Average application size on the rize

According to  ABI Research, the average application size has increased by 16% since march 2012. Why? Retina display graphics, universal binaries are certainly the main culprit.

On the new store front of iOS 6 App Store

Let put this up simply: there are really good things about the new App Store design with iOS 6. But there is also very bad things. Following this article, I want to expose my own and very simple experience with application searching.

Let's open the App Store on my iPhone then hit the search box and type: Passwords. Let's see what are the password related apps available to me. As you already know, the results are displayed in a card style view. But just before hitting the Search button on the keyboard, I get a list of about 10 items which are shown here. 

How is this list of suggestions built? Why only 10 items? Why some items seems to be generalized keywords but others seems to be exact application names? Next, let's see the results.

Showing 1 of 1707 cards. Now let's start the swiping game. First, the thing isn't fluid at all on an iPhone 4S on a wifi network. Second, after 97 swipes, the App Store crashed on me. Opening it again to find out that I had to redo the whole thing again. Is this the better way to show a list of 1707 items on a small screen? I doubt it. It is nice visually but the effectiveness falls short. Is this the only thing Apple kept from their Chomp acquisition earlier this year? Could we have to wait a little bit longer before we see the real fruit of their effort? Time will tell. Meanwhile, we all agree that discoverablity was and is still a problem on the App Store and that Apple isn't good at all at indexing content and providing results following a search.

Did you try to "smorify" your app lately?

Just found out about this web site: www.smore.com/for-apps. In a few words: you enter the iTunes URL into the provided field and hit the button to create an instant splash page for your application. It takes less than 30 seconds to try.

I tried with Ultimate Password Manager and got a web page that is very professionnal looking. Each part of the page can be edited and new sections can be added. Very well done.

Updating our apps for the iPhone 5 taller screen

Interesting article from imore on making our iOS apps ready for the iPhone 5. Adding support for this taller screen with a resolution of 640 x 1136 is not only a matter of adding the Default-568h@2x.png resource to the application bundle. Many applications will have to be reworking in order to take advantage of the added space. Plus, don't forget that we should wait to test software on an actual device. The simulator is not a physical device. This will have a direct effect on our ability to update our applications. In my case, I will try to run my application inside the simulator to see how it reacts but I'll definitively wait for my iPhone 5 to arrive to do more complete testing and eventually release updates.

App Cooker updated with really nice refinements

This week came with a nice surprise: an App Cooker update was ready to roll on my iPad. Release 0.9.95 is out and brings a lot to the table. First, the new iPad's Retina Display is now fully supported. App Cooker which is really well designed visually is even more beautiful on the new iPad. Nice. Next, a lot of refinements:

• Link tools is simpler to use.
• Defining new colours attributes and saving them for reuse is easier too.
• Updated Stroke tool to make it more like other standard graphic design apps.
• Images imported into prototypes can be cropped.
• Updated icons for social networks.

This is the fourth important update of App Cooker. Each iteration brings bug fixes, refinements and add a few welcomed features. Don't be afraid of Hot App Factory giving this app a weird release number. Version 0.9.95 could be numbered release 1.4 as this application is still one of the most well designed and feature complete on the App Store for building iOS application prototypes.

One thing still bugs me about App Cooker: I still don't know what will be the top secret feature that Hot App Factory will bring in the near future release. Supposedly, this feature will change the way we make mockups forever. Mmmm sound good to me.

iOS Support Matrix - must have!

Nice work from Empirical Magic Ltd.

First Draft of My iOS Dev Bible (iBook)

While following the Stanford University course on iOS apps programming, I decided to create an iBook containing my references. So I wanted to share this with you. You can download it here. If you have any comments, feel free to post them in the comments section.

Update on Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 13:57 by JF Martin

In order to read that file, you'll need to sync it to an iPad with iBooks 3.0 installed. 

App Store Review Status

I think some people are on vacation at Apple since the App Store Review Status was last updated on July, 6th.

 

Update on Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 16:19 by JF Martin

Last sunday night, I submitted a new release of Ultimate Password Manager for review. Five days later, Apple review and approved this release. It took Apple less than two minutes to review and change the status to Ready For Sale. Two minutes. Waited five days.

Avoid security breach through iTunes Connect

Are you a user of AppAnnie or AppFigures or any service that depends on Apple's iTunes Connect as their data data source? If you answered yes, then you must follow Marco Arment advice: create a specific user for these service instead of giving them your own iTunes Connect credentials. The problem is if those services are compromised and then your iTunes Connect credentials could be at risk. Instead of using your main iTunes Connect user to get access to sales reports, why not create a specific user for this task with much less power. iTunes Connect provides a granular user role definition, use it!

Update on Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 9:03 by JF Martin

Yesterday I created a new Apple ID in order to be able to create a new iTunes Connect account with access to sales reports only. I made that in order to be more secure about my Apple ID following a lock for unknown reasons last week. Meanwhile, the same day, I received an email from AppAnnie that basically says:

Some users' Apple ID accounts has been locked, we don't really know why but are looking into this with the help of Apple. By the say, it was a good idea to use a seperate iTunes Connect account for the sales reports download.

This is interesting. We don't really know what happen or if any data has been compromised... AppAnnie will be resuming the iTunes Connect data scrapping gradually in the next few days... stay tuned. 

Apptrace - a new app tracking service is born

Just found out about Apptrace, a new app tracking service currently in beta.

apptrace is the fastest app analysis service! Built by developers for developers. apptrace is maintained by an exceptional team of developers with extensive mobile experience. Giving you exceptional data, to further your business intelligence in the apposphere. It is the most efficient and intelligent way to trace apps on this changing global market.

So far I like the service and just registered for their weekly report. According to an interview with David Meyer from Gigaom, the App Store is currently "infested" with more than 400 000 zombie apps (apps that gets no download at all!).