Like most developers, I’m not thrilled with the way the App Store presents my apps. There are several problems, but in particular, I really don’t like the user review system. It’s biased towards bad reviews, and that ends up hurting sales (there are odd exceptions to this). The only time a user is reminded or asked to rate an app is when you delete it, and you probably don’t care for the app if you’re deleting it. In comparison to the unhappy user, the satisfied user rarely takes the time to review your app. Which leaves you with crummy reviews from uninformed users hurting sales of your app.

If Apple would allow developers to respond to reviews, or more easily challenge the validity of a review, this would be no big deal. But I don’t have any hopes of Apple wising up and fixing anything, so I’m left trying to get more positive reviews of my apps to drown out the negatives ones.

Appirater
The goal of Appirater is to encourage your satisfied user’s to rate your app. To use it, place the Appirater code into your project, and add the following code in your app’s delegate class.

Finally, open up Appirater.h and change the APPIRATER_APP_ID to your apps software id. You can also change the other #defines, for a more customized reminder message and buttons, but the default should suffice for most apps.

Now every time the user launches your app, Appirater will see if they’ve used the app for 30 days and launched it at least 15 times. If they have, they’ll be asked to rate the app, and then be taken to your app’s review page in the App Store. If you release a new version of your app, Appirater will again wait until the new version has been used 15 times for 30 days and then prompt the user again for another review. Optionally, you can adjust the days to wait and the launch number by changing DAYS_UNTIL_PROMPT and LAUNCHES_UNTIL_PROMPT in Appirater.h.

Code: http://github.com/arashpayan/appirater/

BTW, if you like Appirater, please consider checking out my game, Jabeh or the lite version of it.

Just a quick post for everyone who’s lucky enough to be using T-Mobile on their iPhone in the US. It’s possible to get a data plan for your iPhone at only $9.99. It’s edge only, but that doesn’t matter because T-Mobile’s 3G network is incompatible with the iPhone’s 3G radio.

Here it is:

1. Log into your account at tmobile.com. Change your device to be a silver (the pink one won’t work!) Motorola RAZR.
2. As of this writing, there’s a bug in the site that prevents you from seeing the correct data plans for your newly selected device, so log out of the site, then log back in again. Now fFind your way to the page that lists the possible services you can add on to your plan, and you should now be able to select a $9.99/month web plan ($20 gets you unlimited texting as well). Select it.
3. In your iPhone go to Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data Network and for the APN use internet2.voicestream.com. Leave the username and password blank.

You might need to wait up to 24 hours for the service to be activated. Just keep restarting your phone periodically and check to see if it starts working.

I just setup my iPhone so I can control it remotely and ultimately perform video captures of my activity on it. It’s a quick and painless process, and here’s a step by step for those interested:

1. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch There are various tutorials around that take you through the jailbreaking process. Just make sure to use the latest version of the jailbreaking tools and install Cydia if you’re prompted.
2. Launch Cydia and install Veency If this is your first time opening up Cydia, you’ll be prompted about what mode you want the program to run in; select ‘User’. Next click on the Sections tab at the bottom, select the Networking section and scroll down until you see Veency. Select it and press Install.
3. Download and install a VNC client If you’re on OS X, you can download Chicken of the VNC. On Windows, you can use Tight VNC.
4. Find your iPhone’s IP address On your phone go to Settings->Wi-Fi then click the blue disclosure button for the network you’re logged into. Take note of your iPhone’s IP address, because we’ll need it later. Mine is 192.168.1.50.
5. Launch VNC and connect to your iPhone Make sure your iPhone is unlocked and logged into your Wi-Fi network. Launch Chicken of the VNC (or Tight VNC) from your desktop, type in your iPhone’s IP address for the Host, and leave the Display at 0, then hit Connect. You should see a prompt on your iPhone asking you to accept or reject the connection.
   Go ahead and accept.
6. Control the iPhone You can control the iPhone with left-mouse clicks and the keyboard. You can simulate a press of the ‘Home’ button with a right-mouse click, and you can simulate the ‘Sleep/Power’ button with a middle-mouse click.
7. Capture the iPhone screen I like to use Screenflow on my Mac to capture screencasts. I’m not up to date on the best screen capturing software for Windows, but I’m sure there are plenty of options out there.

A couple caveats: The frame rate’s not that great, which produces some artifacts during animations, and any app that uses OpenGL doesn’t work at all.

After restoring a family member’s iPhone that was acting up, I began setting up t-zones for them, but couldn’t find the t-zones hack in the BigBoss repository. After some experimenting, I soon realized that none of the proxy configuration work is required anymore either. Setting up t-zones on your iPhone is now an easy 3 step process:

1. Go to Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data Network
2. Type wap.voicestream.com for the APN (leave the username and password) blank
3. There’s no step 3!

That’s all there is to it. YouTube even works over t-zones now.

BTW, if you’re a long time T-Mobile customer, you can call in right now and ask about the loyal customer plan. If you’ve been with them long enough, you can have a plan which gives you unlimited minutes for only $50 a month.

The project that I’ve been working on for the past couple months has finally come to fruition, and is available for purchase on the iTunes App Store.

Jabeh is a puzzle game where you search for 12 hidden stones on a board. Arrows on the board point in the direction of one or more stones, and the column and row numbers show how many stones are in the respective column and row. Using deduction you can figure out where the stones can’t be in order to ultimately find out where all 12 stones are. While you’re playing the game, some light music plays in the background (which you can download for free from the Jabeh website), and when you solve the puzzle you’re rewarded with one of the beautiful pieces of art created exclusively for Jabeh.

You can get Jabeh now for $4.99 or download Jabeh Lite for free if you wanna try before you buy.