- C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead – It’s a sad week for the IT industry.
- Alma telescope opens its eyes – Awesome. In the original sense of the word.
- Mercury’s Explosive Volcanic History – Both beautiful and fascinating.
- Apple’s iPod: ten years old – Is it really a decade since the first iPod?
Tag: Apple
- Lytro — light field sensor photography – This “light field sensor” sounds amazing but I am a little skeptical. I’ll believe its potential more when I hear about it being used by “real” people rather than in controlled situations.
- QuickLook Plugin For Mobile Provisioning Files – If you understand the title and develop iOS apps you need this plugin!
- C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead – It’s a sad week for the IT industry.
- Gallery: Iron Man, Other Pop Icons Become My Little Pony Sculptures – My Little Pony has a dark side too.
- What they’re “protecting” us from – “Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They’re unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.”
I thought it was worth writing about my experience converting my iOS Developer Program account from an individual to a company since a lot of people on Twitter were taking an interest. I can’t claim objectivity or that my experience will mirror yours, but hopefully you can be better prepared than I was.
First things first. Can you even make the transfer? Despite claims to the contrary, it is possible. I think the process is often confused with the ability to move applications or whole accounts between companies (which isn’t currently possible).
If you look at the sales reports from iTunes Connect, it seems that Apple are taking nearly 40% of the sale price for downloads made in Europe. Of course they claim to take 30% and, indeed, that’s exactly what you see in the US store.
So what’s going on?
The good news is that Apple are not screwing you over. The numbers do add up. The difference is that prices in the US App Store do not include sales tax (VAT) but those in Europe do. This means that before Apple take their 30% cut, they first take off the tax that needs to be paid. If that’s not clear, let’s work through an example.
- Enough Is Enough – “The whole [Lodsys] thing is nuts. I can’t understand why our goverment allows this shit to go on. "
- Android App Removals Cast Doubt on Google’s ‘Openness’ – “It’s certainly more open than Apple’s platform. But really, that’s like being a taller midget.”
- iCloud’s real purpose is to kill Windows – “What this requires from Apple is a bold move that Microsoft would never make: Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows. He isn’t beating Windows, he’s making Windows inconsequential.”
- Microsoft joins pre-emptive patent protection program – Software patents are not really popular, even with companies that (in theory) should benefit from them…
- Nearing the end of an era… – Some great images of Endeavour.
- Apple drops secrecy, confirms iOS 5, iCloud on tap at WWDC 2011 – Looks like it’s going to be an interesting WWDC…
Most developers of iOS applications have a love-hate relationship with the main interface with Apple.
No, let me re-phrase that.
Most developers of iOS applications hate iTunes Connect, the main impediment to a good relationship with Apple.
To be fair it has improved since it opened in mid-2008. One of those improvements has been the inclusion of crash reports. A crash report, in case you’re not a developer, is something that iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads write out when an application crashes. It includes all kinds of useful information, including some, but not all, of the internal state of the application in question. It’s very, very useful for diagnosing problems.
It was nothing like as dramatic as my iBook dying one evening, but there was no getting around the fact that my nearly five year old MacBook was no longer up to the tasks that I was trying to throw at it. Developing applications, even for resource limited devices such as the iPhone, needs a pretty substantial piece of Mac software called Xcode. My photography pushed me towards getting Aperture to manage all my pictures. It’s great, but it did have a tendency to grind to a halt when it was least convenient.