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It’s widely assumed that lowering price can increase sales. In theory the lower the price, the larger the increase in sales. This can indeed offset the difference in price and possibly even increase bottom-line revenue. What happens when you raise the price instead?
Mundue Blog
Indie iPhone Development
We’re lucky to live in a big little city (Colorado Springs) that has a vibrant iPhone developer community. There are regular CocoaHeads and NSCoder meetings, as well as non-affiliated iPhone meetups and various UX discussions. Just last night we were able to see and critique some interesting demos of unannounced projects. We also got into a lively discussion about best practices for an App Store description. This kind of feedback is highly valuable.
I am not a developer and I don’t play one on TV. I used to make my living by testing software that other people write; in other words I got paid to find fault with other people’s work. But I gave all of that up when I moved from Boston to Colorado with my husband Matt (aka ‘Mundue’), and I decided that this would be a good time for me to take a shot at helping him write and maintain our iPhone apps.
As an indie developer it is sometimes easy to forget who I work for. I worked for many years as a salaried employee, usually for a large company, often with little contact with customers. In that environment compensation is more dependent on decisions made by others and corporate success as a whole. Now it’s a different story. My income comes from many sources. I get “paid” by Apple, Google, LinkShare, etc. But I don’t work for any of them. I work for myself, but more precisely, for the iPhone customers who use our software. If we don’t keep them happy we don’t eat.
This post could be subtitled “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is a story about how updating existing products can be a painful and frustrating process. Over the last 4 weeks I’ve updated 4 different apps and can share the common pitfalls encountered in the process. It turns out that some users can never be pleased, though the silent majority are just fine with incremental improvements.
We’e updated our Halloween game for 2010. It’s only available for a limited time, so be sure to download it from the App Store (free) while you can.
This version of the game replaces the simple colored balls with playful Halloween figures, such as ghosts, witches, and jack-o-lanterns. The optional game sounds are fun and scary reminders of the upcoming Halloween season.
The mobile advertising buzz lately is about Apple’s iAd. But iAd isn’t yet available in all countries. If you’re like me and have about half of your users outside of the US you will still need ad services that support the other countries. Using an ad mediation layer service like AdWhirl is still a practical solution, and it fully supports iAd and many other ad networks.
What’s all this fuss about Game Center then? Apple says:
“Experience social gaming on your iPhone. Find friends or use auto-match to play multiplayer games against new opponents. Track achievements and compare high scores.”
Have you registered for 360iDev in Austin yet? I have, and not just because I’m speaking this time. There are two compelling reasons to attend. First, there are the features included in this incredibly affordable event:
- Download the Session Details Doc. It’s got all the information you’ll need to select the sessions you want to see.
- Over 40 sessions ranging from beginner to advanced covering topics like “Live streaming with Core Audio”, “The Fundamentals of iPad Programming” and “Game Center, Beyond Games”
- 5 Hands-on sessions including Saul Mora’s Unit Testing That Doesn’t Suck workshop, InMobi’s The Economics of Your Ad Supported Application Business, Adv. Debugging, and Xcode Customization.
- We’ve got a full line up of Parties! TapLynx on Sunday, Disney/Tapulous on Monday and Push.io on Tuesday!
- Every attendee gets an iPad sketchbook from Apress
- Tuesday night we’ll have another Game Jam. All night game creating awesomeness!
- We’ve announced the Community App Awards! (Explained here: http://bit.ly/360iDevCAA)
- The speaker page is packed with awesome names. Check it out!
- The sponsors page is a who’s who of the best companies in the iOS space, but there’s room for more!
Second, and by many accounts more important, is the opportunity to meet and make new friends in the iPhone community. The size of 360iDev is just right so you don’t get overwhelmed by crowds and lines. This will be my third time at 360iDev and I can’t wait to hang out with the folks I met last time.
If you’re on a budget and have to pick just one conference, this is the one! It has the right mix of technical, business, marketing, and design sessions, and you won’t be disappointed. See you there!
Update You can still get a 15% discount if you use the promo code ‘martelRocks’ and no I didn’t make this up. What are you waiting for?
I recently uploaded a new application to iTunes Connect for review by Apple. The new app is currently waiting for review. It makes heavy use of the so-called hi-dpi images that look great on the iPhone 4′s Retina Display. Naturally we wanted to use the screenshots from the iPhone 4 to highlight those images in the App Store description. The latest version of the documentation ( iTunes Connect Developer Guide 6.0 ) is pretty clear about which sizes you can use for an iPhone app. I should mention this is not a universal app, so there’s no confusion over iPhone/iPad screenshot sizes.
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