CodeThePhone

The Honeymoon is Over

Apple has had a year, but the glacial pace of improvements to the App Store haven’t done anything to fix the fundamental problems with running a business focused on iPhone application development. A year grace period is enough and now it looks like the honeymoon is over.

Marco Arment: Serious Doubts and App Store Adds Search Keyword Fields for Apps
Riverturn: There’s No App for That
Justin Williams: Where Do I Sign Up?
Layton Duncan: The Emperor’s New Clothes

Developer sentiment has shifted. These feelings have been there for a long time, but now people are blogging more about the problems and they are getting linked by more highly prominent sites. It’s only a matter of time before the bigger names in indie development chip in, too.

I can easily see a day where all that is available are garbage, throw-away 99¢ apps and apps from bigger companies who feel they “have” to be present on the App Store.

App Store Search to Soon Use Keywords

If you log in to iTunes Connect, you’ll be presented with the following message:

Keywords must now be entered for your applications on iTunes Connect. Customers will be able to search the App Store by your designated keywords. You must separate your keywords by commas when entering them on the application information page and are limited to 255 characters

This refreshing news. Too bad it was rushed out.

First, the limit is actually 100 characters. You’ll discover this if you enter more than that limit and save. Unfortunately, the second problem is that while there is an error message informing you of the real limit, the keywords field is now disabled and you can’t edit it. You have to cancel out of the page and come back.

Beyond the obvious bugs, a character counter would be nice. And as Marco points out, some guidelines about how the keywords will be used would help. Stemming? Phrases? Simple misspellings?

Transactions Further Muddies “Demo” vs. “Lite”

Last month, Ars Technica reported on the distinctions of “demo” vs. “lite” and what was allowed on the App Store. According to Ars, “demo” or “beta” is cause for instant rejection from the store, while “lite” is OK, provided the lite version stands on its own and is not crippled.

Last week, Transactions was released, which processes credit card charges through Authorize.net or PayPal. The “lite” version is limited to two transactions within a twelve hour period. I’m scratching my head how this made it through the approval process. Two transactions is useless for real world use. It’s clearly only useful to trial the app’s functionality before buying the full version. A much better “lite” differentiator is to limit the amount that may be charged.

It is well past time for Apple to implement demo functionality for apps on the store. Allow developers to opt out if they wish. Apple controls the platform. It can’t be hard to add a marker to the FairPlay wrapper. Some period of time after download (even this could be up to the developer), iPhone OS will refuse to launch the app, telling the user that the demo period has expired. Buying the app at that point removes the marker and the app may be launched again.

If (hopefully when) Apple does this, I predict we’ll see average app prices start to rise, since the “risk” of buying something disappears. Higher app prices means a bigger 30% cut for Apple. Isn’t this a no-brainer?

Developer Program Extensions to July 11

Regarding my earlier post about problems with expiring developer program memberships, today I received an email from Apple:

In appreciation of your participation in the program during the beta period, the length of your original program term and your iTunes Connect contract(s) will be extended to July 11, 2009—one year from the opening of the App Store. We will contact you soon with more details and instructions about this extension.

Beginning in May, a full 60 days prior to your new Program expiration date, you will be able to renew your iPhone Developer Program which also automatically renews your existing iTunes contracts.

It’s nice to see Apple make this gesture, though it makes it seem more likely to me that the one-year anniversary of the original program members caught them somewhat by surprise. I guess 20,000+ approved apps in less than a year can do that.

iPhone OS 3.0 Previewed on March 17th

Lots of news today about the potential debut of iPhone OS 3.0 on March 17th.

Engadget says they “got the note” about a a sneak preview that will happen at 10am PST. According to The Boy Genius Report, besides a brand new sdk, we can expect:

• MMS
• Tethering via Bluetooth and USB

And this from MacRumors:

Apple’s calling this an “advance preview of what we’re building,” so we’re not expecting anything ready to go as of the 17th, but hopefully this will allow developers to start building toward future functionality (hey, how about some push notifications?), and presumably users won’t have too many months to wait after that for the real deal.

iTunes Affiliates Can Link to Apps

I don’t know when this changed, but developers can finally deep link to their applications on the App Store and earn a 5% commission on sales. When I first signed up as an affiliate last year (because of the badge in the Program Portal, mind you), the iTunes Link Maker would create links to any media type on the iTunes Music Store, except apps.

5% of the surely minuscule traffic from a web site resulting in a sale on the App Store is probably next to nothing, but there’s no sense in leaving money on the table. Plus, if a visitor to your site buys something else in the same session, that should qualify for a commission, too.

Which brings up an interesting idea I’d shelved a while back: now there is some money to be made by offering a web-based app store. Purchasing still happens in the App Store, but at least there is a possibility for innovation in browsing/searching.

Developer Program Renewals

Inexplicably, Apple does not yet have a system in place to process renewals for the iPhone developer program. It is possible, although Apple assures otherwise, that a developer’s applications will be pulled from the App Store when the existing contracts expire.

I dragged my feet a bit and didn’t sign my contract until May, so I have a bit of time left. Usually, when Apple stumbles, they fix the problem quickly. This seems like it’ll extremely high priority, so I won’t be surprised to see news on this soon.

No Surprise: The iPhone App Store is #1

Some highly paid researchers at Global Intelligence Alliance found out what we already knew:  the iPhone is the leader in mobile applications due to the App Store.

Global Intelligence Alliance Group (GIA), a global leader in customized Market Intelligence services and solutions, has released an analysis of Mobile Application Marketplace initiatives, which indicates that Apple’s App Store is ahead of Android by Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and Ovi by Nokia, based on its timeliness and number, variety and appeal of applications available.

The analysis was conducted along five parameters which GIA deem to be key success factors; time to market, the ability to attract developers, the rate of device adoption, an efficient interface and user experience, and having a critical mass of attractive applications.

And Net Applications reports that mobile Safari is by far the leader in mobile web browsing with a 66% market share.

More info on both studies is available at PC World.

Apple takes down all Emoji enabled apps

Ars technica has learned that Apple issued a sitewide takedown for all apps that enable Emoji:

…Apple has pulled all existing applications that do not provide functionality beyond Emoji enabling. We were told that Emotifun and iEmoji have already been removed from the store. Unlike other apps that provide a core program with Emoji features, these two titles existed solely to enable that hidden iPhone preference that lets any iPhone access Emoji.

Existing applications that offer Emoji enabling beyond their base functionality have been ordered to remove Emoji support. Fung told us that Apple has required an immediate update to his Typing Genius program with the Emoji support removed. This same order appears to have gone out to all developers whose App Store marketing text mentions an Emoji feature.

Apple finally removes old reviews from non-owners in the App Store

MacRumors reports that Apple has finally started deleting the old, mostly negative reviews from non-owners in the App Store.

No purchase was required at that time. As a result, many critical “reviews” came from those who had never bought those applications. Developers, of course, were particularly unhappy with this system which brought down the average score for almost all paid applications.

This is great news for apps that have been in the store for a while.

Several long standing apps have seen dramatic decreases in their review counts. SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball count dropped from 4197 reviews down to 3710 while Namco’s Pac Man dropped from 395 to 122.