Two part Droid-vs.-iPhone series at MobileCrunch. Compares 25 features on the two phones — don’t expect an iPhone sweep!

Most Popular iPhone Apps On Twitter New from AppStoreHQ

Apple Store Abandoning WindowsCE Checkout For iPod Touch And to think that as recently as Tuesday, when buying my new laptop, I gave the geniuses a hard time for running Windows!

Carmack on iPhone Fallout, Quake Live and Elves and Orcs

Flurry Industry Pulse — Oct/09 — Reports a surge in book apps and growth in the “addict” customer segment.

Apple using static analysis to detect private API use

Developers stealing from developers: an App Store tale

Two iPhone Game Jam titles are making their way to the App Store:

1. Imangi Studios (of Harbor Master fame) are finishing Hippo High Dive
2. Gravity Sling is available now — the app is free, and features in-app purchase to buy additional levels. The Gravity Sling team promises to share the stats on the in-game buys with us; stay tuned!

Learn Corona, the toolkit for making Flash-like apps for the iPhone, from Carlos Icaza — one of its creators — in this half day seminar in San Francisco.

Send us your tips for next week’s column! Email team -at- mobileorchard.com

Chris Heintz of Triple Point PR - 01:00 - The PR story behind geoDefense, targeting “previews and reviews,” developer as PR voice, picking a PR agency, how you pay for PR, how an indie beat Madden and I Am T-Pain.
Mike Clark of the Pragmatic Studio - 16:00 - Connecting iPhone apps to Ruby On Rails data sources with REST; choosing between NSURLConnectionRequest, HTTPriot, ASIHTTPRequest, Objective Resource
Jessica Kahn of Tapulous - 23:00 - Code reuse in a one-binary per app world; using static libraries projects, making an app dependent on a static library; customizing shared functionality
Indie Jake Behrens - 32:00 - Performance increases by creating UI elements in code, not Interface Builder; tooling to measure frames-per-second in Instruments and color-blended layers
Byte Club’s Peter Bakhirev - 43:00 - Game Kit vs. CFNetwork; Since 3.1 Game Kit works over WiFi, but still just local networks; Game Kit not a true peer-to-peer system, rely on one phone to act as the hub; test with one device and the simulator

You can listen using the Flash player below, download the MP3, or subscribe to the iPhone Developer Podcast using the instructions at the bottom of this post.

Keep up to date with our iPhone developers’ podcast

Subscribe to our iPhone Development Podcast in one of two great ways:

1. Use the podcast’s feed with the feed app of your choice: http://podcast.mobileorchard.com/feed/podcast/
2. Subscribe using iTunes by clicking here.

AT&T Success Still Linked to iPhone The iPhone continues to bring new customers to AT&T, even though its exclusivity is fading.

The Problem With iPhone Killers

Inside the App Economy A good summary on how far the App Store has come and how it is changing the marketplace.

Easily Share Your Favorite Selection of iPhone Apps with Anyone An interesting way to share which apps you like on your iPhone.

Android App Tidal Wave Analytics firm Flurry detects a flurry of upcoming Android apps

App Store Developer Speaks Out On Game Piracy This developer estimates around 80% of the downloads went to pirates.

Google Plans to Introduce Turn-By-Turn Navigation on Android, Could Come to iPhone In what could be a real landscape changer, Google is going to be releasing turn-by-turn navigation for Android 2.0 handsets. Could the iPhone be next?

Paid Applications on the App Store Pinch Media’s research on paid apps. Highlights: Downloads not linked to price. Paid apps used more than free apps.

Early registration for our L.A. Beginning iPhone Class ends today Last chance to register for $799 with “mo” discount code.

Unity Launches Free Option I’ve been playing around with the Unity 3D SDK for a while and it’s great to hear that it’s going to be free to developers.

New in Android 2.0

Speech-to-Speech Translator Developed for iPhone An interesting idea that could really help travelers in other countries.

Use AMF from iPhone Applications Cocoa-amf allows you to write iPhone applications that can communicate with backends typically used for Flash applications.

NASA App Launches iPhone to the Final Frontier NASA has released a really neat iPhone app that allows you to watch videos, look up data on missions, and more.

iPhone for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach Take a look at this well put together iPhone development book geared towards programmers.

Send us your tips for next week’s column! Email team -at- mobileorchard.com

This free, fifteen minute screencast demonstrates how to create a Twitter client that displays the public timeline in a table view and uses a shake gesture to refresh the view using iPhone Wax, the open source Lua language based way of creating native CocoaTouch apps for the iPhone.

The video also highlights iPhone Wax’s TextMate bundle. The bundle can launch the simulator right from TextMate, interact with the iPhone SDK documentation, and — very clever — will transform Objective-C functions into their Lua equivalents.

Use this link to download the video.

Use this link to download the video.

Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey’s Squirrel Project Revealed A new external attachment for the iPhone which turns it into a credit card point-of-sale device from the founder of Twitter has recently been announced.

The App Store Effect: Are iPhone Apps Headed for Oblivion? A discussion on how prices for iPhone versions of existing applications and games are invariably cheaper than their counterparts and what this means for the future.

Screencast: iPhone Provisioning: Running Development Code On Your iPhone New devs: get code running on your phone in <10 minutes.

Is iPhone Bad for the Video Game Industry The popularity of the iPhone has many traditional video game publishers worried.

Early registration for our Portland/OR Beginning iPhone Programming Class ends today! Register today for $799 with the “mo” discount code — price goes up tomorrow!

Historic Earth iPhone App A great iPhone app that overlays historic maps over your current location so that you may learn more about your area.

Coding in Objective-C 2.0 A great series of screen-casts covering how to develop using Objective-C 2.0.

WolframAlpha Wolfram|Alpha has come to the iPhone, giving you the power to look up whatever you may want easily and conveniently using their service.

Mozilla (Firefox?) App for iPhone to Come Up Within Few Weeks While this isn’t confirmed, it’s an interesting rumor that Firefox may be headed to the iPhone.

Is Your iPhone App a Purple Cow? What does it take to make your iPhone app or game stand out on the iTunes App Store?

Networked Games on the iPhone An interesting and informative presentation on developing networked games on the iPhone.

Creating an iPhone Friendly Web Service in .NET with WCF Writing iPhone apps that communicate with a web server is common. This article shows you how by using the .NET 3.0 framework and Windows Communication Foundation.

Rock Band for iPhone Doesn’t Exactly Rock A review of the new Rock Band game for the iPhone.

Gift This App, Apple! The world wants to be able to send apps as gifts. Help get this on Apple’s radar.

iPhone Tech Talk World Tour It’s that time of year again. Sign up today for the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour brought to you by Apple. The following locations still have openings and it’s free to sign up: November 2 - Seattle, November 9 - Paris, November 13 - Hamburg, December 2 - Beijing, December 3 - Toronto.

iPhone App Site Design Trends A great collection of website designs that are used to showcase an iPhone application or game. Very inspiring.

In Defense of Price An informative article on the current state of iPhone application and game pricing on the iTunes App Store.

Three posts on iPhone Wax, the native CocoaTouch apps written in Lua project: 1. Setting Up iPhone Wax 2. Wax Talks to Twitter 3. How Wax bridges Lua and CocoaTouch

Thoughts on In-App Purchasing for Free Apps The big news of the week was Apple’s announcement that in-app purchases are no longer limited to just paid applications but now allow free apps as well.

iPhone Apps A great thread by one of the original developers of Netscape that asks what are some of the best iPhone apps out there?

How the iPhone is Blowing Everyone Else Away (In Charts) Some interesting numbers on the growth of the mobile web and how the iPhone is leading the pack.

Dear Palm, It’s Just Not Working Out Another interesting thread from one of the original developers of Netscape describing how he recently switched from the Palm Pre to the iPhone.

Inside Apple’s iPhone Subscription Accounting Changes Some more thoughts about the recent announcement that in-app purchases were no longer limited to paid apps.

Rock Band on the iPhone is a Hit Another review of the Rock Band iPhone app, this time from the positive side of things.

Star Wars Trench Run for the iPhone Ever wish you could be along side Luke Skywalker as you try to take out the Death Star during the famous trench run? Now you can with your iPhone!

AT&T Wireless CEO Implies iPhone Exclusivity in U.S. to End Big news from AT&T that may only serve to improve the iPhone’s reach as it may no longer be confined to just the AT&T network.

App Store Reaches 100,000 Application Approvals Apple reached a big milestone in approving 100,000 applications on the iTunes App Store.

In App Purchase and the State of iPhone Piracy An informative article on iPhone piracy and why in-app purchases may not be the savior some people think it is.

Send us your tips for next week’s column! Email team -at- mobileorchard.com

In Q1 of this year, I wrote the Wheels App to address an oft-lamented problem: most apps in the store are invisible. As most of us now know, the App Store is distribution, not marketing. That’s nothing to gripe about; it’s a problem to solve.

In an adapted-for-marketing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the bottom layer of they pyramid, the most basic, core element of marketing is that people have to know your product exists. I decided to tackle app-discovery by creating the Wheels app.

Wheels was a free slot-machine app that paid out other apps. People like to gamble and paying out iPhone apps was a nice twist. Replace the cherries and what not normally found on slot machine wheels with icons and tag-lines for applications. Line up four of the same app, win a promo code for that app. Tap an app’s icon and, by launching an itms:// URL, it’ll be opened in the on-phone App Store where you can read about and buy the app.

An app would be shown hundreds of times for each time that it was paid out. Hundreds of people would discover the app. Some would buy. If enough bought, it’d be worth giving away one copy to earn the sale of others. And, of course, the app tracked everything — views, click throughs to the app store, purchases. More sales for app authors, more commission for Apple. Everyone wins.

Unfortunately, Apple rejected the App. In short form, their objection had two parts: (1) it was an abuse of the promo codes mechanism and (2) I couldn’t give away other people’s apps.

Fast-forward to last weekend. My wife Kristy, mother of and primary caretaker to our three kids, went off for a girls’ weekend. Being a thoughtful guy, I put together a gift basket of goodies for her and her friends. She and her friends all have iPhones, and there are some apps that would’ve been great additions. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism for gifting apps. While you can “Gift This Song” in iTunes you can’t “Gift This App.”

Providing a “Gift This App” mechanism would have made good on both Apple’s issues with the Wheels app and on Kristy’s girls’ weekend. How this solves the girls’ weekend problem is obvious. As for Wheels, when a player wins an app its author (after being notified) could simply go into iTunes and gift them the app. Apple gets its full commission, there’s no promo code abuse, and the author — not I — handles the give away.

Providing a “Gift This App” mechanism would open up a universe of novel marketing, bundling and promotional opportunities — all of which would drive App Store revenues, none of which would threaten Apple’s commission. Taking a page from Amazon and providing a simple API would further support this. Lifehacker could hand pick the best personal productivity apps, negotiate a pay-per-sale arrangement with the authors, and then sell them in a bundle with a single purchase right from their site. TUAW might make a bundle — literally — of apps you can’t live without. It’s nearly Halloween; sell seasonal bundles.

I’ve created a feature enhancement request with Apple. I’m told that the mechanism to put this on their radar is for people to file duplicate enhancement requests. You can do that from Apple’s bug reporter; be sure to reference my request, which is number 7326775.

Downloaded over 1,700 times!

It’s a hassle getting development code running on an iPhone. There are lots of moving parts, all of which have to come together perfectly in order to deploy to your own iPhone.

By walking dozens of new developers through the process in my Beginning iPhone Development Class I’ve gotten it down to a short, seven minute process. This screencast that walks you through it step by step.

Click To Buy: $5 (PayPal). Instant Download

Praise For This Screecast:

Nice Screencast! — Geoffrey Grosenbach, Peepcode Screencasts

Reading through [Apple's] material I got as far as “sacrifice your first-born” and gave up. Your video made sense and made it simple. My first-born and I thank you. — John Oakley

From This Screencast:

Click To Buy: $5 (PayPal). Instant Download

I speak with:

Matt Drance — 01:00 — Matt left Apple, where he worked as an evangelist and one of the primary planners for WWDC, to found Bookhouse, an iPhone application development firm. Matt gave the opening keynote at the conference. Interview topics include: how Apple, you and your apps are shaping the future; getting your app noticed inside Apple, and possibly getting featured; and a section on Apple’s “Radar” bug-tracking and enhancement system.

Kendall Gelner — 15:00 — Kendal taught a half-day advanced debugging class for the conference. Our interview is a compact 20 minute drinking from a fire-hose version of his class. Topics include using Instruments to monitor a running app, advanced debugging techniques with GDB, strategies/tips for preventing bugs, and lots of little tidbits like why you should set objects to nil when you’re done with them and why you should free IBOutlets.

Greg Yardley — 37:00 - Greg is the co-founder and CEO of the well-known analytics firm Pinch Media. We discuss choosing the best performing categories, profit maximizing product pricing, and their research into piracy — including how widespread it is and conversion from pirated-to-paid usage.

You can listen using the Flash player below, download the MP3, or subscribe to the iPhone Developer Podcast using the instructions at the bottom of this post.

Keep up to date with our iPhone developers’ podcast

Subscribe to our iPhone Development Podcast in one of two great ways:

1. Use the podcast’s feed with the feed app of your choice: http://podcast.mobileorchard.com/feed/podcast/
2. Subscribe using iTunes by clicking here.

In App Purchase Now Available for Free Apps Huge news that should make waves in the App Store.

iPhone SDK Development Recommended reading. Book available in eBook or paper book formats.

Tweetie 2 The popular Twitter client “Tweetie” for the iPhone has been reinvented. Try it today.

Ansca Early Adopter Program Latest beta of Corona, the Flash-like alternative to Objective-C, now ready to submit apps to store.

Mobile Orchard Workshops iPhone OpenGL Programming Class is coming to the Bay Area Nov19-20. Save $200 with “mo” discount code.

Tapity A nice new blog related to iPhone development.

Squatters Abusing iPhone App Store Have a great idea for an iPhone app? Think you have the best title for it? Well think again.

Palm’s Full Monty Details about Palm’s app store. Summary: 125 apps, 7.55MM installs, you’ll pay $50/app you put in the store.

Photoshop Arrives on iPhone Another big news item this week was Adobe’s release of their scaled down version of Photoshop that is currently available over the web is now available for the iPhone.

App Store Dev Sick of “Whining Morons” Raises Price of Alchemize Game to Forty Bucks One iPhone developer’s idea on how to deal with negative reviews regarding the price of his app.

360iDev - USB Drive Materials If you missed any of the 360iDev conferences, here’s the latest archive of the presentation files that are either new or changed since the conference started.

The Two App Stores An interesting analysis of the current state of the iTunes App Store, how customers use it, and how you can leverage it.

How the iPhone’s App Store Could Stimulate the Flash Economy

Alienate Your Female Customers? Pepsi Has An App For That Pepsi recently published an iPhone app that had the potentially unintended effect of insulting some members of the female demographic.

Piracy in the App Store (from 360iDev) A great overview of the current state of piracy in the iTunes App Store by Pinch Media.

Google Adds Options to iPhone Search A recent update to the mobile web version of Google’s website includes search options.

The Six Most Fail iPhone Cakes On a lighter note, take a look at some of these unintentionally funny iPhone cakes.

Do you both build and also help promote apps for your clients? Help out friends of this site by filling out a short survey.

Google Wave’s Little Secret: It Already Works On The iPhone With Google’s recent announcement of their Google Wave beta comes the little known fact that it already works for mobile devices, including the iPhone via Safari.

iPhones Can Do Some Pretty Amazing Things

Objective-C’s Niche: Why It Survives in a World of Alternatives An excellent and highly recommended article overviewing why Objective-C is a language that is worth knowing.

Gamasutra on Android Game Development A prominent iPhone developer’s (Jeff Lamarche) opinion on a recent Gamasutra article that reviewed the current state of Android game development.

Accessorizer A great time-saving tool for Cocoa developers.

Striking It Rich: Is There an App for That? “Seeking fortune and fame, entrepreneurs rushed to create programs for Apple’s App Store. That’s not always what they found.”

Send us your tips for next week’s column! Email team -at- mobileorchard.com

Lower your price, lower your ratings. Lower ratings, lower social proof. Lower social proof, lower sales. That’s my theory, and I’ve got data to support it.

I’m a pattern matcher. I like extracting the hint of a signal from noise. For a while now, I’ve had a hunch that pricing an app higher would lead to better ratings. Been reading Predictably Irrational and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

So when, in the closing days of summer, I saw Pete Schwamb tweet about the ratings decline he saw for Cricket Song (his clever app that tells the temperature by listening for cricket chirps) when he starting giving the app away I filed it away as a data point. A short time later, I read Andrew Binkowski’s blog post A Week At $0.99 and noted that the ratings for his baby naming app Stork Drop dove after cleaving 2/3rds off the price.

I sometimes bury the headline; so I’ll state it now, then back-fill the supporting data:

Don’t Discount Your App At Launch

Conventional iPhone buzz-building wisdom tells you to launch your app at a fraction of your real price. Don’t.

During the early days of an app’s life, social proof is critical. Social proof is how you decide whether or not to jaywalk in a new town: you look to see what others do. More formally, social proof is:

a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.

Applied here, social proof means that ratings provide prospective buyers a peephole into the reasoning of the assumed-to-be better informed earlier buyers.

So, it’s important to maximize your rating early on. Discounting your app won’t maximize ratings:

Data

Start with the Christmas tree lights test: to ensure even light-coverage step back from the tree and squint at it. Squinting blurs the lights, causing them to fill in. It’s easy to see — and fix — gaps. Try the same thing with the ratings-distribution graph in the App Store; squinting blurs the specifics and presents the general shape of the curve. On the whole, you’ll see that the graph’s weight for free apps shape sags towards 1 star. As you move up in price the weight shift to the top of the chart where the better ratings live.

Free App	$2.99 App

Compare the the top-10 paid and free apps. The average rating for top-10 paid apps is 3.9. Free apps average 3.4, half a star’s difference!

What’s more, when you break the apps down by price you’ll see that every price increase is accompanied with a ratings increase:

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. The percent of 1-star ratings dropped at each price increase:

Wrapping Up

Pete’s tweet hit the nail on the head when he labeled the folks who got his app for free as uninvested users. Customers with some skin in the game cary a psychological pressure to feel that they’ve been wise in their purchases; they’ll tend to over emphasize their positive feelings.

What’s more, I’d bet that the likelihood of a user uninstalling an app goes down with its costs. Uninstalling apps triggers the negative review bias.

I’ve got two somewhat related items that I couldn’t fit in elsewhere:

1. The “Sex Jokes Lite” application is clever/manipulative about their ratings. They push people to give 5 star reviews with this little bit of a social contract: in their app-description they say, “IMPORTANT: If you think the jokes are TOO dirty, please give a 1-star review. If you want them dirtier, give a 5-star review. This way we know what direction to take in the upcoming updates !”

2. I’m interested in the number of ratings and number of reviews as compared to total of installs on a category by category basis. Games have a small ratio of reviews and ratings to total downloads. I’m curious about this more broadly. Have data? Leave a comment or email me.