Earlier today, Brian X. Chen of wired.com published an article titled, “Apple’s Tablet E-Book App Rips off Indie Dev’s Creation“.

Ok.

It begins:

We love the iPhone book-reading app Classics, and apparently Apple does, too. The iPad tablet includes an app called iBooks, and its similarities to Classics are beyond the realm of coincidence.

If you haven’t heard of Classics, then you should definitely check it out. It’s awesome. There are two main ways in which iBooks and Classics are similar:

1. They both represent digital books by arranging them on a digital shelf.
2. They both include a page-flipping effect.

Also, they are both applications used to read eBooks.

From the article:

The 3D page-flipping effect looks almost exactly the same.

Not really. The page flip effect in iBooks looks incredible in the demos; it truly appears as if the user is flipping a page in a book. The page flip effect in Classics is great, absolutely, but it doesn’t compare. Skip to 4:00 in the iPad video to see just how good it looks in iBooks. You can actually see the reverse side of the page as it flips.

Ryu also acknowledges that Classics’ bookshelf view was heavily inspired by Delicious Library, but he asked Delicious Library creator Wil Shipley for approval before Classics’ release.

Elsewhere on the Internet, MG Seigler of TechCrunch is reporting that Apple copied the bookshelf concept from Delicious Library. Quoting Delicious Monster founder Will Shipley:

“But the thing about iBooks is, it’s a book-reader. So, of course they looked around, found the best interface for displaying books (Delicious Library’s shelves), and said: yup, this is what we’re doing”

Sidenote: Delicious Library Shelves were formally known as bookshelves.

On Twitter, Shipley wrote:

I guess it’s not enough Apple has hired every employee who worked on Delicious Library, they also had to copy my product’s look. Flattery?

Yes, flattery. Displaying digital books on a digital bookshelf is a great idea that you (and Mike Matas) thought of first.

A final voice of reason from Ryu:

“It stung a bit as a huge fan of Apple, but in the end it’s a page flip,” Ryu told Wired.com. “We’ll come up with something cooler and let them take this digital reading experience to the next level with iBooks.”

Excellent.

Buy TV Forecast or Pocketball on January 20 and all proceeds made from the purchase will be donated to the American Red Cross. The donation period ends 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.

Alternatively, you can donate directly using iTunes.

If you’ve yet to decide whether Pocketball is for you, then maybe you should try Pocketball Lite. It’s free and it just hit the App Store. It contains 5 stages; The first 3 are from Pocketball and the last 2 are completely new.

Recently, Apple started running apps through a static analysis tool to detect calls to private APIs. It flags calls like this one:

if ([someObject respondsToSelector:@selector(somePrivateApi:)])
{
    [someObject performSelector:@selector(somePrivateApi:)
                     withObject:foo];
}

But just out of curiosity, I wonder if it’s able to pick up a call like this one:

NSString* selectorName = @"somePrivateApi:";

SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString(selectorName);

if ([someObject respondsToSelector:selector])
{
    [someObject performSelector:selector withObject:foo];
}

Just sayin’ is all.

There are things that are decidedly wrong with the App Store and they’re pretty well documented. Absolutely, there are things that I’d like to see changed. But this isn’t about that. So rather than biting the hand that feeds me, I’m going to tell it what I’d like for dessert.

Analytics

How did the person find the App? Was it by using the iPhone or iTunes? Was it by browsing through categories or typing in search terms? If it was search terms then what were they? Right now, I’m most interested in learning whether there are popular and unpopular categories. That is, can a low rank in category X translate to more revenue than a high rank in category Y? Intuitively, the answer is yes. The Action category is surely more popular than the Dice category. But what about Arcade and Simulation?

Notification of a feature

Pocketball was recently featured a “Top New Game” in the US and Germany, and probably others. It would be handy if developers were notified (maybe through iTunes Connect) when our applications achieve featured status.

Overall/Category rank

So there’s over 100,000 apps in the store. And about 25% of them are free ¹. That means an overall rank for a paid app would be a figure between 1 and 75,000. Right now, if you’re not in one of the top 100’s, all you know is that you’re somewhere between 101 and 75,000. Knowing the exact figure would be invaluable. As an example, it could be used to determine when it’s time to kick off a marketing campaign. Sure, when revenue start to go down you know that it’s time to do something, but the App Store has good days and bad days. Weekends perform better than weekdays and holidays better still. Trending an overall App Store rank (or overall category rank) can, in many ways, be more useful than trending revenue.

If I had to pick one, it would be Analytics, absolutely. I got into this game shortly after Apple switched to daily reporting of revenue from monthly reporting. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to receive monthly reports. In a few months, I hope that we look back at the state of the App Store as it is now and laugh at how much better it has become and wonder how we ever managed this way.

So there you have it. A relatively successful launch and a generally positive trend. So far, Pocketball has brought in a total revenue of US $1,926 (AU $2,097) in 10 days. Not exactly a smash hit (yet), but still a good result.

Some random points that can be intuited from the graph:

• The iTunes “New Releases” list has next to no effect nowadays
• The TouchArcade review produced an enormous spike but the effect wore off quickly as the review dropped from the front page
• I can’t estimate the amount of traffic the AppSmile review produced

Pocketball is currently ranked #54 in the US Puzzle charts and #51 in the US Simulations charts. I briefly experimented with switching the secondary category from Simulation to Arcade. There are many more Arcade apps than their are Simulation apps so this would mean a drop in rank but I hypothesized that a low Arcade rank would be more visible than a high Simulation rank. I figured that since Arcade is near the top of Games category list and Simulation is somewhere down the bottom, people are more likely to click through to Arcade than they are Simulation. This (probably) turned out to be a bad idea.

After making the switch, Pocketball dropped 2 places (from #52 to #54). I’ve since switched it back to Simulation. I will probably resume this experiment at a later date.

It really looks like positive reviews is what brings the sales in. I can see from my daily sales reports that 11 of the 22 promo codes I handed out have been used. I can only account for 6 of those so hopefully the remaining 5 point to a review progress. Time will tell I suppose.

There is a “Hot New Games” feature on the US App Store right now and this is what it looks like:

Awesome right? It only appeared a few hours ago and so I’m yet to find out how it has affected my sales.

The first review of Pocketball is in. It’s from Touch Arcade and it’s fantastic:

If you’re a fan of genuinely challenging puzzle games that are about more than falling blocks, Pocketball is $1.99 well spent.

Awesome.

That’s right folks, Pocketball is now available at the iPhone App Store. So what are you waiting for? Go grab yourself a copy!

Technically it’s “waiting for review” but it’s pretty much the same diff from my end. It’s in. It’s done. I’m not sure how I feel about this right now. In one way, it’s a massive relief and a time to celebrate. My job is done and Pocketball will be selling… SELLING in a couple of weeks. In another way, it feels like I just handed in the final exam to be graded. And I don’t mean by Apple. Yes, Apple has to approve it and yes it is possible that they’re not going to like my keywords or they might fuss over this or that, but ultimately, Pocketball is going to end up in the App Store. The really scary stuff is what happens next. If people don’t buy the game, I’ve failed the final exam.

Okay, so of course people will buy the game. To be fair, I have a lot of confidence in Pocketball insofar as I know that it is really fun to play. It’s challenging and it’s addictive and I know people right now that are in love it. Not in a, “that’s a really swell game you got there, good luck with it” kind of way. I’m talking about a “can I borrow your iPhone? I really want to pass that level” kind of way. And that’s just brilliant. There’s a real buzz you get from knowing that someone enjoys using your software. It’s an even bigger buzz when you know that someone loves your game.

So what am I nervous about? I’m nervous because nobody needs games. Sure, nobody really needs TV Forecast either, but it was designed to service a need. A year ago I knew that if I could make TV Forecast the best app of its type, then it will make me money. This may have been naive but it worked. When it comes to games, I don’t know the equation for success. To be blunt, I’m nervous about the unknowns. The best I can do is make sure that Pocketball fun and exciting and hope that the promotional screenshots and video accurately portray what it is like to play. And yes, I think I’ve done this.

The other obvious step is to get the word out. The promo page, the twitter account, emailing review sites and keeping people informed here is all part of that process. Quietly hoping that Apple decides to feature Pocketball is a fairly significant part of that process too but I know that I would do well to keep my mind off things that I can’t influence.

So back to the happy thoughts: No matter what happens next, I know that I’ve accomplished something here. I’m proud of the game and I really hope you all love playing it. Expect to see it in the next few weeks.