aamir virani » iphone

How Apple’s Approval Process Actually Helps Users

Aamir — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:00:08 +0000

Paul Graham wrote an article on how Apple alienates its iPhone developers. He has a good discussion about developers iterating and needing to get a new product in the hands of their users. In fact, he mentions a developer who says the approved app feels crappy next to the daily builds and betas he hands out.

It’s time for these folks to try my G1. Not because it’s better but because Android will annoy the crap out of you. Every day, I get a notification telling me “N number of apps updated.” And every day, I roll my eyes and clear the notification. Users don’t want to go through this process; it’s annoying when it happens on a desktop every few weeks, so it’s even worse on a daily basis on a phone trying to download over a 3G EDGE connection.

Deciding what constitutes a critical bug is difficult – if you’re a lone developer you think everything is important. Should Apple trust you to self-regulate and update only on critical fixes or major new releases?

Apple has an iron fist when it comes to the iPhone and its ecosystem because its advantage is a tightly knit experience. Getting a daily notification while you sync asking you to update or an in-app pop-up with details lessens the polish.

Ultimately, I think this App Store stuff is a way of throttling developers to ensure the experience is not too painful. More updates make users think, and you want to minimize that.

What are typical usage and pricing trends for an iPhone app?

Aamir — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Andrew Chen pointed out an awesome iPhone presentation by Pinch Media, which covers some really useful insights you should use if considering whether to make your app free or paid, as well as whether your app is doing well when compared to other apps. Here are some of the key points.

Whether you have a free or paid iPhone application, the users returning falls off exponentially. If you retain more than 5% of users after 60 days, you’re doing really well. Long term retention is about 1%; this is true for both paid and free applications.

You shouldn’t necessarily give away your application for free and make your money on advertising. Because current CPMs are around $2.00 and applications are usually run 12 times at most, you may be better off just charging $0.99 for an application. Charge first, and adjust as you see a trend (high usage per user, target demographic, or lots of users) indicating advertising makes you more money.

What are the main usage contexts on the iPhone?

Aamir — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:18:04 +0000

Fraser Speirs describes the three mobile contexts he noticed after developing for the Apple iPhone. He cites a stat from Rubicon Consulting.

A quarter of iPhone users say it’s displacing a notebook computer. 28% of iPhone users surveyed said strongly that they often carry their iPhone instead of a notebook computer.

One critical question is what laptop uses are now replaced on the iPhone? Are we talking about IM? Email? Or is a small group actually doing real web research and work on the phone?

Speirs goes on to describe the three main contexts for usage he sees:

Name	Context	Description
Type 1	physically moving while using – 0-1 hands	small feature set, simple, easy, quick, focused
Type 2	“interstitial” – standing, waiting – 0-1 hands	more features, still relatively simple, adding peripheral data
Type 3	away from home – sitting, replacing laptop – 2 hands	complex, requiring user to think and respond

Do type 3 apps really need to exist on the iPhone? If they do, will a screen keyboard be the preferred method of input? The market for Windows Mobile apps has existed for a while (ditto Symbian), yet neither took off. Is that because it was too niche, or because type 3 apps just don’t translate to such small devices?