iPhone App Happy

2010-08-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

a little diversion from iPhone apps...

2010-08-25T21:00:00.001-07:00

OK, I don't usually go off into "where'd this come from" land, but in this case, I'm going to make an exception. I've been looking at ways to become more productive, and have found thus guy, Mark Joyner, who happens to be an internet marketing genius. He's also an award winning author, with books in marketing and productivity. Where was I going with this... Oh yeah, I remember now :)
So anyway, this Mark Joyner guy has a website (and book) called "Simpleology - The simple science of getting what you want." I've been reading the book, pretty easy read, and full of things you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. His site has a bunch of courses, dealing with everything from productivity, to building an internet business of your own.
You can find his site at www.simpeology.com. Go check it out, you'll be glad you did.

New release out, and a good resource...

2010-07-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, first the new release...
A couple nights ago, I released a new version of EZ-Groups. The new version fixes a couple bugs, was iOS4 tested, and has a couple new features. The bugs were nothing the users would notice (or at least I hope note ;)) I just saw a couple issues in crash reports that I cleaned up.
The real changes the users will see, are I've added an index down the side of the All People view, much like the phone as on its address book, and I added the ability to see which groups a person is associated with. This is handy for someone who wants to quickly see that their softball buddy, also bowls with him, or friends who also work with you. The best example of how this can be used, was actually the inspiration to the change. The user uses this app to organize contact information for people in public life, and adds them to groups according to committees and organizations they're a part of. Now, not only can he see that "John Doe is a member of ACME Charity", but he can also see who else he has as a contact, that is also a member of that charity.
More changes are coming soon, along with changes to Bracket Man!

And finally, I found this great forum for iPad resources, check it out!

Another new app!

2010-04-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

You have an iPhone. You love your iPhone. How do I know, because I love mine! ;)
it does so many great things, yet even with this incredible device, there is always something lacking. I've just released an app that fills one of those gaps. Introducing, the newest app from smartphonesoftwaresolutions.com, EZ-Groups. EZ-Groups allows you to organize your contacts into groups, right from the phone. If you're like me, you have well over a hundred contacts on your phone. Scrolling through all those contacts can be a pain. Now, you can create contact groups to organize your contacts into smaller, more manageable groups. Need to create a contact list for everyone in the group? No Problem!, with EZ-Groups, you can easily create a new list, in HTML format that can be easily sent to anyone who may need access to that contact list. Great for sports teams, large families, classes, on call lists for work, or anything where someone may need to quickly get a hold of someone on in the list.
You can get EZ-Groups now, on the app store, just $.99

Just found one of my apps on a website

2010-03-09T14:34:00.000-08:00

As I was looking at my hosting reports, I typically look at where links are coming from. I found an interesting one today, for Bracket Man Pro. This was from Best Buy Mobile, giving BracketManPro some good publicity. What really surprised me, is I'm on the first page of this site, featured!
Check it out here

Another release!

2010-02-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know what Apple did over Christmas, but it seems like they did something right. Before they took a week off, it was taking an average of one to two weeks to get updates out. However, after Christmas, I've released a few updates, and each one has happened in less than a week. The latest was to the basketball stats app. I've had a few people emailing me asking for the ability to email stats. I'm not going to say it was the hardest thing I've ever done, because it wasn't. In fact, far from it. What I will say, is there are some nasty little bugs in the iPhone OS that prevent PDF files from rendering properly on anything other than an iPhone or a Mac. So, instead of a PDF report like I originally wanted, I converted it to HTML and sent that as an attachment. It works well, and allowed me to put more stats on than I could in PDF format, so I suppose it was a blessing in disguise. Anyway, the new app is ready and available on the app store.

Bug fixes...

2010-01-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

Just last night, I submitted a new version of my BasketBall Stats iPhone App to fix a bug. Not a particularly big bug, but one of those that causes the app to not feel very polished. So, what was this bug? Well, turns out, I had fouls and stats mixed up in a few places. Not a big deal, I know, but I did get a few complaints, so I thought rather than ignore my users, I'd take care of the issue.
So, we'll see how long it takes Apple to approve this version. Hopefully not too long ;)

BracketMan ready for sale!

2010-01-07T13:35:00.001-08:00

As I'm sure you know, I have a few iPhone Apps on the App Store. Last week, I released new versions of a few of those apps, and to my surprise, Apple found a bug in two of them (doesn't surprise me that it was two, as they are largely the same code base). The bug was kind of obscure, and gave me a good case to go look for a crash I'd seen in the field. In fact, this bug was the reason I posted about debugging with crash logs a couple days ago. Well, the bug was easy to fix, but I knew I would go on the back of the queue after resubmitting a binary, which I figured meant another 2 week delay in getting the apps out the door. To my Surprise, yesterday, I got an email from Apple saying Bracket Man and Bracket Man Pro was ready for sale! This is exciting news, as just a month ago, it took over 3 weeks to get an iPhone App approved and up for sale on the App Store. I had reason to believe things would get worse after Christmas, as Apple announced they would shut down iTunes Connect for several days (meaning nobody could submit apps) during that time. Apparently, they used that time to catch up, because the times have become much shorter since the new year.
The big new and exciting feature in these two apps right now are shake to shuffle in both apps, and admob ads to support the Bracket Man.

Debugging from crash files

2010-01-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

I know this is something no developer ever wants to do, but sometimes it's necessary. You've deployed your iPhone app, and through no fault of your own (we don't code bugs, right? ;) ) some user finds a way to break your app. I mean, who really thought they'd actually click THAT button you put in the middle of the screen and says "CLICK ME!!!!"?
Ok, blame aside, you now have a crash report you need to do something with. Looking at the file, all you see is memory addresses, which, last time I checked, not a lot of developers could take that, and tell you what happened and where it happened. So, what do you do?
Well, fortunately, Apple has given iPhone developers tools to use to map those memory addresses to actual methods and line numbers. The good news is, those tools work really well. the bad news, you need a little more information. The key here lies really in 3 files, that all have to match builds. The first is obvious: the .crash file. The other two, you generated your self, the .app file and a file in the same directory as the .app file, the .dSYM file.
The short version is, the app file is a stripped binary file, meaning all the debugging information has been removed. In iPhone apps, this information lives in the .dSYM file.
To use the .crash file, here's what you're likely going to need to do:
1) Open the .crash file in either console or your favorite text editor (even XCode if you so desire)
2) look for something like "Crashed Thread:" which will tell you which thread caused the problem.
3) in the trace for that thread, which will start with something like "Thread 0 Crashed:" you'll see a bunch of libraries and memory addresses. Look for something from your app. You may see things like libobjc.A.dylib or libstdc++..., Foundation, CoreFoundation, UIKit... In that same area, you'll see something with your apps name.
4) Take, probably the highest, row in the list with your app name, and copy the address, which will start 0x... like 0x00004d42 for example. You'll need this later.
5) In a terminal window, navigate to the directory in which the .app and .dSYM file live. I copy these off to a directory I use for deployed apps, in my case, /Users//Development/distToAppStore//
6) Start gdb with your app. If your apps name is HelloWorld.app, you'd start gdb (from the directory in your terminal like: "gdb HelloWorld.app"
7) now, you have gdb running, type "info line *0x00004d42" where the address is the address you pasted earlier. You'll see something that resembles the line, file and method that crashed, such as
Line 213 of "" starts at address 0x42ca <-[ ]+390> and ends at 0x42d0 <-[ ]+396>

Now you have a great starting point to to find out what happened and fix your app, making your iPhone apps more stable!
Enjoy!

Updated website, finally

2010-01-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

It's been needed for a while now, but I finally got around to updating my website. Funny thing about websites, they don't seem to take the priority they deserve, since we're usually about doing things to make money. However, what we often fail to remember, is we use the web to drive sales. In my case, I use sites to drive people to buy my iPhone apps. I've had little success with this, but that's probably because my sites were, well, horrible ;)
So, after lots of time researching tools, I picked one that I think will do the job quite well, one called RapidWeaver, which I bought from Apple.com, and saved $30 over realmacsoftware.com. The new sites look great, and now have a uniform look and feel throughout the entire site.
So, here's the sites and products they promote:
The first iPhone App is for the iPhone Bracket Manager, a tool I created almost by accident. The funny thing is, I never intended it to have more than about 10 downloads, so I used it to learn Objective-C; basically just hacked together an app, and put it on the store for free. I built it because one of the guys I bowl with was doing brackets by hand, and using playing cards to create pairings for those brackets. As you can imagine, using 8 playing cards (A - 8) to determine a random shuffling of numbers 1 - 8 can be complicated, and as a result, we often had the same people bowling against each other in different brackets. So, I started out to build just a number randomization to do the shuffle, and ended up making a bracket manager. I had over 300 downloads the first week, and about 600 the first month. To date, I've had about 4000 downloads of that first app.
Seeing a potential market, I decided to try to capitalize on the success of the Bracket Manager, but the code wasn't written in a way I could easily extend it. So, I did what any masochistic developer would do. I rewrote it. Completely. Well, not quite completely, but close. I did keep about 15 lines of code. I rewrote it so I could extend it to do other things. The design probably isn't the best yet, but it's good enough, and in development, sometimes good enough is in fact, good enough. The result was a completely redesigned bracket man, and a "Pro" version, the iPhone Bracket Manager Pro. This version took everything I learned while rewriting bracket man, and put it to good use. This time, instead of just a simple single elimination bracket, I also support a double elimination bracket, which was one of the big complaints I've seen in this type of software on phones, lack of double elimination brackets. I figured, as a new iPhone developer, but very experienced developer, it shouldn't be too hard. It wasn't, but the learning curve on more Objective-C did extend my time line a little more than I wanted. The first app took about 6 weeks to get out from scratch. The redesign and pro version, took all of about a month to do both of them, and get them out the door.
The next one, I decided to take on the exciting world of Basketball statistics with the iPhone Basketball Stats Manager. This one, as I've written about before, was a lot bigger than I anticipated, and after a few months of hard work, I finally got it out the door. Sales haven't been stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but they've been OK, about 60 copies in the first month. Not what I'd say is write home about good, but better than I'd expected. I have a couple of updates to get out on this one, one of which is ready and should be submitted to the app store this week. The other will be ready in a few weeks. This should keep it on the "Just Released" section of the app store just a little longer and hopefully increase sales.
That brings us up to date on what's happening in my world, I'll have more posts coming in the next few days with more exciting news from my iPhone development world!

iPhone Apps Sold Well Last Month

2010-01-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, I don't have official results from Apple yet, but last month my iPhone Apps did pretty well. I sold over 50 of the Bracket Manager, and about the same for Basketball Stats. I know, I didn't exactly get rich, but hey, it took me 3 months to make about $90, and last month alone was over $130, which puts me over the top for a check from Apple!
Now, I'm thinking of doing some rebranding of the Bracket Manager to see if I can get it into some niche markets. I've also added ads to the free version. So, here's the plan:

Ad supported free version Bracket Man
Non ad supported paid version of the Bracket Man (not yet created)
Non ad supported version of the Bracket Man Pro

Why So many versions? Well, that's really not that many versions. When you think about it, That's just two apps, one with a lite and paid version, the other with more functionality. Hopefully we can monetize them and start really making some money now!
Have a great new year!

Merry Christmas to all....

2009-12-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

I'd like to start this post with a simple seasons greetings. While I realize many around the world don't celebrate Christmas, I do, so Merry Christmas! For those of other faiths with holidays around this time of the year, I hope your holiday season was full of peace and joy.
Ok, now that that's been taken care of, I have some iPhone app news. As you know, I've been trying to sell copies of a couple of iphone apps on the Apple App Store, one of which, Basketball Stats, I've been trying to actively market myself through the web. One of my methods, was to use a service called Link Share which is how Apple setup their affiliate program for iTunes. Basically, you get an additional 5% on every sale you generate, meaning you can bring your profits from 70% to 75% on sales you bring in. I have some good news! I just noticed I got my first two sales, both on 12/14! I'm not saying that this is the best sales anyone has ever done, but, for a beginner in the internet marketing realm, it's a start.

Another way to monetize iPhone Apps?

2009-12-21T18:06:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since my last post, but that doesn't mean I've been sitting around doing nothing. Instead, while trying to get ready for Christmas, I decided to take a brake a couple of days ago and start looking for other ways to monetize my iphone apps. Well, I found one that looks promising. It's called admob and basically, it's pay per click ads for the iphone. It was a breeze to setup, and now I'm just finishing some testing on my free app before putting it on the app store. One thing to note, I have to get it finished TONIGHT, because Apple is shutting down iTunes Connect from the 23rd through the 28th, so no chance to update during that time. Hopefully, they will be using that time to clear out some back log of apps pending approval, but I doubt it. Instead, I'm sure some lucky group of apps will sit there on the what's new lists for 5 or 6 days with lots of free exposure. Let's hope for the best, and have a Merry Christmas!

The new app, the first week

2009-12-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

It's been about a week since my latest app, Basketball Stats, went live on the App Store. I thought I'd do a quick entry just to recap how it did the first week, and how it's done this week so far. Basically, I would say it's done better than I had expected, but not as well as I had hoped. I took quite a bit of time and put some time into marketing this one. I wrote articles, pointed them back to the web site, of course, blogged about the iphone app, made sure I had good keywords on my page, wrote a press release, and even a classified ad. All these measures did in fact get me noticed by the search engines, but I have yet to make any sales through the basketball stats iPhone App web site. How do I know this? Apple has an affiliate program, where if you sign up, you get 5% of every sale through your site, and as of now, I've had none. Of course, Basketball Stats has sold about 40 copies as of now, which, given it's been out for a week, I'm calling that a small win for a small developer building iPhone apps and putting them on the app store. Hopefully it continues selling at this rate, and I make some money with it while I start building then next iPhone app ;)

The new app is finally on the store

2009-12-12T16:22:00.000-08:00

So the basketball stats app is now on the App Store. I took some extra time on this one trying to setup the website and sales copy. Better than my previous efforts, I think. Previously, I just threw together a bunch of text on a page, and didn't really do anything to format them.
However, this time, I thought about what I wanted to say in my sales copy, had my wife review it, revised it, and finally submitted it to apple. The process took a couple of extra days, but I think it was worth it. Despite a provider spamming the sports section, (400 VERY similar apps on the same day my app was approved, and another 100+ the next day) I've had some sales already. in about 2 days, I've had 16 sales, or more success than I had with BracketMan Pro in the first week.

Status on the new app...

2009-11-27T09:49:00.001-08:00

So it's been a couple of weeks since my last post, I thought I'd bring you up to speed on the latest iphone app's status. I submitted it to the app store almost 2 weeks ago, and it's STILL in review. Apple has changed the status from waiting for review to in review, but as of now, it is still in review (6 days now) and has not been approved for sale in the app store.
I'll post again when the app goes live.

The app is ready, now, the website....

2009-11-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, as you know, I'm building yet another "top secret" application for the iPhone to be deployed in the Apple App Store. Of course, this won't be top secret for much longer. I hope to get it submitted to the app store this weekend. I've decided to take a much more interactive marketing strategy this time, one I didn't take with the bracket manager. First, I've actually thought about the sales copy and website design before submission. The web design isn't the best, but certainly isn't the worst either. I'm using some CSS to format it better, and putting pictures throughout the site rather than all in a row like my first apps pages. I will be going back and retrofitting the other sites as well, but that can wait a few weeks until I get new releases ready for the app store. I'll post again when the current app has been submitted to the iPhone App Store. Hopefully that will be sometime this weekend!

The next app is close

2009-11-09T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm getting really close to submitting my next iPhone app to the App Store. How close? Well, let's just say I'm now working on documentation and a website more than the app itself. I did a quick look through the store, and only found two apps doing something close to what I'm doing. One is $.99 and does very little compared to mine, and the other is quite expensive and does about what mine does, but with a prettier interface. I figure marketing at a reasonable price should make mine sell quite well.
So, given it's so close to going out, I figure now is the time to really go over some lessons learned in this app, some technical, others more project management.
First, technical lessons learned.
It's Really Bad to Return alloc'd Objects
This sounds like a no brainer, but, if you need to return an object, make sure you didn't alloc the memory for it yourself. These objects are easy to leak, and if you try to clean them up yourself, you can end up releasing objects not retained anywhere, resulting in a crash.
Instead, if you return objects (Like a list for example) instead of using "alloc" to create it, use other options. Instead of:


NSArray *array = [[NSArray alloc] init...]; //bad idea

use this:


NSArray *array = [[NSArray array] init...]; //bad idea

The resulting object is safe to pass from method to method, and you don't have to worry about cleaning them up.

The Analyze tool is your friend
The build menu has a "build and analyze" option. At first, I thought this was nice, although not very handy. I was wrong. This is probably the most useful tool in XCode's build menu. Using this, before fixing my methods, I saw 30 or 40 potential issues. I ignored them, because upon looking at them, I was releasing the objects later in the code (again, BAD idea). Using this feature, I fixed all those pesky memory leaks in one swoop, in about 30 minutes, instead of hours it would have taken to run leaks to find the leaks in the first place.

Instance variables need to be referenced with "self"
This is another one of those "duh" moments. In Java, you have the "this" keyword, which references an instance variable. It's not required in Java, but can make your code easier to read, especially in areas where you're assigning an instance variable from a local variable, or visa versa, like in this method:


String str; //instance variable
public void setStr(String str){
   str = str; // which "str" are you setting?
}

It's far clearer to use this instead:


String str; //instance variable
public void setStr(String str){
this.str = str;
}

So, why the quick Java lesson? Well, in Objective-C, not using "self" will not update retain counts. So, if you have, a list for example, and you try to assing it like this:


@synthesize array;
array = [[NSArray alloc]... //retain count not incremented.

and later try to use that array like:


[array objectAtIndex:...];

you'll crash, or at least I did.
instead, both those examples should use the self keyword, like...


@synthesize array;
self.array = [[NSArray alloc]...];
...
[self.array objectAtIndex:...];


@synthesize array;
[self setArray:[[NSArray alloc]...]];
...
[[self array] objectAtIndex:...];

You get the idea ;)
Now, the Project Management lessons learned:
Watch Out for Creep
No, I don't mean that crazy guy down the street who...
I mean scope creep. We all know what scope creep is, but in small projects, in a platform so easy to code in, it's really easy to expand beyond what you were thinking. My original thought was a small app, perhaps two or three views, and within a couple of days, that had exploded to five or six screens and a lot more functionality. Today, as I get ready to release, it's over 15 views, and does a lot more than I wanted originally. Will it make it sell better? Probably. Was it worth the extra time? Don't know, but I'd guess probably not. The only way to know that for sure, would be to go back and build my original idea, and put it out at the same time. But, given that my original time frame was three weeks to get it onto the store, and it's been about six weeks already, with probably another two before going live, I overspent on my time. Had I thought about what I wanted to do a little more, this might have not happened. I may have planned to make this much larger from the start, and I could have budgeted more time (since this is a side project, money is only opportunity lost rather than real dollars).
Find Help if You Need it
As I just stated, this app turned out to be much larger than expected. A little planning on my part, and I might have found some friends to help me bang out some code early on, making this happen quicker. The downside to that, is I would have had to either pay them, or share my profits. Of course, if the first app is any indication, there probably won't be a lot of profit in this one, but my luck, I'd give someone 1/2 my profits on a real winner of an app.

This was really just some of my findings and lessons learned in this project. I'll post about this app again once I get it into the approval process in a couple of days, and again when it goes live. I'll say what it is at that point (I don't want to give anyone a chance at catching up to me ;) )

A quick thought on memory management

2009-11-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

So, the iPhone, with as great of a platform as it is for developers, isn't without its flaws. As I've mentioned before, my "day" job, is software development, with about 99.99999% of that, in Java. I won't go into why Java is better than Objective-C, because quite honestly, I think both are exceptional object oriented languages. One thing Java has, however, that Objective-C (well, on the iPhone anyways) does not, is garbage collection. For those who aren't programmers, garbage collection is a memory management system, where objects that are no longer used automatically release the memory they're holding onto. While garbage collection doesn't guarantee you will never have a memory leak, it certainly goes a long way into ensuring you don't have them. Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided on the iPhone to not have garbage collection. The reasons for this were sited as it takes too much processing, it slows things down and is heavy. All of which, I firmly believe to be correct.
Because of this, I suspect many apps on the app store have not been properly profiled, or written by their developers, perhaps causing some unnecessary headaches for users.
Here are just some quick ways developers can prevent leaks in their code.
1) Any time you create a new object (retain, copy, or alloc), release it. Best practice is to release it in the same method that created it, otherwise you risk releasing an object that is no longer referenced (VERY bad idea)
2) Make sure your dealloc method contains a release for every property in the header file.
3) Use Build => Build and Analyze to determine if you have any potential memory leaks as you code. If it finds any issues, they're probably legitimate issues that should be addressed.

Interesting thing about iPhone apps

2009-10-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today, I started looking at some of my older download reports from Apple. The number of people who have downloaded my free Bracket Man from the app store is amazing. Just a quick estimate would put the number at somewhere around 2,000 or so, since July, with NO advertising at all. However, that success hasn't translated into sales of Bracket Man Pro. I'm not sure exactly why this is yet, but I've started looking into this more. Looking at my server logs, I'm getting hits on my website for the pro version, looks like about 5 a day or so. However, This doesn't seem to be translating into sales. I'm also ranked top 5 on Google when searching for an iPhone Bracket Manager. So, now, the problem can't be Search Engine Optimization, since I'm ranked so highly (well, I suppose it could be, based on keywords used), but I suspect it's more on the look and feel of that website. So, over the next few days, I'm going to start looking at ways to tweak the website, perhaps adding a blog to it, and news to keep potential buyers up to date with what's keeping me busy on the bracket manager. I also intend to use this blog, and perhaps one on my iPhone homepage to announce new iPhone products as they go out. Hopefully those two steps will also help increase sales.
On the new apps front, I didn't work on the new "black ops" app too much today. I just had too many other things going on, but tomorrow looks promising that I'll be able to get some stuff done on it. It looks like there's only another week or so left of development on it, but if the bracket managers proved anything with Objective-C and iPhone Apps, at least in my world, that is probably pretty optimistic. I think I still have another 3 or 4 views to write, as well as wire in all the database stuff (Database CRUD code has been completed, but the views don't all write to, or read from the database, yet).

The next iphone app

2009-10-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

I'm several weeks into my second iPhone app, one I'm not yet ready to share with the world. I will, however, say this about it. Currently, I don't see any competition for it in the iPhone App Store. That either tells me that there's no demand for it, OR, and I personally like to think this is the case, nobody's seen this niche yet, and it's been completely ignored ;)
However, this post isn't just about me telling you I'm working on a new app that I can't tell you about yet, but more importantly, it's me describing something I consider to be important when building any app, not just iPhone Apps, scope creep, feature creep and lack of accurate sizing.
Any developer can tell you what any of these can do to a project. As you start building, you start seeing all the "cool things" or things you didn't think about when you started that would make a product better. So, you start adding the new features, and pretty soon, your 2 or 3 week (or month) project takes 3 times as long to complete, and in that time frame, you've not built anything you can sell. I'm not an advocate of releasing broken software, and in fact, on the App Store, you can't release broken software, or at least there's a good chance it will get rejected by Apple before it gets to the store. What I am suggesting, is think out your projects before starting. If you have to, draw out all your screens, on something like notepods for an iPhone, or just simple wire frame drawings for other apps (web, mobile device and desktop). This will help you not only set some direction for your project, but also help you scope it out. Is it too big for one person to build in a reasonable length of time? Are you going to need help? Is it within your skill set and expertise? Can you build part of it, get it out and monetize it while continuing development?
All of these questions I think are relevant and crucial to answer before starting a new project.
Ok, now back to my current project, the one I can't tell you much about yet. I fell into this trap on this project. No, I haven't had any scope creep, or feature creep, although I do have a feature list of enhancements for future releases, thanks to a couple of friends who have seen the project. Where I think I failed on this one, is, thinking it was a smaller project than it really was. I figured this particular iPhone app was about 5 screens, all pretty simple, with 1 custom table cell view. Well, as I drew it out, and it made some sense, so I started coding. Unfortunately, I didn't do any kind of work flow management, how you go from screen one to screen "n". Therein lies the problem. Those 5 screens are currently about 10, with at least 4 more to go, with nearly all of those also having heavy development in table cells. If my full time job was iPhone development, I might say this still has 2 weeks of development left, but since it's not my full time job, this could be another 4 or 5 weeks. Looking back, I should have found someone to partner with on this app, and given them parts of it to build, which would have saved me a lot of time and headaches in the meantime.
Of course, now I'll have a framework for the next app like this, so I'm sure when I start the next one, I'll probably fall into the same trap again, given I have such a big base now, but time will tell. ;)

Just when I thought they were never going to do it...

2009-10-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Apple finally released the new version of my Bracket Man "lite". Last night, I got the email from apple saying bracket man was now available on the app store. Of course, looking at the profile, I noticed the pictures are all messed up now, missing several pictures, so I'll have to update some of the apps pictures, but at least Apple did finally approve it for the App Store!

Still in review...

2009-10-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

As you may remember from a previous post, Apple rejected my update to Bracket Man "lite" because it wasn't "Fully functional" as they put it, and it was upselling to Bracket Man Pro by not allowing double elimination brackets, and instead popping up a message telling the user to buy the pro version. Well, amazingly enough, that was close to two weeks ago, and I'm still waiting for the iPhone App Store approval on the new version. Hopefully it will get approved soon, and I'll be able to get this new version out soon, it fixed a lot of bugs.

Lesson learned...

2009-10-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I released version 2 of Bracket Man, the free version of the bracket manger. I did this because after the huge success I had, over 1500 iPhone app downloads in the first 6 weeks, I realized I could do so much more with this iPhone app. So, when I embarked on creating a paid version of the iPhone App, Bracket Man Pro, I decided to make some changes to the free version as well, giving it a facelift to look like the pro version. Since the pro version has double elimination, I figured it best to make the free version single elimination only, but wanted to get exposure to pro by capitalizing on the success of the free version. To do this, I opted to have the same views, on both versions, with one difference. The free version, instead of creating a double elimination bracket, would simply give the user a message telling them double elimination brackets were only available in the Pro version. First time through the approval process, it went perfectly. No issues. Fast forward 2 weeks, when I tried to get version 2.1 out. Bracket Man Pro, the paid iPhone App, went through without a hitch. However, the "lite" version got rejected. Why? Because, it turns out, Apple doesn't like "upselling" in the products, and viewed that message as somehow breaking the app. So, to fix this, I quickly (within 8 hours) removed the bracket type switch from the lite version, and resubmitted it. That was well over 10 days ago, and I'm still waiting for approval. How long will it take? Your guess is as good as mine ;)

The Marketing Continues

2009-10-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

Good Afternoon. Today, I thought I'd talk about a different topic regarding iPhone Apps, and the App Store. While Apple does a good job of helping you get your app out there, it's not the only way to market iPhone apps.
Here are some ways to get more exposure for your apps.
A web page is a great start, but if you look at my page, it kinda stinks. Why? After all, I'm a programmer, I should have the coolest site of all! Not quite. While I can build back ends, web pages are definitely not my strong point. It is optimized for Google, and in fact, using google to search for an iphone bracket manager, I'm 4th or 5th on the list.
Many review sites will index the app store, and publish results on their own pages. AppStoreHQ is an example of one of those sites. Only problem is, they don't always refresh when new versions are release. I'm not sure how often they refresh, but they do at some point.
Anyone have any great ideas how to market iphone apps? Anyone making money with their apps yet?