Adding insult to injury

This the last you’ll hear on this subject, I promise. If you’ve been following our blog you’ll know of the fun and games we’ve had with our Christmas App, Mistletoe.

Originally submitted in the middle of November it didn’t appear in the App Store until the middle of December when the Xmas office party season was already in full swing. To make matters worse it seemed to be batch released with a bunch of other similar Apps – see our previous post Batch Releases.

Now for the final irony… We’d love one of our Apps to appear in the What’s Hot section of the App Store and we’ve often wondered how Apple select what gets featured there. We’ve always imagined it must be ‘hot’ as in ‘these are selling like hot cakes’ or possibly, ‘wow, this is a really hot example of what the iPhone can do’.

Imagine our surprise then, to see Mistletoe appear in the What’s Hot chart on 3rd Jan – just a bit too late for anybody (including ourselves:) to be bothered. It’s certainly not there because of it’s tremendous sales or it’s leading edge code (it was only ever intended to be a little bit of Xmas fun anyway) so we’re still no nearer knowing how these Apps get selected.

So thank you Apple for featuring one of our Apps but if there’s a next time could it please be something that people might actually still want to buy?

Since there’s a What’s Hot chart perhaps there should be a What’s Not one for all the left over Apps that nobody wants anymore?

 

Mistletoe in the App Store What's Hot chart

Batch Releases

Another trend I’ve noticed lately in the App Store is the sudden appearance of lots of similar applications at the same time.

I can’t believe that everybody has the same thought at exactly the same time so the implication here is that Apple are holding things back until they feel ‘the time is right’. I can see the benefit from the consumer’s point of view – who wants to buy a fart machine today only to find there’s a better, and possibly, free one available tomorrow?

But is it fair from a developer’s point of view? We definitely feel that sales of our app Mistletoe suffered because it was released at the same time as bunch of similar products. When we originally thought of it and submitted in mid November we thought it should be up by the beginning of December at the latest (based on our previous experiences) – plenty of time to hit the Xmas party season. But when it finally appeared in mid December it was a with a bunch of similar apps…

So whose side should Apple be on? Consumer or developer? Based on our experience here we probably won’t bother with our planned Valentine’s day app.

Should these all come out at the same time?

A similar (maybe worse?) practice is the way some companies flood the store with similar variations of their products. The ridiculous number of dialler short cut Apps is the most obvious example of this. This practice only seems to benefit the developer of those particular Apps – it’s certainly not helpful to the consumer or other developers. Who wants to look at the latest releases and see page after page of these?

Enough is enough already...

Again, from a developer point of view, you sell more copies of your App when it’s featured on one of the New Release pages in the App Store. You expect to see it slowly move down the page as other Apps are released but not to see it blasted out completely after  only a few hours by screen after screen of ‘Call @£$%’ Apps.

I suppose as both a developer and a consumer I’d like to see a better way of handling these problems. In the case of the above example, Apple should stagger the release of multiple App instances or only list the first one and explain in the description that there are multiple variations on a theme available.

In the previous case I think it should be like an other free market – first come, first served. In other commercial environments the first product to market has a distinct advantage over the competition.

What do you think? Any better suggestions?

Mistletoe – at last!

We’ve moaned in the past about how long it was taking for Mistletoe to go live but it’s finally here!

Yes, after nearly a month’s wait it’s finally in the App Store. So if you fancy a piece of virtual interactive mistletoe to liven up the office Xmas party then you know where to go.

 

Mistletoe - Jingle bells and a kiss. What more could you want?

Mistletoe – the little Christmas App that might never happen…

We’ve mentioned before that waiting for your App to appear in the App Store can be a frustrating process. But our Xmas app, Mistletoe – an ‘interactive mistletoe simulator’ – seems destined to appear long after the festivities have ceased…

As you can see from the screens below it’s a pretty simple app. Shake the phone to trigger some magical Xmas bells to attract your victim then pucker up and wait for the fun to start. Kiss the screen and it kisses you back…

It was never going to win any awards or make us millionaires – it was just intended to be a bit of Xmas fun. However, it’s been sitting with Apple for getting on for three weeks now and with the festive party season about to go into full swing there’s a real danger that it might never see the light of day.

Seriously though, from a developer’s perspective this is a pretty poor show. The lack of feedback from Apple means that we have no idea what the problem is – is there a technical issue? Do they think we might not have the rights to use the music? Perhaps there isn’t a problem at all, perhaps the guy who evaluates the Entertainment category is on holiday.

This lack of communication is definitely going to stifle innovation. There’s no way we’d consider doing a New Year’s Eve countdown app if it’s not going to be released until Jan 2nd…

What do you think? Would you buy it if Apple gave you the chance? 99c for a twig of mistletoe that will last forever!

 

Mistletoe - Jingle bells and a kiss. What more could you want?