Twitter It!

When the iPhone was originally released, the first thing that came to my mind was excitement about a new development platform.  I was a bit disappointed when I found out Apple was only allowing developers to make web base apps for it.  However, I knew eventually they would release a native SDK for it.  I can’t imagine why a software company like Apple, who spent all that time porting OS X over to the ARM processor and making Cocoa Touch, just to create a few apps for it.  I also noticed it’s way of representing applications to the user, which looked similar to the Wii.  This gave away the fact that the iPhone OS was designed to hold more than just a few Apple branded applications, along with the jailbreaking teams’ work on discovering the ability to move application icons around and multiple pages to move them to.

There was one other thing I had a feeling about, which is what I wanted to do on the iPhone OS since I saw it’s introduction, games.  Apple has been slowly adding to their road map, video game development.  This has been shown countless times now, from iPod touch ads, to demonstrations at WWDC (Apple’s Worldwide development conference).

Now it is 2009, and after messing with the iPhone SDK and a few project ideas over the past year, I finally got one of them finished and added to the App Store.  My appliction was uploaded on February 24th, putting its release date as March 1st.  It’s now on sale, which is one of the causes for me to write this blog post.  I want to share my own experiences and thoughts on the App Store.

The first thing I’ve noticed, is the approval process.  It seems Apple has gotten more strict on the rules.  I, myself, was worried that my application wouldn’t be approved the first time.  Most applications seem to be rejected once or twice before being approved.  Mine however, was approved the first time.  I was quite happy and excited about this if you didn’t already realize.

I impatiently waited for the application to get reviewed, however every time I checked, it still said “In Review”.  Although I should point out, I checked about every hour of the day, for four days.  It was finally the end of last day of February, and my application was still “In Review”.  At this point I had given up hope it would be released the day I wanted it to be.

The next morning, I was bombarded by messages from people.  All of them saying my application was on iTunes!  I jumped for joy at this good news, and had seemingly discovered that Apple puts priority of applications based partly on the date you specify for release.  I’m fine with Apple doing this, however it doesn’t give much room between rejection and the release date if Apple doesn’t approve your work.

After getting all excited about my app being on iTunes, I started getting a little frustrated.  Apparently there is a syncing and refreshing issue with the App Store, both in iTunes and on the iPhone.  My application did not appear on the release list until the day after it was released.  It also did not register reviews until the next day (Although they might have to be approved by Apple before they show up).  I have also uploaded three images of my application, however, on the iPhone’s App Store it only shows two of the three images.  At this point it still does not show any rating or review count in the release list, even though I have 5 out of 5 stars and 6 reviews.

Now as a user,  I have noticed a bug with updating software.  It seems, at least on my device, that if I update my software, the App Store will continue to say that my applications need to be updated.  I actually have to sync with iTunes on the desktop for it to know that I have updated my software.

For all the bad things I’ve said about the App Store so far it actually has some nice features and implementations.  It’s the simplest way to download software, which every other review has said already.  I find the search feature to be the best implementation for finding applications.  I think there should a better way to list featured and popular programs.  They seem to always be the same and it becomes harder to browse for newer applications that you might want (besides the release page).  Maybe they could add different ways to view the popularity list, like a weekly, daily, and monthly option.

So far, and yes I did use “So” at the beginning of this sentence, I have received one report on my sales.  Not a bad mark for the first day, even though you had to search for it by name.  I will do a new post after the first 7 days to see how well this whole thing works out.

At this point, because of the bugs and it being a bit to simplistic for me, I would give the App Store a 7/10 rating.  This is actually a good score; I would probably give most online stores about a 5/10 or lower.  I would also like to say the iTunes application hurts it as well.  I find this program to be slow, clunky, outdated, and missing some very nice features for the store (like a contextual menu).  I’m hoping iTunes will become a full Cocoa application eventually.

To add, my application is in a more specific niche market, so I don’t expect to complete against the big guys with their huge market values and branding power.  My next application will be more generic and aiming towards a larger audience.