I figured I’d drop a quick post about this. Over a week ago we sent a new version of eWallet with minor OS 3.0 compatibility updates to Apple. As you might have guessed we’re still waiting on approval. I’m sure they’ll get to it soon. In the meantime there isn’t anything about eWallet that doesn’t work ion 3.0. There are just a couple of oddities we smoothed out. For example, in one screen the keyboard *pops* into view as opposed to sliding into view. This new update lets it slide again. That sort of thing.
I’ve seen some complaints online recently about people no longer being able to buy iTunes Gift Cards to be sent by email, or that iTunes Gift Card amounts are now being limited. In fact, our account is one of the ones affected by this: our company iTunes account suddenly became unable to buy Gift Cards on iTunes. We get the message:
A little research (links here and here) makes it clear that
Other developers and users are seeing this as well
Apple is acknowledging it, but not yet publicly providing very specific info or resetting the affected accounts
It looks very much like it’s an anti-fraud action by Apple
Now, before everyone leaps to the wrong conclusion, I’m completely in favor of this. I’ve seen plenty of credit card fraud, and whatever anyone can do to fight it has my complete support.
So, to help out anyone who’s affected by this and hasn’t figured out what to do about it yet, here’s our simple workaround that Julie figured out.
Go to the nearby drugstore and buy iTunes Gift Cards
Email the codes on them to whoever you need to
I hope Apple will be able to come up with a solution that lets us go back to doing everything online, and I’m definitely still hoping that Apple will implement “Gift this App” for iTunes apps. But meanwhile, the above works fine.
The good people over at AppCraver read my blog post about pricing and asked to do a short interview. They asked some great questions that further illuminate the challenges iPhone developers face. If you’d like to take a look you can find the whole article here.
The AppStore “Rate It If You Hate It” system is such a spectacularly bad idea that I really need to talk about it for a second. I certainly appreciate what Apple is trying to do. Like I’ve said time and again - I’m VERY, VERY happy with Apple’s clearly demonstrated policy of working to improve things. I’ve seen other companies allow their flawed systems/devices/OS’s to sit around for YEARS with no effort to improve them. So, please don’t take this frustration with one aspect of the system as an overall indictment.
But seriously - a system that specifically encourages people who are removing an application to review it, with no reciprocating system to encourage people who LIKE their applications to review them, is a terrible plan.
Read on after the jump for the whole story…
What Is “Rate It If You Hate It”?
The system I’ve dubbed “Rate It If You Hate It” is a built-in function of the iPhone/iPod touch that encourages you to rate an application if you uninstall it. They make it extremely easy, letting you just tap a number of stars and then get on with your life.
The Problem
The problem is that they are encouraging bad reviews with no way of encouraging good reviews. In a real way, they’re sabotaging their own rating system as every single person that hates the app and uninstalls it, is given an EXTREMELY easy way to smack it with a 1 Star review.
Meanwhile, all those applications that people KEEP on their phones and possibly use every single day, Apple doesn’t encourage reviews for at all! Every app that I’ve disliked, I’ve gotten a “Rate This!” prompt, but for those apps I LOVE (Phase 10, Scrabble, Notes2Self, and more) Apple has never bothered to say “Hey, if you love this App you really should rate it! Let other people know it is great!”
And do you REALLY want to prompt for a review at the moment a person is the most frustrated?
“Fraking piece of junk. I’m deleting you! Oh, review it? Heck yes I want to review it. 1 STAR! DELETED!”
Open Season on Free Apps
This is an especially big problem for Free Applications. With Free Apps, TONS of people just grab it to try it and probably a huge majority of those folks remove it shortly thereafter since all they wanted to do was give it a try. Thousands of users are prompted “Rate It If You Hate It!” as they uninstall while many more thousands happily use the app with no prompt.
My Plea to Apple
PLEASE change this system, Apple. We haven’t been impacted too badly by it yet but it is just such an amazingly bad system that it really has got to go. Either that, or put in some sort of balance - a prompt that comes up the 5th time you use an app saying:
Over at the Apple iPhone Group at Yahoo, a discussion has cropped up about application prices in the AppStore. We think (and hear) about this a lot, so I want to take a minute to talk about application pricing (on any mobile platform). It is a topic that is important to developers, retailers, and customers alike.
So, if you’re curious to hear a developer perspective on pricing, read on after the jump! AppStore Pricing: The Debate Rages On
The pricing of applications in the AppStore is a favorite topic of debate in online communities. Are the apps too cheap? Are they too expensive? What is the correct price point? Should there be a premium store? Typically, the debate falls out something like this:
High Prices = Good for Developer
Low Prices = Good for Customers
Unfortunately, nothing is that simple.
A Disclaimer We have mobile device applications for sale ranging from $29.95 to Free, and frankly we’re doing great. The AppStore is no exception. The iPhone and iPod touch have been great platforms for us. I say this because I don’t want what I say below to be taken as “He’s just bitter because he didn’t succeed.” We have succeeded, and we’re pretty dang happy with how things are going.
What I’ve written below comes from retailers, developers, customers, and the hard earned experience we’ve acquired over the past 12 years. There are always exceptions, but what I’ve written below is, on the whole, how things are in this industry.
$.99 Apps Make $500K!!!!!
Yep, and a kid playing guitar at his high school can become a rock star. These stories (like the Trism Tale) make fantastic press, but just like the music industry, professional sports, and Hollywood, those are the exceptions, not the rules. The majority of folks will never sell enough of their 99 cent app to even turn a profit, much less make it to the “big time.”
Unfortunately, people start to think that these big money makers are how the store works, since these stories make better news for Wired and better commercials for Apple. There are tons of amazing apps that never sell well because they just didn’t have that lucky combo of good app/good timing/lucky placement in an Apple ad/etc. etc. So, yes. Some applications get lucky, but for the rest of them, a 99 cent price tag will put them out of business.
Lower Prices = More Profit This just isn’t true. Lower prices typically DO mean more sales, but it doesn’t necessarily mean more profit. The math is pretty simple. You need to sell enough additional copies to make up for the lost revenue of the lower price. Sometimes this works - usually it doesn’t. Often you make less than you did before, even though you are making a lot more sales. And this cost is multiplied by the fact that more customers = more overhead (support/sales database work/etc.), so now you’re making the same amount of money and have twice as many customers! When the final tally comes in, you’ve actually lost money! There is always a sweet spot but finding it is tough. Just going cheaper isn’t the answer.
No Profit = No Updates AppStore bargain prices worry me. Although a low price might seem like the best deal, don’t expect to see your favorite cheap app get many updates as the years roll on. This is probably fine for small, casual games, but what about an information manager that you spend a lot of time entering data into? Do you want to switch software every year or two? What does an hour of re-entering data into an app cost you time wise? More than the 10 bucks to buy something more stable?
Here are some of the things you typically WON’T get if your favorite app can’t turn a strong enough profit:
- New versions to keep it working when the OS gets updated.
- New versions for new platforms when they come out
- Bug fixes after the first month or two
- New features
- A sequel to that game you love but have played 1000 times already
- Support
So again, cheap may SEEM cool - but it has a cost.
Free = Someone Else Pays Too often folks compare free apps with paid apps saying something like:
“If Facebook can make their cool app and give it away, why do you charge 99 cents for your game?”
Simple - someone ELSE pid for the FaceBook app for you. An advertiser or other investor provided Facebook with the revenue. That free app you got is simply a machine that helps them to generate more income from those peripheral sources. The advertiser bought you the app. That 99 cent game, however, has no such luxury. Unless the gamer developer can find someone else to buy the game for you (difficult to impossible if you aren’t as big as facebook), you have to shell out the cash directly.
Cheap App Support = Phone a Friend In general, cheap apps and truly free apps either don’t have support, or the developer gives up on support after a month or two. If you have a problem with the application it’s unheard of to have a phone number to call with live support and highly improbable that you’ll get a personal email response. Again, maybe this isn’t a problem for your favorite fart noise generator - but as soon as your application is doing something important to you, you NEED that person there to help if anything goes wrong.
AppStore Prices Are Dirt Cheap I’m always amazed by the comments like:
“You’re charging $1.99? Stop trying to rob me!”
Compared to any other platform (DS, PSP, Game Consoles, Desktop, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile) iPhone software prices are INSANELY cheap. Bargain basement cheap. Unable to support most developers cheap.
The reality is that Super Monkey Ball set the bar. At the time that it came out, SMB was the most amazing thing on the device - more levels, better graphics, better gameplay - and it was $9.99. If you wanted to charge more than $9.99 you had to look like your app was a LOT more complex than SMB. Never mind that SMB was made by a large company with the resources to support a lower price point - never mind that MANY applications priced at $9.99 and less can never make enough money to pay for themselves - this was the price and that is what we’ve been stuck with.
The end result is a market where customers expect REALLY low prices. Is that good? Bad? Only time will tell. But that’s the reality of this market.
Wrapping It All Up
I love cheap applications as much as the next guy. Seriously, I have a ton of freebies and 99 cent apps on my phone. I am, however, worried about the iPhone platform as a long term platform for software development. Windows Mobile has been great because over the past 12 years the prices have sustained ongoing development and innovation in the software market. Conscientious developers willing to work hard and support their customers are able to make a career in that market.
But is that true for iPhone? Can you put 6-12 months of development into an application and have any hope of a return for an iPhone application? And if not, isn’t that a terrible disservice to the customer? Will we be left with nothing but fart apps?
Yes, right now we still have a gold rush mentality. Everyone wants to make their fortune and they are willing to take risks to make it happen. The customer benefits from a huge list of apps. But what about two years from now? Or three? Here at Ilium Software we take the long view. We’ve been around for over a decade. We expect to be around for another 10+ years. Will the iPhone provide us with a market that will support the development, maintenance, and improvement of top quality applications over the long term?
Only time will tell. At this point, I think it could go either way.
OK, I’m just guessing but it is pretty cool that on the heels of our survey Apple has implemented a change in the AppStore rating system. I don’t honestly believe they did it just for us, but it is nice to know that Apple is trying. Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve all the problems of the AppStore rating system but it’s a start.
If you’d like to learn more about this change, read on after the jump!
The New Rating System
When we woke up this morning we found that Apple had updated the application rating system in the iTunes AppStore. Turns out they’ve split out ratings for the current version of the application from the overall rating for the application over time.
Why This Rocks
This is great because users can now see what users are saying about THIS version, rather than getting hammered with outdated reviews that have no bearing on the currently released version. It also helps a developer recover from an unfortunate release that drew a lot of bad ratings (something we haven’t had to deal with yet thank goodness.)
Why This Is Still Broken
The bad news is that there are still some serious problems. First and foremost is the “Rate It If You Hate It”system Apple has implemented. I’m referring to the practice of encouraging users who are REMOVING an application to rate it with no reciprocal system of encouraging users who LIKE an app to rate it. This inspires bad reviews and forces the overall star rating down. This is an even bigger problem with the new system because newer versions will inevitably have lower overall ratings (even if they are better versions) because of this.
Second is the fact that the overall reviews are still the number one reviews a user sees - so a review that was posted the day the app was released might still end up as the first review a user sees, rather than something more recent. Users have to specifically choose to switch to the most recent reviews. Seems like this should be the other way around.
Keep Going Apple!
Either way, it is heartening to see that Apple is making efforts to improve their systems. How often have we seen retailers ignore the problems in their systems. I’ll give Apple 5 Stars for the effort! Unfortunately, my overall rating for the store remains a solid 3. Keep trying Apple! And thanks!
I’ve seen some complaints online recently about people no longer being able to buy iTunes Gift Cards to be sent by email, or that iTunes Gift Card amounts are now being limited. In fact, our account is one of the ones affected by this: our company iTunes account suddenly became unable to buy Gift Cards on iTunes. We get the message:
The good people over at 
The AppStore “Rate It If You Hate It” system is such a spectacularly bad idea that I really need to talk about it for a second. I certainly appreciate what Apple is trying to do. Like I’ve said time and again - I’m VERY, VERY happy with Apple’s clearly demonstrated policy of working to improve things. I’ve seen other companies allow their flawed systems/devices/OS’s to sit around for YEARS with no effort to improve them. So, please don’t take this frustration with one aspect of the system as an overall indictment.
Over at the 