News tagged ‘developers’

19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a new study from Game Developer Research. It is more than twice as high as for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS and results in 3/4 of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s gadgets.

Developers claim their choices of platform dictated by the level of market influence and ease of writing code. The cost of development and the ability to port code are important too.

The transition to the iPhone is evident through the number of ports. While many companies are producing original titles, games like Civilization Revolution and Assassin’s Creed series are actually Nintendo DS versions modified to use the touchscreen and the better performance of Apple’s devices.

[via]

The software company RATP gave an interesting presentation called "How to successfully market your iPhone application". This presentation gives advice to AppStore developers how to increase sales and learn new marketing strategies.

Let's watch:

Apple's finally announced the iPad (Apple Tablet). It is perfect for tasks like browsing, email, photos, e-books and videos. It's a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds (680g), with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display and it's running a custom 1GHz Apple "A4" chip developed by the P.A. Semi team. The 10-hour battery life and a month of standby is quite exciting.

There will be devices with 16, 32 and 64GB. All iPads will get a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi and optional 3G, as well as an accelerometer and a compass. There's also a keyboard dock, which connects underneath in the portrait orientation. iPad supports up to 1024x768 VGA out and 480p composite out through dock adapter cables. There is a camera attachment kit that lets you import photos from your camera over USB or directly through an SD reader.

The device is managed by iTunes, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. iPad can run iPhone apps: either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen. Developers can also target the new screen size using the updated iPhone OS SDK, which is available today.

The 3G version runs on AT&T and comes with new data plans: 250MB for $14.99 and an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month contract-free. Activations are handled on the iPad, so you can activate and cancel whenever you want. Every iPad is unlocked (!) and comes with a GSM "micro-SIM".

The price starts at $499 for 16GB, 32GB for $599, and $699 64GB. Adding 3G costs a $130 per model, so the most expensive model (64GB / 3G) is $829. The WiFi-only model will ship in 60 days, and the 3G models will come in 90.

UPDATE: The 3G version will also have A-GPS.

Here is our live blog from Apple's event:

Read the rest of this entry »

French site Mac4Ever (Google translation) claims that Apple's special media event now reportedly scheduled for January 27th will see both the introduction of the company's much-rumored tablet device and the launch of beta versions of iPhone OS 4.0 and the associated Software Development Kit for developers.

Rumors say SDK will include a "simulator" to assist developers in adapting their existing App Store applications to support the tablet's screen resolution. The deployment of tools for supporting multiple screen resolutions could also pave the way for a higher-resolution iPhone in the future.

via macrumors mac4ever

The Financial Times reports that it has received information that Apple has scheduled a special media event for Tuesday, January 26th in San Francisco. A stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco was rented for several days in late January. Apple is expected to make a major product announcement. The topic is unknown. However, everyone is sure that it will be an iTablet!

Want more proof? Recently Apple asked app developers to prepare for a demo scheduled for next month. Notably, Apple has requested that the developers prepare their applications to run in "full screen" mode rather than limiting display to the iPhone and iPod touch's 320 x 480 pixels.

Exact specs of the tablet remain unknown. There are long-standing rumors of a 10" display and recent claims of a 7" display. Apple might make multiple models of the new device.

SBSettings is a great application to quickly turn on and off different services. Recently two developers have released tethering toggles to easily enable and disable iPhone tethering from SBSettings.

The first called, "Tethering" by Filipe Pina makes changes to the files that the preferences framework makes, then restarts the service. The second called, "Tether" by Ryan Petrich uses the preferences frameworks and calls the functions that the settings app calls.

According to BigBoss, both toggles work well. You can download togles and SBSettings via Cydia (for jailbreaked iPhones only).

via iclarified and bigboss

TheBoyGenius report that they have found some very interesting data while analyzing the access statistics to their web site:

We can see that this data is related to the new iPhone firmware 3.1.3 and 4.0!

The iPhone OS 3.1.3 should only be a minor update over the current version and could be released even in several days. Firmware 4.0 will probably be released after testing phase and several private beta versions for developers. Rumors say this new version 4.0 will be released together with iPhone 4 some time in June or July next year.

Apple created a list of the best iPhone games of 2009. The list is part of their iTunes Rewind 2009 where they are highlighting the best content across 2009 in music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, podcasts, and apps.

Here is a list with links to AppStore.

• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor
• Real Racing
• Zenonia
• Ravensword
• Earth vs. Moon
• Sally's Spa
• Ragdoll Blaster
• Canabalt
• Blades of Fury
• Doom Classic
• Sway
• geoDefense
• Flight Control
• Alive 4 Ever
• Fantastic Contraption
• Samurai: Way of the Warrior
• Backbreaker Football
• Meteor Blitz
• Rolando 2
• Star Hogs
• Paper Toss
• Boost 3D
• Doodle Jump
• Zen Bound
• Stick Wars
• Eliminate Pro
• Tap Tap Revenge 3
• Call of Duty: Zombies
• iBomber
• Jet Car Stunts

Congratulations to all developers who created these impressive applications.

If you are a developer, make sure you do not make fake reviews for your applications. Apple in fact, has taken serious steps, blocking the accounts of a developer and removing 1011 applications because of fake reviews.

The developer "Molinker" had many apps. Each of them had about 50 reviews. The developer was using his promocodes (every developer gets 50 of them for every app) to write reviews for his own apps. One of the users, who bought several apps, investigated this issue and wrote to Phil Schiller. The apps and all the reviews were removed very very quickly from AppStore.

What’s incredible is that the developer had 1011 apps, which is almost 1% of the entire App Store. Well that’s 1% of the App Store that no longer exists.

The developers shouldn’t be surprised, but they are:

We got email from Apple yesterday [Sunday 6th] which told us our contract is changed to pending status.
Actually, we do not know what’s wrong so far. We had contacted Apple for such sudden changes, hope we can get quick response and actions from Apple.

Nice, isn't it?

App Rejection is a new portal where the AppStore applications that are rejected by Apple are collected.

The site can be used by developers to understand all those unwritten rules that lead to rejection. In other words you can learn from the mistakes and adopt your app to make it to the AppStore. To access the site just click here.

More and more developers complain about the rejection of their applications in the AppStore. There's a good reason behind all this.

It seems that Apple has created a tool that can automatically review applications and APIs that are used. According to the rules of the SDK, the developers can not use private API. If this initial test is passed examiners begin to manually check the app.

So the advice is quite simple - follow the rules of the SDK.

Couple days ago the developers of MitAPP held a lecture at the University of Bologna on programming for the iPhone and using the SDK. The entire mini-course consists of 3 classes. Here are the first slides about the development environment (XCode and Interface Builder):

Apple has just announced that all iPhone developers can now use the In-App Purchase in free applications! In the past the use of these APIs was reserved only for commercial software.

This is great, because developers can completely eliminate the Lite version, creating only a limited free version with full function unlock through an in-app purchase. All this is also intended to provide greater security for developers.

Apple today announced that its App Store has surpassed two billion downloads. The company also noted that there are now over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers, 85,000 applications on the App Store, and 125,000 registered iPhone developers. App Store is available in 77 countries. There are over 20 categories of applications to choose from.

via macrumors