iPhone/iPod touch Must Have Apps

[Hockey]

Does anyone use any gps apps like tom tom or similar?

Would it be worth purchasing or is it a waste?

[silentsim]

I use the tomtom app quite a bit now, used to like Navigon but lately tomtom has done very well for me where Navigon got me lost!

Tomtom works great!

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Hockey

Does anyone use any gps apps like tom tom or similar?

Would it be worth purchasing or is it a waste?

I've never used TomTom, but I have the Navigon App and use it weekly and sometimes daily. I even used it on a road trip this summer in Idaho, Alberta and BC. It is amazing...at least as accurate as my old Garmin dash-mount unit and way better than the factory in-car system I have. I use the app exclusively now and don't bother with anything else. Totally worth the price.

Like silentsim mentioned, though, it's not perfect. It's accurate 90% of the time, gets you very close the other 5%, and the last 5% it can't find.

[Superflyer]

Do the GPS apps rack up roaming data charges when you leave the city, say when you go to Idaho\Montana\Banff etc?

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

Do the GPS apps rack up roaming data charges when you leave the city, say when you go to Idaho\Montana\Banff etc?

tomtom and navigon do not use data for navigation, only if you want to search for local places. if you have an address or if its in a POI it does not use data. to prevent any data disable data roaming and you'll be fine, and navigation will still work A OK.

[Superflyer]

So how does your GPS know where you are if it is not transferring data?

[Roast Beef]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

So how does your GPS know where you are if it is not transferring data?

The iPhone has a GPS antenna built in, the Tom-Tom an Navigon apps have all the maps pre loaded.

[ken0042]

Another update today for the original Angry Birds game.

[Mazrim]

Final Fantasy Tactics apparently is coming pretty soon now. I'm pretty stoked! (Please Square do not charge $14 for it!)

[ma-skis.com]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Final Fantasy Tactics apparently is coming pretty soon now. I'm pretty stoked! (Please Square do not charge $14 for it!)

if they do charge $14, you should keep an eye out on there other games to drop in price to promote the new release, i know they did this with secret of mana anyways.

[Travis Munroe]

My app was finally released and will be free for a couple more days. "Sing Star"
Had over 3000 downloads in just over a week and 6 reviews in Canada at five stars and 4 in the states at 5 stars.
Needs work no doubt but I think the basis is there for a easy money maker!

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Roast Beef

The iPhone has a GPS antenna built in, the Tom-Tom an Navigon apps have all the maps pre loaded.

Yes but the iPhone uses aGPS or assisted GPS, which combines cell phone tower data with its GPS locator to give a precise fix. Without data the location is not as precise (or will take much longer to get a fix)

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by Realtor 1

My app was finally released and will be free for a couple more days. "Sing Star"
Had over 3000 downloads in just over a week and 6 reviews in Canada at five stars and 4 in the states at 5 stars.
Needs work no doubt but I think the basis is there for a easy money maker!

Good luck with your app. I think you'll get quite a few hits in the search because of the PS3 game that shares the same name. Just watch out for Sony lawyers...

2 suggestions:

1) Get your designer to add retina graphics to the app. It's super easy (two files, 1 for for retina graphics and 1 for regular graphics). Some of the images are blurry on the iPhone 4.

2) Let people search/listen to music for free. Make commenting, rating the paid portion. You can limit the number of songs they can listen to each day and have unlimited listens be the paid version. I would think the vast majority of people want to listen to the others singing, not sing themselves. Right now there's nothing for me to do but whistle into the mic and upload to your server because I don't sing and can't hear what others are singing.

Out of curiosity, what would you consider an easy money maker? When I talk to people about iPhone app sales I always stress that they should lower expectations. There is a huge difference in downloads between a free app and a .99 cent app. When we set Own This World to free for 1.5 days, we were getting 50-100 new accounts every hour. That put a lot of stress on our servers so we set the game back to .99 cents. Going back to .99 had our sales drop to about 10 downloads per day. There are millions and millions of iPhone users but the vast majority of them are cheap.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by KTrain

Out of curiosity, what would you consider an easy money maker? When I talk to people about iPhone app sales I always stress that they should lower expectations. There is a huge difference in downloads between a free app and a .99 cent app. When we set Own This World to free for 1.5 days, we were get 50-100 new accounts every hour. That put a lot of stress on our servers so we set the game back to .99 cents. Going back to .99 had our sales drop to about 10 downloads per day. There are millions and millions of iPhone users but the vast majority of them are cheap.

When you attach a price of "free" to something, it entirely changes how people think about it. Malcolm Gladwell had a piece in The New Yorker about what "free" means as a price and he references one experiment in particular that appears in Chris Anderson's "Free: The Future of Radical Price". It's a good read. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...urrentPage=all

Ariely offered a group of subjects a choice between two kinds of chocolate—Hershey’s Kisses, for one cent, and Lindt truffles, for fifteen cents. Three-quarters of the subjects chose the truffles. Then he redid the experiment, reducing the price of both chocolates by one cent. The Kisses were now free. What happened? The order of preference was reversed. Sixty-nine per cent of the subjects chose the Kisses. The price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede.

“From the consumer’s perspective, there is a huge difference between cheap and free,” Anderson writes. “Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business. . . . The truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another.”

[KTrain]

Great post malcolmk14. I don't want to derail the app thread. This topic could probably be a thread on its own.

Converting people who download free apps into paying customers is extremely difficult. They need to see the value in what they're purchasing over and above what they're already getting for free. You need to get them hooked on what they're already doing for free and then show them that paying a fee will add to that experience.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by KTrain

Great post malcolmk14. I don't want to derail the app thread. This topic could probably be a thread on its own.

Converting people who download free apps into paying customers is extremely difficult. They need to see the value in what they're purchasing over and above what they're already getting for free. You need to get them hooked on what they're already doing for free and then show them that paying a fee will add to that experience.

The most money I have spent on apps for my ipod touch is in game purchases for an alien tower defense game I got for free in the Herald itunes give away stuff over Christmas.

That's not saying much, because it is only $2, but it shows how a good free game has the potential to generate income.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by KTrain

There are millions and millions of iPhone users but the vast majority of them are cheap.

The iPhone app market is a multi-billion dollar business though - individuals may be cheap, but the market as a whole is a freaking gold mine compared to Mac or PC indy app development.

[Superflyer]

One of the best ways to get money from me is to have a lite version of your game\app etc that is really good and just as you start really playing it have it end. This does not always end up in me buying the app but it has gotten me to buy a few of my favorite games.

[Mccree]

My wife and I have started playing ticket to ride. It is a really fun game. We share the same iTunes account on both of our iPads. If I purchase the expansion packs thru the in app puchase does my wife also have to purchase the expansion or does she get it automatically since we share the same iTunes account?

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by Mccree

My wife and I have started playing ticket to ride. It is a really fun game. We share the same iTunes account on both of our iPads. If I purchase the expansion packs thru the in app puchase does my wife also have to purchase the expansion or does she get it automatically since we share the same iTunes account?

You should since it's likely a single defined in app purchase item. When I was implementing that stuff in an app it always let me re-buy something I'd bought before if I removed the app or used the same iTunes account on a new device.