Firefox Imagines a Tablet Version
Firefox put out some concept images of what their Firefox browser for tablets could look like. Interesting.
Apple Makes Lots of Money
Apple announced yesterday that they made tons of money. They didn’t use those words, but I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
Some salient facts:
- Apple posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion.
- Apple posted a quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share.
- Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter.
- Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter.
- Apple sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter.
Motivation : Lacking
I just read an article over at Funky Visions about motivation. Why bother polishing an app to the n’th degree if it seems like it won’t make a difference?
I can totally relate.
I’m working on my latest app, and I’m getting close to done. I just need to fix a few bugs, maybe add a small feature or two, and get better icons for it. At this stage of the app creation process I tend to drag my heals. What if I release this app onto the store and nobody notices? What if it sells as well as my last app (very poorly)? Sometimes I think I’m better off not releasing the app at all versus being faced with disappointment when the app fails to impress.
I can’t say that I’ve found a solution. I’m trying to polish this app a bit better than the last one. I’ve got a cool new skinning feature that lets the user decide the colour scheme of the app. I’ve just added Bump functionality so that users can share data with other users. I’m in the process of hiring an artist to do some work that I did myself in the last app. At the end of the day, though, I can’t say I’m any more comfortable releasing this app into the wild than my previous app. I’m still trepidatious and don’t want to face the disappointment.
The biggest remaining problem is that I’m not a marketing guy. I see lots of articles about how not to market your app. And how releasing an app without a marketing push behind it is suicide. I’m still trying to figure this stuff out. Lots of the advice I see out there is for people who already have contacts. Who can already send out a tweet and have thousands of people read it. But I’m a nobody. Nobody reads my stuff. It’s hard coming up with a plan. Hopefully for this next app it’ll have some better coverage. I’ll have to see.
Bad Naming and Icon
I was so very proud of the name I thought up for my Crate 33 app. After all, it’s a music app, and record collectors often store their records in crates. On top of that LP’s rotate at 33 RPM. How very fitting!
It’s slowly sunk in, however, that “Crate 33″ is a really bad name. It took a while. I was so proud of the name that I didn’t want to admit that it was a poor choice. But now I realize that the name really has to go. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s clever. Clever doesn’t sell apps. The name really should be more descriptive. Ideally, it would even contain a search term the user might use to find the app. So I’m going to relaunch the app with a new name in a little while, after I’m done the app I’m working on now. I’m also going to get a new icon for it.
The icon story is a bad remembrance. I had originally commissioned an artist to work on the icon. But he gave me no concept sketches, no ideas, and just ran with an idea that looked way too much like a different app’s icon. (I warned him several times not to go that way, but he was like a dog with a bone.) So I let him keep his deposit and cancelled the project. This was my first try at hiring someone to do some art for me, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to try again so soon, being once bitten twice shy. So I created my own icon for the app. I knew it wasn’t awesome, but I thought it was good enough for now.
The problem is, “good enough for now” doesn’t cut it. An app’s icon is the first thing a user sees about the app. In retrospect, the icon really is terrible. I really should have gone with the icon the artist was working on, or got a new artist to create a new one.
I am about to try using oDesk to hire a graphic designer to create some in-app graphics for the app I’m working on now. Hopefully if that works out I’ll get him/her to create the icon as well. And if that works out, I’ll get him/her to redo the icon and maybe some of the in-app graphics for Crate 33 before its relaunch as well.
I’ve never hired anyone from oDesk before and to be honest I’m somewhat leery. I am kind of putting it off, saying to myself that I want to get my app as functionally complete as possible first. My app is getting close to done, so I’m going to have to do this soon.
Wish me luck!
Crate 33 is Available!
I’ve finally released my first paid app to the App Store.
I release the app to the App Store with fear and trepidation, I must admit. What if nobody buys it? What if people think the price is too high? What if people think my website for the app is too unprofessional? What if people have problems with the app?
Here’s a screen shot I just took from with the App Store app, showing my app as a new Music release:
Pretty cool, huh?
Diacarta App [Update]
I just downloaded one of the coolest looking apps ever onto my iPhone. But I don’t use it.
Diacarta is a calendar app that lets you create and view calendar events in a rather unique way. I don’t want to try to describe it when a picture is worth a thousand words, so here:
You have an AM and a PM for every day, and you can graphically see when your appointments are, and you can associate one of many icons to each appointment. It’s a very beautiful app, but there were a couple of problems:
- When an event goes over an AM/PM boundary, it is confusing to see what is going on.
- Some very basic icons are missing. There’s no icon for a meeting. Or for games.
- I still don’t know what the button in the bottom-right of the screen does.
- No iOS 4 support. It would be nice if it had fast switching, but it doesn’t.
- Many of the icons are small and hard to touch. Often, there’s space around them that could be included as touchable area, but isn’t.
- I thought I’d be able to change the start and end times of an event by dragging my finger on the circle. No such luck.
All these things are forgivable, though. There is one thing that is not forgivable. There is no iCal or Google Calendar integration! I spend quite a bit of time looking for it, because I just could not believe that a calendar app would not have this feature. It’s not in there. So now I have to see if they’ll ever come out with an update with Google Calendar support. I won’t use the app until it does.
Update: The developer contacted me and told me that several updates are in the works. Several of my wish list items will be addressed, including the big one! Can’t wait.
New App Almost There
I submitted my Crate 33 app to Apple on Monday but yesterday I pulled it because I found a bug. Disappointing, I know, but don’t want there to be any obvious bugs in my app.
So I fixed the bug and now I’m going through the app again to make sure there aren’t any other bugs I’ve missed.
This will be the first app I create for myself that I’m going to charge money for. I’m almost hesitant to release it for fear that it won’t do well.
I hope to resubmit to Apple this weekend.
Finding Apps
Blinders on a horse keep distractions at bay and help the horse to focus on the direction of movement. Blinders on an app developer, however, aren’t such a good idea.
As an app developer, I want to monitor many sources of information that’ll help me as a developer. Staying hunkered down in my home office as I pound out code might get me some success. If I know what’s going on in the iPhone world around me, however, I’ll be able to direct my energies better. That’ll probably lead to more success. I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds by both other iPhone developers and also by iPhone news sites. I like to know what developers are thinking, and I like to know what users are thinking. Plus the coding tips I get from developers are great. One of my favourite developer blogs is iPhone Development.
There was a hole in my vision, though, that I only recently filled. Even though I subscribed to news sites, I still wasn’t getting a taste for the apps out there. I used the apps I had, and only rarely did I find new ones. This had to change. So I got myself an iPhone app called Chomp. It puts a set of apps in front of your face to review, and you can review, ignore them, or dismiss them forever (among other things). While I do review apps every once in a while, I mainly use this app just to see what’s out there. I quickly look at each app and usually I dismiss it forever. Sometimes I bookmark it and sometime I get it. It’s nice that the app has a feature to get the app right then. I’ve found several apps I like using Chomp, and when I get a spare minute or two in the day, I often boot up Chomp and go through a couple dozen apps quickly. The Chomp interface is good for that. While Chomp does allow you to select a category of apps to review, I also wish I could select a category of apps not to review. I’d like to be able to look at all app types except games. I don’t really care about iPhone games.
Featured App: Pollen
The Pollen app was the first app I did for a client who knew exactly what they wanted down to the pixel. Their wireframes were so detailed, it looks like they looked into the future, took screenshots of the app, and put the screenshots into the wireframe.
They specified fonts, image sizes, backgrounds, timings (for the progress indicator), and everything else down to the smallest detail.
This made estimating the app a lot easier. It also made actually creating the app a lot easier too. There was no second-guessing the client and then having them come back with changes.
It was really nice.
Here you can see the splash screen. The problem was that the splash screen wasn’t showing for long enough. The client actually wanted people to look at the splash screen. So they requested that I make the splash sequence longer, and that I add the progress indicator.
Here you see the first image after the app is done loading. It’s a map of the country, showing pollen concentrations. I download the latest image from the internet and fade it into place over the last image downloaded. I think it’s a pretty cool effect, and it wasn’t too hard to do.
Here is the video list. It changes depending on what’s available on the client’s site. So more pollen report videos become available over time.
Last up, this is the info page with information about the app and the pollen website and service. The link brings you to the website, prompting you first.
Push is Better
In my last post, I bemoaned two Push applications that weren’t working quite right for me. Unfortunately for me at the time, my timing couldn’t have been worse for either of them.
Because now they’re working just fine.
GPush went through some teething problems when it was introduced, but now it’s working splendidly. I turned off the sound notifications, but left on the alerts and badges. So now I’m always aware of incoming Gmail, yet at the same time I’m not being constantly annoyed. I heard that the number of customers experiencing GPush problems now is very small.
Boxcar has gone through a similar transformation. You’ll see on my post that a representative from Boxcar offered to help me with my problems, but I suggested that I’d wait it out. That turns out to have been an excellent idea, because now Boxcar is working great for me. I personally use Boxcar as a replacement to text messaging. I refuse to pay my carrier that much money for such a small service. I now have Boxcar and BeejiveIM, which together give me a much better, and cheaper, solution than text messaging.
It would be nice if the iPhone had a a little light on it that would glow if you have a pop-up alert waiting for you. Kinda like the Blackberry, I know. But it would still be handy.
So now I’m a happy Push camper. Now I just need a Push app that’ll tell me where my kids are…