Estimate the sales of any app

While I was developing River of News I looked around for any discussion I could find where developers revealed their sales or the relation of ratings to sales. I found several sources independently say that about 1 in 30 buyers of a paid app will rate it in the store. I now have two apps in the store and that ratio has held up remarkably well.

I'm sure there are exceptions and my information is far from comprehensive, but I have enough evidence to believe that multiplying the number of ratings in the U.S. App Store by 30 will give you a ballpark estimate of the sales of an app.

I'm curious to hear from other developers if this ratio is accurate for their products.

River of News is on sale

I'm putting River of News on sale to celebrate its return to the top 10 in the news category. For a limited time it is priced at $1.99 in the US or the corresponding price in your region's App Store.

Tell your friends! Tell your Mom! Tell your rabbi!

Tip: Gestures

If you haven't done so, take a look at the River of News section in the iPad Settings app. There are a number of details you can change about how River of News behaves and the most interesting are the configurable gestures.

iOS has introduced a gesture language that we take for granted now with scrolling, swiping, and pinching. It's safe to assume that users know those and for apps to apply them in standard ways. But how should gestures be used beyond that?

I like mobile apps that use gestures in a way similar to keyboard shortcuts on a desktop OS. The intent is to provide a fast way to execute common actions with the key being they are useful, but not required. River of News 1.3 added the gesture choices you see above. The gestures can perform navigation actions like jump to the next article or provide a way to invoke your most commonly used sharing service.

Do you have other ideas about how gestures could be used effectively? Tell me in the comments.

More browser changes

The feedback was, shall we say, not positive on the in-app browser change. A number of people told me they had been using iOS 4.2 betas with River of News and not having the freezing problem. I don't know the true source of the problem as freezing the entire device is something that iOS guarantees should never, ever happen.

I think it's my job as the developer to make good choices that work well so you don't have to think about it. That's why I'm loathe to add a new setting. But there is no good choice here so I am adding a new option accessible in the iPad Settings app. The next version will have the option to open links partial screen, full-screen, or in Safari.

Apple has notified us they have a reduced staff for the US Thanksgiving holiday so I doubt this will get through approval before next week. And this time my release notes will only talk about sunshine and bunny rabbits.

Rejected!

As I wrote the other day, iOS 4.2 has a bug that required me to make a change in River of News. Occasionally the entire iPad would freeze up when the in-app browser was closed. This bug likely has to do with the new memory management in iOS 4.2 (a lot changed under the covers). I don't know the exact reason for it but it happens and I can't leave it that way. The best I can do is try to work around the problem until Apple fixes it. Hence, the new version with the browser not full screen in landscape which is now in the App Store.

I figured something was up when this version spent a long time in review. After about a day of being reviewed I received an email that my app was rejected because the release notes contained "defamatory comments about Apple."

 It would be appropriate to remove "In-app browser is no longer full screen because of iOS 4.2 compatibility problem" from the Release Notes.

Really? I can't tell my customers why I had to make a change that I knew wouldn't be popular? Some people react very strongly to change like the guy who wrote he no longer uses River of News because the new icon makes him "puke".

I changed the release notes to say "In-app browser is no longer full screen for better performance in iOS 4.2." This was accepted by Apple and version 1.3.1 is now live.

Minor update coming soon

There is a bug in iOS 4.2 that is occasionally triggered by closing the in-app browser in River of News. It's a disastrous bug in iOS because it freezes the entire iPad and requires a reboot. iOS is supposed to guarantee that no individual app can hang the system. Guarantees aside, it's happening and I can't leave it this way. The best I can do is work around it for now by making the browser not full screen. It only visually impacts landscape but seems to work around the iOS bug in both orientations.

Along with this change I cleaned up the browser UI a bit. I removed the URL bar which wasn't used much and added a search button that acts as a shortcut to Google. If you want to get to a specific site you can use Google as a starting point instead of typing in the URL directly. I also fixed a few minor bugs.

Version 1.3.1 has been sent to Apple and will be available when Steve Jobs personally reviews it and sends me email as he does with all of my updates. (not really)

Tip: Side swiping

Thank you everyone for the survey results. They're illuminating. There were requests for help documentation which I will address in the future. For the moment, I do have this blog and I know a lot more of you are reading it now.

There is understandable confusion about the side swiping order of feeds. It's actually really simple: it's the same order as the feed list. If a folder is expanded in the list then you'll swipe through each individual feed. If your folders are collapsed then you'll jump folder to folder. You can see this if you play with it in landscape orientation. Expand and collapse folders and the swipe order will always match what you see in the list.

Swiping between feeds doesn't appear to be a feature that is used by as many people as I expected. I consider that a failing on my part to expose and explain it because it's really awesome. I like to use the app in portrait orientation and rarely even look at my feed list. I order my list at Google Reader so that the stuff I care about is up top. When I use River of News I have it in portrait and I start with the first folder and scroll, swipe, scroll, swipe. I'm always looking at the content, not fussing with the UI. And isn't that the goal?