Seinfeld… really???
An interesting review from my friends at AppVader. Thanks guys… I think! 
http://appvader.com/2010/08/jiggle-balls-hd
Also, we’re still in the #1 position on the New & Noteworthy… woohoo! I also recorded a podcast with The Portable Gamer guys last nite. It will be out on Tuesday. I’ll post the link here.
New & Noteworthy
Jiggle Balls HD ended up in the iPad Entertainment “New & Noteworthy” section yesterday.
This is the first time any of our apps have been featured by Apple. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’ve heard that getting featured in these sections aren’t that helpful, since they are only visible in the iTunes App Store and not the device App Store. And I’m not sure how I got here. Is it automated or did some Apple employee put me there? I wish I knew. But… happy to get the exposure. I’ll keep you posted.
Jiggle Balls HD Video
Asking For Artwork Is No Guarantee You’ll Get Featured
A few weeks… well… no it’s almost a couple of months… ago I got the email every “indie” developer waits for. The one asking for additional artwork. Wahoo! I started seeing $$$. I quickly, but quite professionally IMHO got together the requested artwork and sent it the very next day. Crickets chirping… more crickets chirping… hmmm… let’s send an email and see what’s up. Nothing… ok, maybe it just got buried in their spam, I’ll try just once more… oh good… a response. So turns out a request for artwork isn’t a guarantee of getting featured. I asked why waste everyone’s time? Especially if you are an indie and paid someone good money to get artwork together for you (I know… I know… Apple says to already have it ready, but who does this?)
Needless to say, disappointed. So… if you ever get this email, do not get your hopes up. I’ll still muddle through this quagmire of apps, trying to get exposure. I was really excited that Apple was going to help me out. Instead a couple more fart apps and zombie apps got featured. Is my stuff the best out there? Hell no… but I think it shows creativity, effort, and originality. For a 1-man shop I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done.
They asked me what I had coming down the pipe (the nice way of telling me… ummm ya… we aren’t gonna feature any of your current stuff). I told them I was working on Jiggle Balls Studio for the iPad. They asked when it would be ready for iOS4 and I said, well… when you guys are ready for iOS4 on the iPad. Perhaps a bit smug and sarcastic… maybe I need to hire a PR person. Their response… well… good luck with that. Ouch!
Retina Display
With the release of the iPhone and Apple recent policy on not accepting iOS2.x apps into the app store anymore, I decided it was time to rebuild the entire product line with SDK4.0 and target 3.0 and above devices.
Part of that process is including a new 114×114 icon in the bundle that the retina display uses to give a sharper icon on the springboard. If it’s not provided, the old 57×57 icon is used. It will look just like it did on previous hardware, because the iPhone 4 doubles the pixels since the resolution is exactly 2x the size in both directions.
After reading through the Apple forums, it appeared there were several different approaches to getting this to work. This is the approach I found worked for me.
First I went back to my original 512×512 icon and scaled in down to 114×114 (don’t scale up your 57×57). I then named this icon114.png and dropped it in the same location as my icon.png. Then I edited my info.plist and added CFBundleIconFiles as follows:
I only had the simulator to test with, so I couldn’t visually tell any difference. So I then put a red X through my icon and verified that that’s the one that came up in the simulator. Still… I wasn’t 100% sure how it was going to look on the iPhone 4, but I released anyway.
Yesterday I put out a call on Facebook and Twitter for help from anyone with an iPhone 4, because the update to Jiggle Balls Spikes was approved. A guy named Rod helped me out and sent me the springboard v1.4 and v1.5 screenshots which proved that the new icon is being used on the retina display. See for yourself.
Notice how smooth the Apple Mail icon is compared to all the other non-iOS4 apps. The spikey ball looks a little pixelated. Now lets see what happens when the update was applied.
Wallah! A big improvement. So that’s how you get the new icon in your bundle. I haven’t decided whether to update all my app with all new higher resolution assets. I’m leaning towards not, but focusing on doing that for future projects.
