TapMode iPhone Development

News Addict removed from iTunes

Tue, 18 May 2010 17:53:00 -0500

Well today I had to make the difficult decision to remove News Addict from the iTunes app store.

Unfortunately I guess many of the major news websites no longer want apps linking to their web sites via iPhone applications. Basically News Addict was just a nice way to keep all your news links in one place as we linked to mobile versions of your favorite news sites with a simple fast browser. Bookmarking has always been something that was acceptable and even encouraged until this point. After all if you are a news site, your goal should be getting more people reading your content and viewing your ads. I guess now these media organizations have dreams of subscription models and we all know how that’s going to turn out.

So anyway today I was asked to remove NY Times, USA Today, BBC, CNN, ABC, Fox News, Wallstreet Journal, and the Economist. I was nicely given the option of releasing an updated version of the application with these links removed. After some thought, I decided this just wouldn’t be fair to current users of the app. If I push an update through, everyone is going to lose those links. So I decided instead to remove the application.

I don’t blame Apple. They are just doing what they have to do when they get cease and desist orders from news organizations. The solution they gave me was really the only option available to them.

I am very proud that News Addict has remained in the top 20 of the News category since it was released. It was also one of the few News apps to break the top 100 paid apps list. It was a fun ride for my first app.

Keep up with real-time breaking news on your iPhone with News Addict

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:58:00 -0500

Use your iPhone to keep up with breaking news from over 40 of your favorite print, television or online sources – such as USA Today, The New York Times, Digg, CNN and Fox News – with Tapmode’s News Addict.

News Addict’s clear interface helps users find stories fast from news Web sites formatted for the iPhone. You can easily scroll through pages by simply tilting your iPhone.

“I developed News Addict to fill a need that I had to regularly check news sites from my iPhone,” said developer Jeff McMorris of Tapmode. “I wanted a browser that was very intuitive to use, with the ability to scroll the page by tilting the screen to make one-handed reading easier.”

Consistently ranked in the top 20 for the News category at the iPhone store, News Addict packs a lot of punch for just 99 cents. A unique full-screen browsing experience provides 25 percent more screen real estate than iPhone’s Safari.

To download News Addict, please visit: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=318726874&mt=8

For more details about News Addict, see http://www.tapmode.com

About News Addict: Browse your favorite news Web sites in full-screen mode. Optimized for the iPhone and mobile browsing. A steal at only 99 cents.

Contact:

TapMode

marketing@tapmode.com

http://www.tapmode.com

Promo codes are available for reviewers. Email your request to: marketing@tapmode.com

Advertising Effectiveness on AdMob

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:16:00 -0500

Advertising Effectiveness on AdMob:

I wrote a long detailed post about the effectiveness of buying my AdMob ads. I had contacted admob about it. Well it seems they wrote their own blog post about the average conversion rates they see for admob ads. I don’t feel the need to post mine anymore as long as this post is available.

All developers thinking of buying traffic from AdMob, take a good look at the 1% conversion rate for clickthroughs they have posted for paid apps. Then decide for yourself whether this is effective for your own app in any ad buys you make.

Passing Data Between ViewControllers

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:21:28 -0500

Passing Data Between ViewControllers:

Nice post about the different ways to pass data between views.

Adding the sqlite database framework to a project.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:25:00 -0500

Adding the sqlite database framework to a project.:

A good way to add the sqlite framework to your project. See the updated way in the linked tutorial: “use the other linker flags setting in the the Build tab of the Project settings to link to the SQLite library instead of using the framework method. You can do this by adding the -lsqlite3 flag to that field”.

News Addict 1.2 Approved!

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:37:00 -0500

Well news addict has finally been approved at the 17+ rating. I really hope this doesn’t hurt sales. I added a bunch of new sites that have been requested. The big new secret feature was tilt scrolling. I hope everyone likes it. This is similar to instapaper’s tilt scrolling. If you haven’t used that app be sure to check it out. It’s one of my favorites.

Anyway I am hard at work on the next version of News Addict 1.3. Version 1.3 will add the ability to add/edit and remove icons. There are actually 14 distinct features required to do this along with a couple of server side components I need to build. This update will actually be much larger than all the code I have written so far, so I believe it will take me a while to complete. Anyway look for that next.

Resubmitted at 17+

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:39:43 -0500

Well I see some other developers saying their apps are being required to be listed at 17+. So I have decided to just bite the bullet and list mine at 17+ also. Quite frankly this is completely stupid and a hack on Apple’s part. They need a new option under ratings instead. They need the option “Does this application allow access to the internet that you do not specifically control the content of?” You would check yes or no. This would not change the rating of the app itself. Then parent’s could filter apps based on not allowing apps which provide access to the internet.

Right now Apple is forcing me to rate my application artificially high so it can handle situations in my app that are unlikely to exist and it was never designed for. The current system is just going to confuse users with warnings for apps that don’t have the content that apple is trying to block.

News Addict rejected again

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:08:00 -0500

Well News Addict has been rejected again. Apparently I must rate the app at 17+ and maybe then I will be accepted. Apple told me my app provides unrestricted access to the internet. However I only allow access to specific news sites so its far from open access to the internet. A user can’t even type a url in my News app. If I have to rate News Addict at 17+, it means every app that provides any kind of internet access will soon have to offer a 17+ rating or face possible rejection.

Browsing around iTunes, I looked at other similar apps. All of my competitor news apps are rated 4+ and are allowed in the store. I even looked at browser replacement apps, they all are rated at 4+ even though these allow true unrestricted access to the internet. Even the “iPron private browser” made to specifically browse content that may fit the 17+ rating has a 4+ rating.

The problem with rating all these apps at 17+ is the rating system is not useful for parents and makes users wonder what the issue is with an app. Twitter clients 17+… Facebook 17+… News Apps 17+… Instant messaging 17+… Social Apps 17+… Drawing apps 17+… (I could draw something obscene…) Games with Leader boards 17+… (no telling what gamer tags people will be using).

I also tested out parental blocking. Even if you decide to block all your apps, apple’s safari and other apps are still accessible. Apple provides separate controls for disabling those. So if a parent uses parental blocking only, the rating system is pretty much worthless without also manually blocking apple’s own built in apps one at a time.

Apple needs to rate apps based on what they actually contain not what they might be used for. This is the equivalent of putting 17+ ratings on TV sets because they have the potential to play R rated movies.

Yep Apple still hates me.

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:40:00 -0500

Well its official apple still hates me. Seems they rejected the update again even after I was told they were going to re-review it. I get the same form message I originally got in the rejection. So I am not even sure if anything new went into the re-review process like taking into consideration my comments. Anyway I am going to try once again to at least get a 12+ rating. I really have no understanding as to why my app requires a 17+ rating.

[UPDATE: well apple still wants me to rate it 17+. So basically now every app that provides any kind of access to the internet can be considered 17+?]

Resubmitted News Addict 1.2

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:20:11 -0500

Well I resubmitted News Addict. I also went ahead and put it at 12+ rating. Maybe its for the best as I had a couple of bug fixes since the original submission that will be included provided of course that it actually makes it through the approval process.

I spent a good day figuring a way to make the BBC news website text bigger. I have more functionality in my app than other similar news apps so that’s what caused this trouble in the first place. You will notice in my app that if you go to a full size page you have the ability to pinch, zoom and double tap around the page like with mobile safari. The other news apps as far as I know, can’t do this. But as a side effect it causes the BBC page to look wrong because the BBC didn’t design their page properly for the iPhone. Well after a day of trying a bunch of ideas, I finally got it working. Anyway it’s little stuff like this that the average user would have no concept that anything special had to be done. I also want News Addict to be the best browser for mobile content so it’s why I refused to sacrifice functionality anywhere even if you may not use the pinch and zoom features now. I believe many more users will need this functionality once I allow the ability to add your own news sites.

Apple Hates Me!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:07:00 -0500

Yet again another rejection of News Addict. Yet again it passed the last two times, no problem. But apparently since my app allows access to the internet I must rate it 17+ because who knows what could be there? Really I don’t have a problem with this, but if Apple wants to rate my app then just rate it themselves. Why reject it and have me resubmit. If they want to make it 17+, then make it 17+ and just notify me they had to change the rating.

So now I get to resubmit again. Wait another week or so.

Oh I also have 5 break out apps submitted awaiting reviews and here is the kicker. I can’t actually change the ratings while they are under review. So now either I have to reject and resubmit each or wait for the rejection. What an f****d up system.

[Update: Just noticed not one of my competitors have to rate their apps at 17+. All are listed at 4+. There are a couple of news apps rated at 12+. However I have to rate mine 17+. I don’t even think this is just some new rule either as my main competitor just had an update approved yesterday and his app is 4+. So its official, apple just hates me.]

[UPDATE 2: I emailed apple with my predicament and they actually have told me they will re-review it. WOW! AWESOME! Maybe they don’t hate me after all and it was just a mix up. Lets Hope!]

interesting observation

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:11:41 -0500

Well I almost have three breakout apps done for various categories. One thing I have noticed is the entertainment industry has by far the best iphone optimized sites. Tech is by far the worse. I would have expected that to be reversed…

Version 1.2 Submitted to Apple for review.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:46:57 -0500

Well I submitted version 1.2 to Apple for review. Added a couple of features that I hope users will find useful. Look for it hopefully in 1 week (usually it takes about a week to get approved). I am probably going to spend the next week or so working on break out apps now that I have 1.2 done and also planning out the design of the 1.3 update. 1.3 will be the ability to add/edit and rearrange the websites which I know has been my number 1 feature request to date. I need to think of the best way to do the bookmark feature. I have some really cool ideas for it so hopefully my ideas won’t surpass my level of skill to create it. Then I will probably add the ability to share links in the update after that.

1.1 Update Approved

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:08:00 -0500

Yaay…. Well my 1.1 update just got approved. It just has a few bugfixes.

“Fixed a problem with the internet connectivity checking that could cause unnecessary slowness over edge networks.

Fixed a problem with some websites not correctly showing the iphone optimized version of the website on subpages.

Fixed a problem with iPhone 3Gs which was causing the news page graphics to show improperly when the back button was pressed.

fixed a problem with some news sites web icon border appearing too much like the safari web browser.”

I almost have my new feature done which will become the 1.2 update. Basically it is done, I am just beta testing it. So I will get that submitted in the next day or two.

Note 2 Self

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:06:25 -0500

Note 2 self: when setting up a UIViewController class. Make sure you create it as such and not a regular Class file:-) Otherwise you get errors like UiSettingsController may not respond to pushViewController. Newbie mistake…

How to move code signing certificates to a different computer.

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:05:00 -0500

This was a great link that got me most of the way there. http://www.theevilboss.com/2009/06/iphone-sdk-development-on-multiple.html

However once I installed everything I got this error. “a signed resource has been added modified or deleted”. After spending a while double and triple checking everything, I did a clean all targets and rebuilt and had success.

1.1 Update Submitted Again

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:01:58 -0500

Well I fixed the icons and I hope Apple will approve it this time. I also took the time to move development to a new machine and get all code signing working on it. It seems to be working ok but as with everything there was a weird error message and something new to learn.

UUGGHHHHH. I mean WTF!

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:32:00 -0500

Ok well after waiting over a week for them to approve my updates which are nothing but bug fixes. They rejected my app. Not because of anything I changed in this version. But because the icons for some of the news websites too closely match the look of the safari browser. Would they rather I make them look like internet explorer? I mean I can understand you can’t use the apple logo or images of iphone or whatever, but please this is just getting ridiculous, the review process is so inconsistent. I passed last time for the same exact icons. Also now comes the guessing game, I really want to make something that looks like a browser. I guess I will use something closer to firefox with some other generic ones that aren’t apple like.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t have to wait another week or two for the bug fixes to get into the store.

I guess this is my Fathers Day present from Apple. I get to spend the rest of the day redesigning icons instead of having any family time.

[I don’t blame the apple reviewers. I do believe they are doing there best with what they are given. I get rejected on a sunday morning. It shows they are working hard, but Apple needs to re evaluate their policies. Rejections have gone far beyond what we were intially told (Nothing Obscene, Nothing Malicious, No Private API Calls)]

Fixed Bug with iPhone 3Gs

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:11:13 -0500

Well the bug I found using the iPhone 3Gs is fixed. I submitted the fix to apple, I hope that doesn’t push me to the back of the queue. I have been waiting over a week already for my other fixes to be approved. The approval process is painfully slow.

Discovered a Bug with 3GS

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:11:00 -0500

Well I wasn’t planning on buying a new iPhone 3GS. But I got the discounted price so went ahead and upgraded, I am glad I did. I just discovered a problem in the 3GS that doesn’t exist in the 3G or Edge. I am wondering if there are different UIWebview optimizations only for the 3GS. I am pretty sure there are otherwise it should operate the same way as the 3G and edge. Now I wonder if I can detect if the phone is a 3GS and only apply the change for that model in my code.