iPhone WNTD: Mobile Allowance app
- Thread starter ms2005
- Start date
59p prob won't break the bank when i freely send texts to the Gadget Show and never get anywhere.
Amazing where my priorities lie.
Apparently v.1.1 has been put forward to Apple for approval. Once approved it will be a Free App in the app store, I presume this is to get a bucket load of good reviews then put the price up to 99p and with 500 positive reviews it will look a bargain.
No mate, usually appears on Appulo when available!
Because somebody has to spend eight hours a day developing the app and responding to each and every support email personally. These days people seem to need money to live (wtf?!); call me crazy, but I think we should go back to when everything was free.
Apologies but your presumption isn't quite right (almost, but.. not quite); the update is to fix the major bugs which cause 5% of all users to have absolutely no access to the app and add a couple of requested features (yes, legitimate users can request features and I actually implement them!)
You guys really have bad standards for society, heh. Wanting to steal somebody's hard work, yet assuming that everybody's corrupt (or is it just the developers who charge next to nothing for their apps?)
Yes, you've guessed it! I'm the developer of "Mobile allowance" and I'm far from a faceless company who can deal with piracy; I charge 59p because I'm not affiliated with O2 and in a few years (or even months), O2 will revamp their website and I'll have to spend an age recoding the entire application so that it'll work as usual for all those lovely deserving customers
Now that you've had my little rant, why not buy my unconditional love (and all future updates) and splash out the ungodly sum of 60 of your hard-earned English pennies (with a whole penny change) on my app at the App Store instead?
P.S. an app can't cost 99p in the App Store; the lowest price points are 59p and £1.19
I do believe in trying stuff before buying (not humans, that's wrong in several ways), but the App Store (as you almost certainly know) doesn't allow for such a feature; if you do want some reassurance before spending 59p (yet feel the sudden moral urge to support my work): you might want to wait for version 1.1 which fixes about six major bugs and adds some awesome new features; it's been revamped to work for everybody (not just 95% of customers)
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Because somebody has to spend eight hours a day developing the app and responding to each and every support email personally. These days people seem to need money to live (wtf?!); call me crazy, but I think we should go back to when everything was free.
Apologies but your presumption isn't quite right (almost, but.. not quite); the update is to fix the major bugs which cause 5% of all users to have absolutely no access to the app and add a couple of requested features (yes, legitimate users can request features!)
You guys really have bad standards for society, heh. Stealing somebody's hard work, yet assuming that everybody's corrupt.
Yes, you've guessed it! I'm the developer of "Mobile allowance"; I charge 59p because I'm not affiliated with O2 and in a few years (or even months), O2 will revamp their website and I'll have to spend an age recoding the entire application so that it'll work as usual for all those lovely deserving customers
Now that you've had my little rant, why not buy my unconditional love (and all future updates) and splash out the ungodly sum of 60 of your hard-earned English pennies (with a whole penny change) on my app at the App Store instead?
P.S. an app can't cost 99p in the App Store; the lowest price points are 59p and £1.19
Holy moses, a dev! I genuinely feel compelled to spend the 59p for his appearance.
Anyway, without prejudice.
I think you will find a lot of people simply use Appulo and the likes to find out if the apps are any good, there are hundreds to choose from most with smoke blowing up their own arses which urge you to buy them for them to turn out to be utter tripe / unstable or just generally shite.
If I like an app, I will buy it, apps that work and I use regularly then fine (swirlyMMS, mboxMail, London Tube etc) Mostly because it then syncs into my itunes IPSW making restores easier and secondly as it auto updates, but believe me, I've installed plenty of apps whose description make it out to be the bees knees and in my opinion are not worth the room on my iphone let alone the money it costs to keep it there.
I think given the mixed reviews of the workability of this app we, as paying consumers with no recourse to a refund, are fully entitled to want to try before I buy. Something tangible I am able to return for a refund should it turn out not to do what it says on the tin but an app I cannot, until Apple adopt such a philosophy, or prevent the publication of ludicrously unstable apps, with the app store I and I'm sure many others will continue to try before we buy. Should you wish to incorporate a free trial period then I am more than happy to follow the conventional route.
I agree, 59p is not a lot but if I shell out 59p for 10 apps (easily done) that's the best part of £6, I do that each month and thats the worse side of £70 a year. The majority of which I wold consider money wasted.
Contrary to popular opinion the main reason for my decision to jailbreak was the ability to A) Customise and B) Add functionality Apple should have included in the first place (MMS, SBSettings, Categories, PDANet, Instinctive Shuffe etc) indeed I have more Cydia apps installed than I do App store apps, my decision was and is not to rip-off developers.
I appreciate the work you have put in and I am sure you will appreciate the other side of the coin!
Very good point for complex apps, but mine's designed to look and feel super simple: I can confidentially say that - without a doubt - version 1.1 will work flawlessly for all users (as long as they don't have multiple O2 online accounts by accident, which is becoming more than a rare case): I personally think that it won't need a trial once the update is approved by Apple.
I'm not sure who told you that (the refunds part, not the reviews!), but it seems that you're far from the only one who thinks that. The App Store was designed to support refunds and they're being claimed all the time; you simply have to send an email to iTunes relations via the Apple website and they'll - seriously - issue a refund. Although it's not a one-click process, it's easily comparable to buying a 59p mega size Mars bar and then asking for a refund at ASDA a day after the refund promise expires
I do indeed! I'm being brutally honest here when I say that I honestly think the app would have almost-all five star reviews if Apple had just pushed out the update soon after I sent it to them; rather than leaving it a whole week: every single customer who's reviewed badly has done so because of bugs which have since been fixed but can't reach them yet - hence why I said to wait for the update if you're un-naturally wary of splashing out another 59p
Bear in mind that you can email me at any time after buying the app for dedicated support - usually answered within an hour - via the mobile allowance website
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Very good point for complex apps, but mine's designed to look and feel super simple: I can confidentially say that - without a doubt - version 1.1 will work flawlessly for all users (as long as they don't have multiple O2 online accounts by accident, which is becoming more than a rare case): I personally think that it won't need a trial once the update is approved by Apple.
I'm not sure who told you that (the refunds part, not the reviews!), but it seems that you're far from the only one who thinks that. The App Store was designed to support refunds and they're being claimed all the time; you simply have to send an email to iTunes relations via the Apple website and they'll - seriously - issue a refund. Although it's not a one-click process, it's easily comparable to buying a 59p mega size Mars bar and then asking for a refund at ASDA a day after the refund promise expires
I do indeed! I'm being brutally honest here when I say that I honestly think the app would have almost-all five star reviews if Apple had just pushed out the update soon after I sent it to them; rather than leaving it a whole week: every single customer who's reviewed badly has done so because of bugs which have since been fixed but can't reach them yet - hence why I said to wait for the update if you're un-naturally wary of splashing out another 59p
Bear in mind that you can email me at any time after buying the app for dedicated support - usually answered within an hour - via the mobile allowance website
OK! You're on, I'll buy before I try on this occasion, then I'll wait for 1.1 release but if I find it gimmicky, buggy, useless or any other reason which had I tried first I would of decided to discard I will come asking for a refund, not for the cost, but for the principle.
I think it's this which is the issues, perhaps it's me but I feel it's a little naive to believe Apple will refund an app simply because in my opinion, it doesn't do what it says / isn't as described, is buggy etc and in any event it's far easier and wastes less of my time if I can simply remove the app myself, none the worse off.
If I choose to remove an app sometimes after 5 seconds sometimes after a couple of days then I don't feel the developers are losing anything, OK they have not benefited from my purchase but in turn I'm not benefiting from their product so why should they!
Given the sheer volume of apps available, particularly similar apps with the same purpose, I still defend the right to try first, that way I can decide which best suits my needs. The same way I went to CPW, Phones4U, Apple etc before I plumped for the iphone.
I somehow doubt the app store is subject to the trades description act is my point and thus I'm protecting my own interests (i.e. my bank balance) by not stumping up for each and every app which appears to be any good.
I'll await 1.1 before making judgment, if it's good then congrats and you'll have my money to feed the kids, if it's bad then I don't see why you or any other developer should profit.
I would also like to thank you for taking the time to discuss these issues on a forum, you're far more likely to get me to purchase something through this method than any other.
I did, if for no other reason than the dev showed his face
Would you please ipa the new update becuase I want to try this app before I buy since the reviews are conflicting.
Thanks.
Working flawlessly as I promised?
Have a quick look at http://mcneela.net/allowance to see a screenshot and nice description
Select "Recent reviews" in iTunes and you'll see that the reviews are hardly conflicting anymore
Yeah works fine mate. Nice app!
With all due respect mate I don't value my time to perform the below at 59p
How to Create an .IPA file from a .APP by KYEK
What you need:
1: An already-cracked app
2: A cracked MobileInstallation file installed on your iPhone or iPod Touch (like you do to install any cracked IPA). For instructions to do this, see this thread: http://geniusblog.net/appstore/viewtopic.php?id=2
3: Lastly, you need to know that when I say "ProgName", substitute the name of the program you're working with
Getting the iTunesArtwork file
The iTunesArtwork file is simply a jpeg image with the extension taken off, and is included in application's install folder on your device for every app downloaded from the app store. This image is what appears in the Applications section of iTunes as the icon for the app, and is definitely nice to have -- if you don't have it, you get a generic, black icon that no one wants to see. If you have the iTunesArtwork file, skip all this and go down to the next red headline! Otherwise, read on:
1: Open iTunes on your computer and find your application in the iTunes Music Store. On the application's page, find the app icon at the top-left corner of the page and right-click it. Now choose "Copy iTunes Store URL". Your clipboard now contains something like this:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...284962368&mt=8
2: Paste that somewhere (in your browser or a text editor) and replace the section that saysphobos.apple.com
with this:ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net
Go to the resulting URL in your browser.
3: Do a search on that page for the text:
100x100-75
Safari users will have to right-click the page and select "View Source" before searching for the above text.
Once the text is found, copy the entire URL it's in to your clipboard. For example, this is the URL I ended up with:
http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r30/Pu...100x100-75.jpg
4: Paste the URL from the last step into your browser again, but change the "100x100" to "512x512". The image that loads will be the official, Apple-provided iTunesArtwork file. Save this to your desktop.
5: Rename the file to "iTunesArtwork" with NO extension. Note that doing this from the GUI on Mac will simply hide the extension, not remove it. If this is the case, open Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities) and paste this line into it:
mv ~/Desktop/iTunesArtwork.jpg ~/Desktop/iTunesArtwork
Mac and Linux users should then execute this line in Terminal to apply the appropriate permissions to the file:
chmod 665 ~/Desktop/iTunesArtwork
Windows users will need to enable the "Show known file extensions" option in their folder options in order to remove the extension properly.
6: Pat yourself on the back! You've just gotten your iTunesArtwork file.
Bundling the .IPA
1: Create a folder on your desktop called "working". Open that, and create another folder inside of it called "Payload". Case-sensitive.
2: Move your iTunesArtwork file into the "working" folder, and your .app into the Payload folder.
3: Mac and Linux users only: Open Terminal and run the following command:
chmod -R 775 ~/Desktop/working/Payload
4: Go into your ProgName.app folder within Payload (Mac users, right-click ProgName.app and choose Show Package Contents).
5 (For Mac users with Dev Tools installed ONLY): Double-click the Info.plist file. The Property List Editor will open and show a simple table. Click the last row of the table, then press the + button that appears to create a new row at the bottom. In the first new cell enter
SignerIdentity
and in the second new cell, enter
Apple iPhone OS Application Signing
Save this file.
5 (For Windows, Linux, and other Macs): Visit the following site: https://brokolice.drsny.net/iphone/plutil/ (You may have to Approve the security certificate -- don't worry, it's safe)
Browse for your Info.plist file, and press the "Convert" button. Save the resulting file to your computer. Windows users, open this file in WordPad. Mac and Linux users can use any text editor.
scroll to the bottom of the file and make a new line just before
</dict>
And paste the following in that spot:
<key>SignerIdentity</key>
<string>Apple iPhone OS Application Signing</string>
The end of the file should now look like this:
<key>SignerIdentity</key>
<string>Apple iPhone OS Application Signing</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Save the file (Make sure the name is Info.plist -- case sensitive!) and replace the Info.plist in ProgName.app with it.
6: Time to zip it up. Use your favorite method to zip the iTunesArtwork file and Payload folder together in one .zip file. Mac users can select both, right-click, and choose "Compress 2 Items". Windows users can select both, right-click, and choose "Add to Archive" (remember to select ZIP, not RAR if that option is available).
If you unzip the file, you should see this structure:
iTunesArtwork
+Payload
AppName.app
7: Rename the zip file to ProgName.ipa
8: All done! You should now be able to double-click the app to install it into iTunes, you'll see an icon for it if you properly included the iTunesArtwork file, and it will sync to your phone and run smoothly. Congratulations!
I've bought it now, but it doesn't work!
