iPhone/Web 2.0

I’m developing an iPhone app which has a built-in quiz which runs using JavaScript within a UIWebView. After a user clicks a Check Answers button, I have to use JavaScript to determine if all the answers are correct, so I can save this result for later.

Here is the relevant JavaScript:

function checkAnswers() {
  // Do stuff to see if all answers were correct
  ...

  // Send all correct status back to Objective-C
  window.location = "/allCorrect/" + allCorrect;
}

In Objective-C, you then need to set up a UIWebViewDelegate to intercept whenever a new URL is to be loaded into the UIWebView. Then you need to call shouldStartLoadWithRequest and if you called your fake URL, then it shouldn’t load, but execute the code you need to run in Objective-C instead. Here is the relevant Objective-C code:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView
        shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
        navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {

  if ( [request.mainDocumentURL.relativePath
        isEqualToString:@"/allCorrect/false"] ) {
    NSLog( @"Nope, that is not right!" );
    return false;
  }

  if ( [request.mainDocumentURL.relativePath
        isEqualToString:@"/allCorrect/true"] ) {
    NSLog( @"You got them all!" );
    return false;
  }

  return true;
}

Many times you need to save some user preferences or session data that will load automatically upon the next launch of your iPhone app. Unfortunately this is quite a bit harder than it looks. Here are simple steps on how to save a string from your application. Just change the variable type to save more information!

Let’s assume you want to save the user’s account number.

Add the following to AppDelegate.h like you would normally create a mutable string:

NSMutableString *accountName;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableString *accountName;


Add the following to the top of AppDelegate.m. I put this between my import and implementation statements.

NSString *kAccountName = @"AccountName";


Add the following to applicationDidFinishLoading in AppDelegate.m:

NSMutableString *tempMutableAccountName = [[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:kAccountName] mutableCopy];
self.accountName = tempMutableAccountName;
[tempMutableAccountName release];


Add the following to applicationWillTerminate in AppDelegate.m:

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:accountName forKey:kAccountName];


In the application itself, you will need to add the following code where you want to set this value to prepare for saving on application termination:

AppDelegate *appDelegate = (AppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
appDelegate.accountNumber = x;


To grab this value from the saved variable, add these lines:

MobilePOSAppDelegate *appDelegate = (MobilePOSAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
x = appDelegate.accountNumber;


Now you can save data from your app so it can be loaded automatically next time!

The history of German Sex? Is that anything like the Book of Italian War Heroes? –Rory O’Connor

After almost a month of waiting, Apple has finally accepted German Sex into the App Store. Even though I’ve lived in Germany for three years, I still can’t always remember the sex of every noun when I speak. In German, every noun can have one of three genders: masculine (der), feminine (die) or neuter (das). The gender of each noun is rather arbitrary. My program has the two thousand most commonly used nouns and will randomly quiz you on whether a noun is der, die or das.

A while ago, I was chatting with Steve Finkelstein online about how he wanted to find a good way to learn iPhone development and he mentioned that his job was considering sending him to the iPhone bootcamp by the Big Nerd Ranch. I said that looks interesting and then I saw the price tag: $3850. Wow! I said, he could fly over here and stay at my apartment a few weeks and write an application and it would be a whole lot cheaper than that class! I’d teach him for free and in exchange he would write an app I could sell. Steve actually did end up going to the iPhone Bootcamp and said he thought it was a very good course.

So, that put this idea into my head and I remembered that my friend Jesse Alter just graduated and was looking for a job. I said, “Hey, how about you come visit me in Berlin and learn iPhone dev?” At first he thought it was a crazy idea, but then remembered that through one of his credit cards, he would get $400 back from a travel expense. He originally planned to stay a few nights in some stupid hotel, but decided visiting Berlin would be much cooler. He found a flight for $600, so was able to visit Berlin for a few weeks for around $200. Not bad!

When he arrived, we brainstormed what he could write in three weeks and finally settled upon this language training app. Then, we had to come up with a name and we thought of GermanGender, but it was too long to find under an icon on the iPhone home screen. Then we said, “Why not German Sex?” First I thought there’s no way Apple would accept it, but sex is the linguistic term for noun gender in such languages, so I said let’s go for it.

A few days passed and I received the letter I was half-dreading from Apple. Yes, I bet they’re rejecting it because it has “sex” in the name:

Dear Mr. Smith,

Thank you for submitting German Sex to the App Store. We’ve reviewed German Sex and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains objectionable content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

It would be appropriate to replace the sound produced by the app when the user selects a wrong answer.

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that German Sex does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

WTF?! They’re rejecting it because they think the wrong answer sounds like a fart! ROFLMAO! Listen to it for yourself: wrong answer. Well, I decided to change the sound anyway, fixed it, uploaded it and sent the following reply to Apple:

Dear iPhone Developer Program,

I have changed the sound for a wrong answer and have resubmitted. I
was unaware that a gameshow buzzer would be offensive, but I am
willing to comply with your recommendation regarding this resource.

Sincerely yours,
Chuck Smith

Several weeks passed with no word, so I was quite happy to see that it was accepted this morning! So, that’s the story behind German Sex, and the $200 3-week European iPhone development immersion trip that led to its creation.

So, if you’d like German Sex, get it in the App Store.

Today I’m with Mika Letki of ThousandApps.com. First, some Internet history. In 2005, Alex Tew had the original concept of the Million Dollar Homepage where websites would pay $100 to buy a 10×10 icon on a website thus paying $1 per pixel. At the end of the project, he would have a million dollars. Believe it or not, it worked and today Alex is a millionaire. As soon as I heard the domain name of this new project, ThousandApps.com, I immediately had the same idea: The Million Dollar Homepage, but with iPhone app icons. Brilliant!

What inspired you to build this website?

Of course I was inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage. I have to admit I didn’t know about Alex Tew’s story before, but last week a friend of mine told me about it and I immediately started to think how to make something similar, but different.

I called my friend Danilo Yasuno of DYS: Translations because he always has interesting ideas and as soon as I told him “Hey, I want to create something like the Million Dollar Homepage,” he replied “Ok, so create a blank page and fill it with a million iPhone icons. Call it Million Apps or something like that. Oh wait, there are not a million icons yet, so maybe a thousand.”

On Sunday www.thousandapps.com was online and I started to contact potential customers, i.e. iPhone developers.

What has been the general response to it?

Sounds like people are loving it. I got dozens of emails in two days and some of the most strategic places for the icons have already been sold. Some people see Thousand Apps as a really good advertising opportunity, others like a freak piece of art, and to feel like they’re joining this “community”.

I expected people would be interested, but I didn’t know it could happen so soon. I’ve never received more than 20 emails in a day before. I’m having fun.

How much does a space cost and when does it expire?

Each space cost 10€ (around US$13) which is a link to its App Store page. It won’t expire. All the icons will be there FOREVER, just like The Milion Dollar Homepage. I’ll take care of this website with Danilo.

So, that means if all spaces are sold, you will have made 10.000€ ($13,000), not bad! How many spaces have you sold so far?

10.000 € wouldn’t be bad since I’m planning to get married soon. I sold 20 icons in one day and a person booked 5 places for his upcoming apps. I had to invent a “SOLD” icon for this reason.

Sounds like a good start indeed. Thanks for the interview and I wish you the best!

Thank you Chuck, congratulations for the good place you’ve chosen for your app and I wish you all the best as well. [Editor's note: check the very bottom left corner of the Thousand Apps page.]

Today, I’m proud to have John Wilker and Tom Ortega with me about the 360|iDev conference taking place in San Jose on Mar 2-4. They boast it to be the largest iPhone conference in the world, so I thought I had to investigate a bit more and I ended up being accepted as a speaker. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

What gave you the idea to start 360|iDev?

John: We want to do conferences we’d attend, that’s what lead us to 360|Flex for Adobe Flex developers, and now both of us are dabbling (hoping to one day have a conference tool) in iPhone Dev, so we had a light bulb moment that there wasn’t really an event for iPhone devs. Apple’s conference is HUGE and across all their tools and platforms, why not offer iPhone devs their own community?

Tom: I really want to be one of the cool kids and program on this wonderful new device. Seriously though, we started 360|Flex, our other show, so there could be a better place to learn how to program in Flex. We saw the same need for iPhone development and thus here we are, planning a new conference.

Why attend iDev instead of WWDC?

Tom: 2 huge reasons:

Cost – If you buy a ticket to our show early, it’s only $200 USD. Even if you wait til the end, the price caps at $499 USD. That price includes most if not all your food for the 3 days of the conference. That and we have a group hotel rate of $129 a night near the conference center.

Content – If all you care about is the iPhone/iPod Touch, then this is the show for you. It is 100% about that and nothing else. It won’t be a matter of “Is there anything of interest for me today?” but rather more of “There’s too much goodness for me today. Which one do I go for?”

John: WWDC is Apple’s main stage, and a great event (I presume, having never attended), but all main stage events, focus on all products and platforms. An iPhone developer may have little interest in other technologies, yet they’re there, as are those people who use them. An attendee at our Flex Conference pointed out that Adobe MAX (similar to WWDC) is 4000+ people, but the guy next to you at lunch, might be an Illustrator designer, or a PDF person, or who knows what, but at 360|Flex, the whole table will be peers in Flex development. That’s the goal with 360|iDev, to give the iPhone developer community a place to come together, swap stories, tricks, lessons learned, etc.

What is your target audience? Is your conference geared more toward developers or businessmen?

John: Developers. We say that our events are by developers, for developers. That’s not to say there won’t be business folks, they’re a large part of any developer community really. They pay the bills usually, they’re clients, owners, idea folks, etc. We hope to bring both groups together in a way that has benefit to both, indie devs can find clients or full time work. Business people can find developers.

Tom: Traditionally, we do get more developers. Most of the sessions are technical in nature. However, we do have a business side of iPhone App development. That is aimed 100% at the businessmen, so there will be topics for both crowds.

On that note, if someone is interested in speaking, which track needs the most contributions? Is there any particular topic that you’re surprised no one has taken up yet?

John: Game dev. For as much noise as Apple has been making about the games on the iPhone, I thought there’d be a lot of people interested in sharing what they’ve learned about developing games for the iPhone.

Tom: Currently, the gambit is wide open. The topic I was most interested
in learning about was Open GL ES. I was suprised no one had offered to speak on that, but just today we got a submission on that topic.

Great, I’ve been struggling lately with learning OpenGL ES, so I’ll definitely attend that talk! So, besides the conference, what else does San Jose have to offer that might attract people to attend?

John: The Winchester Mystery House is a fun time. It’s about an hour or less from San Francisco, so that’s always a huge plus! Plus all the startups in the area, you can’t get in but you can drive by. Heck Apple is there!

Tom: It’s Silicon Valley! If you love the iPhone and are trying to develop for it, you’re probably a nerd. The headquarters of Apple, Intel, nVidia, AMD, Google, Yahoo, and, of course, eBay are all here. For me, there’s something cool about being able to see all those companies. Take a gander at where the magic happens. I’ve been known to serve as a tour guide late at night, during a In-N-Out burger run. If you’ve never had an In-N-Out double-double cheeseburger, that’s reason enough to come.

Ah yes, I’ve heard about the famous In-N-Out burgers, but being an east coast boy, I never had the chance to try them out for myself. So enough about food… for those of us flying in, will 360|iDev be in the middle of nowhere or are there public transportation options available?

John: We hate the middle of nowhere! We aim for hub cities or at least one along a major travel path. From San Jose airport, there’s a shuttle bus that drops off across the street from the hotel, and from the hotel to the conference, there’s light rail. The Hotel is half a mile (Editor’s note for non-Americans: that would be a kilometer) or one stop from the conference.

Tom: That same light rail will take you to downtown. The conference is at eBay’s HQ, which is in an office park area. However, downtown is only a few miles away.

Besides iDev, what are some other conferences you run?

John: We’ve been doing 360|Flex for 2 years now, 7 events in all, including Europe. We really try to focus on making the event a big success with our attendees before even thinking about splitting our attention. Each event is very different as we work to refine what worked and what didn’t, etc. If anyone is curious about our reputation, etc do a google search for 360|Flex (or 360flex, flex 360, we seem to have an easily confused name, LOL) to see what our attendees are saying.

Thank you very much for the interview and I look forward to seeing you there!

John: For sure! Can’t wait to see everyone in San Jose!

Tom: Thanks for the interview. It’s been really fun!

Today I am with Jonas Witt from Metaquark, the company behind Berlin Trip Planner (German: Fahr-Info Berlin), an iPhone app which recently had to remove their maps, because the BVG (Berlin transport company) complained they were under copyright. Thus, while the app is still incredibly useful and much more useful than BVG’s own mobile site, it has now become much less useful without the maps.

Why did you decide to make the Berlin Trip Planner?

I was pretty clueless what to do with my iPhone developer privileges up until about two weeks before the App Store launch back in July. The idea to write a trip planner application was inspired by Johannes Plunien, author of the brilliant MVV Dashboard Widget (which covers Munich public transport), when we exchanged some AppFresh-related support mails just about at that time. I rushed to get the application accepted in time for the App Store launch, and that worked out pretty well. You can read more about the whole process on my blog entry, The App Store Experience.

Why did you decide to make it free?

I decided to make the application free since I wanted people just to use it and enjoy it, and nobody had the slightest idea how App Store pricing would be perceived and I thought it wouldn’t generate a lot of revenue anyway, given that it’s intended for a very limited audience. The zero price tag lead to a lot of impulse “buys” which gave me a good reputation, since most people loved the application. The small amount of time I invested in that application has more than paid for itself since.

Can you elaborate on what exactly the BVG complained about? Were they just complaining about the copyright of the maps or did they want you to remove the maps altogether?

The copyright notice on their website bvg.de (where the PDF map is from) states that you are allowed to use the website’s content for personal and non-commercial use only. Shipping the PDF with my application is no personal use, and I didn’t ask for permission to do so, so they made me remove the maps from the application.

I have also read that the BVG is trying to remove your app from the App Store altogether. Is this true or just a rumor?

That’s a rumor. [Editor's note: I later discovered this was an English mistranslation/overexaggeration of a heise.de article and has since been corrected (heise is basically the German equivalent of slashdot).]

I read recently that they are working on their own application that would work across all platforms. Do you think they are going to develop their own iPhone app or not do anything with the iPhone altogether?

I can only guess here, but that “will work on all platforms” bit makes me think it will be a Java application, which couldn’t run on the iPhone since it doesn’t support Java. I’m not sure if they’re gonna make a separate iPhone application, but I don’t expect either application to become available soon.

What are your future iPhone plans?

I’m currently doing contract work on several iPhone applications, there are Mac projects that need to be continued (AppFresh), and university demands my attention from time to time, so there aren’t any concrete plans right now. It’s definitely a fun platform to write applications on, though, so Fahr-Info won’t be my last.

Thank you for the interview and I hope the BVG soon comes to their senses!

I was quite shocked today to pull out the most useful app I own, Fahr-Info Berlin … and find that it no longer has an integrated S-Bahn map! It was always a great feeling of comfort to know that wherever I was in Berlin, I can always look at the S-Bahn map on my iPhone to easily get around.

Today I just noticed on its App Store description: “Aufgrund einer Beschwerde der BVG mussten sowohl der Übersichtsnetzplan als auch die Detailpläne entfernt werden. Sorry dafür!” (Because of a complaint from the BVG [Berlin's transport company] we had to remove the overview map as well as the detailed maps. Sorry about that!) I find this completely unacceptable from the BVG. If they can’t provide their own iPhone app, then they should be very happy that another organization has decided to do it for them, and done it incredibly well, I must add.

I’ve travelled much more often since I’ve had this iPhone app, because I never have to wonder about where I am and how to get home. I’ll often find myself with a group of people and we’ll have walked for a while to the point where I’m not entirely sure where I am and I’d like to be able to see a map without having to carry around a paper one in my pocket. I haven’t used the detailed maps yet, but I know I’m often in foreign cities and have to switch to a bus or tram and really have to search hard to find it. Such maps would be incredibly useful in such situations, especially for those just visiting Berlin, not so much for those living here. In fact, I’m much more likely to take taxis more often, because the BVG upsets me so much from their complaint.

I am about to write the BVG to make my own complaint and if you are upset about this as well, I’d ask you to write as well. Their general contact page can be found at http://www.bvg.de/index.php/de/Kontakt/ (just click Allgemeine Anfrage). Hopefully with full Berlin community support, we can get the maps back into this app! Thank you for your support.

Related articles

- Berlin’s public transport company forbids free iPhone app by The Local
- BVG stößt Kunden mit iPhone vor den Kopf by TAZ, a popular German newspaper

I am honored to continue my developer interview series with Erica Sadun who is probably best known among iPhone developers for her much needed article against the NDA. She is also the author of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer’s Library) which was published in book form in the USA on Oct 23 and will be released in Germany on Nov 28.

What was your inspiration for writing this book? What sets it apart from other iPhone books?

I always try to write the book that I would have wanted to read. I’m a huge fan of re-usable code snippets that really show how one single concept can be executed. And that’s what I hope I brought to this book, things to make developers more productive right away.

When did you start learning the iPhone SDK? Were you also part of the jailbroken developer community?

I was involved in the Jailbreak development arena, from the first days of NightWatch’s ARM compiler. My first apps “do Shell” and “tapp” allows users to run command-line utilities from the iPhone GUI.

Interesting, so you’ve really been in there from the start! How did you see the official release of the iPhone SDK change the dynamics of iPhone development?

The official SDK did a lot to formalize the libraries and get them into a form that was ready for a wider audience of developers; earlier firmware was still very raw. I’m a big SDK fan, and yet at the same time I get frustrated by the limitations Apple has chosen to set on what devs can and cannot do.

What was your most successful iPhone app? How have you seen your apps have an effect on your personal branding?

There have been a lot (and I mean a lot! dozens!) of apps. It’s hard to put my finger on just one.

Well, I personally think Converter Pro (20-Dec-2009, editor’s note: no longer available) is the most useful, although Moo can be quite fun. I also notice that all of your apps are free. What role do you see free apps playing in the App Store?

For now, free apps relieve me of at least some of the bother of dealing with unhappy customers. I’m seriously not trying to make a statement here. I just don’t have time to build a proper business and give people the support they deserve. With free software, when someone complains you can just suggest that they demand a full refund.

Nice answer. Personally, I’ve only had one refund and it was nice because Apple dealt with it and I wasn’t even involved in the process. So, besides giving away software, what else can we expect to see from you soon relating to the iPhone?

I’m writing over at Ars Technica now as well as my ongoing O’Reilly Inside iPhone commitment.

Thank you very much for your time and interesting interview. I can’t wait to get a copy of your book when it arrives in Germany!

Go Player

I must say that I really enjoy using GoPlayer on my iPhone. That probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise though considering I’m its developer. I’m a rather random person, so my app has a collection of over a thousand games and it randomly picks one out to show. This way you can watch professional Go games anywhere on the go. So, for less than the cost of a round-trip subway ride to your local Go club, you can have 1,000 Go games on your iPhone. Also much cheaper and more useful than having the same data in book form. [2,99 €, App Store]

Downloading apps and games on your iPhone is great for those times when you have the urge to play some games. So, whether you are on a long journey and you fancy playing Stones on the Go app, or if you don’t want to wait for your computer to load up and want to read poker.de online right away, there is something for everyone to enjoy. Having apps, pre-downloaded games and Internet bookmarks, makes everything so much faster and more user-friendly. This way, you can start reading and playing games instantly.

Stones

My second favorite Go app is Stones. You don’t carry a Go board around with you, do you? Well, now you can just pull out your iPhone and play with your friend by passing the phone back and forth. It offers 9×9, 13×13, 19×19 and handicap options for each game. At the end, just mark the captured groups, and it scores it for you as well. It has two Go bowls at the bottom which you drag stones from to place on the board, and I must say it feels very intuitive and precise. [Free, 20-Dec-2009, Editor's Note: No longer available]

Tetsuki

Tetsuki is a Go term which means “The way a stone was physically played. Usually paired with an adjective as in: light tetsuki, strong tetsuki, etc. [Definition from Sensei's Library] Play Go over the Internet on your iPhone. I haven’t actually tried playing there with it, but I’ve noticed that I can watch games with ease. I can load it up and watch people playing Go online in real time on the Internet Go Server (IGS). My favorite Go server is Kiseido Go Server (KGS), but I know they require you to use their Java program, so that no one has an advantage just because of the platform they’re using to play. In any case, Tetsuki seems like a really cool way to play or watch live games anywhere. [Free, App Store]

As a continuation of my interview series with leading iPhone developers, I have with me Christina, the developer of Fuzzle from Candy Cane Apps in Estonia.

I’ve played a lot of puzzle games, but have never quite seen anything like Fuzzle before. What other puzzle-type games have you regularly played and which were your inspirations for Fuzzle?

I’m glad you like it . The concept of moving colored balls to get five in a row isn’t actually new, just not too well known. I came up with the idea of adding rainbow balls and bombs, and also added the levels + timer to try to make the game exciting, so that it starts easy (at least on easy difficulty) but gets slowly harder and thus doesn’t go on forever. I think a lot of players want a quick game for iPhone, which they can for example play on the tube/bus. So we tried to cater for them, as well as people looking for a longer, slower game by adding the different modes.

I like most of these kind of puzzle games that come mostly from Japan, such as some games by the Japanese company that invented SuDoku. I’m working on another game now that’s based on one of these. I also tend to prefer multi-player games, as gaming can otherwise tend to be somewhat anti-social. I even have some ideas about adding a two-player mode to Fuzzle, but I can’t promise anything there yet.

Why did you decide to develop it for iPhone? Have you developed on other platforms before? If so, how does developing for the iPhone compare to what you’ve developed before?

The iPhone for me represents the first platform where I can make a simple game and be provided a platform to be exposed to potentially millions of customers, and thus can sell it cheap and hopefully still make a bit of money out of it. I think its a revolution for small game developers. And it is the perfect platform for these kind of puzzle games like Fuzzle.

I previously only developed on Windows. Apple has a nice setup for iPhone development so it wasn’t hard to adjust. We faced some challenges, but on the whole it was a good experience. I find the touch screen the most interesting thing – it provides challenges for some games, but also provides an opportunity for new game ideas and possibilities.

In the latest Touch Arcade article mentioning Fuzzle, they note that “Mikael Suvi” was formerly listed as the seller and some therefore speculate that you were simply the girlfriend of the developer used for the Fuzzle YouTube video. However, my girlfriend is also a programmer, thus I know it is possible to be a good programmer and attractive. In any case, we were wondering, what is Mikael’s role in Candy Cane Apps?

Yeah, Mikael owns the company and he’s a Mac expert. So I designed the gameplay and programmed it in C++, while he dealt with most of the Mac/iPhone issues and wrote the Objective-C code. We tried to keep most of it in C++ though so it should be easier to port to other platforms in the future. We also have another guy who designed the cute graphics.

Being a female iPhone developer isn’t unusual, as we all know of Erica Sadun (author of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook) and Eliza Block (developer of 2across, which made $2000 per day for the first month). What is the state of women computer programmers in Estonia? Also, do you know many other female iPhone developers?

In Estonia computer programmers are highly sought after – we have a very small population and some big tech companies like Skype are employing many programmers, so it’s an attractive career path for many people, thus I think you’ll find more women computer programmers here than in most countries. I don’t know any other female iPhone developers – the iPhone only just officially arrived in this country a month ago actually.

My girlfriend regularly plays Galcon, Spore and Wurdle on my iPhone. What is your impression of the female iPhone gaming market?

Well, we have had a lot of feedback from women and even some reviews like this one – … so there seems to be a few of us out there.

As we all know, the freedom to change prices is making the App Store an interesting “experiment” in the free market. What was your reason for making Fuzzle free for a limited time? Does this strategy appear to work well?

Well, the reason we made Fuzzle for free for a limited time was to generate publicity and get a lot of users playing and talking about it – if we hadn’t done this, Fuzzle might never have been noticed among the 1000′s of applications in the App Store. I think it did quite well in this regard – we had over 100,000 downloads in just three days, and a lot of reviews in blogs etc. And now we have recently released a Fuzzle Lite version which hopefully also gives a lot of users a taste of the game.

One thing that happened when we switched to paid is that Fuzzle jumped to the number one selling paid app, until Apple removed it from the top a couple of hours later. I think there’s still some things Apple needs to sort out here, because a lot of applications have done this switch, and while ours was removed from the top almost instantly, some others – both prior to, and after, our switch – were allowed to remain at the top for days. So it’s a bit like a lottery. The apps that make the front page – the top apps, the what’s hot and what’s new etc – can receive 10-100x as many purchases as the rest, and the current system for putting apps on the front of the App Store is untransparent, and largely up to Apple’s whims.

So we’re talking to Apple to try and clarify this issue – we felt that what happened with Fuzzle was quite arbitrary and unfair of Apple initially, but now we’re just focusing on our next release, which we hope you will enjoy as much as Fuzzle.

Thank you for your time. Now that I’ve finished posting this interview, I can get back to playing Fuzzle some more!