Comments on: The iTunes App Store from a developer’s point of view

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:44:28 +0000

The Number one app on the German AppStore is MonkeyBall. The number two app is – for a whole week now – a shopping list application, which is featured nowhere. So people are able to find and buy non-featured-applications!

By: Colleen Doering

Colleen Doering — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:16:45 +0000

Just wanted to say I had no problem stumbling across your game, iDrops, and I LOVE IT!

Kudos from Canada!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:10:50 +0000

@Robert Jung:

You’re right, of course. Posting one’s annoyance across the Internet is a bit knee-jerk; doing it with the same text is just being a jerk. In retrospect, that was a mistake – apologies for the irritation caused.

As others have noted elsewhere, we should probably be grateful that we’re on the store at all. It sounds as though plenty of developers didn’t make it into the program for launch day.

In good news, Apple have already added a “More Games” box to rectify #1. Good work Apple for the quick response.

By: Robert Jung

Robert Jung — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:13:13 +0000

While I understand your frustration at being lost in the crowd, spamming the internet with your same complaint-cum-advertisement is not the way to garner goodwill. Having read the same “It’s not been all fun and games for application developers…” rant on a dozen websites today is enough to turn me away from buying iDrops for my iPod Touch.

Perhaps, instead of complaining about your competitions’ promotional advantages, you should’ve spent some time thinking of customer-friendly ways to promote your own title.

–R.J.

By: R.S.

R.S. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:11:44 +0000

I get how you feel, but you should probably wait a little longer since the App Store was released only today (June 10th). I’m sure it will come to a lot of people’s attention, considering it seems like a pretty damn good app. I can’t wait until the iPhone 2.0 Software Update comes out so I can see it on my iPhone…

By: Mike Rundle

Mike Rundle — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:55:36 +0000

Hey Dave, I’m glad you wrote this entry because your app looks very cool. Can’t wait to check it out further once I get OS 2.0 loaded onto my phone.

I understand your frustrations about not being featured, I can see that as a big pain in the ass after you’ve spent all this time writing the app. Might as well rename the thing to start with the letter A so you show up first in alphabetical. App Store hack

By: Brian Robbins

Brian Robbins — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:51:55 +0000

I think you’re right on here Dave. The interface via iTunes is a bit better, since at least you can browse into the categories (but then you don’t even see the icons anymore!). Searching for games via the iPhone or iPodTouch is horrible for all of the ~145 games that aren’t in the list of 15 under the games category.

We’ve been fortunate in that our free game (Spinner Prologue) shows up in the top 10 of free games within iTunes, without that I doubt many people would ever see it.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:37:13 +0000

Adam: I know Thing is, our icon actually plays on the shine, and the whole curved corners / icon shine effect is featured throughout our app’s interface, so we thought we’d get the App Store to do it for us in the standard style. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have taken the Apple route of getting the iPhone OS / App Store to render the icon for us.

My gripe in this article is more about the sheer volume of shiny icons in one place.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:34:30 +0000

Ceejayoz: You’re absolutely right, and we missed the boat in promoting our app outside of the App Store. We should have had a demo video on YouTube, and made more of our online playable demo. Ah well. Next time

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:32:22 +0000

Dude, you can disable the “shine” rendering. Read the docs!