Staying Afloat In a Sea of iPhone Apps

Burnsy writes "During all the hype of Apple celebrating its 1.5 billion iPhone App Store downloads, some good advice on how to be successful and stand out in the App Store came out. One story describes how developers are increasingly coming up with various strategies to make a splash, employing everything from temporary discounts to guerilla marketing tactics. On the other hand, some successful developers, such as the creator of the Flight Control app, which has been the number one selling app in 20 countries, talk about the pitfalls of Apple's approval process for the App Store. They say it can take a developer up to three months to get an application approved and distributed on the App Store and that maybe the iPhone bubble is soon to burst." A related story at Wired points out that the games category — already crowded with over 13,000 entries — is getting even more competitive as the major game publishers push into the market.

Frustrating For Developers

[quangdog]

I've released a few apps on the app store, and have met with some success with them. However, the single most frustrating thing is the approval process for getting an app released in the first place, and publishing updates on a continuing basis.

I recently updated one of my apps, and it took Apple 16 days to review the executable and publish it. I then updated my other app, and it took 14 days.

Seriously? 2 weeks? There is nothing more frustrating than to have users contacting me saying "when will feature xyz arrive?" and my response have to be along the lines of "I've submitted it to apple 2 weeks ago. They'll approve it when they approve it. There is nothing I can do to speed it up.

[Shameless Plug]:
For any who are interested, here are the apps I've written:
Velocity [apple.com]
Points [apple.com]

There's a fair number of useless apps

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

My advice, jailbreak your phone. Apple touts the sheer number of apps as something wonderful but I don't need 5 different apps that can make my iPhone into a flashlight.

Jailbreaking my iPhone in the first hour yielded me apps from Cydia that allow me to record video, tether my iPhone and most importantly blacklist callers and SMS. Just this morning I successfully got Perl 5.10 running on it.

Point is, just don't look to the App Store if you want something useful.

Re:Frustrating For Developers

[Arslan ibn Da'ud]

Might I recommend that if you wish to provide a link to an iPhone app, don't link directly to iTunes. Not everyone has iTunes installed on every machine? (Last I checked there was no Linux version.) Instead provide a link to your app via AppBeacon [appbeacon.com].

For instance: Velocity [appbeacon.com]

They mirror the info iTunes provides, also providing a iTunes link. But that way I can review your app on my linux box and buy it directly, or buy it later on my mac laptop. (No, I don't work for AppBeacon, just a satisfied netizen.)

Craig Hockenberry: Year 2

[c4t3y3]

Craig Hockenberry: Year 2 [furbo.org] is possibly the most thoughtful piece about what Apple needs to improve, why, and how. You may want to pay him a visit.

• The root of the problem: software is not music. Songs sell without iTunes, songs don't harm the device, songs don't bug. But songs are also not essential to sell the device...
• Approvals: Emergencies..., Maintenance releases aren't viable...
• Upgrades: currently there is no upgrade revenue...
• Better rules: clear rules will make the process easier for everyone...
• Better experience for customers: Product evaluations..., Respond to reviews..., Finding apps..., Charge us more money..., Pricing...

Re:Actual iPhone Developer Response only please

[SuperKendall]

What is involved in developing an application for the iPhone? Even just a simple Hello World app. What OS, programming language, IDE, emulator etc must you use to do the actual development?

I develop iPhone apps full time.

You need a Mac (any Intel mac will do, 2GB of memory), you use objective-C, the emulator and SDK are free to download when you sign up at . [apple.com]

For a Hello World app, you would literally create a project from a template and user Interface Builder (comes with XCode) to add a "Hello World" label.

Of course, real world programming gets more complex but anyone who has programmed for a bit can get used to Objective-C.

Also, any overall comments on unexpected difficulties and/or surprisingly nice aspects are welcome as well. Thanks!

When you want to actually build for a phone or touch, the main thing that can be confusing is the certificates - if you read the docs carefully though you'll be fine, they do a very good job explaining exactly what to do.

The nice aspect (for me) is that unlike any other GUI builder tool I've ever used in an IDE, I actually prefer to use the tool over just coding up the UI directly (though you can still do that too and sometimes that approach is useful). Also the ease with which you can add informative animation to an app (as opposed to just animating something because you can) is pretty nice.

On iTunes U, there's a free iPhone development course from Stanford. You could watch some of those classes to get a feel for what development is like.