KDBDallas

Newsprint version 1.1 has been Approved and should start showing up in the App Store shortly!

As an extra treat we are offering Newsprint for 50% off for the next week!

So don’t delay and pick up a copy today.

For more information on Newsprint, please visit: NewsprintApp.com

To access Newsprint in the iTunes App Store, please visit: App Store

*On sale from April 21, 2010 until April 28, 2010.
*50% off is $2.99, based on the normal price of $4.99

Newsprint 1.1 has been submitted to the App Store!

Now to get to work on the iPad version….

The book that I was the Technical Editor for, Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS 3, is now shipping from Amazon.com and should also be in (hopefully) most Barnes and Nobles.
View it at Amazon.com by clicking here.

This book is great for new iPhone developers as well as experienced ones.
You will need some Objective-C knowledge, but if you have some OOP (Object Oriented Programming) experience you should be ok with picking up an Objective-C book as well for as you work through the book.

If you are in a B&N stroll into the Geek, err, I mean Computer Programming section and look for the book.
Feel free to buy a copy to support my good friend and author of the book, Jiva DeVoe.
If you can’t get yourself to that level of geek, at least pick it up and look at the ‘Credits’ page, right before the Table of Contents and then you can go around to all the geeks in that area and say, “I KNOW THIS GUY!”

This makes 2 iPhone development books that I have been involved in, each one with more of a role than the last, however I can safely say it will be my last as after being involved with the book writing processes and having the author be a close friend of mine, I don’t really have a desire to write one myself (unless it’s an offer I just can’t refuse).

After pending review for more than 8 months, we are happy to announce that KidFlix was officially approved for sale today!

KidFlix is for parents with small children. KidFlix stops kids from accidentally activating the on-screen controls while listening to audio or watching videos on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Therefore eliminating accidental exits, fast-forwards, etc and therefore eliminating the need for you to constantly fix the problem.

KidFlix is not meant to be a substitute for proper child care, but instead to be a helping hand in keeping your child entertained.

As a parent of a young child I know how valuable of a tool this program can be when you are at say a restaurant and your child starts getting bored.

You can purchase KidFlix for $1.99, directly from the App Store by following the URL:
itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidflix/id307595676?mt=8

I will be honest and upfront and say I don’t know if KillExchangeLocks will be revamped for 3.0.

I have pretty much totally moved away from the entire Jailbrake scene.
In fact out of all 6 devices I own only 1 is Jailbroken and I only keep that one on hand because I have 2 paid apps that I released back during firmware 1.x and before the AppStore.

I am very sorry if this news comes as a disappointment.

Since 2.0 and the AppStore came out Jailbraking has lost its appeal to me as I use AT&T so that’s not a concern for me and since the only reason I ever got into the Jailbrake scene in the first place was to be able to write my own apps and run other peoples apps on a great device that had so much more potential.

Now with the AppStore it seems like Jailbraking is done for one or more of the following: Carrier Unlock, Apps that Apple won’t approve, and Warez.
I don’t care about carrier unlocks, and I don’t approve of Warez (even if you say you use them as demo’s and buy the ones you like, because 99.9% are not doing that), and that just leaves apps that Apple won’t approve. This would be the only thing to keep me around but Apple lets most things in (it might take a couple rejections first though) that I am interested in.

Also, Apple has been getting really good at closing all the holes that made this app possible (as technically they are security holes).
So much so that the last version “oddly” wouldn’t work for everyone, including me.
I spent a ton of time searching for new ways back then and never found anything that I was happy with, and then I finally gave up and just stopped syncing my work email.

(It was a plus for my day job to have me accessible by email all the time and I decided it wasn’t worth the time and work I was putting into not having my personal device locked down)

Of course I understand that this isn’t the same for everyone.
All I can really say is I feel your pain (as if that helps anything), and that in a comment on the post way back about version 3.0 of KillExchangeLocks, Eirik mentioned that a new app has just shown up in Cydia called: “Exchange Unlock”.

With that in mind, let me get the “legalize” (if you will) out of the way.
“Exchange Unlock” is not my work, nor do I have anything to do with it in any way.
I have NO idea if it works, and I can not be held responsible if it blows up your device, literally or figuratively.

I do wish you the best of luck, and encourage you to check out my other work at: HashBang Industries (http://www.HashBangInd.com)

A while back I wrote another iPhone application that was mainly for myself, but the business side of me said, “If I wanted this app enough to write it, chance are there are people willing to pay a couple bucks for it.”

The down side of this was that I had to develop the application a lot more.
Instead of just having to be “enough” for me, it had to be complete enough to sell and for people to be able to easily use.

So I finished up making it great.
It was done and it was SEXY!

The problem…
The sexy part was the part that connects to your computer, and that part was Mac only.

I did not like the fact that it was Mac only because I knew it would really hurt sells.
So I bit my lip and went about redoing that entire section.
I wanted something that would feel familiar with but that was at least just homely looking instead of looking like a nasty skank.
The problem was that the way to do this was a pretty big undertaking as there was nothing standard for the iPhone and the doing a one-off is a huge task (hence why there is nothing out there).

Finally I found another developer who was in the final status of doing a one-off himself, and he agreed to let me have access to the code.

SWEET! Here was my answer, right? right?

So I went and integrated the code.
Problem was that the code was not complete, but that was alright because I still had a bunch of little things to finish up and I was under the impression that the other code would be finished shortly.

So I finished everything up, but still no updates on the other code…
CRAP!

So I started looking into the code to see if I could find where the problems were, but like I said before, this is a BIG undertaking of code and I had no insight of the under workings of that section.

However now all my code was done, so I needed this last part done.

Off and on I would spend a day or two digging into the code, and hitting up the developer for any word on updates.

Now 2 months after I finished my end, I was still in basically the same spot and still no word on anything anytime soon.

Finally last night I said, “screw this”, and I decided to go with the Skanky version for now, knowing that I could always go back if/when the other code gets finished, but just sitting here was doing no one any good.

Earlier today I finished the coding aspect of the new setup.
Then I just had to do a screencast help video and do all the paper work type stuff on the App Store.

Then it was off to the races!
Application SUBMITTED!

Now it’s just time to hope that it gets through the Apple review process, and quickly.

Oh and to be honest, this new way probably isn’t really Skanky, but it just kind of feels that way to me after my original design.

Great article over at Inside iPhone. Very worth the read.

http://blogs.oreilly.com/iphone/2008/12/the-app-store-effect.html

Snapper-brand lawn mowers are expensive. Many Snapper products cost thousands of dollars, and even their simplest push mower is hundreds of dollars more than some competing products. Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap. What they are, however, is reliable. They’re manufactured well and designed to last for years. Snapper believes that a premium-quality product can command a premium price. They’ve built their business around that idea, and that business has been around for nearly 120 years.

In 2002, as CEO of Snapper, Jim Weir went to meet with Walmart executives. Walmart has thousands of stores in the US, and millions of customers walk through their doors each day to purchase nearly a billion dollars in goods. Yet Weir went to Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters to tell them he was pulling his products from their stores.

The problem for Weir, and Snapper, was the very essence of Walmart itself. Walmart sells customers disposable goods at the cheapest possible price. At the time, Walmart had six different push mowers for less than $200, while the cheapest Snapper listed for $350. These low prices change expectations across the board, and leave customers wondering what they could possibly be getting with a Snapper to justify the much higher price. With no expert salespeople to educate them on the tradeoffs between price and quality, most consumers opt for the lower-priced product. Over time, higher-quality goods are forced to lower both their prices and their standards in order to compete. The quality level of an entire market is eroded, ratcheted downward more and more.

Weir chose to break this cycle by pulling his products from Walmart entirely. Snapper instead focused on the knowledgeable independent dealers who could educate consumers on Snapper’s legendary quality and explain just why the higher price was worth it. Even without Walmart, Snapper has grown since 2002, and they’ve managed to maintain their identity as a premium-quality manufacturer.

Weir’s story brings to mind a comparison between Walmart and the App Store. The reasons behind it aren’t identical, but just like Walmart, the App Store is driving down prices of applications across the board. The price floor isn’t $5 as I predicted back in June, but $0.99, the very lowest price it’s possible to charge for an application in the App Store. If developers could charge a price lower than 99 cents, there’s no doubt that some would, and the price curve would shift even lower.

On the face of it, these low prices may seem like a good thing. The more affordable iPhone apps are, the more customers will purchase, leading them to try out many different products. When price is no longer tied to a developer’s costs, however, the market is unstable. The first application to cut its price and successfully rocket to the top of the App Store sales charts will see an enormous jump in sales. As we’ve seen, this cycle repeats over and over, and those developers who reach the sales charts do very well. As the average price is driven down, however, a negative-feedback loop is created. A low price is required to get a top sales spot, and only the sales volume that such a slot brings makes development sustainable. Fewer and fewer customers will pay a premium price, so all developers are forced to slash prices to chase a top sales spot.

While there are dozens of new applications each day, the number of slots in the Top 100 is, obviously, unchanging. As consumers come to expect ultra-low prices, more and more developers will wind up earning less for their software than it costs to develop. That will lead to developers ending development of existing products or simply opting out of the platform entirely. The low prices the App Store has led to will directly affect the quality of what’s available in the App Store.

Certainly, some developers are attempting to counteract this App Store effect, by providing higher quality products at a higher price. SimCity, currently the #2 selling app, has a $9.99 price tag. However, that’s a game with an established brand; top sellers have by and large been $0.99 applications. It’s difficult to look at iFart Mobile, which has sitting at #1 in the App Store for nearly a week, and view this as a quality, stable marketplace for developers or consumers. The App Store, like Walmart, has been reduced to selling disposable goods at the lowest possible prices.

Unfortunately, unlike Weir and other vendors of premium products, iPhone developers have no other way to get our products to customers. We can’t sell direct to customers, or via any other stores. At this time, our options are to be in the App Store, or to not sell our software on the iPhone. This makes it very difficult to command any sort of price over $0.99.

The math is simple. It costs more to make an application with depth and quality. In short order, the App Store effect will prevent the development of these deeper, higher-quality applications for the iPhone. When developers can’t charge a higher price to cover a higher investment, these applications simply won’t be made at all.

By Paul Kafasis