App Store

Small iPhone Developer Makes Big Money

Sébastien Page ∙ January 16, 2010

Reuters has a simple article on their site about how Tapulous, the developer of Tap Tap Revenge is selling apps for over 1 million dollars each month.

What I don't like about this article is how they make it sound like developing apps for the App Store is the new El Dorado.

iPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to make big bucks from the App Store. For every App Store millionaire, there are hundreds if not thousands of developers that miserably fail. Most don't fail because of the quality of their apps. They fail because of the strong competition.

When you see these articles about how much money can be made by developing iPhone apps, please take them with a grain of salt...

Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2009

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

With over 100,000 apps in the App Store, it's not always easy to figure out what the best applications are. Besides, what's best for me might not be best for you as we all have different needs.

One criteria that makes it easy to figure out if an app is good or not is the amount sold. The more it sells, the better it is, right? Apple recently came up with a list of those top best seller and top rated apps.

Games The Sims 3 The Oregon Trail Need For Speed Undercover Madden NFL 10 Tiger Woods PGA Tour Assassin's Creed Flight Control - my favorite game Cooking Mama Civilization Revolution Wheel of Fortune Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor Real Racing Zenonia Ravensword: The Falle King Earth Vs Moon Episode 2 Sally's Spa Ragdoll Blaster Canabait Blades of Fury DOOM Classic Apps MobileNavigator North America MLB.com At Bat Textfree Unlimited TomTom US & Canada - I have this but I mostly use Google Maps Golfshot: Golf GPS SlingPlayer Mobile ColorSplash Pocket God Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite The Moron Test ReelDirector Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America Jamie Oliver's 20 Minute Meals I Am T-Pain - I think this app is useless CBS Sports SketchBook Mobile Star Walk - one of my favorite apps Convertbot Leaf Trombone Pano

Which of these apps do you own?

A Developer Insight on Apple and the App Store in 2009 [Sponsored]

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

This is a sponsored post by the developers of Star Walk, an amazing iPhone app that I completely endorse and recommend. Star Walk devs are looking for some feedback and I encourage you to help them out because they really deserve it.

We are all immersed, surrounded, bombarded by everything that involves Apple, iTunes, the App Store, the iPhone and the iPod Touch. 2009 has seen the App Store phenomenon growing exponentially and people are confident enough to say that it will never stop, or at least not for a long time. But what kind of year has it been for the developers of the 100,000+ iPhone apps that are available in the App Store?

Today on the iPhone Download Blog we are writing an open letter as developers to tell you about our experience dealing with the App Store: the highs and lows, the great achievements but also some disappointments and problems encountered, things that are still unknown and that we are trying to get our head around.

A little more than a year ago we decided to start the iPhone adventure. We worked hard on an idea and submitted it to Apple with some hopes, fears, and a lot of expectations. How is it going to be received? Will people like it? Those are the main questions for every developer. It is still a new world, which is fast and sometimes harsh. If people don't like what you have worked on for months, you will soon find out that you have worked for nothing, and nothing will hurt more than not appearing at least in the top 100 apps of the category you are in.

Our idea was based on our passions, astronomy and stargazing. We are lucky enough to live close to the forest and have a lot of clear skies that allow us to admire the sky in all its beauty, and so Star Walk was born following our own inclination. But how many people have the same passion as us? Well, it was soon the be found out...

It turns out that apart from the passion for the Apple world, iPhone and iPod Touch users need beauty, smoothness, intuitive features, and only if your app has those features, people will get closer to it. So we discovered that the customers out there, you guys, are passionate as much as we are about astronomy.

It seems like Star Walk has pretty much all of those characteristics and as our first app, it has been so far (for the whole year) very successful, never leaving the top 10 in the Education Category.

Now comes the difficult part... What's next? What would people like from us? Are they waiting for something more from us? Do we already have a fan base? Are we still an anonymous company in the crowded App Store? Is following our passion the key to success? It seems like it is not so easy to find out answers to those questions. We tried! In fact, we have now 4 more apps in the App Store but only Star Walk has reached the top.

Obviously we are not doing everything right but it isn't really easy to understand what's right and what's wrong. Therefore we started some small marketing research to become more knowledgeable about the App Store world and to make more successful apps.

We are convinced that in the near future this market will become more and more sophisticated, demanding and targeted. We know where we want to be, we are good at Education (we hope) and we want to stay there and for this, every feedback helps.

To do this properly we need your help.

It would be great if you could answer a few questions for us to help us understand you more! Click here, take our little survey (it is only 5 questions) tell us you have taken the survey on our twitter page and a random selected group from those who have answered will win Star Walk promo codes, iTunes gift cards, and an iPod Touch! Winners will be announced on Twitter @StarWalk on January 5th. Thanks a lot for your time and for making us one of the best educational application in the App Store.

10 iPhone Apps to Save the Planet

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2019

I don't know if you guys are aware of it but today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. The goal is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion about important issues. This year's topic is climate change so we selected a few applications that will help you lower your environmental impact on our planet.

iLocavore

iLocavore (download for free) will be your mobile tool for finding locally grown foods and locally made products at home and on the road. Never get stuck shopping at the big box stores or the giant chain restaurants again. You will always be able to find the independent retailer, the farmers’ market, the restaurant that supports local farms. Really experience the local scene when you travel, and easily support your local economy, local farmers, artisan producers, and independent retailers while at home.

Carticipate

Save money on gas while helping the environment by carticipating with friends, family, groups, or co-workers. Coordinate driving plans, carpool, or a ride share by indicating where you are going, when, and post your ride. The app will match you to local carticipants going your way. Carticipate (download for free) is also available on Facebook, for those friends of yours unfortunate enough not to have an iPhone and want to rideshare.

iRecycle

iRecycle (download for free) makes it easy to access over 100,000 recycling and disposal locations for over 200 materials anywhere in the United States. Find places to drop-off your old cell phone, get directions and find out what else they accept. With information provided by local governments, industry insiders, organizations and everyday consumers, you can recycle hundreds of products from packing peanuts to computers.

Carbon Tracker

Carbon Tracker (download for free) enables you to manage your personal carbon footprint from commuting, vacations, or business trips. Use the iPhone GPS feature to determine the approximate distance of each leg of your trip, select the mode of transportation, and let Carbon Tracker calculate your carbon footprint. Set monthly maximum footprint goals, and play an important role in helping to reduce carbon emissions globally.

greenMeter

greenMeter (download for $5.99) is an app that computes your vehicle's power and fuel usage characteristics and evaluates your driving to increase efficiency, reduce fuel consumption and cost, and lower your environmental impact. If you're into hypermiling or eco-driving, want to make your transportation more efficient, or are simply interested in maintaining a green lifestyle, give greenMeter a try! It pays for itself within 1-2 tanks of gas.

Green Outlet

One of the easiest ways to save money is to reduce your electric use and while you save money on your bill your also helping save the environment. Green Outlet (download for $2.99) helps you identify which of your household appliances are costing you the most to run so you can make informed decisions about your electric use. By selecting the types of appliances you use in your home and entering how many hours of use per day for each green outlet will give you a detailed list of what your appliances are costing you and will show you how to save money.

GenGreenTips

Many people are dedicated to going green on Earth Day, but we believe making small changes are the way to take better care of the planet every day! GenGreenTips (download for free) will suggest a Green Tip of the Day that you can use to decrease the environmental impact of your daily routine in a small, but significant way.

AllOrganic

Want to eat healthy and naturally? Want to help reduce the negative impact that we have on the environment? Find it difficult to locate and find establishments that sell & serve organic and local foods? Then AllOrganic (download for $0.99) is for you. AllOrganic is a green resource for people who want to eat healthy, and eat organic in the city you live in, or while traveling.

Cruelty-Free

Published by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ (CCIC) Leaping Bunny Program, Cruelty-Free (download for free) is a shopping guide that lists over 200 U.S. and Canadian companies that do not test ingredients, formulations, or finished products on animals. The Leaping Bunny Program certifies that no new animal testing is used, so you can be confident about your cruelty-free choices.

GoodGuide

GoodGuide (download for free) helps you find safe, healthy, and green products while you're shopping in the store. GoodGuide strives to provide the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of products and companies. This app makes it fast and easy to get the information you need, to help you make better decisions on everyday purchases based on what's important to you.

Do you use green apps? Let us know in the comments...

How the Jailbreak Community is Kicking the App Store in the Nuts

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

As the App Store approval process for applications becomes more and more absurd, developers are looking for new ways to get their apps in front of the general public. In the last few months, a few alternative stores showed up, but one really stands out: Cydia.

Every jailbreaker is familiar with Cydia as it is already the application of choice for downloading third party apps that are not allowed in the App Store. Developers who see their apps rejected from the App Store now turn to Cydia. The latest example is how the Google Voice application was banned from the App Store, only to be available a few hours later in Cydia.

A less known aspect of Cydia is the Cydia Store, which was launched in March of this year. It is a part of Cydia that allows developers to charge for their applications, exactly like the App Store does. Reading this MMI article, it seems that the Cydia Store is doing well as Jay Freeman aka Saurik, the creator of Cydia, reports that "the Cydia Store has had about 53,000 purchases for a grand total of about $210,000 spent".

We are still far from the 1.5 billion downloads from the App Store but we're getting there...

The Cydia Store brings a whole new market as a viable option. Freeman states "In the last day, ~470,000 unique devices reported into my server (when I last checked, months ago, this figure was ~350,000). In the last week, ~1.5 million. In the last month, ~3 million. In the last two months, ~4 million devices. To be honest, this actually surprised me: I thought the jailbreak community had a higher attrition rate: that I'd be seeing a much smaller percentage of 'identifiers of jailbroken devices that were seen in the last two months'".

I think that just like me, people are growing tired of Apple and its dictatorship, and they are looking for ways to maximize their iPhone experience. I know this first hand as the jailbreak page of this blog is one of the most visited. I also get between 5 and 20 people a day thanking me on Twitter for helping them jailbreak their iPhone.

When you pay $300 or more for an iPhone, you don't want anyone telling you what you can and cannot do with it, even though Apple wants to make jailbreaking illegal with some ridiculous claims.

Cydia truly is a real alternative to the App Store. The only downside to Cydia is that you have to jailbreak your iPhone. Many people are still worried about the process, or simply don't have the technical skills to do it. But as jailbreaking becomes more and more popular, I am convinced that Cydia has a bright future ahead and that iPhone owners will finally be able to get the most out of their iPhones.

If you're on the edge about jailbreaking, here are 30 reasons to jailbreak your iPhone.

appDowner: A BitTorrent-Powered App Store Alternative For iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ June 27, 2009

If you've used Cydia, Icy, or even Appulous, the concept of an alternative to the App Store is old news to you, but soon there will be a new kid in town that will be the first App Store competitor using BitTorrent technology. This new app for jailbroken iPhones only is called appDowner.

appDowner was created by developer Alec Renolds back in 2008 with the idea to create a simple BitTorrent client for the iPhone. Unfortunately the project was put on hold for a while due to personal issues. But Renolds is now back at it and has expanded his original concept to create a complete replacement to Apple's App Store.

Unlike the App Store, there will be no app approval process and most applications submitted will be available for download within a week. appDowner can also be used as "client for non-app related downloads", which in other words means you'll be able to illegally download music directly from the app.

Something that's not really clear about appDowner is whether or not you will be able to download cracked applications for your iPhone.

We've seen our share of App Store replacements. The 2 most serious ones, Cydia Store and Rock Your Phone, haven't reached a critical audience yet. Will appDowner be able to do that?

appDowner is still being worked on and it should be available in Cydia for download soon.

AT&T Releases Turn By Turn GPS In the App Store

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

There's a bunch of new GPS application being released in the App Store these days. Even AT&T took a shot at it by releasing AT& T Navigator. The app is free to download but $9.99 will be added to your bill every month to use it. Pretty pricey if you want my opinion...

AT&T Navigator was developed in partnership will TeleNav and includes some of the following features:

voice-guided navigation automatic rerouting real-time traffic updates and more...

At $9.99/month, you might as well buy a cheap TomTom. Thanks but no thanks, AT&T. I'll wait for the TomTom app that was presented at the WWDC a few weeks ago.

Write Emails On Your iPhone More Quickly With FastMail

Guest Author ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

Being that I love to email out of my iPhone more than my computer, this particular little app called FastMail really caught my attention. While using it I felt more in control of my email composition creativity. Yes you already have the iPhone application for mail that comes built in and allows you to compose as you type offering optional words above the one being typed. However there are of course certain things that the mail app can't accomplish. You might struggle with having to retype the same long words over and over or if you’re like me, you might not be in favor of typing the word almost to completion before having the word offered to you.

Fastmail works similarly as the apple mail app except that you can see an entire list of words being offered for your use to the right of your current composition. Here’s the other kicker, you can set it to appear on the left side of your screen if you're left-handed! But keep in mind this has to be done at the beginning of the setup of the app. The controls and face of this app is very well put together in that there is no extras, it is very simple and easy to roam through it.

Must Read: Diary of An iPhone App Store Reviewer

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

John Gruber wrote an absolutely hilarious blog post faking the diary of an App Store reviewer. It is a very sarcastic post showing the stupidity of the system. While it is pure fiction, you can't help realizing that Gruber is very close to reality, mostly on the app approval rejection process.

Here are some of my favorite pieces of the post:

Wednesday May 13

Began examining some game submitted a week or two ago. Slick UI, kind of fun to play. But: one of the help screen images shows a little icon representing an iPhone. Rejected the app with this message:

Thank you for submitting [app name] to the App Store. We’ve reviewed [app name] and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because of an Apple trademark image. Rule 2 under “Unauthorized Use of Apple Trademarks” in Apple’s Copyright and Trademark Guidelines states:

“You may not use the Apple Logo or any other Apple-owned graphic symbol, logo, or icon on or in connection with web sites, products, packaging, manuals, promotional/advertising materials, or for any other purpose except pursuant to an express written trademark license from Apple, such as a reseller agreement.”

Jailbroken iPhone Shows Up In The App Store

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

This one is kinda funny... There is a new app in the App Store called Photo Effects! that uses the screenshot of a jailbroken iPhone in its description. You can clearly see the jailbreak apps Installer, Launcher, Terminal, and DockSwap. You will also notice that the dock is a custom one.

This comes roughly a month after Apple updated the SDK agreement forbidding developers to jailbreak their iPhones.

Looking at this app in the App Store, I'm wondering why the developer did this. I mean, it's a very stupid move. The screenshot doesn't help understand what the app is about at all. It seems to me like this dev did this as a big "F U" to Apple.

So now, the real question is: how long will it take Apple to remove this app from the App Store?

Via

iPhone Apps From The TV Ads

Sébastien Page ∙ May 20, 2009

I rarely visit the App Store but yesterday I wanted to check out new apps so I opened the App Store from my iPhone and I noticed that there was a new section in the store called iPhone Apps From TV Ads. I don't know how long it's been here but I thought it was a good idea.

I also think it's a great opportunity for the showcased applications to gain further exposure. I wonder how the applications that appear in ads are chosen. I guess it's a mix of top rated, staff pick, and randomness...

Anyway, so now when wonder what this app you see on TV is called, go to the App Store and look into the 'iPhone Apps From TV Ads" section and you'll find out.

SmackTalk Made My Day

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

Sometimes, the most simple applications are actually the best. That's the case of SmackTalk, an hilarious voice-altering app that features an animated guinea pig, puppy, kitten, and chihuahua that repeat what you say in high-pitched squeaky voices in real-time. Sounds retarded? Well, it is kinda retarded but I laughed my ass off while watching the demo video below and while playing with the app. SmackTalk totally made my day!

SmackTalk is currently on sale in the App Store for $0.99 but we happen to have 4 promo codes. The first 4 people to comment on this post will get a promo code (note that you have to be in the US).