Dave Metzener's Weblog

Update (3/9 2:54pm): From what I can see so far, this banning/not approving apps that are template-based/cookie-cutter type apps doesn’t seem to be happening. There is a new developer, LMK.com, that has added 51 new apps all of which use the same app to display different data. Just the kind of think that Apple would not be approving if they were targeting them. So, as of this moment, template-based apps are still being approved.

All I can say is: Its about fracking time!

iPhone app purge: Are template-based apps next? | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld: “Apple’s campaign to get tough on iPhone applications is reportedly continuing with a new target: template-based iPhone applications. You can find services that build these so-called cookie cutter applications all over the Web, and they have been used by a variety of prominent celebrities, bloggers, and brands including Ashton Kutcher, blogger Seth Godin, and the U.S. Army.”

There are soooo many applications in the AppStore that are just duplicates of a single app over and over again, sometimes hundreds of times. One of the biggest contributor of “template-based” apps is Brighthouse Labs. Latest approximate count puts them at 4332 applications. An example of this cookie-cutter/template-based application is “iNewsPro”. That single application template has 282 apps so far with titles like:

iNewsPro – Johnstown PA • iNewsPro – Joplin MO • iNewsPro – Parkersburg WV • iNewsPro – Peoria IL • iNewsPro – Rocky Mount NC • iNewsPro – Saginaw MI • iNewsPro – Salinas CA • iNewsPro – Salt Lake City UT • iNewsPro – San Angelo TX • iNewsPro – San Antonio TX • iNewsPro – San Diego CA • iNewsPro – San Francisco CA • iNewsPro – San Luis Obispo CA • iNewsPro – Santa Barbara CA • iNewsPro – Santa Fe NM • iNewsPro – Sarasota FL • iNewsPro – Savannah GA • iNewsPro – Scranton PA • iNewsPro – Sebring FL • iNewsPro – Sharon PA • iNewsPro – Sheboygan WI • iNewsPro – Sherman TX • iNewsPro – Shreveport LA • iNewsPro – Sioux City IA • iNewsPro – Sioux Falls SD • iNewsPro – South Bend IN • iNewsPro – Spokane WA • iNewsPro – Springfield, IL • iNewsPro – Springfield, MA • iNewsPro – Springfield, MO • iNewsPro – State College PA • iNewsPro – Steubenville OH • iNewsPro – St. Joseph, MO • iNewsPro – St. Louis, MO • iNewsPro – Stockton CA

Trust me when I say that there are many more of this specific template alone.

The article says that Apple isn’t planning on removing the existing apps, just not letting any new ones into the store. Personally, I think they should send the developers a letter stating that they need to turn these multi-app templates into a single app with in-app purchasing or Apple will remove them.

There is just no reason for developers to produce thousands of apps when in-app purchasing can compress hundreds of apps into a single app. This will please customers since it means that they don’t have to have several app icons taking up valuable Springboard space, it will be way easier on the developer since they only have to maintain one visible app. I can’t speak for the in-app catalog, but it has to be easier than using Apple’s interface to update entries.

Now it’s just a matter of time to see if this actually happens.

Update: It’s official, Valve announced it’s move to the Mac today on their own website.

According to Inside Mac Games, Valve Software sent out info to Mac and PC websites confirming it’s intent to bring Steam and a catalog of games to the Macintosh.

This is great news for the Mac. Steam is a great digital download platform for gaming. Its pretty much as easy to buy games in Steam as it is to purchase applications in Apple’s AppStore. Plus, if for some reason, you need to download your game again, that is just as easy as well.

Looks like there will be a more official announcement at the Game Developers Conference next week (March 9th – 13th).

I can’t wait for Steam to arrive for the Mac. It’s one more sign that the Mac is just as much a gaming platform as Windows is. Sure, there are not as many titles out there yet, but if Valve feels that there is enough to bring Steam over, then its growing pretty quickly.

Well, its that time of year again! Baseball season is once again almost upon us and just like clockwork, MLB.com has the latest installment of [MLB.com At Bat 2010](http://bit.ly/ayq5bC) ready for purchase.

This time it’s $14.99 instead of last year’s $9.99 price. I can’t remember what features were in last years app to see if they have up’ed the anti as it were for this version since the price is $5 more than last year. However, the application description states:

• Spring Training statistics, LIVE audio and LIVE video (mid-March)
• Breaking league and team news
• Schedules, rosters and player stats for every team
• Video library searchable by player and team
• Enhanced LIVE game video (Regular Season)
• Home/Away broadcast feed selection (Regular Season)
• Background audio playback
• Additional enhancements to come during 2010 season

The new features sound pretty good, although it would be nice to be able to watch games (video) no matter about the blackout rules. It looks like if you purchase the [MLB.tv Premium subscription](http://bit.ly/b2SGJP) ($119.95 yearly / $24.95 a month) you will be able to see all the games on your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, home or away. A bit pricy, but less than a single ticket to a game a month. If you are truly a fan or you are a fan of a team that isn’t the home team of the city you live in, this might be a good way to go to see them play.

Either way, I’ve already nabbed the app and so far, it’s living up to it’s hype. It will be interesting to see what happens when they turn on the live video/audio for the spring training games.

Update: Didn’t take very long for Plants vs. Zombies to top the Paid Apps chart as well. I wonder if they had a free trial version of the game if the game would top all three charts. Or, if players had a chance to see the game in action before purchasing it, they wouldn’t buy it.

PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies made it’s appearance in the AppStore this morning and before the end of the day has made it’s way to the #2 Paid App and #1 Top Grossing App. A truly amazing feet for a PopCap game, much less any game in the AppStore.

It’s currently received 458 ratings, 444 of which are 5 star, and only 3 are one star. The one star complaints are that the mini games in the PC game are not in the iPhone game. One reviewer spent the $2.99 so that he could basically tell us that he would rather be: “SHOT, ELECTRICUTED, FLAMED, BOMBED, AND BURIED ALIVE THEN PLAY THIS PIECE OF $&@!” (That is an exact character for character quote). The third one star review basically thinks the game is boring and can’t believe all the positive reviews are from players. Has this guy never gone to the PopCap website and played the free web version?

I mention these reviews because the game is pretty much an exact copy of the PC version (minus the mini games mentioned in that one star review). It plays very well, and is actually a bit easier to play since you just have to tap the sunlight instead of trying to chase it down with a mouse.

PopCap has a real winner here and is probably going to make a fortune off this title alone. Especially at the $2.99 price point. This app is definitely one to grab if you are a fan of PopCap.

If the headline is a true statement, then Apple needs to get off it’s backside and work out a way to protect applications from being pirated.

Via: 24/7 Wall St.
Apple and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over 3 billion applications downloaded since the App program began. Bernstein analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, estimated that between 13% and 21% of those downloads are from paid applications. According to this analysis, the average price of an application purchased at the App Store is $3. Sacconaghi estimated that Apple’s revenue from the App Store is between $60 million and $110 million per quarter. That amount has certainly increased since this research report was published because of the rapid growth of the number of applications.

If what that article is saying is true, then it’s clearly up to Apple to solve the problem. If for no other reason than to save the $135,000,000 that Apple is losing per 18 months.

There are folks out there that question the $450 million number and I must say that I have to wonder a bit too. The only way people can pirate iPhone/iPod touch apps is to jailbreak their iDevice. There are those that are doing this. In fact, some say that 10% of the iDevices out there are jailbroken. That comes to about 7.5 million jailbroken devices. Now, are we saying that, on average, each jailbreaker pirates $60 of software every 18 months? That sounds like a doable number. However, I really doubt that every jailbreaker is also a pirate. Now, what percentage of jailbreakers are pirates needs to be figured out.

The article states that 40% pirate, so now we are talking about 3 million jailbroken pirates would need to be stealing $150 worth of apps per 18 months. This still sounds like a doable figure. I mean we are talking less than 1 $0.99 app per month per jailbroken iPhone/iPod touch pirate. Assuming all the numbers are close to accurate.

If this is all true, then Apple is loosing way too much money to be sitting back and letting it happen. They must be working on something. If Microsoft can put together a system to prevent Xbox 360 pirating, then Apple can sure do something.

With all the whining about Apple’s review policy in the AppStore, its a little comforting to read about fraudulent applications getting into the Android Marketplace:

12.22.09 Rogue Android Smartphone app created

We recently learned that a fraudster developed a rogue Android Smartphone app. It creates a shell of mobile banking apps that tries to gain access to a consumer’s financial information.

Droid09 launched this phishing attack from the Android Marketplace and it’s since been removed. It’s called phishing because scammers go fishing for information about you or your financial account that may be used for identity theft.

Please note that this attack didn’t target First Tech accounts. Accessing your First Tech account from your phone’s web browser is completely secure.

If you did download the Droid09 app, please remove it from your phone and take it to your mobile provider to ensure it’s completely removed.

As a reminder, we don’t currently have an app for the Android phone.

It’s interesting that Google doesn’t seem to have much to say about the incident. If I were an Android user, I would want to hear from Google about the issue to know that they are doing all that they can to prevent future occurrences of similar incidents.

I know I have been one of the many voices complaining about the review process in the AppStore. However, I am well aware that the main purpose of that review process is to prevent just such occurrences as the one that Android is dealing with now.

With more than 100,000 apps in the AppStore, we have yet to see any malicious applications appear. Sure, there have been some apps that AT&T didn’t like (tethering and video streaming) and some that were just rude (the Baby Shaker app comes to mind), but overall, the applications we have had were very safe to use.

Its a shame that Apple was proven correct by this incident. I would have liked to see an open marketplace for mobile applications. However, now that mobile apps are taking off in popularity, they are going to be attracting all kinds of unsavory developers and open marketplaces are going to be very dangerous places to be purchasing/downloading mobile applications.

Yep, that’s right. Furry Scurry and Furry Scurry Lite both have icons with the image of an iPhone in them. Is this a sign of a new Apple and AppStore approval policy? Or is it just another example of Apple’s reviewers messing up.

It was just under 2 months ago that Apple rejected an update to RSS Player Podcast Client due to the image of an iPhone in the splash screen that RSS Player used. The image was of the logo of a podcast in a montage of many podcast logos.

RSS Player was forced to change the splash screen to remove the “offending” podcast logo and resubmit the application. One month later, the application finally made it back into the AppStore.

Now all of a sudden, Apple is approving an application that clearly has the image of an iPhone in the apps icon. This is the kind of mixed signals that has been messing with developers minds for the past year and a half.

There have been other examples of Apple rejecting apps due to images of Apple products other than RSS Player. A recent update to Airfoil Speaker Touch by Rogue Amoeba was also rejected for displaying images of Macintosh hardware to indicate where Airfoil Speaker Touch was getting it’s sound from. Later, after Rogue Amoeba decided to stop development of iPhone/iPod touch software did Apple change it’s mind and allow the images to be displayed.

I have no idea why Furry Scurry was allowed to have the image of that iPhone in it’s icon. I suspect that the reviewer just missed it during the review. However, this is exactly what the problem is with Apple’s review policies. There are so many “rules” that have to be followed that not every reviewer and/or developer can know every rule.

Yet, so long as there are all the rules that there are, there are going to be mistakes made. CodeSource Solutions is going to find out later, when they try to update their application, that the application is going to be rejected and they will have to change their icon in order to get the app approved again. Until that time, or until someone else at Apple notices the icon, Furry Scurry will be the only application in the AppStore that is allowed to have an image of an iPhone in it.

Holy Crap! Apple is loosing it’s collective mind!

OK, a few months back, there was a big uproar over several game applications being removed from the AppStore because they used a game engine that acquired “your” phone number for identification purposes. Mind you, thats what the UDID (Unique Device IDentifier) number is that is assigned to each and every iPhone/iPod touch made. So, Apple removed the applications from the AppStore until the engine developer fixed the problem.

Now, I learn that Apple has “knowingly” approved Dragon Dictation when it captures your contact information directly off your iPhone/iPod touch! I say knowingly because it’s right in the applications description:

PRIVACY:

In order to improve recognition accuracy, Dragon Dictation will only upload names from your address book… no emails, addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information are uploaded. This information is not used for any purpose other than improving the usability of the application. All data is stored in secure data centers according to stringent privacy and security standards. For more information, please view our corporate privacy policy at http://www.nuance.com/company/privacy/

So, why has Apple allowed Dragon Dictation to be approved to the AppStore when other applications were pulled for similar reasons? Was it because they were “up front” about the acquisition?

I have AppAdvice.com to thank for spilling the beans for me. There were probably other blogs that reported this information, but I read it first there.

Their claim is that having that information makes it easier for Dragon Dictation to dictate names you might speak when using their software.

Now, to be fair, Nuance Communications did post that they were doing this in the application description and I didn’t read that part of the description when I downloaded and used the software. However, I feel very violated by this and am very surprised that, in this day and age, the “option” to disable the sending of this information wasn’t put into the software in the first place. You don’t have to be a psychic to know how people are going to react to news that their private information is being acquired without their knowledge.

I guess I should have realized that there would be a “catch” for being able to use Dragon Dictation for free when desktop versions of the software cost from $50 to $900 depending on the version. Still, I would have preferred to be told that I can’t use the software without the capture of my contacts.

Mind you, acquiring my contacts was not a stipulation of being able to use their software. It feels like it was since that information was “stolen” from me.

Well, the lesson I learned here today is that I need to read the entire description of every application I download from the AppStore to make sure I’m not being screwed over or my privacy is being abused just so that I can use what I just acquired.

WTF does Langdell have against Mobigame anyway! This guy is a huge ass! I can’t believe Apple took down Edgy (for the 4th time).

I was seriously considering buying Edgy (Edge and Edgy are separate apps so if Edgy were to get updated, owners of Edge wouldn’t get the updates) just to support Mobigame in their battle against this asshole Langdell that seems to have a huge grudge against Mobigame.

Us gamers need to support Mobigame in order to get people like Langdell put behind bars. Its clear that no matter what Mobigame does to make Langdell happy, Langdell just takes the next step to torture Mobigame.

Please, if you haven’t purchased Cross Fingers from Mobigame in the AppStore, do so. It’s a great game and I’m sure that they can use every penny they get to fight this bum.

This article is not another instance of an announcement of Electronic Arts releasing Mirror’s Edge to the iPhone. That has been done by about 50 websites in the blogosphere. Man, I have never seen so many places letting their readers know that Mirror’s Edge is coming.

Nope, this is an article talking about Tim Langdell and his claim of owning the trademark to the word “Edge”. Langdell has gone after Mobigame because they named their iPhone game Edge and Langdell had it removed from the AppStore 3 times! The website ChaosEdge has a long log of all the strange goings on between Tim Langdell and his questionable antics. This article talks about Langdell’s claim that he owns the trademark for Mirror’s Edge, EA’s game.

My only concern is will Langdell write to Apple to have Mirror’s Edge removed from the AppStore once it’s released. Since Apple is quick to remove apps from the store with the slightest notification, it’s probably going to be an interesting release.

I’m actually hoping that Langdell has the balls to go after EA’s Mirror’s Edge. EA has a very large bank account and will protect it’s intellectual property with all the lawyers at their disposal. If Langdell does go after EA, we can only hope that EA takes him down and we’ll not have to hear about him again after that.

So, go ahead Langdell, go after Mirror’s Edge on the iPhone, please!!!