iOS

There are 86 posts filed in iOS (this is page 16 of 18).

Tea Time! Back Up

snappyI was just pleasantly surprised to see that my new sales contract as Snappy Touch for the App Store was approved and that Tea Time! is once again available for sale. I was fearing it would be gone for days, but the blackout only lasted about a day. Not too bad.

The only difference is that now it’s listed with Snappy Touch being the seller instead of my name. Will this be the end of the App Store saga? Let’s hope so.

In the meanwhile, a sales update for those of you curious about it: In the first three days, Tea Time! sold 83 units. On one hand, that’s more than I expect (although I suspect that half of those are people following this blog and my announcement on Facebook). But on the other hand, it’s nothing if you’re trying to make a profit from it, even if it just took a couple of days to put together.

Granted, this is an extreme example. It has gotten exactly zero marketing of any kind, and it’s aimed at a very specific audience. I’m sure if a place like Republic of Tea or Adagio Tea advertised it in their catalogs, sales would go way up. But it gives you a base line of what you can expect in the worst case.

Status: Pending Contract :-(

pending Based on all the horror stories I had read from other developers, I really thought I got out easy submitting Tea Time! It only took a week and a half to approve, there were no complications, and I was able to change to a company status half way through.

I guess I really got out too easy and Apple had to remedy that. Today I found that Tea Time! shows up in the App Store listings, but it’s unavailable when you try to buy it. When I looked in the app management site, much to my surprise, Tea Time! was listed as “Pending Contract”.

What I thought was a relatively fast switch from individual to a company status, just propagated through their database and cancelled my previous contract. So I had to enter all the banking and tax information (exactly the same as before) and wait for the bureaucracy to approve it. So it looks like Tea Time! is going to be out of commission for a few days (or weeks or months?).

It really blows because it will kill whatever little momentum it had. Boy am I glad I went through this now and not with my other project!

The “One Day” iPhone App Experiment

I’ve been working full time on an iPhone app for the last three months. Realistically, I still have another month ahead of me. Four months is nothing compared to projects for current game consoles, but it’s pretty long for an iPhone app. It’s not like I’m slacking off (I swear that playing WoW has nothing to do with it!), but it’s a relatively complex project for an iPhone, involving 3D graphics, procedural geometry generation, custom user interface, and network access among other things. Definitely not your everyday, quick iPhone app.

teatimeitunesiconA couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a few days off from my project to enjoy the holidays with friends and family. Of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about the project. Soon my thoughts turned to how much more I had to go, and how some parts of the development process were still unknown to me, like the Apple submission process, or making a build for distribution on the App Store.

At that point, inspiration struck, and I decided to use one day during the holidays to write a quick, one-day app. That way it wouldn’t take any time away from my project and I would learn a lot from it. And maybe, just maybe, I would make a buck or two in the process.

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Tea Time! Available on The App Store Now!

My first iPhone app, Tea Time!, just hit the App Store today! Tea lovers of the world: Go get it now.

What am I doing writing a little app like that? Don’t worry, that’s not what I’ve been doing for the last few months 🙂 It was an experiment to see how quick I could put a simple app together and getting the experience of going through the whole cycle with the App Store. Tomorrow I’ll write an entry with all that I’ve learned so far.

Enjoy your tea!