The iPhone Developer Community
Posted by Charles Perry on Jul 4, 2010
Being an independent iPhone developer is great, but it comes with some limitations that larger software shops aren’t as constrained by. In particular, time is a resource that is always in short supply. I’m the developer, designer, and support line for Daze End Software, and unfortunately, there never seems to be enough time in the day to get done everything that I’d like to do. So it’s nice that there’s a supportive community of indie iPhone developers that I can lean on. These guys are great. They offer a sympathetic ear when things go wrong, they offer advice when I need guidance, and occasionally they save me several hours of work.
Such was the situation that I encountered recently with the release of iOS 4 for the iPhone. I received a bug report from a customer that I just could not reproduce. (And as all developers know, if you can’t reproduce a bug, it’s awful hard to fix the bug.) As it turns out, the reason I couldn’t reproduce the bug is because I was in the wrong timezone. How did I figure that out? Because the community of iPhone developers is awesome and generous with their time.
A Google search turned up one lonely description of a problem in another developer’s app which sounded similar to the bug that had been reported in mine. I’d never met this developer before (either in real life, or online), but I took a chance and emailed him anyway. This developer, Greg, took the time to respond to my out-of-the-blue email with a detailed description of the root cause of the problem and the steps needed in order to reproduce it. He saved me hours of time in debugging — hours that I would much rather spend creating new features than debugging old ones.
So what’s the point of this post? It’s really just an excuse to give a shout out to Greg at More Mobile Software who took the time to help out a fellow developer. Thanks Greg! And thanks also to all the other iPhone developers out there that are helpful, supportive, and generally make iPhone development an enjoyable pursuit.
Action Lists 2.5.0 Now Available
Posted by Charles Perry on Jul 2, 2010
I’ve just received word from Apple that version 2.5.0 of Action Lists has been approved. I have put Action Lists back on sale, and it should be appearing in the App Store over the next 24 hours. This version fixes the bugs that were reported when running under iOS 4.
I would again like to apologize for the problems that many of you encountered with Action Lists over the last several days, and for the inconvenience that it caused you. Hopefully, most of you were blissfully unaware of the problems since I removed Action Lists from the App Store, but for those of you who were affected this latest update should fix your issues and I’m sorry for the trouble that you were caused.
Action Lists Temporarily Unavailable
Posted by Charles Perry on Jun 28, 2010
I’ve posted all the gritty details in the forums, but I’m still getting lots of questions about Action Lists not being in the App Store. Here’s a quick explanation of what happened.
With the release of iOS 4 for the iPhone, a serious bug was discovered that didn’t exist under previous versions of the operating system. In order to save my customers from experiencing problems, I have temporarily removed Action Lists from sale in the App Store. I am currently working on a fix and I will hopefully submit a new version to Apple later today or tomorrow. The decision to temporarily remove Action Lists from the App Store will undoubtedly cost me sales, but I believe it’s in the best interests I’d my customers.
I will make another blog post when Action Lists is again available in the App Store, and I’ll also be making periodic posts in the forums to keep people up to date. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused all of you.
Action Lists – GTD Task Manager v2.3.3
Posted by Charles Perry on Mar 15, 2010
Version 2.3.3 of Action Lists has been approved by Apple and should be appearing in the App Store over the next 24 hours. This release is a bug fix release that includes these changes:
- Toodledo sync now detects when you have changed your account. This will prevent disappearing contexts and projects when syncing to a new account for the first time.
- Fixed Toodledo so that Active tasks that have their project set to ‘None’ on Toodledo will have their status reset to ‘Next Action’. This will prevent the task from disappearing in Action Lists.
- Fixed Toodledo sync so that any changes that are made to a task during sync (like its status) are immediately pushed back to the remote side. This will keep Action Lists and Toodledo better in sync.
Action Lists 2.3.0 Now Available
Posted by Charles Perry on Feb 27, 2010
I’m happy to announce that a new version of Action Lists GTD Task Manager is now available in the App Store. Highlights of this version include:
- An “Active” status has been added that will allow users to better plan out their projects. (Active tasks don’t appear in action lists.)
- Automatic task queuing that promotes Active tasks to Next Actions whenever a task is completed. (This is sometimes referred to as “sequential projects”.)
- A new “Due Soon” feature that highlights tasks as their due date is approaching.
- Localizations. Action Lists is now available in English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese.
A full list of changes in this version is below. For instructions on how to use these new features, please see the Action Lists documentation.
Lessons Learned in iPhone Localization
Posted by Charles Perry on Feb 21, 2010
As a native of a relatively typical middle-American town, it’s easy to forget that most of the world doesn’t speak English. The iPhone is an international phenomenon though, and millions of its users either don’t speak English or don’t speak English as their first language. Even though language may separate us, the intimate relationship that people have with their iPhone is universal. iPhones go everywhere with their owners and they contain incredible amounts of personal information. People feel a connection with their iPhone, so it makes sense that they want to operate it in their mother tongue.
With this in mind, I’m translating the next version of Action Lists into a handful of languages. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, getting your iPhone app translated actually involves two separate processes. “Internationalization” is the process of tagging the strings in your program that you want to have translated. “Localization” is the process of presenting translated versions of those strings to the user. I’m not going to go into great depth about the process of internationalizing and localizing your app (Apple has pretty good documentation on the subject), but I will share some of the tips I discovered while localizing Action Lists; things that I wish I had known when I started. (more…)
50,000 Syncs and Counting
Posted by Charles Perry on Jan 15, 2010
It appears that Daze End Software has hit a bit of a milestone. When I looked at my Toodledo statistics recently, I noticed that my apps have been synchronized with Toodledo over 50,000 times in the last six months. Action Lists alone has been synchronized with Toodledo over 35,000 times during the same period. Some kill joys will point out that these numbers are but a drop in the bucket compared to those of some other productivity apps, but I have to say I find it pretty exciting that hundreds of people have used my tools thousands of times to help get things done.
Some users of my apps might read this and have some concerns that I might know a little too much about their usage habits. Let me allay those fears. The statistics that I have access to through Toodledo are only gross totals. I can see, by app, the number of synchronizations and the number of unique users, and only for the past six months. So although I can see aggregate data, there’s no way for me to tell who’s syncing or how often they’re doing it.
I find it heartening that there are so many people out there that find my tools helpful and integrate them into their daily lives. If you’re one of those people, thanks, and stay tuned. There are more good things planned for the future.
App Store B is Dead
Posted by Charles Perry on Jan 1, 2010
For this post to make any sense, you’ll need to have already read Marco Arment’s article about the two App Stores. If you haven’t read it, please read it now. It’s a pretty good analysis of the pressures facing iPhone developers.
Ok, now that you’re up to speed, here’s the thing: App Store B is dead. It doesn’t exist. At least it doesn’t anymore. The path to success using an App Store B strategy has been closed to new developers for a while. It’s closed, because even an App Store B strategy requires that customers know about your app before they purchase it, and today there’s few ways for an App Store B app to get noticed — even if it’s deserving. (more…)
