Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting the OtterBox headquarters in Fort Collins, CO and it was bigger and nicer and more fun than I ever imagined. There are very few right angles in the building and the architecture and interior design is just gorgeous. As if the multiple mini-kitchens, work-out gym, bike room, and pinball machine wasn’t enough, OtterBox headquarters also features a slide. Yes, a giant, awesome, circular indoor slide. iMore and Mobile Nations better watch out, because if OtterBox offers me a job, I’m there!

After watching the video, head over to Otterbox’s website for videos about the headquarter’s design and photo gallery. You’ll be nothing short of impressed.

Oh, and if you missed part 1 of our look inside Otterbox, go check it out now and enter our big Otterbox case giveaway!

Giveaway: Watch the video then leave a comment letting us know which of the Otterbox cases you’d love to win!

Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting the OtterBox headquarters in Fort Collins, CO and talk with Jordan about the history of the OtterBox name, the design and testing process, and get a closer look and description for each case series for the iPhone and iPad.

In addition to the interview, Jordan also passed on one of each case series to give away to our readers! Specifically, we have the following:

• Gunmetal Grey / Envy Green Defender Series
• Victory Commuter Series
• Gunmetal Reflex Series
• Black Impact Series

For a chance to win, just let us know which of these cases you would like to win in the comments below!

Modern Combat raised the bar on first-person shooters. Dead Space brought equal parts atmosphere and awesome.

Rage HD showed what Carmak could do on iOS. Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies kept the walking dead and amped up the action.

Zombie Gunship took slaying to the skies. Grand Theft Auto III showed Liberty City hadn’t changed much in 10 years.

Built just for iPad or iPhone, or ported from your favorite consoles, 2011 had a lot of great hardcore games hitting iOS. Your next achievements comes from picking the one you like best. Vote up top and tell us why you voted they way you did in the comments! These are your awards, so get to it!

David Ashman is the developer behind LockInfo, the popular notification and lock screen information app for Jailbreak — and he’s just seen Apple add their own version of both those features to iOS 5. So how does he feel about that, and what does it mean for the future of LockInfo?

Check out the video above, shot at WWDC 2011 the day after the keynote to see what he says. (Spoiler: While Apple may fill the needs of casual users, LockInfo is going to make the pros very, very happy for a long time to come.)

[LockInfo]

Firemint’s Real Racing 2 for iPhone just went live in the App Store. With 30 licensed cars, 15 person online multiplayer, career mode, and other console quality features it’s another huge leap forward for iPhone gaming. But what if — like me — you don’t drive especially well? What if you need a little inside help, some expert advice on how to beat the game? (And your friends!)

Worry not, Firemint Founder and CEO Rob Murray, Real Racing 2 Producer Chris Nicoll, and Firemint Communications Manager Alex Peters were kind enough to sit down for an interview with us and dish all their secrets. (Okay, maybe not all, but enough tips and tricks to give you an edge!)

This is just a taste mind you. The full interview will be included with our iPhone Live #130 podcast, available later today right here on the blog and via iTunes. Subscribe already!

[$9.99 - iTunes link]

At WWDC 2010 I had the chance to sit down with designer Graham Clarke and developer Nick Takayama Glasshouse Apps, makers of the Early Edition RSS reader for iPad, to talk about their latest app, and their impressions of iPhone 4.

Glasshouse had previously made Barista and Cellar, fine coffee and wine-enthusiast apps for the iPhone, so an RSS reader wasn’t obvious until you realize Clarke needed something to read while sipping his favorite beverages.

Takayama thought the visualization of RSS as a newspaper was a natural fit and he was surprised it hadn’t been done before on iOS. Clarke was excited with the extra screen real estate offered on the iPad, not having to flow screens but just using the canvas.

With a background in print, and previous experience in web design, dealing with the challenge of flowing text — whose content they don’t know in advance — into an attractive column-based layout was somewhat mitigated by having a single platform to work with (as opposed to several browsers across multiple OS to worry about).

Little functional gems like being able to scroll the content in the column-based preview before you tap into the whole article was a balance Takayama wanted to strike. Likewise, the decision to import Google Reader feeds as opposed to syncing them gave the Early Edition the advantage of speed and independence.

Moving forward, they’ve just released version 1.2.0 which greatly increases fetch speeds and responsiveness, and adds forward and back arrows for better browsing.

The Early Edition for iPad is $4.99 [iTunes link]

[Glasshouse Apps]

David Chartier, Chief Media Producer for Agile Web Solutions, talks to TiPb’s Rene and Leanna about 1Password [$4.99 - iTunes link] and 1Password Pro [$7.99 - iTunes link] for the iPhone… and iPad!

Watch along after the jump, and for more on 1Password for iPad, see David’s just-blogged mockups of their initial UI concepts at SwitchersBlog.com!

William Van Hecke, User Experience Lead at The Omni Group, talks to TiPb’s Rene and Leanna about OmniFocus [$19.99 - iTunes link] for the iPhone, and their future plans for iPad. Recorded live at Macworld 2010.

Watch along after the break…

Florian Voss from Microsoft Bing for Mobile talks to TiPb’s Rene and Leanna about Bing for iPhone [Free - iTunes link]… and iPad! Recorded live at Macworld 2010.

Watch along after the break…

Craig Hockenberry and the Icon Factory are among the earliest and most well respected iPhone developers in the community. In addition to their amazing design work and Mac and Windows software, they created the highly popular Twitterrific and Frenzic for the iPhone.

TiPb: We’ve been spending a lot of time lately discussing the App Store and what business model(s) it will evolve From launch, you took the route of having both a premium paid version of Twitterrific and a free, add-supported version. What made you settle on that idea, and how effective has it been for you?

Craig Hockenberry: The desire to have both a free and paid version of Twitterrific came from our experience on the Mac. It’s the best of both worlds for everyone: we get some funds to pay for the development of the product, and users get to choose how they want to support us.

We decided on having ads before the final details of the App Store were revealed. Since there are no demos in iTunes, the ability to have a free version for people to evaluate has been a big benefit. A lot of my fellow developers are now looking at this model.

With stories about apps being rejected or removed from the App Store, how (if at all) does this effect your planning or strategy as a developer? Is it something a developer should have to consider?

Rejections and other App Store issues are certainly a factor in planning. But it’s just one aspect of a successful product: it’s more important to focus on how an app will make customers happy or solve a problem.

That being said, I know of an app that was cancelled before it even left the drawing board. It included both podcasting and fart noises, and was actually a great app concept. I’m sad that it will never get made.

There’s still a demand for multitasking on the iPhone, which would obviously benefit apps like Twitterrific. How far will Apple’s still- pending Push-Notification service go towards satisfying this demand for you as a developer and as a user?

Asking me about a unreleased Apple technology isn’t going to get you a very interesting answer. (This stuff is still under NDA.)

I will make the observation that Apple is still getting its own push service (MobileMe) in order, so we’re all waiting to see how this will pan out. It’s not a simple problem from a developer’s point-of-view.

Now that Twitter seems to have solved their up-time issues, what could they surface or add to their platform to make apps like Twitterrific even more useful or powerful?

There are a lot of things that could make Twitter more useful: http://bit.ly/9L0A

One thing I see a need for is the ability to “jump into” existing threads of conversation amongst a group of users. This has been hard to do until recently because replies didn’t contain accurate links to original tweet. That has improved recently (thanks to Twitter implementing one of my suggestions.) But there could still be a lot done in that area to make the user experiences better.

You’ve now developed for the iPhone during three distinct phases: pre-SDK, post-SDK under NDA, and now SDK post-NDA. Any particular insights you gained from that range of experience, and what steps would you like to see Apple take next?

Everything led up to the “SDK post-NDA” phase. It’s what I wanted all along: developers can now freely exchange information about what we’re working on. When something doesn’t work right, others can help.

I think Apple is fully aware of this need: the recent launch of devforums.apple.com is an excellent example of how they’re actively working to help developers come up to speed with this new platform.

The only thing that I’d like to see from Apple at this point is a detailed list of what is and is not allowed in the App Store. This lack of information regarding acceptance limits innovation from developers: it’s too risky.

If there were absolutely no limitations on the SDK, what app would you never consider developing yourself, but still love to see on the iPhone?

I’d love to see a native version of Lotus Notes with excellent calendar support.

Seems like a strange request, I know.

But my wife uses a BlackBerry because she needs this functionality. If it was available on the iPhone she could buy her own and stop borrowing mine all the time

Profound thanks to Craig Hockenberry for taking the time to share his insights on the iPhone.

Furbo.org is his personal blog, iconfactory.com is his company’s website, and both Twitterriffic (read our review) Free and Premium and Frenzic (read our Forum review) are available via the iPhone iTunes App Store.

Marc Edwards is one of the well known team behind Mac Dashboard Widget aces iSlayer and iPhone development house bjango, whose apps include Jobs, Cities, Darkness, and Phases, and he was kind enough to sit down and talk App development and ecosystem with TiPb.

TiPb: Your team is famous for their Mac OS X Dashboard widgets, was developing for the iPhone really the easy transition some have suggested?

Marc: For us, yes. Our widgets have used Cocoa plugins for quite some time. A lot of widgets are straight HTML, Javascript and CSS though, which is very different to what’s needed for iPhone apps.

Was there anything substantially different about developing for the iPhone? If so, did you learn anything that you will effect your future Mac development?

The biggest lesson seems to be quality. Apple have some great bundled apps, so if you want to fit in, you’d better make sure you spend as much time as they do on the small details. The effective hit area of a human finger also means you have can only have a small number of buttons on screen at once. That keeps you on your toes—almost everything has to be contextual, which is quite different to traditional Mac development.

With some of Apple’s built in Apps, like Stocks, Weather, etc. seeming more like OS X widgets than real Apps, there was once speculation that Apple may open up a widget platform for the iPhone as well. With both WebApps and App Store apps, do you think there’s still a place for a dedicated iPhone widget development system?

There probably isn’t much point in a development platform between web apps and App Store apps… Apple can and will keep on extending WebKit, allowing for better web apps that look and behave more like App Store apps. That’s probably enough for anyone who doesn’t want to develop using Cocoa.

So the line between the two is close enough to not warrant another choice. But hey, who knows what Apple will do!

There been ongoing controversy about the App Store and how to both get exposure for apps and earn a fair living off their development. Do you think app developers are currently racing to the bottom, and pricing themselves out of business, or do you think volume and building user base will prove a viable model long term?

I don’t think pricing is as much of an issue as others seem to. We’re talking about a platform with millions of users (don’t forget iPod touch users when adding up the total). A huge portion of those users seem to buy apps.

If anything, I think we will see some more expensive apps appear, as all the small ideas get done well enough that each app type has a clear winner. Once the low hanging fruit is gone, developers will probably head towards bigger projects.

Either way, I’m not sure less than $5 is a bad pricepoint for an app. Just make sure you have a very good, very small team developing it and you’ll be fine.

Now that the numbers are approaching 10,000, what could Apple do to make iPhone apps more discoverable by end users?

Search results ordered by rankings. A “newly popular” section might work too. I think it’s going to be fairly difficult to keep iTunes as it is for music while making it work for the App Store too. I’m sure they’ll figure it out though. These kinds of things have been working well on web 2.0 sites for years.

What are your thoughts on the new “rate upon deletion” feature of iPhone OS 2.2? Is this unfair to developers who may get more negative reviews now? (fair disclosure, I’ve only give 4 and 5 star reviews to Apps I’ve deleted).

For Apple to build better search and ranking tools, they need all the good data they can get. Right now there’s a lot of fairly average apps on the store, so I don’t see how rate upon deletion should be something any decent developer should worry about.

I’ve also rated some apps well on deletion. Maybe a rate after 20th launch would be good too, although you don’t want it to get in the way too much.

Thanks Marc, we really appreciate your taking the time!

bjango is the website, and the apps are all available via the iPhone App Store (iTunes Link)

David Perry of Didev Studios wrote in to tell us about Bugz for the iPhone, and was kind enough to send along some interesting insights into the game, developing for the iPhone, and the App Store.

On the origins of Bugz as a PSP game:

Bugz was originally conceived about 2 years ago as a PSP game. It took me around a year of coding, design, graphics and audio work before I made a release into a competition that was being run at the time. Bugz was well received in the competition and received first place. The public seemed to like Bugz and it’s quirky cuteness.

On moving Bugz to the iPhone:

Recently I decided to look at iPhone development and Bugz was an obvious choice as a first project. The initial version of Bugz for the PSP only had 17 levels – this would obviously need expanding for the iPhone version. Whilst contemplating the iPhone port of Bugz, I asked a friend to join me on the project, he accepted and Didev Studios was born.

On the re-development:

The port to approximately 5 weeks and I use the term ‘port’ loosely. The game was pretty much re-written specifically for the iPhone, only the original graphics and audio were retained. The iPhone really is a great device for developers to create for. The SDK is feature packed and comes with great documentation and samples – all that a developer could want.

On the App Store and marketing for the iPhone:

I’m happy with the way things have gone so far, Bugz sales are increasing slowly and feedback from users has on the whole been great. The one thing that is hard is marketing your app. Any released app is quickly lost in the App Store and external marketing is a must in order to get potential users interested.

Bugz is available in the iTunes App Store.

Michael Alvarez is the CEO of Avantar, the company behind iPhone applications like One Tap Movies, Showtimes, Calculator AXL, Yellow Pages, AirYell, and Munch. As part of TiPb’s ongoing interview series and our look at the iPhone App Store, Michael was good enough to discuss Avantar’s views on Apple’s new mobile platform, where it is, and where it’s going.

TiPb: Avantar has a wide range of apps on the market. Most appear to focus on quickly acquiring and succinctly displaying useful information like movie times, business listings, and restaurant options. What made Avantar choose these particular apps for your initial iPhone offerings?

Michael Alvarez: You are right. Our applications are meant to be locally relevant, where we use the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to locate the user and then provide relevant information in his or her surrounding area. This is the ultimate stop gap where the brick and mortar business world meets the most relevant, and targeted, digital advertising solution. And, no one is doing it better than we are on the iPhone right now.

What made us choose these particular apps is a bit of a long story. It begins with the President of Avantar’s passion for everything Apple. In his youth, Mr. Adrian Ochoa’s kicked off his successful career with his purchase of Apple’s first computer, which eventually led him to grow a very successful advertising agency and movie production studio.

More recently, he was also one of the first to get the first generation iPhone and it allowed him to envision what the future holds for a mobile Internet and the effect it will have on the advertising industry. Research and data support his conclusions of hyper-growth market opportunity in this sector. Recently, research firm Informa Telecoms & Media stated that “the mobile ad market is expected to grow to $12 billion by 2013, up from an estimated $1.72 billion for 2008.” If you think about it, it just makes sense. Not everyone has a computer, but cell phones are more readily available to the masses. The population of this earth is 6.6 Billion and 3.3 Billion mobile handsets have already been sold.

When Mr. Ochoa and I learned about the plans to launch the App Store, we were in the process of ramping up our interactive yellow pages business and saw the marriage between mobile, Internet, & GPS as the perfect fit for what we had in mind. A few of our developers downloaded the SKD and begun programming our apps several months before the launch of the App Store. We now have nearly 1 Million downloads, and the rest is history yet to be discovered.

Given the diversity in Avantar’s lineup, when designing user interfaces how do you weigh consistent branding/unified look-and-feel against the possibly very different requirements of each individual app?

Getting the right balance is the formula for success. It really comes down to experience, and being that the iPhone Apps are so new we learn new things through trial and error every day that help us to create that balance. We are also very thankful for excellent users who’ve downloaded our apps and provide us with their feedback all the time. We even had one user from Serbia who offered to redesign one of our apps and sent us all the files for free. How amazing is that?

When bringing your content and services to the iPhone, how much did you have to rethink existing presentation and interaction paradigms? Is there anything you learned from developing for the iPhone that would inform, or be carried back to, development for other platforms?

The iPhone was new for us so continue to learn as we go along. We just had to adapt our web design/usability experience and transform it into a smaller window view. Our collective experience in usability and design also help a great deal.

With 3G speed and GPS location, we’re starting to see a shift in applications not just from “static” to “dynamic” but from “when” to “where”. Instead of an alarm telling me it’s 3pm, I can get an alarm telling me I’m passing the grocery store and I need milk. How fundamental will this change be for end-users?

Grand! Think about how much progress our two apps have made to simplify people’s life:

1) Yellow Pages: No more phone book, no more searching two or three websites, no more reading through a list find what you want that’s closest to you, and now you have all the information you need with a few taps of your finger including phone number, address, and driving directions.

2) Showtimes: No more calling an outdated recording for each theater, no more hunting around for information through two or three different websites, no more creating traffic jams in front of the theater to try and read all the posters and showtimes, and no more need for the newspaper. All of the necessary information shows instantly with a single tap of the finger.

Which, if any, of your iPhone apps (or feature(s) of your apps) have especially delighted you? Anything turn out even better than you first thought, or catch on with your customers more than you anticipated?

Showtimes has been as high as the #7 most favorite app, and Yellow Pages has also been a very popular app. Recently Apple published a report stating that the App Store reached it’s 100 Millionth download, which means we currently receive nearly 1% of all their downloads.

Most developers are still experimenting with the business model behind the App Store. You offer both free and paid applications. Does that give you the best of both current worlds? Is there anything Apple could tweak or surface to make things even better for you and your customers?

Our strategy behind offering both paid and free apps was more experimental since no one really knew what to expect when the doors opened. It’s been a great learning experience for us.

One thing I would ask Apple would be to add our own affiliate tracking links on the confirmation pages for each confirmed download. This would allow us to optimize advertising campaigns to know which source produces how many downloads, and thus increasing downloads and sales for both of Apple and us the developers.

Thanks Michael! Avantar.us is Avantar’s website, and their applications One Tap Movies, Showtimes, Calculator AXL, Yellow Pages, AirYell, and Munch are available via the iTunes App Store.

Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad of Tapbots are the breakout designers and engineers behind Weightbot (iTunes link), one of the most original user experiences released on the iPhone App Store to date. Continuing the iPhone blog’s behind-the-scenes look at iPhone application development, Mark and Paul were kind enough to take time and discuss their ideas on interface and interactivity, and how what more we might expect from Apple’s next generation mobile platform.

TiPb: How was approaching the iPhone interface for this App different than how you would have approached an interface for another platform?

Mark: It was really different coming from a web design background. 320×460 isn’t a lot of space to work with and then you have to factor in the huge difference in input devices. A person’s finger is a lot less accurate than a mouse cursor. At the same time, I wasn’t designing a website so I was freed from a lot of rules and conventions I’ve been following over the past 8 years. So my initial approach was pretty simple. If Weightbot was an actual physical device, how could I make it usable and fun at the same time?

Paul: The thing I found challenging about dealing with the iPhone interface is that users want a silky smooth and yet the iPhone and iPod touch are both very slow compared to any modern Mac. I spent a lot of time juggling things around in order to get a consistent 60 fps for all the various animations within Weightbot. Coming from our current Multi Gigahertz, Multi Gigabyte and Multi Core world where for the most part you don’t have to worry about performance to a platform like the iPhone where every cycle and byte counts is a big change.

TiPb: Weightbot’s interface is obviously both creative and innovative. Is the robot theme something that came to expressly for that app, or does it exemplify a personal style of interaction that you can see pushing further in future with different types of Apps.

Mark: The whole robot theme sort of just fell into place. That happens a lot with the work I do. I can’t always sit down with a piece of paper and try to think up a whole concept from scratch. I prefer to just dive into the work and then see what ideas pop up from it.

Paul came to me one day telling me he wanted to test the iPhone market and was going to start off simple with a weight tracking app. He asked if I was interested in helping out and didn’t want to spend more than a week or two on it. I think the original plan was to use all of the standard UI elements provided in the SDK, but I thought I’d let my imagination run a little and then see what Paul would think. My initial sketch was simple. It was just the shape of the iphone with the lcd as seen on the app today. One thing popped into mind at that point. It was Eve from Wall-e. Everything just fell into place from there. Weightbot was inspired by Eve, and the Tapbots idea was based on the whole concept of different utility robots in Wall-e. That was such a great movie. When I was in high school, my dream was to become a 3d modeler for Pixar. Obviously, my career went off on a tangent (along with this interview).

So now that you know the story of where Tapbots and Weightbot came from, obviously you can expect there to be more robot applications in the future.

TiPb: Given the stylization, was it difficult to balance form and function, and make sure the interface didn’t take over or drown out the underlying App?

Mark: Over the years, my web design philosophy has matured. I used to be all about the flash, bang, whiz type of websites, but one day I just realized that people just want to use the site or get the information they need. That’s not to say flashy sites don’t have their place. I’ve just changed my philosophy on it. So my take on all UI design is function first, and then wrap a solid, usable design around it. The same approach was taken with Weightbot. I pictured a user balancing on his/her scale, and easily being able to enter weight data into the app with one hand and without needing too much precision or concentration.

The Wii fit is probably the best example of simplicity because it weighs you and stores your weight data automatically. It’s also somewhat fun to do. The big flaw with it is you have to turn on your TV and Wii just to do it and that can get tedious if you do it everyday. I know because I have one and hardly ever turn it on anymore. So Weightbot needed to be very simple, fun enough to be motivational, and not feel like a chore to use. I’d like to think we did a pretty decent job on it.

TiPb: Did developing an interface for the iPhone change the way you may approach future interfaces on other platforms? Did you learn anything special from developing for the iPhone?

Mark: New experiences always help shape the way you think about other things. I’ve definitely learned a lot from the experience and I’m sure it will influence my work on the web. Maybe not from a visual standpoint, but definitely from a user experience point of view.

TiPb: You use touch and accelerometer based interactions in your Apps. Are developers fully tapping the potential of iPhone interactivity yet? What more, if anything, could Apple surface to help developers create even better user interactions?

Mark: Some developers are doing really cool stuff with it. The multi-touch screen, accelerometer, and even the mic are all input devices for the iPhone. Developers should use them to their app’s advantage. Our main purpose for using them was to simplify the interface. Imagine having a “graph” button in Weightbot to switch to the graph. The button would have to be small so it doesn’t make the interface busy, but then the user has to look for the button. Using the accelerometer was a no brainer. It keeps our interface clean and it’s very intuitive.

Google Earth makes really good use of the accelerometer and multi-touch controls. I think games are also pushing how users can interact with the iPhone. I think the possibilities are almost limitless so we will be seeing a lot of great solutions in the future.

Paul: I don’t think most developers fully tapping the iPhone at all. It’ll probably be another year before we see a large number of apps that really push the iPhone. Unfortunately in the current iPhone SDK there’s very little defined support for detecting things like two finger swipes or shaking the iPhone. You pretty much have to depend on accessing the accelerometer and Event code at fairly low levels. Once Apple provides some higher level support for these features you are going to see more and more developers using them in innovative ways.

TiPb: What worked out especially well for you with Weightbot? Any favorite features or elements that you’re especially happy with?

Mark: I’m happy most with the pure simplicity of it. Part of me wants to say this is the final version. But we get a lot of feature requests and Weightbot is nothing without people using it. So we will do our best to make our users happy without sacrificing on the initial vision of Weightbot.

Paul: I really like the Date Slider screen, maybe its because I spent an obscene amount of time tuning it, but I really enjoy the effect of flicking the Slider and hearing it tick as it switches dates.

Mark, Paul, we sincerely appreciate your taking the time to share with us and our readers!

Tapbots is Mark and Paul’s website, and their premiere application, Weightbot, is available via the iTunes App Store.

James Thomson is the acclaimed developer behind DragThing for Mac OS X and PCalc RPN Calculator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Following up on his recent blog postings about the challenges involved navigating the still-nascent App Store business model for developers, and TiPb’s own look at whether or not there’s a “long tail” potential for the market, James was gracious enough to sit down (virtually) and share his thoughts with us about the issues facing 3rd party iPhone developers going forward.

TiPb: James, you recently blogged about PCalc in the context of a “postmortem”. What was the reaction like to that article, and did it bring about any changes in your current thinking or how you plan to proceed with PCalc going forward?

James Thomson: Reaction was interesting. Many iPhone developers contacted me privately, and via the blog, to say they had encountered similar problems with sales after the recent changes to the App Store.
Some pointed out the “Availability Trick” to change the App Store release date for your software when you do an update, to make it sort higher up in the listings. I talked about that a bit in a follow-up post here. It’s unclear whether it really is a trick, or just what you are supposed to do, but it does seem to work.

I’ve also tried a few other suggestions, like renaming the app to “PCalc RPN Calculator” to make sure it appears during searches for the word “calculator” which it didn’t before. So far, there has been a relatively small boost to sales, but I’m not sure how much of that is due to my changes, and how much is just down to the overall publicity that the article generated.

I’m working on a small 1.1.1 update at the moment to fix a few things, and I’ll likely add some more layouts and themes. The real question is what will happen to sales then. If they remain flat, with all the other changes, then I’m going to have to try some more traditional marketing beyond the Google AdWords adverts we are already running. To a certain extent, the blog itself /is/ a form of marketing – I don’t think I can really deny that, given it is raising the profile of our software.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump…

TiPb has been looking at the App Store and whether or not there is a “long tail” for developer income. Do you think there is currently a long-term business model for developers of niche-apps?

I think it’s a much harder market than it was back in July. It’s well publicised that the store is pretty crowded now, and it’s getting increasingly harder to find things.

I think that when the App Store launched, the initial sales numbers were so high, that many developers – myself included – ended up with cartoon dollar signs for eyes, multiplying the first few months of sales figures out to a whole year. Now that there are many thousands more applications on the store, I don’t think we’re ever going to get back to those early days.

I think it’s certainly possible to have a big “hit” application that breaks the top 50 and stays there for a while, generating significant income, but I don’t think the store is geared towards more substantial applications that will be updated over a long time. Our sales are still non-zero however, so perhaps the level of the tail is just lower than expected.

Also, to be honest, this isn’t happening in a vacuum – the state of the global economy isn’t really helping matters. A lot of the software on the store isn’t essential – PCalc excluded of course – so people might think twice before purchasing if they are worried about their savings. How much of that is a factor, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it helps sales.

Since Apple and the App Store is the only way for developers to make their Apps available, does this shift some of the promotional responsibility to Apple? I.e., does Apple have some duty to promote Apps and provide as much visibility as possible, or do iPhone developers, like traditional devs, have to take on the marketing aspect for themselves?

I think Apple does bear some responsibility, at least in so far as making the store as easy to use as possible and helping customers find what they want. And more importantly, highlighting the best examples the store has to offer. If thousands of people are buying something, but it has a lot of one star reviews, why should that be more “popular” in the listings than something that has all five star reviews, but only a handful of people have found it?

I’d like it if a new iPhone user was looking for a more advanced calculator, they could quickly see that PCalc has 70-odd five star reviews and a very loyal group of customers. How you would represent that on the phone, I don’t know. But Apple has lots of very talented user interface designers who could come up with something

Of course developers need to do some marketing themselves. But Apple gets 30% of the sales, so I don’t think they are completely off the hook.

PCalc is a $9.99 App, which many have said seems to be the “sweet spot” for paid apps at the moment. However, we see some vendors switching from paid to free and back, or running short-term “sales” to either benefit from volume pricing or drive up their popularity before switching back. Is this a reality in the current App Store model, and is it something developers now all have to consider, both for their Apps and competing apps?

That’s a really good question, I don’t honestly know. Of course, you’ll always get people who say that if your software was just that little bit cheaper, they’d buy it on the spot. How accurate that is, I’m not sure. If PCalc was $4.99, would I sell more than twice as many copies? If it was 99c, would I sell more than ten times?

It’s a little tempting to just try it, and get some empirical data, but if you reduce the price and find that it doesn’t actually help sales that much long term, then you’re just losing out. And if the market tends towards lower and lower pricing, then I think the quality of software on the store will suffer.

I priced PCalc at what I thought was a fair price for what I’ve made, I can’t really do much more than that. As it was there on day one, we didn’t know what the prices of our competitors were going to be, so we tried not to worry about it too much. As it is, there are calculators on the store from free up to twice the price.

I do think it’s equally hard for customers to know whether something that’s priced at $9.99 is ten times better than something that’s 99c…

What steps could Apple take, short term or long term, to help developers gain greater visibility in the App Store?

Short term, I’d add more categories, perhaps add another level below each of the main categories. Put all the calculators in one place so you only need to look at 20 things in a given section, rather than 2000. Perhaps some filtering options, so you don’t see apps with lots of very low ratings. Even just a sorting option to sort by rating would help.

Long term, I think there needs to be a way of presenting what the “best” apps are on the store rather than just those that sell the most copies. I want to see apps ranked by quality, perhaps some combination of sales and rating, maybe with an editorial component. I don’t think Apple has the time to do that right now, given that an app still takes a week or so to show up on the store after submission, but I hope they are thinking about it.

Some way to support limited trial versions in the store would also be very useful for customers. The Xbox Live Arcade store on the Xbox 360 has the right model for this – everything on it is a demo version that can be converted to a full version within the app itself.

The iTunes model for music doesn’t work as well for selling software.

Last question: does “backspace” belong on a virtualized Calculator? (That’s a cheap shot at Apple channeling my counterpart at Crackberry.com… )

Wow, I never even noticed that the Apple calculator doesn’t have one. Yes, it certainly does

James, thanks for your time and generosity in sharing your insights with us and our readers!

Dragthings.com is James Thomson’s website and blog, and his highly-regarded calculator application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, PCalc is available from the iTunes App Store.