In App Purchase now available for free apps

Apple announced today that developers can now use In App Purchases in their free apps.  This not only unlocks a new revenue stream for several existing free apps but also paves the way for a new type of "lite" version of a app.  No more downloading an app to test it only to have to download the "for pay" version.  ("One app to rule them all" - LOTR quote... really!)

Apple also says this should help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

To learn more, log into your Apple iPhone Developer account and visit the App Store Resource Center.

If you are a developer currently looking into using In App Purchases in your existing or upcoming fee iPhone/iPod touch app, we'd love to hear from you on your new experience.  Cheers!

App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings.

Dan Grigsby of Mobile Orchard presents an interesting argument against discounting your app, particularly when you first launch:

Furthermore, the likelihood of a 1-star review goes up as the price goes down: 1-star ratings made up 23% of the total number of ratings in the free group; 16% in the paid group.

Read App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings. Don’t Discount Your App At Launch.

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Objective-C Tuesdays: for loop variations

See Also
Looping in Objective-C

Last week, we examined the structure of the for loop. Today we will look at some for loop idioms.

Infinite loop If you omit the initialization, condition and action expressions, you get an infinite loop:

for (;;) {
  NSLog(@":-)");
}

Missing loop expression Sometimes, there's no need to initialize a variable before looping, so the initialization expression is omitted:

char *process_line(char *buffer) {
  for ( ; *buffer != '\n'; buffer++) {
    /* do something with characters */
  }
  return buffer;
}

Similarly the condition or action expressions are sometimes omitted.

Nested loops When building or processing tables of information, put one for loop inside another:

for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
  for (int j = 1; j <= 10; j++) {
    NSLog(@"%d X %d = %d", i, j, i * j);
  }
}

Parallel iteration You can use multiple loop counter variables by using the comma (,) operator to squeeze multiple expressions into initialization and action:

int i, j;
for (i = 0, j = 9; i < 10; i++, j--) {
  destination[i] = source[j];
}

There's a gotcha with the initialization expression however: only one loop counter variable can be declared there. It seems logical to do this:

for (int i = 0, int j = 9; i < 10; i++, j--) ...

but unfortunately you can only do this:

int j;
for (int i = 0, j = 9; i < 10; i++, j--) ...

Next week, we'll look at the Objective-C 2.0 for...in loop.

Tearing down the App Store hype

Newsweek recently published an article entitled Striking It Rich: Is There An App For That?. While it's an interesting read, it's the typical post-hype tear-down article. Since the opening of the iTunes App Store, the press has relentlessly hyped the "get rich quick selling iPhone apps" story. Well, I guess the story has played out; now the tear-down begins.

It seems Newsweek has discovered that not everyone instantly strikes it rich. In fact, it takes most of us a lot of work, a bit of risk and more than a little perseverance to bootstrap a new business. And even successful iPhone developers in the hit-driven gaming segment are worried about how well their next game will sell. With a different tone, the article would actually be an interesting exposé on high tech entrepreneurship, but Newsweek writer Tony Dokoupil gives the piece an air of dejection and disillusionment.

David Barnard of App Cubby, who is featured in the article, wrote an interesting rebuttal (warning: contains a cute baby picture at the end).

iPhone developer Bjango also recently posted a rebuttal in their blog.

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iPhone Friday - October 9, 2009

Hello and happy Friday.  Todays collection of iPhone/iPod touch wallpapers are inspired from the 60's, 70's and some vector art...  Enjoy!

Picking an iPhone App Icon Color

Question: What color should your iPhone app icon be?

Answer: (click here)

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Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

O'Reilly has published a pre-print HTML version of the book Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by Jonathan Stark.

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript covers web apps vs. native apps for iPhone, styling HTML for the iPhone, animation, client-side data storage and offline application caching.

This book looks like it's going to be a valuable resource for both iPhone SDK app creators and web developers who want to target iPhone users.

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