Posts tagged with "developers"

‘Hours, the Apple Watch, and Turning an App Into a Business’→

Jeremy Olson on making Hours free and shifting their focus on turning a “simple app” into a business:

How do you break into business and the enterprise? We like Slack’s bottom-up approach. Start by making the best solution for individuals, who in turn advocate adoption for their team, who in turn evangelize to other teams…and up the chain it goes. If startups can make this strategy work in the Enterprise, as Slack has, then they can focus on creating a great experience for the end-user instead of a bloated feature list to pass a corporate approval checklist.

Hours is an excellent time tracker. I’m curious to see if this strategy will work out for them, and if other developers are tweaking their plans to follow a similar route.

See also: Dan Counsell’s advice from last year.

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Apple Opens Watch App Submissions for All Developers→

After approving Watch apps from select developers last week, Apple has begun accepting submissions for Watch apps from all registered iOS developers. From the company’s developer blog:

It’s time. Apple Watch will be in the hands of customers on April 24. Get your WatchKit apps ready and submit them for review now.

Apple has also created a new webpage titled ‘Preparing Your App Submission for Apple Watch’ with details on what developers should do before submitting an Apple Watch app to the App Store. There are some interesting tidbits on this page, such as limitations for app previews, which must show only iPhone apps:

Your app preview may only use footage of your iPhone app, and footage must stay within the app. Do not change your preview to show your WatchKit app.

And a note that suggests apps from third-party developers will be approved before April 24 and therefore used by people with a pre-release Watch unit:

Once your WatchKit app is approved and released by Apple, your existing iPhone users will receive the app update and customers will see your WatchKit extension icon and description on the App Store. A small group of people who currently have an Apple Watch will be able to use your WatchKit app before April 24, so make sure your back end systems are ready.

As I wrote last week, releasing Watch apps before the April 24 launch is a smart move from Apple:

For the first time in several years, a new Apple product will be reviewed by people who have access to third-party apps from the App Store. When the iPhone launched, there was no App Store; when the iPad launched, reviewers didn’t have access to public downloads from the iPad App Store.

That won’t be the case with Apple Watch, and this is a clever choice from Apple. Because the Watch is many things, it needs apps to offer a more complete picture of its potential. By approving the first Watch apps this week, reviewers (and customers at the try-on sessions in the retail stores) will get access to a selection of third-party apps that can show how the Watch will integrate in everyday life through the apps they already use.

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‘How My App Ended up in an Apple Ad’→

Robleh Jama is the founder of Tiny Hearts, an indie iOS development company that ended up having one of their apps, Quick Fit, featured in an Apple commercial (this one). In an article for Fast Company, he shares some details of the selection process as well as good advice for developers. I liked this bit about localization (which is reflected in the app’s performance in international markets):

One of the best decisions we made early on was to support multiple languages with Quick Fit and Wake Alarm. We focused on the key regions Apple recommends in its internationalization guidelines. Apps are a global phenomenon with millions of non-English-speaking users. We didn’t want to limit our goal of helping people get fit to just English speakers, so we localized our app’s interface, description, and even screenshots.

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A Week in the Life of Indie Developers

We’re always trying to think of new and interesting stories to publish on MacStories, and often times they’re articles that are a complete experiment that we honestly don’t know how they’ll turn out – this is one of those articles.

Earlier this year I published an article that was essentially just a list of indie iOS/Mac developers and we got a great reaction to it (and we promise an update is coming). Inspired by the developers featured in that article, I asked a handful of them to write a journal of what they do in a week of development, and for some crazy reason, they agreed to contribute. Those generous developers are (in no particular order) Oisin and Padraig from Supertop, David Smith, Philip Simpson from Shifty Jelly, Greg Pierce from Agile Tortoise, and Junjie from Clean Shaven Apps.

I asked each of the developers to keep track of the work they did in the week of Sunday 22 February to Saturday 28 February. But I wasn’t specific in the format, other than to say I wanted something along the lines of a journal crossed with a time sheet. That was partly because I really didn’t know what would work well, but also because I wanted to be flexible and let the developers just write what they thought was appropriate. I had no idea what to expect, and was a bit nervous that the whole thing might fall apart because I hadn’t been specific enough about what I was looking for.

Fortunately, the result is fascinating, I found myself not only entertained but educated as I read through each of their journals. You’ll find that each journal is quite vastly different, not just in their writing style but also how they work as an indie developer. I know it’s a long read (certainly longer than I had anticipated), but stick with it – there are some great surprises throughout.

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Apple Increases Maximum App Size to 4 GB→

From Apple’s developer blog:

The size limit of an app package submitted through iTunes Connect has increased from 2 GB to 4 GB, so you can include more media in your submission and provide a more complete, rich user experience upon installation. Please keep in mind that this change does not affect the cellular network delivery size limit of 100 MB.

Over the years, the maximum size of 2 GB for apps forced game developers to drastically reduce the graphical capabiltities of their games (see, for instance, the original BioShock port). With Metal and more powerful iPhones and iPads, it only makes sense to let developers create more advanced iOS gaming experiences with fewer compromises.

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Desk App’s 2014→

A great overview of Desk’s 2014 by its developer, John Saddington:

The bottom-line, though, is that it means that it is quite possible to “make it” as an indie developer and eek out an income that is substantive and worthwhile. I hope this report, if anything, gives some encouragement to all of those that are interested in seriously (or semi-seriously) pursuing an independent app that creates great value for users and customers.

Desk is a new text editor and publishing app for OS X, and John has clearly put years of thought and passion into it. What struck me in his blog post is how he reinvested the app’s revenue into advertising instead of settling on what he had achieved, going after a very committed audience that produced interesting results.

Fascinating story, and good business sense. See also: Joe Cieplinski’s thoughts.

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Legacy TestFlight Service Shutting Down on February 26→

Apple has informed developers that the legacy TestFlightApp.com beta testing service will shut down on February 26:

The services offered at TestFlightApp.com will no longer be available after February 26, 2015. To prepare for the TestFlightapp.com closure, developers and team leaders are recommended to transfer their testers to the all-new TestFlight Beta Testing in iTunes Connect.

The legacy TestFlight website has continued working in spite of Apple’s acquisition of TestFlight last year and subsequent integration in iTunes Connect. Apple is providing developers with instructions to migrate existing testers to the new TestFlight service, with more details available here.

As I wrote last week, the new TestFlight is not perfect, but its native presence on iOS 8 offers a superior solution for testers and developers thanks to the reliance on Apple IDs. Notably, the legacy TestFlight website allowed developers to release betas for devices running older versions of iOS, whereas the new TestFlight is only available for iOS 8.

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App Developers: Try TestFlight→

From the Supertop blog (makers of Castro and Unread):

Shortly after iOS 8 was released, Apple opened this new beta testing service to iOS developers. When compared to the previous testing process, it is a major improvement and I am grateful to the team behind it. It is a sign that Apple cares about third party developers and about helping us improve the quality of the software we provide.

In the past few months, I’ve been testing about 50 apps with TestFlight, and, as a user, I think the system is way better than the old days of beta testing with Hockey and the original TestFlight. I don’t need to give developers my device UDIDs; all my betas are in the TestFlight app; I get notifications for updates; and, I can easily unlock In-App Purchases in beta builds with my Apple ID. Apple has built the new TestFlight with simplicity in mind, and I appreciate the time it has saved me so far.

It’s not perfect. Developers have reported various issues with uploading builds and automatic crash reporting hasn’t been integrated yet. When TestFlight sends you an email for a beta update, the build’s changelog isn’t reported in the email, forcing you to open the TestFlight app (an extra step). You can’t view a beta’s version history (like you can on Hockey). And, as Supertop mentions, betas expire after 30 days, and that’s never fun.

Still, I think TestFlight is, from a user’s perspective, a great start from Apple. Developers need a solid, easy, and reliable way to let people test their upcoming apps. TestFlight already hits all the basic points of this process.

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The World of Indie App Developers

Here at MacStories we write about apps. A lot. Many of those we write about, perhaps even most, are created by individuals and small teams. And typically, those hard-working individuals remain unknown to the public who just know an app as something they use. Today we want to bring a bunch those indie developers to the forefront.

I wasn’t sure exactly where it would lead, but last month I asked on Twitter for independent developers to @ reply me and say hi. Amplified by retweets by Federico and many others, I got dozens and dozens of replies, ultimately totalling just under 200 responses.[1] That’s both a pretty huge number (trust me, it was a time consuming process documenting them all) and also incredibly tiny (there are around 250,000 active developers and over a million apps for sale).

It would be completely ridiculous to perform any kind of analysis on such a small sample size, but it was nonetheless great to have a relatively varied spread of developers from all over the world (illustrated in the above graphic). But more valuable was the list of developers and their Twitter accounts. So I’ve created a Twitter list that includes every developer that @ replied me. We’ve also included the full table of every developer we collated, links to their apps, location and Twitter account (see below). Please note that developers and apps shown in the full list does not mean they are endorsed by me, Federico or MacStories. If a developer met some very minimal criteria, they were included.

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