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Posts tagged with "developers"

Apple’s Secret Conference? Next Week.

It seems like Apple is back to the events. Business Insider reports that Apple is holding a “secret conference” for selected developers in Cupertino next week:

Apple is hosting an event for iOS developers in California next week, we’ve heard from an industry source. The event begins next Tuesday, and runs for three days, we’ve heard.

We are short on details, and we have not seen any public information about it, but it sounds like this will be a more intimate version of the iPhone Tech Talks that Apple hosted around the world last year.

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Justin Williams’ Mac App Store Blueprint→

Justin Williams’ Mac App Store Blueprint

Assuming both applications are accepted, both Today and Check Off will be in the App Store on day 1 as the exclusive distribution channel. At that point in time, I will shut down the existing Second Gear store and channel any sales traffic from my Web site to the Mac App Store.

Risky? Yeah. Insane? Maybe.

As with anything involving Apple’s App Store platforms, pricing is an issue. At this point, I’m not planning to adjust my prices for the Mac App Store. I think this will be the trend for existing software moving to the App Store, because giving up a 30% cut to Apple for the privilege is enough of a sacrifice. Tacking on a price cut as well? I can’t see many full-time developers agreeing to that.

If you’ve selling a $40 piece of software on your own distribution platform for years, moving it to a new platform doesn’t make it any less worth of $40.

A 30% cut seems to be perfectly fine for many developers as long as Apple provides the tools and the system to ensure that the only requirement for a dev is that of doing what he likes most: developing. Notable independent Mac developers such as the Omni Group, Realmac, Pixelmator and, now, Secondgear have already committed to Mac App Store development. I can see where this trend is going. We’ll check again in a couple of months.

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Apple Planning Additional App Store LockDown During Thanksgiving Week

Apple usually locks down iTunes Connect for developers during the week of Christmas. This procedure known as “lockdown” doesn’t allow developers to submit updates for their apps and perform price changes, as they’re basically forced to stay out of iTunes Connect, the system underlying the App Store distribution.

According to a rumor published by 148apps, Apple is planning an additional lockdown this year during the week of Thanksgiving. The lockdown is admittedly a problem for developers who need to submit fixes to their applications, but it’s also a great marketing opportunity as charts and top apps are not updated either during the period. If you’re there on the first day, you’ll stay there for the whole week. Read more

Backflip Studios Making Half A Million Dollars Per Month With In-Game Ads

So much for in-app advertising being a non-sustainable business mode. Backflip Studios, developers of the popular Paper Toss and Ninjump games for iPhone, is making half a million dollars per month from in-game ads alone. The company dramatically increased ad revenue since last May, when they confirmed they had managed to make $1 million in six months.

Backflip generated more than 45 million installs on iOS, 5.5 million on Android devices.

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Mac App Store and Micro-Apps→

Mac App Store and Micro-Apps

MG Siegler:

This weekend, Ryan Block put up an interesting post on gdgt entitled: Will the Mac App Store have enough to sell? He raises a number of good points for why Apple may not be able to replicate their current App Store success with this new desktop store. But I’m left wondering if the store won’t lead to a new class of app: a sort of micro-app for the desktop.

Block makes the following points: a) high-end software like Photoshop won’t be placed in this store because Adobe won’t want to give Apple a 30 percent cut of all sales. b) most paid desktop software is dead or dying due to free replacements on the web. c) Apple’s strict rules will prevent developers from using this new store for test or demo software. I agree with all of those points. And that’s why I’m wondering if this store won’t instead lead to this new type of app environment.

Yours truly, two days ago:

The worst scenario would be: “simple apps” are sold in the Mac App Store, “real apps” are available on the developers’ website. For as much as the Mac App Store is a great opportunity and I’m sure it’ll be huge among consumers, I can imagine some developers, frustrated either with Apple’s restrictions or lack of trial support, will end up selling software only on their websites.

Either “micro” or “simple”, it is clear that the biggest issue Apple has to face is convincing the big names to jump on board. Or maybe Apple doesn’t need them, as they’ll come back on their own once they’ll see the money “simple micro apps” can make.

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“Mac Developers Are Laughing at the Mac App Store Guidelines”→

“Mac Developers Are Laughing at the Mac App Store Guidelines”

Jonathan Rentzsch:

Studying the details of Apple’s current implementation, it becomes clear Apple crafted the Mac App Store policies primarily with its own interests in mind, not of its customers and certainly not its developers.

My fellow Mac developers are laughing at the Mac App Store guidelines. They’re reporting that apps they’ve been shipping for years — a number of them Apple Design Award-winning — would be rejected from the Mac App Store. These are proven apps, beloved by their users. The current guidelines are clearly out-of-touch.

Maybe not just its own interests in mind, but there’s no doubt Apple has something to fix here. Does the 90-day timeframe sound like a “let’s gather feedback before the thing goes live” strategy to anyone else? How long before revised guidelines?

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A Tale Of Two Mac App Stores

In our previous Mac App Store coverage we focused on how, among other things, it will be very likely that Apple won’t allow the release of “trials” and “demos” in the new Store for Mac. As Mac developers also noticed and wrote in blog posts, it’s unknown at this point whether Apple will introduce new rules for volume licensing, educational discounts and other purchase systems Mac developers have been using for years on their websites.

The fears and doubts of Mac developers are worth our consideration as Apple has a huge deal on its hands, and nobody wants to see Apple “screw up” with an App Store on the Mac. So let’s just consider this: what if Apple doesn’t change the rules and understands that the Mac is ultimately different from iOS when it comes to customer experience? What if the first version of the Mac App Store that will roll out in January will be a simple “copy” of the one seen on iOS? In that case, there’s a chance for developers’ websites to stay in the game and become the real alternative to the Mac App Store, and not a “system from the past” headed to disappear. Read more

Mac App Store Review Guidelines Breakdown→

Mac App Store Review Guidelines Breakdown

Nilay Patel at Engadget takes a look at Apple’s review guidelines for the Mac App Store. This caught my attention:

6.2 Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected. This one’s quite odd, as there are lots and lots of Mac apps that look like Apple’s own apps – DoubleTwist looks like iTunes, for example, and almost every FTP app looks like the Finder in some way. And what about an app like Delicious Library, which actually inspired Apple apps like iBooks and iPhoto 11’s new books interface? This one’s going to be hard to enforce in a reasonable way.

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Mac App Store: What Do Developers Think?

The announcement of the Mac App Store caused mixed reactions between developers and users alike. We don’t know if the App Store will work on the Mac platform, where we’re all used to software licenses, developer websites and no restrictions, but it’s very likely that Apple will nail this one once again.

MacStories polled a few developers about the subject, and I collected some thoughts from around the blogs of other devs. Here’s what they think of Apple’s latest plan for the Mac. Read more