App store Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW Bookshelf -- The Business of iPhone and iPad Development: Making and Marketing Apps

by Erica Sadun (May 7th, 2012)

A recommendation by Chris Forsythe pointed me to Dave Wooldridge and Michael Schneider's book "The Business of iPhone and iPad Development: Making and Marketing Apps" (Apress, 2011). A practical primer on creating your business plan, the book offers advice on topics diverse as protecting ...

15 suggestions for iOS 6

by Michael Grothaus (May 5th, 2012)

I've been writing these posts for the last couple of years, usually always before WWDC, as mini roundups of what I, my colleagues, and readers want to see in the next iOS release. However, as releases go on it gets harder and harder to put together lists of major features I'd like to see in the ...

GREE picks up Funzio for $210 million

by Mike Schramm (May 2nd, 2012)

You might remember GREE as the Japanese social network that picked up OpenFeint around this time last year. Since then, the company has been, like Zynga, Mobage, and a few other giant social networks, looking to pick up social and iPhone/mobile developers to make games for its millions of users ...

Dev survey: 59% of app devs not breaking even

by Mike Schramm (May 2nd, 2012)

A marketing firm named App Promo has released some data on a developer survey it took, asking over 100 developers about how they were doing with selling and marketing their apps. Of those developers asked, over 59% told App Promo that they weren't even breaking even on the App Store. And a full ...

Apple removes Android app searches from Chomp

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 28th, 2012)

Just over two months after Apple acquired the app discovery service Chomp, the company has removed features that allowed users to search for Android apps in addition to iOS apps. Chomp is a search tool that lets users to search for an app based on what it can do, instead of by the name alone. ...

Daily iPhone App: Lock 'n' Load makes dual stick fun again

by Mike Schramm (Apr 24th, 2012)

I can't keep up with everything Chillingo is putting out on the App Store lately -- they're really kicking out the jams over there. One of their latest titles is Lock 'n' Load, and even if, like me, you're tired of the well-traveled dual-stick shooter genre on iOS, this one's worth a look ...

Ramp Champ rights acquired by DS MediaLabs

by Mike Schramm (Apr 23rd, 2012)

Ramp Champ is an oldie but goodie from the App Store's earliest days. It's an old carnival bag tosser game that was originally put together by both Iconfactory and DS MediaLabs, and it was quite popular even before going free-to-play a while back. Ramp Champ been sitting quiet on the App Store ...

Daily iPhone App: Sketch Nation Studio opens up game dev on the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Apr 20th, 2012)

Sketch Nation Studio started out as Sketch Nation Shooter last year, a "game" on the App Store that actually let you make your own shooter game by using scanned-in pictures and a few scripted sets of rules. As creator Nitzan Wilnai told me at GDC earlier this year, he heard from a lot of users ...

Daily iPad App: Fibble is Crytek's entry onto iOS

by Mike Schramm (Apr 18th, 2012)

If you had told me, just a couple of years ago, that Epic and Crytek would both have iOS apps in the store, I'm not sure I would have believed you. The Unreal Engine is one of the most popular graphical engines for major high resolution games, but Crytek is also very popular for its graphical ...

Apple allowed to intervene in Lodsys patent case

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 13th, 2012)

Last year, patent holder Lodsys filed lawsuits against iOS developers including James Thomson, Patrick McCarron, IconFactory, Combay, Rovio and more. Apple stepped in and filed a motion to intervene on June 9, 2011. The motion was finally granted this week, says a report in FOSS ...

FAA to expand iPad usage, create app store

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 11th, 2012)

According to a report on aviation website AVweb, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to expand the use of the iPad by its employees. By 2014, employees will be given the choice to replace their laptops with an iPad and possibly other Android tablets. The FAA has found that the iPad ...

Amazon's Appstore takes a 30 percent cut

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 10th, 2012)

Starting today, Amazon will open up its Android Appstore to in-app purchases, according to a report in AllThingsD. Its model will follow that of Apple and iOS, with Amazon taking a 30 percent cut of each purchase. Transactions will be handled through Amazon's 1-Click purchasing system, which ...

Will creativity tools be the "next wave" of iOS apps?

by Steven Sande (Apr 4th, 2012)

Blogger Erica Ogg over at GigaOM's The Apple Blog brought up an interesting point in a post today, wondering aloud if creativity tools will be the next big wave of iOS apps. There have always been creativity tools, like painting and drawing apps, in the App Store, but Ogg based her comment on ...

Readdle PDF Expert receives major update in version 4.0

by Steven Sande (Apr 3rd, 2012)

A lot of us here at TUAW use Readdle's PDF Expert (US$9.99) to view, annotate, and organize Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The app has always provided a useful and fast way to mark up PDFs, and there's a new update available that adds some very useful features. PDF Expert 4.0 now ...

Developing my first iPhone game: the inside story

by Mike Schramm (Apr 2nd, 2012)

Editor's Note: From time to time, TUAW does cover commercial apps developed by our staffers, although it is relatively rare for individuals to write about their own projects (with some notable exceptions). In this case, Mike's experience of his app development process -- going from a code-naive ...