Hold and Copy in UIKit

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On February 24, 2010

This article also appears in Zetetic’s blog. Zetetic’s the company behind the transparent SQLite encryption OSS project SQLCipher and the iPhone password vault Strip. Recently, I wanted to implement an interface where a user holds down on a UIView class or subclass to reveal a copy menu. Basically, I didn’t want to have to present […]

iPhone Game Rebates

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On February 16, 2010

I’m fond of folks who take what is, for more people, a complaint and turn it into an opportunity: It’s common to complain that apps outside of the Top Charts are invisible. There’s substance to this complaint. What’s been interesting is seeing how people turn that into an opportunity. Turning this into an opportunity is […]

CodePromo: Generate/Send Promo Codes From Your iPhone — Beta Testers Wanted

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On January 13, 2010

CodePromo is an iPhone app that interacts with iTunes Connect to generate promo codes for easy sharing. Motivation You’re chatting with someone. Might be at a bar, conference, or business meeting. You’re talking about your app — paid app to be precise — and decide that you’d like to share a copy of the app […]

Podcast: Henry Balanon + Panel Discussion On Marketing

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On December 7, 2009

Henry Balanon is part of the writing team for Giga Om’s The Apple Blog and co-founder of the iPhone app development shop Bickbot. This podcast features Henry’s speech on iPhone marketing and the panel discussion he organized for his segment at the 360iDev conference. Henry’s speech is filled with goodies, including glimpses into how sites […]

App Store Data Mining Techniques Revealed – Part 1

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On December 2, 2009

The App Store is a treasure trove of data. App Store data can help you pick a category/segment, track trends, find the right price point, chart the total number of apps, track the rate of app approval and much more. App Store data mining isn’t magic. It’s about finding data that’s exposed in iTunes, extracting […]

Podcast Interview With iPhone Wax Creator Corey Johnson

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On November 17, 2009

This interview is with Corey Johnson, creator of iPhone Wax. iPhone Wax is an open-source project that lets developers build native CocoaTouch based applications using Lua. Lua’s an expressive scripting language with dynamic language features familiar to Ruby and Python developers. The interview includes content on iPhone Wax’s genesis, the Lua language, embedding and bridging […]

Gift This App, Apple!

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On October 22, 2009

Synopsis: The iTunes Store features a “Gift This Song” capability. The App Store does not feature a “Gift This App” capability. It should. Update: It does now! 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, […]

Screencast: iPhone Provisioning: Running Development Code On Your iPhone — $5

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On October 20, 2009

Spend Hours With The Docs Or < 10 Minutes With This $5 Screencast 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 […]

App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings. Don't Discount Your App At Launch.

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On October 15, 2009

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 […]

Podcast: Warm, Clothed and Fed: Developer Run iPhone Businesses

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On October 5, 2009

Keep my kids warm, clothed & fed: Beginning iPhone Programming Class: Portland/OR Nov12-13 & Los Angeles/CA Nov19-20. Only $799 w. early reg and “mo” discount code. This episode of the podcast is a little different than usual: there’s no guest. Instead, it’s the audio from a speech I gave last week at the 360iDev conference […]