…and a couple other similar ones: Synthetic Bits on Youtube
We’ve been making videos of all our apps to include in the new and improved in-house ads we will run to promote our other apps when iAds doesn’t serve us any real ads. More on that once we submit the updated Explore Space! ad-supported app and try it out.
For our eighth and ninth apps we decided to experiment with a free model that promoted our other apps and ran Admob ads. We made a free entry in our Puzzle Fun Pack series called Explore Space!, and a new one that helps you come up with really Terrible Baby Names. So far the initial results haven’t been that great, but we’ll give it some time and keep you updated as the experiment goes on.
So do we.
Puzzle Fun Pack: Wild Animals! is apparently huge in Portugal. We have no idea exactly why (other than it offers wonderful gaming value, delight, and wildlife fun – transcending borders to appeal to kids across the globe) but we’ll take it. Obrigado!
Online news reports and forums are filled to the gills with iPhone developers claiming to be seeing astronomical improvements on app approval times since the new year. The old days of no transparency and months of waiting are finally over, they proclaim.
So what are we seeing? Well, we’re seeing improvements, but nothing through the roof quite yet.
Our latest app, the FunkBox Drum Machine, was submitted to Apple about five days ago, and was just approved this afternoon. Our wait times were never that bad to begin with – we were seeing weeks, not months.
With this latest release, we’re definitely seeing an improvement, especially how fast the app gets placed “in review”, which took all of three hours. But we then waited for five days before getting released into the iTunes App Store. Other developers are reporting updates to apps being approved in a few hours, and brand new apps in twenty four hours. We sure didn’t see that.
Sure, we may have got caught up in some Apple employee getting us into their approval queue and then heading out for the three day weekend, so this may not be the best time to test out the store’s approval timeline improvements. We’ve got another app to submit in the next few weeks, we’ll hopefully get some twenty-four hour goodness on that one. The trend is definitely heading in the favor of iPhone developers, sounds like Apple is listening to the community and responding.
We haven’t been updating this blog lately, but we are still hard at work cranking out new apps. Our latest two to hit the iTunes Store are Christmas Advent Games, a Christmas themed advent calendar puzzle game, and babyCalm, a healthcare and fitness utility app to help you calm down a crying baby.
Christmas Advent Games made the iTunes Top 75 Kids Games list in the US for over a week, and peaked in the Top 50 in the UK. babyCalm was just released yesterday and is the first app we’ve made that isn’t a game or entertainment related, so we’re interested to see how it does.
These will be our last two apps that get released in 2009, so it’s probably a good time for us to thank everyone who has helped us out with their support and encouragement. Thank you so much!
That makes five Synthetic Bits apps out there in less than six months, and there are more on the way. We’ve even made it through our first major iTunes store re-design, as you can see by comparing the image clips of our new apps in the store above compared to the ones we posted in previous entries. Now we’re using all the experience we’ve gained from developing these first few simpler apps to get ready to start designing and working on some new and even more exciting things. The next two apps are already in development with some interesting new twists, and bigger projects await in the new year.
Thanks again for your support and happy holidays!
Our third app, Underwater Ocean Puzzles, was accepted and is now for sale in the App store. This one is just a variation on our Spooky Halloween Puzzle app, so it’s really only app number two and a half, but it’s our first non-holiday app and our first one geared towards kids. It also includes some electronic music from my band Submodern’s last album, which is something I hope to keep doing in the future.
Apple approved it in exactly 14 days, so they get to count it for their “14 days or less” success rate. So far we’ve had everything approved within two weeks and no rejections, knock on wood, so our experiences with the approval process have overall been very positive.
Submitted: October 2
Tested by Apple: October 13
Accepted: October 16
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