to be able to let you all know where I end up.

Thanks

Finally, I want to say thanks. Ari, you and your column have been invaluable. Peter, thanks for helping get things started. Thanks to the other contributors. Thanks for reading.

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iPhone App Developed To Control NASA Robot Want to drive a NASA robot on Mars? There’s an app for that.

Star Wars Cantina: Your Own Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy, In Your iPhone Coming soon to an iPhone near you, “Star Wars Cantina”, a Diner Dash-like game set in the Star Wars universe.

How to Make an HTML5 iPhone App A nice tutorial on how to use HTML5 in your next iPhone app.

Apple Launching iPad with Explicit Content in App Store Apple has recently segregated explicit content into its own category on the App Store.

Apple to Launch New Mobile Ad Platform? “iAD”, Apple’s own mobile ad platform, is set to launch on April 7th, 2010.

Facebook | App Store Now you can browse the App Store from the comfort of Facebook. Includes the ability to share your favorite apps with your friends among other features.

The Ultimate Gamer’s Guide to Apple’s iPad With the iPad coming out this weekend, take a look at some of the games that are being targeted for the device (updated frequently).

New iPhone This Summer; Verizon Model Could Be Ready By Fall In addition to the new iPad, it looks like the iPhone is going to be ready for a new hardware refresh later this year and we might possibly also see the iPhone becoming available on Verizon for the first time.

Medialets Rolls Out Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad Ads Now publishers and developers of iPhone and iPad applications can use a new SDK to switch between ad networks and first-party ad servers.

MapQuest Brings Free Voice Navigation to the iPhone MapQuest 4 Mobile is a free GPS navigation app for the iPhone that includes “basic voice guidance”.

Flash Comes to the iPad…At least for Advertisers iFlash Ad Units from Greystrip ports Flash ad units into a format the iPad can display.

Starbucks Now Letting You Pay For Your Coffee Fix Via iPhone in 1,000+ Target Stores

ScoreLoop Launches White Label Service for iPhone App Monetization ScoreLoop is a white label social platform helping developers add social features to their iPhone and Android apps and it now includes support for monetizing their apps.

WolframAlpha Drops iPhone App Price by 96% to $1.99, Offers Refunds The powerful website WolframAlpha recently deployed an iPhone application at an initial price of $49.99 but has recently reduced the price to $1.99. They are now offering refunds for those users who purchased it at the original price.

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Natalia Luckyanova, half of iPhone Gaming’s cutest couple, wrote to share their experience giving away 1000 copies of Harbor Master using the new Gift-This capability of the App Store.

Here’s what she had to say, emphasis added by me:

We decided to try a mass giveaway to see how gifting really works. We gave away 1,000 copies of Harbor Master to promote the upcoming Harbor Master HD for iPad. This got a lot of very heated reactions from other developers (mostly worrying that gifted apps affect rank and this would allow anyone to buy their way into the top 100 apps).

Interestingly, we found that gifts do NOT count towards an app’s rank at all. Also, awarding that many gifts definitely took a lot of time. However, it was a great experience for us nonetheless. We got some publicity for Harbor Master HD and got a lot of love from the player community. If nothing else, app gifting will help not to be limited to 50 promo codes when trying to share an app with media and the community.

Full details available on their blog.

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Wikipedia Gets Pretty with Articles iPhone App Take a look at some of the interesting features in a new Wikipedia app for the iPhone.

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark While Apple says that iPad applications can be submitted next week to coincide with opening of the iPad App Store, most iPad developers only have the iPad simulator to work with until then, except a select few who actually received the device early.

Valgrind Phil Hassey, the author of Galcon for the iPhone, mentioned this memory management and debugging tool at GDC 2010 and it’s definitely worth a look.

Corona Now Supports iPad Busy week for these guys.

Apple Stores Now Able to Sell Unlocked iPhones [update] While the original article mentioned that the phones were unlocked, it turns out that they are just contract free.

Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry In The U.S. And Taking Share Insightful data from Flurry about the state of the game industry and the impact the iPhone has had.

App Store Approvals Slow As The iPad Land Rush Begins Some iPhone developers have noticed that their approval times have increased just as the date for the iPad launch nears.

Better Late Than Never, Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone The popular video streaming service Justin.tv now has an iPhone application that has some innovative features.

You Can Now Gift iPhone Apps A feature has been added to the App Store that allows you to gift an iPhone application. One interesting side-effect to this is that some developers are noticing that others are gifting large numbers of their application and shooting up the rankings where they would normally need to sell a certain number.

iPad Launch Looks to be Dominated by Gaming Apps Flurry has data on applications being tested on the iPad and they’ve broken it down by category. It turns out the majority of them are games (surprised?).

Urban Airship: Developer Preview Release for AirMail “AirMail is the next generation of push notification for mobile apps. It’s media-rich (think video and HTML), has the ability to do return-receipt, an in-app inbox and all sorts of cool features.”

Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science and Space Exploration for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Buzz Aldrin has created a Portal to Science & Space Exploration to unite people and technology for the purpose of educating and entertaining the world on this interesting and critically important subject.

iPhone Is Eating Sony PSP and Nintendo DS’ Lunch Another perspective on Flurry’s recent stats regarding the iPhone’s impact on the game industry.

Digg’s iPhone App Is Now Available The much anticipated Digg iPhone app is now available, with a new Digg site redesigning coming soon.

Further Tests Confirm iPhone Touchscreen Superiority An interesting study on the accuracy of the touchscreens on various mobile devices shows that the iPhone is superior.

AdMob Registers 50% Market Share For iPhone OS Based On Smartphone Traffic Admob recently announced that smartphones accounted for 48% of its worldwide traffic last month, with the iPhone still being the dominant device.

3 Useful iPhone Apps to Help File Your Taxes

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Lately Android has been on my radar. It’s gone from easy to ignore to something impossible to ignore.

I’ve tried to ignore it because I don’t care for Java. It’s a fine language, but it’s not for me. So, I’ve been quietly learning Scala to use instead.

Then this came across my inbox today: Corona, the Flash-like way of creating iPhone apps in Lua, is releasing an Android version.

The Ansca Mobile team has done a good job creating a viable alternative to Flash on the iPhone; interesting that they’re broadening to make their stuff run on Android.

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Last October, I wrote a piece prodding Apple to add Gift This App capabilities — similar to the existing “Gift This Song” — to the App Store. Now, according to this TUAW story, you can! This is going to be big. Expect to see a raft of clever promotional uses of this capability.

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GDC 2010: The Best of Both Worlds: Using UIKit with OpenGL Slides from Noel Llopis’ session at GDC this year are now available.

How to Make Your Own iPhone RFID Reader

iPhone/iPad Developer Events (Google account required)

API enables developers to register multiple apps to Medialytics at once Medialet’s has been busy upgrading their analytics offering.

PayPal Launches Revamped iPhone App, Teams with Bump for Phone-Tapping Money Transfers The updated PayPal iPhone application now allows you to “bump” two iPhones together to transfer funds.

Sword and Sworcery This iPhone game won best achievement in art at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference. I really can’t wait for this to come out!

How the iPhone Helped Make Game Startup Unity a Winner The CEO of Unity explains how the iPhone helped make Unity what it is today.

‘Rage’ for iPhone and iPad Coming Soon id Software’s next major console game ‘Rage’ will also be targeted to the iPhone and iPad according to John Carmack.

Apple Releases Fifth Beta of iPhone SDK 3.2 for iPad

The Top 15 Brands on the App Store Might Surprise You PositionApp allows you to track how iPhone apps are doing on the App Store.

Xcode Project Template Expansion Macros Jeff Lamarche catalogued all of the known Xcode project expansion macros in a handy to reference table.

You Can Now Schedule Price Changes for Your App Apple has recently announced the new feature in iTunes Connect that will allow you to schedule price changes for your app, including In App Purchase items.

Star Wars Light Saber Duel iPhone App, now with Bluetooth Due out next month, this seems to be a definite hit.

‘SimCity Deluxe’ Upcoming iPhone Game A big upgrade to the existing SimCity game for the iPhone is due out soon. Take a look at the screenshots.

Notifo is a Simple Mobile Notifications Platform for Anything If you’re having trouble managing push notifications on the iPhone, you might want to take a look at this new Y Combinator-backed company’s API.

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News from GDC this week:

GDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model Is Ngmoco alienating fans of some of their favorite games because of the continued use of the “freemium” business model?

GDC 2010: Street Fighter 4 for iPhone Out Now Some say you can’t experience Street Fighter 4 on a touch-screen device. I think the controls work pretty well but it can be hard to see the controls.

GDC 2010: This is What Unreal Engine 3 on iPhone Looks Like Interesting considering we haven’t seen Unreal Engine 3 on the Wii or PSP yet.

GDC 2010: Baffling $350 App Store Success What does it mean when a “joke app” can sell for more than $300 on the App Store?

GDC 2010: Backflip’s Farrior on iPhone Ad Sales, Free Versions Some insights on how you can use certain tactics to sell an application on the App Store if you can predict the market.

Other items:

iPad Now Available Pre-order your iPad now!

Apple’s iPhone 4.0 Software to Deliver Multitasking Support Could this be because of the upcoming iPad?

iPhone 3D Programming An upcoming book covering OpenGL and 3D development on the iPhone.

Multitouch Air2 and the iPhone A cool tutorial of Multitouch, IntelliJ, and Air 2.0 beta 2, along with SimTouch and the MSA Remote for the iPhone.

iPhone Turns Users Into Junkies Seems like some people are becoming quite attached to their iPhones.

Apple Cracking Down on “Cookie Cutter” App Store Applications? Applications that are little more than web apps may face more scrutiny when submitted to the App Store.

Three Lessons from the Chipotle iPhone App How centralization, a defined use case, and a uniform menu shaped Chipotle’s iPhone app.

iPhone and Android Users by US State and Gender An interesting break down of iPhone and Android demographic data.

Gloriously Detailed Shots of an iPad Game It’s great to see that former iPhone favorite “Zen Bound” is coming to the iPad.

The popular Apple fanboi site Cult Of Mac wants to trade you promotional codes for visibility. More specifically, they’re building a regular Monday promo code giveaway feature and are looking for app devs/publishers to volunteer some codes.

They’ve got a respectable 6,000 Twitter followers and around 2,400 Facebook fans. Zealots are valuable in word-of-mouth campaigns. I’d probably share codes with them vs. going it alone on Twitter/Facebook to get access to their audience.

Contact Leander Kahney, leander (AT) cultofmac (DOT) com, for details.

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