iPhone Development Blog

In a previous post I outlined some of the difficult choices developers face in deciding to embrace In App Purchase in free apps to allow users to upgrade to a full version.

The issues include:

• No upgrade path provided by Apple for current owners of a paid version.
• Difficulty in breaking into the free top lists on the App Store.
• In App Purchase requires OS 3.x and wireless access to the App Store.

Some of my clients have solved these issues by offering two versions of their apps on the App Store:

1. A free app with In App Purchase to upgrade to the full set of features.
2. A paid app with all content or functions already enabled.

If you have already been offering your app as a paid version and a free lite version, the only difference with this approach is the addition of In App Purchase to the lite version.

While this resolves most of the developers’ issues, it doesn’t help reduce the clutter on the App Store.

Update: I just noticed that Riptide Games have come to a similar conclusion after their experiments with In App Purchase. They also detail some of their statistics on sales and conversions. Recommended reading.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

I just noticed something in iTunes 9 which I’m sure has been there in previous versions. But since it was new to me, it might be new to a few of you as well.

At the bottom of the top-level pages in the iTunes Store there is a collection of text links. The last link in the last column is called Change Country. When you click on that link you get to select a country from a large list. After you click on a country you will now be viewing the iTunes Store for that country.

Why is this useful for iPhone developers?

• You can see the ranking of your apps in other countries.
• You can see which apps are most popular in other countries.
• You can read reviews of your apps from other countries.
• You can see which apps have localized app descriptions.

At the bottom right corner of the top-level iTunes Store pages there is a round flag icon that indicates which country store you are currently in. Clicking on this icon has the same function as clicking on the Change Country link. This can be useful to know since the Change Country link is often localized to the language of country you’re viewing. So it’s not always easy to know which text link to click to get back to a language you can read…

Some interesting observations:

• The iTunes Store is available in 76 countries. The iPhone is available in 86 countries. Does that mean people in 10 countries do not have access to the App Store? I’m guessing that countries like French West Indies, Reunion Island and U.S. Virgin Islands where the iPhone is available, use their “parent” country’s iTunes Store. Can any of my international readers confirm this?
• The App Store top lists, New & Noteworthy, What’s Hot and Staff Favorites are all unique to each country store.
• The top lists in music are much more homogeneous than the App Store lists. I guess the music labels still have some global marketing clout. Who is going to take on this role for apps?
• The iTunes Store only has 7 official languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish. So you will only see app descriptions in these languages. (The iTunes UI is localized to many more languages than these.)
• There is an exception to the rule of app descriptions in only 7 languages. If you have an app that is only available in your own language (not English) you can write the app description in that language in the place of English in iTunes Connect, and then only make the app available in your country’s App Store.
• You cannot login to a foreign iTunes Store with your existing iTunes account. Therefore you cannot purchase apps or write reviews. (It is possible to create an iTunes account without a credit card. This also works after you select a foreign country. But in order to purchase anything you need to have a valid billing address in that country. So the utility of this technique is limited.)

Did you know about this iTunes feature already? What have you used it for?

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store, iTunes

This week has seen the departure of two high profile iPhone developers: Joe Hewitt and Rouge Amoeba. This is a big loss to the iPhone development community.

Rouge Amoeba details the story of the rejection of their Airfoil Speakers Touch app and presumably that was the straw that broke the camels back. I think this case has some interesting aspects that are worth discussing. I will not take sides, since I don’t know all the details of what has transpired between Apple and Rouge Amoeba.

There has been an interesting exchange between Jeff LaMarche and John Gruber about this case, which to me highlights the difficult position that Apple’s App Store reviewers are in. The iPhone is a computer that is constantly connected to a network, but it happens to be disguised as a phone. The complexity of the applications that you can write for the iPhone is astounding. The Airfoil Speakers Touch app is a great example of a complex application that involves streaming audio over a network from another computer. When a very experienced iPhone developer like Jeff LaMarche is not clear on the details of where images that show up in the UI are coming from, how is an App Store reviewer (presumably without a developer background) supposed to understand how an application like this is architected?

Since Apple is unlikely to completely do away with the App Store review process, what can be done to make it better?

In Rouge Amoeba’s case maybe getting an engineer at Apple involved earlier could quickly have resolved any technical questions Apple might have, and then they can make an informed decision on merits instead of possible misunderstandings. To not overburden an already bogged down process, there should be a limit to how often you can call in engineers to review your case. Maybe you have to use one of your golden support tickets. (And they could borrow the process from American football where a team who challenges the ruling on the field does not get charged a timeout if the ruling is overturned.)

I think the bigger issue is transparency. (Regular readers know that I’ve been on this soap box several times in the past.) In the beginning Apple could be excused from being overwhelmed and making up rules as they go. But now, 15+ months later, it’s time to publish the rules. All the rules.

It’s the uncertainty and apparent randomness that is making life hazardous for iPhone developers and companies who depend on the App Store for a living.

Maybe Apple still doesn’t know all the rules and all the details. That’s ok. The American legal system works in a similar way with case law. There is a limited number of laws that have been legislated and then courts interpret those laws and apply them to real-world cases. The key here is that courts’ decisions are published for all to see and learn from. I know this is a gross simplification and a system that is not without controversy, and bad decisions. But I think there’s enough similarity for Apple to adopt a similar system.

If every App Store rejection was published by Apple, including a detailed explanation of the reasons, all developers could learn and avoid mistakes made by others. Developers would win in such a system. I think Apple would win even more with a less clogged review system and much happier developers.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

In the last week a lot has been written about Apple’s change to allow In App Purchase in free apps. Here are some of the more informative articles I’ve found:

Thoughts on In-App-Purchasing For Free Apps
A thorough post by Jeff Scott at 148Apps describing the good news and the bad news for both developers and consumers.

In-App purchases could fundamentally change Apple’s App Store
Seth Weintraub at ComputerWorld postulates that everything will change. The (unanswered) question is how?

In-App Purchase now available for free apps
Marco Arment was one of the first iPhone developers to comment on the change.

Apple relents: in-app purchase for free apps allows demo-to-paid
Another good developer summary by Erica Sadun at TUAW.

Free In-App Purchases Will Change…. Little?
A somewhat pessimistic look at In App Purchase by Arnold Kim.

In App Purchase and the state of iPhone piracy
Much has been written about Apple’s statement that “Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases”. Most of it has been ill-informed speculations by non-developers. In this post Dominique Bongard goes into great depth about the challenges of using In App Purchase to combat piracy. It’s not from a developers perspective, but from someone who has been involved in anti-piracy monitoring.

Do In App Purchases count towards the Top Grossing list?
This is one of the questions I asked in my original article. The answer seems to be yes. Freeverse analyzed the rankings of three of their games on the Top Paid list vs. the Top Grossing list. And Distmo discovered that several free apps have made it onto the Top Grossing list.

iTunes Connect Updated
On October 22 Apple made an update to iTunes Connect. After this update I was finally able to add In App Purchase to free apps, and it was also possible to change the price of an existing app with In App Purchase to free.

iPhone Developer Program License Agreement Updated
When you login to iPhone Dev Center you will be prompted to accept a new iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. I have not compared the entire document against the previous version, but one thing that I noticed had changed was specifically to allow for In App Purchase in free apps.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

I just wrote a blog post on our corporate blog about Apple’s announcement that In App Purchase is now allowed for free apps. This is a huge change and you should know how it impacts you as a developer.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

Today Apple launched the new App Store Resource Center. Calling it “new” is actually a bit of a stretch, since it seems to be mostly a collection of information that was previously scattered in several places. But we should still give Apple credit for the effort. The are moving in the right direction.

I still think my own App Store Rejection Reasons page is a good complement to Apple’s official documents. And I just updated the page with a few new items that I painfully encountered.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

Apple posts their answers to the FCC’s questions.

One of the more interesting items posted was the statistic that “more than 40 full-time trained reviewers” review 8,500 new applications and updates per week, and at least two reviewers study each application. Some quick math reveals that each reviewer spends on average 5 minutes testing an application. That explains a lot.

People are questioning if the 40 full-time reviewers is the entire review staff, or if there is an additional group of front-line reviewers. (Would these people be part-time and/or untrained?) Also, how can 40 reviewers (or really 40 / 2) handle all the languages stemming from 77 country specific App Stores?

Now that I got my frustrations with the App Store out of my system, I promise that this will be the last post on this subject for a while. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

Yesterday I told you about Bikini Blast which was held up in Apple’s approval calamity for four months. Today I’m going to top this by a wide margin. Here’s the story, in the words of my client:

It seemed like a good idea: Build a fun, flirty iPhone app that generates millions of custom pick-up lines on the fly, simply by tapping in specifics of a situation: A user enters the place, time of day and characteristics of his intended date, hits a button and chooses a line ranging from clever to clumsy. And just to keep things under control, the user can choose between lines that are either Safe or Sexy.

The app is called LittleWingman (www.LittleWingman.com) and it tested through the roof. It’s an equal-opportunity app, generating pick-up lines regardless of gender or orientation. And because it contains no graphics, no profanity and no abusive language of any kind, we knew it was a cinch to gain approval from Apple’s iTunes Store. And it did. Eventually.

Nine gruelling months after it was originally submitted.

Why was LittleWingman constantly rejected? As it turns out, not for any specific objectionable words or graphics — it doesn’t have any. In fact, LittleWingman may be the first and only app ever rejected purely for the sexual ideas it stimulates in users’ minds.

Are phrases like “tight-fitting jeans” and “legs” objectionable? Not to most people. But when LittleWingman composed them into the following line, iTunes had a big problem with it:

“I’m tonight’s official legs inspector. I’m going to have to ask you to remove those tight-fitting jeans.”

At first, we thought iTunes objected to words like “breasts” and “ass” — two commonly used words in many other apps. So we replaced those with “casabas” and “tush,” only to be rejected again. Within a week or two, the same canned message came back with the same canned rejection:

At 5:51 PM -0800 3/5/09, xxx@apple.com wrote:
Thank you for submitting LittleWingman to the App Store. We’ve reviewed LittleWingman again and determined that we still cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that LittleWingman does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

We combed through the content again, looking for any profanity or objectionable content. But we could find any, because there wasn’t any. It was the app that was writing the content by itself, based on what the user had chosen.

For example, LittleWingman generated this line for a user who finds herself at a wedding: “Think any of the rabbis at this ceremony can lend us some personal lubricants?” Random? Funny? Hardly as objectionable as a flushing toilet, upskirt shots or jiggling breasts, yet Apple rejected that generated line flat out.

The correspondence flew back and forth, with LittleWingman getting rejected for combining innocent phrases like “kiss” with innocent body parts like “lips” into pick-up lines that resulted wonderfully appealing ideas as to what things people might actually kiss with their lips. Each time, the App Store returned the same canned response, with no guidance as to fixing the problem, mainly because there was no problem there to fix. Unlike the “baby shaker” app, LittleWingman was pure, positive pick-up lines — and healthy ones, at that.

At six months, we thought we had a breakthrough: iPhone 3.0’s 17+ rating was just the ticket to get us past our non-existent objectionable content. We re-submitted and got rejected. Again.

The maddening, automated responses were finally disrupted when, after seven months, a breathing App Store human being actually left a voicemail at our offices. We began the dialogue which, two months later, resulted in LittleWingman being approved — with only two word changes from its original submission. And that, as it turns out, is the main problem with technology: it lacks human judgment, which cost us time, energy — and nine months’ of sales.

It’s been nine months of nuttiness. But at least now the world doesn’t have to struggle with how to approach that blonde at the end of the bar.

NINE MONTHS! Insane. That has to be a world record. And for the sanity of all iPhone developers out there, I sincerely hope so. Maybe I can submit it to Guinness Book of World Records?

You can find LittleWingman in the App Store here. You won’t find it anywhere on the What’s new pages in iTunes, because the date of the app is Jan 21, 2009. Another not so nice side-effect of the App Store approval process.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

This is the second part in a series about iPhone application being rejected by the App Store. You can read the previous part here: 57 Ways To Get Your iPhone Application Rejected From The App Store and the accompanying App Store Rejection Reasons list.

I always inform my clients about the “objectionable content” clause in Apple’s iPhone developer agreement to let them know that there is always a risk that Apple will reject the app and their development investment may be lost. Some clients find this level of risk to be unacceptable, and they walk away from the platform. This self censorship is not good for my business, and in most cases it’s not good for Apple either.

When I was approached by the publishers of this book I didn’t imagine that it would get caught up in the objectionable content morass. The book is political satire and in my opinion hilarious. Each page has a real photo of a famous politician to which Mr. Lee has added his own cartoon style talk bubbles. With the limited amount of text on each page, I thought this would make a great iPhone app. Apple unfortunately thought otherwise. After five weeks in review, the app was rejected because it was “defamatory”.

Steve Jobs famously replied to a developer who had developed an app that counted down the number days remaining of the Bush administration. Steve’s defense of that rejection was to ask why should Apple risk offending half their customer base. I don’t know if that put the kibosh on all apps that could raise some political ire. I didn’t tally the jabs in Election Daze to see if one side came out ahead, but it seemed pretty evenhanded to me.

In the end my client decided to drop the fight with Apple. The presidential election was quickly approaching and their carefully timed promotional campaign was not going to be able to ride the tide of political interest.

My second example is an app that we knew from the beginning was going to be a tough battle with Apple. The client was prepared for this and had the patience and resources to ride it out. The application is Bikini Blast which is a wallpaper download type app with photos of, you guessed it, women in bikinis. (I want to point out that we also developed iWallpaper for this client and that app has a category called “Hunks”. So this is not a gender issue.)

Our client sells wallpapers and applications for many other phones, so he has experience dealing with all the major carriers and their content rules and he used that experience when selecting content for Bikini Blast.

Note to Apple: All the major carries have published very clear guidelines on what is acceptable content and what is not. Furthermore they have outsourced the approval of such content to a few companies that specialize in this. I think this is a great way to establish a policy and then take a step back from the daily headaches of deciding what to approve and what to reject.

Bikini Blast was submitted to the App Store in October 2008. Then we heard nothing. This was before Apple started sending out the “this app is going to take longer to approve emails”. So no email. No phone call. No smoke signals. Just complete silence for FOUR MONTHS. Then suddenly out of the blue in January 2009 the client received the approval email.

I said in the first part of this series that these spectacular rejections and wait times are exceptions. However, the point is that they do happen often enough to give businesses pause before diving into iPhone application development. It is difficult to build a business around a platform when the rules are not known, the wait times are indeterminate, the communication is nonexistent, and there is no way to appeal decisions or even have a discussion with anyone responsible for the process.

If you thought four months was a long time to put your business on hold, that’s nothing compared to the next story. And all you have to do is wait until Monday for the next installment of this series.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

App Store rejections is a part of life for us iPhone Developers. Recently there have been several high profile rejection cases that have garnered the attention and response from Apple’s top level management. This is most welcome news!

I genuinely believe that Apple does not have evil intentions when it comes to approving iPhone applications for the App Store. I think the problems that we are seeing are the bumbling results of a process that was hastily put in place and which is still trying to catch up with the flood of new applications and the many intricate policy decisions required. Apple’s self-imposed cone of silence doesn’t help their cause and it frustrates developers to the point of giving up.

This is the first post in a series where I want to constructively add to the discussion.

The meat of this post is on a regular web page that you can reach from the main navigation on this blog. I want to maintain this page as a comprehensive resource for all the technical things you need to think about and comply with before you submit your application to the App Store. I welcome your feedback and additions to the list.

It is my own experience that most App Store rejections are valid and they make sense, at least when they are explained to us. I also think Apple’s recent moves to pay more attention to copyright infringements is good.

However it’s the few cases where the App Store reviewers seem to have gone off the deep end, that we love to talk about. I’ve had my share of these too, and I’m going to dish out the details in the following posts:

• The story of a mainstream book that was too funny to be accepted. I’m sure you will recognize the name of the author.
• The inside story of an app that broke new ground in the App Store and paved the way for a whole new category of apps. For better or worse, depending on your perspective. That app sat in the queue for four months.
• If you think four months was a long time to wait for an app to be approved, wait until you hear about my own personal record.

But before we get to the juicy stuff, please head over to App Store Rejection Reasons.

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store