Although I am agree with this, however soo many developer are abusing this to the point where I think it is ridicilous. Soo many app now give you push notification when the app has not been used for a while and I think that's just as bad as spamming.
I develop an educational app geared for kids and just like some of the people here. I dislike ads, in app purchase, external link etc so I made sure that my app doesn't have any of those and price it at $0.99. I keep updating it based on user feedback to make the app better.
It's good to read that there are a lot of parent here that say they won't purchase any app with ads and/or inapp purchases for their kids but I think majority of the people don't care.
Most of the top 15 apps in my app category/subject are free with ads and/or in app purchases. They can afford to make it free because they make money from ads/in-app purchases and because they're free they get a lot more download that keeps their ranking higher burying app like mine.
It's hard to compete in that kind of condition but I for now, I can't see my self using ads/in-app purchases in any of my app. I will try to compete by bringing better qualities apps.
There are ways to do in-app purchases for kid apps that aren't unethical. In fact, allowing people to try your app before buying it is a very ethical thing to do. Don't limit yourself unnecessarily, and don't assume kid apps with iAP must be from shady developers.
I know you feel like everyone is being unreasonable about this, but instead of trying to change their minds, consider it market research: parents on hacker news overwhelmingly distrust iAP, and maybe that means some other form of try-before-you-buy would be more appropriate for kids' apps.
I believe windows phone market place and android allow you to do some sort of trial but I don't think you can do that in apple app store. I'm not 100% sure about this so please correct me if I am wrong.
You are correct. There are a lot of kid apps with iAP that offer great value such as additional levels etc. I purchased some my self. It's the smurfberry kind of iAP that I don't like.
I absolutely agree with that. What disappoints me is how quickly HN parents will shut off their brains and have a knee jerk reaction to an otherwise really handy feature. And in most cases, if they really hate iAP that much, they could figure out that an app isn't for them before downloading, and save themselves and the developer from a negative situation.
Which makes me wonder what kind of parents are downloading apps and handing over the iPad without doing any research (since certainly if they were doing any research at all, they'd know it used iAP beforehand).
Just out of curiosity, what is it that you think is complex using phonegap build? I've used it before and I thought it was very simple. I was even able to walk our receptionist over the phone on how to generate new build for android from our ios build using phonegap build. Thanks. I am also interested in using command line tools though. Thanks.
I can definetely relate to the OP. The Indonesian(my native language) language doesn't really use gender specific either. That was one of the biggest problem I had when I moved to the US.
Can you please elaborate more on that. I am curious. I developed for iOS and android. I am a .net developer and I'm about to port my code to wp7. I was hoping that it will be a lot easier compare to the other 2 since I use visual studio and .net on daily basis. Am I mistaken here?
I was under the impression that Ice Cream Sandwich will require user to enter the credit card and associate it with their gmail account to activate the device? Is that true? I remember reading something about this.
That … seems stupid? And I don’t really think that can be true.
I don’t even have a credit card (like many Europeans I only have a bank card) and I’m also not enthusiastic about giving my payment information for just using something or even just looking around.
I found video to be every effective teaching tool for programming. I don't know why, but I can read something 10 times and didn't get it but If I see video covering the same material it clicks.
The only thing I don't like about video is that I can't do search for it. Sometime they show you a piece of code and you don't remember exactly where, you can't easily go to that part of the video.
If I have to guess, I would guess cost is too high to have rackspace managed dedicated server. I've been working with rackspace's managed dedicated for 10 years. They are pricey but for a small shop where you dont have dedicated network/hardware guy. It's worth every penny. 99% I called their fanatic support, I hear human voice after 1 ring.
xiaoma, I was really interested in smart tots sdk and really want to implemented in my app but I was really having difficulty in trying to find out what the sdk does. I created an account, downloaded the sdk, looked around and I couldn't figure out what it does or how some of the stuff will show up in my app. Because of that I didn't follow thru.
Right now the documentation is definitely lagging the features a bit.
This is what we offer end customers (i.e. parents): reporting on how much their kids play which apps, breakdown by subject, feedback on how their children are doing (if implemented by the developer), organization of educational apps by subject and age level, and finally recommendations for subsequent app purchases.
What developers get is the following: parents who buy more apps than the average customer, a sales channel via parents looking for their next SmarTots app, usage data of their app broken down by demographic, and a free evaluation of their app by a qualified educator.
We're also offering a few more things on a beta-basis: a system for developers add achievements for children to earn and "anti-achievements" that we call areas for improvement. Parents have been very positive about this kind of reporting. We've also the option of sharing the achievements on FB, which can serve as another marketing channel for app-makers. Also in the pike is the tracking of user data. This will be useful for app-makers in much the same way as analytics are useful for website creators. If you can test what actions users are making, you'll have more data to help you refine and improve the app.
One thing I can offer is help getting the app integrated if you want to give it a try. Either way, thank you for the feedback!
