Good news for Apple developers using Xojo. Version 2014 r1 has been released. This version apparently addresses the Quicktime and QTKit issues when submitting apps to the App store.I have yet to try this myself, but from what I hear, things are working great.
What does this mean for me and Krazy Pengwin Games? Well, this means that I can produce applications in a much tighter time scale. Whilst working directly with Objective-C and Cocoa was an eye opening experience, and one which I surprisingly enjoyed, using Xojo will speed up development ten-fold. There are certain things in Cocoa that I will miss in Xojo (bindings and speed in particular), but I think the speed of development and the ease of code maintenance will outweigh those for most projects, as will the SQLLite integration. I am sure there are times when I will need the speed of native programming, in which case I will go back to Objective-C, but at least, after this learning experience, I have the choice now.
Tuesday 11 March 2014
Thursday 13 February 2014
Don't Leave Bad Reviews If...
... the issue can be corrected.
Just wanted to share a recent experience I had with a game I downloaded from the Amazon App Store onto my Kindle Fire.
One of my favourite Facebook games is Monster Busters (I know, I should be working instead of playing games), so imagine my delight when I saw that it was available on the Amazon App Store. Off I went and downloaded it. Whilst downloading, I read the reviews that had already been posted, most of which were fairly negative, because of an issue with logging into Facebook. Still, I’ve read things like this before and not had problems with other apps, so I carried on with the download.
Unfortunately, the comments made were right. The game would not access Facebook, and it needed to in order to sync with my account.
However, rather than leave a negative comment, on what I was sure was a good game, just with a slight issue preventing me playing it, I contacted the makers of the game, PurpleKiwii, and reported the issue. After all, a negative comment can, and does, affect future sales (I know this is a free game, but it’s still not nice to have negative reviews on any of your projects).
The next day, I got a email back from PurpleKiwii, thanking me for my report and letting me know that the issue has now been fixed and available on the Store.
So, what I have to say is, please do not leave negative feedback straightaway if the issue you have is a bug or failing feature. It may be that something beyond control of the developers has changed (I’m not saying that it is the case in this instance, but it is a possibility). It is equally possible that something may work on the developers machine, but for some reason doesn’t work on others. Things DO slip through testing processes from time to time, it’s a way of (developers) life. It is much better to report an issue to the developer and get them to fix it, rather than do without the product all together and leave a review that could impact on the developers future sales.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say, and thank you PurpleKiwii, 10/10 for customer service, but you have now halved MY productivity as I do ‘just one more level’.
Just wanted to share a recent experience I had with a game I downloaded from the Amazon App Store onto my Kindle Fire.
One of my favourite Facebook games is Monster Busters (I know, I should be working instead of playing games), so imagine my delight when I saw that it was available on the Amazon App Store. Off I went and downloaded it. Whilst downloading, I read the reviews that had already been posted, most of which were fairly negative, because of an issue with logging into Facebook. Still, I’ve read things like this before and not had problems with other apps, so I carried on with the download.
Unfortunately, the comments made were right. The game would not access Facebook, and it needed to in order to sync with my account.
However, rather than leave a negative comment, on what I was sure was a good game, just with a slight issue preventing me playing it, I contacted the makers of the game, PurpleKiwii, and reported the issue. After all, a negative comment can, and does, affect future sales (I know this is a free game, but it’s still not nice to have negative reviews on any of your projects).
The next day, I got a email back from PurpleKiwii, thanking me for my report and letting me know that the issue has now been fixed and available on the Store.
So, what I have to say is, please do not leave negative feedback straightaway if the issue you have is a bug or failing feature. It may be that something beyond control of the developers has changed (I’m not saying that it is the case in this instance, but it is a possibility). It is equally possible that something may work on the developers machine, but for some reason doesn’t work on others. Things DO slip through testing processes from time to time, it’s a way of (developers) life. It is much better to report an issue to the developer and get them to fix it, rather than do without the product all together and leave a review that could impact on the developers future sales.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say, and thank you PurpleKiwii, 10/10 for customer service, but you have now halved MY productivity as I do ‘just one more level’.
Saturday 1 February 2014
Crash Course In Objective-C
Due to Apple’s policies throwing Xojo, inc a curve, I have decided that in order to get some of the smaller applications out I should rewrite them in Objective-C.
I didn’t realise what a steep learning curve this could present.
I have recently released Image Slicer on the App Store, completely rewritten using Apples tools, rather than Xojo. It didn’t take as long as I thought it might, but it was still a challenge, particularly as I have only dabbled with Objective-C before, not really creating anything useful.
The crash course began on Saturday, 25 January, and I was able to submit the initial binary by Monday evening. Unfortunately, I was a bit overzealous with the sandboxing allowances, so it was rejected a couple of days later. But a quick update (and a few other tweaks), and it was submitted again on Wednesday. Two days later, I got the approval email from Apple.
Although this has proven to me that I CAN used Objective-C for my Mac applications, I will probably go back to Xojo after Xojo, inc have addressed the issue preventing apps created in it being accepted by Apple for the App Store, so that I will be able to offer Windows versions as well as Mac versions.
I didn’t realise what a steep learning curve this could present.
I have recently released Image Slicer on the App Store, completely rewritten using Apples tools, rather than Xojo. It didn’t take as long as I thought it might, but it was still a challenge, particularly as I have only dabbled with Objective-C before, not really creating anything useful.
The crash course began on Saturday, 25 January, and I was able to submit the initial binary by Monday evening. Unfortunately, I was a bit overzealous with the sandboxing allowances, so it was rejected a couple of days later. But a quick update (and a few other tweaks), and it was submitted again on Wednesday. Two days later, I got the approval email from Apple.
Although this has proven to me that I CAN used Objective-C for my Mac applications, I will probably go back to Xojo after Xojo, inc have addressed the issue preventing apps created in it being accepted by Apple for the App Store, so that I will be able to offer Windows versions as well as Mac versions.
New home for blog
I have decided to host this blog on my company website now. So if you wish to see further posts, please update your bookmarks to: Pengwin's Blog
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)