Jeff Scott

Now That MiniSquadron is in Submission (that sounds a bit like it's gone into relapse or something), I find myself with a bit of time to consolidate. And by consolidate I mean try to become a normal part of society again and "go outside". But it's cold outside. So instead I'm gonna tell the story of how I went from Zero Code to MiniSquadron The Game in 5 months (and less if you had artists that didn't have to fix giant pendulums hoho). You can then take this recipe and mock me at will - this article will be in N parts because I'll no doubt get bored of writing it all in one go. - Jeff Scott

I’ve been asked a little about my thoughts on marketing in the App Store lately. Back in the early days I felt qualified to say a lot, and did, but not so much anymore. However, I am very aware of just how difficult it is to get any kind of traction these days. Word of mouth is king on the app store, but how do you get enough people using your app to start with so your good app can turn into a recommendation dirty snowball? - Jeff Scott

Right - last time in this sporadic series I had just finished making the 4 week MiniSquadron demo with the red scissors versus the yellow scissors, with you as the commanding Magenta Scissor (snigger - b3ta reference). And it was at this time that I went to show Dave Ferner and who then thought he could do some pretty art to make this game look "a bit better" (how could it possibly be better than what it is already?). One of the other things I decided to do about now is to basically give the game more of a proper structure and deciding on the final scope of it. As it stands, I was of the opinion that this was a fun enough concept to make into a "half fat" game that deserved at least 3 months of my time. I like to call it going "half fat", with "full fat" basically spending a year to make. This decision only came about when I saw the potential that this game could be from looking at the art that I received. Here is one of the first drafts of Level 1, which would eventually become "Duck - Jeff Scott

A static library for outputing video from an iPhone or iPod Touch application to a Television (Or anything with component video). Why: I watched a growing number of developers complaining that they can't capture video from the simulator because their apps used the accelomoter. This solves that issue. Also as a consultant I often demo Apps to large groups of people and it is naturally easier to gather around a TV screen or projector then an iPhone screen. - Jeff Scott

Tappity is a framework for remote controlling an iPhone app running on the iPhone Simulator, supporting multi-touch, acceration, as well as location and compass signals. Tappity consists of a client app and a server-side library, which must be linked with the iPhone app one intends to control. The server lib transparently hooks into UIAccelerometer and CLLocationManager to relay the data. It can also hook into EAGLContext for visual feedback for full-screen OpenGLES apps, as UIKit's window compositing doesn't capture GL content, when attempting to draw a window into an image. - Jeff Scott

German outfit Fishlabs is one of the longstanding mobile development studios. With a reputation for cutting-edge technology in the shape of titles such as Galaxy on Fire and Powerboat Challenge, it's also mixed up its workload in 2009, developing successful free advertising games for the likes of VW, as well as continuing to expand operations with iPhone versions of its existing IP. We caught up with CEO Michael Schade to get his views on the current App Store situation, as well as the emerging trends in terms of new platforms and business models. - Jeff Scott

Our game Gravity Sling is a free app with 15 levels included and another 30 levels available via In App Purchase (IAP). It was one of the first titles to take advantage of Apple’s new policy of allowing IAP from within free apps.  Apple announced this policy change on Thursday October 15th, and we submitted in the wee hours of the morning on Monday October 19th. It was approved by Apple on Thursday November 5th. We’ve always thought that free+IAP was a better way to go for most small-form and simple titles that typically sell for $1.99-$.99 on the app store. Ultimately it provides a better experience for the end user while allowing developers to provide an easier upgrade path for “Lite” users who want to go full. However the issue is not whether or not we think it’s a better way to do things, but if end-users agree and that this type of model can result in a sustainable business. With that in mind, we have been tracking our sales and a few other metrics fairly closely since launch, a - Jeff Scott

Not to be too condescending, but I think it's amusing to watch the old-school techies in the past couple years finally get around to paying attention to the mobile market that I've had been ranting about exclusively for the better part of the past decade. Tim Bray has a post today about the Android OS, dismissing the idea that there's splintering going on, or that it's a big deal if there is. Well, actually, I have to say there *is* splintering going on, and it *is* a big deal. The splintering isn't in the traditional "binary break" style that one normally thinks of when using that word, but it's still just as deadly to a platform. - Jeff Scott

In his first wide-ranging interview on the matter, the Apple senior vice-president explains his company's App Store vigilance—and why it sometimes loosens up - Jeff Scott

Below are 70 tools, tutorials, and resources to help you get started developing your own iPhone apps. There’s everything from basic tutorials to templates to resource libraries to help you on your way. - Jeff Scott

Mobile games publisher Gameloft might have thrown in the towel on Android, but that is a mistake. I certainly understand why they gave up on Android. Since launching in February of this year, our own Whitepages Caller ID app has become a top ten grossing Android application, and yet we’ve seen less than $54,000 in revenue. While our iPhone app download counts are in the millions, our Android app downloads are a mere 17 percent of this volume. - Jeff Scott

Why? The reasons are different for for every software company. Some prefer the technology that Apple offers, which competitors don't offer. Others prefer the iPhone's built-in payment platform. Others note that BlackBerry and Palm can't support high-end graphics for games. - Jeff Scott

The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they've ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil. - Jeff Scott

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. - Jeff Scott

Apple's control over the App Store—which seems arbitrary at times—still frustrates developers. That much isn't a surprise, but some developers have become frustrated to the point that they have decided to simply halt iPhone development altogether. Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, and long-time Mac software developer Rogue Amoeba have all recently decided that enough is enough, and the loss of these developers and others could spell a troubling future for the App Store. True, it has over 100,000 applications, but how many of them are created with the kind of care and passion we take for granted in the Mac software world? - Jeff Scott

Winning iPhone Strategies offers insight on iPhone App Marketing. We've interviewed successful iPhone developers to ask 'how did you make sure your app was a success'. With unique insight, the report offers commentary, suggestions and hard facts on what makes us buy iPhone apps - Jeff Scott

Federated Login has been a "holy grail" in the identity community for a long time.  We have known how to do the technical part for a long time.  However the industry has constantly tried, and failed, to find a model that was (1) simple for end users, and (2) had a reasonable trust model between the RP (the relying party, which is the site you want to log into) and the IDP (the identity provider, who will identify you to the RP). - Jeff Scott

I’m not quitting iPhone development. I’m one of the many thousands of developers that you rarely hear about. We work on the iPhone platform because it is awesome and cool and offers an amazing opportunity. We hate the Apple approval process just as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day developing for the iPhone far outweighs the hassles. - Jeff Scott

There is a hint of that old boomtown feeling again in the Bay Area -- this time in living rooms and garages and cubicles where a cottage industry is unfolding around the iPhone app. Despite the recession, hundreds of start-ups have sprung up in the area since Apple Inc. launched the iPhone two years ago and opened up the device so third-party developers could create games and other software applications for it. "This is our dot-com boom," said Samir Shah, 26 years old, a co-founder of Mountain View-based Snapture Labs LLC, which makes a $1.99 camera app that has been one of the top-ranked photography apps since September. - Jeff Scott

A month later, sales fell off significantly with the introduction of Skee-Ball, a rival app from Mac software development company Freeverse. Skee-Ball remains the No. 2 paid app while Ramp Champ has fallen out of the top 100. The reversal may reflect some small quality differences - users have rated Skee-Balls latest version slightly higher. But the results appear to touch on a new reality in the App Store, which opened in July of last year. - Jeff Scott

In an apparent move to band against Tim Langdell's over aggressive defense of the trademark "EDGE", a number of indie developers have made announcements today that their games will incorporate the EDGE name. - Jeff Scott

dORM is a PHP 5 ORM (object relational mapper) library that seamlessly loads, saves and deletes PHP objects from and to a relational database (currently, only MySQL was tested). dORM requires a small XML file that maps classes to their respective database tables. We plan to offer automatic mapping in a future release. Get started » - Jeff Scott

The current count of iPhone apps available for download is around 100,000. That is a remarkable stat that. Millions of people are downloading apps to their iPhones each day. How, then, is an app developer supposed to rise above the fray and distinguish their product amongst so many others? With a professional screencast demo from Scraster. Scraster Professional Screencasting is happy to extend its expert production services to the iPhone realm. Clients who are serious about taking the marketing of their iPhone app to the next level are invited to contact Scraster for a free quote. - Jeff Scott

During design of our Date Wheel and Serving Sizer iPhone apps, we wanted to include an "about" page with information and links for contacting us, sharing our apps, and upselling. We considered several options, but found using html to this end was the best solution for us. Since it worked well, we thought we'd share the method. This post will describe the steps necessary to create an html "about" page. - Jeff Scott

I think of this every time I hear business plans that say, “With over 30 million iPhones sold, our app is sure to...” - Jeff Scott

Lots of journalism’s resident tech geeks and big thinkers have been talking up the potential of Google Wave to “transform journalism”. I’m not going to go so far as to say that, but it does have a lot of features that make it an ideal candidate for fixing problems a lot of newsrooms face thanks to limitations in current technology. Here are four general ways newsrooms may chose to implement Google Wave. Assuredly, they have countless wavelets. - Jeff Scott