Show notes (aka my script) after the break.

Prior to the US launch of the iPad on April 3rd, we see that Apple apparently created 20 eBook-related categories that Apple created specifically for the iBook store. Below these there are 150 sub-categories for a great variety of book categories ranging from cookbooks to erotic novels. This was uncovered by Busted Loop a company based in San Francisco who was dissecting data that Apple gives to their enterprise customers. Busted Loop slices and dices this data for their AppSlice project which aims to help customers find good apps better. Well in any case they will gain some publicity from this stunt getting Forbes to report on their findings.

Personally I hope that the iBook-Store will allow for anybody to publish eBooks, this flood of single-book-apps is really something that gets on my nerves. Barnes & Noble has acknowledged that the have plans to create a competing eBook store. They already have a B&N reader app on the app store, but plans are to also make a new iPad-specific app that’s a shop for books, magazines and newspapers.

The new beta 4 version of SDK 3.2 brings some minor changes. The buttons for video chat that previously caused speculation have been removed. Also there are new gestures supported by the new gesture recognizers which will make detecting of certain gestures  much easier. Apparently the gesture descriptions are now in plists, possibly to allow your own gestures to be configured in the future. Currently you still have to program your gestures yourself with the touchesBegan, Moved, Ended and Cancelled methods. Having this detection built-in will make gesture implementation really simple.

And actually beta 5 of the SDK 3.2 has been released only 8 days after beta 4, a departure from the previous bi-weekly release schedule that tells us that the final version is getting close. With April 3rd set as first availability date of the iPad that’s probably going to be the most likely release date for the SDK as well.

Shortly after the beginning of iPad preordering in the US, a company claimed to have “cracked the code” of order numbers arriving at an estimate of about 50,000 iPads ordered in the first 2 hours. All they did was basically subtract order numbers. In any case we can assume that many iPhone developers are excited to get an iPad into their fingers. Us Europeans still have to wait a couple of months. Most likely because there is a part shortage that causes a bottleneck for outside of the US. The number was later revised to 91,000 within the first 6 hours. Well, without any information from Apple themselves all these statements are nothing but hot air. It’s stating the obvious that the iPad is flying off the virtual shelves faster than Apple can produce them.

Apple has been criticized for having the batteries of newer devices not user-servicable which causes a minor hassle every few years when you want to get your battery back to it’s original capacity. In the case of the iPad Apple also does something unheard of. For 100 Dollars they will not only replace your iPad’s battery with a new one. Instead you get a brand new iPad within one week. Now that’s cool, so battery replacement does not just recharge you, it fully rejuvenates your device. Naturally there is a clause that this offer expires as soon as you pour liquid over the iPad or have somebody unauthorized open it. But I think that’s a great idea, especially since Steve Jobs keeps telling us that all the latest Apple products are “highly recyclable”.

In an interesting move Apple has banned any kind of protective film from their stores. This includes adhesive films as well as cases that come with a screen protector. As usual we don’t know why, but I guess the reasons are pretty obvious:

• the iPhone’s screen is made of glass which is way more durable than other devices screens. Thus the sale of such films conveys the impression that the screens are in need of protection just like those other devices. An emotion that Apple does not want users to have.
• actually I’ve been using my iPhone 3GS without a film ever since I got it and I never have any problem with smudges because of the oleophobic coating. Instead it feels kind of soft and valuable. Apple being interested in maximizing the user experience on all senses probably just wants to get users to experience the touch interface more fully.
• It’s just like sex where you have much more of an experience if you get rid of the condom. Well, now that the app store is cleaned up, we no longer have to fear that we could catch a Sex App Transmittable Disease.

Speaking of accessories: it appears that accessories for the iPad will be even harder to come by than the iPad itself. People see the availability dates slip quite a bit. Now we can speculate that this means that there are way more iPad accessories being sold than iPads itself, thus outpacing supply. Seems too many people want the keyboard dock, the VGA adapter cable for presentations or the SD-Card reader adapter. This tells me that more people are seeing the iPad as a productivity platform than just an eBook reader or surf pad.

Apple has introduced a new feature in iTunes Connect that allows you to schedule price tier changes as well as availability dates of new or updated apps. So you no longer have to guess when a new price tier will come into effect, but you can actually plan a staged approach with a low price introduction going to a higher price after some time. Very useful stuff!

PayPal has released version 2 of their app. It now includes Bump technology to bump money between two PayPal users via bumping together their iPhones. This is interesting for us developers because there is an API by Bump to allow you to add bumping to your apps as well. They claim it’s just 10 lines of code to establish a secure channel between two devices. You know, to have two devices communicate you have multiple possibilities: peer-to-peer bluetooth (if both have bluetooth enabled), WiFi (if both are on the same network) and now Bump. Because Bump goes via any Internet connection you have they can match up two devices regardless of the state of WiFi or Bluetooth. So it’s not just more convenient for users, it’s also a cool method. Have a look at their API if you would like to use Bumping in your apps as well.

Right when the preordering for the iPad started Apple updated the iPad product page with some additional details which we did not know about previously.

• The previously unidentified small button on the right side above the volume control has become a screen rotation lock button. That’s great if you want to read something in bed on your side.
• The iBooks app which will be downloadable from the app store will support the widely used ePub format. You can create such eBooks with tools like Adobe Illustrator. Also you will be able to download any ePub file, put it into iTunes and then synch it to your iPad for reading there.
• The iPad will work with ANY bluetooth keyboard. So if you think that the keyboard dock looks weird then you just put a regular Apple bluetooth keyboard in your backpack. Then you won’t just have a full-size keyboard on screen. You’ll actually HAVE a full-size keyboard with you.
• The iPad will support file-sharing and file associations. You will be able to associate specific apps with their file extensions and if you get an e-mail with such a file you will be able to open the app for it. Also it appears that each app has sort of a public folder that you can see in your Finder as long as the iPad is docked.
• The 3G iPad will indeed have built-in GPS. CoreLocation will work on both the WiFi and 3G models, but for the WiFi ones it will only use the SkyHook service to locate the user. So you still get to use location-based services if you never leave the home with your WiFi iPad.
• Assistance technology VoiceOver on the iPad will be able to read to you any page, apparently in all 21 supported languages. So this could also turn any eBook into an AudioBook.
• Besides of H.264 and Quicktime, the iPad will also natively play motion JPEG files in AVI containers up to 720p. This is probably necessary because it’s still a video format widely used by still cameras. This container is basically just regular individually compressed JPEG files and uncompressed PCM audio.
• Safari on iPad will allow you to play HTML5 video in full screen mode via double-tap.
• Webviews now support auto-recognition of addresses. Previously they could only recognize URLs and phone numbers, not addresses as well which apparently open the Maps app when tapped.
• We now know how the optional SD-Card reader looks like. It’s a small white donge, a little larger than an SD-Card and it goes into the dock connector. There is also a second adapter that can act as an intermediary between the iPad and Photo cameras which have USB.
• Apple has reaffirmed their claim that you will be able to watch 10 hours of Video on one battery charge.
• The mobile iTunes store now also will support browsing, buy and renting movies “on the go”. You will be able to watch trailers and when you are ready to rent you will be able to. Also what you downloaded which away from home you can synch back to your iTunes when you get home. Ah and of course the iPad has a “powerful speaker” built in, so the updated product page tells us.
• The app store will have a special section for apps that support the iPad natively.
• The maps app has a new “terrain” mode. Don’t know how it his fundamentally different from map mode.
• The calendar now supports setting birthday reminders, something that people have long requested.
• The iBooks app has a built-in dictionary. If you don’t know a word in a book you can search for it in the dictionary, in Wikipedia or on the internet.

A developer by the name of Tommy Refene hates the app store and thus thought it would be an interesting  experiment to keep raising the price for his app Zits & Pimples, where you pop pimples. Refenes five months ago raised the app price to $15, leading to three purchases on the same day. Bringing the price up to $50 allegedly resulted in four sales, while fourteen people are said to have bought the game when the price escalated to $299. One person even bought the game for $400 on the same day it was removed. If you do the math that’s 4831 Dollars in 5 months.

But Apple would not idly watch. Probably somebody complained to the App store team, as should you if you see another developer trying to trick the system. The mail address is appstorenotices@apple.com and is good for all kind of abuse. Now apple has finally reacted and pulled the app. Mr. Refene claims that the real reason was that he used swear words describing the app store when he was standing on the stage of the Game Developer’s Conference.

But wouldn’t Apple have pulled ALL his apps if this where the case? I think so. Apple treats everybody the same, but if you try to be a smartass and beat them with their own system then this will happen.

Finally Apple has announced that you can now submit iPad Apps which where made with BETA 5 of the 3.2 SDK. You will get pre-reviewed and receive instructions on what to do to get into the illustrious group of launch titles to be released together with the WiFi iPad on April 3rd.

Do you have any iPad app in the works or adding iPad support to an existing app? If so, why don’t you mail me? I would like to make a blog post mentioning a couple of apps getting ready. For the post I need from you:

• a nice photo so that my readers can associate a face with the app
• one paragraph describing your app
• a screenshot showing the iPad interface in action
• one paragraph describing what you felt was the challenge in getting ready for the iPad

This episode is brought to you by:

Dr. Touch’s Parts Store – easy to use yet professionally looking components that you can use to spruce up your own apps. Augmented Reality, Calendar Control, Pin Lock or Purchase Button are only some examples. You get full source code, no static library crap, and lifetime support by Dr. Touch himself. Check it out today!

The Show Notes (aka Script) below the break…

News

Apple apparently has seen that their recent decision to pull 5000 apps from the store for being “overtly sexual” was a bit overreaching. I say “apparently” because no public communication has occurred, not even to the maker of on swimwear app, who suddenly found his app reinstated. The app by the name “Simply Beach” is available for free and ages 4 and up. So if your taste is for wet and hot, then why not get this app? Even if hot is just by the sun and wet through sea water. The only thing naked on the apps of the simply group is their intent on selling you articles, their apps are catalogs with built in shopping basket.

On association that was key in orchestrating the public opinion against porn on the iTunes is the PTC, the Parents Television Council. The immediately took favorable note and issued a press release applauding Apple’s action. But they seem to be hard to satisfy, the press release quotes the PTC president Tim Winter:

“Apple has taken a positive first step towards eliminating kids’ access to sexually explicit and pornographic content on its product lineup and we applaud the company’s efforts.  Apple has made a responsible move and parents are appreciative of the company’s concern for the well-being of children.”

First Step? Seriously? What else does the PTC try to get Apple to do? Ah, right the next day after this applauding press release the PTC issued another one, their new target being filthy TV shows like “Two and a Half Men”, “Gossip Girl” and “Family Guy”. Apple apparently has been buying advertisement slots around those TV shows.

Only in America…. well, at least none of use are in the TV sitcom business. And thankfully we are not working for Apple, because for these poor people PTC is short for Pain in The Crotch.

Besides of sexy apps Apple also continues to clean up the app store in other areas. Recent victim of this crusade are several WiFi scanners for aledged use of unpublished APIs to show available WiFi networks. One app that did nothing more than quack got rejected for “minimal functionality”.

While we’re still waiting for the actually availability of the iPad a new rumor has cropped up claiming that there are production problems. Apple was planning to make 800,000 iPads per Month and now there might only be 300,000. This shortage could lead to initial availability being restricted to the USA. We will see. Maybe I’ll be buying my first iPad in USA anyway when I attend the Voices that Matter conference in Seattle, end of April.

Also they finally announced availability for the USA, Preorders are possible from March 12th with the WiFi-iPad hitting stores on April 3rd. You will also be able to reserve an iPad and pick it up without having to queue. For other countries they have neither stated the local pricing nor the exact days. Actually initially they announced it in countries like UK and Austria with “Wi-Fi models shipping in late March. 3G models shipping in April. [..] pricing to be announced.” But when I checked later, the UK text turned into “Coming late April” while the Austrian announcement completely disappeared. An interesting footnote can be found on the US site: “This device has not yet been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.”

So there might be several issues plaguing the iPad launch. The don’t get the hardware due the this rumored shortage, they don’t get FCC approval because they give the US government agency too little time and maybe they are also worried about currency exchange rates changing too much between now late April to commit to prices.

By the way, somebody wrote an e-mail to sjobs@apple.com asking if the iPad would be able to tether with the iPhone. To which he got a response: No. So if you want or need to be mobile with an iPad you have to wait for the 3G Version. What actually amazes me is not that the answer is No, it’s that people keep getting a response from this e-mail address. Do we really think that Steve Jobs answers all the e-mails he gets on his iPhone? With an outdated firmware version?

According to apple all display issues with the 27″ iMacs have been resolved. You might remember that there where 2 firmware updates targeting the graphics. Apple told Gizmodo:

We’ve addressed the issues that caused display flickering and yellow tint. Customers concerned that their iMac is affected should contact AppleCare.

We always intrigued by the number of people in the financial industry whose sole job seems to be to make fancy calculations out of the few numbers that Apple slips them.

In a report to clients issued Friday, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty offered one of her patented risk-reward snapshots of Apple (AAPL), this one even more optimistic than the last, thanks to what she sees as two new catalysts:

- The iPad launch in March. Huberty is anticipating unit sales of 6 million in calendar 2010, considerably higher than the Street’s consensus of 3-4 million
- New iPhones in June. She’s expecting new models that offer “both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology”

Tell me if I am wrong, but didn’t those people at least partially cause last year’s economic crisis? So why should be believe one Analyst that predicts a glorious future for Apple? Well, simple really, if you are dependent on the success of the iPhone OS platform then you are willing to give credit to any report that predicts a greatly increasing customer base for all your apps. Millions of new potentials customers?! Let’s get coding!

Ah, and one other thing. Apple has a track record of generally not doing what it is predicted to be doing. If one thing is certain: we will continue to be amazed.

With all the advances in multi-touch input technology it’s only a matter of time until we will see a big trackpad as mouse replacement for Macs. The name most likely will be “Magic Trackpad” as this was on a recent trademark filing of Apple. It would also go together nicely with the Magic Mouse. Gizmodo speculates that it could either be additional sensors for MacBooks which would could detect if you are typing or gesturing and switch on and off parts of an extra wide trackpad. Or it could be a multi-touch gadget for desktop Macs. Maybe we can see something new in this area as soon as June.

Maybe one day I might be able to navigate around multiple files in Xcode with only gestures. But actually I’d prefer if Apple invested their innovation in things like automatic code generation or at least realtime syntax checking like Microsoft’s Visual Studio has it for several years now. Right now I have to frequently hit CMD+B to see my errors.

Apple has relaunched the Mac developer program. Previously you had several choices ranging from free for just Xcode, 500 Dollars for the entry level and 3500 Dollars for the big version. Apple admits that the model they introduced for iPhone developers is more successful and so the made the Mac program more like the iPhone program. So they dropped the price and removed hardware discounts. Now the only thing missing for the revamped program is that Apple starts an app store for Mac apps. Now that would be really something.

About

Jean Francois Martin tells us about his love child Ultimate Password Manager, more about it on tinysofty.com. He also recommends his iPhone Development Blog buildingiphoneapps.blogspot.com

This episode is brought to you by:

Dr. Touch’s Parts Store – easy to use yet professionally looking components that you can use to spruce up your own apps. Augmented Reality, Calendar Control, Pin Lock or Purchase Button are only some examples. You get full source code, no static library crap, and lifetime support by Dr. Touch himself. Check it out today!

My Show Notes (aka Script) below the break…

News

Wired Magazin showed off how the digital interactive iPad-Version of their magazine could look like. Though it might be something of a shock to use hard core Cocoa coders. Adobe built the prototype for Wired in AIR. They use a component that’s called “Packager” to recompile the Adobe AIR output into an binary for iPad. The demonstration is really gorgeous, the are aiming for a release in Summer. You know I might start reading magazines again which I had quit because I did not want the waste of glossy paper on my environmental consciousness. A digital subscription might be similar to the current print subscription of Wired which is $40 domestic US or $70 international.

Erwan Macé has fallen into the pool. That in itself is not such a remarkable feat, but he had his iPhone in his pocket which got soaked as well and would no longer start. Still nothing unusual. But Erwan, instead of throwing the iPhone away, took it apart and documented it all on his blog. And when he put it back together it worked again. Let this be a lesson to us all: if you happen to fall in the pool, just dry your iPhone after you have stopped laughing.

Apple likes to remind you that if you want to offer video streams to iphone apps which are in duration longer than 10 minutes then you have to use the HTTP Live Video streaming protocol. There has to be a fallback stream wit no more than 64kbit which will be automatically used if network conditions are not able to support more.

This essentiassly means: NO to RTSP. On the frequently asked questions there is this interesting question and answer:

What advantages does this approach have over RTP/RTSP?

HTTP is less likely to be disallowed by routers, NAT, or firewall settings. No ports need to be opened that are commonly closed by default. Content is therefore more likely to get through to the client in more locations and without special settings. HTTP is also supported by more content-distribution networks, which can affect cost in large distribution models. In general, more available hardware and software works unmodified and as intended with HTTP than with RTP/RTSP. Expertise in customizing HTTP content delivery using tools such as PHP is also more widespread.

Also, HTTP Live Streaming is supported in Safari and the media player framework on iPhone. RTSP streaming is not supported.

I know from my contacts in the media industry that RTSP is still widely used, especialy for radio over the internet. But if you want to play with Apple then you have to switch to the HTTP Live Streaming standard.

Apple has added 9 new countries to the long list of where you can sell your apps. Those are: Armenia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Jordan, Kenya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda. Those might not be very big markets, but they sound like there might be a niche for some special apps catering to the specific cultural needs of these countries. Now the iPhone is available in 94 countries, with two more coming soon: Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea.

This made me wonder how many countries there really are. I had always estimated around 70, but I was way off as a quick search on Wolfram Alpha proves. There are actually 203 sovereign states on our planet right now.

According to Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention of 1933, in which a state must have

1. a permanent population
2. a defined territory
3. a government, and
4. a capacity to enter into relations with the other states

Now you know, Apple will soon have 96 out of 203, so just about half. So world domination is still a bit off. But we’re getting there.

Apple has silently increased the WiFi download limit first to 15 Megabytes, now to 20. It is generally believed that this is because hybrid iPad apps require double the amount of artwork to support both resolutions. It is anticipated that the first non-3G iPads will be in stores in about a month. However it is strange because to my knowledge there still is no method in the 3.2 SDK to actually create hybrid apps. Also there is yet no final version of the 3.2 SDK which Apple would permit submitting iPad apps with. I get the feeling that there won’t be any iPad-optimized apps on the app store at launch time, except for the iWork apps by Apple themselves.

Last week the Mobile World Congress happened in Barcelona, Spain. Even though Apple itself was not involved in it in the least, the iPhone stole the show. Most vendors, when asked, said that their solutions worked on iPhone, ah and yes, with little effort also on symbian or Android. So it’s kind of interesting to see the result of Apple’s active non-involvement in trade shows. You know, this year also was the first where Apple did not attend the MacWorld. It appears that their strategy really works, by not attending they permit all the other small fish who swim in Apple’s water to flourish. Which in turn underlines their vision of being a platform rather than a vendor.

Roughly Drafted Magazine unearthed the best theory so far as to the real reason there will never be Flash on iPhone OS devices. It’s the “mouse-over problem”. Most current websites using flash require a visible mouse pointer for interaction and actions will happen if you move the pointer or hover over certain objects. Like video players would show the controls if you move the mouse. Multi-Touch has no hovering. That would cause a lot of Flash boxes to not work properly. Which would in all likelyhood annoy people way more than not being able to see a banner ad trying to get us to punch the monkey.

Apple has dramatically changed their stance towards apps which are “overtly sexual” in nature. For about a year it was possible to sell such apps provided that your iTunes description and screenshots are 4+ rateable. There is an organization by the name of Parents Television Council, which describes themselves as “The nation’s most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence, and profanity in entertainment with more than one million members and growing”. This organization has recently started a campaign (or should we call it crusade?) against Apple to “stop Apple providing porn to kids”. They explain, quote:

Apple is allowing the sale of pornographic applications for the iPhone in its iTunes store, with the content then being downloaded onto the iPhone.  Some of these applications are free to children and adults; and links to web sites that lead to even more explicit pornography are also given on iTunes. And even if teens do not purchase or download these “apps,” Apple provides samples of the pornography on iTunes for all to see.

Typical content has included items with names like “Shawna Lee Private Dance,” which shows a porn starlet with her hand down the front of her bikini bottom fondling herself; “Love Positions Free,” with a drawing titled “doggystyle” showing a couple having sex; “1001 Boobs Lite;” and “Tasty Pasties 18+ Amateurs” (at one point, the 11^th most popular “app” out of thousands on iTunes). All of these applications are free – and available to children.

Please help us hold Apple responsible for providing pornography to children. Call, e-mail, or send a letter to Apple, and tell them to remove pornographic content from their phone apps and iTunes store.

What obviously happened is that lots of members of the PTC contacted Apple to complain about this. Apple trying to a family-friendly company sent out app pull noticies with this wording:

The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application *beep* contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately.
We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that *beep* complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review.
Sincerely,
iPhone App Review

In total about 5000 apps where pulled from the store, the general theory is that this is also meant as spring cleaning before the extra-family-friendly iPad becomes available. Apps of the usual adult publications like Playboy continue to be in the store. When asked why this is the case, Phil Schiller responded that their sexy content had been available previously in widely accepted form.

So to summarize, if you want naked flesh, go to Android, because that’s where pissed off adult-app-providers are now going.

Somebody who apparently has early access to a pre-BETA version of iPhone SDK 4.0 has unearthed evidence of future video-chat functionality. There are some buttons with telling names as well as symbol names containing the terms VideoChat and iChat. So it is very likely that iPhone OS 4.0, which will very likely be presented at WWDC 2010, will include videoconferencing features.

Earlier reports as to what graphics hardware is included in Apple’s A4 chip where false. It was reported that the iPad would use a ARM based graphics circuits. However it has been confirmed by Apple now that indeed the iPad also has PowerVR SGX on board.

Using OpenGL ES on iPad is identical to using OpenGL ES on other iPhone OS devices. An iPad is a PowerVR SGX device and supports the same basic capabilities as other SGX devices. However, because the processor, memory architecture, and screen dimensions are different for iPad, you should always test your code on an iPad device before shipping to ensure performance meets your requirements.

Fun

Have you ever wondered how many oranges it would take to power an iPhone? the answer is 2360 according to UK-based marketing company Imperial Leisure. You know that lemons or oranges produce a bit of electricity if poked with different metals. They did it for publicity but it still is an interesting experiment. Obviously this is without practical application. If you cannot charge your iphone you’d probably be cheaper of if you simply bought a new one instead of all those oranges. You know, Lithium-Ion batteries come pre-charged you’d still be able to make some phone calls with it.

Interview

My guest is Barbara Gavin from Pearson who is organizing the upcoming Voices that Matter iPhone Developer conference.

SPECIAL SAVINGS! You can save $100 off the conference fee by providing priority code PHBLOGS when registering. Register before March 12^th and save a total of $300 as this $100 discount is combined with the early bird pricing!

This episode is brought to you by:

Dr. Touch’s Parts Store – easy to use yet professionally looking components that you can use to spruce up your own apps. Augmented Reality, Calendar Control, Pin Lock or Purchase Button are only some examples. You get full source code, no static library crap, and lifetime support by Dr. Touch himself. Check it out today!

My Show Notes (aka Script) below the break…

News

Obviously the biggest news is that Apple has officially unveiled their top secret new device. It is named iPad in contrast to previous rumors that it would be called iSlate. It is basically building on their experience with iPhone and Aluminum Unibody form factors to make a tablet that promises to blow away the competition in the niche between Smartphone and MacBook. Here the rationale behind the iPad, I could not sum it up better than Steve Jobs himself:

6:48 – 9:02 of iPad Presentation

The multi-touch tablet that is the iPad is supposed to be great at all the tasks mentioned, give you 10 hours of battery live, over a month of standby. Almost all iPhone apps that are currently on the app store will run on the device. That’s either in native resolution in the center of the display or if you touch a 2x button in the lower righthand corner all pixels are doubled horizontally and vertically. That’s sort of a compatibility mode.

iPad apps can also have a native display mode and there Apple forces developers to make their apps work in all orientations. They say that the user does not really care about the home button and regardless if which way he holds the iPad he expects to see a useful UI.

To demonstrate that the iPad can also be used for getting work done Apple also announced a version of each iWork application that is specifically remade for the iPad. Pages, Numbers and Keynote will be available for $10 each. There will also be a multitude of accessories. You can output the 1024*768 resolution to a monitor or projector via VGA-cable. You can connect a keyboard via a specific dock.

Finally Apple told us the price point for the iPad which ranges from $499 for 16 GB and Wifi to $829 with 64 GB and 3G. This is way below what the pundits thought Apple would charge and will make iPads affordable for very many people. The models without 3G will be shipped around April, with 3G one month after that.

With a device that was as much anticipated as the iPad of course there are some people who are very disappointed in the offering:

• it does not run OSX
• there is no Flash and it is unlikely there will ever be
• there is no USB or SD-Card slot
• no camera, therefore no video conferencing

But bear in mind that nobody has actually used an iPad so all these rants are just venting of unmet expectations.

After the iPad announcement Steve Jobs held a townhall meeting at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino. Wired reports some interesting details:

Two of the biggest topics included Google and Adobe.

On Google, Jobs confirms the much-reported competition between the two companies.
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says.

As for Adobe, Jobs said they are lazy and Jobs blames Adobe for a buggy implementation of Flash on the Mac as one of the reasons they won’t support it.
Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

MacRumors has some more leaked infos:

• Apple will deliver aggressive updates to iPhone that Android/Google won’t be able to keep up with
• iPad is up there with the iPhone and Mac as the most important products Jobs has been a part of
• Regarding the Lala acquisition, Apple was interested in bringing those people into the iTunes team
• Next iPhone coming is an A+ update
• New Macs for 2010 are going to take Apple to the next level
• Blu-Ray software is a mess, and Apple will wait until sales really start to take off before implementing it.

A good question is: what is this Apple A4 chip that powers the iPad? OSNews reveals that it’s in fact not just a CPU but in fact a system of a chip meaning that it combines CPU, Memory Controller and all other parts necessary. The Apple A4 consists of an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, the same processor that powers the NVIDIA Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon. The graphics unit is a ARM Mali 50-Series. The key thing to note here is that this is all mostly ARM IP; Apple and P.A.Semi have little to do with it. Since Apple doesn’t have its own chip factory, this thing is produced by Samsung.

That’s it for iPad News.

Despite rumors that Apple has halted production of 27″ iMacs due to intermittent display flickering they still published a firmware update. It’s Called “27-inch iMac Display update” and carries version number 1. The description reads “Updates the display firmware on 27-inch iMac systems to address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering.” Let’s hope that this solves the problem, I have been lucky to not experience any of the reported display glitches.

Apple releases new iTunes Version 9.0.3 to address some minor glitches. Do you remember that iTunes kept forgetting your password for purchases even though you selected the checkbox to remember it? This update is supposed to fix that. Other fixes address certain stability problems.

Even though there already is a 3.2 SDK available for getting your feet wet developing iPad apps, Apple has published version 3.1.3 with several security fixes and improvements. Besides of being more secure against malicious things they fixed something about the battery level on 3GS which seemingly had been misrepresented. Also something about third-party apps not starting. Maybe this addresses the problem that I’ve been having, that sometimes you could no longer build&debug an app from XCode. We’ll see.

Apple wants to remind you that CoreLocation is a nice method to add additional value to your apps. Though they also mention that there has to be a benefit to the user when he is asked to provide location information. There seem to have been quite a few apps that only need location information to provide this info to advertisers. Such apps will be rejected by the app store review team. So if you don’t use CoreLocation for anything in your app, then be sure to disable location information in the API so that the user does not get this dialog.

Apple has been building their web version of the iTunes Store mostly focussing on music first. Now they also added web-based views for apps. So if you take one of the http URLs you get from iTunes by right-clicking on a link, this now does not forward to iTunes, but instead you arrive at “iTunes Preview” which looks almost identical to the store page. If you still want for people to go directly to iTunes instead of the web version you have to use itms instead of http in the URL.

Command Guru wrapped The iPhone Reality Show. In this show 10 developers from all around the world designed and made an iPhone app from design to shipping it in only 7 days. The episodes of the show are available in iTunes and online. On the website you can also download full source code.

Opinion

My guest in this episode is Andreas Heck, maker of the Super Trumps Card games for iPhone.

The show notes aka my script you find after the break.

News

On January 27th Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the fabled iSlate tablet computer. The only concrete information had been the time and date and an invitation to see Apple’s latest creation. It is unlikely however to be something in an existing product line. The artsy look of the invitation suggests something colorful and not sticking with a pre-existing frame of reference.

So far we can guess that the iSlate will be a 10 inch tablet with two dock connectors so that it can be used in portrait and landscape mode. It will use an advanced multitouch metaphor like we know it from the iPhone and sources tell us that there will be a steep learning curve for the brand new interface as multitouch gestures will be the main source of navigation.

The iSlate will run apps made with iPhone SDK 4.0. For this purpose you get second simulator with the SDK, one for iPhone and one for the tablet. When building your app you will not have any difference between building for tablet or iPhone, only when submitting it for review you will have to specify which platforms you can support.

The iSlate has media consumption as primary focus, but Apple is also considering vertical market applications, like in hospitals to replace traditional clipboard and paper. Since the app store has been one of Apple’s most lucrative inventions we can be rather certain that this will also be the preferred mode of getting apps onto the device. This restrictive policy has long been said to be the major drawback for using the iPhone for corporate applications but at the same time rumors tell us that iPhone OS 4.0 will make the mobile devices more like PCs. One immediate effect we can think of is that we will finally be getting bluetooth keyboard support for all iPhone OS-based devices as well as a possibility to use the iPhone or iSlate as multi-touch input for your desktop Mac. Possible also as additional wireless display.

The consensus is that the iSlate will have to have between 5 and 8 hours of battery life to be a useful mobile device which you could carry around meetings without having to recharge it all the time. Having GPS was one rumor, but in the very least we are going to see Core Location via WiFi so that you can use cool mapping applications on the slate.

Finally about price: the sweet spot for which there currently exists no device in Apple’s product line is between 500 and 800 Dollars. Since Apple has a history of putting the price towards the absolute upwards pain threshold it could be as high as 1000 Dollars initially. Though since Apple has learned from the mistake of having an exclusivity deal with AT&T it is likely that mobile providers will offer deals where you get the tablet for maybe $700 with 2 year contract.

Well we could be totally wrong, rumors about the tablet exist for over 10 years now, ever since Apple made these two famous concept videos “Future Shock” and “Knowledge Navigator”. I have links to these on my blog. I am convinced that these portray the vision that Apple has been working towards feverishly. Though we still won’t be getting an AI as digital personal assistant wearing a bow tie who is able to usefully answer our calls and do our bidding. Or will we?

In any case you can bet that I’ll be glued to the meta blogs of all the major sites as the announcement is taking place. Judging from what we saw on 2010 many people seem to think that this year will be the year of the tablet. We would be astonished if Apple won’t try to do with this market what they already did with the iPhone or iPod.

Interview

Today I am having Lee Armstrong of pinkfroot as guest, maker of the first commercial app using DTAugmentedRealityController: Ships Ahoy!

The show notes aka my script you find after the break.

News

Apple announces … no actualy they didn’t announce it as such, they mentioned in passing on a telco conference that in the 18 months that the app store is open they hat 3 billion downloads. Wasn’t it just recently that we reached 1 Billion? Seems that nobody doubts the success of the app store any more.

TUAW did an open survey with manual tabulating of the wishes iPhone users have on the next big iteration of the iPhone OS. The most wished for features where:

• Most people asked for a different lock screen and/or
• A new customizable home screen, that’s location aware
• Being able to access it via vertical swiping
• Some sort of method to better categorize your 11 full pages of app icons on the phone
• 80% of respondents asked for Flash, even if it’s a bad idea.
• 70% want to be able to lock the orientation, like if you are reading on your side in bed.
• 65% want to be able to remove Apple apps especially if you purchased an app that does it better
• 60% would like a shared Documents folder
• Also 60% would like support for more video codecs to be able to get something from sites with Windows Media videos
• And finally, 50%, would like a proper disk mode for the iPhone.

I also participated and my main request was to be able to develop and sell widgets for an improved lock or home screen. With so many people requesting this, I think I was dead on. It would be great if we could develop widgets and also sell them for 1 dollar a piece. Widgets would be much easier to make if they are similar how you program them on Mac or Windows. But the perceived value is much higher because you see them all the time as opposed to this 4$ app on page 11 of your springboard.

Apple supposedly ordered millions of LED flashes to go with 5 megapixel camera sensors. So future iPod Touches and iPhones are likely to be the recipients of those. And it also makes sense have in a flash, iPhone users keep their phones on them all the time and there are many situations where you still cannot make photos due to low light conditions.  Also the competition does not sleep and Apple simply has no choice but to catch up on the next iteration.

Good news for us developers! Apple appears to have supercharged app store review process as of beginning of 2010. We’re getting reports that some apps have been approved in as little as a day or even less, a couple of hours in one example. Since this significant  improvement started around the beginning of the new year we can assume that Apple has hired way more staff just for reviewing apps. New staff would start at the beginning of a month naturally. Or do we think that these where simply Apple’s New Year’s Resolutions? Probably not. Apple does not resolve or announce. They produce facts, aiming to keep the world in a state of constant astonishment.

Apple has introduced two now statusses for apps: Invalid binary and Upload Received. The really seem to like giving names to the various stages of the submission process. I’m sure we’ll soon see a “Steve Jobs farted” status if your app is giving Apple’s CEO indigestion.

Apple would like to remind you once again to make sure you have good keywords to increase visibility of your apps. You can assign or edit keywords for each update to your binaries.

An interesting recent introduction are vanity-URLs of sort. Instead of using the Apple app ID you can now make itunes links to apps and developers. For apps you write http://itunes.com/apps/appname, for developers http://itunes.com/apps/developername. A combination is also possible: http://itunes.com/apps/developername/appname. This is all very easy if you have a simple name. I tried it out with several variants but I could never find a working URL leading to my company. itunes.com/apps/luckywheel worked though. There is a detailed guide on Apple’s site telling you what to do with special characters.

Apple has acquired mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless after having lost the bid on AdMob. Shortly after that I found a targeted spam e-mail from Quattro in my inbox asking to basically switch to them. I call it spam because it pretends to be not, but it makes the following mistakes:

• your address is in the BCC
• it pretends to have a personal relationship with you by claiming that somebody at Quattro found your apps to be “looking great”
• it claims to be by a single person, of title “Business Development Manager” aka “fisher for customers”
• BUT even though it is written in a familiar tone he does not mention my name,
• nor where he got my e-mail address from

According to the buy’s LinkedIn profile he is doing this job for 8 months, so he should know better than to try convince serious developers to switch to Quattro by means of a spam e-mail. You’re either in the targeted advertising business or in the spam business, you can’t be both. Shortly after I tweeted about my dismay Mr. Boffoli sent me an e-mail stating that he’s sorry for the “numerous mails” and that we will take me off his list. The subject of the e-mail was “opt-out”. He just doesn’t learn.

Cult of Mac reports that there is a bug in the power management functionality of the Magic Mouse. It will report batteries that are half-drained as empty. An experiment proved that this seems to be really be true. So we Magic Mouse users are again waiting for Apple to issue a fix via software update. In the meantime make sure you have new batteries available should you reach the threshold.

A good idea why there where no iPhone OS updates recently is that because the same SDK is used for iPhone, iPod Touch and iSlate you have lots of references to the tablet throughout the SDK and even OS. So that’s probably why the next update will bear version number 4 and be published after Apple finally makes public their next bombshell, the iSlate. If rumors are true in as early as two weeks.

Interview

On this episode I interviewed Ortwin Gentz of FutureTap who together with Luc Vandal of Edovia recently open sourced InAppSettingsKit.

Subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes

My script (aka “Show Notes”) after the fold below.

The News

As promised Apple turned off the iTunes Connect site. But fortunately for all of you who cannot live with their daily dosage of sales data you can still get to your reports on the address itts.apple.com. This is the site that hosts the daily and weekly sales data all along, but usually Apple want you to log in via iTunes Connect. But with ITC being down you can still go there and log in with the same credentials. I made a fix in version 1.0.15 of MyAppSales to go directly to the ITTS site if iTunes Connect is down. Other report downloading services and applications report that they continue to work as they where going via ITTS all along.

Yet another video grabbing app has been approved into the app store. Generally it now seems that the private method to grab the screen is no longer contraband.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog deducted the dates for the Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 to be June 28th through July 2nd. How did they get this date? Well, the Moscone Center is booked solid around and on these dates there is a placeholder “corporate event” scheduled. We have no confirmation that this is in fact by Apple, but unless they have another venue, then this is a very good bet. So if you a a professional, then you better block this week in your schedule and start saving.

And save you must, one ticket is around $1300 and there have been quintuple-packs for about $5200, that’s about a thousand each. Add another thousand for a cheap flight, accommodation and food, so it’s about a months salary for most people. So if you put away 333 Dollars each month for the next 6 months you will have the funds.

Also July 29th 2010 will be the date when the exclusive deal with AT&T ends. We can already smell the iPhone going to be available with other carriers. So Mid of next year we will in all likelyhood see an even bigger explosion in market growth. Good for us developers. More carriers mean more customers.

Tablet rumors have gotten much more interesting due the MacRumors reporting that Apple has approached a couple of big developers and asked them to prepare their apps for running in “full screen resolution”. Usually you would take a shortcut and hard-code the sizes of views to something that fits on the iphone. But view as well as interface builder support that views can be resized and would autoresize their children. So if a button is set in a certain distance from the lower left border it would stay there if the view is resized.

It appears that Apple will demo something in January that has a higher resolution that iphones but will still run binaries compiled for the current SDK. Now this could be multiple things. It could be a 7 or 10 inch tablet. Or it could simple be a renaissance of the TV-output with higher resolutions if you use an iPhone as game console. You might know that you can play videos via the USB connector on TV-screens, but currently not play games or use apps in this mode. This might be around the corner. So that’s something that gets us to jump into the new year with a feeling of immediate anticipation of what Apple has cooked up.

Meanwhile the Financial Times discovered that Apple has reserved the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on January 26th, the same location used for the last iPod event which featured Steve Jobs’ return to the stage. MacRumors has evidence that Apple registered iSlate.com as early as 2007. So let’s call it that from now on until we know better. iSlate is a nicer name than iTablet or iPadd anyway.

A senior Apple employee was caught stating “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet,” and a former Apple staffer quips that “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

So, thank you Apple, you certainly know how to get our hopes up. We’ll be looking forward to doubling our app store sales when the masses flock to the super-cool iSlate and want to purchase our apps to run on the big screens.

Subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes

My script (aka “Show Notes”) after the fold below.

The News

Swedish National Broadcaster SVT created a website at DearSteveJobs.com asking Steve Jobs to quickly approve they app. The video demo shows how you can watch swedish TV shows directly from within their app, possible this being the problem that Apple has with the app. I suspect that Apple might prefer if SVT put their shows on iTunes. Though this is an interesting precedent and we have seen Apple approve the Knocking video streaming app after the developer wrote an e-mail to Steve Jobs.

9TO5 Mac reports that about 3%, that’s one in 34,  product searches in the UK are for iPhone or iPod Touch. While that this does not mean that all those people are actually going to GET an Apple device under their Christmas tree, it still is good news for us developers as it means that interest in our platform continues to increase. And by the way Apple continues to rake in the cash from way increased sales across all products in their forth quarter. More people getting Apple devices mean a bigger market for selling apps.

Developers report that currently reviews seem to start much faster. One developer tweeted that his app went from “waiting for review” to being “in review” within 2 hours. Clearly Apple has bulked up on their stock of reviewers for the pre-Christmas push everybody is expecting. ‘Tis the season!

Apple sent out another reminder e-mail to tell us that iTunes Connect will be closed over Christmas:

Dear iPhone Developer,

iTunes Connect, the tool you use to manage your applications and access your reports, will be unavailable December 23 through December 28, 2009.
Access to iTunes Connect will resume on Tuesday, December 29.
Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

So if you are doing any kind of Christmas promotion, be sure to make your changes on December 22nd and take note that your reduced prices will have to stay in effect until December 29th. Also you should sync up your report downloader until the very latest possible day and ignore messages of unavailability until it starts to work again. You also won’t be able to submit updates to your apps during this period. And if you want to give away copies for your apps, then stock up on promo codes as well.

Some well known developers report of problems with the update process. One tells us that he decided to have his update have a higher minimum iPhone OS version. But the iTunes servers got out of sync. So they served and permitted installation of the new OS 3 binary on iPhone OS 2 causing crashing upon app start. We can easily imagine that the formerly pristince ranking went straight down to 1 due to thousands of complaints. This unlucky guy has an installed base of around 70,000 users, a quarter of which is still on iPhone OS 2. Apple has still to officially respond or take ownership of the damage done.

So currently it might be smarter anyway to delay major updates until the new year or as of such time that Apple manages to get the iTunes servers back in synch. Maybe the coming downtime will be used for this as well. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

If you ever get feedback from a BETA tester that your ad-hoc build does not work, then you might be facing a jailbroken iPhone. If the device was jailbroken with blackra1n we found the following problem: you cannot use the “-o kill” extra flag for code signing. This optional setting causes launchd to kill the app if the signature is invalid. For an unknown reason blackra1n aparently prevents ad-hoc signatures for being correctly verified causing this kill to be occuring. To prevent the problem from happening, simply don’t do a -o kill for ad-hoc builds. App Store builds don’t have this problem as our tests have shown.

Speaking of jailbroken device troubles. If one of your customers reports that InAppPurchases don’t work and that he is getting a message about his account not being a sandbox account then you know two things: a) it’s a jailbroken device and b) the user has installed an app by the name of AppSync. AppSync allows for synching pirated apps by patching the installation files to be installable without iTunes. And to do that it seems to lock the device into sandbox mode if there where no previous purchases. To get InAppPurchases to work tell your user to remove your app, remove AppSync, re-install the app and then do the purchase.

According to a post on a cracker forum the reason for InAppPurchases not working is that in order to install unsigned IPAs they need to patch installd which in turn causes the described problem. That’s good for us developers because it causes an extra hurdle for people willing to put cracked software on their iPhone. As more and more apps feature InAppPurchases users will have to decide whether they want to be able to use AppSync for easy installation of pirated copies or if they instead want to have the possibility of purchasing additional content and features for their favorite apps.

App Tip

Don’t forget to open todays window on appventcalendar.com. There you get one free game every day until Christmas. Because of this I don’t give you an app tip today for an external app, but instead like to highlight the Nike+ app which is to be found on every iPhone 3GS. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been doing a short run every weekday and I always had the Nike+ app running so that I can record the running stats for my Nike+ online profile.

If you are running and using an iPod to listen to music or podcast while doing so, I definitely recommend getting a Nike+ receiver for your shoe. It’s like $20 or so and as a technophile I can vouch for the motivational effect this has on me doing sports. I was using Nike+ on my iPod Nano previously, and I was excited to learn that they finally built the receiver into the iPhone 3GS.

To enable the whole thing all you need to do is stick the chip to your shoe in some way. No need to get extra Nike Shoes which have the space to put the sender under the sole. You can carve out the space yourself with a sharp knife or you can use some duct tape to mount it. Because the sender has nearly no weight it is easy to mount it on the shoe.

Then you can enable the Nike+ app in the general settings of your iPhone 3GS and you are good to go running. Next time you plug in the phone the training data gets sent to Nike+ online where you can view stats on how you are improving and you can take part in events where your distance is counted either as part of a group effort or for yourself in a race.

You can also directly challenge other Nike+ runners. So if you are running and use Nike+ then let me know, we’ll either go head to head or maybe we can do a race against Android developers.

Performance Tip

A few days ago I reverse-engineered Apple’s Calendar View for use in my own apps.There one month basically consists of up to 31 views which I was alloc-initing for every day. And when a day rectangle moved off screen then I would evaporate them individually. This worked fine on my MacBook Pro iPhone Simulator, but it turns out, that this is a bad idea on device, because it would noticably slow down going quickly from one month to the next.

Generally if you can avoid this, then do so. Alloc-init for views takes relatively long. So what I did for my CalendarView was to create a NSMutableSet and before I would call removeFromSuperview on my views I would first addObject them to the set. Next time I needed a day view, I would check the set if there was anyObject and if yes I would reuse this, making sure to retain it before popping it from the set.

A simple trick like this is quite similar to what you are used to doing with tableview cells. But my performance tip of the week is that you can do the same for every kind of view that you like. Just throw them into an unordered and mutable set. In my case this made my calendar smooth as butter.

I found my way of distributing MyAppSales and AntiCrack very rewarding and so I will be making available the source code for my Calendar implementation under the same terms. You donate any amount of dollars you feel appropriate to my PayPal account oliver@drobnik.com, note that it is meant for CalendarView and I will send you access details for the svn repo where I am continuing to develop it. So you get the benefit of getting production grade code with appropriately defined interfaces and at the same time you are able to ask for specific features or customization capabilities that you might need for your work. This way I myself benefit from your ideas and by learning how to make my interfaces such that they will work for everybody. Clean, reusable code is my goal.

CalendarView will be the first of many things in my “Dr. Touch Parts Store” where you can obtain high quality components to use in your own projects for a small donation. The concept is that this small amount of money pays for the time I need to continue to improve those, support them and help you with implementing them.

Subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes

My script (aka “Show Notes”) after the fold below.

News

Second video streaming app available. As previously reported Knocking was the first app to allow beaming video from one iPhone to another. Now the USTream app has been updated with similar capability. Previous versions of the UStream apps only allowed recording of video for later upload to the internet. With the new free UStream Live Broadcaster app you can stream video from your device to the web to cater for your “inner reporter”.

More details emerged on the “Molinker Case” where a developer based in China, got his contract with Apple terminated over faking reviews for his own apps. Somebody going by the acronym SCW wrote a letter directly to Phil Schiller documenting the fraud. To which the head honcho responded: “Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.” Molinker, when contacted for comment, responded that they had not heard from Apple but only found their contract going to status “pending”. Their website still appears on Google search result but apparently has been taken offline due to the category 8 crapstorm the media coverage of this case has probably caused. It might be hypocritical to raise a warning finger, when we all are probably guilty of leaving single reviews for our own apps. But now we know what happens if you’re overdoing it.

Tablet rumors. Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner wants to make Apple stock look even more promising and therefore predicts production of the fabled Apple Tablet to begin in February next year. It’s supposed to be sporting a 10.1 inch LCD display, same technology as in the iPhone, no OLED in sight. Launch could be in March or April. What’s interesting though is that apparently Apple has been approaching book publishers and offered them the same 70/30 revenue split that we iPhone developers are getting today. This is an really good deal for publishers who normally only get around 50% of the cover price.

So if you have ideas today that are too big for the iPhone screen, don’t throw them away for lack of feasibility. It is very likely that on the WWDC 2010 we will be getting the big screen multitouch SDK extensions. So you will most likely be able to reuse assets and code for this new platform. I foresee that you won’t be able to run iPhone apps directly on the iTablet, but instead will be able to build separate apps with the SDK. And if development does not work out for you, maybe becoming a book author might be in your future.

There’s another side affect of the iTablet: Due to the disparity of the Euro and the Dollar I could save a couple of hundred dollars on a MacBook if I purchased it in the states. Though it costs 100 Euros or more to get the keyboard changed to German layout. Now the iTablet might be the first device that actually makes sense to purchase while you are visiting the US, say for example attending WWDC because there IS no keyboard to change! I just hope the customs officers believe me when I tell them: “I could not have bought it in the USA, see the on-screen keyboard, it’s German!”

New iPhone is coming next year! Well, that’s not really a rumor. We can assume that Apple will stick to the previous pattern and continue to release a new iPhone every year until the whole earth has iPhones. A journalist had tweeted that manufacturer Foxconn has supposedly received the contract to build the next iPhone. Though, will it really be the a phone? I’ve been saying all along that the S in iPhone 3GS stands for small, and that the medium and large iPhones will be in fact medium and large sized tablets. Or so I goes my letter to Santa Clause. But in any case we have previously heard that the device string of the iPhone 4G has already been seen roaming around in the San Francisco area. Seems that Apple liked the prototype so that Foxconn will be manufacturing it. Let the dreaming begin, what kind of better technology and additional gadgetry it will contain? Maybe a Near-Field-Communication chip?

Since the start of sales in October China Unicom sold 100,000 iPhones. That’s not much compared to 144 million subscribers, but still it’s an indication that it might start to make sense to start making apps specific to this market. Speaking of Chinese, Apple has announced that iTunes metadata can now be localized in 6 more languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Swedish.

After the Knocking and uStream video streaming apps have been approved, now Qik has submitted their previously rejected streaming app. Chances are good that they will also finally land on the app store. So all the big developers know how to grab video from the camera and regular developers don’t. If you search for strings in the UStream Broadcaster app you see that there is a mention of UIGetScreenImage inside. So most likely there IS no API to get the video but they simply make screenshots continuously. Yuck! But it works ok, I tried it out and found the video quality coming from my 3GS satisfactory for ad-hoc broadcasting. So we can assume that Qik uses the very same screen grabbing method as the two others.

Coming to think of it … It’s been very long since the last update to the SDK. So what’s going on? Apple packaging something big into the next SDK version? Or are there no bugs left and everything honkeydorey until the next hardware update in Summer 2010?

Apple release new layout for the iTunes App Store. “A picture says more than a thousand words” you know. So the new design shows an even larger app icon and only the first paragraph of the description. You get the rest of the text via a “more” link. If there is an update then you see right below the first paragraph of the description what’s contained in the latest updated. Below you see the big and beautiful screenshots in a horizontal gallery similar to what we have become acquainted with on the mobile app store. App-releavant stats like the ratings are now in a small box on the lower left.

I must say it’s beautiful and will probably impact conversion rates a bit. It’s old knowledge that attractive pictures sell more goods. And having them so high up means that the user does not have to scroll down. This is what they call “above the fold” on web pages and newspapers. So thank you Apple for making this an even nicer experience for the users who look for our apps on desktop iTunes.

Programming

I posted an article on my blog detailing how to make a PullToReload-Tableview like Tweetie 2.

Subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes

My script (aka “Show Notes”) after the fold below.

News

Apple’s Developer News are now available also as RSS feed. In a feeble attempt to appear more open and communicative Apple had previously implemented a News section on their developer portal. Now the latest news blurp announces that these news are also available as RSS. Unfortunately only the first part of each article. So to get the whole content you still have to click through to the site. But at least now you know if there is some important announcement.

Like for example that iTunes Connect will be closed from December 23rd until December 28th. This means that you will not be able to manage any aspect of your applications or even submit new ones. So if you are planning a Christmas promotion on your apps make sure drop your prices no later than the 22nd.  Also bear in mind that even though it is a separate site on Apple’s server the announcement also specifically states that you will not get sales reports during this period. So I recommend that you use your favorite downloading tool as long as possible so that you also get the daily reports right up to the 22nd. If availability resumes on the 29th you should not have a gap in daily reports.

What could be the reason for such a long outage? I am keeping my fingers crossed that Apple will finally give us developers an API to download our reports the official way instead of having to scrape iTunes Connect as we are doing now. I’ve been lobbying other developers to put in a feature request into RADAR, Apple’s bug tracker, to request that Apple provides such an API. I had gotten a response from Apple that they would consider doing that if there is enough demand.

So please put your Christmas wishes into RADAR reports addressed to Santa Jobs, the location is http://bugreport.apple.com. Usually you would put gripes in there that you have with Apple software and APIs, but it’s also the best and only place where you can request features, like – for example – a report download API. My original reature request, which I entered April 20th 2009, bears the number 6807195. You should mention this number to basically vote for this feature.

I’ve just opened the site myself, let me read you report number 6807195 so that you know what you’d be supporting:

20-Apr-2009 10:16 AM Oliver Drobnik: Many people are looking for ways to download their iTunes Sales reports which are more convenient than going to the website. There are half a dozen apps both in open-source as well as commercial that scrape the site to allow for automatic downloading. At the same time Apple rejects apps that are doing this in a mobile way and cites 3.3.7 of the SDK agreement.

Providing a secure Web API would make all your developers very much happy because then they could create their own tools or could choose between competing mobile downloading tools.

Also waiting for the previous day’s report to arrive is an ideal case for push notifications.

In the very least I urge Apple to create a mobile report downloading app themselves if they absolutely won’t let users access the data they desperately want to have.

By not taking the lead on report downloading Apple causes hundreds of thousands of unnecessary accesses to the report site when people or their scripts are checking if the report is now available. Lots of unnecessary HTTPS/HTML traffic could be prevented if there whas an XML based secure API.

Though bear in mind that this is only a Christmas wish we tool developers have. In reality the only thing that will probably happen during the outage is that Apple will run their annual financial reports for their bookkeeping and they don’t people to go changing the inventory while they count the money. But you know what they say: Hope will die last.

Apple has finally clarified what they want the matter of dates in iTunes to work like. In an e-mail to a confused user they explain:

“The released date displayed on an application page is the date the latest version of that application went live on the App Store. This date will allow customers to be aware of the date this version was released.

On category pages on the App Store, when you choose to sort by Release Date, applications are sorted according to the date the first version of the app went live on the App Store. Sorting by the original app released date creates a list where customers can easily find the most recent additions to the App Store.

Both of these dates are automatically set in the iTunes system and cannot be edited in iTunes Connect.”

Get it? Clear as mud I should say. The point is that they finally fixed the bug to be able to reset the release date every time you did an update. Too many developers where abusing this loophole to make their apps appear as fresh and new to gather additional attention and sales.

Since we now lost release date manipulation as a marketing too, here are a couple of strategies to make most of this situation:

• Make sure you leave the best possible impression for the very short time you are in front
• Do frequent updates so that you app looks cared for
• Have good keywords so people searching for these will find your app
• Sponsor an Ad on the Dr. Touch Podcast
• Make new apps. Take what you learned from your previous apps and repackage this knowledge as new.
• Get people to blog and tweet about your app while it is visible

By the way, you can still the the availability date in iTunes Connect to a future date to prevent availability before this time even though the app is already approved. But who in his right mind would do such a thing? Especially if the review process is still taking too long as it is.

Apple removes apps with fake reviews from the store. The developer “Molinker” has been accused of gaming the reviews for his 1011 apps to drive sales. He had organized a tad too many fake 5-star reviews for his apps. Responding to the outrage Apple removed the developer and all his produce from the store. The same might happen for you if you try to push your own apps by such clandestine means. So please don’t. User your brain power to polish your apps instead of trying to think of a lubricant to shove them more easily down the customers throats.

Proving the fakedness of reviews is relatively easy. In general reviews will cluster around a certain number of stars in the form of a bell curve or at least be uniformly distributed. Now we are aware of a couple of developers who use sort of a review Mafia to purchase hundreds of reviews in certain key markets. I know of one example where you can look through the various big markets and you will see in which of these the developer has clearly purchased a couple of hundred five star reviews. The same app would have like no stars in Austria, but 900 times 5 stars in German or twohundred times 5 stars in France.

One thing puzzles me though There are two riddles: How do I get hundreds of fake positive reviews in markets that don’t have promo codes? And: how much did the developer pay for these reviews? Do we think that this guy has 800 friends who would buy the app? Can a crook be THAT well connected and persuasive?

Only time will tell. Even one major company got recently accused of gaming the reviews: Gameloft. There was a problem with their new app “Modern Combat: Sandstorm” which seemingly prompted a lot of one star reviews. Shortly after the fix became available suddenly lots of 5 star reviews appeared. Gameloft naturally denies being part of this practise, though the author of this article on The Unofficial Apple Weblog found it odd that all the positive reviews had been voted up. By people clicking on “Was this review helpful?” YES.

That’s the other loophole in the process. You essentially get multiple votes with just one purchase. You can set stars, you can write a text and you can find all positive reviews helpful and all negative reviews unhelpful.

Finally there is yet another problem: Fake reviews for competitor’s apps. I know of a shady character who purchases his competitor’s app, leaves a 1 star review with accusations and allegations of bugs and then actually calls Apple to request his money back. Which Apple seems to be rather happy to oblige.

This morning Appsfire announced the Winners of the 2009 Appsfire Awards at the LeWeb which where given to this years greatest new yet unreleased apps.

Winner in the Category Games is Sketch Nation Shooter. Sketch Nation Shooter allows users to create their own games by drawing a player, enemies and a level on a piece of paper and taking a picture of the drawing with their iPhone camera.

Runner Up in the Games Category: Extreme Sheepdog Trials, where you steer your sheepdog by whistling the commands.

Winner in the Utility Category is Here File File. Here, File File! lets you access your Macs’ files (yes – all of your files from all of your Macs!) from your iPhone wherever you are. Browse files and folders, attached storage, network drives, view your files, stream media, and email your files all from your iPhone. Don’t worry about forgetting a file ever again – access your Mac whenever you need to wherever you are!

Runner Up in the Utility Category is Baby Bubbles. An App that helps you log your baby’s every move.

Winner in the Entertainment Category is Cookmate. Ever had a fridge full of food and nothing to eat? Misc items that you’re just not sure how to bring together into a spontaneous and delicious meal? There’s an app for that! And you have found it!

Runner Up in the Entertainment Category is ISSUU Mobile. A magazine reader app.