Whale Trail And Free-To-Play
My friend Mills from app maker ustwo has an awesome interview up with TouchArcade. I’ve been a longtime fan of Mills and what his studio does. Heck, I’ve even interviewed him before. He’s a great, sincere guy who loves what he does, and it shows.
He’s in charge of one of my favorite games in the App Store, Whale Trail. Due to the game not making enough money, it will soon be going “free-to-play” with in-app purchases and all that jazz. The new game elements sound intriguing, and I hope it works out for Whale Trail and ustwo after the transformation.
Biases aside, I’m not kidding when I say that I have spent countless hours playing Whale Trail on my iPhone and iPad. I’ve even gotten a few of my friends hooked on it because it’s that much fun. I have no clue why it hasn’t seen the success it deserves. Grab it for a cheap $1 in the App Store now. Seriously. It will consume your life.
Apple Has Helped Create 466,000 U.S. Jobs Since 2008
Apple recently announced that it has payed over $4 billion to third-party developers since the launch of the App Store on July 10, 2008. Apps are an essential part of the modern smartphone, and Apple continues to pave the way with the growing success of the App Store year after year.
Sparked by Apple’s initiative, 466,000 U.S jobs have been created through what is now called the “App Economy.” Jobs include those that now develop for other platforms, like Android and Windows Phone.
Two App Stores
Marco Arment:
App Store A: Simple, shallow games and apps with mass-market appeal. These live and die by the App Store’s “Top” lists, so success is difficult to achieve and is short-lived at best, but with the largest potential payoff for the lucky few at the top. These apps are developed quickly and cheaply, and are rarely updated once their initial popularity (if any) dies down. Very few are priced above $0.99. Impulse-buying is king, with most purchases happening on the phone itself, and most buyers don’t know or cares whether you’re an established developer unless your name begins with “MLB”. Nearly every best-selling app falls into this category.
App Store B: Apps and games with more complexity and depth, narrower appeal, longer development cycles, and developer maintenance over the long term. These tend to get little attention from the “Top” lists, instead relying on the much-lower-volume App Store features (e.g. “Staff Picks”), blogs, reviews, and word of mouth. More of their customers notice and demand great design and polish. More sales come from people who have heard of your product first and seek it out by name. Many of these apps are priced above $0.99. These are unlikely to have giant bursts of sales, and hardly any will come close to matching the revenue of the high-profile success stories, but they have a much greater chance of building sustained, long-term income. Due to the likely lower revenue cap, these are usually developed on small budgets by individuals who can do most or all of the work themselves.
These two stores exist in completely different ecosystems with completely different requirements, priorities, and best practices.
I totally agree with Marco on the division. I see the importance of App Store A, but I get really excited about App Store B.
Tweetbot for iPhone Makes Twitter Fun Agin
Tweetbot is a new Twitter client for the iPhone that I’m absolutely in love with. Check out my full, in-depth review on iDB.
This IS the kind of review you want for your app.
OpenAppMkt- An App Store for Your iPhone Web Apps
Apple has a strong hold on the iOS app ecosystem through the App Store. Excluding jailbreaking, there is no way to install a native app on iOS apart from using the App Store. However, some developers, including large companies like Google, have begun to create things called “web apps.” A web app is simply an iOS optimized web site that is added as an icon to your home screen through Mobile Safari’s “Add to Home Screen” feature. While not as integrated or feature-rich as native apps, recent web apps have proven to be surprisingly powerful.
Google Books for Managing Your Reading Life
Read my latest article on the iPhone Download Blog about using Google Books on your iPhone.
CloudApp on the iPhone - Your Options
CloudApp is a popular, free file and link sharing app on the mac. (I reviewed the app when it was in private beta about a year ago.)
The CloudApp developer team has been promising an official iPhone app for awhile now. There have been no signs that an official app will be released soon, so recently two different 3rd party apps for CloudApp have surfaced on the App Store.
Is it worth it?
Google recently released a HTC phone running their new open source operating system called Android. This phone has been anticipated as the iPhone’s arch-rival and something to shake up the cellular market. Apple has their totally locked down OS (operating system) and iron grasp on what goes into the iPhone. But is this G1 phone something that’s gonna make either current or potential iPhone users switch, or is it just something to satisfy a few geeks? The G1 had one of if not the biggest amount of pre-orders (over 1,000,000) in cellular market history, but it hasn’t really made itself known now that it’s been publicly released.
Don’t get me wrong the G1 has a lot going for it, but is it enough to convince the average user to pick it over the iPhone? It has some things that the iPhone lacks, such as a real full key board (something that has been one of iPhone user’s biggest complaints), turn-by-turn navigation, and most important- an open source operating system (any 3rd party application can be installed without the approval of Google or T-Mobile, and the source code can be re-written which allows one to edit the whole system). But with an open source OS comes problems, security is a HUGE risk especially for a common user who doesn’t know what not to do.
The stance that Apple takes in having a monitored OS is very legitimate, the common
everyday user will most likely screw up their phone if they are allowed to do anything and download anything. There are plenty of “rotten apples” out there that some guy in a basement wants you to download to corrupt your phone, so Apple makes their users use the App Store and iTunes to download content.
Apple’s stance in this situation makes a lot of sense, but the geeks in the world want more. Grandma may not care that she has to do everything through Apple’s store, but the more tech savvy users have voiced complaint.
Now Google has delivered what the open source, Linux loving fanatics have clamored for, but is it really going to be enough for sales?
I think it all depends on what you are looking for in the G1:
the ability to manipulate your phone to do anything and everything
a full, real keyboard
turn-by-turn navigation
Now let me clarify about the first point, I realize the iPhone can be jail-broken as well, it just isn’t like that out of the box. You can potentially make the iPhone able to download 3rd party applications and such as well, but it really damages the iPhone’s overall elegance and interface. You wouldn’t be able to install updates for your phone from Apple, etc. It takes away the iPhone’s compatibility and easiness, which gives the phone it’s elegance.
So in the end I think for the most part the iPhone is the way to go. Now I’m not and Apple fanatic by any mean, it just hits the mark. It’s amazing because it can be used and manipulated by the tech savvy, and my 65 year old uncle can use it and it makes sense to him. The UI (user interface) is top notch and it’s got all the bells and whistles. You could even jailbreak it and install 3rd party apps if you really want.
The only thing that you may want it is the real keyboard, so the G1 would be the way to go for that.
Sorry Google, you usually make great stuff, but I don’t think this phone will help you take over the world.
