New iTunes Connect bug?

Published on June 9, 2009 in Development. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Update, 01:36am - this bug was just fixed in iTunes Connect, and PCalc has been submitted correctly. Thanks Apple!

Original post:

I’m currently trying to submit an update to PCalc for iPhone, built with the GM iPhone 3.0 SDK, and it’s failing. The “Contact Us” section of iTunes Connect doesn’t actually let you contact anybody, except for very specific problems, so I’m at a loss at how to proceed. I throw myself on the mercy of the crowd.

I’m clicking “Manage Your Applications”, then “Update Application” for the app in question. After I fill in the version number and release notes, upload the app, and tick the “tested with iPhone OS 3.0″ checkbox, when I click “Save Changes” it says:

“The binary you uploaded was invalid. The bundle identifier is already in use by a different software package.”

I am uploading the right application, and the bundle identifier is identical to that of the application I’m trying to update. I did however manage to update the free “PCalc Lite” app, which was built in exactly the same way.

What I wonder is if because I have a “com.pcalc.mobile.lite” bundle ID for PCalc Lite, it won’t accept the “com.pcalc.mobile” ID for the full version because it considers it in use - it’s worked fine up until now of course.

Could it really be doing a comparison of “com.pcalc.mobile” and “com.pcalc.mobile.lite” but using the length from the first string for the comparison?

Somebody else is experiencing the same thing today it seems:

https://devforums.apple.com/thread/18807?tstart=0

I realise the chance of getting an answer this week (let alone a fix) is going to be next to impossible, but this is precisely the week it’s needed if I’m going to submit the build in time for the 3.0 rollout. Sigh…

The Info.plist file for the app looks like:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
<string>en</string>
<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
<string>PCalc</string>
<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>PCalc</string>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.pcalc.mobile</string>
<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
<string>6.0</string>
<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>PCalc</string>
<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
<string>APPL</string>
<key>CFBundleResourceSpecification</key>
<string>ResourceRules.plist</string>
<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
<string>P©al</string>
<key>CFBundleSupportedPlatforms</key>
<array>
<string>iPhoneOS</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>1.6</string>
<key>DTPlatformName</key>
<string>iphoneos</string>
<key>DTSDKName</key>
<string>iphoneos3.0</string>
<key>MinimumOSVersion</key>
<string>2.2</string>
<key>UIStatusBarStyle</key>
<string>UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent</string>
</dict>
</plist>

The current app details in iTunesConnect say:

Application Name : PCalc RPN Calculator
Apple ID : 284666222
Bundle Identifier : com.pcalc.mobile
Localizations : ( “English” )
Prerendered Icon Flag : false
Original Zip File Name : PCalc.zip
Bundle Short Version String :
Bundle Version : 1.5
Minimum OS Requirements : 2.1

I’m at a loss… Any thoughts?

Bundlewars, The Liveblog.

Published on June 3, 2009 in Development. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

So, it seems that I’ve annoyed John Casasanta, director of MacHeist, with my discussion about bundles and taking part in the bundle at TheMacBundles.com.

I just got the following in my inbox:

James and Jon:

I’ve just posted my rebuttal to your blog posts in the MacHeist forums:

http://www.macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=324361#p324361

For what it’s worth, I’ve been a user of DragThing for years, James, and that’s one of the reasons we wanted it included in MacHeist 3. You chose not to participate and now you’re making several false statements about us and other bundle promoters.

So, to reiterate what I wrote in my post, it’s completely your right to partake in whatever bundle you wish… or to not partake in any. BUT… it’s your RESPONSIBILITY to not make false statements. I’m seriously hoping that you’re now rethinking the false, damaging statements that you’ve made and that you’ll post a retraction. The statements I made in my post are FACTUAL.

I love how you’re all on your high-horse about fairness, farmers market and crap, yet you ALL have ZERO ISSUE with posting outright lies. Ethics and morality, people…

———————–
John Casasanta

His referenced post on the MacHeist forums states:

I still have to take serious issue with outright false statements like:

“Instead of most of the profits going to a third-party company with a background in marketing…”

“…instead of getting way less than a dollar per copy, or - even worse - only getting a flat fee regardless of the number of copies sold…”

“So if it sells, say, a couple of thousand copies in total, that’s a much better return than we might see from many tens of thousands of sales of some other bundles.”

“Those people usually reap the bulk of the profits from the sale, passing only a small percentage of the sale price on to the developers of the software.”

Overwhelmingly, the profits go to charity. The developers got the bulk of the earnings. We paid our staff. And the principals earned a fair amount, considering the effort we put into things.

So if Mr. DragThing and Sir Default Folder choose this “fair” bundle over ours or MUPromo, that’s totally their right. They simply shouldn’t go around spreading complete and utter bullshit, though.

All of our “slick, fancy, Madison Ave. marketing” does, indeed count for something… this new bundle still has the bonus app offer for when 2,000 bundles are sold, and I suspect that this offer will last the duration of the bundle. So I’ve heard that the devs are getting like $5 per bundle sold or something. Assume that they’ll sell around 1,000 bundles or so (I’m basing this estimate on what I heard the last MacBundleBox sold at like 800 or something) and that means that each dev will make around $5,000 from this promo.

Compare that with MacHeist 3, where each dev, at minimum, made what most people would consider a really good year’s salary for two weeks of a bit of an extra support load. And that’s saying a lot in this crappy economy.

If devs want the “FAIREST BUNDLE EVAR” then they can just continue selling a “bundle of 1″ at 100% price.

Adapt or die…

So, aside from the fact that I wasn’t singling out MacHeist specifically, I feel I have to respond. Here’s what I just emailed back to him.

That’s very interesting John. I’ll give you two concrete examples:

I was offered a fixed fee of $1200 (later increased to $2000) by Stephen Christopher in February to include PCalc as a bonus app in MacHeist 3. You will probably argue that it wasn’t intended as a “full” member of the bundle, but from my perspective, you wanted to give away an unlimited number of copies of my application for a fixed fee.

Calling it a “marketing opportunity” doesn’t change the fact that you are paying a tiny amount to a developer to boost the popularity of your bundle significantly. That is exactly the kind of behaviour that I objected to in my post, and was what drove me to participate in this bundle as they seemed to be genuinely trying to do something different.

Phill Ryu offered me $2 per copy for DragThing last year for MacHeist 2 in February 2008, again as a bonus app, which I did decline. You didn’t ask me about including DragThing this year, so I don’t know exactly how much you were planning to offer this time around. But you say I chose not to participate this year which is - in your own words - “an outright lie”, as I was never asked anything about including DragThing in MacHeist 3.

I have been offered similarly low - and lower - amounts from other bundles to take part. Did any of the participants in MacHeist 3 get around $5 per copy sold as every single developer is from this bundle? Are all the participants getting the same amount? That, in my book, is a pretty good definition of fair.

You say “adapt or die” in your post. That is exactly my fear. If developers - and by that I mean ALL developers - can’t sell their software at a fair price that will support them in the long term, then they *will* start to die out. If eight or ten developers made a decent wage out of Mac Heist 3 - and I take your word for that - and, let’s say, another eight or ten do the same from MacUpdate, then what happens to the other thousands of developers out there who are trying to sell their software, but nobody is buying it because they are waiting to see if it turns up in another bundle?

I don’t think this bundle is perfect either, not by a long shot, but I believe it comes from a goal to support developers first and that’s why I took part.

I can only speak for the experiences I have had.

James

The conversation has subsequently moved to the MacHeist forums - you can find the thread here. Rather than copy everything in three places, I’m off to the lions’ den… See you there?

TheMacBundles.com

Published on June 1, 2009 in Development. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

DragThing

You can now buy DragThing as part of a brand new software bundle at TheMacBundles.com - you can get it with eight other great applications for only $49.95. That’s only $21 more than a single copy of DragThing, for well over $200 more in software.

It’s all the brainchild of Mac developer Stephen Becker. A few months ago, he contacted a group of us and suggested the idea of a what I would call a "fairtrade" bundle. Instead of most of the profits going to a third-party company with a background in marketing, he would organise it himself, and we would all split the proceeds equally. He’s been working hard to get all the pieces in place since then - it’s been a real labour of love.

I was happy to lend my support to the project with DragThing. The "bundle culture" that’s developed over the last few years has been a great thing for the users - at least in the short term - but not so great for the developers in my opinion. Everybody is looking for the next big bargain - which is especially understandable given the current economic climate of course - and that’s been driving the prices down. But it’s also getting to the point where it’s hard for the smaller developers to stay in business.

But with this deal, instead of getting way less than a dollar per copy, or - even worse - only getting a flat fee regardless of the number of copies sold, we’ll all be getting roughly five dollars from each sale of the bundle. So if it sells, say, a couple of thousand copies in total, that’s a much better return than we might see from many tens of thousands of sales of some other bundles.

I think Stephen won’t mind me saying that this bundle doesn’t exactly have the slickest marketing in comparison to the likes of MacHeist or MacUpdate. But that’s ok, it’s still a really good deal when you get down to it - they’re all solid apps, most of which you will have heard of before now. And hopefully, if this proves to be a success, it will be the start of something big that’s good for the whole Mac community.

So, if you like a bargain, but also like the idea of developers getting paid a fair amount for their software, please check out the whole story at TheMacBundles.com. It’s only going to be available for the next two weeks, so hurry!

Divisive Devices Part 2

Published on May 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

How very interesting! As a follow up to the last post on device IDs.

I just renewed my iPhone developer program membership, so that I don’t forget over the summer, and in the email I just got from Apple it says under “Benefits”:

Devices: device list can be reset beginning 12 Jul 2009″

The 12th is my renewal date.

So, it’s not that deleting devices frees up a slot a year later, it’s that you have 100 devices IDs you can play with for the whole length of your year’s membership in the developer program. The next year, you get to delete them and start again.

So I’m basically stuck with what I have until July 12th. I do hope Apple doesn’t do anything like, say, release new hardware over summer…

Divisive Devices

Published on May 11, 2009 in Development and Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

One thing that bit me a while back, and should be publicised I think, is the current limitation around device IDs in the iPhone Program Portal.

If you are writing iPhone software, you get to specify the hardware ID of a hundred iPhone or iPod Touch devices that your software can be installed on for the purposes of testing. Set up correctly, you can have a group of beta testers which you can send pre-release builds of your software to. They don’t need to go through the App Store, the software can be put directly onto their device via iTunes. This is known in the program portal as “ad-hoc” distribution.

This is invaluable for testing out new versions before you submit them to the store for everybody else, and wasn’t something available right at the start of iPhone development. Before iTunes Promo codes came along, it was also used by people to give copies of their software to the press.

All you need is to get the UUID of the device, enter it into the Devices tab of the program portal, and it’s then available to be assigned to the “provisioning profiles” which are the magical files which say which devices a particular ad-hoc application can be installed on.

The user interface suggests that you can have 100 testing devices in use at any time, and there are controls at the side to add, remove and modify the existing devices.

So, for example, when the iPhone 3G came out, a lot of my testers got new devices, and I went through and updated their entries to list the new UUIDs.

Then, at some point a few months back, I hit a problem trying to update a device from somebody who lost their phone and got a new one - all the controls to edit the devices had vanished:

I didn’t have 100 devices in use, and anyway, I figured that if I ever did hit 100, I could just remove some folk to make room for new one. It looked like some kind of bug to me. So I sent a detailed email explaining everything to Apple, and a month later got the following response:

Please know that each Standard iPhone Developer Program enrollment has a limit of 100 test devices please be aware that removing a device will not replenish the current amount available .

I hope this information was helpful.

Uh…. no, not really.

Reading between the lines, and discussions on the forums, it sounds like every time I deleted or modified an entry, I was getting one closer to the magic figure of 100 device IDs you have entered since the beginning of time. When you hit the limit, regardless of how many total device IDs you have listed in the portal, your ability to further edit the list is removed completely.

Some people have been told that after removing a device, the slot is eventually freed up one year later. Given than the whole history of iPhone development is itself only about a year old, this isn’t exactly helpful. I don’t have any direct evidence that this is true anyway.

I can’t currently add any new testers or change their device entries if they get new ones. And I can only imagine what is going to happen when the new iPhones come along, presumably next month, and lots of people get replacements. If I bought a new iPhone for myself, I couldn’t even add it to my own list of development devices currently.

Now, I understand why Apple has put some limits on this - people were using the ad-hoc feature to bypass Apple and sell software directly to their customers outwith the App Store, very much against the rules. But now, anybody who wanted to do that and break all the agreements in place with Apple, would probably do so with the much easier promo codes. So, this restriction is just hurting real developers who are working within the system.

The last thing I heard about five weeks ago was:

We are currently reviewing your inquiry and will get back to you very soon.

And, so far, nothing. This problem is sonar ID 68922738 for anybody at Apple reading this who cares. Bottom line, developers be careful with your device IDs, you might not have as many left as you think…

Oh, and since this is about to push my PCalc promo story of earlier today off the front page… PCALC FOR iPHONE HALF PRICE SALE, GET IT HERE! :)

Supply and Demand

Published on May 11, 2009 in Development and Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Sorry to have been so quiet, gentle reader. I have been away on a little vacation for the last month in an attempt to recharge my creative batteries - three weeks in Japan, and another week at home to recover from the horrible jet lag that ensued. I will not bore you with my many photos of wild Totoros, but suffice to say a good time was had by all. This was our first trip abroad for many years that didn’t involve visiting Moscone West…

However, while I was still answering support emails while on my trip - the plight of the indie developer - I haven’t been writing any code, nor indeed keeping a close eye on sales. I had a good look at the latter this morning. Ouch… But kind of expected.

In my experience, you need to do an update to an iPhone app about once a month to maintain interest (and therefore sales) and to keep it in the public eye. PCalc was last updated on March 25th, so we’re getting perilously close to two months without anything new to show. So, sales have been understandably slowing a little over the last month.

I have actually been working away on my iPhone OS 3.0 update though - the future PCalc 1.6 already has copy and paste support. But, clearly, I’m not going to be able to release that until version 3.0 of the OS ships.

So what to do in the meantime to stimulate sales?

Well, I’ve been loathe to do it, despite numerous people telling me that PCalc costs far too much at $9.99, but here goes nothing…

PCalc is now on sale at half-price at $4.99 and will remain so until the 3.0 OS ships and I can release the new version alongside it. I don’t know when that will be, but I would suspect around June, given when WWDC is scheduled. I’m not planning to charge anything for the new version, so now would be a really sensible time to buy before the price goes back up again.

The real question is, will this price drop more than double sales again, so we’re actually making more money? Many people tell me yes, my gut says no.

Let’s see what happens!

Of Redirections And Affiliations

Published on April 7, 2009 in Development. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

So, today I’ve been playing with iTunes links, by way of the iTunes Store affiliate program.

At the moment, if you want to link to your app on the iTunes store from the web or from inside another app on the iPhone, you have a couple of options.

On Mac and Windows (with Safari installed) or on iPhone OS 2.1 or later (this might work on earlier systems, but I haven’t verified it), you can have a link like so:

http://www.itunes.com/app/PCalc

Where “PCalc” is the name of your application, obviously.

Opening this will redirect your browser to search.itunes.apple.com, trigger a search by name on the App Store for your app, which, if found, will then redirect you to ax.itunes.apple.com, which will redirect you again to an itms:// URL which will open up in iTunes on Mac/Windows or the App Store application on the iPhone.

It’s a nice short URL, but that’s three redirects to get to your app. On the phone, it also means that your app quits, Safari starts up, quits again immediately, and then the App Store app opens. Bit messy, and prone to confusion since it’s just a text search. I also couldn’t figure out a way to search for PCalc Lite using this method. This doesn’t work for example:

http://www.itunes.com/app/PCalc%20Lite

So if you have a space in your app name, it might not be for you.

It is however the only thing I got reliably to work from within an app on OS 2.1.

On 2.2 and later, you can use a link like:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284666222&mt=8

The “id” in the link is the unique identifier of your app on the App Store. You can get a link like this by control/right-clicking on the name of an application within the iTunes Store and choosing “Copy iTunes Store URL”. I say “like this” because you really get an “itunes.apple.com” link, but the older “phobos.apple.com” links work better on the iPhone. Just change “itunes” to “phobos”.

The advantage of a phobos link is that on the iPhone, you won’t have a trip through Safari to get to the App Store - it’s special cased, so it will open directly.

So, in PCalc Lite, when you clicked the “take me to the full version” button, I used to use the first technique if running on an iPhone OS 2.1 system, and the second technique on later systems.

But, I was curious how many people were actually clicking on that link. The only way to get that information was to redirect through Safari.

If you click the link now, it takes you to either

http://www.dragthing.com/links/pcalc_appstore

or

http://www.dragthing.com/links/pcalc_appstore_21

On my server, I have an .htaccess file at the root of the website folder, which redirects those links with the following commands:

Redirect /links/pcalc_appstore http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284666222&mt=8
Redirect /links/pcalc_appstore_21 http://www.itunes.com/app/PCalc

That doesn’t help from a web page, being browsed by Safari on the iPhone though. The phobos links won’t work on 2.1, and I don’t know a way to conditionally change the URL depending on the client OS. But i figure the number of people on 2.1 is diminishing rapidly at this stage.

I also lose the direct route to the App Store on the phone, and it’s now depending on my dragthing.com server being up, but I get to see how many people are clicking the link, and also I can change it if necessary to point to something else without having to update the application.

Previously on my PCalc website, when linking to the iPhone version on the App Store, I used to use the phobos links directly. People have been trained that a link that starts with phobos.apple.com is going to fire up iTunes, but they do look a little ugly and long-winded.

A better solution was to create the following redirect in the .htaccess file:

Redirect /itunes_store_link/pcalc_lite http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/
MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284666222&mt=8

That gives me a link of:

http://www.pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/pcalc

which I can use everywhere. Hopefully, it’s pretty clear that clicking on it is going to open up the iTunes Store. I also added

http://www.pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/pcalc_lite
http://www.pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/tlasystems

links to go to PCalc Lite and to our company page on the store. It looks a lot cleaner, and it means I can change the underlying links if required without searching and replacing all over our pages and sites.

This proved useful when looking into becoming an iTunes Store affiliate. The idea behing the affiliate program is that if you send somebody to buy something on the iTunes Store, you can get 5% of the value of the transaction as a “finder’s fee”. In the case of the App Store, the developer still gets 70% of the price, so Apple pays the 5% out of their share, as they should.

It was pointed out to me that there’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t be an affiliate for your own apps. Because if you are spending your own advertising money promoting your apps and driving sales to the App Store, you’re doing exactly what any other affiliate would do. Sounds good to me.

Better still, if somebody navigates away from your app, and buys your competitor’s app or anything else, you still get 5% of the total transaction for getting them to visit the store. Or so I’m told - I’ve only just set all this up, so it’s early days.

First obvious catch, the affiliate program is not run by Apple, and it’s different in each country / region. So, I had to sign up with Linkshare and then request that Apple let me be an affiliate. It’s not guaranteed, although it seemed to be pretty quick that I got the acceptance email. You need to show Linkshare your primary website, and give some demographic information. In my case, I also had to give lots of details about my company as well as tax information, and bank details so they could pay me.

Once that’s set up, you have to create special URLs that contain the affiliate information. So to link to PCalc, I would now have to put:

http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=HHOV33kSYk0&offerid=146261
&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252F
itunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware
%253Fid%253D284666222%2526mt%253D8%2526partnerId%253D30

Yuck! So, that’s a Linkshare URL that has the iTunes Store URL embedded inside it. Nowhere as nice as the Amazon affiliate mechanism that just adds an ID to the end of a regular link. Also, while the iTunes Store URL will work worldwide and take you to the same software in any store, the Linkshare affiliate scheme is only for the US store. Thankfully, if a user outside of the US clicks on one, it will still take them to their store - you just won’t get an affiliate payment.

The downside is also that you can only have one affiliate scheme at a time, unless you provide different App Store links for different countries. While I could become a UK iTunes store affiliate, I can only have the one link. But most of our sales go through the US store anyway, so it’s annoying, but not the end of the world.

The click.linksynergy.com links look very ugly though, and I might think twice before clicking on one myself. No sign of Apple, unless you look really hard. Apple should really have implemented their own global and unified affiliate scheme if you ask me, tied in with the iTunes Store.

Ah, but I have my super server-side redirect technology!

I just edited the .htaccess file like so:

Redirect /itunes_store_link/pcalc http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=HHOV33kSYk0&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=
http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa
%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware%253Fid%253D284666222%2526mt%253D8%2526partnerId%253D30

Redirect /itunes_store_link/pcalc_lite http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=HHOV33kSYk0&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=
http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa
%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware%253Fid%253D300311831%2526mt%253D8%2526partnerId%253D30

Redirect /itunes_store_link/tlasystems http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=HHOV33kSYk0&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=
http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa
%252Fwa%252FviewArtist%253Fid%253D284666225%2526partnerId%253D30

Without changing any HTML at all, I rewired all the App Store URLs in one fell swoop to include the affiliate information across all my sites. Result!

Now you could argue that by hiding the fact that the links on my site now go through an affiliate scheme, I’m somehow being dishonest. But, since it’s just for my own software that I’m doing it, and the customer pays exactly the same in either case, I don’t think there’s any real case for saying so. If I ever did something similar with a link for somebody else’s software, I would definitely draw attention to the fact that I got a 5% kickback on the sale.

Anyway, it’s early days (in fact, the first day), and I have no idea if this is going to increase our income by any significant amount, but I should know in the next few weeks how it looks and I’ll report back then.

Dear Members Of The Press

Published on March 25, 2009 in Development. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Trying a slightly different self-deprecating approach to the press release today. We’ll see if it works. New PCalc updates for the iPhone and Mac OS X, all out today. The App Store is doing its usual trick of not listing new things on time, so at this point I’m relying strictly on press coverage to get some sales. Fingers crossed, please.

Here’s the release:

Well, you can’t say we didn’t try. We built something that the world was clearly not ready for, at least not yet. Yes, Twitkitteh - the premier iPhone Twitter client for cats - was, shall we say, sadly misunderstood at best.
But following the disappointing response to our feline foray - some would say folly - TLA Systems has decided to go back to basics, back to what we do best. Calculators!
Today, we are proud to present not one, not two, but three PCalc releases all on the same day. The scientific calculator trifecta, if you will. Surely, such an unquestionable return to form would be worth a little bit of coverage?
Out today, we have PCalc 1.5 and PCalc Lite 1.5 on the iPhone, and PCalc 3.4.1 on Mac OS X. All good releases, with no obvious signs of catlike behaviour to be found anywhere.
Review copies happily provided on request, although currently the promo codes for the iPhone only work with US store accounts.
PCalc for iPhone
PCalc gets a brand new engineering layout, with hyperbolic trig functions, hypotenuse, leg, gamma, delta percent and more. You also get a classic theme taken from PCalc on Mac OS X, and six new key click sounds you can choose from too.
PCalc Lite gets just two of the click sounds, and some other small improvements. PCalc Lite remains completely free however, and completely awesome. If you want to get a feel for how the full PCalc works on the iPhone, just try it out.
PCalc for Mac OS X
On the Mac side there are some familiar faces, as all the calculator themes from the iPhone version have made the long journey over.
Aside from the completely rewritten visuals, there’s an updated Dashboard widget - you can copy and paste again! - and a collection of additional unit conversions including a whole new cooking section.
More Information
PCalc Lite is available for free from the iTunes Application Store at the following link:

<http://www.pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/pcalc_lite>

The full PCalc for iPhone is available to buy at $9.99 from the iTunes Application Store at the following link:

<http://www.pcalc.com/itunes_store_link/pcalc>

PCalc for Mac OS X costs $19.99 and can be downloaded here:
More information and screenshots are available at:
Of course, you might still be interested in teh kittehs:
Thank you for your interest, and for not making fun of us behind our backs about the whole cat thing. Or at least doing so quietly.
Yours hopefully,
James

What do you think? I’m open to any and all suggestions to get that elusive bit of press!

Addendum

Published on March 21, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I forgot to include this insightful graph I drew earlier in the week in yesterday’s post on Twitkitteh.

My customers, let me show you them.

Twitkitteh, Where Did It All Go Wrong? Part 2

Published on March 20, 2009 in Development. 17 Comments Tags: , , , .

I trust you have read the background to all this in Part 1. If not, go read it now. We’ll all wait.

Right, so where were we? Oh yes, I’d just submitted Twitkitteh to the app store nearly two weeks ago and was full of childlike hope and dreams. Would it be a success? Would cute animal Twitter clients be the future of the iPhone? Would I make enough money from it to pay for the domain name and the website?

Ok, full disclosure time.

Since Twitkitteh released about a week ago, we have sold exactly a hundred and one copies, at roughly 99c each. That makes it about £50 in terms of income at current exchange rates after Apple’s 30% cut. About 14 quid of that went on the domain name for a year, and about another 11 quid on hosting the domain on our existing server.

That leaves us £25 profit for three week’s work. Oh, and minus the 120 or so engineer-hours spent designing, writing, and promoting it that could have been spent on something else. So, depending on exactly how much you rate iPhone engineers at on an hourly basis, you can calculate exactly how much we lost on the whole project.

Not, as you will admit, the resounding success we were all hoping for. To be honest, when I went into it, I figured it would do absolutely nothing, or be the next big thing. Given that the reaction of most people to the idea was to ask when I was going to be retiring, I was kind of hoping it would tend towards the latter. My actual goal was to make enough extra money for a new laptop or two, but as it turns out, I don’t think I could afford a reconditioned 2nd generation iPod shuffle.

This is really the first thing I’ve written that’s not been a success, and is - if I’m honest with myself - really quite firmly in the failure camp. I’m not sure exactly how to deal with that. There’s a whole other post waiting to be written about the independent developer as artist, and how we view our creations as extensions of ourselves. If they don’t do well, we do take it personally. But that, as I said, is for another discussion.

So - and you should have really realised where we were going with this from the title of last week’s post - where did it all go wrong?

I think there are a lot of factors. I think the product - as it is written - is perfectly fine. It’s silly, and intentionally so, but those people who get it think it’s great. It does what it says. I don’t see it being any more silly or less worthwhile than some stuff on the app store which is selling thousands of copies a day, anyway.

I think, while I assumed I was aiming for something mass-market, I didn’t really. It’s a common fallacy to think that just because you take three things that are big and popular - cats, iPhones, and Twitter in this case, then a product that is the intersection of all three must be just plain huge. But as it turns out, a lot of people said “that’s great, but I don’t have an iPhone”. Or indeed, “that’s great, but I don’t have a cat”.

The initial sales weren’t helped by the fact that while I got the “Ready for sale” email from Apple to say Twitkitteh was on the store, it wasn’t actually listed anywhere. If you searched for it by name, it was there, but it wasn’t listed under the recently released applications, or the alphabetical section. In iTunes that was fixed in 24 hours, but on the phone it took much longer. Given that significant sales come from people just randomly finding your app in the store from it being at the top of the recent apps, that wasn’t a great start. Submitting an app just after a big update to the App Store software might not have been a clever move…

Also, while there was an impressive grassroots movement on Twitter to promote it, led by the iPhone Twitterati of  @atebits, @chockenberry, and @mattgemmell, very few places picked up on my press releases, with the notable exception of Rene Ritchie at The iPhone Blog. Lack of press being a common theme here during PCalc development of course, but I assumed there would be a lot more mainstream interest this time round.

I also hoped that the absurd nature of the app would at least get some reaction, one way or another. I submitted press releases - each with an iTunes promo code for a download, of course - to a much wider assortment of sites, outside of the traditional Mac folk I would normally market to. I worked solidly for about 2-3 days just trying to get a bite with my PR hook without success. Surely somebody like Engadget, or Gizmodo, or even The Register would pillory me. Apparently not.

Perhaps the Mac sites, who are still unsure about how to cover the sea of iPhone apps generally, were put off by the whole feline frivolousness, and the non-technical sites were put off by the iPhone / Twitter / Cat 2.0 side. Not everyone gets my sense of humour either it has to be said, and were taking things entirely seriously. Some people did though - Jason Snell of Macworld said:

This is like performance art via app. Or practical joke. It really works, though.

Rene Ritchie added:

We can’t tell if Twitkitteh is shrewd marketing or wicked satire at the state of the App Store and Twitter. We suspect it’s equal parts both, finished with a good shot of lulz.

I tried using Facebook, digg, reddit buttons on the website, but they only got a few clicks - mainly - after some investigation - by people who I know personally. I still think it’s a mainstream press story away from success, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now. It very briefly made it to number 46 in the Social Networking category of the App Store, but dropped off quickly. Sales yesterday were a mere six, and the chatter on Twitter has dropped off markedly now.

So, yes, failure as a product. But also an interesting success in terms of learning a little more about the mysterious ways of the App Store.

Lesson 1 - You cannot manufacture a hit record.

I went into this deliberately trying to create something wildly populist, and ended up making something that’s sold significantly less than a scientific calculator. And I thought I was being pretty smart about it too.

Lesson 2 - It’s a lottery.

Any old nonsense put up on the App Store, priced at 99c, will not make you rich. Some people will get rich, but the odds are, it’s not going to be you. As more and more people come to the App Store gold deposit, thinking they are going to make a fortune, the less gold there is going to be to go round. Yes, writing a good product is important too, but it’s not a guarantee of success.

Oh well, I gave it a good shot. Worst case, I learned about a number of new iPhone technologies I hadn’t looked at before, so I’m in a better state for my third iPhone app. And that will be THE GREATEST IPHONE APP EVER.