Boooooooo…
You all set for IOS Market buddy :D:cool:
I will be joining you soon. next week hopefully.
Do you have plans for new Apps/Games for IOS or you will convert your successful Android stuff to IOS (my case)?
Thanks @gcc.
first I am going to convert android apps to ios (already being done by a contractor), games created with andengine would be tough to convert. Next focus would be to use unity for every new game. don’t know how to create cross platform utility apps without hiring platform specialist contractors.
I already purchased apple developer account on 22nd october on my son’s birthday.
My total expected cost of just getting the environment setup till now in INR:
iphone: Rs 20000
macbook(already ordered): Rs 75000
dev. account: Rs 5000
Total: Rs 100000 (1lakh)
Need to earn back that money fast from iOS by paying money to contractors. iOS dev. is really expensive to get into.
P.S. Recently I had started ios development tutorials channel on youtube. Do follow my android and ios youtube channels guys to get hold of android and ios development tutorials.
I do my main development in Windows and Visual Studio 2013 on a desktop, as I use cocos2d-x as a game engine. Don’t want to start a flame here, but VS as an IDE and debugger is now decades in front of Eclipse (not to mention Xcode, which is a plain PITA).
So it goes like this:
- write and test all your code in the best language (C++ of course
in the best IDE available for it (VS). - build it using Android tools and Eclipse, deploy and publish.
- reboot into Hackintosh mode (:P), checkout the code, import it in XCode, build and publish on Apple Appstore.
- extra bonus, if you’re into it: load the WP8 or Windows 8 project in Visual Studio 2013 and publish on Windows Store.
Cross platform coding is awesome.
For convenience I also got a Macbook Air - since my previous laptop died, and wanted to do some light iOS dev while on the move.
PS. If C++ is not your thing, there’s also cocos2d-js - which gives you all of the above + HTML5 web game.
How about performance with cocos2d-js. what’s the fps one can expect?
I also heard of xamarian (something like that) which needs C# skills.
As a former Visual Studio user I can’t agree with monocube. But I prefer a simple text editor to IDEs anyway (although for Java I use Eclipse out of convenience). My main motto though is - never addict yourself to one tool because you might need to change it later in life and it will be a hard change. Better to be prepared to code in anything, any language, any IDE, any OS.
cocos2d-js uses Spidermonkey for Javascript, but on their demo project, I get 60 fps on an old HTC Desire S. I just saw they released cocos2d v3, which claims up to 10x faster in some cases.
Zynga uses cocos2d JS for some of their games.
Depends on the size of the project - I use TextWrangler or Notepad++ on occasion. But you can’t really debug with a text editor 
Also, we write native C++ code - using GDB with Eclipse is a nightmare. Profiling native code is also difficult. This is where VS comes in very handy. Nvidia also has a nice plugin for debugging / profiling Tegra devices in VS. And it’s free, you just need to register and get approved.
Of course you need to know all tools and languages and be prepared for anything they evolve into. But, as they say, a bad programmer will write bad code in any language
What about making money with iOS? its harder than Android?
I have no direct experience in that. but following factors are well known in IOS games/apps.
Their approval process is difficult than GP
Less user base
IOS users preffer paid stuff more than shitty ads. so apps need the stuff to satisfy your customers and pay for it.
If app is monetized. per click revenue is more than android.
hope it helps.
The best thing of IOS is that all apps are manually verified and hence you won’t see your iOS account blocked one day when you wake up
@adforandroidapps made excellent comments.
iOS is 20% of the market and shrinking. Right now, my feeling is that another 20% of the market is USA Android installs. The other 60% is Android in countries that won’t earn you large $$$. So right now, you could earn equivalent money on both iOS and Android (with USA customers).
HOWEVER… the advertizing market is maturing. At the moment, ads are CPC/CPA because they want you to install a shitty app or fill a survey/etc. This is like the early days of the WWW. So look to the Web to see what will happen in mobile advertizing.
Pretty soon, Brands will start seeing value in mobile advertizing. For those of you that don’t know, “Brands” are things like Pepsi, CocaCola, BMW, Gillette, etc. A lot of them have multiple products eg: Proctor and Gamble makes both “Head and Shoulders” shampoo and “Pantene” shampoo. Why sell just one shampoo, when you can sell every one a customer could possibly buy ?
Anyway…Brands get sold ads on a eCPM basis. They are paying for market awareness AND interaction with ads, so are less sensitive to CTR.
eg: Toyota wants to track that they showed you a car advert on your PC, then a few times on your mobile device, then you went to their website and built a Toyota Corolla model using their car builder and after that they showed you Toyota Corolla adverts for 2 weeks. They can match this sort of advert pushes to sales numbers.
Once the Brands come online, you will see better advert performance IN EVERY country.
The summary of all this… build a large advert network, and wait for the market to mature a little more.
Couldn’t say it any better. I do see some branding campaigns but not a lot yet. It is still pretty much a “land grab” in mobile right now.
Switching from Android to iOS :-
Step 1: Download the app
To start the process, download the Move to iOS app on your Android phone. Then take your iPhone out of the box and begin the iPhone setup process. It is important to note that the app only works with phones that are being set up for the first time, or after a factory reset. This can be annoying if you already started setting up your iPhone.
Step 2: Prep your phones
Once you’ve initiated the iPhone setup and made it past the “Hello” screen, follow the prompts. Eventually, you’ll see an “Apps & Data” screen, and from there you’ll notice “Move Data from Android” at the bottom of the list. Select this option.
Now, run Move to iOS on your Android phone. Agree to the terms and conditions and then on the “Find Your Code” screen, hit Next. Now, you should have the option to enter a 10-digit code. This code will appear on your iPhone after you’ve selected “Move Data from Android” and hit continue. When the code appears on your iOS device enter it into your Android phone, then let the transferring begin.
Step 3: Transfer away
Your iOS device will then use its own private Wi-Fi network to communicate with your Android phone. Once you select what data you want to send over, the transferring process will begin. Some things that are transferred are pictures, music, emails, contacts, browser data, accounts, and texts. Apps, on the other hand, will not transfer. This means going into the App Store and redownloading all the apps that didn’t make the move. Additionally, you should probably check to see if any files didn’t make the transfer before you retire your Android phone. If there are any files that are stuck on your Android phone, Apple suggests using Android File Transfer to manually move the files onto your computer, and then from your computer to your iPhone.
i converted 5 android apps (with together about 10000 daily downloads) into iOS - the result was: not even 100 downloads per day … revenue almost 0
I started with developing for iOS and it was very bad - then i developed for android and i made really good money … converting to iOS was not really good for me …
I think it is very hard to get a game featured or ranked very high in Itunes…
So i would not recommend it