icoder magazine

THE NEW iOS TECHNOLOGIES

No. 05/2012 march 2012 www.icodermag.com

App marketing for the poor

cyberDuck- file transfer from iPhone to mac

The New Apple TV, Should you Purchase it or Not?

iPhoto & redesigned camera app for iPad

The Endless Possibilities of Xcode 4

icloud, what is it and what it offers

Is Getting Lost A Thing of The Past?

march 2012www.icodermag.com

This issue, we’re talking about New iOS Technologies. iOS is the operating system at the heart of iPhone,

iPod touch, and iPad devices like everyone who read our magazine know.

In this issue we want present some new things in iOS. There is a lot of interesting and new information for

developers and regular readers. You can also find some tutorials and review about GPS system,

which app is the best for you? Read and find out.

As usual, we’re waiting for your comments and suggestions about magazine and articles.

Want read about something? Write to us and we think about it.

Remember, iCoder Magazine is created by developers for developers, everything what we creating is for you!

Enjoy the read!

Mariusz BernackiEditor in Chief

[email protected]

Greetings iCoders!

icoder magazine Published by: FX Press Sp. z o.o. Sp.K.

President: Ałła [email protected]

Editor in chief:Mariusz [email protected]

Design and DTP: Aneta JonesEurodesignwww.euro-design.info

Production Director: Ałła Zalewska

Postal address: FX Press Sp. z o.o. Sp.K., ul. Bokserska 1, 02-682 Warszawa, Poland tel. +48 600 649 676www.icodermag.com

advertising: [email protected]

All trade marks presented in the magazine were used only for informative purposes. All rights to trade marks presented in the magazine are reserved by the companies which own them.

The FX Press Sp. z o.o. Sp.K. works individually from Apple. The iCoder Magazine team reserves the right not to be responsible for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the information provided by contributors.

www.icodermag.com 05/20122

conTEnTs


TuTorialsapp marketing for the poor 04Inbal Geffen

cyberDuck-file transfer from iPhone to mac 08Mateusz Majewski

TechnologyThe new apple TV, should You Purchase it or not? 13Kris DeSouza

iPhoto & redesigned camera app for iPad 17Mateusz Majewski

The Endless Possibilities of Xcode 4 22Omar Al-Halawani

icloud, what is it and what it offers 28Hessel van Tuinen

reviewsIs Getting Lost a Thing of The Past? 34Omar Al-Halawani

arTiclesThE nEW ios TEchnoLoGIEs 38Gökhan Gültekin

Proper Presentation in app store 44Jason Walsh

TuTorIaL

“Congratulations!

The status for the following app has changed to Processing for App Store.”

Your baby came into the app world – the app store. The app you’ve put your

heart and soul into, is now ready for sale!

Excited, after the first day the app is live, you’re expecting the daily report.

Slowly, the report loads... and here it is – 3 downloads. How disappointing.

You probably thought that you could retire after creating this app... It will

probably take a while before you get there.

app marketing for the poor

4 www.icodermag.com 05/2012

Basically, it’s all about being out there, on Google, app store searches and top charts. It’s a no brainer, that’s what every app owner/developer wishes for. But how?

If you’re the owner of a large company that has a huge marketing budget – good for you!

Paying for marketing is easy and may prove cost-effective. You can pay for reviews, pay for downloads, pay for com-panies that will promote your app, pay for ads in other apps etc.

This way, somebody else will do the hard work for you; but what if you’re an indie developer, or a new startup and don’t have a marketing budget?

So the real question isn’t “how can I market my app”, it’s “how can I spread the word about my app without spend-

ing a huge amount of money”?You can Google it as much as you want, you won’t find a definite answer.

One thing I can say for sure - there is no “successful recipe for app marketing” (without tearing your pocket).Marketing without a budget can be a headache and requires you to work hard.

When marketing without a budget you need to find crea-tive solutions and use as many free resources and plat-forms as you can.

Listed here are some zero-budget tips that I’ve gathered during the last years as a freelance iOS developer.

I will share some of my insights – things that worked for me.

• DroP IT LIkE IT’s hoT Always plan price drops! Submit your app as paid, even if you’re planning to eventually give it for free. The bloggers and app aggregator websites will be all over it and market the app for you. People just love getting things for free, and they love it even more if it used to be paid. “Apps Gone Free” is one of the psychological tactics that users can’t resist. Price drops are the ulti-mate method to go up the app store charts.

• “LITE” & Pro VErsIonsCreate a free version of your app with limited func-tionality and an option to purchase the full functional-ity via In-App Purchase.

By creating two versions of the app you gain a few things:

•The “Lite” version will be easier to promote, you will expand your user base and some users will upgrade the app, or at least join your Facebook fan page.

•The “Pro” version can be used in giveaways or in planned price drops. Once in a while, lower the price of the “Pro” version, to get the users attention (as mentioned above). Make sure that your “Lite” version has enough functionality to make it viable and useful for your users, but add some extra-shiny features to the Pro version to make it worth the upgrade.

• PrEss IT!Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.com) is a great tool to increase visibility of your app to Google and other search engines. Start with opening a free Word-press blog. Have at least one static page, describing your app, accompanied by screenshots from your app, and one posts page with room for comments from your users. Make sure comments must be moderated before going live!

Use tag words and categories that you would like to be associated with your app. After a few hours, your post will be discoverable via Google searches. There are also people who constantly read new posts, they’re also potential us-ers. You can use any blogging system you know. I personally prefer Wordpress because it’s easy and it provides many great tools and widgets. Of course, the most important ad-vantage of Wordpress is that “WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines“ (Word-Press Codex). Wordpress has built-in tools and widgets that are easy to embed in your blog, for example: Word-

press Facebook Like Box widget and Wordpress sharing settings.

• WorDPrEss FacEbook LIkE boX WIDGETLink your Wordpress blog with your Facebook fan page in order to expand your fan base. Users that came cross your post and don’t know about the fan-page might become fans after reading your blog. You will find this widget in the Wordpress dashboard un-der Appearance -> Widgets.

• WorDPrEss sharInG sETTInGsBy configuring your sharing settings you automatically allow Wordpress to post links with new posts you’ve written in your blog. For example, if you connect to your Facebook fan page, every new post on your blog will be published on your Facebook fan page. Same for: Linked-In, Twitter etc. Wordpress sharing set-tings can be found in the Wordpress dashboard under Settings->Sharing.

• cross aPP markETInGUse your current users to cross-advertise your apps. Use splash pages, links offering more apps or custom ads. You’ve worked so hard to get these users, they’re potential users for other apps you own.

According to my statistics, splash pages conversion are approximately 7-8%. For best exposure, present your splash page every time the user starts the app. If you want your splash page to be presented on app activation even if the app was opened from the background, don’t place the call for splash page in “applicationDidFinishLaunch-ing” method, call it in the “applicationDidBecomeActive” method.

• aPP raTInGFor most potential users, the rating of your app can be crucial. Although some might ignore the ratings and download the app based on the app description, screenshots or recommendations. App rating might even be a factor in the unknown algorithm used for the “iTunes store” search results. Don’t count on the users to return back to the store and rate your app. Make it simple. Add a button or prompt the user to rate your app with an alert. App rating is considered an act of “sophisticated” users. This will assist the “lazy” or “simple” users to rate your app. Hopefully they’ll have something good to say.

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5



• Push mEssaGEs - Don’T Push IT!Push messages can be an extremely powerful tool if they’re used correctly. Very much like the power of splash pages, you can use push messages to cross-pro-mote apps. The problem with push messages is that they’re annoying, and unlike splash pages, the user can unregister from getting them. This is why I recom-mend to use them wisely. Every irrelevant message you send will cause users to unregister from your app push notifications and they might even uninstal the app. Before sending a push notification, think about the consequences. Is the value of this message equal to the power of holding users as possible push receiv-ers? On the other hand, what’s the worth of the users if you don’t use them! Mastering the art of push notifi-cations isn’t simple, but with some trial and error you will learn what works for your users and you will be able to practice it on your next app.

• bE acTIVE on Your FacEbook Fan PaGEMake your Facebook pages friendly, comment on posts from users, post interesting photos and links that are relevant to your app and fans.

• GIVEaWaYsGiveaways are a great way to keep people active in your Facebook page. Remember that when users like something on Face-book, their friends see the activity and it’s very likely they will become fans of your page too.Make your giveaways simple, don’t ask users to upload photos or write anything. Trust me, I’ve tried that, the reach rate will be much lower. A simple “Like” will do

Needless to say that giving the “simple” user’s access to criticize your app, won’t always generate only good re-views. Take that in consideration when asking for rating. The question whether to prompt an alert or just show a button on your screen is a question of your taste and how you characterize your users. An alert can be an advantage and a disadvantage. It forces the user to act in order to continue using the app. Some people might see it as an op-portunity and some will find it annoying. If you annoy your users they will probably write a bad review, which is the opposite of what you intended to do. I find a button more subtle and yet easy enough for those who have something to say.

• crEaTE a Fan basE • Enable sharing from your app using several social plat-

forms (Email, Facebook, Twitter, etc) this way your us-ers can promote the app for you.

• Promote your Facebook page from within your app. Facebook users are potential users for other apps you own (or might own). Even by joining your page they promote the app to their friends.

Expanding your Facebook fan base can be done in many ways. You can add a link from your app to your Facebook page or use an internal inbox to send a message leading to your page. I’m using Appoxee SDK (http://www.appoxee.com) to engage my app users. In Figure1 you can see an internal inbox with a message promoting the app Facebook page.

• Use the Wordpress Facebook Like Box widget men-tioned before.

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Figure 1 – appoxee’s internal inboxThe internal inbox is a wonderful way to engage your current users.

* advertise your Facebook fan page and blog/website.

* keep them updated with your new apps* Inform price drops on your apps* advertise relevant events or products

The internal inbox’s main advantage is that unlike push messages, the internal inbox doesn’t force the user to read the messages.The user will open the inbox only if he’s curious or interested in the content. In this view there’s also a “more apps” button, which can be used to promote your other apps.

Figure1 – Internal Inbox

InbaL GEFFEniOS developer & entrepreneur. Website: http://inbalgeffen.comLinked-In: http://il.linkedin.com/pub/inbal-geffen/12/b0/a38

the trick, without forcing the user to work hard or share personal details. Another advantage of giveaways is that they make your page attractive. people who will visit it later will know that there’s a chance to get free apps or other promotions and they might join just for that fact.

• sEo 101Since we want users to know about our app, we need to promote our website. Post links pointing to your website, Wordpress blog and itunes download link wherever you can! In your Facebook fan page, in iOS developer’s forums, in free review websites, anywhere possible. Google rankings are known to be related to the number of links to a certain website. When linking your blog in other websites and blogs, your website gets priority on Google searches. Another SEO tactic that can be used to promote your website is adding links on your posts to external websites. You can add links to websites that reviewed your app, or other rel-evant websites. When showing search results, Google algorithms take in consideration both linking to your website and linking from your website outside.

Search for SEO tutorials on Google for more details on promoting your website. Most of the tips are easy to fol-low (add links, add keywords etc...)

• communITYFind your target communities on the web and on Face-book. For example: if your app is targeted for children, become active in parent groups or pages. Giveaways in these kind of groups are a great way to expand your user base. Contact bloggers that write about subjects that might interest your target users. For example: if your app is a game, contact bloggers that are gamers. Offer them a free promocode or a few promocodes to give to their readers. Contact as many bloggers as possible. Not all bloggers will respond, but that’s ok, you only need a few bloggers to get started. Bloggers will gain the added value of sharing promocodes or announcing a new and exciting app.

Let’s review our main objective and how all these tips bring us closer to achieving it.Our objective was to market the app, which means we want users.

Figure 3 will help us understand how it all connects.You don’t have to follow all the tips. As you can see there are many ways to reach the users. Still, it’s important to re-member that as many systems you use, you will reach more users of different kinds. Some users won’t have a Facebook account, some users don’t look for price drops. Using dif-ferent methods will help you maximize your efforts.

If you got tired and frustrated just from reading this article, I guess you should start saving some money for advertise-ment and do it the old fashioned way.

Never forget that nothing will work if you don’t have an excellent app that brings actual value to your users. Good luck everyone!

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Figure2 – Giveaway on Facebook fan page

Figure3 – App marketing cycle example

TuTorIaL

Hello, today I’ll show you how to view system files of your iPhone through the Mac. In this tutorial we connect iPhone via SSH files. In emergency situations, for sure come in handy. CyberDuck program is equivalent to WinSCP for Windows. This is a great program so that in a very easy way you can add to your iPhone files and delete them without USB, all via Wi-Fi, wirelessly!

cyberDuck -file transfer from iPhone to mac

8

WhaT Do WE nEED?

1. a computer with mac os X2. cyberDuck for mac http://cyberduck.softonic.com/mac3. Jailbreak iPhone4. iPhone and mac connected to a Wi-Fi

LET’s GET sTarTED!

1. openssh installationTurn iPhone and enter into Cydia, and now we are waiting to refresh the sources and enter the search and enter the password: “Open SSH”

Now select the program from the list of sophisticated.

We install, confirm

2. our IP addressOnce installed, enter the settings, then Wi-Fi. Among the list of available networks look for our already connected to the network. In addition to a network press the blue arrow. Here you can learn about our network.

We save you our IP address, which is the first item on the list.Example: IP address 192.168.104.102

TuTorIaL

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cyberDuck-file transfer from iPhone to mac


Select the new connection.

3. conectionYou can now put iDevice.CyberDuck Turn on the Mac.

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Select the third from the top of the protocol is a protocol (SFTP to connect through SSH)

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•Now the “Server” type in our (previously saved) IP address•User name: root• Password: alpine

Now we are connected into your iPhone! You can edit all the files directly from your computer. The program is in some sense equivalent to iFile. But here comfortably look through the partition. We have ac-cess to a computer, and you can add files without iTunes to the appropriate folders, it will be useful when you want to quickly upload a whole album of our favorite sing-er or you want to upload wallpaper. Ap-plication required for the advanced user iOS. I myself have used, I use and I will use. Great Apple users!

maTEusz [email protected]


TuTorIaLcyberDuck-file transfer from iPhone to mac

If you’re like me and was expecting an actual television set for the new

Apple TV then you must be utterly disappointed. All we got was an update of

the same looking a black box of the 2nd generation TV. Is the 3rd generation

Apple TV hiding something great, am I missing something.

As a huge Apple fan, I would want to think so.

The new apple TV, should You Purchase it or not?


TEchnoLoGY

Let’s gather what’s new with Apple TV. Firstly it packs an impressive A5 processor, a step up from the 2nd gen Apple TV A4. I would think that an A5 processors (single core, I must point out) is included to give enough power for the 1080p graphics output, another of the new features avail-able. I personally think Apple themselves isn’t impress with

this A5 chip because this wasn’t mention on-stage at the last Apple event. It’s nothing unique in the 3rd generation Apple TV but Air-play allows you to play contents from your iOS device on your HDTV and the gaming graphics on the Apple TV 3 looks much more amazing than the Apple TV 2. Maybe it’s a reason to get the new device.

A5-single

The updated interface is something to mention and so we shall. At first glance, what comes to mind is beautiful and to be honest, it is, that’s until you head a little bit deeper into the menu and what you find is the same old textual

interface. Nothing has change apart from the top layer. The new interface is also available to all Apple TV 2 owners in the latest software update. Maybe it’s not a reason to go out and purchase the new device.

ThE nEW aPPLE TV, shouLD You PurchasE IT or noT?TEchnoLoGY


and videos at a top HD quality.If you already own an Apple TV, then you’re not the tar-

geted market with the new Third generation Apple TV. If you had your eyes on the Apple TV then maybe it’s the time to get one. So it’s all in your hands readers, we are merely pointing out the facts.

The price of the new Apple TV remains the same US$99. Is it worth going out and buying it? The latest software upgrade for the Apple TV will give your 2nd generation device the lovely looking top layer interface. In the case of the ability to play 1080p videos, this might be really tempt-ing for some because let’s face it, we love watching movies

aPPLE TV 3rD GEnEraTIon TEchnIcaL sPEcIFIcaTIons

size and Weight •Height: 0.9 inch (23 mm)•Width: 3.9 inches (98 mm)•Depth: 3.9 inches (98 mm)•Weight: 0.6 pound1

In the box•Apple TV•Apple Remote• Power Cord•Documentation

Processor•Apple single-core A5 chip

system requirements•Wi-Fi (802.11a, b, g, or n) wireless network (wireless video streaming requires 802.11a, g,

or n) or 10/100BASE-T Ethernet network• iTunes Store account for buying or renting movies and buying TV shows•Netflix account for streaming Netflix content• For streaming media from a Mac or PC: iTunes 10.6 or later; iTunes Store account

for Home Sharing•MLB.TV subscription required to watch live and archived games•NBA.com League Pass Broadband subscription required to watch live and archived games•NHL GameCenter Live subscription required to watch live and archived games



krIs DEsouzaHe is from iPhone and iPad App review blog, www.iphoneglance.com.

Ports and Interfaces•HDMI2•Optical audio• 10/100BASE-T Ethernet• Built-in IR receiver•Micro-USB (for service and support)

Wireless•Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n)

Environmental requirements•Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)• Storage temperature: -4° to 113° F (-20° to 45° C)•Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing•Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)

Power• Built-in 6-watt universal power supply

Video Formats•H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High or Main Profile level 4.0 or lower,

Baseline profile level 3.0 or lower with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

•MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

•Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

audio Formats supported•HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320

Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV; Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through

Photo Formats• JPEG, GIF, TIFF

TV compatibility•Compatible with high-definition TVs with HDMI and capable of 1080p or 720p at 60/50Hz,2

including popular models from these manufacturers: Hitachi, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, NEC, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio, Westinghouse



As we know from long time, the camera of iPad aroused much controversy and

debate, from first-generation iPad until the new iPad. The first had no camera

at all, the next had two. Its options when it comes to movies I estimate

(720p without stabilization). As for the photo- awful. I still do not know how

many in my opinion megapixel has camera in iPad 2 it is said that 1.3, but in my

opinion more than 2.0. iPad 2 brought the second camera FaceTime. Its purpose

is to talk through video calls and use the stupid and senseless Photo Booth.

iPhoto & redesigned camera app for iPad

TEchnoLoGY


However, the new iPad has already a great 5 megapixel iSight camera! IPhone 4S lenses and image stabilization make a nice effect, even on the big screen of iPad. There is only one small problem, who takes pictures by tablet?

Today we’ll see what the new iPhoto, we will know the options and watch the camera application on the iPad. With the new iPad a mobile software update from Apple, iOS 5.1 has appeared.

aPP markETInG For ThE Poor


TEchnoLoGY

Whether we use the iPad second or third generation, the application has been redesigned to pamper us. The appli-cation is universal from today, because after several firm-ware versions, Apple finally arranges for and iPad now has

its own camera application. That functions are not ideally suited to our needs or expectations, but edits, corrections and other additions we can do in iPhoto.

At the first sight there is a little changes, but if you read carefully we can notice the line saying: Redesigned Camera app for iPad


aPP markETInG For ThE PoorTEchnoLoGY

iPhoto for iPad is a powerful software designed for effec-tive organization and edit digital photos at a very affordable price 3.99 €.

This program is a mobile version of one of the applica-tions available in iLife on the Mac. The application has also the same options, as version of iPhoto on the Mac, but is equipped with support of gestures to help you perform various tasks.

iPhoto for iPad allows among others to upload images to social networking sites, create slideshows, and view with your photos on the big screen using Apple TV.

For example, in a trivial way with the help of gestures, you can select individual images and display them on a single screen for comparison, and the elements of the pictures,

or mask mark with your finger.

iPhoto provides us with advanced retouching, including their color, exposure and contrast, adding filters and ef-fects. We are also able to send photos to other devices from Apple.

We can change the brightness and contrast, saturation, the entire image or selected components or select the white balance setting. I really like the animation of the crop and marketing functions with a special wheel and pitch angle.

The new iPhoto also includes Digital Photo Journals, which help our picture to be created automatically, with the pos-sibility to add the information about the date, time and place of photos. The program will handle up to 19 meg-apixel photos.



Going back to the camera:

The entire interface has been completely redesigned to take photos and videos, better.

In the low left corner we can see our last photo taken by iPad, pressing on the thumbnail, we go to the camera roll. We can also go there by intelligent multi-touch gesture, swiping your finger across the screen to the right.

Next to: options. Probably Apple plans for the future to expand the options because they did a separate folder, but on the iPad there is only one: Grid.

The iPhone we have probably two: Grid and HDR.On the right we have the option of changing the camera from the back (default) to the front. It is worth to mention about adding to iOS 5.1 improvements that eliminate the possibilities of recording the film upside down, as often happened, for example me. Next, as standard-change from photo mode to video.

But for the first sight we can notice the change in the sepa-ration of a button to take pictures or video from the main strip. Now, to take pictures more confortable we have the thumb-button next to the hand when I hold the iPad. Ingenious solution, the key is always below finger. From now it will be better to push this button, without using the sound button to take the picture. Another plus!

I think that Apple has done everything as it should. In the AppStore we have a full package of iLife (GarageBand, iP-hoto, iMovie). I think it was the next good step by Apple. iPhoto can not be good for professional imaging, but as a basic, mobile entertainment and editing for sure come in handy, even for moderately severe treatment. iMovie also allows for the average treatment effects in movies, but Ga-rageBand is almost a professional tool for creating music on mobile devices. Coming up here, we begin to be aware that Apple, for some time, maybe longer, maybe shorter, will be dominated in terms of quality and mobility of their devices. Greetings!

maTEusz maJEWskI



You might have heard about Xcode 4 somewhere, but did you ever fully

understand it? Do you realize exactly what it can be used for and why Apple is

so proud of it? Well I’ll try and clear a few things up.

The Endless Possibilities of Xcode 4

So what is Xcode 4 for those who don’t know? Xcode is a program for Mac OS X that can develop software for other Mac OS clients and iOS devices, pretty cool if you think about it! It was first released back in 2003 and has been used by developers ever since. If you’ve invested in Mac OS X Lion, the good news is, you can get Xcode 4 completely free off of the Mac App Store, if you don’t have Lion you can always signup to be a developer for Xcode and even more applications to help you develop applications. Xcode is a very powerful tool and the suite itself has a modified version of the GNU Compiler Col-lection, which basically means it supports C, C++, Objec-tive-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, Cocoa and more. It’s understandable why developers want to make applica-tions for iOS devices, it’s one of the most advanced mobile platforms out there, and it’s secure and compact and gives the user an amazing experience. Making an application on an iOS device or even a Mac OS X device may be expensive at first, but if you have a good product you want to share with the world, you can easily pay off the developer mem-bership. Once you get the hang of Xcode and SDK, you can easily make great applications for a powerful platform. iOS 5 has made it possible to make your application more open and the limitations even lower. Using Xcode you can store documents and data you need in iCloud, publish magazines or newspapers to Newsstand, integrate Twitter to your application and so much more. iOS has a powerful founda-tion and shares technologies such as OS X Kernel, BSD

sockets, C and C++ compilers with the likes of Mac OS X, Apple have made it possible to take full advantage of iOS devices and really push it to your needs. The possibilities are even more advanced when develop-ing for Mac OS X. Cocoa is the main programming envi-ronment you would be using to create applications, it may take a while to get used to if you’ve only used DirectX or OpenGL before, but once you know how to use it to it’s full extent, you can create extremely powerful applications for the OS. It uses the Objective-C language to give the user a rich experience and gives the developer the ability to make state-of-the-art applications and gives them com-plete access to the OS and you can use Automator, Ap-pleScript or VoiceOver to enhance your application. The graphics are another good reason to start using Xcode, both iOS devices with their retina display and Mac OS X with its graphics capabilities means using Core Animation, Core Image and OpenGL makes some really good anima-tions and multimedia. And this is all made better by the fact that millions of users in 90 different countries now use the Mac App Store. Why choose Xcode 4 over previous version though? I, my-self, usually get the most stable and up-to-date versions of programs to get the most out of it, but what have been the improvements since Xcode 1? When Xcode was first released in 2003, it wasn’t the most amazing program ever, it was simply based on Project Builder but had an updated UI, ZeroLink, Fix and Continue, distributed build support

TEchnoLoGY


and Code Sense indexing. Windows users thought nothing of it, but Apple fanatics and developers definitely started to seem interested in the idea. When Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” was released, so was Xcode 2.0, which included the Quartz Composer. This is a pretty powerful visual pro-gramming language to use and has improved over the years. Version 2.0 also had better Code Sense indexing for Java and included Ant support which is a great tool that im-plements Java. To further the possibilities of Xcode, later versions in the 2.0 series could create universal binaries and it supporter Shared Precompiled Headers, unit testing targets, conditional breakpoints, and watchpoints. So far you might not be too impressed, but you can see how progressive and adaptive Xcode is and why 4.0 is the best option. Xcode 3.0 was initially released alongside Leopard but is still used by many computers across the world and it took the biggest leap in versions yet. Some of the notable changes include an updated debugging tool, context-sensitive documentation and Objective-C 2.0 with garbage collection to help increase speed. It also supports Project Snapshots, which provides a basic form of version control. Version 3.1 was an update for the developer tools for Mac OS X and was included with the iPhone SDK; you could make applications for iOS 2.0 and included the GCC 4.2 and LLVM GCC 4.2 compilers. Versions 3.2 shipped out with Snow Leopard and don’t install on any previous versions of Mac OS X. Support for targeting iOS versions 3.0 and below were dropped in this update, and Java sup-port in 3.2 is “exiled” to the organizer. If you still use Snow Leopard you can download Xcode 3.2.6 for free after a free registration at Apple’s developer site.

So after the progression from Xcode 1 to Xcode 3, what’s different in Xcode 4? Why should I get that version instead of others, should I just stick with Xcode 3 if I have Snow Leopard? Well to start off, Xcode 4 puts the editing tools and Interface Builder into a single application, which can be really useful. Version 4.2 was released alongside iOS 5.0 and had improved features like storyboarding and automat-ic correction. Xcode 4 drops support for older systems such as the PowerPC and all SDKs for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 and all iOS SDKs older than 4.3. You can still produce binaries for these platforms but for the Mac OS platforms, you are limited to creating x86 and x86_64 binaries. So for those of you who are interested in developing appli-cations, I would recommend you go for Xcode 4, it comes free if you have Lion (which wouldn’t be a bad upgrade if you don’t already have it) and it develops higher quality ap-plications and comes with more features than previous ver-sions. It also develops applications for the newer versions of Mac OS X and iOS, which is necessary for those who want a good selling application as most people upgrade their iDevices as soon as an update is available. Enough of the sales talk though, what is really possible in Xcode 4, how about some examples? Before we get into that though, you need to understand the UI of Xcode, this will make it easier for you to get around the application. Firstly, to create a new project, go to File > New Project and then choose from the many types of application. For now, choose “View-Based Application” this is a really sim-ple application. After entering a name you will be taken to the workspace, which at first, may be really confusing, here’s a picture that will show you the two different sec-tions:

ThE EnDLEss PossIbILITIEs oF XcoDE 4

The very old Project Builder.

The Xcode 3 interface.

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Now the rest is straightforward! Simply design the applica-tion how you want it to look and add all the elements you want such as Text Fields and buttons. This is the easiest way to make an application for those of you who are new to making them, but you can also make your application a lot more customizable by using Objective-C coding, this is a little bit more confusing and advanced and should only be attempted if you understand coding.

A few things you should take away with you when using Objective-C coding are: •Variables are written in ‘camel case’, e.g.

appleMakesCoputers - the upper case letters appear like “humps” in the text

•All lines end in a semicolon •Asterisks are used to declare a pointer, which is a

variable that “points” to a physical memory address Now that you understand your workspace and some of the basics, a really simple application you can make is a cal-culator, there are many guides out there on the internet to guide you step by step through this process, but I will just outline the main steps. Simply make a new project and se-lect “View-Based Application” and target your iPhone, this application is for iOS devices after all. Go to the initializa-tion file (which is CalculatorViewController.h) and add the code below.

The simplest way to make the application is to go over to the Navigator (as shown above) and double click Project-Name.xib; this will let you change the interface of the ap-plication you are making. Go to View > Utilities > Object Library to see the different icons and interface elements you can add to your work.

A chart showing the sections of Xcode 4

The Object Library showing a multitude of different interface elements

ThE EnDLEss PossIbILITIEs oF XcoDE 4TEchnoLoGY


The IBOutlets creates the code for variables that we can use later on. Now move on to the implementation file (CalculatorViewController.m), this will define how the variables will react to user interaction, again, add the code below.

Now we need to build the applications interface, go to the “View Controller” and add three labels, two buttons and two text fields and make it look like the picture shown, or however else you like!

This calculator would be pretty useless without a key-board, so naturally you’re going to want to add one. To do this, look underneath the Text Field’s attributes and head on down to keyboard. From the menu, select “Number Pad”, that’s it! Now all we need to do is link up our codes with the inter-face we’ve just created. Click on “File’s Owner” and go to the “Outlets” pane, to add the code we need to drag the code to the correct elements. So drag the “Label” code over to the label, connect the two text fields and con-nect the calculate button with the code that we defined in the initialization file and then do the same with the clear command. And that’s all there is to it, quite a bit of work If you’re new to Xcode 4, but this is a good practice and if you’ve done everything correctly you can load it up in the iOS Simulator and show it off to your friends! So apart from the technical terminology, what have other people said about Xcode 4? The reviews look generally favourable from the older version, Xcode 3, but there are both advantages and disadvantages. When transitioning from Xcode 3 to 4, probably the first thing you will notice, is the new user interface, it’s quite a bit different. The tool-bar is near empty and there seems to be an LCD display in the middle that’s come right out of iTunes, not to mention everything is now contained in a single window such as the code editor, project navigation, inspectors and the rest. The workspace can be as minimalistic as a text editor or you can choose it to be packed with a UI editor, document info, debugger and the media library. If you plan on using this application a lot, it’s rare that you will only ever have one project on its own; after all, it’s such a large applica-tion. For instance, you may be developing plugins or have frameworks that are in their own projects to later compile together with your main project.

Customise your application how you like What the new UI looks like in Xcode 4



Xcode 3 probably had the worst user interface out of all the Apple products. It was called the “Groups & Files” list and of course, you could improve it, but it was still very cluttered and was one window that was trying to offer you everything at once. At exactly the same time it was a file manager, target browser, find results list, SCM controller, symbols list, breakpoint manager and much more. How-ever, all that is now gone and Xcode 4 simply replaces the old “Groups & Files” list with navigators. You’ve got the Project navigator, Symbol navigator, search, issue, debug and the breakpoint log. The Project navigator is the main one, it shows you your classes, frameworks, resources, products and the rest, but there’s an improvement. At the bottom you will find a filter bar with 3 pre-set filters, re-cently changed files, unsaved files and files with SCM status and it includes a search field with which you can filter files across all projects in the workspace. This may be all good, but there is a problem, the inability to save filters or flatten results so they don’t show groups. This functionality would replace the smart folders that you can find in Xcode 3, un-fortunately there is nothing like this in Xcode 4.

Xcode 3 did have a real flaw, file management. It’s been improved in Xcode 4, but it still has its issues. You can map groups to folders on disk, if you create a new file in a group, it’s then added to that directory, but if you drag a file into that group, it isn’t moved to the directory, this may seem small but it’s a major time waste. The Search navigator is simply a find and replace panel and it has all the same options as Xcode 3, however the find options panel seems to have been replaced by a find scope sheet, which is easier to understand. The last navigator I’ll write about is the Debug navigator. Your stack appears here when you

stop in the debugger, the stack information is now much cleaner and it’s easier to reach, you can even view multiple threads at once and you can make Xcode filter out threads that aren’t relevant. Another new feature to Xcode 4 are jump bars. They’ve existed in other applications for quite some time now and they’ve proved to be very useful. They let you navigate through your entire project, but to those of you who are used to the Groups & Files list will probably end up using the Project navigator and if you’re used to using Open Quickly, you’ll probably keep using that. It’s a great new feature, but it’s navigation between files seems somewhat limited, and may only appeal to new users who prefer it to the other methods.

Apple is well known for it’s different key bindings, however I can’t seem to remember all of them, they can be really annoying and they’ve added a load to Xcode 4. These can be really useful, but at the same time if you forget the key binding you have to look for the command elsewhere or possibly mess up your work experimenting. Open Quickly is now Shift- Command-O, this makes sense but it means all the debugger keys have had to be changed as well. Step Over/Into/Out have all be changed to F6, F7 and F8 respec-tively. This is quick and easy but correct me if I’m wrong, these keys all do something already as they assigned to do system commands such as rewind, play/pause and fast-forward.

The new and improved “Project navigator”

An example of the new jump bars



People seem quick to criticise Xcode 4, but I believe it shouldn’t be judged on what it is, but what it will be in the future with updates and more. There’s a lot of new and interesting features, yet Apple seem to have got rid of a lot of features from Xcode 3 that many people loved and used constantly. The foundations are pretty much all there to build an Xcode that can compete with the likes of Visual Studio and Eclipse, they just need fleshing out more and some of the old features put back in. There are very few areas where Xcode 4 is worse than previous versions. The majority of those areas are where the features simply aren’t there, but where they may re-appear in future ver-sions. In every other area it offers major leaps forward in usability, performance and enjoyment.

I’ve always considered Xcode to be the nicest IDE to use in terms of user interface, though it wasn’t ever the best looking one. It’s just the competition was so ugly and clut-tered. Xcode 4 however, genuinely is pretty. This may sound nerdy but, sometimes I love looking at it and admir-ing the amount of work that has gone into it. Apple has had some of the prettiest developer tools in terms of Inter-face Builder, Instruments and Quartz Composer for quite a while, but Xcode seemed dated when you compared it. It now feels like the sort of user interface you’d expect from Apple. Some people believe though, that Apple simply used iTunes as an inspiration for Xcode 4 and made the toolbars sparse to make it look like iTunes. It does lack some of the more advanced features of Xcode 3, but it’s wrong to say that iTunes was the cause or inspiration. iTunes isn’t particularly great; it’s old, clunky and somewhat ugly. In my opinion Xcode 4 is much closer to iLife or iWork in the sense that it’s modern, it puts a large amount of focus on the user interface and it tries to use great engineering to reduce the amount of work you need to do to create great results. It may be lacking a few features, but maybe with the release of Mac OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” this summer, there will be an update to Xcode that will make it more user friendly and packed with new (and old) features. All I know is, Xcode still has quite a long way to go to keep compet-ing with the other applications out there, but it still makes a hell of an IDE.

omar aL-haLaWanIHe is a freelance writer who’s been interested in magazines and helping people for quite some years now. He’s also been an avid Apple fan for years and owns a lot of iDevices! In his free time he enjoys surfing the net and is an active member of many online forums, feel free to contact him at [email protected] or just Google Omar6000.



Apple recently launched a new service for all there devices.

The named it iCloud but, maybe it looks nice but:

What is it?

iCloud stores your music, photos, documents and more, and wirelessly pushes

them to all your devices. Automatic, effortless and seamless — it just works.

icloud, what is it and what it offers

Overview of devices and iCloud service

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aPPLE maDE aLrEaDY somE IcLouD basED aPPLIcaTIonsOne of these applications is Apple iWork.Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

And Apple is giving their developers the tools to make their apps work with iCloud too. So you can do things like paint a masterpiece, edit stock lists and more — and have it all with you on all your devices, including your Mac or PC.

icLouD, WhaT Is IT anD WhaT IT oFFErs

iPhone and iPad with preview of Keynote (part of iWork)

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sErVIcEs In IcLouD:

ios Device backup and restoreiCloud allows users to back up iOS devices online; they can be restored from backup without connecting to a com-puter.

Find my iPhoneFind My iPhone, formerly part of MobileMe, allows us-ers to track the location of their iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Mac. A user can see the device’s approximate location on a map (along with a circle showing the ra-dius depicting the margin of error), display a message or play a sound on the device (even if it is set to silent), change the password on the device, and remotely erase its contents.

Photo streamPhoto Stream is a service supplied with the basic iCloud service which allows users to store the most recent 1,000 photos on the iCloud servers up to 30 days free of charge. When a photo is taken on a device with Photo Stream ena-bled, it is automatically uploaded to the iCloud servers; from there, it is automatically pushed to the rest of the user’s reg-istered devices. Apple has announced that the service will be integrated with the Apple TV set-top box, allowing users to wirelessly view their recent photos on their HDTV.

back to my macBack to My Mac, previously part of MobileMe, is now part of iCloud. This service allows users to login remotely to other computers configured with the same Apple ID that have Back to My Mac enabled.

iCloud makes it easy to move Pages, Keynote and Numbers documents between your computer and your iOS devices. Just sign in to iCloud.com/iWork in any modern web brows-er, and all your iWork for iOS documents will be there — complete with your most recent edits. Click a document to download it in iWork ’09, Microsoft Office or PDF format.

You can also drag and drop any iWork ’09 or Microsoft Office document from your computer into one of the the iWork apps on iCloud.com, and it automatically ap-pears on all your iOS devices, ready for you to review, edit or present.

Documents from iWork showed in iCloud on web browser

icLouD, WhaT Is IT anD WhaT IT oFFErsTEchnoLoGY


iTunes matchiTunes Match debuted on 14 November 2011, initially avail-able to US users only. For an annual fee, customers can scan and match tracks in their iTunes music library, includ-ing tracks copied from CDs or other sources, with tracks in the iTunes Store. Apple lets customers download up to 25,000 tracks in 256 kbps DRM-free AAC file format that match tracks in any supported audio file format, including ALAC and mp3, in the customers’ iTunes libraries, with users having the additional option on their computers to

keep the original version stored there or to replace it with the version from the iTunes Store as they wish. Any music not available in the iTunes Store is also able to be uploaded by users for download onto their other supported devices or computers, but online storage needed for the upload of tracks not available in the iTunes Store is taken from the users separate iCloud storage service allowance, as iTunes Match is currently available in 37 countries.

With this in mind, i’ve been to this Apple event last summer:

I was very excited and thrilled to be there, “one of the developers” There were nice sessions with a lot of infor-mation regarding iOS 5 “New Features” one of this was iCloud.

The best thing during this event has been the clear and good explanation about how iCloud is really works for you.

some things i’ve learned there:• It isn’t the complete file which is send after every

change.• It isn’t a big data center which only saves data.•The technology only provides “the connection”

somE ThInGs You haVE To knoW/kEEP In mInD abouT IcLouD? (if you are developer and didn’t know already)

being a responsible icloud appApps that take advantage of iCloud storage features should act responsibly when storing data there. The space available in each user’s account is limited and is shared by all apps. Users can see how much space is consumed by a given app and choose to delete documents and data associated with your app. For these reasons, it is in your app’s interest to be responsible about what files you store. Here are some tips to help you manage documents appropriately:



Have a good strategy for storing iCloud documents. Whenever possible, give the user a single option to store all data in iCloud.

•Deleting a document removes it from a user’s iCloud account and from all of that user’s computers and devices. Make sure that users are aware of this fact and confirm any delete operations.

•When storing documents in iCloud, place them in the Documents subdirectory whenever possible. Documents inside a Documents directory can be deleted individually by the user to free up space. However, everything outside that directory

is treated as data and must be deleted all at once.

•Never store caches or other files that are private to your app in a user’s iCloud storage. A user’s iCloud account should be used only for storing user-related data and content that cannot be re-created by your app.

•Treat files in iCloud the same way you treat all other files in your app sandbox. The time at which to save a file should be driven by the need of your app and the need to preserve the user’s data. You should not change your app to save files more or less frequently for iCloud. iCloud automatically optimizes its transfers to the server to ensure the best possible performance.



concLusIons:If you are Apple-fan, developer of iOS applications or only user of Apple products.

We all can agree, if this service is working as Apple say how it has to be, it can be a great addition for now and in the future.

Developers easily can integrate several features of iCloud.Users can get there data where ever they want to have it.

If you want to know more about this nice service:I’m Hessel van Tuinen, founder of HT Applications / co-founder of FriksMobile

You can reach me on: http://about.me/htapplications

I’ve also got the opinion: Be reachable for many people and all the good will be shared!

We have launched many different mobile apps for iOS, Android and WindowsPhone7 We believe the “cloud” in many formats will be all over the world.

So if you talk about the Cloud, iCloud is an good service and i hope you’ve liked this article.

Maybe next time i will write about some other cool fea-tures from iOS5.

rEmEmbEr: “If you trying to reach the Cloud, and you’re failing, you’re still “sky-high!”

hEssEL Van TuInEnMy name is Hessel van Tuinen from the Netherlands.The chief editor asked me to write an article for this beautiful magazine.

I’m honored to share some knowledge about the things i’m working on/with for 3 years now,

March 2010 i’ve started my first company in the mobile software business, i named it HT Applications because that is what we doing, we develop applications.

http://www.htapplications.com

After two years i’ve got the knowledge and skills to offer a wide range of mobile applications to many customers. With the launch of the iPad last year and the upcoming demand for B2B applications we got busy.



GPSMany people believe that you need

Wi-Fi or cellular coverage to use a GPS, however that is only true

for the ‘Maps’ application where a cellular ne-twork or Wi-Fi connection is needed to do-wnload the map data. With more and more GPS applications being added to the App Store every day, the list of possibilities goes on. The-re are many applications that use ‘aGPS’. The-se incorporate a true GPS receiver, that uses a cellular network to connect to 4 satellites to lock your position and find you, but if you don’t have a cellular connection the satellites will still be able to lock your position, it just needs more time.

Since iOS 3.0, Webapps have been able to access and display GPS information, includ-ing Google Maps and others like iRoute. Before iOS 3.0, accessing the iPhone’s GPS meant running Maps or downloading anoth-er application off the App Store, how times have changed.

Smartphones now seem to be outclassing other GPS navigators with high precision compasses and real-time navigation. Appli-cations such as AmAze GPS and MotionX

GPS Drive offer voice guidance and others include voice recognition and sensitive ba-rometer altimeters. As more people invest in smartphones, GPS applications are in-creasing in popularity; they even have their own App Store category! The Garmin Nüvi is part of the new generation of GPS navi-gators, but even Garmin have realised it’s better to get into the smartphone business. They released an application called Garmin StreetPilot onDemand last year that costs only $0.99 with an optional subscription ser-vice. StreetPilot offers lane guidance, speed limits, 3D buildings, landmarks viewable on Wikipedia, voice guidance and the ability to keep in touch with friends on Facebook and Foursquare, sharing your locations.

There is a problem however, the Apple iPad does have GPS, but only on the Wi-Fi + 3G model. This is how Wikipedia describes ‘A-GPS’:

“Conventional or “standalone” GPS op-eration uses radio signals from satellites. In very poor signal conditions, for example in a city, these signals may suffer multipath where signals bounce confusingly off build

Is Getting Lost a Thing of The Past?


With so many GPS applications available for your iDevices, anywhere in the world, with a simple App Store search or tap of a button, you can find where you are, but what’s the best option?

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ings, or be weakened by passing through walls or tree cover… An A-GPS system can address these problems in several ways, using an assistance server or other data from a network.”

Under the iPad technical specifications, assisted GPS is only mentioned in the “Wi-Fi + 3G model” NOT the Wi-Fi only model. Maybe this is Apple’s marketing office taking some liberties with the plus sign. The iPhone 3GS also has “Assisted GPS” listed underneath the technical specifications. The iPad technical specifications clearly state that A-GPS is available on both the 3G and Wi-Fi models of the iPad, so GPS is not included in the 3G chip. However, it could be that extra GPS-specific silicon is added to the Wi-Fi model, but it seems unlikely. So we can gather from this that A-GPS is linked to the A4 chip.

So how can you add GPS Functionality to the Wi-Fi only model of the Apple iPad and the iPod Touch? The iPod Touch also lacks a GPS chip that lets you lock on to satellite signals, this helps to locate you and track the distance covered. Instead of using the GPS chip for more accurate triangulation using cellular coverage or satel-lites, it uses Wi-Fi tower triangulation to provide inac-curate data as to where you are. There are several ways in which you can navigate just like any other smartphone using an iPod Touch or Wi-Fi only iPad.

The first method you could use is adding an external dock. You can use the 30-pin port (the charging port for all iDevices) to put dongles into. This lets you use GPS on both the iPod Touch and Wi-Fi only iPad by giving them access to GPS hardware and enabling navigation through the dongles. These dongles lock on to satellite signals and can even be more powerful than the GPS available on the iPhone’s and iPad’s.

The Bad Elf Dock is the perfect example of this. Its don-gles can be plugged in to all iDevices and it has a green LED light to indicate when the GPS is available. There is also a mini USB port so you can still sync your device to your computer. There is also an application on the App Store, Bad Elf GPS, for free that lets you download GPS data and check for any firmware updates. The Bad Elf Dock can also lock onto your position within 45 sec-onds or less with an accuracy of 2.5 meters.

To top it all off the Bad Elf is compatible with the iPod touch 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation, iPhone 4S, iP-hone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPad and iPad 2.

Another great way to add GPS functionality to your iDevice is through a Bluetooth GPS device. There is an Apple certified one that seems to outclass most others out there. The Dual XGPS150 comes in a small form and can be connected to any Bluetooth enabled smart-phones and this includes the iPad and iPod Touch that will enable GPS navigation. Your iDevice will pick up the GPS data via Bluetooth after pairing it with your device. It will then give the GPS data to most navigation applica-tions available for the iOS platform. It also comes with a free GPS Status application that can be downloaded from the App Store. This application is actually quite useful and displays your current location, how many sat-ellites the device can see and connect to, along with the signal strength of each satellite, the battery level of the XGPS150 and confirmation that the device is success-fully connected to your iDevice.

There is one other way to get GPS on your iDevice and I can’t say it’s my most favourite. Using an Android smart-phone, you can connect your iDevice to it and the GPS data can be fed to your device through a hack. This does require a jailbroken device though. All you have to do is install “BTStacks GPS” from Cydia, after this, make sure your native Bluetooth is turned off in the ‘General’ settings. There are many applications available for An-droid that will link your Android GPS chip to an external source. After looking through many reviews I’ve found that the adequately named “Bluetooth GPS” is the best, however you can try others such as “ShareGPS”, “Net-work/Bluetooth GPS” or “Bluetooth GPS Output”. Some of these may not work, but this isn’t much of a surprise, as most smartphones weren’t designed to do this.

There should be an icon on your springboard now called “GPS”, tap on it and you should be taken to an inter-face that simply lists all the devices you can connect to. At first it will say “Searching…” and as long as your Android smartphone is discoverable, it should show up soon. Now pair your iDevice with your Android by sim-ply tapping on your iDevice through your Android. Then enter the same pin number to secure the connection. If you have successfully paired with one another, then BTStack should take to a screen with a map on it. After a few seconds more information should be visible on your screen after the GPS signal has fully resolved. Now all you have to do is open up any application that is re-quires GPS capabilities and you will be able to use it like any other GPS device!


Is GETTInG LosT a ThInG oF ThE PasT?

GPS

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Now what if you have already have GPS functionality on your iDevice and want to have a more advanced and improved application? There are many GPS applications on the App Store; they even have their own category! So which one should you go for? They all have their own unique features and reasons to buy, but these are all free.

FrEE GPsThis is a really simple application with no advanced and technical information or other twiddly bits. It will tell you your current position, how accurate it is and it will let you make your own waypoint by entering the latitude and longitude of the position. It doesn’t offer too many features, but it’s pretty simple and easy to use.

amazE GPsNow this application offers many features of expensive GPS applications. You can view the map in 2D or 3D with pretty good graphics. It also offers a turn-by-turn voice that really helps when you’re in the car or just find it really helpful in general. There is an option to buy the full version, but there’s no need. All you have to do is tap on ‘keyword’ or ‘local search’ and you will get what you ask for, real easy! The routing options are quite extensive, for instance you can have directions for cars, pedestrians, trucks and there’s even an option for car pools. Decide whether you want the shortest route, fastest route or without traffic. The navigation is simi-lar to applications such as Navigon and includes satel-lite images. You can save places, search addresses, do a local search, look through the white pages and more. It doesn’t offer maps to everywhere in the world but it covers most areas, all of North America, Western, Cen-tral and most of Eastern Europe, parts of Latin America (Brazil and Argentina), Israel and most of the Middle East, parts of Asia (India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore), Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Either way, I think it’s a really useful application and on their iTunes page they’ve promised real-time traffic con-ditions, a five-day weather forecast and speed trap and red-light camera alerts for no additional cost.

auTomILEzThis is particularly good if you need to keep track of your mileage. If you really need to keep track of where you’re going and how much time and money you are spending, this is perfect for you. It has a real nice in-terface and seems pretty accurate, the only downside

is that you have to make an account first, but that’s not too much trouble for most people. All you do after that is enter your current odometer reading and click start, then when you’ve finished, tap stop and it will tell you your distance. Good for people who are on the road all day or for a living.

GPs LoGbooksThis application isn’t a very popular one, but that’s prob-ably because it’s mainly for people who fly planes or are just interested geeks like myself and it might even in-terest some travellers. It’s a pretty simple application and all it really does is shares and records your flights with your friends and other users publicly. Not really an application for everyday users, but another example of how GPS functionality can be used in a unique and weird way.

mYTracks – ThE GPs-LoGGErIf you’re interested in geocaching and do it a lot, this ap-plication might be good for you. After taking a look at some reviews, people like to take a lot of pictures while they’re geocaching. This application also adds the co-ordinates of the picture you’ve taken and even gives you the ability to add other photos that you may have taken in the same place on other phones or cameras. This is a particularly good application because you can take pic-tures on any device and add them in at a later date and connect them to a specific location on a specific date, neat! You can even send ‘tracks’ via email or synchronize them with the desktop edition of “myTracks”.

GPs-rThis is like a mix between a to do list and a GPS track-er. It tells you where you are going and then notifies you when you are near something that you have to do. Maybe you have to go to the supermarket or what if you fell asleep on the train and missed your stop? This application will sound an alarm or vibrate (or both) when you get close to a destination you have set and also tell you what you’re supposed to do when you get there. You drop a red pin onto the map where you want to be reminded to stop and it does exactly that. There are also some real cool features such as, using your own songs as ringtones, the ability to exchange reminders through email, post a tweet when you get a notification (for those social networking addicts) and you can set a certain address to a contact in your ad-dress book.

GPS



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GPs TrackErI’ll tell you the downside to this application straight away; you have to register to track your phone. Once you apply you will get a device key, which you will have to enter to use the application, this seems a bit much, but it’s required. This application will track your phone so if you’re lost, someone, somewhere can find you, considering you have friends. Your phone will be tracked on Google Maps and is updated every 5 seconds and you can embed a map with your location on a blog, web page or even Facebook. According to the application in-formation, you can get around 5 hour’s worth of con-tinuous tracking from 100% charge. The interface isn’t very exciting, but it does give you some accurate and useful information to those of you who need it. The al-titude, speed, heading and accuracy of your location are all given as well as your co-ordinates and how long ago your information was sent.

iWanTIf you do a lot of hiking or travel a lot, this is a great ap-plication to have. It tells you all the local places nearby that may be of interest to you, these include: restau-rants, cafes, pharmacies, cinemas, banks, petrol stations and more. You can search within a certain radius and it combines the functionality of other applications so this is really the only application you need for finding places nearby. It even gives movie times and restaurant reviews so you don’t go to the wrong place at the wrong time and nearby landmarks are straight from Wikipedia so you don’t miss out.

WazE GPs & TraFFIcThis is another application mixture, and a great one to. Waze is social networking meets GPS application and it allows you to share your locations details with all your Waze friends. The obvious downside to this is, you need to have friends on Waze to even bother with this ap-plication, and if you don’t know a lot of people who are willing to download this application or travel a lot, you’re out of look. However, for those of you who do know people like that, this is a really fun application to have. You can even report nearby traffic jams, this can help you save time, outsmart traffic and improve eve-ryone’s daily commute. This is another application that features the voice turn-by-turn guidance ability and with the new update you can share your location and traffic help on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook. When you

get to your destination after avoiding traffic jams and go-ing through the shortcuts it will even tell you how much time you have saved. I’m not sure if a lot of people will use this near you, but it’s a pretty good idea.

sITorsquaT: baThroom FInDErNow here’s something really bizarre! However, it’s still an application that relies on your GPS functionality. If you’ve ever found yourself in an unknown part of town and you really need the toilet, but don’t know where to go, sometimes you end up going into store and store trying to find one or even trying to find a public one somewhere. Hold it in no longer! This application will use your nifty GPS to find a restroom near you pret-ty quickly, as long as someone else has marked it be-fore. If not, you can add your own place and even write a review about the standards of it, if this isn’t push-ing the boundaries of GPS functionality, I don’t know what is.

So there you have it. There are hundreds of decent GPS applications out there in the App Store and online that you can download and use really easily. A lot of them, like the ones above, are free as well! Even if you have a Wi-Fi only iPad or an iPod Touch, with some simple tools and intelligence, you can turn that device into a GPS ena-bled one so you can find your way out of any situation. Considering most people decide to buy iPhone’s nowa-days anyway, the applications above is probably the main part of the article, but either way, I hope I’ve helped someone out there and proven that GPS functionality is a must in today’s society. Just remember, most of these applications will use your mobile data connection to get the maps and directions, so if you’re abroad, don’t be surprised if you get large phone bills.

omar aL-haLaWanIHe is a freelance writer who’s been interested in magazines and helping people for quite some years now. He’s also been an avid Apple fan for years and owns a lot of iDevices! In his free time he enjoys surfing the net and is an active member of many online forums, feel free to contact him at [email protected] or just Google Omar6000.

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iOS 5 released. It came with great features! You already know these features but I am going to present with quick notes again. What I am going to write is more about features as a developer. So we can start…

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Ios 5 FEaTurEs

notification center

This feature brings Local and Push Notifications to us. We can easily see the changes on any application at No-tification Center. When you are on home screen, slide down with your finger from the top and you can see all changes of any application. I think this works best on so-cial applications like Twitter, Foursquare etc. You don’t have any chance to miss any notification with Notifica-tion Center. When the screen is locked, notifications come out on the lock screen. To launch the application, you can slide application icon to the right. This is great feature I suppose.

We developers are contently using this feature. As an example you develop an application, which you usually have to update. When you update it, these changes come out on Notification Center instantly for users. Also you can delete notifications, as you like, that appear on your Notification Center. This feature gives users conveni-ence to control your applications.

icloud

You have storage on the cloud anymore. Apple finally gives this technology. Actually there were lots of tech-nologies like iCloud before. Among these, most known is Dropbox. Releasing iCloud from Apple is not surpris-ing us. Unwired technology is so common since a few years. We are moving cables to the trash. It is a won-derful combination that iCloud merges iTunes which is Apple’s revolution.

However developers love it as users. We develop great applications with iCloud technology, which is usually used in productivity applications. As an example you write or draw something and save it. After that your document flies to your cloud and synchronizes to your other mobile devices or your computer. Actually iCloud is worked great on Apple’s devices more than other de-vices I guess. But we know iCloud is a great cloud tech-nology for users and also for developers.

automatic reference counting

Memory management. One of the most important things is Object Oriented Programming. As you see, developers usually write web-based applications. Web based applications allow us to work with less memories. For example we want an image for our app. We usually prefer to link the image from the URL. We avoid from large memories mostly. That’s why developers scared large memories.

Okay, now Automatic Reference Counting. We call it ARC for short. When you start a new project, Xcode asks you to check ARC mark. ARC exactly release your variables or objects automatically. Before ARC we have


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to release all allocated variables manually. It was terrible. But now we don’t have to do that anymore. It’s a great feature for us.

Some developers do not prefer ARC. It may be funny but we always want to control everything. Developers have a different coding or development style, everyone knows.

newsstand

With Newsstand you can read many magazines and newspapers flawlessly. The new world constrains you to read on mobile devices. Maybe the books become a quaint thing of the past… A lot of discussion has oc-curred about this issue in my county, Turkey. I guess the whole world discuss this. But reading on an iPad is great experience I guess.

A lot of magazine companies prefer iOS Newsstand. They hire developers for that. I don’t have any experi-ence for Newsstand but I really wonder about it. You don’t have a magazine shelf in your house anymore; you have a brand new Newsstand on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Developers create magazine and publish for the Newsstand. Also updating is so easy. It’s the new trend of mobile world!

Twitter Integration

One of my favorite features. I am reviewing this feature generally for developers. Because this feature is more important to developers than to users. I usually devel-op applications for restaurants, bars and entertainment companies. They all have a twitter account definitively. So they always want me to add ‘Share on Twitter’ func-tion for their application.

Developers can add these features easily with Twitter Integration: Share on Twitter, tweet feed into applica-tion, entering application with Twitter permission.

Adding ‘Share on Twitter’ function is really easy for de-velopers. You click to relevant button then you see a small window. This window contents a default photo, tweet line and also location. We can make it unchange-able or changeable. It depends on applications structure.

Most developers prefer Twitter or Facebook permis-sions in their application. Since this feature coming out, you don’t have to create a username and a password. It is a great convenience for users.

Integrating twitter is very easy with iOS 5. Xcode has a Twitter framework from now on. This API gives us a library, which has its own classes. They had written before. It saves all developers from writing a hundred of line codes.

storyboards

Storyboards are layout of your application. You can con-trol your views of your application with Storyboards. Before it came, we developers had to write too many codes for view transitions of view controllers. Also working with storyboards allows us to create a lot of



view controllers and link each other. We can create navi-gation or tab bar applications with storyboards easily. Programmers and developers usually choose different ways. Developers usually create an empty project and shape the application manually. We always want to be sure if application is under the control. When Xcode 4 is released, I had some experiences about storyboards. It’s a great workflow but I didn’t get used to it. I am fine with codes.

airPlay

AirPlay is Apple’s great stream technology. If you have an Apple TV and of course other Apple mobile devices, you can link these devices each other without cables. It makes streaming live completely.

openGL Es

I don’t experienced yet but it has new OpenGL ES ex-tensions and the new debugger as far as I know. It seems more quality games are on the road…

imessage

iMessage was only available on iPhone before iOS 5. It only worked on devices, which were supported 3G. Then iOS 5 has been released. It’s available on all devices running iOS 5 now. You can type messages to all iOS 5 users anymore. Also you can start group text conversa-tions with iMessage. In the iOS 5 SDK, you have new Message sheet. It allows you to add iMessage features to your application.

Instruments

Instruments are a great way to optimize your project.

Xcode 4



Xcode is Apple’s development software for iOS and Mac OS X developers. It contents different libraries accord-ing to these development types.

It has few additional software’s. Interface Builder is one of them. In Interface Builder, you can design your ap-plication. All the objects and components you need are there. Button, slider, text field or label etc. anything you need. Drag your object to your application view and link it to the relevant variable.

In Xcode 4, there are some different additions. First of all, Interface Builder was embedded into the Xcode, but it is not anymore. So this is awesome. You don’t have to open another software. You don’t have to save and quit it. Everything is under the control in Xcode 4. This is the most useful feature, I guess, also very helpful for developers.

A lot of features are occurred with Xcode 4 and they are all completely great. The result of optimization, Xcode becomes more useful and efficient. Apple knows their developers needs and applies what they need.

Xcode 4 on os X Lion

I have installed OS X Lion recently. I have been im-pressed by the new operating system. Also OS X Lion allows working with Xcode 4 more useful. It has some smart features like mission control, full screen function etc.

I think Apple has started to make Mac operating systems like iOS. OS X Mountain Lion looks like iOS more than OS X Lion. Existence of App Store in Macintosh causes to look like mobile operating system. Developing appli-cation will be more easy and enjoyable day by day.

ios 5.1

iOS 5.1 is released with the new iPad on March 7th. It was a perfect day especially for developers. First of all I’m going to refer the new iPad in short. It came with magnificent retina display. The resolution ‘1536x2048’ is unbelievable. Apple calls it: ‘Resolutionary’…

Everything looks like amazing in the new iPad. It has new A5X chip and it supports 3.1 million pixels! We develop-ers have to create more powerful application designs.

9.7 inches screen, 3.1 million pixels and ‘1536x2048’ resolution. It seems like great applications and games are on the road… There will be more artistic user in-terfaces, more colors.

Additionally the new iPad has 5 MP iSight Camera. Also you can record 1080p HD video. So that developers will add more photos and videos to applications. It seems so enjoyable.



The other new features are Ultrafast 4G, Dictation etc.

This is an amazing new 4th generation iPad. Let’s talk about iOS 5.1 a little bit.

First of all Siri supports Japanese now. We wonder how Siri supported Turkish will be like and wait for it pa-tiently.

You can delete photos on Photo Stream with iOS 5.1. It is a good option for users. Actually it was deficiency for me. Finally it comes out before it’s too late.

Camera short cut is on the lock screen for all iOS 5.1 devices. The good thing is about it is that you don’t need to click the camera button; you just tap the camera icon and slide it up with your finger. This is cool.

Face detection on camera has been optimized. Also bat-tery efficiency has been optimized with iOS 5.1. No need to talk about other features. They are small changes and I haven’t experienced them yet.

Even so I align these:

• iCloud and MobileMe accounts• Some changes about net services and DNS APIs• Backup• iCloud PhotoStream & Storage•Movie player, security, UIKit, Xcode/Developer tools

If you would like to read more details, please go to iOS 5.1 released notes.

Gökhan GüLTEkInBorn in Bursa, Turkey. Living in Bursa. I graduated from Balikesir University Faculty of Architecture&Engineering in 2011. I am a Mechanical Engineer but I am developing applications for about six months.

My programming experience has started at 2th class. We learned ‘Fortran’ a programming language that is rarely used now. After that, I learned ‘Matlab’ which is a professional programming language for engineers. Actually ‘Matlab’ is huge software and it has its own language itself. Mostly Electronic and Physics Engineers use it. I wrote great algorithms for our solutions such as some projects, some studies etc. And then, I learned ‘C’ language fundamentally. It was the basis event of my development life.

Eventually I began to study ‘Objective-C’ language. It’s an object oriented programming language. I really liked OOP and Objective-C syntax. I love Objective-C. I love Xcode. I love writing applications for iOS!


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Let me explain how we did it by sharing our experience.

We are a small team of developers in a company VInternete/Odessa Global, LLC, who stands behind the app called World Live Cams, which we had launched recently as our first app and already had some initial success.

Proper Presentation in app store


There’s no question that creating, developing and selling iPhone and iPad apps is one of the hottest entrepreneurial opportunities out there. By the latest count, there are more than a half a million iOS applications available for sale and free download at Apple’s App Store since its June 2007 debut. This equates to an astounding pace of more than four hundreds of new apps a day! Considering a recent milestone of 25 billion of overall App Store downloads we can surely argue that the explosive popularity of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices will increase this numbers even more in the years to come.But for every iPhone/iPad developer who surges to success, there are

thousands with their apps who do little more than gather ‘digital dust’ on Apple App shelves. These developers need to rise above the clutter and get noticed. To get an idea of the depth, width and height of that clutter, just go to the Apple App Store and see all the apps available there. Pay particular attention to competitor’s apps and take some time to dig into the options the App Store offers to present and promote your product.

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Building the app from scratch was not easy deal, so as the proper app presentation in App Store when the first version development was finished.

The first most important thing we had to choose was the app name. The app name should be as short as pos-sible for easier remembering, maybe a little fun and defi-nitely catchy. Does your app name sound like this? If not, consider renaming your app so it can be found more easily in Google searches and in the App Store.

A good practice when your app name also consists of keywords, that are obvious and usual for searching your app by ordinary users guided by a common sense.

When making our app, which is serving live webcams from around the globe, at first we took a closer look at our future-to-be top competitor, the app simply called Live Cams. We understood that this name is nearly perfect, because it’s short and quite good explains the app purpose, what’s it for. We chose the option to add a word “World” to our app name, because we had to choose from the app names still available for App Store, so our final app name sounded like World Live Cams. A one word longer, but on other the side thus we had an important keyword right in the app name. Not bad for the first experience.

The second most important thing is an app icon. This catches user’s attention firstly and immeditely, and by the first quick look this maybe even more important than the app name itself. Take a look at countless app icons in the App Store: some of them are beautifully done, they’re gorgeous, and definitely polished very well. Such apps are not only catch user’s attention but clearly deliver the main message: what is this app all about? Is it something I’m looking for? And ususlly a good icon alone encourages user to tap it and even buy the app right away. But the other things are imporant too, not only icon alone.

In our case we have chosen a webcamera pic only, on a slighly gradient background of a red color (Figure 1). We picked this color as believed it’s considered “strong, impulsive, maybe aggressive”, and after all it’s finally looking descently with red color, being contrastly high-lighted on the background of all our rivals’ apps.

Figure 1. World Live Cams app icon.

We believe it’s fairly simple and obvious, and this kind of a public indoor or outdoor web camera, followed by the app name World Live Cams, will be pretty clear to choose it among others and then look at the actual app screenshots.

Again, we don’t say our icon is ideal, and we have a staff designer yet to improve and polish it, but it’s just okay for initial launch. Remember, the app icon is very important, it should contain as much of a meaningful informantion for the user as it can carry inside a very limited space, in other words clear, enticing, maybe even alluring and definitely attractive. And if you have resources to hire a good designer to do it – go ahead, it’s totally worth it, because when customers are scrolling down endless list of apps – it’s just almost about hit or no, stop and take a detailed look or not – or just cuntinue to scroll it down further till he encounters the more lucky app developer who paid attention and invested resources properly in the creation of a good-looking icon image.

The screenshots is the third thing to what people are usually looking, giving they understood the message from the icon and the app name and pushed to open the actual app page in the App Store. If the app icon is so good and the name is so clear that the customer immediately buys it (considering the price of paid app is acceptable too) – just perfect. If the customer is just got interested and engaged, or the app is pricey – he will scroll down to the screenshots area of the app page.


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Now this becomes the most important point of choos-ing: yes or no, will I like it and buy or consider it poor and not good enough for me and I’ll just go find some-thing better to spend my $0.99.

here we have some differences between games and actually other apps.

Games, especially top grossing 3D-games, are usually developed longer, than usual apps, considering their lev-els volume and complexity. It’s just roughly, that is said, overall. Of course there are many very complex apps, at much higher degree than many of the games. But for the major part, as the games are developed longer, they thus could become a final product and very probably sell as it is for the rest of the time. No big upgrades till the next part or edition. In this case try to make the best screenshots of your game: always start with the two the most informative ones. It’s always better delivering a full

perspective of what is going on inside the game, of the action user may expect, revealing and bringing to the front all of the excitement of the gameplay. Maybe it’s a heat of a combat scene, or a final lap of the fast and furious race, or anything that just strikes and hits. Bring the heart of your game to the front, to the first two or three screenshots that go first.

The apps in the other hand are commonly less complex, and are updated much frequently. Regardless of the app category, you should push the best informative screen-shots to the front, leaving less important to the end. If it’s a messenger – show the live chat dialog first, if it’s an augmented reality app – show the main screen where all magic happens in realtime, if it’s some kind of utility – do the same, show user the value right at the first two screenshots.

Here are our screenshots (Figure 2):


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Figure 2. World Live Cams app original screenshots.

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The first is a camera list which is a start screen, and then goes a full camera page, following a fullscreen im-age screenshot. And only then we show the little less important feature, such as a map. As you can see, the app looks very simple. We’d be glad to keep this level of simplicity while adding new functionality. We’ll try not to get it overloaded in the next releases by buttons and other controls everywhere, especially in inobvious places.

Many developers illustrate the screenshots with entic-ing words and ad phrases. For example our screenshots could become done like this, giving a perspective how the app should be looking on the real device (Figure 3):

If the screenshots are okay but user doesn’t understand the whole thing, which is okay for complex apps, the four thing is a description. It’s important to pull the main message in short sentences that will fit the first two


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Figure 3. World Live Cams app screenshots after post-production.


lines visible from the desktop computer in non-expand-ed state.

Description is almost the last thing the users are look-ing into. Who wants to read? Everyone wants to try the app instantly. But reading is important. For those customers who was not attracted and ensuerd enough with the app name, icon and screenshots – it’s another chance to convince them to buy an app. Don’t try to pull everything about your app. Nobody wants to read com-prehensive long manuals, it’s boring. It’s not the right place for manuals where people decide just buy it or not. Here’s an example how we wrapped it up:

“Enjoy watching more than 3500 live cams worldwide with World Live Cams! Search any particular webcams and vote for your favorite. The app is streaming only real time video and images from the 24h-available cameras all over the world.

Watch interesting places, like cities, streets, restaurants, squares, parks, gardens, zoos, highways, shops, airports, beaches, resorts, harbors, hotels, mountains, universities around the globe. New cameras are added daily.

Zoom in camera image for details close lookup.Read information about the cameras and locate them on the map.

Even more webcams and app features like adding your own public/private IP cams are coming in the next update!”

So we pointed and highlighted the strong features of our app and striked on it’s value for users. We made it simple, easily understandable, without special technical terms. Who cares how the app work inside?

Additionally to the description there is one more thing It’s keywords. They are hidden to users but visible in iTunes Connect admin panel. It’s one of the most impor-tant things that will directly define the number of app purchases and downloads. App Store app on the device and iTunes on the desktop – they both search by these keywords at first priority, then consider the app name too, but with a lower meaning weight.

To pick up the correct keywords you should define a

semantic core: all the main words and short phrases, that are likely will be searched by users. Extract them from the ready app description prepared for the App Store. You can add straight highly competitive words and phrases, as well as more specific: this is highly individual and depends on the app and it’s category. For example, “cam”, “cams”, “webcam”, ”webcams” are highly com-petitive in our niche. We’ve obviously added them, even when dozens of other apps will be found by these key-words. On the other side such word as “surveillance” is more specific and less competitive, as not so many apps in our niche has this word among keywords. Sometimes it’s more profitable to add specific words, than more common. Divide each word by comma, without unnec-essary spaces to write the maximum number of words. Remember, once the app is approved, you cannot change the keywords until the next version update. So try to search by your keywords and short phrases in advance: if all main competitors are found then they have these words in keywords and you should too. But if by more specific search rivals are actually appearing less, and you bet your app could benefit from it, then go ahead and try: you may become pretty lucky and drive good sales, until rivals will find out your magic keywords and feel stupid why they did not add them before

In the end, users may read other user’s reviews.

User’s star ratings and reviews are still the subject for discussion. It’s all individually and and you won’t guess how it will work out for you. Generally the higher rated apps are accepted more well, than those with one-star ratings. But in our experience there were many cases when app sells well even with one star rating. What’s the point? How “bad” app could sell well? The answer is, the unique functionality. When there almost no other similar apps to chose from, chances are you rely to your own intuition, thinking: well, all feedbacks are negative, but maybe I’ll get to be lucky and it will work at least de-cently with my device/computer system configuration. Maybe, it depends. Or another case when app is still selling nevertheless of negative reviews is just simply no one reads them! Who’s counting stars? Who’s reading reviews, when all things like name, icon, screenshots, description and keywords are done so perfectly and deliciously that barely no one will pay attention to the reviews.


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concLusIonDon’t simply count on proper presentation only, rather make a good product from scratch. The fundamental of success is in complexity: you should be the the best at all matters: at the product quality, at the proper presen-tation, at valuable customer support after the purchase was made and so on. Build community of happy users, and they will tell their co-workers, friends and relatives about your outstanding app, and as a result they will bring you more customers already ready to buy your apps, not only current but future also. Being the the best, the first, and exceeding customers’ expectations in many ways – that’s the true success.

With all that said if all things are done properly, your app should be looking good enough to top the category in Top Free or Top Paid and Top Grossing. Unless your app is unique and insanely popular right from the launch, it will gradually go down and eventually disappear from the top 200 list of apps in each category. The only way for users to find it – is searching by keywords we men-tioned above. You are lucky if your app drives good sales without nothing additionally. But this is uncommon rare situation, which we don’t recommend to rely to, instead we recommend doing other activities such as PR and reviews, and YouTube promo videos and social network-ing sites’ such as Facebook and Twitter “viral advertising campaigns” should also apply for the full success and unleashing the whole app potential.

Some developers rely upon word of mouth to market their apps. Word of mouth is a great tool but you need PR to fuel up word of mouth. What is really needed is a PR plan that reaches both the end users – the consum-ers – and the media who can reach those buyers.

Developers of technology of any kind tend to speak to other tech people in their own world. And that makes sense. They trade ideas, swap insight, discuss road-blocks, and share code. But to market and ultimately sell their iPhone/iPad apps, developers must reach out to the people who talk to their end users. They need to reach non-technical journalists who can mention an app on a TV newscast, write a newspaper column that reaches a few hundred thousand readers or a syndicated radio show with 100,000-plus listeners across the U.S. as well as other countries in the world.

That’s why an iOS app developers need to invest time and resources in their proper app presentation in App Store to make the app well enough known that it will become a popular seller.

In conclusion we’d like to point out that you don’t have great resources to start developing apps. Our team doesn’t even barely count ten people yet. Always believe in yourself and your great ideas, just ask and answer the right questions: is my app unique? Will it be good for people? How can I deliver the better value to my cus-tomers on top of my rivals offerings? If answered prop-erly, the rest of an obvious success is a matter of time. Good luck in creating your apps and make them look good and many customers will buy it!

Jason WaLshThe author of this article, has worked as a Busi-ness Development, PR and Marketing Manager for more than three years in a leading mobile software development company, whose apps reached top rankings in four App Store categories. The company, which author preferred not to disclose on personal reasons related to the new recent startup in which he takes part in, is a cross-platform software vendor and web-based services provider, developing instant messaging, social networking, productivity, enter-tainment, games, media and location-based apps. The new separate startup is a team of 5 people also experienced in mobile apps industry, which is a joint venture of a VInternete.com website developers and Odessa Glogal, LLC website hosting solutions owners. The new projects to be presented in com-ing months, which our team believes will be also interesting to users.



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