MODERN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Here at Rosebrae Technology it’s officially become We Love Apple week.

Not only did they feature Clocks in their New and Noteworthy section, but they’ve just approved version 1.0.1 for sale in the Apple Store, despite a previous rejection for private api use.

It also looks like they’re starting to apply some common sense to their rejections, (as we and others have previously suggested), which is startlingly good news.

So We Love Apple. Doesn’t everybody? And we’ve never said a cross word about them before, you hear? ;-)

So after a week of being in the New and Noteworthy section, how did we do?

Pretty good (by our lowly standards), but generally we’re really happy with this week, for a couple of reasons.

Recognition

It’s just nice to be recognised by someone,somewhere, and it helps make all the effort worthwhile. Another side to this is the fact that the increased exposure brought our app to the attention of a few more people, who’ve written in with suggestions, comments and (occasionally) complaints. You don’t get that user interaction when you’re not selling anything, and it really does bring another dimension to the job of creating software

More sales

Need I say more.

We would have loved to make the top 20 in US utilities (we got there in Canada and Mexico), but we stalled at 21, unfortunately.

Still, all things considered it’s been a really exciting week for us at Rosebrae Technology, and we’ll be shuffling off to our caves presently to implement some of the features our new users have requested.

Oh, and a big Thank You to anyone who bought the app.

Selling iPhone apps is a tough business, and is no doubt a problem even for talented developers. With 100,000+ apps (or whatever it is now, frankly it’s becoming meaningless) trying to make your product stand out has never been more difficult.

Any sane development company have to ask themselves if it’s still worthwhile.

So why should the indie developer persevere? It’s hard to get noticed, hard to come up with anything original, the competition is insane and only it’s going to get worse.

Is iPhone development going to become like the music business or Hollywood, where for every success there’s hordes of frustrated but talented individuals who didn’t catch a break?

This is why – from a Morgan Stanley report on internet trends.

(via Appy – do go read the entire post, it’s a nice summary and a good read.)

2 Key points from the report

1) Mobile Internet Usage Is and Will Be Bigger than Most Think.
2) Apple Mobile Share Should Surprise on Upside Near-Term.

And to this, I’d like to add this post about how the ipod touch is creating the iphone users of tomorrow.

Make no mistake, the pie is getting larger. Much larger.

And while the App Store is still a hit based business, the sweet spot where a small development company can make a decent income is moving steadily down the rankings.

And that’s got to be good for everybody.

I love this review of the Phantom Menace.

All those nebulous reasons why I’m not a fan of the film have been articulated, and more so.