MODERN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

We’ve just submitted Clocks, our multi time zone alarm clock to the app store. Fingers are now firmly crossed!

Clocks basically grew out of the work we we’re doing for the job timer app. Basically, once you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a nice looking updating LCD display, it seemed a shame not to use it.

I’d already considered creating a Rosebrae version of the bedside clock that’s popular on the app store, but it was the specific need to have multiple time zones available at a glance that gave me the idea.

With family in at least 3 widely differing time zones now, I wanted something to help me keep track of their time, and I thought a fusion of that with a bedside clock app might be an idea. Certainly it’s an app that I use everyday and every night.

Clocks has just been released to the App Store. No problems with review, thankfully, but I’m busily now putting all the marketing in place. Iphone development certainly has stretched my skill set ;-)

App Store link is here

Full press release is here

When I check the App Store this morning I almost spat my tea all over the Mac.

Clocks was ranked no.4 in the US Utility category.

Alas, it was not to be, turns out there was some sort of glitch at Apple HQ.

For a while, though, rumour was rife amongst developers that Apple had changed the rules and was employing some different algorithm when calculating the ranking system.

That’s not good.

Unfortunately, it speaks volumes about the lack of trust that now seems to exist between Apple and iPhone devs that anyone gave it any credence at all.

So far, there hasn’t been any communication from Cupertino about what happened, so we’ll wait and see if any explanation is offered. Frankly if people have lost money (and they will have) then someone should be on the blower double quick wringing their hands in abject apology.

Meanwhile we’ll see if this has any effect on Clocks’ sales.

Clocks 1.0.1 has been moved from “Waiting for review” to “In review” so hopefully this will get approved soon.

What’s new:

• Fixed the “too many Clocks” bug
• Fixed a problem with the autolock timer not resetting when the app is interrupted
• Enabled landscape mode in the info screen (see below)

This is the second time this version has been through the approval process. Unfortunately last time we were refused for using a private api.

We were using setOrientation on UIDevice to force the app into portrait mode, mainly because we felt that it looked better, without realising that this call was private.

Sometimes as a programmer you just see a property on a class and think “Oh, I know I’ll just call set on that”, see if it works and if it does then forget about it. Obviously we need to more careful in the future.

Anyway, we just rejigged the app to handle the info screen ( and sub screens) in portrait or landscape, and to be honest I think it looks better now! Fingers crossed that it makes it through review this time.