April 2011
3 posts
Getting Started With Core Motion in Cocos2D
The gyroscope in the iPhone 4 and the new iPod Touch are great sensors for accurately detecting the device’s motion. When combined with the accelerometer data, the Core Motion framework can return a measurement called ‘Attitude’ which is a set of numbers that describe how the device has moved from a frame of reference. Attitude can be difficult to accurately explain in text, but completing this...
Inspecting UI Details
The devil’s in the details. I can’t think of many disciplines in which this statement is more true than in that of UI design where attention to subtle detail can mean the difference between an ok-looking design and a great one. If you’re interested in learning how to create a good UI, or at least understand one, studying great designs is key. And inspecting each carefully placed pixel to see...
Sharing on Twitter and Facebook Should Be Easier...
Game: “Would you like to share your high score on Facebook/Twitter?” User: “OK” Game: “Great. Just login here.” User: “Oh…No Thanks. See, I’m really lazy. I don’t feel like typing in my username and password on this tiny little keyboard. The iPhone’s auto-correct always messes up my username and I have chubby fingers so I never really...
March 2011
2 posts
Achieving an Embossed Text Effect With Interface...
The embossed text effect is a subtle, but key detail in creating the ‘iPhone look’ for your app’s UI. In fact, you will see this effect in every single one of Apple’s apps that ships with the iPhone. If you’re not familiar with the term ‘embossed text’ open the Clock app and tap the Alarm button. Notice how the word ‘Alarm’ appears to be embedded in the Navigation Bar so that if you could...
Lite Versions - Still An Effective Marketing...
When indie iPhone developer Ethan Nicholas made headlines with the $600K he made in one month selling his iShoot app, he cited the game’s lite version as his sole marketing effort. Soon afterwards, free/lite versions became the de facto marketing technique for the indie dev to push their paid apps up the charts. That was two years ago and the free/lite version promotion technique has been...
October 2010
1 post
iOS Dev Conference Round-Up
I just got back from iPhoneDevCon yesterday. I learned a lot, had a great time, and met a lot of interesting people. If you’ve never been to an iOS Developer Conference, you really need to attend at least one. Not a lot of indie devs have the big bucks to shell out for WWDC, but for a quarter of the price you can attend a number of other great events:
Upcoming
GDC Online - Oct. 5-8 -...
September 2010
2 posts
Top Grossing In-App-Purchase Business Models for...
In last week’s blog post, I examined The App Store Top 100 Grossing rankings over the course of one year, and found that the average purchase price of a Top 100 Grossing app had decreased. This decrease was facilitated in part by the 11 Free apps that made it onto the Top 100 Grossing charts. Today I’m looking at what In App purchase business models these apps are using to produce...
The App Store One Year Ago Today
The App Store is an ever-evolving and rapidly expanding eco-system. Today I’m taking a look back at a snapshot of The App Store from exactly one year ago to see what’s changed since then, and to find out if there’s anything I can learn from those changes moving forward. I’m focusing my comparison on the Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Grossing charts since those are the charts...
June 2010
0 posts
App Store Approval Criteria Comes Straight From...
Last night @rustyshelf began a lengthy dialog of tweets with other developers about how his iPad app, My Frame, was being removed from The App Store by Apple for seemingly vague reasons. Here are some key tweets to get up to speed:
Just got off the Phone with Apple, they are going to pull My Frame out of the App Store! Get it while you still can! http://bit.ly/b1m2wr
@xavierverhoeven no they...
May 2010
2 posts
5 tags
My DIY iPad Case
Traveling to and from 360iDev, I realized I needed an iPad travel case since wrapping the iPad in a thick layer of t-shirts wasn’t really convenient. Rather than support the ongoing extortion practiced by iPhone/iPad accessory manufacturers that sell $0.50 bits of plastic for $35, I decided to make my own. Using glue, some super-soft fleece fabric from Hobby Lobby, and a $0.99 book from a...
March 2010
2 posts
Apple is blocking spam apps and imposing new...
Earlier today I stumbled across a blog post from Mobile Roadie founder Michael Schneider about the company getting a phone call from Apple. According to the post, an Apple representative contacted Mobile Roadie and informed them that ‘cookie cutter’ apps which do little more than pull feeds from web sites or reproduce websites with webviews will no longer be accepted in The App...
She's Amazing. If She Were an iPhone Dev...
I’ve had the good fortune of being invited to speak at this year’s 360iDev Conference in San Jose which is billed as “the Premier iPhone developer conference in the world”. If you’ve been to 360iDev before, this year the organizers are promising it will be the biggest 360iDev yet with 40 sessions, 3 panels, almost 40 speakers, and 5 different hands-on training...
February 2010
1 post
Apple Fixes App Store Release Dates (sort of)
iPhone app release dates have always been a cross-your-fingers issue for iPhone app developers. In 2009, if devs wanted the visibility of a category’s New Release list, they had to go into iTunes Connect and change their release date to the current day as soon as their app was approved. If a dev waited too long (more than a 24 hours), the opportunity was lost and the app would not appear...
January 2010
1 post
Opening the Facebook App to Your Facebook Fan Page
I decided to donate my first blog post to Mobile Orchard, my favorite iPhone development blog. Check out the article to learn how to get more Facebook fans by opening your Facebook fan page within the Facebook iPhone app and allowing users to become fans in a single tap.
December 2009
1 post
My New iPhone Dev Blog
I’ve been doing iPhone development for almost a year now with my company Blackout Labs. I’ve had some successes, some failures, and I learn something new almost daily. It’s been a great journey which has been made far less difficult thanks to the aid of the iPhone developer online community. I’m taking another step in becoming more involved in this community by sharing...