iTunesConnect
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Apple made it likelier you'll get an App Store review reply
Most App Store users don't leave negative ratings to be jerks -- rather, they may have just had trouble figuring out an app or felt it was missing a key feature. If the developers spot the issue and can deal with it, they can turn a bad user score into a good one and educate other customers at the same time. To help, Apple has made it easier for developers by adding a new role in the iTunes Connect portal called "Customer Service."
iTunes Connect now allows developers to transfer apps to another developer
We've heard about all the new elements in iOS and OS X today at WWDC, and how they will change the way we use our iOS devices. There are some new features on the back side of iOS, including a major change in policy that'll let developers easily transfer an app from over developer to another via iTunes Connect. The new transfer app feature will let you transfer the ownership of an app to another developer as part of an acquisition or a distribution deal, for example. The new owner will receive all the ratings and reviews of the app they just acquired. During this process, the app will remain in the App Store and users will be able to download all available app updates. It's a seamless transfer tool that'll make selling your business or your apps easy on you and easy on your customers.
iTunes Connect will be down for maintenance on Saturday
A quick note to all iOS developers out there: Apple has been sending out emails to devs alerting them that iTunes Connect will be down for maintenance for four hours this Saturday, January 26. From the email: iTunes Connect will undergo scheduled maintenance for approximately four hours starting at 8 PM (PT) on Saturday, January 26. During this time, content delivery and iTunes Connect will not be available. Regards, The iTunes Store team While iTunes Connect is down, developers cannot make any changes to their app listings, submit new apps or update current apps. Apple is currently saying iTunes Connect will only be down for four hours, but still...if you have any mission-critical changes or pending submissions, take care of them soon.
Dev Juice: Tokens 1.1 released, TUAW-exclusive promo
Tokens is a brilliant little app that enables devs to track promo codes they submit to websites for review. We looked at the app a few months ago and fell in love with its features. Now, the developers are celebrating their 1.1 release with a sale that starts tomorrow morning. The TUAW-exclusive tracking code found here will offer the app to the first 50 customers at just US$9 each, $20 off the normal price. This TUAW-only offer is in addition to the 50 sale licenses they're offering to the general population. The new version of Tokens offers the following enhancements, among others: Manual import of promo codes generated outside of Tokens, so you don't lose track of items you generated yourself. A new "+" button for adding tokens. (Previously, there was a grid of "available" tokens, which I found confusing.) A share button that appears over each token when you hover your cursor. A new "copy" menu item, letting you copy token details without having to hunt around for the functionality -- a feature that initially confused the heck out of me, and that's better implemented in this version. Developer Oisin Prendiville tells me there are plenty of further features in the pipeline for 1.2 and beyond. As this update shows, he and his team are actively listening to their user base.
Apple adds support options for iBookstore publishers
In very welcome news to iBookstore publishers, Apple has recently added some support options to make it easier to get answers about pesky issues that might be delaying the sale of the next Great American Novel. In a letter to iBookstore publishers last week, Apple outlined four different support options. First, the Book Forum is part of the Apple Support Communities and a great way to search for answers to questions that others may have already asked. There's also an FAQ for iTunes Connect (requires iTunes Connect account to log in), the tool that's used to submit books to the store. For additional assistance with iTunes Connect issues, an existing Contact Us module leads publishers through a guided set of questions to provide an FAQ answer. Should that not provide an answer, there's now a toll-free (U.S. and Canada) number available to speak directly to an iBookstore Publisher Support advisor. Apple recommends that publishers have information on hand before requesting support by email or phone, including the Apple ID, ISBN, or vendor ID and title, the transfer log for iTunes Producer delivery failures, and the device, browser, version number, and operating system for technical issues in the iBookstore or on iTunes Connect.
Apple Store, iTunes Connect Mobile apps receive updates
Among the business of WWDC, Apple quietly rolled out updates to the Apple Store app and iTunes Connect. The Apple Store app adds an express checkout option, which saves account information for faster purchases. Those with an iPhone 4S also can notify the Apple Store when they're close by, so that any orders will be ready by the time the customer arrives. Meanwhile, the iTunes Connect Mobile app updated with enhanced product views for developers, the ability to view all customer reviews and ratings, advance search, the ability to release or reject apps from the mobile app and more. Both updates are available now through the App Store.
How Apple iBooks needs to compete with Amazon: Better author tools
Amazon has trailblazed; Apple has followed. Apple's iBooks program currently allows authors to self-publish ebooks. Authors create their own business built around iTunes Connect, just as they do for self-published apps. So where does Apple have room to improve? What follows is one of several posts about how iBooks can improve to better compete with Amazon. In this post, I discuss how Apple needs to create a better authoring platform to help support their independent authors. iBooks tools are frustrating. You can publish on Amazon with little more than an account, a doc file and a smile. For iBooks, you need validated ePub files, ISBN identifiers from the Library of Congress and a willingness to run the gauntlet of contracts, paperwork, and the hell that is iTunes Connect. iTunes Connect It's not that iTunes Connect is so unusuable from a web page perspective, it's that its servers are often so loaded that each request (such as select a country and set a price level, repeat 30-odd times) may take several minutes to complete for each region. You can lose an entire day of work just moving through paperwork details. There is a workaround: you can use a hacky, poorly-documented tool called iTunes Producer to update your product metadata and it will save you lots of time. But if iTunes Producer, with its amateur-level support, is all that Apple means to bring to the table, then it must re-address how it works with with the iBooks content-creator base. Amazon makes it so simple and intuitive to list books that when you have to move over to iTunes, the difference hits you right in the face. Keep in mind that I personally use iTunes to sell both books and apps. It's not that iTunes is so horrible, especially when you set aside any issues of server responsiveness, it's just that it could be so much better. Getting Started Recently, Steve Sande and I went through the iBooks process for our "Talking to Siri: Learning the Language of Apple's Intelligent Assistant" ebook. It was quite the learning process, taking several weeks until we could get the book clear for sale. With Amazon, the book went live within a couple of days after we first posted it. We had to fill out two quick pages of information and hit the Publish button. On iBooks, we had to set up our contracts, taxes, and banking details, produce a properly formatted end-product (Amazon automated that entire process for us and provided a beautiful preview tool), and wait for it to work through review. Admittedly, you can use a certified aggregator like Smashwords or Lulu to relist your books to most major vending sites including iBooks. They provide the ISBN and take another cut of your profits above Apple's, typically leaving you with about 50-60% of the list price, versus Apple's basic 70% of list price. They handle all the little details that you normally encounter at iTunes using their own custom interface to help you manage your content metadata, pricing, and marketing materials. Apple-approved aggregators for North America include: Ingram, INscribe Digital, LibreDigital, Lulu, and Smashwords. European aggregators are Bookwire and Immatériel. Of these, only Smashwords will convert MS Word documents to ePub. Keep in mind that the strength of these services should focus on providing full book deployment to every available market, not just because you want to sidestep iBooks. ISBNs If all you want to do is publish to iBooks, you'd be better off setting yourself up to create an iTunes account and buying your own ISBNs rather than go the aggregator route. If you plan to distribute in iBooks, you'll need those ISBNs to register each book. Bowker is the exclusive ISBN provider for the Library of Congress. A single ISBN costs $125. You can pick up a ten-pack for $250, a 100-pack for $575 and 1000 for $1000 -- just a dollar per ISBN. It's all economy of scale. If you want to buy more, prices for even higher volumes are negotiable. Contact Bowker directly. Most new authors will choose the ten-pack option, which provides a way to test the waters for more than one book with a minimal commitment. Bowker's free title registration service allows you to ensure that your book title is unique and won't be duplicated. You can create free barcodes for your books at Bowkers as well. Because Amazon doesn't require ISBNs to list and sell books, independent authors find it much cheaper and more straight forward to market in the Kindle store, leaving all other issues of simplicity aside. If Apple wants to gain some of that market, they may consider stepping away from traditional publishing ideas to introduce a way to streamline product listings that aren't tied to ISBNs. Authoring Tools If you have a copy of MS Word or Open Office, you have all the tools you need to write for the Amazon ebook market. Just create a simple style sheet (Steve and I used just seven styles for our books, including headers, paragraphs, notes, lists, and figures) or use the default, write the book itself (I know, I know, the hard part) and include any images in-line that you want to appear in the book. Speaking of which, here's an easy pro-tip: Don't resize the images. Include them in full scale in the document and let Amazon's conversion tools handle all resizing for you. Life lesson learned, life lesson shared. Moving on. For iBooks, we investigated several (for that you can read "OMG, I can't belive how many we actually tried, it was insane") ePub preparation and conversion solutions. In the end, we ended up using Pages as the most reliable way to create ePubs that passed validation. Although Word can export HTML and Calibre can convert to ePub, it failed our validation tests. We reserved Calibre for editing metadata once the ePub was already created. We looked seriously at Storyist, which is a terrific authoring tool but one that didn't live as comfortably in the must-convert-between-formats realm with our primary authoring done in Word. The fault lay in our workflow, not in that app in particular. Give it a look see, it's well worth investigating, especially if you're looking for a tool that helps you plan your book as well as write it. Pages is a fine content creation tool but it's not serious enough or appropriate for what we wanted and needed to do in our ebooks. It feels deeply out of date and in no way lends itself to the content creation, reviewing, and editing tasks we needed for our production. We ended up writing in Word, importing into Pages, and then converting into ePub from there. For a 150+ page ebook, that took much longer than you might think. Add to the import and conversion times, overhead for ePub inspection. Another pro tip: Make sure you use Pages' section break tools, not Word's. Otherwise, Pages will throw out all pictures past the initial ten images. Another lovely life lesson learned the hard way. In fact, there's a gaping hole in Apple's product line when it comes to ebook authoring and production. iWork has not been updated for OS X since '09. It's crying out for a smart, current refresh that reflects the modern world of AirPlay, iBooks, Apple TV 2, and other state-of-the-art changes. Too much has happened in three years. What's more, the ePub specification and Apple's inherent multimedia focus mean that iBooks should be able to move leaps and bounds beyond where ebooks currently are. Do current specs with their end-user-picks-the-font presentations really provide the best reading and presentation experience possible? Shouldn't Apple be looking at smart typesetting that's a little more sophisticated? And where else could they be pushing the envelope? I believe that Apple should be leading a revolution in embedded live book elements with video, programmable app and web integration, and more (Think "Khan Academy" as books, for example). Why aren't we seeing both the specs and the tools with Apple trailblazing forward? As it is, Apple is taking a back seat to...Word docs. That's just sad. WWDR for Authors and Publishers What Apple really needs is an internal initiative that matches (and exceeds, honestly) its World Wide Developer Relations for app development, but on the book publishing side of things. Apple needs a WWDC for publishing, evangelists and road shows, and internal Mac-driven tools that allow authors to expand beyond the current iBooks offerings. As Apple's product line moves more and more towards consumers, its support for independent authors (and developers) needs to evolve as well. Apple needs to integrate author-to-author resources, like its devforums theoretically should for app programmers (Admittedly those forums have somewhat devolved into Apple personnel ordering people to file "radars", aka bug reports rather than providing the kind of warm human support many developers might hope for, but they're far better than no support at all). I could easily imagine signing up for a yearly independent authoring program (complete with 2 tech support incidents if the program is paid), access to high-level Apple-supplied creation tools and bypassing the current ISBN-based publishing paradigm. In the end, if Apple is to make its mark in iBooks, it has to both simplify publishing for independents and set its products apart in terms of expressive possibilty. Posts in this series: KDP Select Better Author Tools Cross Platform Support
iTunes Connect down for maintenance for most of July 13 (updated)
The Mac App Store, iTunes Store, and App Store have all been experiencing fairly serious connectivity issues over the past several hours. Many speculated this was a sign that OS X Lion was about to debut on the Mac App Store, despite plenty of evidence suggesting it won't hit until July 14 at the earliest. Now MacRumors has heard from developers that Apple intends to take iTunes Connect down for most of July 13 for "scheduled maintenance." iTunes Connect will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, July 13 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT. During this time, iTunes Connect will still be available. However, pricing changes made between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. PDT will cause the app to become unavailable for purchase until maintenance is complete, at which point the app will become available at the new price. To avoid interruptions to the availability of your apps, do not make price changes during this time. Lastly, customers may not be able to purchase apps in the Mexico, U.K., Australia, Switzerland, Japan or Norway storefronts during the scheduled maintenance. If this really is "scheduled maintenance," it seems odd that we're just now hearing about it, only nine hours ahead of the downtime. There's no official link between this downtime and the issues Apple's online storefronts have been experiencing today, but the timing certainly doesn't appear to be coincidental. This downtime will be an inconvenience to developers, just as today's intermittent App Store issues have inconvenienced potential buyers. None of this makes for a particularly inspiring prelude to the OS X Lion launch; Lion is around 4 GB in size, and with at least tens of thousands of downloads likely on the first day of availability, the Lion launch day is likely to be Apple's most bandwidth-intensive day ever. Here's hoping the company can get its affairs in order tomorrow. Update: MacStories postulates that the maintenance could be to adjust prices internationally, which have grown disproportionally with international currency fluctuations. An interesting theory, and we'll update you when iTunes Connect is done with maintenance.
iTunes adds international promo codes, push notification security upgraded
A couple of big changes occurred today in the iOS ecosystem. First, application promo codes may now be used internationally instead of being limited to US store customers only. Second, the push notification system has been upgraded to use more secure 2048-bit TLS/SSL certificates. International promo code distribution will greatly help those developers whose products are meant primarily for use outside the United States. This particularly affects applications where English is not the primary language for use or US customers are not the central audience. Now, developers can send review codes to local newspapers, magazines and blogs without having to request that those outlets create US iTunes accounts. The push notification system's upgraded security requires that you download an updated server certificate. Apple recommends that you test and validate your communication channels so that your deployed applications will not experience service outages. Further information about both developments is available on Apple's iTunes Connect and developer sites. Developers can use their dev credentials to log in.
Apple updates iTunes Connect Mobile for iPad
Apple has updated the iTunes Connect Mobile app to version 1.1. The app was first released in June of this year and allowed developers to view statistics about their products on the App Store right from their iPhone or iPod touch. Today's update brings universal support for all iOS devices, including the iPad. It also adds support for multitasking in iOS 4 and adds support for iBookstore providers. With today's universal update to iTunes Connect Mobile, Apple has updated most of its iOS apps to take advantage of the iPad's larger screen. The other remaining holdouts are iMovie, Keynote Remote, Apple Store, and Texas Hold'em.
iTunes Connect will be open over Thanksgiving weekend
A few weeks ago it was reported that iTunes Connect would be closed over Thanksgiving weekend and the Christmas holiday. While the closure wouldn't affect consumers who want to shop for apps, it would affect developers who wanted to submit new apps or change prices of their apps during that period. iTunes Connect had been closed for a number of days over Christmases past, but the Thanksgiving closure was one that irked a lot of devs as it came during Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- the four day weekend that is the traditional start off to the US holiday shopping season. To the relief of developers everywhere, Apple last night notified iOS devs that iTunes Connect will be closing for Christmas between December 23-28, but made no mention of a Thanksgiving weekend closure. This means that developers can still adjust prices of their apps on those days to entice holiday app shoppers, submit new apps, and don't have to worry about a Top Apps list freeze during the Thanksgiving weekend.
Apple warns App Store name squatters
TechCrunch reports that Apple is cracking down on "app name squatters," developers who create an app and reserve a name on the App Store, but don't actually upload files to release and sell the app. Apparently this is an issue -- personally, I can't immediately think of any names that I'd need to have on the App Store (maybe it's something really generic, like iReader?), but there are supposedly a few developers who have a certain name in mind, but can't use it because a squatter has locked it up in iTunes Connect. In fact, our own Victor Agreda foresaw this problem a while back, and now it's popped up on Apple's radar. There's good news, though. Apple will now send out a warning after 90 days of locking up a name with no actual files uploaded, and then 30 days later will delete the record on the App Store. And notices are going out; developers who've sat on a name for more than 90 days already are getting their 30 days' notice now. If that app you're planning to put out there has taken a little longer than expected to go through the final coding process, you might want to get on it. But Apple doesn't say that it will actually check. While the app will need to meet all of the other guidelines (including the rules for minimum functionality), you could probably still release a small app under the name you want, and then upgrade and release the full version later on. We'll have to see what happens with devs who really want to reserve App Store names in the future. [via AppleInsider]
Apple to increase frequency of pay for iOS developers
Are you an iOS developer who's been pained by the threshold at which Apple decides to send payment out for your hard-earned app sales? Well, Apple has a bit of good news for you on that front. Along with a new reporting module within iTunes Connect, Apple has decreased the amount developers must accumulate from sales before payment is issued, along with an increase in the frequency at which those payments are made. Not only will this decrease the amount spent on bank fees for developers, but the reports will give them a better understanding of how sales are doing. Right now there's no word on what the pay threshold and frequency have been changed to, but the quicker earnings make their way to developers' pockets, the better. Are you a developer, and have you been hoping for such a change? [via Macworld]
Schools: Get your discount at the App Store (some day)
Students and educational institutions already get some nice perks from Apple in the form of hardware discounts, and from some development firms (such as Microsoft) in software discounts. Imagine being able to get an educational discount when you buy an iOS app in the App Store. Developers are informing us today that when they log into iTunes Connect, they're being prompted to accept a new paid application contract. The contract includes an amendment that gives developers the opportunity to offer educational discounts when multiple copies of the same program are purchased. Developers must accept the new amendment in order to continue placing their apps in the App Store, and they can turn discounts on and off in the app management area of iTunes Connect. The amendment enables developers to offer a 50% discount to educational institutions on multiple copies of apps. They can apply it to individual app titles, or to all apps that they currently offer in the App Store. As of yet, Apple hasn't noted when the discounts will be available for educational institutions, but this could be a nice treat for budget-strapped school systems in the near future.
Poll: What are your feelings about iAds?
Hey TUAW's Developer Brain Trust! For many of you WWDC is just wrapping up, and you're now probably hanging around in airports bored and checking on e-mail, visiting web sites. We thought it would be a great time to offer you something to think about. Now that you've been exposed to iAds and are able to start returning to your offices to build and submit 4.0 apps using the GM release candidate, are you going to be adding advertising to your apps or not? I've had very mixed results with ad-supported apps. For me, they've been successful outside of App Store (and a big old "thank you" to every single one of you who has clicked through! I very much appreciate it!) but not so successful in App Store itself. Now, with Apple behind iAds, I'm willing to give App Store another try.
Apple releases iTunes connect mobile for App Store developers
Apple today released iTunes Connect Mobile, an iPhone (and iPod touch) app for allowing developers to view statistics about their products on the App Store. There are over 250,000 apps on the App Store and with the release of iTunes Connect Mobile, Apple has made it easier for developers to track sales statistics for each product they have on the store. The app allows a break-out of sales by day, week, month (5w) and 6 months (26w). There are colorful graphs for displaying unit sales and updates. Additionally, developers can see information about the different markets where their app is sold. Apple's iTunes Connect Mobile is a free download from the App Store. Note that it does not seem to have propagated throughout the entire store. If you don't see it yet, try again in a little while.
Apple is now accepting iPad app submissions
Simulator-only apps developed with the iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 5 can be submitted as of today for initial review. Upload your apps by 5pm, Saturday, March 27th, and the App review team will e-mail you with submission feedback about the readiness of your application for App Store distribution. You will also receive information about submitting your apps for final review, before the iPad ships and (for most of us) before we even own hardware. If you're thinking about waiting: don't. Apple states that "[o]nly apps submitted for the initial review will be considered for the grand opening of the iPad App Store." An Apple spokesman further confirmed that "[W]e are looking forward to having an amazing line up of apps available when the iPad ships on April 3." The iPad App Store will launch at the same time as the iPad device.
iTunesConnect now allows automated release dates, price changes
Back in the bad old days of the App Store, it was anybody's guess when a submitted app might get blessed by Apple and show up in iTunes. It might be three days, three weeks, three months, or never. Recent improvements in the approval process have brought that time period down to a matter of hours -- but until now, there's been no way to schedule release dates for apps. Once submitted and approved, apps went straight to the App Store. Now, developers of apps for the iPhone OS have been granted new options in the iTunesConnect interface. Not only can devs set a release date for the app, they can also automate price fluctuations set to certain dates. For example, say you've created an app that you want to go live on April 15 rather than immediately after Apple approves it. This allows you to publicize the app on your site, and at an introductory, promotional price, as well. "$0.99 for the first week," you can tell potential buyers, "$2.99 after that." Through iTunesConnect, not only can you set the launch date for your app, you can also automate the price increase from $0.99 to $2.99 on April 22. And if you want to run another $0.99 promotion a month or even a year later, you can automate that, too: just set the price and the effective date for the price in the iTunesConnect interface. It's a pretty simple change to the interface, but one that opens the door to a lot of promotional opportunities for developers.
13 new countries added to the App Store
Last week, Apple announced through the iPhone Developer News feed that the iTunes App Store is now supported in 13 additional countries: "You can now distribute your apps to more customers with the addition of App Store support in Armenia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Jordan, Kenya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda." Unless an app has been set to "sell in new territories," developers will need to update their iTunes Connect preferences before their products will be available in the latest batch of added countries. If your apps already have the "sell in new territories" option checked, you're good to go.
Apple's New Year's resolution? Get apps through approval faster
One of the biggest gripes we heard from iPhone developers during 2009 was that it took forever for their apps to make it through the iTunes App Store approval process. Often apps would be disapproved for seemingly illogical reasons after a long wait in the approval queue, and TUAW heard from more than one developer that had just given up. iTunes Connect, the portal through which iPhone developers submit apps and check sales, was down between December 23 - 28, 2009. Since that time, TUAW has received a number of positive emails from iPhone devs that indicate that Apple has resolved to quit holding up apps in 2010. How fast are some apps making it through the process? Take developer Aaron Douglas's free Migraine Diary [iTunes Link]; he submitted it on December 28th at 9 PM CT and received notice of the approval a 4 PM CT on the 31st of December -- that's less than three days. But that's downright slow compared to what Yuri, a developer at Atomic Cactus, experienced: I'm a developer behind Atomic Cactus, we have 3 games currently in the app store, and they all took approximately 2-3 weeks to get approved. Today at 4:00 am I submitted for approval our latest app, which isn't exactly a "fart app" (it's a pretty polished puzzle game with OpenFeint). As of 1:30 pm today, the app is in the app store. That's nine and a half hours, folks! This is a small sampling of the many emails we've received from developers since just after Christmas. Whether this is due to a New Year's resolution, competition from the Android platform, or a new back-end system for processing apps, it's a welcome change for iPhone developers and users alike.
