Archive for December, 2009

XA iPhone call to Arms

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Ok, just looking for a few brave souls that would like to help steer the development of Extreme Agenda for iPhone in a fun way.

I had a really great group of Beta Testers in private forums on this site that helped steer the initial XA for WM to make it such a great product. (and if any of you have since picked up an iPod Touch or iPhone and want to participate just let me know, that goes for all XA for WM converts to iPhone).

Well I want to take that to the next level. So I have created a Facebook Group that will allow complete interaction along with Sneak Peaks, design input(and more), and eventually will be Ad Hoc Beta Testers if they want to be. All I ask is for feedback on what you are thinking on what we are doing or should do, and how you would use it…

Just drop an email and if Im still wanting more and I can find you on FB Ill throw you an invite….

Thanks

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A little iPhone Submission Process Rant.

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Ok, so obviously everyone under the sun that develops for iPhone has pointed out why the submission process stinks for the iPhone AppStore. Yes it takes too long. Yes it is hit or miss with no set guidelines. Yes, they will let utter GARBAGE through, and lots of it, but will reject good applications for the stupidest things….

My recent example. I have a nice little PokerTimer program that I wanted to upload for FREE on the AppStore. Thing is it got rejected not once, but Twice. Why? Well the first time is because they have changed their policy and are now rejecting for a ‘private API’ that really isnt dangerous and in fact should be public. Original iPhone 2.0 OS builds actually EVEN needed it to work correctly. And Ive used it in at least 5 applications!! It basically tells the device, ‘hey you are in Landscape.’ But now using it got my App rejected. Ok. So I take it out and re-submit.

After another week and a half, rejection #2. Why, because I used a Standard “compose” icon (still visible in the screenshot of PokerTimer) as a button to enter when you EDIT the blinds. Yes, it seems that it might confuse some users because its for EDITING MESSAGES not EDITING BLINDS. You’ll see the trivial change to the icon that I did in order to fix this. C’mon APPLE, this icon has been used for EDITING of all types for YEARS!!!

AND Apple, how about if its going to take 1-2 weeks to even complete the Approval Process, that you actually complete the first review and tell me on the first rejection that there is more than one infraction. How hard would it have been for the reviewer to do a complete review and say, “Hey, change this icon and remove this API call”, both of which are ridiculious to be rejected for in the first place, but at least it would have knocked the approval of a nice little application down to a couple weeks from a month.

[End Rant]

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December 2009 – Wha?

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Well, Birdsoft has been extremely busy. We have just released a huge release to our biggest product of all time. We are finishing up some really cool consulting projects. And Im excited for a couple of FREE projects that are in the submission process with Apple.

All-In 3.0 has been doing very well, and I encourage Windows Mobile users to check it out. Of course Microsoft is going the way of Apple with their submission process and has rejected it once due to some weird “hopper” test that they use to try and crash your application over 2 hours of random input. The thousands of people that have played the game dont run in to too many real world crashes or I would have heard about them. But I will be attempting to get that resolved and re-submit soon…

PokerTimer iPhone has not yet ‘cleared customs’ as now Apple do to their ridiculious submission testing has rejected it twice. The first time was from a private API that doesnt even make sense to be private and I have used in at least 4 other applications. The 2nd time I used a ‘compose’ icon (they maybe could have mentioned it the first time) that is a piece of paper and pencil to access where you ‘Edit’ the Levels. Well its not for composing or editing Levels but rather messages and may confuse the users to use that icon, so I have since re-submitted again for the 3rd time with a slightly altered icon.

All-In Poker Lite is also in the submission pipeline, which will offer a FREE and rather unobtrusive game of All-In with only Limit Hold Em and Omaha included.

We have some other projects in early stages for the iPhone including Poker Timer Pro, The update to All-In, another poker related title, and initial work has been started on another possibly recognizable title….

Extreme Agenda iPhone

Extreme Agenda iPhone

Yes, plans are in the works to bring Extreme Agenda over to the iPhone in stages. The plan is to first bring a lot of the calendar functionality over as the iPhone calendar is rather weak. Then Task/Todo’s and Sync/Contacts/Projects and as much feature parity as we can possibly hit while creating this new interface. We’d LOVE to hear feeback on what you really want to see.

So Yes, we are rather busy…. Hope you are having a great Holiday Season.

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