The v1.1 version of iPuckLite is built and sitting on my hard drive, ready to submit as soon as v1.0.1 is approved.

I have may have been a tiny bit hard on the App Store review process in the past, but the recent approval times are not too bad.  I can live with a turnaround at 7 – 9 days.  Let’s just hope that this is the new normal, not simply a burst of performance…

Updates:
2009.10.06 — iPuckLite v1.0.1 was approved at 8:09 PM, PDT. I’m telling you, the App Store reviewers are cranking!
2009.10.06 — iPuckLite v1.1 was submitted.
2009.10.11 — TiltBallLite v1.0 was approved. At 9:50 AM PDT on a Sunday!
2009.10.11 — TiltBallLite v1.0.1 should be submited today.
2009.10.15 — iPuck v1.3 approved.
2009.10.16 — iPuckLite v1.1 approved.
2009.10.20 — TiltBallLite v1.0.1 approved (8:00 PM, PDT!)
 

RingDanceLite provides a soothing audiovisual encounter with your iPhone™ or iPod touch™.  The colored rings dance randomly about your screen.  When they touch, they exchange colors and make a gentle sound.  The calming melodies produced by the dancing rings create a relaxing environment that enables you to either focus your thoughts, or completely surrender to the otherworldly music.

The music produced by the dancing rings may be almost hypnotic, in spite of the distraction presented by the crass commercial imagery.  We hope that the truly evolved will be able to look beyond the logo and use the app as a tool for meditation and concentration.  Of course, we’d be just pleased as punch if these folks went ahead and bought the paid version of the app.  That way, they could avoid all exposure to the logo.  To be honest, though, I created the logo, and I’m not really sure why they’re so offended by it.  I guess that therein lies the difference between the engineer and the artist…

Technorati Tags:  iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, TiltBall, iPuck, iPunt, RingDance, RingDanceLite

RingDance still provides a soothing audiovisual encounter with your iPhone™ or iPod touch™.  The colored rings dance randomly about your screen.  When they touch, they exchange colors and make a gentle sound.  The calming melodies produced by the dancing rings create a relaxing environment that enables you to either focus your thoughts, or completely surrender to the otherworldly music.

The music produced by the dancing rings can now be almost hypnotic, without the distraction presented by the crass commercial blasphemy.  We regularly use it as a tool for meditation and concentration, and now those that have evolved beyond the marketing plane can, as well.

We hope that you’ll continue to enjoy it.

Technorati Tags:  iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, TiltBall, iPuck, iPunt, RingDance

Unfortunately, RingDance has been our least commercially successful effort.  We had sold just 14 copies and given away 12 promo-code copies since the app was approved at the end of May — certainly not the blockbuster that we might have hoped for.  With this in mind, I decided to see what would happen if I just gave it away.  So, last week, I set the price for RingDance to US$0.00.  I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect.  We’ve done the promo-code thing, with relatively pathetic results.  Most of the codes that we gave away were not redeemed — they just expired.  I’d pretty much decided to stop developing RingDance.  The results simply didn’t justify additional effort, but I really do like this app, so I was hoping for some epiphany from the “Free” test.

That’s right, 399 copies of RingDance were downloaded in just over a week.  Our downloads for that week were >15x the downloads for the previous three months, combined.  We also received more than 20 additional ratings and one new review.  We haven’t noticed a post-promotion uptick in sales, but it did feel good to know that some other people are actually enjoying our efforts.  I was even inspired to start working on some enhancements to make the app perform better on old hardware and to be significantly more visually pleasing.  One other thing to note, the only “marketing” that I did for this test was the blog post mentioned above and a couple of tweets.  No press releases, no forum posts, nothing else.

This lame test leads me to believe that (a) iPhone users, in general, do expect apps to be free;  (b) “Free” trumps any silly marketing promotions; (c) There may be real potential for lite apps.

Now, if the Dungeon Masters at the App Store would just approve a couple of my lite apps, perhaps I’ll really have something to report.

“Where is the art?
This is so crass!!! If you developers were the least bit sincere, you’d never dream of putting an ad/link on the screen, let alone in the middle of it!!! So now, there is nothing meditational about this app!!! However, there could be, if you let it just be!!!”

This is transcribed verbatim, including the use of three exclamation points to punctuate each sentence.

Since I can’t express how glad I am that he’s back, without sounding all mushy, I’ll do the next best thing.  To celebrate his return, RingDance will be free, over the next week.  I hope that RingDance does nice job of highlighting some of the “goodness” of the iPhone / iPod touch platform as an entertainment device.  We even tried to incorporate an interaction model that further showcases the platform.  We hope that you’ll enjoy the app.

Welcome back, Sir!

The music produced by the dancing rings can be almost hypnotic.  We regularly use it as aid to meditation and concentration.  We hope that you’ll really enjoy this app.  Please let us know how you’re using it.

RingDance is currently available on the App Store.

Technorati Tags:  iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, iPuck, iPunt, RingDance

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